← JP Dinnell Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
Good morning, this is the JP NAL podcast episode 135. I am JP Donnell and as always I have Lucas with me. So I am here in Nashville at the Echelon Front Muster 024 and we just got done with the first ever pre muster FTX and man, it was an incredible day of training. After that, Cody and I rushed back to make it in time to meet with the team, do some rehearsals, then quickly ran back to a room shower change to make it in time for registration, meet and greet, then right after at a dinner, now I'm back up in the room knocking this out. Appreciate the flexibility Lucas. And obviously not ideal during the mustard week to be doing this, but last week, me having that really bad fever, being down hard all week, you know, we had to adapt and we had to make changes to our plans. Life is never going to go planned 100% of the time. You know, we have to be willing to shift and make changes, but we also can't let that ruin our life. You can't let it ruin our attitudes. But this also doesn't mean that we just go through life reckless and not making plans and saying, well, everything's going to fall apart, so what's the point of planning? Which is crazy to say out loud, but I know some people think that way and kind of operate that way. There has to be a balance. I personally think you should always make plans and be disciplined with doing those plans, executing those plans and sticking to them as much as you can. But you also have to have some contingency plans in place knowing that things are going to shift, they're going to change and so ultimately you don't fail at accomplishing your mission at hand just by being like, well, I don't know what to do and we're going to let it fall apart. So you know, we made some pivots and you know, this is what we're doing and you know, it's just, again, it sucks because of my sleep and I got to be up super early and not ideal and I still are going to review my slides tonight, tonight when we get done. But I mean I saw this firsthand today at the, at the pre muster. FTX is, you know, they come up with plans, they'd be getting ready to, you know, they brief the plan and get approved, they're getting ready to execute and as soon as they would go out there and start executing the mission, things would change. And that's one of the things that we talked about today, is having contingency plans and Thinking through things, but not over planning and not having too many contingency plans. There, there has to be a balance. But also I remember one of my debrief points today because before they're getting ready to get their mission approved, there's a lot of arguing amongst the leaders of what they thought was the right plan and what they should be doing. And you know, then they get the mission approved and then they're going through that with the team and they're still like wasting time over arguing about little semantics that don't actually matter because once they go out there and start executing the mission that hey, guess what, the enemy gets a vote and you're going to have to be flexible and you're going to have to adapt. And we don't, obviously we don't focus on tactics at Echelon front when we're teaching our FTXs. We don't care about it. It's the intent is hands on scenario based leadership training. And what we're looking is looking for is do people have the ability to detach from their emotions, think strategically, listen to other team members and even though you're in charge and somebody's asking questions, not taking it personal and recognizing that when people ask question because they don't know and they need more information and if you're getting offended or taking it personal, then that's the time that you probably need to focus on a little bit of detachment and listening, listening to your people, listening to their concerns. And then during some of the debriefs, people brought up like, hey, what if I'm trying to voice my concerns to my leadership and they're not listening, what do I do next? So the day of training was awesome. And what was cool is this was the first ever individual style FTX that we did for the muster. Before the muster. Normally when we do these one day FTXs, it's after the muster. And this time because the muster is on Thursday, Friday in Nashville and no paintball airsoft facility is going to rent out the place on a Saturday. I mean they will, but we ain't paying that price. We adapted and we're like, hey, let's try it out. Let's make an iterative decision and let's see if it's something good, let's see if it's something our people like and if there's benefit from it. And man, the. The impact from today's training was incredible. Cody runs an incredible program. His role players are super squared away. We had Josh and Callie, James, Jesse and Carl So a lot of really good experience, super squared away, guys that just freaking get after it and are super professional, they understand our principles, they live the principles, they implement the principles. And so having that combo with the way Cody thinks and the scenarios that they come up with and create and Cody's ability to connect them back and teach is, is really cool for me to be able to watch the day progress. But what was really cool is last night when we did the kickoff dinner and class for the ftx, a good portion, a good majority of the group had never been to a muster, never been to anything echelon front related. Some of them had maybe read the book, but a lot of them were there because their company sent them and so they didn't know what to expect last night and then today when they showed up, they didn't really know what to expect. We had one guy, he's a stud. Chris had been to the FTX once before, the individual one that we did in Texas and he really enjoyed it. And like everybody, he had his struggles going through the training and had a lot of eye opening moments that it was cool to see him have been able to apply those personally and professionally from the last individual 2day FTX that he did and then coming back to this. And so he progressed really quick today, which was cool, which is a testament to training and being intentional with your disciplines. But what was really cool, Lucas, is at the end of the training, every single one of the attendees was excited and fired up for the muster. Like legitimately excited. Like, man, I can't wait to go into the muster with these strengths and weaknesses that I'm now aware of that have been exposed through that hard training, that difficult stress induced training. And I actually had a gentleman tonight at the registration come up and shake my hand and he was like, hey man, I just want to share with you what I share with Cody. He goes, I am so excited to go to the FTX tomorrow with my leadership and personality wounds exposed so I can go in there and I can make the changes that needed and be able to implement these things afterwards. And I just couldn't help but smile, told him I was super proud of him because I legitimately was proud of him for having that awareness, having that humility. And so it just was a really cool day of training and I'm so excited for the next few days of the semester. But how are you doing my man, Ben?
- [07:07]
B
I'm doing great and it's, it's awesome to hear how this little pivot has changed the perspective of the people going into Muster, you know, it was great to hear. We, we're good friends with the folks over at first in nutrition. Jonathan and Anne were part of a post Muster FTX and we got to talk with them a little bit about their experience there. And now hearing how this shift where versus with the postmonster ftx, they learned all this stuff and then they got to see kind of how bad they were at it in the reverse. Now everybody's kind of seeing where the holes in their leadership game is. So now they know where to pay attention. I'm curious to see how that's gonna change their. Their perspective on things. You know, I was listening to the Lead Win podcast. I don't know if you're familiar with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody from this podcast was recently on it, Jeremiah. And you guys were talking about change. And one of the quotes from Leif that I really enjoyed was that no one likes change except the guy who suggested the change. And in a little short, it panned over to you For a second. You had a smirk on your face, then it went back to him. And what is interesting about this is we're talking about change and about how to innovate and adapt and finding new ways. It's the reason so many people go to the Muster is to figure out the changes that they need to make. So often the change that needs to happen is not something that you implement in the moment, it's something that happens in the planning phase.
- [08:45]
A
Yeah.
- [08:45]
B
And so I'm, I'm curious, like, what are steps when somebody realizes, hey, you know what I. The thing that I'm really lacking is not like execution in the moment. Like, maybe you're. You're great, as some people refer to him, a great gamer.
- [09:00]
A
Right.
- [09:00]
B
They're like, in the midst of the game, like, you're ready to go, you can execute well. But what you're realizing is that you're able to figure everything out in the midst of the chaos, but you're burning your team out. And so you've got to figure out things on the front end. You've got to learn how to plan better. What steps do you give people so that they can determine how to become better at planning?
- [09:21]
A
I mean, I mean, the first step is, you know, just plan something and evaluate. You know, I mean, I. It's not rocket science is make some plans and then see how you can execute upon those plans. Another option, which I think is a better option, I'm just saying that first one, like, hey, if that's all you can do is create some plans, execute the plans and then assess. That's a great place to be. A better option is I create some plans and I get feedback from people around me, my peers, my boss, my team. Like, hey, here's a plan I created. What do you guys think of this? The, the next best thing is let your people create the plan. What does it matter unless they come up with some absolutely idiotic plan that's going to get everybody injured, killed, or be, you know, detrimental to your business or, you know, a huge violation of safety or integrity or financial risk, like drive ownership to your people. Why do you have to come up with a plan? It's because our ego, our ego wants us to come up with a plan. And this is something we all deal with and fight with every day. But like, the ultimate form of creating a plan is not having to create one at all. Let your people create the plan. You know, get your family involved. Hey, we're going to take a vacation this summer. Where would you guys like to go? You know, and you know, kids sometimes and even spouses or ourselves will come up with some crazy ideas. It's like, all right, cool. Like, hey, yeah. I love the idea of us going to Maui for six weeks. Sounds awesome. However, comma, we can't afford to do that. That's really expensive. This is what it would cost right now, unfortunately. Can't take six weeks off of work. But if you guys really want to go to Maui, I mean, it's an expensive trip. We could do a five day trip. That's an option. And here's what we could do while we're there. And here's some options of where we could stay and we'll look through that and you guys figure out what you want to do. Like, hey, when we're in Maui, like, what do we want to be doing? Do we want to be on the beach the whole time? Do we want to go do some different tourist things? Is being close to the beach really important to you guys? So you're asking questions, getting their feedback and saying like, hey, based off, what do you guys think we should do? And also there's like, there's a difference between desire and capabilities. Yeah, I would. I have an incredible desire to go to Maui for six wheeler, six weeks. I don't have the capabilities to do that financially or work wise. And also we have three dogs at home. Like, we can't, you know, like, so there's all these things. And so then I come up like a few options. Hey, we could go to Lake Tahoe. We could go down to Destin, we could go to the Ozarks. Hey, we could have a staycation and plan a bunch of stuff around around here, you know, based off of like what we can afford, what's in the actual family budget, what are some things that we want to do, and then just trying to get as much buy in from our family as possible within realistic expectations. And that's the thing is when you're planning something, do you have realistic expectations of what the outcome is? Do you have an understanding of what the outcome is and do you have the capabilities of being able to execute and accomplish those things? And so, yeah, you can do it all on your own. Okay. You could come up with it and get feedback and then hopefully you're humble enough to listen and adapt and make changes. Or you can give ownership to all the people included in that plan that will affect that plan. Drive ownership down to them, get their feedback, get their buy in, let them create portions of the plan and then if it's a workable plan, say, cool, hey, this is what we're going to do. What do you guys think some contingency plans should be if this happens and we can't do this, what are some alternatives that sound good? Like, you know that backpacking trip I do every September with Chris, Tyron and Mike, we have contingency plans. Hey, this is where we want to go. We're applying for permits. If we can't get permits, we're going to apply here. And then here's flight options, here's contingency plans. Like if there's issues of day of travel, then we have some leniency on the permits in these different areas. And then even to the sections that we go and we have permits, Chris has two to three different routes planned out with, you know, different things that we could do. And he's always like, hey guys, what do you, what do you guys want to do? What do you guys think? And Mike and I are like, I don't care. You just tell us where we're going to go and where we need to be. And as long as we all start on the same trailhead, we'll meet you somewhere. Because, you know, Tyron and Chris know these areas better than some of the locals, which is pretty crazy.
- [14:18]
B
That's pretty.
- [14:18]
A
And so what, what feedback do I have? Hey, cool. Hey, you know what? I just want to be with my boys for six to eight days. Backpacking, spending time, fellowship time with the Lord, quiet time, like doing some crazy hikes, doing some awesome hikes. Finding some cool rivers and lakes to enjoy and be freezing cold in and then laugh about it afterwards and you know, make some backpacking meals and sit around and talk about life. Like I, other than that I don't, I don't care what we do. So planning the routes, which is funny because I was, I'm, I was appointment and I love planning routes. I love navigation, but Chris and Tyron love that and they know it better than me. So I'm like, cool, awesome. I like to review the routes so I have awareness of the routes. But they both know that I really like travel and logistics. So guess who comes up with the, the travel and logistics plans of flights and hotels and rental cars? Me. Like they literally gave me ownership of that right away because I was just showing some interest, expressed some interest in it was asking questions, was like, hey, what do you guys think about this? Because also this is their trip that I was invited to start joining. So I just was asking some questions and then just said, hey, I really like doing this. Can I take this off your guys plate? Hey, do you mind if I handle this? And the good leaders that Chris and Tyron are, you know what they said? Cool, sounds awesome. What do you need from me? It's just, it's such a cool experience and there's like literally zero stress except for the physical stress that those guys impose upon Mike and I on these routes. Other than that, there's literally zero stress. Zero stress. And that's the way I think, like all aspects of life should be. Create that environment with your family. That's what I'm trying to get better at. I know I need to work on that. And you know, we've gotten better at that with my wife and I of talking through things, different options. And my wife is a freaking saint because her answer always is, I don't care, honey. Like, what do you want to do? To the point. Sometimes it frustrates me. I'm like, hey, just, just tell me what you want to do. Because I want, I really want to do what you want to do. And you know, because we communicate through these things. Not always perfect, but we're trying to be better at that. It's, it's, it's awesome when you get a live life with a spouse, with kids, with coworkers, with friends, where it's like, hey, at the end of the day, if we have alignment on what we accomplished, does it really matter how we accomplish it? Big picture, does it really matter? And that was one of my big debrief Points today. Why are we fighting? Arguing, wasting time, leadership capital over semantics on a plan that, you know, as soon as you go out there to execute the plan, plan falls apart. Yeah, because the environment isn't what you thought it was going to be. How? I mean, you're a pastor. You've been a pastor for a while. You and your wife counsel other couples and people that are wanting to get married and people that are going through divorces and going through hard times and all these things. How many arguments have you guys had to help navigate and negotiate? That started off as something stupid, but one or both of them would not. Would not relinquish their stance and felt that they had to make a hard line in the sand over something that wasn't that serious.
- [17:59]
B
It happens all the time. One of my favorite examples is something that happened on our staff whenever we were planning a retreat and one of our guys was planning breakfast. And this was at a time a couple of years ago. And I told him, I was just like, hey, man, just watch the cost of things. We've got a budget for the meals I had recently seen. You know, we always buy eggs in those, you know, the five dozen boxes, right?
- [18:26]
A
Yeah, right.
- [18:27]
B
Like, that's it. I eat eight to ten eggs a day. So we, like, this is just the way we buy them. We had gone to to buy some, and we decided not to because it was like 20 bucks. So I just told him, hey, man, listen, be careful with the budget, right? You only got X number of dollars to spend. Normally the eggs were this price. I saw them for 20 bucks the other day. And then immediately an argument starts. Like, I don't know. I don't. I don't know where you saw them for that much. Like, I've never seen it. I was like, dude, doesn't matter. And then. But we both, like, all of a sudden this. So we get into this argument over the price of eggs, and, okay, the meeting is, oh, a hundred percent. And now I feel like my authority in the whole meeting is being challenged over egg prices. So I'm like, instead of detaching, I am trying now to not like, I'm not detaching. What I'm trying to do is just use personal restraint. There's no detachment from it. It's just. Don't make myself look like a bigger idiot in the midst of this meeting. So I was, you know, I. I finally do the. The very mature, like, hey, we're just gonna move on, okay? Just pay attention to the price of the eggs. About four hours later, I get a text message with a picture of eggs, of course, and. And they're like $5 less. We get together for the next staff meeting and we're talking about. At the very beginning of the meeting, everybody is talking about eggs. So this really important thing, right, has now become the conversation piece of the entire, the entire team. And nothing that needed to be accomplished for the first 15 minutes of that subsequent meeting was able to be accomplished because everybody wanted to know what happened with the, quote, egg drama. What's great is now that we're past that, you know, five or six years later, he and I both use that as an example of a time where we were absolutely just idiotic in a meeting and ruined everybody else's experience. And when we're training young leaders, we both talk about this as leadership failures on our part. But to your point. Yeah, it's the thing we tell couples is it's never really about the dish in the dishwasher. There's something that escalated. There was something else that made it to this point. And even with these little semantic arguments, more often than not it has to. To go back to an ego thing that there's something about the ego that's, that's causing these things. So how do you, in the planning phase, how do you balance the, the value of the mission, making sure the mission gets accomplished well, and figuring out which battles are worth fighting and which ones are taking us off the path to the mission.
- [21:29]
A
Okay, so what's the actual mission? Do you understand the mission? Have you clearly communicated the mission to your people? Are you delegating tasks based off of their capabilities and their ability to like, actually execute? Like, can, can they accomplish the scope of work and if they can, delegate it. If they can't, okay, that's when we have to be a little more hands on. And this is a training opportunity that we get to have with them. And so, you know, it's parameters, expectation and standards. Okay, hey, here's what we're trying to accomplish. Here's the mission at hand. Here's the parameters in which you can make decisions. Here's what is expected. Here's like the output, right. And here's the standards that we have to maintain. So, hey, we have a men's breakfast coming up. Here's your budget. Those are the parameters. What's expected is that we have enough food to feed a hundred guys and it has to be edible food that tastes good. Where the men at, this men's group are going to enjoy their breakfast and they're going to have Good conversations so that they're not talking about how crappy this food is. If we can accomplish that, I don't care how you accomplish it. I don't care if you use eggs. I don't care if you do pancakes. I don't care. I don't care what food you serve, as long as every person has about this much food. And so, like, I get these expectations to my people of quality and then the standards, and I don't care what breakfast they make. Like, I don't care. Did you stay in budget? Cool. Does everybody have enough food? Awesome. Was it a good meal? Was it edible? Was it enjoyable? Are people going to enjoy this free breakfast that they're getting so they can focus on the fellowship aspect and they're not being like, bro, did you taste the eggs? Those were horrible. Yeah, I tried to wash it down with a coffee and that stuff was like oil. Like that. These. Those are little things. But what if those little things deviated? And now this group of men are complaining and joking about the crappy breakfast and not saying, hey, man, how you been the last few weeks? Everything all right with your wife and kids? Is there anything I can be praying for you about? You know, that's what, like, Cody talks about at the ftx. Like, hey, if the trash cans are full, we need to take those out and finish and clean them out and change them out right away. Because his whole thing is, like, people are paying good money to be at our training. We want their focus to be on the leadership training. And a overflowing trash can looks bad. And if that is something that bothers somebody because that's one of their pet peeves. And now they go to throw away trash and they throw their bottle of, you know, jocker fuel hydrate in there and their discipline go. And it rolls out. And now they have to pick it up and they're pushing the trash can down. And when they push the trash can down, their hand gets, like, trash juice on it.
- [24:51]
B
That's the worst description of anything.
- [24:54]
A
It's. You know what? You knew exactly what I was talking about. And you probably smelt it as that and you thought about it, because I did, too, when I did that. And now they're pissed off and they're looking for hand sanitizer, and they're getting hand sanitizer on. Well, it's cost that person time. They're frustrated and it took away from their focus of the training. So, hey, guess what, guys? If you see a trash can getting close to being full, take it out, put A new fresh bag in there, set it far away from the group, and at the end of the day, we'll take out the trash. This is not rocket science, but this is part of the expectations at Echelon. Front is to be professional.
- [25:35]
B
Yeah.
- [25:37]
A
And it's not hard because the guys, guess what, they do it all the time. And now's to the point if Cody and I are taking out a trash bag because we're like right next to it and we're like, cool, let's do it. And if the FTX team sees us looking at a trash or pulling it out, they will attack us and take those trash bags out of her hand and be like, no, stop, we gotta go. And it's a fun little game we play. But that's literally the part of the culture that Cody has created in the FTX program is having very high standards, being super professional and delivering an ultimate world class experience. And that's what we accomplish in all things.
- [26:16]
B
And I've got one more question for you about planning. There was a meeting we were at this morning with a bunch of local business people and one of the guys said something that I thought was interesting, but I, I don't know that I absolutely agreed with. And what he said was that people tend to overrate planning and underrate action. Now the point he was trying to make is that there are a lot of people who plan great things but they never take action for it. And so I understand what he was trying to say, but I don't know that that's necessarily the case. What I do want to ask and what the heart of my question is, is, is there a balance between planning an action? When you say, hey, this plan is good enough to go any further is going to prevent us from doing it?
- [27:05]
A
Yeah, go, execute. Is it a workable plan? Yes or no? Is it a workable plan? And if you can say yes, start putting in the work, but don't over commit. Make small iterative decisions with that plan to see if it's good like you thought it was. And if it's good, then keep doing it. And then maybe take a bigger step and a bigger step and a bigger step. And if you have momentum trending in the right direction, awesome. But don't be blind to that momentum. Be aware, be assessing and be like, all right, cool, we're still on path. We're still, you know, we have the right plan, we're able to execute. Awesome, let's run it. The key to that is workable plan and iterative step. Take a Small iterative step in that direction.
- [27:53]
B
Right on. Well, if you want to learn more about how to do this, go check out echelonfront.com JP is currently at the muster. There are some individual FTX events coming up later this year. There's another Muster coming up later this year. You can go check out their in person events or go to echelonfront.com and look at the Extreme Ownership Academy where they have weekly calls and Wednesday at 1pm Central Time. Also you can sign up for courses like how to implement Extreme Ownership in your business, how to create a culture of Extreme Ownership, Implementing Extreme Ownership in the home, courses on planning and all kinds of things that are part of that. You heard us mention the folks over at first in Nutrition. Big shout out to Jonathan and Ann Montgomery and as a listener to the JP Donnell podcast. If you go to firsttennutrition.com JP Pod they're going to give you four free weeks of nutrition coaching at the Muster. There is on the last night there's an introduction to Jiu Jitsu which is done by a guy named Dean Lister. And Jocko Willink is also there doing it. JP provides some stuff. Is Raina gonna be there at at the National Muster helping out with that?
- [28:57]
A
I don't think she's gonna. Dean's not at this one. He'll be in San Diego, but it's gonna be Jocko, Echo and myself.
- [29:03]
B
Right on. Well, the reason I mentioned Dean, Dean did a great seminar for us with Jesus in Jiu Jitsu was absolutely awesome. He's a, he's an absolute stud human being. So thanks to him, if you haven't checked out Jesus in Jiu Jitsu usa, go check it out. Give it a look. If you need apparel printing, go check out on the Path printing Little Cattle CO for all of your skin care needs right now. And then if you want to do stuff the same way that JP and Jocko and Leif did, they got a company called Bruiser Arms. They can put together custom gear packages for you, custom training. They're working with some of the best folks in the business, so go check them out. And finally to our folks over at Origin and Jocko Fuel that are keeping the folks fueled at the Muster as well as keeping me fueled in dfw, whether keeping JP fueled in Tennessee, Dean fueled over on the west coast and our boy Ethan fueled up in Michigan. So go check out jockofuel.com use code JP Pod20 to save 20% on that. And if you aren't already an Origin insider, go check out OriginUSA.com join the insider stuff because Pete dropped some pictures of some new origin. Not sneakers, not boots. Freaking cross training shoes with what looks like at least a 10 millimeter drop. So please go support what they're doing because if we can bring training shoes back to being a USA made thing. Are you freaking kidding me? That means everything that you want to own to be the best version of yourself can be manufactured here in the United States. And they're doing something that everybody said was impossible. Go support those guys over there. Jp, you got any final thoughts for us, man?
- [30:45]
A
Nothing more than what we shared, but I just want to say thank you for all of our listeners. You know, I had a man, I had a good amount of people come up to me at the muster tonight and we're like, hey, I just want to say thank you to you and Lucas for what you do. They're like, thank you for the podcast. Thank you for being bold in your faith. Thank you for sharing what you guys share. Thank you for the interviews that you do. So I just want to say thank you to our listeners. Thank you to our listeners that share the podcast. You know, just literally share the podcast in a text message. People that share it on Instagram and add the link in their story, that helps us. That literally helps us grow the podcast and people that use the, you know, the affiliate codes of Jockey Fuel, that helps us as well. And man, I just want to say thank you. It's just awesome just seeing and getting to meet amazing humans that are out there making a difference, trying to be better husbands and fathers and mothers and wives being better humans. And that's what the world needs. But at the end of the day, like, it's on us to put in the work. And I know I've said this before, you can't give to others what you don't have yourself. So make sure you're taking care of yourself so that you can take care of the people in your life. I hope 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 Donnell podcast, episode 135.