Tales of Leadership
Tales of Leadership is a veteran-owned podcast designed to equip leaders with the knowledge required to inspire others through transformational leadership. If you want to grow your influence and become a purposeful leader, you have found your tribe. Become the leader your team deserves!
Tales of Leadership
Episode 99 with Lon Stroschein
Lon Stroschein is the founder of Normal 40 and best-selling author of The Trade. With a career spanning international expansion, leading a $100M division, closing a $2.1B public deal, founding a private wealth group, and serving in the U.S. Senate, Lon knows success at the highest levels.
But his defining moment wasn’t in the boardroom—it was when he chose to walk away and chart a new path. Now, Lon helps high-performing professionals—executives, physicians, attorneys, military officers, and business owners—reclaim purpose and write the next chapter of their lives with intention.
Each episode dives into the pivotal transitions that shape our lives and careers, guided by the Normal 40 process—a proven roadmap for meaningful change.
This podcast is for anyone standing at the edge of "what's next"—ready to trade comfort for clarity. Lon’s mission? To inspire transformation in 1,000 lives. Yours might be one of them.
Connect with Lon Stroschein:
-Website: https://www.normal40.com/
-LinkedIn: lon-stroschein-normal40
-Twitter: LonStroschein
-YouTube: @normal40
-Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/normal-40-the-podcast/id1642813933
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My Mission: I will end toxic leadership practices by equipping leaders with transformational leadership skills.
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Joshua K. McMillion | Founder MLC
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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. 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'm the founder of McMillian Leadership Coaching, and I'm on a mission to create a better leader what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader or a pal and my vision is to impact 1 million lives in the next 10 years by promoting transformational stories and skills.
Speaker 1:And on today's episode, I'm bringing you a transformational leader Lon Stroschein. He is the founder of Normal 40, and he's a bestselling author of the book that he just recently published the Trade up in a very unique perspective being a quote unquote Midwestern boy to working for a US senator, to growing his leadership, authority and responsibility, to ultimately, one day, walking away from a very successful job and putting his faith in himself, taking risk in his self and creating his own brand, which is Normal40, which, by the way, he's doing absolutely phenomenal. He is an executive coach, your life coach, he's wrote a book, he runs his own podcast and he's built his own community about people that are afraid to take that next step, that purposeful action to reinvent themselves, and what he likes to talk about is the trade as always team. Stay on till the very end and I'll provide you the top three takeaways that I took from this episode. Let's go ahead and let lon on. Lon. Welcome to the tales of leadership. Round two how you doing, brother?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great man. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:brother, I'm doing great man. How are you doing? Like we were talking about before. There's nothing that I would rather do than to discuss what I'm passionate about, which is leadership, and even though that I have the day off, right like it's Martin Luther King Jr four-day weekend for the military. This is something I'm deeply passionate about and, again, I'm humbled to just have the opportunity and the space to discuss it with you.
Speaker 2:Oh man, likewise, you said this is 2.0. And what people probably don't realize is that we tried this 18 months ago and we got done and the audio somehow had a bug in it and we weren't able to do it. And if we can recreate that even though neither one of us can probably remember what we really rambled about if we can recreate that, this is going to be absolutely a treat and I think that's a testament to just being persistent and consistent and being okay with being imperfect, Like I've been now.
Speaker 1:You know podcasting, I know you've been podcasting for a while and when I first started off like those first three or four episodes were really rough Me just figuring out like what kind of battle, rhythm and systems that I needed. So thank you for the grace and believing in me enough to do a round two.
Speaker 2:Oh man, of course it just comes with the territory. When you're pushing the boundaries, you're going to have glitches along the way. That's just how it goes. And so, look, it's happened to me many, many times more than I care to really talk about, but that's just how it goes, and that's what happens when you kind of push the boundaries a little bit. So here we go.
Speaker 1:So let's start off with you just taking the time to provide an overview to the listeners of who you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So first and foremost, I always introduce myself as a South Dakota farm kid and that's 100% the truth. I was born and raised on our family farm. I was the fourth generation and I expected that after I graduated from college I would go home and take over the family farm. Well, it got to be January before my graduation in May of college and my phone rang and it was a United States Senator's office and he asked me if I would be interested in going to work for him to help in the state, but to help create the next farm bill, but to also be his eyes and ears while he was in Washington DC. And I just didn't think that call was going to happen again and I knew that the farm would be there. So I said you know what I'm going to take that job. I knew I would regret it if I said no, no-transcript.
Speaker 2:The political realm back then wasn't nearly what it is now. I was really proud to say I worked for a United States Senator back in the day and I'm still proud to say I did, but it wasn't the atmosphere we have now and we don't need to get into that, but I just I feel like it's important I we have now and we don't need to get into that, but I just I feel like it's important. I was really really proud of the work I was able to do there. Going to work for a bank, I got to learn about profit and loss from other people and good business and bad business, and it taught me a whole bunch about who really had money and who didn't, who looked like they had money but didn't, who looked like they didn't have money but did so.
Speaker 2:Know. So it all these things and it and it and it showed you, look, you've got to ask some questions before you go ahead and make a judgment on whether somebody is credit worthy. Well, that translates into everything, and so I really took that with me into my next role, which, when I was in banking, I had a private client group and one of my one of my uh private client members worked at a public company. He recruited me into a public company called Raven and I spent 15 years there doing three different jobs, but I ended there after six years in charge of mergers and acquisitions for our company and we transacted at the very end of 2021. And I separated from the company then in February of 2022. And I launched Normal 40.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's amazing, and you said a couple of things in there that I'm really curious to how you develop that mindset about making decisions that in the future that you knew that you potentially would regret, and then you just decided to jump right in. I one of the words that you always use, and I love, is on mission, because we use that, I think, within the military as well. So here you are. I don't know how old you were, we'll just say 18, 19 year old kid growing up on the farm in the Midwest, and the US senator calls you to help chase significance, not success. And putting you in that mindset, what, what helped drive you in making that decision to hey, let's go chase this hard thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. I wish I could look back and say that I was wise enough at you know, just as a fresh college graduate, to say boy, this would be significant. No man, it was cool, it was going to work for a Senator and it was what I should do next. But your question is this how did I weigh that? And I'll tell you, one of the hardest things, um, that I've done in my life to this point, joshua, is to dis to go home and tell my dad, after it had been understood from my siblings generationally, the family business, the, the farm that was bought and lost in the thirties and bought back I was going to take it over. That was the expectation. So it was a hard decision for me to say am I going to go home and am I going to take over the family farm or am I going to answer this call? And I looked at it and I wrestled with this a long time.
Speaker 2:But the very central question that I came back to again and again and again, at three different points in my life, was this If I get one, two, three or four years older than this or past this moment, and I don't do it, if I pass up this opportunity to go work for a US senator. Will I regret it? And my answer was yes. I couldn't imagine sitting in a tractor cab for 10 hours a day wondering what would have happened if I had just said yes. It would have. It would have gnawed at me and eaten at me my entire life. So I had to say yes, I had to go figure it out if I was, if, if I was capable of doing it. So it was. It was the central question that I used every time I've made a major life decision Will I regret it if I don't?
Speaker 1:I love that man. It's just a framework, I think evolves around the core values of who. You are right and I think one of the most essential things within life now, especially when we go chase hard things, is being able to embrace that level of risk. There there's always a trade-off and I you know spoiler alert it's one of your, your books that we're going to get into. But I love how that beautifully transitions, cause now I can see that thread that's connected you through your entire life that now has inspired you to where you are right now of writing a book and being a successful entrepreneur.
Speaker 1:But you have such a unique perspective, I think, on leadership of being in a very successful business Raven Industries and then transitioning at the height of your career when everyone else looking outside in would like, hey, this dude's highly successful, he has everything, he has the car, he has the money, he has the house, he has all of those things. But you internally were not happy. You said it so nonchalantly, but you were in three jobs in Raven Industries so international sales, vice president of business development and the CEO of the senior director of corporate development within there. So you continue to climb that ladder. What I would love to know you know, in the 12 years that you worked in Raven industry, what allowed you to continue to climb and gain more influence and authority.
Speaker 2:A couple of things. One, I had a boss who believed in me. Two, I always I never, ever allowed myself to leave to interpretation or to question my integrity and the ability of anybody in that company to trust me, that company to trust me. And so when you work through a company and you just work hard, you're going to go a long ways. When you work hard and you have an advocate, somebody who is on your team, on your side, willing to help you which I had that is super helpful. When you do work, that is surprisingly different, not even better.
Speaker 2:When you just approach something that's been done the same way, differently, you put your own flair on it.
Speaker 2:Now, this isn't to say you make this huge leap and you do something that's going to get you in trouble because it's too big.
Speaker 2:No, just within what you can control, wherever you are, whether you're an entry-level position or you're the executive in charge of mergers and acquisitions, which runs the span of my 15 years there, when you were just figuring out how you could approach a problem differently and provide a perspective that was different all of a sudden it shapes, it establishes you as somebody who's willing to do things that are approached from the standpoint of curiosity rather than conviction.
Speaker 2:And look, we can parse that apart if you want, because that's a big mind shift. But when you approach what you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis and this is true in business, it's true in your home, it's true in your politics, it's true in your religion, it's true in your relationship with your neighbor, it's true in all aspects when you approach that situation with your curiosity rather than your conviction of what you assume they are going through, what you assume they are doing and what you assume is right and wrong in this black and white, it opens up this entire new aperture. So now back to your question how did you have success? I had an advocate that would take a bet on me. I did things my own way that was always in alignment with where the company was going, and I worked as hard or harder than anyone else around me, and those three ingredients were enough to keep propelling me through the company.
Speaker 1:I love that. It's so simple from the standpoint do the work, do the work. You're going to have the integrity or the character build up to where people are going to believe in you, that you're going to have advocates on your team and then always be in alignment. Never have anyone question your integrity. It's simple and I absolutely love it, brother.
Speaker 2:You're going to love this too, man.
Speaker 2:So I didn't serve. So first of all, let me say to you thank you for your service, and I mean that. But on my, on my, when I was the both the president of a aerospace and defense contracting division in our company, which I did for six years, and when I was running mergers and acquisitions, on the top of my whiteboard I had the definition of a campaign and acquisitions. On the top of my whiteboard I had the definition of a campaign. And the definition of a campaign is different things for different people. If you're a politician, it means one thing, but if you are a member of the United States Army, it means something different. My definition read this a connected series of operations designed to yield a particular result. Just think about that. Break that down, for where you're at, I knew what our campaign was. I knew that sometimes I had to write it. I knew sometimes I had to inspire people to it and I knew that it had to fit within the mission of the company.
Speaker 2:A connected series of operations. Well, no matter where you're at in your company, no matter where you're at in whatever you do through the course of your day, a connected series of're at, in whatever you do in your, through the course of your day, a connected series of operations, their operations, their things that have to be done, and they have to connect and why? Because they are designed. Designed mean that's with intent, there's a strategy, there's a plan to yield a particular result. Everything, every word in that definition has a meaning and it's powerful. So the campaign and I would read that every morning when I came in what are my connected series of operations and what is the particular result I need to design them towards? And it really those things really just provided this clarity every single day that I would come in and execute towards, and it was super helpful to me and I hope that somebody's jotting this down who's listening because, man, it really does help narrow your focus on what's the most important thing I need to accomplish today.
Speaker 1:So you talk about jotting down notes. I've already. I already have two pages of notes. I'm trying to feverishly keep up with you and I love that. So my wife always gets mad because it's just like you say. I love that way too much on your podcast. But that's, that's who I am, so I'm not going to change it.
Speaker 2:Dude, you do you. I love it too, man.
Speaker 1:What you talk about. There is exactly what we do within the military space, but it's depending on the level of authority or the hierarchy of the organization. We all have a mission, we all have a vision that we're trying to achieve, which is that mission of the how, and then we have the key tasks that are associated with that, like the threads along the way with a desired end state, and that's how we essentially boil down. Going into a campaign of how you talked about. Each individual organization, all the way down to the platoon level, should essentially have key tasks that feed into that mission, and when you can do that and you can create that synergy, you're all working towards the same desired end state and vision. That's powerful and I love how you made that connection to a campaign equals clarity and I think that's the end state is.
Speaker 1:We're trying to create clarity not only in like a business, but I think that leadership is holistic. You can't lead other people unless you lead yourself and you fill your own cup up. So that's a beautiful point, man. The next point that I would love to try to get to is walking through still your leadership journey. Working in Raven Industries, what was some of the most challenging aspects in terms of leadership that you ran across.
Speaker 2:In terms of just things that I would wrestle with, yeah that you would internally wrestle with.
Speaker 1:That maybe brought you additional like fear and anxiety.
Speaker 2:When I came into Raven I didn't have a lot of experience leading teams yet. I led a couple of different times. I led a small team in the bank, you know a handful, five or six people. And I led a small team as a member of the United States Senate and a Senate staff, just to be clear. And so when I came into Raven I immediately on day one had still a small team, but a bigger team than what I was used to. It was probably 15 people and I remember from that point on I thought that kind of my job was.
Speaker 2:As I was working to establish myself, I felt like my job was probably to show how smart I was and how I understood the mission and how I had control over all of the things that I should have control over. And I had my first job in Raven only two years. I was international sales director and I would travel the world setting up distribution around the world and it was fantastic. I was gone a lot. And the CEO then moved me to be president of one of our operating divisions, an aerospace and defense contracting division. And now I went overnight from a team of about 15 to 20 to a team of about 350. And, looking back, it's one of these things. I always said yes, and then I knew I would figure it out. When the CEO said I would like you to do this, the answer was immediately yeah, I got this, give me the ball, I can't wait. I got it and I'd had a fair number of successes through my career at that point, and so the answer, of course, was yes, and I was thrust into this position where I had hundreds of people reporting to me from all over the world and I came out of a industry I knew, which was technology in agriculture to aerospace and defense.
Speaker 2:I didn't speak military jargon. I didn't understand the straws and stripes on uniforms. I didn't. I was a South Dakota farm kid. And now here I am, I'm leading people who came from uniform, and I had all of this to learn.
Speaker 2:But here was my problem. I still told myself I had to be the guy who had the answers. I had to be the one who knew how to cast a vision and be convicted. Lead with conviction over what was right. I loved working for people who had conviction. I wanted to be a leader who had conviction, because conviction is powerful. Conviction inspires people to follow.
Speaker 2:But if you operate only from a place of conviction the second time I'm going to say this on this podcast already if you operate from a place of conviction purely and you don't allow in curiosity, if you don't learn how to lead with your ears as much as your mouth, you set yourself up for some very, very dangerous outcomes. And I walked headlong into one that came up and smacked me right in the face because I was more interested in leaning into my conviction than I was into leading into my curiosity and allowing, allowing myself even to rethink decisions I had made once, because conviction would say no, you made this decision, move forward. Curiosity would have said well, you made that decision, but it's not working, maybe we should tweak it. And it wasn't until I literally stepped on a rake and I got smashed in the face that I realized that okay, wait a minute.
Speaker 2:Conviction only gets you so far. Then it gets you in trouble. And so that's where I realized I got to. There's a pivot here in how I'm going to choose to lead. And I made that tough transition. But it came after I had what I deemed to be a fairly public failure that I had to endure emotionally and personally and all the things, that spiritually, all the things, so that I would say, without question was my hardest lesson learned.
Speaker 1:First of all, that's crazy, you know, going from leading 15 people to over 300. And I put myself in that shoe because I've led organizations close to 300 people and I've led organizations to 40. And that time has been six to eight years. So I had time to mature and also to get mentorship from people at that next level up, always get that next level up. And I still didn't feel that I was 100% ready when I was finally put into those roles. So I could only imagine someone that leads a team of 15, highly competent then jumping in a seat leading over 300 people.
Speaker 1:Because I know that that mindset shift that you're talking about and I call that really mission command it's the ability to learn how to delegate down to lower levels and allowing people to really lean into their strengths and letting them run with it, like how you talked about get the football and go with it. And I had a boss tell me one time, colonel Landers, we were getting ready to do a live fire exercise and he talked about Josh, you need to operate with mission command so much that you delegate to the point that you physically feel uncomfortable. And when you delegate to that point of where you physically feel uncomfortable. You know that you're doing it right and that that is a tough mindset shift to do, and especially how quick you did it. So that's awesome and I think feeling is not a bad thing.
Speaker 2:You know it certainly shaped me. I tell you what that is superb advice. I mean, one of the hardest things you'll have to learn to do in your leadership journey is to learn how to delegate and to do it. And the mind shift. I don't know how much you want to talk about this, but here's the thing I learned about delegation and your advice is sound. I hope everybody wrote that down. It needs to be awkwardly uncomfortable to delegate. You need to do it to a place where it's awkwardly uncomfortable. And um and the.
Speaker 2:The people who I admired most in in business as the longer I was there were the people who were wildly successful through delegation. I used to be inspired and impressed by the people who just got shit done and they could just power through and look, the more you give me, the more I'll do. And yeah, that is impressive, that's an impressive workhorse. But I became over time more impressed by the people who are really effectively delegating to this awkward extent not not throwing work over the transom and saying I'd get this done, but delegating, supporting, mentoring, grooming, holding accountable holding awkwardly accountable back to that word to this place where when they got it wrong, he told them or she told them and then over time what they were doing is they were making leaders and and it started these little pods of great delegators.
Speaker 2:In our company of thousands there were just a few places that were spinning out these great leaders and so when the company needed somebody, they went to these little pods. And so eventually you company needed somebody. They went to these little pods and so eventually you wanted to be on that person's team because they were creating leaders. Now they're holding you accountable. There were some awkward conversations, there was some long nights because you didn't do it right the first time but you were prepared when you got tapped and I learned how to do that over time. But it came through the ability to learn how to delegate and it's not natural, you're not born with it. You've got to learn how to delegate.
Speaker 1:Two things right there that I love and we can go wherever we want because everything you talk is fire and I love it.
Speaker 1:So delegation allows one exponential growth because now you're working together as a team, so where one could do something, there's always a capacity.
Speaker 1:Like Elon, if I give you a task and I keep giving you more stuff, at a certain point you're going to hit your limit, where your cup is going to overflail.
Speaker 1:And then we talk about rubber and glass balls. Rubber balls can bounce and it's OK because we can pick them back up. But when a glass ball breaks it's shattered and the amount of work to get that back to a functioning state is almost impossible. But when we learn to delegate, then we can give I call them rocks, we can give those rocks to everyone on our team so those rubber balls never drop, and then it's just like a beautiful orchestra of where you can continue to grow and can continue to grow and there's really no limits associated to it. And another point that I just realized when you said it the second benefit is creating leaders, and it's a pipeline a hundred percent of it's a pipeline, if done well of where your organization not only is delegating and growing, but you're also creating the leaders for tomorrow that is going to allow for that sustained growth to continue. Boom, you just blew my mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you see it, if you go back, if the people listening just go back, go back to any business, any place you've ever worked, and you'll identify the people. They're probably the people who annoy you. At first, it's like this person doesn't do anything. They delegate everything. And now there's two types of delegators. There's the ones who just give work away and they don't follow up and tell it to do, and then they get pissed off when it's not right and nobody likes that person.
Speaker 2:And then there's the coach delegator, the one who doesn't say, hey, hit a home run and I'll see you at home plate. The one who says, no, you're holding the bat wrong. No, you don't swing at that pitch. No, you, when you're down in the count, the one who coaches you through it and holds you accountable to it, is the one who delegates best, so that they're building trust in what they can give you. And and we can all look back and identify well, yeah, the success I had, the boss I actually loved most wasn't the one who certainly wasn't the one who let me get off easy, and it certainly wasn't the one who just gave me work and then, when it wasn't right, let me hang out to dry. It was the one who challenged me, coached me, mentored me and showed me that I was capable of being better than I thought. Those are incredible mentors, and it's done through delegation.
Speaker 1:That's where I want. I always love when I fall within organizations. I kind of call it stretching me, pushing me outside of my comfort zone. For right now I work in acquisitions within special operations command, and I have so much authority and responsibility. It's incredible, it really, really really is. But if I were in any other organization I would not have that same level of just autonomy. And it's really beautiful to have that, because then now I am forced, I have so much to do, but I need to rely on my team, because if I don't rely on my team, then there's no way possible that I'm going to get it done. And another thing that learned, I think, about delegation, is there certain tasks, as as the leader we'll say, ceo that or, you know, chief operation officer that you cannot delegate because it's so uniquely yours. So you have to also be careful, I think, within delegation, delegating the tasks that should be and could be completed by someone else, but understanding that there are certain things that you just cannot delegate because they're so unique to your responsibilities and your duty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's the analogy I used when I was mentoring young hopefully, future executives. I said imagine yourself as a musician, but different than that. Imagine yourself as an orchestra conductor. Different than that, imagine yourself as an orchestra conductor. Now, an orchestra conductor can go to the back, and he can.
Speaker 2:He or she can play the drums. She can come up and play the violin. She can go over and play the oboe. She can go over and grab a trombone or a tuba. She can play the clarinet. She can play the French horn. She can play whatever she wants to play, but not nearly as good as the person who's sitting first, second or third chair. Her job is to make sure she is putting the right people in first, second and third chair to play their piece of the music beautifully, so that everything comes together. Your job as a conductor bring everyone together, bring them in and take them out as they're supposed to go. So you've got to have an understanding of what every instrument in your purview does, where they come, where they go, where they get louder, where they get softer, where they're out front, where they're in back, and then it's your job to stand up front and help them all find unity and uh, and that requires accountability. It requires one-on-ones off to the side when the whole, when the whole orchestra isn't there.
Speaker 1:It requires all of the things you need, but that is kind of the job of the leader at the time, at at any given point in the in, to verify and I've learned that process the hard way several times is that when you do delegate, you have to be able to stay in tune with that individual, and that's the cost of leadership. Leadership's not easy because it's a people-driven business. Leadership is a people-driven topic and if you're not close to the people then I personally think that you'll fail at leadership, because people are absolutely essential. And I love how you talk about that orchestra. I always go back to Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth.
Speaker 1:It's just like that In the military. We always have these different weapons and there's a desired end state that we want to have on that objective and you have to figure out all right, what type of munition or what type of armament do we need to overlay to get those desired end states? But it's the same is true with like people. You're just delegating kind of the point of effects that you want on the target. And if you can change your mindset and think about people in that way, then that's when we allow for exponential growth. And when were you and your company working with the PGA system? Because I want to bring this story up too.
Speaker 2:All right. So, uh, it was 2009, the very end of 2009,. We were a little small, nondescript, lighter than air company uh in the Midwest, and I, you know I, I understand who I'm talking to, so I forgive me if I get some of this wrong, but there was certainly in theater. This was the height of roadside bomb attacks throughout Afghanistan and Iraq, and there was nothing really that could be done about it short of flying helicopters 24-7 over the roadways. Well, that's just not, that's just not feasible.
Speaker 2:And so there was this huge need and there was this compelling needs request that was issued by the office of the secretary of defense, and our company stood up and said we'll try it, and we provided a solution that was fantastic. In what normally would have taken 10 years to develop, for us to do it in about six months or less was fantastic. Now, when you do that, it's going to have some problems, but it's also going to do its mission, and its mission, its connected series of operations, was to save lives, and so we did the best to field those, and I took over that division. About three months after we got that first contract, we'd delivered one unit um to the office of the secretary of defense at the time when I came in and took over as president of that division, and I led it until 20, uh, the end, the first of 2016, the end of 2015.
Speaker 1:So we use that almost every single day. When we were in Afghanistan. I remember the first time that I pulled into RC South I say pull in, when I flew in on a CH-47. And I was looking around. It's like almost like Mars, right, like everything's, like this weird red clay, weird mountains everywhere. It's just a different world. If you've never been there, if you ever go to El Paso Texas, it looks a lot like that. Been there, if you ever go to El Paso Texas, it looks a lot like that.
Speaker 1:But when I saw these balloons like floating through, I thought that I was on an alien planet because I had no idea what they were. But then I grew to love them because. So basically what it is, it's a tethered blimp with about a $10 million very sophisticated camera inside that, if I remember right, could allow you to zoom up to, was it five kilometers Somewhere in there with good clarity. We would use it for counter IED deterrent all the time and with great effects. We would use it for our actual maneuver operations because we could then overlay those. So we would have different cops or compounds and we could overlay those PGIS cameras to where we didn't really necessarily have any dead space outside of like our organic UAV platforms that we had. I loved it.
Speaker 1:Then there's a crazy story I told you I was going to share so evergreen chopper, which essentially is just a civilian bird that will come in and out of cops, was coming in, the balloon was fully up, I think, whatever altitude that could be. The propellers from the evergreen chopper come in and cut the cord and this peaches camera goes floating off with the whole balloon. It ends up going like, I think almost like 50, 60 miles and our mission was was hey, go retrieve that thing. So we basically shot down one of your balloons, uh, because we didn't want the camera to fall within the, uh, the hands. But that was the craziest mission I think I've ever been on of like, hey, go go shoot down a balloon, okay, sold, I'll go do that I.
Speaker 2:So here's what. What's funny, I remember that I was on, I was on the calls. So because we were the, our team was on daily calls, same time, same day, with people who are in theater and uh, and I remember when that happened and somebody, somebody I didn't realize it was a civilian helicopter, I thought it was a military one, doesn't matter. The result was the same Away it went and you guys had to scramble to go get it. But that's exactly right. I mean the payloads on there. I have no idea if they're still classified, but at the time we're highly classified as to what was on there, for all the obvious reasons, and so to make sure that we, the United States government, retrieved it was super important because the payloads on there, yes, there was EOIR visibility vision, but there was more than that that was on there and it was really important that we get that back and that it not fall in the wrong hands. But that was just a day in the life for you guys back then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was like we would do two to three missions a day, but I really mean that that system was integral in the success of everyday missions that we had, because it also saved us the ability to so we didn't have to go out and do a counter or a presence patrol to keep a lock open. We could just scan that with a preset screening criteria of making sure that a lock was open or a passage, which was awesome, yeah. So thank you, and I wanted to make sure we brought that up because I genuinely appreciate that. So, kind of walking back into you know your leadership journey, you make it to the height of your career and then you decide, hey, this isn't for me. Walk me through how you made that decision.
Speaker 2:I was 46 at the time, maybe 45. But in my mid 40s I was leading mergers and acquisitions for the same company. I'd moved on from leading this aerospace and defense contracting division that you and I were just talking about and I was now a corporate executive, leading mergers and acquisitions, and I had achieved more than I ever thought I would achieve, Josh. I had just done really well and I'm not saying that to toot my horn, I'm just saying it just kind of happened and I would come into my office and I never came in and I was never unhappy. I was never. I was. I didn't have this place where I was fed up or tired of of a situation. I was never trying to escape something.
Speaker 2:But I would come into my office and I would leave my nice house and I would drive my nice car into my nice office and I'd sit down at my nice desk on the executive level and I would open up my computer and I would feel this thing in my gut and I would think to myself well, is this it? I'm 45. If I'm going to work for the next 10 or 15 or 20 years, is this it? Is this what I have to give to the world. And then I would slam my computer shut and I'd get frustrated with myself and be like, well, if this is it, shouldn't I just be happy? Damn it, Shouldn't I just give thanks for the fact that I've got my health, I've got a great family, I have the nice house, the nice car, the nice office, blah, blah, blah. And shouldn't I just be happy? And then I'd guilt myself into saying suck it up and go back to work. And I would, and about 90 days later, guess what? Same thing. And so there was something burbling in me, and I wasn't trying to escape something, I wasn't trying to quit, but something was trying to wake me up.
Speaker 2:And right before COVID, I decided that one of the things I need to do is I need to figure myself out. I need to figure out what's going on. And so I decided that I was going to go get my executive coaching certification. And so in March of 2020, like literally weeks before COVID I went to Sarasota, Florida, and'm going to use this inside of my company to continue to groom and build and grow the next generation of leaderships inside of my company, next generation of leaders inside of my company. And then, at the same time, I reached out to some bank presidents because I came from that world and I said, hey, if you've got some high achievers, let me just meet with them for free and I'll just be their executive coach, just because I enjoy it. Well then COVID hit and I realized that hey, look, I really enjoy this. I'm really and I'm pretty good at it. I'm good at mentoring people, and so all of this was swirling around. I didn't ever expect it to be part of my real big future. I just knew I wanted to continue to do it inside of my company.
Speaker 2:Well then, fast forward into middle of 2021 and Raven my company instead of being that guy in charge of mergers and acquisitions coming in, I became one of the team members who are in charge of mergers and acquisitions going out. We were being acquired by CNHI, which ultimately happened, and so when that transaction happened, and just before it, I was busy. I didn't have time to think about what's next. But as it looked eminent and we were months out from closing, I didn't expect that I was going to have the option to say usually the sell side M&A guy, we're gone, the acquiring company kicks us out because they've got people like us on their team already. They don't need more of us, so we get let go, and that's what I was expecting to happen. But Case was great. They were fantastic. They offered me a job, they asked me to stay, they gave me a three-year sign-on. If I stayed on for three years, it's a big bonus. And so they made my decision harder.
Speaker 2:But I ultimately decided it's my time to go. And, Josh, I used the exact same criteria we talked about earlier. I thought I can stay with this company and I can do the things they're asking me to do, and I think I'd be good at it. But if I don't do that, if I don't go see what it is I should do next, if I don't separate from this and really get serious about who I'm here to be next, I might never do it.
Speaker 2:And instead of starting when I'm 46, maybe I won't start until I'm 56. And I just decided that I wasn't going to tolerate that. I made the hard decision of leaving and I turned. I can tell you the whole story of how that came about if you care to know it. But at the end of the day, I decided that it was time to bet on me. I would regret it if I didn't do it then and I separated and I didn't know what I was going to start. I didn't know what business was going to be. I didn't know if anybody would show up and fast forward two years. It hasn't even been two years since I've left, but it's coming up on it. By the time this, by the time you put this out, it'll be my two year anniversary and, uh, and I just couldn't be happier with the decision I made.
Speaker 1:Team. Let's take a quick break from this episode and I want to share an additional leadership resource with you, and that is one-on-one leadership coaching through McMillian Leadership Coaching. So what do I do? I help leaders discover their purpose, create a long-term growth plan and take inspired action. I believe everything rises and falls on leadership and, regardless of where you are in life, one fact is true you are a leader of others, you are a leader of your family and, most importantly, you are a leader of yourself. To lead others well, that starts by leading yourself well. If you want to learn more, you can go to mcmillianleadershipcoachingcom and schedule a free call today. Back to the episode dot com and schedule a free call today. Back to the episode. That's amazing, brother.
Speaker 1:Every time that I hear someone who who does a major change in their life like that, it brings me a little bit of anxiety. You know to be honest with you because I've been in the military since 2008. At this point, I have been institutionalized you can use another word if you want for that but that's inspiring, that you take a bet on yourself and I always said this in the military and I genuinely mean it the day that I show up to work and what I do is no longer fun. Is the day that I will get out of the military, because, at least from my standpoint, military leaders have to have that emotional intrinsic motivation.
Speaker 1:And you had that same type, I think, of spark within your own personal life is like, hey, is there more to life? Am I called to do something greater than what I'm doing right now? Am I happy and am I actually improving the organization? And I'm sure you were, but you weren't happy. And then you were able to identify that and then go take a bet on yourself, which is I honestly, look, hearing your story, I think COVID was probably a blessing, where I know it wasn't a blessing to the world but for you. It gave you the space and the time probably to think. And then that chain of events of where your company was getting acquired it almost just sounds like it was meant to be. You were supposed to break away and then you start this thing called Normal 40. What was the spark behind that?
Speaker 2:Here's the spark the day I left it was February 1st was my last day at Raven, and so I woke up the next morning. First time in my life well, since I was well, probably the first time since I lived at the farm I didn't have W-2 income. Well, I guess I didn't. My whole point is it's the first time in my professional life where I didn't have a W-2 income. And I woke up and I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about that because I didn't have a plan. And I woke up that morning early, like I usually did, and I opened my eyes and I realized, you know what? My bed is soft, my wife is still here, the carpet was soft, the bathroom was warm, my running shoes were comfortable.
Speaker 2:I went for a run that morning and it wasn't a release of stress, it was an expression of joy, and I had this wonderful ease about my decision. And I realized in that moment that whatever, whatever I do, I'm. I don't know what it's going to be, I don't know what it's going to look like, but it's going to, it's going to be me, it's going to be mine, it's going to be pure. And I went to LinkedIn and I had a small following, a really small following, probably six or 700 at the time, and I wrote that that is essentially my post was some version of. I woke up, the carpet was soft, the bedroom was warm, the run was great and I'm going to be fine. I'm going to figure this out. And in that moment, josh, my inbox blew up from people from around the world who said I feel the same way. How did you know this was your time? How did you know you'd be okay? What are you going to do next? How are you going to make money? What'd your wife say? What'd your boss say? And I realized wait a minute. There's a whole bunch of people who feel exactly as I was feeling before I left. They're wrestling with all the things I'd been wrestling with for the last two or three years. They just don't have anyone to talk to. So I said, okay, I'm just going to keep leaning into this. I'm going to keep showing up curious. Remember that lesson Conviction versus curiosity. I'm like I don't know what this is. I have no conviction over why these people are showing up. I'm just going to be curious about what's going on. And I just kept showing up for that person who was me two years ago and I kept writing about it and, and it just kept presenting to me what I should do next and fast forward. Two years later, we've got normal 40. But I want to say something and this is really important. So who shows up to me? Who shows up here? Who are these people?
Speaker 2:And I've had 538, 540 free rambles with individuals from around the world over the course of the last 18 months. You can go onto my website and you can book time to chat with me for free, and I've talked to the most amazing people from around the world. But after 500 conversations, you pick up on some things that people have in common and one of the things I ask every single person I've talked to when they find me. I'm like all right, you're here, you're here for a reason. Tell me what you feel. And they all use the same language to tell me what, the how they feel.
Speaker 2:They say I feel like I'm on autopilot. Things just aren't challenging for me. I'm not doing bad work, it's just I'm not doing great work anymore. It's just kind of I'm on autopilot, but I feel frustrated. I feel controlled. I don't have control over my own calendar. Things are uncertain. I feel lost, stressed, annoyed. I feel alone, paralyzed, I'm getting stale. I feel like I've worked myself into a box. I feel anxious to do something else. I feel caged, discontent, I miss my family and I feel a little bit of shame and guilt for wanting something other than what I have, because I just spent the last 20 years getting right here. Who am I to think that I should want something else? It's unfair to my family, it's unfair to my team, and so they carry around this shame and guilt for wanting something other than what they have. So what do they do? Nothing. They tolerate it, they stamp it down, tamp it down and they live with it. And so then I I let me just add one more, one more layer onto this. I'm like well, who are these people? Cause it can't be everyone. What are they? What do they have in common? What are the common themes? And here's, here's the common themes.
Speaker 2:They tend to be people who are at a high level in their professional game, leaders and executives. They tend to be people who've dedicated their whole life to something specific. They tend to be the providers for their home. They're the moneymakers or the providers and are the problem solvers in their home. They've got good marriages, but not great. There's room for improvement. They've lived their life by the book. They've checked all the boxes, they've done what they're supposed to do, they've been on time, they've worked hard and they've outperformed their own expectation from only five years ago. They're relentlessly loyal and they've always done what's expected of them.
Speaker 2:And here's the last thing I'll say about this group of people. They tend to fall into five different boxes Six physicians and people in healthcare because they decided when they were 18 that they want to be a doctor, career, military because they decided at 18 they're going to enlist Attorneys. Because they decided at age 18 that they want to go to school and then law school, accounting partners because they decided at 18 that they want to get into, go to work for one of the big three Business owners. Because they decided young that they're going to dedicate their life to a business. And executives because they worked their whole life to get to exactly where they're at. And now they get there and they're like holy cow 20 years later. I don't. I'm not so sure that this is exactly what I want anymore, but they feel powerless to do anything about it.
Speaker 1:I think that that is that's so powerful and I underline the word guilt, like all those feelings that lead up to that moment that who are we to decide to go do something that we feel that we should be doing or that we want to be doing because we worked our entire lives up to this moment? Well, I always try to think of it like this is that maybe at that point you you've built your entire life up to this moment for the next chapter in your life? There's always other chapters in our lives. I had to learn that the hard way. I had to kind of reinvent myself, being an infantry officer and now transitioning into acquisitions and having no clue about anything still within the scope of the Army, but understanding that, hey, there's chapters in our lives, there's seasons of our lives and it's okay that we reinvent ourselves and everything that I did in the past is just an opportunity to show up as present, as full as possible now and to continue to do things that bring me joy, so I can bring joy to the world, to the family of others, because I really think that that's what leads to burnout, that anxiety, fear, the guilt that you talked about being stressed, because then you find yourself one day older and nothing to show for it. And then, over time, but you look back, you're five years older and all of those dreams, hopes, aspirations, shift, they, they, they manipulate themselves into, you know, almost fear, dread, anxiety, because you know that you're never going to want to do those things.
Speaker 1:I love people like you who embrace those and then found the drive to go, do it and then help other people do it. And I would love now to kind of just transition to your book, the Trade, moving from the life you have to the life you want. And, by the way, man, you've done so much. So 2021, 2022 is when you kind of separated from the regular job side to now being an entrepreneur. You wrote a book, you have a podcast, you have a successful coaching business. So let me just ask you how did you do so much in a short period of time?
Speaker 2:Well, look, looking back, it looks like a lot. It always looks like a lot through the rear view mirror and it looks impossible. Looking forward and that's it. That's a key point in my book, actually is never underestimate how different your life can look in one year from now. But here's the thing you have to actually start Now. This is important. I quit and then I started, and some people do that. Some people do that on their own accord, some people get let go and they have no choice but to then start something else. But you don't have to do it that way.
Speaker 2:The whole premise is this you can start from wherever you are. If you have one week, one month, one year, one decade left of whatever chapter you're working on, if you've got another dance, start working on it, because you'll be amazed at how different your life can look in one year from now. So you know, I, looking back, it just like well, look, I'm a, I'm a businessman, I'm a hard worker. This, this is how it's supposed to be. It's just, you make progress every day, but certainly, I think, from the outside, looking in, it's like well, boy, I can never achieve that much, and I just want to remind people that's baloney.
Speaker 2:You absolutely can, anybody can. But the key difference is I started, I actually started and I'm doing it, and that is so different than just thinking about how different it could be or might be. But you actually have to start. And, by the way, one more thing, and this is really important starting is easy. You just have to try something, just do something. You don't have to quit in order to start, but you do have to start if you ever want to quit.
Speaker 1:I think a testament to that is our first podcast. I just tried it. It failed. But hey, I continue to keep going and keep moving forward. Man, I love that I wrote it down is that sometimes you need to quit to start.
Speaker 1:And then I thought about, um, aspired versus practiced actions. So we have to be purposeful in our actions. What are we thinking that is aspired and what are we actually doing those practice within our lives? And then I don't know if you've ever heard this or not, but it's the rule of a hundred percent, and I don't even know if it's an actual thing, but I saw it on Instagram and it talks about the power of just continuous action. It's a beautiful way of expressing it.
Speaker 1:So over a course of a year, if you dedicate 18 minutes a day to one thing let's say you want to be a better soccer player so 18 minutes a day, you play soccer. For the whole year you'll have dedicated up to 100 hours and at the end of that year you'll be in the 95th percentile of soccer players with within the world. And I think that's just the power of consistency and compounding, because over time it's always rough at the beginning, like my daughter with wrestling last year not so awesome. This year she's doing phenomenal because she built upon those skills and at a certain point you're going to have a learning curve efficiency of where now it's all clicking and then it's just easy for you what was hard yesterday. So anyway, sorry, you got me fired up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no man, but you're nailing it. You're nailing it. You know, we sometimes, we sometimes overthink what it means to start. We assume it has to be public and it has to be visible and it requires a press release. I mean, we're so tuned into a grand opening, this big splash, and like this announcement of I used to be that, now I'm this, look how. And I just want everyone to take a breath. That's not what it is. You might get it wrong, and that's okay too, because getting it wrong enough leads to what's right. So that's why I call it exploring. So when you book a call with me, it's not a discovery call. What the hell are we discovering? That's not my language, it's a ramble. We're just going to chat, we're going to see where it goes, we're going to show up curious and we're going to let it unfold. That is exploring.
Speaker 2:And whatever you want to start, I don't care if it's a nonprofit, I don't care if it's your One tiny step, you can do it by yourself. But find a community. My biggest thing is find a community who think like you, who are where you are on your path, because it is going to hold you accountable. Sure, accountability is good, but it's going to inspire you to move forward and that's really what you need. You need courage. Everybody really wants to wait until they're confident and before they start, they want to be confident in its right decision, confident that they're going to make money, confident that you're not going to get that. That's not how starting looks. You don't start with confidence. You start with courage and you lean into that courage and you explore. And then you, with confidence, you start with courage and you lean into that courage and you explore, and then you build confidence. But you have to start with courage. You have to do the thing. That feels awkward. But when you do, man, you're going to feel different in your day. That Sunday pit you have every single Sunday at 430, or that huge pit you have in your entire chest the day before your vacation is done actually about three days before your vacation all that shit, all that goes away when you have something else on the sidelines that you're betting on, that you're working through, that you're testing, you're exploring. All that goes away because that's where your energy goes.
Speaker 2:You said one more thing. You said burnout, burnout. I think burnout isn't being overworked, I think it's just working on the wrong stuff, the stuff you're not passionate about anymore. You could have been passionate about it at some point in your life. You could have been passionate about it for most of your life. But when your passion is somewhere else, burnout comes from, not from putting too much work in. It's from the point you know you're working on the wrong things and you're not chasing what you know or you believe is next. I think that leads to this discontent, which is another way of seeing burnout.
Speaker 1:Yep, the way I see that is purposeful action is like a tire. If a tire can spin right and just doing work and it looks like it's busy but really it's not because there's no traction. But the moment that you add purposeful action to that, you have spikes within the tire. Then you gain momentum. And momentum is required to accelerate in life because we all hit roadblocks. But when we gain momentum, it doesn't matter when we hit an obstacle because we can accelerate beyond that. But if we don't have traction, you're never going to move. You're always going to find yourself in the present. And the one thing I would love to come talk about your your book is I think there's a four step process that you kind of walk through within this book would, without giving it all away, right, because I know that people need to go buy this. Could you share a couple stories from that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there is four steps and look, I will give my book away, I'll tell, I'll talk about any portion of it. It's, it's not. I wrote the book. My mission, josh and we've talked about this my mission, literally, has become to inspire the change in a thousand lives and my metric is to get a thousand notes of thanks.
Speaker 2:My book was never written to make me rich financially. My book was to make me feel rich spiritually, and every day I wake up and I get these notes of thanks from people from all over the world and it makes me feel rich. It probably will never make many mortgage payments and that's okay. That's not what I designed it to do, but here's, here's what I went through every time. So we talked about my career changes and we talked about well, I regret it if I don't blah, blah, blah all of those things. Well, I realized that as I was coming up to that.
Speaker 2:There were four things that I was wrestling with, and we've talked about one. The first one is knowing when you feel different, when today doesn't felt like it did yesterday, your excitement is something's changing inside of you and you accept that. You have to see it, appreciate it and accept that there's a change happening inside of you and when you do, the process goes like this you got to start exploring something else, you got to test something. You have to take some time by yourself, selfishly, by yourself. This process is a very selfish process it is. So take some time by yourself and explore what it is that might be next, what it is that might be calling you.
Speaker 2:Don't, don't use the wrong words here. Don't say what is it? Who am I here to be? Those are the wrong answers, yet those are the eventual answers. But just what might it be? Talk to us, talk to a friend, hire a coach. I'm here to tell you. There's a reason why people become coaches because they get hired, the great ones do great and they change lives. Hire a coach and start exploring. What might it be? Start letting yourself come out of your, come out of your shell and start exploring. Then, when you've identified a couple of things, start learning, start investing your time and learning about it.
Speaker 2:Now you're, now you are learning and investing. That's step two. And you're giving. You're giving part of yourself to something. It's more than just internal. There's something external going on. Then there's testing.
Speaker 2:Now, this is the point. People are going to see what you're doing. If you're going to join a board, if you're going to start a side hustle, if you're going to do some of these things where, yeah, you've done the investing and learning, now you're ready to start something like create. People are going to see it and it's a hard, hard step, but you just keep leaning into that and eventually you get to this point where you make a trade. You either trade what you have for where you're going or you don't. That's still a trade. You've decided to trade out of what you have for where you're going or you don't. That's still a trade. You've decided to trade, trade out of what you started, back to where you were.
Speaker 2:And the point of the matter is this I don't care what you do. I don't get a vote on what you do. My whole premise is do the math. If you get to this place in your life where you feel like your best days are upon you they're right here and they're not where your feet are You're not going to be able to live out what you are here to do and who you are here to be by staying where you're at. You've got work to do and you owe it to yourself to start something. I don't get a vote. Josh doesn't get a vote. The only person who gets a vote is the person who's feeling that way, and you have got to start that process and you've got to start exploring, and so that's the whole premise of the book, then, is to be an insurance policy against future regret.
Speaker 2:And look back at this moment, the moment that if I'm talking to you and you're feeling it, you feel it in your gut, you see it in your head and you're like, holy shit, this is exactly how I feel. My best days are here, my best work is still inside of me. I don't know how to let it out. What am I gonna do? I'm telling you get selfish, start exploring and don't let yourself get five years older than you are right now and look back at this moment and say, god, dang it, why didn't I do something? I knew how I felt. I heard that dude on the podcast talking about this and I decided to do nothing. I didn't talk to anyone, I didn't join a community, I didn't even reach out to Josh and say, hey, thanks for putting together this great leadership podcast. It's changed my life. Don't be that guy or gal. Do something. Do something small, but do something for you. You have to do it.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say it again I love that. So I think one of the biggest misconceptions I think within leadership is taking the time to take a tactical pause to set back and really evaluate our surroundings. And a lot of the times and I know you talked about like it being selfish I think that that is an unselfish act because when we can show up in this world as like our true, authentic selves of who we're supposed to be, we can create so much more change. And I had to mentally shift my brain of thinking that, hey, investing is Josh's selfish, because I had to go, go, go, go, go, go go, like literally from five 30 in the morning when I was going into work till sometimes not leaving work till seven, seven, 30 at night when I was in command, it was it was dark when I went home. That was the most miserable time. And then it was dark when I got home and sometimes my kids were asleep the entire week and I never got a chance to see them.
Speaker 1:And then I realized quickly is that there has to be a trade-off. What you just said I love that is that we understand the emotions that we find ourselves in and then we need to invest in ourselves, figure out what is the next course of action that we want to go take or how we want to improve our current surroundings. Then test those things and make it public. And I love how you talk about making it public too, because then you're adding accountability to it, because when you share it with other people, then people can hold you accountable to what you're trying to do, because we can't do it ourselves unless you're Jocko Wellington right and you have extreme discipline.
Speaker 1:And then the trade-off, because then we're going to come to a moment in time of is this more important than that? And there has to be sacrifice because we can't have too many irons in the fire. And I love how one of my friends talked about this is that when we have too many irons in the fire, what it does is it displates the heat. So none of the irons ever reached the temperature enough to be molded or malleable to make into that weapon. They're hot, yeah, but it still didn't get to that desired heat to make the tool that was originally designed to do so. You can only have so many irons in a fire, and that metaphor always plays back in into my mind. So I have so many people in this podcast and this is where I want to apologize to you is that I have not read your book yet, but I promise you in 2024, I will read your book.
Speaker 2:Dude, you're good. I promise you you're good. Look, I named the book the Trade because you realize that there's certain points in your life when what you need to do next is no longer obvious and it can feel irresponsible, and it's usually not free, and it requires then you to trade something. It requires you to give something up in order to pursue what is next. And for so long, I think, you go through your career and people take bets on you. I talked about people always taking bets on me and for as long as people were taking bets on me, what was next for me was always obvious. It always found me Well.
Speaker 2:I got to be in my mid 40s. There wasn't going to be somebody next to come along to take a bet on me and my option was to stay where I was or trade it for who I was capable of being. It wasn't obvious, it wasn't free, it was a trade. If it was obvious and free, it would be a gift. It's not a gift. It's hard. It's hard work, but, man, is it worth it? When you come out, you're going to learn. When you do this, it is impossible to look back. I've never met a single person who made the trade and look back and said, boy, I wish I wouldn't have chased my dreams, I wish I wouldn't have taken a bet on myself, even when it doesn't work the way they wanted it to. Nobody gets to the end and says I wish I wouldn't have tried. Everybody gets to the end and says I wish I'd have started earlier or I wish I'd have tried when I knew it was my time.
Speaker 1:Yep, you just have to push yourself outside of that comfort zone. 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 what do you believe separates a good leader from a great leader?
Speaker 2:A great leader learns how to lead with his ears, or her ears, versus their mouth, and you make that transition, usually later than you wish you would have, but once you do, you change lives.
Speaker 1:Yep Spot on man Number two. What is one resource that you could recommend to our listeners to grow?
Speaker 2:I listened to a lot of Seth Godin. I just think the guy's up. I'm so jealous of his ability to communicate. He's just absolutely Well. First of all, I'm a huge believer. We preach the same things and I didn't find Seth until a year after I was gone, even though he's been around for a long time. But man, I just think he's absolutely brilliant and I just love how he communicates. What he preaches little P preach, and I just think that's absolutely fantastic. And then, more generically, and I've said this a few times find a tribe, find a community and be willing to spend a few bucks. I mean, it's you'll. Most people will spend more on dinner with their spouse on a month, one time a month, than they would ever spend on themselves trying to really feel good about where they're going, and I just really would ask you to give yourself permission to try it. Try something where you're investing a little money on yourself.
Speaker 1:Spot on, brother. Number three if you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Well, the easy one would be to lead with your ears. I would tell myself that leadership is about showing up and that the hardest thing that you will do in your life is to decide when you're going to not do nothing. Leadership is not doing nothing, leadership is doing something. And to really have clarity, pure clarity on who you are and what you will and will not tolerate, and live purely inside that, unapologetically, and even though I feel like I've done pretty well at that, it isn't until really late. You know this phase of my life in my late forties, that I know exactly who I am and I know exactly what I will and won't tolerate, and I stand in it every day. And the sooner you can figure that out in life, the more you're going to enjoy every day you've got left.
Speaker 1:Spot on, brother. I love that. I love when people answer that question, because everyone answers it slightly different and it comes from your shared experience. So that is probably my favorite question. I get an opportunity to ask great leaders like you. And the last one is how can our listeners find you and how can they add value to your mission?
Speaker 2:My mission is to inspire change in a thousand lives. So you are helping my mission by allowing me to be in your podcast and really all I want to do is give people a moment to stop, think about where they are and if they are not happy, if they are not living their next chapter, do something. So that's my mission to inspire the change in a thousand lives where they can find me. It's pretty easy Normal40.com gets, gets you almost everywhere. I show up every day on LinkedIn and I leave a message that hopefully inspires, gives you something to think about, and hopefully tweaks and motivates and inspires and annoys all at the same time exactly what you're feeling, because I'm trying to twist you into doing something. That is my intent when I show up there. So it is going to be a little punchy. You can find me there every day. You can email me at lon, at normal 40.com, and then a couple of other things.
Speaker 2:I do have my own podcast called normal 40, the podcast. You can join me there. Um, and then I've got a community called the Insider that you can find from my website. When I say find a community, this is a community for some people and you're invited to come in. We're in there at least twice a month. We've got our own boards where we're communicating, and the people in there are your biggest cheerleaders and, by the way, you'll be theirs. There's men and women of all ages, but all of them are two years from before making a trade to two years after they've made the trade, and everyone's in there supporting one another, and it's probably one of the things I'm most proud of.
Speaker 1:I love that, brother. I love that you're being able to make the community too, and not only are you providing the information, you're also providing the support and I always say this, but I genuinely mean it One of my best podcasts that I've been able to film, because I've learned so much from you, and you are what I call a purposeful, accountable leader or a pal. So thank you for the space of just sharing your leadership wisdom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man. Well, thank you, and I've said it off the top, but thank you for your service. Thank you for look. Doing a podcast is hard work and it looks easy. It looks like you put throw some headphones on and you hit record and, having done a fair number of my own, I know how hard it is. And, to stay on message on topic, do the editing, get it out there, and then you do so much more. I mean, you're writing, you're creating content all the way around it, you're promoting it. So look, dude, on behalf of myself and your listeners, thank you for doing it, because it is having an effect.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it, brother. Yeah, thank you. Have a great day.
Speaker 2:Thanks, man. Thanks for letting me be here. I'll see you on the next page.
Speaker 1:All right team. What a phenomenal episode with Lon, before we kind of go through the AAR process we talked about at the very end. Another journey that he's going to be going to take that I didn't even have the opportunity to bring up on the podcast and I generally mean that is that I could be a dude, a Joe Rogan, talking two to three hours, but I tried to stick within the bounds of one hour just because there's so much information and content out to you guys and I want it to be in bite-sized chunks that you can understand and digest for, maybe driving into work and driving back from work or wherever you have the space to listen to. But in February he's going to go hike by himself, machu Picchu, and his kind of goal is to find a place that allows him to share that experience with other individuals and, within that space that he's building within the Normal 40 community, he would like to have other people attend this with him, you know, maybe on a yearly basis or whatever it is, but as a opportunity to grow, meet new people and put yourself in uncomfortable situations. So if you're interested in his journey that he's getting ready to take, I highly recommend that you go to his LinkedIn page and follow him on LinkedIn, so let's just jump right into it.
Speaker 1:So what are the top three takeaways? The first one that we discussed was curiosity and conviction, and I think that as you grow in your leadership capacity, you have to understand that curiosity is essential for growth because it allows for open-mindedness, and conviction is a very closed-minded way of thinking and as we gain more title, more authority, more responsibility, we have to shift our minds. We can't always be closed-minded to everything, because to solve complex problems, you have to be open-minded, you have to be curious, and when you are curious, you look for creative solutions. So understand that as you continue to rise in authority and rank responsibility wherever you find yourself in a leadership position, that is absolutely imperative is that you don't give in to your conviction that you always remain curious. The next key takeaway that I have was we talked about the power of delegating. Again, as you gain more responsibility and authority, the one thing that is going to make or break you is how you delegate. Number one do you trust your people enough to delegate authority down and I brought up the topic of mission command. But number two are you delegating the right things or are you just task dumping on your team or everyone around you.
Speaker 1:And it's funny as I go through these podcasts, I reflect on my life and I also find myself task dumping, sometimes on my wife, right? So I'm an active duty army officer, I film all of these podcasts, I do a lot. I manage my social media, I do a lot of things, and sometimes I find myself talking to my wife as an employee like hey, you know, it'd be really great if you could handle my social media. I do a lot of things. And sometimes I find myself talking to my wife as an employee like hey, you know, it'd be really great if you could handle my social media. Or hey, you should start doing this for our podcast. And I find myself understanding that there are certain things you just should not delegate, especially to your wife, right? But that's just a point of vulnerability.
Speaker 1:Whatever job you have, there are distinct and specific tasks and responsibilities that you have that you should never delegate, and you need to understand what those are. I can't tell you what they are because I don't know where you find yourself, but you need to understand what they are. But 90% of the things that you could be doing should be done by someone else and I always ask that question should be done by someone else. And I always ask that question Should someone be doing this other than me and could they do as good or better of a job than me? And if the answer is yes and yes, always delegate those things to the right people.
Speaker 1:But also delegate to make sure you're not breaking your team. Make sure you're sharing the burden. If you have a rock star on your team and you continue to give them tasks, there's going to be a certain point where those glass balls that we talked about in this podcast are just going to start to break. But when you can learn to delegate effectively, it does two things. Number one, it allows for exponential growth because you're really not ever cutting off your potential to grow, because as you get more tasks, you can delegate those down. And number two, you're creating an internal pipeline to create future leaders. So not only are you delegating tasks, you're creating future leaders, which, in turn, can build more authority and delegate more responsibility down. So as you grow, you're growing internally, and that's so beautiful.
Speaker 1:So understand that, as a leader, when you delegate to the point of being uncomfortable, you are succeeding. So I challenge you go, be uncomfortable, delegate stuff that someone could be doing and should be doing, and figure out what those red lines are of things that you can't. And the last key takeaway that I have is sometimes you need to quit to start, and that's true. There's a trade-off. This is the whole theme in this episode is that, no matter where you find yourself in life, every single journey we are on there is going to be a hard stop right Like I'm in the military. At some time in my career hopefully not near future, because I love what I'm doing I will retire and the service to my country as an active duty service member will end. When will that happen? I don't know, I can't tell you, but there'll be a trade-off. I will give up my uniform to potentially be a more active father, to go chase some dreams of mine, to go get that PhD in leadership that I wanted to do, to go write a book, to go full-time in entrepreneurship and build a community and be in this full-time being active and maybe having active people on my podcast. I don't know what that is, but there's always a tradeoff.
Speaker 1:Wherever you find yourself right now, there is always a trade-off, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. You have to give to sacrifice and you have to give up to receive. So you need to understand that. What is the trade-off that you find yourself in? And if you understand where you're going, what's aspired and what's practiced, right, there's a certain place that we're trying to go, a desired end state. Are you saying the right things or are you doing the right things? And I broke that down to aspired or practiced actions and you have to understand those.
Speaker 1:So, team, do me a favor. If you like the content that I'm providing or bringing to you guys, do me three things. It would mean the world to me. Number one is share this podcast with anyone and everyone, because everyone is a leader. Number two, make sure that you rate this show, no matter what you're listening, no matter what the platform is, or however you can do it. Make sure you leave a comment, if you can, or leave a review.
Speaker 1:Go to mcmillianleadershipcoachingcom, read some of the additional resources that I provide you to include this podcast episode with a fully written article to summarize all the key concepts. And then the final one is support the channel, if you can, and you can go to tellsleadershipcom, backslash buzzsprout, or you can go to mcmillianleadershipcoachingcom. Find any of my podcast episodes and you'll be able to figure out how to support the channel from there. But, as always, team humbled and honored to continue to have this platform to help bring light into this world and build more purposeful, accountable leaders. And, as always, I'm your host, josh McMillian, saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time.
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