Latest / The Junto Podcast / E54: Guerrilla Startups - Unconventional Warfare Doctrine Shaping Small Business

Transcript

E54: Guerrilla Startups - Unconventional Warfare Doctrine Shaping Small Business · 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.
0:29
Hello, good people. Welcome back. This is episode 54.
0:33
And again, as always, I thank you for sticking with me and for listening to my opinions on things.
0:41
So on the last episode, we talked about small business and we compared the six
0:50
principles that Admiral McRaven laid out for special operations.
0:55
And we talked about the theory of relative superiority and how you can get ahead
1:02
in your business and defeat a larger force,
1:07
defeat a larger company, or at least stay competitive.
1:12
Well, going back a little bit on that and staying with the same theme, right,
1:19
of how small business and the military kind of jive with each other or military doctrine.
1:28
This time, what I'm going to, the comparisons and parallels I'm going to draw
1:33
between small business, you know, entrepreneurship, small business startups,
1:38
and the seven phases of unconventional warfare.
1:42
And even deeper, the principles of guerrilla warfare as laid out by Mao Zedong and T.E. Lawrence.
1:53
Mao Zedong, Taesung, however you want to say it.
1:57
Yeah, Mao, infamous communist leader of Red China.
2:04
And T.E. Lawrence, who is, I guess you could say, one of the fathers of unconventional
2:10
warfare as we know it today.
2:12
So, yeah, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it.
2:18
Now, Lawrence was prominent before Mao came to prominence, and it was two very
2:24
different fights that they were in.
2:28
But they both draw from similar foundations to Sun Tzu and Clausewitz and some others.
2:39
So they both,
2:44
now I'm drawing from the 10 principles on guerrilla warfare from Mao,
2:51
and then Lawrence's, the Arab revolt from 16 to 18.
2:58
And those are the things we'll be drawing from here. And what both of those
3:02
instances did was show that a small motivated force can beat a larger conventional force.
3:12
By using some, some unique, some principles that are unique to unconventional
3:16
warfare, being mobile and agile, having the support of the populace and, well,
3:23
and the focus, focusing on, on the enemy's weaknesses and not through direct
3:29
face-to-face communication.
3:31
Yeah, because a big standing army, like you guys tell me, you know,
3:36
in the current conflict with Iran and this and that,
3:38
what army on the planet could stand toe to toe with the U.S.
3:45
Army or the U.S. military?
3:47
I'm going to be bold and say none. We might suffer a lot.
3:52
We might spend a lot of treasure, but I don't believe any force on the planet
3:59
of the Earth can go toe-to-toe with the U.S.
4:02
So why would you want to, right? So you do unconventional things.
4:08
You hit weaknesses. You exploit weaknesses.
4:14
Well, those principles map over into the phases of unconventional.
4:20
So doctrinally, there are seven phases of unconventional warfare.
4:25
And then there's special operations. There's a couple of different manuals out
4:30
there. One's classified, one's not.
4:32
And we're pulling from the unclassified one.
4:36
But entrepreneurs out there, people who are looking to start businesses,
4:41
startups, Perhaps smaller scale guys, whether you aim to scale up big and large later or not,
4:49
that's not what we're talking about right this moment.
4:52
What we're talking about is how these startup entrepreneurs kind of unknowingly
4:58
execute the unconventional warfare phases.
5:04
And they kind of work out of the playbook on a daily basis, really,
5:09
whether you know it or not. And there are many parallels.
5:15
I am attempting, now when I say successful small businesses do X,
5:20
Y, and Z, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm talking about my business.
5:24
Yes, I think I'm pretty successful to my metrics, to the things that are making me happy at the moment.
5:32
But I am in no way where I want to be as a business.
5:39
But we can look at other small businesses out there and apply you know kind of generally,
5:45
say oh yes that is a successful business or not well what i'm going to point
5:52
out throughout this whole thing here is how successful small businesses they
5:57
mirror guerrilla doctrine,
5:59
like right along the way and and what is what is a guerrilla doctor what does
6:06
a revolution look like What does a resistance look like?
6:09
Well, they're kind of revolutionary in spirit, right?
6:13
Like they're revolting against something, an oppressive government or even an
6:19
invasive force or something like that. Well, as a small business...
6:24
You are revolting against something, right? You're trying to,
6:26
you're not happy with what's the status quo.
6:31
You're, you're trying to bring forth something new and different and better.
6:38
So, yeah, I mean, I think most small businesses who take the stand, right?
6:44
You're like, you know what? I'm not, I'm not working for this company anymore.
6:48
I'm not in this rat race anymore. I am starting my own little revolution and
6:53
I'm going out and becoming independent on my own or with a team,
6:57
you know, but to be independent.
7:00
I think that's a commonality. What do you think? And then what is another thing
7:05
that resistances are is necessary for resistance to succeed,
7:12
a revolution to succeed?
7:14
Indeed, well, you are very dependent upon the populace winning hearts and minds.
7:23
If you don't have the support of the people, and I mean the vast majority of
7:29
the people, you're going to crash and burn.
7:33
In an unconventional warfare frame of thought, but also as a small business,
7:40
right? You got to have the customers.
7:42
The customers have to support you, especially as a small business.
7:46
So you have to earn their trust just like a revolution has to earn the trust of their population.
7:54
And what else? I said a few of these things a minute ago. You got to be mobile
7:59
and flexible or agile. You have to be adaptable.
8:04
You have to be able to move when the time, remember we talked about the law
8:09
of timing, the 21 irrefutable laws.
8:12
If the time is right, you have to move.
8:16
If conditions change, you have to be flexible. You have to be able to take the hit and bounce back.
8:23
And then another thing that is unique to revolutions,
8:28
to resistances, is that they are always in an offensive mindset,
8:37
not a defensive mindset.
8:40
Because one, yes, security is always a thing.
8:45
But as a small force, you're not trying to hold a giant piece of earth.
8:51
You're not trying to hold a piece of key terrain.
8:56
You're not big enough. You're not equipped enough to defend.
9:01
But what you are and do it well is small offenses against weak points.
9:11
So you always have to stay offensive-minded, which means on the move,
9:16
always looking to push the next thing.
9:19
Whatever your offerings are Whatever your products are You have to be on the
9:25
offensive Against the market.
9:28
Revolution, revolutionaries, right, resistance movements, guerrilla fighters,
9:34
you exploit, and small businesses,
9:37
you exploit gaps in the market, or you exploit gaps in the larger forces,
9:45
I don't know, supply chain or something like that.
9:48
But you avoid big toe-to-toe, head-to-head battles with larger companies and
9:56
larger forces to stay alive.
10:00
Because as a small business, though we're resilient, you could probably be crushed
10:07
if somebody put a little focus on it.
10:11
And then these guerrilla forces, how do they build their stockpiles?
10:17
Well, they don't have stockpiles, right?
10:19
Battlefield recovery. They replenish their strength through captured equipment
10:24
and even captured people who they just turned into their own fighters.
10:28
Well, as a small business, that looks like market share, right?
10:31
You capture one little piece at a time. You capture a piece of the market share.
10:37
You exploit that. You grow that. And then you move forward on the offensive.
10:44
So we're going to look at the seven phases of unconventional warfare and try
10:49
to compare them, to parallel them with, well, you know, small business applications.
10:58
And then show during these big broad phases as seen through the doctrine of
11:06
unconventional warfare, how specifically they kind of go along with the guerrilla warfare there.
11:12
Because don't confuse guerrilla warfare and unconventional warfare.
11:15
They're not one and the same.
11:19
So preparation is phase one, and that sounds like a no-brainer,
11:23
right, as a businessman, but preparation.
11:27
And preparation is not necessarily a physical thing.
11:31
You're collecting intelligence right now. You're collecting,
11:35
you're studying the terrain via map or whatever technology you have.
11:42
You're looking at the population. You're doing what is called information or
11:50
intelligence preparation of the environment.
11:53
You're trying to get as much knowledge about what you're about to go into.
11:59
And if it's a foreign country or if it's, I mean, a battle, like you're trying
12:03
to learn as much about your enemy as possible, as much about their networks,
12:07
as much about anything that you can.
12:10
And Lawrence illustrates this real good in his journey because he, before...
12:17
Before becoming an officer, when he was younger, he was like an archaeologist.
12:22
And he walked, this guy walked on a tour of like the Crusaders' castles in Syria.
12:31
He walked a thousand miles across Syria in 1909 to study those castles.
12:41
He learned the Arabic language. He learned about the tribal dynamics and all
12:49
that before the actual Arab revolt against the Ottomans.
12:55
And that was him preparing the operational environment. He was soaking in as
13:05
much information as he could. And that was long before combat ever started.
13:09
Yeah. Yeah, area assessments, intelligence preparation.
13:13
What does that look like as an entrepreneur?
13:16
Yeah, you're doing market analysis, looking at the terrain, which is the market,
13:22
the trends in your field, whatever your field is.
13:27
And you're looking at competitors and you're looking at their feedback they get from customers.
13:35
You're looking at their vulnerabilities.
13:38
Yeah, before you ever launch anything.
13:41
That's what phase one looks like. Do the market analysis. When you're building your business plan,
13:47
find out as much as you can about everything you can, about the geographic area,
13:55
the habits of the people in that area, the people who are meant to be your customers.
14:01
Now, if you're an international or selling things online, that's a different thing.
14:05
But then you look at Internet trends and how people buy and things like that.
14:13
So yeah, in phase one, you're, you're shaping your battlefield.
14:18
You're shaping your battlefield. Yeah. And once you think, you know,
14:23
everything there is to know about your battlefield, you know, then you launch.
14:28
There's always going to, folks, always unknowns are going to be out there.
14:33
That's why we plan for contingencies, but prepare your battlefield by going
14:39
in and pulling out the information and intelligence that you need to make your vision happen.
14:46
What's phase two? Anybody listening to this who's a military man,
14:51
Green Beret or whatever, seven phases of unconventional warfare, like that's...
14:58
That's the whole buildup of Robin Sage or the Q course, the special forces qualification course.
15:05
It all builds up to the, to the final phase and, and it's Robin Sage.
15:14
And that's where you're, you're basically on a accelerated timeline going through
15:19
all of these phases of unconventional warfare.
15:24
And it's called initial contact. Now, that's not full-blown force-on-force contact, folks.
15:31
That's initial, that's your pilot team or your advance party or someone.
15:38
And again, I'm going to go back to Lawrence on this one. He met with Amir Faisal
15:43
well before and built a relationship, built on respect, really.
15:52
And Faisal, I think, was impressed that Lawrence knew as much as he did about, well, Syria.
16:02
And because of that initial contact, they were strong allies together.
16:09
And they ultimately kind of reshaped the whole Middle East.
16:13
But from Mao's perspective, and this was, you know, decades later,
16:19
he stressed even, even Mao stressed that having good rapport with the populace
16:24
was a foundation for guerrilla fighter success.
16:30
So even that initial contact you make with people who may or may not be a customer or whatever, that's.
16:39
Establishing rapport early. Now, some of us are not, what do you call it?
16:44
What's the word I'm looking for? Charismatic.
16:46
Some of us make bad first impressions. Some of us, not so much.
16:52
And if you're a guy like me, I'm what I like to refer to as direct communicator.
16:57
That oftentimes does not make a good impression on people. Oftentimes.
17:03
How do I know this? because oftentimes I have failed due to direct communication.
17:10
But in UW, though, especially, you go in and you've got this initial contact
17:15
with, you know, well, key leaders, really.
17:19
And it might be under dubious or sensitive sort of conditions,
17:24
but you've got to make some kind of contact with someone who is going to then
17:31
help you to grow and succeed and things like that.
17:35
So that might for an entrepreneur look like, well, you're pitching a customer
17:40
on your product, or furthermore, you're pitching an investor on your product
17:45
or what you need or whatnot.
17:49
No matter what it is, there has to be some baseline level of trust established,
17:56
or at least is there potential that I could,
18:01
you know, is there trustworthiness that can be developed here.
18:06
Yeah. Trust is, is what turns strangers into partners, man.
18:12
Yeah. Okay. Initial contact, build trust.
18:17
Now I'm going to give an example because this is kind of a local,
18:21
I, those of you who may or may not know who Sarah Blakely is.
18:26
She is the, She started the company Spanx, which is like fitness clothes for ladies and.
18:37
And I think she cold called like Neiman Marcus, and she had like $5,000 and
18:45
like a prototype of her product.
18:52
But I think her ability to win them over with some probably what was,
19:00
well, she was probably very authentic, and she was probably very impassioned.
19:04
And she may have even come off a little vulnerable to this gigantic company.
19:11
And that got her in the door.
19:14
Yep, that got her some shelf space. And boom, Spanx.
19:19
Now, I think they may have ended up selling that. And she still has shares of
19:23
that. But I don't know her life story on that.
19:26
I'm saying she's a perfect example of some small startup that fits into that
19:33
initial. Well, the phases of unconventional warfare.
19:37
Yeah. So, you know, one genuine conversation with somebody, one respectful,
19:45
genuine conversation, that can ignite your brand.
19:51
Right? That can ignite your brand.
19:54
Phase three. Phase three is infiltration.
19:58
That's a very military sounding word and i'm
20:02
gonna i'm gonna use the the two
20:05
guys first lawrence their method of infiltration into enemy held terrain or
20:13
areas was a little they were cruising around on camels yeah hard to detect right
20:20
so you're cruising through the desert on camels,
20:24
That's not a big signature, right?
20:26
And plus, back in those days, there wasn't all the technology that there is these days.
20:31
But yeah, they moved small and under the radar, as it were.
20:37
And on the same token, Mao kind of advocated that you entered rural areas and small cities first,
20:49
right, before trying to get into and work in larger urban areas so as not to be found out.
20:57
Infiltration is probably one of the most difficult and dangerous parts of a
21:02
whole operation if you're looking at the phases of UW. Yeah, for sure.
21:09
So you infill quietly.
21:13
Then make your moves from there.
21:15
How does that, how's that parallel with entrepreneurial small business?
21:20
Yeah, especially startups and little businesses like mine, we're sort of niche, right?
21:26
So you can see how it could grow into a larger thing, but right now it's pretty
21:31
niche and it's pretty small scale.
21:34
So the footprint is small, right?
21:38
Any of the bigger companies out there doing the things I do,
21:42
they don't know who I am. Yeah. And they may never know who I am.
21:46
And as we're marketing as entrepreneurs in this infiltration phase,
21:51
you know, I heard this, I heard about this thing called guerrilla marketing,
21:55
where you put your thing out there, but then you like tag a bigger company that
22:01
does the things you do, but you tag them and people,
22:06
make an association, you know what I mean?
22:09
And then, and then a social media market, you know, you got all this,
22:12
this micro influencers and these, and all this stuff.
22:18
Work. Now I put my stuff all out there. I told you guys, I'm not a strategic mastermind.
22:25
I tell I'm upfront about what I'm doing and everything like that.
22:29
But even then what I'm doing, even when I put it out on the podcast,
22:33
it's still to a pretty narrow audience, right?
22:37
So ultimately in infiltration, we're staying low, staying under radar while,
22:43
while we're getting our footing in this new market or this new area.
22:51
I want to say, Mal maybe said, arrive like vapor, silent, pervasive, impossible to pin down.
23:02
That's pretty good. We do want to arrive like vapor, but we can't stay silent for too long, right?
23:08
Otherwise, we're not going to succeed. So phase four is organization.
23:16
Now we're foot in the door.
23:24
Now we can start to look around and begin to organize.
23:29
Uh mal and lawrence both it's
23:32
you know they turn tribes and farmers
23:36
into a functional fighting
23:40
force and lawrence noted
23:44
that small units outperformed giant
23:49
mobs right he was an advocate of small
23:52
unit tactics and i think
23:55
mal was the first to introduce the organizing into an underground and guerrilla
24:01
network and then there's auxiliary in there as well so the underground the auxiliary
24:08
and the guerrilla forces are who make up your resistance and.
24:15
You may have a bunch of support from the population. Well, I hope you do. That's the way to do it.
24:22
But the underground helps you in a certain way, right?
24:26
The auxiliary helps you in a certain way, you know, probably like logistics
24:31
and getting from point A to point B and that kind of thing.
24:34
And then the guerrilla forces, what is it? Everybody knows what a guerrilla's job is, right?
24:38
You're the fighting force. You're the ones out there doing the hit and run and
24:43
the disruption and the offensive type tactics to keep the bigger force off balance.
24:52
Well, how can we organize? How does this apply to entrepreneurial actions?
25:01
Well, never mind our people. What if you're a one-man show?
25:07
You're not organizing yourself, right? You're organizing your,
25:10
well, your, your early clients and you're building your early clients into people
25:17
who will advocate for you.
25:19
Well, and you're doing that through the trust, right? That we,
25:22
that we talked about earlier and, and you build your early clients into,
25:28
you know, like, like brand evangelists.
25:32
You know what I mean? They're out there when they're talking,
25:34
they're talking good about you and they spread the message. Like,
25:38
hey, have you been to OSS?
25:40
I mean, have you shot a match at OSS, you know? And that's good. We want that.
25:45
We want to continue to build that during the organization phase for sure.
25:49
But that's something that is ongoing.
25:52
We always want to keep that, well, one, trust with our clients.
25:56
Two, that our clients are out there pushing.
26:01
And ultimately, what I'm saying by that is our clients and our customers,
26:06
especially in my business you can't look at them,
26:11
as just transactions. They're not just a dollar figure that they,
26:16
well, in the, in the scope of what we're talking about today,
26:19
they are your resistance.
26:22
They are your, your auxiliary and underground.
26:25
Yeah. They are your support structure. You know, a guy who knows a guy.
26:30
Well, next thing you know, that, you know, that's a helpful asset.
26:34
So treat your customers like you treat your employees if you have employees.
26:39
Treat them with a little care and respect, a little honesty, trust.
26:46
They are your resistance movement. And then after organization,
26:51
phase five comes buildup.
26:53
Yeah, buildup.
26:56
Now, we might have mentioned it earlier, like Mao and, well,
27:01
and with Lawrence and Mao, but how did they build up?
27:06
Well, one, they replenished their gear with captured enemy gear.
27:11
And then in between campaigns, they would rest.
27:15
You know, they would train, reconsolidate, reorganize, and they would also recruit.
27:20
And they even recruited from within some of the other people that they fought with.
27:29
Yeah, and T.E. Lawrence and their fighting forces. Yeah, man,
27:34
they they that was basically how they armed themselves was with Turkish weapons,
27:38
Turkish horses, Turkish supplies.
27:41
And then they would rotate fresh parties, you know, doing these raids.
27:47
I bet half the raids were done simply to get get provisions and weapons and whatnot.
27:53
But at some point, yeah, we've got to build up our logistical capacity and maybe
28:02
be able to scale that a little bit so that our resources are more dependable,
28:07
that we don't have to depend on resources.
28:11
Having a friend who, well, my buddy builds, you know, target stands and then
28:16
your buddy moves to Washington, you know, or something.
28:20
So you, you, you have to build up as an entrepreneur,
28:24
your, well, yeah, logistics for sure, but your systems, you start to,
28:29
you start to build these, these infrastructure systems and these, And folks,
28:34
in the entrepreneurial space, like your systems are what takes the place of
28:42
your hustle when you were brand new starting out.
28:46
Eventually, you build systems that are functional and consistent.
28:54
And then even you start to maybe recruit, you know, a little talent here and there.
29:00
And you shore up your SOPs during this buildup phase. Yeah.
29:07
And then you start to maybe, well, what would be in an entrepreneurial sense,
29:12
what would be capturing enemy resources, right? You're starting to get a little
29:16
piece of that market share.
29:17
And you might even start to pull some dudes from other companies to work for
29:23
you, you know, stuff like that.
29:25
You're starting to get a little revenue flowing.
29:28
That's the build-up for an entrepreneur. But it starts with your systems and your processes.
29:34
You're getting those in place so that they're, I don't want to say unbreakable,
29:38
but yeah, man, pretty solid. Pretty solid.
29:41
The build-up phase is where the vision of the resistance meets the...
29:47
The functional logistical piece of it, right?
29:54
The vision meets the functionality during the buildup phase.
29:59
Okay, we've built up. We've got our processes in place. What's next?
30:05
We've got a resistance built up now.
30:09
We've got auxiliary and underground, and we've got a guerrilla force.
30:14
We've got our hands on some resources.
30:18
Now it's employment, right? Phase six, employment.
30:21
You've got to employ your forces to really start to get.
30:27
So Mao, probably like five of his principles are about, I'm about to shake out
30:34
in like one sentence here, but attack dispersed and weaker forces first.
30:40
Yep focus on destroying
30:43
enemy strength not holding ground focus on
30:48
disrupting his pattern and not just trying to hold ground concentrate the bulk
30:56
of your forces at decisive points that draws the enemy into mobile warfare because
31:04
that's one of our strengths as as guerrilla fighters, right?
31:08
And then strike at weakly defended points.
31:12
And all that was from Mao's principles. He had, in his book,
31:16
there were 10 principles. That was like five of them right there.
31:19
Well, decades before that, T. Lawrence embodied those principles.
31:26
And I'm sure Mao was familiar with and probably very educated on the methods of Lawrence.
31:33
They raided, yeah, They raided Turkish rail lines with, with very small,
31:38
highly mobile little raiding parties.
31:41
And they even, they even had Turkey armored cars that they got from previous raids. Yeah.
31:48
Avoided strong points altogether. So when they hit their rail lines, what did that do?
31:55
That disrupted the Turks' ability to resupply.
32:02
They disrupted their supply chain. That's unconventional warfare,
32:06
folks. That's good stuff right there.
32:09
You coordinate smaller forces to disrupt the larger adversary.
32:16
And at some point, based on what we talked about last time,
32:21
about Admiral McRaven's theory of relative superiority, with those smaller coordinated
32:27
forces, you can achieve relative superiority.
32:32
Yeah, and win the battle, for sure. And ultimately the war by doing so.
32:37
What does that look like for a small business?
32:40
Well, that's your ad campaigns and your marketing.
32:45
That's you trying to extend your reach a little bit to, you know,
32:50
a bigger geographical area or space.
32:55
That's you doing creative, well, creative marketing, creative pricing, right?
33:02
And so that you're not only competitive, right?
33:07
You can undercut on certain things for periods of time, right?
33:11
Offer specials and offer two-for-ones and BOGOs and all that stuff.
33:18
That's what that looks like in practice for small business people.
33:22
Employment of your forces. That's employing your small strategies,
33:27
your guerrilla strategies.
33:30
Yeah. And in that...
33:34
Which we talked about the law of timing from Maxwell, the timing and the coordination
33:41
can be the spark that creates the bigger fire.
33:48
And as the small coordinated efforts, as those small coordinated parties,
33:54
you can get the relative superiority and you can disrupt the market and bring
34:01
maximum disorder to your local market and make that disorder become your equilibrium,
34:09
your happy space, right?
34:12
I've said this before, and it's not to be anything other than this,
34:17
just the way it shook out.
34:19
In the midst of chaos.
34:25
Objective, for instance, in combat and in training, I sort of thrived during
34:32
chaos, during that chaos.
34:35
And I'm able to manage it. I'm able to manage my emotions and see opportunity, see gaps and adjust.
34:46
That's not me as an individual. I mean, as a team, you know what And I'm able to,
34:51
we're agile and we're flexible and we're able to shift and shape in order to
35:01
meet whatever the challenge is.
35:03
I've always been very proud of that about myself as a combat leader.
35:08
I can't say that same held true in Garrison too much. But I once had a platoon
35:17
sergeant, and I may have said this before, but I'll say it again because it stuck with me.
35:23
When I was a young E-5 fireteam leader in the 82nd Airborne Division,
35:28
and this guy, and I'll say his name, Larry Lunsford, he didn't like me too much.
35:36
And we were doing something, I don't know, man, Shugart Gordon Village in JRTC
35:42
or somewhere, something.
35:46
And he says, he says, damn it, Mills.
35:50
How come when we're in combat, I can depend on you to save the world?
35:54
But in garrison, you just don't seem to care.
35:57
It's like, well, I don't know what to say to that. You know what I mean?
36:01
Because my priorities are more focused on being the best warfighter I could
36:07
be, I guess. I don't know.
36:10
But it stuck with me, though. I can depend on you to save the world in combat.
36:14
But in garrison, you just don't seem to care.
36:17
Well, folks, garrison's a whole different body.
36:21
You want to talk about bureaucracy and hurry up and wait and all those things, that's it.
36:29
Phase seven of unconventional warfare folks so so
36:33
let's go through them we have preparation then we
36:36
have initial contact that's that's sort
36:39
of the initial meets there and then we have infiltration where we're trying
36:44
to go in with our force and get a foothold and then once we're in once we're
36:49
in we're trying to organize to get ourselves ready and and then we're and then
36:56
we're trying to build up.
36:59
So, and during, during the organization, during phase five, we're trying to,
37:03
to get our systems square.
37:05
And then during phase five, let's say phase four, phase four, phase five buildup.
37:11
Now we're, we're trying to get all our, our systems are in place.
37:17
Now we're, we're trying to build those systems to be able to function fully at their full capacity.
37:23
And then in phase six, we're employing all those systems and all those things, all our forces, right?
37:29
Well, we've employed our forces. We're fighting the battles.
37:33
We're winning the battles, all right? And the war, the war rages on,
37:37
but we're fighting and winning battles. Well.
37:41
Of unconventional warfare is transition. So every guerrilla force being a small,
37:49
you know, what you imagine to be a ragtag group of this, that, and the other.
37:53
Well, if your guerrilla force wins, right?
37:58
If you're defeating the invaders or the occupiers, well, eventually you become, you take over, right?
38:08
You've won, you've defeated the occupiers.
38:11
And Mao envisioned his guerrilla forces, you know, evolving into conventional armies.
38:18
And that's pretty much what happened.
38:21
Whereas T.E. Lawrence, well, after the Arab revolt, Lawrence stepped aside as
38:32
conventional forces came to Damascus.
38:35
And he understood that the revolution or the resistance to success,
38:44
I mean, that was a metric of success was handing authority over to the larger,
38:51
more established force.
38:53
And both of these, Mao and Lawrence, yeah, they understood fluidity, right?
38:59
And they knew when the nature of the fight shifted, when it changed.
39:06
Well, the difference being that Mao envisioned his guerrilla forces and resistance
39:13
becoming the bigger, now the conventional force.
39:18
Whereas Lawrence didn't think that. He thought, hey, we disband,
39:24
go back to living a happy tribal life.
39:27
And my thoughts on that, and I wrote a paper on this, a blog,
39:31
or not a blog. I did a course on this. I created a course on this.
39:37
I think had that fight, had that Arab revolt gone on and on and on,
39:43
had it been longer, would Lawrence
39:46
have envisioned his guerrilla fighters becoming the conventional army?
39:51
And that's the question. The answer is, I think no. And I'll tell you why I think no.
39:56
The Chinese, I don't know as much about the Chinese people or the nation or its history.
40:04
But I got to imagine the Chinese are a little bit more homogenous than the Middle East.
40:11
And what I know from experience, which is why I'm saying what I'm saying,
40:14
is that when you have tribal or different tribes,
40:19
you might have them working together for a moment in time, but they're always
40:24
going to have allegiance to the tribe.
40:27
And if you, much like in Afghanistan, when you try to make the Afghan National
40:31
Army and you got people from different tribes standing side by side in formation,
40:38
it don't always go over very well.
40:42
And that becomes a whole other problem. Right.
40:46
I think Lawrence thought the way he thought because of the geographic location,
40:52
where he was at, the indigenous people that he knew intimately.
40:58
And then I think Mao, I think, like I said, in my guesstimation,
41:02
China was a little more homogenous and also a little more strict in their regime.
41:09
Like the communist regime was...
41:14
They would probably quell any internal disagreements pretty damn fast.
41:21
So, yeah, in UW, that's what you do, right? In transition, you demobilize the guerrilla fighters.
41:28
You may have some strategic guys that you keep in place and make them a part
41:32
of a conventional force or whatnot.
41:35
You hand authority over to a legitimate structure, legitimate regime,
41:39
governmental structure, and then you move on to train for the next fight.
41:43
Well, what is transition in the entrepreneurial aspect?
41:50
Well, you're moving on from a, you know, like a tough, scrappy little like insurgency,
41:56
right? You're a small startup.
41:58
You do some good stuff. People love it.
42:01
So do you level out right there and get yourself in a sort of homeostasis where,
42:08
all right, I'm happy right here.
42:10
I don't want to grow. I don't want to shrink. Like, I'm going to provide what I provide.
42:15
I'm happy with the money I'm bringing in, the number of customers I have, et cetera.
42:23
Or do you have an exit strategy to where you try to build success that gets
42:29
successful enough that you can then sell out to a larger,
42:33
maybe one of your large-scale competitors for what you see as an awesome amount of money?
42:40
And then you tap out and go buy a boat and go hang out and sip on drinks at the beach.
42:49
You have a vision to stick with it and become an industry behemoth.
42:53
You started out small, tough, tenacious.
42:58
You've grown. You've worked hard to grow this success.
43:03
And now you're just going to keep doubling down, keep offering more and more,
43:09
building larger and larger, hiring more and more people.
43:14
So you're going to scale up to epic proportions.
43:18
Or, or then what else? I'll tell you what my move is.
43:23
Now, look, I'm, I'm still a long way off folks. I'm, I'm probably somewhere
43:27
in the, if I had to put myself in a phase right now, probably about,
43:34
probably about phase four, phase three.
43:38
I'm saying I'm, I'm one foot in phase three, one foot in phase four for my own
43:44
business. And look, that's about what?
43:47
17. That's, that's about almost nine years in operation.
43:53
No, that is nine years in operation. And I'm still only in phase three, phase four.
44:00
That could have a lot to do with just, it's me doing it.
44:03
You know, maybe somebody else could have made this thing happen in six months
44:05
from, from start to finish at any rate. My bad. I got off.
44:12
What is my view of the field? Well, I want to build up, not into a behemoth,
44:19
but to sustain, well, national level shooting matches.
44:24
Yeah, I want to be able to sustain national level shooting matches.
44:29
And I want to have a pretty huge customer bay. I mean, I mean,
44:32
like I want, you know, I want there to be 2,000 members of the range.
44:39
Now, 2,000? Yeah.
44:43
Would I be happy with more than that? Yeah. But I think 2,000 is a right number.
44:49
But once we're able to maintain about 2,000 clients or members,
44:57
and once we're able to consistently run multiple national level matches from
45:05
big organizations, USPSA, IDPA,
45:08
PCS League, the tactical games, I'm going to say, man, this is success right here.
45:15
And I do, everybody should know this. I do aim for my son Ezekiel to step into
45:21
my, my role, my space and, and take that over and then launch a new venture.
45:29
Yeah. And some of you that know me, once the range is, is, is running smooth.
45:38
And I don't want to say on autopilot, but where Zeke's running and whatever
45:43
partners that we have or everybody's running smooth,
45:47
everybody's making pretty decent money, everybody's pretty happy with life,
45:51
I'm looking to launch a new venture in the indoor rock climbing business.
45:56
Yeah, that's what's out there for me.
45:59
Now, I mentioned Sarah Blakely. Let's go back because she's another example that I've been doing.
46:06
Sell a majority stake in Spanx.
46:09
I think she maintained sort of creative control and her and her husband,
46:16
they're always launching some new thing.
46:20
They're always out there launching, launching things, new, new business ventures
46:27
and, and, and events and stuff like that.
46:31
And they're doing quite well, by the way. So that, you know,
46:35
I aim, that's in my future. I aim to do that.
46:38
And it's not a matter of if, but when that's, that's what it is.
46:43
Now, what I've discovered, folks, I've said this on different podcasts as well.
46:49
There are people out there who will look you straight in the eye when you,
46:52
when you talk about things, they go, oh, money's not the problem.
46:54
You know, this, that, and the other is.
46:57
Well, I beg to differ. Money is the only problem.
47:02
I can tell you from my own experience, folks, that I have a pretty solid network
47:09
of good human beings around me, great human beings.
47:14
And I have a pretty solid, what I would say is the populace,
47:21
I believe, supports Osprey Shoe Solutions and the silo.
47:26
And whatever I'm doing, I've got, I think, a good, strong base of support for it.
47:35
Have is pockets full of money. Yeah. So it's been very tough trying to,
47:41
trying to find, you know, people who, you know, well, we need land.
47:46
We, can we do this or we do that? Are you willing to do this and that and the other?
47:50
It's tough, but that's the way it is.
47:54
That's the way it is. So yeah, we're looking to get to a point of where we level,
48:00
where we don't, don't want to grow anymore.
48:04
Well, we don't want to grow into a behemoth But we do want to grow To be a national
48:10
level Asset, a national level Attraction.
48:14
You know, you know when to transition power, right? And that's, for me, that's to my son.
48:21
I do have a point in my mind when I'm going to transition everything over to him and then move on.
48:31
Obviously staying in there, you know, obviously. So, yeah, that transition.
48:37
Yeah, there has to be a transition somewhere. And you see this with the big companies out there.
48:44
You got these big companies always buying and selling each other.
48:48
You've got these mergers of all these behemoths.
48:52
And that stuff lends itself to politics and it lends itself to corruption and
48:57
it lends itself to all these things.
49:00
So I definitely don't want to be in that space. I don't think you do either.
49:05
And then, yeah, transition to the good life, whatever life that is for you. Yeah.
49:11
So, you know, kind of mashing up unconventional warfare, guerrilla warfare,
49:17
and then kind of entrepreneurial,
49:20
well, the phases of unconventional warfare, and then mashing that up with how
49:26
to, what does that look like against a small business?
49:29
I think that, well, we know a few things. You need populist support.
49:34
You need a good customer base.
49:36
You need people who want to see you succeed. Or that even if they don't like
49:42
you, they like your product.
49:43
You need that. You've got to have the support of the populist.
49:47
You need to be flexible and, well, flexible, right? I got a catchphrase out
49:52
there. I said it the other day and somebody laughed pretty hard.
49:55
I say, hey, I'm as flexible as a Russian ballerina.
49:59
You have to be flexible. You have to.
50:02
There's always dynamics out there that you don't control.
50:05
And if you're not flexible, they might knock you down.
50:08
So be flexible.
50:12
You five minutes sorry folks
50:16
so yeah be flexible as a
50:20
small business person we're not going after the behemoths we're not going after
50:24
the big businesses right yeah we want to exploit their weaknesses that that's
50:29
not going to harm them and they're not losing much market share if we're if
50:33
we're getting market share right the first of all in my opinion i never went
50:39
to business school good people,
50:40
but I don't think the market is a finite piece of, like,
50:44
circle, right? I don't think it's finite.
50:46
When you say, well, if I'm getting a piece of the market share,
50:50
that's taking away a piece of the market. I don't think so. I think the market grows.
50:54
That's what I think. So understand that. And as small businesses,
51:00
we're the resistance, folks.
51:02
We're the revolutionaries as small businesses.
51:06
So we're, we're, we're light and we're fast. We're waging unconventional warfare
51:11
against the big, the market, the marketplace. That's what we're doing.
51:16
And these parallels, I don't, I don't think they're necessarily coincidental, right?
51:20
I think they're pretty, well, I mean, I think they're pretty timeless, really.
51:24
I mean, when did the Lawrence do the, when, when was that? 19,
51:29
when did he walk across here, 1909 or something like that.
51:33
So I think the principles hold up and I think they hold up against business.
51:38
And I think they hold up still to unconventional warfare today. Yeah.
51:43
So I think they're a good blueprint. Check them out and match the phases of
51:51
unconventional warfare, match them up to your business plan and see where you think you're at.
51:57
If not, hey, at least if you're starting out right now, at least it's a pretty
52:03
good structure to work against.
52:06
Yeah, it's a pretty good structure to work against.
52:10
That's what I wanted to talk about. I thought last week I wanted to keep a theme
52:16
of talking about special operations things as they are relatable to small business things.
52:25
I think you can get a lot from it.
52:30
You can read business books. I've read a few. It's dry. You can read military doctrine and it's dry.
52:39
But reading the military doctrine might give you a
52:42
little different approach might give
52:45
you a little different vision of how you can do a thing yeah it can help and
52:51
that's why i'm here folks to help you all right good people i appreciate you
52:56
listening please comment ask questions whatever it is. I welcome it.
53:04
Please do that. Unconventional warfare. That is the cup OT for special forces.
53:12
Not every war is an unconventional war, but it's still a very important piece of doctrine, I believe.
53:19
And I think it relates just fine to small business startups.
53:24
Helps revolutionary folks be revolutionary be revolutionary all right check
53:30
out all my other stuff on all the other websites folks i love you guys take
53:34
care of yourself you know take care of.