Jocko Podcast 560: Leadership Is A Skill. Train It. With Jamie Cochran.

0:00This is Jono podcast number 560 with Echo Charles and me, Jono Willink. Good evening, Ekko. Good evening. Also joining us tonight is Jamie Cochran. Jamie is the chief operating officer at Echelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy. She's a military spouse, or at least she was a military spouse. She was married to a SEAL officer that worked with Leif and that I put through training and she has been with us since 2014. She rose up through the ranks and we discussed her background and how she ended up where she is now on the podcast a few years ago which is episode 388. So if you want

0:34to get the entire backstory on Jamie Cochran check out episode 388 and she's an integral part of everything that happens at Echelon Front. She oversees everything as the COO and she also runs an event called the assembly which is a leadership event specifically for women and we'll talk about how that came to fruition but she does everything else at Echelon Front and today we were recently we were talking about some case studies with some of our clients from Echelon Front and the lessons that we've learned from that and as we were talking through them I thought it would be good to share

1:10some of these lessons with everybody. And then we actually discussed a couple more things that it would be interesting to discuss here and have everyone learn these lessons because many of these lessons as we often find are universal lessons that are helpful in any business in any industry with any team including your family and of course in life as

1:30well. So Jamie welcome back. Thanks for having me. It's been three years. It's nice to be back on a podcast where I don't have to spend the majority of the podcast or hopefully any at all talking about myself. So excited to talk about leadership principles versus the last time. You don't want to talk about your days

1:44in college singing. No. Hell yeah. Did you spend how many did are you on any albums that we could get right now doing vocals? I supported in uh doing like vocal demos for several songs that are out. Can we find out when any of them are? I don't think so. I think I think I have Ironclad NDAs from back then because you're not really allowed to share what songs. I'll tell you off camera. How's

2:08that? Jason Wilson, you know who came on and he was a rapper in Detroit like back in the day and I went and found his music. It's pretty legit to be honest with you. And you know, but that's the way it is. So, it's still out there. Yeah. I'll find an old demo CD and send

2:24you my my own demo CD at some point. Were they covers? Oh, there songs you wrote? Yeah. Songs I wrote and and we did some covers as well. What kind of music was it? Uh, it was kind of all over some bluesy. I had a I was in a band. And we had a standup. Uh, what was the name of the

2:39band? Jace. It was just my name. Jace. Jace Smith. I was Smith back then. Yeah. Jace. It's cool to name a band after yourself, but Smith, it was me and then I had some friends in college that joined me and played with me. Yeah. Yeah. So, we I had bands back in the day, too. And Oh, yeah. My brother Elgen had the real to reals that we had because we went in

3:07the studio and made an album. What's a better name? Um the album well the band was we had a bunch of different names. The the name that seems to have survived through the most amount of time is Bronson's Children after Charles Bronson because we had all kinds of different names. We we were one called Time and Mind you this is when I'm 15 years old. Our band was at one time called Rage of

3:29Discipline. Oh my gosh. 15. and you were already chanting the discipline, which is so ridiculous. But so he has the real to reals [snorts] and he brought them to like a forensic person to see if they could get the tracks off of them and they apparently it's too brittle or something like that. So I don't know. It would be awesome to get we had some real bangers on there of

3:52songs. What was the uh what do you feel the media? Was that like a tape? Yeah, it's a tape. It's a realtore like an eight I I want to say it was an eight track studio that we were in. Oh yeah. He he sent me a picture of the receipt, you know, it had like the little I think it cost us, you know, $80 for eight

4:09hours of of studio time. But there was a song on there [snorts] that I wish we could get back. It was and I wrote it. It was called Myself Strong. And I'll I I still remember some of the lyrics. We'll get back to it at some point. I could probably try. This is still at 15.

4:25Yes. Okay. You've had this running theme since a young young kid. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's what's kind of funny about the whole thing is there hasn't been a whole lot of mental progression from [laughter] I saw one of the videos Elgen James has of you guys like going hard in the garage or something and then your dad comes in and scolds you guys. [laughter]

4:45Great. Jo of 15 years old. Great. Yeah, those are some good times. Um, all right. So, we were talking about some case studies and what's interesting is, you know, uh this is kind of like when when Dave Burke and I do the debrief podcast, like changing the names and the industries a little bit just so we can talk openly about we we work with so many companies that it's hard to figure out. It'll be hard for people to figure out who this is, but the lessons are always the same. And so first one we'll talk about um there was a there was a construction company and the CEO came to

5:23a muster and recognized like the principles that we teach and you know started bringing us in on multiple levels doing all kinds of work with them doing keynotes doing workshops uh doing other types of consultings FTXs the whole nine yards and had exponential growth over the next several years and went from, you know, a probably a regional I would say a regional a regional player into a nationwide massive massive um company with like thousands% revenue growth and thousands of employees and hired. So pretty cool

6:00um pretty awesome pretty awesome to see. But this is a common question. So one of the things that we dealt with a little bit early on with that was you there was like someone in the seauite that wasn't on board with you know the whole echelon front the whole extreme ownership the whole you know these militaristic and we'll talk about this I have a note to talk about this these militaristic leadership principles like how does this relate to our industry at all and this this happens in just about every company that we work with, right? There's going to be some people that are just not on

6:36board. Like, hey, and we'll talk about some of those reasons because there's a there's a whole plethora of reasons that you that someone that an individual may not quote be on board with the idea of extreme ownership, but getting them on board and doing a direct assault to attack them for not being on board is not the recommended move. What do you

6:58think? No, not at all. Yeah, this particular I I think a lot of companies we work with, a lot of clients ask this question because you're always going to have a naysayer. I don't think we've worked with any company that 100% of their employees are on board, especially from day one. It takes a lot of time. Usually, we're like we're we're happy if we get 10% of people in that room to say, "Yes, I can take more ownership in my life." And what we tell them is what you have to do is surround them. So you have to build up this culture of ownership so strong that the people that

7:27are unwilling to take ownership sort of start to weed themselves out. They sort of feel like they're not connected to the group. They're outside. They're the outsider because the more they push against it, the more the people around them are compensating by taking more and more ownership. And those problems are starting to get solved with or without them. And I think this was the case in this particular organization. One, it wasn't just one. Multiple people in the organization were excited about these principles. and the one that continued to push back just sort of started to get

7:53ostracized from the group a little bit. Yeah, that is and again, if you go and attack people, they're they're not going to be they're not going to change their mind because you attack them. That that's just not the way the world works. And I say this all the time about like um the person the talking head personalities, the either extreme conservative or extreme liberal uh type of talking head personalities. Like how many people has that extreme conservative person converted to conservatism? The answer is probably zero. And how many people has this uh left-wing talking head super crazy liberal person converted [clears throat]

8:31to that? The answer is probably zero. Now they each group has their own big giant audiences, but all those audiences always already think the way that they think or they at least lean in that direction and they go, "Oh yeah, oh yeah." So you just get a bunch of cheerleaders, but you don't actually change anybody's mind. So and and by the way, each of those groups, what they do as their strategy is attack the other ones. So this being idea that you're just going to attack people and then they're going to go, "Oh, wow." You know, if you came to me and said, "Hey, Joel, this is a stupid plan." I don't

8:59go, "Oh, thank you so much for pointing me out, pointing that out to me." No, I say, "Well, I'd like to see you come up with a better plan and all of a sudden we have problems." So, the idea in in military terms is, you know, it's like bypassing. You might bypass an area of terrain that's too hard to take or it's too well defended. And what you ultimately do is you envelop it, which means you surround it. And then once it's surrounded, well, now they're kind of cut off, like you said. You're kind of isolated. And those people either

9:28surrender and they go, "You know what? Okay, I see it. Or they they leave, right? They leave the company, they self- select out, which I would say that's usually well, if that happens, it's going to be a good thing because that person is too uh egotistical and too stuck in their ways and they're not going to be progressive in their

9:47mindset. So, it's going to be a problem. So, surrounding people, and listen, that doesn't mean you can't have conversations with them. Cuz by the way, one of the easiest conversations to have with someone is, "Well, oh, oh, Jamie, you you don't like extreme ownership." Cool. What do you What do you think we should do? Blame each other? Like point fingers at each other? Is that what we

10:04should be doing? It's like, no, no, no. That's not what we should be doing at all. What we should be doing is oh well I mean to me it's just like I'm going to take responsibility if something goes wrong. I'm going to try and get my get my team to do their best to fix it. Does that sound bad? Like no one thinks that just like no one thinks cover and move is bad. No one thinks simplifying things is bad. No one thinks prioritize and execute is bad. No one thinks decentralized command is bad unless

10:27you're a tyrant. But so having those conversations is okay, but also just beating the door down with someone is generally speaking not the smartest approach when interacting with other people. Yeah, I think the resistance often times when I think about the people that resist extreme ownership and the people we've met that just have this wall up of nope, this isn't for me doesn't come from a place of understanding what exactly we teach. It comes from whatever it is they've made up in their mind of

10:56this military combat type of principles. And then what they start to see around them is people actually applying the principles. And if you take away the language and you know the image of Jaco and the extreme ownership vernacular, all of a sudden you get just people that are saying, "Hey, I'm going to prioritize building relationships. I'm going to simplify plans and communicate more effectively. I'm going to be detached from my emotions and my ego so I can make good decisions. I'm going to empower my people to lead. And without all of the language we use, people can, for the most part, you have the one-offs, but for the most part, they

11:30start to see this as this is an opportunity for me to solve a problem, and I should probably just get on board. I think we we just have to sometimes separate the image they have in their mind of what extreme ownership is, for them to see it in action, and start to see the people around them. And maybe they self- select, maybe they self- select out. Maybe they actually see that as okay, I see now a path for me to apply these principles a little more

11:52effectively. Yeah. The and we have this in the notes to talk later about, but yeah, the car the Joo caricature, which is welld deserved. It's welld deserved. The Jono caricature is welld deserved. Uh but it's also not not very realistic. It's partially realistic, but it's not it's a very it's one side of the story. And same thing with the stereotypical military leadership. well-deserved reputation but not the real not the real actual what military leadership should be. So okay that's the first kind of

12:23resistance. Go ahead. I was going to say in the case of this case study though that individual started to change their perspective when they saw that as they were growing. So this this particular company was growing at a rapid pace through acquisitions and mergers. And what typically happens in those instances is that you acquire a business and people freak out and you have people leaving constantly. You have a culture shift. you're trying to get people onboarded to new processes and it just creates a lot of chaos for the company that's now being acquired. And this company decided that they wanted to build their culture around ownership. So

12:57part of that acquisition was we're going to show them right out the gate, we're here to invest in them and they would do a field training exercise typically within the first one to three months. So those individuals that are now feeling a little nervous about joining this bigger company, they're going and doing this awesome team building experience, this leadership exercise and getting a chance to see these principles in action. They feel more connected to the parent company. They for most of these companies which are mom and pop organizations, they haven't been invested in in that way ever. So they're feeling this sense of man, this company

13:27is really taking time to invest in me and my leadership. And so the individual that was really resistant towards this, what he saw was the transition in these acquisitions and mergers were going so much smoother than any other company he'd been a part of before. So the resistance he had started to break down as he started to see the impact of people saying, "Okay, I'm ready to take ownership and this is helping us with this really difficult transition and this was our that was their business model." And so he sort of turned the tide and got on board as he started to

13:54see it in practice. Yeah. the the idea of merging cultures, which is something that happens anytime with so many business out there that are doing acquisitions or merging companies, and you're going to have cultures that come together, and those cultures are not going to be, they're not going to be the same exact thing when you get together. It's just, it's just not going to happen. And the, you know, we I obviously dealt with this a lot in the military. not only the culture of hey the SEAL teams versus the big Navy, the SEAL teams versus the Army, the SEAL teams versus the Marine Corps, and then

14:25on top of that, you go to a host nation, it's the SEAL teams and the Iraqis, it's the SEAL teams and the Singaporeans, it's the SEAL teams and the Thai Navy Seals, it's the SEAL teams and the Egyptians. Like, you're working with all these different people with all these different cultures. And so, you have to learn like, okay, so what do you do there? What do you do? And one of the most important things ad pieces of advice that I give is of course goes back to having an open mind. And when you start working with other people that have different cultures than yours, instead of saying, "Hey, this is the

14:53culture now. I'm I'm going to dictate the culture to you." That that's not going to work out. You're going to get that resistance that I talked about when you attack somebody. If I attack your culture, you are you are going to get defensive. That's the way it is. But if I ask you questions about your culture and why you do things a certain way and there's going to be parts of your culture that I have to say, "Oh, you know what? I like that. I like the way that you do that more than the way it is in our culture in our company. Oh, you do this. You have, you know, Fridays

15:20where you you have pizza parties. To me, that seems a little bit efficient." Oh, but you've tracked over the past three years that you get people that stay later in the evening cuz they all had a good time at lunch and they get they're more productive. Okay, cool. That makes sense to me. So, so bringing in parts of different cultures is what creates a stronger culture in the long run. But a lot of times people just think, "Oh, we're buying I'm I'm buying your company, Jamie. Here's your new culture." I'm going to tell you right now that does not go over well. It just proves out of the gate that I don't have

15:50an open mind. I'm not listening to I don't care about you. Right? I don't if I I'm not allowing you to influence me at all. So, those are two components of a relationship. I'm not listening to you. That's a third component of a relationship. And I'm not treating you with respect. So, right out of the gate, I've failed on four out of the five elements of building a relationship by not going, "Hey, Jamie, I noticed that

16:09you guys come in casual on Fridays. What's that all about?" Or, "I noticed that you guys always wear, you know, suits when you go to present. What's that all?" Whatever the thing is, instead of me just just decreeing that it's wrong and I say, "Oh, why you do it that way? Oh, let me listen to you. Hey,

16:24you know what? That kind of makes sense. We should maybe we should absorb some of that, too. We don't have to necessarily wear suits, but maybe we could we we just figure things out and then all of a sudden those instead of rejecting the relationship, all of a sudden I'm building and I'm at least moving in the

16:36right direction. Yeah. So, good stuff to think about. Um this uh going to case study number two, we had a a company that was uh or not a company but like a public service. This is uh this person working for the public and let's say Waterworks. we'll say that waterworks and this the director in this company had or in this in this organization had listened to the podcast read the books brought us in we did the trainer trainer program when we did the trainer trainer program all of a sudden things got more efficient they increased their delivery of service they cut their delivery time like everything got better

17:19um and eventually they ran a train the trainer program with us and so now they have people inside their organization that teach what we teach and they don't need us anymore. We still do some check-ins with them to make sure that everything's going well. We still give them some some uh materials to utilize when they teach. Their promotional exams now include, you know, extreme ownership principles, which is pretty awesome. So, it can have a change e even in like the public realm inside of companies. But one of the biggest problems that we work with when we work with companies that are that are part of, you know, public

17:51services is it costs money. And how do we overcome the the cost? And one of the things here that we we'll talk about is that, you know, you've got to run your budget through like strict, you know, public budget scrutiny. And it's hard sometimes people it's very difficult when people have a tight budget to invest in their people because it's very hard to quantify, right? It's very hard to quantify. Well, we we should just get new what are we talking about? Water works. We should just get new pipes and

18:27new pumps. And that makes sense, right? Everyone goes, "Hey, new pipes and new pumps. We should just do that." It's very hard to quantify leadership. leadership. People have a hard time understanding how impactful it is. Of course, we don't have a hard time because we've seen it over and over again, but what are some of the ways to overcome the high cost of what we do

18:49in for a leader? Well, I think the point you're making is really valid because I have had this conversation countless times with clients who are coming to me and asking what is the return on investment for leadership development? And that answer is very hard to quantify. It's very hard to explain except for the dozens and dozens probably hundreds at this points of clients that we have seen the uptick in what matters to them the measures the the metrics that matter to them increase as a result of investing in their people and delivering on leadership development for their people. So we know we know the

19:23measurements exist and we see it. Yeah. And I say this all the time. You know, this happened for the first time, I don't know, probably 10 years ago when a client was asking me, "What's the ROI on this going to be?" And I I said, "Well, what what metrics do you measure?" And they said, "Oh, you know, cost to produce, you know, whatever this and that." And I said, "Cool. All those things will get better." And they were kind of looking at me because I didn't have a spreadsheet and I wasn't, you know, uh, going to going to look at their their cogs of what they No, I was

19:46going to look at any of that. I'm telling you if whatever it is that you are measuring success by inside your organization, it will improve when your leadership gets better. That's the way it works. That's why we say all the problems, all problems are leadership problems because whether it's your upside down on your P&L, that's a leadership problem. Sure, you can blame accounting and you can blame there's all kinds of things you can blame, but it's a leadership problem because a good leader is going to say, "Hold on a second. What are we spending money? How we what are we bringing in?" That's what a good leader is going to do. If it's if

20:15you have trouble with turnover, right? You got you're losing people. You got churn of people leaving your organization. You could say, "Oh, that's an HR problem." That's a leadership problem. And sure, HR is part of leadership, but it is a leadership problem. And that is leadership is what will get that problem solved. If you have safety issues, you could say, well, you know, we got we got the wrong kind of equipment. The fact that you have the wrong kind of equipment is a leadership

20:37problem. So, all problems are leadership problems. So if you want to improve in any metric, then what you need to do is improve your leadership. So that's what and people think is people think, well, you know, Jamie, if I promote you to a leadership position, now you know how to lead. No, that's not true. It's not true in the military. It's not it's not true anywhere. That's why McDonald's sends their managers to Hamburger University for 6 months to learn how to manage and lead in that store. McDonald's making burgers and fries. They have leadership

21:08training. And yet you think in whatever organization you're in that, oh well, we can just promote someone and since that person was a good plumber or since that person was a good salesman or since that person was a good um technician on the job site, they're ready to lead now. Nope. It's being a plumber is radically

21:26different from being a leader. Mhm. And so when you put a plumber that's never been in charge of anyone before in charge of people and you don't give them the skills, it's the same thing as putting them on a job to to install a toilet and they don't know what they're doing. You wouldn't do that. You'd have everywhere. It's just the same thing when you put them in a leadership position. If you don't give them the training, you're going to have

21:46everywhere. It's not going to be good. Yeah. But you and I know that. The problem is so many companies do not prioritize leadership development. when times get tough and budgets are tight, it's the first thing to go off the piano. And it sucks for their people because I have talked to dozens of clients who were in that exact position. I was the best at my job. I got promoted. I wasn't ready and I screwed it up. And think about all the time and wasted money and effort that went into that effort as opposed to investing in your people before you put them in a position to lead. So, it's very

22:15difficult for us to explain to clients the value of leadership development. And there's few clients out there who understand that and are actively seeking ways to invest. So to your earlier question of how do you manage this when you do have tight budgets or things are going through a very specific budget process to get approval oftent times I remember early in my time at Echelon Front I used to say this to clients like hey this isn't a great sales pitch but we're okay if you don't sign up for the six-month 12-month program. Let's start with one thing. Let's start with a virtual session if that's all you can

22:45afford. Let's start with an on-site workshop. That's brilliant if we could do a half day or a full day with your team. And if you can't afford those, let me give you a slew of free resources and things available to you to help you start implementing this within your organization. And the reason why I would always start with one thing as opposed to trying to get people to sign up for this big package deal is because I knew that if we could do one thing with them, they would create enough buyin and they could see enough of that potential ROI to say, "Okay, maybe we can actually

23:14lead up the chain and try to get some more funding here or let's let's build this out step by step as opposed to trying to do it all at once." That's been really effective with a lot of clients of hey, you don't have the budget now. let's build in enough excitement around this and buy in that your leadership is going to say, "Okay, what's going on over here? Let's let's

23:31dedicate a little more funding to this." And that's worked in almost every case. Yeah, for sure. That's there there's so many kind of lowcost ways that you can start this process inside your organization. I mean, you can probably the probably the cheapest would would be to go to the library and get a copy of Extreme Ownership, right? And and there you go. You can start that off. You can the cheapest is your podcast. podcast is

23:54free. Um, that's a great way to start it, too. And and and that's and then once you start getting a little bit of traction, things pick up and then other people see the effectiveness of it. And you know, even with this particular case of this public uh service company, it's like, oh yeah, when they start seeing their costs go down and the service increase, they

24:13go, oh, okay, where did this come from? Oh, it came from training our leaders. And that kind of ties into this third case study here. there was a manufacturer and I think uh they were making auto parts and this particular individual had had left a career as a you know working in an auto manufacturing shop and he started his own started his own little shop and he had read EO and then he attended the muster and he started to build relationships with bigger manufacturers and he built very critical relationships with suppliers started bringing his team to the FTX, got more contracts and he, you know, then had the material to make

24:58the contracts happen because he had he had built relationships with the material suppliers and then brought, you know, NEF to train a whole staff of 200 people and and now they are really doing well. But that goes back to the same thing is we we work with a lot of companies that they don't have a big budget. You know, they're trying to grow. And when you're trying to grow a company, you you're not sitting on a bunch of money. It's just not the way it works. You're going to rein invest that money back into the company. And again, okay, how much of that it would be ideal

25:29if you could invest in invest a bunch of it back into leadership. But sometimes like no, no, we got to make payroll. Oh no, we got to buy the material for the next job. That's a reality of life. But luckily, we do have things like the books, the podcast, the academy, the online training academy. That's not an expensive investment at all for your team. And yet it is so effective in teaching these principles. And then people have something that they can tie back to on a weekly basis. You're getting together. You're making sure that you're you're staying on the path because everyone everyone resorts back to their instincts after a short period

26:10of time. And it takes some serious time and effort to change your instincts, which I think we're going to talk about as well. Changing your instincts to where you actually start to think and let the logical extreme ownership part of your brain run things instead of your emotion and your logic run things, which we were actually talking about before we hit record. Is we've all got that voice in our head of our ego and our emotions that is ready just to ruin everything and think it's right while doing it. And

26:39you can't let that voice out. If you want to let it out, you can you can go into a a soundproof booth somewhere and you can go and yell and scream about how dumb everyone else is and how smart you are and how you deserve to be in control. You can do that. You can go in that little thing. They they have rage rooms. You could go in there, just make all the excuses you want, rage out, and then and then leave and do the actual right thing [clears throat] and then go out and run the filter so

27:07that you're not saying dumb stuff. Mhm. And you're not attacking people and you're actually building relationships. So th those are good ways when you start out to with a company to utilize these principles and at a very low cost. Yeah, Echelon Front does a lot of emphasis on value. So we really try to put enough out there in the world for for the clients and the individuals who can't afford us or who don't have the budget to bring us in or for individuals who maybe don't have support with their leadership. How do I learn these principles? And one of the most common things we hear from our clients is, hey,

27:41we don't want this to be a flavor of the week. And oftentimes, we're coming in after they've had other companies who have become the flavor of the week. And so we try to connect this back to what are your values. Sometimes clients say, "Hey, here's our five values. We'll map those to our principles. Let's make sure

27:56that this is ingrained in your culture. We'll change some of the ways we talk about it to fit your values so when we leave here, you can actually sustain it." And that's whether it's through training with us or the academy or the implementation program which is one of our fastest growing options because it's scalable, it's cost-effective and it it's essentially like a book club that you can go and do with your people and you can sustain that for 12 months and then start back over with dichotomy of leadership and you've got another year of training. I think need to lead is coming out in in a month. So now you've

28:24got three years of training that with or without Echelon Front there every day and helping you got access to the content to ensure it's not flavor of the week and your people are constantly getting an opportunity to apply these principles effectively. Yeah, [snorts] I've done plenty of events over the years where either the the company like I remember uh this probably happened for the first time

28:43probably like six or seven years ago. this construction company. They'd been doing this big project and they were way off and they brought in a new leader and the new leader was like a extreme ownership type guy and of course they were way over time and way over budget. He had no money to do anything but he like out of his own pocket bought books for like the 12 senior people and they turned that thing around. They got it back on timeline. They were still a little bit late, but they like recovered millions of dollars worth of

29:15loss time and then finished the project. And I actually went out there and spoke as the project was completed. Like I spoke in this brand new facility, you know, $500 million place. And I spoke and and I was kind of congratulating them because they had done it. And this happens a lot too at Frontront where, you know, I'll come in maybe halfway

29:36through a project or at the completion. Sometimes I do the beginning, but but my point being just like in the Warrior Kid books, at the end of the Warrior Kid books, Uncle Jake leaves and you know, Mark is like, "Hey, but what how who's going to help me?" And Uncle Jake says, "You you know what you got to do? You you you got this." And so when people pick up the mantle of extreme ownership, they really can carry it. Now, again, you have to be careful. We have plenty of examples where someone doesn't pick up the mantle of extreme ownership. They pick up the hammer of extreme ownership

30:08or the shotgun of extreme ownership or the bazooka of extreme ownership or the flamethrower of extreme ownership. And what they do with that is they just kill everyone around them. They just aim it at everybody and shoot them in the face with extreme ownership. You need to take ownership. You need to take ownership. It's like Oprah Winfrey. You need you get a car. You get a car. No, it's like you need to take ownership. You need to

30:29take ownership. And that does not work. It does not work. I think it's important though as we talk about these case studies to realize that this wasn't echelon front necessarily going in and making the changes in these organizations. We're providing the leadership development, the principles to do it, but it took leaders in that organization to, as you just said, pick up the mantle to actually say, "Okay, we're going to go apply it." It doesn't

30:51work if they don't actually do the work. So, as much as we talk about, well, we we went in here and the the the client succeeded, so much of that success is, in fact, nearly all of it outside of us just coming on site and saying, "Here's some things we've learned and we want to teach them to you." Was the client saying, "All right, we're going to take this and run with it. We're going to do

31:08this effectively." For sure. Yeah. That that that guy had no money to spend on echelon front and he just he just got it done with with probably a dozen books that he bought or whatever the case may be. Yeah, absolutely. I think we also helped him out on the price because he was very clear this was out of his own pocket. I

31:25think we hooked him up. So, you're right. And and to think that, you know, you're going to be able to hire Echelon Front and we're going to become your leaders. No, that's not what we're doing. We're going to come and teach people how to lead. That's that's what we do. And we're good at it. And when people learn how to lead, they're

31:44going to be able to pick up that mantle. They're going to be able to run with it. are going to be able to learn to build relationships, cover and move, you know, keep things simple, prioritize yourself. They're going to learn all that stuff. But those are skills. They they really truly are skills to to have the naive to think that to think that someone is born with the leadership skills that are going to make them effective on leading a team of 5, 10, a thousand, 10,000

32:08people. It's so wrong. It's so wrong. And you just got to re realize that just like you wouldn't put a plumber on a job without teaching them how to solder pipe, you wouldn't take a leader and put them in a position where they've got to prioritize and execute, where they've got to establish the mission and and and have decentralized command and train their supporting leaders. You can't how how can you expect that? You cannot expect that. So, please don't. I'm doing some interviews for a project we're working on called the frontline leader make a makes a difference and it's been awesome because there's so many running

32:46themes and one particular story was actually in the firstaa case study we talked about that construction company the individual that I'm interviewing told his story and what's really cool is a cool story of him taking ownership but also him having enough humility because essentially he was that guy he was good at his job he got promoted he got promoted to a pretty big leadership role big responsibility and he bombed It it was bad. His people were unhappy. He was too emotional. He didn't know what he was doing. And he essentially was demoted. Told he was going to get demoted. They were going to put someone else in this role. And he chose in that

33:19moment because he had learned about these principles and realized that he needed to take ownership of this problem that he was going to have enough humility to take the demotion and to work his way back up. And the next time around, he invested in applying these principles and really getting good at the leading component, keeping his ego in check, uh, delegating to people, building relationships that when the opportunity came back around to step into that leadership role, he was ready and now he's killing it in this leadership position. And it's awesome to see people kind of go through the exposure of extreme ownership and get to

33:52the other side where they can see the actual outcome of what happens when you take ownership. Yeah. Well, it's a it's just a it's a cruel world. And it's a cruel world because what happens to people when they get put promoted into those positions and they they haven't been trained on what to do. What they're going to do is they're going to behave based on their natural instincts that they have. And what why I say it's a cruel world is that your natural instincts of what you think you should be doing as a leader most of the time

34:26are wrong. Most of the time they're wrong. And that that's a problem. It's very similar to to jiu-jitsu in that way in that in jiu-jitsu your fighting instincts often times are wrong. They're not always wrong, but often times they're wrong. And if you rely on what your instincts are, they're not going to help you. they're they're actually going to hurt you. And it's the same thing with leadership. Your instincts are going to be wrong and they're going to cause more problems. And that's such a great example because I'm sure if we broke that down and we said, "Okay, what were the behaviors that you really rocked on

35:04your first goround?" You know, oh yeah, you're damn right. I'm in charge. Hey, this is the way we're doing it. Hey, listen to me. I came up with a plan. I told you to be and like you can see this and you you think that's what you're supposed to you know when you watch TV and a leader walks in the room and starts yelling and screaming okay that's the way it's supposed to be or you see the the mob boss or the military leader or the the industrialist that's out there cracking heads on the on the floor and you're like hell yeah and it's like no those are dramat those are dramatic

35:31things and they're not true and I even have this discussion when it comes to like military leadership and people say you know back in the day it wasn't like this, you know, we we tell someone to do something, they do it. It's like, oh, did you see go watch Band of Brothers and see how that worked out? See, why did they why did they shoot tyrannical leaders so often in the Vietnam War that they have a name for it, right? We're going to frag our officer cuz we don't like him. Well, did they not like him because he listened to them? Did he not like them because he

36:03treated them with respect? Did he not like them because he came up with because he allowed them to influence how they were going to do things? No. Now, that's not why they that's not why they literally would kill their officer. They'd kill their officer because he didn't listen to him. Didn't treat him with respect. Didn't allow them to influence him at all. And and they cannot stand that. And yet, what's the instinct? The instinct is, hey, I'm in

36:26charge now. This is what we're doing. And it's just wrong. So, you got to be careful of that. Uh this last one of these case studies, this is a healthcare scenario. And in this particular situation, pretty big healthcare organization, bad relationships between the the headquarters and the union. One manager started using EF. It started to spread throughout the company. Um the whole company eventually adopted it doing outstanding. But original one of the original um points of contact was well the original person that that kind of ran with it inside the company was was again picked up that not the not the mantle of extreme ownership but the

37:12hammer of extreme ownership and started smashing everyone with it and their COO was just not on board was not on board. didn't, you know, coming from a healthc care background, very empathetic woman, like wait a second, who is this guy with a shaved head in here talking about, you know, battle and war? This is not what we're doing. And so early on, we had to again interact in a way to allow the their COO to say, "Oh, wait a second. There's more

37:44to this than than I'm seeing right now." And you played a pivotal role in kind of conversing through that. Well, the the original point of contact had great intent. He read the books. He was a fan. And you can imagine he's wearing Jacko shirt locker. He's drinking go. He's got the discipline equals freedom flag in his office. He is a champion of the cause. And yet he was he was too extreme. He was going hard on the ownership. He was going hard on discipline. And people sort of were put off by that to say the least. in including his other partners in his seauite of saying hey I don't really

38:21know if this military thing is for us but we know that we want to invest in our people they had a particular group of individuals their companywide employee engagement surveys were super super low and so they were looking to take a group of 300 people and put them through a program to see if that would help increase in their employee engagement efforts and so they reached out to Echelon Front because of this gentleman's recommendation and because of their resistance they said okay you know what we're going to bring in another company as well. And we're going to essentially do two full day workshops, one with each company, and

38:52then we'll let our people help us decide. And I think that was probably leadership's way of just hoping that they would bring in this other company, and the people would choose that other company. And so we got on the conversation with her and talked through the challenges that she was having with this content and this military style. And if you remember, we it was you, me, and Dave went out and actually did a workshop with them. And the other company did their workshop. And the end result was that people said, "Hey, we want ownership." And I think what we are able to show them in that initial

39:20workshop is we can scale this back as much as you want. We have clients where we take out all of our military photos. We change some of the vernacular. If there is a resistance to what we teach because of the military aspect, cool, we can scale that back. And we did that for this organization. And so what they got was all of the same principles, all of the same language we use, but with a little bit of a softer touch so that they could see the value of these things work for us in healthcare. And I think the end result was that she not only got

39:46on board, she was a massive champion of the cause. And the end result of the 12-month program was that those 300 people because they were invested in, they now had these leadership skills. Their engagement in the organization increased significantly. And they were happier in the organization. They felt like the organization cared about them. They probably felt generally more in control over their outcome. And that shift was significant from the original survey to the end result of those 300

40:11that went through this program. Yeah. the the point that you bring up this is something that we we always have to kind of contend with is well number one okay the the the caricature of me which is [clears throat] again I am 100% to blame for the character of me I look the way I look I you know what gets what gets clipped right what gets clipped is when I give some freaking tur answer to some question and someone says you know I'm having trouble get up in the morning what should I and I say get up and and then that's a clip and like oh that must

40:46be this guy's personality or you know uh whatever there's a million of those little things out there you did you did not help us out at Echelon Front early on because one of your first major public appearances of you doing a speech was your TED talk which is I had to manage with clients all the time like don't watch the TED talk that if that's the only clip you see you are so intense and it really didn't show like your funny side your humor side the the the the real Joo. And so I used to have to combat that all the time by sending other clips of like

41:16don't watch TED talk because you're gonna get a different idea of what Jaco is going to do on stage. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. The TED talk is hard, you know, and even I watch it now and what year was that? Maybe like 2016 like somewhere. It was great. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But it's not not even close to a keynote you would give as part of an initial

41:38kickoff with a client. Not even close. It's it's so less much less intent. You have a lot more fun on stage with the audience. It's just different. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, 13 minutes talking about war and combat and a very very intense situation and very intense lesson. Some it's like, yep, it's not. And the other thing is is like it's not like I was backstage like uh hyping myself up like you're going to be intense now. I'm like no, that's I'm talking about that kind of stuff and that is very serious and that's the way I am when I talk about that. And then but yeah, of course there's all kinds of

42:12I mean leadership is comical. It's got a bunch of funny things that happen. It's it's light-hearted. It's heavy. It's all those different things. And so, so for people to kind of get through that and I mean I still have people, you know, uh talk to me and they say, "Wait, so so you're married?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I've been married for 30 years." You know, or like I can't believe you have kids. I had someone say that to me the other night. And you're so close with

42:38your [laughter] kids, which is crazy. And your wife. I know. Like, I can't believe you have kids. I'm like, yeah. I mean, they they think I was just just sitting like the movie Soldier. Have you seen that movie, Echo Charles? Yes. That's a classic. They think I'm sitting on the edge of my rack, my bed with my weapons staged, waiting for the next call to war. That's what they think. Oh, yeah. Cuz Carrie sends that all the time. Carrie said whenever I'm like, "Hey, who hey, who can do this?" and Carrie just sends the picture of the soldier sitting there waiting for orders. Uh yeah, so so getting through

43:11that character and again I don't I don't help it uh very much because of the way I look and some of my answers when I get asked stuff and you know I've always said if I'm the more annoyed I am the more the more the better answers you're gonna get from me. The more the more honest No, no, no. the more clippable answers you'll get from me is if I'm annoyed of telling you this thing cuz otherwise I'm like well you know Jamie that's a good point but after like I'm annoyed I'm like no Jamie that's dumb that doesn't make sense you know and that's kind of what gets

43:47clipped there was this one where it was a while ago and this interviewer was asking me he's like no no but what really like what what is it what really you know when you get up in the morning like what's can you talk to I was like I get up and get get I get up go to bed or get up brush my teeth go work out and

44:02they're Yeah, but I mean what's that? And then I kind of I started mocking him a little bit and I was like, well, you know, the first thing I do is I ground myself and I and I went through this thing and I just said, "No, I just freaking get up." And they like clipped that and it was, you know, one of those things where, oh, that's his personality, right? He's just this um, you know, knuckle drager. So, I know that you had to contend with that a lot

44:22during the early days. We still are. Oh, I know. I know. You did a we did a live session just like two weeks ago and somebody had asked you a question on that call and said, "Hey, we have we have a naysayer." And you gave him some honest answers and you were like, "Hey, is he a naysayer because of the

44:38principles or does he just not like me?" Well, it turns out last week I talked to this client because they're looking to bring us in for the implementation. He's like, "Well, I dug into it and Jaco was right. He just doesn't like Jaco." And I thought, man, if only he could decouple the image of Jaco from what we teach, I know on the other side of that, he'd see the value in in obviously the

44:57principles. Yeah. And that's a real thing, too. You know, I'm going to absolutely rub some people the wrong way. They don't like the way I carry myself. They don't like the way I look. They don't like, you know, my background. I was in the military for 20 years. Some people just don't like that. Um, you know, I I I'm a physical person. You know, I'm kind of into fighting and lifting and some people don't like that. I'm into working out. Some people don't like that. So, there's all these reasons why you could say, "Oh, I don't I don't like this guy." And that's, you know, that's a

45:26bummer. Um because like you pointed out, I am not the principles, right? I am not these principles have been around for a very long time. You know, we might have articulated them in a way that people could understand them, but that's not they're not me. I follow the principles. The principles don't follow me. And so I

45:46think that's important to keep in mind. And you know the other thing is from the the military aspect one of the re one of the effective things is the military stories are very consequential and therefore they take something that in business may not seem very consequential and people go oh okay. So, for instance, if you run sales and I run operations and you and I aren't don't have a good relationship and we're not working well together and you've sold a bunch of stuff and you didn't place the orders with me in time and now, you know, I don't get them delivered to you. Like, okay, we maybe

46:24our client, we have to make some calls to the client. We have to explain we're going to be a little bit late, but you know, we get through it. We still get paid. You still get your commission. I still, you know, do my next orders. It's okay, right? We're all going to live. So maybe we don't really take a hardcore lesson from that. Whereas if in combat you you said you were going to take the high ground and cover me as I moved and then you didn't take the high ground, you didn't do your part of job and I now move and I get killed. The consequences

46:48are so high and it makes the story of of the it makes the principle very clear for people to understand. Same with decentralized command, same with keeping things simple, same with taking ownership. All these things when they're put in a context of military, they become very consequential. And this the lessons are very easy. They're not very they're easier to grasp as opposed to oh, you know, we we I was micromanaging my decisions a little bit for a few months as the CEO of this company and it caused us to lag a little bit on our orders and now we're going to be a little bit below our projections for

47:25Ebida this quarter. Like no one freaks out about that, right? Everyone goes, "Oh, okay. But so maybe we don't worry that much about decentralized command." And I keep kind of making too many decisions myself. And now we look up in a year and we've, you know, we've lost more money, but still we're in business. People will hit the panic button eventually. You know, if we can, if we paint a picture of some company that goes completely upside down

47:46because of their their problems, cool. That that will translate into something people understand. But the consequences of the military examples are very very clear and therefore it often times makes the principles easier to understand because the consequences are so high. That being said, we have all kinds of stories and anecdotes of where these principles were not applied in a myriad of different environments and the outcome is the same. If you don't follow these principles, you're not going to be successful. I don't care if you're running a a girls girl scout troop or you're running a giant, you know, trillion dollar corporation. If you don't follow these principles, it's

48:29going to get it's going to catch up with you. So, that's one of the reasons why the military I mean, I think that's why extreme ownership sold well and people understand the lessons from it because it's very obvious if you don't follow these principles, here's this terrible outcome that you can get and if you do follow the principles, here's the positive outcome you can get. It just doesn't it's not as obvious and not as clear with normal examples. [snorts] That's why I love teaching the I didn't serve in combat. I can't tell these stories in the same way that you guys do. But I always talk about them and I

49:00give people the background of where they came from when I'm on site working with a client because the value is understanding if they work in this really harsh environment. And yes, maybe people's lives aren't at stake, but people's livelihoods are in businesses, but if it works in this harsh environment, then let me tell you a story after explaining the combat situation of how I used it with my 16-year-old. And you can see the connection. And if it works here and here, now you can draw the connection to it works in every other scenario you can imagine. So I think it's really valuable when we can show the combat situation,

49:32the background or history of where they came from and then give a ton of experience examples of business and home examples where people go, okay, I see now the impact of this and maybe it's not life or death in combat, but it is absolutely critical to the success of the mission as the team or in our family lives with our own relationships with our kids and our spouse. Yeah, it's so weird how when you're detached from the situation like we are at Echelon Front, you know, when we go work with a company, we roll in there for the first time and over the coming months, we're

50:04we're detached from it. We're not in it. We're detached from it. And it's so obvious. And when we grab someone from that organization and pull them out and we go, "Hey, look at this." And they go, "Oh my gosh." You know, like, "I can't believe we're doing that. I can't believe we haven't fixed that. can't believe we have that going on inside of our team. Like it's it's crazy how much that ability to detach and pull someone out and say, "Hey, just come over here with me for a minute and look at what's going on." I used to do this, you know, training SEAL platoon, you there'd be

50:35total chaos and mayhem and grab a grab one of the leaders and say, "Hey, come with me for a minute. Just come over here and stand on this burn with me and just tell me what you see." And it's they'd be up there going, "Oh my gosh, this is a disaster." I'd go, "Yeah, that's See how clear it is? Clearly, it is a disaster from standing up here on this burm 10t away from your platoon that's getting annihilated with paintball right now. Yeah. And what do you see what the solution is? Yeah, we just need to go over there. Yeah, that's

50:58cool. Go make it happen. The same thing happens inside when we go and work with a company. It's like, hey, wait, come over here. You know what? I I ser I I I recorded that last meeting that you had. I want I'm going to I'm going to let you listen to it right now. It's like, oh my god, I sound like that. My favorite thing is we have an exercise called the ball game. And you you and Leif adopted this from something you saw on online at one point 14 years ago. But the ball game is one of my favorite exercises because it puts people in a

51:29little bit of time and attention. There's, you know, there's a timeline. We're we're getting people's times to go through this activity. The rules are kind of vague. And so everyone's competing. They're all excited and there's this, you know, non-detached perspective in the room. And what happens is at the end of that that ball game, the silly little game, the first question you ask, and without giving too much away, is, "Hey, how did you guys do at applying the principles we just talked about this morning, the first one being cover and move?" And without fail, everyone goes, "Yeah, yeah, we worked together as a team." And you can see it

51:58across the room. They're all giving themselves a pat on the back. They implemented cover and move effectively. And all you have to say, okay, here's a few things that I heard. And you just look at your notebook and you read out loud, they're cheating. This isn't fair. uh and all these different things where you realize what they did well was work with their team, you know, their little department, their little group, and yet they didn't actually do the one thing we teach in cover and move, which is break

52:22down silos and actually work together. And that's noted because on the leaderboard at the bottom row, which is where everyone should have completed that task, four or five of the groups didn't finish. And immediately they get to see the connection between this silly thing we talked about in combat and now we played a fun little game, but the reality is you're doing this in your day-to-day. You're actually not breaking down silos and working across uh with other teams and and other organ other units

52:47cuz everyone's instincts kick in. Yes. It's such a revealer of instincts. You know, there's so many things out there that just reveal what your instincts are. There's a thing that we do with shooting where you basically you put a dummy round in in your magazine or someone does it for you so that at some point when you're shooting all of a sudden a dummy round your your your gun

53:07doesn't fire and it's interesting. You're just trying to figure out what they're what mistakes they're making on their trigger squeeze and they're holding their pistol and whatnot. But you can see it's like oh it gets revealed what they're doing. And that's kind of what some of these some of these um scenarios that we run and we go, "Oh yeah, look at what you're doing." And it's so hard when you get when you see

53:30it when somebody plays it back for you. We we do this leadership lab as well where we kind of set up a a business and we set up scenarios to run the business through. And again, we should you if you ran a survey, hey, who thinks they're going to raise their voice today at other people in this room? everybody be like, "Oh, no, of course not." And then you you hit record, everyone everyone's like yelling, panicking,

53:55barking orders. It's it's it's amazing. It's it's it's crazy. Same thing with the FTX. The FTX, you know, you've got someone that's read Extreme Ownership a thousand times. They I'll sign a copy of Extreme Own has it's worn ragged and the first thing, you know, you send them out on a mission. The first they're completely like micromanaging to a level that seems almost incomprehensible. And you record it. You're recording them and you're like, "Hey, don't move past that door. Hold right there. Come back four more inches." And you're like, "Bro, that's what you you just did that for your entire 25man element. Didn't move without you telling them to move

54:30and didn't stop without you telling them to stop. Do you think that might be indicative to how this organization is run?" It's so revealing. It's scary. I was at an FTX just a couple weeks ago and a fire team leader is telling one of his people, "Hey, you've got to get out of that position. and the enemy is

54:47coming down that road. You're exposed." And the guy doesn't listen. And he yells it again. The guy doesn't listen. And then he says, and I pull out my pen and I write it down. He says, "Okay, fine. It's on you if you get shot." [laughter] It's like, "We just did a brief on extreme ownership." And you're letting your teammate just be out there exposed in a bad position. Instead of thinking, "I'm not communicating effectively. I'm not ensuring he understands the real risk here. I'm not going over and saying, "Hey, we've got to get you out

55:11of here. This is not good for the team." and his instinct showed up in that moment of, "Hey, it's on you. It's on you if you get shot." Yeah. I I had to go beyond just writing down quotes when I was when I was running Trade App because they they didn't understand how crazy they sounded. And that's when I started

55:29bringing a voice recorder out with me. Originally, I made the voice recorder just so I could repeat what they're saying or, you know, make notes to myself. But eventually, I would just hit record and you'd hear these guys going completely losing their minds, just yelling and screaming. And and because prior to me recording it, their perspective would be, "Dude, I wasn't yelling." Like, I had to raise my voice. Like, they truly did not believe

55:57that they sounded the way they sounded. They acted the way that they acted. They truly did not believe it. It did not make sense to them. You know, I'd say, "Hey, bro. You kind of lost your mind in that last building." And they'd say, "What do you mean?" I'd say, "Well, you were yelling and screaming. you were barking at everybody. You weren't even making sense with what you were saying, by the way. And they'd say, "Dude, I just had to I just had to like, of course, I had to get loud, but I

56:18everyone knew what I was talking about." And I couldn't convince them or they would think, "Oh, Jon was just like he is he's exaggerating." What would happen when you'd show them? Well, eventually I would Yeah, eventually I said, "I'm I got to I got to just hit record." And then I'd say, "Hey, dude, you were getting crazy in that building." And they'd be like, "No, I didn't." And I'd be like, "Okay." and I'd press play and yeah, they would be they would be they it'd be a moment of awareness, you know, it'd be a moment of awareness where they go, "Oh my gosh, I'm not who I think I am and I'm not

56:51doing the things that I think I'm doing." Which is a very bizarre thing. You know, I was writing a book recently and I was um was talking about this this thing that happened to me with with when a guy a friend of mine Grizz was in my platoon with me. got killed and and I was how old was I? I was maybe like 22 or something like that and he was a good friend of mine and I'm I was very personally um you know emotive about the whole thing and you know we went to the services and I was kind of it again I was I wasn't like outwardly just being

57:35an but I certainly had the the image in my mind that he was kind of my friend more than anybody else's friend, right? Mhm. And one of my my actual like best friend, he he told me he said, "Uh, you're not the only one that lost Grizz." And that was the that was like him hitting record or hitting play on something that he recorded because I realized he was 100% right. He was absolutely right. I was like, "Oh my gosh, and the way I'm acting, I didn't even know it. I didn't, you know, didn't just didn't think about

58:10it. I'm just an idiot." [snorts] And so a lot of times I think it's a similar situation where so often we're not aware of the way that we are behaving. And this is why I I always try and keep a nice low level of paranoia in my head that the way I'm acting is is everyone's looking at the way I'm acting through negative viewpoint. They're not looking at me going, "Oh, Jaco has the best intent." Like I don't think that about anybody. No one's looking at me going, "Oh, Jaco really means well with he what he's about to say to me." And I he, you know, I can just, oh, Jamie 100%

58:47just knows that I'm just this is in her best interest, so I'm just going to give it to her straight. I I I'm too paranoid to say, you know what, that's not the best approach to take right now. Now, look, quite frankly, with you, I have a I have a very um I mean, you know, I I give you feedback, very straight feedback pretty regularly when you need it. You don't need it a lot obviously, but like at the muster, like you'll speak at the muster and you'll say, you'll come off stage and like what do you got? And I'll be like, hey, this was a little long. This was

59:15cool. And I'd index on this right here because it was powerful. And you'll go awesome. But that took time. You didn't do that in my first If you had done that on my first brief, oh my gosh, I would have just melted. Yeah. Well, also public speaking is is also different. It's it's critical because public speaking, if I get someone focused on something, it derails

59:34them. M. So if I was like, Jamie, you know, you you you you you did a lot of pauses that were a little bit long, like you would it would screw, you know, it would just mess things up. And that's the same with, you know, if Ekko's going out to, you know, uh, for a football game and

59:49I'm like, "Dude, don't drop that ball." You know, like that's not that's not what he needs to hear. Yeah. That's not what he needs to hear. He's a receiver. He needs to hear like, "Hey, go out there and crush it." You know, that's what he needs to hear. And same thing with like if you come to me and you're like, "Hey, got any advice before I go on stage?" I'm gonna tell you, do yeah, I got some advice. Be yourself because you kick ass and you're ready to rock this thing. And you'd be like, hell yeah. If I told you, listen, you need to be careful about it would screw

1:00:12everything up. And there's a lot of things that 2 minutes before you go on stage. Yeah. That's not that's not the best uh way to run things. And that's true with public speak. It's true with anyone that's going into a pressure environment. Don't put additional pressure on people when they're going into a pressure environment, whether they're going to do a presentation, whether they're going out into a competition. I mean, when I'm talking to people before they go out to compete in fighting or in jiu-jitsu, I'm not like, "Hey, you better be careful of this." No, no, no. It's too late for that. Too late for better be,

1:00:40you know, better be careful that. No, they rather train for it or not. They're trained for it or not. And it's like, go, hey, go out there, have fun, kick ass. That's what you're going to hear from me. And I mean it because having some weird other element in your brain is not additive. It's distractive for what you're trying to do. You got to go out there and do your best. you've already been trained. You already know what you're going to say. You already know what moves you're going to try and do. You already they're already part of you. So trying to give someone some weird corrective things before they

1:01:09perform is not smart. I do feel like though there is a a third layer. So you give the great feedback, hey, just go out there, do your best, be yourself. And then you get to the point of the relationship, you're like, hey, here's a couple things you can think of after the session. And then he gets to the point, and I think you and I both share in this, where you do say, "Hey,

1:01:27don't screw it up." Oh, yeah. Just to mess with us at that point. Once you have enough faith, then it turns back into the, "Hey, don't screw it up out there. Don't drop the ball." Then it becomes the the the fun part. That's when I know that you're not going to screw it up. You know what I mean?

1:01:39For sure. When you have enough faith. Yeah. But the but going back to the feedback thing is like you've got to clearly be you've got to give feedback but a lot of times the feedback that you give you got to be cautious because people will overindex on things people will grab a hold of something people will take offense to it and man I've got that's why I'm saying I'm I'm always slightly paranoid a small low level of paranoia that what I'm saying is not landing the way I think it's landing and I think that's a very pragmatic way to go through life is that the words that are

1:02:14coming out of my mouth are not landing exactly the way I think they're landing and they're probably my low level of paranoia is they're landing in a worse way than than what I think I'm saying. And man, I I've I've screwed that up. Um I'll give you one example. You might slap me, but my wife was in the hospital with our first kid. like she was giving birth to our first kid and I said something like um hey if you don't show the pain in your face you'll feel it less. [laughter] This was like not a good call and and I I truly did mean it. Like I was thinking

1:02:49you know when you're going when when you're in the teams and you got something sucks like you don't show it. You just kind of suck it up and it sucks less. Poor Helen. Boy, she was like she looked at me and I was like okay bad. Nope. Yeah. No. I I I meant that in a totally different way

1:03:04than you heard it. My husband's phrase is, "Tell me two more times." Oh. So, if you're frustrated or you're hurt or a kid comes home and he's like, "Oh, I hurt my shoulder." He always says, "Okay, tell me two more times." [laughter] You get two more times. So, uh he tried that when when I was also giving birth. And it also didn't go very well. So, total idiots over here. Then one time I was telling my oldest daughter, she was

1:03:26probably like 17 or something like that. And I said something along the lines of, you know, um I forget what she did. She did something something, you know, dumb or whatever. And I said something along the lines of like, you know, it's my fault for not raising you. And and she was like, yo. She just shut me down. She's like, you're not like a failure as a dad because I did this and quit trying

1:03:51to say that kind of stuff, you idiot. And I was like, "Okay, fair enough." So, what you say is very often going to land, not the way that you mean it. And also, the way you behave is not going to land the way you you mean it. And to assume that it is going to be perceived in a negative way gives you the best possible outcome because that means you index in the other direction like, "Okay, I need to be more positive about this or I need to say this in a softer way so that that so it doesn't get taken the wrong way." That's going to give you

1:04:21the most positive outcome. assuming that hey what I say you know J I'm I'm I'm I'm the boss around here. Of course Jamie's going to she's going to love to hear some critique point for me. Like that is the worst attitude to have because yeah no filter. I can just tell you what to think. That kind of sucked today Jamie like that you know that could again you and me know each other and I was like were you were you okay today? And look if you were to bomb something I I I wouldn't be like yo you bombed today. What was wrong? like I wouldn't say that. Um but

1:04:54to frame it in a way that hey what I'm saying is probably going to be perceived more negative than I think is a very positive way to go through interacting with other humans. You taught me this early on at my time at Echelon because you introduced to me this idea of leadership capital and that we have a bank and every interactions a withdrawal or a deposit. And you said very early on and it's now something I think all of our instructors teach. You should always assume that when you're interacting with someone, you are at a

1:05:21bigger deficit than you think you are. You're always in the red. And if I interact with you thinking, I'm in the red in our leadership capital, I need this interaction to be a deposit. I'm more inclined to engage with you in a way that actually enables us to deposit some money in that bank as opposed to assuming you and I have all the cash flow in the world and I'm coming in there not realizing that I'm at a at a deficit and I'm continuing to take from the bank, it just further puts friction in our relationship and it's not a good end result. Yeah. And and here's another

1:05:49little thing that people get caught on. So, you know, I had feedback for you, Jamie, and my feedback was that um hey, the way you briefed today sucked, right? Wouldn't it hey, isn't it just better to just give her that direct feedback because then she knows that it sucked and now you can move forward. And I I understand that and and that's why, you know, that's why we talk about the direct approach versus the indirect approach because the direct approach, which I just used, what does that do to our relationship? What does it do to the next time you have to go out there and present and you've got this this bear in

1:06:22the back of your head that you sucked last time? None of it is good. Whereas, if I said, "Hey, Jamie, I noticed a couple things were different about your brief today. I just want to figure out where why you did them." And maybe you say, "You know what? you know, my my kid was sick and like I I was honestly distracted and and I go, "Oh, that sucks. Hey, all right, cool." You know, do you need anything? Do can we help

1:06:44out? Do you need a day off? Whatever. Like, that's a totally different outcome than Jamie, your brief today sucked. So, and I think people think, well, the direct way is the best way to get there. It's like, no, it's actually not. It truly is not the best way to get there. And listen, can you develop a relationship with people where you can be very direct with your feedback? You can get there. You can. I see it very

1:07:07rarely. I mean, to this day, my wife of almost 30 years, if she cooks something that is not like that's not my favorite and she says, "Oh, how do you like the whatever?" And I go, "H, not really my cup of tea." [laughter] Bro, that's direct feedback. my wife, you know, like I like I said, my wife and I, we have four kids. We've been married for a long time. She's she's my

1:07:34my my soulmate, the whole nine yards. She doesn't want to hear that. She doesn't want to hear that. It's not gonna it's not not helpful. Now, what I I've got a little bit of a system, but now this system has been uncovered. The system is she'll say like, "Oh, do you want me to

1:07:53cook that stuff I made the other night?" And I used to be like, "Oh, no, no. I'm not really in the mood for that." Now she realizes that's because I didn't like it. Because you know, once I had to suffer through it, right? Because I'm definitely not saying, you know, no, it's good. Thank you. But how's that with my wife who wants me to have a good meal, right? She loves when I'm like, "Oh, this is so good." I was telling Ekko she makes this she's she's got this thing she's making right now and it's like it's protein pasta of some kind with this um it's

1:08:30like a it's like some kind of a Caesar saladish kind of something sauce and then big chunks of fresh mozzarella in it and it so what she's making me these like mixing bowls filled with it and I use salad fork, like a big to I like it when my I push my fork in there and it doesn't even hit bottom

1:08:52and I'm just shoveling it in my mouth. But you when she made that for the first time, I was like, "What is this? Is this is awesome." That's great. She want she loves that. So, this is a woman that wants, you know, to to to deliver the goods, right? And even she is not just down for like, "Oh, it's not really it's not really that it's all right. Hey, direct feedback off." No, no, no. Not

1:09:17good. I think that the direct feedback from our closest relationships is even harder. Oh, yeah. Cuz it lands harder. It lands so much harder. If you gave me direct feedback, that would that would hurt my soul because I care so much about your opinion of me. Um, just given our long-term relationship. Same with my husband. He does I don't want to hear his negative feedback. Are you kidding me? Not at all. That's way worse than someone I don't care about who has an opinion about me and I go, "Yeah, okay, whatever. I can [laughter] move on from

1:09:42that." Yeah. So, it's just important to be aware of that stuff, the the direct versus indirect. And all day long, all day long, I'll have people that on paper will explain to me how the direct feedback is better. And I'm sure there's thousands of people listening this right now that are like, well, you know, if you if you really got to give them the direct and listen, that's why you can escalate, right? There is an escalation here. And and over time, if you have somebody that continually does something and you've discussed it with them and you've brought it up and you've asked earnest questions and they're still

1:10:16doing something that is not that they shouldn't be doing, yes, you can escalate your directness to eventually where you say, "Hey, you cannot do this anymore. This is unacceptable behavior. You cannot do that." You can do that. You can do that with your kids. You can do that with your spouse. You can do that with your family. You can do that with your employees. You can do that with your boss. You can go up and down the chain of command. You can escalate escalate directness and how do you how

1:10:38does how does it work up the chain man? Well, if I keep coming to you going, hey Jamie, I need this by tomorrow. And you're like, okay. And you like and then the next time, hey, I I need this by tomorrow. And you go, hey, just so you know, like when you tell me you need this by tomorrow, I got to put these other things aside. Is that what you want

1:10:53right now? Well, yeah, I need it. Okay. And then the next time I go, hey, I need this by tomorrow. And you go, hey, just so you know, last time I couldn't deliver this the other thing, and I also missed this. So, is this really what you want? And I go, "Well, yeah, I do." And like, "I need to spy tomorrow." And then eventually go, "Hey, just so you know,

1:11:10here's this is not acceptable behavior. Like, you cannot ask me to do this. It puts every we have all these other things going on and I'm casting it all aside cuz you're not giving me this task early enough. So, if you need this stuff done, you need to ask me with this much time." So, that's direct feedback up the chain of command. And but it starts with a with a gentle escalation because, believe me, if I was like, "Hey, Jame, I need this by tomorrow." And you're like, Oh, okay. I got a couple things, but I

1:11:37can move them. And I'd go, "Okay, cool." And I pro, even with that, I'd be like, "That wasn't a good move. That was that was not cool leadership." You know, now if I had to do it again, I said, "Hey, Jamie, I need this by tomorrow." And you're like, "Okay, just so you know, here's the secondary impacts." I'd be like, "She's only telling me the

1:11:50secondary impacts because I suck." Right? So, you can escalate up, down, and across the chain of command. Your directness and and usually you don't have to. Usually, you don't have to. Most cases people get the hint up, down, and across the chain of command. When I bark, when I tell you I need something tomorrow, and you go, as soon as you did that, I'm like, "Oh, okay. This is not

1:12:11good." Yeah. But that takes a lot of self-awareness. How many leaders do we know are completely missing out on the signals from their team and not seeing the way that people react to something they're doing, they're missing out on those signals left and right. And then because Jaco said you can escalate to directness, they go from A to B like

1:12:28that. No, from A to F. A to F. Yeah. A to Z and meanwhile they're missing all the iterative steps of what escalating directness actually looks like. Y people people tell you how they feel about things. If you just pay attention to how they react to you, you can get a good sense as to what is our leadership capital like and does do I have this

1:12:46person's respect? Absolutely. And going back to the uh point of people saying well listen why don't you just go from A to F? Why not? And the reason is because of all the collateral damage that it causes to the relationship to the to the um confidence of the person to their relationship not just with you but with the organization as a whole. So that's why you don't go from A to F from hey I need this done today like hey you better do this or I'm going to fire you. Like those are those are not those are not good ways to operate. and the the the collateral

1:13:22damage that is caused is way worse than the time that it takes to escalate the directness. So when you run the numbers on the whole situation as a leader, when you run those numbers, it seems like what you get with the direct with the the direct approach is the short-term gratification and a short-term payoff. Like you're damn right, Jamie. Uh yeah, Jamie, you screwed this up. You need to fix it. And so she goes and fix it. You see, see how that wasn't hard echo? I just told her

1:13:50what the freaking problem was. Meanwhile, Jaime's literally putting her resume into another company cuz she hates me, right? That that's what you get. So, you get a short-term gratification by the direct approach. The long the the indirect approach is a strategic move. It builds strategic relationships and it's a strategic win. Whereas direct is a short-term win in

1:14:10air quotes, but it's a long-term loser. So, please pay attention to that. Um, in talking about some of this stuff before we did this, you were you were you were talking about the stages of extreme ownership that you experienced and that now you've seen many people experience. It's kind of like the uh the

1:14:35acceptance the stages of grief, right? and I forget what they are off the top of my head, but there is a similar correlation between the the stages of grief, which is like denial, anger, sadness, something else, and then acceptance. Yeah. And I forget what number four is, but this is this can be a similar kind of trajectory of of when people learn about extreme ownership and how their mind processes it over time to go from like this is a cool idea to like oh a deep sense of

1:15:09understanding. What's it look like? I think the first stage that I see with either clients that I'm talking to that are looking to hire echelon front or when we go in and do sessions is an initial excitement around extreme ownership. They're excited about the principles. They hear about it and they're like, "Yes, we need this." But in almost every case, the excitement is aimed towards other people. [snorts] So, it's the point of contact or the leadership talking to me before the session and saying, "Hey, my people need to take ownership. We need you guys to come in. We're excited about this because they need to take

1:15:40ownership." And then you know what happens? We get on site and during the break or during the lunch the people are coming up to us and saying, "Oh man, if only my boss, if only our leadership would take ownership, this whole thing would be different." So there's this initial excitement around the principle, but it's almost always placed on their opinion that someone else needs to be taking ownership. I think that's the

1:16:00first stage, at least what I've seen. Yeah. Uh the the weapon of extreme ownership is meant to be aimed at yourself, not at everyone around you. It's a very powerful weapon. It's a very powerful weapon and it'll hurt when you use it on yourself and it's supposed to, but it'll hurt everyone else worse when you use it on them and they will not be

1:16:18happy about it. Well, it's hard to see right out the gate how this applies to you. That's uncomfortable. That's your ego sort of protecting yourself. So, the easier uh thing to swallow is to say, "Okay, extreme ownership is awesome. We love this concept. This is great. And if I could just get Joe to take ownership, everything would change." And so, we actually we we fail ownership by just assigning it to other people. And I think that's where the initial stage is yes this excitement sense but then it's immediately on the people around us and not necessarily looking internally for how can we start to take ownership in

1:16:49our own lives and then that rolls into what? Resistance. Resistance. Yeah. Uh and sometimes people jump right to this. We get the immediate people in the room that are like hold on you don't know about and I'll use your name Fred. You don't know about Fred over here and you don't understand what we're dealing with. And if I look at these situations, this is I think where most of the barriers come into play that we teach a lot, which is I can't see a real path for how I can take ownership of this. This wasn't my fault. I'm the victim. It's a whole lot easier to sit in the place of making an

1:17:19excuse than it is to say, man, this is my fault. And so, I think people sometimes in that sense resist it. Maybe because it's military, maybe because it's you, the character of Jaco, they don't like, or maybe it's because they really just don't see how them taking ownership in their life is gonna prove anything because they're really still worried about the other people around them and them not doing it. So, I think it's a sense of resistance of saying,

1:17:40"No, I don't think this actually works." Yeah. and the idea that well it's not really my fault like like it's not really my fault and that's a that that might be one of the biggest ones is even when people like yeah it's my fault but it but you can hear them kind of say like it's not really my fault like the way they're acting is it's not really my fault and actually probably about it's probably been eight years now but one of our instructors at Ashelon Front went to an event and brought it up on one of our cadre calls and was like, "Yo, I got asked this

1:18:20question. This woman was the CEO of this company. They have 2500 employees and she was talking about some outstation like person that's on the front lines and she's like, when this person does something stupid, how can that possibly be my fault?" And our instructor at the time was pretty new and this was before we had a really good like the squared away kind of educational program and the test and everything that we put our instructors through. He he he was caught. You know he didn't it didn't make he didn't give

1:18:48a great answer. And you know the fact of the matter is that is it is your fault. And when you have a company and there's whether there's 2500 employees or 20,000 employees or or 200,000 employees, when someone does something bad or stupid or inappropriate, it is your fault. And that means you have to behave in a way that you say, "Okay, how did this happen? Why did this happen? What's wrong with our training process? What's wrong with our screening process? What's wrong with our promotional process? What leader what training have we not given the leaders that's going to help them prevent their frontline personnel from doing this? This is this is what happens

1:19:27in the military. This is what happens in any big business that you've got someone on the front lines that does something stupid. If the boss says, well, you know, it's not on me. Well, that's just hey, that's on the front lines. Not that's not me. Okay. Well, then what did you change or what did you implement? How have you tried to prevent it? And I'm not saying that you're going to be able to prevent people from doing things that they shouldn't be doing on the front lines. But if your attitude is that's not my responsibility. Oh, I guarantee you it's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. And

1:19:55while I can't guarantee you that it will never happen again if you take ownership, I can guarantee you that the percentage of that happening, negative things happening will absolutely go down when you say, "Okay, here's here's some things that we can implement. Here's some things that we can change." So the the you know the when when I would have young SEAL leaders and someone in a in a fire team or in a squad, you know, you'd have a machine gunner that would shoot

1:20:23where he wasn't supposed to be shooting. And of course the machine gunner is getting written up for a safety violation. And so is the fire team leader and so is the squad leader and so's the platoon leader. And the platoon leader is going, "Hey, wait a second. That guy, he was he was 140 yards away from me on a ridge line. I wasn't even

1:20:41close to him when he took that shot. Okay. Well, why didn't he understand what his fields of fire were supposed to be? Why didn't he understand where the other friendly elements were? Why why did your squad leader not inform those people? You know, that machine gun Why did the fire team leader why wasn't he watching him and as he set up his machine gun? Like everyone everyone made a mistake. And so we have to that guy needs to say, "Oh yeah, okay. I'm

1:21:06platoon leader. Hey, fields of fire. This is important. Here's what we got to look out for." And by the way, there's a million other things. That's why we have decentralized command. People need to understand not just what they're doing, but why they're doing it. Because if you're a machine gunner and you go, "Oh, I'm over in this position cuz I'm supposed to prevent any enemy approaching from this position from from

1:21:26the position where we just came from." Okay, that's my job. And I also part of my job is also to deconlict with friendly forces. Okay, so those are the two things. It was one thing, but now I'm also supposed to know I'm supposed to deconlect with friendly forces. Okay, so where are my friendlies? At least even that's in my head. I can shoot in the right field of fire. Whereas if I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing, I cannot make good decisions. So the idea that resistance that like well I'm not I can't be responsible for everything. You are actually are responsible for everything. You you

1:21:54truly are. And that kind of ties into preemptive ownership, right? If I know that I'm sending Jamie some, you know, new person into the field to go, okay, what can I do to make sure that she at least has some guidelines and some boundaries in place where she's not going to do something that's catastrophic. Okay, so here's what we're

1:22:12going to do. Put these things in place. That's what we have to do. Cuz when you are in charge, you actually are responsible for everything. Everything. That's that's the resistance though because by accepting the ownership piece, you're accepting then the responsibility to fix it. And so a lot of people push that away because they say, "Man, I don't want to screw this up." Or what we hear a lot in this kind of stage if we're talking about it in this way in resistance is I can't own everything. I can't possibly every be everywhere all at once and I can't take

1:22:46ownership of all of these things. There's too many things on my plate. And so again, it's the barriers that we face and taking ownership and the resistance comes from I can't possibly do everything you're asking me to do. It's too much responsibility. And instead, what people don't realize is that we're talking about taking ownership of the outcome. Doesn't mean we necessarily

1:23:02have to do it all as a leader. Well, you better not be doing it all. You better be implementing decentralized command because otherwise you'll be a disaster principles. Yeah. Um and so then people start looking at like, okay, what's what's their first attempt when they start trying to take ownership? What does that what is that

1:23:18looking like? I think I think if you are willing to start taking ownership, you get a couple little wins where you start to see in this conversation I took ownership and that person's defenses came down and it allowed me to have a more open conversation or you take ownership with something with your kids and you have a better interaction than you would have otherwise. Or you take ownership of something and you feel a little bit of that excitement or that uh sense of okay, wow, that I felt a little more control. I can see now a path for taking ownership. And I I love when people get

1:23:48to this phase because they really start to see the potential outcome. They don't get there right away because we get those little wins and then people backslide. Uh because those barriers are strong and the various things that keep us from taking ownership constantly are things we have to overcome. But the initial wins are where people's eyes start to open and they go, "Okay, I'm starting to see now how I can control the outcome and I can dictate the situation more than just letting this excuse be the reason why we're not winning, why we're not accomplishing

1:24:15what we should be accomplishing." I am thoroughly convinced that we can take we have ownership over so much more than people think. Like so much more than people think. We really narrow down what we can control and our into the tiniest thing that we possibly can. Like, oh, I that's not my fault. That's not my thing. I can't do that. I can't help there. That that's what our ego does. That's the instinct is that's not on me. That's that's not mine. I can't help it. I can't help it if Jamie, you know, missed her plane flight. That's not on me. Oh, really? Well, you're the one that set up the the event so that

1:24:50Jaime had to go from this event on this day to this event that night and now you're surprised that she missed her flight and now she's not going to make it. You're really surprised about that. Like that's what we're doing. You see what I'm saying? Where oh actually if I say wait a second Jamie works for me and I put her on backtoback events the same day with a oh it's only an hour and a

1:25:07half flight from Vegas to San Francisco. It shouldn't be that big of a deal. Oh no no no. We've all been to the airport before. What are the chances? Dele with it last night. Exactly. So So to think that oh you know I this is not on me. Not just the people doing dumb things but the world doing dumb things. Right. How often does the world do dumb things to you? It the world does some dumb stuff to us. And if if you just say, "Well, throw up your hands." Well, there's nothing I can do about it. That's the world. That's the

1:25:35world in action. If you don't have that attitude, if you have the attitude of like, "Oh, wait a second. The world is going to do what I set it up to do. And the things that are immovable, I'm going to maneuver around them effectively. and I'm going to put myself in positions where I will not be negative negatively impacted by what the world is doing. It's the same thing I see in any type of let's say adversarial relationship and people put their outcome based on what the other

1:26:11person does. This is a bad move. This is a bad move. So, if you and I are are arguing about something and I say and I decide, you know what? I'm going to call her bluff. Go ahead and do the way you want to do it, Jamie. The minute I do that, I've now given you the power to do what you to do whatever you're going to do. And maybe there's a 99% chance that you're going to be logical and rational and you're going to see the the way that I'm doing the way that I want you to do it as superior. There's also a 1% chance that you're going to do

1:26:42this crazy thing. And guess what you're going to do? You're going to do the crazy thing. That's the way that's the way the world works. So I will never as not never but I as as seldom as possible do I put the outcome of a situation into the hands of someone else where it relies on them and what they do rather than what I am going to do and what I am responsible for. So if we have to be in a certain place by a certain time I I know what I'm going to do. I know that I am going to be there. And if you're

1:27:15like, I can't rely on you being there. Hey, I'm gonna be there. Jamie may show up, right? And I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna start. And Jamie may show up. She's got a tight timeline. It's okay. But hey, listen, talking to a client. Hey, I'm you know this this I'm going to be doing the presentation. Jamie may be here as well. She's got a Right. There you go. No problem. It's covered. If I say, "Well, you know, we'll start when Jaime gets here, but Jaime's on a tight flight and she's got, you know, she checked a bag," which is a mortal sin at Echelon Front if you check a bag. So, if

1:27:46she checked a bag and now she's got to do baggage claim and the whole thing and that thing got lost, like, no, don't do that. What outcomes can you control and base your plan around outcomes that you can control and you're going to be in a better much better situation. Yeah. And I think that what you described is the challenge people face is because they underestimate their sphere of control or their ability to influence the situation. So they give up all their control because it's someone else's or something else's problem. I was working with a client recently and we were going through our problem solving framework. And one part of that

1:28:17framework where we start is for them to identify the problem. And everyone loves identifying the problem. They love the part which is really just coming up with all the reasons why this problem exists which is usually someone else or something else. In this particular client, the problem was the executive le leadership team. They're changing priorities. The the goalposts are

1:28:34constantly moving. There's friction. There's change fatigue. Their team is feeling it. And in the situation, they're hyped up around the problem, which is their leadership and the situation that's happening at the at the higher level. And so then we flip to the next side of the of the framework, which is okay, what are you going to do about it? How do you take ownership of this problem? And it was crickets. Everyone's thinking like I don't I don't have any control over this. We just described that. That's leadership. And one person raised their hand and they said, "Man,

1:29:01it was really fun on the other side." [laughter] And I said, "Yeah, right now we have to get to the harder part, which is to actually pull the thread on how can you solve this problem within your sphere of control." And I think that was the piece that they had to understand is that can you solve for the leadership and the challenges at the top? Maybe not and pro certainly not, you know, tomorrow. But what do you actually have control over? And it was one gentleman who realized this connection and said, 'You know what? I realize now my team has a bad attitude because I am not

1:29:30filtering the frustrations I have from leadership. I am if anything spreading it down to them. So he realized that within his sphere of sphere of control, the ownership he could take wasn't necessarily what leadership was giving him to work with. It was how he created the buffer between leadership and his people and put them on the path to have a better attitude and help them manage the change fatigue that they were feeling. And all it took for was for him to really continue to pull the thread to realize at the end of that line is is you. It anchored back to you. And I think when people first start

1:30:02the attempts of taking ownership, they start to see more clearly, okay, all right, I can't solve for this whole thing, but I can solve within here. And here's what I can take ownership of. And they start to ask that question. How can I take ownership of this? What in this problem can I actually step in within my

1:30:18sphere of control to take ownership of? And that gives us so much more control as a leader than just making excuses and casting the blame onto other people. And then eventually once that starts happening, then people start saying, "Wait a second. Uh what about everyone else?" And then you get like the the extreme ownership dip where they're starting to look around going, "Why am I the one that has to own

1:30:41this?" Or you're the only one. I think that's for most people, they dip because they feel like they're the only one. they they got a couple wins, they understand the value of ownership, they're starting to see it more clearly, and then they show up with their team and they take ownership and their team goes, "Yeah, cool." Or their spouses, "Yeah, you're right. That is your fault." Or your kids who take forever to get them on the other side of ownership, let you have that ownership. And that starts to feel lonely. You're like, "I'm out here on an

1:31:08island. No one else is taking ownership. What's the point? What's the point of doing these things when no one else has got my back in this?" And so we dip because it it starts to wear on us if we're the only one out there doing it. Yeah. It's kind of interesting that you win, right? You use the principles, you win. It's it's like uh when kids wrestle and you practice, you train, you start

1:31:32to win. And then if you keep practicing and keep training, you'll keep winning. And if you don't, but guess what? The training and the practice is freaking hard. And cutting weight, it's freaking hard. And so some kids are like, "You know what? I'm not doing this anymore." Or you go out into a match and you get

1:31:50obliterated. Yeah. One time and you go, "What's the point? I've been training so hard. I've been having all these successes and I went out there this one time and this guy kicked my butt." Like and then you what? You just stop training. I think that's what happens though with ownership is people say, "You know what? This doesn't this was great in theory, but it doesn't work in practice." You know, the question that I get a lot is um you know what if what if you know I take ownership and I say you know what Jamie this is this is my fault that that I scheduled these flights too close

1:32:18together and then Jamie says yeah it is your fault. Well then what am I supposed to do? People honestly ask that question as if it was a get out of jail free card. As if as if when I take ownership the problem goes away. It's like no the problem doesn't go away. It's still a problem. And so when when someone points their finger when you say, "Yeah, this was my fault." And they point your finger at you and they say, "Yeah, it's your fault." You don't go, "No, actually, no. I was taking ownership so I could avoid this." No, no, no. You

1:32:44say, "I know. That's what I just said. It's my fault. Here's the things I'm going to change. We're going to make a new, you know, protocol at Echelon Front. We're going to put a minimum amount of time for distance between events and that way no one will get caught like this again." So that's what I'm doing to change it as opposed to like, well, no, I was just kind of saying it was my fault so that you would take ownership because isn't it kind of your fault, Jamie, when you're the one that booked your flights? Isn't that

1:33:07kind of your fault? Like, no, you that's what you want when you take ownership. There's a little piece of you that's like, "All right, I'm going to take ownership, everyone, cuz I heard this was good and I saw the win last time, but you're you all have to be in this boat with me, right?" Like, we all want people to take their part of ownership. And oftentimes that leads us,

1:33:24you always say your intent has a smell. If I'm taking ownership, but deep down I know that you've also got some ownership in this, it's not going to land in the right way. When I take ownership of a problem, when you really take ownership, it doesn't matter what the other person is or is not willing to take ownership of because I'm still going to now solve this problem within my sphere of

1:33:41control. Yeah. People get through the dip. They power through and then they start to form the habit, the extreme ownership habit. Yeah. I think it starts with the mindset. that first question when you start to see the winds before the dip of how can I take ownership and then if we just persist it's the discipline you talked about if we just consistently look through the world through that lens of ownership we start to see that we actually have a lot more control than we give ourselves credit for and when we do that we start to ask ourselves a question constantly how do I take ownership of this doesn't feel like my

1:34:17fault but somewhere ownership exists and as We do that over time it becomes our behavior and it becomes our habit and I think over time it actually become your instinct. I think I've been at Echelon Front long enough that I know I know even when I trip up and I say something the immediate reaction I feel of like oh man that's dang it that wasn't ownership. You feel it because that's your instinct now. And I also know the power in getting to the other side of when it is your instinct. I don't look

1:34:43at problems the way same way I used to. I don't look at them with my flight last night was a total disaster. I didn't have any sense last night of feeling overwhelmed and frustrated because I now have this instinct of ownership which is okay cool that sucked. What am I going to do to solve for it? Let's let's move on from this and let's start moving in the direction of getting this taken care

1:35:01of. I remember when you first had this idea of asking the you put it on a slide at the muster. Yeah. Yeah. How can I take ownership of this? No, [snorts] I said how can I make this my fault? Oh, that's right. How can I make this my fault? which either either one of those to me I read it as oh so and I you know you and I talked about this you and I said listen that means you really don't think it's your fault and you're trying to make it your fault which is not really taking ownership you're just pretending to take ownership and the way

1:35:30and then after I thought of it for a while I was like oh this is like training wheels right it's like here's a situation that's going on some kind of failure some kind of a problem and you got it's a training wheel to go hold on a second I don't want just blame Jamie. How can this be my fault? Okay. And then it made a lot of sense to me. That's a great way to get in to form the habit of taking ownership is by when something goes wrong instead of just going, I can't believe Jamie did this. I can't believe Ekko dropped the ball. Instead,

1:35:57going, hold on a second. How is this my fault? And the the minute you start doing that, you you start going, okay, I can see the things that I could change and the things that I could do better. And man, it there is such a small percentage of things in the world that when you really start pulling the thread and asking that question that you don't find yourself going, man, I should have done this two weeks ago. I said this or I did this or I didn't do that and now we're here and that's on me. And sure, there's a bunch of other people that I

1:36:28could rely on to have filled some gaps, but that's not what we're talking about. I don't control them. I control me. I remember that conversation because that was in my first barrier slide and the barrier was it's not my fault which I think is the biggest barrier people face. They try to take ownership and like but this really wasn't my fault. I wasn't there. I wasn't a part of this pro this problem. And I had put on the slide how can ask yourself this

1:36:54question. How can I make this my fault? And you gave me that initial feedback of hey that's kind of insinuating that it's not really your fault. and behind that might have that insincerity that doesn't lead to a good outcome. And then I think it was like two days later you called me back because you thought about it and you thought, you know what, I changed my mind. Because I do think as people start in the path of ownership, you do sort of have to force yourself by saying, okay, I don't think this is my fault. How can

1:37:18I make this my fault in this situation? And maybe I maybe I can't ever get to what I should have or couldn't or could have done in that situation. But what I can at least get to in making this my fault is what I'm going to do next to solve it. Which sometimes is where we have to anchor our ownership. Maybe we

1:37:33can't understand what happened to us. It's that victim mentality. Bad things happen, but I can at least take ownership of what I do next and how I respond. That's when you get that instinct of ownership of saying, man, this thing happened to me. I wasn't there. This doesn't feel like my fault. And even in that really difficult situation, I can still understand where ownership lies and how I can take it effectively in this in this uh

1:37:54situation. Yeah. the the idea of feeling bad or not good when you blame other people. I I always think about throwing up in my mouth. I know that's gnarly, but like when you that's when I'm like, "Well, you know, actually, Jamie, this is on you." Like I I feel like I just threw up in my mouth because it it's so disgusting to say that kind of stuff, to blame other people, to blame other It's just terrible. And yeah, it's that's where you should get to. You should get to where you're if you start pointing

1:38:32that finger at someone else. Oh, hold no. Actually, it's on me. You got to swallow that puke. Back down. Don't let it out cuz it's it's freaking nasty. Um, [snorts] and then how are we how are you teaching ownership? Like now you've got the kind of got it, you got the habit. What are you doing to teach it? I think once you establish this instinct for ownership, then you need to understand your responsibility to model that behavior for the people around you. And certainly with your teams and your peers and your boss and the people that you work with, but where I see this play out the most

1:39:08is at home with my family in especially three teenagers in how can I model this behavior because I what I want more than anything is for the people around me and certainly the ones I care about the most to understand the outcome of what ownership gives them. the gift of ownership that they can take ownership of their life and not spend so much time that I think I did when I was younger making excuses which prevented me from actually achieving what I wanted to achieve. So I think it's modeling the behavior and then it's those earnest questions and helping people reveal to themselves like you said before I can't

1:39:42show up with my kids and say hey you got to take ownership of this but to reveal for themselves that oh there's actually a path here in which I can take ownership to solve this. I'll tell you what right now like if I in my house make any kind of blame on anybody it is

1:39:59unbearable. It is my kids. Oh [laughter] they I mean it don't do it. Do not do it in my house. Do not do it in my house. Do not say like well you know you you said you were going to Nope. Nope. Nope. YOU WILL GET OH [screaming] YOU'LL GET YOU'LL get dunked on for the next 20 minutes. I've had a

1:40:20few of those. It's rough. You don't want you don't want to let that happen in the house. Um, and it's important to know as well that there are there are slugs in the world. There are people that do that are not going to take ownership. There are people that when you know when Jamie you and I are working on a project together and we're peers and you know you we have to do ABC and D and F and you're going to do D and F and I and I'm kind of done with my AB and C and I go hey do you want me to do D for you and you're like

1:40:53yeah yeah go ahead take ownership of it and I go cool yeah no problem here's support cover move and then you know I do that and then a little while later you're like hey do you need help with E too because it seems like you're like yeah go ahead yeah take it here here's E do that and then you know you're like a little while later I say do do you need help with F2 and you're like, "Uh, yeah, go ahead and do F2." And there are people like that in the world. Most

1:41:14people, their egos won't allow that. Most people, you might allow me to take D. As soon as I ask for E, you're like, "No, no, no. I got it." Matter of fact, give me D back. Most people, they want to, they want to, they want that work. Are there slugs in the world that don't

1:41:26want to do it? Yes, there are. Here's the thing. If you let that play out, we look up in three months and Echo, our boss, comes over and says, you know, hey, how's it going? And I go, yeah, I just need to I need one more person on my team. I mean, you say, you know, why do you need another person on your team? And I say, well, it's cuz we do ABC and we do D, E, and F. And she goes, and Ekl says, well, why are you

1:41:45doing D and isn't that Jamie's world? Well, no, here's the, you know, here's what I've been doing. Here's the extra man hours it's taking me, and I'm not sure what she's got going on, but I need another person. Eventually, everyone realizes Jaime's not doing anything. And so, if you got people that aren't going to carry any weight, take the stuff off their plate. Eventually, they'll go away. That's the way it will happen. Uh generally speaking, people will let maybe let you take one or two things off their plate and then they they want them

1:42:10back. That's the way the ego works. That's the way the mind works. Everyone realizes that that's you know you have to create value inside of an organization if you want to stay there. So when you start taking things that they are supposed to be doing away from them, generally speaking, the the slug will relinquish it all eventually and they won't be there anymore. So that is another way that the idea of extreme ownership creates a culture where people that don't believe in it won't be there for a long time. They they will get weeded out. And that's an example of like either a peer or subordinate that's

1:42:45going to get weeded out eventually because they won't have a job anymore. They just keep giving stuff up. So and by the way, when you are taking stuff off their plate, you increase your value. So now you have more value to the organization and now you can bring more people on and you'll get promoted to a new position and you'll be running more stuff. So it is good for you as an

1:43:03individual as well as helping the team. It's a win-win across the board. Um what's the deal with uh reflective ownership? I started thinking about this a couple years ago because you guys use the term preemptive ownership early at my time at Echelon Front. So there's the preemptive ownership which means hey I we're about to go do something together. there's things that I can do as your leader or your teammate to preemptively take ownership, meaning I'm putting contingency plans in place or I'm making sure that I'm double-checking certain aspects of the mission so that we can be successful. There's ways for me to preemptively, even if it's just telling

1:43:36my team, hey, what we're going to go do is difficult and it may not succeed. And if that's the case, here's what I'm going to do afterwards. You can preemptively sort of show your team you have their back. That's a way of implementing preemptive ownership. And then there's the ownership in the moment, which we should be doing every day. And a thing that I've been talking with pe different leaders with in the last probably five years is this idea of reflective ownership. Meaning when you really have this instinct for ownership, there's power in being able to look at past mistakes that you've made through now this understanding of ownership,

1:44:10this lens of ownership reflectively and saying, "Yeah, I see now how I contributed to that. I see now what I could have done differently to set myself up for success. I see now the lack of ownership there or that making an excuse in this instance was not the right call. And the power in that isn't to dwell in those instances. It's to be

1:44:30able to say, "Okay, I made that mistake. I can see more clearly now what I did to contribute to that problem, which sets me up for success when those things come again. I'm going to be more capable of taking ownership when those same issues arise." So, I think that there's power for people to take reflective ownership over the things that bring them second-guessing or maybe even shame or guilt and to look at that through the reflective lens and ownership and say, "Okay, here's what I would do

1:44:55differently knowing what I know now." [snorts] Yeah. The the idea of remember don't dwell, you know, that we talk about when we talk about uh losing people and obviously we want to remember them, but we don't dwell in the past. And it's a very similar thing, you know, remember and what lessons do you learn from it? Because it the the excuse of well I was 20 or well I was 22 or well I was 23 like those are that's an excuse that you're making and but we all we both know we were not smart you know we you were doing I was doing dumb stuff when I was

1:45:3617 16 15 20 23 like I was doing dumb stuff and so to say, you know, well, this is what I did and this is what I learned from it. And the so the the idea that, oh, well, I was young and therefore whatever I did is excusable. It's like, no, no, no, that was me. Have I learned? Yes, I've learned. Have I matured? Yes, I've matured. Do I try and pass on what I learned from doing dumb stuff to other people? Absolutely. Is it

1:46:06an excuse? Nope, it's not an excuse. It's it's the reality of the situation. And to your point, do I sit around all day and and and and drag myself under [snorts] the ground for dumb stuff that I did when I was younger? No, I learned from them. Like, okay, and I'll do my best to pass on those lessons. But I think that's a very important thing to remember. Um because people things happen, right? Things happen. People do dumb stuff. I do dumb stuff. You've done dumb stuff. Echo Charles for sure is doing some dumb stuff, right? And and do we grow up? Do we mature? Yeah, that's that's part of

1:46:47it. And do you want to dwell on the fact that you made mistakes when you were younger or and by the way, you can make a mistake two weeks ago and you you can beat yourself up about that mistake, you know. Um that happens all the time, but sometimes you got to make a decision on something and you made the wrong decision. And what information did you have at the time? You you took action on what the information that you had in the time it it turned out to be not a bad outcome. And again, to sit there and dwell on that forever and I can't

1:47:20believe I messed that up is not a good program. They already happened. You have to learn from it and then you have to move on. That's what we have. That's what you have to do with life. Do not get bogged down. Don't let extreme ownership become this anchor dragging you to the bottom of the ocean. That's not what it's meant to do. It's meant to be an educa. This reflective ownership in my opinion is like, oh, this is extreme ownership is is the instructions that I'm getting from the past that are now teaching me how to move forward. Cuz again, there's all kinds of things. You

1:47:52we talk about PTSD. A lot of PTSD is what I did or what I did not do in combat or in in whatever situation. What I did or what I did not do. And extreme ownership and reflective ownership would be, "Oh, here's the situation I was in. Here's the decision that I made. I understand why I made it. It wasn't a good decision, and here's what I learned

1:48:18from it, and here's why I'm better now." That's a reflective ownership of that as opposed to I did this. I did this thing. It was the bad move. I can't believe I did that. I should have done better. I should have known better. like just heaping that on yourself and letting that anchor drag you down as opposed to

1:48:38okay from a lens of extreme ownership. Here's what I did. Here's why I did it. Here's the lessons that I've learned and here's how I'm going to move forward. And that's what we really do have to do. I agree because I think so many mistakes we've made when we were younger, we double down on the excuse the older we get. We think about it again. I think part of that is because inside we know we should have done something differently. And so we then for those of us that dwell on the past or think about those mistakes that we've made, we double down on the excuse we made at the

1:49:05time. So there's power. And I would say, you know, not that we're super touchyfey here at Echelon Front, but it's healing. It's healing to actually look at mistakes you've made and say, "Hey, I can recognize now my ownership in this situation, and I'm better equipped the next time I come around these same problems to take ownership in an effective manner and actually solve this problem. I don't have to make that excuse anymore." You can alleviate the weight of some of those mistakes you've made and the shame and guilt that comes with them by just looking through that lens of ownership and saying, "Okay, I

1:49:34made an excuse. I did X, Y, and Z. Here's what I would do differently now with the knowledge that I have." Yep. Yep. Use that as a lens to use U use this idea of reflective ownership as like a lens to the past to learn from, not a anchor from the past to drag you

1:49:49there where you have to live forever. It's not supposed to be like that. Um and then eventually you get to this point where you you are liberated [laughter] liberated by extreme ownership and it no longer feels like this massive weight. I think similar to what you teach around discipline, if I think about the discipline that I enact in my life for my physical health or my mental health or things of that nature, ownership can become this instinct. And if you continue with the discipline to implement it effectively every day in your life, you get to the other side which is absolute feeling of control over the outcome and

1:50:34a higher sense of confidence. You get to a place of understanding how to solve problems. the the friction you feel with other people or the friction you feel about just challenges in general can be replaced with the sense of calm and ownership that hey I can solve this problem I have the tools to to solve this problem and take ownership yeah it is very liberating eventually eventually eventually because for a while again the financial problems I have the relationship problems I have the job problems I have the the progression problems I have, the physical problems that I have. That's a lot of problems to have and have them all on your

1:51:15shoulders. But when we take ownership, all of a sudden, it's our decisions that shape h the the outcomes of all those things. And again, are there going to be things in your world that you have no control over? Yes, there are. So, what are the things you can control? Do not put your do not put your future. Do not put your your your present into the hands of other people or of other situations or of other outcomes. What outcomes can you control and that those are the ones you need to focus on. And the ones that you can't control, you have to maneuver around them. You can't

1:51:54beat your head up against them. You have to, you know, I talk about um at the muster, I talk about human terrain and reading the human terrain. And there are some pieces of terrain when you're out in the field, actual earth terrain. A big mountain, you can't move it. A stream, you can't move it. A river, you can't move it. You have to maneuver around them. And there is human terrain that's the same thing. Like there are people that there I'm not we're not going to be able to change them and they're not going to be any different

1:52:23and I have to maneuver around them. That's the way it's going to be. And then in life in general, there are going to be part portions of life that you cannot change. They are what they are. And if you rely on how that unchangeable thing, you rely on that thing changing somehow, it's not going to happen. It is going to be what it is. And you have to maneuver around it. And you have to if you can incorporate it, incorporate it into the whole thing. That's what we're

1:52:46doing. Okay, that's the way this is. Okay, I'm in with it. That's the way that's how we're going forward. Just like when you have somebody with a some characteristic that's really hard to deal with, incorporate it into the program. Make it part of the program. That's what we're doing. Okay. I got echo Charles with we're going to use we're going to utilize that thing. We're

1:53:02going to make it work. People get People waste a lot of energy on things that they have no control over. And man, it it's just a waste of energy. And and not only that, it's futile. It really is. It's futile. And to waste your energy on futile things is [snorts] it just going to bring you down. That's the way it works. So identifying and you know sometimes it might take a little time to realize like oh you know what I can't I don't think I'm going to be able to change this. I'm not going to cast I'm not going to you know throw it away but you know what I think it's going to

1:53:37be really hard to change this situation. Okay. So you know what I'm going to deal with it. I'm going to deal with it. This is what this is my new normal. This is what normal is. This is okay. You know, you see sometimes people get hit with some kind of a traumatic um disease or they get with a you know, look at look at Travis Mills, you know, lost arms and legs. Like, okay, that's

1:53:57his new normal. He's crushing worldwide. He's just getting after it. And he's such an example of ownership because look at what he's done with his life as a result of that. And he couldn't change it. And you know, that's one of the things he talks about, you know, he's like, "Okay, this is where I am. It took him a It took him a little bit of time, but this is okay. This is where I am. This is what I got. Here's I'm moving forward. So, there are going to be things in your life that yep, you you wish you could change. You can wish all day. You can spend the rest of your time

1:54:25wishing and wondering what could have done, what could have been, but it's not. And so, don't waste that time with that. Get on with what you got. Start moving. Take ownership of what you got. Don't worry about the things you can't control. They're not they're really no factor. Ultimately, they're no factor. You got to contend with them, but you can't let them drive the way you're what

1:54:45the outcomes are going to be. So, pay attention to that. So many cool examples of people that have shared those kind of outcomes. Um just I'm just the people that we have personally met over the years that have done everything from grow their business into billiondollar businesses to overcoming addiction to getting healthy to repairing their damaged relationships to getting promoted to just just everything. And it does it [snorts] all comes back to you know all right I'm going to start taking ownership of

1:55:20what's going on. We call those stories of impact at Echelon Front and we share a lot of those to remind our team of what we're doing here at Front. We share a lot of them. Yeah. What we're doing here at Echelon Front. And again, like we said earlier with the case studies, this is

1:55:36individuals. People come up to you all the time and they say, "Hey, you changed my life." And what do you always tell people? I didn't change it. You did. You changed your life. And I think the example here is yes the principles are here but these are individuals and people who said I'm going to change my life. I am going to take ownership of these things that I am currently making excuses for. And the example is I couldn't even count the number of times people have emailed and said to what you described. I overcame this addiction. I lost a ton of weight. I repaired this relationship with my wife. Uh you know I

1:56:06was on the brink of divorce and we came back and we're healthier than ever. Whatever it is, people when they start taking ownership, they see a path of gaining the control to actually achieve what they want in their life. It is so empowering. I know for myself, I've been around you guys for 12 years now. I read that first manuscript and it was a lot of stuff that I knew about leadership, but the end result of 12 years of trying to create this instinct and I'm not perfect at it for sure, is I am a better human being as a result of these principles. I'm a better mom, a better

1:56:38friend, a better spouse, a better boss, a better teammate. I am a better individual as a result of these principles. And what I always tell people is if you just get on the path of ownership, the end result is that your life will be better. Every aspect of your life will be better. And it doesn't mean easier. You look at someone like Travis Mills or Rob Jones, not easier, but better because you're in control of

1:56:59the outcome. Yeah. I got asked a while ago like what's the what's the first like move? uh you know what's like the white belt first move that you're going to learn when it comes to these principles and you know I said oh it's looking around at the world looking around at everything that's going wrong in your world and realizing that it's because of you there's one common denominator in all these freaking disasters that are going on in your world echo Charles there's one common denominator we have the decal it's actually our our council if you come to our council you get a plaque that's a mirror and etched

1:57:31on the mirror it says problem identified and then we decided Jen on our team got decals that you can put on your mirror. So if you're trying to take that first step and you're struggling, just put that decal on your mirror and every time you wake up in the morning, you look in the mirror and it just says problem identified. You go, "Yep. All right,

1:57:47we're going to start the day off right. I'm at fault." And because I'm at fault, I can actually control what I do next. Check. Um, we have the muster coming up in Denver October 14th through the 16th. And the muster is one of those things that you know like a little bit of a gamble. Well, maybe even a lot of bit of a gamble in the beginning because we had sort of grown to a point where we were priced out of some small businesses and we had a bunch of people saying, "Hey, can you come work with our company?" And

1:58:17they just didn't have the budget for it. And we kind of talked about it and decided, let's do something where pretty much open to the public and anyone can come and it's a lower price point. So, the first one we did, what year was that 2016? 2016. 2016. This will be 10 years this October of

1:58:33Musters. Oh, sweet. 10 year anniversary. Yep. Um, we So, we decided to do it. Luckily, you had experience in event planning. And you're also just going to take ownership and figure things out, which you did. And so, we we did it in San Diego. We sold it out. It was freaking awesome. 365 people. Yeah. And

1:58:55our first one. And I do, which felt like a win cuz we had no idea. I didn't know 50 people would buy a ticket. Well, none of us did. And we ran the numbers and it's like, okay, well, worst case scenario, we're going to lose some like I think when we ran all the numbers, we were going to lose like 80 grand or something like that. And I was like, well, you know, okay, that sucks, but upside, if we do it, we'll be able

1:59:15to we'll be able to make some money. We'll be able to get the word out to a bunch of these small uh smaller businesses. But back then, that was a lot. Oh, yeah. That like the pressure was real for sure. Oh, yeah. The pressure was definitely real. The pressure was definitely real. Um but anyways, we sold that out and then we've sold out all these things since. But the next one is in Denver. Um you the first muster was um behind the scenes [clears throat]

1:59:41was chaos. It was chaos. Like we, you know, we just didn't know what we're doing. There's I think we got like an hour of sleep at night. It was wild. Ton of moving parts. And of course, even from the very first muster, people were like, "This is the most smoothest thing we've ever seen." And I was like, "Bro, I'm glad you thought that, cuz meanwhile, I didn't

2:00:01I haven't slept in 3 days." I didn't have a way to like uh take cash for the merchandise. It was like It was a nightmare. It was just like money stuffed in in like a notebook. It was very [snorts] It It was organized to the attendee, but behind the scenes, it was a lot of problem solving and innovating. The first shirts we ordered, the laws of combat were in the wrong order and we had to get them reprinted in like a 24-hour span so we could sell them on

2:00:25site. Take that times 100. Yeah. Times 100. That was the first muster. It got better for the second muster. Got better the third, fourth, fifth, and now it's front of stage is front of scene has always been super squared away, but now the back of the house is uh awesome too. Very smooth. But it's just such an impactful event and we have people come from all over the world. So that's coming up now. At one point, and I mentioned this when I was talking about you in the beginning of the assembly, at one point you came to me and you wanted to do started with a women's breakout. Is that

2:00:59right? At the Muster, you wanted to go women's only. Yeah. We had an intern at the time who kind of said, "Hey, 10% of our attendees at Muster were women at the time." that has changed significantly, but at the time we just weren't getting a lot of women to come to this event because I think just it didn't feel like a welcoming place I think for people who my presence

2:01:18back to the character of Joo. Uh and so I had said caricature actual character you're like the character of Jo caricature. [laughter] Um, I had said, "Hey, what if we did like a women's breakout?" And your response to me at the time was, "Hey, this the principles are the same." And this was like, wait, this was like during the mustard. You were like asking me in between a break. You were like, "Hey, we're thinking like maybe next month must we do a women's breakout." I was like, "Well, the principles are the

2:01:47same." Well, yeah. Doesn't sound like a great idea. Yeah. And I remember going back that night and kind of being like I I rarely have disagreed with you in our relationship, but in our that night, I was like, he just doesn't understand. he doesn't understand how different it is for me as a woman versus like my male counterparts. Um, and there's there may be truth to that, but the reality was the next day I was listening to the same content you guys had put out at every other muster. And it hit me that what you were saying was it doesn't matter the circumstances or your experience

2:02:16being different. The same principles we teach apply. And I realized that you were right in that instance. And it was probably another year later before the idea came to fruition of okay, we understand it's the same, but there is still a barrier to entry. There is a barrier to entry. And I think you started thinking about it based on

2:02:35jiu-jitsu. Correct. Yep. 100%. No. Um, we have at Victory and Memory, we have women's jiu-jitsu class, but they don't teach different techniques. They teach jiu-jitsu and but there's a barrier to entry because jiu-jitsu means you're going to be in close close contact with a bunch of dudes and a a lot of women are like that doesn't seem like fun. Especially

2:02:58when you start first start jiu-jitsu. It's like, well, that doesn't seem like a I don't like the looks of that at all. I don't want to do that. Well, jiu-jitsu is still awesome. And so, we have a women's class. Okay. And most a lot of women do end up migrating into training with the with the dudes as well. Some of them do, some of them don't. But the barrier was there and it was real. And I realized, oh yeah, that's that's the same thing here. You know, you've got me, the Neanderthal, as the what's the uh the face of the Yeah. the face of the event. Like, what is this big

2:03:31Neanderthal going to teach me about jiu-jitsu or about about leadership? But to going back to what what I said to you originally, it's like, no, the principles are the same. And the principles are the same. And it doesn't matter if you're male, female, old, young, black, white, um, experienced, inexperienced. It doesn't matter where

2:03:53you are, the principles are the same. Now, are there trends that certain groups of people will have to utilize certain principles more than others? Yes. For instance, if you have engineers, engineers are a group of people that will have to focus on certain parts of the principles and leaning against their personal instincts. Sales people are going to have other parts of the principles that they have to lean into or lean away from because their instinct is different. And it's the same thing in jiu-jitsu. You know, you have there are there are absolutely women at Victory MMA that are bigger and stronger than some of the men at Victory MMA. That's

2:04:41those are just the facts of the case. And so those women that are bigger and stronger than some of the guys are going to utilize some of the moves that are you generally used by some of the bigger guys. And so, but the principles are the same. The jiu-jitsu is the same and the leadership is the same. So eventually I did you start with the doing the phone uh doing the the online the women the webinars that's where you started cuz once I once I realized that I was being stupid and that there there was a barrier and that this is a good way to overcome it. Then it was like okay yeah

2:05:14let's do this. We did that for like a year and a half I want to say we had just started doing live free sessions every month and we're like let's see who shows up and that audience grew and grew and grew. I think we would have anywhere from 100 to 300 people that would join live, but we had six, seven, then eight, then 9,000 people in the community that were asking for more content that were watching the video after the live session. So eventually we had enough of a data point to say, I think we have enough people to

2:05:41maybe do a live event. And so what number is the next one's going to be in January, January 5th through the 7th? This will be the fourth assembly. Yeah. It's in Palm Springs. So that'll be awesome. And you know what do we and we're we have in 2027. What do we have? Two musters in 2027. Two musters. So we'll have the women's assembly in January. Kind of a kickoff to the year. I my my uh pitch to women is hey for a lot of women, particularly mothers, they've spent the holiday getting everything ready for everyone else and then all their kids go back to school and this is your chance to start

2:06:16off your year and do something for yourself. So come to the women's assembly and then um and then we have in March DC uh muster and then in October we have a Dallas muster. Sweet. Um and then of course we have stuff going on all the time. FTX, we have Battlefield, we have Council, we have Roll Call, we got a bunch of stuff going on. We have the Extreme Ownership

2:06:39Academy, we have the Leadwin podcast. Are you on every lead win podcast? I'm on most. I think that there's been like one or two episodes where I left for a flight and they they they floundered through flounder through it without you. I was told that when I left there was about 25 minutes of just nonsense there. They didn't have anyone wrangling them

2:07:01in. Oh, it was it was Sean and Leaf. They went on off on a tangent. Oh, yeah. I'm sure that was I'm sure that got had to get edited out between these two guys. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] But it's fun. We've had a bunch of the Echelon Front instructors on for a season. So, we'll do, you know, eight or 10 season, eight or 10 episodes with another instructor, so you get a third voice besides just

2:07:19mine and Leif in those conversations. I've been on it. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. They were the best episodes I've heard. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Hands down. Everyone said that your episodes were the best. But it's it's a it's a good compliment to your long form podcast because ours are 20 30 minutes and you

2:07:35can short short form. You don't have to get dragged through the freaking history of whatever battle that I'm going off about for they're less intense for sure suffering and everything else. No, it's awesome. Um, so that's it. Plenty of options that we have at Echelon Front to to for you for you to learn about leadership and get on board. Um, so

2:07:57plenty of ways to activate your brain. Sometimes you also got to activate your uh physicality from time to time. I have a question. You go send it. Jamie, can we rewind a little bit to the Flynn Cochran two more times? Yeah. Yeah. Can you explain that a little bit uh more robustly if you don't

2:08:14mind? Yes. So if you are hurting, so you hurt your ankle in a football game. Okay. And you come home and you tell my husband, "Dad, I hurt my ankle." He will receive that with some empathy and then remind you you have two more times to complain about said injury. like you're cleared to complain about two more times, but no more after that without two more times you will continue to receive some empathy even though even it's kind of a lie cuz even the the very next time he's like okay one more time it's just his way of reminding you like cool let's we don't complain let's just

2:08:48suck it up let's not uh harp on it kind of a thing yeah [laughter] it's good I like those little techniques you know so like if um for example like if one of my kids will do something or run into a situation that's very small and they're complaining about it like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe whatever." And then so I asked like, "Hey, are you are you going

2:09:07to be okay?" If it's super small, you know, and they don't like it, but they understand. See what I'm saying? So it makes them not complain about these small things over time. It's the same level of sarcasm. It is the same level. It's like, "Hey, tell me two more times." It's it's very insincere, but the outcome is I think if you ask my kids like, "Hey, what's our mantra as a family?" They'd probably say two more times. But what you get is hopefully kids who just don't complain and make a bunch of excuses all the time about random stuff. They're just like, "Yeah, okay. Two more times and then I'm

2:09:36going to get over this." Yeah. Yeah. That's that's what it felt like. And that's what it seemed like to, but I want to make sure I don't want to misuse it, you know? Yeah. Family mantra. Two more times. It's a good one cuz Yeah. Over time they kind of get what you're doing, you know, where it's like, "Oh yeah, like it's not like they they're saying, "Hey, don't complain." It's kind of like, "Okay, complaining cool, but chill," you know, kind of a thing. And overall,

2:09:56they say it to each other now. Oh, perfect. That's when you know to me or to their dad, you know that we we get we get it back now quite a bit as well. My kids say it back to me, too. Am I going to be okay? Like if I just say like, oh, the air conditioning is running too long. They'll be like, oh

2:10:11yeah, are you going to be okay? [laughter] But it's like, okay, good. I'm glad you glad you picked it up. When like like I was saying, when the kids come back at you with this stuff, that's when you know, bro, stand by. You know what, though? Isn't that doesn't that mean you're doing something right? Right. You're getting it back and

2:10:28even though you're like, "Ah, damn it." Like, "Okay, but you're getting it back and you're thinking, "All right, we did something right." Oh, hell yeah. I I'll be I would give them like, "Do you do Do you want me to take you to the hospital? [laughter] Should we get you to the emergency room?" Just straight up, you know, cuz

2:10:43I'm Come on. That was like our our parents who were like, "Well, we should just cut it off. You know, my finger hurts, Dad. We should just cut it off." You know, I used to do something with my youngest daughter and I would like walk up and like touch her head as if it was like soft and I'd be like, "Oh, how long were

2:10:59you how long were you watching TV for?" Cuz she would look horrified. She would look so scared that her brain was getting soft. So, [laughter] Jack uh physicality, being in shape, working out. Tell me about your First in Nutrition journey. Oh yeah. A couple years ago I worked with First in Nutrition. They're awesome. Ann and Jonathan have a very rigid, like you talk about discipline, it is a discipline program. It is not for the faint of heart. And I say that because you should know what you're getting into, but their program works. I am significantly healthier as a result of them working with me and understanding even and I understood

2:11:44nutrition and macros and some of that. But the way that they the way that they run their program is it is it is the forced discipline of you're going to track this, you're going to run this and if you do these things and what it does is it reveals all these little things that you just weren't counting on. Uh because you're forced to track your calories and to track your protein in an effective way. So, you're learning very quickly like, "Oh man, I never really counted that." And you start to see how they add up. Like peanut butter. I used to think peanut butter was such a great

2:12:12source of protein. And then you run through personal nutrition, you're like, "This is a terrible source of protein." And it's just a big jar of sugar. Yeah. Yeah. Sugar and and fat. And there's there's aspects of that that might be good for, you know, athletes, but not for me at 40 when I was going through the work with them. Um, so they were awesome to help me get on my own

2:12:31health journey. Um my wife big H uh she did it too and she was like it the thing that the thing that I realized about it is it's like what you're talking about that kind of audit period people learn so much about what they're putting into their bodies that it becomes a habit and then they're like oh okay cool and they it's like seeing the world in a different way you know and my wife is in awesome shape and she's always been very athletic and in very good shape, but talk about a game, you know, that girl's got her agame together. And so, anyways, shout out to

2:13:11uh for uh First in Nutrition cuz I noticed a big impact with you just like you're you're looking healthier and more like energetic. And I was like, "Oh, okay. Squared away." And boom, there you go. And you know, they they're kind of a real presence at the muster. or they always bring a bunch of people to muster because there's a huge overlap in like extreme ownership and taking ownership of what you're doing in your life and taking ownership of what you know how you're fueling yourself and so just just awesome stuff. Um but that physicality part and we have to work out. We have to get after it. I

2:13:48know you post some of your family joyous Saturdays and Sundays. You guys sandbag Sunday. You guys go hard. What's the What's the tradition with sandbag Sunday? Sandbag Sunday. My husband started just because my boys are wrestlers and why not have a theme for Sunday where you throw some sandbags around. [laughter] But they my boys so we have like a little group uh it's called the Penguin Circle Barbell Club. That's the street we live on. Got it. And um and so it's my husband, my boys, and then a couple neighbors. And they'll bring some friends periodically, but it's every morning at our home gym around six o'clock. They all gather, get their

2:14:22workout in. Saturdays I go to Mount Trashmore. It's it's a it's become a family thing. I used to separate myself from that and go do my own thing. Now you're in it. But lately I've been in it and it's fun because you just roll wake up and roll out to your home gym and it's uh yeah

2:14:35there's some good accountability there. And you sent me a picture of your fridge that you have which is racked and stacked with Jaco Fuel. It is you it's cases and cases and cases of Jaco [laughter] Fuel and you'd think like dude you're good. You're good for months. We go through it. so fast. Partly cuz it's an open door, so anyone who comes to the barbell club can help themselves. Uh, but it it's amazing how fast we go through it. The only thing I'm waiting now is a decal. I need to get like a get after it or a Jaco fuel decal for the fridge cuz it lights up

2:15:07and it's We can make that happen pretty easily around these parts. Uh, so if you're working out, if you're getting after if you're throwing sandbags around, y'all, we recommend you get some fuel. We We recommend Jaco Fuel protein. I just had the pumpkin spice. Did I have the pumpkin spice? God, that was good. Actually, I just got informed by my wife, Big H. Big H. Yeah. She said,

2:15:29does she like that nickname? Yeah, of course. Big H. [laughter] She um It's funny because people people like refer to her as Big H. And even people that probably don't even know what her name is, you know, but there's like Big H. Um she just informed me this morning, she was like, I just I'm going to get some more pumpkin spice. And I said, oh, cool. cuz it's a it's it's a just like a

2:15:52seasonal thing. And she was like she looked at me with anger. [laughter] We ordered five cases just to have enough because I love it. Yeah. So I and I knew it was going away. I'm going to talk to the team and see if we can't maybe prolong or maybe even make permanent. [snorts] Although we tried that before with the powder and it was like kind of it kind of faded. The demand signal faded. So we'll see. Well, I think they're following the trend with the national coffee chain where every fall it's like the pumpkin spice latte comes back. So, I think maybe sticking with the seasonal creates

2:16:28the hype because then you're just waiting for it when the fall comes. You're waiting for the drop. You could just extend the season a little bit cuz it is good. I think I think we leaned into the spice a little bit. Like I think it's a little bit we get a little bit of that spice.

2:16:40I put it in my coffee so I prefer that. Yeah. Yeah. That's what Big H does too. That's good. All right. So, [snorts] Jaco Fuel, check it out. Check out the energy. What are you drinking over there? Orange. That's your go-to. I drink other flavors, but orange is my go-to. Orange is your go-to. Uh we got everything that you need. We got supplements. We sell it all over the place. We sell if we if they don't have it in the store down the street from wherever you are right now. Just tell

2:17:03them you want Choco Fuel. You know where I just saw it for the first time in a long time? Where? Wawa. Oh, yeah. We're in Waw Wa. Back in Waw Wa. Yeah. Yeah. Wawa is And it's doing awesome in Waw Wa. So Waw Wa. We we got so many awesome partners out there that

2:17:19are selling Jaco Fuel. So check it out. Jaco Fuel or you can get it from Jaco.com and make sure you get enough to feed your entire neighborhood when they get done throwing sandbags. Also, Origin USA. We're making clothes here in America, which is a really big deal. It may not seem like a big deal. I was at an event and there was a bunch of patriotic people at the event and I was like, "Oh, this is cool." Bunch of patriotic people. It was around September 11th, you know, and you're kind of like everyone's feeling very patriotic and I'm sorry for being this way, but I start like looking at

2:17:52everyone's clothing and I'm like good. I I didn't say anything. Of course, I filtered it out, but [snorts] super patriotic people are wearing literal Chinese-made jeans, Chinese-made sneakers, Chinese-made boots. I It's It's terrible. And the if you want to be patriotic, if you want to support America, then buy stuff that's Americanmade, support the communities, support the the people that are in the factories making this stuff and the people that are making the materials for this stuff. This is this is absolutely so important at this juncture in the world. We are adversaries, economic adversaries with people like China. And every time you buy a pair of jeans or

2:18:38shoes that are made in China, you are helping them enslave people. That's [snorts] what you're doing. So, we make the best product. We make it all Americanmade. It fits great. It wears great. It's high quality. It looks cool. It's Origin USA. So, go to originusa.com and get yourself some. That's what we're doing. Oh, yeah. Amanda just sent me some of those

2:19:01women's jeans. Yeah. So good. You love them? So good. It's it's it was about time. Yeah. Well, you know, Amanda obviously as the COO of Origin, she definitely had the priority of wanting to make women's jeans at a minimum. But even for for Amanda, who's, you know, the COO, you know, the pressure of being the COO, she told me, she's like, "We're not making them until we are squared away on men's jeans." And like, okay, until we

2:19:30get to where and we finally got there. And by the way, it's not just being squared to women, but with all the products that we make, right? It's just a whole another it's a whole another game, right? When you start making clothes for women. So, we're slowly entering that game. I was feeling left out cuz all the men in my house wear Origin jeans and shirt locker shirts. It's that that's the only thing that exists outside of like school

2:19:53spirit. Dude, your your family represents your dad. My dad is in the game. He wears the Jo shirts every day without fail. But the Origin, I was feeling left out because there wasn't as many women's products, but the jeans I highly recommend. Yeah. So, Origin USA, get some Americanmade. They are 100% 100% communist free.

2:20:15Get some. Hell yeah. Speaking of Shocker, thank you, by the way, for representing so hard. It even inspires me. And, you know, I help run [snorts] the store, so that's saying a lot. Um, Shocker is uh an option we offer on Joostore.com. If for the people who don't know, if you go jockstore.com is where you can shop

2:20:34your discipline equals freedom. Good. All that stuff. Um, got some hoodies on there, some hats on there. Christmas is coming, by the way. Jimmy Cochran, you make a special Do you make a special uh shirt? No. Maybe. I don't know. Not What about the December Sherlock shirt? December Sherlock shirt is not in production as of right now cuz we're on

2:20:52October. I have an idea for that. So, let's get offline and we'll discuss. [clears throat] Oh, okay. Not right now. Not right now. Oh, surprise kind. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Right on. That's how my dad's shirt locker started off was a Christmas present I got in the shirt locker for a year and now we're just I think three years in and he just

2:21:08Yeah. Shirt after shirt after shirt. That's locked in. So good. Uh you'll be happy with October one though. It's um it's good. It's a good shirt. It's another good shirt. Okay. Right. Um but it's like the opposite of the highle problem. You know high level problem. It's the opposite. It's called uh hard times.

2:21:27Oh dang. Good hard times. You know the layers on that, right? Layers. Song by the Chromags right there. Hard times. Oh, I didn't know. There you go. Incidental layers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right on. Yeah. Good. Came out good. It's in production. This October shirt. Uh October 1st. You can go on jockstar.com, click on it, and see kind of what it like a little teaser what it looks like. That's just a heads

2:21:45up. Um otherwise, yeah, just get your regular discipline equals freedom. Maybe some other options with a good shirt sellable on there. Some socks on there. By the way, I don't have any socks. So, oh, you want some socks? You want me to give you socks? I mean, okay. You know, cuz some people have socks. They just go

2:22:00they just buy the socks. Okay. Noted. All right. I'm just saying other people have socks is what I'm saying. Actually, my wife asked me the other day, why big H. Is that who you're talking about? You know the deal. She was asking me like she was like going through our finances. She does all the financing stuff. And she goes, "Why is there an order on here

2:22:16for jore.com?" And I go, "Well, that's the only way I can get stuff from represent. You're the man. Thanks for thank you for your support." See what I'm saying? So, yeah. Thank you for that. Um Oh, yeah. There's like polos on there, too. And actually, if you get a polo, we'll offer you like a little half off with the socks, like a combo situation. See, I learned that, you know,

2:22:37matching. Yeah. Yeah. So, when you go to work, you can represent in more than just one way. Head to toe. Head to toe. You see what I'm saying? Unless you're me, then you're just kind of like Yeah. You're kind of struggling for sure. But, you know, we're going to do the best we can. But, yes, it's all on joocktore.com. You know, you like something, get something. But yes, I wanted to announce it doesn't seem like it, but Christmas is coming up like end of September, right? That's when we're

2:22:59starting to think about Christmas. I think I think it's after after Thanksgiving, right? Which is like literally I highly doubt your wife is thinking about Christmas after Thanksgiving. You mean she thinks of it before then? Before, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's It feels a little early. It feels a little early to me now, but by like by Halloween Yeah. I'm starting to think about Christmas. Two months away. I got

2:23:25three kids. Yeah. Yeah. So, we're getting ready to get ready. Boom. You know what? I'm getting ready for Thanksgiving. Way the Warrior Kid movie. Oh, hell yeah. Oh, yes. Me, too. I've been ready to be honest with you. Global global uh release. I've seen the trailer. You seen the trailer? Did I show you the trailer?

2:23:41The trailer, man. I show you the trailer. Total approval. 100%. I'll show you the trailer. Yeah. I I got to see a little piece of it of the actual film. Oh, yeah. Yeah. How'd you What's your assessment? It's so good. Remember, I have like I have the original Warrior I have the OG Warrior Kids. I think the kids the the age group that read this book first before it came out. So, my kids are fired up. They've been Warrior Kids since day one and now they're like little they've all the lessons we teach them were found in Warrior Kids. So, as

2:24:09a family, we're stoked for this. Yeah. It's so cool. I meet kids like that. I like I'll go to wrestling tournaments and there'll be some kid that read the Warrior Kid book when he was six or seven or eight and now he's like a senior in high school and is like a badass and is going to go, you know, going to go in the Marine Corps, going to go into the Army or going to go into one of the militarymies and their parents will just be like, they're literally all doing this like I'm like, "Oh, did you wrestle?" Nope. Did you just do? Nope. Nope. The kid he read the

2:24:37books. It's It's amazing. Like it's so cool. So getting it on this new medium with you know which is a easily consumable medium of watching it is going to be crazy. I'm super freaking stoked. The last muster we had I think 18 team members bring family. So we got to see like this generation of warrior kids and these kids are there's something special about them and these are all of our team members and their kids. So they're all the kids that grew up with warrior kid grew up around extreme ownership. It's it's amazing. I can't wait for even more

2:25:11people to get exposure to that. November 25th. Yeah. Streaming live on Apple TV. That's where that's when you're going to be able to watch it. Global release. Um we got some books, the Warrior Kid books. Obviously, we got then I've written some books about leadership and whatnot. And then Dave Burke, Need to Lead, Rob Jones, Put Your Legs On. Also,

2:25:30we just talked about Echelonfront. Echelonfront.com. If you want to check out any of that, go and check out all of that. And then if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Goldstar families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, she's got an incredible charity organization, if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mightywarriors.org. Also, check out heroesh horses.org and Jimmy May's

2:25:51organization beyond the brotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us for Jamie, she's on Instagram and LinkedIn. She's jamlin Cochran. Are you on Twitter? Twitter Xm. Are you on Twitter X Charles? Yeah, I have an account. You know, my activity is free activity low pretty low. Uh, and you're on Facebook, I'm assuming. But that's like not really It's just linked to my in it gets

2:26:18whatever I put on Instagram. Got it. But your your LinkedIn is a little bit more active. Yeah. Yeah. I would say got some good stuff going on there. So, you can find us there. And then, you know, for me, you can check out joo.com. And then on social media, um, I'm at Joo Willilink and that goes echo Charles. just I'd prefer you don't go there. I prefer you just don't look at social media because it's not healthy for you. So try not to go there. If you have to go there, you might as well check out me, but don't don't if you don't have to, don't. If you if you

2:26:49really want to check out Echo Charles, he'll inspire you not to not to be on social media anymore. Sometimes. And uh Jamie, anything else? Any closing thoughts? Don't make excuses. The path of ownership is what leads you to solving the problems in your life. So, learn how to create that instinct and I promise

2:27:06you your life will be better for it. I agree. You agree? Right on. Well, thanks for coming out. Thanks for joining us again. Um to all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines currently deployed around the world in harm's way. Thank you all for protecting us and our way of life. To our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret Service, and all other first responders. Thanks for what you all do to keep us safe here on the home front. And everyone else out there, you're in a leadership position. And whether that's your family, whether that's at work, whether that's in your community, you are leading people. And

2:27:45you're not just leading the people below you in the chain of command. You're leading your peers. You're leading your family. You're leading your boss. And like I was saying earlier, imagine you were in a band and you had to play guitar and you didn't know how to play guitar. That's not something you'd naturally know how to do. Just like if you were had to go and do plumbing in a building and you didn't know how to do plumbing, you wouldn't just naturally know how to do it. You have to learn it. And leadership is the same exact thing. It is a skill that we have to learn. And

2:28:20it's a skill that you have to continue to practice. And the better you are at leading, the better every aspect of your life will be. So think about it, read about it, invest in it so that you can make your life and the life of everyone around you better. So go lead. And that's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Jamie and Ekko and Joo