Eugene Fluckey, Paul Saunders, and Creating the Perfect Entourage

Lieutenant Commander, Eugene Fluckey, didn't pick his first submarine crew, despite his dedication to hand-selecting an entourage of officers as bloodthirsty and ballsy as he was. If you've never heard of Eugene Fluckey, this was the man who literally rewrote the book on submarine warfare during World War II. Even before he got a chance to command his own sub, Fluckey had wild and crazy notions about how submarines should kick more ass in the Pacific than they were. Concepts like using subs as hunting vessels on the water's surface and only submerging when they invaded enemies. Another one was mounting rocket launchers on the top of the subs to do more damage. This was at a time when submarines were primarily used as slow and cautious underwater creepers.

His ideas about aggressive sub tactics were so radical and so much fun to read about that Franklin D. Roosevelt himself requested Fluckey’s field reports to be delivered to him directly. Eugene Fluckey’s first Captain assignment was as a temporary skipper on an unlucky ship known as The USS Barb. The Barb was a Gato-class submarine that only managed to sink one enemy ship during her six patrols. To keep command of The Barb, Fluckey promised the fleet commander, Admiral Charles Lockwood, that he would sink five Japanese ships on his first patrol. It was a risky bet, but if Fluckey managed it, he would get to keep the sub.

Fluckey started by recruiting Paul Saunders, aka Swish, as his chief. He was a 26-year-old Virginian who had a burning desire to see Japanese ships bubbling beneath the surface. Saunders got his nickname because he would swish back and forth on his feet whenever he was commanding the ship's guns to fire on enemies. Fluckey would also famously capture an enemy sailor at gunpoint, a Japanese man stranded in the wreckage of his own ship. He would even convince him to betray the Japanese military and eventually join his crew. But first, Fluckey would need to secure his command. On his first tour out, Fluckey and his men managed to meet and beat the original bet with Admiral Lockwood. He had promised five ships, and he and his crew delivered seven. That's right, on The Barb's first trip out with Fluckey and Swish running things, The Barb sunk five Japanese freighters and two trawlers. Recognizing Fluckey's spark of genius, Admiral Lockwood was forced to give Fluckey the command he deserved.

But throughout The Barbs continued patrols, seven more patrols before the war would end, Admiral Lockwood would raise the stakes. He asked for more destruction every time The Barb sailed. Eventually, during its final patrol, Admiral Lockwood bet Fluckey that The Barb and her new crew couldn't sink 15 vessels in an outing. Fluckey would take that bet. He then asked his chief officer, Swish, to do the impossible - torpedo a train carrying Japanese ammunition.

Entourages. Sports heroes have them, movie stars travel with them, and rappers use them as accessories like handbags. But the real purpose of surrounding yourself with an entourage isn't to show off or to keep your friends around you like a safety blanket. An entourage should be a group of smart, hard-working people you've assembled not as friends to chit-chat with but as advisors, business professionals, and mentors. Or, as Jim Rome famously put it, “We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.” To help us assemble our entourage like Captain Fluckey and his gung-ho officers, we have a few myths to dispel.

Myth 1: Why do I need an entourage if I already have my friends? Surely my buddies can help me reach my professional goals, right?

So today, we want to be able to assemble our own entourage like Fluckey. For starters, I want to identify what makes a good entourage and how we can figure out what we need. Overall, I always look for someone with more experience than me and someone who is probably different from me. Furthermore, I’d look for someone who will cover my blind spots. Based on research, this angle does hold up. There's a lot of articles we went through, but in a nutshell, approximately 6 to 12 months ahead of you is the target time gap.

So, if you're an entrepreneur, you want somebody who has been in their business for 6 to 12 months longer than you. You want somebody who's about a year ahead of you because they have more experience, yet are not so professionalized that they forget the tiny incremental steps that will help you.

When you pick an entourage, you choose people that you like, but who cover a spectrum. Branching from this, I found a good article called Study: If You Want to Succeed, Don’t Work With your Friends. They talked about the exact same system. In this article, they found that if two investors started collaborating with the same socio-economic and ethnic background, they were far less successful (22%) if they went into it as buddies. I'd love to work with my best friend, but findings show it often does not work out well. You want somebody who can cover your blind spots and be unbiased towards you. I'm going to quote David Ballard, “You want to find someone who fills in the gaps and your weak points and vice versa. This way, when you come together as a whole, it works better than what either of you could have done individually.” With that being said, if you're picking out an entourage, stay away from friends. Your friends probably have the same business issues that you do because they probably came from the same school and share the same socio-economic and ethnic background as you. To thrive, you want to pick people who are directly outside your bubble, like how Fluckey picked Swish. 

Myth 2: What is the science of entourages? What about teams or friend groups? What makes some entourages click and others fall apart?

There's something to be said for chemistry and Fluckey and Swish. It was like electricity, and they were both like the same mold - powerful. They were both brave with the right amount of caution. No one in the audience is going to believe this, but chemistry is how friend groups and entourages work. I was reading up on entourages and friends because I wanted to know what the most robust groups were. How do you get a powerful entourage? How do we pick out people in an entourage who are going to serve us? I found that entourages and good friend groups look like chemical compounds.

Imagine a picture of chemical compounds where it's got those hexes, bars, and geometric chains. That's effectively what friend groups and entourages look like. They look like these chemical chains because you have a group that is like you. There are groups of people you connect with better than others, and you may even seek out groups that know different things you can get along with. To do this, you have to bond with them like a chemical chain to make it work. For example, 300 people don't sit down at once and watch The Game of Thrones. It's because you actually need to connect with them to bond over different things. However, the critical part that in terms of an entourage, you want to be the bond between two groups. The reason is if you are in the middle, you are in the center of the information exchange and get to suck in that knowledge. If you are a connector, you will see the similarities between two subjects in groups, and you can communicate between them.

Now, we want to talk about how to make a strong entourage team. The answer? Becoming a part of an entourage that is entirely composed of bonds. If you think of your smartest, brightest, and highest achieving friends that you know, and if you're making an entourage of them, I guarantee those high achievers themselves are bonded to multiple groups. They are a bond in a chemical chain, and everyone is benefiting from someone else. In summary, our best selves in this scenario is being in a bond amongst bonds and on every side of us is a chain of people feeding us information. As New York Times put it, an entourage is often just a good team in disguise.

If you are working towards assembling an entourage, there is something you have to keep in mind. Even if all of you are high achievers, according to Google's analytics on making perfect teams, the most important thing to make a team work together is equality and distribution of conversational turn-taking. People's common mistake is only letting the expert talk, making it a lecture, not a team effort anymore. Your ideas are valued and are appreciated. Quote, “As long as everyone had a chance to talk, the team did well.”

Myth 3: Finally, if we're not rich and famous already, how do we get an entourage on a budget? Is there an entourage website somewhere that we could profile to match with mentors and educators?

How would you go about building an entourage without a ton of money to spend? Well, I know how I've done it. My entourage is the people who helped me go up through volunteering and serving at things. Overall, I make friends with them and make sure that I can come back and ask questions later. The way you do this is by showing genuine interest and asking lots of questions. And the most significant part is offering them something valuable in return. Try going to different events, clubs, and websites that trade services online. They are literally like dating sites, but for services. You can find experts on a budget through these networking collaboration platforms. If you are doing something professionally, you can also think about bringing on interns who are looking for college credits or work experience. They'll work for you for free temporarily, and you can always make friends with them and offer them to work with you again if they wish.

Remember, you do not want to assemble your entire entourage out of people with the same socio-economic and educational background and age as you. You want people who are older, younger, and a tad more experienced than you to gain the most benefit. Be open, transparent, and friendly to make that connection with them. You may actually be surprised at how flattered people can get when others admire and seek their expertise in something. Even if you think that person/people are too busy, try shooting them an email instead to exchange information more conveniently. Lastly, get out and travel. There are so many people in different places who can offer so much insight and value into your life. Talk to them about things, be deeply fascinated, and learn/network with them. Even if you cannot offer them anything back in return, this fascination and enthusiasm in what they are doing can help break the ice. In the end, all you have to do is make yourself interesting at a party or at a connective networking function, and suddenly you'll start having the building blocks to create your entourage.

Final Thoughts

We all try to surround ourselves with people we can get along with, friends who have our backs and support us emotionally. But we instinctively pick friends who are similar to us, friends who agree with us, and who share similar education and social backgrounds. Basically, friends who shouldn't be in our entourage because they have the same blind spots as we do. If you pick your best friend as your business partner, the two of you might glance to the right when the freight train is coming from the left.

Naturally, people group together like chemical compounds. It should be your goal to be the information node of multiple groups that have the most balanced sense of the world and of upcoming opportunities. If you build your entourage out of other nodes and each member feels safe enough to share their ideas, then you'll be positioned as the Nexus of information and opportunity.

Finally, there are ways to build a competent entourage without making it rain hundred-dollar bills in a noisy nightclub. Seek out experts and offer them an interesting perspective in return for their valuable time. Talk to personal trainers, visit professional skill-building clubs, look up local peer to peer mentor and mastermind groups. Captain Eugene Fluckey once commented, “I've always believed luck is where you find it, but by God, you've got to go out there and find it.” So, that's what you might want to keep in mind. You'll need to step outside your comfort zone to find skilled people for your entourage because by inside your comfort zone, you'll just find more of you.