Garth Massey has been a colonel in the marine corps, was in the reserves and was on active duty for four or five years in the 90s. Then got off and have done about four years of mobilizations and tours and stuff. He's put all that into about the last 26 years, he's been strapping on the green suit and playing the game.

 

He started his company a decade ago-- teaching leadership programs for different levels of people: beginners and the experienced. They have offerings for different stages for different people-- both companies and individuals. They are teaching to implement military leadership processes for entrepreneurial businesses.

 

Thousands of business professionals and Marines have trained through their CommandReady program on how understanding leadership in professional and personal lives can create new opportunities.

 

For them, success meant creating cohesive teams, inspiring innovation, building and promoting stars based on the principle -- we achieve more when we are open to learning.

 

Leadership is a process, a journey. Through continuous learning, practical application of ideas and personal reflection, leaders can shape environments that improve business outcomes, drive innovation and improve retention of key employees. “Never stopping to learn makes everyone on your team better” is a strong belief of their team.

 

In this episode, Garth talked to Manny about a few topics like: How the military has shaped Garth in becoming a better man. How an adult can have a direction and purpose in life and can strive to achieve it. The process to work with your values. What does Garth still struggle with and differences in styles between being in the military and being an entrepreneur. How do you condition someone to empower them to become good in spite of their doubts and feelings.

 

Insights from the Episode:

 

The military has systematically broken down by age and rank like things you can do to help continuous learning

 

Operational design: It's that thing that connects your goal to tactics and strategy. When done with intentionality and on purpose, we call that continuous learning 

 

Motivation is like coffee which lasts just for 5 minutes, shoot for Inspiration instead.

 

Purpose and direction are key elements of leadership. If you internerlize them--you're living by your vision, you're living your philosophy

 

 

If you're not truly living your purpose, only thinking what can I get, how can I get, what's mine; all those things will ring hollow and it doesn't work

 

Commanding is the most overused and often the most negative style of leadership

 

When you get to the place where you're actually applying stuff, you're getting to the level of mastery where you have a degree of competence in your field. You build greater confidence, try new things, make small adjustments and really start to customize it and make it your own.

 

In the process of developing mastery: passion starts kicking in, now you're at this place where you're like 'I'm pretty good at this'

 

When you do your thing at the mastery level, people around you start changing, they feel that energy: that is Leadership

 

When you're authoritarian and kind of dictatorial in your process; what do people do? they resist.

 

You could go down a rabbit hole of trying to follow somebody else's past because we feel so certain about everybody else. But we should have that same certainty about what we should do.

 

It's always harder to know what we should do

 

It's not about choosing the right path but it's about choosing your priority

 

Human beings are wired to acquire a target and track it down and crush it, that's how we work

 

You're filling the space in your head and your calendar and your day with noise; you are achieving nothing, you're doing nothing, you're just spinning plates everywhere

 

If you think having multiple priorities works for you, how long do you want to play that game?

 

In the military, in tactical parlance; we say if you have more than one main effort, you have no main effort at all

 

In the moment that you're in, do that thing and do that one thing well, and stop trying to do ten

 

If you got a side hustle, you're not doing your hustle right. So either let the hustle go and get on the side hustle and grow that thing

 

Most people should not be entrepreneurs, they don't have the risk tolerance for it

The longer and harder you work on your values; the more refined your understanding becomes and the easier it becomes to embody them, show them or live them or discuss them or debate them.

 

‘Make more money' -- that's not a value, that's like a task, that's a thing, it's a byproduct of a life well lived

 

Even chasing happiness is a dangerous undertaking

 

We should be looking for a flourishing life; it's one where good things and bad things happen to you and yet you're growing through it and you're improving

 

Even in pain we can get something, we learn at the pain of adjustment

 

Internal motivation is way more powerful if you don't lie to yourself, and that takes courage

 

You have to have the courage to make hard choices, to do the hard things to be upright, when everyone else is slouched to engage in the work when netflix is calling

 

Have big goals, aspire to great things, it's okay to want to do something just gigantic:  have a huge company or work towards sainthood

 

We're not learning about who we are and what our character is, and because we're ignoring that we just rot like little mushrooms and fungus

 

The more successful you get, the more you're going to be attacked from the outsides trying to pull you back down

 

If you're going to be a leader; the goal is not to use the power, it's to use your wisdom and your experience to draw out other people's power

 

We worry about the future as though we could control it but you can't  project the future

 

We spend a lot of anxious time worrying about the future when we can't control it.

 

We don't think about the things we're doing right now, that could get us there to our goals

 

You are probably your best mentor for the future self; the thing you do today is the mentorship, the coaching, the growth for your future

 

You live for the outcomes, you do not live for right now

 

You've got to look at your life and say 'what am I learning next, what takes me to that next level?'

Wherever you are, there are things to learn at that level and then there's things to learn to get out of that one and move on to the next

 

You don't learn by watching, you learn by doing. There's no better way to learn than to teach

 

Having a struggle never stops and that's a good thing, you want the struggle, you want to embrace that and that's what builds resilience, that's what makes grit

 

Sometimes in our lives we get stuck, we get tired, it's hard; but you can't stay there, if you stay there you just become dead to the world and that's no good