Mark Esper

It felt like training because we trained the way we would fight and then we applied that on the ground.

And so to me, that type of approach serves you well in any endeavor.

And so to me, that's the mindset you have to take into it to think every day you're training.

And at some point in time, you'll be called to action.

Something will happen.

And you want to become second nature, instinctual that you respond, you react and you perform.

Yeah.

And sure, I'll extend it because when I worked in corporate America, I had a great CEO and he used to say, we got to be careful of the disease called incumbent itis.

Yes.

In other words, you get to a position and you feel too comfortable and you stop innovating, you stop pressing hard, you stop working the long hours.

And what he would say is if we don't get that edge, keep that edge and disrupt ourselves, somebody will come in and disrupt us.

And now we'll be second and third and fourth.

You know, in the military, of course, the stakes are no higher than your life is on the line, right?

And more importantly, the lives of your colleagues, because in many ways, that's who you're out there for, serving for, trying to make sure you can live up to their expectations.

And, of course, in the military training, I mean, recalling back my days, I mean, it was always...

It was always real in the sense that we were in helicopters at night with night vision goggles.

We were moving along a ridgeline.

We would do live fire training both day and night with live ammunition.

So there was always that element of danger, and you tried to mitigate that, but at the same time not compromise the realism that you're trying to—

to put yourself in.