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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Episode #579: David Perell - Setting The Standard, Cultivating Your Taste, Pursuing Excellence, Becoming a Sloganeer, Always Working/Never Working, & Lessons From a Mysterious Billionaire

Notes:

• Set the standard – “It’s your job to have the highest quality standards of anybody you work with. Every day, you’ll face pressure to lower them. Don’t do it. If you can set a high standard and simply maintain it, you’ll do very well for yourself.”
• Have a high-quality bar. Do three things:
  • Define it: Clearly state the standards. (read The 11 Laws of Showrunning)
  • Maintain it: This is hard to do.
  • Raise it: Keep pushing.
• You need to define what quality looks like. Set the true north.
• David worked with a coach to establish his core values. And he was going to narrow it down to five and the coach said, “Nope, it’s just one. It’s the one that everything in your life orbits around... It’s The Pursuit of Excellence.
• The biggest piece of low-hanging fruit for leaders is getting funnier:
  • Nobody trains themselves to get funnier though. It’s strangely taboo. That’s why it’s such an opportunity.
  • "Laughter is the sound of comprehension." Say something memorable. Humor is memorable.
• A good way to think... Deconstruct something funny. David spends a lot of time understanding why Theo Von is so funny.
• The key to excellent storytelling: a moment of change. Conflict and suspense carry stories.
• Robert Caro writing the LBJ books... "What would I see if I was there." He moved to where LBJ lived to see what it was like to be there.
• How to cultivate taste:
  • Make a list of things you love/hate.
  • Look for things you love (but aren't supposed to), and things you hate (but are supposed to love).
  • Make things. Don't be a passive consumer. Be a connoisseur. Be discerning about what you consume.
  • Amor Tolles - History is bad for knowing what's good now.
    • Consume old things.
  • Museums - Pay attention to what elicits a reaction. Why is it a 10? Why is it a 1? What do you love? What do you hate? Why?
• Archegos is David's favorite Greek word, and it gets to the heart of good leadership.
  • Four meanings: Author, founder, pioneer, leader
  • America’s founding fathers are the canonical example
• Lessons from a mysterious billionaire mentor:
  • David asks very specific questions, listens, and takes lots of notes.
  • When meeting with a mentor, show up with energy and specific questions. They are tired of hearing the boring generic questions. Be specific.
  • The mentor talks 98% of the time and David just types what he says. He now has 18,000 words worth of notes. Some lessons:
    • CEOs are Sloganeers: CEOs shouldn’t write strategy memos. They should drive slogans.
      • Three lines. Three words each. (Bezos: Focus on the Customer)
    • CEOs should tell the same stories over and over again, refining their pitch like a comedian.
      • Gauging reactions
      • Asking questions
      • Listening to push-back
      • Seeing what makes people’s eyes light up
        • Your message is only landing once people start making fun of you.
• Good goal in life: Always working, never working
  • Story from Patrick O'Shaughnessy. He was asked how much time he spent preparing. Initially, he said, "not much." Then he thought for a while, and said, "I'm preparing all the time. My whole life is preparing to ask these questions."

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Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

• Create surplus value - What can we do to give more than we take? "The key is to figure out what you can do that others can’t or are unwilling to do. Hard work is a talent. Curiosity is a talent. Patience and empathy are talents."
  • "Helping others makes me feel strong."
• Scott's recent experience with Ketamine Therapy - "It clarified my thinking. It's helped me stop keeping score. It also made me grateful for my wife. Did you ever get a gift when you were a kid that you weren’t expecting and you couldn’t afford it? Something you never imagined having.” I got a $45 Banh skateboard from my mom’s boyfriend Terry. It was a moment of sheer surprise and joy. My wife kept popping in my head and I kept thinking, god I get to hang out with this person, get to have kids with them, get to build a life with her. It was this overwhelming feeling of wonderful joy and surprise. It was very clarifying and rewarding for me.”
• "You Gotta Ask" - Scott met his wife at the Raleigh Hotel pool in Miami. He saw her from a distance and promised himself that he wouldn't leave the pool without introducing himself to her first. In order to do anything of significance in your life, you must take an uncomfortable risk." Scott is married to Beata Galloway, a real estate developer born in Germany. Together, they have two sons. One of them has the middle name, Raleigh.
• Why Crying is Important - "It informs what's important to you."
• Why Scott uses crude humor - It's used to connect with people. And people are either afraid or not able to do it.
• When Scott was 13… One of his mom’s boyfriends handed him two crisp 100-dollar bills after he asked him about stocks. Terry (his mom's boyfriend) told him “Go buy some stock at one of those fancy brokers in the village." Once there, Scott met a mentor named Cy Gordner who helped him learn about the markets.
• Show up when it matters — Michael Bloomberg’s policy. "If a friend gets a promotion, there is no need to call. You’ll get dinner with them at some point. But if a friend gets fired, I have dinner with them that night in a public place where everybody can see me. Because I remember when I got fired from Solomon Brothers — I can tell you every person that called me. That meant something. When I was made partner? I have no recollection of that whatsoever."
• Last year Scott had 340 inbound speaking requests. He accepted 30 of them. His average rate is $112,000 per speech.
• “The stimulus that attracted my attention with the most urgency was money, not as a means of establishing economic security, but to feed my addiction: affirmation from others.”
• The role of Luck - Being born in America in the 1960s and two (most importantly) Scott's mom. Though she was raised in a household with little affection, she couldn’t control herself with her son. “For me, affection was the difference between hoping someone thought I was wonderful or worthy and knowing it.” (Emotional)
• Scott is a dynamic communicator: A turn of phrase is a way of expressing something, in writing or speech, that stands out in some particular way.
• One of the key indicators of long-term success is the “willingness to endure rejection.” Whether this is walking up to a stranger at the Raleigh hotel, a cold-calling sales job, or asking people to be on your podcast.
• How to build wealth? Focus (mastery, find your talent), Stoicism (this is about saving more than you spend), Time ( 21 years with your money in low-cost index funds, you will earn 8 times your money), Diversification (Your kevlar). Once you earn some money, assume you are not Steve Ballmer or Mark Zuckerberg. Use a variety of investment vehicles. Going all on one company or asset class is not the optimal choice for most of us.

Our book, The Score That Matters, is now available!

https://amzn.to/3ToYckL

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

• The ASK approach - Choose curiosity, make it a safe space to tell the truth, pose quality questions (that’s a question that helps you learn something), LISTEN (check if you heard them right, rephrase), then reflect and connect - FOLLOW UP. Make sure the other person feels that you’ve listened to and heard them.
  • 1) Choose Curiosity to awaken your interest in new discoveries.
    • What can I learn from this person?
  • 2) Make it Safe for people to tell you hard things
    • Find the right context. Be vulnerable. Radiate Resilience.
  • 3) Pose Quality Questions so you can uncover what’s most important
    • Questions that help you learn something. What do you really think?
  • 4) Listen to Learn, to hear what someone is really trying to tell you.
    • Request reactions... What holes are in my perspective?
  • 5) Reflect and Reconnect, so you take the right action based on what you’ve heard.
    • Update my thinking. Sifting through what we heard. What can I take away of value?
• What are the best questions to ask in an interview for a job:
  • As the interviewee, ask them what concerns they have about you? They’re going to talk about these when you’re not in the room. You might as well talk about them together when you’re in there…
  • As the interviewer: Fast forward 1 year. There are two scenarios. 1, you crushed it. 2, You didn’t. Tell the story of what happened in each of those scenarios…
• What did Jeff learn from his work as a magician?
  • Magic trains you to hold your cards close to your chest, that’s what makes the illusion work…He dreamed (still does) of someone asking him, so what do you think Jeff? He’s held back so much because he wanted people to ask him what he thought… It's like he needed permission.
• When pollsters asked Americans, “If you could have any superpower you wanted, what would you pick?” Two answers tied for the number 1 spot. Reading other people’s minds and time travel.
  • Asking helps you read people's minds.
• Key learning from Chris Argyris:
  • How smart people fail to learn... They don't ask.
• A child asks 25-50 questions per hour. An adult. A tiny fraction of that. Curiosity goes away as we age if we're not intentional about it.
• "We're all stuck inside our own certainty loops."
• Leadership hiring must-haves...
  • Alignment with the mission
  • Core values
  • Track record
  • A learner
• Learning design – How to make your next leadership retreat as impactful as possible? ASK the participants to help you co-create the event.
• We often miss out on goals, opportunities, and relationships because we don’t know how to ask the right question, in the right way. Yet this critical strength can be learned, and transform your career, organization, and relationships.
• Career and Life advice: You don't have to have it all figured out. WHO matters more than WHAT.