Episodes
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Maurice Ashley is a Chess Grandmaster, a chess commentator, a national championship coach, and an author. In 1999 he earned the title of Chess Grandmaster, making him the first African American Grandmaster in the game’s history, and was later inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame. His latest book is titled Move by Move: Life Lessons On and Off the Chessboard.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· Going into any big moment, the best way to calm your nerves is to get into the right mindset which is that you can’t be better than yourself. Don’t focus on the results. Just focus on being yourself and the rest will take care of itself.
· He is able to play up to ten people simultaneously while blindfolded and win each game.
· It’s important to cultivate a beginner’s mind and approach the game as if you’re viewing it for the very first time. That way you’re open to seeing something new and having a fresh perspective.
· Upper echelon thinking is to keep growing every day. Today you need to be a little bit better than yesterday. Your only race is against yesterday’s self.
· Focus often dips when you’re ahead and your lowest concentration is often when you have the biggest advantage.
· To stay mentally sharp and focused over the course of a prolonged game, you have to learn to continually check yourself. You have to be your own barometer. Counting breaths also helps to calm down and stay in the moment.
· Retrograde analysis is envisioning a future state and then working backwards.
· When conducting post mortems it’s important to categorize your mistakes so you can become more self aware of the patterns behind the mistake and preempt their happening in the future.
Notes:
Book: Move by Move: Life Lessons On and Off the Chessboard
Personal website: Maurice Ashley
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Gary Hunt is a professional cliff diver. He is a 10 time Red Bull World Series Champion with 43 overall victories and counting. He is widely considered the greatest cliff diver in the history of the sport.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· Juggling was a practice he used to increase his focus and concentration and take his mind off the stress and pressure of the competition.
· It took several years diving off increasing heights to build up the confidence and courage to jump off the 27 meter platform
· He’s afraid of heights when there’s no water underneath
· To prepare for a cliff dive, you have to practice routines off the 10 meter platform and then assemble the pieces together when doing the actual 27 meter dive.
· His curiosity to learn new dives and explore what’s possible is what drove him to be the best in the world.
· His greatest fear is losing his motivation to learn new things
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George Mumford is a psychologist, elite performance expert, and author of The Mindful Athlete. He has worked with worldclass athletes including Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O’Neal. He has also consulted with college and Olympic athletes, corporate executives, and inmates, and is a sought-after public speaker at both business and athletic conferences nationally and internationally. His latest booked is title: Unlocked: Embrace your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· Unlocked is releasing the masterpiece within. It’s embracing your inner greatness.
· Being authentic is a core part of being unlocked. “We remove the extraneous, the layering of our conditioning and defenses, and the ways that we have been untrue to who we really are until we find what is authentic within us - an authenticity that is always there, waiting to be revealed.”
· Kobe Bryant once said of George Mumford: “George helped me to be neither distracted or focused, rigid or flexible, passive or aggressive. I learned to just be.”
· George’s big break was coming on the heels of the Lakers’ third NBA championship in a row when coach Phil Jackson asked George to help the team deal with the stress and pressure brought on by their success.
· 90% of long term happiness is dependent upon how the brain interprets our experience.
· One of the distinguishing characteristics of the best athletes in the world is they’re very coachable. They are lifelong learners, always looking to get an edge.
· If you want to be in flow, you have to have a fully integrated self. Your body, your mind, your heart, and your soul have to be in unison and harmony.
Notes:
George Mumford website
Book: Unlocked: Embrace Your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success
Book: The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance
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Dr. BJ Miller is a longtime hospice and palliative medicine physician and educator. He currently sees patients and families via telehealth through Mettle Health, a company he co-founded with the aim to provide personalized, holistic consultations for any patient or caregiver who needs help navigating the practical, emotional and existential issues that come with serious illness and disability. Led by his own experiences as a patient, BJ advocates for the roles of our senses, community and presence in designing a better ending. His interests are in working across disciplines to affect broad-based culture change, cultivating a civic model for aging and dying and furthering the message that suffering, illness, and dying are fundamental and intrinsic aspects of life. His career has been dedicated to moving healthcare towards a human centered approach, on a policy as well as a personal level.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· “I had a basic hunger and curiosity to understand the world in which I was living and to understand myself”.
· Early on, as he was recovering from the accident with three less limbs, he forced himself to reframe his situation. That life wasn’t going to be extra difficult going forward but just uniquely difficult. And that suffering is something we all deal with in our own way. Eventually his emotions would catch up with his mind whereby he truly felt that way.
· Studying art history in college taught him perspective. It taught him how he was in control as to how he perceived his life and how he framed his life experience.
· In palliative care, you don’t just treat the pain, you treat the suffering.
· “If you don’t know the depths of sorrow, you aren’t going to know the peaks of joy.”
· As dying patients reflect back upon their lives, it’s not so much regret over what decisions they made but how they imbued whatever decisions they made. Did they do it with love, did they infuse their spirit into whatever they were doing. That’s what matters most.
Notes:
The Center for Dying and Living
Book: A Beginner's Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death
TED Talk: What Really Matters at the End of Life
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Kara Swisher is the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher and the co-host of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York magazine. She was also the cofounder and editor-at-large of Recode, host of the Recode Decode podcast, and co-executive producer of the Code conference. She was a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and host of its Sway podcast and has also worked for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Her latest book it titled: Burn Book: A Tech Love Story.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· Her father’s passing when she was just five made her appreciate the ephemeral nature of life and focus on what truly matters.
· A lot of big tech titans have a big deficit in their upbringing and replace it with enablers and fence themselves off from the population, hence their isolation and loneliness.
· With her direct no nonsense approach, she has an uncanny ability to get big people to open up and share unique insights.
· She has been as entrepreneurial and innovative with her career as the tech entrepreneurs she covers for a living.
· She feels Steve Jobs is the most consequential figure of the modern tech era.
· She has called Mark Zuckerberg one of the most carelessly dangerous men in the history of technology.
· “Excellence is doing your very best to get to the heart of something, doing your very best to create something fresh and new, and doing your very best to get it right.”
Notes:
Book: Burn Book: A Tech Love Story
Podcasts: Pivot On with Kara Swisher
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Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant is a wildlife ecologist with an expertise in uncovering how human activity influences carnivore behavior and ecology. She is a National Geographic Explorer, host the PBS podcast Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, and is the cohost on NBC’s Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild. She is the first black woman to ever host a television nature show. Her new book is titled: Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· She attended a high school for the performing arts because of her voice yet refused to apply for a conservatory to continue her musical studies knowing that her life vision was to become a nature show host.
· Having black leaders in wildlife conservation during her first field study project in Kenya was transformative in helping her understand that she could actually do this for a living.
· Learning firsthand of lions killing local villagers in Tanzania was an experience that taught her that the wellbeing of people has to come first in wildlife conservation.
· Capturing and tagging a rare lemur during a mission critical expedition to protect a rainforest in Madagascar allowed her to overcome her self-doubt, increase her self-confidence, and realize her full potential.
· As cohost on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, Rae has fulfilled her lifelong dream and become the first black woman to ever host a television nature show.
· “Excellence is being your best and your truest. It’s being aligned with your values, aligned with your energy, and aligned with the balance you’re seeking.”
Notes:
Book: Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World
Podcast: Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant
TV show: Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild
Personal website: Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant
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Daniel Goleman is a psychologist, former science journalist for the New York Times, and the author of 13 books including the #1 bestseller Emotional Intelligence. He has worked with organizations around the globe, examining the way social and emotional competencies impact the bottom-line. Ranked one of the 10 most influential business thinkers by the Wall Street Journal, Daniel has won several awards including the HBR McKinsey Award for the best article of the year and the Centennial Medallion awarded to him by Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. His latest book which is titled: Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day shows how emotional intelligence can help us have rewarding and productive days every day.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· There are four parts to emotional intelligence: Self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and relationship management. The latter builds on the first three parts.
· There are three kinds of empathy – cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and empathic concern.
· When you’re in an optimal state, you’re highly productive, highly engaged, you care about others, you feel connected to your work, and connected to others.
· The ability to focus is one of the pathways into the optimal state.
· People who have a sense of purpose and feel inspired in their work, do it better.
· It’s never too late to increase your level of emotional intelligence.
· In emotionally intelligent organizations, it’s not just about hitting your targets but how you went about it. Did you get them by inspiring people to give their best or was it by fear and pressure?
· Team EI is how people on a team relate to one another. And teams with highest team EI are often the most productive.
Notes:
Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day
Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ
Daniel Goleman website
Emotional Intelligence Courses
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Kristin Harila is a Norwegian mountain climber who recently set a world speed record for climbing the 14 highest peaks in just 92 days.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· She quit her job and sold her home and put everything on the line to achieve this goal.
· “If you are happy with less than your goal, then you’ll never reach your goal.”
· You have to truly believe in what you’re doing if you want to achieve a goal.
· Working together as a team with her Sherpa was a key component of allowing her to pull off this world record.
· Many people think that the summit is the goal but the goal is actually to come safely back down the mountain.
· “On almost all the peaks, there are dead people. If it happens to me, I will have died happy.”
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Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, renowned for her research on psychological safety over twenty years. Her award-winning work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Psychology Today, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and more. Named by Thinkers50 in 2021 as the #1 Management Thinker in the world, Edmondson’s TED Talk “How to Turn a Group of Strangers into a Team” has been viewed over three million times. She received her PhD, AM, and AB from Harvard University. Her latest book is titled: The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· A good failure is an undesired outcome that brings you new knowledge that could have not been gained any other way. It should be just big enough to get new information without wasting unnecessary time.
· Most of us have shifted from curiosity and learning in our childhood to defensiveness and self-protection in our adulthood because of the belief that we had to be right or successful to be worthy.
· Psychological safety Is a belief that one can take interpersonal risks without the fear of punishment or rejection.
· You need psychological safety in order to cultivate a culture of intelligent failure.
· Reframing is one of the techniques we can use to learn from failure. It’s the ability to challenge the automatic thinking and come up with a healthier, more productive way to think about the same situation.
· A culture of accountability and high-performance standards can coexist with a culture of psychological safety and embracing failure.
· “The easiest way to not fail at all is to not take risks at all.”
· “Excellence is doing as well as you can in your chosen field and making a positive difference.”
Notes:
Books:
Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth
Websites:
Amy Edmondson personal page
Harvard Business School bio
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Chris Voss is one of the preeminent practitioners and professors of negotiation skills in the world. He was formerly the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI as well as the FBI’s hostage negotiation representative for the National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group. He is the founder of The Black Swan Group, a consulting firm that provides training and advises Fortune 500 companies through complex negotiations. He has taught business negotiation in MBA programs at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. He also taught business negotiation at Harvard and guest lectured at other leading universities including the MIT Sloan School of Management and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. His book is titled: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· Working the crisis hotline was where Chris first learned the power of empathy. Showing someone that they feel heard is often enough to get them to change their behavior.
· Empathy is about the transmission of information whereas compassion is about the reaction to that transmission.
· Any time you relax into stress, you’ll handle it far better. The act of relaxation increases your body’s ability to handle its stress demands.
· Labeling is a verbal observation of an emotion or a dynamic. It’s a way of demonstrating that you’re listening and understanding the other side.
· Meeting someone halfway (i.e. splitting the difference) rarely works since it never feels like it’s really halfway. You feel the transaction was unfair. Reason being, based on the economist Daniel Kahneman, people tend to fear a loss twice as much as they are likely to welcome an equivalent gain.
· “Excellence is a delight with learning and growing. It is not the pursuit of perfection which is a fool’s errand.”
Notes:
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if your Life Depended on It
Black Swan Group
Fireside Black Swan Group Coaching Program
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Jason Belmonte is an Australian pro bowler. He has won 31 PBA titles including a record 15 major championships. He is one of two bowlers in PBA history to have won the Super Slam, winning all five PBA major titles. He has been named PBA Player of the Year seven times. He is widely considered one of the greatest bowlers of all time.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· When he was just 10 he told his mother he planned to one day bowl 100 perfect games which he actually accomplished a couple years ago.
· He chose to pursue bowling over the more popular sports like rugby and cricket given his love for the game despite the fact that it would never be as lucrative.
· He was often teased and mocked for his two handed style of bowling but he let his impressive scores shut the naysayers down.
· His unique two handed technique allowed him to spin the ball twice as fast as most other bowlers which allowed him to strike with much greater frequency.
· He has never had a coach and has always been self-taught, learning from his own mistakes and continually improving his game.
· A turning point that allowed him to begin dominating the sport is when he shifted his mindset from being worried about failure when everything was on the line to just being in the moment and enjoying himself.
· “Excellence is working and striving toward a better version of yourself every single day.”
Show Notes:
Jason Belmonte website
YouTube videos:
Jason Belmonte YouTube Channel
Nascar bowling: fastest strike ever recorded
Bowling trick shots with Dude Perfect
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Bubba Watson is a professional golfer. He has won two major PGA championships, both victories at the Masters. He has a total of 12 PGA tournament wins and reached a world ranking of 2nd in 2015. He has played in the LIV Golf league since 2022.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· Bubba never had formal lessons. He was entirely self-taught. He would just go by feel and practice over and over until he understood how to position himself and swing to achieve a certain shot.
· In college his drive to be better at golf was due to immaturity – he was mad at people. These days his drive to be better is so he can help people. Paying it forward is much more important than trying to be the best in the world.
· He built a distinguishable brand as Bubba - the new age redneck country boy, despite not hunting or dipping or smoking or country music.
· He was kind and considerate off the golf course but had a hot temper on the course. Pride and ego was eating him alive. He got caught up in the rankings and allowed that to dictate how he felt about himself.
· His first Masters victory was on the heels of adopting their first baby so allowing his mind to focus on something outside of golf removed him from the excessive pressure which allowed him to play the match of his life.
· Joining LIV Golf wasn’t about the money but an opportunity to play golf in a team format which he misses and the entrepreneurial opportunity to own a franchise in an emerging league.
· “Excellence is touching others in a way that makes their lives better. It’s giving people an opportunity to be successful.”
Notes:
Book: Up and Down: Victories and Struggles in the Course of Life
Personal Website: Bubba Watson
LIV site: Bubba Watson and the RangeGoats
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Frans Lanting has been hailed as one of the great photographers of our time. For more than three decades he has documented wildlife from the Amazon to Antarctica to promote understanding about the Earth and its natural history through images that convey a passion for nature and a sense of wonder about our living planet. He has received many honors including Wildlife Photographer of the Year, the Lennart Nilsson Award, The Netherlands’ highest conservation honor – the Royal Order of the Golden Ark, the Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography, and the Lifetime Achievement Award in nature photography. His latest book is titled: Bay of Life: From Wind to Whales.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· Not knowing the rules will make you experiment with anything and everything. Be aware of the rules but then put them to the side and do things your own way.
· His empathy toward animals allows him to capture their personalities which are as distinct as our own personalities.
· Unlike the prevailing methods of photographing the animals from a distance, Frans likes to get up close and personal and take his pictures at eye level to create a more intimate interaction.
· Too many people are overly fixated with technology but what’s most important is knowing what’s interesting to you and your connection with the subject in front of you.
· Unlike painting where you start with a blank canvas, with photography you go in the opposite direction and have to delete as much as possible until there is clarity.
· His photography evolved from capturing a single species to capturing the essence of nature as a network of relationships amongst many species.
Notes:
Books:
Bay of Life: From Wind to Whales
Into Africa
Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape
Other books by Frans
Exhibitions:
LIFE: A Journey Through Time
Bay of Life
Website:
Frans Lanting
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Carol Tomé is the Chief Executive Officer of UPS. Previously she served as Chief Financial Officer for The Home Depot. Carol serves as board member for Verizon Communications, Inc., board of councilors for the Carter Center and is a board trustee for Grady Memorial Hospital Corporation and the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Carol has been named twice to the Forbes list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women and was listed second on The Wall Street Journal’s list of best Chief Financial Officers, and among the top 50 most powerful women in business by Fortune magazine.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· She was a competitive downhill ski racer growing up which taught her the importance of advanced preparation. To this day she goes into every meeting well prepared.
· When she first joined Home Depot, she wasn’t getting through and winning people over so she went to work in the stores to learn the business so she could speak their language.
· She had a transformative moment at Home Depot when she realized that she was working too hard and didn’t have a purpose and dedicated herself from that day forward to making a difference. This changed how she interacted with the people around her.
· Much of her success was learning to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, faster than you, and better than you. They lift you up and give you wings.
· One of her ingredients to success has been to be well networked. Always first look to make deposits with people so down the road you’re in a position to ask for a withdrawal.
· “Excellence is about thinking all the way around the problem. Go slow to go fast. Or in the language of home improvement, measure twice, cut once.”
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Bob Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is also the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development and director of the program in Psychodynamic Therapy at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a practicing psychiatrist and a Zen master who teaches meditation around the world. His latest book is titled: The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
· His TEDx talk in 2015 is still one of the most popular TED talks ever with over 44 million views and growing.
· When trying to optimize happiness, most of us try to strike a balance between eudaimonia, which refers to a state of wellbeing in which a person feels that their life has meaning and purpose, and hedonia, which is more about fleeting happiness.
· The essence of the findings from the study boils down to relationships. That relationships are more important to long term health and happiness than diet or exercise or anything else in our lives.
· Contrary to stereotypes, women are not any more likely to form relationships than men. They just have a different means of engaging with one another.
· About 50% of our wellbeing set point is determined by genetics, 10% is based on our current life circumstance, and 40% is within our control.
· “Excellence is being as fully and deeply engaged in something as I can be in something I care about.”
Notes:
Book: The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness
Ted Talks:
What Makes a Good Life?
The Secret to a Happy Life
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John Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He is also the Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope. His research centers on infrared astronomy and cosmology. He was the chief scientist for the Cosmic Background Explorer and received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation. He has served on advisory and working groups for the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, and the National Science Foundation.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
The James Webb Space Telescope uses infrared technology which allows us to see through the dust clouds to see stars being born. “Maybe the formation of life doesn’t require a rare and exotic coincidence but maybe it’s something that always happens when given the chance.” Like Neil deGrasse Tyson, John visited the Hayden Planetarium as a kid which ignited his early passion for astronomy. He didn’t have his entire career mapped out but rather followed his curiosity and said yes when opportunity would present itself. While society holds the theorists in higher regard than the experimentalists like John, that never deterred him. Stephen Hawking called his discovery of hot and cold spots in the cosmic background radiation “The most significant scientific discovery of this century if not of all time.” COBE took 15 years from inception to launch and the James Webb 27 years but John was able to stay the course on both, keeping himself and his teams motivated along the way. His secret to success isn’t being the smartest one in the room and always knowing the answer but rather not being afraid to ask others. -
Cindy Timchal is the head coach for the women’s lacrosse team at the United States Naval Academy. She is the NCAA's all-time leader in career wins (535) for division I women's college lacrosse. She has won eight national championships, seven of which were won consecutively while at University of Maryland. And as coach at The Naval Academy women’s lacrosse team, she became the first coach to lead a service academy women’s team to a Final Four. She’s been named national coach of the year twice.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
After they started winning a lot, they stopped thinking about winning and focused more on the journey. They treated their opponents as a partnership. If their opponents beat them, they would be teaching them a lesson of how they weren’t doing things very well. She called the style of play “relaxed intensity”. If you’re not tight and anxious and can just be in the moment, the intensity will rise on its own. She used a sports psychologist and spiritual advisor to help her team with the mental aspect of the game. It was helpful in building self-confidence, for even the most talented players have self-doubt. This spiritual advisor had an expression: “Slowing down is sometimes faster than speeding up.” Mistakes are part of sports but it’s what you do after the mistake that makes all the difference. -
Will Guidara is the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park and the NoMad, and is the cofounder of the Welcome Conference, an annual hospitality symposium. In 2017, Eleven Madison Park was voted the world’s best restaurant by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants annual ranking. He has coauthored four cookbooks, was named one of Crain’s New York Business’s 40 Under 40, and is a recipient of WSJ Magazine’s Innovator Award. His new book is called Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
Unreasonable hospitality is being just as relentless, as focused, as intentional in your pursuit of how you make people feel as you are with every other facet of what you do for a living. One of our most deeply held needs as human beings is we want to feel known and seen. One of Will’s favorite quotes that speaks to hospitality is one from Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you say. They’ll forget what you do. But they’ll never forget how you made them feel.” “If you don’t understand the importance of your work, the nobility of what you put out into the world every day, it’s very hard to be the best version of yourself consistently.” He has kept a paperweight on his desk since he was a child which reads: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” If you don’t have the confidence and conviction to answer it honestly, it’s unlikely you’ll ever achieve it. Whenever you’re leading a group of people, it’s one thing to have a good idea. It’s meaningless if you can’t convey that idea to your team such that you’re all moving in unison and in the same direction. It’s important to be both “restaurant smart” and “corporate smart”. That is, balancing what’s best for the guests with what’s best for the bottom line. To become the number one restaurant in the world, he had to balance a culture of excellence with a culture of unreasonable hospitality. “If you are not being as intentional, as relentless, and as unreasonable about how you make people feel as you are about whatever product you make or service you offer, you are leaving extraordinary opportunities on the table.”Notes:
Book: Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
The Welcome Conference
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David Copperfield is a magician and entertainer, best known for his combination of storytelling and illusion, and described by Forbes as the most commercially successful magician in history. His illusions have included the disappearance of a Learjet, the vanishing and reappearance of the Statue of Liberty, levitating over the Grand Canyon, walking through the Great Wall of China, escaping from Alcatraz prison, and flying on stage. He has received 21 Emmy Awards, 11 Guinness World Records, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a knighthood by the French government, and the Living Legend award by the US Library of Congress. You can watch him live performing 7 days a week at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
While he’s passionate about magic and one of the greatest magicians ever, at heart he is a storyteller. He is a multidimensional entertainer. His role models growing up weren’t other magicians but actors and dancers like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. And storytellers like Walt Disney. He likes to make audiences feel something in the heart, not just a challenge in the brain. To this day he is inspired by a quote he read as a kid: “You’re only as good as you dare to be bad.” You can’t do something unique and special without taking some risks along the way. The formula for his success is summarized with his mantra: “Passion, preparation, and persistence.” He still has imposture syndrome at times which pushes him to continue to keep trying to perfect his craft. “Excellence is about nothing ever being finished. It’s a process that never ends.” -
Jimmy Burrows has directed more than one thousand episodes of sitcom television and has earned eleven Emmy Awards and five Directors Guild of America Awards. In 1974 he began his television career directing episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and Laverne and Shirley. He became the resident director on Taxi and co-created Cheers, directing 243 of the 273 episodes, as well as all 246 episodes of Will and Grace. He has directed the pilots of multiple episodes of Frasier, Friends, Mike & Molly, the pilots of Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, and hundreds of other shows. His new book is titled: Directed by James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories from the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Will & Grace, and More.
Some interesting insights from this episode:
He operates with kindness. Everyone has to row together and pull equally with everyone else. He doesn’t allow ego to get in the way. He has the perfect temperament for TV directing. He doesn’t lose his temper, he’s patient, he has low ego, and he knows how to encourage others. He feels as a director it’s important to “die with your boots on”. That is, to try to do something to make a difference. To provide input to make the best show possible. When deciding whether to work on a show, he likes to meet with the writer and have him/her defend themselves but not be defensive. When asked about same-sex marriage, then Vice President Joe Biden said, “I think Will & Grace probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody’s ever done so far. People fear that which is different. Now they’re beginning to understand.” His success is attributed to his ability to create a harmony on the set so everyone’s involved in making the show better. On his sets, you have to check your ego at the door. “Excellence is to try to be the best you can be in your particular field.”Notes:
Book: Directed by James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories from the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, and More
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