The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Leif Babin | Extreme Ownership

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Episode #154 – Nick is joined by Leif Babin, former Navy SEAL Platoon Commander and co-author of the NY Times Bestseller: Extreme Ownership. They discuss the most prominent distinctions between military and civilian leaders, how powerful leadership is about considering other people’s perspectives, why simplicity in your communication makes you more impactful, and how ‘silent leaders’ can tend to be the best ones. Nick and Leif also recount gripping stories from their military experiences and how they shaped their future endeavors. “If you interact with other humans in any capacity, you are a leader.” Even without a ‘title,’ you are a leader. Leif passionately speaks to the need to own this responsibility and positively impact the lives of those around you. This episode jumps into practical, inspiring commentary on our lives from two tremendous leaders. About Leif Babin: A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Leif served thirteen years in the Navy, including nine in the SEAL Teams. As a SEAL platoon commander in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, he planned and led major combat operations in the Battle of Ramadi that helped the “Ready First” Brigade of the US Army’s 1st Armored Division achieve victory. Task Unit Bruiser became the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War. Leif returned from combat and became the primary leadership instructor for all officers graduating from the SEAL training pipeline. There, he reshaped SEAL leadership training to better prepare the next generation of SEAL officers for the immense challenges of combat. During his last tour, Leif served as Operations Officer and Executive Officer at a SEAL Team where he again deployed to Iraq with a Special Operations Task Force. He is the recipient of the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple Heart. Upon his departure from active duty, Leif co-founded Echelon Front, a premier leadership consulting company, where he serves as President, leadership instructor, speaker, and strategic advisor. Echelon Front helps others build their own high-performance winning teams. More Resources: BPN Website - Supplements and Apparel: www.bpnsupps.com Nick’s Website: www.nickbare.com Nick’s Instagram: @nickbarefitness Nick’s Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/barelifenutrition Follow Us On Social Media: Instagram: @thebareperformancepodcast Facebook: The Bare Performance Podcast

Welcome back to another powerful episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Nick Baer, founder and CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition. Every week, we bring you insightful stories, knowledge, and inspiration to help you reach your full potential in life, fitness, and business. If you enjoy the message we're promoting in this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review on the platform you're listening to. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. that embody the go one more mindset.

All right, welcome back to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast. Today we have Laif Babin, co-author of Extreme Ownership and co-founder of Eschlon Front, leadership instructor, speaker, and strategic advisor. Graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy served 13 years in the Navy, including nine of the SEAL teams. As a SEAL platoon commander in SEAL Team 3's task unit bruiser, he planned and led major combat operations in the Battle of Ramadi. task unit bruiser became the most highly decorated special operations unit of the iraq war

laif welcome thanks for having me great to be on with you thanks for the drive easy day man right down the road just right down the road no no factor so i want to dive right into a question to to kick things off and then kind of back up a little bit and uh you know the topic of conversation i really want to drive today is one year experience in the military own the SEAL teams, being instructor at Buds, and then transitioning out and co-founding echelon front. And kind of as I explained to you earlier, now I'm scaling and growing this business,

and through that process, we're experiencing growing pains, a lot of those being leadership issues or navigating the trajectory of the business, and then you being involved in now 1600 organizations, through echelon front and experience a lot of different leaders, strength and weaknesses. I'm very interested in that as I kind of navigate my future with the business. But to really like drive this first question in, I'm curious, what is the separator from SEAL team leaders or military leaders as a whole and a civilian-bred traditional corporate

leader? What is it the military or the SEAL teams do that make? that leader truly stand out. That's a great question, Nick. I think, to be honest, I mean, there are, I've worked with a number of leaders in the corporate world, and I'm sure you have as well, right? With it, you work with that person. They're a go-getter.

They have discipline. They're humble. You know, they put their egos in check and put the team first. They take extreme ownership when they, you know, screw things up and learn for their mistakes. They empower the team, you know, with decentralized command. And when I work with a leader like that in the corporate world, somebody who's really succeeding, leading a great company, you could put that person into a combat leadership situation,

and they would do great. They'd let their team lead. I think there's, so I think there's what works in leadership, you know, in the battlefield, works absolutely in the corporate world as well. I think the military is probably more geared toward developing leaders. And I think the Army and other services are way ahead of where we were in the SEAL teams as well. I mean, for us, Largely, when I joined the SEAL teams, I went through BUDs, our basic training program in 2002. It was largely just on the job training. You know, I went through a junior officer training course,

what we call it was like the, for every officer graduate from our basic training pipeline. I later ran that program. And the people that ran it were great. You know, there was officers trying to teach us what we needed to know, but they had been staff officers, and they didn't really,

they didn't have any combat leadership experience. So I kind of, when I took over that program, I kind of, I threw a lot of that stuff out and tried to focus on getting these young officers to be prepared to lead a squad or a platoon, you know, of seals on the battlefield. And, you know, if anything, you know, you just read my bio. I mean, what's, it's, it's, that sounds, that makes me sound way cooler than, uh, than I am. I can tell you that. If anything, what qualifies me to talk about leadership is I've, I've made every mistake that you could possibly make. And, uh, and I've had to learn deeply from the, you know, those mistakes, learn from those mistakes.

think deeply about those mistakes and try to think about how I could help others not make those same mistakes. You know, and I think that's what set us up for success for Eschlon Front. But to answer your question, I think to me, leadership is leadership as leadership as leadership. And the people that are doing the same things in the people that are doing those things I just described by taking ownership, they're discipline, they're willing to work hard, they're willing to empower their leaders and let them step up and lead by focusing them toward the common goal, you know, the commander's intent that we're, we're trying to achieve, you know, the purpose, the goal, the end state.

If you have leaders that are doing that, they're going to succeed wherever they are, whether in the corporate world, whether they're in, you know, in the military on the battlefield. And I think, to me, it's the same leaders that are doing the same things are successful in either one of those endeavors. And I've seen leaders come out of the SEAL teams just like, you know, you've seen leaders come out of the military as well and not do well because they're not doing those things. you know, if they were just kind of leading through rank or authority, you know, kind of the rock scissors rank, do it because I said so.

When they don't have that title, right, or they're in a situation now where they're kind of having to start over again in the civilian world, they've struggled, you know. And so I think there's incredible people I serve with the SEAL teams, some of the absolute best leaders in the world that I've ever served with, the SEAL teams. And some of the absolute worst leaders I've ever served with in the SEAL teams. world. We're in the SEAL teams as well. So it's kind of everyone, you know, it's everyone,

even in a highly screened organization like that. It's, it's largely dependent on the person, I think. My CFO was asking, asking me this, as we were talking about like this podcast, and he asked a question, like, what makes a military leader unique compared to, you know, he came from corporate finance. And I'm curious, your take on this and, I'll kind of describe what I told him. It's, you know, if you look at a business and maybe it's like investment banking or something, there is a monetary incentive to do your job or even overperform. It's like, hey, if you work these extra hours, you will get paid X plus two.

Or if you go crush this sales program, you'll get a commission of 15%. Like there's an incentive through influence in leading for a reason of someone to make a positive or negative decision. When it comes to military leadership, there isn't this monetary component. Like whether you work 10 hours a week or you work 120 hours a week, your pay doesn't change. And whether you achieve or don't achieve, you're not getting a commission, you're not getting a bonus incentive. Do you think that has anything to do with the way, leaders are bred in the military or they have to perform and learn? Well, we use that example all the time because it's the most common,

it's a real common excuse that I think leaders give themselves, you know, in the business world as we work with a company or leaders come to our events like extreme ownership muster and they're asking a question. They ask a question like this, well, I can't, I don't have the ability to pay my people more. You know, we don't have the ability to pay bonuses. And, and I mean, you can't obviously do that in the military for all the reasons you just stated. You could be the, you know, if I'm your boss and you work for me and you're the top performing person, I have no ability to pay you more. So that's not a driver in any way, shape, or form.

And it's always interesting to me that so many people look at that as like the chief driver. And I don't see that as the chief driver. You know, obviously a company has to pay people enough to pay their bills, you know, and take care of their families. So there's some balance there. but the greatest, you know, the greatest reward you can give somebody is the control over their own destiny. So, you know, the more ownership of a plan I can give you, the more ownership you have of your schedule and when you work and how you work and what you're focused on, that's, that to me, that trumps any kind of monetary, you know, a reward that you might get. And obviously, you know, if you, if you incentivize people to, to take a company. mission on this sale or hey you you have a we're going to give you an equity piece of the business and so

you're working toward that i mean all all those things are great but um i think just control over your own destiny is really the greatest reward you can give somebody um and i think in the military um having not having being able to lean on that as an excuse is is a huge advantage um for sure in my book because you don't you just don't have that as you said there's no there's no ability to do that but i can take a young you know e5 you know, second-class petty officer who wouldn't otherwise be in a leadership position in a seal platoon

and give him ownership of this training program with the Iraqi soldiers or give him ownership of, hey, why don't you, why don't you put together the plan for this capture kill rate and tell us how you want to do it? I mean, this is,

the more you can give him ownership of stuff, I mean, it's, it shows that you actually are interested in them, that you trust them. It's, it's, I thought it was, I learned that from Jocco, and we put a lot of our junior people in charge of stuff and let them run.

And they did amazing things as a result. I think, you know, business can do the same things. And if anything, back to your first question, if the advantage in the military is probably that you're, you know, you're thrust into a leadership position really early on, right? Instead of having to kind of work your way up. And I know particularly as an officer, I know you're in the same boat.

Like all of a sudden you're in charge of an infantry platoon. That's a, that's a massive, amount of responsibility for a young person to have. And that's probably way more responsibility than I would have had in the SEAL teams, had I gone right in. I was fortunate enough to not get selected, which was soul crushing at the time to come out of the Naval Cab. I didn't get selected for the SEAL program.

But I was a division officer on a surface ship. So I went out and served on two different surface ships before I went to the SEAL program. And I was in charge of a division of 28 people and millions of dollars worth of equipment. and it was a huge leadership responsibility. So if anything, I think that is an advantage that the military has of kind of thrusting people into leadership positions that they may not get in the corporate world until they've been around for a long time.

Yeah, we just redid our company values or refine them. One of them is owner mindset, which is ownership in its own, but treating the business, whether you have equity or ownership or not, it treat like you own it. And a lot of times that's being focused on the mission. And I don't know if you found this by working with so many organizations and companies, but you see mission statements throwing on websites and it's just blah.

It's just like this mission or vision statement that's probably a boilerplate from something online, but it doesn't actually mean anything unique or specific to your organization, your company. And if leadership doesn't believe in that mission statement, you can't expect anyone else to believe in that mission statement. But if you actually believe in the mission when you're bought in, That's the incentive. Like you're working towards this one mission. But if you don't have that,

there's no reason to fight for it. There's nothing you're fighting for. I think people have a hard time connecting the dots between what they're doing and the overall organization success, right? The overall mission that you're trying to accomplish. And I think as leaders, we often just kind of assume that they get it

and they don't get it. You know, even the example that you talked about, right, of people, it should be obvious to people that can work a little harder Did they make more money, that, you know, they create more opportunities. It's actually not obvious to a lot of people, you know, and we're working with companies and, and we'll talk to them about, hey, you know, you need to help connect those dots. And we talk about it at Eschlawn Front as connecting the thread of why, right, from what you're doing, why you're doing it, how it's going to help, you know, support the overall organization and the mission that you're a part of, connect the thread from what you're doing to, to that overall success. but then you've got to connect the thread back down to them

so that they clearly understand how it's going to benefit them. You know, you got people that are just in the grind, hey, we're working every weekend, we're working overtime here. This is, you know, there's kind of no end in sight. And, you know, when the company says like, hey, great job, we made more money for shareholders. You know, they don't care about that. Yeah, cool.

Even if they were a shareholder, it doesn't really translate to an immediate benefit from them. But if you can say, hey, listen, we made a lot more money, this is an opportunity for us to grow. We know you guys are, we're under resource right now with personnel. We're going to be able to hire three more people that can take some of this workload off your plate.

So maybe you don't have to work overtime, you know, and be here every weekend. And so when they see that, they're like, oh, that's why I'm working. You know, that's why I'm working harder. And I think as a leader, it's the default position is you just don't, I was talking to a leader recently.

And he was like, so you're telling me that, you know, he was pushing like a new strategy and his people were kind of resisting and pushing back for it. And I was like, they don't understand why. You got to explain why. And I was like, he's telling me you, you, I think they get a 10 out of 10, but you're telling me they only get it seven out of 10.

I'm like, no, man, I'm telling you they get it like three out of 10 at best case, maybe one out of 10 or zero out of 10. So if you're in that default position of like, of constantly pushing the why to your team. And of course, if you give them ownership, that's, that's even better, right? It's their plan. Like, hey, what do you want those? And the more ownership they have of the work they're doing. control over their own destiny.

That's, it's their plan. You're not, you're not trying to get them to buy into the plan. It's a real common question we get at Exchon-Fron. How do I get people

to buy into the plan? And the answer is, you give them ownership to the plan. It's my plan. I don't need someone to tell me, you know, I'm totally bought in because it's actually my plan.

I'm actually out executing my plan. We're implementing the system in the business right now. It's called EOS entrepreneurial operating system. It's based off the book traction. And essentially, we're rebuilding,

our accountability chart within the organization and then setting the vision for five years out like big audacious hairy goal of what we want to accomplish three years out and more realistically one year out where do we want to be in one year what does data look like for a success and we break down this this data in terms of objectives or rocks by department and function within the business and the goal while we roll this out we're still in the process of of completely rolling it out but the goal is that everyone has ownership in an objective that they can see clearly connects to that one year, three year, and five year goal. And we've seen success in that already, just getting people to realize this is how my function contributes to the larger goal and mission.

But I'm super excited to see kind of that roll out and play out because what we found over the last 12 to 18 months is we've moved pretty quickly and we've had to pivot and adjust And with that, there was a lack of communication and clarity that was passed down throughout the entire organization. And now I've kind of realized that's happened and we're building out the system to relieve some of those issues and then help us scale effectively, effectively in the future. Yeah, I think that's awesome. You know, when people can have some measurable goals that they can see and look at and you're

breaking that down into some, you know, from the strategic goal to the tactical goal, And look, I think what you do, you know, in the fitness world is, is, it's, it's one of the things that, that, that, um, that no one I were just talking about, you know, the drive here of, of, of, of what I love to see is, is, that's something in particular for my personal fitness, I don't do that. I'll say like, oh, I need to be more flexible. And, uh, but I don't actually, I don't actually set some, a goal and then, and then measure that goal. And so it never actually happens because, um, because I'm not actually, I'm not actually, hey, instead of trying to achieve me, you know, putting my hands on the floor, you know, from standing

you know, so that I'm measuring my handstring flexibility and working toward that goal. And it just, it doesn't happen otherwise. So I think it's the same, you know, for physical fitness. It's the same for business. Something that Jock taught me is, you know, as a combat leader, is like the most important thing you can know is where you are. Because if you don't know where you are, you can't, you can't factor help into your position. You can't consolidate your forces.

You can't, you know, you can't call an airstrike on the enemy because you don't even know what you are. So you can't know where the enemy is. And I think just measuring that about where you actually are. And then you can move toward a goal, you know, that you've said in the more ownership that people have with that goal, I think is awesome. That it's their plan and they're going to go execute that plan. Do you see that as lack of self-awareness? Is lack of self-awareness an issue in poor leadership or poor leadership? positions or businesses.

Do you see that often? Definitely. I mean, you know, the self-awareness is, is, we talk a lot about perspective, you know, and like you're doing,

I'm sure you guys is something similar in your Army experience. We, we, Clover relief recon, right? I think is across all services, you know,

when you're looking at a target, we could call it a special reconnaissance mission in the seal teams, but you're looking at, uh, you want to look at something from all these different angles,

you know, instead of you're creeping into position, you're looking at a target, and then we're going to back out of that position and come in from a different direction, back out of that position, come in from a different direction. So, you know,

maybe over the course of two or three days, you're looking at that target from, from 360 degrees, and you can really see a lot that you can't see from one perspective. And it's, there are leaders, you know, when,

if anything, the power of leadership is, is the ability to see from other people's perspective. So whether or not, it's recognizing that your junior folks on the front line that are out there in the grind aren't connecting the threat of why from what they're doing to the overall success the nation and back down to them and how it's going to benefit for them. And when you can kind of see the world from their perspective,

and you realize like, oh, I got to communicate this to them. I got to make sure they understand it. And it's not just a single brief, something you got to do all the time. And, you know, we talk about this from the laws of combat that we've, that we teach, cover, move, simple, prioritizing, rescue, decentralized command. Any team has to use these laws of combat to be successful. And the second law of combat is simple, right? This is not anything new.

Joccoa often say we didn't have anything new. Keep it simple, stupid. That's been around for a long time. It was beaten into my head of the naval capitalism, just about every combat leadership book I read. You know, and yet the first time I ran a training mission, you know, went out in the training battlefield. After I briefed the team and gave it all the information,

it just was a big disaster because I came up with a super complex plan that no one understood and they couldn't execute. And part of that, I think, is just the recognition of seeing the perspective of the teams. And, you know, what you're calling self-awareness of like, okay, I think I'm being simple with this plan. My team doesn't actually understand that. You know, I'm trying to put together a combat mission.

Well, maybe I've been looking at the intelligence for days or weeks. And I've got guys showing up to the, you know, the operations order that are, they've been out prepping demolition. You know, they've been out getting the vehicles ready. They've been siting in their weapons. They have absolutely no concept whatsoever of what we're doing and why we're doing it. And so I'm just going to inundate them with a ton of information over the next 45 minutes or an hour and expect that they're going to retain all that.

It's totally not practical whatsoever, you know. And instead of that they just need to listen to what I'm telling them, it's, I've got to have the self-awareness to say it's my fault that they don't understand. I got to see the world from their perspective. What do they actually need to know? Let me simplify that down, you know. And I had an awesome platoon chief who taught me that, you know, I was trying to come up with 50 different points that I want everybody to, to remember and he said, I can remember three things, boss.

What do you want those three things to be? I was like, all right. I got to cut these other 47 things out and focus on what's the highest priority that, you know, for the team to know. So you think that early on in your military career, you were overwhelming subordinates with information? 100%.

Yeah, and I still do that. I mean, I still stumble with these things all the time. I mean, I wish I could say that I'd learned all those lessons and I now perfectly ask you. It doesn't happen. The good thing about extreme ownership, it's humbling because everything is your fault, but it's also liberating because when you make a mistake,

you just have to own that mistake, implement a solution to fix that mistake going forward. And I think a lot of times when you think you're clear about something, you know, it's as the team starts, execution kind of breaks down, you know, it's the recognition that if the team doesn't understand something, they can't execute. So I need to make sure that it's communicated in a simple,

clear, concise manner, so they get that. And if you see the world, I think if Jocko Willink has a superpower, it is the ability to take a really complex thing and simplify it down into a manner that everybody can understand it. And I think that comes from the ability to see the perspective of other people.

And so I'm going to communicate this to the troops. What do they actually need to know? How do I need to communicate in a manner that it's going to get across to them? And so I think that self-awareness or seeing the perspective, perspective of others is a really powerful leadership trait. And it starts by taking ownership, right?

When if I'm trying to communicate something to you and you don't understand it, it's not your fault. It's my fault because the only test for whether or not I've done that effectively is, is that you get it. So it doesn't matter how clear I thought it was. It matters that you actually understand it. And if I take ownership of that, we're going to get that prompts out. Yeah, I remember early on when I would try to clearly, I mean,

trying to simplify things is a lot hard. order. It's a lot easier said than done, right? Because a lot of times you want to provide context to everything you're talking about. And before you know it, like this, this three-minute speech on providing clarity of how to, you know, do an operation in the business turns into a 45-minute speech because you're providing context into every layer of that business. I think it's this fine line of, like, being transparent. This is something I struggle with, too, is being transparent through all layers of the business in providing context

so people can understand but not providing too much context where then you overcomplicate everything and it's something really I used to be horrible at it I'm getting better with it but it's easy to talk in circles because especially when you're very passionate about something

you want to really hammer in that one I mean I'll make sure I hit things three times like I'm hitting the second time because I want you to hear it now I'm hitting the third time because like you gotta not miss this part. And then you're saying all these things over and over and over again. Like I was given this little off topic,

but I was given this best man speech at my friend's wedding two years ago. And I didn't plan it out. I was like, I'm going to go into some, I'm going to have topics. I'm going to say on these topics. I'm just going to wing it. And it started really strong. It was like very clear. The message was spot on.

And I saw my wife in the background. She's just like giving me the nod. She's like, yes, just like right here. And then I didn't know how to wrap it up. So I spun it all the way to the top again. And I started going back through every topic. And I see my wife in the back. She's like, cut it, just cut it.

But I didn't know how to wrap it. So I'm like for writing all this context. And it was like 10 minutes overdue of what it was supposed to be. But it's that struggle of keeping things simple, which is actually and can be very difficult. I've learned, speaking, you know, you're talking about your wife there. I get lots of those signs from the back of the room, if I'm speaking. My wife is a journalist, and she worked for Fox News for 10 years, and she's exceptional,

like on TV. The first time that I met her, I brought me and a couple of my, you know, meathead, most wannabe, like lady killer, you know, seal buddies into Fox News. She was giving us just a tour of the, you know, the studios, and there, you know, It was, she just put us all in our place. Like, was it taking it, you know, was it, was it taking any crap off anybody? And so, but what was interesting is she sat me down in front of the television.

I was like, okay, here's what it looks like to be on TV. You can see yourself up on the screen. And, you know, it's me and two of my buddies who have been, you know, highly combat tested. And it's terrifying, right? It's terrifying to get on TV and have to have to have to say something. But one thing she's awesome at is in television news, you got to give a 20 or 30 second response to something.

Yeah. And it may be a really complex topic. So she's really, really good at taking, you know, taking something and talking and just those kind of short sound bites. I struggle with that.

It's something I really struggle with as well because I do the same thing you're talking about. And it's, as you say that, I'm thinking that's exactly right because the things that I feel most passionate about, I find myself talking round and round and round and round around and round about as well.

and that can over complicate stuff. So people lose, hey, instead of given a real hard hitting five minutes, like here's what we're focused on. You know, it's 25 minutes of like, hey, I'm kind of not sure. We talked about a lot of different stuff. I'm not sure what we're supposed to be doing here. And that's a problem. And I think keeping it focused to like, hey, what's the short?

What is the, what's the headline? What's the headline you want to put out? And then some, you know, a couple supporting bullet points. But there's a real, there's a real skill in doing that. She certainly has it. and I get tightened up all the time for, you know, for the embarrassment of information as they call it. It's particularly for the things that you feel passionate about, you know.

Yeah. One of my favorite words that's been circulated in this business the last two years is intentional and being intentional with your words and what you're saying and how you're saying it. And I was walking, I mean, I'll never forget this. I was walking through our creative office. And Jordan Utter, who was employee number five here at BPN, had this note, this sticky note on this computer, and it said lack of intentionality

leads to a repetition of what is easiest. And you can apply that with your actions, but you can especially apply it with your words. And if I go to give a speech to the team, I'm trying to jack everyone up because we're prepping for Black Friday right now and we're trying to drive energy high because everyone's going to get beat down

for two weeks of fulfilling orders. But going into this speech, a very intentional of what I want to say and how I want to say it. Because if I'm not, I'm just going to go in circles. But intentionality behind words I found is, it's such a powerful,

just principle to keep in mind while speaking to people, groups of people, individuals. No question. No question. Again, I think if you're seeing their perspective, right? And that just enables you.

It's what we call detachment, right? If you're detaching and seeing the perspective of other people, to me, that is the key in a, effective communication, right? When, when, and if I'm thinking simple, clear, concise, like, if I, if I'm going to give a leadership presentation, if, if, if I think, like, oh, man, we've got a lot of time that we have to feel here, I'm going way over time.

Like, I have to, I have to start with this idea of like, I am, I am pressed for time. What do I actually want to say? Let's get right to the point of that, you know? Yeah. And I think that's something that they just, um, it's just a lot more effective when you keep it simple, clear, concise. I want to take it back a little bit. And, uh, one of my questions is, what exposure to leadership or leadership principles did you have in life prior to joining the military, either from family, father, mother, grandfather, is like, what did leadership mean to you back then or being a strong leader? Did you watch someone? Did you have experience?

Did you have a mentor growing up? Or was all your experience learned once you got to the SEAL teams? Not at all. I mean, I think we're all product of our experiences, you know, to some degree. And I grew up in rural southeast Texas, a little town called Woodville, Texas. And it's about two hours northeast of Houston. And it was a great community to grow up in. And I had awesome parents. My mom and dad are incredible people that really set a great example for me as parents. And I really looked at my dad, you know, as a leader to try to emulate.

and he set a great example for me. And he was a small business owner as a dentist, you know, like the town dentist. And there were a number of people in my life that, I mean, from a, there was a, there was just a tremendous amount of leaders in our community and our church, you know, growing up, that said a great example of somebody that I wanted to be like or somebody I wanted to emulate. And one that really stands out was a good friend of my grandfather's. and who was a West Point grad, had served in Korea,

was a highly decorated infantry platoon leader and company commander, and had gotten out and ran a really successful business. His name was Ken Ruddy. He passed away a few years ago, but he was a guy that was very influential on me, you know, to see how he'd taken his leadership from the military and, you know, translated it to the business world as well.

And it was another, one of my dad's cousin, an older cousin of his, it was kind of the older brother he never had, who had been an infantry officer in Vietnam, and it was a Silver Star recipient. He'd gone into the Green Berets, retired as a Green Bray colonel. The same was Nook Carlisle. He passed away while I was in the Naval Academy,

and he was hugely influential as well. I mean, just a guy that was, what was interesting to me, you know, kind of growing up with my parents' generation, is a lot of their friends that had, you know, were Vietnam veterans, didn't want to talk about their experience at all. And for Nook, he loved talking about Vietnam.

It was like some of the greatest days of his life. And I can deeply relate to that now. Because, you know, I'm sure there are days, you know, when he lost people he loved and cared about, that he would trade for anything, just like me. The days when we lost Markley, when Ryan Joe was wounded, you know, when our sister platoon, you know,

Mikey Mansour and others that were wounded, you know, in Tasking and Bruce, I'd trade those days for anything, you know, but most of the days that we spent in some biolaccombat operations were actually some of the absolute best days of my life. And it was, it was interesting to hear his thoughts on that. And as, because he knew that he was making an impact. He, he loved the people that he worked with. He loved being a part of that mission. And, uh, and it was, it's very much the same for me. You know, so he was a huge influence on me. And I, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was bummed that he couldn't be there when I graduated from, you know, from Buds, our SEAL as he training program, but, but, uh, he was, uh, definitely a guy

who had had some huge influence on me growing up. Was the goal always to, to go to the SEALs while going through Naval Academy? Man, from the time I wanted to be anything that I, from the time I can remember, wanting to be anything. I wanted to be some kind of a combat leader. I, I mean, playing with my G-IGO figures in the sandbox when I was a kid. That's what I wanted to do. Mr. Ruddy had put some, there was a big West Point alumni network there. So he put a lot of pressure on me to like, hey, you know,

I actually was, I had an appointment to West Point. I was accepted. I got accepted in like January of my senior year. And so I'd accept that appointment. And, but I didn't get accepted to the Naval Academy until April that year. So I then now had to make a decision there. But backing it up, I mean, I really, I probably found out about the SEAL teams, I don't know, I was probably 12, 13 years old. You know, I read, I read Rogue War, I remember what year that came out, but Dick Marcyon goes about Rogue Warrior.

I started reading some books about the SEAL program. And I like the idea of being in the Navy and this kind of, you know, special operations unit that at the time, people didn't know a lot about it. You know, it wasn't, so it was something that was very appealing to me. And I started kind of leaning that direction. and then I got to admit, man, Charlie Sheen, Navy SEALs, 1990. That thing came out. I was like, that kind of sealed the deal for me. That was it.

And, which is, I'm proud that we quoted some of those cheeseball lines from that movie on combat operations. I mean, you know, going back and watch it now, it's pretty funny. But that certainly was a big influence. And I decided, I made the decision not to go to West Point, but to go to Navy because I wanted to be in the SEAL program. And so when I didn't get picked up, you know, four years, later, you know, when I graduated, that was pretty crushing. And as I said before, I mean, it's just, it was the best thing ever happened to me. How's that process of work?

Like, why didn't you get selected? Because I had a bad conduct record. I had horrible grades. And I was competing against some world class athletes that destroyed me on the physical fitness test. So I certainly can't, I certainly can't, you know, I mean, I never, I, I was, I was confident in the water. But I was, I mean, when you're going up against the captain of the water polo team, you know, are some, you know, Division I collegiate swimmers. I mean, they're going to destroy you on the swim, right?

You're going up against some, the captain of the cross-country team, right? He's, I mean, you can look at me and tell I wouldn't build to be a runner, man. That was something I struggle with, had to really learn and get in the game as far as running, running goes. And I was lucky I had some friends who were much better runners who put me on some tough runs that got me ready, you know, later on. But most importantly, I think, you know, the, process itself was out of the academy. At the time, we had 16 billets for Naval Special Warfare. So, you know, 16 midshipmen graduate. They get selected. Commission officers sent to,

sent to BUDs. And that's not how many? I think we had almost 900 people in our class, something like that. So it's very competitive. Very competitive. We had a prior listed seal in my class. It already made it through BUD. So he obviously gets a billet. So there's 15 of us going. And, you know, we started for the screening process. There was probably, I think, 200 or so people. that wanted to go. Did he have to go back through buds?

No. Okay. No, you don't have to go through buds once. I say, holy shit. But there's a, he's a great guy.

I mean, it's, it was the right call, you know, on those to, if I was on the selection committee, I would definitely have not selected me either. I mean,

looking at my PT scores compared to the other guys, looking at my grades, compared to the other guys, looking at my conduct record, compared to the other guys. I had a hard time with people who were only like a year older than me,

bossing me around and lording it over me and I let them know that I did not deeply appreciate that and that caused me a lot of issues but lessons that I had to learn later the hard way that that didn't help help out things but the the process was you know say

you had to go through a screening a two day screener and and it was out of that 200 people wanted to go I think we had 80 or so people graduate you know from that that two day screener program and then out of that we probably had 35 or 40 guys that were solid guys who any one of which could have probably gone to buds and done well so um and they only took 15 of those so

i was not one of those 15 and it was actually you know as i said it was an awesome leadership opportunity in the surface fleet but more than anything nick it was a chance for me to take ownership like i had to really look at i could make all the excuses in the world like hey that person got selected because of this reason or i didn't because i i it wasn't a it wasn't a fair selection process and that person had some benefit because they knew this person or they did that or they did this or they played this varsity sport politics yeah exactly and so instead i had to really look at myself and like look this is i came here to be in the seal teams this is what i want to do and so i'm going to actually have to take ownership of the situation and um that means i've got a i've got to

i've got to recreate myself to to perform you know on on the physical fitness uh screener tests um i've I've got to be the best service warfare officer I can be, so I get the recommendation that I need to go into the SEAL program. And I've got to build relationships with SEALs that are serving. And I had some great people that I knew that helped me out a ton, you know, and open those doors for me. But it was a chance for me to really take extreme ownership of that situation before we even knew what that term was.

How much time did you have in between not being selected and going to Buds? Three and a half years. Oh, wow. A big sprint then. It definitely was. Yeah. Did you, is there a certain, like a minimum time that you have to go back into conventional Navy before you can reapply to go back to buds?

There's, uh, it, well, you had to qualify as a surface warfare officer. And that usually takes like a year. So you have to, you know, you have to go through your entire like personal qualification system, you know, meet all these marks and, and eventually you get your official, you know, qualification to have your service warfare officer pin. And, uh, so that was, that was the requirement. And then, you know, you obviously have recommendations. So that takes about a year, year and a half.

I applied the first time I did not get selected again. And I met all the minimum requirements. There was like, I think there was like 12 or 14 documents that were required. I met all the minimum requirements for that. And felt like, okay, I got my package, good to go. Did not get selected. That was also a highly competitive process. Because for lateral transfer, I think they took two guys out of my year group,

you know, out of like 30 or 40 that applied. So it's, you know, it was a highly competitive process. I had to put in another, I went to, I got orders, went to a different ship. And I spent, once you take orders to a ship, you got to be there for a year. So you got to give the Navy a year to like trans, you know, to transfer somebody to cover your role. I had an awesome commanding officer there that ended up, he let me go TAD, you know, temporary duty to a SEAL team. and I had some friends at SEAL Team 5 at the time, and I basically, for the last six months,

I went over and just trained for Buds, which was awesome. Before going to Bud. Before going to Buzz. It was a phenomenal opportunity, and thankful I had just some amazing people that helped me out, you know, to get ready. But that final package I put about, I think I had three times the amount of required documents in there.

It was like, this is it, man. This is the last chance I get to get selected. I'm going all in on this. So by the time you got the buds, you were like, I'm passing this shit no matter what. Yeah, I got selected, and the fleet is, you know, we have a 70, 80% attrition rate or something like that on average. So there's a lot of people in the surface fleet that didn't make it through buds.

And there were a couple of sailors on there that were, when I got selected, who had gone to buds and not made it through training. And I remember when they're asking me like, hey, you know, that Mr. Bow, it's awesome, you got picked up. You know, that's great. How long do you think you, you know, how, How far through the program do you think you'll make it? I mean, I thought that was an insane question.

Yeah, it was like, it'd be a joke. The whole way, yeah, all the way. But in their mind, I realized it was actually a serious question because in their mind, it wasn't something that was achievable for humans. You know, they kind of had this thing built out as like, hey, it's, there's no way that anybody could possibly graduate from this program.

And that was kind of their experience. And so, yeah, for me, I mean, it was, there was never any question of like, I'm making it through this program. This is, I just, I was thankful for the perspective of just being, you know,

just having the ability to be there, you know, and, uh, because I had to work hard to get there. Definitely. Was, was Buds as a whole,

a life transformational experience? I mean, look, Buds is a tough training program. I know you've been to Ranger school. I mean, that's a tough training program. You know,

these are, these are tough training programs. They're, they're great for you. They teach you how to push yourself. They, you know, you have to have discipline to prepare yourself.

you know, for them. I mean, a lot of, Buzz was fun in a lot of ways, you know. There's stuff that sucked. There's stuff that was super challenging. You know, we kind of always say it's a kick in the nuts. And there's really no way to fully prepare for that kick in the nuts. I mean, even amazing athletes don't make it through that program.

It's an awesome training program. It's been around since World War II and Draper Kaufman, the father of the underwater demolition teams. You know, we're going to cram all this training, together like hell week is still something that came out of that they were going to take weeks of training cram it all down into five days to try to mimic the horrific combat situations that these guys were going to experience on the beaches of normandy and you know iwojima and okinawa and places like that so um they uh it was it's still it's great to have that legacy you know carry forward

um it's an awesome training program but it's uh look if you're a good athlete and you're determined to make it through you're going to make it through training i mean i i think people are often surprised to hear that I was way more physically exhausted and sleep deprived in combat than I ever wasn't training. And that's just the reality of it. So I mean, that's, right now, there's a lot of, there's a lot of scrutiny on buds and the, just like all services, but particularly buds, there's a, there's a scrutiny on, hey, do we actually have to train that hard? Like, are the standards, you know, do they need to be that high? And the answer is, hell yeah, they need to be that high, man.

Are they trying to lower the standards? There's a huge push. There's massive pressure on the Navy around that right now. And there's all kinds of stuff. There's been articles written and, you know, critical of how hard they're pushing. There's some YouTube video that was out of like Bud students getting gassed, you know, with a CS grenade and recently.

And the reality is... I think I saw that. I saw Tim Kennedy, I think he shared it. Yeah, yeah, Tim was talking about that. And Tim, Tim is spot on with us. This, you actually have to maintain those. standards because combat is hard. Combat is harder than anything that you can possibly prepare for in training.

And look, do we need to have safety procedures in place so that we don't get people killed in training? Absolutely. I mean, we need to do everything we can to mitigate the risks. We need to do everything we can to mitigate the risk we can control. But you've got to push the standard. You've got to push the standard hard. And there's a reason that training is hard.

And for organizations like Buds and like Rangers school, I mean, those standards, need to stay super high. And I think the idea that only in a world where we can think that, well, all the wars are ending and, you know, now there'll be peace. I mean, we know that the world doesn't work that that. You know, so I think having some highly trained individuals who are ready to go to war and in the toughest environment imaginable, you know, I think is super important. So we got to maintain those standards.

And again, I just, I think when some of the things that we did on combat operations, where you're launching into the field on a 72-hour Overwatch mission where you're probably going to get no sleep and you've already been up for 24 hours. It's just what life requires, you know.

So it's, it's, it's, it's, you've got to have, you've got to have programs like hell week that push people hard. I'm assuming that the people who, who want to lower the standards of these schools have never been to combat, correct.

100%. I mean, is it, is it, uh, yeah, it'd be like me telling you, you know, how you need to train and prepare for an ultramarathon when I've ever run one before.

I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever. Those critics are all over the place. Yeah. I mean, ignorance is bliss. You know, like, you don't know what you don't know. So, yeah, these people don't know, obviously, what combat's like. So they're criticizing something. They don't know what that preparation is for.

How do you even get that message across? Is it, how do you show people this is necessary? for X, Y, and Z because X, Y, and Z is so destructive that you can't even comprehend why we're doing these extremes. How do you even get that message across? Or is there even a reason to? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think you can have people observe training.

I think you can have people, you know, talk to combat vets and, you know, but more than anything, I think it's just a, it's, it's humility, right? It's, it's the humility to, to recognize it like, hey, maybe I don't have all the answers. And maybe I should let people who've been there decide, like, what the standard should be, you know, in order to prepare, you know, for the tough situations around. So, you know, there's, I think that, you know,

we always say in life it's be humble or get humbled. And, you know, unfortunately, the way of the world is that things go south and you get in a tough situation, you realize like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm, uh, we're actually going to have to ramp these standards back up, you know, uh,

because the people that we have in this, this, in, in, the people we have serving in this unit are not actually prepared and capable in the way that we need them to be to do what we need to do. It's one of the reasons I, it's one of the reasons I love physical training.

It's one of the reason I love jujitsu in particular. I don't know if you train jujitsu at all, but, um, it's, uh, it's incredibly humble. I can walk on the mats and feel like, like,

hey, I'm, you know, I'm a SEAL, I'm a combat veteran. You know, I could take care of myself. And then you just get just destroyed in seconds by someone who's half your size, who's just trained longer than you and has the skill set. And it's very, it's good to recognize like, okay, I got to train more. You know, I walked in here thinking, I was, you know, I can handle myself. There's a lot more I need to learn. And so I think those things are always, and physical trains the same way, right?

when you're pushing yourself hard and you realize like, hey, I'll feel like in a pretty good shape until I try to compete with somebody who's in way better shape to me. And all of a sudden, I'm like, all right, man, I got to get back in the game here. I got to, you know, get on the path. And so I think those things are, uh, we actually made a transition to the SEAL teams.

When I, when I joined the SEAL teams, physical fitness was largely like long distance stuff. You know, we're talking the triathlete, you know, you need to put on a rucksack, you know, with 50 pounds and you got to be able to go do a 30 kilometer patrol. And that stuff is important, right? You got to be able to do that. But then when we started, you know, my experience in the Iraq War, you're talking about urban combat where I got to take a guy who weighs 250 pounds

with 75 pounds of gear and drag you across the street, you know, this. And I got to sprint up to the rooftop of a building or sprint from block to block to block for kilometers on in, you know, with all this gear on, we realize like, hey, the strength and explosive power, all these things matter as well. So, you know, I think just being in a humbling situation where we realize like, okay, the standard has got to be high because this stuff is really hard. You know, there are no timeouts,

there are no weight classes. There are no like, hey, I need to take a break now. We've got to keep that standard high. So I think that humility piece, it'll come. I think it'll come. And hopefully it doesn't take some horrible, tragic, you know, situation for us to have a wake-up call, you know. Yeah.

Go back to Djir-2. I haven't done it before, but I know I'm an easy target when I walk in because they're going to be like, that big guy is going to try to muscle through everything, and the smallest guy is going to come up and just take me down. That's why I haven't walked on a mat yet because I know I'm an easy target.

I'm going to try to muscle everything. You know, it's like... You definitely will, and you're going to go level 19 berserker mode. Jock always says, like, when he's like, you got a relax. you got to relax because your first incline, you know, inclination is like, this is a fight, and I'm going to go like, you know, 100 miles an hour. And so he'll always joke, he'll be like, you got to relax.

And people are like, I am relaxed. He's like, you got to relax harder, relax harder. Somebody always says to people that are training. And look, I'm very much a novice at Jiu-Jitsu, man. I spent a lot of years not training. You know, I train here, I train there, and not at actually advancing, you know, and gaining the skills to be better. It's something I'll always continually do at every opportunity.

and when you do it, you should start, like, start with a private. I start with someone just showing you the basics instead of just jumping in because, you know, your level of athleticism, you're going to be able to get the best of some folks. And what they're going to do is go hard. You know, you're going to go really hard and they're going to match that, you know, that aggression. So, but when you get, the other thing you have to realize, too, you know, for that is like, hey, what do you gain by like not tapping in a situation where like, hey, I'm getting my neck cranked into real uncomfortable.

Or hey, I might be able to fight out of this Camaro where my arm is getting, you know, bit behind me right now. They're about to tear my shoulder apart. I actually don't get anything from this. I actually need to just tap and be like, hey, man, good job. How do I stop that, you know? So it's a really humbling experience. But you find good training partners, you know, and we get a great gym, Stoogesuituit and

dripping springs, but you want to come train with us anytime, let us know. Yeah, I'll let you know. I'll be fully prepared. It makes me think of, you know, we bring a chiropractor in here on Tuesdays. and whenever you adjust my neck, he's like, relax. I'm like, I'm relaxed. He's like, no, you're not. You're not relaxed.

I'm consciously trying to relax, but I'm so tense because I'm thinking about relaxing. So I just imagine myself, like, doing a jitsu where I'm just like barrel hugging this dude. And I'm so exhausted in 60 seconds, I got nothing left, but he's taking you down. I know that's like, we'll film it. We'll create content on it. It'll be great content, but I'll look like a fool, but it's okay.

It's all good, man. It's part of the learning experience. That's typically the go-to, right? If you're like, okay, this big, strong guy is a good athlete. Like, you just let himself burn, you know, let you burn yourself out. And then you're useless. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty good.

So talking about 2006, Irmadi, going into Iraq, did you have expectations of what to expect in terms of chaos, destruction, what you're getting yourself into? Or was it kind of going in blind? I've been, my first point in track was in 2004, and we did, we spent most of our time guarding the interim Iraq, the Iraqi government officials, which is not a cool mission at all. I think they put out a bid the Blackwater, and, you know, Blackwater said it was going to be $100 million per each one of these five guys. They're like, steel teams, you got it. So we spent our time at security detail, you know, for the interim Iraqi government officials.

and two of them have been, you know, assassinated part of this. And to the credit of the SEAL teams, like we were able to keep those guys alive, you know, which is awesome. But it wasn't the mission that we wanted. And I spent a few weeks up at Samara supporting the Big Red One first Infra Division up there with some cyber support. And they were having all kinds of issues with IEDs and these anti-tank minds were getting planted in the road.

So had a great time supporting those guys for about three weeks up there. That was really my only combat experience that I got. And so I was eager to get back to Iraq. And when we deployed in 2006, before that, right up until about two weeks before we deployed, we thought we were going to be working with an Iraqi commando unit. That was a well, you know, as far as Iraqis go, it was a very well-trained unit.

We were going to be doing some high-speed capture kill raids and going after and targeting bad guys. And so largely these roll-up assaults and vehicles where we would just, you know, load up in our vehicles, drive up to a target building, dismount, you know, hit the target building, grab guys, you know, come back, largely, you know, nighttime, night vision raid stuff. And two weeks before, I think I was on leave in Texas back home, I came back, and Jaco said, Jocko said, new orders were going to Ramadi.

And, of course, we'd all heard of Rami at the time. You know, after Fallujah in 2004, the Marines had smashed Fallujah. All the insurgents had fled to Ramadi, and Ramadi was the worst area in Iraq. and was accounting for the vast majority of U.S. casualties at the time. And through 2005, 2006, so we started, you know, we'd already heard about it, knew about it, but when we arrived there, it was very clear this was a lot different than any deployment we'd seen before. And, you know, one example that was me and Jockwood, several of the guys,

the key leaders had gotten on the ground, you know, about a pre-deployment, you know, going early before the main body of troops arrived. And so we're, even as we're, I mean, there's guns. gun fights going on every single day. There's casualties happen every single day. We're talking to these army units and marine units that have been engaged in the fight. The army unit was the 228, Second Brigade 28th Infantry Division, a Pennsylvania National Guard unit. They've been on the ground for 14 months at that point in Ramadi.

And it was, I mean, taking a ton of casualties. I mean, incredible group of warriors that had been in that fight for so long and learned a ton of lessons. and pass those lessons on to us. So we started trying to build those relationships. The new, as the main body arrived, we've been on the ground for about a week there. The day they arrived, there was a massive enemy, you know,

coordinated attack on the U.S. camp right across the river from us. And so, and actually there was three or four different attacks going on at the same time. We're talking with, you know, dozens of enemy fighters. I'd never seen anything like that. like that before.

You know, this is, this is, this is a, you're talking, you're talking, dozens of enemy fighters and a well-cordined attack

with, with, you know, supporting arms, we're talking mortars and rockets and machine guns from multiple directions. And so we, we had the entire task

in it up on the rooftop in like PT gear, flip flops, shorts, you know, t-shirts, guys, you know, some people with no body armor helmet on. Some people just thrown their helmet

body armor on. And as we're running up to the rooftop, It was just night time So it was like, you know, it just got dark Guys run up to the rooftop Bullets are just hitting the outside of the building And we got the entire task

You know, on the building Just dump and rounds across the river And it was kind of a wake-up call for us Like, this is welcome to Ramadi, man, That's a different spot And one of my machine gunners Was on his third deployment to Iraq And he had never fired his machine gun in anger

So literally day one, he'd be on the ground for like three hours and just fired like four or five hundred rounds down across the river. So it was obvious. This is going to be different, yeah. Do you think was there a, between those two years, 2004 and 2006,

was it just that they became so much better trained and prepared? Or was it just a different area that you guys were operating in that it was a different level of fighter? That's a good question. I don't really know the answer to that. I mean, I think obviously they gained experience, you know, and I think they realized in Fallujah

that they can't stand and fight with American force, right, you're going to get smashed. And so, but they could hide amongst this populace. And when we arrived in Vermont in 2006, I mean, two-thirds of the city, the city of 400,000 people was Al-Qaeda in Iraq battle space. We were told, like, don't even go there. You're all going to get killed.

And so that's how bad it was. And so they just had this massive freedom of movement where they weren't going to get attacked. They didn't have to worry about that. So they could plot these. offensive operations and they just got Boulder and Boulder and Boulder. I mean, the government center, 3-8 Marines,

their Kilo company, and Lima companies controlled these outposts along the main road, the main supply route throughout Michigan through the city, and the government center was kind of right there in the middle, and they would, Kilo company for 3-8 Marines, they were under, I'm talking four, five, six-hour-long attacks.

I mean, once a week, you know, we're talking 50 enemy fighters trying to attack them from different directions, you know, and multiple machine guns, mortars, rockets. I mean, they've had like vehicle, like technicals, you know, Dishkas, matter, to vehicles, you know, moving around the city. There was no place you could do that really in Iraq

because aircraft would destroy those vehicles before, but they could do it there because aircraft, you know, you send an Apache or an aircraft over the city. I mean, they're going to get shot down. They fixed wing, maybe not. but it was a real threat. And then most of those attacks would end up with, you know, somebody trying to drive a 5,000 pound V-bit into their position.

And those Marines, man, would just, they'd beat back those attacks. But they were under those attacks. I mean, it was almost a weekly evolution, maybe even multiple times a week at times. So that's the first time we went out and visited those guys. It was crazy. We parked our vehicles and kind of snake through some, these uh you know these these uh the concertina wire and the jersey barriers you know there's

so vehicles down and we get up there there was no gate so we're like man what's going on we kind of pull up there and there's there's sandbags you know and and i we step out of the vehicles we're all kind of standing around and i look up and these two marines come sprinting out of this doorway that we didn't know it was there there's like a you know iR netting the camouflage netting there that comes sprinting out of the doorway just as fast as they can at full combat gear and run right past us. We're like, hey, what's going on? Like, why are you guys running?

They just yell, snipers! And they run right past us. And they're moving to like a guard tower. It's also like covered in iron netting. It's all like fix. And so we learn pretty quickly like at the government center, you don't want to be just standing outside. Like you got to be running or you're going to get sniped.

It happened pretty regularly. What was the significance of Ramadi? Like, why was it such a significant spot during that war? Yeah, Zarqawi, you know, who was the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq had declared Ramadi was going to be the center of his caliphate. So that was, that's where they decided to take their stand. We had something like estimates were like 3 to 5,000 enemy fighters, you know, that were part of that, that were hidden amongst this populace of about 400,000 people. And I think it just became, you know, Anbar province was. you know, the large, it's overwhelmingly Sunni province.

And that was kind of their base of operations. And Ramadi just kind of became their, the center of operations, you know, from where they were running those ops. And it had been Fallujah prior to that, and then they moved to Romani, you know, after the Phantom Fear, the big Marine push through there in 2004.

So I think they really thought, I mean, even U.S. military, there was an intelligence report that said that Romani, and Anbar province were all but lost. I mean, a lot of people didn't think we could win there. And I think for us, you know, we were a small group. Tasking a Roosier was about 40 seals and about 50s of war personnel.

I mean, we were proud and honored to support the soldiers of Marines. There were thousands of soldiers of Marines on the ground. The 228 got relieved by the 1-1-A-D, ready first brigade combat team in the first armored division that came in about a month into our deployment there. And they led the Seas Clearhold Bill strategy to take that city back. and there was a three Marines and other Marine attachment to them and some sailors and airmen as well,

but mostly soldiers and Marines. And we were just proud and honor to support them in that effort. And, you know, as an Army vet, you might appreciate the, you know, those inter-service rivalries are real. But the, what was most, we were able to build some extraordinary relationships by being a supporting element, a supporting asset for, you know, the Army in that effort, the soldiers and Marines that went in and took that city. back and the 1-1AD called us their army seals and we wore that as a real badge of pride.

What was the turning point or was there? Was there a moment where you realized this is not all but lost but we're actually gaining back in a foothold? Definitely. I mean as we started to move into these areas and we realized very quickly what we could do was, you know, I'm not going to run three to five thousand enemy fighters out of the city with 40 seals. You know, I was a Potentic commander charged with 16 seals. So I'm not going to win this battle, but what I can do is take a small group of guys with a whole lot of firepower

and go into some of these areas that people said don't go there, you're all going to get killed. And we could go in there and not get killed. And even if people couldn't get to us, I mean, we're talking, you know, machine guns and shoulder-fired rockets, and we would bring as much firepower as we could.

And the soldiers and Marines would do everything they could in their power to come rest, and they did it all the time. But there were some areas where they simply just couldn't get to us because the ID threat was too significant. Or they got blown up, you know, coming in. So it was, we would just, it would become an overt fighting position, you know, instead of like sneaky sniper hide. It would just transition to like an overt fighting position.

And but the turning point really for, for me was as we moved into some of these areas where there have been zero U.S. presence, you know, in the previous, I don't know how many years. so the local populace there has not seen any American forces in this particular area. All they've seen is insurgents, and they know that these insurgents are going to cut their head off, and they ruled through this brutal campaign of terror and, I mean, just murder and torture and rape. I mean, you name it. This is the precursor organization to ISIS, and they were doing all the same things. So they were absolutely terrified of these people, you know, of the insurgents. And when we'd enter a building, and you'd, you'd, and we'd, and we'd, and we'd,

We had interpreters and we had Iraqi soldiers with us on every operation. And as we started engaging with the family, we talked to, you know, like the head of the household there, the senior man of that family. And they didn't want to look at us. They were terrified. They just literally like get their families and like stare into a corner. They didn't want to make eye contact with us because they were absolutely terrified of

of these insurgents. But the more that we started to show them that like they did, you know, the army or the Marines build a combat outposts in their neighborhood. just a few blocks away. They're living and working out of that combat opos with Iraqi soldiers and pushing the insurgents out and trying to build relationships with the local populace. It really only took a few weeks before they started,

you know, maybe two or three weeks into this thing, they start opening up to us in conversation. They start offering Chaiti to Iraqi soldiers. You know, a couple more weeks go by and they start telling us like, hey, there's a bad guy that lives two houses down from here. He's the one that's putting the bombs in the road. I could tell you right where the bombs are

and we want him out of her neighborhood. And we started seeing this turnaround that was that attitude in like the civilian populace where I realized like, hey, they actually don't want these insurgents here. But they just didn't believe that we were going to be here permanently to help him. And then once they see that we're actually doing that, it was that to me was kind of the turning point that we saw. And I remember one time we were hitting a target where we're going after a particular bad guy. And he, you know, AC130 gunship overhead is tracking this guy as he jumps from building to

building to building like multiple rooftops. And we go hit. so we're not hitting the original building where he was and we know there's a bad guy in there potentially waiting on us so we go in there we just, I mean, explosively breach that, that, you know, front door, going to the building, clear the building,

and there's a, you know, of course, when you're supposedly breach, you've shattered the windows and the door. I mean, it's a lot of devastation to the building. And there's a family in there. And the family is, I mean, the family instantly is like, he's not one of us. I mean, they instantly dime this guy up.

And why? Because they hate this person. I mean, he's murdering their families and killing their loved ones and threatening them, you know, all the time. So they want this guy to be gone from their neighborhood. They don't, they want him arrested. They want him gone. And we had, we carried funds with us. And I was very apologetic to the, you know, the head of the household to say, I'm really sorry about the damage you done to the building. You know, we're going to give you some funds here.

we're going to send a civil affairs team out here to help you out see what we can do to repair the door and we damage and the windows that we destroyed. And he actually, through our interpreter, just said, hey, I'm totally good, but I totally understand. I'm just thankful that you guys are getting this person out of Burnet Run. So that to me was like, okay, there's a big difference that's been made. And then fast forward a few months, you know, so the next deal team comes and relieves us, you know, in late October 2006. they spend several months in still some significant combat. But by the early 2007, this place that nobody thought was possible to turn around,

we started seeing pictures being sent back to us of marketplace that were open, schools that were open, robopile buildings that were rebuilt. And the craziest one to me, Nick, was a, so out Michigan that road I was talking about with those Marines were getting halaciously attacked. It had an average of 7 to 10 IEDs every single day, every 24-hour period, 7 to 10 IDs.

This is a road that the U.S. forces control. We had Marine checkpoints or Army checkpoints every kilometer and 7 to 10 IEDs on the road every day. And by the next summer, we get a picture sent back to us by one of our guys who had deployed with another SEAL team was there. They ran a 5K fun run down that road with zero incidents. And it was just, it was unbelievable. I mean, you were talking jaw-dropping turnaround.

in this place that so few people thought it was possible to win. So it was, we were just proud and honored to be a small part of that victory that was accomplished by the soldiers of Marines of the 1-1-A-D and the 228 that set the condition for success for them. Was that strategic going into Ramadi? Did you know you had to win the hearts and minds of the people there? Or was it just something that started happening? You realized this is working in our favor?

Well, I think we, it's very hard. get seals. You know, when people talk about hearts and minds, the three Marines had these t-shirts that they would wear on the, they said winning hearts and minds, two to the heart, one to the mind, which I thought was pretty difficult for Marines there. But, and we would laugh and joke about that kind of stuff. You know, typically you're talking about, we don't win hearts and minds.

Yeah. But interestingly, you know, you might look at Jocko and think that, well, he's just the, you know, war and destruction. But he actually was the very first person I knew that read, he read a draft version of the new countered surrogency manual before it even came out and and realized like look this is he really really kind of remat for us like what does winning look like if you'd ask any of my seals in chartered baton at the time like you know before we as we deployed what is winning you know what's your mission their mission is like kill bad guys and we realized jaco

kind of redefined that for us like hey no actually our mission here is our mission is to is to stabilize the city of Vermont, secure the populace, and lower the level of violence. That's what our mission is. That's the overall mission. And we didn't need some general to come brief as that.

It's pretty easy to figure out, you know. And so are we going to have to kill some bad guys to accomplish that mission? 100%. And we're in a, we're in a really good position to do that and do it, you know, where we can, we can, you know, do everything we can to minimize collateral damage

and with precision shooters and snipers. And that's, that's a big part of what we can bring to the table to mitigate the extreme risk to the soldiers and Marines that are on the ground building out in these common outposts and living and working amongst the populace along with their Iraqi soldiers. But I think that's something, you know, from a leadership perspective,

to, and we talked about connecting the threat of why. And I think when my team understands, when they understood that our job wasn't just to kill bad guys because we can kill bad guys and cause all kinds of collateral damage that totally alienates us from the local populace, that despite the, you know, ethical and moral and illegal, you know, legal issues of that situation, you're talking about a strategic setback for the mission, where now you've got al-Qaeda, you know,

in Iraq using this as a recruiting tool to turn the local populace and say, no, no, we're here to protect you from the evil Americans that are here to just slaughter you. Look at what they're doing. Yeah. You know, so it was making sure that they understood what our mission actually was and that we had to do everything we could to protect the local populace from these evil insurgents.

And it was a real paradigm shift for us. It was a game changer, you know, mindset. And that was something that our tasking and embrace. I mean, Charlie Batoon, and tasking and bruiser, we absolutely embraced that. And I think it's the same thing for any leader in any situation, right? You've got to help them understand

it's not just closing the deal, right? It's not just making the sale. It's not just selling this product. It's, we're actually, we're trying to do something. and greater that we're actually trying to help someone we're actually trying to improve their lives we're actually trying to deliver greater impact as far beyond that and when they understand that at a deeper level then they can actually step up and make some calls to to move the team forward in a

positive direction um you know to to to accomplish the greater mission do you think your time in romani really lay the foundation of the leader you are today and the way that you instruct leaders and businesses and organizations 100% that that that specific time was that significant in terms of what you learned? 100%. And I think the lessons that we learned from Ramadi were the biggest lesson is humility, ownership, and teamwork right off the bat.

Humility, like if you'd ask me, you know, if young Lieutenant Laif Babin, Charlie Baton, Commander, tasking a bruiser, before we deployed Ramadi, are you going to get in a blue-on-blue, you know, friendly fire situation overseas? You think it'll happen. I told you that happens to losers

that don't have a plan and execute. And if you've read extreme ownership, that's chapter one. hunt, man. I mean, the very first major operation, we got in a horrible blue and blue situation. And just even there's the recognition of how hard combat actually is. So that's one of the lesson we brought back to say, look, you think you're trained and ready for the chaos of this urban combat situation. I'm telling you, you're not. It's actually way hard and you think it's going to be. And if you don't take extreme measures to mitigate the risk of a blue and blue situation happening,

it's going to happen. I mean, it's assuredly going to happen. So that, kind of humility was, was one of the, you know, biggest lesson we wrote back. I mean, the ownership piece, too,

of like, hey, this is a horrible situation. People don't think we can win here. Even military people don't think we can win here. The recognition of like,

okay, we can just make excuses and say, well, it's hard. Well, I didn't create this problem. Not my issue.

You know, we'll just do what we can and we'll go home. The reality of like, no, we're going to take ownership of this problem. You know,

and then that really translates in that teamwork, that teamwork, that teamwork piece because seals were, we have some tremendously talented and capable people. We also have big egos, and that causes all kinds of problems. And we saw where, you know, we saw Army and Marines that were out in the daytime doing counter-

uncertainty operations, and SEALs and other special operations units are doing like nighttime capture kill rates, counterterrorism stuff. And on two totally different programs. And, you know, it really took a brutally honest assessment there, you know, the measure of effectiveness. I mean, here's an example. We talked about knowing where you are. Measure of effectiveness for the steel teams.

When I joined, as guys were coming back from Iraq, how many operations you did? How many operations you did? We did more common operations than any steel, you know, platoons as Vietnam. That was the measure of effectiveness. We captured X number of bad guys. You know, the only,

we captured more bad guys or killed more bad guys. Those were the measures. And Jock, to his credit, you know, really looked at the situation and said enemy attacks are up 300%. And they actually control real estate, like major cities, two-thirds of Ramadi,

US force can't even go there. It's Al-Qaeda in Iraq battle space. Like, we're not winning. And we realize really quickly, like we can do these operations and talk and high-five ourselves about all the combat ops we accomplished or the bad guys we killed or captured.

And if U.S. forces lost in Ramadi, like we all lose. so that really helped us realize like we're all this this is we're here to help if u.s. forces win we all win so us forces and our coalition partners the Iraqi forces if we win you know if if if we win the overall team wins we all win and and that's really what the mindset that changed you know for us to say okay we're here to support these guys and we did tons of capture kill raids and capture much of bad guys and but the operations that had the most impact I'm I wasn't a lead element.

I was a supporting element to a thousand soldiers and Marines at 50 tanks and dozens of heavy combat engineering vehicles. You know, we took 24 seals and some EOD bomb technicians and, you know, maybe a squad of Marines and a handful of Iraqi soldiers in with us on those operations. So we were the supporting element to help the overall team win. And I think that's something that it's a big recognition of, you know, the first law of combat is cover,

move for a reason because any team, any organization, you know, I know as you guys grow with your team, it's easy for us to get focused on our key task within that particular team, whether it's, you know, the media team or the product development or the sales and you're focused on your goals, your task. And that's important. I mean, you got to have people focus on those goals and tasks. But when they forget that it's not about just that goal and task for that immediate team within the greater team, it's about the overall team being successful. you know, that's what really makes a difference. And when people start seeing, okay, it's not about me.

It's about, I mean, to really summarize cover move, it's the, it's not about you, it's about the overall team and the overall mission, the strategic goal that you're trying to accomplish. And when people start thinking that way, it's game changer. And you get a whole group of people that are just, you know, they're never going to say,

hey, that's not my job because that's the opposite of cover move. They're going to do whatever it takes to help others on the team accomplish their mission so that everybody can accomplish the overall mission to win. When you go into businesses with echelon front, how often do you hear people say, that's not my job? I hear it. I definitely hear it. It's, but as we talk about the concept of cover move,

they actually think they're doing a good thing by saying, that's not my job. Well, that's your job. You need to do that. That's, I'm going to do this over here. And when they find, when they understand that like, actually, what I need to do is to do whatever it takes to actually help the team win.

And sometimes those teams don't want to help. I mean, some of the original efforts that we made to go in and support, there's one army unit in particular, he's a good friend of mine now, but at the time I walked in and talked to this army company commander. We had 200 soldiers, a dozen tanks, you know, and about another, I don't know, 100 Iraqi soldiers assigned to him. And I introduced myself as the Baton commander, said, you know, I'm Lieutenant Lafab and I'm Charlie Baton commander. here's what we can do to support you. I've got these, I've got, you know, J-Tax that can control aircraft. I've got combat advisors to Iraqi soldiers. I've got snipers that can support you.

You have, you're here to help you. Where can we help? And he said, shouldn't you be riding a ship in the Persian Gulf? You know, and I found out later that he'd been treated very poorly by another special operations unit who had not shared intelligence with him. It caused all kinds of problems in the battle space. They've been highly unprofessional. and so he thought we were just going to be a bunch of problematic losers, you know,

that we're going to be, he didn't think he actually needed me. I knew that we could help his team and that we could make sure more of his soldiers came home alive as a result of what we were going to do. And we could help him get in some areas that, you know, maybe he couldn't even get into at this point. And so I also knew that if we didn't have a good relationship with him, I was going to be sitting on the sidelines in the Battle of Ramadi, you know, even though we didn't call that at the time,

we just kind of knew this thing was setting up to be the big push into Ramadi. And so we had to check my ego and demonstrate to him that we were going to be, we treated him with professionalism all the time. We shared intelligence with them. We worked to support him and everything that he asked us to do. And, you know, he and his soldiers were incredible, incredible warriors. There, every single time that we called for fire support from his tanks, he personally mounted up in his tank, you know, and came out with another tank, you know, these two tanks rolling out in a section. every single time we called him. That's amazing.

Rolling down roads where he had every expectation they were going to get blown up. City of Vermont, I think in just the small city, a few miles across, they had nine M1 Abrams tanks completely destroyed. In just the six months

we were there with those guys. So 15 Bradley fighting vehicles, 34 humbes. I mean, just, you know, some of those humbies completely wiped out

with everybody inside, you know. And yet that's the kind of relationship we were able to build with them because we were there to help them. You know, anytime he asked us to do something, we did it,

you know? and it was the same. So when people stopped looking at their task and thinking, hey, that's good for me. Oh, it's not my job. You know, whatever somebody needs, you know. Now, you can't neglect your job. You can take any of these things too far, you know, in one direction.

If I'm just neglecting my job to do someone else's job for them, that's a problem. But you need help from me. I'm going to help you. And we're going to do everything we can to help you so that we all can win. What made you guys realize, you know, when you left the military transition down, there was a massive opportunity to help businesses.

Do you experience firsthand? Or do you just know that there were leadership issues out there? It's a great question. I mean, I'm sure like you, like I had no experience in the civilian world. I mean, in, now, I didn't even get to go to normal college, right? Because the Naval Academy is like you're in the military from the time you check in on, you know, induction day. Right. Or at least you think you are.

It's kind of their little invented world within the Naval Academy. but and that was a great experience for me but I didn't know anything about the outside world and the benefit for me is I got a chance when we came back from Ramadi I got a chance to take over that leadership course and for two years every single sealed officer I graduated from our training pipeline

I got to try to teach them everything I wish someone had taught me before I went into a really difficult humbling combat situation as a leader and I had five weeks to do that I have four-week, classroom, week-long field training exercise. And it was awesome.

I loved every second of that. We put not only SEAL candidates through training, we had a bunch of the Crow officers from the Air Force, that their pararescue teams, about a dozen of those came through the program. We had some NATO allies like Norwegian Marine Yeagers that came through as well. So I really got to see what works and what doesn't,

and it was a really incredible leadership laboratory. You're putting different people in different situations and kind of monitoring that. Jocko did the same thing too on the, you know, training detached. He took over the, basically the entire training for the West Coast SEAL teams. And so those things were incredible leadership laboratories,

but I still didn't really understand what leadership was required like, you know, in the civilian world. And we had a, there was a company that came out and did an offsite and in San Diego. And part of that was one of the junior officer, I'd put through the, that junior officer training course, that leadership course I was running.

when I was I was now serving as the executive officer at a seal team and he was one of the platoon commanders there and he asked me to come in and talk about leadership to this civilian company they had a few of their key leaders out there and so they came by the team you know that he kind of showed him around and so I walked in there and just answered some questions and and we blocked off I was like I was like well how long do you need he's like I don't know maybe you know man just talk time for 20 minutes they'll love that we at like the hour and a half mark they were still asking questions you know and they were still taking notes and and I realize everything that they were dealing with is is always the hardest part

about leadership right it's not about combat leadership is not about you know the most difficult parts are not about planning an rescue missions under fire it's about getting a group of people with you know from diverse backgrounds with different skill sets and different perspectives to work together as a team to accomplish a strategic goal and that's what they were dealing with and and and it was when we started talking about this concept trying to give people ownership and utilizing decentralized command instead of dictating everything to everybody and and this cover and move so seeing the these different you know disaggregate organization these silos within their greater team that weren't actually working together supporting each other you know

communicating in a manner of simple clear concise so everybody understands prioritizing and focusing you know efforts and dedicating resources to the highest priority effort i mean these were all things that they were struggling with and they were it just directly resonated with them i mean that was kind of the first, first eye opener for me of like, oh, this, this leadership is leadership is leadership. It's the same on the battlefield as it is in the business world or anywhere else. It's the same on the home front as well. Man, extreme ownership is the most powerful tool you have in your marriage and, you know, in your family, in your community. I mean, it's, it's, it works. It works in all aspects of your lives. When you guys go into businesses,

are you working primarily with the leadership team or is it the organization as a whole? It all depends. I mean, we work with leadership teams. Certainly, we work with various levels of leadership. And then we give, we have what we call leadership development and alignment programs that we create for companies. And so that can attack a certain level of leader of like, hey, we're going to work on these mid-level managers, or these department heads here, or we'll have a senior executive program, and we'll have a frontline leaders program.

And then maybe part of that is doing an all-hands presentation where we're introducing these concepts to everybody. So it's really all of it. Is there a certain size business you like to work with? You know, it's a great question. I mean, for us, the leaders we like to work with are just leaders that are willing to, they're open and they're willing to learn. And I think that's, we generally don't have people bring us in to talk about the concept of extreme ownership if they're not open and willing to learn.

Every once in a while, you will have people like, you know, I got a senior leader that wants you, I want you to come in and fix my people and square them away. You know, and you realize, like, very quickly, like, it ain't your people. Yeah, it ain't your people will get a square away, right? But that's actually good, too, because when you get a,

you can provide some feedback that maybe that senior leader isn't getting otherwise and kind of see the perspective of, you know, the people on his team. I mean, it's fun to work with a startup, you know, that's eager and growing. It's also fun to work with, I mean, we work with divisions. within, you know, or sites within a giant corporations too, you know, and that can be awesome

as well. There's, um, sometimes a giant corporations have a, it's a little bit harder to get them to actually commit to stuff, you know, or to say like, hey, we need to bring this in from the outside because they have kind of their own internal training, you know, a piece. And our goal is always to, to work with a client and create a sustainable program where we have a leadership sustainment training team where, or they, they continue that program long after we're going and we can move on in the next line. I mean, that's our goal.

I think which is different from a lot of consultants out there that are trying to keep hooks in and, you know, indefinitely. I mean, our goal is to deliver maximum impact and I hope these leaders actually solve problems with leadership. I don't know that I have a particular size of company, but it's really cool when you're working with a company that's having some serious impact in the world that's helping people lead better lives

or providing a product and service that's making lives better. and I mean, you know, we're working with companies that are, it's not just companies either. I mean, there's, there, we work with educators and non-profit organizations and ministries and things like that as well, you know, that are having to really back in the world that are using these principles to lead more effective teams.

That's one thing we're finding as, as we grow, as we scale, as we add more, you know, people into the team, as we explore new distribution channels, uh, strongly, constantly strengthening, that foundation of that leadership team to be resilient for what you're going to experience in the future. Because we know 12 months from now, something's going to happen in the business.

It's going to either stress the business or stress the employees or stress growth to some level. But if we strengthen that leadership team, we can navigate through those issues. And the more I've been exposed to the business world, I mean, as someone who's bootstrapped business from zero and then founder led to this point the people that are in this business are so mission focused and so bought in we're constantly looking how do we improve like what can we do to improve but then you're the other side of the whole 180 where there's these institutionally backed public companies who a lot of the people are just working for that company organization because

it's just a job i would assume that it's harder to influence some sort of ownership or change into an organization like that. It can be certainly. I mean, I think where it's hard at institute change is where people are just dug in, right? Where their egos have put up a wall. I mean, if you show me a problem in an organization and we start pulling the threat on that problem

in just about every case, it's an ego issue. There's an ego issue. I was going to ask that. And that's, that is at the root of just about every problem that's out there. I mean, this is why we say humility is the most important quality the leader because when you're not humble you can't learn from anybody else you can't you can't be open to other people's ideas you can't educate yourself about new methods of doing things and

and and you start getting complacent you know you start taking your competition for granted or your enemy for granted even on the battlefield this this happens and uh and and and worst of all you can't self-assess you cannot take a brutally honest self-assessment you know that hard look in the mirror to say okay what could i have done to improve that situation you know what could I have done to actually make sure that didn't happen? What can I do to actually, where am I actually weak and need to improve? And those are the kind of the people in those organizations, if they're not humble, then you're never going to actually be able to make any improvement.

And what's interesting about it, you know, as you ask the question, as I think about it, when we, Jock and I were launching this company before Extreme Motorship was written, people told us, and I'm talking to some very successful people in the business world, that, you know, I look to for some mentorship and guidance, and they said things like, you know, you're going to be really, really good in the crisis management mode, you know, for these companies. And, you know, a company that's actually really struggling

or has an issue, you know, you're going to be able to come in there and help them and use these combat leadership, you know, knowledge that you have to apply to help these guys through some tough times. And we've done a little bit of that, you know, and when a company's struggling and saying, looks, I'm tired of actually failing,

we want to actually turn this stuff around. There's been a handful of cases of that. But the, I'm talking the 95th percentile, you know, in my estimate of, of, of clients who worked with, it's the opposite. There are people that are actually kicking ass. Corrective. They're doing extremely well. They're growing rapidly. And yet they realize that they need to invest in developing their leaders and improve.

And they want to make improvements under what they're doing. And that's what's actually gotten into that success is keeping that open mind, being humble. and willing to learn and to grow and to get better. So I think that's really what it takes, you know, in order to improve. You know, you talked about investment in leadership, and I think that's spot on that, you know, I talked about the lesson we learned from Vermont, humility ownership and teamwork.

The biggest lesson, you know, beyond all of that is that leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. I mean, that's really what we learned there. And by leaders, I'm not talking about just, you know, Jocko in charge of the task unit or the brigade colonel in charge of 5,600 troops of the brigade combat team are me in charge of a 16-mancylatoon. I'm talking about leaders at every level of the team, you know, right down to the frontline troop or not in charge of anybody else, but just themselves and their piece of the mission.

I mean, they, when you've got someone who sees themselves as a leader and we, at Eschon front, we define this as if you interact with other humans in any capacity, then you're a leader. and you've got to take the leadership principle we're talking about and influence people around you to accomplish, you know, a goal. Align people behind the strategy, get people to, you know, support others and get support you need from others.

It's, you got to see yourself as a leader. I think when you're investing in leadership at every level of the team, that's the game changer. And we've seen, you know, even companies that were totally crushed, you know, we're talking companies that had to furlough two-thirds of their workforce through 2020.

you know, when the entire economy shut down with, you know, the pandemic, we saw those companies really lean on the laws of combat, like really say, okay, what do we got to do to survive, a horrible situation like this? It's a leadership, and we got to invest in our leaders. And it's been pretty cool to see that, the people that realize just how powerful leadership is. And if they're not actually investing, you know, leadership's a skill.

It's a skill like any skill that you've got to learn. And it's going to atrophy. It's not, there's no leadership. There's no inoculation for leadership training. It's somebody you've got to continuously work on all the time. I'm working on all the time. I made mistakes all the time. But as I said before, if you take ownership of those mistakes,

you learn for those mistakes, you're going to get better. Yeah, one of my favorite references in the book is there's no bad teams. There's just bad leaders. I mean, if you read that and you are a leader, I mean, for me, when I read that and listen to it and see it, it's like, that is ownership in a nutshell. You can't blame your teams. You can only blame yourself.

And, you know, for us, 2017 was one of the hardest years of the business in terms of managing cash flow. It's our first year we did seven figures. It was just three of us. We had no debt, no line of credit. We were living off the CMR pants. Like, every dollar mattered. It was the most stressful year of my entire life.

Two thousand, half of 2021 and 2022 that we're currently in, I would say has been the hardest year for me in terms of, of managing leadership at a scale and at a growth and building leaders in the business and putting the right people in the right spots in the business because it's really easy to assume and I've made this mistake in the past that there's this natural trajectory for every employee to go from starting the business

to them being a manager, then being a leader. And not everyone wants that or not everyone deserves that. You have to put people in leadership positions who deserve the leadership role, not just because of their previous role or how long they've been there. So half of 2021, 2021, I know I'll look back in 10 years and say,

well, shit, that was the pivotal point where I learned a shit ton about leadership in a startup business. I think it helps you focus, right? It helps you prioritize. And I think when you can take, you know, going through hardship like that, I mean, it's going to bring your team together

and as long as you're self-referral critical, you know, and learning the lessons, you know, it's going to help you improve. You know, as you're thinking about leaders, I think you're definitely going to find the right roles for people, you know, I think so many people have this traditional view of a leader. Like, what do you think about when you think about a leader? You think about somebody that's standing up in front of a group and saying, okay, you do this and you do this. And, you know, in military terms, it's like barking orders at people and the person that's

standing there and pointing, you know, pointing people in positions. And I think, you know, the best, that's actually not what the best leaders look like. And I really didn't learn this. I started working with Jocko. Like the best leaders are more of what we call a silent leader, somebody who's letting the team run with stuff. You know, and it takes a while to work into proper decentralized command. That's not something that happens overnight. You got to really, everyone's got to be clear about what the goal is, what you're trying to do,

what the commanders intent is, what the parameters are, where they can make decisions. but if you're working toward that silent leader where you don't have to say anything, your team's running with stuff because the team knows where to go. Now you can start thinking about the next step and the next step and the next step. So you're thinking about six months from now

and a year from now and five years from now and 10 years from now instead of just what's going on right now because your team's running with that. And that also enables you to kind of from that detached perspective, pull yourself out of the details of, you know, down in the weeds on stuff,

you start to see where the holes are. and where people need more help or more resource or more leadership development or where you need to hire someone and maybe bring them in from the outside with a particular skill set. But for me, you might be surprised here at Eschalon Front,

we teach leadership. I can tell you right now, I am the most badass leader on our team. And Ashland Front is not me. It's not Jocko. It's our chief operating officer. And she started as a part-time admin assistant. She had been a stay-at-home mom for three years,

and part-time admin assistant, and she's now our chief operating officer. She runs everything on our team. She's awesome. I mean, she's taken, just slowly started to learn these principles, implement them in her world, utilize them,

take some things off our plate. You know, as she got too much on her plate, you know, she hired more people on her team. And her name's Jamie Cochran, our chief operating officer, phenomenal leader. She's been, she was our employee number one at Exxelon Front. It's amazing.

We hired her back. just before the year before the book came out. So the Extreme Motorship came out in October 2015. We hired her like, I think June, 2020, 2014. And we've been around for at that point about, you know, two, three years, you know, kind of struggling along. But she is phenomenal. And I think, you know, when you, part of it is taking

and embracing the leadership principles that we teach. And, you know, we got to continue to develop our leaders on our team. I think everyone has to do that. You got to invest in those people. She'll tell you, too, like she wouldn't be prepared to step into those chief operating officer role, you know, five years ago or seven years ago,

but she had to learn and grow, you know, but she's awesome and she runs everything on our team. And I had to get to a point where I was cool being like, hey, I'm, I, it's let her run with that.

She's going to do a better job than I'm going to do it. And by the way, even if I see the world, you know, maybe my plan's slightly different. Like, who cares? Like, let her run with her.

her plan. You know, you and I were talking before this too. I mean, Jocken had some tough conversations around that as we started to grow and, and our team is, we have about 30, 30 or so full-time employees now. I mean, we're still a fairly small team, but that's massive growth where it was me and Jocko and Jamie for a long time. You know, and then a couple, you know, leadership instructors came on board. And so we started to grow a scale of the last couple years. And Jockeye had some conversations of like, hey, what do you actually want to do? You know, what do you want to focus on? and a couple of things that I was really having a hard time letting go of.

You know, it was, he said, hey, do you actually want to do that? And I thought about that for a second. Once I kind of put my emotions to check, let my ego, you know, kind of deflate to say, no, I actually don't want to do that at all. He's like, cool, man, well, let Jamie and her team over that. All good. They're perfect.

And that's exactly what you have to do. So if you're working toward the silent leader, let the leaders on your team step up and lead, you know, empower them. And a lot of times that happens, when people, we become the easy button for our teams. Like if I'm working for you and I'm coming to you and saying, hey, Nick, what should we do in this situation? And you're like, talk me to do that.

Okay, do this. And every time that you do that, you're just training me to come ask you to solve every problem. You're solving every problem all day. You're being the easy problem. You're being the easy button for your team because I don't have to make a decision. I don't have any responsibility. It was you.

And the best thing you do for a leader in that situation is like, what do you think we should do? And either they come up with a great plan, great, do it. Or they come up with a, that's actually how it started out with Jamie a lot of times. Hey, what do you think we should do? Well, I think we should probably do this. You know, like, okay, why don't you do that? And then so we got this question a little bit.

And then it became, hey, here's what we're doing, you know. That reminds me of, I was a brand new LT here at Fort Hood. And my first week is a PL. What do you serve with? First Calf, first brigade, 212. Outstanding. And I discovered this issue in the motor pole. I was like, oh shit, I'm going to take this.

My company commander, Captain Sorrell's. I'm going to tell him I found this issue. So I walked in his office, stood detention. Sir, I identified this issue. I just wanted to let you know. He goes, okay, well, what's the solution? Oh, sir, I don't know. I'm just bringing you the problem.

He's like, don't ever come back into my office with a problem unless you bring me a solution. And I'll never forget. I was so embarrassed. I'll never forget that. And from that moment on, I tell the team here all the time, and it's deeply embedded into the roots in DNA, a BPN, don't be a problem identifier,

be a problem solver. Let's find solutions for problems rather than bringing problems to leaders for them to solve. It empowers them, it helps them, you know, find the solutions and help grow the business.

That's an awesome lesson. And I think what's wild about it, though, is right, you probably thought you were doing a good job. I did think I was doing a good job. You're identifying a problem. you're bringing it to the boss to make a decision about how to you know well how best to solve that problem particularly as a junior you know leader you know new to the job and you're leading on somebody with more experience so I think that's that most people think they're doing a good job by simply just being given a task and then waiting until you know then you know comes to that task waiting you know waiting for the next task and I think you know that's why decentralized command is such a powerful thing that even if it's above your pay grade to solve a problem I at least want a recommendation being made because if you're close to that problem, you're in the best position

to come up with a solution to get that problem solved. And I think that when you get, you have to kind of re-educate people about that. Like, hey, that problem isn't going to solve the self, you've got to figure out a solution for that problem. And you're not helping your boss

if you're just dumping all the problems on them to try to get them to solve it. But most people are not thinking about that. And once you kind of reprogram them to do that, and I'm sure that's a huge part of your success here at BPA. Yeah. Belief.

I appreciate the time today. honestly amazing conversation, great insight, and absolutely incredible what you've done over a career. So thank you. Awesome, man. Thanks for having me. I honored to be on here with you. And I appreciate what you guys are doing with the world.

I hope we can do it again another time. Absolutely. All right. Thanks, man. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast. Please leave a rating and review on the platform you are listening to if you enjoyed it. It helps us to grow and reach more people with the intent of changing lives through

the Go One More mindset. If you are ready to take your health and performance to the next level, head over to bPNsups.com to take the first step.