← JP Dinnell Podcast
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- [00:02]
A
Good morning. This is the JP now podcast, episode 127. I'm JP Dunnell and always have Lucas with me. What's up, buddy? How are you?
- [00:09]
B
I am doing fantastic, man. We get some great feedback on episode 125's Q&A. And so we've got some more questions from our listeners and viewers which thank you guys for going and checking out the pod on all those places. I'm stoked to get into some of this stuff as well as thankful for all the people who have used JP Pod 20 at Jocko Fuel because my alternator has now been capped. So I appreciate that.
- [00:38]
A
Good times. Okay, so what do we got for the first question?
- [00:42]
B
So the, the first one, which I think is, is pretty interesting because it kind of hits on something that I think a lot of people feel but maybe not a lot of people verbalize is jp what is a leadership myth that needs to die?
- [01:05]
A
There's a few that I think, like we could open up the door and talk about, but I think the biggest myth is that leaders are born like natural born leaders. What we teach at Echelon Front is leadership is a skill set. And you know, I think back to my time in the military and I had a lot of really good leaders that poured into me, that invested into me. And as you get to know them more, you hear about their past and you know, how they were brought up, you know, whether it was, you know, their childhood or time in the military. And you know, it is a very common theme that all, like all these great leaders out there were taught how to lead by other good leaders, other good examples. So leadership is a skill set. That's one of the things that we teach at Echelon Front is that leadership is a skill set. So you have to learn the skill set, you have to practice the skill set, and then you need to assess your skill, skill set as a leader and then make adjustments and then you just keep running that loop. It's very similar to, you know, the OODA loop, which is a decision making process. You know, you observe what's happening, you orient yourself in regards to where you're at, decide what you're going to do and then act. And the reason why I say it's similar is because you're always like running that loop and you're always making adjustments and sometimes you're making a major adjustment, sometimes you're making a micro adjustment. And I would say most of the time as leaders, when you're trying to develop your skill set, which I'm still, obviously trying to develop my skill set as a leader and, you know, become a better leader and a better father and a better husband is you need to be evaluating yourself. And you also need to have the ability to put yourself in an environment of peers and, you know, have a good relationship and your lead back to where you can get that feedback. You can receive the feedback of what you're doing well, what you're not doing well, what do you need to adjust. And so, yeah, the biggest leadership myth is that these great leaders are just natural born leaders. That's just not the case. Leadership is a skill set, and in order for us to develop and grow ourselves as leaders, it means that we have to be intentional with our education of different skill sets and education of what it takes to be a good leader. Knowledge is not power. The application of knowledge is what allows us to do powerful things. There's a lot of people out there that have read all the leadership books that have, you know, degrees and leadership development and communication and business and all these things, and they're. They're not good at leading their people. They don't, they don't have successful companies. And, you know, I look at somebody like Pete Roberts who has built an incredible company, and he talks about all the mistakes he's made over the years about, he calls them tuition payments and how he sought out advice from other people that were successful. And he sought out the advice, he took it on board, he applied it, and then he made it his own. He developed himself as a leader. And, you know, I know you've been to a few musters and you've read extreme ownership dichotomy, leadership and leadership strategy. Leadership strategy and tactics. And one of the things that Jocko talked about is the great leaders in his life who poured into him that he invest that invested into him that he learned from. And even, you know, he says, like Colonel Hackworth is one of his, you know, mentors as a leader. Well, Jocko never met Colonel Hackworth. He never talked to him on the phone. He never know what did he do. He read his book and he applied those leadership skill sets and those lessons to his life. And he's always been making these micro adjustments over the time to improve who he is as a leader. You know, I think about waif bobbin and, you know, just the, you know, the examples that he shared in the past of his failures and his growth and all these things. You know, he jokes about how, you know, angry Leif was his, you know, kind of his joking nickname, not an actual Nickname. But, you know, Jocko talks about it as a joke from the muster about angry Leif and tossing adversary because Leif would get fired up. And he's a passionate person. He's a passionate leader that cares about his people, cares about getting a job done. He wants to win. And Leif and Jocko are two leaders. And I know I've said this before and you've heard me say this, they are to the leaders that it is unreal how much they want their people to win more than they want to win themselves. They care so much about their people. And so, yeah, when, you know, Jocko jokes and says, you know, angry Lace back in the day, well, that's. He was a passionate person. He'd get fired up because he wanted things to be done right. And life learned over the years, like how to make adjustments to his personality to be a better leader. Seth Stone was the same way. And you know, again, all these people that I've been able to learn from, I learned from what they did right? And then also the lessons that they shared with me of the mistakes that they made in the past, which tells me that they weren't natural born leaders. If they were making all these mistakes and had to learn and grow and adjust. Okay, cool. So they weren't just natural born leader. I've never met anybody that thought they were just this awesome natural born leader. And it's. If I was to meet somebody, it would tell me everything I needed to know about them because they're lacking what humility. And humility is the number one characteristic of a great leader. So if somebody lacks so much humility that they really, truly believe they were always just this natural, great, you know, leader, then cool. I. I know that that is not true because they don't have the humility to admit the mistakes and the shortcomings that they had as a leader, as a husband, and as a father. So leadership is a skill set and we should all be working on it. We should all be thinking about it and trying to improve our leadership skill sets.
- [07:55]
B
Question 2. What's something people don't want to do or. Sorry, what's something people don't want to hear but need to. I hate this question because. Because I don't want to hear it.
- [08:10]
A
Yeah. Two things come to mind. And there's again, like the last one, there's so many different ways that we could go about it. You know, I think about chapter two and extreme ownership. No bad teams, only bad leaders. And that means not that you're a bad human or A bad person, but it means that you haven't been leading your team properly if your team is struggling. The other thing Cody and I talk about a lot at the FTX's, and I know you've heard me say, this is you. You weren't always the rock star that you think you are right now, which means, hey, you aren't as good as you think you are in the first place. And two, you aren't as good as you thought you've always been. Because we like to look back and be like, oh, yeah, I did this great, I did this great, I did this great, I did this great. And, oh, yeah. But we forget to look at our struggles along the way, typically. Right? Typically, most people forget to look at their struggles along the way and recognize, man, I. I screwed a lot of things up. You know, I think back when I was a new guy and good Lord, man, there. And I know we've talked about this on a podcast. There's times where I've just. I've wanted to call my first oic, Matt Mosden, and be like, hey, man, I'm sorry. And I. And I have before in the past, and, you know, and I know you and I talked about this, and he's like, jp, you're a good team guy. You cared you'. While. But, you know, and he gave me a lot of grace. And I know the reason why he gave me a lot of grace is because he was a humble leader. Is a humble leader. He cared about me. He cared about the team. And I also know that Seth was helping guide me, and Matt saw Seth working on me, gave me a lot of patience, a lot of forgiveness, a lot of grace. And so I think we have to remember that where we're at right now, we weren't always operating at this high of a level. And that means that we have to have just forgiveness at times for other people because if they did something wrong, hey, forgive them. Truly forgive them. Have some patience, have some grace for them. Now, the other part to that is if we're doing honest self assessments, we should be able to realize. And we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. And so, I mean, I guess that's the other thing I would add on to that is, you know, the more you dive into what we teach at Echelon Front, and the more you're trying to develop yourself as a leader and you truly have this extreme ownership mindset embedded into who you are, your family, you know, your relationship with your spouse, it becomes more and more apparent. But man, there's a lot of things we need to dial in and fix. So it's kind of some of my first initial thoughts. Anything to add to that or any, any, like, I've got kind of a
- [11:22]
B
question to tag onto it, man. Is there, you know, with these two questions kind of combined. Right. Is that the myth that we're breaking is that leaders are built, not born? Right. And there are some people who have like some natural leadership aptitudes. But I think that yes, we. And you've talked a lot about that, right?
- [11:40]
A
We all do.
- [11:41]
B
Yeah, we. And it's how we develop those skills alongside the other skills and weak points and all that stuff and then getting to this, like the thing that people need to hear even if they don't want to, that so much of that has to do with our own perception of ourselves. And you know, there's, there's all kinds of tests out there, man. There's personality tests and there's, you know, the, the strength test and then the find your weakness test and all of this kind of stuff. A lot of good tools right there. There are, but there's also a lot of stuff out there that's nonsense. So what is a. You know, if I, if I know that there's a skill set that I need to develop in order to become a better leader, and if the thing that I really need to hear and be reminded of is that, you know me, this place that I'm at was a process, I'm not always the rock star that I thought I was, then what is a good tool that I can use to give me a consistent self assessment so that I have a good idea about what I need to improve on where I'm actually at, what are some areas where maybe I need to lean a little bit more on my team and their feedback, like what is a good tool or how's a good way maybe to do those self assessments so that we aren't stagnating, that we don't get complacent in our leadership.
- [13:08]
A
So if. All right, there's a few, few different answers to that for our listeners.
- [13:14]
B
You're welcome. So the most open ended of open ended questions.
- [13:21]
A
Well, the reason why I'm just kind of like trying to find my words before I start speaking is, you know, I'm down here in New Orleans working with a client. And one of the things that we do with our clients is individual balance assessments. And we created an individual leadership balance assessment at Echelon Front so that people can Be able to do an honest self reflection of themselves. If you come to the mustard, guess what? You get to do the balance assessment. If you, you know, if we're working with you virtually and it's a half day workshop and that's something that you want, we will do that virtually. Balance assessment, that's not something I can provide to the listeners because that is proprietary to Echelon Front. It's what we do. So if, if you want to get
- [14:10]
B
a look at it though, and you've read Extreme Ownership, the Extreme Ownership workbook, if you purchase that workbook has a link in it. Whenever you're done with the workbook to go into, do a version of the balance assessment which goes directly with that, which we, we did with our teams here. We got the workbooks. We, we went through that. The balance ass was, was there and that's a, it's been a good periodic tool for us to use. So. Yeah, but no, that's not one that you can, you can give to, to anybody. But it is available, you know, for those who are interested in, in doing that.
- [14:42]
A
If you get the companion workbook to Extreme Ownership, for sure. But okay, let's say somebody isn't able to do that. You know, one of the things that I love that Jocko used to reply on Twitter and social media a lot of was when people like, I really want to come to muster, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to put on my credit card so I can be there. And Jocko would be like, no, don't do that. Don't max out your credit card to come to muster. Read the book, read the book, implement the book. And once you get yourself in a better financial position, then come to the muster. And I always love that because that is, as you can probably attest to as well, the exact opposite of everybody else on social media when they're trying to promote their business and sell their
- [15:30]
B
100% and courses, they're like, if, if you really want it, if it really means something to you, you'll max out your credit card to get here. And that's the exact opposite. He's like, go, go get the book. Get it on prime days. Pay $10 for it.
- [15:43]
A
I know, just think about, think about the intent behind that. From Jocko Life. Every other, not every, almost every other, you know, individual that's putting on their courses and sell, trying to sell tickets to their events are basically calling you out and saying if you're not willing to max out your credit cards and do all this stuff to get here, you'll never actually truly succeed in life. Yeah, those are all individuals. I had to choose my words properly for that. Those are all individuals who are just a flash in the pan. They've never, you know, understood the value of having true impact and influence over people. And that's just what I'm so thankful what we have at Echelon Front with Jocko and Laith. So, yeah, I would, you know, I would say read Extreme Ownership dichotomy of leadership and as you read each chapter, ask yourself, what are you doing well and what can you improve upon based off of each chapter? I mean, if you do that, that's going to give you a solid baseline, if you're being honest with yourself, a solid baseline of what you're doing well and what do you need to work on and approve and then implement those things. You know, set some goals for yourself or set some KPIs for yourself and your team and say, hey, if we set the, if we hit these KPIs, we can go to national Front training or we can bring national on front end and hey, make it toward those KPIs. When they get hit. There's an increase to revenue which offsets the cost or covers the cost of doing training with Echelon Front. But what's cool is if you listen to Jocko's podcast and you, you know, listen to the Lead Win podcast that Echelon Front has, you're gonna get a lot of incredible information that if you just reflected upon it and thought about it and did assessments, you're. You're gonna be on a good path. I'm loving the Lead Win podcast, by the way. It's freaking incredible.
- [18:02]
B
They do, Leif and Jamie do an incredible job. And it's really cool to see how Jamie, if you've been watching her on her social media stuff, the last, what is it, almost two months now since she had her, her operation, which she talked about. She had some, some cancer removed in her thyroid. Just to see. Yeah, the, the development there and her implement the extreme ownership principles in her daily life is. That's pretty cool. And there we may put a link to this and also that there is an extreme Ownership leadership assessment test that is free online that you can take, that gives, it's part of the academy and it gives at least a baseline for that thing. And then like you were talking about, do the evaluation at the end of each chapter, whether it's extreme ownership dichotomy of leadership. If you're going through leadership strategy and tactics. You know, you can make the. One of the things that I've done is made the one to five scale, right? Where one is like, strongly agree or strongly disagree. You know, five is the strongly agree of, like, where do I end up on that thing? And as you're going through it, you can look at the mindsets to victory that have to do with each one of those principles and give yourself that grade. Like, how good am I really at simplifying things? Well, I'm terrible at it, right? Like, I. I've got so much stuff happening in my head at all moments in time that before I get to the point, I'll chase a hundred squirrels, which. Why Some of my questions on this podcast last three minutes before I get to a point I could have said in, you know, 30 seconds. So there's. There's some really cool ways that you can. You can do those assessments, and I think they'll be super helpful to have been for. For me and I know, for us and several of our other listeners on top of, you know, the other tools and things that are out there. You ready for the next question?
- [19:52]
A
Yes, sir.
- [19:53]
B
What's the most common leadership excuse that you hear?
- [19:59]
A
So that's. That's a good question. And, man, I wish I would have gotten a little more context from this question because, man, this can apply to so many different things on, like, what their situation is or. Or. Or if they could have painted the picture just a little bit deeper for me, that would have been cool. But when I'm looking at it from, like, I'm sorry, when I'm thinking about this from, like, surface level, what's the most common leadership excuse you hear? There's two that come to mind, and one is, well, it's really not my fault because I wasn't there. That's a very common thing. It's really not my fault because I wasn't there. Somebody on their team does something wrong, they weren't there, and they're like, well, how do I really take ownership of that? Do I really have to take ownership over that? Like, at what point do I just not have to take ownership? Like, when do I really. And it's just crazy because it's like, no, there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Not saying you're a bad leader, but if people on your team are making mistakes and you're in a leadership position, that is your fault. That is 100% your fault. Whether you're there or not, that is your fault. That's your responsibility. Your people are your Responsibility, their growth, their development, their what they're accountable for, Their responsibility, the standards, Those are all your responsibility as a leader. And so whether you're there or not with them, that is on you. And so that's a very common one, is, well, at what point do you not have to take on the drink? At what point? What they're looking for is this little alibi that they can cash in and be like, yep, see, still not my fault. The other one is I don't have time. A lot of leaders will be like, I don't have time to whatever, fill in the blank. And that's not the truth. You're not allowed to say, I don't have time. It's just not a priority. And that's something that I am trying to work on as a leader, is being better with the prioritization of my time, the task at hand. What's important, what's actually not as important as I thought it was, because I know my personality is I really like to do things to help people, to take things on on my on board. I like living in the chaos. It helps me just, you know, focus, you know, which is kind of crazy to say, you know, the chaos helps me focus. And so I tend to take on too many things, which means then I end up not being able to do the things that I said I was going to do or wanted to do, and more importantly, the things that I need to do. And so what I have to think about is what is a priority and then making those things a priority. Be disciplined with putting those things into my calendar, into my schedule. And also be disciplined, Lucas, with telling people, hey, I'm sorry, I can't do that. Having the ability to say no to doing things or taking things on board, because if I take another thing on board, it's taken away from the quality of other things. And that's not fair.
- [23:22]
B
You know, that was my. My follow up is. How do you say, I don't have time for this? Tactfully?
- [23:31]
A
Oh, how. How do you say, I don't have time for this tax week?
- [23:34]
B
Yeah. Yeah. How do you do it without, you know, without hurting the person's feelings or without damaging the relationship? Yeah.
- [23:39]
A
Yeah. Cool. Hey, Lucas, I'd love to help you right now, but unfortunately, when I look at my schedule and the things that are priorities, I don't have the ability to make this a priority right now. Can I come back to you in a week? Or, you know, can I follow up with you next month? Hey, hey, can I connect you with One of my buddies that's actually really good at doing those things and he has more bandwidth than I do right now. Is that okay? Something along those lines. Obviously not verbatim. That's not like the perfect thing. I'm just giving you a framework to make it your own based off of that relationship, the situation and the severity of that ask. But you know, I've had to tell people like, hey, sorry, I don't have the ability right now to fit that in my schedule with everything I have going on with Echelon, front my family and all these other things. Like, I'm sorry, I. I just, I don't have, I don't, I just don't have that availability.
- [24:43]
B
I, I think that that's one of the, the things as a leader that it's. One of the more delicate situations that we have to handle is because everybody believes that their thing or their idea is going to be.
- [24:58]
A
That's the most important thing.
- [24:59]
B
Yeah. And to them, right. And this is not, you know, to be disparaging, but most of the time if you have especially a subordinate or someone who is really, you know, focused on the thing that they're presenting to you, like they've got so much time and just like personal capital just like invested in this in one way or another that they, they have put a lot of their self worth into this idea. And so if, if we mismanage those interactions or if we handle them poorly, I mean, it's a, it's a movie trope among kids movies where there's like the person with the great idea and then they present it and the person, you know, the, the guy they were given the idea to, whether it's, you know, the, the invent athlete or whatever, it's just like, oh no, it's great job kid, but it's just not gonna work. And you know, that sends them either in one of two ways, like they now they work their whole life and they become something amazing or like that's the beginning of their villain origin story. Like it was in, in the Incredibles. Right. Like, that's how Syndrome had this great idea and then that was it and that now he becomes the villain of, of the story. So the way that we handle those interactions is something that we, we should put a lot of thought into. But because you don't know what your interaction, because of the level of influence that you have and because of the amount of time and care somebody's put into one of these things. So, you know, I think that, you know, I can't make this a priority right now or, you know, obviously showing them some gratitude for, you know, hey, you know what, thanks for taking the time to put this together. I would, I would love to be able to look at it more or whatever, but it's just not something with the plate that I have that I'm, that I'm able to do. Do you think that there is, there's a way in those types of interactions in particular to prevent the unkeepable promise. Right. Or the thing that like, we pacify, but there's no like, real intent behind it. And I say this because we, we get to this next thing where you say, hey, you know what, I'll follow up with you in a week. And then, you know, a week goes by and we haven't heard anything or we, we didn't send him a message. And then two weeks goes by and then all of a sudden like this resentment begins to, to build. So if you're going to say something like that or you're going to encourage follow up, do you personally, do you put that on yourself and say, hey, I'm going to follow up with you in a week? Or do you put the onus on the person, Listen, next week might be a better time for me. Why don't you hit me up next week and then if I've got time, I'll take a look at it. If not, then, then we'll find some time to put it on the books. Like who do you put that responsibility on? You or the person that's like bringing you the idea or the thing that needs to be addressed.
- [28:10]
A
So I used to be really, really bad at trying to take that all on myself. And then I would just, I would fail to do that and it would cause issues. It ruined some relationships, friendships. Not so much like ruined, ruined relationships, but I would say it, it. There was some withdrawals in those leadership bank accounts for sure. And, and so what I've been trying to do is, you know, share the responsibility of finding a common time and be like, hey bud, next Thursday at this time is going to be good for me. I'm a. Does that work for you? Cool. Yep. Hey, I'm putting my calendar, let's do a call then. And so it's not so much sharing the responsibility at that point, but it's sharing the, hey, let's find a, a common time and let's get it locked in. Because I, I've tried that before and I have had people like, well, I don't know what next week's Gonna look like I can't really commit to anything. And then I just was very straight up with them and that, well, if I don't put in my calendar, it's probably not going to happen on my end because I have so many things going on and my memory is not good when it comes to follow ups of these small tasks. I'm working on it. I know it, I know that's not like a good thing to say out loud, but I'm being honest with you, I've got to put it in my calendar. There has to be a follow up, there has to be a reminder, man, if you could pick a time that would really help me. And so I try to find alignment on it, on a time and then just get that in the calendar and then just remind them like, hey, can you follow up with me tomorrow at 5:00pm I'm gonna be done with my client at 4:00pm. I'll be in the car by 4:30. If you can give me a call at 5:00pm I'll be available. And then I was a few of my buddies and boom, they called me right at that time. Aaron Price is so good at this. Aaron Price is so good at when him and I are trying to find times, align and talk. I'd be like, hey bud, like man, here's what I have going on and he'll find a time that works. And then like, I mean within 90 seconds of that time like he'll be calling me. And he's super patient too because there's been times where something goes long on my end like the client engagement or the client debrief went much longer than expected on site. And I'll be like, dude, I'm so sorry. He's like, bro, not a big deal. I know what your priorities are. Your priority is with your client, with business Echelon front. So this is no factor. So I just try to be as transparent with my schedule and availability as I possibly can. And I mean I've had some people that, how do I say this felt like what they had to talk about or their idea that they're pitching to me was so important that I should drop my, the priorities that I had with Echelon Front, my family to get on the phone with them. And I, at that point I was just like, hey bud, I, I don't think, I don't think this is going to work, man. I just don't have the bandwidth right now. I know you're running and gunning. I love it. I hope it, I, I hope that you can forgive me for not making the time, but I'm good right now because I just, I have to choose what's a priority in my life right now.
- [31:48]
B
Yeah. And that's a, you know, right off the bat, that's kind of an alignment thing. Right. And it's difficult when, especially when somebody has a good idea, it's easy to overlook the lack of alignment if you really believe in the idea. But ultimately that's going to be what causes the separation in the long run is if you guys aren't aligned on what your priorities are, not just within the organization, but also within your lives, that, that there will be that disparage or that difference in what investment looks like or what sweat equity looks like. Last question on this one, and then we'll hop into, into the next question I've got there. Do you ever use the, the if then kind of statements, navigating this stuff? This was something that a mentor of mine mentioned a while back, that what he would do is if he, if he and this person like exchanged, if they pass business cards or whatever, then he would write on the card, if or if Tuesday, then, you know, whatever, or he would write on the date, the day that they were supposed to call him. So where he would say, if you haven't heard from me by Monday, then, you know, call me Tuesday afternoon. And when he would hand them their card or whatever, then it was that thing. So there was this like, this shared responsibility for it. But it also. Not that it like gave him an out. Cause sometimes he would make the call and he would be able to do that thing, but it let them know that he wasn't pushing them aside. But also that if, you know, if it didn't happen, then they had some responsibility in making this happen. And for him, his thing was if I wasn't able to do it, if the idea wasn't there, or maybe I just couldn't make it a priority within that time. If they didn't reach out to me on or within a certain time period, a couple of days of that conversation, then I knew it wasn't a priority to them either. And so, you know, they just wanted me to hear their cool idea. They weren't really that interested in implementing it. And I think that that's one of the things, especially in your position, that happens a lot where somebody's like, oh, I've got a great new take on extreme ownership, or here's a new acronym that you guys could use for your training. And they do it and you're like, all right, cool. I'd like to talk more about that. And they're like, nah, this, this was it. This was my, my big idea was to make sure that you heard this and now you do something with the idea and then just kind of leave it, leave it at that. So that's something that has been effective for me.
- [34:08]
A
I like that. I understand the premise of it. I think people could take that and twist it the wrong way though, for sure. Right. But it comes down to your intentionality. Like, what are your intentions? I do like that. I've used a version of that. Not said if. Then actually maybe have like. Yeah, I've just never heard of that framed that way as like, hey, it's a technique called if, Then like, I think, I mean, I know you and I have done it with each other. Like, hey, if you don't hear from me by five o', clock, give me a call at six and you're cool. No factor.
- [34:44]
B
Yep. Or if I don't get back with you by tomorrow morning, then you're going to need to remind me. You know, I use it with Kirsten and the kids all the time. Because when, when we. You move from the stuff that's happening at work to the stuff that's happening at home, they end up on different calendars. The priority levels are different for all of those types of things. And my work brain, my home brain, I don't know if you've. Have you heard of the show Severance? That's on Apple tv? So the idea, the premise of the show is that as soon as you walk into work, your brain only processes work things. And then as soon as you leave work that your brain only processes things outside of work. So like, before you get to. Or the. The two worlds exist complet completely separate from one another. Like your, your memories, your, your memories, your beliefs, all of your thoughts that would have to do with anything outside of work are severed the minute you walk into this building. And then the. It's back and forth. There is more truth to some of that than I want to admit in the way that I operate whenever I, whenever I get home. If there's too much crossover, man, it just becomes a mess.
- [35:57]
A
So I think it's good, I think it's good to create separation.
- [36:01]
B
Agreed.
- [36:03]
A
So there should be some separation so that you can have a healthy balance of, hey, when you're at home, you're at home, you're intentional with your wife and your kids or your husband and your kids, whatever gender. You are listening to us. So it's either your husband or your wife or significant other and your kids. But, yeah, the separation should be there. It's healthy to have that separation. I don't know how much I buy into, like, this severance thing completely because.
- [36:38]
B
No, yeah. I mean, it's an interesting premise for a show, but it's an amp.
- [36:41]
A
Yeah. For a show, for sure. Absolutely.
- [36:42]
B
For spoiler alert.
- [36:44]
A
They did their job because we're talking about it, right?
- [36:46]
B
Yeah. And it begins to collapse on itself because it's a terrible premise to live by, which is one of the things that you. You find out later in the show. So there you go. Spoiler alert for everybody who's going to watch it. But the acting's. The acting is great. Number four. What. What's one hard truth about discipline? Man. Boiling that down to one is. It's going to be a hard truth about this question. The hard truth about this question is that you only have to pick one hard truth about discipline.
- [37:17]
A
What is one hard truth about discipline? It is a skill that you have to be intentional with developing, and you have to impose it upon yourself.
- [37:30]
B
I hate this. I hate everything that you just said. Discipline is something that people are born with, just like, leadership. And since I was born on discipline, it's not my fault.
- [37:41]
A
Okay, yeah, cool.
- [37:42]
B
Now fix. Fix everybody else who's listening, because I just solved my own problems.
- [37:46]
A
Yeah. Discipline is a skill that you have to impose upon yourself. And you know what the other truth to discipline is? Discipline equals freedom.
- [37:59]
B
Yeah.
- [38:00]
A
And that's a biblical principle. That is a biblical principle. And if I'm lacking discipline. Discipline is rooted in the truth that we tell ourselves. So if we're lacking discipline, then we have to be more intentional with imposing discipline into our lives, which means that we have to create habits to change our behaviors and tendencies so that we can be more disciplined. Discipline. Nobody likes discipline being imposed upon them. But when you understand the value of discipline, then you embrace it.
- [38:45]
B
Is a lack of discipline at its root really a lack of ownership? Or where do those two things begin to converge? Yeah.
- [38:53]
A
Yeah. Because you're lying to yourself and you're not taking responsibility. And so therefore, you just let that complacency creep in. And, you know, you just lack. You lack the discipline to do the things that you know you're supposed to be doing. Because playing the victim card is really easy. Taking no ownership is easy. Blaming everybody else is easy. Instead of just looking at yourself and be like, all right, if you're so good and so smart, why aren't you lending them I'll never forget when I heard Jocko answered or say that at an ftx, if you're so smart, why aren't you winning, Man? It's a hard one for people to hear. Yeah, it's a hard one for me to hear because I know I'm not winning at the level that I should be. I know I'm not as disciplined as I should be. I know I'm not as good of a leader as I should be. I know I'm not as good of a father as I should be. I know I'm not as good as a husband as I should be. I'm not saying I'm bad, but I don't know. I know I am not where I should be because I'm lacking freaking discipline in all these little things.
- [40:09]
B
There's a. A daily journal thing that I've been doing where I kind of give myself a score in, like, these four or five different categories. And I noticed that over the course of the last week that I'd given myself a five in this one thing every, every day. And so at the end of the week, I looked at it and I was like, okay, well, one of two things is happening. Either I'm way better at this than not than I thought I was, but than anyone else has ever been that I'm the best at this that has ever existed, at least during this week, or I'm really not taking the time to do this assessment well and to take a look at how things have actually gone. And I bet you'll be surprised by this, but it was actually the latter, that there was a lot of it that I was just like, oh, no, I need to do this, because this is the box I was going to check. And it's easier to write down a 5 than it is a 3, because if I write down the 3, then that means I'm really going to have to think about it and evaluate what I was doing and figure out what I was doing wrong in order to try and improve it when I can just write a 5 and feel good about it and get on to the next day. And I think that there's so much of that, and when we talk about the hard truths of discipline, that that's what it is, is that we've. We've taken this approach that it's not that, you know, there are some times where, like, good enough is better than not done. Right. That. That's an important thing for us to remember. Right.
- [41:46]
A
Yeah, that's bro. An internist. Yeah, that's in the right direction. Right. Like that should be daily.
- [41:52]
B
Yeah, that's a. That's an actual principle that, like, doing something is better than doing nothing, no matter what that. That looks like. And there is a point where, like, good enough is better than incomplete. But we're. We're so willing when it comes to our self evaluations to say, no, I was great at this, because it protects our self image. It protects our. Our ego. And our egos are vicious, man, in protecting themselves in order to make sure that, you know, we. We are able to justify all of our wrong actions. And so, like, that's. That's one for me that, that discipline really hits because as soon as I do an honest evaluation, one area of my life that bleeds over into. Into others. And this kind of leads us into the last question.
- [42:40]
A
So. So I just want to add one thing to what you said. Do you have the EQH app? The. Yeah, yeah, it's. So it's a. It's an app that Jocko created called the Imminently Qualified Human, and it's. Yeah, so it's the ability for you to do daily evaluations. And it is based off of the book that Jocko, Dave Burke, and Sarah Armstrong. So David and Sarah Armstrong helped Jocko create and write this book called the Code, the Evaluation, the Protocols. Yeah. So that book breaks down what Jocko talked about in podcast 174 and 226. And what's really cool about that book is it breaks down in a. In a simpler form, what Jocko and Dave talked about on episode 226 of the Jocko podcast. And it is. It is very humbling if you were to do the daily evaluation, because when you do the daily evaluation, like, so for physical health. If for physical health, it goes 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and. And then you can hit. You can click on. So for health. Sorry, on health, you have. Excuse me, you have physical fitness, sleep, rest, diet and nutrition. And if you're wondering what your score should be on there, if you click on the little icon button at the top and you click on physical fitness, A zero is inactive, did not perform any activities that contributed to my overall physical fitness. A1, you engaged in basic fitness routine or activity. That's A1, A2 to 4, depending on how honest you want to be with yourself, engaged in intense physical activity and demanding exercise that increased overall fitness level while addressing weaker issues that needed improvement. That's a very intentional workout. Would you agree?
- [45:00]
B
Yeah, no doubt, man.
- [45:02]
A
Yeah. So it's going to be Kind of hard to be on a three or four on that. And number five. Participated in training that reached a level of exertion beyond my perceived limits. The most intense physical training that I was capable of performing and set a new baseline for maximum useful effort. Broke. I would read through all those every time when I was filling it out. I had listened to podcasts a few times. I had read the book, I was doing the app, and bro, my average scores were like, into one, one point something to twos. And I would see people that would take a screenshot of their score and, and post it, and they're like 4.7 for their overall score. And I'm like, dude, you're just lying to yourself. Like, sleep and rest. 0. Did not get rest or sleep that was useful in leading to a productive day. Slept so much or too little that the body was not capable of performing level. Oh, well. 1. Got minimal sleep or rest required to perform at the lowest acceptable standard throughout the day. 2 to 4. Got effective sleep or rest throughout the day to be ready to perform at a high level. 5. Perfectly Optimized the body's need for rest. Went to sleep tired. Woke up alert and ready after optimal number of hours of sleep. Rested at the ideal time for the ideal duration to maintain a sustained peak level of performance throughout the entire day.
- [46:27]
B
Yeah, so I just looked up the EQA JF for those who, who would go look for it. It has been completely now replaced by the DEF Reset. So the difficult discipline equals freedom Reset. If you go look up the EQH app, it'll send you right to. To that. Because there, there are some differences in there, but for the most part it's the same stuff. The D F Reset app now actually has more like, information on stuff that you can get and involved in and some more resources for it. But it's. It allows the same type of evaluation whenever you do those types of things. And there's. There's some other stuff there. Yeah, man.
- [47:08]
A
I was doing this while doing 75, 75 hard. Had all my stuff dialed in. Was just performing at a high level at work and everything else like that. And I was just looking at it and. Let's see, where was it? Out of all the ones that I've done, what do you think my best score was?
- [47:35]
B
7.
- [47:39]
A
What do you think my best overall score was?
- [47:43]
B
Okay, your best overall score, which is all of those things for the course. What's it out of?
- [47:49]
A
5.
- [47:50]
B
It's out of 5.
- [47:52]
A
Yeah. Number 5 was like perfectly. Did all these great things.
- [47:55]
B
Yeah.
- [47:56]
A
What?
- [47:56]
B
I didn't. So I'm just trying to make sure that it's not like all of those things combined.
- [48:00]
A
Right.
- [48:00]
B
They give your total overall score for the day.
- [48:02]
A
No, you get an average.
- [48:04]
B
Right.
- [48:04]
A
Of those sectors, and then you get an average of all of the sectors combined.
- [48:12]
B
Knowing how you evaluate yourself, maybe three and a half, four stars at best. But I think three and a half is probably accurate based off of what I know of your self assessments.
- [48:22]
A
2.1.
- [48:25]
B
Wow.
- [48:28]
A
2.1.
- [48:31]
B
So you're at least in the third star if I'm Blue Skynet.
- [48:35]
A
Yeah.
- [48:37]
B
Yeah, the third star's got a little bit of shading on there.
- [48:43]
A
Yeah. And then when I go back to that day and I click on shows me. Okay, so for health added to that day, because physical fitness was a three. Sleep and rest was a two. Diet nutrition was a one that day. Personal development was a two because I had a one on intellectual fitness, a three on time management, a two on financial management and a two on personal goals, Professional development. My score was a one because I had a two on performance and a zero on advancement and qualifications. Yeah. Character and leadership was a 2.7. Relationship was a 4 that day. Because I know that day I was like, really heavy on, like really trying to like, focus on family and friends and co workers. And then preparedness and safety was a 1.5. I gave myself a 4 on martial arts self defense training, a 1 on weapons training, a 1 on neighborhood community impact, and a 0 on fire safety, emergency preparedness. And so that totaled mine out to a 2.1, which is very humbling.
- [50:15]
B
Yeah.
- [50:16]
A
And it probably should have been lower because you're like, thinking about some of those that I thought was a four. Now I don't, I remember that time frame. I don't remember that day. So. And I'd like to think I was pretty accurate on that because I gave myself zeros and ones. So.
- [50:33]
B
So sometimes those things are a reflection of. Of how we, we feel about ourselves on a given day or how a given day went. So it's important that, like, when you're doing these self assessments that you do get a few days of it instead of just like, you know, charting for one sucky day and then being like, I'm never doing this again and getting in your. Your head or your feels about it. Which is what leads us to, to the last question, which I think is kind of a culmination of all of this stuff. What separates leaders people follow from leaders that people tolerate?
- [51:09]
A
So what separates a leader people will follow from leaders that people tolerate relationships 100%. People will tolerate a leader because of their position, timeline, rank. People will follow somebody that they have a relationship with that has influence over them. You know, so what we teach on front is everybody is a leader. Everybody should have the ability to lead and make decisions, to deliver impact, to solve problems. And you don't need a title to lead people. The title is important, but it doesn't make you a good leader. So people tolerate people that come in and demand respect and dictate and micromanage their people because of their position and their experience and all these things. And they'll tolerate it because, hey, it's a job. They want the job, they need to keep their job, they need to provide for the family. So people will tolerate that for a while. But actually, following like the leader, it's. It's because you trust them, you respect them, you're willing to listen to them. They have influence over you and you care. And that means that, okay, if they're. If you have that for that person, guess what? They're giving you all of those things. And that's what makes up a relationship. And people lead people through relationships and influence. So if people are following you or listening to you evaluate your relationship, how much influence and impact you have over them, and if you don't, do a hard assessment of yourself and ask yourself, why, what have you done to lose the respect and influence of your people?
- [52:52]
B
Yeah. And I would say, if you've made it this far in the podcast and you want to be a leader that people are going to follow, are you doing the other things that we've talked about leading up to this? Because every one of these things are. Are we killing the myths that leadership is something that, you know, only a few people are born with? Are we doing the things that are necessary, even if we don't want to hear them, for our improvement? Are we making excuses? Or are we making things happen? Are we telling ourselves that, you know, we need to be more disciplined and we're finding the things that we can do to improve upon that? Or are we believing these lies that we tell ourselves about, like, well, you know, you've got an executive dysfunction, and so therefore, you can't wake up early, it's not something that you're capable of? Or are you saying, hey, you know what? I'm going to figure out how to do this so that I can be the best that I need to be for myself, for my family, for my community, and for the people that I work with. You know, Those are, those are the things that we need to constantly be doing. And if you're finding that, hey, you're a person that people don't want to follow, then maybe it all starts with are you taking ownership and are you showing humility? Because nobody wants to follow somebody that's arrogant, but they will tolerate doing it if they think that they're, they're heading in the right direction. But as soon as things go south, man, that leader normally finds themselves out in the cold. Well, if you don't want to do that and you are looking at all of these things, go to echelonfront.com, look at the extreme ownership Academy. It's awesome. You get to be a part of, part of these group calls that we do. 1:00pm they're going to be starting to move that from Mondays to Wednesday. So it's 1pm Central Time, where the instructors from Echelon Front, Jocko Leif, JP Rob Jones, who's been on the show and who has a book that just came out, which is super great. Dave Burke, the the author of the need to Lead the Final in the or I guess the latest installment in the trinity of the leadership books that came out from Echelon Front with extreme ownership dichotomy of leadership. Now the need to Lead. Jamie Cochran, who we were talking about, she's on the lead with podcast with Leif. You can learn directly from all of them, ask them the questions that are relevant to the topic that they're covering and some things that just have to do with the situation that you're in. It's an absolutely invaluable asset if you can do it. Also, they have some online courses that you can get for yourself or your business. That leadership assessment which we talked about is one of those things that's offered for free on there. There'll be a link to that in the show notes. If you want Echelon Front to come out and work with your company, go check out infochelonfront.com shoot them an email, let them know, hey, maybe we need an instructor to come out and do a workshop. Maybe what I need is some CEO coaching. JP and several of the people that work for EF are able to do those things. Obviously get the books and if you want a little something extra, then go to one of the events. The Muster is coming up in Nashville coming up super quick. Yep, it's almost completely sold out last I saw on that. And there are some really cool opportunities that you get. It's an event for leaders that's unlike anything else that you'll ever attend. Not only is there no need for a hype man or an mc, you're going to literally be standing in line waiting outside the door to get into it. But also all of the instructors, everybody that's on stage, everyone that you've read their stuff, you've listened to their podcast, they're accessible to you. You can go right up to them, talk to them, ask them questions, get the in person feedback that you want. So if you're able to go to echelonfront.com click on the Events tab and you can look at the muster that's coming up, the Women's assembly for next year. Some of the individual FTXs that are are coming up here in the near future, as well as the council, the battlefield, all these different kind of things that you can get into on the path and to be a part of there. Speaking of being on the path, once you get your leadership stuff dialed in, one of the things you're going to realize is you got to get that nutrition dialed into. If you downlo the Def Reset app, it's going to ask you, did you give in to the sugar coated lies today? Are you sticking to your dietary plan? And if you're not, if you're struggling with it, maybe you've never done it before, go to firstinnutrition.com jppod and Jonathan and Ann Montgomery, who are absolute studs in their field, will help you get on the path and get set up right. So if you go to firstinnutrition.com jppod they'll give you four free weeks of nutrition coaching. You'll be a part of the first in fam. Get some behind the scenes tips. Whether it is competition prep, whether you're trying to get healthy for your family, maybe you want to put on muscle, maybe you want to lose a little weight just so that you can make it to that next level to feel better about yourself, gain some more confidence, or to get to the healthy spot that you need to be in for just a longer, happier life. Go check them out. They're absolutely awesome at all of it. Go look@Jesusinjujitsousa.com it's a ministry that JP and I are a part of. We do regular seminars across the United States with some high level Jiu Jitsu practitioners. Wagner Hocha is doing one for us in April we're going to be down in Dripping Springs with the folks at Stoic Jiu Jitsu with Marcus and Lacy with Leif and then a Guy named Dean Lister, you guys may have heard of him. Going to be doing our seminar down there, so that's going to be awesome. If you need some skincare products, which we all do, it's the winter season. If you've been outside working, you know, the wind is brutal, the cold is brutal on you. So go check out Littlecattle. Co, grab some of those beef tallow products to make sure that your skin is good. Because there is one thing that you cannot afford to have and that is cracked and chapped skin whenever you're working out in the cold. And the reason is because your skin's an organ, right? It's not just something that you can just completely let go of. It's not like, oh, I broke a fingernail, oh, my skin's cracking. Your skin's an organ. Your body's gonna work super hard to try and repair it and it will affect your health in other ways. So make sure that you go check out the products over there at Little Cattle company. Keep yourself warm with apparel from on the Path. Printing on the Path does all your apparel printing needs. If you wanna start your own brand, maybe you have a company or organization, you're like, you know what we need? We Hoodies. Our guys are freezing cold out there, but they've got to wear stuff that's work branded. Go put your logo on an on the Path hoodie and get that set up for yourself. So go check them out on the Path. JP talks a little bit about, you know, the personal assessments he was doing on the app. But one of the things was like, hey, am I efficient in my weapons training? Well, if you're not, go look at Bruiser Arms. It's Jocko JP Laif. They have a company that puts together custom gear packages as well as custom training. Not only will they help you figure out how to defend yourself and your home, but on top of that, they're going to give you exercises and things that you can consistently be doing whenever you go home to keep yourself sharp in all of those areas. And as always, man, huge, huge, huge thank you and shout out to the folks at Jocko Fuel to the team at Origin. That keeps us fueled, that keeps us closed. That keeps our minds sharp. With the 10 grams of creatine that I had right before I hopped into this podcast to make sure that my my cognitive self was the best that it could be. Use code JP Pod20 when you go to jockofuel.com to save 20% on everything that you purchase and then make sure that you're Going and looking at the stuff at Origin. Go check out OriginUSA.com and go look at it pretty regularly because it's the 250th birthday of this great nation this year. And so they are constantly dropping new things that are going to be one off designs that they're going to do limited runs off to celebrate the whatever centennialist thing it is right now. 250 freaking years of the great United States of America. Go check it out originusa.com and everything that you get there is going to be just extra American because it all came from here. Every bit of the supply chain is from here. Celebrate America's 250th. Yeah, celebrate America's 250th the way that we started it by doing everything right here in the freaking homeland and go throw some tea into a lake or a river or something else. Let's all celebrate together. Jp, you got any final thoughts for us?
- [61:04]
A
I was like, is he gonna keep going or are we gonna circle?
- [61:07]
B
Yeah, that was it. We were. We were talking about tea off air at the beginning of this and I was like, you know what a nice hibiscus. Hibiscus tea Creek would be really good for the trout.
- [61:17]
A
Let's get it go. Let's do it. All right. Hey. Closing thoughts. Intentionality and intensity is a choice. We all have work to do and usually it's a lot more work than we think. So take the time to do an honest self assessment. Where you at, where you want to be, and what do you need to do? And with that, I hope this episode has been a reminder for all of us to go do the work that's needed to put in the effort to build your legacy and to never settle. This has been the JP Do now podcast episode 127.