Latest / The Junto Podcast / E16: Inspire, Educate, Mentor, Motivate

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E16: Inspire, Educate, Mentor, Motivate · The Junto Podcast

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Music.
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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 us.
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Music.
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Hello, America. Welcome to episode 16, entitled Inspire, Educate, Mentor, and Motivate.
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So the last couple of episodes may have had somewhat of a negative twist on
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them so i'm trying to go a little lighter here go a little easy on this,
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this also is me sort of pitching what i do to you guys in the great wide world
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and let you know what we do around here at Osprey Shooting Solutions and at Two Team Guys.
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So that's the question, right? That's the question I ask myself.
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How can I inspire? How can I educate?
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How can I mentor and motivate the masses?
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Anybody from any industry, from any skill level or blue-collar,
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white-collar, et cetera.
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Does my background stand up to that?
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Do I have enough cumulative experience short of education?
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Do I have enough life experience, wins and losses, ups and downs,
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et cetera, to be able to translate that and help you build a formidable team,
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a high-performing team, or just as an individual?
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I'm not sure the answer to that question. I think yes is the answer.
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There are plenty of guys out there with equal or better credentials than me
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who are doing such a thing.
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And there may be guys out there with less credentials than me doing such things. So...
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I feel guided to do this. So speaking of my experience, and where does that
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pick up? I don't think it's just the military.
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Now, I'm going to go ahead and make a blanket statement and say that I do believe
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that anyone who does a career in the military,
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has a set of skills that will allow them to be successful in any environment. I believe that.
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Now, if you want to break down specific branches of the Army and things like
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that, I think that holds more true for special forces than most others.
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But that's not to take away from any of the people in any of those other branches.
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It's not just the branch itself. It's not just the job itself.
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It's also the individual and what they choose to do or how far they choose to
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carry those skills and develop those out.
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Excuse me. So I believe that even before the military,
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I believe my time as a bike messenger, and I know this sounds crazy,
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But my time as a bike messenger was very formative for me.
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Up until that time, I had not interacted with very many white-collar people at all. And I didn't.
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I didn't understand, and to a large degree, I still don't, but I didn't understand
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that world very much at all.
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And oddly enough, I knew some of those people on a personal,
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friendly level, having a drink at the pub, after hours and whatnot.
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But back in those days it was all
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about physical resilience and sort
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of what you'd call tactical level problem solving when
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you're riding your bike in and out of traffic in
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the Atlanta streets you have to be on the job you have to be highly focused
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and that's all there is to it and that That alone trained my brain to be able
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to focus in sort of a high-threat,
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well, high-stakes environment.
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Now, I have been hit more than a few times by vehicles, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose.
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I used to tell people this all the time, and it's true.
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During the time that I was a bike messenger I was
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also a bouncer on the weekend nights well
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throughout the week as well and I saw more violence as a bike messenger than
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I did as a bouncer the level of vitriol that the general public holds for for
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people riding bikes on the city streets is unreal.
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I've had guys pull the gun on me driving down the road.
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I've had people throw unopened Coke cans at me and hit me.
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I've been in literal fights with pizza drivers and taxi drivers.
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I've been hit by little old ladies and intentionally ran down by a mail truck, things like that.
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Anyway, it's, and at the time, you know, Hey, it was fun, right?
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I was young, youngish. It was fun. It was a good time.
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It was just the cost of doing business.
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So at any rate, at the time, I didn't realize it. But looking back,
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I learned a lot from all that.
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At minimum, physically and on the fly problem solving.
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And then fast forward to the military, to, you know, SF and stuff like that.
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I learned a lot in the infantry.
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And I can tell you this. I learned more about leadership in the infantry than I did in SF.
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Now, there were different types of leaders in SF and the infantry, different guys.
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Everywhere you go, there's different personality types, but also similar personality types.
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But the foundational principles of leadership, I learned that as an infantryman,
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as a fire team leader, and then a squad leader.
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It's tough being a junior leader in the infantry.
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It's tough. Everything, as a squad leader, everything that your guys do that is low, negative,
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that comes back on you.
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And it turns out it was the same way in SF as well.
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No matter what the circumstance, no matter what the situation,
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if one of your guys, even at his house on a Sunday afternoon,
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did something illegal or did some domestic violence or got a DUI or anything
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like that, you were standing up in front of the man right along with him.
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And it was just, that's a tough way to learn leadership.
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It's a tough way to learn leadership, but you do.
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You learn a lot about human nature as a young leader, because as a young leader, I, now,
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for better or worse, my leadership style
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kind of straddled a
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fine line between form and informal in such a way that I always used the us
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against them sort of mentality so that the guys in my fire team and the guys in my squad,
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they looked at me as one of them.
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And I kind of was always the black sheep as a junior leader to my leadership.
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I once had a platoon sergeant, and he said once, man, he's like,
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damn it, Mills, how come in the field I can depend on you to save the world,
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but in garrison, you act like just like your guys?
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I was like, what does that even mean?
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And ultimately, to answer that question, I said, well, sergeant,
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I guess you and me just have different leadership styles.
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And that's how you get to do a lot of push-ups.
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I did a lot of push-ups behind that.
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But hey, my guys, when I was a young leader, when I was a young leader,
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all my guys called me by my name.
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That burned my platoon sergeant up. He couldn't stand it. He pulled me to the
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side. Hey, these ain't your buddies.
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They need to be calling you Sergeant Mills, not Edgar.
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Well, again, that wasn't my leadership style.
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Now, I hope, I would like to hear from any guy that I've ever been in charge
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of, whether it was SF, whether it was on ODA or whether it was in the 82nd or career or whatever.
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I would love to hear from anyone to see, you know, get a reflection.
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Yeah, I never had to threaten guys to get the job done.
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I never had to smoke guys to get the job done.
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Now, there was a few cases here and there that warranted a little bit of smoke.
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And it comes to mind a young man. We called him Earl the Anvil.
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This was in Korea. And this guy came to my team. I was a team leader in a Pathfinder
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platoon with the Aviation Brigade there in Yongsan.
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We were the only infantry guy. Well, there was like an honor guard or something
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like that there in Yongsan as well.
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But we were the only infantry guys on jump status other than Deck K,
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the SF dudes. This was long before I was SF.
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So anyway, young Earl comes to the team, and this kid was probably 5'5 and about 138 pounds.
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And he was from Louisiana.
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And he talked like he was from Louisiana.
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And he, now I don't want to stereotype Louisiana, but this young man drank.
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And he drank hard and he drank heavy.
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And his very first night in Korea, he, I got a phone call from the MPs.
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So I went out and had a drink with the guy and was like, Hey,
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look, tell me about yourself.
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Tell me what's going on here, man. I was like, yeah, you're in a new environment.
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It's less restrictive. This was pre 9-11, by the way.
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So, you know, in the year 1999 or 2000, whenever I was in Korea,
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in Yongsan specifically, it was very loose.
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There was no curfew. There was none of that stuff. Not in Yongsan.
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So maybe the next weekend, you know, this guy gets in a fight,
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a drunken fight, and I get a phone call again.
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And so it took three incidents right and you can you can say that I was too
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lax or whatnot but I was trying to give this guy the benefit of the doubt every benefit of the doubt.
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But his third incident we had
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and in the pathfiring platoon we had what we called motivational tools.
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One of them was a big log. It was painted infantry blue, and it was about a four or five-man carry.
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It wasn't a full telephone pole, but almost.
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And then my best mate, Tommy, we were, I can't remember how we come about it,
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but we were near the, is it the Han River? the big river right there in Seoul.
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We were down on a dock and we found an anvil, a big-ass anvil, just like on Bugs Bunny.
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And this thing probably weighed 100 pounds or possibly more.
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I don't know what increments they come in, but this thing was heavy.
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So young Earl, I didn't restrict him to the barracks or anything like that.
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I didn't even tell him he couldn't go off post, but everywhere he went,
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he had to have that anvil with him.
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So for the first couple of days, he had a rucksack and he had this frigging anvil in it.
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And he was slogging down to the chow hall and he even slogged out to a bar one, one night.
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But that didn't last because that anvil weighed almost as much as he did.
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So pretty soon, like guys were bringing him go plates from the chow hall and stuff like that.
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At any rate, what was the learning point there?
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Well, alcohol weighs your brain down.
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It slows your thought process, right? You're not making good decisions.
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So the anvil slowed your body down.
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It weighed your body down. so that you would have to think about your decisions.
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Every decision had to be very calculated. You couldn't just go out willy-nilly
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with this big-ass anvil.
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I bet young Earl was happy to see Edgar Mills' PCS from Korea.
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Call it how you want. I didn't do it to haze the guy. He was probably going
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to end up harming himself or someone else sooner than later.
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And good thing he got it all out of the way up front. That way we knew immediately
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that we were dealing with some craziness.
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Young Earl the Anvil.
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Anyway, yeah, that seems, what has that got to do with a Fortune 500 business,
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putting their team through some leadership and team building thing.
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Yeah, not a lot. It's just to understand that, one, there's creative ways to get a point across.
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And the Army has come up with all sorts of creative ways to do that.
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And most of them are unpleasant. And in SF, I kind of learned different ways
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of doing that to get the point across.
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But you were dealing with a different level of human NSF.
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And you have to be able to.
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Well, you have to be able to deal with people on their level and attempt,
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well, at least to empathize with what they've got going on.
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So, yeah, you have to meet people where they are, even when it comes to professional development.
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That's one of the things I didn't like about the Army in that,
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you know, every young Green Beret wants to go do whatever schools,
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right? Sephardic or Sniper School or all those things.
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But what the general public doesn't know about is there's a lot of other schools
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that people don't know much about.
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You don't get a tab or a badge or anything for them.
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But there's a lot of interesting training out there. And if a young guy has
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interest in something like that,
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but the team sergeant or the company sergeant major doesn't think that fits
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in with his career development,
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then the guy won't get to go.
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So in essence, you get treated like a kid because, well, we know what's best for you.
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When the fact of the matter is that sort of thinking and that mentality has
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caused a lot of young Green Berets to not re-enlist and to get out.
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So let a guy entertain what he thinks he wants to do.
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And chances are, if he's even happy on the surface level, he'll probably hang
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around because not everybody is a career-minded guy, right?
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And that was a problem, I think, for a little while was a lot of young guys
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were coming in SF doing one or
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two tours and then getting out because especially with a young 18 X-ray,
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maybe you're already a little older.
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Maybe you got a little education. Maybe you even had a pretty prominent job
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before you joined the Army.
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And then you come in and see some of the shenanigans and some of the,
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I don't want to rip, I don't want to keep ripping leadership, but there,
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all throughout the Army, there are some seriously toxic leaders.
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And I've been labeled as a toxic leader before.
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I beg to differ, and I will stand by the way I do things and did things,
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and the way I talk to people, I'll stand by it, even now.
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I'm a direct communicator. I think direct communication is very important.
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On one of my deployments, I said, I coined the phrase, and this was up on a
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whiteboard for a while somewhere.
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I said that everybody's got feelings these days, even the savages.
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And I was referring to our Afghan commandos at the time.
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Well, I also said that everybody's got feelings these days, even Green Berets.
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I can tell you a thing. In the 82nd, I never had to worry about hurt feelings.
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Everyone spoke directly and usually with a healthy dose of expletives.
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That's the way it was. Even the officers, when addressing and dealing with NCOs,
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they were throwing F-bombs and there was no tap dancing.
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And the NCOs especially. you know so that's
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how i grew up in the army was with
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very direct and yeah it
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could be argued that it's unprofessional or it might be argued that you catch
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more bees with honey and things like that you you can still be direct and be
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respectful or not use expletives and things like that So,
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man, I'm going on and on, but I think direct communication is very important. And I mean succinct.
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I mean, say what you mean and leave no ambiguity, especially if you are talking
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to a subordinate and you expect them to complete a task.
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You don't have to tell them how to complete the task, but you can give them
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the expectation, right?
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What the end result needs to be this.
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Now, if you're a micromanager, then you'll follow the guy around and make changes and this and that.
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But if you trust your junior leaders or your subordinates, you'll give them
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a task and you will give them the standard and let them execute.
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And yes, obviously supervise and check up to make sure that they're on the right azimuth.
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At any rate, direct communication, I think it's critical. It's absolutely critical.
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Yeah. So leadership, the things I learned a lot of stuff from leadership.
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And I'll tell you another thing in the military where I learned some new and
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different things that I didn't want to learn. And that's when I went to SOCOM.
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SOCOM is what you might call the mothership, right? That is the U.S.
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Special Operations Command.
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And it's almost like a different branch because it's a joint command.
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And when I went, so it was coming close to my time to get SWIT,
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which is the school house for SF.
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So I volunteered to go to SOCOM because one, it's in Florida and that was closer
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to where we lived or Georgia and wanted to see family and things like that.
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And, you know, at the time, I was still struggling with an injury.
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And I thought, man, this will be a good little break. I'll be able to do,
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I'll be able to get fit and get better, have kind of a nine to five job.
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And that's, and that's what it was.
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But I went there, I was a E8. That's a, that's a master sergeant E8.
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And I was one of the lowest ranking dudes walk, walking the streets there.
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Yeah, There was a whole bunch of colonels, light colonels, and majors everywhere
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from all different branches.
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It was a crazy mix.
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And, you know, I worked at JSAL,
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and that was a very odd, what I call a perverse mixture of military and intellectual academia. Yeah.
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The president of the JSAW was a former Air Force guy, but he was,
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and I think he might have been a two-star,
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well, I don't know what he retired as, but his SES grade was equivalent to a two-star.
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And some of the instructors, so in the instructor training course that I took
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there at SOCOM, It was called Methods of Instruction at the time.
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Two or three of the instructors of that course were Ph.D. level people.
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And that's crazy. To me, that was crazy, right?
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These people were at this extremely high level of intellect and education.
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And, you know, I was trying to just hang on and learn what I could learn.
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I found that there was a lot of, man, I don't know what the word I'm looking for.
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I was the operations sergeant for the Senior Listing Academy.
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And, you know, people can fill in the blank on what they think that job means or does.
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But the fact of the matter is there wasn't much physical work to do with the
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exception of the very beginning of a course when the sergeant major course started
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or senior enlisted course started.
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And then at the very end when they were graduating and things like that.
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In between time, there wasn't a lot, you know, to do. too.
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So, and that's how the SOCOM marksmanship team came to, or program came to be
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rebooted by yours truly.
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At any rate, where I was going with that was the level of people that I was
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seeing on a daily basis and listening to and sitting in their lectures and things like that.
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It was, I mean, to some degree, pretty impressive.
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And I feel, excuse me, I feel like I learned a whole lot at a different, in a different way.
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I mean, while I was there, I took the enterprise management course and what was it?
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Joint, joint special operations fundamentals, something like that.
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The enterprise management course was an eye opener for me. I had the luxury
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of knowing all the instructors because it was technically an online course,
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but all the guys worked downstairs.
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So I would go down and get some face-to-face feedback on some of the things.
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And most of those guys down there were retired sergeants major or E8s or whatever.
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And most of them were good guys, great guys, and they worked,
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you know, they got themselves jobs being instructors.
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I don't know the state of the Joint Special Operations Senior Enlisted Academy right now.
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They were going through some ACE accreditation and things like that because
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they had a very ambitious plan to issue, I think, bachelor's degrees upon graduating that course.
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I'm not sure if that ever came to pass.
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I'm not sure that the academic rigor was there or that the instructors,
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because not many of the instructors had even master's degrees.
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I think some of them did, but that was also kind of a place where guys would
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go to catch up on their education outside of Army. I mean, like college education.
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So it was a unique place, man. It was weird.
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I'm glad I went there. I have some small regret for not going to SWCC.
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But every time I talked to some of my homies that did go to SWCC,
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I'm glad I went to SoCal at any rate.
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I learned a lot. There was a high academic environment there and a highly intellectual environment.
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Now, on some of my gripes on the place, I would also say there was also,
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however many intellectuals were walking the hallway, there were that many faux
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intellectuals walking the hallway as well.
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So that kind of, that's one of the things that got under my skin a little bit,
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was people kind of like I'm doing now,
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trying to operate at a level that they weren't qualified to do.
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Or maybe they were qualified, but they wanted to seem more qualified.
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So that's just it. That's the difference with me is I don't care that I seem more or less qualified.
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I deliver the goods at face value, and I take critique at face value.
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If you're not giving it at face value, that's your problem.
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I'm a direct communicator, and I strongly encourage you to be direct communicator.
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All right, so man, I'm getting sidetracked on my own stuff here.
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What have I done? So since retiring, you know, I started Osprey Shooting Solutions
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three years before I retired. That was 2017.
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And while in Colorado, we, my son, when I say we, my son and I made a very good
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go of it, doing it as a sort of a part-time gig.
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And once we decided to move to Georgia, you know, kind of had to start from scratch.
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But I think since then, since about, I think we built the range in June of 21,
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since then we've been going nonstop. And I feel like it's a very successful endeavor.
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Now, now it's time to expand. And we are currently working through that.
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So more to follow on the expansion of Osprey Shooting Solutions into a bigger
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entity, into an actual proper facility.
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And then I did two team guys so it
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started out as southern ornithological league I said
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this on another podcast but it turns out that if you
30:23
if you want to actually make money you can't have multiple layers deep for somebody
30:28
to have to figure out how to get to what you're doing the plant I'm not gonna
30:35
explain it right now but it was a great idea well actually it was Yeah.
30:44
And the concept was a great concept, but in practical application,
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it doesn't work out too well.
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So Southern Ornithological League has become two team guys.
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And at two team guys, that is exactly what we do is train team building,
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teamwork, and leadership development through various scenario-based courses.
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So they are sort of, I don't want to say action adventure based, right?
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But one of my favorites is the Search and Rescue Mountaineer course that we
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do with Nathan Hicks from Higher Ground.
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And that is very much a team building exercise. The whole thing is a team building exercise.
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We will assign leaders for that, but you'll see leaders emerge as well.
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And those natural leaders, when they emerge,
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you got to also be mindful of the natural leaders that can't follow,
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that they have to lead. They have to step up.
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It's just something they can't. It's whatever personality type.
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Or they just feel, you know, alpha. They feel they know better or know more.
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So that's equally important to be mindful of is that can you lead when it's
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your time to lead effectively?
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And can you follow when it's your time to follow effectively?
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And be a indispensable teammate, not just the leader.
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That's very important. That's very important.
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Now, good leaders will take feedback from everyone, right?
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But in the process of you delivering your feedback, if you take over the job, I mean, come on.
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So that's a good one anyway. We do a situational awareness course there.
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We do land navigation.
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Now, land navigation can be done in a team format. And in fact,
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coming up soon, we're going to be doing that.
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It's going to be kind of a team race, an orienteering type race.
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So there you can sort of develop your teamwork because there's a lot of resilience
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involved in there, especially when you're covering a lot of ground.
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But it's all about that's all about individual
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resilience as well as being able to make
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a decision based off some very technical skill
33:34
by the way and being confident with that decision and then be able to carry
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out that decision because there there is some very sad and poopy feelings when
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you're out lost in the woods in the middle of the night it's hard to recover,
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if you discover that you're lost and like hopefully lost or are hopelessly lost.
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If you know you're close to a point and you just, you just do a search pattern
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and you might be able to find it.
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But if you know you're just out there flapping and you're looking at your map
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and there's not even a trail in one direction or the other for a couple of kilometers,
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man, that's just a poopy, sad feeling.
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So that's a good course for resilience, right?
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Not only team building, but for resilience.
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What else would we do? Long range evasion is a good one. That's a very much a team building event.
34:33
And again, team leaders emerge from that.
34:36
We don't assign leaders on that, but you do move as a team and you have to make decisions as a team.
34:43
And some of those decisions could be costly and to the point that you may end
34:50
up with a black hood on your head.
34:54
And then a couple of the big courses we have, we have a special operations experience.
35:01
Now, mind you folks, this is not a course to teach you how to be a operator commando, right?
35:10
There, we use blue, we use UTM guns doing it, but it's all about the mission
35:15
planning and the management of the team during the planning phase and time management,
35:23
and then hitting your timelines and accounting for all of the things you need
35:31
to do to accomplish the mission.
35:33
And that one has consequences as well.
35:37
And then we have a very educational course, and that is Surviving Captivity.
35:44
And that course is geared toward international travelers, be it corporate team
35:53
or just the salesmen or whoever.
35:57
And there's a lot of academics there, a lot of academics on preparation,
36:01
on area studies, just being prepared for what country or what city you're going to,
36:10
understanding the threats and that kind of thing and it's all open source stuff to help you,
36:16
learn how to do your research before you go to
36:19
a place and then yes there there's a captivity portion of that and i'll just
36:26
i'll just leave it at that there's a lot of teamwork involved a lot of individual
36:29
resilience involved so those things through those things and then hopefully
36:36
through the Juneto podcast,
36:37
I hope to inspire.
36:42
Now, would I say I'm a very inspirational character?
36:45
No, no, not really. I don't think so.
36:49
Now, my story may inspire some folks.
36:53
Some people are just enamored with, you know, special operations guys or whatever.
36:59
And yeah, all that stuff was hard to a degree and doing it for 25 years.
37:06
Yeah, I guess that could inspire some folks, but folks, there's countless,
37:12
countless people who have retired from the military and done multiple,
37:17
multiple, multiple combat operations.
37:20
Now, I don't know anybody who's done 20 combat operations.
37:26
But there's some guys out there who's done plenty, right?
37:30
And if you want to revere combat veterans, you need to look back at the dudes from Vietnam.
37:38
Because those guys did some wild and crazy stuff.
37:42
Listen to the, there's a podcast on the MACV SOG.
37:46
And I want to say it's called the SOGcast. Yeah, maybe.
37:51
Yeah, there's a handful of guys that were SOG dudes who were running that podcast
37:57
and telling their stories.
37:58
And let me tell you, they were doing stuff back when the Army was less risk-averse
38:05
before all the technology, before all the satellites and the thermals and all this and that.
38:11
These dudes were out doing some absolute madness.
38:17
And look at all the medals of honor that came from that.
38:20
And look at all the SF guys that got killed during the Vietnam War,
38:24
to include my uncle, James Gordon Williams.
38:28
So if you want to be inspired, look to those guys. But yes, I hope to inspire
38:32
you to at least, you know, be a better version of yourself. That's what I hope to do here.
38:42
So are you going to get much inspiration from me based off my entrepreneurship? I don't know. Maybe.
38:50
If anything, just to know that if, hey, if that guy can do it, I can do it.
38:56
Right. I looked at, you know, I never went to, I've got maybe 60 odd hours of
39:03
random college credits.
39:06
I'm not an educated guy, but I looked at Guy Kawasaki's pitch deck is a slideshow
39:15
there. and I want to say it's like eight slides.
39:18
And I kind of broke that down and applied it to what I was trying to do.
39:24
And I got a business loan and did my thing.
39:28
So yes, if I can do it, you can do it. There's no doubt about that.
39:33
So if nothing else, be inspired by that.
39:35
And then I do hope a little bit to inspire via the podcast here.
39:42
A couple of friends of mine came up with the idea of doing a podcast,
39:47
and they came up with the Junto Club, which was modeled after Benjamin Franklin's
39:54
club back in the old days,
39:57
1727 to be exact, where they would sit together at a pub,
40:04
maybe have a couple beers, and discuss all the things that were important to
40:08
business, religion, politics, art, philosophy, etc.
40:14
So that's why the podcast is what it is, so that we can talk about just any
40:19
number of things and have just, you know, anyone on.
40:24
If you have something to offer that may be inspiring, then boom, there it is.
40:30
And then what else do I hope to do here? To educate. So for those of you that
40:36
have listened And faithfully, to all the episodes so far,
40:41
you'll notice that there's a whole lot of talk of libertarianism.
40:49
Libertarian politics, and that kind of thing.
40:52
So that is chiefly what I hope to educate folks on the most.
41:01
But also, you know, and I'm no counselor, folks.
41:05
I'm no counselor. But also, I hope to educate people on ways to kind of escape darkness,
41:17
emotional or mental darkness or torment, ways that you can kind of fight through,
41:25
prioritize your feelings and your emotions and your actions and try to be a
41:33
better version of yourself.
41:34
If not for yourself, for your family, and et cetera.
41:38
So that's another place that I'm trying to educate on.
41:43
I've got plenty of life experience dealing with plenty of unique stories of
41:52
people who were suicidal or just serial,
41:59
poor decision makers.
42:02
They just couldn't seem to make a good decision to save their life.
42:07
So hopefully my life experience my even my military experience dealing with
42:14
different personalities can help fight through those types of issues and help
42:20
educate you guys on those types of issues.
42:24
What else what else what else inspire educate mentor yes so those of you that have trained with me,
42:37
either through OSS or two team guys or anything else.
42:42
I am teaching technical skills here and there, yes, without a doubt.
42:47
But hopefully, I am, without directly saying so,
42:53
hopefully I am mentoring you as well, especially when it comes to,
43:00
like, law enforcement, for instance.
43:03
Yes, you're out trying to learn to shoot your gun better, but we can also talk about, you know,
43:10
the responsibility of taking life, the emotional toll and the sort of emotional
43:16
trauma even of taking life or even losing a homie and things like that.
43:22
So hopefully through the training,
43:27
you know the little side conversations and things like that that I can you know
43:32
mentor you a little bit to help not give you a path to go on but show you a
43:39
direction that I've been before.
43:42
And maybe maybe you might find that direction helpful we talk a lot whatever
43:49
course I'm doing And we talk about, well, good guys and bad guys, right?
43:54
That's the simplest term. But being a good guy,
43:58
which means your ethical standards and your integrity and the way you interact
44:08
with your teammates and your leadership and your subordinates and things like that.
44:17
So, yeah, I think mentorship is a thing that I think is very important.
44:23
I can name you about three solid mentors I've had in my life that I wouldn't
44:34
trade those guys for anything.
44:37
I think it's just critical. I think it's absolute critical to have that mentorship.
44:43
Now, leadership doesn't necessarily mean mentorship.
44:48
It can, but it doesn't necessarily.
44:51
You can be a good sort of rigid textbook leader and be a crappy mentor.
44:59
And then I think the reverse is
45:02
true I think you can be a good mentor and not
45:06
necessarily be the best leader I I've strived to be both I know a couple of
45:12
CSMs that would tell you that I was not a good leader but I know plenty of dudes
45:20
that would tell you I am a good leader so.
45:26
Who am I going to listen to? I don't know. Probably a little bit of both.
45:32
Mentorship, I think. And if you've got some experience, if you're an older guy,
45:37
I think it's important to mentor young guys.
45:41
Now, look, ideally, your dad would be your number one mentor, ideally.
45:47
Well, some people don't have their dad anymore.
45:50
Some people have absentee dads, alcoholic dads, et cetera, or just simply out-of-touch dads.
45:59
You know, your dad might be a sweet guy and just never had an ounce of leadership
46:05
skill in his life or mentorship skill or whatever.
46:11
So I think it's important as men in general that we look at younger guys and
46:20
not critique so much as just help them sort of see the way.
46:26
Now, if you're traveling a screwed up path, disregard.
46:32
Make sure your path is correct first. And it's taken me many years to get my
46:40
path somewhat straight, somewhat straightened out.
46:44
There's still a curve here and there.
46:47
And I believe there's always going to be curves. There's always going to be curves.
46:53
If it was just going to be easy, what's the point, right?
46:57
You don't learn from easy. You learn from adversity. You learn from challenge
47:03
and hardship and that kind of thing.
47:07
So not only do I aim to mentor people who I come in contact with,
47:13
I aim to develop mentors so that they can pass it on, pass on the goodness.
47:20
I think that's critical.
47:22
And it's for work, for home life, for parenthood.
47:30
The whole, the whole works, man. Mentorship is absolutely critical.
47:36
And I stand by that. And I welcome feedback on if you've, if you've got anything
47:45
that, if you've trained with me before, if you worked with me before,
47:49
I welcome the feedback or critique, I mean.
47:52
And then finally, motivation, right? So inspire, educate, mentor, motivate.
47:58
That sounds like a book. It sounds like a cliche.
48:03
Motivate. Now, I've talked about motivation before, motivation versus discipline.
48:09
I would like to be able to motivate you to do a thing, to do hard things,
48:15
to want to do hard things.
48:18
I would like to motivate you through the things I do on the podcast or write
48:23
on my blog to do some independent study on libertarianism or the Libertarian Party of Georgia.
48:33
And I would like to motivate you through, now I don't tell a whole lot of war
48:37
stories, but if we're one-on-one and you ask me a specific question, I'll answer.
48:43
But you know maybe through
48:46
some some war stories you might get a
48:49
little motivation what i hope motivates you to
48:52
be a good shooter anyway is that i
48:55
demonstrate and you think oh wow that's really good i want i'm motivated to
49:01
do that that and that sound down at its most simplistic level when it comes
49:06
to shooting guns but as far as motivation goes yeah motivation's fleeting Right.
49:13
I want you to be motivated. I want you to be motivated to be a curious human.
49:18
Go out and explore the world and explore art, music and those types of things.
49:29
But cultivate discipline for the things that you have the interest in.
49:36
Yeah. Cultivate discipline.
49:38
And, you know, we're, we're grownups
49:41
and we're busy and we got kids and grandkids and all sorts of things.
49:44
There's only so much time in a day, but you can prioritize some things and you
49:50
can work on those things and still participate in life, right?
49:55
You don't have to exclude yourself and dedicate.
49:59
I mean, shooting, right? You're not going to take your four-year-old grandson
50:03
down on the range, but you can make time for a few things that you prioritize.
50:12
Like your family should always have some, like pretty much the biggest priority,
50:17
but oftentimes like, like one of my sons, for instance, his priority right now
50:24
is to take care of his family.
50:25
But what that means for him right now is to work shift after shift after shift
50:30
between the fire department and the ambulance just to, to,
50:34
to make enough money to, to live and, you know, pay for all the things, right?
50:41
They got four kids and today's society, yeah, four kids and one working parent is pretty rough.
50:53
So he prioritizes his family.
50:57
However, he don't spend nearly as much time with his family as he wishes he could.
51:03
So it don't always go the way we want it, folks.
51:06
It don't always go. So cultivate the discipline to do the priorities,
51:12
right? Whatever your priorities are.
51:14
And that's it. Make your priorities and then have the discipline to work for
51:21
those priorities. That's it.
51:25
So this is just a sort of a, well, I want to say short podcast,
51:30
but it's almost an hour already.
51:32
I just, I wanted to kind of share with you,
51:37
Not my experience a little bit, but some of the things that Two Team Guys and
51:41
OSS and the Junto podcast kind of aims to do for you as a listener or as a customer.
51:50
And hopefully inspire and educate and mentor and motivate you to, you know, move.
51:59
Do I want to say toward excellence? yeah but
52:04
just move to forward
52:08
to be a better version of yourself and whatever you've defined that to be folks
52:13
i'm not telling you you got to be like me because yeah i'm i wouldn't say i
52:21
exemplify excellence right.
52:25
A better version of yourself. So no matter what your background is,
52:30
no matter what your experiences are,
52:32
no matter what field that you work in,
52:36
we here at OSS and
52:40
Two Team Guys and the Juneto Podcast can help you identify your priorities and
52:49
build the discipline to work toward those priorities And to help you as a leader to be a better leader,
53:00
a formidable leader, and as a team to help you be a proficient and efficient
53:10
team and to be indispensable teammates,
53:17
to be indispensable teammates.
53:20
That's what you want to be. If you are an indispensable teammate,
53:25
it's not a big leap to be a good leader.
53:29
All right. So that brings us to the end here. I hope, I think that this was a more positive tone.
53:37
Don't worry. We got plenty of darkness in the future. We got plenty of,
53:42
because we're going to be talking about police training again pretty soon.
53:46
That one goes negative pretty quick. But I wanted to share some sort of positive
53:51
things and things that I think that we can do to help you, that we can do to help you. So.
54:03
What's coming up? What's coming up? All right.
54:06
On Saturday, this Saturday, which I don't know what that date is, but I will tell you,
54:13
we have a pistol workshop. Oh, yeah.
54:18
That's the 19th. That is going to be, I might change that to just call it heartbreaker workshop.
54:26
That is the pistol workshop, and we're going to be working from 25 yards and beyond.
54:33
We will not even be shooting inside of 25 yards. So that's going to be an eye
54:38
opener. It's going to be very educational.
54:41
And I think doing that the way we're going to do it, I think you will see or
54:50
at least have a solid foundation for some accuracy improvement.
54:56
Like pretty quick.
54:58
Yeah, that one's going to be tough.
55:03
And then what's coming up after that? The following weekend, we have a wildcard day.
55:11
And then the wildcard day is random drills.
55:15
We'll shoot three or four random drills. And then we will run the Blackjack 33 challenge.
55:23
And if you score 90% or better on that, you will earn yourself a coin.
55:29
And you can read all about that on OspreyshootingSolutions.com.
55:34
There's a menu item across the top that says BJ33.
55:39
There's a backstory to that coin. And it's all about my Uncle Jimmy,
55:44
my Uncle James Gordon Williams, who was killed in Vietnam in 1967.
55:51
And the coin is near and dear to me. I did the art myself, and I think it's
55:57
an awesome way to memorialize my family, my family member who I took inspiration from, right?
56:07
My dad was an infantryman for about four or five years.
56:12
And my uncle, James Gordon Williams, he started out as a commo guy in the 82nd
56:20
and then went to 5th Special Forces Group as a commo guy,
56:25
18 Echo or whatever it was called then.
56:28
And he was on a mobile guerrilla force.
56:32
And there's a book called
56:35
Black Jack 33 written by Jim Donahue that has a firsthand account of my uncle
56:44
as a point man on a recon patrol and they walked into a firefight and he got killed.
56:54
And not to be morbid, but it was crazy and awesome to read about that. when I found that book.
57:04
So anyway, that's what's coming up folks.
57:07
And then again, keep in mind, twoteamguys.com, we're going to be doing a land
57:14
nav course in September.
57:18
And there's going to be probably about three or four slots available for that.
57:24
And that's the three day. That's the one an overnighter in the Talladega National Forest.
57:29
So it's not for the weak or fainthearted. And you're going to be able to do that as a two-man team.
57:36
So, and we provide all the gear and equipment to do that.
57:41
You just need to show up with some good shoes on and fit and hydrated and all that stuff.
57:47
All right, folks, thanks again for listening. I appreciate you guys.
57:53
You don't know how much I appreciate you.
57:56
And thanks for listening. Thanks for reading the blogs.
58:01
And thanks for following on all the socials. And I appreciate you all.
58:06
And I love you guys. Take care.
58:09
Music.