Latest / The Vincere Project / Episode 3 - H-Hour Training and Events
Transcript
- Vincent: All right, all right, the Vincere Project ⁓ going to continue and I only have 49 more weeks I've committed to today was one of those days that I was coming up with all the reasons not to do this thing. I ate too much ⁓ during Easter. I didn't sleep good. I have a really busy week with work and I'm already looking for those excuses and reasons not to do a podcast. ⁓ hear I said I'm still going to deliver and do the best that I can to give you what think is appropriate and really really good for The Vincere Project I'm not proud of any of that stuff disclosing that, I think that's part of the process. We're doing a podcast or starting anything. Our feelings aren't really that important in terms of the completion or the continuing of that process. So I'll do my best to speak about something I care about and I'll do my best to demonstrate that to you as a form of motivation, because motivation is very much not an emotion, right? It's a state of being and we have to demonstrate and model that for other people. For example, how do you know if somebody is motivated? Well, we can see it. We all agree that that is what we're looking at and watching. And a lot of times for H-Hour training and events specifically, ⁓ that is where we get to express those things in a very serious but really fun, playful way. And I take a lot of pride in delivering those particular trainings. But before that, what I'm really proud of Molly Pitcher, our logo. ⁓ our dog right there. And she's exactly like that. that picture tells a story, right? She is 100 % a guardian. She is all the Cane Corso. ⁓ I call her Kanye West Corso, but she's a Kane Corso, Kanye Corso, an Italian Mastiff, whatever you wanna call her. Funny story is definitely barked things, scared things, tried to run through fences or jump out of cars to get things. She does have a strong prey drive. We had Monty over last year and ⁓ after an event, great event. you know, just really fulfilling, engaging, important event. He comes back to the house, grill or whatever, and get him set up to travel out the next day. He leans in on the ride over and goes, hey dude, is this dog for real? Like, you gotta really, really pay attention or like, what are we doing here? Cause I got a big dog myself and I love dogs. He's like, what are we doing? So I'm like, hey dude, you just gotta stick with me. ⁓ Stay close to me and then I'll introduce you. So sure enough, we go through the door and Molly flips it, right? hair sticking out, she's growling, she's barking, she's lunging at him, ears pinned back, sticking up, all the things that an excited dog is gonna do, right? And she's defending her home. so ⁓ Monty, ironically, what he did was brilliant. He just listened to what I said and I gave him some treats and he got down to a knee to her level. Not inappropriately close where like his face was up on her face, but like three, four feet away, like he just got down to a knee, got some treats and then boom, he started feeding her treats, boom. boom, boom, boom. And it really is just basic conditioning, right? Like all the experiments are exactly that. Like, hey, let me just start giving her treats. I'm going to create new memories, lead to new beliefs, which leads to new emotional states. So long story short, after 48 hours of Monty and Molly bonding, before you know it, he was walking around the neighborhood, doing assessments of all the neighborhood. And I think that speaks to what we've pride herself with training events, man. We take really competent, capable people that have skills and tools and know how to express them. But in that moment, there was nothing funny about it all. And I was definitely holding her back. And he knew exactly what to do, get down on her level. And a lot of times in coaching or advising and in mental health space as well, ⁓ hear the term like meet them where they're at. And I think that was a good expression of that. It doesn't mean that we need to stoop down to somebody's level of behavior or violate our own boundaries, but we do have to introduce ourselves to the environmental situation that we're in we go. And that's a good rule for life. That's also the first principle of H-hour, head up and chest up. This way, you know where you're going, right? So you can see and observe where you're going if you have the gift of sight. It helps you to hear better if your head is up and your chest is up, right? And taking the world around you. ⁓ think that's just a good tool, a good prompt and a good cue. whether you're going into a difficult conversation or into a wonderful celebration, head up and chest up is never gonna fail to help somebody in a difficult situation. Once you're throwing hand grenades or you're in a gunfight, sometimes it's better to duck, right? hey, it, right? We get world-class people that have skills and tools. And in that case, Monty demonstrates to the world, hey, how to remedy the situation or rectify. He takes all cues from me as the owner and the master of the dog. We introduce, ⁓ we steak for dinner. And before you know it, they were cuddling on the couch, man. And that's how you do it. ⁓ For H-Hour training events, that's what we do. We partner with world-class people. And in Mani's case, he spent some time in the Navy SEALs and doing some special warfare stuff. mean, the running joke I heard on one podcast from his buddies is that they call him Mr. Dev, which I think is super fun, right? To get the nickname Mr. Dev and you come from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. I just think that's kind of awesome, right? But all that being stated is that's his story to tell. Let's see if we get Monty on here at some point to do a podcast. But H-Hour training events is built on those particular things back to like feeding the dog and the behaviors and a little bit of a math equation I gave. So Mary and I come together, we develop training and events and we're working through things 2017, hey, we're gonna meet the 11th hour, hey, we're gonna call it this, hey, we call it whatever. And ultimately landed on H-Hour. And I'm gonna talk to that and about, you know, how that fits in and what that means for us, because it's something that's very sentimental. But on the front end for training events is, We have a series of corporate clients that contract us and they partner with us. And important in that is that I'm there to essentially the reason to why they need to partner with H-Hour or any of our facilitators. So whether it's a for-profit or not for-profit, an individual that's going through a phase of career or something like that, ⁓ how it help? How does H-Hour training events help is the big question. ⁓ And three things that I think about is we create some form of movement, right? And it's not necessarily spontaneity, right? We're just introduced to the environment. So we're gonna create movement, whether it's in an arena, in a classroom, on the beach, offsite at a location, at a field, at an event. Some of the things that we do use, the beach, we like to use mountains, like to use tools, we like to use obstacles. We've introduced experts in their spaces, we've driven race cars, we've gone to iFly, we've taken people skydiving, ⁓ we've done paintball. So anybody that's a middle manager or a corporate manager that hears this, Think about your experience in the office. There are days when you go into there, you still love that person you work with, but they hog the copier. They're always hogging the copier. It's always, and it's never refilled with paper after they use it. Sometimes it just feels good to shoot that person in the butt with ⁓ a paintball. And that's what we found from those events, splitting teams, shaking up the teams, different obstacles, indoor, outdoor. There's just something fun about when you get a bunch of corporate managers or directors or leaders from an organization running around, having a shared experience. And the fun part of it for me is, I get to bring in like battle-hardened warriors to kind of co-facilitate or embed with these teams and go over some basic tactics and stuff like that, right? Like, hey, cover me, right? Or whatever. And it just becomes this fun conversation we get to have about the application, what it looks like in the office. And what does that mean in terms of communication via email presentation or whatever business model or platform. The educational part that we introduce depends on who we're working with and what we're doing. But oftentimes a little bit of that movement creates that. Then we have a healthy conversation and then always, always, always, and I would say Mary does a good job with this, is we cultivate a healthy meal of some sort. We hit that kind of trifecta or that triangle of wellness and wholeness, right? Because regardless of the dilemma or situation or issue that a group or team or individual is going through, they're going to have a better way of solving that problem when they have a shared experience. The great General McChrystal, before he got fired by President Obama in 2010, said something, profound in his ⁓ My Share of the Task, he said, ⁓ leaves service on their terms. So whether it's somebody that does a four year enlistment or 40 years and makes it to the highest ranks, they feel like they still have more in the tank. ⁓ how it ends ⁓ determine some things and can be expressed before it even happens, right? ⁓ He suggested as an example that if him and President Obama had gone on a whitewater rafting expedition for a day, one time together, that way his career ended wouldn't have ended the same way. There would have been a different way to get that done, a more eloquent, more sophisticated version. ⁓ he's given a very simple solution to a particular thing, but that shared experience allows us to humanize other people, allows us to express our empathy and start to remove some of the... apathy or indifference that sneaks into the workplace, it sneaks into our environments, it sneaks into our mind. that doesn't apply to me. That doesn't matter for me. What do I care? Well, maybe your colleague or the people that you're designated to lead right now, that matters a lot to them. Like maybe you don't care about geopolitics maybe you don't care about race or religion or you don't care about whatever, but your people care about that. So some way, somehow you need to be able to express to folks is that you do have an interest that their things are important to them. And I think that is the art of leadership. How we get there and do that is always very different. And there's different times and different places for different types of leadership. if you don't care, there's nothing that H-Hour or anybody else is going to be able to do for you. So any of those events, right, when we get hired or brought on, what gets born out of it is a fractional partnership and access to us and people. ⁓ think leaders CEOs love having somebody like Vince on ⁓ call where, I pay this astronomical retainer to keep this guy's attention. He comes in and consults with us. There's an NDA, which at times there are because the nature of hiring and firing people ⁓ and the dollars and cents, like to protect that stuff. ⁓ ⁓ you think about advisement, when people are getting ready to ⁓ their business or siege a city for that matter, sometimes they need that wartime kind of perspective about, hey, we need to be aggressive here or maybe less aggressive right there. And what are the risk profiles depending on what we're looking at and the degree of investment, right? Because if it's human capital, that is high, high, high risk. If it's monetary capital, yeah, there's risk in there, but the actuaries and the people that crunch the numbers are pretty good at gauging and measuring some of the fallout potential, right? it doesn't account for is the thing that H-Hour introduces where we start to take a look at what is the greed or the fear factors in this storyline or narrative, right? Because everybody is a different type of personality and their risk tolerance is very, very different across industries. So ⁓ consultants will deliver on that particular event and whatever we agreed to in that scope of work. Those key activities are just the way we start the conversation and get people moving. The second part of it is what happens naturally is we reinforce values. We just double down on the strengths of the people in that room and the organization to talk through the things that they're doing really, really well. How do we multiply those? Because the old axiom, right, and it's not mine, and I don't know where I heard it, but it's definitely not mine, strength is never a weakness, right? And the quickest way to accelerate the compounding interest on those strengths, right, is to essentially cut the weeds. But let's not cut the flowers, right? Because we have things that are blooming and blossoming and harvesting fruit for us or an aesthetic or serving its purpose, right? We want to expand and compound that, right? We don't want to get caught up in the weaknesses saying like, oh, we don't do this particular thing. Well, we need to learn how to do this thing. And then all of a sudden, now we're starting to cut down the flowers, right? And freaking water the weeds, right? And that's an investing thing. But I would say that carries over to our personal lives as well and how it intersects in our professional space. We want to be able to experience a high degree of satisfaction. We want to have a sense of achievement and sense of recognition. H-Hour training events helps companies do that particular thing, right? It expands upon what is already the good stuff that is going on. if there is a spot to point out a problem issue dilemma or troubleshoot things, ⁓ that's where we serve in that particular role as well. Many times in an organizational capacity, especially when comes to human resources functions and things of that nature. The last part is the action. It's implicit or explicit. by the end of that particular event, there is a call to action for that particular individual or the group of people. They design it and develop it to be in their language of what fits for them and what they need to do. And I think what's important is that that's that ownership that people need to have a sense like, hey, I just spent six to eight hours with the H-Hour people. Hey, I spent a 48 hour weekend immersed with the H-Hour. Hey, I spent 72 hours. with the H hour people and here are all the things that I learned, here are all the things I now know about myself and my team. And then what they're gonna do with that just depends on the nature of our agreement and our partnership. But we like to think into the future. Hey, if what we're doing right now is important enough, it'll matter in three years, five years, 10 years, 20 years. If it's not important enough, why are we gonna lose our minds and go crazy about hyper-focus and these particular things that are subject to change regardless, right? And so we help develop the matrix and the models and how people come to those better decisions that are more. A lot of it too is just co-facilitation. It's something we accelerate at is getting people to talk about difficult things that may not come up at the water cooler or the copier. So yeah, we're always looking to consult. Mary drives a lot of that and she's doing great, great stuff. And I think her independence in that is what is most inspiring to me. I mean, she she served as a supply sergeant in war zones, right? Like it's like a superpower of like accounting for all of the stuff and the dollars and the beans and the bullets. mean, she's phenomenal at that stuff. And me, I was like a functional illiterate of an S3. Like operationally, I conceptualize things in my mind pretty well and we find that intersection. So where does it get vulnerable? What I'm excited about is where we're going now is those events, right, are part of a service that we offer. But the cornerstone of we sample it so people can take a dose and make an informed decision is our beach events. And we do two a year. And it's multi-layered how it came about. The first part is this, you know, like I shared, wanna... calls on one of the Zooms, I'm sorry, or podcast, whatever this thing is. You know, C cup came to one of our beach workouts, like, hey, you guys should do something like this, right. And that was back in like 2017 ish 18. And now 2019, boom, we do our first beach event, and now we're growing. And we've done a bunch now, right 1213 14, whatever, none of them have been the same, right? I facilitated some Mary's facilitated all she's had some help at other times bringing some other veterans here and there like And dudes with experience, special operations backgrounds, drill sergeants, combat experience, law enforcement experience, academic experience, business experience, right? Because we serve a wide range of clients up, right? need, everybody needs a little something different. And we want to be that 0.01 % are their 100 % story. And so, you know, this, this year, June 6, 2026, it's going to fall on a Saturday, right? And we're taking on coach Brock. And I think what's exciting for him is he did one of the events and was like, Oh man, you know, I'm getting into the mental health space and counseling. I'd love to. love to kind of build my brand and do my own thing with her. I'm like, yeah, just do it. don't stop you do what you're gonna do. And then he posed the question of like, hey, like, what would it take for me to maybe come intern at H-Hour or something like that? Without other people ⁓ inquire, don't always say yes, we're very, very cautious. And so Mary turned to Brock, maybe need to do another another beach event. There's my dog right there that we talked about before, ⁓ flipping the But Monty's not here. That would be weird, right? But that's that's what she does. And so Brock comes on, right? And he's going to help run the event. Look, there were only 800 Coast Guard folks in Operation Overlord, the invasion into Europe, June 6, 1944. So we have one of Coast Guard peeps, right? He's representing them, and Mary and I are Army people. And the full one is based on kind of Marine Corps Army stuff in the Pacific, but it's layers, right? So for me, I've designed it where I'm going to do this thing forever. I see future self, if I live long enough, it's going to be great grandpappy Vince, right? with his grandkids and his great grandkids out there getting after it, dragging sleds, walking on the beach, because the requisite level of fitness is just walking the beach. And if you can't walk and you get tired or it's too much for you, you sit on one of the benches and our little setup, right? We have a little talk area, right? Little operation center area with snacks and all that stuff. You just sit down and hang out. That's the value you have at that moment in time. There's nothing wrong with that, right? That's what you choose to do. So yeah, we're gonna just make it inclusive for everybody. Mary and I made it for our family. And now what's happened has been introduced to other families and other friends. and spouses, mom and dad or dad and daughter kind of thing come and do the event or whatever. We've had as young as 14 do it as old as 73. My father-in-law did it. He crushed that thing. He's dragging a 225 pound slide up and down the beach, Like, so you could definitely do that, right? But the cool thing about that 14 year old when he came through is now he's an ROTC. Like, yeah, he's about to commission as an officer in the military. He's going to do great things. Super smart, right? And I think it's just a continuity because we're going to look at like, how do you harness the spirit? in your attitude and behavior. The fun part for Brooke and I is she's done most of the events as well. She's done a handful of them, right? We get to invite some people that want to onboard with us or maybe they're onboard and they're seeing clients but they're not on the website yet because there's a step in there you have to kind of cross over. You come to the beach event. Because for me as a professional counselor, right? And a therapist is I know that at some point in the workday when you're serving people, you're gonna get a little sand in your shoes. It's really important to retain a positive attitude and behavior in that space and time. So walking on the beach is the requisite level of fitness. I think the implicit and explicit action after those events is always magical, man. I had a buddy come through there and he's struggling. He's like, I'm changing careers. I got some safety and security over here. I'm doing really well, but I want to go do this. I think I have some creativity here. Boom, he goes and does it. And I was just crushing, man, just crushing. And then had another buddy come through. He's like, hey, two jobs, one paycheck. This is the circumstance I'm facing. I can't give advice or teach that, but we can test it in the safety of those beach events. If that's something you're interested in, ⁓ any of the training and events, reach out to Mary at the H -Hour You can reach out to Vince at the H -Hour and then I'll forward it to Mary at the H -Hour and she'll be able to hook you up. But yeah, we got Brock coming on. It's gonna be super exciting for ⁓ then I look forward to being overly critical and talking about him behind his back, right? Because like the first time he came to the beach event, ⁓ brought his dad and his brother and I don't know why I think he's gonna try to protect himself or whatever, but yeah, he needed his daddy and his brother. And then he came to the next one, right? And it's just him and his brother. And there was a progression in there. And so now at this point, now he's gonna be facilitating the thing, but we're gonna get his dad and his brother to come back and then we'll be super judgy, me and them two, we'll talk about how well Brock did or didn't do in the event, man. But it's also the precursor to mental health. And we have two other mental health professionals come into it and they're gonna come for a walk with us. We got some other folks that have inquired that need to take a walk on the beach. are limited, but it's probably one of my favorite events and it's definitely ⁓ family thing. It's definitely something we want to include a lot of people in and it's inclusive as we possibly can. ⁓ Yeah, so corporate stuff. I some stuff with the VFW coming up. I got a connection with Ken that's going to be really good. Continue our service with veterans in whatever capacity. That's what we're going to keep doing. And then Mike over at the Alpha 13 guys hit me up. And the funny thing about Mike is he disclosed to me, like, ⁓ dude, I got to give you the call up, He's somebody ⁓ put me on a B team. And it sucks because it's difficult when I come get the call from the B team to the A team. I've never gone back. That started when I was young, right? So yeah, they tried to put me in the B team when I was a kid in like sixth, seventh grade, I was in the B team for like a season. All right, we weren't very good. I wasn't very good. But then the next year I made some changes and the A team never looked back, right? Hey, that's that's kind of it. And I say that carry over to my life in the military. It's carried over to business is carried over to investing, right? And what I mean in all of that H-Hour training events is an opportunity for you to self select period the end. There's no mandates. We're never going to yell at you. We'll encourage you and support you. We'll never harass you unless there's a fire in the building or a safety issue. That is what the design is. You'll get nothing but professionalism every step of the way. And the best part is you'll get some cool swag. You'll make some friends on the long run and you'll continue to expand upon the great stuff that you're doing because ⁓ strengths are never a weakness. And sometimes it's our responsibility to double down on our strengths because that's just good training and event stuff. You know, the world doesn't need another version of Vince and it definitely doesn't need a version of you. We just need you. We just need Vince to be the best version of Vince, right? And I think H-Hour counseling and H-Hour training events for me have been the immediate extensions of trying to make other people proud, including my friends and my family and all takers that become part of those things. The reality I've learned in the six, seven years of doing this is that not everybody's going to come along, nor does everybody believe. But irony is that I'm delusional, right? And I built a runway that's incredibly long. ⁓ I know because of my phase of life and the seasons of life I've been through is that most things are just endurance sports. You just have to not quit. Allow things to evaluate and assess you out of whatever the things are, but you just don't quit, right? And much as life, the amount of success you will experience and have is going to be overwhelming. Most people self-select and they give up on themselves before the coach even tells them, right? Life's just like that. The boss is like that. The spouse is like that. The kids are like that. And so if our goal and intent is to continue improving, ⁓ We use H-Hour training events as a means and a resource for people to make themselves proud. And in turn, right, represent the people that are proud of them well, right? And you get to self-select in that story as well. All right, the Vincere Project. You heard Molly in the background, which is awesome. I hope that this picks this up, but it's a true story, man. She went face to face with Monty, freaking SEAL Team Six dude. It's the most handsome, scary dude ever. But yeah, we gotta get some people in the podcast. It's gonna be good. All right, Vincere Project, gonna keep going.