Learning Leadership with Doug Ward

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Albert. Our mission is to provide tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that help The US military veteran community to show up as the wisest, strongest, most capable versions of themselves in the civilian world. If you're not a veteran, stick around because anything we talk about will most certainly apply to you as well. This podcast is made possible with the help of f bomb nutrition. They make delicious packets of fats that you can carry around anywhere with you in little portable packets.

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Let's get into today's programming.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

What's going on, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to this edition of the Warrior Soul podcast. And today, we are gonna be talking about leadership. And here's the deal. This is an interesting subject.

I don't talk much about leadership here because I think that there's a whole lot of better people that you can listen to on that subject. People like Jocko Willink, you know, people like my friend Scott Huesing. You know, there there there's just so much that goes on with this. But a lot of what we do talk about does involve leadership. It does involve leadership, but it's it's leading yourself.

But today, I wanted to bring on a new friend of mine. His name is Doug Ward. Doug is a veteran who's actually served in every single branch of the military, the US Marine Corps, the US Army, the US Navy, and I think even the Air Force. And Doug retired from the Navy, and then he got out and he started doing leadership consulting. And he's got a lot of experience with this.

And what he came on to talk about today was how you can adapt your skills from the military into leadership in the civilian world because a lot of people think they can't do that. They think they can't translate the military style leadership to the civilian world. The problem is though, well, there's a lot of civilians out there that that really don't have much experience with leadership who get put into leadership positions just because they present themselves a little bit better. But he's he's really well versed on this subject. He's consulted with a lot of companies, helped them to improve their leaders leadership processes.

We had a great conversation. Of course, this conversation occurred in the midst of the COVID nineteen crisis that you will probably still be in by the time you listen to this show, and hopefully not. I hope by the point time you're listening to this, we're out of it, and it's a distant memory in the past. But but, yeah, great conversation, great guy, and I hope you get a lot out of it. I'm gonna stop, yeah, my trap over here, and let's get into the show.

Doug, welcome to the Warrior Soul podcast, man.

Doug Ward 00:04:51 (link to this point)

Hey. How's it going, Chris? How's things going to you, brother?

Chris Albert 00:04:54 (link to this point)

It's going good, man. We're today is 04/01/2020, and we are still in the midst of this COVID nineteen crisis and taking things day by day. I, you know, enjoying myself on PT and a lot. I am reading a whole lot. I just started a book about Teddy Roosevelt, The Rise of Teddy Roosevelt, which is a fantastic book.

But really just trying to enjoy life while we're going through this. What about you?

Doug Ward 00:05:24 (link to this point)

No. Same thing. Trying to do a lot of that. I actually went back to school just to finish some stuff on a personal level. So I've been taking classes full time.

I do that usually at night. And then during the day, you know, try to do some stuff with work and at the same time, like you were saying, you know, try to read something that is going to further, you know, your mental state, you know, read Teddy Roosevelt, you know, was a great president. So I think, you know, things like that. I was just reading Carnegie's book, you know, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Yeah, great book.

You know, I think, you know, these are things, you know, people need to do and reconnect with your family. This is a perfect time to do that.

Chris Albert 00:06:03 (link to this point)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, going being socially distant of course, but going for walks, having family dinners, playing games, being around each other and enjoying each other while this time is going on, I think is really important. Wanna start by, you know, Doug, asking you to give your story just in maybe like a two to three minute synopsis so everybody knows where you're coming from.

Doug Ward 00:06:32 (link to this point)

Yeah. So I I started out in high school when I was a sophomore. I knew I wanted to join the military. Joined Marine Corps 1987 and was a radioman. Ended up going to Desert Storm.

You know, a big thing for me was when I was in the Marine Corps, you know, I wanted to be a Marine so bad. But one of the things that I learned was all of sudden there was a leadership side too. And as you know, once I got that leadership, you know, was a wake up call because, you know, I had that internal fear. You didn't want to fail. Yeah.

And I remember that was such a learning curve of having to separate from the people that were your friends. And actually being impartial and having equal, you know, justice and treatment to everyone. And being able to learn how to recognize everyone's talents. And I think that's a key thing in leadership. There was something, you know, in the Marine Corps, I learned very early on at a young age.

And I find it very interesting when you look at that. As I went through my career, you know, my last assignment, I was leading a whole bunch of senior people. And in between that, you know, I had at one time 500 people I was responsible for. So when you look at that, that whole dynamic, then, you know, I was in a corporate environment working as a business executive, corporate account representative, stuff like that. And I would run into people that they were just getting into their 40s.

And they were basically running into their first leadership experience when they're like, hey, you're going to be in charge of this one person. And to them, it was like, oh man, you know, what do I do? And you know, here it is, that one person was me. So I found myself actually trying to coach this person like, hey, you know, they were like, wait, you know, I wanted all this. I'm like, listen, I'm trying to tell you, you're kind of going about this wrong.

You know, you need to do this, this and this if you want to be successful. And if you want to keep moving up the company, obviously put you in this position. You know, I can help you go farther, but you know, you have to listen. So it was a very interesting dynamic.

Chris Albert 00:08:43 (link to this point)

And did you spend your entire time in the Marine Corps or in the military? Was it all Marine Corps? Did you switch over?

Doug Ward 00:08:51 (link to this point)

So I actually served in every branch of the military, believe it or not. I started out in Marine Corps. I was out after Desert Storm for a little bit. Was going to go to college. I met my wife, you know, we were dating at the time.

I basically wanted to come back in. At the time, you know, there was a huge drawdown going on. And the only service accepting anybody was the army and I really didn't want to do it. But I said, you know what, the hell with it. Ended up getting assigned to Germany and right before I left my wife and I got, or my fiance, who's now my wife, we got married.

So that was a great assignment, you know, the first couple years of my marriage, right? Being in Germany. Then I was trying to change jobs in the army. They wouldn't let me. So I ended up getting out moving to California, taking a job in the Air Force Reserve for five and a half years.

So I was out in California at March Air Reserve Base. Worked there for a while and then decided to come back in the military and that's when I went to Navy and spent the last my last twelve years of active duty time in the Navy, you know, and then I was able to retire.

Chris Albert 00:09:58 (link to this point)

Nice. Nice. And so you spent so that's a combined how many years?

Doug Ward 00:10:05 (link to this point)

I was right over twenty active duty years. You know that the total years was probably around twenty four to twenty six.

Chris Albert 00:10:12 (link to this point)

Nice. Nice. And so when you were leading an organization with 500 people, what types of stuff were you doing? What types of things were you doing?

Doug Ward 00:10:21 (link to this point)

Well, know, that was mainly being an instructor. And so we, you know, that assignment, where I had that vast amount of people that was an assignment where I had, where you have to be very hands on, because you have all these people getting out of boot camp, either getting ready to go into their technical training, or getting out of their technical training and getting ready to go to their first assignment. You know, first duty assignment, you know, their first actual like, I'm not going to actually go to do my job that I was just trained to do. And I think the very interesting thing with that was, had to be more hands on and it was a very big test of your leadership because even though you're dealing with these young people, you know, I found where some of the guys would get, they would try to be old school military and yell at these guys all the time. And what they weren't understanding is, when you go to military training, you know, and you know this, you know, when you go to Marine Corps boot camp, after about the first week of getting screamed at, you start toning out the screaming and you start listening to the message.

Right. The problem was lies guys are just screaming, but they weren't really getting across the message. So I said, you know, they're already past that point, you have to start talking to them and figuring them out. That's where you're going to pull out their strengths. And so that was a very interesting time.

My last assignment, for example, was when I had my senior listed guys. So that was a very different dynamic in leadership because I was dealing with a lot of my peers. I just happened to be the one in charge because I was a senior man. Right? And with that assignment, I was dealing more with egos.

Because you're dealing with people that are basically your peers, you're just having to be the one in charge. So you have to be able to not only deal with the egos, but also recognize their experience and their leadership and let them run with it. And, you know, I mean, that's just one of the things you have to do. You have to recognize their strengths and weaknesses and everybody plays off well, especially if you have a team environment. Now, when you had those people that had their own agenda and, know, we had a few of those.

Those were the times I actually had to even step up over a peer, for example, and apply leadership principles of you're not really here for the right reasons and we need to fix that. And some of them they just did not they could not wrap their head around. It's not about you. Would tell Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:12:56 (link to this point)

You're saying ego is getting in the way and and a lot of these guys were just thinking about it as as like just being about them and not not thinking about the message they were talking about? Correct.

Doug Ward 00:13:12 (link to this point)

And and the other thing is they were thinking about their next career stepping stone. But what they were doing wrong was they weren't taking care of their people.

Chris Albert 00:13:19 (link to this point)

Gotcha.

Doug Ward 00:13:20 (link to this point)

And I would tell them, listen, you want to get promoted? I'm writing your evaluation. I'm having major input into your evaluation. Know, every military branch, everybody gets a yearly evaluation. Now tell them, I'm putting inputs in your yearly evaluation.

How can I trust you if you can't take care of people? If you can't make sure that people know how to do their job, they're trained to do their job. The morale sucks. People are trying to get out of here. You know, they're trying to go to another duty assignment early because they don't want to be here because of the way you act as a leader or I should say your lack of acting as a leader.

So I think that's extremely huge and it goes for the business world, especially. I've seen it on numerous occasions. You know, we've got these guys out there. You got to step up. You know, the greatest organizations always have an open line of communication up and down the hierarchy of the company.

You know, if you don't listen to your people when they have great ideas and if you think you're the one that always has the greatest ideas, what's going to happen? No one's going to want to bring those ideas up. And if it's in a corporate environment, guess what? All those ideas were going to propel you five to ten years down the road in profitability, sustainability, keeping everybody employed, making you know, making people want to work there and have a purpose. When you don't do that, they're gonna shut up.

And then you wonder why you're starting to lose business to a competitor.

Chris Albert 00:14:50 (link to this point)

So does why does that happen? Is it the organization's fault? Is it the individual's fault? Is it a combination of all of them? Is it is it the leadership at the top who's not who's not translating this stuff down properly?

Doug Ward 00:15:05 (link to this point)

I think it's a combination of everything. You know, the leadership at the top has to cultivate an innovative environment, an idea exchange that has to go on. And for example, if I'm asking you, Chris, hey, you got any ideas? Now you say you're giving me some good ideas, and I'm like, let's run with Chris's idea. Okay?

But if I'm asking those things, and I come back in another light, and I'm like, okay, hey, this is a decision I made, we're going to do this. But there's nothing said about you, there's nothing given on what Chris is actually contributing. You know, after a while you're going to kind of sit there and think to yourself, you know, I've been here five years, haven't got promoted and I keep giving each ideas. Say for example, it's a product or service that's being offered. And it's actually propelling the company and moving the company really fast, but you're still stagnant, you know, that's going to have a major effect on people.

And they're not going to want to contribute. And that's when you're going to start running into issues. So you have to cultivate that environment. A lot of times it's that middle management. You know, it's all the people that are there, that are seeing a number one.

Where the rubber meets the road. With the employees who are actually building the product or providing the service. What are the you know, you have to be constantly getting feedback from them. When you're that manager. Hey, what are you seeing with the customers?

They're coming back saying, hey, the customers are little irritated about this or hey, this didn't work out. We had it. Maybe we had an equipment failure on something that got sent back to the company. Hey, you've got to address those things. Listen to the people that there are building it.

Listen to their ideas. They will come up with some of the best ideas to fix things in a snap.

Chris Albert 00:16:53 (link to this point)

Right. Right. So listening to your people, listening to the people who are right there on the front lines handling handling customers, dealing with dealing with the the actual in the trenches situations.

Doug Ward 00:17:07 (link to this point)

Yeah. Definitely. And that's where a lot of companies fail.

Chris Albert 00:17:11 (link to this point)

So, you know, when it comes to middle managers and and the thing about companies, you get companies in different stages. Right? So you get your small businesses, at some point that small business decides it wants to scale, right? And so as it grows, it has to take on more middle managers and those middle managers have to increasingly translate the company's culture down to the front lines. Right?

And all of that, again, it comes from the top. It comes from some sort of grand strategy. In your experience, you know, have have you seen a lot of companies just fall flat on their faces when it comes to growing like this? Or or is it and and is that how you came about these ideas? Or is there a was there a a particular situation that kind of kind of brought this to mind that said, hey, I gotta go out and talk to people about this?

Doug Ward 00:18:07 (link to this point)

Yeah. Some of the things I've seen is, you know, for example, I was actually at a company. This was a personal experience and I've seen it talking to other people from other companies and you know, I actually had a discussion with a guy who had a company and he's trying to scale up. And one of the issues he had was one of the people he had, he's interviewing the guy and I told him, I said, you know, if you're trying to scale up, the people you're hiring, especially when you're a small company, it's extremely critical because if you hire the wrong people, it can take you down a rabbit hole, you don't want to go down.

Chris Albert 00:18:43 (link to this point)

Right.

Doug Ward 00:18:43 (link to this point)

That's gonna cost you a lot of money. And as we were discussing, she was talking about a guy he had and as he brought him in, come to find out this guy really wasn't there for the company. The guy actually admitted in the interview that he wanted to in six months, lead the company, set up his own company and mimic exactly what was being done here to set up his own company. Basically take business from this company. I mean, I was in shock.

I'm like, you're kidding me. He goes, no, I couldn't believe it. I said, that's why it's critical. He actually, to his credit, he was actually able to figure out something's not right in this interview. Like the guy had all the qualifications.

Okay? But there was something in the interview and he was able to pinpoint and just ask the guy a question like, what's your plan in six months? Oh, well, you know, in six months, you know, I plan to start my own company. Well, number one, that's what caused the team to say, what do you mean you want to start your own company? And then that's when, you know, the whole conversation led to what, you know, what I just described.

My experience that I had, one of the big experiences I had, I was working at a company and a new vice president had gotten hired and came in and completely changed the way everything was done. Now some of the initial things were very tough. But it was how they were treating the people. I mean, I actually saw women coming out of the bathroom after discussion with the VP, look like they were emotionally wrecked. Like they were bawling.

And I was thinking to myself, wait a minute, this, something's not right about this. I mean, that's just basic humanity. Okay? You shouldn't be making your employees cry. If it's gotten to that point, number one, you're setting yourself up for lawsuit.

Right. You know, there's just so many things. And I watched, I think was it they had a production floor, I think I watched them one week, a manager. And I think it was like 20% of the production floor turned in resignation papers within one week. So it was like seven people total.

And I was sitting there and people were like, well, you know, if they want to leave, you know, we can always hire new people. And I'm thinking, okay, we've got these contracts that have to be fulfilled and everyone's already working overtime. Right. So now it's about to crank up even worse because you're too stubborn to take care of the people and throttle back on someone's behavior who's actually in charge.

Chris Albert 00:21:23 (link to this point)

Right. So when you're hiring middle managers, I mean, that's a particularly particularly important point. Right? Because what you've got to do is you've got to identify whether or not they have the leadership skills present in order to to be able to lead the rest of your team. And so, you know, in your mind, and I know you have some hiring experience, what are some things that people should look for in their middle managers as they're going through the hiring process?

Doug Ward 00:21:55 (link to this point)

Well, you know, if say for example you want if you're going to bring people in as a middle manager, first off, to promote with them. You want to cultivate that type of environment within the company. Because that number one, that builds loyalty within the company. Now, not saying you don't want to bring in people from the outside because sometimes they'll bring fresh ideas. Ideas that maybe someone there isn't thinking about.

But you also want to have that loyalty within the company of and I'm not talking about a blind loyalty. I'm talking about loyalty to the purpose and impact of what they're doing every day. You need to have a vision And your vision needs to be no more than two senses. That everybody is very on board with. There's a clear understanding of what it's basically like in military.

What's the mission statement? Okay, so that would be your vision. And when you're looking at the managers, if you're going to be promoting someone, for example, that's one of the actual worker bees and you're going bring them into that initial management position. You want to recognize that number one, they can be the greatest person at their job, but how do they deal with the other people? And as you bring them in and you put them in that management position, don't just make them a manager, you know, have someone, another manager who's senior to them, who actually has their stuff together, where you know, female, whoever.

And they're there to guide them for the next year and be their sounding board.

Chris Albert 00:23:23 (link to this point)

Gotcha.

Doug Ward 00:23:25 (link to this point)

You know, that's one of things I experienced when I was in the Navy as Chief Petty Officer. When I met Chief Petty Officer, I had a senior chief who was my sponsor when I went through Chief's initiation, induction, whatever you want to call it. And it was a six week period. Well after that, him and I stuck together for that year. So once a week, twice a week, we would meet up And he would ask me, okay, what are things you had to do this week?

What are the decisions you had to make? And we would go over them.

Chris Albert 00:23:53 (link to this point)

Gotcha.

Doug Ward 00:23:54 (link to this point)

And sometimes he would shoot holes in some of the stuff, decisions I made where he'd say, hey, you know, that's a good decision. They're like, what's your next step? But it was like a mentor, you know, he was basically my mentor. And you know, since I've retired, you know, still keep in contact with him. And then, you know, so when you have a company, it's the same concept.

When you bring that manager in, you want have a senior manager actually mentoring that person. And I think that's a very huge thing. Know, for any individual, especially someone says just getting into the management realm, and they're actually because part of management, a function of that is leadership. Right. So you have to be able to, you know, help them guide them along.

They're making some bad decisions. Hey, what you know, why do you make that decision? You know, this is not how the company does it. Here's why. Gotcha.

Gotcha. Here's the other thing. What if you want to take that manager and make him into a vice president? Right. Right.

You know, and I'm saying I'm the CEO, you're the CEO and you're like, hey, Doug, I'd like to bring you up as a VP. Where you we don't even have that discussion, but you're you're looking at myself and maybe like two other people. So you're looking across the board like, who has the most productive department or or what have you?

Chris Albert 00:25:12 (link to this point)

So so when you're you're looking for these people, you you need to cultivate them and there needs to be a process in place so that at every step of the way, you're helping them to improve their skills. And not only improve their skills as managers, but there's also that soft skill of leadership in dealing with people on on, you know, multiple levels. The emotional level, making sure they're good with people, making sure that they're communicating properly. And so, you know, when you go into a business, is this the stuff you're working with? Are you helping them to create these processes?

Doug Ward 00:25:49 (link to this point)

Yes. That's one of the things I like to sit down and basically break it down. Okay, you know, and not only that, but even from the senior leadership, you know, there's a portion where, you know, how are they looking at the next promotions, for example, for the vice presidents, when you have the managers, you know, what manager has the lowest turnover rate? What manager has the best morale? And it's of like a weight and balance scale.

You know, checks and balances. And you want to make sure you know that the next person you bring in that because that vice, once you get them that vice president role, they're going to be overseeing all the managers. So you kind of want to have a trickle down effect on the way they're treating people, that they're able to get it down to the other managers.

Chris Albert 00:26:31 (link to this point)

And so how do you how do you measure that stuff?

Doug Ward 00:26:33 (link to this point)

Well, know, you can look at the, you know, can look at some hard data if you wanted to. Okay, this division, this person had this division. How many people quit? Right. How many people have done great things?

What was the production level? What was the success rates of the service or you know, how many how many or let me put it this way. What was the lack of complaints? Or the increase in complaints? Who had the most?

What, you know, things that were going on? Those are the type of things you can look at. You know, and if you're the CEO, one of the things I I like to say, you know, we brought up the vision. You know, that vision statement's gotta it's gotta be on point. It's gotta be bulletproof to where everybody understands what they're doing.

And, you know, each manager look at look at your workplace as a bookcase. So each shelf would be like say it's a one's production, one's, shipping, one's, you know, whatever you wanna call it, the trucking division. But each one of them, the manager should know each one of those books or have a pretty good understanding of the books. Now the CEO should have a basic summary of all the books. And unless you're in like a large large corporation.

Right? Because they should have a basic understanding. The other thing is, you know, you're the CEO of a company, the VP is what are you doing in the morning? Are you going straight to your office or are you actually maybe parking in the back of the parking lot instead of that front parking lot space right next to the door? You know, walking through the parking lot, going in having a cup of coffee, not having small talk, actually connecting with people and asking people how they're doing.

How's things with your family? How's your kids doing? And actually looking people in the eye. Because those are huge things. You know, one of the big things in my life, and it's not just military and civilian world is, if someone's not really looking me in the eye, or just kind of mimicking small talk, I have a real hard time having trust with that person.

Chris Albert 00:28:35 (link to this point)

Right. Right. Yeah, that stuff we all learn and we kind of develop as we go along and that takes a lot of experience to kind of learn that as well though.

Doug Ward 00:28:49 (link to this point)

Yeah, and you know the funny thing is, you know, I've had people reach out to me on like LinkedIn and things of that nature nature. And they're saying, you know, I've actually had people actually hit me up about the individual coaching, you know, of overcoming their fears. Just because, know, they heard me talking in a couple of interviews, some stuff I'd put on LinkedIn about getting out of your comfort zone. You know, you Chris and I are gonna we're gonna lead different. Right.

I'll probably like if you and I were together, and I was around you for a while, I would see things you do, that I would love. And there might be a few things I'll say, know what, that's not going to work for me. Not that it's bad. It's just for my personality and the way I am, I know that wouldn't be a good fit. You know, for example, you know, look at all the commanders you've ever had or you know, let's not even talk about your commanders, but like your gunnies or you know, maybe your master sergeant, you know, maybe a first sergeant, whoever, maybe some of the sergeants when you were younger in the military, right?

There was qualities you saw in some of them that you took those and incorporated them into what? Who you were and who you became as leader. Right. Right. So it's the same thing, you know, people got to do that.

So you know, it's pulling it out of people to say, hey, what were some of the greatest things you ever saw? And they'll say, oh, I saw this. I saw that. Okay, well, that's who you should be then. If you like that, just incorporate it into your personality.

You don't have to do it exactly that way, but fit it into your personality where people can relate to you. Have to be relatable.

Chris Albert 00:30:25 (link to this point)

Right. And then there's some people there's some people that I've encountered who were horrible leaders and and I learned a lot from them as well. Just about how not to lead. Right?

Doug Ward 00:30:35 (link to this point)

Yeah, exactly. I mean, was a lot of that I saw. And you know, it's disappointing to see it. And sometimes you try to say, hey, you know, have you thought about doing something this way? Who's a senior person?

A lot of times people get very defensive about that And you have to break it down in a way that makes them understand. Right. You know, when I'm so I had the opportunity, I got served with special operations when I was in Navy on two assignments. And so I was working with the SEALs and I did communications for them at two assignments. And especially my last assignment, that's where I retired, a special reconnaissance team too.

And the thing people need to understand is, when you have people, you have to delegate and delegate with trust. Now, are you going to follow-up? Of course you're going to follow-up to make sure things are done. One of the things I found out was, I brought in some guys from my previous special warfare assignment. And as I brought them in, I mean these guys were pipe hitters.

And as I brought them in, you know, I recruited them there because I was working sixteen hour days because we were starting up a new element. You know, a new division. And as we were doing this whole thing, after about three months, they were pretty pissed off with me. And we ended up having a meeting and they're basically like, Doug, you're not letting us do anything. You're doing everything.

You brought us here, know, we might as well leave. You know, that was a wake up call. It kind of caught me off guard. It was like a punch in the gut. And you know, kind of hurt my ego a little bit.

Because you know, was thinking about my ego and when I sat back for a couple hours and thought about it, you know, we all went to lunch and when we sat down it's okay. And then we divvied up the work. And you know, I actually apologized. I did not realize what I was doing. I made a fatal error.

But once I did that, here's the rub Chris. Once I did that, guess what it did for me on a personal level? On a personal level, I actually was working four to five hours less a day, so I got more time. I was actually seeing my kids and actually having dinner at home. Yeah.

And seeing them and being able talk to them for a while.

Chris Albert 00:32:53 (link to this point)

Hey guys. I hope you're getting a lot out of this interview. You know, the Warrior Soul podcast is built with the mission to empower its listeners to live absolutely epic lives. And that's why we recently created a group called the Warrior's Obituary Society. This group is built to empower its members to live epic lives worthy of epic obituaries. And it starts with an eight week development program.

And with this development program, what you're gonna do is you're going to outline a vision for your life. You're going to get very specific about what you want. Because without that specificity, you don't know where you're going and you don't know what you're doing. From there, we help our members to develop specific goals, objectives that they are going to push toward, and that their fellow members of the Warrior's Obituary Society are going to hold them accountable too. From there, we're getting down into specifics.

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Going to help you to develop the skills that you need to develop yourself so that you can have a major impact in the field you choose. If you choose to go into business, we're going to help you to set up the foundations that you need to create your own company and get started on your path in life. From there, we're going to be working on your relationships. We're going to help you to develop a world class network. And all along the way, you're going to have your fellow members of the Warrior's Obituary Society pushing you in every single area.

We meet once a week over a live call, and we're constantly communicating over our own private floor forum on Slack. We don't do anything over social media, and that's because I don't want anybody feeling like anyone's looking over their shoulders, and I don't want you exposed to the crazy distracting alerts that you get on Facebook and some of the other social media platforms. Normally programs like this cost thousands of dollars. This one does not. For the price, it is the best development program on the internet.

And that's because our mission here at Warrior Soul is to empower people to get more out of life so that they can in turn make the world a better place. We've got a great mix of active duty military, US military veterans, and civilians in this group. We wanted to keep it really eclectic so that we get a lot of different types of views up there and a lot of different people with different areas of expertise. If you think that this is something that would be of interest to you, and that this is something that could empower you to live your absolute best life, head over to www.warriorobituarysociety.com. That's www.warriorobituarysociety.com, and you can sign up today.

And if you have any questions about it, just reach out to me at chris@warriorsoulagoge.com. That's chris@warriorsoulagoge.com. I'm happy to even sit down with you for a phone call for a few minutes to see if the group is right for you. I look forward to seeing you guys in there, and let's get back to this awesome interview. You know, it seems like when you're in the trenches, right, particularly if you're a small business owner.

Right? And I think a lot of guys who get into into business initially, you know, you're working those sixteen hour days, you're grinding in a way, you got to learn a little bit of everything, you're doing your books, you're doing customer service, you're fulfilling orders, you are doing you're doing janitorial stuff around the office, right? And I think what happens for a lot of guys is as they are going through this, they tend to lose perspective, right? Because they can't see the situation from up high, Right? And they're it's like being in a jungle where you don't see a clear path ahead.

And so I think for a lot of guys out there who might be running small businesses right now, they're in that type of situation. And, you know, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. And it's hard to delegate, you know, what would you say to those guys who are in that situation right now?

Doug Ward 00:37:38 (link to this point)

You know, delegation is kind of like outsourcing. And one of the things I try to tell people is, my job is to look at a 30,000 foot view. And say, hey, you know, where do you what is like, you tell me your mission statement, tell me your vision, like, what is the impact you want to have? Like, when you show up every day, what is your purpose? Right?

Because that purpose leads to your impact. So tell me where you see this company going. Right. And if they start giving you a confused answer, well, you know, I wanna do this because you know, I wanna have this end result. Okay, get specific.

Are you niching down on something? Or is it like a general product, you know, or a service? Like, what are you really trying to do? Because a lot of times, like you just said, people lose sight, because they're just trying to do the day to day stuff. And they're what they need to do.

And I tell them, listen, this is the same thing as when you hire an employee, you should know where you want to be in one year, five years and ten years. Have that ten year goal. Okay, where do want to be? Well, I want to be here in ten years. Okay, well, what are you doing to get there?

Well, you know, we're starting off here. Okay, stop. You need to start at ten year mark and reverse engineer it. You wanna be this size company at such and such a time, how are you gonna get there? Alright.

Now you need to work backwards. What would be the steps laid out? Now start working on those first steps. Once you hit that one goal, you know, you've got to that certain rung on the ladder. Guess what?

That is now your baseline. Now you're moving up to the next. Now you're moving up to the next. And a lot of them, they can't see that because they're still hung up on getting to that first wrong because they just don't know what the end goal is. Wrong keeps changing direction.

Like the needle, you know, you know, the needle it's going all over the place.

Chris Albert 00:39:40 (link to this point)

Right. So if you're in that type of situation, the first thing you got to try to do is figure out how you can delegate, right?

Doug Ward 00:39:46 (link to this point)

Yes.

Chris Albert 00:39:48 (link to this point)

Right. And so, you know, particularly in a situation like we're in right now with this COVID-nineteen thing, a lot of companies are, I mean, besides the millions of people who are getting laid off and things like that, a lot of people are working from home right now and then a lot of small businesses are going to have to go to virtual employees or virtual assistants who might be contractors. And so there's a whole different level of management communication in there, right? So what would your advice be to them?

Doug Ward 00:40:21 (link to this point)

Well, first off, you know, and that's actually a really good question, because a lot of companies were so focused on having everybody, they were adult babysitting, let's be honest. Everybody's got to be in the office because a lot of companies are afraid that they let their employees work out of the house, they're not going to work, That they're gonna let let's be honest, that they're gonna they're gonna fuck off. No. They're not. You you need to throttle back and treat them like adults.

It's like, you know, I have two daughters. When they were growing up, when I talked to them, I did not talk to them like kids. Now they were kids, but what I I talked to them like an adult because I wanted them to understand like the level, the place I wanted them to go. Mhmm. There was marked difference between my kids and other kids when, for example, when I went to a restaurant.

I see kids climbing all over the damn place and my kids are sitting there at a table, acting polite, eating their food, enjoying the atmosphere, looking at the other kids like they're freaking crazy. Right. You know, so it's the same thing with your employees. And a lot of employees a lot of companies right now, every scrambling to get on for example, Zoom, you know, get a Skype service now because hey, you know, we want to have some virtual meetings just to be able to talk to people. So now there's just this huge scramble and because they weren't ready for it at the time, you know, and now look at the situation we're in now.

No, I don't know about you, but the internet has been sketchy. Since this all happened because why? Because everyone's at home. You know, and we also have all the kids now are taking virtual school now. So all their school lessons because they're, know, the schools are shut down in the country, basically.

They're all having to do everything online. So I mean, you have to set yourself up and treat your people like adults. Now, if they prove you wrong, that's when you cut them loose. But you've got to be able to, you know, start off and delegate with trust. Hey, are you going to be disappointed?

Yeah, we're all going to be disappointed. But you have to take that and accept that fact. Once you accept that fact, it'll set you free.

Chris Albert 00:42:37 (link to this point)

Right. Right. Now, you know, another another thing to bring up here is, you know, for those of us who are working from home, you might not be in the office, but I think it's also important to, you know, maybe set up a workspace and make sure that, you know, you're not in a place where your kids are gonna be climbing all over your shoulders and things like that, you know, and even to the point of, you know, not hanging around in your pajamas all day, but but actually getting dressed up. That could change your mindset a bit about what you're gonna do for the day. It can can get you into the mindset that, you know, you're gonna accomplish something.

And I would say even if you are one of those people who who maybe lost their job because of this, which I think is is an absolutely unfortunate circumstance of of this whole thing, you know, I think we're in a place where we might be heading to some serious economic contraction. I think it's important for those of us who might not have a job right now to still get up every day to treat it like a job, find your next thing, to find your next mission and to still get dressed and to still get on there and put those hours in, right?

Doug Ward 00:43:50 (link to this point)

Yeah, it's a mindset. You know, I'm still getting up at between five and six in the morning. You know, have a some quiet time where I'll drink my coffee and actually do the mental notes of what I got to do. I'll look over a checklist of things I know, maybe I didn't get done the day before. Maybe there's a couple things that I just couldn't get to.

I just had that added to the list, you know, on the priority of it, it might go to the top of the list. And I think that's very huge. Everybody needs to look at it that way. And like you were bringing up, you know, the mindset, you you might want to put on a nice dress shirt. You're not going anywhere and I'm not talking just to the nines, but get yourself in that mindset, you know, if you're gonna work out, you know, whether you work out at night or workout and then what you know, keep those things up just cause you're in the house doesn't mean you can't do it.

Trust me, there's all kinds of stuff you can do for a workout in your house. You know that and I know that. So, know, we've been working out of the house. Take advantage of the extra time you have to now you're not doing what? You're not commuting to work, you're not commuting from work.

You know, the average, I think drive is what hour and fifteen minutes in The United States or something along those lines. Now you just freed up about two and a half hours of your time. Utilize that time to get your work done, get what you know needs to be done. And then use that extra time that you have left over, you make it efficient, try to have a schedule, but then use that extra time to spend with your family. And I think that's really huge.

It's a mindset thing. Just like you said, it's extremely huge, because you're going to work out of the house, you got to have some type of self discipline. Now that's not saying you can't in the middle of the day do what? Hey, you know, the kids are there, you're there, maybe they finish up some schoolwork, you do a couple calls, maybe you've had some stuff you were working on, it's submitted, you know, you got some stuff you want to get done in the afternoon. Hey, go for that bike ride in the afternoon after you have lunch with the kids, come home, boom, get your stuff, get it done.

There's not to say you can't do that. You actually have more time on your hands now to actually think about what you want to do. Yep. And this is actually a good time if you want to change careers to start reaching out to people.

Chris Albert 00:46:07 (link to this point)

Yep. It's a great opportunity to do that. It's a great opportunity to enrich yourself. It's a great opportunity to learn something else. Know, There is so many online courses out there on coding, on learning machine learning programs, you know, on different things you can do.

You could excuse me, you'd learn a language, you could do so many different things during with just that extra hour of time, you know.

Doug Ward 00:46:43 (link to this point)

Yeah, and you know, that's exactly what was talking about, you know, and take the extra time at night, you don't have to sit there and look at the TV only. And basically, you know, a lot of people like to get into this bin watching on Netflix, I'm thinking, you know, there's nothing wrong with watching a movie, maybe sitting down with the family or you know, maybe your spouse, whatever. But actually pick up a book. I love going to actual bookstores actually buying the physical book. That's a thing for me.

Some people like to buy ebooks or you know, it's the Kindle, things of that nature. Me, I've always liked to actually have the physical book because sometimes I like to make notes on them, you know, especially books on something that I might learn. Or that just really resonates with me. And I think that's a huge, know, like you were bringing up, know, you're reading about, you know, Theodore Roosevelt. You know, I'm sure there's a ton of stuff you'd like to like, you know, dog ear the page or, you know, put like a little note next to it.

Like man, this really resonates. This was like a or maybe, you know, this was a really great statement he made. And it really resonates with me. You know, things like that, that you can always reflect back on to kind of maybe help guide yourself and provide a little more fidelity in your life.

Chris Albert 00:47:58 (link to this point)

Yep, yep. And seeing what kinds of hardships he went through too. I mean, guy lost his wife that he was barely 22 years old, 23 years old, lost his wife, was left with a daughter and of went crazy for a little bit before he came back. And you know, I think it's important in these types of situations to see what other people went through at other times and how they dealt with hardship.

Doug Ward 00:48:26 (link to this point)

Yeah, exactly. No, and you're really good. Yeah, there's a another book I have. It's the gift of adversity or adversity is a gift. And it's from Marcus Aurelius Anderson, you know, and he was 37 years old.

And he joins the army. You know, he's like, I want to contribute, I want to do something, you know, that I've always wanted to do. I'm 37. I'm getting away from getting in the army. And he got paralyzed in a training accident.

Yeah. And through just sheer willpower and understanding and, you know, getting from a person who is sitting there, you know, paralyzed, to drinking and just doing all sorts stuff to basically become this person that all of a sudden just did a mind switch. And just changed their mindset and said, I can't live like this. If I don't make a change now, I'm done. And now is actually walking, does TEDx speeches, is a public speaker, has written his bestseller.

I got to meet him last year and you know, was myself and another guy I served with and you know, we're just sitting there talking to him. Now, he had a great story to tell at this conference in Charleston, called the Freedom Fest. And you know, he just the whole crowd was just quiet. Because he was talking about, you know, basically what he had to go through in his mind to overcome the adversity he was in. It's basically, had he not had that adversity, he would not be where he's at.

He would not have learned the lessons he's learned about appreciating life and going for it. Now he's like, you know, there's nothing that's going to stop me. And you know, that's the big thing too. You just can't let anything stop you. You know, if it's physical, maybe you got some medical condition, you know, maybe that's a gift.

Maybe that's something to make you realize, you know, life's short, we're all going to die. Okay?

Chris Albert 00:50:27 (link to this point)

Oh, yeah.

Doug Ward 00:50:28 (link to this point)

A lot of people fear it, you know, we all have a fear about it. And most of time it's not about fear about time, it's about a fear of how we're going to die, right? But you have to wrap your mind around it. Time's limited. Right.

You know, what are you doing? Right. Do you want to be that person that's in hospice or in a day care center? You know what I'm saying? The senior homes.

And you don't want to be sitting there having so many regrets that it makes you sit back and it just takes you into a spiral of depression that accelerates the end of your life. Right. You know, we want to contribute as much as we can as long as we can. So if you want to do that, then you need to start taking action now.

Chris Albert 00:51:15 (link to this point)

No, you're very right on that. I mean, had Noah Currier on this podcast a few weeks ago. He's he's a paraplegic, and he is you know, he he got back from an appointment, got into a car accident three days after he got back from deployment, lost the the ability to use his legs. And then two months after that, he lost his fiancee in another fatal car accident. And, you know, he was at the end of of his wits, but he figured out something that brought him meaning, and and he started a company around it.

And that company is is Oscar Mike. And he's he's living an amazing life. And, of course, he's physically limited, but he's just such an inspiration and we can all look to stories like that, to help us to move forward.

Doug Ward 00:52:10 (link to this point)

Yeah, and I think you've people need to understand, you know, some people that have all their faculties. You know, I remember when I was in high school for example, now I had the mental faculties to probably have straight A's, but I was like a D and F student. I barely graduated just so I could join the Marines. Why? Because I just didn't apply myself.

Right. And that goes through everything in life. You know, there's a lot of opportunities that are going be out there for you. The question is, are you going to take them? Are you going to.

Is fear going to overcome and keep you from doing it because, you know, is the fear oh, is it a fear of what other people are going to think? Is it a fear of just you don't have a set of stones? You know, what is it? Right. And you know, you gotta drill down on like what's the cause of that fear?

And actually lapping it in the face and just move on. You know, for me when I started my company, you know, my fear was I mean, if I start this company and what are people going to think? Right. Right. Exactly.

I mean, I actually that actually was going through my mind and then finally, you know, I'm just doing it.

Chris Albert 00:53:18 (link to this point)

Well, so how did that point come about? What made you say, hey, I'm going to do this. I don't care.

Doug Ward 00:53:25 (link to this point)

You know I was in a toxic work environment and I'm thinking to myself, know, after everything I've been through and how did I get myself into a work environment like this? And you know, it wasn't like it was just me. Mean, I was watching a whole bunch of people going through a rough period. And I thought to myself, you know, I'd already like, I made a mental note in my head. I have to Now you think, looking at my background, I've been an emery and you know, you think, man, you know, like, I didn't have a problem doing anything in the military.

Like I just did, right? I'm gonna do it. If there's something I want to do, I'm gonna do it. Here I am, I'm retired. I'm thinking how am I going to get to pass that?

And I'd seen a guy online on LinkedIn. And him and I started talking, Curt Mercadante, he's a coach. And I hired him as a coach and him and I started having some conversations, you know, one on ones and he said, Doug, what's keeping you mad? Okay. He said, set a date when you wanna set your company up.

So I set the date. He said, okay. Now reverse engineer what you gotta do. And I was like, wait a minute, I already know this stuff. He's like, exactly.

He goes, but you let other things get in your way that blocked who you actually were. Right. And that's what I do, is I get, know, I'm trying to help people do the same thing. Where do you want to be in ten years? Like I love what you're doing.

You know, you're actually trying to help people bring out the best in themselves. Like you're doing for yourself. Help one, help all. Know, what was it Reagan said? You can't help everybody, but you can help someone.

You know, and you have to choose to want to be helped and to help yourself. So, you know, that's one of the things that, you know, once I made that decision and I filed the paperwork, I just got online, start filing paperwork for company. Now I went through a couple names, you know, you're trying to get the names. Nope. That company's taken.

Nope. That's probably not gonna work. You know, and you're just going through this. And then once I did that, and I'm like, well, set up now. Now what do I do?

Right? So every time you set up something, you know, you take that one step, you know, now you're moving on to the next thing. Now you're moving on to the next thing. And it's just a process. And the thing is, yeah, there roadblocks?

Yeah, I've had roadblocks. I'm sure you have too. That's part of the journey. Use those as stepping stones, but stepping stones that you've learned from and correct the mistakes that you made along the way. Yeah.

And it doesn't hurt talking to someone like yourself, myself, other people. Get another perspective, because sometimes you'll be surprised at some of the things you hear. You might not wanna hear them, but it's gonna help you grow.

Chris Albert 00:56:30 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Doug Ward 00:56:31 (link to this point)

No.

Chris Albert 00:56:32 (link to this point)

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Doug, where can people find you? Where can people learn more about what you do?

Doug Ward 00:56:41 (link to this point)

Yeah. So I I tell a lot of people. I'm on LinkedIn, Douglas Ward. My company is anchorstrategiesllc.com. And then you know, you can reach out there.

I'm gonna be printing out a newsletter. I'm gonna be starting a podcast with my friend Tommy. It's gonna be about leadership. Nice. Vision, purpose and impact.

We've already done I think three or four recordings so far. The yeah, thing so it's gonna be the truth with danger Doug and Tommy Guns. And yeah, pretty funny. My nickname was Danger. When I was in free or fall school, I actually got sent home after my fifteenth jump.

I had two blow pulls, which was safety violations. And they're like, yeah, kind of getting people a little nervous. So yeah, definitely brother. But yeah, that's where you can find me. I'm also on Instagram, I'm starting to get active on Instagram.

And on Instagram, they can find me at the truth with danger date.

Chris Albert 00:57:48 (link to this point)

Awesome. Awesome. We'll definitely get those up on the show notes. Doug, I wanna thank you for coming on today. I know it's a crazy time.

I know you got loved ones who are out there trying to help the situation right now too. And, you know, for everybody at home, we went through a lot of stuff today. And and my advice is to go through this with a notebook, maybe go back and and take some notes on some of these points, particularly when it comes to leadership and and some of the things we talked about as far as getting your life together in order to accomplish things. And, you know, no matter where you are, what you're doing, it's never too late to to start planning forward and to start thinking about what you want to do, where you want to be, and what kind of impact you want to have. And so, Doug, again, thank you so much.

And, you know, everybody out there, live your best lives while you can. I know you're inside. I know you can't go out. I know it's a hairy situation, but there's still some good that can be done.

Doug Ward 00:58:53 (link to this point)

Yeah. Definitely, Chris. I appreciate, you know, you have me on here and you take care, Warrior.

Chris Albert 00:59:00 (link to this point)

Absolutely. Absolutely. Alright, gents and ladies, we will be back at you later on this week with some more awesome content. This is Chris and Doug, and we are out.

Alright, guys. I hope you enjoyed that interview with mister Doug Ward of Anchor Strategies. You can find Doug up on LinkedIn, and we'll have the link to that on our show notes. We'll also have a link to his website. And, again, I hope you got a lot of lessons out of that conversation. Leadership is something that doesn't come easy to everybody.

Some people seem like they're born leaders, but regardless if you're a naturally good leader or if you're somebody who needs to brush up on their leadership skills, everybody's got to work on it. And it's definitely something that holds value in paying attention to. Outside of that guys, I don't have a whole heck of a lot of announcements. The biggest thing that I need from you, the only thing I need from you, like I always say, I don't care if you ever spend a dime with Warrior Soul. I just need this information shared out.

I need you to tell your friends about the podcast. I need you to head over to iTunes to write us a written rating and review. The more we spread the word out about this show, the more we are going to be able to get more vet more veterans to listen and the more veterans I'm gonna be able to help. So please do that for me. And, other than that, if you wanna check out the rest of our content at warriorsoul, head over to www.warriorsoulagoge.

That's agoge.com. If you've got ideas for topics or for guests, just email me over at chris@warriorsoulagoge.com. If you want a t shirt, you head over to www.warriorsoul.shop. If you want a book, a fitness program, or anything like that, head over to www.warriorsoul.academy. And if you want to join the Warrior's Obituary Society, head over to www.warriorobituarysociety.com.

With that guys, I wanna thank you so much for listening. Get out there and live your best lives while you can. This is Chris Albert, and I am out.