Running your construction business like a Navy SEAL team is a great way to be successful. The principles and tactics of teamwork and leadership all apply and transfer over. You need to create a company culture that is aligned with everyone at the business. In the Navy, once you have a mission, you have to push forward so you can complete that mission. It’s the same thing in the construction industry. There must be a reason why you’re doing what you’re doing. Join Eric Anderton as he talks to the President of Radix, Peter Worhunsky and the Chief Leadership Officer of Radix, and former Navy SEAL, Jeremy Beal. Discover how they implement SEAL team training, culture, and principles in the construction industry. Find out new tactics so you can grow your construction business today!
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Luck Is Not A Tactic: Navy SEAL Wisdom Applied To Construction With Peter Worhunsky And Jeremy Beal
One of the more popular books in the construction industry is Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. The reason why is that the principles described there by the former Naval SEAL Commanders apply very closely to the challenges that are experienced in construction on a daily basis. It’s interesting, if you’ve read the book, you know that a lot of the action takes place in Ramadi around 2006.
You may be wondering what was it like for the folks who were on the ground whom Jocko and Leif were leading. In this episode, you’re going to find out because one of my two guests is Jeremy Beal. He is the Cofounder and Chief Leadership Officer of Radix Services. We’re joined by him and Peter Worhunsky, the Cofounder and President.
Peter and Jeremy, along with Erica Beal have launched Radix Services, which is a large-scale civil utility infrastructure construction contractor. Jeremy is bringing his over twenty years of experience in the SEAL teams to the construction industry. He has retired after 23 years of faithful and dedicated Naval service. We spent a lot of time on this show. This one’s a little longer than my usual episode, but I want you to hang in for the whole time because we go through Jeremy’s experience in the SEALs from his days in BUD/S in 1999 to 2000 to his deployment to Iraq, then to Afghanistan, and then into more senior leadership roles in the teams.
We talk about how that experience has shaped the way that he thinks about leadership, then we have a wonderful back-and-forth discussion with Jeremy and Peter about how that then applies in the construction industry. You’re going to enjoy this conversation. I’d like you to pay close attention. This is Jeremy’s first time on a show. He brings a lot of experience and insight that you’re going to find tremendously helpful. I’m looking forward to seeing how Peter, Jeremy, and Erica grow Radix Services in the coming years. I’m grateful that they join me on the show. Feel free to share this episode with other people whom you think would benefit from reading it. As always, thank you for reading.
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Jeremy and Peter, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having us.
Peter, you are the second three-time guest on the show. It’s great to have you back on the show.
It’s great to be here.
Jeremy, it’s wonderful to have you on the program as well. You and Peter are collaborating in the construction industry on a number of exciting initiatives. You’ve retired from a twenty-year-plus career with the Navy SEALs. I’d like you to begin by taking us through your history in the SEALs. As you’re doing that, II want the audience to be considering how the experience that you have both in the field and in the higher command levels relates to the construction industry. Please introduce yourself to the audience.
I joined the Navy in 1999 right after I graduated high school from a small town about one hour outside of Cleveland, Ohio. I knew I needed to expand my horizons a little bit. The military always held a real appeal for me. It was always something that I kept going back to when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do after high school. It boils down to I wanted to be part of an elite group of people that did elite stuff. I got drawn towards Naval Special Warfare and becoming a SEAL just hearing about who they were, what they did, what they went through, and what it took to become one of them. it held a lot of appeal for me.
Was that prior to joining the Navy that you intentionally joined the Navy because that was the route into the SEALs or was that as you had joined the Navy?
I joined the Navy with the intention of getting into Naval Special Warfare. I had talked to all their service branches before deciding on the Navy. I wanted to hear what they all had to say and explore my options. Once I found out that there was a route to get into Naval Special Warfare, rather quickly, I was like, “That sounds good. Sign me up. Let’s go.”
Where do you think that that thought of yours to be within an elite group of people doing elite stuff comes from?
Probably the simplest answer I can give you is, as a child from the ‘80s, I grew up watching G.I. Joe. As strange as it sounds, not that I wanted to be a G.I. Joe, but in the sense that I did because they were in an elite group of people that did elite stuff. They were doing the things that no one else wanted to do. That’s something that always stuck with me. It was more than a cartoon. It was the teamwork and all the stuff that appeals to people. I got about as close as I could get to becoming a G.I. Joe with the group that I ultimately got came working with. I never saw an episode of G.I. Joe Headquarters or given a strategic budget planning brief or no one was doing ORM sheets, but that didn’t sell.
They were men of action as opposed to men of planning.
I don’t think G.I. Joe HQ would get high ratings. It was that mentality of, “I wanted to be part of something more than the run of the mill.”
If you want to be a part of something more than just the run-of-the-mill, join the Navy. Click To TweetYou joined the Navy and you went to BUD/S in April 2000?
I checked into BUD/S’s training in April 2000 and fortunately made it through with no injuries or no roles in training. I graduated in April of 2001 and checked into my first command at SEAL Team 3 out in Colorado on April 18th, 2001.
What was the biggest challenge for you in BUD/S?
Honestly, staying in the routine and learning to not overdo too much like, “What’s the task? What’s the objective? What do we get to get done?” Grind it until it does to get finished with what you to do.
I’ve thought about it a bit and watched your YouTube videos on the BUD/S training and all that stuff, the guys who succeed and fail. I was hanging out with you and I noticed some of the folks there who are at your retirement ceremony. They’re not like these yolked-up 6’3-foot jocks. Some of them are like that, but a lot of them are ordinary dudes. Some of them are little and they’re not, “That’s definitely a Navy SEAL.” Why do you think those guys who seem to be strong and outwardly impressive don’t always succeed with the SEALs?
There are honestly a ton of reasons that have been speculated upon and hypothesized around in everything else. They’ve been studying Navy SEAL training since the beginning and trying to come up with like better metrics to predict who’s going to be successful and who’s not. They’re getting better at it. They’re still just as wide reasons as you come up with. This is my observation, both as a student and instructor. A lot of times it seems like folks don’t know how to deal with failure. A lot of those folks that you’re talking about, the biggest, strongest, and always the fastest were always the high performers.
They were always the captain of the team, this and that. When they’re in an environment where they may not be the best at something, or they have to work a little harder to do it, they’ve never been met with that challenge before because the cold is an amazing equalizer. There’s no way to out tough the cold. If you’re not used to that environment or if you’ve never had to dig down deep and gut through something, then that’s hard for some people to do.
How did you dig down deep and gut through it yourself?
I knew that was where I wanted to be. There was nothing else they could do that was going to make me change my mind about that. The biggest challenge and the biggest thing that held the most apprehension for me going through training, knowing about it before I even came in was this 50-meter underwater swim that you had to accomplish, jump in, do some result, then swim down the pool and back 50 meters underwater holding your breath.
For some reason, that was the thing that got me. I was like, “That was the one.” I knew that if I didn’t pass it the first time I jumped in the pool, psychologically, I probably would fail at any other temperate. That was my best time to probably get it done. I was like, “There’s an instructor over top of me. I’m not going to drown. Let’s just go through and get it done.”
As you were doing that, was there ever a point where you thought in that 50-meter swim, “There’s no way I can continue,” and you pushed on through, or were you singularly focused and you kept going and going?
Singularly focused on the objective. That was it.
if you’re focused on the objective that helps to block out the noise, the physical discomfort, and all those kinds of things. Is that what worked for you?
It’s something to help you push past that point.
How long did it take you to realize that physically you’re capable of doing way more than you think mentally? You know how people talk about that all the time? We’re capable of doing way more than we think we are. How long did it take you to reach that point of understanding?
I was confident I was going to pass BUD/S and graduate about one hour into day one because I think the anticipation is always worse than the actual one once you get on the ground and start doing it. On day one, PT started at 5:00 in the morning. Within the first hour, we had about ten or so folks quit. More than a couple of those folks were the ones that you were talking about. Those guys who run like a deer and swim like a fish. They were strong and they were just, “I guess I’m not going to be here anymore.” I was like, “I’m fine. I knew that. I’m going to be good.”
In the first hour in, you’re like, “I’m good. I’m going to make this.” What’s the difference between confidence and cockiness? Cockiness is the negative or the arrogance. What’s the difference between confidence and arrogance?
A lot of it is how much you are making it about you or the team. You can have people that are quiet and cocky or confident and quiet. There’s no one set way to do it. If someone is good and a high performer, are they talking badly about their other teammates? Are they about them or are they using their talents and potential to help bring other people along?
The difference between arrogance and confidence is whether you're making something all about you or the team. Click To TweetThat’s an interesting aspect there because, on the one hand, you are the one who’s passing BUD/S. You’re the one as an individual who’s either going to succeed or fail in the terms of going through the training and yet you also have to bring in that team element. How much did that team element play a part in the motivation that you had as you went through the training?
It plays a huge factor because one of the things they hammer home is one of our core tenants of how we do things and or the way we think things should be done. The first thing is in order of precedence, the way you’re taking care of stuff is like country, team, and teammate. It’s keeping things in order. What’s the ultimate objective? Serve the country and do what we do. The team first, your teammate, and then you.
If you take care of your team and other people first and you worry about yourself last then good things tend to happen even more on a micro-level country teammate. Operationally, we’re talking about you taking care of team gear first, personal gear, and then yourself. You finish the op. You take care and make sure that the boats are cleaned, flushed out, put away, and got all the salt water off of them. You got all the guns and everything’s taken care of.
Those have been cleaned, lubed, oiled, and put away, then you take care of your personal gear, make sure that all your equipment that you might need tomorrow or in a couple of hours is back up and ready to go in case it needs to be done and you got to go, then finally you. You get to take off the wetsuit, change out of the wet clothes, get in the shower, get warmed up, or get something to eat. Take care of your equipment and people, then worry about yourself. That was beating into my head very early.
Take us through. you got through BUD/S 2001 before 9/11 or before all that happens. Give us a little more about your history as you were involved in the team.
I got to the team there in April 2001. I went to a few professional schools along the way. We formed the rest into platoons. Before we started, I work up in training in January of 2002, 9/11 happened. That changed everything because our kind of battle rhythm, deployment, and the way we’ve been doing things has been set for the last many years since in Grenada and then things to the ‘80s and then Desert Storm.
It was pretty status quo up until that point. 9/11 changed everything. It was an interesting time to be in and to be young to see it go from an organization that had been status quo to grow into the organization it has become in the last many years. To see it go all the way from the beginning of that to where it was, to where it was in its height, and to where it is now was incredible to witness.
As a result of that, how long was it until you deployed into the battle space that was related to the aftermath of 9/11?
Personally, we started our workup and training in January of 2002. We deployed in October 2002. We were over there in the Middle East then we were preparing for, and then, participating in the initial invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. It was my first real dip into action.
This happens in every sphere of life. There’s the theory, practice, and actual. As you got into the SEALs, you were doing a combination of theory and practice, to begin with, and then me more of the actual. I’m assuming, as you got into the battle space, that obviously became real. As you got on the ground fighting and leading troops, what was the biggest change in perspective that you had from the training time to the actual fighting time?
The old cliché, “You don’t rise to the occasion. You default to your level of training.” It’s a weird thing, but as things start getting more dangerous, real, and close, they become simple. You don’t start to worry about too many fancy tactics or maneuvers. It’s just about getting the job done and moving on to the next thing. Keeping things simple and concise, then moving fast with the purpose and violence of action to achieve the objective.
How did your training help you to manage the emotions of the battlefield? I’m thinking everything from rage all the way to terror.
The more training you have and the harder your training was, it makes all that stuff simpler. You can compartmentalize those things because you know where you’re going to go or what you do and should do. You have a frame of reference. There’s the old saying, “What do you do in a dangerous situation with people? You are on a fight-or-flight response. There’s also the freeze response, which a lot of times, people are brain lock because in their brain, there is no even frame of reference like, “What do I do in this situation?” because they’ve never even thought about it.
Having gone through and drilled like this, “If this happens, then this, we’re going to do this. If something happens here, we’re going to do this.” Everyone works through those contingencies. If that happens, like, “We’re going to shift.” Everyone’s on the same page. You drill those simple things one at a time. It makes it a lot easier to get everyone moving in the right direction once something happens that requires us to pivot, move, or do whatever.
We’re talking about 2004 or 2005. Take us back to your flow there. Where did you go from there?
We got back from that first deployment in 2003, then we went back through another workup and training cycle and deployed again with a different mission, mindset, and thing that we’ve been tasked to do. We were tasked to do so we had to then figure out how to acquire the best training, knowledge, and expertise that we could to meet those specific objectives we had been tasked to do.
It was a great lesson in leadership right then and there that I saw was like, “This is people giving top-down direction on what needs to be done,” then they let the mid-level people come up with the best plan of action to achieve those objectives. It was a real good way to start very early in my career to see not coming down from the top too much to dictate the tactics much as, “Give me the plan and let me go,” which is a good crossover into the construction thing is like, “Tell the people what to go build or do and let them go do what they do best.”
How did you progress in terms of leadership positions during your time in the SEALs?
On my third platoon workup and deployment, I was the leading petty officer of the platoon, which is the Senior E-6. All the other folks are below me. I was the head cat herder. Our platoon chief was the senior enlisted guy in the platoon. That was where I was in an official leadership position. That was my first time. It was great because I had such wonderful leadership by that.
Those folks had grown me up to that point. In that specific platoon, I had two great guys who had been with me in the first two platoons. They made my life easy because we grew up together. We were taught the same things. They knew how I worked. I knew how they worked. I knew what they needed. They knew what we needed to do, and they were great at making that stuff happen.
When you took or achieved that leadership position, what was the biggest mistake you made as a new leader? Give us the first one that pops into your mind. Maybe one that you’re thinking, “If I could do that one again, that would’ve been awesome.”
Asking more questions and starting to dig into more of the higher level stuff to be able to articulate more to the folks below, give them the why and what we’re doing, the objective, and what some of the strategic implications, impacts, the operations that we’re doing would have on the battlefield versus just ramp back up to go out and do one more op or get ready for the next op, be able to give them more of that background and the why.
Let me ask you about that. Let’s say you’re super clear on the why and then you’re on the ground in the battle. The bullets are flying and the decisions are being made. How do you think in your experience a clear understanding of the why helps someone when the bullets are flying?
It’s important to know why you’re there because if there’s a real strategic impact on, “What needs to be done? Why are we out on this target? Why are we after this particular person? Why are we doing what we’re doing?” you know why you’re out there. It’s like, “We can’t just back up, retreat, go away, and live to fight another day. Sometimes you can, but a lot of times, we got to push forward because there are many other things that are contingent upon us accomplishing this mission. If we don’t do this, then all these other subsequent things can’t happen.
Would that be something you would remind one another of in the middle of the battle or would that be in a breathing space in the battle? Would you ever verbally communicate that again? How did that happen?
It happened organically, especially on the deployment in 2006, where what we would do is we worked very closely with a lot of the Army and Marine that were deployed also there o the City of Ramadi. When they were running big-scale operations, we would be doing things that would be there to support them like bringing our folks over as we were going through rehearsals and mission planning with our American counterparts that we were working with and making sure they understood.
They knew what the plan and the objective were, but we need to accomplish so then all the follow on things should come in and putting those people together so you know who the tank driver is that’s coming in or the people that are coming behind you. You can put a face to the name, know what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it. We got to secure this so they can come through their thing.
You mentioned Ramadi there. I know people have heard a lot about different SEALs who are involved in that. Are there any of those folks that are publicly known that people may know that you can name so that people get an idea of the context of where you were at and what you were doing?
I was deployed with Retired Lieutenant Commander Jocko Willink. He was the troop commander for the troop I was in. Mr. Leif Babin was the officer in charge of the platoon I was in. Jocko Willink extreme ownership, I was right there for all that stuff as they were learning all the fantastic lessons that they brought back and shared with the business community. Another gentleman, Chris Kyle was one of my guys. He’s one of the fellows I referred to a little bit ago when we did our third platoon workup and deployment together.
That’s helpful for the audience because it gives them some context into what you’re thinking there and what you’re describing. After Ramadi, where did you go from there? From the construction point of view, it’s like the guy or girl who’s been an engineer, superintendent, or a foreman and they’ve been on the ground learning the trade and understanding what it means to get a project built. Where did your career in the SEALs go from there?
From there, I moved over to our training detachment. That’s the group that puts all the SEALs platoons that are going to be deploying through their unit-level, core competency training. I was the lead for our assault cell, which taught close-quarters combat, breaching, urban combat, urban movement, and things like that. Coming right from that battlefield in 2006 to that environment to teach what we learned during that time to the folks that were falling behind us.
Did that then take you out of the combat space into the teaching space? Was that a permanent shift for you?
That was a three-year tour. I did deploy with the SEAL team during that time for about two months. For the most part, that was one month between training blocks, getting ready for the next group. These were teaching the SEALs that were getting ready to deploy.
Is that typical for a SEAL who has an extended career to eventually transition out of combat roles into teaching roles?
Yes, especially for our instructor cadre teaching, not only the platoons that are going through, and then also some of the support personnel with their requirements, required training, and everything else or at the schoolhouse as an instructor for the students, which I did a tour there later on in my career. You’re operational for a while, go teach for a while, get back operational, and do it all over again.
Continue to walk us through there. What was the next step for you?
After that, I was able to make another 90-day deployment to Afghanistan in 2010, which place I hadn’t been to yet. I spent 90 days there. It was great to see different battle spaces with the same stuff going on. That’s where I started then to see the correlation between principles versus tactics and how often a lot of times people get hemmed up with the tactics and not the principles.
Maneuver warfare is pretty simple, cover, move, and flank. It’s pretty standard. You do those things differently on flat terrain versus in the mountains. You adapt and change the tactic, but the principles don’t change. Conversations were funny where people would arbitrarily say like, “We worked in Iraq. We work in Afghanistan.” Won’t it or do we just need to modify the principle and change the tactic to still achieve the same goal?
That’s interesting to me because that makes me think of construction. Peter, maybe you have a thought on this. One of the things that make construction unique is that every single project is in a different geography and conditions on the ground, the conditions of the working population, etc. change the way that you might execute a project. How do you see that idea of principle and tactics playing together in terms of the construction industry?
There are fundamental principles in construction that are timeless and that move from job to job and industry to industry. One of the cool things when Extreme Ownership came out, was that there were principles in there that directly applied to construction. There were many people in our industry that were attracted to that book because it was speaking our language. A principle like simplifying or keep things simple, you hear that from all of the good construction players.
There are fundamental principles in construction that are just timeless. They move from job to job, industry to industry. Click To Tweet“No bad teams. Only bad leaders.” We see that at the crew, project, and company levels. “Prioritize and execute” is one of the things you learn as a young supervisor or engineer. There’s only much you can get done in a day. How much of it? What’s important? What do you do first? What do you do second? How do you get through things? There are principles that you see as you go through your career that are timeless. It doesn’t matter where you’re building or what you’re building. It doesn’t change and there is something that is going through determining your success or failure.
As you are going through your career here, it sounds like at the beginning, you’re someone who’s “in the field” and then as you’re moving into the training position, you know how in construction you have the dichotomy between the field and the office. As you’re growing in your leadership roles as well, you have people reporting to you, what did you find was changing for you as you become more senior in your leadership role and less involved in the execution of operations on the ground?
Focusing more on the strategy and backing out of the tactics so much as I started to move up to the higher levels. I’ve seen it, and Peter verifies this as well. A lot of times these conversations happen in the construction space as well, talking of strategy against tactics. It seems like a lot of the time, the conversation devolves because of tactics like, “You want to do something in a certain way and I want to do something else differently. Is it my position to even worry about the tactics that you’re doing? Do you know the objective that you were tasked to accomplish? Go forth and do it.”
One of the best things I learned as I was a new instructor teaching the SEALs how to go through stuff because I was only taught a few ways for a few certain times. As we’re moving through the training cycles and you start seeing things, people want to try new things like, “Maybe this is the way we taught it. Maybe try something else different.” Someone told me, “Is it safe? Does the tactic that they might want to try or innovate make sense? If it makes sense and they can safely execute it, let them try it.”
The worst case happens is that it doesn’t work here in training. We can maybe modify it a little bit and come up with something that does work or we’re like, “It sounded great on paper and practicality did not work out at all, but now we know.” You got to give people the environment and that space to be innovative and creative and come up with different ways to try out the problem. Make sure you’re applying ORM.
What do you mean by ORM?
Operational Risk Management. It’s another one of those fantastic principles that bleed over from warfare training into construction safety.
For the audience, explain ORM in simple terms so that we can grasp that.
Construction, training for war, and war are dangerous jobs but we have to train to do them. In training and on construction sites, we put people in dangerous positions. You do the best you can to mitigate the risks. You make sure that the people have been properly trained. They have the right equipment to safely execute what needs to get done and you train them as best you can. You send them out to do what they do. Identify the risks, “How can we mitigate that?” Find an acceptable level of risk. If we can buy down some of that risk, we’re like, “This juice is now worth the squeeze. Let’s go for it.” Sometimes it’s too risky. If the sea state’s too high, we’re not going to do that jump tonight into the water because it’s not worth it. We’ll reschedule and live the fight another day.”
When you were coming up in the teams, that idea of presenting an idea and then the superior asking the question, “Is it safe? Does it make sense?” was that something they did for you so that you learned that process, or was that something you had to learn yourself when you came into a more senior position?
I’ve had wonderful leadership and mentorship for my entire career. Someone shared that nugget of knowledge with me. Maybe it is as old as time, who knows? “Let the folks down there. Just because the folks wrote some tactic or something in a manual doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do it. Take the principles that are learned and maybe we can apply them in a different way. Maybe we can modify it a little bit. Encourage people to be creative.”
Peter, how have you seen that practically in your experience in construction? Have you seen that work out or even not work out?
Maybe not working out is something to talk about first. If you’ve ever been on a site or been involved in a company where the people are in the headquarters, in the office, or far from the field are trying to run the work and micromanage, it’s a disaster. They don’t know what’s going on. No one likes working on for that company or project. Frankly, no matter how smart or think they are, they don’t have the information that they need to run the job.
The best-run projects are the ones where you set up your crews for success and you get everything out of the way so that you can put the right teams in place. You give them the right training, and then you turn them loose to do their thing. You support them, monitor, and track them, but if someone’s sitting in the office somewhere calling game day audibles, trying to day-to-day direction, it’s a recipe for failure.
Jeremy, you’re going from a guy who’s got his hand in the dirt into a guy who’s not so much in the dirt but is training the guys who are in the dirt. I have this picture in my mind of the military bureaucracy where you begin to interact in a greater way. Is that a true picture in my mind where I’m thinking? Is it challenging for someone like you who came to do elite stuff with elite people, and all of a sudden you get into roles where you’re coming up against, “This is the way we’ve already always done it. I don’t even care if it’s safe or makes sense. We ain’t doing it that way?” How did you handle that or did you ever experience anything like that?
I don’t think anyone who’s ever worked in a big organization has experienced something similar to that. One of the things that I find is that “The way we’ve always done it” is a very dangerous statement. Typically, a lot of people are like, “If that’s the way they’re explaining why they’re doing something, then they don’t know it. Maybe we should stop and take a look at what we’re doing and why.” Maybe it does make sense, but at least we’re taking that pause, making sure our risk management is up to date. We’re like, “This still makes sense,” or, “Maybe we should look at it again.”
People can reflect on how this impacts their business as well. In your experience in the SEALs, what were the areas where, “This is the way we’ve always done it and because of who we are and what we stand for, we’re not going to change this?” In other words, these are core principles or core values that aren’t about the tactics and the way we execute a mission but it’s about who we are as people or what our overall big-picture mission is. What were those things in the SEAL teams that are unchanging?
The only thing that you can say that’s unchanging is, “The environment’s always changing.” We’ve been deploying SEALs and the US military in general for the last many years. it has gone way down now, withdrawal from Afghanistan or Iraq. Now that we’re in a newer environment where it’s unpredictable, there’s a lot of potential out there for bad things to happen.
When you're in a new and unpredictable environment, the best thing to do is to go back to the basics. Click To TweetWhen you don’t know what can happen, the best thing to do is to go back to those basics. Make sure you control things that you can control so that when something changes that we have to address, we don’t have to spend time worrying about the basics. Making sure like, “Your weapons are cited in. Your equipment is ready to go. Your basic patrolling formations are down.”
Everyone knows the hand and arm signals, how to program and use their radio, how to use the software to do a terrain study, the mapping, and whatever else. When something happens, we’re like, “Now we have to do me mission planning missions for this specific area right here.” People can go to that and start looking at that information, not have to like, “Come over. Let me show you how to use the software to do it.”
Let me ask you in a different way. I had the privilege of attending your retirement ceremony in San Diego. I was struck by the order of ceremonies. There was at one point when a poem or a hymn was read out. It was the one about the American flag and the different places the American flag had been for over 200 years. You could see how there was a certain thread that moved across time and circumstance that tied together the history of the United States. I was thinking, “What are those timeless principles that influence the way that you acted and behaved in the Navy SEALs that didn’t change regardless of the tactics, the strategy, or the battle space?”
The Old Glory hymn with which you’re referring lists all these battles from over 200 years of American history from Gettysburg all the way to what’s happening now. The principles of honor, courage, and selfless sacrifice for the person beside you, those things shouldn’t change. Taking it back to the American flag, that’s this country.
That’s something bigger than yourself, the team that you’re assigned to, the coast that you’re on, and even bigger than being in the Navy. I’m connected now with every veteran who ever won a uniform from the Air Force or Marines, every single one of them. My brothers and sisters out there, that is something bigger than all of us. It is something that was here long before we got here and will be here longer after we leave.
Peter, how do you think that mindset of legacy or significance can impact the running of a construction business?
You see that same character and thought pattern in great enduring companies. There’s a higher level of purpose and a legacy. Even if it’s a newer company, there’s an understanding of the history of the business and the things that don’t change. We talked last time about great companies and these great companies, if you look at it, the leaders know their history. They have principles that haven’t changed. There’s a core to that business that has stayed the same. That core is the foundation that their success is built on.
It seems like the best companies are very good at identifying, articulating that, and communicating it to the people who work for them and making sure that their businesses are run within those principles and yet within the principles themselves, allowing a lot of space for the innovation that we’ve been talking about, that you found to be effective during your career in the SEALs. What date are we at now with your career? Are we around 2010 or 2012?
In 2010 or 2012, I spent as an instructor at the schoolhouse working with the students and two years instructing and getting the students ready to send them over to the teams after they graduated. It was interesting to be there around. Folks want all the information. It was cool to be there.
Did you notice any difference in the quality or the temperament of the new guys from your time, from 1999 to 2010 or 2012? Was there any difference or is it the selection process of the SEALs? Do they get the same folks across time?
Major differences? No. There has been a lot more press and spotlight on the NSW community in the last many years. We have a much higher profile than we did when I came in. For the most part, no. The folks that came in many years ago when I was an instructor came in for the same reasons. They seemed like they want to be part of an elite group of people that did doing elite things and with people that they knew had their back. That is probably one of the most comforting things about NSW. You knew that everyone wanted to be there. They wanted to be the best version of themselves, be the best operator, whatever else, and you knew that they had your back no matter what. I worry about the stuff in front of me because someone got me covered.
Peter, let me ask you this in terms of a construction company. From what I’m hearing from Jeremy is that if your culture is consistent, then that’ll help you to attract the right types of people and then repel the wrong types of people regardless of what the generational differences may or may not be. What is your experience of that in terms of construction?
Every company has a culture, whether they’re intentional about it or not. That company’s culture is reflected in its people. You can see companies that have a good culture based on how long their people are there, the talent that they attract and continue to attract, and then you can see the reverse. You can see the companies that have high turnover, that struggle to keep people, or that have problems. It’s because they’re not intentional with their culture.
One of the things that we did was we thought hard about, “First of all, what is our culture?” We defined it as, “Culture is the way that we think and act.” When we started putting together our core values, we started first with the culture and defined our culture. That was one of the things that connected Jeremy and me in business. Culturally and fundamentally, we were aligned.
Culture is the way that we think and act. Click To TweetHow do you guys meet?
Jeremy’s wife is in the industry. She was a longtime utility executive and entrepreneur. My company, Live Oak, was talking to her business about partnering on a proposal. We connected and said, “There’s something more here than this job. We should all meet.” I brought my family down to San Diego. We met Erica, Jeremy, and their family. We started talking. From that, we created our business.
What does your business focus on?
Our business right now is focused on utility construction. We’re in California and the people in California, even outside of California, see the challenges our state is having with things like wildfires, renewable energy, and outdated power grid. We’ve created Radix to solve those challenges for customers.
Jeremy, as you were beginning to think about transitioning out of the Navy because you reached 23 years of service, why didn’t you go for 30 in the Navy? Why did you decide that now was the time to try something different?
The decision at this point had long-term effects if I would’ve stayed in another year or two. At that point, I would’ve been at 25 years, and like you said, “Why not stay until 30?” I wanted to get out and try something new. I’m 41 years old now, and I retired. I got time to get something done. There was that. It’s a time of transition also in the military in general, shifting out of Afghanistan and Iraq into what the future holds. It felt like the right time. Things are transitioning and it’s a good time.
Family-wise, my oldest started high school. As a military person and a father, I’m like, “I’m going to get all four years of my oldest high school career. I get to spend that time. There’s no way I make that up.” With the opportunity that present itself with Peter where everything was headed and plus families, it felt right. The last thing I’ll say is after that meeting with Peter, being aligned with someone else as we were looking to build something. What appealed to me was building something, not just becoming part of a big established corporation, big entity, or whatever else going in and fixing someone else’s broken culture or broken processes. It’s easier to build it right than to try to fix a bad one. The challenge of it was very appealing to make.
Let’s pivot back then. In 2018, you got into a different role. Can you describe what that was like?
For the last four years of my career, I spent at the headquarters of Naval Special Warfare. I got to work for the admirals in charge of everything. I work on the staff for the Admiral as his force training and readiness officer. I’m working to help develop and implement training plans force-wide with our recruitment and assessment commands who we want to bring into the community all the way through certification, getting folks final approvals and ready to go out the door, and everything in between.
Were you in meetings with the admiral and the top dogs?
Occasionally, but for the most part, my job was to prepare and help my boss. He’d be the one in there briefing the admiral on trading objectives and things like that. I was his action arm and I’m working with my counterparts at the subsequent commands to help implement, monitor, document, validate, and inspect. All the training objectives were being completed and they were in accordance with the admiral’s desire.
When you came into that role, how did you feel? Were you like, “I got this. I’m going to nail it?” When some people come into new roles, they got promoted because they’re bawlers, and bawlers bawl, “Let’s promote this guy, let him go, and figure it out.” You get into that role and you can feel a little insecure or unsure of yourself. What did it feel like when you went into that new role?
That was a big transition going from where I was as a team. Even though I was at the team working as a training officer on one team, such had one team to focus on not going up to the headquarters where I would be engaging with everybody across the coast. It was a lot. You go in with an attitude of, “I’m going to do the best I can because this is what is supporting the folks on the ground,” and remind myself, “I’m sure many years ago someone was sitting in that exact same seat doing that job that allowed me to do the things that I was able to do.” Now it’s my turn to do the best I can to set the conditions and help the folks that are going out the door now to be the best that they can be.
What did you like most about your services as a force training officer at the headquarters?
Sitting at that level and seeing the decision-making process that goes into things that affect folks from that higher up, that 50,000-foot perspective as things change, what’s important to one department, group, or team that’s not as important to the other one? Where’s the priority? Seeing all the various things, factors, and facets that go into the decision-making process and learning how those things get done. It was incredible learning how to sift through a bureaucratic morass. I call it administrative warfare.
What’s the difference between administrative warfare and actual warfare? There are obvious ones, but in terms of the way you approached it from a strategic and tactical thinking perspective.
You need to invest the time to learn the culture, how things get done, the processes, procedures, and the rules. Typically, to the readers who may have a military background, especially coming from the Naval Special Warfare side of the house, no one’s ever in just deep water in January freezing dreaming about doing staff work. That is not what people join to do.
It’s all part of the bigger strategic planning picture. That’s your job to do. Even if you don’t like the job so much, it’s like, “I need to do it the best I can so I can provide my boss the information that he needs to inform the admiral to make those decisions.” In an effort, try to go back to do the best you can, be great at your job, and try to make it better than how you found it.
Let’s look back at your whole career. What I’d like you to share with the audience is your biggest regret and greatest triumph from the years that you spent in the SEALs.
Looking back on the biggest regret from maybe being more effective on it, taking the time to learn, read and find out how things are supposed to be done before you run off and try to make something happen through a backdoor channel or, “I know this person. I can call them and I can make this stuff happen.” That’s not sustainable and it winds up usually making the process and things take longer and cost more money.
Take the time to learn and find out how things are supposed to be done before you run off and make something happen. Click To TweetIf I’ve had something to make me a better, more efficient operator, investing the time to do the research on how to be more effective, more efficient, and maneuver through the military itself, as weird as it sounds, I began to enjoy that process the last couple of years I was in there at the headquarters. Once you start to pull that apart, you can start pulling that thread a little bit on how to make things happen, you get me momentum going and you’re like, “This is cool. We’re learning how to be efficient.”
As you’re thinking about what Jeremy was saying and how that might translate into someone’s career in a construction company or the construction industry, how might that idea of learning the organization and how things work as opposed to doing the bull in the China shop thing? How might that apply to someone who’s in a construction company?
The bull in the China shop seems to happen all the time. I was that when I was younger. You see that especially in a lot of high performers early in their careers. They think that they have to have that personality and mentality to be successful. They’re focused on their own performance and getting the job done. A lot of times, it works against them. It’s helpful to be able to give people a perspective of the bigger picture, the mission of the company, and what we’re trying to accomplish. Especially for newer people, it’s not their figure out. It’s the company’s job to teach them that.
Pivoting back to your journey, what would you say is your biggest accomplishment or sense of pride that you have from your involvement in the teams?
The promotions, advancement, and growth of the people I worked with. Not just from the SEALs that I got to put through training and watch them get their try and pinned on everything, but all the amazing people I had the opportunity to work and grow with. Seeing the folks get promoted or in new leadership positions and seeing people grow was rewarding for me.
I want to ask you one thing, and this is based on a very short amount of time interacting with you and with other folks down at your retirement ceremony. I was struck by the humility of the operators or the former operators that I met. What I mean by that is there’s almost a sweetness about some of you. It struck me in a weird way because you don’t expect that. I talked to Jocko after the ceremony because my boy was like, “You got to get a photo with Jocko.”
I’m not the kind of guy who wants to go and talk to Jocko, although I like the stuff he does. I go up to him and I say, “My boy will kill me unless I get a photo with you.” He says, “Sure. I’ll give you a photo.” He’s totally normal. He’s not like me highfalutin dude and he’s like, “What does your boy do?” He asked me what my boy did. When I was interacting with you and the other guys, the sense of sweetness and humility is weird. It’s not weird in a bad way, but it’s like, “That’s interesting.” Is that a true perspective that I had there? Do you see that with the guys that you know and worked with for many years?
The best ones, yes. There’s having a humble attitude, a growth mindset, and trying to be the best that we can, but knowing that we can always be better. It is a great way to live life. As soon as you start thinking that you’re the best at something and, “I can’t learn anything from you. You can’t teach me something,” you’re probably not going to be a value-added person to the organization anymore because you’re not going to contribute anything and you’re going to just going to dig your heels and fight any changes or anything new that’s going to come along. Another great mentor I had told me something along the lines of like, “In every group, no matter how elite, has a bottom 10%.”
As far as a SEAL platoon goes or a construction crew, you do your best to bring people in. Some people are genetically engineered to hate everything and nothing’s ever good enough. Hopefully, those folks decided this isn’t for them and they move on. Maybe construction or being a SEAL wasn’t for them. Maybe it wasn’t what they had in mind or what they expected.
Being in the SEAL teams, the reality was a lot different than what you thought it was. That happens a lot of times with folks that come into Naval Special Warfare or even in construction. They thought it was one thing and it turns out it was something completely different. They become disenfranchised and they’re like, “I’m going to leave.” The worst part is that those folks hang around with their bad attitude.
Peter kicking over to you with that thought because it’s a reality. There’s always the bottom 10% and they’re always there. How does the construction executive manage that bottom 10%, knowing that some of them are going to have to be on the job site because we’ve signed a contract? We got to build the work, and yet, “I’m never going to settle. I always need to be working on upgrading my team.” How does that dynamic work from your experience in construction?
It’s always there and there’s no getting rid of it, but at the same time, you can’t ignore it. From our perspective, the most important reason not to ignore it is for the other 90%. There’s nothing worse than you good people knowing that you’re willing to keep bad people around. For us, it’s something that we’re very mindful of. We’re always making sure that we’re not injuring our good people because of the bad ones.
I found this conversation very interesting. Peter, what is your main motivation for partnering specifically with Jeremy? What are you hoping that he brings to the table from his experiences that will help the business to grow in the construction space?
You talk to anybody in construction and say, “What is construction all about?” It’s all about people. “What is it all about?” To be successful with people? It comes down to leadership and culture. This is something that Jeremy and Naval Special Warfare have in spade. For us, taking those lessons and that talent and applying it all the way to the crew level within the organization is something that is very unique and we’re excited to do it.
Extreme Ownership is a great book. It helped me as a young manager. There are many principles that have come from Jeremy’s experience that we can’t wait to share with everybody. What the SEALs would call the action are, and we call our crews. We are going to take that knowledge base and those principles and apply them across the whole organization.
How do people learn more about your company and what you do?
Our website is RadixServices.com. We’re also on LinkedIn. We will be happy if you check this out there. You can get in touch with us on both platforms.
I found this interview very informative. Jeremy, I appreciate you taking the time to go into some details there in your experiences. I’m looking forward to getting both of you back on the show as the business continues to grow to learn more about what you guys are doing to impact the construction industry. I want to thank you Peter for coming back.
Thank you for having us. I hope we can do it again soon.
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Thank you for reading this episode with Jeremy and Peter. I hope you found it useful. Feel free to check out their website, RadixServices.com. Connect with them on LinkedIn. This episode was brought to you by Construction Genius, the book. It’s Effective, Hands-On, Practical, Simple, No-BS Leadership, Strategy, Sales, and Marketing Advice for Construction Companies.
To get a copy of the book and to learn more about it, go out to ConstructionGeniusBook.com. There you’ll find a description of the book and a big fat Buy Now button. Click on the button and for $20, you can get yourself a book that gives you insights that could make you or save you millions. The reason why is that people’s problems are costing your construction company millions, and in the book, you will learn how to solve those problems.
Feel free to check out the book. Buy one for you and your leadership team. If you are in the Greater Sacramento area and you buy the book, shoot me an email and I will personally come by your office and sign the copies for you. If you’re in the Greater Bay Area, let me know and the next time I’m down there visiting my clients, I will come by your office and I will sign them for you. You never know. If you’re somewhere else in the country and I happen to be traveling and meeting my clients, let me know and I will come into your office and personally sign the books for you. I look forward to catching you on the next episode.
Important Links
- Extreme Ownership
- Radix Services.
- LinkedIn – Radix Services
- Https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/Peter-Worhunsky-21496b3/
- Https://www.LinkedIn.com/In/Jeremy-Beal-988743158/
- ConstructionGeniusBook.com
About Peter Wohunsky
About Jeremy Beal
From 2010 to 2012, he was assigned to SEAL Team One as Bravo Platoon Leading Chief Petty Officer. Upon checking in to SEAL Team One, he immediately volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan.
Other SEAL career highlights include serving as Seal Qualification Training Close Quarters Combat Leading Chief Petty Officer,
Chief Warrant Officer for SEAL Team One, and Command Training Officer from 2014-2018.
From 2018 to his retirement in 2022, he served as the Force Training Officer at Headquarters Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado, CA.
Beal launched Radix Services with Construction Industry veterans, Erica Beal and Peter Worhunsky in 2022.
He resides in San Diego, California, with his wife Erica and their two boys: Logan and Gabe.
