Carnivore Leadership Meets Overcoming Impossible

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Dr. Patrick Donley:

All right, good morning AFA. I am super excited to be here. My name is Patrick Donley. I run AFA’s Doolittle Leadership Center. And I gotta tell ya, this is like the most intimidating panel to moderate. ‘Cause I’m here with these, I mean, look at ’em. I’m starstruck here. And so in preparation for this, I wore the tightest fitting suit I had. I did some pushups beforehand. I did Crest white strips last night just to try to fit the image here. It’s a real pleasure to be on the panel with two exceptional leaders. And the thing that I think is really amazing about these two guys is you know something about them. And in a way, that’s just a caricature of who they really are. Even the amazing things you know is just a small piece of the impact and the influence that they have as leaders.

We’ll start with Ramon, Chief Master Sergeant Ramon Colon Lopez, CZ as he’s known, former Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman. You also know him as a war hero, as a guy who’s had amazing influence and now as an author who’s written the book, “Carnivore Leadership” and who continues to have amazing impact and influence really at the highest levels.

Next to him, Chef Robert Irvine. You know him, what’s that?

Robert Irvine:

A guy who makes eggs.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

A guy who makes eggs. That’s his claim to fame. He’s an award-winning chef. He’s an entrepreneur. You may know him from his restaurant in the Pentagon. You may know him from his amazing brand of fitness products. What you may not know is the influence that this guy has, not only within industry, but at the very highest levels of governments. And that’s a plural. The things that he is doing to change life for all of us is amazing. And he has also written a book called “Overcoming Impossible.” And so it’s exciting.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here with me. I’m excited about this conversation. I know you guys know each other. I know y’all do this a lot together. So my anticipation is I’m gonna say something and I’m not gonna get to say anything again until to the very end when I say, “Please join us for book signing.”

So let me throw just a teaser out there, get the conversation started. You both come from very different walks of life. You both became famous from very different aspects that required leadership. You’ve both written books on leadership. I have a sense that while you’ve both come from very different perspectives and very different walks of life, the aspects that make up good leadership are very similar. They just are applied within different contexts. And so I’d like to just give you an opportunity, each one of you, to talk about, whether it’s in the context of your book or broader than that, what goes in, what are the essentials for good leadership in the world that you came through?

Ramon “CZ” Colon-Lopez, USAF (Ret.):

Well, good morning, everyone. It’s good to be back home. And, you know, to the Chiefs, thank you so much for being gracious hosts. And obviously to my great partner, Robert, it’s always an honor to be in your company. And Doc, man, we have done this several few times, so great being here with you. One of the things that Robert and I always talk about when it comes to leadership is disruption. And it is about going against the grain. It is about exploring the things that haven’t been done yet that can potentially create or yield better results.

And with that comes a lot of aggression. You know, you have to be motivated and willing to be able to go ahead and get into that great unknown to achieve the results that you wanna achieve. But in the middle of all of it, being disruptive and aggressive, you also have to be compassionate. You have to take the people’s mindset when it comes to the change that you want to implement. And you have to help them be able to understand the why.

Robert Irvine:

How do I follow SEAC? Yeah, totally disruptive. I am a very loud, aggressive person, my wife says. How do you change something that’s been setting place for many, many years? And you’re all leaders in the room. And at some point, you have to challenge not only yourself, but everybody, and I’m not saying you go up to the chief and you say, “Oh, you’re doing that wrong.” If there’s a problem, you solve the problem, and you go to the chief and say, “Hey, this was a problem, can we change this?” That’s how I met this guy.

Leadership to me is empathetic. It is ego-less. It is approachable. Because if you can’t talk to a Soldier, Sailor, Airman, a Guardian, they’re never gonna come to you. And why I have the advantage over all of you, everybody’s sitting here, I have the advantage. Why? Because somebody won’t come to you with a problem very rarely, but if you sit a meal in front of them, or a cup of coffee, it takes the guard down, and it allows them to decompress, and I get to know more about their families, and about them, and about their problems, and I’ll give an example.

I was just at Barksdale Air Force Base, with a B-52 bomber, who doesn’t wanna be one of them guys, right? But on their flight line, there’s no food. It wasn’t the four-star general that told me that, it was the pilots, and the maintainers, and the people on the flight line. What do I do? I go to the four-star general, and I said, hey, this is not acceptable. We can’t feed them. That’s aggression, by the way, to a four-star. He was a colonel when I met him a few years ago. I’m gonna leave that there. Aggression can get things done, not all the time, but when you problem-solve, like I just told you, in three weeks, there’ll be food on that flight line, because I’m gonna make that happen. So that’s the advantage I have, is food, but the empathy side comes in when you sit and break bread with somebody. It does two things, and you think about an aircraft carrier that you’ve just all heard about, right? I know I’m in the wrong room for that, but you heard about it. There was plenty of food. There was plenty of water. There was plenty. Deployment was tough, but five people on an aircraft carrier weren’t happy, and yet the media blew that whole proportion. The skipper on that ship is a good friend of mine. The one star on that ship is a good friend of mine, but the media blew it out of proportion, and we had to bring that back. And leadership, in this case, no aggression, just go into the press and tell them the truth, without ego, change that narrative, literally.

So for me, I use food as a tool, not only to break down barriers, but also to make sure that I know what the Airman, that Sailor, that Guardian, that Marine is going through. And then I go to the senior leadership and I say, “Hey, do you know this?” Because they’re so busy, they don’t know the minutiae, the details. That’s where I come in. I don’t wear a uniform, which means I can get away with a lot more than you can. By the way, that’s not good all the time, but I think that’s what leadership is, is being disruptive and changing things when they don’t work. I think that’s my biggest superpower, our biggest superpower.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

So let me just pull on that a little bit, because I think in an audience like this, you say two amazing leaders, they’re exemplars. They say be disruptive. There’s a chance that that might be misinterpreted and I’m just gonna go disrupt a bunch of stuff. What I hear you saying is when there is something that’s not working correctly or could be done better, how do I use my rank and my position in this moment to inject into the system something needs to change and that in itself is the disruption? Is that fair?

Robert Irvine:

Yes, but think about this. Our military has for years been military, dating back to whatever. The food system in the military, how many people in here can tell me who runs the food system in our military? Anybody, and you won’t be able to tell me. Secretary of Education, how does that work? 1936, Congress gave the Secretary of Education power to run the military’s food. I found out about it three years ago. I wrote a document to the Secretary of Defense who literally took the document, put his name and signed it and we changed legislation to get better food. Did anybody know that? I didn’t know either.

Ramon “CZ” Colon-Lopez, USAF (Ret.):

That’s like giving Defenders the authority to go ahead and be in charge of maintenance of facilities. How does that happen?

Dr. Patrick Donley:

So I think I get your point there. I’m curious, in addition to being a disruptor for the good, disrupting for the good, you’ve both written books on leadership, “Carnivore Leadership,” “Overcoming Impossible.” I don’t know for sure that you’ve read each other’s books, but I’m curious, if you were to take out an aspect of that book that, boy, if I was gonna really suggest people take one thing out of this, what would that be? CZ, we’ll start with you.

Ramon “CZ” Colon-Lopez, USAF (Ret.):

What in “Carnivore Leadership” is like, boy, you can’t miss this one? Well, so we both have read our books. Obviously, he wrote almost like the foreword for my book. And when I was in the process of writing my book, Robert gave me a lot of help and coaching on how to do that. But I think that one of the biggest things that you get out of my book is just maintaining an open mind with humility in order to listen to people, because there were times where I got that wrong. I thought that I had the ultimate answer to something, and I failed to listen to people that were giving me some great advice, you shouldn’t go about it that way. And that was tough, because when you actually come to terms with the fact that, man, you disregarded some valuable input from people that really care, probably care more than you do, man, you feel really bad as a leader.

But humility, I think, is the foundation of everything that happens with carnival leadership. And that’s the reason I wrote the paper to begin with, because I got to see many figureheads in many places to where their ego got the best of them. You know, they were all about themselves, I have arrived, so therefore, you know, kiss the ring. I was just like, man, I’m never gonna do that. I am never gonna do that. I’m always gonna be on the level, never forgetting where I came from, and I’m always gonna go ahead and pay it back to the Airmen, Guardians, and then as a joint guide to everybody in the Department of Defense on that same fashion.

So it doesn’t matter how many stars or how many stripes you had, man, the time was the same, and the effort was the same, and the focus on the issue was always the same.

Robert Irvine:

Echo everything there. For me, I wrote “Overcoming Possible” because I was doing a TV show that I could do one restaurant a week, and I had 2,000 applications a week to help, and I could only do one. It’s a real 48 hours, and we run a lot of companies. I could only do one, so I wrote the book, and the book was about leadership, about people, about the wins and the losses and the egos and the variables in business, which they’re almost, if you read them, they’re almost identical.

I talk about the wins and the losses and how many losses you can take, but they get disregarded when you have one win. It’s a humanistic book, and there’s a lot of real-life stories in there about real-life people that they’ve overcome their biggest fear, and we are afraid to, major companies and big organizations are afraid of change because it takes an act of Congress in the military to change something, right?

It’s not easy. It’s the same with Fortune 100 companies. They’re afraid to do something they’ve been doing for years and break the mold, and overcoming the possible is not gonna teach you how to be rich, although if you read it well, and you read this one chapter, and I make people read one chapter, write their questions, then go back two days later, read the first chapter, and answer their own questions. So it’s a really self-help book. It’s a blueprint to be successful and not make the mistakes that I made. We all make mistakes, but if you make the same mistake twice, shame on you. Once, it’s okay, and you can continue to make mistakes, but it can’t be the same mistake, and that’s what the book is really about, and how to deal with, I use this all the time, because this happened, this is a real-life scenario. Fortune 100 company. Ramon has an autistic child. He comes into work. I see there’s something not right with him. I know my people. What’s going on? Oh, my son’s having an episode today. Okay, go home, take care of your son. I’ll keep paying you. When you’re ready, come back.

What does that do? It creates loyalty, because now I’m taking care of the family. I’m taking care of him. He’s never leaving my company, ever, and by the way, our companies, nobody’s left in 19 years, not one turnover, because we take care of them, and that’s what the book is about.

How do we listen to people? God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. Listen first, compute, then speak. By the way, that was very hard for me to learn that, but that’s what the book’s about, and yes, we’ve both read each other’s book. The essence of both books are the same, but in different languages.

Ramon “CZ” Colon-Lopez, USAF (Ret.):

So you have the British version and the American version. No, but here’s something else about the book. So when you really look at the mindset and the method, it’s truly the same. For me to become a pararescueman, I had to overcome the impossible, and that impossibility was the naysayer. All of the people that told me, “Oh, you’re never gonna make it through that.” And my question back to them was pretty simple. It’s like, “Have you ever tried it?” Well, no. Then what gives you the right to tell me that I can or cannot do that? And there’s a lot of people out there that like to go ahead and tip on the side of negativity and tell you what you cannot do. Don’t do that. Just go ahead and blaze your own path and keep on moving forward in that direction. And what you’re gonna discover about yourself and the impact that you can make is gonna make you a better person and a better leader.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

Yeah, and I’m just gonna piggyback on that just for a second. You don’t realize how powerful a word can be until somebody comes back to you 10 years later and says, “You once said this to me and it changed the direction of my life.” It can be a power for good or it can be a power for ill. And it’s the job of a leader, I think, to be intentionally looking for opportunities. How do I give you a word that’s gonna change you for the better? And it’s incredibly powerful if you’re in a position of authority or supervision, it’s amazing how much weight your words actually carry. So don’t miss those opportunities because when time passes, you don’t get it back.

Let me ask you another question ’cause you both were just touching on the importance of thinking about the people, taking care of the people, pouring into the people. What would you say to people who say, “I am so focused on pouring into the people that I don’t wanna set high standards for them and then hold them to those standards because I don’t wanna be a mean person. I don’t wanna be a bad guy.” What would you say to that?

Ramon “CZ” Colon-Lopez, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, you wanna take that one first or?

Robert Irvine:

Yeah, I want you to be the best you. I don’t care if you think I’m mean. People say I’m mean on TV, right? I’m not mean. I just want you to achieve the best You you can achieve. And if that means me pushing you, then get ready to be pushed. People say all the time, and some of you I know, some of you don’t, I’m changing the military feeding platform right now. I sit with the President of the United States, I sit with the Chairman, I sit with the SEAC, every secretary of every branch, and I’m not exactly a nice human being. I tell them what they’re missing. Not because an ego, it’s because I wanna make better. I want the Airmen to feed better, I want the Sailors to be fed better, I want their life is given to this nation, and we give them the top technology, the Space Force, we give all this stuff, right, guns and bullets and things, but we have lost a way in how do we take care of people.

I don’t have to say yes sir, no sir, I’m very respectful, don’t get me wrong, but I want them to understand the gravity of not changing the feeding, right, or buying from DLA and paying more money. I can tell you in eight dynasties in the Army that we’ve just changed, and the Army was first, over $300 million in savings that go back into the government to buy planes and trains and automobiles. So for me, I want the Airman, I want the pilot, the Sailor, I want them to be the best, and if I have to push them to be the best, I’m okay with that because I had the same thing.

I didn’t become successful because I was, “oh, don’t worry, everything’s gonna be okay.” We’re in the military. You have a job to do. We have to hold you accountable. If you don’t do the job, there’s systems in place, just like in civilian world, that go through if you don’t do your job. I’m holding you accountable because I’m held accountable every day.

I don’t get paid by the government. I do this 345 days a year around the globe with him, most of the time, and we change lives, but we’re honest, and some people can’t take honesty. So when you say, oh, you don’t, you know, no. They have a job, they have to want to get better. They want the next rank, they want the next position, and I’m gonna push them people, just like I did the enlisted aides yesterday, to do a better job. So if I’m mean, okay, I’m mean, but I want, when you walk out this room, to have a different perspective on what leadership is. You don’t have to be mean, but you do have to get the best out of people, and that is not all people are the same. He may like money, I may like vacations. You have to understand the people that work for you, or with you, because once you understand them, I go back to that empathetic leadership. They’re the front line. We listen to them, ’cause they’re giving us answers, and if we don’t, as leaders, listen to them, then we have failed. So if you come to me and say something, and it’s something we can change, then we change, if it makes sense. But I also want you to continue your education, and grow up to be the next chief. I’m not gonna be soft on you. I’ll listen to you, but I’m gonna push you. So I’m not a nice guy.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

And by pushing, I just wanna, and CZ, I’ll get to you right next, but I wanna follow up on that. By pushing, you are pushing because you care, not because you don’t care. Is that fair?

Robert Irvine:

No, absolutely. Anybody that knows me knows that I spend 345 days a year on the road visiting bases for morale, but also to understand what we don’t have in the force so I can come back and change that, or hopefully change that by speaking to the people that I have relationships with. But I want the Sailors, Airmen, I want them, and I said this last night at our dinner, I want them to continue their education to become the best they can be. So when they leave the service, they become productive, already productive in the military, but then they go on to make more money and get better positions because they’ve learned in the military.

There’s nothing wrong with being strong or direct because you do care. We care about everybody that puts on a uniform because there’s only 1% of the country that does that. So yeah, I do what I do because I believe in every one of our joint force. You’re a little different to me, but.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

CZ.

Ramon “CZ” Colon-Lopez, USAF (Ret.):

So if you thought my grin was big when you mentioned accountability, you should have seen B9 and Dave Wolfe, man. You know, these guys are on the same wavelength when it comes to accountability. So my relationship with Robert started when I was at the combatant command level. And this was when the ego and accountability and humility discussion actually ended up basically becoming the foundation of our relationship. A while back, I wrote something that was along the lines that accountability is not hostility. And a lot of people get that wrong, to where somebody tries to correct you, all of a sudden they’re imposing in your comfort, and therefore they’re being hostile towards you. And that is not the case.

When you really care about the institution, accountability is a must. It’s not a shall, you know, it’s not a maybe. It is a must. And that is because if you do not have the discipline to take care of the small things, you’re gonna fail at the big things. You’re gonna think that orders are suggestions, and you’re bound to go ahead and go down a path that is gonna go ahead and destroy, destruct your reputation, your credibility, and your combat effectiveness.

It is that simple, gang. You know, when you make rank, you make rank for two reasons. Number one, you’re good at your job. Number two, you’re showing potential to teach others how to be as good as you in that particular profession. You have to flourish in both arenas. And with being uncomfortable, having those tough, being comfortable with the uncomfortable and having the tough conversations to help your people be better, that is really the true essence of leadership. There’s not an easy conversation between us and David and the rest of the team that is in the Irvine Enterprise. Everything is tough, but eventually, that becomes the norm. That becomes the norm.

And for those of you that have known me for 20, 30 years, you know that I have never changed for that reason, never wavered, because the expectation is always gonna be the same. It’s right or wrong, and if you’re not doing it right, I’m gonna teach you how to do right. And if you’re not doing it right and you continue to do wrong, then I’m gonna tune you up. It’s that simple. Nothing ever changed. But that wasn’t because I wanted to be forceful or disruptive in the negative sense of it. It was because I wanted each and every one of you to be better, and that is really what a leader does. You help people become better. And it’s not always gonna be rosy, but it’s always gotta be right.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

Yeah, great words from both of you there. I don’t think there needs to be an either/or. I’m going to lead you. I’m gonna set high standards because I care for you. That’s the essence of care, is that I’m going to make you better.

Robert Irvine:

We have the best NCO corps in the world. No other country can rival that. And why? Because people have trained you to do something, just like CZ said. We hold you accountable because you’re teaching the next generation of people. That’s our future. That’s what’s important. And for me, I give my life to service, just like all of you do. It’s really important what CZ just said there. We have to hold you accountable. Number one, ’cause we want you to grow, but also, the country holds, we have a country of accountable people. Well, most of it, and the rest I’ll leave there. Yes. But it’s important.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

Let me ask you this question, ’cause you both touched on the importance of thinking about individual people and addressing them as they need to be addressed. I think sometimes, and you guys are both at kinda the top of your game. You’ve had large, very large organizations that you’re responsible for leading. I think the tendency for leaders is when you’re in charge of a group that’s, say, this big. There’s 1,000 people in the room. They all look pretty much the same. Everybody’s wearing a uniform. Everybody’s haircut’s kinda the same. It’s very easy to see this as just a faceless, nameless crowd, an organization that I lead. How important is it, rather than seeing this leadership as an organization, but leadership as a group of individual people that I need to address individually in the way that I’m leading them?

Ramon “CZ” Colon-Lopez, USAF (Ret.):

Well, so that’s another key factor of leadership, that each case has gotta be dealt with in its own merit. You cannot come with a carte blanche method of leadership. This is my cut line. If you get a DUI, this is what I’m gonna do to you. You always gotta go ahead and look deeper into the circumstances that led into that. And Robert talked about it with my autistic child, which, by the way, I never had children. But if I did, I don’t know. But the key thing about it is that if a leader doesn’t take the time to understand the background of the situation and what led to that event, then you’re failing them. You’re failing them.

I almost got kicked out of the Air Force as a one-striper. And if it wasn’t for one NCO to have compassion and take my case on its own merit and give me an opportunity to overcome, man, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be here talking to you. But each one of you, when you have the responsibility of leadership, you have the power to make that impact on somebody’s life, to give them a second chance. And I can guarantee you that both Binan and Dave Wolfe are gonna be backing you up because they come from the same school. They come from the same school. And when the institutional leadership coming from Cruiser Wilsbach to Dave Wolf, to Doug Schiess and John Bentivegna, man, they’re willing to go ahead and do that for you because it is important for us to grow.

And I will tell you that I didn’t learn from success. I learned from failure. I really learned from failure. And why? Because it made me feel bad. Because it almost took away the thing that was most important to me at the time. And that was credibility and being an upstanding member of the United States Air Force. But man, you know, each case on its own merit, you have to do that. Otherwise, you will fail as a leader.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

Robert, is that true, as true in the kitchen or in the boardroom as it is, as CZ just described it? Is it true in your world?

Robert Irvine:

I already used this with these autistic children that he doesn’t have. He may have, but he’s not telling me that. We have to think individually. So when I sit with leaders, senior leaders in government, the president or the vice president or whatever, I have to understand their vision of something. So individuality, and I’ve already said it, I’ve got to know what makes you tick in your command, in your squad, in your plane, in your… And each one is individual. And you have to know. It’s very hard for the chief to know everybody because it’s such a big Air Force, right? But the individual commanders and squadron leaders and all, not that you have that as a British thing, but you have to know who’s working with you and what makes them tick.

And I said that earlier on. It’s the same in a civilian world. It’s the same with, you know, John from CEO of Walmart, who I deal with. There’s nobody in senior leadership in the top 100, Fortune 100 companies that I don’t guide, literally. They were all at the White House last week, 22 of them, with Brooke Rawlings, RFK, and a few other people I won’t name, but to try and figure out feeding. So for me, I don’t care what you do, leadership isn’t the same in every…

So take Walmart as a prime example. I’ll use that as a prime example. The Walton family, Sam Walton was an Army aviator. His plane’s in Bentonville. If you go there, you can see his plane in the original store. Look at the size of that company, but their culture was wrong. I changed that culture, literally. We built a 500,000 square foot facility for families. We built a 300 million facility for babysitting because they didn’t get the people business, they got the money business. You’re in the freedom business, right? It’s the same thing. Leadership, no matter whether you get out of the Air Force, your Navy, whatever, I always say this about NCOs. When you leave the military after 20 or 30 years, you’re so valuable because your experience you have in the leadership roles, and we allow you to make decisions on the spot because it requires that. When you go into the civilian world, there are people trying to push you down all the time, but you know better as NCOs and leaders how to make teams happen, and the civilian world doesn’t know that.

That’s where I come in with a big stick and literally change that law from 1936 with a certain amount of people in the White House, no matter what Democrat, Republican, I don’t care. I’m apolitical because I feed the military. I don’t care what you do, just support what I’m doing. So for me, it’s an individuality-based thing. I sit with the CEO of Walmart or the CEO of Piggly Wiggly or Compass or Aramark CEOs, and I have to understand what they’re thinking and their bottom line. How do they make money, but not at the expense of my Airmen, not at the expense of my Guardians. And you can read about it. I take them to task for charging us more money than what they should do. And they’ll say, “No, we’re gonna bid it out. “We’re not taking it.” DLA, whoever it is, because that Airman, and just like I told you about the four-star general, one day, he may be the chief, he may be whatever, or she may be. Our job is to make sure that we give them the best at everything, not just planes and trains or uniforms, everything. So it’s an individual sport. You have to know everybody within your core group.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

Yeah, and core group, I think, is so key there. ‘Cause sometimes it feels like, well, I’m now a superintendent over a group of 250. How in the world can I know everybody? But that’s why we have a chain of command. Do I know the people who I am directly responsible for? Am I leading them well? And does that example then permeate to who they lead, to who they lead? That’s how you have the influence across. Do you even know the people you’re responsible for to that degree? And are you leading them well?

Robert Irvine:

So last night, prime example, I asked 350 people, all three stars, four stars, secretaries, or whatever. I said, think about one person that you know that hasn’t been fed or doesn’t sit with people. They’re on the phone. Families that don’t eat together. And I said, think about one person. Don’t tell me who it is. But the next three days, contact that person and sit and have coffee or Danish or food and get to know them better. We’ve made a big mistake in the military, in my opinion, and I’ll share it with you because I’m gonna share it with you.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

You got the microphone.

Robert Irvine:

If you look at 133 suicides a day, 64% are military. When I was in the Navy, and I worked for Prince Charles, now King Charles, we lived in barracks of six or eight people. Not at your level or the chief’s level. They have single rooms ’cause it is what it is. The dining facility was a place where, so we slept, we ate together, and I can see what’s going on with him. And we don’t do that anymore because we build barracks with single rooms and the dining facilities are not good and they go and spend their own money, which is kind of crazy when you think about it.

We’re already taking money from these people and then it’s not good because these contractors take the money and they go out to APs and they buy something that’s not as good as we can cook. We’re changing that process, but that’s the disruptive piece for me is challenging what we’ve done in the past to what we’re gonna do in the future. You see all these pictures of planes and drones and all these amazing things, but we still have to have people to do that. And if we don’t take care of them people, and I made a lifelong commitment to it, then all them planes and trains and tanks and submarines, it doesn’t matter because we’ve lost the human being.

For the first time, when we met, we started to think about the human being, the soldiers, sailors, and not the hardware. Still holding them accountable, but we have to take care of them. And don’t mean give them sushi every day in the dining facility either. We have to give them good quality, real, nutritious food. We have to give them a uniform. We have to give them whatever their MOS is. I go into a dining facility, and I’m making it about food for a second, because it’s the same with everything.

If I don’t give you a knife to do your job, by the way, I cut my finger. If I don’t give you a knife, it’s like me giving you a gun and one bullet and saying take on the Chinese army. You’ll get one shot off, then you’re hit, and then you’re dead. If we don’t give them the tools to do their job, train them correctly, show them if they make mistakes, then we failed as leaders. And I tell that to senior leadership every day. Last night, you were there. I told them last night, “hey guys, we’ve really got to think about the decisions we make,” and that’s why the Chief and SEACs people do what they do because they’re great at it. You don’t get a rank just because, oh, it’s your turn, right? So, very passionate about that.

Ramon “CZ” Colon-Lopez, USAF (Ret.):

If you give me one bullet to go after the Chinese army, you know who I’m gonna shoot? General Tso, ’cause he’s making more people fat than anything else.

Robert Irvine:

You know I’ve got an answer for that, don’t you?

Dr. Patrick Donley:

So, what might be the hardest task I have all day is to ask a question and hold you guys to about 45 seconds of an answer, okay? So, you’re both at the level where you’re able to bring in, whether it was in your military time or in your restaurants or in your companies, the top talent. You’re able to bring in people who really are coming in at their top capability. How important is developing those people, even if they come in at top tier talent, how important is it to pour into them development in the midst of being extremely busy with a thousand different things on your plate?

Ramon “CZ” Colon-Lopez, USAF (Ret.):

So, I’ll give it from the context of your previous comment of having to lead 250 people and getting to know everybody. That is a concept of delegation. You have highly capable people within your rank and file right now that are just hungry to go ahead and make it to the next level. Given the opportunity to go ahead and do exactly what they wanna do.

There’s no way that you’ll be able to know everything about 250 people. But if you know most about 10 people and you start delegating things down the chain and create a transparent method of communication for reporting, welcoming, being always on receive mode, ready to get the information without being judgmental, always with the mindset of helping, you’re gonna see what happens. And you’re gonna start learning more and more and more about your organization because you’re just hitting it on the right cylinders. And the most important thing that you’re gonna be doing with that, it is helping people grow. Growing your replacement because you’re not gonna last forever. Every single one of us is a carton of milk. We have an expiration date and you have to keep the stock fresh. And that is by delegation.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

Great words. Robert?

Robert Irvine:

I have to bring food into my stuff too, so.

Ramon “CZ” Colon-Lopez, USAF (Ret.):

That’s good.

Robert Irvine:

I disagree slightly. Our companies, we have 9,000 employees. So we have drones, we have robots, we have all this stuff that we have. My job is to replace myself. My job is to make this guy that started washing floors a CEO of a company. That’s what I do. Within our organization, by the way, we’ve sold a lot of them companies that are manual. So food companies and liquor. We have distilleries, we have all these things. But 9,000 people, I do know their name. Every one of them. Because that’s what I made a commitment to is them families. And in 19 years, we haven’t lost anybody. Zero. And we’ve grown our companies, and CZ knows this, from this to this. It’s not me that does it. I’m a guy that sits there and make eggs, and I laugh about this all the time. The people that we employ, we better know who they are. They’re our team members, they’re our teammates. They want to do better every year for themselves.

So my job, and as a leadership team, is to make sure that we know what their vision of success is because my vision of success is different. The guy that’s sweeping the floor that wants to be a drone operator, then I’ve got to get him there, or her there. That’s my job. I take that very seriously. And we have not lost anybody in 19 years.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

That’s amazing.

Robert Irvine:

That’s called 100% success for me. Not the money, ’cause if money drives you, it will always drive. You can’t think about money. You have to think about doing the right things and money will flow. It will always flow if you do the right things. But our job as leaders is to take them from A to Z so they can do the same thing for the next person.

Dr. Patrick Donley:

Great words to end on right there. We are gonna do a book signing. If you’d like to get with Robert or CZ again, we’re gonna be at the pavilion, which is the big AFA branded booth as you come through the main room. That’s gonna start at 11.45. The books are here. They’re at Shop AFA. You can pick those up. They’ll sign those for you. Take a picture if you want it. Please join us at the pavilion around 11.45. Let’s give them a round of applause. Thanks so much for coming.