The Ryan Hanley Show - Leadership Gurus Don't Want You To Know This

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Every leadership guru has a framework to sell you. Seven steps to build a team. Four pillars of leadership. Twelve habits of executives. Different names, same product. And you do not need any of them. I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley Most frameworks are not built to help you. They are built to brand the person selling them. You cannot trademark "figure out what works and keep doing it." So the simple truth gets buried under acronyms and extra steps, while the guru sells the workshop. In this solo episode I break down why complexity is the enemy of execution, and the only three moves that beat every framework on the market. Have an idea. Test the idea. Iterate on the results. I get into why Naval Ravikant is right that it is not 10,000 hours, it is 10,000 iterations. And I walk through how I used that exact loop to grow Rogue Risk from 17 lead sources down to the 5 that made it the fastest-growing small commercial insurance agency in the country. I am Ryan Hanley. I built and sold Rogue Risk, I have spent two decades inside the rooms where founders win and lose, and I help leaders turn chaos into clarity. No theory. Lived reps. If this hits home, subscribe and share it with one leader who needs to stop collecting frameworks and start shipping. Follow Ryan: Website: https://ryanhanley.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley X: https://x.com/rhanley This is the way. Hanley. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Every leadership guru has a framework. Seven steps to build a high-performing team, four pillars of extraordinary leadership, 12 habits of unstoppable executives. And they're all basically the same, and they all have one thing in common. It's that you really don't need a framework to be successful as a founder, owner, executive leader. And the next 10 minutes, I am going to see. save you thousands by giving you just three steps, not a framework, completely malleable, call it whatever you want, not proprietary to me, but it will save you thousands of dollars on

leadership training. So stay with me. If you're new to the channel here, my name is Ryan Hanley. I am a multi-time founder. I recently exited from my own National Digital Small Commercial Insurance Agency. I'm an angel investor speaker and soon-to-be bestselling author of the book easy mode, which comes out in September of 2027. I know that's a long ways away and I am future pacing, but I am highly confident that that book is going to crush because I believe in what's inside it, as should you. Okay. So let's get on to how we bust up all these frameworks in 12 step or 11 step or seven step processes, right? The truth that no one in the personal development or leadership space wants to say out loud is that frameworks aren't primary, right? They're not primarily

designed to help you. They're designed to brand the guru selling them. Let me say that again. Frameworks are not primarily designed to help you. They're designed to brand the guru who is selling them. Now, think about that. If I were to tell you, figure out what works and keep doing it, that's good advice. But I can't put that on a book cover. I can't charge you $5,000 for a two-day workshop built around a simple idea. I can't trademark it and I can't build a certificate program for it. So no one gives you the real clear baseline simple answer that essentially you can use over and over again in every situation. Right.

But if I call this the clarity method or I call it the peak performance operating system, now I've got a brand. Now I've got IP. Now I've got a business. So that's what most frameworks are. They're monetization strategies wearing a costume of wisdom. It doesn't mean there isn't good stuff inside them. I'm not knocking what these people are actually coaching.

In most cases, these frameworks work. But just understand what the real reason the framework was created is for. And here's how you can tell. Just count the steps. If a process is more in three or four steps, ask yourself, to question, why are the additional steps there? Right? Are they genuinely required to get the result that I want?

Or were they added to make the framework look more proprietary or specific, unique, to make it feel different from the last leadership guru's framework that you came across? Nine times out of 10, it's the second one, right? There's an added flip or a word misspelled in a weird way so that it spells out some acronym, and I get it from a branding and memory, you know, kind of memory standpoint of a consultant or a coach wanting you to, you know, have their ideas locked in your brain. That's why they do this. And while, as I said before, many of these frameworks work perfectly well, complexity is the

enemy of execution. The reason you have to keep hiring these gurus over and over and over again is because their frameworks are complex and you do missteps and there are things. things that feel extraneous and that you have to maneuver and work around to fit into your workflow or your work style. Complexity is the enemy of execution. The more steps between you and starting, the less likely you are to actually do the thing. I've been in rooms with leaders who could recite their company's eight-step innovation process

verbatim and couldn't tell you the last time their team actually shipped something. Think about that. We can walk through the seven-step proprietary process. process that we were taught by insert leadership guru or maybe it would be like hashtags like this. I don't know. But they nothing ever comes out of it. The framework becomes a religion and not an execution strategy. Right. The framework is the work. And that's the trap. That's the thing that drives me nuts. That's what's got me sitting here about to tell you how you never have to worry about frameworks again. And if you want to work with a specific leadership guru, go do it. I get it.

but think of them more as accountability partners and that who have lived experience and insights that they can help you with. The frameworks are bullshit. So what do you actually need? What are the things that you actually need? Let's save you those $1,000 on the framework. You need three things, and this is all you need.

And the reason that you need three things, and I'm not putting it into a framework or an acronym, is because these three things need to be malleable to how you work and what you need to get done. They should be applicable to small projects, and large projects alike, they should be applicable to human situations and machine situations.

One, have an idea. Two, test the idea. Three, iterate on the results. Rinse repeat. That's the whole game. Do you understand now why you can't, no one shares the information with you like this? Because frankly, they can't sell.

No one can sell this. You can't sell this, right? Like, one, you need to have an idea. I believe that we need to add. a new marketing channel and that GEO is the way to go, right? That we need to optimize our web properties for AI search. Okay, great. Let's test the idea.

Let's build out a section of our website that is wholly optimized for GEO. Let's give it a month to see what happens. And based on what happens, we'll make a decision and test a new idea. That's it. Then that but for everything. Should we hire a new person? Okay. Well, let's think about what we need.

Let's hire a person, put them on a three-month, you know, kind of initiation program. And if they work, keep them. If they don't, get rid of them and make a decision whether you actually need that person or you don't or you need to hire someone else. Rinse and repeat. That's the whole game. But leadership gurus can't sell that, right? Noel Rabakant, who in my mind is one of the sharpest thinkers in the world right now,

you know, he just, he understands wealth, he sees around corners. get success in a way and is able to package it in a way that I think is just incredible. He said this better than I ever could. It's not 10,000 hours. It's 10,000 iterations. Frameworks put you into a 10,000 hour scenario. Do this thing over and over again for hours. You need iterations.

You need idea, test, iterate. Idea test, iterate. Idea test, iterate until you get to the result that you need. It's not 10,000 hours. It's 10,000 iterations. Not 10,000 hours of studying someone else's framework. Not 10,000 hours of workshop attendance or certificate programs. 10,000 iterations.

This means 10,000 times you tried something, learned from it, and adjusted. That's the skill. It's not mastering a system. It's not memorizing some acronym framework. It's mastering the feedback loop. And this works for everything in your life, right? How do I get my kids to do to pick up their clothes instead of just throwing them on the floor when they walk in the house, right? I could try yelling.

How does that go? I could try bribing them. How does that go? I could try sitting them down and having a honest talk. How does that go? Right? Just idea, test, iterate. Idea, test, iterate until you figure out what works.

The feedback loop is where most people get it completely backwards. they spends months, years, learning, and studying, and preparing frameworks and systems, building the perfect plan, waiting until they've got the full framework nailed, like every member of the team can regurgitate the framework at will. And they do all this before they take any action. Then they're shocked when they actually do take action and reality doesn't cooperate with the plan, when the framework doesn't produce the results that they want. Reality never cooperates.

Reality never cooperates. Mike Tyson said it best. We all have a plan until we can punch in a face, right? Reality never cooperates with the plan you built in the conference room. The leaders who win are not the ones with the best framework. They're the ones who are the most willing to operate in uncertainty, to put ideas out into the world, collect real feedback and data from real world interactions,

and adjust on the fly, iterative adjustments. That's not. not a five-step process. It's a posture. It's a philosophy. It's a belief system. It's a culture of getting shit done. Right?

And the posture is this. Assume that you don't know what works and your job is to find out. Even if you know the answer, even if in the past, you have done this exact same thing and X worked. Assume you don't know what works

and go find out every single time. Do not sit there with the ego of I've been here before, or I've been in this job for X number of years. Yeah, but you don't know what works today until you go find out. There's a phrase for this that I genuinely love

and it's not one that you'll find in most leadership books. F-A, F-O, go figure it, get results, adjust, iterate. That's not a framework. It's a universal operating system truth of the universe. have idea, put into market, iterate on results. All right, let me make this concrete with a story from my own life, because I know you guys love that stuff. When I launched my insurance agency, Rogue Risk,

I eventually sold it. We were the fastest growing small commercial insurance agency in the country, United States, in 2021. I had no idea which lead sources were going to produce the best results. Zero idea. I had a hypothesis. I had some past experience. But what I said to myself was,

I'm not going to be so egotistical as to, is to double into places when I haven't tested everything. Despite my opinions, despite my experience, because I didn't have data. You never have data until you actually operate in the market. So once when we launched, we started with 17, that's right, 17 different lead sources from,

Everything from outbound cold calling to obscure, you know, contact form kind of huckstery Facebook things. 17 different lead sources, right? Paid search, organic content, referral partnerships, social media campaigns, email. If you can name it, we tried it, I promise, right? We tested everything. And we tested them all simultaneously because, one, I didn't really have another way. and two, I wanted everything to compete against each other. Because even though I had used many of these methods in the past,

I had never used them with the specific inbound model that I was using at rogue risk. So I didn't know what had the lowest cost of acquisition in that scenario. I didn't know what had the highest conversion ratio. Frankly, I had loose ideas and nothing more. And some of those 17 sources looked very promising early. Some looked terrible early. and ended up being some of our best performers later. Some looked great and then fell off completely.

The initial results were noise. The pattern only emerged through time and repetition. We kept operating. Two years later, we were down to five. And it was those five lead sources that we doubled into. Out of 17, we whittled it down to five, and then we poured gasoline on the fire. Every time we removed a lead source,

we took the capital and resources that were being applied to it and spread them out across the others to the point where what we had initially spread across 17, we were now spreading across five. And here's the key part. Those five weren't chosen based on gut instinct or guru advice or a framework or a book that I read or even really my own beliefs.

They were chosen based on, iterative improvements and actual results. We ran the tests. We watched the results. We made iterative improvements to every single one over time. And some of them held up and some of them did not. We didn't do it based on our beliefs or our hopes. Did it based on what worked.

And by doubling into five, the five that we knew worked that had the lowest cost of acquisition, the highest conversion ratio and the largest ROI, that is what made us the fastest growing small commercial agency in the country in 2021. It was this. It was not having ego to believe that I knew the answer in just allowing real data and iterative improvements to produce the results. That's when things got real. The mistake most leaders make at this point is they skip all the messy middle. They don't want to start with 17 sources because it feels chaotic.

And it is to a certain extent. And it looks like from the outside that you don't have a plan. And again, our ego takes over and we don't want people to, we don't want to feel like people think we don't know what we're doing. So we try to be the I have all the answers guy or gal. And maybe we get it right. But most of the time we don't. Right. The plan needs to be gathering real intelligence from reality as fast as possible and letting the data tell you where to focus.

You can't shortcut this. Right? Frameworks, whatever, no framework is going to get you there. No framework knows the market. No framework knows your customer. No framework knows your team's specific strengths. They're easy mode, right? Only you can figure that out.

And the only way to figure it out is to operate, observe, and iterate. I'm not putting that into some sort of framework. It's just those three things. Call them whatever you want. Just have an idea. test the idea, iterate off the results. We didn't need a system to go from 17 to 5. We needed the discipline to keep testing.

And honesty to kill even some sources that I have a persuasion towards that weren't working. It was having the conviction then to double down into what we found worked. Whether I enjoyed that lead source, right, enjoyed I guess, or not. That's it. That's the system. You don't need to pay thousands of dollars. You got the end. answer right now. Have an idea, put it into the market, iterate. It is literally that simple for

everything. It's that simple. So what do we do with this? Right now, today, whatever problem that you're trying to solve in your business, in your leadership, in your life, I want you to ask a different question. Not what framework or course should I be using, but what's the fastest, cheapest, most real-world tests that I can run to find out if my current idea actually works. Let me say that again. What is the fastest, cheapest, most real world test I can run to find out if my current idea actually works? That's it.

If you're trying to build a high performing team, right, run a test. Change one thing about how you're running meetings or setting expectations or giving feedback. Run it for 30 days. look at the result, then adjust. Maybe your team only needs 15-minute meetings and they don't need to be an hour long. How would you know if you don't try it?

If you're trying to crack a new revenue channel, start with more possibilities, right? Start with more possibilities than you think you need. Run them all at low investment or whatever you can manage. Kill what isn't moving. Double into your winners. Again, very simple. Maybe you're trying to develop your own leadership skills

like as a person. Stop consuming frameworks. Start picking one behavior to change, right? That could be emotional reactions to comments that you don't appreciate. Say, you know, take like the three breath method, right? Someone says something to you and you feel that, that, you know, I got that Irish anger. You know, right? It starts coming up.

Right, you don't have to do it quite so obviously, but give yourself three beats and then respond and see if what your response doesn't elicit better results, something like that, right? Test and iterate. Test and iterate. Test and iterate. It's not glamorous. No one's going to sell you a certification for it. There's no 48-page workbook for test, observe, iterate, right?

There's no branded acronym. There's just results. Real results built in the real world through the unglamorous work of trying things and iterating. That's how it works. not a framework. It's never a new framework. If you enjoy frameworks, that's fine. If you're a leadership guru and you have a framework, it's also fine. Just saying you don't need it. Maybe some people do, but I think most of us are overpaying for things that we just don't need. And, you know, I do want to be fair here because everybody's different, right? There are genuine structures that help people

move faster, and I'm not saying all of them are worthless. I'm just saying, saying don't outsource your thinking to someone else's system. Use frameworks as a starting point, as a guide, a rough map, then go into the field, encounter the actual terrain, and let reality update the map for you. The leaders I respect most, the ones who actually build things that last, are not the ones who followed the most sophisticated,

complex, multi-step system. They're the ones who were willing to operate in ambiguity. Put ideas out into the market. Collect real data and adjust without ego. They were willing to not know. And then go find out. That's the whole game. 10,000 iterations.

Not 10,000 hours in a workshop. 10,000 iterations. Have an idea, tested, iterate. This is the way. My friends, if you enjoy these shows, if you enjoy these solo episodes that I do, I love doing them. Like this video, subscribe, leave a comment below. If you have questions about this, if you think I'm right, if you think I'm wrong, if there are frameworks that you absolutely love and you think I am doing a disservice to,

I promise you, I'm not trying to knock frameworks. I do have some frameworks that I use with my coaching clients, but I don't tend to not push them. really they're more like tools in a tool belt because at the end of the day all those frameworks really are are more like thought experiments for getting to idea observe iterate right like that's ultimately the framework is like they're supposed to be mental exercises not necessarily tried and true maps to success because the only map to success that actually exists is have an idea put it into the market and iterate on the results i love you for being here. I appreciate you for being here. I'm out of here. Peace!