Join us as we dissect pivotal moments, like David Goggins' agonizing decisions in his intense bike race, to demonstrate the potent lessons that come from decision-making under stress. We illuminate the transformative impact that such high-stakes situations have on our ability to lead effectively. Furthermore, our conversation ventures into the importance of learning from our blunders, aptly reminding listeners that the path to personal growth and professional mastery is not only paved with trials but also the profound insights gained through missteps and perseverance. Tune in as we unravel these leadership and business epiphanies, giving you a front-row seat to the raw and authentic journey of relentless improvement.
Join us as we dissect pivotal moments, like David Goggins' agonizing decisions in his intense bike race, to demonstrate the potent lessons that come from decision-making under stress. We illuminate the transformative impact that such high-stakes situations have on our ability to lead effectively. Furthermore, our conversation ventures into the importance of learning from our blunders, aptly reminding listeners that the path to personal growth and professional mastery is not only paved with trials but also the profound insights gained through missteps and perseverance. Tune in as we unravel these leadership and business epiphanies, giving you a front-row seat to the raw and authentic journey of relentless improvement.
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, with our season five special guest, dave Nurchi, and we are getting after lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and today's big point that we're going to get after is lead bullets are hard work and there are no silver bullets, and that's brought to us by the Ditch the Suits podcast, ditch the Suits, where we focus on helping you get more out of your money and life. Head on over to nqrmediacom to check them out. You can go to NQR Media on YouTube. Subscribe there. Actually get the recordings. You can find us wherever you can find a podcast. Basically, we're going to be there.
Speaker 1:
District Suites has also been ranked top finance podcast by Podcastle, second year in a row, I think, definitely this year. I believe we were ranked first last year too. So check that out, get more out of your money and your life. All right. So, dave, lead bullets are hard work and there are no silver bullets.
Speaker 1:
What Ben's talking about is literally the fact that there is no shortcut to building a business, leading people becoming good at it. He talks a lot about the fact that, because his whole perspective is about being a CEO. Right, and when you are in that type of role. So whether you're a CEO or manager of a team or you know, somewhere in that hierarchy, the only way that you really learn is by getting out there and doing it. And when you just get out there and do stuff, you're going to screw up, you're going to make a lot of mistakes, you know, and that's kind of like the lead bullets.
Speaker 1:
It's just you're getting out there and you're slogging it. You're just you're grinding through stuff. You're dealing with life as it comes. You're dealing with business as it comes. You're dealing, you're learning about people you know, and there's still things I mean I, I, there's, there's decisions that we have to make all the time. That's like man, I wish I could have done that differently, right, and next time I'll do it differently. And but the only way you, the only way you have a moment where you go, oh, I could have done that differently, and next time I'll do it differently is by doing it the way that you think you should have done it differently first and the you know, like you got to do it, to say, ah, that's what that feels like.
Speaker 1:
You don't know what the adrenaline is going to feel like with some of the stuff that you're going to have to deal with, until you feel the adrenaline and you're like, okay, so this is what that means. Or that seemed really scary and I got through it and looked back and I was like I don't know why I was nervous about that at all. It's like sometimes you procrastinate because things seem like they're going to take a lot of work, and then you actually like get into them and you're done in like five minutes. You're like why did I put that off for two years? Right, and you just got to get after it. So there's no shortcut. There's no like silver bullet. You can't go take a class on management or entrepreneurship or business or whatever the universities want to sell you. Right now. There's nothing that you can do to prepare yourself, for you know, if you're really serious about being good at leadership or being a good manager, or being a good CEO or in charge of anything whether you're in charge of a committee, at your church or whatever you know like to be, or even a parent how many times you make mistakes as a parent and you go now. I know, right Now, I know what that means. Even if somebody gave you the. I told you. So it's like now I understand what you were telling me. Thank you very much. I had to make the mistake. I'm better off now. That's why everybody's so much better with the grandkids than they were with the kids, cause they figure out oh, when you do that, that's the outcome 20 years from now.
Speaker 1:
I get it now right, it's like you don't realize the decisions you're making and the impact they're going to have in the moment, and a lot of times you don't realize it until 10, 15, 20 years later when you look back and go, okay, cause and effect. Now I kind of get why maybe I should. You know people should do this. This is where mentors are made out of. You wonder, like, what makes a good mentor a good mentor? Somebody who's already screwed it all up so they can tell you you'll screw that up. But and you say, no, I don't think so. And they say, yeah, you know, by 18 years you'll see that's that's, here's the outcome. That's how a good mentor has perspective. I think no-transcript getting good at this stuff. You just you gotta, yeah, take the lumps and the bumps, yeah.
Speaker 2:
And the way I looked at this one was the problem happens If you start spending a lot of time or energy looking for the silver bullets.
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 2:
And that's the shortcut. That's like the like the magic pill, whatever right that's going. The magic pill, whatever right, that's going to somehow get your business where it's supposed to be. And if you're spending resources or your energy there instead of just getting through the hard work, that's where you're going to see the problem.
Speaker 2:
And you mentioned the classes, right, so if you have someone, maybe you promote them to managers the first time they're in a management role and they get all excited and they start looking at you know, all these classes they could take online and become a better manager. And they put all this time and it's fun, right, it's? Oh, look, I can take this class. Look at these, the outline has all the things I need to know, right, and I'm going to be great after this.
Speaker 2:
And they spend a ton of time and money and everything on these classes and they come out they have all this theory, but then the first problem happens, or the first difficult interaction or conflict, and they're like, oh shit, the class didn't teach me this. What happened to this nice outline I had? And then the reverse of that would be the new manager who just kind of hits it and maybe they're looking for the coach or mentor that's going to help them when these situations come up, but they're going to go, experience it and do their best and be open to improving and changing. That's the one that's going to advance and come out on top and a lot faster.
Speaker 1:
I was listening to David Goggins is can't hurt me, I think is the book Um, and there's a chapter there where he's talking about how he's doing this.
Speaker 1:
Um, he does ultra runs and he does, like you know, the combination races where you're running, swimming, biking, mountain climbing.
Speaker 1:
He's a crazy fitness guy, right, like he's beyond the beyond as far as fitness goes and he's experienced, right, but one of his first bike races he does, he does all his prep, he's got everything together, and there's a part of it where you have to ride a bike and so a friend gives him state-of-the-art, super fast bike and his backup bike is like slow and clunky, and so he's riding and something happens, I think, like the tire blows out or something on the bike and down he goes right, um and for.
Speaker 1:
For an enormous amount of time he is waiting for a part to come to fix the bike instead of just getting on his backup bike and riding, and the reason is because the bike that he had went like twice as fast as the backup bike. But the problem is is that he spent so much time. He probably could have put the bike on his back and run across the finish line and at a time it took him to repair the bike, to get back on the bike to ride it Right. So he was so convinced that he was supposed to ride the bike because it was the fastest bike and he had so much tunnel vision into you know I have to fix this bike but he like he could have been very, very different had he either gotten on the old bike and rode the old you know the clunky bike, cause he still would have finished faster, or had he probably just picked the damn thing up and ran with it.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
You know and it's like so you look at that and you just go it's along the same lines with the bikes, not the silver bullet man and and, and and, but, but also that you, in this kind of like journey that you're in, he's a smart guy, he's an athletic guy, he's been in a lot of races, right, he's a Navy SEAL, I mean like he's. You wouldn't think he would have this dumb moment, right, but you're in the moment and you have this dumb moment and you know he's going to spend the rest of his life, because he talks about it in the moment. And you have this dumb moment and and you know he's going to spend the rest of his life Cause he talks about it in the book thinking about this stupid thing that he did. And it's like the only reason why he had the dumb moment is because he'd never faced the moment before. He had never been in that moment, so he didn't know how to condition his mind to deal with the moment.
Speaker 1:
And when you're thinking about leadership and management and being in charge of people and dealing with people problems and business and business strategy and all the stuff that comes with that you know legal and accounting and everything you know you're really thinking about you don't realize it, but all kinds of experiences that you haven't had before. They're going to create energy and emotions in ways that you've never experienced. And you know the peaks are high and the valleys are low and they come fast, right, and you don't know how you're going to deal with that stuff until you deal with it. And when, once you deal with it, you go okay, I didn't deal with it the way I wanted to deal with it. This is how I think I would deal with it, going forward and then the next time that it happens, you see it coming because you've already experienced it.
Speaker 1:
If you're good, you see it coming. You go OK, now, when that happens, I understand where this is going. So I understand how to curb my reaction to it or or how, to, you know, sit back and listen a little bit more, or something like that. But that's that's the point. There's no, it doesn't matter how prepared you are. It doesn know. It doesn't matter how prepared you are, it doesn't matter how gifted you are, how much talent you have, how many classes you take, how many people give you certain tools or whatever. You're gonna be in it and you're gonna have to have experiences where you shit the bed and you go. Okay, I understand now what that means and now it can be better.