The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 575: The Score That Matters - Growing Excellence In Yourself and Those You Lead

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Our new book, The Score That Matters, is out TODAY (March 26, 2024). Here's the link: https://amzn.to/4citmTL Thank you for your support! Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Ryan Hawk is the creator and host of The Learning Leader Show, a top-rated business podcast that focuses on learning from the most effective leaders in the world. He speaks regularly to Fortune 500 companies; works with teams and players in the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NCAA; and facilitates Leadership Circles to offer structured guidance and collaborative feedback to new and experienced leaders. Ryan has also built an online leadership school called The Learning Leader Academy. He is the author of Welcome to Management and The Pursuit of Excellence, lauded by Forbes magazine as "the best leadership book of 2020" and "the most dynamic leadership book of 2022," respectively. Brook Cupps has been a high school basketball coach for more than 20 years, earning several Coach of the Year awards. His teams have won numerous conference, district, and regional championships, as well as Centerville High School's first-ever basketball state championship in 2021. In addition, he has spent the last eight years coaching grassroots basketball on the AAU circuits and helped guide the North Coast (Ohio) Blue Chips to national championships in 2014 and 2019. He publishes weekly essays on leadership and coaching on his site, Blue Collar Grit, and is the author of Surrender the Outcome. People love to keep score. Managers keep score of a range of business metrics: market share, revenue, profit margin, and growth rate. In our personal lives, social media has us keeping score by likes and followers. These external scores are outcome-driven and serve as proof of our success—money, fame, material possessions, wins—but this constant chase for more validation often leaves us feeling exhausted and empty. Offering both descriptive and prescriptive advice and anecdotes, The Score That Matters will help you unlock true fulfillment and happiness by discovering your purpose, identifying your values, creating critical behaviors, and living them faithfully every day in all aspects of your life. Warren Buffett once said, "The big question about how people behave is whether they've got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard."  And that's what The Score That Matters Is All About… The inner scoreboard is about eliminating comparison with others and living in alignment with what's most important to you: your values and the behaviors to match those values.  If you want to stop comparing yourself to others, establish YOUR core values, and live in alignment with them (and I believe you should), then I think our book, The Score That Matters, will be useful for you. In addition to that, our book, The Score That Matters, will help you Build trust with the important people in your lives (your family and the team you're leading at work) It will help you focus on your eulogy virtues instead of your resume virtues And we write about how you can build transformational relationships that will ultimately change your life for the better. When I interviewed economics professor and best-selling author Tyler Cowen, I asked him why he chose to write his most recent book with someone else (after he previously had written his books by himself). He said, "If you have an opportunity to work with someone who is awesome and brilliant and who will cooperate with you, you should always do that. Drop everything and do that." Before this, I never thought I would write with someone else. It's too personal. However, I took Tyler Cowen's advice and I am so glad I did. Working on a book with one of your mentors is the ultimate tool for learning. I got to have long-form conversations (both in writing and in person) from someone who has figured out some of life's most challenging issues. When you meet Brook Cupps, you'll notice that he's incredibly comfortable in his own skin. He has ZERO need to get approval from anyone outside of his closest friends. He has his values, lives his values, and that's it. I think we would all be better off if we did that. In this book, you'll get the unique perspective of a teacher and a student. Brook plays the role of the teacher, and me the student. We wrote almost all of the book together and mixed in some parts labeled BC and RH when it was from each of our unique perspectives. After a lifetime of figuring these things out and 3 years working together to get the ideas out of our heads onto the page, our book, The Score That Matters is now available for you to read. If you've gotten any value from The Learning Leader Show over the past 9 years, I hope you decide to buy this book. I think it could change your life. Go to Amazon now and buy it. If you've already bought yourself a copy, go back to Amazon and buy another one or two for the people in your life you care about most. Start a book club, tell your friends, read this with your colleagues at work. Not only do I think it could change your life, but all of your friends too. Thank you for your support!  

Warren Buffett once said, quote, the big question about how people behave is whether they've got an inner score card or an outer score card. It helps if you can be satisfied with an inner scorecard. And that's what the score that matters is all about. The inner scoreboard is about eliminating comparison with others and living in alignment with what's most important to you. That's your values and the behaviors to match those values. If you want to stop comparing yourself to others, establish your core values, and live in alignment with them, and I think you should, then I believe our book, The Score That Matters, will help you. And in addition to that, our book, The Score That Matters, will help you build trust with the important people in your lives. That's your family and the team you're leading at work.

It will help you focus on your eulogy virtues instead of your resume virtues. We write about how you can build transformational relationships that will ultimately change your life for the better. Now, when I interviewed economics professor and bestselling author Tyler Cowan, I asked him why he chose to write his most recent book with someone else. Now, this was after he previously had written his books by himself. He said, quote, if you have an opportunity to work with someone who is awesome and brilliant and who will cooperate with you, you should always do that. drop everything and do that. Before this, I never thought I would write with someone else. It's just too personal. However, I took Tyler Cowan's advice, and I am so glad I did. Working on a book with one of your mentors is the ultimate tool for learning. I got to have long-form conversations

both in writing and in person with someone who has figured out some of life's most challenging issues. When you meet Brooke Cups, you'll notice that he's incredibly comfortable in his own skin. He has zero need to get approval from anyone outside of his closest friends, his foxhole friends. He has his values, lives his values, and that's it. I think we would all be better off if we did that. Now, in this book, you'll get the unique perspective of a teacher and a student. Brooke plays the role of the teacher and me the student. We wrote almost all of the book together and mixed in some parts labeled BC and R.H. When it was from each of our unique perspectives, after a lifetime of figuring these things out and three years working together to get the ideas out of our heads onto the page, our book, the score that matters, is now available for you to read.

If you've gotten any value from the Learning Leader Show over the past nine years, I hope you decide to buy this book. I think it could change your life. So go to Amazon now and buy it. If you've already bought yourself a copy, go back to Amazon and buy another one or two for the people in your life you care about most. Start a book club, tell your friends, read this with your colleagues at work. Not only do I think it could change your life.

but all of your friends too. I am so grateful for your support. So on this special book launch day of The Score That Matters, we are sharing a few clips from a podcast Brooke and I did with my friend Omeid Homayan. We thought these would be useful

for you to listen to in addition to reading our book. So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation about our book, The Score That Matters. All right, guys, it's so good to connect with you guys about your new book. As I was telling you before we were recorded, what I love most about it is I always look for books or even interviews that I do where like, how can I become more self-reflective? How can I develop more self-awareness? And nobody really gives me a great answer

for that doing about 100 interviews. And I think that's why I personally get the most value from the work that you guys have done, even from the interviews that you guys have had on the learning leader show and the book that you guys have written together is that you guys actually have prompts and I can write a letter to my 10 year old self. I can, you know, write down who's in my foxhole, which I didn't even know what that was until I read this book. So I love that. And so congrats to both of you guys on publishing this book. Yeah, I think that's the thing you hope is that there's practical application that I can maybe make a difference in your life that you actually do something with it, not just be, you know, slightly entertained, but also you take some action from it.

Awesome. So just from an origin story, how did you guys sort of intersect to put this workout together? So we sat down together a few years ago to record an online course. And I didn't do probably a great job of planning outside of the fact that there were video guys there. And there was a friend of mine named Dan Smith who sat close to us off camera who transcribed everything we said over the course of those, I guess, seven or eight hours for the day. And after I read the transcription from Dan, I texted broke and thought, like, this actually could be a book. What do you think? And I think he just said, all right, I'm down. And that was it. And so, you know, two and a half years later, we actually have the artifact that's here. So a lot of messiness in between that time and this time, but we made it, I guess. That's awesome. So a couple things that I really love are quotes. I might read one of the quotes. I'd love for you guys to reflect on it. But in the beginning, one of the things

you guys talk about is your purpose and your why. And Brooke, one of the things that really stuck out to me, I won't read the whole thing, but you go on to say true fulfillment will always be just out of grasp to those longing for success while those pursuing excellence can enjoy it daily, right? I think about like the journey and maybe the trophy at the end. And you've obviously been coaching at like the highest level. And when I think about what you do, you know, know, I also think about like what Chris Heron does, who I know you guys both know speaks to kids. And to me, that is like you will get caught quick if you're not real and authentic with them. To me, that's the hardest audience to build trust with and rapport with.

I don't know if you agree, Brooke, based on your experience, but I love to hear about your why behind the book just to kick things off. Yeah. First of all, I definitely agree with you. They sniff fake out real fast and they don't hesitate to call you on it. tell you about it. For me, my purpose personally is excellence over success. So I define excellence as you maximizing your potential where success is more a comparison with other people. And so what I think my goal is to always help people try to focus on becoming the best version of themselves rather than just better than somebody else or something else. I think in the

score that matters, we talk a lot about defining success on your terms. and that to me is what excellence is all about. And that's why you can enjoy it daily. And, you know, there's a part in the book that we talk about. The idea of the greatest, that's a mirage. There's not a greatest. Like there can be a bunch of people that are great. Like, we can all be great.

And focusing on just trying to become the best version of ourselves allows us to control our daily actions and our behaviors and then have fulfillment from that. rather than all but one person being fulfilled because they're in first place or they win the game or whatever it is. But I think the idea behind it is just having the discipline and the understanding to define success on your terms rather than allowing other people to do it for you. I love that. Ryan, what do you think about the thesis of the book about the internal scoreboard rather than the external one? What really motivated you about this topic? It's aspirational for me, first and foremost, something I struggle with.

And if you really want to learn about something, try to write a book about that topic. You'll learn because writing is the ultimate tool for clarity. So that's first and foremost why I wanted to continue a relationship with Brooke after we first met in, I guess, 2017, 2016, in that time frame was I admired his ability to know himself, to know what tough, passionate, unified, and thankful is all about. Those are his core values, which everybody knows if you know him. And I wanted that. And I feel like through the course of this, I've gotten much, much further along on my kind of process than I was at the beginning of it.

So that's a huge win because I think one of the prompts I asked myself at the end of each day is, what did I do today to be a little bit wiser going to bed than I was when I woke up, you know, from Charlie Munger. And so having deep long form conversations with people on my podcast to having really, regular dialogue with members of my Foxhole and my friends and people like the team that Brooke and I have put together to go out and do work with some of these great companies we talk to, that ensures that I'm getting better each day. So really that's what it's about. That's why the subtitles is like growing excellence. It's that growth part is really important for me because I can't like lead anybody else unless I'm going to be really good and intentional about leading myself first.

And so all of that's, all of that's just really about being more thoughtful and intentional. And so I would say this book, this project was more for me than anything else, selfishly, just to learn and to get a little bit better. And I think now that we've at least completed the first part, which is the writing, the next part, which will happen for the rest of our lives, is the selling. I feel pretty good about that. That's amazing. One of the things that struck me was a quote. And I don't know how much time you guys spent with Donald Miller, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. And it reminds me of maybe the process of this book.

I'd love to hear either of your reflections on it. And it's, quote, writing a book is like climbing a mountain in the fog. You don't know where the top is. But if you walk uphill every morning for two hours, you're going to get there. And I think that's such a good metaphor for many things in life. I'm wondering, what did that mean to you guys? Well, he was with us in Nashville when we had one of our learning leader growth summits for members of my leadership circle.

And Brooke plays a prominent role in all of those. Don came and told us that. And it really resonates with me because I think it's true, but I think it goes well beyond just writing a book. That's kind of like life. It's really hard to, I know that's something Brooke and I, we've gone back and forth with like, what are we going to do in the future? And to me, it's just really foggy.

But I think we both share the attribute and the skill to get up and work every day, no matter what, whether we feel bad, whether we feel good, whether we win, whether we lose, we know what we're going to do the next day. We're going to get up and work. And I think if you keep doing that, it's funny how things seem to work out. Good opportunities come your way. You make the most of those opportunities and you get up and work. And I think James Clear told us last year in Columbus at another one of our gross summits that it's actually more important what you choose to do when you don't feel like it, when you don't feel good, when you wake up and it's not going your way. It's more important. important what you do on those days. So I think that just kind of goes back to both of our,

probably our dads as well as just who we try to be. And that's like, hey, I may not be the most talented or the most skilled. I'm not that great by myself. But I can't get up and go to work each day. And so I'm going to choose to do that. I think we probably share that ethos about us. I love that. I want to jump into some of those core values. I feel like Ryan's looking at my notes somehow. I want to make sure I'm not sharing my screen here. But he named him. He memorized them, right? Tough, passionate, unified, thankful. More people know. Brooks values, then know their own values. That's a fact. So I'm just saying it's a cool thing that a whole community and beyond know your core values. That means they're really resonating

with people. So I know them just because I'm one of the many, many others out there that have memorized the Brooke Cubs slash Centerville Basketball core values. I love it. But Brooke, I'm going to ask you about this story. But I don't want you to tell, if someone's listening to this, I don't want you to tell them what the value is. What I'd love for you to do, if you're open of this here. Tell me about your dad what he went through growing up. And I'm curious how what he did for you impacted some of the decisions you made in your life. And then we'll tie it together with the value that sort of you etched, you know, in stone, so to speak. Yeah. So my dad went to 15 different high schools. He grew up, dirt poor, didn't have anything. First person in his

family to go to college. His dad was an alcoholic, an abusive alcoholic. He would come home from school. He's got two brothers. But they would come home from school and, you know, mom would be beat up. Dad would be drunk and passed out. It was a regular occurrence. And so when dad finished high school, he just knew he was going down that path or he had to intentionally choose a different path.

And so I give him all the credit for changing the course of my family's life. If he doesn't decide I've got to do something different, we're in the exact same situation he was. And my kids would be too. And so that one decision, just it makes you really aware of how impactful every little decision you make is. Because at the time, I'm sure he just knew like, I got to get out of here. This is crazy. But he didn't think about the impact of his grandson, what he gets to do because he made that decision. So dad went to the Air Force, came back out of the Air Force, taught for 30 years, retired as a math, science, physics teacher.

My mom drove a school bus. So we were all about school. Dad coached when he could. he was never really a sports guy, never had enough money to play sports in high school. He said he quit one high school team because the coach accused him of stealing something in the locker room. And he said, if the coach didn't trust his word, then he didn't have anything. So he just quit playing, never played another sport.

But my dad just, he does not flinch. I mean, he got electrocuted, taking down an antenna off of a house. And like he got hit in the parking lot of our high school one morning, walking on it was foggy. He got up and went to school, brushed his arm off, he just never made excuses, always went to work, did what he was supposed to do. And just there was never an excuse. There was never, oh, I don't feel good. That was, I mean, never. And so he's somebody that I admire deeply, not because of anything that he did.

It was just how he did everything is more what it is. I love that. Tell me about the value that now you tie in with that story that you just share with it. I appreciate you leaning into that, but I'd love to understand how that sort of framed into the core value. We won't go through all the core values, but I think this is a really important. Yeah. So when I was finding my core values, you know, I looked at who I admire. And my dad is at the top of the list of people that I admire.

So then the question becomes, okay, why do I admire him? Not just because he's my dad. I mean, like, what's he do that makes me aspire to do that? And the first thing, there's a toughness to my dad. I always remember I'm out working on a car, changing a tire, and he'd cut his finger and he'd be bleeding or he'd be bleeding and he just keep working. It's like he didn't even know he was bleeding. And I remember being like, and I wish I was, I was bleeding a little bit.

That's freaking sweet. Like he's bleeding and he's not even saying anything, right? And so at first, tough was pretty clear to me because of the no complaining about anything. But then I was like, okay, well, what does tough look like from that? And, you know, for me, dad just always showed up. I hate that he never missed school. He never missed work. He never missed practice.

He was always at our games. It was just no matter what, he showed up. I didn't even think you got sick once you were an adult because he was never sick. Right. And so, so that became my behavior, show up, became my behavior. But then I changed it a little bit later into into positive body language because that's really what dad did. He showed up and his attitude was good. He wasn't just there, but he was present.

and it seemed like he was always happy to be there. I know he wasn't, especially now that I have kids. I know he wasn't always happy to be there and happy to be doing the things that I wanted him to do. But that's how it felt. I love it. Did he get to meet his grandkids? He did. Yep.

He goes to all their games right now. He's in the front row. He doesn't say anything, but always there. Ryan, I read that you had 20 values and then you'd like dwindle them down. Help me understand because I think that's the hard part, right? It's having clarity and having three or four. How did you get there? And I'd love to hear about gratitude as well.

Well, I mean, I hung it up in my house. Yeah, the Hawk family values. There was roughly 20 of them, which I guess is still better than not even thinking about it. You know, at least you're thinking about values, even if you haven't narrowed them down. It's simply just being okay with the fact that you're going to leave great values out of your final three or four. That's all it is, I feel like. You just got to be okay with it. Of course, like being honest and having integrity is really important.

It's not one of my four, right? But that doesn't mean it's not important or I don't value it. So after a lot of back and forth texting calls, Zooms in person with Brooke, I got down to thoughtful, thankful, curious, and consistent. And you mentioned you asked about thankful. To me, it stems from the fact of being just extremely fortunate to how, like, the situation I was born into to very loving parents who are the models for like how to have a great relationship, an older brother and a younger brother who have came along.

two years after me who are, you know, very supportive, each other's biggest fans and have been forever. I realized as I've grown up, that's actually not necessarily normal. We didn't, we never wanted for anything. I got to see my mom and dad's work ethic. And so I've modeled my work ethic and consistency in getting up and getting after it each day after them. Same with my brothers. So I think that's to me what I think about being thankful is you got to be thankful for the situation you're born into. And when you're given a lot, I believe you should give a lot. And so my critical behavior for thankful is leaving it better or the short as possible is leave it better. The longer version of that is leave people, places, and things better than you found them. And so that's an intentional

thought each day. Did I leave Omeid better than I found him? Did I give you everything I had during our time together, whether it's a simple text message or it's a conversation? And I definitely mess that up sometimes, but it's a question I regularly ask is, did I leave this place better? So I just think that intentionality about whatever you value is really important. And so I don't necessarily care about what people choose to value. I just think they should value something and then find a way to intentionally live that out each day. And if you do that, again, I like your odds. Like, I like your odds of good things happening, or at least of being fulfilled and feeling like you're doing what you're supposed to do. So I try to do that. Again, we mess it up, but I think it's just

really, it's an aspirational thing because my values are what I'm about, but it's also what I'm striving for. It's not necessarily that I do perfectly each day. And I think that's good. It's good to have something to strive for to aspire to. I want to talk about your who or people, but before we get there, I love to just hear from you guys. What is a foxhole friend? I think we call I'm 3 a.m. friends in the book is part of what we talk about. I just think of those people that, first of all, a foxhole just by definition, they care about who you are, not what you do. I think that's the easiest way to describe them. They don't care if you win or lose the game. They still care about you. They don't care if you get fired. They still care about you.

They show up for you all the time. If you are broken down at 3 a.m., eight hours away and you call them, they'll be like, yeah, I'll be there. It won't be like, oh, I got it. They're just coming. They're just coming to get you. So you do not have very many of those people. I think we mistake relationships and friends for foxhole friends. You probably only have maybe four to five of those people in your life. And that's okay. That's all you need. But just an awareness of who those people are because they are, I think Adam Grant calls

them disagreeable givers. Those are the people that will tell you the truth when you really need to hear the truth. And so you need those people in your life and you need to know who they are because that's who you should be going to. Everybody's opinion doesn't matter, but some do. And those people that are foxhole people, those are the people that you can trust their opinion because it's not jaded by other things. I love it. All right. Let's flip gears to the people you surround yourself with. Ryan, I know you had an inflection point in an interview with the great Jim Collins. I'd love to learn When you think about all the interviews you've done, one of the greatest lessons you've learned

about who you surround yourself with. Can you share what that inflection point was and why it was so important to include this as part of the book? I was really amped up as episode 216s. 215 people preceded him trying really hard to get him. It took forever. Many calls, many emails. They jumped through a lot of hoops. And Jim just wasn't doing interviews.

But eventually he gets on. So you can imagine I'm really excited. I'm talking very fast. I'm long-winded. And I'm explaining to him about my business and all the stuff I'm doing and how excited I was. And this is what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and how I'm doing it. And he's like, who, calm down, Bob. And like that kind of like that wise old uncle.

And he's like, all that's great. Thanks for telling me. The single greatest determining factor in your long-term success or failure will be your who. Who will be your friends? Who will be your mentors? Who will you marry? who will you intentionally choose to surround yourself with? And that word intentional was really big because to that point, I actually thought I was good at it.

I thought like, I'm doing this. But then you actually analyze it. Who's ahead of me, beside me, behind me, and who am I intentionally trying to develop relationships with in each of those three buckets? And I wasn't that intentional at all. I was just kind of going about my life and my job and my work and whoever was there was who was there. And some of them were great. So that's a little bit lucky. But then also other ones was just like, eh, there wasn't really anything there.

And so what it really did Omata was just made me much more intentional about thinking about who those people should be and then taking the next step, which is investing in those relationships. going first, sending the first text or the call, responding. It's actually something you're really good at now that I think about it. You're really good about sending me a question about something. And I'm like, oh, yeah. And it leads to a longer conversation. But that's being intentional about reaching out to somebody you want your who. And I think that's, to me, I was just unintentional up to that point.

And after that moment, I feel like I tried to get better, which then you think about the conversation with Brooke. and I actually didn't know anything about Centerville basketball before he emailed me because while I live here, my kids are at the time at least, were younger and not near high school age. So I had no reason to go to Centerville High School. And I didn't. I didn't go for years. So I didn't know who the basketball coach was. I didn't know if the team was good or not. And then I met him and realized after the first day, oh, yeah, this is a relationship I should invest in. This is going to be worth it.

This hopefully could be mutually beneficial. but at minimum it'll probably be beneficial to me. So I need to try to invest in that. So I just think that's really what it's all about, just being intentional about those people, not wandering through your life, just saying, oh, okay, yeah, I work with them. And oh, they're there, they're there.

To me, that's what I was doing. And that kind of flipped after that conversation. I want to flip to behaviors. One of the stories I thought about Brooke was your mom. And you says she's the most selfless person you've ever met. Tell me about that. I mean, she would always get up in the morning, fix me breakfast.

the house at like 515, she would get up, fix breakfast for me every morning, always positive, always thinking about other people rather than herself. It was just a great model. Kind of like Ryan said, I was just very lucky with my parents. My mom is very much my thankful value, just showing love. She's a grandma. So she like, of course, her grandkids can never do anything wrong. But that's part of it. Like her ability to see the positive in everything and every person. is so admirable and something that I'm not great at. I need to continue growing in, but something I aspire to to be able to be better at and be more intentional about. I love it. Ryan, on the behavior front, one of the things that you shared around consistency,

and I'm thinking about your dad, but you said something around being present with your kids, even when you're tired, even after work. And you said, kids don't care if you're tired from a long day of work. They care about being with you while doing something they enjoy. The answer is yes, always yes, no matter what. I'm wondering, where did you learn this? Was it from Pistol? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Still, still that way. I was just, when we took Ella to Florida for her 16th birthday, that's where we stayed with my parents. He's still that way. You want to go to the gym, whatever. I was with him. So it just became normal. It just was normal because we played all sports. So we live right by a park so we could go back in the park and play football, baseball,

basketball, ping pong, tennis, swimming, all of them, always there doing all of them. Always there doing I think that just became normal for us, was to throw and catch. We'd always practice like one-handed catches. He'd always rebound for us when we're shooting. He wouldn't bought catchers gear. He's left-handed, so it was awkward. There's not that many catchers gloves where you put on your right hand, but he bought all that when we were pitching a lot. So that was just the normal way it was is to show up with whatever we were most interested in doing, which was always playing sports. And all of the sports, just whatever season it was in. But I just think that's the main thing, is that I try to do the same thing. You know, we live right by a park. We intentionally built a home there for a reason.

There are soccer fields and lacrosse fields by our house. It's just what happens that we have lacrosse players and soccer players in our house now. So we go over there and we were just there last night, in fact, playing lacrosse. And I don't know anything about that sport, but I actually, I got a chance to meet with the coach and ask her a bunch of questions. She probably thought I was a complete idiot. But I was just trying to learn a little bit about the sport with my now nine-year-old who's playing for the first time. She has an older sister who also plays for the high school team. But yeah, man, I just think you just got to be there. You just got to show up. You got to be there no matter what. And it's the things that they're interested in, not what I'm interested in. And yeah, I guess there would be a time where I'm like, let's go to the movie I want

to watch. But for the most part, like, that doesn't work. You just got to kind of go do the things that they want to do and try to enjoy. I mean, dude, I took three 16 year old girls to Florida and they really enjoy shopping. Okay. Like, I don't fully get it. I don't understand the whole thing. But that's what they wanted to do. So there I was. All day, I imagine, yeah. Random stores doing all that stuff. But it was fun. It was fun. I think you just got to be present, enjoy it, and be there with them. And ultimately, that's part of our job is to show up and be there.

Okay. So the idea is to come up with your values and then you've got the behaviors that sort of emulate those values. And then you guys also talk about creating like imagery. Am I thinking about it right? Mm-hmm. What is the imagery aspect of it? How do you explain that? And like why? So we have mantras which are similar to that. Those are just reminder tags.

But I think you're referring to the ethos exercise where I just think about what, you know, what image best represents what you believe, how you would portray yourself or your values or the way you want to live life. And so we do this exercise where we have people pick two or three, four. You could pick one for each value. You could pick one picture that does everything. You can pick a few that kind of speak to different aspects of your being or your person. And the cool part is we remember pictures.

And I think that's probably the most powerful thing when we've worked with groups and leaders. When you start attaching a picture to it, I remember one from Mark, one of our first, I don't think it was Nashville, but maybe it was, but somebody talked about being a buffalo with their walking straight into the storm. And you get to tell about that in the stories that go behind it. For me, a wolf is a big deal. And so talking about how my core values relate to a wolf. The Red-Giard Kipling boat.

Yeah. Strength of the wolf is the pack. The strength of the pack is the wolf. Yeah. So that was yours. That was your. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I just, that resonates with me because I've never viewed myself as super talented. I've just always viewed myself as somebody that's willing to work. And by myself, I'm very average. But within a team, I think I can be really, really good and I can help other people be really good. And so that's what a wolf is to me. One of my favorite quotes is lions and tigers are cool, but you don't see a wolf in a circus.

You could put a bow on this. You talked about JJ Reddick, basketball guy. You guys talk about his practice and his work ethic. He played for Duke. He was on the Learning Leader show. I'd love for you guys to talk about what we can learn from JJ Reddick. I mean, the quote never arrived always becoming. I attribute that to Redick.

I don't know if it's really his or not. That's what I think of, of just his continuous commitment to improving. If you look at his MBA career and just how he went about it and you've listened to some of the stuff he's talked about. But that's really what the score that matters is. It's a focus on the process and realizing that that process is never over. It never ends. And being okay with that. Being okay with the setbacks and challenges that go with it.

and embracing it anyway and thinking that is the best way to go about creating the most fulfillment in your life. For me, I actually do like to go out and climb mountains. That's part of one of the ways that Miranda and I enjoy each other's company is to go out and hike. And we've done a lot more of it over the last couple of years. And the cool thing about hiking is you do eventually get to the top of some of these mountains. And then you realize it's not about that. It's about the people you become. in our case together, the people we become along the way.

And I think that's really what this is all about. I think Brooke and I both feel very fortunate to be doing something where the reward is the actual work. And that's what never arrived always becoming is it's just the fun of this is just because you finish a book or you do some big podcast or a big speech, that's great. And then you go on to the next one. Like the reward is the work. And I hope people have jobs and professions to where the reward is the actual action they're doing each day.

I realize not everybody has that. But that's to me is what this is all about. It's like being grateful that the reward for me is the work. And it's really more about who I'm becoming each of those days more so than any mountaintop or in Brooks case like winning another title. It's really about the people they're becoming as they're doing it. I appreciate the time, guys. Also, thanks for just leading into this and just the openness. It was a lot of fun.

And I'm looking forward to putting this together. I appreciate it. Awesome. Great to meet. Thanks, ma'am. Likewise. Thanks. See you guys. It is the end of the podcast club.

Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this conversation about our new book, The Score That Matters. I think today is a great opportunity. to tell you how grateful I am for your continued support. This third book would not happen without you continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to the Learning Leader Show.

I think it will help you become a more effective leader. And Brooke and I certainly believe that our book, The Score That Matters, will help you first lead yourself and then next lead others more effectively. So I hope you choose to buy the book and read it. I hope you choose to share it with your friends, to start a book club. I would love to get emails from you three months,

six months, a year from now to say, hey, I read the score that matters and it changed my life. That's the juice. That's what this is all about. So once again, I would say thank you so much for spreading the word,

for telling a friend or two, for leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify about the Learning Leader Show, or on Amazon about the score that matters. It means so much to me. And I can promise that I'll keep at this thing, learning myself, and hopefully you get to keep learning along with me. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.