Picture this: You're standing at the edge of your capabilities, ready to leap into the vast unknown, but what if you're only experiencing 40% of your true potential? This week, we're unraveling the wisdom of David Goggins, a man trained by the Navy, Army, and Air Force, who maintains this very belief. He's the embodiment of the idea that being great often means being misunderstood. We take a deep dive into his philosophy, looking at how he navigates the world differently to unlock his full potential. Prepare to sail into uncharted territories and redefine what you believe is possible!
Picture this: You're standing at the edge of your capabilities, ready to leap into the vast unknown, but what if you're only experiencing 40% of your true potential? This week, we're unraveling the wisdom of David Goggins, a man trained by the Navy, Army, and Air Force, who maintains this very belief. He's the embodiment of the idea that being great often means being misunderstood. We take a deep dive into his philosophy, looking at how he navigates the world differently to unlock his full potential. Prepare to sail into uncharted territories and redefine what you believe is possible!
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership and I'm your host, travis Moss, and welcome to Quote Day. I know, I know we're in the middle of the team interviews. Emmy and May have a lot more interesting things to say. We're going to get back to them. We're sandwiching between episode one, episode two of the team interviews. I promise we're going to get back to them and they got some really good stuff. But first we're going to do this quote and the quote is if you want to be great, you're going to be misunderstood by everybody, and that's by David Gaggins.
Speaker 1:
And I didn't know who David Gaggins was, and maybe I should have. But I looked him up and I went to his website. He's got a website davidgagginscom. Check it out, it's worth your time. And in Big Bowl Letters across his website is a book title. It's called Never Finished. Unshackle your mind and win the war within. And then, in small print, this is not a self-help book, it's a wake-up call and I love that.
Speaker 1:
Maybe the reason why I don't know who David Gaggins is because I'm not looking for self-help, I'm looking for perspective. I'm looking for other people's perspective that I can use to help inspire others. I'm looking for the slap in the face and I'm looking to share the slap in the face, all right. There's an abruptness of a wake-up call versus a let's hold your hand and talk about. You know why life is so hard and stuff. You know what it's hard for everybody. Wake up. That's the difference. I love it. So, anyway, I'm reading his website and I'm like that's my jam, I'm in.
Speaker 1:
So then I messed around with his website a little bit and I found out that I can get his book on Amazon and he's actually got two books Never finished and can't hurt me and I forget which one I got. I got one of them when I started it already and it's really neat. He's doing the book, but he's doing it with his ghost author and they're actually doing it kind of like a podcast and, as they explain it, like a radio show, as they're going through their own books, kind of like what we do on this show. So I thought that was awesome. So I started listening to that book and A couple of things that I found, and some of the Workup that I've done here, is that he's the only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy Steel Army Ranger, an Air Force tactical controller, which didn't know it was a thing that you could do all three.
Speaker 1:
I think I've heard of people doing Navy Seal and Army Ranger training or vice-versa, but never all three. It's pretty inspirational Because, you know, as we talked about team of teams, they're not trying to make super soldiers, are trying to make Super team members. So there's something special about what he's doing there that he's figured out that recipe and that he's saw out that personal growth. And, apparently, his book is premised or one of the books is premised around on how most of us only tap into 40% of our capabilities, which he calls a 40% rule. And he goes on and talk about pushing past pain, demilishing fear, reaching our full potential. And so I said, you know, that makes sense. I don't know where we come up with 40%. Maybe I'll learn that it may only be like 20%. I think we are so capable, so much more. So I got his book and our next series. We already committed to the infinite game by Simon Sinek. We've talked lots of about Ben Horowitz's books and tons and tons of other books. We're gonna get to lots of different books, but I thought you know what. I'm gonna start listening to one of his books because I'm kind of intrigued by this guy, and if it's really good, that'll follow. Or if I get it done in time let's put it that way too That'll follow shortly after Simon Sinek. So back to his quote.
Speaker 1:
To be great means that are you. It means that you are significantly above average. And if you are significantly above average, you must be doing things different than the vast majority of people in the world. And if you're doing things so different, then you are going to be misunderstood, even by people that you consider close to you. There's no shortcut to this. That's what's gonna happen. Because, to be average, there's a reason why everybody's average Because they're not doing much above average. Right, they're doing the status quo. They're doing the conventional wisdom. They're just staying in line. When you get out of line, people start pointing finger. What are they doing? Why are they doing that? When you start showing people up, when you start climbing the ladder, people get frustrated with you. It's never gonna work. You're never gonna stay there. You can't do it like that. You have to block all that out. You have to keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 1:
If you want to know what makes someone great, don't look at the obvious features. I love how they come up with the seven habits of effectively teaching those types of things right, like why do successful people do certain things, or what are the things successful people are doing? You don't think it's that easy. Don't look for the things that you're doing. Don't look for the things that you relate to or the things that you understand. Look for the things that don't make any sense. The yabba stuff yeah, but he wastes time on the abut. He's always working instead of watching the game. Yeah, but he's got interesting perspective on the world.
Speaker 1:
If you look at a business, if you took all the metrics and we participate in these surveys we actually didn't do it this year because it was providing less and less value but we historically participated in industry surveys in the financial industry and the growth rate is off the chart. They put a little arrow at the top and it points up, and so normally those charts they show you what the average is, they show you what the top 20 percentile, the bottom 20 percentile, and for us they just put an arrow at the top of the chart. And then there's a lot of other analytics that they put an arrow at the bottom of the chart and I've had the consultants come from the organization and put the survey together and they say we want to help you on this and it's like okay. So I also know that you're consulting all these other firms on growth and the average firm really, really struggles with growth. The growth rate is actually abysmal, without accounting for acquisitions. So we've unlocked that piece and now you want to come back in and you want to tell me that I need to do everything like everybody else.
Speaker 1:
Maybe you should be coming in and saying why are the outliers so extreme? What's the perspective on those? What's the purpose of those? And in fact, I want to know about the other firms. I want to know where their outliers are. I want to know the most extreme stuff that they're doing compared to average, because that's where the magic is actually happening. There's something going on there. The people who are really good, they're not really good by accident. Right, there's a deliberation in what they're doing. They're being, whether they know it or not, they have a perspective on things or focus on things. That's not average.
Speaker 1:
Most leadership quotes I see say that greatness comes from effort, if you just put enough effort in, and that's partly true, because without effort you're not going to get anything. But in a room full of people who are all putting in maximum effort, right? All the people who are reading the same quotes and listening to the same thing, going to the same gym, getting up at the same time, doing all the habits of successful leaders. Everybody's trying to do that right. They're all putting the effort in what separates the greats from average the people who do things different than the rest of us. They see things different. They don't ask for confirmation or affirmation. They don't need your opinion to change what they are doing. They'll change it themselves. They're not looking for self-help. They're looking for the wake-up calls, whether it's them delivering it to the world or whether they've been woken up by the world. That's what's happening.
Speaker 1:
Look for the people that everybody else gets annoyed with because they keep challenging the conventional methodologies Not because they're asses, but because they push and they challenge. They're going to do it different almost always. Those are the people changing the world. That's Amazon, that's Tesla, that's Facebook, that's Microsoft, everything great that you can think of. Every great company, every great leader. They did it different and they sold what was different. In fact, a lot of them didn't even have to sell anything. People just bought it because they were so impressed. And it didn't happen overnight. Almost them 15, 20 years in the making. Get your reps in right. You cannot be above average by doing what everybody else does. You become great by doing what the average person doesn't.