Optionality is overrated. I realize we live in a world where people love keeping their options open, but the ones who are winning are those who picked something and got really, really good at it. Committing to something can be scary. That’s part of the risk of committing to something. You might look stupid for doing it.

Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR (sold to Facebook for $2B) and now defense technology company, Anduril, sees this mentality as a mistake. “At some point, in business and in life and in romance, you have to commit to a path,” said the 33-year-old Luckey. “A lot of my peers in the tech industry do not share this philosophy… They’re always pursuing everything with optionality. ’Oh, I need to be able to raise money from anybody. I need to be able to sell my business in any way. I need to have liquidity in any way. I need to make sure that I’m not closing myself off to future romantic partners. I need to make sure I’ve got my options open. I need to make sure that I’m not going to buy a house and settle down in one place and lock myself down. Oh, having children. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not ready to commit to that path.’”

There’s a cost to hedging all the time. When we keep one foot out the door, we never get in the room. When we’re looking for better options, we don’t focus on the opportunity right in front of us. You know that guy at the party who is kinda paying attention to you, but also looking over your shoulder for someone more impressive? Yeah. We don’t want to be that guy.

The energy we spend thinking about other options is time spent not investing in forward movement. A few years after starting The Learning Leader Show, I was at a crossroads. The show’s success had opened unexpected doors: keynote speaking gigs, CEOs asking me to work with their leadership teams, book offers, etc. But I was still working as VP of Sales at a large company, leading a team responsible for over $500 million in annual revenue. I was trying to do it all, and started to notice a bad pattern: I was becoming average at everything instead of excellent at anything.

So… I had to make a choice: either scale back all the good pub I was getting from the podcast and the opportunities it created or leave corporate America to focus entirely on this accidental business I’d built. I chose the latter. What could happen if I gave everything I had to build a media and leadership consulting business? I wasn’t sure, but I knew 100% commitment was the only way to find out.

The first couple of years after making that choice in late 2017 were tough. While I had good clients, the money didn’t match my VP salary & bonuses. But each year since I made the decision has been better than the last. Now, I can’t imagine doing anything else. There was no way to know what would happen without first making that complete commitment and sacrifice.

But commitment is scary because it means saying no to other possibilities. It forces us to make peace with the paths not taken. It also opens us up to look stupid. I vividly remember a conversation with a mentor I trust, who told me I was crazy to leave a VP role at a great company: “Man, you’ve got a great gig. Why would you give that up? That’s crazy. Is Miranda (my wife) really okay with this?” He might have been right, and I would have felt like an idiot if this didn’t work. That’s part of the deal. You might look stupid.

This is probably why our culture has developed such an attachment to optionality. It feels safer. We think we’re being smart and keeping our options open. But mostly I think we’re just avoiding the vulnerability of going all-in on something that matters.

Big achievements (the ones that put a positive dent in the world) require 100% commitment. We have to be willing to own our choices and ignore the naysayers (most people aren’t really paying attention to you anyway, so you might as well do it). While there will always be those who love keeping their options open, the courage to commit to something is a competitive advantage. The leaders who are making that dent are willing to go big and go for it. There’s a chance you’ll fall on your face, be embarrassed, fail. But “that just makes the movie more interesting.” So… I’d rather go for it. Wouldn’t you?

For years, I didn’t think about anything beyond the next recording. Each rep felt small. Then I started noticing the same pattern in the 700+ leaders I’ve talked with. The best ones never really looked for a shortcut. They just kept going. Last week, I got to walk 18 holes with a few NFL coaches. I asked one of them how he prepared to make the jump to head coach. He said, “I didn’t. I just kept trying to do my job as well as I possibly could. And then when I became a head coach, I figured it out each day. And we steadily got better and better as a staff and as a team.” It’s cool that his idea of taking the next step each day is similar to the 700+ leaders I’ve talked with on The Learning Leader Show.

And that pattern became a book.

The Price of Becoming: The Compounding Practices of High Performance comes out on Tuesday, July 21st.

If you’re building something hard, or you lead people who are, I wrote this for you.

Writing a book is a weird project. You’re like a stand-up comedian who tells a joke, but you have to wait 2 years to see if anyone thinks it’s funny. You spend a long time alone with a manuscript. You read your own sentences so many times you can’t see them anymore. I had many moments where I thought the writing was garbage. But, in a real meta way, I got up the next day and wrote more. The first manuscript was over 105,000 words long. The final one is right around 54,000 words. We worked hard to cut this thing down to the shortest possible book so that the reader’s time isn’t wasted.

Then people you deeply respect read it early, and they tell you they think it’s awesome.

People like Jack Carr, Dan Pink, General Stanley McChrystal, Liz Wiseman, Scott Galloway (who said ‘It’s the best leadership book of the year’). And on and on…

So here’s my one ask. Pre-order a copy now. Pre-Orders and launch week sales determine whether books hit bestseller lists and if bookstores put them on shelves, so a copy ordered today counts more than one ordered next month.

Pre-order The Price of Becoming

Order one for yourself. Order one for the person on your team who is an 8 or 9 and wants to be a 10. That’s who this is for.

Thank you for your continued support!

This one is all about the power of compounding. A lotta stuff I've learned from Munger/Buffett and the 700+ interviews I've done over the past 11 years.
If you're an 8 or 9 who wants to be a 10, then this book is for you.

If you enjoy my work and think you might buy the book when it comes out, it would mean a ton to me if you pre-order it now. Pre-Orders are a really big deal. They help determine the book’s placement online, in bookstores, and they tell my publisher that they need to print a ton so we don’t run out (like we have in the past when people waited til launch week to buy it).

If you really want to make a difference. Want to leave a positive dent in the world… Then there is a price to pay. There are trade-offs. This book is the story, science, and practical application of that price. It’s not theoretical. It’s stuff you actually do. Each chapter has lots of prompts for you. As well as actions you can take immediately to change your life.

I’m giving away a lot of pre-order bonuses to make it worth your while to buy it right now. All those are at Learning Leader dot com
And if you want to buy in bulk (50+), DM me or send an email (Ryan at LearningLeader)

Bill Murray picture — stay light, loose, and relaxed. If you can do that, you can play at the highest level. Keep that sense of playfulness.

“I’ll never make anything good in here. It’s too nice.” Oh, that’s okay; you just have to mess it up some.”

The analog desk is my R and D time.

“People want to watch someone who is activated.”

“People pay every night to show up and see somebody believe in themselves.” - Kim Gordon

“The market for something to believe in is infinite.

The world is full of people who are just going to work, doing whatever. People are really hungry to see people who are on fire for what they’re doing.”

“I ran at least the first half of my career off the fumes of that meeting with cartoonist Linda Berry. This person is activated to the world in a way that I want. I’ll have what she’s having. It’s important to have those people who light us up

The writer takes what people are thinking and puts it into the words. That’s what we do. That’s what a great writer does. That’s the best compliment I can think of for a writer. I don’t have that many special thoughts. I have a way of communicating that connects with people. It gives them the words.

Be a noticer. Therou always had a notebook with him on his morning walks because he knew he would need something to write about. That’s why photographers always carry their camera with them. It’s a driving function to be on the lookout for good shots.

We both went to Miami University at the same time. Austin created his own major (interdisciplinary studies). He synthesized multiple fields (English, Art, Classics). And they housed architecture students there too, which was most important since that’s where Austin met his wife.

My kids taught me more of what it’s like to be able to access the raw creative urge. The title of the book is stolen from an artist who I learned so much from watching a kid draw. Kids don’t call it art; they’re just doing stuff.”

I expected to be the teacher, and I ended up being the student

Kids are great because they’ll ask you enough questions that the universe becomes mysterious to you.

In order to keep growing, you gotta toggle between knowing and not knowing

To be a parent is to be a perpetual amateur. Neither of you knows what you’re doing. Even if you’ve had a kid before. What worked the last time might not work this time.

The word “amateur” in French means “lover of.” To be an amateur is to do it out of love.

“Kids are great because they’ll knock you on your ass as far as your pompous sense of certainty about what you do and what you know. Every great CEO should probably be put in the room with a 4-year-old. “

We are attracted to people who are very curious about the world. Those who are curious about people.”

Activation + Curiosity = a deadly combo

The great leader listens. They ask questions. The leader is curious and asks how others are doing. They aren’t the big talkers.

When I’m out in the world, I’m not looking for people who seem to be “successful.” I’m looking for people who seem to be having fun.

People say the Friday newsletter looks easy… Do it every Friday for 13 years, then call me.

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play.” He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he’s doing and leaves others to decide whether he’s working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. - Lawrence Pearsall Jacks

Writing is thinking. People think you gather your ideas, then write them down. The act of writing is the act of figuring out what you actually think. That’s the hard part.

Austin’s champagne moment a year from now: his kids flourishing. The older he gets, the less the books mean and the more his family does.

Those are a bit different. They usually involve more vertical gain. Rocks. Some scrambling using your hands. And in Colorado, you already start at elevation, and you keep going up. Your legs start getting tired. Breathing is a bit harder. But then you get to the top. And it’s beautiful. Not only the view, but the feeling of doing the harder thing. And doing it with someone else is so fun.

It becomes an addictive feeling. We’re going to choose the harder option, and we’re going to get to the top. Part of it for me is wanting to be prepared for future adversity. If I’m always choosing the harder path, then I’ll be better ready to handle whatever the next hard thing is… and part of it is that it brings joy to do hard things with someone else. Especially with someone you love. Brings you closer together.
It’s a great reminder that when I think of the coolest moments of my life, they were usually preceded by something hard. Helping my football team win games was preceded by years of hard work in the weight room, practice field, film room.
Crushing it on stage in front of thousands of people is preceded by creating the talk, practicing it, getting tons of reps, and making it look effortless when it's go time.
It seems like all the great things happen after we choose that harder path, and then earn the beautiful view/the feeling of accomplishing something big.
The easy hikes are enjoyable (and I'll keep doing them). But the hard hikes are where the real fun happens.

And over 11+ years of talking with more than 680+ people on The Learning Leader Show, one commonality among those putting a positive dent in the world is that they regularly choose the hard path. And then consistently get after it each day.

We met in the control room where the audio/video engineers sit. It’s a music recording studio where they are next to you with a big glass window. Jim takes his Apple watch off. Takes his wallet (which was a zip-lock bag) out of his pocket. His car key fob had a small piece of tape on it. It said, Jim. Takes his phone out of his pocket and puts that down too. There’s a pile of his wallet, key, watch, phone.

We started talking about audiobooks (this is the studio where he recorded his recent one), writing as a learning tool, and his wife, Joanne.

We move to the recording room. I ask him about his namesake, Jimmy Collins. Jimmy was a test pilot in the 1930s. He conducted the first flight of the Grumman XF3F-1 biplane in 1935 and authored Test Pilot, a celebrated memoir. The last chapter of his book was in his desk drawer, written by hand. He told his wife, Delores (Jim’s grandmother), to get it and publish the full book when he died. On March 20, 1935, Jimmy performed tests on the Grumman XF3F-1 prototype. He was killed in a crash during a high-speed dive test.

Delores raised Jim’s dad on her own. When I asked Jim about his dad, he said he “didn’t seem that interested in me.” Heartbreaking. He was not in Jim’s life. It was a wild way to start our conversation.

I was blown away by HOW Jim showed up. He was as present, focused, and energetic as any person I’ve met. He’s 68. Says he’s at the midpoint of his career. I believe him. He has these piercing blue eyes. Looks right into your soul. Especially when he’s talking about something he cares about. Which was our entire 2-hour talk. It was hard not to be intimidated by that focused stare. I tried to stay present. Look him in the eyes. Nod my head. Laugh sometimes. I felt good. Also, at times, when his answers were a bit longer, I kept thinking about how cool this all is. I almost felt an out-of-body experience… Like I was watching myself live out a dream. Meeting with one of my heroes. And being peers. Friends. Talking.

At one point, we started talking about what we were encoded for. This is a big part of his new book. He mentioned that he was encoded to be really curious. And how that’s driven his personal and professional life flywheel. Then he started talking about what I was encoded for. He said, “You have incredible encodings for what I would describe as attractive persistence. You don’t have a pushy tone. You are persistent. Once you see what must be done, you are relentless in your persistence. That’s part of your encodings, you’re just like, ‘I am not gonna let go.’ Your persistence is welcoming. It’s also part of your style. The way you’re put together. It’s a relentless persistence of invitation. That’s the way I experience your encoding. That persistence of invitation is a Ryan Hawk encoding of leadership that works really well for you.” That was a cool moment.

Towards the end, Jim showed me his notes. Prior to flying out west, I sent him some ideas about what we could talk about… Then he took that and wrote his own notes about each. And then he pointed to one of the answers on his sheet. It said, “Most important today… Catch up with an old friend.”

He mentioned the conversations we’d had over the past decade. He said it with such a genuine look in his eye. My lips started quivering. I tried to hold off. But couldn’t. Lost it. Tried to compose myself. Looked down. Messed with my hat a little bit. Was able to get out an “I’m sorry.” He comforted me. I was a little embarrassed. Wondered if he’s thinking, “Why is he crying?” I said something about being grateful for him and the impact he’s had on me and so many others…

“Never meet your heroes” is a common adage. I guess it’s because we put people on a pedestal, and it’s impossible for them to live up to those lofty expectations. And yet, every once in a while, you meet someone like Jim Collins, and not only does he live up to them, but he blows past them. I’m super grateful for the day. One I’ll remember forever.

It’s inspired by early moments in my life when I failed… And the past 11 years and 700+ conversations I’ve had with some of the most exceptional people in the world: coaches, CEOs, athletes, Navy SEALs, scientists, and quiet leaders you've probably never heard of.

The book stemmed from a question I like to ask leaders… What do you intentionally do each day to ensure you’re going to bed a little bit better than you were when you woke up? I’ve been super curious about the power of compounding behaviors. So, this is a combo of the things I’ve learned AND what I’ve actually done over the past decade to move from theory to action. It’s kind of pointless to learn all this stuff without actually doing it too…

It comes out July 21, 2026. I know this book can be transformational. Especially for people who want to put a positive dent in the world.
I want you to read it. I want you to tell your friends about it. Buy extra copies. And spread the word.

If you enjoy my work and think you might buy the book when it comes out, it would mean a ton to me if you pre-order it now. Pre-Orders are a really big deal. They help determine the book’s placement online, in bookstores, and they tell my publisher that they need to print a ton so we don’t run out (like we have in the past when people waited til launch week to buy it).

You’ll be hearing more about the book over the coming months. This is a deeply personal project. I am nervous to put it out, but at the same time, I’m proud of it. I think it will change your life for the better.

WHO is it for? We work with 8s and 9s who want to be 10s. 4s and 5s will not enjoy this book. This is for people who are doing well… And want to be even better. The target market is not the majority of humans. My publisher didn’t love that part (smaller # of people to sell books to). But that’s who I’ve been lucky to attract with my work on The Learning Leader Show.

If you really want to make a difference. Want to leave that dent… Then there is a price to pay. There are trade-offs. This book is the story, science, and practical application of that price. It’s not theoretical. It’s stuff you actually do. Each chapter has lots of prompts for you. As well as actions you can take immediately to change your life. If you actually do the work, the outcomes you want will happen. That’s a big if, though…

I’m giving away a lot of pre-order bonuses to make it worth your while to buy it right now. All those are at Learning Leader dot com
And if you want to buy in bulk (50+), DM me or send an email (Ryan at LearningLeader)

Thank you for your support! – Ryan

Why I Love Skiing With My Family

I love being out in nature. The mountains are beautiful. It’s worth it just for that. But the real reason we keep going back doesn’t have much to do with the views. A few years ago, we got our daughters a lesson on their first day. It didn’t go like I expected/hoped. There were tears. They wanted to quit. Maybe this whole family ski trip idea was stupid. It’s so much easier to just go to the beach. In Utah, it was cold. They fell a lot. There was complaining and crying. But… By the last day, they were skiing blues in Park City. That turnaround happened because they kept getting up. Over and over. That’s one of the big lessons. As parents, we try to manufacture hardship for them. Confidence needs evidence. You can’t talk kids into believing they can do hard things. They have to do actual hard things to prove it to themselves. And the shared suffering was a bonding moment for them.

There’s also something specific about courage on a mountain. When you peek over the edge of something that steep, there’s only one way down. You point your skis and go. That skill of choosing to move forward when it’s way easier to not do it, is worth developing. And the only way to get it is to earn it. By doing it.

Skiing also teaches kids to manage their own stuff and make decisions for themselves. The gear is awkward and annoying. You gotta carry it yourself. You figure out the trail map, decide which lift to take, and how to get to the place where you want to go. Last weekend, my daughter said, “I kind of like not really knowing where we’re going and just seeing where we end up.” I loved that moment. It was really about just enjoying the ride.

On the lifts, we’d sometimes ride up with older people who still ski hard every winter. I’d usually ask about their lives and how they stay in such great shape (for long-time podcast listeners, you know if I see an old dude who is jacked, I’m 100% going to ask how they do it). The answers are usually simple: they moved their bodies consistently for decades. Being around people who take their health seriously and actually enjoy it, I like learning from them and want my kids to be influenced by people like that.

But mostly I love the in-between parts. Getting all the layers on. The walk to the first lift. Riding up while everyone talks over each other about which run to hit first. Skiing behind my daughters and watching them go faster than they did yesterday. Meeting at the bottom and hearing, “That was awesome. Can we go again?” Then, the hot tub after a full day. Then dinner, where everyone is tired and happy and telling the same stories about falling and getting up and why the food at the mid-mountain lodge costs so much. All of it. It’s also cool to see that kids seem to lose their fear faster than adults. They go from being scared, crying, questioning themselves, to actual decent skiers within a few days. And before you know it, you’re asking them to slow down so they don’t hit a tree. It’s wild. If you haven’t taken your kids skiing, consider it. The mountains are beautiful. But you really go for all the other stuff. I doubt you’d regret it.

For this year-in-review reflection, I’m going to focus mostly on how I worked to make this the Year of Connection and share some ideas about what I plan to do in the future. Here we go…

• January 1: Went on a family ski trip to Utah. Rented a small house. Riding up lifts together (a very cool way to hang out with your kids). Teenagers learning to ski. Lots of falls on day 1. Some tears. Got steadily better. Luckily, our flights were cancelled for two days, which gave us an extra day skiing. Incredible. Everyone was crushing it by the end. Doing it again in 2026.

• Leaders’ retreat. Rented a house in Scottsdale. Hosted 12 high-character leaders who are doing well at home and at work. Hikes, workouts, great food. Single-threaded conversations (one topic, one speaker at a time) at dinner. Lots of free time for people to break off and talk about whatever they wanted. Great stuff.

• ​TEAM​. Love that I get to work with Sherri Coale, Brook Cupps, Geron Stokes, and Eli Leiker. We work with leadership teams. It’s cool to see where teams are when we start versus where they are a year later. I’ve noticed: the people who hire us to work with them and their leadership teams are already crushing it. They are 8s and 9s who want to be 10s. We never get asked to do work for people who are 4s and 5s. It’s the ones who are excellent and want to be better. There’s a lesson in that.

  • I was fortunate to do a leadership retreat/vacation with the team in The Bahamas. Incredible morning workouts in the rain. Jumped through a hole in the ​Thunderball Grotto​. Great meals. Fun games. Good chill time. Spouses came too. So much fun.

• Recorded six in-person podcasts (of the 53 total published). Kirk Herbstreit, Bert Bean/Sam Kaufman, Tom Ryan, Ed Latimore, Larry Connor, and James Clear. LOVE recording in person with my guest, and want to do even more in 2026.

  • The Learning Leader Show ranked as high as #1 in Business and #17 in All Podcasts on Apple.

  • Gartner just wrote, “The Learning Leader Show is one of the 5 podcasts CIOs must listen to in 2026.” No idea how those lists are created, but it’s pretty cool to be alongside one of my favorite podcasters, Dwarkesh Patel.

• Learning Leader Growth Summit. We hosted it in Scottsdale, AZ, for my Learning Leader Circle members and some guests. Did a live podcast with Ed Latimore. Hiked Camelback with my teammates and a sunrise hike with the group on our last day. In between, we did a lot of work focused on how we can “be at our best.” Loved it.

• Went on the Buckeye Cruise for Cancer with my brother. A really fun trip for us to hang out and raise money for a great cause.

• Went to Lake Tahoe with my brother for the American Century Celebrity golf tournament. We’ve gone the past 15 years. One of our favorite weeks of the year. We stay in a house on the lake with friends. Sunrise swims, golf all day, amazing dinners with awesome people at night. Super grateful we get to do this every year.

• Coached our youngest daughter’s volleyball and flag football team. I got way into this. I see how coaches get addicted to it. Working with kids, seeing them improve, watching them compete like crazy, losing, winning, crying, celebrating, getting an interception when the game is on the line. All of it. I love it. Super grateful I get to do it.

• Hosted a dinner in Columbus. After doing the live show at Ohio University together, James Clear and I decided to host a dinner for high-character, accomplished leaders. He invited a few guys... I invited some. Nobody at the table knew everyone. We spent 3.5 hours sharing a meal and talking about being a great husband/dad, excellence, putting a positive dent in the world, and more. One of those nights where everyone says, “Man, we should do this more often.”

• Did 28 keynotes all over the country. This continues to be one of my favorite things I get to do. I love the anticipatory feeling I get right before I’m introduced to go on stage. I love seeing the positive body language from attendees who are having aha moments, interacting with them throughout, and then the follow-up conversations off to the side of the stage afterwards. Love it. I blocked off a few months of travel in the fall since it was my daughter’s senior season of volleyball. I learned that most people are really cool about that kind of thing if you just tell them the truth. “Hey, it’s my daughter’s senior year, and I don’t want to miss any of her games.” Everyone understands that.

  • Speaking of that, I was the public address announcer for her volleyball team. I took it way too seriously (​“Hell yeah” or no​) and went all out to sound like the dude who announced the Chicago Bulls during the Michael Jordan years. I loved it, and it brought me closer to the team.

• Made a new “​This I Believe​” video. This is the capstone project for first-year members of my ​Learning Leader Circle​. Probably my favorite exercise. I encourage everyone to do it. It’s a way for someone to really get to know what you’re all about in three minutes. Pretty cool. ​Here’s mine​.

Things to Do in 2026 (and Beyond)

• On January 1, 2026, I plan to be on a giant mountain out west skiing with my family. For us, that time together is as good as it gets.

• TEAM. I want to ensure my teammates continue to feel 100% fulfilled in the work we do. The work we are doing is transformative. Not just for people at work, but more importantly, how they show up at home and in their communities. It’s so cool to see that happen. I want to do everything in my power to continue to push that standard.

• Become a New York Times bestselling author. Most authors I know who have achieved this have said it has helped them. Now that I’m running a business that employs more than just me, I feel a massive responsibility to help our team continue to earn clients, increase our rates, and make a bigger impact as we grow. Publicly, it seems like an unspoken rule that authors have to say, “Oh, I don’t care about hitting lists.” And then you talk to them privately and see how crazy hard they worked for years to become a NYT bestseller. I’d rather just skip the public lie and state what I actually want to achieve. I know a lot of it is out of my control. I’m still going to work hard to make it happen. (I have a new book coming out this year)

• I was listening to an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin recently. The part that really caught my attention was when he talked about hosting his annual DealBook Summit. He’s been doing it since 2011. About 500 people attend; they’re mostly leaders from a wide variety of industries (similar to the people who listen to my show/read my books). Andrew conducts one-on-one interviews with six to 10 CEOs, senior leaders, policy makers, and top world influencers. The summit is not just an industry conference; it’s widely viewed as a conversation hub where influential voices shape thinking on business, policy, and innovation. I want to do our version of a Learning Leader Summit. An annual event where we get thoughtful, ambitious, get-after-it type people together in a room for great conversations that spill out into the lobby and at dinner and beyond. Last year, I said I wanted to have the “biggest leadership conference ever,” but I’m changing my mind. Instead of the biggest, how about one of the best? Andrew’s summit is sponsored by The New York Times. I’d like to work with a partner to help put this together. If you’re interested (or know someone who would be), let me know.

• I’d like to earn one Fortune 100 company for my team as an ongoing monthly client in 2026. We do work with teams of leaders. Usually, 12-15 people together in a group learning together. We’ve learned that it has compounding effects to do it that way. It brings leadership teams together, AND they are becoming more effective in both their professional and personal lives.

• Podcast guests I want to record with: Dave Matthews, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Dave Chapelle, Caitlin Clark, Brad Stevens, Shalane Flanagan, Rick Rubin, Claire Cormier Thielke, Michael Lewis, Marques Brownlee, Palmer Luckey, Marcus Mumford, Mike Rowe, Brian Chesky, Mary Barra, Chris Martin, Shane Gillis, and Timothée Chalamet.

Other Random Thoughts

• Live music: I love the old show “Storytellers.” It was a series of concerts with great artists in a small venue. The fans were just a few feet from the band. The lead singer told the story behind each song prior to playing them. I love live music. I can’t imagine how cool it would have been in the room for Tom Petty’s taping of Storytellers. Anyway… I hope someone brings that show back. (You can watch old episodes on Paramount+)

• It’s a dopamine factory: Sometimes I get asked why I love hosting The Learning Leader Show so much. I recorded an episode with Tim Ferriss a few months ago, and he told me about this story from Elan Lee, the maker of the game Exploding Kittens. “I once took a week-long skydiving course, and at the end of it, I asked the instructor, ‘Do you ever get bored of this?’ And he said, ‘Do you ever get bored of having sex?’ And I thought, that’s exactly it. That’s how I feel about games. That’s how I feel about this job. It’s not a thing with an expiration. It’s a little dopamine factory for me and the people who get to have these experiences. I don’t know how you get bored of that. That’s just eternal.” That’s how I feel about having deep, long-form conversations with people and then publishing those so you can listen and learn along with me.

My Favorite 2025 Episodes of The Learning Leader Show

• ​619: Mike Maples Jr.​ - Practicing reckless optimism, betting on founders, Bill Gates hiring Mike Sr. at Microsoft, being overprepared, and what it means to do your best

• ​626: Rob Kimbel​ - Living by your values, caring for your people, taking the back seat, and creating opportunities that improve lives

• ​628: Anthony Consigli​ - Digging graves, playing football at Harvard, learning from failure, taking big chances, and growing a business from $3 million to $4 billion

• ​631: Bert Bean and Sam Kaufman (in person)​ - Obsession, grit, growth-mindset, winning in a tough market, hiring for potential, running ultra-marathons, and caring for your people

• ​633: General Stanley McChrystal​ - In pursuit of greatness, high standards, the ranger effect, self-discipline, white-water rafting, obsession, and making choices that define your life (on character)

• ​637: Tom Ryan (in person)​ - Chosen suffering, emotional control, responding to tragedy, success pillars, and learning from Dan Gable

• ​640: Tony Reno, Yale University Head Football Coach​ - Writing a team creed, leaving it better than you found it, going to Gettysburg, leadership retreats, and winning championships

• ​644: Blaine Anderson​ - The #1 dating coach in the world teaches you how to genuinely connect with people

• ​645: Ryan Petersen, Flexport CEO​ - Frontline obsession, Gemba walks, relentless work ethic, CEO Mastermind groups, and valuing simplicity

• ​647: Tim Ferriss​ - Chasing your curiosity, internal vs external scoreboards, effectiveness over efficiency, winning even if you fail, fame’s hidden costs, and the Mount Rushmore of podcasting

• ​650: Michelle “Mace” Curran​ - Building a world-class team, running an excellent debrief, rebuilding trust, feedback loops, and how to turn fear into your superpower.

• ​652: Arthur Brooks​ - The power of teaching, the arrival fallacy, the mad scientist profile, lifting heavy weights, and the two best practices to be happy

• ​654: Jake Tapper​ - The most important leadership skill, handling criticism, chasing your curiosity, understanding tradeoffs, responding to rejection, and being so good they can’t ignore you

• ​655: Morgan Housel​ - The simple formula for happiness, betting on others, gaining independence and purpose, family vacation secrets, the art of spending money, and the deathbed lesson every leader needs to hear

• ​660: James Clear (Live at Ohio University!)​ - The four laws of behavior change, systems vs. goals, building better habits, mastering the two-minute rule, having a great marriage, and the plateau of latent potential

• ​665: Patrick Lencioni​ - Five dysfunctions of a team, fear-based success, working genius, anticipating objections, and the hidden cost of proving yourself

Some Quotes I Like

“If you always put limits on what you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there. You must go beyond them.” – Bruce Lee

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.” – Lawrence Pearsall Jacks

Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, and famed online essay writer, “Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn’t know it as well as you thought. Putting ideas into words is a severe test.”

Jack Raines said on my podcast, “It’s impossible to have a fully formed, well-defined idea in your head. Your thoughts are like an ocean. There are lots of waves going by. You can’t fully picture every aspect of an idea; you can’t get to the second or third derivative without writing it down. It’s like a cat seeing a laser pointer. We get distracted by a new idea if we don’t write it down.”

You don’t fully know how you feel and what you think about something until you write it down. Writing is the ultimate clarifying tool. Whether you decide to publish your thoughts or not, all leaders should have a writing practice.

The most effective leaders are clear thinkers. And there’s no better way to get clear than to write. I nudge all of the leaders I work with to create a writing habit. Most push back initially, saying that they don’t have time. Nonsense. It’s like working out for your brain. If you want to be healthy, you work out. If you want to be a clear thinker, you write.

Most people interpret this as da Vinci’s personal motto, though historians note it wasn’t formally adopted as such. But whether it was an intentional mantra or not doesn’t matter. The phrase captures what separated da Vinci from everyone else around him. Look at the Mona Lisa. Started around 1503, da Vinci worked on this single painting for over 15 years, until he died in 1519. Giorgio Vasari, a contemporary biographer, described how da Vinci would sometimes spend an entire day just observing the painting, add a single brushstroke, and consider it a day’s work. His peers thought this was madness. But da Vinci understood something fundamental about excellence: greatness lives in the microscopic details others are unwilling to pursue.

This wasn’t a one-off approach. It was his standard operating procedure. When da Vinci studied human anatomy, he created over 240 detailed drawings based on actual dissections. While other artists learned just enough anatomy to make their figures look right, da Vinci mapped entire vascular systems, documented muscle attachments, and measured proportional relationships with scientific precision. Most stop at “good enough.” Da Vinci didn’t.

In 1503, when commissioned to divert the Arno River, da Vinci produced topographical maps so accurate they astonished modern historians. He calculated water volumes and flow rates with painstaking detail. Historian Carlo Pedretti later called it “the most thorough study of a river conducted up to that time.” Da Vinci wasn’t just doing the job; he was redefining what the job could be. His bird flight studies reveal the same pattern. Hundreds of detailed observations about wing movements, air resistance, and balance fill his notebooks. “The bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law,” he wrote, followed by calculations that wouldn’t be fully understood until centuries later, when modern aerodynamics emerged.

What’s particularly revealing is that da Vinci pursued this level of excellence largely for himself. Many of his most thorough studies remained hidden in private notebooks. His commitment to understanding wasn’t performance art for others; it was his internal standard. Francesco Melzi, da Vinci’s assistant who inherited these notebooks, described how his mentor would revisit ideas repeatedly, refining them until he had explored every aspect of a problem. Da Vinci’s few students often complained about his methods, finding them frustratingly slow. He would insist they master fundamental techniques through endless repetition before advancing. This commitment came with tradeoffs. Da Vinci completed remarkably few paintings compared to other artists like Raphael. Yet his works have endured for 500 years, while thousands of “more efficient” creations from the same era have been forgotten. Most people never reach excellence because they’re unwilling to tolerate the thousands of tiny iterations required to get there. They want the outcome without the process. Da Vinci’s life demonstrates that genius isn’t a moment of inspiration; it’s a lifetime of attention to details others ignore.

During a Q&A session for his program “Burn in Hell,” Smith shared a story about his dad.

“I got a phone call at like 5:30 in the morning. It was my brother. He’s like, ‘You gotta get down to the hospital on Walnut right now. Dad’s in the hospital.’

When he got to the emergency room, Smith witnessed something that would haunt him: “I saw something so horrifying. Something I had never seen before. It was my mother crying, but not like crying. I’ve seen her cry. This was different. This is the crying one does when someone’s fucking scared big time. When a life is hanging in the balance. She couldn’t put words together.”

“I go into the emergency room, and they said, ‘Donald Smith. I’m sorry he passed.’ They took me into the room, there’s my father laying on a gurney, just dead.”

Kevin spent a few minutes in the room and then went outside to have a cigarette and collect himself. His brother shared details that would forever alter Kevin’s perspective.

“My brother comes out and he said, ‘Dad died screaming.’ I was like, What? What do you mean? ‘He woke up and he was kicking the sheets off him and screaming about being on fire. He was so hot, he wanted water. The screaming got louder and louder. It reached a fever pitch, and then he died.”

This hit him“like a Mack truck.” Not just that his dad had died, but that he had died in distress. In pain. Without dignity or peace. The cruel irony wasn’t lost on him. His dad had lived modestly, prioritizing others above himself. “I remember asking him once, ‘Dad, what were your dreams?’ And he was just like, ‘Well, I wanted to get married and have kids.’

“He was a good dude… He worked at the post office his whole life just to pay for the family. He didn’t necessarily like working for the post office or believe in the mail, but it was what he needed to do to pay for his wife and his kids.”

In that moment, Smith confronted an uncomfortable truth: his dad had postponed his own dreams and desires to provide stability for his family. He had played by the rules. He had done everything “right.” And his reward? A painful death that offered no acknowledgment of his sacrifice. This realization crystallized a philosophy that would guide the rest of his life: “And I remember thinking, in this world, where even a good man is going to die screaming, there’s no point in not trying to achieve every dream that I have. This is my eventual end. One day, that’s it. The best thing to do is to try to pack that life with as much wonderfulness, fun, and productivity.” If playing it safe offers no protection from suffering, why not pursue what brings you joy and fulfillment? If the end result is the same regardless, the journey becomes everything.

People have an odd relationship with new ideas. The default human response to hearing about someone’s ambitious plan is to immediately explain why it won’t work. This isn’t malicious. It’s just how most brains are wired. We’re pattern-matching machines, and we’ve seen lots of things fail. But this creates a problem. Good ideas often look identical to bad ideas at the beginning. The difference isn’t always obvious until much later. So when you automatically default to skepticism, you end up discouraging both the failures and the successes. The people who accomplish interesting things have figured out a simple trick: they seek out environments where the default response is different. Instead of surrounding themselves with people who ask, “Why would you do that?” they find people who ask, “Why wouldn’t you try that?”

This isn’t about being naive or ignoring real risks. It’s about understanding that encouragement is uneven. The cost of encouraging someone is essentially zero. But the potential upside is huge. You might help someone discover something that changes their life or even changes the world. The math isn’t complicated: if you’re wrong about discouraging someone, you might crush something valuable. If you’re wrong about encouraging someone, the worst case is they learn something from trying. The risk-reward ratio favors encouragement. Most people don’t think about it this way. They focus on being right about why something won’t work instead of being helpful about how it might work. But the helpers tend to build better networks, create more opportunities, and find themselves part of more interesting stories. Through his death, Donald Smith gave his son the clarity to see life for what it truly is: brief, unpredictable, and too precious to waste on unfulfilling obligations or unexplored passions.

This is a wake-up call for anyone postponing their dreams for some hypothetical future that may never arrive. It’s a reminder that safety is largely an illusion, and that the only true security comes from having lived according to your values. As Kevin Smith discovered through tragedy, there truly is “no point in not trying to achieve every dream that I have.” The only logical response to our mortality is to maximize every moment we’re given.

This hits on something we know but don’t want to admit: most of our failures happen because we treat important things like they’re not that important. Think about the last time you had a goal that really mattered to you. Maybe it was starting a business, getting in shape, or learning a new skill. Now think about how you talked about it. Did you say “I’m going to do this” or “I’m thinking about maybe trying this”? The difference in language reveals a lot about your odds of making it happen.

We’re casual in ways we don’t even notice. We’re casual with our mornings, letting them drift by instead of seizing them. We’re casual with our attention, splitting it across a dozen things instead of focusing it like a laser on one. We’re casual with our standards, accepting “good enough” when we know we could do better. The problem with casualness is that it compounds. Each small compromise feels insignificant on its own. Missing one workout doesn’t matter. Skipping one day of practice won’t hurt. Putting off that important conversation for another week is fine. But these decisions add up in ways that surprise us.

What’s really happening here is that we’re being unserious about the big goal. We’d rather dabble than commit. We’d rather keep our options open than go all in on one thing. And I get it. Being casual feels safer. It’s psychologically easier to be casual about something important because you have a built-in excuse when you don’t achieve it. “Well, I wasn’t fully committed anyway.” It’s a hedge against disappointment. But this safety comes at a massive cost.

The people who change the world don’t dabble. They don’t keep their options open. They pick something and get after it with relentless focus. They commit to the thing, even knowing they might give everything they have and still fall short. That’s the fear casual people are avoiding: the possibility of full effort leading to failure anyway. Success and failure both happen gradually, then suddenly. You don’t wake up one day and discover you’re out of shape. You don’t suddenly realize your business idea is dead. You don’t instantly find yourself without the skills you need. These things happen slowly, through a thousand tiny choices that seemed harmless at the time.

The opposite is also true. Excellence emerges from the accumulation of small, consistent actions performed with obsessive attention to detail. Every person who has achieved something remarkable can trace it back to a period when they stopped being casual about what mattered most. This means identifying the few things that really matter and treating them with the seriousness they deserve. It means organizing your life around your priorities instead of hoping you can fit them into whatever time is left over.

The window of opportunity doesn’t stay open forever. The market doesn’t wait for you to get serious. Your health doesn’t pause while you decide to start taking care of yourself. Time moves forward whether you’re ready or not. If something matters enough to want, it matters enough to pursue with everything you have. Otherwise, you’re just playing pretend with your own ambition.

Casual effort gets casual results, not just in what you achieve, but in how you feel about yourself when you look back on what you did with your time. Your choice? Either treat your goals like they’re worthy of obsession, or accept that they’ll probably remain wishes.

I was reminded of this while recording an episode of my podcast in Atlanta with (CEO) Bert Bean and (CRO) Sam Kaufman from Insight Global. Bert said something that has stayed with me. A just cause is a vision of a future state that doesn’t yet exist… A purpose so inspiring and compelling that people are willing to sacrifice and contribute to making it a reality. It’s not just about winning or short-term goals but about advancing something meaningful that extends for a long time.

Unlike goals that can be “won,” a just cause is an ongoing pursuit that inspires continuous improvement and adaptation. Organizations with a clear just cause tend to be more resilient, innovative, and capable of inspiring true loyalty from both employees and customers. Bert told us that Insight Global’s Just Cause is to “Be The Light” for the world around them (He even tattooed it on his arm). It comes from scripture. But it is not just about faith. It’s about how they want to lead. How they treat people. How they serve their team and customers. How they build a company that makes an impact beyond the bottom line.

“Be the light” will not show up in a spreadsheet. You can’t measure it easily. But in a world where everything seems temporary and transactional, this kind of clarity has power. It reminds people that their work matters. That their effort contributes to something meaningful. That they are part of a story bigger than themselves. You can run a business without a Just Cause. But it is hard to build something lasting without one. The leaders and organizations we admire most stand for something. They make people feel something. And they do it consistently... Not just when it is easy. That kind of leadership is rare. Which is exactly why it matters.

This sense of purpose transforms how we make decisions, including the small daily choices that compound over time. When we’re anchored to something meaningful, we begin to evaluate our actions not just by immediate results, but by their long-term alignment with what truly matters.

The math of active participation is compelling because it can create huge returns. The downside is usually limited… Maybe some discomfort, a few hours lost, or a bruised ego. But the potential upside? Nearly unlimited. When Benjamin Franklin walked into the Tun Tavern in Philadelphia in 1727 to form his "Junto" discussion club, the downside was maybe an evening wasted with boring conversations. The upside? His club evolved into the American Philosophical Society, spawned America's first lending library, and formed connections that shaped his life and, eventually, a nation. For Franklin, being in the room was a deliberate strategy. He understood that luck isn't something that happens to you but something you position yourself to earn.

Eleanor Roosevelt learned this same thing. When her husband became president, convention dictated she host teas and manage the White House social calendar. The risk of stepping beyond this role? Criticism, political backlash, maybe a strain on her marriage. But Roosevelt calculated that this limited downside was worth the potential upside. She held press conferences, traveled to coal mines, visited troops during WWII, and eventually helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The value of her active participation was history-altering.

What's useful to learn from both Franklin and Roosevelt is how they maintained this bias toward action across decades. They didn't just get lucky once… They consistently positioned themselves at the intersection of preparation and opportunity. Most people understand this, but they don’t do it because they overestimate the downside. They magnify potential embarrassment or inconvenience until it overshadows the potential upside. Active participation often feels inefficient in the moment. Franklin's endless experiments, Roosevelt's grueling travel schedule could seem wasteful in a strict accounting of time. But life doesn't yield its biggest returns through efficiency. It rewards exploration, iteration, and showing up in rooms where serendipity might occur.

This is why the people who leave a dent in the world that I've studied are often the most willing to try things that might not work. They understand that being actively engaged is the only reliable strategy for catching the exponential upside.

This is a story I learned from a recent conversation with Derek Sivers...

When he was 17, Derek called a recording studio with a random question about a music notation.

The studio owner, Kimo Williams, heard Derek was heading to Berklee College of Music and made an odd proposition: "I can teach you two years of theory in a few lessons. You could graduate in two years if you understand there's no speed limit. Show up at 9 AM tomorrow if you're serious."

Most 17-year-olds would have said thanks and forgotten about it. Derek showed up at 8:59.

What happened next is something useful to know about human potential... Kimo compressed 6 semesters of music theory into 5 lessons. Not by cutting corners or simplifying, but by removing the artificial gaps between concepts that schools insert to accommodate the slowest learners. Derek tested out of those requirements and graduated college in two and a half years.

Kimo later admitted he made that offer to lots of students over the years. Derek was the first person who actually showed up. This story shows that most of us are living inside invisible prisons of our own making. We've accepted speed limits that don't actually exist. Think about how arbitrary most timelines really are. Why does it take 4 years to get a degree? Because that's how long it takes when you spread the learning across 4 years, take summers off, and design curricula around the average student. But the knowledge itself doesn't require 4 years to absorb. The system requires 4 years to process you through it. (Yes, I realize that getting a college degree isn’t the only reason to go to college. It’s a good time to grow up, too.)

The same artificial constraints exist everywhere. Why does it take years to become fluent in a language? Because most people study for 30 minutes twice a week. Why does it take decades to master a craft? Because most people practice casually.

In most domains, the difference between fast progress and slow progress isn't talent or resources. It's intensity and consistency. But intensity is uncomfortable, so we've agreed that slow and steady is the proper way. The people who break through refuse to accept conventional timelines. They compress learning by practicing more deliberately. They solve problems faster by working on them more intensely.

When I asked Derek about this time in his life, he said, “Kimo’s high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me that the standard pace is for chumps. That the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you’re more driven than most people, you can do way more than anyone expects. And this principle applies to all of life, not just school.”

Kids will believe anything. That can be a good thing.

The letter wasn't from Florida State's coaching staff. It was from Rex Caswell, a family friend who happened to love the Seminoles. He'd donated some money to the program and attended games, but he had no official role. He was a fan, originally from Florida, who hoped I might play for his team someday. But that wasn't really why he wrote the letter. Rex wrote it to expand my view of what was possible. To make me believe I was good enough for the number one team in the nation. Florida State was competing for national titles back then. The idea that I could play there was crazy.

Sometimes you need someone to push you toward the absurd. Great mentors do this instinctively. They see something in you that you can't see yourself. They believe first, before you have reason to. They root for you when winning seems out of reach. Rex stayed close to our family as I grew up. It turned out I wasn't good enough for Florida State. But I was good enough for other schools, and football paid for my college education.

When my playing days ended, my phone rang. "Ryan, I've been watching you lead people since you were a kid. I want you to be one of my managers someday. Come work for me as an entry-level sales rep and work your way up."

Rex was a VP of Sales at LexisNexis. I had never sold a thing in my life. But he believed in me. Again.

I said yes.

That's how my career started. I won a few Circle of Excellence awards for being among the company's top salespeople. Eventually, I got promoted to work directly for Rex. His belief created my belief. His willingness to bet on me made me desperate to prove him right. When someone takes a chance on you, really takes a chance, something changes. You don't just want to succeed for yourself anymore. You want to vindicate their judgment.

That's the hidden power of mentorship. It's not just advice or connections. It's the weight of someone else's confidence in you. Rex remains a mentor to me today. He's still one of my biggest fans, telling people about my podcast and pushing me to think bigger. Now it's my turn. As we climb to positions of influence, we inherit the responsibility to lift others. To see potential before it's obvious. To believe in people before they have reason to believe in themselves. To write letters that seem to come from places they could never imagine reaching. The best mentors give permission to dream bigger than you thought possible.

First, be excellent in your current role. I don’t care what it is. My first summer job as a teenager was for a guy who owned a transportation company. One day I’d be painting the walls of a warehouse, the next I'd be getting him groceries. My mission was clear… Paint those walls perfectly and make sure I get him exactly what he wanted from Kroger. Regardless of what your job is, work to be excellent at it. Nothing else matters if you haven't gotten this right. This won’t guarantee a promotion, but lacking it promises you won’t. You can’t focus on the next thing without being great at your current one.

Next… An uncomfortable truth. Your employer pays you to do your job, not to prepare you for the next one. That preparation is your responsibility. Learn what skills are needed to be excellent at the job you want and develop them on your own time, not during company working hours. The market rewards skills it values, not complaints about a lack of opportunity. You want to become a better communicator? Write every morning before work. A better speaker in front of a group? Go to improv classes on the weekend. The skills that create career value don’t always develop during 9-to-5 hours. They're built in the margins of life. The people who get promoted choose to do extra work and develop additional skills in their own free time.

Third, become a “surplus value” employee. Companies keep and promote people who create more value than they extract. Mentor others, solve problems before they become crises, and make the company culture better. When you consistently deliver multiple times what you cost, your promotion becomes a rational business decision.

The people who get promoted fastest are usually the ones who weren't actively trying to. They were just busy doing excellent work, learning constantly, and making everyone around them better. The system works because excellence creates opportunity, skills create options, and value creation creates demand. And when all three compound together, promotion stops being something you ask for and starts being something companies beg you to accept.

On paper, the idea seemed innovative. Reduce inventory costs. Streamline operations. Cut expenses. The kind of efficiency Silicon Valley celebrates. But Dubinsky, who managed Apple's distribution, saw a fatal flaw. She understood something Jobs missed: the actual day-to-day reality of how Apple's business worked.

"In my mind, Apple being successful depended on distribution being successful.”

The company wasn't shipping integrated products. The Apple II, which generated the most revenue, required components from multiple sources. Computers arrived from one facility, monitors from another, disk drives from somewhere else. These parts came together at distribution centers before reaching small, undercapitalized retailers who couldn't afford to maintain inventory themselves. Jobs's plan ignored this reality. It wasn't just a minor oversight. It threatened the entire business.

What Dubinsky did next deserves our attention. Rather than bow down to the powerful founder, she delivered an ultimatum: give her 30 days to develop a counterproposal, or she would resign. Donna had done her homework. She had savings to fall back on. She knew the business deeply. And most importantly, she cared more about doing what was right for Apple than protecting her position. The result? Her proposal was right. Rather than getting fired, she earned a promotion to run an Apple software subsidiary. Later, she would go on to become CEO of Palm Computing and co-found Handspring, creating some of the first smartphones.

Having the conviction to stand behind your expertise when it matters most is a superpower.

Organizations fail because smart people stay silent. What made Donna exceptional was her willingness to risk her position to protect the company she served. She understood that true loyalty sometimes means challenging leadership, not blindly following it. My friend Brook Cupps has a core value on his basketball team of being unified. He defines that as speaking and acting with urgency. When I asked him what “unified” actually looks like in practice, he gave a great example: “Seeing a teammate not touch a line during sprints and not speaking up is a selfish act. If a teammate is not upholding the standard, and you don’t say something, you are being selfish. You are choosing your comfort over the standards of the team. Don’t be selfish.”

In our careers, we'll all face moments when we must choose between comfortable silence and uncomfortable truth. Most choose silence. The path to exceptional outcomes requires truth. The next time you see something wrong in your organization, think of Donna Dubinsky. Consider that your decision to speak up might end your career… Or it could elevate it. This is growth in its most practical form. Every time you choose difficult honesty over easy silence, you build the muscle that separates good careers from great ones. You're proving to yourself and others that you can handle the bigger problems that come with bigger opportunities. The conviction to stand behind your expertise when it matters most is surprisingly rare. Most people want to work with someone who will tell them when they're about to make a serious mistake. Be that person.