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This is a creative/philosophical/personal-growth podcast that shares discussions with unorthodox teachers and interesting humans. Through honest conversation with the host, Jacob, we mine the hearts and minds of one another to discover interest, connection, theory, stories, joy, creativity, knowledge, and wisdom. Jacob navigates the human condition through a growing lens of mindfulness, curiosity, and thoughtfulness.
Here you'll find playful, inquisitive, and friendly dialogues with the likes of psychologists, musicians, teachers, yoga instructors, philosophers, DJs, health educators, entrepreneurs, astrologists, holistic healers, meditators, life coaches, athletes, hairdressers, authors, speakers, comedians, leaders, advocates, changemakers, seemingly regular people bursting with wisdom, artists, mathematicians, and much more.
It's kind of a dichotomy. I ended up in Nebraska. That's where I'm from. Trying to get out of Nebraska by joining the Navy. And I joined the Navy to be a radar air traffic control specialist.
Marty Strong:And through mistaken orders, I ended up at the, seal training center in Coronado after I completed air traffic control or radar school. And, when I got there, they talked me into volunteering for the seal program. So I that's pretty much my life in a nutshell. The every time I kind of think I've got a a strategic plan or an idea, you know, gamed out, some opportunity, a window opens up. And, I won't say it's a gut instinct but I sometimes I could just see it for what it is, especially if you're looking for it, which is something I I talk about a lot in my books and my speeches.
Marty Strong:If you're open to it, it's kinda like punch buggy. Soon as somebody plays Punch Buggy, suddenly see Volkswagen Beetles everywhere. Right? But up up until that point, you didn't see any because you weren't thinking about it. You weren't aware of it.
Marty Strong:So that's the same thing with opportunity. So my life has to more of a zigzag of jumping in through windows of opportunity. I, you know, I was enlisted the SEAL for 10 years, then I decided to join officer. So I was an officer for 10 years in SEALs, and then I went to manage money as you noted in the intro. And then 911 happened and then I got pulled out of the money management thing after 8 years into counterterrorism using some of my old skills, the U.
Marty Strong:S. Government. And then I ended up in a government contracting large government contracting company and started doing basically business management of operations. But then I got pulled because I was pretty successful at marketing and growing my division, I got pulled into being the business development, marketing corporate communications guy for a $1,000,000,000 company and about 7 sub supported companies. So and I wasn't that person.
Marty Strong:I didn't have that training. I wasn't that wasn't my background. But all of a sudden I was trying to figure out how to pitch and position aviation companies and vehicle companies and digital digital and virtual training companies, all kinds of odd mixture of these different these different, entities. And initially to try to figure out how to position them everything from their brand awareness and and position for success, but but then I got sucked into the operations of the companies. So just just because I said yes and went into that particular position, I ended up with about 2 or 3 years of being the doctor going into a company to look at their marketing piece and suddenly I'm getting pulled into everything, marketing, but distribution, production, their staffing levels.
Marty Strong:Do they have a strategy? Do they have any kind of planning at all? And that actually became my forte for quite a while. It wasn't so much what I started with. I ended up segueing at this whole other piece.
Marty Strong:So that's just kinda how my life happens. The books, same kind of thing. I decided I was gonna write a science fiction novel, and I wrote it. And, so I was gonna donate all the all the proceeds to the Ceil Veterans Foundation, and then, and then end up writing 3 more science fiction books and then 5 seal levels and I finished a, a 10th novel about 2 months ago, which I'm shopping to agents. And somewhere about 4 years ago, I started writing business books.
Marty Strong:Basically, because I thought that would be interesting and also would be helpful if I wanted to be a consultant or a a business coach, executive coach, etcetera. So
Jacob:Yeah. Okay. Well, it sounds like you kind of life is stumbling you stumbling you into positions that you're that you're fit for in in some way. Tell me more about this. So, at the beginning, you had a different intention, and then you ended up at this at the SEALs office.
Jacob:I'm I'm drawn to, like, use the word intuition in here too. I I wanna explore more of that. Like like, how did you just follow these little instances to listen and start talking to certain people?
Marty Strong:At 17 years old, well, just about 18 when I showed up in California, and I didn't know anything about the SEAL teams. Back back in in in those days, it was totally classified. There were no movies or no books. Nobody knew anything about them. So I really went in there thinking they were gonna figure out how to fix my orders and send me to a ship to be a radar guy.
Marty Strong:And and being, you know, basically about 18 years old, I was very malleable. So it's very easy for it's very easy for this gentleman. Very nice guy. He didn't lie to me or anything but he he just started asking me questions, you know? And and, and I answered him.
Marty Strong:I wasn't intimidated by him. It just sounded like a really fun thing to do the way he laid it out. And and he actually, you know, he'd ask a question like, well, did you ever play sports like team sports? Yes. What'd you play?
Marty Strong:There's a basketball football. Oh, so you were in football? Did did the coaches ever yell at you when you weren't doing performing correctly? Oh, yeah. Well, that's how the instructors are here.
Marty Strong:If you're not performing, they're trying to do the best thing. They're helping the coach you and get better. So they'll yell at you and everything. Did they ever punish you if you didn't do something right? Oh, yeah.
Marty Strong:Well, what were the what were the punishments? Oh, we have to run laps or run up the same stairs or something else or do wind sprints. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the same kind of thing here.
Marty Strong:The punishment is really a reinforcement of of what they're trying to teach you. So it made it sound like I was going to football camp. Right? And then, you know, do you know how to swim? Yeah.
Marty Strong:I swim competitively for 8 years. Okay. So you're okay with the world. Yeah. And by the time he was done, I thought, well, how?
Marty Strong:This seems like a perfect fit for me. It wasn't like I had this intuition or I didn't have a sense of the universe of myself yet, for sure. But I think I I was always had an awareness of it wasn't it wasn't something developed, but I had an awareness that something seemed right, like a fit. And having gone through 17 weeks of air traffic controlled radar school, and I did that because my dad did that in the Korean War in the Navy. I I'm not a tech guy along with some tech boards, and I'm not a, you know, electronics whiz or anything, but I had to go through some electronics schools for that other that other, vocation.
Marty Strong:But I knew that that didn't seem as fun as what this guy was saying. So it's kinda like signing up for prisoner war camp and not realizing. You think you're signing up for, you know, soccer camp or something. Yeah. But it did change the course of my life in a really big way.
Jacob:Yeah. Hats off to that recruitment guy. He he did his job really well relating relating things that you've experienced to, potential futures you could see in the military. Okay. So what, so what so as you started working with these other people, you were saying that it sounds like you you'd be became the person who had all the answers in some ways.
Jacob:It sounds like you just were an incredibly useful, mind to have around, and they were floating you to where you were best used. What what was that all about? What was that like? Did did you intentionally come in with, like, I'm gonna I'm gonna have a bird's eye view on this and have kind of a a little bit to say about everybody's individual or, you know, jobs, or or I guess I guess, how how did that start?
Marty Strong:Let me let me talk about how that ability kind of developed. So again, part of carving, you know, what I my pitch is to be creative, you have to be open minded and you have to take risk. You have to kind of jump through that hoop and see what's on the other side and maybe it's not perfect and maybe it's not even that great, but you gain an experience. And Louis Pasteur has this quote chance favors the prepared mind. So it's kind of like the thing that luck is when you know opportunity meet.
Marty Strong:It's hard work kind of a thing. It's one of those kind of deals, but it's true. So and I've taught my kid I have 5 kids, all grown. I taught them the same thing. There's no bad job.
Marty Strong:That that bad job, that bad boss is teaching you what not to do for your ever boss. It's teaching you how to communicate better than that boss. You're gonna you have to suck every bit, every ounce of information intelligence about the world, life, workplace, working with the coworkers, maybe the business that you you happen to be in, And then you're gonna move on because you know, this is trauma if you're a 16 year old kid working in a fast food place, and then it's trauma when you're 26 years old, it's your first big job. And it's trauma when you're 44, and you just got laid up. It doesn't change because we're a human being.
Marty Strong:So I I learned early. As a kid, I worked in lots of different jobs. I detasseled corn. I bailed hay. I worked in a warehouse.
Marty Strong:I I, for one day, I I manned a high pressure hose in a in a meat packing plant. I was too late to make that work so it was a one day job. But you you learn what you're not good at too. Right? So what you end up with if you kind of see life that way is you're kind of like this snowball that's rolling down the hill picking up everything that's on the ground.
Marty Strong:The snowball is getting bigger and more powerful, more capable, and you've got all it it reflects all these different dimensions of of the path you took. And that makes you a better problem solver because the the open minded approach and all this kind of disparate goofy experience that isn't aligned with a course or certification makes you very very comfortable with the unknown and very very comfortable with a scenario where all the assumptions are are not there laid out perfectly in front of you. And and also operating with parts of those assumptions being missing completely and then you have to make make a decision and take a leap of faith. So if you have a life like that, which is kind of how I started, and so the SEAL teams kinda think that way too. The creativity is driven that way.
Marty Strong:Open mind, throw all the all the whatever you did before, the formulas and everything, get that out of your head because every mission is a a separate problem set. And you're gonna get big trouble if you keep doing the same football play over and over again. Even if it's successful 10 times, it's the 11th time that's gonna blow up on you. So look at the problems in real time. Assess the information in real time.
Marty Strong:Have lots contingency thoughts about what happens if this doesn't go through or that doesn't happen, the weather is different. So that just reinforces what I said through 20 years of that kind of experience and training. So it was easy when I get into the business scenario I outlined. I didn't go in there thinking I was gonna be a business doctor you know like bar rescue or something. I thought I was gonna go in there look at their website.
Marty Strong:I was gonna look at their their marketing materials. I was gonna see what are they doing for promotion because that was my job at the time. And when you start talking to business owners of smaller companies, they start confiding in you about all the other elements of the business. Because it all it all ties. Right?
Marty Strong:If you don't have enough money to to run an ad, I better tell you why I don't have enough money, and that leads to I can't sell anything or at least my product sucks or my service sucks or my competition's kicking my butt. Next thing you know, you're sucked down the, you know, business 101 rabbit hole, and you end up being a mentor and a coach and a consultant for the whole sweep of issues, all the categories, because they're all inter inter intermingled and they're all related. And I was actually solving problems that were fixing things that had nothing to do with my primary purpose. And then people I worked for said, hey. There's this other division that's having problems in the biggest the big $1,000,000,000 organization.
Marty Strong:I want you to go into that division, and I want you to do an assessment. So now all of a sudden, I'm I'm, you know, the business doctor after 2 years. But it was a it was a ramp up and a learning curve, and it was me learning to, not try to solve everything right away, but to listen and hear what all the issues are because I didn't know anything about aviation. Not not the the the art of buying planes or fixing planes or or moving planes across the planet logistically. I I didn't.
Marty Strong:So I couldn't give them an answer right off the top of my head and be a know it all. I had to sit back and just absorb.
Jacob:So what so what do you think it is if you had to pinpoint, you know, a a one solid sentence or 2 of what it was about you at that time? Like, what what did you have that it seemed that other people's didn't other people do not?
Marty Strong:2 things. The open mindedness. Because if you're if you're open minded, if you're intellectually humble, it's amazing how much stuff you see. It's like the punch buggy thing all over again. You see things clearly.
Marty Strong:You see things even the people that you're talking with don't see because they're too close to it. I'm on boards with technology companies because I have an objective viewpoint because I don't know anything about robots or don't know anything about, high speed, drone operations. So I'm the one person in the room that goes, hey. You know? You got a booger hanging out of your nose because nobody's looking for that.
Marty Strong:And and that's valuable to a lot of people that they have somebody that actually sees the truth, but to do that, you have to have an open mind. The second thing is and this happens with experience, but also the experience is formed by being comfortable with taking a chance, with taking a risk. Because if you're so risk averse that you've mitigated all opportunity away, you're just a stick stuck in the in the ground. You're not going anywhere. The world's swirling past.
Marty Strong:Do everybody else's chance. Do you think you're safe because you think you've really your job is to mitigate and make everything perfect. Well, guess what? Your product, your service, the way you run your company, it's all changed. Maybe everybody in the neighborhood, I've got a friend that had a training school, and it was fantastic because it catered to kids.
Marty Strong:After a decade, the revenue started going down. The headcount started going down. And he wasn't sure why, so he threw money into advertising. I mean, it turned out that where he planted that school was perfect when he when he put it there because the demographic of the surrounding 5 to to 6 mile radius were parents with kids in elementary school. And then the kids, as they were shifting from elementary school to middle school, were flooding his school.
Marty Strong:But as they started to get to high school, right, the opposite was happening. And then if you took it, like, another 5 years later, he's surrounded by empty nesters who aren't coming in to do but, you know but that so he was
Jacob:Marty, I think the mud
Marty Strong:Then he wasn't a stick in the mud kind of guy at all.
Jacob:Hang on. I think, I think you got a lag. Hang on just one second. Can you hear me right now? Shoot.
Jacob:You are froze at the moment. We'll give it another another minute. I think my my Wi Fi looks good on my end.
Marty Strong:Shoot.
Jacob:See if we can wait for it to reconnect here. Hey.
Marty Strong:Where did I drop off on that?
Jacob:About 90 seconds ago. I'm not sure exactly where, because it glitched a little bit before you started cutting out, but just, retrace your steps and and re elaborate the thought you were just talking on. I'll edit it all in post. There's no big deal.
Marty Strong:Okay.
Jacob:I think that it was I think my Internet stayed consistent on my end anyway. I I'm pretty sure. Cool. Yep. I'm still recording.
Jacob:Yeah. So, you you were talking about change. You were talking about
Marty Strong:Well, the your last question was, what are the 2 things? I think I got through the first one, which is the open mindedness. Oh, yes. Yes. So that is I'll I'll start with the number 2.
Jacob:Fantastic.
Marty Strong:How's that? Answer that. So other than you know, you have open mindedness and intellectual humility, which is the first element that you would you require. The second thing is you have to be able to take risks. You have to be willing to take risks.
Marty Strong:So if you try to mitigate the whole world and you try to get everything perfectly safe, you will miss every opportunity. You'll be left like a stick, you know, stick in the mud. The world will swirl past you. The clouds change. The stars will move.
Marty Strong:And you think you're safe because you're sitting there untouched. But in reality, everything's everything's different than it was when you decided to lock it down. So if you, for example, I have a friend who had this this fitness center, catered mostly to kids, and and it was doing fantastic. And then over time, it started to lose lose the, the patient patients the the training population. The kids started leaving because they started going into high school.
Marty Strong:They started going to college. And what he didn't realize for a long time was that the demographic of the environment around him, the 5 mile radius of the school, had gone from small families with 1 to 2 kids in elementary school and going into middle school to empty nesters. So the entire pop he served the population, but they had evolved and left. So he basically had to shut the school down there and find another location like that. But it happened so slowly that he had no no conscious awareness that was happening.
Marty Strong:And so, you know, you have to go take risk, but you also have to realize that, you know, trying to try to mitigate those risks can actually, cut off your opportunities. So those are 2 things. Ability to, have an open mind and, be intellectually humble coupled with risk taking.
Jacob:Yeah. Well, it seems I mean, change is actually a pretty profound, change is even a continuous learning process for me. You know? A lot of, a lot of, like, kind of my world in this podcast has been it started from me trying to learn about myself, and, I had some mental health things that I was like, man, I gotta get this stuff figured out. I've gotta understand how my own mind works.
Jacob:And that that's a pretty profound fact is learning about change. You think you're gonna get to this arrival point of, like, I'll learn about who I am and exactly why I am this way, and then it'll be that same way until I'm, you know, 95 years old or whatever. But, no, it's a you know, every day, you kinda have to accept who you are that day. You have to accept in every different transition in all of your lives when you start a new job, when you get into a new relationship. Any of the stages of our life, we kinda have to take account, who am I?
Jacob:Why am I this way? And is it serving me going forward? Because sometimes we're met with we're understanding ourself, we're learning about ourselves, but we but there's not necessarily an arrival point. I I feel like I found that a lot with myself. There's not necessarily a place where I get to where I know myself 100%.
Jacob:I'm continuously learning about myself. I wonder in your world, Marty, where do you what what do you see in other people? I mean, you've you've worked alongside a lot of other people. I mean, I'd love to hear what your own experience about it is too. What happens when people start to try to change?
Jacob:What what are the frictions that come up when we when we want change? What are the things that are difficult for us to look at about who we are now and that need changed? What I guess, I suppose, what are some things that that come up commonly in your world when it comes to people trying to assert change in their life?
Marty Strong:So there's there's a lot of brain science now that has identified kind of the the primordial original intent of the brain to keep the human species alive. And there were 2 things. 1 was stability and safety. Essentially, full mitigation of all risk. You know, you don't want to get eaten by a saber toothed tiger, and you want to be able to find food all the time, right, and stay warm and all those kinds of things.
Marty Strong:The second thing was the willingness to take risks and explore. Because if you didn't do that, in the first case, if you were living in a valley, you would eventually kill all the deer, eat all the fruit. You know, everything would be you'd you'd, denude all possible food sources, and then you starve to death and die. So you were had to be compelled and be willing mentally to pick everything up and take it into the unknown over the hill. And there's actually 2 switches in the human brain that they located that are functional parts of the human brain, which is part of what I write about in in be different because that allows you at any age, unless you have a medical problem, to be creative, to take chances, to think that they have a sense of awe and wonder.
Marty Strong:We just been taught not to do that as adults. That's not an adult thing to do. 6 year olds, that's okay, but not adults. So that I think is a premise to my answer to your question that that's the way we're designed. And if in modern times, say since the late 1800, mostly through public schooling, we've been conditioned to not take risks, to to hug safety and stability as as the be all, end all, you know, the objective is stability and and safety, then what happens is we are leaving ourselves open to greater and greater and greater emotional and psychological shock when that reality turns out not to be reality.
Marty Strong:Madame Curie who who discovered radium has a quote that says the universe abhors stasis. In other words, it it the universe hates stability. And she's saying because she was a scientist and she realized everything she was looking at was in a constant state of turmoil and change and adaptation and evolution or devolution or complete destruction and just disappeared. And and she goes, okay, then I'm gonna stop trying to contain this and control this and codify this and catalog this because that's not the way the world works. So if you think of what I just said and and take your your question and there's 2 people in a room and they hear, hey, the company is going to, reduce the staff by 10%.
Marty Strong:Well, usually, when I tell my people because I'm I've been a CEO for now 15 years. Anybody's about to communicate to change, I say, but what's the first thing everybody's gonna flash in their mind the second you start to talk or and you send out a communication? What's gonna happen to me? So the best thing to do is to front load what's gonna happen to you. You can start off with all kinds of wind ups.
Marty Strong:You know? We've had a strategic retreat. We did this and that, and the markets are changing and everything, And they're all going, you know, they're hyperventilating because they're waiting for the other shoe to drop. Right? And the longer they have to wait or the more vague your communication, the worse the outcome's gonna be as as far as their mind's concerned.
Marty Strong:That's because any change, even before it's announced, and maybe it doesn't have anything to do with you, any change is perceived as a threat to their stability, their security, their stasis. And it it could take an even down a notch. You can you can go to an accountants and linear kind of trained professionals or or or, they do this all the time. You go up to an accountant and say, hey. I want you to be part of a project team that's gonna be developed pricing for a bid we're putting in.
Marty Strong:And if they've never done that before, they break out in sweats, they go pale, and they stare at you because all they see is failure because they haven't done it before. Because what they're good at is incremental repeating of, rules and laws related to accounting. And they went to school for that, and they were attracted to that. And what you just basically said is I want you to go on there and and show your ass and look like a fool, and then you'll never be the same again as far as we're concerned because we'll remember how how bad you were. They think it's like you're gonna go in there and film them doing karaoke or something.
Marty Strong:That's the psychological reaction. So if you don't hire people with a with a more comfortable mindset, a willingness to work with other people, a willingness to roll with some of the changes. And you've had to really interview for that kind of temperament. Right? If you don't do that, what you have is you've actually, on purpose, brought a whole bunch of fragile mind mindsets into a room.
Marty Strong:And the only thing that that hasn't happened yet is you haven't announced your first change because then once you do, you're gonna get what you bought, basically. That that labor force is gonna react how each individual reacts, and the majority of them are gonna get freaked out. Now, of course, the opposite is true. If you bring in a bunch of people that have been identified as open minded, comfortable with with some change, willing to work in project teams, you know, inter inter, multidisciplinary groups, you know? Well, then what's gonna happen is when you start talking about change, a lot of them are gonna think this is opportunity, and how can I how can I how can I help?
Jacob:Mhmm.
Marty Strong:So that's a lot of prep, you know, prep stuff, environmental stuff. Every it doesn't matter. I can't I've never been able to control every single hire that's come into groups that I've been put in charge of. And so you have a mixed bag of all those all those types of people. Some of them step up and go, what can I do to help?
Marty Strong:And some of them are in the corner, in the fetal position. And some people have already dialed up, you know, a headhunter. I need another job. I think I'm gonna get fired. And nobody's even announced anything about firing.
Marty Strong:And you get all the whole gambit. And all you can do afterward is try to manage everybody's psychological reaction. Now the more you've been through that, the more you're kind of a veteran trooper of those kinds of experiences. You build up psychological resilience to the moment, And you still may pick up the phone and dial your headhunter, put them on standby because you're not sure how it's gonna turn out. But you're not necessarily gonna go into a panic mode.
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it does make sense to have a plan in that moment. But, you know, I think we all deal with potentially making things worse when when they don't need to be, as a big of a deal as they as they currently are. I wonder in in that moment I think about the difference between growth mindset and fixed mindset a lot.
Jacob:I'm sure you have, like, some great examples of those, but, I I think that it's something that can be learned. Like, if if you think of someone with a fixed mindset, maybe they're kind of always been the certain way. I don't think that it's a death sentence by any means. I think that it's a it's an active thing that we can invite ourselves to do, and see where we're being in a kind of a fixed mode of of wanting comfort and safety, but life or whatever, you you know, is is inviting us to to have a growth mindset. I think it's something that that people can change into.
Jacob:In in those moments, especially when there's big changes happening at corporations in in, places that you're working at, What do you see? Because it seems like you you have a pretty natural growth mindset. Do you see other people with fixed mindsets? Is there, like, some linchpin that you can give them that opens them up from a fixed set to a, to a growth mindset? I know my questions are a bit rambly, Marty, but I I hope there's something that I can hand hand to you.
Marty Strong:It's they're they're fine. It's, so we're talking about behavior, and and we're talking about modifying the behavior for a particular purpose, in this case, to be able to have more of an open mind and a less reactive negative, response to some kind of an announcement or change or something and a more proactive and positive reaction. Right? So behaviors are all about training. Training, coaching, mentoring.
Marty Strong:I'll give you a perfect case in point. If, everybody that's listening to this, unless this is something you're practicing all the time, just stand on one foot and time how long you can stand there before you lose your balance. Now there are 100 and 100 of little muscles and tendons and ligaments that are involved in stabilizing your leg, including all the bones of your feet and your own mind the way it perceives its its sense of balance. And you may find that you can't keep it up you can't balance for more than, like, 5 seconds. But is that your human your human constraint?
Marty Strong:Does that mean all humans can only balance on one foot for 5 seconds, or is that a self imposed constraint because you've never practiced? I guarantee you, if you practice that a little bit every day randomly, you get a sense of what the stability feels like when it's right. And you do that for 30 days, and you probably have, you know, a 2 minute, 3 minute balance period. Which if you like numbers, the the percentage of improvement is, you know, exponential. Right?
Marty Strong:It's the same thing with this kind of human behavior. It's practicing and flexing and exercising all these other types of thoughts. The the the open mindedness is a huge one because if you don't have open mindedness you won't even you won't take it on the train. You won't listen to anybody. You you know, you just block it out, which again is kind of that stick in the mud thing.
Marty Strong:You're you're trying to protect yourself from the risk of change because in your mind, all change is bad, all change leads to karaoke night. And you have to have it as as a cultural thing. You have to have your leaders thinking this way. Again, you have to this is a big part of of creating and establishing and sustaining a culture. You have to do it at the hiring point.
Marty Strong:You can't just hire people that on the resume can do exactly technically what you're looking for. And if you do it in a panic because you're just trying to fill a fill a hole and you're bypassing all these human behavioral, what do you call it? When your incompatibilities that you really need in a culture, then you're just you're just bringing in a problem. You're bringing in a a psychological grenade that's gonna go off down the road. You're not gonna help with a group project.
Marty Strong:They're gonna react violently to every little piece of new information. So you can control a lot of this by how you hire and then you you need to improve upon it by evolving everybody through this kind of mindful behavioral excuse me, transformation from wherever they are to a comfort level with change, and and and there's ways to do that. You can do it through scenario based training. It's it's it's a game. It's role playing.
Marty Strong:You get in a room and you say, hey, we just lost our our number one supplier. We just lost our top salesperson. We just lost our biggest client or customer. Now, these are real things. I have 5 kids and some of them, you know, they're in different businesses.
Marty Strong:But this pops up all the time. Hey, we just lost our number one client. Excuse me. Management team's freaking out. Right?
Marty Strong:It happens every day in business. Happens it happens in small businesses and large businesses and middle sized businesses. Somebody moves in across the street and sets up a a pizza parlor and you've got a pizza parlor, but they've got more more room and they've got more money to throw at advertising and they're putting everything at 25% off and they're having a kid's night or Monday night football night. You're you're caught behind the the curve. Right?
Marty Strong:That's the way the world is. That's that whole point of the universe constantly changing because you can't see everything, but you have to anticipate things are gonna change. And gaming this out, sitting in a room, either doing it as a as an exercise and brainstorming all the possible things that could go wrong and all the possible opportunities that might be out there with your team. The more you do that, the more everybody opens up and starts throwing something into the mix.
Jacob:Mhmm.
Marty Strong:You can't do it once because everybody that thinks you know, I guess that karaoke night thing, they don't wanna look stupid in public. They'll just sit there and clam up. You'll get 1 or 2 people that are just real comfortable with flapping their lips and everything, but that's, you know, 2% of the input potential. So you have to cultivate it, you have to hire for it, and you have to maintain it by mentoring and doing these practice drills. That way when the real thing comes up and this is how you do it in the military.
Marty Strong:You train harder you know, SEALs for sure, we train much, much harder for combat than combat tends to be. Mhmm. Right? If we push ourselves harder and we have more things fall apart and radio broken out, you get a communicator. The helicopter never showed up to pick you up.
Marty Strong:Now you have to walk, you know, 15 miles through mountains or sand or whatever. And that happens to you all the time, and then you go to do the real mission, and everything works, and helicopter shows up on time, you go boom, boom, boom, you're out. It's anticlimactic Yeah. Because you train to a much worse set of, probabilities. Mhmm.
Marty Strong:Same you can do the same thing in business. You can see just having a family. Your family could even do this. Yeah. I I like
Jacob:that a lot. I, I have experienced A lot of my work is in, I work in live event production, and I work with a lot of nonprofit organizations that do, leadership training. So if you ever heard of, like, HOSA or DECA or FBLA, they're, like, high school leadership, organizations. They do a lot of mock trials and, like, mock competitions. And it was very profound for me, when I was young, when I was originally enrolled in DECA and one of these organizations, just having that mock interview, like, the first time you go in and have an interview, just shaking someone's hand and introducing yourself and being offered a problem or trying to sell yourself and tell them why, you know, you're worthwhile for them to hire you at this job, whatever.
Jacob:Doing those mock competitions a a few times made me just so cool and calm and collected when it actually came time for real job interviews. It it took away the anxiety. And so, yeah, it totally makes sense. It's that, you know, you you run 15 miles with a 25 pound weight vest, and then the next time you run that exact same time without the weight vest, it feels pretty light and it's it's it's it's no big deal. So yeah.
Jacob:Yeah. That that's that that's pretty profound. Set setting people up in these positions to where they're not shocked when something that is inevitably gonna happen happens. What what do you so I I wanna talk about discipline. How how do you see discipline?
Jacob:I think that's probably an ever growing factor. I I liked, I'm sure you're familiar with, like, Jocko Willink. He he has he has the popular saying, discipline equals freedom. It's it's a short simple thing, but it's it's a great one, man. It's, I think that's that's a pretty profound one.
Jacob:So I I guess I wanna just open that door to you, Marty. What do you think about when when I say discipline, or or how do you think about discipline that may be different than the way other people do?
Marty Strong:Well, I think I think people overcomplicate the discussion of discipline. The problem with discipline is it's simple, but it's so candidly difficult that everybody gets about halfway or 25% of the way there and realizes how hard it is, and then they stop. So I'll give you an example. So with with the novel I just finished and the 3 business books, I have about 13 books, and they're most of them around 90 to 95000 words. So that's 13 times 95,000 words.
Marty Strong:And if I tell somebody that, they're like, how the hell did you ever do that? And I did it basically about 200 to 300 words at a time per day, which sounds not like a big number. But if I did it for 7 days and I did it for the next 7 days and I kept doing it until the book was done, then I've created a set of of behaviors that become habits and those habits repeated over and over again to get the result that you're trying to get, which in this case is incremental momentum and movement through a project, that is the definition of discipline from the outside looking in. Everybody looking at me says, oh, he's so disciplined. He gets up at 5 in the morning.
Marty Strong:He starts trying at 5:30. He always puts down at least 300 words and he says it every single day. Bam. He's got a book. Bam.
Marty Strong:He's got another book. He's so disciplined. Yeah. Okay. Fancy word.
Marty Strong:What it really means is doing whatever it is has to be done over and over and over and over again to get the result that you're aiming for. It may be nothing more than than getting up and not watching you know, looking at your screen on your phone. Psychologically difficult. People have a really hard time with that. Right?
Marty Strong:I've I've turned my phone off or left my phone places and walked around and and had that same freak out everybody has. I'm missing all this. I mean, I know a CEO, and I've I got all this other stuff. Somebody's calling me. Somebody just sent me an email that I have to respond to.
Marty Strong:And and you you experience the freak out and you go, this is how bad I am right now. This is me not having this thing in my hand. Right? But if I did that every day, if I gave myself 3 hours or, you know, 4 hours of of the day that I'm awake, where I don't have this thing, like, in front of my face, in time, the discipline of doing it over and over and over again, repeated behavior to achieve a positive result, reduces my anxiety, eliminates my anxiety, and suddenly I realize I'm coping without having to look at the stupid phone, which was the end state I was aiming for. Mhmm.
Marty Strong:You wanna lose weight, you wanna gain weight, you don't wanna, you know, get bigger biceps, you wanna run faster. I mean, there's physical limits to physical goals, and there are maybe some limits like like I can't I can't dunk a basketball. I'm just too short to dunk a basketball. So you have to, you know, look at what your objective is. And before you start watering down the objective, set the objective and give yourself a reasonable amount of time to reach it and then break it up into these little mini steps with the seals that training technique was called, baby steps.
Marty Strong:Little tiny baby steps to achieve each element or increment of growth, whether it's knowledge growth or whether it's skill attainment growth. So, you know, eat an elephant bite at a time kind of thing. And if you do it that way, and I don't know how you were at math, I sucked at math. But whenever I had a math teacher that taught that that way, I was never left behind. Whenever I went into a class, you know, the next year and the guy went and the next day he jumped to the next concept, if I hadn't picked up the day before's concepts and been able to practice them and figure them out, I was a day behind all the concept behind.
Marty Strong:Next thing you know, I'm halfway through the school year and I'm way to hell behind because that teacher didn't care. They didn't teach in a way it was incremental and reinforcing incremental and reinforcing. That was a discipline of learning and then evolving into the next concept and then evolving into the next concept. They were just throwing it out there and say, execute. So you can't do that to yourself either.
Marty Strong:You can't set a goal and say, I'm gonna make I'm gonna achieve that goal in leaps and bounds because that's not the way we learn, and that's not the way we change.
Jacob:Right. Right. Yeah. My, chemistry was that for me. It felt like I missed one day, or I was, like, nodding off one day or something.
Jacob:And like you said, before you know it, halfway through the through the semester, I'm like, I don't know what's going on. So I I feel I can't catch up. But, yeah, I I like that a lot. I, it kinda reminds me of, doctor Jordan Peterson. He talks about sometimes it can be so daunting to look at the giant staircase of, like, you know, what you wanna accomplish or what you know needs done to get to where you, you know, point a to point b.
Jacob:But it can also be easy to for some of us to, kinda, like, cripple our own responses of doing anything if we're too much staring at the big the big staircase. So he talks about just, hey, you know, if you can't you can't write your novel this morning, what can you do? You can go into your office desk drawer, and you could take a piece of paper out and put it on the desk. Cool. Maybe that's all you got today.
Jacob:And then tomorrow, you grab a dang pen and you put it on there. Maybe you write the first sentence. Maybe you don't. Whatever. But that was it was really helpful for me, man, because I, sometimes when you have all these, like, creative, amazing, cool ideas, you're like, that's awesome.
Jacob:I wanna attack that. I wanna go on. I have this, excitement. I have this momentum. I have this, motivation.
Jacob:I wanna attack this thing that I know I'm gonna be good at. I wanna write this book, whatever it is. And then we realized, you know, we only have 24 hours in a day, and your excitement doesn't match what you're actually able to do in that day. So rather than just sitting down and accomplishing nothing, keeping that momentum going. I I I feel like it fits into what you're talking about with the, the snowball analogy to where, like, you run into different things and and they just become your snowball.
Jacob:I think what happens often with a lot of people is we we hit those things, and instead of keeping the momentum of our snowball, we, like, we gotta stop and check out what we just ran over, and we gotta define ourselves by that.
Marty Strong:Or if we pick it out of the snow ball because we can't see why we have any value, we toss it out to keep it clean and pure and safe and and
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So so what separates what separates us from I guess, what keeps our momentum as the snowball?
Jacob:You know, how do we notice when we've been stopping to to take our report card? I say that often, like, you know, we're more like, how am I doing right now? Who am I right now? Does this define me as as a whole? And we give our letter number grade, and sometimes it's defeating.
Jacob:So how do we keep the momentum of the rolling snowball, I suppose?
Marty Strong:I'm an advocate of of pull versus push motivation. And so push motivation is you're either threatening yourself or somebody else is threatening you with some downside consequence if you don't push forward and move forward and keep doing everything to some volume of completion. And, and then then if you don't do that, then you feel like you're starting to fail. It's like the chemistry thing. You're falling behind.
Marty Strong:It's it's all on you. You sure what are you doing this for? I need you to stop. Right? But the pull motivation approach is you think long and hard about the end state.
Marty Strong:You think long and hard about what you wanna do, what you wanna be, how you wanna look. This could be a personal thing, could be a professional thing, could be if you if you're you're a company. It could be what do you want the company to look like or your division or department to look like. And then you have to solidify that out there on the horizon. Kind of like a light, you know, and you're in the desert or you're in the frozen tundra and you see that light.
Marty Strong:And what happens is you're you're compelled, you're motivated to move physically, psychologically, emotionally in that direction. And, of course, it takes forever for that light to look like it's gotten any closer or any bigger. But you're being pulled towards that light and that light is your objective. That is the cleanest, purest, and I think the most powerful motivating factor for people. The problem is there's so many there's so many programs and there's so many books and there's so many, you know, infomercials and what and it's more about pushing you.
Marty Strong:It's it's pushing you towards something and you haven't really defined whether you wanna go there yet. So if you don't wanna go there, you're bound to fail because you're not gonna you're not gonna incorporate all the little micro behavior changes in the disciplines because you don't you don't perceive the value yet or there there's no value for you. So somebody else can set a goal for you. Like, you're gonna be a lawyer. So you're a sophomore in high school.
Marty Strong:I want you to get good grades on my ground kid because I want you to be a lawyer. You know how that works. You know? And if you look at the statistics of how many people quit the 1st year of law school, how many people that actually graduate law school never actually go to take the bar and go off to do some other thing in in industry. It's amazing if you saw it.
Marty Strong:I mean, mind mind numbing. So it's kind of sad because you're thinking, well, if those people quit the 1st year of law school and they and they quit right after they finished law school, they probably never really wanted to be lawyers. Yeah. So who decided that who who made that their goal? You know, parents, family members, peers.
Marty Strong:So, yeah, push doesn't work. And and it's probably a cliche in any profession that if you get in your 3rd year of college and you realize you never really wanted to go to college, it was your parents' dream, or you never wanted to be the work in the in the family business and take it over. That was your parents' dream. And you just kind of stop one day like Forrest Gump and go, I'm done. And you've and you wasted all this time sacrificing to achieve somebody else's goals.
Marty Strong:So figure out the goal. And, you know, if the goal is just next week, that's fine too. You know, I was talking about before the baby steps. You basically set the big goal way out there. And you say, okay.
Marty Strong:I think it's gonna take 2 years. You don't you don't go crazy. If it if it was gonna write a book, it's okay. I would it's gonna take a year for me to finish the first draft. Okay.
Marty Strong:That's 12 months. And then you say, alright. So if if I got 12 months, then that's, you know, 52 weeks, and you start breaking it down into the time chunks. And he says, so I basically have to write 500 words a week or something. You know?
Marty Strong:And that means that I've gotta write a 100 a 100 words a 5 day work week or, you know, 67 words, you know, a day for 7 and then you start going, well, I could do that because you broke it down into the increments. And so your short range goal is to get to the end of the month and have have achieved whatever that that count is. It it'll feel like slow motion later, but in the beginning, it it feels like it's taking forever. Because once you get used to the habit, then you feel like the the the increments are they're too small, and the the short term objectives are too short, and you can actually do a lot more. Because now you're getting into the pull part of it.
Marty Strong:You're getting sucked in. You actually start to get the confidence that and and and the, the courage. I can actually do this. I'm in month 2, and I've written this much, or I built this much, or I've or I've, achieved this much. My 1 year goal is achievable.
Marty Strong:I can do this. One step at a time, I can get that done. But you have to have that that big goal to end, you know, I can't remember what it was, the big audacious goal, you know, it was a a book, business book, back in the nineties, I think. You have to have a big audacious goal for the organization that is worthy of sacrifice and worthy of that disciplined behavior change and repeated activity.
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So so what do you think about, I suppose this might be aimed towards more younger people, but I think we all probably have our own instances of it throughout our life. You were just talking about, you know, what we wanna do versus the voices of our parents, the voices of our influences.
Jacob:I think sometime I mean, I definitely find in in this world of kinda the mental health, self development, self help, you know, setting scenario, nowadays, kinda like this whole self help world. I think a lot of people come up against that as they they get to a certain age, and they realize, man, I have a lot of momentum towards things that I don't truly wanna do. I I did not realize it until I was 28, but I was trying to please my mom this whole time. And now I gotta reset and go, what do I what do I really want? What what what do you think about or or what has come across in your path, Marty, and even for you as well?
Jacob:Those those times where we notice, oh, jeez. I've been working towards someone else's goal. I I'm I need to reset. I need to take stock of what I actually wanna do. You know, how do we kinda find our own centers, I guess?
Jacob:How do we take those moments, settle, reset, and align with our values, not our influences?
Marty Strong:So I I work with a lot of military people that are transitioning out of doing, you know, a 20 plus year career. Mhmm. And it's a culture shock to come out of uniform because that's a that's a that's a very fixed culture, and their expectations are are are unrealistic because they haven't been a civilian for so long, and they don't understand what it's like to have a job. And you you you gotta do something pretty bad to get fired in the in the military because everybody's trying to train you to be the best person you can because you're part of a team, and we have to rely on you. So there'll be a lot of effort put into correcting whatever the issues are to get you at least to the medium standard.
Marty Strong:Right? So unlike the regular world, if you were failing, there may be nobody that cares and nobody's gonna try to help you, and you'll fail to the point they'll just get ready and replace you. You're like you're like a, a bad car part. Right? So they're so they're used to a loyalty system, and they're and they're also used to this audacious end state goal or objective.
Marty Strong:So they train hard and passionately, and they're pulled towards these things because they're it's god and country. It's it's, you know, to protect United States citizens. That's all. Okay. Now now they get out, and they're they're working as the the regional manager of Walmart.
Marty Strong:No god and country. Decisions aren't related to the loss of life and limb. Yeah. Everything's diminished. The, the pull part feels like it's not there.
Marty Strong:It's just a job. It's just a paycheck. So you feel like you're just stuck in paying the bills mode where you used to have this life. And then the other part of it because, you know, patriotism kind of waxes and wanes in US history. But for the past 10 years, at least 12 years since 9 11, if you walked in in uniform in a in a in a bar any place in the United States pretty much for somebody to buy you a beer, say thank you for your service.
Marty Strong:Wasn't always that way. It wasn't that way for the Vietnam guy. It wasn't that way for the Korean War guys. It was definitely that way for this World War 2 guys. And and so guess what?
Marty Strong:You don't get all that big love hug kind of stuff going on every day when you get out. So nobody really cares. It's I actually have a presentation that I call, thank you for your service. Now what? And it's a shock to these guys into the fact that, you know, the the flag and the medals and the box and all that kind of stuff, it's kind of like the trophies from high school football or swimming or whatever.
Marty Strong:You know? Are you still walking around saying I'm I'm the, you know, first string left pulling guard on the varsity team? No. You know, you you aren't that person and that is no long that's no longer what defines you. Now you you kind of put this in a place in your mind.
Marty Strong:This is a part of my life that that I did great things and I was successful and I was respected And now I'm gonna put that where it is. I'm gonna use all the skills, like, that I attained and all the knowledge and wisdom and all that. But I can't go from being a fighter pilot or squadron commander and go right into being a fortune 50 corporate executive. It's not gonna work that way. So when you look at anybody and they have to transition from who they are to some other kind of person, they have to first and this is kind of back to the intellectual humility thing.
Marty Strong:They basically have to sit down and say themselves, I've gotta shred myself of all this negative and positive baggage. The positive baggage is important too because if you think you're the bomb diggity, be all, end all, then you're arrogant. You're arrogant about what you think you are and what you're capable of doing. And if you're really arrogant, you think you can do it anywhere. Kind of back to the fighter pilot thinking they can be a fortune 50 executive.
Marty Strong:You're a you're a Olympic boxer, and you think you can go and be a a swim coach or you can be, you know, the head of a the head of a restaurant. They're they're totally different things. Just like I can speak Chinese. I'm gonna go ahead and speak Farsi too just because I can speak Chinese. It's lunacy.
Marty Strong:But psychologically because as we wanna hug what we know makes us feel good and feel stable and feel loved and and and, accepted and respected, we tend to think it's gonna be a horizontal transition to the next to the next big thing. It's not. So what I usually explain is you have to create this apprentice mindset and don't jump off of your day job before you've done the research and put in the work to figure out what you wanna do next because it takes time. And that's what I tell the military guys too. I say, if you got 6 months to a year and you know you're gonna be retiring it up, that's when you start going out there.
Marty Strong:And whatever you think you wanna do, learn everything you can about that particular thing. You'll find that you don't really wanna do it or you really do wanna do it. Then how do you wanna get involved in it? So research that. Talk to people.
Marty Strong:People will help you all day long. You know, you wanna run a restaurant? The restaurant owners and and operators will tell you, you know, they'll they'll help you out. And but you have to get into a mindset that I'm an apprentice in this new thing. I'm not the master.
Marty Strong:It's not a transition of I'm the fighter pilot. I'm the Navy SEAL, and and I'm the army commander and suddenly I'm in charge of all restaurants because just because. And and what I'll say to these guys in in uniform, I would say to anybody, if you are honest and you think back to whatever you're doing now, that when did you start and what was it like in your 1st week or 1st month or 1st year? What didn't you know? How many mistakes did you make?
Marty Strong:Think through that learning curve. That's the learning curve you have in your next new thing. You're not gonna start out kicking ass and taking aim. You're gonna start out as an apprentice. Now, like I said, we're in the interview, if you've been smart and you've absorbed all these different weird kind of things that you're learning, You're you're you're in the trucking distribution business and you wanna go into the oil industry.
Marty Strong:Well, they're both linear movement of product. So there's a lot of things you learned over here that are transferable. And you you dealt with people, and you dealt with technology, and you dealt with, time and space issues, and weight and load issues. We'll get the same thing over here. So there are things that will transition over, but you don't know how to sell oil, or you don't know how to do all the calculations.
Marty Strong:So you're not an expert yet. So be an apprentice as much as you can start studying before you go make your leap. In the military, obviously, there's a date certain. If you're not, then it's the same guy tell my kids, I tell everybody, Give yourself 6 months to a year to go from not knowing anything, going through the apprentice mode to where you think you've got a pretty good handle at what you need to do. Get the certifications you need for this new thing.
Marty Strong:You know, save the money you need for for whatever you're gonna need if you have to do a start up or something like that. You can even go ahead and work in some of these industries for free on this you know, in your spare time. And and don't come in there and say, I want the corner office, I wanna observe it. And come in and say, can I work on the loading dock? Or can I work out in as a bus boy?
Marty Strong:And then can I go back and work as the fry cook? Can I can I always see the whole operation? Because I wanna start my own restaurant. See. And that that mindset, you're gonna get you're gonna get there.
Marty Strong:You're gonna you're gonna evolve, and and all the the totality of all your other experiences and knowledge and capabilities will all come with you. And you'll be be better than the average person because you have all that. It's kinda like a like a booster rocket
Jacob:Yeah.
Marty Strong:To help you with your success.
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah. And and I imagine it's, you know, after that first few weeks or first few months of the initial learning period where you're just kinda figuring out what you don't know, after you really kinda get a, you know, a a what do they say? Like, a a hip hip in your get up or whatever the saying is, like, you you feel comfortable with where you're at, then your your access to all your old info and all the other skills that you have are able to, like, have a place. You you found comfortability, and you found kind of your place in the hierarchy at your new spot, and then now all of your, other info can find its way in into that new job.
Jacob:I I was thinking about, there's this dude called Simon Sinek. He's a a leadership motivational you've heard of him? Yeah. He's a he's great, man. I I've loved his books.
Jacob:Leaders Eat Last is one of my favorites, but, he talks about I think it's in that book how he was a speaker at this event, and he was kind of the main speaker, the main keynote 1 year. And they got him a car, like, picked him up from the hotel. They, like, brought him his own, coffee. They, like, hand it to him, and he was a speaker, and he's, like, this important guy right this way, mister with mister Sinek, blah blah blah. And then the next year, he wasn't the speaker at the event, but he was just going to the event.
Jacob:And he talks about the difference with his, basically, like, name tag wasn't there. He wasn't the speaker. Nobody sent a car to pick him up. He asked about coffee, and they're like, yeah. There's maybe, like, some old day old coffee in the back, get it yourself type thing.
Jacob:And so he was just kind of talking about, I I thought it was really profound how he pointed out the differences between you don't really get to take your name tag with you in every room you walk into. You know? You kinda gotta start from
Marty Strong:Right.
Jacob:You you know? And it's a it's a profound lesson. It's probably a lot of humble pie that people gotta eat, you know, throughout Yeah.
Marty Strong:There is. I I had the same experience. I was in Atlanta last year, and I did a speech to a biz big business organization, 1800 people. And it was actually there was supposed to be 1600 seats, but they had 200 standing in the back. And when I came out, they had a guy following me with a float camera thing, and and it was rock music.
Marty Strong:And I came out, And it was, like, 4 minutes of just cheering. It's like, you know? And and I don't normally do venues that big, so I don't really know what it's like to be, you know, actual Rose and come out. You know, the lead lead guy have been a in a powerful rock band or something. And I just stood there kinda like, oh, shit.
Marty Strong:And then and then I said, okay. I'll I'll just go ahead and start. And when I got done, the same thing, and and they're all reaching up to shake my hands. So I'm going down the thing like I'm Elvis shaking hands and everything. And they did the same thing.
Marty Strong:They picked me up at the airport. They let me let me me to the Atlanta Hilton. I get in there. They'd already prepped everybody, and there were 2,000 people at this conference. So they all knew my face and everything already.
Marty Strong:This was the day before the speech and people rang up to me. Security had to help me get into the elevator because there's too many people crowding around me. And, I actually and I called my wife and and I told her about it and she joked. She goes, who did they say you were? You know?
Marty Strong:Like, they like, they said I was, you know, something else. You know? And so then, you know, I do the I have the meeting with the executives, all that stuff, and then I go and I do my speech, And I I'm done. And the next morning, I go to the airport, and my flights are all screwed up. And I end up sitting in Atlanta for 12 hours, and I'm just some dude on a plastic seat.
Marty Strong:And it doesn't matter who I am. I'm not gonna get anything done. It you know, the name tag is my the name tags go out. And my wife goes, well, that's just the universe telling your ego to just, you know, shrink back down to North Carmel. Yeah.
Marty Strong:But that's a that's that's reality. And, like and it's, again, it's kind of back to what I was saying about if you're a Navy SEAL or a fighter pilot, you you got all your chest full of metals and all that stuff. It's really it's really a big fall from grace in a way. It's it's the way it's the reason why so many military people have trouble getting out. It's the reason why professional athletes that have spent considerable amount of time as professional athletes have a real difficult time transitioning when they get out.
Marty Strong:I mean, they're walking out there and they're the center of attention. Everybody in that town knows they pay for the play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Every restaurant they walk into people are like running up the image. They're like rock stars. Right?
Marty Strong:And then a year after they get out, yeah, it's a big mind it's a big mind game.
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I I think that that moment is you know, it's funny. I I come at it with this kind of silly comical side just because I've experienced my own versions of it, you know, in in my different jobs and as I'm getting, just involved in different different environments. You know, 1 year I'm the important guy, and the next time, you know, nobody knows I'm there or whatever.
Jacob:I think that the the the transition is I don't know. I know. I'm kinda sound like I'm poking fun at it like it is kinda silly, but it's actually deeply painful. It's actually deeply, to, like, come to a point in our lives, you know, male or female, where we have to reinvent ourselves suddenly. Like like, the end of a chapter, the end of a book closes, and it doesn't have to be necessarily sorrowful or sad or a loss necessarily, Then we have to reinvent ourselves, and we have to now insert ourselves into this new hierarchy where, you know, just a week before, we we woke up in the morning.
Jacob:We knew where we sat in the hierarchy. We knew what we had to do every day to prove that. We knew what it took to feel fulfilled when we laid our head down, and now we've gotta restart that. What, I don't know. Anybody going through those transitions, I I suppose, what advice would you have for them, Marty?
Jacob:What, someone who and I guess I may be speaking to the people who are having a a hard time with this. They're having, like, genuine sorrow. They're, they're having trouble finding this new version of themselves. What what do you think you would you would talk to them about? Well, this sounds kinda like,
Marty Strong:you know, Yoda or something, but and I mentioned intellectual humility. So it is great you have a spike in in, in self esteem in an event that, you know, you're the center of the universe, and there's something you learned in that. But mostly, it's you you experience it, especially if it's a positive thing. And then when it's all gone, even if it's only gonna be gone for a period, but maybe you never have that experience again, then you have to basically clear your mind and be humble and realize there's something to be learned by I mean, you can learn you can learn when you're laying on the ground after you fell. You you can learn while you're up running and and looking great.
Marty Strong:You know, You can learn in almost any situation. You just have to be aware. You have to be aware of that. And back to what I I told my kids when they were first going into jobs and everything that's happening to you, good or bad, is a learning experience. Every it's it's the school of life.
Marty Strong:So if you aren't sure and something comes up, I'll I'll pick up the phone and call me. But I guarantee I'll squeeze some value out of it that will help you down the road, and you won't remember it. But when you're 20 or on your 30, you're gonna say someday, you know what? That thing that yeah. Guess what?
Marty Strong:It's it's happening here. But it's not a shock to him because it's part of life. It's part of human nature. It's part of whatever. So if you take what life gives you and you accept it and then learn from it, which sounds trite, but, I mean, really accept it and really learn from it.
Marty Strong:And that I'd go through the emotional of I'll never be that big a deal again or, well, I am the big deal and I'm gonna be that that way every day. You know? That that's not reality. Deal with your the reality in the moment and learn from it and the circumstances in the context of the moment. And like that big that big speech I I mentioned or having a chest full of medals after 20 years.
Marty Strong:Thank you for your service. Good job. Now what's next? What do you got for me? What what are we gonna do next?
Marty Strong:Don't rest on your laurels. You can appreciate them, but don't don't ride them into the future thinking that that's gonna give you some kind of a a pass on reality. It doesn't. The emperor doesn't care.
Jacob:Yeah. That's, that's pretty powerful stuff. I mean, that's, again, not not easy, but it's it's valuable. It's it's useful. I, I work in a lot of realms of, I like a lot of Buddhism stuff, a lot of stoicism type stuff.
Jacob:And acceptance is something I'm always learning. It's it's not easy, but it's it's a constant reminder. It's a constant daily thing of acceptance. Cool. Yes.
Jacob:I did serve that. Yes. I did accomplish those things, but now it's time for a new chapter. Let's accept that. Let's not dwell on where I was and how upset I am that I'm not there anymore.
Jacob:You know? The sun still came out today, and what what can I do today? So, yeah, it's pretty powerful stuff. Man, I wanted to ask you, there was a couple things that you said in in in your book that just kind of made me wanna ask you about, just freedom in general. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, you you kind of had like a a mention, about cancel culture in there.
Jacob:I think that's kind of a fun a fun thing to bring in. I I I suppose just broadly, man, what do you think about why is freedom important? What does freedom mean to you? And I'm definitely thinking freedom of thought too, not just, like, the law freedom. I think, you know, my ability to to think of, whatever it is that I'm thinking of is is is involved in that.
Jacob:So I suppose just big old circle that for you. Freedom question mark, Marty. What what comes to mind, man?
Marty Strong:So there's there's a lot written on on this, And the power of your mind and the power of being able to think freely within your mind and range far and wide without ever physically moving. So, there's lots written about the, the pilots who were kept in Hanoi Hilton during Vietnam for many, many, many years and and how they stayed alive, but really how they stayed sane. How they use their minds to basically live a life that was worth living and to contemplate all kinds of things and to make it day to day to day. Viktor Frankl in his book on A Man's Search for Meaning about his time in the Nazi internment camps, same thing. And he points to those that were able to be free in their mind as opposed to those people that, took the consequences and interacted only with the consequences and got so depressed they ended up basically dying of depression.
Marty Strong:You know, they basically died because they couldn't handle the circumstances where the people that survived understood the circumstances and then said, okay. The rules were different. I'm no longer a banker. I'm no longer this. I'm no longer that.
Marty Strong:I need to learn this universe. I need to learn these rules in this place, and then I become I have to become a master of these rules. I have to sit stay alive. And the best way to motivate yourself in those situations is to help other people around you because you stop thinking about yourself all the time. So those are mind games, but they're important mind games.
Marty Strong:And it's a freedom of the mind. So if you're sitting in a cell in Hanoi or you're sitting in a in a cell in, in Nazi Germany, if your brain's not defeated, if your mind is not defeated, then you're not defeated. So those are extremes. Right? And and as extremes, they're they're great because they show that if you're physically constrained and and you think you're constrained in other ways, financially, geographically, whatever you think your constraints are, your mind isn't.
Marty Strong:So you can conceive of almost anything and work it through and storyboard it in your mind and play it different 5 different ways, color it any color you wanna color it, stretch it out, shrink it down, compress it, add players, take players out. You can do this all day long as long as you realize that your mind has the freedom and the capacity to do that. And that that is actually a really positive thing, and and humans are unique. They're both species on this planet to be able to do that. And that's imagination.
Marty Strong:That's creativity. That's using a sense of wonder and and taking a not knowing and trying to convert it into some understanding and knowing all all without getting out of chair. So if you can do all that in your mind, then you could probably handle almost anything that comes at you as long as you have the freedom of intellect to to deal with it intellectually. I don't mean like academically intellectually, I mean like applying your brain and the the mechanics of your brain. What what as I mentioned in the book is that we've all been told we can't do that.
Marty Strong:We've been told not to do that. There's very little reward after you're about 6 or 7 years old to think freely, to dream, to wonder, to awe, have a sense of awe. If you raise your hand when you're 14 years old and say, I think I wanna be an astronaut, the social reaction is gonna be almost immediate. And you're gonna say, oh, then you go home and say, I wanna be an astronaut and your parents want you to be a lawyer. So immediately it's gonna be pow pow pow pow pow.
Marty Strong:They're gonna pound that astronaut thought out of you and and get back on track. This is what you're this is the only thing you're supposed to think about. So your intellectual freedom starts to get compromised and you start thinking that that's the only way you're supposed to think like an adult and like a sober adult. I mean, you're kinda supposed to think pain outside the lines. The path has been set.
Marty Strong:Go to school. Get good grades. Get good grades to get into another school. Get good grades to get a good good job. Get a good job.
Marty Strong:Stay there. Keep your nose clean. Have tenure. You'll start advancing up the ladder, you know, and then you retire some days. That linear American dream thing.
Marty Strong:But when you look at the people that everybody talks about when they talk about the American dream, it's not those people. It's the risk takers. It's the people that take chances and think think big and act big and fail and get bankruptcies and start all over again. And and usually they come from other countries because they don't know that there's a linear plan. So they just go for it.
Marty Strong:Right? Because their mind says, I had nothing to lose. And and I don't have a preset battle plan. My parents didn't say to do it a certain way, and society didn't say to do a certain way. So and it takes you're when you buy your your time time you're an adult and you're sitting there and you're your first or second job and you're at the conference table and somebody has a problem and you raise your hand, everybody looks at you.
Marty Strong:You don't have the right title. You don't have enough time at the company, and everybody just looks at you like you have 3 heads, and they don't call on you because you haven't paid your dues yet. That suppresses and compresses your impulse to think think big or to be creative or to even participate in problem solving. These are not mechanical brain problems. These are not human constraints.
Marty Strong:These are constraints of society and all the constructs that society has put around us. And, you know, I make a point in the book That's probably the you know, the cancer culture thing, and it may may be over by now, but that is a social reaction, but it really looks like the same thing that I just said. It's don't think of a certain way. Don't don't talk a certain way. You know?
Marty Strong:And there was a time where, you know, don't dress a certain way. When I was, you know, like in the late sixties, seventies, you know, if you wore jeans to school, you're in trouble.
Jacob:Mhmm. You
Marty Strong:had to wear you had to wear, you know, chinos or something. So you, these things were these things were imposed on you to stop you from expressing yourself, but they weren't about breaking laws. That the the freedom we're talking about isn't about you wanna be able to do whatever you wanna do, however you wanna do it physically and impact other people. This is about intellectual freedom and and the freedom of the mind. So, yes, I'm I'm a big advocate of it.
Marty Strong:I I I think it's it's something that's, it can be relearned within adults. I think it's it's in fact, we have other things we're talking about, it takes a little bit of practice to build the habit, to not react immediately by constraining and containing your thoughts and conforming, but to instead, you know, take a shot, put the hand up, and then that they don't call on you, go ahead and say it out loud anyway. And if you're an organization where they just keep stomping on you and everything, find some place else to work. Yeah.
Jacob:Yeah. I love that. But what a great answer, man. I, I I think about that a lot because I, I spend a lot of world a lot of time in the world of creativity. I do a lot of, some some sort of musician.
Jacob:I do a lot of art artistry stuff, writing, poetry, whatever. And so I'm I'm often I I spent a lot of time contemplating what it really means to have free thought and and how amazing it is that we that we have it. Like, how cool it is that we're able that I'm able to sit in my apartment and think about and talk about the things that I'm able to talk about. Fact that I'm able to record this conversation, and I can kind of collectively say whatever I want, I mean, that's that's pretty cool. Well, so, Marty, we're getting up here in time.
Jacob:I I would love to just kind of round us back on, your your latest book. I found that one thing that I really loved about it was, I think, just as a quick thought, my brain doesn't accompany military with creativity or, like, being rebellious and joining the military, But I feel like you you laid it out in in such a nice way. It kinda changed my perspective a little bit, in in your book was very enticing. So I I would love to just kind of, at the end here, just for anybody who's listening, who's kind of thinking about checking out your book, who's your book for? What what are kind of some mind mindsets that you would like to, who would you like to attract to your book,
Marty Strong:I I suppose? Well, you know, I the first two books were focused more on organizational issues like being able was about leadership in crisis and be, the visionary was about strategic thought and development of the strategic thought into an actual plan of action. The be different, especially the subtitle of how Navy SEALs and entrepreneurs bend, break, or ignore the rules to get results, is kind of what we've been talking about for the last 10 minutes. It's the I I saw that, you know, the first two books are useful to business leaders. Doesn't have to be a profit business leader.
Marty Strong:It can be an organizational leader. But what's was missing was and I've in in working with these technology firms, there's a lot of creativity. There's a lot of rapid prototyping and innovation, a lot of experimentation, which means there's a lot of failure and it's a mindset related to leading edge technology. But there are human beings that are exercising these things and I'm watching them. Why are we doing that in the clothing Why are we doing that in the car business?
Marty Strong:Why are we doing that in in, you know, the medical business that I'm in? Why are we just kind of stuck in the status quo? It's because we're missing this creative engine, this willingness or the comfort to exercise and practice creative thinking. And then that's where I started getting into the conformity thing. I found some research, that was done proving exactly the same thing.
Marty Strong:They tested kids from, like, 6 years old to 40, and, their creativity score went from like the the high ninetieth percentile down to like 5%. And it was almost a a 45 degree decline. And then I thought, okay. So it's gonna be based on age or something. They said, no.
Marty Strong:It's based on the amount of exposure to institutional learning and institutional management. And it was exactly and I had already written the book, first draft when I read the research and it basically con confirmed that the first couple of chapters, of my book focus on which is this obedience, the blamed obedience, conformity, and compliance, intellectual compliance. And they said that's the problem. You know, they're not allowed to think think anymore. They're not allowed to dream.
Marty Strong:They're not allowed to do all these things. So that was cool. And I thought, alright. So what really what the book is gonna be about is to tell people it's okay to paint outside the lines. It's okay to think differently.
Marty Strong:But to think differently, you have to basically convert yourself and be different because you're gonna have to change your whole mindset about life and work. And and, yeah, there's gonna be it's a little bit about your mindset about risk because being creative and innovative is a big risk taking, endeavor. People are going to not like what you say. There's gonna be a social social cost to it. Small social, like in an organization or big social sometimes.
Marty Strong:But if you start looking back at all the people that we point to and say, wow, they're so creative and so innovative, but they were so brilliant. Einstein was, like, 21 years old when he came up with a special theory of relativity. Alexander Konkow conquered most of the new, known world before he was 30, Tesla, I mean, almost anybody you point to. We see pictures of these guys, especially in in the last 100 years as old men because that's when when cameras and photography and and film, you know, like Ford, those guys look like the little men, but they all they all invented and created what they created when they were in their twenties. And the reason they're they're they're such icons is because they did what other people were doing or wouldn't do, You know?
Marty Strong:So we've been talking about that theme through the whole the whole conversation is, you know, set your goals, create an incremental plan to achieve those goals, focus on the goals and let the goal pull you there. And the book basically tells you to do that, but also to allow yourself and to train and prepare yourself to think and and and then act and be different as a result.
Jacob:Yeah. What what a way to wrap it up, man. That was great. I I love that. I had this my, like, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade in high school, my, drama or theater teacher, he would always say, dare to be different.
Jacob:He was kind of the first one to to impose that on us, and, it it stuck with me. I feel like I use it as this little, this little, bit of encouragement in in moments where I'm like, what am I doing? I'm I'm being weird right now. But it felt like the right thing to be done for me. It felt like something that I could do.
Jacob:And I looked around. Clearly, other people are not thinking the same thing as me, but it feels like it's the right thing to do, So I'm gonna act on it, and and I I never regretted acting on on on things like that. So, wow, Marty. Man, I wanna thank you for your time. I really appreciate this.
Jacob:I I I wanna thank you for, the most recent book. I think we're gonna have to crack into your other ones too as well. I'm I'm kinda curious to read your so you you have so you have nonfiction books and fiction books. How many nonfiction do you have? 3.
Jacob:3. And then you have 9 other ones?
Marty Strong:I have 9 published novels, and then the 10th one that I'm I'm shopping to agents right now.
Jacob:Okay. Anybody who's kinda interested in checking out your novels, what do you think is, like, the first one you'd probably send them to?
Marty Strong:Well, if you like science fiction, it's called, A Time for Glory. And if you just go to mortystrong.com, the 2, fiction series, the books are at the bottom of home of the landing page and also the the the covers of the 3 business books. So if you click on that it'll take you right to the information or or point of sale. The first sealed book in the series is called, Death Before Dawn. And both books takes a a kind of naive young person and evolves them through the series until they're a much more evolved and and more powerful personality.
Marty Strong:Not necessarily perfect or anything, but but, you get to track how they how they evolve over time. Yeah. Cool.
Jacob:It sounds like it hits on the whole hero's journey. I'm always a big fan of that. Cool, man. Well, thank thank you so much. I will definitely include all of that info in the so we'll be able to click on your link and everything below.
Jacob:So listeners, check that out. And then just the last thing, I'm just kinda curious. What what what do we have coming from you in the future? It sounds like you're definitely someone who, you know, chips away at it day by day. But, do you have anything on the horizon we could be looking out for?
Jacob:I actually don't. I I
Marty Strong:think I'm gonna start writing some articles just to keep, you know, warmed up with writing. The, when you write a book, you know, you're kind of in it deep. And then then you finish it and then you have to start I use beta reader readers. So people that are interested in sci fi or people are interested in whatever the the genre topic of the book is to read chapter by chapter and give me feedback. I do the same thing with the business books.
Marty Strong:I got a group of CEOs and people that have a lot of business experience who give me feedback chapter by chapter. So I I do a stream of consciousness writing in the first draft, and then I go back and I look at all the input by chapter of 3 to 4 beta readers and, sometimes like it's mechanically good. You know, the character we have was left handed in the second chapter and now they're right handed in chapter 15. You know, little weird things like that. Sometimes it's my voice, like in the business books I've shifted from.
Marty Strong:My books are very conversational. People said it's like a a mentoring program. I'm definitely on Audible when you listen to it. But if I start to get too technical and it starts to sound too textbook y, I get called on it by those guys. And I've had to rewrite rewrite an entire chapter because I shifted into technical writing mode, and that's more like here's the information instead of kind of weaving back and forth like a a storyteller teacher, you know, guide, which is the way the books are written.
Marty Strong:So, but when you're done with the inputting all that information, that's your second draft. And then I I get it edited by a freelance editor and that's the 3rd draft. And so you're pretty much you don't even remember why you wrote the book by that time and you're kinda like numb. And then if you publish the the book, like my my business books for sure, the publisher wants to wait 8 months when it's ready so it can get on all the worldwide distributions systems and all that. And so it just sits there in presale for 8 months.
Marty Strong:And then when it actually comes out, it's been 18 months since I started to write it.
Jacob:Yeah. So
Marty Strong:what I've been what I've been to do the business books, no kidding, is I was on a lot of interviews for the first book, Be Nimble, and, they're asking me questions because they read the book. And some of them had the book all, you know, marked up and everything and I'm like, I'd already I just finished Be Visionary. I'm like, what the hell did I say in Be Be Nimble? Yeah. Like, I wrote that.
Jacob:That sounds
Marty Strong:pretty good. And a half years ago. Or, you know, or like, well, that sounds pretty smart. But, you know, but then we had a comment, why did you say that? You know?
Marty Strong:So I went back I went back and I got the audible versions. I started listening to them in my truck. I did that, and I did it I did it with Be Visionary, and I just pulled down Be Different for the same reason. Because, you know, you move on. You evolve.
Marty Strong:You know? And and so I don't really have a new project because I'm just kind of numb from the finishing this 10th novel and and the search for an agent. Right.
Jacob:Yeah. I'm I'm sure I'm sure there's novels being worked on every day in some subtle way, though, within your mind, man. I'm sure I'm sure that's going on. Well well well, cool, man. Yeah.
Jacob:That that's really cool. I'm looking forward to to hearing whatever it is that you do, come across next. I'll be sure to follow you on on social medias and all those sorts of things. You and I will be in touch, Marty. As far as listeners, I hope you're having a good day.
Jacob:I hope you're drinking some water. I hope you're stretching a little bit. I hope you're challenging the way that you've been thinking. And, yeah. Click down below if you wanna check out more Marty's stuff.
Jacob:I recommend his newest book. I like it so far. And, yeah. I thank everybody for your time. Marty, thanks so much again, man.
Jacob:We we we will be in touch, and I'll let you know when this thing's releasing and all that. So thanks again, everybody, for your time.
Marty Strong:Thank you. Have a great day.
Jacob:Cheers, man. Merry Christmas to you too as well.
Marty Strong:Same to you.
Jacob:Take care. Bye, everybody. Knowledge is power. Reality is Junkyard Club Podcast.