Tales of Leadership
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Tales of Leadership
#113 Isaac Lee - From Cockpit to Corporate: A Marine's Leadership Journey
Isaac G. Lee, a native of Lubbock, Texas, is a graduate of Texas Tech University and a retired Marine Corps officer and aviator. Over his two decades of service, Isaac completed seven overseas deployments, including four combat tours in the Middle East. He served as the Commanding Officer of an operational CH-53E squadron before retiring in 2017. Now residing in San Diego, California, Isaac works as an operations executive and dedicates his free time to volunteering for fellow veterans and enjoying time with his family. A fan of baseball and football, Isaac is also the author of HANGAR 4, his first book.
Connect with Isaac Lee:
- Website: isaacglee.com
- IG: @isaacgleewriter
- Facebook: Isaac G Lee
🫡 My Why: I’ve seen the cost of poor leadership — how it can destroy morale, break trust, and in the worst cases, lead to lives lost, including through suicide. That’s why I’ve committed my life to helping others lead with purpose. Through Tales of Leadership, I share real stories and actionable insights on how to overcome adversity and become the kind of leader people remember for the right reasons.
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- Joshua K. McMillion
I would say the number one thing that he always emphasized to me, with a star next to it, was what he called mental toughness. You know, he was like you need to be physically tough, you've got to work hard, you've got to be a great teammate, but to him, the differentiator was always mental toughness. Right, how do you respond under pressure? How do you bounce back in adverse conditions or situations? How do you deal with failure? And we spent a lot of time talking about that specifically.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I think that was extremely beneficial to me later as a combat aviator. To have, you know, been talking about these things and learning about them since I was a kid was extremely beneficial, and I give him a lot of credit for understanding that and focusing on it extremely beneficial and I give him a lot of credit for understanding that and focusing on it.
Speaker 2:You're listening to the Tales of 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 3:All right team. Welcome back to the Tales of Leadership podcast. I am your host, josh McMillian, and I am on a journey to be the best leader that I possibly can, and I plan to do that by bringing on what I like to call pals purposeful, accountable leaders on who lead with intention, integrity and impact and then continue my own self-study of my leadership habits through journaling and my experiences to share with you on this platform so you can be a better leader, and my why it's important to go over. Every time I've seen the cost of poor leadership, how it can destroy morale, break trust and, in worst case, lead to a loss of life, including suicide. That's why I've committed my life to helping others lead with purpose and through Tales of Leadership, I share real stories of actual insights on how to overcome adversity and be the kind of leader people remember for the right reasons. So before we start, just a couple quick reminders of free resources so you can go to my link tree slash Tales of Leadership. Every single one of my social media is listed there to include all of my additional websites, how you can get a hold of me, all of those things. You can also go to McMillian leadership coaching slash tales of leadership. And in there, with this specific episode and every other one that I've filmed, there'll be an accompany blog post that distills down the key facts. So maybe you don't have time to listen to this whole one hour episode and you just want to go read an article really quick. Well, all the key points are there for you and it's a hundred percent free. And finally, make sure you stay to the very end. We'll do a quick AAR and I'll provide you the top three takeaways from this episode, but time for today's guest.
Speaker 3:Isaac Lee, a native of Lubbock, texas, is a graduate of the Texas Tech University and a retired Marine Corps officer and aviator. Over his two decades of service, isaac completed seven overseas deployments, including four combat tours in the Middle East. He served as the commanding officer of an operational CH-53 Echo Squadron before retiring in 2017. Now residing in San Diego, california, isaac works as an operations executive and dedicates his free time to volunteering for fellow veterans and enjoying time with family, which he very much deserves. He's a fan of baseball and football, and Isaac is also, most importantly, the author of Hanger, for his first book that he wrote, and before we start, I read this book. I absolutely love it because it comes from all the right places. He's not just trying to sell a book, he's trying to help friends and he wrote it in a very authentic manner and I cannot recommend it enough. Hanger Four it's a phenomenal book. Without further ado, let's bring on Isaac. Isaac. Welcome to the Tales of Leadership podcast, brother. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Good, thank you. Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, public apologies. Sorry, it's taken me so long to get you on the show, so I know you reached out and me, being a full-time Army officer, mission always comes first. This is something I'm passionate about, but I'm glad to actually get you on the show and do it during a normal time so you don't have to film it like 7 o'clock at night. Yeah, of course, no problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3:No problem. So I always like starting off with a couple preload of questions, because it just sets a barometer for the podcast and really tell me a lot about, like who you are, and the first one is always the same, because I think it's important, because I'm trying to distill the facts of all the leadership wisdom that the guests have on, and you coming from a combat arms background, as an aviator in the Marine Corps, over seven combat deployments I'm very curious how do you define leadership in your terms?
Speaker 1:To me, leadership is really just putting people that you're responsible for in a position to be successful, and try to keep it that simple and really make that the focus and constantly remind yourself, as a leader, that that's really, at the end of the day, the job. Right. If I'm effective, I'm putting them in a position to be successful. I can't necessarily do it for them from that point forward, but it's my responsibility to give them the opportunity and set the conditions, and so that's really the way I approached it the entire time I was in the military and you know, after transitioning in the business world as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I think that that's a beautiful way of defining it. Is that leadership really? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what I do, it's the legacy that I leave and the impact. And that's really through the people. And if we empower our people to make a difference, that's how we actually grow as individuals and organizations. So kind of jump into starting off in your leadership journey. So I know sports was a big part of your upbringing, growing up in Texas. And now you're like in California.
Speaker 3:I think, starting there, where did your leadership journey start?
Speaker 1:That really is where it started and the interesting thing is hindsight's 20-20,.
Speaker 1:But I didn't totally realize how much I'd learned, frankly, as a child, until much later in life.
Speaker 1:So I was fortunate to grow up in a house where my dad was a high school football and a baseball coach.
Speaker 1:My mom was a teacher, baseball coach, my mom was a teacher. So I literally spent all of my time on the dusty ball fields of West Texas and hanging out at the high school watching my dad basically do his job. So I was just immersed in watching mainly him, you know, lead these groups of young people all the time and I didn't realize what I was learning or seeing or observing until much later, you know, as a fairly young officer in the Marine Corps, I finally, like the light bulb went on one day and I was like, oh, I understand this. This is the same thing I was looking at, you know, when I was not even 10 years old back in Lubbock, texas, and once I made that connection I realized that really was the foundation and I and I also realized it really gave me I would call it a head start as an officer in the Marine Corps, because I already understood quite a bit of things that I was going to need to understand to be successful there too.
Speaker 3:With that too, like just thinking back. So that's awesome that you had like a mentor in your father, because I think at a young age especially men too, because we all have a little bit of craziness, especially those who choose to join the military Having a role model that models the kind of behaviors that need to be implemented in the world. What were some of like the characteristics or values that your dad had that kind of set you apart?
Speaker 1:I would say the number one thing that he always emphasized to me, with a star next to it was what he called mental toughness. You know, he was like you need to be physically tough, you've got to work hard, you've got to be a great teammate, but to him, the differentiator was always mental toughness. Right, how do you respond under pressure? How do you bounce back in adverse conditions or situations? How do you deal with failure? And we spent a lot of time talking about that specifically and I think that was extremely beneficial to me later as a combat aviator. To have, you know, been talking about these things and learning about them since I was a kid was extremely beneficial, and I give him a lot of credit for understanding that and focusing on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that's a great place to kind of dig into is that I I've had to understand this and build upon it like throughout my career. Is that failure is not final, it's not fatal in a way, is that it? And when I went and got my master's degree in systems engineering, it really helped me, like, think through failure is hey, in engineering they don't call it failure, they call it iterative development. They understand something fails and then they fix that thing and then they release a new product or a new service and they continue to iterate and make it better. And I didn't have that early on in my career. But how did your dad like when you were really young, how did he help instill that to where it's just stuck with you?
Speaker 1:It was. He was just very opportunistic situationally, so sometimes it was something that I had done or experienced in a little league game, and sometimes it was, you know, me helping him break down film and him stopping and saying, hey, I called the wrong defense right here. This is what happened. I should have seen this. And so next time I'll be sure when I see you know that motion that I'm going to do X Y, z to counter it. So he was always just very open and honest about pointing out mistakes and then talking through.
Speaker 3:How do we learn?
Speaker 1:from them, so we can be better next time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I know sports very important to your upbringing but also to like going through your book. You use mastering the fundamentals, right, what? What does what does that mean to you? Like mastering the basics or the fundamentals?
Speaker 1:Well, to me it really goes back to this philosophy and I will die on this hill that in a leadership position, especially one of the pieces of art to it is taking something complicated and making it simple enough for the team to execute.
Speaker 1:So I'm always looking at everything from an angle of how do I distill this down to totally just what is the main thing? Because if we can get the main thing right, all the details have a funny way of working themselves out. So by doing that, it just simplifies the problem for everybody. We used to do the same thing when I was an instructor at the weapons and tactics school and we would literally tell the students you know, the art in these tactics is taking something very complicated and making it simple enough for your squadron back home to go execute in combat, because you know your dash four, dash five air crew is not going to be rock stars most likely, and they have to be able to execute your plan too. And just maintaining that basic philosophy throughout has been extremely helpful to me and it's really carried over into the business world.
Speaker 1:As a chief operating officer of a company, I do the same thing every day for 500 people. How do we make this simple enough for them to go execute? Well, and that's my. Really it annoys my peers in the company, I'm sure, as we're sitting in the conference room, but I'm always the one that's like too complicated, too many words, they're not going to be able to do it. We got to make it simple, but you know distilling it down, like that really helps, I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I. I resonate deeply with that. Being an infantry guy is I. My model in life is kiss, Keep it simple.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's that's been my go-to and if I can keep that regardless of like communicating to civilians now in the acquisition core or when I was doing mission planning for ground maneuver and talking to privates, how can I communicate clearly enough to you that you can take what I've given you and then go, operate within the left and right limits and be successful to get to that end state and hit the key tasks Absolutely?
Speaker 1:If I could do that. I crushed it yeah absolutely, and it can be really challenging to do that, I think, especially the more senior you get in, whatever organization you're in, because I think most human beings their natural tendency is they want to display how intelligent they are, what a great idea they have, but they're not thinking about how that ripples down and out to the organization. So whoever's going to have to actually execute the thing and that's something I think you have to learn through some observation- and the military is a great training ground for that right, because if you make that mistake it's going to go sideways and it's going to blow back on you.
Speaker 2:So you kind of learn?
Speaker 1:the hard way, sometimes like, hey, we've got to keep this simple enough to go actually do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I that reminds me of like a quick story when I was going through the Naval postgraduate school. That was really my first introduction into the like sister services of the Marine Corps and the Navy and I had to do, while I was getting my ILE accreditation for major, I had to go do a naval planning. So you got this army dude and I'm trying to figure out how to like maneuver. I do a Harry Potter. I'm like we're magically on the beach. Here is my ground maneuver plan. It's super awesome, let's talk about that. And then the instructor is like hey, don't baffle me with your BS. And that just stuck with me at that moment of like. Sometimes, like all the words, things like doesn't really matter, like what are the key facts? Let's just get after it. Keep it as simple as possible. So transitioning, you know, from your young childhood, growing up before having your role model being a father, your father being like a key role model, what those you well, honest, it really that tied back to sports too.
Speaker 1:So I stopped playing sports when I graduated from high school because, you know, I was a good student. I knew I wasn't quite a good enough athlete to ever say get paid for it. Right, Maybe I'd end up being a coach or something if I pursued, you know, college athletics. But I certainly wasn't going to go pro, and I knew that and I also just had this kind of desire it was really difficult for me to explain at the time to go have some kind of an adventure, go experience something interesting in life.
Speaker 1:And so I was going to college, honestly, just because I thought I was supposed to, not because I really wanted to join it but I was seeking a path and the more I thought about it, the more I decided, or the more I just came to the conclusion of the military would be a very good fit for me and I might find the part of sports that I was missing, which is really the teammates, the camaraderie, the contributing to something bigger than yourself. And so I slowly came to the conclusion that it might be a good fit. And then trying the aviation route was really kind of a whim and just thinking frankly over a conversation with my father who at the time looked at me like I was insane and just got up and walked back into the house, which we still laugh about to this day.
Speaker 1:But in that moment I was like you know what I'm doing this, like I just decided I was doing it and then started to pursue it and thankfully ended up being a great fit. I would definitely do it all over again in a heartbeat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, like reading through your book. It's funny how many similarities like we share and I think everyone who serves and goes on a combat deployments and has a family. They share the same stories roughly, but that God bless you right For joining the Marine Corps and then doing all those deployments. How many, how many Marines and soldiers lives did you save because of what you've done. So you definitely chose the right path and I thank you for everything you've done. We'll get into those stories, but it's pretty incredible what you did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, kind of continuing on that theme, you decide to make that transition, to go be an officer. Go Quantico, virginia, which is like 20 minutes down the road from where I'm at right now at Fort Belvoir. What was that like now being a very rigid organization that has very solid core values that are steeped in history, and then being put into that type of situation as a young man?
Speaker 1:I really enjoyed it, to be honest with you. I mean it was mildly terrifying. I was very out of my comfort zone, like everybody else, and you know, you have these moments where you're like oh man, am I way too far out of my skis by being here? But I settled in pretty quick and, even though it was a slightly more extreme version than what I was used to in terms of discipline and being regimented, it felt familiar and I was comfortable with that.
Speaker 1:It didn't rattle me and I really responded well to it, so very quickly I came to the conclusion that I'm in the right place. This is the right place for me to be, and I think I can be successful here.
Speaker 2:And I was just a sponge.
Speaker 1:I mean, I consider myself to be a fairly observant person and I was just observing everything around me, trying to keep a low profile. You know, don't skyline yourself and get your stuff done. And that basic strategy for the most part worked. And then it's, you know, like a snowball rolling downhill. You have a little success, you get a little more confident, a little more success, a little more confident, and just almost on a daily basis I felt progressively more comfortable with it and progressively more convinced that I was doing what was the best thing for me and that I was going to enjoy it.
Speaker 3:So that's one thing that I noticed as a theme throughout your career starting off like really in the Marine Corps of like hey, which students are doing well, right, and then gravitating towards them and then learning from them and then emulating those behaviors and characteristics. And then, as you transition to and to being an actual aviator in the Marine Corps unit, you did the exact same thing. You gravitated towards the people that had influence and you were a sponge, which I think that's a huge nugget that a lot of people don't really fully understand when they're going through their journey or they decide they want to go be a Marine or a soldier or whatever have you. They think it's an individual journey, Like hey, it's all me, it's not. You got to collectively understand, hey, you're new to the team, humble yourself, learn as quickly as possible and find those people with influence and authority and then learn from them, because that's how you shorten the learning curve. So that was a huge theme that I've noticed in your journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I did that throughout my entire career at every level, and I still do it to this day. I'm the backside of a military career. It's been very helpful for me and I've done the most, learning from literally observing and talking to others who did it first and were successful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, another thing that struck me early on in your book is that you discussed majors, right, so Phil Gray. So I'm here right now. I've been promoted, I've been a major for a while.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 3:Captain was my favorite because they gave me keys to a Humvee when I was at JROTC and I could just drive around, do whatever I wanted. I may or may not have done some mudding in the swamps of Louisiana, and then just being a company commander, deploying and being with troops has just been phenomenal. But I definitely agree with you Something happens when you get that field grade status that you get a lobotomy. So how did you start formulating that opinion? Because I love that when you get that field grade status, that you get a lobotomy. So how did you start formulating that opinion? Because I love that? When you mentioned that in your book, I was just giggling like a little girl.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it was really two things. And going back to being observant, so when I was a young captain in the squadron, there were four squadrons in our hangar and the playing field is perfectly level right. Everyone has the same number of aircraft, same number of Marines, same qualifications, same tools, same parts by everything's the same. But after a couple of deployment cycles, I noticed that at any given time, one squadron was awesome, two were call it mediocre and one was terrible. And it didn't take me too long to realize that it was the scheduled leadership changes that were the inflection points, that were causing those squadrons to either get better or worse. And so I really started paying attention to the field grade officers in all of the squadrons, from the commanding officers, lieutenant Colonel, through the handful of majors who are department heads, and just picking out like what's working and what's not working, and just literally observing that.
Speaker 1:And one of the biggest takeaways I had was that there were guys that I'd observed that had been great captains and senior captains that were very successful and everyone you know respected and they'd done well. And then they pinned on major and just turned into a different human being and my observation was that they stopped being themselves and they started just emulating behaviors they had previously observed from other majors and not necessarily good ones and so that really struck with me like OK, if you stay around in the Marine Corps long enough to become one of those guys, don't do that. Just keep being you. Just keep being you. Don't try to turn into something that you're not or emulate somebody who's not the right person to emulate or feel obligated to display these specific behaviors. Just keep being you. You're the same person. You just have a different rank. Just keep treating everyone the same. Keep doing the same things and you'll probably be okay.
Speaker 3:And that was really my approach. Just knowing your story through reading your book. I think you've done that and kudos to you, and I think the cost that sometimes you have to share is that you rub people wrong sometimes like commanders, but it's totally worth it and you get the love and respect of everyone around your team.
Speaker 3:I remember being in acquisitions and I'll just sit in my office listening to the Viking death metal. I was like, hey, I'm not going to change who I am just because I'm an acquisition officer. Now I'm still Josh. So I deeply respect and value that. You were authentic through your whole approach and hopefully you're carrying that on in the civilian world now. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I actually was just having a conversation yesterday with someone who works for me and he literally asked me he goes were you this way when you were in the Marine Corps? Were you like way more intense and yelling at everybody? And I was like no, I was exactly the same Same guy, like I've been the same this whole time, and he was kind of surprised by that. But it was interesting conversation because his assumption of course was oh, you must have been way more intense or crazy or whatever in the Marine Corps and I was like nah, I mean I was intense in the aircraft but as far as interacting with people and leading and doing the same stuff I do now.
Speaker 1:No same approach.
Speaker 3:So kind of continuing through your journey you finish. So one thing I've learned and I'm assuming it's true in the Marine Corps is to be a pilot. It's like a two-year pipeline. You go do your basic In the Marine Corps. Everyone's a soldier first, which I absolutely love, or a Marine first, so you master the basic fundamentals. Then you go to your branch of choice, which is aviation. I think that's like an additional two years. So the time you show up you're a senior first lieutenant captain, which is awesome, but also too a little bit like nerve wracking, right, because you show up you have two years of schoolhouse experience. How did you begin to build trust? And then, like, 9-11 happened right, and then you had to apply that to beginning doing combat operations. How did you make that transition?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I would say my timing was either perfect or terrible, depending on your perspective.
Speaker 2:So I got to the fleet in December of 2000.
Speaker 1:And at that point I'd been in the Marine Corps for three and a half years. You know from going to officer candidate school all the way through flight school and fleet replacement squadron to learn the CH-53, which was the aircraft I flew. So I walked in the hangar at Miramar for the first time three and a half years in. And you're starting over at that point, because on a fleet squadron you know, as the newest boot lieutenant you're the lowest of the low and you have to earn it. And I really just did the same thing I'd done at the last couple of stops and put my head down and work my butt off to make sure I was always prepared for my fights.
Speaker 1:I was doing the best job I could in my ground job and really just trying to earn the trust and respect from the other Marines in the squadron and not just the other pilots but the enlisted Marines who flew with us and worked downstairs in maintenance and just really the term we used to use is become a player in the squadron, and that's all I wanted.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to turn into someone who was a player in the squadron, and so I really worked my butt off to do that. And then we went on our first deployment that summer of 2001. 9-11 happened during that deployment. We were in Okinawa, japan. And at that point, I was just getting my first major qualification as an aircraft commander meaning I could sign for the aircraft.
Speaker 1:That's like the first big step, but there's another dozen qualifications and flight leadership designations you can attain after that and to be, honest with you, I wanted all of them.
Speaker 1:That was like my goal was to get every qualification you know to be someone the squadron could really lean on. And so we came home reset, ended up heading out to Iraq a few months later, but thankfully at that point I had just enough experience to be I kind of call it a mid-level guy in the squadron. So I got a ton of experience in that. First, you know, the initial invasion of Iraq and then it really just snowballed from there. You know we went back to back two more times after that, but I was just immersed in literally doing the job and you know, for better or worse, I was getting to do it in a real environment with real bad guys and all the other things that come with it. So the learning curve was steep, but it also helped really accelerate how proficient I was able to get in a short period of time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that that's one thing, at least from a maneuver perspective, like I can quickly get acclimated to what I need to do on the ground and understand that Cause the basic fundamentals. There's only seven battle drills, right, and like all my organic and indirect fire systems, I don't have to understand how to use all those. Like your aircraft, I just need to know the right tools, the right time to layer the effects to get the desired end states. But, like as a pilot I love through your journey, you still didn't master it all yet, like I think, maybe like through your fourth or fifth deployment I can't remember exactly when, but when you did that absolutely crazy mission yeah, get the 160th there, yeah, which I can't wait to talk about.
Speaker 3:Like that's when you said you were at the top of your game, but like, hey, backwards, planning off that. That was how. How long were you in your military journey at that point?
Speaker 1:I mean, geez, at that point I was 14 years into my career, yeah, so I'd been flying for over a decade and I and I knew it. At that point when I flew that mission, I was like you just peaked, like that was everything you did up to this point was to prepare you to do that one thing. It's probably all downhill from here, but at least you got to that place, you know. And at that point, I'd I'd had every qualification there is to have an aircraft for a few years at that point Um, nine years, I guess, technically.
Speaker 1:but it was just getting there and pulling that off was like okay, yeah, you really got there. I mean it was indicative of how much work and how much time it takes to really master something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the the another thing that we have in common, and just hearing your stories, uh, it kind of helped me reflect on mine. So after your first deployment you get back and then you have your first, first child. I'm pretty sure in my battalion I was the first person to come back and have a child.
Speaker 1:It was a, no one knew it, but it was uh yeah so, having that um, and then, how challenging, was it right to continue to go deploy as a father, um, as a husband, and happen to say like goodbye to them and I can't, and if I get it wrong, I'm sorry, but like trish, tristan, yeah, it was extremely challenging and for me, I would say, that's really where I started to become aware of how complex it is to live this life where, on the one side, you're a warfighter and the other side, you're trying to be a good husband and father. And I still think of it as it's like living on two different planets simultaneously and you have to learn to compartmentalize your emotions and several other things.
Speaker 1:But it was really tough that first time I left to go on deployment after she was born and you know, we had kind of an interesting introduction to parenthood in that, you know, my wife had gotten sick and Tristan was quite premature. So she was in the NICU for nine weeks and there was a lot of call it emotional challenges around that in of itself. And we'd only finally gotten her home for a few months when I got recalled off Christmas leave to go get on the ship and set sail for Iraq. So that first one, deploying after she was born, was the toughest goodbye of all the goodbyes. I mean it never gets easy, but I just conditioned myself to be better about it. But I'll also tell you that deployment was where I decided I'm never going to say bye at the squadron again, I'm just going to get someone to pick me up at home and give me a ride. It was just easier to do it there. And then by the time you get to the squadron be in character and ready to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my uh, second deployment. I did that. The first deployment. They I did the whole thing right, like where the families came out on the parade field, these buses came and picked us up and then we go straight to the airfield to fly. And man, that was hard, um, I didn't even have a child yet at that point. Like I couldn't imagine doing that again with, like my son and daughter. Like I'm a cry baby as it is, so I don't want to cry in front of my men, right. So like that's that's challenging. And you you mentioned something there, cause I, I understand that you have to be two different people is like hey, when you're at home, you're a father, you're a husband, you're Isaac, right, but when you're deployed, you're Whiskey. And how did you do that? How did you try to separate those two worlds? Because you had to be that person to save lives. I did.
Speaker 1:I got very good at compartmentalizing it. I would say I got so good at it that it was challenging for me later in life to try to put those two things back together and just be quote unquote normal again. But I got very adept at it. I mean, I think I've talked about it in the book too. It was when I went to Afghanistan in 2011 for a combat deployment as a major. I was the detachment officer in charge. We had two kids at that point and I remember I was very aware of everything that was happening.
Speaker 1:I'd done it, you know, several times before I understood the stakes, but I just remember thinking walking out of the house. You know, it's such a bizarre thing to walk out of your own home with your wife and kids and just know and accept and acknowledge like I may never see this place or them ever again. And by the time I get to the squadron in about 20 minutes. I have to be totally okay with that. And when the Marines look at me, they need to see nothing. But hey, we're super confident and we're ready to go and we're going to go crush this deployment and I used to call it getting into character. So 20 minutes or so, to get myself fully into character. So when you walk into the hangar, you are the most confident guy in the room and everyone else is going to take their cues off of you. Right, it's a lot of responsibility.
Speaker 3:I been like a. I took my platoon over my first deployment in the middle of fighting season at Afghanistan and I had my sergeant major on at the time, my platoon sergeant Derek Kearns, and it's funny like reflecting on that, but you and I shared that same thing. Is that like hey, like I call it peacocking, like I'm going everywhere and I'm trying to be that guy, unafraid of making decisions and then being out in the front, putting myself in those more tough situations because, like, my life is just as equal as anyone else on my team. But it took me a long time. You did it way better than I did, but to separate those two worlds went all the way through my company command time. Sometimes my wife would remind me that I was not her soldier and that was challenging. Honestly, it was very hard for me to separate those two. So kudos for you to be able to figure that out to be present.
Speaker 1:It's not a switch. You can flip per se and once I was there it was very difficult for me to to come back and really reconnect and be present in a normal way. And I wasn't anyone that would come home and be like angry or act crazy or anything like that. It was just really hard for me to totally get there on an emotional level. I mean I could talk, I could interact, I can do things, help around the house, all the normal stuff, but that connection was challenging.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I noticed that too. Is that, like, at a certain point, like things that my, my, here's a like a more vulnerable stories Like my grandmother died, like when I got back from Iraq, and like the whole family's devastated? She was like a mother to me, um, and I'm there at the funeral and I like I'm sad, right, but like I didn't have the same like visceral emotional response as everyone else did around me, because, like at that point, like hey, I'm comfortable with death, like I knew that, like what I was doing may die. And my, my wife was like hey, are you, are you okay? And then I finally got home and you know, like all the emotions like hit me. But I realized, like at that point, like hey, am I crazy or or has something like happened within me? And then I realized like hey, I'm definitely suppressing some stuff because I think I have to, just based on the nature of my job.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course it definitely has an effect and it's a challenging one to unpack later, for sure. Yeah, so kind of continuing through your book. You had one quote in there that I loved and it kind of follows that keep it simple, stupid. If you get excited, you get dead. Could you walk me through that phrase, man?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely. Um, so really where that that comes from is we would talk about a lot in aviation that and it really goes all the way back to boyd and the OODA loop. You know, observe, orient, decide, act. And the Marine Corps teaches that to young lieutenants right out of the gate, with the whole premise being you know, really just at the end of the day, make a decision. You know, don't, don't sit on this, make a decision. But in aviation that happens at hyperspeed and you just don't have a lot of time sometimes to really make a decision on what you're going to do.
Speaker 1:The was and I would say, if you get excited, you get dead Meaning as soon as you let yourself get emotional in that situation. It clouds your thought process, it slows it down, it just delays you making a decision and definitely delays you making a good decision. So learning to control your emotions, stay calm, stay cool, is extremely helpful and, I would argue, necessary in that environment.
Speaker 1:Just to maintain that and I'm that way to this day, to a point that it frankly annoys people. Sometimes, you know, I'll be in some situation, even to this day at work, and people will get extremely stressed out and someone will look at me and be like, what's wrong with you? Like how come you're not like mad or upset or stressed out? I'm like, well, is that going to help? Anything Like like, in order to solve this problem, we're going to have to make some decisions, and to make good decisions, we need to be calm and think through it as quickly as possible, then decide and then we'll take care of it We'll figure it out.
Speaker 3:I love that kind of framework and that took me a while again. Like coming straight out of ranger school going and being a rifle platoon leader, like I would get switched on and once I was switched on, sometimes I did not think through problem sets because I was very emotional at that time. But, like, as I continue to gain some more wisdom and my NCOs I gravitate towards, they kind of pushed me into like that tactical pause space and that's what I quickly learned. And like even during a firefights we would have a firefight. I initially you know there's something was going to happen. You do a recon by fire just to see like all right, are there actually people out there that are trying to like kill us right now? And then in those engagements I find myself even like slowing down and it's like almost like a Spider-Man in a way of like all right, what is in front of me and what are the tools that I have to quickly neutralize that threat.
Speaker 3:But there's a science to that, because you have to think through that problem set quickly and then you have to act quickly and I've seen that with like tier one guys and aviators. You both share that like hey, they go enter and clear a room. There's nothing like fancy about that, it's just a basic battle drill. But the speed and frequency of which they do that is world-class, second to none. If you're in that room and you have a weapon, you're a bad guy. You're going to die in the next three seconds, like it's going to happen. But they think through all of that because of the repetitions that they go with and that's a beautiful tool, that OODA loop. I always kind of find myself going back to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I always felt like, when it's happening, my perception was things were happening in slow motion, and that's when I knew I was exactly in the right place mentally, because it felt like you actually had more time than you did. Time slows down a little bit, but it's just because you're seeing and processing everything clearly, with no emotional bias that's tilting you in any direction while you're doing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the craziest thing is like thinking about like some of the most stressful times in your life Time actually slowed down, but it's funny when you reflect on that. Yeah, absolutely so kind of continuing. You are very good at accepting risk and in managing risk, so walk me through that mindset. How did you do that?
Speaker 1:Honestly, I think that's something that I was just for the most part born with and didn't totally realize it until I was in the Marine Corps. But once I realized it, then a lot of other things started to make sense and, to be totally honest with you, it wasn't until later in my career that I even started to realize it totally. So I'll give you a very short version. But when I was a captain and I did three combat deployments to Iraq in a row essentially three in three years and I started to acknowledge just to myself early that I liked it, like it was exciting I was, I was enjoying it and I felt like I might be a little bit crazy because I shouldn't be enjoying this. But as I continued to do deployment number two, deployment number three, it became more obvious to me that I really did enjoy it. I was liking it, I was thriving in that environment and I was still kind of struggling with that Like, is this normal? Should I be doing this?
Speaker 1:And by the time I was on that third deployment, a couple of people that I flew with, a couple other Marines, pointed out to me like hey, what's what's wrong with you? Like you should have been, you know, nervous back there me like, hey, what's what's wrong with you? Like you should have been, you know, nervous back there I was scared. Why weren't you scared? And I didn't think a whole lot of it and I was thinking of it still in very conventional terms like, well, I have more experience. But then later, a few years later, my major go to Afghanistan.
Speaker 1:And I became very aware of it on that deployment, like, hey, I'm really really enjoying this. I would probably stay here forever if they would let me and just keep flying these crazy missions. But I was very the logical side of my brain knew like that's probably not good, like you might need to look into this a little bit. And so then, a couple years later, as I, as I was getting into command, I just started doing my own amateur research into this. You know, like what? What is? What is risk acceptance, or call it risk addiction?
Speaker 1:Um, and I had a flight surgeon, thankfully, who was working for me at the time great guy, and he was pretty senior as a flight surgeon, which is unusual for a squadron level, but he had a lot of knowledge about this and he and I had lengthy conversations about it and I came to understand pretty well at that point that you know, there's just this small subset of people that gravitate towards these professions and in some cases will thrive in those professions, just because they are so comfortable with risk, and not only comfortable with it, they, they enjoy it. And once I really understood that about myself, it was like so many things made sense that hadn't made sense before. Go all the way back to when I was a kid and would do something that was a little outside the box to get myself hemmed up and in some trouble with my dad, and at the time you know he'd be like why did you do that? And my answer is I don't know.
Speaker 2:But once I understood all this.
Speaker 1:it was like, oh, I know now, Like that was even as a kid. Your subconscious was just gravitating towards where's the line and how close can I get to it before I, like get in trouble or get burned or whatever it is? And I realized at that point that I'd always had a propensity for that and it just really came out. And so I was. I was in a Marine Corps and in an environment where, frankly, you get rewarded for that and so it's encouraged to a degree and it really just grew from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it all culminated for you on that one mission of where you had to go support. I think it was in Afghanistan, right.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, 2011.
Speaker 3:port, I think was it in um it was in afghanistan right yep yeah, 2011 the 160th. They they wreck one of their um. I think it was like a 47 variant I believe so, and that's similar to what you flew. I'm not familiar with the the 53, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So ch-53 echo similar mission profile assault support aircraft, large but just a little bit stronger than a ch-47. So once that aircraft went down, a ch-47 can't self-recover, I mean you can't. You can't externally lift a 47 with another 47, but a 53 can. So the army reached out to the marine corps for an assist mission, ended up getting handed to our squadron. At the time I was the operations officer. I just happened to be not flying that night and I was on what we called the morning shift.
Speaker 1:We'd come in around, you know 10 o'clock at night, fly all night till sunrise, and that's usually when all the we call them, you know the, the named ops and the cool stuff happened. So we started planning the, the mission to go do a tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel, and it just really snowballed from there and we didn't even realize initially that it was a 160th aircraft. But once we did, then I was like okay, this is a big deal. We need to get this right, if we're going to do it.
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Speaker 3:I've commanded two organizations in the Tenth Mountain and both of which are very deeply impactful to me. This is a company that I stand behind, and if you're looking for a great bottle of bourbon, look no further at Tenth Mountain Whiskey and Spirit Company. Back to the show. Look no further at 10th Mountain Whiskey and Spirit Company. Back to the show. That's where I would really love to like deep, dive into, like everything you've done up to that point, like we talked about it before, like where you peaked, but you had to understand your system at such a precise level and then, when you were flying it, you even mentioned that you had an epiphany, like some of your calculations were wrong.
Speaker 3:It was like your aircraft could actually go above peak performance for a short period of time. Like I was reading that, I was like I, I kudos to you. I don't know how you did that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's definitely some pilot nerdery in that story, but it was it was really like how do we get the absolute max out of our machine, out of our aircraft, in order to execute this mission? And there were several, several Marines in our squadron for the most part, most of the squadron that had some hand to play in that. But it really started with a basic math problem and I ran across to our maintenance control tent. He has awesome maintenance control chief in there, jakeake jake lewis, and I just said, hey, jake, here's the basics. Do you think you can get 5 000 pounds off one of our aircraft? So I can do this. And he's like, let me take a look. Then, like five minutes later, he was back in the office and he's like, yeah, we can do it, you just have to be comfortable going with no armor, no guns. Like he was just giving me the list of all the stuff he was going to strip off and I was like, okay, that makes sense. Thank you like, let's try it.
Speaker 3:And then we went from there it was. It was wild that I'm that's pretty impressive like just being within po aviation. I've been around aviation for a little bit combat arms, understanding some of those sling load missions that we've done, and hearing you operate at such a high level altitude and then be successful. It's funny how good work doesn't go unpunished. That then opened up your organization to support more of the SOCOM side of the house.
Speaker 1:It did. It really snowballed. We were successful on that mission, which was awesome. It was a huge win for the squadron. I personally definitely peaked that day, but it really did open up the floodgates because at that point we we earned, if you will, a reputation in country as being a viable option, and the 160th always got more requests than they could fill, so we basically they're called the overflow, started coming to to us and so we got to really do a lot of really neat and fun missions throughout the rest of that deployment. It was a wild one, definitely the wildest I've ever experienced.
Speaker 3:You know, kind of like thinking through your book that you wrote too. I love how you didn't shy away from the language that you used. In my opinion, when people write books, they definitely put a filter on things and I don't feel it's like they're true selves, but like when I first chapter end, you're cussing as much as I typically do on a day and I was like I love this.
Speaker 3:So what made what was that decision for you to kind of like stay true, to like who you were and the men that you led when you were writing the book?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, deciding to write the book was a very deliberate decision that I made over time, but, at the end of the day, what had happened is I'd kept a journal the whole time I was in the Marine Corps, so I had, you know, hundreds of pages of the stuff I'd written down over the years and it was just sitting there on my computer. You know, I transitioned out in 2017 and was really moving forward, you know, into the next phase of life, but what happened was in 2021, I started really thinking about it because I kept hearing more and more about guys that were in my peer group that were having different issues, challenges. You know everyone's having marriage problems, substance abuse problems. Guys were having a hard time getting jobs, holding jobs, and I knew what was what was wrong, and so I was trying to just reach out individually to people as a friend, you know, to offer what advice I could, you know, to try to help. But I ultimately came to the conclusion that if I wrote this in a really brutally honest way, just sharing that story, might be helpful to people.
Speaker 1:When I sat down to do it, I committed to that to tell this story in the language of the Marine Corps who is as brutally accurate as possible. So the language can't be massaged and I also stayed true to this throughout in sharing the perspective that I had at the time and place in that story, even if I now know that perspective was wrong. So there's certainly a few points in the book where I'm sharing my perspective on something and today Isaac is looking at it going like, oh my God, you're so screwed up on that one, or or you're way out of the box. You're lucky you didn't get hammered like big time for that. But I just felt like it was important to to really share that whole arc so you could see. You know, how did this person go from being a young, motivated Lieutenant to this smart ass captain he thinks he knows everything you know, cause he's been to combat a few times to a major that hates himself, cause he's a major to oh damn, I'm a seal of the squatter.
Speaker 1:Now, like this is crazy, right, like it, take you on that whole ride with me and then end up on the at the end where you're like, okay, all that actually happened, like am I crazy, like was that real and it was just?
Speaker 3:it was just a wild ride there's, uh, I think, a good question to follow up with. That is like how did you get your nickname whiskey? Oh yeah, that's, it's in there.
Speaker 1:But uh, at the very end of of OIF one, we had what's called a beer day on the ship. Everyone's supposed to get two beers and it was the day that President Bush had landed on the carrier, declared victory and all that Right. So it's like we won the war party. Little did we know it was just starting, but everyone had a couple of beers and you know it was not uncommon on the ship for guys to have secret stashes and they'll start slowly coming out. I just happened to be one of the fortunate ones me and one of my roommates who got caught with our secret stash which ultimately led to me getting the call sign whiskey, which I never complained about.
Speaker 1:Like it's uncommon to get a call sign that isn't just like horribly, like sounds terrible and make you sound like a total idiot. So I was like, hey, if the dumbest thing I did, the marine corps got me a cool call, so I don't take it.
Speaker 3:So yeah, they're forward you definitely have a great call sign. Hearing some of my peers, some of the call signs they have, I can't necessarily say uh on this podcast, yeah, yeah, you, you, um, it's funny too because it kind of goes back to that level of uh, you, so you're a west coast marine yeah, and then east coast marines of like, accepting risk, being okay with like, living in the moment, making the best decision possible, one of your deployments before you took command.
Speaker 3:This stuck out to me is that this was a hodgepodge command of like where you didn't think you had to go deploy leadership's like hey, um isaac's the right person for this. We need him in there. You had to take marines from the east coast and you had to put them with marines from the west coast. I know a little bit about this. Just working with organizations in the past is like it's two cultures same organization but two different cultures. How did you bring those two together for a successful deployment?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is it's a great point and I was very honest about that in the book for that reason, because I felt like it's it's almost like a case study and what happens when you take these two organizations with totally different cultures and try to mash them together. So, needless to say, in the very early stages it was extremely difficult and the way it was set up was they brought the flag, so their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel, was in charge.
Speaker 1:And he's a great guy, but he is definitely East Coast Marine and East Coast culture and I was the senior person from the West Coast at the time as a major was going to be the operations officer for the combined squadron and have just a totally different person right, different demeanor, different way of going about things.
Speaker 1:And just the stereotypes are often based on things that are true. You know, east Coast Marines just tend to be a little more formal. West Coast Marines are a little more laid back on some things, but at the end of the day we're all trying to execute the same thing, we're all proficient in the same things. But it really there was a lot of head-butting right up until we did that big trap mission, and I really think that that was the thing that kind of made it all click, because at that point we did something together that was so much bigger than any of us that then everyone was just almost like overnight, okay with each other and then it worked from there. But you could call it shared adversity, you could call it a giant success, whatever, but that one big win that we went through. From that point forward everything worked well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there was another point, too, that you had in your book that I resonated with is that some of the best soldiers and the best Marines deployed are not necessarily the best soldiers or Marines in a garrison environment because, they gravitate towards more risky behavior.
Speaker 3:I'll keep his name out, uh, but one of the best soldiers I've ever had while deployed, I loved him. Um, he, in my eyes he could do no wrong wrong. But when we would get back, the dude was so talented. He was making catapults like legitimate catapults. While we were at m4 ranges and m5 ranges, I find this dude in the woods like what are you doing? It's like, oh, I just made this catapult. Like that's badass, but we need to go do this right now. Um, could you, could you walk me through your experience there of, uh, how you distinguish that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it was just an observation that I had, and as I became more senior in the Marine Corps I was just probably privy to more of it, so I was seeing more of what was happening. You know, once I was a major and above like, with Marines getting in trouble, and the common thread that I just really started to pick up on was it was it was our best Marines that were the most prone to getting into some kind of situation on the weekend on liberty, you know, and it didn't take me long to the then it just seemed all of a sudden so obvious like, well, of course the guys that are the best on the darkest night in afghanistan are a little more prone to get into a bar fight on friday night than the other guys. And like, it's not rocket science, right, and and that really ties back into that risk discussion we were having earlier. So those people who are wired that way me being one of them you know, sometimes you'll just subconsciously gravitate towards something that's risky, or at least more so than the average person, and that's not always good.
Speaker 1:You can get yourself into a scrape here and there, and and the marine corps, to no fault of its own, really just came a little more formal over time as I was growing up in the Marine Corps. Like you know, I think, when I was a young captain I'd never even heard the term alcohol-related incident. By the time I was a major, I was hearing it weekly. So there were more rules, more restrictions. We were more concerned, if, if you will, about being on the up and up and behaving and not having a reputation for just being these. You know wild men that were out terrorizing san diego on the weekends if we weren't deployed and uh. So there was just more focus on that and as it became more focused and more rules and things got more stringent, more marines were getting in trouble, but it was often our best, best Marines.
Speaker 1:But I realized that was the link, and so I actually put that together and gave it as a class to my Marines when I was a commanding officer of a squadron. I was like, hey, let me put this puzzle together for you so you can see how this happens and why. And I have Marines to this day that reach out to me and say I still remember that class you gave us when we got to Okinawa so we wouldn't get in trouble. That was awesome.
Speaker 3:It all made sense after that the guest speaker at Marshall university pulled me aside and say, hey, josh, you're going to be combat arms, and he didn't explain the why. But he's like hey, try not to have downtime, make sure you're always training and do stuff. You'll thank me later. And I was like at the time I was like I want my guys to have downtime, right, like I want them to have that space. And then I quickly learned that they will fill the void with shenanigans and then you as the commander have to deal with those shenanigans. So that's, that's hilarious, that, uh, you experienced that like within your journey, so kind of continuing right. Um, you get to the tail end of your, your, your marine corps journey. You get to take over a company. I can't remember the name of the company, but I I know the nickname was the Screw.
Speaker 1:Crew, the Screw Crew. Yeah, HFH 462. So technical callsign for the squadron is the Headie Haulers, but the unofficial nickname was Screw Crew, which dates back to Vietnam era. On the way home they got stuck in Okinawa for an extended period of time and supposedly that's where it came from. But it was a great squadron to have the opportunity to take command of and that was really the most rewarding tour I had.
Speaker 1:the entire time I'm in the Marine Corps which I'm sure most people say about 05 Command, or I hope they say about 05 Command and all branches of the service but truly an honor to have an opportunity to work with those Marines in that unit. It was, it was great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that that was, um, I think, a fitting into your, your journey. Uh, seven combat deployments, which is pretty incredible. Like I feel like a baby. I've only done two, uh luck and timing, right, like, or bad luck and timing, whatever you, however, you want to see it, but one, and like that's where I kind of want to focus now on once you made that cognitive decision to get out what were some of the challenges that you personally faced?
Speaker 1:Yeah, transition is challenging and, honestly, we talked about it briefly before the show started, but I ended the book there on purpose, because to me I feel like I'm still in transition to some degree, even though it's been eight years, and I don't know that I'll ever not feel like that.
Speaker 1:But it's definitely been a, for me, overall, a very good experience and continues to be a good experience, but also a bit of a journey, and it's it makes a lot of sense to me why so many people struggle with it, because it is so different, you know, and initially I was just focused on the basics, like, okay, I need to make a certain amount of money as a living to make all this work and take care of the family and do all the things I'm supposed to be doing as a husband and father, and so I've always been a nerd and you know someone who's willing to put in the work, so that last year I was in the Marine Corps. I was just networking like a maniac and looking at what I wanted to do. I was just networking like a maniac and looking at what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:And for me personally, you know, there's some fairly predetermined paths I could have taken. There's a very set path for even rotary wing aviators to become airline pilots, obviously a very clear path to Department of Defense you know related jobs with. You know pick your DOD related contracting company. But I had enjoyed the leadership aspect of my military career so much in the Marine Corps that that's the thing I felt like I wanted to do in the civilian world. And, to be honest, I kind of had this huge question to myself was are the same things I did to be an effective leader in the military? Will they work outside the gate with these regular everyday people? And because of that I gravitated towards wanting to get into the operations lane of business, which is really people in process, and so I looked at that, I started networking that way and then I came to this conclusion one day and I tell people this all the time when they reach out to me to talk about transition One day I realized I was looking for a situation, not a job, and as soon as that happened everything got easier.
Speaker 1:And to me the situation was operations, preferably director, above in a small to medium-sized company that's trying to grow, preferably. That has a lot of issues and the reason I landed on that was because I felt like in that specific scenario, I would be able to make an immediate impact with the things I just knew the leadership piece, the people stuff, while learning the business, and that was. It was literally just like a theory that I'd come up with, and I will tell you that everyone I shared that with told me I was crazy and it doesn't work that way. It wasn't going to work. But I've always been someone who's motivated by that exact thing. You know, the same thing had happened to me years earlier. When I started to tell people I'm going to go on the Marine Corps and be a pilot, they were like, yeah, right, you know so.
Speaker 1:So it was. I'd been through this before, but ultimately networked my way into that and ended up landing a first job as a chief operating officer of a small manufacturing company that had plants in three states and a lot of challenges and it honestly it worked out the way I thought it might.
Speaker 1:I was able to really make a positive impact on the people out of the gate. You know, I did all the homework I needed to do to learn the business if, if you will, as quickly as possible, to start making a good, positive impact on the balance sheet, and it just all came together and worked. And so I did that great learning experience and then parlayed that into started my little consulting company, with my idea being that I was just going to go around and help a bunch of small companies you know, do that, do that here in San Diego. And then I hadn't been doing that for very long when I did a project for a local entrepreneur who owns a little chain of retail stores.
Speaker 1:Ended up you know, coming back to him with like hey, here's everything I think you should do, and he just flipped it back on me. He's like well, great, why don't you work here and do it?
Speaker 2:and so I've been working for him for several years now, yeah, but it's been a great, a great ride.
Speaker 1:You know, we've we've taken the company more than twice the size it was when I started. We'll probably double it one more time.
Speaker 1:But my focus to this day is the same stuff I was doing in the marine corps. You know, I've got a team of about 500 people in the organization that roll up to me one way or another. I tell my Marine Corps friends, like what are you doing? And I'm like it's kind of like being the OPSO, the XO and the AMO all rolled into one job as a chief operating officer. But I really enjoy it and still to me it's all about the people.
Speaker 1:So, professionally, that piece has been good. Professionally, that piece has been good. I'll also say and share from a very real place that the smartest thing I did, though, when I was transitioning was, as I was starting to do all that the year before I separated, I also started going to counseling, and I did that. At the time, I felt like what was fine to me, like what I'd know or come to know, is fine, like it was my normal, but I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to put myself in a situation where you know, it all caught up to me, so to speak, a few years later.
Speaker 1:And then I go off the rails and everyone's like what happened to that guy?
Speaker 2:you know, he seemed like he had it together.
Speaker 1:It was it was a very preemptive decision for me, but you know I continue to do that to this day, just because I'm introspective and I like learning and I've learned a ton and that has really helped me a lot in this next phase of life and trying to be the best version of myself, not only professionally, but personally. It's been good, so I'm thankful that I did that as well yeah, I think leadership is a journey.
Speaker 3:It always starts with ourselves and then it bleeds into every other aspect of our lives and I genuinely believe that veterans, regardless of branch, make a bigger impact outside of the uniform than they did in. You make a lot of good connections, but you have those same connections when you get out. You can help them just as much as you could when you get in, but you are making an actual difference and a change in the civilian world, and your book, I think, is a testament to that. So this is a great follow-up question what's next for you? When's that next book coming out?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. I've got a couple of things in the hopper as far as writing another one goes, but I'm still sort of on the ride for lack of a better way to put it in this next phase of transition. Uh, so there, there's a few more things I want to experience before I make a final decision and say go this way and write another one. You know the the basic idea I have is there's a lot of books out there that are specifically about transition and related to to employment. Uh, but I like the idea of writing something that's more about transitioning as a human being. How do you go from this place where you're this warfighter guy that functions this one way into being someone who, say, is maybe a little bit more amicable version of yourself?
Speaker 1:that can interface with everybody on a day-to-day basis in a way that's hopefully positive and making a positive impact on people and the community. So I'm working through another couple of programs on a personal level that I want to get a little more info on and get a little further down the road, and I think I'll really start that in earnest.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm excited to see the journey man. Like I, really and I genuinely mean this I loved your book, Um, cause it helped me reflect on my journey. Um, just the way you wrote it. It's authentic. I could tell it came from the heart. Um, it wasn't just about like writing a book to get your name out there. Like you did it from the right place to help those that you served with, and I always find value in authenticity. So thanks for just taking the time and putting all your collective thoughts over your I don't know how long you were in over 20 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just over 20 years yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah it's. It's tough to fit all of that in a book, but you, you beautifully executed that. Um so great job, brother. Yeah, Thank you very much. I appreciate that so great job, brother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you very much, I appreciate that 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.
Speaker 3:Question one what do?
Speaker 1:you believe separates a good leader from an extraordinary leader. I think to expand on something I said earlier. But it's really just learning to be yourself. And the way I articulate this to other leaders is you know, no offense, but it's not about you ever. It's about the team and it's about earning their trust and respect. And the way you do that, in my opinion, is there's three main things. You know. You've got to be at least somewhat competent and know what you're doing. Um, you've got to demonstrate that you genuinely care about them. And then you also have to have some level of confidence. No one's going to follow anybody who's not confident. But if you do those things right and you do those three things, three things well, you can earn that trust and respect. And it won't happen overnight.
Speaker 1:It takes time and it really never ends like you have to just keep doing it and be consistent and show up every day and be that person.
Speaker 1:But if you do that in the right way, it'll really get you back to you know, go back to high school with maslow's hierarchy of needs. What you're looking at is trying to get to that third level where you're affecting them in a positive way and that love and belonging level of the hierarchy of needs. Because once you do that and they feel like genuinely cared for and that they belong, you just get a whole level, a different level of output from people, and the organization does better, the individuals do better. So I think that's the most important thing Be yourself and approach it in that way, and you and the organization should be successful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great answer. Knocked it out of the park. Number two what is one recommendation for a source that someone can use on their leadership journey, that they can use today to be a better leader?
Speaker 1:I would say so as someone who has absolutely learned way more from doing than from reading or studying. I would really kind of go back to you know the Malcolm Gladwell outliers book. You know, practice anything for 10,000 hours to become an expert. So I would really say, just get out there and do it, you know, find a way whether you have to volunteer or coach a little league team or whatever but just be leading, be responsible for people, because literally practicing and doing it every day is the best way to get good at it.
Speaker 1:You know there's no one way to lead, or there wouldn't be such a giant section of leadership books at every bookstore on the planet. There's a bajillion opinions on how to go about this. So, you know, take the ones that resonate the most with you and then get out there and practice, and that's something I think that's very valuable, and there's ways for anyone to be able to do that if they just seek those opportunities and take advantage of them.
Speaker 3:What was the name of that book? I'm going to write that down. I haven't read that.
Speaker 1:Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Yeah, and the whole premise is practice anything for 10,000 hours to become an expert. But then there's a bunch of stories in there. It's interesting. Yeah, I love that man. All right. So third question if you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be and why I would say I should have been a better follower.
Speaker 1:As a young officer, you know, my natural tendency was to be a little too much of a contrarian at times and more often than not it was coming from a genuine place, it was a good place and a lot of times I still think I was right. But I didn't always go about that the best way. Sometimes I was probably a little more outspoken than I should have been and probably a little bit too much of a pain in the butt. But the good part about that I would say that I learned from is later in my career I too had company grade officers like that and I was able to connect and identify with them.
Speaker 1:And then later kind of pull them to the side and be like hey, man, I used to be you. But here's kind of what I learned in doing that. Here's a slightly better way to approach it. So I tried to at least learn from that and pay it forward to them in some way.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. So the final question where can our listeners find you and add value to what you're doing right now? Oh, yeah, thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm pretty prevalent on social media. Obviously. I have a website that I put together for the book that's IsaacGLeecom. Also pretty easy to find on Instagram Isaac G Lee Writer. Facebook is Isaac G Lee, and LinkedIn as well. I'm the only Isaac Lee, or I think I'm the only Isaac Lee in San Diego on there, so I'm pretty easy to dig up on LinkedIn. But, yeah, please reach out anytime. I always love having conversations with people about you know whether it's time in the military or leadership or the business world.
Speaker 1:Now, I enjoy connecting with people and anything I can do to help them, and generally we'll try to do as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think this has been a great opportunity just to connect. Read through your book, I feel like I knew you before you even came on the show, all that you've done for our country in the past and what you're continuing to do. Just thank you for being what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader. Just keep crushing it and I can't wait for that. Next chapter, next book. I'll read it. We'll do a round two.
Speaker 1:Sounds great. Thank you so much for having me on and thanks for mentioning the book and hanger for it. It's been a great experience being able to share that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, awesome, brother, have a great day. Hey, thank you, take care. All right, team time for our after action review. What are the top three takeaways that I took from this episode? I'm going to try to make these quicker than I normally do, just because I don't want you to have to listen to an hour and a half or two hour podcast. The first one is we both share this.
Speaker 3:How can we translate things that are overly complicated and simplify them? So I always think through the lens of KISS keep it simple, stupid. It's a framework. Take something that's extremely complicated and then how can we distill it down to the basic facts and then communicate that to anyone, regardless of their educational background? This is one thing that always frustrates me with collegiate writing. If you read a scholarly article, man, when I'm reading through that, I don't retain any of it because it's overly complicated and it's jargon and it's language, which is great if that's where you come from, but at the end of the day, the real world doesn't operate like that. If you're a leader, you're a purposeful, accountable leader. Right, you have to be able to articulate both orally and in a written form, because that's at the essence of what a leader does. They communicate the vision. They help execute the vision. And if you can't translate overly complicated things into a simple manner, you're going to struggle at the aspect. So just remember that acronym, kiss. Keep it simple, stupid, and always try to get down to the root and communicate that in a clear manner that anyone can take and then move out.
Speaker 3:Number two is gravitate towards people of influence and wisdom. Isaac and I share this. When I started off in my career, I was blessed with an opportunity to have an amazing instructor Ibolik opportunity to have an amazing instructors I Bullock. Some of those instructors were also in my first operational command at a four to three, the Tomahawks, and I had a group of phenomenal NCOs and I always gravitated and I continue to this day to gravitate towards people who have influence, authority and respect. Not because I'm trying to gain the ladder, I want to quickly learn, as fast as possible. So you think about how can you shorten that learning curve, how can you become a professional as quickly as possible within an organization that you're going to? Well, the way to do that is to close the distance and find those people who have influence and respect and authority and just be a sponge, just like Isaac said, and if you can do that, you'll shorten that learning curve and then you'll be able to make an impact faster within the organization. And I think none is better than the last job I just left. I had one year to make a big impact. So how do I did that? I had to go, get out as often as possible and pick the brain of people who were influential in that space, and I think I did a decent job.
Speaker 3:And then the final one is be yourself. I love this one because leadership is all about authenticity. Like I said in this show, there are millions of freaking leadership books out there. All of them will tell you this is the way to lead. This is the way to lead. Well, here's the secret about leadership. There's not a formula, there's not a clear example of a way to lead. That's because there's a, because there's an art and a science to it. All you can do is be yourself.
Speaker 3:And I remember transitioning from a rifle company command to an HHC company command and all the things I wanted to do. And everyone was telling me hey, hhc company command is like you're basically just herding cats, you don't need to do all that. Well, I didn't listen. I went in there and I was myself. I embraced FRG, I tried to do all of these things and I think at the end of the day, that's why I was successful and I continue that and like regardless if I'm in working with civilians, I may or may not wear my berserker hat while I'm in my office, and I may or may not listen to Viking metal or pirate metal. And if you don't know what that is, I just introduced you to a new genre. You need to go listen to it because it's awesome.
Speaker 3:But the key there is just be consistent in who you are, because if you're showing up as someone else that's not authentic. Your people will know that and they'll quickly gravitate away from you because you're not showing up as an authentic individual. And to be a leader you have to be authentic and he talked about a couple of C's here. So be competent. If you are doing something right now maybe you're a young officer or young NCO or whatever it is go be the professional in your workspace, like, be that guy or gal. Have the answers. Do the self-study. Take the time to be as proficient as possible in your craft.
Speaker 3:Number two is care. This is the easiest Like if you're a leader. The number one thing that you should always do is take care of the others around you, because it's a selfless position. And then number three, with that, is confidence. To be a leader, it does require a level of charisma, and charisma is infectious. And if you look at the definition that the army has for leadership, it's purpose, direction and motivation. Motivation, charisma, inspire people. If you can do all of those and, most importantly, you can be consistent, you're going to knock it out of the park. All right, this was a phenomenal episode.
Speaker 3:Do me a favor, guys, as always, uh, if you like, uh, the podcast and the content that I put out, it would be hugely helpful if you do the following four things. Number one like, subscribe and share wherever you listen to this podcast. Number two leave a review and send me some feedback. I love hearing feedback or getting fan mail from people of how I can improve or something that actually stuck with you, uh, you that you're using right now, or a topic, potentially, that you would want me to do a deep dive on. Number three go follow me on social media. You can go on link tree, cause I do other posts outside of just the normal podcast.
Speaker 3:Again, I'm very passionate about this space and you can find me on any platform. And number four if you want to become a show sponsor because I'm actively looking for two show sponsors or you would like to support the show from a money standpoint, you can go to talesofleadershipbuzzsproutcom and you can support the show there. Everything I make, 100% of it, goes back into building a better podcast and building better content, because I want to help you guys be the best leader that you possibly can, especially in this complex world. As always, team, my name is Josh McMillian, I am your host and I'm saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time you.
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