Winning The Talent War with Mike Sarraille

May 6, 2021

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Mike Sarraille is Founder and CEO of the Talent War Group. He is also the author of the book “The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent.” He is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer, founder and board of director for the VETTED Foundation, a 501(c)3 Veteran executive education platform, a graduate of the University of Texas McCombs Business School, and a leadership instructor and strategic advisor for Echelon Front, a management consulting firm. Mike served fifteen years as an officer in the SEAL Teams and five years in the U.S. Marine Corps as an enlisted Recon Marine and Scout-Sniper before receiving his commission in the Navy. Mike served in SEAL Team THREE, Task Unit Bruiser alongside Extreme Ownership authors Jocko Willink and Leif Babin where he led major combat operations that played a pivotal role in the Battle of Ramadi in 2006. Mike again deployed with Task Unit Bruiser in 2008 and led historic combat operations in Sadr City during the Battle of Route Gold. Following his return, Mike assumed duties as the primary leadership instructor for all officers graduating from the SEAL training pipeline, taking over that role from Leif Babin. Mike was then selected for assignment to the Joint Special Operations Command where he completed multiple combat deployments in support of the Global War on Terrorism. Mike is a recipient of the Silver Star, six Bronze Stars, two Defense Meritorious Service Medals, and a Purple Heart. Mike continues to participate as a Veteran Transition subject matter expert on panels across the nation.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent, for speeches, custom experiences, livestreams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. I’m John Shegerian. This is a very special edition of the Impact podcast because we’ve got with us Mike Sarraille. He’s the founder and CEO of the Talent War Group. He’s also written this new great book that every leader out there should be reading. Welcome to the Impact podcast, Mike.

Mike Sarraille: Thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be here and [inaudible].

John: Mike, this is great because our good friend, Dean Stott, introduced us. Dean’s been on the show. Dean’s just a wonderful guy and one of the great badasses that are out there that make the world a better place. You are very cut out of the same cloth and similar. But before we get talking about your new book, the Talent War Group, for people who want to find Mike and his great group of people, they could go to talentwargroup.com. I want you to share a little bit of the Mike Sarraille story because our listeners, readers, and viewers haven’t met you necessarily yet. I want them to understand who you are, where you’re from, and how you even got here.

Mike: Well, I’ve got to start with a shout out to Dean. You’re absolutely right. Actually, Navy SEALS turn to Dean Stott for a little bit of motivation. That’s who I listen to. I listen to his podcast in the morning. He’s a great individual. John, I was born and raised in the Bay Area. I did something very uncharacteristic from usually with the kids in my town. I came from a town called [inaudible]. I guess, the best way to say is very affluent. I enlisted in the Marine Corps. So, probably a black eye to the reputation of my parents. I’m joking. They were very proud. We’re talking about Talent today. The one thing we want is for all our [inaudible] leaders from the the top to the bottom of our organizations to be a representative of our organizations out in town. For me, I didn’t come from a military lineage. I met a Force Recon Marine. For the listeners, if you don’t know what Force Recon Marine, they’re a bunch of badasses in the Marine Corps. It was their Special Operations Community before it got renamed as known as MARSOC. I was an eighteen year old kid, probably a hundred and thirty pounds at the time. He was humbly confident. He smiled. He was respectful to everyone. The way he carried himself, you just wanted to be this guy as a young man. I basically found out what organization he was from, that made up my mind. I’m joining that organization. If that’s the product they turn out, then I want to be just like that. That’s what pushed me over the edge to join the Marine Corps.

I did make it into the Recon Community. I did become scout sniper in the Marine Corps. Then, I met some Navy SEALS. I’m like, “Okay, that’s my next challenge.” So, Marine Corps was good. After five years, they let me go try out for the Navy SEALS. I had entered into the Navy as an officer, [inaudible] the SEALS did ten combat deployments. The majority of those deployments was that an organization called Naval Special Warfare Development Group. It’s the Top 2% of the SEAL teams. It belongs to a organization known as the Joint Special Operations Command. I’ll tell you, I was surrounded by men and women that performed at a much higher level. So, on a day-to-day basis, I basically had to pay rent every day to just maintain a spot at that organization until they said, “Okay, you’re good.” Go off, and do other other things, and I retired out of the SEALS, and it brings me to the business world.

John: Got it. How long ago was that when you came into the business world?

Mike: So, my last tour in the Navy was at the University of Texas while Admiral William Mcraven was there. Admiral Mcraven famous for the make your bed speech, also in charge of Special Operations. I got my MBA from the University of Texas. I was with an organization which some people hail as the very best in the world in Special Operations. Quite frankly, it is. When I entered the business world, my business acumen was [inaudible]. That’s not the set of skills we used in the [inaudible]. We used a very unique set of skills, a lot of risk mitigation, very good intelligent planning, very good at details. So, I had to learn the business side, the business acumen. So, I went and got an MBA at the age of thirty nine, surrounded by a bunch twenty seven year olds. I learned as much from those twenty seven year olds as I did from the professors. Then, I identified for me entrepreneurship, value creation in front of my eyes, starting from scratch with an idea, and turning it into a business that provides value to customers, and customers are willing to pay a lot of money for it. I’ve only been retired for three years. I am loving it. I am making mistakes on a daily basis. I go with the Charlie Munger quote, “Anyone who tells you business is simple is an idiot. It’s one of the most complex things in the world.” I’m learning that the hard way and I’ve got a lot of growth come back to me in thirty years. I’ll tell you how I’m doing.

John: I’m going to come back to Charlie Munger in a little bit because I’m glad you brought him up. There is another famous quote that I want to go into, but before we get to Charlie Munger, let’s talk about the forward of this book. Again, it’s a Talent War book. You can find Mike and his great group at the talentwargroup.com. The Talent War, this book. Look at it here. Reading is an active form of education. I read my books. I mark them up both with Post-it notes and my pen, and this was a great book. We’re in the process right now. I told you this off the air but I want our listeners to hear this. We’re in the process of hiring a CFO now, a very important position at a company like ours. I’m going to tell you, this book upped our whole game, the level of responsibility and care that we’re going to be putting into this process. This is going to be our road map. This book is a great book. All leaders, entrepreneurs, or anyone else that’s considering being a business, sports, or any other type of leader out there, this book is the book. I read a lot of books because of this podcast and because of my own interest. This book is the book. You’ve taken it to a whole another level. Let’s talk about Jocko Willink, Mike. He wrote the foreword. He is Mr. Discipline Equals Freedom. I’d read his books. Talk a little bit about your relationship with him and the importance of him writing the foreword for this great book.

Mike: People tell us the best part of that book was the foreword. It doesn’t hurt my ego at all. Jocko’s a pretty inspiring leader. What makes you unique is he does what he says. He is disciplined. Again, he’s a leader that people emulate to be. Jocko and I served in the SEAL Teams. I was a younger seal. He was towards the end of his career, but we ended up in one of the worst battles of the Iraq War. The Battle of Ramadi in 2006. We cut our teeth together. He was my task unit commander. He’s a coach. He’s a mentor. I was involved with S-1 Front which is a leadership consultancy for the last two years. I’m breaking off to go stand up another company to which we will get into because it’s private equity backed, and pretty excited about that on top of the Talent War Group. We all need coaches and mentors. John, I’ll tell you a quick story. I remember attending a dinner in honor of a guy named Admiral Bobby Inman. Bobby Inman is a former de facto director of the CIA. Of course, he was a four-star admiral in the Navy. Bobby, I want to say, I think he’s in his 80s. Well, two keynote speakers were Mike Flynn and Robert Gates. Again, gentlemen who are not young, but still consider Bobby their mentor to this day. I don’t care if you’re the CEO of Fortune 500. I don’t care if you’re the CEO of Google. Even Sergei [inaudible] and the rest all considered Bill Campbell the trillion dollar coach and mentor. That’s one of the biggest parts of leadership. Again, Jocko has been one of my great mentors throughout my career.

John: Great person down as a mentor. Really, who you surround yourself with this who you become. So, tell you that. Let’s go back to Charlie Munger. Great guy, my family and I were investors in Berkshire Hathaway. We went to their National Conference. One of the great lines that Charlie’s partner, Warren Buffett, said which ties right to your book; when someone in from the crowd, he took question in the Q&A section, and they ask Warren Buffett, “How do you hire? What are the traits of the leaders that you hire for your portfolio companies at Berkshire Hathaway?” So, he said, “There are three traits we go for – brains, energy, and character.” He goes, “If they have the first two and not the third, will absolutely kill you.” This is a constant theme throughout your book. Literally, maybe the pillar of your book talked about the importance of leadership being based in great character.

Mike: Leadership not based in great character isn’t leadership at all. I’ll put it to you that way. We talked about nine foundational attributes. We went and studied high performers in every domain from professional sports, to Special Operations, to the business world in America that fuels the greatest strength in our country, which is the US economy. When it comes to integrity, it’s a yes or no criteria. You either have it or you don’t. If you’re on the fence as to whether somebody is filled with character and integrity, then I I think you have your answer. It doesn’t matter how smart somebody is, how high-performing they are, if they lack character, that is going to come back to be detrimental, to be catastrophic to your organization. Again, everyone uses the example, but Enron had four words on the wall. I think it was excellence, integrity, communication, and teamwork. Ultimately, your leadership foundation is not the words on the wall. It’s the behaviors that you exhibit on a day-to-day basis. Leadership is not a title. It’s not a position. It’s a set of behaviors. I think a lot of business leaders have to be very weary. I’d rather under-promise and over-deliver. Be very weary about what you preach because if you don’t live, if you don’t set the example of the values you preach, then your organization is going to flail, if not fail altogether.

John: I think you’re exactly right. You got it right. You make these big and bold promises and you underperform. That delta is going to be where people really judge you then. I think you’ve got that that negative delta is where they’re going to really judge it. I think you’ve got it right. One of the things I love about your book is not only it is well-written with great examples, but at the end of every chapter- again, for our listeners, and our readers out there, the Talent War has special operations and great organizations win on talent. Mike Sarraille, he’s our guest today. He’s the founder and CEO of the Talent War Group. Mike, one of the great things you did is you made it gettable. You made your book and the information gettable. So many authors forget that. So many authors just talk where they’re at and they don’t understand that we’re all at different levels of experience, of need, of education. They don’t make their information gettable. Your chapters all have key takeaways. So, either if you miss something when you were going through the chapter, or you didn’t understand something, there’s clear and concise takeaways at the end of every chapter. You mentioned the nine factors. Can you walk our listeners through those nine factors that really make up a great leader since you did all the homework and the study? I read it in the book but I’d rather you walk are our viewers and listeners through it.

Mike: Yes, absolutely. So, the first one is drive. Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett were really sort of relating to is that energy. That actually plays into curiosity, which we’ll get into. You cannot create drive where it does not exist. Again, in the Marine Corps, International Operations in the military does this very well. They sort of uncover the drive in young men and women like myself. I just didn’t know it was there. They gave me a sense of purpose. Out of that purpose, came drive. You can create it. It’s very hard to do. A lot of business leaders don’t have the time. So, you’re looking for somebody that is driven.

Resiliency. Who’s not going to fall? In Special Operations, which we talk in the book, we run our hiring process is called assessment selection. The training is designed to knock you down. And right when you get up, it’s designed to knock you down again, and again, and again. Now, the funny thing, John, is we have some pretty amazing people that show up to SEAL training from NCAA athletes who are Division 1 football players to gold medalists from the Olympics. Some of those people are the first to quit because they’ve never really faced failure like they’re going to face in the Special Operations training. So, when you design interview process, you really want to test for that resiliency. You want to dig in and see if somebody’s reflective in making discuss where they failed in life, and more importantly, where they’ve gotten up.

So, you’ve got things like effective intelligence. Again, it goes back to Warren Buffett’s “brains.” Everyone wants somebody with intellectual horsepower. That’s given. We talked to Tracy Keogh, the CHRO of HP, an amazing leader. She mentioned the same thing on top everyone. What Special Operation sort of codified is they said, “Yes, intellectual horsepower is a necessity but we’re actually looking for something called effective intelligence.” We don’t care if your IQ is a hundred thirty or your high IQ is a hundred. The person that has a hundred and thirty, if they can’t operate in a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous environment, if they suffer from paralysis through analysis, they’re not going to be a great battlefield commander. Hence, they’re not going to have a spot in the SEAL Teams. We’d rather take that person with a hundred IQ who has the ability to apply what intelligence they have to real world problems for which no books solutions exist.

We talked about integrity. Integrity. All you need to know is yes or no. Are they a person with integrity? Simon Sinek worked with the SEALS. He came up with this thing called the performance trust matrix. You can have somebody that is a high performer, but if they’re low trust, they’re going to become a poison to that culture. So, integrity is a key thing. You have things like teamability. Teamability, ultimately, is the ability to put your self-needs to the side for the good of organization. That’s what we’re looking for in the SEAL Teams, much like every business leader. Somebody who really takes pride when the organization achieve things, not that they were the top salespeople, yet their company had a down quarter. No. They want their company or organization to always succeed. The realization that if the organization succeeds, we’ll all win from that.

You’ve got adaptability. Again, resiliency and adaptability during these times of covid, we all had to adapt. We had a set of constraints put on us. It doesn’t change the end state. It doesn’t change the end goal. We have to find a way to innovate and adapt given the circumstances we’re faced to win.

You’ve got curiosity. This was something that Tracy Keogh and even one of the the really founding fathers of Delta Force talked about, is they said their best employees are the ones that are in their 50s but still have this fire in the belly to understand how things work the way they work, why we do things the way we do things; not to question authority, but to see if there’s a better way. That curiosity really leads to a lot of innovation.

Those are just a few of them. If somebody’s going to have all nine of those foundational attributes to a high degree, no, that person would be the perfect human that doesn’t exist. I might be high drive. I might be low in teamability. So, ultimately for organizations, don’t come up with the interview process to look for all nine. Come up with the top profile for each role within your company and identify the attributes that matter to that role. Then, you design your interview process around that in order to elicit attributes from people and determine if they are right fit for the culture.

John: Let’s talk about you now evolving and transitioning from SEALS to your MBA, now to the private business world. You’re a young guy, still. You’re very young. What have you learned in these three years? What is the Talent War group mean to you? Why did you set it up? How is it different from other leadership organizations?

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Mike: I’m doing a lot of reading on something called the Dunning-Kruger effect of late. Also, these last three years I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what I did in the SEAL Teams. When you’re engaged in war and you’re going to war constantly, sometimes, you don’t have that ability to really detach and contextualize what you’re going through and what you’ve learned. These three years have been instrumental. I’m looking back in a lot of decisions I made in the SEAL Teams where I wish I could have done a better job. I’m going to make sure that I don’t make those same mistakes in the business world. That’s why we teach you leadership for a living. The Dunning-Kruger effect, the more I learn, the more I realize the less I know. I don’t have to have all the answers. I’ve learned from a great set of mentors and coaches that as long as I’m surrounded by great people, like in Proverbs 27:17 – iron sharpens iron, we will win. We either win as a team or we don’t win at all. So, I constantly look for these tribes of great people [inaudible]. Right now, I have one. We are very much a start-up, but our growth year over year over the last three years has been pretty impactful. I’m just taking the leadership principles I learned from the US military, which is one of the best leadership development programs in the world. I’m trying to apply them to the business world while I’m building my business acumen. The mistakes I make, as long as we learn from them and don’t repeat them, we’re going to do great.

Now, ultimately, the Talent War Group because I’m obsessed with talent. I’m obsessed with winning teams. When you look at winning teams, there is no one recipe. What made the San Francisco Giants win the [inaudible] two years in a row when arguably, you could say there’s more talent or better talent than another team? Same with companies. But ultimately, I want to take some of the lessons I learned from Special Operations community for which the business world has a fascination for good reason, and take those best practices, and give them to the private sector. Here’s why this may sound like a hyperbole and I’m being genuine. The greatest power in this country is not the US Military even though it’s pretty damn impressive. It’s the US economy. Our economy and free enterprise is what gives us the latitude to affect policies overseas to make sure that our military has what it needs if they have to go wage war. The business world has a lot to learn from the military in terms of leadership development and how they build teams. If I can help with that process, if I can start a small initiative that possibly grows and help small and medium businesses set a foundation to lead to success, then that’s what I’m going to do, John.

John: Are all your colleagues veterans?

Mike: No. Here’s the thing. If we’re not preaching that, “Hey, you got to be in the military to be a great leader.” You’re a perfect example of that. Bill Campbell is a perfect example. Warren Buffett-

John: Are all your colleagues in the Talent War Group veterans?

Mike: No. Tom Lokar, who’s one of the partners in Talent War Group, is a former CHR of Mitel. George Rydell happened to be in the military. Carly Walden, who’s the smartest of us all, was in the Air Force. A lot of our executive search consultants, our marketing team, never served a day in the military. That’s not a prerequisite for us. Talent comes from all places. You just have to look for it. So, we’ve hired a lot from St. Edward’s, which is a local University in Austin, people that never served in the military. Guess what? Day 1, we start teaching them leadership. We set the foundation. If they can assimilate to the culture, if they can understand and implement the principles, they’re going to be with us for a long time.

John: Got it. In terms of hiring practices, what’s wrong today with the traditional hiring practices in corporate America? If you were to say, “John, my one mission here at Talent War Group is to fill this gap,” what’s like the biggest gap that you’re trying to fill at Talent War Group?

Mike: Tom Lokar, Gorge, myself, and Carly, we all believe that the human resources function needs to be supercharged. The human resources function for a lot of businesses is not treated like a strategic function. John, your CHRO, should be one of the most high-performing people in your organization because they’re the one creating the processes and procedures for your hiring, your leadership development in your talent management. That’s a critical role to any organization. Now, what a lot of CEOs look at things directly. In Special Operations, they taught me to look at things indirectly. HR is not a revenue-generating function. It’s a cost center. Look at it indirectly. That’s actually the mechanism you utilize to feed the count into all your revenue-generating functions. So, when you treat your CHRO, when you bring your CHRO to the table for every single discussion. Because every single discussion you have, and every single decision you implement revolves around people. The biggest thing I’d say is treat your HR as an equal leader. Actually, empower them, set metrics and goals for them to bring talent and retain talent within your organization.

John: For our listeners, readers, and viewers out there, we’ve got Mike Sarraille with us. He’s the founder and CEO of Talent War Group. To find Mike and his great colleagues, go to www.talentwargroup.com. Buy his new book, The Talent War. I’ve read it as you can see here. Mike, when someone hires your firm, they’re hiring your firm, is it a start-up? Is it a billion-dollar company, or everything in between? What’s the number one reason they come to you to hire your firm to help them do what?

Mike: Yes, absolutely. Talent War Group is an executive search firm in Italian advisory. So, if you’re looking for senior leaders from the c-suite down the general manager, that’s what we focus on. We love, primarily, to focus on the HR function. If you’re looking for a high-performing, aggressive CHRO, Chief People Officer, Chief [inaudible] Officer, that’s what Tom Lokar and George Rydell do for a living. They know the space. Both of them have twenty plus years. They both have proven track records of creating world-class, best-in-class talent acquisition and talent management programs. From the talent consulting side, we would rather come in and help you set up the processes and procedures, again, to create a world-class talent acquisition program as well as talent management program, rather than just placing individual leaders in your organization. So, we do both. They’re mutually supporting, but we love creating long-term relationships with the companies by doing that talent advisory. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Fortune 500. We do love working with small to medium businesses because that’s where my heart is. I want to see them set the foundation to grow into Fortune 500s, but we work across all domains. We’re industry-agnostic. Again, high-performers have the same set to the common thread, same set of attributes as anyone else.

John: You’re three years into it. You’re a young entrepreneur. You’ve got your whole life in front of you and your career in front of you with a lot of amazing and experiences that people would not necessarily get exposed to. What’s your vision and what’s your dream with the Talent War Group and where do you want to take this?

Mike: You know, I’ve got to tamper my enthusiasm and focus on being very good at few things. Once we fill that cup, move on to the next. I want Talent War Group to become the number one provider for- we call them Chief Leadership Officers or Chief Talent Officer, CHROs. People think, “Hey, we need our CHRO to come to the Talent War Group,” or if they want to talk about talent design, that’s when they come. John, veterans will always be dear to my heart. I can’t set my family and I up for success, and leave my brothers and sisters behind. One thing, and I want to be cautious here is I really like the search fund model where there’s a lot of baby boomers that don’t have succession plans that want to sell their businesses, and doing the due diligence to identify the right businesses providing the funding for veterans to buy those companies where they can step in as leaders. And like me, learn things the hard way, but knowing that their drive, their ability to adapt, to learn their curiosity, and their ability to deliver just outstanding customer service. I know they’ll grow those businesses. So, that’s sort of my five-year plan is creating the fund within Talent War Group.

John: That’s wonderful. We need more help with veterans. You know, I’ve learned the hard way over my adult life that we have all these heroes fighting for our freedom around the world in weird places against enemies that are real and enemies that aren’t real, actually. When they come home, they’re somehow the forgotten heroes of America. I don’t get that. I don’t get that as someone who hasn’t been to war and someone who hasn’t been in the military, but just as a person who loves this country dearly and loves people, I don’t understand how we’ve got gotten this far by acting that way.

Mike: You know, everyone has a part to play in this country. Whether that’s military, the private sector, if that’s serving the federal government outside the military. [inaudible] for serving this country in some way. I’ll tell you, and I don’t want to speak for veterans, but I know a lot of my brothers and sisters in arms, you don’t need to thank us. We were humbled to have the opportunity to serve our country and to go over there while you guys have created one of the strongest economies here. Again, it is not easy to transition out. You leave a tribe. It’s one of the strongest, most supporting teams you’ll ever be a part of. To leave that is hard. Then, to re-assimilate back into normal life… I don’t expect anyone to do that with ease. They again, they would be a superhuman if they did. But there are lingering effects from war, which is normal. General Mattis calls it traumatic growth where we have normal reactions to the abnormal conditions of war. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean somebody’s weak. For those listening, yes, if you can reach out and help a veteran, if you can [inaudible] them as they’re transitioning in, help them find their new passion, give them hard advice, and give them a hand up, not a handout. I think we can solve this problem together, these veterans’ transitions.

John: I love it. You know, Mike, you have a great book. Again, for our listeners and viewers, it’s called the Talent War. You got to buy it. To up your organization’s hiring skills and protocol, this is just a great book. Your HR Director, leadership team, the founders of your company, they should be reading this book here. Mike, during the pandemic, The Last Dance came out. One of the great sports leaders was highlighted in that ten-part series. The end of the eighth episode was the only time he broke down and got emotional. They ended that on his words as he got emotional. He said, “Leadership has a price and winning has a price.” Your book, what you’re preaching, and your whole approach to leadership is unique, and special, and bears being listened to about character, about integrity, and about the nine key elements to making leaders a success. What is that? What is Michael Jordan’s words of leadership has a price and winning has a price mean to you? I know you haven’t gotten this far and been the success that you are without paying a price.

Mike: It’s a one great series. When I heard that, the words victory comes at a cost sort of ran through my mind. Our soldiers won every battle they were tasked with during the global war on terror. The wars went a different direction, but every battle that they were tasked with, they won. Again, that comes at a cost. For business leaders, you can empathize with this, when you are so driven to grow something, it’s an opportunity cost. If I’m to give all my time over here to the Talent War Group to grow it into a multimillion-dollar organization, that means I forgo time with my family and the development of my children. That is something we all struggle with as human beings is that balance. I don’t have any good advice because at the end of my career, my CEO career, we had a very high divorce rate from where I came from, because we gave it our all. This sounds horrible, John, in JSOC, the men and women you served with were your first family. Your wife and children were your second family. Because we were always deployed in the war, that’s who you had to focus on. Especially as a leader, your whole focus was to get the mission done and bring all your people home. Again, that came at a cost. I didn’t balance my career well. Towards the end of my twenty-year career, I ended up in a divorce. I never wanted that for my children. So, the only advice I can give is you’ve got to pull back every once in a while as a leader. You have to reflect and you have to ask yourself what’s important. You don’t have to take everything on. If you do train your team so well, it starts to take more off your plate knowing as a leader of an organization that I have the right people in the right positions with the right training to seize opportunities at their level or solve problems. It’s almost what General McChrystal talked about in [inaudible] is creating the one culture that really matters at decentralized command. If you can do that, that actually helps you get back to balance, but that’s something I still struggle with to this day is how do I maintain that balance and not making a Pyrrhic victory.

John: Right. For our listeners and viewers out there, to find Mike and his colleagues please go to www.talentwargroup.com. You can buy the Talent War at Amazon.com, Barns and Noble, other great book stores. Mike, I’m going to give you the last word, but before I give you the last word before we say goodbye for today, at least, first of all, at the top of the show, I should have said thank you. Thank you, thank you. God bless you for the service. You’ve done a great service. You’ve done representing our country around the world, protecting our freedom. As an American, I just want to say thank you from our listeners and from our viewers. We don’t get to do this stuff without you doing your important work, and your colleagues, and other veterans doing their important work around the world. So, God bless you and thank you for that work. I also want to thank you for your time today, the generosity of your time today for coming on the Impact podcast, and sharing your journey, sharing your important and wonderful book. And hopefully, sharing your vision of great, great leadership, what that means, and what that should mean to entrepreneurs and other leaders around the world. It’s a very inspiring story. Mike, I’ll give you the last word. I just want to say thanks again for your time today.

Mike: Hey, John, thank you. The only thing I’ll say is we didn’t realize this when we started the book. George was now my co-author, but the best part about this book is the amount of people we’ve got to meet and to have a discussion about leadership and talent like we’re having here. So, we’ve expanded our network and we’ve met some amazing people. So, that’s the real reward that we got from writing that book. The only thing I’ll say to leaders is make sure that you’re taking time to step back when you can as often as you can. Contextualize what you’re doing to give yourself your own personal debrief, not necessarily about what you’re doing right, but where you can improve in life. Reflection is one of the greatest attributes of the leaders I’ve ever worked for They were always asking themselves, “Can I do this better? Where do I need to improve?” Then, taking steps or taking action to actually implement change into their lives, and ultimately, become better. When you become better, you make the people around you better.

John: Thanks again, Mike. Look forward to having you back on hearing the continued journey that you’re on right now, the Talent War Group. God bless you. God bless America. Thanks again for being with us today, Mike Sarraille.

Mike: Thank you, John.

John: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by Trajectory Energy Partners. Trajectory Energy Partners brings together landowners, electricity users, and communities to develop solar energy projects with strong local support. For more information on how Trajectory is leading the solar revolution, please visit trajectoryenergy.com.