3 Leadership Lessons Learned Only In The Ranger Regiment

Speaker A: David, dude, welcome back. It's round two. Stoked to have you here. Round two. Um, so, quick recap, I think before we dive in. Um, here's. Here's what I remember. You grew up in a huge, wild family. I like, I remember you called it a little bit of Lord of the Flies is. And I like that you talked about how you barely made out of high school. You took off to live on the beach in Hawaii. You were chasing the surf, and then you had the wipeout that shattered your knee. Somehow ended up at a cattle ranch in Arizona and then back, uh, home and made a giant pivot, ended up going back to school, uh, and then another one into the army to join the Ranger Regiment. Um, and I think that's about where we left off, right? You were heading into Ranger school, you already done your first deployment, and then you're headed. Heading into Ranger School. Is that, Is that about where you remember it?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's about right. You know, if it's, uh, looking back on my life, that's probably. That's the order of operation with a little bit of granularity in between all of it. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. You know, I think, I think within the first, the first year, uh, 15 months I was in regiment that I got into regiment, I went on one deployment, and then I, they, they, they shipped me off to Ranger School. You go through assessment, selection, and then if you're a combat arms, uh, um, whether you're, you know, an officer, a branch, or whether you're in, you know, uh, enlisted, you have roughly two years, um, to get your Ranger tab after you go through selection, right? And then if. And if not, eventually you'll get what they. And this is a beautiful thing about Ranger Regiment, unless you were part of it, you get rfs, which is released for standards. So you'll get released out of Ranger regiment, back to the conventional army. And so, so it's like, it's a rite of passage, but it's also like the thing that will allow you to have time and space and perpetuity in regiment as a combat. Combat arms. Some. So, so you want to go to Ranger school, but you also don't want to fail Ranger school because you got to maybe 1-2-T chances to get through it. And if you don't, you know, um, it's some of the writings on the walls. I don't know what the rules are today, but I'm sure I'm just, I'm. I, I would go as far to bet a paycheck that range regiment hasn't changed its stance on, on combat arms, guys needing Ranger taps and uh, any and girls. Now when I was there, it was just guys, but guys and girls, you know, need the Ranger tab to stay there and not have to go anywhere else.

Speaker A: So, so, so to get, so to get into the school, to get your tab, what's that process look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's an interesting process and I, I don't know how it is for folks because people go to Ranger, Ranger school, you know, and I'm sure some, you know, there's some viewers that might, you know, argue with me, but it's one of the premier leadership schools in the military. Right. Um, and that's not my words, that's their words. But. And so, so you get a lot of people from the regular army, you get people from foreign armies. Right. And militaries. You have people from the navy, from the Marines. You know, you have, you have every flavor of military kind of going through there. I would say the majority, um, uh, probably about 50, 30 to 50% of the folks who go to Ranger school a lot of times are, are from Ranger regiment because they have the largest amount of humans that need the tab to be able to maintain their position within, within that special, uh, operation unit. So it's, it's, it's a rite of passage. And, and, and again, like right, wrong or indifferent, like you are certainly treated a little bit different after, before you have your tab. And after you have your tab. So there, you know, so there, there's things that, there's externalities and second order effects that happen when you go and you come back with your Ranger tab. Um, you know, but the thing is too, is that, you know, with, with about 70 attrition through the, the phases, there's three phases. There's really four phases, but there's three main phases. Uh, the first phase is like three weeks of like, can you make it into phase one? Right? It's, it's, it's much more physical. Um, you're doing all your ruck marches and all those things. Um, and then, and then they, they have uh, a bending phase. So you, you spend um, two, three weeks in Fort Benning. It uh, used to be called desert phase. They used to do it in Utah, um, but they took that out. So you do your first phase in Benning. Then if you make it through the first phase, you go to mountain phase, which is up in the Appalachian. So you'll jump in. If the weather's good, you get to jump into the Appalachians. Um, and then from there, if you make it through the second phase, you go to the third phase, which is swamp phase, which is in the panhandle of Florida. Um, you know, and all of them have their own little nuances. The blood, sweat and tears are all different color in each one of those phases. And then the time of year you're going through Ranger school has a big difference, you know, and in Regiment, we would say, like, if you went. If you're a Winter Ranger, you would, you would sew your tab on with white, uh, thread, you know, and if you. And if you weren't, then you would just do it with black thread, right? So if you're a Wind Ranger, that was, you know, I don't know if that actually really happens, but that was the thing. Oh, I was a Winter Ranger. I'm going to put, you know, white threaded. I'm going to sew my tab on with white thread. But I was a Winter Ranger. I went in January. And, uh, I hate being hot, but I'll tell you what, I might hate being cold even more.

Speaker A: That's funny, dude. Um, did you, uh. So which. Which one of those three was the worst, from your view?

Speaker B: You know, they, they were all equally terrible and all equally gratifying. Um, the first phase, you want to just get out of Benny, right? Because you like. And we. And what made it even, like, worse and a lot of like, probably, I think the 82nd has it. You know, there's a lot there. They call it pre Ranger. So you go to pre Ranger school and. And we called it cert. And so you go to cert for three weeks right up into the weekend before you went into Ranger school. And, but, and what they did, and I couldn't figure out why we did this, but I kind of get it now.

Speaker A: They.

Speaker B: I mean, that three weeks was probably some of the hardest three weeks that I went. And this is pre Ranger school, right? And the regiment runs it. They run the research program. And it was, I think 10 degrees in Fort Benning, and we were sleeping out in the woods. I mean, they just. We are land nabbing, rocking. Just, just like. And so you're. I'm like, I'm beat down right now before I even go into Ranger school. And, you know, if you don't make it through cert, pre Ranger in range Regiment, you don't get to go to Ranger school, right. M. So it's like, so you actually got to go and go through cert and pass it and do, uh, you know, pass your PT test. Do all the things hit your land out and then you get sent to, then you get sent to ranger school. And the first three weeks of ranger school are, are really like learning some of the ranger tactics. You know, they're teach, they teach people how to take apart weapons and things that you're going to be tested on through the three phases. But they're also the uh, you know, you have to do malvesi, like which is the obstacle course in the middle of the night. You gotta, you gotta hit the ruck marches, you gotta hit the PT test. There's all these things. So you're con. And you're constantly like it's very physical, right? And they, and they break, they don't break you down as much because you get to go to the chow hall and you get to eat breakfast and you get to eat dinner, but you're not sleeping much. You know, like, ah, very, very little. Um, so, and, and then when you go into, to the first phase, what they do, it's really interesting because they kind of build you up the first phase. Like you'll go out for two or three days out into the woods with your, with, with your platoon, right? And, and then you'll come back in and you'll rest and refit and maybe get to go and, and maybe have a hot meal. I don't even think that that was something we had there because they gave us two, uh, MREs a day and, and typically they made us eat them, um, at the same time, you know, between the hours of 2 and 2:30 in the morning. And if you didn't have what if what you didn't have finish at the end of it, it got taken away from you. So you would just be chowing down, you know, and, and probably getting about, you know, 12, 000 calories within a half hour and then sleeping for a few hours and getting back up and doing it. Then you would go out for a few days, come back and so, and then mountain phase, you would go out for a week up in the Appalachians and then come back and rest and refit for a couple days, then go out for another week in Florida. You go out for the whole three weeks, you're just out in the swamps. So they kind of build it up like that. Um, but along the whole path, I mean there, you know, I, I would say there were times in, in, in all of the phases where in a whole week's time you would maybe get 15 to 20 hours of sleep in seven days. Oh, dude. You know, so, you know, sometimes it would Be an hour and a half, two hours. Sometimes you might get a whopping three, if you're lucky, four hours. But you know, so sleep deprivation and, and uh, and food deprivation, like it's what put. Because Ranger school, it's, it's not a physical, in my opinion. This, in my opinion is not a physical test. It's a completely a, uh, mental, It's a, it's a mental thing because when you, when I don't care how if you look like Arnold Schwarzenegger come in or you're just like, like a marathon runner and everything in between, they, you're, you get broken down, right? When you don't get to eat and you don't get to sleep. And that's really what they do is they break everybody down. So you're. So now, when you're now tasked with making hard decisions because you put, get put in leadership positions, there's probably about, I would say, you know, five to 10 leadership positions and those are the ones who are being graded. And you never know when you're going to get hey, Dave Port, or you're, you're the platoon leader today or you, uh, know you're the Como guy, which sucks because that was like 125 pound rucksack with all the como gear in it. And so, and when you do that, the cadre, you know, the Ranger instructors, the cadre just the, our eyes walk beside you with a little notepad and they don't say anything to you and they're just taking notes. And so you're paranoid the whole time when you're in a leadership position. Because if, if you get a go, that means that you can, you can go to the next phase. If you get a no go, you get a, they'll put you in leadership maybe a couple times. And if you get a couple no gos, like, then you get held over in that phase, right? And everybody who makes it through goes to the next phase. And you're stuck there with the class that's coming up from the phase before. And if you fail out of that, that phase again, like, let's just say you failed phase two. You get restarted in phase two, if you fail it again, you go back to the beginning of phase one. Oh, uh, so you could be all the way in phase three and, and get a no go twice. Boom, you're back at the beginning in the bending phase. So like it's a game and, and, and they don't let you know whether you got to go or no go till the end. So if you're get, keep getting put in leadership positions. It really messes with your head. And that happened to me in my second phase. I was in a leadership position like three or four times. And I'm going like, they're putting me here because I'm getting no go. Uh, what I found out is I got a go on my first. They just liked how fast I moved when we tried to get to another objective. So they would put me in charge, so we would hurry and get there, you know, but, but it's a pair. It's very paranoid, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, because you, because you don't, you don't know where you sit. And that psychological game, you know, and then add the, the elements to it, like, it just creates. It's really wild. It's like if I could go back and be a fly on the wall, you know, or like an invisible drone, just to watch the psychology of all of us, like, it was like Ranger school was a very, very interesting thing. And people would be like, oh, we don't fight like this because it's very Vietnam kind of era based, like, like, you know, tactics and things like that. But it doesn't matter if you made it a Space Invaders like situation, right? Because what you're doing is you're breaking everybody down to the same level. And then, and you're putting them, um, in a situation where they have to make decisions that affect, like, roughly 20 other people. And if you don't, and if you don't succeed in the mission, whatever that mission is, then you actually get a noo. And now you're playing with, with weeks and months of your life, you know, and maybe coming back without a tap, right? So lots of weird pressure. But, but in that, in that, in that pressure cooker, you start to see people do some really unnatural things, right? Even myself. Like, you know, I look back into the couple of things I did. I'm like, oh, my God, Like, I don't know if I would tell anybody that I did that. But like, when you're that hungry and that tired, you. You start to do things to compensate.

Speaker A: I mean, is there anything that stands out? Not necessarily that you did, but you

Speaker B: remember other folks doing, well, I'll just tell you something. I did. And like, you know, when you bend the rules a little bit or, you know, um, you're, you're playing a risky game in Ranger regiment because if you get caught, like, if you put some food in from your MRE in your pocket and they find it, like, you, you, you can get dropped from the course. Right. Um, but I remember coming out of the first phase, we were going to jump into the Appalachians, but it was just January going on February and the weather was not permitting. So we got to get on a bus, which was great because it's a two hour drive to Delonica in northern Georgia. We all knew.

Speaker A: Peaceful. Two hours.

Speaker B: Yeah, two hours of sleep, you know, but right at the end they're like, you know, porter, get off the bus. We need you to go throw all the trash away from whatever. So I had to run over there and I grabbed these two big bags of trash and everyone's on the bus and I go, I gotta go behind the building behind the bus and there's um, some dumpsters. I flip open the dumpster, I look down, there's trash in there and I see an. It's open. It's a jar of peanut butter that's about three quarters full. And we're starving. So I look around and I chuck the trash in and jump into the bin and I, I took the, the peanut butter, shoved it down my pants, and then we all shared it on the bus. Passing her around, eating peanut butter out of a garbage at a dumpster, you know, like, and I look back and I'm like, it was the best peanut butter. And I made a lot of friends that way too, you know, but, you know, then we had to somehow like, get rid of the trash and do some things like that. But like, I, like, I never in a million years, probably never again in my life. Well, you know, you never know what could happen.

Speaker A: Jump.

Speaker B: We'll jump into a dumpster and get an open jar of peanut butter and eat it with no, hands down, no, no ego, nothing.

Speaker A: So, and then tell your friends about it. Not, I mean, celebrate it with your friends. You're like, hey, check this out. This is the best thing ever. And they're all like, yeah, yeah, let's freaking.

Speaker B: Yeah, we're just sick and dirty fingers. I haven't been washed for a couple weeks in the peanut butter jar. Just sharing it and.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So, oh man.

Speaker A: But that's a great, like, ah, a great story because it also puts in perspective how you're feeling at the moment. Like if you're that hard up and you're just starving and you're going to eat dumpster peanut butter like that, that just, that's puts it in perspective where your mental, physical state were. Are.

Speaker B: Um, and you see, you see it, you see it with a lot of the people and that's what. When people think Too much. And. And. And looking back, and I did it too. You know, I hate to admit this, but. But people, you know, you like, oh, uh, how'd you get through ranger school? Oh, you had a, like a no quit attitude. I'm like, kidding me. Like, I had the opposite. I quit a hundred times in my mind every day. I'm like, this sucks after this, man. Like this. I'm freezing. It's literally snowing on us in the Appalachians. We're. We're trees. You're waking up with snow on your bivy sack, and it's just, like, miserable, right? No sleep and. And like. But you're not the moment, you know, and that's hard when you're. You're frozen or you're so tired. I mean, I would. We would watch. I would watch people walk up to trees, like, especially in the Florida phase, because, like, now, you've been months now, um, especially if you've made it straight through, uh, without sleep and food deprivation. And I would watch people walk up. No, no, kitty. Walk up to trees, to big pine trees. And they. In the middle of the night, they were. So. We called it droning. They were so you get so tired, you just. You just. And they would be actually putting what they thought was money in their pocket into the tree as if it was a vending machine and hitting buttons. And I would even walk up to them sometimes, be like, what are you doing? Like, uh, oh, I'm just getting a candy bar. And I would just let him finish the task. Uh, anyone who's been in ranger school who's watching this has a million stories on what I just said, and probably a lot worse in some scenarios, because the thing that will get you a, uh, no go fastest is if you're leading and it's the middle of the night, let's say two or three in the morning. You. What happens when you're all in a line, following each other to wherever you're going to, you know, have camp or an objective or something like that. When you're droning, you're that tired, all it takes is one person to kind of start veering to the left or right and head off into the woods, and everyone behind them, like, follows them. And you see this a lot, like when you. When you break contact with your own group and it, uh. Like, that's a big no, no. And that's a hard thing to do when you're in a leadership position and everybody's only had, you know, an hour of sleep or two hours of sleep. Over the last 48 hours or something like that. I saw that a lot. You know, is that. That sleep deprivation made people do some wacky things?

Speaker A: Did I mean, uh, like, it's a. It's a funny story and like, you know, fairly harmless. Like putting thinking, the pine trees, a vending machine. Be like, did you ever have, like, look, when I get tired, I get cranky, man. Like, I'm gonna get, like, real agitated. And, you know, did you. Did you have any situations where, you know, you're having to deal with a teammate who's just like, you know, uh, you have conflict with folks, like, because. Because they're. They're tired and just stressed out and does that change how you deal with things?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, you know, it does. And I think as you progress through the phases, if you don't learn real fast that you don't earn your ranger tab on your own, you got a problem because you earn it with everybody to your left and right. Like, no one earns their tab on their own. Right? And so there's. And it's the people who think they're going to earn it on their own that I think end up having some problems. Right. And so there's a lot of discord and discomfort, especially when the cadre don't tell you you're going the wrong way. They wait two or three hours until you're completely off track and maybe tap you on the shoulder. And so there's a lot of disagreement or discussion and iteration. What, you know, would we. You stop and you're like, are we at the right place? And people. And people are cranking, people are tired and. And in, in, in. If you let that fester, you just got to keep moving. It's just, you know, it's just like, when you're working out and you're doing, like, I don't know, CrossFit workout or hit workout, whatever. Like, you just don't stop moving because when you stop moving, you get tired. And when you get tired, then all of a sudden. So it's like trying to keep everyone moving and then trying to motivate the people who are just super unmotivated for a lot of, um, like, very, you know, like, realistic reasons. Like, that's a. That's a hard one, right? Uh, and so, yeah, there's, you know, the thing that you would see a lot is that people. People would think they start thinking, like, I failed in that leadership role. I bet I got a no go. And they'd start to let that affect them. And they. Because they Think they know the outcome of when they were. Of what they got graded on, and that's not the case. And they start to. They start to, uh, you know, like, sometimes silently quit and sometimes not silently quit because they feel like they're out of the game. So you're. You're in. People did it for me. I did it for them. You're constantly coaching people up, going, like, hey, listen, man, like, we just keep going, like, you'll get it on the next one. Like, and so, like, that. Don't stop. Because if once you stop and you start thinking, all of a sudden, that's when it starts to unravel. And, um, yeah, that.

Speaker A: That's super interesting. So I liked how you said, you know, you had. You were comparing the no quit attitude to, like, hey, that's not my reality. Like, I. I quit, you know, 100 times a year, all day, every day. I was quitting in my mind. What's kind of your stop point in your mind there? How do you. How do you keep that from, you know, your thought turning into an action? Here's what I'm getting at. There's this book that I really like. It's called As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. And his. His whole idea is you. So a thought, you. You reap an action.

Speaker B: You're.

Speaker A: You sow an action, you reap a consequence. And I think there's a lot of truth. I think there's truth to that. Um, but I also, you know, you're. This. What you're sharing with me here is all super insightful in that, yes, you. You can think. There's a difference between thinking it, saying it, or thinking it and doing it. What's your approach? Just to. To. To think about, hey, yeah, this sucks. I'm quitting, but actually not doing it.

Speaker B: Yeah. You know, um. Yeah. Ah.

Speaker A: And.

Speaker B: And I'll tell you how I did that, because I. Because I did. I don't know if I quit a hundred times a day, but there were times where I'm just like, this. This is like, this is ridiculous. You know, um, what I would do is I would go through the thought experiment of what I. So, like, I'm over this. Like, I'm, um. You know, I want to be back on the beach in Hawaii where it's warm and I don't have, like, I don't. People yelling at me and all this stuff. Well, uh, what I started doing is doing some backwards induction. I said, okay, if I made that decision, I got to go back to regimen with my Tail between my legs and tell them I quit, I'm out now. I'm going back to the big army. Like, not a bad thing, but certainly, uh, uncertainty. Then I got to go back and tell my wife and kids who, you know, who I like. I'm trying to show my kids, like, when you do something, you start something, you know, and then I'm like, all of a sudden all those. That whole thing was like, nope, I'm not quitting. So quitting and then playing it through actually kept me going. Because maybe the second order effects of quitting it might feel good right now because you get to go sit by the hot burn. Burn barrel and have a piece of pizza and a cold beer. Because that's what they're, you know, they're over there telling you, like, come quit, and you're going to get, uh, you know, hot shower and a beer and a pizza. You know, you do that. That's. It takes that. That. That's great for about a minute and a half. And then you got to sit, uh, it. Sit with what that reality is at that point. So I would play those realities out my head. I'm like, okay, that's not really what I want to do, even though I really want to do that right now. And so that was definitely, certainly one of them. Um, because you don't like, it was easier to see. I said this before, like, we're not very good about knowing what we want to be when we grow up. We're really good about knowing what we don't want to be. Like, you know, I knew I didn't want to go and do that as the. As the result, an impact of feeling, of getting out of a miserable environment and situation in the.

Speaker A: In.

Speaker B: In the present. You know, is it a way to solve problems? And, uh, I don't know, but that's certainly how I did it there.

Speaker A: Y. That's super logical. And it obviously worked. I mean, you made through a bunch of really hard days. So you're describing the scenario where you're, you know, you're. You're navigating, your compass is out, and people, you know, there may be some disagreements and stuff. Uh, maybe people are under stress. And I was thinking, you know, finding direction effectively, uh, that can happen on a mountain range or in Florida or any of those. Those places you described. That can also happen in a conference room, you know, or a boardroom, like where a bunch of people are sitting around a table, they're frustrated and trying to figure out direction. Like, do those same skills apply in Your leadership roles in corporate.

Speaker B: In corporate work or, you know. Yeah, very much so. Like, and I, you know, it's funny you asked that question. I haven't really ever thought about that. But I think there's a lot of parallels and similarities to. To what? And I'll just take the Ranger school example. Right? Um, yeah, you know, because you have. You have clear. You have a clear mission. It's very clear what you're supposed to do. Like the. The end result, right? Just like in business, like, we want this result. Um, there's a lot of ways to get there, and. And there's a lot of. There's a lot of kind of right ways. There's. And then there's a kind of a lot of wrong ways, and there's. Then. Then there's just absolutely the wrong way. What ends up what I. This is my. And this is maybe a personality trait. Um, you've heard the saying, like a camel was a horse created in a committee, right? When people sit there and iterate, like, I want a horse. You know, if I tell my team, they all get a bunch of people and they have 27 meetings. All of a sudden they come out with a camel. It's like, well, we want to put a water hump on it and its feet are bigger. And all of a sudden it's like, no, I wanted a horse. You know what I mean? And you got a camel. Very. You know, so like sometimes in. In Ranger school, like, is you can't sit around and figure out what the best course of action path would be. Do we want to go straight up that, you know, that mountain here in the Appalachians, or should we zigzag back and forth? Right. You could spend, especially when you're tired and hungry, a day and a half trying to figure out how to. How to m. Navigate up the mountain, you know? But, you know, what I found is just like, just pick a way and just go do something. You know, just. Just pick a path up the mountain. I realized many times that I shouldn't have gone. Try to go straight up and over, even though it's the fastest point from A to B, because that does. It's better to zigzag back and forth up up the. The big Appalachian Mountain. Um, but at the end of the day, if you just step off and start making forward progress, like, you can change course along the way to get to where you want to be. That's a parallel in corporate America, too. Like, you know what you got? Like, someone's got to make a decision Say we're moving out. And you know what? You don't even know if it's the right, if it's the best path. You just gotta, you just gotta move. It's like you gotta keep moving. It's. You've worked in tech, I've worked in tact. We've been in tons of thousands of meetings and I would say probably 85 of them were absolutely like, like a waste of time. Um, maybe not. Maybe I'll say that for myself. You know, a lot of times everybody's talking about what the right action is because we get so focused on not acting. We get focused on the outcome of acting and that starts to slow everybody down because you're like, well, what if it's, what if that's not the right way to do it? Or what if, what if that's not the best way to go to market? Or you know, should we be focusing on this thing? We don't really know all the answers to some of those things because they're second, third order effects. There's all these externalities that happen when we make an action. But if you start thinking about way too much about like the, what's, what's going to happen if that action is not right, it bombs people down. Uh, you know, you've probably seen that in a lot of different circumstances. I've just spent the last, I don't know, 18 months working as the chief of staff for the president of, of, of all the Americas. 70% of our revenue at ServiceNow. And one of the things I noticed flying really close to the sun with the C suite and you know, interacting with is that like a lot of times people don't know the best. Like it's not that our, ah, that our C suite doesn't know what they're doing. They absolutely do. But there's a lot of things that are very algebraic and we can do the math and we can be like, yeah, that's, you know, we should do this right. But, but a lot of the decisions that I think have to be made at every level, but certainly, ah, it's at, you know, in ranger school and in the, in the, in the boardroom is things that we, that aren't like clearly defined and algebraic in nature. And so now someone's got to make a decision. And so making those quick decisions and knowing like, okay, we uh, of course you bring intelligence to the game, right? In context and past experience and market conditions and blah, blah, blah, blah. But you just. Acting is a sign of a good leader. Even if it's not the right action. You, you usually learn whether you were right about what the outcome was going to be after the fact.

Speaker A: That's a, that's a great point. You can solve so much by just taking that first step. I think in a lot of scenarios. I think that's spot on.

Speaker B: 100. 100.

Speaker A: I love that.

Speaker B: And you know what? I found that, and I'm not even saying I'm great at it, but I found that that's actually sometimes really hard for people to do.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Especially when you have limited information and you have a time, you, you have your time bound and so there's, there's action that needs to happen. Like I, that's, that's sometimes difficult for people, People be included. Like. Right. I, um, have very limited information. I don't know. I know what is wanted. Is this the right course of action? Like you can iterate on that forever. People do, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, but, but there's a cost to that, right? I mean, waiting too long. I think there's, yeah, yeah, there's a

Speaker B: cost associated with waiting too long and there's a cost associated with, with moving too quick too, without like having as much thought and foresight and context and reaching out to other people to get some feedback. So there's a cost, There are costs associated with both of them.

Speaker A: Yeah. I like how you mentioned reaching out to other people to get feedback. What's your general approach on that? Do you, are you a, uh, like, you know, do you like to, you know, get, get perspective or like, let me think about it this way. Um, do you, when it comes to reaching out to people to get feedback, what's your general approach? Do you kind of just do, are you more like a trust my gut kind of guy or are you like, hey, let's try to get some insight from the whole group or let's try to, you know, talk with a mentor or I don't know, some combination of, uh, of those.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's probably a little bit of a combination. And you know, I, I, I, I, I always have a gut, you know, for the most part, unless I'm completely out of my league and I know nothing about what I'm involved in, you know, so, but I, but, so I always like to trust my gut. Trusting your gut. Insane. Out loud. Loud. What your gut's telling you to everybody is two different things. Right. And ah, because, you know, yeah, like my, my gut could be wrong, but a lot of times my gut's not wrong on, on a certain subset of things. So getting, you know, and the one thing I try to do, and I'm not perfect at it, but, uh, you know, and I. I was even telling my team this week on our team call is like, look, like, this is a safe space. Like, this is a. There's allowed dissent here. You're allowed to say, my baby's ugly. Like, and that's perfectly fine, even if I sign your bonus, right? Like. Like, let's just, like, get that on the open. I even said this as the Chief of Staff. Like, I am the Chief of staff by title when I was the Chief of staff. But we are the Chief of staff. It's not one person. It's a whole apparatus creating an environment where people can feel like we can say some things and we can poke at things because, you know, and that's great. What's even worse is when people sit and they have a, uh, thought like, that idea is stupid. And I know why, because I tried it 17 times, and they don't say anything at all. Like, to me, that's even worse because, you know, in a lot of these corporate settings, um, like, I call it the petting zoo, you have a teams or Zoom meeting with 20 people on it, and there's like, they're pitching this idea, this. And then you have all these stakeholders. You know, there's been times where people are, you know, texting me on the side going like, this will never work. I've tried this a hundred times or whatever, and it's like, well, then say that out loud so we don't go down that road, right? But people. Everybody wants to pet each other and not have any dissidents in these meetings. And that actually is the worse outcome than saying, hey, your baby's ugly. And this is why, you know, so I try to create environment number one. Certainly, I trust my gut. I do enough homework ahead of time to have some kind of reasonable, logical, intelligent, like. Like. Re. Like something justifiable for. For the outcome. But then I. I lean on a lot of people for a lot of things, right? And. And sometimes I've even found that even when I. Whether I think or I do have the answer to the. The. The question at hand, not coming right out the gate and saying it like, is so beneficial to me because I start hearing what other people are saying. I'm like, oh, my God. I'm like, I'm not wrong. My answer wouldn't have been wrong, but it sure wouldn't have been as robust. You know, I have mentors who I talk to about, like, Higher level, you know, professional growth. And what do I do, like, with this, you know, this issue between teammates and things like that. But when it comes, I like to, like, I pick up the phone and be like, man, was I way off on that. I'm way of those guys. Soon as the meeting's over, I'll call you on your cell immediately and be like, hey, Jeff, like, am I like, does this pass the sniff test? What I said, give me some feedback. Right. Um, we all have biases and, and I'm certainly not the smartest in, in, in. In. In every room or any room. And I'm good with that. Um, you know, and so it's like we're a sum of all of our parts for a reason. Right? Like, we have teams for a reason. Because you can't, you can't do most of the. On their own. And it's not meant to be that way. And it would, and if it, if it was, probably everything would come out like a surfboard or some labeled surfing or something. It would be my. It would be my thing. It would be terrible. It wouldn't. It would be the objective.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for going there. I, I really appreciate that perspective. And yeah, I've never been in your shoes, but seems like truth to me, so I like it. Um, okay, so we were back. We're back in, uh, from like a timeline perspective. We were back in. You were in Ranger school. You made it through all three phases. And you know something I was wondering about, as you went in, you'd already been on a deployment. Did you start like a little banged up? You know, like, were you going there pretty, pretty healthy?

Speaker B: You know, I felt pretty banged up. Right. Cause we got off deployment. I had, I'd gone to, to pre rasp, which is just like the, to, you know, beat you down. But what they were doing is they were hardening you for what the. What was a task to come. I went into Ranger school, like, not knowing if I could even run the five mile test that we were going to have, like, later that night. Like, I was. That I was that thrashed, you know, um, and then, no, for me, there was an added measure of pressure on everybody who started in that January class, because what they have is they have something called Best Ranger. They do it every year. They bring, you know, it's groups of two and they compete over the span of five or six days and nights. And you're working almost 24 hours a day doing all these tasks. And Ranger regiment always has people supported. I think we Ranger regiments Won the last three or four Best Rangers. Make a long story short, it's through a lot of these, uh, areas that you're doing ranger schools. If you got held back in any of the phases that I've in that I was going through in my class, you had to wait two months because Ranger Best Ranger Competition came through and took over all a lot of the areas. So you would be painting rocks and telling people where they can sit and stand as you, you know, for Ranger. For Best Ranger. So, like, I was like, if I. If I don't make it out of the first phase, like, I'm going to be stuck here for two months. If I don't make it out of the second phase, I'm going to be stuck here for, you know, seven weeks. And then if I don't make it out of Florida. So there was this added pressure because I got kids at home, uh, had two young girls, and I'm, like, missing them. And so I'm not. And I have this thing chasing me, and I'm going to be painting rocks, you know, and bleachers for, you know, people to watch. Rang Best Ranger Competition. So, like, that was like, chasing us, too, during mine. Not that it makes it easier or harder or anything. It's just, for me, I didn't want to be sitting around for two months. I would go and say, you know, that'll get.

Speaker A: That'll.

Speaker B: That gets people in trouble, you know. So that was chasing us. And so that. There was about 200 people that started with us in our company in ranger school there, there were four of us who actually made it through all four phases and made it straight through. Four of us, me and three other people. I still am in touch with one of them today. So we looked around. There was 200 people we were starting with. And then, you know, after fate, after the first three weeks, you know, knock off 30 or 40 or 50 of those. Phase one, I think we had 12 people that made it out of phase one. 12.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And partly because they needed a lot of people to paint rocks. That's what I think. That could be wrong. That's my. That's my conspiracy theory. You know, um, 12 of us made it to mountain phase, and then four, and then six of us made it to, um, swamp phase, and four of us actually made it all the way through. Now, out of those 200, you know, there's probably a large percentage of them that eventually made it through, but there's probably a large percentage of them that didn't make it through. I was Just. And, and I'm not patting myself on the back. I still, to this day, like, I'm like, how did I make it straight through? I don't know stats or anything. It happens, you know, I, I don't know the stats, but I was just so. I, I was more grateful to make it straight through and not get stuck almost than anything else at the time.

Speaker A: That's, I mean, that's brutal. And it's, you know, it's not like a, um, like you said, pat yourself on the back kind of thing, but I mean, let's also acknowledge the statistics there. Like, that's, that's, that's a pretty small pass rate. I mean, that sounds. That's brutal.

Speaker B: Yeah, I felt, I felt really lucky and I had some really good people around me. And again, it goes back to like, I did not earn my Ranger tab on my own, you know? You want to be a good battle buddy. Like, if you're, if your buddy's that tired and you're going to be sitting in a hole over watching a, uh, field all night long and you can't fall asleep, uh, you let him go to sleep for 10 minutes and make sure you don't fall asleep and then you flop it. You know what I mean? Or wake them up when the cadre comes around. There's a lot of that going on because if you're, if you're not, if you're not working with each other, you're working against yourself, you know?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it's same thing in business, too. If you're not working together, you're working against yourself most of the time.

Speaker A: Like, you know, that's so true. Um, you know, you're talking about how people treat you a little bit differently after you come out. You know, you hear your tab on. But like, did you feel differently when you finished that thing? I mean, that's an amazing accomplishment to come out, right? I mean, you're like, I just did something really, really hard. And on the other side of that, you gotta feel differently about yourself.

Speaker B: You know, it was really interesting. And like, I don't think I've ever really said this out loud before, but, um, when I got to graduation, number one, you're so tired and you just want to, like, get. And go get in the car with your family or whoever's going to be there, or even if there's nobody, you go have a hamburger by yourself and just get away, get out of there that you're so tired. Like, it, like, I remember getting my tab and I'm Like, I was, I was happy that it was over. I wasn't getting that dopamine hit that you think you would when you just like, you know, like, like cross the finish line of a really hard race or something like that, you know, because, I mean, number one, it's like you're looking at this piece of clothing. Um, it didn't have this, like this moment that was just overwhelming. Um, and because at the end of the day that the, the piece of cloth, the Ranger tab just is a physical representation of an inward commitment that you just gave for 62 straight days. You know, and when you look at it, it's like, and I've, I've told this to other people in other scenarios. Like, you know, when you set goals, like I'm going to go to Ranger school and I want to finish it and get my tab, or, you know, I want to do a hundred sit ups straight, whatever it is, fill in the blank. Like you're, as you progress along the path of succeeding at some goal you set, you actually have a, A, uh, physiological reaction. You get dopamine hits as you start to like, iteratively do better. You know, where you don't get dopamine hits when you actually complete it. It's like, this is like a, this is like a proven thing in science. So what, what, what was, what was the thing? It's the 62 days, it's not the graduation. And when I look back, I'm like that, like, uh, I, I can't believe I made it through phase one. I can't believe I, uh, you know, I didn't get caught doing something dumb. I can't believe I made it through all the way through. Like all those things like in making it and progressing like that, those were moments where like, that's like, where the meat of my, like Ranger school is graduating. Was that that pinnacle point? You know, and then in the. But the thing is, is like, ah, now I'm a tabbed. You know, I'm a tabbed E4am M. I going to be a saw gunner. And you slap, you go back and, and you're smiling and, and all of a sudden you realize like 80% of Ranger Regiment has a tab on their shoulder too. And now you're just, if you go back to the 82nd or the 101st or the third ID with a Ranger tab on 80 seconds, a little less, but you're like, like you're the guy in Ranger Regiment, you're not the guy because you have a Ranger tab. So even where you land after a Tab, you're not real special in Ranger regiment as a. Combat. As a. As an 11 Bravo, a shooter with a Ranger tab, because that's what you have to do, and that's what everybody has. I know that's weird, but, like. But it. It did mean a lot to me because I. I learned more. You know, I, like. Oh, yeah, I've gone through, uh, assessment, selection. I've been to war, you know, I've got to go to. Got into firefights and stuff like this. Like, you know, this shouldn't be as hard as it would be for somebody else. Absolutely. I was absolutely wrong. They're completely different. You know, it was hard, you know. Yeah, sir. I had some. Some tactical experience and things like that, but, like, you know, it was. It was a completely different set of problems in a completely different environment, you know, and. And so, like, you can't rest on your laurels and think it's going to take you through the day just because of that. How about that? But I will go and say, like, working on a cattle ranch and sleeping under trees, being hungry and cold, living on it on the beach, you know, in Hawaii, you know, like, growing up with Lord of the Flies, all of those things as. Where some of all our parts had to have helped me there. I don't. I can't pinpoint exactly how I can make some strings of connection, but, like, all of that stuff helped me to get there. I. You know, and, you know. You know, fighting. Fighting over, you know, you know, bread on the table with five other brothers. Right. You know, I mean, you know, I'm sure there's some parallels there. Sneak. Sneaking it. Sneaking the last piece of chocolate cake in the middle of the night when no one's looking, you know, at home. Yeah, like that. That was a transferable skill. Um, so that's awesome.

Speaker A: Um. What. What do you prefer when it, you know, you described it. You know, you're in the Rager regiment, and you're just one of. You're one of many. Um, do you prefer that, or do you prefer the, you know, the. The other one where you're kind of more. More standing out? Uh, I mean, I'm just thinking.

Speaker B: Yeah, I prefer the blend, you know. You know, achievements are great, and, like, I will always be proud of all the things that I got to do, including going to Ranger school. But the. But I. But. But to know, like, that was hard. And everybody will admit, like, it. No one will admit, like, Ranger school was a breeze. It was easy. Right. Or whatever. And Maybe there's people out there feel that way. Um, but, but, but, but, but watering it down because you're with a group of people. I liken it to, like, like being a professor at a college, when you get your Ph.D. and you got all your lays on you and your hat, you got your PhD, a diploma, like, that's awesome. And then you go work at a university, and everyone there has it, too. So it's not that it cheapens it. Let's just say to, I don't know, pick your. Pick your favorite regular army unit where they might have three people in the whole battalion that have a Ranger tab. Like, you're going to stick out and you're going to get, like, they're going to give you the hard things and stuff because, you know, because it represents something and. And people see that, like, that's a dangerous place for. For me and for, uh, individuals, because all of a sudden now, like, yeah, Po power, like, it can be taken and it can be abused because just because you went through 62 days of hell or 100 days or whatever it was, like, that's. That's something that's to be, you know, recognized, uh, and is an accomplishment. But as soon as you're done, like, what's the next thing, right. Ranger regiment, you couldn't rest on that tab, Laurel. It's like, what's. What are you doing next? Like, like. And so that's what I really love about special operations and being in Ranger Regiment. Like, you couldn't rest on your laurels that long. You know, everyone's got a combat infantry badge. Everyone's got deployment patches. People are walking around everywhere with Purple Hearts and everything. Like, so it's like, it's a very unusual situation compared to, like, outside of that world, in. Within the. Within the. The army and the military. Right. So I prefer that, like, because it. Grant, it keeps you grounded.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I think that makes sense.

Speaker B: And. And it's what I. I'm going to skip way ahead and a little bit to transition. Sometimes people transition out of the military and going into the regular workforce and civilian life and things like that. You know, you got to take off the uniform because in the military. And I wrote about. I. I did a blog on LinkedIn about this years ago. It was like, um, you know, you don't. You don't. You have all your military bling that shows all the cool stuff you've done and blah, blah, blah, like, you got to take that thing off. And in the civilian world, like, I, like, I couldn't tell Jeff that you, I don't know, have these accolades and awards and all these things. Unless I, like, unless you flash them in front of me or told me or I went down some rabbit hole on the Internet and found out that you did, because you don't wear them every day, you know, and so some people have a really hard time transitioning because they. They've, uh, now identified themselves so much with the things they did while they were in that they have a hard time, like, having an identity on the outside, you know, And I know I'm skipping ahead, but, like, it kind of goes back to that same thing about in Ranger Regiment. There's so many people with all the good bling that, like, you know, go get all the bling that you can get, and you're still going to be like a lot of these people.

Speaker A: Yeah,

Speaker B: Like, every. Every deployment had its own thing, you know. You know, I got to a point, um, where I had to make a decision. I'm like, okay, well, I'm coming up on, you know, 10 years is in very near reach. If I'm going to stand for 10, do I. And it go past one day, past 10 years, do I just stay in for 20? Because at that point, like, I'm halfway there, right? Uh, like, that's a bad way to think about it. But that's kind of where my thought was. It's like, okay, this is a natural exit point, right? And so I, you know, I sat under a big tree for a little while and decided, like, okay, you know, this is the right thing for me, this right thing for the family. Um, and especially having some young kids, like, in. In. In Ranger Regiment, it's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's rough. Like, we get awards, we get plaques, we get, you know, medals and all these things, but the wives and the kids and. Or the spouses, I should say the spouses and the families of especially special operators, but people in the military writ large, like, they don't get any, you know, and they're doing God's work, you know, every day, every deployment, every training cycle and stuff like that. So it was the right thing for me. And. And it, uh. And it was daunting coming out. And I had. I had, you know, I had a master's degree. I had a degree in economics. Like. Like, it wasn't like I was starting from scratch. Like, I had done some things, you know, and seen some things, but it was still a little daunting, you know, getting out because you don't, you know, like, oh, I gotta go if I gotta feed my family, I gotta get a job, I gotta like all those things. I gotta hang up my uniform. My ranger tab doesn't mean as much out there. If I tell everybody I got a ranger tab in the civilian world, like some people might think that's awesome, uh, because they understand what it takes to get it. But you don't go around doing that because it's not going to win you in a favors. It'll probably do the opposite. So it's like you're hanging up a little bit of like the past, trying to figure out what I'm gonna do in the future. Um, and so it was uh, definitely for every transitioning person, whether you're been in for four years or 24 years, like everybody's going to come to that point. Right. It's not, it's not daunting and scary that you like people just, well, maybe it is for some. They stay in. For me it was just like, okay, like this is a new set of hard, uh, hard work that I gotta to do to get to where I want to be.

Speaker A: Yeah, I, I mean, I've obviously never experienced that, but I mean, I could imagine. And from what I've heard, yeah, I mean that's a big, big piece for your identity and I couldn't imagine that how you could go through something for a decade or, or even, you know, a shorter period and like that just becomes a part of you and so you move on. There's like a little, I don't know, there's like almost like a morning period. As you know, you kind of leave that part of you behind and try to, try to move forward. That's so, yeah, that's, that's super interesting. So what did you, what did you end up like you got out. You know, you're like, I'm gonna try to try to figure something else out. Did you already have an idea of what you wanted to do or is this another. Well, I know I don't want to be, I know, I know I'm not going to be a ranger anymore, but I'm going to do something else. And you're like, I'll just figure it out.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that was a, that was definitely a bit of a, you know, I, I knew where I wanted to physically be. I wanted to be back home on the beach in California. So I knew I was going there, like, nice. So I, and you know, you know, I, I, I said, I've had enough with you. Uh, know, hot, muggy and buggy Georgia. I love, I love myself some Georgia. But I was ready to go back to, to the beach and, and be back home with my people. Um, but I, I didn't, I, you know, it was funny. I was, it's such a strange, um, chain of events. I. When you get out of the military, it's so archaic, right? You, you have this piece of paper that you walk around and you get it signed off. Like you don't owe any money at the library and they sign it off. You got to do this checklist of. And it's literally a piece of paper by the way. Um, and you, and, and you go, and you go. And when you're done, you turn it in and you start to out process and do these things. So I like, honest to God, I'm sitting here thinking like, what do I want to do? Maybe, you know, I got this GI Bill thing, maybe maybe I'll go back and you know, I actually applied and got into a master's degree, um, in New York City. Um, and I just was like, no, I don't want to go back to school. And so I'm in. I had to go to the education center, which was one of those sign offs, right, and make sure that you didn't owe anything to the, like the Education Center. So of course I just needed a signature which should have taken a 30 seconds. I sat there for two hours, you know, waiting, just that what you do a lot in the military. And as I was sitting there, I was so bored. I was just starting to read every pamphlet that you could get, I could get my hands on. Just read something while I'm sitting there not to and poke a dull spoon in my eye. And I started going through and I, I found this pamphlet that said, you know, software, uh, academy, right? And I'm like, man, I like, I don't know anything about coding and that like scares me, right? You know, but they're like, you know, and I had about six months left of my, my contract and it said, well, you know what we're going to do, It's a Microsoft Software and Systems Academy mssa and you can use part of your GI Bill. You get assigned off and you go for three straight months and you, and you, you literally go into a coding camp, right? And there's different tracks and so you gotta, you gotta pass a certification. And I'm like, wow, man, like tech is evergreen. I've never thought about it. Like tech is always going to be growing in like, you know, if I wouldn't work for a horse and buggy company years ago. And all of a sudden the bicycle came out in the car like, I'm out of business, right? But tech's never going to do that. That, that was my thinking and I, I still stand by that. Um, I said, so, you know, I might as well do this, right? And I said, I got six months. It's a three and a half month course. Um, and it's on cloud application develop, development, development. I didn't even know what the cloud was at the time, you know, and it was fairly, it was fairly new, you know, for, especially for Microsoft, but for the Globe, it was kind of new because it was all created on excess capacity by Amazon. They started to sell an excess, excess capacity and introduced the cloud. And then every hyperscaler, you know, jumped on board and, and so, so I actually got myself in through like a lot of pain with my commander to finally sign off and, you know, got a certification in Microsoft something or other that allowed me to get the course. And I learned how to code C plus, C sharp, C sharp, um, JavaScript. I coded enough to realize I never want to be a coder. Like, you know, you know, but I was making little applications like I was, you know, I could spin up VMs and do these things in the cloud. And it got me, but it got my mind understanding terminology and enough to be dangerous where I could open up, you know, a cloud portal and actually code something like hello world or something. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, so, so, you know, it wasn't dangerous. But I like understood enough. Um, and what, what came out of that was access to interviews too with, because I had a, you know, top secret clearance. I had, I could speak army, came from regiment. A lot of the tech companies at the time were really, and you'll, you'll know this about 12 year, 12 years, you know, 10 to 15 years ago, you, you want people who have the tickets to the dance, meaning you can get into a secret insecure facility, a top secret facility, and they want people. So if you have those, that's a really great thing. And then if you can understand tech and uh, like now you're, now you're cooking, right? So the tech companies are really looking, especially at this time, like focusing heavily on the public sector in the federal business, right. And so I interviewed with Google, I interviewed with Amazon, I interviewed um, with Microsoft and at Fort Benny because they brought the, the college did it there on base, um, got offers from Facebook, right. Thank God I didn't Take it because, like, I'm just really happy I didn't take it. But, you know, I, uh, I, I interviewed with Microsoft, um, in Fort Venue, said, hey, we want to fly you to, uh, to, to, to, to Redmond, you know, and interview. You'll probably have about five or six interviews over, you know, two days. And so I go, oh, man. Yeah, cool. I got, I made it to the next round. Well, I, I go there and you're in this room with like 50 people, and it's like speed dating interviewing, right? There's two doors. There's like, rooms all down the door, and they'll be like, porter room eight. And you go in there and you, you sit down and someone interviews you, you know, and you would, you would do that three or four times a day, twice for two days. Well, they were looking for technical people, right? Because I was coming out of a, like, software academy. I went in there and everybody was like, want me to, to, to whiteboard kung fu some code up on the whiteboard, you know, which I had practiced for and stuff. But I decided when I was walking in there, I'm like, no, I'm just going to tell the truth. And so I, I literally would. I walked in every interview and I said, if you're looking for someone who's a coder, who's an engineer, tech, like, I'm not your guy. I don't want pizza slid under the door while I just keep banging around on keyboards. Like. But if you want somebody who can connect people with technology, like, I'm your guy. Like, that's what I want to do. And swear, swear to God, at the end of the two days they came out and they go, everybody really loves you. But we're looking for technical depth and people who want to be coders and people who want to be this and that and the, you know, a technical account manager, all these things. And they're like, but we're going to hold on your resume because, like, we, we'd love to see you here. And I'm like, that's what they tell everybody who didn't make it through this, right? So I'm like, thanks. Um, and I ended up, um, over the next few, few weeks or month, I ended up getting a job with a company called Cubic right here in San Diego. And I was going to be a program manager. I'm literally about two weeks from packing up my stuff and driving across the United States with a U haul to San Diego, where I was going to start my job three or four weeks later. And I get a call from the recruiter at Microsoft, and I like, hey, someone found your resume, and they really want to talk to you. And you know what I said? I said, lose my number. I already accepted a job. And they gave me all my concessions, and I hung up. Up. I literally hung up on the recruiter. Um, I'm not saying that was the smartest thing to do, but I did that.

Speaker A: Bold. Hey, I like it. Yeah, keep going. This is great.

Speaker B: And. And then all of a sudden, 15 minutes later, I get a phone call from an unknown number, and I pick it up, and this guy says, hey, his name's Steve. Steve's like, hey, don't hang up on me. Like. Like, I'm. I'm the. The. The senior director. I run the army team here at Microsoft, and I just want to talk to you. Like, I found your resume, and, ah, I was in the 101st. I have my Ranger tab. I know what you guys do. Like, just hear me out. And I'm just like, oh, boy, here we go. You know, And. And come to find out, Steve's roommate, who he commissioned with, was the 2nd Ranger Battalion commander. Right? So I'm like, oh, okay, I know, Colonel Burgess. Yeah. Um, and we started talking, and I'm like, God, man. Like, I get to. I get to be back selling stuff to the army. Selling stuff, even, you know, like, to the meat eaters of the world. Like, I know that world. Like, I don't know, program management for Cubic. And. And. And Steve did a really good job. Three days later, I'd gone through the whole interview chain, and they, uh, gave me an offer four days later, and I took it.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And I had to call up somebody who was in my m. You know, the. The VP at, uh, Cubic was in my MBA course, and he was doing like, yeah, yeah, I want you. I had to call him up, be like, hey, sorry, man, I'm not coming. I'm going to Microsoft Video. But. But it. But I literally hung up the phone m on the recruiter, and it took Steve. Steve is the greatest seller in the world now. He's the President of the Americas at ServiceNow. Um, Steve Walters ran the army team. Ran. You know, he. He's done really well for m himself. He's a good friend and a great human. Um, which ties back to how I ended up at ServiceNow years later. Um, same connection. Um, but I cut my teeth there on the army team, and I surrounded myself with really good people. Um, and I. And. And unknowingly, like, the first thing you Always do when you get to a new company is you find out who not to go to for help and all of a sudden you're closer to somebody who can actually help you. Um, and I, and I found myself with some really good smart people and we ended up together doing some really awesome stuff, you know. You know, working like working on the IVAs deal. Uh, I found that within the first year, uh, you know, and we close it, I close 800, close 850 million dollar deal like my first year. I didn't even know that wasn't normal. Yeah, and I'm not saying it's not abnormal either but like, like, and I had some success there and then I ended up from there taking over our special operations portfolio at Microsoft and ran that which was, was, which was one of the greatest like jobs I think I, I will ever have. Right. One of them. Um, because I was really, I felt like I was almost doing more at that point working with you know, SEAL teams, you know, working with you know, Dev grew all of the operators, the T socks around the world and like really doing things that were ah, that had like purpose and mission and clarity. And they have money too in special operations. So it's nicer to work with people who have money uh, instead of trying to pry it out of the hands of the other mil deps. Um, but, but I had such a great time there. And then I got tapped to, to, to run our Air Force and then our Space Force business, um, at Microsoft, which I didn't know anything about space and I didn't know anything about the Air Force other than they have the best gyms in chow halls. I've learned that there's a lot more to the Air force than those two things. That was the span of almost 10 years. I have really fond memories of Microsoft and I did well there and I'd like to think I have had a good brand there when I left. And um, it was really hard to leave because again Steve Walters picked up the phone and called me and said, hey, I need a COO of Global Public Sector. And I said, Steve, I, I don't know, um, I don't know how to be a CEO. I don't know what that is. He's like, you'll figure it out. Which is, and he's like, remember what I told you when I first met you? And this is like one of the best things that anybody has ever done for me, um, in, in my professional career. And it's, and I'll go back to when Steve hired me and so I drive my U Haul across the United States, unpack everything, blah, blah, blah. Ah, two or three? Two. Couple weeks later, I'm hired. Steve Walters flies to San Diego. We meet in La Jolla at the Microsoft office, and we go through our HR stuff. I sign some things, it gives me a computer, and we kind of go through all the. The boring stuff of onboarding. And then he's. Then he slides me a green American Express card, and he goes, hey, this is your. This is your American Express. Like, use it. Travel wherever you need to. Just make sure you're just like. It's like you're doing it for a reason. He goes, make sure all of your, um, expenses are in on time and that you do all of your training. And I go, okay, I could do that. And I go, but. But I've never done this before, Steve. I've never sold before, you know, like at a tech company. Like, dude, am I going to buddy up with somebody? You know, like, should I shadow somebody and kind of learn how they do this? He goes, no, they'll ruin you. He goes, you owe me $10 million. That's your quota. And don't be late on your expenses. Make sure you do your, you know, your training, and gets up and walks out the door. And I was like, I'm like, I sweat all the way back home. 45 minutes from LA Jolla to my house up in Carlsbad. I sweat the whole way home going, like, uh, I'm not going to tell you what to do. Like, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna. We're not gonna teach you what to do, or I'm not gonna buddy you up with someone because I, like, uh. You'll start thinking, like, everybody and I can. And so now I'm, like, left on my own. Like, I owe him $10 million for my quota. And here's a subset of accounts, and, like, go knock it out of the park. And of course, they give you the worst ones, you know, as the new guy. And that's. That scared the hell out of me. That might have been scarier than anything I did in the military. And that was the best thing Steve could have done, because when you don't know what to do, you do what you know. You know. And. And so I, uh, was afraid of the sick shop and for people who don't know what the 6 shop is, like the CIO shop, where they, you know, procure technology for the military and all these things. Like, I didn't deal with those people when in Uniform, I was blowing up stuff, shooting guns, and, you know, and so. So what did I do? I went and started talking to the people that I had, could have a conversation with all the meat eaters right out at the edge, right? People who are getting ready for deployment, people who are, you know, were in charge of EOD and all these things, because I know them, and, like, we could have a conversation. And I had a little bit of street cred come just coming out of regimen, and that was the place that no one was going. I had no idea everybody had been selling box software to the CIO and coming back every year and being like, here's your new bill, and, you know, we have this new thing called O365, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they kept going back there. Well, the customers of the CIO are the people out there doing things right, and they procure and buy things to support the mission of the people who are on what I call the edge. So what I found is that the edge had never really been touched, and it was completely accidental. And I blame it on Steve for not telling me. I would have been trying to sell to the CIO shop. And in that, we found, you know, how to. How to redo our. Our night vision and thermal with AI spread all over it called IVAs. I won't even go into that because that was a whole couple years of my life that I'll never get back again, but it was. But I found that $850 million deal where I found, you know, I went to Afghanistan three times with Microsoft to go support the, uh, NATO special operations in Kabul and all over the country. Like. And it's. And I know it sounds strange, but it's because Steve said, I'm not going to let. I'm not going to teach you or let someone teach you what to do because we hired you because we don't want you to be the same as everybody else. It was one of the greatest things. And he said the almost exact same thing when he asked me to be a CEO. I said, I'm not going to be a CEO. He goes, you'll figure it out. You did it before. So. Yeah, so. And that almost lands me where I'm at right now.

Speaker A: Um, first of all, shout out to the. To Steve for seeing that in you and knowing it and trusting you and being like, hey, look, I. I believe in you, and you got this. And, you know, and. And we're hiring you because you're a little bit different. And we, you know, let's let's embrace that. Let's really lean into that. But, dude, that. That takes a lot of trust. And I don't know, like, I guess from two angles, like, it takes a lot of trust from him. And it also, um, you know, that. That makes for, like, a tough path forward for you. You know, like, ultimately it worked out okay. But, I mean, I don't know, like, is that. Do. Is that something you. You kind of sounds like that's something you value looking back, that. It's not like he. He didn't, you know, give you the kid gloves. He really, like, just let you figure it out on your own and. And you learn it. You kind of did it your own way.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think back on that a lot, um, and how it. It was risky for. For both sides, me and Steve in the business. Um, but it was also the thing, like, I wouldn't have. I don't think I would have had the success otherwise just if. If I wasn't just left out in the. Yeah. Essentially in the desert to walk like Kane from Kung Fu around the globe, trying to figure out where I'm supposed to be. For those of you who remember Kane from Kung Fu. Um, but, um. Because what I did is I didn't. And we talked about this before about, you know, um, heuristics versus, like, algebraic way of problem solving. Like, like, if I tell my girls, and you'll get where I'm getting at. If I tell my girls, if they say, dad, I want to be a. I, uh, want to be a, uh, surgeon. How do I do it? What do I do? Uh, like, you know what? That's a great thing for your kid to say to you. And probably a lot of us would say, and there's nothing wrong with this, but I'll just. I'm going to point out maybe some costs associated with, like, okay, here's your choice. You should probably go. Go, you know, chemistry or something. Or something. You know, and then from there you should. You should go to a good medical school. And then you really want to be careful about where you're going to go do your interning and things like that. And like, like, we would say, like, here's like, a good path, and we do this all the time with our kids. What ends up happening? If I gave the recipe, uh, which I have a lot of recipes I would love to give my kids, but if you do that, they only now own the downside, risk, and not the upside. If they succeed, it was your idea. If they fail, it was because they could. They Failed because they couldn't do it. Does that mean we shouldn't give advice to our kids? No, absolutely not. But we got to be careful. When you tell someone how to do something, and this is the path, it's easy for them. They own the failure now, and they don't own the success. Like, Steve let me go heuristically, like, bounce around and figure it out, uh, because I had some intelligence about, you know, some things, and I knew some people I was having conversations with, people that had never had conversations with technologists at that time, because they were out there trying to figure out, like, how to, you know, kill more bad guys and save more good guys. It wasn't a conversation people were having with them, but they were the ones who were actually telling the CIO shop and their, and, and their, Their units what they actually need. Right. And so from. I could have bumped in, I could have done a lot of wrong things, and I did, I chased things that I probably shouldn't have chased, and I learned along the way, but I also stumbled upon things like pots of gold because, like, there are people who want to fix the thing that they, that they have and make it better, and they never knew they could. So I just. It was. I'm not saying I'm a genius. It was just really. Because I was scared of the CIO shop. I didn't know those people, you know, oh, those are the nerds who know how to play with computers. Like, I don't know that world. Like, so I'm going to go talk to the guys who blow stuff up and shoot guns during the day. Like, I know them. And it just happened to, you know, you've been in tech and you've worked in public sector, and you know how, you know, you know how, you know, we've seen how it works and, you know, and so it, it just broke the mold and it's. Steve made me go heuristically bump, Bump into things and didn't give me this, this recipe or algebraic way of decision making that, you know what, like, if you do what you've always done, you get what you always got, you know?

Speaker A: Yeah. And I love that perspective of, of, you know, of adding the extra layer to, uh, allowing people to own the six own and learn from any success or, or any failure. You know, that's. I think that, I think there's wisdom in that. Um, it's risky by not giving them necessarily your recipe.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's risky because you want, because you, you, you, you, like, Steve wanted to Succeed. I know that. And he's been very successful. He wanted to succeed. So telling somebody, like I'm not going to tell you what to do, just go figure it out. That's a, he's taking a risk too.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, I think we tend as humans m to want to tell people like here, here's what I would do if I were you. Like you should do this, this, this, this and this because of, and, and it could be grounded in logic, it could actually be true and all of those things. But, but, but then all of a sudden people start to anchor to that and, and, and that's when you stop. Like I, I don't want to call it innovation, but it, like I, I, I use Claude all the time. I use anthropic, I use all the different models and stuff like that. Like, if I kept doing this, I don't know if I'd know how to respond to an email written by myself in 30 years. Right. I mean like I gave something up, you know, Am I giving something up? I still would, but you know what I mean? It's like, like now like it's telling me what I should, it's telling people what to do and people are actually listening to it and all these things and like all of a sudden you're taking this critical thinking and this kind of bumping into things in the world aspect out of it. And I'm not, I am not bagging on AI. I'm like, like I, I sell it for a living, you know, but, but you lose something when you turn it over to the recipe and you turn it over to the LLM or you turn it over to the fill in the blank. Um, and because what you're doing is you're putting uncertainty and fear into somebody else's box. So you don't have to own it because it feels better to do something that someone tells you to do. Because then I don't have to own the fear.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: I just outsource the fear. And uncertainty.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and uncertainty is risk. And so sure, if you're outsourcing the risk, you're giving it to someone else, then there is an amount of that that you could do. But also risk is directly related to reward. So you're also missing out on the potential opportunity by, by giving that up. I love that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Know thyself, right? It's a, it's a Greek know thyself. You know what, we're not very good, uh, at knowing who we really are. Every people are better about knowing who we are than we are. We're really biased. Like, we have a pretty damn good idea, but we're not really good about knowing who we are because sometimes we think we're worse than we are. Something at, ah, certain things. Sometimes we think we're better than we are. Sometimes we think we know who we are, but we're not very good at that because we have all these biases. So if we don't know who we are, we also don't know what our potential is. Right? And so that's why I don't, like, who am I? Like, if I ever figure out who I am, I just box my, my upside in, you know? So, uh, and, and the way you know who you are is by taking risks and taking adventures. We talked about this before we started this, right? You take adventures, it forces responsibility, even if it's telling the truth, you know? You know, because there's a million ways, like you could tell someone how to tell a hard truth to somebody, but that's just not easy. No matter what, you gotta go there and you gotta put your tail between your legs or whatever it is and just be like, I screwed up, or, you know, whatever those, all those little adventures, whether they're adventures getting on a plane or a boat or going to Hawaii or whatever, like they force responsibility. And so when you strip some of that away to your point, you strip away some of the upside in the, and the, uh, and that dopamine hit as you go along. Like, if I, if you tell me everything I'm supposed to do and I hit those gates, I guarantee you I'm not going to get the iterative dopamine hit that I, that I would otherwise.

Speaker A: Yeah. At least I think.

Speaker B: I'm not a doctor.

Speaker A: Well, um, yeah, I, I, I think, I think you're spot on. I heard this Huberman line, uh, uh, you know, recently where he was talking about anything that gives you dopamine without effort will ultimately destroy you. And, uh, I mean, I think, I think there's, there's some truth to that. I mean, this, he's, he sounded pretty smart behind it, so I'll take that word.

Speaker B: Risk.

Speaker A: Um, risk.

Speaker B: Risk is a really interesting topic. Right. You know, risk is risk. And uncertainty, you know, is like our people have written books through the ages about, about uncertainty and risk. Um, I talked about him with you in some setting before, like Nassim Taleb. I think he's such a great thinker. He's definitely a hard, hard individual on people who, uh, aren't as intelligent as him when he's interviewing. But he's, he's got a great book out there called um, he's got Upside of Irrationality, the Black Swan and then um, Antifragile. And Antifragile. How can you make things stronger in. When there's volatility and uncertainty in the world, Right? So think about like Antifragile. Like if you have a, if you have a glass base in a box, the harder you shake it, the stronger it gets. Like, how could I get like that? That when there's uncertainty and, and, and there's volatility, how do you, how do you not break real fast? It goes back to a lot of like. We're not very good about knowing what we want to be when we grow up. Even though we think we are, we're really good about knowing what we don't want to be. So in uncertainty you start to take the things you know, you don't want out of the system immediately. Right. And, and you know, and I'm not saying I was thinking this consciously about it, but that's what I was doing when I got into, when I, that helped me get through ranger school, but also helped me go know, like what do I do when I don't know what to do? Because now I, now I have a $10 million I owe Microsoft, you know, and I have all these metrics and things and blah, blah. So what. How about this? I know what I don't want. And immediately I started doing that. And, and that's to me as close as I can get to in decision making that is induced with uncertainty and risk is you start taking everything out of the system, deductive reasoning. And then now you're left with like, okay, I don't know what to do. I know what not to do. So now I'm left with something closer that might be right, the right thing to do. Like, I know it's really uh, like maybe a wacky way to think about the world, but to me it's, it's a problem solving mechanism that I use all the time.

Speaker A: Yeah. You know, dealing with uncertainty. Do you think that's like a muscle that gets, that you get better at the more that you do it or dealing with risk or is it kind of for you? Is it. Do you kind of have the kind of same reaction to different levels of uncertainty?

Speaker B: You know, I think you, I, I think you grow a muscle, an uncertainty muscle. Here I am self proclaiming, but I think I learned some of that without even thinking about it. Many uh, for, for over A span of many years of my life. Because the only way that you can, in uh, my opinion, deal with uncertainty and then get better at it is to completely fail and fall on your face. Because you can't, you can't like uncertainty. Like when I go out in the ocean when I surf, you know, and I, I used to surf a lot. I surf a little bit now. The ocean is different every day. Like, you literally could get eaten by a great white shark. You know, I surfed this morning. I could have been eaten by a great white shark. You know, so there's uncertainty there. Well, there's probability too, but there's uncertainty. So, you know, when you go into uncertain environments and all of a sudden something smacks you down like, like you didn't realize, like, this place that you're surfing, you've never surfed, is way crazier when you're out here than it looked like on the beach. Like now you're in a situation like I gotta, you know, um, dodging waves, I gotta get back in. I don't have a big enough board. All these things. Do you. You times you realize, like, okay, like I can go and screw up and I can survive that and then go back at it again, you know? So I think it takes have. Getting, having some licks in life, whether that's business or whatever it might be, fill in the blank, you know? So like, you can't just, you can't just attack uncertainty and be successful every single time. And so you got to be good with being unsuccessful at uncertainty. Right. Because you're taking that step. You're not, you're, you're not taking a recipe and saying, oh, everybody who walks this path, uh, across the river is going to make it. That sounds great. I feel, you know, you know, more people are, are hit and struck and killed by cars in crosswalks than jaywalki. Because we feel safe.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: You know, you put your head down, you walk across stripe white lines looking

Speaker A: at your food, you get boom.

Speaker B: You get hit by a truck. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's interesting. The, the illusion of safety or the, you know, the illusion that you're avoiding risk?

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, good people go to college because they think that equals a good job.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, could it. Absolutely. Would I, would I say the probability of getting a better job, having the degree is. Than not a degree is there? Yeah. It's math. It's probability. But you know what? I learned this. I think we've all. It doesn't equal, you know, a $500,000, uh, like a year job, like, you gotta work at that. Like, you know, and so like, you know, I know we're going down a rabbit hole, but that whole idea of like, I feel safe here is an illusion in a lot of areas because when you're jaywalking, you're not in a, uh, you're not, you're not algorithmic anymore. You're not, you're looking both ways, you're paying way more attention and you're running across the street.

Speaker A: I remember originally on our first conversation, yours, you described heuristics as street smarts. And that's the perfect example of it. Literally street smarts, um, knowing where you are and how to take care of yourself on the street. Um, that's heuristics there. That's. Yeah, that's fascinating. So there's like this craving for like safety. We all want safety and comfort. I also agree with you that, that, that doesn't necessarily exist where it, where either people are going to tell you it exists or where you, where your logical brain might think it exists. Um, yeah, that's a really good approach, man. I love that.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean it can get you in trouble too. There's cost and benefits to both sides of it. Right. But you know, I mean, it's one way to approach uncertainty, right? Because there's so much uncertainty in our lives, but we mask it all the time, you know, like, we're really good about knowing from a probability perspective when the Hundred Year Flood is going to hit. We're really bad about knowing when the Thousand Year Flood's going to hit. And so what we do is we, we build to spec, encode to the Hundred Year Flood and then the Thousand Year Flood comes and it wipes out entire cities, you know? You know, so there's, there's some of that thinking too. Like, you know, there's those outliers in life. Like, think about this. Like you, it's one of the reasons why I think when a company, and I'm not going to even name companies, like where you have a, a really high floor, like the base pays are re. Are really good, but there's a ceiling that you're like, I, uh, might make $400,000, let's just say, and I'm making this up, but I'll never make a million. But that space in between there, that between 4 and 900k is a really nice, comfortable place to live, you know, and in you. What you see at uh, companies that have a very high floor and a low ceiling is that you get a Lot of people who, you're not going to get your best performers who just want to sit in that band. You're probably not going to get your lowest performers, but you're going to get mediocrity in that, in that band. I don't know how that all connects. I don't know why that came out, but it certainly. Part of what I was getting at.

Speaker A: I think, I think it's super interesting and you're spot on.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: I mean I think it's just about like this idea of where we see safety versus risk and I think, I think you're spot on. Um, yeah. There's danger in mediocrity too, I think. Right. I mean, because there's comfort there. You're sitting there to your point, like, hey, you got a decent people get a decent salary. They feel comfortable. They just, maybe they're not driven to perform because one either because they're, they're only due to comfort. They don't, they don't want to. They're not either believing in the mission maybe, or they're not uh, or for, for many different reasons. I think my takeaway is that I think that they're where we think we're getting comfort is actually. Maybe in the short term, short term, true, but in the longer run I, I think that's ultimately, I think that's ultimately the bigger risk is just staying in your comfort zone and, and, and not growing. And like.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. When you, when you look at it, uh, and, and like, and, and, and you're a great example of going out and doing something that is pretty risky. Right. Like you were very successful in the tech industry and you decided I'm gonna, I'm gonna shift my focus to something that I want to do and I love to do, but I'm not sure how successful from a uh, like a, a monthly monetary, like good perspective, this is going to be like. I don't know. I, I'm not speaking for. You never told me those words but

Speaker A: like, so you know, you're spot on by the way. Yeah.

Speaker B: A big, it's a, that's a big risk. Right. And so, but, but think about this like, um, and that stops people right there from, from, from doing something that's uncomfortable. Um, and so you, and when you're, when you're, when you're super comfortable, you don't grow that much. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, and so people will say, you know, I really don't like my job all that much. Like I've been here for X amount of years. Like I, you know, I kind of want to like go get something else or maybe jump fields or something. And then they look, they're like, oh, almost what I did in the military. Well, I, If I hit 10 years in one day, maybe I should just stay for the rest of 10 years. Right. Perfect example of me sticking my foot, foot in my mouth, but it's true. And so what people do is they start to look at, they start to use the, the fear and the uncertainty as the driver to decision making. When Steve called me up, said, come be the coo, I'm like, gosh, man, like, I mean like senior director, I'm running Air Force, space Force. Like, I got a good trajectory here. Like, you know, I started thinking like that and ultimately I, I don't want to be that person. I'm more scared of me staying somewhere for 20 years because I have a great gig. Why would I leave this gig? Even though, like, I'm really, uh, gosh, I'll always look back and be like, should have taken that CEO position. You know, I really wanted to, but this is a safe spot. You use the fear of uncertainty as the reason to keep you here. I don't want to be the guy 20 years from now going like, man, I should have, I wish I would have tried that CIO thing or, you know, uh, because I don't ever think I, if I had that thought, I would never go back and be like, man, I'm glad I didn't keep that do that COO thing. I've been riding this wave for 23 years here, you know, I don't want to be the guy to look back and now I'm 20 years older and that's about it. And I really haven't like gone and done something that makes me really uncomfortable. Right. And I'm not a superhuman or anything and I don't love sticking myself in. Maybe if I look back, I'm a masochist. I like putting myself in situations that like, are painful. Would have more regrets as a 80 year old man, not trying things that I thought were interesting and scary and uncertain and I didn't, I wasn't smart enough to probably have, um, should be in that position. Like, I don't want to be that guy because when I think about my 80 year old future self, like, I'm going to look back and be like, oh, I'm glad you just stayed safe and never took a risk border, you know, like, I don't want to be that guy either.

Speaker A: Totally. Because I think, I think inside we Know that there's, there's, that's, there's no growth there. Even people that have had really big failures, like, you know, stuff that's, that's really, really impacted their lives, um, they don't regret that they tried, that they went after it, that, that they stuck their neck out. Because if you, if you just don't quit at some point, there's, there's so many lessons to learn. On the other hand, there are so many of those where people are like, ah, I freaking regret. I wish I would have done this. I wish I would have done whatever else. Um, yeah, I think I, I think that's spot on, man.

Speaker B: When you look at, like, when, you know, we had chatted about this, like, I went to Hawaii and I was dead set. Like, I'm never leaving here. Never going to leave here.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and then through the chain of events that happened, I said, oh, man, I'm not, I'm not going back. You know, I'm gonna go do something different. So, like, what, what, what I thought, what, what I had planned my trajectory in life. Like, like, like we actually know that at, like, 20 years old or 21, you know, we think we do. Um, yeah, like, everything went the other direction, partly by choice and partly, you know, by breaking my femur and shattering my kneecap, you know, it was a forcing function, but know. So again, was that a failure? I, I don't think so. No, it wasn't, it wasn't that I failed at what I thought my plan was. I, I, I guess if I, my plan was to stay in Hawaii forever, I wasn't, I wouldn't have the, the, the context and the thought to be like, why would you ever say that at 21, 22 years old, you know, that you're going to stay here forever? You just, like, cut off all the decision nodes on this decision tree, you know, like, moving forward. And it forced me to get out of that, you know, in a lot of different ways. And all of a sudden, the decision nodes open up, you know, and now I can take, you know, I'm like, I love game theory. Um, uh. And so I started thinking, and so I didn't fail. I may have failed at my pursuit of living in Hawaii forever. I could have gone back and lived there forever. But what it did is it opened my. That, that, that, if you want to call it a failure, opened up the, the. The canvas just grew 100x.

Speaker A: Yeah. I love the way that you kind of reframed that too. In that. Yeah. In the moment, it Felt like a failure. But you know what, actually it really opened up my view and I was able to see, like you said, the whole canvas, uh, when I wouldn't have been, I wouldn't have been able to see it before. But I think that's super good. I, ah, love that, that feels, I mean, look, anything, anything we haven't covered.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, ah, I guess the only thing I maybe close with and um, you can use this or not, but the thing that, that I would say is that, is that, you know, having, having, uh, what did you call it as the spiral, the professional spiral. Like I, I, I, you know, I, I, I don't think that I've done anything that's, you know, out of the ordinary or anything like that as far as like, you know, what I've done. And uh, everybody's got these, everybody's got an awesome story. Everybody's done hard stuff. It doesn't mean that you've like had to go through the snow and the Appalachians. That just happens to be something that I did. Everyone's got a hard, hard thing. It's not always a physical trait. We often, uh, um, have attribution error that like you attribute hard things to like, oh, someone who went through, you know, SEAL Team six training or something like that. Like, sure, that's hard. Everybody has hard stuff. What I've learned doing a lot of different things and I've done a lot of different things right in my life is that now. And this actually gets me excited. I don't know all the things that I get to do in the next 30 years. And that to me is exciting. There's a lot of decisions that I can make. There's a lot of outcomes that'll come from those and I don't have the right answers. Um, and sometimes I don't even know what the wrong answers are. But that's the beauty of, you know, I feel really, I feel much more comfortable in my life having gone through all those things that I did because I'm less afraid of the unknown in, of the future and more excited about it because I've got to do so many things. Um, you know, and I've had good things happen, bad things happen, made good decisions, made bad decisions. I, like, there's still like, there's still so many of those things that come and like, I'm going to make a lot of bad decisions. But you know what? I'm going to get to like, the life is a, is a fun ride if you kind of, and it's all the perception that you have about it. And I like. And it's. It's taken blood, sweat and tears, and I've touched the hot burner a hundred times. But, like, you know, I feel like I'm. I love. Like. Like there's new. There's so many new things for me to learn and to, like, go do and to try and to fail at, maybe succeed at. And I just, like, I'm just. I feel really grateful, you know, to have done and met the people I have. And, you know, I just. I just. I'm a very grateful person and I'm looking forward to whatever the hundred adventures of the future are too. Right. You know, and, uh. And when it all said and done, you know, right now I'm the VP of Global Public Sector. Like, my favorite job ever was a landscaper, mowing lawns and planting trees and in Hawaii, on the beach. So I know I can always go back because I can run a broom, I can run a shovel, and I can run a mop. And I'm not. I don't have an ego that's above that. And so I know I can always be happy. And that's a beautiful thing.

Speaker A: Absolutely. You think TC is still there?

Speaker B: You know what?

Speaker A: Wasn't that the guy's name you told me? TC?

Speaker B: TC. Yeah. If TC's still there, he's still there, man. Maybe you can call me with his hat saying, work harder. Waste time, waste money. You know, I hope he's learned a little more English since he. I was there, you know, 30, 25 years ago or whatever it was, but TC is probably still floating around there, is what I'm thinking. Yeah, good memory.

Speaker A: That was a great story. I remember it. So, anyway, David, this has been awesome, man. I super appreciate your time and everything here. Um, yeah, I'll click the end. And, um, I think people are just going to get a ton of this.