697: The Price of Becoming - The Compounding Practices of High Performance (My New Book is Now Available!). "Have a Plan. Work the Plan. Plan for the Unexpected."

**Ryan Hawk** (0:02)
Welcome to The Learning Leader Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this, and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com.
Now on to tonight's special episode for the past 11 years.
I've been the one asking the questions.
This one is different. I'm bringing in one of my friends. Dan Smith has spent years as my research assistant and editor for The Price of Becoming. He read every word, every draft and helped make a ton of edits to make the book a lot better. He knows The Price of Becoming as well as anyone alive, which made him the perfect person to talk with me about it. The book is out now. This is launch week. Launch week for books is everything it helps create positive momentum. During this episode, you'll hear Dan push me on things I don't normally talk about, like the AI rabbit hole I fell into while writing it, how I actually structure my days around my family, what aggressively ambitious looks like in practice when you're also trying to be really present during the good old days, and whether the philosophy I've spent 11 years building will actually work when you apply it to your life. Now, if you've been a listener for a while, you know I believe in compounding, that small things done consistently over a long time. This book, it's my attempt to show you exactly how that works, with the research, the stories and the honest reflection to back it all up. The Price of Becoming is out now. I think it could change your life for the better. If you're an 8 or a 9 who wants to be a 10, then buy The Price of Becoming right now. You can do it at learningleader.com or directly from Amazon or wherever they sell books. Thank you so much for your support. Now on to tonight's episode with my friend, Dan Smith.

**Dan Smith** (2:29)
I'm really curious how you started off the book. You have a start here section and you talk about a coach who meant very much to you, Terry Hoeppner.
Reading that opening section, I could feel the heat of the turf. You put the reader right there. You're in the heat of battle. You're a quarterback at Miami University and you talk about Coach Hoeppner and you pull a quote that he said. He says, have a plan, work the plan and plan for the unexpected. And so what I'm curious to know is what that quote meant to you then and what that quote means to you now and the difference between those two things.

**Ryan Hawk** (3:07)
Yeah, that's really good place to start. I love Coach Hoeppner. We had a rocky relationship because as the story progresses, I eventually go on to be told by him that the other quarterback adds more value to the team than I did, which is very hard for a 19 year old, very arrogant punk to hear, but needed as far as have a plan, work the plan, plan for the unexpected at the time.
You know, I don't know how you were when you were 19, but I didn't always take in the messages as well as I should, especially something as useful as that, but it's imprinted on all our minds I still speak with my Miami teammates. In fact, Mike Bath, who was the starting quarterback when I got to Miami just posted about have a plan, work the plan, plan for the unexpected as well as the don't quit poem that I closed the book with. And so it's cool how that stuff has stuck with us, even though it's been decades since we played for him. I think at the time what it meant to me was that like, let's practice hard, let's read the game plan, let's make sure we're prepared. And then when the game starts, you're going to get punched in the face and you got to be willing to react. Now, I think of it as it's just a mode of operation for life. Planning is useful. It's good to think about what I want to do, how I want to go about doing it. Then I have to take action on that plan, right? Have a plan, work the plan, go and actually do the thing.
But life is really about the adverse moments, knowing that you're going to get knocked down, knowing that adversity is going to strike and thinking about how I'm going to respond when it does and being prepared for that. So have a plan, work the plan, plan for the unexpected. It was posted up in our locker room. He said it every single day. I still think about it every day to this day, and it's super, super helpful.