Author Talks: The daily practices that lead to exceptional performance

In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Tanushree Baijal speaks with Ryan Hawk, host of The Learning Leader Show podcast and former vice president of sales at Elsevier, about The Price of Becoming: The Compounding Practices of High Performance (HarperCollins Publishers, July 2026). Synthesizing insights from nearly 700 conversations with world-class leaders and his own experiences, Hawk offers a practical three-part framework for ambitious readers committed to becoming their very best. He shares a blueprint for how small, consistent behaviors can compound into extraordinary personal and professional results.

Why did you write this book?

For a long time, I have followed the writing and speeches of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett about the power of compounding when it comes to money. The more I’ve read, listened, and watched what they’ve done in their careers, the more I’ve realized that the same exact principles apply to living a life where you want to leave a positive dent in the world.

If you want to positively impact others, that starts with yourself. There’s so much power in the compounding behaviors of high performance. On my podcast, The Learning Leader Show, I’ve interviewed 680 of the most impactful leaders in the world over the past 11 years and have learned so much from them. I’ve tried to implement as much as possible to be an actual doer of the things I’ve learned instead of knowing them just in theory. I felt like The Price of Becoming was the right title, and this is the right time. A decade’s worth of research and actually moving from theory to practice has given me a lot of insight. I tried to capture and document as much as possible in a useful way, and that’s what resulted in the book.

The book is full of stories about well-known public figures. How did you decide which ones to include?

Much like ideas in general, it’s not necessarily the quality of your ideas, it’s the quantity. The most creative people—those with breakthrough ideas—are usually the ones with the most ideas, of which many may not be good. Edison had many patents, but we only know of a few of them. So many of those ideas aren’t meaningful or have not made a difference. I tried to take the same approach to writing a book. I had a daily conversation with my research assistant, where we were trying to make tough decisions about which stories most effectively bring to life the concept of the price of becoming. The stories that you see were included because we felt that they moved the thesis of the book forward more than others.

The final word count of the book is around 55,000 words, but it started at 101,000 words. I tried to make it as short as possible because I really respect the reader’s most valuable resource—time. Hopefully those 55,000 words are the smallest number to get across the biggest point.

Who would benefit most from reading this book?

It may sound harsh, but this book is for people who are eights and nines [on a ten-point scale] who want to be tens. While I realize that it feels judgmental to say it, the fours and fives of the world will not like this book. It’s too demanding. The standards are too high; it’s pushing you too much. This book is for people who are already doing really well and they want to get better. This is for people who, family wise and career wise, from all appearances have done well, but they’re still itching to be a little bit better, more consistent. They’re itching to understand the habits and actions they need to take on to be a ten. The market for this book is probably smaller than for most books. It could have greater impact on people who are already really high achievers but are still striving to do more.

How can one pursue ambition without letting it distort character?

This is where this book builds from my previous book, The Score That Matters, which is about having a very clear-eyed, purposeful life. The best and most useful purposes are always centered on other people—how you could help and impact the world in a positive way. It’s about having a clear set of core values, a code by which you will live, even and especially when things get hard.

I love ambition. Ambition can be beautiful. Knowing your core values, the critical behaviors that make those core values true, and living up to them on a consistent basis, and then having giant ambitions to make a positive dent in the world, to influence people positively and make a difference, is beautiful. You run into problems if you skip that step. If you have low morals or lack values, you’re low on purpose or your purpose is for the wrong reasons, such as a selfish pursuit of money or fame. When I think of the best leaders, the most impactful ones, the ones who have done the most good, they’re very clear on purpose, values, and critical behaviors.

And so I’m trying to hopefully help people get even clearer on that and then go live that out.

What factors have shaped your relationship with ambition?

It probably starts with my upbringing and my mom and dad, who still play a very large role in my life. They’ve both always been very present and very demanding. They have very high standards.

But my dad was always big on being a part of bath time, as well as being in the backyard with us, playing sports, and also helping with homework.

I’ve always viewed my relationship with my wife, Miranda, first and foremost, and my relationship with my five daughters as the most important things in my life.

I’ve worked very hard to create a business and a lifestyle where I put my youngest daughter on the bus every morning, and I get her off the bus every afternoon. For the most part, those are my days as a very present dad. I like to be involved in our community, go to all the parent-teacher conferences, be involved and engaged in all aspects of school and friends, including actively knowing the names of their friends and their friends’ parents.

I’ve always tried to design what I do so that I can be at those things. That might mean having to get up a few hours earlier to get my work done or exercise, or having to stay up late, or doing things at times when they’re sleeping, at school, or otherwise engaged. It means always figuring out how I can orient my day so that the people who are my highest priority always know that. And they don’t know it by what I say; they know it by what I do. Consistency is a big value for me, and I try to live out that value by being consistent with them, every day, so they never have to wonder. They know I’m going to be there. I’m going to support them.

I’m going to strive to design my business in a way that may mean sacrificing financial incentives or potential opportunities because it’s important to me to show up for them. I know these years are fleeting. We have older girls who are going to college, and it’s tough to realize they will be gone. I’m trying to make the most of every second that we have until they leave us and go live their lives, which is what’s supposed to happen.

Why build a daily writing practice in the age of AI and cognitive outsourcing?

I’m having a conversation with my leadership clients about this topic. It is vital. You cannot outsource your thinking to AI platforms. I work with AI a lot; when I mess up the most is when I start outsourcing my thinking.

My fear is that outsourcing is so easy that, when people are busy, they take the easier path of saying, “Oh, I must write this thing or I must post something on social media. Let me just put a few prompts in the cloud, and it will spit out something that’s not bad.”

The problem is it’s like going to the gym, not lifting any weights, and thinking, “I’m going to get stronger.”

If you’re going to go to the gym, lift weights. If you’re going to write, then go through the process of getting those messy thoughts out of your head and onto the page, seeing how terrible it is, and then having to revise it. That’s how we learn, that’s how we grow.

That’s how we become clearer thinkers and better communicators. If you skip all of that, you’re not working out in your mind, not doing what you need to do to become a clearer thinker and better communicator—all of which is vital if you want to be a good leader.

While I think the tools are amazing and I use them, we must be very careful about how we use them. We must still think for ourselves, write that terrible first draft, edit that draft, get it cleaner and better. Don’t outsource your thinking. Don’t outsource the hard work to another [AI] tool. Doing that will make you become weaker, a less clear thinker, and not as impactful as a leader.

Your podcast took off while you were serving in a vice president of sales role. What did you learn from sustaining two rewarding professional paths at the same time?

I was becoming average at both. I loved recording the podcast, and I was devoting more and more time to it. I was also getting a ton of feedback that it was impacting people in a positive way. So I probably was getting a bit better at that podcast and becoming worse as the VP of sales at Elsevier. In 2017, I began having conversations with my wife and said, “This is hard to walk away from, but what if I went all in? What if I put all my effort into the podcast? The market has already told me that they’re willing to pay me to do more beyond just hosting the podcast. What if I did that?” And so, I left.

Those first couple of years after leaving corporate America were tough. We just had to live a little bit lighter. My wife definitely picked up the slack, but she had complete belief and support in me. Next year will be our tenth year of doing this full time, all in, and it’s not even a job. It’s the most rewarding and coolest thing in the world I get to do. Financially, that has all followed and multiplied a lot more than what I was doing in corporate America.

Focus is a very important attribute in people who want to put a positive dent in the world and make a difference. You can’t focus on two separate very full-time jobs. And so I had to make a choice and I made this choice, which was a little bit riskier at the time. Yet it has turned out to be, again, one of the coolest setups for a career that one could have.

What is your advice to others who might be stuck between two equally rewarding career paths?

There are signals that tell you if this is potentially the right path. This is a question I get from a lot of people. They have a corporate job and they’re starting something on the side, and the question I ask them is: Has anyone paid you to do that thing? And if so, how much? Then you know if it’s real or not. People may tell you, “Hey, you should go do this. It would be fun. You would be great at it.” Well, has anyone paid you for it? If you don’t need to make money, then you can do whatever you want.

But I do. I have five children and my wife. The reason that the move I made wasn’t as risky as it looked was because there was evidence. I had been paid for years to speak, to coach. People will offer you opportunities to do projects for free. Well, your mortgage does not get paid by you working for free. In the speaking world, people often say, “Come speak at the event. We don’t have any money, but you’ll get great exposure.”

Exposure doesn’t pay the rent. It doesn’t make my mortgage payment. So if you’re thinking of starting your own thing on the side, one of the first things to ask yourself is: How can I do it without it affecting my day job? See if people are actually willing to pay you to do it. The market does not lie, and the market tells you the truth with money. Maybe that’s too cold-hearted, but it’s a fact. And if multiple people say, “You should do it, you’d be great,” but no one is paying you, I would be careful. But if you see that people are willing to open their wallets for what you do, your product, your service, then you have some signal, some evidence in the world that it could be a thing. Then maybe I’d be more apt to do it.

Otherwise, I would keep the job and figure out the stuff on the side and then do that, especially if you need money and you have a family. The only way to know if there’s a market is if people are willing to pay for it.

Why is mentorship so important to being a better leader?

One, helping others and paying it forward is simply the right way to live life. It’s the right thing to do. At the foundational level, the essence of living a good life is helping other people. Also, selfishly putting yourself in the position of mentoring and teaching is probably the greatest tool in the world for learning. Think about any time you’re giving a presentation, guest lecturing at a university: You are writing, you are teaching. The process of preparing for that moment and the process of sharing that with others is the best learning tool that exists. So I push every leader with whom I work and ask them: “When is the next training session you are leading?” Initially they say, “I’m an SVP, I don’t do the trainings anymore.”

I want preparing, documenting their thoughts, getting very clear about standing up in front of a group and trying to help other people to be a regular part of their process. There is also the benefit of helping others and being a multiplier in the world. Mentorship is a great way to do that because you get consistent repetition at getting clear, helping another person, and learning through teaching. So I push all leaders to create a writing practice, whether they publish it or not, then lead training sessions, whether it’s with mentees or groups. Put yourself in the position of being a teacher.

Mentorship is not just about helping others. While that’s a big part of it, it’s also about helping yourself become clear on what you believe. And if you’re regularly putting yourself in that position, you’ll be a more impactful leader overall.

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