Jesse Boulden - Why So Many Young Men Feel Lost Today - The Crisis Facing Young Men - And One Program Fighting Back

Hey there and welcome to From the Ground Up Show, the show where we encourage and inspire the next generation of free thinking leaders by telling the stories of those that have been there, done that, and are still getting it done. Building a life that they love with their hearts, their hands, and their hustle. I'm your host, Erick Loden. If you guys enjoy the show, enjoy the content, help me out.

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com. So make sure you check that out. There's hats, sweatshirts, water bottles, coffee cups, anything you might want. And today I'm really excited.

I think this is going to be a fun one. I am joined by Jesse Boulden he is the director of the international alert Academy. The International ALERT Air-Land Emergency Resource Team Academy is a nine-month military-style discipleship and training program for young men between the ages of 18 and 22. They are based in Big Sandy, Texas, and were founded in 1994.

ALERT has spent over three decades forging young men through boot camp-style character formation, nationally recognized emergency response certifications, and real world disaster deployments. Alerts nearly 3000 graduates have responded to hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and search and rescue operations across the United States and internationally. Jesse came to Alert in the fall of 2008 at 18 years old and never left. After earning his EMT certification and completing the program's leadership track, he rose through the ranks from squad leader to drill instructor to sergeant major over the entire student body, eventually serving as the commanding officer of alert basic training before being named the director in 2021.

Jesse is also a volunteer firefighter, a deacon at his church, a father and a husband. So Jesse, you got a lot going on there. Thanks for taking the time to join us today. Yeah, no, I appreciate it, Erick.

I appreciate the opportunity and the introduction. Thank you. when I was roofing and working in the hot sun every day, I would sweat a lot and my clothes never really got clean. They were left stiff and uncomfortable with residue from the detergents we tried and the smell came back almost immediately if you started to sweat again.

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athletefresh.shop/fromthegroundupshow Again, is athletefresh.shop/fromthegroundupshow Yeah, well, I'm excited to learn all about Alert, but we like to start every show learning a little bit about you. Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood, what it was like growing up and what brought you to Alert back in 2008?

Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up ~ in a Christian home, that's probably the most important thing about my upbringing, and probably the most foundational thing about my upbringing is that my parents were first generation believers, and so I had the opportunity to grow up in that home environment. with becoming a Christian because of that very early on in my life, which kind of dictates the rest of my life, right? Because that's that is that that foundation, but my dad was in the military So he was a submarine commander.

I was in the subservice Navy for his whole career And so I kind of grew up a little bit of everywhere So, you know born in Virginia and in Connecticut, California Hawaii And then he eventually retired in Maryland And so by the time I was 18, I'd already moved 18 to 20 times. So the idea of growing up in one house was a completely foreign concept to me. I didn't even know people like that until later in my life, because I grew up on military bases and everybody moves every three to six years.

was just the way it is. And I joke because my dad was an officer and because he was the commanding officer of a submarine. I got to do sleepovers in nuclear powered submarines, right? And go out to on sea on the sail of a submarine.

And I thought that was a normal childhood. I thought everybody got to do that, right? And little did I know that that was a big deal back in the day. so, so that was, those are probably the two big, big formative things in my life is the fact that growing in a military family, on military bases around the military my whole life.

And then, from a Christian worldview of by God's grace from my parents, both being Christians and being heavily involved in whatever local church we plugged into, right? Which was many different churches over my first 18 years because of all that moving. And so those were kind of the two big formative things I would say. I was homeschooled.

was, you we were kind of the early homeschool back in the day, 80s, 90s, early 2000s. So my parents were kind of... very pioneer-ish, I guess, from a standpoint of they were first generation Christians, both of them, and then they were kind of figuring out the homeschool thing on their own. And so I like to say my parents set out to do something that had never been done in either of their families, or since has been done in either of their families.

And so I give lot of credence and credit to my family of origin, my parents. That's a heck of a lot of courage they both had to kind of figure that out in the midst of. military career and moving all over the country and all the rest. man, yeah, that is an interesting upbringing.

I imagine being the commander of a submarine, your dad was probably gone for large periods at a time. How did that affect your family and your home life? you know, fortunately, by the time we came, you kids came along and I'm actually one of six kids, right? So that's kind of another little tidbit there.

you Five boys, one girl. So a mostly, you know, male dominated house as far as just numbers go. But by the time I really have good memories, you know, he wasn't gone for probably more than six to nine weeks. The real long deployments happened early on in his career.

By the time I have solid memories, now he was gone, right? He was gone a lot, just as far as training goes and sea tours and sea trials. And so there was a repetition of him here and then gone and then here and then gone. Not for months at a time, but for sure, know, chunks of time, maybe a month here and a month there.

And that even continued after he got out of the Navy. He ended up working for the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. as a government employee.

and that too had lots of travel to it. And so probably the big thing that transpired is my mom ended up filling a lot of both roles a lot of the time, kind of the mom and dad role, because she had to. And so that obviously created tension at times, or dad would come home and try to step into that father role. And we were kind of like, you been here, dad.

You don't know what's going on. So it certainly had an impact. There are things that I look back and I say, there's something to be said about growing up in one town with one church with one job, there's some value to that. And my family didn't miss out on that, right?

We didn't have that core community or that core church or that one job. I didn't really get to go to work with dad, like some of these guys that I've met over the years, where I went, oh, my dad took me to the shop, or took me to the, I didn't really do that. I didn't know what was going on, nor was I gonna go to the Office of Naval Intelligence with my dad, right? There's no way, right?

It's a top secret, you know, built, I'm not going to the Pentagon with my dad. So there's some of those experiences that because of his military service that, and you know, if any other military brats are listening to this, they'll understand, right? You appreciate what your dad does, you like what he does, you think it's super cool, but you don't really get to participate in it in the same way that you might if your dad ran his own company or his own business or. or just had more of a blue collar job.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. And so one of six siblings, where do you fall in the birth order? Yeah, so I'm number three, so dead smack in the middle. ~ yeah.

So there's an older brother, an older sister, me, and the rest is boys all the way down. ~ Which I actually enjoyed, because I could hang with the older ones if I wanted to, Okay. stay up late, watch movies if I wanted to do that. Or I could go play Fort in the Woods with the younger ones, right, if I wanted to be the captain of the little guys.

So I actually, I like being dead smack in the middle, personally. That's awesome. You don't hear that very often, but I can see that even with my own kids. The middle one can connect both directions and enjoys doing so.

Well, even to this day, I'm kind of that tethering between the olders and the youngers, because I kind of understand both worlds. So they'll all kind of come to me and say, hey, talk to the olders about this or talk to the youngers about that, because I get to have decent relationships with all of them. Part of that, think, is because I was dead smack in the middle. So you came to Alert at 18 years old in 2008.

What was it that brought you to Alert? What made you decide to go that route rather than diving into the workforce or going into a college education or some of the other options available to you? Yeah, so I went to a camp in Durango, Colorado. This is kind of a formative memory for me.

And the founder of Alert, whose name was Ron Furman, he actually left Alert by that point, retired from Alert, and he was running these summer camps around the country. I didn't know that at the time. And so my parents had just found this summer camp in Durango, Colorado. And so I attended the summer camp.

It was a week long, right? It's not all summer, but it a week long in Durango, Colorado. And Ron Furman was there, the founder of Alert, and he was staffing these camps. with prior alert guys, right?

So guys who'd been alert, alert alumni, they'd gotten out of alert, right? They'd finished their training, and then he was using them as the staff to help run these camps around the country. And so as a 14-year-old, I show up to this camp, and I think these guys are cooler than sliced bread. Now in my brain, they're 30, 40 years, these guys were 18 years old, right?

19, 20 years old. But they had all these kind of these war stories and they You had all these skills and these adventures. They've been all over the world, all over the country. They've done all these cool things.

And I just really, I admired them. And both for the coolness factor they brought, where I like to say, I didn't know men like that existed. I just hadn't run cross guys like that. And I was like, these guys were awesome.

How did they get to be this awesome, right? Well, they were all these alert guys, right? They're wearing these shirts, sailor on the back. And they were also not just cool, they were also touchable.

Or they were very relatable, very relational. And so as this 14 year old kid, kind of thought, if they're just like me in a lot of ways, right, they're human, they're touchable, maybe one day I can be just like them. And I've actually interacted with these guys, you 20 years later at like reunions and they've come back and I've walked up them and said, you don't remember this, but you were staff at this little camp in Durango, Colorado for 14 year old me. And that week fundamentally changed my life, getting to hang out with those guys.

So at that moment, I really settled in my mind that, you know, I'm gonna go to alert, I'm gonna be an alert guy. I want to do this thing. Obviously the environment also attracted me. growing up in military bases, like that was in the military.

I was always kind of a big fan, kind of attracted to that world of structure and discipline, uniforms and things. So that was always obviously helpful. And coming out of high school, a lot of guys don't know what they want to do. And I wasn't sure what I wanted to do maybe long term, but for sure I knew the next step was this program.

This is nine month year long program. I wanted to at least get through that, graduate that, do all those things. And that was gonna hopefully help me figure figure out what the next step is going to be. it sounds like the next step for you, you just stuck around.

Did you do anything between graduating from Alert and coming on staff, or did you just roll straight into that next role? Yeah, so I graduated, the program's nine months, a year, it was a year long at the time, so came to Basic in 2008, did the EMT program, leadership pipeline, and then by the providence of God, and then invitation, which not everybody gets, and opportunities aren't always there, doors were opened, and they actually asked me to come back and, hey, will you do fill this role, will you fill that role?

And because I'd finished the training, and I still wasn't wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. I had some skills and some experiences and thought I might, maybe I'll join the military, maybe I'll go into fire EMS. But these doors opened and I said, well, you know what? I'll give it another three months, right?

And do it a three months. And that inevitably just led to another opportunity and another opportunity and another opportunity. And it just made sense, right? Because there were actually other things that came up during that time, other opportunities, even for other organizations or other programs or other things.

And it just fit me like a hand to a glove. I remember one of my bosses saying that as he came to me and was mentoring me during a period. And I was kind of struggling. Do stay?

Do I go? And he looked at me and he was like, you know, ~ this place just kind of fits you like a glove, Jesse. I don't know why you would try to go and figure something else somewhere else when this just makes sense. That's probably the best way to describe it is I had a tremendous amount of opportunity that other guys never got or didn't get.

The timing worked out. The opportunity was there. And then there was the ask, right? Where the organization asked me and obviously I prayed about it and I sought counsel on it.

But it just made sense. And I do attest to that to God's direction. Right? God closing doors, opening doors, order to me here for the almost last 18 years at this point.

Yeah. So it sounds like that's maybe an unusual track. What is a ~ normal career track for the typical alert graduate? Do they go into the trades?

Do they go to college after graduating? Do they go to work as a first responder somewhere? What's kind of the typical track for somebody that comes through alerts? Yeah, and I do need to specify that.

That is not a normal track for almost any of the alumni association. The goal is not to train you and keep you, right? The goal is to train you and send you. You know the mission statement of alert is forging extraordinary men who will influence their world for Christ, right?

So they come we train let me send it back right into whatever their world is right the workforce college military the church or family whatever So about a third of our guys will actually end up in the military Either they come here and they realize they like the environment right and they say man. I really like this I want more of this and they kind of go home and they miss it or they come to us intentionally in preparation for the military, right? They kind of see it as a military prep program to say, man, this is what I, you know, they know some alumni who've done very well in the military and the alumni will attest that their training here helps them do well in the military and so they'll come here to kind of put some reps in and do some things, get some training.

So a third end up in the military, a third will end up in emergency services, right? Because we do kind of have that angle to us. So they become firefighters, EMTs, paramedics, law enforcement. And then the other third will end up pretty much anywhere.

They become pastors, lawyers, engineers, go to college, blue collar workers, construction, or whatever. That's kind of the breakdown of the student body. Yeah. OK.

So it's not necessarily a funnel to a specific career track, but it's a preparation for whatever is next. Well, that's really the heart behind it. When the program was started by this guy named Ron Furman, he saw young guys coming out of high school and he saw an opportunity because these guys were coming out and they were kind of lost. They didn't know what they wanted to do, didn't know where they were going to go.

There were all these options. A lot of them were going to college and either washing out or never using the degree. I need to say, how do we help these guys? And then a third of the guys end up in college probably don't belong there.

just because they're not geared that way, they don't learn that way. Another third never used that degree to begin with, they get it and never used it. So there's only really a third that probably belonged there that needed it, your engineers, your doctors, all those guys. And so we saw that gap in the life of a young guy coming out high school, and he said, well, how do we help these guys land on their feet?

They're kind of floundering. And he saw some of the benefits the military had to offer for guys, discipline, structure, camaraderie, brotherhood. skills-based, and so we actually put together a cadre of retired or ex-military guys to start the program back in 1994. That's kind where the military-style flair comes from.

And it's helpful in life of a young man, right? We tend to be undisciplined and some of us are lazy and we're kind of figuring out what we want to do, and this kind of brings things into focus. And it's designed to help men figure out, okay, how has God gifted me? What has he made me for?

How do I use these skills in the service of other people? And so yeah, so our guys end up doing, you name it, we threw 3,000 alumni. One of them is out there doing it. And they can all look back at their time at alert and say that was a beneficial season of my life to repair me for what I'm doing today.

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Well, I can tell, I mean, clearly just the time that you've put in and just speaking to you, you seem to have a real passion for this program and the service it provides to these young men. What was it, I mean, outside of the inspiration of wanting to attend Alert as a 14 year old and seeing the graduates and the way they presented themselves, what is it that really gave you a passion to devote your life? to serving in this capacity and working there. Yeah.

Yeah, well the reasons I came to Alert were not the reasons I stayed at Alert. So I really came for the adventure of it, whether it's the firefighting or the EMT or the disaster relief, going off and doing cool things, and also the hardship of it. It intrigued me. How hard can I push myself?

We all watch those Navy Seal Buds videos, and we all think, I wonder if I can do that. I wonder if I could get through Hell Week. So that was part of the attraction for me to come to Alert with Nick. Can I do this?

Can I be pushed this hard? Can I hike for 24 hours through the night, right? 56 mile endurance hike. Can I do that after hearing these stories from the alum?

So I really came for the adventure and the excitement. All of that I got, but I really stayed for the discipleship. So as these older officers or these older guys mentored me and poured into me and helped me figure out what it was to be a man and to be a Christian man and to... be a healthy husband and a healthy father.

And they really had that on display, right? Because you're kind of living life together with these training officers. And I saw them and I said, I want, again, kind of like I did in 2004, I said, I want more of that. How can I spend more time with these guys just in their hemisphere?

So then I kind of learned by osmosis, right? I kind of learned by just watching and listening. And so as I was being mentored, I fell in love with that aspect of it. And then said, I want to do more that.

I want to actually return the favor. As I've been mentored and discipled, I want to kind of turn around and do the same thing for the student body coming in, for the young guys, knowing how hard it is to be a young guy, 18, 19, 20, and all the struggles that come with that, all the opportunity that comes with that, ~ and being able to help young guys just like me come in behind me and help them land on their feet and figure life out and get some direction and get some mentorship and get some discipleship.

get pointed in the right direction is really what I felt in life. So you mentioned that Ron started the program by kind of seeing a gap where we had young people graduating high school. They didn't know what to do. They really didn't know how to behave as adult men in our culture and just needed some guidance, some encouragement rather than being funneled into a college.

education that maybe wasn't for them or wasn't required for what their career track would be. has that that mission or that need changed at all? Do you see a different need or a different gap that alert is filling here 30 some years later? Yeah, you know, there's a couple of basic questions you always have to ask whether it's in business or working for an NGO here.

And you know, what's the problem you're trying to fix? Right, is the problem getting better or getting worse? Right, is the market growing for this problem or is it shrinking? Do you have a solution to the problem?

And does that solution work? Right, does it actually fix the problem? And as I look at Alert back in 94 and I look at Alert today, I think the answer is yes to all of those things, right? So what's the problem we're trying to solve?

Young men kind of being lost, right? Or young men being awash, right? Young men kind of being on the fringes of society, not sure what they're supposed to do, not a lot of options for them. It's true back in 94.

I think it's actually truer today in a lot of ways. So the second question is, is the problem getting better or getting worse? Well, I think it's getting worse, right? you can kind look at our culture and it doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize young men are in trouble, right?

They're struggling and over the last 20, 30 years, because they've been marginalized or cast to the outer reaches or maybe even demonized for their masculinity, that's created a vacuum in young guys' lives. And unfortunately, there's a lot of toxic voices that are filling that vacuum, right? Either from a side of young men should be passive to a side of young men should be overly aggressive, right? You've got some really toxic voices out there, unfortunately, filling that vacuum for young men.

Because they don't want to latch onto anything. Somebody affirming, somebody telling me I'm not as broken as the culture says I am for being a man. I think the problem is just getting worse. So does LERT have a solution to that problem?

I would say yes. Because I've been here almost 18 years, I've gotten to work with almost 1,000 guys. I did the math once, and think it's actually over 1,000 guys in my time here. And I see it work.

I see it at work, and I see it work almost every single day. If we have a solution, yeah, we have a solution to that problem. We try to fill that vacuum with the right things, with the good things. things that it good to be a man right there are good things about your masculinity and how do we encourage that and exhort that and into that and then how do we give you skills right there's kind of a three-pronged approach right discipleship training and service so how do we disciple these guys from a crucial worldview make sure they're solid in their faith how do we give them tangible skills in their toolbox so that they're fit for service right whether it's emergency services skills or just normal life skills and then how do we equip them for life of service, right?

That when the Son of Man comes, when Jesus shows up, He comes to serve, not to be served. And so how do we help young men take their focus off themselves, which is very natural, pick their head up and go out and whatever they end up dealing with their lives, be selfless, sacrificial service. And so do we have a solution? Yeah.

Does it work? Yeah. As an alumni of the program, I can tell you it works. And then having worked with as many guys as I have, I can tell you the solution that we came up with in 94 is still the solution today, and it still works.

Well, I know you've mentioned a few aspects of the program. So are there some prerequisites to join the program? Do you have to be a Christian before you're coming into the program? Do you have to have done well in high school?

Who's kind of the prime candidate to come join Alert? Yeah. Probably the two big misconceptions of Battler is that either we're a bad boy school, right? So we're some kind of a reform school for guys, know, you know, criminals or something, right?

Which is just not the case, right? We're not. not a bad boys military school. And that's the first misconception.

The other is that somehow we're a good boys school for lack of a better term. Where sometimes you gotta come with your nose clean and you gotta be straight A's and you gotta graduate high school and you gotta be a Christian. And neither of those two paradigms is true. And we're really just looking for guys that wanna be better.

You don't have to be a Christian. We obviously are unashamedly a Christian organization, but you certainly don't have to be. We're not attached to any denomination, right? So we're non-denominational.

We have a pretty ~ middle-of-the-road statement of faith. And the only real... prerequisite is that you gotta get cleared by a doctor because the training is intense. And then you gotta be able to do a certain number of physical fitness assessment tests we have.

And as long as you can hit those base numbers, which are pretty low, right? We just wanna make sure you're in some physical condition before you show up. And then you got to the application out and the application is not a test. It's just a hate Who are you where you from?

What are you thinking? What are you feeling? And then if you have any inkling that you want to be here man If you work with us, we'll work with you and I have I have seen all shapes and sizes come to the Academy and you guys that you think would not make it have made it because they wanted to be here right as I Don't care how hard it is. I want to be here.

I want to do well and I want to get better So as long as you have an inkling of I know I should be better than I am right now I just don't know how to get there. We'll work with you all day long. Okay. And is there an age cap?

I mean, for a guy that's in his 20s, 30s that wants to change a pace, changes life and wants to be better, can they come and join as well? Or is it primarily kind of that college age group? Yeah, so the bottom of the age graph there would be 17. That's the lowest we'll go as a 17-year-old.

you You don't have to officially even be done with high school. Some guys will use this as kind of their last senior year of high school, and that's totally fine. We can work with you on that. So 17's that, and then the oldest I've seen come through, as long as you're not married, right, that's the one prerequisite there, is that it doesn't really make sense to come here and be in this environment where you got a wife and kids at home, got other responsibilities, let's go figure that out.

You need to make money, not spend money. And so the oldest I've seen come through is 36 years old. So 36 year old said, I want that change of pace, Okay. I want that wake up call.

I want that gut check, I want that brotherhood. And so yeah, 36 is the oldest I've seen come through. Awesome. So do you feel like at Alert you compete, so to speak, with colleges or trade schools or that kind of thing for the candidates or the students that are coming in?

Or is this kind of a complementary program? how would you view your relationship with other options available to a high school graduate looking for the next step? Yeah, and I would tell you that the competition is probably fiercer today than it was 30 years ago. When my dad was growing up, he used to say, you know, could be a doctor, you could be a lawyer, or you could join the military, right?

And that was about it. And with every passing year, I think there's even more and more opportunities, which is why I think young men can feel lost, right? They don't know what to do. They're kind of paralyzed because there's just a million and one things you could do.

And then you go on social media and you find all of them, right? And everyone's doing them. And so you feel like you're behind or you feel like you don't know what to do and everyone's asking you what are going to do? yeah, I think that's probably the biggest competition would be kind of that kind of that narrative of you to go to college, you got to go to college.

And I think young men feel that. Now just just in the last six months, we've been able to partner with Anchor University, who is now offering us college credits for our training. And those credits can be can be taken to other universities, Okay. right?

Liberty University and Moody and S you and a handful of others. So that is helpful, right? So we don't just get certifications, now we can get college credit for your time here. So that is going to help some of that competition.

But yeah, that's probably our biggest, especially with college being online now. mean, COVID just kind of totally changed the whole world. And we can't do Alert Online, right? Doesn't work, right?

You got to be in person. just it does not happen. So that's where it is limiting, and where all these schools can do their courses online. We can't.

Right? So, you know, what I'll tell people is, you know, if you want to just be a firefighter, well, you can go to your community college and be a firefighter. Right? You just want to be an EMT.

Well, that's fine. You can go to your community college and be an EMT. But if you want to be transformed, right, you want to become a better man, you want to get grown spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally. and walk out more mature and ready for life, then Alert really is gonna fit that ticket for you.

Because for me, Alert offered me a lot of the tangible things that I got, right, certifications, but the untangibles, right, the things you can't put a price on, is really what I think is most valuable about the experience here. And that's crazy awesome experiences, right? I got to do things, still get to do things. Right?

And go places all over the country, all over the world, disaster relief or search and rescue or push myself on 24 hour endurance hikes. Things that you would just not do pretty much anywhere else in most guys' lives. As an 18 year old, right? And as a 19 year old, I'm put in leadership positions, right?

And that helps mature me and grow me up. And I'm in charge of 30 guys. And I'm in charge of 100 guys. At 21, right?

I'm in charge of the battalion. That's a tremendous opportunity. And so, you know, those crazy experiences, right? can't put a price on.

Second thing is friendships, right? Brotherhood, where I made my best friends while I was here, right? Because those crazy experiences, the blood, the sweat, the tears, we all had together. You get forged together in a special way, where almost 20 years now, my best friends are alert guys, right?

And you get plugged into this worldwide alumni network that you get to be a part of. And our guys are doing everything everywhere. and you can connect with them all over the globe. So that's kind of an untangible thing, right?

You can't even put a price on those connections, right? There's actually a, one of the elders in my church went through unit one back in the Northwoods years ago. And yeah, we have a connection because we're Christians and we have connection because we're church members. We also have a connection because we're alert guys, right?

We went through 20 years apart. But we're alert guys, right? We can share that camaraderie. He's in his 50s, I'm in my 30s, but we have this multi-generational connection now, because we have that shared experience.

So you get these crazy experiences, you get this brotherhood that you desperately need as a man, and then you get perspective change, right? Where most young men are born kinda looking at themselves, and you walk out of alert with your head up, you know, this quiet confidence saying, how do I be of service? How do I give my power away, give my strength away? All the things that...

make being a man good, how do I give all those things away in the service of my family or my church or my community or whatever it is? So those are the things that you really can't put a price tag on. ~ And so that's, in my mind, that's probably the bigger selling point of alert, Yeah. right?

Yeah, we do the firefighting, yeah we do the EMT, yeah we do the hiring, we do all that. But technically you can go somewhere else and get those. But I can't promise you that you'll get all those other things in addition to that. except for your time here at Academy.

Okay, awesome. Well, it sounds like ~ you guys are quite successful Ahem. at taking young men and transforming them, to use your words, or inspiring them, building them up to be successful in whatever comes next. What are maybe some of the key things that you think are significant in your program that, ~ you know, fathers, churches, maybe even businesses that hire a lot of young people could incorporate into raising their sons, their youth programs, their employees to kind of tap into this secret sauce that you guys have to help get similar results from the young men that are charged to them.

Yeah, think that there's a couple of things that come to mind right off the bat. One is that if you expect poor performance from a certain age demographic, that's probably what you're gonna get, right? So if you expect, he's this 18 year old punk, he's kinda lazy, he's kinda sloppy, he's gonna show up to work late. Well, if that's your expectations on a young man, that's probably what he's gonna do.

But if you can challenge him, and actually expect more out of him, and it's kind of this phrase we'll we'll say, I have tremendously high expectations for you, and I believe that you can meet them. Right? When you're giving these young guys hope that not just that I have high expectations, because we do, but I also have hope that you can actually meet those high expectations. Right?

That's how cool is that? Right? It's not just that I have them, right? Cause that's kind of depressing is I have them, there's no way you're going to meet them.

Well, no, I have them and I believe in you. I believe that you can meet these expectations. I believe you have it in you. I believe you can be better.

And, here's the thing about young men. They believe that too, deep down, they know they can be better. They want to be better. they just don't always know how.

So one of the things is expectations, but then belief in them, that it's not just that I have them, I believe you can actually meet them. I believe you have it in you to meet these high expectations. So that's kind of the first thing, is really the necessity of giving these young guys hope and believing in them. And that's where the mentorship comes in, right?

So it's not just I have hope, and I'm also gonna give you tools and a pathway to get to where you need to be, to meet those expectations. The other thing we watch is responsibility breeds maturity. I watched it in my own life happen as I got more more responsibility as older leaders took a gamble on me. They really did take a risk on me.

They said, we're going to give you a shot here. We're going to trust you. At 19 years old, here's 30 guys for you to take care of. You're going to help them and you're going to mentor them.

You're not this super older than these guys. They're 18 and you're 19. You're really just a side mentor to them, but you're responsible for them. right, and knowing that I'm responsible to my boss, and he's gonna show up and expect a certain level of discipline and structure and these things out of the guys he's entrusted me with.

That helps breathe, which is what I experienced in 2004, these alert guys, I thought they were 30. Well, they were 19. Why did I think they were 30? Because they were incredibly mature.

Well, why were they incredibly mature? Because these guys had been given responsibility. And that had produced a level of maturity out of that I had just never interacted with. I'd met other 18, 19 year olds before and they were kind of bums or punks or whatever.

I thought that was just the, and unfortunately the culture has that expectation for young men. They say, well they really don't have to grow up to 25, they don't have to grow up to 30. We're here to say no, no absolutely not. By 18, 19, 20 you can be entrusted with a tremendous amount of responsibility.

We think about our grandfathers and their you know storming the beaches of normandy eighteen nineteen twenty years old as easy to kind of say well that was there this is now or is it not i think that's still possible today if you have my expectations you hope that they can meet them you've told and then you give them responsibility beckham absolutely transform young guys life and breed about the maturity that we all know they're lacking right and set up even up for it and say and we're kind of bob i can't believe it back in my day and while none of that is helpful What these guys need is hope, they need tools, and then they need responsibility to help breed that maturity.

man, yeah, there's some good stuff there that's applicable to a lot of different people and areas. So, well, I know a big part of Alert is, yeah, kind of the first responder field. You guys do EMT certification, search and rescue, disaster relief. I imagine in your 18 years at Alert, you've had some pretty unique experiences.

Are there any ~ really exciting or really unique experiences that kind of stick out to you that you would be willing to share with us? Yeah, know, it's the best experiences are the ones that end positively, right? And so obviously there's a tremendous amount of experiences where we go out on, whether it's a body recovery or a search or recovery or a search or rescue, that ends on a negative note, right? And that's, unfortunately, that's probably 90 % of the time.

We're going out and it's a recovery and not a rescue. And so, unfortunately, by the time they call us, right, it can be more of a recovery than a rescue, even in that response. And that's just the, ENS fire world, right, where their worst day is our best day, and obviously we're happy to be there, and we're glad to use our skills, and we're happy to help and aid where we need to. Unfortunately, a lot of those end up in a sad or a negative standpoint where the person is deceased or passed away or isn't there.

~ Probably the one that I was telling somebody about it just the other day, our guys got called out yesterday on a missing person search and to clear a bunch of wood in an area and help a sheriff's department do some search or rescue. And so I was recounting this story just the other day about one that I was on. And ~ it was a search for a, I think, it so long ago, but she was four or five years old, this little girl that had gone missing. and we got called out around, you know, was probably three in the afternoon and we deploy, we send our teams out there and we're out there looking and we, and obviously, you she's just gone missing in the last hour.

So this is a very hot search, right? It's not cold, it's a hot search. So we're all these zones and they have us going through the muck looking for this little girl, right? And we're doing, you we're doing the skull drag through some of these things and kind of looking at each other like.

I don't think she's back here, but we're gonna look, right? We're gonna get after it. know, alert guys are gonna go through whatever it takes to finish the mission. And you always end up with just all sorts of scratches on your arms and your face and you're bleeding, but by golly, you're going through it, right?

And I remember, I remember the incident commander looking at this wall of thorns and saying, she might be in there, like go in there. And we're looking at each other like, there's no way this five-year-old girl walked off the road into there, but we're going, right? And so we get down on all fours and we're skull dragging through this thing, looking for this little girl. we're searching till nine or 10 o'clock at night.

And we find her, right? Not in there. We ended up finding her down a couple of miles east of there. She had followed her dog, right?

Her dog had walked off and so she followed her dog and she'd walked down a trail into the woods and we ended up finding her, right? And so that's probably one of the most memorable ones is just number one how miserable the search was because it was just in the muck here in the thorns and the tangle and you you're walking through some you know up to your waist and water and your mud and stuff But that one ended positively right? We were able to find this little girl and returning to her parents And so I was just telling someone about that the other day I was like man a lot of these don't end positively But I do remember though, you know, and I've been on dozens of these over my time maybe even hundreds and I actually don't remember the ones that end negatively because there's just so many of them.

I for sure remember that one because it ended positively. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that.

And I know you guys travel nationally and even internationally to help with different disasters. I know in a lot of these areas, firefighting search and rescue EMT, lot of their certifications and connections don't always interface. What organizations do you partner with? mean, how do you get tied in to be able to provide these services to, sheriff's departments, government agencies, other people throughout the country who maybe have different training, different certifications than what you guys do.

Yeah, so obviously most of the certifications we give are national certifications, right, and that's on purpose so that obviously our student bodies from all over the country or even all over the world, we get a contingent of international students. So we do try to train up to kind of a national standard, whether it's in the search and rescue or in the firefighting or in the EMT. So these guys can go back and use those certifications from whatever state they're from or even country they're from.

And so that is helpful when it comes to we're all speaking the same language. We're all going to the same incident command courses, ICS courses, NIMS courses, As we work with, know, we're working with, whether it's a government agency. So, you we were down in Kirk County, right? When Kirk County had that massive flooding last summer, we deployed there doing body recovery down there.

Well, we'd all been through that training. And so when you show up, you all speak the same language. So. Especially when you're working with a government agency, you really got to know the language and know the incident command system and then be able to work within that system.

When it comes to other NGOs or non-government organizations, that is where it gets a little more tricky. When we work with government agencies, a lot of the time we show up and they're assuming that we're the subject matter experts. And sometimes we are, sometimes we're not. Sometimes we're just a contingent of a bigger operation going on.

Sometimes you show up and we are the subject matter experts. They say, man, you guys have more time on the pond. You've done more than we have. You guys take this and run with it.

And so there was one tornado in Van, a number of years ago. We were the first on scene. They let us run the incident command system. Because they said, you guys actually have more time.

I've never done this. You guys take it. So we took it. We ran the incident command system and talked to the government and worked all those things that were happening.

With NGOs or other non-government agencies or nonprofits, that is where it does it can get sticky because they've got their own system or their own language or their own way of doing things. And we've worked with a whole slew of them. Organizations like Mercy Ships, we've done some deployments with them over the years. done, we work really hand in hand with Samaritan's Purse.

It's kind of one of the bigger ones that we deploy with. We're kind of the boys in blue for them. where they'll give us a phone call and say, can you give us 30 guys here, 10 guys there, help wrap up this work deployment here. And they've taken us international sometimes, right?

Where they took our guys to Turkey for a while to do some work out there, flew us out there. I was on a team that they flew us out to California to do wildfire relief, right? And they needed hands out there. So they called us up and we sent, with alumni and student body, they flew us out there and we worked with them for a couple of weeks.

They're probably the biggest organization or other non-government agency we work with is Emeritus Purse, but we've done Operation Blessing, we've done Mercy Ships, Texas Baptist Men, right, and we'll work hand in hand with pretty much any other NGO that needs us or wants to use us, where we're pretty flexible. And then obviously government agencies, sheriff's offices, a lot of it's word of mouth, right, and so I'll get phone calls from... Random shares is like well I talked to this guy who talked to this guy who talked to this guy who said you guys can do this Yeah, we can there's a lot of his word of mouth or this sheriff talks to this sheriff or you know this this governor You used us 20 years ago on this disaster relief, right?

Or you know, when we we've done right we space shuttle Columbia, right? We were a main search operation when that happened years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit we were made operations on that one, right? So we've had some of these bigger major national disasters we've been a part of. And there's the small ones, right?

The little tornadoes that go through Gilmer, Texas, just north of here. We respond to that. Do chainsaw relief or tarpon roofs or whatever, looking for people, providing care. So big or small, it doesn't really matter to us as long as we can be of service.

Okay. And so if we have some listeners that are involved in, you know, local sheriff's office or something, what is the process to contact you guys and take advantage of your services? And I guess maybe for more, you know, immediate stuff like that, how wide of an area do you cover? How quickly can you get to which areas?

Yeah, yeah, so mean the main point of contact is just call the office number, right? You'll find that on our website there. And we're a small enough organization, right? I mean it's me and about 13 to 14 other staff members, instructors, trainers.

We have more contractors that come in and teach and stuff, but for the most part it's only 15 of us. So you're gonna get a hold of me or one of my officers very quickly, especially if it is an urgent search or an urgent recovery or an urgent disaster that's happening. So it all depends on the time of year, right? So sometimes we don't have a student body, right?

We run, you know, quarterly semesters and stuff. So sometimes we don't have anybody to send. Sometimes it doesn't fit the timing or the distance. It all really depends on, you know, how emergent is it as in, how much of an emergency is it?

Do we have the manpower? Does it make sense in the training calendar? I mean, this one that we had, you know, yesterday that I sent our guys out on or the other day. You know, they contacted me Sunday and they said hey, can you can you deploy a team today?

And I said well how emergency is it? Well, the guys are missing for a week, right? Well that that doesn't tell me that's an emergency, right? That's okay.

Wait till Monday, Yeah. right? Yeah, okay We'll do Monday right as where if they said hey this little girl like the little girl story I told right well that was she's been missing for an hour. We're gonna go right and it's 45 minutes away and we're gonna and we all keep go bags, right?

Our guys are trained that way. They're trained for that active response, right? We have an alarm system to go off and say, you and you and you, you're going on deployment. You grab your go bag, you've got 15 minutes, you'll be on the road.

So we can be as quick as about probably 15 minutes to half an hour, depending on the time of day, where we can turn things around and get guys on the road in that direction. I know, yeah, you have a lot of experience as a first responder and EMT search and rescue firefighter for the average Joe that just wants to keep himself and his family safe. Do you have any advice about how they can best prepare just for life events and avoid being one of the people that you're searching for or working on.

Yeah, yeah, I'll just tell you I keep in my own two cars, right? Because a lot of the emergencies you run in, you run in on, are actually on the highway. And I've had all sorts of moments in my life where you watch a car flip three times in front of you, or you pull off and there's this big pile up and things. And the beautiful thing about the training that I've received here at Alert, or alumni received, ~ It is not that you keep this whole cache of stuff in your car so you can be a good service It's actually the thing that's between your two ears right and being able to have a calm presence in a crisis situation Because really, you know without an ambulance, you know a doctor and an EMT are kind of is equally useless, right?

They may have different lists of knowledge, but without the right tools. We're both kind of sitting there going Well, I think they're broken. I hope they're you know, so So you know for my own two vehicles I actually keep small fire extinguishers, just handheld fire extinguishers in both vehicles, whether that's for vehicle fires or other vehicle fires or things. I keep window punches in both vehicles, right?

So I would either punch out somebody else's window or punch out my own window. I keep a set of medical gloves, right? If it's warm, wet and not yours, don't touch it. And so being able to throw medical gloves on in you any circumstance or situation, right?

So I keep a set of those in both vehicles. And then just a basic medical, where you have a CPR mask, something to create a barrier and maybe some gauze, and then a tourniquet. CPR is going to save lives and tourniquet is going to save lives. Because you're just the first step.

You're the first responder. Hopefully you got bigger resources coming. Hopefully you don't have to be there for three hours packing gauze or whatever. You're just there as the very first guy showing up on scene.

How do you make it better, right? Well, you make it better through getting rid of the active things that are most dangerous at the time, right? Whether it's lack of breathing or lack of consciousness or fire, whatever. You can do that.

Man, you are probably more useful than 90 % of the bystanders standing around that are just kind of looking, going, well, that's not a good thing. And again, really bringing that calm head to a crisis situation. I mean, I'll just tell you a story. So I was on, this was several years ago, and I was on an airplane, and they come over to the loudspeaker and they go, is there a doctor on the plane?

And nobody moves. And they go, hey, we a medical emergency, is there a doctor on the plane? And I'm sitting there waiting, and I'm like, I am not a doctor, right? And nobody moves.

So I go, well, I guess I'll hit my button, right? So I hit my button, and they come back to me, oh, hey sir, and I say, hey, I'm just an EMT. So I have emergency medical training, it's pretty basic, what do you need? say, wow, we got this person up front of the plane who's having these convulsions and they're sick.

So I go up there. They've got enough medical equipment on the plane to where I can take a base set line of vitals, I have a conversation, I ask my questions, and the person is fine. They really are fine. Now the flight crew is freaking out.

The people on the plane are freaking out, but the person is fine. I'm able to sit there with my, you know, though limited medical knowledge and say, look, they're going to be fine. When are we landing? Like 15 minutes.

say, they can wait 15 minutes. Now they should probably go to the hospital when we get off there, right? You can call an ambulance ahead of time or whatever, but this isn't, this isn't a horrible emergency where we need to get on the ground right now. And so I'll stay up here.

I'll sit with the person, right? I'll just be here with them and it'll be fine. That's all they needed, right? They needed a calm head in a crisis situation.

as we're 10,000 feet up in the air. Now what's funny is that at the baggage claim afterwards, everybody's coming up to me being like, you're the doctor, you're the doctor, right? Because they don't know, You just heard, is there a doctor on board? And I stood up, right?

I was like, no, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a doctor. So that's where, even as I encourage people, they can get their EMTB or their emergency care attendant, even if they never work as one ever a day in their life, right? Take a CPR course, take a basic first aid course. You just never know where you're gonna be.

And you can be that calm head in a crisis situation and help, especially if you have that tourniquet or that mouth barrier for CPR. You can do lot of good with a very limited amount of equipment there. Yeah, that's awesome. That's a very similar to the, the list of things I make sure in all of my vehicles as well.

I'm coming up on this summer will be the 20th anniversary for me being a search and rescue first responders. So, man, a, ~ a tourniquet and an Israeli bandage, Okay, awesome. Yeah. you know, it, Yep, there you go.

Those will work magic, it, yeah, yeah. CPR, a tourniquet and Israeli bandage. right? Those are the big life saving.

things, you know. Yeah, and you can go deeper, right? I think you can get confused and overly complicated if you're not careful. And, you know, should I have an IV bag?

Well, you can, I guess, if you're certified that way. But now you're pushing boundaries of of good Samaritan laws and things. And you're like, let's just keep it, keep it to the basics, right? You're the first responder, not the last responder.

And so just get there, cost some good with what you've got. Make the situation better, not worse. Don't do any harm to yourself, right? Keep yourself safe and your family safe and then hopefully do some good with one of the skills or the tools you brought to the scene.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, things that people actually die of, know, blood loss, blocked airways. Right, Yep.

If you need some fancy medications or something, you're probably not doing a lot of good out in the field anyway. They need to get to a doctor, but if you can stop the bleeding, Yep, you need to be calling a helicopter a box. if you can clear an airway and stop the bleeding, Yeah. that's, ~ you can solve 80, 90 % of life threatening situations just with those two things.

So. Yeah, 100%. 100%. That's great.

Well, I know you've talked a lot about leadership responsibility and kind of moving up in the ranks there at Alert. What was the most difficult thing that you faced as a leader? man, I'll tell you some of the most difficult transitions I had. With this one probably being the most difficult, right?

When I finally became the director, that gap in leadership, that step in leadership, it's all fun and games until you're the guy, right? Until the buck stops with you. You The other step was very similar and that was when I was Sergeant Major over the battalion. I went from being over 30 guys as a...

~ first-line drill instructor to over a hundred guys as the Sergeant Major. And I was just, I was out of my depth. And that was good for me, right? It stretched me and grew me in a tremendous amount of ways.

It caused all sorts of resilience to be grown. Because within the first two weeks of that Sergeant Major position, I was ready to quit. I was like, oh my goodness, I didn't sign up for this. This is ridiculous.

And so that was a big challenge. And then this job also is probably the other big challenge. This one is probably challenging more so because it's pretty ~ administrative, which I knew going into it. surprised.

But that's also not what I fell in love, I didn't fall in love with administration, right? I fell in love with the men. I fell in love with the discipleship and the people. And now I'm doing a lot of administrative work, right?

~ And I'll just be honest, that is not my gifting, right? That is just not, you know, I'm a... I work with my hands and let's get out and do stuff and get in the field. And now obviously I very rarely deploy anymore just because of the position that I'm in.

I've got other guys to go take those deployments or drive the vans or go on hikes and stuff. So it's actually probably the, you know, working with students, they're very teachable, they come to be taught, they come to be mentored, they want to get better. When you're working with staff members, right, some of who used to be your peers, it's probably that friend-boss tension. That's probably the biggest struggle, as where students come in, well, I've never been their friend.

I may become their friend, but I've always been kind of their boss, right, or I've been in charge of them. As we're now as the director of the program, you know, I've got, you subordinates that used to be equals with me or used to be my friends, and they still are. well now I'm their boss, right? Now I'm cutting paychecks and now I've gotta hand out some discipline and now I've gotta hold it accountable and I gotta hold the standard.

And I heard it put a couple weeks ago, like I don't even know if you can be a boss and a friend. You can either be a friendly boss or a bossy friend, but I don't know if you can be a boss friend, right? And it's kind of this tier of roles, right? And one of the things I'm still learning, is that as you move into new roles, and so for some of my staff, I've got multiple roles, right?

I'm their friend, and I'm their boss, and I'm their mentor, or I'm their, you know, go to church with them. So those are multiple roles, I feel, with maybe one individual. Well, I've gotta kinda put those in a little bit of a hierarchy and say, okay, in this season of life, which is the most important right now? Right?

And it can't be the friend role, because if I'm, I'm gonna say things to you as a boss that I probably wouldn't say to you as a friend. I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to say things or hold you accountable. And so I've kind of had to recalibrate and say, okay, let's put the right slot.

Primarily, I have to be your boss first, right? I love you, and you know, I'm gonna go to church with you. I'm gonna be your friend. But remember on Monday, I do expect you to show up to work on time or whatever.

As a friend, a friend may not, may not be putting the screws to you like that. And so that's probably the biggest, in this position specifically, is holding that boss-friend tension well and trying to put those roles into kind of that hierarchy, right? It's kind of like your pastor at church, right? Like your pastor is your friend and he may be your neighbor and he's also your pastor.

Well, which of those roles needs to come first in your life? Probably that pastor role. Right? Because a pastor is gonna have to be able to tell you things that your neighbor would never tell you.

Right? He's gonna have to hold your feet to the fire on things that your neighbor's not gonna confront you on your sin necessarily, but your pastor should. He asked you. That's his job.

And so you're making sure I've got my pastor in the right category. Yeah. Right? He might be my friend, he might be my neighbor, but first he has to be my pastor.

And so same thing in this role. Right? I am your friend, and I am your neighbor, and I am your, you know, working in the fire department with you, or whatever. But first and foremost, when you and I interact in this context, I gotta be your boss.

And that's tough. That is not an easy thing to do when it comes to any organization. But for sure, an organization like this where you're kind of all in same team and maybe, like me, I kind of grew up in the organization. And so I know all my staff very well, right?

I've seen them in all sorts of ~ capacities. And now I'm in charge of all of them. That can be a difficult thing to figure out. Yeah.

Yeah, I can relate to that. I like to just call it out because, I mean, you mentioned, you know, Sure. the boss says things sometimes that a friend wouldn't say, but sometimes it can go the other way. A friend would say things that might be inappropriate for a boss to say.

Hmm. And so I like to, Hey, you work for me, but this is not a work thing. I'm taking off my boss hat. I'm going to put it aside.

I'm not telling you this as your superior. As a friend that cares about you, I see this in your life and I want to just ask, how are you doing? And so, you know, don't file a complaint with HR in this, That's right, that's right. ~ in this moment.

I'm not your boss. doesn't affect your employment. I just, I'm worried about you. care about you.

There's somebody that cares about you. I want to talk about this or, you know, vice versa. Hey, we were fishing yesterday. We had a good time, but you were late to work today.

And now as your boss, we have to talk about that. So. Yeah, yeah. One of the things I found helpful in doing that is even just changing locations of conversations, right?

Yeah. And so when I'm having boss conversations, I should probably hold those in a boss context, which is probably in my office, right? In some way, shape, form. And then if we're going to have a friend conversation, let's go out for coffee.

Let's get out of the office, get out of the distractions, let's get off the campus, or whatever, right? And actually go to coffee shop. That can help change the whole mood. of putting that conversation in the right context, just moving locations can actually help bring the, either bring the blood pressure up, because it needs to be up, say, hey, this is a boss conversation, or bring it down, because this is a friend conversation.

Easy. You're doing just fine. Chill out. Yeah, yeah, that's good.

There's some good advice there. what is your favorite thing and your least favorite thing about your job? Oh man. My favorite thing about the job is really what it was from the beginning, why I stayed.

And that's watching transformation happen. Whether it's in my own staff, right, as I watch them grow and mature and take on new roles and new leadership, or the student body, right? When I get to see a student body grow and learn, and not just during their time at the academy, I get the opportunity sometimes. to actually follow these guys after they leave, right?

I get to go to their weddings, or get to meet their children one day. One of our guys just got through Green Bray School a couple years ago. I got to go to that ceremony, right? And that's a really cool thing to be a part of, right?

And you don't sit there like, ha ha, I'm the reason. No, I'm not sitting there saying I'm the reason he did all these things. But you say, I got to play a small sliver of time in this guy's life. What a privilege that So that's probably the coolest part of the job is getting to go to these weddings or go to these, know, meeting these guys' kids or seeing them graduate from a college here or join the military there or whatever, or having them come back, right, for reunions or something and tell me what they're doing.

That's probably the coolest part of the job is watching these guys, not just for the nine months they're here, but nine, 10, 12 years after the fact, still doing well as men. That's really cool. And then, you know, Probably the hardest part of the job is the inverse of that is that is people people people People are you might my dad says if people are the problem, right? It wasn't for all these people who wouldn't need leadership ~ And that's true.

And it's just that you know, you people are not logical problems waiting to be solved Though some days I wish they were right you kind of wish a plus b equals c and it's just not which in turn makes leadership number one really tough, right? and unforgiving It also makes leadership unfair, right? Where you did A and B and C doesn't happen always, right? And leadership is not fair.

Where you think you did all the right, you can do all the right things and still lose as the leader. And so I like to say, leadership is not complicated. Now it is because people are complicated. What I mean when I say that is that the principles of leadership are not complicated, right?

What you're supposed to do as a leader, right? how you're supposed to behave. Anybody on the planet can probably tell you what a good boss is and a bad boss is. Most of those are ways bosses behave.

We all know what good bosses are, or good leaders are. Well, they're normally a set of behaviors. They're normally character traits of good leadership. We all know it, so it's not complicated.

You can ask any Tom, Dick, and Harry, like, what makes a good leader? We're all probably saying about the same things. Inherently, intuitively, we know that. So it's not complicated.

Leadership's not complicated. But by golly, it is difficult. It is really, really hard. Because people, people are complicated.

And one day you hit it out of the park and the very next day you strike out three in a row, three up, three down, you're going, ~ my goodness, this is just, know, kicking in teeth. So that's probably the hardest part of the job. I can relate to all of that very closely. think you and I would get along very well.

~ When have Hahaha you been most afraid as a leader and where did that fear come from? man, you know, probably the most afraid I've been, well, there's probably a couple of moments where I have been genuinely fearful. All of them have to probably deal with the fear of man, right? Where you have maybe a parent who's really mad at you or a student who's really mad at you.

And I've got some stories from students when I was working in the trenches that you're like, is this guy gonna hit me? Like he might hit me. He might deck me. And I remember just being genuinely afraid, right?

Where you get a really unhappy parent, right? Who are the customers in a lot of ways, they're paying the bills. and so you get a really unhappy parent and your heart can just sink, right? And that can come out of nowhere sometimes where you're like, I don't even know how this happened or something has gotten out of control or you didn't meet an expectation or whatever.

And so those are all probably a, part of that's what I'm gonna call an idolatry problem. where I'm looking for value in the wrong places. And I'm looking for value from man, right? I want to be liked, I want to be praised, I want to get patted on the back and tell me I'm doing a good job.

And when that's threatened by angry students or angry parents or angry staff members, all of that has to do with the fear of man, which inherently is an idolatry problem. It's worshiping the creature instead of the creator, looking for my value from God. What's happening in that moment, So I'm looking for value from people and that's been threatened. So now I am afraid.

I'm afraid of, know, whether it's I'm afraid of getting sued or I'm afraid of, you know, just people not generally not liking me, right? Or not liking my program. Those are probably the, you know, that's not a moment necessarily, but. As I think about the moments where my heart drops or my heart skips a beat or I can feel it in my stomach or I'm not sleeping at night, right?

~ What is all that? Well, that's a fear man. Right, afraid of what people think about me. Have you learned anything in your time in leadership that helps you overcome that or avoid those situations?

Yeah, there's a sticky note on my desk that just has one question on it. And it says, what did you expect? And so when I end up in moments like that, or just difficult moments in general, you I kind of sit back and say, Jesse, you decided to work with people. You decided to work with 18-year-old young men.

What did you think? What did you expect, right? You really expected it was gonna be great and happy and lucky and smooth sailing. And then you work in a very high risk environment, right?

So of course sometimes the guys do something that's dumb, right? Or the guys make a mistake and somebody gets hurt or whatever, right? You've to go to the clinic and get patched up or this person's mad at this person and this happened, this person got their feelings hurt or whatever. A lot of why I can get frustrated is I have bad expectations, right?

I expect things to go my way. I want them to go the way I want them to go. I'm the boss, right? Dang it, things need to go the way I want them to go.

And so that little sticky note helps kind of keep me, keep me, like, what did you expect? Right? Where are your expectations completely out of alignment with reality? And say, wait a minute, what am I doing?

I'm working with people, so I should expect tension. I'm working with people, I should expect conflict. I'm working with young men, I should expect pushback. I'm working with young men in a high risk, high dangerous environment.

Why did I expect anything different? So that's probably the one that I come back to. And I run my staff, right? When they all get kind of angsty or antsy, you're like, I can't believe this parent yada yada yada.

Whoa, time out, time out. What'd you expect? Right? This is people work.

This is parent work. This is student work. This is, we're, know, like, we have to get up at midnight and go on a search. Yeah, what'd you expect?

This alert, like, welcome to the party, pal. Like, you must be new here. This is what we do. So yeah, that's been really helpful for me over the years.

man, yeah, I can relate to a lot of what you're saying. I was in a different industry, different field, but there's a lot of parallels here. So what is a lesson that you wish you would have learned earlier? man.

you know, leadership is, as I said before, it's not complicated, but it is hard. I think when I was a very young leader, I really did believe that as long as you did the right things, or the right principles, or the right ideas, that things would generally go a certain way. And I ended up giving the leaders who were over me a lot of grief. because I saw a deficit in some of their behaviors or some of their attitudes.

I was like, well, if you just would do this, then this would happen. Well, now I'm in that position. And I go, man, a little bit of humility, Jesse, would have gone a long way. And legitimately, I've actually called some of those leaders back over the years and said, I am so sorry, because I just didn't know.

I just had no idea that... this is as difficult as it is, or this is as hard as it is, that you can do everything right and still lose. know, your leadership is a little bit of a game that has to be played, and if you want to get to the place where you can change the rules of the game, you gotta play by the rules for a very long time, right, or to get that position of leadership. And I didn't always play by the rules, right, when I was a young leader, right, I was kind of edging and dodging, and how do I do this, and...

And so I ended up, I'll say griping to my upper tier leadership a lot where I was hard on them. I was just hard, right? Like you should do this and you should do this and you should read this book and you should know these principles and blah, blah, blah, blah. Forgetting that these guys were 50, 60 years old, some of them, right?

Hello. They've got wisdom that I don't have, right? I may have knowledge, right? Cause I've read all these books, but I don't have wisdom.

These guys have wisdom. And I just didn't know. And it's hard to know, Experience, without experience, it's hard to really understand until you're sitting in the chair. Well, now I'm sitting in the chair and you're going, and guys will come to me, right?

They'll sir, if we just did this and this and this, and I look at them and they'll say, man, if only it were that simple. Don't you think I would have done that? Like if it was just that, I'm not stupid. Yeah.

Well, that was what my leader should have told me, ~ Yeah. right? They said, Jesse, don't you think we would have done that if it was that simple? They didn't.

They were very kind. They were very humble. They were very gracious. They listened to me.

But that's a mistake I made, was really thinking that as long as you did everything right, you could still win. That is not always the case because it's people work. It was complicated. And one day you hit it out of the park and the very next day it's three strikes and you're out.

That's the price of the image. man, I love it. There is some real wisdom in that experience you shared there. that's ~ one of my favorite lines is, you don't know what you don't know.

~ Yeah, Yeah. yeah. 100%. as a senior leader, probably you've experienced this as well.

I know in business, there are certain positions that everybody thought they could do. You know, that's the sweet job. They're in charge. They're the boss.

get to do whatever they want. I want that job. And then you promote somebody to that position. It takes about a day and a half and they figure out.

What is this? Well, and here's the thing, right? Because you've never sat in that job, you don't actually know what they're having to deal with, right? You have this fantastical idea, Exactly.

or this is part of that lesson that I learned, it's this fantasy that it's something that it actually isn't, right? Some of it's true, right? You do this, you do this, and you are in charge, yeah. Some of it's not true at all, right?

Sometimes the government comes and tells you, you can't do that, right? That's against the law. You're like, oh, well, didn't know that was against the law. Yeah.

I didn't know you can't do that, right? you are really at your boss like well you guys would just do this they're like that's not even illegal we run out to do that right and so you do you do kind of have this this fantasy of what you think this position or that position is going to be when you get there and some of it is true most of it is not Because number one, you've never felt the emotional pressure of being in that position, right? And that's not nothing, right? That's a huge part of that weight, right?

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. You've never had that emotional weight of responsibility. And then two, you've never actually had to deal with making those decisions for that organization or for that team or for that situation. And so now you're sitting there going, I actually have to make that phone call to that parent, or have to make that phone call to that lawyer, or I gotta talk to this person about this, or talk to that person about that.

Well, that's a whole different ball game. It's really easy to be like, well, if I was in charge, I would. Well, maybe, maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't. Maybe you wouldn't do that at all because you don't have all the information that that leader had.

That's why that leader made that call is that they're sitting in room with way more information than you have. And so you're down here a little peon saying, this is what I would do. Well, it might not be what you do. And when you get there, find, like said, take day and half and you're going, oh my goodness, this is a whole different game.

Yeah. Yeah. And the, the secondary unintended consequences of those decisions. A lot of the times you can't, you can't see that until you're sitting yeah.

in the seat and it seems pretty black and white, cut and dry until you're the one making the decision. And it can get messy. Yeah. you see that fallout effect.

Yeah, It's, it's not all black and white. oh yeah, and you say, well if they do that there, well then I gotta do that for this person, and so I can't do that, I can't do that. As good as that would be, as helpful as that would be, as much as you want me to do that, here's what you don't understand, is that then I have to do it for this person and that person, and that's not healthy, that's not good for the organization. Or I don't do it for those other people and I just do it for you, well now I'm playing favorites, right?

Now I'm doing favoritism, and that's a whole different kettle of fish, so. Yeah, yeah, it gets real messy real fast. ~ like I said, you don't know what you don't know. Sometimes it looks clear from one perspective, Yeah.

but when you're the guy sitting in the hot seat, things change real fast. Well, real quick. a related question. This is one of my favorites.

Is there an opinion you once held strongly that you've changed because of your experiences? Yeah, you know, a lot of it's kind of wrapped up in the previous conversation, but it's probably that fantasy idea, right, where if I was in that... that position, I would do this. Almost none of us actually behave the way we think we're gonna behave, right?

It's really easy to make up a world that doesn't exist and to think, well, when I'm the pastor or when I'm the elder or when I'm the whatever, and you can do that because you're not actually there. It costs you nothing to make up that narrative in your head. And it's very easy to cast judgment on other people, especially people that are your boss. And so you cast judgment, I wouldn't do that.

and get there and you realize, wait, I'm this, you can say it this way, the non-leader you is the leader you. Nothing changes but the title. There's no magical transformation that you go to bed one night not a leader and then you get a title and you wake up the next morning and say, wow, look, I'm disciplined and I have self control and I show up to work on time and I know how to be honest. ~ No, you might have been a jerk as a follower.

Well guess what you're gonna be as a boss? You're gonna be a jerk because that's who you are. And so there is no magical transformation. But we do that.

We create that fantasy in our heads about when I'm in charge I'm gonna behave a certain way or do things different. you may not. And so that's why I tell people, the first person, this is kind of John Maxwell thing, but the first person you lead is you. And so learning how to lead yourself really well when you're a follower will correlate to being able to be a good leader, or least a decent leader, when you're in charge.

You may not do everything right, and you still got problems and things, but for sure it's gonna be an easier transition if you're that really good follower and you're leading yourself really well really intentionally, well then by extension you're probably going to be an intentional leader. But if you're kind of a bum down here, well you're probably going to be a bum as a leader. Now you just have a title and now you're just doing more damage. Ha Before your lack of self control and the effect of you, well now your lack of self control, your angry outbursts, now they affect everybody.

The whole culture of the organization, the whole mood of the room. And so that's a lesson I've had to learn the hard way. I'll be like, I'm not angry, I'm passionate, right? And kinda excuse my way out of maybe outbursts.

It's like, well, that was okay when I was down at the bottom of the food chain. Well, now I'm at the top of the food chain and I have an outburst. Well, now everybody knows about it. Everybody hears about it.

It trickles down to the whole culture and saying, Jesse's angry, he's in a mood today, don't go talk to him. Well, that's not good. And now you've done damage to the organization and the culture. So just really learning how to lead yourself well before the risk and the cost is high.

Because once you're there, in some ways it's almost too late. Or you can still make it up. You got a lot of clean up on aisle six. If you carry those behaviors and those habits that are not helpful into the position of the title.

Yeah, that's good. That ties into a topic or a something that I would present to the lot of guys working for me for a long time was they'd complete, you know, I always get the menial tasks. I want to do one of the important jobs. I want that job.

I want to do that thing. And like, well, the menial thing that doesn't really matter, you do a poor job at it. So why would I give you a job that actually matters? Yeah, You know, ~ yeah.

~ The job that doesn't matter, show me you can do that well and I'll give you a job that does actually matter. It's not the other way around. If you slack off and do a crummy job at the job that doesn't matter, you don't just magically do a great job at the job that really does matter and is important. You know?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, well, we'll tell guys if I can't trust you to make your bed, why would I trust you with with with men, right? Why would I trust you with you? Yeah.

know, and which is why we is why we we do the training when we do it and we put them through that boot camp phase. Basic training we get them is because you say, before I put you on the tower at 90 feet in the air rescuing somebody's life, if I can't trust you to make your bed, I ain't putting you up there or, you know, 60 feet under the water looking for a body or a car or a handgun. for the sheriff's office, well, I'm not doing that because you're gonna kill yourself down there and somebody else, right?

And so if you can't tie, make your bed and tie your shoes and polish your boots and iron your uniform and show up on time, when life is easy, right? It's real simple over here. You got no decisions to make. We're making them all for you.

You can't do that well. We're not putting you in the air. We're not giving you your pilot's license or whatever. So yeah, that's direct correlation.

I watched this actually play out in real time. And this is where the leadership principals, as John Maxwell talks about, they are principals, right? And they are foolproof, and they do work. I went to fire academy in Dallas, actually.

So by the time I went to fire academy, I kind of aged out of this program here. was an officer here. I was teaching. I didn't have the time to go through alerts fire academy.

So I went and I doing this other course in Dallas. I was 25, 26, but I was actually one of the younger cadets in this fire academy. And three or four days into the academy, you pick your company officers. And you collectively pick them, right?

And it was me and another alert guy, actually. We'd gone to this fire academy together in Dallas. And we were two of the youngest cadets there in the fire academy. But we took these principles we learned at alert, right?

Showing up on time, working hard, getting after it, quiet professionals, make your bed, polish your boots, work really hard. And we applied those for those couple of days that we were there. When they picked the company officers, they picked him and myself, right, as a captain and lieutenant. And these were guys that were in their late 20s and early 30s and even 40s.

And they said, we want to follow you guys. We were like, you want to follow us? We're 25. Why do you want to follow us?

Well, it was because we were faithful in those small things, right? This isn't toot-a-roan-hoaring, but I was shocked. And I was like, it worked, right? It actually worked, right?

I was faithful in making my bed and showing up on time and working hard and getting after it. that quiet professionalism, let my work speak for itself, not my words, I of now shut my head down and show up, shut up, get up and do up and they say, we'll follow you, we'll follow you into a burning building, right? Even though you've got little experience and you're young, we'll follow you because we can see you're faithful with making your bed, so you're probably gonna take care of us when we go to the fire.

Yeah. man, that's awesome. I see that played out every day in different areas and you're articulating those principles very well. So is there a major mistake that you've made that you wish you could have avoided?

You know, when I was early on, this would have been when I was in charge of basic training. So that first phase, I was the commanding officer of that phase, which is the bootcamp phase. I was probably 27, 28. It was another big step in my leadership, right?

Maybe not the biggest step, it was a big jump. And very early on... I kind of held moms and dads or parents a little bit at a distance where I kind of felt threatened by them for whatever reason. And very early on, and I had some pretty major things transpire in that first year or two, and it wasn't working, right?

It was just, was some antagonistic parents and some really hard conversations and it was kind of beat up. to one of my leadership mentors who'd mentor me for years and years and years. And I was like, what? I don't even, what is happening right now?

And he's like, Jesse, you're not a parent, right? Like, of course they don't trust you, right? You're 27, these people are 47, they're 57, right? You have to work at earning their trust.

And one of the things you have to do is level expectations, right? What you're bucking up against is these parents have all these expectations and you're not meeting them. And you don't even know what they are, right? Because you're not a parent, right?

So you don't know what it would be like to send your son to alert. You don't know it would be like to entrust your 18 year old maybe to this program, right? That's difficult and hard and dangerous. And so I sat with, you after that mentoring conversation, I sat down and I wrote this long list of here's what you can expect of me as your son's commanding officer.

And I wrote all these email templates and I ended up sending them out every week. they're still used to this day, right? 10, 11 years later, we still use those templates that I wrote up. because I was getting beat up so badly.

And I was like, this is horrible. This is miserable. The guy who'd had the job before me was a dad. He was a parent.

He could talk to language. He could relate to, I mean, I even called my dad, right? He's been one of my leadership mentors over and I was like, dad, I don't know what I'm doing here. I can work with young men, but I can't work with mom and dad.

And part of that was that level expectations, Yeah. right? Tell them exactly what to expect out of you and your organization so that they can come to the table going, ~ this is what I can expect. And they don't have unrealistic expectations of you.

And so that was a really hard lesson there for about a year, year and a half, where I was just beat up 16 different ways from Sunday. And the more I got beat up, the more I wanted to hold them at a distance, right? And these mentors in my life are like, they're not the enemy, right? You've got to actually bring them into the fold.

You need to over-communicate and over-have conversation, pick up the phone. And you don't have to do things exactly how they want you to do them. You can come up with creative solutions, but you've got to be talking to these parents. You've got to be communicating with your customer base this way.

And you're thinking that the students are your customers, well, they are on campus. but mom and dad are paying the bills and so you've got to be able to reach them too. So that was a really where I was very much out of my depth just because I wasn't a parent, I was very young, I thought I had all the answers right and so this some of that pride and ego and I help people at a distance where I needed to bring them in and embrace them and then help level the expectations with proactive communication.

Okay. Man, it sounds like you're kind of a pro at learning from your mistakes and ~ putting in processes to correct it moving forward. That's, I think that's a mark of a great leader is when you can honestly evaluate yourself and, and make changes instead of blaming something else. So, kudos to you, man.

Well, it's certainly been a leadership road of hard knocks, that's for sure. And I don't get it every time, right? Sometimes I gotta go through it two or three times. You go, okay, I gotta stop banging my head against that.

We need to change tactics. You got to that question. What is the common denominator? I've been in this same situation a bunch of times.

Yeah, it's probably me. It's me. The only thing that's common is me. Oh, Yeah.

I'm the issue here. Yeah. Well, I know you've kind of devoted your entire adult life to this career track, helping these young men, this alert program. If you could go back to 2008, would you choose to do it all over again?

Oh yeah, you know, and I actually tell parents that, right? I tell perspective students that. I say alert was one of the best things I ever did, both as a young man, and now obviously continue to do, as a middle-aged man, I don't know what we are, right, whatever. But I absolutely would do it again, right?

I would not change, from the experiences I got, the friendships I got, the perspective I got. I mean, it radically transformed my life, right? It changed my life, right? I didn't quite know what I was gonna do.

join the military and go to fire EMS or whatever. And obviously, Alert helped answer that question. And yeah, and it also obviously gave me direction. It unlocked a passion I didn't even know I had, right?

And that was for helping other young men. Because by God's grace, I got helped as a young man, right? And mentors gave me a shot and they gave me permission to stretch my wings as a young leader and being able to turn out and do that for other young guys and watch them grow, right? coolest things about being around an organization as long as I have is you get to watch guys go from being day one students all the way through the same trajectory that I took, right?

They become midterm leaders and drill instructors and senior drill sergeants or sergeant majors. And that takes a four or five year long process. But you gotta be around long enough to see that and to watch guys that come in and you're like, this guy's kind of bozo. right, or whatever, or you say, you'd never peg this guy, and then you watch him grow, right, and then he becomes a sergeant major, he becomes an upper tier leader, he becomes an officer, right, and he works and he instructs here, right, and being a part of that journey, man, you can't put a price tag on that.

And I used to have, was like, that was the coolest part of my job, right, is I would look around and say, I knew every single one of you guys at 18 years old. I knew every, because I've been around long enough, I knew every single one of you guys as a day one student, and now you're all upper tier leaders. That's an incredible journey to be a part of. Yeah.

man, that's I think you kind of alluded to it there, but what has been your biggest win as a leader? What are you most proud of? Yeah, I think that's probably what I'm most proud of is watching these guys grow within the organization and then grow outside the organization. There's a couple of real hard cases over the years where guys have come through and they've come from broken homes or they've come from rough, rough backgrounds.

And everybody on the outside was like, there's no way this guy's gonna make it, right? Or there's no way this guy, you need to give up on this guy. By God's grace, we were able to continue with those guys. Not all of them, right?

Sometimes guys wash out or guys quit or, you know, sometimes they don't make it. But there's probably four or five that I could, you know, call the memory right now that we kind of, you high expectations, but we believe you can meet them. Back to that idea. And they rose to the occasion.

And these guys have moved on to be good husbands and good fathers and... I got to be a part of that transforming process while they were here in training. I mean, that's, again, you can't put a price tag on that. And so it's always good when good guys come and they do really well.

That's kind of expected though, right? They come here they're like, yeah, I love this. This is my bread and butter. Like I can eat this up all day.

Those guys go on to be Navy SEALs and Delta operators and Green Berets, right? All of which our alumni are out there doing. But you kind of like, you know, you'll meet them on day one. And you'll say, what do you want to do with your life?

Like, well, after I'm done here, I'm going to join the Navy SEALs. Those guys, you're like, yeah, you probably are. Right? And they do.

Right? Because they're already kind of geared that way. And those are awesome. Right?

want to be a part of those. It's actually more of the Rocky Balboa stories, right? The Zero to Heroes that I'm the most proud of. Right?

When you watch these guys, right? Again, you know, by God's grace, go from when you're like, I don't think you can tie your shoes, dude. How in the world are we gonna get you through this? And it does, it works, right?

They're committed, they wanna be helped, they wanna grow, and if something clicks in their brain, they lock in, and some of those guys end up making a turn and going on to work in special forces or become lawyers or doctors or whatever, right? Those are probably the coolest part of the job is you sit back and you go. Him? Really?

That happened? It's awesome. It really is awesome to watch that happen. man, that's great.

I love that. What has been your best resource to grow as a leader? man, you know, I was actually on your website earlier looking at all your book recommendations at the bottom of your website, yeah. I think.

I think I've read every single one of them. And I was like, man, like this list is my list. I love every single one of these, right? So obviously, know, the classic mantra, leaders are readers.

And so I try to be decently well-read as a leader. I try to listen to a plethora of podcasts, right, from Andy Stanley has always been kind of a big one to John Maxwell. John Maxwell was the foundation of my leadership journey, right? One of my mentors when I was 13, 14, 15, gave me a John Maxwell book and that was kind of the very beginning of my leadership pipeline where I read some principles in there that I still carry to this day, right?

I still use those kind of foundation, right? And obviously, you know, as I bridged off from there to read the Simon Sinek's and the Jaco Williams and all those one of the best leadership books I ever read was actually by Albert Mueller, who's the president of Southern Seminary. And his book, Conviction to Lead, is probably one of the best leadership books that I ever read. It is so concise and so on the nose.

I actually go back. and I'll reread it every other year just to remind myself of the things that I've learned in there. And so obviously that's kind of a classic, listen to podcasts and read. Probably the biggest thing that has made a leadership difference in my life though is actual flesh and blood mentorship.

Is sitting down with a cup of coffee. And here's what I've realized is that as the mentee, I have to do the pursuing. And as young leaders, we have to be okay with that. Right, knock on the door, send them the email, send them the text, buy them the coffee, getting up at four in the morning and driving to wherever to sit down with this guy and take notes.

And your job again is to show up and shut up Yeah and bring a notebook and ask questions and take notes. You know, I've got things on my desk to this day that a mentor just drew in front of me. He said, here's how you need to be spending your time. Right, needs to be a third here, a third here, a third here, and I keep that in my planner.

So when I start my day, I look at that graph. And so those are probably the biggest impact in my life is the actual flesh and blood, picking up the phone. I still call the founder now and again, right? Ron Furman, I'll call him, pick him up, right?

Because there's only been four directors in Alert's history, right? I'm one of the four. Well, that means there's only four guys in the whole world who know exactly what I'm dealing with. Well, I should probably be calling those guys, right?

So I'll do that, right? I'll talk to those guys. And so here's what I do. And then they just say, oh, I get that.

Oh, I understand that. Yep, I hear. And here's some wisdom on that. I mean, I talked to him two weeks ago.

Yeah. And that was a phenomenal conversation to help write my rudder a little bit and go, oh, that's right. OK, this is what I should be expecting. This is what I should be course correcting.

So probably the biggest, biggest leadership influence. That's what I would tell, that's what I would encourage people to do. And you've got to find people who are doing what you want to do or have been where you are. and show up and listen and take them out to coffee and sit down and just soak up that, soak up what you don't have which is wisdom, right?

That the owl of wisdom flies at night, right? It's at the end of life that we finally get wisdom, especially as a young leader. don't have knowledge and information, I don't have wisdom. And so I have two options to get wisdom.

One is to live a really long life, right? Which I'm working on. But the other is to hang out with wise people. And so really making that a habit and a practice has been ~ fundamental to my leadership career.

me good stuff there and sorry, this is way off script, but it just kind of popped into my mind with our discussion here. you know, I'm kind of turning that corner in my career where now I'm the advisor in a few areas and, you know, the, people that have replaced me are now the ones calling me asking for advice. And, we talked earlier, you know, when you're the subordinate, it's really easy to look at the person in that position and judge it. And you have no idea what's going on.

As that advisor now I'm finding, you know, the things we talked about, that emotional pressure, the secondary consequences, all of that, that's relieved a lot. And so there's a lot of times where a situation that would have been very heavy and very stressful for me as the leader, when I'm now the mentor advising someone, I understand what they're going through and I can relate it, but I'm removed enough from it that the... the clear path is a lot more clear. I know this is hard, but this is what you have to do.

So, yeah. And that's literally what Ron told me two weeks ago. He said, I wish I could have seen this while I was there. but here's the answer to your question.

Because I was struggling, was like, sir, I came to mentor young men, I'm not doing any of that anymore, right? I'm pushing papers, I'm writing checks or whatever. And he says, you're right, what you need to see is that you are now the mentor of the mentors, right? It's as if you can mentor the officers, right?

And your mentoring is happening through your subordinates. And this is what says, says, I wish I could have seen that while I was there. He said, I didn't, I struggled in the same way you're struggling. And so to your point, right, he's removed from it and he says, well, let me give you some wisdom because this is true because I'm not in the frame like you are, right?

You're just frustrated with the paperwork and the administration load, and I was too, but you are the mentors, you are doing mentoring, it's just through other people. It's not you actually individually, you doing that, the mentoring. Yeah. Yeah.

Good stuff. Well, I know we've talked about it a little bit already. You don't know what you don't know. And man, your experience, even at a relatively young age, I think you carry a lot of wisdom and have a lot to contribute.

Is there something that you wanted to discuss, wanted to talk about that we haven't ~ asked the right questions yet? man, I don't think so. The only thing I can think of is that if people are interested to learn more about the Alert Academy, internationalalertacademy.com is the website.

You can look us up and watch our stuff. And if you've got questions, pick up the phone and call us. You can do campus tours five days a week. And we got a preview day coming up at the end of May for the new unit coming out of basic training.

And so if you want to see the Academy on full display, all the bells and whistles and stuff. We're happy to have student body out for that. And yeah, if you want to learn more or you know a young man or you want to help young guys, pick up the phone, give us a call, check us out. Awesome.

Well, I will make sure we put all of those links and all those numbers in the show notes. We'll make it real easy for everybody. They can just scroll down in the details on their podcast app and click the link there to connect right to you. Kind of wrapping up here, we have a few questions that we ask of every guest.

I know you've made it pretty clear here. You are a Christian, a person of faith. What does that mean to you and how has that affected your leadership and your journey? Yeah, probably in a plethora of ways.

Number one, this is, you can read, I think it's John Piper, who has got a little booklet, right? It's talking about the inner circle and the outer circle of leadership. And the outer circle is the stuff that's kind of the, we'll call secular leadership, any leadership book's gonna talk about it, right? And it's integrity and being a good communicator and.

good judge of character and all those things. Well, the inner circle is kind of the spiritual side of things. That's kind of the lifeblood of the spiritual leader. And in there, it's the Word of God, and it's the people of God, and the Spirit of God.

And just reminding myself that my ability to transform people only comes through the power of God, right? It is the gospel of Jesus Christ that transforms people. It's not me. I think it's Alistair Begg who talks about walking through a graveyard now and again.

just to remind himself that in the same way he can't bring people back from the dead with his words, he can't actually transform people with his words. It's gotta be the Spirit of God. And so in a lot of ways it's a humbling thing to be a Christian leader because you so desperately want people to change and at the same time you know you're not actually the answer to their problems. You're not the answer to their change.

The Spirit's gonna have to do his work and his timing. so God is that power source, right, to what I'm supposed to doing, he's the direction of what I'm supposed to be doing. If these positions have done anything to me, they've driven me to my knees. That's probably the best place for me to be as a leader.

It's not where I like to be. I like to be in charge and I like to stand on my own two feet and have all the answers and know what I'm going to do and be proactive and make actions and blah, blah, blah. But the safest place for me to probably be is on my knees, crying out for wisdom, crying out for help, crying out for transformation in my people, into my organization, and in my own life as a leader. And then the other thing I think about when this idea of faith and leader is looking at the ultimate leader, and that's Jesus Christ.

And so it's not just this God in the wilderness who's in the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud like with the Israelites, it's God become flesh. And that's in the life and work of Jesus Christ. And so as we think about leadership principles for all kinds of purposes, There's no better place than to look to the son of man. And what does he do?

He comes and he serves. And he loves his sheep and he calls to them and he takes their burdens. And no greater love has men than this that has laid down his life for his friend. Well, what's leadership?

In a lot of ways, it's laying down your life for your subordinates, for your people. I've heard it put that servant leadership is an oxymoron. Right? Because it's the same thing.

Right? There is no servant leadership. It's just leadership because leadership is service. Well, where do we get that from?

I love the, there's a book out there. It's called Humilites, which is the Latin word for humility. Okay. And in there, he makes this argument that if you look at history, the arc of history, the idea of servant leadership really doesn't come on the scene historically.

Right? You can believe whatever you want about Jesus, whether he's the son of God or not, or just a crazy person or a prophet. Doesn't matter. Whatever you believe about Jesus, when he shows up in his writings and his teachings and his apostles, there's a traumatic transformation in what a leader is.

So today, you pick any book off the shelf and it says, oh, leadership is servanthood, leadership is humility, and leadership is all these things that we take for granted. Well, before Jesus, none of that was true. Right before Jesus it was was doom and gloom and I'm in charge and you're not and I'm Roman Empire and I'm gonna kill you whatever right you're gonna praise Might is and glorify me Yeah, exactly might is right and then Jesus this little carpenter from Galilee showed up and he says radical things like If you want to be first in the kingdom of heaven you gotta be last Right, you know what?

I mean, that's a radical transformation of life and by extension leadership And so that's really the, as we think about the focal point of faith and leadership, is the guy, is the man god, Jesus Christ. And what he says about leadership and says about authority and says about servant leadership and how that just absolutely transforms, know, it turns the leadership pyramid on its head, right? It inverts it to where now the leader is at the bottom, right? He's lifting up.

He's not at the top, standing on top of everybody else. man, good stuff. Good stuff. Is there somebody you'd like to see on the show?

Somebody that has a really unique industry, career, story that you'd like to learn more about? man, you I was thinking about this question. Obviously, the names that come to mind are some heavy hitter names, like Andy Stanley and those big leadership gurus. One organization that I've become fairly familiar with is the Emotionally Healthy Leadership ~ book series and podcast.

Okay. And I've really appreciated both of you know Peter Scorsario, and then the guy he just gave I think the presidency over to the organization I love their content and so man if you were to get somebody like that on here They talk about leadership just from a completely different world or idea right and it's all about slowing down being present and emotional intelligence and connecting to your family of origin and those things have really been helpful for my inner working as a leader.

And so those are, and they're not quite as, they're not quite the Andy Stanley level of, or John Maxwell level of leader. And so somebody like that, I think would be really great to hear from. I listen to their podcast, I'm not sure I've ever heard of an interview with them somewhere else. And so if you were to get one of those guys on here, Okay.

that could be really cool. Oh man. Yeah, that would be good. I might reach out and see if I can get a response there.

know, uh, I read the, the original book there, the emotionally healthy spirituality, think, um, I haven't dove into any of their other content, Okay, yep, yep, yep. but, uh, man, chatting with you, seems like, uh, we kind of read the same books and follow the same people. There's a lot of overlap and a lot of connections here. Yeah, this is great.

So yeah, awesome. Well, our last question I ask of most of our guests, this might be a little bit outside of your wheelhouse. A lot of the guys we talked to are more blue collar, but if you have a job to do that requires a cordless tool, which brand do you prefer? man.

I am a DeWalt guy through and through, but only because that's what was bought for me. I got my first power tools as a gift. You And this one from my father-in-law, actually. He was like, you need some power tools, right?

Because I'm not a blue collar guy, not as much. I wasn't gifted with necessarily hands. Like I was saying at the beginning, my dad, right? He was gone, right?

He was a mariner, right? He wasn't a blue collar guy. He wasn't working with his hands. So I didn't work with my hands.

So I had like no tools when I got married. My father-in-law was appalled, right? like you need a saw and you need a drill and you need all this stuff. And he was a DeWalt guy, so he bought me DeWalt, so I've got DeWalt.

And unfortunately, once you get a brand, because it's all battery related, you're kind of stuck. You're like, why would I get anything else? you And I've been happy with it, I really have. I've been happy with DeWalt, I really can't complain.

It's done me well for the really little bit of home DIY projects that I do that I risk doing. half the time, you know, I ended up having to call somebody else anyways, because I make it worse. My old pastor makes a joke where he says, you know, in my tool bag, I have a hammer and a credit card. Right?

And that's a little bit me, right? I got a hammer and a credit card. But if I had to choose one, because I'm stuck with the batteries on it, that would be the wall. man, I like it.

I appreciate that. yeah, I agree. think most people, you know, there are kind of some different tiers. If you start with one of the real cheap home brands, maybe upgrade, but once you settle in on some brand, that's where you're at.

Cause man, yeah. Changing over all the batteries and all the tools. And once you get started down the road, that's where you're at. So awesome.

Well, we'll, we'll chalk one more up for DeWalt. Yeah. I'm a DeWalt guy myself. So, Hahaha I think Milwaukee might be just a little bit ahead, but we're running right neck and neck with them.

And it is crazy because guys have, once they're in, they're in. they will, mean, I, it's one of my instructors who does our construction program. keeps our, you know, he's the Milwaukee guy, right? And he's just like, he's DeWaltzer, Yep.

blah, blah, blah, my Milwaukee. And there's, know, I like, okay, I don't know enough, right? Don't get mad at me. ~ yeah.

It's funny how strong those feelings get sometimes. It's like, ~ this one's so much better. yeah. Like, is it?

Have you ever tried the other one? Have you ever even held it? Like, Are you sure? I think they're pretty compatible.

yeah, Yeah. ~ yeah. One might edge the other out here or there in a specific model, but, ~ yeah, those top tier brands, Yeah, maybe a little bit. they're all pretty good.

So awesome. Well, Jesse, thank you so much for giving us your time. I know you're a busy guy, have a lot going on. really appreciate you taking some time out of your day to meet with us and share your experience, share your wisdom.

It really has been a pleasure to me and I know our listeners are going to get a lot out of it as well. I appreciate it Erick, thanks for the time, it's been great. Yeah. And thank you guys for joining us here on from the ground up show.

Again, remember to like, follow, subscribe, share on your favorite podcast platform, social media, wherever you find us. Uh, make sure you click that auto download button and, uh, check out our merch store. There really are some cool things there. Um, grab a new water bottle, a sweatshirt, a hat, something like that.

Uh, until next time, keep grinding.