From the Marine Corps to Main Street… Leadership Minus the Boot Camp Barking!

Speaker A: Welcome to Consulting from the Couch, a, uh, podcast about leaders. What makes them tick, what drives them, and the challenges they face. During the show, you'll get to know some of the most genuine people I've worked with over the years and you'll hear these leaders provide nuggets, tidbits and takeaways for the emerging leaders of tomorrow. This broadcast is brought to you by Brown Leather Couch Consulting, hence known as BLC Consulting. We're a communications and organizational strategy group that works in the electric utility space and with service related industries, helping them thrive in today's ever changing landscape. To learn more, go to blcconsultingllc.com today we're talking about a kind of leadership forged under pressure. The kind that comes from military service and follows you long after the uniform comes off. Our guest is a very good friend of mine, Brock Goss, a veteran, a real estate agent and an entrepreneur who took what he learned in the military and built a successful business on, um, Main Street. From leading with discipline to navigating the civilian world without a rank or a title, Brock's story is about adapting, evolving, and leading with purpose. We'll talk about his transition from boots to business and what leadership looks like when it's built on trust and not authority. Welcome, Brock, and thank you for joining us today, man.

Speaker B: I'm glad to be here.

Speaker A: I'm glad you're here. So before we get going, man, just take a couple minutes to tell the listeners about Brock Goss.

Speaker B: First of all, I want to tell you that, um, I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to come here and talk with you.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Anytime that I get the opportunity to share my experiences, no matter if it's, you know, going to impact somebody or not, I feel like it is a, um, I don't know, I think it's the ultimate compliment to be asked to do something like that. And I'm always willing to do it, and especially with a good friend of mine like you.

Speaker A: Well, thank you, buddy. I appreciate that.

Speaker B: Yeah, man. So I think, I think really, I think I have to start with the fact that I'm not from this area. I'm from Macon, Georgia, and I grew up in a town real close by called Warner Robins. That's a military, uh, town. There's an Air Force base there. Warner Robins High School, by the way, is like a very big football school. And, um, they've won several state championships, national championships. And, you know, that's the whole reason that I moved there, is to be on that team. After I left there I went, I went to the University of Alabama. So the University of Alabama is my connection to Clemson. I, I'm not a, uh. Like, I wasn't originally a Clemson fan, but Dabo Swing.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: At Alabama and, and my brother went to Alabama. He was actually a captain of the team his senior year and his, his position coach was Woody McCorvey and before that it was Dabo Sweeney. Woody McCorvey came over from Clemson and he's the one who got Dabo back over to Clemson. And he is Dabo's like right hand, right hand man.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I wasn't a great football player. Okay.

Speaker A: You had to hold your own. I mean, obviously you're going to be modest about that, but to move to Warner Robbins and play football and then even if you went down there and you were walk on, let's just say walking on at Alabama is probably the equivalent. I'm going to make a lot of people mad here. Is probably the equivalent of getting a D1 scholarship to East Carolina University.

Speaker B: No, I'm just for the football, for the football team. Maybe they changed all that now, though. They have the whole preferred walk on thing. And like, maybe they only got like, you know, where we had probably 25, there might be 10 or 15 walkouts now because the roster size has gotten really small.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: 105 is all you can have.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So anyway, here's, here's the part where we get into the military. First of all, I was, I was decent. Just studied the game and I used my like, wit and understanding of the game to put myself in position to be where I could make plays. When I got to Alabama, I realized the talent level is just way. I made a lot of great relationships. Right. That was the one thing that really, like, stuck with me there. And I'm still, you know, one. The guy that I was standing next to in line when I checked in, his name is Mark Maleconi. We're friends to this day. His son's name is Brock. So like, that's how tight. And we're like family, you know what I mean? So, like, I made a lot of great relationships, but I left there and joined the Marine Corps. And the reason that I left is because maturity wise, I wasn't ready for college. I had enough good people around me and I'll tell you about who they are. Had enough really good people around me to help me to understand that I wasn't ready.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And one of them is my, um. Okay. He's like, he's my cousin.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But he's Like a brother to me because we grew up together. His name's Tog Thomas Oscar Goss. We call him Tog T O G. And he's like him and my brother Chad and my brother, my cousin Henry. Like this crew, you know, growing up. Henry, 64. My brothers, you know, and, um, they were. They were really close to me, and at the time, they knew I needed something different than this. So the Marine Corps was it. I joined the Marine Corps, and then, you know, I never looked back. But I spent 13 years in the Marine Corps, and during that time, I got to do some amazing stuff. I got to. First of all, graduating boot camp from Parris Island.

Speaker A: I know it wasn't a bucket list thing when you were growing up, but it was something that is to be extremely proud of, man. My best buddy, uh, has. And, uh, he was in the Marine Reserves. Got called over and was over in the Gulf. First time that we were over there many years ago. And, uh, going through Parris island, it's an accomplishment.

Speaker B: It is. If I had to stack it up with all of the accomplishments in my life, you know, obviously, becoming a dad.

Speaker A: Yeah. Nothing. Yeah, nothing touches that.

Speaker B: Top of the list then.

Speaker A: Nothing touches becoming a spouse, getting married,

Speaker B: having children, you know, being a Christian.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: You know what I mean?

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Christ, it's up there with those. Yeah, those things. Had I not become a Marine, I would have never met Amy.

Speaker A: That's right. You met her in the middle. You met her.

Speaker B: She was a Marine, too. Yeah, she was a Marine sergeant when she got out. And, uh. Which, you know, we're all super proud of. Yeah. But, um, it's. It's those types of things that. That m. That the Marine Corps brought me. Right. Pride and. And. And, um, just consistency and discipline and those kinds of things. It's just not. There's no other place in the world where you can manufacture the experiences that you get doing that.

Speaker A: So was your last duty station Jacksonville? Is that how you. Is that how you ended up.

Speaker B: That's it. So I got to go to, like. I spent my first year. I got to live overseas. I lived in Japan. Then I moved to California, where I met Amy. Then, uh, I deployed to Iraq, and we were a part of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. And I got selected to go with this group called Landing Force West. It was a special magtaf. Magtaf M means, uh, Marine Air Ground Task Force. So I got selected to go with this group. We floated over, offloaded seven ships in seven days. And it was, um, a historic event. I got to be a part of that.

Speaker A: That's awesome.

Speaker B: Um, which I was very fortunate to, to be able to be around these people and learn from them. Major Yens Curtis was one of the guys that like I got to work directly for. Man, I just learned so much from him about being a leader and about um, toughness. Right. He used to have this saying, like, we're on ship, don't miss a meal. He said, because the fat gets skinny and the skinny die. Because we're getting ready to go out here and we're going to miss, we gonna miss some meals. Goss. You know, we moved to Hawaii. I got to go over there and live in Hawaii. And I was a corporal's uh, course instructor over there. It's my first instructor gig.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And I was there for two years and I taught there for like a year and a half. Left there, got an opportunity to go be a drill instructor back at Paris. Oh wow.

Speaker A: That was an experience.

Speaker B: I went to drill instructor school which was another accomplishment. That's to me the rigorous, like, um, it's almost hard to explain the level of rigor that you go through in the regimented like the days. And I'm not going to bore you with all that. But it was uh, a very tough school mentally and physically and academically. I was there for three years. I was a green belt drill instructor, a senior drill instructor and I was a serious gunnery sergeant. That experience, incredible. There's nothing like it. So. And then when I got out of the Marine Corps, I worked, I moved here.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And I was at Train, the trainer school and I was an instructor there training trainers. And then I got to also go out to marsoc and that my military service took me to a lot of places where I felt, I always felt like it was a privilege to be around people who were, you know, elite at what they did. Right. So that's where I got all that experience and all that learning and all that information. I feel like I just was put in a unique, uh, position to do it. And I knew because of people who were around me to soak it up and really take the opportunity to learn as much as I could. And during that same time I finished two degrees. So here's something else I gotta tell you about myself that I didn't tell you earlier.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I had some eye problems growing up and I didn't learn to read until I was in the seventh grade. Oh wow. A lady who, her name is Nancy Elliott. Um, she was my seventh grade teacher. One of my teachers. I Remember? But she took special interest in teaching me at that point, and once I. Once I learned I was just behind. I wouldn't be where I'm at today having those degrees without her. And my grandmother, she. She raised.

Speaker A: She raised you?

Speaker B: Her and my Aunt Janice. So getting these degrees was, for me, payback for them helping me.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I got a degree in, um, business from Liberty University, and I got a master's degree from Boston University in Leadership Project Management.

Speaker A: M. Oh, nice, man. Nice.

Speaker B: So, um, those are huge accomplishments, and it's not really for me to tout, because who cares? I don't even have them on the wall. They're not even in a frame. They're just tucked away. Because I did it as a payback for them, and I, you know, I appreciated them, but, uh, I did that while I was working there, and then that's when I got my real estate license. That, like, speeds us up all the

Speaker A: way to here just by telling the story. Even before you got into the military, it says quite a bit about you as a person that you remember, and people stand out to you in your mind, and you can name them. But even more than that, Brock, the fact that you recognize it and you pay homage to them. Let's talk about your military, sir. So an enlisted service member. What did leadership look like to you in that role?

Speaker B: When I think about leadership in the military, the first thing I think about are people's names. Because these guys, these men, um, without them, first of all, I would have made some mistakes, because when you're young and you're out in, you know, out in the world and, you know, Japan and all these places, it's an experience.

Speaker A: Experience.

Speaker B: Right. So we'll just leave it at that. We don't want to give glory to any of that. No, but, um. But truth be told, um, there were people placed in my life throughout. So, like, pt, when we. We knew we had messed up, Gunny Schmidt would come in, and he would be like, you got 10 minutes to get in PT gear. I mean, middle of the day. Yeah, get in PT gear, and he run. He would have no idea where he's going. He flicks his cigarette out, he's out there smoking, and he takes off running, runs us to this hill, and he goes and gets up at the top and tells us one at a time, come try to take me down. And we're out there, and we can't. He's got old man strength, you know what I mean?

Speaker A: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: He probably wasn't really super old, but, uh, the dude was just like, he was, he was, he was with us, but he. He felt like we needed to feel, you know what I mean? Something that we were not doing right. And we get. We just didn't want to disappoint them. The biggest thing I can say about your question is what does it look like? It looks like other people putting themselves in like, a, uh, harm's, uh, way or a risky situation or putting themselves in a role to where, you know, they care so much about what's. What the mission is. And you as a person in your development that. That you don't want to let them down.

Speaker A: I went through life whether good or bad or indifferent. It was more of a self expectation, what I expected of myself. My mom and dad never put pressure on me, but there's always that thought of, you just don't want to let your mom and daddy down. Man. That kind of drove me in different areas of my life. Like I said, it wasn't anything they put on me. It was something that I put on myself. Fear of failure is a very big motivating factor.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And fear of letting somebody down is a tremendous.

Speaker B: That's all the motivation I needed. Yeah. They would teach me things like, I learned this from them. Put your name on it. When you take a test, what's the first thing you write at the top?

Speaker A: Your damn name.

Speaker B: Put your name.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: My trade in the Marine Corps was automotive mechanic. We're gonna rebuild the transmission. When you take that, when they give you the document that you're supposed to. Is a technical term. Right at the top. It says name.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Rank. They want your name. And Right. They want to know who did that. So you're leaving something behind. It says a lot about you. It doesn't say anything about your skill or whatever. It says a lot about you as a person. And I used to. I just remembered that. So it's something I teach my kids. What it really says is take responsibility for your actions.

Speaker A: That's exactly right. Leadership by example in the military. Tell me what that meant to you in the military. But also as much. Tell me if you taken something from that and you carried it away in business today.

Speaker B: M. There's a misconception about leadership by example. That don't mean I need to see you take out the trash. You know what I'm saying? It means I don't need to see you do that to know that you've done it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I don't need to see that from. You think that the. The things that stick out the Biggest to me are never let anyone expect more from you than you expect from yourself. Inspect. That's one. Leave that where it is. Inspect what you expect.

Speaker A: That's good.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, if you expect something from somebody, you want to expect it from yourself. Right. But. But if you expect something from them, don't ever expect it without going to check to make sure that it's right.

Speaker A: That's. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker B: So. So those are the things and how that. How that transfers into entrepreneurship and business. A lot of people think that when you become the boss, you work less, or when you own the company, you don't really got to do anything. Right. I like to use prominent figures to. To explain this when people ask me about it, because a lot of people call me and ask me about, hey, my son wants to join the Marine Corps. Will you talk to him? So this kind of stuff that I. Yeah, absolutely. And I always say yes. Always say yes. But I say it in. In a way that it's like, look, before I'll talk to them, I need them to read the oath of enlistment for, um, for. For all branches of service, because I want them to understand what that says. Right. Then I get them on the front, and I use a prominent figure. Figure like Dana White. Let's talk about Dana White.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: They bought that company for a million dollars. Ish. And now it got. It got sold for like, 4 billion or something like that. Something's not going into the details. But now he still works there. He's worth the amount of money that if you and I won in the lottery today, we'd say pop smoke. I'm out.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Name, uh, UFC event that you've seen

Speaker A: on TV that he's not at.

Speaker B: That he's not at.

Speaker A: Yeah, I can't.

Speaker B: You think he just shows up at the last second?

Speaker A: Oh, he's involved. It's his baby, man. Even after he's gotten rid of it. I don't know what is worse. Not building something at all or building something and then potentially, like, selling it or what and watching it crumble or watching it not succeed or what it not be what it was when you were particularly involved in it. I think he's driven by that, or

Speaker B: looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, did I do enough? And that to. So that. That's the answer. What did the military give? So give to me that allows me to continue to, like, push and press. And that's. It is, um, you know, am I doing enough? Am I doing enough? And is there something else that I can learn? Is there something else that I can do? Is there someone else that I can help that is going to help me get to a place to where I feel like either I can, you know, delegate to someone else or pass it on to someone else who has the same, like, vigor. When you become a stakeholder or when you become an entrepreneur or you become, or you're put in from, uh, you know, an everyday gen pop person at work into a leadership role. Right? M. More is expected.

Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.

Speaker B: It's not.

Speaker A: It's not less. No. Yeah.

Speaker B: It's not less. More is expected. And you are going to have to push yourself further and harder than you did before.

Speaker C: Is your organization ready to lead with clarity, coach with confidence, and build a culture where people Thrive? At, uh, vibrantculture.com I bring the spark. My name is Nicole Greer. I do executive coaching, dynamic training, and HR consulting. I help leaders and teams unlock their full potential. Plus, if you visit the website, you'll discover fresh content, practical tools that will energize your workplace. Starting today, visit vibrantculture.com where leaders are made and cultures come alive.

Speaker A: So let's talk about. In the military, there's a lot of thought about you have to be in a certain position to be a leader. There's leaders all over organizations that are not necessarily supervisors that are, that don't form a role like that. You can be a leader within an organization and manage, supervise, anyone. Let's talk about being in the military. Authority is often granted because of rank. Would you agree with that?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah. So how do you think, how do you lead an influence now, especially with clients or peers or whomever when they don't have to follow you? In the military, you don't have a choice. If my sergeant tells me something, I got to do it. But in the undisciplined world of civilian life, how do you go about that?

Speaker B: So really it's about, it's more about what you demand from yourself than what you demand from someone else.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And let me give you a couple examples.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: If I showed up to. So really it comes down to, um, customs and courtesies and etiquette and then professionalism. If, if, if I'm in charge and I show up every day and my uniform looks like trash and my, my room in my car looks like trash, and I don't have any, uh, personal hygiene. Right. If I'm in charge of you, are you going to take me seriously?

Speaker A: Absolutely not.

Speaker B: You're not?

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: So those are the basics, right? So the other thing is, you know, you think about military, you think about being punctual.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: You think about being on time, you think about 0, 6, 30 or whatever it is that you think about. Right. I take all those things that I learned and I put them into my own life today. A lot of the things that you do before you get to an appointment, like let's just say we're using this for a listing appointment and I want to go and meet with someone about listing their property.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: A lot of the work that I do is commercial stuff.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: So uh, just take this one that I did recently as a commercial strip center. You know, these, a lot of times these properties trade for 6, 7, 800,000 million dollars. I've done, you know, deal a deal for 2.2 million just selling land. Right. So when you're talking to these people, these developers that, that sell a property for, or buy a property for two and a half million dollars and they're going to develop a gas station on, there's one on Western here we're talking about, right?

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Um, for those who don't know Western

Speaker A: Boulevard, it's a, it's a, the main thoroughfare in Jacksonville. Besides that, in 7, Highway 17, everywhere

Speaker B: where you live, just, you know, United States thoroughfare. Yeah, anywhere. You know, these people eat you alive. Right. They are just tremendous professionals and the questions that they have. So if I'm not, if I don't show up, look the part squared away. I know my terminology, I've done my study. So what I do in order to make sure that this person has confidence in me is I check all those same boxes that I checked in the military for an inspection or a test or for a special school or if I've got to run a pft. You can't just show up to run a personal fitness test and you're going to get scored for it for promotion and just on accident get a good score.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It doesn't matter what kind of level athlete you are.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You're gonna have to practice it and you're gonna have to put in the work. So the answer to your question is is I go back to the basics and I check all the boxes like clean shave and you don't have to shave, but these are just some, yeah, easy, clean shave. Make sure that I'm polished up on the information that I'm going to be talking about, whether it be a commercial property or residence. You know, a lot of the stuff I work and do in, in real estate is for business clients who own residences as well. And typically a person who owns a business has a big, nice house.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So those are higher end, higher value properties. I've got to approach that differently than I do. If it's, you know, just a quote unquote, normal property.

Speaker A: Kind of answered my next question about building trust and credibility. And the way you build a credibility is doing your due diligence before the meeting itself. I mean, the meeting itself should, I don't want to say should be easy, but the meeting, you do prep work in order to you to get to that meeting and then it becomes second nature. That's how you build the credibility and you build the trust. You know, we were talking about, it's easy to work, work with a client one time, but when you get the repeat client, you work with the client and help them find a house or sell a house, and then that client's going to need to go buy a piece of commercial property and build a business or build an office or do something that you're going to hear anything on any of these podcasts, whether it's your personal business, whatever. Lifeguys is about relationships. You built the relationship and then you've established that trust with that person and you've established that credibility. Would you agree with that?

Speaker B: Absolutely. But the other thing that you give them is confidence. You give them confidence in you. And there's two things that you can't match. When you're an entrepreneur or you're a real estate agent or an insurance agent, a salesperson, and you're out there, you eat what you kill, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: If you don't kill, you don't eat. So you got to go make sales and you got to go do things. I've stopped thinking about the money. The money's gonna come. The money's a byproduct. It's going to happen.

Speaker A: If you do the right thing, you do your due diligence, you work hard, you're exactly right. That stuff takes care of itself, man.

Speaker B: Takes care of itself.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly right.

Speaker B: And so take the money off the table and start thinking about everything that you need to do to help a client or a business person at their. The greatest point of friction. That's another thing we learned in the military. Where do you put your best assets? You put your best assets at the greatest point of friction. So where their heaviest pain point is, that's where you need to come in and be the relief. So you have to, you have to learn to be able to do that. And what it really is, the two things that you can always count on that are going to bring people back is they have confidence in you and you put money in their pocket and the military gives you a lot of regimented, like, I don't want to say systems, but a regimented actions to continue to take.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: That are always going to keep you in a position to where you can instill confidence or, uh, you can allow people to be confident in you. Right. Because of the way you look, the way you present yourself, the way you talk, the way you carry yourself and your results. I don't know where I would have found this experience to get me to know that. Except for the military.

Speaker A: Except for the military. You've mentioned a lot of folks that it mentored or had an impact on you. Let's focus on the M military. Think about one and you named a bunch of them. Think about a mentor, something that you learned from that mentor. How do you try to be that kind of leader today?

Speaker B: There's just so many. It's hard for me to pick one, but if I had to pick one right now and the name, it just keeps popping up in my head.

Speaker C: Um,

Speaker B: Johnny Vancel the thing that he did that I thought was the most extraordinary is he was always present. You can't phone it in, right? You're not, you're not gonna phone in.

Speaker A: Uh, because people know when you phone, man.

Speaker B: They know when you phone.

Speaker A: Don't think you're smarter than everybody else, folks, because if you phoned it in,

Speaker B: they know the moment that I thought he wasn't around and he wasn't around to be like snooping, he was always present. And when you thought he wasn't watching or he wasn't paying attention when you're doing good, when you're doing bad or whatever. But it always made me think. You see what I'm saying?

Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.

Speaker B: It always made me think like. And sometimes he would never even say anything, but you knew that wherever you were, he's probably gonna show up and be watching. You know what I mean? And it goes back to the. And really the easiest correlation and um, what I'm trying to do is think of. Because it's not a phrase or a word, a lot of people put these big caption words on leadership. You know, it's like all these like. But it's not. It's actions.

Speaker A: Yep, I would agree.

Speaker B: It's a string of actions put together over a long period of time that show a trend.

Speaker A: Consistency.

Speaker B: It's the best word.

Speaker A: Consistency, man. It's about consistency.

Speaker B: Consistent, yeah. Actions Taken to create, um, a will in another person's will. So here it is. You could, you could have, he could have come to work every day. This is the way he made me feel. And I don't have a word for it, but this is the way he would. He had everybody in the group like feeling this way. You could have a person, another person could have come to work every day and like threatened my life.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And said, if you don't do this, I'm going to stab you in your arm or whatever. And the next. You see what I'm saying?

Speaker A: I know what you're saying.

Speaker B: Could have threatened me and, and I would have done the job. Right. With Johnny Vancel there. You could have threatened me. If I do the job, you see what I'm saying the opposite way.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I was gonna do it anyway.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Cause I knew that if I didn't, we were gonna be letting him down.

Speaker A: Oh yeah.

Speaker B: Now he's just, and I hate to say it like, but he's, he's not the only one. So the thing that he did is he created an environment to where there was an expectation and we all had it in our heads. Like he's watching, he's present and he cares. And if we aren't, if we don't hold ourselves to this higher standard, then he's going to hold us accountable. His presence and his leadership and his willingness to be there with us and trust us to do this gave us a certain amount of responsibility. Right. And our awareness generated a responsibility. So I think that's it. That's the, a person, that's a mentor where you're in an environment where you have an opportunity to influence people. The most important thing is that when, when they're, they're making decisions or they're in a, in a mode where they're performing, you want them to think, think to themselves. Uh, um. I can't go back and not get this done.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know what I mean? And when you, when you're, when you've achieved that, this is what I, this is what I'm shooting for, especially with my kids.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But when you've achieved that, that's real leadership. But there's no catch word for it.

Speaker A: This has been great. This has been, this has been awesome.

Speaker B: It's real.

Speaker A: It's real. I'm going to switch gears up a little bit. I prepped you with those questions, but I've got some rapid fire questions. You don't have anything to. You haven't seen these. There's about Five or six of them. You have no idea what they are, but I'm going to read them to you and just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the word successful. Who's the first person that comes to your mind and why?

Speaker B: Thomas Goss. Thomas Oscar Goss.

Speaker A: That's your cousin.

Speaker B: Cousin.

Speaker A: Your cousin. Why?

Speaker B: He in the middle of his 40s, changed careers. He was an entrepreneur, uh, in the construction and landscaping business. Changed his career and went into the healthcare field.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: And he's the COO at an atrium hospital right now.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: And, um, it's been the most incredible transformation that I watched. He's. He's the person that I'm the closest to in the world. Right. Other than my, you know, daughter, son, wife. And I don't make an important decision without talking to him. He knows I'm here today.

Speaker A: Favorite documentary, movie or book beyond the Bible is.

Speaker B: This is gonna sound terrible.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: Wolf of Wall Street.

Speaker A: Dude, I've seen it. I watch it as I'm flipping through YouTube TV.

Speaker B: I would be lying to you if I said something different.

Speaker A: Leonardo, baby.

Speaker B: Anybody who knows me knows that's number one, number one movie. You can't argue with me about it and ever.

Speaker A: Wolf.

Speaker B: Wall Street.

Speaker A: I'm with you. Do you have morning rituals? And if you do, what does the first 60 minutes of Brock Goss Day look like?

Speaker B: It's with my family. It's with my family. And it could be, um, you know, getting the kids up, going to school, morning routine. It could be a lot of different things, but, you know, I spend every morning. My. My routine is. Revolves around our family. I love my family. There's nothing important. There's nothing more important that I focus on more than my family. We're not going to talk about fuss, argue in, nothing negative. That can wait till later.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: But how could you expect your family to have a good day when the. The first thing you do or before. Before they walk out the door. You're. You, you. You're stirring up negativity.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Whatever that is. Whether it's arguing, yelling, you're not getting done, you know.

Speaker A: Did you get your homework done? Why'd you get home? Yeah, you know, I'm with you, man.

Speaker B: I want to leave the house with a positive outlook. You know what? You forgot your homework. It's forgotten. My first. My first 60 minutes of my day is. We're focused on each other.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: That's having a successful day and whatever that entails.

Speaker A: What topic would you speak about if you were Asked to give a TED Talk on something that is outside of your main area of expertise. So I'm taking being a Marine, and I'm taking real estate, and I'm taking being a father off the table.

Speaker B: Continuing education, continual learning. Because adults and I don't know. I'm not saying the right word, but like a thirst.

Speaker A: Knowledge all the time. Because you're growing.

Speaker B: Growth. Yeah, growth. Especially with what, you know, you're getting worse or you're getting better.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You're never staying the same.

Speaker A: I read something. I'm paraphrasing it. If where you are today is where you are in 12 months, that needs to be a fear of yours.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: So do you have a quote you live by or you think of often?

Speaker B: There's, there's, there's.

Speaker A: I'm sure there is. What's one that stands out?

Speaker B: It's a Bible verse.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: It's Luke 17:32. It's three words. Remember? Lot's wife. Crazy, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But you know about Lot.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah, Right. His. His. They. They were told to leave.

Speaker A: Leave. And told not look back.

Speaker B: And what his wife did look back. And what did she become?

Speaker A: A pillar of salt dust.

Speaker B: So what? Don't look back.

Speaker A: What do you believe is true even though you can't prove it?

Speaker B: Thing that just sticks out in my mind is that God is real.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: God is. I can't prove it. I can't show it to you. And I, um. I just, you know, there's a lot of. There's a lot of opposition to that. Especially today.

Speaker A: Especially today's woke up and all that.

Speaker B: And I'm not using it. Yeah, no, but everybody's just replacing. They're replacing God with the word, like the universe.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, Brock, man, thank you. This has been a powerful conversation. It's just a great reminder that leadership isn't about structure or titles. And leadership and learning can happen at just all stages of your life. And it's about showing up, serving others, serving our country, and staying grounded. And no matter what type of uniform you're wearing, I think that's the important thing. From football uniform to military to now you dress like me with shorts and a polo shirt. Yeah. But thank you, man. This has been awesome.

Speaker B: Thank you. It's been great for me. And I'm just. I'm grateful.

Speaker A: Well, I appreciate you, buddy. And I. And I'm grateful for you coming and listen to the audience. Thanks for listening. If you like this episode, then be sure to follow us by going to blcconsultingllc.com check it out. You can find this podcast, you can find other things about BLC consulting and share it with someone. Share it with someone who loves stories, who loves stories about leadership. So until next time, I'm Steve Goodson, and we'll talk.