The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 516: Matt Mochary - The Components Of A Coaching Conversation, Making Better Hiring Decisions, Holding Yourself (& Others) Accountable, & Giving Useful Feedback

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Matt Mochary is an operator and an investor. Matt is known as the coach of Silicon Valley's best CEOs. He works with leaders at many companies, including Coinbase, Opendoor, Bolt, and Clearbit. After selling his startup in 1999 for millions, he surfed, made movies, and then developed the Mochary Method to help leaders excel. Matt's life mantra: "Make Money, Have Fun, Do Good" Matt has coached the leaders of Angelist, Brex, Coinbase, Sequoia, Grammarly, Attentive Mobile, Flexport, Plaid, and Reddit. I was not expecting so much emotion from him when talking about coaching. It's evident that Matt finds great joy in what he does. I find that inspiring. The components to a coaching conversation... Hold each other accountable. Declare the highest priority actions. Unpack the problems. Ask them how they are complicit in creating those problems? Help provide solutions & action items for each. Then share feedback. Instead of looking for a specific class, find the best teachers and go to them. That's where the learning happens. In college and out in the real world. "Matt's coaching has brought me clarity, focus, organization, less stress, and higher performance (me and the team). I have always been skeptical of coaches but I think he can 10x the output of a lot of people and I hope he does!" -- Sam Altman (CEO, OpenAI) "It's often easy to make a decision, but it can be much harder to get your team to invest emotionally in that decision." "You create buy-in when you make people feel that they are part of the decision and that their input contributes to the final outcome." "Most companies spend extraordinary resources of time, money, and equity to bring on a new team member, and then almost entirely drop the ball on quickly getting that team member onboarded and up to speed on how the company works so that they can begin making a full contribution. Don't make this mistake." "You create buy-in when you make people feel that they are part of the decision and that their input contributes to the final outcome." "Making a Sale To make a sale effectively, you need to do the following three things: Build trust Identify the customer's specific pain Sell results, not features" "Why did you leave that job?" Was the candidate promoted, recruited, or fired? Get very curious about why." "And when receiving appreciation, there is only one correct response: "Thank you." Do not feign humility by downplaying the act with statements like "It was nothing, anyone could have done it." No. The person is trying to make you feel appreciated. Anything other than "thank you" will rob them of their goal." Meetings – ALWAYS start on time. Don't ever say, "Well let's wait for everyone to join zoom."

So fear is an incredibly powerful motivator, but it's toxic. It erodes the soul over time. What I've found is joy is actually a better motivator. It's much harder to achieve, but if you can help someone achieve it, then they're just excited. They're excited to go to work. They're excited to dive in and tackle problems, and there's no cost. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global.

I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book The Pursuit of Excellence will help you become a more, effective leader. Text, Hawk to 66866. Now on tonight's featured leader, Matt Mosheri is an operator, investor, and is known as the coach of Silicon Valley's best CEOs. He works with leaders

at many companies, including Coinbase, Open Door, Bolt, and Clearbit. Now, after selling his startup in 1999, he surfed, made movies, and then developed the Moschari Method. to help leaders excel. During this conversation, we discuss the three actions of an excellent coach and how you can implement them right now. And then how to use imposter syndrome to your advantage. Then we did a live coaching session at the end of our conversation and focused on how to give critical feedback and how to receive it from the people you're working with. Ladies and gentlemen, this one also gets a bit emotional.

It's really good. It's Matt Mosheri. All right, Matt, it's great to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thank you, Ryan. Thanks for having me. Coaching is an interesting word.

So people think of it naturally. They probably picture a sports team. There's a football coach now. The season's going now or basketball. Whatever. Sports team. What does a great coach, do, not in the sports world, but in your world.

What exactly does, like, what does it sound like? What's your mindset? I know that's a big question, but what does a great coach do that's different from maybe an okay or good coach? Yeah. Well, there's also what type of coach? Right. Because it's almost like there's doctor. Well, what type of doctor?

Is it an internist? Is it a brain surgeon? Is it, you know, these are very different operations. So coach is this like catch all term that can mean a doctor. almost anything. And I sort of separate into two general categories. One is the therapist type person who's going to listen to your issues and your problems and your fears and your angers and just make you feel heard and reflect it back to you so you feel like, wow, this person really gets me and may have some methods of, you know, to work through your anxieties and fears.

that's one and very helpful, and I would say more of a therapist, you know, making you feel like that being a CEO isn't so, you're not alone. You've got a thought partner who understands you. Then the other category is operators, sort of ex-CEOs who've been there, done that, and, hey, I've got this problem. How do I solve it? Tactically, here's the answer. Do, you know, write out this thing, share this thing with these people, it's tactics on solutions for, here's how you do levels and ladders, here's how you give feedback, here's how you, you know, if you think someone's not performing, just let them go. Don't, you know, we'll even worry about the feedback. That's what Frank Zooten would say, you know, these types of directions from someone who's been there, but of course

it comes from their own experience. And I think I sort of straddled the gap in the middle where I think it's important to make people feel heard, but then they also need answers. And so what I found was every time I found we'd come up with a solution, we'd implement it, it worked. And then the next CEO would come along and have that same exact problem. I would simply write up the solution and say, okay, sounds like this is what's going on. Is that right? They say, yes, that's exactly what's happening. Great. Please read this. And they read, this is where we've implemented it. This is where it's work.

And the CEO goes, oh, thank God. And the value of that is, first of all, it's you can ingest information much more quickly by reading it than by hearing it. You can also refer back to it. But even more importantly, you can share it with others. So then the CEO can say, oh, that really resonates with me. I really want to go do that. And they can share that document with their exec team, make sure their exec team is

bought in before they roll out. the solution. And also here's the instructions in how to roll out the solution. So I think that's the difference for me, which isn't much of a difference. It just means I write things down. That's all. In preparation for this, there are, I feel like an unlimited amount of Google Docs that are connected to you, things that you've written. There's Q&As, there's videos, and then there's a lot written down by you. And you have your own method, which is branded really well. Can you walk through your mindset of writing everything down and basically using Google Docs and you also have a book, but you can learn so much for free just by Googling your name. Literally, you could

probably run a business just from reading the stuff that you've published online for free. Oh, and there are people who do. Yeah. I remember the one time there was an investor who I talked and and I said, what's the best performing company or portfolio? He mentioned a company. I said, great. I'd love to meet the CEO and talk about coaching him. He said, great. Connected us. CEO was super eager to meet me because he read all my stuff. And we talked, had this great conversation. I said, okay, great. Should we try some coaching? And he said, no. I said, really? Why not? He says, Matt, I've been reading and implementing your stuff for the past three years. It all works. And I don't have any problems. I don't need to talk to you to get more information. You wrote it all. You made

all available. And so to me, that that's like the best answer I could have ever gotten. Now, most people aren't like that. Most people want me to, you know, they still feel fear and they want me to help them with the exact implementation in their company and when they have questions for me to help answer those questions. But realistically, it's not needed. Realistically, all this stuff is public. I want people to read it. I want people to use it. I want people to implement it. And frankly, they don't need me. Do you charge for coaching? I've heard you do not. Have you started charging? Like, what's going on with that? So for many years, I did not charge. I've made a lot of money, so I don't need more money. And I also wanted to make sure that I was doing things for joy and for love.

And the easiest way to do that is to not charge. So that way my brain doesn't get confused. And it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. But after years and years of not charging, I know I love this. And all of my CEOs started asking me, Matt, can you please turn this method, which is all Google Docs, into software so I can implement it throughout my whole company. And I remember Brian Armstrong at Coinbase was the first person to ask me that. And I said, Brian, you've got 500 engineers working for you. Why don't you go do it? He's like, wow, we've got to focus them on Coinbase. And I thought, well, I'm not an engineer.

And I don't have to have any engineers. And finally, after many, many CEOs asking the same thing, I said, okay, I'll do it. but I'm not going to come out of pocket to pay for this. Like you guys have to pay your fair share. So I've run agreed. And so now we do charge. But all that money goes into developing software. I noticed that online.

It looks like it's in development. What is that going to be? Yeah. So really the idea is a company operating system that operates the entire company. It's like a modern version of workday. And you can think of a combination of, you know, Asana is probably the best proxy for it right now. Asana slash notion. But those softwares are very open-ended.

You can do anything. How many other coaches do you help? Are you trying to scale in that way where you teach other coaches? That's a great question. So at first, people said, Matt, it's impossible to scale you. My coachee said that. My friend said that. And I thought, I don't think that's true.

I think actually everything I do is incredibly relevant. applicable. So back in January of this year, I did a coaching training. I invited 12 people to come to it. And I wanted to see, could I make even one of these people be able to do what I do? And it turns out by the end of the, it was a six, once a day or one day a week for six weeks. And by the end of the six weeks, I'm pretty convinced that all 12 could do what I do. I ended up making an offer to two of them saying, hey, come work with me full time and accepted. And now those two coaches, Sabrina Wang and Alexis Damacourt, are coaching many CEOs, many exec team members.

And Sabrina's already full. Alexis is just about full. And so we're now going to go do another training and train and hire more. What are the qualities, mindsets, behavior sets of a great coach? If I'm good at teaching, it shouldn't be. matter. It should be anybody. But it turns out there are a few things that are a little bit harder to teach. So ideally, I want someone who's already hyper-organized. I can teach someone to be organized, but if their brain already thinks process, that's very helpful to me. They have to also be able

to communicate both written and verbally incredibly well. But now I've just described 80% of the working world. So that's not really a lot of restriction. In addition, I think that coaches, one of the key tenets of my coaching is that fear is when we feel it and anger, our brain activity goes into our amygdala. So we have two main parts of our brain, our prefrontal cortex, where our brain activity goes, when we feel joy and excitement. It's also where we have creative thought. And amygdala, where we go when we feel fear and anger. It's where our thoughts become very fight or flight. So there's a threat.

I see it. Either I'm going to attack it and yell and get angry, or I'm just going to cower away and fear and run away. And those obviously are not very creative thoughts. And so that's often the position we're in when we make critical decisions and are therefore the thoughts that we have are pretty suboptimal. So one of the keys is to a notice. when you're in fear and anger and be not not make any decisions not take any actions until you're

able to shift out of it and then three here's some methods to shift out of it and so i guess that is a key uh that people need to be able to notice and let go of their fear before they act um but frankly again this is part of my coaching so i haven't yet met anyone who was willing to do this and then wasn't able to. I've got methods that sort of are little hacks that can bring anyone there. There just have to be willing. I guess they have to believe in the philosophy. They have to believe that fear and anger actually do get that advice. If they believe fear gives really good advice, then no, then this wouldn't work for them. I encounter people who have maybe promoted to a leadership role for the first time. My first book is called Welcome to Management. It's for that first

initial promotion in your career. Maybe you're a superstar sales rep and they make you now the manager. Like, oh, God, that's a completely different job. And so with that, there's, there's, there's this quiet imposter syndrome that they'll admit to you, but they don't want to admit it around. And I would imagine this is something you deal with, even with some of the, the most known CEOs in the world that you work with, it's funny. I bet they still deal with it.

What are some things that you've learned and how you've tried to help people deal with imposter syndrome? Yeah. Well, first of all, let's recognize imposter syndrome is not all bad. Mm-hmm. There's one CEO I coach who gets really great reviews on Glass Door. And so I asked her, asked her, what do you think is the cause of all these great reviews? And she says, Matt, you know what I think it is?

I think it's that I feel that I'm so unqualified to be where I am, that I'm just so grateful that anybody wants to work with me. And so I let them know all the time just how amazing grateful I am. I thought, yeah, that makes sense. I would want to work at a company like that, too, where I got thanked and appreciated by the CEO constantly. So there are some real benefits to a Boster syndrome. Now, of course, there are some negatives. It obviously takes a toll on the individual and the human who's feeling it. And it is just fear.

It's fear that says, oh, shit, I'm not good enough to be here. I'm going to fail. and I'm going to bring everything else down with me. And so over the long term, we can prove that that prediction is bad. The problem is that the human suffers in the meantime. Now, again, that fear is highly motivating. Remember, when I first started my career,

my fear was that I wasn't going to make money. So highly motivated me to do the things to make money. Of course, I way overshot my goal. So fear is an incredibly huge. powerful motivator. It's also, but it's toxic. It erodes the soul over time. What I've found is joy like an emotional is actually a better motivator. It's much harder to achieve. But if you can help someone achieve it, then they're just excited. They're excited to go to work. They're excited to dive in and tackle problems and there's no cost on this whole we get to enjoy life right now right here

because of course also the biggest booby prize is to create a successful company and i can't tell you how many founders i coach who have become billionaires during my coaching it's sort of a natural progression. They own 10 to 30% of the company. The company ends up being worth $5 to $50 billion, and they become billionaires. And all of a sudden, there's this realization, oh shit, I am no happier than I was before. And because that's what people, they're all pinning, their hopes on all my problems will be solved if I can just become a billionaire. You know, first it's 10 million, then it's 100 million, then it's a billion. But once you get to a billion, there's no other mark. No one says, I'm a billionaire, but I'm not happy. But if I were a 10

billionaire, I'd be happy. Like, no, once you get to a billion, you realize, oh shit, the money actually doesn't do anything. And that's when they have to turn somewhere else. And they have to sort of, That's when I have to start look inward and say, wow, what would make me happy today, not in the future, but today. And once they start thinking about that and figuring that out, that's actually when satisfaction usually arrives. What is it about talking about joy that makes you emotional? I feel joy.

So these are tears of joy. I love what I do. I love sharing with others, but they can love what they do too. That's it. This is not sad. This is a joy. I mean, it's awesome, man.

It's inspiring, dude, to see somebody who does. What brings you the most joy? Originally, it was just helping people and really also becoming great friends. I become great friends with everyone I coach because there's this incredible intimacy. They share with me everything. They're most, their deepest, darkest pains and things that they feel deep shame about. And then we uncover it. And we solve them.

We heal them. And they ask me to reverse. Like, Matt, I want to know about you. And so I share about me. So there's this depth that we get to very quickly. And we also have fun. I mean, I'm doing this for fun. So we're going to laugh.

We're going to have a great time. That's required. That's not optional. And so, yeah. So we become great friends, and that brings me a lot of joy. Lately, I have to tell you, you know, because I've started this software company, one of my CEOs, I think might be the best head of engineering CEO that I know of. This guy named Aaron White runs a company called Blissfully,

just acquired by vendor specifically because vendor wanted their engineering excellence. And there were other things that Blissfully didn't do great, the distribution side, but on the engineering side, they just crush it. And so I want to learn from Aaron. So I've been interviewing him. And one of the things he said really struck me, he said, Matt, when you create software, you actually haven't done anything. All you've really done successful software software that has product market fit,

software that people really use to solve their problems, all you've done is create a prototype for the rest of the world to copy. And now if there's a three-person YC startup that can iterate faster than you can, then they're going to catch up to you. and pass you and their software will eventually be better than yours. And so really what you need is not to create software, but you need to create the fastest software development team on the planet. And yes, of course, you have to solve customer problems

and you've got to get to product market fit, but that's table stakes. You have to do this also. And that really struck me. And I've realized that that's what I need to do too. So that's what I've been experimenting with now, hard. And there's another CEO I coach, her name is we dang clipboard health i've learned a tremendous amount from her she experiments so hard

with so many radical things and i have a write-up on how to create product at a scaled company and has some crazy ideas in it one of the ideas is is that once you do have a software that lots of people are using you know it's going to be very difficult to iterate on it so if you want to create new product you actually have to take take small teams like yC startup teams and go make them completely independent. They don't report in the head of engineering. They don't report in the head of product. They report directly to the CEO or someone who's outside of the chain of command of this behemoth over here. And in fact, what you should do is you should go create a separate C-corp for each of these new products. So they've got a separate name, separate legal entity. And that way,

they can experiment. They don't have a brand that they're trying to protect. They can do crazy things and it doesn't hurt the main brand. And I remember about a month ago, someone read this doc and looked and said, Matt, these ideas sound amazing, but does anyone really do them? And I thought, well, you know, no, nobody that I know has created these C-Corps. Now, I do have coaches that have created little teams, but no, no one's created the C-Corps. And then I talked to Wee-Dang at at Clipboard Health, and she said, oh, yeah, I do. I've created five C-corps for the five new products that I'm creating. It's like, that's incredible. And then she went on to describe other things she's done, One of the things she does, which I think is phenomenal, is that she not only creates separate

entities for new products, she in the past has created separate teams for the same product. Because she says, Matt, I don't, like, I had this engineering team. I wasn't sure if they were performing well. I didn't know. And I tried everything I could, but I'm not an engineer. I couldn't figure it out. So I had a feeling they weren't performing well, but I didn't know. So I just hired an entirely new team, a small team, to do the exact same thing.

And sure enough, the new smaller team way outperform the old big team, and then she knew. And so I have started to do that now. We actually have three separate teams basically doing the same thing. And what I've noticed is the performance of the original team has improved dramatically simply because they see what the others are doing that's working and they simply copy it. And so now we've got three teams all performing incredibly well. That's kind of what gives me a lot of joy, maybe the most joy right now, is team green experimenting in the software world, which I know nothing about.

But I think I might actually now have the fastest software development team in the world. Could you take us inside a coaching session? What does it sound like? What are the questions you're asking? I realize it depends on first meeting, 100th meeting, everything in each, I don't know, maybe not. what's it like what's it sound like were the questions you ask what or maybe even some of the typical follow up how do they go so what happens is when i take on a CO to coach i tell them you manage a thousand people but nobody manages you right report to anybody you report to your board but that's not really

a reporting structure you don't you don't tell them everything and and and so they're not really your thought partner and theoretically the people that you manage perform better because you manage So now you CEO are going to report to me. I'm now your manager. And I'm going to show you how I manage. And we're going to have three one-on-one meetings. And if at the end of those three your life is better, then you know that my method works.

You can simply copy and paste whatever you like and use it in your own reports. And then we'll do three meetings with your team. And if sudden your team performs better, then again, you can copy and paste what you like and continue using it with your team. And so that's it. We just do one-on-ones as any manager would. And I find that there are three critical components of a meeting in a one-on-one. One is accountability.

I want to make sure you did the things you said you were going to do. I also want to make sure you declare your highest priority actions towards your goals because I find that that act alone will cause you to be proactive during your workweek as opposed to reactive to other people's request. and that can all happen asynchronously. And the first meeting, we do it, I show them how to do it. But by the third meeting, they're all writing that up before the meeting happens. I'm looking at it before the meeting and happens. We don't even use meeting time for that.

The second thing is what I call coaching. And this is sort of, here are the problems you run into. Tell me what they are and we'll unpack them together. Now one thing I do is don't tell me what they are and then sort of blame other people for them. So yeah, that guy, he's not performing. and I can't believe that he sucks and that's terrible. Because all you're doing then is putting the power in the other person. Only the other person can fix it.

I want to know what the problem is, but then I want to know, what didn't you do to create it? What conditions did you create so that this guy didn't perform? And they go, oh, wow, when you think about it that way, well, I didn't give him feedback. I didn't give him context. I hired the, you know, I didn't do reference checks and I hired the wrong person. I was like, oh, okay. Now I want you to tell me what your solution is.

And by the way, you can just unwind the things you did to create it. Okay, I'll give them feedback. From now on, I'll give full context. And I'm going to do reference checks from now on. And so, boom, there's the answer. I didn't have to do anything. Now, I do something in the coaching. So when we get to that point, what I find is people share the problem, what they did,

their solution. And I, this is the key part. This is the part that's incredibly replicatable. I share it back. I say, I think I'm heard you say, da, that, da, da, da, is that right? They say, yes. Great.

Then I say, there's more. And I go, wow, now that you mention it, Matt, there actually is more. Because now their brain, now that they've had this part of their thought validated, it's almost like it's set in concrete. They put that on the foundation. And suddenly, literally more thoughts appear to them.

And then they say more. I repeat that back. And I say, is that right? I say, yeah, I say there's more. And they go, wow, there actually is more. And they go one layer further. And they keep going and keep going. And by the time we get to layer five or six, they're like, that's it.

And by the way, I now see exactly where this all came from. Thank you, Matt. That was amazing. And I haven't done anything. All I've done is say, there's more. But reflecting it back, the key is reflecting it back and making the person feel like, yes, you understand. And now they can put that off to the side and the new deeper thoughts appear.

All right. So that's part two. And then, of course, we come up with actions for each. So when we solve a problem, we say, okay, what actions are you going to take? Everything is driving towards creating actions because these meetings are useless if all we do is spend time, figure out solutions, but then don't do anything about it. So then the third part of the meeting is what I call transparency, which is feedback. And I collect, I say, how could I do better? Like what of this meeting was valuable, but also how could I do better?

And I also usually want an absolute rating, one to five. Three is meeting expectation. Five is it couldn't be any better. One is it couldn't be any worse. And I was giving you feedback, not you giving them feedback. Right. But I've been giving them feedback the whole time. All time.

Yeah. Exactly. And so they do. And I do this. I collect feedback in every one-on-one I do and every team meeting I do. Because this is where I learn. This is where I get better. But it's not just that.

It's also this is where I create trust with a person that I'm managing because this is their forum to help to improve me, to change me. And so we think, oh, you know, you can say, hey, just, you know, if you see any ways I can approve, just let me know. No one's actually going to say anything unless there's a dedicated time when they're forced to say something, then they'll share. and their thoughts. And oftentimes the first time, they're scared. Like, here's Matt Mishar. He's this coach that I've heard so much about. I really want him to coach me. I don't want to piss him off because then he'll just say, see ya. And he's done that to plenty of other people. He has a reputation for just only coaching the people he wants to coach. And so if I say something that piss him off, it's a huge asymmetric negative bet, meaning if he accepts the feedback,

yeah, he'll improve a little bit, one. But if he does. accepting gets pissed off, then he'll say, screw you, I'm not going to coach you, and it's minus 100 for me. So that's a terrible asymmetric bet. So people don't make that bet. They don't do that with their bosses on a regular basis. And so as the manager, it's my job to pull that bit of information out them in the beginning and then to show them, no, I really value this. Thank you so much. Say someone's a VP of Sales, Matt, they're not the CEO, VP of Sales. So they have managers and directors who report to them, and then those people have individual contributors. So there's a whole host of people, depending on the size.

And I remember this feeling because I would ask for it. And I know at the beginning, people were afraid. They'd just tell me how awesome I was, right? And I was like, I haven't built enough trust yet. It was obvious. I haven't built enough trust. I haven't done the work there. And I was frustrated because I'm background athletics, went to college on a scholarship,

to play football and played afterwards. So, like, I love coaching. I watch film every single day. coaches get on us, we would get better, and that's how it works. But in the business world, it's different where they report up to you. And so it takes a bit before they're willing to actually give you real feedback instead of just the fluff of how great you are, which is, it feels good for a second. And then it doesn't because you're like, no, I need, I need real stuff. So what are some things that VP of whatever can do to get their people to actually give them real feedback so they can improve?

Yeah, let's do it right now. Okay. So, Ryan, we've been interacting now for 48 minutes. And so I don't want you to say it, but I'd like you to think it. And obviously don't say it. There's something, a thought that you've had about me that if you said it, you're afraid it would piss me off. So again, don't say it. Just think it.

And you have it in your brain chamber. Look at my notes. some way where you know like Mac could have done this a lot better okay okay yeah no of course don't say it so do you have it in your brain chamber excellent now can you please share it with me

I think this story about creating the software could have been tighter shorter and that could be a me thing since I'm not as curious about software. Like I don't care as much, but that's what I would say.

Perfect. So I think what you're saying, Ryan, is, Matt, this podcast is about leadership and coaching. And you went off to total tangent around software and got really into it and got really deep. And you spent a long time talking about it. I mean, it's fine to mention it. But Matt, keep it short.

Like three second, boom, this is what we're doing and come back to leadership. This is a leadership podcast. Is that close? That's right. Excellent. I accept that feedback. The next time I come on your show, we're going to keep it to leadership. So, but you see what I did there is I just reflected it back to you, not in the exact same words, but in actually a more exaggerated version of what you, I imagine you were probably really thinking. And then you're like, well, I mean, I try to tell you like as much as you're right. You did you did a better job of of, of giving the cliff notes of what it was of like, okay, there's one small section that I didn't care as much about. Yeah. Right. And now you likely feel hurt or do you feel heard? Absolutely.

100%. That's the key. If as a manager, you can do that or doesn't even have to be with your reports with your spouse, with your friends, with your investors, with anybody. That creates connection. That makes people, ah, this guy gets me. It's actually more important than accepting or acting on the feedback. So if I get you, you can say, hey, Ryan, I appreciate you saying that.

I'm actually, I don't accept that. I'm not going to do it. And here's why. You'd be kind of okay with that because at least I understood you. Yeah. But in this case, I do accept it. So I will. I appreciate it.

I think the main thing, though, in that regard is if I would have given you fluff, like, Matt, I don't really have any of you. Like, this has been killer. Like, the whole thing. I was like searching and reaching for it because I wanted to be a good sport. I wanted to play along. But at times, I've asked that, usually it's the beginning of your time working with the newer team and you get back like dude this is great that speech is awesome or the town hall

you know what i mean so i think i think i like how you modeled that though to say think it think about it in your head okay now will you say it and it kind of makes you say like well i want to do a good job for him like i want to have something to present to him you know exactly there's a slightly more brutal way and had a little bit more pressure i have said to people and this is true that i can't fully trust you until i hear your full feedback. And if you don't give it to me, then there's only one of two possibilities. Either you think I'm perfect, I'm God, which I'm clearly not. You're withholding. So until you give me that first bit of harsh feedback, I'll assume you're withholding.

And that does put pressure on people. Let's say you're meeting somebody who's earlier in their career, maybe in their like mid-20s, college grad, want to do great in the world, not really sure yet what they want to do, but they do want to do good. They want to leave a positive dent in the world for people. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person? Yeah. So two thoughts.

One is a lot of people say, Matt, I want to make money. I want to have fun. I want to do good all in one. And I say when you're starting off, don't try to optimize for all three because you'll optimize for none. So pick the order you want to go in and then optimize for the first one. Likely, frankly, making money is probably going to be the most important thing up front because you don't have any yet. And then whichever category you pick, then I find that it's easiest.

This is the advice my dad gave me and I followed to this day as when I went off to college and I was choosing my classes. He says, Matt, don't choose the subject matter. Instead, ask the upper classmen who the best teachers are and just take whatever classes they're teaching. And so that applies in life. Find out who the great managers are, the great people are. Who cares what business they're in? Who cares what department they run? It just doesn't matter.

And just go learn from them. And I find the best way to learn from someone is to shadow them, is to be a fly on the wall. And it turns out there actually is a job where you get to be a fly on the wall. And it's called Chief of Staff. And that's the way it's the onboarding, for chief of staff is you simply observe the person you're going to be helping for one, two, three months. You have access to their email, you sit in their meetings, until you can

think like they think, because you see the information coming in, you see the decisions they make, you start to make the correlations, and then you can start doing tasks for them. I find that to be the single best job in a company, and I would do it for the CEO, and that I think is where you get the most learning. There is so much free stuff. I'm telling everybody to go check out. Just Google Matt Mashari. Look at the Machari method and then there are unlimited Google Docs with unlimited links throughout them. You'll go down a rabbit hole for a very long time. The cool thing about it though is it's all so useful and practical and you could

implement it and there gets some background as to why this stuff is what you should be doing. So I'm super grateful for you man for just putting that all out there and having me live in Google Docs for a while preparing for this, but it's all there. So I'd encourage anyone, just Google you, go check out all your stuff. And it's really great. And Matt, if you would, I would love it if we could continue this dialogue as we both progressed because I really appreciate how thoughtful you are and your willingness to be vulnerable.

It makes this really meaningful and inspiring for me. Well, this is a lot of fun for me, Ryan, so definitely yes. Awesome, man. Thanks so much. All right, my man. That felt quite a bit different than what I'm used to. I was not expecting all of the emotion that poured out of Matt multiple times. It felt like he's pretty secure in himself and willingness.

We had never spoken before and never met. And I'm grateful and actually quite a bit inspired by his willingness to be vulnerable. I think that's something all of us can learn from. It's evident that Matt finds great joy and what he does. And I think that's something for all of us to strive for. More things that I found interesting. The components to a coaching conversation, a few of them, hold each other accountable, declare the highest priority actions, unpack the problems, ask them how they are complicit

in creating those problems, help provide solutions and action items for each of those, and then share feedback with each other quite a bit. of there. The meat of that aspect and that part of our conversation, I thought, was a super useful and something that we can implement on. And then instead of looking for a specific class, find the best teachers and go to them. While that's advice for college students, I think the same can be true in life. Find the people who have done something that you admire. And more importantly, they've done it in a way in which you admire and go to them, talk to them, shadow them, ask them questions, try to learn directly from the source.

I'm fortunate to do that for a living and I find great joy in that and I learn a lot in the process. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Matt Washari. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars in Apple Podcasts, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will always find joy and I will always be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk soon.

Can we?