The True Story Behind LEADERS EAT LAST

What's interesting about the story of humanity and the concept of Leaders Eat Last. First of all, the title Leaders Eat Last comes from a conversation I had with a Marine. I said, what makes Marines better than all the others? And he said, officers Eat Last. And it's a concept shared across the military. I just happened to be with a Marine. That's where that title comes from. And the opening story in Leaders Eat Last is a war story.

I like to joke that in the military, they give medals to people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may gain. And in business, we give bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice others so that we may gain. Right.

But the true origin story for Leaders Eat Less, which is not in the book, was.

When came from an. I don't talk about it that often. I have talked about it, but I don't talk about it that often, which is. I had the opportunity to go to Afghanistan with the Air Force. I had been doing a lot of work with the Mobility Forces. The Air Mobility Forces are the branch of the Air Force that are responsible for all of the big planes that don't drop bombs or shoot bullets. So no fighter jets, no bombers, but the tankers, the cargo planes, Air Force One, all of that stuff belongs to Air Mobility Command. And the general who was in charge, he said, you've got to know us really well, but it would mean a lot to me if you would be willing to go to Iraq or Afghanistan to see our men and women perform their duty. I would like you to see what they do. Would you be willing to go? And I said, yes.

And they chose Afghanistan. And I didn't tell my family and very few friends for the simple reasons I didn't want them to worry. I told my parents that I was going away with the Air Force for a few days. True. I told them I was going to Germany. True. I told them I'd be on a lot of planes, so I'd probably be out of touch for a while. True. I just didn't tell them I was going from Germany to Afghanistan.

Minor detail. Minor detail. And it became very real when I was at Dover Air Force Base, which is where we left from. And the first thing we got was a tour of the mortuary where all of fallen soldiers came through Dover. And then we went and I got fitted for my Kevlar vest and helmet. And they asked me, do you want the extra ceramic plate? Like, yes.

We flew to Germany on a C5. Amazing experience. Big, big, huge cargo plane with, like, whole helicopters in the back. And Then we flew to bagram on a KC135 tanker, and the Air Force was stretched so thin that they were using tankers to bring inbound stuff. These planes aren't designed to land in war zones. They have no defensive capabilities. They have no flares. They have nothing. And everything was fine. And we landed in Bagram. And the door, the side door of the plane was open, but we were still on the plane. We hadn't got enough. We'd been on the ground maybe 10 minutes. This is 10 o' clock at night. It's middle of the night. They do that for safety because we have no defensive measures.

We were on the ground for maybe 10 minutes. And the base came under rocket attack. And three rockets hit 100 yards off our nose. And you could hear them. And the air raid sirens blared, and through the speaker they told everybody to go to their bunkers to cover. And we are on a plane and there's nothing we could do. And nobody put on their helmets or their vests because our plane is filled with gas. That's not going to do anything. And everybody was weirdly relaxed. And for those who view. And I think there's a couple of you in the audience who've been in a war zone, you have all the feelings you're supposed to have, but you don't have them at the right times.

So I was relaxed.

The air inside turned off. The all clear was given, and we could go to our quarters. We went to our quarters, me and my two escorts, two officers who went with me, and. And my only responsibility was to do an airdrop mission, and they're not regularly scheduled. So we went to our quarters. We got like two, maybe three hours of sleep, if we were really lucky. Got up super early in the morning. Then we did an airdrop in a C17 where we flew an hour and a half out to the middle of Afghanistan to a forward operating base, dropped down to 2,000ft, the big door open at the back, and supplies parachuted out the back. And we were sitting right there watching it happen. It was an incredible experience. Come back to Bagram after the mission was completed. And now the goal is to leave the country. And nothing's really regularly scheduled. And you sort of. You have to find a plane that we could get on to come home. And we did. We found an aircraft that was an outbound aeromedical mission, which means they're taking away the taking back home, fallen soldiers and. And Marines and airmen and sailors out of the war zone. And we had to get Permission from the pilots. They said yes. And then we waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited. And eventually we got on the plane. All of our stuff was strapped down, and about five minutes before we were supposed to leave, the pilot came up to us and says, I need to bump you. I need more room for stretchers. And if there's ever a good reason to get bumped off a plane, this is about as good as it gets. So we got off the plane, and now the goal was to find another plane we could get on. And that's when we found out that there were no other planes going in the direction we needed to go until Tuesday, and it was only Saturday. And in that moment, upon receiving that news, every fiber of my being sank.

I could feel the panic coming now that I didn't have before. I became a person that I am not. And I could see it happening like one of the PA offices. One of the public affairs officer said, I can get you on a flight to.

Kyrgyzstan, but you don't have the right visa. And I put my finger in his face and I said, you get me on that plane. I don't talk to people that way. You were in fear. What's that? You were in fear. I was consumed by fear.

We went back to our quarters. We're all pretty exhausted. And I lay on the bed and I closed my eyes. There's no way I'm sleeping. My mind is racing. But I closed my eyes. One of the officers said, well, I'm going to see if I can find another flight. And he left. And the other officer said, well, I'm going to go to the gym.

And because I was in my bed with my eyes closed, he thought I was sleeping. And as he walked out the room, he turned off the lights. I'm now left by myself in this dark room. My mind is racing and I'm consumed by fear. I am now convinced, I would bet money, I'm 100% convinced that there's going to be another rocket attack. It's definitely going to land wherever I am. And the way that my parents are going to find out that I am in Afghanistan is that someone is going to knock on the door and tell them I'm convinced.

I don't want to be there. I regretted saying, yes, I'm lonely and I'm in the purpose business. So I get this. And so I thought to myself, okay, you don't have a sense of purpose. That's what you need. You need purpose. You need Purpose, Okay? So I started inventing purpose. I'm like, you're here to give witness and then come back and tell their story. And I'd feel amazing.

And then, like, three minutes later, I wasn't amazing. I was back into deep panic and fear. And I would do this a couple of times. I would come up with some nonsense, and I think we do this ourselves. We come up with some rationalized nonsense that sort of lasts a little bit. And everything was exaggerated and compressed for me, you know?

And I. I couldn't come up with anything else. And so I lay in that bed and I. I gave up. I resigned myself to being powerless and stuck. You surrendered. Surrender. I just gave up. I surrendered. And in that moment of surrender, this intense calm came over me. I'd even go so far as to say excitement, where having now surrendered and given myself up to the situation, I decided that I wanted to serve, that I would volunteer, that I would give talks, if they wanted, around the base for troop morale. I would sweep floors if they wanted me to. I would carry boxes. I didn't care how menial the tasks were. I wanted to be there, to serve. As if it were a movie. The timing was uncanny. Having just come to this realization, having just learned what true service means, that truly to live a life of service means the choice to serve those who serve others. Not everybody. To serve those who serve others. Having just come to this magical insight, as if the door flung open. It was Major Throckmorton. He said, there's another flight that's leaving. We can get on it. We can get it. There's another flight, but we have to leave now. We have to leave now. They're gonna leave without us. Where's Matt? I'm like, he's at the gym.

So we ran to the gym. He's on the treadmill. Like, we gotta go, we gotta go. There's another flight. We gotta go. No, just as a quick aside, I'm not a. I'm not military, so I'm not allowed to wear uniform or anything like that. And I'm wearing khakis and a golf shirt, which is, like, contractor wear, and a pair of boots, and I'm scruffy and I'm little, so I kind of look like Special Forces.

So when all the other troops see me run into the gym, go up to one guy and go, we gotta go. We gotta go, we gotta go. They're all like.

What'S going on?

That was my little thrill. You deserve that. Anyway, we ran back to our quarters. We grabbed our Stuff. He didn't have time to shower. He threw his uniform back on. We grabbed our packs and ran out to the flight line to catch our plane. As soon as we got to the flight line, we could see the C17 that we were going to board. And just as we got there, a security cordon came down. And they wouldn't let us onto the field because somewhere else on base there was a fallen soldier ceremony happening. And what happens is, out of respect, everything on base stops.

And so we sat on the curb and we waited. And while we were sitting on the curb, I told the guys what I had just gone through in the bed. And I wept. It brings me to tears now. I wept as I told them the story. And one of the things people don't realize about the military is crying is just fine. It's just fine. There's a lot of crying, and it's just fine.

They hold space. Yeah. And we finally, the security cordon came back up and we went and boarded our aircraft. And what I haven't told you is the reason that this was an unscheduled aircraft and the reason it showed up is we would be carrying the soldier for whom they just had the ceremony. We got on the plane, we're the only three passengers on that plane. And the army brought upon the aircraft a single flag drape casket and laid it in the middle of the cargo bay. And all of the airmen stood at attention. I didn't know what to do, and I put my hand on my heart. I kind of felt like an idiot. And so I just stood at attention with them in this perfect line. As the army laid down the casket, they did a slow eight count salute to say goodbye to their comrade. We watched them march off the plane, hug and cry as they walked out of sight. The air crew got to work and strap down the precious cargo. And then we left. It was a nine and a half hour flight overnight back to Ramstein, back to Germany. And as soon as we got in the air, everybody, like, staked out a piece of real estate to get some sleep. And I was last because they all sort of scattered. And so I was left sleeping next to the casket. Wow. On every other flight I was on, we joked, we talked, we had a blast. On every other flight, I. On this flight, barely a word was spoken. On every other flight, I hung out in the cockpit, talked to the pilots. On this flight, I never visited the cockpit once.

And I will tell you, it was the greatest honor of my life having just learned what true service means. Getting to bring Home, someone who understands service more than I ever will. We get to Bagram, we get to Ramstein, and our final flight home is.

An aeromedical evacuation, where we're bringing the wounded back to America from Germany, some of them ambulatory, some of them not. And it's more relaxed on this flight. But in the back of the aircraft, there's a single gurney, there's nurses tending to a whole bunch of troops, and there's, like, four doctors tending to one Marine who's in what they call ccat, which is an artificial coma.

And I sort of stayed away out of discomfort from the back of the plane. And I sort of like, at some point, like, I should really go. So I went back and talked to the docs, and they were telling me his wounds. His buddy had stepped on an IED and was killed. And he took the shrapnel. He had shrapnel in the chest. He lost an eye, shrapnel in the skull. And.

They were telling me how.

Some of the trauma care that was being developed in Afghanistan and Iraq was slowly making its way to civilian hospitals back home. So even when they're wounded, they're giving back to us. And the head doc, the guy in charge, was a reservist from Austin who works in an er. And I asked him a question. Had I not gone through what I went through, I asked him a question I would never have asked him.

I said, you're a good guy. You work in an er. You save lives for a living. Are these missions different than your job back home? And he looked at me, said, there is no comparison. He said, 90 to 95% of the people who come through the ER are either drunks or idiots. He says, there's not a single drunk or idiot here. He says, the honor I get on these missions doesn't equate to an entire career. We made it back to Ramstein, back to Andrews Air Force Base. We made it back to Andrews Air Force Base. We were the last plane to land right before a huge storm came in, which was amazing that they let us land. And we got off Andrews, and there was this. The biggest rainbow I've ever seen in my life over the base.

And I'll tell you one final piece to this. The deal I made with the general was that I would go do my thing. And then he wanted me to come back to headquarters and report out what I had seen and share any insights that I may have gleaned. And so about two weeks later, I went back to headquarters and did just that and I stood in an auditorium smaller than this and all of the brass was there, all the generals, bunch of colonels, like, all the brass were there. And I told him what I went through in the airdrop and some things that I was really impressed by and some little tweaks that I could see. And I was going over in my head, do I want to tell the story of coming home with this casket? And I sort of like was debating and I finally decided to tell the story, and the emotions were raw. I mean, it had just happened and the emotions were raw. And I started telling the story and I couldn't. I swelled up and I couldn't get the words out. And something magical happened. And you realize the difference between private sector and these magical human beings. And it's happened. If I'm on a stage and I well up and I get stuck, somebody in private sector will say, it's okay, don't worry, as if to push you aside.

When I got stuck and welled up on that stage.

Two words were spoken by the four star who was sitting at the back of the room. He said, go on.

As if to say, go on, you're safe, or go on, we're with you.

And that's amazing. He didn't say stop. In a time of pain, in a time of fear, in a time of overwhelm, he did not say stop. He said, go on. And this is why I wrote that book. Because you realize the power of community, the power of friendship, the power of a strong culture that is built on love. And I don't use that term lightly. If you ask folks in the military, I've talked to the hardest of hardcore warriors, and I say, what is it that makes you good at what you do? And they say, love. They say love. They love each other. We call each other colleagues and co workers. They call each other brother and sister. And that relationship is real. And from that day on, when my friends struggle, I say, go on. And that's why that book exists.