Jocko Podcast - Standard Directive 006: Do An Audit

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

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There is a reason that financial audits take place, right? And there's a reason that they are always run by external accountants because the people in the business, the internal accountants in this case, they have a tendency either consciously or unconsciously that they might try and make themselves look good. Right? Just do like little adjustments. They're going to adjust some numbers. They're going to round up some incoming revenue.

Maybe they're going to round down some expenses. They're going to move some costs to the next quarter. They're going to forecast some payments that might happen in the future as if they're going to happen 100%. And you add all these little adjustments together and things start to look pretty good. things start to look pretty good. Things start to look pretty good. And at a minimum, they look better than they really are.

At a minimum. And that leads to problems. That leads to problems. Little problems at first, but big problems in the end if they go unchecked. If they go unchecked, we're talking about bankruptcy and foreclosure and insolvency. So that's what happens in a company.

But this can happen with us as well in our heads. We make little adjustments in the way we report things to ourselves. That's what we do. I'm in pretty good shape. I'm not drinking that much. My financials are good. I don't waste too much time. I don't really need to train today.

My husband or my wife or my spouse or my kids, they won't mind just this once. That's what we do. Little lies. Little adjustments to the truth just to get by. Just to make ourselves feel a little bit better today. Just so we look good to ourselves. But just like a lying accountant. And by the way, the lying accountant has good.

intentions, right? They're not a bad person. They just want the company to look good. They want the company to feel good. But by trying to make the company look good and trying to make the company feel good and by you lying to yourself to make yourself feel good, here's the problem. Over time, it catches up. Little problems turn into big problems. You end up out of shape. You end up broke. You end up in bad relationships. If you're in a relationship at all, You ended up with wasted time and wasted life. So don't let that happen. You need to audit yourself, but you need to do it with the truth.

You cannot lie to yourself, even in the littlest way. You've got to run the numbers. You got to account for everything. Everything. And there can be no lies. And then you get things in order. You do what you're supposed to do. Self.