This week, John A. Dailey, a veteran Marine with over 20 years in special operations and author of the memoir ‘Tough Rugged Bastards.’ Dailey recounts his
experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, emphasizing the importance of actions over words. The discussion highlights Dailey’s military background, insights on leadership, and the concept of achieving a flow state during high-stakes operations. Dailey also explores the psychological challenges faced by veterans and the critical importance of finding purpose after military service. The conversation dives into the necessity of maintaining ethics in combat and the struggles of transitioning back to civilian life while retaining one’s core values.
Episode Highlights:
04:04 Combat Experiences and Flow State
08:03 The Physiology of Combat
12:56 Applying Military Lessons to Civilian Life
33:36 Misconceptions About Leadership
35:41 Creative Thinking in Problem Solving
43:08 Finding Purpose After Military Service
54:34 Moral Injury and Rules of Engagement
John Dailey left his home in West Virginia at seventeen to join the Marines, which led to a career of over twenty years. As a Platoon Sergeant in the Marine Corps’ 1st Force Reconnaissance Company on deployment in Australia on Sep. 11th, 2001, he and his men soon found themselves in Afghanistan battling the Taliban. In 2003 he was selected to serve as a team leader in the first Marine Corps unit assigned to U.S. Special Operations Command —Detachment-1. Det -1’s 2004 Iraq deployment solidified the Marines’ place in special operations and led to the formation of the Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC).
John received his MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina – Wilmington in 2018. John continues to train Marine Raiders, and he provides leadership training and performance coaching through his company, Walking Point LLC. He lives in Hubert, North Carolina with his wife, Tracy.
Get the book here: https://a.co/d/bRU0DZh
Episode Transcript:
00:32
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words. Instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest truly embodies that phrase. John A. Dailey.
01:00
joined the Marines at the ripe age of 17, leading to a career of over 20 years spent working in special operations with tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He received his MFA in creative writing from UNCW in 2018. Now this incredible first book, his memoir that we’re going to be talking about today is called Tough Rugged Bastards. And it is a memoir of an ordinary guy who sees an extraordinary opportunity to become one of the most elite war fighters in America during the most volatile times.
01:30
in the global war on terror. And before we hit record, we were discussing how you had a conversation with this guy named Jack Carr. Maybe our listeners have heard of him before. Tell us about that connection so people understand how that comes together. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, Jack was an East Coast SEAL who was assigned to support a West Coast SEAL team who was deployed to Iraq at the same time that I was. Midway through our deployment, we were all brought together and
01:59
given the responsibility of bodyguarding essentially the Iraqi government. But we did that for a while and that brought Jack down to the Baghdad area where we were. And shortly after that, things kicked off in a place called the Jaff. So was pretty significant battle, a meat grinder. rather than gonna send the army and the Marines who were standing by and they brought in sniper teams initially. So I had about a seven man
02:28
sniper team of Marine Special Operators. Jack was with a SEALS sniper team on another side of the city. the one other side was an Army Special Forces sniper team, and then we had the Polish Special Operations GROM unit. So between the four groups of snipers, was a very target rich environment for about a week. And it ultimately led to the mighty Army who were the kind of who we were fighting, deciding that they didn’t want to fight anymore.
02:57
heading out. it, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about that. And that’s kind of our connection that we had, you know, as a student of history, he was the unit that I was in and the unit I talk about in the book was kind of unique in Marine Corps history and working with the SEALs and in special operations. So it was a great conversation. And like I said, hopefully his that episode will be airing relatively shortly. And the book that we’re referring to is called Tough Rugged Bastards. You can go to J.A. Daily.
03:25
dot com and find out more about that. can also sign up for John’s walking point newsletter and everything that he’s up to. He’s very busy, but I would highly recommend grabbing the book and if you’re kind of person that’s like, I can’t read books, it’s on Audible. So there’s no excuses. There’s great material in here. We’re going to touch on some of it here, but there’s so much stuff that I want people to read. I’m not, we’re not going to give everything away. And I’ve got a ton of notes, but there was some really powerful stuff. All these people that are in advanced operations that are in special
03:54
operations, in my opinion, this is more than just a person that’s in good shape and a good marksman. This is the person that can think. This is a person that understands what true peak performance looks like. And you mentioned specifically in one of your first engagements in the book that you went into this almost like this flow state, Beheli Csikszentmihalyi, this idea of how that was. And then you also later on in the book mentioned that you were literally sort of functioning in that state.
04:20
multiple times a day from operation to direct action to all these things over and over again. So for some of our listeners that don’t really understand what that is because it’s not just this place of being in the zone, is, but there are a lot of things that you have to do to sort of prime yourself to be in that position. Yeah. So, I mean, I hadn’t read the book at that point, but the verbiage I didn’t have that came later, yeah, reading it, as soon as you read it, you realize, oh man, that is exactly what I was going through.
04:49
There’s a lot written about it. And when you realize, when you hit a point where the challenge of the task is just above your capability, right? Or the situation is violent or serious enough that it puts you into like fight or flight state, you know, and you have to have the training and the ability to operate at that level. those two things are necessary. You both have to have this
05:17
something being thrust at you that’s unexpected and you’re not wholly prepared for, but you have to also kind of be ready for the challenge now. And when those things line up exactly, then you enter this flow state where performance seems effortless. And I mean, it happens in sports, you know, with basketball players or with race car drivers or with any, you know, time slows, there’s just all of these things that happen that are.
05:44
can take you off guard the first time you experience them, but after you become used to them, that’s really, think, one of the, when people talk about people being combat junkies or whatever, I think it’s not necessarily the adrenaline rush, that has something to do with it to kind of bump you into that state. But really, I think it’s the idea of just being able to operate on just another level, another plane of existence. And when you lose that,
06:11
You know, once you retire, get out of the military, it’s very, very hard to find times or opportunities where you experience that again. So there’s, you know, I think a lot of people that lead the military or law enforcement or whatever, kind of like chasing. They think they’re chasing an adrenaline rush, but there’s, they’re also chasing this ability to operate on this other realm. it’s truly mastery, which you’re pointing, I love that you pointed out the technical part. There’s a lot of people that say, Oh, you know, I want to be in the zone.
06:40
or I want to be in this flow state, but they don’t realize that their mastery of the ready up or transitioning to another weapon system or clearing a malfunction has to be like breathing. It has to be second nature. You almost have to be standing outside yourself, observing yourself and clear the malfunction to be in that state. And most people, unless they’re in a situation where they know there’s going to be life and death, will not give themselves that amount of commitment to get to that place. Yeah.
07:07
Yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s definitely a reward for doing the work. And I’ve been in, you in firefights with, you know, and at the end of it, I’ve had people who I thought were relatively well trained, you know, like, man, everything was just too fast, right? It was all really, I mean, almost everybody that I, that I know experienced the exact opposite, you know, where things were moving so slowly that it seems comical. So you then you have to kind of question.
07:35
that person, if they’ve been putting in the reps and the sets and the training. And I think also, again, so having the fundamental mastery of the skill set is key. But as you also pointed out, we have to train in that at least mildly adrenalized state and controlled environment to give us that because I can have all the skills in the world, but once my motor skills goes out the door and the adrenaline dumps into my body, like you said, now I’m that guy that’s like, I can’t even draw my weapon now. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That, uh,
08:05
There’s so many, you really kind of dig into it. And it’s my fascination, I guess, with this whole physiology of everything that happens, started from a class that we got the first close quarter battle shooting package training that I went through in forced recon. And they brought in, it was a lot of information from FBI statistics on gunfights. And a lot of it came from a guy named Colonel Jeff Cooper.
08:34
who had a Marine that started Gunsight, was kind of the premier early training academy for law enforcement and military. And he was really probably the, in my opinion, I mean, really the first guy who really sat down and wrote about what it was to really be a warrior since like, know, Musashi or whatever, you know, like.
08:57
Like real, or at least that I was privy to, there’s plenty of people that write about military planning and Klauswitz and things like that, but he was, what does it take to really excel at the art of warfare? And he came up with this idea of the color codes, the mental awareness color codes. So condition white being kind of where we were told and never, never, ever be, right? You’re not paying attention. You’re on alert, unaware, but it really starts with condition yellow, where you’re just
09:27
always paying attention to your surroundings. And he called it a relaxed alert. You can live in condition yellow. You can be in that all the time and be comfortable. I mean, it’s really just a state of mindfulness when you think about it. And then, you know, when you’re in that condition and you’re going to be more inclined to pick up on something that doesn’t look right, you know, and whether that’s a vehicle that’s, you know, it’s not stopping for a roadblock or whether that’s, you know, somebody with a
09:53
heavy coat on, know, you there might be a body bomb or whatever the case may be, you know, some predator that’s, you know, playing around or hanging around the playground. You know, any of these things, if you’re not paying attention, you’ll never notice that. So being in condition yellow lets you just identify that maybe, you know, something looks off.
10:11
if it warrants it, then you go to condition orange, which is a specified alert or specified threat. You know, now I’m watching this guy who doesn’t have a child and is walking around the playground. And then very quickly there I can go to fight, right, to condition red, and I can take action. And if you skip, you know, I think one of the things that happens is people in condition white skip.
10:35
you know, suddenly they’re absolutely unaware, unalert. And now somebody’s running away with their kid, you know, and trying to stuff them in a car. You know, they’re, they spaz out, you know, as a parent would. So that I just, became fascinated with that idea that, Hey, there’s a lot more to being a warrior than just no one else shoot or being fit or whatever the case is. And after the first gunfight that I talk about in the book in Afghanistan, all of those things that they talked about from FBI statistics and
11:04
LAPD SWAT came down and talked with us about this. We really didn’t have a whole lot of experience, know, post Vietnam. So, you know, listening to these things and I experienced them all and realizing that I was experiencing them all mid gunfight, you know, and on a cold road in the middle of winter in Afghanistan. I’m like, man, all these stuff that, you know, these these guys told us are true. And, you know, why am I thinking about this right now?
11:28
You know, and it was because I had kind of entered that state where all of the actions I was performing had been kind of turned over to the autonomous nervous system, autonomic nervous system, and they were being performed without conscious thought. Right. But while that was happening, my brain was, was working, you know, because it’s been infused with, with all these chemicals, you know, it’s working at a speed that’s far, far faster than the normal. So I’ve got, you know, all of these random.
11:58
thoughts floating through my head while we’re engaged in relatively kind of combat from a couple feet away. So it’s after that, you know, the next day, actually, when we got a minute, I sat down with each of the guys who were in my platoon at the time and just went down the list of things that I had recognized and ask, hey, did you notice time speed up or slow down? Did you notice sounds diminish? Did you notice tunnel vision? And had them kind of talk me through and, know,
12:28
took notes and I was like, and this is some like legit research here. So when I got back, I started trying to dig in, you know, and for the last, you know, kind of behind me is really kind of the culmination, you know, the last, now it’s been 25 years, you know, I’ve spent really digging into that, how can we learn from that? How can we improve training, you know, for military or law enforcement folks to improve their alertness, awareness and execution when when it’s necessary? But how can we also
12:57
apply those things to everyday life. As we were talking about a little bit before I do some like coaching with business people or professionals, mostly kind of men over 40 who are, have been successful, but they, they just quite, you know, there, there’s something missing. They’re like, man, I either, you know, I focus so much on work that my fitness has suffered, or I focus so much on, on, you know, fitness that my home life has suffered. And, you know, really taken those lessons that I learned over, you know, 20 plus years and the
13:27
and the Marine Corps and turning those towards helping people achieve their, whatever it is they want to achieve. Yeah. And it’s, as you say, we see where many times we’re driven to reach success. And for many people, that metric is easy when we put money to it. But as you say, if we’re 40 pounds overweight and our kids are strangers and our wife is just like a roommate, they’ve desperately sacrificed something. And now they try to justify that sacrifice with this.
13:55
monetary success, but I guarantee they and probably their family would say, give all that money back. If I could just have this relationship and just have some of my health back. Yeah. And I think, you know, there’s absolutely the, at some point that recognition is going to come. And when it does, you can think that, I’m kind of beyond hope, you know, and double down and just kind of bury yourself in your work. Or you can say, Hey, you know, there’s at any point, you know, at any point you can say, let’s put the brakes on. Let me figure out where I’ve gone off.
14:26
course, and you know, I think I always talk about the first step is, you know, figuring out where you’re going. Right. Nothing else really matters. You know, where do want to be at the end of your life or at the end of the year? You know, it’s, I use a lot of references to land navigation. If you’re in the military, you understand it. But, you know, from whatever, you know, mountain or valley you’re in, you know, what’s as far as you can see yourself.
14:54
Once you can see that, then you can plot it on the map and then you can draw a line back to where you are. Then you can start saying, hey, let’s put some checkpoints in here. How do I know that I’m staying on the route that I want to be on? How do I recognize when I’ve gotten off of it? How do I put in weekly or monthly or annually, kind of after actions to stop, take a look at where I am and say, hey,
15:21
Am I, am I still going in the direction I thought, you know, do a compass check? Am I still heading on the right asthma? Yeah. And then shoot that reverse asthma. If you need to do the AR reevaluate, exactly. Keep stepping and cloverleaf around until you find the point. Everybody thinks that the point is just really easily found. It’s like, no, sometimes they hide those things guys. Exactly. But that’s what makes, that’s what builds the character. And I love that you have this very learning teaching kind of mentality because you knew that in order for.
15:50
the men that you were teaching to get this stuff. A lot of it was predicated on how well you could teach it. wasn’t a fact that they weren’t strong and that they weren’t strong backs with, with hard feet. And you were saying that in the curriculum, you early added on this idea of a concealed carry component. You actually brought in the, um, the 45 as a matter of fact, uh, a Kimber specifically was at seven, seven plus one. Yeah. So for a lot of people that don’t understand, they would hear that and they would say, well, why would you
16:20
bring a weapon that has less magazine capacity when say an M38 or a 92 has, you know, 14 or 15. And I think I know the answer, but for our audience that may not understand, why is that so important to have a 230 grain bullet compared to 124 bullet in common? Yeah. Yeah. At the time, the Marine Corps had been really big in force recon on using the 45. Okay. And for years had used the
16:49
1911 old 45s are actually, you know, first made in 1911. A lot of them seem to have been made kind of within that timeframe. You know, they were they were old, they were not terribly accurate, they would break. But when when this unit, the attachment one stood up, the Marine Corps did not have enough weapons to get to us. So we were most of us were just converts, you know, and loved John Moses Browning and the the 45. And so we really didn’t consider
17:19
anything else. We had to go with, because they couldn’t get them for us, we were able to go with the company, Kimber, who produced the great out of the box. Yeah, it’s a beautiful right out of the box weapon. Yeah. So we sent it to get a rail, light rail put on it. And it was, it was cool because it was actually the only, to my knowledge, was certainly the first pistol that was the serial number that USMC, you’re normally able to say US Army because the Army buys all the guns and gives the Marine Corps some.
17:48
So it said USMC on it, which was really cool. Now we have most, I think everybody has gone away from the 45 and gone to mostly nine mils because of capacity and ease of, everybody has nine millimeter ammo. It’s harder and harder to find 45. I think also you were mentioning some these statistics. Some of the concealment classes that I’ve taken when I take shooting.
18:16
They were mentioning that most of the time the encounter with the handgun is between zero and six feet. So for what you guys were doing with direct actions, clearing houses, getting HVTs, the only time you’re going to pull that weapon most of the time is if your M4 is blocked or is not working, it’s a dead gun. So you need to just let that thing go and quickly transition. So in my mind, the 45 is the perfect one because you may only get that one round. And if that’s the round you want to have around, that’s got some ass in it and around that’s going to actually shock this guy enough to stop him.
18:45
So that you have a chance to either get that second shot in, break contact, have your buddy come in, butt stroke and whatever it is. But I found that really interesting that you were working with those things in addition to, you know, picking locks and things like that, because that’s the field craft that you guys were going to run into. Land nav is fine, but this was more like pragmatic to what you guys were getting ready to get done in those times. Yeah. Yes. When the unit detachment one was formed, we weren’t quite sure how long we had to prepare. Uh, we weren’t sure where we were going.
19:15
So we really thought that we were going to go to Afghanistan. initially our training was really focused on that. Then we were told, you know, after several months of that, that, you’ve got another, you know, six months to train, but you’re going to Iraq and you’re not going to be doing like long range reconnaissance, which is what we thought. And we were kind of planning for instead, you’re going to be doing direct action raids on a high value targets. So it definitely shifted the focus and it was.
19:42
Only possible because this unit was, so the unit was directed, the secretary of defense told post 9-11, the services that, we’re going to need more special operations for this global war on terror. So he told the SEALs to make more SEALs, the army to make more Green Berets, and the air force to make more pair rescue guys. And the Marine Corps had not participated when SOCOM was initially formed in 2000 or in
20:11
- So the Marine Corps bowed out and this time the SECDEF said, guys are going to participate. the Marine Corps was still not happy about it. the SOCOM was not really happy about it. But once the decision was made, the decision was that we would do a proof of concept for two years, we would gather a group of started, it was supposed to be 87, it swelled a little bit to close to 100. Out of that, the
20:40
guys I was primarily with were forced recon Marines. and that we were able to pick, like I was given the kind of carte blanche to pick from anybody that I knew that I wanted. So we were really out of, you know, forced recon Marines within the Marine Corps, the the pedicle of what you could do up until that point. And so we were able we were picking kind of the best of the best. So it was, you know, our success was only possible because we were starting with guys who with
21:09
10, 12 years of experience who were highly skilled in their jobs with tons of training already. And guys, a lot of cases, guys we’d worked with in some capacity so we knew them. And then we added to that the roughly 30 assaulters or shooters that we had, another 30 Intel folks. Those kind of ran the gamut from geospatial intelligence, human intelligence, all-source intelligence, signals intelligence.
21:38
So between the two of us, the two groups, that was really the bulk of the whole organization. And then we had JTAX, know, people to control fires. had, you know, some of those and then all of the things that it takes to make a unit, some logistics and admin and communications. You know, when this whole thing got put together, it was just phenomenal to see, you know, the Intel guys that we picked were.
22:03
All being like pulled from the NSA or pulled from programs that most of us didn’t know at that time even existed. So these guys were all top tier as well. So it was it’s a phenomenal, you know, when you go to work and you’re like, man, you know, every, had felt that way while I was in force recon, but, here, you know, being selected to be a leader of a team, you know, where everybody that you looked at, you’re like, man, this guy is, is better than I am.
22:32
You know, I need to, I need to step up my game. And one of the things I talk about all the time, and one of the probably the maybe coolest things that’s come out of the book is, is when people read it and they’re, I talk in there about the imposter syndrome, you know, which I didn’t know had a name, but I’ve had the comment that I’ve probably gotten the most is, you know, people are like, Hey man, you know, I, can’t believe that you actually had that or there’s a name for it. Like I, I felt that way too.
22:58
I mean, guys in the book that I wrote about, you know, that I thought were beyond that were like, man, you know, how come we never talked about that? How come nobody ever said? And I think, you know, a lot of times it’s given a bad rap that, you know, imposter syndrome, it’s, you know, makes you feel like you’re not worth as much or whatever nonsense people might say, but it absolutely can drive, you know, drive performance. Cause you have everybody, 86 got showing up every day thinking they’re the, you know, number 86.
23:27
and trying to finish today at 85. when probably all of them were probably somewhere in the top 10 and we’re pushing each other and making each other better. That was the time that we spent was so valuable in my life in a lot of ways. Amazing people that I got to work with, amazing missions, opportunities to meet all these really cool people. more than anything, I was in my mid 30s at that point.
23:57
But that’s really that time I think I credit with solidifying my personal philosophy on life and recognizing that you can always do more, you can always improve, and there’s always more to improve for. There’s always more to get better before and to set your sights on. Yeah. You also said that you had this healthy combination between imposter syndrome and a lot of cocky swagger as well.
24:23
Yeah, you had to. You can’t walk around letting that imposter spend over or unsure in the show. You’ll get eaten alive if you do that. So we kind of all put on this mask of cockiness, particularly in my role as a team leader. There were four of us that were initially selected to be assault team leaders. I was the youngest of the four in Marine Corps, the junior of the four.
24:53
And so I absolutely felt that I had to be, you know, best in, you know, the other guys. And they were all the other three were guys that I had looked up to and, you know, they were far enough ahead of me and they’re in their career that, you know, they had already done everything that I had done. And so I, or they were guys that for years I had looked up to and admired, respected, and now I’ve got to, I’m going to be fighting for missions against these guys. So you can’t bow down, you know, you’ve got to, you know, put your chin up and, and charge in and.
25:21
Try to make yourself believe that you’re more qualified than they are while at the same time, you know, doubting that you’re even qualified enough to be there. think that’s that mastery and Gates of Fire, Steven Prestol talks about the idea of you’re fighting for the man next to you. You don’t want to let that guy down. And while we may join for patriotism or whatever, when we all join, we have the sense of adventure. We know there’s something more. We want something that will force us to demand more of ourselves.
25:50
And once you’re in that situation, like you said, you either sink or swim. And when you’re around a bunch of other guys that iron sharpens iron, as you say, you can literally feed off of that in a way that makes you better. That inspires them. And now there’s, it just becomes like a living organism of just excellence. And now you’re, you’re kind of dragged by it. And all of a sudden you’re ready to catch up with it. And it’s a beautiful synergy. It’s, it’s almost like a flow state in and of itself. Yeah. Collective. But some of the writing.
26:19
They talk about that, you know, collective flow state, whether it looks at a basketball team or whatever, if an organization can turn into an organism, like you said, where it’s, you know, kind of a living breathing thing that there’s one one of the chapters in the book, I talk about that idea, you know, the chapters called good at war, I had written years before I’d written a essay called, you know, with that title, and was with that idea that, you know, once you
26:48
kind of master the basics of combat. And if you are with a group of people who have also mastered it, you know, really it becomes geometry, right? You’re just, you know, hey, I know where I should be. You know, know where you should be. know where the danger, you know, the threats are. You know, it takes a lot of the, you know, particularly people who’ve never been in the situation, could rightfully be, you know, might rightfully think, you know, combat is just every single second waiting to get shot.
27:17
But you can’t run around like that or you will get shot. if you’re really good at it, the risk gets reduced drastically because it’s really very predictable. And there are obviously the unpredictables, the PBID or the things that you can account for. it’s one of the things that the Stoics said that you can’t do anything about that.
27:44
So you’ve got to not worry about that, focus on the things. And when you start focusing on the things you can control, then you realize that you can control more things. We get it flipped, right? We want to control desperately these other things that we’re wasting energy and time on. And now that’s taking time away from the actual things we can control. And then like you said, when we lean in on that and when we have this cockiness with a little bit of that imposter syndrome and we have this guy next to us, it’s like, man, I want to make sure that he knows that I’m not the
28:13
the weak link in the chain, all of a sudden you focus in on that stuff and all of a sudden you’re hitting levels you didn’t even know were possible. And that’s the beauty of having other people that force you to level up in a way. And again, it’s conducive to the entire team winning, the entire organization winning. And that’s why I think that the experience that you have specifically, when you bring that into a civilian sector or into a business, because when it’s happening in real time, it happens, like you say, so quickly.
28:41
And when you’re in the boardroom or when you see the C-suite executives or CEOs not talking and you’re detached, you can almost see it. Like you said, it’s almost slow again. That’s like, person can’t get over their own way. This person, you can’t change their mind. This person thinks because of the CEO that everything they say goes. So in that kind of situation, what would be your advice if you were on the outside? Yeah, it’s almost the same thing that you would do in the military. You’ve got to, the way that really good units get really good is, we mentioned it earlier, the after action.
29:10
review. You got to sit down and kind of put your cards on the table. And one of the things that absolutely made the attachment one so good and the unit that I come from before that where most of us came from First Force recon was we were absolutely ruthless, just brutal. It was, I mean, it was bloodletting sessions. We just, after a mission, we gathered into a room, sat down and go through everything that happened.
29:41
You just call out the guy, hey man, you were supposed to, you know, pick up security here. You didn’t. Well, what the hell? Why didn’t you? And, you know, it’s not, oh man, you know, I’m sorry, I forgot. No, you you need explain yourself because that will ensure that you don’t forget again. But, you know, if the, if the breach, the explosive breach was a second late, or if calm wasn’t up when it needed to be, or if it took too long to find the, the, you know, during a training mission, the target that we’re going after.
30:09
if the helicopter didn’t land in the right place. I we would just break each other over the coals. And, we all understood that we were not doing it to be dicks. We were doing it because it was going to make us all better. And that’s why I have had some opportunities to work with, with corporate clients or sports teams. And that’s really one of the first things we do. Let’s sit down. Let’s understand the outcome. I mean, if you’re for a company, we want to make money.
30:35
That’s the goal of a company. If you’re a sports team, you want to win games or matches or whatever they are. The way that we’re going to do that most frequently is by everybody firing on all cylinders. Everybody understands what’s expected of them, what the standard is. You can’t hold somebody to a standard unless you set the standard. from a leadership capacity, the thing that I’m always…
31:02
harp it on is in the military. It’s something we absolutely understand is that the standard that you walk by is the standard that you accept. So it’s the thing, hey, everybody needs to have haircuts. But I walk past, you know, a bunch of people without haircuts and don’t say anything, then I’ve just said, carry on. You know, you’re okay. If I say that we want to keep a clean team area or company area, and then I walk past a piece of trash, then everybody sees that. So we’ve really got a
31:28
you know, from the company leadership or team leadership has got to set the example that they want from coaches to players and set the example that they want to be upheld. And then, you know, come to a consensus on on what the mission is exactly the same thing. Where are you going? You know, it’s all the same thing. You know, where are we going as a company? What’s the destination that we want to arrive at? And my wife is a was a school teacher for all the most of time I knew her, but she
31:57
a couple of years ago became a travel agent. And when she started explaining it to me, I realized that kind of what a travel agent does, I wouldn’t think that they even exist anymore, but I realized that there’s kind of this three step thing that if you’re a lot of times they’ll do guided tours where they’ll take a bunch of people somewhere. All right, if you want to do that, you got to start with knowing where you’re going. You know, it’s not enough to say, oh, hey, we’re going to, who wants to go to Europe? All or who wants to on a trip? All right, you’ve got to know exactly where you’re going to. Then you’ve got to create a
32:27
good travel brochure or to entice people to come with you. All right, and in a team setting, you’ve got to show people how they’re going to benefit from coming on this journey with you. And then the third step is you got to be very upfront about how much it costs, right? You can’t get 27 people that want to go on your European vacation. And then when you show up to leave, tell them, hey, everybody owes me 10 grand and they don’t have it.
32:51
And the same thing in a company, you’ve got to set, hey, here’s the standards, right? If you want to be a part of this awesome journey that we’re going on, if you want to work for this company, you want to be member of this team, this is what it costs every single day. The rents do. Here’s what it takes to be a part of it. And a lot of people simply aren’t willing to pay that price. They’re not, or they don’t realize how high the price is. And maybe they can pay it once, but they don’t realize that, like you said. Yeah.
33:19
Can you keep doing it? Is this sustainable? Is this scalable? Everybody wants to do it once when it’s easy. And then when it gets hard, they want to make an excuse. It’s like, that doesn’t matter. That’s why it’s a standard. And that’s how we maintain the standard. have to have it. And you had a great leadership lesson there with about actions, not words by lady by example. Is there another like misconception around leadership that you see anywhere, whether it be in the civilian sector or even in the military that a lot of people have misconception about? I think one of the
33:48
And I don’t, this is one of the things that I don’t necessarily disagree with, but I kind of, like poking fun at the saying that, uh, that nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. You know, and that there’s, there’s absolute value in that. If that was true, then your best platoon sergeant would be your mom. All right. You know, and your mom is probably a bad platoon sergeant. She probably has no tactical skills. She probably can’t do well with a weapon.
34:15
you really need to be proficient at the job. mean, that’s in the Marine Corps, we have this saying that, and it’s kind of standard throughout the military, what’s most of the two goals of a Marine Corps leadership are mission accomplishment and troop welfare. And people always kind of debate, what’s more important, mission accomplishment, troop welfare, mission accomplishment, troop welfare. Undoubtedly, it’s mission accomplishment, right? That’s why we exist. However, Kakaama, it’s…
34:42
If you take care of your troops, then they will usually take care of the mission. So they’re both, you can’t say that one’s more important than the other, but I think sometimes people try to get by on being a good leader because everybody likes them, because they care about their, and it’s a dangerous slope to fall into. As a leader, really have got to be, and the military does this.
35:06
Mostly well, I mean, you don’t get to be a leader unless you’ve been platoon sergeant, unless you’re proficient as a machine gunner, as all of the steps on the, you have to take all the steps on the way up to that. So that doesn’t always translate into the civilian sector. I think also you have some great stuff in tough rugged bastards, which everyone should get. I think that there was a really great point where you were talking about
35:34
I believe it was the chapter, if I have it here, when you guys were going after Z and I’ll let everybody read to learn more about what that HVT was like, but you were describing this, um, brainstorming exercise that you had and you were saying that you would literally ask them, I don’t care what it is. Like come up with something stupid. Give me the dumbest ideas you can. Can you kind of explain that? Because I do something like that with companies and I think that it’s valuable. absolutely. So Marine Corps planning process is.
36:03
is kind of built around the idea of design thinking. It’s good and it works and it’s valuable, but there’s this other thinking process, creative thinking, and that really starts with the idea that you diverge. You get really big, generate tons of ideas, and then once you’ve done that, then you converge and you start saying, all right, let’s kind of, one of the great exercises that I do with people is have a team just write ideas on yellow sticky notes and put them on the wall.
36:32
You know, it’s just as many as they can and they can be crazy stupid. doesn’t matter. Once they’re all on the wall, you know, we’ve gotten them out. can then we can start saying, hey, these are similar. These are like, this is dumb. But when we start, you know, when people are trying to come up with ideas and you start immediately self-centering, you know, or you start immediately critiquing the idea, you know, if somebody’s like, it may not be, it may be a really, really stupid idea that they.
37:01
But if they’re afraid to say it, they’re not going to say it. If they do say it, that may spark something in my head. Like, well, but what about this? And that’s really where great ideas come from. that’s companies that do, like Pixar, movie studios, companies that are known for having great ideas. It’s a tool that they use. And so it’s hard to do, especially hard for military guys to do.
37:27
to let somebody say some dumb shit and not make fun of them for it. in the extra lot of time, we’ll put them on a timer. He got five minutes, come up with at least 30 ideas. And at the end of that, maybe they haven’t got 30, maybe they’re at 25, but that 25 is probably 23 more than they would have come up with if you hadn’t done that. And then once we start looking at them, then we can kind of start thinking that, well, this won’t work, but if you took
37:57
this part of it and this part of it and put them together, you know, that now we’re, we’re getting somewhere and said, maybe jog somebody else’s memory that, you know, so it’s, think it’s a really valuable exercise and you can only do it, you know, if you’ve got to suspend judgment and allow people to, uh, to throw their stupid shit on the wall. There’s a martial arts concept that says anything and excess eventually becomes its opposite. So if I’m working with the company, I’ll say, what’s your big problem?
38:26
And they’ll give me the big, hairy problem. And I’m like, all right, everybody, how can we make this worse? And they’re kind of like worse. And so you push them, like you said, what can make this worse? Oh, we don’t put any funding. What else? We don’t do this. And eventually, like you said, they start saying silly stuff. It’s funny, but eventually they get to a point where it’s like, actually this part of that isn’t that bad. And then as you’re saying, when you have these other aspects, now it can kind of dovetail into a way to where.
38:54
maybe at least you have a different orientation, you have a different avenue of approach. And just having that capacity is enough to sometimes give them that, like the next day they come in there, like, hey, was in the shower and I thought about this. And that’s the multi-million dollar idea, right? Yeah, that’s, mean, as humans, we’re kind of hardwired to come to a quick answer on things. Yeah, that’s, that’s proven, you’re thinking about being in the shower. There was a, I don’t know what book I read, but the,
39:21
guy who wrote the TV series MacGyver, which I used to love as a kid. would, you whenever he was kind of stuck with what was MacGyver going to do next, he would go home and he started doing it, like, you know, at random time, middle of the day, going to jump in the shower and just the water on his head, whatever it was, he would be like, yeah, that’s it. So the, there’s this idea that, you know, when you can detach, you know, whether that’s just coming up with silly ideas or
39:50
or going out for a walk in the middle of the day, anything like that that lets you set aside the traditional thought process and you open yourself up to heaven, like aha moments. And a lot of times people will think that that’s like a gift. think Steven Pressfield talks about that, that the angels come down and it’s like, it’s not, it’s the culmination of tons of hard work and things coming together, all of the stuff that you’ve read, all of the…
40:20
you know, stories that people have told you all of the conversations that you’ve had, they’re all kind of floating around and it just, takes, you you being able to get out of the way a little bit, you know, for what we call the, the muses or whatever to, to come in and give you the gift. Yeah. And like you said, the muse can tell when you’re bullshitting. So if you’re not putting in the work or you’re faking it or you’re halfway in, just wasting your time. There’s, there’s, you either have one foot out there, craft all the way.
40:50
or there’s no in-between, you’re gonna get people killed if you don’t have it committed. There was also a gentleman that you met when you were in country, a guy named Jaco. I think some people may have heard of him before. Tell us a little bit about that exchange. Yeah, so Jaco was, we had actually deployed together years before when he was enlisted. was one of the SEALs in the platoon that we were, our force recon platoon was deployed with. And so we hung out then, but he was…
41:18
I mean, this was long before he became, became Jaco. So it was, you know, I put him in the book because I thought it was just, it was fascinating. So, you he was the guy who kind of the seal that met us showed us around and welcomed us to Iraq, basically. And there were a couple of us that had been in that previous platoon. So we’re like, Hey, man, you know, you’re an officer now we kind of caught up a little bit. And it was, this was the deployment before his
41:47
big deployment with TU Bruiser and Ramadi. Yeah, was cool experience. Been trying to, I won’t lie and say that I just put them in there without any hope that that would get me on this podcast. Hasn’t happened yet, I’ve sent him a copy of the book. He requested it to a friend. So yeah, great. He’s really done a lot to, I mean, I admire when veterans want to do really well for themselves, but do really well.
42:17
in a way that lifts up the whole community. mean, he’s done a lot of great things for veterans. And I would be kind of remiss in saying that sometimes there’s a stereotype, they’re post military service or whatever. And Jack or Chaco are absolutely people to prove that wrong. And then there’s obviously there are knuckleheads from
42:46
from all walks of life, all branches of service and you know, the Marine Corps is not immune either. yeah, they’re a couple of obviously great guys and it’s been a pleasure to have some opportunity to interact with. Yeah, and the veteran community is weird. If you’re a successful veteran, sometimes that rubs other veterans wrong or what is your idea of success? I think, like you said, that comes back to when we get out, when we transition, we had to find another mission, another purpose.
43:16
And if we don’t, then we’re always, you know, talking about that Friday night lights and back when I was in the chorus, like that’s fine, but you have to bring these things in. And that brings me to another great part of your book. How you were saying that you stripped away everything that was not recon, but in the process of that, whenever you come back into the facility and sector, we have to kind of regain those attributes. How are you able to kind of get that place of compassion and empathy and things of that nature?
43:46
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And I think I was working on that chapter and it was stuck kind of for a while. And there were over the course of, you know, months, there was four or five guys that I who killed themselves. And it was, you know, thinking about that, that, you know, we’ve, we give up a lot to serve our country. Like I said, you kind of get rid of a lot of humanity in order to be very effective at the job. And it’s necessary. You’ve got to do that, but you’ve got to find it again.
44:15
You know, when you, uh, you know, think some guys think it’s, it’s lost, but I gave these this up, you know, I can’t, it’s really like when you go to bootcamp, you know, you show up and they like take your clothes and you think they’re gone, but at the end of bootcamp, they’d like give them back to you in a box and you’re like, what the hell? Um, know, the pants are too big or whatever, but, uh, the shirt’s too small because now you’re jacked. But you know, that’s, you can always go back and pick up the things that you dropped.
44:42
along the way, even, I mean, even they’re absolutely people that make bad ethical choices or do, you know, give up your integrity to a certain degree or, you know, make mistakes. I mean, you can always go back, pick those things back up, start again. There’s a, which used to be my favorite movie of all time, Young Guns, the first Young Guns. And Doc tells that, that little China girl, know, they says it like your past is like a,
45:12
paperback novel, right? When you finish reading it, you throw it away and start a new one. So you can always make that choice, that decision to do that. So I think that one of the things you need to guys, get out and don’t think that the best in life has already passed them, that it’s downhill from here out. mean, that’s, especially if you do four years, your mid-twenties, that’s a horrible, horrible thing.
45:38
And even if you retire 20 years, 40 years old, or 30, 50, there’s still a lot of life left ahead of you. you still have a lot of, I mean, there’s so much that regardless of your MOS or what you did, you got a lot to offer. So figuring out what the next mission is, and I think a lot of where a lot of guys go wrong is either not realizing that or thinking that the next mission is, hey, I’m to make a lot of money.
46:07
And I don’t kind of care how I go about it, but I’m going to. And that’s, you know, most of the guys that do that is good. You know, I mean, some people, know, Jocker, good example. I mean, I think him, Jack or, know, I think they’re both doing okay. But I think they’re, you know, they’re both doing okay. And something that I suspect, I don’t know them enough to speak for them, but I suspect they’re, giving back, you know, and, and in a way, so they have a mission still. And I think, you know, a lot of.
46:37
of guys that I know, Raiders that have gotten out, that have gone into business, become very, very successful, but really weren’t, it wasn’t satisfying. You it wasn’t, you aren’t in a team, you aren’t working with people that you like. The thing that was giving them a whole bunch of money wasn’t really scratching the itch that they’d had, you know, when they joined to be of service. So I think, you know, there’s, you know, some of the people that I coach, you know, the mission doesn’t have to be saving the world.
47:06
you know, maybe it’s, you know, working with kids or, you know, working with your own kids or, you know, coaching a little league team or, you know, I’ve got a buddy of mine that started by teaching people adults to read that don’t know how to read, you know, like do an organization or working with veterans and teaching them to write, you know, write a concurring, write their stories and helping them. There’s, you know, a million ways to be useful and, you know, or, you know, trying to help people think.
47:35
better, be better, bring out the best of themselves. You know, all of these things, if you can, there are plenty of missions, know, there’s more missions than there are people to take them. So, know, finding something, whether it’s kind of your main job or whether it’s a sideline that you do. And once I started, you know, I was fortunate that when I retired, I went straight into the same job, right? I still get to help make raiders every day of my life, which is like,
48:04
It’s crazy. They pay me for it. But, you know, then I started realizing that there’s a lot of this stuff that I’m doing with these guys is, you know, would be wildly valuable to, uh, to people in the civilian sector, people that never had the opportunity, the will, desire, whatever, to join the military, or maybe people that joined and got out and, and just still like that aren’t, you know, haven’t learned some of the lessons. So, you know, for me, it doesn’t have to be.
48:34
something that you go broke, you know, doing, right? It should be a way that you there’s a little icky guy diagram, know, the four Venn diagram, if you can find something that you love doing, you’re good at the world needs and people will pay you for and you’re in pretty good shape. And I think most veterans, there’s a have a post that I wrote about this coming out soon, the guy who wrote or drew the comic strip Dilbert, Scott, Scott something.
49:03
He talks about it. It can be daunting if you look at it like, am I really, really good at? What am I the best in the world at? And maybe that’s nothing. But his thing was he was like, hey, man, I’m pretty funny. I’m funnier than the average guy. I worked at corporate America for a long time. So I saw a lot of things that were funny and I’m pretty good at drawing. I’m not the best at any of those things. But if I stack those three things together, then
49:33
He have, uh, know, Dilbert and I’m sure he’s not, uh, hurting for, you know, he’s, knows where his next meal is coming from. know, Scott Adams. That’s his And I think that that’s a great point in the military. It’s easy for us to be, give us a mission or insane leadership brought this down, but when we get out and then we have agency in our life and now you say to this person, you get to decide what the mission is. That.
50:01
isn’t the most overwhelming thing for them. So all this stuff you’re describing where it’s like, listen, almost like land now. I know where North is. That’s where I want to go. I might not know exactly where it’s at. I know that there’s a land mass here. I know that there’s a mark over here, but I will figure it out as I go. And as long as we continue to go in that direction, and it could be the thing that either brings you pleasure or relieves pain or brings purpose or helps you get back to this compassion, this empathy, that person that you want to become, we can absolutely do those things.
50:31
But it’s just like everything else you’re describing with combat, with, with repetitions, with a flow state, you’re going to be in this. It’s not going to be a tensionless state. There’s always going to be these competing priorities pushing you and dragging you one way. But as long as you have that intention and that agency and take control of what you’re wanting to do, that’s how you get there. And before you know it, you’re getting close and all of a sudden it’s like, wow, look at the progress I made. Yeah, exactly. I think, uh, I mean, you, you said it. I mean, really you.
51:01
you know what direction you want to head in. And if you figure that out, and then the next step in it is how am I willing to travel? Aristotle had this idea of the golden mean. His thing was that every virtue was also a vice. if you are, everybody thinks heroism is great. Being brave is awesome. But we know that the opposite of brave is cowardice.
51:29
We don’t want to be there. So brave is really not the opposite of cowardice. Brave is in the middle of the road. The opposite is recklessness, maybe. So I’m a leader and I don’t want to be a coward, but if I’m too brave, I’m throwing my men away needlessly. So I want to be, and that’s like the Zen idea, the idea of Buddhism, be in the middle path, be in the middle of the road.
51:53
If you think about that, if I think bravery is important to me or courage is important and integrity is important, then I can pretty much stay. I just need to look around from time to time. Am I doing too much of this or am I doing too little? If you stay between those lines, it’s like a runway lights. The thing is that we sometimes put our head down and just start slugging through the night.
52:21
And then when we pick our head up and realize we don’t know where the hell we are, right? We got off course somewhere along the way that happens. Right. You can always, like I said, you can always go back and pick, pick up whatever you dropped. You can always turn 90 degrees and get back on, on track. I think it’s like you said, if what we’re working towards is difficult, we’ll have to naturally take those stops and breathe anyway. So I might as well while I’m here, get a sip of water, get my compass out, shoot that asthma, see if this is really what I want to go. And now I just keep. Yeah. Yeah. One of the.
52:49
My favorite books that I read during that time was this former Olympic gold medalist in shooting. I got him Lanny Basham, who wrote a book called What’s Winning in Mind. Love that. His thing, like really just if you follow this, like the one 30 second blurb, if you do it, you will be the most successful person in the world. All right. Or you won’t. But his thing was, you know, put a note on your mirror every morning and have what you want.
53:18
on that note. And his was, I think he said it in the press state, I am an Olympic gold medalist. And, you he read that he committed to doing the things that Olympic gold medalists do. So that was, you know, obviously practice shooting, eat well, sleep well, you know, work out, do all of the all of the things that he thought it took to be an Olympic gold medalist. And his thing is either, you know, you’re going to succeed and you’re going to achieve it, or you’re going to wake up one morning and you’re going to not read the note.
53:47
you’re not going to commit because you decided that I’m not willing to pay the price for that. I’m not willing to do the work. And when you decide that, sometimes as much as I hate to it, sometimes deciding that, hey, this goal that I really, really thought I wanted is not for me. I’m not willing to put in the time, the effort, the energy. So let me find a new one. That can send me off the rails or I can say, all right, I can’t be.
54:12
I’m never going to play in the NBA. All right. That’s, that ship is sailed. So, you know, what can I do? think also you, and again, I can’t recommend the book enough. There’s a part because at the time that you were there, Belusia in those areas, what had just happened with those contractors from, from Blackwater, the ROE, the rules of engagement, there was a certain standard that we were expected to have on our side, but yet we’re fighting an enemy who cares not for those things.
54:43
and you really kind of unpack that a little bit in the book. Can you explain that? Because you’re in the heat of battle, you have men that depend on you and your life is in danger. And yet you’re still trying to find, as you were saying, integrity is important to me. Doing the right thing is important to me. We can’t really balance it as more about the ability to adapt well, I would imagine is the answer. Yeah, I mean, it’s hard. It’s absolutely hard. And I was never put in positions that other people were put in where…
55:10
So I can’t say that I would always make the right decision. But for us, my thought with it was that there’s always people that would say, you we need to match the enemy on their terms or we need to, you know, they’re not going to follow the Geneva Convention. So why should we? And it’s the mistake is in thinking that it’s, you know, that you need a convention. We’re following that in order to protect the enemy or, know, in order to, we were doing it to protect ourselves.
55:40
because there’s the idea of moral damage. It’s something along those lines. know, you… I think it’s called moral injury, I believe. Moral injury, yeah, moral injury. you know, if I do something that I know is wrong, you know, and I may do it with the best of intentions, I may do it with, and I may be able to justify it. Absolutely. You know, if someone’s pointing a gun at my…
56:06
friends had a shoot that person you know i’m absolutely justified in doing that but if that was a kid i was a kid that i got you know i i can’t think or if i come into a room and there’s a a man hold the baby that was the rifle and i know i accidentally killed maybe uh… that’s one thing about right but i i can be absolutely justified by the rules of engagement
56:31
but I can’t think that I’m going to go through the rest of my life and not have that weighing on me. All so the idea of moral injury is that it may not mess with you now, but it’s there and it’s going to come out at some time. And it really comes down to our belief system. As Americans, mostly we were raised a certain way to believe certain things, that as the military, we’re supposed to do good, we’re supposed to fight for what’s right, and we’re supposed to fight in a way that’s honorable.
57:02
There are absolutely times when people are required to do things that are maybe less than honorable to accomplish a mission or do things that even though they are illegal are going to be injurious. that’s the reason that we have rules of engagement. The reason we have is to protect us, not to protect the enemy. And I would wager that a large number of veteran suicides.
57:29
come because these things, I’m never going to stop seeing that. Never going to stop waking up and seeing this thing that I did. There’s absolutely help for that. There’s counseling and people that can absolutely encourage people to take advantage of that. I didn’t realize that. You don’t realize it when you’re younger. But once you get to a point particularly where you’re in charge of other.
57:58
men, soldiers, Marines, you are now responsible for them. And more than just, you want them to come home, but you want them to come home with honor, right? You want them to, you know, continue to be good husbands and fathers and whatever the case. And they’re probably not going to do that if they’re unable to sleep at night because they’re seeing this thing that they did. So that’s, that’s kind of my take on it. I think that’s powerful. And I think you have so much gravity in saying it because you’ve been in those, or close to those situations. You had to have that as a contingency.
58:28
You had to have that literally chambered as you would walk into a direct action because that may be what you have to do. Nietzsche says that a warlike man, which is war on himself in times of peace, if he doesn’t have the ability to protect himself from these things. When I interviewed little Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, he wrote on killing. It was similar about, and you touch on it also about this notion of the distance between myself and the combatant and how that even gives us a little bit of protection.
58:57
when you’re in the thick of it and when you’re in it and it’s close combat like that, you can actually feel the man’s breath on you. It’s much different. And it’s something that you can’t describe. You’d have to experience. And even in those situations, as you say, we have to put up certain barriers to keep ourselves and our men intact, even if they are not willing to do it themselves. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, Ranger, I could talk to you forever. And I, for those of you that didn’t understand that, read the book, but I thank you for your time, for your service, for what you’re doing for everybody.
59:27
So Tough Record Bastards, where can we get this and where would you direct us to learn more about you, what you’re doing to learn where you’re going to speak and all that you have going on? Absolutely. The website’s the best. It’s jdailey.com, D-A-I-L-E-Y. There there’s links to buy the book. You pretty much get it anywhere. Amazon, Barnes Noble, any of those places. But there’s also…
59:49
place where you sign up for the weekly newsletters that I write, The Walking Point, which is kind of more along with what we’ve been talking about. My other one’s called Ruck the Fuck Up. That’s more about mental toughness and rucking. I’m a big fan of throwing a pack on your back and going, and then all the social media links and things are on there. So yeah, I appreciate it if you check those out. Yeah. And I’ll have my people put that on the show notes so that we have it there. John, I look forward to shaking your hand in person at some point and
01:00:18
Thank you so much for everything and for the time that you’ve given us and have a fantastic run whenever you go next. Yeah, absolutely Marcus. Thanks for having me on. I’ve had a great time. The time flew by, so come back on whenever, whenever. Continue the conversation. I was going to say we’ll have plenty to talk about next time. Excellent. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
