The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 536: Dave Berke - Leadership Lessons From A Top Gun Instructor (Chief Development Officer, Echelon Front)

Episode Date: July 16, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Be on time. It's not okay to be late. As the leader, we have to set the right example. There is a narrow path to Top Gun, but Dave made it... Dave served as an ANGLICO Forward Air Controller supporting the Army's 1st Armored Division during extensive urban combat operations on the ground in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006. He led his supporting arms liaison team on scores of combat missions into the most dangerous neighborhoods and accompanied SEAL Task Unit Bruiser on virtually every major operation in the Battle of Ramadi. He was the only Marine selected to fly the F-22 Raptor having served as an exchange officer at the Air Force's 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron as the Division Commander. He became the first operational pilot ever to fly and be qualified in the F-35B, serving as the Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps' first F-35 squadron from 2012-2014. Balancing courage and confidence with humility - It's a must to surround yourself with others who continue to push you and keep your ego in check. The attributes of a Top Gun instructor: Willing to learn and Able to teach. Great leaders seem to have those same qualities. Dave's choice to volunteer to fight on the ground is what led him to meet Jocko Willink and thus change his life. Stepping up and doing a job that others don't want to do, and taking that responsibility can lead to amazing opportunities. A Top Gun pilot must balance courage and confidence with humility. You need a great support group around you to keep in check. Your ego, however, can be helpful at times. "It allows you to do things that others say can't be done." How to deal with negative self-talk? "We all deal with it. Relax. Take a step back. Breathe. Detach from the situation."

How humble are you to listen and to learn and to embrace the lessons they're teaching? And how quickly can you incorporate that? And when they see someone willing to learn and willing to listen, they know they have someone that is going to get better over time. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk, to 666-866 to become part of Mindful Monday.

You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book The Pursuit of Excellence will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk to 666866. Now, on tonight's featured leader, American hero, Dave Burke, as a retired United States Marine Corps officer, fighter pilot, and ground combat leader. as an F-18 pilot he deployed twice in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He spent three years as an instructor pilot at Top Gun, where he served as the training officer.

Dave is currently a leadership instructor and speaker with Esselon Front, where he serves as chief officer of development and curriculum. During this conversation we discussed, the importance of showing up early. And then Dave shares why he was selected. to be a top gun instructor. Then he tells a story about meeting Jaco Willink in Ramadi and how that relationship has led him to the work he does today with Eschelon Front, which is Jocko's company. Then he told some great stories about imposter syndrome, especially when he was chosen as a top gun instructor, which was fascinating and I think it could be very helpful for people who are dealing with that.

There is so much here. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good. Please enjoy. Dave, Burke. Dave, great to have you here. in The Learning Leader Show. Great to see you again after meeting you at a conference. And I'm just, I'm so grateful that you're here, man. This is awesome. I appreciate it.

That conference was a blast. It was great meeting you. You were 10 minutes early to this. And I love that so much. I can't tell you how much I love being 10 minutes early. I want to re-normalize being early to meetings as opposed to how it's been normalized to be late to meetings. Can you help me on this mission? How can we make this normal again?

You have my full support. It's not okay to be late, ever. You should never be late. So if you're on a quest to re-normalize being early and on time, I'm going to support you 100%. I'm right there with you, man. Being on time is important and you should never be late. But you work at a company. You have lots of meetings, right?

You have kind of a tough boss that people have heard of that's been on the show before. How is your company organized so that you're never late? Well, I think you stated it pretty well. despite what Jocko looks like, he's like the easiest boss in the world, partially because he's super detached, he's super chill. But he also sets a really good example. And I think it's really easy for the entire company to have Eschlon Front to not be late because he's never late. And I don't want to this point him. I don't think anybody does.

But the way he's gotten our company to believe in that one and several other beliefs as well is he role models it. The guy's never late. And I do everything I can, so I'm never late either. I love it. So one of the tactical ideas I've had around this actually so that somebody could potentially implement right now if you find yourself in back to back to back to backs. And that's why somebody runs over and you're late. Again, a pet peeve, I hate it. But an actual thing people could do is why not have your meetings end at 10 till the hour?

So if you're if you're saying, we're going to have an hour meeting from 9 to 10, that hour meeting is switched to a 50 minute meeting from 9 to 950. I think if everybody did that, at least would. help some of the stragglers that get a little break, do whatever you got to do, but then make sure you're not only not late for the next meeting, but you're early. Yeah, I think there are a lot of several important tactical things that individuals and companies should do. That's true for meetings. That's true for getting out the door to get your kids to drop off at football practice.

It's true for everything in life. And I think the number one thing you can do is let the people know around you that you are never going to be late. And just that example alone goes a long way to getting people to start on time and to your point, finish on time. So like I said, if you got a crusade against being late, I'm going to be right there with you. All right, man, we're going to keep at it. So I wasn't planning on talking about that at all. But the fact that you were so early made me want to talk about it.

I want to focus in your career because you are right in the middle of a pretty awesome career. First that started in the military. And so let's go back to earlier in your life. I believe you're a Southern California boy growing up. and you were near airplanes. But can you take me back into what it was about growing up where you did that made you want to become part of the American military and eventually fly planes? Yeah, you said it pretty well.

I grew up in Southern California. I spent most of my time from, I think I moved to San Diego when I was one. So obviously I don't remember that. So as far as I can recall, I spent my entire childhood between San Diego and Orange County. And it turns out that I think I was five or six. I moved to a town called El Toro, which at the time, and it's long gone, but at the time there was a big marine base there called Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. And it just so happens that my house was about a mile away from this airfield. And you walk outside and all day, every single day, jets would be taking off and landing.

And the fighter jets, like at the time, it was F4 Phantoms and, you know, A6 intruders and then eventually F18. So the type of jets that I found really, really intriguing. And honestly, Ryan, I think what happened is that as a little kid watching that stuff every single day, it just got in my bloodstream. It got to my system. And I could not help but stop. Every single time a jet would go by, I couldn't help but stop and look up. And there was a part of it that just got into my system that I really fell in love with the idea of wanting to do that, something that seemed a little bit of a fantasy, like literally up in the sky. It was super intriguing.

And then every year there was a big, big air show there, like a big, big air show. and you got to get up close and personal. And from that six or seven, I kind of fell in love with it and really never lost the interest. So that's what got me on the path at least. What did you do later on towards high school and after high school in order to put yourself in the position to go to the Marine Corps and then eventually fly? I got real serious about it in high school. I'd say by my junior year, 15, 16, that time frame, I was 100% committed. In fact, even the final decisions I made about where to go to college, those type of decisions I was making in late high school were all geared towards making sure that the things I wanted to do after could get done.

So I ended up going to, you know, the college closest to my house. A lot of little decisions that I started to make in my teenage years in high school were geared towards knowing I wanted to fly fighters. I was fortunate enough to have some good mentors, you know, good guidance counselor. And it turns out one of the things that I discovered in my teens that I think is important for everybody is I discovered that the path or the process to at least being competitive or considered to doing something like that, it wasn't that difficult. Now, it's competitive, but there aren't 47 different steps you got to take to be a Marine officer. Obviously, you got to finish high school and you have a good enough grades to get into a college. You got to get into college. You got to be in good shape.

but when I started to discover, hey, you have to do A, B, C, and D. I'm like, oh, I can do A, B, and C, D. And it demystified the process. It made it much more attainable. And I was very lucky to realize like, oh, this is, this is a thing that I can do. Got to go to college, get a degree. So I went to college and got a degree. I got to go to something called Officer Candidate School.

Went to Officer Canada School. So that was a really helpful thing for me to realize, oh, this is a regular thing that regular people do. You didn't require some sort of magic formula or potion to do it. And once I figured that out, I'm like, I'm definitely going to try to do this. And I did all the things that required. And to be honest, it wasn't that many unique nuanced things. And there's a story around 9-11.

Everybody remembers where we were when that happened. Where were you and what happened and what was your immediate next step after 9-11? I was back in San Diego. So I told you I grew up out there. ended up moving up to Orange County, go to school, go to college, join the Marine Corps, go through all the things throughout the Marine Corps to get me commissioned, to get me to flight school, to get me in a seat of a fighter jet, and get me to what my goal was to be in an F-18 squadron.

So when September 11th happened, the morning of September 11th, I'm stationed back in Miramar. I'm flying F-18s in a Marine Corps squadron in San Diego. Amazingly, I had graduated from Top Gun about two months earlier. I was in the last graduating class from Top Gun as a student before September 11th. So I think July of 2001, I finished Top Gun. I go back to my squadron in the morning of September 11th. I'm literally getting up.

I can certainly picture to this day. It's probably five something in the morning. I done work out. I was done showering, getting dressed. I'm lacing up my boots at the foot of my bed. And I had always had the habit of flipping on the TV, turning on the news at 5.30 or whatever it was, just to see what's going on before I hit the road to get into the squadron around six a class. or whatever, and I see what's happening.

And I'm like, man, I got to get into work. And so I drive into work, get onto the base as early as I could. And during that time, I get a call for my commanding officer who happened to be with a couple pilots in the squadron up north in Nevada on a different base. It's like, hey, you're the senior or the most recent top current graduate. You're going to be the flight lead and you need to start planning for whatever contingencies might happen. It was a crazy morning that I knew was changing the course of everything.

And I was right there to witness it in an active duty F-18 squadron. It was pretty wild. What do you do next? My squadron, which I can't remember what the cycle was, instead of the normal deployment cycle, within six weeks of September 11th, we were on an aircraft carrier in the North Arabian Gulf in Afghanistan dropping bombs. We went straight to war pretty much. In a matter of weeks after 9-11, we reconfigured the entire deployment schedule.

And I was on a carrier-based squadron. And so the carrier, all the people that support the carrier and all the squadrons accelerated, accelerated that, got onto the ship, and steamed out to the North Arabian goal and started flying combat missions. So your missions were you're taking off from aircraft carriers. You're finding the targets that you need to hit, and then you guys are dropping bombs on them. Yeah, so we were launching. It was almost a two-hour flight from the launching off the deck of a carrier to get up to Afghanistan. And it was six, seven-hour missions that we were flying routinely being given targets by other

assets or finding targets on our own or working together with other teams either on the ground or in the air to find targets in Afghanistan. And we were not every mission, obviously, but it was an incredibly busy time. It was my very first, I would say, sustained combat deployment that really revealed what it was like being an active duty combat squadron in wartime. Now, that was 2001, 2002. I think we got there, October, November, 2001, came back in April and May of 2002. I certainly did not anticipate what the future was going to look like. But at that point, time having finished Top Gun and being in combat, that was a absolute pinnacle of my career at that point doing what I'd always fantasize and dreamed about as a little kid.

How did the actual act of doing it compare to what you thought it would be like? Because I can only guess what it would feel like to identify a target to help protect our country and others. And then drop a bomb on it, man. There's one thing to think about it and to see the movie Top Gun, which we'll talk about for sure. and then there's another thing to actually be dropping a live weapon. I mean, what was that like? Yeah, I like that question because I don't think at the time I was really thinking about it. In retrospect, I've learned to contemplate things that I've done in the past because when you're in the moment, you don't really think about it in that sense.

And I think there was a very interesting blend that I could look back on and really coalesce around in my mind that I felt. one was an incredible sense of patriotism and obligation. Our jets, we painted on the side of our jets, names of police officers and firemen who perished on the morning of September 11th, first responders who, when the nation needed them the most, didn't survive going downtown in New York City to try to help after the Twin Towers are impacted. We had those names painted and blazing on the side of our jet.

So every time the hair in my arm is starting to stand up, rethinking about this. Every time we climbed up into those jets, our jets had those names on there. And you undeniably had this sense of, like I said, I think it was a combination of patriotism and obligation that what we were doing was a necessity. Now, in the same time of having those incredible emotions, and obviously too, just being an American, seeing the Twin Towers fall, seeing the Pentagon, those are awful experiences that impacted me just like everybody else. But what I had that I think was a little bit different was this responsibility, this obligation and this timing of serving in that war where I was also really busy. And I recall looking back on it, I know this sounds maybe crazy, but feeling very comfortable, very prepared and very confident that what I was being asked to do and the missions I was being asked to do it on, I felt very capable of doing that. I had very few times where I didn't feel like I was confident enough to execute on that. And so executing those missions, finding targets, dropping bombs, I don't mean to say that it came easy, but it felt like I was comfortable doing it, especially

since I had a sense of the need and the reason for doing that was so important. Part of that comfort, I have to believe, comes from your training. It seems like our American military is some of the best trained humans ever. And you mentioned Top Gun. And your story with Top Gun is amazing, both being a student, a graduate, and an instructor. I know the numbers of all three of those things are a tiny fraction of the population. So can you take me back to one being selected for Top Gun what it was like and then how you felt during that training as well as after you finished? Yeah. Top Gun obviously, that was a movie that I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that it was massively impactful. I think that movie came out when I was 14.

So I go see this movie and I'm at an age where I'm definitely leaning towards the military. I'm living near a Marine base. I've already gotten this idea in my head. And then I see the movie. And I'm like, man, it was so larger than life. It was such an influential thing. It probably isn't too much different than when you're a little kid the first time you see Star Wars. But this was real.

This is a real thing. I'm like, I'm going to do that. So that movie impacted me. And then when I ended up going through all the, you know, the process to get in the Marine Corps. And then when you finally end up in an F-18 squadron, which is the only jet in the Navy of the Marine Corps at the time, certainly in the Marine Corps at the time, that's going to Top Gun. And so you've gotten this really narrow path to get to a place where Top Gun has a potential. And then you end up getting selected.

And the selection process definitely is competitive. You know, I was in a very, very good squadron. We had a lot of talented guys. You end up, most squadrons, and it's some rough match. math, but most squages get on average one billet or one opportunity to send a pilot to top gun every year. Sometimes it's two a year and none the next year because you're deploying, but statistically the average around at the time, one pilot per year. So you're threading the needle. A lot of it you have to attribute to just good timing, good circumstance, good fortune.

You'd certainly have to be prepared. You have to be one of the better performers in the squadron, but you can't take full credit like I was the best pilot in the squadron. That's not how it works. There's too many other factors at play. So when I got selected to go to Top Gun, especially in a really competitive peer group, a lot of that worked out in my favor. I felt like I hit the jackpot. I felt like I absolutely hit the jackpot. And then, of course, I graduated from Top Gun.

A couple months later, 9-11 happens. Then I'm off in combat. And so I'm on this combat deployment I was talking about. And the staff at Top Gun had voted to have me come back to the staff. So the entire time I'm on this deployment to Afghanistan, I know when I come home from Afghanistan, I'm going back to be an instructor at Top Gun, which is a little crazy because it's like the script of the movie.

I'm living my childhood dream, which is remarkable. But inside of that, Ryan, this overwhelming sense of obligation. Like, I'm not there to go live a movie. I'm there with this massive responsibility to take what I was learning. It was the first combat deployment that country had in over a decade. You know, that era of combat hadn't happened in a very long time. And so all these things that I'm doing and learning, I've sensed this obligation of I have to capture these lessons and be part of the premier fighter aviation staff to teach a new group of pilots that we knew were coming in that were all going to go to war. And so obviously it was a dream come true.

It was a bit of a fantasy, but there was this sense of obligation and responsibility that was very, very heavy at the time. And I feel very fortunate. You talked about the statistics. Obviously, it's very rare. But in the end, a lot of good fortune and good timing happened beyond my control that allowed me to be. be in a place to get a chance to go do that, which at the time, again, was just the highlight of my career. Why do you think they chose you to be an instructor for Top Gun? To be quite honest, the most important attribute there is a combination of being willing to learn and being able to

teach. You know, the best pilot isn't necessarily the pilot that is the best at maneuvering his airplane. No one's ever going to say Dave Burke was the best pilot to control an aircraft. But what we're looking for, and I know what is important there is you have to be good in the airplane. You got to be talented in the airplane. But what you have to do is be willing to learn because the instructors there are so much better than you as a student. When I got there as a student, I wasn't anywhere near as capable as the instructors. And I think what they're looking for is how humble are you to listen and to learn and to embrace the lessons they're teaching and how quickly can you incorporate that? And when they see someone willing to learn and willing to listen,

they know they have someone that is going to get better over time. And that attribute, I think, is much more important than just whatever raw skill or talent or potential capability you have. They want to know what you can learn. And then what's most critical when you're an instructor is, can you teach other people? There's some really talented people out there that are good of what they do that have a hard time explaining or teaching or modeling it. And so Topkin really needs to take your skills and your talents and your ability to be good in an airplane and the missions and impart that in other people. And so I think that's the, those are the attributes that we as as a staff we're looking for in the students is can you learn and can you teach?

Were you showing examples of this along the way? Because it's just like in the business world when you're going to promote somebody. There's a whole, it's a completely different job from being the top sales professional to then being the manager of the of a team. I did this exact thing and I really struggled. Yeah. And that's because they're two different jobs. But part of the way to try to make better decisions for the instructors, for Top Gunner, teachers, or for a manager in a corporate world, is to see, are they showing

their teaching skills, mentoring ability, a way to explain how to do it to somebody else while there may be a top rep or in your case a top pilot? So was this happening along the way that you were kind of one of those guys showing to everybody else that you were helpful, that you were curious, that you and enjoyed seeing your teammates do well that you offered a helping hand or however you do that as a pilot. Was that part of how you were operating all along? I think so. All along is probably a stretch.

It's something that I learned. You know, I would say that my experience in the perils of ego, I learned, I had learned by the time I got to Top Gunn, I had learned hard lessons so many times at how often my ego got in the way. And I think one of the best things that ever happened to me is I had my ego, checked many, many times at a pretty young age. I've got some memories that go well before flying airplanes of learning the damage that my ego can cause. And I'd come to the conclusion that the best thing that I can do in my life is do what you just

said. Be a good teammate. Be a listener. Help the people around you. And I think part of it, I was fortunate enough to learn those lessons early enough in life to apply them before they really did some damage. And ego, as you know, can be a brutal thing and can cause a lot of problems. fact, you alluded to this in business.

Ego is a killer in combat, as much as it is in business and in life. And when you take care of yourself, when you focus on yourself, when you maneuver for your own best interest, that hurts you in every aspect. It hurts you in relationships. It hurts you at work. It hurts you in your professional world in every measure.

And I think another thing that was really valuable is when I got to Top Gun, as a student, I'm seeing these instructors. And these are world-class pilots. the best palettes I've ever seen, the most talented guy, the most capable guys. And they were so humble and they were so willing to identify and admit their mistakes and so willing to show me an example of what true humility looked like, which was learning and getting better and listening and all those things that go along with being humble is they model that behavior so well that it was easy to follow. I'm like, I see what they're doing. I want to do that.

And so part of my ability to reflect that or to present that was because the examples that were set for me were so profound from what I thought were the best pilots in the world. If these guys are humble, there's no excuse for me to not try to be more humble. And I do think that served me well, certainly at Topquin and later in life. But make no mistake, I struggled with ego in my career throughout and certainly early in my career. So that was something that I had beaten into me over time. You've got to make these incredible life-altering decisions. split second decisions when you're flying an airplane. Yeah.

That I don't know if ego is not the right word. You certainly have to be confident. I think you have to have conviction in your choices. But at the same time, right, be humble. How does that balance work with a fighter pilot? Because it's literally his life and death here. I mean, a lot of things in life are not. This is one of the things that actually is.

So how do you balance out that conviction and confidence and courage with this humility that you've identified is so important? Well, listen, man. I'm hearing you talk. I think you've got a talent for this and you've got a talent for identifying inside that comment, the answer because you used the word that came to mind was balance. That's the answer. When you say, how do you find that balance?

I think the most important thing is to recognize that there is a balance. And even when we teach this at Echon Front, we talk about ego all the time, you have to have that confidence. And actually, that confidence meter sometimes need to get right up against cocky. But you can't overshoot that. that humility is important too as the bookend of that. And if that humility gets too humble to the point that you become passive and you get out of balance. And so there's this very narrow band between of confidence and humility that if you

overshoot in either direction, you have a problem, certainly in a fighter, but that's not true just in fighters. It's true in everywhere in life. I think in flying airplanes, what that does, and certainly in combat, it magnifies things. But in the end, it's all the same dynamics. And I think it's great that not everybody's life is at stake in their world, but livelihoods are at stake. The families are trying to support. And so they're much more similar than they are different.

Combat tends to magnify things a little bit, which means that the lessons are all that more important, but they're all the same lessons. And so I think your description of that balance is where I struggled, me was where my confidence turned into cockiness. And what I think Dave Burke does when he's cocky is he thinks. he's got the answers, he kind of knows what's going on. He might not be willing to do as much preparation. He might not be willing to accept things will go wrong. He might predetermine the outcome that he's going to get this thing handled. And so when that confidence turns into being cocky, what it does is it keeps you from being humble enough to go, hang on, I need to prepare for this. I need to anticipate the worst. I'm not perfect here. I'm going to make mistakes. And so early in my

career, that confidence cocky meter wasn't fully calibrated. I was very, very fortunate to learn some of those lessons. But even to this day, dude, it is a constant balance. It needs to be struck. And that's what we're all trying to figure out as what is that balance there. Because ego is a really good thing when it's kept in check. It becomes a problem when it gets out of control. I feel like having a good core group of people around you. I'm guessing at Eschleon Front, you probably play this role for one another, but that seems to be one of the ways to keep that in check. Because I do think it's healthy and good to push it up to the limit, right? As you said, because you can't just be passive and sit in the corner and just take notes all day and say, well, I don't really know. I'm not

really sure. Like, you've got to make decisions. You've got to do stuff. But you also can't take it too far. So how does your surroundings, the people you work with, whether it's your peers, your friends, help with that? You want to stay humble? Surround yourself with talented people. I can tell you that at Echelon Front, if you just Google who's at that company starting with Jocko and Leif and everything downstream of that, it is not hard for me to look around and keep my ego in check. And I mean that in the best possible way. And you're right, we do feed off each other and we do keep each other in check. But I am surrounded by some incredibly talented people. And the minute I start to, you know, read and listen to my own press about how great I think I am, it takes about a half a second to look around me and recognize.

keeping my ego in check is actually pretty easy to do. And so, listen, I'm a believer in ego. I'm a believer in the power of ego when done correctly. Ego is the thing that allows us to do things that people say can't be done. And we want that. Everything from American ingenuity to hard problems to setting dreams and goals as a little kid. And so for me, the problem isn't, is an ego a good thing. The problem is when egos get out of control.

And our tendencies as human beings is to listen to what our ego, tells us, which is you're right in an argument, you're smart, you've got the answers, they don't know. And I have to learn to keep that thing in check. And one of the best ways to do that is surround yourself and be an environment with other like-minded, talented, hardworking people. And what you'll discover is they're struggling not just with the same things, but they're going to reveal some capabilities about themselves that you don't have. And if you're listening and looking for that, you will learn to be humble. And if you find yourself not do those things, you run the risk of letting your ego get out of control and you convince yourself

that you better than you are. So I've been very, very fortunate throughout my career to be surrounded by not just naturally talented people, but when I say talented, meaning hardworking, passionate, motivated people that have achieved some incredible things. And all those things keep me humble. And I like that. It's important. When I work with leaders who are a bit earlier in their career, sometimes they're promoted

maybe before they feel like they're ready. and at times they suffer from what is now called imposter syndrome. I'm not sure that's the right phrase. Did you deal with any of that when you either got selected for talk about or you went back to be an instructor? Because I could see it even more for that saying, wait, now they want me to teach these people? Like, wow. Did you have any cases of imposter syndrome? Yeah, and I'm glad you caveat of that.

I don't know if that's the right word either. It's certainly the term that we use. And I think you and I are using it more just as a vernacular. I've never really analyzed what is the appropriate word for it. but I fully understand the meaning, and I actually think that's a good thing. I think feeling a little underprepared. I think feeling a little early in this timing. I think those are good things.

Now, we don't want those things to be debilitating. We don't want those things to be, hey, I can't do this, or I'm not at a position. I'm not capable of doing this. We don't want that feeling of I'm an imposter to prevent you. What I want it to be is have you be humble. And have you recognized that you don't have all the answers and you always have something to learn. And I think for me as a pilot, one of the most remarkable things is everything, there's all these levels. There's all these level of performance and certifications.

And every time you achieve a level, you're like, I've made it. I remember when I got into flight school, I'm like, oh, I've got this thing figured out, which of course I didn't. And then I remember when I got my wings. I'm like, oh, I figured out flying. Of course. And so each level, you feel like you figured it out. I became a fully qualified F-18 pilot. I was a carrier pilot.

I'd been in combat. I'd been at Top Gun. And each one was an opportunity to think, I've got it. And every time there's another level up there. There's always another level. And being at Top Gun, you'd think, hey, when you become a Top Gun instructor, you've made it. You're at the absolute pinnacle.

And when I got to Top Gun and I saw the people around me, even when I got there as an instructor, I'm like, oh, man, there's so much more to learn. And you can't help but have that imposter syndrome feeling of, I don't know if I can do this. Now, I know that you can, but I think it's a very healthy thing to feel as long as you keep it balanced

and it doesn't become debilitating like, I don't belong here. Hey, please don't assign me that task. Please don't make me give me that responsibility or make me in charge of that thing. Embrace that feeling. That is your ego in a good way saying, hey man, you have more work to do.

It's going to be harder. You've got to make more commitment. You've got to put yourself in a position to be successful. So embrace that feeling. Don't let it run over you. But I think there's health in that and also recognizing no matter where you are. I don't care who you are.

I don't care who you are. There is another level up there and it's attainable. Speaking of Top Gun, I mean, I've watched the first one a million times. And I like the second one too. What about the movies are most real? And what about them are most not real? Coming from a guy who actually was a part as an instructor and an attendee of of Top Gun.

Very few people in the world that have this experience. But what elements of the movies were real versus, no, that's not how it goes. I mean, they're movies. And I'm going to say that with a caveat is that I love them both. I'm probably like you. I don't know how many times I've seen that first movie. I have no idea. The number is too big to remember.

And I obviously, it's more recent. So I haven't seen it nearly as many times. But I loved the second movie. I loved it. But they are movies. They are 100% movies. I think one of the great things about the first movie for me at that age is even just the cinematography, watching the planes land on the ships and the moving around, that is real.

And so when you see something that's not computer generated or not science fiction or not fantasy, there is a captivating aspect of seeing that. And so the fact that the flying was done so well and the flying is real flying, that I think is where the strength of those movies are and the second movie took that to another level the flying the recordings that they had and the camera work, the cinematography and all the professionalization of

modern 21st century media in an actual fighter made that as authentic as real as it could possibly be and even as a pilot, I look at that and I'm like, man, that looks amazing. Now, the stories, the tactics, the maneuvers, you know, it's a movie and it's Hollywood and they're certainly trying to depict

what they're trying to do is take an entire world, an entire environment, and condense it down into two hours. So they have to exaggerate in a couple of things. But I give them, certainly the newer of the two movies, I give them full credit for how authentic and how accurate they portrayed the flying.

They did a really, really good job of that. And the story to me, totally plausible, totally enjoyable for a movie to sit there and watch it and say, hey, I had no problem enjoying that movie from beginning to end, even the parts that you can,

could say, oh, well, maybe you wouldn't do that in the real world. And that's fine. I thought they did a great job with it. Most importantly, the flying was legit. Word I think of that could come up as fear while fighting a war, while flying a fighter jet. Can you think of the scariest moment you've had in your career as a pilot? Where were you? What happened? What was so scary about it? I'm curious to kind of go inside the mind of somebody who had to fight and deal with that fear and overcame it. Yeah, it's interesting the way you asked that. For me, it's a little bit of a yes and no to that comment. To be quite honest, the thing, when you say, when you say, Dave, hey, the time you were most afraid, the most fearful, I actually don't think of flying.

My most, the times in my career that I was most afraid was on my ground tour, my fact tour, when I was on the ground in Iraq after. that deployment. But to get more specific in your question, you might, you might find this to be a little bit of an odd answer, at least in retrospect, the times that I could look back and acknowledge that I was the most scared, most of those stories are me landing on the ship at night, not the combat experiences. And I don't want to be really, really careful here too. There are some people out there. In my combat experience as a pilot, you know, I drop bombs in Iraq, I drop bombs in Afghanistan. I definitely had some wonderful experiences, but there are some pilots out there that endured far more challenging, far more scary things that I ever did. And so I have, I think,

a little bit of a luxury. I think most naval aviators would tell you that landing on the ship is usually the scariest thing. And I had a couple of night landings in a snowstorm. I had some landings with some mechanical problems. I had some landing where you couldn't see the ship until you touched down, like some pretty scary stuff. The crazy thing about my flying experience is the carrier always for me proved to be the most scary and debilitating, not because I was like born for combat or some great combat pilot, but oftentimes when you're flying combat missions, you're pretty busy. When you come back to the ship, they send you back to the boat and you're in something called the stack, which is where the stack of all the airplanes at altitude, and you sit there for 15, 20

minutes waiting to land, doing nothing. So you've got all sort of free time. And all you're doing is creating the story of like how dark it is and how scary it is. And that's when the fear sets in. And so when you're in the stack at a ship and you have 10 minutes to land and you realize it's snowing, there's zero visibility, you hear the other pilots talking to the ship and they're saying things like the flight deck is moving up. And panic can set it. And again, there's the hair in my arms because that's what I bring it back to.

So my aviation stories about fear are almost all centered around sitting around the back at the ship waiting to land thinking, I don't want to do this, man. And I think if you talk to other naval aviators, landing on the boat, especially at night, is a uniquely terrifying thing that I think almost every naval aviator would tell you that's often the worst part about it, partially because you have so much time to contemplate it. And it's awful. So I think this could be relatable, not obviously landing on a boat at night, but people in general face fears of all different sorts all the time.

what were you saying to yourself? What is it to help you get through those times? One of the things we have to learn to do for ourselves is detach from the situation. When I get the most anxious, the most fearful, the most afraid is when I look at a particular problem, landing on a boat, leading a team, solving a problem, meeting a deadline, whatever. And I stare at that thing down and in and I start to create this scenario, this story, I create this narrative by which this is an unsolvable problem. And I start to get panicked. I start to get nervous. I start to get uncomfortable and I start to think, I can't do this.

And what I have to do is something very simply, I just have to, I know this sounds simple, but you have to relax. You have to take a step back. And what I've come to discover is the farther away I can get from a particular problem, the more likely I can see the pathway to solving it. But if I stare down and I'm just staring at that ship through my HUD glass and when I'm staring at that boat and I hear all these calls and I will create a story about which it's total armor getting down there.

Nobody can do this. and that actually makes it harder for me to land on the boat. As opposed to saying, all right, hang on. Hey, I've been in the situation before. The procedures for landing on the boat at night are the same as during the day. Yeah, it's going to be a little bit different environment. But at this altitude, I do this. At this speed, I do this.

This is when I put my gear down. This is when I make the turn. And I just start to create the scenario and go, oh, hang on. No, no, I know what to do here. I know how to do this. Oh, I need a little help. Hey, I'll go to my teammate Ryan and go, hey, man, I'm struggling with this deadline here.

Can you walk me through a couple things you've done to be successful? So you're literally not in your head. That alone has this naturally beautiful thing of helping us detach and stay calm and helping us relax. And some of it is to tell ourselves, I actually know what to do. And the fact that I'm afraid of it is a really powerful thing because it means I'm hypersensitive, I'm hyper engaged, I'm hyper aware, and I probably care about this thing. Those can be really positive things if we get the right mental attitude or the right frame of

reference. And that's the mindset you want to have is, hey, I'm, I'm catching myself, be scared. I'm getting butterflies. That is all normal. Those nerves are powerful things when harness and collective use collectively to be successful. Embrace that. Don't resist that.

Don't reject that. Don't belittle yourself because you're embarrassed that you're afraid. Just go execute on that. So in addition to flying in combat, you are on the ground as well. So why would they have a pilot do that? I actually volunteered for that job. When I left Top Gun, you know, one of the things about, Top Gun is you do get a sense of having accomplished, certainly for me, who my childhood dream was

trying to reenact the script of Top Gun. When you leave Top Gun as an instructor, there's a party of things, man, I've really done everything ever dreamed of doing, which I had. But I was also a Marine, and I really wanted to experience the Marine Corps. And so I volunteered and sort of fought my way into getting to be what's called a Ford Air Controller, which is no longer flying, but I'm on the ground with a radio rifle, a team of Marines, and I'm the one going to be calling in the airstrikes, calling in the aircraft overhead. And so the Marine Corps places this very high value on experienced pilots who have a ton of training, certainly in combat, are in a really great position to be on the ground to help support the ground Marines, which are the most important assets we have of those

frontline ground Marines, because they know how to control the aircraft. So I had an opportunity to do that, and I kind of maneuvered my way and wheezzled my way into the fact tour, into a deployment, and getting into Iraq and getting to a place called Ramadi. So right after Top Gun, I was a FAC in Ramadi. That's how I came to meet Jocko and Leif at Eschlon Front was my team of Marines. They're called Anglico Marines, which are the Marines that help control airplanes, showed up in Iraq at the exact same time Jocco and Laf's SEAL team showed up. Their task unit showed up.

So that's how I got to know those guys. That was back in 2006. Obviously, I wasn't thinking about Eschalon Front and rejoining them in the private sector. but the reason I'm on this team at Eschlon Front now is because I got to know Waf and Jockel really, really well by being on the ground with them. And my team and their team, I wouldn't say we combined, but I accompanied Lace Platoon on like 50 missions during our six months together there. So I got to know those guys really, really well. That to me, when I think of combat, that's by far the scariest, the hardest, most challenging, most demanding thing I ever did was leading Marines on the ground. That was a brutal environment that was a very maturing, impactful experience that I had.

had that I never expected after Top Gun that my life would continue to reveal itself in such unique ways. Well, Ramadi, from what I remember, it was known as one of the worst places to be, right? I mean, or I guess some might say best places to be if you want to be in the fight. Well, if you're a seal and Jake, Leif and Jock are on this podcast, that's the best place to be. I volunteered to go there because I knew that was where I needed to be. That was the most violent city.

Amazingly, when I was in Ramadi with those guys, Time Magazine, you could, Google it, wrote an article. It was called the most dangerous city in the world. I remember that. So at that time, Ramadi, just like you said, that was, that was the place to be for better, for worse, depending on your mindset. But it was definitely where I felt I needed to be. That was a crazy experience in a very, very, very, very tough urban counter-insurgency warfare environment that I was in way out of my comfort zone, in way over my head. But by far, the most seminal combat experience I ever had was on the ground in Ramadi. What was the typical day slash night slash mission like in Ramadi.

Yeah, I'm not sure if it was a typical, but at the height of that, when we were operating in the city, trying to take the city back. The city was controlled. When I got there, most of the city was controlled by the enemy, and we built this strategy that I was a central player in because I was a massive influence over controlling the aircraft, the air assets, the helicopters and the jets. We had F-18s and Harriers and F-16s from the Air Force, and we had Qies and Cobra's and all these amazing things. I was a lintzpin for that. So I was central to this strategy of taking back the

city by installing these little things we called combat outposts. So we'd find a place in the city the enemy controlled and we'd go in there and fight the enemy and take it from them and try to spread it out throughout the city. So typical was being in downtown Ramadi, which was a relatively small place. I think it's maybe 12 square miles, three or four miles wide, three or four miles north to south that had 400,000 civilians living in there. And probably between, as you know low estimates two to three high essence four to five thousand enemy fighters i don't exactly know for sure but somewhere in that thousands and thousands of enemy fighters is trying to figure out where they were and take the city back from these insurgents and sometimes we do it

on vehicle patrols sometimes we set up observation posts sometimes we do foot patrols but everything was really designed towards identifying and finding the enemy and rooting them out by finding them and killing them and i was in firefight shooting my rifle i mean i saw and did things i controlled as the as the Ford Air Controller, every piece of ordinance in the Marine Corps inventory from hellfire missiles to Mavericks to J-DAMs to the gun on the F-18 and the Huey and the Cobra, a bunch of crazy things

all right there in the middle of the city, all in support of the Army soldiers, the Marines, and the Navy SEALs that I was there. It was an unbelievable year, an unbelievable experience that I had as a fact to include the seven months I spent there in Romani. How hard was it leaving? I know

to a normal person, we think, like, man, I just want to get out of there. But also, there's got to be something to the amazing, this might not be the right word, but camaraderie and partners and like teammates, like this is life and death stuff that we're trying to take something together. And when you leave that, it's hard to get that anywhere else in any other way because you're probably not coming home to a life and death situation, shorter to shoulder with other people doing these incredibly hard things. What was it like for you when you left?

I understand what you're asking. It's a really, really cool question. I'm not sure I've ever been asked it exactly in those terms before, but the bond, the sense of camaraderie, the connection that you make, impossible to replicate, impossible to replicate. And certainly the feeling that I had towards the Marines of my team and in a lot of ways,

the relationship I built with other teams, most specifically, Jocko and Laif's task unit, you know, Laif's platoon there from Task Unit Bruezor while I was there. impossible to replicate. That was a hard deployment for me because a Marine of my team was killed. I lost a Marine named Chris Leon. My son's named after him.

And so you can imagine being in that environment, certainly for me as a leader, to have someone on my team not come home. Leaving Iraq without coming home with Chris was certainly the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Now, I was ready to go home. I was ready for me and my team to be done. We had had a brutal seven-month deployment. it was very, very challenging. The units that we supported have had significant losses.

The Army unit, and I give, you know, I supported two different Army units. Just full, full, full credit. What an unbelievable group of people. The brigade that we supported had 485 wounded and 94 killed on their deployment. 61 while I was there. Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Humvees, equipment more than I could possibly count. And so that deployment certainly took its toll. But leaving without coming home with everybody,

is a hard thing. And there was a part of that of wanting to be out of there so bad I just wanted to get home. And I had just gotten married. And my wife was in San Diego waiting for me. I had my whole life ahead of me. And I was going to go back to an F-18 squad and back to the beach and back to this fantasy life that I had. But leaving there without Chris or knowing I was coming home without Chris was a very, very hard thing. It was a significant burden that comes from that. It was a really, really tough experience and a real dichotomy of the joy and happiness of surviving and coming home. And the sadness and also the power of that camaraderie and that experience and the loss

that came along with that is an incredibly influential thing on life. We see a lot of veterans unfortunately deal with PTSD, a lot of mental health, unfortunately, suicide. What do you think about that? How did you deal with that for yourself? How have you helped friends? You work alongside others who I'm sure have very similar things. they're going through. How have you worked through that?

Yeah. And so there's no doubt that those experiences have have significant impact. And what you're describing the ability to deal with those things is a huge challenge. And I use the word before it. I'll use it again. And listen, my combat experience is significant as it was it was. There are people out there that endured so much more than I did. So much more challenge and so much more tragedy and trauma. I do not want to place myself anywhere near in that tier of folks of what some people endured. I had some challenges for sure, but nothing like some of the people I'm sure you've talked to and nothing like some of the people that are out there. But universally, and I think it's important because you can struggle with that no matter what your experience was,

the word that I used before is burden. What you will do is you will come home with a burden. You'll have a sense of burden of having left a person behind, having left part of yourself behind, having not accomplished what Yanukkah, having seen an experience and been exposed to things you weren't anticipating. It might not even have been prepared for. And all those things place a burden on you. And you and I both know, and you've alluded to it, obviously that burden weighs heavy on so many veterans and it is a challenging. It is a hard thing. What I think of it is, especially the ones that have thrived despite the chance. challenges the most are the ones that accept and embrace that burden and then cultivate a sense

of obligation of trying to do the most good with that burden. For me, someone who came home from a deployment without Chris, Chris Leon, June 20, 2006, I hope all of your readers, you know, Google and listeners and listeners, Google and read his story is an amazing young Marine that I was responsible for, that I did not come home with. That was my responsibility. The burden becomes a powerful thing for me because I have this sense, this obligation, this need to live a fulfilled,

successful, impactful, meaningful life on his behalf. And anytime I find myself, and I know those feelings of being depressed, of feeling terrible, I know what that's like. If I give myself five seconds and think, would Chris want me doing A, B, and C,

sitting around, feeling sorry for myself, not getting up and doing the right things, not eating, not being healthy, not being proactive, not being engaged, not being a good husband. And if I can ask him, hey, Chris, is this what you want me doing? The answer is so simple. And so in some sense, that burden can be a very powerful, formative thing to say, no, I am so lucky to be here. I am so lucky to be here. And I feel lucky to be alive from that deployment because I had numerous times where I thought, man, I'm not going to make it through this.

I had several that, at least a handful that I could tell you, I was almost convinced I wasn't. So I have the sense of two things that came from that. One is the obligation is to not, the obligation is to make him proud. Because if I'm not my best and I had a chance to ask him if he was proud of me and he'd say, no, that's a tough pill for me to swallow. That means I have to do right by that. But the other part of that burden, which I think is so powerful that all, it's true for all veterans is they have these lessons that they can capture and pass on. And one of the great things that happened to me when I came home from from that experience, I went back to a squadron and I could take these lessons from this terrible, challenging

experience and I could train and help other folks to be more prepared. And I know that's what Chris would want. And so I work hard every day to try not to follow the pitfalls of the negativity that comes from that. I try to make that as positive as I can, knowing full of that, that can be a hard thing. It's a hard thing for people sometimes. You mentioned Estrelaan Front and Jocco and the work that you do together, working with them, working with clients. What type of work do you do? Who do you help? How do you help them? I'm really

curious how the business works. Well, it's a lot of this. It's a lot of me sitting down at a computer sometimes on Zoom or obviously now we're doing a lot more in person, which is great. But, you know, Laf and Jocco started this company, I think back in 2011. I was still in the Marine Corps. They came back from our, we came back from our deployment in late 2006. They both went to seal training. They both left the military and both had this sense of the lessons that they had learned that there was a lot of power in there. Like I just talked about that burden. And if you take that burden and make it a positive thing and capture the lessons,

they started to recognize that these lessons were universal. They weren't about combat and about Navy SEALs. They were about life. And so in 2015, they wrote the book Extreme Ownership. In 2015, 2016, Time Frame, the book Extreme Ownership, which is the foundation for what we teach, really became the catalyst for the company, Eschlon Front, to have this broad reach.

Jocko started his podcast. the Jocko podcast. And so a few things started to combine together the confluence of the book that they wrote from the lessons, the podcasts created this opportunity for the company to start to grow to reach more and more people. That's when they decided the two of them alone couldn't do it. And they reached out to me and another guy from their team named J.P. Dinell and said, hey, why don't you come join us at Echalon Front?

We think there's an opportunity for us to really take these lessons and create some real impact. I had been 10 years, knew those guys from Ramadi. and I'd gone on and done other things in my career. I'm like, these are two of the best guys I've ever known. I'm in. And I was getting ready to transition out of the Marine Corps. So I immediately left the Marine Corps and joined National Enchon Front. Seven years later, we are the premier leadership consultancy teaching these lessons.

And Ryan, we are fortunate enough. We work with every industry you could possibly imagine. U.S. and abroad, at every layer of leadership from founders and CEOs to a billion-dollar companies, all the way down to frontline leaders right out of high school in their first job, knowing that the leadership principles that we learn in combat aren't about combat. They're about everything. They're about business and life. And I get to take the connection of the lessons that I learn from my time in the military,

flying airplanes and being in Ramadi and apply them to all aspects of my life and all aspects of our client's life. And I'm thankful to have that experience. And Eschlein Front feels this massive burden on behalf of all those people that we have to share those with the many people as we can. and the company has been absolutely just unbelievably successful. I am so lucky to be on this team, man. It's unreal.

You're back to a teaching role like you were at Top Gun. Absolutely. And I leverage and cash in all the things I learned at Top Gun every single day, every single day about how to teach. That was probably the best thing it came from my time at Top Gun is learning how to teach, and I use it all the time. What are the elements of your role? What skills have you developed to become a world-class teacher?

I don't think, I mean, I know you guys are friends, but I don't think they would keep you at echelon front or you wouldn't stay there if you weren't world class at doing it, right? They could get probably pretty much anybody to come work there now because I assume the inquiries and all of the opportunities are flying in by the minute. So it's mainly having to push people to say, sorry, we're like at capacity. How do you manage that? Well, Jaco and Lay for the type of guys that people want to work for. I was very fortunate to start with them really on day one when they started to grow the company. So I've really been here from the beginning once we start. I think we're at 40 people. So if you think about it was the two of them, we became four and now we're up at 40.

So you can imagine what that has been like growing and professionalizing an organization, a company. But at the same time, I have learned not communication is important, my ability to teach, leveraging those experiences of how to communicate and articulate, but I've also learn these leadership principles in a way that I understand them more. I can make them more relevant to not just the battlefield or not just to an airplane, but to the real challenges. And what I've come to discover is the things that made me successful in combat, the things that made me successful at Top Gun, the things that made me successful across the military, especially in Ramadi, are the same behaviors, the same attributes, the same lessons that make me successful everywhere in

life. And the opposite is also true. The times that I struggled, no matter where it was, war, the carrier, combat, didn't matter. When I struggle, it's the same things that caused me to struggle in every aspect of my life. And so the connection between the leadership principles that we learned to every aspect in life are the same. And I think the biggest challenge and the biggest skill is to be able to communicate that in a way and capture the lessons in a way to make them relevant and applicable and usable in every other aspect of life. Parenting, being a spouse, family, community, those type of other areas too. When you can see the connection,

then you can learn how to apply them. We're not there telling our story about what it was like to be in war. We are leadership instructors trying to take lessons that can be used by other people and the attribute of being fired up and excited and motivated. That is not what we're trying to accomplish a national on front. We want people to understand the concept of ownership, the leadership principles we teach, and how to use them in their life so their life can get better.

So well said, Dave. It was great to meet you in Charlotte at the NBA conference where we both spoke. And you sometimes just get that feeling within about 30 seconds like, man, I like this guy. I love this dude. I want to talk to him more. And I just get that sense from you. So I'm really grateful for your investment today of time because I know it's super valuable. And I would love if we could potentially get a round two, round three, and at some point in the future because you're certainly somebody I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.

Well, I felt the same way. I think we both felt when we're at that conference, given the caliber of folks there. It was a great experience for me. I was captivated watching you do that podcast up there live, by the way. And I found that to be remarkable. So it was certainly a two-way street. If you see any benefit to have me back on, I'd be back on in a heartbeat, man. I had an absolute blast with you. But I think from the very beginning, watching you up on that stage in front of hundreds and hundreds of people do that live podcast, that was a pretty remarkable thing, man. You're great at your craft. So I appreciate you including me. Thank you so much, man. Definitely, definitely more to come. I really appreciate it. And obviously, this shouldn't go without saying, so I want to be overt. Thank you so much for your service. Because of people like you, we get to experience this amazing place. And that should not go unsaid. So it should have been at the very beginning. But that is everything to me. I've not done that. I've not sacrificed in that manner. And so for the people that do, I mean, you're just on another level. So thank you so much for your service, man. Well, I appreciate that. I want you to know that it was an absolute honor. It was an absolute honor. And don't forget, I got to live my childhood dream. So I appreciate those conversations. I'm glad that that was your dream and then you went out and actually lived it.

Like, I watched the movie and liked it, but I didn't go and do it. So good, good on you, dude, for doing it. I, again, I love this conversation. Look forward to more than the future, man. I appreciate it, man, very much. Thanks for including me. It's the end of the podcast club. Thank you so much for being here.

If you're here, send an email, Ryan at LearningLeader.com, and the subject line right end of the podcast club. I enjoy meeting those of you who are in the club. A few takeaways from my notes with Dave. Balancing courage and confidence with humility and curiosity. I think that's big. I learned that many years ago from Kat Cole, and it was interesting to hear Dave talk about it and how we must as leaders surround ourselves with others who will continue to push us and also keep our ego in check. Dave told some stories about how his ego got him in trouble. in his younger days. Then the attributes of a top gun instructor, you must be willing to learn and able to teach. Great leaders outside of top gun instructors also seem to have those qualities

of a yearning to learn more and the ability to teach. Regardless of your title, I think developing the skills to teach others will help immensely. And then Dave's choice he made to volunteer to fight on the ground is ultimately what led him to meeting Jocko Willink, thus changing his life. And it seems when we're willing to step up and choose the work that maybe others don't want to do, it can lead to outsized rewards and opportunities like Dave's did. And now his life has changed by having the amazing opportunity to work with Jocco and Leif at Eschelon Front. I just want to say once again, thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leaders Show with Dave Burke.

I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to go to Ryanhawk.net, which launches you into Apple Podcasts. And once you're there, you write a thoughtful review and you rate the show hopefully five stars. And by doing that, you are helping spread the message, which also gives me the ability to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.