How to Embrace the Suck with Former Navy Seal Brent Gleeson

Our class leader, who is the highest ranking naval officer in the class, actually did not survive Hell Week. He died on Thursday, the day before. We'd complete Hell Week that Friday afternoon.

During Hell Week you don't sleep for the entire week. Your body and your mind are so broken fraction of the man you were when you began on that Sunday. The 911 turning point.

Put everything in a different light. Blowing the door off some bad guy's house at two o' clock in the morning. Short gunfight. Five minutes after that I'm carrying two four year old girls in their jammies and they're barefoot. I'm carrying them across the room because there's glass everywhere because all the windows and out blew out when we blew the door off. Hit seven times in the face, neck, chest, arms, legs. His arm was dangling by a tendon at the elbow. It's go time.

Brent. A huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

I'm so, so glad to sit down with you. As a from a young kid, I always looked at sas, Navy seals. I've always been fanatical about the work that they do and the level that they serve at, the mindset that they have, the physicality that they embody. It's just, it's incredible. So to sit with you today is an honor and to get the ball rolling, what I'd love to do is ask you, what age did you know, hey, I want to go into the military?

It's a good question. Actually kind of an interesting story because I do currently now informally, but I do mentor young men into and through the program. So sometimes I'm coming across individuals who've wanted to be in the special operations regardless of what branch. Typically, they're young men who want to become Navy SEALs.

Some of these since they were in elementary school or middle school or when they were 10 or 12 years old. For me, this didn't really come about until the latter part of my time in college at university and then a year after when I was working in the financial industry. So I grew up in Dallas, Texas, did my undergraduate education at Southern Methodist University, which as I said before, I played rugby there. So my coach was a Kiwi. So bad respect, former All Blacks. And I currently at that time had a really close college friend of mine who was a year behind me in school, who was one of these young men who had more or less a lifelong dream and passion to join the military and try out for the SEAL program. Now Interestingly, keeping in mind that this was right before 9 11. So when we started talking about this, for me, I was just there to be a supportive friend. I had no inclination whatsoever to join the military. I was on the business path, and I was brainwashed by undergraduate business programs, and I was ready to go into finance or investment or real estate. And that was about a year before 9 11. And so when I graduated, I took a job as a financial analyst and he was a senior. But at that time we started training together. So for me, it was just kind of a way to stay fit, have an accountability partner, but also simultaneously help a good friend prepare for the arduous journey that laid before him. And so by nature of our training regimen, for me, like every night after work and the weekends doing long runs and all types of calisthenics, we completely changed our regimen based on the specific physical test to get into the program. And so we started spending so much time together and having a lot of deep dialogue about the implications of what he was taking on that it clearly piqued my interest, like it did for you at a young age. And I started doing research and reading books about the history of the Naval special warfare community, essentially how we cut our teeth really as an organization from our forefathers, from the underwater demolition teams in World War II through Korea, and really became who we are as an organization in Vietnam. That's really what we formed then as the U.S. navy SEAL teams. And over a period of time, the growing fascination with that community, with the challenge, with their mission, with their purpose, which I was very, very intrigued by, coupled with the somewhat boring nature of my entry level financial analyst position, working 80, 90 hours a week crunching numbers, balancing spreadsheets and pivot tables, I made the obvious choice to leave that job behind and wrote my parents a letter telling them my background. They were. Didn't go well.

They were shocked. And then when the shock dissipated, they were cautiously optimistic again. It was still peacetime, so there wasn't that imminent threat, at least in their parental brains. So that's where we began. And so I left my job and my buddy and I moved to Colorado and trained for another six months at high altitude, enjoying the join the Navy.

So incredible. And so you went to Colorado, you went to high altitude. Obviously it gives you an advantage for training. So what was, what were some of the things you were experiencing at altitude when you were there? Preparing to apply?

Sure. We, we tried to replicate as much of the training as possible. So obviously putting ourselves in extreme conditions, high Altitude being one of them. Just to your point, from an athletic standpoint, looking to put ourselves in a better position to, after acclimating, to build that cardio, build lung strength and cardiovascular strength and stamina at high altitude, hopefully that would carry over, then you move back down to sea level and it all goes away. But anyways, we thought at the time that it was gonna be that great. And it was, it was very challenging. But you know, one of the things that I tell my mentees and one of the things I learned early on was one, you know, emotionally connecting to that purpose of what we're trying to accomplish. Therefore transforming all the rituals in your life to align with that one purpose and that one mission and that one goal and essentially eliminating everything else. And that's why we left and went to Colorado, to rid ourselves of any distractions, but also, you know, essentially create a training ground that we could create to replicate much of what we'd be doing. We brought long, thick ropes, just like the ropes you climb in buds. We hung those up in trees, we had fallen trees, we cut those into logs and we carry those with us on long trail runs through the mountains. A lot of climbing, a lot of high peaks, a lot of swimming in ice covered lakes. And we would do this, we do like three a day workouts. So it ended up being about 10, 12 hours a day, morning, midday, and then late afternoon, early evening. So we did that seven days a week for about six months.

That's massive commitment. I mean that's going all in. Like we are not messing around and we're prepping for buds. So basic underwater demolition, SEAL training for the listener, that's going, what is buds? What does that look like? What was BUDS like for you? What was your experience of it?

Well, and just to your point about clarity, for the listener, BUDS is just the first six months. You know, SEAL training in its totality is, you know, 14 months plus depending upon what extra schools you throw in there before you get to a team. Now in the old days that you used to literally just go to buds so you really learn the trade and the craft of being a naval special warfare operator. Once you got to a team, you would just get your ass kicked for six months and show up at a team. Now we're training the well rounded warrior to really be called up and skilled up so they hit the ground running, literally and figuratively once they're to a team. Now you're going to continue to go through months and years of professional development, but we're giving them all these Additional schools and a longer training pipeline so that they're skilled up when they get there. And obviously that's been part of our major organizational transformation in that post 911 world of looking at the special operator and the skills they need. So when they get to a team, they're good to go. I mean, they're a deployable asset as opposed to, we got all these new guys, they still don't really know anything. So that took a long time. But BUDS is the first six months of that long training pipeline, traditionally what you'll see on Discovery Channel or in the movies, you know, depicted. And it's conducted there at the Naval Special Warfare Training center in Coronado, California, which is essentially part of San Diego, just on the other side of the downtown. And it consists of six months of training of three phases. So first phase, they call it physical conditioning. That's just a nice way of saying you're getting tortured for a couple months. Second phase is combat diving, so you're learning the basic skills of underwater combat diving. And third phase is land warfare, close quarters battle and demolition. So learning a lot of those different skills, bringing those elements together. And so that's how it begins. But you will lose all of your class, mostly except for the ones that will essentially graduate, you know, minus a few that might get performance dropped or get injured and rolled back. You'll lose everybody in the first five weeks because the fifth week, sometimes it bounces around fourth week or sixth week. But the fifth week traditionally is called Hell Week. And that's the brutal crucible that all seals share that very few students successfully navigate. You'll typically lose over half your class just leading up to Hell Week. Then you lose the majority of everyone else in the first few days of Hell Week.

So tell me about Hell Week. What makes it so hellish?

So Hell Week begins on a Sunday evening and ends on a Friday afternoon for the few that do complete it. And the beauty of that Sunday, this is important point to note, is the class will report to the classroom, one of the classrooms, early in the morning, just with a couple required items in their possession. And you sit in the classroom all day just waiting and waiting and waiting with no idea really when held week will commence. You know, it's going to be late afternoon, early evening, into the evening. But you're not sure when exactly they do that on purpose because the stress, the anxiety, that fear of failure, and that duality of knowing it's going to be at that time the worst week of your entire life yet you just want it to Begin so you can just get into it and hopefully start moving towards getting it over with. And during Hell week, you don't sleep for the entire week. So it's an incredible social experiment and an experiment of mind, body and soul. And you'll run the equivalent of multiple marathons while wet and sandy. And I say that inside and out. That makes sure you get the sand on the inside of your clothing so that it plays a nice exfoliation experiment with your body. Just a few layers of skin too deep. I mean, you swim dozens and dozens of miles in the open, frigid Pacific Ocean. You're on the obstacle course multiple times a day. It's just constant motion, constant beatings, constant running in motion. And it, and it never ends. And it's, you know, people are always looking at, you know, why do people quit? And you know, what's really driving them is more physical, Is it more mental? But you know, if you make it too hell Week, you know, it comes down to really again, going back to being very, very purpose driven. And we put a lot of research into this, as you can imagine, trying to identify those mental, emotional, cognitive and physical attributes of students more likely to successfully navigate our training pipeline. Because if we put this in corporate terms, if you look at a 90 failure rate per class, we have what one might consider a talent acquisition challenge. It's very, it's very difficult to grow the ranks of your talent when you're only graduating about 10, 15 per class. So. And obviously we can't make the training harder, if anything. Technically it's longer and more challenging and more competitive. But it really does kind of, we'll get into this later. But it comes down to, and this is even from the, the young men that I've mentored, reminding them to maintain that emotional connectivity to that purpose. Why are you here in the first place? What is that long term goal, that long term vision? Why did you focus on this for so many years? And some do, and in that moment, they can't compartmentalize. They can't get past that moment of pain or suffering. And after years of thinking about this, years of preparation, they quit. But then an hour later, when they're dry and they're warm, you know, they're just overcome with grief and regret because in that one moment they couldn't stay connected to their ultimate purpose of what they're trying to accomplish.

So yeah, it's incredible. What, what was your ultimate purpose when you stepped into BUDS and you got the Hell Week? What did you connect with as your personal purpose?

There was definitely a, you know, once I had gotten into it and I started, you know, started doing the research and reading books and to your earlier, I became really, really fascinated with the way that we build, you know, the organizational culture, the type of people that are attracted to these organizations, the type of people that are successful in special operations, whether we're talking about SAS or seals or Green Berets or Rangers or any, any of the other special operations forces around the world. It's a unique type of individual, yet a very diverse group of people. You take a quick snapshot or a quick look, you're like, that doesn't look like a very diverse group, but it really, really is. And you're getting diversity of thought, diversity of experience, diversity of education, financial background, where people grew up. Geographically speaking, you get star athletes and people who've never seen the ocean before. You get Olympic swimmers and people who have swam a couple laps in an Olympic sized pool once in their life. So.

None of that stuff really matters that much. It's a fascinatingly level playing field when you get these students into this type of environment that is so far beyond anything they've experienced before. You know, being that star athlete in college or someone who's trained, you know, their butt off for so many months or so many years to get there. That stuff definitely matters because you have to, again, you have to focus on what's in your control and your training, your preparation is definitely in your control, but everything else is going to be more in the moment and how you cognitively adjust and adapt your, your mentality, kind of reassessing, you know, what's really happening in the moment. And really the students that are most successful, they cling to that purpose, that reason of their. And sometimes it's a very different reason. That's why I have deep respect for men and women who join the military, not just in the US but across the world. Especially with 20 years of conflicts. Those who have been involved in these conflicts, you know, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle east, knowing at least at special operations that they most likely will be going down range, they will be taking the fight to the enemy. Whereas I went in, it was a little bit more, admittedly a bit more of a personal challenge. You know, going in with a friend of mine and seeing like, can we do this and be a great resume builder for my career later on? Of course, good thing, you know, maybe get into a good grad school or get a great job at, you know, in a consulting firm or a big finance institution. So there was a little bit of that, to be totally honest. But our journey was interesting in two ways early on. One, our class leader, who is the highest ranking naval officer in the class, actually did not survive heli. He died on Thursday, a day before we complete Hell Week. That Friday afternoon had severe pneumonia, turned into pulmonary edema and ended up drowning in the pool during one of the evolutions. And by that, by Thursday, you're, your body and your mind are so broken that they're just trying to keep you moving.

You're a fraction of the man you were when you began on that Sunday. And your body in some ways is like literally kind of dying in many capacities. So he actually didn't survive. So it was a very eye opening.

Moment when the commanding officer confirmed that, you know, his name is John, confirmed that John had passed. And he told us to literally said, gentlemen, get used to this feeling that you have right now. This will not be the last teammate you're going to lose. This is what it will be like in the SEAL teams. And you know, you got to keep moving forward. And that's kind of a weird element of foreshadowing because this was, you know, literally six months later after he said those words was 911 when we completed, we were literally a week between buds and starting sqt or seal qualification training, which is the advanced portion of the pipeline. That's when 911 happened and that's when everything changed.

I bet. And that moment when you were at, during Hell Week and this colleague, this friend, this, this person that you stood alongside died, how did that impact you? What were your thoughts psychologically and emotionally?

It was, it was gut wrenching. You, you, you become so close to everyone in your class so quickly, especially for those that are still there. So by the time John passed, there were, we started with well over 200 students, probably 225, 235, something like that. And by this time there were probably about 40 of us left and we lost another of 10 due to injuries and performance drops later on in the coming weeks. But you know, you're talking about a very, very small group of people and he was our leader, he was the class leader, the man responsible for motivating us to keeping us aligned, to keeping us connected to the purpose and reminding, you know, the students to lean on one another, look out for the person to your left and right, you, and we will go further, faster as a team and as a class because you literally can't survive Hell week as an individual. That's one of those interesting takeaways you look at when you think about any high performing team is that the teams that really, really thrive in adversity, every individual makes it about the other team members and not themselves, which creates an overlapping web of performance. And John was a phenomenal servant leader in that regard. So it was a huge loss to us. But in the wake of 911 and the deployments, after deployments, after deployments that would come and we started losing more brothers on the battlefield and now.

We'Re losing more to their mental health battle. It's taken special operators a longer time for that to catch up with them. I'm not a behavioral psychologist, but you've seen the effects of PTSD and TBI impact sometimes. I don't mean this in a negative way, but sometimes the lesser trained or the younger individuals or special operators are older, they've got a lot more training under the belt, they're typically a little bit more emotionally mature, things like that, that can sometimes play a role. So it's taken them longer. But you know, that was, that was the first of many teammates that we've lost over the past 20 years. So yeah, it was tough, but it also put everything into a context that it needed to be in and realizing that yeah, we already took it seriously. I mean you're, you're in SEAL training for crying out loud. But then with John's death and then months later, a few months later, 9 11, you know, it was, you're putting your big boy, big girl pants on and things got, got real.

So 100. Well, thank you for sharing that. And I guess another question there is, did your friend that you started out with, did he get through training?

So interesting question. And we always, you know, I say God works in mysterious way. Why don't say that. But it's a saying. So short answer is no, he didn't. And I remember on many of our long runs, part of our training regimen to train for and you know, complete a few marathons because it gave us some specific goals and milestones to help, you know, drive us towards the different areas of how we were training. And we'd be on these long runs and we'd be kind of joking with each other like, well statistically we know the, you know, we, the outcome. So it's like there's only two of us. So statistically one of us is not going to make it. And of course neither of us believe that. But the story is kind of sad but kind of funny in a way. So we run six classes a year. So every two months a new class will what they Say class up and begin training. And so in that two month gap, a lot of the individuals for your class are filtering in from other branches of the Navy from boot camp or officer candidacy school after coming from college or the civilian world or sometimes other branches of the military in general too. So we do a lot of, we have a lot of that in special operations where you're having people come over from the Marine Corps for the Army. And so during that two months, students for your class are filtering in. So he and I, based on the timing, we got to, to the Naval Special Warfare Training center about, I think five weeks before we actually would begin the training and class up formally. So you have what they call a proctor, which is one of the instructors who's helping form the class. They're not, they're not beating you up at that point, they're actually helping you prepare. So they're running you through half day workouts and getting you just accustomed to the facilities and where everything is and get, making sure you're getting your gear load out and all those different things. But it's a pretty, you know, it's a pretty lax schedule comparatively to what you're about to embark upon. And the week before we started all the horrible training, I got really, really sick. So flu, high fever, couldn't stay hydrated. I was just bedridden. And so at that point they're not going to medically drop you because you're not really in training yet. And so but he and I were living in the dorms together, so in the barracks there at the center and you probably see where this is going. We were roommates and the weekend before we started training I finally got better, but he got sick so I gave him what I had. So. Oh yeah, thanks for bringing it up. It's a very sore subject I'm getting. But yeah, no, he, he did get sick with what I had. And so, you know, day one he's got the 104 fever. He's, you know, not, he's not capable of staying hydrated. You can literally die of dehydration during this training. You can't keep water down and fluids in you. And so a couple days later they basically forcibly medically dropped him. Two days in, two days in. And this was the guy that put me on this journey. However, there is somewhat of a silver lining. Whether he would tell you it's a silver lining or not, I have to tell myself it's a silver lining for my own. Yes you do. Mental well being and guilt. But he also Had a lifelong passion of being a pilot. So that was another possible military avenue that he was interested in possibly going SEAL being number one. So what he did was he did like I mentioned before, some of those other folks doing lateral transfers from other branches like the army or the Marine Corps. He did a lateral transfer out of the Navy to the army about pretty quickly, about six months to a year later, as soon as he could get those orders fulfilled and became a helicopter pilot, actually a medevac helicopter pilot flying uh, 60s I think. He did like 12 combat deployments across Afghanistan and Iraq, saved hundreds of lives, saw some crazy stuff, only crashed twice, which I guess is a, that's a good thing. That's on me. I jokingly asked in years episode, have you ever crashed? He's like oh yeah. I'm like really said that as a joke. But you have crashed. He's like oh yeah. Twice.

Oh my God.

One time right in front of my commanding officer.

So yeah, any anyways but. And, and he then he transferred later on to the Air Force, ran one of our top secret drone programs and then retired after that. So he had a phenomenal military career for 20 years.

So incredible. Well, thank you for sharing that. And let's fast forward. 911 happens. You're right at the point end of getting ready to step into things. What's going through your mind when 911 happens and you're looking at the next six months ahead.

It'S go time.

I mean we already, like I said before, you take this training very seriously because they're looking for serious people who are going to take it very seriously because it's a serious job. But now going back to the theme now, it had a real purpose, not just a readiness purpose, but we're in the thick of it purpose like you will be deploying in the very near future. So you know, they didn't change the training right away, but what they did start doing, what we have started, what we did start doing back then, was bringing a lot of the real world lessons learned and adjusting some of the training. Not so much in the basic training, but definitely in advanced training, platoon level training, how we adjusted different tactics and strategies on the battlefield, different methodologies for how we conduct close quarters battle and fighting in urban areas. From looking at how we were trained and what the literal battlefield is today. And then the longer you're in these same conflicts, your enemy adapts to your tactics and therefore you have to continue to adjust, just like in business. So you're always looking to adjust, be adaptive and looking for New and more innovative and creative ways to leverage technology or to, to insert and extract from the battlefield in different ways or to, to your planning methodology. So all these different things we brought back to development programs for advanced training, platoon level training that really did help evolve our adaptability on the battlefield and helped us continue to, you know, win. It doesn't feel like winning, but for lack of a better phrase, to be successful, you know, from a mission standpoint on the battlefield. But yeah, I mean the, the 911 turning point put everything in a different light.

So I imagine. And in terms of being at war, being deployed, what impact did that have on your leadership development? Because you're on the field, you're in the thick of it, you're around other great leaders that are experiencing incredible stress and adversity. What impacted that whole, say, the first couple of years of being deployed? What did it do for your own leadership development?

Well, I think one that having the opportunity and the blessing to work alongside with and literally stand on the shoulders of giants. Some of the best leaders I've ever known, some of the best people I've ever known, but also many of us were growing together.

As on that level, special Operators, because nobody had been to war before. And when my task unit from Seal Team 5, a task unit, they call it a troop now, but usually about 30 or 40 seals, we were actually the first into Iraq in April 2003. So we were the first seals in to operate predominantly in and around Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah and some surrounding areas performing what we call capture or kill missions. So essentially hunting down terrorists on the deck of cars. There was a blacklist, other various insurgent leaders that would, that would come up based on ground intelligence that we would gather either internally or outsource to other, you know, agency partners we'll call them. And to see how leaders learn was one really amazing takeaway that I've always thought of when I think of who are the best leaders I've ever.

Studied or been able to work with, or even sometimes coach. Because you know, in my organization we learn just as much from the organizations we partner with in leadership development and as hopefully they do from us. And being a lifelong learner is something and really craving not just knowledge, not tactical knowledge, not just subject matter expertise, but peer to peer knowledge. Seeing leaders who really crave feedback from not just their peer group or their boss, but from those they lead their direct reports, if you will. And that takes a certain level of humility and a high degree of personal accountability to behave in that manner. And it seems a little counterintuitive to think like military, the old school, top down, command and control, my way or the highway leadership style. One, that doesn't exist in special operations and two, it just can't really exist in most modern organizations, military or not anymore these days. Because that's just not how high performing teams develop their culture or their structure for execution. So one was seeing how leaders learn and seeing the best combat leaders take full blame for mission failures, even when there was plenty of blame to go around. So it's that philosophy of pushing, you know, pushing the, the wins, the success and the praise down to the team and pulling the blame up to the top.

Another one was, and so there. And, and that behavior.

At the top cascades down to the team. So when you're, you can't just talk about a, having a culture of accountability or talk about humility, transparency, openness, the ability to engage in what we might call radical candor. When you and I are trying to learn from one another, let's say we're doing a debrief or an after action review after a mission. There's no time for passive aggressive communication or a lack of specificity. It's like, no, we need to talk about these things and you need to tell me what I need to hear and I need to tell you what you need to hear because it's for the betterment of the team and for the mission. And so it's uncomfortable at first. But when you see teams really get into that, that cultural dynamic and those types of rituals, I mean they can accomplish just seemingly impossible goals because of that type of cultural environment that they create of rapid learning and rapid adaptation.

And then really.

Other concepts just around. I'm heavy obviously on the culture element, heavy on how to keep people engaged and focused on the mission. But it does come back to purpose and looking at how leaders continually communicate the vision, the purpose, why we're all here, and specifically what everybody's role and job function is in driving mission success. So having an appropriate balance between the here and the now, and here's the information you need, that's all you need for now. But also maintaining, helping everyone maintain situational awareness on the big picture, which is also important and the why behind what you're doing. Because in special operations you have a very flat organization. You have leadership at all levels. Therefore everybody needs to understand not just what we're doing, but why we're doing it, so they can be more adaptive and also connect those dots when necessary, when they're not standing around Waiting for directive. They're making their own decisions on the battlefield because there is no time to wait for someone back at a tactical operations center to tell you what to do. You have to make real world decisions regardless of rank, tenure or title. So those types of. Those are. There's many more, but those were a couple really interesting elements that I've learned that I've succeeded and failed at in trying to evolve my leadership style. But you know, when I started that transition and became, you know, dove headfirst into entrepreneurship, regardless of, you know, the growth or things like that in organizations, I tried to build similar cultures where feedback, especially for senior leaders.

Was not just imperative, but it was mandated. And so that started with me. And yeah, I got some interesting feedback over the years as a. Oh, I bet as a business leader, I was like, never mind, we're not doing that anymore.

Forget everything I said, yeah, yeah, never mind.

Everyone does not have a voice. Get back to work.

That whole idea that I guess what you've said to me, I hear like decentralized decision making where, you know what, we all know where we're headed at all levels of the business or the military, Special ops, we know what our purpose is. And here's your role and you've got autonomy within your role to make critical decisions based upon what's best for the overall arching mission.

Yeah. The reason that that works so well though in special operations is because of the training, the resources and the preparedness. And people think that special operators or serials are downrange, like hunting bad guys all day long. We spend 95% of our time training over and over and over again training the same skills, training new skills, learning from one another, applying new lessons learned to adapting that training and how we're going to take that back to the battlefield. And so when you have a team that's so well trained and so well trained together and there's a culture that is designed to achieve specific results, we can get into that later. But culture has to be designed to achieve specific outcomes, not just have a nice workplace environment or, you know, people who like each other a bunch. It's like, no, there's rituals that must be put in place, such as training, such as how you conduct meetings, such as how you get feedback from one another, very specific rituals that support a well designed culture that achieves outcomes. That's why special operations is successful at decentralized decision making, decentralized leadership, pushing decision making to the furthest front lines of the battlefield. Whereas, and I know this intimately well because I've made these mistakes, you know, in my previous companies where we're like yes, I've heard and read that autonomy is important and people like that stuff. And I've heard that it's really good for employee engagement and we need to, we need to really delegate better as leaders so we can think more strategically and give people really great work to do. And so we do that stuff. But then we don't give them the right resources, we don't give them training, we don't really give them great guidance. The vision isn't well communicated, they don't really understand the strategy so we set them up to fail. And I've done that in the past where and it can be catastrophic to not just the organization of the results because you can kind of pull back from that, adapt, but to your leadership authenticity, to your leadership credibility when you do those things, when even when you mean well. I've seen this all the times with very well intentioned leaders who just are either inconsistent or they exhibit some of those behaviors that I just mentioned when they're trying to create more autonomy and trying to create a culture of decentralized decision making. But we miss those critical steps of making sure that one, they have the skill and the will to take on either more roles, more responsibility or whatever project is they're being given, but also the resources to do so in the right guidance at least the lane markers within which they can innovate with regular check ins and knowing that they can come to you when they need some, some feedback on progress and things like that. So we have to make sure all those pieces are part of it for autonomy and decentralization of leadership decision making to actually be successful.

So yeah, thank you for sharing that. And it's when I think about what you must have went through and I can only imagine there would have been a lot of adversity ambushes. Uncertainty would have been every day of the week you'd have been expecting that.

When you've been deployed.

So what type of self leadership and organizational leadership is required for people to thrive and survive in those uncertain moments in adversity?

Well, I want to share one story with you. It's not a story about me. It's a story about a good friend of mine who was.

A leader in the SEAL teams and who has, who was and has continued to be and develop, you know, as a phenomenal servant leader, a great motivator, someone a great inspiration to others despite.

His own personal adversity, extreme adversity that he's had to overcome before. We get into that though. Yes. I mean, it's obviously you're in these situations where anything having to do with the battlefield, whether you're talking about, you know, the bad guys you're hunting or the non combatants, which is even more heart wrenching when you're, you know, in these cities, these towns, villages, or on actual enemy targets where it's not just a bunch of bad guys sitting around with AK47. There's three generations of family living there. There's grandparents, there's little kids, there's toddlers, babies, you know, women and children. And so it's, it's almost surreal environment when you first, you unfortunately get used to it over time, but it, it's very difficult to digest at first because obviously it's not like the movies and you know, it's, it's, you have to really learn how to adjust your approach sometimes minute by minute. I've been in situations where one minute we're blowing the door off some bad guy's house at two o' clock in the morning, short gunfight, five minutes after that I'm carrying two four year old girls in their jammies and they're barefoot. I'm carrying them across the room because there's glass everywhere because all the windows in the house blew out when we blew the door off. You know, and it's just what that does to a person's mind is.

Well, it's kind of hard to describe actually. But you know, we do some training in that to learning how to dial up and dial down your intensity and also be an empathetic warrior. And knowing that, you know, there's certain reasons we're there, sometimes not always understood, but there's typically way more innocent people on the battlefield than they are, you know, evil people, you know, and a blend of both. But it, you know, one thing that I've seen though is how some of the best leaders have taken even their own adversity and used it. And kind of, there's a microcosm of that in SEAL training where, excuse me, like I said before, students who are successful oftentimes are spending more of their time, emotion and energy lifting up the people to their left and right than they are worrying about their own, their own misery. And that does, you know, that, that that level of altruism and sort of giving to others is a very powerful thing when it comes to giving the individual actually energy to keep moving forward. Because it's not about them anymore. It's about the team, it's about other people and it gives them a deeper purpose. And, and so you see that too on the battlefield. So there's one story about my friend, former teammate, Lieutenant Jason Redmond. This was, and he's written two phenomenal books. The first one is called the Trident and about his story, the other one's called Overcome. Kind of a follow on to the book, but really about overcoming adversity and applying some of the most extreme and arduous situations in our lives to not just becoming better individuals, but making it about other people and giving back. And it was 2007. SEAL Team 10 was on their last week of deployment and intelligence came down the pipeline that one of the specific Al Qaeda leaders they've been hunting this entire six month deployment was going to be in a specific location in central Ramadi, I believe, that very evening. So they put together, you know, a mission package, excuse me, did their rehearsals, and that night they were out the door. Well, they hit this target and as often happens, the bad guys had left already, so it became what we call a dry hole. So it's a big walled in compound in central Ramadi. And so they were starting to perform their SSE or sensitive site exploitation, which means they're gathering intel on target to see if that intel can lead them to either where those individuals went to or maybe some other bad guys somewhere else. They got a call from attack on the AC130 gunship that was circling high above their heads, providing air support that they had a visual on. I think it was like seven or nine armed enemy fighters moving across the road about 100 meters to their south into an open field. Jason put together a small team of SEALs and Iraqi interpreters and they made pursuit. Long story short, they walked right into a preplanned ambush. Enemy and bunker positions, heavy machine gun and all hell broke loose. And so ultimately they had several casualties. Jason himself got hit seven times in the face, neck, chest, arms, legs, but yet continued to lead, and his team continued to lead as well. Just because the battlefield commander, if you will, is down bleeding out on the battlefield doesn't mean the battle stops. It means, you know, leadership and decision making, like we're talking about decentralization goes to everyone else, and it already existed within everyone else. So they continued to maneuver on the enemy. They continue to communicate with the AC130 gunship, begging them literally to drop ordinance. And they were denied twice because it was too close or what we call danger close. The third time they were approved to drop. And the tax on the gunship dropped it perfectly to the enemy positions and help Them win the fight. Medevac helicopter comes in. Jason walks unaccompanied to the medevac helicopter. No extra help from his buddies who were. And. And checking in with the guys, like, how are you doing? Are you. His fake. He had shot through the face, his arm was dangling by a tendon at the elbow and he was getting a headcount. He was checking in with his guys to making sure they're doing all right, getting everybody on the hilo. And the story gets more fascinating about this mindset of mental fortitude and the type of people that I had the honor to serve with. A couple of weeks later, he was recovering at the naval hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. And he immediately got so frustrated with people coming into his room, even teammates, friends, family, you know, crying over his wounds and saying how sorry they were for him and how unlucky this whole situation was. And the doctor, doctors of course, giving him a laundry list of things he'll never do again. His serial career is certainly over. Never going to be jumping out of planes or working out or doing any of that stuff. So finally one day he was like, screw this. And so he tasked his wife with going to find some. A big piece of poster board. She was like, what the hell are we going to do with poster board? He's like, I'm putting a sign on the door.

Ironically, the only poster board available at the hospital that day was the brilliant color of hot pink. I'm. You can't make this up. The hot pink sign so good posted on the door and on that sign it said, attention to all those who enter here. If you were coming into this room with sorrow or to feel sorry for my wounds, go elsewhere. The wounds I got, I received in a job. I love.

Doing it for people. I love doing it for supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I am incredibly tough and I will make a full recovery. What is full, that is the utmost physically my body has the ability to recover. And then I will push that another 20% further through sheer mental tenacity. The room you are about to enter is a room of fun, a room of optimism and rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, go elsewhere. And he signed it the management.

I love that.

And that sign caught the attention of many people, including the then president George Bush. And it now hangs in the wounded center at Walter Reed. And he's gone on, of course, to be a successful entrepreneur, two time number one best selling author and an inspiration to millions of people all over the world. So he did all the stuff on the list that they said he would never do and more.

Such incredible self leadership. And we actually, we had a great conversation. We had Jason on the show early last year and when Overcome was coming out and he'd bring the book out and just incredible. So I'm really delighted that you brought Jason up.

That says a lot. Yeah, yeah, you could have stopped me, but I didn't know you knew the story. No, but. And so when I, When I started writing Embrace the Suck, you know, I was thinking about, this wasn't a book about me. This was a book about, you know, who, who out there can we learn from when it comes to mental fortitude and grit and resilience and adaptability. And Jason, of course, was one of the first people I called. I was like, I want to. Can I interview you for the book? So I knew the story, but I wanted a little interview him and just get his perspective, you know, years after and hear literally from. From, you know, from his mouth, you know, what that story was, what it meant to him, and then how he used that as fuel for his journey.

So 100%. Well, thank you. And there'll be lots of listeners that haven't heard that interview from early last year. So I'm so glad and delighted you brought it up. And I'll be sure in the show notes to put a link to it. But I'd really like to talk about this. And I think the title of your book is phenomenal, Embrace the Suck. So let's talk about that. To start with, why is it important that we adapt a mindset where we just embrace the suck?

It's interesting because my first book was very much. There were some stories in it, but it was very much a business book about organizational transformation, about leadership, culture, adaptability, with a specific strategic intent of building essentially a company around. But then when really diving into a lot of these programs and looking at how we develop leaders, how we develop talented organizations, how that bleeds into having a great culture and highly engaged workforce and how all that delivers results. It's all about the human condition. You know, nothing else really matters. Your strategic plan, your frameworks, your structures, your methodologies, all that stuff, you know, is important, but none of it's going to work unless you have highly motivated, highly aligned people with the right attitude, a shared sense of purpose and a shared sense of values, executing on that mission, on those frameworks, on that strategic plan. And so, you know, a lot of what we do when working in organizations, we work very large organizations, very senior leaders, who are again, all human. We all need this stuff. Like again, going back to lifelong learning, you might think that all these leaders at this global bank or that big healthcare company are the most sophisticated leaders out there. Sure they are sometimes. But they also need continued reminders and continued methodologies and tools and things that they can use for their self leadership, to your point. But also how do they do that to keep their teams motivated in this fast paced world of modern business? In this post Covid world that we're living in now, managing remote teams and all these different nuances that always keep cropping up that help us, or excuse me, force us to slightly, if not completely adapt our leadership and management approach.

So concepts around personal development are always integrated into this program. So I started thinking like, maybe there's people asking, are you going to write another book? I said, well maybe, maybe there's a book here. So I had never read a book that would technically fall into the self help genre. So I was like, I don't need that stuff. What are you talking about? And then I started looking at all this, the great content. I was like, oh, first of all, I do need this. And second of all, looking at what really resonated with me and what didn't really resonate with me and what was actionable, what was fluff and kind of thinking about some of the books that were not just popular and Goodreads, but also very actionable, very specific when it comes to tools and things you can really do to transform your life. Storytelling is one thing, giving examples is another, but you know, tools that people can do or an actual methodology on how to change your daily routines, how to change your rituals, how to implement that with your teams or your family or your spouse or whatever you're trying to transform in your life or your mental well being or physical well being or your fitness regimen. All these things need frameworks and rituals and with great specificity and so trying to find a blend of all those different things. But you know, obviously looking at, and when it came down to it, this is going to be a book about resilience and developing mental fortitude for yourself mainly, but for others as well. And so you know, looking at the very wide array of different catchphrases and quotes in front of military Embrace the suck was always one that came up. It's something that we heard a lot in SEAL training and it's, it's been around in the military for a long time. But it just, it so perfectly captures the.

Necessity to not just accept the challenges, obstacles and adversity that we will inevitably face in our work, in our life and our faith or whatever aspect of life you're looking at. But to lean into it, to know that it's coming, to be well prepared and almost in a way, and we can kind of go back to the. The Forward, written by my friend and former teammate David Goggins. But that mentality of praying for it to be worse than it's really going to be. And so really it's about kind of going to some of those philosophies around stoicism and writings by Marcus Aurelius and others where looking at how do you reframe your perspective on that adversity? How bad is it really? And asking yourself better questions. We spent a lot of time in sort of that bunker of human emotion of the why me? Why this? Why now? Why can't I close that deal? Or why did that great person just quit and go to our competitor? Or why is my marriage failing? What's wrong with all these people around me? And you realize, well, maybe it's you, first of all. Second of all, you know, are you really looking at through the right lens? So embrace the suck. Has all the. It's not just about being macho or being tough for the sake of being tough. It's about looking at the world through a proper lens, questioning your perceptions and looking at what is real reality, and then finding. Finding the adversity that matters to you that's part of your purpose. So, you know, I talk in the book about purposeful suffering. Not just suffering, but purposeful suffering that is part of your journey, which is whether you're talking about SEAL training or getting into Harvard or building a business or selling a business or whatever you're trying to accomplish. Any lofty goal always comes with stress, anxiety, adversity, some pain and suffering, Right?

Or die, right?

Yeah. If it doesn't, it's not that lofty a goal. It's maybe just a goal, but.

Looking at it in the right way to say, what suffering am I willing to not just accept, but lean into? And then essentially having that as part of your plan, Being intentional in how you push the boundaries of your comfort zone with the right purpose so that you're essentially training yourself emotionally, physically, mentally, regardless of whatever the goal is, to adapt to those adversities that are deeply connected to the purpose of what you're trying to accomplish.

Incredible. And I like that you talk about the fact that it's not all just this macho. You've got to be, you know, Pushing yourself to that level, because some people. I've read David Goggins stuff, and I love it, but for some people, it's too much and it's, you know, almost masochist. And I think that there's got to be this balance where people can.

Trust me.

We're in the same boat crew in knowing. Really. Yeah, I was boat crew, too. He always talks about that was our boat crew. We get to that later.

But, yeah, I want to know more. That would be fascinating. But I think it's nice that you've got this framework that people can take to whatever level they want in terms of their intentionality, in terms of their intensity. You mentioned one thing around toughness. So when you think of mental toughness, how would you define that?

Good question.

Kind of encompasses some of the things we've been talking about. So let me try and put this in a concise, articulate answer. But it does stray from some of that, you know, overly abundant, you know, macho approach, letting go. Mental toughness, someone who's willing just to gut it out, you know, regardless of what it is, overcome any obstacle and always bounce back more quickly. But what I've seen, and kind of going back to a little bit about what we talked around SEAL training, so if you. If you tried to size up and predict, you know, the 20 or 30 students are going to be standing tall at graduation, out of 200, 250 students, you would be wrong every single time. You might get one or two like that David Goggins guy. He looks like kind of an asshole, so he's probably going to make it. But I would say that if he was on the show with us.

You might get a couple corrects, but you'd just be probably lucky. And it's. Yeah, there's. Yes, there are some of those guys that are just. They're super hardcore. Nothing seems to faze them. But the majority of students that are successful are just very thoughtful, and they. They can. They have a really strong ability to maintain a positive mental attitude, although I find that term to be overly used quite a bit. But maintaining some level of positive positivity of humor. Humor is a great and powerful tool when thinking about the level of adversity you might be facing, regardless of what it is.

And so when you think about defining, you know, mental toughness, I really think it comes back to people who are open and willing to one lean into these specific adversities they know they will face and the ones they don't see coming related to a specific path that they're on. And then of course there's obviously other obstacles that we that are unforeseen. But when you train yourself intentionally to be willingly open to accepting adversity, accepting failure, celebrating failure, analyzing it, seeing how can I apply these lessons learned. So constantly really debriefing with yourself on a regular basis. But also I think it really goes back to having good specific daily routines, daily rituals. How do you put your battle gear on in the morning? What are you willing to accept the good news that comes throughout the day? Do you take that with humility and intentionality and with what you're going to do with it? With the bad news? Do you reframe that perception and look at all the different things that could come from, you know, might be tough one day we're like, oh, I've been worked for six months on that. You know, big deal, we're trying to close and it fell apart at the last minute. Well, if you really analyze it, there's probably some other good things that can come from that. You know, one door closes another open. So it's really having that adaptive mindset really continually moving more quickly from that bunker of normal human emotion when grief strikes more quickly out.

Into analysis and action oriented execution. All right, this happened and kind of going back to the basics of stoicism and mental fortitude, really it all comes down to maintaining the majority of your time, energy and emotion and talents on things that are within your control. I mean, ultimately, if I had to put it into one bucket and be people who are, you know, have the higher degree of mental fortitude, grit, resilience and adaptability. They spend very little time and emotion on things that are not in their control. They spend, they maintain situational awareness on those things. So not that whole like, wow, just ignore what you can't. No, you don't want to ignore it. You want to maintain situational awareness on things that are outside of your control. But then you put all of your time, your energy and emotion on things you can either control directly or you have a sphere of influence over. If I really had to boil it down into one sort of behavior, that's one I'd say would definitely rise to the top of the people who you would think of as having the greatest degree of mental fortitude.

And let's go to an example. You talked about the boat crew along with Goggins there. So what happened with your mental fortitude? What was your experience during that time? Because I'm sure it was tough.

Well, you can imagine how tough it was on Me having to keep motivating David and keep dragging him along through training because he was crying and sucking his thumb the whole time. Yeah, right now. Oh wait, no, that was the, it was the opposite of that. I was trying to help him by having him carry me along so he can thank me for that. But now, as you recall, like David, you know, he went through, you know, this is his first Hell week and got injured and rolled back. Then it's another hell week or well, made it through part of Hell Week and, and those times they got rolled back for injuries, then landed in our class, class 235. And then we, you're, you know, you're reforming boat crews all the time because you have so many students. The class gets smaller and smaller so they're always kind of adjusting people. Typically though, boat crews are done by height because you spend a lot of time running around with those boats on your head. So you can't have a bunch of, you know, five foot people with the six foot, five people because that wouldn't really work because the six foot five people will be doing all the work. And so, you know, we're roughly the same height as were the other guys in the boat crew. So that what became boat crew 2 leading in through and through Hell Week. And so it's only interesting because I got to spend, you know, you know, what is really the most sort of iconic, the most iconic days of SEAL training is typically what you think of is Hell Week, you know, in the same boat crew. And it's a very intimate setting because that's your team, that is your team, you know, forget everybody else. And much of what you do in Hell Week, you're actually competing against the other boat crews and which is intentional and probably largely for the entertainment value of the instructors. But there's some key lessons to be learned and it bears mentioning, you know, for, you know, the people listening when you think about the attributes of high performing teams. So then I'll get into some of those, some of the elements of how to apply to our boat crew and you know, working with, with David. But you know, a lot of these crews, some crews come together very, very quickly, first and foremost under an inspirational leader. So these crews are seven person teams, one naval officer who is the boat crew leader and then six enlisted students, so seven total. And you have some of these leaders that are again, very purpose driven. They're very, very good at clearly articulating the mission, getting everybody emotionally connected to that mission, literally and figuratively rowing in the same direction, kind of even breaking down, not to overuse some of this terminology, but breaking down even some of those behavioral silos that can exist in a very small team. Because the students that are successful transition very quickly from that mindset of individual exercise to go further, faster as a team, because it's very much an individual effort to get into SEAL training. But then you very quickly realize that you're like, this is not going to work unless I am being a good team member and leaning on the team as well. And so everybody has to lean on one another. And so they create that very quickly, create that very cultural dynamic of high performance in these small teams. They learn quickly, they adapt, they debrief everybody on the team's looking out more so for the person to their left and right. So again, overlapping weapon performance. And they can also, because of that cultural environment, engage in really rapid learning through peer to peer feedback. So they don't have infighting, they don't have finger pointing. They're not putting blame on others when they're not being successful. That's all the other boat crews that immediately fall apart. There's no leadership at any level. They succumb to their pain, the pressure, the fear of failure, their illnesses, their injuries. You know, they're still working in silos. They're literally rowing in different directions. And so these, these crews are losing all the competition. So it just gets worse and worse and worse for them because they can't overcome those mental and emotional blockages. And the leader's not helping them do that, even though that person has the title leader. We see that a lot in organizations, regardless of title, somebody's not behaving as a leader. And sometimes as the person that's, you know, the lowest rank in the boker, who has to step up and become that leader. And so they continually lose all the races. And because there's blame, there's finger pointing, and there's not a cultural dynamic of high performance. And that's something that we were able to create. We had a great boat crew leader, but everybody in the crew behaved as a leader. Everybody in the crew was constantly asking themselves, what else can I individually be doing to help this crew be successful? You know, if you see someone suffering, if you see someone falling back, you know, lift them up, bring them along, you know, step into the toughest spot on the boat, or dig in with your paddle a little deeper or run a little faster. Encourage each other. You know, that was a. And David, of course, has his own unique way of encouraging everyone. Never heard, never heard the word Mother. Effer. More in my entire life. And then, of course, it's all captured in his books and writings and in the forward of my book. But I was like, wow, he's. He's. He's got a unique communication style.

Every third word is mother effort. I was like, huh, okay. If you can read between the lines and you're like, there's a message in there somewhere. No, but I've never met an individual. You know, not to blow smoke, but everybody in there is tough and willing. But I never met quite an individual with the unique characteristics that he brought of just a level of intensity that I'd never seen before.

Yeah, absolutely.

No.

Thank you for sharing. And when you talk, I hear a lot about mindset in terms of setting yourself up to know where you're going, why you're going there, and then training the mind to have rituals and so forth. So when you think of mindset, what is mindset? Because we use that word a lot. But for you, when you think of the word mindset, what does it mean?

So mindset. Well, depends on what type of mindset you're talking. You have a bad mindset, you got a medium, a great mindset. It all depends on how you're channeling the way you think, act, and behave into.

Achieving a specific goal. Let's put it into that context because it's easy to kind of visualize. But it's all that appropriate mindset that will drive the right behavior and the right action is a byproduct of all those other things. It's a byproduct of rituals. It's a byproduct of routines, of habits. I love the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, because it really does encapsulate that we bring this into organizations and leadership development programs for the time about developing individuals, developing teams, developing culture. One of the things that are always lacking is a very specific set of regular routines and regular rituals that create that culture or help develop that individual or build the team. They just talk about it a lot, and they believe they need to do it. But there aren't specific things in place to create behavioral shifts towards high performance or behavioral shifts towards, you know, whatever the goal is associated with that individual or team's development. So, you know, let's take it to, you know, I like fitness as a example, because, you know, when, you know, when. Let's go back to, you know, when my buddy died, said, okay, we're all in. Quit my job.

And everybody. Everybody literally is like, what the f are you guys doing? This is really stupid. You have a great career ahead of you and now you're throwing it away to enlist in the, in the Navy for a program you most likely will not succeed at. So it's a great business plan. You can imagine the feedback that I was getting from friends, family and colleagues. But one of the things was, and this is now something that I learned, I can now apply to mentoring the young men that I work with, that have worked with over the years, is realizing that all of my rituals and routines had to change because you look at, okay, I can prepare physically, yes, as much as I possibly can, using the appropriate regimen, doing the research, applying that to how I train my body to be well prepared, but also to specifically pass the physical exam, the running times, the swim times, the, the calisthenics with the pull ups, push ups, sit ups, and all those things combined, you know, you got to get in first. So that's, you know, mission number one. You know, don't be slow at running, swimming and have, you know, be able to do a lot of pull ups. So pretty simple stuff, but it takes a lot of training, you know, months and months of really training. So that, that piece is something you don't have to worry about. You know, I tell the guys at inter, take that off the table. There's all these other things that you're not going to be able to control, but make fitness and your level of preparation and preparedness something that's non negotiable. That's something that, you know you have executed well. And so that's not going to be an issue. You have plenty of other things to worry about. But the way you train your mind for something like that oftentimes is through other types of rituals, not just, you know, a lot of reading or listening to podcasts or blogs. All those things are good to bring it all together. But having very specific routines that are transform your mindset. So what do you do from the time you get up in the morning? What type of wellness practices, what type of learning practices? How do you balance your time throughout the day to have an appropriate mindset for whatever you're trying to accomplish? So again, we can have a negative mindset allowing all worrying about the things that are out of control or letting adversity strike and knock us down for a long time. Or you can develop those skills through good feedback from peers, good coaches, good mentors, and good daily and regular routines to continually train your mind to be able to push those boundaries. So one of the things that we did to train our Minds was the physical part of the training. So continually and intentionally pushing the boundaries of our comfort zone through very specific and well thought out training, not just pushing ourselves to the breaking point because you don't want to, you don't want to get injured.

But also doing a lot of research and finding ways to mitigate overuse injuries while at the same time pushing yourself further physically than you ever have in your entire life to make sure you're well prepared. The byproduct of that is, you know, is the mindset necessary to hopefully, you know, achieve that goal that you're trying to accomplish. So I know that's a, a long answer. I was trying to use some examples there. But it's the same thing if you're building a business, whether it's a startup or a late stage startup, or you come in as an executive to do a full scale organizational transformation with a well established company. Your mindset plays a huge, huge role in not just your success as a leader, but most importantly, how you authentically lead others through all that adversity and all that change and all those new things you have to learn and adapt to, you know, on the landscape of that battlefield. And this is something, you know, I research a lot, we talk about a lot is, you know, how do I continually train my mind so that I can get up every day and be an authentic leader and be a servant to the team? And that can't be. When it's inauthentic or you're just trying to go through the motions, then people see through that and it's very difficult. So it's a good question that applies to all aspects of life. But being very specific and intentional in what type of mindset you're trying to develop through specific routines and rituals is really how you're going to. And it's not a, as you know, it's not a one and done thing. It's because you'll get complacent and, you know, you'll start to lack that healthy sense of urgency and you'll get a little bit comfortable and you kind of have to recertify yourself as a savage, as David would say.

Yeah, I love it. And in terms of post special ops, now you're back into civilian life largely, I imagine you're a leader of leaders and you guide other leaders. What are your rituals and your routines daily or weekly that help you maintain your leadership and your health? And your health?

Sure. Well, being in the unique position. This is my third company, so there's some context to this. So My first two companies are more tech focused and I exited the last one in in late 2017. What I found though was not necessarily a passion for those specific industries. There were some opportunities, some white space and I met my previous business partner in graduate school. I know very cliche, very cliche entrepreneurial journey, these big aspirations of, you know, 50x exits and you know, all these great things. But we did okay. But nothing like what we, the unicorn moves we, we had thought of in the early days. But what I did find a passion for was being a student of leadership, being a teacher of leadership, understanding how culture plays a role in delivering specific results, even financial outcomes for a business. All the people practices that go into creating high performance and starting to actually starting to more thoughtfully bring those lessons, those insights and methodologies and how we form teams in what is arguably one of the most high performing organizations in the world, how do we bring that into creating higher performing leaders and teams in great business organizations? So we're not a turnaround management consulting firm. We're more of a good to great where we take very committed teams and we equip them with the leadership tools and professional development necessary to navigate change and growth, but with accuracy and precision. And also how does that cascade throughout the organization. So if I'm going to be out there authentically, and not just me, but our whole team, our organization, all of us are continually studying and one, because we have to, because we're also developing curriculum and adjusting curriculum and proprietary methodologies and creating new content. So one, it forces us to continually learn and you know, what's really working, what doesn't work so well, what new innovative ways can we think of that would more rapidly and measurably develop teams, develop leaders and organizations that we partner with. But then it comes down to also, you know, our own, you know, routines. So you know, mine is I, I don't get up at 4:30. That's the middle of the night. That's ridiculous.

That's for some people, but not for me. We have a baby too. So. But you know, getting up early and having some type of wellness practice in the morning, whether it's you know, stretching or yoga or cold plunging or whatever, then before not checking your phone, not checking your email, don't distract yourself with any of those things, you know, especially not at 5:00am and, but then going into, then I flow into doing some reading, you know, not long, I don't have that much time. I want to get some stuff done. So about 15 minutes of reading from like currently I'm reading the Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. And so it's, you know, it's good. I'll, you know, read the, the, the message of the Daily Stoic a snippet in their analysis of it and then do some, you know, some analysis of. Okay, how does this apply to me today? How does this apply to the business, to my leadership style? You know, how I prioritize, you know, my, my wife and family? How can I be a better servant leader to the group, to the team? You know, what type of battle gear am I going to need today? Depending upon what type of good or bad news we receive? You know, those, some, some, some time and reflection, you know, and then going into, you know, the to do list for the day, which is prepared the day before, not the morning of. So that's, that's one specific sort of routine I get into that I do a more intense workout or physical routine, typically at lunchtime. Sometimes it changes because I travel and things like that. But if I'm home in a more regular routine, not traveling, I like to do it in the middle of the day because it gives you more energy for, you know, for the afternoon. So that's kind of how my day flows. But also spending some of that time, you know, in learning, in reading, but also always finding new ways of things that we can obviously teach others because ultimately, at the end of the day, that's our mission and why we exist as a leadership development firm.

That's amazing. No, thank you. I think that you really are a product of your habits and your life is just a miniature version of what happens every day. Every day you're dictating what life turns into. So I love that you do those simple things and you do them well. How good are you at sticking to the not looking at your phone first thing in the morning?

Really good. Really good. I, I, I get it's one of those things like I'm human like everyone else, so I, I can backslide and falter on routines or consistency, but there are certain things, especially once I'm all in, I'm just this radical about sticking to that routine. So, you know, even if, you know, my phone's, you know, over on the side table or on the desk, I literally will not look at it other than to time my cold plunge. I won't look at email, I won't even look at what's popped up on the screen and text messages. I immediately wipe that away and go right to the timer for the cold punch. And, well, it's for my own Mental health. That is the first thing that I want to do in the morning is read by email. Stressful.

No, that's not at all what I want to do at 5 in the morning.

But also one point I wanted to make too is, and I try to be very disciplined in this is, you know, the people who are really good, like you said, are a good byproduct of their habits. You know, those routines, those habits, they're not four or five days a week, they're seven days a week. So just because it's Saturday or just because it's Sunday doesn't mean you're not making time for those important, important habits. As long as you know, I'm not saying like sacrificing time with your family or things like that, but typically those types of routines in some way, shape or form are seven day a week routines, not four or five day a week routines.

Yeah. So they really become part of you, who you are, your identity.

Yep, yep, for sure.

Ryan Holiday's book, the Daily Stoic is awesome. I'll definitely give it a shout out. I'll put a link in the show notes, but I read it often as well. And sometimes Brent, I'll read one and then that one little statement. I'll be stewing on it for days, like just thinking, how does that apply and what does it mean? And he's a fantastic author.

The other day for me, it was the April 15th one and the title was pay your taxes. I was like, nope, I'm skipping ahead.

So yeah, that one did stick with me for a couple days.

I love it. As long as it doesn't stick for a couple of months, then you're all good.

That's inevitable.

So for the person listening right now, I am going to encourage you, if you're on your phone or if you're sitting at a computer, go to Amazon.com and for wherever you are in the world and order the book embrace the suck. And I'll put a link in the show notes for that so you don't even need to go searching for it. I'll put a link down there. But the work that you do is phenomenal, Brent. And I can see that you're passionate. I can see that you've got a deep sense of purpose around what you do. And the thing I love about it, we've got a lot of people in the leadership space, but a lot of people are theorizing about things. They've read things and you've actually done it and you've done it at battle in Special ops, then you've done it as an entrepreneur and a leader of companies. And to me, that's what makes you a 1%er. That's what makes you stand out and your company because you've truly walked the walk. It's not just a theory of what you think happens. You've done it. And so I think that's something to be very proud of.

Thank you very much.

No, thank you. And one last question before we wrap up. So, yes, we fast forward to the very last day on earth. You know, it's your last day. You've been given five minutes and you've had a very full life, right? And a very young person, it could be a grandchild, maybe even a great grandchild, comes up to you and asks Brent or granddad, how do I lead my life on purpose? What would you share with me?

I think at that moment, it goes down to that one piece of advice. We've heard it before, but it's something as very, very difficult for all of us to consistently embrace, is that when you look at, you know, that day, that moment when you're whatever you want, you're on your deathbed and you know, all the things that you've done, good, bad, ugly, in between all the things you've accomplished or the stuff you've acquired, how much of that actually really matters? What types of relationships have you built? What type of mark on the world are you going to leave? What are people going to say about you? What are those eulogy virtues, if you will, if someone you know, a trusted friend or colleague or family member or spouse, were to get up that day at your funeral, what would they authentically actually say about you? Keyword being authentically? You know, so think in terms of every day of your life, almost kind of working backwards. What is your personal exit strategy? You know, what does that look like? So it can really impact how you make decisions, the types of choices you make, the. The values orientation you have. So really defining your own core values and trying to live your life by those values, assuming they're good values, but living your life by those values and eliminating all the other stuff, that's not to say there's anything wrong with being successful or making money, but, you know, if you're going to be successful, going to be good at making money, give a lot of it away, give back, you know, engage in altruism and find ways to leave a very, very positive mark on others and in the world, because that's what's going to be left behind. You know, the Ferrari and the big house. You know someone else is going to get those at some point and nobody gives a shit about that stuff anyway. Ultimately it comes down to what are you going to do with your purpose driven life to impact the world and the lives of other people?

That's fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing it. And a heartfelt thank you for creating the space to connect today.

Absolutely. No, it was an honor to meet you, to chat with you. I really, really enjoyed our conversation. Hopefully we can do it again someday.

We definitely will. Absolutely. Thanks a million. Hey guys, if you enjoyed the content today, please smash that subscribe button below. And if you want to become part of my community, I've got an amazing free Facebook group. Please come and join us. The link is in the description below. And also if you've got any questions about today's session, I'd love to know. Just comment below and I'll be sure.

To get back to you guys.

Have the most amazing day.