Tales of Leadership
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Tales of Leadership
Ep 92 Tales of Leadership with Dave Braun
Dr. Dave Braun is the co-founder and president of Oola. With a deep-rooted commitment to empowering individuals to find balance and transform their lives, Dr. Dave Braun has spent over a decade guiding people towards holistic well-being. As President, he plays a pivotal role in shaping Oola’s strategic direction, leading the team in creating science-based products and transformative programs that promote life balance.
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You're listening to the Tells the Leadership podcast. This podcast is for leaders at any phase on their leadership journey to become a more purposeful and accountable leader what I like to call a pal. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership.
Speaker 2:All right team. Welcome back to the Tells the Leadership podcast. I am your host, josh McMillian. I'm an active duty Army officer, I'm an Army leadership coach and I am the founder of McMillian Leadership Coaching, and I am on a mission to create a better leader and to grow and become a better leader what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader and my vision is clear I want to impact 1 million lives in the next 10 years by promoting transformational stories and skills, and on today's episode, we are in for a great one. I am going to be bringing on a transformational leader Bottom line.
Speaker 2:Dr David Braun is a purposeful, accountable leader. He is the co-founder and the president of ULA, with a deep rooted commitment to empowering individuals to find balance and transform their lives. Dr David Braun has spent over a decade guiding people towards holistic well-being. As the president, he plays a pivotal role in shaping the companyLA as strategic decisions and leading the team in creative, science-based products and transforming programs that promote life balance. I'm really excited because this is one of the turning points within my life that set me on the path to being a transformational servant leader, and Dr Braun's story is just absolutely incredible and, as always, team stay at the very end and I'll provide you the top three takeaways, but let's go ahead and bring on Dr David Braun.
Speaker 2:Dave, welcome to the Tells the Leadership podcast, brother. How are you doing? Awesome man. Thanks for having me, brother. Yeah, so I'm always humbled to have the opportunity to talk to someone, especially someone who's kind of had a very unique journey. And I know you from the past, just getting involved with your company, ula, so I know that you have a deep purpose. I read through your book, ula, how to Find Balance in an Unbalanced World, and it's something that I've used personally being in the military, to kind of help me get through some dark times and build balance in my life. So I'm excited just to pick your brain for an hour. I got you for an hour, so we're going to dive deep into it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, dude, I can. The one thing I want to say, man, is when you reach out to me super honored to be on the podcast, but I started checking you out. I've known you from the past, but I started checking you out, Super proud of you, what you're doing with this podcast you have great episodes on here, man, about anybody who's working on being a leader. Every time at the gym, man, you've been in my ear lately. I appreciate you and what you're doing in the world as well.
Speaker 2:Dude, I love that. That kind of makes my day. Thank you, let's just start off from just provide an overview to the listeners of who you are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually started. I mean, if I go way back to where the journey began in 1997, I met a guy named Dr Troy Amdahl. He's a coauthor of the book and he's the one who first really started teaching me about living my life differently and living my life by balancing my life in seven key areas. And when I did that in my early or late twenties, early thirts, I found a lot of success. Dr Troy moved overseas to the Middle East. I lost connection with him.
Speaker 3:I drifted from these principles about balancing my life in seven key areas 2007, 2008,. I found myself living in a motel on the bad side of town, going through a bankruptcy, divorce, losing everything my business, everything and, prior to this, being very successful in all areas of my life. And I reached out to Dr Troy he was 42 and retired at the time and married to his high school sweetheart, running Ironman, like living his life and I'm living in a motel on the bad side of town. And he said you have to get back to these principles of ULA. And I said if I get back to these principles and they work, like, this is like a prayer for me. I'm like man. If this works for me, god, we're going to share this with the world and 2012,. Life is Better.
Speaker 3:I wrote the first book with Dr Troy thinking it would sell about 50 copies, and it just took off and got a publishing deal. A couple of years after we self-published. We sold 100,000 books, I think, just self-published and then it went to a publisher. Three books later, a million people following ULA. Now we drive a 1970s weed bus Vita bus across the country.
Speaker 2:That's what we do for a job. It's crazy man and you have probably seven. How many layers of stickers do you have on that bus? What do you guess? What do you guess? I would say seven, just because I know that seven's like that number within ULA. So that's my guess.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just kind of for the listeners to understand this is. Ula is about balancing life in seven key areas fitness, finance, family field, faith, friends and fun. We have this event called ULA Palooza, where people declare their goals in these seven areas, but then they pick one area like man, my family, life needs work, or my fitness, or whatever it is and they write it on a sticker and declare it. Well, Troy had this idea of grabbing a 1970s VW bus and driving it literally across the country to every book, signing TV, radio, whatever. And we're going to let people write on a sticker what they're going to change in life, lose a hundred pounds, get out of this toxic marriage or heal my marriage, whatever. Put on the side of that bus and these little stickers. It took us a long time to cover up one layer, but right now it's 43 layers, bud, 43 layers. You can barely open the doors.
Speaker 2:So that is incredible layers. Yeah, so it's. It's basically scratch proof. At this point you can market that, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Whenever we go to like a big event, we just say we're getting another coat of paint, you know. So it's incredible. It's a beautiful looking bus.
Speaker 2:So one question with a stickers, cause I'm just curious is there one that is on there that just sticks out that is more impactful than the rest?
Speaker 3:From a standpoint of the categories, uh, by far the most. The majority of stickers on the bus are fitness and finance. That's what people are struggling with the most, probably followed up by family. Um, but man, there's been some impactful stickers on that bus, one of the one of the stories I this is where it got real for us. So Troy's retired. We write the book together. He wants to stay in retirement. The book takes off. I beg him to come out of retirement. He comes out of retirement and we decide we're just going to go on this epic two-dude journey.
Speaker 3:It's called One Bus, two Guys, 50 States, a Million Dreams and the first trip, the first tour. We start in Coronado Island, in San Diego, and we take our two boys with us and we're just driving up the PCH. We're going to go from Coronado Island to San Francisco. It was the first tour and we started collecting dreams. At donut shops and coffee shops and parks and wherever we were we collected dreams. People come up up to the bus all the time Like what is this? And we're like, hey, we're collecting dreams. You're designed for greatness. You're designed by God for this amazing thing in life, like what is holding you back? And people will say, like you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 3:And we were driving up the PCH and the ocean was out the left-hand side of the bus and our boys were getting antsy after about five, six hours of just no air, no heat, 50 miles an hour up the PCH, and they wanted to go swimming. So it was sunset. We pulled over into this park. It was amazing and our boys went out and they jumped into the ocean and we're just hanging out and we noticed this couple husband, wife, two kids taking pictures with a professional photographer on the beach right at sunset, like gorgeous waves coming in Pacific ocean. The background is incredible.
Speaker 3:And they came up to the bus and they're obviously like what everybody says, like what are you guys doing at this point? You know, it looked like a chicken pox, like stickers all over first layer, and we said we're just collecting dreams. You know, across the country, we're going to go across the country, we just started and we're just going to collect people's dreams and reconnect them with that dream that they had for their life. And they all grabbed their stickers and they all wrote their stickers. She grabbed a family sticker. She went to the back of the bus, put the sticker on, came around, took a picture with us, said thank you, you know, high five, all that stuff. Kids got their dreams on the bus and then, as soon as they left, what we did is we went to the back of the bus to read the stickers. Like we want to know we're so early in the process, like what are people's dreams? So went to the back of the bus and she had a family sticker and she wrote to survive stage four cancer, long enough to see my daughters become women, wow. And that to me was the first moment the tour got real. And it was real early first tour where it's like, okay, we're going to go across the country, we're going to see stuff, we're going to hear stuff and it's going to be, it's going to. It's the most impactful thing someone could ever do is just slow down, talk to people about their dreams and goals and just say you're designed for greatness, what do you want to do with your life? And, josh, it's just been story after story after story after story, and one of the one of the cool parts for me is literally about that, I think.
Speaker 3:The next day we were close to San Francisco and we met a guy at a gas station. He goes what are you guys doing? He has he had a Yankee hat on backwards. Just as big buff dude. He's like what are you guys doing? You know, he's like this big guy. And we're like, hey, we're collecting dreams, and what's your dream? And he grabbed a.
Speaker 3:And then we drove off and all of a sudden we saw this pickup truck just like barreling down behind us, honking, flashing his lights. We're like, okay, we're going to get murdered. We pull over. And this guy pulls up with his truck. He comes out, same Yankee hat guy. I'm like, oh, I remember this guy from the gas station. He comes up and he said, hey, can I change my dream? I'm like, yeah, and he grabbed a family, a better dad for my daughter, and he was crying when he wrote it. And I'm like that is what this is about. You know, we, we have this. You know this superficial layer of life and when we get deep on what we really want for our dreams, it really that bus has a tendency to just bring that out of people. I said, hey, I'm going to do something significant with my life.
Speaker 2:I remember reading through your book and your nephew his name was Jared I want to make sure I don't get that wrong Was it Jared? Yep, I remember reading that and then how you talked of being grateful and and having faith like the true definition of of being grateful and having faith. And, like you know, I'm in the military. I've been in the combat arms most of my life. I work within a SOCOM unit right now, so it gets about as alpha as it can get right.
Speaker 2:When I was in company command, I lost two soldiers. Both were to like preventable situations in my eyes, something that I could have prevented, and I thought I was cursed throughout that entire time. This is before I kind of knew ULA, and then I started reading your book and then, when I got to that chapter dude, I just like broke down. And then I started reading your book and then, when I got to that chapter dude, I just like broke down and I really started thinking about being grateful and having faith. Okay, well, if I'm going to do that, then I need to go to some of my darkest memories and figure out how I can be grateful and have faith in that time and that allowed me to really be full transparency.
Speaker 2:Dude like, get my mission that I'm on now of trying to impact 1 million leaders by showing them hey, you can use transformational skills and you can be a great leader and you can inspire others to be a more authentic version of themselves and have balance in your life doing so. It really started at that moment Like that was the moment for me where I was able to shift my mindset of stop hunting the bad and start looking for the good. When I asked that right question of like how can I be grateful and how can I have faith in a terrible time? So I want to say thank you for that yeah, bro, um, that means a lot.
Speaker 3:I don't want to get, I don't want to get emotional in the first 10 minutes of this show, but also like just looking at you and behind you seeing the ax and the warrior helmets and all that, like that was Jared. That was my nephew Jared. He was 16 and I know he was a young boy, but he was a, he was a warrior. I mean, he was six, six foot shredded football player. He was going to go play college ball. He was a stud. I mean he was a man. He grew up on a farm, hunted elk. I mean, like you know, we grew up, we grew up on a farm and and he was just, he was just a stud dude and at 16 years old gets diagnosed with bone cancer and, long story short, passes away at 18 when all of his buddies were playing college ball. He's at the hospital dying after two years of struggling with cancer is.
Speaker 3:We found a letter that he wrote when he pretty much knew that he was going to pass away and in that letter he wrote I'm grateful that God chose me for cancer, not my mom and dad. I'm grateful that God chose me for cancer and not my brothers or my sister. I'm grateful that God chose me for cancer, not my cousins, which are my kids. And then he said I'm grateful that God chose me for cancer to teach others how to be strong. And I'm like man, if an 18 year old kid can literally be going through I mean at 18, if I had to miss a football game, I'd have been devastated, or a wrestling match or something devastated.
Speaker 3:He missed two years of school pretty much, and he knew he was losing his life. And he said I'm grateful, man, because I got to teach people how to be strong while my time on this planet and uh, and I'm I'm so honored I get to carry his story forward in the first book. And then obviously it's, we wrote it in the first book and it just became part of ULA that everybody, everybody who follows ULA, knows that story, um, and we've been able to have his legacy live on through that book and it's an incredible story. But you're so right, man, and we just go through some tough stuff and we try to bury it a lot, and how we teach ULA is, or how we teach gratitude is. You know what happens in your, what happened for you, josh, isn't right, I mean, it's wrong, it's not good, it's not great, but there's lessons in it. How can you be grateful for what you learned in it? And that's really what gets people to kind of turn the corner with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no spot on is being able to look into that and then find the lessons that you can take and just move forward with so kind of starting off on your leadership journey. I know you have a medical background. That's how you worked with Troy when you first started learning this ULA framework. What were some of the challenges that you came up against? Like all right, so this dude obviously has this stuff together. Troy, how am I going to take this framework and apply it to my life? It's like I will kind of go from the mindset of like this isn't going to work for me. What was your mindset of how you started to adapt and use that framework and then how? How did it change your life?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was bought in super quick because I knew Troy for two years. So I worked with Troy for two years while I was going through my residency year and a half going through my residency program with him, and he invited me to Vegas after my graduation, got my doctorate degree and he invites me to Vegas and I'm thinking we're going to go celebrate my degree and I found myself sitting on the floor at the hard rock hotel for three days literally working on goal setting. I thought this is the weirdest thing ever.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Three by five note cards and they were in seven stacks and it was like seven key areas of life. I love it. And Troy told me on the taxi ride over. He said dude, you are going to crush business and money. You're wired to be a worker like farm kid, like you're going to do that, but you can't make money, build a business and lose your family and get out of shape and not take care of your mind and your body and lose your faith, walk all of that. So he said what we're going to do.
Speaker 3:There's a group of guys. We hang out every year at the beginning of December and we hang out at the hard rock in Vegas and we literally sit down and we say where are we in these seven key areas? Where are we going to go? And then, how are we going? These seven key areas, where are we gonna go? And then how are we gonna get there? We hold each other accountable and that to me, I was bought in from day one.
Speaker 3:So I think for some people it's a little harder to look at life in these seven key areas for the first time. But I started looking at my life like that from day one and I was no, looking back, and I, I was successful in all seven areas really quick, within a couple years. I was like, wow, I can't believe this is my life, yeah. And then I got. I just straight up, like just to be super transparent, I just got cocky with it like unhumble, uh, had dough, had big house cars or whatever, and I way overextended myself.
Speaker 3:Troy moved overseas at the time. I completely lost touch with him as a buddy. Um, and the other three guys actually moved over to united arab emirates and I was by myself and I'm like, yeah, who cares? I mean, I got this man, I got a you know crush of my career, big house, all that stuff, and I I just lost it over. You know, by 2007, 2008, I was living in motel on the bad side of town, type of story, like country music song and uh, yeah, it's just once you. It's just really truly what I look back, if I could say one, it's just living with complete intention and complete self-awareness of exactly where you want your life to go and how you're going to make that happen.
Speaker 2:The one word that I really heard there that has helped me so much is accountability. You have that group of men that you go in a Hard Rock Hotel hotel and you probably still have that inner accountability section of people that keep you intentional towards your dreams. And I have a group of of men, like-minded individuals, that I meet with. They're all military active duty still every other Sunday and we go through literally this framework. We call ourselves shields of freedom, but we go through this type of of framework and one of my homework assignments was breaking down these seven areas of life. But what does it mean to us like in terms of affirmation? What does finance truly mean to me? What does family truly mean to me? And and when you have that group that keeps you accountable, you, I think you have that intrinsic motivation.
Speaker 2:It's hard to do this on your own unless you are are a Jocko Wellington right and just have that extreme level of discipline. But I think that that was at least just hearing your story and knowing it through me. That's what really helps me keep this framework with intention, because one of the metaphors that you use and that I absolutely love is the concept of spinning plates, of that maybe one area of your life is in perfect balance but another area of your life will just say your family is not. You may be crushing it in your field, and this has happened to me before but your family's just completely off kilter. You need to switch from that season of life to this season of life and be intentional with it, and if you have an accountability group that can kind of help you realize that you can see those blind spots before they turn into a blocker.
Speaker 3:I think. I think that's so key man, I think you know you take Jocko or Goggins, or who doesn't want that discipline, that integrity itself, I think and I think we have that in certain areas of life. Like there's no one that's going to say Goggins doesn't have integrity with his fitness or being able to push through pain to get his workouts in, but then you have to say, like in ULA, we say that's great, but but you have to be integrity in all seven areas. And that's where I think you need a team, because we're naturally driven Every single person is naturally driven to do something crush fitness, work on our faith, work on our family life, hang out with buddies, crush a business, whatever. But it's really rare. I personally haven't met anybody that can do all seven areas, spin all seven plates, like you're talking about, without a team that can guide them, without a team that can say hey, man, you're doing great in your business, but you're getting a little soft. Man, you got to hit the gym. Or man, you're working in the gym, but are you spending time with your family or with your faith walk, or are you having fun in life, or and that's where I think the accountability is key.
Speaker 3:So in ULA we talk about integrity and discipline. Those are, those are straight up what are called ULA accelerators. They're going to get you being integrity with yourself, integrity with others, being in discipline of your goals and dreams, but then having an accountability team really helps you keep on track. So we have a group of guys same way, and I'm coming up on 2024 here. So we're going to be like hey, here are my dreams, here's my goals for 2024. And they're going to hold me accountable. Man, they're going to, they're going to trust me, they're going to hold me accountable to make sure that happens.
Speaker 2:I love that, and you kind of mentioned something ULA Accelerator. So let's, let's dive into that bad boy. So love, gratitude, discipline, integrity, passion, humility and wisdom. How did you, when you were going through this framework, pick those out and be intentional with, with those seven?
Speaker 3:It was. It was actually like so if you go 1997, Troy and I are working as a group of guys, working on balancing our life in these seven key areas. It was always just guys hanging out I mean, when you hang out with your buddies, right, You're just talking about different things and there would be years we would struggle. There would be years we would win, we would hit. You know, we hit. We set three goals in all seven areas. That's 21 goals. That's a lot of big goals and we would hit 19. Next year we'd hit seven.
Speaker 3:And as a group of guys, we just started talking about why, Like, why did you hit 19? Well, I had serious discipline and I was in full integrity. Why did you not hit them? Well, I ran into fear. Or I'm struggling with guilt for my divorce or, um, you know, guilt of something that you went through in the past. Or I'm struggling with straight up flip. I was lazy dude. I'm struggling with laziness, that's my whole thing and that's a blocker. So it was just stuff we had talked about forever. And then, when we sat down to write the book in 2012, uh, we just really laid it out Like, what are the seven most common blockers we've all talked about and what are the seven most common blockers we've all talked about. And what are the seven most common accelerators.
Speaker 2:And that's how that all came about. And those bins, I think, are beautifully categorized. Love is something that, at the essence of how I lead, love is the fundamental bedrock. So I define it kind of really as meekness, because I believe being a strong leader also means that you have to learn to control your emotions, how you communicate, how you actively listen towards other people. But at the end of the day, it's all about love loving the people that you work for, loving yourself, loving the organization and then just loving the mission. And that was the one that always kind of sticks with me. But I'll ask you which one is like, your strength? What's your top accelerator that you kind of always kind of go back to?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm gratitude all the way. Um, I love love is great. Um, I talk about that inside my like family, with my kids and stuff. A lot like love and kindness. Man, that's what we're going to leave on this planet as a family. Like we are going to leave a legacy of love and kindness because I think we need to be kind to people and love people and love ourselves.
Speaker 3:Um, but gratitude a little bit because of jared and also a little bit because the opposite of gratitude is complaining, and nothing drives me more crazy than people complaining, especially like, dude, you know, like you're in the service man, so like what you've done for us that aren't is just incredible. Like I don't think people understand. I've been able to travel with ula around the world like multiple countries, and what we have in the us is just absolutely insane from a standpoint of like I can get up in the morning and do whatever I want to do and I'm in complete control of my life. So there there should be, there should be zero complaining, um, in in most parts of the world, but there should be zero complaining here because it's like, if you go human history from the first human that walked this planet until maybe about 40 years ago. You're just trying to find food and you're trying to stay warm at night and just surviving. That's been the whole million years of evolution. And it's like we legit complain if our latte is not quite right or, you know, if it's a little too hot or cold outside. It's just absolutely absurd.
Speaker 3:So that's probably my thing is just being grateful for all things and just really understanding the blessings that we have, because it is absolutely insane, the blessings that we have and how we get to live our lives. It's absolutely incredible. And you can be, you're going to be challenged, I'm going to be challenged. I've had tons of challenges and my nephew had cancer at 16, 18, 17, 18. And he goes. I can still be grateful for the lessons. So I'm all about that one man. And if you're grateful for everything, you quit complaining, man. You can go a long way in life.
Speaker 2:I love that mindset is that challenge Life is is really an adventure. It's a journey. It's never ending and the one thing that is always guaranteed is life is going to give you obstacles. And in the military we define obstacles in four ways. So it can either block you, it can turn you, it can either fix you or disrupt you. But I've always viewed obstacles as an opportunity to get better, to forge me into a better version of myself. So every obstacle I come on, I'm going to be a better version of myself and then I'm going to go inspire other people. And I always talk about like a sledgehammer mindset Whenever life gives me a challenge, I'm just going to bust through that obstacle and then allow other people to go through the breach with me. But I love that mindset.
Speaker 3:There's. There's a great book you should read. I don't know if you read it, but obstacle is the way. Have you heard of that book? I have, and that's what I think it's called the obstacle is the way, or I think it's called the obstacle is the way. It's a great book. I read it a long time ago. But it's exactly that I. We hit those walls and we turn around.
Speaker 3:but man, those are, those are usually right on the other side of that is the greatest opportunity, you know just break through that that's, that's what God's leading you to hit that wall, and if you can overcome it, you've earned it Like, then you go to the next level. So I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 2:I remember going through your framework. You talk about that 60 seconds of courage, no-transcript anymore. I'm gonna use a bad word Shut up bond. I can go just a little. A little bit further and I wondered if you could walk me through the the.
Speaker 3:ULA blockers. Well, I wish you would have been there this morning. My cold plunge, because I was a complete baby in my mind, man and I was just. I was like, suck it up, man, suck it up, push through. I hate that thing. Um, but I, when I get out of that cold plunge in the morning, I'm always like, all right, if I can do that for three minutes, I can do anything, because it's horrible. But what you're talking about is the blockers. So there's accelerators. So you say this is where I am in my life, this is where I want to go in the seven key areas, and then I'm going to run into blockers and I can embrace accelerators, accelerators, guides who love passion, wisdom, integrity.
Speaker 3:But, you're going to run into blockers fear, guilt, anger, self-sabotage, laziness, envy and focus issues and everybody runs into those and what the? What the courage is is really just it's a three-step process that you can do really quickly. It's acknowledging that I'm running into fear or I'm running into laziness, or I'm running into self-sabotage or focus issues. It's setting its and it's called ready, set, go. And it's setting it in its place of just saying, okay, if I give into this fear, what does my life look like on the other end of this?
Speaker 3:But if I break through this fear and I jump on live or I jump on this podcast or I jump on stage or I ask that girl out or whatever it is, if I break through that, what does my life potentially look like on the other side? And it's just having that crazy level of courage to do that and it's a great tool just ready, set, go. So anytime you run into like anything that's holding you back from your goals or dreams, you're like ready, set, go ready. Just call it out, set, set in its place, set this blocker in its place, look at it and say what does it look like if I break through, what does it look like if I give in and then just go make it happen, and it helps so much just to take that action.
Speaker 2:I have to ask that that cold plunges that you do what, uh what? What do you jump into? Is it just like a bucket that you got full of ice, or do you got like one of those fancy ones that you can set?
Speaker 3:No, I actually last year, um, I got a, just a straight up tub, uh, like a cow, a cow tank, right, yeah, metal cow tank. Metal and ice in the winter is not great. I live in Boise, Idaho. I live in the foothills. It's beautiful up here and right around December I take it out and I cold plunge until about March, april. And last year I said, okay, if I do this every day that I can, while it's cold outside, for two years I'm going to buy the fancy tub. But I didn't want to buy a fancy tub and then never use it. So I got like a little I don't know $300 tub and it's a it's a metal calf tank really. And I just I committed last year to 90 days, um, and I never missed a day that I wasn't home. And, uh, I just started two days ago and I hate every minute of it, but I do get used to it after a while.
Speaker 3:And I think there's a couple of things. Obviously there's tons of physical benefit, right, the inflammatory effects, all that stuff. You know it's great, but to me it's a mindset thing. It's an endorphin release, for sure, but it's also, if I can force myself, break ice, literally go out and break ice with a hammer, force myself to sit For three minutes. When I get out, I'm like there's nothing that I can't get through today, you know. It's just like let's do this.
Speaker 2:I've been wanting to get one of those tubs and start doing the cold plunge, just because where I'm getting up there in my military age, like I'm 37, but I feel like I'm 63. Just about injuries that I have. But I keep going like, nah, we're going to wait, I'm going to get that tub. But I keep going like, nah, we're going to wait, I'm going to get that tub. So I'm going to take this as a sign that for Christmas I'm going to make sure that I buy myself a tub and I'm going to actually start doing that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, where do you live again?
Speaker 2:I live around the DC area Fort Belvoir is where we're stationed right now. It gets cold enough. There right, it was 27 degrees this morning.
Speaker 3:You're great, you're gonna love it.
Speaker 2:Man, don't wait for christmas get it now and then send me a picture.
Speaker 3:I want to see you in that tub. Okay, start with one. Start with one minute for a week and then go to two minutes and just just suck it up and go three minutes every day and it never gets comfortable.
Speaker 2:It's always uncomfortable, but you feel amazing afterwards you.
Speaker 3:You feel incredible. After the first minute is terrible. Every time the second minute it starts getting better. Your body builds up a little bit of a warm layer around it. I mean it's still not comfortable, but it's a mind game. Man, you got to breathe. Don't get in there and be like all alike. It's so. It's so interesting how it's so much like life because you can't get in there and panic and right away your body wants to panic and it wants to breathe really fast and it wants you to get out. So it just makes your mind take over your body and just breathe and relax. It's just not that bad once you get into it, but the first minute's hard.
Speaker 2:That is an absolute nugget, right, there is that a lot of the times that we get anxious or very stressed out and our mind is just absolutely racing, we don't act with intention. And I think an ice bath that is a beautiful metaphor kind of just spurred is that when we can learn to I call it stop, silence your mind, take a tactical pause, observe your surroundings, pursue with purpose, then we're acting with intention and we're being purposeful. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's great and we talk a lot when we're working with people in business especially, and even personal development too. It's like when you're in a high state of stress, you do not want to make emotional decisions.
Speaker 3:That's when people make mistakes and I mean you know that in your industry but it's like when you're in that high state of stress, like whether it's a family thing or it's a business crisis or whatever it is that's when you need to be the most composed, the most relaxed and the most non-emotional when you're making those decisions. And that is true that ice bath is very much, that it's a very heightened state of every cell in your body saying what are you doing? Get out of here, don't do this, you're going to die. And then you just got to breathe into it and then your body relaxes into it. It's just not that bad.
Speaker 2:That has always been a weakness of mine because, being ingrained in the military, you know you always want to move forward, you always want to drive forward, you always want to make fast decisions, be decisive, and when I was a young officer, compared to where I am now, that was the one thing that I still have to to this day, remember that. Hey, let's, let's take a tactical pause, josh, and let the environment kind of mature. And then, when we get to that point, then we can go and we can be decisive. But that is like one of the hardest things for me. That's my giant. I guess if I had to talk about one of the one of the, the ULA blockers, like my giant, right, there is just acting without thinking, and then and then I'm like, okay, well, that was probably a poor decision I should have. I should have waited.
Speaker 3:I think that's tough because in your, in your world, I think sometimes you do have to act so quickly. Right, it's like literally life and death, death situations where you have to act. That's a that's a tough one for you in that world. And then you bring that world home to where you do have plenty of time to take some breaths and think through it. But in a military setting I would assume I've never been, but I would assume you just make extremely rapid decisions constantly in the fight of it.
Speaker 2:All right, team, let's take a quick break from this podcast and I want to personally invite you to our private Facebook community that I call Purposeful Accountable Leaders, or PALS, and PALS is a community dedicated to inspiring and developing servant leaders by sharing transformational stories and skills exactly what Tells the Leadership is all about. My goal is to build a community of like-minded leaders that can share lessons learned, ask questions and celebrate wins when it happens. And my mission in life is clear I will end toxic leadership by sharing transformational stories and skills, and you will find countless transformational leaders in this group, many of them I have had the honor to serve with in the military. If you want to find a community that can help you grow both personally and professionally, we would love to have you. You can simply search Purposeful Accountable Leaders on Facebook or click the Leadership Resources tab in the show notes to join. I am looking forward to seeing you guys and continuing to grow together on our leadership journey. Back to the podcast.
Speaker 2:I think one scenario that I that I always kind of go back to is during Ramadan and Pangea way, rc, south Afghanistan, and whenever you get ready to get into a firefight, it's it's. It's really weird and ominous. It's like in the movies, like we're Wild West. Everyone's out on the streets, but soon as the two gunslingers come out to the center, everyone goes away and it's like the air becomes stale. Everything's quiet. You can hear a pin drop, but it's the same way, at least when I was over there in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2:It just didn't feel right and we took a tactical pause and instead of like going out and doing a patrol, what we ended up doing is just a recon by fire. And this was the moment in time that I understood, like, okay, let's act with intention and not just do something um rash. We did a recon by fire, which was just a way to kind of elicit a response from an enemy. You do a burst in a direction that is safe from civilians, seeing what type of response you're going to get back from the environment. Soon, as my saw gunner did that Devin it just completely opened up.
Speaker 2:I think it was like 70, some odd fighters that tried to attack our position. But it was absolutely insane because in one minute it was complete, peaceful. Then the next minute it was complete and utter chaos. So we were being tactful up to that point. But when that point happened, then we were decisive and we all knew how to act because we had our cleared roles and we had our clear responsibilities. But that would be like the one story that that I would always talk about setting tactical patience, allowing the environment to set up for you, and then you attack with purpose.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's such a beautiful story and just for me as a civilian, that sounds so crazy.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean by that.
Speaker 3:Like no one outside of the military like I can't even grasp that.
Speaker 2:Like no one goes to work.
Speaker 3:No one goes to work and goes. Okay, let's see if we get fired upon, if we fire it, it's. It's wild to listen to those stories and my military buddies that I hang out with it, just there. You cannot grasp it unless you've been in it, like I. Just, I have no idea. You know what that would be like. So, uh, just just kudos to you from a standpoint of leadership, like you're leading in the highest stress possible, like there's nothing outside of that that could be more stressful. There's just nothing. You know. It's. It's incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of the beauties about the military too, is that being in those types of stressful environments now like I have a motto in my life for like an affirmation is every day is a gift. I'm not going to waste mine because I remember what a bad day is. So now, being an acquisition officer in the military, whenever we run into a situation that seems like hey, this is just a bad day, I always go back to like those moments in time and like hey, today's, today's a gift. We're going to figure out how to get through this and just continue to move forward, because I have been put in extremely rough situations and I know that I can use humility, I can use those accelerators to get me through that, and it's still going to be light on the other side of the tunnel.
Speaker 3:How have you taken those moments over there and brought them home for the better, and is it hard for you?
Speaker 2:So I've been blessed from the opportunity of and I thought and I reflected a lot on my deployment. When I took over my platoon, they deployed with 44 personnel. When I took over my platoon, they deployed with 44 personnel. When I took over, they were down to 28. And I was sitting in a talk most of the time just seeing the devastation that was happening. We had, I think, 76 amputees the first day that we deployed. We had a KIA, which was our EOD tech, and a bunch of IEDs going off, like 400-pound IEDs that were blowing up strikers. I'm thinking to myself man, this is going to be a rough deployment.
Speaker 2:And the one thing that stuck out to me and allowed me to develop was humility. I had the mindset when I was going into that key developmental leadership role that I was going to get something out of it. I was very selfish in that mindset is that I wanted to go be a Ranger platoon leader. I wanted to go do all these really crazy things because that's where my motivations were. I wanted to go prove myself. Motivations were. I wanted to go prove myself.
Speaker 2:I sat in a memorial for one of our soldiers, rodriguez of the platoon that I was getting ready to take over. And just the emotions from the company that was sitting there, hearing the company commander at the time, captain Wolf Schlegel, talking barely even getting a word out, just because he was so emotional, and seeing all the men and women that I was getting ready to lead, that just like struck me to my core. It still strikes me to my core, thinking about that, like, dude, how selfish are you? You are here to serve, you are not here to be selfish, you're here to be selfless. And I went into that position in life. That was a changing moment for me of how can I go be the best leader possible to aspire and serve other people with a very unselfish agenda. So that's the one thing that I always take back of like being put in those moments in time that like shaped me and applying it to every single day. So that, dude, that was a beautiful question, man.
Speaker 3:It's just a crazily beautiful answer because that's a prime example of taking something that's just so hard and trying to make the best of that situation. And, um, it's really, it's really just. It's really interesting to think about it because if you've never been in it, I don't think you can grasp it. Like I said, but it's just, yeah, man, it's a crazy, crazy thing to just put your life on the line like that man. So I appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an honor and a privilege. I love serving my country and it's the least that I can do for all the great things that I've been able to achieve and what my family's been able to achieve. So, kind of moving back into ULA, right, so you figure out this framework, you learn this framework. Then your mentor, the ULA God, what is the?
Speaker 3:ULA. He goes by ULA Guru, but he doesn't like it.
Speaker 2:Guru Okay, yeah, the ULA Guru leaves. And then you learn it again. And then I knew that you were making that promise to him, like, hey, if this changes my life again, we have to take it out to the world. You start going on this world tour of the bus. When did ULA really take off in terms of the mission that you're on right now? You know, 1b7 trying to affect 1 billion lives how, how did that process?
Speaker 3:work for you. You know, I mean it'd be cool, It'd be a great story If you, we had, like this 10 year plan and we followed it perfectly.
Speaker 2:It hasn't been like that at all.
Speaker 3:It really the first book we wrote as buddies. We wrote it in three days. That's incredible and stressful to me, which is just insane, makes no sense.
Speaker 3:We're at Troy's cabin. You know I'm gonna take a pause. I'm gonna go back on this because I think this is very important for this podcast is when I was at the motel and I was at the bottom and it was about two in the morning and cops broke down the door next to me and hauled this guy away and I I called troy. I woke up because they were literally banging down the door next to me. I watched them take this guy out, handcuff him, throw him in the back of a car. I walked out. I saw the door beat up and I was thinking that's exactly what my life is like right now. That's how I feel. I was losing everything. And I called Troy and he answered, luckily at 2 in the morning. I hadn't talked to him in about a year or two and and at this point he thought I was like happily married, living in a big house in the mountains and crushing life and I was literally had lost everything in 2007, 2008, 2009. And he said you got to get back to ULA. And I took my mom's beat up old Taurus, cause all the cool cars have been repossessed at the time. Like a $1,500 Taurus is all. I had to drive with five kids and I drove to the mountains, which I love. And I drove to the mountains, which I love, and I wrote down with a notebook and I started going through my ULA.
Speaker 3:But I wrote in this notebook when I came to career field so fitness, finance, family field, which is your career what do I want to do with my life? And I just reflexively started saying I'm going to open a clinic again and da, da, da, da, da, da. And then I tore that out of my notebook and I said, okay, if I could do anything I wanted to do because I'm at the bottom now, so who cares? Right, like I'm not going to, I'm not trying to hold on to anything. I'm like if I could do anything I wanted to do. And I wrote down on this notebook it's right in front of me, it's never left my side since 2008. And I wrote down be a visionary leader, educator, entertainer, facilitator around the world and forever be grateful for my journey. And then I said on the bottom why do I want that? I want to have the ability to show the wonders of God's world to the, to my children. Because at that time one of my biggest prayers was I don't want to die in this motel. And my mom, my kids are like and my parents are like, yeah, he was a loser. He died on the you know, you know motel on the bad side of town. So I said I want to, like, I want to be a visionary leader, educator and tainter, facilitate around the world. I want to do this because I want to be able to show my children that I can be successful. I want to show them the world that god created for them. And, uh, that's been my thing forever. Like I have carried this notebook around since 2008 and that's been the guiding light.
Speaker 3:So ula's gone a million different directions. I had no idea we're gonna have a bus. I had no idea we're gonna have these things called Ula Palooza. I didn't know we're gonna have a nutrition line. I didn't know we're gonna sell our company. I didn't none of that. And I didn't know we're gonna have a million followers. I didn't know we're gonna have a book deal.
Speaker 3:So what it really comes down to, I think, is if you have that guiding, just that guiding light in the distance of I don't care what I'm gonna go through, because I know from from that motel to where I am today. I'm gonna go through a lot of crap. I'm gonna go through a lot of crap trying to build ula, but I was so committed, like I'm gonna be a vision. I didn't know. I didn't know what being a visionary leader, educator, entertainer, facilitator. I don't even know, I didn't even know what that meant, but it came from my. I was in tears when I wrote it and I'm like this is what I'm going to do and I think if you have such a strong commitment to something and a strong why and why you want to make that happen, I think you just let that naturally evolve. You just work hard towards it. And it's not like you know you start a day and you go to B it it's like you started a, you know where you want to go, but it's not going to follow the plan and we've been all over the board. So, yeah, I mean it's been a crazy, crazy, crazy ride.
Speaker 3:But I think when I felt like this is going to sound so stupid, but when I felt like it finally kind of was a thing is about 90 days into the book, when someone we didn't know finally bought a book as weird as that sounds, because everybody that was buying books and we sold like 50 books, right, everybody that was buying a book is like, oh, that's my cousin, oh, that's Troy's brother, you know. And I could, I could. And all of a sudden someone from New Jersey bought a book and I didn't know who they were, and Troy didn't know who they were. And I'm like okay, like okay, wow, this could be something. And then some celebrities, some nfl players, got behind. It went really big into the nfl for quite a while and then, you know, the rest is history.
Speaker 3:But once we hit a million, uh, people reading the book and and following and all of that, then we set this dream of like okay, what would it be like to impact a billion? One in seven people around the globe know who we are. And that's when that company took a shift of. If we want to do that, we need to bring in a partner. We need to have an actual. It can't be just one bus, two guys. It has to be like one bus, two guys and then a team of hundreds to make this happen. So now we're starting to build a team. So we have a great CEO who's built two massive companies. We have an incredible CFO, cgo. We're backed by an incredible company right now, a billion-dollar public trade selling nutrition company that's working on our nutrition line, because I'm 51, troy's 55. We're both big time into nutrition. So, yeah, now it's taken on a life of its own and it's just kind of going. We actually probably have a plan for the first time in 10 years.
Speaker 2:So I love that one, that light there's always light at the end and the one of the, the quotes that I always go back to in scripture and, I think, every single time. And, by the way, kudos to you for not shying away from your faith, and that's something that I I kind of boldly declare too. But Matthew, chapter five, chapter 5, uh, 14 through 16. Like, that is my favorite quote from all of scripture. And you are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden, neither do the light. The light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on the stand and it gives light to everyone in the house in the same way. Let your light shine before others that they may go see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven. That that's ULA to me. You're taking your light and you're bringing it into this world, and I I define that as leadership. I'm taking my light and I'm going to bring it into any organization that I go into, for the sole reason is that I want to inspire other people to be a better human, be a better version of yourself, and then have that multiplying effect If I can make a positive interaction in your day, you can go, be a positive leader or have a positive impact on someone else and it's just a magnifying effect. And I also love the concept too of, like you had, that self-awareness. If I want to positively affect 1 billion lives, I can't do this alone with Troy. I have to bring on a team and I call like with me.
Speaker 2:I understand as I progress in the army I have more authority and responsibility. But more authority and responsibility means that I have a deeper level of, but more authority and responsibility means that I have a deeper level of accountability. And I go through this concept of tactical, operational, strategic levels of leadership. Tactical, it's on me to do the work. Operational, on managing people. You are now at that strategic level of where you are focused solely on the mission and the vision of where you want ULA to go and you have your team focused on the operational. And you have your team focused on the tactical. And that's hard to do, man, like I had a boss tell me one time mission command right Is that you have to give authority away to the point of where you feel uncomfortable. And I can't. That is like my nightmare. It's so hard for me to do? How do you do that when you have such a big company?
Speaker 3:This is the best conversation ever for me right now and I'll tell you why, because this is what I'm battling with. Like, if you're, you talked about your giant right Like, this is my giant right here. So I grew up on a farm in North Dakota working my tail off 50 below winters all that stuff. Right a year and a half ago, we were acquired by this $1.2 billion publicly traded company and part of that acquisition was so that we could build a team with a CEO and a CFO and everything. The whole deal like what I talked about. The acquisition partner like unbelievable. Wrap my hugs around. They're the best people ever. I've known them now for over two years, but 18 months they've acquired ULA. Unbelievable, like just unbelievable. The team we have, our executive team, all the people that work for ULA now, where it was just Troy and I and like another guy helping us out to get to a million. Now it's like now we got a team.
Speaker 3:Right On my 50th birthday, about a day later, I got my first paycheck of my entire life Because prior to that I was just an entrepreneur. I owned my own business. I've never had W-2 income and a 401k and health insurance. I've never had that and it freaked me out because it's like where most people find security in that. I felt so insecure in that that I had a paycheck basically as weird as that sounds. And we still run the company Troy and I, completely, but with this team.
Speaker 3:And the other thing is I want to say this in a nice way because I would say, if you talk to any of my past employees of my clinics or whatever, I always got along with them. I've never raised my voice in my life, not even to my kids. I'm very calm, but it was still like a benevolent dictatorship, like I ran the show and everybody listened, no one questioned, right. So exactly what you're saying is what I'm working on right now is now we have a team of people that are smarter than me in their areas and I need to say this is my vision, this is what I want for ULA, this is where I want for ULA, this is where I want it to go. But then I have to step aside and let them run with it and they're 100% more capable than me. But it's really hard for me because I've been hands-on everything since birth and it's a weird concept for me, but ULA is growing way faster than Troy and I could grow ULA right now because we have this great team. So that is something I'm constantly trying to be very self-aware of.
Speaker 3:That it's like you know, richard Branson said this. He said if you want to build a billion dollar company, hire the right people and get the hell out of the way. And it's so true. Just hire the right people and get out of the way, because we get in the weeds too much with them. So it's that's a really great thing. You brought up Cause that's exactly what I'm working on in my own life right now, my own career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is one of the hardest things to do when you get to that level of to separate yourself from all the work that you've done because it's yours, you did it, this was your mastermind, this was your brainchild. But that's where it kind of goes back to like you have to focus on the hiring and the culture of the organization so they're continuing to share that same level of enthusiasm and motivation that you have and that they're wise in the right place. Cause I love how you said this before If you have a big enough why, it just demands a response. And I remember going through talking about journaling intentionally of why do I want to be a better leader? And then I had that moment of clarity, you know, sitting down in my thinking chair, I just started crying because I realized that, hey, this is what God has gifted me with and this is my purpose on this planet and this is how I can make a change. And that was my moment of clarity. But you'll work through it, dude.
Speaker 2:I have no doubt that ULA will continue to go and meet that seven-year mark of 1 billion lives. And when is that? When is that seven-year mark?
Speaker 3:So we're two years in, so we have five, five years to go, and what we've done is we've we've employed ambassadors people that can actually be part of ULA, make a career around it and then coaches. So we have coaches in all 50 states, 23 countries, teaching ULA and coaching ULA and taking into people. That's been huge. But the ambassador thing is what's really growing so much right now and what I realized too, going back to that, because I think it's such a great conversation is what I really started to realize over the last year is that anytime inside I wanted to like it's my job to paint the picture of where we want it to go. Troy and I, like Troy and I worked together to say this is where we want to go and we have these incredible people that do that. It's all ego that would get in the way of me stopping that. So it's really just being self aware and going like, okay, they're way better at this than me. I mean they.
Speaker 3:Travis, our CEO, has literally built two $1 million billion dollar companies. I built $5 million companies. Like. He just needs, he needs to lead this Right and he's he's unbelievable. First of all, he's an incredible human. He's incredible at what he does. He's super smart, super well, it listens and he's a great leader and um, it's, it's awesome and it's just like just making sure. I'm always like telling my vision, telling working hard, being the hardest worker in this company, but also, on the back end of that, making sure that we let the right people lead where they need to lead. So I'm getting getting better, but it was. It was a hard shift for sure.
Speaker 2:So there there's this um, the concept in the military that that I love, and it's called um dead space. So when you're doing a military operation, there's terrain that you cannot see or affect with indirect fires or whatever, just because it's so either thickly vegetated or it's unpassable, and it's the same is true in life. I think we all have dead space, and the only way to overcome that dead space is to surround ourself with people who have strengths that overpower our weaknesses, and then that blind spot that we naturally have is now no longer invisible. It is visible and you, you're spot on man. Like that I'd love it, like the whole self-awareness and hearing it from someone who is so successful because this is just a common theme that that I've struggled with at a lower end and in the military, and I know that every leader struggles with. It's just having that type of self-awareness and the ego of letting go of your ego and going back to the accelerator of humility and then gratitude and just embracing yourself in that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think, if you want to look purely, we're actually going through. Starting tonight, like in two hours, we start going through what's called the confident leader training with our coaches. It's a one year training program called the confident leader becoming a leader you're born to be. And the whole training, the whole one-year training, is built around embracing the accelerators in leadership, embracing love, loving yourself, loving others, loving your mission, love what you do, embracing gratitude as a leader, not being the one who's complaining but actually the one who is like, not complaining, showing gratitude, showing kindness, moving forward with your team and yourself.
Speaker 3:And it goes all the way through like wisdom, gaining wisdom from yourself, from your experiences, from mentors, trying things. You know as a leader, you should try things and then see what's working, what's not, and then also working through those blockers. So we're going to do a half a year on blockers as a leader, to be a more confident leader, and then half a year on embracing accelerators. But it's so true, it's like you know, we have everything we need inside of us. We just have to develop it and get out of, get out of our own way. So many times.
Speaker 2:So I've I've been waiting to ask this question. I'm really curious. So 2024, right around the quarter what is your one big thing that you set for 2024?
Speaker 3:So I have 21 goals. Um, I have narrowed down to my what's called the top seven. You set three goals in each of the seven areas Narrowed down to my top seven. I don't have my ULU one picked yet. I'm working on it. I'm going to tell you what they are. There's two in there.
Speaker 3:I'm super blessed right now with my family life. Everything in there is great, all that. I have two You're going to laugh at one. One is I need to get under 10% body fat. I'm about 16%. I'm 51. I'm going to be 52. There's no reason for that. Like Troy, dr Troy is ripped right now at 56. He's doing incredible.
Speaker 3:I've been on the road a lot and I just lost my way with. I still hit my workouts, but man barbecue in Kansas city and all that good stuff has kind of beat me up a little bit. So number one is just get under 10%. That's one, and then the other one is just really to take. I have some goals within our company because our company is really. We just launched this final product line six months ago, so we're almost like brand new. It's like multivitamins, atrophics, adaptogens, probiotics right, really helping mind and body health. And I want to make a massive impact on mental health and physical health in this country and around the world. So we have I have a big field goal career goal of where I want to take the company by the end of the year, lead this company with, with the team that we have. So I don't know which one's going to be number one. It's either going to be the career or the fitness, but they better both happen for sure. But yeah, so those are my two major goals this year.
Speaker 2:If I can persuade you, the field goal man. I love that, especially now, because I think people need to have mental clarity and there's so much depression, there's so much anxiety to have mental clarity and there's so much depression, there's so much anxiety, there's so much transition and chaos in the world right now and people just need that ability to to to quickly learn how to be resilient in life. And I think that kind of goes down to that word, being being resilient in life and allowing. There's a beautiful quote and I don't know who to attribute it to but you don't have to control an ocean, you. You just need to learn to ride the wave and when.
Speaker 2:We can develop that mindset but it's hard to teach people that and if you can figure out and crack that nut because, like veteran suicide, that's one of my huge things that I'm trying to curve and I think God's blessed me through the ability to create better leaders. Because if you have better leaders within an organization, you have lower turnover, you have a better culture, you have a better climate, you have better leaders below you. It just makes a better person. But I think if you can develop that type of framework at a very large level, a strategic level, the impact would be outstanding. So that was my persuasion.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, know it's great and I love it and I, and that's most likely the direction I'm going. The 10 thing is really weird because it's just getting my health right. So I could do this for a long time. If I look at my, if my health is not bad I mean I'm actually pretty healthy but I look at like okay, I'm 51, I want to crank ula. Until I can't crank ula, like I want to help as many people as possible, so I just need to be in really good health. So most likely both will happen.
Speaker 3:But we just had our event called ULA Palooza in Nashville a couple of weeks ago and you know three levels of people wild horse saloon, it's this big venue, it's incredible. And we hand out a piece of paper where, privately, people answer 14 questions and then they fold it up and they don't write the name on it. They stand up and they all mix around and they hand their piece of paper to someone else and grab someone else's and they keep doing that four times. So at the end, when you sit down, you have a piece of paper in front of you. You don't know whose it is right. No, there's no chance. You know whose it is. It's been mixed up four times in this pile of people, three levels of people, and then we have you stand, if your question says yes, and the exercise is called standing together, and what we're saying is you don't know what the other person is going through, next to you, behind you, in front of you, above you, in the balcony, whatever. You don't know what they're going through, but in this community of Ula, we're going to stand together and I'm going to tell you, bud. There's three questions on there that we've done this two years in a row. Three questions in there that just give me goosebumps and make me want to work harder than I've ever worked in my life.
Speaker 3:The question I feel anxiety, daily, anxiety and worry daily. This year, 60.3% of that room stood up Wow, a thousand bucks a ticket and fly into Nashville and spend two days working on themselves. Still still, 60.3% of that room is straight up feeling daily anxiety and worry. Over 40% of that room feels lonely on a daily basis Lonely, wow. And 20.1% of that room this year said that they I think it was 20.1 last year. This year was like. 19.9% of that room said they consider ending it all and committing suicide to just get out of this. And this is a room full of happy people posting pictures, hugging each other great community and 20% of that room thinks that they want to end it all, and that's where it's like we just have to get this everywhere, because mental health is just a real thing that we need to take care of and we need to do our part at least.
Speaker 2:I mean, we're not going to fix it, but, man, we need to do our part. Yeah, I think of the concept of a combat multiplier. If I continue to go out, try to build better leaders and you're continuing to go out and you're helping people find a balanced life and and bringing awareness to mental health, all the powers converged, there's going to be positive energy. I don't know if you ever read the book Map of Consciousness, but it's a beautiful book of talking about, like, how we can raise our conscious levels and how the higher you go, the more positive energy, and how. It's a really awesome book and I'd highly recommend it. But, like we can raise the consciousness of humanity.
Speaker 1:It's time for our final show segment that I like to call the killer bees. These are the same four questions that I ask every guest on the Tales of Leadership podcast Be brief, be brilliant, be present and be gone. Question one.
Speaker 2:What do you believe separates a good leader from a great leader? Humility.
Speaker 3:Straight up humility, Just being humble, being out of ego, being very self-aware and being humble and making it about the mission, not about themselves.
Speaker 2:I love it. What is one resource that you could recommend to our listeners so they could be a better leader today?
Speaker 3:Man, now you said be brief and be quick. They could be a better leader today. Man, now you said be brief and be quick. I love ULA, I love the framework of ULA, but even just this podcast. And just keep putting good things in your ears, man. Just keep listening to good things over and over.
Speaker 2:I love it All right. So the third question if you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 3:Relax, enjoy the journey a lot more, man. I tell every kid that everyone I meet in their twenties I'm like be patient, you got so much time. Just enjoy every single day, but work your butt off, have fun. But I think I was really worried a lot in my twenties that I'm not going to be successful or whatever, and just enjoy the ride.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. Last question how can our listeners find you and how can they add value to your mission?
Speaker 3:uh, ulalifecom, o-l-a-l-i-f-ecom, ulalife on everything social media. I'm ula seeker on social media, um, and honestly, just the best thing is just be the best version of yourself, use ula in your way to live your best life and if you feel like you want to share it with others, join, join, the, join the jump on the bus with us and do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this has been awesome podcast, brother. Like I think this is probably one of my favorite ones that I've filmed, so thank you for being intentional with me and spending your time with me.
Speaker 3:Super fun, dude, I'm not going to lie. I got a little nervous when you say you're going to fire, blast me with four questions, but I made it. I feel good dude, okay, hey, cold plunge man, I want to see you.
Speaker 2:Send me a picture. I wrote that down. That's going to be one of my uh, I don't know if it's going to be my one big thing, but it's going to be one of my goals for the year.
Speaker 3:I love it. I love it, man. Thank you so much for having me Appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, have a great night. All right team. That was a phenomenal episode with Dave. I'm going to try to be short but it's going to be really hard because there's a lot of key takeaways that I got from this episode and the first one was just being grateful and having faith. And I generally mean that.
Speaker 2:The pivot point in my life happened when I read his book and I heard his nephew's story, jared, of being grateful and having faith and his definition of it and going through all the memories that I had of losing soldiers and losing friends and feeling that I was cursed, feeling that I was failing, because who am I if I am not a inspired leader? I think everyone is a leader. You have to be a leader of yourself, your team, your organization, your family, your community. And I realized that I was looking in the wrong areas. I was looking through the lens of blockers in life fear, guilt, anger, self-sabotage, laziness, envy, misdirection, focus. I should be focused on accelerators the love, gratitude, discipline, integrity, passion, humility, wisdom, but specifically gratitude. And when I started hunting the good stuff, I could look at those terrible times in my life and pull things out that were positive, and that was one of the pivot points in my mind, in my life, of where I started to make positive change in myself, focusing on self-care, focusing on being a better leader of myself and building self-confidence. That was the moment where I started hunting the good stuff. The next key takeaway that I have is what are your accelerators? So we talked about those accelerators before and I just mentioned them again, but life is going to do one thing which is guaranteed it's going to give you ample opportunities to test yourself. You're going to have more challenges and obstacles to overcome, but that's okay, because that is life. There are always going to be something that's going to block us, disrupt us, fix us, turn us. That's the definition of an obstacle, and it's okay to be fixed, disrupted or turned, but it's not okay to be blocked.
Speaker 2:Leaders purposeful, accountable leaders do not allow obstacles to prevent them or their teams from moving forward. They apply a sledgehammer mindset and in order to do that, he uses the framework of ready set go. So ready yourself, understand the situation, set yourself, get the tools and the resources that you need and then go, take decisive action. It's the whole concept of what I like to call stop, silence your mind, take a tactical pause, observe your surroundings and then pursue with purpose right. And then the last one that I have is ego.
Speaker 2:Letting go of our ego is one of the most critical elements of being a servant, transformational leader. And why is that? Because it allows us to build self-awareness. And self-awareness is critical because then we can learn to look through the blind spots in our life, the invisible areas that we think we understand, but we don't, because we have that little voice inside of us is saying that we're good enough, we don't need to listen to other people, that we are the subject matter expert, that we are harder workers, that no one can do what we can. That is the ego talking. You need to silence that and you need to focus on being self-aware, calling that type of behavior out.
Speaker 2:And the last bonus takeaway that I got is I guess I got to get an ice path right, like so. I made that bold statement on a podcast that's been live streamed and is out in the ethernet now, and I've always wanted to do it, but I'm doing it. I'm getting an ice bath and I'm going to start the ice bath challenge. Hey, team, if you've gotten any value from this episode or the content that I push out, let me share another resource with you that you already know about if you've listened to my episodes, but that's McMillianLeadershipCoachingcom, specifically the articles that I write. So this episode you can go to McMillianLeadershipCoachingcom when it officially airs and you can read through an additional article that I have wrote for this podcast episode, because, at the end of the day, I'm just trying to produce powerful content for you to be a better leader, a more inspired leader, or what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader, and do me a favor share this podcast on any platform you listen to.
Speaker 2:Share it and send it to someone, give it a five-star review or however you can rate it. Give me feedback. Reach out to me on social media. Let me know how I'm doing. Follow me on social media. That would mean the absolute world to me. And if you want to support the channel, you can do that by going to McMillian Leadership Coaching or talesofleadershipcom and you can support or donate to the show there, and everything that I get is going to go back to producing powerful content, as always. Team, my name is Josh McMillian. Saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time.
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