← JP Dinnell Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
Good morning. This is the JP Donnell podcast, episode 132. I am JPANell and as always, I have Lucas with me. Keep calm and return fire. So today I'm wearing a shirt that one of my very close friends, best friends, as one would or could say Jesse Rembert gave me. Jesse is with the Denver SWAT team. He's a full time SWAT operator. He's in a leadership position with the SWAT team and he gave me this shirt as a gift that his team wears. Now, there are multiple reasons why I love this shirt, but I want to dive into a few thoughts on the saying keep calm and return fire. Now, one of the reasons why I love it is, you know, being in the SEAL teams, gotten a lot of good gunfights and felt calmness in those gunfights. And the reason why I was able to feel that calmness is because of my training, because we had very hard training, but also I expected those things. I expected to get into gunfights when we were in Ramadi. I expected to get into gunfights on all my deployments because of the nature of the job, where we were going and knowing it was just part of what was expected for me to be able to do my job and be proficient. Now, most of our listeners I know, we have some that are in law enforcement and we have some people who listen that are in the military and some that are in law enforcement that are a part of SWAT teams. And we're very thankful for all those guys service and everything that they do. And in that job, in that profession, you should expect those things. You should be trained to be proficient in using your weapons to handle that type of situation, if it ever was to escalate to that point. And that's why we have to have hard training. Hard training is a solemn duty of leaders and individuals in every organization. And if you're in an industry or you have a job and a career, a profession that requires you to carry a weapon, you should be proficient and you should be training in a manner that induces stress upon you and your people so that when that time comes, you can be calm and engage in return fire. Now, for the majority of our listeners that are never going to be in that situation, what does this mean? Hey, in business there's going to be conflict, there's going to be issues, there's going to be friction, there's going to be competition. You should expect these things. And when these things happen, what are you going to do? How are you going to properly quote, return fire? End quote. In that business scenario, well, if you're not training properly, if you're not doing industry specific training and scenarios to prepare yourself to handle those stressful situations, the likelihood of you being able to do those things is very low. You rise to the level of which your training prepares you. And that's why we have to have hard training to prepare ourselves for these stressful situations. And again, I expected these things. It was a part of my job. And you also have to, as a professional, as an individual, whatever you have going on in your life, think strategically about the things that might be involved in your day to day operations so that when they come about, you're not caught off guard, you are prepared. You know, one of the things that I've been asking people at Echelonfront when I do our leadership workshops is how many of you are tired of playing defense in life and in business? And I will get 90% of the room that will raise their hand, they're tired of playing defense. And my response every single time is start taking ownership. When you take ownership, you start to take control. And when you take ownership, you're on the offense. Now, from a sports analogy, yes, defense is very important, but in order to score and put points on the board, it requires offensive movement. So yes, there are times that we have to be defensive in life. We're reacting to what's happening, but we don't want the situation to dictate. We want to dictate the situation. And that means that we have to be thinking, training, planning, preparing and taking ownership. And that's how you can remain calm and return fire. Lucas, how are you, buddy?
- [04:22]
B
Man, I'm doing fantastic. It's been a good busy week as we're preparing for Easter Sunday. So I'm stoked about that.
- [04:31]
A
Yeah, you know, kind of, kind of a big weekend service for you as a pastor.
- [04:35]
B
Yeah, sort of a big deal. But it's interesting that you're talking about this in, in this week because there are so many things we try to, to do an evaluation where we, we sort of walk through our building, our property, look at our processes and everything with fresh eyes so that we can assess how many of the things we're doing are going to be easy enough for somebody who's never walked in the building before to just come and to figure out whenever they come into our church, are we welcoming? Are we friendly? Are there enough signs and this, that and the other that's posted? And most organizations, I think, end up in, in a place similar to what, to what we're at. And I've heard it talked about at the muster, like a lot of the friction that we come up against whenever we're changing things, whether big or small, is the if it isn't broke, don't fix it. And then on top of that is, but this is the way we've always done it. And, and when we, we come up against those things, right, then that's friction where there may not be, you know, a ton of success of the organization that's like hinging on this one thing. But that doesn't mean that it isn' thing to change. So when, when you're talking about organizational friction, when it's those little things that. Let's start with the, the first one of this is the way we've always done it. Why would we change it? You know, how do you approach that as a leader in order to, to help somebody gain a new perspective?
- [06:08]
A
Yeah, well, first off, I'm, I'm going to agree with them and say, yeah, we've always done it this way because it was very effective for a very long time. And then I would ask him an earnest question. Do you think there are better ways that we could be perform team? Do you think there are things that we could be doing to keep our people safer? Do you think there are things that we could do to make us more efficient and more effective? Where can we cut some costs without being detrimental to the client or our team or the project at hand? What are some things that we could do to keep our people safer, more efficient, more effective, and increase morale? Yes, we've always done it this way. And I agree with you, we have, because it's effective. But as things are evolving in our industry, things are starting to change. There's new technology, there's new tools, there's new resources. Why, why would we not want to improve what we're doing? And I would, I would just ask earnest questions. And then, you know, one of the things I've been asking people when I do these workshops, when I talk about innovate and adapt, is I ask everybody as a group and I say, hey, are there things you. I'm sorry, first off, I say, hey, quick show of hands. Who's been here for five plus years? All right, cool. Keep your hands up. 10 plus years, 15 plus years, 20 plus years. I'll keep going until I figure out who the most senior individual is with the most experience and, you know, and then I'll, you know, ask a few of the senior people and like, hey, is there something in the last 23 years that was being implemented that initially you thought was going to be horrible, but over time, you realize it was actually a good thing. And you know what? Every single person says, yep, there is. And I actually had a guy recently say, yeah, every time I thought something was going to be stupid, it turned out to be awesome. You go, so I realized my perspective was way off. I'm like, hey, you know what? Our next thing we're going to talk about is humility. And you just showed a lot of humility. That's awesome. And so I asked them to give me actual examples. I said, give me an example, and they share an example. And it's really cool to see all the people in the room kind of go, oh, yeah. Yep. Hey, I can relate to that. And the goal there, Lucas, is to show them the mirror themselves. They get to look into the mirror and recognize, hey, you know what? In the past, I thought all these things were going to be bad. They turned out to be good. And then I just ask them, so what's the likelihood that these new changes that are being rolled out are going to be absolutely horrific? High or low? You know what? Everybody typically says pretty low. And then I just asked him a question. What's the likelihood that your leadership is implementing change to make your life harder, to make you less effective, to make you unsafe and not be able to perform at a high level? What's the likelihood that your leadership is rolling these things out with that intent? And I legitimately, every time, have people say, zero, zero percent chance. Our leadership wants us to not do the job well, to be unsafe, to not be productive, and to decrease our morale. And so I just ask them, like, do you think we could probably shift our perspective and do a better job at implementing change and being on board with the change and give it our best effort to implement that change? And I also ask them, like, who. Who is better equipped to implement change in the organization? You or your senior executive leaders? And everybody in the room goes, it's us. I'm like, cool, take ownership over that. And you should also actively be seeking to make things better and not just waiting and expecting anybody else to improve your life, to improve your job. And that also goes at home to improve your marriage, your relationship with your kids, your finances, your health. It's not on anybody else other than you. It is 100% on you.
- [10:28]
B
So this kind of leads into that. Second thing is, if the idea of if it ain't broke, don't fix it, which we hear all the time that you can't know that it's broken until you look at whether or not there are opportunities to improve.
- [10:45]
A
Yes.
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B
And if. Yeah.
- [10:47]
A
And this is what we say, innovate and adapt. I'm going to adapt to new technology, new gear, and I'm going to innovate, which means I might create new things or modify what I have right now. I look at it from a weapon standpoint. The weapons I had in the SEAL teams, was I efficient at using them
- [11:13]
B
that I would say yes? I didn't know if that was rhetorical.
- [11:16]
A
Yeah, I mean, no, I'm just, I was asking you a legit question based off of what you know about me and my career and what you've learned at musters and being able to interact with Jocko, Leif and the team. Was I effective and efficient at doing my job based off the gear that I had at that time?
- [11:32]
B
Oh, 100%.
- [11:33]
A
Okay, cool. Guess what? That gear is garbage compared to what we have now. It's crazy when I look back at old pictures and gear and I'm like, dude, this is what we wore. That's crazy. And I even think back to the gear we wore in sqt, which we thought was awesome. And then we get into our first platoon and we get new gear issued and we're like, this is the greatest thing ever. And then we get onto our second platoon and we're like, man, this gear is so much better than last platoon. And then when I was at trade it, I saw an evolution of gear and then also weapons and technology and it's crazy. Now when I teach long range shooting and some of the courses I talked to Leif about recently, some of the shooting courses that we're creating for bruiser arms, like we're going to have, you know, part of bruiser arms is having the, the weapons kits similar to what we carried in tasking a Bruiser, but also having current modern day versions of that. So if you want the old school stuff, we can do it, but if you want the current, we can do that too. And part of the training that we're going to do is based off of a couple different options. But like, you know, the relationship that we have with vortex optics, the new technology is unreal. The laser rangefinder binos. So you're not having to carry two things. You're looking at something in binos, you're scanning, push a button and it gives you the freaking distance and it gives you data that I can put into an app on my phone and it gives me the adjustments I need to make on my vortex optic scope and freaking take a shot and drop an animal. Or I can hit a target at a thousand yards cold bore, easy. I can make thousand yard shots cold. Like I would say nine out of 10 times. And the only reason why it's nine, not 10 is because something changed in those environmental, in that environment. And there was some crazy win that I didn't calculate for.
- [13:39]
B
Yeah.
- [13:40]
A
And I know that's a bold statement. Cool. Let's go shoot. You know, I like, you know, and I have a video of me years ago when I got my 6.5 Creedmoor weapon that was built for me. One of my really good buddies, Jarrett, who built that gun for me. And my first time shooting at a thousand yards, I went five for five with like a half minute of angle group, which is awesome.
- [14:09]
B
Yeah.
- [14:10]
A
And it's because I had the data and the information. I had technology that I used to my advantage. And then I, I applied that technology to my fundamentals which, hey, those are things that you don't change. Fundamentals of shooting. Small adjustments. But how I set up behind a weapon, how I control my breathing, how I hold the weapon, how I place my finger on the trigger, how I slowly and smoothly pull that trigger towards the back, I will always do that. But in regards to the scopes that I use, yeah, they're better. The technology that I have access to, way better. I'm not having to guess. I'm taking data, plugging it in and then being able to apply that, it makes me more effective and more efficient. When I teach shooting and when we are doing these courses at Bruiser Arms in the future, before we get to lunch, I will have 100% of our students hitting a target at a thousand yards.
- [15:14]
B
Oh, wow.
- [15:15]
A
And those can be first time shooters.
- [15:19]
B
Dang.
- [15:21]
A
And so we should embrace change. You know, a big thing that businesses talk about is change management. Well, the more ownership you drive to your people, the more likely they are going to be to embrace that change.
- [15:34]
B
Is, is innovation something that has to be baked into the culture? Because it does sound a little bit like if you are struggling to innovate, if you're, if your points of friction always have to do about change or most often have to do about change, does that mean that you need to create within the culture of your organization more of, I guess a thinking about innovation that now you've identified something that like, hey, this is something that needs to be part of our culture. We need to make innovation and adaptation part of our culture now. Because it's maybe what's holding us back 100%.
- [16:09]
A
Because, I mean, that's why we teach, innovate, and adapt. Every single workshop that we do is to talk to people about the importance of having an open mind, to be willing to change, to be willing to adapt, to make things better, but not wait for anybody else. We should reward our people that develop change, that make things better. I know the Navy had a program for a while that if you were able to identify something that needed to be improved and then you created the improvements and it got adapted, they would give you a bonus.
- [16:46]
B
Oh, that's rad.
- [16:47]
A
And don't quote me on the specifics. I'm giving the framework of what that is, because I knew an EOD guy, an explosive ordinance disposal tech that guys were like, bro, how do you. How are you affording this vehicle? And he had. He found out that the Navy did that, and he had created some new technology that was able to be applied, and he got some sick checks, bro.
- [17:12]
B
That's what I'm talking about.
- [17:14]
A
Yeah, nice. You have a freaking E5 as an EOD tech driving a freaking $100,000 vehicle back in the early 2000s. There's gonna be some questions.
- [17:24]
B
Yeah, no, no. No doubt about it. You know, you. You said the. The shirt you got on is kind of what inspired this and that, thinking of, like, keep calm and return fire. Do you have some strategies for keeping calm? You know, one of the. The things that's recently happened in our community. We talked about it a little bit on the last episode. There was a big explosion last night in. In Lake Dallas. We had a. It wasn't really a town hall meeting as much as it was like a rescheduling of a city council meeting. But at the beginning of every city council meeting, there is an opportunity for a community comment and bragging. My city a little bit, it was. It was probably 70, 30 positive to negative, but watching our. Our mayor, our city manager, our city council take some of the criticisms that they took, knowing that, you know, they can't comment or anything to those things where they're just absolutely getting blasted by leadership, by some folks. Yeah. So what are some strategies that you have for keeping calm whenever you do experience friction? Because I. I got a hand to tell them last night. They did a really good job of doing, as my grandmother would say, fixing their face so that, you know, they weren't showing all the emotion that they had behind it. But how do you. How do you teach somebody how to do that? Or what are some strategies that you have for keeping Calm, whenever these kind of things happen,
- [18:53]
A
well, you gotta realize that your natural tendency is usually the wrong thing. And so you have to create habits to change your behaviors and tendencies. What we teach at Echelon Front, and I love Cody Gandy, says this all the time, we teach behaviors and tendencies. Laws of combat or behaviors. Tendencies are the mindsets for victory. And our natural tendency is tendency is to be emotional. And so one, we have to detach from our emotions. And you're not going to detach from emotions if you're not mindful of it. So you have to do honest self assessments and ask yourselves, ask yourself, when you get in these situations, how do you normally react? And the first step is being mindful and aware of it. And then you have to train, you have to do some scenarios, some stress induced scenarios where you're role playing back and forth and preparing for these hard conversations, these hard meetings, these hard interactions. So that way when it does happen, you've already ran through the gambit. That's why when we're on the shooting range, we start off dry and then we'll lock a load and then we add stress. And then so sometimes with our guys that are seasoned operators, like the first thing they do on, on the range is a, is a stress test because that shows you how you perform when you're cold. Anybody can shoot great after a full day of doing repetitions. But how do you perform when you're cold? How you perform when you're cold is a reflection of you as an operator. So when you walk into a meeting that you think is going to be great and it just turns into pure chaos and everyone's yelling and attacking you and there's a bunch of friction, how do you react? That's a cold scenario. You went into it thinking everything was going to be great and all of a sudden now it's pure chaos. That's why the FTX program is so effective at Echelon Front, because we put you in a controlled stress induced scenario where you're gonna have to work through and solve problems in an environment that you're not used to and your natural tendencies will come out. And that's why people love coming to the FTX because it shows their strengths and their weaknesses. So if you're trying to identify these things, create industry specific scenarios and think through them at a bare minimum, just thinking through, well, hey, if I'm going to go have this conversation with so and so and they say this, this will be my reaction. And then the other thing is just remind yourself, stay Detached. So I jump on a zoom call. I'm cool, zero expectations, stay detached. And I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to see. Engage my environment before I make a decision. Hence why we teach people, relax, look around, make a call. I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna cool. Let. And there's a thing we would teach guys. Let the situation develop a little bit. Let the situation develop. You don't have to, you know, engage right away. You know, the enemy used a tactic called recon by fire. They would shoot random shots, hoping we would shoot back and then they would be able to identify and find our location. It's called recon by fire. So how many times are people doing recon by fire by trying to get you spun up? Don't engage.
- [22:05]
B
So that brings me kind of to, to the last question that I've got on this is, you know, keeping calm and returning fire is great when it's coming from outside of our organization. Yeah, it's really difficult as a leader sometimes to, to not commit a. As is talked about an extreme ownership a Blue on blue.
- [22:25]
A
Yeah.
- [22:26]
B
Where, where you do get somebody that is within your organization, maybe they come at you a little strong whenever you've presented an idea or whenever you're talking about to be changed. And, and it's difficult not to fire back at them. So we've talked about how to, how to keep calm, not return fire against, you know, maybe your customer base, maybe it's opposition, maybe it's clientele like whatever. Right. How do you prevent Blue on blue? How do you prevent from firing on your own whenever the opposition is coming from within?
- [22:59]
A
So one of the things, I'm glad you asked this question because one of the things that I, you know, we could dive into on a future episode is keep calm or return fire. Guess what? Return fire can also be de escalation, apologies and taking ownership. That's returning fire. And so if, if these things are happening internally, I'm going to remain detached from my emotions and I'm going to de escalate by taking ownership and helping people navigate. And guess what? That's how you effectively return fire towards Nana. Blue on blue. Well, I appreciate us being able to do this. Thank you. Obviously to all the listeners. I know Lucas is going to wrap it up with a few things, but hey, shout out to all my boys at Denver swat. Love you guys. Appreciate it. Those guys take time away from work and their families to come support echelon front at the musters at the FTXs. So very thankful for Jesse, you know, Carl, Fred, Jake, Adam. I'm missing probably another few guys in there. I apologize. But you know, they very, very thankful for those guys that are one, serving their city at a very high level, enduring stress and BS at a level that we don't know about and see. I mean, I get a glimpse, but those guys are answering the call every single day and I'm honored to call those guys my friends. I am so thankful for what Jesse and his guys do for the city of Denver, the state of Colorado, and also our nation and for them helping us at Echelon Front and also to all of our first responders nationwide. Thank you for what you guys do. To all of our veterans, thank you for what you did and what you continue to do to serve our nation and any capacity. Thank you to our veterans right now. I'm sorry, thank you to our military members that are, you know, have answered the call and, you know, just so thankful for those men and women and the relationships that I'm very fortunate to have with those people. And you know, if you want to check out what we do at Echelon front, go to echelonfront.com we have the muster coming up in Nashville. We have a few spots left for that. Go to echelonfront.com click on events. We have an FTX coming up in September in the Austin area. We also have a muster in July in San Diego, October in Denver. We have the battlefield coming up as well. And man, just so thankful for all of our listeners that support Echelon Front, whether they're a member of Extreme Ownership Academy or they come to the events. It's pretty rad and it's really cool to meet more and more people, Lucas, at events that listen to our podcast. Yeah, man, that are, you know, listening, tracking, you know, just thankful that we have this platform to share these lessons and more importantly, share our faith because that's our number one intent behind this podcast. But what else, you guys? What else you got for us for.
- [26:05]
B
Well, I was going to say as a, as a thank you to any of our listeners, if you guys go to firstinnutrition.com jpod Jonathan and Ann Montgomery have partnered with us and they will give anybody who goes and checks out that link four free weeks of nutrition coaching so that maybe the way that you need to return fire in your life is getting your health back on track. So, so go ahead, check that out first in nutrition.com JP Pod and then if you go to Jocko Fuel and use code JP Pod20 because Jonathan and Ann are in the game with Jocko Fuel as well. It'll save you 20 on everything that you do over there, even on the new pro series, which is absolutely incredible stuff for anybody who's trying to lose weight. The muscle drive that protects your muscle during times where you're cutting weight. If you have been prescribed GLP1s, if you're doing any of those kinds of things, this keeps you from losing the muscle that happens with every kind of weight cut. So it's absolutely phenomenal product that they just came out with. You've already talked about Bruiser Arms on the Path Printing for all your printing apparel needs and then over at Origin, So thankful for what Pete and Amanda Roberts have done, bringing manufacturing back to the United States. If you're worried about tariffs, you don't have to worry about them with Origin because everything comes from the United States. There are no tariffs between North Carolina and Maine and back to Texas whenever I open up my jeans. So it's pretty rad. And, and they've got a deal right now on Jiu jitsu gear. If you haven't signed up for their text messages, if you're not on Instagram following them so that you can get those special deals or be part of voting for. Hey, you know what, Pete? We like this. We like this trim. We like this cut a little bit better than we do the others. And also about to be dropping the, the mom jeans or the, the women's jeans, which are. Yeah, the women's jeans. You can't call them mom jeans because apparently that's like a specific type of cut. My wife was educating me on all this stuff this week.
- [27:53]
A
Yeah.
- [27:53]
B
So it's, it's pretty cool what they're doing and a big shout out and thanks to, to them for keeping us going and for the new products and stuff that they've come out with in the last few months in order to make the value that Jocko Fuel already has even a little bit better. So very cool. And, and thank you, guys. Make sure you check out all the links to that stuff in the show notes. And jp, you got any final thoughts for us, man?
- [28:11]
A
Yeah, you said on the Path printing, so I know we've been talking about it for a while, but I've got the design tweaked. I know I sent it to you and everybody I've sent this design to. Literally everybody has said put me in for at least one, if not a few, or how can I pre order or let me know when this drops. So we have the huscular shirt coming out of muscular. It's awesome. So that'll be coming out and you know that is a great way to support the podcast and on the path printing and you know, Origin just launched or they're getting ready to launch a new rash called Rash Guard called the Jiu Jitsu Redeemer.
- [28:54]
B
Okay.
- [28:56]
A
It has a spinoff on. It's like Brazilian colored themes but with Jesus.
- [29:06]
B
Yeah, with Christ Redeemer from Brazil. That's rad.
- [29:08]
A
It's bro. It's so cool. But hey, as we close it out, just want to remind you, keep calm, detach from your emotions, relax, look around, assess the situation, make a decision and then take action. I hope this, this episode has been a reminder 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 Denial podcast, episode 132.