the Learn-It-All™ podcast

Failure is an option. Accepting that may be the fastest way to perform at your best. Dr. Haley Perlus is a performance psychologist who helps business leaders and elite athletes apply the mental strategies of top performers. When leaders insist that failure isn’t an option, they often tighten up, micromanage, and second-guess every move. Dr. Haley explains why that happens and what to do instead....

The goals you set on Monday can be irrelevant by Friday. Leading through that takes honesty, not certainty. Matt McClernan is the CEO of Augment Code, the leading AI platform for professional software engineers. Before that, he helped scale MongoDB from roughly $60M in revenue to over $1.2B. A year into his first CEO role, he shares what he’s learned about setting goals in a market that changes by...

Being good at what you do gets you the first call. It doesn’t guarantee the next one. Kenny Aronoff has spent over four decades as one of rock's most in-demand drummers, recording with hitmakers like John Mellencamp, Elton John, and The Smashing Pumpkins. The best of the best keep coming back to him, and not just for his drumming. In this episode, you will learn: Three skills that help you get to...

When things go wrong, nobody cares about your title. They care whether you can make the call. Dave Sanderson was the last passenger off Flight 1549, the Miracle on the Hudson, where he and 154 other people had just six minutes to work together to survive. He's spent the years since turning what happened that day into a repeatable way to make decisions. Today, he works with leaders who have to act...

What are the biggest pitfalls leaders face, and how can you avoid them? In this solo episode of the Learn-It-All™ podcast, Damon shares 16 common leadership mistakes, from canceling one-on-ones to over-delegating to top performers. Through candid stories and actionable advice, Damon helps listeners build trust, empower teams, and steer clear of costly missteps. Listen through to the end for a spec...

Build the culture, and the culture builds everything else. Neglect it, and you’ll never get buy-in. Jon Gordon is the author of 19 bestsellers, including The Energy Bus and his latest release, The Power of Positive Habits . In his work with leaders in pro sports and business, he's seen what sets the great ones apart — and how you can lead like them starting today. In this episode, you will learn:...

Only one player scores the goal. But it's the team that wins championships. Joanna Lohman played professional soccer for 16 years, including time on the U.S. Women's National Team. Now, she helps leaders build high-performing teams where every role gets the credit it deserves and no one settles for the bare minimum. In this episode, you will learn: What happens when leaders only celebrate their st...

Most leaders think they're managing stress. A lot of the time they're managing fear. Michelle "MACE" Curran is a combat veteran and former fighter pilot who flew lead solo for the Thunderbirds. Her book, The Flipside: How to Invert Your Perspective and Turn Fear into Your Superpower , outlines how fear isn't something to get rid of — but rather something to use to make better calls when the pressu...

In Business, "Got five minutes?" is almost never five minutes. And the impact on your team doesn't end when the task does Shawn Vanderhoven leads the executive development practice at The Wiseman Group and wrote the USA Today bestseller Pause: How to Lead Brilliant Work in a Busy World . His research found that there are two types of leaders: those who generate traction, and those who amplify dist...

What if AI is not replacing people because it is smarter, but because too many businesses have become broad, vague, and easy to copy? Matthew Whyatt, founder of Tech Torque and Authority RevUp, believes founders must “get known before they can get chosen.” In an emergency, nobody calls a generalist. They look for the specialist who understands the exact problem and can solve it faster than anyone...

You may be hitting goal after goal, but where is your ambition actually taking you? For James "J.R." Reid, it took two years to notice his success on paper wasn't translating at home. While working with Hall of Famers, All-Star athletes, and Fortune 500 executives, he found the same problem: most underperformance can be traced back to one thing. In this episode, you will learn: Why the real proble...

What if earning more money didn’t create freedom, but quietly made you a hostage to the life you built? Real estate expert, Keynote speaker, and business strategist Alexa DePaolo escaped poverty, became a national top producer, and created the financial security she once dreamed about. Yet even after the desperation was gone, she continued answering calls at 11 p.m., stepping away from her daughte...

Most people think there are two ways to succeed: be talented, or get lucky — but there are two more no one talks about. Kyle Austin Young is a strategy consultant and author of Success Is a Numbers Game , which outlines his probability hacking framework for achieving your goals. He's spent a decade using it with leaders and their organizations: mapping out what has to go right, removing risks, and...

When your company’s values are just words on the wall, trust crumbles—and so does your team. In this revealing episode of The Learn-It-All™ podcast, Joe Machicote , veteran leadership coach and bestselling author, joins to unpack the hidden (and costly) gap between what leaders say and what they actually do. Joe pulls back the curtain on why culture begins at the top, how one word can transform bl...

8 in 10 AI rollouts go the same way: high hopes and minimal results. Dr. Soren Kaplan, organizational psychologist and author of 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, has advised more than 30 Fortune 1000 companies and seen why AI adoption fails — it starts with people, not the technology. In this episode, you will learn: Where most companies go wrong with AI adoption What experiential intelligence is and wh...

By the time your child turns 12, 75% of the time you’ll ever spend with them is already gone. So what are you doing with the time that’s left? High-performing dads can be crushing it at work, providing for their families, and still feel that nagging sense that something is off at home. In this episode of The Learn-It-All™ Podcast, Damon sits down with Jeff Wickersham, bestselling author, speaker,...

Only 8% of people are on superteams. The rest lose hours every week sitting in meetings, answering messages, and doing work that gets them nowhere. Ron Friedman, social psychologist and author of Superteams , researched thousands of teams to find out what high-performing teams do differently. In this episode, you will learn: Why most teams loses 29 hours every week How superteams handle wins and l...

What if the mindset that made you successful is also the mindset quietly pushing you toward burnout? High achievers are rewarded for going, doing, achieving, and hustling, but leadership advisor, Keynote speaker, and bestselling author Mairin Moore Cane says there is a hidden cost when your identity and self-worth become tied to performance. You stop appreciating what you’ve already accomplished,...

A million users in three months. Then the hardest three months of his life. Colin Hodge, author of Outrageous Startup Growth , walked away from Microsoft and spent the next decade learning how to build a truly sustainable business — reaching a total of 100 million users in his career. But in between came an App Store ban, a major lawsuit, a co-founder's burnout, and a 3 AM breakdown that put his r...

Companies are spending billions of dollars on AI tools, and most of them still aren't seeing the ROI they expected. In this episode of the Learn-It-All™ podcast, Damon Lembi, CEO of Learnit, sits down with Christa Hill, Learnit's Chief AI Learning Officer, to share what they're actually hearing behind the scenes. After going through 100+ calls with the leaders responsible for AI adoption, they pul...

What if promoting your best salesperson is one of the fastest ways to create a struggling sales manager? Being great at selling and being great at leading require completely different skills. In this episode of The Learn-It-All™ Podcast, Damon sits down with inside sales expert and author Lynn Hidy to explore why top-performing salespeople often struggle after transitioning into leadership roles....

By the time you picked your career, you probably only knew about 5% of the opportunities out there. No wonder so many of us end up in the wrong one. According to bestselling author Tom Rath, millions of people die with their greatest contributions locked inside them. He makes the case that a few key changes can unlock your full potential, make you a better leader, and build purpose into your day....

How do you stand out and build a thriving online business when there are already thousands of competitors in your exact niche? When Kyle Pew first searched the Udemy platform to launch his online courses, he typed in keywords like "Excel" and discovered over a thousand courses already existing in his space. It was discouraging, and he initially wondered if he was just going to waste his time. Yet,...

If your AI spend outweighs the returns, it's probably not the tool. It's how you're using it. Julie Stone is the Chief Learning Officer at TTEC, where she's led the AI transformation of a global workforce spanning more than 20 countries. She shares where most leaders go wrong with AI adoption, and how to fix your AI strategy before it costs you another year of growth and your team's trust. In this...

Are you letting fear of discomfort hold you back from your next massive career breakthrough? In this episode of The Learn-It-All™ Podcast, Damon sits down with D1 swim team captain, model, and MBA candidate Andreea Dragoi to discuss how elite athletic training builds a high-performance mindset that business schools simply cannot replicate. Andreea dives deep into how her upbringing in Romania fuel...