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Welcome to "Visionary Voices" the podcast where we dive into the minds of business owners, founders, executives, and everyone in between.
Each episode brings you face-to-face with the leading lights of industry and innovation.
Join us as we uncover the stories behind the success and the lessons learned along the way.
Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or just starting your business journey, these are the conversations you need to hear - packed with visionary voices and insights.
Let's begin.
So David, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for taking the time to jump on today.
Can you give us a top level view of what it is that you do right now and your journey so
far?
Yeah, so I have been running my own company, which is the FiveCo Consulting Group, for the
last five years.
We do two things.
We do executive coaching, and then second, we take corporate groups to battlefields and
other historic places and use that as a venue to talk about historic decision making and
leadership while under pressure.
For example, this year I've got a group going to Normandy, a group going to Gettysburg,
and another group going to Little Big Horn.
Very cool.
So how did you get into this line of work then?
What was that transition into, you know, starting your own business like?
Yeah, so I was in the Army for 24 years.
I retired in 2017 as a colonel.
I commanded units from the platoon level all the way up to brigade.
Platoon is about 40 people, brigade is about 3,000, both here in the United States and
then overseas in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
When I left the Army in 2017, I went to work for another company.
And then after a couple of years decided to start the the five Co consulting group I would
not recommend to any of your listeners to try to start their company at the beginning of
the the kovat pandemic We really got off the ground in March of 2020 which made 2020 was a
rough year, but It it it built It built some good
made some good lessons in how to run a company and how to bootstrap and how to get it off
the ground.
Nice then how did you find that transition then going from you the army to then in into
business right inside your own business What was that transition like for you?
Well, I was at 1099 for the first company, and the first shock was not getting a every
other week.
And I had gotten a check every other week from the government for 28 years.
And so that piece, for someone that was in their 40s, was a new and very exciting kind of
thing.
I did not completely understand the risk tolerance that small business owners have to
have.
If you are not making sales, you're not getting a check and you're not keeping the lights
on and all those things that keep you as a small business owner or solo entrepreneur,
feeling like that person that's running around like the person in the circus that's
spinning the plates.
That's how I always feel.
You spin the plate on marketing and then all of a sudden you got to go over to sales and
you got to spin the plate on sales and then you got to go execute and you got to do good
with the clients that you have and then all of a sudden you got to go back to marketing.
For me, has been my experience as a small business owner.
It's a lot of fun, but nevertheless, you're
you're a little bit, you're not as focused as you'd like to be because there's always a
fire to put out with a small business.
Yeah, I completely agree.
It's one of those where, as you said, as a small business, you're just doing so many
different tasks.
And sometimes you're doing pretty much at the same time as well, like going from service
delivery to marketing to then sales to this, to that.
So no, I completely resonate with you on that.
I guess it'll be interesting to know, from the army, did you take any lessons from that
which you've managed to successfully apply within business itself?
Because I think a lot of the things within the army, it'll teach you is, of course, that
discipline aspect, that grit and everything.
So have you taken any lessons from that?
Yeah, I've taken a lot of it and frankly the the second part of the business the taking
the corporate groups the battlefields get to leverage I was a military history major in
college I continued to study military history while I was in the army and I get to
leverage that aspect of the military and help Folks that haven't been associated with the
military Understand maybe the Battle of Gettysburg better or the battle or D-Day or
wherever we're at
For me personally with the business, one of the things that I always prided myself on in
the military was being organized.
I always would make a list of stuff that I needed to get done the night before and I show
up at work ready to hit the ground running.
I always thought that that gave me an advantage.
I still do that with the small business every day.
I've got, know, tonight after we get off this call, I'll make my list for tomorrow, make
sure I'm tracking on all the things that's gotta happen and...
That helps with the firefighting of running between marketing and sales and execution with
the business.
definitely the organization, both daily and weekly with a little bit longer range plan,
the planning aspect out of the military continues to resonate here in my business that I'm
running.
No, I love that.
I think as a small business owner, as we all know, the organization is so key, as you
mentioned, because you are spinning all those different places.
If you're not organized with it, it's just going to flood you, And you're going to be
overwhelmed with all the different things that you need to do.
So I think that's a really cool thing you managed to take away from that and apply to the
business world.
I mean, tell me a little bit more about going to the battlefields and that process.
So why do you go to the battlefields and what does that look like from that coaching point
of view?
Yeah, so the battlefield piece is actually something that, know, is it, know, plagiarism
is the sincerest form of flattery or something like that.
So the military, actually the German army started it, was this idea of what they called a
staff ride.
frankly, it was a way when your military is not fighting in a war to go to a battlefield
and try to learn
the lessons from that battle so that those folks that you're taking there don't make the
same mistakes and are successful when they actually have to go to war.
And so the Germans started it, the American army copied it and used it extensively
post-Civil War and then in between World War I and World War II and then post-World War
II.
And I did it as a cadet and some of...
So I went to West Point, studied military history there.
And as part of the military history program, they took us to Gettysburg.
I got selected for a special program to go to Germany and do what was called the German
Army attacks.
And so we followed the German Army in 1940 during the invasion of France and then turned
around and followed it in 1944 through the Battle of Vardetz.
But that was more to learn the history and learn the decision making and then hopefully
apply that when you're actually in combat.
For corporate groups, we at least, I tried with the corporate groups that I work with, try
to make sure that we spend about 10, we go to different stops on the battlefield, you get
to stand on the ground like at Gettysburg where Buford, who's a cavalry officer, actually
decided, hey, this is where we're gonna fight.
And you get to stand on that ground and you get your group to look around and you tell a
little bit about the history.
And then I try to have some questions on how do you apply this military idea to what
you're experiencing in your business?
And so it takes a little bit of homework to understand what business that they're in, what
problems they're confronting, and then to figure out the military lessons that they might
be able to apply with their business.
At that location at the the Beaufort area, one of the things we talk about is this idea of
high ground.
And high ground is typically
It could be a hill, it could be anything in the military, but it's something that gives
you an advantage when you're defending it against the enemy.
But we take that idea and change it a little bit and say, okay, for your corporate group,
what's the one thing that gives your corporate group a competitive advantage that must be
defended at all costs?
And it causes a great discussion because a lot of them have never, a lot of them know a
bunch of different things that they think the company is doing, but
they haven't ever thought about what's that one thing that gives them that sort of
competitive advantage.
And you get some great discussions.
Some folks will say, it's the people.
Some people will say, it's the culture.
Some people will say, hey, no, it's our product.
We got this great product.
And so you get this great discussion within the group.
And then it helps them sort things out when they leave the battlefield.
And they have that discussion over the next year, maybe before they come back and do
another program.
Where they're like, hey, know what is this really our high ground?
You know, are we in are we committing the resources to make sure that it is our high
ground?
It stays our high ground.
The competition doesn't take it away from us.
And hopefully it gets them to ask some hard questions about their business in a different
way.
No, that's so cool.
Because when you're talking about that, was thinking as well, know, that's such a cool
principle to have, right, taking that into business.
You know, what is your high ground, right?
What does that look like?
I'm really thinking about that, you know, and I think, as you said, when you go with the
team as well, you can get so many different answers.
So it's so interesting to see what other people deem as the high ground for the company
and the mission that they're going on as well.
I guess what other breakthroughs have you seen people maybe have out on the battlefield
itself, you know, in the business context as well?
Because I assume
There's gonna be lot of breakthroughs throughout that period of time when you're visiting
these places.
Yeah.
So one of the things that I think is fascinating is the military.
Sometimes folks ask me, hey, what's the difference between military leadership and
corporate leadership?
And corporate groups spend a lot of time making sure that they all are on the same page
with, we'll call it basically, their financial lexicon.
Everybody knows what EBITDA is and what profit and what revenue is and...
whatever sort of metrics that they're following to gauge how good their business is going.
But the corporate groups are not nearly as precise when they use the leadership terms with
their group.
And I'll be in a conversation, and part of it is the military spends a lot of time making
sure there's these words that we call tactical tasks, and for instance, they're seized and
secure.
Well, if you tell an organization to go seize something,
actually have to go put boots on the ground on that piece of terrain.
If you tell them to secure it, they can actually be several miles off and they can be
using binoculars and they can be able to just look and observe that terrain and maybe
shoot artillery or call in airstrikes or send drones in or whatever.
So you want to be that precise with those terms when...
you know, people's lives are on the line and you don't want somebody to be confused and
say, no, I thought you meant secure when you really said C's or vice versa.
Well, you sometimes see that problem with executives where they will talk about strategy
or vision and they'll use that word three different ways in basically one conversation.
And so it means...
They are not very precise with those words and what strategy means or what tactics means
because the army is very precise on what strategy is, what tactics are, what a vision
should be or what an end state should look like.
And so I think one of the bigger things that corporate groups, and I haven't achieved that
aha moment yet, can take away is spending some time defining the words that they're going
to use in the leadership side of their business.
I think that's one that I'm still working on trying to figure out the right way to get
that aha moment there.
The corporate head of Lululemon as part of their annual strategic retreat would have them
define the top 25 or 30 words that they were going to use at Lululemon.
That's the only one where I've seen that sort of insight.
But I'm still trying to get some group to take me up on that idea.
Yeah, I mean, I love that idea because, you know, I'm kind of thinking that about the
clients I work with and the companies I work with now is, you know, they'll use a bunch of
different terms.
But again, no one actually knows what they mean, right?
Everyone's speaking a slightly different language when it comes down to it.
And ultimately that's not going to create the clarity you need when it comes down to the
leadership or business strategy or whatever that looks like.
So I think that's a really cool bit of advice and a bit of a golden nugget really for
people to take away, you know, within their own businesses.
Think the words that you're using within the team and
do people actually understand what they mean?
Which ones are the words they're every single day?
But if everyone is speaking that slightly different language, then ultimately the end goal
is not gonna be achieved at the level you want it to be.
So I think that's a really cool golden nugget there.
Right, Yeah, you know, it's a lot of fun to work with different corporate groups and try
to figure out what they're using.
For instance, this one corporate group, it was more on the coaching side, they used this
term leadership shadow.
it was one, they kept using it in a multitude of ways.
And it meant a lot of things.
And so I eventually,
was like, okay, I gotta go research this.
So I researched it.
I found there was a Harvard Business Review article that had the genesis of what
leadership shadow meant, and it was not the way that they were using.
And it's fine that the HBR article defined it one way and the way that this corporate
group was using it was in another way.
But they never sat down and said, hey, this is what we really mean by leadership shadow,
because it's not the way that HBR
the HBR article defined it.
And so that was kind of fun to work with those folks on, and hey, really are you meaning
by this leadership shadow thing?
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
And then I guess about the leadership development, know, programs and coaching, I guess
what other types of events do you do or what other types of coaching have you found to be
really effective when it comes down to creating change within an organization?
Because I think sometimes it's very hard for organizations to change.
You can speak change at them, but it's hard to actually get them to transform long term
into, you know, the end result that they're looking to do.
So, you know, what have you found in that realm?
One of the more interesting projects I took on, and it's been a couple years and I haven't
been able to get a second corporate group to try it, is I took the military's planning
process, which is called the military decision-making process, and changed it into the
corporate decision-making process.
And I taught it, I wrote a booklet for them on it, and then facilitated
several strategic planning sessions with them.
And the Army's military decision making process, there's eight steps with it.
To build a corporate one, we added in a couple of steps.
But the biggest takeaway for your corporate listeners out there, most large organizations
in the military have a dedicated planning cell.
And so the CEO or the boss can tell folks, go.
go away and plan this for a little while and then come back and give me some ideas.
Most corporate groups I've seen, unless they're exceptionally large, Fortune 500
companies, don't have a dedicated planning cell.
And so what typically happens is the CEO tags the HR leader or the COO or the CFO, hey, I
need you to go work on this project.
And so they go off and sort of in a vacuum, they plan and they come back and deliver
something
and the team isn't on board, the boss isn't on board, but they start down this road on
doing it because they've already invested some time and energy into this plan.
So one of the big things that I learned with working with this group was, you know,
whatever that they were gonna decide on, we always force them to stop and go, okay, what
problem are we really trying to solve?
And this was an agriculture co-op.
big $2 billion a year agriculture co-op.
the first project they brought me in on was this.
They wanted to buy this $65 million site along the Mississippi River.
And the site was going to end up basically being a super fun site because it had a whole
bunch of pollutants on it and a bunch of other stuff.
they were like,
And eventually they were halfway down to already buying it and trying to figure out how
they were going to change it and stuff.
they're like, okay, well, what problem are we really trying to solve?
Well, the problem they were really trying to solve is how they distribute stuff in central
Arkansas.
Like, okay, all right, so that's the problem.
So let's figure out a couple of ways that we can do it.
We can still buy this piece of property on the Mississippi River.
But it turned out...
the property was going to run them about 50 or 60 million, but it turned out that they
could build a couple warehouses in central Arkansas for $10 million and distribute with a
rail spur and a couple of trucks in the same way rather than buying the $65 million
superfund site.
So I like to think I saved them $55 million in this process by just getting them to come
back and think about what problem they were really trying to solve.
Okay, I think I lost you.
You still there?
My wifi decided to cut out for some reason.
It's alright.
I was like, well, I hope the snow isn't so bad that it messed up my my Wi-Fi
Yeah, apologies for that.
think I've been having issues the last couple of days.
No idea why it's cutting out.
So yeah, apologies for that.
kind of ruined the flow there a little bit.
But I mean, let's just jump back into what you were saying before we kind of got cut off
and we'll just go in and snip things out.
Yeah, where do you think we need to go back to to start?
Where do think you lost me?
think it was from when you're talking about the corporate steps.
Just after that, it then cut out on my side.
go back in and edit all this and try to...
Yeah, we'll piece it together and smooth it out.
All right, all right.
All right.
So lay the question on and then I'll talk through it.
So, I mean, talk to me a little bit more about the corporate steps that you've taken from
the army and then change it into the corporate steps.
What does that look like?
And what does that look like?
Yeah, so the first project that they brought me in on was this project where they'd
already started to do some planning on how to buy this $65 million site along the
Mississippi River where they could unload grain and fertilizer at.
And the place had been operating for 60, 70 years.
It needed a lot of updating.
frankly, it was going to be a bit of a
a cleanup mess because there had been chemicals and stuff there for years.
So we joked that it was going to become a superfund site.
But that was the state of their planning.
And so the first thing we did, which is something that most corporate groups don't do, we
gathered everybody in a room together.
And we said, OK, what problem are we trying to solve?
And we got everybody to talk about, true, what problem we're really trying to solve.
And it turned out the problem we're really trying to solve was,
how to distribute their both grain and fertilizer in central Arkansas.
Like, oh, okay.
And then we said, okay, what are some ways that we can do that?
And it turned out with a little bit of creative thinking, you could build a warehouse for
$10 million in the middle of central Arkansas and you can ship stuff in on rail cars and
distribute it with 18 wheelers.
throughout central Arkansas, and it was only gonna run about $10 million versus the $65
million superfund site.
So after we got them to think through that, the boss eventually said, okay, yep, that's
what we wanna do, we wanna do the warehouse option, not buy this piece of property.
And so that one is another nugget that I think the corporate groups can take away from the
military is this idea of one,
taking a step back and going, okay, what problem we're trying to solve, and to getting
everybody in the room.
We had the HR director, we had the CFO, we had the COO, we had the guys that would
actually have to do the distribution of it, some of the sales team, and we got everybody
to talk about.
So everybody came from that group, at least with this project, came away with an
understanding of what the problem is, what we were trying to solve, and then a couple of
different ideas that we explored, and then the one that got.
got picked as the best idea.
so it takes a little longer.
This took a whole day out of work.
they weren't making sales.
They weren't doing other things.
But it got a better understanding, got better buy-in.
And then when they went off on the plan to build a warehouse for $10 million, they had a
much bigger buy-in and much more momentum on executing that plan than typically what
happens, which was
The boss tells somebody to go away and plan.
They plan, they come back, they say, let's buy the $65 million superfund site.
Everybody says, yeah.
And then everybody's like, why the heck are we buying this superfund site?
And so I think it's one thing that corporate groups could take away from the military is
this planning process.
And if any of your listeners are out there and want some help with this, I would love to
come out and help them.
I've got the booklet and can teach it in a day and then would
love to facilitate it for a couple of times, then think the corporate group can go off on
their own and do it on their own.
Yeah, definitely.
I love that.
What problem are we actually trying to solve here?
Because I think it's so easy, Everyone starts throwing these solutions in and you just
kind of pick one, but actually giving it the thought that you need to, right?
Because these are the big decisions within the company, which can really shape it and be
massively detrimental if you've chosen the wrong one.
So I think that decision making process is very, very important for sure.
And then I guess looking forward then into the future, what are your plans with the
business?
What goals are you trying to achieve with it as well?
on your side.
Yeah, you know, like every small business owner, have this vision of building and
expanding and growing and developing.
you know, I've got my goals of, you know, I've currently got five battlefield programs
locked in already here in January for the year.
My goal is to get somewhere between 10 and 15 this year.
continue growing the coaching side of the business and keep plugging along.
I want to do this for another couple of decades.
The opportunity to help people and the opportunity to help them see things in perhaps a
slightly different light than their normal corporate experience with the battlefield
programs I think is super helpful and it just brings, for a leader, brings another tool in
the toolkit to the problems that they're doing.
Because if you continue to
to tackle the problem in the same way, same sort of methods, you're gonna get the same
sort of results.
so hopefully, being able to steal and plagiarize some ideas from the military helps them
as leaders and helps them bring things to the company that they might not already have.
Awesome.
And then where can people find you if they're interested in going to the battlefield and
taking you up on that coaching offer?
Yeah, so I've got a website, www.the5coatconsultinggroup.com.
It's got the Battlefield stuff on, it's got some of the coaching, and it's got my email
and contact info.
So if they want to reach out, would love to talk to them.
Amazing.
So one of the final questions we always ask on this show is if you can go back to your 18
year old self and only take three things with you, whether it's some business knowledge,
some philosophy or some technical knowledge, whatever it is, what would those three things
be and why would it be those three things?
That's an interesting question.
I should have listened to the end of your podcast to actually hear it, so I'd come in with
some better ideas.
Okay, so three things that I would take back to my 18-year-old self.
So the first thing I would do, you know,
One of the things that I struggled with is once you're in the military, was a tough
decision to leave.
It's all I had known as an adult, my last job before the Army, I'd been a busboy.
And one of the things I would take back is this idea that, hey, there great opportunities
no matter where you are, whether you're in the Army or
outside as a small business owner or in corporate America.
And frankly, that's one of the cool things that I've gotten to do in this job is I've
gotten to see a lot of great corporate groups and meet some really, really great
executives that are out there.
And so there's lots of opportunities.
I was hesitant to take the jump and leave what I knew.
And frankly, there aren't many folks that at age 46,
you know, completely jump into an entirely different career.
And so that's a big jump.
And I think the thing I take back to my 18-year-old self is, hey, you can do it and it's
not as scary as you think it is.
Second thing is maybe not my 18-year-old self, but it's something that I tell a lot of
folks that are getting out of the Army,
after 20 years is that I think a lot of folks that have done 20 years in the Army should
take the risk to be an entrepreneur more than they actually do.
And you probably know some of the bigger ones.
There's the guys that started Black Rifle Coffee Company.
There's the guys that started Nine Line.
There's a bunch of folks like that that are sort of the big names.
But the other folks that are sort of like
me and there's some other friends that are here in town that are running their own small
businesses.
You're set up for a lot of success to be a small business owner if you leave the military
because you have that pension and you also have healthcare.
And it's cheap.
I appreciate the American taxpayers subsidizing my cheap healthcare as a DOD retiree.
But those two things
really set you up for success because it's a safety net when you go out as an
entrepreneur.
And I try to encourage a lot of my friends that are getting out to consider it.
I do think that they should go do a job in the space where they think they want to be an
entrepreneur for a year or two because I think it's helpful to see another company and see
how it runs and what to do and not to do based off of that experience.
But then I think they take the leap after two years of doing something else.
And so that would be number two.
Number three would be travel.
The mantra I would go back and tell that I have traveled a lot, but now at 50, I realize
I've missed some opportunities to travel.
I've been to 30 plus countries and all over the United States, but I love the just...
learning about new areas, new cultures, new history by traveling places.
And so I'd go back and tell that 18-year-old self to, hey, you can do it.
You can travel more.
Being committed to the job and stuff, but find those opportunities to travel and take in
those experiences would be something that I'd go back and tell my 18-year-old self.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to jump on this podcast.
I've really enjoyed the conversation and learned a lot myself.
Yeah, no, thank you.
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate it.