In this episode, Brian Cramer shares insights from his military service, his battle with PTSD, and the constant journey of self-development. The conversation highlights the essential values of honesty, self-discipline, and accountability, and their impact on personal and professional success. Listeners gain valuable advice on effective leadership, mental resilience, and the importance of addressing inefficiencies early.
Episode Highlights:
01:31 The Importance of Honesty in Leadership
04:35 Challenges and Growth in Leadership
06:24 Self-Improvement and Accountability
11:41 Effective Communication in Leadership
39:26 Overcoming Victim Mentality
40:40 Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life
51:03 Finding Peace and Grounding Techniques
As a teenager Brian Cramer embarked on a journey to become one of the world’s elite marksmen. The challenges he faced in his youth and the obstacles later endured as a Marine sniper are brought to life in his biographical narrative. Brian served on multiple combat deployments with 1st Battalion 6th Marine regiment from 2005 to 2007. He left the Marines as a Sergeant receiving commendations for valor, operating in both Fallujah and Ramadi Iraq. His story is motivational and engaging. He explores the making of Marines, the warrior brotherhood, and the realities of combat, as seen firsthand in Iraq. He offers this narrative as a Marine sniper in a raw, unfiltered manner. Suffer Patiently is a compelling and heartfelt account of being young and at war.
You can learn about Brian at: briancramer.net
Episode Transcript:
00:44
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Brian Kramer is a Marine scout sniper who served multiple deployments in Iraq from 2005 to 2007. His memoir, Suffer Patiently, explores his Marine Corps experience from enlistment to assimilation after combat. He currently works and lives in Florida with his family.
01:15
You can get Suppropatiently anywhere that you buy quality books. And you can actually find out more about Brian at briancramer.net. Brian, thank you for being here today and thank you for taking the time. No, I definitely appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I appreciate that. We were discussing earlier how there are a lot of people that are out there sort of regurgitating lessons that they’ve learned and things that they’ve heard from other people that may sound good in a quote or may sound pragmatic in a controlled environment.
01:44
But when we’re actually in it, you have a great statement here that you talk about that says you were given this piece of advice that says a job well done is never complete. Can you expand on that? Yeah, for sure. For sure. That was a great one. I’ll never forget that gentleman, Captain Lloyd, series commander, when I was an undergraduate in Buchanan. And, you know, I doubt that he ever even knew that.
02:10
You know, you mentioned those words to me years down the road, but I mean, here I am, and I still reflect on them regularly how important they are to me. And they were and still are. And I think it goes on a lot of, you know, my concept and thoughts on leadership. And you have this bifurcation, right? It’s bifurcated. You kind of have these two groups of people, at least I feel you have ones that are, you know, just born and bred with this natural leadership ability. And then you have this other set that.
02:39
They have the capability to be leaders, but it’s through continued growth and continued development that really takes them from being a good to great leader. And the commonality between both of those groups of people though, is the fact that in order to really be great, truly, you have to be focused on constant self improvement, constant development of your leadership skills, you know, finding the right mentors, researching the right things, having the right discussions. So I look at it that way, but all that stuff, I say that.
03:08
It manifests itself in one thing and just like the comment that Captain Lloyd made to me that day, that a job well done is never complete. It manifests itself in honesty and honesty. And you might think, ah, it’s that simple. All I have to do is be honest. And, you know, I’m a great leader, but when I say honesty, it’s something that I hang my hat on and I talk to people when I’m in tour and I coach. It’s really comes down to.
03:37
this whole honesty concept is stratified. It’s multi-layered. It’s not just, you know, in one realm, it’s not just my job, right? The eight to five that I go to, it supersedes that. I mean, we have to have honesty and practiced honesty in every aspect of our life, whether it be our job, whether it be, I mean, even our marriages, our relationships with our children, you know, coaching a youth sports team or a program.
04:05
We have to have honesty in all those areas. And I think in the politically correct world, if you work at a large organization or wherever you may find yourself in your career path, as leaders, we have this problem sometimes with delineating between honesty and maybe hurting someone’s feelings or saying something that we think might not be perceived very well.
04:35
But I think as leaders and as mentors and as coaches, just like Captain Lloyd with that honest statement that made me self-reflect, you know, you have to have that candid conversation with someone and you have to be able to do it effectively. And as you go through that and the, the, the multiple spheres of different environments and you know, whether it be with an employee you work with, a peer relationship, a spouse, whatever, it all starts at one place in my mind. And that’s with yourself.
05:05
Right. So you can have honesty through all those layers and all those stratifications, but it comes down to, are you honest with yourself? How can I be a great leader? A leader of other men and women, a leader of other people when I can’t even lead myself. And that’s where I start. And I have to reflect and I tell other people to make sure you reflect as well on am I proficient at
05:32
in all the areas that I should be? Am I as proficient in all the areas that I could be to help, you know, drive my organization, drive my team culture, increase the life that I live with my wife and my children. What does my spirituality look like? How am I a well-rounded person? What areas am I lacking in? What areas do I need more self discovery, more research? And I can’t remember. It’s like the Taoism book of Tao, something like that. I can’t remember who said it or what the quote is, but, um, it’s like,
06:01
Knowing that you know what you don’t know is like the ultimate enlightenment. And putting all those things together back into that statement of honesty from Captain Lloyd, which is a job well done is never complete. Well, that’s a conversation of self-reflection within your own mind, right? That’s, that’s where I go with that, that piece of it. And it’s so true when I speak on leadership for Keynote, my very first statement is always all leadership begins with self-leadership.
06:31
And until I can have that very honest reflection on myself and be honest in where I’m at. And that’s the great thing about adversity, which you’ve been through a lot of that to get to the place that you are, because it burns away all the bullshit, gets down to where we really are. And it’s not always great what we see, like sometimes we fail, but we have to acknowledge that honestly, because until we look at that right in the face, there’s no way for us to begin to even know where to go next. And a lot of people get stuck in that place of either not wanting to see it,
07:00
Or they do see it and now they get paralyzed there. And I see that too often. Yeah, certainly. Certainly. And it’s funny because when you say, yeah, honesty, it’s like, it’s like the golden rule, right? It’s so easy to let it roll off the tongue. It’s like, oh, that’s very simple, but it’s hard. It’s, it’s hard. It’s challenging to be honest with people that you love. It’s challenging to be honest with, you know, subordinate relationships, um, peers, leaders above you.
07:28
depending on your work environment. I mean, it can be challenging, but at the end of the day, you know, that’s your obligation and your role, right, is to be honest and to share that information. Because if you walk around an organization all the time telling lies or providing half-hearted information, in the end, it’s not going to turn out well for anyone. And I think that could be the same in the academic world. It could be the same with your family. It could be the same with your youth groups, whoever you’re working with, whatever scenario you find yourself in. It’s so important.
07:57
to have those conversations. And, you know, I’ve had to have a conversation with somebody before that just, I hate to say limiting, but when you look at someone you’re working with, let’s say in a work setting or at a job, and you know, you can tell that they’re really not putting in their best and they’re not striving to self-improve like we mentioned, it’s almost like I can look at you and tell that you’ve reached your ceiling.
08:26
Like you’ve reached your max potential and it’s not that you’ve reached your max potential in your life. You’ve just reached your stealing and your max potential for what you’re willing to put into what you’re trying to accomplish. And sometimes when you have that conversation with someone, you know, especially when you’re an adult, you know, I think with the adolescence and youth that you work with is a little different, but it hits home. You know when you’re a little bit older and you’ve worked your way through a couple jobs or you find yourself in a career and
08:56
It’s kind of that nail in the coffin, you know, that will make someone wake up and go, yeah, I’m really not performing to my full potential in life. And you know, what do I need to do to address that? What areas of self reflection do I need to have to get moving in the right direction or achieve what I want to achieve and go the direction I want to go. And that’s the power of once we’ve been through hardship, we can recognize when other people are holding back. When they’re subconsciously just doing, they’re going through the motions, just kind of trying to get by.
09:25
And like you were saying also as a leader, if we go around and we’re telling half truths, we’re literally lying by omission. And if you care about this person now to your point also, military leaders, we’ve grown up in a very succinct, direct sort of reflective kind of, Hey, you’re a soup sandwich, get your shit together. However, um, in other environments, are you still as direct or are you a little bit more indirect to be able to
09:53
because you have to know who this person is. And maybe that direct approach, maybe that’s what they need. They need the punch in the face. Sometimes they do. But sometimes that may be enough to actually artificially suppress them. Yeah, that’s a great question, great topic. And that’s where I kind of mentioned it. It’s challenging to be honest because as leaders sometimes we don’t know how to be and how to be honest in the right way.
10:18
And like I said, it sounds so simple to be honest, it sounds so simple. That’s the easiest thing ever. But you know, when you find yourself in a working relationship where you have to really deliver some candid information to someone that you know is not going to be received well, maybe someone who’s been in a role a lot longer than you that now you’re in charge of, you know, as a younger individual or maybe a less tenured individual, but to answer your question, no, I’m not as direct.
10:46
as I used to be. And I love your example because, you know, I look back at my time in the Marine Corps, I could just go grab somebody by the throat and throw them into a wall locker and cuss them up and down. And, you know, but, but even in that scenario, you explain, look, you made this mistake, you know, you did ABC and ABC goes to D, but because you did it like this D now results in you getting someone to kill. Right. And you explain the why behind those things. But the only difference is now instead of
11:16
you know, for lack of better words, kind of yoking somebody up and throwing them into a wall locker and, you know, giving them the gears for it. You got to really sit down and think to yourself, okay, let me highlight the points of this scenario and let me be able to exhibit the various outcomes. And I always like to ask people that I work with, or even peers or family members, you know, what, what do you think about that? Right. I think a lot of the things in our language, when we talk to people, just human beings, right.
11:45
Just conversation. We can be very poignant in the way that we say things that automatically create a defensive posture. Kind of just like when you’re introducing yourself or talking to someone or you see someone that has a bad attitude or like your kid, you know, like my son or daughter. I could very easily say, hey, what’s your problem? Right? But we could very easily not say, hey, what’s your problem? And say, hey, how’d your day go? You want to talk to me about it a little bit? And it’s…
12:13
just totally a different response to the point of, am I still as direct? I don’t wanna misconstrue the directness because I am still 100% honest, but the delivery method is what changes over time. And I think that in itself, that’s that self-improvement, that’s that mastery of the skill, that’s that art of being able to deliver a clear, concise,
12:43
a bridged message to someone that they can walk away with and perform their own self-reflection. And that’s what takes time to develop and that’s what takes time to work on. Is there a better way to further develop your leadership? Yeah, I mean, I’m sure there is. I mean, you know, there’s a ton of stuff out there that you can do, courses that take, books to read, things to watch. But at the end of the day, you know, we learn from just waking up and putting your pants on, right? Going to work.
13:11
You got to show up showing up is 90% of the deal, right? I mean, if you can just show up and put yourself in the place every day to be able to make the plays and make the calls and make the right decisions, or at least make decisions period, you’re learning as a leader. I mean, I’ve made plenty of mistakes in leadership. No doubt. I’ve made some people angry. Maybe didn’t have conversations the right way. Maybe too heavy handed, maybe too high. I don’t know. But.
13:36
You know, you look back on those and you reflect on them. And even after I have conversations with people that are challenging, I just kind of ask myself like, could I have done that a little bit better? What could I have done? What could I have said? How could I have, you know, handled that scenario to ameliorate a better outcome, you know, for that person. And for myself and our relationship to your point. I mean, the delivery is what’s changed, not necessarily the honesty. Yeah. The honesty has to be true because you don’t even know what delivery you need to look at if you can’t see what’s honestly going on. And,
14:06
back to what you were saying, let’s say we have a person that’s performing and they’re always producing, they’re doing great. And they really respond to us with that drive and that push. And then one day, like you said, something fell off and it’s like, what’s going on? Well, if I use what worked before, which is raising my voice and giving them the knife hand, that still isn’t landing. So as a leader, like you said, the honest reflection is this isn’t hitting, what am I doing wrong? Or again, maybe I need to flank this.
14:35
give this person this indirect approach and say, hey, what’s going on? Is everything all right? And now all of a sudden you get that honesty back and now you have a better honest reflection to be able to implement in that delivery. And a big thing too that we, life moves so fast now, right? I mean, the speed of communication and the in your face stuff all the time. I mean, younger folks, and I hate to put labels on things, but like myself, I kind of grew up in that transition of
15:05
not to debate myself, but I kind of grew up in that transition of when you didn’t have smartphones and then all of a sudden you had them, right? And the technology growth and the implementation of technology in the workforce and in our daily lives has changed exponentially just over the last five to 10 years than it had for the last 30 or 40 years. And a lot of corporate roles and even local businesses and smaller organizations, you see the implementation of your computer learning.
15:34
your AI stuff, your machine learning. We take all this and we develop tools, whether it be through reporting or whether it be through developing better best practices, standard operating procedures at organizations, whatever. Through all this new technology and all this new learning, we have this problem with taking these tools and transforming them into weapons.
16:02
because they’re tools that are meant to help drive performance, help coach people, help mentor people, help to ultimately achieve better success. But we take them and we turn them around into weapons of, Hey, look, I’m just strictly going to look at this and hold you accountable for it, you know, rather than help coach you, help develop you. It’s more of just a, Hey, I got you accountability piece. And that’s where we fail. I believe as leaders. And the fact that we start looking at people as numbers.
16:32
on a spreadsheet or a chart, rather than stepping back and realizing, hey, look, we don’t manage numbers, we manage people, and we have to be able to work with those relationships, and we have to be able to foster those relationships to really get where you would want to be, because nobody can do it by themselves, right? I mean, it’s all about a team environment, and you have to really be able to foster that team and build the team. Yeah, and like you said, this person is more than a KPI, this person is more than just what they’re putting on the quarterly P&L.
17:02
Having said that, as you were saying, this reflection as leaders, if we want our people to grow, we have to continue to, again, be very honest, exponentially try to challenge ourselves in these capacities. And I think that that brilliance of the simplicity of just being honest is a great piece of leadership advice. What is a horrible piece of advice that you continually hear repeated about leadership out there that is either blatantly false or potentially dangerous because people don’t understand or recognize that it’s not true?
17:32
Yeah, that’s a good one. I mean, because we’ve always worked with folks that we see things we don’t like and we put them in the toolbox and just kind of decide what we want to carry along with us throughout our leadership journey works for us and what we don’t. I think one of the biggest things is you’ll find leaders who, I don’t want to say limit communication, but they’re limited in the way in which they communicate.
18:02
Right. Whether you have a sales team or, you know, whether it’s, uh, working in a retail management environment or, you know, you’re working in finance or whatever medical device sales. I mean, it doesn’t matter, right? If you’re a team is a team, you’re managing people and you’ll have leaders sometimes that I’ve seen that can be a little bit absent, you know, from the team role, they work one-on-one with folks a lot, but they don’t really communicate. Um.
18:31
you know, in the team sphere, as far as, you know, making sure everybody’s in the boat rowing in the same direction, right? Really getting a clear, concise message out there to the entire group at one time. And I think the misconception for me is that you can always leave it to just one-on-one management and one-on-one conversations. And that’s not the case. I mean, depending on the environment you work in.
19:00
You have to get the team together. You know, whether it be a virtual world, you’re working on zoom calls or whether it be, you know, in the physical realm, if you, you know, have a territory of sales managers or something like that, that you’re, you’re overseeing, you got to bring those people in and you got to get together at what best fits your schedule, monthly, quarterly, whatever. But you got to make sure that everybody has the same message and the expectations are clear. The expectations are so defined.
19:29
that people wake up that work for you and they go, hey, I know that these are Brian’s non-negotiables. These are the things that I know that Brian is my supervisor or my leader or whatever. These are the things that he hangs his hat on that aren’t gonna fly if I don’t do them or if I miss doing them or if I’m not, you know, 100% dedicated to doing them.
19:57
for me, I call them my we wills, right? These are the things that we will do. These are the things that I will do, that I commit to. And they’re just the non-negotiable things in life. I mean, we can probably break that down to all those different aspects, those layers that we operate through, whether like we said, at work, with your family, with a program you’re working on, nonprofit organization, whatever. In each of those spheres, you’re gonna have non-negotiables that you hang your hat on.
20:27
And that’s going to drive your success. But the big misconception is I think with people who try to lead kind of like a hip pocket type leadership model where it’s just, Hey, I’m going to put a check in the box because I spent 15 minutes with Joe today, or I’m going to put a check in the box because I spent 15 minutes with Derek today. And we just go through this and we’re piece milling our management. We’re piece milling our leadership thinking that.
20:56
we’re doing the right thing. But you know, it’s like the telephone game, right? I mean, I could talk to 20 different people, tell 20 different people the same thing, and they’re all gonna have 20 different accounts of what I told them. And that’s where it comes into having that team communication, and really bringing everyone together. I think a lot of the times there’s leaders that shy away from that, because they’re great in a one-on-one conversation, a one-on-one setting. But when they get into an environment where they have to talk to 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 people,
21:26
their communication ability breaks down. They’re not able to really impart the message that they want to, or maybe if they receive feedback that’s kind of adverse against their agenda, how are they able to react to that? How are you able to kind of sidestep and get the team moving in the right direction, reach an amicable agreement on what needs to happen to achieve whatever goal you’re after or whatever your operational planning is. So I think that’s an area of thought for me is how leaders communicate.
21:56
And the biggest issue being that some leaders don’t really focus on communication at the team level, at the greater unit level. And, you know, for the Marine Corps, like yourself in the Army, the military, I mean, you know, you always have that one-on-one coaching, but what you will always have is communication at the squad level, the platoon level, the company level. So it’s there and you learn it, you know, there. And that’s a great point because we see a lot of leaders that are doing what you’re saying where…
22:26
They had this sort of like hip-hocket leadership, but then you can see it becomes grossly apparent when they’re trying to address the entire team. They’re often behind with data. They’re often behind the curve of what’s really going on. And as they ask these questions, and as they’re trying to unpack this thing, that the team’s already unpacked a month ago and they’re at this impasse, it indicates you’re like, dude, this guy has no doubt. He’s lost in the sauce. He’s just sort of trying to figure it out in real time.
22:54
And everyone on the team sees that because it’s like this person, while they mean well, they’re essentially incompetent in this position. And now we’re having to wait. And now we have to wait for them to catch up. And the question that we have is usually pretty burning. It’s pretty intense. So they can’t answer it, at least not well under pressure in front of everyone. And then you say also, there’s 100 people in the room as a leader. Not only do we need to know the mission and the goal and the objective.
23:22
But now we need to be able to present it in a way so that each of the different people understand where they are. So if you had the sales team and they’re excited, that’s great. But then you also have to explain the operations. This is the SOP. This is how we’re going to make it easier for you. And now you’re telling everybody on a level that they understand as opposed to just saying, hey, we’re going to double our sales next year. It’s like, well, what the hell does that mean? And half the people are like, I almost killed myself last year trying, you know, I was doing 60 hours a week trying to get to this thing last year. How are we going to do that now?
23:50
So we have to be able to again understand it at all these levels and then also present it to them in a way To where they can understand this is your lane. This is where your where your rates of fire are Continue forward and let’s get there Yeah, certainly I feel bad for folks that find themselves in that position I got a lot of friends in engineering and stuff and I listen to them sometimes and it’s like man You got sales guys out here promise and stuff that you know It’s gonna take you two years to deliver a product on its
24:19
It’ll be a little stressful. It is. And then they put it on operations and they go, by the way, we need this at 50%, you know, the price point. And like you said, we promised that we’d have it in two months. It’s like something’s got to give here. And just because they got their commission doesn’t mean that it’s going to be good for us. That’s a short-term win, but we’re losing the war. So that’s a bad situation for sure. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, that’s right. And, you know, short-term win, but losing the war. And it makes me think.
24:46
I think it was like Rumsfeld or somebody that said it. And I mean, I’m not going to get into, you know, they can read my book and all that. I’m not going to get into talking about, you know, political affiliations, what’s right, what’s wrong, or, you know, defense strategies, things like that. I’ll be honest with you, I really never cared about any of that anyway, because I joined the Marine Corps for my own purpose, right? To achieve something, kind of put myself out there to contribute to something greater than myself and show people that I can do more.
25:15
and be more right. So it’s almost like a self-defining journey for me rather than, Hey, I want to go fight in this war because you know, this is the government’s position or whatever. But I mean, I did it for myself, but circling back on all that, I think it was Rumsfeld that said, you don’t go to war with the military you wish you had, you go to war with the military you have, right? Or something along those lines. Right, right. And it’s funny because like,
25:45
I was a young teenager back then. It’s like, whatever, it didn’t matter. But I was talking to somebody the other day and we brought that up again. And I was thinking about it and I was like, you know, it’s really true. It even supersedes the military. Like it’s, you know, we say, you don’t go to war with the military and have, well, I mean, it’s like a business, right? I mean, if you’re, if you’re a small business operator, even working at a large corporation, you have competitors out there, right? Who are the enemy? You know, I mean, you could be a florist, you could be a micro brewery. I mean, you could be.
26:14
a large financial organization. I mean, whatever the industry is, whatever the organization is, there’s competition. And that’s the world we live in. And you can’t just live in an environment where you’re just constantly, well, we’ll wait to roll this out or wait to implement this or wait to make this change when we have the correct staff that we want hired. Or we have the team performing at this certain percentage in this category or whatever.
26:43
You can’t go to battle against your competitors with the business structure and model that you wish you had. You have to do it with what you have. And it’s like the other analogy I kind of put that into, I think it kind of runs in a Rumsfeld thing is it’s like building a plane while it’s flying, right? I mean, you’re already in the air and you got to figure out how to keep putting the pieces together to make the thing work. So it’s an interesting thought. I think we get wrapped up a lot in.
27:13
you know, waiting for these perfect moments as leaders and that’s a failure. You know, I mean, we talked about the communication piece, but that’s another big failure there is we like wait for the stars to align and you know, sometimes they never will. And when they don’t, you’re just letting yourself sit idle and just get steamrolled by your competition. You’re not making the right choices when you should and it results poorly. What did I learn one time in shooting? They said, uh, your first sight picture is as good as your 20th.
27:43
It’s like, just squeeze the damn trigger, man. Let’s get there. As they’re in there, let’s do this. I mean, and if, I mean, we’re not in a hurry, but we’re also not, my squad leader told me, he says, do you know what kills more men in combat than IEDs or bullets? Hesitation. I believe it. Yep. And we were doing a shoot house and the guy in front of us hit the door and just, and it’s a 24 hour shoot house, right? You’re training to deploy and it’s about hour 18 and you’re cold and you haven’t had food and you’re a little bit tired, imagine.
28:13
And he just, just for a second, but just that single hesitation, we’re all in the fatal funnel. It’s over. That’s it. It’s a wrap. We’re all done. So he was very adamant. We got a lot of, um, a lot of additional training after that. A lot of what do you guys call it in the Marines? I don’t know what you all call it there, but I mean, we got smoked a lot just to kind of make sure that we can. Yeah. A lot of incentive training. Yeah. Incentive training is what they call it now. It’s not remedial training.
28:43
So after remedial training, that usually makes us remember the lesson, pain and discomfort are the best teachers oftentimes. And so suffer patiently. The title of your book is what got my attention initially. The Gifts of Adversity, you’re going to Long Rock March. The stuff that I did was nothing compared to what you did to just get qualified to be a sniper. Can you tell us about that journey? Because you literally, as a boy, had a poster in your room.
29:11
Tell us what that poster was and how that led to the man that I’m speaking to today. Yeah, no doubt. So I always had this poster in my room. It’s like the old force recon Marine, you know, he’s got like the rope over his shoulder, like the K bar on his H harness, you know, the, the old, the old M 16, a one, you know, face painted up, you know, something like this total bad-ass, right? And, you know, when I was younger, man, I wasn’t the epitome of physical fitness or good health, you know, I was pretty overweight kid, man.
29:41
you know, slow, sluggish. And I just reached this point that I was just, I could see my peers, you know, when I was young and I was like, tired of being the guy that’s cut from the team. You know, I’m tired of being the one that’s picked last with your friends, you know, on the ball field. And it’s like, something’s got to change. Like even, even when I was a young kid, like I saw that and I reflected on myself and I was like, man, something, something’s got to change. And I always knew I wanted to be in the military.
30:10
You know, I had, you know, lineage of family, the military, Marine Corps, Air Force, Army, you know, I always knew I was going in. But when I got into high school and I had that poster on the wall and I started reflecting on some of the things that were happening, you know, with me personally, when I was younger, I was like, you’ve got to be accountable for yourself. And it goes back into that honesty thing we talked about self accountability. How can I ever get to where I want to be? If I don’t just break it down.
30:39
tear the barriers away and be honest with myself and find out what is it that you need to do to get to where you want to be. And at that point in time, I was like, man, I want to be a Marine. I thought about doing the Army SS stuff and all that, watching all these John Wayne movies, all the good American propaganda growing up. But I decided on the Marine Corps. And when I finally made that defining decision of what I wanted to do, I was like,
31:08
You got to get in shape now, right? Because you’re not going to be a Marine. You’re not going to be this forced recon guy, like chubby, overweight kid that can’t do any pull-ups, you know, like that’s not going to happen. So I just started moving myself into positions to make sure that I was successful, you know, started doing things, running on my own, exercising my own, right, like typical stuff. And then eventually they got into track and field and cross country. Uh, when I was in high school and you know, the Marine Corps.
31:35
I mean, things have changed over the years as far as physical fitness tests and standards, but they still, you know, test and training for physical fitness is paramount. And when I was in it was, you know, you had to do a three mile run in 18 minutes to be, you know, 100%, you know, on that category. And I was like, what better way to prepare, you know, than running cross country and track. And that really just, you know, I left, I think it was like eighth grade one year and went into high school, or maybe it was ninth or 10th grade.
32:03
And I just kind of made like this complete transformation of myself over the summertime. Come back to school the next year, friends are like, dang, man, I don’t even recognize you now. You lost a bunch of weight, put some muscle on, you know, what’s going on. And, uh, you know, I’d let it be known, you know, like, dude, I have this goal in mind that I want to be in the Marines. I want to join the Marine Corps. And, um, that’s something that I’m going to work towards and continue to do so. And it’s just like this inherent drive kicked in that once I saw myself make these little successes, right? Like.
32:32
I went from not being able to run like a lap around the track to being able to run a mile. You know, it’s like the first milestone, you know, it’s like in eighth grade or ninth grade. And I was like, damn, man, I can do that, you know, and little victories turn into big victories and you keep kind of just chipping away, right? You keep eating the elephant, you know, just one piece at a time. And you just always on this journey of self improvement, you know, what can I do to make myself better?
33:01
Back then, I mean, it was mostly just physical, right? Because being honest with myself, that was the area that needed the most work. So it was always just about physical fitness and trying to make myself physically better, physically better, more capable. And, you know, when I got into the Marine Corps, it didn’t end there, you know, because I knew I wanted to join the Marine Corps for the shooting program. You know, I knew about the marksmanship program and Marine Corps has like national marksmanship team and you know, their sniper program as well.
33:28
And I just knew that’s what I wanted to do. That’s what I was gravitating towards. And I knew the hardships and the things that I would have to endure would just continue to increase that would continue to just compile themselves. You know, Marine Corps bootcamp stuff, you know, no doubt, but Marine Corps bootcamp was nothing compared to the sniper indoctrination that I had to undergo for, you know, hell week and things like that. And then not only that, but going into three months of sniper training. Um, but even before all that.
33:58
You know, you had to have a combat deployment under your belt as a prerequisite to even be able to try out to be a sniper. Right. So you had to just kind of navigate through all these different levels to just even get a chance to be there. You know, and I knew then that the most important thing for me was focusing on my physical fitness and my physical readiness, you know, knowledge, studying material.
34:28
You know, those things, as far as what you need to know to be proficient at the job, the Marine Corps will teach you that. They’ll be sure that you know it. Whether or not you retain it, you know, that’s up to you, but they will teach you. And like you said, if you don’t learn, you’ll remediate through pain and punishment. But that was that transition for me, man. I think it was really early on in my life, I was just hit with this like brick to the face. Just like this two by four truth just knocks you right in the teeth. And it’s just like…
34:58
I got to make a change and it’s about self-accountability and it’s about self-improvement. That in turn, it migrates into a lifelong journey of self-improvement. I mean, even today, even today, I find myself having to have conversations with me, with Brian and it’s like, hey, man, you need to change here. You need to dial back on this. You need to rededicate yourself, recommit yourself to this.
35:25
You know, you got to spend more time doing this less time doing this. You can very easily find yourself. Um, just going at life and I hate to say it, but like a willy nilly manner, you know what I mean? Um, you have to have a plan. You have to be structured. Uh, you know, know what you’re doing today, know what you’re doing tomorrow. Know what you’re doing next week. Know what you’re doing next month. And Hey, look, stuff comes up. We got to adjust. We got to change. That’s fine.
35:52
But you can adjust and you can change and you can be successful if you have a plan. You can’t do that if you’re just kind of firing from the hip. Yeah. The, uh, I believe the Marines are the ones that came up with the 70% plan, correct? Yeah. And that’s it, which for those of you that don’t know. So the plan always changes once contact is taken. Having said that they have at least a 70% plan of what the objective is, where they’re going, what the mission is, who’s doing what that last 30%, they understand how to pivot.
36:20
and adapt whether it be an HPT, a target of opportunity, you know, environment changes, manpower changes for the enemy or for us, whatever that may be. But the act of trying to create the actual planning in and of itself is so key, because it’s gonna serve you in every position you have for the rest of your life. And it’s interesting too, because you were saying how that at that young age, where you realized if I want this thing, I have to become this person, and what is this person doing? Was that your first like really,
36:49
honest assessment for yourself at that point? I would definitely say so because looking back, if I would have never taken that first step, it wouldn’t have turned into this marathon run. All the things that I’ve been successful at throughout my life, and I mean, I’m not tooting my horn saying I’m some amazing successful person better than anybody else, but I look in the mirror myself and I can say, man, you have come a long way and done great compared to where you began.
37:19
you know, where you started at. And there’s a lot of junctures, you know, in life and through my journey where I could have very easily stopped and you know, said, nah, man, you know, I’m good. You know, I’ve had enough, especially like in Marine Corps, man, like, you know, my first combat deployment, I went through a lot of devastating experiences there, you know, had a Navy Corpsman pretty much like die in my arms, like while I was trying to provide first aid to them, long story short, like you live through situations like that and you can walk away a victim.
37:48
Or you can walk away and just say, man, you know, that motivates me to do more, to carry on a legacy, to be someone even greater than who I am now. And not say to go seek vengeance on the enemy, which is kind of like part of it too. It’s led me more to wanting to be a sniper because I knew that I’d have more opportunities to aggress and engage the enemy on the battlefield than as just being in a line, you know, Marine position and a squad, but, you know, that does have a big part of it to do too, but.
38:18
You look at that and it kind of becomes this section where you can go left or you can go right, right? You’re at an intersection, a crossroads and say, I can take a couple of different directions here. Which direction is it going to be for me? And you know, at that point in time, I chose to continue on the route that I did. I didn’t fall for the victim mentality and say, man, I’ve had enough. I’m going to basically kind of just skate out of my time and do whatever I can do to not do anything until I get out of Marine Corps. But I think that’s an interesting concept is that.
38:46
on your leadership journey and what I would tell people was, you know, you never make it right. You’re not just this leader that’s like, Oh, I made it. You know, everything’s cozy. It’s good. No, man. I mean, it’s always going to be demanding. It’s always going to be challenging. And I mean, that’s what I love. You know, that’s what I love in life is the challenge. I think, you know, if I ever found myself in a position that I was just bored and, you know, didn’t have any structure, didn’t have anything challenging me on a day to day basis, like I’m afraid if I fall victim to that, I’ll like die, you know.
39:14
like my heart will stop working or something, you know, like, like I have to have that to be able to continue on. But I think the biggest thing is for people, it’s like, don’t think that you’re just going to make it and it’s going to stop. I mean, it’s always gonna be there. Yeah, we shouldn’t be surprised when we find adversity. We should be surprised when we don’t. It’s like, and you’re mentioning this idea, it’s like, if I can go left or right, and you have that victim mentality, the victim, when I felt like I was a victim, when I was asking less of myself, I noticed what I would do is I would look at the path.
39:42
and not look at where it was, I would look at how hard it was. And say, man, that looks tough. I don’t know. And then if I allowed that to make me hesitate, man, I’m already behind. And now it may be tough for me to get that courage to push through. But when you have that momentum, when you hold the line, and now you’re like, you know what? This is what I want. I don’t care what the path is. I want this thing over here. I want to become this person. And now we just go through.
40:08
It’s hard, yeah. But guess what? There’s a lot of heart in life. There’s a lot of heart of mediocrity. Like you said, you were saying that it felt like your heart would stop. Man, you probably would have died at that age, but you wouldn’t have actually passed away until you were like 80. So why would you waste that part of your life? Yeah, that’s an amazing thought, man. Scary, really. You know, I hate to say it, but I think there’s a lot of men and women out there that do that. I mean, there’s a lot of people in life that do that.
40:36
And it’s unfortunate. I mean, I mean, I pray for people like that because I’ve been there, right? I mean, my assimilation out of the Marine Corps is very challenging. Um, and I mean, that can be a long conversation of itself. I, you know, kind of jump into it, but I mean, like the whole assimilation piece for me, I just kind of found myself like, Hey man, you came home from a combat deployment where you were really hot and heavy rain and hell on the enemy. And people are dying. You’re killing people. And then it’s like, you’re going to be out of the Marine Corps in a few months.
41:05
And I had no plan. I have no mentors helping me develop a plan. It’s just a, Hey man, goodbye. Thanks for coming out. It’s right coming out. You know, you don’t, and you know, at that time, like I joined the Marine Corps so young, so like this is happening to me now when I’m. Shit. 20, 21. I don’t even know if I could drink when I left the Marine Corps, you know, like I was like a kid, right? Oh, so you lived through two deployments, all this trauma of a PTSD, you know, and all these things like.
41:33
combat fatigue and now here you are just, we’ll shit you back out into the world and let you figure it out. And that’s a tough time, man. That’s a tough time. And it took me a lot of self-discovery and a lot of depression and a lot of years of like trying to figure that piece out. But the roadmap that I’ve come up with after the fact, so it doesn’t really help me, which it did help me because I got here, but.
42:03
I mean, for others, you just got to really take the steps. I’d say one is like a time of self-reflection, right? Because I never did that for myself. Like I had no plan when I left the Marine Corps, but I jumped out and just enrolled myself in a community college because I had the GI bill and I was like, well, hey man, hell you got to do something. So I was like, well, that’s what I’ll do. Well, what are you going to school for? I don’t know. Like just taking some classes. You know what I mean? So I think their initial piece is like.
42:31
You have to decompress yourself. You have to have time for reflection. You have to be able to identify what the next stage in your life is going to look like. I’m not saying all people like this. You have some people who just, they’re so focused and driven. They move from one thing to the next thing, to the next thing, no matter what trauma they experience, no matter what they live through. I mean, it could be combat. It could be rape. It could be whatever. I mean, trauma is not just isolated in silo to someone who’s put on a uniform, right? There’s children that grow up in abusive houses. I mean, there’s, there’s all sorts of scenarios. Okay. And.
43:01
You got to stop if you ever get out of your situation, you got to stop and self reflect and take a time for reflection. No matter how short or long that period is, you just have to have that time to reflect to be able to identify what you want to make your next step look like. And you know, for me, I mean, I left the Marine Corps, I mean, some of the stuff’s like 20 years ago now, man, 15, 20 years ago. So it’s like writing my book that I just completed a couple of years ago.
43:30
I almost side skirted my time for self reflection. Like when I got out of the Marine Corps, I just kept moving. I compartmentalized my mind. I never thought about anything that I did. I never sat down and came to terms with the reality of the life that I lived for those four years and the amount of warfare and the amount of combat and the amount of loss and anguish and friendships that you’re no longer involved in and the camaraderie. I never really digested those things until
43:57
really later on in life, like when I was writing the book, I mean, it’s therapeutic for me to go back and revisit and think about those things and digest them piece by piece. And my ultimate goal for my book really was just to have something for my children, you know, who at this point in time in life really won’t be able to understand the things that I learned along my journey until they’re older. You know, God forbid if something happened that I wasn’t here to tell them that story when they’re older, I wanted to put it on paper so that they had it.
44:28
In term and doing that, I found myself in a position where I was working on a project that was very beneficial for me from a mental health standpoint. So I talk about that as far as having that period of reflection, which I eventually did for myself. But the other thing too, that, uh, advise people when I talk to them is. What are your social circles look like? Do you have a plan? Like we talked about that daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, right? Do you have a plan or are you just floundering? And then what do your social circles look like?
44:57
And don’t fall victim of thinking that you’re not blessed and you don’t have gifts and that there’s things out there that are not amazing in your life. Because we get so bogged down with what we don’t have or we get so bogged down with the success that we’re not seeing or we get so bogged down with, you know, like me. I mean, I went through a thousand interviews when I left college after the Marine Corps and I just, I could never land a job.
45:26
You know, I couldn’t land a good career job. And that was another one of those spots, the left and right turn in the road. I can be a victim dude, or I can keep plugging away and do what I know is right. Because at the end of the day, I believe good things happen to good people, especially if you continue to work hard and make those relationships. But I say like, what does your social circles look like? You know, don’t focus on the things you don’t have. Focus on the things that are truly gifts. And when I say social circles, like I’m a very religious spiritual person, a Christian, and I…
45:55
I truly believe in being involved in your church and your faith. And through all the things that you do in life, your friendship is one of the most valuable things that you can have. And friendship drives so much more than just a relationship with another human being. It drives your own personal accountability. Because now that I have you as my friend, I don’t want to let you down, man. I don’t want to fail for you. And it means so much. And even if it’s just one person.
46:25
If it’s just one person, I mean, you could be someone out here who is just a loner. You don’t have anybody you feel like, but if you just got one friend, one friend, that’s enough to help you maintain your accountability and maintain your discipline. And that is a gift from God that you should be thankful for. Um, you know, I’ve been blessed in my life to have several friends and several relationships through the years that I’ve fostered and, and they helped me and they’ve helped me stay on the right track.
46:51
their struggles with PTSD and anxiety and those challenges over the years after leaving the Marine Corps. And I don’t discount them one bit. I don’t discount them one bit. They’re also very valuable and so very important. But like everything else, they take energy to foster, right? Friendship and relationships, they’re not just one way. They’re lifelong, multifaceted, you know, both sides of the fence. And that’s what I love about them is because there’s an accountability element in it where, you know,
47:21
Somebody can do stuff for me and help me, but at the end of the day, my card may be pulled and I may have to help them and I may have to step up to the plate at, you know, whatever the situation may be. No matter how intrusive and how uncomfortable it might be and how much of an inconvenience it may be, you’re in a position now where it’s like, dude, I owe this person. I owe this person maybe even my life because they have given so much to me when I was down and when I needed someone.
47:49
So as far as like that whole assimilation piece, I mean, it’s just not discounting those blessings, you know, making time for self-reflection and developing yourself a plan, not just short term, but long term and really focusing on things that, you know, maybe are tangible and non-tangible. And if you have to make adjustments, make the appropriate ones so that you can fit stuff in where it needs to be and then stay on track.
48:19
Because we see when we transition out of the military. Like you said, you go from this environment where if you don’t have a piece of equipment, men die, to where now you’re driving and there’s some kid that pulls in front of you that’s on his phone, that’s not paying attention, that almost makes you wreck. And you want to follow him in the gas station and rattle him up just to make it. It’s like, do you even see what your repercussions, it affected my life? But we have to be able to pull back, breathe. And once we get acclimated, and you were saying, we need to have a plan.
48:48
You’ve given yourself that grace and that space to say, listen, I feel like I’m floundering now simply because I’m trying to figure out where the hell am I? What do I do? The skill set that served me so well before may not serve me here. So what other gifts do I have? What gifts can I foster? What can I improve on? And then giving yourself that ability to have a buddy of mine that when he got on Marines, like he literally was doing the same thing. He called me up. He’s like, hey, what are you doing today? I already worked out and I already did all my stuff. What are you doing today?
49:17
And in the military, it’s the same way, like where Ackerman is like, you’re here at zero six, we’re doing this after this, after PT, it’s 10 hundred, now we’re doing this. Yes, sir. Everything is regimented, right? Yeah. But when you get out and it’s not, the beauty of it is we start to finally realize we get to be the one that decides what’s the mission, what’s the vision, what’s the objective. But sometimes, let’s be real, most people cannot take a hundred percent freedom. Because that means that it takes a hundred percent accountability. Yeah.
49:46
They would rather give some of that freedom to somebody else to give them a job, give them direction. But until we do that time where we give ourselves that space to figure out, because when you get out, we want to find a job, we want to find a way to do whatever we need to do to support ourselves, our family. But sometimes the question is, man, how do I find peace? What’s my spiritual component look like? What am I willing to admit? That’s the beginning, that’s the foundation. Because until we do that, like you said, it’s very easy for us to kind of skirt all these other things.
50:17
and drive, drive, drive. And we see even the most successful entrepreneurs and leaders out there that that’s what they enjoy. This gives me the dopamine hit, or look, they said I did a great job here, or look, we did this amount of money in the company, and now everybody thinks I’m a great person. But at the end of the day, they’re not really checking their ego and looking at what’s going on. And here’s the thing, all that ugly stuff that we don’t wanna talk about, or we don’t wanna admit or look at, that stuff festers and it comes out anyway. Yep.
50:44
And if we don’t look at it, it usually festers and comes out at the most inconvenient time at a holiday, at an event, at something else that we could have had that introspection and at least begun to just chip away at it a little bit long before that, before it became something that was blows up in everybody’s face. Yeah, for sure. And one of the things you mentioned was like finding that piece. And I mean, I really don’t get this intimate.
51:09
you know, conversations, but man, like you saying that, like find that piece. And through BAS that I’ve struggled with mental health throughout the years, I, uh, I was like a therapist told me one time, I’ve got this grounding technique. Okay. So this, this rock, right. And you can research your grounding techniques. You know, you can learn about this stuff. I mean, walking around outside and your bare feet, you know, meshing yourself with the environment. Some people, that guy, I don’t believe in all that, but dude, I do, man. And, and I’ll tell you, like this, this rock, the simple little rock.
51:38
painted with American flag and we found it on a trip somewhere. My son found it and the thing is just so smooth. The edges are just perfect. The thing is so smooth. It’s beautiful. It almost looks like you go out there and throw this thing across the lake man and skip a hundred times and then it come back to you. You know but he just took this rock and just painted his flag on it man. He gave it to me one day and I was like man I carry this thing you know because I had a therapist tell me he’s like you know you got to think about things that ground you right.
52:08
And if you ever find yourself like in those positions of like fighter flight mentality, because you know, that’s what combat does to you. Right. I mean, it puts you in a position where you’re in a firefighter or you’re in a hide site. I mean, I’ve been there before, man, rounds, you know, flying through the window and, and hitting above your head on the wall behind you two feet away. And it’s just, I mean, just the most atrocious sound, loud cacophony of just hell that you can imagine and immediately your heart and your body’s jolted into this.
52:37
this position of, dude, you got to kill or be killed. You got to move your ass. You got to make some fricking decisions. You got to do it now. And, you know, later on in years, when you struggle through some of those trauma recovery things, you. You’ll find yourself having that same like feeling you’ll find yourself having that same reaction to something that might not even be a deal. I mean, I remember being in college. It was like one of the first times I had a.
53:07
something happened that I didn’t even know like PTSD was a thing. Um, but like I was in college, like in this auditorium, I had to stay and take a test and like, you weren’t allowed to leave the class until like the class was done. It’s like some freshmen bullshit, you know, you weren’t allowed to leave. And like, I got done with my tests and I was just sitting there and like, I was like, fuck me. And like, I’m trapped in here. Like if I leave, like I forfeit my grade, right. And just immediately I went into this
53:35
fight or flight thing, like, dude, I’ve got to kill somebody or run the fuck away from here. And it was overwhelming. And there was no reason for me to feel that way. Like no reason to feel that way. And over the years after dealing with stuff like that and still dealing with stuff like that, it’s like these grounding things, right? Like dude, I’ll go into meetings and take this rock in my pocket, you know, or I’ll go somewhere and just take this rock with me. And if I ever feel a certain way, I just think back and touch this rock. And I’m like,
54:05
Yeah, man, it’s good. It’s good. Things are good. And, you know, I, I mean, I share that story because I think it’s important. And I think a lot of people, well, I mean, let’s just say it for this reason, right? It goes back to the beginning of our conversation, right? Self enlightenment, honesty with oneself, you know, developing yourself. I know even to this day, like what my weaknesses are and what I struggle with. And I have to find ways to try to overcome them. They never go away. And learning.
54:34
certain techniques and following them and practicing them. It helps me. And again, the challenges don’t go away, but it helps. And I offer that, you know, as maybe it’ll implore other people to seek some same help, you know, and try to know that there’s things out there that can help you. You just gotta, you gotta ask, you gotta research and continue that journey. I think that’s powerful. I mean, so much in that. And like you said, that rock around you, but it’s also this physical totem.
55:04
that represents what you want brings you back to this thing. I always say the diversity, the only meaning diversity has is the meaning that we assign it. And so for you, that rock, you assign this to mean grounded. You assign it to mean that experience, that beautiful time with the family. And that’s a powerful thing to bring us back, especially when we’re in the face of chaos because it’s everywhere. And like you said, it doesn’t get easier, but understanding that we have something that can ground us makes the chaos easier.
55:34
because we can come back to it whenever we want.
55:38
and we control it and it’s a choice that we make as opposed to having the choice made for us. And that feels like we don’t have power. Now we’re reacting, but when you have the rock, no matter what happens, man, you’re grounded, you’re good. Bring it, you can handle anything. Man, I love that, that’s powerful. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Hopefully somebody gets a good takeaway from that. It’s the same thing. I mean, and we can make anything a totem, right? You can, I’ve heard some people say that the guy says when he gets home,
56:07
He takes his armor off and when he leaves his keys, like in that little tray and he hears that sound, work’s gone, all the hardship, all the stress is gone. And now he’s here and it’s the family and it’s the kids. And the most important, he says he could be tired as hell when he hits that door. But once those keys hit that and he hears that sound, now he’s here and all of a sudden he’s like Superman for his family again. And it’s crazy what we can do if we attach that, the importance of that meaning.
56:37
And it’s our choice. So like you said, if we look at work, if we look at any of these things and say, man, I don’t want to do this or this is a drudgery, guess what? It will be. Yeah. The way that we see it is everything. For sure. I carry, you know, weapons. So it’s the same thing. Those are physical totems that remind me of this warrior mentality, but also it’s not just a sword, it’s a shield. It’s protecting other people. So we have to have all of those things where these ethos, these beliefs, these core values, they dovetail in a way.
57:06
that allow us to continue to move forward. So when we do one thing, it helps us do all these other things like one domino, that just creates the entire reaction. Yeah. Yeah. And I think like a big thing too that we lose sight on, and I think it’s like first Peter chapter five or something like that. It’s one of my favorites is, it talks about just being alert, being ready, ever ready, being present, being, you know, so reminded as I think the exact phrase.
57:34
You know, because the devil is out there just like a roaring lion, there’s evil out there, prowling the streets, just seeking to devour people. Right. And I look at that piece and it talks about being sober minded. You know, Peter mentions that sobriety can mean a lot of things, right? People look at it and say, well, sobriety just means drinking, right? No, man. I mean, what does your financial life look like? Are you a debt slave? Right. I mean, that transitions you into.
58:03
everything we talked about today as a leader, right? If I’m a debt slave, I cannot be honest with people at work because now I’m gonna do whatever anybody says and does because I have to be here. And if I got fired today, my life would be over, right? Because I’m living paycheck to paycheck, right? So sobriety means a lot, like financials. I mean, talk about all the other stuff. People that battle with pornography, right? Things that poison the mind, right? And the spirit, I mean,
58:32
It’s not just about drinking and it’s not just about doing drugs. I mean, there’s so much other stuff out there that can fall into that bucket of a sober mind than a sober heart. And that goes all back full circle to the honesty of self-reflection and knowing, hey, where do I need to improve? Where do I need to work? Where do I need to make myself better? I mean, because listen, I’m not a perfect person, man. I was sin. I’ve made some poor mistakes and bad decisions in my life, but I try.
59:01
all the time to reevaluate myself and make sure that I’m on the right track and that I am an image to emulate for those around me, my children, my family, my community, people that I work with. And I try my best to give them that character that they deserve, you know, and that God wants me to give them.
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everything. Can you tell us a piece of leadership advice that you make sure that you pass on to your kids? Yeah. I think the number one thing for me from a leadership standpoint, and not to be simplistic, it goes back to the Captain Lloyd statement. A job well done is never, ever finished, man. It’s never done. And you say that statement and you’re just like, ah, that’s it.
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Job well done is never complete. But dude, try it, man. Try it. Anything that you do, try it, try it and see what happens. You will always find. And people might say, Hey, it’s chasing perfection or whatever. And, and you shouldn’t strive for perfection. You shouldn’t strive for that. I don’t, I don’t believe all that. I think there’s nothing wrong with you setting your standard as just excellence. You know, there’s nothing wrong with that.
01:00:21
If your standard is excellence and people know it, then they know what to expect. And my message to my children will be, listen, you’re gonna fail. Life’s gonna kick the shit out of you. There might be a time when you find yourself so depressed, so struggling that you might think about ending your life. I mean, I’ve been in those positions. There’s dark places out there, man. There’s dark places out there that you may find yourself one day, and you gotta…
01:00:51
For lack of better words, pull up the bootstraps and reflect on the fact that this is just one piece in the game and a job well done is never complete. And it’s an evolving thing. Your individual personality, your leadership ability, your successes, your failures in life, it is just a always continually changing environment that you can be down one day.
01:01:17
and on the top of the world and next. And I’ve watched so many men in life, people that I know. I mean, I’ve watched so many people who they get discounted early in life. And then you see a guy, I mean, you can’t count folks out because you see guys all the time that get later in years, moving up into their 50s. And all of a sudden they just hit a damn streak, man. And they just become wealthy and independent and just amazing. It’s like, God, where’d you come up with that idea?
01:01:47
You know, where, where did you get that? What did you, what did you do to become who you are? And then come to find out like, well, shit, man, I floundered around for 40 years, and then I finally figured it out. And it’s like, you can’t discount people. You know, I mean, and that would be my message to my children is that the race is never over. The job well done is never complete. You always have to self reflect and strive and be honest, you know, and try to push yourself farther and further every day. I mean, because the world’s going to tear you up.
01:02:16
It’s going to tear you up and it’s not going to have any remorse for it. It’s going to be about what you do when you fall into circumstances. That’s going to make a difference. I love that. And it’s so true, right? There’s no rewards. There’s no punishments. There are simply repercussions to our preparation or lack thereof. Yep. For sure. And I remember my great uncle, my great uncle was in Vietnam. He was in large units in long range reconnaissance. Yeah. Yep. And I always called him uncle. He was my great uncle. He’s the one that took me out. My parents were divorced and I was eight.
01:02:45
So he was the male role model for me. So he touched first one that took me out, understand markmanship, safety, field craft, hunting, all those things. And all those lessons like that still serves me today. Like it’ll never go away. He’s the one that told me adversity was a gift. We’re out in a tree blind, like freezing around. Well, to me, I was 12. I thought I was freezing. And I look up at him and he’s like this pillar, we’re out there and he’s just sucking on some Joe and looking at the tree line. And I’m out there like shivering. I’m like, aren’t you cold?
01:03:16
I’m cold too, but I’m going to give you the secret. He’s like, you’re focused on the hardship, the cold. You should focus on the purpose, the hunt. Yeah. If you just focus on the cold, if you can’t suffer patiently, Yeah. then by the time a deer comes out, by the time you shoulder that weapon, you’re already behind, you’re probably going to jerk the shot and all this suffering’s for naught. Yeah, 100%. But if you remember why we’re here and you start looking for that tree line, you’re going to see it right when it happens. You’re going to be prepared.
01:03:45
and now you have an opportunity to shoot true. So the choice is ours. How do we see it? Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s incredible what those lessons do. And that’s why I was asking you what the lessons for your kids are because let’s be real. If we don’t teach the kids now in the environments they’re growing up in, they’re never gonna learn it outside of them. And honestly, this is a huge tactical advantage for them if they go somewhere else, like in any environment that they go into.
01:04:11
they can absolutely dominate simply because they’re willing to just keep stepping when everybody else has given up. Totally agree. And man, that’s a whole nother session that we could talk about for two hours. Let me be honest with you. It’s the good one though. I oftentimes tell people like, uh, you got to prepare your children for a world that doesn’t exist yet. You have to forward think, but the pillars of that success for them in our world that doesn’t exist now are just the basic.
01:04:40
things that last forever and continue to develop you. But it’s that environment that doesn’t exist today that we have to prepare them for, but it’s just those pillars, those basic things, making sure that they’re good human beings, making sure that they’re in tune with the environment around them. They’re spiritually centered, they’re grounded. They know what it takes to be successful because we give them an example of what success looks like.
01:05:10
And I think that’s something that’s very powerful. And like I said, probably a whole, whole nother conversation there. Now I think it’s everything though. Once we have these fundamentals, like you said, fundamental of honesty, fundamental of self-discipline, keeping our word to ourself, doing the things we say that we’re going to do, planning something, creating an objective and getting there, that’s everything. And those are the fundamentals upon which anything else can be built. So like you say, if
01:05:38
If you give your kids discipline, that makes them coachable on the little league team, that makes them coachable as a leader, that makes them coachable to lead, that gives them all the things that they need. But if they don’t have that from the beginning, that becomes something that is just going to be a deficiency that they’re going to, okay, we look at business, right? We talk about, oh, we want to scale these things. But these inefficiencies in our life will also scale with us as we develop. So if we don’t
01:06:05
nip them in the bud. If we don’t have the honest assessment and say, this is an area where I’m lacking, as we scale and grow, that gap will grow as well. And all of a sudden, you literally kind of scale yourself either out of business or out of a job or out of a relationship or out of an opportunity that you absolutely should have had simply because you weren’t able to be honest and assess in a way that makes you take action and accountability.
01:06:34
A lot of the stories that you were talking about and suffer patiently, I highly recommend the book to anybody that wants, and this is not just about a book about a sniper. It is, it’s about the process and if you’re into those things, I highly recommend it. But everything that we’ve talked about here, you’re going to hear that inner woven within that it’s baked into this story, his life. And then you’re also able to, you’re doing more speaking now and even like coaching and leadership training. Can people reach out to you? What is the best way for us to reach out to you to be able to get those?
01:07:04
those opportunities with you. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I think the best way to do it, just briancramer.net, briancramer, Cramer with a C, briancramer.net. You can just shoot me an inquiry on my website and I’ll get back to you. And I do, I’ve done some speaking for some nonprofits, a little bit of leadership stuff for local organizations. I’d be more than happy to work with people. It’s definitely a passion of mine.
01:07:28
and sharing some of those intimate stories and close encounters throughout life is what makes all the difference and shares knowledge that, man, I wish people would have told me these stories, and help get me a leg up, so for sure. And you check the book out on Amazon, probably the best way to find it, Amazon. You can just go search stuff for patiently. But reach out to me, please, if you would like on briancramer.net, shoot me a message. Speaking of shooting, there’s a story that you have to read where he takes it out to a grand from standing to show the other guys.
01:07:57
how you do it. And I’m going to make you guys read it. I’m not going to give that away because that is it’s a beautiful leadership lesson, man. It’s powerful. So we have to have it. Thank you, brother. I will talk to you soon. Hey, thanks again for being here. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming out. See ya. Take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
