#015: Navy SEAL: Calm is Contagious | Mike Sarraille
Who knows the most about staying calm during chaotic situations? A combat experienced Navy SEAL.
In this episode, you'll get the advice of Navy SEAL Mike Sarraille on staying calm during a crisis like the Coronavirus.
Links & Resources
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Books
The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent
Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown
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Mike Sarraille
Instagram: @mr.sarraille
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
We're taking a break from our normal content because of everything going on with the coronavirus. There's a lot of fear, a lot of panic going around and we wanted to address it because in the midst of everything going on in the midst of the anxiety, that a lot of people are feeling, we really need to stay calm.
And so we thought, who can we ask for advice on that topic? Oncom in the midst of crazy situations. And so we thought who's experienced the most chaotic situations in the world. Let's get their. So we brought in an American hero, a Navy seal. Who's experienced a ton of combat, which is the most chaotic environment in the world.
So in this episode, you'll hear his advice and more on staying calm and reacting properly to a situation like the coronavirus. Our guest is Mike Elli. Mike is a retired us Navy seal officer, our graduate of the university of Texas. And now he's a leadership instructor, author and speaker and strategic advisor for echelon front.
I'll tell you more about them. In a second. Mike served in the military for a long time. He served 15 years as an officer in the seal teams and five years in the us Marine Corps as an enlisted recon Marine and scout. Snip. Mike served in seal team three task unit bruiser alongside Joco wiling and LA Babin.
They wrote the book extreme ownership with them. Mike led major combat operations that played a pivotal role in the battle of Ramat. In 2006, Mike was also the primary leadership instructor for all officers graduating from the seal training pipe. He was then selected for assignment to the joint special operations command, where he completed multiple combat deployments.
Mike's recipient of the silver star, six bronze stars, two defense meritorious service medals, and a purple heart. This guy is the real deal. He's a true hero. And he probably wouldn't like me to say that because he's so humble. Mike's the CEO of echelon. Overwatch a company that specializes in recruiting training and placement of veterans from the us special operations forces with companies seeking leaders with an extreme ownership mindset to build their ranks and dominate on their battlefields.
Mike brings incredible combat leadership experience and business acumen to the echelon front team, as well as unique insight and expertise on veteran transition and education programs. One thing you'll hear in the show is that Mike was a tier one operator. And what that means is he is a very, very elite man.
I would say more elite than the professional athletes in our world. A tier one operator is someone on the level of seal team six or Delta force. And so if you know anything about those guys, they are the best of the best. You'd never know it though, because Mike is an extremely humble man in the show.
You'll hear about the book that he just wrote called talent war. That's coming out in the middle of 2020. I'll tell you more about that at the end, how you can buy it. And we had some minor internet issues in this conversation. So I do apologize if things sound like they're a little bit choppy. We definitely take ownership of that on our end.
So here's my conversation with Mike Mike. It's an honor to have you here, sir. Thanks so much for taking the time to be with. Dude, Joey, thanks for having me. People are freaking out right now. There's a lot going on with this coronavirus. People are scared. They're worried, they're anxious, worried about how it'll affect them, how it'll affect the people that they love.
But they're also worried about how it'll affect their jobs, the economy, their finances, and so on. And I've heard a lot of people say, they're afraid that the 2008 recession is gonna repeat itself. And so just a lot of panic in the air. Unfortunately, the media is feeding that fear. And so I think now more than ever, people need to hear.
We have to stay calm. We need to keep a clear head. We can't let fear control us. Uh, but some people struggle with that. And so I wanted to bring you on wanted to get your advice as someone who's really been in the most chaotic environments in the world as a seal. And so my first question for you is, uh, what is your training and your combat experience taught you about sing, calm and reacting properly during a chaotic situation.
If, if you go back to the actual assessment in select. For special operations, which is, you know, what our version of the hiring process, it actually screens exactly for what, what, what you're describing is people that are, uh, have the ability to remain calm when push to their thresholds, to push to their, uh, their limits, special operations thrives in what we call a VUCA environment.
And what VUCA stands for is volatility. Uncertainty complexity and ambiguity, and it takes a unique individual to remain calm when in that environment. And, and quite frankly, uh, during global war terror, our special operators were, were thrust into those, uh, environments deployment after deployment, after deployment.
And so we look for a very unique individual that can remain calm. As you've often heard, you know, JCA willin in lay Babin, the co-authors of extreme ownership. Talk about an ineffective leader versus an effective leader. An ineffective leader is the one that loses their composure. During chaotic times.
And when the person you're following, uh, becomes chaotic, you tend to match, uh, their sort of temperament, nothing gets solved. Things, get worse with, uh, effective leaders on a battlefield. And what I've seen is those ones that remain calm. It's almost like a disease in itself. We, we have a phrase in the, in special operations community.
Is contagious. And if you, as a leader, in a position of authority are calm, your people will remain calm as well. You see a lot of people going after Trump, uh, right now for what I call a version of calmness. Uh, he didn't want to invoke fear. He's remained calm people, uh, you know, sort of characterize that as indecisiveness.
I, I don't view it as that at all. Mm-hmm the problem with people losing their composure is that the media is feeding. They're fierce. Media's not always your friend. We learned that on the battlefield, uh, the media was not our friend, so you gotta be cautious to who you're listening to and where you're getting your information as a whole Joey things.
Aren't all that bad. You know, structurally people are worried about, uh, the economy structurally the economy is fine. Mm-hmm this isn't a mortgage backed security crisis of 2008. There's. Uh, a pathogen that's being spread, uh, Corona that is, you know, affecting our ability to produce goods as well as, uh, driving consumer, uh, purchasing down, cuz people are now, you know, confined for their, to their homes, uh, more or less, but guys we're gonna rebound.
After we get past this, uh, the current counter measures that the government's recommending people with, you know, safety isn't seen or remaining home. Those are the appropriate measures to see if we can curb this as quickly as possible. But even if we're down, even if, uh, you know, productivity is down for a few months, guess what.
America will bounce back. The, the world of economy will, uh, bounce back. This just goes back to the days of world war II in England, remain calm and keep on things will be fine. Guys can agree more with everything that you said. Do you have, uh, do you have any stories about that thing that you said where calm leaders they're contagious and the opposite is absolutely true too.
I automatically go back to the, uh, the worst case scenarios that I. The first worst case scenario that I had was, uh, the day that, uh, Michael Monsour was, uh, was killed. He was our last mission during the battle of Vermadi. And, uh, we had actually cut the size of the platoon half the platoon was off preparing, uh, what we called these pallets with all our gear for redeployment back to the United States.
So we were at half Manning, which was not the, uh, the best call. And something I look back on, uh, frequently. So we went out with four seals and a few Iraqi soldiers. We occupied a position. There was another position. About 500 meters away with four seals and a few Iraqi soldiers. Uh, we were engaged in firefights throughout the day, supporting an army element that was clearing a very bad sector of Mai about midday while three, or I'm sorry.
Two of the other seals were sleeping. Mikey was awake on my snapper rifle, keeping security on a particular sector. I was, uh, you know, dozing in and outta sleep. And, uh, even though we were having conversations about midday grenade, Came over the roof and insurgent had infiltrated close enough to our, uh, position unde undetected and through grenade Mikey.
Uh, this is a, a perfect example of remaining calm. It had a decision to make in, in, uh, about a, uh, a second. And, uh, he calmly decided to give his life for his brothers. When that grenade went off, he absorbed the majority of the blast. There's a seal to his left and the seal and myself to the, uh, the right.
We were both about three feet away from Mikey and we took multiple shrapnel wounds to, uh, to the legs. Neither of us could walk. So that was three seals outta commission on that one rooftop only when seal was, uh, uh, was ambulatory. And he automatically got on Mikey's machine gun and started returning fire.
But after that grenade went off the Alqaeda insurgents launched an attack on our position to overrun it, to kill the remaining, uh, Americans in the, uh, Wow. And so we're at min Manning, even though I'm bleeding out through my legs, I was in a massive pain. It took me a few seconds to get composure, to block the pain out, as best as possible to assess the situation.
My radio was knocked out during that, uh, that situation. There was an Iraqi soldier who was in the fetal position. Just in pure shock. And I saw that he had his Motorola radio. That's what the Iraqi, uh, used. And so I couldn't walk. So I crawled over to him pretty much, you know, for civilians the equivalent of a, of a Mayday call to the other position, let him know that, you know, we had multiple casualties that we could not hold our position and they started moving us.
But you know, that's one situation where despite pretty much everything going wrong, we had to remain calm. We had to work together to get through that attack. And ultimately all of us got off that, uh, that roof. And, uh, that was due to Mikey's, uh, sacrifice. You know, another one is, is, you know, the night that Adam Brown.
Was killed. And in fact, this is the 10 year anniversary today that Adam Brown was killed in Afghanistan. There's a book called fearless, uh, about him cuz the guy was truly fearless. Uh, I think he didn't have a, uh, a risk meter. He saw trouble and he ran right towards it with, without assessing it, one of his better and worse qualities.
Uh, but we went into a valley in Afghanistan and this is 2010 that no Americans had ever been in during the war. And that's. Years nine years after it had, uh, had started. And, uh, we got in one of the worst firefights I've ever been in Adam was hit pretty early on during the fire fight. And we had to fight our way though.
We were taking fire from throughout the valley, fight our way down, uh, the side of a mountain passing down Adam's body at each sort of, uh, wall. The mountain was cultivated. And so, uh, it'd be cultivated for 50, uh, meters. And then there was about an eight foot. Cultivated for 50 meters, eight foot drop. So at each drop, you know, even though the guys were getting fired at, you saw them calmly passing Adam's body down and treating him with, with such, uh deLacy.
And I look back on that night, especially, even though it was a worst case scenario and God bless the TF one 60 pilots for flying into a bad situation to get us out. But the guys were, we were surrounded, like I said, taking machine gun fire from all directions. Everyone remained calm. And, and that was very much due to, uh, an amazing, uh, what we call a troop chief E nine, who had trained his unit.
Well, and, and I was humbled to be on that operation to, to share the battlefield with Adam. But I mean, when you have 50 guys, all calm, Focusing on their roles and responsibilities to make sure that we got out safely things, you know, things went well. Amazing. Yeah. Mikey's story is, is unbelievable. So heroic and Adam, I didn't know about Adam, but guys we'll make sure to link to that book in the show note.
So you guys can pick that up if you'd like to, but wow. So heroic, and it sounds like you guys just inoculate yourself to the craziness around you in combat, through training, you guys were able to stay calm, stay focused on what you needed to do to get out of the situation. And so that's one thing I think people need to hear is.
Just keep doing what you're doing, focus on what you're doing right now. Even if the media, you know, is throwing a lot of fear around, keep doing what you're doing, you know, don't, don't occupy yourself, reading articles and watching the news all day. In fact, I've been telling people, shut the news off, listen to some trusted sources, but otherwise keep working hard, keep taking care of your families and, uh, focus on what's in front of you.
Is, is that what you would say to, to people like that? Kind of applying those lessons to civilian life right now, who, especially for people who may be more prone. Fear and panic focus on what you can affect now, uh, assess the situation and focus on how you can contribute to getting past these rough times, if that means staying indoors, working from home.
Uh, so be it, if it means that you have, uh, elderly in the home and sort of, uh, segregating them from the rest of the population. Absolutely do. Take every, uh, you know, countermeasure or precaution. You can also, during times like this internally echelon front, we're looking at what we can do, not only for our partners, but, uh, individually to accelerate our performance.
So if we have somewhat, let's call it a down period right now, how can I improve upon myself? You know, is that picking up a book and reading? Is it, is it writing? I, is there a project at work or at home that I can, you know, move, uh, closer to completion, view this as an opportunity as. It's affecting a lot of our lives, but it also provides everything is an opportunity cost.
If you have to stay home, trust me, there's a lot of things you can engage in for personal development that you could come out on the, uh, the backside, more prepared and, and better to, uh, to attack opportunities that await us. And, and remember the, the second this thing is, uh, is done or, or to the part where it's minimized guys, that's our opportunity to come back and get this economy where it needs to, uh, to be, and, and that's, you know, these, these ebbs and flows in life.
Are natural, not everything can be AF flow. Not everything can be a economic upturn and we've been on a good ride. We should be thankful that we've had such a great ride up to this point. We're we're in about a downturn, but that's okay. We've always recovered. And we'll recover from this as well. And that's, you gotta keep things in perspective.
Absolutely. I have no doubt that that we'll bounce back stronger than we were before. I wanna go back to Ramat for a second and just paint a picture for people. This was the worst place in the world to be at the time that you were there. And so just if you could. Paint a picture for us of, of how, how bad this city was, how chaotic it was absolutely funny enough of the only member of tasking, a bruiser I'd actually been in Ramada in 2000, uh, five as a, uh, Enson.
I stayed on, uh, the deployment, uh, a little longer since I'd met them halfway through in 2004, 2005, I stayed on and actually, uh, was in, uh, Ramat for about one month in 2005. It was a bad place then, uh, when we found out we were going back to Ramat, you know, I sort of knew things. Would be worse, 2006, uh, Al-Qaeda pretty much owned, which is an embarrassment to the United States that we even allowed this to happen.
They pretty much owned. The third, largest city in Iraq, which is AR Ramat located in ABAR province. They owned it with pure impunity and, and Ramat to, to put it into perspective for, uh, people. The population is roughly around 400,000 citizens. Uh, there was an estimated, uh, enemy force of 5,000 enemy troops and Ramat was their Cali.
Which in law is ins law means, uh, their capital. It was quite frankly, when we went back in, uh, when we arrived, there was a national guard element from Pennsylvania to 2 28 that had done a phenomenal job sort of isolating and containing the city, which means they set the conditions for the next group to come in and, and try to take the city back from, uh, from Al-Qaeda during that, uh, you know, their deployment, which was 14 months, they lost 100.
American lives, the, these national guard soldiers, and they did a tremendous job and they, they did truly set the conditions for the, uh, the 1, 180, which is the, uh, one, one, uh, armored division to come in and clean house in terms of a fight. It was a one to one ratio we had about 5,000 Americans. And again, there was an estimated, uh, force of 5,000 troops in there.
And that's not a good ratio to step into a fight. You know, Joey, if you challenge me to a fight, I'm, I'm gonna bring around about nine of my friends. wait around the corner. Uh, you know, for my, uh, for my call, I'm an ensure victory. Yeah. But that's the, uh, those were the conditions. Uh, you know, we faced things were so bad that actually a well respected Marine in a, uh, secret intelligence report, which was linked to the world by the media pretty much described the situation as UN.
And that's what we were told is that Ramani was all bit lost. And I don't know why we ever say that to Americans, cuz history will show you that we will prove people wrong. There was no such thing as an unwinable situation. You know, they said the same thing about world war II fighting a, uh, a war on two fronts against two empires, two, two strong nations, and, and we proven wrong.
Then when we stepped in there, the situation was pretty bad. But those 5,000 Americans banded together, regardless of being in the army or the Navy or the air force or, or the Marine Corps, we came together, you know, we had great leadership gentleman named, uh, you know, at the time Colonel Sean McFarland.
Retired as a restart general and then all the way down to the ground force commanders guys like Jacka, Wilin, and LA Babin and Z stone. I've never seen a more cohesive environment amongst the different services with one purpose, with one mission. And that was to prove the world wrong. That it wasn't, unwinable watching the, the Marines and the, and the army soldiers that board, the brunt of the fight, you know, house to house, the streets, the street that was just.
Sight to, to see, I mean, those 18, 19 20 year olds fought their hearts. To uh, to win that city back. Unbelievable. And the reason I wanted people to know that is because if these guys are able to go in there in the most chaotic of situations in the worst place in the world and win and remain calm while doing that and keep a clear head, then we can handle something like this and you know, any business leaders out there, we need to do this for our teams too, just as Mike was describing, his leaders did for him.
We need to do this for our people. Wanna shift gears a little bit, uh, related to a lot of panic and fear that's going around is uncertainty. There's a lot of uncertainty. And so I'm curious, how do you guys deal with uncertainty, especially in combat? Yeah. You, you know, combat is the, uh, the ultimate manner.
Uh, there is nothing but uncertainty, uh, on the battlefield and you've gotta learn to deal with that. You've gotta learn to make decisions without all the inform. We call it the 70% solution. So look at it this way. If I have a bit of information about where an enemy can bat and some of his troops are located, uh, I'm never gonna get the a hundred percent solution.
I'm never gonna get all the information. So I've gotta look at all the information I do have, and I've gotta make a decision based off that incomplete information to seize the opportunity in front me. And for a lot of people that that is very, uh, very hard to do, even though the military trains are people.
Well, it doesn't take hold with everyone, even though a seal makes it past, uh, buds or seal training doesn't mean they go on to be a good seal. And when people hit the battlefield, we, we truly see who has what it takes and who, uh, who. And again, if you don't have what he takes, it doesn't mean you're a bad person.
It just means you're not, uh, equipped for that environment. But I, I, again, I had great leaders that prepared me to assess the situation and to make the best decision I had with the incomplete information given to me. Sometimes you have to let the, the situation develop, which is one of these right now, it may take a few weeks for this situation to develop before we have a true grasp of either how bad or how minor the problem is, uh, in, in our leaders.
Uh, you have to have faith in government, regardless of, of politics that they're gonna make the best decisions for people. I, I had a client and she came up with this term and we're gonna write an AR article. You have to have the assumption of positive. It's the assumption of positive intent that those people in, in the national, uh, you know, capital region I in the white house are making the decisions for what's best for our people, for the economy, uh, for the overall wellbeing of America.
And if they put out information, if they need us to, you know, do certain things like stay home for one week, guess what? Stay home for one. Things could be worse. Uh, again, find an opportunity to get better in your life, some area with those seven days that you have love that. Any other advice that you'd give any practical tips in dealing with this situation?
You, you already covered it well, but I just wanna give you an opportunity to say any final things, you know, uh, I don't wanna sound cavalier. Because, you know, lives will be taken with this, uh, coronavirus. We, we know that the elderly are, are more, uh, susceptible to that and, and that's tragic. So, you know, we, we do need to take this seriously.
We do need to all contribute. Everyone contributes to it, uh, by following what our leaders say, um, not necessarily pushing back and, and then ultimately remaining calm, you know, the runs on the supermarkets. Uh, don't buy more than you need. You know, my wife and I are not run into the, uh, you know, the Costco and stocking up for two months worth of, uh, food and, and supplies.
We're not gonna do that to other people. Other people need to, to supply their family. So remain calm, only get what you need, take what you need, buy what you need, and, and just continue to monitor for updates of what our, our leaders are asking us to do it. It's not that hard guys. It just remaining calm gives you perspective on, uh, on.
And the economy, I know it hurts and most people are inclined to go, you know, pull all their stocks out. That's actually the worst thing you can do. Uh, if you, if you follow the, uh, macro microeconomics, the economy will rebound it. It's been a continual uptick with minor fluctuations through the past decade.
We'll be fine. Let it sit. The economy rule, recover. This is just a small downturn. Again, it may take a few months. But everything will be okay. Absolutely. Yeah. Even looking back to the 2008 crisis within a few years, if people just remained calm, they were gonna make their money back. And, uh, it's kind of unbelievable though, because fear just controls us and people act on emotion and it's gonna hurt you in the long run.
There will always be people that will yell the world is ending. Even on the battlefield. There were certain seals that could not maintain their composure. And literally the other 16 or 17 seals would look at 'em and tell them. Well, in some rather harsh verbiage to, uh, shut up and say, Hey, you're no longer a part of this equation cuz you can't maintain your composure.
This is to, to me and I hate to, to simplify it. It's just not, it's not hard. This is not hard. Don't like keep your wits about you. Assess the information based off the, the information you have and make good decisions simple. It's great. And I love what you said before too. We just, we need to pull together as a country.
We can't be fighting against each other. We need to help each other. And so in closing out, I just wanted to ask you kind of a side question, but as a special operator, someone with your training, I'm just curious, what do you recommend that we do. To prepare our families for any, any disaster situation, not just the coronavirus, but something like a flood, a hurricane, an earthquake, a wildfire.
That's a question. Some people asked me and, uh, telling them that I was gonna interview you. They were just curious, how do you prepare for something like that? What's your recommendation? Well, you, you know, it also is region dependent. If you're on the west coast in California, your earthquakes, more likely.
If I, if you're in Florida, you know, hurricanes, uh, you know, I, if you're in, uh, the south, uh, east flooding, So it depends on your, uh, your region, but it it's prudent to come up with plans for those contingencies, a and then if you have children make sure that they understand those plans in terms of supplies, you know, it's always smart to have a first aid.
Um, the depth of that first aid kit, you know, that can, that, that can be, uh, a vast topic. Again, it depends on what you're potentially facing. Always smart to have stores of, uh, of water either in one, uh, you know, one water, uh, gallon jugs stored away rations in terms of MREs or, or meals ready to eat. That's, that's not a, a, a, a stupid thing to do.
And quite frankly, I do guns are a, uh, very. Decisive topic in, in America, you know, I, I'm not a gun freak. I was a special operations guy and I live in Texas. Believe it or not. I more Texans are gun freaks than I am. Do I have a pistol? Do I have a rifle? Yes. Uh, that is to protect my, my, my belongings. But as long as you have some food rations, clean water.
Um, a first aid kit. You you're step ahead, but even more important is discussing with your family. Hey, if this certain scenario happens, these are the steps we are gonna take. And sometimes that's getting out of your general area. If you know, a hurricane is coming, it's packing your family up, getting in the car and getting out the region rather than trying to it.
As a parent, I would never put. Children in that situation. If I was gonna remain in the area, I'd make sure that my children, with my wife get in the car and they depart the area to, to a safer environment, but it just comes down to what the military is very good at. It's contingency planning. And, uh, you can never plan for a contingency far enough out if you leave it to the last minute, you're gonna be like these people that are running to the, uh, the stores to, to stock up on toilet paper and, uh, whatever food they can grab a hold of, which is just.
Just ridiculous. So again, know your re region know the most likely threats plan for it. And, and then, uh, you you'll be a lot better off than, uh, than most civilians. Really good. Thank you for that. And just wanna give you an opportunity. Tell us about your work. What are you working on right now and how can we support you?
Love what I do with the echelon front team, which, uh, you know, our, our goal is to come and I think we're getting there. One of the world's premier leadership training, uh, firms and, and due to the demand right now, it's extremely high. Uh, leadership gets us out of bed in the morning, man. It's such a vast topic.
And guess what? The principal, the very principles we teach, we screw up on a daily basis. But we're trying to get better with every day. I don't know if you knew this. I started a recruiting firm with jock and LA, uh, that places military leaders into, uh, into companies. There's been a bad rap. And, and it's just because people don't know much about the military anymore.
You know, the 99% don't know much about the 1% what they do on a daily basis. We're, we're trying to change that narrative. We've placed some high performing veterans into companies that have already ascended to the COO. Of certain companies. So we're seeing great results there. We're very selective in, in the, the vets that we choose.
It's all based off mindset. And because I dived into that subject of how to find talent, which is, you know, uh, there was a Harvard study that said over 50% of CEOs say that finding talent is the, the biggest challenge they face, uh, myself and a, uh, a guy named, uh, George Randall prior army. Officer from the eighties and nineties are about done with talent, how special operations wins on talent.
Wow. And the focus of it is really how the special operations community assesses and selects talent into their community. Again, what, what is analogous to the hiring process for the private sector? Uh, and it's all based off attributes. We don't hire in the special operations community for, uh, industry experience, which has sort of become the default for the private sector, which is the worst thing.
One of the worst things you can do, if you find somebody with industry experience with the right mindset, absolutely hire them out right away. But we've, we've become very good at assessing talent based off their character. Out in necessity. And, um, I think a lot of the general principles we talk about, uh, we try to translate it to the business world and how they can improve their hiring process.
I think the book is gonna be well received. It's a fascinating topic. Uh, we're not saying that we have the, uh, you know, the answer. We have ways they can improve their, uh, their process. Literally finishing up, that's getting reviewed by DOD, the department of defense right now. And I'm excited to release that and see what the, the general feedback is.
That's amazing. So it's called the talent war. It's a book coming out when, uh, June, July timeframe we're expecting right now. Again, uh, the department of defense is reviewing it. We can't really move them along. They have their set process. Uh, I'd love to say I have some influence. I don't, but I I'll tell you what I was a recon Marine went through that as, uh, assessment and selection.
I was a seal, went through that assessment and selection. Uh, I was a tier one operator, went through that assessment and selection. Uh, had 10 combat deployments under my belt and writing this book was the hardest thing I've ever. Wow, Mike, Mike don't write good. So , it was, uh, it was challenging, but I've actually improved upon myself by, by engaging in it.
And actually a few of our preconceived notions going in have completely changed based off the interviews and the research that we did to write the book. You guys are humble on your learning as you go as a leader in a company right now, you know, I lead 40 people. I run operations for, for business. And I can totally say that.
What you just said is absolutely. Finding good people, trustworthy, hardworking people is, is difficult. And yeah, you can't just go down a checklist necessarily and say, oh, you, they, they have the years of experience. They have this degree. It there's more to it than that. And I love that you guys are doing that and serving our veterans cuz we have you guys to thank for our freedom.
And so I love that. You're you're doing that as well. Thank you, Joey. I, I appreciate that, man. I like people just don't understand that they're like, but you went to war. How could you, you know, say thank you. I loved. A as well as the guys I worked with, we loved what we did. I wish I could have deployed, uh, to war more because of the purpose behind what we thought we were doing eradicating evil, that just doesn't need to exist on this, uh, this planet back to your, your, your statement about finding the right talent.
It it's really a two part equation. Uh, talent plus leadership will ultimately equal victory. Once you find good talent, guess what? Half the war is complete. That's just one battle. And then you've gotta, uh, devote yourself to. Developing and cultivating them throughout their tenure in your company. And they may leave your company.
You may put all this time into 'em and they may leave your company. But even for corporations that hire executives in the C-suite guess what they may have experience, they may be proven, uh, leader elsewhere. You still have to develop those senior leaders as well. It's an ever ending war. Absolutely. And so many companies put so many resources into, you know, marketing into sales, into product development, but very few have a really cohesive plan to develop their leaders.
And I love what you guys did in task unit bruiser. You guys would have your most, most junior, um, members of, of the task unit lead operations in the. Which says so much about Jock's leadership, literally putting everything in the hands of these junior guys, because you were training them so well. And so I think American companies need to do the same.
And, and funny enough, one of the main themes in the book, uh, the talent war is, uh, we talk about how CHROs and HR is, you know, really minimized when they should be a strategic function within companies. They're, they're minimized to, you know, either a, uh, compliance function. Or, or overhead costs. But when you think about it, HR is actually actually your largest revenue generating function.
It's the one that provides talent to, like you said, accounting, marketing sales, they don't get the love and support. They don't get capitalized upon, uh, about how important their function is in keeping the company alive, filling the talent, you know, the funnel, uh, to all the other, uh, revenue generating, uh, Absolutely.
And for so many companies, you know, salaries, payroll, that's the biggest line item on their, uh, you know, profit or loss sheet. So it's certainly, it's, it's a huge investment. And so, you know, why, why do it half hearted? You gotta get the right people on there. And, and that's how you win. Like you said, there's just effective leaders and ineffective leaders.
There's no, no between Absolut. Absolutely. Awesome. How can, uh, how can people follow you? Uh, you know, I'm on Instagram, uh, Mr. Elli, uh, or at Mr. Cirelli. I'm not a big social media guy. Uh, I'm not as good as JP D Janelle or Jocko. Uh, uh, you know, this is, this is my own way, as I'm very resistant to letting people into, like what goes on behind the Elli household.
I didn't have a social media account. We basically weren't allowed when we were in special operations, just not, not prudent, you know, with the talent war. We're gonna start a page there. We're gonna start a blog. That's probably the best way, uh, people can follow me. And that should be released, uh, Midsummer, uh, along with the book.
And we're gonna continue to expand upon this topic of. How to find great people and then ultimately how to develop them into the future leaders within your companies. So important, so important. And speaking of you know, the impact on the economy, this is gonna be more important now than ever. So guys go out and grab that book once it comes out, depending on when you're listening to this, uh, we'll link to it in the show notes.
So make it easy for you guys to, to purchase it. Mike, thank you so much for your service, man. Thanks for your time for doing this interview. Really appreciate you. Like I said before, uh, man, couldn't be more thankful for men and women like you who go out and protect our country. You are the reason that we have our freedom.
So thank you so much. And Joey, thank you for having me and, uh, stay calm and keep on. It was such an honor to interview Mike and for the record, I would never challenge him to a fight. It would mean certain death. One thing that really stuck with me is that calm. Is contagious. And so in the midst of everything going on with the coronavirus in our world, we need to be models of keeping our composure, even when things are chaotic and unknown.
And if we can do that, the people around us who are watching us will do that too. The few books that we talked about, talent war. That's the book that Mike just wrote, and that comes out in the middle of 20, 20, June or July. He said fearless is also the other book that he mentioned. We'll have all this in the show notes for you guys.
So you can just click and buy there. And then also extreme ownership is a phenomenal book on leadership, especially in the business world and the military. But it goes beyond that too. If you wanna go to Mike's company's website, you can go to E F. overwatch.com again, that's E F overwatch.com. And if you wanna look at the parent company, which he mentioned does leadership training, that's echelon, front.com.
Again, that's echelon front.com. The story that he mentioned of Michael Monsour, Mikey Monsour can also be watched on YouTube by his commanding officer Jocko, Willink. It's a really, really moving beautiful, heroic story that I really encourage you guys to check out. So we'll link to that in the show notes as well.
When I was in San Diego, not long ago, I actually got to go to Mikey's tomb and spend a few moments there. If you're new to restored, we exist to help teenagers and young adults cope, heal, and grow after the trauma of their parents' divorce of separation. So they can feel whole again. And of course, we're taking a break from our normal content, just due to everything going on with the coronavirus.
But if you'd like to find out more, you can go to restored ministry.com again, restored ministry ministries to singular.com. All the resources and links that we mentioned can be found in the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 15. Again, that's restored ministry.com/fifteen. Thank you so much for listening.
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