Submarine Leadership Lessons That Will Transform Your Business And Mindset

Today, I sit down with Marc Koehler, a former U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine Officer and the founder of Lead With Purpose. Mr. Koehler’s story begins with an “eighth-of-an-inch” moment—disqualified from becoming a fighter pilot due to the length of his thighbone, he found himself unexpectedly entering the elite world of the nuclear submarine force. In this episode, we explore how that path shaped his leadership philosophy, built his resilience, and ultimately led him to help transform struggling businesses and burned-out teams.

Mr. Koehler and I go deep into the intense environment of life underwater—watch rotations that disrupt your circadian rhythm, the constant noise of machinery, isolation from loved ones, and the psychological toll of working 10 non-stop months a year inside a steel tube. We talk about burnout, mental health, and how even high-performing leaders can collapse if support systems and balance are missing. He shares the powerful story of how six years of stress manifested physically after his service, and how critical conversations with commanding officers helped shape the way he leads today.

We also break down leadership frameworks that translate from the military to the boardroom. Mr. Koehler explains how his Fast Attack Leadership model was born out of the same principles that keep submariners alive: accountability, adaptability, and decentralized decision-making. We compare how the Navy empowers 23-year-olds to make billion-dollar decisions, while corporate America often paralyzes employees with too much structure.

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Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and I've had a fever for two and a half days now, so I sound awful, but I look great. And what I mean by that is I'm wearing the mock turtleneck from the Navy. I'm not sure if our guest is familiar with it from, from his time in the Navy, but I, I have not worn this in a couple years.

In fact, I didn't really wear it when I was in the service. Actually we made fun of people who wore it, but I decided as I was looking for what to wear for today's episode, I said, we'll do it. So I'm wearing a mock turtleneck sweater with a cowboy hat. So interesting combination. Very fitting for a nuke, actually, I think, to be honest at least from my time in nuke school, this is something I would see.

Commonly, if not cat ears or swords or lightsabers or something like that. So, well, we'll get into nuke school a little bit here, but today's guest is here not just to talk about the nuclear navy and the military life, but also about the leadership and the world outside of the Navy. But what can we take from the military life, which the military obviously is known for work ethic, for working under pressure for leadership.

And we're gonna get into all the different ways that the military, in some ways, is better in leadership than the civilian world in some ways where it is different and sometimes worse. And what we can do with that knowledge, whether you're a veteran trying to serve a community or start a veteran-owned business, or you're someone in the corporate world, or a small local family business, this episode is gonna be for you.

And so, Mr. Mark Kohler, I've give dropped little hints here and there about you, but please fill us in on who you are. Yeah, fantastic. I thought you were gonna say, I have a fever and I thought I was gonna be about talking about leadership, but I hope you're feel, I hope you're feeling better. And that is, thank you.

That is a great memory. So, yeah. My name's Mark Kohler. I have a company called Lead With Purpose. We help people lead more purposeful lives firm Rochester, New York. In 1986, I saw this movie, you probably heard of it. It's called Top Gun studying Physics at the State University of New York at Fredonia.

Saw it four times in four days. Fifth day I was in the office of the recruiting office of Buffalo, New York to become a jet fighter pilot and go through all the tests that day. And the recruiter comes out at the end of the day, says, you passed every test with the exception of one. And I was like, did I not see the horizon, right?

Am I colorblind? And he says, no, your thigh bone's, three eighths of an inch too long to sit in a jet. Wow, Mr. Whiskey, I'm six foot five. We get it down to within an eighth of an inch, and I get disqualified. And as I'm leaving the recruiting office, I think he must have needed one more recruit that month.

He's like, what about SEAL Team? I was like, no. What about Helicopter Paddle? I was like, no. And then he said what about elite Nuclear submarine force? And I was like, ah, send me some information on it. And he sent me some information on it and I decided to, to join the program. It, it, it, a combination intrigued me, but also intimidated me and I wanted to challenge myself and, that's how I got into nuclear submarine force. I call it my eighth of an inch moment because in eighth of an inch I would not be involved in the submarine force. I'd probably be living in Pensacola, Florida somewhere, be married to someone different. And you know, we all have these different times in life where we have our eighth of an inch moment.

But I look back on it and I feel fortunate to to have then been gone down this path of nuclear submarine force and then got out and I was a turnaround CEO for many, many years and took a lot of the leadership principles from the nuclear submarine force, applied them to companies to help them get fully engaged, fully aligned, and highly adaptable team.

So it's been a fantastic journey and excited to be here today with you and the audience. I just can't help but feel like it's ironic basically being like, sir, you're too tall to go in a jet, but a submarine, by all means, that makes zero sense to me. And I will say, ladies and gentlemen, if you've never been on a submarine, yeah, they're small.

The one I was trained on was actually much smaller than the regular ones. So I know the modern ones are a little bit bigger, but it's not just the submarines. Everyone who was 5 11, 6 foot or taller in an aircraft carrier always hitting their head on some kind of valve or a pipe or something. So, I mean, it is those, those vehicles are just, you know, they're not made for people who are six five not even six foot. So that is very interesting. I've had some guests share stories like that where Don Gleason, I guess he quote from meps to or from the recruiting office to MEPS on the plane ride, somehow lost like half an inch of height or something, but it changed his entire weight bracket.

And they're like, you need to lose, like. Eight or 10 pounds by tonight. And he was like, how did I shrink on the plane? Ride over? They're like, well, gravity, you know, atmosphere and stuff. So, oh yeah, there's plenty of stuff and people don't believe this, but when I was in the Navy, they if you were a little too heavy and they couldn't get your circumference measurement right, they would tire rope around you and, and squeeze in and measure you.

But we've seen all kinds of stuff, you know, for the skinny guys, our recruiter would be like, wear three socks in your boots and make sure yeah, you eat a big breakfast, you know, so yeah, there's a lot of like used to call them one eighth moments in our lives, but yeah. It sounds like you had a good experience on the submarine.

For the most part. Obviously we're gonna get into the good and the bad and I know that you were so I just wanna clarify, you had already gone to school, so you went in straight officer, you did not go enlisted officer. That's correct. Yeah. After the, after my it was my junior year in college, I went through what was called the PAC program.

And so I was in my junior year in college, finished my degree and then went through the officer candidate school and then everything. And I, I will tell you, I was cursing the recruiter when I finally showed up on the submarine 16 months later. I was like, what the heck did you do to me? 'cause it was tight.

Very tight. Yeah, for sure. I can, I, I, yeah, it, it, it is. So besides the, the, I'll call it the physical stress of always leaning over and, and having back problems, what would you say mental health wise was your experience from when you first got in, during, and then when you got out, did it get better, worse?

Were there good days, bad days? How did you kind of experience that, especially as an officer? Yeah, so, so I think you know, if you can imagine, I know you can, but if the audience can imagine, you know, now it's an $8 billion piece of equipment. It's a cold steel tube that's 300 feet long. You're cramped in between, you know, nuclear power, plant guided missiles.

And you know, for months on end you're rebreathing the same air you, you're living in fluorescent, you know, sunlight on missions critical to national security. And so that stress and that strain, at first it was extremely exciting because it was wow, we're underneath the surface of the ocean. I can tell you for the first like seven days I didn't sleep because I was like, oh, there's water outside.

And then, yeah, and then, and then and then I, I got to be so tired. And and also I, I had to learn how to trust the other members of the crew. 'cause when we were on watch section. Everyone was trusting us while they were sleeping and they were doing what they needed to do, and I needed to learn how to trust everyone else.

So, you know, the qualifications, you went through it. The qualifications are brutal. You have to sit all of the different watch sections. You have to be able to draw every single system that's that's there. You have to recall where every valve is, how it's operated. And all of that takes, took me about 16 months to get fully qualified on, on the submarine.

And, and again, it's just a it's what's nice is that the Navy gave us a ladder and they said, Hey, here's how you climb up the ladder. And they gave us everything you had to work your tail off. But for those first, you know, 16 months. You weren't watching any movies in with everyone else. 'cause they're like, Hey, are you qualified yet?

And you had to say no. And you had to, you had to you know, really work on your study. So a lot of it was self-learning, A lot of it was very exciting. I would tell you when I got qualified to lead on a mission critical to national security and the watch section, that was really, really exciting. At the, and I can't, you know, like, you know, we, we can't say too much about what we exactly did, but at the end, what I would share with you is that the stress and the strain of being out at sea 10 months of the year again, completely isolated from loved ones, no sunlight, no fresh air that, that ultimately built up.

And, and at the end, I, I was burned out. And this was during a time Mr. Whiskey, when they were going through a reduction in force. And so we had two submarine tenders. So when we came in the port, there was all this work that needed to be done, and typically we would get off and the submarine tenders would do the work well.

They got rid of one of the tenders. So we went into shift work when we came into port. So 10, 10 months out at sea, right? Imagine, imagine taking off on a 7 47 today and coming back 10 months later landing. That's, that's what your ticket says. And then, and then when you get back, imagine going to shift work where every day you have to come back on the, on the airplane and somehow, was it like a Port starbird rotation, 3D section or, yeah.

Yep. And so and so it was, it was, you know, it was, it was just the time that the United States was going through that reduction in force. They were, they were consolidating a lot of things. But again, I I left the Navy with a tremendous experience. I mean, you know, 23 years old helping the lead, you know, now it's 130 crew members, average age 23 years old.

And to put it in perspective, you know, this Mr. Whiskey, if you put it in today's perspective, it's 30 millennials leading a hundred Gen Z. There's no baby boomers, there's no Gen X on board current US nuclear submarine, and there's not just one of those out there 24 hours a day, there's 50 of 'em out there.

So the framework that I was exposed to this fast attack framework was extremely powerful to help young people to thrive in dynamically changing disruptive environments. And that was an extremely powerful experience that I had. But, but you know, at the end of it, I got, I got burned out and, and I actually I actually left the Navy, right.

There's a, there's a lot of go over. The first is comedic, which was, I was thinking you're talking about getting used to the submarine. Can't sleep for the first seven days and I won't share. What color the inside of a submarine is. But you get used to one specific color a lot. Yes. In fact, when we, when I first went on board a submarine, my petty officer in charge of us that he said, all right, everyone write down this time, this date.

This is the day that you were introduced to x, y, z color. And this is gonna become an important part of your life. You're gonna have nightmares about this. Yeah. And what really made me laugh is we had a joke as, as nukes, and you kind of, you hinted at it, is there's obviously, there's machinists made, electricians made, electronics technicians, elts, all different ones.

For those who don't understand basically the, the nuclear part of a, a summary or aircraft carrier, it's a lot of moving parts. And, and to have one person, we, we nicknamed them the super nu in charge to know all of that. Yeah. I mean it's, you talk about the school already being difficult, they describe it as drinking water through a fire hose.

Right? Yeah. It's, it's extremely difficult to then know everything else that every other. You know, sub rate knows, I mean, it would be insane. It is a lot. It's already a high stress rate, high suicide rate, high burnout rate. But we used to joke, you know, if I was an electrician, make nuclear, everyone thought I was a mechanic based off personality and I always hung out with mechanics.

It was funny when I graduated and they said, electricians mate, you know, petty or whiskey? Everyone said you're an electrician's mate. Like all the whole school, they thought I was a, a mechanic and I used to go to people and be like, oh, you're a mechanic. Name every valve on the submarine. Then, you know, we used to make that joke, but like you said, valves, gauges, you monitoring, if you're an electrician, there's so much going on.

So it's definitely a high stress job. On top of, like you said, watch on top of, one of the things you mentioned that is so important is the, the way free time works when you're living on board a sub or aircraft carrier. Do you really have it? You know? 'cause you're, I imagine for, for civilians listening, imagine you go home from work or I imagine you don't go home, you just stay at work, you change outfits and your boss is still walking around and he sees you.

He's like, you know, you could be doing something else to improve yourself for the job. I mean, you don't, you can't relax. Really? Yeah. Let alone people were like, well, I'll just go sleep. Well, I don't know. Were you hot bunking on your submarine? I, I, I wasn't, but we did have people who were hot bunking.

Yes. Yeah. Right. And for those who don't know what that is, that's basically where during the day shift, someone sleeping in Iraq and during the night shift, you're sleeping in the rack. You know, I, I've heard stories about that and, it's interesting. I, I don't want to share my space. I'll, I'll say that much.

I know. I don't know many people who would, you know. Yeah. Imagine a c you know, just for the listeners, imagine a coffin. Imagine where you're laying on your back and 18 inches above your head is the, is the top, and you're literally in a coffin where you can't sleep side to side. It's only six feet long.

Like I'm six foot four. I was gonna say, I don't know, six foot five, six foot four. Depends on the day. I was gonna say, I, I thought a rack was cramped and I'm five 10, so, I, I can't imagine. I'm five eight. I just lied. I'm five 10 with cowboy boots. I can imagine. How you must have felt because I felt cramped.

I mean, it's like, yeah, it's like you said, it's right in your face, the, the ceiling of, of your bed, and then you've got two more people above you, or, or one more, however it is. And then like a foot across from you, you've got the other set of racks depending on where you're at, at least on an aircraft carrier and everyone's snoring or some people are reading with a light on, which there's, there's, I remember one of my friends just made a poor call and he was like, Mr.

Whiskey, it's so quiet in this hotel. He said, there's no diesel, there's no steam, there's no one mc. He goes, it's, it's kind of eerie, you know? A lot of people think, and I know there are times where the submarine goes absolutely quiet, you know, but there's always some kind of noise internally. So, I mean, it's definitely interesting.

And are you able to tell us, you probably, you probably remember this, there was a, there was a vent and through that vent you could hear the sounds like white noise. And when that noise went away. You knew there was some type of emergency on the submarine and you would automatically wake up like searching for the noise that you're constantly 24 hours looking for.

One other thing, Mr. Whiskey, you know, as, as the audience might not know this, we were on 18 hour days, so we were on 3, 6, 3, 6 hour watches. And so they found it was a lot of mistakes happened in hour seven and eight of a watch instead of three eight hour watches. So they went three six hour watches. So your, your circadian rhythm was totally screwed up.

And, you know, think about, think about doing that. And like you said, you're, you don't go home. You're living, you're living at your place of work and you can't go take a ride. You can't go say, Hey, you know, I just had a problem with Mr. Whiskey. I want to go take a walk, or I wanna go work out, or I wanna go do this.

Like you have to face, you know, one of the things we always had was like, we always ran towards the fire because if a fire broke out in a submarine within one minute, you had to somehow get some type of extinguisher on it. You had to put a, a, a, a mask on that would help you to breathe. And that's a really powerful metaphor, not only for underneath the surface of the ocean, but it's a very powerful metaphor for business today.

You know, a lot of times we have conflict and we run away from the conflict, right? And, and it's not running towards the conflict with gasoline. You don't run towards it with fire. But you know, we have to learn how to be able to communicate and address those different types of conflicts that are happening in business today.

So like, run towards the fire was a big thing that we used in the submarine Force translates really well to being a successful leader in business. Yeah, the submarine fire was probably my turtleneck in the dryer anyway, but I'll say basically from what I've heard on submarine fires. But what I will say, and, and that's interesting because I lived with civilians for a while and I had been in the habit, the military, at least nuclear navy, trains you like, you empty the, the lint trap.

Every time you do laundry, you don't leave it for someone else or this that. Yep. And when I lived with civilians, it was always full. And every day, every time I did laundry, I was emptying this out. I'm like, you're, y'all are gonna start a fire. You know? I was like emptying it out. But speaking of, you know, talking about what transitions will to civilian world in the military, and you find this out the hard way if, if you don't do it, is you try to handle everything on the lowest level possible first, you know, peer to peer.

If that doesn't work, your LPO or whoever is above you, if that doesn't work, their supervisor, right. Some all, you could go all the way up to the captain if you want, or to third parties in the military inspector general, whatever it may be. In the civilian world, I've found that it's should be the same.

But a lot of people like to go run and tell whoever it is, corporal or the boss or whatever. In the military, I felt like you learn faster than the civilian world. The, the power and the peace of peer-to-peer level, you know, communication. Because in the military, when it goes higher up, it comes down a lot harder.

You know, we, we have a say, I'm sure you've heard it. One team won fight and a, I've seen a lot of sailors put onto sinking ships and you know, I've seen people who, you know, the, the group punishment and it ev and it is the same way in civilian world. There's always one person who ruins it for everyone.

You mentioned conflict in the submarine, you know, that was one of the reasons too, I chose the aircraft carrier. 'cause if you don't like someone, there's a chance you'll never see them again. The aircraft carrier is that big. Yeah. In the submarine you're gonna see them five minutes later. You know, I mean, I met someone new every day on the aircraft carrier.

Yeah. And if you want to get away from someone you didn't like, you could, you know? So I think that was one of the plus sides. But I think it's important because at some point in life you're not going to be able to, you know, sometimes in life you'll be on an aircraft carrier for a while. Maybe that's the job you're at now, the family situation you're in.

But at some point things are gonna get more closed quarters, so to speak. So I think it's important to learn communication and I think part of that is that peer-to-peer level. So what did you witness during your time serving on, on that regard of, did you see a lot of people who kind of cut the chain of command and the consequences of that?

Did you see people really well doing that level to level? How did you personally go about it? Yeah, so great question. You know, in the submarine force, one of the, one of the sayings, one of the mottos is either we all come to the surface or no one does. Mm, I like that. And, and, and that meant more than just us physically coming to the surface.

It meant if we have 130 crew members and 120 are unplanned to be qualified and what they need to be qualified, but 10 aren't. It was incumbent upon the 120 of us to make sure that they had everything that they needed so that they could be successful. And so when you think about communication and conflict that happens, it was always very important.

Like if, if we ever went to, if we ever went to the, to the executive officer and said, Hey, this is happening and everything, the executive officer, the first question he asked me back would be, have you talked to that person already? Right. And a and a lot of times people just hadn't. And so, and so, you know, I can remember the executive officer coaching me one time and he said, Hey, have you talked to that person?

I said, well, I haven't really, I just sort of observed this. And he said well, I would, I would encourage you to talk to that person first, and then why don't you come back to me? And he saw, he saw the look in my face, and then he said, do you feel comfortable doing that? I said, well, I don't know, you know, he said, well, let's role play right now.

And so he took the time, Mr. Whiskey, to role play with me, right. To make me feel comfortable. And then I was able to do that and be successful. Now, I did go back to him. I said, Hey, I, I addressed it with him and nothing else needs to be done. He said, fantastic. And so for me, that was a great lesson and that's how we had it set up there.

Now, like you said, anybody could go and talk to anybody. I mean, our captain was. I'd been on board, you know, I'd been the submarine force for over 30 years. And the person who just came on three days earlier, who was 19 years old, who was prob, you know, some enlisted person, he was, he was adamant that if there was something that was going on and you see something that he wants you to say something to him, now you had to say it very respectfully to 'em, right?

Because all of our decisions that we made, every valve that we walked by, there's 2,500 valves on a submarine. There's 1500 miles of electrical wire, 150 miles of piping, an entire nuclear power plant. So in our systems, like 200 systems, right? 4 million components. Everything we walked by had consequences.

And so it wasn't for us to maybe communicate with one another, it was like, how do we succinctly communicate with one another? And how was it always in this order? How was it always ship mate? Itself. It was always that way. Everything you did was, am I doing this for the ship? Am I doing this for the submarine?

Am I doing this for the crew? And then finally the third in line was, am I doing this for myself? So as an example, I might say, Hey, you know, I'm really tired. I'm not gonna do that maintenance check. I'm gonna get some extra sleep. That's for me, but I'm not thinking about the ship, my shipmates, and I'm not thinking about the ship.

And so having those, having those two really mantras in the back of our mind really helped us to, and, and, and the structure that would say, if you haven't talked to the person, you have to talk to the person. And make that as a, as, as a first step. Before, before it, it, it went up further and, and people got more involved and then you felt more comfortable talking to like, how do you feel Mr.

Whiskey, when you're talking to me and I got like a piece of broccoli right here, right here in my teeth. Right. You know, you feel uncomfortable about it, but it's like, hey, you know, you should say something to me. And, you know, if there's things that are going on in a submarine, I might just look bad on this podcast if I have a piece of broccoli in my teeth, but if a person turns the valve wrong, I mean, it could scuttle the, you know, the $8 billion submarine and the 130 crew members and be a, you know, something that's hurt around the world.

So, so it was that uncomfortableness in helping us to get through that. That, that really helped us to have what I call crucial, crucial conversations with each other. Love everything you said. You know, I think it's really important because there are a lot of executive officers and even just military leaders in general who would not take the time to coach you, but would've just said, go effing, deal with it.

And maybe even more curses than I got. Too much stuff to do right now. Yeah, you yeah. Yeah. Right. And I, and I, what he recognized, which is so important, you mentioned it in the very beginning, and it's something I do think is advantageous of the military that you don't find as easily in a civilian world, which is leading at a young age, theoretically in the naval nuclear program.

Yeah. If you join when you're 17, turn 18 at the end of bootcamp. Yeah. And you go through the school with smallest t track section, you, you push through the school. You by 18 or 19 could technically end up as a nuclear instructor at prototype if you got picked up for JSI slash spu. Yeah. So you could be at 19 teaching people how to operate a summer.

Yeah. And or even at It's awesome. Yeah. 18, 19. That's amazing. Awesome. You know, and that's not just a, the nuclear navy, if you, most people are 17, 18, 19, when they join, whatever rate you go for, whether you're a photojournalist, you're a boat since mate, nuclear aviation. Right. There are a lot of opportunities for leadership and not just your job.

Yeah. Yep. One of the things we've talked about that kind of sucks about the military is there's a lot of random watch stations that pop up that are part of your job that you didn't think would be a part of your job that your recruiter never mentioned. But there are opportunities, right? You're laughing because it's true.

You know, I mean, I'm thinking of all of 'em that I had to even sit myself, Hey, you're nuclear operator. Yeah. By the way, you need to sit in this office and answer the phone for the next eight hours with from, from midnight to 8:00 AM on a weekend holiday. What? I got one phone call, it was the Exos wife, and she said he still isn't home yet.

And he looked at me, he said, you know, yeah, yeah. Or whoever it was, it was someone, some higher up wife calling saying he still hasn't come home yet, and I'm mad. And he said, I'm busy working, you know? Yeah. When one time someone called and tried ordering a pizza, like genuine, and we were like, oh gosh, this is a reactor admin office.

We don't know how you got this number. But yeah, we don't have pizza here. It's it's radioactive. It might turn you into teenage media Ninja Turtle kind of pizza, but Yeah. You know, I think, like you said, what one of the downsides of that, so to speak, is that young leaders do require a little bit more of coaching, especially if they haven't had it prior in their life.

Some people joining the military had no, parents, had no mentors, they maybe they're running away from something or they're trying to start a new life. Now you put them in charge either voluntarily or often involuntarily. And like you said. If they don't have social skills, how are they gonna go talk to someone?

Whether someone who was bullied their whole life, I mean, now they're gonna go up and tell someone they're wrong. Yeah. Let alone someone who has been on a submarine for years longer than them. Yeah. That's not, of course anyone, even that captain who's been on for 30 years could turn a valve wrong. Right.

Mistakes happen especially when complacency starts to spread. So it's still intimidating though to go to someone and say the wrong, especially when they turn around and say, Hey, I've been doing this longer. You just mind your own business. You know, there could be a lot of harsh reactions when you try to hold people accountable.

In fact, I kind of let myself be intimidated once I was standing on an electrical operator watch, and there was certain stuff happening with the submarine and I needed to do something called shift to electric plan a certain way. And the software said, Mr. Whiskey, do it x, y, Z way. And I said, that doesn't make any sense.

It would be more practical and more likely for our survival in the simulation. To do A, B, C, X, Y, Z is going to endanger us and risk all of us dying. Yeah. And it was kind of that situation where I, he's an officer, but I had been standing the watch a lot longer than him and was qualified and he had failed his qualification for it.

And I decided I really wanted to say, sir, respectfully, I had the watch. We're not doing that. But I let the intimidation factor come in and I shifted the electric plant how he wanted, well, whoever was in the engineer came in who just did that? Why are we doing that that way? Why? And I said, well, you know, officer at A BC said to do it X, Y, Z.

And he said, what? How did you wanna do it? I said, I wanted to do it this way. I explained why. He goes, you had the watch, you're experienced. That's a new officer. Yeah, right. Don't let the right intimidate you. And I really regretted that. I really regretted it. My, my pride was hurt my, you know, it could have endangered lies if it was a real situation.

And that's, that's even, even though it was a simulation. I mean, the pressure put on you in, in Sure. Like, I will say the Navy nuclear simulations, they're, they are, you feel like you can feel the pressure, you know? Yeah. Same with bootcamp. You know, I mean, the military is designed to break you, you know, to a degree for growth to learn.

Sure. And so I think like you're talking about holding people accountable and having those conversations is so important. But the age demographic of leaders in the military when they first come in, I mean, it's very difficult. So what would you say, I mean, what can we do as parents, as mentors of the youth to help prepare them to have these kinds of conversations?

I mean, I think it should, it's gotta start at home, right? Yeah. So I think, I think I think it does have to start at home. But this isn't something that you're born with or there's an unalterable factory switch, right. That you, that you come with. So, so when I, when I reflect back upon my time in the submarine force, I remember the captain of our submarine.

He knew the submarine in and out better than anyone else. He'd been in for 30 years. He'd been on six different submarines, so he knew exactly where every valve was, and he expected us to know that stuff too. But when something came up as an example, I remember us being in what's called the jam dive situation.

I was on the, I was on the control in the front of the submarine and we were running a drill. And the, the drill was we were 400 feet below the surface of the ocean and we were going all ahead, standard. And I look over at the captain, I said, captain, you know, ready to secure the, the drill. And he said, Mr.

Kohler, all ahead flank. So all head flanks as fast as you can go, can't tell you how fast it is. I, you know how fast it is, Mr. Whiskey, but it's really fast. And the drill monitor takes and pushes full down on the stern planes. The submarine, 5,000 tons of steel lurches towards the bottom of the ocean at a 40 degree down angle.

Now the diving officer who is there, says, passing through 500 feet. Mr. Kohler, the captain looks at me and he doesn't tell me what to do. He says, what are you gonna do, Mr. Kohler? He asked me a question. Wow. Now I had forgotten the code word that I was supposed to say. And I'm like, Hey, the code words in, in my mind, I'm thinking the code words in the back of the control room, but by the time I go back there and come back, we're gonna be at crushed depth.

That's when the diving officer says, passing through 600 feet, Mr. Kohler. And the captain looks at me and says, Mr. Kohler saved my submarine and crew. Now, he didn't actually say it like that. There was another word that was in there. It started with an F and right, but as the diving officer says, passing through 700 feet, Mr.

Kohler, I'm frozen. The captain sees that I'm frozen. And he says, attention to control. This is the captain. I have the con. And he says, jam dive. Those were the two words that I was fighting to find, to tell the crew what to do so that we could combat that situation. Now, I was crushed when this happened and I can remember the captain of the submarine pulling me to the back of the control room.

He and I were there privately. The submarines leveling off at starting to come back up to 400 feet and he. Mr. Kohler, you're doing so well. Like, what happened? And I said, yeah. He goes, I, I, I go, I've practiced that hundreds of times, captain, I just blanked. He said, okay. He said, but where was the answer to your, to your problem that you had?

I said, well, it was in the back of the control room, but we would've been at Crush Depth. And he goes, okay. He said, but the answer was here. Where was it? And I said, I don't know. And he said to me, do you think anyone in your watt section knows the answer to this? Now, mind you, you know this, the members of the watt section are very talented, been on board for 20, 25 years.

And I said, they probably do. And he said to me, why didn't you ask them for a recommendation? And I said, and I was a junior officer. I was, I was learning how to, how to be a leader. And I said, well, captain, I'm supposed to be the leader here. I'm supposed to have all the answers. And if I asked them a question.

It shows. I don't know it, and it's gonna make me look like a fool. Now, we were alone, and he said this to me and I had a really strong relationship, but he said, what do you think you look like now? And he smiled as he said that, right? Yeah. And he said, he said, he said, Mr. Kohler, we've put a watch section around you, nine members of the watt section.

They're very talented. We've put them around you because you're gonna have situations that come up where you're not gonna know how to handle situations, something you've never seen before. You're gonna have situations come up where you're blank, and you need to know that you can tap into that, that team to help solve a problem and manage change.

I don't want you to feel like you have to have the burden of everything that's on top of you. Now, the captain. Like, just as I shared that story, I just shared probably eight questions. The captain asked me, he already knew the answer. He, he could have said, Hey, you should have tapped into the, but what he was doing, he was making me think, and this goes to the, the, you know, core of the submarine force is that you are asked questions all the time.

And what it does, national training laboratory, Bethle Maine shows that if you tell someone something 24 hours later, they're about 10% likely to remember it. If you just ask 'em one question back, like, what do you think? It goes up to 50% retainment. And so I can tell you this is a key. If we wanna teach people how to become decision makers in the submarine force, we want to teach people how to become decision makers at business, at our businesses.

If we want to teach people how to become decision makers, our kids. My, my three kids, when my daughters were six, four, and two, I started doing this, asking them questions, Hey, what do you think we should wear when we're going skiing? I knew the answer to it, so, right. So just the simple act, Mr. Whiskey. And if you're out there and if you're leading anyone and you want to take and transfer your knowledge and experience, it's called guided decision making.

And what you do is when you ask one question back, what do you think you responsibly push decision making down. And then, and then we really teach people how to become great decision makers. They become more competent decision making, and then they can handle really any situation that comes their way, gives 'em tremendous confidence.

So what do you think is a great answer that you should give people when they ask you a question? I agree. I think I've talked a lot on the show about the difference between teaching and telling, and I've talked about a lot of military leadership especially that does telling. Yep. And some military leaders who think the more they curse, the better you understand it, you know?

Yeah. I've met plenty of those. And, and that's, that's for the blue collar and, and white collar world as well. You know, I think telling, and, and I've been guilty of this before in, in group projects or leading teams or, you know, in both the military and civilian world where employees or whoever you're leading come to you with, you know, questions or what to do.

And a lot of us tend to just do it for them, you know, or I'll just do it, I'll just take care of it. You know, sometimes we, we don't want to take the time to teach. We j I'll just take care of it, you know, or you just tell them to get it done. Yeah. But that little time you're taking will cultivate that knowledge for them to be able to do it on their own more independently.

Right. And that's something that ties back to the very beginning we talked about. The ship ship mate itself. And are you doing your part? And how if 130 people are there and only 120 are doing the job, it's important when other people are doing a good job, whether you're leading them or working with them.

Because what they don't do, you end up having to do right when someone's not qualified. Now you have to stand that watch your, your shipmates had to stand that watch in place of that. So now you're getting less sleep, less free time. Now you're overworked. Let's say you get overworked to the point that now you had to step out for medical.

Now those other two remaining people have to split the watch, you know, so it funnels downhill really fast. So it's important to make sure that you're doing your part, your part, and that everyone else is doing theirs. And you know, the more you do yours, hopefully the more people will do theirs and holding them accountable.

So I wanna talk a little bit about the transition out. We've spent a lot of time with the nuclear navy, but you said you left, you said you left because you got burnt out, was the burnout. Because of internal personal issues? Was it external factors from the military life or from something calling you in a civilian world?

What was the whole culmination of all of that? Yeah, just I, I think it was being overworked. Yeah. I mean, my, the captain of my submarine, I mean, I, I did have a previous captain and he was a teller. He was a teller, and he was a yeller, and I didn't learn a lot from him. The new captain who came on board was, was very coach.

Coach-like cared. I think it was just being overworked and burned out. You know, again, you, you don't 10, if you say I'm working 10 months of the year on the submarine, the, the, the time that you have off, quote, unquote off, you're still on the submarine. You're somewhere in the ocean, right. You can't, you can't do anything.

So, so I, I think it was, it was just total burnout. It was just way too much work. And I always, I talk to CEOs a lot about this now too, is you can have everyone deeply connected to the mission. You can have them all loving the job that they're doing. I loved the Navy, I loved serving, I loved the crew that I served, the highest performing team that I, that I ever served on.

But it was just tremendous burnout. And I can tell you during those riff years that reduction in force years, a lot of, a lot of people got out. So, so I got out 'cause I was it was a, it was too many hours of work, right? And I want people to understand, I've tried explaining this before to some of my civilian friends.

I felt like the military was a time warp where two weeks military time was not the same as two weeks civilian time. And they were like, well, what do you mean? I said, look, a lot of military members, not only do we work longer hours, but we're awake for longer hours. Half the time we do watches overnight, especially in a nuclear program.

Or if you work security or galley, you're doing overnight stuff. You're doing holiday stuff, right. When you're awake for more hours a day, every day it adds up. So when you say you were on a summering for 10 months, it was 10 long months. It was long days, right. Minimum free time, not de stressful time.

There's no weekends. There's no weekends off. Yeah. No. Saturday, Sunday off, right? No. And and, and it's not like there's paid overtime or holiday pay either, right? It's all voluntary, involuntary most of the time because you get stabbed with these random tasks. And it's not just that, you know, on top of there's always, it's not like you qualify and then you're done.

There's, you gotta requalify, you gotta al always learn more. People are always pushing you to learn more. Yep. They always come out, they make so many changes in military. Here's a new training we have to do. Here's a new testing we have to do. Here's a new qual we have to do. You know, every, if the amount of times my day off was actually we're gonna muster and do something.

I mean, that's the worst. The worst was a Saturday morning emergency, emergency muster, muster, the whole nuke school base to do a shave check to make sure everyone was still shaving me on a Saturday. I'll never forget that. That was the worst, one of the worst moments in terms of like, ridiculous. But there's always stuff going on.

Cybersecurity, physical fitness, training, you know, there's a lot. And again, on top of the hardest sleep environment I know guys who cannot sleep without a red light Now after being on the submarine, you know, I know some people who were training with one before they even went on and you know, it's, it's a lot.

So when you talk about the burnout and stress, you know, I get it's the, the long days, sleepless nights, holidays plus. Can you talk a little bit about, you have this submarine family, but most likely, you know. You can't, you, you don't have a phone, right? So you're not calling or FaceTiming family members.

Maybe you're emailing them depending on what's going on. But for certain missions, there's no contact at all. Maybe you're making poor calls. It all depends on, on what's going on. Maybe you make a poor call and out of the three days you're in port, two of them you're working and you can't go right. Or there's bad weather conditions, you know, had that.

It happens. I, that's one of my, my my beefs with the Navy, so to speak, was one of their biggest selling points is pork calls going on these amazing trips. And then my friends were calling me saying, Mr. Whiskey, we were only there for two days and it one day and we couldn't get it to the port. And the other day I had duty, so I missed the entire port call or av.

Everyone on the ship did their job except for one aviation squad and they failed their drills, so they canceled a Hawaiian port call. Yeah, yeah. You know, so the, you know, there's a lot of depending factors. So can you talk about the, the. As the, the isolation aspect, because again, you're surrounded by great people, but they say after three days, companies like fish, it starts to smell.

I mean, you're crammed in this expensive little can underwater. I mean, you have to start to get on each other's nerves. Right. And and what, how did you cope with that? Yeah, when I was, when I went into the submarine force, before I got in as part of the testing, they had me, believe it or not, in Washington DC they had me sit in a closet that was really cramped and had a low ceiling, and they had a light in it, and they had a dimmer switch, and it's like zero to five minutes.

They're like, how do you feel? I'm like, I feel fine. You know? And then five to 10 minutes they turned the light down a little bit. How do you feel? And then they turned it red. How do you feel? And like, I was fine, you know, I was, even though I'm, I'm very now do it for 10 months. We were very tall. Yeah. So, so, so I, I think you know, I remember leaving San Diego and you leave on the surface.

It's beautiful. You're on the on top, you're in the top of the sale, and then you then you have to get everything ready to go, go under. And I can remember I was the person who would take the hatch and close it Wow. On ourselves. And so I remember the last person to see anything. Yeah. I can remember like feeling the, the sun ray on my face and taking that last like breath of fresh air and and then closing it and going down.

And you go down. You know this, you go down into an environment that has the most advanced technology in the world, every square inch. Is, is the technology that's gonna help you to complete your mission's critical to national security. And that's why you don't have enough bunks. And people are, some of the people are hot racking is because, you know, some people are sleeping in between the torpedoes 'cause it's like, hey, we don't have enough room for sleeping, but we, we need all of this equipment.

So being under fluorescent light, fresh food is gone after about 12 days. Like our, our supply officer used to keep 12 real eggs and they wouldn't crack 'em. They would keep them there and like four weeks later you would see those eggs and you would think they'd just have 'em in a little thing and you'd think they were the fresh eggs, but they were serving us powdered eggs.

And then slowly, you know, over time all the food is gone. I can remember being on a. 60 day mission. We got extended 15 days and then we got extended another eight days. And the only thing left was li li lima beans. And so we had lamba bean pancakes, we had lama bean sandwiches, we had lama bean steaks get creative.

And, and to this date, I can't, I can't eat Lama beans. And I will tell you that I also saw the movie with Patrick Swayze Roadhouse. I saw it 86 times and I saw it in 86 days. And, you know, he always, he always found one thing, but, but you know, when you're under that type of stress over an extended period of time, and then every six hours you're playing three dimensional chess in the ocean, it's, it's extremely stressful.

And you know, like you said, on 18 hours we would get like maybe three hours of sleep and that three hours of sleep was always interrupted by, they'd run a fire drill. They'd run the flooding drill. You have to get outta your rack and all those such of things. So, so I think the, I think the stress of that over an extended period of time, I will tell you, Mr.

Whiskey, two years after I got outta the submarine force, my wife, who be my Heidi, who's my, became my wife, she got me a massage and, and the woman said, the knot in your back is something I've never seen before. I believe you because, because stress, it starts getting into like a knot. She released all of it.

She goes, how much do you want me to release? I said, Hey, go hard on it. Go hard at it. And she released all of it three hours later. I'm not a person who cries three hours later, all of those toxins were released inside of my system. And literally I was sitting there crying. My wife's like, what are you crying for?

I go, I don't even know. And come to find out, it was the, the six years of stress that had built up in that one knot and it finally got released. So, so, you know, I think that's the environment. It's hard for people to really understand that environment. I think you understand it, but but it's a, it's a different environment and when you open that hatch for the first time, again, it's the best feeling to feel those sun rays, to feel that fresh air, to see the dolphins coming off the top of the submarine.

Oh my goodness. I can't imagine it. Yeah. One, one other thing was the communications piece you talked about today. I think they have some type of email system where you can email back and forth. Back then we got six family grams. So we got six there. There was pieces of paper you could hand out. You can out six of them and they had little dashes on them and every dash was a word.

And so your loved ones could write something. And those were always very cryptic. They didn't use the words or the, it was like a cryptic message that you had to ci to piece together. And I gotta tell you, I was a communications officer on board when those would be downloaded. It was literally like Christmas in the submarine because it was that, it was that reach to the outside world that someone who cared for you sent you a message.

And I can tell you, Mr. Whiskey, if I got one and you didn't get one and we were sit watch together, I would give you mine and go read this. Because you needed some type of connection too. Yeah. And I would know when you got one that you would probably share it with me. So think of one way, commun six, one way communications, you can't respond back.

And so that's the type of environment that we lived in. Wow. I. One memory you brought back was, you know, getting off a watch and, you know, you worked all day. Now you had a watch from like 2000 to midnight. You go, you get in your rack, you pull the blank blanket over on an aircraft carrier. Man overboard.

Man overboard. Everyone must, and then if someone can't be found because someone didn't mark something down, now you're standing there for an hour waiting to go to bed. You gotta wake up at like 4:00 AM to shower and get to the chow hall. So yeah, the, the drills in the middle of the night, toxic gas.

Radiation. Oh man. Yeah. And then our, our sub, our submarine, if, if it was a fire and you didn't get, if you didn't get a, a fire team there, within one minute they would pack everything away. Do it again within 10 minutes you would run it again. Yeah. But that, that is, that just tells you how really important it is that, I mean, that's a, that's a true life and death situation.

So, um Right. But it, but it was, it was very challenging. So. I really like how you said for, for the civilians listening, you know, imagine getting on an airplane for 10 months and mind you, no windows. There are no windows and there are no flight attendants. But the bathrooms are pretty similar. The bathrooms are pretty similar.

I will say that about the same size. Yeah. And not as nice bathrooms are similar. That sound that you hear, that humming sound mm-hmm. Is like constant. You can lay down at least, but imagine Yeah. You know, one third of two thirds of the people up one third sleeping. Oh, yeah. Just, oh yeah. And, and however, like the, like if you're in the window seat and someone's in the aisle seat, that's about how much space you have between racks.

Yeah. Maybe depending where you're at. And you know, like you said, sleeping between the torpedoes. Imagine you're sleeping up with between the luggage bins, you know, something like that. Right. So it's a bad time. So you got out and can you tell us about that transition so you get out. Obviously you know, I'll mention now you have a podcast, you do speaking, you have books, right?

All that stuff. I mean, what was the journey to there from, because getting out is a huge identity change. It's a huge purpose change. Yeah. There's a lot that goes on. You already had a lot of baggage from the military that you're taking with you as well. Yep. You mentioned a why, so how does this all play together?

Yeah, so I got out, I got an opportunity to go work at Honeywell. It was a fantastic opportunity. Loved that opportunity. They you know, a lot of training and reading a profit and loss statement, putting together big company strategic plans. And I became a master black belt in Lean Six Sigma. Loved all of that.

One of the things that was hard as a transition, and you'll know this in the submarine force, when we said we're getting underway at 1300, which is one o'clock in the afternoon, and when we said we're getting underway at 1300, we didn't get underway at 1259. We didn't get underway at 1301. We got underway at 1300.

So one of the challenge that I had, Mr. Whiskey of transferring to the civilian. You know, business was that someone would say, Hey, I'm gonna, I'll get you that by, by Wednesday at one o'clock. Right. And then you'll be able to work on it. We'll get a proposal back to the client. Well, I, I can't find the person at one o'clock.

You know, in the submarine force, your word was your contract. Everything. Your word was your contract. And so I can remember one time where I couldn't find the person until the following day at like 11 o'clock in the morning. I said, you know, where's the stuff? He goes, oh, I'm so sorry. I was out with my girlfriend last night and I was, you know, we're, I was just like, you know, so, so for me, that became a little bit of a challenge.

I, I adjusted to it, but, you know, because that would really frustrate me. And, you know, so, so that was one of the, the challenges that I had shifting to Civilian Million Life also at Honeywell. It was a hierarchy. Took forever to make a decision. You know, this, in the submarine force, we would make eight decisions in like 10 minutes.

And the first seven decisions were totally wrong. But we would make it then we'd course correct course, correct course, correct. Course correct. And that would help us to get to the eighth one, which is correct. What I found in businesses, and I still find this sometimes today, is that people are so worried about making that mistake that they're un they freeze and they don't make any choice at all.

And so a lot of times, I I, I, you know, when I was transitioning, I was like, Hey, just make a decision. You can always make another decision. It's not your final decision. Right. And then you can, you can always course correct a success. So, so I think that's one of the great things that I brought to businesses.

Was this ability to say, Hey, it's okay if you fail. Now if you fail multiple times in the same exact thing, then you know that that's a problem with training and should that be your job? But as long as you were trying to make a decision and get to the solution and you finally got to the solution you know, I, I think that's one of the, again, a lot of hierarchy and structure when I got out.

So, because that took so long to, to happen, Mr. Whiskey, I, I decided to jump off and my kids were eight, six, and four. Instead of climbing Honeywell's corporate ladder, I wanted to be at every back to school night in choir performance and soccer practice. And I jumped off and I started doing strategic management consulting.

Now, I tried to take all the tools I learned at Honeywell, applying to these businesses that were struggling, and I was smart enough to see that they weren't working. They were putting more structure in place. And so what I did is I just went back to my time in the submarine force and started really analyzing 130 crew members.

Average age 23 years old, you know, operating a billion dollar piece of equipment, mission's critical to national security. How do we make that happen? When I peeled everything back, there were two keys to our success. Number one is we had, in the submarine force, we had an everyone as a leader mindset, and here's why.

When a fire breaks out in the engine room, the person responsible for putting out the fire and leaving the team is the person closest to the fire when it breaks out. Mm-hmm. So look at on, in, in other, you know, like on an aircraft carrier, they'll have a damage control. Right. And everyone's, hey, call damage control.

You were the damage control. If you were the cook and you were walking by in the engine room and the fire breaks out, you don't call someone, you step in, you step up, and you lead. So I think that was like one of the, one of the keys to success. And then the, the other key was, or we already talked about it a little bit, was, you know, we had this really strong culture where, you know, best described by either we all come to the surface or no one does.

We're all helping each other out. We all had each other's backs and we all, we all trusted it one another deeply. And so when I think about, when I went into these companies, a lot of times there was a lot of structure, there was a lot of hierarchy. People were afraid to make decisions. And what I found is just deeply connecting people to the mission of, of, of what we're doing was really important.

Viewing everyone as a leader and telling them, I viewed them as a leader was really important. And here, here's why. Most of a, a lot of people wake up and they go like, I wasn't born a leader. That's someone else's thing, right? And, and I always say. I believe that we're all born with a leadership toolkit inside, and it's not what we don't have.

It's what we don't use. And so the second thing that I found to be really successful as part of the framework, first deeply connect everyone to the mission. You know this, on our submarine, there was never any, any confusion about what mission we're on. Number two is, right? Every, everyone is a leader. And number three is we operate in a matrix framework.

And everybody, like if you're an engine room upper level, you are the person leading the fire and you're the electrician. Or if it's flooding, doesn't matter. Flooding is something mechanical, but you're the electrician. You're the one leading. Everyone else follows. Then we had this ability to shift and adjust on the fly.

So, so I think you know, making that transition, I went from Honeywell, which taught me tremendously powerful tools, but I was also able to see the dysfunction that happens in companies where they have a lot of hierarchy and too much structure. And then it forced me to go back to the time of the submarine force and create fast attack leadership, which is that five step framework that nuclear submarine officers use on top secret emissions that anyone can learn.

So they can create fully aligned, highly adaptable world-class team. So that's my journey. I just shared that in three minutes. That took me 20 years to develop though. Right? Right. What I'll say is, you know, like you said, that course corrected progress is better than no progress at all. I, I definitely agree with that.

Like you said, a lot of people are afraid to make those decisions. I think. At least on the aircraft carrier. I'm sure it was the same on the submarine. 'cause you already mentioned it with a firefighter. Same with if you came across a casualty, someone had a broken leg, someone fell down, a stairwell, someone was bleeding, whatever it was, there's a certain type of reporting you do.

And, and, and the first step is man in charge. And that that's who is there right now. That's you, you're the person who discovered it. And you know, maybe someone else will take over when they get there. Right. But for the time being, you have to take care of it. Especially, there are certain situations where there is gonna be no backup, you know?

Yep. We, we always preach forceful watching backup, but sometimes it's just gonna be you. And I think on the submarine, that isn't a choice. It is what it is. You know, you have to be able to be in charge. I think in the civilian world, in businesses workplace cultures, some of them developed this mindset of they have the ability to push off.

Well, that's not, that's a manager's issue. Or that's, that's corporate's issue or that's not my problem. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's actually a lot of civilian world workplace cultures are myself, shipmate ship, so to speak, where, you know, this is just a job, you know? But in the military, it's not just a job, it's a lifestyle.

People's lives are at stake. Right? So I think people need to treat their job. Yeah. In the same mindset, right? Because a lot of people say, well, you know, if the company does good, it doesn't benefit me. Right? But you gotta think about that. So a lot of people think of themselves first, right? This isn't my problem.

I don't wanna do this extra work, or put in this time, how's it gonna help me? Right? How's it gonna help me? So I think that is, is crucial, and I think it's, it's so important, like you said, the kid communication and that team mentality. You know, there's a lot of times where I felt like group punishment was it, you know?

Felt so unfair, but I guarantee you, if if Liberty was taken away for a whole group because of one Sailor, there wasn't gonna happen again. You know? But I think there's a balance to be had with it. And I wanna talk a little bit about, you mentioned your guide. I wanna talk also about your podcast Surfacing Leaders.

Sure. Surfacing, I assume being a, a, a play on words there. Tell us a little bit about that, about the, the podcast and who should listen to it and what kind of information they can get. Yeah. You know, people ask me like, why did you start a podcast two years ago? You know, podcasts have been around forever.

You've been around forever with fast attack leadership. You've been working with companies, leadership teams, you're doing keynotes on stages. Why'd you start surfacing leaders? And I really wanted it to be and open up people's minds that everyone is a leader. I really wanted to do that and, and I wanted to find where leadership is happening in places where we either don't know what's happening or where it's happening for some very, very young people, a lot of Gen Y and Gen Z, because that's the future of our workforce.

And so I wanted to be a little bit like the dirty jobs sort of approach where it's like, Hey, what are the jobs that are going on? Really, you know, where is leadership? Because I think a lot of us, you know, me included early on, we overcomplicate leadership, right? But leadership is a set of, you know, six simple things that you do every single day.

And it's the simplicity of doing those things. The, the power is in doing them every single day. And it's like establishing those atomic habits, you know, if you've read the book by James Clear. And so I, I wanted it to be something where someone. We, I would have a conversation and someone would see themselves either in me or they'd see themselves in the person I was having the conversation with and say, oh, if Mark considers that to be leadership, then, then I know how to do that, and then I open up someone's eyes to, to view themselves as a leader.

Then that only changes their approach and how they view their life. Now, you can't just say pixie dust, poof, you're a leader. Right? But I think the number one challenge is that we we're our own number one challenge. That we don't view ourselves as leaders. That we think someone else is a leader, that we have to, you know, Mark's a nuclear submarine officer and he a million dollars spent on him and all that stuff.

Yes, some people might be intimidated by that. I wanted to start conversations where I get down to the essence of leadership and then people see themselves in that conversation and then take that first step and go. Hey, I think, you know, I think I wanna try that. And and so that was the purpose of surfacing leaders.

Yes. And it was a play on words. Right? And I think that intimidation factor, again, of, well, well, Mr. Kohler is a, is a, you know, was a US Navy officer. So of course it's easy for him to talk about leadership or be a leader. I'm just, you know, so and so X, Y, and Z. But again, in the military, right? You get a lot of young people in charge and they're backed by authority and rank, right?

If, if you don't respect those leaders, the chain of command is gonna come down on you. But what you need to remember as well is that in the civilian world, maybe you don't have as much positional authority or Right. That, that consequences, but it should be about your actions, right? It should never be your age.

In fact, some of my favorite Bible quotes, because I've dealt with a lot of age belittlement in my life, you know. It talks about how it's not about your age, it's about what you're saying and what you're doing. Even small children are known by their actions. One of my favorite Bible quotes, right, love that, love that quote too, because you can see kids who are well behaved and you see kids who are not well behaved, and you can see who steps up as a leader, right?

Yeah. And so there's a lot of people who will try to place limitations on you based on your age. You're too old to become a leader now, or you're too young to become a leader now. And I like what Tim Thomas Australian Special Forces said on my show, he went to join the Special Forces. They said, you're too old to join it.

He said, maybe when you were this old, you couldn't do it, but I'm not you. And I, I love that mentality of, you know, we're all at different places, right? And so I think it's so important to not focus on labels so much, right? Just, just do it. Take the action, right? If you come across a scene and you want to take action, then, then do it.

You know? So I think so many people are intimidated. By, like you said, by titles, by overthinking, by overcomplicating it. Yeah. There sometimes you'll say it can't be as easy as just, you know, speaking up or taking that next step, but a lot of times it is, and we just think, I think there's a lot of glamorization of leadership.

It's this huge thing. It's a, it is special. It is important, right? People's lives are on the line. People's businesses, people's lifestyles, people's wellbeing, their money. But at the same time, you know, don't over glamorize it. Where now it's an intimidation. It is you know, it is a position, but it's about your actions and your words.

And I know you talk a lot about leadership. You talked about your fast attack and your five steps. Is that different from leading with purpose, your book, or are they kind of one in the same? How do those two play together into all of this? Yeah, so leading with purpose has three phases to it. And the first phase is we help people to distill everything down onto a single page.

And what we're mimicking, Mr. Whiskey is, you know, we had a one page captain's orders on board the submarine, right? And this surprises some people. They're like, what? You had one page? I go, yeah. But it would change constantly, you know, what's the plan of the day? And everybody could look, everybody could look at that, post it in a couple different parts of the submarine.

It's like, so how do you distill that down first? And then what we do is we teach the leadership skills that you and I were exposed to in the submarine force of how do you push decision making down responsibility. We have three courses that do that. And then we have three courses that are about encouraging people.

How do you coach, mentor, and teach the people that you lead? So that is the lead with purpose. Program. And then out of that you, you earn what's called a fast attack leadership certificate. And those are specifically five things that you can do to become a fast attack leader. And there's, these are things that you do on a daily basis and they can, IM, you can implement those immediately.

So one is really a framework that happens over a six or a nine month period. The other one is like, I'll give the Fast Tech keynote on a stage and it'll be five things that you can implement today, and I can teach those to you in an hour. And that's really fun because then people start going, oh yeah, I can do that.

And then they start going, Hey, I'm a, I'm a leader. So, so yes, they, they sort of overlap with one another. Fast attack is really in the middle of, of Lead with purpose as a program. Right. And we're gonna have your website and description below where it has your books, your podcasts, your speaking, how to get in contact with you.

I think we've talked about a lot of great things and it's always great connecting with someone from the nuclear DA and hearing words I haven't heard in a while. Yeah. When you said ship shipmates self, I had a, I felt a chill go down my spot. I haven't heard those words in a while. And you know, what I want you to leave us with is we talked about the power of questions and cultivating thoughts and the difference between teaching and telling.

You, and I have told a lot here, and sure we have taught a lot here. What question would you leave with everyone in relationship to leadership or life in general to have them really think about it and, and cultivate some growth here? If you look at, if you look at your company, if you look at your family, how do you view every single member.

Of your family. How do you view every single member of your company? How do you view every single person in the world when you're going up to a barista and getting a coffee? When you're seeing someone who's cleaning, how are you viewing them? Because if you're not viewing, when you start viewing people as a leader, every single person, your mindset shifts for everything about how you interact with those people.

So, you know, I would say, say you're working at a company that has 200 employees. You can say, Hey, we have 10 leaders leading 109, 190 employees, or, and it's competing against the company that has 200 leaders. Which company's gonna win in long run? So one with 200 leaders, right? And so the, the question you should ask yourself is, how are you, how are you viewing everyone in your company?

And the answer should be, I'm viewing them as a leader. If you do that, your mindset will shift. On your interactions with them, how much you're gonna pour into them, how are you gonna treat them?

Well, Mr. Kohler, thank you so much for coming on the show. I think we discussed a lot, and I want everyone to focus on that question there. And you know, when you find the answer, do something with it. Don't just let it sit, don't just throw it away. Reach out to Mr. Kohler if you wanna share the answer and, and, and he can give you some great information on what to do with it, or if you think you know what to do with it, implement it into your life now.

But again, Mr. Kohler, thank you so much for what you do for your service to this country in the Navy, and for what you're doing now to help everyone become a leader. Okay? Thanks again. If you wanna reach out, you know, you can. All our social handles are Mark at Mark Kohler speaks. We'll put 'em down below.

I'd love to hear if you, if you do implement something. But Mr. Whiskey, thanks you much for having me on today.