Ep. 9 - Sergeant Major Brody Bourgeois: United States Marine Corps | Leadership - Miracles in Meat

Episode Transcript
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Music.

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You're listening to the Miracles in Meat Podcast. I'm Shane Thibodeau,
a fourth-generation butcher at one of the oldest meat markets in the world.
My great-grandfather started this business by slaughtering one cow or pig at
a time and selling the cuts door-to-door on horse and buggy.
Today, our products are enjoyed across the globe. I will attempt to give you
some insight as to how we got here and explore the challenges we've had along the way.

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At Bourgeois, our mission is to preserve our heritage generation after generation
through legendary Cajun flavors and the development of relationships, not customers.
Since 1891, Bourgeois has maintained age-old culinary traditions that fuel the
South Louisiana lifestyle.
Over the past 133 years, our Cajun products have gained global recognition,

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and for tens of thousands of
folks around the world, the Bourgeois Cajun Lady logo is a symbol of home.
Today, the fourth-generation butchers sit at the nine-foot maple block with
loyal customers to discuss the adventures, skills, and passions that guide each of their legacies.
These conversations will become priceless resources for future generations of any industry.

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This is our way of maintaining the spirit, purpose, and traditions of our lost
arts in a world of change.
133 years, four generations. We're just getting started.
Music.

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I always cross a thin line Here we go, episode 9.
With my cousin and mentor and United States Marine Corps, Sergeant Major Brody Bourgeois.
Whether he likes it or not, Brody was one of the main reasons that I joined
the Marine Corps back in 2008.
And Brody and his two brothers, Nick and Jason, were huge role models for me.

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And I knew from a young age that when I got older, I just wanted to be like the boys.
There's a saying that you're the combination of the five people you spend the
majority of your time with.
By the end of this episode, you'll understand why I'm very lucky to have Brody
as one of my five. Here we go. Brody Bourgeois.
Brody, what is your earliest memory of bourgeois?

(02:32):
First memory. My earliest memory of bourgeois meat market is running over from
across the street when we were at Popeye's.
Well, let me back up. So my dad, when we were younger, my dad lived in Popeye's little house.
Little rent house there which is where cousin amy
lives right now and we love

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that house so me and my two older brothers when we
were with him we would we obviously played
with all the cousins and everything so my brothers
and the cousins we'd all run across the street to the
bourgeois meat market because back in those days they
would have cows in the pen and we would poke at
the cows house and he's always upsetting on slaughter day

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if we got there right after slaughter day because we
missed our chance to poke at the cows and what you mean poke at
the cows the long sticks pointed sticks and
uh just poking at the cow they in a pen so they can't
do nothing to you so that was before my time
i do remember it i remember the slaughterhouse very vaguely
like i may have one video in my mind of me

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walking walking over there and i remember mr
cleave and that's probably it like
i i think it was me and mr cleve back there and that's the only remember memory
i have of seeing the pin and actually seeing a cow standing over here so for
me it was a mystery after the pin so i remember the pin being filled with cows
and i don't know why i feel like it was thursdays and we were usually at my

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dad's on the weekends which meant.
You know it wasn't common that we'd be able to get there in time because if
we got there on Friday was too late or whatever.
And maybe I got my days wrong, but we come over, we see all the cows.
And then I just knew from there, they slaughtered them and did what they did.
And I didn't know much about it because I never came in to that part of the building.
And so I was always jealous of my oldest brother, Nick, because he got to participate.

(04:24):
He was older. So he got to participate in slaughtering a couple of times.
And I remember him being so impressed with how they would do it and the guys
that were good at it and things like that.
And he described it to me, but to this day, I can't quite picture exactly what
that looked like back there.
Cause it's, you know, we don't slaughter anymore, but that was,
that's my earliest memories is coming over here for that. I always thought that was fun.

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And shoot. I mean, I would imagine Bo probably ran over here with us.
Benson, for those who don't know, is no longer with us. He's in Arkansas now.
We lost him. Yeah, lost Benson. But, and then cousin Scott and then Shanna,
you were a little younger, but I don't know.
I would think obviously Bo probably has, you know, his, his memories are more involved.
But, uh, for that, I remember coming over, that was a big deal.

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The other thing I remember is, is my dad, when we would come over here,
it was almost always after hours.
Uh, we'd come over with my dad if we had to get, you know, whatever supper and,
uh, hopping over the counter, which I always thought was the coolest thing.
Cause that was the only way to get into the, you know, that was how you got in.
And, uh, so to this day, when I hop over that counter, I think of my dad and
I think of when I was little, cause I just think that's a cool thing to do two

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hands on the counter jump jump up put your butt on the counter and then swivel
your legs across together yes yeah same way yep,
That's how I get a drink every now and then, across the, by the drink machine.
Yep. Almost knock over the POS system every time.
Yeah, so Nick worked, Nick, how much older is Nick than you?

(05:53):
So Nick was three years, he was born in 81, I was born in 84.
So he was three years older than me.
So, yep, serious note, Nick is actually no longer with us. He passed away in 2010.
Got in a car accident. And I'm sure we'll get into more of that later for sure.
But he was, man, he must've worked here.

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And I'm just guessing, but I would imagine he was in his early teens,
maybe probably early teens and mid teens.
He worked here a little bit here and there.
And then by, by mid to late teens, I think he had spent, he spent enough time
here that, you know, he knew Karen, Kathy, Kathy real well, Jenny and all.
And I think they all knew him pretty well.
So, you know, I was still younger, but in my, in my mind, they all knew him

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well enough that he He must have worked here for a couple of years before he left for the military.
Yeah. I don't have any time here with Nick. I don't remember any of that.
I remember being here with Bo and Benson. That's really it as far as family goes.
What was your, so I didn't like the beef jerky when I was a kid.
I rather the beef steaks.

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Maybe just mouthfeel, chewability.
What was your favorite as a kid? So first, you're the first.
I didn't know that about you, that I'm the same way. I did not like beef jerky when I was younger.
I didn't dislike it. I just didn't know what the fuss was all about and would
always tell people, I was like, look, I promise you it's very good.
I mean, I don't like it, but it's obviously really good.

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And now I'm older and I get it. It is very good and it's better than anything
else I've had as far as jerky goes.
But growing up, my favorite thing up until very, very recently,
my favorite thing was always the garlic sausage.
And it was take the garlic sausage, put it in, get a frying pan,
fill it with water to just above the, you know, where the garlic sausage,

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like the thickness of the sausage, and then just boil it out,
which was great for somebody like me because it, it meant that's my timer.
That lets me know when it's ready.
And when the water was all boiled out, you knew it was ready,
but then, but then you, you kind of Brown the garlic sausage in the pan and
man, that, that crust that it's just so, so good, just impossible to beat.

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Eat and and really until very recently
that's that's always been my my favorite thing that we make here and
it's still probably it's up
there the only thing is i've now had our jalapeno cheddar smoked
sausage and my wife also is obsessed
with it so therefore that's that's my go-to but
it's it's a special thing we don't we don't make it obviously regular that's a

(08:25):
custom order so for anybody listening i'm always
excited when that gets ordered because that means i get to make a
a little extra for me yeah smoked sausage
man you know we do have a smoked sausage to
talk about yeah smoked sausage and
on dewey the way i explain explain to people
is we have the best smoked sausage

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you'll ever taste but we have the best on dewey that anyone will ever use that's
how i feel about it yeah yeah i've never had an on dewey as good as ours i've
had really great smoked sausages but our andouille is on a different planet
yeah yeah i agree i and i haven't tried a ton.
But the ones I've tried, I'm usually not, you know, I'm not crazy about or,

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or they're, you know, they're okay, but just think ours is so good.
You know, until the last, probably until I started working here full time about,
I guess just over, I guess over three years ago now, but before that I had never
had boudin or hog head cheese from anywhere else.
And so people would always ask if ours is good. I was like, well,
I like it. I'm admittedly biased, but also I've never had anybody else's.

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And so now I travel quite a bit. and when I do, I always, if I can try somebody's
boudin, I don't see hog head cheese much anywhere, but boudin I will try.
I know Lafayette's got plenty of places.
I will always, always, always get some and they do have some good ones,
but I absolutely still very much think ours is my favorite and I just love it.

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Yeah. I'm not, I'm not crazy about boudin. I'm the same way.
I'll try anything anywhere, but I'm not, I'm getting it to try.
I'm not getting it to eat. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm not going to go get a meal of three pounds of food.
Yeah. So how about some family? You're one of how many siblings?
All right. So I'm one of 16.

(10:15):
All right. So here's the rundown. I was born in, so I'm, I've got two older
brothers that are biological brothers.
One's Nick, we've already talked about, and he passed away in 2010.
My other brother, Jason, born in 82, and then I was born in 84.
Our parents divorced when we were younger, and my mom remarried,

(10:41):
and I don't know what year, but I know that some of my earliest memories,
so whatever is the normal age a person has their earliest memories,
that's about when she got married, because I do very vaguely remember the wedding.
And when she got remarried she that introduced
so my stepdad with his two daughters from his
first marriage so that's nicole and monique and so

(11:02):
i say that to say i grew up in my memory i always grew up with you know one
of five it was me nick jason and then nicole monique and you know for them i
imagine it was very different obviously they were older and that comes with
some i'm sure even some challenges but for me it's just they've always been
my brothers and sisters and that's is how it is.
From there, they, my mom and stepdad had three children together.

(11:27):
I think I was seven or eight when they had their first child together.
So that was weird, but it was only weird.
Cause you know, I'd never had a, I was always the youngest baby roadie was what they called me.
And here comes a new baby in town.
Yep. New baby. So Glenn, Natalie and Patrick.
So they had three, three kids back to back. Uh, all are still,

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still here in town, live local.
And then that was, you know, I don't know, I was probably nine,
10, 11 by the time that I had by the time Patrick was born.
And then about that same time, my dad remarried and my dad remarried someone
who also had two children from a previous marriage.
And so but they were also extremely young. So, you know, I've been around their

(12:10):
whole life. I would say, you know, Jonathan and Olivia.
I remember Olivia being born. So, you know, I've known her her whole life.
Jonathan was a little bit older, like maybe two or three, I think.
And I could be off on that, but, uh, you know, he might remember meeting me,
but for the most part, I feel like I've been around his whole life too.
So again, uh, these are all my brothers and sisters.
And then my dad and my step-mom, Miss D had six children together.

(12:34):
And that was starting in the year 2000. And I forget what year Ann was born,
but just to give each other their names, that's Lillian, Rebecca,
Adam, Catherine, Jeffrey, and Ann.
And that's also to prove that they exist. I'm not making that up.
And not to cut you off, but here's something you might not know.
Your stepmom, Ms. D, her actual name is Carrie. Yeah. I didn't know if you knew that.

(13:00):
I didn't know until I was about 30, 31.
So her name came up, her nickname is D, which, so both, so my dad and stepmom
both have nicknames that most people don't know their real names.
I didn't know my dad's real name until I was.
I wasn't a teenager, but I was probably 11 or 12. So right before being a teenager.

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So everybody knows my dad as Biff.
And one day it occurred to me, I knew Biff wasn't his real name,
but one day I realized I don't actually know his real name. Oh, it's Biffy.
It's Mr. Biff. Mr. Biff-ity. And so I asked and found out and come to find out my dad was Lester Jr.
And so I go, okay, cool. And then,

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so that was not too long before he got married, remarried. And so Ms.
D is Carrie Dawn. She was Carrie Dawn Grow.
And I think they had another, maybe another Carrie in the family.
And I could be wrong, but they called her Carrie D.
And that was her nickname growing up. And one day her mom or somebody came home

(14:01):
and it was, hey, what did, you know, how are y'all doing? What did you and Carrie D do today?
And I guess they just tickled them D-Do. They just, something about that stuck.
It was catchy. And so they called her D-Do. that became her
new nickname and then obviously over the years i just got shortened
to d and now you know she she taught it she's
taught at several high schools so she is uh he

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is d and miss d to everybody that's so cool yep so that's her so anyway so yeah
so they had six children together and so the way i always look at it is i say
i always look at it i say this because it's probably it's self-glorifying here
but i call me nick and jason the glue and uh so we got my mom's side of the family,
my dad's side of the family, and I got all my siblings on each side.

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And, but me, Nick and Jason were all extremely close growing up.
Everybody called us the three boys.
I've always, I'm number three, Nick was number one, Jason was number two.
And that's just who we've always been. And I take pride in that.
I absolutely take pride in that as much as, uh, I view, you know,
these all my brothers and sisters, and we're real close, obviously extremely
close with Nick and Jason.

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And, and, and I was, that was great growing up.
And, and we were, we were absolutely inseparable and and i think we're still
you know jason and i are still really close obviously the loss of nick was was
huge but jason and i feel like we're as close as we can be he's uh living in
dallas now but uh he's got he's got kids and all and i know my kids are obsessed
with his kids and i'm always excited when they come to town,

(15:26):
The boys. That's what I knew y'all as. The boys. All of our cousins.
Now, we're one of 40-something first cousins.
Bo knows the exact number. It's like 45 first cousins in the bourgeois family.
And we've always been close. All the cousins have always been close growing up.

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And we'd go to Papa's, watch Saints games, and just you name it,
we were there on a Saturday.
And a very common question
out of my mouth was are the boys going to be there yeah and
that meant nick brody and jason even though
what 75 of us
were boys yeah but the boys were nick brody and

(16:08):
jason and they were the oldest they were the coolest they were
the fastest they were the strongest and we all
just tried to be like the boys and i
remember so who lived on
cartage right here was that uncle donald i think uncle donald
and uncle brian and maybe even uncle john too might have lived
so there was a camp out right here in the back of their house and y'all were

(16:32):
there the boys were there it was probably just y'all me bo and benson maybe
maybe even austin maybe freddie but and scott might have been there so i remember
i don't remember much about.
The night like hanging out i just remember
being woken up in the tent because i
think probably y'all maybe whoever was

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in the other tent like destroyed our tent
in the middle of the night like flipped it upside down or like just crashed
all the poles in and this was all a blur but here's what i remember nick pulled
me out of the tent grabbed my arm and you know i'm i'm I'm probably seven or eight, probably eight,

(17:17):
which would make Nick what? What year were you born? 90.
So Nick would be nine years older than you. So he might've been 16, 17. Okay.
So that's about right. So Nick grabs my arm and he goes, come on,
we got to go to, we got to go to your dad's house was, was the apartment right
here in front of Papa's, which is, I don't know, what's that? A 200 yard run.

(17:40):
Yeah. Not very far. so he grabs my arm
he goes we gotta go to we gotta go to
my dad's house and we ran through the woods
and then the next like i don't know
six or eight you know backyards we're just running through people's backyards
and he was so fast he was the fastest person on the planet and i couldn't keep

(18:03):
up with him and like every four of his steps one of my feet would touch the
ground and I'd get like my next little boost. And I was just like flying like a kite behind him.
And I remember there was a big scary dog,
like threatening to murder us running after us and he did not care and we just
outran the dog and it was it was pitch black it was the scariest moment of my entire life,

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and all but all i wanted to do was keep up and i knew i was good because i was
because i was with nick that's fine so cool that i still remember that so nick
he's five years older than you three three three older than you okay makes sense
and he was the first to join the military Yep.

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So Nick joined and he graduated in 1999 and went straight to the Navy.
And so I guess let me back up just one little thing about Nick.
So Nick was always, you know, awesome older brother.
We were, we were close, of course, like I said. head.
But the thing about Nick is Nick was always, always family, you know,

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being close with family and emphasis on family was always a big thing for him.
But it was for me too, the difference with Nick. And I would say the difference
between Nick versus me and everyone else is that with Nick, he put it into action.
And so just now, when you're telling that story about Nick grabbing you and
running, you know, the first thing I think of is Nick probably was 16 or 17.

(19:32):
And how many 16 or 17 year olds are camping out with eight and nine year olds.
And, you know, maybe it's happening, but, uh, with Nick, that was his, that's what he did.
Nick was always with always hanging out with the, you know, if it's family and
it didn't matter about, about age.
And, and I even remember for me, uh, there was times, you know,
I'd get a little annoyed with, you know, maybe one of the younger cousins or

(19:54):
maybe it was, you know, church kids or something.
And it's like, you know, they're little kids, which whatever,
but I was 14, 15, maybe I was being at a latitude.
I don't know, but Nick didn't at all. And I remember asking him about that and
man, how you, you know, how you, how you good at this, like how you, how you do that.
And he just, and I don't remember what he said, except that it wasn't a,
it wasn't a challenge for him. Like he actually enjoyed that.

(20:16):
It wasn't, it didn't put him out at all. That's, you know, that was his friends.
And it was, again, especially when it came to family, he always included the younger kids.
Uh, you and I talked, I feel like in the last year or two about somebody we know that was similar.
That was always including the younger kids. And it was an older kid that,
you know, could have been cool and too cool to do that, but that was never a thing for Nick.

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And, you know, now, now I'm older and looking back, I think,
you know, that's, that's not a minor thing.
That was a big deal. I appreciate it then, but I really appreciate it now.
It's a mentor, man. Kids don't have like, we had great mentors,
you know, growing up and as long as they're excelling and as long as they're
around and giving you the attention, and you want to be like them, you know?

(21:00):
And if you can reach it, then you can attribute a lot of that success to them
just from being around, you know, being there consistently.
Yeah. A lot of people don't have that. A lot of people don't have a family of 41st cousins.
So it has to come from somewhere else has to come from maybe a coach or a teacher or, you know?

(21:22):
Yeah. So, uh, so anyway, yeah, I always, always looked up to Nick.
He always, you know, obviously included you, he included me and he always included us.
I always felt special around Nick even. So in high school, I went to,
I went to home a Christian for eighth, ninth and 10th grade.
Nick went to, so we all went to St. Francis until seventh grade.

(21:44):
When Nick left St. Francis, he went to Vanderbilt for a year.
Let me get this right. Let me tell you, I just don't know the order,
but I can tell you this. He went to Homer Junior High, Terrebonne,
Vanderbilt, and Homer Christian.
He went to all four of those schools in, what is that?
Eighth, ninth, tenth, so five years.
I know he graduated from Homer Christian. So Vanderbilt may have been his eighth

(22:06):
or eighth and ninth grade years.
But, and that's just cause you know, we were, you know, our parents were sending
us to different schools and ultimately we wound up going to home of Christian,
but that's where he wound up graduating from.
But when I get to home of Christian, it was my eighth, I went there for eighth, ninth and 10th grade.
And so my eighth grade year, I want to say he was there.

(22:26):
And I mean, you know, I'm just, my brother's just the coolest guy in the world
and And he's a senior, you know, so, and I just couldn't have been more,
more blessed to have him as my older brother and there at the,
uh, and obviously Jason was there too.
So I just, that was so cool to me and he had already been there.
They had already been there. So everybody knew him.
So that was, that was a blessing for me. I walk into a situation,

(22:47):
new school. Like I, I went to St. Francis from, you know, pre-K.
So I'm going to home with Christian where there's not a single person that I
went to school with going home with Christian. So I'm not gonna know anybody.
And so that was new for me. and and so showing up there and having my brothers
there was was awesome and and so again there's nick always making sure to involve
me i mean again what what senior is making sure the eighth grader gets to hang

(23:10):
out with his his friends you know,
and so that was great so so anyway nick forget exactly how it started but he
wanted to be a navy seal for sure that's that was like hands down what he wanted to do and.
Joined the Navy. I remember how he talked to the recruiter. He told me,
he talked to the recruiters a certain way, like this is what he said.
And he told me I should do the same thing.

(23:31):
He went to each recruiter and said, so let's say he goes to the army recruiter.
He goes, Hey, why should I join the army? And like, why shouldn't I join the Navy or whatever?
You know, like each one, he had like a question that was specifically,
why should I join you? And not this other one.
And, and I, I think the Navy SEALs he might already known about,
or maybe they told him about it, but bottom line is that is what he wanted to

(23:51):
do. He wanted to be a Navy SEAL.
And so So, so he joined the Navy and he, let's see, was to say 1999, joins the Navy.
He takes the ASVAB and Nick was always a smart person.
I mean, he's not an idiot, but he wasn't like, I don't think he was a straight
A student getting a 36 on his AT, ACTs.

(24:12):
But when he took the ASVAB, which is the test you take to get into the military,
just to kind of for placement purposes, what job you'll have and things like that.
He got a 98 and for those who don't
know at least back then a 99 maybe it's still
like that a 99 is the highest you can get what'd you get me
i got a something in late uh 78 i got like a 68 yeah which is fine if i remember

(24:34):
yeah that's normal that's average is 60s and 70s probably 80s is good i imagine
90s i don't know i mean maybe i've met people now i just don't know but i don't
know know anybody personally that I know right away that's what they got.
So 98 was no small deal. Even he was like, yeah, I don't know how.
And so they offered him, as a result, they offered him a pretty good job and a good benefits thing.

(25:00):
So nuclear engineering was the job specialty he could choose and E3 out of bootcamp,
which is, yeah, like you don't pass that up.
So he didn't pass it up. It wasn't what he wanted to do at all.
It was just, you know, Nick was always good at asking advice from people,
taking counsel. So I'm sure he talked to probably our parents and everything.

(25:20):
And ultimately I was like, look, I know you want to be a SEAL,
but if you take this, you can still do the SEAL thing later.
So that's what he did. Or that's what his plan was.
So he joined the Navy to do that. And then he found out he can get out of that commitment by.
Going to the Naval Academy, which is a next better deal than that.
And he's like, oh, okay. So now I can do the Naval Academy.

(25:41):
That's four years. Oh, it's a six-year contract. So instead of a six-year,
I can do four-year contract, be an officer, and I'll just do SEAL as an officer,
which is, if you know anything about the SEALs, it's a funny way to talk about,
oh, I'll just do it this way.
I'll just be a Navy SEAL commander. Yeah. And so anyway, fast forward,
he gets accepted to the Academy.
And for those who don't know, the way Nick used to say it is to get into of

(26:03):
the Academy, you know, you gotta be pretty smart.
You need to score really well on more than just the ASVAB and all this stuff,
or it helps to have prior military.
And the way Nick, you say it is he's got prior military and that's why I got accepted.
And the reason he would say that is he wasn't one of these people who could
just skate by on his grades. Cause he was super smart.
He absolutely had the log. He had to log his hours. Cause he worked,

(26:24):
I guess some of it was like stuff he couldn't take home.
So he'd clock in and clock out or whatever this, the the library.
And he was logging, I mean, 40, 60, maybe even more hours a week,
just studying in addition to all this stuff, just to, just to get by.
And he did well, obviously he graduated and everything, but while he was there,
he met his, his future wife and he knew he didn't want to be a Navy SEAL and be married.

(26:49):
So wasn't planning on getting married. He was planning on being a Navy SEAL.
God had other plans and it meets his wife while he's there.
His future wife knows he wants wants to marry her. And so he's like,
okay, well, if I can't be a Navy SEAL, obviously I want to be a Marine.
I'm going to be a Marine infantry officer. And so that's what he did.
And that's ultimately what he wound up doing.
Got out and he graduated in 2006 from the Naval Academy, went officer route,

(27:11):
or sorry, went to infantry route in the Marines, married his wife the day of
graduation, which was a pretty neat thing. I got to be part of that.
And so at this point, so it's 2006 so at that point Jason had joined in 2000
he joined the Marine Reserves and then I joined in 2003.
The Marine active duty Marines and so by 2006 I was a,

(27:35):
sergeant when he got married and so I got to go and be a sword bearer at his
wedding which was pretty cool and uh and slap the bride on the on the behind
I got to witness this yeah so neat and I remember the blue angel fly by in the
stadium that's bone chilling if you ever If you're ever anywhere that has the Blue Angels flying, go.
Definitely go and stay. Yep. Agreed. Man, that was cool. Yep.

(28:00):
And so how much of Nick being in the Marines swayed your decision?
Or I guess Nick and Jason joined the Marines.
Yeah, that was a huge, huge reason to join.
At first, I was shocked that they would want to join the military.
I didn't know much about it.
There was reasons I thought I didn't want to do it, but ultimately I wasn't

(28:22):
super interested or serious about it, but it was like, man, but Nick did,
you know, like Nick does it. It's got to be something to that.
And then obviously Jason followed on his heels.
And so, so I gave it, I gave it some pretty serious thought,
but not super, super serious at first, but in 11th and 12th grade,
I got, I started, I left home a Christian and went to be homeschooled.

(28:45):
My dad and step-mom.
Uh, so my step, my dad, that's when they started having their kids.
That's when my dad and step-mom started having their, their six children together
over the next, you know, seven years or whatever.
So when that happened, Ms. D had to leave teaching in order to come home and,
you know, basically they're schooling their children now.
And as a result, then I'm coming home too, which funny, funny thing about that

(29:05):
is I guess somewhere along the way I was under the impression,
you know, I had to make a decision on whether or not I was going to try to finish
out at home a Christian or do I want to go home and do the homeschooling thing?
And I went back and forth on it for a while and ultimately decided,
man, if I get homeschooled, I can get a job, which I really wanted. I wanted a job.
I wound up getting a job while I was homeschooled. And so that,

(29:26):
that's the route I took. And it was, uh, I don't know if it was then or years later or whatever.
I was telling that story to somebody and my dad's just laughing.
He's like, that's, that's very funny to me that you thought you had a choice.
I don't know where I got it from because that certainly makes more sense.
It was not up to me. That's good. Yeah. So, yeah, homeschooled 11th, 12th grade.

(29:48):
And that was important because my American literature class or whatever subject was,
Was probably the thing that pushed me over the edge of joining the military
and without belaboring this too much.
The bottom line is reading all these stories about, you know,
the American Revolutionary War, you know, a lot of the 1800s stuff,

(30:08):
maybe probably not World War I stuff too much.
But, you know, you start to read and you realize there was a time and everybody's heard of this.
You realize there was a time in this country when people would like lie about
their age to to join the military, to go to fight.
And that was that was very
encouraging or inspiring to me

(30:30):
but at the same time i was like man i feel
like we're the opposite now you know we you know this was you
know late like now it's early 2000s so i'm still in high school 2001 and 2 i
guess is when i was you know homeschool so i was just it's like man that was
right after right after 9-11 so so that's obviously fresh in my mind and i'm
just thinking man what a different different time you know, and,

(30:52):
and I couldn't help but think,
should I, you know, should I be one of the people that goes,
you know, should I, should I do that?
And, uh, so I started, started thinking about a lot. I prayed about it.
And that was Nick's thing right away.
He's like, he gave me, I asked him, of course, I asked my dad,
Nick gave me all the reasons that joining the military would be great.
And it's a good thing to do and all, but that's something he absolutely told

(31:14):
me was, but it doesn't matter what I say.
You got to pray about that. You got to see what God has for you you're there.
And if this is what you want to do, then you do it. And it's easy, easy decision.
If he doesn't, well, then that's easy to do, you know, just pray about it and
see what, see how you feel.
And so, so I tried to do that, prayed about it.
Didn't obviously, didn't feel like I didn't hear from God or anything like that,

(31:35):
but started looking around at different stuff. I called, I don't know if I called
colleges or how that worked, looked into going to different colleges.
Uh, nothing really appealed to me.
Talked to the recruiters and did the same thing Nick did.
Went and talked to all the different recruiters. And I guess my take on that
was I watched the Marines.

(31:56):
They didn't seem like they were trying to make a quota. They were okay saying
no or helping somebody to the next door to go talk to the Air Force,
Army, Navy, or whatever.
They were fine with that. That stood out to me. I thought that was cool.
And I think we have a good area.
The recruiters in this area don't have it as hard as maybe some other areas.
Is, but, uh, that stood out to me.
I didn't feel like they were trying to sell me or anything like that,

(32:17):
but ultimately at the end of the day, and I got called out on this later at
the end of the day, the Marine Corps was a no brainer because I couldn't imagine
joining any other branch and always wondering,
well, could I have been a Marine and not knowing, you know, we got the hardest
bootcamp and years later, what I got called out on was, yeah,
how many people joined the Marines for the first three months.

(32:40):
I was like, yeah, that was, that was probably me, but you know,
we're definitely different.
There's more to it now I know about, but at the time, yeah, it was, it was about bootcamp.
It was all about, I want to go through the most, the hardest bootcamp we have.
And you know, that's, I don't know anybody trying to argue that maybe,
maybe somebody would, but it was definitely the hardest.
And from what I've been told. So I was like, all right, well,

(33:02):
Marines is a no brainer if I joined the military.
And, And, and so, uh, so that's what I wound up doing. I, one day I realized
I was checking into colleges and I was like, what if I just stop checking into colleges?
What if I just, I'm just going to do the military thing and just get that ball rolling.
And I knew the ball just never stopped rolling basically. And,
uh, and I'm happy I did. And, uh, it was great.
Obviously just another chance to see Nick at times and both doing the same thing.

(33:28):
Jason and I were in Iraq in 2000. So he left in February of 2005 from his seven-month deployment.
I got there from my deployment in February 2005.
We didn't get to see each other. We had just crossed paths.
But I say that to say Nick and Jason did, if I remember correctly,
got to see each other in country.
No, I'm sorry. He saw one of Nick's friends in country or something like that.

(33:50):
Or something like Nick's the one orchestrated it, of course.
I don't know how. Back then, there was no cell phone. You weren't calling anybody in Iraq.
It was probably a beef jerky drop-off. Yeah. I know Nick used to wholesale.
He would peddle the jerky. Yeah. And Jason.
Yeah, they absolutely wholesale the jerky and did very well.
And many people in Iraq were very happy to have access to that.
So get me straight on this.

(34:11):
Who would send him some? Your dad?
Nick? Or your mom? Who would send him like packs of jerky?
I don't know. And I arranged it. Yeah. But anyway, he would get a shipment.
My dad. My dad would do it. Your dad would send boxes of jerky and beef sticks.
And then the stories I've heard is like, you know, all the guys on base know
about it and then they've had it and will flock around him.

(34:34):
And he was selling them for like 10 bucks a pack or like, you know,
double and making them a little bit of cash. Yeah.
So he, what's funny is he started that.
I'll never forget. He started that when we were kids at gymnastics.
We went to Tardo's gymnastics. I mean, when I say kids, we were kids,
you know, you're a little older than me, but not that much.

(34:55):
But what's so crazy is he would, I remember he charged, I think a quarter more
20, when we were kids, he charged 25 cents more per pack, but he did it enough.
And he was diligent enough.
You know, he might've had 20, 30, which, which by the way, was a small fortune
when you're 11 and 12 years old, 20, 30, 40 bucks that that he saved up over, you know, maybe a year.

(35:17):
And I was like, never saw so much money in my life from selling beef jerky at
a quarter cent, a quarter more per pack.
And you know, he's saving them the trip. So he's probably still coming up on
it. Long in the game by the time he got to Iraq.
So, uh, yeah. So, all right. What was your MOS? Original MOS?
Yeah. My original MOS was tank mechanic, which I joined my step.

(35:40):
So I went to my step-mom and asked, I wanted to be infantry.
That was what Marines do in my mind. Marines are grunts. And so I was going to do infantry thing.
And my step-mom is D is the one who told me, well, you know,
you might want to consider something that's, you know, in case you don't stay
around in the Marine Corps forever, which was a weird thought to me at the time.
Cause I was like, well, of course, in fact, real quick. So when the recruiter,

(36:01):
when I finally signed, the recruiters puts the contract in front of me.
And when you join the military, most people, it's a four year contract.
If you do an active duty, and then there's a four year inactive reserve,
they call it. So you do your four years and then you get out.
And if you don't read the list, you get out and you have four years where you're
on the books, they can call you back up for probably oversimplified way of describing that.
But I'm looking at this thing and I'm having him describe to me what that means.

(36:23):
And he's, he's focusing on the four years. Cause he's thinking,
I'm like, what's this eight year thing.
But I was like, no, where's the, I was going to do 20. And he was like,
yeah, it doesn't work like that.
I absolutely thought I was signing up for a 20-year contract until I saw that thing.
And so, you know, that made my stepmom's advice all the more like,

(36:44):
well, that's probably not going to be important.
And now her advice was, you know, something you can use on the outside.
And Infantries certainly has a great skill set and those guys can do just about
anything, thing, but it doesn't always translate well in a resume.
And so, so anyway, I took her advice. And so I chose combat vehicle repair,
which is basically a mechanic.
And I thought of my uncle, our uncle Brian, because I didn't know any,

(37:06):
I had built houses at this point. I'd helped, helped build houses.
I'd done some carpentry.
I'd done landscaping, maybe a couple of little odds and ends here and there too.
So I liked the idea of knowing a lot about, you know, jack of all trades and
master and none. I was like, I like that. So, but I don't know anything thing about being a mechanic.
So combat vehicle repair was the equivalent to a mechanic in my mind in the
military. So I chose that.

(37:27):
Well, as it turns out, you can become an amphibious assault vehicle mechanic.
You can become a light armored vehicle mechanic, or you can become a tank mechanic.
I think those are the three things that were on the table for me.
And I didn't realize it at the time. I just combat vehicle repair.
Well, I got chosen for a tank mechanic.
A tank mechanic or a tank is a turbine engine, which is what they use in airplanes as a jet engine.

(37:50):
And so to this day, I still know absolutely nothing about zero carryover.
Yeah. No carryover in the civilian side.
And, and so that's what I chose. And, and, or I chose kind of vehicle repair.
The Marine Corps decided to make me a tank mechanic.
Yeah. So join. So let's see, I went to bootcamp in 2003.

(38:10):
Oh, wait, question. So I don't know where Nick was and I don't know where Jason
was, but when you signed or maybe when you made the decision, how'd you tell them?
Uh, I don't remember how I told him. I'm sure it was a big deal though.
I'm sure I called him and let him know.
I do know when I left for bootcamp, we still, we have pictures.
It's probably, it's, it's some of my, they're not good pictures, but it was a fond memory.

(38:32):
Cause it's really one of maybe not even 10 times over the next 10 years that
we were all three together like that.
But the day I left for bootcamp and hindsight, I guess I don't know how it was
middle of summer. Maybe they took leave.
Well, Jason was reserved. So he was probably home for the, since he was,
he wasn't deployed at the time, but Nick would not have been,

(38:52):
he would have been at the Academy.
So he must've found a way to get leave or I don't know how it works there,
but he was there the day I left for bootcamp.
We all went to Chili's in Houma. And I even remember our waitress's name,
not because I remember what she looks like or anything, but her name was Sunshine.
And I've since brought that up with Phil and he said he knows her.
So listen to this. Cool. Hey, I remember you because you have a cool name.

(39:16):
But yeah, that was Chili's and then I left for boot camp. But the three of us
were together and we were acting stupid and took some pictures together and it took off.
But that was obviously a big deal. Three brothers and the three of us,
the three boys, all in the military now.
And Nick didn't know he was going to go Marines yet at that point,
but the three of us wound up being, all three being Marines.

(39:36):
Looking back, if you did it again, would you choose the same MOS?
Probably. I just don't know what else I would choose. Would you have stuck with,
what about one of the other mechanics?
So all my friends were AAV mechanics.
Obviously tank mechanics too, but outside of that, that the people there's people
i still keep in touch with to this day and they're all by,

(39:57):
coincidence aav mechanics so that's the amphibious assault
vehicle which for those who don't know the marine corps no longer has tanks
and so we do have the aavs so that would be a reason to to have that but those
were again that's not anything about the aav mechanics as much as i just happen
to be really good friends with those guys and but no outside of that i guess i just

(40:20):
would look at the big picture and I'm, I couldn't be more again,
blessed with how my, my trajectory went in the Marine Corps and,
and how that all played out. So I wouldn't want to change anything.
I'm, I'm super pleased with where I am and how it's all worked out.
You mentioned, uh, being in Afghanistan, maybe around the same time as, uh, Iraq. Yeah.
And, uh, how did that come to be and how'd you find out when'd you get orders, stuff like that? Yeah.

(40:44):
So found out in 2004, uh, probably, probably shortly after getting to, uh, to, to the fleet.
So go to, go to bootcamp, go to Marine combat training, go to MOS school.
And then I graduated that.
So MOS being my job graduated as a tank mechanic in 2000, or I'm sorry, in March of 2004.

(41:07):
And then straight to Camp Lejeune from there. That's where I got stationed along
with a good friend of mine.
He and I joined on the same day, but he went to, he went to bootcamp on the
West coast. I went on the East coast.
So we joined up at MOS school and then we wound up going to Camp Lejeune together.
I've talked to him kind of recently too. We don't keep in touch quite as much,
but a very good friend of mine, he actually retired recently from the Marines

(41:28):
as a warrant officer, chief warrant officer.
And probably within a couple months of getting there, we find out we're going
to Iraq, which we kind of, kind of everybody knew, you know,
that's how, that's how, that's what was going on back then.
And, you know, it's funny, I didn't know what to expect. The Marine Corps,
all the Marine Corps does is train to, to fight.
Like that's, that is all we do. You know, every Marine a rifleman and,

(41:48):
you know, there's a reason for that.
And we, we absolutely train that way. And so when I, in high school,
when I decided to join, I mean, part of the whole deciding to join was deciding
to be somebody who would die in battle, right?
Like it wasn't a glorified thing. It was, it was literally an objective thought
that I had that, well, you know, I'll die. You know, if I go to Iraq, I'll, I'll die.

(42:09):
And I absolutely thought I was going to die in Iraq, almost like a academic
thing. Like it was like, this is going to happen.
So make sure everything's in order. and not that I didn't care.
It wasn't like I wasn't afraid, but I just, I don't know. It didn't occur to me. You go and come back.
And so that's how naive I was is all.
So I get there and we, we left in February of 2005 with the unit I was with,

(42:34):
which was second maintenance battalion.
We had a general support maintenance company. So we, you know,
it was all the mechanics basically for the, for the different vehicles get there in February.
And when I got there, I realized, oh, this is not at all what I expected.
And so for some people, absolutely it is the way I just described,
you know, and they didn't come back.
But for me, I was inside, I was at TQ, Altacottam for the whole seven months.

(42:56):
I never, I feel like I left the wire one time for one thing.
I didn't even go on convoys and I don't even remember what the thing is that
I left for, but obviously came right back.
I mean, I was in the same two mile radius spot for the whole seven months.
And so So working at this little compound, essentially, this bunker where all the mechanics worked.
So I was safe. In fact, side note, that was 2005. So Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005. I was in Iraq.

(43:24):
I would call home about once a week, I think pretty consistently once a week.
I'd call home, try calling home, couldn't get in touch with anybody at home,
and then find out about this hurricane.
Did you hear about, you know, people ask me, you heard about the hurricane that
hit? And I'm like, well, you know what? I didn't know anything about it.
Well, at the child hall, they would have a TV.
And so I guess at some point I started seeing things on the news there.

(43:46):
And the news tends to sensationalize that stuff. So at first I didn't care.
But once I couldn't get in touch with anybody for a couple of weeks,
and I was getting really concerned.
And so I wrote, and when I went to Nichols a couple of years later,
one of my English classes, I wrote up, I forget why, what the essay was about
or whatever, but I wrote it was called Safe in Iraq or something.
Yeah, good thing you were in Iraq. Yeah, I was safe in Iraq.

(44:08):
Not many people get to say that. Yeah, exactly. So, uh, so I missed Katrina
cause I was over there, but yeah, that was, that was 2005.
And that's the only, it's actually the only deployment I've done,
which is, uh, puts me behind my peer group significantly.
But, uh, I wonder, I'm thinking right now about how our drill instructors deferred because.

(44:29):
My drill instructors, like all of them, all of my drill instructors and all
of my MCT instructors and even schoolhouse, like those are the guys that just
came back from Fallujah And like, oh, two, they were there, oh,
two, oh, three and stuff.
So like, I'm in oh eight. So now they're like, you know, sergeants and staff sergeants.

(44:50):
And I wonder what, you know, there's gotta be a, there's gotta be a mindset
shift just in the era of, of deployment, you know? Yeah.
Yeah. Well, and you know how it is once you got, once you got a deployment under
your belt, you're just, you're just the hottest thing, sliced bread, you know?
Yeah. No matter who you are, what else you've done. Yeah.
All right. So deployed to Iraq and then back to where?

(45:14):
Yeah. So I got back from Iraq in September, went back to Camp Lejeune doing
the same thing. There was no tanks where I was at in Iraq.
So they used me for a collateral duty. So I was in the tool room, which was cool.
I enjoyed it. It's not a very glorified job at all, but I liked it.
I was able to kind of nerd out on organization and things like that because

(45:37):
I was also in charge of some, what we call the pre-expended bins,
all the parts they use to rebuild engines and everything.
I mean, and it got to the point where, you know, they'd come to ask me for a connecting rod.
Well, like I said, I don't know nothing about mechanics stuff.
So to me, a connecting rod was, you know, part number seven,
six, six, five, or whatever.
And they're looking at me. I'm like, is that the seven, six,
six, five or the this? And they're like, you're not serious.

(45:58):
So anyway, that's what I did in Iraq. So when I got back from,
from Iraq, I went straight to the tool room for a few months.
I got promoted to sergeant. So I went as a corporal, got cut back,
promoted the sergeant shortly after and became platoon sergeant for, for this platoon.
And that's where I found kind of my, my wheelhouse, I guess.
And I excelled. I felt like I excelled at that. That's what I enjoyed the tank mechanic stuff.

(46:22):
You know, I didn't get to do much of it in Iraq, any of it in Iraq,
even before that there wasn't a ton of work at second maintenance battalion,
because that's, you know, that's if they couldn't fix it in the field and then
they couldn't fix it at this their little bay,
then they got to send it to 2nd Maine. Well, Marines aren't going to do that.
They're going to fix it. They're going to find a way to make this thing work.
So I did very little tank mechanic stuff.
Once I was platoon sergeant, I realized, you know, I kind of inbred for that.

(46:46):
And I thought I did well and certainly enjoyed it.
And that's how I finished out my active duty years was as a platoon sergeant there at Camp Lejeune.
That was like your first leadership position?
Who was right over you? So right over me, there was a staff sergeant who was
very uninvolved. And I don't mean that in a bad way at all.

(47:08):
Like he was probably more operations side.
So more often than not, who I would answer to from a leadership standpoint or
personnel standpoint, let's put it that way, was a gunning. Gunnery sergeant, little.
Sylvester Little. He goes by Sly. We call him Gunny, obviously.
But he was a very, very large man.
Not little at all. but I learned a ton from him.

(47:30):
There are still things from him that I haven't forgotten that I have used and,
and shared with other people that I think it's helped them too.
He was great. So it was a gunny that I would answer to.
And then his boss was the, our platoon commander and the platoon commander was
also really good in Iraq. I didn't know him that well. He was with us in Iraq.

(47:51):
I didn't know him well out there. Obviously I was just a corporal and he's,
he's got bigger fish to fry type of thing.
But, uh, once I was his platoon sergeant, essentially, obviously he and I spent
more time together and I never once felt like he necessarily liked me or anything
like that, but he, he always treated me extremely like I was just as mature
and professional as they get.
And, and, and just, I really owe a lot to him for, for giving me the opportunity

(48:16):
to fail at times and everything, but he never once held me back.
He let us do our thing and more or less us ran the show as long as things were
going smooth and he let me do that and I appreciated that.
So cool about military experiences, the people that you get to learn from and
you're forced into a lot of those positions and you're also forced into leadership

(48:36):
positions with people you don't necessarily.
Desire leading but you gotta figure out a way to do that you know so before we get into what you
do now with the marines give us like a give us like a rundown on i'm just gonna
say some words that no one knows okay and then you explain how it all works

(48:58):
and what it what it looks like company,
brigade, unit,
platoon, battalion.
Fire team, squad. Tell us what that stuff means.
Because even in my service, I never truly understood.
Part of it is because I wasn't really on a typical Marine Corps base.

(49:20):
Yeah. But I really did. I never understood it, how it really would have looked
like from the top, just because I never studied it. But I know you're super
familiar with that stuff right now.
So let me preface this with this. So in 2018, I was promoted to first sergeant.
That was my previous rank from this one.
And that's when I got real, real serious into everything.

(49:42):
Before that, I was, you know, I was not unserious about it as much as not as
engaged as maybe I should have been.
And I'll readily confess that to people now. And, you know, you were skating is what they call it.
Yeah. Once I got promoted to first sergeant, that absolutely went out the window.
It dug my heels in and we went all in. Well, that's when I started...

(50:07):
You know eating and breathing and drinking marine corps stuff all the more let's put it that way,
so i tried to a lot of this stuff comes up
like the question you just asked has come up and with my wife because she wants
to know as a first sergeant i was a company first sergeant well if i get promoted
to sergeant major one day what does that mean i was like well i'd you know i'd
be like a battalion sergeant major it's like what that you need to know the

(50:27):
difference in a company of a time yeah or if they have to make any sense and
so so i try to teach abby these things my wife and And bless her heart,
she is super proud of me and she's so interested in everything,
but nothing puts her to sleep quicker physically.
She will literally physically, if we're sitting up, it doesn't matter.
She will, you'll watch your eyes just start to glaze over and she will start

(50:50):
falling asleep when I talk about this stuff.
So I'll try to keep it brief. But the point, the main thing is,
is the thing from the ground up.
So you have an individual and I'll oversimplify it. So I'm sure some Marines
will be mad at me about this.
And there's actually been some changes recently, but so there's a,
there's an individual Marine who's going to be part of a fire team,

(51:11):
which is three used to be four people.
And I don't think it's three or maybe that's still evolving for four people. That's a fire team.
Three fire teams make up a squad and four squads make up a platoon.
And if you do the math, you come out to somewhere around 60 people make up a
platoon. Now, when I was a platoon sergeant, we had 80-something people.

(51:32):
Some platoons have 20 people.
So that's not hard and fast rule. Now, when it comes to the infantry side of
the house, which is what everything is based off of, some of that is hard and fast rules.
And you may still have gaps, but ultimately, that's what you're looking at.
But outside the infantry, you're going to use the term fire team,
but that's a corporal over his fire team because he has three,

(51:54):
maybe three Lance corporals or maybe another corporal and two Lance corporals
kind of under his charge, if you will.
And so we call that a fire team, but there's not a machine gunner and rifle.
It's just, it's used as an element, a size element.
And so anyway, so the pride looking at the bigger stuff makes it easier.
And that is again, a platoon of Marines is, you know, let's say 60 to 70 Marines

(52:18):
who all are, you know, working toward a common goal of, you know,
whatever that they work on.
So if it's, if it's a right, a comm platoon, communications platoon,
these are going to be all your radio operators, your radio technicians,
your, you know, the list goes on there.
There's all, there's different types of technicians, all that kind of stuff.
These guys all have very similar jobs, MOSs, and that's their platoon.

(52:44):
Well, you might have a food service platoon. Well, these are all your cooks and everything.
You might have a motor T platoon. That's all your drivers. Well,
maybe you have a mechanic platoon. That's all the guys who work on the trucks that the guys drive.
Well, usually I guess I don't actually know what the hard, fast rule is,
but if it's three or four platoons make up a company, but that's a company,

(53:07):
a company is going to have, you know, from 100 to 200 Marines in it.
Typically that's a company.
And then a battalion is made up of X amount of companies.
So I could tell you, I came from my last unit was infantry side.
I was with one 23. So that's first battalion, 23rd Marine regiment.
So it's the first battalion. So it's a battalion and it had five companies for

(53:28):
what we call four line companies, uh, a weapons company, and then an alpha Bravo,
Charlie company, and then the H and S company.
So that's all your headquarters and service. So that's all your,
that's where your comms going to be your motor T guys.
All the other companies are, it's rifleman. It's just filled with riflemen.
And they might have a, a small, small element of, of some motor T,
some drivers and some radio guys, but ultimately that comes from the H and S company.

(53:50):
So the battalion one 23, I think was 800 Marines or something like that.
So that's, that's a, you know, I don't think that's a, I don't think that's
a large battalion. I think battalion could have up to a thousand or so.
Again, maybe I'm off on that, but, and then a regiment would be the next thing
up from there is made up of, I
think 23rd Marine regiments, probably three battalions if I had to guess.
And then after the regiment, you get to the group level or in the,

(54:16):
the infantry side, us the division.
And so the, the fourth Marine division is made up of, you know,
three regiments or two regiments.
They're always, it's kind of a hybrid now because it's, they rolled this flag and unrolled this one.
So some of that's kind of a hodgepodge now, but, but yeah, so all the way up
to a division and, and I guess cap it off. So I'm in the reserve.

(54:38):
So now that I'm in the reserves, there is Marine forces reserve is the top of the top.
So that's a three-star general, commanding general.
And he has fourth Marine division, which consists of the regiments.
And each regiment has all the battalions. Each battalion has all those companies.
Each company has all those platoons with individuals.
Uh, but he has fourth Marine aircraft wing, which is what I'm part of now.

(55:00):
And that's got, that's massive. That's going to be all your,
all the planes, all the pilots and everything. And those are groups.
So I'm part of Marine air group, which is like the equivalent to a regiment,
but we use the word group on the wing side.
And, uh, and the a group is made up of squadrons and I'm in a squadron,
which is the equivalent of Italian.
And again, it's just different words for the same, you know,

(55:22):
different elements because of what it is.
But anyway, I'll stop there because I don't think it gets more interesting than
that, but that gives you an idea of the size and element of things and what
it all kind of looks like and who, who, who's who in the zoo,
I guess, as far as I guess. And your current billet is what?
So I am the squadron sergeant major for MWSS 473. So that's Marine Wing Support Squadron 473.

(55:46):
And that is a squadron in mag 41, mag 41.
America's mag is massive. It's a, it's a pretty awesome thing.
It's 12 squadrons or something. Maybe I think it's 12, 12 squadrons,
mostly flying squadrons.
So it's going to have your seat, C one thirties, your, your Huey's your F eighteens
and all the, all the birds, all the, all the planes in the different squadrons.

(56:10):
But there's two MWSSs and those are ground support.
So what our squadron does is pretty fascinating to me because I didn't know
it existed prior to getting to this unit a year ago.
And that is they're in charge of, or we're basically involved in any kind of
air support from the ground.
So refueling, rearming, you name it.

(56:32):
But that means also setting up a spot for helicopter to land,
for a jet to land if necessary, which could mean going out, clearing trees,
laying this matting down.
We have engineers, we have surveyors, we got everything. They can go out literally
in the middle of the woods if they had to clear out an area,
make a landing strip out of matting, basically make a landing strip where there used to be nothing.

(56:56):
They could, bird can land, we can refuel it and the bird can go, we can rearm it.
Like that's very cool to me and it's just, it's really impressive and it's not
something I even knew existed. before a year ago.
That's awesome. How often do y'all get in these huge, maybe squadron size elements,
like in a formation where everyone's out there and, and where are you in that formation? mission?

(57:20):
So for in probably the reserves is I would imagine different.
So I haven't been active duty in so long that I'm truly borderline ignorant
on some of the differences as far as that goes.
But I know for our squadron, we get together every year for our annual,
we call it annual training.
So two weeks, if you've ever hear, if you ever hear one week in a month,

(57:42):
two weeks a year in the reserves, the two weeks a year is the annual training we do in the summer.
So I just got home from that last month, uh, last week.
And we had the whole squadron together out at camp Pendleton.
Now there's, you know, we had a bunch of our Marines from one of our companies
had done something else.
So, you know, you're never going to have a hundred percent of everybody,
unless you go on in country actual deploy, but, but we had, you know,

(58:06):
that was a squadron exercise.
We had everybody out there. Uh, we do that at least once a year,
at least for the annual no training.
But this past year we did it for a drill weekend, which was,
I thought was really awesome because we, we have company, we have a company
in Lemoore, California,
which is, you know, it's a five or six hour drive North of San Diego,
which is where the headquarters is, is that, which is where my office would be.

(58:30):
And then we have a company in Fort Worth, Texas, which is, you know,
that's not a drive that we've got to fly those guys out there.
So to get the squadron together for a drill weekend is it's a huge lift,
but we need to be able to do that. Like that's what we trained to do.
Like we trained to be able to move personnel and equipment and gear to one location,
aggregate and conduct training or exercise, whatever it may be.

(58:50):
And we did that this past year. And I thought that was really cool.
And obviously, you know, so where I'm at, I'm watching all of this.
So when I say we, I'm not just being pseudo humble. I don't,
I don't get to do, I don't get to do a lot of the cool stuff anymore.
I am the commanding officers, you know, I'm his tool. I'm a tool in his toolbox
is how I've always considered myself.

(59:12):
Excuse me, the commanding officer of the squadron, you know,
he's, he's the guy in charge. He's the boss. He runs the show.
He is, you know, by Congress slated to, to be the commanding officer of this
squadron. So it's a, it's a legal right.
It's you name it. He's been appointed and he's He's the man.
I am his, I'm an advisor to him and he can use me or not use me as much as he

(59:36):
wants or as little as he wants.
Right now, the community officer I work for is awesome. I've had,
I've actually not had any bad experiences with that, if I'm being honest, like even before now.
And I'm not just saying that. I have heard, obviously, there's times that you
can butt heads with your boss and I'm sure it goes both ways.
My boss right now is, he and I get along great.
I think we think very, very similarly

(59:58):
on a lot of subjects, which is great. What I try to do when I get.
To a new unit now as a, in my position is, is just feel out what the commanding officer wants from me.
If, if he wants to know every single thing that's going on, I'm going to tell
him every, if that's really what he wants to know, I'm going to,
I know every single thing that's going on.

(01:00:19):
I am going to poke my head into everything and I'm going to find out as much
as I can about everything.
My job is to sift through it and give him what he needs.
And most don't want nor need to know every single little thing that's going
on, which is perfect because I get to know that, but I'm not,
I don't have the burden of command.
So I can feed him the information that helps him make decisions.

(01:00:41):
It lets him know what he needs to know, what he wants to know.
And, and that's essentially, that's how I view my job there.
That's how I view what I do.
And then I bring some unique things to the, to the table as far as the enlisted
matters. So, you know, I've been an enlisted man for 21 years.
He's never been an enlisted man, You know, and, and so he absolutely is, is always, always open.

(01:01:03):
And usually they are open to what we had to say on, on enlisted matters.
You know, if it's a personnel issue and, and most, most of the Marines are enlisted
usually because the officers are the, they're the top leadership position.
So by definition, you're not going to have as many of those.
So your, your unit is made up of enlisted guys.
And so that's where I come in with the experience

(01:01:24):
and the time that I've I've been there that I
can just I can help weigh in on a matter weigh in on a
matter in a way that maybe he hadn't thought of or or whatever or I can listen
to what he's thinking and and see well sorry maybe you didn't maybe consider
this too but the reason I say we get along great and we think similarly is he's
got he's got such a wide he's a very diverse background and so he's he'll he'll present

(01:01:47):
something or propose something and kind of run it by me. And I'm like,
yeah, man, it's perfect.
Like feel, don't feel super useful to him yet, but he's a, it's cause he's just,
he's very good and he's smart guy.
And, but yeah, we get along good and he's still.
We'll still go after it together. All right.
So after your active stint, what happened when you came back home?

(01:02:12):
All right. So I got off active duty in 2007.
The reason I got off active duty was because I wanted to get married to my wife, Abby Bourgeois.
Sorry, she was Abby Marlborough at the time. And I'm going to just try to tell this story.
So I got home from the, I got off active duty in 2007,

(01:02:34):
got home and I actually, Abby and I got married about a year and a half,
maybe a year and a few months after I got home, which was a year and a half
too long, according to her, which I appreciate, but she doesn't.
So, but I do want to tell that story because it's kind of cool.
So I proposed to her in, to Abby in October of 2008.

(01:02:56):
I proposed with her, her parents, my parents, all of us.
In fact, both my mom and dad, and obviously my stepmom's the dad.
So we had six, six couples there plus, plus Abby and I, and we had dinner at her mom's.
I proposed with a ring pop because Abby's super frugal. If you don't know her,
or if you, if you know her, that won't surprise you.
So I thought it'd be funny to get a ring pop and propose that way.

(01:03:19):
But I did also kind of weasel out and I had a real ring too,
but that was, that wasn't until later. She said yes with the ring pop.
So to her credit, the next thing that happened was we came up with a date in
February that we thought would work out.
One of the things that was really important to us was having my brother, Nick there.
And Abby was at that point, you know, she knew Nick well enough,

(01:03:40):
or at least knew my relationship with Nick well enough and, and with the family
and all that, you know, that was important to her too. And I always appreciated that.
And so we picked a date in February because Nick was supposed to deploy in March of 2009.
And so we wanted to get married. We didn't want to wait until he got back.
We didn't want to have a long engagement necessarily, but we didn't want to
take any chances of him not being able to be there. So we're like,

(01:04:02):
well, let's do February.
And I don't remember the exact date in February, but that gave us five,
just over five months, maybe right at five months to plan the wedding.
And we didn't want a big wedding, so that was easy.
Well, fast forward a month and a half, maybe two months. It was just before Christmas.
I don't know the exact day. So let's see. I can guess. I can guess it was December 17th or 18th.

(01:04:26):
I know that it was a Thursday and I'm at work and I find out,
oh, and we did nothing up to this point to prepare for the wedding at all.
We had like literally done nothing. I guess maybe Abby probably got her dress
started or maybe not even that. I don't know.
But again, wedding would be be a big wedding and we needed help anyway. So it's a Thursday.

(01:04:47):
The following week, Christmas was going to be on a, I guess a Thursday.
Yep. It was going to be on a Thursday. So it was a week before on a Thursday,
a week before Christmas.
I find out from my brother, Nick, that his deployment is very likely going to get moved to the left.
So he was going to be deploying in late February, maybe even sooner.
He wasn't sure, but he was telling me because he knew about the wedding situation.

(01:05:11):
And, you know, he wasn't really asking us to move it because,
you know, he didn't know his exact thing. He was just letting me know.
But I was in a bit of a panic because of the possibility of him not being able
to come to the wedding. He had already missed pretty much all the siblings' weddings.
And I know he felt bad about that, but it was always, you know,
it was a reason for all of it when like he wanted to be there and everybody
wanted him there, just never quite worked out.

(01:05:32):
So it was really important to me, really important to Abby.
So I was a bit of a of panic. I call Abby, let her know.
Long story short, we're back and forth on the phone. She's talking to her mom,
who's going to obviously be pivotal in arranging it because she has the restaurant
in Houma and whatever. I'm also at work.
I can remember where I was sitting in the truck. I was building houses at the

(01:05:54):
time with some guys I'm friends with.
At one point, back and forth on the phone, trying to figure out what's a better
date that still works for everybody. body, Abby kind of jokingly said,
well, why don't we just get married next Tuesday, which was two days before
Christmas, but whatever.
Tuesday felt like a random arbitrary thing to say in the, in the moment,
if you're just kind of messing around and the random arbitrary response to that

(01:06:18):
for a person with a sense of humor like me is sure.
And then we hung up and she had to, you know, do whatever she was doing and
I was doing whatever I was doing.
Well, maybe 10 minutes later, maybe a little longer. I don't know.
She said, she called me back and Hey, Tuesday works.
Everybody's going to be available for Tuesday. So come to find out at that moment,
she was serious when she brought brought up the Tuesday thing.

(01:06:39):
And also come to find out with her when I said, yes, I was just joking,
but I didn't actually, it's fine with me.
I'm the guy, you know, I don't care. I don't need a year and a half engagement.
I just want to get married.
So it was a Thursday and we were going to be getting married in five days instead of a few months.
And it's funny. I think one of the things she told her mom to kind of convince

(01:07:00):
her mom to be okay with it was mom, we can, we can kind of put this off and
stress about it over the next few months, or we can just stress about it over the next five days.
And at the end of it, Brody and I are still married. So something along those
lines, which I appreciate about my wife and my mother-in-law,
of course, that she agreed.
And so basically what happened was it was two days before Christmas. We got married.
We got married in a church that was completely decorated for Christmas.

(01:07:22):
So it looked great. We didn't have to do anything there.
We got married by a pastor that's been a friend of the family for a long time.
Literally every single one of our friends and family that we would have wanted
to invite was in town for Christmas for the week, you know, for the most part, it wasn't an issue.
There's literally only one person I know that I can think of that we absolutely,
you know, really close friend that we wanted to be there and he couldn't be there.

(01:07:46):
He was, he works offshore, worked offshore at the time and he wasn't available,
but that was it. It was, it was just the one guy and his family was still able
to come, which was great.
His daughter actually videoed it for us, which was awesome. We still have that.
And so, yeah, we have a wedding video. We got married in a nicely decorated church.
And then after had the reception, oh, and had all our friends and family there.

(01:08:07):
Oh, and my wife's bridesmaids, which was like her sister and close friends.
I don't even, I don't even know the full story to this day, but they all had
matching dresses somehow last minute.
And then we went to Abby's mom's restaurant, Cafe Dominique,
now Dominique's Bistro, which is run by our sister now, Dominique.
Steak, but yeah, which is obviously an amazing restaurant and still is.

(01:08:31):
And, you know, couldn't have asked for better. Everybody went over there.
It was everything about it seemed like a wedding that had been planned for,
you know, a year and I got put together in five days because people who knew
their, knew their skill and knew their job and could do it well.
And, and I had the easy part of just showing up and that part of my wife's not
too crazy about, cause I think she had a pretty stressful few days.

(01:08:51):
Certainly the day was pretty rough. I knew she had a lot going on and I had
absolutely nothing going on.
In fact, I had some friends in town and I went hang out with them on that day,
which I'm neither ashamed nor proud of, because I don't think there was anything
I could have helped with. I think she just doesn't like that it was so easy for me.
I always thought that was a pretty cool story. Testament to the kind of woman
that my wife is, which is cool. She's great. She still is.

(01:09:12):
One more little tidbit there is a couple months later, since we didn't have
like an engagement party, I guess, or whatever, couple shower,
I don't know the different terminology,
a close friend of the family on Abby's side had a, had like a,
basically like an engagement party, but we were married at that point at their house.
And it was just a few months later. And I remember the weather was real nice.

(01:09:33):
So I don't remember the exact month, but I want to say we had crawfish and all.
So it was probably crawfish season, but super, super nice.
I couldn't be more appreciative of them doing that for us. It was very nice.
And, you know, kind of weird for me because I'm not used to being that guy,
meaning, you know, the one the party's about type of thing.
Luckily, I was married though. So it was about us, which means it can be about

(01:09:54):
her and that's works perfect.
But what I found out later was while we were there, I had some of my good friends
from high school and grade school come to the thing.
And while there, they talked about, uh, one of, one of my buddies,
uh, Matt Labriere mentioned, or threw out the idea of, of us going on a trip,

(01:10:15):
once a year, all the guys getting together.
Cause at this point we were starting to move, you know, everybody's graduating
college and things like that and moving all over the country.
You know, what if once a year, the, the six or seven of us get together,
just the guys meet up somewhere I think at
the time we were going to Blue Ridge Mountains or maybe maybe the the Smoky
Mountains in Tennessee what if we get together once a year and you know just

(01:10:36):
make that a thing well I don't know if what we thought it would turn into or
what or what his idea was when he brought it up but he proposed that idea at that party in 2009.
Right after Abby and I got married. And we went that year was the first year we got together.
It was about six or seven of us that all went to grade school and or high school

(01:10:56):
together or grew up in the same neighborhood.
And that same group of guys gets together every year to this day since 2009.
So we actually just got back a couple of weeks ago, this time to Colorado.
And we've been all over the place. I've missed some here and there.
I probably missed more than anybody because of the, since I'm in the military
reserve still and a few other things, but, and maybe some of of the other guys

(01:11:16):
have missed one, one or two here and there, but for the most part,
everybody makes it every single year.
And, and that's pretty cool. Uh, we just got back. Colorado was a four day trip
and super nice up there. That was my first time in Colorado.
I've always wanted to go, but anyway, I thought that was pretty cool.
I don't even know if my wife knows that story that, that that was proposed at that, that party.
And that that's a trip that continues to happen to this day.

(01:11:38):
And as a little bit of a conversation every year when it comes,
cause obviously I'm I'm going a lot.
So for me to leave for a whole weekend for a personal reason is not the most,
always the most easily received thing.
But I knew I wanted to marry her and I didn't want to be, I didn't want to be
active duty married knowing I was going to be deploying every,

(01:11:58):
you know, every other year, maybe every three years.
The unit I was with when I got out was already deployed.
They left again. And the only reason I didn't go a second time is the timing.
You know, there's a cutoff date as far as when you in your contract and they
either will or won't take you.
And so I was, my cutoff date was such that I couldn't go to the second deployment.

(01:12:19):
So I didn't go and got off, but I never really wanted that.
I knew I wanted to raise a family and I wanted to raise a family where I was home.
And, and I, and again, I knew that's how Nick was and Nick was absolutely involved in that decision.
And he was like, yeah, I think, you know, I get it. And that was where he was.
And he was just, since his plans had kind of changed with going Marine route
and going to officer route, and now he's getting married and he's like,

(01:12:41):
well, you know, he's just kind of playing it by ear at that point.
I shouldn't say playing it by ear as much as like having, he had to call some
audibles on the way, but ultimately, you know, his, his goal was always as far
as I knew was, was to finish this obligation out basically. And, and then come home.
And so when I came home in 2007, I knew I wanted to get married to Abby.
So I proposed to her, A couple months after getting back, I was living in the

(01:13:06):
apartment I grew up in that we talked about earlier that my dad lived in, renting from Pawpaw.
Right here across the street. Yep. Yep. Right across the street.
And I would come over here. Oh, and I was going to, I don't think I was going to Nichols yet.
I started working for the, I started building houses with some friends of mine
that were building, they were contractors and I worked for them for a little while.

(01:13:28):
Then I worked for the same guy I worked for in high school building houses,
worked for him for a little while.
And then I also worked at Vita Paint in Houma, which is where my dad has worked
my entire life, which was just some of the best years of my life.
I'd never thoroughly enjoyed the work at the paint store.
It was, you know, nothing about the place that was the work that was great.
It was just obviously spending all that time with my dad each and every day

(01:13:51):
was absolute highlight of my life.
And, you know, there was a point at which I realized, you know, my dad's around a lot.
He's not, he doesn't travel or anything, but you know, he works a set,
he worked a seven to five. So he was, he was going a lot as far as that goes.
And so at one point I realized I was like, man, I'm around my dad more than
probably any of my brothers and sisters I've ever got to be around them our
whole lives. So that was such a treat.

(01:14:12):
And man, I still sometimes wonder, I was like, man, should I have just stayed there?
You know, and I enjoyed it and I don't now, like I guess I know I'm doing what
I think God wants me to do, but that was, those were very treasured years for sure.
And so I left there to go to Nichols.
No, I shouldn't say I left there. I didn't leave there, I guess,

(01:14:35):
until I got a job doing physical therapy.
I went to Nichols. The only reason I went to school was because I had the GI
bill. So once again, Ms. D enters- Got to get that paper. Yeah.
Ms. D enters the equation with her wisdom and it was wise.
And she's like, well, because I was like, I enjoy building houses and that's
kind of what I was thinking of doing.

(01:14:55):
I enjoyed, obviously, when I was at the paint store and I was like,
either one of those is fine.
And he's like, but you do have the GI bill available and you might,
it might be wise to, you know, I had some back problems, nothing too serious,
but you know, what if it gets really bad? Now, what are you going to do?
So maybe, maybe having something to fall back on is not a bad idea and you can go get a degree.
So I decided to do that. I went to, at first I wanted to go athletic training.

(01:15:21):
So because it, Oh, I just looked at, okay, what are the options? What can can I major in?
I just, it has to be something interesting because I don't want,
I don't need, I don't need it. I don't want it.
And, but science was always cool to me. Like biology and physiology is always neat. Kinesiology.
And so I saw athletic training was a lot of the prereqs were stuff like that.
So chose that and went to Nichols with athletic training degree in mind.

(01:15:46):
Excuse me. Well, by the end of my first year there, I got to talking to my brother-in-law.
He must've brought up with me that he's a physical therapist and he said,
he's like, well, you know, you could
consider going, becoming a physical therapist or even a PT assistant.
He said, he's like, because it's a lot of the same stuff that you're looking
at now, but you could, he's like, you could get a associate's degree in a PT

(01:16:08):
as a PT assistant and you could start work sooner as that.
And I think you'd enjoy it. And then by the way, if you want to own a clinic,
you could, you know, you would need a therapist to, to be the supervising therapist
of the care, but that's a, that has to do with patient care.
It's not, doesn't have to do with the, you know, you could, in other words,
like the sky's your limit, you know?
So I was like, well, that's, that sounds awesome. I wasn't crazy about some

(01:16:29):
of the athletic training stuff. So I was like, okay.
Pull the trigger and just shifted. All my prereqs went toward it. So it was an easy shift.
I might have done one or two classes more than I had to and missed one or two,
but I took care of that in a semester.
So wound up going, becoming a physical therapist assistant. So I went to Nichols
for a year, year and a half.
And then I went to Delgado for their PTA program, which at the time was,

(01:16:50):
excuse me, was a fall, spring, summer semester, three consecutive semesters.
So almost like right exactly a year.
As long as you had your prereqs done, you go to the PTA program,
you come out with an associate in applied sciences and a PTA.
So I did that. And while I was doing that, I can remember just to bring Nick
back up again and to bring up this market because it all comes full circle.

(01:17:13):
Nick and I had a conversation while I was living in the apartment across the street.
And it was about him getting out. When he gets out, he's coming to work at the market.
That's what he was coming to do. It was what everybody knew that's what Nick
was going to do. In fact, there was times we didn't know, you know,
we probably just didn't ask Bo, like, Bo, you're going to, you know,
what's the plan, you know, when your dad retires?

(01:17:33):
And Nick was like, well, if nobody else wants it, he's like, I'll have it.
But Nick was also like, I don't care who owns it. Nick's like,
I want to work it. I'm working at the market. And that's what he was going to do.
And I was like, well, you work at the market. I'm working at the market,
period. Like that's happening.
We'll find an owner later. Well, yeah.
I just remember thinking, all right, I guess I'm working at the market one day.

(01:17:56):
And that was another reason to like get the degree, get all that done.
Cause eventually Nick's coming home and no matter how good a job I have at the
time, which I went on to have a very good, you know, physical therapy was an awesome job.
Like I, and I still love it, but I remember thinking like, okay,
I guess I'm gonna work at the market one day.
And cause I mean, as much as I enjoyed working with my dad, the big thing,

(01:18:18):
and that was probably what we talked about.
I was like, well, look, if you and I are working at the market,
obviously daddy's got to come work at the market.
Because we want to get daddy back in the market. And so, you know,
we're just scheming, plotting basically.
And so that was, that was probably one of our last conversations.
I don't know for sure that that was the last conversation, but sometimes I wonder,
because I remember where I was at and I don't know that we talked again after

(01:18:41):
that. Cause I was, you know, maybe not quite a month before he died.
So I was living in the apartment still going to, I must've been,
I guess I was not at Nichols at the time.
I must've been going to Delgado at that point because I was finishing,
I knew I was going to do physical therapy at that point.
And so that's what it did. And Nick at the time, so this was probably,
this must've been 2010. And I think he was going to be getting out in 2012.

(01:19:05):
So I remember thinking that'll be enough time for me to get into the therapy
thing, figure it all out.
And then he comes and I don't have to leave right away. Let him figure this
out. So even if that's a year or two, I'm married at this point.
Abby and I got married in 2008.
And so I knew, you know, I had, I had some time, but I was like, I'm doing it.
Like, and I was, you know, I knew I'd be happy to do it. Obviously,

(01:19:26):
uh, just the thought of Nick coming home was, had me pumped.
And so, yeah, that was always the plan. And then 2010, Nick gets in a car accident.
So he was leaving, he was leaving Virginia, driving across country in a,
in a big moving truck and he had a blowout and it flipped over and it,
and it was a, it was a terrible crash. It was a five, I think I heard,

(01:19:47):
I think it was five people died in that accident.
It was somewhere in Arizona, you know, super sad, you know, it's been 14 years
now, so I can talk about it. It was devastating.
I was, I will readily admit I was, I was absolutely devastated.
I had never experienced death like that before. So that was a new experience
and I'll never want to experience it again, but I know it's,
I know it's part of, part of being here.

(01:20:09):
And so that was an eye-opening experience.
But, you know, Nick and I were super close. We had only gotten closer over the
years because we didn't get to see each other as much.
So, you know, that works. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.
Nick had written letters to me and Jason on multiple occasions because Nick
would write a lot of letters.
But I mean, there was even times where he would just take time to write a very

(01:20:31):
serious and pretty intimate letter to each of us.
I mean, just Sue, always such a thoughtful guy, always sacrificed so much of his time.
And so when that happened, it was just like, man, I can't believe it.
And so I was living in that apartment across the street.
His wife moved down here and she, uh, with her two kids, cause she knew Nick

(01:20:52):
wanted to raise the boys in Shrever.
And, and so that's why she moved down here. I'm Abby and I moved to Homa at
a house we had just bought from her mom that we were going to fix up.
Like, I think we might've been planning to live there, but ultimately it was
like, I I want to fix, I like fixing up stuff. So I was like,
let's fix it up and sell it or whatever.
Well, we had just bought it, still needed to be fixed up. And now we needed

(01:21:13):
to get out of it quick. So Miranda would have a place to live.
And so, so that was the plan or that's what we did.
And yeah, when we moved into that house in Houma, we didn't have a shower.
We didn't have anything. It was, it was an office building before.
And I knew I was handy, but it was a lot of stuff.

(01:21:35):
I five years just getting that house into a state where it wasn't like under
construction. And then we moved out as soon as I was done with that.
Same thing you're going to do with this house. Same thing I'm doing now,
which we definitely don't have time for.
Well, we might, but yeah. So that's a thing of mine. That's what I do.
But yeah, so we moved out of that house in 2015.

(01:21:56):
But anyway, I'm kind of fast forwarding there. So,
Yeah. So I went to, finished up, finished up at Delgado. Abby and I are married at this point.
And she is a nurse. She was working at Ochsner in New Orleans.
She loved, loved what she did.
I loved physical therapy. It was a lot, it was a lot of fun.
I was working at Chabert and it was great.

(01:22:17):
When, I don't remember what year, maybe like 2011, maybe 12,
but I think it was before that.
Abby started working at Chabert too. So that was just awesome.
She worked at the, in the recovery, the post-surgery recovery area.
And I worked in the rehab department. So I mean, yeah, my wife being the,
at the same hospital I worked at, I was like, this is awesome.
You know, it was just, just couldn't ask for better.

(01:22:38):
And you know, it was, it was, I enjoyed the work itself. My boss there was great,
but I always wanted to do home health therapy.
And so after I was there for a year, I knew I was eligible to do home health.
And I guess I was there for two years before I took the plunge into home health
and home health's great because it was all the the same stuff as I was doing.
It's still, still therapy, but the scheduling was flexible.

(01:22:59):
And, and that was, that was what I did for the next 10, 10 years,
I think right at 10 years before I came to talk to you guys.
But yeah. And you're still, you're still at, you're still active.
You still have a license. Yeah. You can practice.
Yep. Yeah. I keep my license up. So, and I'll work for, I worked as funny.
I worked for two hospitals and two home health companies.

(01:23:19):
So, and I was in the reserves. So I always joke saying I had five jobs,
which I'll, you know, So it was five places that I worked for,
I guess, but still sounds better to say five jobs.
But also there was times where I know you and certainly Benson would wonder like, what do you do?
Cause I was always available at the job of a hat.

(01:23:40):
I was seldom, not seldom working, I shouldn't say that, but I could,
you know, I could shape my own schedule essentially. So it was nice.
And you know, there's different kinds of people in this world when it comes to work.
I like working. I think I have a good work ethic and all that,
but I love my family too. I want to spend time with my family.
I want to be able to be around my kids.

(01:24:01):
And if I can work 50, 60 hours a week and make a bunch of money,
or I can work 30 hours a week and make just what we need, there's benefit to having that money.
And maybe there's been times where I should have done that and didn't.
So I'm not saying that's the way to go.
But for me, by and large, I've worked what we need to get by so that I can be
at home and helping where know, raise the kids. We started having kids in 2012.

(01:24:24):
So that was, uh, right when I started home health. And that's when Abby shortly
after she stopped working at shop air and she stayed home with kids.
And so that's always been how I am. And obviously I get that from Nick,
you know, that was something I learned from Nick and, and my own parents,
of course, but it's been, you know, home health and physical therapy and the

(01:24:46):
Marine Corps, all this stuff has, has made it possible for me to be that way.
And I'm super thankful for that.
And that's why I say, I certainly wouldn't change any of it.
So you started having kids in 2012 and you had four in four years?
Yeah, five, 2016.
Yeah, I guess four years. So they're not each only a year apart though, but they are close.

(01:25:08):
So they're each a year to a year and a half apart.
Yeah. They're a handful. So we got our daughter first and she absolutely did
not prepare us for the boys specifically. She was too good.

(01:25:28):
Yeah. She was like, I say it and I don't know if people think I'm just,
if I'm lying or I think I'm exaggerating, I'm not.
She was health. She wasn't just not hard as a child, like a baby.
She was helpful as early as year old.
So I should say 14 months old, because that's when Charles came around,
our boy, our first boy. So it's our second child.

(01:25:50):
And anybody who has kids knows that, you know, it's like the fog of war,
the friction of war, the simple things are hard and hard things are seemingly impossible.
And so just changing a diaper is kind of like, can be a challenge when you have,
you know, two very young kids.
Well, when one of those is a 14 month old who will walk and go grab the diaper
and the wipes for you, That's amazing.

(01:26:11):
Like you cherish that. And it's like, man, thank you so much.
So that was, that's Isabel. That's how she's always been.
And, and she's great. And she's still awesome. She's just turned 12 the other
couple of days ago, but you know, the boys are great, but they're not like that.
I make no qualms about it. They're not that helpful.
So they're certainly awesome and getting better.

(01:26:32):
And that's always a goal of ours to teach them how to work. But yeah,
that was, that was how I was introducing the parenting.
And then, and then Charles came around and he was just the typical,
constantly suicidal child, right? Full speed.
You had to keep your eye on. Yeah.
Yeah, I remember going to your house one time for maybe Christmas or Thanksgiving,
and, you know, the kids are like, look up in the tree.

(01:26:54):
And I look up in the tree, and like 40 feet up in the tree is one of your kids. And I'm like, holy crap.
Like a young kid, you know. Yeah, he was probably very young.
It was probably four. But it wasn't Charles. It was another one. Oh, goodness. Yeah.
I'm like, that's too high. And then I look up again, higher than him, at like 80 feet.

(01:27:18):
And Charles is like the very tip-top branch.
The tip branch.
But stuff like that has never surprised me.
Anywhere around y'all or at your dad's house, I know it's always going to be
some shenanigans and it's always going to be something fun or an injury.

(01:27:38):
I remember growing up, Meemaw.
So, Pawpaw's wife, Rita. Maumau. Maumau. Yep.
I don't know where that... We call her Maumau. We called her Meemaw.
We're the only ones, me and my two brothers. Yeah, y'all probably started that.
But anyway, I remember anytime something like that was going on,
where they had to do some work high in a tree, anytime something dangerous was

(01:28:01):
going on with Pawpaw and her boys, our uncles, she right away, going inside.
She threw her hands up. I'm going inside. She didn't want to see it.
And I always thought, you know, that's, that's women, you know,
and here I am now it's like, there's times where I want to watch what this boy is doing.
I don't want to stop it, but I don't want to stop what he's doing.
Like that's, that would be wrong, but I do not want to see this.

(01:28:23):
And yeah, he's had times. He's had times where I forget if he was balancing
on top of a big medicine ball or what, and just boom, hits his head so hard when he was,
you know, maybe two or three years old crying and abby's
consoling them and just trying to make them feel better and like you know you
should be careful and he's like he finally gets over i'm gonna try again
and he runs back to her she's like no so yeah that's them all right let's get

(01:28:47):
into the transition from or to to this place you had had some i don't know something
in you was was saying that you needed to work here at at some point in your
life and now you're here.
And so do you remember any of that stuff before it happened?
Yeah, I do. So it was after COVID, which probably played a part.

(01:29:13):
So like I said, I was working for two hospitals and two home health companies
doing physical therapy.
And loved it. Loved those jobs. It gave me the, and that's why I was able to be flexible.
So number one, home health is flexible, but number two, I'm not a full-time
employee with any of those people.
So if I need to take off to go, so I'm in the reserve.
So if I need to take off for two weeks, which these companies all would work
with me and they were, obviously that was not an issue, but I would still feel

(01:29:36):
bad. Somebody has to pick up my patient load when I'm out.
So when I went home health and when I went working for all these different companies,
I decided to be part-time with all of them.
That means if I take off for two weeks, each place has to pick up a little bit
of patient load, but not a bunch. So it's really easy on them.
But when I'm there, I can pick up as much as I want.
So I could literally have more than I could handle if I wanted,

(01:29:58):
or I could have nothing. I could literally just, we can go vacation.
So that was really, really nice.
The downside, which is maybe a small downside in hindsight, but always had in
the back of my mind, the conversation with Nick. And that is,
you know, Nick always wanted to work here.
I had worked here a little bit growing up, like temporarily for a week or two
here and there and never really got to get my foot in the door.
And so I was like, I did always, it always had an appeal. I wanted to work at the family business.

(01:30:22):
And so work started getting slow, real slow after COVID obviously.
And it was picking up a little bit. I want to say it was, it must've been,
it was February. So it was years, just almost a year after COVID had started.
And it had started picking up a little bit, but not, it was not enough that
I didn't have to worry about anything.
So I was like, ah, maybe, maybe I should start looking looking around for something.

(01:30:44):
And I was, I was going to look around at different therapy jobs,
but that's when I was like, maybe I should come talk to y'all.
Maybe y'all could use me. Maybe now's the time, a good excuse to come here.
And so the big plus to working here, aside from just the appeal and that I already
mentioned, as far as being part of the family business is my children, my children,
and not only my children, my wife, I could have my wife come to work with me

(01:31:07):
again one day, you know, and the kids were still, you know, three years ago,
they're, they're young now, but they were even younger three years ago.
And, but in five years, they can't really come with me to see a patient,
you know, and there's ways to incorporate them a little bit.
And ultimately, if I'm home more sure, but here I was like, man,
I could work a normal seven to five here, but my kids could be here one day.

(01:31:29):
My wife could be here and I don't need to go home at all.
If that's the case, you know, not that I don't want to go home,
but I'm going home to be with family. Like that's why I'm there.
And so that was, that was really the justification behind, let me come see.
Cause I also knew we'd be open in a second location in the coming,
you know, year or two or three.

(01:31:50):
And so I was like, now might be the best time to try to get my foot in the door.
Because if I wait till after the split, nobody knows what that's going to look
like. And so I came to talk to you and Bo and you guys were,
you had just had a position open on the table, the butcher table.
And I remember when y'all talked to me about different things,

(01:32:12):
I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I didn't, I didn't know enough about who does what, you know,
in my, in my childhood, like everybody did everything, but now things have gotten
a little more like, well, back house, front house, and that's fine.
But I didn't know that I didn't fully understand all this.
I was just coming to say, you know, could y'all use an extra hand type of thing?
And I'll never forget y'all were thinking of, y'all were thinking of some different

(01:32:32):
things for me that I might've been a good fit for.
And that y'all thought would be, would probably be best for me too.
And maybe even paid, you know, better pay in position or whatever, better hours.
And I remember you said something about the table and, and it wasn't the,
the best sounding position, you know, throughout there, the best sounding thing,
but also I didn't know what it was.
So I was like, what, like what table, maybe he's talking about it.
Are they, are we going to have like the new place? Is there gonna be a place

(01:32:54):
for people to sit down and eat? Like what's, what's the table? You know, waiter.
And I just, I just let you, you know, y'all talking, y'all said your thing. And I almost didn't ask.
And I was like, once I had a chance to ask, I was like, what is the table?
Like, what are you talking about? And you said, well, the butcher table.
And I was like, oh, we don't need to talk about anything else.
That's exactly what I want to do. That's, you know, I want to do something I

(01:33:17):
like. So why, why the butcher table? What was the appeal?
So I don't know, other than, I mean, other than even now, I think butcher table is fun.
I like what we do on the table. There was some more stuff brought up after I
said that, that I found out, oh, well, it's even cooler than I thought.
And I'll say that in a second. But growing up, when I would help out here, it was vacuum packing.

(01:33:37):
Or maybe clean up something in the back. But there was once or twice,
maybe three times, where they needed me to bring something up to the front.
Carry something heavy. Throwing a quarter on my shoulder or even just a big
gooseneck and bringing that up front, throwing that on the table.
And just seeing it up there, this is where it's at. This is where they're cutting

(01:33:58):
up. They're always cutting up. Not get back to the back. Exactly.
They're always goofing off.
One time I got to cut up some fat, which you would think you can't do wrong.
I did it wrong. Jenny let me know. and, uh, just show the right way.
And, but yeah, being up here was, was always, it was always neat.
Obviously this is where I got to watch pawpaw, you know, thrive essentially
with customers and, and all.

(01:34:19):
So yeah, I just always thought if I was going to be here, that would be probably
very enjoyable and, and it, and it has been. So that's what I'll, that's what I clung to.
And, and then, you know, you made the comment too, that look,
nothing, nothing leaves that door. That's not been on that butcher table.
Like anything we make here is like, it starts here, there on that table.

(01:34:41):
And that was a cool concept to me.
And then, you know, every now and then you you'll cook something up here and
you brought that up and you said, and look, the guys in the back don't always
get to taste what we cook.
People in the front get first dibs. And, uh, and so I've spent three years trying
to make sure they do not get the taste we make up here cooking for ourselves.
Should y'all doing something right now. Yeah, y'all got work to do back there.

(01:35:04):
The butcher table is different, man.
It's its own business. It is. I'll never forget loading up.
So back then we were doing 14, 12 to 14 and sometimes 16 cases of shoulders
to make a big old huge pot of boudin and the amount of shoulders that is on that table.
I thought, I mean, because Bo's a funny guy. I was like, is he just messing?

(01:35:28):
Like, is he messing with me? Like, this is what they do? And just load it up.
And yeah, it's just another day.
What was, what was hard about the change or once it's, once it started,
what was, what was challenging?
So this, this schedule, the schedule was the hard thing going from make them

(01:35:48):
own schedule to, Hey, we're open for seven to five.
And we rely on you at this time.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that, uh, was so cool about therapy,
even more than just flexible scheduling is growing up.
I never had breakfast with my family.
Like we, we, we ate together, we had dinner together and all, but breakfast.
Was, you know, mornings are you wake up, you go to school or whatever you were doing.

(01:36:12):
And I'll never forget my brother-in-law, the one who talked to me about therapy
visiting, he, they live in Florida and I visited them and they were,
and I was, I was on vacation, but you know, that's where they live.
So he's just, he's just getting up and going to work.
And I'll never forget his job. He was maybe doing home health at the time or
whatever, but you know, he didn't have to leave super early and they had breakfast
together as a family. And I was like, dude, this is so cool.

(01:36:33):
Next level. Yeah. And this is before I was married or maybe not before I was married,
before we had kids and so being able
to have breakfast together every morning was that was
awesome as doing therapy so coming here i was like well
we get not only get started at seven like we open at seven but like on the table
we're we're hanging sausage we're making sausage making ground meat and you
know now fast forward three years the amount of people i've had to tell who

(01:36:56):
if we wanted to hire somebody's like look just don't be late because you could
leave at lunch why don't you not come back? And I'd be upset with you,
but you wouldn't have ruined the day.
But if you, if you show up at seven 38 o'clock, you've missed what I hired you for or whatever.
That's when we get our, that's where the bread and butter is made here is a
first thing in the morning. And so, so that was just, that was a learning curve for sure. And, and.

(01:37:19):
But, you know, now the kid, you know, it's been a couple of years now and the
kids are, like I said, they're so young, but you know, you'll,
you'll see them in here now, especially on Saturdays. I have the kids come with me.
They are absolutely elated to come.
They love it. And I know that may not last forever, but I'm going to milk it
as long as I can and do the best I can to have them continue to enjoy.

(01:37:40):
What will they remember? You know, what are they going to remember?
Like when they're 30? Yeah.
Right now, the big thing is the tips they get. they're so
appreciative of tips you gotta remember the tips and they absolutely bragged
to each other about you got tips as a kid i don't
remember getting tips i remember i remember a little while i would stand right
there by where the hot box is or that didn't exist but i'd stand right by the

(01:38:02):
door and i would wait for those old ladies that had a big brown bag and i would
just grab it for him and walk it to the car and sometimes i got a got a bill
out which which is awesome so So Charles,
as rambunctious as he is, he did that a couple, I guess it's been a couple months
ago now. It was a rainy day.
And the kids do help bag, which is a help.

(01:38:23):
They're a small help, but they're a help. And more and more,
what they can do here is cool. It's like, wow, that's pretty helpful.
But this one particular day, and the people tip because they're being nice.
And we appreciate that. But the kids do too.
But this one day, Charles took
it on himself to do kind of what you just said. It was a little rainy.
No one told him to do it. No, I never told him that. Yeah, that's cool.

(01:38:44):
And I was so proud of that. And of course he raked it in that day and,
you know, he earned it. Absolutely.
So I thought that was cool. All right. So, so,
You kind of broached the topic of the transition and getting back here and the butcher table.
Talk a little bit more about that. Like, what did you remember?
How was it different than you expected? Say whenever, you know,

(01:39:06):
your first couple of days loading
up the smoker for smoked sausage and actually the operations of it.
That's a good question. So I guess some of the things that stood out,
stand out the most when I think of just unexpected expected challenges were
mostly, you know, personal coming from doing what I was doing for so long,
doing home health, physical therapy, and as, as a PT assistant and,

(01:39:28):
and all was coming to work at a place that had a, you know, had store hours
also being low man on the totem pole. That was, that was weird.
Not that I'm, I was high man, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't in a position of
leadership or anything in therapy, but I'd been there for years.
And then just like that, I show up somewhere and I'm definitely,

(01:39:49):
you know, I don't know much at all.
So that was, that was a new experience that obviously everybody experiences,
but it'd been a long time for me.
I was shoot. That was, you know, I was 36, I guess, 37 something.
So that's not, you know, just a couple, two years ago.
It's not young. That's not an age. I think most people are starting new jobs
or maybe that's, maybe that's more common than I think, but it had been a long

(01:40:11):
time since I had started something brand new like that.
And so that was, that was a challenge just because I didn't know,
you know, how to be or how to act or anything.
And, you know, even with that, I was, I'm family. So I had obviously you and
Bo, which was, you know, I wouldn't have dreamed of wanting to work here if it wasn't for y'all.
I mean, y'all were, that was, you know, I say I wanted to be here for, for family.

(01:40:32):
Cause I'm thinking of my wife and kid, but clearly you and Bo were,
were almost equal parts of that. Y'all are family.
And, you know, I didn't get to see and hang out with y'all that much,
but just like I got to hang out with my dad when I worked there.
And now it's like, well, this is cool. I get to hang out with my cousins.
You know, that's, that's truly how I view being at work. Work is, I do enjoy work.
I'm sure there's work I don't enjoy and I don't work those places.

(01:40:53):
And so it's, it's nice to work somewhere you enjoy.
And, uh, and maybe not everybody has that luxury, but I do always,
I encourage people to look for it.
And if you can't find it, the main problems you maybe, maybe you just need to
learn to enjoy the thing you're doing, you know?
And I feel like I can do that. Yeah. I know you're You're very detail oriented,
obviously, maybe because you're a Marine or maybe because you were just built like that.

(01:41:18):
The butcher table does offer a wide variety of depth on anything that happens on it.
And we see that as super important going forward in the ways that we train new
hires, whether it's your brother, Jeff,
who's on the table right now, or the guy that's coming Thursday that you just interviewed. dude.

(01:41:42):
So how do you take someone who maybe isn't detail oriented and get them on the same page as you?
Well, that's still a struggle of mine because I don't know, but I think I'm,
you know, that's a natural thing for me. So I enjoy those things.
So I guess the challenge is trying to find the thing that motivates that person

(01:42:04):
or inspires them or whatever.
And I'm not the type of person to inspire anyone.
So even that word I use loosely, but for me, it could be something like trying
to do this quicker than the last time, or trying to do this with less guidance than the last time.
And so I just try to throw those ideas out there when I'm teaching somebody

(01:42:27):
something that like, Hey, these are some, you know, I'll tell them all the things
I guess that they can be thinking about, you know, I'm about to tell you,
you know, a bunch of stuff.
You're not going to remember much of it, but you know, maybe you can remember
one thing next time and try to have that.
So I guess, I guess what I'm trying to do is give them little small victories
to kind of get them feeling engaged and some buy-in and not feeling so,

(01:42:49):
so out of place or whatever.
And that's just when it's somebody new, ultimately you'll get to learn somebody
and, and you can find those things.
Maybe you find little things that motivate them, or you can tell they like,
like, or they have little niche thing that they're really good at.
And then obviously I'll try to capitalize that on as best as possible.

(01:43:10):
You know, maybe, maybe versatility is the thing they like.
And it's like, look, you don't have to worry about getting perfect at this today.
I just want you to, you know, just think this is something else to add to your
list, find something you like, and we'll, we'll focus more on that or whatever.
Again, not, not in a strong suit of mind is just trying to find that thing for people.
There's so many things on the table that are a good fit for me.

(01:43:30):
Like you said, there's, there's all kinds of details.
There's all kinds of goals you can be working towards. So one of the things
about the butcher table that's so cool to me that I wish more people were like
this just because it's cool to me is it's like the infinite game concept that
I can always be improving on something.
So I'll never, you know, if I want to bone out a cow, you know,

(01:43:54):
a piece of cow or a quarter of a cow, I can do that a couple of different ways.
I can do it a certain way that I want to do it every single time.
I can find what I think is the perfect way, but ultimately there's going to
be something else I can try next time. That's a little different way.
And that's just one aspect. Well, what about how fast can I do it?
Well, there's another thing I can go toward and there's no end there.
You know, that's a game I can always be playing against myself.

(01:44:17):
And what's the most efficient way of, you know, making sausage for two people
that again, there's just always ways of trying to do better than the last time.
And you'll never run out of those.
And I thrive in that. As soon is there something you can arrive at then i'm
kind of i'll get bored with it pretty quick and move on to the next thing whereas
on the table as on the butcher table there's just,

(01:44:39):
very few things you know even cutting green onions there's there's ways you
can show okay how quick can i do this or whatever how can i set this up to be more efficient.
I like that kind of stuff. But where does it come from? I have the same,
I have the same mentality and I did since I was younger.
And I remember I just looked at the guys ahead of me and I just wanted to be like them.

(01:45:02):
Like I wanted to be able to do what they were doing as well as they can do it.
And I wanted, I don't know, I wanted them to know that. I want,
I want it to be the one doing it. Yeah. Right.
But God, it's hard to find that same thing that it is X factor in people.
And sometimes you get tricked into thinking is there and it's just not.

(01:45:22):
So you mentioned we had talked about role models briefly. And I think there's more to dive into there.
But I think maybe that's where I got it from. And you got it from because we
come from a line of people who were like that.
But those people were also role models to us. We, we respected them and respect
them and we like them in general.
We want to be like them and we want them to, to be proud of who we are.

(01:45:48):
And, and that's certainly not something everybody has.
So I guess, you know, that's another thing that I've thought of and it's been
hard to apply, but to just remind myself, Hey, if I could just be a role model
for this person, you know, that I may be giving them something they've never had before.
And, you know, that's starting at something that I was given since I was a baby
that they're starting at 20 something like, Hey, they're not,

(01:46:11):
they're not going to be exactly where I'm at, but, uh, but I'd be,
I'd love to be a role model or somebody if they'd never had that,
you know, that'd be great.
You want to be able to walk out and say, okay.
To a guy that's on his first day and just say, just watch me.
Yeah. Just watch everything I do.
And then right after I do it, now you do it. You do what I just did.

(01:46:33):
But I don't know what's happening when people are in the same room and they're
unaware of what's going on in the room.
I don't know what's stopping them from wanting to beat me.
Like want to be better than me. Take my job.
Yeah. Like, yeah, I don't know what's stopping people from feeling like that. Yeah.

(01:46:55):
No, that's definitely something that you hear in the Marine,
the Marine Corps all the time is, you know, work for the, you want to take the
job of the next guy and it's not because you actually want his job.
He should be getting the next job too, you know, over him.
It's, I don't know, but even that is, there's a sense of autonomy or,
or there's something about autonomy.
That's a very appealing, you know, I don't want somebody hanging over my shoulder

(01:47:16):
if they don't need to be there. And I'm not, I'm certainly okay asking for help.
It's not that I don't want to ask for help. I'm all, I'm for that. I'm okay with that.
You know, when I first started working here, Bo always had a list and I still do this.
Bo would make a list in the morning, grab a Sharpie, butcher paper and write
out the things for the day.
And after a couple of weeks of that, I was like, started wondering,

(01:47:36):
like, does he think I don't know to do this? Like, it was kind of weird to me.
And so what I started doing was I was like, I don't know, maybe he just likes
to make that list because let's say after a couple of months of that,
I was like, well, I surely know every Every single one of these things has had
to get done today. So why is he doing this?
And I don't know, maybe he's doing it for himself. Maybe it has nothing to do with what I'm thinking.

(01:47:57):
But for me, what I started doing was making my own list on the side before I
looked at his list to see. And eventually I was like, okay, I'm doing all the same things.
And after a couple weeks of that, then I would just start leaving my list out
before he made his list. But what makes people do that?
And why isn't everyone like that?
Why don't people want to prove themselves and say, here's proof that I can do

(01:48:22):
more. I can do more than you're letting me do.
Yeah. So give it like, give me more.
Yeah. I really don't know. I don't know. Cause I'm, I'm miserable if I'm not being that way.
Yeah. And Hey, you hear a lot about how people are miserable.
So maybe they just don't know that it's a lot of fun to just be always trying
to improve yourself and get, or, you know, even just beat yourself type of thing.

(01:48:46):
Nevermind improving yourself. That's a, that can be generic and vague,
but just be better at this thing today than you were yesterday.
And here's the great part. You may not always succeed, but you get to try again.
What else are you doing? You know, if you're doing the same thing over and over again.
So I don't know, maybe, maybe people don't know that. Like, and that sounds
silly, but, uh, Hey, yeah, if you've, if you're a turn us into a one-on-one

(01:49:13):
with Brody, but, uh, Hey, if you're a miserable person,
maybe you need a, maybe start trying to improve certain areas and nevermind
the deep stuff. Just start on the easy stuff.
Just have something you're working toward, I guess, have goals.
And that maybe that's what it is.
Maybe it's something therapeutic about having a goal you're working towards
and then, and then achieving, you know, something to a certain extent.

(01:49:35):
And then you just shift your goal again. So your goals can change.
That's what I think. A lot of people, they, they make a goal.
It's unreachable. They don't, they don't do it. They don't do the research that they needed to.
In order to get them there and they bail on it and it's you know disheartening and,
never see it again or they are that comes up again in five

(01:49:57):
ten years instead of they would have just kind of pivoted a little just change
it a little bit so that you can still meet it and maybe you'll never need to
stop doing that you know yeah so and so you came here and you started on the butcher table,
you started learning more about the meat stuffs, which.

(01:50:21):
So remind me what your skills were in the building, say, like high school time around that area.
Yeah. Really just help, just cleaning help. Yeah, it really,
it could be anything that they just need to help with. It wouldn't be anything
you need to teach somebody how to do.
So vacuum packing is, you know, you can teach somebody how to do that in a minute.
And then cutting pork fat or something for the sausage, did that,

(01:50:45):
I think, maybe once, maybe twice.
But something that you can just literally watch somebody else do for a minute
and you now can be doing it. So nothing super involved.
I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have known. I might've helped hang sausage for smoke for the smokehouse.
Cause again, you can watch that and figure it out, but definitely never did
anything with the smokehouse and never made, you know, or understood what we

(01:51:06):
were doing. We were making sausage if I was throwing stuff in the pot, but that's what I did.
Just roused about just helping here and there.
And, and that was maybe for a couple of weeks during christmas
i think i feel like there was something during the summer once
but i know that's such a slow time so i don't know why it would have been something like
that but there was there was times where
it was a couple weeks or more than a couple weeks and i was like all right

(01:51:29):
my foot's in the door type of thing but it just got slow after
christmas and i was like all right well thanks for your help all right
so man
my favorite part my favorite part
about the butcher table is the camaraderie
I guess like especially if you got two or three guys
you know maybe deer season I think is is maybe some of

(01:51:51):
the funnest times if you got like three butchers on the
on the table really in sync
and you don't need to talk about you can talk but
doesn't need to be about what you're doing you just be for fun that
and then being the like
subject matter expert to the customer like
they look they look at you differently if you're behind the

(01:52:14):
table they just assume you know more yeah and
i just i've always tried to i tried to not let
them down at least you know even if that means even if that means hearing a
customer ask one of the girls for something and before before the question gets
to me i'll run back here and jump on the computer and google it real quick so

(01:52:35):
that i do still look like the subject matter expert and there's nothing There's
nothing wrong with that.
That's thinking ahead. I intercepted that correctly.
That's funny. But I think that's what it takes. That pushes me,
you know, that improved me and I didn't let it, I didn't let it blindside me.
I didn't let it make me look stupid in the moment.

(01:52:55):
And I'm not embarrassed to do that. And I wish everyone would have the same,
like all the answers to everything are there. We can find them.
Yeah. Be creative on how you get it.
So that and playing with fire. Yeah. Those are my favorite things.
So being the butcher on the table, you get to load up the smoke house with smoke

(01:53:21):
sausage and and light you a nice little fire,
which I'm sure you grew up doing the same, maybe even more dangerous things. Yeah.
But let's talk about that. Let's talk about what, what that part of it is that
some people will never get.
They don't, they don't get that. And that's not maybe a fun thing or like,

(01:53:44):
I don't know, like a therapeutic for me.
It is for me. It's like a therapeutic, like get my fire tight.
You know, like I have what I want it to look like.
I'm going to make it look like that. Yeah. So I've thought of this a lot.
So I use it as an example for people when it comes to teaching how to do something.
So when it, when it comes to teaching how to do the fire, there's going to be a way that you teach.

(01:54:06):
And then there's going to be a way that I teach and everything here.
We were pretty insistent on, look, we do things.
You're going to do things the way we do it, period.
And there's not, there's no wiggle room. And my, my go-to now is,
is look, maybe there's a better way, but first you need to learn my way.
Then you need to learn how to teach my way. Then you're free to try to find
some other way. As long as it's not interfering with whatever.

(01:54:27):
And if you can prove it's better than sure. But when it comes to the fire,
I compare it to holding a flashlight for somebody in the dark.
Like two people walking together. One of them's got the flashlight.
The other person is miserable because that's the most anxiety producing thing. That's so good.
And so. I hate someone else's fire.
Yeah. I wouldn't, you will never like someone else's fire because you just want

(01:54:51):
something a little, you just want to move that log a little bit for why?
Why? Because that's where it needs to be in your mind.
Certainly doesn't mean it's wrong where it's at, but it's wrong to you and that's
okay. It can be wrong to you. That's also why it needs to be somebody else's fire.
And so that's something fun for a fire. It's a personal thing.
It's a customizable thing all day long. Each piece of wood, for me,

(01:55:15):
I don't nerd out as much as maybe I should on the weight of each piece,
but I absolutely nerd out on the shape.
The shape of that wood tells you everything about how it's going to sit on top of the other pieces.
If you're making the fire in the morning. It tells you which ones are going
to go on the bottom because that's going to be sitting on a flat surface.
And yeah, I nerd out on that big time. Obviously, the size matters.

(01:55:36):
And if, if somebody else just watches me or just watches you,
you're going to make decisions and make little tweaks and choose to split some
pieces that really, and truly, if they ask you, okay, wait, if they want to
understand what you're doing, you can't explain that.
You forget it. And yet I will try.
Like I just confuse people. No, it's not on purpose. It's just, I don't know.

(01:55:57):
I was just feeling this thing with the fire and that's, that's what I did.
That's between me and the fire. This is personal.
Yeah. And, and, you know, there is a goal though. It's not just a fire for fire's
sake. And it's not just trying to smoke the sausage.
I'm, I'm also, I want that fire to be able to sit.
I do want it to be untouched if necessary for as long as possible or whatever,

(01:56:18):
you know, I want it to sit at this temperature for this long or,
you know, whatever the case may be.
I've gone days where I counted how many pieces of wood I use.
And I want to say, okay, if I can do this with with seven pieces of wood the whole day.
Well, then other days I can't, and that bothers me because I'm like, well, why?
Well, there's a lot of factors and maybe I can be too insistent on trying to

(01:56:39):
be consistent there, but you know, weather plays a factor, all kinds of things play a factor.
And so, but I know it can be done with just this amount of wood on a good dry
day. And I want to do that again.
Anyway, it's just an ongoing thing. That's, it is a lot of fun,
but it's absolutely a personal thing and everybody's going to be a little different.
I don't know if maybe, maybe not everybody gets nerds out on it like I do,

(01:57:01):
or we do, but your kids, so your oldest child is 12 and I know that all your kids can light a fire.
Yeah, I would think so. Pretty much. Yeah. Jacob's the youngest.
I'm not sure I could say I've seen him do it, but yeah, maybe I need to revisit that.
But man, with, with lighting a fire comes so many lessons. Yeah.

(01:57:22):
Like you said, decision-making, there's so many decisions to make or that you
can make or can't or you don't need to but something's going to happen whether
you do or don't yeah hey you got to be patient if you're building a fire from
scratch uh you know here we got the easy button with the gas line in the mornings
but at home building a fire even in the fireplace,
you got to be patient because you can't just go grab whatever and light it you

(01:57:44):
can grab the best logs in the world but you got to get those logs lit what about
the next butcher in training what if you just don't tell them we had the gas
line for the first month or so well i got two guys is coming soon.
That'd be interesting to try. I'm for it.
I'm all for it. Yeah. If you're lighting the fire, uh, you need to show up about
an hour early on those days. I want to get here at four.

(01:58:06):
Everything you need is right here. Just point to the yard. Give them that bellow.
Yeah. Hey, so that, that fire bellow, I got to give a shout out to my, my niece.
I'll put that on my Christmas wishlist one year for my dad's side,
little family get together.
And she got me this little fire bellow and it's it was
awesome it was the coolest thing it really is handy loved that thing

(01:58:27):
and and i've replaced it twice since because it we use
it we use the heck out of that thing and and yeah love it it's it's such a man
they it's like they knew what they were making it for you know yeah all right
so enough about the butcher stuff shortly after you started your job,

(01:58:48):
I'd say quickly developed and expanded and went in depth and width and maybe
just going all over the place.
Which I think that's what you wanted. Yeah. I think, I think you were,
I think you're ready to kind of get your hands into everything and you have, what are some of those,

(01:59:10):
I guess, what, what, what did you feel that you needed to do when you looked
around and you say, here's what I can do around here. I need to start doing it.
Yeah. So, so I didn't say this at first, but this is a good point to mention
it. So the other challenge of being here, when I first, first started here,
the first challenge was the leadership side of things, because what I felt I had to contribute.

(01:59:34):
And some of that I think was necessary humility I needed to grab along the way.
And Hey, some of it is similar to the fire. We just talked about some of the
things that I would have wanted to do different or felt were being done wrong.
Well, they weren't, they just weren't the way I would do it. and
and some of that was a huge struggle constant biting

(01:59:54):
the tongue frustrated over something that well
you know thinking to myself well if i you know if they'd have done it this way
this would have turned out better and so that was that was a huge struggle but
i truly even in the moment even when it was hard i knew i was like this is this
is good because at that point at that point in the marines which is where i
was you know able to really exercise my leadership if you will skills deals.

(02:00:17):
I was a first sergeant at that point and I had learned a lot,
but maybe had lost a little bit of the humility that comes with that.
And so, and I mean that, and that was good.
But the other side of it is also, you know, what do I know? I've been here for
a year or two at this point.
And like I just said, I mean, I knew next to nothing about exactly how the market was being ran.

(02:00:38):
One thing Phil had talked about a lot that I was starting to realize was,
yeah, I didn't think it was a challenge for me at first, but he mentioned it.
And that is for Phil coming from the kind of the more corporate jobs he came from.
And he comes here and it's like, okay, where's your, how had he's like,
where's your SOP binders? And everybody looked at him like he's crazy.

(02:00:58):
And then, you know, his thing was, well, you know, just the,
how you make sausage, you know, where, where's the, where's the binder that
tells me how to do that and still crazy looks.
And so, and at first I thought that was funny. Cause I'm like,
yeah, you don't need to do all that, you know, but, but I, after,
after being here for a while, I was like, yeah, I want those two.
I really want those things.

(02:01:19):
And so, uh, because that's what we do in the Marine Corps, you know,
we have, we call them turnover binders and every, everything has a step-by-step process.
And ultimately the best way to understand it is everything is possible with you not around.
I could literally, literally die. And somebody else is ready to step into that
position. position and just, it's as though I, you know, didn't miss, we didn't miss a beat.

(02:01:41):
And, uh, and there's huge value to that, of course, but yeah.
This is not a big corporate run. It's a mom and pop meat market. And we want it to be that.
And, and sure, there's been some things that we've been able to do better in
that area that it has been useful, but other things that it would not be useful.
It isn't, it isn't necessarily a good thing. We need to be able to have the
flexibility to shift and change or, or what have you.

(02:02:05):
And, and look, some of that I'm still learning where we are,
you know, on certain things is what would be better to have a SOP for what wouldn't
or whatever the case may be.
So, so So anyway, that was, so just for the leadership side of things,
that was a, that was a challenge for me.
And, but with the split, you know, I stayed here at the original location and

(02:02:25):
right away was, was like, okay, well, was kind of put into a position to be
able to, on the butcher table, for instance.
So, you know, me and Terrell, which I didn't mention him as part of one of my
16 siblings, but I probably should have, uh, he's, he's, he's the 17th.
If anybody's ever seen Terrell and I work together on a table,
you know, we're, we're brothers.
We just don't have the same parents and, and had a blast with him.

(02:02:49):
But once he was going, well, now it's like, well, shoot, it's on me.
And, and when I say that, I mean, not only just how we do what we do each day,
but if we get a new hire, somebody's got to train that person.
And the thing about Terrell is that I am not, you know, I kind of alluded to it a minute ago.
I'm not real good at training people, not the best when it comes to teaching and coaching.

(02:03:14):
That's good. And, and he would probably disagree, but I've watched him teach people.
He taught me a lot of what I, what I've learned here, uh, specifically on the
table. He taught me himself.
I think he's very good at that. So when he was going, I was like, Oh shoot.
So called him a lot early on, uh, frankly called him over here a lot to,
Hey, can you come teach this person how to bone out a shoulder?

(02:03:36):
Cause I'm telling them to do it this way. And I don't even know why they're
They're holding their knife the way they're holding it.
And it's like, they don't see the way I'm holding it, I guess.
They keep putting their knife inside of their body.
Oh man. So anyway, yeah. So a little more, you know, a little less help here

(02:03:57):
was a challenge, but also, okay, well, here's your chance.
Did you learn the humility you needed? Because here, here we go.
And, and some of that was, was great. Some of it I loved and some of it was, was hard.
Some of it was a challenge, but just back to earlier, you know,
I want to do better to tomorrow than I did today.
And so that was still my mindset.
That's still where I was, where I was going with things.

(02:04:19):
And I just wanted to make sure whatever I did here was contributing to the success of the meat market.
Something I've heard Bo say, and he might've even said it on,
when, when you guys talked on here, but you know, he's, he's just watching over
things until the next generation comes around.
And I've always, I appreciate that mindset and, and, and I respect that a lot in bow.

(02:04:43):
And so for me, I just have a small, I have a part in that is how I look at it.
If that's how he views it, we'll shoot that. That better be how I view it too.
And so I want to make sure I'm always doing that, I guess.
So yeah, that's, that's how I approach everything I've done here.
And obviously I'll, you know, I know I fall short at times, but I've been,
been blessed with the ability to see that I think when it's necessary.

(02:05:06):
And again, the humility to own it and and try to do better.
And so, yeah, that's what I'm doing.
So Bo and I sort of came in the same way.
Bo had much more time than I had, but we both kind of came in the same route,
which would be like the way I look at it is like the Mustang route in the Marine Corps.

(02:05:29):
Like I would consider us Mustangs.
Explain what that is in the Marine Corps. So a Mustang in the Marine Corps,
or maybe all branches call it that is when an enlisted Marine decides to become commissioned officer.
So, you know, to become an officer, you need a degree, but, you know,
again, the officers are the, the, the leaders in an organization, the commissioned,

(02:05:53):
you know, again, presidentially recognized, you know, it's like the commission
is from the president of the United States. So an officer in the military.
So to go from enlisted officer is a, is a pretty big jump, but a Mustang would
be one who was enlisted first and then went the officer route after.
Which it helps, that's that me and Bo started in the back, you know,

(02:06:14):
at a young age, just doing the help, cleaning and vacuum packing.
But even like once I came back from the Marines, I started in the back and had
to relearn, you know, or really learn for the first time a bunch of stuff,
stuffing sausage and making Buddha and actually making the products in the back.
Smoking the jerky and then, and then moved up to the front and learned to butcher

(02:06:35):
table. All that came second.
And then started, you know, once, once all the products and all the sales stuff
was done, then I started learning more of Bo's job and trying to prove to Bo that he can leave here.
Like he can get out of the building and I got it, which was a different route
than say, like you and Phil would be good examples.

(02:06:56):
Like, you're kind of both coming into leadership positions and you didn't get
to spend a bunch of time in the back.
And Phil talked about it when, when me and him spoke and he explained how much
of a challenge that was like, you know, cause you do have a different perspective.
A lot of times it is, it is a better perspective, maybe even a bigger picture

(02:07:18):
perspective, but you need the, you still need the buy-in from the guy who has
been doing it for 10 years every day.
Yes. And you got to, you, you have to figure out a way to personally earn that respect from them.
And everyone's different. You might get it like this from one guy and it might
take you seven years to get that respect from someone else. Yeah.

(02:07:40):
How, how'd you kind of navigate those things?
Some of those are still navigating for sure. I have tried desperately to go
learn stuff in the back at this point, I've given up.
I've I'll I'm learning here and there. And I kind of I know the gist of some
of the stuff, but there, and the reason it never really came to fruition is
it was just, I was always kind of needed in the front.

(02:08:00):
And, and then a few times it was like, oh, this will be good.
I'll take a few months and just go work in the back. And then,
you know, maybe something will come up.
It's like, oh, well so much for that. And it's not needed. It's not, it's not mandatory.
It would just be nice. Hey, again, that was something Terrell,
same thing, like Terrell knows, you know, I was always jealous of Terrell knowing
everything from front to back.
And I think that made him more well-rounded and and again still Highly look

(02:08:24):
up to him because of that so.
I think part of me was just spent a lot of time trying to just learn the stuff
in the back because I knew that'd be helpful.
But then the other part of me, other part of me is now is just,
is just transitioning more into the, hey, there is some benefit actually to, to not know it. Yeah.
Making a decision, even though I don't know, or, you know, I'm going to include

(02:08:45):
the guys in the back, back of house or what, you know, whatever this area may
be, not just back of house.
Because there's, there's things in the front that I've maybe never done.
And so there's, there's benefit to that because I can take a step back and man
working on the butcher table.
I do, I truly, and I've said this, you know, to you outside of here,
but I feel that is an ideal position for, for what I'm doing here at this market

(02:09:07):
now and what I, what I think my place is.
And that is at the butcher table, able to see just about everything.
When it leaves the table, it goes to the back.
Certain things come back from the back and I'm, I'm able to see it as it comes in.
I'm seeing it when it's leaving the door, I'm watching the interactions.
I can, but I also, I'm not, I'm not so focused on one customer say that now
I'm missing a bunch of stuff going on.

(02:09:28):
That is, that's huge. And, and I think I can apply that to everything that happens here.
I mean, I know exactly how it's happening, but I have the vantage point.
I think that's, that is useful.
Um, and Hey, it, it certainly doesn't hurt that the people who are the experts
in their individual fields here have been doing it for 10 years.
So, you know, Now, if I didn't have that, yeah, we, we would drown.

(02:09:51):
I mean, that, I don't know how we would do it. I mean, sure.
We wouldn't drown because we refuse to fail. I get it, but we would be in a really bad spot.
And so we're forever thankful and I'm forever thankful for the people we have
where they, where we have them.
And we, you know, the goal remains, my goal remains. Okay. But how can we do
better? How can we do it better? And so that's cool.

(02:10:12):
I like, I like looking at that butcher position, you know, that head butcher
position as like a linebacker.
Yeah. Like you get to see the whole field. You can run to the back if you need,
you can run to the front, you can involve yourself with the customers and then
back out once you're ready for someone else to step up.
And you know, when you see the moment where it's like, okay,

(02:10:35):
even if you're a new hire, you know this, like you know the answer to that question,
you step in, I'm backing out, you know?
And it can be done correctly or incorrectly for sure.
Yeah, I think maybe a kind of equivalent thing in the Marines that I think is
unique to the military and it's very cool and it's a good thing is,

(02:10:57):
so my position in the Marines now as a Sergeant Major,
the right-hand man, if you will,
of the commanding officer of the squadron, but I'm not working for his job,
meaning I'm not trying to, there's no path up for me that I'm not going to become
a commissioned officer.
I mean, sure, that's an option, but that's not ultimately our relationship is

(02:11:20):
not one where I'm going to hopefully get his job one day.
Like that's not a desire of mine and vice versa. And we're not equals.
I don't mean that we're equals. He's he's a commanding officer of the unit.
But that allows me to just really focus in on what I can do best to help the
organization with no ulterior motives.
And in the more he is successful or the more the squadron successful,

(02:11:43):
the more I feel like I'm being successful.
And so the same thing here, if the more the market is successful and by definition,
the people in those experts, the experts in their little individual areas,
they're excelling too, and they're succeeding and vice versa.
If I can get, you know, the perfect amount of product made and,
you know, the most efficient way, well, everybody benefits from that.

(02:12:04):
And I'm to the point now and not only in my career in the Marines and here just
in life that is it's not cliche I truly if other people are succeeding I take
that as a huge I take a lot of pride in that and that just makes me very happy
and I feel great if I can help other people Do well,
Yeah Cuz what else?

(02:12:25):
What else is there? You know? Yeah. Like, yeah. Yeah.
Your pictures on the wall. I don't know. What's the best?
Yeah. The accolades are super temporary. You know, I, I like to plug a thing.
I heard a YouTube video and it's like a five or six minute video, maybe a little longer.

(02:12:45):
And it's, I think it's called the 16th second or something like that.
But anyway, sorry, I can't tell you exactly where it's at. So now if anybody's
interested, they may not be able to find it.
But what it is, is a high school graduation or college graduation,
but it's the valedictorian gives a speech and it's really good because he's

(02:13:06):
a young guy who acknowledges that,
yeah, he got valedictorian because two years before he decided he wanted to
be valedictorian and he knew he could do it and wasn't being cocky.
He's like, no, I can do this. And it wasn't easy.
It came at a great cost and he outlined some of those costs.
But the point is now he, then he finds out he got it and it felt awesome.

(02:13:27):
It was everything he wanted it to be for 15 seconds. Then what?
And, uh, anyway, I thought it was pretty deep and it's, it's really good.
And, and that's super important because if, you know, what relationships were
sacrificed along the way and, and all that other stuff.
And when, you know, he could have given up on that dream and instead focused
on relationships and focus on making himself better and making others better.

(02:13:48):
And I mean, those are, those are of eternal importance.
What are some influences that you've had along the way that I don't know about?
I know your dad was a huge influence, your brothers. Yeah. I'm sure Papa.
But what about like maybe some military leaders you've had along the way or
experiences you've had that you think really, truly carried over to, to who you are now?

(02:14:11):
Yeah. Yeah, so I want to talk about first my mom, because you mentioned my dad,
and this is something that I learned, if I learned it, and I think it's a theory
of mine, but I think it's true.
Up on it way later in life. And it was once I already had kids or maybe right
before my wife and I started having kids.

(02:14:31):
And that is, I've been asked many times by many people from all walks of life,
what did your dad do that made y'all's relationship so good?
Because I love my dad to death. I don't just like him though.
He's the wisest person I know. I
think he's got great wisdom great patience and he's just you know i like i love

(02:14:52):
my dad like everybody knows me and my brothers like we we thought the world
of my dad always have and so over the years especially as we got older that
started to be a unique thing because not everybody has a great relationship
with their dad and so people who cared who were going to be having kids themselves soon or had,
started keying in on that and would ask inevitably you know what what is it

(02:15:12):
about your dad what did he do you know what do you think and uh and i would
have some things to point to because my dad is a, you know, it's all those things I just said.
I'm not, it's not just my opinion. My dad is great.
But I realized for years, I didn't give proper credit to my mom.
And that's not just because she deserves credit.
If I could back up and talk about something a little uncomfortable,

(02:15:33):
but it needs to be talked about.
To properly realize how great my mom is. And that is that, like I said,
my parents divorced when I was very young. My mom remarried when I was very young.
Well, growing up, I didn't know this, but a lot of times when parents get divorced,
they don't get along too well.
I did not know this growing up. I have never once in my entire life ever heard

(02:15:59):
my mom say an unkind word about my dad.
And obviously there was some friction at some point.
So, you know, that's not want to downplay it, but at the same time,
you know, both of them have, have essentially, you know, they've been awesome
examples to me since then, you know, neither one of them's proud of that.
That's not something they probably won't be talking about too much,

(02:16:20):
but I say it because I think it's important to acknowledge that my mom understood
the importance of having a role model maybe, or whatever. That's my dad.
And so there was many times my mom probably could have been upset or whatever,
but she just never said an unkind word about my dad.
Uh, and the same thing with my stepdad, her, her husband.

(02:16:42):
Now, uh, I have never seen my mom say an unkind word, probably about anybody,
if I'm being honest, but looking back, I think, yeah, my dad was always,
she didn't just not say an unkind word.
My dad was on a pedestal and remained there my whole life.
And I, I think My dad didn't put himself on a pedestal, so who did?
Sure, in a young son's mind, some of that's going on naturally,

(02:17:04):
but really looking back, I think my mom had a huge part in that,
and I'm forever grateful for that.
I've taken that very seriously. That's been a huge influence on me when I think
of how I treat other people, which is not always obvious because I don't do
as well as my mom, but I think one thing I've been been able to do is recognize it.

(02:17:25):
And I'm usually pretty good at saying, I'm sorry, which doesn't undo things,
but I'll, I'll acknowledge that the mistake was made because I think that's important.
And I think we can really mess up somebody's opinion or views of somebody by
not being careful in that area.
So, so that was important to me. And I think that needs to be said.
I think that needs to be recognized when we're dealing with people.

(02:17:45):
And when we're, maybe when we're frustrated with someone is watch out who's
listening to what's, what's being said and all that.
So fast forward to the military and in the Marines, you know,
if, when you get promoted to corporal, that's your first, that's your first,
first real, what I would say is that's, you know, you're a leader now, period.

(02:18:06):
And we know we say even Lance Corp was leader, but yeah, sure.
But a corporal, a corporal has Lance Corp in his fire team and he's going to
have Lance Corp that he is responsible for providing counselings for sitting
down with every month in the reserves.
It's quarterly, but sit down knee cap to knee cap, a blouse off if needed,
you know, no rank if needed to just have an honest heart to heart conversation

(02:18:28):
if that's what needs to happen.
But then there's other times where it's not going to be heart to heart.
It's going to be laying down the law, some knife hands or whatever the case
may be, but a corporal has that responsibility.
And once you're a corporal, you need to understand that you don't talk about
other corporals, just like, you know, my mom, I talked to my mom saying,
go, a corporal shouldn't talk about another corporal negatively in front of a lower ranking person.

(02:18:51):
You know, that's just universal understood concept.
And you, you might complain about higher ups, but you don't complain about higher
ups in front of lower ranking people.
And I remember that was just, that's just the way it was. And I don't ever remember
being taught that is absolutely how it was. And I like to think that's how it still is.
And so I thought that was, I think that's really important. And,

(02:19:13):
and I would hope we're not losing that.
And I would hope I'm not losing touch with that or losing sight of that.
My wife and I have talked about that plenty and, uh, and she's, she's great.
And, you know, she has every reason in the world to, to have to,
to, to mess up there, but she doesn't, I don't make it easy.
So, so that's has been great. So in the Marines, as a corporal,

(02:19:34):
I had a really, even as a Lance corporal. So before I got promoted to corporal,
there was a staff sergeant that was in charge of our section.
His name was Staff Sergeant Moyado, Victor Moyado.
And I don't know where he's at anymore. Last time I talked to him was probably
15 years ago on the phone.
And I just don't know how to get in touch with him, but he was,

(02:19:55):
I owe my Marine Corps career essentially to him.
There's been some others, you know, of course, and I even mentioned one already,
but he was the first one and also the most just vested the most interest in me. It was crazy.
And for years, I was like, what did he see? You know, why did he,

(02:20:17):
why me? And, and maybe there was something, but over the years I've come to
the realization that, Hey, maybe it was nothing.
Maybe he just picked somebody that he was going to take under his wing and teach everything.
And he was also a very funny guy, which has certainly made it fun for me.
But anything I fell short in any, any like general military knowledge question,

(02:20:37):
I didn't know he would make sure I knew I should be embarrassed that I wouldn't
know the answer or to some random, you know, trivia question about the Marine Corps or whatever.
And, you know, he was a role model to me. So I wanted to be,
I wanted to impress him or I wanted to make him proud or whatever.
So I would always make sure my uniform was perfect. You know,
tight sleeves, tight sleeves.

(02:20:58):
Like I didn't want to give him anything to pick, to pick out because it wasn't
just that he would pick it out. I would feel like I was disappointed.
He would look at me and be like, hands up. Like how, how could you? Yeah. How could you?
Exactly. Exactly, that's exactly how it was. And he absolutely- You of all people.
I expect this from so-and-so, not from you. And that would just cut me to the quick.

(02:21:19):
So that was a staff sergeant who went on to be promoted to gunny.
And I think he retired as a gunner sergeant. He went on to the drill field.
You know, I think I was, I think I owe my first promotion to,
or my promotion to corporal to him. I think he set me up for that as a success.
And, and then same thing for the next promotion was a lot of things I got from him.

(02:21:41):
So the reason that's important to me to bring up now is not just to give the accolades to him.
Although obviously I would love
to, you know, love for him to know that I still appreciate what he did.
It's when I, years later, now I'm a huge reader, try to be, I read, what's the outliers?
By Malcolm Gladwell.

(02:22:02):
And that book, I want to say it's the first part of that book,
but it talks about, I won't get into what it talks about because it's super
involved and I'll sure I'll mess something up.
But what I learned from it and what I grabbed from the book was opportunities,
giving people opportunities.
And I feel like that's what that staff sergeant did for me. He rolled out the
red carpet when it came to opportunities.

(02:22:23):
I had every opportunity to succeed or fail, but nothing was withheld from me
as far as an opportunity goes.
And, and I feel like that was essentially what I gleaned from the first third of that book, I guess.
And that was the importance of giving people opportunities because some people
may not ever excel because they just didn't quite have the opportunities we've had.

(02:22:44):
And, and I think that's true. And that could be something as simple as in the
way the book outlines it.
It could be, you know, people born in this particular month wound up,
you know, not making the cut for this particular recreational team or whatever.
And it seems like not a big deal, but you can look statistically and see how,
well, no, it actually, it plays out.
And these are people who just happen to be born a certain month, you know?

(02:23:06):
And so for me, that means, well, let's give people all the opportunities we can.
And so I try to apply that to this day and just give people opportunities to succeed.
And if they're coachable, great, because then even if they mess up,
we can, and we can fix it along the way.
And so that was a huge influence for me and something that stuck with me.

(02:23:27):
Any other books on your mind? I know you're reading Infinite Game right now.
You just finished it? I just finished Infinite Game.
That book's really good. It really applies to our way of doing things and our
purpose and our mission and everything.
Yeah. So I just finished that, and I just finished Warrior Poet Way by John
Lovell, which is really good.

(02:23:47):
That had some stuff in it. At first, I thought it would be stuff that I'm like,
I don't need to hear. I'm above it as much as like, yeah, my mind's kind of already there.
But no, it wound up being some stuff I definitely needed to hear.
Year and it was really helpful, but I mentioned it here because those two books
together, I think I happen to be, you know, one I did on audio,
one I did the hard, hard copy.
And, and that was just a good timing for me to be doing both of those books at the same time.

(02:24:10):
Yeah. I've, I had this conversation recently with someone as far as books I
recommend leadership wise, and it's whichever one I've read most recently.
That's my answer. Yeah. It's not a bad one. Yeah.
I've thought more more about, you know, what's the one book.
And, you know, I think I haven't hit it, hit the fact yet. I'm a Christian.
And so the Bible has been hugely influential, obviously for me,

(02:24:32):
which is probably an understatement, but I thought as it applies to leadership,
the book of Proverbs is going to be hard to beat.
Filled with little nuggets and tidbits of wisdom, Proverbs obviously gives that away.
But there's a verse that says, when the righteous are in authority,
the people rejoice or sorry when the
wicked when the wicked are in authority the people groan when the righteous are in

(02:24:54):
authority the people rejoice so sorry if I'm getting that backwards but
the point being you know when when the wicked
are in authority and when they're in positions of leadership that's bad news
for everybody and I don't think that's hidden I think that's pretty obvious
and many people have experience with that so therefore if you're not a wise
person and who's upright and has a higher calling or feels like you have a higher

(02:25:19):
calling than just serving self,
if you don't have those things, you're probably not going to be a very good leader.
And that's usually where we hear about toxic leadership and a lot of the problems
you hear in leadership ultimately come down to, you know, there's some kind
of selfish motive or whatever, what have you.
And so I think we can glean a lot from the Bible, obviously,
in general, but the book of Proverbs is going to be hard to beat as far as just,

(02:25:40):
hey, apply those principles in your life and I think you'll be a person that people want to follow.
And if that's all you can be as a person people want to follow,
then you're a role model now.
And as long as you're not, as long as you're living a life worthy of following,
you can do a lot. And I think people can glean a lot from that.
How do you go about reading the Bible? So I've gone through it a lot of different

(02:26:01):
ways now, but I got real serious about reading the Bible in 2010,
shortly after Nick died.
And right away, I was just, I would just open and I just picked a book and would read it.
Over the years, I've gotten a little more methodical about it.
There's so many different,
you know, Bible in a year things people have put out that all those are cool

(02:26:22):
because if you can get through the Bible in a year,
that's, it kind of force you to stay organized so i've done that i've done that
different ways one of them that i have liked but i didn't like the jumping around
too much is so every sunday you read through.
Poetry which is the book of proverbs psalms song of solomon and i might be missing
one in there every monday is history so you're going to be reading about the

(02:26:47):
israelite history every tuesday,
you're reading through the first five books of the Bible, which is,
you know, Genesis, you know, the
first five, every Wednesday you'll read through the Psalms or whatever.
And so, and, and I'll stop there. Oh, the prophets or whatever.
So every day of the week has a different thing.
And it's, it's still chronological, but every day you wind up in a different spot.

(02:27:09):
So I did that one year, another year I did the same exact thing,
but I just, I went vertical instead of horizontal.
So So instead of every Sunday, I just, I went through all history and then I
moved on to all the Psalms. I went through from there, I went to all the prophets or whatever.
So I've done that. I've done the Bible in a year at this point,
I've done the Bible in two years.

(02:27:29):
So it forces me to slow down, to read it much slower than one year.
I was like, let me do the Bible. And you find there's benefit in that.
Yeah. Slowing down. Yeah. So you just, it forces you to kind of,
you know, if I'm, if I sit there and read for 20, 30 minutes in the morning, I'm,
then I'm accustomed to reading for that long. Now, instead of just having just

(02:27:49):
enough time to kind of get through five chapters or whatever it is,
now I've got maybe two chapters, but I've got the time.
So, okay, let me look at this. What did I miss last time? And in my experience,
it's very seldom I'll not have missed something.
There's usually something I'll see that I didn't see before.
And the Bible is its best commentator. And so the Bible speaks on itself all over the Bible.

(02:28:14):
So it's been, that's been a huge, you know, that's, that's a huge part of my life.
That's, that's very necessary for me to, to see what, what I think is the right way to go.
And obviously I'm not doing it perfect, but you know, short of that,
I don't know how I would know the right way to go.
And so that's my, my plug to everyone is, is every, everyone can,

(02:28:38):
there's, there's some two, two things mentioned in the Bible that I think we
should be on guard against.
And number one is that every man would do what's right in his own eyes.
We see that constantly in the history of the Israelites.
And then the other thing we see in the New Testament, where it talks about being
carried about by every wind of doctrine.
And in 2024, if those two sayings don't ring a bell and feel like,

(02:28:59):
man, I feel like that kind of describes the state of things in this country sometimes,
then you might have your head in the sand because that's essentially what
i'm seeing and so i think we could use some some regrounding
and uh and look i'm a big reader and i
would i would say anybody who hasn't who who
is a big reader and hasn't read the bible that that

(02:29:20):
is odd to me because that is clearly the most unique book that's ever existed
so never mind faith never mind any number of spiritual things we could talk
about when it comes to the bible the bottom line is that book has stood the
test of time more than any other book my dad put together something years ago
that man I talked about it all the time.

(02:29:41):
That's really good. And it's like, it's written by 40 different authors over the span of 1500 years.
And the list goes on, but all the things that make it unique,
uh, and yet it has perfect harmony among all the topics and,
you know, try getting 10 people in a room to talk about one thing,
something they all agree on, but really dive into it.
And you're going to find a lot of trouble getting everybody to agree on something

(02:30:03):
as well as the Bible agrees on itself.
So, uh, so yeah, there's certainly something special about the book,
even before we start talking about faith and spiritual matters.
So, yep, I'm a huge proponent for the Word of God, and I wish more people were.
So I know that kind of carried, you know, I'm going to say it carried you, but you relied on that.

(02:30:24):
You relied on praying a lot to make the next decision, and that's how you do things.
What's, I don't know, let's call it career progression or skill progression,
or how does someone who is not doing that, who's not reading the Bible or they're
not praying about it, what are they missing?

(02:30:45):
If they're not progressing or they might be missing those opportunities or what
happens to someone who just stops, just stops going forward or stops wanting to go forward?
Well, typically, you know, we hear people don't stagnate. So you are moving in a direction.

(02:31:05):
If you're not moving in a good direction, that would mean you're moving in a bad direction.
So that would be something to be concerned about. The big, my big concern for
somebody who's my big concern for anybody.
And I'm really concerned about people who don't have this is,
is maybe I'm hitting the role model thing too much, but again,
is what is your, you know, what's your, why, you know, that's,

(02:31:26):
that's a big topic nowadays.
What is your higher calling. Cause if there's not, if, if, if self is the only
thing, I mean, we are amazingly fickle people.
There's a number of books, man, read, read thinking fast and slow by Kahneman.
I think it's Daniel Kahneman.
And I forget the other guy and there's many books just like it.
And that's just the one that comes to mind just now, but it's amazing how,

(02:31:49):
how not just fickle our minds are, but how easily swayed we are in one direction or the other.
Read a book on marketing and see how, you know, on, on what is influence that
book by Calcedini or whatever the name is, you know, that's just a marketing
book and, and it's amazing how, how easily we can be swayed one way or another.

(02:32:11):
And so we really need to be grounded.
Something I've heard you mentioned before that I think is important is having
somebody who's better than you in an area, having somebody who's maybe you're
better than them and then having somebody who's equal to you.
And, uh, and I've, I've heard that other places and I think that's important.
And I don't know how often we, we seek the person who's, who we look up to,

(02:32:33):
you know, not just a role model, maybe just somebody who is,
you know, they're better than you at this thing.
If you don't have that, then again, you're not going anywhere.
And that can absolutely, that can feel futile and depressing or,
you know, any number of things we hear nowadays.
I would assume it's a lack of hunger for maybe skill or new skill.

(02:32:56):
You know, for me, the easiest way to find
someone who's who's better than you you have to try something
new it's not going to be at your current 12 you
know 15 year career it that may
not necessarily be your your boss or your supervisor maybe
you don't you might not be doing anything you want
to make you want to be doing you might just want his job you might

(02:33:17):
just want to be getting paid what he's getting paid then
then search for a skill outside of there you know like
we we have jujitsu i just got into to
diving and spearfishing and dude the
guys i met instantly it's it's the
same thing i'm like i want that skill who

(02:33:38):
is the best like who is the best guy
around here doing it it put me in a boat with him like i'll do anything to get
in a boat with that guy you know but who else is doing that outside of you know
i don't know these are we do jiu-jitsu we're constantly looking for those guys
that are better than us that can show us the magic.

(02:33:59):
We just want to be near it. But I don't know, maybe you just have to find some
kind of extracurricular, some, I don't know what else is out there. Jiu-jitsu is great.
Excuse me, it's great for what you just mentioned because you'll never get on
the mat and be the best guy on the mat. Mm-hmm.
So, you know, that's probably why I'm in jujitsu.
There's some, there's certainly some, some concepts there of wanting to be able

(02:34:24):
to protect my, my family and myself and, you know, physically be able to protect us.
But there's an element of humility and getting outside the comfort zone that
I feel like makes jujitsu just the perfect fit for me.
And, you know, I would, I would argue that anybody's like, yeah,
but that's your thing. I was, I would argue not really. That's what I'm talking. It's uncomfortable.

(02:34:48):
I don't like it all the time. You know, sure. I, I enjoy aspects of it,
but, uh, but I do not enjoy, you know, being submitted 10 times an hour,
you know, I would, I would love to be able to, you know, take on anybody, but, but I can't.
And so it's a constant reminder that, Hey, you're not, you're not the best one in the room.

(02:35:11):
You're not the strongest in the room and you have a lot of room for improvement.
And so, yeah, I would, I would, I would argue anybody who doesn't have something
like that in their life, go try that. You might enjoy it.
You know, there's an adrenaline rush with it that I'm sure I physically enjoy.
Yeah. But anybody who hadn't tried it yet, I would, I would say,
Hey, maybe you'll enjoy it too.
It's, I think it's cool. It's a good, it's a, it's a drug maybe, but, uh, it's useful.

(02:35:35):
It's also another it's just another room to
be in right it's another room with with other
influences and just because this
guy is better than you in jiu-jitsu doesn't mean he's better than you in parenting
or finances or health or you know so it's one more room to find more people

(02:35:58):
you don't have to look up to the guy just because he's jiu-jitsu black belt yeah maybe he's a really
good parent or you admire his, his relationship he has with his wife and the,
and that's why you can be drawn to that guy, you know?
So chances are, if you have a room of, you know, 15 guys, you might be able to seriously, uh.

(02:36:21):
Put half of them on some pedestal that you can chase you can improve you can
you can chase their success in all these different areas you know and maybe
people don't do that enough you can do it,
here you know you can you can do it at work you can
learn from everyone it's important important it's important

(02:36:41):
to try yeah leadership styles like coming from from the marine corps i think
you know I know how most view Marine Corps leadership is pretty blunt and get
it done now, get it done quick.
But now that you've gone through the ranks, maybe that's only everyone's perception

(02:37:05):
because most people get out at Corporal or Sergeant.
But now that you've gone through the ranks, what is your view on the big picture
of like, no, seriously, what does it create at Sergeant Major level?
Or, you know, you're working hand in hand with, with colonels and generals.
And what is it at that level? You know, like, what is the, what is the,

(02:37:29):
the true big picture of Marine Corps leadership? So the only answer I can give
to that specific question would be General Mattis's book, Call Sign Chaos.
He addresses literally that exact thing, starting at the three major levels of leadership.
And I forget the terminology now, but executive and operational and strategic
maybe, or tactical, strategic, and executive. But he talks about that and it's good.

(02:37:54):
It's unbeatable. He's certainly worth the time of reading into what he has to say.
But for me, when it comes to leadership style, I want to address that first
because that was my first big lesson in leadership was this idea of style.
To this day, you'll hear people say, everybody's got different styles.

(02:38:19):
Everybody's don't. Maybe just me. I'll use that as an excuse at times for maybe
you don't like how I'm leading. Well, that's my leadership style.
And that can be, and look, you can get away with that. And maybe that works for you.
For me, I have found it much more
effective if instead of viewing it that way, I flip the table and say,

(02:38:39):
okay, I may project a certain leadership style that is more comfortable to me,
but maybe the person being led has a style that they receive better.
So if I can flex to what they receive better, then wouldn't that be more effective
for getting the job done, whatever the job is I want done.
And, and the answer that I think is yes, sure. It'd be great if everybody would

(02:39:03):
just learn to deal with the leader they have.
That's true. I agree with that, but I don't have a say over that person's decision
to do that or not, but I do have a say over how I lead. And so,
as a corporal in Iraq, I had a Lance corporal who was, he's one of these Marines
who was really good at his job.
And when you hear somebody say that about a Marine, that's the same as saying,

(02:39:27):
somebody, when you get set somebody up on a blind date and they go,
he's got a really good personality. Okay. That means he's ugly.
And so when somebody, when somebody says like, what kind of Marine is he?
Oh, he's really good at his job. I'm like, okay.
So he's not good at being a Marine. He's just a good mechanic.
And that was the case with this guy. Nice guy. Everybody liked him.
He was likable. He was a very good mechanic.

(02:39:47):
But when it came to basic Marine Corps, keeping your uniform tight and respectful,
very loose sleeves and would laugh at anybody who would dare bother having tight sleeves.
Not super respectful, not necessarily disrespectful, but at the same time,
ready to be if he had to be.
So he was one of my Marines. I was a corporal. He was a Lance Corporal.

(02:40:09):
And I don't remember exactly what happened, but something happened where I had
to kind of, I blew up on him and, you know, dressed him down,
if you will. And I was decent at that.
And he couldn't have cared less total attitude, did not care, whatever.
Well, one of his friends who was a decent Marine, like was a,
was a, one of the better Marines.

(02:40:30):
He was another Lance Corporal approached me and to his credit,
he was very respectful. and he told me, he's like, you know,
you know, Lance Cobble, so-and-so, I know what he did was wrong.
And I know his attitude was, was wrong. Everything about the situation was wrong.
And I'm not trying to defend him at all.
He's like, I just wanted to tell you because I know him really well.
Like we're, we're friends and I knew him before we joined.

(02:40:50):
He's the kind of person that if you were to talk to him different,
like if you were to just talk to him like a man, like treat him like a man,
instead of just dressing him down, he would respond. He would be putty in your hands.
And, and I thought, first of all, like, there's no way. Cause I knew this guy,
but, but also I'm like, yeah, there's a novel concept. I'm treating somebody like an adult.

(02:41:14):
So I'm like, all right, thanks. And he was just, he was just telling me,
he's like, you do what you want.
I'm not telling you he wasn't being disrespectful. So I appreciated that.
And so anyway, I kind of swallowed my pride and a little later went talk to
the Lance Corporal that had the attitude and just, I think I might've apologized.
I might've said, Hey, look, Sarah blew up like I did. And I should say like,

(02:41:34):
I've never, never apologized for blowing up on somebody and I will apologize,
but there was nothing wrong.
And at least in my mind at the time, I did nothing worthy of apologizing.
I stood all that. So there was a lot of like pride that had to get figured out
there because ultimately I was like, okay, I got to approach this guy, try this technique.
But first I might need to just, the only way to do that is to say,

(02:41:55):
Hey, maybe I shouldn't have done what I did.
So, so that's what I did. I just told him, like, Hey, look, maybe I'm sorry.
I shouldn't have blown up like I did. Here's why I did.
But here's why the thing is important. And I just totally, here's why the thing that we're.
Really helpful, very helpful. If you would fix this area, whatever,
like still, he still did wrong, whatever it was.

(02:42:17):
And I made sure that was clear, but I said it in a respectful way, treated him like a man.
And, uh, and that man had tears in his eyes before we were done.
And he was apologizing profusely for the thing he did wrong.
It was just two of us. And I was like, what is this magic?
And, uh, so I will never forget that obviously. And, and that has stuck with me.

(02:42:37):
And so So when I think leadership style, I literally think back on that incident right away.
And I've tried very hard over the years to try to learn people.
And in the absence of learning people, because you can't always learn people, do what works for you.
And the beauty of the Marine Corps, if I'm being honest, is that by and large,
the way I treated him the first time works great in the Marine Corps.

(02:42:58):
By and large, people respond to that and it's fine. And as the rank gap increases,
all the more. You know, I could talk that way.
And, you know, that same Lance corporal, if I was two or three ranks above him,
would not have had an attitude with me and probably would have still been effective,
but it doesn't hurt to also have him now wanting to please me,
wanting to do right by me and wanting me to be proud of whatever he was going

(02:43:22):
to do next. So I thought that was real helpful.
Now, fast forward many, many years. And so that was in 2005.
So here we are 19 years later.
I have very few people that I'm dealing with on a personal level like that,
but the people that I am dealing with a personal level like that are first sergeants
and gunnery sergeants and staff sergeants.

(02:43:43):
So Marines who didn't just join, who are not kids, you know,
not that a 19 year old is a kid, but we do tend to talk like that.
So now I'm dealing with, you know, professionals in their own right,
leaders in their own right, who have also been through a lot of learning situations
themselves. and right up front, I'll say by and large, they don't need a lot from me.

(02:44:04):
They they're good leaders who, who don't need a lot of what I feel I have to offer.
So what I do offer is I try to just always put myself out there as like,
Hey, if there's something, you know, if they need a story like that,
then I'm, I'm there to share it like in a heartbeat.
And if there, if there's correction needed or whatever the case may be typically,

(02:44:24):
typically going to address them the way I I addressed that Lance Coppola the
second time because, you know, they don't need to be yelled at.
Nobody, nobody probably needs that. But so now because of the nature of my position,
I'm, I'm dealing with, with, you know, again, mature professionals in the Marines
who, who kind of know the right way anyway, they know if they messed up or whatever.

(02:44:45):
The biggest frustration now for me might be something with laziness or something like that.
Frankly, the way I deal with that is I just try to emulate good work ethic constantly.
I am pretty outspoken about my willingness and desire to just work.
You know, we work, I forget where I got that quote from, but some coach somewhere
is like, we do two things around here.

(02:45:06):
We work hard and we win and we win because we work hard.
So really we only do one thing around here and I'll never forget that.
And so, uh, so yeah, I'm all about working hard. And so I try to demonstrate
that. I try to set people up for success.
So, you know, you kind of learn when talking to people while talking to them,
you kind of start to learn some of the looks in the eye that it's like,

(02:45:27):
okay, they're, they're overwhelmed right now with this task or whatever.
Well, it's a task I've done before done maybe a bunch of times.
So I'll start and then I'll just go right into how to get started.
Now I'm going to give them the first couple answers on how to get started.
But yeah, I mean, if I want to keep going from there, uh, something else that
was a big, huge help for me more recently, like on a grander scale that I'll

(02:45:48):
never forget that, you know, is who's got the monkey.
And that is my new leadership style. And that is very applicable for everyone.
So I highly recommend it. It's called, it's a little five page article called
who's got the monkey and it revolutionized the way I deal with other leaders.
Let's put it that way. Because you know, when you're dealing with,
when you're down, down in the weeds, everybody needs to pull the weeds.

(02:46:12):
But when you step back a little bit now, it might be no, you're talking to the
people who need to get the people pulling the weeds or whatever.
So what I've noticed is there's a tendency to, at my level, there's a tendency
to take on all the responsibilities because I can do it, I've done it.
I am the subject matter expert in this area or that area. And so I'm like,

(02:46:34):
and I'm very good at it. Or I spent many sleepless nights learning this thing.
Like, trust me, I know this 10 times better than you, even though you're supposed
to be the expert. I know, I know it better.
So there's a tendency to take it all on. And what the who's got the monkey article
is all about, excuse me, is essentially, you know, not taking all that stuff on.
Let the people who are supposed to do that specific thing, let them do that specific thing.

(02:46:58):
And there's, you know, the opposite of that, frankly, is micromanaging.
That's probably the opposite. And a couple of years ago, I read somewhere that
something I'd heard a hundred times that this won't be a shock to anybody that
when you micromanage, what that means is you don't trust the people that are,
should be, you know, to do the thing they need to be doing.
I've heard that a hundred times, but it never meant anything to me.

(02:47:18):
Well, this particular time I was like, I took it serious and I realized, yeah, absolutely.
That is what's happening. I absolutely do not trust them to do it the way I want it done.
And so that, that caused me to take a step back and say, you know what, you know, let them do it.
Yes. They're not going to do it exactly like I want done some.
First of all, sometimes that's okay.

(02:47:39):
And that was a, that was hard for me. Sometimes that's simply okay.
But the other side of that is, well, maybe it's not okay. Maybe it needs to
be done exactly the way I want it done, but it doesn't mean I have to do it.
Let them do it. And when it's not exactly how you want done,
help them get there so that the next time it is done the way you want.
So in other words, teach, coach, expect more of them.

(02:48:01):
You know, something Gunners aren't little, who I mentioned before,
I remember sticking up for one of my peers.
I was a sergeant at the time. I was sticking up for one of my peers who was
a good guy. I liked him, but he kept falling short in a certain area.
And he told me, he called, he's like, why sergeant so-and-so this again?
You know? And I was like, ah, you know, I make excuses for him.
And, uh, and they were legitimate ish excuses for the most part.

(02:48:23):
I wasn't just blowing smoke, but one day he just said, why are you always?
And he didn't dislike the sergeant. So this question really took me back.
He said, why are you always sticking up for him?
And I was like, I didn't think of it as sticking up for him.
I was like, I was giving real answers to, to the situation.
And I was just like, stare down for a minute. He goes, and I was like,
I'm not, I'm not sticking up for him. It's, you know, it's legit.
And he's like, he's like, he called me out. Right. You know, BS.

(02:48:45):
He said, you're sticking up for him. He's like, and the reason you're doing
it is because And that's how he called me out on it. He goes,
would you have done that?
You know, whatever the case, whatever the thing was, would you have done it?
Would you be, would I be asking anybody why you, whatever?
And I was like, like right away, like not a chance. Like, and I knew, like no way.
And it was something minor. It could be tight sleeves. It wasn't tight sleeves,

(02:49:06):
but it could be as minor as tight sleeves.
And I was like, there's no way. Like, because my sleeves are going to be tight.
You will never fit two fingers in there. And so. Not a chance.
You can get lost. loss. And he knew, he knew that would trigger me.
Cause I was like, I would never confess to that.
And so anyway, his takeaway was, wasn't to rag on the other guy. He's like, don't ever,

(02:49:27):
don't hold other people to a lower standard than you hold yourself.
And I'm like, man, I was deep, you know?
And, and there's, there's a lot of levels you can go with that.
That's not just about holding people to being hard on them.
It's no help them, like hold them to a higher standard because that's what they'll rise to.
Or if not, well, then you need to know that. And that's how you need to cut
them loose. So, so anyway, that stuck with me. I thought that was good.

(02:49:49):
I had a staff sergeant on MSG.
I remember just being in there in post one and I don't know what happened,
but we were, it was a couple of us. It was like four or five of us.
I was probably a sergeant at the time.
And this is kind of the first time he, first time he really blew up.
You know, I don't think anyone's ever made him mad until this day.

(02:50:11):
And I'd been there for like six months probably.
But what he said, I never forgot. He said, don't hold, don't hate me for holding
you to a standard you chose to be a part of. Nice.
And I never forgot it and I've applied I've applied it in thought several times since. That's good.
And it's funny how you don't forget some of those things.

(02:50:33):
And maybe nothing else you said was influential ever, but that one thing.
I was like, that's it. That's all. That's it.
As a leader. That's really good. Yeah. Any other, what about the guys you're working with now?
Any quotes keep popping up or any isms that they like to use?

(02:50:53):
No, I have a, um, so, so like I said, I'm at the squadron level.
So it was my first, first, you know, just got promoted to sergeant major a year ago.
The next, the next level, if you will, is, uh, the mag.
So the Marine air group 41, the group sergeant major, he's a, he's really good.
I like him a lot. There's an active and reservist there and both of them are great.

(02:51:14):
But the, uh, the active duty guy actually recently was cracking me up because
he was dealing with, he's a guy who's got plenty.
He's got, it just rolls off the tongue. He's got plenty many things to say,
I should have a book and just write them down while you're talking.
But the one that I thought of it just now, when you're saying what your staff's
going to say, was an issue with, you know, sometimes we deal with married Marines

(02:51:35):
and the wives calling to fuss at something their husband, you know, doing or whatever.
And sometimes it's absolutely inappropriate and outside our purview,
has nothing to do with us.
And he told, he had to say, he was like, he said, excuse me,
when you two were in love and just met, holding hands, kissing each other,

(02:51:56):
and I bet y'all were just so excited to be around each other,
y'all decided to get married.
At any point during all of that, did y'all think about the office of the Sergeant Major?
Because now when things aren't going so smooth anymore and marriage is tough,
now all of a sudden the Sergeant Major needs to get involved and I'm the most
important person. and he's like, y'all didn't include me in that decision.

(02:52:18):
I'd have told y'all not to do it.
But that was good. Oh, that's smooth. Yep, but that wasn't good. That's so smooth.
So leadership versus management. You just talked about the who's got the monkey and the micromanaging.
And all I thought about when you were saying those things was the fire.
All I was thinking about was standing there watching someone new build a fire for the first time.

(02:52:44):
Let them feed it. And just have your skin crawl. Yep.
And it'll crawl. You got to let them do it.
So, yeah. So the who's got the monkey is interesting. because when it comes
to leadership versus management, I would say those are very,
very, very different things.
And real quick, my definition there for that would be, I don't know how to define

(02:53:04):
leadership as much as to say it's a lot of intangible things and qualities and
concepts that are a lot of what we've been talking about here.
Management is much more black and white, checking the block,
you know, managing a thing.
It's more finite is that there's an end goal in mind or whatever.
So I don't know how else to say it other than that. I feel like that's kind

(02:53:25):
of helpful to differentiate the two.
So when it comes to who's got the monkey though, that's applicable for both
because there's some leadership things going on when you allow somebody else to feed the monkey.
But when it comes to just managing, and frankly, I view my position here as I'm a manager here.
If I can be influential in some way for good, great. That's awesome.
But by and large, I am managing some finite things around here.

(02:53:48):
And I apply the who's got the monkey all the time because inevitably people
aren't trying to, but I'll give the gist of the article is the idea of somebody
comes to you with a problem.
And when you're having that conversation with them, at some point,
that conversation is gonna be over and the person is gonna walk away.

(02:54:09):
Is there something now on your plate that needs to be done?
Another way I've heard it put is like the people at the circus spinning the
plates on on the top of those sticks or whatever.
And, you know, they can hold one in each hand and they got one balancing on
their toe and then they'll balance another one on their chin.
That's management, balancing a bunch of spinning plates or feeding a bunch of monkeys all day long.

(02:54:32):
Well, when people come to you, when your subordinates come to you.
Do they walk away and they just left another monkey for you to feed or another
plate for you to balance somewhere?
Or are they leaving with the same monkey they came with? And that's the the
gist of it. And the reason it's important in the article is, is worth reading.
It's very short, but it gets into, there's certain things you don't have a say over.

(02:54:53):
So a boss imposed time, for instance, you know, your boss is going to impose
tasks on you that you don't get a say in, you got to do those things.
Uh, and those are going to fill your plate.
Well, you can't have everybody fill in your plate all the time,
or you're going to be drowning. And so you're,
When it comes to managing things and even people, even staffing management decisions.

(02:55:14):
To me, a lot of that stuff is, I try to view it as black and white.
And if somebody comes to me that should be their problem or their monkey to
feed, I make sure before they leave, the monkey is on their back.
And I didn't used to do that. I absolutely used to take every monkey I could
and try to feed them all and it will burn you out.

(02:55:34):
And maybe you can do that for years and good on you, but that's not helping other people.
And, uh, and that's where those two things kind of bleed over into each other.
So, I mean, that's just managing items, but, but again, you got to manage yourself.
And again, you are the leadership aspect. There is, you are also hurting other
people by doing that because you're not helping them grow.
And so, so yeah, it's, it's become a bit of a game for me for sure to the point

(02:55:58):
that it's comical and it's especially comical because I've had times where I
don't know that this guy read who's got the monkey,
but I felt he knew he was trying to leave that monkey on my back and uh and
it wasn't here it was this was in the marines and the look on his face with
my one sentence response to him each time he tried to leave the monkey on me and his face was like.

(02:56:19):
Shoot like he read it that monkey yeah exactly crap he's like man i really feel
like that monkey still on my back and uh i could just see in his face he was
shocked and and he would try another sentence or two to get it back with me
and it's like okay you had a problem and then i would just I just say the one
sentence that it went to.
Anyway, it was just funny. You just see the monkey jumping back and forth.
And I was like, this conversation is not ending with that monkey on my back.

(02:56:41):
It's kind of like the, it's kind of like the, you owe me one game.
I used to play that one on my Marines.
That's right. We would always just one up each other and do each other favors
with the notion of, no problem, you owe me one, you know?
But we would push the limits to it.
So that, when you sent me that, it did help me as well because I did the same stuff.

(02:57:04):
And what you didn't mention happens a lot of times. It's not only when people come to you.
A lot of times it's you go to them to collect the monkeys.
And that is what you cannot do. You cannot do.
And a lot of it, like you said, as you're going and you're collecting monkeys
and you're feeling like you're doing something, you feel like you're doing a

(02:57:26):
good thing and you're helping. a lot of times you're hurting.
A lot of times you're, you're negating all the training you've been doing.
You're not giving them the chance to, here is the chance for them to do the
things you've been training them to do.
Now you're stealing it back from them or someone they need to be training.
You're taking, you're taking opportunity away and it's real.

(02:57:47):
It happens and you can make the decision not to.
So, and here's the, here's the huge plug for having that kind mindset.
For me, I learned that as a first sergeant in the Marines, and that's where
I was most applying this.
In fact, I wasn't even working here yet. My job in home health physical therapy
was, I didn't feel like there was much leadership stuff there.

(02:58:08):
I was doing physical therapy with people.
As a first sergeant, I was working. I'm in the reserves.
You hear one week in a month, two weeks a year. I was easily putting in 30 to 40 hours.
Well, easily putting in 20 to 30. a week doing reserve things,
nevermind my full-time job.

(02:58:29):
And the fact that I have a wife and four children who, you know,
I've made it clear are important to me and I need my time.
And so while I felt I was very good at it, I was definitely burning myself out
and I was not enjoying it.
Not much anyway, certain aspects of it. I was, but by and large,
I was not enjoying it and I was okay. I didn't need to enjoy it.

(02:58:50):
Well, what I found out with the, who's got the monkey was once I finally figured
that out, I was able to start, you know, delegating better and stop micromanaging things.
And so, yeah, maybe things weren't getting done exactly the way I wanted to,
but I was I was able to teach those people that needed to be taught.
Other things were getting done in a different way that was okay.
And that freed me up to do what is the real job of a company first sergeant.

(02:59:14):
And ultimately what is now my job as a, as a sergeant major,
I feel, and that is, you know, to handle enlisted matters, to get out among
the troops and talk to the Marines and, and,
and insert myself where I could be most influential or most useful at that time,
pull myself out if needed,
whatever the case may be. I was free to do that.

(02:59:34):
And I loved it. And I really felt like my last six months as a first sergeant were so enjoyable.
And it was, I felt like I finally really capitalized on a lot of this and go
figure, you know, I'm out of that.
And I'm now I'm learning how to be a sergeant major, kind of like the house
that I finally perfected in time to move out.
And so, so yeah, it's hugely rewarding because you can kind of take that step

(02:59:59):
back and let people thrive.
And again, you can start to insert yourself in ways that are much more impactful
and more maybe suited to where you will best fit.
And otherwise, you can't do that because you're too busy trying to feed all the monkeys.
And how do we pass that down? How do we keep that ball rolling?

(03:00:20):
Or do we need to start doing that now? Or do we need to just keep perfecting?
But I'm also afraid to just keep perfecting without getting started now.
Yeah, no, that's a good question.
I don't know. I think I've never thought about this particular conversation
with regard to teaching these things in my kids.
I never thought of that before until right now. But, um, one thing I have done,

(03:00:44):
and we don't need to go down a rabbit hole with this is I have started journaling
and I would, I would recommend anybody do that.
But, uh, the reason I bring it up now is, is these kinds of things do make it
into my journal. And I started journaling so that my children could have a journal
of mine to read one day. Like that was my why behind doing that.
So, you know, hopefully they, hopefully they read these types of things.

(03:01:07):
Cause I do mention this kind of stuff as they've come to me over the years and,
and hopefully they can apply it in their own lives as, as needed.
Other than that, there's certainly ways to teach that generation,
these specific things, but I never actually thought about other than putting
them in positions of leadership in some kind of way.
Here's an interesting question. Do you play the, who's got the monkey game with Abby?

(03:01:31):
Oh man. um probably
yes you heard that no but seriously
my i wrote it down earlier because you're talking about
you said kneecap to kneecap conversations with your you know you learn to do
that when you're a corporal how did that prepare you for marriage and raising

(03:01:52):
kids like is that is that this kind of style you use like hey me and you i need
to tell you what's happening so we're sitting down.
Yeah. Here's what you specifically have been doing lately.
Yeah. You know? Okay. So I think that's a huge, so there's a skill here that
is very important that I do happen to think is my strong suit.

(03:02:13):
So yeah, I'm kind of toot my own horn, but I do think it's important.
And even if you're not good at it, you should be able to do it or try it.
And that is the ability to reprimand and to lift someone up.
You know, maybe I shouldn't say tear them down and build them up.
Sometimes people need to be torn down, but you might need to be able to do that,
but you need You need to be able to lift, not just lift people up,
lift that same person up.

(03:02:33):
Some people are real easy to tear down and maybe even fun to tear down,
but that's not a good thing.
You need to be able to lift that person right back up. And so,
yes, as a corporal doing, you know, this idea of sitting down and doing quarterly
or doing monthly counseling, we call it in the Marines.
What I learned there is that I can talk to a Marine.

(03:02:56):
I can talk to somebody like an adult because that session is always supposed
to be professional and mature and like adults and all that.
And so even if it's somebody who really rubs you the wrong way or is always messing up,
that person absolutely still deserves your time one-on-one and doors closed

(03:03:19):
and they can speak their mind if they need to. And frankly, you speak your mind.
It doesn't have to be, nobody's raising their voice, nobody's emotional in a bad that way.
It's just an opportunity for that person to have a voice.
Ultimately it's for that person to have a voice all month long.
I have a voice. I'm the boss, you know, or whatever.
I'm the manager. I'm the, this, I already have a voice, but does that person.

(03:03:41):
And so for anyone who has forgotten or maybe never was in that position,
Hey, it's pretty frustrating day in and day out to feel like you never have a voice.
And so it's real. I think it's very important for people to know they have a
voice and that's not built into our industrial model.
And so, so I think that's important, letting people know they have a voice.

(03:04:02):
But what that did for me is it allowed me to be able to talk to people,
you know, literally in one, in one sentence, like, you know,
I'll use the Marines in one sentence.
I may be sitting down with somebody having a very formal reprimand with them
that maybe even have some paperwork behind it.
Like, Hey, you're getting kicked out of the Marine Corps, maybe for this severe
thing, or maybe not kicked out.

(03:04:24):
Let's say, you know, you probably with this on your record, I don't know how
you, you know, it's going to be hard to get promoted because you did this thing.
It was so stupid, blah, blah, blah sign here. But in the next breath.
All right, how are we going to, how are we going to get you,
how are we going to help you out now? Because this ain't good.
Let's fix this. How are we going to fix it?
And that's, you know, some people get taken aback by that and you realize right

(03:04:46):
then and there, they've probably never had somebody who was willing to do both.
Yeah. So you're being, you're, you're, you're actually being vulnerable.
You're saying, yeah, I usually, I just tell you what to do.
I don't know what to tell you right now. Can you help me? Yeah.
Like you're showing weakness, you know? So for my kids, I feel like that's,
again, if I say I have a strength of mine, I have absolutely no hesitation apologizing when I've messed up.

(03:05:14):
I have no problem confessing when I've messed up. Sometimes maybe they don't
even know that I did something wrong or whatever.
That's not something I struggle with, and I'm thankful for that because I mess up a lot.
And so sadly, they'll have seen me mess up plenty. money, but the good news
is they will have seen a man who
was willing to admit when he's wrong and apologize for it if necessary.

(03:05:35):
And, and so that I think comes from just that, that willingness to be vulnerable
and, and all that, and just acknowledging, you know, our own shortcomings.
And so I'm very, very open with my children when it comes to,
and their own reprimand too. Like I don't shy away from reprimanding them.
I don't shy away from, from lifting them up if I can, because again,
the reprimand's easy to find.

(03:05:56):
How do you feel about, you have four, how do you feel about doing it in front of the others?
We kind of, I kind of struggle with that, like not knowing if it's right or
when it's right or when to not do that.
I can tell you what I think is the right answer, and it's not something I get
right all the time. I do try to be conscious of it.
I think the right answer there is it depends on if it's reprimand,

(03:06:17):
if they say reprimand in private, scold in private, and praise in public or whatever.
Well, sure, but there are certain sins that are public sins that maybe need
to be reprimanded publicly.
That's my going in argument there. If they've done something that was public, that was wrong.
It needs to be publicly confessed and acknowledged.

(03:06:39):
If it was private and it didn't necessarily affect anybody else or whatever, then I'll handle that.
When it comes to praise, by and large, you almost can't do wrong if you do that
publicly, but that could be a problem.
If you praise too much in front of people, there could be some big headedness or whatever.
Do you have to keep a, I'm sure you have a spreadsheet.

(03:07:00):
Do you have to keep a spreadsheet with the count of how much public praise. Yeah.
So-and-so is getting pretty stacked. I need to psych off for a while.
Yeah. Cause it's just, it runs so rampant. I probably should start getting more organized.
I think this calls for a spreadsheet.

(03:07:21):
Well, good. What do you think? Let's talk a little bit about Papa.
What's some things that, that you think truly were passed passed down to you
from papa not from your dad not from anyone else but papa,
so or maybe just a memory you just can't forget you
know so so papa the first thing i thought of basically is just a picture you

(03:07:44):
know again a picture i'm here with the with customers and you just how did uh
was it mr cleave how did he say it man can make friends with a rattlesnake so
that you know just his personality stands out but the thing about papa that
is just the coolest thing in the world to me.
And I wish I had a video of it because everybody needs to see it.

(03:08:04):
When that man would come home from anything, if he just went to the store,
if he walked over here to the market, it didn't matter.
And it did not matter how many people were in his house. It could have been
me visiting, just sitting there and he walks in and I was visiting with mama,
or it could have been, I got it right that time. I already know what you're going to say.
Or it could have been, it could have been a Christmas thing where the whole

(03:08:26):
family was there, but Papa was out doing whatever.
When Papa walked in the door, he made a beeline for his wife.
Wife he did not turn his head to the right of the left
he barely said hi to anybody he looked his wife
right in the eyes he walked right up to her he grabbed her on both cheeks and
he kissed her on the forehead and they would even say i love you
so much anyway and they do like

(03:08:47):
that and maybe for a second but that was the first thing he
did when he came home and so you do it too i do
it too yeah i do it too yeah i do the same thing i
even the the memory burned into me is he
would he would like crawl to her chair yeah yeah and
i do it too and i think i do think about them yeah
it's so awesome i thought that was awesome too i think

(03:09:09):
we're doing i don't know i want to say i think we're doing a good job i think
there's plenty we can we can get better at but i don't know how to get better
at it necessarily but i don't know how do you think we go about passing this i don't know know,
if you call it a mindset or this thing that,

(03:09:29):
that we have because of the influences
we've had along the way and the mentors we've had, I don't know.
I hope we can be those mentors and I hope we've, we've started,
you know, that's all we can hope for is that we've at least started. Yeah.
So I think when I think of that question about how we're going to pass it on

(03:09:49):
and make sure the next generation is kind of, you know, sitting around talking
like we are, I do first wonder, okay, well, do we need to be talking about it?
And I only ask that because I want to be purposeful and make sure we're not
just doing something because we think it's right.
I want to, you know, question everything type of thing.
And so I think of, I think of uncle Donald and my dad and uncle John and all

(03:10:09):
the aunts and uncles, really, I think of pop ball.
And I don't know that they sat around talking about this kind of stuff.
And I don't know that they were trying.
I don't know that they were being intentional about, I think they were being
intentional in in a lot of good ways, but I don't know that they were being
intentional about trying to make sure they passed something on as far as a way to be yet.
They did pass it on.

(03:10:31):
I can argue. I can argue that they absolutely knew what they were doing. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe.
Good point, Matt. I never thought it like that, but you're, you're right.
I mean, if you do anything interesting enough, people are going to look and
if you do it for long enough, they're going to remember it. Yeah.
Right. And that's a good point. Yeah.
So, yeah. So for me, I think, I think stay the course be the role model, be the mentor.

(03:10:55):
In other words, have a character and an uprightness about you that's worthy of emulation.
That's an important thing, taking that seriously. Again, Bo's mentality on,
look, just watching over things until the next generation, I think that's not
just a good, humble attitude to have.
It's the right mindset because it makes you a good steward of the thing that you're watching over.

(03:11:18):
If you think about it for yourself, it's not just that it's selfish, it's that you change.
But if you think about it for the next generation, you're going to take care
of it like it belongs to someone else.
And we all take care of something a little different when it's for someone else. and
so just that little small thing i think makes a
big difference i think i think as long as we're thinking about it like that

(03:11:38):
that's really that's that's maybe doing a lot that maybe does more than we realize
it's not going to feel you know won't feel like fireworks going off and we're
doing world-changing things but just that small thing recognizing that it's for the next generation,
what i what i call that multi-generational faithfulness i think that's a big
deal and And that's the Simon Sinek's book, Infinite Game. And that's essentially what it's about.

(03:12:04):
So what if something can last for 30 years and you retire and fat and happy on it?
And that's fine if that's your goal. But that's not our goal.
Our goal is that the next generation can, like you said, can pick up the torch
and continue to carry it.
That seems daunting when you start thinking about multi-generational 200, 300 years from now.
But if you just think, well, no, just the next generation. generation

(03:12:26):
and i would argue think about the next one after
that too but think of those two generations because again
do things our way first learn how to teach things our way and then you can maybe
deviate well that's how i think of that's how i think of the next two generations
i think the next generation needs to know how we do it and they need to know

(03:12:47):
how to teach how we do it because they're going to have to teach the next generation
then they can start deviating and see if they know a better way.
So I just think, uh, just have the right mindset that it's not about us.
It's about the next generation. It helps.
All right. Got anything else? This was awesome.
Yeah, this was fun. It's really good. No, nothing comes to mind.

(03:13:09):
I'm sure I'll think of a hundred things tonight. We'll do another.
We'll just do another. Cool. All right. Thanks, Brody. All right.
Well, I asked for the opportunity to provide some closing remarks on something
that I'm very passionate about, and Shane graciously agreed to allow it. So there I go.
We talked about a lot of things, and frankly, it felt all over the place.

(03:13:30):
But when the subject of the Bible came up, I felt I missed an opportunity there.
I have my hands in a lot of fire, so to speak, but when it comes to God and
his word, this is an area of my life that I have devoted more of my time,
energy, and emotions to than any other area by far.
This includes even the relationship I have with my own wife,
and that's one of the things she likes about me.

(03:13:51):
I'd be remiss not to encourage everyone to read the Bible. Know for yourself what it says.
Anyway, I don't say that to imply I'm an expert on what God has to say in every circumstance of life.
But other things I have sought to understand in this life, this is certainly at the top for me.
For sure more than leadership or being a butcher or therapist, handyman, etc.
And I would be a fool not to at least attempt to encourage others that have

(03:14:13):
never read the Bible to simply sit down, start today. take the time to see what
God has to say on the many issues that I promise are relevant to you and everyone around you.
The Bible has been around for almost 1500 years, written by over 40 authors
and over a period of 40 generations in three different languages and deals with
the most controversial topics yet with complete harmony and agreement.

(03:14:34):
It's had the largest circulation of any book in history, read by more people
than any book in history.
It's the first book ever to be translated from its original language and has
been translated into more languages than any other book in history.
No other book has been banned, burned, and outlawed like the Bible has,
and yet it is still around as much as it ever has been or more.
There is no natural explanation as to why the Bible still exists,

(03:14:56):
and all that is to mention nothing of the actual information to be found in
it and why it exists. So check it out.
None of this proves it's true or even relevant, but it does prove that it is
unique, standing out from all others, one of a kind, having no equal.
I've heard what I think is every reason under the sun from people for why they
don't read or have not read the Bible Most of whom I hear criticize it will

(03:15:19):
openly admit to having never read it in
the first place Nor considered its qualifications compared to other books,
There was a time when you had to earn the right to critic criticize something,
But sadly it is also not all that rare to hear of someone who claims to believe
in God and his written word and That has also never read it.
I'm not sure which is the bigger travesty In 2004, General Mattis responded

(03:15:39):
to a question in an email with regard to the importance of reading and officers
who found themselves too busy to read.
I want to read the opening lines of that email.
The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience,
or by your men's experience, i.e. the hard way.
By reading, you learn through others' experiences.
Generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work,

(03:16:02):
where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.
Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation,
never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed, successfully or unsuccessfully before.
It doesn't give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead. head.
For all the fourth generation of war intellectuals running around today saying
that the nature of war has fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new, etc.

(03:16:26):
I must respectfully say, not really.
Alex the Great would not be in the least bit perplexed by the enemy that we face right now in Iraq.
And our leaders going into this fight do their troops a disservice by not studying,
studying by just reading the men who have gone before us. So end quote.
So that's General Mattis. I share that because of its relevance to reading the Bible.

(03:16:48):
General Mattis was referring to the importance of reading history and reading
in general, but I can say in my experience, it is very applicable to all of
life and the reading of God's word.
Shane and I didn't even get into my wife's cancer diagnosis in 2019 and how
we had to navigate that, or the fact that in 2021, I was faced with a moral
decision that was all but sure to have me kicked out of the Marine Corps and
how that ultimately played out.

(03:17:09):
Those were very hard times for my wife and I, and we learned a ton,
but it wasn't some mystical, unexplained, or illogical, quote,
faith that carried us through.
It was an objective, tangible understanding of so many scriptures that laid
the path out so clearly for us that I can hardly justify having ever doubted
the right path. And I'm thankful for that.
We, of course, don't have it all figured out and never will on this side of

(03:17:32):
eternity. And that's okay too.
We can trust in someone who does and just see what he says, what he has to say
about it all. If you try that and you don't like it, well, at least you can say you tried.
Music.
And that's all I got to say about that thanks,

(03:17:53):
alright that's it for this episode of the Miracles in Me podcast we ask that
you share it with at least one person in your life that you think needs to hear
it you know if you got a little something from it you got some little goose
pimples or it just gave you some feel goods,
you know send it to someone else let them feel that
too and if you loved it please leave us a
five star review that'll really help out and if

(03:18:15):
you only loved it like four stars or so please
do not leave a review same thing with the one through
three not interested in any of those only five stars if you have any personal
questions or comments about the episode shoot them over to bourgeois meat market
on facebook or instagram and we'll reach back out And if you have any ideas

(03:18:36):
for any cool future guests, please shoot those over too.
We're all always interested in hearing Who else is out there and what kind of
cool stories we might be able to bring into this place.
Music.

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Ep. 9 - Sergeant Major Brody Bourgeois: United States Marine Corps | Leadership

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 9 - Sergeant Major Brody Bourgeois: United States Marine Corps | Leadership