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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

302: Nick Kokonas - How To See The Genius In People

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Ryan Hawk

Business, Management, Careers

4.9 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2019

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

302: Nick Kokonas - How To See The Genius In People

Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com

  • Commonalities of sustaining excellence:
    • Intellectual curiosity - A desire to learn.  Not for the outcome, but for the curiosity to learn more
    • Healthy degree of paranoia - What Jim Collins would call "productive paranoia"
      • In the pursuit of excellence
    • "No one is giving it away for free.  It takes effort."
  • Balance -- "I get manic at times. I'm not always well balanced."  The skill is in being able to turn it on and off... Which can happen over time
  • "I've always been curious about how things worked..."
  • Why it was helpful to go to Colgate University
    • A Liberal Arts school forced Nick to study areas outside of just his major.  Made him more well-rounded
    • He "learned how to learn" -- Forced him to wrestle with existential questions
  • Rhetoric -- Can you understand all sides of an issue? Where does ambiguity exist?
    • Need to learn to think critically -- How you do it is more important that you do it
  • General advice:
    • "Learn to communicate well.  Concisely. Learn to write and speak well.
    • From a psychology perspective, analyze, "what are they really saying?"
  • Why he became a derivatives trader:
    • "I got into law school, but didn't want to go."
    • He tested well, but desired his independence
    • "Prestige as part of pay doesn't matter to me."
    • To be great at anything, you must be disciplined to show up everyday -- "My money has always been at risk everyday. Some think that's crazy.  But I've always worked to have an edge."
    • How to figure out outcomes as soon as possible
  • The decision to leave the world of derivatives trading to open a restaurant... Why?
    • "I took some money off the table... Then my dad died... and I thought, what am I doing?  I had no idea what I was going to do next..."
  • Meeting Grant Achatz and the impact that had on Nick's life...
    • "He reminded me a lot of myself.  He was thoughtful, driven, shy (this was the opposite), and he wasn't afraid of hard work."
    • "I think I have a skill to see the genius in some people."
    • "Grant's work is of artistic genius"
  • Doing what you love and are passionate about:
    • "For me the test is... When I wake up in the morning is it nagging at me to do it?"

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I don't think it's about failing fast and often. It's about figuring out the outcomes as quickly as possible.

0:09.0

You know designing experiments or designing aspects of your product that you can test very very

0:16.0

quickly. Whatever it is that you're selling, get out there and sell it as fast

0:20.6

as you can and do it often.

0:25.0

Everyone loves payday, but loving a payroll provider,

0:29.0

that's a little weird.

0:30.0

Still small businesses across the country love running payroll with Gusto.

0:35.0

Gusto automatically files and pays your taxes.

0:38.0

It's super easy to use and you could add benefits and HR support to help take care of your team and keep your business safe.

0:45.7

Gusto is loyal and it's modern.

0:49.1

Special to listeners of the Learning Leader Show, you get three months free when you run your first

0:55.2

payroll with Gusto. Try a demo and test it out at gusto.com.

1:01.4

Leader. That's gusto dot com slash leader

1:20.0

Welcome Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 442-22 in order to join tens of thousands

1:28.7

of learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners 442-2. Now on tonight's featured leader and

1:36.4

wow it's a great one it's Nick Kekonis the co-owner and co-founder of the

1:41.1

Alinia group of restaurants which one of them is Alinia.

1:44.3

Alinia has been named the best restaurant in America and best restaurant in the

1:48.8

world by every imaginable organization and list that measures restaurants.

1:54.0

Nick is also the CEO of Toc Inc. a reservations and CRM system for restaurants.

1:59.8

Additionally, a best-selling author and previously was a derivative trader for more than 10 years.

2:06.4

Nick is a true polymath.

...

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