Infanterie Greift An. (Infantry Attacks) by Erwin Rommel w/John Hill and Jesan Sorrells

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Hello, my name is Jesan

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Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from

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the Great Books podcast, episode number

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204.

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Opening up with, with

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our book today, I want to read

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a little bit from the very first chapter,

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some observations that the author of the

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book had when he was

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engaged in a war of movement in

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Belgium and northern France in

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the year of our Lord

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1914.

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And I quote, observations

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facing the enemy, the reconnaissance detachment commander becomes

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conscious of his heavy responsibilities. Every mistake means

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casualties, perhaps the lives of his men.

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Therefore, any advance must be made with extreme caution and deliberation.

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Taking advantage of all cover, the detachment should keep off of the roads and repeatedly

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examine the terrain with field glasses. The detachment should be

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organized in considerable depth. Before crossing open stretches of terrain,

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fire support must be arranged for. Entering a village,

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advance with part of the unit on the left, the rest on the right of

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the houses and with fingers on the triggers.

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Report observations rapidly, for delay lessens the value of

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any information. Train in time

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of peace to maintain direction at night with the aid of a

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luminous dial compass. Train in difficult

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trackless wooded terrain. War makes

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extremely heavy demands on the soldier’s strength, and nerves.

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For this reason, make heavy demands on your men

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in peacetime exercises.

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Rommel, you magnificent bastard. I read your

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book.

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Applying the lessons from military strategy and tactics

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to solving business problems is usually objected to by people in

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business for one

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of two main reasons. The first is that people in the

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civilian world are now, in the year of our Lord

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2026, largely ignorant of the discipline, focus,

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and grit required to execute tactically in an environment

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defined primarily by violence and death.

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The second objection is that people in the civilian world are either unwilling

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or unable to subject themselves to the discipline, focus, and

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grit required to execute tactically in

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environments that feature just a little friction, much

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less the friction on a battlefield.

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So the critics think, and concludes, what possible lessons

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could a leader in a civilian space glean from

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studying the tactics and strategies military commanders have

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recorded in their writings throughout history?

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The core idea inherent in both objections is that there

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exists somewhere a field of study from which leaders cannot learn,

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or even worse, that there might be a field of study that leaders can safely

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ignore because the nature of the field itself may be

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unsavory. The people who have engaged in tactical practices

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in that field may have questionable ethics, or that the air of

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civilian life is so rare. And this is the one I think that

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drives most of us, that it does not require suggestions of

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improvement from the pedestrian. Or even the banal.

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We reject the assumptions that exist under these ideas on this

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show, however, and we prove

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the continued commitment to such rejection every October

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and November when we read and glean what we can from books that

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address military strategy and tactics, like the

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book we’re going to read and we’re going to examine today.

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So today on the show, we will extract lessons for

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leaders from what is quite possibly one of the best books I’ve read in a

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while that pulls lessons from battle that can be

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applied to civilian business problems.

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Infanterie greift an,

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or if you’re going to do the English,

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attacks by Erwin

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Rommel. Yes, that Erwin Rommel.

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Leaders, tactical thinking is what we are

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missing in so many areas of society and culture. And the

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best place to understand, or at least to begin to understand tactical

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thinking, is in the space of military strategy and

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tactics. At least that’s what I think.

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And back from episode number 203, the last episode, Uh,

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where we covered Neuromancer by William Gibson, where I

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left, uh, I left him hanging without an answer to the following

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question: should there be like some sort of intelligence quiz to vote to participate

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in these ideas that have such a big, huge impact on our day-to-day lives?

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Coming out of our observations about Robert Heinlein’s 1959 military

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science fiction novel Starship Troopers, where the fact that

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government service most often military service,

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was a prerequisite to the right to vote,

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is our now, I think, semi-regular host. I think

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you’re a semi-regular host now, coming in back to back.

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John Hill, AKA, of course, Small

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Mountain. How you doing today, John? You’re back. How you doing

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today? Dude, I’m good. Um, I, uh,

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I had to create some space because you did leave me hanging last time, right?

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So I kind of forgot that, uh, that you did leave me hanging in such

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a profound manner, um, because like I had to go write in my journal about

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it, um, because I don’t like open loops. So I don’t know if

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we’re gonna dig into this in this episode. We’re gonna get to close this loop

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or not. Yeah, we’re gonna close this loop. We’re gonna close this loop right now.

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That way we can start clean with Rommel. Rommel would want us to close the

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loop. So you want us to close the loop? Finish. He would want us to

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close the loop. He would. It is— well, it is a maneuver. Yes. Um, he

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would call it a defilade and

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retreat while fighting

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the Romanians. Um, okay.

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So should military— should there be sort of some sort of intelligence quiz to vote?

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So the answer to this question, at least from my opinion, is when

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you ask about intelligence quizzes to vote, now you’re getting into the

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long history of poll quizzes

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and African Americans not being able to vote in the

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South under Jim Crow. And so there’s a lot of history

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underneath that question, and it’s weighted with that history in an

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American context. You also have on the other

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side, as we are currently going through the royal in our country, as are people

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globally about immigration, you have the fact

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that when people legally— and yes, I am using this term as a distinction

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with a difference— legally migrate to the country and

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stand in line, and I know many people who have,

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when they do that, they have to take a test, a citizenship test,

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in order to participate in a democracy,

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which is what we claim we have. By the way, when people illegally

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migrate to America by either jumping a border or coming over

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in a, uh, in a shipping container,

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like in the Port of LA. They don’t do

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any of that. And because we have an open society, they’re

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not allowed to vote. They are not allowed to

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participate in civic life, but they are, weirdly enough,

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given Social Security numbers and they are given benefits

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by states, some of which will remain nameless. Okay.

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So we have those 2 twin poles that vibrate in the national character

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around this question that you asked. Then the other dynamic we have

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Is the concept of an IQ test. So

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IQ research—I don’t know if you’ve ever researched IQ IQ

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findings—but the military actually has done a lot of research, particularly coming out

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of World War II and in Vietnam around IQ.

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And IQ research is brutal. It is utterly,

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completely demoralizing when you read it because what you realize

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is. most things are not about race or class

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or even social status

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beforehand in a person’s life. Most things are

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about how much— and I frame it this way— how much horsepower a person

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has. And then after that, all the other things just sort

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of come forth. And when you are

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thinking about a country that is as utopian as the United States,

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both conservative utopian and liberal utopian, it doesn’t matter. We both

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operate underneath the same sort of Mindsets about how to how to

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create how to create heaven on earth here. The fact that some people are

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born with less horsepower than others disturbs us greatly,

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and we don’t know what to do with it. So we just kind of it’s

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like a little hole in the boat. We just kind of ignore it, and we

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pretend that it’s not there. And we do a whole lot of pretending by with

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education, with culture, even with racial

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strife, poll taxes, tests. Like my

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kid’s going through standardized testing right now. She’s gonna take the ACT, right?

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That’s going to be a measure, whether we like it or not, of how much

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mental horsepower she has. Yeah. Now, part of

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that is— can be, can be, uh, what do you call it? Um,

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uh, well, it’s the old argument of nature versus nurture, right? So we have

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IQ, we have racial history, and we have immigrant history that

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goes into the answer to this question. So with that context, I’m

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going to answer the question this way. Should there be some sort of intelligence quiz

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to vote? Yes. Yes, there

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should be. And the reason why I say this is not

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because I want to keep people out, but because

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we already have an intelligence quiz to vote.

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And about 50% of the people in the country,

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and it’s an increasing number going, I mean, going every year on year.

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And I’m just gonna look at the presidential elections alone, an increasing number of people

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self-select out because they don’t have the

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horsepower to keep up with the issues

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and the intricacies and all of this,

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or they don’t have the interest, which is also driven by horsepower, to

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care about the issues.

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Yeah. And so it’s a brutal question, and

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Heinlein got into it in Starship Troopers,

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um, but I get into it from the perspective of

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We already have it. So what are we— why are

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we pretending we don’t? And

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this is such a fascinating thing, because like, as soon as you’re talking about some

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of these things, and I’m like, oh, yep, of course,

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we have— we’ve, we’ve done versions of this for

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the wrong limitations, right? And so then

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I was like, oh, yeah, of course, there has been really

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biased tests, or maybe the tests are only given to like certain

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people, right? But, um,

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yeah, I mean, uh, to, to me, there’s a whole book—

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the whole thing— sorry, there’s a— sorry, there’s a whole book that we’re going to

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cover at some point called McNamara’s— like, it’s like McNamara’s Idiots or

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McNamara’s Morons, where the Army

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basically decided after IQ testing from the ’50s

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at the end of World War II all the way through the ’70s

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that there were certain

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people that just— they were never going to take in the military.

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Oh, interesting. Based on IQ research. And it’s called McNamara’s Morons

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because it really hit, hit in like the ’60s and ’70s with

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Vietnam because there was a draft. And so everybody had to go into

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the pool regardless. And, and the military was already integrated,

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had been integrated since the ’50s. Truman did all that. So it wasn’t an

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issue of race. It was an issue of horsepower or

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IQ. And the Army— say what you want about the US

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military— the Army was ridiculously brutal about

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this, and they just tested the hell out of it. And at a

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certain point— and this is the reason, one of the reasons also why the Pentagon

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no longer wants a draft— they don’t want

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people with low IQ, quite frankly.

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Coming in. They’d rather have volunteers with high IQs.

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Yeah, absolutely. Right. So anyway, sorry, sorry.

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That’s just a side note to that. Yeah. No, like, to me, the thing

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that always is hilarious is whenever I see a clip of someone

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who’s interviewing just people on the street about the same

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questions from the immigration exam. Right.

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I’m not saying we need to go create a new exam or anything, because

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since we do already have one that is the standard, You know, we

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should— hey, before you walk in here and pull these handles and fill out these

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things, right, how many

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senators are there? Oh, I have no idea. Okay,

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like, you know, like, there is a— like,

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and, and I’ve seen some stuff, and I’ve not researched this too deeply, about like

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how some— like, the whole formulation of IQ has been biased and

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loaded and different things like that. And, you know, but there is

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Capacity of this thing, right? And I really appreciate how you talk about it.

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Like, I do think some people have an affinity for this stuff and they like

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it, and then not everybody does, and that’s totally okay. And

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so I think that that capacity has to be there because, you know, some of

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it is just preferences, right? Some people don’t want to spend their time

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reading really old books or looking for overlap or however these

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things are. I can totally respect that. I’m not saying that I don’t want those

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people to vote. I like— I’m trying to get the people who don’t know their

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head from the hole in the ground, right? And are just on the receiving end

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of a constant line of rhetoric. And they’re just going in and

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just, well, red or blue, just straight down the column line kind

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of thing. There is no discerning thought.

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That’s the thing I would love to, like, not have

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personally. Well, and you and I both live in Texas.

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And currently, I’m sure you are receiving as well as I am

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endless text messages from candidates. Oh my God.

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So I like, I’m a sales guy and a business owner and marketing

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is a thing I am trying to get better at every day as a business

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owner. I loathe, I

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loathe all the text messages, all of it

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spamming. And because like, you know, at least from like a

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domain, I can go look up the domain and figure out who it is from

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a cold email perspective. This can spoof numbers. Like, random people that

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spoof numbers for their outreach and stuff like that. So half of this stuff, you

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can’t even tell if it’s real or valid. But I’m getting 5 to 7 text

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messages a day, and I’m not signed up on any of these lists. Right. And

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I’m getting stuff from lists I wasn’t even

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like— and I’m relatively politically active. Yes, folks,

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I do put my money where my mouth is. But at the same time,

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like, I’m getting things from people that I’ve never even— I’ve never even expressed an

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interest. I’ve never even clicked on anything that even interested that I would even

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Well, I say that to say this. I was talking with somebody. I

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was at a jiu-jitsu tournament actually this weekend. We talked a little bit about that

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too. Actually worked out really well. I was coaching at a jiu-jitsu tournament,

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coaching kids, and I was talking to one of the other parents who’s the

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wife of the owner of the school that I go to, and she’s a single-issue

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voter. And then the other— the other coach who was there,

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one of the other coaches who was there, is also a single-issue voter. And both

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of their issues are, of course, in the opposite direction as usual. And

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they are both ground into those single issues. And I— you

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would— you would love me. I literally laughed at both of them and I said,

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God bless the single-issue voter. I mean, God grant me the

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confidence of the single-issue voter. It’s like, God grant me the confidence of a blue

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belt. You know how they say that in jiu-jitsu? God grant me the confidence of

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a blue belt. And I looked at both of them and said, God grant me

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the confidence of a single-issue voter. Oh my God, you’re going to bet everything on

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this with either one of these people, and then everything else is just going to

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be like away. Okay, that’s fine. That’s, that’s fine.

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That’s fine. And I just walked away because I couldn’t, I couldn’t handle the conversation

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anymore. Such a fascinating thing because I’ve never,

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I’ve never— And by the way, I get it. Like, I understand why people are

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single-issue voters. I get why. And at the same

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time, most politicians are not single-issue

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politicians. They never are. They never

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are. And whatever your pet peeve issue is, and I’m not going to name any

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issues at all, just pick one out of the, out of the basket of things

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you’ve heard about. I guarantee you that politician does not care

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about it as much as you do. Not even close. Oh, yeah. Like,

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that’s so— it’s interesting because I’ve never really thought about this

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concept of, like, the single-issue voter as we’re sitting here talking about it. Right.

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Because, like, hearing that term single-issue voter, part of me is like, it’s like,

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okay, Like, are you trying to find only one thing that you care about,

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or is it like this one thing is

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such the big deal on top of the pile to you and stuff like that?

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And, and, you know, I think that’s such an interesting

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concept because like, do you just not know how the

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rest of the sauce gets made? Like, like,

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and, and I’m not trying to say it negatively or anything else like this, but

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it’s like, it’s like, do you think that the other points that other people do

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care about, like, don’t matter, or they just don’t care about to you, or

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different things. But yeah, the idea that, like— now,

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here’s the thing. This is also kind of fascinating, right? Because, like, the label is

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not really the person, right? Because, like, the people that are like, hey, I

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only care

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about

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immigration policy or war or religion or

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different— like, these are single-issue voters, right? Mm-hmm.

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They’re— but yeah, that’s an interesting thing because like I know a lot of people

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and they’re like, well, I only really care about this, you know, kind of, kind

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of people, right? But I would imagine they don’t see

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themselves as single-issue voters. They’d probably get a little offended even at

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that label. So the wife, the owner, the wife of

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the owner, she got so mad at me, she wouldn’t talk to me for like

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15 minutes. She just got mad at me. I

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was like, And that’s literally the sound I

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make. I don’t know what, what, what. Like, number

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one, when, when, and this is just sort of a standard I have,

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when, when other grown men or grown women get mad at

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me, number one, with grown women, it’s like, I’m not married to you. So like,

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we’re on an even playing field anyway. Like, I’m not, I don’t have to like

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live with you. Like, it doesn’t matter. Like, we’re just 2 adults having a conversation.

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If you’re mad, well, that’s a you problem, not a me problem. I didn’t say

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anything that you— I didn’t say anything that was offensive. Now, if I do say

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something that offends, I own that. But if I don’t say anything

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00:19:30,830 –> 00:19:33,450
that offends, if I just say something that’s a fact, or I say something that

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I think is funny, like humorous or whatever, then like,

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oh, okay, you got offended. I don’t know, deal with it. But then like, if

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it’s a grown man, and in general I’ll have a different sort of— there will

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be a different sort of approach there. By the way, the guy, his single

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issue was so far, again, so far away from hers. It was like

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night and day. He started laughing and he’s like, oh, I’m still going

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to do the thing that I’m going to do. And he just walked away. Like,

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so 2 different people, 2 different responses, right, to this.

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I will say that over the course of the last 20— no, I mean, I’ve

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been following politics in one form or another since I was 15 years old in

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this country, in various states and municipalities and

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places I’ve lived and all of that. And everywhere I

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go, there are single-issue voters who are rabidly,

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emotionally— and this is the keyword— emotionally committed to a

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position, and they cannot see anything else

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outside of that issue. And again, I’m making this very bipartisan.

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I want to be very clear, this is very, very partisan. I don’t care whether

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you’re right or left. I’ve

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talked to libertarians, I’ve talked to socialists. Oh my God, the

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00:20:41,794 –> 00:20:45,079
single-issue people, God bless them all. God bless you. But in a

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democracy where you’re supposed to be informed, and this gets back to should

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00:20:48,883 –> 00:20:52,703
there be a quiz to vote, you’re supposed to be informed on a broad range

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of issues, not just one narrow one. Yeah. If we give

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you a test and you don’t know anything about If you can’t figure out

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contextually why terrorism and gun

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control and drug policy and,

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I don’t know, LGBTQ

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race things— if you can’t figure out how all this stuff clicks together,

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I’m worried. And by the way, many people

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self-opt out. I want to be very clear. Many people self-opt out because they

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can’t figure it out, which reveals how little

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horsepower they have without a test even being done.

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That’s fair. Yeah. I’m fascinated by this idea though,

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because like, I wonder, I wonder if the, the more you

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00:21:37,278 –> 00:21:40,765
hold a torch for that, for that single top line issue, the more,

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the more likely it is that you are going to be

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emotionally invested in it, like, like to the point of fanaticism, right?

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Because one of the lenses that I have over here on my, on

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my board behind me, like things that I try to use and look through with

355
00:21:56,029 –> 00:21:59,805
my client work is like, if I can’t find the elephant in

356
00:21:59,853 –> 00:22:03,355
the room, right? And usually as a sales guy, the elephant in the room is

357
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like, hey, you might be just fine. You might not need any

358
00:22:07,261 –> 00:22:11,092
changes. Everything could be hunky-dory. I don’t know enough yet,

359
00:22:11,205 –> 00:22:14,757
right? If you can’t find that lane, you are going to be the feverish

360
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acolyte. And then you get, you get tossed out.

361
00:22:18,802 –> 00:22:21,310
You don’t get the trust. You don’t get any of these things. All your questions

362
00:22:21,310 –> 00:22:24,981
look like bear trap questions and everything because— You can’t

363
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even show up with an understanding like, hey, maybe some people don’t need HubSpot. Maybe

364
00:22:28,733 –> 00:22:32,517
some people are just fine on spreadsheets, right? Like, hey, maybe,

365
00:22:32,966 –> 00:22:36,606
like, and if that’s not okay with you, you’re, you’re going to be the

366
00:22:36,606 –> 00:22:40,293
zealot. Just how it should be. If you can’t spot

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00:22:40,678 –> 00:22:44,446
the sucker at the table in the first 5 minutes, was this from Rounders? I

368
00:22:44,446 –> 00:22:48,070
love that. You are the sucker. I mean, you’re the per— you’re the one. And

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00:22:48,535 –> 00:22:51,822
there are so many zealous people. And don’t get me wrong, I, I

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00:22:52,287 –> 00:22:56,084
want to be even clearer. I have been zealous in my time for

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00:22:56,084 –> 00:22:59,576
single issues. This is how I know it’s a problem. This is how I know,

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00:22:59,592 –> 00:23:02,589
right? I have been zealous for single issues. I have been

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00:23:03,261 –> 00:23:05,280
emotionally unable to

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00:23:06,241 –> 00:23:09,830
disconnect my personal emotional feelings about an

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issue from a larger hierarchical scale

376
00:23:13,691 –> 00:23:17,441
idea, right? And that is a huge trap that

377
00:23:17,441 –> 00:23:20,837
people fall into, but I don’t even think they recognize it as a trap. Yeah.

378
00:23:21,367 –> 00:23:23,512
If I am opposed to

379
00:23:26,221 –> 00:23:29,895
banning books in the public library, let’s just pick one. Okay. Mm-hmm.

380
00:23:30,396 –> 00:23:33,965
All right. Which, it’s a book podcast. This is an easy one, right?

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00:23:34,046 –> 00:23:37,098
Most people who listen to this show or know me would be like, oh, well,

382
00:23:37,114 –> 00:23:40,745
he’s— of course he’s going to be anti-pulling books from the library.

383
00:23:42,585 –> 00:23:46,232
And 20 years ago, yeah, I would have absolutely had a

384
00:23:46,313 –> 00:23:50,144
knee-jerk reaction to that. When someone brings me

385
00:23:50,144 –> 00:23:53,853
a single issue though like that, it says sign up for this so we

386
00:23:53,853 –> 00:23:57,256
can impeach these people or get these people out for taking out the books, or

387
00:23:58,412 –> 00:24:02,088
oh my God, sign this thing so we can sign this petition so we can

388
00:24:02,120 –> 00:24:05,957
get these people out who are putting in the books. Okay, either

389
00:24:05,957 –> 00:24:09,649
one, because both sides can both get signatures. Oh yeah. Okay,

390
00:24:10,371 –> 00:24:13,807
now I have to sit, and this is the wisdom that comes from

391
00:24:13,839 –> 00:24:16,805
time maybe, I have to sit with this and go,

392
00:24:18,152 –> 00:24:21,759
what’s the real issue here? That’s number one. What’s the

393
00:24:21,759 –> 00:24:25,510
real battle that’s happening? Is it really about the book coming

394
00:24:25,542 –> 00:24:29,309
in or the person coming out or whatever? Is it really about that? Or are

395
00:24:29,389 –> 00:24:32,804
there other underlying things that are here that a politician

396
00:24:33,733 –> 00:24:37,420
sees but doesn’t say anything about, or a policymaker

397
00:24:37,789 –> 00:24:41,620
sees and doesn’t say anything about, that they will then use to do something else?

398
00:24:42,037 –> 00:24:45,788
And what is that something else? And I’m doing this on all kinds

399
00:24:45,820 –> 00:24:49,570
of issues. So I don’t sign the petition because I don’t have an

400
00:24:49,570 –> 00:24:53,270
opinion. And that’s like, as I’ve gotten older, like, it sounds like

401
00:24:53,270 –> 00:24:55,510
if you listen to the show that I have an opinion about everything. I have

402
00:24:55,510 –> 00:24:57,410
a lot of opinions about a lot of things. I don’t know if they’re good

403
00:24:57,410 –> 00:25:00,490
or bad. I just have opinions. That’s why I have a show and that’s why

404
00:25:00,490 –> 00:25:04,130
I write books and do all the things I do. And I have

405
00:25:04,130 –> 00:25:07,110
no opinions about a lot of things. And that’s okay.

406
00:25:08,050 –> 00:25:11,710
It’s fine. Does that sound like I’m

407
00:25:11,710 –> 00:25:15,030
knocking the no opinion, I don’t know where to vote people because they’re not single

408
00:25:15,030 –> 00:25:18,859
issue? No, I’m just saying you want to participate in a demos. You want

409
00:25:18,859 –> 00:25:21,443
to participate in a democracy, you should be tested on that.

410
00:25:22,775 –> 00:25:26,145
And if you fail, or if you don’t meet whatever the minimum

411
00:25:26,145 –> 00:25:29,436
standard is— now, of course, we then get into who determines what the minimum standard

412
00:25:29,436 –> 00:25:32,260
is and how do we, you know, all those kinds of— the devil’s always in

413
00:25:32,260 –> 00:25:36,096
the details. Um, and invariably it will be congressmen that

414
00:25:36,096 –> 00:25:39,611
determine— invariably it will be congressmen that determine what the

415
00:25:39,611 –> 00:25:43,239
minimum standard is. Yeah. That benefits them. It will always be them.

416
00:25:43,704 –> 00:25:47,219
Um, but the question of should we actually have the thing

417
00:25:48,669 –> 00:25:52,155
Yeah, because it’s a public acknowledgment of something we’re

418
00:25:52,301 –> 00:25:55,384
already all privately doing and are just hypocritical about.

419
00:26:02,357 –> 00:26:05,656
Say that again. We’re

420
00:26:05,656 –> 00:26:09,039
already giving ourselves an internal

421
00:26:09,055 –> 00:26:12,873
test, and we are either opting in or

422
00:26:12,921 –> 00:26:16,755
opting out based on our own internal test, and then we’re hypocritical

423
00:26:16,755 –> 00:26:20,566
about it because we say, oh no, there should be no testing because that’s

424
00:26:20,647 –> 00:26:24,239
unfair or biased. Okay, I’m with you now. Okay, we’re

425
00:26:24,368 –> 00:26:28,167
already there. Like, we’re already fully in the— to me, we’re

426
00:26:28,167 –> 00:26:30,831
already fully in the cul-de-sac at the end of the path. I, you know,

427
00:26:32,301 –> 00:26:35,530
so let’s just say— and, and as I also have gotten older, I’ve gotten more

428
00:26:35,530 –> 00:26:39,361
and more into the just say the thing. Just say the thing that’s the thing.

429
00:26:40,059 –> 00:26:43,128
Just say it. Why are we shading it? Why are we hiding?

430
00:26:43,853 –> 00:26:47,647
Which is why I’m, I’m not— I mean, One thing, when they

431
00:26:47,647 –> 00:26:50,952
struggle with sales, I’m bad at sales because it’s like, you’re gonna buy a yellow

432
00:26:50,952 –> 00:26:52,862
car anyway, so just pick the yellow car.

433
00:26:54,210 –> 00:26:57,853
Just go buy it. Just go buy the

434
00:26:57,901 –> 00:27:01,431
yellow car. In what way, shape, or form does that make you bad at

435
00:27:01,431 –> 00:27:05,186
sales? Um, because I’m not— I’m unwilling

436
00:27:05,282 –> 00:27:09,021
to do the, the, the influence, pull along, tug along, draw

437
00:27:09,166 –> 00:27:12,905
along, drip thing, that, that kind of stuff. Yeah, all of

438
00:27:12,905 –> 00:27:16,670
that. Hold on, I’m not going to turn this into a coaching session, but like,

439
00:27:16,670 –> 00:27:20,110
why, why is— why, why is your opinion that that’s the

440
00:27:20,110 –> 00:27:23,950
job? Well, it’s because I’ve been told that by other

441
00:27:23,950 –> 00:27:26,570
people. It’s actually really not my opinion. I’ve been told that by other people. You’re

442
00:27:26,570 –> 00:27:30,010
talking to people who don’t understand the job, my friend, right? These are the same

443
00:27:30,010 –> 00:27:32,390
people that come to me and they’re like, they’re like, hey, can you get me

444
00:27:32,390 –> 00:27:35,690
someone who can like close all the deals? And I’m like, do you want a

445
00:27:35,690 –> 00:27:39,020
magician? These— well, these are also some people who I am, uh,

446
00:27:42,430 –> 00:27:46,110
Engaged in a lifetime commitment to have

447
00:27:46,110 –> 00:27:48,060
given me that feedback.

448
00:27:50,590 –> 00:27:53,770
I mean, I mean, this is a fascinating conversation

449
00:27:53,770 –> 00:27:56,880
and— It is not. Yes, it has nothing to do with the book.

450
00:27:57,710 –> 00:28:00,250
You might need to come on my show so we can talk about this a

451
00:28:00,250 –> 00:28:04,030
little bit more. Yeah. But it’s like, like if, if you really want a

452
00:28:04,030 –> 00:28:06,870
yellow car, like I really want to know why yellow is so important to you.

453
00:28:06,870 –> 00:28:10,014
I would love to understand that. But like, If I don’t have a yellow card

454
00:28:10,014 –> 00:28:12,643
past that point and I can understand that this is there and it feels like

455
00:28:12,643 –> 00:28:15,705
you’re familiar with the fact that like it’s going to be hard to clean and

456
00:28:15,705 –> 00:28:19,504
you’re familiar with the tradeoffs, every, every salesperson with their

457
00:28:19,568 –> 00:28:23,319
salt, they don’t have a yellow card. They just leave. Now it’s

458
00:28:23,319 –> 00:28:26,686
everyone else playing at sales thinking they know what the

459
00:28:27,311 –> 00:28:29,731
job is, especially when they don’t have to do it anymore. And they can just

460
00:28:29,731 –> 00:28:33,434
give someone else a bunch of like make busy busy work and go pest

461
00:28:33,483 –> 00:28:36,769
everyone else around and everything else like this. Because like, now that I’m not doing

462
00:28:36,769 –> 00:28:39,510
this anymore, you should just be so excited to go take over the world and

463
00:28:39,510 –> 00:28:42,440
have endless confidence. and waste your time and everything. And then like, why aren’t you

464
00:28:42,440 –> 00:28:45,860
at gold? Because you didn’t want it enough. Like this, this is, these are the

465
00:28:45,860 –> 00:28:49,700
talk tracks from people who should not be giving anybody sales

466
00:28:49,700 –> 00:28:53,460
advice at all because it’s, it’s things, it’s, it just reinforces

467
00:28:53,460 –> 00:28:55,980
the stigma. You got me a little excited.

468
00:28:57,760 –> 00:29:01,580
Put that down as a mark. We’ll mark this moment. We are, we are,

469
00:29:01,580 –> 00:29:05,360
we’re, yeah, we’re like 20 minutes in. We’ll mark this moment here. Just,

470
00:29:05,360 –> 00:29:06,930
just edit this part out.

471
00:29:09,430 –> 00:29:12,871
Cutting room floor. We’re keeping it all in. I don’t cut.

472
00:29:12,936 –> 00:29:16,717
Keeping it all in. It’s fine. All right, let’s talk about the

473
00:29:16,717 –> 00:29:20,527
book. So I answered the question, I think. Yes, there should be

474
00:29:20,575 –> 00:29:24,422
a quiz. And yes, things have a big, huge impact on our day-to-day lives. And

475
00:29:24,454 –> 00:29:27,947
I think that people self-select out already. I think they give themselves that

476
00:29:28,044 –> 00:29:31,769
quiz and then they just automatically opt out. I think an actual

477
00:29:31,769 –> 00:29:34,559
manual quiz itself would make it really sharp for people.

478
00:29:35,518 –> 00:29:38,965
Now, what people would do with that sharpness, I don’t know,

479
00:29:39,029 –> 00:29:41,931
because people are all over the place. I think some people would rise to the

480
00:29:41,931 –> 00:29:45,537
challenge. And this is where I do have faith. I think that

481
00:29:45,537 –> 00:29:49,256
some people would rise to the challenge. So wait a minute, hold on.

482
00:29:50,394 –> 00:29:53,408
I was listening to an old-time radio show. This is the last thing I’ll

483
00:29:53,857 –> 00:29:57,480
say. And a PSA ran for voting in the next

484
00:29:57,480 –> 00:30:01,231
presidential election. It was from like 1955. And the statistic

485
00:30:01,231 –> 00:30:04,469
that it gave was that less than 60% of the available

486
00:30:05,639 –> 00:30:09,185
voting population voted in the last presidential election, do your part.

487
00:30:10,057 –> 00:30:12,902
And I thought, holy crap, that number hasn’t shifted since

488
00:30:12,902 –> 00:30:16,653
1955. Because guess what? It was

489
00:30:16,751 –> 00:30:18,663
the same back in 2024.

490
00:30:20,836 –> 00:30:24,155
Interesting. That’s interesting.

491
00:30:24,429 –> 00:30:28,220
So I have a question philosophically for you

492
00:30:28,220 –> 00:30:31,657
at this point. Yeah, because I am, I am myself. Okay, because,

493
00:30:31,802 –> 00:30:34,964
because I hear a statement like that, and part of me just starts like

494
00:30:34,964 –> 00:30:38,707
spinning, right? And so Part of me is like, okay, great, it hasn’t

495
00:30:38,707 –> 00:30:41,994
changed. And then I’m like, okay, is that okay?

496
00:30:42,619 –> 00:30:46,195
Should we be putting effort proactively in so that way we’re

497
00:30:46,243 –> 00:30:49,338
pushing that number up because we deem it as

498
00:30:49,370 –> 00:30:53,123
important to get an actual representative vote? Because I

499
00:30:53,139 –> 00:30:56,554
would say that 60% of our total population, like, only

500
00:30:56,586 –> 00:30:59,857
participating in these things is not an actual representative kind of like vote.

501
00:31:00,290 –> 00:31:04,107
So is, is the thing like, oh, okay, cool. We’re

502
00:31:04,107 –> 00:31:07,909
just level, so things aren’t really getting better or worse because

503
00:31:07,909 –> 00:31:11,262
it’s just level, or should we be trying to

504
00:31:11,583 –> 00:31:15,016
get more people to be voting? Like, like, what is Hasan’s

505
00:31:15,016 –> 00:31:17,904
philosophical bent at with this idea?

506
00:31:19,219 –> 00:31:22,011
I think we have tried literally everything in the last 80 years to get more

507
00:31:22,011 –> 00:31:25,604
people to vote, with the exception of— well, and we’ve even tried this. We’ve tried

508
00:31:25,604 –> 00:31:29,406
dragging people out of their houses and putting them on buses. Like, we do that

509
00:31:29,406 –> 00:31:32,958
all the time. We’ve tried literally everything. The only thing we

510
00:31:32,958 –> 00:31:36,283
haven’t tried, because again, we have history with

511
00:31:36,816 –> 00:31:40,635
testing that’s negative. The only thing we haven’t really committed to

512
00:31:40,635 –> 00:31:44,268
trying is testing. We haven’t committed, really

513
00:31:44,268 –> 00:31:48,081
committed to that because it feels icky. So case in

514
00:31:48,081 –> 00:31:51,927
point, when George Washington

515
00:31:51,927 –> 00:31:55,638
was running for president, I think the second time, if I remember

516
00:31:55,638 –> 00:31:58,555
correctly, because it was after the Shays’ Rebellion.

517
00:31:59,470 –> 00:32:03,259
where all the old veterans were like, we don’t want whatever it is

518
00:32:03,259 –> 00:32:05,291
they didn’t want. It was a big deal. It was a big deal, right?

519
00:32:07,862 –> 00:32:11,053
And Washington’s folks, and I

520
00:32:11,102 –> 00:32:14,812
think Jefferson ran against him the first time, if I remember

521
00:32:14,812 –> 00:32:18,631
correctly. And if I don’t, correct me, folks.

522
00:32:19,436 –> 00:32:21,818
But whoever his opponent was,

523
00:32:23,702 –> 00:32:26,937
it was standard practice to put people on wagons

524
00:32:28,030 –> 00:32:31,280
take them to the pub, have them drink,

525
00:32:32,130 –> 00:32:35,610
and then take them and tell them where to vote. Like, that was standard practice.

526
00:32:37,170 –> 00:32:40,230
Wow. We’ve been dragging people to the polls since the beginning of

527
00:32:40,230 –> 00:32:43,650
this country, and it hasn’t

528
00:32:43,650 –> 00:32:47,490
moved the needle. We’ve already tried everything except for the one thing that

529
00:32:47,490 –> 00:32:50,590
makes us feel icky. And I see this, by the way, in conflict

530
00:32:50,590 –> 00:32:54,190
management. People will try everything to resolve the conflict

531
00:32:54,190 –> 00:32:57,170
except for the things that make them feel icky, because the things that make them

532
00:32:57,170 –> 00:33:00,843
feel icky are the things that actually work. But they can’t get past their feelings

533
00:33:01,116 –> 00:33:04,787
about them. Preferences, yeah. They can’t get past their

534
00:33:04,787 –> 00:33:08,137
preferences. And so I will have somebody come to me in the space of

535
00:33:08,169 –> 00:33:11,343
negotiating a conflict, and they will say, well, I’ve tried everything.

536
00:33:12,177 –> 00:33:14,822
And I will say, really, have you? Have you tried

537
00:33:14,822 –> 00:33:18,589
everything? Because— and then we run down the

538
00:33:18,589 –> 00:33:21,795
list of things they’ve tried, and then I present all the other things they haven’t.

539
00:33:21,875 –> 00:33:24,584
And they go, well, I haven’t tried everything. And I go, I know, go try

540
00:33:24,600 –> 00:33:28,015
these things. Well, I feel it might make me feel better, make the other person

541
00:33:28,111 –> 00:33:31,360
feel better. And it’s all the excuse, the Excuse piling

542
00:33:31,360 –> 00:33:35,160
up begins to happen. And I know you see this in sales. And

543
00:33:35,160 –> 00:33:38,800
at the end of it, you’re like, well, do you really

544
00:33:38,800 –> 00:33:42,340
want to resolve the conflict? Do you really want to close the sale? Do you

545
00:33:42,340 –> 00:33:45,270
really want to vote? Or do you just want to make a bunch of excuses?

546
00:33:47,640 –> 00:33:51,320
Yeah, 100%. Like, I can’t tell you how many times in a sales conversation

547
00:33:51,320 –> 00:33:54,940
where people are like, man, how do I close this deal? I’m like, well, you

548
00:33:54,940 –> 00:33:58,120
know, I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything to close this deal. How do I overcome

549
00:33:58,120 –> 00:34:01,690
this objection? Okay, well, first of all, what’d they tell you was the real problem?

550
00:34:02,460 –> 00:34:04,520
Well, John, you don’t get it.

551
00:34:07,400 –> 00:34:11,190
Well, okay, I think we’re done.

552
00:34:12,320 –> 00:34:16,100
Right? Because like the most powerful thing you can do is like, hey,

553
00:34:16,100 –> 00:34:19,180
kind of sounds like maybe we— you don’t need my help. I’m not really doing

554
00:34:19,180 –> 00:34:22,940
anything here. And that’s totally okay. Is that where we are? Like, should we save

555
00:34:22,940 –> 00:34:26,520
the extra 25 minutes in this hour-long meeting? And I’m happy to give you some

556
00:34:26,520 –> 00:34:30,259
focus back. It doesn’t feel like you’re doing anything. It looks like my research

557
00:34:30,259 –> 00:34:34,019
was off. Is that, is that, is that real? You get to have a real

558
00:34:34,019 –> 00:34:37,799
conversation. And then if they’re like, hey, I don’t think you have yellow cars.

559
00:34:37,799 –> 00:34:40,719
You know what? You’re right. I don’t have yellow cars. Like, sounds like that’s really

560
00:34:40,719 –> 00:34:44,299
important to you. Why is it? Oh, that’s our brand color. Oh, okay.

561
00:34:44,299 –> 00:34:47,419
Interesting. It sounds like it must be super important to you.

562
00:34:47,419 –> 00:34:50,599
Interesting. How do you get the budget to pay for the yellow cars? Like, I

563
00:34:50,599 –> 00:34:54,179
mean, we’re still gonna have a delightful conversation, right? Right. People are just too

564
00:34:54,179 –> 00:34:57,719
zoomed in, right? And they don’t want to fail, right? And I love how you’re

565
00:34:57,719 –> 00:35:01,547
talking about this because it’s, It’s not the uncomfortable, it’s like the things that

566
00:35:01,547 –> 00:35:05,203
make you feel icky, right? If it makes you— if it— and this goes

567
00:35:05,235 –> 00:35:07,865
for, for us too, right? If it makes us feel icky, I’m gonna have to

568
00:35:07,865 –> 00:35:11,488
sit with for a second, right? And really kind of like look through a

569
00:35:11,488 –> 00:35:15,192
couple of lenses. Is this compromising you? Does this go against other things? But

570
00:35:15,753 –> 00:35:19,586
if it doesn’t hit those big marks, I’m gonna try it before I

571
00:35:19,586 –> 00:35:23,161
judge it, right? Yeah. At least now in my older state, right? Whenever I was

572
00:35:23,338 –> 00:35:26,560
younger, I would come up with a whole list of excuses about why something wouldn’t

573
00:35:26,560 –> 00:35:29,510
work because it was gonna to be hard or challenging before I’d even taken any

574
00:35:29,510 –> 00:35:33,277
positive action to go do it. Meanwhile, I’m over here playing poker and, you know,

575
00:35:33,357 –> 00:35:36,948
trying to get really good at kung fu and just getting stomped over and

576
00:35:36,980 –> 00:35:40,747
over and over and over again and still getting a

577
00:35:40,763 –> 00:35:44,178
little bit better. And that’s enough, right? So the biggest

578
00:35:44,178 –> 00:35:47,945
hypocrisy is that it’s really okay in certain lanes, but abhorrent, and we

579
00:35:47,945 –> 00:35:51,712
can’t even try in other lanes. Right, right. And maybe

580
00:35:51,712 –> 00:35:55,287
this is— well, this ties into our book. So let’s— I mean, I

581
00:35:55,335 –> 00:35:59,183
opened up our episode today, if folks are still listening, now that

582
00:35:59,183 –> 00:36:02,377
we’ve gone through, you know, almost 30 minutes of

583
00:36:03,377 –> 00:36:05,475
the other conversation at the other end of the other episode.

584
00:36:07,169 –> 00:36:10,328
You know, when we think about a guy like Rommel, okay,

585
00:36:10,731 –> 00:36:14,275
so Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

586
00:36:14,500 –> 00:36:17,609
was born in 1891, November 15th,

587
00:36:19,592 –> 00:36:23,024
1891. Coming up here in about a month will be his

588
00:36:23,121 –> 00:36:26,553
birthday, the anniversary of his birth. And he died by suicide

589
00:36:26,996 –> 00:36:30,704
in 1944. He was known as the

590
00:36:30,704 –> 00:36:34,348
Desert Fox, and he was a German field marshal in World War

591
00:36:34,348 –> 00:36:38,135
II, probably the least political out of all of

592
00:36:38,168 –> 00:36:40,592
Hitler’s field marshals.

593
00:36:42,206 –> 00:36:45,734
You read his book Attacks, which, by the way, he wrote in

594
00:36:46,088 –> 00:36:49,905
1937 as the

595
00:36:50,034 –> 00:36:53,361
National Socialist Party was beginning to make its move

596
00:36:53,361 –> 00:36:56,619
really intentionally. I mean, they started in the ’20s, but they were really making their

597
00:36:56,619 –> 00:37:00,391
move in ’30s. And so

598
00:37:00,391 –> 00:37:03,705
he wrote and published this book where he

599
00:37:03,786 –> 00:37:07,278
described the tactics and experiences he used in World War I

600
00:37:07,973 –> 00:37:10,625
to overcome and to defeat

601
00:37:11,709 –> 00:37:15,477
the Russians and various folks on the Eastern Front, and then also some, some of

602
00:37:15,509 –> 00:37:16,625
his Western Front activities.

603
00:37:19,788 –> 00:37:23,364
He was implicated in 1944 as part of the

604
00:37:23,477 –> 00:37:27,030
Operation Valkyrie plot, to assassinate Hitler.

605
00:37:27,642 –> 00:37:31,427
And it’s not really clear how much involvement he actually

606
00:37:31,427 –> 00:37:35,085
had with that, or whether he was just a name that people threw around

607
00:37:35,085 –> 00:37:38,865
because, you know, he was considered to be a good,

608
00:37:39,122 –> 00:37:42,216
quote unquote, German or good National Socialist.

609
00:37:46,267 –> 00:37:49,797
His, his, his

610
00:37:50,055 –> 00:37:53,850
actions in World War I earned

611
00:37:53,850 –> 00:37:57,424
him the, the Pour le Mérite for his actions on the

612
00:37:57,424 –> 00:38:01,174
Italian front, which was like the highest honor you could get in, in World

613
00:38:01,174 –> 00:38:03,435
War I. And he,

614
00:38:05,640 –> 00:38:08,738
he was able to parlay that into continuing to be

615
00:38:08,802 –> 00:38:12,496
engaged with the German military in the interwar period

616
00:38:12,496 –> 00:38:14,787
between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II. As

617
00:38:14,787 –> 00:38:17,770
a matter of fact, he was

618
00:38:18,976 –> 00:38:22,102
He led several brigades and divisions, divisions with several brigades

619
00:38:22,663 –> 00:38:26,446
and troops into Berlin, actually,

620
00:38:26,927 –> 00:38:30,101
to put down riots. And he was called to put down riots of workers and

621
00:38:30,117 –> 00:38:33,932
former soldiers. And according to the history that I

622
00:38:34,045 –> 00:38:37,892
read, never once in any of those attempts,

623
00:38:37,972 –> 00:38:41,194
not attempts, but never once in any of those times where he actually had to

624
00:38:41,194 –> 00:38:44,961
put down people that he had formerly served with who were

625
00:38:44,961 –> 00:38:48,648
rioting in Berlin and other places in Germany during that interwar

626
00:38:48,648 –> 00:38:52,422
period, never once did he fire a shot. He was able to actually

627
00:38:52,422 –> 00:38:56,156
talk people out of, you know, doing whatever it was they were

628
00:38:56,156 –> 00:38:59,887
doing. I think the guy was probably

629
00:38:59,919 –> 00:39:03,342
solid. And I don’t mean solid in terms

630
00:39:03,519 –> 00:39:07,055
of character, although I think he did have that. You could read his

631
00:39:07,200 –> 00:39:10,991
book Attacks, and you see his character come through. I think the guy

632
00:39:11,023 –> 00:39:14,297
was just a solid human being who loved war. Like, that was the thing he

633
00:39:14,361 –> 00:39:18,101
was good at. And there are people who we’ve covered on this show where the

634
00:39:18,101 –> 00:39:20,374
thing they were good at was war, and they weren’t good at anything else.

635
00:39:21,628 –> 00:39:25,237
So Grant is the— Ulysses S.

636
00:39:25,302 –> 00:39:28,847
Grant. If you read about that guy, like, he

637
00:39:28,847 –> 00:39:32,424
failed at everything else, even the presidency, even the

638
00:39:32,424 –> 00:39:36,194
presidency, which was hard to fail at in the 1880s and the 1870s.

639
00:39:36,691 –> 00:39:39,595
Like, it was really hard. And he failed at that. He was no good at

640
00:39:39,595 –> 00:39:42,450
it. And he knew he was no good, by the way. But he did it

641
00:39:42,450 –> 00:39:44,857
because that was the next step thing that you were supposed to do when he

642
00:39:44,857 –> 00:39:48,145
was popular. And so how was he going to turn that down, right?

643
00:39:50,167 –> 00:39:53,601
But Grant was like that. Sherman was like that. We’re actually going to cover the

644
00:39:53,601 –> 00:39:57,260
book Empire of the Summer Moon about the Comanche coming up here

645
00:39:57,292 –> 00:40:00,871
with, with Tom Libby in our next episode. And Sherman

646
00:40:01,721 –> 00:40:05,396
was the guy that the US military threw with the Comanche. And Sherman knew

647
00:40:05,428 –> 00:40:08,943
exactly what it would take to break the Comanche. And he was very

648
00:40:08,943 –> 00:40:12,553
sorrowful about it. And he said, there’s no other— just like with the

649
00:40:12,553 –> 00:40:15,169
burning of Atlanta, there’s no other way we’re going to be able to do this.

650
00:40:15,856 –> 00:40:18,457
And so it’s gonna suck, and we’re gonna do it anyway.

651
00:40:20,930 –> 00:40:24,647
Rommel was in that line of those kinds of guys who had character all

652
00:40:24,842 –> 00:40:28,268
the way through, but understood

653
00:40:28,268 –> 00:40:32,017
that— they understood the tragedy and the triumph of

654
00:40:32,131 –> 00:40:35,436
war. And I don’t think Rommel wanted

655
00:40:35,630 –> 00:40:39,156
warfare, but if warfare was going to come, he was going to be as

656
00:40:39,415 –> 00:40:43,141
excellent and as tactically brilliant and as

657
00:40:43,173 –> 00:40:46,910
strategically well-placed as he possibly could have, as he possibly

658
00:40:46,942 –> 00:40:50,726
could be, regardless under whose regime that war was going

659
00:40:50,726 –> 00:40:53,741
to run. I think you could take a guy like Rommel and you could put

660
00:40:53,741 –> 00:40:57,109
him in the Turkish army or the Russian military or the

661
00:40:57,109 –> 00:41:00,845
Japanese or the Brazilians or name any other military force

662
00:41:00,845 –> 00:41:03,555
during World War II, and he would have been the exact same guy.

663
00:41:04,806 –> 00:41:08,655
And that’s rare in warfare. I don’t think you, you run across guys like

664
00:41:08,671 –> 00:41:12,238
that too, too often. Um,

665
00:41:12,964 –> 00:41:15,994
I was kind of surprised when you picked this book to read, another one just

666
00:41:15,994 –> 00:41:18,895
like Ben-Hur. It’s like, oh, okay, I guess we’re gonna do— I guess we’re gonna

667
00:41:18,895 –> 00:41:22,671
do this. Um, what drew you to

668
00:41:22,720 –> 00:41:26,043
thinking that this might be a book that you would wanna— that you would wanna

669
00:41:26,043 –> 00:41:29,730
talk about? Um, honestly,

670
00:41:30,069 –> 00:41:33,887
uh, the name stood out, you know, because you, you

671
00:41:33,887 –> 00:41:35,868
shared the list of what you were going to read, and so I was like,

672
00:41:36,029 –> 00:41:39,293
oh, well, that would be at least interesting,

673
00:41:39,886 –> 00:41:43,363
right? At least some— sometimes I just like to read things that force a

674
00:41:43,411 –> 00:41:47,081
perspective that I don’t really think I could get to through

675
00:41:47,097 –> 00:41:50,077
any other. Because like, you know, I can sit and I can think and I

676
00:41:50,141 –> 00:41:53,667
can, okay, let me try to put myself in that person’s shoes and stuff like

677
00:41:53,667 –> 00:41:57,512
that. But when it comes to this stuff, like, there’s just a,

678
00:41:57,977 –> 00:42:00,749
you know, there’s a limit to how far I can go for that stuff, right?

679
00:42:00,797 –> 00:42:03,747
And so like going back to reading these kinds of books and everything is super

680
00:42:03,747 –> 00:42:07,038
helpful for like forced perspective, right? And

681
00:42:07,473 –> 00:42:09,522
that really drew

682
00:42:11,667 –> 00:42:14,826
that to me on this thing. And to your point, like, it’s such a—

683
00:42:15,518 –> 00:42:18,319
I love how you’re talking about this because like, as I’m reading through this book,

684
00:42:18,351 –> 00:42:21,898
like, I’m kind of having this moment of like, this guy is just—

685
00:42:24,002 –> 00:42:27,448
he like, he

686
00:42:27,770 –> 00:42:31,456
just wants to be the best that he can be in whatever his lane

687
00:42:31,634 –> 00:42:35,448
of greatness is, right? Mm-hmm. And I love how you’re talking about that because

688
00:42:35,481 –> 00:42:38,385
like, I like, you know, there’s some turns of phrase and we’ll get into that

689
00:42:38,385 –> 00:42:41,948
here in a second. Um, but like, I was like, this guy would perform

690
00:42:41,996 –> 00:42:45,767
under anybody. Like, you know, like, oh yeah, he would, he would be a high

691
00:42:45,767 –> 00:42:49,394
performer. He would be someone we were hearing about no matter who

692
00:42:49,522 –> 00:42:53,037
he was serving under or what his thing is. Because, you know,

693
00:42:53,294 –> 00:42:56,519
um, someone said this about someone I worked with once, you know, ’cause he was

694
00:42:56,519 –> 00:42:59,408
like a top performer on the sales team and they’re like, that guy’s just gonna

695
00:42:59,408 –> 00:43:02,218
be a top performer anywhere he goes. Yeah. It doesn’t matter. Mm-hmm. He’s just gonna

696
00:43:02,282 –> 00:43:05,914
figure it out, right? Mm-hmm. That to me sounds very much like, like

697
00:43:05,914 –> 00:43:09,385
Rommel, right? And to your point, like, I think, I think when they’re

698
00:43:09,449 –> 00:43:12,798
trying to make a, like, a movie

699
00:43:13,377 –> 00:43:17,017
and the archetype is military, right? And they’re trying to give him that, like, hey

700
00:43:17,017 –> 00:43:20,519
man, you’re just, you’re not that guy. You just, you just

701
00:43:20,648 –> 00:43:24,294
really want to be. I think, I think that Rommel is essentially the

702
00:43:24,294 –> 00:43:27,422
stereotype that they’re trying to shoot for in that thing because

703
00:43:28,680 –> 00:43:31,265
He just wants to be tested. He just wants to see how good he can

704
00:43:31,265 –> 00:43:34,765
do, right? But it seems like he is

705
00:43:34,797 –> 00:43:38,378
passionate about his, like, nation, but isn’t really

706
00:43:38,410 –> 00:43:42,183
drinking all of this other Kool-Aid, or at least in, in, in

707
00:43:42,183 –> 00:43:45,073
this stuff here. Like, I don’t know how much that changed after and stuff like

708
00:43:45,073 –> 00:43:48,911
that. So it’s interesting, and I want to pick up

709
00:43:48,911 –> 00:43:52,090
something from the book here, from chapter, from chapter 3.

710
00:43:53,423 –> 00:43:57,007
But in chapter 1, right at the beginning, he says

711
00:43:57,039 –> 00:43:59,980
something, and I underlined it because

712
00:44:01,764 –> 00:44:03,489
he lays out, you know,

713
00:44:06,449 –> 00:44:09,887
how he got to the frontier, right? How he got to—

714
00:44:10,385 –> 00:44:14,224
how he got to— oh, where was it he was

715
00:44:14,256 –> 00:44:17,716
going to? Yeah, Belgium and northern France, right? Right at the beginning of the war.

716
00:44:18,344 –> 00:44:21,469
And there’s this great line in here, right in the very first chapter. He says,

717
00:44:23,117 –> 00:44:26,341
Early on August 19th, we moved to the southwest, passed under the cannon of the

718
00:44:26,341 –> 00:44:30,190
French fortress at Longueuil, and bivouacked at Dahlem. The

719
00:44:30,190 –> 00:44:34,039
first battle was near. My stomach gave me a great deal of trouble, and

720
00:44:34,039 –> 00:44:37,712
even a chocolate and Zwieback diet brought no relief. And this is the line I

721
00:44:37,712 –> 00:44:41,369
underlined. I would not report sick, for I did not want to be looked upon

722
00:44:41,417 –> 00:44:45,138
as a shirker. Yeah, very much a thing. And I

723
00:44:45,251 –> 00:44:49,100
looked, I thought, I underlined that. And we’ve covered, and

724
00:44:49,116 –> 00:44:52,772
I’ll kind of lean into this. John Keegan’s First World

725
00:44:52,868 –> 00:44:55,962
War. We covered that with Tom Libby. Go back and listen to that episode. But

726
00:44:55,994 –> 00:44:59,745
Keegan is British. And so of course, he wrote the book from a British perspective,

727
00:45:00,258 –> 00:45:03,961
where he basically pumped up the French. He was

728
00:45:03,961 –> 00:45:07,456
sort of as even as he possibly could have been to the

729
00:45:07,456 –> 00:45:11,142
Germans, and then stared in puzzlement at the Russians and whatever the

730
00:45:11,142 –> 00:45:14,541
heck they were doing. So I get it, like, I understand from a British

731
00:45:14,605 –> 00:45:18,019
perspective. But you read this and you realize

732
00:45:18,454 –> 00:45:22,166
And this was my stunning realization. The Germans might just have just been better

733
00:45:22,166 –> 00:45:25,878
at war in World War I. And that’s what scared the

734
00:45:25,943 –> 00:45:29,580
hell out of everybody. They just might have been better. And you see

735
00:45:29,629 –> 00:45:31,617
it. And this is where I pick up in chapter 3,

736
00:45:34,698 –> 00:45:38,233
where when he’s talking about combat in the Argonne in chapter 2,

737
00:45:38,876 –> 00:45:42,282
and then he goes to the battle in chapter 3 of positional warfare, the war

738
00:45:42,347 –> 00:45:45,801
of movement in Romania. Everything comes

739
00:45:45,898 –> 00:45:49,665
down to— it

740
00:45:50,037 –> 00:45:53,530
comes down to how he observes and how he thinks.

741
00:45:53,983 –> 00:45:57,799
So in the very first battle, the occupation of

742
00:45:57,815 –> 00:45:59,860
Hill 1794, so I want to read this.

743
00:46:03,354 –> 00:46:07,108
Observations. So he goes through the battle, he describes it in

744
00:46:07,124 –> 00:46:10,826
detail. He describes what he’s doing with the Württemberg Mountain

745
00:46:10,859 –> 00:46:14,534
Battalion going into the Transylvanian Alps. By the way, weirdly enough, I’m

746
00:46:14,534 –> 00:46:18,191
also reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula. So this is actually like a weird sort of

747
00:46:18,543 –> 00:46:21,799
overlap here. It’s very interesting. Um, but observations.

748
00:46:22,392 –> 00:46:26,225
The occupation of Hill 1794 showed how high mountain weather can influence

749
00:46:26,225 –> 00:46:29,770
the efficiency and resistance of the troops, especially when the

750
00:46:29,770 –> 00:46:33,185
equipment is not suitable and complete and supply fails.

751
00:46:34,244 –> 00:46:37,644
On the other hand, we saw what the soldier can endure in the presence of

752
00:46:37,644 –> 00:46:41,156
the enemy. Under certain circumstances, dry wood or charcoal must be

753
00:46:41,220 –> 00:46:45,004
furnished for troops living at an elevation of 6,000 feet. A few days later, on

754
00:46:45,004 –> 00:46:48,658
the southeastern slopes of the Vulcan Mountains, we were heating our tents with small

755
00:46:48,674 –> 00:46:52,264
charcoal fires built in suspended tin cans.

756
00:46:52,776 –> 00:46:55,821
Close quote. How do you beat people who are willing to do that?

757
00:46:56,703 –> 00:47:00,309
And that’s the thing the French couldn’t figure out. Like in the first 2

758
00:47:00,309 –> 00:47:04,011
chapters, when he’s describing what’s going on in France and Belgium, the

759
00:47:04,075 –> 00:47:07,825
only solution the French have for the problem of the German

760
00:47:07,841 –> 00:47:11,415
military in World War I is they’re just going to drop ordnance on them from

761
00:47:11,447 –> 00:47:15,133
the sky and hope to kill as many of them as possible. And all they

762
00:47:15,133 –> 00:47:18,562
did was dig in. And even Keegan points this out in, um, in the First

763
00:47:18,562 –> 00:47:22,199
World War. They, the Germans figured out that if you dug the trenches

764
00:47:22,199 –> 00:47:25,468
deep enough, the, the ordnance wouldn’t get to you.

765
00:47:25,644 –> 00:47:29,314
Mm-hmm. And somehow the French struggled to figure this out

766
00:47:29,314 –> 00:47:33,048
until like midway through the war. And the French were, I was saying

767
00:47:33,064 –> 00:47:36,717
this to somebody on Sunday, the French were the Germans’ nearest near pure

768
00:47:36,765 –> 00:47:40,371
competitor on the continent. And they couldn’t get close to the

769
00:47:40,371 –> 00:47:43,677
Germans. Well,

770
00:47:44,143 –> 00:47:47,595
it’s interesting because like part of me, okay, this is such

771
00:47:47,996 –> 00:47:51,770
a fascinating kind of perspective, right? Because like for anybody who’s

772
00:47:51,770 –> 00:47:55,511
listening to this, right, I am prior service. I joined in 2001

773
00:47:55,623 –> 00:47:59,332
before 9/11. So I’ve never deployed.

774
00:47:59,573 –> 00:48:02,544
I’ve never had to go anywhere or anything else like that. So this is with

775
00:48:02,592 –> 00:48:06,429
a lot of space not colored in by actual personal experience.

776
00:48:07,304 –> 00:48:10,134
Um, but the training that I went through

777
00:48:12,137 –> 00:48:15,750
was— it was filled with guys like that. There was just like this

778
00:48:15,927 –> 00:48:19,491
joy and glee, right, of

779
00:48:19,959 –> 00:48:23,578
the hardest training you could possibly imagine, right? Like, they would

780
00:48:23,578 –> 00:48:27,371
talk about they wanted it raining, they wanted it wet, they wanted

781
00:48:27,371 –> 00:48:30,892
it garbage weather, because like that meant now we’re

782
00:48:30,908 –> 00:48:33,719
really training, right? And we’re all like

783
00:48:35,165 –> 00:48:38,534
But wouldn’t it be better if it wasn’t like wet, if it wasn’t like water

784
00:48:38,534 –> 00:48:41,727
up to your knees and the foxholes and everything else like this, right? Like, and

785
00:48:41,727 –> 00:48:45,320
we’re like, why don’t we want to like, like easier training, right? Because

786
00:48:46,540 –> 00:48:50,005
whenever I went through, like all of my basic training was, was in peacetime. So

787
00:48:50,005 –> 00:48:53,470
this is largely just an exercise, right? Right. And that even happens during my job

788
00:48:53,518 –> 00:48:57,048
training, right? In the, in the intention shifts, right? You can tell that it’s

789
00:48:57,048 –> 00:48:59,919
different, right? But we’re covering the same information.

790
00:49:01,015 –> 00:49:04,245
Right? But all of a sudden people were okay with the more hard-edge training and

791
00:49:04,245 –> 00:49:08,089
everything else like this because now it’s very clear why we’re taking

792
00:49:08,121 –> 00:49:10,951
it to this pinnacle and this extreme, right? And so

793
00:49:12,813 –> 00:49:15,969
there’s— there were— there were all these people that whenever I was going through, I

794
00:49:15,969 –> 00:49:19,621
was like, man, like, you’re just too excited about like war,

795
00:49:19,783 –> 00:49:23,203
right? Like, why are you so excited,

796
00:49:23,542 –> 00:49:27,172
bro? Like, like, like, it was such a flooring concept, right? Because like, I just

797
00:49:27,188 –> 00:49:29,479
meet these guys and they’re like, oh yeah, up and at ’em, and you know,

798
00:49:29,495 –> 00:49:33,263
blood and all this stuff. And I’m I’m like, what has happened? Like, this is

799
00:49:33,311 –> 00:49:36,630
such a bizarre thing, right? But it— I’m

800
00:49:36,903 –> 00:49:40,671
reading this book and that’s, that’s who’s coming to mind of these guys. And it’s

801
00:49:40,671 –> 00:49:44,440
just like napalm in the morning kind of stuff, you know? Like, like, and then

802
00:49:44,440 –> 00:49:47,695
not, not even because like you want to like go

803
00:49:48,866 –> 00:49:52,602
like that hard on someone, it’s just you want to see

804
00:49:52,602 –> 00:49:56,322
what you’re capable of doing, right? It’s like this very weird competitive kind of like

805
00:49:56,322 –> 00:50:00,100
nature. So it’s in— I mean, Martial arts.

806
00:50:00,100 –> 00:50:02,320
Oh yeah, you see this in martial arts too,

807
00:50:02,320 –> 00:50:05,840
right? So I’m

808
00:50:05,840 –> 00:50:09,520
going to talk about this now. Um, so I’m at the point in

809
00:50:09,520 –> 00:50:13,280
my jiu-jitsu journey where I actually have to like develop a game. Like I

810
00:50:13,280 –> 00:50:16,960
have to quit effing around and quit screwing around and quit just showing

811
00:50:16,960 –> 00:50:20,480
up and I’m gonna roll for cardio and whatever

812
00:50:20,480 –> 00:50:24,080
and then leave. Develop a specialty, if you will.

813
00:50:24,080 –> 00:50:26,900
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I gotta put together some sequences and I gotta do some

814
00:50:26,900 –> 00:50:28,660
things, I gotta try some things, and I have to not be reactive and stop

815
00:50:31,454 –> 00:50:32,921
I’m very excited.

816
00:50:36,120 –> 00:50:39,633
I am so unbelievably excited because you know what, here’s what I know.

817
00:50:40,992 –> 00:50:43,883
And this is the, this is the thing that I know that this is what

818
00:50:43,883 –> 00:50:47,450
I recognize in Rommel and, and, and in the culture that he came from.

819
00:50:48,060 –> 00:50:51,311
The second I decide, the second I’m going to click over and decide, okay, I’m

820
00:50:51,311 –> 00:50:54,686
going to be good at this. It’s not just the writing and the

821
00:50:54,767 –> 00:50:58,510
documenting of being good at it. That’s the tip of the

822
00:50:58,510 –> 00:51:01,534
iceberg. It’s not just that. There’s a whole

823
00:51:03,270 –> 00:51:07,084
bunch of other dominoes that start to fall. And I know because I’ve

824
00:51:07,084 –> 00:51:09,929
been through this before. So this is not my first— jiu-jitsu is not my first

825
00:51:09,929 –> 00:51:13,478
martial arts journey. I’ve been through this with taekwondo. Like,

826
00:51:13,720 –> 00:51:17,325
when I was— I mean, from 17 to 27,

827
00:51:17,665 –> 00:51:20,995
26, all I did was taekwondo. That’s all I did. I did

828
00:51:20,995 –> 00:51:24,500
competitive combat. I did all the different variations and versions you could

829
00:51:24,500 –> 00:51:26,421
possibly imagine. You know, 6’2,

830
00:51:28,440 –> 00:51:32,239
150 pounds, like soaking wet. I did the whole thing, right?

831
00:51:32,944 –> 00:51:35,525
And, you know, then I let my body take a break, and then I went

832
00:51:35,525 –> 00:51:38,812
into rugby and did the whole thing, the whole domino thing through my 30s,

833
00:51:39,116 –> 00:51:42,483
right? And now I’m in my, my 40s, getting ready to be in my late

834
00:51:42,563 –> 00:51:45,962
40s, 50s, and the domino— I can feel the domino falling.

835
00:51:46,731 –> 00:51:50,499
And the reason I’m the way I am about it is because I know what

836
00:51:50,499 –> 00:51:53,657
happens when that domino hits the next domino and the next domino and the next

837
00:51:53,657 –> 00:51:57,285
domino. And what happens is, to your point about,

838
00:51:57,774 –> 00:52:01,406
I want to do the hardest training possible. Okay, so now

839
00:52:01,406 –> 00:52:05,116
it’s not hardest training possible. I’m already doing that. I’ve already overcome that.

840
00:52:05,584 –> 00:52:08,955
It’s, I’m going to do the hardest sequences possible.

841
00:52:10,590 –> 00:52:11,346
And in jiu-jitsu,

842
00:52:14,471 –> 00:52:18,111
okay, okay. And you’re like

843
00:52:18,111 –> 00:52:21,528
4— and I’m 47 years old. With 20-year-old,

844
00:52:21,609 –> 00:52:24,156
30-year-old guys. Okay, let’s,

845
00:52:26,457 –> 00:52:29,980
let’s— I did birthday rolls, a bunch of birthday rolls, right?

846
00:52:30,221 –> 00:52:33,342
Monkey in the middle birthday rolls. It’s fine. It’s whatever. And

847
00:52:33,873 –> 00:52:37,624
7, 8 rolls in, I’m exhausted. I’m sitting there and I’m sweating. I’m like, okay,

848
00:52:37,640 –> 00:52:41,070
who wants to come on? Who’s ready for the title? Because now I’m locked in.

849
00:52:41,826 –> 00:52:45,158
Now I’m past the emotion. I’m past the whole, I don’t like this.

850
00:52:45,730 –> 00:52:48,783
I’m past all of that. And now I’m into the space of,

851
00:52:49,953 –> 00:52:52,854
okay, I’m going to be excellent. I’m going to be excellent at the small thing,

852
00:52:52,918 –> 00:52:55,644
or I’m going to be excellent at this thing. I’ve stripped away all of the

853
00:52:55,788 –> 00:52:59,379
garbage and the nonsense and the excuses like we were just talking about with voting.

854
00:52:59,715 –> 00:53:03,146
I’ve stripped away all of that, and now the thing is in front of me.

855
00:53:03,562 –> 00:53:07,330
And this is what you get from Rommel too, and in essence also from, I

856
00:53:07,330 –> 00:53:10,968
think, a lot of the German military. Although All

857
00:53:11,016 –> 00:53:13,597
Quiet on the Western Front kind of puts paid to that a little bit. I

858
00:53:13,726 –> 00:53:17,204
want to kind of acknowledge that too, because it does— that book

859
00:53:17,252 –> 00:53:20,665
postulates that Germany Germany started in one spot

860
00:53:21,523 –> 00:53:25,146
as a culture, but then through deprivation and

861
00:53:25,178 –> 00:53:28,998
through the, through the, the, the nastiness of World War

862
00:53:29,047 –> 00:53:32,623
I wound up in a different spot that led to

863
00:53:32,720 –> 00:53:36,399
resentment and, and other things. And I

864
00:53:36,399 –> 00:53:40,111
keep thinking the worst thing that can happen with

865
00:53:40,111 –> 00:53:43,904
someone who, like myself, whose dominoes are falling in their head, or like

866
00:53:43,904 –> 00:53:47,740
the German people where they’ve made the commitment and now they’re pushing through to excellence,

867
00:53:47,756 –> 00:53:48,898
the worst thing that can happen to you is that you lose.

868
00:53:53,405 –> 00:53:56,791
And by the way, not lose because of anything you did, lose because of circumstance,

869
00:53:56,871 –> 00:54:00,370
lose because of, to our point earlier about politicians, lose because

870
00:54:00,402 –> 00:54:04,174
politicians aren’t aligned with the people. And the German politicians

871
00:54:04,174 –> 00:54:06,806
weren’t aligned with the military and they weren’t, sure as hell weren’t aligned with the

872
00:54:06,806 –> 00:54:10,578
people. Mm-hmm. They were playing a totally different kind of game. They

873
00:54:10,578 –> 00:54:13,323
thought they could get away with it. And of course they couldn’t. And that led

874
00:54:13,323 –> 00:54:15,762
to the crackup of their country in the interwar period.

875
00:54:17,122 –> 00:54:20,033
But again, that’s the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing that can happen

876
00:54:20,082 –> 00:54:22,768
is I do all this sequencing, just to make this about me for just a

877
00:54:22,768 –> 00:54:26,323
minute. I do all this sequencing and then I don’t get my black belt.

878
00:54:28,032 –> 00:54:31,545
Like I, or I get injured or I zig where I should have

879
00:54:31,593 –> 00:54:34,832
zagged. And now I gotta come, I gotta come back from that.

880
00:54:35,618 –> 00:54:39,294
And that’s the thing that goes in, in your head because you’ve got,

881
00:54:39,375 –> 00:54:42,281
if you read enough of these books, you, you wind up in that. You want

882
00:54:42,281 –> 00:54:44,439
to be thinking about all those dominoes that haven’t fallen yet.

883
00:54:46,582 –> 00:54:48,540
Yeah. It’s, uh,

884
00:54:50,675 –> 00:54:54,169
um, you shared a thing and I don’t know if, I don’t know if we

885
00:54:54,169 –> 00:54:57,910
talked about this on a recording or maybe this is, um, how we met,

886
00:54:57,959 –> 00:55:01,647
but you shared your first jiu-jitsu like session and being gassed

887
00:55:01,647 –> 00:55:05,373
afterwards and smoked and out of breath and someone being like, it’s

888
00:55:05,373 –> 00:55:08,957
okay, buddy, it gets better. Right. And you like

889
00:55:09,086 –> 00:55:12,709
almost having to like not guffaw in this person’s face because

890
00:55:14,276 –> 00:55:17,911
the, like, the sheer audacity that you

891
00:55:17,911 –> 00:55:21,492
think I’m like out of shape because I’m just a

892
00:55:21,492 –> 00:55:25,340
little winded is a little kind of absurd, but you don’t know me. That’s okay.

893
00:55:25,404 –> 00:55:28,398
Right. Right. That’s okay. But like, just the idea of like, I’m just trying to

894
00:55:28,446 –> 00:55:31,407
figure out if this is what I want to spend the next decade working on.

895
00:55:32,002 –> 00:55:35,797
Right. Right. Like, I think about that line maybe once a month, honestly.

896
00:55:35,925 –> 00:55:39,387
Right. Because like, I am that person as well. Right. And honestly, whenever

897
00:55:39,660 –> 00:55:43,414
I’ve, you know, stopped training jiu-jitsu largely because,

898
00:55:43,751 –> 00:55:47,586
you know, it’s tough on the body, you got to get really good

899
00:55:47,602 –> 00:55:51,195
practice partners, time, right? Yeah. I know a bunch of guys with like really

900
00:55:51,227 –> 00:55:53,746
bad neck issues from training and stuff like this. And you can say this for

901
00:55:53,778 –> 00:55:57,164
any martial art, but it is what it is. And so I know for

902
00:55:57,164 –> 00:56:00,757
myself, right, that if you— that if I don’t go create this space for

903
00:56:00,838 –> 00:56:04,687
myself, I’m going to find myself into one, right? Yeah.

904
00:56:05,200 –> 00:56:08,840
So because like it just is who I am. So I started playing

905
00:56:08,872 –> 00:56:11,822
guitar, right, to see if it would take up the same space, right? And lo

906
00:56:11,822 –> 00:56:15,317
and behold, it largely has. But business is also kind of the similar,

907
00:56:15,605 –> 00:56:18,491
right? It’s a path of challenge. You’re going to challenge yourself, you’re going to learn

908
00:56:18,491 –> 00:56:22,323
a lot. And I think of them as being the same, right? And so

909
00:56:22,659 –> 00:56:25,417
when I think of a guy like Rommel, right, or,

910
00:56:26,652 –> 00:56:30,034
you know, you could put half a dozen other war generals,

911
00:56:30,259 –> 00:56:34,059
admirals, war leaders in this thing, and if we just change the labels, you get

912
00:56:34,059 –> 00:56:37,896
the same kind of person, right? A person who just

913
00:56:37,896 –> 00:56:41,669
wants to be at their best. And this is the

914
00:56:41,669 –> 00:56:45,426
part I really appreciate— not ego-driven enough that they’re

915
00:56:45,442 –> 00:56:48,316
gonna try to hold it all in their mind, right? Because like, right, this comes

916
00:56:48,316 –> 00:56:51,912
from his journals, right? Right. Meditations comes from his journals,

917
00:56:52,025 –> 00:56:55,862
right? Like, there are so many great bastions of knowledge, deep

918
00:56:55,878 –> 00:56:59,554
wells of expertise that have come because people were

919
00:56:59,571 –> 00:57:03,373
good and confident, but still being like, you know what, I should,

920
00:57:03,645 –> 00:57:06,661
I should maybe write this down. There might be some good things in here, right?

921
00:57:06,790 –> 00:57:08,891
Like, which is just funny because I talked to so many people and like, I

922
00:57:08,891 –> 00:57:12,324
don’t need to write anything down. I’m just good. Like, I’m still trap, right? Like,

923
00:57:12,340 –> 00:57:15,966
okay, like, why would you want to carry that pressure around? I don’t get that

924
00:57:16,335 –> 00:57:20,073
personally. Well, this is this. So I quoted from George

925
00:57:20,169 –> 00:57:23,955
Patton right at the beginning, right? Which is, which is a quote from the, from

926
00:57:23,955 –> 00:57:27,709
the movie Patton. Allegedly, he actually said this when he showed up in North

927
00:57:27,789 –> 00:57:31,446
Africa in World War II and Rommel had just just gone through

928
00:57:32,281 –> 00:57:35,682
North Africa like poop through a goose and had gone through the American

929
00:57:35,682 –> 00:57:39,259
military like they weren’t even there. And, you know,

930
00:57:39,275 –> 00:57:43,093
Patton shows up. And by the way, Patton was cut from the same cloth as

931
00:57:43,189 –> 00:57:46,462
Rommel. The way I sort of frame it is same church,

932
00:57:46,478 –> 00:57:49,750
different pew. And

933
00:57:50,264 –> 00:57:53,520
he recognized from the jump who Rommel was.

934
00:57:54,258 –> 00:57:57,034
Like, yeah, he absolutely understood that guy.

935
00:57:57,868 –> 00:58:01,557
And he wanted to— Montgomery. Now, Montgomery The difference

936
00:58:01,557 –> 00:58:04,026
between Patton and Montgomery, Bernard Montgomery—

937
00:58:05,180 –> 00:58:08,675
Montgomery was so captured by British class considerations,

938
00:58:09,332 –> 00:58:12,859
he wouldn’t even consider Patton or

939
00:58:12,859 –> 00:58:16,289
Rommel as being anywhere near his, like, whatever, which is—

940
00:58:16,546 –> 00:58:19,864
this is a touch of the Keegan kind of thing, like the British whole

941
00:58:20,233 –> 00:58:24,064
stiff upper lip slash I’m of a different class than you

942
00:58:24,337 –> 00:58:27,848
kind of nonsense, right? Kind of like nonsense. Yeah, it’s the thing they

943
00:58:27,848 –> 00:58:31,149
have that just cuts through their culture that they can’t really get away from because

944
00:58:31,149 –> 00:58:32,969
it’s sort of embedded into their national identity.

945
00:58:35,290 –> 00:58:39,060
Well, Montgomery brings that to North Africa and also gets his tail whooped,

946
00:58:39,287 –> 00:58:41,330
you know, just all over North Africa, right?

947
00:58:45,999 –> 00:58:48,567
But Patton

948
00:58:53,199 –> 00:58:56,184
I think if Patton had lived, he probably would have written a book similar to

949
00:58:56,249 –> 00:58:59,579
Rommel’s. Now, he did write one

950
00:58:59,708 –> 00:59:03,329
book, but it was sort of hodgepodge patched

951
00:59:03,329 –> 00:59:06,579
together. It wasn’t— I mean, I looked it up on Amazon

952
00:59:07,128 –> 00:59:10,380
and I may get a copy of it. There’s an ancient, ancient copy that’s like

953
00:59:10,380 –> 00:59:13,788
$700. It’s ridiculous, ridiculous first edition. I’m not going to spend that amount of money,

954
00:59:14,302 –> 00:59:16,199
but I’ll get a reprint somewhere for like $29.99.

955
00:59:18,203 –> 00:59:21,860
But I think, I think if Patton hadn’t gotten—

956
00:59:22,534 –> 00:59:25,069
if he hadn’t gotten in that car accident,

957
00:59:26,384 –> 00:59:29,496
he would have written probably the same kind of book as Rommel. And we’d be

958
00:59:29,496 –> 00:59:33,314
having the same kind of conversation about those 2 guys. I agree.

959
00:59:33,667 –> 00:59:37,164
Because they both— body recognizes body coming through the rye.

960
00:59:38,014 –> 00:59:41,287
And they both wanted to be the best. They both wanted to be engaged with

961
00:59:41,287 –> 00:59:44,511
each other. They both wanted to be— maybe not necessarily at each other’s throats, but

962
00:59:44,511 –> 00:59:48,094
they both wanted to— it’s like a

963
00:59:48,142 –> 00:59:51,500
UFC fight, right? They wanted to fight the best. If you’re the best, you want

964
00:59:51,500 –> 00:59:54,375
to fight the best. You just do. Or a boxing match. You just do. Why

965
00:59:54,375 –> 00:59:56,974
do I want to fight also-rans? Why do I want to be in a match

966
00:59:56,974 –> 00:59:59,830
against somebody who’s not as good as me? There’s no challenge there.

967
01:00:00,686 –> 01:00:04,448
Yeah. The thing with Rommel, though, is— and I

968
01:00:04,448 –> 01:00:07,146
think this is a fundamental difference between him and Patton. You talk about ego.

969
01:00:08,582 –> 01:00:12,425
Rommel was able to subsume his ego. And you see

970
01:00:12,425 –> 01:00:15,827
that in his, in his writing. Whereas

971
01:00:16,310 –> 01:00:19,685
Patton’s ego came out in the Pearl Pistols and all the

972
01:00:19,685 –> 01:00:23,478
shenanigans with the poetry he was spouting, and I’ve lived other lives and all

973
01:00:23,478 –> 01:00:27,083
this other kind of nonsense like he did. And then Montgomery’s ego, of

974
01:00:27,115 –> 01:00:30,434
course, came out in British class status. And he’s like, I’m going to be

975
01:00:30,531 –> 01:00:33,883
snobby about the British military system.

976
01:00:35,590 –> 01:00:39,403
But, but Rommel Rommel was able to kill his ego. And you

977
01:00:39,403 –> 01:00:43,177
see that in, in attacks, like his observations. And that’s what I’ve

978
01:00:43,177 –> 01:00:46,839
been reading this whole time. Like, the things he observed were actually

979
01:00:46,951 –> 01:00:50,501
like, to your point about journaling, he was able to strip away the emotion from

980
01:00:50,549 –> 01:00:52,958
it and be like, well, we did this, we did that, and this didn’t work.

981
01:00:53,375 –> 01:00:56,620
Or we did this, we did that, and that did work. And for a business

982
01:00:56,748 –> 01:00:59,639
leader, just to kind of make a turn here, for a business leader, I think

983
01:00:59,639 –> 01:01:02,899
that’s critical. And I think that’s what you can learn from military strategy and tactics.

984
01:01:03,703 –> 01:01:07,095
Well, I think, man, because you were talking through this and I was like, that’s

985
01:01:07,095 –> 01:01:10,938
the split. Like, to me, whenever I think about Patton, right,

986
01:01:10,970 –> 01:01:14,713
I think about a guy who was like, man, like a little bit like Hamilton,

987
01:01:14,907 –> 01:01:17,630
right? If I just do good enough in this war, I’m not gonna have to

988
01:01:17,662 –> 01:01:21,352
do this crap anymore. Right. Whereas Rommel was like, I’ll do the

989
01:01:21,352 –> 01:01:24,893
crap, right? Like, there’s this, because,

990
01:01:24,958 –> 01:01:26,515
you know, it talks about how

991
01:01:31,211 –> 01:01:35,042
Um, reluctant he is to give up any, any command,

992
01:01:35,379 –> 01:01:38,826
right? He talks about almost falling out of his horse. He talks about being so

993
01:01:38,826 –> 01:01:41,696
fatigued from loss of blood that like he can only give orders from like the

994
01:01:41,712 –> 01:01:45,111
thing. And like it’d be super easy to be like, oh yeah, ego, ego. But

995
01:01:45,111 –> 01:01:48,542
like how he’s talking about it and how he’s doing this, like

996
01:01:49,007 –> 01:01:52,646
in the fact that like he’s still doing it later, like he’s still,

997
01:01:53,031 –> 01:01:56,478
you know, he’s still like jumping on a horse with his men to go do

998
01:01:56,478 –> 01:01:59,863
these things and stuff like this, right? Yeah. Like he’s not You know,

999
01:02:00,554 –> 01:02:03,076
and I see this all the time sales side, right? Like there’s so many people

1000
01:02:03,076 –> 01:02:06,225
and they’re like, okay, well, I’m gonna grind for a little bit and then I’m

1001
01:02:06,225 –> 01:02:10,065
not gonna have to do it anymore, right? It’s like you’re already

1002
01:02:10,065 –> 01:02:13,808
screwed because you think that you shouldn’t have to

1003
01:02:13,808 –> 01:02:16,426
do this. Mm-hmm.

1004
01:02:17,679 –> 01:02:21,149
Whereas like he just wants to be— he wants to be the best

1005
01:02:21,278 –> 01:02:25,021
soldier he can possibly be. He doesn’t— he like— and this distinction I

1006
01:02:25,069 –> 01:02:28,825
think matters, right? He doesn’t want to be the best general he can be.

1007
01:02:29,482 –> 01:02:32,852
He wants to be the best soldier. He wants to be the person entrusted to

1008
01:02:32,852 –> 01:02:36,591
go win these battles and everything, you know. And it’s so interesting

1009
01:02:36,783 –> 01:02:40,522
because I was curious about this because I remember one time

1010
01:02:40,618 –> 01:02:43,731
during my training and being in Georgia and everything,

1011
01:02:44,726 –> 01:02:48,432
they were one time talking about how they say how they send us off to

1012
01:02:48,432 –> 01:02:51,946
decision-making school, right? And I was like, well, that’s weird. I like to make

1013
01:02:51,946 –> 01:02:55,560
decisions. Like, why do we need to go to school? for that? And they’re

1014
01:02:55,560 –> 01:02:58,300
like, well, liking to make decisions is not the same thing as being good at

1015
01:02:58,300 –> 01:03:01,720
decisions. And I was like, well, I’m pretty good at making decisions. I’m pretty here.

1016
01:03:01,720 –> 01:03:05,320
I’m all of 20 years old, right? So I’m obviously killing the game.

1017
01:03:07,000 –> 01:03:10,620
And he goes, no, when you hit NCO status, E-5, we’re going to send you

1018
01:03:10,620 –> 01:03:14,440
to school so that way you can learn how to make imperfect decisions. And I

1019
01:03:14,440 –> 01:03:17,260
was like, what? No, you want to make the perfect decision. And he’s like, what

1020
01:03:17,260 –> 01:03:20,699
if there’s not time for it to be perfect? Like, what— like,

1021
01:03:21,340 –> 01:03:24,817
sometimes the best decision is based upon which

1022
01:03:24,865 –> 01:03:28,694
decision loses less lives, but there’s not going to

1023
01:03:28,694 –> 01:03:32,507
be a decision at all that leads to no lives lost. And it was

1024
01:03:32,539 –> 01:03:36,080
so weird because, like, as, as they’re saying this to me, like, I’m, like,

1025
01:03:36,224 –> 01:03:39,925
being imparted with the full weight of really what we’re talking about here, right?

1026
01:03:40,855 –> 01:03:44,363
And you can see that through his words, that he’s always

1027
01:03:44,460 –> 01:03:48,241
considering the trade-offs, right? Mm-hmm. If I go this route, I’m gonna lose 25% of

1028
01:03:48,241 –> 01:03:52,014
my force. forces. If I go this route, we might only lose about 15 max.

1029
01:03:52,094 –> 01:03:54,086
And so while this is going to be harder, this is the way we’re going

1030
01:03:54,086 –> 01:03:57,812
to go. Like, and I think, I

1031
01:03:57,860 –> 01:04:00,590
think when we talk about this stuff, it’s super easy to just be like, okay,

1032
01:04:00,607 –> 01:04:03,979
cool, great, it’s like check. But like, he’s also with these guys, right?

1033
01:04:04,317 –> 01:04:07,754
Mm-hmm. Like, they’re traveling together. This is not now

1034
01:04:08,236 –> 01:04:12,058
where there’s vehicles and kits and, you know, all this stuff and everything

1035
01:04:12,074 –> 01:04:15,832
else like this. Like, they’re in the trenches together, right? He’s having these

1036
01:04:15,864 –> 01:04:19,683
guys march for days on end and then dig in

1037
01:04:19,779 –> 01:04:23,502
and entrench. And it’s not just for the exercise. It’s in the hopes that

1038
01:04:23,502 –> 01:04:27,257
they can make it through all the bombings and artillery and everything else

1039
01:04:27,257 –> 01:04:30,819
like this, right? And so to me, it was

1040
01:04:30,867 –> 01:04:34,686
such an interesting perspective because I think he does a really

1041
01:04:34,782 –> 01:04:37,767
good job. I think most people would probably read it and be like, well, this

1042
01:04:37,767 –> 01:04:41,393
guy’s a sociopath with how he talks about the loss of human lives and

1043
01:04:41,393 –> 01:04:45,094
everything. But this is the job. job. If you can’t get to that

1044
01:04:45,094 –> 01:04:47,354
point, you’re not going to be effective.

1045
01:04:49,510 –> 01:04:53,223
This is right. And this is where, so when I opened up, I talked about

1046
01:04:53,239 –> 01:04:57,049
how there’s usually 2 objections to aligning, you know,

1047
01:04:57,113 –> 01:05:00,735
the study of military strategy with the study with business practices, right?

1048
01:05:01,378 –> 01:05:04,736
And these 2 main objections I most recently within the last few years

1049
01:05:04,913 –> 01:05:07,821
heard almost explicitly from the guys at Basecamp.

1050
01:05:10,600 –> 01:05:14,231
And I like Basecamp as a business. I like those guys. I have no problem

1051
01:05:14,231 –> 01:05:17,072
with that service. I have no problem with how they’re running their business. I actually

1052
01:05:17,072 –> 01:05:18,089
think they run it brilliantly.

1053
01:05:20,947 –> 01:05:24,068
And I think there’s a fundamental blind spot there

1054
01:05:25,474 –> 01:05:29,225
that— I would love some background on this. Like, so because, because I like

1055
01:05:29,274 –> 01:05:32,536
the guys at 37signals a lot, right? I think they’re smart. I think they’re very

1056
01:05:32,908 –> 01:05:36,670
on it, intelligent. Yep. So are they known for saying that

1057
01:05:36,670 –> 01:05:40,090
like, hey, we shouldn’t be using like military jargon and—

1058
01:05:40,090 –> 01:05:43,850
Yeah. Yeah. They’re, they’re, they’re, they’re the, they’re the, we shouldn’t be using military

1059
01:05:43,850 –> 01:05:46,240
jargon because what we’re running is not a war guys.

1060
01:05:47,090 –> 01:05:50,810
They’re in that, they’re in that space now. And by the way, Seth

1061
01:05:50,810 –> 01:05:54,610
Godin’s also in that space. The marketer Seth Godin, bunch of other

1062
01:05:54,610 –> 01:05:58,050
people are in that space. That space is very, very crowded. I’m in that space.

1063
01:05:58,050 –> 01:06:01,516
Okay. You’re in that space. Okay. And I think when you,

1064
01:06:02,370 –> 01:06:05,865
when you, this is, this is my, where I come from with my

1065
01:06:06,090 –> 01:06:09,910
sort of, uh, on this. I think, I think, um,

1066
01:06:10,686 –> 01:06:14,388
I think saying we don’t use the

1067
01:06:14,388 –> 01:06:18,123
jargon allows you to dismiss the other ideas that lie behind the

1068
01:06:18,187 –> 01:06:21,737
jargon. And so I, and I think I have an example here that, that proves

1069
01:06:21,835 –> 01:06:25,501
this rule. So when I was reading Infantry Attacks,

1070
01:06:25,582 –> 01:06:29,310
which I would encourage everybody to go out and get. I immediately— well, not

1071
01:06:29,310 –> 01:06:33,110
immediately, but as I was going through the book, I started thinking of a guy

1072
01:06:33,110 –> 01:06:36,930
we both talked about on this show somewhat extensively, who’s

1073
01:06:36,930 –> 01:06:39,270
got his own podcast, Jocko Willink.

1074
01:06:41,020 –> 01:06:44,100
And God bless the guys at 37signals,

1075
01:06:44,490 –> 01:06:48,230
but they would never talk to Jocko. They never

1076
01:06:48,230 –> 01:06:51,310
would. There’s no overlap there. And that’s okay. I’m not saying there doesn’t have to

1077
01:06:51,310 –> 01:06:53,750
be. I’m not saying there has to be overlap. I think Jocko’s operating in a

1078
01:06:53,750 –> 01:06:57,050
completely— he’s doing another thing over there and they’re doing another thing over there. And

1079
01:06:57,050 –> 01:06:58,010
that’s fine. You can have multiple threads. There’s more than one way to skin a

1080
01:06:58,010 –> 01:07:01,720
cat. However, I

1081
01:07:01,720 –> 01:07:04,228
think that when we

1082
01:07:05,917 –> 01:07:09,693
when we fail to see the overlaps everywhere, then

1083
01:07:09,725 –> 01:07:13,429
we automatically and this gets even to like the question that we were covering and

1084
01:07:13,429 –> 01:07:17,230
masticating about for the first 45 minutes of the show today. When we have

1085
01:07:17,230 –> 01:07:20,968
those blind spots, we fail to see connections, and I’m very much a

1086
01:07:20,968 –> 01:07:24,676
guy who’s who’s about context and

1087
01:07:24,676 –> 01:07:28,512
connections. So like things are not just Things are not just

1088
01:07:28,512 –> 01:07:32,221
single issue. Everything connects to everything else, right?

1089
01:07:32,590 –> 01:07:36,348
Right. And to paraphrase from Tony Soprano, if you’re a leader, at the end of

1090
01:07:36,348 –> 01:07:39,976
the day, you’re with it. Now, you can either be with it

1091
01:07:39,976 –> 01:07:43,429
alone. You can make that decision if you want to be. You can— you could

1092
01:07:43,429 –> 01:07:47,250
be alone. You could be with other people. But either— but either way, you’re going

1093
01:07:47,266 –> 01:07:51,055
to be with it. It’s going to be you. And you have to figure out

1094
01:07:51,441 –> 01:07:55,023
how I think particularly in our time, how

1095
01:07:57,642 –> 01:08:01,418
religion or religious idea or whatever connects

1096
01:08:01,418 –> 01:08:05,065
to a business idea, which connects to this

1097
01:08:05,178 –> 01:08:08,970
military idea, which connects to this technology idea. Because all

1098
01:08:08,970 –> 01:08:12,361
of these things— and I think AI is going to push this

1099
01:08:12,506 –> 01:08:15,886
incredibly further than we even give it credit for. And this is where I’ll say

1100
01:08:15,902 –> 01:08:19,363
something positive about artificial intelligence now, because normally we dog it on this show.

1101
01:08:20,071 –> 01:08:23,587
But I think it’s going to push people Not people. I think it’s going to

1102
01:08:23,587 –> 01:08:27,165
push business leaders to become way

1103
01:08:27,342 –> 01:08:30,969
more generalist than they’re comfortable with right now. I think the

1104
01:08:30,969 –> 01:08:34,018
era of the specialist, I don’t think it’s at an end, but I think the

1105
01:08:34,018 –> 01:08:37,517
specialist is going to have to acknowledge this generalized

1106
01:08:37,549 –> 01:08:41,096
contextual pieces, these generalized contextualized pieces of

1107
01:08:41,225 –> 01:08:45,028
understanding strategy. And it’s going to— you’re

1108
01:08:45,092 –> 01:08:48,639
going to have to broaden your scope, I think. And so

1109
01:08:48,639 –> 01:08:52,099
that’s where I get off the train with with the

1110
01:08:52,099 –> 01:08:55,419
37signals guys. But I’m like, okay, I mean, I’ve gone as far with you as

1111
01:08:55,419 –> 01:08:58,939
I can go. That’s okay. That’s cool. You can have your opinion about that. That’s

1112
01:08:58,939 –> 01:09:02,699
cool. I don’t have to— I’m gonna go read your Patriot Attacks,

1113
01:09:02,859 –> 01:09:06,379
and then I’m gonna try to apply some of that to what I’m doing. I

1114
01:09:06,379 –> 01:09:09,959
think, man, oh, wow. I have a lot to say on this, actually.

1115
01:09:10,039 –> 01:09:13,839
So my favorite, all-time favorite saying,

1116
01:09:13,839 –> 01:09:16,839
and I have a lot of sayings that I really like a lot, is it

1117
01:09:16,839 –> 01:09:20,513
goes back to the very first book we did together on the show, Musashi’s

1118
01:09:20,529 –> 01:09:24,220
book, right? When you know the way broadly, you see it in all things. Yeah.

1119
01:09:24,798 –> 01:09:28,281
So I, um, it really

1120
01:09:28,313 –> 01:09:32,149
bothers me that while I see a lot

1121
01:09:32,149 –> 01:09:35,952
of overlap around chain of command, rules of engagement,

1122
01:09:36,562 –> 01:09:40,318
how do we act with other people in the trenches, right? Uh, in

1123
01:09:40,350 –> 01:09:43,367
the weeds, right? Every, every line of military

1124
01:09:43,640 –> 01:09:47,439
jargon that someone would use helpfully inside of an organization or

1125
01:09:47,487 –> 01:09:51,092
on a sales team. There’s another line that we can also choose to

1126
01:09:51,092 –> 01:09:53,992
use. Okay. Okay. Morale, culture,

1127
01:09:55,258 –> 01:09:58,991
right? In the trenches, in the weeds, right? Like, like we can,

1128
01:09:59,167 –> 01:10:02,836
we can use other phrases, right? We can use other terminology to get

1129
01:10:03,349 –> 01:10:07,163
people aligned and moving forward. Okay. What bothers

1130
01:10:07,195 –> 01:10:10,768
me, right? And this might be my lens, right?

1131
01:10:10,832 –> 01:10:14,358
Because I work in this space. Is that it happens to salespeople so much more

1132
01:10:15,513 –> 01:10:19,313
than I think it being applied to other business units

1133
01:10:20,243 –> 01:10:23,369
or teams within a business, right? And

1134
01:10:24,107 –> 01:10:27,650
this is where it really bothers me, right? Because like salespeople are, you know, the

1135
01:10:27,650 –> 01:10:30,568
sales stigma is very well known, right? We’re going to lie, we’re going to cheat,

1136
01:10:30,584 –> 01:10:32,668
we’re going to steal, we’re going to do anything we can until I get the

1137
01:10:32,668 –> 01:10:36,516
deal done. Okay. Who’s pushing that stuff?

1138
01:10:37,895 –> 01:10:41,744
Right. It’s the leadership who are creating the goals, right? I’m just

1139
01:10:41,744 –> 01:10:44,924
gonna put it bluntly, are not good enough at leadership to

1140
01:10:45,341 –> 01:10:48,617
have a way of getting people bought in,

1141
01:10:48,890 –> 01:10:52,567
invested, moving, enrolled, and doing it the right way. So

1142
01:10:52,567 –> 01:10:55,826
instead what they do is they just come up and they try to use war

1143
01:10:56,035 –> 01:10:59,856
jargon, get in the weeds. It’s a battle. You got to kill them.

1144
01:10:59,953 –> 01:11:02,217
You got to kill your goals. You got to kill all these things because we’re

1145
01:11:02,217 –> 01:11:05,235
trying to just coax more out of somebody,

1146
01:11:05,829 –> 01:11:09,648
right? And, you know, more is the only

1147
01:11:09,680 –> 01:11:12,247
thing you know to go looking for when you’re a leader, when you don’t know

1148
01:11:12,247 –> 01:11:15,520
enough to like go ask for what you specifically need, right?

1149
01:11:16,242 –> 01:11:20,092
So this idea that like, you know, we’re bringing people

1150
01:11:20,092 –> 01:11:22,835
in, we’re trying to make them rabid with excitement. So they’re gonna go off and

1151
01:11:22,835 –> 01:11:26,397
take massive action. So we hit all of our sales goals and everything. Well,

1152
01:11:26,910 –> 01:11:30,102
old saying is that the person who gets emotional in negotiation is the person who

1153
01:11:30,119 –> 01:11:33,874
loses the negotiation. So we’re holding these people hostage. We’re paying them as

1154
01:11:33,986 –> 01:11:37,744
little as we possibly can, and we treat them and look at

1155
01:11:37,744 –> 01:11:41,230
them like, like no one else inside of the organization. And we’re gonna use all

1156
01:11:41,230 –> 01:11:44,442
the— like, we’re trying to put people into this emotional state because we don’t have

1157
01:11:44,442 –> 01:11:48,088
a better way of getting people actually interested and invested in doing their work

1158
01:11:48,088 –> 01:11:51,701
consistently. And that to me is where, like, really

1159
01:11:51,733 –> 01:11:55,347
bothers me whenever I see someone who’s not in the military and never been in

1160
01:11:55,347 –> 01:11:58,912
the military using military jargon. Like, I saw a guy on

1161
01:11:58,961 –> 01:12:02,653
LinkedIn and he was talking about that if you don’t have a war board you’re

1162
01:12:02,653 –> 01:12:05,138
not a real sales leader. And I was like, oh, what do you mean by

1163
01:12:05,138 –> 01:12:08,761
a war board? Well, it’s our dream account list. Then just call it

1164
01:12:08,809 –> 01:12:12,144
that. Like, why can’t we just call it that, right?

1165
01:12:12,737 –> 01:12:15,125
And he’s like, well, John, I don’t really think it matters. And I’m like, well,

1166
01:12:15,719 –> 01:12:19,390
it does. You know, you probably haven’t served, so it probably doesn’t

1167
01:12:19,390 –> 01:12:23,173
make a whole lot of sense that it should matter to you. But why do

1168
01:12:23,173 –> 01:12:26,620
you have to go that far to get your people to like show up and

1169
01:12:26,620 –> 01:12:30,362
do their jobs? Let me ask you this

1170
01:12:30,362 –> 01:12:34,192
question. Sure. Do you

1171
01:12:34,306 –> 01:12:37,026
think that there’s more use of this jargon

1172
01:12:37,528 –> 01:12:40,701
casually because the

1173
01:12:40,846 –> 01:12:42,910
average male

1174
01:12:44,554 –> 01:12:48,279
in America in the year of our Lord 2026, when we’re

1175
01:12:48,279 –> 01:12:51,877
recording this, hasn’t served and doesn’t know

1176
01:12:51,877 –> 01:12:54,910
anybody who has? And, and, and gets their

1177
01:12:55,038 –> 01:12:58,458
scripts about this jargon not from

1178
01:12:58,891 –> 01:13:02,632
books like Infantry Attacks, not from,

1179
01:13:03,226 –> 01:13:06,726
you know, studying whatever it is Jocko might be writing,

1180
01:13:07,223 –> 01:13:10,691
um, not from reading, um, the biography of William

1181
01:13:10,691 –> 01:13:14,384
Tecumseh Sherman or Empire of the Summer Moon. They’re getting it

1182
01:13:14,384 –> 01:13:17,626
instead from— let me be blunt now—

1183
01:13:18,477 –> 01:13:22,096
Marvel movies and Hollywood. I mean, I

1184
01:13:22,338 –> 01:13:25,968
would wager that the same guy who watches The Wolf of Wall Street and

1185
01:13:25,968 –> 01:13:29,244
takes that as a lesson on like how to sell as a professional

1186
01:13:29,244 –> 01:13:33,004
salesperson is also the same, same kind of person who watches Fast and

1187
01:13:33,004 –> 01:13:36,804
Furious 7 or The Expendables and then leaves thinking that they know a lot about

1188
01:13:36,820 –> 01:13:40,215
how military training is, right? I think,

1189
01:13:40,795 –> 01:13:44,013
and I think, I think there’s a whole lot of psychology as to why that

1190
01:13:44,013 –> 01:13:47,713
happens as often as it does. And like, I’m

1191
01:13:47,729 –> 01:13:51,260
not saying that it’s not like a

1192
01:13:51,405 –> 01:13:55,193
judgment, right? It’s shiny, it’s cool, it feels great. There’s a big,

1193
01:13:55,209 –> 01:13:58,933
huge dopamine rush. And at the end of it, like, everyone leaves those

1194
01:13:58,966 –> 01:14:02,497
movies feeling like they can handle some business, even if they’ve never done a day

1195
01:14:02,497 –> 01:14:05,130
of training and they’ve never been on the mats any one time and stuff like

1196
01:14:05,130 –> 01:14:07,361
that. You know, like, you’re wrong.

1197
01:14:08,822 –> 01:14:12,353
And like, I hope you don’t ever have to find out, but like, there’s a

1198
01:14:12,353 –> 01:14:15,968
reason why those movies get made, they get funded, they get,

1199
01:14:16,131 –> 01:14:19,844
they get the returns that they do. And it leads to everyone feeling

1200
01:14:20,509 –> 01:14:24,211
way more able than they probably

1201
01:14:24,211 –> 01:14:27,639
should if they zoomed out and really had the real range of

1202
01:14:27,914 –> 01:14:31,688
like human performance when it comes to that stuff.

1203
01:14:32,227 –> 01:14:35,294
Now let me ask you another question. So another book that I’m reading, because of

1204
01:14:35,294 –> 01:14:38,896
course I’m reading 10,000 books all at once, is Gift of

1205
01:14:38,945 –> 01:14:42,785
Violence by Matt Thornton. And yeah, just

1206
01:14:42,785 –> 01:14:45,366
start reading it. Just, just pick it up, just start reading it. I’m only like

1207
01:14:45,495 –> 01:14:49,294
the first 2 chapters in. Um, but one of the points he makes in

1208
01:14:49,342 –> 01:14:52,692
that book is that violence and

1209
01:14:53,221 –> 01:14:57,020
sex are the 2, the 2 things that— and he’s

1210
01:14:57,132 –> 01:15:00,499
really hammering on it in the first 2 chapters— like, they’re the 2 things that

1211
01:15:00,499 –> 01:15:04,250
really have driven human evolution.

1212
01:15:05,067 –> 01:15:08,818
Oh, okay. That’s an assertion that he makes. And then, and

1213
01:15:08,834 –> 01:15:12,361
then from that assumption, from that assertion, he

1214
01:15:12,602 –> 01:15:15,970
goes into, you know,

1215
01:15:16,690 –> 01:15:20,083
we in the West, we in America specifically,

1216
01:15:20,663 –> 01:15:24,291
live lives that are far less violent than

1217
01:15:24,291 –> 01:15:27,897
even the lives of medieval peasants 400

1218
01:15:27,929 –> 01:15:31,705
or 500, 600 years ago, 700 years

1219
01:15:31,705 –> 01:15:35,530
ago. And because we live less violent lives, we have

1220
01:15:35,530 –> 01:15:37,770
deluded ourselves into believing

1221
01:15:38,774 –> 01:15:42,595
falsely, he claims, that violence can never happen to us.

1222
01:15:42,692 –> 01:15:45,999
Now, he starts from there and then goes into a different direction. I’m using that,

1223
01:15:46,080 –> 01:15:49,789
that, that set of assumptions to ask this question. Mm-hmm. A

1224
01:15:49,789 –> 01:15:53,112
salesperson who’s grown up in a— through no fault of their own—

1225
01:15:53,787 –> 01:15:57,335
has grown up in an America that is, as Matt, as Mr.

1226
01:15:57,416 –> 01:16:00,659
Thornton would define it, relatively cushy and

1227
01:16:00,675 –> 01:16:01,430
violence-free.

1228
01:16:05,280 –> 01:16:08,726
Well, okay, let me make this question very simple. Do salespeople

1229
01:16:09,098 –> 01:16:10,555
need to be doing more martial arts

1230
01:16:14,191 –> 01:16:18,036
to change their language because they haven’t done a hard thing?

1231
01:16:21,115 –> 01:16:24,543
I mean, what a beautiful question, right? Because like,

1232
01:16:24,931 –> 01:16:28,780
as a very old kind of thing

1233
01:16:28,829 –> 01:16:32,541
in my lane, of sales training, recruitment placements, and everything else

1234
01:16:32,541 –> 01:16:35,253
like this, right, is a lot of people talk about if you can find prior

1235
01:16:35,253 –> 01:16:38,206
service military, you can find a Division 1 athlete,

1236
01:16:38,767 –> 01:16:42,057
yeah, half of the battle’s already won. You’ve already found someone who can be driven

1237
01:16:42,057 –> 01:16:45,587
and disciplined, right? And I

1238
01:16:46,373 –> 01:16:49,518
found that to be kind of true, right? But I’ve also found that the lens

1239
01:16:49,518 –> 01:16:52,936
is way wider than that, right? So what salespeople really actually need

1240
01:16:53,273 –> 01:16:56,948
is an evolution or a season to where they have had to take critical

1241
01:16:56,964 –> 01:17:00,789
feedback and choose to suck a lot,

1242
01:17:01,400 –> 01:17:05,017
right? So martial arts is that thing. Being in the military is that thing. Being

1243
01:17:05,081 –> 01:17:08,499
a D1 athlete and your livelihood, your scholarships, right?

1244
01:17:08,886 –> 01:17:12,259
Because the other part of this thing is like, I talked to so many people

1245
01:17:12,259 –> 01:17:14,534
who are like, well, I could do that if I had to. Okay, cool. You’ve

1246
01:17:14,534 –> 01:17:18,240
never been in a situation where you had to. That’s going to be problematic

1247
01:17:18,240 –> 01:17:21,397
because every day you have to when you’re in sales, right?

1248
01:17:21,945 –> 01:17:24,571
And, you know, there’s, there’s a lot to be said about building

1249
01:17:25,720 –> 01:17:28,384
And so that way you don’t always have to be in that scramble. And there’s

1250
01:17:28,384 –> 01:17:30,390
a whole lot of people that don’t want to work on those things, and they

1251
01:17:30,390 –> 01:17:33,119
get to be in that scramble, and they get to be burnt out all the

1252
01:17:33,119 –> 01:17:36,698
time, right? And so what, what I’m always looking

1253
01:17:36,810 –> 01:17:40,598
for is like, have you had to choose to suck over a

1254
01:17:40,598 –> 01:17:44,370
long period of time and you still found some way to get

1255
01:17:44,370 –> 01:17:48,093
excited about it? If yes, we can move mountains

1256
01:17:48,125 –> 01:17:51,143
as far as deals and revenue and projects and all that stuff. And profitability and

1257
01:17:51,143 –> 01:17:54,933
everything else like this. But if you have never done any season to

1258
01:17:54,933 –> 01:17:57,951
where you have had to get essentially chosen to get kicked in the face,

1259
01:17:58,561 –> 01:18:02,351
right, this is being a white belt in a martial arts school. You’re choosing to

1260
01:18:02,479 –> 01:18:05,963
just tap as many times as you possibly can that first minute for your first

1261
01:18:05,963 –> 01:18:09,640
year, right? Like, I remember in my martial arts school, my first

1262
01:18:09,721 –> 01:18:12,145
art, I remember asking a guy, I said, hey man, how do I know if

1263
01:18:12,145 –> 01:18:15,646
I’m getting better? He’s like, I’m hitting you less. Don’t

1264
01:18:16,224 –> 01:18:19,019
Don’t make it about anything else other than that. Other people are going to tell

1265
01:18:19,019 –> 01:18:22,569
you these things and everything else like this, but like when I’m hitting you

1266
01:18:22,569 –> 01:18:25,588
less, when someone better than you is hitting you less, that is when you know

1267
01:18:25,588 –> 01:18:29,347
you’re getting better. Everything else is nonsense, right? And I

1268
01:18:29,395 –> 01:18:32,527
think about that line all the time, right? What is the true mark of success

1269
01:18:32,527 –> 01:18:36,286
here, right? Because like, are we, are we picking a data point or a

1270
01:18:36,286 –> 01:18:39,659
KPI that doesn’t really matter, or, or can we look at this in that same

1271
01:18:39,820 –> 01:18:43,390
way, right? So Like, you know, are you getting

1272
01:18:43,390 –> 01:18:46,910
meetings? I don’t care how much outreach you’re doing, how many calls you’re— are you

1273
01:18:46,910 –> 01:18:50,430
getting a meeting? If you can’t get a meeting, you’re not as close as you

1274
01:18:50,430 –> 01:18:54,170
think you are, right? You’re like— and if you need 5,000 emails

1275
01:18:54,170 –> 01:18:57,590
to get one meeting, you’re not anywhere close to like the place that you need

1276
01:18:57,590 –> 01:19:01,310
to be, right? So focus on the right parts of the problem. Develop a game,

1277
01:19:01,310 –> 01:19:03,630
right? Kind of the place that you’re in right now. But

1278
01:19:03,630 –> 01:19:07,470
like, up until that point of like, okay, you’re now at a space to

1279
01:19:07,470 –> 01:19:10,870
where like you need to develop a game, We’re all in that scrambling thing,

1280
01:19:10,870 –> 01:19:14,030
right? And the best you can do in that mode is like just show up

1281
01:19:14,030 –> 01:19:16,490
and have the intention of like, you know what, I’m not gonna quit, I’m not

1282
01:19:16,490 –> 01:19:19,090
gonna let this get to me, and I’m gonna try not to lose, right? Like,

1283
01:19:19,090 –> 01:19:22,890
I’m not trying to win, I’m just trying not to get crushed. Let’s try

1284
01:19:22,890 –> 01:19:25,870
to do that in the early days. Well, you also have to arrive at a

1285
01:19:25,870 –> 01:19:29,510
spot where you don’t tap to bullshit, and you like, you

1286
01:19:29,510 –> 01:19:33,250
actually recognize what it actually is. Oh, this is just bullshit,

1287
01:19:33,260 –> 01:19:36,761
and I’m not going to tap to it. So Yeah, this isn’t a real choke.

1288
01:19:37,290 –> 01:19:40,528
This isn’t a real choke. Or like, or like, yeah, he’s hitting me

1289
01:19:41,153 –> 01:19:44,712
or she’s hitting me, but they’re not really trying to take me out.

1290
01:19:44,985 –> 01:19:48,784
Like, it’s a little bit whatever, but I’m not like getting rocked, right? I

1291
01:19:48,848 –> 01:19:52,391
love the other side of that as well, is like when that, when that, uh,

1292
01:19:52,856 –> 01:19:56,030
when that rear naked choke is sunk and you know that it’s there, and like

1293
01:19:56,286 –> 01:19:59,252
you don’t have to do the 2 minutes of perfunctory like, oh, I can get

1294
01:19:59,252 –> 01:20:02,076
out of this, bro, or like really put it me because you’re doing it for

1295
01:20:02,076 –> 01:20:05,193
someone else, right? And you can be like, nope, this is real. I’m just gonna

1296
01:20:05,193 –> 01:20:08,664
tap now, as opposed to the wasted 45 seconds of fake

1297
01:20:08,664 –> 01:20:11,974
tussling over here so we can reset and get some more training in. Like,

1298
01:20:12,359 –> 01:20:16,087
that season is beautiful, man. Yes. Like, a friend of mine

1299
01:20:16,617 –> 01:20:19,526
that I trained with in Wing Chun, he talked about this thing one time. He

1300
01:20:19,526 –> 01:20:23,253
was like, man, we all walk in the door wanting to be Billy Badass, everybody,

1301
01:20:23,446 –> 01:20:26,644
right? And I was like, yeah, that’s valid. And he’s like, but did you ever

1302
01:20:26,644 –> 01:20:29,194
notice Anyone who gets up there,

1303
01:20:31,099 –> 01:20:34,378
that intention has to drop away at different times. Oh yes.

1304
01:20:34,894 –> 01:20:38,663
Right? But if you’re like, go find me a black belt who is

1305
01:20:38,777 –> 01:20:42,369
just like trying to murder everybody with the same intention that they were

1306
01:20:42,483 –> 01:20:46,331
on— like, you won’t find them because they’re not there. Because they’ve either changed

1307
01:20:46,331 –> 01:20:50,174
through the crucible of practice and appreciating your practice partners in a practice

1308
01:20:50,174 –> 01:20:53,272
environment, or your ego got you. Gotcha.

1309
01:20:53,834 –> 01:20:57,659
Right. Something, something got in the way, right? Yeah. You allowed it to happen

1310
01:20:57,916 –> 01:21:01,724
kind of thing. So I don’t— I think, I think part

1311
01:21:01,724 –> 01:21:05,372
of it is leaders and managers need to actually go back to

1312
01:21:05,388 –> 01:21:09,116
training sales fundamentals. And that includes things like planning. So that way we

1313
01:21:09,116 –> 01:21:12,571
stop putting magician-like pressure on brand new

1314
01:21:12,571 –> 01:21:16,347
salespeople because things like ramp up, things like break-in periods, things like,

1315
01:21:16,395 –> 01:21:18,757
hey, let’s plan for the amount of time we need to even

1316
01:21:18,805 –> 01:21:22,322
hit these goals really do matter. And then

1317
01:21:22,595 –> 01:21:26,288
let’s start talking to people about, hey, you know, you

1318
01:21:26,288 –> 01:21:29,981
should have other things in your life that like aren’t just sales conversations. Hey.

1319
01:21:31,169 –> 01:21:34,316
I know that’s weird. I know that’s wild. That’s going to give me some hate,

1320
01:21:34,557 –> 01:21:37,800
but like otherwise they’re going to burn out

1321
01:21:39,197 –> 01:21:41,750
and then they’re not going to be there anymore. And then that top performer goes

1322
01:21:41,782 –> 01:21:44,817
and takes the other job at someplace else because they’re going to give them a

1323
01:21:44,833 –> 01:21:47,564
little bit more quality of life in the form of maybe a little bit higher

1324
01:21:47,564 –> 01:21:50,985
base, maybe a little bit more time off and everything. And now you have to

1325
01:21:51,001 –> 01:21:54,550
fill a black box. You’re not really sure how that

1326
01:21:54,550 –> 01:21:58,389
person is generating all that pipeline and all those deals and everything. And man, I

1327
01:21:58,389 –> 01:22:02,099
hope you can find another one. Right? It’s, it’s

1328
01:22:02,099 –> 01:22:04,749
like when we zoom out and we look at it, like, how do we not

1329
01:22:04,749 –> 01:22:08,282
see all the flaws? Right? Pushing people way too

1330
01:22:08,282 –> 01:22:12,125
hard. A fraction of them actually make A lot of those guys

1331
01:22:12,125 –> 01:22:15,414
have stents in their hearts because they’re pushing themselves so hard

1332
01:22:15,849 –> 01:22:18,913
and then something happens and then they go take an easier job. Take an easier

1333
01:22:18,913 –> 01:22:19,396
job.

1334
01:22:23,368 –> 01:22:23,481
Yep.

1335
01:22:30,245 –> 01:22:33,343
Yeah, here we go. So I want to close with this because there’s another point

1336
01:22:33,343 –> 01:22:37,122
I want to make. This applies directly to leadership in what you’re talking

1337
01:22:37,122 –> 01:22:40,144
about here. This is deep in— oh,

1338
01:22:42,239 –> 01:22:46,010
deep into— and I’ve marked this book

1339
01:22:46,010 –> 01:22:49,159
up. So, you know, it’s because there’s all kinds of stuff in here. I might

1340
01:22:49,159 –> 01:22:52,951
actually use it for some future training that I might wind up— that I am

1341
01:22:52,951 –> 01:22:56,694
going to wind up doing because there’s just so much good stuff in this book.

1342
01:22:58,970 –> 01:23:02,546
So he’s talking about engaging with the fire attack of the

1343
01:23:02,691 –> 01:23:06,477
Romanian artillery the night of August 8th and 9th.

1344
01:23:06,719 –> 01:23:10,096
Right. And he,

1345
01:23:10,851 –> 01:23:14,595
he makes a number of different points about

1346
01:23:16,555 –> 01:23:20,244
the benefits of telephone lines and of technology and how that was really helpful for

1347
01:23:20,358 –> 01:23:23,077
him. But also how,

1348
01:23:24,243 –> 01:23:28,044
how quickly they, they engaged and accurately ascertained the

1349
01:23:28,044 –> 01:23:31,536
strength of the enemy, and how they were able to do that. By the way,

1350
01:23:31,843 –> 01:23:35,512
he, speaking of Rommel being out in it and getting up after it, he went

1351
01:23:35,512 –> 01:23:39,342
out on reconnaissance with his boys, with the people he was leading. You know, he

1352
01:23:39,342 –> 01:23:41,906
didn’t just say, oh, go out and figure it out and then come back and

1353
01:23:41,906 –> 01:23:45,751
report to me. Um, it wasn’t like the, the line of

1354
01:23:45,751 –> 01:23:49,357
the Pink Floyd song, which I always think of World War I with this, forward

1355
01:23:49,357 –> 01:23:52,689
they cried from the rear and the front rank died. He wasn’t doing any of

1356
01:23:52,689 –> 01:23:56,359
that. You know, he was, he was definitely out there. Go ahead. And I have

1357
01:23:56,359 –> 01:23:58,906
a question for you about this, right? Because like one of the things that really

1358
01:23:58,906 –> 01:24:02,432
struck me a lot as I was— because of the, of all the hand

1359
01:24:04,010 –> 01:24:07,512
Yes. Right, which I really appreciated a lot because this would have been a

1360
01:24:07,512 –> 01:24:10,886
slog without those little bitty diagrams that he decided

1361
01:24:11,496 –> 01:24:13,729
to put in there. And I’m curious,

1362
01:24:15,992 –> 01:24:19,616
obviously it’d be super easy to say, well, he’s got to go do

1363
01:24:19,616 –> 01:24:23,449
that because there’s no real proper reconnaissance,

1364
01:24:23,561 –> 01:24:27,209
there’s no drones, there’s no technology, there’s no photographs,

1365
01:24:27,242 –> 01:24:30,548
there’s none of these things. things, right? And I’m curious,

1366
01:24:30,984 –> 01:24:34,330
do you think it was easier to be a better leader

1367
01:24:34,718 –> 01:24:38,482
then? Because you’re not going to get a dossier, you’re

1368
01:24:38,482 –> 01:24:42,202
not going to get a briefing, you’re not going to get 17 cuts of 30

1369
01:24:42,251 –> 01:24:45,841
seconds from each photo from the site before you go do the thing.

1370
01:24:46,343 –> 01:24:50,147
Mm-hmm. Like, you had to, you had to want to go look at

1371
01:24:50,244 –> 01:24:53,238
it yourself. You had to want to go put eyes on the battlefield before you

1372
01:24:53,238 –> 01:24:56,869
lead your men into it, because intelligence was at such a lower level,

1373
01:24:57,142 –> 01:25:00,702
right? Now, the martial arts guy in me, the guy who reads

1374
01:25:00,702 –> 01:25:04,198
Musashi, wants to call BS on all of that stuff, right? And say that if

1375
01:25:04,198 –> 01:25:07,165
you really want to go do the thing, you go do the thing, right? Right.

1376
01:25:07,646 –> 01:25:11,430
But I’m curious if that stuck out to you as you were reading this,

1377
01:25:11,494 –> 01:25:15,247
that like, it’s maybe easier to fall into some of these traps because there is

1378
01:25:15,279 –> 01:25:18,968
so much intel, but we’re still not boots on the

1379
01:25:18,968 –> 01:25:21,316
ground, which is a military term. I on the scene?

1380
01:25:24,177 –> 01:25:27,986
Well, I’ll answer that by saying that’s battle reconnaissance. I want to

1381
01:25:27,986 –> 01:25:31,393
quote from this. Sharp observation of the hostile territory yielded

1382
01:25:31,489 –> 01:25:35,171
excellent results during the night of August 10th and in the first hours of the

1383
01:25:35,171 –> 01:25:38,934
morning. The forward hostile installments and the behavior of the garrisons were

1384
01:25:39,047 –> 01:25:42,768
accurately ascertained. Love that. Scout

1385
01:25:42,768 –> 01:25:46,386
squads were not sent out by us in order not to arouse the enemy and

1386
01:25:46,386 –> 01:25:49,975
make him curious as to our attack preparations. The enemy,

1387
01:25:50,396 –> 01:25:54,090
however, and I double underline this, committed the great mistake of not

1388
01:25:54,139 –> 01:25:57,622
surveying the terrain in front of his position, and in fact behaved in a

1389
01:25:57,638 –> 01:26:00,919
most unwarlike manner. Visible sentries,

1390
01:26:01,033 –> 01:26:04,492
garrisons outside of their shelters. Thus our surprise

1391
01:26:04,541 –> 01:26:07,476
attack struck him like a thunderbolt.

1392
01:26:10,410 –> 01:26:13,639
Technology has convinced us that we don’t need to do this.

1393
01:26:15,436 –> 01:26:19,034
It has, it has convinced us. So the kid— and I’m not

1394
01:26:19,034 –> 01:26:21,588
knocking this kid— the kid who grew up playing

1395
01:26:23,049 –> 01:26:25,812
Grand Theft Auto 1 through 5— there will never be a Grand Theft Auto 6,

1396
01:26:25,828 –> 01:26:29,650
don’t worry kids, it’ll never happen— the kid who grew up playing Grand Theft Auto

1397
01:26:29,650 –> 01:26:33,457
1 through 5 and SOCOM

1398
01:26:34,132 –> 01:26:37,135
and all of these other wonderful video games, who is now

1399
01:26:38,484 –> 01:26:42,101
inside of a Navy ship ship off the coast of the Persian

1400
01:26:42,101 –> 01:26:45,352
Gulf driving a drone. By the way, we’re now 2

1401
01:26:45,401 –> 01:26:48,491
generations into this now. Driving a drone,

1402
01:26:50,336 –> 01:26:54,132
by the way, driving a drone into the Ukraine to help the Ukrainians against

1403
01:26:54,132 –> 01:26:57,541
the Russians, by the way, just want to point that out.

1404
01:26:58,740 –> 01:27:02,531
Sitting in that ship in the Persian Gulf or sitting in

1405
01:27:02,563 –> 01:27:06,387
that ship off the coast of Venezuela, like when we turned the lights off

1406
01:27:06,596 –> 01:27:10,236
and then went in and got Maduro earlier this year. Okay,

1407
01:27:10,317 –> 01:27:13,175
we turn off lights in entire cities. Just think about that for a minute. Rommel

1408
01:27:13,191 –> 01:27:16,548
would have killed for that. Please, he would have killed for that technology.

1409
01:27:17,223 –> 01:27:20,788
But that technology has convinced us, and even the CIA has noted this,

1410
01:27:21,238 –> 01:27:24,547
over the last couple of generations, from the millennial generation sort of moving down,

1411
01:27:25,414 –> 01:27:28,932
the CIA is less and less able to recruit people who actually want to go

1412
01:27:29,012 –> 01:27:32,658
out and do what used to be called human intelligence. You know,

1413
01:27:33,027 –> 01:27:35,870
where you show up in a place, you give a person a cigarette, and you

1414
01:27:35,870 –> 01:27:39,513
have a conversation with them. You know, sales. They are less and

1415
01:27:39,529 –> 01:27:42,720
less able to recruit individuals who are comfortable doing that because

1416
01:27:42,817 –> 01:27:46,649
technology has convinced people— this started with the internet, by the way, and went to

1417
01:27:46,665 –> 01:27:50,225
scale now with drones and reconnaissance— that they don’t need to do that.

1418
01:27:50,915 –> 01:27:54,427
And yet the best military,

1419
01:27:55,405 –> 01:27:59,238
uh, tactics are executed by strategies

1420
01:27:59,254 –> 01:28:03,102
that involve human intelligence. And the example that proves the rule— I’ve mentioned

1421
01:28:03,102 –> 01:28:04,594
this on this podcast before—

1422
01:28:06,964 –> 01:28:10,792
Mossad. The Israeli Mossad had a

1423
01:28:10,792 –> 01:28:14,636
listening station that helped turn out the lights in Tehran

1424
01:28:15,888 –> 01:28:19,616
before the Americans bombed the Iranians like 8

1425
01:28:19,728 –> 01:28:23,167
months ago. And by the way, they had a listening

1426
01:28:23,215 –> 01:28:26,961
station in Tehran running human intelligence for the last 5

1427
01:28:26,961 –> 01:28:30,722
years that the Iranians didn’t even know about, right next to

1428
01:28:30,738 –> 01:28:32,410
where the Republican Guard headquarters

1429
01:28:36,288 –> 01:28:39,686
world. Nothing beats human intelligence. Nothing beats getting out of the

1430
01:28:39,686 –> 01:28:43,228
office, getting in there with your people, figuring out

1431
01:28:43,228 –> 01:28:46,904
exactly what it is that they need, learning their

1432
01:28:47,018 –> 01:28:50,808
jobs, not to do them, but to know what the correct questions

1433
01:28:50,905 –> 01:28:54,729
are to ask. Mm-hmm. And then going out and, dare I

1434
01:28:54,777 –> 01:28:58,553
say, learning your opposition, going out and actually buying your opposition’s

1435
01:28:58,553 –> 01:29:01,607
product and testing it, not having your people test it and come back and tell

1436
01:29:01,725 –> 01:29:05,514
you. You go out and buy it and test it. You go out and figure

1437
01:29:05,514 –> 01:29:08,444
it out. Oh, well, I’m too busy. Well, okay. Yeah.

1438
01:29:10,038 –> 01:29:13,275
Okay. So for me, I come down just like you do. I come down on

1439
01:29:13,275 –> 01:29:16,861
the side of human intelligence. I think the technology has fooled us. And by the

1440
01:29:16,861 –> 01:29:20,028
way, I think AI will allow us to be fooled at scale, particularly with surveillance

1441
01:29:20,028 –> 01:29:23,635
and flock cameras and things like that. I don’t know. The human beings on the

1442
01:29:23,635 –> 01:29:26,905
ground always beat the tech. Always. 100%, man.

1443
01:29:27,340 –> 01:29:27,807
Like, um,

1444
01:29:32,290 –> 01:29:36,097
One of the old martial arts lines that

1445
01:29:36,097 –> 01:29:39,147
my kung fu teacher would talk about all this, all the time, is that he

1446
01:29:39,147 –> 01:29:42,906
would say the master would find greatness in the chores that the beginner wants to

1447
01:29:42,906 –> 01:29:46,755
avoid. Hmm. So, so essentially he’d be like,

1448
01:29:46,771 –> 01:29:50,618
you know, like you can find your next level scrubbing pots and

1449
01:29:50,618 –> 01:29:54,302
pans, but most people are gonna do everything they

1450
01:29:54,351 –> 01:29:57,735
can to like not not scrub pots and pans, right? He talked about chop wood,

1451
01:29:57,751 –> 01:30:01,012
carry water. So then fast forward, I’m starting to read philosophy and more things,

1452
01:30:01,606 –> 01:30:05,075
and I find this chop wood, carry water idea in the Buddhist kind of lane

1453
01:30:05,075 –> 01:30:08,850
and everything. And now it’s a thing that I talk about with my clients, right?

1454
01:30:08,898 –> 01:30:12,592
Like, before we’re gonna go build some big huge 5,000 cold

1455
01:30:12,592 –> 01:30:15,676
email thing a day and everything, shouldn’t we be able to pick up the phone?

1456
01:30:15,836 –> 01:30:19,659
Mm-hmm. Have one conversation. Let’s

1457
01:30:19,659 –> 01:30:23,048
validate the problem state. that we think is so

1458
01:30:23,208 –> 01:30:26,966
pressing that everyone’s going to be so excited to come to

1459
01:30:27,047 –> 01:30:30,499
us because we’re going to change the world on this thing. And they’re like, can

1460
01:30:30,499 –> 01:30:34,145
you even validate that people are feeling the thing that you think is so

1461
01:30:34,289 –> 01:30:37,405
pressing? Like, and you don’t want to.

1462
01:30:38,144 –> 01:30:41,356
I get it because you’re in a hurry, you’re fearful of rejection. And these are

1463
01:30:41,356 –> 01:30:44,776
all big blind spots because I can’t tell you how many people, Hasan, are like,

1464
01:30:44,792 –> 01:30:48,213
well, Jon, I’m only interested in scalable ideas.

1465
01:30:49,369 –> 01:30:53,124
Like, if I had a dollar for every person that has said

1466
01:30:53,156 –> 01:30:56,655
that to me because they’re scared and they’re fighting rejection,

1467
01:30:56,992 –> 01:31:00,330
right? And they’re not even aware that they’re hiding from it. They’re fearful of it.

1468
01:31:00,378 –> 01:31:04,070
And it’s fueling all of these things, right? Like, I

1469
01:31:04,134 –> 01:31:07,761
wouldn’t need to run a business anymore. Like, years and years of

1470
01:31:07,761 –> 01:31:10,569
people telling me this thing. And I’m kind of like, okay, like,

1471
01:31:11,388 –> 01:31:15,208
I’m not coming on to work with you when you’re so

1472
01:31:15,208 –> 01:31:18,084
fearful of this thing. I’m definitely not bringing you another human human

1473
01:31:19,159 –> 01:31:21,815
that you think is gonna be able to do this job when you have not

1474
01:31:21,864 –> 01:31:25,635
even tested the waters for yourself? So the— I’ll close with

1475
01:31:25,667 –> 01:31:28,987
this idea because we’re, we’re around the corner.

1476
01:31:29,796 –> 01:31:33,374
Um, the venture capitalist Peter

1477
01:31:33,374 –> 01:31:36,311
Thiel, who gets a lot of run,

1478
01:31:37,150 –> 01:31:40,733
um, for a whole variety of reasons, some of it well deserved. Um,

1479
01:31:41,185 –> 01:31:44,967
I, I read his book and actually facilitated his book, um, with startups, Zero to

1480
01:31:45,709 –> 01:31:49,158
Or Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future from his Stanford

1481
01:31:49,190 –> 01:31:52,881
lectures, right? I wanted the— one of the quotes in there, and

1482
01:31:52,881 –> 01:31:56,688
it’s absolutely the truth. This is one of those perhaps the

1483
01:31:56,688 –> 01:32:00,096
wrong clock shows the right time at least twice a day kind of things, right?

1484
01:32:00,177 –> 01:32:02,858
Mm-hmm. He says, brilliant thinking is rare,

1485
01:32:04,227 –> 01:32:06,564
but courage has always been in even shorter supply.

1486
01:32:09,699 –> 01:32:13,546
And we exist in a time— I’m having a conversation with— it’s interesting— with

1487
01:32:13,546 –> 01:32:14,975
another person in another project that I’m on about cowardice.

1488
01:32:17,364 –> 01:32:21,041
Right? I wrote a whole blog post about this. I think we are

1489
01:32:21,041 –> 01:32:23,474
coming out of a time of intense

1490
01:32:25,126 –> 01:32:28,356
technologically enabled— I’m going to use the

1491
01:32:28,908 –> 01:32:32,380
Freudian term— technologically enabled cowardice.

1492
01:32:34,694 –> 01:32:38,246
And I’m not talking about

1493
01:32:38,246 –> 01:32:41,951
cowardice in terms of military bravery or

1494
01:32:41,951 –> 01:32:44,664
running into a burning building. That’s not the kind of cowardice I’m talking about. about.

1495
01:32:45,210 –> 01:32:48,936
I’m not talking about it in opposition to that. I’m talking about cowardice in terms

1496
01:32:49,032 –> 01:32:52,533
of, I will only do the thing that supports the status quo because that’s what

1497
01:32:52,533 –> 01:32:55,086
I’m paid for, and then I’m going to go home. And we see this at

1498
01:32:55,215 –> 01:32:58,699
all levels in our society and culture, and we see this at all levels in

1499
01:32:58,699 –> 01:33:01,943
our business. Now, we, we can see it in

1500
01:33:02,136 –> 01:33:05,492
others, but it’s really hard to

1501
01:33:05,508 –> 01:33:09,266
recognize the cowardice in ourselves. So you use the

1502
01:33:09,266 –> 01:33:11,723
word fear. I’m going to use the word cowardice.

1503
01:33:13,281 –> 01:33:16,452
And we look for the supports for our cowardice

1504
01:33:17,000 –> 01:33:20,397
because if we were to put

1505
01:33:20,526 –> 01:33:24,354
down, if we were to put down our cowardice and actually make a courageous

1506
01:33:24,354 –> 01:33:27,446
decision, like to leave, such as to leave the office

1507
01:33:28,369 –> 01:33:30,894
and go out and be in the field and talk to people,

1508
01:33:32,267 –> 01:33:35,884
we might have to upend the status quo, which might threaten our paychecks,

1509
01:33:36,780 –> 01:33:40,588
which might threaten our mortgage, which might threaten our kids getting into a school

1510
01:33:40,588 –> 01:33:44,033
that we really like. And we don’t want to

1511
01:33:44,081 –> 01:33:47,872
put— talk about dominoes. We don’t want to knock down that first

1512
01:33:47,872 –> 01:33:51,439
domino because there’s a bunch of other dominoes that will fall

1513
01:33:51,615 –> 01:33:55,455
after that. And we are unwilling to live with the consequences

1514
01:33:55,567 –> 01:33:59,149
of courage. But we’re plenty willing to live with,

1515
01:33:59,888 –> 01:34:03,326
and we are supported in, I believe, society and culturally at many levels.

1516
01:34:04,001 –> 01:34:07,727
We’re plenty willing to live with the consequences of cowardice because they

1517
01:34:07,727 –> 01:34:09,157
don’t show up immediately.

1518
01:34:11,050 –> 01:34:14,660
Whereas we are afraid, to your point, that the

1519
01:34:14,660 –> 01:34:18,413
consequences of courage will show up immediately. And

1520
01:34:18,526 –> 01:34:21,397
the thing that I would say is that they— the consequences of courage and the

1521
01:34:21,397 –> 01:34:24,766
consequences of cowardice both show up at the

1522
01:34:24,766 –> 01:34:28,391
exact same time down the line. You just have to—

1523
01:34:28,696 –> 01:34:32,081
you have to pick which lane you’re going to walk in consciously and intentionally,

1524
01:34:32,161 –> 01:34:34,776
pick which lane you’re going to walk in. And that’s what you can get. One

1525
01:34:34,776 –> 01:34:37,676
of the things you can get from Rommel But you can also get it from

1526
01:34:37,676 –> 01:34:40,576
a bunch of other books too. Yeah.

1527
01:34:44,136 –> 01:34:47,938
With that, I would recommend going out and picking up

1528
01:34:48,147 –> 01:34:51,948
Infantry Attacks. Um, the, um, by the way,

1529
01:34:51,964 –> 01:34:55,505
the, the one of the things I will say this as a last note, one

1530
01:34:55,505 –> 01:34:59,342
of the things that was in the introduction, I freaking love this, um, the publisher’s

1531
01:34:59,342 –> 01:35:03,030
note from the original, um, Oh, gosh. From the original,

1532
01:35:03,030 –> 01:35:06,530
the original version that we’re reading here by Lee Allen. He writes— he wrote this

1533
01:35:06,530 –> 01:35:07,900
publisher’s note.

1534
01:35:10,030 –> 01:35:13,510
Let’s see. Oh, here we go. Attack is a classic of

1535
01:35:13,510 –> 01:35:17,050
military literature, first published in Germany in 1937 under the title

1536
01:35:17,050 –> 01:35:20,730
Infanterie greift an. It became a great success before World War II

1537
01:35:20,730 –> 01:35:23,690
and played a major role in launching Rommel on the road to fame. We’ve mentioned

1538
01:35:23,690 –> 01:35:27,530
that the US Army translated the book in 1943, and

1539
01:35:27,530 –> 01:35:31,074
General George Patton became familiar with it. Um, we’ve also

1540
01:35:31,122 –> 01:35:34,893
talked about that. Today, 35 years

1541
01:35:34,893 –> 01:35:37,814
after its initial publication in the United States, the book is mentioned frequently as a

1542
01:35:37,814 –> 01:35:41,249
magnificent account of imaginative and successful combat

1543
01:35:41,249 –> 01:35:45,084
leadership. This is the line that jumps out to me. Copies

1544
01:35:45,084 –> 01:35:48,856
of the wartime English edition are among the most valued works in private

1545
01:35:48,856 –> 01:35:52,290
collections. All copies in the Library of

1546
01:35:52,323 –> 01:35:56,089
Congress and in the Army Library of the Pentagon Have,

1547
01:35:56,138 –> 01:35:59,765
however, mysteriously disappeared.

1548
01:36:08,603 –> 01:36:12,091
If it’s good enough for the Pentagon to basically just

1549
01:36:13,124 –> 01:36:16,563
draw a black marker through it so you can’t read

1550
01:36:17,420 –> 01:36:19,316
it, it’s good enough for you to pick up.

1551
01:36:22,256 –> 01:36:25,893
And of course, now you can’t. You can go out and pick up Infantry

1552
01:36:25,893 –> 01:36:29,678
Attacks by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Underline

1553
01:36:29,678 –> 01:36:33,400
the observations, take what you can from it, think about how it applies

1554
01:36:33,497 –> 01:36:35,870
to your business, and think about the conversation that we’ve had today.

1555
01:36:37,620 –> 01:36:41,088
I want to thank my friend John Hill for coming on today, having a

1556
01:36:41,088 –> 01:36:44,798
robust conversation with me. Always a pleasure. Thank you, man. It’s

1557
01:36:44,798 –> 01:36:48,400
always a blast. And with that, well, we’re out.