The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Lead Like a Marine: Run Towards a Challenge, Assemble Your Fireteam, and Win Your Next Battle by John Warren, John Thompson

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Lead Like a Marine: Run Towards a Challenge, Assemble Your Fireteam, and Win Your Next Battle by John Warren, John Thompson https://amzn.to/3NIPACJ The U.S. Marines Corps is the greatest fighting force on the planet, but it’s so much more than that: it’s a factory for producing first-rate leaders, problem-solvers, and innovators. In 2006, John Warren and John Thompson led Marines into combat in the world’s most dangerous city: Ramadi, Iraq. But when they got home, employers didn’t understand what they had to offer. Undeterred, they founded their own specialty mortgage company, growing it from scratch into a national powerhouse over the course of a decade. When the two decorated veterans applied the values and training of the U.S. Marine Corps to build a thriving business, they defied corporate America’s expectations. That’s because they realized that, far from producing mindless drones, the Corps trains its warriors in adaptability, initiative, and courage—ideal traits for anyone in leadership. In Lead Like a Marine, Warren and Thompson lay out the simple, universal rules that helped them succeed, from valuing grit and potential over pedigree, to condensing large groups into resilient “fireteams,” to cross-training team members so that anyone can step up to the plate in a crisis. While the corporate world is mired in maintaining the status quo, respecting status, and flattering ego, Warren and Thompson stripped away the fat that prevents organizations from innovating and excelling. Full of smart, actionable advice, gripping combat stories, and entrepreneurial lessons, this book will give you the tools and the training you need to truly lead like a Marine.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, people around the world, welcome to the Chris Voss Show podcast.

We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in and spending time with us. 14 years and 1,400 episodes. We've got to stop saying that because in about 10 more episodes, we're at 1,500 episodes. So there you go. Make sure you're watching all the great material we're putting out, two or three episodes a day with great new minds, the most brilliant people on the show, and none of them, of course, me. That's why we have guests, folks.

Go to goodreads.com for Jess Crisvoss, youtube.com for Jess Crisvoss, linkedin.com for Jess Crisvoss, and we're over on that new Threads is the official Crisvoss show, and you can find us on TikTok as well. We have two amazing authors on the show. I'm excited to talk to them today because we're going to be talking about leadership and some of the masterful things that people have done with the way we train our military. I've always been intrigued by this because when you see other militaries operating in the world or quote unquote militaries, what was the joke that I believe our head of defense said recently that Russia, it turns out Russia used to be thought of as the second best military in the world,

and it turns out they're the second best in Ukraine. That was a pretty good joke. They are the authors of the newest book that comes out July 11th, 2023, Lead Like a Marine, Run Towards a Challenge, Assemble Your Fire Team, and Win Your Next Battle. lead like a marine run towards a challenge assemble your fire team and win your next battle john warren and john thompson are going to be on the show today we're going to be talking to them about their amazing book and went into it john warren is a former usmc captain and entrepreneur and community leader he is the co-founder and former CEO of Lima One Capital, which he launched

in 2011 and sold for nine figures in 2019. He is now the CEO of a new startup, Gem Mining. John Thompson is a retired USMC Master Sergeant. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Lima One Capital and is currently COO of Gen Mining. Both Warren and Thompson were infantry marines decorated for valor while serving together in Ramadi, Iraq. Do I have that right? That's it. There you go. I've never been there, but I have it on my bucket list. It's a place you'll never forget. I'm sure, I'm sure.

Both authors live with their respective families in Greenville, South Carolina. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. How are you? Doing well. Great to be with you, Chris. There you go. Now calm down just a little bit. We need to take the show down a little bit there. There you go. So welcome to the show, both of you. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the internet, please? You can go to leadlikeamarine.com and find all of us there info on the book pictures videos pretty much everything's there mr thompson anything you want to jump in here with no i mean john john and i have the same website but we're also on social media lead like Like Marine with Facebook and I think Twitter also.

There you go. So is this your guys' first book? This is our first book. There you go. A lot of people think Marines can't read, so we decided to write a book. That's not true. We love Marines. You know, I grew up reading books about the Marines in the World War II theater and the astounding stories that I would tell about how they would take beaches.

And sometimes if you were in the first one or two waves of landing on the beach, you knew your body was probably going to be used as cover. And, you know, as a wave, you weren't going to make it. The immense amount of bravery and power behind the Marines and what is done and the sacrifice they've made are extraordinary to our country. So give us a give us a what motivation you want to write this book about leadership and and using the sort of mantra of the U.S. Marine Corps. Well, I think we wrote the book. I mean, both of our wives encouraged us to write down all of our military stories in Ramadi. And like you said, the Marine Corps has an amazing legacy. And I know that Top and I, when we were in Ramadi, we always tried to live up to the legacy of the

previous Marines, because they set an unbelievable example for us. But we ultimately wanted to write it because when you look across all different spectrums, different industries, religion, politics, business, there's just a vacuum and a deficiency of good leadership. We thought we had learned a lot of lessons in the Marine Corps, applied them to business. And that's really why we wanted to share them with everyone and improve society. There you go. We talked in the pre-show. I mean, I've always been really amazed the more I've learned about, you know, and I was a kid. I studied Eisenhower. Who else did I study? Patton. I studied, who's the great theater of war in Korea? It was late World War II and then Korea.

MacArthur? MacArthur, yeah. I used to love reading the books and I'd build all these model ships as a kid. It was interesting to read. I think, what was this book about John F. Kennedy and his PT days and stuff like that. I was always enthralled by it. Lead Micah Marine, why did you choose that title and what makes that such a powerful thing, running towards challenge,

assembling a fire team and winning the next battle? I'll throw that out to either of you. I mean, I think the biggest thing is when we decided on the name of the book, it wasn't just about, it's not about, Hey, these are the exact principles that the Marine Corps pushes out. It was the principles and leadership traits that we learned in direct combat. So if you look at, you know, the Marine Corps principles on leadership,

they probably don't match up directly with what John and I have talked about in the book, being like a Marine. It is directly contributed to actions in combat and in training for combat. It's lessons learned from that that we took and built Lima One Capital on. There you go. And why do you think that translates so well into business?

I mean, personally, I mean, John can hop on this. Personally, I think, you know, listen, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're in business, there is tough stuff going on. know this Chris there's stuff going on every day and when we look at it and when we looked at what happened to us in Ramadi and we talk about this in the book all the time it was easy to translate that and take that back to building a company and building those core values building a culture um it was i mean it's amazing and i think it's not only just building a company when it comes to this book it's could be a nonprofit organization. It could be a church. It could be your family.

You know, it's just things like being blunt and honest, right? So just being, hey, if I'm screwed up, if I'm messed up, John's going to tell me. And I want to be told that, right? If there's a problem, I want to resolve that and fix it. The title for us means so much too. But I think being a Marine means so much to Americans. You know, one of the few categories that people still think highly of institutionally are small businesses and the military. And both of our backgrounds equate to both of those industries. And I think lead like a marine everyone wants to

aspire to be that guy or female in the military in the dress blues they have this these ideals and those those traits top talked about core values that's the most important thing that we have experienced in the marine corps and in business really all comes down to core values. And we talk about that in the book by telling a lot of cool stories from, you know, hiring a former Marine who we met as a bartender who has an unbelievable background, but no background in finance, and we trained him. We hired another, Courtney Newmans, we hired who was a UGA football player who had lost his mom early in life and was raised by his dad. Again, no finance background, but the right core values. And I think that is what's important in success. And that doesn't matter what industry you're in. There you go. I mean, I would agree. Since 18, I've been running companies, and business is war. It really is. Life is war. I mean, life is a battle for survival when it really comes down to it. You're fighting disease. You're fighting people texting in the cars as they're going by you. It's a war sometimes. I don't know about you guys, but I'm 55 now. I wake up every morning. It's a whole new war to just get to the coffee machine and, and get, you know, part body parts to move, you know? So, you know, in business is war,

it's survival ship. You've got competitors that are cutthroat. You've got people that want to put you out of business and, you know, you, you've got your family behind you. You're, you're defending something just like our military defends the values of our country and freedom, et cetera, et cetera. And it is, in fact, a war. And I think that's why leadership principles that are taught in our military are so important and translate so well. Because I've just been enthralled by them the more I've had authors like yourselves on the show from the military and study what goes on. And then, of course, like I mentioned earlier, you see other militaries and how they perform. And a lot of it because of their structures they use and whether or not their front lines empower to be able to make decisions.

And it makes all the difference. Tease us out some stories, if you would. I know we mentioned one there, but tease us out maybe a little bit of things that are in the book that people will like to hear about. Well, I think one of the things that makes the book special is the fact that a lot of people are familiar with the military principles. A lot of people are familiar with the business principles, but very few military personnel have come out and sold a company for nine figures after starting it from scratch. So I think one of the unique things about our

book is that we talk not only about the military traits and characteristics, but we've already applied them to business and we know that they're successful. But some of the stories that we talk about, you know, the book ends on a chapter called Lead from the Front. And one of our Marines, Mike Ouellette, it's his story of how he won a Navy Cross in Afghanistan in the Nowzad District. And it was 2009. Mike went out with his squad of Marines to do a battlefield assessment. They had shot a Hellfire missile at a Taliban position, and they sent out Mike's squad to go inspect the damage. And while he was out there, he was patrolling. And Mike was one of the few Marines that actually, as a squad leader, he was point man. And he was out in front to protect his Marines. And Mike stepped on an IED and lost both of his legs.

And, you know, none of us on this call can really understand what that means and what he went through. But ultimately, he just shared, he showed so much courage. And we conclude the chapter on, hey, lead like Mike Ouellette. And what he did, he lost his legs. They tried to stop the bleeding, put tourniquets on both legs. And while he was still bleeding, he stayed in the fight the entire time. The squad was ambushed by 50 to 100 Taliban fighters. And Mike actually called on his own air support to save his Marines, stayed in the fight, called on his own air support to save his Marines, stayed in the fight, called on his own casualty evacuation, directed his troops the entire engagement, which lasted up to an hour,

and did not, he refused to be evacuated until he was the last person out because he was the leader of that squad. So that's one of the harrowing stories that we tell in the book. Wow. I mean, that's extraordinary. And the Marines have a history of being the lead for the spear, I think, for the U.S. military. Am I correct in that?

Yeah, the tip of the spear. And, you know, they get sent into all sorts of stuff. Like I said, I grew up reading about the Marines and, you know, what they were doing in Iwo Jima and the theater and, you know, landing on beaches that were just on islands that were totally controlled by the Japanese. You know, we had Senior Master Sergeant Israeli D.T. Del Toro Jr. on the show a couple weeks ago about his book, Patriot's Promise. He was burned over 98 of his body and yet when he was burnt just like the story you told he was still he was still trying to command uh uh drop hits on on some people that were uh bombs being dropped on some some of his compatriots on the hill that were being uh attacked as well just extraordinary stories

but these translate well into military because, or I'm sorry, in business for military, because, you know, well, the Marines have always been great at running towards a challenge and taking on and being that tip of the spear. You know, we see a lot of organizations that struggle to do that. They struggle to lead. You know, there's a million examples you could probably cite in business of people that, you know, either won't eat their own lunch or eat their own, you know, eat their own lunch. Like Apple did when they introduced the iPad, it knew it was going to, it was going to cannibalize its computer sales, but it did anyway. Kodak, who I think was Kodak, who originally developed digital photography, but they knew it would kill their

film business. So they didn't, they didn't lean in it. They didn't run towards the challenges. You guys like to have it. Hi folks, Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far.

We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer,

and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO. And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. Tell us about some other principles that you put forth in the book that are important, you think. I think, to me and John alike, I think one of the most important things is how to develop culture and build a company.

And when you find, and that goes into the hiring process, when you find like-minded people who share the same intrinsic core values that you do, regardless of their background. It doesn't matter about their background to us. If they had the core values, we were willing to hire them. And that's a sacrifice for company. It was a sacrifice for us, right? So we're really hiring these people, you know, and we're going to have to train them and get them elevated. And it's going to be six months before they can be what I would consider a fire and forget weapon. And there's some sacrifice in there, right? There's salary, there's training, there's everything. But if they have that, the core values, that's how you build the culture, right?

Like that's the start of building a culture. And some of the core values, Chris, you know, we have a chapter in there called build a team of killers. And some people have gotten offended by that term. But when we talk about killers, we talk about killer performers. And if you're too soft, people outside are too soft or too woke to appreciate that, then they probably shouldn't read the book. But ultimately, the characteristics that we want to hire are extremely hardworking people, people that have honesty and integrity, people that want to be part of a team,

and finally, people that have a chip on their shoulder and want to prove something. There you go. Regardless of whether you're in the military, you're in business, you're in a nonprofit, you're on a basketball team, those are the traits of the people that I want in my foxhole and I think we've proven that out. There you go

you want in your foxhole, I love that term, I was going to ask you about that chapter, build a team of killers because you want guys that are killers, you want killer salesmen, you want guys who are going to go out and they're going to rock and roll it's a term used in comedy, you know you want to get up and kill, you don you want killer salesmen you want guys who are going to go out and they're going to rock and roll uh it's a term using comedy you know you want to get up and kill you don't want to die on stage um you know it's a it's a phrase people get it i think unless they i don't

know they have issues whatever but uh um but you you you talk about some of the principles that i i'm pretty sure that from my understanding because i've never been in the military so you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong. But, you know, principles that are part of the military and what makes people like the Marines great. You mentioned trust, honesty. I'm sure self-accountability is in there somewhere. Loyalty. You know, anytime I've talked, and with all my military friends I've always known, they've talked about their band of brothers. They've talked about that loyalty loyalty knowing someone has your back um loyalty the principle the cause

to each other um you know because you know when you're in a firefighter you're in a danger zone or maybe you're in a collapsing pr business situation or or you know i've had companies they work fine one day and then all of a sudden some system changes or some supply chain changes, some pricing changes. Suddenly you're bleeding out, and if you don't patch that hole, your ship's going down. You're going bankrupt. So am I correct on that? I mean, just look at Bud Light, right? I mean, that's a recent company.

How do you think the leadership is at that company? How do you think the core values are there? They don't even know their most basic customer, and's why they're about 25 in sales yeah i think they i think they handed some stuff over some people that uh didn't respect their core values from when i've seen the video of the young lady who i think has been removed from the company and they think her boss and uh and uh you know talking about and talking about how it was a frat brand and talking down about the brand. Yeah, I think they found out very hard. It's kind of interesting to me.

I guess the CEO used to be in the CIA or something at one point. Kind of an interesting story. I think the CEO was actually a former Marine. Oh, was he really? And also was in the CIA. I got to confirm that but i read an article recently where i was i was shocked but that goes back to what we were talking about earlier is like hey hiring the right people exactly and then decentralization of command so that they can make the right decisions yeah it's that's a perfect example and

if you look at the market cap they lost it's actually it's shocking yeah and i mean you can you can take whatever premise you want on it i mean we support lgbt community but uh you know from a business standpoint it is a lesson and it's respecting your brand it's respecting the people who value your brand and talk about your brand and uh i think what was most offensive to people is when they saw the video of that young lady marketer who I believe did a little program that got her fired, or I believe she's either that or laid off. It's being said now she's gone.

Disrespecting the brand. She goes, it's a frat brand. It's a frat boy brand know it's not this is a frat boy brand we need to change it and it's like well you know i mean guys have a real huge identity towards beer and sports and we just do i mean you don't really you don't really crap on that and go hey you're frat brand i think it's offensive i think it was the number one selling beer in America. You know, it's like, yeah. And one thing where these leaders, so-called leaders, go wrong, a good leader unifies bad leaders. They have to show how everyone's different.

And that's the problem with all these woke ideologies. They want to point out every reason why we are so different. And instead, what they should be focusing on, true leaders focus on what unites us. What unites us as Americans? What unites us as a company? What unites us as Marines? There's no better place for diversity than the Marine Corps. However, that's not the focus of the Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps focuses on our shared core values. There you go. Shared core values. We as a society need to get back to that. We definitely do. I mean, Victoria's Secret doesn't market bras to straight men. Not yet, anyway. Not yet.

I mean, to straight men. But, I mean, i guess there's still time but uh you know it is interesting but you talk about core values and those are so important in a company and it's so important that your employees know your core values you guys talk about uh hiring well uh you know i found out the hard way in my companies you know we used to hire people after one meeting and then we have all these problems. We found that after having three to four interviews and filters and comparing notes and doing good upfront interviewing and hiring made all the difference in the problems we were having in

the organization. They totally got cleaned up and it's so important. And then one of the first things that we did, literally the first things that we did, literally the first thing that we did once we hired someone in Lima one top and I would go in and we would give them an investor brief, the core values of the company. And then the second brief we would give them is our experience in Ramadi and why we think the way we think and how we conduct business, because it's often a lot different than a lot of other companies. But going back also to what you guys were both talking about with the training, it is a short-term sacrifice to do the training, to do the intensive training. However, it is a

long-term huge upside because those are going to be your best employees and they're going to stick around. The biggest mistake we see in business today is not hiring someone because they don't have industry experience. So for example, they won't hire someone straight out of college who is very capable to learn how to be an underwriter. They want someone that's been job hopping for the past 12 years and been at 10 companies because they say, well, that guy has experience. And we were just totally opposite. We focused on the core values and the competencies, and we knew that training would take care of the rest. It's kind of like the Marine Corps.

No one goes in. Think about the Marine Corps if they had the idea of we're not going to bring anyone in who doesn't have combat experience. Yeah. I love that analogy. That makes so much sense. Yeah. I mean, you should post that on LinkedIn. It probably got like 50 million likes.

Oh, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. No, Chris, early on when we were trying to raise capital and, you know,

go through the process of really building the company, expanding it, we would get criticized on that from Wall Street bankers and investment bankers. Like, hey, why don't you have a 55-year-old woman who is running your underwriting department? And it's like, our response was like, we're not going to change that. And that's how you guys did it. And that's what everybody does. We're doing this a different way.

And it was a struggle early on trying to raise capital. We didn't have that experience. We had a hedge fund, Chris. We were at a, they've done all the underwriting, due diligence on the company to write a huge check. We were at dinner and they said, hey, we love your company. We love all the loans that you originate. They're all performing great. However, we don't like that your underwriters

don't have experience. And then they said, because of that, we're just not going to do a deal with you. Six weeks later, after they had toured the country of our competitors, they came back and said, we'd love to do a deal with you. And then one year later, Top and I almost fell out of our chairs when we were with that same hedge fund. And we were around a bunch of people. And the CEO of that hedge fund said, one of the things that we love about Lima One is their hiring practices. They hire people based on core values and core competencies. So, you know, people can change and that's an example of it. So what do you guys, what are some factors you guys look for in core competencies when you hire? You know, I, I, with my companies, I found that like for our

sales company, hiring people who were taught sales in college would never work out. But hiring guys off the street who'd done car sales and other things like that in the hardcore sales business, they learned the old-fashioned way. Those guys are great salesmen. What are some of the core competencies you look for? Chris, I think it's stuff. Ultimately, the core competency is stuff that I can't teach you. I can't teach you to show up to work on time. I can't, you know what I mean?

I can't teach you that. I can't teach you to work hard. I can't teach you to be part of a team. I can teach you to underwrite a loan. I can teach you to probably film your podcast, but I can't teach you to show up so those are like and i can't teach you during tough times not having the drive to push through yeah and we look for things like that and then i can teach you everything else yeah you know i can i really

can and so can you. Yeah. Work ethic is hard to teach. I mean, if you don't have it, you know, no, it's hard to develop.

And, you know, we talked earlier, John and I, like a lot of the core competencies, like, Hey, how do I know about hard work? Cause I watched my dad work his ass off.

Yeah. Right. Like, and I, you know, those are the things, uh uh that it's hard to teach or almost impossible yeah one of the best hires we made one day i was sitting in my office we had tried to hire our first salesperson so you're talking about hiring a salesperson

top comes in my office and he says i've got the perfect guy and you're going to love him. He's a football player. I said, what kind of football player? He said, an SEC football player. And it ended up being Courtney Newman's. And we sat down with him. He had applied. He was a former Georgia player, relatively no sales, recent grad. But we sat down with him at dinner down in Atlanta, Ted's Montana Grill, I still remember. And we liked Courtney Newman's immediately and wanted to hang out with him. So, you know, who's going to be good at sales? Someone that people want to hang out with, right? He's not super intrusive. He's not overly aggressive.

But people just genuinely like him and they genuinely trust him. And Courtney probably today makes more money at Lima One Capital than anyone because he's so successful as a sales guy. Yeah, plus he can tackle the sales. You don't want to mess with a Georgia fullback, right? There you go. Hey, you should hire that Tom Brady guy here. He's looking for work. Anyway, I'm just talking about Tom Brady.

That's what i hear that's uh so you know this is really important and you bring up a good point because i i see and talk with a lot of recruiters on linkedin and different things and you know you mentioned earlier in the show you know these guys that it's it's almost like they kind of want bots more that that that hey are they good at you know just topping job to job? And almost like people that, you know, they're just going to keep their head down, do the job, show up, and, you know, they're dependent upon the thing. I remember when I was young and I started my first company and then things were working out because evidently construction isn't good in winter. Who knew it was cement and stucco that it doesn't stick as well in winter.

And so I was looking for work at different places. And I remember I looked for spare work at a rent-a-center. I think it was a rent-a-center or one of those furniture renter places. And I was actually sitting with the owner. And he goes, you know, what are you hoping to do with your life here, blah, blah, blah. And I said, he told me his story. And I go, God, I want to grow up. I want to be like you, man. I want to own some companies, do some stuff. And he said to me, I'll never forget. He goes, he goes, well, I gotta be honest with you. Sound like you just want to go be an entrepreneur and

become like me. And this probably isn't going to work out for us because we want a guy who, you know, is just going to, I don't know, cross the T t's dot the i's and yes sir no sir blah blah blah and uh so it's probably not gonna work out here and i thought you know that seems a really dumb thing because you know i i know people that have built major companies and there's the maxwell i forget his first name but uh maxwell he wrote a lot of leadership books one of his best friends john maxwell his his second in command in his company is probably taking over now, I believe. You know, I've been with him for 30 years.

And yeah, he can run the company. But there's a guy that, you know, ends up being like the thing. And we have this kind of weird thing in the hiring field, in the business field, where they just almost want to hire bots, per se, as opposed to people who want to lead. Well, I would say the people that want to hire those bots are probably bots themselves.

I mean, we want people that want to take a new division and grow it. Don't, you know, I mean, we doubled Lima One Capital every single year we were there. And that's hard to do. And you can't do that without great employees. And we were there. And that's hard to do. And you can't do that without great employees. And we had those. And you need to, as a leader, this is one of the most important things. You need to be preparing leaders inside of your organization to move up through the ranks. And of course, through those filters, become your next CEO. You've, as any smart leader knows that you should be developing the leaders under you to replace you because

that's that's real true leadership is when you can replace yourself with uh with leaders and you can step aside and do whatever you want i suppose and that's taken directly from the military i mean talking about a great principle that we talk about is training up and down to where you can do the position of the person above you and below you. In the Marine Corps, if a platoon commander goes down, the platoon sergeant or squad leader needs to step up and fill that role. And I think the best, you know, Collins talks about this in Good to Great, level five leaders, they're ones where the organization is so well run that when that leader steps away or leaves, the leaders below step up and that company runs just as great as it did before. The level four leaders are insecure

and they don't quite want the company to do as well if they're not there. And that's all around insecurity. So I think you hit it on the head. You want people that want to be around A players and higher. Hey, I want to be the dumbest in the room with my employees, not the smartest. Yeah. I'm always the dumbest person in the room, but I mean, if you see me lately, hey, so, I mean, this is really important. You have to develop leaders. In my book, I talked about how everyone's a leader. A parent's a leader. You know, and it's amazing to me how many people don't see themselves as leaders. And you want leaders all through the levels of your organization because you need leadership.

You know, I've seen the companies where they just go spend most of their days in conference rooms going, Hey, are you going to lead? Are you going to lead? Who's going to lead? I don't know. We're just going to sit here and talk about this stuff over and over again. One unique principle that we had at the company was a rule. We would not

allow anyone, including the CEO, to have more than four direct reports because above that you just have a bunch of meetings and you don't do anything accomplishing the mission. We found that that just empowers the middle level of leaders. And, you know, we had so many small fire teams that we called them,

and that really empowered the employees to grow. That's how the Marine Corps Infantry Company is organized. It's three four-man teams with a fire team leader and then a squad leader. And inside that platoon is three squads. So there's this decentralization where decision making is done and problems are solved so that leaders can focus on the more important things is, hey, where are we going to be at next quarter? What are we going to plan for growth next year? And if you're, you know, if you have 12, 15, 20, we've seen this direct reports, your calendar is filled with meetings about what happened last week

and not what is going to happen two weeks from now, a quarter from now, or a year from now. And maybe in the sequel of the book, I can tell you how successful I've been implementing this early. I have three young kids, seven, five, and almost four. I'm trying to get my oldest to be the fire team leaders of his two siblings. There you go. I think it's never too young to start the leadership team leaders of his two siblings there you go i think it's never too

young to start the leadership training it isn't i mean it it's uh it's really important i mean kids need this i mean being leaders the world needs leaders damn it and uh our i was just reading a report today that you know we're losing you know a lot a large part of leadership from from uh our retiring community with the baby boomers and stuff. We have a shrinking employment base and a shrinking knowledge base. We need more leaders. You guys mentioned, what was the stat you guys mentioned earlier in the show?

The companies spend, what was it, 90% of their time putting out fires and solving problems and 10% leading and focusing on the future? Was that the figure I had? That's a figure that I believe you can have. As a leader, if you don't have decentralization, you don't trust the people you employed and trained and spent all that time to make decisions,

you're going to be dealing... As a CEO, I don't want to deal with somebody who is late i don't i expect somebody else to deal with that right yeah and that's a simple example but or a mistake in underwriting or manufacturing or something i expect to get a report on that at some point but i don't want to have to deal with it and take up my time of the day. I've hired people that I trust can manage those things. Yeah. And entrepreneurs have that issue too, where they don't delegate well. We have a hard time with that, especially in small companies. Yeah. I mean, it's, I think it's tough and John would know best about this, but you have to do that. I mean, we've, we have,

we did that for years on end where we hired people and, you know, six months later we had them leading underwriting teams that were writing millions of dollars a month in loans. And I have to trust that. If not, then I might as well just be an underwriter. And, you know, that's, you have to do that, but it goes back to hiring the right people there you go uh one final question i'll ask you uh you guys have a chapter here called be blunt and direct chapter seven uh tell us what that means i think it's probably the most applicable chapter to anyone in america or in the world. I mean, it can affect your marriage, your family, your business career, your social life, that if you literally just are

blunt and direct with people and tell them what you're thinking, any problems that you have, the positives, the negatives, but you're just honest about it. And you let the person know that you're coming from a position of love and care, that it will really impact the relationship. So, you know, we have a funny story in the book where we say, based on a small sample size of two, marriages are improved if you are blunt and direct. And that's what we found. And it's just being honest. It's owning up to things early. Hey, if there's a mistake, you know, Top always says problems don't get better with age. Have you seen me lately? So I think, you know, Top may have something else to add on the blunt and direct.

Yeah, I think the most important thing is you, you know, and this goes back to like taking care of your employees. You know, employees always stress about, hey, my six month review is coming up or my 90 day review is coming up. The great thing about being blunt and honest and tackling a problem early on is when they go into that review, there's no shocks or surprises. There's no stress on them. They already know if they've done a great job. They've already been told that if they had a couple of problems, they've already been told that if they had a couple of problems they've already been told and we fixed them so to me it's the best thing and like listen and john said this i mean i'm sure you know listen my wife tells me all the time hey you know your pants look

like crap it's like hey i really appreciate that right like i'm about to go to a business meeting let me go fix these things it's just you know it's it's it's safe from me having to tell him that a couple hours yeah but i think you know in the employee in building a company our employees love that if there was a problem we saw it on the floor on our trading problem, we saw it on the floor, on our trading floor. If we saw it, it happened immediately. It wasn't somebody taking notes and you get that in your review. One of the things we tackle too is the sandwich approach. Hey, positive, a little vague negative, and then end on positive. And then that person walks away and was like, so is he bragging on me or is he criticizing me?

Like, what's the deal? So you always knew where you stood with us. And I think people really appreciate that. I mean, kids, if your kid gets beat 10 to nothing, don't tell them good game. Tell them, hey, you guys got smoked, but I'm really proud of you for trying so hard and continuing to fight,

even though you were down 10 right like the kids know no one's more blunt than a kid right they have no filter you go to certain situations and your kid says something you're like no don't say that please but he's just being honest but it seems like in today's society we're not supposed to be that and i think we need to return to that yeah i mean it's about being honest with yourselves and the company you know like the values you guys have talked about the spouse um you know if a company's not honest with itself i learned as a ceo if i wasn't honest with myself and bought my own bullshit pr that you know i would be blindsided

i would have uh i would have blind spots uh where i wouldn't see you know, I would be blindsided. I would have blind spots where I wouldn't see, you know, what the true problems were. And those can end up costing you money if you're, you know, if you're buying your own hype and whatever PR, the PR part is pumping out. And if you're not true to those values and being honest with yourself, you're going to drive right into a cliff, really. Yeah.

So let's tease out, what do you guys both want people to learn from the book? What's your final message on the book and what you want people to get from it when they walk away from reading it? I mean, I'll start off real quick. I just think our hope is that people take the nine principles that we lined out in the book that we learned in combat and albeit built a very successful company. I don't want people to be deterred about lead like a Marine. It can be used, family, churches, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and current businessmen and women to grow their companies. Yep. Anything more you want to throw in here no i just think the books like top said very applicable to everyone it's a fun read we've got a lot of cool stories from combat but we also have a lot of funny stories uh from business um it's applicable for families and i think it can really impact people in a positive way and impact society because right now if there's one thing that most people agree on is that we need more

leaders we need better leaders and this is a path to uh to achieve that it's a path for everyone to improve their own lives so we're very proud of the book and it was a lot of fun writing it reconnecting with you know 40 something of our marines for interviews and uh we hope everyone really enjoys it there you go we need more good leaders in this world we need more leaders that espouse truth honesty uh self accountability you know the stuff that you loyalty the stuff we talked about here you know your your people look for that in you as a leader and can i be loyal to this person this is a person loyal to me can i trust them you know there's there's all those aspects that are in that interpersonal relationship when you when you build your teams

and people look to you as that leader and they go should i follow this guy and is he full of shit as uh as uh who's the famous comedian you said he's full of shit uh george george conway george carlin um yeah george carlin you see you know he has that he's full of shit i love that line anyway uh so think real quick i just think people really the two questions they ask their leaders are can we trust them and do they care about us? And, you know, that's so important. And in the Marine Corps, the only two, really the only two things that everything boiled down to was mission accomplishment and troop welfare. And that's what we need out of leaders. We need people that want to accomplish the mission and care about the people under them. And oftentimes leaders think leading is a privilege that comes

with a lot of perks as opposed to leading with responsibility and fiduciary duties. And we need to return to the latter, not the former. Definitely. I love the term fiduciary duties. I learned that in owning a mortgage company for 20 years. You know, fiduciary duty, taking care of what the client's interests are and having a duty to them. Think about if our politicians had that approach. My fiduciary duty

is to not be so concerned about getting re-elected, but actually caring about the taxpayers and the citizens of the U.S. That would be an amazing transformation. It certainly would be. We need more of this in life and better leaders.

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for coming on the show. Give us your dot coms, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. You can find us at leadlikeamarine.com. There you go. Thanks for having us. Thank you for coming. We certainly appreciate it.

Thank you for your service. And yeah, I just love what the military does and puts out and and uh i love the strategy but when i when i see what's going on like military with russia and stuff like that and you see their structure of of stuff and you go wow this is why we kick butt i mean i was i was watching somebody talk about the other day how china just really tries to solve our just to become like us. And when you really, you really are like our military. And when you, when you really see it, part of, I think, what was the book I was reading? Was it The Prince recently? I'm reading On War right now, the famous book on war.

Or was it The Five Rings? There was something I was reading recently that talked about that if your soldiers have that value and our military fights for the values of this country freedom uh the u.s constitution um please read it people like actually read it um and uh uh you know all these different aspects but there's a you know they fight for their families that are back home they fight for the american ideals and then you see you know some of fight for their families that are back home. They fight for the American ideals. And then you see, you know, some of the conscripts of the Russian war and how they're just like,

why am I here? What am I doing? In fact, that's how their interviews usually are in the Ukraine right now. You, you see the difference in the spirit of, of the human beings and the way we built our military and, and how much that makes a difference. And it's the same for organizations, the spirit and culture in your organizations, like you guys write about your book.

Anyway, thanks for coming on the show, gentlemen. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, fortresschristmas, youtube.com, fortresschristmas,

linkedin.com, fortresschristmas, see the big LinkedIn newsletter and all the other places we're on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.

That should have a song.