MY TAKEAWAYS FROM EXTREME OWNERSHIP BY JOCKO WILLINK & LEIF BABIN

E78 MY TAKEAWAYS FROM EXTREME OWNERSHIP BY JOCKO WILLINK & LEIF BABIN

Transcript

Dalton Anderson (00:01.102) Welcome to Vichy Step Podcasts, where we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasional bulk review. Have you ever wondered what it would take to become a better leader or a more concise communicator? Well, if you have, I've got a perfect book suggestion for you. Extreme Ownership, How US Navy Seals Lead and Win by Jaco Willick and Leaf Babin. You probably are familiar with Jaco or Leaf. They have a

pretty popular podcast. They also wrote some books and they do leadership seminars. And one of the books that they wrote, I read, Extreme Ownership, the book's pretty good. I'll get into why I think it's good, but I first off want to recommend that you read this book. And I would recommend people who read the book to come in with an open perspective. And then for the people that I would suggest to read this book,

are folks that are moving into a leadership role or wanna be in a leadership role, or folks that are interacting with leadership and need to understand what they're thinking about and their perspective and proper methods of communication.

Another thing would be overall, if you just want to be a better team member and be more efficient at your job. And one of the ways to be more efficient is just hold yourself accountable and be disciplined and to have ownership of all parts of your project, even if they aren't yours. At the end of the day, if it's your project and another department isn't doing what they're supposed to be doing.

there was results still reflect on you. That was still your project. No matter if you're still waiting on this other department for their project or the supplies or the logistics got messed up or there's some kind of storm. At the end of the day, you could have been a clearer communicator. You could have illustrated the why, the importance of the project and why it was strategic and how it aligns with the missions of the company. And you could have reached out or.

Dalton Anderson (02:16.191) elevated things when you were having trouble. I there's just every step of the way of the project, every obstacle that you had, you could have solved for. Instead of saying, well, it's some other department's problem and they're just not doing what they're supposed to be doing. They never do. If they never do, then why did you not solve for it? Like once you remove this inability to be accountable for other people's stuff.

And you say, hey, this is my project. I own it from start to finish. may not be the key contributor, but if I'm running into issues or I'm not getting the results that I need to get the project done, then that's on me. It's because I didn't communicate the importance or the why I didn't allow people to ask clarifying questions. There's a whole slew of reasons why the project didn't go as planned, but that would make you more efficient. Just being disciplined and

accountable. But regardless, I recommend this book to pretty much anyone is what I'm getting at is if you're a leader or someone who wants to be a leader or you're interacting with leaders or if you just want to be a better teammate or overall, maybe you're maybe you lack discipline and you need a plan to follow. This would help you out. It breaks it down in a very simple manner and it's easy to understand and to replicate. So

If you haven't noticed today, the podcast is about a book that I read, Extreme Ownership by once again, Jaco Willink and Leaf Babin. You can read the book, which I recommend. I always recommend to read the book, but also you can listen to the audio podcast on Spotify or wherever you find it. This audio book, I said audio podcasts. I'm just thinking about podcasts. The audio book,

It's pretty good because since Jaco and Leaf have their own podcasts, they volunteered to be the voice. Are those the voice actors or I don't know who they're called. They're not voice actors, but they read the book. They're the narrators of their own book. And so I think it's well done because it's their book. They wrote it and it's their perspective and they're talking about it. It's pretty good.

Dalton Anderson (04:43.489) So I would suggest if you're like, Hey, I need a new audio book to not read, listen to this is a good shout because it's well done. Regardless. I always recommend that you read the book and accidentally bumped my mic. So the podcast episode is about the book and we're going to dive right into it. Before we do, I'm your host Dalton Anderson. I do a lot of things, code, insurance, financial services, and

also have a podcast. So if you enjoy the podcast or the content, give it a like or comment or do whatever you want to do. Anything helps. Okay. So the agenda, we're going to kind of walk through different chapters. I am becoming more advanced on my book reviews where I'm taking notes per chapter. So I normally take notes about the book, but in my last book I felt like

within the chapter, there was things that I could have taken out for different folks. Like majority of the contents of the hard things about hard things by Ben Horowitz, I would say is more related to executive leaders and like how to be a better CEO or upper leadership, those kinds of things. Whereas a lot of the content wouldn't resonate with many folks, but it's a great book regardless of where you are in your life, but doesn't necessarily.

have a lot of value to every single person. So I focused on the things that I thought would resonate with more people than less people. And I didn't want to do two podcast episodes. That long winded explanation was really just to say, I took notes on every chapter and had my takeaways. And so I just have short snippets about each chapter and yeah, we'll get right into it.

So basically a little bit of background is if you don't know Jocko or you don't know Leaf Babin, those two folks were Navy SEALs and they were deployed in the Afghan war. And they were one of the first Navy SEALs teams to be deployed. And they are the Bruiser Task Force. And the Bruiser Task Force was in charge of a...

Dalton Anderson (07:07.041) basically like a targeted raid situation where they would target these safe houses or houses within enemy controlled territories, take out bad guys, capture bad guys, interrogate, and then rinse and repeat. And then they also were on cooperations with the army force. I don't remember the actual task force with the army, but it was like a big brigade and they would provide

Either tactical support or sniper support or either or why they are building build secure build.

It's a build, secure, and push. Basically, they would push into enemy territory, then they'd push the enemies back, and then while they're under intense fire, the army engineers would then build a base in the middle of the enemy territory, secure it, push back the enemy, and they would just keep doing that until the enemy was completely pushed out of the city.

And that happened for some time. And a lot of these scenarios came up from either them communicating to business leaders with their consulting group or from personal experiences on the battlefield. But most of them are relatable to business, not all the time, like apples to apples, but maybe apples to pears close enough. So, okay.

The first part of the book, talks about

Dalton Anderson (08:48.205) a firefight that they had and just knowing your surroundings and familiarizing yourself with where you're going to go and where you're to be and not relying too much on the metrics and the tech. In their scenario, was technology that was faulty and relying too much on the technology put them at a disadvantage because if the technology went out, they were kind of shit out of luck. kind of same thing is just

Trust your instincts in certain scenarios, remain composed and move forward. You've got to make decisions in business and not making a decision and becoming overwhelmed and freezing up is a decision in itself. You just got to, what they would say is look around, take a breath, make a call.

Extreme ownership is the next part and that's literally the title of the book. So you ownership basically means everything's your responsibility. And the premise of that is if everyone has extreme ownership on your team, you never have a gap. So if you're saying you own everything, I'm saying I own everything and then another teammate says they own everything, it's not necessarily that they own everything. It's like you might be.

I guess I'll do cooking in this example because after this podcast I'm gonna cook. So you might be in charge of the sauces. I might be in charge of cutting the vegetables and then our teammate might be in charge of seasoning the meats, right? But at the end of the day, we all own the responsibility of cooking the meal. And so if the seasoned meats person is out or they're sick or they didn't show up or they're not performing, we could still step in and cook the meal.

We're not waiting on this other person to deliver their seasoning and do their thing. We still have a meal to cook. And so if everybody owns every part of the situation, there are no gaps because you pick up slack when there is slack created either from someone being out or someone leaving or someone not performing the way that they need to be performing. If you just own everything, you don't have

Dalton Anderson (11:07.456) any issues. And the story in the book is where Jaco had a situation where they had a friendly fire incident and somebody got killed.

Just to preface this with the Navy SEALs are supposed to be the top, top soldiers. And a friendly fire incident is not acceptable for any military group, but it's especially not acceptable for the Navy SEALs. And for that to happen, it's a massive, massive embarrassment to the Navy SEALs and to everybody involved. And then,

The issue was in this scenario is that the supporting troops that were supporting Navy SEALs and the Navy SEALs themselves, they were in different positions on the battlefield than that they were supposed to be. And then the supporting troops were closer to the Navy SEALs than they initially anticipated. And they started opening fire on the Navy SEALs. Navy SEALs fired back. And in this scenario, they didn't have what would be called like confirmation of person of interest. And so

The Navy SEAL shot an Afghan soldier, killed, and then there was like an all out battle. The Army was about to air strike the building, it was a whole thing. And then Top Brass came to the base and asked what happened and they wanted a low down. And Jocko just took complete responsibility of everything. At the end of the day, he's the commander and it was his fault.

Same thing if in the business world, they gave an example where an executive was failing to deliver on a cost cutting initiative and saying that people, people weren't following directive and things people weren't understanding. It's super clear and it's all their fault. At the end of day, it's your fault. So people don't understand your idea of your initiative. It's not their problem. It's your problem.

Dalton Anderson (13:13.574) But at the same time, it is their problem. It's their problem because they didn't ask clarifying questions and understand the why. But it comes from the top down where the leader needs to explain the why and the importance of the cost cutting initiative and then open the door for the person executing the plan to ask clarifying questions to make sure that they understand what they need to do and what their objective is.

Dalton Anderson (13:41.539) So basically the takeaway here is take responsibility for you take blame. I think that's pretty fair, right? Next part. I really liked this one. Really liked this one. No bad teams, only bad leaders. And this was a pretty cool chapter where they talked about the SEAL training in a scenario where Leaf Babin was back at base and observing training and observing the officers in training. Cause when

he came back from deployment. He was part of officer training and so he'd help new Navy SEAL officers get trained up and go to additional school and training. I guess they call it school. I'm not sure. I'm not a multi-person. I'm not trying to pose as some expert here, but save additional training after they get through Hell Week and these other things and get accepted as a Navy SEAL and get their trident. And they were reserving team, team

two and team six, I'm pretty sure, but there was two teams. One was performing exceptional and had a great leader, didn't blame anybody, took responsibility, helped pick up the slack when others were struggling, had a way of identifying people's strengths and weaknesses and balancing out the team and being a team member and a team lead. While the other guy was an amazing athlete, like

peak physical fitness. But the issue was he felt that he was dragging his team and was blaming them for their inability to perform. And that's why he was last every time. And he was getting a lot of slack from that slack, but he was getting a lot of flack from the leaders or I guess the, what are they called? They're not the drill sergeants. I guess the, the drill instructors, drill sergeants, the people leading the hell week were

giving him a lot of shit. And they're like, hey, if you don't fix this now, you're gonna be able let go. you're out. And they're thinking about letting him go. And then they had a suggestion of switching the leaders. So they gave the bad team the good leader, and then they gave the good team the bad leader.

Dalton Anderson (16:01.175) And so what happened was the bad team somehow after getting extra sessions, because if you come in last, you are penalized and you have to do extra stuff. So they're just, they're annihilated. Their bodies are done. But the bad team with the good leader was able to perform consistently first or second when historically they were last every time. And it was like almost an instant impact.

maybe two rounds later they were, they were a top team. And then the bad team or the bad leader that went to the good team constantly performed either first or second. And the gist of it was there's no bad teams, just bad leaders. And so it's bad leadership that was, that was issued. But then why does, why when the bad leader went to the good team that there was still good performance? Well,

In this scenario, what was said about that was the good leader already put together high standards and the right culture on the team to not push blame, to be accountable for your own folks, to collaborate. And so when the bad leader came to the good team, the standards were really high and the expectation was to meet those standards. And so the bad leader had no choice but to do so. Whereas the standards

whereas the good leader going to the bad team had to recalibrate the team and get the right standards put in place and then change the performance.

Dalton Anderson (17:41.314) So I think that was a great story. And then the business tie in was a scenario where they talked about a CEO resisting extreme ownership. The CEO didn't feel that extreme ownership was the way to go, even though his department wasn't performing well and they weren't being profitable and they weren't delivering on their initiatives. But he felt that it was everybody else's problem, not his problem.

And he had mentioned to the CEO of the company that Leaf Babin and Jaco Willing are bad news. They don't know what they're talking about.

After some time, the CEO let go of the CTO because he wasn't moving forward with some of the initiatives that the CEO wanted to do. And one of the ones that the CEO wanted was extreme ownership. And there were strong resistance to that for some reason. And then the team wasn't performing well either. As soon as they got in a CTO that embraced

extreme ownership, well, they performed. They had record performance, quarter over quarter. So I thought that this was probably one of my favorite chapters, no bad teams, no bad leadership.

Dalton Anderson (19:12.205) The next one is a pretty cool one, I think as well. And I wanna say pretty cool is like, I was having a conversation with an executive and.

We were talking about various things and I don't know how it got brought up, but they asked about the books I was reading and I was talking about this book and another book and they were asking about suggestions like which one, if you could only pick one, which one would it be? And I was like, I'd pick the other one. And then he asked me some stuff about this one and

Dalton Anderson (19:48.448) the piece that I talked about was this one, believe in the mission, explain the why. And in this scenario, it talks about, in this scenario, I talked about how they may feel that they have some kind of really, really open door policy and that they're super approachable and that any employee can come up and ask them questions whenever they want. And

Then I asked the executive and they were like, yeah, yeah, I hundred percent feel that way. And I was like, okay, how many times has an employee asked you that since you've been here? And they're like.

I don't know. Exactly. And I talked about how.

you may feel that you have a super open door policy and that you're very approachable, but at the same time you have a lot of experience and your stature of your company. You're, forgetting those parts and for them to ask questions about the mission, it kind of seems like they're questioning your plan or your thoughts. And they're like, no, that's not how I would interpret it. And I was like, it doesn't matter how you would interpret it. And it matters how the other person thinks that you would interpret it. And

then I said, you've got to open up, you've got to open up the opportunity to, for people to ask clarifying questions instead of letting people come to you with clarifying questions, with an open door policy. And it seemed like they thought it was pretty eye opening where they're like, like I'm really not getting clarifying questions at all. When I say that, I would like them. Anyways, I that was a cool side note.

Dalton Anderson (21:45.549) But in this chapter, they talk about how...

The government, like when I say the government, I'm talking about the US government stated that they would no longer approve any operations without

Iraqi soldiers and it was a big deal because the Navy SEALs typically don't do operations with other groups. the operations they're doing are super dangerous. They're going in, they're raiding, they're going taking out bad guys, they're capturing bad guys and then they're coming back home or doing whatever they're doing. Like they're doing crazy stuff. Like they're Navy SEALs. And so the Navy SEALs just

did not like that idea that they would have to work with somebody they don't trust, isn't trained, doesn't make a lot of money, is historically had fired on their friendlies either from on accident with lack of training and firearm discipline, or they are bribed to kill their friendly combatants or their friendlies. And so no one was thrilled about that at all.

No one liked it. And Jaco wasn't even okay with it. Jaco was like, wow, no way. And after he had calmed down and he asked the why and the why was really, hey, what for us to really take.

Dalton Anderson (23:24.942) this to the next level and to be able to remove ourself from the situation, we've got to get a local force that can compete with these terrorist groups. And if we never get a local defense force that is good enough, who's going to defend this country? Who's going to defend these families? It's your generation and the next generation after that and your kids' kids.

And so the gist of it was like, hey, either work with the Iraqi soldiers and add them to the operation, train them up, get them the gear, get them the right training and get them executing on missions or you won't go on any missions. And that sounds a little rough, but once you understand the why, the why is that, we have to get Afghan soldiers, or sorry, Iraqi soldiers to be

to be able to.

defend themselves or else they won't.

be able to defend themselves and then if they can't defend themselves, then who is? And the answer is the U S and once you understand the why, it makes a little bit more sense.

Dalton Anderson (24:53.934) Basically just if you have a plan, get the buy in and understand the why.

And I know you've heard that before, but it makes sense. The next one is decentralized command. So decentralized command is, decentralized command in simple plans. Decentralized command is like basically everyone's cross-selling. Like everyone has, I said cross-selling, cross-trained. Everyone has the ability to step up and be a leader. And if,

the folks that are immediate leadership, something happens to them, someone else could step up. They get injured, they're out sick, whatever happens, it will work out. And so no one is, no one is.

Dalton Anderson (25:51.994) No one is, is like the sole leader here where everyone is responsible. Everything was three ownership, right? And then decentralized command just allows you to lean in and lean into the leaders, the junior leaders on your team. And if those junior leaders, something happens or some atmosphere, you, someone else could step up and the way that you can do decentralized command is simple plans. And so if you're, your plan's super complex, it's hard to follow, hard to understand, then it's not going to work because

If you can barely explain to somebody and they can barely understand it, they're not going to be able to step up and take ownership of their part or guide other people to execute things that they that they didn't understand before. And so really, it's important to have simple plans. And the business example in this book was pretty good where they had this this crazy sales compensation plan in this business example where they're like, we take the.

the three differences in the weighted average of the products. And then we look at the supply chain and the weather patterns. And then from there, we derive these four factors. And on a given day in a time of sale, that's how you understand how much is paid on an individual unit. And it was crazy.

And then they were like, they started off with complex and then Jaco was like, okay, how complex could it be? And then they said all that stuff. And then Jaco was like, that's it. That's all. And they're like, yeah, that's it. That's pretty simple. Huh? And then he's like, no, no, no one's going to understand that. And the issue was the salespeople, the key salespeople at the company were

just, they didn't understand how they're getting paid. They didn't know how they're getting paid. And so they were confused. They thought they were getting gypped or getting mispaid because one month they would be, they would sell the same amount of units. And then the next month they would sell the same amount and they were getting different payments. And they're like, what's going on? I don't understand this. And it just caused a lot of confusion and frustration when they just could have made a simple compensation plan. And

Dalton Anderson (28:13.765) then they change the compensation plan to make it very simple. Like here is just, we have our orders in queue, we have our current supply and let's, you know, let's encourage people to sell.

X product at these times, like they had different demand metrics, but it was very simple. There's only like three things instead of being like 15, 25 different variables. It was three things. was like when it was sold, what was the demand and what was the type of unit? And that was it.

So everyone sold more because they understood which products that the company wanted them to sell and which ones they would get compensated more for. And so just made everything very simple and people could understand it and they can execute it.

The next one is check your ego.

And this one was about an elite team that was just being monsters out on the battlefield. And they were going over to help out the bruiser group, which is Jocko and Leif Baven's squad. The Bruiser Task Force. And.

Dalton Anderson (29:35.975) they, they did not assimilate with the base. So the, the groups were on an, on a base, on an army base. And basically you're in their house, right? So if you go to your get, if you go to your house, someone's house, you play by their rules, you don't just do whatever you want. And so it's the culture of the host and what their principles are.

And so if your principles are, you you have to get up at this time and you got to do these things. And if you want to stay here, that's fine. All right. But you can't just come into somebody's house and just muck up their schedule and the things that they care about. So I'm going to go well. It's disrespectful. Same thing applies here. Whereas the Jocko and Leaf Bavin task group, they said like, like we're going to, we're going to abide by

the army's group were, going to take care of ourselves. We're going to make sure our uniforms are pressed and we're going to make sure that we're shaving her face and we abide by like what everyone else is doing on the base. Like we're not special. We're Navy SEALs, but we're not special. And the other group came in there wearing tank tops and not shaving and not collaborating with the group, the commander and

They're telling the commander they're on a need to know basis and they'll let them know when they need help versus.

Dalton Anderson (31:10.374) being respectful on that piece. And they didn't stay long. They were kicked out because it just causes too much trouble when you have people doing whatever they want and on a battlefield with other friendly fighters in the area and not stating your location or where you're going to go or what you're going to do. puts other people at risk either.

either the people that have to go save them or the people that are nearby. So it's just not good. So just got to be humble and lead and assimilate and be respectful.

Dalton Anderson (31:52.349) So the next principle was cover and move. So this cover and move thing is really about like, if you're moving, somebody's covering you and.

This could be.

really related to businesses like you're on the same team, right? And the business scenario that they had was production and supply chain mismanagement where they're on the same team or same company, same mission, different teams. And they could have collaborated better, had a simple plan, have extreme ownership, and then cover and move. Whereas they had a

functional collaboration instead of dysfunctional collaboration. And that would allow them to produce better results. And so I would say this example, had an issue, not really an issue, but maybe call it a situation at work where I was trying to collaborate with a different group, that they're new and we did a restructure and all those things. And so there's a lot going on. And I was really trying to be there for them and say like, hey,

we're on same, we're on different teams, we've got the same mission. I've got a lot of background information here. I can help you out any way you need. Just let me know. And try to create a professional relationship with these folks. In that instance, I also try to help provide insight and background on different things that they're working on and call things out if they sounded weird.

Dalton Anderson (33:33.869) as you should as any good teammate would. And you don't want people working on stuff that they're not supposed to, or it's probably not the right usage of resources. And nor do they want to work on stuff that may not hit the mark, especially when they just started. And so we have the same, we have the same desired outcome, just the best outcome. And so I try to illustrate that stuff to the group and

At first they were apprehensive about it and fair enough. And I had another conversation with them like, Hey, like I'm really on your team. Like I really just want the best for you. And this is how I can help you. That's it. I'm here to help. And then eventually we got to the point where we're covering moving. We are covering and moving where we are a functional.

multi-part system that moves as a unit. And we're getting, we're getting stuff done.

And that's it. It's as simple as that. Just making sure that I am helping them out. They're helping me out and we got each other's backs. That's it. Simple. The next one is prioritize and execute. So the prioritize and execute thing was

an interesting war story that they had. think that the

Dalton Anderson (35:08.21) gonna say, think I know that the business story is better for everyone listening. So the business story was this successful medical company that they had many projects going on. They had trainings, they had onboarding, they had new product launches, they had all sorts of stuff. They had like 20 initiatives going, but they weren't all important, but they were important. But what's most crucial and the most crucial was

to increase sales and they wanted strong product launches and stuff like that. And so you're spreading yourself thin when you have all these different initiatives. So it's not that to say that you don't wanna do them ever, it's just pick a couple, get those done correctly and then move to the next one versus trying to do everything a little bit at a time. You just spread too thin.

And an example that I have is my personal life. I, for this podcast and other things, I just try to do too much, right? I have different things going on. I got really sick and I'm just underneath just a mountain of stuff that needs to get done. I was sick for like five weeks where I was in bed, like couldn't get out of bed for like three and a half, four weeks where I just started eating food. Five weeks where I was still struggling to do normal functions.

And I'm just so far behind on everything. was so completely swamped at work, swamped in my personal life. Bills, all sorts of stuff. Everything was just a mess. And it can get overwhelming and everything's important because it's past due. There's personal things that you just want to get done.

and that people are expecting from you. There's work stuff and vice versa, and then there's bills coming in, and you've been sick and you've been out of commission, you've been trying to survive. And when you get back into it, you're looking around and all you see is just shadows. It's just got these towers of just garbage all around you.

Dalton Anderson (37:24.902) And then that scenario, all I did was I said, hey, we're going to pick some items off of each category. And then we're going to just knock out a couple of a day. Just keep knocking them out. And eventually, we'll get to the point where I feel a little bit more comfortable. And then we can really see what's underneath everything. And then once we get to that point,

Let's really tackle some initiatives. So one initiative that I have, have a couple of initiatives for the podcast, right? I want to scale the podcast. I want to become a Spotify partner. I want to have guests on the show. And I also want to have a website that has all my articles. The first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to get rid of the backlog articles I need. Then after that, I am going to get guests on the show. And then after that, I'm to work on scaling the podcast.

But all these things wrap up into the mission of scaling the podcast.

The first thing though is to get rid of the backlog of episodes. So I have a backlog of episodes that need to become policies, not policies, I'm thinking insurance, that need to become articles. And for me to do that, I just need to get heads down, write the articles and put them on my site. And why is that important? Well, the site will give me extra views and extra views help with exposure.

and they help things look more legitimate when you're trying to get a CEO on the podcast and all these other things. And then the next thing would be, okay, now we're getting guests on the show and we got to get guests on the show.

Dalton Anderson (39:07.504) Those scenarios were.

Previously I might have been trying to do, you know, a couple articles a week, three articles a week, two articles a week. But if I do two articles a week, it's gonna take me like two years to finish all the articles. If I did five articles a week, then that puts me in a better spot.

Dalton Anderson (39:33.347) So just knock it out, get it done, take some time on it. And if I could do more than five articles a week, if I could do 10 articles a week, it might take me three weeks or something. But at my current standings, I'm not getting stuff done and I'm spread too thin on the podcast. I only have a certain amount of time to work on the podcast. I have other things I have to do. And no one's paying me to do this. I don't need to get paid. I do it because it's fun and I don't want it to become something that.

is a chore. I want to do it because it's fun. I have fun doing it. I know that there's some stuff that I would probably prefer not to do, but if the mission is to scale it to become a Spotify partner, you've got stuff that you have to do. But if I try to do guest on the show, podcast articles, podcast episodes, it's too much. I'm too far behind on the podcast articles. So prioritize that, get that done, move to the next thing.

Same thing with personal section and the work section. That's my thoughts.

decisiveness under uncertainty.

So in this scenario, there was a CEO and they were doing executive meetings with the consulting group with Jaco and Leif Babin.

Dalton Anderson (40:55.928) in this meeting, the CEO gets an email from two of their head developers. The head developers didn't like each other. They were scrapping for whatever reason. They didn't like each other. And so both of them said the same thing, like, Hey, the other person's looking to get a job somewhere else and I can't work with them. Fire. I need to fire them immediately.

And so each of them are calling for the other to get fired.

Dalton Anderson (41:23.711) And the CEO is kind of freaking out. She's like, Hey, you know, I need all of them for me to get done when I need to get done. And.

I don't want to mess up some of these product launches. Like these are big product launches for us and they're crucial contributors in this regard. And Jocko had mentioned, which one would you fire? And which one's right? And then she's replied like, honestly, I don't know. I don't have enough information.

Then there was just group conversation like, are there other people on the team that might have just as good as knowledge? Or are there recommendations that people could put forward? And.

Dalton Anderson (42:23.292) people offer some suggestions and say, like people that are actually on the boots on the ground might have better information on this. Like they actually might be in a better position to lead the team to success because they were contributing on a day to day basis. And so that could work for you as well. Or you could fire one of them. Or what about both? And in my opinion, before they ended the story, I immediately said, right when I heard this scenario, I said, fire both.

You can't have people like that in your company squeaking the wheel and speaking out of line like that and asking for the other employees to get fired and bickering at the company. It's just a bad situation. You don't want to encourage those kinds of people to be there, especially in leadership positions. So.

Dalton Anderson (43:15.386) What they did is they couldn't figure out who to fire. So they fired both of them. And then they immediately found replacements before the firing of suggested employees that could be uplifted into a leadership position to lead the teams to success. And they said that was a great decision, but I'm also hearing this after the fact. they're probably not putting bad decisions in the book. So keep that in mind.

Dalton Anderson (43:47.527) The last one was discipline equals freedom. I talk about discipline quite a bit in the podcast. People would say that I'm quite disciplined. Some folks even said you're the most dispersed, disciplined person I know. Who knows if that's true or if they're just hyping me up. But I think that discipline gives you the right to dictate what you want to do. And I don't mean it in the way of

Well, I'm disciplined. can do whatever I want to work. I mean it in a way that if you have something that you really want to work on or that you really want to do or that you find important, if you have discipline to carve out the time consistently, you can get that done. And this may be that you're a busy mom or you're just struggling with this new chapter of your life and you need to get a handle on things.

Dalton Anderson (44:45.586) Carving out the time to do that is one thing, but what if you don't have time in your schedule? How do you get time? And the easiest way to do that is either stay up late or get up early. My problem with getting up late, sorry, I mean it in a way of staying up late is people are up late.

People are doing stuff. You can get invited to things. There's all sorts of distractions. Like if you're up late on a Saturday or Friday night working on your stuff, your friends could text you say, Hey, got an extra seat at this concert. You want to go or you want to go to this rave or Hey man, like I'm hitting the bars. Do you want to go like, or they just show up your house or they do whatever they do. That scenario does not work if you get up early.

They're inviting you to go places, you're asleep. You're up when they're asleep. And so you have this time that's just your time and how you use that time is up to you. I hope that if you're getting up early or using it efficiently, but that's the time where you can push ahead in these different initiatives that you want, that you find important, that you have the grit to get up, get after it.

Morning, day in, day out.

Dalton Anderson (46:16.189) That's what I would suggest. You wanna find freedom, find discipline. And in that scenario, you're able to push yourself towards what you want. But if you constantly allow people to push you where you need to go, you'll never go where you wanna go, if that makes sense. Because the route to your dreams

or to the things that you find important are not what other people find important. So if you're doing what other people want consistently, you're never going to get to what you want. But at first you need to know what you want and look down inside and see who you are, what you find important, what you find interesting, what you value. And then searching for that externally and finding those things.

And once these things are found, then keep attacking and never stop attacking.

For me, I want to be an entrepreneur one day. So I have this podcast, I do those other things. That's what gives me life. Like literally gives me life, gives me my life force. And if you don't know what that is, that's fine. You can search for it, try out different things. Keep trying, try a couple things a day until you find something that you're addicted to and that you love. You can't be addicted to people or drugs though. Maybe addicted is the wrong word.

Dalton Anderson (47:52.595) But you know what I mean. But of course, I appreciate you and...

Your time today, of course. man, this is brutal closing. But wherever you are today, good afternoon, good evening, good morning. Thank you for listening in. Hope you catch the next episode airing next week. Goodbye.