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E40: Don't Expect Hard Things Not To Be Hard · The Junto Podcast

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Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto Podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I am your host, Edgar Mills. Thanks for joining.
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Hello, good people. Welcome to the Junto podcast, episode 40.
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I appreciate you guys for staying with me. I really, really do.
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This title, sorry, this episode is entitled something to the effect of don't
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expect hard things to be hard, not to be hard.
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Me and my friend, Nathan Hicks kicked that around for a while and it was in reference.
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He was doing an episode on talking about a race, a running race that he did
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and heard some people kind of moaning and groaning about the difficulty and
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the elevation and things like that.
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And my first thing was like, well, why would you sign up for a race,
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an endurance race, like an ultra race?
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So anyway, that jumped in my head. Don't expect hard things not to be hard.
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Well, hey, here's the news, folks. Life is hard.
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It's not just doing ultra marathons or ultra races or these enormous,
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crazy physical events that people train for these days, these Ironman stuff
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and the tactical games stuff.
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All those things are hard, Yeah, but but life in general is hard that and it
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affects different people in different ways.
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But I'm going to give you, for example, I know at least five people who have
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lost children and and I'm not talking about miscarriage.
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I mean, like adolescent and teen, you know, aged children.
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And I cannot imagine anything.
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Tougher than that worse than that i cannot i can't
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even say how i would react to something like that it's
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just beyond my it's beyond me
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but these p of these people will
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handle it well that's not true one one guy committed suicide but the others
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are they seem to be very healthy about it not to say that there's no pain and
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probably pain lingers every day but they're dealing with it in a healthy way.
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So there's, there's different things that are tough in life.
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It's not just physical stuff.
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And if you think life is, I don't know, I guess if maybe if you're born into
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a rich family, life can be fairly easy in a financial way.
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Like you might have things and you might be able to do all the things you want to do and have,
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have nice house and, and nice cars and nice and boats and all the things but
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there's probably different sort of problems that you're dealing with there so
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i can't speak from experience on that i just imagine.
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But in the theme of don't expect hard things not to be hard let's let's look at some stuff once,
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once you decide to go after a thing to do something that seems like a challenge,
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you need to develop realistic expectations and I don't mean just that oh well
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I'm probably going to fail not that,
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Be prepared for that, but don't plan for failure. Just be prepared for it.
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But you have to be realistic, and your analysis of the thing has to be as accurate as possible.
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And understand that it's going to be tough, and it's going to be tough in different ways.
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And don't kid yourself on thinking it's going to be smooth.
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And I'm saying, I said after a big thing, and that's whatever it is.
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Whether you plan to summit a big giant mountain peak or go on a hundred mile
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run or more or whatever, or apply to some prestigious,
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really tough, you know, I don't know, Georgia Tech or something.
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Understand that there's going to be obstacles and difficulties and peaks and
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lulls and the way you deal with those things.
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I always, you guys know I like to every now and again quote the Stoics.
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And Marcus Aurelius said that the impediment to action advances action.
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What stands in the way becomes the way.
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Yeah. Now, I did an episode on the paradox of constraints that touches on that.
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Yeah, hard things, yeah, they're tough, but it helps you to develop alternative,
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clever ways to defeat these obstacles or to get around them or over them or
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under them or however you do it.
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So expect the difficulties because that's just part of the path.
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That's just what it is. And then there's always the element of discipline versus motivation.
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And there's always going to be a motivation to start a thing or something.
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There's going to be a spark, right? And the motivation is usually the spark.
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And I've discovered in my life, and it's true with me and maybe not everyone
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else, is that motivation fades, whereas discipline kind of holds steady, right?
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Discipline is the steady baseline.
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Motivation fades. It comes and goes. It depends on how, you know,
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if you've had the flu for the past two weeks, maybe you're not motivated to do much.
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So you just got to have the discipline to go do things.
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So understand that. So we're going to talk about physical challenges.
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And this is from my perspective and what I've experienced in my life.
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Then we're going to talk about sort of life challenge.
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And I'm going to keep it somewhat superficial. superficial
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we could talk about all sorts of life challenges folks
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relationships with your spouse or
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parents or children addiction dealing with some sort of addiction just all kinds
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of things dealing with a loved one or spouse who committed suicide man there's
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so many deep hard things we could talk about i'm going to keep you kind of superficial
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just talk about entrepreneurship,
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But first, I want to talk about the physical stuff.
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Now, for me, and this may be good or bad, but the toughest physical thing I've
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ever really done was selection for Special Forces Selection.
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And I can tell you now I was young. I think I was 24 or 25 when I went to selection.
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So yeah, I should have been mature. I wasn't very mature at 25,
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but I did not, I did not underestimate selection.
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I knew it was going to be hard. In fact, I thought it was going to be so hard that I wouldn't make it.
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I went with the mindset that I'm going to give this everything I have and I hope I'm good enough.
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That was it. And I wasn't a physical guru by any stretch.
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I think when I was young and that age range, especially I was hard.
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I was just kind of naturally, I was, I was kind of, I would say tough for, right.
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There were stronger guys in me and faster guys than me, but I had some tenacity
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and I had, I don't know, I was fueled a little bit even by anger and just stubbornness probably.
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But the physical fitness part of it was tough. I was, I was challenged.
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And I'll tell you, I've seen some numbers where you, you can burn anywhere.
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So during team week, you could burn up to 10,000 calories in a day.
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And now that being said, your day was, well, depends on how efficient you and
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your team were to how long your day was during team week.
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But yeah, can you imagine burning 10,000 calories in a day.
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Now I can tell you, I went into a selection weighing 196 pounds and I came out
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weighing 167 pounds, I think.
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So I can see that. I can see those numbers as far as calories go.
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But I'm going to share some things that I witnessed and then I'll share some
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things that I went through.
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The mental piece of selection, I did not think was very hard.
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I was coming from the 82nd going to selection.
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And during the 90s and into the early 2000s, the 82nd was not a pleasurable experience.
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It wasn't, you know. And I was very motivated, I guess, or very frustrated that
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I wanted to advance. I wanted to see what Special Forces had to offer.
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And then, of course, my uncle, who was a Green Beret in Vietnam and those sorts
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of things, drove me to that.
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But what I saw from guys there was some guys were very wrapped around,
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what we call G2 or trying to get the, you know, trying to know what's coming
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next because they change selection up periodically so that people can't war game it, right?
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They don't want you to know what's coming next. They just want to throw things
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at you to see how you react to those things.
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They don't want you to have the schedule all in front of you.
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Now, that's when I went through, and that was in 1998.
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So how much has changed since then, I don't know.
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But I'll give you an example is that our instructors were very, very unanimated.
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They didn't speak. They rarely spoke.
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And if they spoke, it was simply to give, you know, some very basic generic
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information that had to be put out.
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We didn't do any classes. There was no instruction during my selection class.
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It was simply take all instructions from the whiteboard.
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And, you know, you had your fire watch, right? And then every guy on his shift
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would go and check the whiteboard. And...
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The instructors usually didn't put the instructions on the whiteboard until
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the wee hours of the morning.
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They wouldn't write it up there like 8 o'clock at night, you know what I mean, the night prior.
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They would write it up at 4 o'clock in the morning, and there would be a,
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you know, 5 o'clock wake up, 5.30 first formation type thing.
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And what they wrote on the board was the time to be in formation,
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the equipment needed, and the uniform.
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They didn't, they didn't write what we were going to do or anything else.
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Be, be here at this time, have this equipment and look, have this uniform on. That is all.
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And so you'd go out, stay in a formation and, you know, it was a special forces formation.
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So we just kind of, kind of gaggled around a little bit, but,
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and then an instructor would come out and deliver the news, whatever it was.
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Okay, guys, we're going to get on these trucks right here and go there,
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or we're going to march to, or we're going to march, follow me.
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And then we'd go do a thing and then we'd get to wherever the event was going
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to start. Now this was physical fitness.
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If it was a run, you usually had an idea that it was going to be a run because
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the uniform would be wear your sneakers and you didn't have your ruck with you,
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which was the only time you didn't have your ruck with you by the way was when
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you when you're doing a run and then every other time it was just unknown anyway
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i'm dragging on here what what what i mean to say is,
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there were dudes who had a very hard time mentally with the with the unknown
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with not knowing what was coming next,
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And then the whiteboard would say what it said. We would all get up and go stand in formation.
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And then dudes would be like, nah, I heard it was going to be a 13-mile run.
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Or I heard it was going to be this or that or the other.
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Now, I did a very good job at not listening to that stuff.
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Simply because I knew they didn't know what was coming. Whoever says they know
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a thing, chances are they don't.
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And I also had my buddy next to me on roster number next to me.
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I think I was, I might've been, was I 80 and he was 79 or something to that effect.
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You know, we, we kind of, we were kind of on the same sheet of music.
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Our fitness was pretty similar and we just stuck together and yeah, that was it.
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The dudes who couldn't handle the unknown. Well, my partner and I, his name was Jamie.
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We made a game out of trying to guess who was going to quit,
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you know, that night. Right.
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The first few guys that quit early in the game, and there is no reason to quit
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early in selection, by the way.
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Well, there's no reason to quit anyway, but team week is the brutalizer.
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The first week where you're doing all your sort of physical standards and those
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types of things, just no reason. I just can't understand it.
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But guys would quit. And then the good dudes would leave like all their moleskin
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and betadine solution on their bunk.
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And they would just go to the shack of shame.
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And that's good. at least they left their good stuff behind.
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You know what I mean? Blisters were a thing.
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I got news for you folks. I had bitch feet. I get blisters pretty easy and my
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feet were pretty tore up pretty quick.
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The unknown, not knowing what to do, not knowing what your next task was going to be.
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This messed with people. It didn't mess with me.
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I was just happy not to be in the 82nd for that period of time yeah so you might
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go get a couple hours of sleep I think on on the the first,
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few days you know we'd maybe get three or four hours of sleep but then once
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things started picking up a little bit it was it was much less and then you'd
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yeah you'd get up in the morning and there would be empty bunks and you're like yeah.
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So-and-so V-dubbed or voluntary withdrawal. And guess what? That messes with
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other guys' heads, right? Why did this guy quit?
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Especially if it's a guy you think was a stud or something like that.
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You're like, man, that guy was killing it. What happened?
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Why did he quit? And who knows what their agendas are.
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So even the fact of other people quitting would make some guys really question themselves.
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And then physically, man, yeah, it was brutal. you know
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you have a rucksack on your back almost non-stop almost non-stop and it's somewhere
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in the neighborhood of 65 plus pounds i want to say it was it had to be 55 dry
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with no water no food i think i can't i can't remember it was a long time ago
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it's something like that,
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and that don't seem too heavy and you do get used to it but man it gets pretty brutal,
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because you're moving with this ruck even when you're moving during team
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week you know and you got you're carrying all these crazy things
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you're carrying them on top of your ruck you still have to carry the ruck are
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you doing the sand babies or all that stuff or you're carrying the unstable
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missiles for 12 or 15 clicks which is just unstable missile is just code word
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for a giant telephone pole or two.
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So it's pretty crazy, and it's really rough on the back. It's really rough on
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the hands, and it's really rough on the feet.
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And there were guys, I can remember this one guy, man.
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He was a leg infantryman from possibly Korea, and he kept talking about early,
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right? He was like, hey, man, you just got to have hand strength.
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Just make sure you got strong hands. He's just got to have sand strength.
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And the very first team event we did was carrying these big ammo,
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these big rectangular, very wide, long and narrow ammo cans filled with dirt.
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And they just had a little nylon rope as a handle, and it was a thin nylon rope.
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And they were pretty heavy.
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And, you know, you'd be on one side, another guy would be on the other.
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You'd walk, you'd switch out, rotate, go to, go to the front. Then you work.
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And eventually the way it worked out was like one guy would have a break, right?
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One guy would walk with nothing while the other guys were carrying everything.
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And then we'd, however, however many meters we'd go and then we'd stop, sit down, rotate.
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And I remember, man, we were, I mean, not even long into this,
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only maybe a couple of, you know, couple of four or five miles into this movement. and this dude quit.
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Here's the secret. In team week, you're a part of a team.
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All the equipment that leaves that camp comes back to that camp,
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regardless of who's carrying it.
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If you quit out in the middle of an event, what you've just done is screwed all your teammates.
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Yeah, that's what you've done. If you quit on an event, you've just screwed your teammates.
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You know let people know man say hey i'm hurting i
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need you know and dudes will pump you up dudes will motivate dudes
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will will even help try to pick up a little
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more of your weight just to help you
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out but just quit and he quit like cold
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like there was no indicator we we did
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a break we set him down he said that's it i'm done went
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back told the cadre cadre's like well okay
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and he still walked behind us for the entire rest of the the the event he just
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walked behind us with nothing he still had to carry his ruck too by the way
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um so it was it was real odd i thought it was crazy that he quit and it was
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a hand strength sort of event yeah,
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it's crazy it's brutal right it's brutal the distances are are usually well
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the runs and the rucks the distances are unknown i want to say our final trek
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you know whatever it was was.
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25 30 miles something in that neighborhood and the team events you know the cadre would,
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the whoever the team leader at the moment was have had
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a map you go all right you're here move to there you
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got you know go and there was you know
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timelines that that we were unsure of or no we had time hacks on those yeah
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we had time hacks and that was one of the big things right did you make the
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time hack or not it was interesting it was crazy and it was pretty awesome i
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didn't underestimate it,
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but it was hard.
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It wasn't exactly as I imagined.
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And I did a pretty good job at assessing other dudes and, and sort of,
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yeah, I compare myself to other dudes, but there were some studs there, like physical studs.
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And I want to say, there's a
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guy and I want to say he was in my selection class. His name is Akil Bay.
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And he's, he does his own training up in Baltimore more nowadays,
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he's retired and all, but man, that guy was like the head of the pack on everything.
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He was a physical phenom and like he came in first on the ruck.
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He came in first on, he was always first on the runs and all that stuff.
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And of course he got selected.
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But when I was measuring myself against that guy, I was like,
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oh my God, if I'm not going to make it.
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Somehow I did. Thank goodness. Thank goodness for that. Somehow I did.
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Think a lot of guys that did quit, I think they underestimated maybe the difficulty
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or maybe just the psychological game.
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They underestimated the sort of fear of the unknown or maybe underestimated their preparation.
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There's a lot of things. There's a lot of things, but I think the guys who who
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quit, I think that's where they were at.
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A lot of underestimating. Yeah. Or possibly overestimating themselves. I don't know.
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There ain't no shortage of arrogance either around the special forces community.
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So I read, I read one story of a guy and I
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can't remember his name so i'm not gonna but he
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was a candidate right and he in his
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story was that he was cruising in the wee
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hours of night on some land nav and got
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pulled into one of those gnarly draws out
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there in the hoppin training
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area and he and
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he had some kind of you know sort of i don't
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know cheap map case kind of ghettoed up map map case but
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while he was squeezing through his draw he lost his
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map and it was raining and all the stuff
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right and he goes through here and he and he loses his
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map well that that's it you're done if you ain't got a map he's done and he
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didn't have any an additional map for sure and you know i don't know i think
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because he lost his map he might have got DRAWT.
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But I don't know. Did he underestimate something or was it just bad equipment?
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Or did he underestimate the importance of like making sure his gear was good?
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Making sure his pockets were buttoned? Okay.
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I just gave away my age, right? In the 90s, we had buttons on our BDUs, not Velcro.
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Yeah, always make sure your pocket's buttoned, always, because that map will come right on out, baby.
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Did he underestimate that, you know, his little details?
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Because little details matter, folks. They matter. So, yeah, that sucks.
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But in contrast, you guys have heard of, I'm sure, because he's on the internet
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a lot, not as a content creator, just his story will pop up occasionally. Johnny Kim.
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And he he was a navy seal and then
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he went and that's tough right selection sfas
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and buds and all that stuff it's it's all different but the same it's very hard
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it's very tough it's grueling and it's like never ending it seems and you got
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sleep deprivation and food sort of deprivation And you're expected to do,
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I don't want to say superhuman.
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It's not superhuman at all, but it seems that way at the time,
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you know, the feats of strength and whatnot.
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It's like Festivus every day at Selection. And so this guy goes on to become
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a doctor, like a Harvard trained doctor, which being a SEAL, okay, great.
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He did some hard things, right? Then he goes and does intellectually and mentally
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tough, hard things to be a doctor.
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And then the guy goes on to be a NASA astronaut.
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Now we're talking about levels of difficulty, leaps and bounds beyond where
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I'm at, right, intellectually and stuff.
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So this guy has done a series of full-spectrum hard, hard things.
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Did he underestimate anything? I doubt it. I doubt it. Yeah.
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His story is, well, it's definitely one of commitment.
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For sure. But also preparation, man.
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He had focus and preparate, right? He had to be prepared.
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You don't just, you might squeeze through the cracks in one thing or another,
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but I don't see you going from SEAL to doctor to astronaut just by squeezing
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through the cracks at all.
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So preparation, right? And he was prepared for the difficulties and the hardships,
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and he probably had the contingencies, And he was highly focused and had some internal grit.
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Turn three very difficult things
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into reality. And that's crazy and that's inspirational a little bit even.
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So now we're going to go back into Stoic philosophy here a little bit.
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Epictetus, who I also quote pretty regularly, he says that it's not what happens
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to you, but how you react to it that matters.
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Yeah, it's how you react to it. How do you take that punch in the gut.
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In selection, right, there's pain, physical pain, and there's uncertainty. That's it.
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But how you respond to those things is inwardly and outwardly,
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because also the daggum cadre are always watching you.
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Yep, the cadre are always watching you. And this is a standard quote throughout
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SOF, is that you're always being assessed.
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And that's kind of a tough way to live, right?
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But at least during selection, you know that you're there to be assessed.
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It's in the title, assessment and selection, right? You're being assessed.
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So if you take it in stride because those guys are looking at the way you respond to hardship.
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Do you start pouting or blaming, playing the blame game?
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You start getting pissy or do you like buckle down, get positive,
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Pull your teammates together and keep rolling.
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It's how you respond to these things. Yeah, it's how you respond to these things.
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So make a conscious effort to respond to hardship and,
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Even if you're internally screaming out loud, externally, maintain your composure.
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And I'm not telling you to fake the funk by any stretch, but the man to your
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left and right, if you go into what I call a homosexual panic,
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then they might too. And you don't want that.
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You don't want panic in some of these times of difficulty, especially in combat, right?
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Especially in combat. that. You cannot have panic.
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You cannot have it. How do you react to things?
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Well, you will react better to things by having mentally prepared for those things.
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Now, you can't foresee every possible thing that comes along,
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but you can make some contingency plans that sort of get real close to addressing
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most foreseeable problems.
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Yeah, selection. I don't talk about it a lot. It was just another course. It was a unique time.
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And then there's the mind game at the end, right? When I was there,
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they called out roughly the remaining candidates that were there.
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They called out about half and then the other half. So there was two formations standing there.
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But they didn't tell you which formation was which. You didn't know who was
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the selectees and who was the non-selects.
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But guess what in both of those formations there were
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dudes who were shit bags and dudes who were studs so
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as you're standing in one formation looking over at the other and you're like
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there's no way that guy didn't get selected he's a stud but then you look you
29:24
know two ranks back and you're like well that guy was a piece of shit he never
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pulled his weight he didn't help anybody else pull their weight he was just
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just there and then you look at your own formation and you're like, man,
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that guy's a stud. Oh man, that dude's a shit bag.
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And then in my class, the way they did it, we still, it was the old,
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old school Robin Sage, right? So they had the pavilion.
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They still had what they call back then the million dollar shitter and rocks.
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They had rocks all over the place everywhere.
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I hadn't been to Camp McCall in decades, but, and then they one at a time called
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your name and they called the names from each of those formations, I think.
30:06
Yeah, that's right. So we had the two formations split and then,
30:10
you know, probably six cadre were under the pavilion at their own little picnic table.
30:16
And then somebody would call your name and you'd run up there. All right.
30:21
Here's. And then they would kind of give you just a little generic rundown of
30:25
what, how your performance was.
30:27
And then they would either say, congratulations, you've been selected or.
30:33
You didn't make it come back in six months and it
30:36
was a stressful time that was that was the most stressful time to be to be quite
30:43
honest with you that was the most stressful time was waiting to be called to
30:49
come up and and stand in front of the guy who was in front of me was a first sergeant of,
30:55
of like a, a SWCC,
30:58
Camp McCall, whatever the first sergeant job was, you know,
31:02
old crusty old fifth group, just crusty old dude, angry dude,
31:07
bald, you know, hard as, hard as frigging nails.
31:13
And he said, yeah, you, you're a little slow on some of your land nav and whatnot.
31:18
And I thought, okay, okay. Back to the 80 second I go.
31:24
He says, but we think you have great potential. Congratulations.
31:28
I was like, I didn't outwardly smile or anything.
31:33
Cause I, and then at that point I didn't want to turn around and look at my homies.
31:37
Do you know what I mean? And then one of my homies not make it or something.
31:41
Anyway, it was very emotional moment.
31:43
All right. That's enough of selection. Golly, I'm dragging on and on that.
31:46
That's enough of selection.
31:48
It was tough. I went in with a blank mind.
31:51
And I know some of you just make some jokes right now on that,
31:54
but I went in with a blank mind. I didn't have expectations.
31:58
My, my only thought was I'm going to stay and I'm going to go as hard as I can go until the end.
32:06
And that's it because I don't want to be in the 82nd. There you go.
32:11
Now I want to go into, so that was, that was decades ago and that was,
32:18
that was awesome. Right. It was fun.
32:20
Started a career. You know, I, I had a good career.
32:25
It wasn't golden boy career by any stretch, but I enjoyed a lot of things I did.
32:29
I enjoyed being a special forces guy and I did a lot of cool stuff and I'm glad
32:34
I got to do it. And I did a lot of combat.
32:36
And even that, I hate to say, I'm glad I got to do it. That's what your job is, is to do that.
32:43
So now let's talk about life, life challenges.
32:46
And I went back and forth with myself on what we're going to talk about.
32:51
My wife mentioned talking about addiction and stuff like that.
32:54
And that would be very deep and hard to talk about.
33:00
But I've never experienced any addiction issues. So I don't think I have enough insight into that.
33:09
I decided to go with something a little more superficial.
33:13
Well, it's not superficial really, but entrepreneurship, because I do have experience with that.
33:20
It's learn as you go experience, but it's still experience.
33:28
In my entrepreneurial journey, we're having
33:33
some controversy right now over our range plan we're trying to
33:36
build our range and or meeting some some resistance
33:39
as expected and understandable
33:43
resistance at that but my wife so I know for sure in 2010 that I started making
33:52
plans for a range shooting range complex that I had on digits and I know this sounds weak,
34:01
but all, everything was done on PowerPoint.
34:03
You know what I mean? Little blocks, little squares and lines and colors.
34:08
And I created range plants and I tried to do them to scale the best I could
34:14
to, to sort of give a good visual.
34:17
So, and my wife said I was talking about it as early as 2008.
34:21
And that's probably true.
34:24
About the time I went, I think that's about the time I was starting my second
34:29
duty station in SF was leaving Germany and going to Colorado Springs.
34:36
And, you know, you got to think of, of it like a, kind of like a child, right?
34:43
You, you conceive this idea, right?
34:47
Like, okay, you formulate an
34:50
idea of what you want to do well i have a talent
34:53
for shooting and a pretty good instructor i think
34:56
and this is what i'm good at i'm i'm largely uneducated i don't have many skills
35:02
as far as technical skills go i can swing a hammer for sure and dig a ditch
35:08
but i don't have any skills as far as the market goes, right?
35:14
My skill is in shooting and training.
35:16
And so I knew that early and I knew early that I didn't want to finish college.
35:23
So I conceived the plan of the range and then I put these magical plans on digits, right?
35:33
One of my early plans was something like a 1,000 yard by 1,000 yard sort of
35:40
square with all these ranges and this little fob in the middle and a driving
35:47
track on it, all this big, crazy stuff.
35:50
And obviously I was inspired by places like Blackwater or I think Constellus
35:55
or whatever it is now out in Moyoc, North Carolina.
35:58
And I was inspired by places like that, that had sort of all this one-stop self-contained
36:05
tactical wonderland type stuff.
36:07
And I was inspired by that. And I thought, man, I could, so I made these big
36:11
fantastical best case scenario things.
36:15
And I did that for a couple of years, just like, okay, kind of doing different
36:19
size and different things.
36:22
Well, well.
36:25
Around in 2017, well, somewhere around 2015, I started doing math on like actual
36:34
costs and things like that.
36:36
Never mind land costs, but like just earth movers.
36:41
And I was thinking about HESCO barriers and I was thinking about buildings and
36:45
I'm thinking about structures, cinder block, you know, structures like you find
36:50
on a military base for shoe houses and things.
36:53
And began to realize very quickly that these numbers are astronomical,
36:59
that I am nowhere near capable of getting those numbers.
37:06
I don't have money people. I don't know big money people, right?
37:12
So I started paring the idea down.
37:15
And ultimately, even in Colorado, before we came back to Georgia,
37:21
before we came back home, I reckoned that somewhere between 20 and 40 acres
37:26
was, was going to be doable.
37:29
And then at that, I reckoned that 20 acres was the minimum.
37:36
Anything less than 20 acres was not going to be able to accomplish the things
37:41
we wanted to accomplish in the business.
37:44
It would just be nothing more than a shooting range in your front yard with
37:48
limited, very limited capacity. So 20 acres was necessary.
37:52
And in that 20 acres, you can do a lot if you're efficient and if you efficiently lay things out.
37:58
And so that's what we did. So one of the very first obstacles,
38:03
and it's still an obstacle today, was money.
38:06
How do we defeat that? Well, I have some unique plans that I'm going to implement
38:11
when the time is correct.
38:12
But money and planning is kind of, there's a catch-22 where you can't execute
38:19
certain things without money and you can't get investors without having executed
38:23
certain things. So it's.
38:28
Key linchpins there is land and finding the deal, right?
38:33
Finding the space that is conducive and that is affordable and that meets certain
38:40
parameters, that is far more difficult than anybody gives credit to, far more difficult.
38:47
And we found it and we think we found it. And then we moved on from there.
38:53
So understanding the obstacles that are in the way ahead of time is very important.
39:01
We expected there's resistance and we expected it.
39:06
So we had contingencies prepared for that resistance.
39:10
And we think that those are very reasonable and workable contingencies.
39:16
So once you understand that your best case dream, it's not that it's undoable
39:21
because if you've got money, if you've got access to money, you can probably do it, right?
39:25
But if you're a regular working class dude, you got to realize that,
39:29
okay, there's going to be compromise somewhere.
39:33
Finding the land is going to be tough. There's going to be compromise.
39:37
Then there's zoning and things. It's going to be a compromise.
39:40
And then scraping together the funding.
39:43
Yeah, nobody wants that investor who thinks he can come out and run your show, right?
39:48
Show up with a bunch of champagne and machine guns and gun bunnies and think
39:53
he's going to do whatever he wants out there.
39:57
So you don't want that, right? So in that case, you would have to reject that
40:01
money because it would come with conditions that you ain't willing to bend to. Yeah.
40:07
Got to deal with opposition from other people. So it's compromises,
40:11
and it's compromise upon compromise.
40:14
And then your perfect vision meets the real world, right?
40:17
And then it comes down to what's the most likely to succeed plan?
40:24
What's the most likely to succeed path forward?
40:28
And however passionate you are about your plan and your project and your goals,
40:35
The planning has to be dispassionate.
40:38
I'll say that again. You can be passionate about your project,
40:42
but the planning has to remain dispassionate because you have to be able to
40:47
assess and analyze the potential problems
40:52
and create the contingency plans objectively and don't have a bias,
41:00
a success bias, And don't think that just because you have this really awesome
41:05
plan that it's just, boom,
41:07
everybody's going to love it.
41:11
So be objective.
41:14
Maintain some balance there. You've heard me say that before,
41:18
balance. That's in all things.
41:22
One of the good things I learned in Special Forces, well, one of the things
41:27
Special Forces is known for is what? It's meticulous planning, right?
41:34
For meticulous planning. And if you haven't heard the acronym PACE plan,
41:41
P-A-C-E, I'm going to share it with you because I use it for all my business planning.
41:46
You got to have a primary plan, an alternate plan, a contingency plan, and an emergency plan.
41:56
And when you're doing planning for like a combat operation, or even a campaign
42:02
like a stretched out thing, your communications has a pace plan.
42:08
Your medical plan, there's a pace plan. Your transportation has a pace plan.
42:14
Your infill and exfill pace plan.
42:18
Yeah, you have those things stacked up and ready to roll. and that's good stuff.
42:26
Now, most people will do a plan A and plan B, but they don't consider the possibility
42:32
or even likelihood that there's going to be a plan C or plan E.
42:35
So I like it. It's pretty good. Pace plan. You guys should consider using that.
42:40
Now, you don't always have four options on a thing, right? For sure.
42:45
Sometimes it's just a primary alternate. But why not play that out as far as you can?
42:53
All right. Man, I'm getting on and on. I'm wrapped up in this stuff, right?
42:59
So we're left with our most likely to succeed plan. If you...
43:05
Honest with yourself, and the thing that you put on paper is a thing that you
43:10
can be happy with, even your most likely to succeed plan. Like, not perfect.
43:15
This is not even close to what I wanted, but I can live with this most likely to succeed plan.
43:23
And you got to do a lot of math on that too, folks. A lot of math.
43:26
That it will be viable financially. That you can make money on it.
43:32
Because as much as I love doing charity work, if you're in business,
43:38
you're in business to make money. You have to make a living.
43:40
And for me, I'm in business to leave a legacy for my kids and grandkids and so on.
43:47
So it has to be able to, to make a living, has to make money.
43:53
So yeah, be honest with yourself, understand that obstacles and challenges arise.
44:00
Does your alternate contingency and emergency plan, can you live with that?
44:06
Or do you need to just put the whole thing on pause and wait it out?
44:12
It's hard to say, right? It's all very, very situation dependent.
44:18
So that leads us to Seneca, another stoic, right? And I love him.
44:24
Difficulty strengthen the mind as labor
44:26
does the body yeah yeah the more challenges you're faced with the more firsthand
44:33
problem solving you get to do and that's just like practicing man that's that's
44:39
just like practice yeah it's just a workout it's a way to build a stronger business.
44:46
I talked a lot about my business, right?
44:49
And how to do it. And my business, I would say in the scope of starting a business
44:54
is pretty easy as it is right now as my range in my front yard. Yep.
45:01
$85,000 into my business. That's what I've, that's how I started it with a,
45:08
with a small Well, went alone.
45:10
And I got a fleet of of of firearms and I got earth movers and I got a building
45:18
and I bought a bunch of target stands and went to work and and and went to work.
45:26
And I would say that's relatively low overhead in the scope of businesses as far as business goes.
45:33
I got to imagine a restaurant with all the kitchen equipment and tables and
45:39
decorations and all that.
45:40
I got to imagine something like that's way more than $85,000.
45:44
A gym, I got to imagine all that equipment, even on lease.
45:48
I mean, if you've got a sizable gym, I got to imagine $85,000 just scratches the surface.
45:55
So the good thing about my business is that
45:59
there is relatively low overhead until you
46:02
get ready for the big plan right so that that the next phase of this is is not
46:09
going to be 85 000 i can tell you that you but my business is is i would say
46:17
pretty easy because what i you know i can travel i can go to someone's.
46:23
Go to someone's home range and do a private course with them on their home range.
46:28
And when I say home range, I mean whatever local range they have near them and
46:33
do a one-on-one private session.
46:35
And I pay a fee to the range and then the customer pays me and there we go.
46:40
So you can piggyback onto other places and that's pretty good.
46:45
But up here, living where we live now, that's not a practical way forward.
46:53
So all this to get to what I'm getting to is that you have to,
46:59
well, you got to stick with it, for one.
47:02
If you've made it a priority, which it has been a priority in my life,
47:07
if you make your business a priority, then you have to do things to support that priority, right?
47:15
And you have to stick with it. One of my favorite Bible verses,
47:18
and I have the book and verse tattooed on my arm, is James 1.12.
47:26
And for all you Christians out there, I'll let you take a minute to just say it in your head.
47:30
Yeah. And for all you non-Christians out there, James 1.12 says,
47:36
Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial.
47:39
When he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised
47:44
to those who love him. Yeah.
47:46
You have to know that, I mean, me and Nathan talked about this on the All In
47:53
episode, I think, which was our, I think was our last episode.
47:59
Do you feel like you have clear guidance from God? And I think yes is the answer
48:04
for me. How does it affect your family?
48:07
How does it affect you? And then how does it affect the community around you?
48:13
And I think I have positive answers for all four of those things. Yep, I think I do.
48:20
Perseverance. Persevere under trial. Marcus Aurelius said that you have power
48:25
over your mind, not outside events.
48:28
Realize this and you'll find strength.
48:31
So even if this does not go my way, I'm not going to take it personally.
48:37
It's going to be an obstacle that must be overcome. That is all.
48:41
And then I'll find a way to drive on.
48:46
But I'm not going to let emotions cloud my judgment. I'm not going to let emotions
48:52
cloud my analysis of the project or my business operating procedures.
48:58
I'm not going to let emotion do any of those things.
49:02
And by maintaining an objective perspective, I'm going to be able to stay in
49:06
the fight and hold some good footing, I hope.
49:10
Yeah, expect the obstacles. Have your contingency plans ready.
49:15
And then persevere. Drive on. Keep going. Keep grinding.
49:20
Yeah, that's where I'm going to leave it, right? Persevere, folks.
49:25
There was a line in the movie, The Outlaw Josie Wells, Chief Dan George,
49:30
and he was talking to Josie, and he says that one of the senators was talking to his tribe.
49:38
And he said, no, it was Abraham Lincoln was talking to his tribe.
49:41
And he said, endeavor to persevere.
49:45
Yeah, that's it, people. I will endeavor to persevere. and you should too.
49:53
That's what I want to talk about, folks. I want to talk about hard things in
49:57
life. Don't expect hard things not to be hard. Yep.
50:01
Understand what you're getting into and go in with a toughness,
50:06
right? Go in with a certain toughness about it.
50:09
An emotional toughness anyway. Not necessarily outward, right?
50:14
Depends on what you're doing.
50:15
So I hope you enjoyed that one, folks. I don't know. This is probably not one of my better episodes.
50:22
But i felt like talking about it let's see what's coming what's coming next
50:27
what's coming next what's coming next we have a pistol workshop i don't have
50:31
this in front of me we have a pistol workshop,
50:33
i think on january 24th and well that might be filled up if you try to sign
50:39
up and it says sold out i apologize to you we try to keep our workshops kind
50:45
of small so that people can get the most out of them.
50:49
And then all private lessons. Right now, we're scheduling through the third
50:53
week, in the third week of January, into the fourth week of January.
50:58
And I may or may not be around for the first week or so of February.
51:04
But then I'm going to be out of town for a good while. Well,
51:07
not a good while, a month.
51:09
And then I'll be back in the month of March. so for those of my regular clients
51:14
you still can reach out to me to schedule things and for those of you who are not.
51:23
Running a workshop when I get back in March, and we'll be running a match,
51:26
which is going to be the liberty or death match to commemorate Patrick Henry's
51:32
speech, give me liberty or give me death.
51:37
Yep. So that's going to be in March. And let's see what else.
51:42
TwoTeamGuys.com, check it
51:43
out. See what we offer on there. Those are by appointment class courses.
51:49
You need four people or more to schedule a
51:52
course and then we can drive on from there
51:55
and other than that then we have the
51:58
help a homie fund that's give send go.com backslash help a homie fund and that
52:05
is a a small way grassroots way for me to help people in need within within
52:14
my reach now i have a limited reach,
52:17
but believe me, there's plenty of folks who need help within my reach,
52:20
and that is a way for me to help them.
52:24
So that's going to become more formalized as we go.
52:27
But meanwhile, your dollars are helping people to get some food and pay some
52:33
bills and feed their babies.
52:36
All right, so keep that in mind if you're a charitable person.
52:41
Other than that, folks, please go to siloftc.com that's the website for our our future range and.
52:52
If the location changes, that's still the website for our future range.
52:56
But if you go to that website, there's a page on there now that says range progress.
53:03
And if you would go on to that and read my open letter on there and share that
53:10
open letter, if you will, and most especially if you're a Floyd County, Georgia resident,
53:14
it would be very beneficial for us if you would, you know, Write a little letter
53:19
to the commissioners to voice your support, not to bash on anyone,
53:24
not to complain about government overreach or any dirty dealings or any corruption or any of that stuff.
53:35
It is simply for you to voice your support for the Silo Firearms Training Complex
53:42
and the current plan as it is. So read that letter.
53:46
That'll help you a little bit and write a letter on our behalf.
53:52
We would greatly appreciate it. And that's it.
53:56
Our hearing is 27 January at 6 p.m.
54:02
Location to be determined. I have the location, but I don't know it off the top of my head.
54:06
And any Floyd County citizens who are interested in supporting and going to
54:12
that hearing, you are more than welcome to come to it.
54:14
I'm not exactly sure how that agenda goes, and I'm not sure how much time I'll
54:19
have to speak or anyone else, but that's the final hearing.
54:24
Like I said, if you're a praying person, please pray for it.
54:28
If you're a savage heathen, please do a little dance around the fire and do
54:34
some incense or something.
54:35
And let's try to get this thing done so that we can start helping people help themselves.
54:42
Good people, thank you so much for listening. I drug on about this when I was
54:46
a little preachy, I guess.
54:47
Take care and stay tuned. Love you guys. Love you guys.