ASTON INCORPORATED
Episode 15- Integrity: Cultivating Extreme Ownership and Transforming Leadership
Discover the unyielding power of integrity and how it's the bedrock of extreme ownership in our latest episode, drawing from the wisdom of Jocko Willink and Leif Babin's transformative principles. We lay it all on the line, discussing the highs and lows of standing by your commitments, adjusting on the fly when life throws a curveball, and the vital importance of transparent communication. Trust is a fragile treasure, and we're here to show you how to guard it with your life. Our candid conversation will challenge you to differentiate between genuine integrity and the all-too-common excuse-making that undermines personal and professional growth. Owning your actions is not just an option; it's the only path to real success.
This episode isn't just about keeping promises; it's about creating a culture where promises mean something. Experience the raw truth as we break down decentralized command in a business context—how it can unleash the potential of teams, foster a sense of belief, and transform sales from mundane to monumental. We touch on the harsh reality that leaders need to do more than just train; they must inspire belief in their vision. By confronting internal challenges head-on, companies don't just solve problems—they evolve. It's time to embrace integrity, step into extreme ownership, and watch as the ripples extend into every aspect of your life. Join us, and become an unstoppable force in a world that's hungry for leaders who walk the talk.
Discover the unyielding power of integrity and how it's the bedrock of extreme ownership in our latest episode, drawing from the wisdom of Jocko Willink and Leif Babin's transformative principles. We lay it all on the line, discussing the highs and lows of standing by your commitments, adjusting on the fly when life throws a curveball, and the vital importance of transparent communication. Trust is a fragile treasure, and we're here to show you how to guard it with your life. Our candid conversation will challenge you to differentiate between genuine integrity and the all-too-common excuse-making that undermines personal and professional growth. Owning your actions is not just an option; it's the only path to real success.
This episode isn't just about keeping promises; it's about creating a culture where promises mean something. Experience the raw truth as we break down decentralized command in a business context—how it can unleash the potential of teams, foster a sense of belief, and transform sales from mundane to monumental. We touch on the harsh reality that leaders need to do more than just train; they must inspire belief in their vision. By confronting internal challenges head-on, companies don't just solve problems—they evolve. It's time to embrace integrity, step into extreme ownership, and watch as the ripples extend into every aspect of your life. Join us, and become an unstoppable force in a world that's hungry for leaders who walk the talk.
Welcome back to the show, guys. It's Wayne Aston. This is Aston. Incorporated. With me is my co-host, dallin Aston. What's up, dallin? How's it going? Happy to be here back in studio today. Today, guys, we promised this one early, early. And we said, man, we should do a whole episode on that.
Speaker 2:So today is the day Today is the day we're gonna have a whole episode on integrity.
Speaker 1:Love it and there's some offshoots to integrity that we're gonna get into. It's actually another one of our Universal Principle series, and the Universal Principle of the day is extreme ownership. Jocko Willing, thank you. Lave Bavin, thank you. If you guys haven't read Extreme Ownership by Jocko and Lave, you've gotta get that book. That's an incredible book.
Speaker 2:That's inspiring so much of how we operate.
Speaker 1:So much of what this episode's about the other day I was.
Speaker 2:I was sorry to cut you off there. The other day I was talking to one of my buddies about books he should read and this one came up and I was like dude, this one changed my life. And he's like dude all the books you recommend and we change your life.
Speaker 1:That's true. I wouldn't recommend any book, and that's it changed my life.
Speaker 2:So the point is, if we're recommending this one it's a good one, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. It's made some impact. So, absolutely, what comes to mind when I just drop the word integrity on you.
Speaker 2:Man, for me it's being your word. That's what comes to my mind. It's doing what you say you're gonna do and just being committed to that. Being committed to following through, being committed to transparency. It's being committed to being someone that that maintains kind of a persona of trust and is not willing to jeopardize that trust for any reason. Right, and so when we're talking integrity, it's like look, you know, relationships come first. I guess is what comes to my head.
Speaker 1:So one of my favorite movies, Miami Vice, one of the newer ones, the one with Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell, have you seen it?
Speaker 2:I haven't, oh okay.
Speaker 1:All right, this is an amazing movie, you gotta go get it.
Speaker 1:So in this movie, you know, the Miami Vice squad are working on this covert drug operation with this Colombian drug lord and the one guy the one guy gets in the car.
Speaker 1:I think this is a scene with Colin Farrell. He gets in the car with this Colombian drug lord and this is one of my favorite like definitions of integrity, because he's speaking in this Colombian accent and the stakes are high. And he says and the Colombian drug lord is saying to this guy and it's so rare that this Colombian guy even shows his face Like you don't get to interact with him directly, but he gets this chance opportunity, gets in his car and he's asking him a series of questions about this delivery and he says if you say you will do a thing, you must do exactly that thing. And what's crazy is because when you take the context of this scene, he's saying if you don't deliver this exactly at this time, at this pace, then you're gonna be dead before you even know it. Like high stakes consequences and it was really impactful for me, aside from the fact that I love the movie and you got a cool sniper in there with a 50 cowl just crushing.
Speaker 1:I mean it's a cool movie, but that is it. I mean it's just what you said it's. If you say you're gonna do something, do exactly that thing and exactly when you say you're gonna do it and guess what? Integrity is not cement, it doesn't set. So if I mean, stuff happens, life happens. So what happens? Okay, well, let me ask a better question Do you think there's a way to be in integrity if things don't go the way you planned? Absolutely and how does that look?
Speaker 2:Well, the way I see it is like look, if you were, let's just do a dumb example you say, hey, I'm gonna be there at 4 pm, you and your friend or a business partner, whatever. You're meeting up for whatever reason. This is a very simple example. And we'll be there at 4 pm. You're on the road and there's an accident. Oh, I'm gonna be there at 4.07. There's no way you can sit here and tell me oh, now you're not, now you don't have integrity, Cause now you're showing up Exactly.
Speaker 1:Circumstances happen beyond your control. In investing and real estate development and real estate in general, things happen that are beyond your control. Interest rates and inflation happen you have no control about. So how do you? Stay in integrity. So in that simple example, how do you stay in integrity, how do you stay impeccable with your word, yeah, that you were gonna be there at that exact time.
Speaker 2:Well, look, you see the accident. Oh, no ring ring. Hey Joe, there's an accident. Man, I'm literally in the car. I'll be there at 4.07. Yeah, I honestly think it's as simple as that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, and that's in that specific scenario.
Speaker 2:Communication Shoot him a tech. Hey, dude, I'm literally at stop track, like send him a picture of traffic. Yes, yes, yes, hey look I mean, I am literally doing my best.
Speaker 1:I would have been there, but Now here's a funny twist to that. So you said you'd be there at four o'clock. You're farting around, you're at home you just take too long in the shower. But you wanna call and say, hey, there's an accident, there's no accident. That's not integrity.
Speaker 2:Now you're a fucking liar.
Speaker 1:You're making shit up because you don't place enough pressure on yourself to be accountable. So what we're really talking about when we talk about integrity, we're talking about accountability, which goes into what Jocko and Leif spend an entire book on extreme ownership. So is there an example that comes to mind Dallin, for you where you've had an opportunity to exercise extreme ownership?
Speaker 2:Oh man, many times, many times, I could share some personal ones. But, man, the number one thing that comes to my head when I'm thinking about this and I'll apply it to kind of my own scenario, but when we're talking about Jocko and Leif in their book Extreme Ownership, where I kind of derive my experience from, is the single experience that they talk about in the book and, if you'll recall, they're on some op and something happens and they're in the midst of a very, very rugged, confusing area and it's kind of hard to distinguish friendlies from non-friendlies, right?
Speaker 1:And so they're in their battle of Ramadi.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, they're going in there and they get to a point where there's this building. They're about to just take out, like these guys, and they're in this tank and they're about to just destroy it.
Speaker 1:Right, they're working with the US Marines. At this point You've got a Marine Regiment in there and you've got Jocko and Leif's Navy SEAL team, team Bruiser. They're doing a coordinated op, and so you have different communication platforms between the two elements, and so communication is a critical situation it's important. So they see movement in a building. I remember this scene you were describing. So yeah, go on.
Speaker 2:And they're like oh man, do we have friendlies in that building? And it's like no, no friendlies in the building, no friendlies in the building. And they keep saying and I believe it was Jocko right, it was one of the two there was like, are we confirming there are no friendlies? And they're like it's confirmed, it's confirmed, they're about to kill them. And then like With a tank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're like one more time, can we confirm? And they're like why are you confirming? I remember and it was the guy who was with them there it was like why are we confirming? And we've already confirmed. He's like just one more time, let's confirm, they confirm. And it turns out that there was a squad of friendlies in that building. They were not enemies, that was SEAL team maybe there's a SEAL team in there.
Speaker 1:There's another example they had confused the buildings. They were talking about a building that was like three doors down from the one, and so there was a miscommunication over the building number and they were yeah, they had confirmed and confirmed and dang near unleashed a tank on their own SEALs inside this building.
Speaker 2:They share some other experiences of that type of a scenario, right when there's, like friendlies involved, friendly fire, all this kind of thing. And it's crazy. There was this one scenario where they were in a debriefing, if you'll recall. I can't remember if it was the tank scenario or one of the other friendly scenarios, but Jack gets up and he's like whose fault was that? Yeah, I love that and he's looking at everyone in the room and their his direct superior was there in the back like watching this unfold and he's like, oh man, this is bad and whose fault is this Whose?
Speaker 2:fault, is it? And after a while he eventually has a couple it was my fault. He's like, why was it your fault? And they say, oh, I didn't do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, each of them were taking some accountability for their part and they were like, yeah, it was my fault. Right and Johnco, she's up and down, but more than one of them yeah.
Speaker 2:It wasn't your fault. Whose fault was it? Yeah, and he goes around the room and some other guys, oh, it was my fault for this. And he's like why was it your fault? For this reason, it wasn't your fault. And he just goes around and eventually he's like I'll tell you whose fault it was. It was mine, yeah, yeah, and that was. I mean, that is extremely powerful when you talk about extreme ownership you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the epitome of it, right there.
Speaker 2:That is the epitome, because admitting to that would mean some serious potential consequences. Oh, man, you're done Especially with the direct superior being there Could lose rank.
Speaker 1:The epitome of it all kinds of stuff. Oh man, you could be correct.
Speaker 2:But Jaco proves that through being extremely, through extreme ownership, the opposite is actually the reality right. You acknowledge, you say, look, this is it. You go through the motion, you take extreme ownership. And what happened?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, he was honored and praised.
Speaker 2:He was honored and praised.
Speaker 1:Because the higher ups above Jaco, they were so impressed with the fact he was willing to die on his own sword and they could see that he was taking extreme ownership, because there's a process that happens in that scenario when circumstances at surface level yeah, it could have been that gunner up there on the front he dropped the ball here and this guy back here with this communication 100%.
Speaker 1:But the exercise is tracing all of the circumstances back through places, circumstances and people to myself. This is an exercise, guys, for the listeners as an entrepreneur, it's a very, very healthy in my opinion, healthy and powerful exercise for you to trace all circumstances back to yourself. If you can ask yourself a series of questions how is this my fault? You can get really good at this. You will find that in almost every circumstance, you can trace it back to yourself, which is it's empowering, because the reason why we need this and why this is important to an entrepreneur is because if we're in the, in the blame game, if we're in the space of not taking accountability for our own behaviors, our own actions, our own mistakes, most importantly and we're blaming circumstances, we're blaming the government, we're blaming all of these other possibilities then the lack of accountability means that we can.
Speaker 1:We really are disempowered to execute. Now, on the flip side of that, like with the example with Jaco, if people we're leading because entrepreneurs are leaders I mean we're inspiring people to follow us and execute on crazy ideas but if we can show through example that we're willing to be accountable for the wins and the losses, okay, we might lose. We might lose. In fact, it's probable we're going to lose. If we're playing the entrepreneur game, hopefully in the real estate investment game we don't lose, but I've lost big and more than once. And so how we circle back and take accountability for losses as well as the wins? Because it's easy to take accountability for the wins Everyone wants to take credit for the wins, but taking the credit for when things go badly, that's so interesting.
Speaker 2:You say that because it makes me think of oh man, I was just reading Flip the Script. Oh, yeah, or in class and he was talking about. I can't even remember what he was talking about here, but this one little nugget sticks out to me as we're talking about this and he's like. He's like once everything is going good, everyone wants to say, yeah, I'm the reason it's going good, but when it's going bad.
Speaker 2:no one wants to say I'm the reason it's going bad. When it's the same, it really is the same, like let's take it from an example of let's just do sales for simple simplicity sake. Maybe this month you're crushing it in sales because you're so good. Yeah, right, and then next month there's no sales because of the market's bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, that's right.
Speaker 2:It's not because you're bad. Yeah, you're good. That was proven last month.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:It was proven last month that you're great at what you do. This month, if it's not going your way, oh it's because the market's bad. What is that that's so interesting?
Speaker 1:to me it's like what is happening here.
Speaker 2:It's the same person, same, I guess, activity, right. What's the difference as well? Okay, and maybe the market really is bad, but at the same time, what are we really talking about here? Yeah, Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's funny, what you're bringing up with this is folks in general will reminisce on the glory days. Oh man, I mean, I was state champion football player. I played D1 college ball or you know or you know even NFL high level athletes propensity for this. It's like you had this great accomplishment but now you're eating shit in business a year later. But you still were that professional who made all those records a year ago, but so you want to be focused on.
Speaker 1:Well, I got a message. For you Today is all that matters, and what you did a year ago means nothing in this context.
Speaker 1:So, being able to take accountability and not try and reminisce on the past or live on a track record if it was positive. That's the key here. We're in the present moment. That's all we can control. How are we handling the moment right now, right today, that's really was relevant, so a high level operator is really focused on that. I'm not going to use my past performance and my wins of the past as an excuse to fail today.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:It's, it's. There's just a different focus is all I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know. Another interesting concept that comes up and comes out of extreme ownership is the concept of decentralized command and decentralized command in the military. For those of you guys that are vets, you understand what we're talking about. But decentralized command is is a situation where all levels of management, all levels of the company understand the mission clearly. They have their orders and they can make their own decisions at their level, versus top down command, which means everyone in the layers are waiting for the managers to make the order and push it down. We want decentralized command. Typically, as entrepreneurs, what we want is we want to establish a mission. There's an outcome we want, there's a target I want to achieve. I have a team to do it and, if we're effective, installing the culture of extreme ownership and the culture of decentralized command, everyone in their own unique roles, are committed to the target and the mission and they're not relying on me the owner of the company to be making decisions on the fly.
Speaker 1:I've empowered them to make decisions for the best of the company, and when you have that magical combination of decentralized command coupled with extreme ownership, what it means is you're duplicating what Jocko talked about, where everyone on his team was saying no, it was my fault.
Speaker 2:No, you want that you want everyone to.
Speaker 1:when something goes bad, everyone's trying to take accountability because they care and because they want to be an integrity, because it's a high value to be an integrity. So I'm just having you consider, if you're listening out there, that this is the type of mentality that we want to cultivate within our businesses, rather than disempowering our workforce to blame management, bad manager. What does Jocko say? There's no bad teams, there's a bad manager.
Speaker 2:There's a bad leader. Well, I'm going back to when you asked me about personal experience of this. I can think back. I was in a role one time doing sales for a certain service. And let's just say long story short. The company was kind of starved for sales and I personally was having a very hard time selling this particular service and for one reason or the other I just couldn't feel like I could get behind it, in the sense of I didn't necessarily believe in what I was selling.
Speaker 1:So this brings up a really interesting predicament where it's talking about integrity.
Speaker 2:So I had two options. I could either sit there and keep selling it when I didn't even believe in it and hope that people would just buy because I could manipulate them into buying something.
Speaker 1:Hope isn't a strategy.
Speaker 2:Right. Or I could sit back and say should I really be doing this? Is there a way that I could? And let's say you have to stay in this position. What are you going to do? Let's just say, for example, for this scenario, leaving is not an option, ok, what's the solution? Like you could just leave, right. But if you're not going to, what's the solution? And I was inclined to figure out the other solution that wasn't leaving but could be aligned with this integrity. And I was sitting there I was like OK, well, what would make this offering actually valuable? What could I do that would make me get behind?
Speaker 2:this and feel confident and passionate about selling what I'm selling.
Speaker 2:And I actually had a conversation with leadership and said hey guys, I'll be completely honest with you, I don't feel like I can really, like I have a very hard time selling this because I just don't feel passionate about it. I have a hard time with it and I feel like my sales numbers aren't really great because I am not doing what I could be and that's not an easy conversation to have. But then I flipped it, kind of like Orrin flipped the script. I flipped it and I said but here's a way in my mind that would excite me about selling this. And they actually had me create a package around that and it became standard in the company. So when we're talking and now when I think back on that, it's like wow. And then it caused me to actually believe that, oh man, this is actually that If someone's going to buy this, this is actually going to be valuable for them and it's going to impact everything else that they purchased with the company that I was with. And I was like man, now I can get behind this.
Speaker 1:Man, that's a huge, this is a huge concept you're bringing up, because I think it's really common in the entrepreneurship space where we're talking about sales and products and how easy it can be for management to say, well, go, you have a bad quarter, well, our sales force sucks. I mean, they just they failed, so the management. So C-suite management's answering to owners, founders and they're saying well, the sales team sucked.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what we're talking about. That cannot happen. That happens a lot, oh yeah, but cannot happen for a successful business. What needs to happen is C-suite management needs to say well, I failed to provide the adequate training to have my sales force actually believe in what they're doing. There's no passion. They don't actually believe in it and acknowledge a problem. So, at the root of the cause, acknowledging something like you did and having then to bring it to management and having managers acknowledge a problem and pivot, that's a very, very important thing.
Speaker 2:Right, Right Well, and you take a look at the result of that. It led to higher sales.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it directly led to higher sales.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I could sit back and say the prior quarter. I could say the market is just not good.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or I could have said well, it's me Right.
Speaker 1:So if we're considering starting a business and scaling a business and we're just thinking of all the ideas and what do we want to do, Does it seem self-evident that if we're asking a sales team to sell something that sucks, that that's going to be a hard thing to do? If we're false marketing, if we're out there saying something that isn't true and we're trying to persuade our sales team to go out and execute something that isn't true then, that happens all the time.
Speaker 1:Don't you think it'd be a lot easier if we could just enroll our own sales force to believe in what we're doing 100%, 100%, avoid the false marketing effort completely or just can the product and get a new product?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and we've talked about this before, when we've talked about OTAs and Airbnb, for about these platforms, we see a lot of this. So, tying it into the real estate side of things, it's like man, nightly rentals, you have these listings, you have these things that are just incorrect, or the photos are not accurate, or this, that or the other is just not right. What happens? Your reviews go down. It has a direct impact. It's just the guests that are staying. I'm getting these dumb, cheap guests.
Speaker 1:They're the ones that are giving me the bad reviews.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, let's take a step back and listen to what you're saying here. If it was going well, you'd say oh, I'm just so good, I'm so amazing.
Speaker 1:Look how.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm so amazing. But because it's not going good, it's the guest fault all of a sudden. Why is it the guest fault all of a sudden? So that's ultimately what we're talking about here. It's like, look, if you can be transparent and committed, if you're saying to someone you're going to have an awesome time here because this, this and this and you're showing these pictures, it better be that, oh yeah. Cause, if it's not, they're going to get there and go yeah, uh right, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And so so doing something focusing on the details, so that the details are exactly what I present to my constituents and if the I would even add to that, if they're not, make it so that they're better, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and and that can be a tricky one, cause it's like, well, you don't want to go out, like you know.
Speaker 2:I guess what I'm talking about isn't necessarily hey, if you're going to get this, you're going to get that. Make sure you're giving them what you're going to tell them you're going to give. But then there's also an opportunity. If you are truly giving them what you're saying you're going to give, there may be an opportunity to provide a little bit more and surprise them happily. Surprise them Right Under promise and over. Deliver Right, but make sure what you're promising and and portraying is amazing, yep, but they can deliver. That you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Um it. I think. I think, you know, one of the big takeaways here is just that if, if we naturally are really committed to integrity and accountability and we we embrace extreme ownership, then we're not relying on a sales team to save us, we're not even relying, relying on God to save me. Right, okay, I'm taking extreme ownership, I'm in control, I'm the master of my fate, I'm the captain of my soul. I am the one and I'm great.
Speaker 2:Now God loves me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, God loves me, but he he's not going to step in on my behalf and save me if I'm not in integrity.
Speaker 2:He's not going to pedal your bike for you when you're going up. That's right, the?
Speaker 1:only one I could that can do, that is, is me, not my sales force, not even my managers, no one within my organization. And so so, training ourselves entrepreneurs out there to do that, to be that, that of that mind of taking great accountability and extreme ownership, um man, that's, that's the way.
Speaker 2:That's probably the number one abused relationship. Wouldn't you say like if there's any relationship where someone says like we talked about, oh it's the market, it's not me, but when it's going good, oh it's me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:God is probably the number one most used excuse. Oh yeah, oh, this is terrible thing is happening to me.
Speaker 1:Why, god, why, why are you doing this to me? Why'd you let this happen to me? Why did you let my business fail?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the audacity? Why did you let this happen to me?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, what no-transcript. Seriously, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:Right, it's like that is. That's like when you really take a step back and think about what, what you're saying there.
Speaker 1:It's like what yeah right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because, because then the flip side, when something great happens, it's like dude, I'm living my life, I'm loving this.
Speaker 1:It's like you kind of feel a theme like, as the episodes churn on here, that there's a lot of redundancies. Yeah in philosophy, in the way that we operate, yeah, and our relationship with God, and this is a big one. It's like. It's like understanding these things. There's, there's operating as a victim and there are no miracles or everything is a miracle. It's. I'm feeling gratitude, the different energy for different people right Um and, and these are overlaps.
Speaker 1:But when I take extreme accountability for myself, my own actions, my own outcomes and my circumstances, what I do for myself is it empowers me to Do more. If I'm unsatisfied with my result, then it's an easy equation is okay. I have to do more, I have to be smarter, I have to do. There's something that I missed? So then I'm on a mission to figure that out. Right, but I also temper it to your point and I'm I'm. I'm rarely out there having a parade for myself on the winds.
Speaker 1:I mean, you do need to celebrate the winds, guys, but but, it is prudent to be humble about that and give credit to God. We're God, you know we're. God deserves the credit so you know if.
Speaker 1:It's a really hard thing to be out there tooting your own horn all the time and then lose 10 million dollars for your investors. There's going to be no grace right. But if you're operating in a certain way and your investors are with you and there is integrity and it truly is a market, you have a chance for grace right. Speaking from experience, so, um, do you feel like we've covered integrity clearly?
Speaker 2:Comprehensively.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, guys. Well, I enjoyed it. It's one of the most important universal principles Of all extreme ownership. I challenge you guys to try it on. I think it'll feel good for you. Hopefully you've got some value out of it. Make sure you're telling your buddies about the show, guys. We'd love for you to share it. Share it on on, you know, your social media platforms and however you can think of that. That would help us grow the show and with that we're out till next time.