Latest / The Junto Podcast / E57: Command the Room with Trey Johnson - Leadership, Imagination, and Authenticity

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E57: Command the Room with Trey Johnson - Leadership, Imagination, and Authenticity · The Junto Podcast

• 0:10
  Hello, America. Welcome to the Juneto podcast, where we promote the practical
• 0:14
  applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
• 0:18
  I'm your host, Edgar Mills. Thank you for,
• 0:28
  Hello, America. Welcome to episode 57. Thank you so much for staying with me.
• 0:34
  I appreciate you all for listening.
• 0:37
  And our listenership is growing steadily, and I'm very excited about that.
• 0:43
  So thank you all for listening.
• 0:45
  Today's episode is a unique episode in that it is a conversation with my friend Trey Johnson.
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  Trey Johnson is a battalion fire chief over in Gwinnett County,
• 0:57
  and that is his career. He's been doing that for several years.
• 1:00
  And in addition to being a battalion fire chief, he and his wife host the Command
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  the Room coaching podcast.
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  And they have a leadership coaching business together, consulting.
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  And it's pretty interesting and their podcast is pretty insightful.
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  It's interesting to me because their personalities complement each other pretty well.
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  Now you'll hear Trey here today with me, but Allie, in contrast,
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  has a very, very positive and bubbly voice.
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  And it just sounds like she's smiling all the time, the whole time.
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  And that's pretty awesome. I like it.
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  So they compliment each other very well.
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  So Trey comes out to shoot with me. That's how we met.
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  And we discovered just through conversation that we both have podcasts.
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  You know, who doesn't, right? Everybody has a podcast these days.
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  So we thought, you know, we have a little overlap on discussing leadership and
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  things like that So we thought, hey man, this might be good,
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  let's do it And we did So I think we had a great conversation Without further ado,
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  here is my conversation with Trey Johnson.
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  All right. So, podcasting. Yeah. Yeah.
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  At first, I thought everything had to be tight, tuned up, professional level stuff.
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  But what I'm starting to see is the AI fatigue.
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  Uh-huh. Yeah. Where everything looks perfect and polished.
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  Yeah. And people are starting to get like- They're tired of it.
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  They want to see some authenticity. Exactly.
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  And so, if you hear me tell my wife five minutes on podcast. ass.
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  That ain't, that ain't AI, bro. Yeah, exactly. That's my wife rushing me.
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  No, it goes back to, like you said, being authentic. Yeah.
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  People want to know the real Edgar. And so we're going to make,
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  we're going to say, um, and we're going to steal over our words.
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  And so that's what people want to hear. But also when I was coming up as a young,
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  young firefighter, I saw all these leaders. I thought they were perfect.
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  Right. I thought they didn't make any mistakes, all that stuff.
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  And then you get there you're like oh no these guys are screwing up all
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  the time we just didn't see it so i think it's important so i
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  try a lot to show the people who work with
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  me hey i screwed this up here's what i did to fix it yeah i
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  don't want them to think that you've got to be perfect to be in whatever position
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  well because if you try to portray it it's just you're just lying to yourself
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  because everybody knows that you're not perfect exactly and then when you do
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  make a mistake that someone finds out about oh yeah hammer time exactly yeah
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  so yeah i think the same with podcasts It's like we, you know,
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  we do some editing, but there's plenty of ums in there. Yeah.
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  Oh, we should take this out. It's like, nah, I'm not taking it. Nah. It's too much work.
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  I record one string. Yeah. One take.
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  Hit save. Oh, yeah. That's it. We do one take. We, you know,
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  take out the big gaps. Yeah.
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  Send it my first couple man i tried to edit it up to make it nice and clean and whatnot and it was,
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  i understand why people get paid to do these things oh yeah like marketing for
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  instance like i do my own art on all the osprey stuff yeah it's a pain in the
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  ass like if i got paid by the hour i'd i'd be clean cleaning up you know what
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  i mean but yeah i see why people get paid to do this
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  stuff exactly this technical stuff or this mundane
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  stuff and i see the value in ai for
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  stuff like that but like i was messing around with some logos last night on
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  ai yeah and some of them look pretty good man pretty professional looking but
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  like maybe it's just psychological but i look at it and it's like soulless do
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  you know what i'm saying no you can definitely tell when something's I can, you know,
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  read a post on Instagram and like immediate, I'm like, this is all AI.
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  It takes, it takes a little bit from it, even if you know, it was their words
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  initially, like it's just too clean. It's too perfect.
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  And Hey, I use AI for some stuff, but I try to make sure it's 95% me,
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  you know? No. Yeah. Me too.
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  Cause I do a lot of writing and stuff, but yeah.
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  I i use it to structure you know
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  what i mean to put it in the right structure or or
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  grammar right right exactly yeah i don't yeah
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  yeah i don't look to friggin t2000 for
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  content you know i'm saying yeah exactly yeah skynet taking
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  over my podcast or whatever uh yeah
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  it's definitely ai pushback and i think it's probably warranted i
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  think so man it's gonna it's all a pendulum right it's
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  gonna to it's never going away no oh no it's
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  not and it's gonna it's gonna proliferate more
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  yeah but it'll be to where people use it
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  a little more just to kind of bolster what they're doing well i said this on
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  one of my podcast it's gonna happen and people there's gonna be job loss and
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  i compared it to the industrial revolution just there's gonna be new jobs emerging
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  and all this yeah but once regular people get comfortable like using it for
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  what what it's good for yeah,
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  Because right now, like, you know, they were talking about making whole movies,
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  just AI, eliminating Hollywood altogether. And I'm like, yeah, good. But.
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  That'll never. Oh. It's like watching bad animation. Yeah. That's the same.
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  Yeah. Pretty much. Except somebody actually created that animation.
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  Mm-hmm. Whereas the computer did.
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  Anyway, it's soulless a little bit. Oh, absolutely. But what I said on my podcast
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  was it's going to take over the mundane tasks. Exactly.
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  The frigging monkey task. Just, uh. Mm-hmm. And if people use it for that,
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  why not? Yeah. You know what I mean? Exactly.
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  Now, don't let it take over your critical thinking and analysis.
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  Because you can ask for an analysis of a thing. I do this a lot.
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  I'll do some comparisons. Right.
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  Some people that I follow, like...
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  Let's say economic stuff from like von Mises or something.
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  And then I'll ask a very generic question from AI to see what the comparison is.
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  And the problem with it on your computer, if you do it on your profile,
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  it kind of tracks what you're looking for.
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  It'll tell you what it thinks you want to give you. Right.
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  So even then, it's not like it. Well, I don't know. So I think there's,
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  I guess there's been false information out there also.
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  Oh yeah. I don't use it enough to have to worry about that. AI hallucinating. Yeah. Yeah.
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  But man, I would hate to think that some dude would type in like,
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  hey, give me, you know, X, Y, Z, and then just send it without.
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  I mean, you know what's happening. That's gotta be. Like critical thinking is that the,
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  at least on the decline, if not at
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  the bottom of the them off right now let's be honest yeah you know for
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  christmas i buy occasionally like i can't remember the name of the company but
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  there's like these critical thinking card decks oh really interesting and you
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  know it gives you little thought exercises and it defines you know like the
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  fallacies and all these and that oh wow okay that's cool give those out for christmas,
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  you think anybody uses them yeah i know my daughter yeah that's
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  awesome you want to argue bro yeah give my daughter a
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  call nice she'll hit you i can only
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  imagine she's got your genetics oh my god not my genetics bro okay it's my mom's
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  genetics no no no my grandma's genetic there you go god rest both so they're
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  both dead i don't know they're both hard women.
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  Listen there's nothing wrong with being hard nah we need more hard people in
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  this world So, yeah, man, that's always at the top of the top.
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  Who would have thought we'd start this thing off with AI bashing? I'm not though, man.
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  Like I'm not. You know, there's, there's limitations. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Yeah. There's limitations.
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  All right. So the thing we're talking about on your podcast,
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  which is command the room coaching. That's right. Yep. Yep.
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  The last one you guys did, and I don't remember the title of it,
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  but you guys were talking about, you know what?
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  Yeah. Look it up real quick. You guys were talking about leadership,
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  and one of the things you said that caught me was being imaginative as a leader.
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  And that don't mean rainbows and unicorns. That means being able to imagine
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  all the possible outcomes. How to lead when your day keeps getting hijacked is what it was called.
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  You guys went into this leadership stuff hard as far as.
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  Well, imagination, right? Right. How, how.
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  Well, one, being good at your job. Now, I'm convinced. Now, I said this before
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  that I disagreed with one of the things you said.
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  Yeah, I was going to bring that up. I'd like to dive into that.
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  I think if you're a good leader somewhere, you can be a good leader anywhere.
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  I think we both agree. Yeah. Mostly.
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  No, I think we totally agree. So what, I said something on a podcast and I said
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  something like, sometimes leaders don't translate to other.
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  Yeah, that's what I picked up on. Yeah, other industries. and I was talking
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  about like mainly about military and first responders because we're very command
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  and control, you know, and you push back, which I appreciate it.
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  And I think you're right because I wasn't necessarily saying that a military
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  leader can't run a business.
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  I think what I really should have said and what I was getting at is sometimes we can be inflexible.
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  That's not a good leader. That's it, man. Yeah. And so what I was saying,
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  you see military leaders or first responders try to go into the private sector
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  and they fail because they're inflexible. Yeah. And they were already not a
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  good leader. That's right.
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  So if you're not a good leader in one section, you're probably not going to
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  be a good leader in the other. Yeah, absolutely.
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  But I think the reverse is true.
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  Because there's tons of military dudes that get out and just do wildly great things.
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  They take the processes, some of the processes, not all of them,
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  but, you know, and apply them.
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  Yeah. And then they soften it up a little bit to talk to, you know,
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  average human people who don't get yelled at every day.
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  And then they did great things. So, yeah, I think the leadership traits are,
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  Yes, maybe there are born leaders, but I think it's a learned behavior,
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  just like violence, just like whatever else.
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  I think it's both. A little both, yeah, right?
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  You're born with some innate traits that might make you a good leader. Yeah.
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  But you've got to learn and grow, and I'm a big proponent of lifelong learning. Right. Absolutely.
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  So the character traits just support what you learn, how you learn to be a leader.
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  So some people's character traits aren't conducive to.
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  Some people are wallflowers, man. and introverts and they refuse to step out or non-controversial.
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  There's a difference though. I don't think so.
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  I am the definition of an introvert.
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  Well, but if you were an introvert, like a deep introvert, you wouldn't be out
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  here shooting at a match, for instance.
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  Nah, no, I don't think so. See what I'm saying? No, I disagree.
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  Why? So for me, the best way to, I look at introverts versus extroverts.
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  Like, so I look at it as we're human batteries. All right. Yeah.
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  So extroverts, their battery starts getting low. They want to go out and hang
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  out with their friends. That fills up their battery.
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  Introverts are the opposite. I come in here this morning, my battery's full.
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  Yeah. As I talk with you, my battery.
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  It's draining. Draining, draining, draining. I do that to people.
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  Yeah. So not just you, just everybody.
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  So then i go home and i chill out my battery refreshes
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  so it doesn't mean that the introvert doesn't want to
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  hang out or can't hang out it's just how that how they're i think that's a unique
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  definition it is yeah that's a unique definition so that's that's how i look
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  at it so i'm i'm an introvert i think you should uh publish that and well johnson
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  i don't know if it's that unique i'm sure i heard it somewhere i did yeah i've
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  never heard yeah i've never heard quite like that so Yeah, I like it.
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  So, yeah, you can be an introvert and go into a social situation or give a speech.
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  But you're still an introvert. You're still, you know, you got to recharge.
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  Oh, some people were more healthy.
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  Yeah, some people. Some people were introverts or unhealthily. Yeah. So.
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  Yeah, but I don't. But that's other stuff. That's other stuff. So. Yeah, man.
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  But back to the imagination. Back to the imagination. How? So anyway,
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  yeah, I got sidetracked right there.
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  One, being able to look ahead. You have to be good at the job.
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  So I said leaders can lead across, but you still have to jump in and learn that.
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  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in depth.
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  So for guys like you and me who did the same thing for decades,
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  you learn all that stuff. Yeah.
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  So usually good leaders develop over time.
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  You got to know, because you got to know the end is out for sure.
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  But even then still, some people don't have the imagination to look six months ahead even.
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  I'll go with five minutes. Yeah.
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  Yeah. And that does take a little bit of a magic, or at least openness.
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  Like, okay, what could happen and how could, if,
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  If X, Y, Z, and then what's the logical outcome if this happens or if that happens
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  or if that happens. Right.
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  So, yeah, imagination. But I called it the pace plan.
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  All right. I like it. But that's a forced process. It forces you to look,
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  okay, if this doesn't work, then this is next.
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  Yeah. If that doesn't work because of X, Y, Z, then this is next.
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  So it's just a formalized process versus just being able to solve the problem on the ground.
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  Not that you don't need to be able to do that. You do.
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  Cause even the pace plan might go. Exactly.
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  Yeah. So yeah, that's just formalized process.
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  But I think, I think any place action oriented firefighting cops,
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  you should have pace plans for all sorts of things.
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  Because, yeah, it's good to be able to solve problems on the move.
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  I stress that. That's one of the things in my, the two-team guy stuff,
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  that's one of the things that I press on. Yeah.
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  But nothing should come as a surprise. Even if it's egregious,
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  even if it's crazy, it should not come as a total surprise.
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  You should have at least in the back of your mind, like, all right,
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  worst-case scenario, what if that blows up while my dudes are.
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  Yeah. And then if it happens, you've thought about it at least.
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  Because if you even think like, well, if that blows up, then you will for a
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  second go, shit, I guess I'll have to do this or that or whatever. You know? Yeah.
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  So yeah, man, pace plan. That's, that's what I replaced when I was listening to you say imagination.
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  And I thought that was good. I like it. Yeah. It's a good analogy.
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  It's sort of an artistic analogy and I like it. I.
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  Yeah, you have to come up with contingencies as leaders or even just as in general
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  life, you know? At all levels, yeah, for sure.
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  And it doesn't have to be, well, some of it should be written down.
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  As leaders, like we have our, if like we've got a small airport in our district,
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  we've got written down plans of a plane crash. Right. You know, we need that.
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  But in my personal life, we also have plans of, hey, if this thing happens,
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  we've probably just talked about it, but we'll do this, this, this.
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  And it's just, because life's going to throw you curveballs no matter what.
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  So you got to try to think through them and hopefully plan contingencies ahead of time. Yeah.
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  The smallest, most simplistic example is on the range. I'm going to do a safety brief.
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  Right. If somebody gets shot, if we can control the bleed, we'll call 911.
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  We cannot control the bleed, we'll get in the vehicle. Yeah.
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  Then I brief the route, right? Yeah. That's only a primary and alternate.
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  You don't have much content. Like, if your leg is blown off,
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  then we'll call a life flight or whatever.
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  But that's, so that gets us into the next thing we're talking about.
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  Paranoid leaders versus vigilant, just prepared leaders. Right.
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  And we've experienced, I'm sure, both sides of that. Yeah, for sure.
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  I liken paranoia to being irrational.
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  So if I briefed every time, hey, if somebody's leg gets blown off.
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  Gosh, you'd have much fewer clients.
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  Yeah, so you got to look at the likelihood of a thing happening. Exactly.
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  Yeah. That's not a rational fear. No. That's, could it happen? Yeah.
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  Look. Maybe. I guess. Anything can happen, right? Right, yeah.
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  Don't ever say nothing. That's facts. However, the chances of a leg blowing off is about .00.
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  That's your range, yes. The chances are pretty small. So why would I breathe?
• 18:37
  That's paranoia to say that.
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  That's just getting the, I'm either doing it for effect. Right. Which is pointless.
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  Yeah. Or I'm overly stressed about whatever. So that's paranoia.
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  But preparedness is still a safety brief.
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  If you get shot in the foot, that's not even likely, but that's the most likely.
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  And that negligent discharge and holstering or unholstering,
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  either in the foot or thigh or something.
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  So yeah, that's rational fear. That's like, it's practical. It could possibly happen.
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  And that's being prepared versus paranoid.
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  And that's simplified to death, but...
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  Yeah, that's it. Now, as far as firefighting goes, God, I can't even imagine all the possibilities.
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  First, let me tell you, there's two things I'm very scared of.
• 19:33
  One is sharks, and the other is fire.
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  Yeah. I was always very stressed. I didn't, I was always very stressed about
• 19:42
  getting an IED and like burning up inside the vehicle.
• 19:44
  Yeah, that was. I was very stressed about that. Yeah, that would suck. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Now we had hey we had pace plans for shit like that but as far as firefighting goes,
• 19:56
  god it seems like eight million things could happen it could but just like you
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  said you can either be paranoid about it or you can be realistic and of those
• 20:05
  eight million things that can happen on say a house fire there's probably maybe
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  you know a lot less than that that we really
• 20:11
  realistically need to be worried about and fortunately we have the training
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  and the gear and the experience to be able to use the building.
• 20:19
  Well, I say you're better able to assess, like, all right, this could happen.
• 20:23
  This is likely to happen, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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  So, and hopefully if I'm doing my job and I see that, oh, this building is very
• 20:33
  much structurally unsound, we've gotten there and we searched,
• 20:36
  there's no one's in there, I should be doing my job.
• 20:38
  I'm like, all right, hey, my guys are not worth any building.
• 20:41
  Right, right. So, hopefully I negate all those 8 million things that couldn't happen. Yeah.
• 20:46
  Yeah, so that's just me not knowing what goes on, like a real fire.
• 20:50
  Yeah, exactly. It's like if, you
• 20:52
  know, I'm sure I'd have some irrational fears if I were doing your job.
• 20:56
  Yeah. But that's just, I don't have the experience or the knowledge.
• 21:00
  Well, that's one of the good things about, and that's another good why military
• 21:06
  stuff translates pretty good.
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  Like getting shot at is pretty stressful. So, yeah.
• 21:12
  I'd imagine. Well, I mean, the first few times, like, even then you build a
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  sort of a, do you know what I mean? Yeah.
• 21:19
  That's just like, you go into your first fire, you're stressed to the max,
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  but now I go into a fire. I'm like, you know. Same exact concept, man.
• 21:27
  People think combat, like, oh my God. But I think fire. Oh my God.
• 21:30
  Yeah. Better go into combat and go into a house fire.
• 21:33
  Yes. But you probably say the same opposite, right? Yeah.
• 21:38
  But yeah, that, so for action oriented stuff, that's good that you don't get
• 21:44
  numb to it, but you're able to assess things.
• 21:47
  You get numb to it. Yeah. You're not, I mean, there's no irrational,
• 21:50
  like it all seems rational.
• 21:52
  Yeah, exactly. Like if the dude's shooting for me or 500 yards away. Mm-hmm.
• 21:57
  I know that Taliban guys don't shoot that good. Right. Yeah, there you are.
• 22:02
  Now, if I hear a machine gun open up, I'm going to start tap dancing and moving
• 22:05
  out. Yeah. You know, things like that. So, yeah.
• 22:09
  I think that's why doing high-stress jobs, though. I had a guy hit me up on Facebook or something.
• 22:15
  So, I got a course with two team guys called Long Range Evasion.
• 22:18
  Okay, yeah. And it's a cool course.
• 22:22
  And, yeah, it's threaded with teamwork and leadership development.
• 22:27
  But it's a group of dudes evading across you know from from atlanta all the way up up to here,
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  and a guy hit me up man he's very like how does
• 22:37
  this even remotely translate to the corporate boardroom blah
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  blah blah i'm like well guy you're
• 22:44
  making decisions under stress with zero resources there's
• 22:47
  all kinds of reasons why it translates but he
• 22:50
  was just very ugly about the whole thing because it wasn't or
• 22:53
  even to the everyday it relates because so me
• 22:57
  and my wife we went to chicago maybe a year ago and we stopped in the morning
• 23:03
  to get some coffee at starbucks that is huge i'm not a starbucks fan but they
• 23:08
  had this huge i don't support starbucks they had this huge three-story starbucks
• 23:11
  is the closest one to the hotel and with a walking distance so we went in there and get coffee.
• 23:16
  And this dude walks in, dressed, not the best, and starts being very loud.
• 23:24
  And I say to my wife, she's like, all right, we're going to go somewhere else.
• 23:27
  And she's like, why? What's going on? And I'm like.
• 23:30
  Do you not see what's about to happen in the next couple of minutes?
• 23:33
  And everybody else is just ambivalent, not paying any attention.
• 23:37
  I see this dude. I'm like, this is going to be a problem.
• 23:40
  Let's give it a couple of minutes. And of course, as we're trying to make our
• 23:42
  way out, it gets louder and louder. They have to call their security over.
• 23:45
  And as we're walking down the street, I see the cops showing up.
• 23:48
  I'm like, that's why we left.
• 23:49
  You got to be aware of, hey, this thing's about to go bad. I don't know when,
• 23:54
  but I don't need to be here.
• 23:56
  And here's the thing, man. Maybe it wouldn't have went bad, but so what? Who cares, yeah.
• 24:00
  Sometimes you're going to get it wrong, but I'd rather be wrong on the side
• 24:02
  of being safe and protecting my family.
• 24:04
  For sure. Versus I don't need this Starbucks and whatever we're going to get
• 24:08
  there. We can go somewhere else.
• 24:10
  So that long-range survival class, even if it doesn't apply to corporate,
• 24:14
  which I think it still does, it applies just to everyday life.
• 24:17
  Well, those courses that I do, they're themed for adventure,
• 24:24
  right? So you're having fun.
• 24:26
  Right. I mean, well, some of them aren't as fun as others. Some people don't have fun.
• 24:31
  Some people have a big time. Some people are like, have you ever heard of type two fun?
• 24:35
  No. So like, you know, type one fun is like, it's fun in the moment.
• 24:39
  Right. And type two fun is, it sucks.
• 24:42
  But then a couple days later, like, oh, that was awesome.
• 24:45
  Type two fun is where you need to be because that makes you better.
• 24:49
  That makes you more resilient. Right. Because you're learning something there. Right. Yeah.
• 24:53
  Yeah. All those courses, they're all completely different, but team development,
• 24:58
  team development, like doing tasks outside of your normal daily life.
• 25:04
  So now it's, you got to put, but can you still work with people under pressure?
• 25:08
  Cause there's always time pressure involved.
• 25:10
  Yeah. That translates, man. It translates to any, anything.
• 25:13
  So I think from the private sector, kind of corporate world,
• 25:17
  that's where they, they miss out on that team building because you get into
• 25:21
  a firefight, we go into a burning building. You got, there's some risk involved there.
• 25:27
  So that bonding is instantaneous.
• 25:32
  So sometimes we have to have trainings with, you know, I work for a pretty large
• 25:37
  county and the county HR does trainings that the eight hour people go to.
• 25:42
  You know, sometimes we're in there and they do like this, these little team
• 25:44
  buildings at the beginning. I'm like, this is stupid.
• 25:46
  And they, I've unfortunately said that a few times and they look at me like I'm crazy.
• 25:52
  And I tell them like, we don't need to do this. Like we do this at the fire
• 25:56
  station. That's a nine and five thing. We do this going to calls. Yeah.
• 25:59
  And so those people in the corporate world, they just don't get that. Yeah.
• 26:04
  I don't know if it's fortunate or unfortunate, but yeah. Well,
• 26:07
  some people out there get, I got a buddy.
• 26:10
  He he works for a major major humongous tech company and he's he's pretty high
• 26:18
  up in it but he was a enlisted marine okay yeah back in the day yeah and he
• 26:22
  sees value and stuff like that i'm sure because he works with a bunch of oh
• 26:27
  in the in the i don't want to say nerds but,
• 26:30
  it is what they do what they do right they've never been tested physically though yeah so.
• 26:35
  You don't have to be tested physically to learn how to be a team player,
• 26:39
  but that speeds up the process.
• 26:42
  Definitely does. Yes. It gets you to, it gets you there faster, I think.
• 26:47
  And you see very quickly how people are going to react under stress.
• 26:50
  Yeah. That's when you get the poopy.
• 26:51
  So you might not see it at work every day. There's just like,
• 26:55
  Oh, this guy's pretty, but in that accelerated high stress timeline,
• 26:59
  that dude might turn into like a bitchy, like, uh, you're unable to work with the guy.
• 27:04
  Or you may think, oh, this guy's a stud. Right. See him every day.
• 27:08
  He's awesome. He's doing everything right. Then you go into a fire and you're
• 27:11
  like, dude, what happened? You know? Yeah, and then you see him crumble under the chair.
• 27:15
  That's the goodness of stuff like that. Team building with the adventure spin
• 27:19
  on it. Because there's always physical stuff involved.
• 27:23
  And nothing will make my...
• 27:27
  A soft person at 3am when it starts drizzling rain, you see some poopy faces, man. Sure.
• 27:37
  And everybody's like, yeah, but then there's, there's not natural,
• 27:43
  but people who are like, all right, well, it is what, here's what we got to
• 27:46
  do. This is just a variable.
• 27:48
  So what? So, and that's how, you know, and that's how you shake it out. And it's, it's awesome.
• 27:54
  And that one guy I was talking about, he, he sees that kind of,
• 27:57
  He sees value in it, man. He loves it.
• 27:59
  But there's other people that, why would I ever have to do that? Why would I do that?
• 28:03
  And I can't get my mind around people who absolutely don't see any reason to test themselves.
• 28:10
  So I think that life should be strenuous.
• 28:15
  Not every day, but life is definitely strenuous.
• 28:18
  But life is the easiest it's ever been in history. Oh, I know. That's right. History.
• 28:26
  And you've got to test yourself you've got to yeah seek a strenuous life whatever
• 28:31
  that means to you if you just these if your life is comfortable every day one you're mentally,
• 28:38
  lowering your capacity yeah that's right and your body's probably also getting
• 28:42
  a little soft yeah and it's not it's not good so i'm softer than i want to be
• 28:46
  right now but that's all right but you've tested yourself mentally in the past
• 28:50
  so you can get to no yeah so i know yeah i know what my baselines are and all that stuff.
• 28:56
  And then with my, my clients, I've seen the other side of that dudes who go
• 29:03
  and do all the action stuff and they get all pumped up about themselves.
• 29:08
  You know, they're, they're like corporate-y guys or whatever.
• 29:12
  Yeah, it's definitely a lot. And they imagine themselves to be operators. Yeah.
• 29:18
  And they put themselves, now I'm not saying above anyone, but I'm just because
• 29:24
  you can go, I don't know what, summit some 14,000 footer.
• 29:32
  All right, I can't, I've never done that, but I'm pretty sure it's pretty hard.
• 29:35
  So I can't, I don't want to, I feel like that is an accomplishment.
• 29:39
  Oh, it is for some of them, but there's some that you can walk up.
• 29:43
  Colorado's got, I can't remember how many 14,000 footers, but some of them are like in the woods.
• 29:50
  Well, not woods. Cause that high, there's no trees, but like,
• 29:53
  oh, see, I just, the elevation, the base elevations already,
• 29:56
  you know, 8,000 feet. And then it's just, you know, you kind of trail up.
• 30:00
  Yeah. There's a few of them like that. Oh, I just always want to say Lincoln
• 30:03
  and like Democrat and some other, they're walk-ups.
• 30:08
  I just imagine climbing Everest, you know, where you're like,
• 30:10
  you're literally, you could die.
• 30:12
  If you do everything right, you could maybe not make it better.
• 30:14
  No, there are mountains like that too, for sure. And that's tough stuff. Yeah.
• 30:20
  But that doesn't also, it doesn't make you superior to anyone.
• 30:23
  No, no, it does. So when you come back down and you go to the office,
• 30:27
  you still got to be a team player. You still got to be.
• 30:30
  Yeah, but that's, now we're talking about. But it's a. A personality.
• 30:34
  Yeah, it's personality. Not to call
• 30:35
  it a defect, but there's definitely a personality issue there that she...
• 30:39
  People like that should probably work on. Because nothing makes you better than anybody else.
• 30:43
  So an arrogant guy, that kind of stuff will fuel that arrogance a little bit.
• 30:47
  But the arrogance was already there. Right. It was, yeah, yeah.
• 30:50
  I guess this is a tangent. So how do you feel about all these classes and,
• 30:56
  you know, you talk about people wanting to be pseudo operators. Yeah.
• 31:00
  Is that beneficial or not? No, I don't, no, no, no. I don't think so.
• 31:05
  Yeah, I, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't generally like it. Well,
• 31:09
  one, I purposely do not teach tactics to civilians.
• 31:14
  I teach tactics with cops. And every now and then I'll get a military unit and
• 31:18
  I'll teach tactics, but I don't teach tactics with civilians.
• 31:22
  Everybody wants to do CQB. Everybody wants to do CQB. Yeah.
• 31:27
  It's team sport. And if you ain't on that team, you're not.
• 31:32
  Whatever you think you're doing with it, you're not.
• 31:36
  And then, you know, you got the guy, LARPers, whatever you want to call it.
• 31:39
  It's fun. They go out and they do it.
• 31:41
  They dress up with all their thousands of dollars worth of kit.
• 31:45
  And they go enter and clear rooms with each other and pretend like they're awesome.
• 31:49
  I think you're setting people up for, I don't know.
• 31:53
  I'm looking at worst case scenario, right? Yeah. You got to take a CQB class
• 31:58
  with eye spray shoe solutions, which don't exist, by the way.
• 32:01
  And then you go home, you hear bumping at night. You start cruising through
• 32:05
  your house like you're a frigging, uh, you know who Sam Fisher is? No.
• 32:11
  Splinter Cell, man. It was a game back in. Okay. Yeah. I've played that.
• 32:15
  Yeah. Yeah. The next thing you know, you get smoked in your own house.
• 32:19
  I don't know, man. I just don't.
• 32:22
  I got philosophical problems with it.
• 32:26
  Uh, one of my favorite guys to follow in this, in that scope, right?
• 32:29
  The tactics tactics and shooting one of
• 32:32
  my favorite guys is matt prank and he he's a
• 32:35
  bit of an asshole right he's like he was
• 32:38
  a delta dude yeah and i don't care what anybody
• 32:41
  says that's the top of the that's the top of the line okay right
• 32:44
  that's the yeah that's the that's the premium model and
• 32:49
  they are the masters of cqb whether it's
• 32:52
  hostage rescue or direct action or whatever it is yeah
• 32:55
  and he will just so one
• 32:58
  of these whatever cool guy youtube companies will post
• 33:01
  a video and then it's that he will just rip nice and
• 33:06
  you know some guy who maybe was in the army for four years or was a SWAT cop
• 33:11
  on his part-time SWAT team yeah or some crap like that and now they're teaching
• 33:15
  making big bucks teaching civilians stuff that one the civilian will ever use as a civilian.
• 33:21
  I mean, it's just... Yeah, why would you? So, sell it as fun or don't sell it. Yeah.
• 33:28
  But they're very deadly serious when they're giving the instruction,
• 33:31
  right? Like, they're talking about how bad guys are trying to kill them in a snap.
• 33:36
  It just builds up a whole nother thing that's just, uh, it's not relevant to
• 33:40
  shooting a gun, shooting a gun and doing any other tactic to totally different things.
• 33:46
  Yeah. So I always believe that shooting a gun is like training any other sport.
• 33:52
  You do the, you, you get good at the task.
• 33:55
  Yeah. Isolate. Isolate. That's right.
• 33:58
  And then if you're good at all those, all the cumulative tasks,
• 34:03
  you can apply them to whatever tactic. Mm-hmm.
• 34:06
  Not that you, you know, somebody bump, if you hear bump in a night,
• 34:10
  most grown men are going to get up and see what it is. Yeah.
• 34:12
  But if you get more than one room separated from your wife, that's probably
• 34:16
  not, that's probably wrong.
• 34:17
  Yeah. If you got kids in the house, if you're not going to that room,
• 34:21
  you're probably wrong. There's all kinds of realistic.
• 34:26
  Things that if you try to apply CQB to, you're going to be a clown and maybe a dead clown.
• 34:35
  Yeah, man. Anyway, I don't know how I got off on that.
• 34:39
  You led me down a hole there.
• 34:44
  Yeah, CQB is team sport, man. Yeah. If you ain't on that team,
• 34:48
  don't waste your time and money. Go shoot.
• 34:50
  Because I guarantee you everybody on all those videos could probably afford
• 34:55
  to shoot a little better.
• 34:59
  We probably all can. We all can, right? Yeah. So just go tune that up, man. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:05
  Go tune that up. And if you want to CQB, if you want to move and shoot,
• 35:08
  go do a match because that's all the moving and shooting you need right there. Yeah.
• 35:14
  Because now you're getting the movement part under stress. Mm-hmm.
• 35:20
  And it's varied. Everything, you know, the stage has changed.
• 35:22
  So you're getting a lot of variety.
• 35:24
  So you're learning to apply your marksmanship skill to your agility and all that stuff.
• 35:31
  Man. Yeah. I lost my train of thought on that. You got me. Yeah. You're welcome.
• 35:41
  All right. Back to it. Paranoia, vigilance. All right. Next.
• 35:46
  Okay. Yeah. Fire service versus military. About, with AARs. All right.
• 35:52
  Yeah. After action review. Yep.
• 35:54
  So the military, even if you do a, there's a thing called a KLE,
• 36:00
  a key leader engagement. Okay.
• 36:02
  Where you and your, you know, like maybe your whole team will go,
• 36:06
  but maybe just, you know, split team will go.
• 36:09
  You got some security guy and a team leader or whoever goes in and sits down
• 36:12
  with a little village chief.
• 36:15
  Key leader and got a meeting with the heads. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:20
  Even then, you still, when you come back, you do an after-action review.
• 36:24
  And in a lot of cases, it's formalized,
• 36:27
  especially in pre-train-ups to go to combat when you go and you go to a training,
• 36:33
  a big training center, because everything's on video and shit.
• 36:36
  You'll go down, sit down and do a proper, like, detailed after-action.
• 36:40
  And that stuff, it gets formalized. Now you got something to go, tune up.
• 36:45
  But even as a team, you sit around. And I mean, like, all right,
• 36:48
  you come back off an op, whatever op to do.
• 36:51
  I don't care if it's a one day or 10 day. Yeah.
• 36:54
  Before you even go back to the team house, you stop at the gas pump.
• 36:58
  Right. Fill up the trucks. Yeah.
• 37:00
  You go back, you take care of all the stuff so that before you go even back
• 37:06
  into the team room, the truck's ready. Ready to go.
• 37:08
  Yeah. For the next thing. You never know what's coming.
• 37:12
  And all your ammo's tied. Then you go to the loadout room, everything gets,
• 37:16
  so it's all ready to go for the next thing.
• 37:21
  Then you might take a half hour to go shower, maybe.
• 37:26
  Then you go sit in the ops room and formal AR. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 37:31
  And I'm an informal guy. So when I, when I do it, it's a little,
• 37:35
  a little more, it flows a little bit, but yeah, here's what the plan was. Mm-hmm.
• 37:42
  And then, but you AAR even the planning phase, right? Like. Okay.
• 37:46
  Like even the plan, you AAR, all right, we did this and we went based off this information.
• 37:52
  And then we found out different on the ground, whatever. Then the op.
• 37:57
  So planning, preparation, infill.
• 38:00
  How did our infill go? Well, we had a flat tire on the way. Well,
• 38:03
  how could we fix, you know. Yeah.
• 38:05
  Which has been a thing. And then, you know, and then, hey, actions on the objective. Mm-hmm.
• 38:13
  Exfil, a whole thing, all in very detail. Yeah.
• 38:16
  And that's good because it solves a lot of, prevents a lot of things in the
• 38:21
  future, you know? Yeah. I think it's very good.
• 38:24
  The level of formality, it's on you. Yeah. And I'm trying to imagine that against firefighting.
• 38:33
  So I think at different levels,
• 38:37
  we should be doing, reviewing every, every major incident, every, every call.
• 38:44
  And I would like to think, and I don't know, I know when I was a lieutenant,
• 38:48
  a captain on, on, on the rig, most major incidents, we, we talked about it.
• 38:54
  We got back to the station, maybe over, over, you know, eating the meal or whatever.
• 38:59
  We'd talk about the call. Hey, this went well we should do this next
• 39:02
  time so but that was was that former
• 39:05
  was that just amongst the homies sitting around yes that's amongst yeah
• 39:08
  yeah the crew right so and i think that happens probably in every firehouse
• 39:12
  in america or should be happening yeah but as you get and so for me as as a
• 39:17
  chief if we go on a major fire i try afterwards we call it a hot wash we'll
• 39:22
  just get around either you know in the front yard or around the trucks we'll
• 39:26
  talk about it we'll you You know, hey,
• 39:28
  engine 15, what did you do? What did you see?
• 39:30
  What could you have done different? Just kind of go about it.
• 39:33
  And then once we get to really major incidents where, unfortunately,
• 39:37
  a lot of times maybe something went wrong or it was, we call them target hazards, where you have...
• 39:42
  Know, a big building that is either a huge risk to the community or maybe a lots of life hazard.
• 39:48
  We'll do it like an official after action review where all the,
• 39:53
  all the chiefs will come PowerPoint, go down it.
• 39:57
  Hey, this is what we did. This is what we could do different and really formalize it.
• 40:02
  But for us, like we're a really busy department. It's hard for us to,
• 40:06
  so at a, at a house fire, we're going to have 20 to 30 people there.
• 40:11
  We're going to have, you know, at least.
• 40:14
  Probably like eight pieces of apparatus there. Yeah. We can't take it out of
• 40:17
  service for two hours after the fire to, to really, you know,
• 40:22
  after every fire to, to talk about how it went.
• 40:25
  Cause it's just, we still, we still have all these citizens to serve and we
• 40:28
  got to keep service levels up. So.
• 40:30
  And even informally. So one thing I want to add to you that you should think
• 40:34
  about, we always, no matter how informal it is, there's somebody at the whiteboard with a marker.
• 40:40
  Mm. Right. And whoever's running the AR, but we always have sustains and improves
• 40:46
  okay okay and we write down the things that like this shit was clockwork this
• 40:51
  was whatever it was and then we have that we we slipped on this a little,
• 40:56
  whatever phase of the operation like yeah this part right here was a little
• 41:00
  slack yeah and not blaming or anything like that just saying as a team we need
• 41:06
  to improve this for the next time So, however informal,
• 41:09
  it's still, there's the sustain and improves. You know what I mean?
• 41:14
  So, I think we could do a better job about, like, doing it more often and really.
• 41:21
  So, there's this governmental agency, NIOSH.
• 41:25
  Don't ask me what it stands for. Oh, shit. Yeah. I think it's the National Institute
• 41:30
  for Occupational Safety and Health. That's what it is.
• 41:33
  So, after every fight. In addition to OSHA, there's another.
• 41:37
  Of course, man. Come on. Jeez Louise.
• 41:39
  So they investigate every firefighter line of duty death. Yeah.
• 41:44
  And I'm talking about in detail. Right. Like their reports will be 150 pages long.
• 41:49
  And I don't know when it started, but it's been going on at least like the past 30 or 40 years.
• 41:55
  They always identify the major causes that contributed to the firefighter's death.
• 42:00
  And I would say for the past 20 or 30 years, it's always been the same causes.
• 42:05
  You could probably look up, if you looked up on your computer right now,
• 42:08
  any NIOSH report of a line of duty death,
• 42:10
  I can guarantee you like command and control and all
• 42:12
  these solicit probably 15 different things that continue
• 42:16
  happening at fires that contribute
• 42:19
  it to a line of duty desk and as a
• 42:22
  fire service we just haven't implemented anything
• 42:25
  that to make these things better yeah and so i
• 42:29
  feel like y'all's after action reviews y'all y'all take what what is what should
• 42:33
  it improve and y'all actually improve it but for the fire service we don't necessarily
• 42:39
  well what i'm going to compare to niosh is the army on the big level has the
• 42:44
  uh Center for Lessons Learned. Oh, okay.
• 42:47
  I didn't know that. So every big operation like that, you know,
• 42:50
  they identify all these things.
• 42:52
  And that goes out in a publication so you can look.
• 42:55
  Do you find a trend where those same things are? Yeah, there's always trends and ebbs and flows.
• 43:00
  But yeah, but that was one of my, I loved that resource. Yeah.
• 43:07
  Because they would categorize them so you can look at SF operations or you can
• 43:11
  look at infantry operations.
• 43:12
  Oh, wow. Okay. And find stuff that's similar to what. Yeah, that's going to be a question.
• 43:17
  Was there a big difference between special operations and just normal infantry
• 43:22
  and the causes are. Well, yeah, yeah, there is.
• 43:26
  But the ground level tactics are very similar. Yeah.
• 43:29
  Machine gunners. Machine gunners. Yeah.
• 43:33
  Know the the resources available the mission itself
• 43:36
  you know usually as the
• 43:39
  sf team you're you're there looking for a dude right and
• 43:42
  we're going based off of yeah an objective name like a guy yeah right yeah and
• 43:47
  he just like an infantry you might just be out doing a patrol movement to contact
• 43:52
  you know somebody shoots at you shoot back execute your battle drills yeah so
• 43:59
  yeah There's just a lot of different missions, but.
• 44:00
  So, yeah, I think after action reviews are, like, huge and important.
• 44:03
  That's how you get better. Yeah.
• 44:05
  I liken it to, you know, a football team. I'm not super into sports. No, I mean. Yeah.
• 44:11
  But they go back every game. Well, they watch film, right? They watch film.
• 44:15
  That's why we do film on the range down there, right? Yeah, that's how you get better.
• 44:18
  Like, and so we need to be doing the same thing in the fire service.
• 44:22
  I think so. If you're in the corporate world, you need to be doing the same
• 44:25
  thing. That's how you improve.
• 44:27
  Even on my courses, man. Yeah. We sit down at the end and do it after action.
• 44:31
  That's awesome. Because everything can be made better.
• 44:34
  Exactly. There's no such thing as. So then you just fire our military or anything
• 44:39
  else. Yeah. We can always get better. There's always things we can improve.
• 44:42
  And even corporate level stuff, product launches, whatever.
• 44:46
  You can after action review that shit and be like, man, if we would have done
• 44:50
  this right here, we would have got.
• 44:52
  It's, it's, and it's not hard and it can be informal.
• 44:56
  Yeah. I think the key is you've got to, whoever that leader is or the organizational
• 45:02
  culture, you've got to make it so people are willing to actually speak up and
• 45:05
  say, hey, I screwed this up. That's the culture, right? Yeah. That's the culture.
• 45:10
  And a lot of cultures don't, they don't allow that. If you admit,
• 45:14
  hey, I messed this up or. Some AARs get heat.
• 45:17
  Oh, that's going to happen, right? And they're not supposed to.
• 45:19
  Well, we all got egos. But I'll give you, I'll give you an example.
• 45:22
  Yeah. I'll give you a quick example. This is just a little war story,
• 45:25
  but I was, we were on operation and we had a little bit of friendly fire that
• 45:30
  was potential, nothing bad, right? That's good. Yeah. But still.
• 45:36
  Guess who I could after, because I was on the other end of it.
• 45:40
  I didn't speak to that guy for like three days because I was, I would have beat him up.
• 45:46
  Yeah. And I didn't want to do that. Yeah.
• 45:49
  You can't be a team sergeant and go beat a dude up. Probably not. On your team.
• 45:55
  But I would have because I was very irate.
• 45:59
  I would say that was probably warranted. I don't know how I'd have.
• 46:01
  I think it was warranted too.
• 46:03
  Yeah, I don't know how to react to that. I think it was warranted too,
• 46:04
  but the AAR, I'm trying to decide if, no. So I just sat quietly, man.
• 46:12
  I was, and he was across two rooms.
• 46:17
  I was irate, but you do it right after the fact, man, everything's still.
• 46:21
  Yeah, no, you got it. But that was still a few days. That was a long op,
• 46:23
  right? It was, I mean, eight or 10 day op.
• 46:26
  And that was a few days, you know, like, so there's even days go by before we
• 46:31
  got back. And I was still fucking irate.
• 46:35
  I can imagine. But sometimes, yeah, good on you for knowing to take that time
• 46:39
  to cool down. That's definitely an important leadership skill to have.
• 46:43
  I know I've been there where I've wanted to talk to somebody in the moment,
• 46:46
  like, you know what? I should probably, this is not the time for this. And that dude...
• 46:52
  After the AAR and all that, and they said what they said, and they gave their
• 46:57
  statements because he had a team with him, a little infantry.
• 47:00
  Some infantry guys were with him.
• 47:02
  After they said everything they said, right, I was like, all right.
• 47:07
  And then over the course of those two days before I addressed him,
• 47:10
  I went and talked to those young guys. I was like, all right, man.
• 47:16
  No master sergeant right you know just tell me what happened and he told me
• 47:20
  and it didn't jive up with what he told me you know what i mean i could yeah
• 47:25
  i wasn't good i was very upset that makes you imagine right tegher imagine getting shot by your own dude,
• 47:31
  no grandkids and shit yeah yes yeah
• 47:36
  f that guy so did he own up
• 47:39
  to it in the after action or no eventually no
• 47:42
  not in the after action no no no no nope it took it took him a while to actually
• 47:47
  admit one is i presented facts to the guy anyway yeah after action review brings
• 47:54
  that stuff out though yes so what happened well i saw this i don't know that boom boom boom.
• 48:03
  Yeah he just was wrong about what
• 48:06
  he saw you know what he did yeah and then
• 48:09
  about lying about what else he did about it anyway after
• 48:13
  action review you get a chance to at
• 48:16
  least get the version of it now normally that was
• 48:19
  an incident right right normally you know if there's no incident you just do
• 48:25
  the op and it executes however you know there'll be a little friction here and
• 48:29
  there but not usually ars aren't aren't the blame game you just yeah they shouldn't
• 48:36
  be or else don't want to go nuts. It's not an AR then.
• 48:39
  It's just, so it's usually not, it's not a, it's not meant to be the blame game.
• 48:43
  So as you can't let it be. No. Yeah. You gotta be.
• 48:47
  And then, cause you can always, I mean, this happened to me,
• 48:50
  believe me, you can always, somebody wants to blame somebody,
• 48:53
  you can turn around and be like, well, why didn't you do this?
• 48:55
  Correct. To prevent that.
• 48:57
  Exactly. And then it gets like, oh, whoa.
• 49:01
  So yeah, there's always, that's why you don't do the blame game.
• 49:04
  It's a team effort. Correct. the way it is we're all trying to get better that's the way it is,
• 49:09
  Yeah. AARs, man. I think they should be done every time. Now,
• 49:13
  yeah, you ain't got time, but informal, man. Just standing in front of a whiteboard.
• 49:19
  Sustains and improves. We did this really awesome. We did this. We could do this better.
• 49:24
  That's it. I like that. Even on, like, ah, never mind, Army stuff.
• 49:31
  Yeah. So those are the things I pulled out of y'all's that I liked about that
• 49:35
  last episode. I thought it was good.
• 49:37
  Yeah. I'm glad you liked it. Glad you got.
• 49:40
  Something positive. Now I'm still foggy on Allie. She was in a higher education. Yep.
• 49:49
  And she was in some non-profit. Yeah, so she started out in higher education.
• 49:54
  Like, she was over residence halls working with the students if they had issues.
• 49:59
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then she transitioned into working still in higher education
• 50:03
  with helping students find internships, career guidance, that kind of stuff.
• 50:08
  Yeah. And she got a little a little burnt out with the higher education world
• 50:11
  yeah i can imagine you got parents parents are always the problem yes and she
• 50:16
  went into non-nonprofit work doing the same type of thing she was working with
• 50:20
  working with disadvantaged the disadvantaged essentially helping them,
• 50:25
  build skills go through some like tech classes and stuff like that and then
• 50:30
  she would help them find careers work on the resumes interview skills and so
• 50:35
  that's what she does yeah so she's really,
• 50:37
  She, she's top notch in, in that, that area, interview skills,
• 50:41
  all that kind of stuff. She's awesome. Yeah.
• 50:43
  No, she's a way smarter than me. I don't want to say bubbly. It ain't that.
• 50:47
  She's very, she's got a positive tone. Oh yeah. She's definitely positive.
• 50:50
  She's not toxic, positive, but just positive. Yeah.
• 50:53
  She definitely balances me out because I am not positive. So,
• 50:56
  yeah, I wouldn't, I'm, I call myself positive, but people would not look at
• 51:02
  me and go, yeah, I just expect good things to happen.
• 51:06
  See, my motto in life is low expectations equal happiness.
• 51:11
  So if you, you know, some of us have too high of expectations.
• 51:15
  See, mine's different. And I've changed.
• 51:17
  I used to be a very cynical son of a bitch. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 51:20
  I would hate to see that. But these days, man, one of my team leaders once called
• 51:27
  me a curmudgeon. That's a nice word.
• 51:31
  That's funny. I have high expectations now. Yeah? I'm just prepared for the worst.
• 51:38
  I can go. I feel like that's... You know what I'm saying? That's the same thing, yeah.
• 51:41
  But I expect shit to go well. Yeah.
• 51:46
  Because of the things I do, I put 100% effort into. And I tell people this all
• 51:51
  the time, especially, you know, we do some... I do a force on force.
• 51:55
  But in the military, when you do force on force, right, you'll have role players. Yeah.
• 52:01
  And the sort of standard is when you're the, the, the team going through,
• 52:07
  even if you get shot, you don't go down unless you're trying to get a medical,
• 52:11
  like you're trying to train a specific objective.
• 52:14
  Even if you get shot, you, you fight through it. You got to.
• 52:18
  Because it trains for success. That's what I was about to say. Yeah.
• 52:22
  So when I was initially in the fire service, it was super common for,
• 52:27
  we'd be training and then they'd be like, oh, you're down.
• 52:31
  Yeah. You got to just lay there. They're going to rescue you.
• 52:33
  Well, that's training me just to quit. Right.
• 52:36
  So we do the same thing now. Like you're never, you're never dead. Right. Keep fighting.
• 52:40
  Keep fighting. Yeah. Now, unless you're trying to specifically get a medical
• 52:43
  thing out of that, right? That's a thing, right?
• 52:46
  But yeah, you train to keep going. Yeah. And, and.
• 52:51
  Every time you go in a number one man and you get shot and you stop right there,
• 52:55
  you're not getting your training objective. Correct. Yeah.
• 52:59
  So yeah, that's the way I do everything.
• 53:03
  I train for success and I just, that's what I'm going for.
• 53:08
  And that's it. Hopefully that'll translate one of these days to actual success. I bet. I bet.
• 53:16
  From my viewpoint, you're successful, so. No, I am too from my viewpoint.
• 53:19
  I just don't manage my money well.
• 53:22
  But legacy, man, the range. It's all about building the big range.
• 53:26
  There you go. And once that happens, I'll feel like I have arrived.
• 53:29
  Whether it makes a dime or not, it's irrelevant.
• 53:32
  It's all about the facility existing and ultimately about my son running it.
• 53:37
  That's awesome. You know.
• 53:38
  But that word arrived, like you're reminding me of something.
• 53:42
  Have you heard of the arrival fallacy?
• 53:45
  That's it, right? the people yeah and i think we're we're naturally inclined
• 53:50
  to it we're all victims of it so.
• 53:53
  Anybody looking at me right now would say i'm wildly successful right i i mean
• 53:58
  i'm essentially i was a college dropout i got into the fire service and now
• 54:03
  i made it to a level in a pretty respected organization that most people will
• 54:08
  never make it to right but i i still i wouldn't say
• 54:12
  i know i'm successful but i'm still wanting wanting
• 54:15
  to do more wanting to see how i can improve and it's that arrival fallacy
• 54:18
  that you think you oh if i make i don't
• 54:21
  know i want to be a millionaire and then you get to a million dollars and you're
• 54:24
  like oh is this it and then you look to the next thing yeah that's right i used
• 54:29
  to think i was an infantryman i thought once i got a green beret i was there
• 54:32
  but then you find out what you get shit on there too so then you're It's like,
• 54:37
  oh man, I got to, I got to go.
• 54:39
  It just never ends. Yeah. No, that's right.
• 54:42
  Everybody imagines there's some arrival point. There's not. No.
• 54:47
  And if you've reached it, I mean, good on you, I guess. If you've,
• 54:49
  if you're. I feel like if you, if you, if you've reached it in your mind,
• 54:52
  you've probably just quit.
• 54:53
  Right. Right. I think so. Yeah. Cause yeah, I know very well off people who
• 54:59
  are not happy with their space.
• 55:02
  People look at me. Yeah. People go, oh man, you live in a very nice house.
• 55:06
  A wildly overpriced house.
• 55:10
  But yeah, all overpriced, but haven't arrived anywhere by any stretch. Yeah.
• 55:18
  I say that, but you got to be careful, I feel like, because you mentioned the
• 55:23
  guy, there's millionaires out there and 15,000 square foot houses unhappy,
• 55:28
  right? Right. Which is really sad.
• 55:31
  So that's it. There's a lot of places to arrive to. Yeah. Regardless of your job or your whatever.
• 55:38
  So, yeah, I don't look at things like that at all. It's just always a constant.
• 55:42
  You got to be moving forward. And that might be a problem, too.
• 55:45
  I don't think. As long as you're moving forward to the right thing. Positively. Yeah, man.
• 55:51
  Arrival fallacy. I like it because you don't arrive.
• 55:55
  No. And I, there's a thing I say similar to that is you'll see some senior dudes
• 56:02
  in the military who feel like they,
• 56:06
  you'll hear dudes say it even sometimes that they've paid their dues. Yeah.
• 56:12
  As, as, well, I guess, what do you mean by that? Are they saying like,
• 56:16
  I don't have to do it. Dudes who kind of rest on their laurels a little bit. Yeah.
• 56:19
  That's, that's a trap. No, no. I paid my dues.
• 56:23
  Nah. They don't get paid until you're in the ground, bro.
• 56:27
  That's the way I look at it. Because if you think this one's paid up,
• 56:31
  then then there's another one over there.
• 56:33
  Yeah. You don't, the dues ain't paid.
• 56:37
  Nah. So whatever you think. And that goes along with like entitlement and things like that.
• 56:41
  Yeah. You're not entitled to anything. No, you're not. You haven't paid.
• 56:44
  No matter how hard you think you've had it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 56:48
  There's always more to be done. Plus there's some other person who is grinding
• 56:55
  to get where you are or past you. Yeah.
• 56:58
  Well, if you feel like you've paid your dues, they'll pass you. 100%. Yeah. For sure.
• 57:03
  All right. We've talked about some weird stuff. Let's talk about...
• 57:08
  All right, this is generic. I want to talk about your definition of success.
• 57:14
  We kind of talked about it a little, right? I don't.
• 57:19
  Generally speaking, you're successful. Generally speaking, I'm successful.
• 57:22
  Anybody, if I told anybody my story, they'd be like, you're wildly successful.
• 57:26
  But yeah, I don't think I am.
• 57:28
  And this is going to sound like BS, but I don't know if I have a definition
• 57:32
  of success. I wake up every morning and so we do performance appraisals every year.
• 57:39
  And my boss kind of asked me, hey, what are your career objectives?
• 57:42
  And I told her, I was like, I just come to work every day trying to be a better
• 57:45
  firefighter. And that sounds like complete and utter crap, but it's true. It is.
• 57:50
  And I don't know where that's going to take me, but I just want to be good at my job.
• 57:55
  And I don't know that I'm there yet. I know I got a bunch of stuff I need to work on. Yeah.
• 57:58
  And I probably always will. but i don't there's no there's no goal that i have
• 58:03
  that says i can say oh i'm successful.
• 58:07
  The performance reviews yeah yeah the army has ncoers and oers okay evaluation of course is what,
• 58:18
  that's a loaded question right what are your what are your career goals i want
• 58:21
  to be the sergeant major of the army well that's the right answer right but
• 58:24
  that's crazy that that's a crazy I never, I never even want to be a U nine.
• 58:29
  Yeah. And I, and I made it without ever making a D nine, uh,
• 58:33
  on, on purpose. Like, uh, yeah.
• 58:36
  Structured myself. There you go. So I can retire as a team sergeant.
• 58:41
  So when, when somebody above you asked that and they're, they're expecting like
• 58:45
  one of those, what I think is ready-made answers.
• 58:49
  I don't think they're genuinely like, if you go, Hey, I just want to get better
• 58:53
  every day and be a value to the people around me.
• 58:56
  I don't, to me, that's the right answer. Yeah.
• 59:00
  I don't, I think, I don't think, I don't think there are ulterior motives when
• 59:03
  I was asked that question.
• 59:05
  I think it was. Well, maybe not ulterior, but really? Yeah.
• 59:09
  I don't think that was the answer that was expected. let's go with that which
• 59:14
  is you know i don't know i've always been told to
• 59:17
  march to be the moon drummer so like i just i i
• 59:20
  didn't expect to be a battalion chief yeah one
• 59:24
  i i never expected it
• 59:27
  i knew it was possible but i didn't expect it but
• 59:30
  i definitely didn't expect it to be one already and there were
• 59:33
  a bunch of factors that made me decide to accept it or not because it was a
• 59:38
  tough decision but man you're reminding me of a quote you keep going about it
• 59:43
  so yeah i don't know where i was going now so i lost it the quote is something to the effect of.
• 59:54
  The people who seek power are rarely suited for it a hundred percent people who don't are,
• 1:00:01
  right something to that effect i don't want to get into politics well that's
• 1:00:07
  a lot but well where I'm going with it is I almost feel like anybody who raises
• 1:00:13
  their hand and says they want to be a senator or president I'm like they're
• 1:00:17
  automatically not qualified automatically disqualified yeah that's right that's,
• 1:00:21
  let me see if I can find it which is not like you know it's not feasible but yeah,
• 1:00:28
  This is going back to Plato, okay, because there was a Mary Goldwater thing
• 1:00:31
  there that was similar but different.
• 1:00:36
  Plato. All right. Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it.
• 1:00:41
  That's what I was looking for. Yeah, man.
• 1:00:44
  Ambition. It's good. To me, internally, it's good.
• 1:00:48
  But to me, externally, it's, I don't know.
• 1:00:54
  Is it genuine, right? I don't know. And when do you think you're ready,
• 1:00:59
  right? First off, you're never ready.
• 1:01:01
  I was an E-7 team sergeant, which is not normal.
• 1:01:08
  But like it happened like by default by my team sergeant retired.
• 1:01:13
  Okay, yeah. I happened to be the next senior guy, even though I was new in SF. Oh, wow, okay.
• 1:01:21
  We got a team sergeant in who, it turns out he was kind of incompetent. Okay.
• 1:01:28
  So I became the team sergeant during a deployment, during a combat deployment.
• 1:01:33
  I looked at my, my warrant officer. I was like, Hey bro. Yeah.
• 1:01:37
  He's like, gives me his shoulders. He's like, Hey bro, you're it.
• 1:01:42
  Just do squad leader shit. If you don't, you don't know anything else,
• 1:01:45
  do what you know. So that's what I did. But I was not ready for that at all.
• 1:01:49
  And I felt like one, I got cheated a little bit. Oh, really?
• 1:01:52
  I expected to get a lot more...
• 1:01:54
  Mentorship. Now the guy who retired, he did mentor me. Good.
• 1:01:57
  But he was gone like immediately, like six or eight months. Oh,
• 1:02:02
  yeah. Maybe longer than that. Maybe about a year. Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:05
  And then he retired and I was like, oh. And he was the guy, right?
• 1:02:08
  21 year SF guy. Okay. That's big shoes to fill. Hard as nails.
• 1:02:14
  Fit. Smart. He'd done everything.
• 1:02:18
  Yeah. And he was just as cool as, you know, and all that.
• 1:02:21
  Yeah. I was like, all right, this is it. This is what it's about.
• 1:02:23
  That dude gone next thing you know i'm the senior guy on the team,
• 1:02:28
  two years into my sf career wow i was like that's crazy yeah well there's a
• 1:02:34
  manpower shortage you know back during that time and and i was in germany so
• 1:02:39
  second and third battalion in colorado get the most of the dudes in germany
• 1:02:44
  now and again and i went to germany first and okay,
• 1:02:47
  I was like, man, it sucks. Yeah.
• 1:02:52
  You're never ready, man. I wasn't ready then. So right now we're having...
• 1:03:00
  So for us, like you can be eligible to promote to say, well,
• 1:03:04
  Lieutenant, that's the first, that's the first level of formal leadership we have.
• 1:03:10
  And say right now we have a hundred guys eligible to promote.
• 1:03:16
  You got to go through an assessment center test to get on the list,
• 1:03:20
  to be, to now we can say, hey, you're promoted.
• 1:03:23
  Congratulations. You're going to be a Lieutenant over here.
• 1:03:25
  Well, we've got 100 people that are eligible, but we're getting like 30 that
• 1:03:30
  actually challenge the test.
• 1:03:32
  And maybe, you know, half of that passed the test. So we have like just a very
• 1:03:38
  small number of people that we can promote.
• 1:03:40
  And I could see in the future, 5, 10, 15 years from now, where we're going to
• 1:03:45
  have this just leadership vacuum because all these people who are eligible to
• 1:03:49
  step up and lead, and there aren't.
• 1:03:52
  And I don't know yet how we fix that. Well, one, can you blame them?
• 1:03:57
  Nobody wants to sit at a desk.
• 1:03:59
  No, no, no. You don't sit at a desk until you're like my level or above. Like, yeah, honestly.
• 1:04:05
  I love being a lieutenant. It was probably the most fun I had in my career so far.
• 1:04:10
  You're on an engine company with your crew, just going around.
• 1:04:14
  I felt like we were cowboys. We'd leave the station at 8 o'clock in the morning,
• 1:04:18
  run 20 calls, and go home exhausted. But you were just hanging out with your
• 1:04:23
  guys all day long. It was awesome.
• 1:04:25
  So to say all that, how, how did, how does promotion work?
• 1:04:29
  I don't even want to go. There's numbers. It's, is it, it's controlled by the army. Right.
• 1:04:35
  But do you have the option or is it like, what do you mean?
• 1:04:39
  Qualified can you say no i don't i don't want this promotion
• 1:04:42
  no see that yeah no especially at like
• 1:04:45
  e from ea to e9 you either move forward or you're out of there if you decline
• 1:04:54
  any anything like that you're you're gone and ea's the last good job in sf master
• 1:05:01
  sergeant that's team sergeant yeah,
• 1:05:04
  You're still doing all the stuff. Doing the job, yeah.
• 1:05:07
  And you only, you manage 11 other dudes. Well, team sergeant and team leader.
• 1:05:11
  Team leader is the commander. The officer. Yeah. Captain. Yeah.
• 1:05:15
  And then the master sergeant is the team sergeant, what I call the yard boss. Yeah.
• 1:05:21
  After that, and I never had any ambition whatsoever to be a sergeant major,
• 1:05:27
  which is an E9, which now you're the company level guy, or you're sitting in a S3 operations shop.
• 1:05:35
  And so those guys never, they don't go on missions at all? Sometimes,
• 1:05:40
  I mean, but not, no, not by doctrine. Nope.
• 1:05:44
  Now, my good friend Ryan Sartor was a sergeant major, and there was a big,
• 1:05:49
  you know, it was a big operation and all this, and so he went out to sort of
• 1:05:53
  check on the team, and there happened to be a firefight he had.
• 1:05:56
  Yeah. Well, he got into it, and he got killed.
• 1:05:59
  But generally speaking, no, sardar major ain't in the business.
• 1:06:04
  I'll be honest. That was one of the main reasons I had such a hard time when
• 1:06:09
  it became obvious that I made.
• 1:06:13
  Offered a battalion chief position because I, I, I'm still young in the grand scheme of things.
• 1:06:17
  I still, I still would love to go into fires every day, but I knew I needed to,
• 1:06:23
  you know, it'd be good for my family because I wouldn't have to work as much
• 1:06:27
  and need to make room for other people to like, am I, I was on the best truck
• 1:06:34
  company in the, in the County.
• 1:06:35
  Like there's nowhere else for me to go. There's no, no other level for me at captain.
• 1:06:40
  I was, I was topped out. is at the best place, in my opinion.
• 1:06:44
  If it would have been practical, if I could be all-time team sergeant,
• 1:06:49
  like never move, or even the senior Bravo weapon sergeant, which is what I was.
• 1:06:56
  I was a weapon sergeant, intelligence sergeant, and then team sergeant.
• 1:06:59
  But if I could be an intel sergeant and never move, I'd stay there for years
• 1:07:05
  and years. And everybody thinks that.
• 1:07:07
  That's what dudes want. Like they want to be on a team, do the work do the thing,
• 1:07:13
  and that's it yeah and it's not avoiding responsibility it's I'm doing the job
• 1:07:19
  correct yeah I've trained for years to do this one thing and this is where I am but once,
• 1:07:24
  they get in and when you go to Sergeant Major Academy and they start.
• 1:07:29
  Putting it all in there now they're like well why don't you want to progress
• 1:07:34
  why don't you want to do this why don't you well it's a shell game right they
• 1:07:38
  got to move people around Because now you're a manpower, you're managing manpower.
• 1:07:43
  So now, never mind what a guy wants to do, because sergeant major don't care, right? A good one does.
• 1:07:48
  And a good one will ask the guy. And then a good sergeant major will look at
• 1:07:52
  a guy and go, look, here's career progression. Here's what you ought to do to
• 1:07:57
  be able to move forward. Right.
• 1:08:00
  And then there's what you want to do, right? And if you do this,
• 1:08:05
  you'll, you'll, you may stagnate or you're, you're going to get a pigeonholed into a certain thing.
• 1:08:10
  Some guys don't mind it. Yeah. And there's dudes that linger around group,
• 1:08:14
  man, just not progressing and. Mm-hmm.
• 1:08:18
  I don't like the, I like the British model where your pay grade is not the same as your job.
• 1:08:25
  Well, in the army, your pay grade and your job are the same.
• 1:08:28
  If I'm an E7, I'm a Sergeant first class. I'm a senior, you know,
• 1:08:33
  whatever, Bravo, 18 Bravo.
• 1:08:35
  Once I make E8, I'm no longer the senior 18 Bravo. Now I'm an 18 Zulu, right?
• 1:08:40
  And if I'm a, so in a company, there's, there's, there's slots.
• 1:08:46
  So every team has 12 dudes.
• 1:08:48
  Right. These are the 12, 218 Echoes, 218 Bravos, 218 Deltas, 218 Charlies, 18 Fox.
• 1:08:57
  Well, you're the junior, you become the senior.
• 1:09:00
  And then after that. You've got to go to the next. Well, there ain't two team sergeants, right? So.
• 1:09:06
  Are there pay bans within? Because you say it's tied to pay.
• 1:09:10
  Are these guys not like once you're the 18 Bravo, are you stuck at that pay
• 1:09:14
  for however long you're in?
• 1:09:16
  Well, if you're E6, you're E6 pay and you're a junior Bravo.
• 1:09:19
  You may become a senior Bravo by default, but there's no pay with that until you get promoted to E7.
• 1:09:25
  Okay. So it's weird, but the Brits, you will, your seniority,
• 1:09:30
  you will, but you could stay in the same job.
• 1:09:32
  Yeah, but to get paid more as you. But your seniority rises and your pay rises
• 1:09:36
  and you're the smartest, baddest ass 18 Bravo ever to have existed.
• 1:09:42
  And you've been on the same team for 10, 12 years. Yeah.
• 1:09:45
  That's everybody's dream. Well, the U.S. Army don't... Nah. He might get...
• 1:09:52
  You might get four or five years of team time as a junior, then a senior,
• 1:09:56
  and then you got to go to the schoolhouse, right?
• 1:09:58
  And I get it. We got a man in the schoolhouse. Sure.
• 1:10:01
  And then you'll come back. But while you're in the schoolhouse,
• 1:10:04
  a lot of guys will make E8. So they'll come back.
• 1:10:09
  They'll take over a team somewhere and probably a different company or different
• 1:10:12
  battalion. They do their two years of team sergeant time.
• 1:10:16
  Well, then you got to, once your team sergeant's time up, you go sit in ops,
• 1:10:22
  S3 ops somewhere waiting on, did you make the E9 list?
• 1:10:27
  If you made E9 list, well, you got a, you got a number. You got to go to a Sergeant Major Academy.
• 1:10:33
  Once you go to a Sergeant Major Academy, you got to commit X number of years
• 1:10:36
  on your contract. It's just not, I don't like the way it works.
• 1:10:41
  Yeah. For us, no, you can be, there's, we got pay ban. And so if you're,
• 1:10:45
  you're a lieutenant, you're going to keep getting raises, you know? Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  Now you'll get raises per year whenever they give the army just a general,
• 1:10:53
  you know, 2% raise or whatever, but you don't ever get like a,
• 1:10:57
  well, at some point you'll get a time and service raise.
• 1:11:02
  I don't know what the numbers on that are, but you'll get, but it's little,
• 1:11:05
  but it's, you're still the same rank though. That's interesting.
• 1:11:08
  It's weird, man. I don't like it. You need people.
• 1:11:12
  You obviously need people to move up, but you also need people in those positions
• 1:11:16
  that have been there forever because they have that. Yeah, that's where I'm at.
• 1:11:19
  And that's what I imagined SF was when I first went in. Yeah.
• 1:11:23
  I thought you might be on the same team with the same dudes for 10, 15 years. Yeah.
• 1:11:28
  That's, it's not that way. Everybody's just. Nah. There's dudes always coming
• 1:11:32
  and going. It's bizarre.
• 1:11:33
  And you'll go, if you deploy with a team, a group of dudes, you all get tight, man.
• 1:11:38
  But you might come back six months later, you got five different dudes.
• 1:11:43
  That's crazy. Yeah, I always imagined that it was like, if you were on a team,
• 1:11:47
  you're on that team. Yeah, nah.
• 1:11:49
  Man. I think that's what a lot of people imagine. And that's what would be awesome.
• 1:11:53
  Yeah, it'd be better. And then like, look, a dude gets, you know,
• 1:11:58
  starts getting on, on up in age and you can't, you can't keep up or something.
• 1:12:04
  Right. Or, or you can't, you got hurt, like proper hurt.
• 1:12:08
  Yeah. And then go, go work at ops, you know, but if you can still do it,
• 1:12:14
  you should be able to do it.
• 1:12:15
  And people, and a Sergeant Major will belittle guys who try, they call it hiding out.
• 1:12:22
  Here's a, here, here's a good quote. they'll belittle you and they're saying
• 1:12:26
  this in a negative way you can't hide behind your rook well fuck man that's
• 1:12:30
  the job you know like yeah i want to go do this i would rather,
• 1:12:36
  wait they're accusing you of hiding out if you try to stay yeah if you try to stay on a team,
• 1:12:41
  that's crazy yeah it's crazy right it doesn't make sense well because they're
• 1:12:45
  they're just being it's that's manipulative that's a manipulative phrase to
• 1:12:49
  make you want to move on so they can put somebody so they can move guys around, you know, because no,
• 1:12:55
  we definitely have people that hide out. They like, you know.
• 1:12:59
  Don't want to do the job anymore yeah that's high
• 1:13:02
  now right when you don't want to do the job and they go you know
• 1:13:05
  i'm not going to name these places they can go there's definitely places you go
• 1:13:07
  and not do the job right and sometimes i get it because we think
• 1:13:11
  firefighting is one thing and then you you get into
• 1:13:13
  the fire service and you realize yeah it's totally different and
• 1:13:16
  it ain't for everybody yeah so those people hide out but yeah
• 1:13:20
  i would never yeah that's high now yeah if you want to stay on the truck forever that's
• 1:13:22
  not hot now that i would say a guy who goes
• 1:13:25
  to like i was in socon for three so
• 1:13:28
  you got to do a instructor or or
• 1:13:32
  a broadening assignment sometime in your
• 1:13:35
  career i think that's awesome so no it's not bad yeah but if you go do your
• 1:13:39
  three-year stretch then you go back to group right and you get back on a team
• 1:13:45
  or whatever yeah but there are dudes that'll go and then they'll they'll try
• 1:13:50
  to wiggle their way into at other jobs at there so they can stay there. Yeah.
• 1:13:55
  Well, you're not doing the job there. You're doing a job and everything's important. I get it. But.
• 1:14:01
  I mean, some things are more important than others.
• 1:14:04
  But now dudes will hide out at places like that. At SOCOM or even at SWCC,
• 1:14:08
  you know, where that's the schoolhouse, right? Yeah.
• 1:14:12
  You know, they go and they keep creeping in little open spots there instead
• 1:14:16
  of going back and getting on a team.
• 1:14:18
  Being on the team is where it's at, man. And that's, other than that, what's the point?
• 1:14:22
  And that's the way a lot of guys look at it. I mean. And that's why you lose a lot of good guys in SF.
• 1:14:28
  They'll come in and do one or two, like, contracts, you know,
• 1:14:32
  three or four years, however long the contracts are.
• 1:14:35
  And then they've been there too long, and now they've got to go into a job that is not the job.
• 1:14:39
  Right. If it looks like they're going to get swicked, and their contract's coming
• 1:14:42
  up, we're like, nah, fucking, I'm out of here.
• 1:14:44
  Yeah, that makes sense. That's not, they should change that.
• 1:14:47
  Like, why would you? Oh, I agree. You spent all this money to train them,
• 1:14:51
  and then why would you— One of the least creative entities on this planet of Earth is the U.S. Army.
• 1:15:00
  So, why would we try to retain the dudes we know are good dudes?
• 1:15:04
  Yeah. That's crazy. They look at you. If you're like, no, I'm going to get out.
• 1:15:07
  And once they realize that, like, you're getting out, you become like a pariah. You know what I mean?
• 1:15:13
  They shitbag you and you're like. That sucks. They cut you loose immediately.
• 1:15:17
  So, that's crazy. All right. There's a lot of organizations out there that,
• 1:15:22
  oh, Army for Life, you know, your family and this and that.
• 1:15:24
  Oh, that's. But there's individuals, leaders out there. Yeah.
• 1:15:29
  They will cut you off. I hate the whole, we're a family.
• 1:15:34
  Nah, that's bullshit. It is. It is manipulative. It's manipulative. Yeah.
• 1:15:39
  That's to get you to put out while you're there. Yes. Yeah.
• 1:15:42
  So. The problem is you don't have to be urged to put out, especially in like
• 1:15:47
  SF, right? Yeah. I don't have to manipulate somebody to put out.
• 1:15:50
  Dudes are there to put out. Especially at that level, you shouldn't. No.
• 1:15:53
  That's a problem if you have to. And that's the difference between like elements
• 1:15:58
  that have selection processes, right?
• 1:16:00
  Rangers and SF and CAG and places like that.
• 1:16:04
  You have to go through a grueling process just to get there to put out.
• 1:16:10
  What's the average cost of an actual operational SF person? Oh man,
• 1:16:15
  I don't know. It's crazy.
• 1:16:17
  And the reason I'm asking is, so I think for us, the average cost to get somebody
• 1:16:23
  from higher date to actually on the trucks able to do the job is a couple hundred thousand dollars.
• 1:16:30
  So it behooves us, and I would imagine the Army as well, not to lose these people.
• 1:16:36
  Like, that's a huge loss of money that just walks out the door. Yeah.
• 1:16:41
  A grand yeah that's one dude one person
• 1:16:44
  from entry level all the way
• 1:16:47
  through the q course so and then
• 1:16:50
  if they're leaving after you know would you say like five
• 1:16:53
  eight years and so so you got to add in all the yeah all the training all all
• 1:16:58
  they've done up to that point like why just let them walk out the door like
• 1:17:01
  why not give them some path that doesn't nah they they do re-enlistment incentives
• 1:17:07
  you know kind of across the board
• 1:17:08
  some of them are okay sometimes like i I really, when I hit 19 years,
• 1:17:13
  there was $150,000 bonus that was available.
• 1:17:16
  And wow. I didn't get the sentence out of my mouth before my wife was like, take it.
• 1:17:22
  So, but that was that 150. No, no, it was over the court. No,
• 1:17:27
  you don't get the 150 grand, bro.
• 1:17:29
  Dang it. You'll get a lump sum like 20 or something grand. And then it pays
• 1:17:34
  out over time. But that cost me six years.
• 1:17:38
  That's a long time. Now, if you do math on 150 grand divided by six years.
• 1:17:43
  Yeah, I'm not good at math. It's all right, but I mean. It's not.
• 1:17:46
  It ain't super awesome. Yeah.
• 1:17:49
  You get 150 grand all at once, it might be super awesome.
• 1:17:52
  Yeah. But anyway, so they're strategic about it. Mm-hmm.
• 1:17:57
  And that was for senior level dudes, but I'm pretty sure firefighters ain't
• 1:18:02
  getting 150 grand bonus. I don't know. Do you got that? Nah.
• 1:18:07
  So when I went to paramedic school, we got a bonus. It was like 10 grand,
• 1:18:10
  but it's kind of the same as you. It was over five years and,
• 1:18:12
  you know, Uncle Sam takes his cut. Right.
• 1:18:15
  But yeah, ain't no one giving us, no, we're not getting no bonus to stay around.
• 1:18:20
  So, I mean, that's pretty good for the Army.
• 1:18:22
  Yeah. I mean, that's a good bonus. When I was an infantryman,
• 1:18:25
  you know, on every one of my reenlistments, I get like a $20,000 bonus for another
• 1:18:30
  four or five years or something. Mm-hmm.
• 1:18:34
  I got lucky with the way the bonuses worked out. I just happened in my timeline
• 1:18:38
  happened to work out. There was always a bonus available.
• 1:18:41
  I didn't have no enlistment bonus. Some guys get an enlistment bonus.
• 1:18:44
  If there's a hard up MOS, like satellite repair guy or something where there's
• 1:18:50
  like three of them in the army and one of them is retiring, they need another one. Is that a real MOS?
• 1:18:55
  They've got all, there's all kinds of jobs in the army, man.
• 1:18:58
  And there's some of them that are so obscure that like you'll get a $35,000
• 1:19:02
  sign up bonus just to, just to sign the dotted line, which is,
• 1:19:07
  you know, that's pretty good, man.
• 1:19:09
  I would say so. Yeah. Depending on what the job is. So I ain't saying the army
• 1:19:12
  ain't full of opportunity. It is.
• 1:19:14
  Yeah, for sure. But just saying manipulative leaders.
• 1:19:18
  That's where I'm going with that manipulative leaders. Some of them are,
• 1:19:21
  I did an episode on narcissism and I knew I can, well, I can name. Yeah.
• 1:19:28
  Two handfuls of guys who, but manipulative, man,
• 1:19:34
  you know, or, or just so full of themselves,
• 1:19:38
  well, narcissistic that they believe themselves to be Captain America and any,
• 1:19:44
  anybody else's shit bag for not being Captain America or whatever.
• 1:19:50
  You know, there's just so many personality types.
• 1:19:53
  And you see the extremes in the military. That's a, that's the reason why I
• 1:19:57
  think some of the training I do, I don't do coaching per se.
• 1:20:00
  It's, it's all crafted in a course, but I think the reason I'm able to translate
• 1:20:05
  it was because you see extremes in the army.
• 1:20:09
  On the other end of that, man, I've seen some of the best human being know everything,
• 1:20:15
  even tone can fix, can fix it no matter what.
• 1:20:20
  Best leaders on the planet I've seen in the army.
• 1:20:23
  I've seen the worst leaders on the planet in the Army. Unbelievable.
• 1:20:26
  So it's good to get those extremes, I guess. It sucks in the moment.
• 1:20:33
  I probably learned more from some horrible officers that I've had from the good ones.
• 1:20:37
  So, yeah, there's things I purposely don't do today that I was like,
• 1:20:42
  I'm never going to do that. Right. Yeah.
• 1:20:45
  You got to look at it all as learning. Now, for all the listeners out there,
• 1:20:49
  if you're under a horrible boss at this moment,
• 1:20:52
  just suck it up and, you know, either make the change or just understand that this too shall pass.
• 1:21:00
  Yes. Or, yeah. Yes.
• 1:21:04
  Because you can learn from horrible leaders. It's just, you gotta,
• 1:21:07
  you gotta, you gotta translate it and what not to do.
• 1:21:12
  There's some, oh God damn. Yeah. There's some bad ones.
• 1:21:18
  The army man. But I, I don't, I, I imagine in fire there, it's the same though.
• 1:21:24
  I imagine in police, it's the same.
• 1:21:26
  Anywhere, anywhere is the same because, well, that's yeah. Power attracts narcissists.
• 1:21:32
  Yeah. people are that that dark triad yeah and
• 1:21:36
  oftentimes it's rewarded because if i'm
• 1:21:39
  if i'm looking at somebody that reports to me all i'm seeing is their
• 1:21:41
  work they're sending to me right and they may be you know if i'm not doing my
• 1:21:46
  job and really looking to see how their their crew has reacted to them they
• 1:21:49
  could be narcissistic or not treating their crew correctly and i could not be
• 1:21:55
  seeing that so a lot of times you find people who are not good leaders still
• 1:21:58
  rise up the ranks because to do good work.
• 1:22:01
  So, yeah, I think I might be a little, I don't, I don't want to say naive,
• 1:22:06
  but maybe misinformed because I imagine,
• 1:22:09
  like I said, I think fire, police, anything where there's a bureaucracy and
• 1:22:14
  it's a government sort of, I think that lends itself to the extremes on the
• 1:22:18
  leadership side and either or may continue forward up the ladder.
• 1:22:22
  Yeah, for sure. Because it's not the, the evaluation reports aren't necessarily
• 1:22:27
  genuine. They're crafted to say, Whatever. Yeah.
• 1:22:31
  Maybe naively, but I think that on the civilian side, it seems like somebody
• 1:22:37
  would see that and be like, no. You think so? I don't know.
• 1:22:39
  I think it's easier to get to fire people as a civilian, right? Like, I think.
• 1:22:47
  Yeah, I feel like it probably is because, yeah, it takes some work to hire somebody
• 1:22:51
  in the fire service. Exactly.
• 1:22:53
  Any government bureaucracy, it's hard to fire people.
• 1:22:56
  Where in a civilian company, like if you're the, now if you own the company
• 1:23:01
  and you're the guy. All bets are off.
• 1:23:03
  I guess that's it. Yeah. But probably, I hope that your company's probably not
• 1:23:08
  doing that great unless you just got the best.
• 1:23:11
  Right. If you're a shitty leader, your company ain't going to succeed.
• 1:23:16
  So that's why I think maybe naive. I don't know. But I think in a civilian market.
• 1:23:22
  Have to be a little more balanced because there has to be tangible,
• 1:23:26
  especially if there's like a board of directors. Right.
• 1:23:28
  And, and there ain't the profits coming in. Why ain't the profits coming in?
• 1:23:31
  Well, they're not performing over here. Well, why aren't they performing?
• 1:23:34
  Yeah. Well, this guy's an asshole and nobody wants to work for him and we can't
• 1:23:38
  keep people. There's turnover or whatever.
• 1:23:41
  Yeah. So I think you can identify that stuff easier.
• 1:23:44
  Yeah. You might be right. Yeah. Yeah. I think I could be wrong.
• 1:23:48
  I don't know. I've never worked in corporate. I'm not.
• 1:23:50
  Yeah. I'm not going to say I never will. because who knows what will happen,
• 1:23:52
  but I don't know that I'd be well suited for it. No, I wouldn't. I can't.
• 1:23:57
  I'm not a formal person, and I can't sit in a, I can't, I can't.
• 1:24:02
  I just don't want to put on the facade to sit around an oval table.
• 1:24:08
  Yeah. And certainly not stroke somebody else's ego.
• 1:24:12
  Why are the tables always oval? I never really, that is, I don't know,
• 1:24:15
  man. I got an oval table down in my team room down there.
• 1:24:20
  But I got why is it oval because it costs 50 bucks there you go,
• 1:24:26
  it's big enough to hold like 8 people and cost 50 bucks I don't know knights
• 1:24:30
  at a round table maybe yeah I don't know yeah I don't know I know the leadership
• 1:24:37
  translates because it just does.
• 1:24:41
  But I would I would think from a procedural yeah it's easier to get rid of,
• 1:24:47
  non-performers I think you're right you see all the time see or yeah some scandal
• 1:24:51
  happens and the ceos go on like the next day so yeah yeah now how how those
• 1:24:56
  ceos get booted but walk away with like a 32 million dollar golden severance package and,
• 1:25:02
  medical for life or whatever i don't know how all that works but i wish i could
• 1:25:08
  get some of that me and you both might become ceo and just do something yeah
• 1:25:12
  and just be an asshole get fired,
• 1:25:15
  I can be an asshole. That's good. I'm good at that. We all can. I can do it.
• 1:25:21
  All right, man. Leadership. Yeah. So I think it's fortuitous that you and me met.
• 1:25:27
  How did you end up coming out here?
• 1:25:30
  Did you just see an ad or something? Or you know somebody? No, I think the old Google.
• 1:25:35
  It was a Google machine. Yeah, I was looking for. Right close. Looking for.
• 1:25:39
  I don't know if I was looking for a place to shoot or instruction. Probably instruction.
• 1:25:42
  And yeah, you popped up. I was like, let me give this a try. and
• 1:25:45
  it came out and I was like this dude's all right yeah I
• 1:25:49
  think it's fortuitous yeah for sure life is weird
• 1:25:52
  that way right yeah it is yeah it is so before
• 1:25:54
  we started recording you know we're kind of talking about things that
• 1:25:57
  happened in our past and I said you know things happen for
• 1:26:00
  a reason I I literally don't have
• 1:26:03
  any real regrets in my life right bad things have happened I've done
• 1:26:06
  really stupid stuff but it bought me here so if
• 1:26:09
  I changed that stuff yeah you know it wouldn't be happen for a
• 1:26:12
  reason yeah i think it's yeah because
• 1:26:16
  who knew we'd both be doing podcasts i
• 1:26:19
  want leadership stuff whatever i call
• 1:26:22
  mine philosophy though i talk about other other other stuff definitely go some
• 1:26:26
  deep dives i'm i'm here for it i like it i did that on purpose my friends talked
• 1:26:30
  me into doing my podcast oh good friends they're like hey let's do the podcast
• 1:26:34
  yeah it's like let's do it yeah yeah which so i think that's another good leadership trait is,
• 1:26:41
  you need to know when to say no, but I very rarely say no to things that are
• 1:26:45
  going to challenge me or grow,
• 1:26:47
  especially if it's like some weakness that I've identified or someone's pointed out to me.
• 1:26:53
  Cause if you asked me two years ago, if I would be on a podcast,
• 1:26:57
  I'd say, nah, I'm not doing that. Same here, bro. You know?
• 1:27:00
  So I started this one in October 24. Okay. Yeah.
• 1:27:05
  Me and the boys talked about it for probably six months prior now in their defense. Thank you.
• 1:27:12
  Of them have kids in competitive
• 1:27:15
  sports from one one
• 1:27:19
  of them he's got a college age all the way down to
• 1:27:22
  like i don't know six or something yeah it's
• 1:27:24
  awesome and they and he's got like five kids and they all play some sports and
• 1:27:29
  then my other buddy's got a high school competitive dance and cheerleader and
• 1:27:34
  then middle school traveling wrestler okay like you know like i didn't know
• 1:27:40
  they had travel wrestler, big style wrestler. Yeah.
• 1:27:43
  So they're, he's there. They're both on the move. I can only imagine,
• 1:27:46
  but it was their idea. Yeah.
• 1:27:49
  And the Junto came from, from, from both of those dudes.
• 1:27:52
  Okay. Because of the Ben Franklin connection, but what, what the Junto calling
• 1:27:56
  it, the Junto pocket opens it up to any topic.
• 1:28:01
  Because if you do the history on, on the Ben Franklin, the, it was called the,
• 1:28:05
  the leather apron club, or it was called the Junto club. Okay. One or the other.
• 1:28:10
  Or both. I mean, it was known as both, but homies would meet at a pub and talk about.
• 1:28:18
  Whatever. Improving. Yeah. The world around them.
• 1:28:23
  That's awesome. At that time, you know, small world around them,
• 1:28:25
  but still, how can we, firefighting came from that. Yeah. Ben Franklin started. That's right.
• 1:28:32
  That, that was a product of the Junto. Okay. I didn't know it was a product
• 1:28:35
  of the Junto club. That's right.
• 1:28:37
  I knew Ben Franklin as a father. Well, Ben Franklin started.
• 1:28:39
  So the Junto Club, that was 1727. That's when it started.
• 1:28:43
  Yeah. But yeah, they started, I think they started public libraries as they,
• 1:28:49
  well, the early versions. Yeah.
• 1:28:51
  They started volunteer firefighting, the early versions that became firefighting.
• 1:28:57
  I want to say, did you know that Ben Franklin invented swim fins?
• 1:29:02
  I did. No, I did not know that. Yeah.
• 1:29:06
  So anyway, the point is you can talk about anything. It's all,
• 1:29:12
  it's all relevant. Yeah.
• 1:29:13
  I hit philosophy a lot. I'm, I like politics, you know, but yeah,
• 1:29:18
  all kinds of stuff. Leadership is a big one.
• 1:29:20
  So there's a, there's a lack of open dialogue.
• 1:29:25
  I feel like in the, in the country in general, you got, everyone's got their
• 1:29:29
  little camp of what they believe. Yeah.
• 1:29:30
  It's better if we could all just talk openly with open mind.
• 1:29:35
  And you learn more and you find better, better solutions to stuff. So, yeah.
• 1:29:42
  Now I've yet to have anybody on here that is a direct challenge to like my belief
• 1:29:48
  system or something. Yeah.
• 1:29:50
  Like maybe one day I'll get a communist on here to have a conversation, but.
• 1:29:56
  But I believe in open dialogue in that spirit anyway. Yeah. We all got in that spirit.
• 1:30:01
  We need more independent thinkers. Yeah, that's right. man. That's right.
• 1:30:07
  And that's one thing I don't, well, y'all are very specific on leadership coaching
• 1:30:12
  and that's good. That that's, that's got a target audience. Yeah.
• 1:30:16
  I don't think I have a target audience.
• 1:30:19
  I'm just trying to push. Target audiences, independent thinkers.
• 1:30:22
  That's what I'm trying to push. Right. That's it. Yeah. Independent thought.
• 1:30:27
  Even if we end up disagreeing, I'll go ahead and tell you why you're wrong. But.
• 1:30:33
  But independent, independent thought. Get out of the blue team,
• 1:30:39
  red team, frigging independent thought.
• 1:30:43
  Sir. That's where it's at, man.
• 1:30:45
  All right. How long have we been doing this? An hour and 34 minutes.
• 1:30:49
  Oh, that's 34 minutes longer than I normally go. Well, I don't bore people to
• 1:30:53
  death either. You know what I'm saying? I agree.
• 1:30:56
  All right. What is your advice to the world?
• 1:31:01
  My advice to the world. Wow, you really put me on the spot there.
• 1:31:05
  Yeah, just what we've been talking about. I think, yeah, go through life and
• 1:31:08
  just try to improve yourself.
• 1:31:10
  Have an open mind. Be willing to change your mind. Yeah, on new information,
• 1:31:16
  right? Yeah, that's right.
• 1:31:17
  And, yeah, just try to let's all be good people.
• 1:31:21
  That's it. And that's what I like to leave people with is on the be good people thing.
• 1:31:28
  Treat everybody with good manners. mm-hmm yeah
• 1:31:32
  let's talk let's just start with that let's treat everybody with
• 1:31:35
  good manners yeah the same right the homeless dude
• 1:31:38
  and the ceo oh facts yeah for sure treat everybody with just a baseline good
• 1:31:42
  manners you ain't gotta stroke nobody's ego you ain't gotta fluff no just treat
• 1:31:51
  everybody with the same good manners that's it man and go about your day all
• 1:31:55
  right It's pretty good. Pretty awesome.
• 1:31:58
  All right. Appreciate the conversation. Yeah, it was good. This will be airing
• 1:32:02
  on both podcasts. That's right. All right. That's awesome.
• 1:32:07
  Trey Johnson and myself having a conversation about things.
• 1:32:12
  I hope you enjoyed it. Do go over to Trey's podcast, Trey and Ali's podcast,
• 1:32:18
  Command the Room Coaching, and give them a listen. It's pretty good stuff.
• 1:32:23
  Yeah. And be careful around the house. Watch out for fire hazards.
• 1:32:29
  Yeah. Trey Johnson, Command the Room Coaching. Thanks for listening, folks.
• 1:32:34
  Please go check out all our other stuff, OspreyshootingSolutions.com, TwoTeamGuys.com,
• 1:32:42
  of course, TheJuntoPodcast.com, and then GiveSendGo.com backslash Help a Homie Fund.
• 1:32:51
  Please go check all those things out. We do have a lot of stuff coming up through June.
• 1:32:58
  We have a workshop. We have the end of June. Well, okay. A workshop.
• 1:33:05
  We have the OSS Challenge Green Beret, OSS to Green Beret edition.
• 1:33:10
  That is June 6th. We have a Force on Force Armed Self-Defense course,
• 1:33:16
  which there's only a few seats available for that.
• 1:33:20
  And that's a good one. That's an eye opener. It's a really beneficial reality based.
• 1:33:28
  It's good. But we have Sons of Liberty match at the end of the month.
• 1:33:35
  So there's a lot of stuff in June anyway, if you want to shoot.
• 1:33:38
  So please go check it out. You should be out there shooting.
• 1:33:42
  Okay, good people. As always, I welcome your feedback.
• 1:33:48
  And please reach out if you have suggestions for topics or guests for that matter.
• 1:33:55
  And then other than that, good people, treat each other with respect.