Heroic Chat with Mike Manazir: Leading With Joy And Empathy

Foreign. PM on the dot, Central time. It is day one and today is a very special day for me personally and for us as a community. We have a special guest, Admiral Mike Manazar and another Manazar and another special guest, the individual who conducted Mike and I, Captain Daryl Cardone, who is currently stationed in Japan, the commanding officer of the USS Reagan. Goosebumps, tears my eyes as I introduce you. Brother Daryl's going to share with us why, when I asked him after reading Call Sign Chaos, what other leadership book I should recommend, which Daryl recommended I read, he said, you, you have to read Admiral Men Azer's book, One of my mentors. It's just a phenomenal book. He's a phenomenal man. We're going to come back, we're going to hear from Daryl. Of course, Mike and I are going to have what will be a wonderful conversation. But first let me say hello. Great to see you. Kyle, Stephanie, Coach Kevin, Brian, great to see you. And fun to connect you with another admiral yesterday. That was fun. Ryan, Paul, Robin, Gary, Jonathan, Carolyn, Christian, great to see you. Anissa, Eamon and Caroline, Justin, Barnabas dominating. Let's go. Georgina, Sarah and Steve on my first screen. Bless you all. Everyone else who is deeper, great to see you as well. Before we actually go into the intros, I put Mike on the spot 30 seconds before I said, hey, you got a routine that you used to walk through before you'd hop into a, a fighter plane or command of whatever situation that you'd be comfortable sharing with us. And you said, let's go. So can you do that for us as we check in and, and connect to the best version of ourselves and get focused here?

Yeah, thanks. And, and I have never been on a zoom call where energy is coming out of the screen. I mean the grins are huge. Brian is, he's like lighting matches all the way around the top of my screen. I mean, this is bitch. And this fits my, this fits my energy level. So yeah. Brian said, hey, did you ever have anything like a, you know, a routine? Well, for us, the brief to go fly briefing to go fly starts two hours prior to takeoff, which is an hour and a half, you know, prior to the, to walk into the airplane on that neat looking flight deck behind Daryl there. And, and the idea of the brief is everything else goes away. The briefer says, all right. And he actually says a time hack. He goes, and, and you saw it on the Top Gun movie Hack Time now, you know, and it's, and everybody goes. And their, and their brains go into the Flying mode. And the brief goes through an administrative set of objectives and then the mission set of objectives. And it's a very, if it's a very complex brief, then there will be other briefers that'll stand up and brief specific aspects of it. But the idea is when you start the brief, everything else is out of your life. And whether that's a fighter or an E2, like, like Daryl flies or, or any kind of a Navy airplane, that brief starts your process, hones your focus, and then you know the takeoff is only the first part of the whole flight. Right? And so it gets you. So we typically have a two hour brief, probably a two to two and a half hour flight off the ship. And then you come back and land and there's a two hour debrief. So there's a six to seven hour window of time where you are just focused on whatever that is you're doing.

I feel focused is listening to you to describe how you got focused so perfect. If your best, most heroic version of yourself is not here yet, then you are excused. If that didn't do it already, I don't know what will. But let's just take that breath right now and flip the switch and deliberately, mindfully invite the best, most heroic version of ourselves to join us as we celebrate the opportunity to be with two individuals who I have so much respect and admiration for, who have offered such a profound service to our country and to our world, protecting the freedoms on which our flourishing is so dependent. Let's have some fun today. Darrell. It's great to see you, brother.

Great to see you as well, Brian. And Admiral, it's always a, a pleasure. All of you are in for a total treat this morning. In 20, 20, 12 and 13, I had the privilege to serve with Admiral Menozer on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. And one of the first things that set him apart from. I've had the privilege to serve with many great officers. But when Admiral Menuser came aboard the ship, one of the first things that I noticed, you know, we, we would give him a morning update in the meeting as a, as our strike group commander. And I noticed on the first day that he was there that he took the time to learn the name of every person as we went around the room. And a lot of people try to do that, but what most of them can't do is come in the second day and nail the name of everyone who talked to him yesterday. And I really took note of that. And, you know, there were a number of other things the Admiral Told stories about, which I hope he gets into today, about being not just the commanding officer, but, you know, the morale officer of the ship. And the foundation of that, not just as the guy who ensures the crew is having fun, but he understood that that portion of the law that defines that is what was the foundation of our optimized performance in combat. And hands down, one of the most motivating leaders that I've ever had the privilege to serve with. And so much so, I followed in his footsteps and this has been a neat journey for me as he's told me the story about him writing the book is as he was going through that process, we had the opportunity to meet up in, in Annapolis and then to connect him. I knew right away the two of you would be soul brothers and this is an exciting conversation for me and I am ready to get my pen out and take, take notes for as long as he's got time.

Bless you and bless the two of you. And I was sharing with, with them before we came on. Just this is a really, really special moment for me. I have again, so much respect and admiration for both of you as human beings and just good, good, good people. Let's get to work. Thank you for being here. It is. Good morning. As Darrell said, it is 3:08am on his side of the planet. We've got some people who are celebrating a good Saturday morning, but we're bright and early. I get a text from Darryl a few hours ago. I'm going to hit the rack for a few before I. Let's go hero. Admiral Manasser wrote a great book called Learn how to Lead to Win. We're going to hear from him some ideas from that great book. Book, including the one that Daryl referenced for sure. We got to make sure we don't end today's discussion with that missed. But, but step back, stepping back and just hearing more about you and your heroic quest. Tell us about you. Tell us about your path, however you want to frame it up. And as I said in the prelude, preferably with some good dragon opportunities where you had to win some battles, perhaps win or learn on occasion. But just want to hear more about you personally and your heroic quest that brought you to this moment now.

Well, thanks, Brian. And again it's, you know, I'm humbled and, and honored to be here with all of you and we're on this journey together and you know, I, there, there's a, there's an affection that you have when you lead at the level that I got to in the, in the, in the strike group, when Daryl tells a story about people coming in to brief, you know, brief the Admiral on the, on the first day, my, my respect for those who were briefing me, you know, was, was equal to their, you know, respect. And then, and then I. A little bit of empathy, maybe a little bit of fear, like, who is this guy? You know, it's. How do I talk? Am I. Is he going to rip my head off? You know, and so there it's very obvious to me that the way you show up every day is very important because you reverberate against the people that you meet. And so you're not on your own journey. And so when you, when you. And I'll keep using the word reverberate because you put out energy and it comes back to you somehow and the kind of person you are. You know, that reflection can, can be very, very interesting. And I just like you to think about that as Brian talks about Arete and I, I just, I love the idea that, you know, when you're trying to be your best self, you're gonna bounce off other people and that reflection from you back is going to be either energizing or it's going to be de. Energizing one way or the other. And so we can, you know, we can go into that later. But, but you know, the question that wrote, wrote the book. So there's a bunch of them back here, you know, they're sitting back there and, and, and basically it's 33 stories of, of my journey through the Navy with Kelly. And we got married about half through flight school. We knew each other in high school and, and we, we got engaged when I was in the Naval Academy. So the journey is ours together. And the book talks about that journey. But there's three themes in that book that I want you to, I want you to guys that think about. The first one is, you know, when, when Brian talks about a gap for your best self, well, if you don't know what your best self is, you kind of don't know where to go. And so I had, the theme that I've come to is I had a North Star. So I someplace I wanted to go and you have to see the North Star. And so the thing that got me started in my career was, was I went to eighth grade. We're in, we're in. My dad's a US Marine Corps officer. We're stationed in Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina. We went to a Naval Academy Georgia Tech football game down at Georgia Tech. We Drove down there and dad is an academy graduate. He would. Told stories about the academy. But, you know, I. It went right over my head. I'm only eighth grade, but we go down there, we sit down on the bleachers, and the midshipmen marched on, much like you see them in the Army Navy game. And I saw those people at the time, they're all men. Now it's. Now it's. It's all. All genders. But I said, that's what I want to do. That it's like, bang. And that white hat, that black coat or dark blue coat, that's me. That's what I'm going to do. And it was just this flash and I didn't, you know, I. I didn't have. That's what happened. It was like, that was my North Star bang. And so on the next Monday, I went into the guidance counselor and said, I'm going to the Naval Academy. What do I need to do? And she wrote down all the courses for each of the four years in high school that I had to go do. I went to four different high schools and I went into the guidance counselor at each one. I said, I'm going to Naval Academy. This is what I need to do. I need your help. And I did. And. And that's where I went. So. So the North Star that you set in front of you. So I go to the academy. Well, you're not done. And so this idea that, you know, you bring your best self every day is this journey that you're on, like, it's like mountaintops or you're climbing, you're climbing a mountain and you get to an interim point still look at the top. You get to the top of that mountain and you look, oh, there's another mountain. And maybe you're going down a valley to get to the other mountain. So this big journey. And so if you've got a North Star in your head, then you're willing to risk everything to get to the North Star. And so there's failure, right? And so you fail. And so in my career, and it's depicted in the book, I've got. I've got huge failures. I mean, I failed to carry or qualify the first time in a fours. I thought I was done. I thought I was done. And the Navy thankfully gave me another chance and I qualified there. I failed to select for an aircraft carrier. You know, Bowen right through, and he selected for a carrier. He's awesome. And I failed to select all the way to the very last one was so Angry and so pissed that after all of this, this work to get to that point, the Navy didn't select me. But then the last year that I was eligible, I got selected for Nimitz and the tour was epic. And so then the third theme is resilience and recovery. Resilience and recovery. So North Star failure, because you're willing to risk everything and then resilience and recovery is recovering from the failure. And I'll tell you a secret. When you have something happen to you and you, you get hit really hard in life and you go, ouch. You get back up and you look around, you go. And what I've come to believe, first of all, there's a hand of, hand of providence in my life. And so in all of ours, I think our lives are guided by higher power, whatever your beliefs are. I believe that there's a combination of human determination and providence or God or fate, you know, to get you going. And so I've become in my life to the point where I get hit with something or something really negative happens. I go, okay, what's going to happen now? There's something that this occurred for. Sorry for the noise. There's something that this occurred for because every time something happened and I depicted in the book, you turn around and look at the, at the path beyond that failure. It was better. It turned out better, you know, so like, wow, that's why it happened. You know, I'll give you an extreme example and we'll go into the whole story. But there's a story in the book about, about being the landing signal officer for an A6 coming aboard. Abraham Lincoln at the right seater was partially ejected out of the airplane. And so he's halfway out. And it's, it's kind of a neat story. Has to do with, you know, professional competence and taking, you know, taking all of the license I needed to. To land the airplane. But I was not supposed to be on that deployment. I was not supposed to go. I was supposed to be done and rolled out. And the Irwin commander said, nope, I want a pointy nose or a fighter landing signal officer go on deployment. I realized after that deployment, the reason I was meant to go on that deployment was to be in that place in that day with my skills to land that airplane. Because other LSOs probably would not have acted the way I did. It's just the way I was brought up my whole life, all the way back to flying in the training command with, with LSO bug roach on my should, you know, has gave me that thing and so I look back and go, I think, that's it. That guy. The guy stuck out, didn't die. He got married to his girlfriend. They have two girls. And that family would not have existed had something happened. And so I think there's this, you know, there's this. There's this recovery, and there's a hand of fate as you go through this. So those are the three themes. And then, you know, what, your. Your point. Your point about, you know, what. What gets me, know what. What's the path of my life? I've been competing my entire life, you know, was competing in a Naval Academy, competing to, you know, to do good enough to get a pilot slot, competing in flight school, competing to go through flight school to get a Tomcat, competing in Tomcats to, you know, get a Top gun slot in 1985, competing with all the other officers to be a commanding officer, competing with other officers to be offered a chance to be a carrier co, Competing with all the captains in the Navy to be an admiral, and then. And then competing against all of, you know, the bureaucracy and things like that. So I just find myself with this constant, all right, now, this is the next, you know, trying for there. So I have this constant sort of a. The environment gives me the reference for how to bring my best self. Right. If it's just me looking at where I am in the gap, I would say that's really hard. You know, where am I supposed to be? It's kind of subjective, but if you got other people that are. You're bouncing off of, I think that's. That's more valuable. Is that enough?

Oh, my goodness. Is that enough? Well, we can go enjoy one another conversing about just those ideas for a solid weekend and a half. Vision and North Star failure and resilience, the three themes that are featured again and again Beautifully in the 33 stories in the book. Again, learn how to lead, to win. There are so many things I want to go off on first. I just want to come back to that story you briefly shared in which you helped guide that pilot safely onto the carrier. I listened to that audio. I googled it, right? So I googled this story and listened to it, and I have goosebumps right now. Just the calm confidence and the competence and just the fierce power that you had in that moment, being as focused as you just told us we need to be before we do anything in our lives, essentially, I felt. And it was such a. It was a beautiful thing to experience. So we'll follow up and share that because it's. It's worth listening to as just a highlight of you in that moment. You couldn't have known when you were deployed to that, you know, ship that that would happen. And that day you took. I don't remember all the details, but just that felt sense of that was what you were destined to do. That human determination meets providence equals you at your best. And that happened to be a punctuated moment of heroism, literally. But it was all the micro moments of heroism that led to you being ready for that moment that I find even more inspiring. And then again, there's so much there. But I want to briefly say too, that the way that you showed up with as an eighth grader, with the clarity of that's what I want. We call it targeted thinking. That's what I want and this is what I'm going to do in order to get it. And the relentlessness with which you pursued that. And then, you know, Admiral Menozer, before he was an admiral, before he was a pilot, before he was a top gun pilot, paid on his own dime to go to pilot school. You know, like the. The over outperform your contract, which is one of the things I want to talk about that I feature in the note go the second Mile. And your demonstration of your commitment to excellence, your commitment to arete, of which all of the success you achieved were simply byproducts, you know, is deeply inspiring for me. Again, I just said a ton that you can riff on. So take that wherever you want to go, then I'll. We'll go from there.

Well, I tell you what, and I think what I'm really happy and pleased to be able to do here is to take your concept of arete and give you. And that's what the book does give you. Like my interpretation of how to do that, you know, so if you give somebody like this recipe. Well, let me tell you what happened with me. I'm going to tell you a little nuance that you can expand into. Everybody can expand into their leadership style. So it is funny to listen to. That's fun. It's very interesting to listen to the audio of that. Of me recovering that. That airplane because you know that my heart is in my throat and I'm just like, well. And I had just sprinted to the LSO platform when I heard from the. The boson, the air boats and that the B. The bomber navigator is still in the. Is still with the airplane. I thought partial ejection. He was gone because I couldn't see the airplane. And and he says he's still with the airplane, his feet are in the cockpit. And so the mental picture is like, oh, well, you got to be kidding. So I was like, you know, running over there, out of breath completely. The point, I want to tell your. Your audience and everybody here, there's this point in which, okay, I have to be completely calm. The empathy for the pilot on the other end and the people listening is like, I got this. You know, it's like, that's a walk in the park. Come on down. We'll have a cheeseburger, you know. And so it was like, okay, you know, DJ voice. Hey, man, it's good down here. And I learned that, you know, early on from. From Commander John Roach, call sign Bug, as a landing signal officer. When it's bad out decks, pitching, weather's bad, it's hard, it's really scary. The last thing you want to do is start transmitting that sense of urgency. So when you guys are leading your teams and you're trying to get them to be excellent, the last thing you want to do is run on going.

Ah, we're all gonna die.

And you. And you've seen, you know, satire on the. On TV and movies and stuff where the leader just goes running after me, looks at him. Oh, God, okay, things are bad. So as a leader, as an. As a landing signal officer, it was very important to me. When it was particularly bad and the uncertainty and fear were palpable, you just gonna be fine. And so it's very interesting for me to, you know, my journey through that experience and reflecting on that experience, I know exactly how I felt. And then I listened to the audio, and there's even a point in the audio where I thought I would have stopped talking. Because when the airplane, when the airplane came across the ramp, like, right, right here, up for me, looking, I had the phone in this hand, looking at the airplane, you know, controlling him. Coming aboard. I could see Keith's face and his helmet had blown off. And the, you know, I could see his face. Bare face. You never see a bare face in a tactical airplane. It's always a visor and a helmet. And he's his angle over towards me, eyes are closed. And I thought, he's dead. And I'm looking straight at a dead guy, like, face to face. That. That far away. And I know my heart went. And I, I. It felt to me like I just stopped. But you hear the. You hear the. The verbiage, and it keeps going. So my brain was moving at a. At a pace and a And a. And a sense of urgency that my mouth wasn't. And I, I just, I knew I tried to do that very hard sometimes. And I remember when I was flying tactical airplanes and, and bone is probably the same. You know, there's. There were times when stress was through the roof. I mean, you know, fuel. The fuel tapes were here. Fuel low, lights were on. We call it sucking the seat cushion up, you know, through your butt. And very, very scary. And I would get. I realized when things are going really, you know, sort of south in the airplane, I would get very, very quiet and, and, you know, I would be focused on everything, but I get very quiet. My voice was. Was very low, very quiet and very monosyllabic while I focused on the, you know, the thing. So I know that about myself. But a lot of my training is to try and impart calm in a very, you know, scary situation. And I think that's a great. It's an empathic thing for leaders to have. And I, and I try to recommend that to everybody. You know, when, when things get really bad and your team is freaking out, you can't freak out. And whether it's, you know, Daryl. Captain Cardone's driving the Reagan into a particularly, you know, risky thing. And he's looking down at either a rock or another ship that's like that close and his hearts through his. His throat, and he says, this is where my career ends. And the rest of the crew knows it's there, too. And they're going, holy crap.

Well, you.

Even as the captain, you can't go, ah, this is where, my friends, you have to just give some orders and keep everybody calm and kind of move away from there. So the way, the way that you show up in an extreme or a crisis situation is extremely important.

So I'm going to go there and I appreciate you bringing us there. And that was one of the best stories you told in the book as well, is that I don't know how many passes you missed where it's like you got refueled, you're up in the. In the sky, you got refueled. Bam, missed it again. There's nothing more embarrassing for a Top Gun pilot than to miss the landing and then to miss it. Second time, third time, fourth time, oh, my God, there's no more fuel coming for me. I forget how much one of your jets is worth, but it's not a small amount. The next pass you miss, it's eject. Very good. Beautiful. Perfectly fine plane submerged in the water. And the way you told that story was genius. But I want to go into the very tactical, practical weeds here for a moment. And this is one of the reasons, guys, why I start every one of our sessions and end every one of our sessions flipping the switch. And I'm trying to personally inculcate the ability to tap into what I call calm confidence and energized tranquility, where you're simultaneously locked in and focused, but you have control over your nervous system enough to bring yourself to that point of calm. And I've talked to our coaches about what you're sharing right now, Admiral, regarding being a radiant exemplar and your presence reverberating, as you said. And then in those moments of crisis, we had this angelic, heroic midwife. Nothing could fluster her. Our pediatrician, same thing, world class. There's not one thing that could fluster him. And so I encourage our coaches. My coach, Phil Stutts, laughs when I have problems. Like, finally, we've got something to deal with here. I was hoping you'd bring me something good. I got the SEC sending me a letter and he's like, finally, we've got real bullets. God, we can do some good work now. That level of confidence gives me goosebumps right now. That level of not naive certainty, but the bend there done. That I've cultivated the ability to show up at my best when it matters most is such a beautiful, sacred thing. How did you do that? Because it wasn't something you just magically turned on in that moment you spent decades creating. I would intuit that ability sometimes more or less successfully. But what specifically did you do that you think we could do to live with Arete in those moments when it matters most?

Well, first of all, I gotta tell you, it's practice. And I was. And you go, well, okay, stupid practice. Great. What I practice against, you know, my pat, I was very lucky in my path. You know, my North Star was to go to the nail academy. And when I. When I went there, they took a cocky high school scholar athlete and turned him into a naval officer somewhere in that four years. And so I was presented with challenge. And because I was committed to get through because of my North Star, I hit those challenges and screwed up all the time. I mean, and so I think the answer to your question, you know, nobody's not too many people are going to be presented with, okay, you're going to land this airplane the first time on an aircraft carrier, or you're going to, you know, avoid a collision with a ship, or there's a There's a guy about to land here. And so. Well, all right, all right. Nasty. You showed up. And you, and you, you know, you, you reacted in this way. The way you do it is you have to give yourself the challenge that you're willing to risk for and put yourself in. In Teddy Roosevelt's arena. Whatever your world is, you have to, you know, whether it's. And I saw somebody riding, you know, the coach is riding a bike and somebody's riding an elliptical. Maybe you're. Hey, I'm going to. I'm going to do this particular bar on the elliptical, and I'm just going to. I'm going to go like crazy. And I can't get it. How do you deal with a failure? Or you're. You're leading a team towards something that's unreachable heretofore, right? And so you've got to give yourself, like, a task. And I was lucky enough, like I said I was. I've been competing my whole life against life and against the military and against, you know, other pilots and, you know, ace Air combat maneuvering, you know, not being second and, you know, the ability to try your best and, and then achieve a certain amount of graded performance and then debriefed or given feedback to perform better the next time. That's. But I was lucky enough that that's kind of how my life in the military, in the Navy, whether it's the Pentagon or whether it's on an aircraft carrier flight deck, that's kind of how it laid out for me. So I think that we learn our most when there's resistance. So whatever resistance is in your life, go that like you said, Brian, there you go, a problem. Yay. We cannot deal with something because until, like, you know, until you have, and this is kind of a dumb metaphor, until you have resistance, like weight li. You know, weight training, you can't. You can't build strength, right? So I think the answer to your question is, is you gotta. You work against that resistance, and that's how you build strength. You keep trying, you know, failure. Failure only happens to a human being when you quit trying. It's not the number of times that you go after something and, you know, maybe. Maybe the way that you had your Northstar and mine, certainly, you know, I thought I was going this way in my career. When I turn around and look back at my career, it's a wiggly line. So, you know, you're going to go, you know, hand climb El Capitan, right? And you think you're Going this way. But all of a sudden, like, you can't get over this escarpment or whatever, and you got to go, right? And you didn't know you were going to have to go, right. But now you got to figure out, right, maybe right doesn't work. So now you go back down, then across, then up to get around the escarpment. And when you turn around, you realize that, you know, your initial path, you had failed, but you didn't quit. You still got to the top of the. Of our metaphoric, you know, cliff face, Right? So. So it's. I think it's whatever everybody has in their lives. And the coaching for people is, well, keep. Keep trying. What do you want to do when you wait? Well, you know. And you'll hear all the excuses. Well, I thought I wanted to be this. But, you know, I don't know if it's right for me or I don't know if I can do it or, like, no, yeah, go. Go to your point. If you set a goal in front of you and you're willing to risk for that goal, you will achieve that goal. Nathan Hill's book, Thinking Rich, that's what he says he writes right in there. You make a plan, you write it down, and you go, I'm gonna get a million dollars on October 23, 2024. And then you just set out to do those things necessary to go do that. So if you put a plan together and you keep trying and you're, you know, you're willing to try things and you're willing to. To jink and move and go left or right, I think that's where it comes from. But. But you got to be faced with some kind of a resistance or adversity or things like that to be able to grow and. And whatever that is in your life. Like I said, I was lucky. I was. You know, all those stories. I got to. Got to fly fighters, I got to fly off carriers. I loved it. I went on 15 deployments, and people go, oh, my God, 15 deployments. I loved it. You know, I've been. I've been over southern Iraq with the fuel tapes about this much, and low fuel lights coming on, and I got a tank from a KC135. It's terrifying in the dark, in bad weather, and you gotta. You gotta do that. Otherwise, you know, you end up ejecting. You know, you can't do that. So. So, I mean, I was lucky to be faced with enough challenges to be able to create a Persona that. That reacts to that and all those stories, what I, what I realized here is how, how to tell stories to people they learn from and lead better. And so. And that's you. You know how I got to those 33. And then the things that I focus on to like to answer a question.

Like that, that's so good. And again, so many things. There two things quickly, practice and weights. If you ask my kids how you get good at anything, literally they practice like with enthusiasm after asking them 101 times, 10 times, and just that repetitive growth mindset is the implicit kind of mindset that you've brought as well, where you saw those challenges as the very things that would make you better. Whereas someone with a fixed mindset might think that those challenges might prove they weren't worthy. You said, I know what I want so bad, and I'm willing to pay whatever price is necessary to get it. Bring it on. And that approach versus avoidance that we talk about, guys, all the time is huge. So practice briefly. And then I love the metaphor of resistance training. And in the book, one of the ideas I use is from a coach of mine who talked about going to the gym and I. The chapter is called Soul Gym. When you go to the gym and your intention is to get stronger, do you lift Styrofoam weights? Of course not. It's only when you overload yourself properly, not crazy, so you injure yourself, but you overload yourself, that your body, of course, overcompensates and you get stronger. So those weights that you're talking about. And your immediate response to all right, we say the heroic gods have blessed us with an opportunity to practice our philosophy. Epictetus says when you face challenges, act as if God gave you a. A young buck who's strong and well, you want to be an Olympic wrestler, then you should be happy that you were given this challenge. You know, But I just love your reflections on that. And I want to step back. You said something that I thought was just wonderful, which was your take on arete. When you think of Arete, what do you think? How do you frame that up? How does that. How would you explain it in your experience and from your perspective? And then, Darrell, I want to put you on the spot and ask you a follow up, ask you to ask a follow up question to what we've discussed and then we'll continue our chat. But just to give you a heads up on that, Darrell, so.

So thanks for that gift. I love the concept of arete and where you are and, and where do you get to your best Self or that excellence that goes there. I went to. I went to Top Gun in 1985, and two things happen at the Top Gun school. One, they teach you how to fly your airplane to the edges of the limits of the airplane to get the best you can be in the air. Like I said, 1v1, no points for second place, just you. And so better and better and better. And then the second thing is they teach you how to teach, you know, again, that resistance against, you know, the other airplane. You don't know what that other. The. In fact, sometimes. Sometimes you don't even know who the other pilot is or what. What that pilot could do. So it's an unknown threat, and you have to continue to evaluate whether that airplane is being flown better than yours. So. So Top Gun gave me a. A way to assess where that gap is and where I needed to be. And then through this competitive, you know, nature of. Of my life, you. You were trying to achieve excellence every day. Every day, you know, and. And I, I got into a mindset. I mean, you. You get up at the Naval Academy at, you know, 0555, and the freaking bells go off and, and you're start. You start right then and you go to 2200. So. So five minutes to six in the morning till 10pm at night. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And that's. That's the first summer of my, you know, Naval Academy experience. So they drive into you this idea that, you know, first of all, it's this challenge, and you have to meet that challenge. And then the second one is driving in this sort of mental discipline to always try your best and. And always strive to be better, better than you are. But it has to be, you know, it has to be on purpose, has to be intentional, right? And so. So that you give, particularly when you. When you. You aren't given those challenges, you have to have had some means of growing up that way. And that's. That's what I find. So I'm kind of wired that way. And then I'm wired, you know, to your point, to, to all your. The, you know, the. I'll call them disciples. We're all disciples of leadership, right? So we want to learn to be better. We want to talk about. And I want to learn. I want to teach people how to lead from their heart, not with. And so people that run around talking about that, I think that's really good. But you have to give yourself, you know, some grace sometimes. You know, you fill the hours of your day and you want to Always be beget, have some tension and some strain on yourself going, what more can I do today? I mean, you know, I didn't get my workout in, but can I still get my workout in? Or did I read enough today? Or did I, did I, did I get to, you know, did I get to, you know, be able to do that thing I could do? So your daily routine, so you're always looking to fill that day, but you can also give yourself some grace, you know, that, that says, okay, I'm, you know, I'll fix these things first. But you can live with yourself saying that I am using the time that I have to fix the things that I can, you know, that I'm focused on. If you try to fix everything, you go, all right, I'm, that's it. You know, I'm up at six in the morning and I'm going to work until 10 o' clock at night. You might not be able to prioritize the things that are really important to you. You might actually burn yourself out rather than apply the right energy to the improvement phase that you're trying to do.

Love it. And again, you, Captain Cardell, I'm putting you on the spot. What's our follow up question?

Well, he hit it when he just said to lead from the heart and not from a title. I still remember the day 10 years ago when the Admiral gathered me and all the other commanding officers from the Air Wing squadrons in, into the War Room on the ship and told us, you know, so we're, we're sitting down and you know, it's an exciting day for us. The Admiral is going to spend, you know, an hour and 90 minutes with us talking about how to best lead a team in combat. And one of the, one of the first stories he told us about was that he didn't view himself when he was, you know, commanding officer of Nimitz as the guy who was going to give all the orders. He viewed himself as the morale officer on the ship. And I, I distinctly remember him saying, and I wore that on my name tag, you know, that it said Mike Menazer, morale officer. And sir, I'd love if you would share that story with everybody else because I think it's really good insight into the point that he just made about leading from your heart, not from title.

Well, thanks. It's actually, you know, this is embarrassing, but it's one of my favorites, one of my, one of my own favorite stories. So it's a good one. Yeah. So way back in 1996, I was about to take command of my fighter squadron, VF31, the Tomcatters. And we were. I was already second in command of this squadron at Naval Air Station Oceana, and we were flying F14D Tomcats. And so I was about to be the commanding officer. And I had led, in my experience all the way to that point, so through the Naval Academy, starting in 77, some leadership opportunities there. And then through, through my life in tomcats from about 1984 until this 1996 point, I. I had had leadership experiences, but not like, responsible for a squatter, the guy. And all of a sudden it became like, oh, my God, I'm about to. And 12 F14s, 350 total people, you know, going on deployment. And, and all of a sudden I was going to be the one with the responsibility. And it, it just was like, whoa. And I was Washington kind of taken by this change in responsibility. And I'm literally sitting at the bottom U of the NAS Oceana bar O Club bar, usually where as much shenanigans going on. It was fairly empty on a Friday, mid, mid Friday afternoon. And I was drinking beer with a, with a buddy of mine. And I literally said, and this is all in the context of taking command. Why is morale important? Why is morale important of, of a unit? But you know, in the military, you just order them to do stuff, right? A lot of people think military leadership to do it, and they're going to do it. It's true. It's true. You can order people to do stuff. And in fact, if you're the CEO or a senior executive in a company, you have authority to tell people what to do. But if they don't believe in it themselves, if they're not connected with you, if they don't think you care about them, if they don't think you care about their work or their result, they won't try hard. They'll do the minimum required and they're not going to risk and they're going to lead. You're going to, they're going to see a little bit of fear in, in going, you know, failing in fear and failing. If they try too hard and fail that you're going to yell at them as a leader, you're going to hold them responsible for this negative result, right? And so all of this is wrapped up. And how do I, how do I actually lead all these people and get them to do what I want them to do as the CEO? Because I'm responsible. And it turns out, and I knew this, but it turns out that, that Title 10 of the U. S. Code, I think it's paragraph 8, 9, 4, 7, like 8, 8, 947. Title 10 of the U.S. code has the duties and responsibilities of commanding officers. And it literally says. And by the way, Title 10 of U.S. code, that's law. And so it literally says in law that the commanding officer is responsible for the morale and welfare of the people under his commander is charged. So the morale and oh, okay, I'm responsible for morale. And when I became the commanding officer of VF31 because of that story, it occurred to me to put on my name tag morale officer instead of commanding officer because I was responsible for morale. Of course, I'm the commanding officer. You can. I got the label on me. I'm the CEO. The star, you know, or star in our uniform, a little star with a wreath around it is over here in a pocket. People know I'm the commanding officer, but I put morale officer on my name tag. And it would, would stop people. Are you the fun officer? What. What is that? And I'. Well, according to Title 10 of US law, I'm. I'm responsible for morale. So I am the morale officer, and I carry that every single command. My command of VF31, command of the USS Sacramento, my ship, command of the USS Nimitz and then the Carrier Strike Group 8. As the admiral, I was technically, you know, kind of not in command of the strike group, sort of. There was a bunch of commanding officers, but I still wore that. And I wore morale officer even to formal events when I had a name tag on it, say morale Officer on. And people get a kick out of that. But I. And the opportunity to tell that story. So you're responsible for the morale of the people that you work with and that work for you. Their, their welfare, you know, their families, their. Why they come to work every day, their. Their inclusiveness, a safe environment, you know, that's. It's, it's about the whole thing. If they have high morale and doesn't mean necessarily happy. I mean, you know, Daryl and I can tell you if you're in the middle of nowhere in the third month, you haven't gone to port, out on a, you know, a carrier in the middle of the ocean turning circles, okay, that ain't fun. But you can have high morale because people are fired up because of the mission and the purpose, and they know that the commanding officer cares about them and they know the commanding officer cares about what's going on in their life. And they know the commanding officer knows their name sometime and is appreciative of the contribution to the mission and the unit and the teamwork and the, and that's why I really started out and it might be the emotional drivers in the beginning of my book that caused me to be the kind of person I am. But I really want to be approachable and humble and somebody that people can trust because I want them to be comfortable with me. Because when I tell them to go, go take that hill or go jump over that thing or do this dangerous thing, they'll go, yes sir. Got it. And they're gone. And that's why that, that attitude so kind of born out of that, you know, being realization. And then, and then it was kind of funny to say it's law to be the morale officer.

It's, it's, it's both funny and also deeply inspiring for me and one of the reasons, I'm sorry, committed to you and to Daryl and to everyone who serves us, the fact that it's enshrined in law and the specific. And I also love the fact, Darrell, that you went there. It's the first idea I feature. You know, I read that and I'm, I think I, I, I, yeah, yeah, check it out. So I actually opened the book to that story Goosebumps. I forgot that I shared it in the note, but I read the front and back and I kind of whatever and I look at the table and then I randomly open a book often and I opened it to this and I knew that it would be the first idea I featured. Full goosebumps. And it's the idea I wanted to make sure I featured you and Darrell in my book. And so it's the idea I feature in, in Arete to shine a light on you and, and just the sacredness of it. But, but to quote you quoting, you know, Title 10, Chapter 5 11, paragraph 594 7, the requirement of exemplary conduct of the commanding officer is enshrined in law. You say, and says all commanding officers are required to. And then you quote the law, promote and safeguard the morale, the physical well being and the general welfare of the officers and enlisted persons under their commander charge. And I find that so inspiring and so humbling. And then the way that you playfully embodied it with the morale officer is obviously a phenomenal expression of your leadership style and your ability to connect. And it's just, it's amazing and I extend that to you. I don't care who you are. And your whole point of the book is you're a leader, whether you call yourself a leader or not, you're a leader. And whether it's as a parent or as a counselor or advisor, or at the very least yourself, you're leading yourself. So you have a fiduciary responsibility to take care of your own morale and your own physical well being. And so I riffed on that in the note and then in the book. And I just love your expression of that. Darryl, I'm going back to you. I'll bring us back to a few other things I want to make sure we talk about. But what else arises for you and reflecting on that.

Well, I mean, one of the, one of the neatest things about the story to me is the Admiral was telling. It was totally not what, you know, where I thought the conversation was going to, was gonna go. And you know, he shared, he shared a number of things in there, but during the conversation we had that day. But what, what really stuck out to me and that, what I hope everybody else is, you know, is taken away from this conversation right now and you hit on a little bit. It, it wasn't just the unexpectedness of the story or, or what he was saying. It's, you know, the, the way in which the Admiral told the stories. I mean, we had embossed. You can, you can type me around the time, but this guy would go flying every day. It was probably, I don't know, mid afternoon sometime. And the Admiral would go out, he'd fly a tanker hop and fire up the entire strike in an hour and a half, much like you're seeing him do in this group right here. But he would take off from the ship and it was like, it was nasty menager out there. For about an hour and a half, he'd fly by, he'd fly by every destroyer, every cruiser that was out there. He'd call the tower of the, you know, the Dwight D. Eisenhower and do a flyby. And, you know, you could see through this, this picture that's right here. You know, he would, he would come around low, go vertical, you know, and the whole entire crew would just look and be like, yeah, nosy, fine. This was, this was an everyday occurrence. So, you know, just, just being, just being around him and, you know, being able to quote Title 10 of the US Code and to playfully put that into who you are every day at the same time, telling everybody, you know, talk, wanting to know everybody by name and actually pulling it off was, was one of the other. Really?

Yeah.

You know, made me say so the.

Audience, you know, it's like, okay, nasty around in an airplane and getting all this kind of stuff. I know what a flyby looks like from the flight deck. And when you're leading people, people will follow a joyful leader, somebody who's obviously having a good time. And, and so I really worked hard. There were, There were leaders in my. In my life, and they were pretty good. They went flying all the time, too. And, but it was like, that's them, you know, going flying all the time, you know, taking away, you know, flights or trash from junior officers. I'm very sensitive to that. And I always would ask the. The skippers, are you sure I'm not taking, you know, the flight away? No, sir, We. We actually. We're actually overloaded in the schedule, and we need somebody to go fly the tanker. And so. Okay, well, all right, I'll go. I'll go do that. And I was checking pretty hard to make sure they weren't just, you know, pandering to me to say, oh, no, sir, go ahead, take the airplane and go. But. But the energy that you put into the team and the positive energy, and you're approachable, and you're one of them, and I'm there with you, too. And, and this is. You know what? This is just fun. Let me show you. Leading with joy, leading with empathy, leading with caring, and. And being, you know, that person. You know, you jump off the flight deck and. And the plane cameras are coming around. So, sir, I was so freaking awesome. I go, isn't that cool being able to just, you know, have a good time with folks and high five. And on the way across. I know, because I grew up for 30 years under Admirals. That's the admiral.

Yeah.

He's having fun. The admirals, they're not supposed to have fun. You know, they're always supposed to be mean and dour, and they're. They're looking at everything and say everything's bad. But I remember that we. We had a guy named Jack Batzler, that was our strike group Admiral. And, and when I was. I think I'm a department head, he. He was flying Tomcatz, and he loved flying. I remember the feeling that I got watching him get in an airplane, how cool that was. And, and so whatever your activity is, whatever your. Whatever you congregate with your team or whatever, think about how joyful you are and how. How you present yourself every day. And, and, you know, it's. It's cool to be out here in the middle of nowhere for the third month. Come on. Where else would you rather be? You know, and, And. And, you know, the silliness of that, I think, imparts this kind of. Of us together, a togetherness that. That came from that. So I got. I got lots of energy back from folks when I would go run around the strike group, like, Like Daryl said. And then when I, you know, I'd go over to. I learned how to fly a helicopter from one of the seats, and I'd fly over to destroyer in the strike group with commanding officer in the. In the right seat, and I'd jump out of the helicopter and go running in, and they'd put a junior officer in the front, take off the helicopter, go run around, and I'd spend an hour and a half, two hours, three hours on. On the destroyer as the admiral, making sure I got to know the people on the ship. Now I'd go out there and get back in the left seat, and I'm the one that took the airplane off. And they're like, look at the animal. He's flying over here, comes to see us, and he's.

He's.

He's like, loving what he's doing. And I. And I, I really. I. I think. I think that style of. Of team, Teamwork and togetherness and leadership works really well, especially when you're a joyful leader.

It's amazing. Again, I. I'm so happy I went back to you, Darrell, for the. For the continuation of that conversation. And then the word that arose for me as you started sharing, Darrell, and then as you started reflecting back, admiral, is joy. And then you said it out loud, but it's the joy that is palpable in you right now, in your celebration of what you had an opportunity to do with your life. So as much as you were driven to lead, to win, and as competitive as you were, you were competing against your best self. Over and again, you use the construct of the Navy and the different tiers, but it wasn't joyless. There was this deep sense of true effervescent joy that Joseph Campbell would call bliss, you know, and he literally said, as. As I happen to be the guy talking about in finding joy in finding Joe, that there were three jumping off points to enlightenment in ancient India. In Sanskrit, sat Chiddananda, beingness, consciousness, and bliss. And Campbell said, and I think we're aligned on this. I have no idea, if I'm honest with you, what proper beingness is or consciousness. But my bliss, my joy, when I feel most alive like that, I get. Let me do more of that. So your entire life, to me, is A demonstration of that heroic truth. And I have goosebumps again. That true sense of grounded, purpose, driven, mission oriented joy is why what I feel from you right now, what Darrell, I think feels from you right now and 10 years ago, and everyone who's had the opportunity to work with you and be led by you and I, I just really appreciate you demonstrating that truth. And again, everyone here, I'm seeing heroic moms unite. You know, I'm seeing Anissa, who teaches music. I'm seeing different people who do different things. What if we can groundedly turn up the amplification of that joy? And I'm thinking of you, Darryl, now as a performer, musician, turned aircraft carrier commanding officer. Like, turn it up, baby.

Yeah, let me. You know, you said it just a second ago, mission and purpose. And I gotta jump in here because I just love this idea, so. And when Daryl Bone Cardone for the thing sends me the picture, like within the first week of him up there jamming with that guitar, I can tell you I know exactly how that crew felt when he got up there. Like, oh, my God, that's the captain. And just rocking and rolling and losing themselves in the music. That's exactly right. It's, it's. And I would heartily commend everybody, and you've probably all read it, the book of Joy 2016 by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu. And it's, it's. The guy who is the assistant to Archbishop Tutu writes the book. And it's the Eight Pillars of Joy. And it's, it's not, you know, you don't run around like, happy all the time. And, and, you know, this idea of joy is exactly what Brian just said. It's, it's a mission and a purpose. I can tell you for a fact, I do not get up seven days a week and go around and go, hey, I'm a joyful guy today. You know, literally when I'm not having a very good morning, I get up, I literally go, what am I grateful for? And I look around, I know that's a very common practice, but it's often not applied as you, as you. Okay. I'm grateful for the weather. I'm grateful for where we live. I'm grateful for this. It's a, you know, I do. What am I finding joy in? And, and I'll, I'll share with you. A couple of Decembers ago, December of 2020, my neighbor, we're smoking cigars and drinking bourbon. He goes, what gives you joy? And I said, I don't know, I don't know what gives me joy. And so it's this journey that we're on that you, you said it, sense of mission and purpose and connectedness with it and, and you know, the mom's doing the thing and the community people, and especially when you're, you are, when you're material in, in the leadership of this, this community, you, you have some role in the community that, that you, you get that, that joyfulness out of and the phenomenon. For me, they're really bringing it home. That Daryl can talk about is the CEO of a nuclear powered aircraft carrier is the best job in the galaxy. It goes about three years and the, and the lore is that that's the longest a human can go without sleep. That's why it's only three. Because every single night you get called at least once, if not twice, if not three times. Either the reactor or a person thing or airplanes at sea or at home. And the amount of stress on the commanding officer, the things that are weighing on their brain 247 is immense. And we're all trained to go there, but it's immense on the commanding officer, on no other person on the ship is, is it minutes. But you know what? For 30 months in the command of Nimitz, I had a ball. And I cannot answer the question for myself about the most stressful job I ever had was the CEO of the aircraft carrier. But I was a happy, joyful leader of Nimitz the entire time. And I don't know why. The stress was excellent for me. It was, it was my, my environment. And maybe it's because I was the captain. And maybe Daryl can, can talk because maybe when you have that much control over your environment and you can take, you know, when you have the control, the amount of stress around you, you're controlling that ball of stress with you. Maybe that's it, but it's that, it's that feeling of belonging and purpose and mission, Brian, that you just said, that's what gives somebody joy in a leadership position.

Well, let's, let's pull that thread a moment a bit further in a moment longer. The ancient Greeks had a word for that too. So the reason we want to live with arete and express the best version of ourselves via virtue, excellence, is to experience what Aristotle calls the summum bonum of life, which is eudaimonia, which means good soul, which we incorrectly translate into English as happiness. But it's more like what we're talking about. It's a deep, grounded sense of joy. And I'm still trying to frame it up because same with me, when I went through some challenges recently over the last year with some stuff with heroic, I felt more alive and more. More eudaimonically joyful. But it held all of the emotions I had never been under more pressure and more stress and all the other things that go with meaning. And that that arose for me too, is that stress goes with meaning. The deeper the meaning, the deeper the stress. And when we can hold that frame, then it all becomes an opportunity to practice our philosophy and to feel that aliveness when we know we're doing what we're here to do, you know, and there's something about that that I think approximates the impossible to capture that we're discussing right now. But I love that idea of eudaimonic joy that holds all the emotions. And the analog for, for many would be the, okay, you as an aircraft carrier commanding officer and Daryl now it's like going up Everest. So I've decided I'm going to summit Everest. Now, when I'm on Everest, by definition, the weather's not great and I can expect X number of storms. Am I complaining about those storms when they happen? No. I realize that that's what I signed up for. And those give me the opportunity to show the world and myself what I'm capable of. And it's something about that. To go back to your big three the vision, the expectation of failure. We can't be surprised by it. Of course you're going to fail in the process of trying to do something great. Don't give up the dream. Get back to work. Demonstrate your third pillar of resilience. Repeat, and something magical happens, I think, in that constellation that again, you capture so Beautifully in your 33 stories, kind of triangulating from different vantage points, but get me fired up because it's such an important and exciting idea and so coherent with everything that we've been talking about brought to life in your stories. And to have you here, Darryl, as well, it was just so fun. Are we working or playing right now is the question. Because, you know, we talk about this with our community when we do it right. Abraham Maslow says the apparent dichotomy between work and love or work and play dissolves. And I think that's again, a theme that you've demonstrated, that Darrell's reflecting in your leadership. That's just so cool. Darrell, what else you got? We got 13 minutes.

Hey, let me inject something.

Yeah, please.

I want to say something before Daryl, you know, takes us in a different Direction, this idea of doing what you. What you love doing. I love the provocative question. If you knew you're going to die tomorrow, 24 hours from now, what would you do different? And I think about this all the time. I don't know why, but I always want to answer. Nothing. I would do nothing different from what I'm doing right now. And if the answer is, oh, well, I'd go here, I'd go there, then you better change your life. Because if you're wasting that time, since you know you're not going to die, you always want to be able to answer that question. Nothing. I'm good. You know, I'm good right where I am, doing exactly what I'm doing, because I get joy out of this whole mission, purpose, life where I am right now.

So.

Good.

And then that brings me back to the other thing I made a note of. Then I'm going back to you again, Darrell. The ultimate aim and everything that we do is to activate what we call Soul Force, which is palpable in you. And that's the moral charisma is what has been described in different cultures, but that sense of a felt sense of rightness in a human being that we talk about in a note called trying not to try, where a neuroscientist talks about the fact that we have evolved to be able to detect that felt sense of rightness and integrity and care in others, and we want to follow them. So that's what Darrell and his crew felt when you walked in and gave that talk. It's what I feel from you right now. It's what I aspire to be for our community, and it's what I absolutely challenge our community to be for their community. It's Soul Force activated. That. That is, from my vantage point, all of our superpowers. It's what all of these heroes of mine embodied. And I really, really appreciate you bringing it, bringing it and activating it with us today, because I can feel it. Daryl, what else you got?

Well, you know, first I'd say I. You know, I don't. I don't think joy is given. I think you need to find it. And when you're, you know, as the Admiral said earlier, when you're in the arena and you're out and you're pushing on your boundaries and like you talked about, Brian, when they're set alignment and coherence there and, you know, you're narrowing that gap moment to moment to moment, that's. That's the place that I think you find the joy and, and I. My wife Kate gives me the business all the time because I tend to watch things that I like over and over and over again. And one of the things I just rewatched was the Last Dance, the Netflix documentary on the 90s bulls. And Michael Jordan in there, and one of the guys, I think it was Mike Vancel in there, says that Michael Jordan, this true separator, you know, here's. The guy was probably as good at his job as anyone has ever been at their job, like, ever, probably, particularly in sports. But here's a guy who was so.

Present.

That was a separator for him and then found joy in those moments when the game was on the line and wanted the ball. And I think, I think that's the same thing the Admiral was talking about, is that when you are in the arena and, you know, you are out, you're pushing yourself, your crew, your team to the limit. And, you know, you are embodying, as you say, that best version of yourself, moment to moment to moment, doing what you love, doing what inspires you. And, you know, the going after your, your North Star, that's. That is personally where I find joy.

Yeah, I, I tell you what, I resonate with that a lot. And I'm looking at the carrier behind Daryl, you know, I, I have no regrets or, you know, not regrets. I. People ask if I miss flying, you know, because of all the tactical air time. And I go, no, I don't actually. But my happy place is in the cockpit of a fighter, you know, at sea and this joy. And I'll give you a tactical parallel with, with Michael Jordan. And, and, you know, being in that moment of joy. So, you know, when you're running around, daytime at the carrier is like a varsity sport, you know, and so coming around and, and, and are doing arrested landings. And so when we had to do these things, we call it bagging traps, you know, getting a bunch of traps or bagging traps. When you're out bagging, you're actually, all you're doing is landing and then turning downwind and coming around the corner and landing again. And every once in a while, there'd be a situation where they would, they would, you know, I was. I got to go get some extra traps. Not, not as a senior officer, but actually as a, as a junior officer. And, and you're, you're. When there's nobody down, when you can, you do a little circle. And so you touch down your trap, you go to the cat, they shoot you off the cat. Of course, all that Strain and stress, you guys. You know, you can see that in the videos and you listen to people talk about it and maybe some of you on the, on the screen have experience, but it's, it is a demanding, grueling environment, but it's so much fun. And you're, go out the cat and then boom, at the end of the cat, this big turn. And what I used to do was I never wanted to stop my turn, come all the way around the corner, you know, come down in and then get a centered ball all the way to touchdown, hit a three wire, boom, roll out, go to the cat again, do it again. And you just do this and, and you're in the zone the entire time. And you're, you're looking for the slightest deviation from the technical numbers of the pattern and, and you're, you're completely blowing away standard procedures. You know, usually you climb upwind and then you get to altitude and you level out and you turn downwind and you go a little ways and you come this way and you come off here. No, no, no, you're, you're, you are Michael Jordan from the Key. In a fighter being able to do little circles around there and trapping every time and getting good grades doing it. You know, there's no deviations and battles is, you know, it's like, okay, you know, okay past three wire, you know, didn't see anything. You know, go to the, go to the cat, do it again. And it's just this, you're immersed in, in the process and, and anytime you're immersed in something that you're in the zone or you're, you're in that purpose or that feeling and you're in your, in it and all of a sudden you just pause for a second and go, wow, I love this. This is awesome. I love being here. And it can be, it can be anything that gives you that sense of feeling that you're succeeding in a mission and a purpose, you know, that particular second. And you know, if you're lucky enough that it happens to you every single day, every day in a row, then you're, you're leading a great life and sometimes it just kind of shows up and you, you are your best at that point and you, and you engage, right? And you, you go for it and you probably find yourself having to fix some things, but, you know, you get out and you miss it being there, right? You, you miss, you miss being part of that.

Which is another answer to your question of how is it possible that in the 30 months in which I worked the hardest I've ever had. I had the most joyful, deep sense of purpose. It's the number of moments in your day. The relative percentage of flow moments, vis a vis moments was insane. Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the idea of and studied the science of flow, did a survey where he's like, all right, well, no, he tracked people with a beeper back in the day, right? And he buzzed him and said, all right, what are you doing and how do you feel? Right? And then he asked them, what do you really want to spend time doing? Everybody wanted to spend time in leisure, watching tv, sipping pina coladas. That's what they wanted to do. But when he asked them what they were doing and when they felt best, it was all when they were fully engaged and they felt moderately depressed when they were doing the things that, like watching TV that they thought would give them joy. So our society is so backwards. We want to avoid challenges, we want to avoid anything that might stress us out. And then in the process, we miss the opportunities to do the truly eudaimonically joyful and of course, heroic. And again, so fun to be able to make so many intellectual distinctions. In the process of talking about something as fun, I could feel your joy. And oh, my goodness, I feel like I'm up there when I'm reading the book and listening to you in that jet, showing up again with that deep sense of on my whiteboard, I have a palpable sense of urgency. So blessed to be connected to a couple of the the Most senior Navy SEALs back in the day. And I was blessed to receive their little booklet that aspiring seals get before they go through the training. And it's literally become like a bible for me where I'll open it up and I'll flip it to a page and just read it and be astonished by the level of commitment to excellence and to service, by the way, to something bigger than themselves. And the phrase palpable sense of urgency. This moment is your opportunity to be your best self. And again, we think that relaxing and doing whatever is going to give us joy. But it's that beautiful felt sense of urgent desire to show up and get a little bit better in service to something bigger than ourselves. That is the true source of joy. We've got three minutes, and time flies when you're having fun with friends. Darryl, I am so happy that you were able to join us at what is now 4:10am Admiral, what have we not discussed that you want to make sure our community hears from you? And I'm hoping this is part one of at least another chat that we can have. But just wrapping this up, what is it you want to leave us with as we learn how to lead to win?

Well, thanks. First of all, I get the opportunity to do, you know, podcasts and things like that. This has been. I am not kidding. This has been the most energizing discussion, the comments, and I'm so. I wish we were all in person, because I want to. I would spend hours with all of you. We'd be in there for six to eight hours, I guarantee it. Answering the questions and bouncing off each other and taking energy. This has been. Brian, congratulations. You have created Arete on a video screen. So I. I'm so happy. I. I want you. You know, we've talked about it. Please get the book. And it's not because I want to sell more books, but I think that you'll be energized by the stories that. That Bone and I referred to. And then there's a leadership lesson tied to each story, which is what we didn't sort of talk about. Brian does a nice job in his note about the book, but there's. There's a story, so we all need to be good at storytelling. And then this is what I learned. And so instead of just saying, hey, you need to learn how to do this as a leader and be a good leader, you know, and there's a zillion leadership books that do that. This is one man's journey through, through this process. And, and, and so, you know, North Star willing to fail, risk everything. And, and then the recovery. By the way, if you don't get to summit Everest for, because of the storms, you can go back and summit Everest to some other points. You don't fail because you, you failed it at one time. Right? So, so keep trying. But I want that to be the most important thing that people take away. And then this idea of don't lead with your title. Lead from your heart. And the way you lead from your heart is you connect with every human being. You learn their names, you. You learn what brings them to work every day. You thank them. If you've been walking by somebody's little puka every day on the way to your C suite office, and you recognize and realize all of a sudden that you had not. You don't even know who that person is. You know, they know. You walk by their. Their desk every day, going to your office, and they go, well, he doesn't. Don't even know who I am. Stop Go say hi. Apologize profusely for walking by their desk every day. You'll never do that again. You'll say hi to them, all of those kind of connections with people. But make the connections. Lead from your heart, and our world will be a better place.

Nothing I'm going to say that's going to improve on that other than I am looking forward to our continued chat. I'm looking forward to connecting in D.C. as well, and seeing if we can actually set up that in person time together. That's gonna be so cool.

Let's go, man.

Before we go, I put on. I put on a sweatshirt. You open to Sharon. What's underneath that sweatshirt of yours?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, I got my. Is I got a sweatshirt on because it's hard work. But look, I got my heroic thing on.

Let's go, Hiro.

Under my sweatshirt.

Look at that.

That is absolutely how it is done. Oh, my goodness. Bless you. I'm so grateful for you and for our friendship and for your mentorship, and to have you here today with us is. It's an honor and a privilege, and I'm looking forward to giving you a hug in person in the not too distant future. Captain Cardone. Bless you, brother. Anything you want to. To add as we wrap up?

I would just say I'm just here as a testament to what can happen when you dedicate yourself to the principles that Nasty talked about. And, you know, you. You give people energy they want to do. They want to be you. So whatever that looks like, wherever you work, you know, when you live that out and when you see someone like I had the privilege to do, to. To see them push the edge of their boundaries, to do so every day in a personal manner and to find joy in doing it, that radiates. If we can all embody that like Nasty does, we'll all be better. Better leaders.

Amen. Learn how to lead to win. Check out the note. Get the book. You're gonna love it and appreciate you both. Great to see you. I'm looking forward to connecting on the other side. Nat, if you can connect those of us who would like to connect afterwards, that would be wonderful. And day one, all in. Let's go, heroes.

Yeah.

Let's go.

Fly, Navy.

That's right. Fly Navy.

Let's go. Oh, geez.