Ryan Hawk has interviewed hundreds of the most productive achievers in the world on his podcast, The Learning Leader Show, to discover the most useful ideas for pursuing and sustaining excellence. He’s found a pattern of uncommon behaviors that set these stellar individuals apart. On this episode we discuss these behaviors and his new book, The Pursuit of Excellence:The Uncommon Behaviors of the world’s most productive achievers. 

The world’s most effective leaders have always found a way to adapt and thrive in times of uncertainty. In this moment, will you rise up or will you maintain status quo and not progress?

PURSUING EXCELLENCE REQUIRES A MINDSET THAT IS BIASED TOWARDS ACTION. IT IS THE PURSUIT OF GETTING BETTER. IT’S NOT ABOUT WHAT YOU ACQUIRE. IT’S ABOUT WHO YOU BECOME IN THE PROCESS OF ACQUIRING IT.

Ryan was also on Episode #178

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TRANSCRIPT 

Ryan Hawk

[00:04:54] Sean: Ryan, welcome back to What Got You There. How are you doing today?

[00:04:57] Ryan: Sean, it’s good to see you. I’m glad we got to talk a little bit in-between times that we recorded, but it’s good to see you. Good to be with you. 

[00:05:05] Sean: For the listeners, it’s so great when we get to hear people on podcasts and kind of see what they’re doing out there in the world, but just from a behind-the-scenes perspective, Ryan has been instrumental. I reached out to him maybe a little over a month and a half ago with an email and wasn’t expecting a response at any time. And he immediately responds within probably a minute and says, Hey, are you free right now? Give me a call. And you spent the next 30, 45 minutes talking to me. And what I love about this is leadership taking place. 

Ryan’s Peak State

It’s not what you’re putting in your books or what you say in your podcast, you deliver, it’s how you live. I just want the listeners to know because I think so many times we idolize leadership, but then behind the scenes, it’s different. This is not the case with Ryan, so I just want to say thank you, and I appreciate that. But before we dive too much into things, I would love to know actually about your peak state. And I know you’re a tremendous keynote speaker, do a tremendous job with the podcast. What is it like minutes leading up to a big speech, a podcast, or even just an interview like this for you to get in the right mind space to bring your best self forward?

[00:06:12] Ryan: That’s a good question. I think one story shares this well. Two and a half, three years ago now I was in Washington, DC., it was a Sunday in the fall, and I was to deliver a keynote speech to a lot of leaders in the building/contractor space. A lot of really highly intelligent, thoughtful people, most of them are older than me, and as I walk into the hotel ballroom where I was to deliver the speech, I went in about two hours early to watch the person before me. And I noticed about 10 minutes before I was to go on stage, there were people in the audience sitting there with their phones, they had them sideways, in landscape watching their phones closely. 

I got curious and I walked up behind them and I peeked and I looked, and they were watching the NFL Redzone channel which kind of bounces around to all of the games. Remember it was a Sunday in the fall. I remember I texted my dad and I said, this is awful. They’re not even paying attention to the person on stage. They just want to watch football games and then probably get out of here, it’s Sunday. And he gave me a good reminder of a mantra that we’ve talked about for years, that he has to say to himself. I think my dad is one of the most humble people I know yet there are brief moments in his life where you kind of throw that humility aside.

And one of those moments is right before you walk up on stage and he texted me, you’re the “baddest” dude in that room, get ready to put on a show. And he had said it to me before, this has become a mantra of ours before we go up on stage. He has gone up on stages a lot in his life, and it was a great reset, a great reminder for me that you’re here for a reason, throw the humility aside for a second and go up and serve that audience. You are there to change their life. And that sounds grandiose, but I find it helpful. And so that’s what I try to do, to go up there and deliver and to serve that audience. 

And the cool thing about that specific day, Sean, is it has led to more than 10 keynote speeches of people who were in the audience on that day. The greatest mark of if you made a difference or not when you’re giving a speech is how many people book you for maybe one of their events later on in the year. A lot of these high-level people have their events outside of this one conference that I was at. So that was a long way of me sharing that it was a great reset. It’s totally against kind of how our family normally is, but there are these moments in your life where you need to be the “baddest” dude in the room. And for me right before I walk on stage is a mantra that I say to myself every time.

Intentionality

[00:09:32] Sean: What I appreciate in this is the intentionality you bring to that. You’re trying to be a conduit for good and deliver and raise excellence out of those people you’re giving that speech to. I just think that’s so important. What are you trying to accomplish when you go into a different arena and then deliver that and get the most out of it. You bring up something cool. What I see a lot amongst high performers is when that adversity sets in, instead of letting that downward spiral happen, they go the opposite way, the same thing with you. Everyone’s watching NFL Redzone and you could have just let that overwhelm kick in. So what do you do specifically to redirect that downward spiral into that positive upward spiral?

[00:10:14] Ryan: I think some of it is kind of how you phrase it, instead of “have to”, it’s “get to”. I try to remember in that instance with the same story. I realize how hard it is to be in that position and how fortunate I am to be the one that gets to do it. And so it’s just a great reminder of I have an opportunity to change someone’s life today, even if it’s only one person, but I have the opportunity to do that. I get to do that. Don’t waste it. Let me make the most of this, just like you, I saw all your prep done for this conversation with me. We’ve emailed back and forth leading up to it. You sent me a bunch of bullet points and thoughts. I get the sense that you’re the type of guy too that doesn’t waste these opportunities, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d love to hear more about this from you.

You and I know each other enough that you probably don’t have to prep and you would still do a good job yet you do the opposite. You’re overly prepared for this. You send it to me, you let me know. I’m ready to go. You’ve already exhibited that preparation early on in this conversation, that’s different. That’s harder. It’s easier just to kind of show up and wing it because you’ve done it hundreds of times, and yet you choose to view this as an opportunity, not to waste, to make the most of it. And I try to view the opportunities and the things that I get to do the same way, let’s make the most of this, let’s change somebody’s life,  let’s make a difference. And that leaves me much more fulfilled by the result, the fact that maybe we changed somebody for the better.

Productive Paranoia

[00:11:58] Sean: Maybe it’s just the natural process. I can’t imagine getting to talk to someone that I highly respect and not only respect for a short time, but you’ve also been in my life and impacted me for years where I owe it to you, and the listeners. I read every single page of your book. I was trying to get in Ryan Hawk’s head all morning. I wasn’t Sean, I was trying to be like Ryan Hawk. What does this feel like? The intentionality there, it’s important, otherwise, I would feel so scared entering this conversation out of respect to you, if that process wasn’t done.

[00:12:38] Ryan: Real quick, that level of productive paranoia as Jim Collins writes about in his books is great fuel. I have a healthy dose of productive paranoia all the time and I sense you do too. This tends to be a commonality among people who perform at high levels over an extended period. Have you ever watched the show, Impractical Jokers?

[00:13:03] Sean: No, I haven’t.  

[00:13:04] Ryan: It’s on comedy central. I’ve seen these guys live. Solver Vulcano, I had him on my podcast years ago. And this dude his TV show is blown up. It’s been all over the place. They do a world tour and they’ve done extremely well. And he still seemed so nervous that it was going to end tomorrow always. And I go, you’ve completely exploded. It’s everywhere, you’ve blown up. And he goes, man, I still feel like it could end tomorrow. And that’s because he’s just an insane over-worker. And I thought it’s just another reminder, even somebody who’s gone all over the place who was all over TV and tours the world, he still has a healthy dose of productive paranoia. And that’s part of what drives him and fuels him to keep at it.

Success Vs Excellence

[00:13:55] Sean: Yeah, you’ve hit on a serious commonality there. Those people who achieve excellence, but then sustain it, which I think is the more important and incredible attribute of that is they always feel like they’re being chased by something. Like they wake up and they’re just being chased. So I’m really glad that you highlighted that because it’s something I’ve seen throughout other high performers as well. And I want to hit on that because your new book brings a lot of insights, into these commonalities amongst these high performers. But I would love to know the difference between success and excellence because you do a great job articulating the differences.

[00:14:29] Ryan: Yeah. And this came from my conversations with my friend, Brooke Cupps, who was a great high school basketball coach. Success is a comparison to others, excellence to me is a comparison to yourself. So that’s the primary difference. I think it’s okay to use success, it’s just hard to define, and everybody has their definition, which maybe that’s just the way it should be. What I think about more is excellence and excellence is about a comparison to my previous self. And so it’s this constant viewpoint of the world of am I improving? Not only am I improving, but what specifically am I doing to ensure that improvement happens? And that’s part of like the daily routine in the process to have this trajectory that’s slowly going upward as opposed to going down. So to me, success is the comparison to others and excellence is a comparison to yourself.

[00:15:29] Sean: In your approach, both sports, business, entrepreneurship, are you trying to be the best or you trying to be your best?

[00:15:20] Ryan: Well, I’m just trying to be better. I want to be the best version of myself every day, but I don’t know how you would measure who’s the best. People can say that to me. If I am constantly striving to be better and to improve, I think the score will take care of itself and you could define the score for you, whatever way it is, or whether that’s books, podcasts, the opportunity to do this work and make a living like that’s part of the score for me. To me, it’s just a constant drive to be a little bit better each day and do my habits in my daily actions align with that mantra, that ethos of trying to be better. I can grade myself on that. I can reflect on that. I can see if I’m passing that test. And that’s where I try to regularly reflect on that.

[00:16:34] Sean: Is this a never-ending game for you or is there some end goal and state you’re hoping to achieve and then move on from there?

[00:16:41] Ryan: I don’t see an end. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a moment where you arrive. I think it’s just this always becoming mindset. I don’t necessarily see that. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. Maybe it is. Maybe you should have some desire to say, well, yeah, I’ve kind of got there. I don’t know. At least for me, I don’t think that they will ever come. I just sense that it is always, again, this kind of trajectory of slow growth moving forward and trying to get a little bit better, a little bit better. And again, the good things seem to take care of themselves once with that approach, at least I’ve found. So I’m just trying to keep at it.

[00:17:28] Sean: Okay. With the good things that take care of themselves or seem to, was that something you were able to see and understand earlier in your career? Or does that just take experience?

[00:17:37] Ryan: Both. If you talk about sports, the reason that I started doing well, let’s say even on the football field, that I was able to recognize early in high school is because of the work and preparation in January, February, June, July, and August. So that by the time Friday nights in the fall came about it almost became automatic. Our actions as a team, our prep, our conditioning, our level of being ready to go, our ability to beat teams that were probably more talented than us, because we were better conditioned, better prepared, had better coaching.

I learned that preparation, resilience, the ability to persevere, and the ability to keep going consistently the score then took care of itself. In sports, there is a clear scoreboard. Life is not necessarily like that, but in sports there are, so I’ve kind of taken what I learned from the athletic fields and tried to implement a similar mentality into the work I do now. Certainly, if you keep adding, the score starts taking care of itself. For me, that’s built confidence right in and say like, okay, I think I’m on the right track now, let’s just keep going at it so that we keep getting better and better at who knows what we can accomplish if we stick to this process. 

Building Confidence

[00:19:09] Sean: Can you talk about your approach to confidence early on, like those initial days when you’re entering a new domain. Even the first time with your first book, what is that like? I’m just wondering what the internal dialogue is like for Ryan Hawk when he’s first starting… 

[00:19:23] Ryan: The confidence of how to build confidence? 

[00:19:25] Sean: Think about entering the unknown. When you were releasing your first book they’re just unknown unknowns. And so many people allow that to be debilitating and they never stepped forward into that unknown, but you’ve done this again and again, and you’ve gone into the unknown. So I’m wondering what the internal dialogue is like for you to instill that confidence within yourself, and then be able to step up forward.

[00:19:49] Ryan: Again, Sean, I appreciate your thoughtfulness. When I was done playing football, I played football in high school and college and a little bit in the Arena League, in the Canadian league for like a week, my first job was as a telephonic sales rep at a company called LexisNexis. And I got shifted to new business sales right away. So new business sales, you’re calling people who are using something else, not your product. And you’ve got to convince them to switch to yours. And so when you have a job like that, you are regularly hung up on, they don’t answer, they don’t call you back or they just flat out tell you to stop, or they say no, so you lose 96% of the time, maybe more, maybe 98, 99.

You lose, you get a full-blown rejection. And so I did that job for years, and I think I got calloused and conditioned to lose and to not care, to be able to keep going and keep going through all of the losses through all of the rejection, through all of being ignored. So to me, if I’m going to do everything I can for it to go well, but if it doesn’t, I’m just going to keep going. That helped me. As I reflect on those first jobs I had, I’m very grateful for them, even though at the moment, I didn’t realize that. I’m very grateful that they were so hard, that there was so much losing as part of it and that most people didn’t want to do it.

And if you found a way to kind of breakthrough and do well, it was very lucrative. It was very fun. It was very rewarding. And it built these calluses and these skills that have since helped me since then. So I guess when it comes to a book, did I know how it was going to do? I did not know. I knew I was going to do everything I could to help it go well, to help it get out into the world. Fortunately, it’s done pretty well. It seems to help people. It seems to be a topic that’s important, this leap from individual contributor to first-time manager. 

That seems to resonate, and now it’s even selling more than it did when it launched, which is a great feeling because it’s more of an evergreen book and not just a, Hey, let’s have a big launch and then it dies. To me, that’s kind of the mark of good work, and I’m continually trying to help that spread, but I didn’t know. I had no idea how that was going to go, but I was okay with the fact that if it flops, yes, I will be upset. I’d be bummed, but I’m just going to keep going and go on to the next thing. 

Integrating Mentorship with Own Personality

[00:22:34] Sean: It’s great. Even if it does flop, that’s all experience, that’s all new knowledge that you can use moving forward. Your smiling dial story makes me think, I was exploring just the progression of both athletic and business in myself. I was kind of playing with this the other day and I view this as you’re on this teeter-totter, this seesaw where you were just getting rejected 96% of the time, but I am wondering were you having wins during that time to build the confidence? 

The way I think about this, my athletic career, most of my time I was on teams where I was the best on the team, in the league, but then at the same time in conjunction with that, I was playing on travel teams where I was like the lowest guy on the totem pole, where I had people so far better than me, that it was just like, wow, I wasn’t even aware of their people this good. And so I think that was very helpful because when I was on those teams where I was one of the better ones, it built up that confidence and allowed me to then try to teach my skills to others. 

But then I entered the new domain where I was the absolute beginner and it was just on a full-on beginner’s mindset. Let me absorb as much knowledge as possible. I’m wondering if you’ve experienced anything like that. I’m just thinking out loud of a new concept I was playing with the other day, but I would just love to get your take on that.

[00:23:47] Ryan: Sure. Yeah. I think to me I had never sold a thing in my life before that first job. I had never had a real job in my life and mainly focused on sports and was fortunate to get a scholarship because of that. So I went in thinking I have no idea what I’m doing, and I was very fortunate to have good mentors who helped me. And I interviewed the top 10 performers in the stack ranking in the sales world. They’re publishing stack rankings every day, you know exactly where you stand and I don’t know if that’s sustainable long-term because at times it can be debilitating to constantly see stack ranks.

I tried to take bits and pieces from each of those people. And then I would mash them together with my personality, try things out, get embarrassed, get hung up on, and get rejected, every once in a while you get a win and then you get another win and you start stringing these things together. And before you know it, you’re that person at the top of the stack rankings, because you had this willingness to work and to learn and to not get upset or scared with the projection and just keep at it. 

I think the beginning stages of that job going well was purely about a combination of getting help from people who were far wiser than me, who had more experience than me who had done it well for years, as well as just kind of not ever stopping, just continuing to go and to do extra work to get to a place to where, okay, this is working and then you start building confidence because you reflect and see, oh, this is going okay, this is going all right, let me keep at it. Let me keep trying to get better and better. And I still draw from that experience to this day.

[00:25:37] Sean: Ryan, two things that I love there. When you talk about talking to the mentors, people who are above you, but then you said, then I integrate it into who I am. And that synthesis, that merger, we were taking the best lessons, but how this works best for me, I think that’s one of those key steps when people start to pivot and accelerate, whether it be their career or whatever it is. I just think that’s cool to hear about that. And I also love how you hit on the fact that you talked to these people who are far above you, and you’re not trying to accomplish what they’re accomplishing yet. 

You’re tackling those little things and finding the joy and the competence building each one of those little steps. And then over time, the aggregation of those little things leads to those bigger steps, and then you’re top of the totem pole. I just think that’s important because it’s so easy today to look to people 10 years our senior and want to accomplish what they’re accomplishing, and we forget about the nine years of little wins they had to do to get to that point. So I just have someone to respect for people who not only take that approach but understand it.

[00:26:33] Ryan: If you do get caught into this “success world” of comparing yourself against others, don’t compare your year one to somebody else’s year nine. It’s a completely different stage of life and stage of career. So if you do that, I still don’t necessarily advise that. Some people say it does motivate them and help them, so to them, great. But try to make an accurate measurement. I haven’t found that to be helpful if you’re going to be, you’re measuring yourself at a time when it’s just not even relatable to the person that you’re measuring yourself against.

Outcome-based Goals Vs Process-oriented Goals

[00:27:11] Sean: Absolutely. And highlight the fact that you’ve got to know yourself. You’ve got to do the inner work to understand how you best operate. One thing I’m so intrigued by is we’re kind of both operating in the knowledge space a lot. So not everything we do, there are clear metrics. A podcast episode, you can see listens, a book you can see sales, but a lot of this is just like knowledge exploration. It’s really hard to put clear goals and objective goals on. So I’m just wondering how you analyze the gap between where you are to where you’re trying to get to in pursuit of more knowledge. And then even just the unknown of just putting yourself in a better position for opportunities that might come up in the future.

[00:27:44] Ryan: Yeah, I have kind of a love-hate relationship with goal setting. I’ve had years where I’ve set goals and years where I haven’t. 2022 is a year where I decided to set goals, but I went through a process of really getting clear on my core values, I would say for the past 18 months. I think goals, in my opinion, should be aligned with those core values. The four that are big for me are being thoughtful, thankful, curious, and consistent. And so I’ve created goals that are aligned with being thoughtful, thankful, curious, and consistent. So I’ll go through them if you want.

But for 2022, my curiosity and consistent goals publish 52 episodes of my podcast, The Learning Leader Show. Now I’ve done this for a few years, but as you know, it’s still really hard to be that consistent to publish at least one per week. So that hits the curiosity and consistency because you got to be curious to do a podcast well and to ship at least once per week, you got to be very consistent. Also, I’m going to send out my Mindful Monday email every single Monday of 2022. Again, I’ve done this before but still really hard. It still takes hours upon hours per week to write, to curate, to put it together.

That hits curiosity and consistency. Thoughtfulness is hard to define, but I had a guest on, Matthew Dicks who was an amazing guy. He’s a great storyteller, but he has this thing called Homework for Life. Basically at the end of each day, you reflect on the highlight stories of that day, Homework for Life. And what this does is helps you one, remember the great stories of your life, whether they’re with your family or professionally or both. It also actually helps slow down time. You talk to people and they say things like, oh my goodness, the year flew by, or I can’t believe my kid was two and now they’re seven, it flew by. 

Well, Homework for Life helps you spend time and reflection each day, remembering those stories. It helps you become a more thoughtful person, which again is one of my important core values. And then thankful, to show more gratitude and to live out the value of being grateful. I’m committed to writing 100 thank you notes, writing them, putting them in an envelope, putting a stamp on it, sending it out, and keeping track in a Google sheet. I do say I’m thankful, what am I doing to show that? Well, now I’m putting metrics and numbers to them. 

So those are all process-oriented goals that I have complete control over them. None of them are outcome-based goals like I need this many downloads or this many books, sales, or I need to rank at this certain level on some random chart. Those things are out of my control. I guess there are weird things that you can pay to play in some of these instances but I’m not going to do that. So what I’m focused on are process-related goals that I have complete control over and I’ll measure myself against those. They’re hard, but they also are realistic and I know I can do them if I’m focused on the daily actions. So that’s how I’ve chosen to set goals for this year. 

[00:31:00] Sean: You bring up two things. I know for a fact earlier in my career, I would have just missed this, in this conversation that is, process over outcome goals. Way too many times when we set up goals and have that outcome, and then the second that outcome is out of reach, utter failure sets in even with our goals. I think that’s even more important that you highlight though, is value alignment in terms of our goals. Too many times earlier in my career, I would set goals that were in tension. I might have thought they were in conjunction with my values and then only to find out they weren’t.

Those are two foundationally game-changing things. When you truly break down what your values are, set up your goals in alignment with those values, and then obviously it’s a process over outcomes in the achievement of those goals. That way you’re in control. You can’t let those outer games affect your internal state. And when you do those outcome-based goals. So I just think Ryan, that is just exceptional. I’m just really appreciative you bring that up.

[00:31:51] Ryan: I want to enjoy this, I feel very fortunate. So if I set these crazy goals, and I don’t hit them, I don’t want to live in this perpetual state of missing goals. That just doesn’t seem very fun for me. And I trust me in the selling world, you get given your sales goal every month, every quarter, every year, and yes, I was motivated to exceed those goals. I felt like that was winning. So I understand how those can work. I don’t know if it’s sustainable for me to be content and happy and to be a good husband and a good dad if I’m in this perpetual state of like, God, I keep missing all of my goals. 

I want to set goals that then if I do them, again, the results and the score should take care of themselves, but a lot of it’s out of my control. But the stuff that is within my control, I’m going to work hard to make sure that I do that well. And that’s why I’m a believer in these process-oriented goals. And focus on doing that work each day, as opposed to setting these, like I’m going to sell a million books this year. Well, I would love to sell a million books, don’t get me wrong, but there’s only so much I can do to sell a million. James Clear just wrote about the fact that he sold 5 million copies of Atomic Habits in the third year. 

It is the number one selling book on Amazon for 2021, it’s the greatest thing ever. But at some point, it became out of his control. What was in his control was writing an excellent book and marketing it well at the start and hopefully keeping it going, and now it’s taken on a life of its own. It’s kind of out of his hand, that part of it, there’s no way he could have set a goal to sell 5 million books. That’d be like, well, yeah, I’m going to be able to make it sell five. No, I mean, he wrote a great book, and fortunately, word of mouth is really powerful once it catches on. So I think that’s why it’s focusing on the process instead of focusing on just the results.

Reflection

[00:33:50] Sean: Yeah. It’s so apparent that you’ve set such a strong foundation to build long-lasting sustained excellence. This is one of the key things you write about, but you have buil