The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 111: Chris Guillebeau – How To Create Your Dream Job

Episode Date: March 30, 2016

Episode 111: Chris Guillebeau – How To Create Your Dream Job Chris Guillebeau is an extraordinary leader.  Between his best-selling books and hosting the World Domination Summit every summer, he’s constantly inspiring and empowering others to be creators and leaders.  During this conversation, you’ll get to hear why Chris specifically wanted to come on the show and his personal backstory (It’s incredible).  We had a fascinating conversation on this episode of The Learning Leader Show. During a lifetime of self-employment that included a four-year commitment as a volunteer executive in West Africa, he visited every country in the world (193 in total) before his 35th birthday. Since then he has modeled the proven definition of an entrepreneur: “Someone who will work 24 hours a day for themselves to avoid working one hour a day for someone else.” Chris’s first book, The Art of Non-Conformity, was translated into more than twenty languages. His second book, “The $100 Startup,” was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, selling more than 300,000 copies worldwide. His latest book, “Born For This” will be released April 5, 2016.  This book is the culmination of years of research on people who’ve found or created their “dream job.” From the outside, it looks like these people have been lucky. But in reality, they’ve followed a process of trial-and-error to get exactly what they want. Every summer in Portland, Oregon, Chris hosts the World Domination Summit, a gathering of creative, remarkable people with thousands in attendance. Chris is also the founder of Pioneer Nation, Unconventional Guides, the Travel Hacking Cartel, and numerous other projects. Episode 111: Chris Guillebeau – How To Create Your Dream Job Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show “Never Give Up? That’s Terrible Advice.” In This Episode, You Will Learn: Curiosity and persistence leads to sustained excellence Why some of the greatest achievers in the world have given up at times Why we should all think like a janitor Fulfillment = Success How to build a tribe through creating interesting content The art of non-conformity Build a business on vision and relationships… Not on tactics Receiving life coaching from Jay-Z You Inc. – Build a small empire Why a side hustle is something that everyone should have How to be a DIY Rock Star Why you shouldn’t think like a CEO Being a learning leader means you are actively engaged in learning – positioning yourself as a learner  “Think Like A Janitor… He Knows Everybody” Continue Learning: See why over 140,000 people follow Chris on Twitter: @chrisguillebeau Read: Born For This Read: The $100 Startup To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector W/ Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 082: Dan Pink – The Science of Motivation, Legendary Writer & Ted Talk Episode 086: Seth Godin – How To Become Indispensable & Build Your Tribe Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Chris Guillebeau on the show, please don’t hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell   Bio From ChrisGuillebeau.com During a lifetime of self-employment that included a four-year commitment as a volunteer executive in West Africa, he visited every country in the world (193 in total) before his 35th birthday. Since then he has modeled the proven definition of an entrepreneur: “Someone who will work 24 hours a day for themselves to avoid working one hour a day for someone else.” Chris’s first book, The Art of Non-Conformity, was translated into more than twenty languages. His second book, The $100 Startup, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, selling more than 300,000 copies worldwide. His latest book, The Happiness of Pursuit, was published in September 2014 and was also a New York Times bestseller. Every summer in Portland, Oregon, Chris hosts the World Domination Summit, a gathering of creative, remarkable people with thousands in attendance. Chris is also the founder of Pioneer Nation, Unconventional Guides, the Travel Hacking Cartel, and numerous other projects.

You know, if somebody is listening and maybe they're like just getting started, you know, down this road. And so they're like, wow, that makes sense. But, you know, it seems kind of daunting. You know, what I would say is the great thing about this process, yeah, it takes work. Of course, it takes hustle. It takes dedication. But the great thing is when you build it this way, as opposed to like some kind of hack or trick or, you know, like there's all kinds. There's always like little tactics and things.

And that's fine. But don't build your business or your brand on tactics, right? build it on vision and relationships. When you do that, it's actually going to be far, far more valuable in the long term. In the long term, like, you've created this tremendous asset, and the asset is not just a product you've made or a service. The asset is not real estate or a car. And the asset is the relationships you have with these readers or listeners,

your fans, you know, your community, whoever it is that connects with you. And that, I think, is the most valuable asset that anyone can build, not just in their business and in their lives. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk.

Hey, guys, remember episode number 97 with Alejandro Chene? He is the CEO of Ma and Bao. We both promise to continue our dialogue as we both progressed on our journeys. and we certainly have, just as I have, with the great people at Mizan and Maine. And Alejandro and his company have decided to sponsor the Learning Leader Show. This episode is brought to you by Motten Bow. I told the story on that episode of why I absolutely love their ridiculously comfortable, handcrafted premium jeans.

Also, no ugly back pocket embroidery or weird stitching, just simple, elegant, great-looking jeans. And Motten Bao has a free, try-on program. You get two sizes to try at home with every purchase. Keep the one that fits and send the other one back for free. These jeans are already priced under market because they cut out all the retail markups. But the deal is even better when you go to mottenbow.com and use promo code Ryan Hawk for 20% off. That's M-O-T-T-A-N-D-B-O-W.com promo code Ryan Hawk. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I am Ryan Hawke. So excited for tonight's feature leader. It's with New York Times bestselling author Chris Gillibault. Chris has written The Happiness of Pursuit, the $100 startup, and his most recent book is titled Born for this, and it's out April 5th. Also, every summer, he hosts the World Domination Summit in Portland, Oregon, and he's traveled to all 193 countries in the world. It's one of the things we discussed during our conversation night. A few of the other things we talked about. the importance of being a curious learner and why giving up is actually sometimes the right decision.

You'll learn more about that during this talk. And then you incorporated how you can build your small empire in some of the tactical ways to do that. And also why you should not think like a CEO, but instead think like the janitor. I love the story Chris told around this and why we all would be better served if we thought this way. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Chris Gillibode. Chris, so excited to have you here on a Learning Leader Show. Quick question to get us rolling, man. That is, what are some of the most common characteristics you found in leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time?

Ryan, thank you so much for having me. It's a big honor to be on Learning Leader. And I have spent a lot of time actually thinking about this question because I've written about it in several of my books. And the first thing I think is curiosity. I think people are willing to ask good questions and kind of see where those go. And I've seen that especially in entrepreneurship. A lot of the businesses I've seen have kind of gotten started, not because someone had an amazing idea, but because someone kind of followed a rabbit trail.

And that led to something that helped people or provided a solution and they were able to make some money off it, which is great. The second thing I would say is, you know, I don't know what other people say in response to that question, but I bet some people would say persistence and like people never give up. And I have been working on this a lot, especially with the new book Born for this, I think it's actually terrible advice to tell people never give up because most successful people actually give up on lots of things. And most successful people do not follow a linear path. They don't actually know what they want to do when they're six years old, like when they grow up

and they end up doing that thing. They probably do a bunch of different stuff. And some of it doesn't work out. And they are actually willing to kind of go back to that path where they had to make a choice and make a different choice and eventually it leads them to something, you know, where they are very successful. So never give up up on life. But there's all kinds of, you know, businesses and jobs and relationships and other things that you probably should give up on to be ultimately successful. Wow. Interesting. It took a little turn I wasn't expecting.

When you think of sustained excellence, who are the first people that pop into your mind? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, in kind of my sphere, you know, being a writer, author, traveler. I think of Jonathan Fields. He's a good friend of mine. He wrote the book Uncertainty. He founded Good Life Project. It's something that's influenced a lot of people for good. So I always think he's great. I kind of go back, though, to, you know, I spent about four years living in West Africa, and I was an aid worker there. And there was a guy named Dr. Gary Parker, who was a surgeon from California, who had actually spent at the time almost 20 years, you know, living there and nobody really knew him. He had kind of given up a huge income up in the U.S. to go and do this. So I was really

inspired by that story. That's what led me to go overseas in the first place. So when I think of success, I think of fulfillment and, you know, meaning and purpose, like are you doing something that you love? Yes, you want it to be sustainable. You know, yes, money is great. But true wealth that, you know, goes beyond that. True wealth is really like, I get up in the morning. I'm excited about what I do. I have good relationships. You know, I'm working on projects that I believe in. So That's what I tend to look toward. I love it, man. And Chris, I originally became a huge fan of yours when I was, when I picked up the $100

startup, which is the New York Times bestseller that you've written, one of the books that you've written, and it just blew me away. And most recently, I appreciate your team. Send me an advanced copy of your upcoming book, Born for This. So I'd love to dig into that a little bit. Sure. But first, I got a question, and you cover this a little bit in the book. But when people walk up to you and say, hey, Chris, what do you do?

How do you respond? Yeah, I mean, it depends on how they're asking or like who it is in the context. But usually I would say, well, I'm a writer, traveler, an entrepreneur. You know, if I'm going to pick three things, like everything kind of orientes around that. You know, I write books. I have this blog that I've been writing for eight years, the art of nonconformity. I've been traveling the world all that time. I went to every country in the world for an 11-year quest.

And I start little businesses. So I kind of do what I want. You know, like I feel very fortunate because I, work all the time. Like, I love my work. I work every day of the week. I don't really take a lot of breaks. I don't necessarily know that's the best advice for everybody, but for me, that's what I do. And I'm always kind of working on something that I'm motivated by or I'm excited about. Travel to every single country in the world. That was a side project. A project, really. What the, why did you do that? Yeah, well, I mean, it wasn't a side project. It was a quest.

It was something that I really kind of believed in. I loved to travel, and I loved seeing different places. And, you know, I've always been very goal-oriented. And so after I'd been traveling for a while, made a list of all the countries I'd been to. And I was like, it's pretty cool. I've been to, like, 25 countries. You know, maybe one day I can go to 100 countries. And so that was my goal, like, in life, you know, at age 25.

And as I got a little bit closer, I went to more countries. I was like, it's not that hard to go to 100 countries when there are 193 in total. because you can pick and choose. You know, you can go to the easy ones. If you get stuck somewhere, you can just leave that and go somewhere else. So I decided to make it a real challenge, you know, and add on like every country in the world. So I'm motivated by challenge. I'm motivated by like progress, milestones, you know, like stepping points along the way.

If you had to pick a few of those countries that stood apart from the rest, this might be too hard of a question, but I'm curious it initially popped to my mind. what stands out amongst every country in the world? Yeah, you know, let me say first that that is a great question because, you know, I've done hundreds of these kind of talks and interviews and most people ask, what's your favorite country? And asking it, you know, like where did you have like a meaningful impact? What stands out is so, so much better.

I lived in Sierra Leone for a year. Sierra Leone is not the kind of place that tourists go. Most people know it because there was a big civil war there for more than eight years. But it stood out. It was very meaningful. The people were beautiful. It was an amazing place. Definitely a lot of poverty and struggle, but also kind of people trying to make their way. I'll pick a totally different story. I went to Macedonia in Eastern Europe. Very small country. Most people have never heard of it. And for whatever reason, I just had a great visit. I was there a few days. It was kind of relaxing. Most of my travel is not relaxing. I'm always kind of on the go. And when I went there for some reason, I was just able to chill and appreciate the surroundings. and also the people were great there too. So there you go. Love that answer. And so like I said, I originally became a big fan of years from the $100 startup.

And I know that book is just insanely popular with so many people. The one thing I noticed as I was digging in and doing some research prior to this talk today, is that you've gotten some massive influencers, people who are world class and what they do to write incredible testimonials about you. I think of Seth Godin, Tony Shea, Dan Pink, and the list is very long, and those are just a few of the names. How have you been able to develop relationships with those people that they support you so much when it comes to recommending your book? Because I know that's not just an automatic thing that happens. And I noticed those names, and I thought, I'd love to hear how you did that.

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, those people and others have been very, very kind. I mean, it's been a building, it's been a building process. It's a process of building blocks. So I think you kind of go back to before the $100 startup, you know, eight years ago, I started this blog. I was turning 30. And I was like, I've done a lot of things in my life, but nobody knows who I am. And it's not that the goal is like to become famous. But my frustration was that I had no convergence point.

I had no like platform to point people to and say like, here's where you can learn about the different things I've done. So that's why I started the blog. And in the beginning, like obviously I didn't know anybody at all. So probably spent the better part of two years doing everything. I could to create, you know, content that was interesting to people that helped them in some way wasn't really focusing on big names. You know, I was focusing on developing relationships, you know, one by one with individual readers, you know, whether they were famous people or not. In most cases, they weren't. And I wrote my first book, The Art of Nonconformity. I believe that came out in 2010.

And so when that came out, like, it came out from a small publisher. I didn't get a lot of money to write it. They didn't have money for marketing. And so I did my own tour. I went to all 50 states. I did a 50 state, you know, reader-supported book tour to meet, like, all the people who've been reading the blog. And so I guess what I'm coming to, like, I could talk more and more about that. But the whole point is I'm actually, like, building, you know, throughout my career. And so as part of that, I come into contact with some of these people.

Or maybe I reached out to them at a certain point. And then after I know a couple of people, I like, well, maybe I don't know so-and-so, but, you know, my friend Ryan Hawk, like he knows that guy, he can probably vouch for me. And so that's the, that's been the process. It hasn't been like a strategic, oh, I want to connect with influencers. You know, I think that's a mistake. I think it's much, it's much better like in this organic fashion, you know, over time, trying different stuff.

We have this event that we do every year in Portland, World Domination Summit. So we've had lots of really great talents and other authors come for that. So it's just, it's just a process. It's not like a magic formula. I think some people like to take shortcuts when it comes to that and just reaching out or cold emailing. And there's nothing wrong with cold emailing. Yeah, sure.

Which is I do that all the time. Yeah, that's fine. But as far as it, to me, and I love your answer because it's this slow build of I spent two hard years writing and producing great content for fans. And then that created a book. And from there, it created a tour. And from there, it created these relationships that build up over time. So for anybody, it's just like anything else when they hear about or people hear about

this overnight sensation or success, usually it's taken. years and and and and so much work put into that and you build those relationships one at a time um until before you know it you you you kind of take a step back and you look around and like wow this is incredible i've built up this great network of both fans as well as other people who are doing big things that we're we're friends now and i i really love that aspect to what you've what you've done hey so can i can i just say something about that of course that's um that's great and uh you know if somebody is listening and maybe they're like just getting started, you know, down this road. And so they're like, wow, that makes sense.

But, you know, it seems kind of daunting. You know, what I would say is the great thing about this process, yeah, it takes work. Of course, it takes hustle. It takes dedication. But the great thing is when you build it this way, as opposed to like some kind of hack or trick or, you know, like there's all kinds. There's always like little tactics and things. And that's fine. But don't build your business or your brand on tactics, right?

Build it on vision and relationships. When you do that, it's actually going to be far, far more valuable in the long term. In the long term, you've created this tremendous asset, and the asset is not just a product you've made or a service. The asset is not real estate or a car. And the asset is the relationships you have with these readers or listeners, your fans, your community, whoever it is that connects with you. And that, I think, is the most valuable asset that anyone can build, not just in their

business and in their lives. So to me, I think of all of this as an investment. And, you know, as you're building that, however you choose to build it, it's like every day, like you think, what can I do to invest in that? What can I do to invest in that? Just as you have your retirement plan, you know, or your savings account and you're putting money aside every month or every year for something, you know, and think about how you can invest in the people who might care about your work one day or the people you're already connected with now. Such great advice. Absolutely great, Chris. I want to dive in to Bourne for this.

specifically, I might bounce around a little bit, but it's your book, so I know you could probably dive deeper on certain chapters. Life coaching from Jay-Z, that caught my eye. Tell me more about that. Yeah, I believe the theme or the objective of that chapter, you know, every chapter has an objective. I'm trying to actually, you know, teach people how to do something rather than just describing something. I think the objective there is expand your options and then limit them. So I used this allegory of Jay-Z's career, you know, when he was a teenager, he was a drug dealer, and then he was also a rapper. And so he kind of faced this, you know, just decision, like, do I pursue music, you know,

or do I continue with drug dealing? And maybe drug dealing is actually more rewarding short-term, but the long-term potential isn't so great. You know, you're probably going to end up dead or in prison, essentially. But what people often experience when they're getting started or they're trying to choose, okay, I'm going to go in this new direction, they get a lot of. a lot of advice about being selective and saying no to lots of things. And I think that's great advice. If you're much older or much experienced, you've owned a lot of businesses, now you really

need to focus on something that's great. But in the beginning stages of your career, or even in the midpoint, it's actually much better to say yes to things and to go down a lot of different roads and try a lot of different things. And then over time, so you're expanding your options, then over time, the goal is to limit them and to say, you know, that could be a good thing. But just because it's a good thing doesn't mean I'm going to do it because I can't do everything. So then you become more selective. But you don't become more selective until you know what it is to be selective about. So I think that's the mistake that people make when they're like, oh, I'm 20 years old.

I should know my life purpose. Well, you don't know your life purpose most of the time when you're 20 years old or when you're 30 or whatever or when you're just starting a new career. So the way you get to it is by doing a lot of different things. Well, that kind of leads into U.N. objective of building your own small empire. Talk to me more about that. Yeah. So I tried to write this book for people to find the work they were born to do or meant

to do regardless of whether they were self-employed or whether they kind of found that purpose in a broader organization or company. So the goal is essentially about helping people to take entrepreneurial skills and apply them, even if you work a job. So you can think entrepreneurally in your career. You can be self-employed even if you have a job because nobody. cares about your career more than you do, essentially, even a great company. But U.N. specifically, it kind of follows this concept of a side hustle, which comes first. And that side hustle is

something I think everyone should have. Even if you love your job, that's great, you know, you should still have a side hustle. You should have something that's producing additional income. Even if it's small income, it still can be very satisfying. It can bring you great confidence, brings you great security to know like I've got something else there. And so a lot of people that I saw, you know, through this book, they had started with a side hustle, but then they had decided to go, you know, all in. And they decided to, you know, create you incorporated and to create this actual business. And it's just like $100 startup. Most of the people that I profile, like, if they start a business, they haven't gone to business school. You know, they didn't,

like, go to the bank and ask for a loan. They didn't spend, you know, eight months writing a 80-page business plan that no one ever reads. You know, what they did was they experimented. And they thought about what they were good at that other people also cared about. And then they thought, okay, how can I take that and then transition it into a service into a product and then how can I package that as an offer? So there's this like deliberate, you know, process that you can follow. And most people, you know, if you haven't started a business before, you have like a business idea, quote unquote, which is great.

But you need to think about like how are you actually going to implement and execute that. So I try to show people basically how to do that in a very simple process. You know, Adam Grant talks about that in the book, his newest book, originals, how some of the greatest entrepreneurs or people who create things. there's a lot of examples of these types out there actually had full-time jobs and did their work on the side. And the reason that they were able to be successful is because they limited their risk. And so they weren't really nervous.

And then when they were creating their other business, they didn't have to do things specifically to pay the bills. So they could take a loss initially. They would be completely fine, even for years in some cases, of not making any money because they had a job where they enjoyed their job. but and they could make money from that job and then they could put put time and effort into the side hustle and maybe not make money for a couple years because there were some tough decisions that you need to make that maybe won't lead you to being profitable right away

but could lead you to be incredibly profitable later on down the road. It's kind of like the building relationships where sometimes it just takes time. Yeah, no, I totally love that. I always tell people, you know, it's not a dichotomy between like, do I stay in this job, do I quit my job to start my business? you know, as you just said, like, why don't you start your business now? And I know you don't have time, but nobody has time. Like, we're all busy. You know, we make time for the things that matter to us. And in some ways, it can be a benefit to have limited time to work on something because then you have to be very intentional about what you do for it. And all of a sudden, if you quit your job and you've got like, you know, 50 hours or whatever next week to work on something, it can actually be kind of overwhelming. And you end up doing all kinds of other stuff. And you end up kind of surfing the internet and wasting time. But if you got like, okay, I've got one hour, every evening that I'm going to work on this project. Throughout the day, you're probably going to be thinking about, okay, how am I going to spend that hour? And you may actually be more successful

than the person who quits their job right away and, you know, then has 40 hours and doesn't know what to do because they're also stressed out about money, as you said. You talk about being a do-it-yourself rock star. And I want to get, let's, let's drill this down for, let me just list somebody who could be listening based on emails that I receive. A 30-year-old guy who is married with two kids, house, cars, you know, the regular things that a lot of people have that probably are reading this book. And he says, chapter 11, do it yourself rock star, recruit a small army of fans and supporters. How can I do that? Yeah. Well, I mean, it goes just to what we were talking about, about relationships. They're different mediums, you know, if we're doing that, I chose, I chose writing.

Lots of people are doing great podcasts like yours, other different ways of doing it. I focus on that that small army concept. And I think first of all, like, you know, the most important thing is, okay, if you're building a small army, like, you have to have something to share with them. You have to have something that inspires or empowers or educates them. So maybe the first step is, before we think about how to do marketing, let's think about what our message is, you know, what do you have to share with the world? And if that sounds like this huge, you know, big ass thing, well, don't think about like the world, you know, think about like, how can you help people? What problem can you solve for people?

If you don't know what it is, you know, maybe other people actually know it. So ask them or think about the questions that people ask you, like are you the go-to expert on, you know, whatever, you know, some random thing. There's probably other people out there in the world. You know, this thing comes very easy to you, but everybody else kind of struggles with it. I saw a lot of people kind of build businesses and build like this small army of people around that. So let's start with that, you know, and then we get to the whole thing about, okay, how do we actually build the platform? And that's not that hard to figure out. You know, I mean, you can spend a few hours a week learning about how do I set up a blog, you know, how do I start a podcast or a YouTube thing or whatever the whole thing is.

Like, those things are easy to learn. But what's, what's far more important is like what's the message, how do you actually want to change the world or whoever this group of people, you know, may be? And then if you have that, then everything else is just a learning process. There's so many articles out there about Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and you've written about this. And I'm curious. And so, and these get passed around and they're all over social media about how Steve Jobs approaches leadership management and Warren Buffett approaches investing. And you have talked about the fact that you should not think like a CEO. Explain why you shouldn't think like a CEO.

So we began by talking about, you know, perseverance. And I said that there's a great lesson is actually giving up. It's very good. So here's another thing I'm a contrarian about. I mean, Steve Jobs, like, obviously built this huge, huge company. It's fantastic. He had kind of a reputation of being an asshole as a manager. And so do I think that the best lesson for everybody listening is like, oh, I should be an asshole?

Like, no, of course not. And here's the other problem. Like, even if you're a decent person, you know, the lessons that people extrapolate from famous people do not necessarily apply to the rest of us. So it's like, yeah, if I want to invest like Warren Buffett, well, I'm not sitting on, you know, billions of dollars. If I want to lead like Mark Zuckerberg, I don't have tens of thousands of employees, you know, to kind of, you know, be there at my beck and call. So I think what's far more important is to, you know, I use this model of like think like a janitor. Don't think like a CEO.

Think like a janitor. And the janitor is the dude who's actually like, he's in the whole building. Like he knows everybody. You know, he's kind of got his hands in a lot of different things. He's got relationships with people. Might have some different skills that nobody really looks at because he's a janitor, but he's got some, like, secret sauce there somewhere. So the problem again with being like a celebrity is that most of us are not celebrities. And so if we try to do that, we end up failing and we're disappointed. We feel

like we're a loser when in reality, like we have a different path that we're supposed to pursue. And if we pursue that, then maybe we will eventually, you know, be like Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett or any of those people. Or maybe we'll just end up becoming like ourselves, which is even better. Great advice. I love it, Chris. One more question before we get rolling. And that is around. And again, I talked briefly with you prior to recording about the whole purpose behind my show, the learning leader show. I'm curious from your perspective, when you hear that phrase learning leader, what's the first thing that pops into your mind? Yeah, it's good. I think I love the adjective because I can even, I was going to say lots of leaders don't learn, but that sounds like a criticism.

It's more of a self-criticism. You know, I have been a leader, you know, throughout my life in different ways. and the times that I have been the best leader, like when I look back and say, okay, I actually made a lot of good decisions, you know, compared to the times when, you know, I made some poor decisions or I wasn't caring for my team properly. I think one of the differences is, you know, the times that I was most successful, I was actively learning. And I was actively, like, reading books and listening to talks and trying to educate myself.

And then there were also these periods where I was just so busy, just so busy, like, doing stuff that I actually didn't make time, you know, to learn. And so to me, what comes to mind is like a good leader, you know, positions themselves as a learner. A good leader realizes that there's something they can learn from anyone, you know. It's not just, you know, experts, you know, or gurus. There's something they can learn from every person that they encounter every day. And so a leader is kind of receptive to that or is trying to soak that up. Completely agree.

I love it. This has been awesome, Chris. I really appreciate your time. Where would you send everyone to find more about you online? Yeah, awesome. So anybody's listening can go to Chris Gillibow.com, Chris Gillibow on all the social or for the new book, it's born for this book.com. You can register your book there and get some bonuses. I'm also doing a 30 city tour all across North America.

So I'd love to see you guys somewhere out on the road. Perfect. Again, thanks so much, Chris. And I definitely want to stay in contact as you both progress because I love what you do. I'm a big fan. And this is a thrill for me to have this conversation with you. Oh, dude, you're awesome. Thanks.

Well, it's a great show. Thank you. Thank you very much, man. Talk soon. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learningleadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.