Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

War by Sebastian Junger w/ John Hill aka "Small Mtn" & Jesan Sorrells
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00:00 "Trade-Offs and War Decisions"
17:06 Sales Roles and Pride Dynamics
24:48 "Reflections on Military Legacy"
36:37 Future Warfare: AI and Drones
50:11 "Understanding Conflict and Consequences"
01:00:56 "Reflections on Military Service"
01:07:27 Leadership and Intentional Selling Parallel
01:20:24 Martial Arts and Community Connection
01:28:09 Struggling to Conform and Belong
01:39:07 Respecting Unpopular Opinions Online
01:53:54 "Effective Communication for Founders"
02:05:07 "Power of Editing Perception"
02:11:56 "Better Sales Leadership Techniques"
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Opening and closing themes composed by Brian Sanyshyn of Brian Sanyshyn Music.
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ā˜… Support this podcast on Patreon ā˜…
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Creators and Guests

Host
Jesan Sorrells
CEO of HSCT Publishing, home of Leadership ToolBox and LeadingKeys
Guest
John Hill aka Small Mountain
Sales doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to make you feel gross.
Producer
Leadership Toolbox
The home of Leadership ToolBox, LeaderBuzz, and LeadingKeys. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books podcast link here: https://t.co/3VmtjgqTUz

What is Leadership Lessons From The Great Books?

Understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand (yet) another business book, Leadership Lessons From The Great Books leverages insights from the GREAT BOOKS of the Western canon to explain, dissect, and analyze leadership best practices for the post-modern leader.

All right, Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode

number 171 with with John Hill,

aka Small Mountain Covering War

by Sebastian Younger in 3,

2, 1.

Hello, my name is Hasan Sorrells, and this is

the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

episode number 171.

This is going to be kind of a long intro, so bear with me.

In the study of conflict, whether between people, between people

and institutions, or between institutions themselves, there is

an observation that applies to those types of conflicts

from the economist Thomas Sowell, whose book

A Conflict of Ideological Origins of Political Struggles we

will be covering next season in February on this

show, and this

quote applies to our book today.

There are no solutions. There are only trade

offs. And then

there is this from that hoary old book that lies at the bottom of Western

culture that we don't often talk about out loud.

And I quote, for which of you, desiring to build a tower,

does not first sit down and count the cost? Whether he has enough to complete

it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to

finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, this man

began to build and was not able to finish? Or what king

going out to encounter another king in war will not sit

down first and deliberate whether he is able with 10,000 to meet him who has

comes against him with 20,000? And if not,

while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and

asks for terms of peace.

Luke 14:28 32 ESV

the challenge of trade offs the challenge of counting the cost of those trade

offs and then being willing to explain the trade offs to people who might disagree

or who might like to have their own costs included in the conversation

is one of the most difficult challenges endemic to the Western way of war

making. None of the countries who have sprung

out of the Western tradition has been quote, unquote, good at this part.

Going back into the history of the west and this lack of

being skillful at measuring the trade offs inherent in waging war

has reached its apotheosis in the form,

as is usual, of the United States making

war. We forget in our postmodern time,

and I think to our peril, that we have never been fully united in the

pursuit of war because we disagree fundamentally about the trade offs in

blood, Treasure, time, and here's a big

one, the will to commit to what the enemy

won't. But

when the moment of battle arrives, as it did at the siege of Vienna in

1683 by the Ottoman Empire, and as it would in

the Korengal Valley in 2007. The

militaries of the west tend to commit all of their

forces to an inflection point and leave

the dealing with the trade offs and the arguments for

later today on

this episode of the podcast, we will explore what happens after. The arguments about trade

offs and the counting of costs have been, for better or worse, put

aside. Now the will to

commit will be enjoined right at the tip of the spear

with Battle Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd

Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team

in 2007 and documented by the embedded journalist

Sebastian Younger in his excellent

reportage war,

which you can see on the video today.

Leaders. Who among you, even in business,

are willing to count the cost and willing to live

with the consequences of that cost?

And today we will be joined by our co host rejoining us on episode

number 161 this summer and feeling a little spicy today.

We were talking a little bit before we hit record, so he's going to bring

some of that spiciness to our conversation, I suspect.

And in episode 161 we discussed Robert Heinlein,

Stranger in a Strange Land. You should go back and listen to that episode too.

My friend and the friend of the show, John Hill, AKA

Small Mountain. How you doing today, John?

And I'm. I was getting a little spicy before we hit the record

button. Um, this is an interesting

book. Like, there's a lot into this and yeah, we're going

to dig into it, but I'm not going to jump ahead. I'm very excited to

dig into this and hear your perspective on it and kind of talk about my

thinking on it and go from there. Absolutely,

absolutely. This book was,

you'll, you'll, you'll hear. So by the time you hear this

episode. Right. The introductory episode will be, will be out where

I talked a little bit about the background of the book, talked about the background

of Sebastian Younger as an embedded journalist and reporter

of Vanity Fair and an author who had written the book the

Perfect Storm before this. And that sort of was his ticket

into, into the Korengal Valley and into

being embedded with the, the 2nd Battalion and,

and their efforts at Opera Strepo or

Op Restrepo as well as other places in

the Korengal Valley. And we're going to talk a little bit about the Corgon Valley

today. But I would encourage you to go back and listen to that intro episode.

I would also encourage you to go back and listen to the shorts episode, I

believe it's number 200, where we talk about

or where I address this idea, which is addressed in the back end

of the book in the section called Love.

The really complicated relationship that young men have with

combat, particularly when we ask them to go do it,

and then we demand that they come back and put that all down

in favor of the lives that we live here without,

in my opinion, a requisite understanding. And even Younger

says this in the book. An understanding of why combat

works particularly for young men. We

don't really want to think about that because it's just too. It's too

ugly. It's too ugly. But I

think we, and I agree with Younger, I. I think we have to face that

ugliness if we ever really actually

want to have peace on Earth.

That's really hard. It's a really hard way to get from there to here.

But that's kind of starting at the end. I would encourage you to go back

and listen to that shorts episode, listen to the introductory episode. Today on the

show, I'm going to delve into John's insights

from the book. I'm going to share my own, as usual, because it's copyrighted material.

I'm not going to be reading directly from the book. I respect not only the

copyright, But I respect Mr. Unger's work too much to do that.

And I respect the. The men of.

Of the 173rd Battalion and of 2nd Platoon. And so I'm not going

to do that to them. Instead, what I'm going to do

is I'm going to ask John to start us off with. And he was very

excited to read this book. When I initially sort of sent him the list, just

a little bit behind the scenes, sent him the list of books that we're going

to be reading this year on the podcast. He said, dude, I want to do

that one. And I knew it was going to be tough. And we're

doing it on Coming in on the Back End, or we're covering this book Coming

in on the Back End of World War I by John Keegan. And there's

a lot of parallels between the way Keegan reports

on World War I and the ways in which World

War I has been framed from a soldier's perspective, which Keegan does critique

in his book because he's framing it as a historian, not a

combatant, and definitely not an embedded person.

All the way a hundred years later to what we are doing in the

Korengal Valley and the ways in which things have shifted over the course of a

century is kind of amazing. But what's even More

amazing are the things that have remained the same.

So with that framing and setup, I

would remind you that the book is divided into three parts.

We're going to probably talk about each part, but first part is fear. The

second part is killing. And then the third part, as I said previously,

is love. John, you went through

this book. Tell us your thoughts about Sebastian

Younger's book on war.

So a little bit of backstory here. I

am prior service. I joined the army reserves in

2001, in May of 2001. That's an important

part of this thing because I joined largely just for some college money

and for all the wrong reasons to join the military. But we were in

peacetime. Didn't really matter. You know,

the recruiters made it sound. It was like it was going to be awesome, right?

I was going to get really great training. I was gonna be able to come

back. I was gonna be able to get a really cool job, and no big

deal. Let's just go do this thing. So I joined,

and me and. Me and a buddy joined together, and his younger brother

had already joined. And so I kind of got to see this

person who had gone through basic training and was still very

optimistic about the army, right. And being in the

military. And I didn't have anything going on. Right. I dropped out of college.

At this point, I'm working full time. You know, I had all the credit cards

that everybody got around that time, and, you know, starting to feel that pressure of

it, didn't know what to do. And so kind

of found my way there and

put a lot of distance, I think, between myself whenever I was

going through that and this person that I am now. Right. I see a lot

of value in some of the stuff that I've had to go through. A of

lot of what the military taught me had a long period of kind of being

not really excited about any of that stuff. I didn't want to talk about it

a whole lot. But now I kind of see where it's helped

me. Like, I do not think I would be capable of running my own business

or being a sales professional or doing any of the things that I do now

without my time in the military. But all that to be said,

I never deployed. I never really had to go out

and do the things that are talked about in this book. And so

when I'm talking about this and I'm sharing my opinion, I just wanted to be

clear that I am speaking from a place who. Who has been through the training

but has not actually been in that environment. But I have a lot of friends

who have and have come back different and

to the point you're talking about before,

not the same, completely different. So

this book was. Wasn't fascinating because like

reading through it, I don't know that I've ever read anything

that made it more like real.

Like I was instantly like teleported back to being in

Georgia before 911 when it was just an exercise, and after

911 when it was no longer just an exercise and we're on, you

know, 24 hour alert and things like that. I've never,

like, I had to put it down a couple of times and like, take some

breaks and walk away from it and stuff like that because it was just like

very, very well written. Like there's this,

there's this vibe that like is. And you can see it in the

book if you're really paying attention to it and stuff like that. And if you're

not familiar with it, it just feels like bravado.

But there's this weight to it that if you've been around

it and you've seen the output of it and stuff like that, to where it's

not just bravado, like it's, it's. It's this very

weird version of like hope kind of thing and stuff like that.

And it's, it's mixed up and labeled oddly and put into weird

conventions, you know, and there's a lot in the book about like, you know, the

needling and the, you know, the crap giving and the, the

hazing and all of this stuff. And like it's, I

mean, it's so well written, right? Like, if you've never been

through it, this is probably one of the, one of the most interesting

points of view on it, right? Because it's all there

and even down to when you're leaving, you're going to give

the new guys crap because they're not prepared, but they think that they are, but

you're going to go humble. Like that is. That is so just in

it, you know, and the, the cool part

of they know that that's what's required

in that space, right? Like, you know, when they're talking about how

their uniforms are completely destroyed and everything because they're doing these things and stuff

like that, and it becomes a mark of distinction. Like when you're out and you're

that far out and stuff, it is. There are like, the rules are lesser, you

know, and then when you come back and you're, you know, herded together again,

it's kind of like, you know, I, I've seen that frustration

so many times when talking with people who are frustrated by the rules when

they come back, you know, and, and it's just, I've never read

anything that like, put me back in that spot as deeply as this book did.

And I'm, I'm. It was, yeah, it was a

lot. It was a lot for sure.

Buddy of mine who's been on the show, I don't feel bad about using his

name, R.J. st. John. He came on a couple years

ago and talked with us about the book about Face,

which is, which is another great, another great memoir

written from the perspective of a guy who,

the author who, who served in Korea. Right. And then proceeded to serve

in Vietnam and then just, you know, left the military, the American

military, and retired to, to Australia, began to critique the American

military's approach in, in Vietnam and then

was, you know, cast off, basically.

Colonel David Hackworth. Right. I didn't know about that.

Like, like I know about, I know about Hackworth and about,

about Face, largely because of, you know, Jocko's podcast and following him

for a while. I didn't, I didn't realize that he got kind of like

excommunicated for some of these ideas. That's fascinating.

He became peacenick or what they called Peacenick back in the day.

Today we would just call him a reasonable guy,

but the thing he was fighting uphill against was

all of the residue From World War II that

was the thing he was fighting against. And we don't, we don't appreciate.

No, I'll frame it this way. I think people who have a non

historical perspective on the world and on the, on America

don't appreciate just how powerful military service

was from World War II and the ripples that went out from that in

literally every facet of American life.

And so by the time you get to Vietnam

and Hackworth's looking at the decay of the American

military command structure, he doesn't really

understand it. And so for him, the only solution, at least this is what

I was able to glean, was to critique

the system and then eventually leave the system.

Yeah. Because there was no way around it in

that particular environment that he was in. I think it's because of

the work of guys like Hackworth. I think it's because of the

writing of folks like that and yes, the journalists who came

after and who critiqued Vietnam that we are able to

wind up with this book right here. Oh, I think so.

And I want to. So I was mentioning my buddy RJ I want to bring

this up because he, he saw the picture that I posted

on Facebook, on our Facebook page about getting into the

book and he texted me, he said this, that book, Younger, that book

by Younger War. I've read it, actually I read it in

Afghanistan and I couldn't put it down as finally I had found a

civilian who understood and could put into words what I could not.

When I came home, I had, I'm not going to say her name. I

had this person and her mother read it. And while this person

understood, her mom didn't and lots of people I've

recommended that book to Just Do Not Understand. It's an

excellent book and a good view into the grunt world from a non

grunt perspective. Yeah.

Close quote. There's, there's this

status that goes along with it, right? And they talk about how they

know about it, right? Like I went to Benning, which is where like the home

of the infantry is. But my, my, my job is not to be an infantry

person, right? So I went through like the regular standard boot camp.

But it was wild because since I'm at Benning and it's the home of the

infantry and that's like their big thing and they're very, you know, we were

always hearing about how we weren't, we weren't there for the,

for the good stuff, the 11 Bravo. And like, I mean it was always

just kind of being dangled, like the pride of that, right? And

it has to be there, it must be there, you know, and

this is a, I hate, I hate when people take

war propaganda into sales leadership. It really, really bothers me, but it happens

all the time. But you know, if you

don't make it a big thing, something

you can be proud of or whatever, people are just going to do the minimum,

right? And so right now there's a, there's a whole fleet of

sales professionals called like SDRs and BDRs, right? And they, they do

early stage work, right? They're setting appointments, they're, they're triaging, they're

clarifying the information and stuff. They don't even get to close any deals. And in

that mode, when you're just being told, well, you're just a setter, you're just a

setter, you're not going to, you're not like they're doing it the, the bad way,

right? Because everyone just wants to be out of that role, which means no one

is going to really be in that role and do it well and like lead

the Pathfinder and document the journey and do these things. And so

it's, it's this very stark comparison. Right. Because being.

Being an sdr, being an appointment setter, being a BDR can sometimes be a thankless

job because you don't get the glory of closing the deals or getting it across

the finish line or anything else like this. And if it's positioned as well,

just do this for a little bit and then we'll get you promoted and then

you're going to do the cool work, then you get to do the, the big

bucks and stuff. It's why everyone has

hates that role and it's why people can't keep people in that role because they're

not packaging it in a way that makes people excited to do it.

Right. Whereas infantry, for as much as that job sucks,

most of those people are incredibly bought into the value and

the value of the effort that they do. Yeah, I, One of

the things that really struck me, particularly in the first part of,

of the book. And it. Struck me

all the way down to my bones, so I've known the kinds

of folks that go into the military.

This was a surprise for me. I, I did not know

this. And it was. I, I was delighted that they put this

into the book, honestly, because, because people do not know about this if they

have not served or not spent time around armed services folks. Right.

And it's, it's, it kind of reminded me in a certain way of

the folks that I see at. And this is my first mention of it, and

I'll mention it more this episode. I always do once or twice or four times

an episode. It reminds me of the folks that I've been going through Jiu Jitsu

with right now on the Jiu Jitsu journey. It is this ragtag

collection of miscreants and criminals

and people with a criminal mindset who aren't quite criminals

and people who just want the thrill and accountants

and lawyers and doctors like we were

just talking about. And we're all united in this sort

of brotherhood. And they

were united in this. And they talk about this a lot. In love, united in

this brotherhood. And to your point, there's hazing,

there's nonsense, there's crap talking. Like

every time I go to Jiu Jitsu, I'm getting crap talked. It's fine. And I'm

dishing out as much as. I'm taking it fine. Because, you

know, my mom didn't raise no punk. So there you go. That's how that goes.

Don't, don't get confused with the flat

Midwestern sounding voice. Don't get confused. Don't, don't

confuse that. But you sound like you're going through boot

camp like right now, right? A little bit. Well, you

know, here's the thing. I would never compare what I'm doing in jiu jitsu with

boot camp. I would never compare. Thank God. Like, like it's not

even. No, please. Number one, I'm in my mid-40s. My knees don't work

that well. Let's be really real here.

But the, the, it is the closest

thing a non combatant, non grunt can get to something

that's like, almost like that. And even still you're not close.

Right? And it's. And what fascinated

me in the first part of the book in Fear was

the psychology of these guys, the

mentality of these young men.

Typically when we think about soldiers, we do, we think of a rootless,

typically our time. Rootless, to

your point about your experience, rootless, non college going

guy who might have some violent tendencies. And we

don't understand that. And so we want to channel that as a society and culture

into something that's beneficial. And I looked at the statistics. Less

than 1% of the available male population in the United States serves.

Really? Yep. I looked up the statistics. It's like 0.08%.

I did not know it was that low. That's interesting because the biggest

lesson that the Pentagon learned from the end of the Vietnam War,

at the end of the Vietnam War was get rid of conscription.

This is why anytime anybody in Congress on either side of the

aisle talks about going back to the draft, the

Pentagon shuts that down immediately. Oh, yeah, don't,

don't even talk about it. Shut up. Right.

But what this does on the other end of that

idea, which we don't appreciate this. Remember I talked about the World War II veterans,

right. What this does is it flattens

society in the face of a warrior ethos. And now

the society doesn't understand how to deal with that warrior when they come back.

So the case in point for sure is o', Byrne, right. In

the book, his, his journey. Right. So you know this

guy, Brendan o', Byrne, right. He led his men, what I, in what

I would consider an exemplary fashion in a

horrible place and made command

decisions that

a 22 year old shouldn't have to make.

But he understood what the game was and he

understood how to do the thing. I even, I even as a, as part of

me reading this book, I went out and bought Restrepo, which was

the movie that was made from the

photographer Tim Harrigan, or I'm not saying his name, last name

correctly, I don't think. But the photographer that was along with Sebastian

Younger, who took photographs and video. Right. Of their experience and it turned into a

movie called Restrepo. And then there's another movie called Korengal, which I'm probably going to

get to. And I watched that movie as part of reading this book and normally

I don't do that. Normally I don't cross over the book with the film. But

this was one of those things like reading Shakespeare where you've got to like hear

it and see it, because seeing the words on the page, to your point,

doesn't quite have the same impact as it does when you actually watch the videos

of it. That's a fascinating thing because. Because like, I was watching

this or sorry, I was reading this and I was seeing about the Restrepo stuff

and the other document and I was. And I want all the context. I'll go

watch all this stuff, right? And then got a little real and I was like,

right. And so I still want to watch it, but I think I need a

little bit of time.

That's a fascinating thing, right? Because like, if you've not gone through anything like

that, I would imagine, I would imagine your

feeling at the end of that book is completely different than my feeling at the

end of that book. Oh, right, yeah, I, Yeah, I mean I,

I had to thumb back through it again on, on the. Well, so

we're recording this on a Monday. I had to go back through it on a,

on a, on the Sunday beforehand. And I just sat on my front porch and

just sat with. Was just one of those books I just sat with like, like

at the end of John Keegan's book, like World War I, I just sat with

it because

again, as a non grunt, right, As a person

who might have more orientation towards that mindset

than most other folks that I know, but never actually did the thing, never actually

pulled the trigger to go down the road for a

whole variety of reasons

as a person who, who has lived a life surrounded by these kinds

of people. And I'm talking about a lot of it like

they, and, and I'm the first male in my family to not serve in the

military. I broke the generational like going back, right?

And so there was a lot of pressure not to serve

necessarily, but a lot of pressure to do something if you're not going to do

that. Oh, so then it's like, well, you don't have to go,

but you better be a doctor. You better be something.

It's. It's almost like it's the. I'm going to use an analogy here. This

is going to be terrible. But it's my platform, so I can use terrible analogies

if I want. Absolutely. That's the whole point of building a platform. Exactly. It's the

African American version of the Asian tiger bomb.

Oh, yeah. It's that kind of

pressure, right? So, like, my uncles on my father's side all

served. My uncles on my. On my mother's side

served. My grandfather on my father's side served.

Like, it goes. You know, it's just there, right? We were the

opposite, actually. Okay, okay. So, like, my

parents are both hippies. And, like, whenever I told my mom I was thinking

about it, she's like, are you sure? What's. His

name's. What's his name? Who was in here? What was one of the soldiers. They

were describing him, the one who's like, mom wouldn't

let me have guns. She was also a hippie. Mm. Yeah. And

he was like, now I'm here doing this thing here. They like. I.

I believe he was. He was interviewed in. In Restrepo. And then they

cut to him, like, firing the 50 cal or it might have been the saw.

I can't remember right now. And, you know, it's.

It's.

I don't. I don't know what to do with any of it other than to

say reality plays out in weird ways.

And let's not layer. Let's not layer stuff on top of it. Let's not try

to make it more complicated or subtle or gray area

than just reality works out in weird ways. And follow the bouncing ball.

Well, and that's. That to me, goes back to how you open the show. It's

about the trade offs, right? And there's a.

As you were talking about this, I was having this flashback of

being in basic training, right, very early on, and

drill sergeants were yelling at us about not being decisive, not making decisions, not

just moving forward with intent and everything. And he goes, ah, that's right. You

guys are. You guys are privates. Like, we're not even soldiers yet. We're privates, right?

And it's derogatory, and you know it. Right? So going through this whole

thing. And he goes, oh, that's right. That's right. You guys haven't been to school

yet. You guys are, you know, too dumb to make decisions. And I was like,

I'm sorry, what? And. And he was like, start pushing so I'm down now.

I'm pushing now. And we have this conversation about how there's a school that the

military sends you to when you get to a certain rank, and it's all about

how to make decisions. And I thought this was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard,

right? So while I'm doing push ups, I'm like, hey, drill Sergeant, this seems a

little silly. Like, really. And he goes,

well, private, here, if you make

the wrong decision, people die. And here, sometimes, even if

you make the right decision, people will die. And there's a lot

of times where time does not actually show you which solution

has less risk and less death. And you have to be able to make command

decisions in the heat of that moment. And, like, I can. I couldn't

even do push ups anymore. I'm hearing this, and the weight with which he's

talking about it is just like, coming through, right? Because I'm

20 years old and I'm one of the older guys in the. In the thing.

Everyone else is like 18 or doing split ops. They're like on summer break between,

you know, junior and senior year of high school and everything.

And I'm like one of the older guard at 20 years old. And this idea

that, like, it was kind of like, okay, what have I really gotten myself

into? You know, but it was still fine because we're not at war. It's

okay. We're not at war. It's okay. This is just the reserves, right? And,

you know, talk about the hazing and like, the kind of hierarchical nature of it.

You know, there were airborne guys on our base, right? And

the hero worship, right? The Red Beret and. And all these

things, right? And being a reservist going through, like,

Benny, oh my God, man, like,

just hazed. And you know, only thing worse than being reservists of being a

National Guard or a nasty girl, like, it, like, there. There's

no way to show up and not take it in some way, shape or form,

which is just kind of like an interesting aspect to it. But that idea of

everything has a trade off, right? And this is one of my very unpopular

conversations that I got to have with people now, including my wife sometimes, and she

does not like this, that choices, everything is a

choice, right? And everything has trade offs. You know, as a founder, if

you're not doing your stuff, that's a choice. If you're choosing to

procrastinate, if you're choosing to not figure it out, if you're choosing to go by

tech as opposed to understanding how this stuff works. Because you think the tech is

going to save you. You're making choices and there's going to be output of those

choices. Not only that, something else that Sebastian

makes an excellent point about in. In War,

in the back. In the back of the book, the back end of. Of Love,

he talks about how, yes, there are trade offs

and at. No, the. The tension

when you're in. As they used to say back in the day, pardon my French,

but they used to say back in the day, in the shit, when you're in

it versus when you're back home and the dial is turned down.

Yep. Everything that is out

there. This was the best explanation I ever saw for the psychology of this

or I've ever read for the psychology of this. Everything out there can kill

you. Everything is consequential whether you tie your

shoes or don't tie your shoes, whether you wash

or don't wash, whether you are carrying the appropriate

amount of water or not. Like, he. He told the story of a guy who

peed off the side of the. Believe it was off the side of the bunk

and the pee was like. Everybody could smell the pee. And the commanding officer went

back to that guy and said, listen, you're not drinking enough water. It's

110 degrees out here. We're sweating ammonia.

Drink water. Why would you be yelling at you about drinking water? Well,

because if you die on patrol or if you

pass out, a repeat stroke on patrol, now we have to carry your behind

up the mountain and back down the mountain to make sure you don't get shot

by the enemy. Drink water. Every decision

has monumental consequences. And then we come back to your

point about using war metaphors in business and war propaganda and sales and

leadership. You come back to the civilian

world and people are behaving. And I could see this in my veterans

that I know. I could see their frustration with civilians. This is the

best way I had it articulated. Civilians behave as if no

decisions are consequential. 100%. 100.

And I could see where that would drive them crazy and where that is the

biggest disjuncture. It's not the PTSD, really.

It's more the disjuncture on going from a place where

if you don't tie your shoelaces it can get you killed to,

well, I'm just not going to walk the dogs today because I don't feel like

it. Yeah. And the dogs will be fine.

And how do you make those two. How do you make the zipper close on

both of those ideas and you can't. No one has a good

psychological. Yeah. Way.

Matter of fact, I think Younger is probably the first writer to ever sort of

really articulate this correctly. Beautiful

job talking. I. What I love

and. Oh, man. Okay.

I love how he talks about how he carried it back

himself, that he was struggling with it. Right. I finished

the book and then I was doing a little bit of research on o'

Brien a little bit, and turns out that he writes now and

was reading some of his stuff and then I read an article about a flashback

he had because people were on him and it put him back

into that mode. And when you tighten the spring,

by. The way, the guy Money who told him he wasn't going to buy his

book, I freaking loved that. I laughed so hard.

Anyway, sorry, go ahead. When you put that. When you. When

you take a steel bar and you wind it into a spring, right. So that

way it'll push, it'll be. It'll compress, it'll do these things and everything else like

that. Like, we don't unwind that spring. No. In any way,

shape or form. Right? No. And a friend of mine is serving a double life

sentence because that spring was not unwound. And it just led to

a truly unfortunate incident. And he was trying to get help, but the line was

super long and so made some decisions and you know, he will

never be out because of that.

And it didn't have to be that way, but there was no. There

was no offloading of that tension in a meaningful way. And

so. Yeah, it's tough. Very tough. Well, and, and, and

so we think it's the trauma, right? I mean, Younger addresses this in the book

too. But violence, I think of the movie Heat,

right? The action is the juice, right. The

violence is the thing that young men want. That's why I opened up the

podcast with that, with that point. We, as a post

modern culture where we

have attempted in very meaningful ways to

erase violence at multiple levels, or at

least put it on the back burner enough to where we see it as an

aberration, not merely human nature

anymore. This is why everyone's shocked with murder statistics.

This is why everybody's shocked. Every time there's a murder statistic, everyone is surprised and

blown away. Everybody's shocked when we see.

Now, unfortunately, murders or

assassinations happen and then are publicized on social

media. And the reason why we're

shocked is not only because the vast majority of the available

male population doesn't serve in the military, thus doesn't See,

no, not only does it serve in the military, but doesn't experience combat because

combat has even reduced over the course of time. Okay.

So because of those two factors, we are shocked by violent death.

And we can say that's a good thing. We can say that that's a good

progression of society and culture. Yeah.

And yet to your point about trade offs, there's a trade off there. So

we exchanged being anti violent all

the way down to the lowest level for the

ability to focus violence,

as John Keegan made his point in World in the, in the first World War,

to focus violence at an inflection point very quickly,

very narrowly, particularly in America, we're really good at this.

And then get in and get out. Right. And then not waste a whole lot

of time. We don't like to waste a whole lot of time, partially. That's culturally,

we're Americans, we don't like to waste a lot of time. It bores us. We

lose interest just as a civilian population. But

when we ask people to do that, the thing we haven't taken into

consideration is back to my point about the psychology of these men.

What type of person do we want to go do that?

Because what's coming up in the next 20 years, and you and I have talked

about the next 20 years on the show before, what's coming up in the next

20 years is I would say probably 50%, maybe even

60 to 70% mechanized warfare between

drones and cyber AI

and God only knows what else that will come out

of human beings. Fertile imaginations.

We are going to reduce the number of human bodies you need in

an inflection point to an insanely low number

in the history of warfare. Now that will happen not only

in America, but also in Europe, in places that are

technologically advanced, in China, places that are technologically advanced. But the

knock on effect will be to places that are not technologically advanced because

they always ape us and try to copy what we do

in order to fight their own wars. And so over the next 20 years,

I suspect the casualties in warfare,

they won't go to zero, but they're going to be very low.

And yet we still won't ask the question, to your point about the

metaphor, about the steel bar, we know what it takes to tighten that steel bar

up, but I think we'll, I think we will still lack

curiosity, which is a shame to me, about what it takes to

unbend that bar. But we're still going to bend bars

because wars are still going to happen and

combat is still going to happen. And that's. I don't know.

And I don't know, maybe that's a thing, but maybe like 500 years from now,

long after you and I are dead and this podcast is gone from the Internet,

maybe 500 years from now, we'll get there. Maybe we will

get to world peace, but it's gonna take a while.

I know. I don't know. I don't know. Things to where

I put a lot of work over the past handful of years and being more

optimistic and being more of a positive person, because I am by nature kind of

cynical, kind of skeptical, especially after some of the stuff that I've been through and

what. What I've seen. And I work in sales, right? So.

I don't. There's something about youth,

right? And ego and

things like that. And, you know, reading this book

is really fascinating because whenever I was going through my time in the military, I

was kind of. And I had the same thing in sales, right?

I was trying to follow someone else's playbook, right? And I mean, it's a military,

so that's kind of what. What happens, right? But I was just thinking, okay, well,

if I just keep. If I just keep trying harder, if I just keep trying

harder, if I just keep, okay, eventually I'm not gonna have any of these concerns

that I have now, right? That was not true at all,

you know, because what I realized is, and I could not appreciate this

then, but hanging out with some of the people that I've met training martial

arts as well. Some people are just

meant for violence, right? Like

Clint, who was Marine,

served over there, deployed, was kind of doing some of the same stuff around.

Around, like, jocko stuff whenever he's talking about it in his book. But he

was Special Forces, Marines, and

never on my most angry day do I have the

capacity for violence that he.

Just. Because he. He go into that mode, right? Like, he's not a

sociopath or anything else like that. He's a super kind dude when he

wants to be, right? Thoughtful guy, great person, love

hanging out with him and stuff like that. But his. I mean,

his capacity for that is significantly more than mine, right?

And so going through that and you're bumping up against those people who are

built for that stuff, you know? And, you know, sweetheart, John was

not especially during that time, right? I hadn't learned how to be myself. I was,

you know, very unconfident and hadn't gone through anything

yet. So it was kind of this. Well, that's who I'm Supposed to be. That's.

I'm supposed to be. And then whenever I wasn't, it was just like a failure

on my part, you know? And then whenever I get into sales and I'm. And

I'm experiencing kind of the same thing, it's, like, frustrating, but I'm a little bit

older. And then, thankfully, I found coaching that was able to walk me out of

that jaded hole that I was about to walk down. I'm trying to

turn myself into something I didn't need to be to do the job, you know,

so it's there, you know. But hearing o' Brien

just talk about how he approaches

the world, like, yeah, yeah, I've.

I've met people like you. And, and while. While I've trained and I've

done a lot of training, and I think I can handle myself and everything else

like this. There's never.

There's never excitement about that prospect. There's never any kind of glee. There's never

like. It's just like, this is. This is the last line, right? This is what

it takes for me to go home. Some people, that's their first response. I'm

just not that guy. Right. And so for as long as there's going to be

those people, and I think. I think there's always going to be those people around

youth and around big ego. I think it's always

going to get in the way. Well, and

he talks also about, in the book Reaction Times, particularly between men

and women. You know, he talks about

the research around, particularly the psychology coming out of World War II, about

what basically creates a bond or team among disparate

elements of people. He also talks

about, or younger, writes about in this book, the

nature of. And this is sort of a Minority Report idea that I want to

go down the road a little bit with you here. The nature of

the enemy and the nature of

the Taliban. And

because he's unable to be embedded with them, he doesn't get a full

view. But he tries to be fair at least as much as he possibly can.

And, you know, the reality of

fighting wars in places that are.

And I love this line when he was describing the Korengal Valley. I have it

in my script here. Too remote to conquer, too poor to intimidate, and

too autonomous to buy off. Kind of put me in mind of

what my buddy, one of my buddies I brought invited on the show. He

comes on and talks about the Declaration of Independence in the Constitution every year. De

Rolo Nixon, he and I were kind of going back and forth A

little bit about sort of how people think around

freedom. Right. And one of the, one of the

points he made because we kind of. I don't know how we got on Afghanistan

in the conversation, but he made the point about the country of Afghanistan. He said,

he described it as the global version of Appalachia in the United States.

Right. A place where the internal

cousin fighting has been going on for

since time out of mind even the evening. I

mean the Chinese wouldn't go into that place. The Indians don't mess with them.

The Russians and the, and the British both had problems

and the Americans, for all of our 20 years of

going in and meddling ignominiously left in

2021. And I'm not going to discuss that at all. I don't want

to get on that. That, that kind of irritates me. I'm not going to get

on any of that for a whole variety of reasons. But we

spent 20 irritates you as fascinating label though. It does. It irritates me because I

don't. Was all for now.

I, I am not happy

with what we did as a great power. Even if we don't

want to be a great power, we're still perceived by others as a great

power. Even if internally we reject that and internally we do. We don't like that

language. That's why I wrote in my, in my script here

we're not supposed to. I think there's a, I think there's a contingent of people

who. Okay, sure there's a. There's a political contingent of people

that like the Lindsey Graham types. Sure. There's a political contingency

of people. The Victoria Newlands, you know, in both

administrations by the way. Doesn't really matter who. Who are. Who are there. Right. I

think this is a uniparty idea. I'm not talking about those people.

I'm talking about people like you and I. Like you and I aren't interested in

being part of an empire. And the reason why we're not interested in being part

of an empire are many and multifaceted. And that's part

of what I was saying in the intro about the arguments over trade offs.

That's where we have arguments over trade offs is okay,

we're going to give up our blood, our treasure, our time, our young men

to this in exchange for what

exactly. Yeah, what exactly are we

getting in exchange? And it's the politicians fault, not the generals

and not the civilians. It's the politician's fault for not

sufficiently explaining that to us and updating us every

single step of the way. And by the way, I don't mean updating us

in a Senate subcommittee that no one sees on C Span.

Yeah, I'm talking about updating us in political campaigns

and pass the propaganda and the rhetoric. I'm talking about updating us

through like say what you want about Ted Cruz, he's got a podcast.

Use a podcast. Like frickin go and do it. You know,

open the door. Right. But don't,

don't tell me that we're going to do the blood and the treasure

exchange. And then because you

know we are impatient,

you're going to do a pull out or

withdrawal in a manner

not befitting of the image or the

avatar you have put forth.

Because other people in the global neighborhood are watching.

It's not like we're doing this behind the scenes or

underwater or in the dark. Other people are

watching and they're taking our measure. They really are. They're taking our measure. Just like,

just like in. If I'm, if I'm,

I'll use a case of point. If I'm behaving badly at the American

Airlines ticket counter in front of my kids

because my tickets to where I'm supposed to go

or my luggage to where I'm supposed to go, if I'm behaving

badly, who sees that and learns from that?

My kids. I have a responsibility

to those people greater than can possibly be

fathomed, just as everybody else does who has kids to

make sure that I'm role modeling the correct behavior.

Great powers also have the same responsibility, but we

don't act like it and we don't want it. We just want to

come in and do our stuff and then leave. Okay, okay,

I'm with you. And that's where my objection comes in. And then there's a bunch

of things that spiral out from all of that. And so I get. It's too

complicated for me to get into here. Yeah, we're gonna, I can't, I can't

wait until we're not recording because I can't wait to get in the backside of

this conversation. I'm very fascinated. But we'll put it down for now. I've spent a

lot of time thinking about this. This is not just something that, like I came

to yesterday, heard a lot of time thinking about this. Very

intentional, which is why I want to talk to you about it. Oh yeah. And

then you like see the thing as it actually went down and you're just like,

I'm just like, no, that's not. Other people are looking.

So, you know, as I was saying.

He, he goes, I want to talk about the Afghanis. I want to talk about

them. Because the enemy gets a vote. Right? Okay, this is an idea from. Yes,

Jocko, but from other places, right? The enemy gets a vote.

You know, the, the Taliban recruited forces out of Pakistan.

And the reason why the Americans were in the Coral Valley, a place the

Soviets didn't even go into, like, they got to the mouth of the valley and

they were like, no, we're not going in there. The British didn't even look at

it. Even people in Afghanistan were wondering why the Americans

were going in. So like when the global version of

Appalachia says, don't go in there with those people, you should

probably listen to them. And of course, we're

Americans and we're arrogant and we know better

and we are beyond history. We, we've canceled history, haven't you heard?

And so we're going to go into the Cor Valley. And to our credit, to

our credit, arrogance and a lack of historical knowledge will take

you far. They'll take you right to Op Restrepo.

That's where they'll take you. They'll take you to

Firebase Phoenix. Right? And we did

successfully, we cannot take away this away from us. We did

successfully set up military bases and operations inside of that that

disrupted other operations that were happening further down the valley. So from a

strategic perspective, the strategy was correct,

the tactics left something to be

desired. But when you get past the

politics and the patriotism and the religion, which Unger makes an excellent

point of this, you begin to realize that the 14

year olds that are shooting at you with AK47s

are shooting at you because you're there in their backyard.

And the guys realized this, by the way, they weren't ignorant to this. They were

not. Yeah. And so it's a weird

combination of, I'm saying that all of that to make my much larger point here.

It's a weird combination of understanding the enemy gets a vote, but

also understanding like there's an incident that occurs in the back end of the book

killing where an elder, it might have been an elder, but a

villager is basically caught by the American. Not caught,

but like he's tracked by the Americans and it turns out that his son, who's

14, got shot in the leg by a, by an M4.

And at first they thought it was an AK47 bullet, but it turns out that

it was an M4 bullet. Right, which means it definitely came from an American's gun

at some point. Right. And the doctor was like, no, we need to.

The doctor for the American patrol that followed the villager back to the

village goes, oh, no, no, we. Did you take this kid? And we need to

go wrap up the kid and we need to go. And the villager

whose son it was who got shot, didn't want to go.

Vilger was like, no, I don't want to go. Because he knew that the

Taliban was floating around. He knew that all these guys were floating around.

Right. And the Americans like, shut up. Let's

go. We gotta save this kid's leg. Let's go. We gotta go. Now.

That's the weird dichotomy that other countries don't understand

about us. Yeah. That's the weird thing. Past patriotism

and politics and religion and all of that. That's the thing that's not

understandable because every other soldier from

every other empire in the history of the world would have

shot that kid, shot the villager,

cleared out the village, and moved right the heck along.

And we don't. We didn't do that. And that's just one time. That's just one

time. And so. And by the way, the American patrol knew that they were

patching up this kid who was probably going to go pick up an AK47 from

behind a rock somewhere and start shooting at them 10 minutes from now. These are

some of the lessons we learned, by the way, in Vietnam.

These are some of the hard lessons we learned in Vietnam, I think. Yeah. Like,

that part was. I piled in a lot there on you. Yeah, yeah. I mean,

all of that stuff because, you

know, so a couple days after 9, 11, it might have been the

next day. Honestly, this is a bit of a haze for me because I'm

just going. Going to, like, army version of college. Right. For people who

don't listen. Right. You go to a school, it's called ait. It's where you learn

how to do your job. And, you know, mine was 17 weeks. Right. So. But

it's largely just a bunch of experiments and you do a little army stuff, but

most of the time you're just in a classroom, like, learning, right? Yeah. You still

have to run and do PT and everything else like that. And so I'm like,

okay, cool. Like, I'm. I'm enjoying this new version of the military that's

more like learning and educational. I'm learning cool stuff. I'm learning, like, you know,

really cool stuff. And it's not just, like, how hard can I push my body,

you know, the nerdom runs pretty deep, I guess. And

so I remember being. And it's called the day room.

And the day room is like the common area, right? And there was big screen

tv and you know, we're in there, we're watching, you know, Fox News or,

or, you know, something at the time. And everyone was like, yeah,

let's just go turn it into a parking lot. Let's go turn it into a

parking lot. And it was wild. Cause like, I'm this, I'm this small

kid from Texas, you know, Like, I never really spent any time out of the

state. And now I'm here in Georgia with people from New

York, people from D.C. people from these areas that have had these things.

And, and it's this weird duality of like, God, I get

it. I get why you're so frustrated. I do. But like,

that is, that's the road we can't go down. That makes us

know better than them, right? Like, that's what they

did. We, you know, and you want to talk about

instantly being the unpopular guy in the crowd,

I decided to say something about this. And man, the rest of the 17 weeks

is pretty brutal right after that because, you know, now I'm.

Now I'm not bought in. Now I'm the problem child and stuff like that.

So the, that, that mob mentality, right,

is also, I think, easier at youth, right? And so kind of going back to

that idea of there's a reason why we send young people to go do these

things and stuff like that, because they're easy to control, it's easy to manipulate. And

also they've not seen a whole lot of the world. Some of these people do.

And because it's not forced, right? Everyone who doesn't want to go now doesn't

have to go. So there's no. Everyone is there, right? For

whatever reasons that they're there. And I remember getting there and

first day, we're marching around and they start making us in cadence about

how, you know, thieves and people who are about to go to jail and stuff

like this were only here because a judge told them, you can join or you

can go to. Like, I'm. I'm the whitest white

bread kid ever from Fort Worth, Texas, marching around

thinking that I'm here doing this like, really cool, like,

thing. And, you know, then we're singing this cadence. I'm like, ah, well, that's

just kind of like a weird thing. And then like a day later, company commander

comes in and he asked the question, okay, how many of y' all are here

because you decided to join the circus and everyone kind of like looks around a

little bit. Oh, hold on a second. I forgot. How many of y' all are

here because the judge told you if you didn't come do this, you're going to

jail. And, dude, the number of hands was astounding.

Like, just in my company, right? Company of 30 guys. The number of

hands was, Was baffling to me,

who was here for what I thought were good, genuine

reasons. Let me ask you a question, because Younger

was. One of the points he makes in the book is, you know, he

carried a 60 pound rucksack and he carried his own water

and eventually him and Tim the cameraman eventually carried

ammunition. And there's a whole sequence in the book and

the front end of love about journalists and weapons and war

and ethical considerations and all of this,

which I find to be interesting because a lot of journalists served in World War

II. But, okay, maybe that's far enough away that we don't. We don't think about,

like, the nature of that anymore. I think you hit it nail on the head

that Vietnam changed everything. Right. And the. Yeah. The

overarching, assumed nobility of military service

was just forever tarnished. Like. Right. Like there is no going

back. So I think now the distinction's got to be bigger. Right.

Because I think, I think Unger hits it spot on. If, if it came back

and he was. And he was known to have, like, picked up a weapon or

done something like this, he would have no credibility in the circles that he wants

status in. Right, right. And you. And we keep circling back,

and I want to circle back to this idea of status too. Sure. Because I

think this is, this is hugely important. But one

of the points he makes to your point about, you know, looking back

on this now 20 years plus, like looking back on these

experiences through the lens or through the window maybe of this book.

Younger makes the point that he was in his 40s, he was 20

years older than all these boys, and he knew,

you know, that him not keeping up would be

consequential and would, Would, would maybe

potentially set these young men, I shouldn't say

boys, young men up for death in a way that was

unnecessary when there were so many other ways of death that were coming

that they had signed up for. Right, yeah. And so, you know,

part of the uniform thing was. Yeah, exactly. Real. Was very, very

real. Right, exactly. And then he sort of like let go of his pride and

was like, well, not pride, but More like, I would

say, was journalistic ego. But I think it might be too simplistic.

You know, I think he just got real with the situation with himself.

Well, I think in some of those situations it's easy to think that, like. Well,

because you're just a bystander, it's not really going to be that big of a

thing. Right. And you know, there's some stigma around this. Right. Because, you

know, we've all seen examples of the embedded reporter or the

reporter who's like following the beat and they're all way off to the side and

nothing really gets dirty and you're fighting to be taken. Like, I mean, it's a

very pretty well known trope, right. As far as like culture and movies

and stuff like this. So the.

I, I mean, there is a little bit of ego, but I also think it's

around the idea of like, he's very aware that he can

die and more than that, the trade off of what

happens whenever he decides that he can't do this because of

his role or his part. Like, you're creating risk,

you're adding to risk, you're making the trade offs potentially bigger.

Right. And I, I thought that that was a very

cool component of him kind of like talking about it and kind of getting to

it. And then he goes and asks for it. Right. Which I, you know.

Yeah, probably should. Well, and I wonder how his perspective has

changed on the book now that he's. He's 20 years past the writing of it

almost. Yeah. And in a different stage of life. Because a man

at 20 is not this. It's just not. It's just you're not

the same man as you at. At 40 and you're going to be a totally

different man at 60. And if God blesses you or whoever to live.

God or genetics blesses you to live that long, you'll be a totally different man

at 80. Okay. And so

looking back on your experience, this is a question that I wanted to ask you.

20 years out now, could John

of 20 years

with your brain now, going back to that situation, which.

I know, I know, I know, but going back to that situation

with that, what would your reaction be to that, Drill

sergeant? Right. Or to that 17 weeks

of like, what would you say to John on that 17 weeks? Because now you

have the benefit of. You've lived that next 20 years, you know

how the game ends, Right. He doesn't. He has no clue.

Yeah, he has no idea. It's funny because I get to do this a

little bit occasionally now, right, because it has been so long and I've

networked a lot and I put myself out there and I talk about the fact

that I served and everything. I'll have parents, like, people that I've trained

with, people that I've worked with, sold with, networked with and stuff. And they're like,

hey, will you come talk to my kid? And it's

always an enlightening moment, right? Because

the first handful of times that I did that, or people would ask and I'm

like, you know, you know, you don't want me talking to them. And they're in,

in because I'm making a bunch of assumptions, right? And now it's

okay, what are you, what are you hoping I'm going to talk about with

them? You know, and this is always a very fascinating thing because people will

know I want you to talk them out of it or I want you to

talk them into it. It's like, that's not my job and it's not really

your job, right? So you should know that if, if

you want me to talk to whoever in your life is thinking about this thing,

I'm going to talk about the only good reason to go. And it's for you

have a burning desire to go serve your country. That's the only good reason. Everything

else is going to be

infuriatingly fragile later on, right?

College, money, the muscles, the uniform, the, you know, flying

above your station after the war, all these other things and stuff, these are, all,

these are all remarkably hollow in the moment when you're being asked to go

do, to go take a hill, to go live in a valley that no

one else wants to live in and no one even, even cares about,

you know, so, you know,

I don't need to be in the room is what it is, what it really

needs to be, you know, because I

don't, I don't regret my military service at all. Like, I don't, as I said

at the beginning of this thing, I don't know who I would be if I,

if I hadn't gone through it. But it definitely wouldn't be this person who, who

does these things, right? Chooses to do all these hard things that I do

in the, in the form of, you know, like my own training, my own development,

my, the business that I choose to run and everything. So I,

I, I respect a lot of it. And so I'll, I'll do

the thing occasionally, right? If you went back, would you, would you tell yourself to

go do it again? Like,

I I would have had to have

given myself another lane to explore. And I can't think of another one that gets

me to the same point of distinction. Right. The same. The

same path of certainty. Right. Because at

this stage, I'm a pacifist. You know, you and I have talked about martial arts

training and, you know, if. If someone has been listening to all these episodes that

I've guessed it on. I've got 16 years of martial arts training, and, you

know, I don't ever want to be in a fight with anybody on the street.

I don't want to be in that moment ever again. It's for me, it's a

way for me to exercise my brain and to, you know, keep pushing

myself for the sake of myself. It's not because I'm

fearful or anything else like this,

but

I don't want to do it. But I know that I'm capable

if the situation comes up and I can't think of another path

that I could have walked down to where I would have that same comfort in

my. In my normal daily actions in my. Now,

let's also call into a couple of things that are also kind of important to

talk about. I'm a tall white guy, right. A lot of people aren't really

messing with me, right. In the grand scheme of things, if I was 5, 9,

I probably would have had to put a lot of these ideas to the test

a lot more rigorously than I've had to. So, like, I do. I do

get, you know, some grace here around this stuff. But, like, you know,

there's also how you carry yourself, right? I don't carry myself like that right

there for a while. I tried for a little bit, and then I would be

uncomfortable whenever people would, like, kind of. And then finally I was like, oh, I

should just not be that person anymore. Not wear it, not paint it

on myself. The way that it was weird. I kind of felt like I

was supposed to, right. And talk about that winding of the

spring. Right. You know, for anyone who's listening to this, one of the things

that I talk about with people is that the sales is a beautiful job

for people that are coming out of the military. Right. Because what happens the way

that I talk about it with people is you're in sixth gear all the time,

and then you come home and everyone's in second. Right.

And you're used to being in sixth. Right. And sales is a really, really,

really beautiful role and transition period for,

you know, service people that are coming out of this thing because you're allowed to

be performance driven in a really, really big way, right? One of

the hardest things about coming out of the military is like, you're supposed to be

awesome, you're supposed to be pushing. You're supposed to be looking for performance

into your point. Like, I came back, I'm waiting tables, right? Everyone just, like,

wants to make a hundred bucks so they can go blow it on shots, you

know, later on after we're done for the night and everything. And it was just

like this weird, like, flywheel. Like, I couldn't, like, grab

at anything, you know? So sales is a

beautiful job because how hard you want to work has a direct impact on

how much you want to make. And that's a beautiful thing here. They want that.

Sometimes when you show up and you're a little too driven, you become

problematic, which is kind of crazy. But sales you're

allowed to be in. Entrepreneurship is another really great way to. To

transition and to put yourself out there and to be really driven and do it

on your own terms. But that pacing thing is very interesting. You're not

going to find a lot of places that have that same kind of pace with

that same kind of go be the best you can be. Don't just, like,

man the box, right? Don't just be here for no reason. Put. Put

your full effort into this. Put your focus into. Be the best version of this

you can be. So I tell everybody, I hope people hear

this and come seek me out. If you are in the military, you're transitioning out

of the military, and you think you want to be in a sales role or

you're looking for a role you think is going to put some of these ideas

that you've been working on into play, please come talk to me. I

will coach you for free until you get a job in sales, if that's

a thing that you want to go do. I offer this to people. I don't

market around it because I'm not trying to be that guy. But I do think

that sales is one of those really great opportunities for people to transition out

and still bring a lot of what was making them great before. It's

got to shift a little bit, of course, but it's a really great race. So

if you're looking for a sales role, if you're not sure if you want to

re up or if you're thinking about these things, I have group practice labs. You

can come, you can sit, you can learn, and you can get a job. And

then from there, if you want to continue Training, we'll talk about it. But if,

if anyone in the military is thinking about this and they're like, what do I

do with this energy? I can help you and would love to help you if

that's something that you're interested in. That is a.

This incredible offer. And I would recommend that anybody take advantage of that.

Anybody who was coming out of the military, particularly anybody who's coming out of combat

or is. Is sort of like some of the care

characters, some of the guys were, you know, trying to figure out what they were

going to do next and how to not fall back into, as we've already, you

know, talked about on this episode, how to not fall back into problems,

right? How to not fall back into bad behavior and

traumatic engagement. How to not fall back into drinking or substance

abuse or just trying to calm the demons in their head,

you know, that is a great tool.

And you know what? Whether you're

good at it or not, you will

gain something at the end. 100.

Like, you know, there's, there's no downside to, to this offer at all. So please

take advantage of this. If you're listening, if you're on the, if

you're on a similar path of me and my excellent friend Hassan here,

you probably see that there is a lot of overlap between

good leadership and selling with intention because they're exactly

the same thing, right? And

going back to the hazing for just a second, you know, where they talk about

jumping in the new, the new guys, right? And

it's, it's. There's this weird thing of like, it kind

of ruins you for leadership outside of the military, right? Because it's like,

I know you've been here. I know you can do everything I can do, and

I know you're better at it or else you wouldn't be here, right? And then

you come out to the civilian sector and you see people that are in management

roles and they can't tell you anything other than like, we'll just do more.

Well, if, if your only response is more, you're not qualified to be on the

spot, Right? But

it's hard to, it's hard to realize that. And being a young person

and not, not knowing how

to navigate that conversation when I'm talking to someone who sounds like

they're three days out of managerial school

and they want to tell me to just keep dialing and trying harder and that

I don't want it enough and ever, and it's like, dude, I, I, like,

there have been times to where I'm just like, oh, God. It's so, like, I.

I have to remind myself I cannot be that guy

here, right? Because, like, if you have a problem in the middle, you go talk

about it, right? Sometimes it leads to a desktop, sometimes it leads to a transfer

and stuff like this. But, like, you know, if. If I thought someone was

full of, I'm gonna go tell them, right? And so that led to a lot

of uncomfortable conversations because I'm like, I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Well, John, now we gotta have a. An HR conversation and

stuff. And I'm like, am I wrong? Because if I'm wrong, then like, sure. But

if I'm right and you just got offended, like, that's not my problem. You should

be good enough to lead. It's interesting that you brought about. Brought this

up, being good enough to lead and if I'm wrong, being offended. Because this is

a good segue into something else that I wanted to talk about. Another theme from

the book which also struck me. So

I'll tell a story here to kind of unite the two ideas. So

I heard it probably anecdotal tale about the

American troops who were deployed in Bosnia in

the mid-90s during their civil war between the

Serbs and the Croats and the Serbs and the Croats and the

Bosnians, all who visually look the same,

but divide up among Muslims and Christians. And it was a religious

war in the middle of Europe, which hadn't happened in, like, 100

years up to that point.

Well, the American troops were going in under NATO, right? And so the American

troops all had, you know, the NATO blue pith helmets on, right?

But what. What befuddled the Serbs and the

Croats and the Bosnians alike was that

they would roll up on a squad or they'd roll up on a patrol

of Americans or a patrol or a squad of Americans would roll up on them,

and there'd be an Asian, there'd be a Mexican,

and there'd be a white guy. And they weren't all shooting each other. They weren't

all having problems. Now, this is an anecdotal story, right?

And you run across this idea in War by

Sebastian Unger, where Tiggily

Jones and Bobby, like,

I've had that kind of relationship with, quite frankly, white. A white guy. I have

had that kind of relationship. But not a lot.

Exactly, exactly. So, you know, you had to hold on to them when you. When

you got them. You don't let that sucker go easily. But.

But one of the defining characteristics

of America is that and we do not appreciate it very much

until we go other places where it is not the defining characteristic.

Yeah, the defining characteristic of America is our, for lack of a better

term, multiculturalism. And our

ability to break

down along visual lines and to divide

up society among visual lines, good, bad, ugly, and indifferent.

And then to, of course, beat the snot out of each other verbally,

sometimes metaphorically, sometimes psychologically, and then all the way at the end,

sometimes even physically, over those differences.

And yet when we go someplace and the

Taliban sees us show up, or the Bosnians and the Serbs

see us show up, or Vietnamese see us show up,

or the Koreans or even the Germans, even the Germans back in

World War II thought we would all fall apart because to Hitler's term,

we were. We were a mongrel people. That's how he described the

Americans even back then. And as Americans,

we see that. I see this in the. Saw, this in the book is early

descriptions of. Of the. Of the. The folks in combat, the guys in the

squad, the guys on patrol, when. And

I told my wife this because I was having to be reading the book a

little bit while I was on our anniversary trip.

I look, it was reading it, and I just started laughing because

we're literally Americans everywhere where we show up. And the most

American thing is to be, quite frankly, a Benetton ad,

not to put too fine a point on it. Benetton? What is that? Yeah, you

deal with a brand with, like, all the multicultural people in it all the time.

America's a walking Benetton ad. And then we're just going to shoot you

and go home. And every single one of

those people in that ad, that is the American army

that's showing up have the capability, particularly in war.

This is. This is most. I mean, this was it. Like, every single one of

those guys could jump on a saw. Every single one of those guys could jump

on a.50 cal. Every single one of those guys is going to have each other's

back. It was a massive brotherhood. And, yeah, when

we get back to the outpost or when we get back to

behind the enemy lines at the fire base, yeah, we're going to crack each other

in the mouth just because we're Americans. That's what we do. But the second we

step out of that fire base, all that goes

away. And it's not religion that's uniting us as it was in the

Serbian and Bosnian war or, or, or. Or causing us to

diverge as it does in other parts of the world. And this is where

we also get Back to status. Class is also not the

thing separating us. I mean, one of the major problems in World War

I was the class differences between the generals and. And

the combat troops and then the class differences between

the folks who were the commanders and the generals. Because World War I

was, for better or worse, a very European

war where the entire European aristocracy kind of

fell apart in order to make space for the modern world. And

that was why, you know, 10 million people died and 10 million troops died in

that war. And it took a lot of death to break that aristocracy

and to break that aristocratic thinking that we look at

as foreign and we don't understand. I mean, we think of it in terms of

like, you know, the prince. Yeah. Entitlement

or divine will. Prince Harry and Meghan. I think of Prince

Harry and Meghan Markle. I go way, way low rent on that. Right.

And I'm like, who are you people? Why do I care about you? You have.

You produce nothing. Go away from me. I don't know what you do.

And yet in other parts of the world that are

still running parliamentary systems with an aristocratic

kings and princes and kind of overlay on top of

that, that stuff means a lot.

And we don't understand what any of that

means. And so the things that mean something to us mean very little

to people in other parts of the world. Like, one of the notorious things about

Islam is Islam accepts everybody, regardless of how they look.

They don't care because it's about the Israel. It's about. Can you

conform to what the book says? And if you can, well,

great. You could be from the Philippines, you could be from Bangladesh, you could be

from India, you could be from Saudi Arabia,

whatever. And when jihad gets declared, as was

declared in Afghanistan, we're going to funnel troops through,

and they're going to be multicultural for sure, but

they're all going to pray five times a day and they're all going to be

engaged in Jihad. And this is something I don't

think. I think we struggle

because. And you and I have talked about this on the show, we're

struggling, I think we've struggled for the last 20 years to figure out what unites

us as a country anymore. Because patriotism doesn't

unite us, and love of country doesn't unite us, and religion doesn't

unite us. Even economic situations and circumstances don't unite

us. So what binds us together? What is the thing? And

the book gives an interesting example of what may bind us

together, which is brotherhood. That's really

interesting, but I don't Know that you could scale that up as a

substitute across. Across a multifaceted culture

on a third of a continent like us, man. What we

got here? Okay,

this is a fascinating take to hear from you a little bit, because it really

kind of shows to me where some

of my thinking, like, comes from, right? Because

the thing you're calling brotherhood, I just call community, right? And

you hit it on the. On the head earlier about talking about training jiu

jitsu, and, man, that was my kung fu community. Like,

my. My. My kung fu sifu is a special operations

guy, right? And so when I come home from the military and I'm looking

for something, right? Yeah,

I. I'm like, I always wanted to be a Ninja Turtle. It was always this

thing, and my parents were like, no, you'll shoot your eye out. But, yeah, you

know, we don't have insurance because we're hippies, so, like, don't do anything too dangerous

is really what it was, right? And so I. I went and I

looked at some martial arts before the military, and that. That. That

brush Persona of, you know, this, of the sensei always kind of ran me

off. Like. Like, we got to be this, you know, but after the military and

realizing, like, hey, there's just a lot of people who are just like that by

natural or by nature, I was like, oh, okay, cool. Maybe these

are the people I want to be learning how to do violence, you know? Okay.

So I come home, and I'm in this weird state of, like,

looking for that. That space to really

be driven and to do what I want to do and be performance driven

and. But still, not for. Not for just the

sake of it, but for something cool, something interesting, something

meaningful. And I went to all these schools, man. I went to an

aikido school. I went to Travis Luder's school way back in the day

whenever it was like an H E B area, right? Wow. Okay.

Way back, like, 2002, I go

into Travis Luder school, and I was like, I don't. I don't really want to

do jiu jitsu, right? And, you know, because I'm like, I'm 6 4.

That's a long way to fall. I don't want to have to go down to

the ground every time I fight. And, like, I'm going around,

I'm looking for it. And then in a casual conversation,

someone was like, have you. Have you called the kung fu guy? I'm like, there's

no kung fu in Fort Worth. And he goes, yeah, he teaches you how to

fight with A cane. And I was like hell yeah, let's go. Right? Because

it was this, it was like kind of like mystical in pursuit

of something else. Right. Like I like that. And big huge fan of kung fu

movies and Jackie Chan and all this stuff by that time. So it was like

violence, but it was like violence for good. Kind of elevated.

Exactly right. Yeah. It wasn't like like three guys

just deciding to be at the piss out of each other like in a backyard

and stuff like that. You know, this was a school and there's stuff there. And

so I look up the website, it talks about being prior service and everything. So

I pick up the phone, I call him and he answers the phone. Now I

was surprised at the time because I didn't realize how most small kung

fu martial arts schools, how small they actually are. And it's usually kind of a

one man show. And so I'm like okay, I go and I,

it's oh man, you can't ask for

a better landing for someone who is getting out of the military is looking for

because there's curriculum, there's standards, there's

hierarchy. Like you don't go to the red sashes in my school

and be like hey, you don't know anything. You're going to get worked. Right? And

they're also doing all the teaching and everything. And so it, that was

my community, that was my space to go and do these things. Now

a lot of times what happens is it gets too far, right? And that's where

the culty kind of stuff starts to show up a little bit. And we see

a lot of this with like entrepreneurial, you know, communities and stuff like this, like

the guru and all this other stuff and everything. But

it was, it was exactly what I was hoping for and looking

for, right. It was drilling and training and really glad

that I found it because it was it

like while the military showed me a bunch of stuff and is super impactful

for here like that 15 years of going to kung fu for

20 hours a week and training with other people and putting myself to the test

and everything is, is just as much of a reason why I'm here doing these

things because like I had, it was like, it was like I had a bunch

of tools that I didn't know how to use afterward in, in

kung fu and martial arts like showed me how to apply these things in a

way that was helpful in this setting. But it took a while.

So to me that's, that's community and you can find it anywhere, right?

Like you can Find it politically, you can find it spiritually. Right. And the

coolest thing I think about the Internet is like you're.

You're only the nerd because you've not found your pocket of people that are taking

whatever you take as seriously as you are. And why would

you enable that? Right. There's Reddit, there's communities, there's all this stuff online and

everything. So if anything, go find your people as opposed

to trying to nerd out on something that doesn't really get you that excited.

Well, and this is also, you know, the decline in sort of a business and

economic sense, the decline of mass. So, you know,

mass has been, well, you know, mass entertainment, mass movements, mass

media, mass journalism, mass sales, mass

business. Good. Honestly. Right, right, right. Don't get me wrong. Like, one

of the things that the Internet did when it got turned on in 1989, and

we didn't foresee that happening, was it was

going to like poop through a goose, destroy all

these mass organizations and mass institutions. And the

institutions and organizations that. Going to hang on because there

will be people who will push back on me and say, well, what about Amazon

or NBC News or the church or whatever. Okay, sure,

you can name all those mass institutions, but the reality is

they've all been eroded and impacted by the Internet. And you're a fool if you

don't see it. Absolutely. And then the institutions that were

built on top of the Internet are built on fundamentally different

assumptions. And the fundamentally different assumptions are not

ones around mass. They're ones around

different areas. Like preference. Not

only that, but preference. Expectation.

Yeah, Assumption. Here's another one. Talk about community.

Community. So those are other

assumptions that don't play well

with the assumptions of mass. Right. Or they

play differently with the assumptions of mass. So as a

side note, you know, while I'm reading this book and I'm. I watched Restrepo,

I've also been geeking out on Alfred Hitchcock Presents

every night on Amazon Prime. Okay, so I'm on like season.

I bounce around in seasons because. Whatever. But

it's a great show because it shows. It

demonstrates two things that I think we

not. I think I know that we have. That have eroded over the course of

time and that we lament. But it also shows the undercurrent of all of them

too, because it was Alfred Hitchcock. So he did it really well because it's good

writing. The two things. Well, the two of many things that it

demonstrates is, number one, the conformity of the. Of the late. The mid

to late 50s and 60s. Oh, God. Conformity. But

conformity at a social level so that all these other things could happen

underneath. Right? Which is part of what we are

missing. And we're trying to put that into community now because

over the course of time, the conformity to social level has completely eroded.

You talk about your parents being hippies. They were part of that process. My mother

was part of the civil rights movement. She was part of that process. Yeah. Okay.

So that. That he wrote it away. Okay, cool.

A question I always ask at the end of this podcast. What are we building?

Because you can't just erode, you can't just deconstruct. You have to build something

else, because human beings are builders. That's what we are. That's what we like to

do. Deconstruction works for a little while, but you have

to replace it with something else. So that show

shows the level of conformity and sort of the other things that were going on

underneath it. But it also shows, interestingly enough, the

power of community out of that conformity and the safety,

or the appearance of safety anyway.

That's the important distinction with a difference there that

seemed to emanate from that conformity and what we're

missing now, and I think what's causing us a lot of psychic angst in

this country is the safety part.

And this is why we're searching for it in a whole lot of different places,

in brotherhood and community, on Reddit,

and. And I don't think it's a bad thing. I think this is a human.

This is a human thing. Human beings want, because this is how our

amygdalas are set up, right? We want to eat, we want to reproduce, so we

want to be safe. No amount of social jiggering

or even biological jiggering is going to get rid of

that, at least not for a long time.

Man. So I had a. I had a really great teacher in

sixth grade. This man made me want to be a teacher all the way up

until junior year of high school. And my friend Kevin said, you know, they don't

make any money, right? And I was like, oh, I better go find something else

to do. But his name is Rob Krueger.

Very, very, very cool person. And

he was telling us this. He's talking about being

like an older kid in like, late 70s, right?

Because this was in. This is probably 90,

91, right? And so he's talking about

walking around and wear. And seeing people wearing shirts that say, kill a commie

for mommy. Right? And the group think of, like, the anti

communism Kind of push and everything else like this, right? And

you know,

to me, to me, I see a big overlap

between that kind of like, group think and what

it kind of just does to someone if you're not already aligned for that stuff,

right? And how it wears on you, right? Just like being the only guy

who's, who's in an. Who's in a, you know, company

full of people that want to go off and bomb everybody, and I'm the only

person who doesn't want to go do so. Right. You know, I mean, the, you

know, when you're the odd man out, you know, it. Right. Pretty hard to argue

about. And so the thing that I think is really cool is

the ability to

be yourself, right? Like,

because, because I see a lot of overlap with like, gay people, right? People who

are gay. Right. People who are trans. Right? And so imagine never

feeling comfortable with that stuff, right? But just constantly being pushed and

told and pushed and told. You're wrong, you're an idiot. You're wrong. You're an idiot.

You're wrong. See how no one else has these problems because no one is talking

about them because there is no community, because it's not surface level, right?

So imagine dealing with 50 people and they're all telling you. Them telling

you that you're wrong, right? Like, imagine

because we, you know, we still have people that go through this,

right? In different ways, shapes or forms. I want to go be an entrepreneur. No,

you don't. Just go get a job and just play it safe, right? And then

we're told these things. It's really hard to continue to have

individual opinion when everyone is telling you that. That it's

wrong and that it's stupid and you should just change and stuff like this, right?

And so now in the military, this is really helpful because you're there for a

purpose, right? And I remember the first time I got in

trouble because I was doing something that I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be

doing, but everyone else knew they were supposed to be doing at the this way.

And the drill sergeant got in my face and I'll never forget this moment. He

goes, he goes, why are you still trying to be an individual?

Why can't you just do what everyone else here is doing? John, are we going

to have to kick you out on, like, a failure to conform? And I was

like, what? Like it was bad to be individualistic in the

military. Like, it's a, it's a problem, right? So I mean,

imagine being, you know,

gay and you don't happen to have any community around you

who's gay, Right. And you're just being told that, no, it's not

true. You're just experimenting, you know, blah, blah, all these things, right? Or being trans

or, you know, let's just say that you're a pacifist, right? Or

let's say you're, you know, kind of progressive and a very conservative town. Like,

it's really hard to have the opposite opinion. Right? So

I love that people, oh, well, maybe I

should go check online as opposed to just being bottle fed by this

immediate group of people around me who might mean well,

but might ultimately be shutting down access to the person

I'm, I could be, I should be, I want to be like, I

don't, I don't want that for anybody. So I think it, well, yes,

I, I, I appreciate how you said you

feel safe, but imagine having to pick up

an identity that only has 10% of

something you care about because no one is diving any deeper

to like, be like, oh, you could be just this

group over here without being, without picking up the bigger mantle.

Well, what I'm saying is that.

And. I see your, I see the, I see the opposite point.

And I would say to that, I think the opposite point, if not

by virtue of the Internet, at least by virtue of the last 20 years,

has made its cause very well. I

think we are in a space in comparison

to the other spaces

in the last 80 years that existed. I think we are at a

highly individualistic space. I think we are. Now

we're okay. If we're at a highly individualistic space where our identity is

around, say a sexual identity or racial

identity or even weirdly enough, a

religious identity, we're not okay.

Or the culture of America is not okay. If

we're at a highly individualistic space where we're

individualistic about our money or about how much money we

make or about how much property we have

or about how much work we do that produces something. So, for instance,

we're okay with a person being an individual

around their racial identity. I'll use the one that I see the most

often. Right. But it's interesting to me. Here's

the dichotomy that as a person

begins to become more wealthy, while their racial identity may say

the same, now all of a sudden we have demands as they conform to a

group structure around their wealth

and the conforming, such as, okay, so the conforming to a group structure around

their wealth would be, well, you should give money

to xyz, nonprofit or ABC activist platform.

I don't get to be an individual and determine what monies I want to give

where. Instead, I'm going to have pressure put on me by the

overarching racial group to go in

this particular direction. Because while these people supported you

when you were nobody, the group supported you when

you were nobody, and now you're somebody. So you have to. This is how it's

typically couched. Give back. And that,

to me, is the dirty underside of the conformity argument,

but from the opposite direction. So I'm okay to be an individual

if I'm going against the dominant group on my racial identity, but the

second I get money as an individual, now I

must return those funds back to the dominant group

or even to the minority group that I came out of in order to raise

other members of that group up. I'm not allowed to be an individual on that.

I'm just not. There's all kinds of social controls around that.

And so I think we have to be intellectually

honest and say that this

idea of conformity versus security

and the individual versus the group. Right. Is

one that I think

just like what motivates young men to combat is one I don't think we're ever

going to resolve. It's going to be the continuing dynamic tension. Yeah, it's going to

be the continuing dynamic tension for police for as long as there's human

beings. And I think that the line between

those two things

runs through the human heart, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn would say about the line of

tyranny. Right.

And I don't think there's a way to make. Other

than maybe in smaller and smaller communities, this is maybe the only way I see

it working. You know, I don't think there's a way to unite people

around that. So. And. And I'm using race as an

example because that's the one that I'm most familiar with, because that's where I get

the most pushback. Right. There's presumptions about what I should do

with my money because of how I look or where I came from. And

by the way, I'm not the only one to rap. Oh, I'm not one. I'm

not the only one to, like, talk about this. Kanye west rapped about it all

the time. Right. Maybe I should have forgotten where. I should have forgotten where I

came from. Right. Well, I'm not forgetting where I came from. Where I

came from was conformist in a particular way that, quite frankly, I didn't want to

go There, that's what I've forgotten. It's that I've

decided to rise as an individual out of that conformist thing and of that

conformist thing, out of that conformity. And now you're going to pull me back into

that conformity like a crab in the bucket. And you're going to claim

that whatever the dominant majority is doing is somehow not

confident. Correct. And yet if I

hadn't played the dominant majority's game to a certain degree of

success as an individual because nobody else was helping me,

well, how are we going to square that circle? And by the way, I don't

think there is a good way to square that circle. I think, I think it.

I think it works out differently. The line runs through every

human heart, and every human being has to work this out differently and has to

make decisions. I think the Internet has allowed people to see

what the decisions are that people make more clearly and

then to unite in community, in smaller and smaller groups, further

and further out on the long tail. And this is part of that decline

of mass thing that's happened. But I don't know how

far out the long tail goes. I guess we'll find out with the LLMs. I

guess we'll find out how far out the long tail goes. That's going to be

fascinating and interesting. And I have. I have a question mark at the end of

that because I don't know what the answer is.

Where, where I get a little sideways with these conversations. And I'm trying to be

better about this idea, right? Because with what you

just told me is you're not ever going to make anybody all, all happy,

which is just life. You know what I'm saying? Like, maybe,

maybe it's my maybe. And maybe it's my tragic view of, of human experience.

And I'll. I'll chalk it up to that. Maybe it's that I have a tragic

view of human experience, and maybe that's just me, and that's just my bad

mileage, my bad road, and I got to deal with that. You know, I'm not

asking you to adopt that road. Well, like the, the thing

where I keep getting, like, stuck is.

Oh, man. Okay, we're gonna get spicy.

Social media has given way to promise. We promise to people.

Social media has given way too many people access to people being loud

without the ability to be clear.

Okay. In the way that all the algorithms. I would agree with that

is you're not benefited by talking at depth

and making sure that you're spelling everything else that you can't be misinterpreted. The stuff

that gets the most mileage is the stuff to where two very polarized, different people

can find something to argue about. And here's the thing. Are they even

arguing about the same things half the time? No, not at all. But most

people can have a civil debate. Most people can't stand up to critical

feedback of like, hey, have you gone and researched any of these things? Are you

just watching the news all day? Well, I'm watching the news all day. Okay. And

that makes you feel like you're really informed just by watching the news,

right. Where you're, where you are the product. Like, and

like, that's not to say that people, like, should avoid the news. I avoid the

news because I just can't deal with it anymore because I don't know what is

actually worth caring about at this stage. Right. Because it just feels like everyone just

wants my focus and attention. So none of you get it. I'm. I'm going to

go go over here and do my own stuff, but I'm taking my ball. I'm

going home a little bit, you know, kind of like, I can't, I can't

impact any of this. And I don't think, I don't really believe anybody who has

a vested interest in my eyeballs being on your page to give me the truth.

So let me go do. I'm going to go read three articles from very

different sources and I'm going to try to figure out the main line through it

kind of thing is how I kind of go about it. Yeah,

but most people should not be debating on social

media. Most people, you should have to have a license, which is a

pretty hot topic debate. But if you have, if you have a

loud horn, right, and you were in the mall

and you went around saying fire, there'd be consequences for your actions.

Right? There's a bomb and hot topic. Right. There would be consequences. You'd

have people all over you. Rightfully so. Okay. But you can get on social media

to say whatever you want. And like, there are, there are strategists that are

specifically hired to make it more polarizing and all of these things and stuff like

that. So it's tough, right? It's,

it's. The problem is a lack of

vocabulary in my, in my opinion. And then a lack

of having to sit in front of people and say these

things versus being able to hide behind the keyboard and

then, you know, doing that 50,000 times and there's never been any

consequences for those things. And now you're just going around heavy handed feeling justified,

like, like everything must be right because no one's ever

been able to convince you that you've been wrong. But you avoid all of

those conversations because they're, they're the dumb ones. Right. And it's just, it

just. I mean, how could we not end up here?

Isn't this still the part of the trade offs, though that we were talking about

earlier? I mean, I think so. Right?

Like, yes, I do think it's a trade off, but like in

ultimately, please, please hear me out. I love

that I don't just get my information from the

local paper and that's the only access that I have to it because that would

be way worse. Right. I'm very well aware of that. Right. Talk about trade offs.

Right? Yeah. So I'm never going to push too hard for like

censorship online because I want the ability to talk about

the things that I want to talk about even when they're unpopular. So I must

give other people space to talk about the things that I think are stupid or

unpopular because I want my ability to go do these things. Right.

But when you start thinking of like, well, I'm right and everyone else is wrong,

that's where you lose the thread. Right. And if someone else believes something

differently than you, well, then they just must be the idiot. They're not allowed to

be intelligent and think differently than you because you're not on the level of understanding

just how deep all of these decisions and chains and things like that go.

Just, oh, well, you're an idiot because that helps me sleep at night. I don't

have to question anything super deeply because you're dumb. Right.

It just becomes the easiest off ramp. Right? Oh, you're a child. I

don't have to listen to you. Well, you know, like, this is why

I, I have a shirt. It's my favorite shirt.

Don't argue with within with. Don't argue with idiots on the Internet.

Favorite shirt. Had to buy it. It doesn't even

really fit me because, like, I washed it one time and it shrank up too

big, but it still hangs up in my closet. And there are certain days when

I'm going through my shirts, I'm like, what am I gonna wear today? And I

get to that shirt and I was like, thank you for the reminder. Right.

This is, this is compounded because you can't have hard opinions about

anything without some person being like, well, if you thought about. Yeah, thought about

it. Right. Like, at least I have. Right. Before I Before I

post content, talking about sales and entrepreneurship and being a founder.

Yeah. I'm thinking about how you're going to hear it and where, like Joe

Schmo idiot who's never done any of this, is going to be like, you're not

right. How. Let me just go ahead and weave it in

so everyone can know I'm right unless they're trying to see me

as wrong, you know, so there is this weird thing. And

every time I talk about a thing, especially as a sales coach, you know, this

one time back in like 1873, I followed, followed up with one

person for 5,000 days in a row. And then, you know what happened, John?

They bought. And it's like, okay, cool, I'm glad you have an anecdote.

Is that how you want to keep getting it done? You know, like,

you can't have too hard of an opinion with this thing. But. But

by that same token, if you are out here in some sort of space, whether

leadership or being a founder or anything, you must be comfortable putting your

ideas into play and going and defending them, because you will have trolls. And if

you let them stop you from putting yourself out there, you know,

you get to go back to work for someone else.

I think we are at a.

We're at a moment of,

I think, several things. So we're at a moment of

inflection. Right. People call it a vibe

shift. Okay, Maybe I think it's more like a

moment of inflection or an inflection point in the culture.

And I put this in my notes. 20 years on, from 9 11,

24 years on from 9 11, get ready to be 25. Which is just

insane to me. At a certain level,

I'm not quite sure that if a 911 style event

occurred now that we would have the same response.

I mean, I think all the first responders that are, like, trying so hard to

get seen and taken care of after they, you know, put forth so much, and

now they've kind of gotten screwed. I mean, not really a whole lot of pattern

and precedent for wanting to be super excited to go, you know, really commit to,

like, driving the country forward. Because all, like, if you're paying any

attention, all those people that are putting forth the most effort

are the people who don't get taken care of on the backside of it. Right,

Exactly. Why, like, you almost have to

be delusional at this point. I would think to be like, you know

what? They're gonna take care of me. I just. Right. You know, and

I hate that I have that opinion, I really, really don't like it. But

I, I mean we read these books for a reason. We,

you know, like it's there and it happens too often

for I think anybody who's reasonable and really concerned about it to be like, you

know what, they're going to take care of me. Well, and even if we had

like, and, and you know,

we're doing this podcast, you know,

four years after Covid. Right. Yeah.

Another wet blanket on, you know, any kind of

right. Rotary is ignat. Right. So

on the one hand I, I would like to,

I would like to say that because of our collective in this

country, and I'm not talking, again, not talking about the politicians or the generals, they're

a minority on this one. I'm talking about because of the

collective. Disinterest is probably

a hard word, but maybe that's the most accurate one.

Disinterest on the part of the electorate in

not necessarily supporting the people on the back end.

I think disinterest on responding in

the same way as we did previously. I think there's immense disinterest in

that. If a 911 event was. Were to happen, I think there's just immense disinterest.

Yeah. The question then becomes,

and this is a truly apocalyptic question, but

is the question that follows from the logic, how

many 911 events, how close together

would have to happen in order to move the American

public out of their disinterest into a different space? And by the way, I'm

not asking this question because I want it to happen.

I'm asking the question because if the line of

911 is way back there in the rear view mirror and

the line of COVID is way back there in the rear view mirror, then

how much horrible, much more horrible will the next

line have to be

to shake us out of our disinterest and our apathy and our

impatience with outcomes? And I think we've been asking a

variation of this question since World War II. And we. And

the line has gone further and further and further and further and further out.

And I think that.

Back to that idea of being a role model in a neighborhood. I think other

countries pay attention to that. They pay very close attention

for a whole variety of reasons, by the way, some that are self serving

and some that are venal for their own interests

and others that are like, we wouldn't. If

you don't, if you don't think I'm correct, we wouldn't have had all of the

blathering over Russian

interference in elections if we didn't think Russia was paying attention,

whether you, whoever candidate you think it's benefiting, it doesn't matter to me.

We wouldn't have all that blathering if we didn't think Russia was paying attention.

We just like, we don't blather about.

No one's blathering about, no one's blathering about South African election interference.

No one. Okay, yeah, no one. No one. Because like

topic think South Africa is paying attention. Right? And the reason, and the

reason why I'm saying that is the reason why I'm saying this. Among the, the

smart people, you know, those people that are not the electorate,

right? But who think they know what the electorate wants by virtue of

having won a vote from the electorate, they think they know that that gives them

an idea of what they think the electorate wants for those people.

I don't think they have an answer to the question. And this is the part

that scares me even more. They don't have an answer to the question of what

would be the thing, where is the line to move the American

public. And you see this, by the way, notoriously and political

acts that are happening now in this country and I'm not talking

about the big popular ones that everybody can see. Like right now we're currently

in the midst of like a 30 day government shutdown

and I can't, I don't know, there's no one in my circle

or the circles that I go to in my limited expansion on the Internet

that are even remotely talking about any of this. Oh

yeah, everyone else is the bad guy, right? But that's the first rule of

rhetoric. But that is. Right, it was just the first rule of rhetoric. Exactly. Yeah,

yeah, it was funny because like, you know, one of the lines

that I learned early on is like, was like marketing, right? You know, because like

I, you know, started, started to really get into selling and then I started to

like look at marketing and everything and then it was like, just make someone else

the bad guy, you know, so cold calls are the devil. You

don't want to be a salesperson. You want to be in marketing, right? So when

you can demonize something else, right? And people are like, oh,

I don't want to be like that, then, then it creates a

thing, right? And we see this, right? Remember the Titans, when Denzel Washington is like

the, like he is the centering focus, he becomes the bad

guy. So then everyone else does this thing. Same thing with Miracle with Kurt Russell,

right? Is it is such a well known thing and People play their parts. Like,

I, I honestly thought that my, that my, that my

company commander, my captain, he wouldn't, he would not approve

of how these drill sergeants were treating us and talking to us. He was, he.

I was wrong. I was way wrong. You were way wrong. Couldn't have been

more wrong, honestly. Right. So. But

it, it's human nature. Right? Right. Someone else is.

It's not your fault. Right. And humans

love to not have to take ownership for their,

you know, their deficiencies. Right. So, you know, and we see this, like,

and you see this because we see it even in, like, martial arts training. Well,

I can't do that. I got bad knees. Why are you here? How bad? Why

are you here then? Yeah. How about. Are those knees? If you're here and training

all these times, but you can't do a pistol squat, you're not strong enough, You've

not developed yourself to the place to where you can do that move. Stop trying

to play the victim. You're just not enough.

Now accept that and then go fix it. Right.

But stop making it out to be that you're put upon and you're limited

because a lot of times you're not really right. It's just. You've not decided to

face the music. You've not decided to go look at yourself and your personality and

why some things are easier for you to believe and do, and some things are

harder for you to believe and do, and that goes back to awareness. But if

you're not aware yet, and most people 18 years old aren't

super aware. Right. So it's just kind of like, well, hey, you can let someone

not let you go to college. Absolutely not. Right. So come on, you

know, and like, be all you can be. Like, these are. I mean,

they're. They're very well known rhetoric things.

Right. They're. They're so well used

in the form of indoctrination and

persuasion and, you know, things like this. So

the, the more ceremony we have

around the community, the deeper that community goes. Right.

The military's got a lot of deep ceremony. So does martial arts. Yeah.

Well, here's one other thought as we wrap up, as we close, as we turn

the corner around on this episode,

another thought that sort of bounced around in my head from reading

this book.

When we went to Afghanistan, we were fighting

Taliban. We were also fighting uphill

against village elders. Some of the more interesting

interactions, particularly you could see this in Restrepo in the movie, but in,

in the book that were documented were between o' Brien

and the village elders and I always wondered, like, and then

when I got to see it in the movie, I was like, oh, that's how

that went down. Like the village elders who literally were like

wizened elders in a way that we don't appreciate age, we just don't

like. Going back to that story about the, the boy who was shot by the

M4 or had the M4 bullet in his, in his leg

at the Americans took one of the points that Younger makes in the book when

he relates that that story is that he thought that that 60 year old man

could out walk the Americans all over those mountains.

And we talk a lot about man strength or men do at a certain

age. We talk about just old man strength, right? Which, which,

which by the way, in jiu jitsu, I'm accused of having old man strength. I'm

just like, no, I just know where to grab you. Like I've just been alive

long enough to know where to grab you. That's all I'm really, once again, hey,

it's not my fault. Like you must have something that I don't, you know, and

then you know what you're like, now we have an age limit, right?

If you're over 40, you got to go to the old man's class because you

can't be bringing, you can't be bringing old man strength down to these 20 year

old white belt or blue belts who are tournament champions in training and

stuff like this. It's not fair. So you have this old man strength, you know,

let alone a decade of training in another martial art, you know, like, you know,

let's not talk about that at all. You know, I, I, I, I cover all

of it by saying, listen, I'm a frail old man. Go

easy on me. You're just gaming

everybody. My, I mean, my instructor doesn't

buy, he just laughs. He just keeps right on going. He doesn't buy any of

it. And there's a few of them in there. It only really works on white

belts, honestly, who just don't know. But like by the time they get there, the

blue belts all laugh at me. They're like, whatever, shut up, shut up.

It works on, it works on everyone who's looking for a reason to discount you.

It is, it does, it does, it does work on them. That's true. Well,

you know, I'm like Al Pacino in the Devil's Advocate. Never see him coming. Always

take the subway. Just, they never see you coming that way. But

my point is, the village elders and o' Brien.

And again, you saw it in the movie. It was that weird collision of American

youth that was puffed up with authority

and then these village elders who literally liked it with a cow. The cow

is the best. Oh my God, that was the best. Go read the book if

you want to know about the cow. That was hilarious. And living in, living in

Texas, you know, being. I started laughing. I knew

exactly what had happened. Yeah, but beautiful moment of that,

which I not thought about until you talked about it. I mean, imagine if you're

not from the south, right? Like, I mean, made sense

to me too. I've lived here my whole life. But you know, if you're from

Chicago. You'Re like, what the hell? It doesn't. Why, why

do you even care? Why do you even care? But then, but then Younger uses

the line, I love it on the, on he goes, you know, the, the

commander, whoever was o' Brien's commander, made an Old Testament style decision.

And I was like, that's genius.

Brilliant. That. Yes, you're exactly right. The weight of the

cow. And like, honestly, this is, this is

awesome. Because, man, okay, short

detour we talked about in Strangers during a Strange Land about how if the language

doesn't have a label for it, the convention probably doesn't exist, right?

And so what? And I, I have to teach salespeople

and founders to do this, right? Put it into their conventions. Because since

we're trying to get something out of these people in the form of revenue or

relationship or something else like this, you know, it's the least we can do, right?

So if they're talking about, you know, MRR

monthly recurring revenue, and you're trying to back everything up to like times 12 for

like annual RR recurring revenue, why are you making it harder

for them to be on the same page with you? Right? It doesn't make any

sense. Right? And using of jargon when you're talking to people who

don't understand the jargon is the same thing, right?

But if that's what's supposed to happen, right? Because

here's the thing. If, like imagine talking to someone

who died 15 years ago about the ease of creating

white papers using AI right now, there's no way they would be

able to really conceptualize the lift that that provides. Endless

slop that it's creating all over the place, but that's a whole other conversation. So

like in that mode, how much can I talk to you about? Like,

how much can I take your opinion? Right? I can take your concerns, I can

take your theories and Everything else like this. But I got to talk about this

with people, because founders will often get stuck

because they're taking advice from everyone. Right? Their mom, their, like, nephew

who's in college. Right. Their sister's baby cousin who. Who's just in high

school. Like, sorry, Like, I can't

take advice from you if. If you're not on the level. Like, my mom loves

me. She has a copy of my book. I'm not going to be like, hey,

what's keeping you from reading it? Why would I do that to myself? Right.

Like, it just open. It's not for her. She wants it for the reasons that

she does, and that's okay. But the same thing is just

all the way through, like, the whole thing. So while we should

have respect for. For. For elders. Right. And you know,

I love the whole. Now that I'm older, I love the. They put on their

pants one leg at a time. I used to hate that whenever I was younger.

Right. You know, when I didn't have patience for folksy wisdom.

But it's like, they're just a human. So now, and this is super

helpful for me as my development as a salesperson of, like,

you're good at what you do, right? I'm good at what I do.

Okay. But I'm not putting myself down here just because you've done

three things that were really great over here in these things. No. If we're having

a conversation, it's called equal business. Stature is how. Is how. How it

was taught to me. And so by that same token, I don't put people into

lanes to where they can feel like. Like they should be giving me advice

that I'm not going to listen to anyway. Right? Yeah, well, and.

And. And you saw that with o', Byrne, right? Like, he's trying to

navigate this. And then you've got these elders and

these villagers who. And this is sort of my

larger point here, who have.

They've been knowing the battles that have been going on between them

going back at least 500 generations.

Yep. Yeah. And 500 is probably exaggerating. 50 generations. At least

50 generations. They've got that recorded. Right. Particularly in those

mountains with those people. And we're going in.

And it's not that we're. Although we are. We're going in

and disrupting their lives. And the thing

that's interesting to me is that ever since World War II, where the

idea of civilians as targets

in war started,

we haven't yet ground down to our logical end of this.

But we're Getting closer to the logical end of it. And

the logical end of civilians being seen

as part of the infrastructure of

warfare is I think, the other dynamic that's going to

shift warfare in the next 20 years. Because, see, here's the thing. So

collateral damage is no longer going to be, like, explained away the way that it

often is. Now, not only that, but I think that

collateral damage will be justified.

Oh, so any collateral. So the rhetoric. So

the rhetoric is we don't have to kill as many people. We don't have to

kill as many people. Look how great our technology is. Oh, my God. We killed

all these people. They must have really been bad. Okay, I can see

that playing. I mean, there's, there's, there's. You see this, you see a

variation of this proto argument beginning

in Israel with, with the Gaza war

that either just wrapped up or is. They're still trying to wrap

it up. You're also seeing a variation of this in, in

the Ukraine, Russian war. I mean, when the Russians. This is something

that nobody knows or very few people know because it was very lightly reported on

when the Russians were paratruding, parachuting. Russian troops

were parachuting into the Kiev airport. Kiev

civilians were shooting them out of the air.

Right? What does that make a Kuyev civilian then who could pick up an

AK47 and just shoot a Russian paratrooper out of the air? What does that make

that civilian? Now, now that civilian's a combatant. Now, the rules

of war have shifted. And while it's

interesting to talk about the

philosophy of this at a material

level, I think it's really, really important for us to understand

that warfare will have much more integration in the future with civilian

structures. Not just

paratroopers parachuting into an airport to take over a

spot, but also. And this is why the data

centers. Yeah, the cyber warfare, the data centers.

I mean, think about how much of our lives going back to this idea of

conform, conformity and mass are now being gradually

through the trillions of dollars being spent on LLM development.

Yes, it's a bubble. Yes, it will burst. Yes, it will be nasty. You heard

it here first. I've been through four of these bubbles already. It will

burst. It's fine. And then we'll all somehow

survive whatever, but it will

burst like a bunch of people are going to go broke, Right? And

when that happens, there'll be a lot of collateral H damage.

But, but one of those things is

one of those offshoots of those ideas is if we're building data centers in

remote places like you can use it a bomb.

Right. Like Abilene, Texas. It's not hardened. Or

ol. Kansas. That's not hardened. Or.

Well, not Jackson Hole. Jackson Hole is hardened. But like

any. Any name, any rural place in America where, by the way, these data centers

are going in. Yes. Providing jobs. Yes. Providing.

Yes. Sucking up natural resources. Yes. Doing all these kinds of things

that happen when you put a big, you know, piece of machinery, you know,

in the middle of a population that hasn't had a whole lot of growth in

the last, like, I don't know, 60 years because everything got offshore to

other places and now we're trying to reshore that for a whole variety of

geopolitical reasons that are way beyond what we could get into right now.

Yeah, but it is happening. Like they're building a chip manufacturing.

They're building a chip manufacturer in. In North Carolina. I think it's North

Carolina right now that's going to employ like 50,000 people.

It's going to be a great thing. But it's going to take 10 years to

build. Well, I think they're trying to build.

A friend of mine is trying to move into the space and I think he

was talking about either maybe Little Elm, which is a

suburb up here, where. Where we are. They're building a huge, huge one

out there. Right. And they're popping up everywhere, you know, so. Right. So what

happens when those become. Become nodes

along a path to disrupting an enemy's

infrastructure so you can make war on them better? Well, that

means that at that facility in Little Elm, and I'm not putting anything on that

at all. I don't want anything to happen. I want to be very clear.

I am not wishing for that. And

warfare has shifted. Yeah,

it's shifting right in front of our eyes right now. Overseas,

it is merely minutes before it will show up at a country near you.

Oh, man. Like. And we're. When we're not psychologically prepared for

that in America, we're just not. And you know how I know we're not? Because

I just saw it in war, I just saw it in this book that we're

not psychologically prepared for it. We can't even like scroll on

Facebook without, you know, taking the wrong point

from someone else's conversation and then, you know, belittling it down, the

name calling and stuff like that. We're definitely not ready for, you know, anything

like that. But, you know, I.

And by the way, we're going to try to do that as a country to

other countries. As well. It's going to be 100%. Yeah. It's going to be a

tit for tat thing going back, right? Like, True

Lies, right when True Lies came out, right? And I remember watching

it, and I think I was 13 or 14 when that

movie came out. I think it was like 93, 94. I forget the exact year,

but I'm 13, 14 years old. And I remember just being like,

man, we really hate these guys with, like, the red. With the red head

coverings, you know what I'm saying? Because, like, I'm just old enough to. Where I'm

starting to see, like, they're always the bad guy. Like, they're always made out to

be the bad guy. It becomes this very easy thing and stuff like this. And,

you know, I'm like, okay, well, that's. Well, that's kind of. And

now I'm like, okay, you know, if we're. If we're putting that into

all of our cultural things, you know,

there's. There's. There's gonna be a whole lot more room to hate those guys just

easily, right? We're indoctrinating around it and stuff like that, depending

upon what you're watching and stuff. Stuff. And so, like, that was a very weird

thing to kind of, I think, realize that, like, 13 or 14 years old. And

because it was like, it's like, I'm supposed to hate these people, right?

The same thing with. I forget the name of the movie, but it had Annette

Benning, it had Bruce Willis, maybe the

Siege, you know, I'm talking about. And there's like, martial

law, and it ends up being.

Let me look this up. Kind of situation.

But it came out, like, around that same time, and I was like,

man, like, these people must have done some really bad

things to us, you know, and stuff like that, because it. Because it just felt

like it was everywhere. It felt like I couldn't watch an action movie without

them trying to make, like, someone in the Middle Eastern area, right?

It was the siege. You're right. It was the siege. Congratulations. 1998.

Congratulations. Thank you. I'm. I'm really good at movie trivia. Like, don't.

Don't invite me to trivia night. It's. It's brutal.

So I think. I don't know, I think. I think

culture is used to soften people up for certain things, but I also think

it's used to deliver. Media

in particular, is used to deliver messages very subtly,

by the way. Messages that are all over the map. I. Because you'll have two

different media deliver two different messages. Like. Like the propagandists can't get

their story straight. Like, if you

like anyone who's like, you know what? Editing. Who cares about editing?

Like, if you're walking around thinking that you are being manipulated so

hard because you can take the same interview and edit it 17 different way.

Like, and my daughter is kind of at this thing now

to where, like, I'm trying to, like, teach her how to be. Slow down, make

sure it's real, you know, and one of the things that I've been showing her

is, like, I love the YouTube clips to where they'll take a movie that's like

a horror movie and they'll re edit it to make it a comedy or vice

versa. Because I love showing that to her. Because then I'm like,

this might be why you hate that person, because someone just

decided to make them out to be. To look like this, and they might not

actually be who they are, you know, And I mean,

we're. A lot of people are deep in the throes

of malicious editors currently.

Yeah, well. And, you know, a lot of this goes back to

what. Oh, God. C.S. lewis talked about this in his book

Mere Christianity, which we'll cover on the podcast in December. But he has a

great line in that book where he talks about how

he doesn't tie to propaganda, but this is what he means.

How, in essence,

the meaning of a word is lost. When we focus more about what

the feeling of the meaning of the word is or the feeling of the

word itself, we lose the actual core of that

meaning. And, you know, to me,

that's. That's at the root of what a propagandist does. At the root

of it. A propagandist is about. Is. Is focused on

one. The answer to one question. And the question is,

who owns the dictionary? Who owns not only the

definitions of the meanings and the definitions of the words, but who

gets to decide it by whose authority. So here's

my most spicy take going into that mode. Right. Oh,

we're rounding the corner. Your last spicy take. Go ahead.

Well, I don't really know that I've. Gotten all that spicy so far. I felt

like I've kind of. Kind of held it in the back box a little bit.

But we're not going to anymore. If you go and you are confused,

I think about who's pushing, like, you know, a good

message versus who's not, who has the

depth versus who's choosing to keep the depth away from it. Right.

Categories, labels. Definitions and stuff like this. Right?

Because it's just as easy to, to realize like, oh, hey, you

know what, the reason why we argue about politics is because we

have different values. And that's okay because we have different paths. Right. That this

requires a little bit of patience, a little bit of knowledge and a little bit

of ability. Because it's just easier to be like, you know, what are you, a

dumb snowflake? What are you, dumb snowflake? Like, there's

no attempt to hear the other person out and say, and it happens

the other way as well. Like, so I'm not just saying it only happens this

one way, but when you're not willing to give anyone else the benefit of the

doubt, like, what are we even doing?

You know, so it's depth. Are you, are you, are you taking

it deeper? And is it okay for them to feel how they feel because there's

a room there, there's a, there's a, there's a map to how they got there.

Or is everyone dumb if they don't believe what you believe?

Yeah. And anyone who's pushing that idea is in my

opinion, or a tyrant pushing ri. Or

rhetoric. Right, Rhetoric. Everyone else who's like, hey,

they don't know enough. They don't know these things. And so that's why they feel

like anyone who's pushing depth and education probably on the right side,

at least in my personal opinion. Anyone who's trying to keep it shallow so that

way they can name call and then everyone picks up these name calling labels

is rhetoric. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

we seek to avoid rhetoric on this show,

which is why John returns. And thanks for having me on, dude. Like,

I, I, I really appreciated all the books that we've done. I

really appreciated you letting me bring you Stranger, Stranger in a strange land.

This was an important read for me and so I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you.

You're welcome. Any final

thoughts on war? What can we take from.

I'll frame it this way. I've been framing my, my outlying question or my outgoing

question this way lately. What can

we take from a book like this? A book like War by Sebastian

Younger and apply to

building forward. Right, Because I'm tired of, I'm weary of

deconstructing. I'm way more interested in building,

I'm way more interested in building the next thing

versus deconstructing the old thing to find out all the problems. Because we know what

all the problems are. We, we do know we've had

20, some would say even 40 or 50 years of

just masticating. That's chewing for you folks out there

over have to be very. You should not be posting on social media.

There you go. That's right. Over what the problems are. And

arguing, to John's point, social media just being the latest

tool arguing to shut people up or to

elevate our own egos. And neither one of those things are building.

So what can we take from war that can help us build

the next institution, the next community, the

next business? What can we take from war?

I think the thing that I take away the most from

from war. And this shows up all the time for me and my

conversations because whenever I talk with people about hiring, right?

And they start talking about salespeople and they all start saying this

line, John, I want someone who has urgency,

right? And urgency is an important quality,

okay? But what happens is, at least in my

conversations, right? People struggle in conversations not because they're

bad at sales, but because they're bad at having conversations. They've not done

them enough. They're. And so they start thinking of, I need something

just more than me, right? And

I think that this book shows very clearly

what that end label or in level of

more can be. It becomes

dogged determination. It becomes the inability

to relax after the fact, right?

Becomes lasting impact of things. And so

first of all, if you're in business and you're trying to whip people into

rabid intensity by making it war, like I have a problem with you and we

can talk about it, please send me a dm. I will show you a better

way to coach and lead and manage your salespeople. Because

these people have been honed for this one environment

specifically to the point to where they're problematic even

with the people that are. That are not as far forward as they are, right?

And so when you start thinking about just rabid intensity and

sales savages and urgency and everything else like this, or

you're telling yourself that you need to be more because you're a founder or you're

a leader and you just think you got to be more. You got to be

more. You got to be more like this thing or whatever, you can take it

too far to the place to where you are the cultist,

you are the. You're just as problematic as anybody

can be because you've lost the ability to have

a discerning point of view.

And I. And that's problematic, right? You got to know those

trade offs favorite book for anybody around this

topic that's not around war, but go read Annie Duke's book

about quitting, because quitting is notoriously shown or seen and

portrayed as, like, absolute failure. But, God, if we're going to lose everything to

go win this hill, is that does that even make sense? No, it does not.

Right. Losing your sanity because you're, you're on some founder's path, and

you're the only person who gets it. It's not worth your sanity. It's not worth

your relationships. It's not worth anything else like this. Don't get so dogged that, like,

people who should be able to kind of point you in the right direction

can't be heard.

That's a good way to end. And so I want to thank you for

listening to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Book podcast. I want to thank

John for joining us today. And with that, well,

we're out.