The Steady Leader w/Multi-Business Owner, Schuyler Williamson: Ep64

In this engaging conversation, Sean Patton and Schuyler Williamson explore the multifaceted nature of leadership, emphasizing the importance of mentorship, self-leadership, and the ability to learn from adversity. They discuss how energy and influence play crucial roles in effective leadership, the significance of having a purpose that extends beyond oneself, and the dynamics of teamwork. Schuyler shares insights from his military background and how those lessons translate into the business world, ultimately advocating for a culture of growth and fulfillment within organizations.

Takeaways

• Leadership is fundamentally about love and caring for others.
• Adversity should be viewed as an opportunity for growth.
• Self-leadership is essential for effective leadership.
• Leaders must teach their teams how to think critically.
• Pursuing excellence rather than perfection leads to better outcomes.
• Energy and mindset are contagious within teams.
• A leader's purpose should be about serving others.
• Creating a culture of growth requires intentionality and effort.
• The lessons learned in the military can be applied to business leadership.
• Effective leaders prioritize their own health to better serve their teams.

Chapters

00:00 The Importance of Strategic Thinking in Leadership
01:54 Energy and Mindset: Keys to Effective Leadership
04:23 Morning Routines: Setting the Tone for Success
07:18 Leadership vs Management: The Pull vs Push Dynamic
13:03 Translating Military Leadership to Business
16:42 Leadership Mindset: Who Do We Need to Be?
20:12 Learning from Adversity: After Action Reviews
25:51 Evergreen Purpose: Fueling a Life of Service
31:33 Health and Spirituality in Leadership

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:00)
Welcome to the No Limits Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Sean Patton. On this episode, I had the honor and privilege of interviewing one of my West Point classmates, Schuyler Williamson. Now at West Point, Schuyler was not only an academic rock star, but literally an all-star of our baseball team, setting records and-

After that, he served as a combat arms officer in both Iraq and Afghanistan. After he got out of the military, he got his MBA from the University of Texas and went on to become one of the top 1 % of all real estate agents in the country with his own real estate group and his own home construction business. He also owns other small businesses and is soon to be a published author of the steady leader. So this was just a fantastic conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Sean Patton (01:04)
congratulations on all your success. And it's so great that we get to all these years later and reconnect and have this conversation.

Schuyler Williamson (01:12)
Yeah, thanks, Sean. I mean, you know this. We've led through some of the same environments. I mean, you're as good as your team is. So the only reason why I'm where I am today is because God's blessed me with a bunch of great people. So I do appreciate it.

Sean Patton (01:25)
Yeah. And you know, you have your book steady, steady leader, right? Is that the name? Yeah. This the steady leader coming out on early next year. we'll put a link for, for pre-orders. know I'm definitely pre-ordering because everything that I've, I've, read of yours and our conversations, I think is just spot on and, needs to be out there. And I was just saying how, you know, when I published my book a few years ago, I w I just like,

Schuyler Williamson (01:29)
The Steady Leader.

Sean Patton (01:53)
worked with my clients and realized that I needed to create a, basically a framework for self leadership so that I, was almost like creating the content that I could teach off of. So I had a little more structure to what I was doing. And as we started talking, you talked about the strategic planning that, before your book comes out and all the work you're putting into it and you're absolutely, you know, doing it the right way. how has that experience been for you, writing and preparing to release your book?

Schuyler Williamson (02:17)
shoot, writing is like therapy, right? I mean, you had mentioned ahead of the call, just organizing your thoughts. I define leadership a couple of different ways. One, first, I like John Maxwell's simple definition. It's just influence, right? Another mentor of mine says it this way, that leaders teach other people how to think so that they can get what they want. And then that helps you get what you want.

And I resonate more with that thinking part of leadership. And I think that leaders have the responsibility to spend a lot of time thinking because ultimately we need to respond to things, not to react. We really only get our teams in trouble when we react.

So the more thinking we're doing, and this is a blessing the Army gave us, but the more thinking we're doing ahead of the fight or ahead of the competition or whatever it is you're about to go do, the more we're able to respond because we thought through multiple scenarios.

I'm in this world of like trying to teach, you know, all the people in my business how to think. And I just thought, you know, like you, like you're coaching people, you're teaching them how to think, I'm leading people. I want them to think the way that I think so that we can get results together. So we put it all together in a book and, you know, a big part of what we want to do is just help other people, you know, and when you put it in a book and you put it out there for everyone, you know, it's the best opportunity. You can have the influence of others to help them in their lives.

Sean Patton (03:41)
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, when you mentioned, you mentioned about spending time thinking as a leader and you're one of the few people who I've heard say that because I'm a firm believer when I find with a lot of clients I work with is

Schuyler Williamson (03:50)
Yeah.

Sean Patton (04:01)
You know, the more senior of a leadership role they get in, right? The more responsibility to have the more, the more reports, the busier they get. And it's almost like a badge of honor that they're running from meeting to meeting. You know, I mean, the amount of calls I have where, you know, the response I was, sorry, I'm back to back today. Right. It's just like, it's like a badge of honor for leaders to do that. and, and I, I'm like you, think the, the further up you get, right? If you're just the, if you're the individual contributor, like on the ground, just like executing.

Schuyler Williamson (04:18)
Yeah.

Sean Patton (04:31)
Your day needs to be filled with primarily execution, but the higher up you get, need to create that space. you know what, I guess what advice do you give to leaders who say I'm too busy to stop and do that strategic planning and thinking I have too many things to do. Like how, would you recommend? How would they think about that?

Schuyler Williamson (04:49)
Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say is the only way for you to free yourself up is to give yourself time to think. Tony Robin talks about it this way. You gotta lead the business that you have today while you're building the business that you're gonna have tomorrow. You won't have a business tomorrow if you're not building that along the way. And a lot of that building comes from the time that you spend thinking.

And if you're surprised, I mean, this is the thing like the subheader to my book is leadership models that bring clarity in times of chaos. If you're experiencing chaos in your business, if you're experiencing chaos in your life, you're responding. You don't have clarity.

And, you know, in our world, when we were soldiers, you know, we both led, right? We were both officers. The Army like spoon fed us this. They said the first thing that you do when you plan is you do this thing we call the situation paragraph.

which you look at the environment, you look at the enemy's composition, you look at your friendly composition. And then we literally ask ourselves, what's the most probable course of action and what's the most dangerous course of action of our competition. And then we go to the terrain board and we like, we walked through some of that stuff and so many leaders in business because they're there. And the thing is, they're genuinely trying to do the right thing. They're trying to stay busy and earn their money that they're being paid.

and being busy feels good, right? But if you just go straight into planning how you're going to execute and you don't spend that time thinking upfront of like, okay, well, if I do this, what's going to happen here or what is my competitive advantage versus the competition's competitive advantage? What is the environment right now? How is that going to influence things? If you don't spend that upfront time thinking, I mean, your plan.

could work, right? But I can tell you the chances of your plan actually working out really well will increase superiorly if you spend that time upfront kind of assessing the situation.

Sean Patton (06:50)
Yeah, I think that's such a great point. And there's many tools that we got in the military. And I think that that operations order process that we, that we both learned starting with, you know, defining the situation that you're in first, right? In terms of the enemy yourself, like you mentioned the terrain and, we can sort of translate that into business, right? We talk about

market analysis and you know, what resources do you have available? whether that's money or people or skill sets or abilities. And, before it's, I think it's just important to remember that you do that before you actually state what the mission is.

Schuyler Williamson (07:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you I, so, you know, you and I talked about energy before, right? And, and one of the things that I teach my team about energy is what if you were planning a mission or a project, right? So I say mission just so they can connect it to the army time that I had. What if you were planning a project as if your life depended on it? I mean, wouldn't you consider the situation before you started planning?

Right? Like you bet you would. And and I'm not this crazy guy around the office that's like, hey, you're actually on on the line. You need to plan that way. But dude, we want we want to excel. And if I'm to pay you to plan that, I want you to plan with excellence. And and so let's bring some urgency to it. Right. If we're going to if we're going to plan, let's bring some urgency to it as if it matters. And that and that's my point.

And so that energy, you that you have to bring that to the situation so that people take it seriously and then they do it the right way. I mean, when you don't do it the right way, you're going to pay for it.

Sean Patton (08:36)
And, know, I know that you've talked about too, how energy is contagious in an organization and you're kind of just mentioning that. like what sort of specific strategies, can leaders use to maintain and even transfer the energy that they have to their teams for, for the project, for the mission.

Schuyler Williamson (08:57)
Yeah. Well, I mean, some of it is just teaching them how to think, right? Like you in your book, you know, I know that a lot of it's just mindset, right? And so if you can, if you can start your day with the right mindset, I mean, your energy is going to start at the top and you don't have to, you don't have to work to bring it up, right? You're just, you just walk in with the right energy. And a lot of my team, I want them to walk in that way.

Hal Elrod wrote a book, The Miracle Morning, which to me gives you a model that you can deploy or at least you can innovate from, right? You can have his model as the base and then say, okay, well, for my life, it's gonna look this way.

And it's all about putting yourself in peak position at the start of the day. You have this miracle morning so that the rest of your day follows that. And it's going to be better. And for me, I wake up very early. I had to in the military, and I just never stopped. So it's a little bit of an advantage for me because I start the day off before everyone else in the world. So I start my day off at 4 15 because 4 o'clock seemed crazy. So I do it at 4 15. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean Patton (10:01)
415 totally normal though totally

not crazy at all

Schuyler Williamson (10:05)
Yeah,

when my wife said, four o'clock, that's crazy. I was like, all right, I'll do 415. Right. And so no normal human being wakes up at 415 and doesn't need coffee. So the first thing I do is go get some coffee. But then, you know, I

I have a goal that I intend to hit every year of reading the Bible all the way through. So I have a reading plan that that's the first thing I do is I have my cup of coffee and I read the word there. Then I pray and meditate. All right. Then I read a business book that I'm ultimately going to journal and post on LinkedIn. I always share my thoughts and that's that's my way of showing my team that, your leaders getting better every single day before you before most of them wake up. I'm making a journal post.

for the world based on what I read and learned that morning. And I'm just showing them. I'm like, hey, look, at least read what I'm posting, right? Because you're going to think what I'm thinking, and you're going to at least consume some of the book that I'm reading, right? And we need to be on the same page. So that's my gift to you.

Then I go work out. I try to get 45 minutes weightlifting in every single day. Usually when I'm lifting weights, I'll listen to worship music. lot of people laugh at that, but you know, like what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to lift my spirit. I'm trying to lift my energy up, right? I'm not going to listen to something that's going to bring me down. I'm not going listen to some news, right? That's going to just stir me up on the inside. I'm going to listen to something that's going to build me up.

At the end of my workout, I'm feeling good. I'm at peak position. And so the cool thing is, is I tell people this story and I write about it in the book, but the transfer of energy, right? So how do you think I am after I'm done working out? I've done all that stuff, right? I've been successful already in the morning and now it's time to go wake my kids up for school. So I'll go upstairs, right? And I'm in...

As you can imagine, I probably am a little bit much when you first wake up because I'm just so fired up at that point. But I go rub on my son first and I'm like, hey man, and my son's He goes, hey dad. And I go, I've been missing you all morning, man. And he goes, I've been missing you too. He repeats things back because he thinks that's the proper thing to do, to be nice. So the first thing I tell him is like, I've been missing you all morning.

And then he'll repeat it back and I'll go, do you know how proud I am of you? And he'll say, I'm proud of you too, dad. And I go, dude, it's going to be an awesome day. Are you ready? And he goes, yeah, I'm ready. And so every single morning, my son and my daughter start their day with their dad doing that. And again, it's a little much and maybe they'll grow out of it. But that intentionality of taking my peak energy that I have right there,

and making sure that they know their daddy's been thinking about them all morning. They know their daddy is proud of them. And you know what? It's going to be an awesome day. Those are the first three things that they consume. And so I'm doing what I can to set my team up for success in that way. And so when I come into work,

You know, I've buffered in a little bit of time for me to go pour into people. So I'll go pour into them like, hey, let me let me tell you what I read this morning or hey, I had a thought. I want to share it with you or hey, how's everything going? You know, like I know that if you don't take care of the person first, they're not going to work hard that day. So I go check the energy. If someone's off, I'm like, hey, you know, let's chat about it I need you to be productive today. I don't tell them that like it's in my head, but like that's I'm checking. I'm checking in. And if they're not ready to go, then I'm going to spend that

time because I'm not gonna lose eight hours with them because they're not ready and and I don't do that for everybody every single day but you know I try to I try to hit a few on the way in at least my key folks right my my top executors I'm gonna hit them and so that's there's no like exact model

But I'll say if you do it every day, you'll know what to do, right? And in some days you'll spend 10 minutes doing it and some days it's 15 seconds. You can open the door and look at them and know like, hey, they're good to go. They look at you and smile like, all right, you're good. I just want to say, hey, and then you keep rolling, right?

Sean Patton (14:13)
man, I, I love that. And that's, that's an inspiring, you know, morning that's I'm big on morning and night routines. And, you know, I'm always torn between, you know, some people, you know, I got really into the morning routine for awhile, you know, where it was like, all right, I've got to, you know, I got to get up. got to, I got to, I got to read.

I got to get my workout in. I got to get hot. I got to get cold. I got to get sunlight. I got to get my protein. I've got a year. just like, you're just like, at some point I think I have to work today. I'm not sure when it's going to happen. Cause I've been prepping for the day all day, you know? But, and then, you know, Alex Ramozi, right? another big influential, business entrepreneur kind of, I guess he's a business owner and, I love his podcast, but he talks about the best morning routine is one where you

Schuyler Williamson (14:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean Patton (15:01)
How fast can you get from waking up to be an effective working? And I'm like, somewhere in between is the right answer, you know? but you made so many good points there. I think two points I don't want people to miss where that is really pure leadership to me is by you're setting the example by. By getting up by being intentional, by showing self-discipline and you're

Schuyler Williamson (15:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean Patton (15:27)
setting the example by pouring into yourself first, which gives your team, both permission, to pour into themselves and, and awesome shows them that you value that, you know, that that that's an important part. really is. And, and then I love the fact that you're journaling your thoughts to the team. Again, setting the example, but also

Schuyler Williamson (15:45)
yeah.

Sean Patton (15:56)
getting there is a, a great way to mass communicate, to get people on the same page so that they know what you value, know what you're thinking, know what you're consuming. and, and really what you're talking about is leadership as opposed to is it's leadership first, management second, leading the person first and management second. Would you say that that's something after you got to the military that you instituted right away?

or through your career have you been, since you've been out of the military, figuring out how to apply that because the military environment and the civilian environment are different in terms of leadership. And what was that? What was that like to get you to the point you're at now?

Schuyler Williamson (16:40)
I think what I found was the leading was very similar, but the situation was very different and the terminology was very different. But leading, Influence, teaching people how to think so they can get what they want, creating clarity in your organization, creating camaraderie, like those things, those things transfer to all organizations. You know, and was blessed to be a ball player growing up.

you learn how to be a teammate, right? But once you know how to be a teammate, then you're learning also how to be a great peer. You're also learning how to be a leader.

You're also learning how to be a follower. mean that team sports are such a beautiful gift and just kind of learning how to be a teammate and then that ultimately that'll transfer from organization to organization and you know they call it the golden rule for a reason. Treat other people the way that you would want to be treated. So

To some extent, leading is just treating people the way that I would want if someone was leading me. And then, by the way, I'm your leader. I won't fail you. I'm I I realize that I'm the lid to this organization. I'm going to push and push and push. And, know, and I there's no way I expect as much from you as I do for myself. There's no way. So I'm going to show you how much I expect of myself. But there but to me, there's two ways to do it. I can push you right, which doesn't feel real great.

when you're trying to push somebody or I can pull you. And I like to pull, I like to show them like, this is where we're going. If you want to be a part of this awesome team, then let's go. And I'm going to help you. I'm going to pull you there. I'm not going to push you. And I think that's a manager's push. And that's what managers are supposed to do. They're supposed to push, hold accountable, measure progress, keep things kind of under control.

That's what managers are supposed to do. But the leading part of it is pulling, right? Follow me, right? We've heard that enough in our life. You know, follow me. I'm gonna show you, right? I'm gonna teach you. I'm gonna help you, right? Leaders wake up in the morning every single day and they say, what does my team need me to be? Right? And that's what I think about. The president of United States,

Schuyler Williamson (18:53)
You know, they're they're the most powerful leader of the world, right? And they they don't get to go to the world and say, hey, you have to do what I say. That's not the way that we lead.

The President of United States wakes up every single morning and asks themselves, who does the country need me to be today so that we can be our best? And that's the way we should, every morning we should wake up and say, who does our team need us to be today so that they can be their best? And I mean, I think that that's the right mindset to have.

Sean Patton (19:26)
That's absolutely true. And I love that you said that I remember as a young officer, had, was mentoring the incoming lieutenants because I was moving away from being my rifle platoon leader. And was getting ready to take over the battalion, scout platoon, scout and sniper platoon leader. And the new, the new lieutenant was coming in and he's like, I'm just not sure like how to behave. We all remember like, you know, as as a young lieutenant, for those of you aren't familiar, like there's

probably no position in the world where someone is giving so much responsibility with so little experience and so little qualifications as a 22, 23 year old that here's 40 people and their lives are in your hands. he was, I'm not sure how to like, how to behave, you know, and I think there's a lot of people that have that, whether it's they're in a new role, they get promoted, they get to a new industry. Like any of us are going to, as we move up or putting these new positions. And I do think the best we have, I,

Schuyler Williamson (19:58)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sean Patton (20:21)
advice I gave him was, imagine that you're, you know, you're the, you're your soldier. Imagine that you're looking up at your platoon leader. Who do you want to see? Like who do you, who do you, who would you want to follow and just be that person? And, and it's, it's, it's such a simple concept. I love that you said it, but it's like, who does my team need me to be? And, and when in doubt, put yourself in their shoes and be like, who would, you know, that person who's in your, your, your office.

And you know, the owner walks in like what would be the perfect boss to walk in that door and then just go be that person.

Schuyler Williamson (20:54)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I just understand that grace, like when you have this chapter in the book titled love, right? And, and the whole point love doesn't directly translate, but I'll get there. it's pursue excellence, not perfection.

The perfection bogs us down, but excellence to me, excellence is the pursuit of you just being the best that you can be. And that's different, right? Like Sean, your best is better than my best. Certainly topic by topic, right? Like we have things that we're great at and things we're not great at. But grace, and this is why I titled it love grace.

gives you the ability to reframe failures as opportunities to just become better, right? Every tough thing that we go through, every single tough thing that we go through, we can use it to just up-level ourselves. And so you have to give yourself that. And when you give yourself that well, you're gonna give it to your team well.

And the mindset around your team ought to be, hey, we cannot waste this failure. This is a gift for us to level up. It's a gift for us to learn something, to get better. And we better not waste this failure.

That's the only, so the failure isn't gonna upset anybody. It's the wasting of the failure that's gonna upset people. So you gotta be this leader that has this aura of grace, right, or love. You gotta love your people so that they feel that from you so that they will go make these attempts to do the right thing. And they're gonna fail, right? You don't want them to wait for you to tell them what to do so that they don't fail because they're waiting for you to tell them. No, you want them to go do things.

And if they fail, so be it. But at least they're going and doing things. And the more you can get them to go and do things, I mean, the faster you're going to be able to move. And so then it just becomes like, OK, well, how can I turn them loose but still have a little bit of control over them? And that's the thinking part. That's teaching them how to think. So the more they think like me, the more I can turn them loose and know that they're going to get there. Right?

Sean Patton (23:04)
Yeah, you know, we don't plan any of this, but it's so funny. Like I've got, a keynote I used to give, and I think it's in my book too. can't even remember now, but like, is, you know, I have like leadership is love. Like, you know, it really is a pouring into people. have to, you have to actually care about them as a human being and lead and leading with love. And, and also, I know I call it adversity, adversity scene, elite teams see adversity as a gift.

It's a chance to get better, right? It's a chance to, it's just like you said, you were, you know, you lift weights every morning, but you haven't been lifting this, the same exact weight for the last 20 years, right? You've been getting, hopefully as you get stronger, you add weight, right? You have, you that that's, that's an amazing opportunity because that added adversity makes you stronger and, propels us forward. And that mindset around seeing adversity around mindset toward

challenges or failure and seeing that as, know, this is how we grow. Thank you. Thank God for this. Thank God this happened to us. Thank God it's happened to our team so we can get better. And I'm wondering if we go tactical with this past past this mindset piece, you know, in the, in the military, had after action review in your, what, in your companies with your teams, how does this process of learning and growing through adversity?

and challenges and failures, what process do you have in place to do that?

Schuyler Williamson (24:30)
Yeah, I mean, it it so in business, they call them post mortems, right? So that's that's a great example of what we were talking about earlier, like, hey, how did you translate the military to, you know, the business world? Well, they just have different words for things, but they're all the same, like the outcome that everybody's after is the same, right? So you and I'll call them after action reviews, we actually call that that's what we call them here in the company. But if you go grab a business book and read it, they call it post mortem. So yeah, I mean, for us, it's

What did you plan for the outcome to be? Like, what did you think was going to happen? OK, so we go through that. Then we say, well, what actually happened? And we go through that. And then we say, what are the one to three things that we can implement today to make sure that we do it better the next time? And it's funny, had a...

This is good, just army story. We were training and brand new LT, right? Don't know anything about anything, but we're smart. We're smart people. And so we're observing and we go through this exercise and I'm sitting there writing down in my book things that I just think the team should tighten up on. Cause I know the book answer.

And so I'm writing these things down and, you know, our non-commissioned officers, our junior leaders are the ones that lead the after action review. And so they, they go through the after action review and, and they pick and they said one thing that they're going to do the next time they do it in the iteration. And so I called, I called my, my junior leader over and I said, Hey Sergeant, you know, I had quite a few things here on my list. I think we could work on and, and he goes, Hey sir.

I mean, I saw those things too and we'll get to it. But if you want to train everybody, you need to give them one thing to work on and we'll do that and we'll get good at that. And then we'll do one more thing and we'll do one more thing. So you give them too many things to do at once. We're not going to make any progress. And he's like, I, you know, I would prefer for them to focus on one thing at a time. And, and I thought it was so simple and brilliant.

I'm the only one that wants to do it all right now. And I'm not capable of doing that, but I want to do that because I feel like that's the right answer. So I think you got to be careful to understand that most people, because it's more than just your things they're worried about in life, most people

aren't going to be able to do more than one to three things that they learned in an exercise. mean, they, you know, so, so pick out the one that's most important, drive that home, repeat about repeat it, you know, all of the time around the company and it'll go away. You will solve that problem. And that's one thing that you're sure you're going to have knocked out. And then we can go to the next thing. Right now you as a leader, if you're capable of remembering everything, the next time we go do a project, you're kind of looking out for that. So, Hey, remember last time we

had this happen to us, you know, let's just kind of get ahead of that. But that's not, that's not what you're driving, right? That's you as a leader kind of saying, watch out, watch out. Are you plan for that? But the team, you want them to take one big step at a time. That's, that's if you can take one big step at a time, you know, every, every, you know, you name it every day or every week, like that's, that's 300 steps in a year. And that's a better company. When you try to do three steps at once,

you actually probably move backwards because it's too difficult. People get frustrated, you know, and they think you're too demanding or whatever and you didn't make any progress. So in fact, you went backwards. So I think that's an important part of it. But to go back, the model is what did you plan to happen? What actually happened? What did you learn from that? And what are we going to do for the better the next time? I mean, that's that's as simple as this. Four questions is simple.

Sean Patton (28:11)
I love that. And I think the leader's job there, right. With input from the team is to determine what the priority is. Like what's right. Like what's the one thing, right. Isn't that's kind of the secret sauce, right.

Schuyler Williamson (28:22)
Yeah, well two things.

Yeah, yeah, the leader. So number one, the leader is creating the culture of like, hey, we don't just accept failure and not learn from it. All right. So that's the first, like we're going to do these postmortems because it's important that we grow every time we do something. So that's the number one job a leader has. and then you're right. The second thing is like, well, what is the priority, right?

We have this vision out in front of us that we want to make a reality. We have this plan. In pursuit of accomplishing this plan toward this vision, what is the top priority that we take away so that we can get to the vision faster?

And that, yeah, I mean that, again, it's all about thinking though. You gotta spend your time thinking about the priority, about what you just went through. you, before you show up to do the after action review, you better have a plan in mind. We're gonna go through the after action review, but I can guarantee you, I know what I want to happen at the end of that after action review. It's somewhat led to an outcome that I want to happen as the leader. Now I won't buy in, so I want the team to be the ones that come up with this stuff.

But if they don't get there, I'm going to leave them there because I know what the priority is.

Sean Patton (29:32)
No, that's so true. You know, I want to shift a bit. You, you've talked about purpose and you, you talked about our leaders purpose needs to be evergreen. It needs to compel you into action and needs to always be about others. Can you explain, I guess, first, what you mean by a purpose needs to be evergreen.

Schuyler Williamson (29:58)
Yeah, you know it.

It needs to be big enough that it can fuel your whole life. I guess that's what I mean by evergreen. So a purpose, if your purpose is too small, like you can get it done quickly, then you're not, that's not a purpose, that's a goal, right? I, purpose needs to be something that is so massive and so big and audacious that it fuels the whole legacy that you're going to leave the world. Okay.

And I think that your purpose will expose your passions and your passion is the fuel source that never runs out. Your desire for money will run out. Your desire for something that you're doing in a job, it will run out. If I work you 17 hours a day, you're gonna burn out. You just are.

Now, if I ask you to do 17 hours a day of work towards something you're extremely passionate about that's in line with your purpose, there is no burnout for that. It's a fuel source that's always there, right? And so I believe that it has to be about other people because...

think you'll quit on yourself, you won't quit on others. And so, you know, I know you went through Ranger school too. This is a perfect analogy. Ranger school is not fun at all. It's horrible actually. I lost 55 pounds while I was there. And I thought about quitting that school every single day. Every single day. I never thought about quitting anything in my life until that school.

And it humbled me. It taught me that there is something that you will quit. Eventually, you will quit. And you know why? It's because when I was at Ranger School, that was an individual achievement that I was after for myself. Now, when I went to combat, I deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we fought every day, some days, multiple times in a day.

I kicked open doors that I knew when I kicked it open, someone was going to shoot at me from the other side. And not one time did I ever think about quitting. Not one time. My life was actually at risk in combat and not at Ranger school. But I, but I was not willing to quit the combat. I was willing to quit the Ranger school. And it's because I had these men that were depending on me, my teammates, my brothers. And I wouldn't quit on them. I won't quit on them.

I would never quit on them. would lay my, so no greater love than lay one's life down for another. I love them that much. I would never quit on them. And so.

Because I was blessed with that experience at the most extreme level, and I have that perspective on what you would quit and where you would not quit. And they're both extreme sure, but one had people and one didn't. Like that gave me clarity around this thing we call purpose. It has to be about other people because you won't quit on other people. You just won't. The right people.

Sean Patton (32:54)
No, no, it's, so true. And, know, in, in my book, you know, I have, call the North star and, I think that story you just told is, is beautiful and it's so true. And it's a great real life example of this. But, you know, I think every living creature. So I guess what I'm saying, I think what you're saying is absolutely true. And I think it's also universal.

And I almost took it down like one more level and say, you know, every living creature is its most happy content and fulfilled when its activities and environment are aligned with its genetic purpose. And, and I mean, it's true. It's true for plants. it's true for animals, right? Like if you take, you know, I, I was, during COVID, my, my wife and I, you know, when we, when we all thought it was going to be a, two months snow day.

you know, we're binge watching like the, the zoo, like there's a show called the zoo. And we're watching these different zoos and they have to do these enrichment activities, right? Like you have like, so the lions, they would make them like simulate and chase this ball. It's like rabbit and do a hunt. And then after they caught it, they would feed it. And, know, same thing with like these penguins, they like make them do stuff and then they would get to eat, they get rewarded and they would, you know, so if you took a lion and you put it in a cage, I mean, and gave it, you know,

All medicine and food, basically free healthcare and free food, but no purpose, no, not, it wasn't able to do what it was designed to do. It would deteriorate and die. And I think what makes human beings unique is that we're tribal creatures, right? Like we, we, for years, we. We've we, came to the top of the food chain because we could communicate and work together in unison and we all had roles. And, and you sum that up, you know, with the co like.

with being on sports teams and having people above us and coaches and elders to learn from. And then we were able to pass that knowledge on to others and we were peers and we get fulfillment from being a part of that tribe and contributing to that tribe. And I think what you're describing here is exactly that same conclusion that it has to be a fulfilling life purpose as a human being has to be about other people. And

But I think it's a powerful message because I don't think that's a message, at least in our society that is pushed, right? That's not what modern marketing is telling us. So how do we, how do we instill that and show that and, grow leaders that think about that and the power of fulfillment in the selfless service of leadership versus the

you know, attainment of financial or material gains or status or fame or all the other things that our society tells us, you know, leads to happiness.

Schuyler Williamson (35:47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's.

Yeah, tough problem solve, right? Or every parent in the world would give that gift to their kids, right? You know, I do talk about being healthy. And to me, health is a four-legged stool. One leg is physical health, right? If you don't take care of your body, your body will fail you. And...

It doesn't matter how healthy you are in other ways. You have to have a certain level of physical health. And I sum it up real quick with people. I ask them directly, is your body a liability or is it an asset?

You know, I push myself every morning because I need, I need massive energy to go through the whole day. Right. my, my, there's lots of families that depend on me to be able to do that. and plus if you, if you exercise, you know, it's harder for your body to harbor stress and all the things that leaders have to hit head on. The second thing is mental health, right? That's the second leg. And to me, mental health,

is about that growth mindset. So this is why I read every single morning, right? Is because I'm not gonna settle, I'm gonna grow, right? And if you wake up every morning with a growth mindset, you're gonna be mentally healthy, right? Because you're gonna feel in control. And when you feel in control, you're gonna feel better mentally. And then legs three and four to me are spiritual health. And to me,

When you wake up in the morning, you're going to think one or two things. You're going to think, this is what I'm going to get. Or you're going to think about the people you're going to help to the extent that you wake up in the morning and you think about others.

That's how healthy you are spiritually. If you think about if you think about some of the most miserable people in the world, it's all about woe is me. I don't I don't have this. I don't have that. I'm a victim in however which way you want to call it. They're not spiritually healthy, right? Because the second that you start thinking about other people, you forget about all the stuff that's happening to you, right? You go out and you try to do for others and

And so, you know, when you look at all the major religions of the world, they all talk about love. And yes, you do have to love yourself, right? But they spend 95 % of the things that they're right about in their Bibles, right? Writing about loving others.

And so, yeah, I mean, there's a reason why spirituality is a big part of us as human beings, because there was a void that we know is there unless we're spiritually healthy. And it's all about love. It's all about love and love for others. It's a big piece of it. So if I were to like...

You know, when I walk in here, I'm not afraid to tell my team that I love them. I don't expect them to give it back to me. I realize there's a lot of things that make up whether you love someone or not, but you get my love right away. Right. And to me, love is patient. Love is kind. Love ignores faults, right? Love is steady. Love provides trust. You know, these things are a gift that we can give someone without expecting anything in response to that.

And when you're that type of leader, when you show your team that love is first in our business, then you're kind of making the steps toward where you were trying to go with this. And so you got to show your team how to love, you know, and you got to love them, right? You pull them where you're at. I don't have an expectation.

that everybody loves everybody, like in the true sense of how people use the word love. But I do expect everybody to walk in this organization and think about the others. I do. They think about their clients. They think about their teammates. They think about how they're going to be a piece in this machine that we're going to all use to go try to get something special done.

Sean Patton (39:50)
You know, we've talked about love in terms of energy. We've talked about leadership is love. We've talked about how leadership is fulfillment and service. And, and that really ties with my belief that the path to becoming a leader is a path to become the greatest version of yourself for the reasons that you just described, more eloquently than I ever have.

that, know, you're talking about a leader as being someone who, loves puts others before themselves. And when you do that, and then you're, you're self-disciplined and you create routines and you're healthy and you provide clarity and you're growing and you're pouring into others and you're setting the example, like all those things that, and you're not talking about just someone who was in a

management role or a business owner. talked about leading their clients, leading their customers, leading their families. And so I think that just ties up beautifully. And I appreciate the work you're doing because it's so aligned with what my C minor star is with creating, you know what I'm calling no limit leaders, people who are breaking through, you know, self-imposed barriers and limits.

become the greatest version of themselves so they can inspire others to do the same. And so I love the work that you're doing. and I'm really excited for your, your book to come out. And, so when people want to make sure they get on that pre-order list and they can hear more from you, like, how did they go do that?

Schuyler Williamson (41:30)
Yeah, you can go to our website, schuylerwilliamson.com. You follow me on LinkedIn. I post every morning what I'm reading. So if you're not a big reader of a book and you just want to get the Cliff Notes every morning, you can just follow along. But I think those are the two easiest ways. You go to the website, schuylerwilliamson.com. You can see everything that I'm working on. obviously, we'll make the book available for pre-order there.

Sean Patton (41:55)
Awesome. Well, it was great to reconnect with you for this after all of our years. We've got our 20 year reunion coming up next year, which is insane back at West Point. are you going or are bringing the family too or what?

Schuyler Williamson (42:14)
Yeah, honestly, I haven't thought about it. I mean, I think I have to go. I think my wife would like destroy me if I didn't go. So the answer to that is yes. But I haven't thought too much about it. I was laughing when you said it because I used to think like, man, these guys are just so tired. These guys walking around with their 20 year. I'm like, they're just so beat down. And here we are, man. 20 years.

Sean Patton (42:38)
I know.

I'll tell you what, I have moments of feeling beat down, but I mean, I don't know if it's just you and me. I'll tell you what it is to bring it back to you talking about passions because, I, before we wrap here, I see this as an example, my wife who's awesome at her job, loves her job. She's great at.

but she needs like rest time on the weekend because she's drained from doing her job.

Schuyler Williamson (43:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sean Patton (43:03)
And I legitimately, I could, you know, half day on a Sunday and I would continue to do this, but it's because the, what I'm doing is so aligned with my passion. I, and, and I think there's something to be said for that. And, and it'd be interesting to see, to see when we go back, you know,

Schuyler Williamson (43:23)
You're doing it for others. you, because of what you do as a profession, you can feel the impact for others right away. I don't know what your wife does for a living, but it's probably a longer route to see how she's impacting others. it's, yeah, yeah, yeah. So perfect, right? Like she's helping people.

Sean Patton (43:36)
Yeah, she's a sales manager. So yeah.

Schuyler Williamson (43:41)
And certainly she can bring that mindset to what she's doing. But the reason why you could go and go and go and go is because your purpose is about other people. And man, you're like, you can see it happening. So the idea would be, was like, okay, well, how can she bring that into her organization? The way you feel every day, how could she bring that? And then watch the excitement and the productivity go through the roof.

Sean Patton (44:06)
It's so true, absolutely. Well, thank you so much. This is awesome, brother.

Schuyler Williamson (44:10)
Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm grateful to be on the show.

Sean Patton (44:13)
I'll talk to you soon