Join us for an inspiring conversation with retired Green Beret Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, who shares his compelling journey of leadership, resilience, and connection. He unveils insights from his book, "Nobody is Coming to Save You: A Green Beret's Guide to Getting Big Sh*t Done," and reflects on the pervasive issues of divisiveness and distractions in today's world.
Through powerful storytelling and personal anecdotes, Scott emphasizes the transformative power of unity and shared experiences, drawing from his own early life influences and initiatives, which are also evident in his award winning play, "Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret".
Discover the profound concept of "rooftop leadership" as Scott explains his experiences in counterinsurgency, highlighting the need for long-term, community-based strategies that build trust and empower individuals. Through engaging stories and vivid metaphors, he illustrates how understanding local customs and fostering genuine relationships pave the way for sustainable change.
The concept of "the churn" is a central theme in the episode. Scott explains how modern society has created an environment where civil discourse has eroded, leading to increased distractions, disengagement, disconnection, and distrust—the four D's. This shift is compared to tectonic plates moving beneath us, resulting in behaviors reminiscent of primal in-groups and out-groups. Scott emphasizes the impact of technology and media on our attention spans and interpersonal relationships, urging listeners to recognize "the churn" as the true adversary. To combat this, he suggests focusing on gaining clarity by putting their own "oxygen masks" on first, allowing them to rise above the chaos and build cohesive communities.
Scott's journey from military life to addressing mental health issues among veterans underscores the healing power of storytelling and human connection. We touch on practical strategies for digital detoxes, enhancing creativity, and fostering authentic connections. Concluding with a focus on active listening and meaningful conversations, this episode invites you to explore the themes of leadership, resilience, and unity, and encourages you to engage with Scott Mann's inspiring work.
To learn more about Scott Mann, visit:
ScottMann.com
RooftopLeadership.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Son of a
Blitch podcast.
I'm your host, George Blitch,and guys, you're going to love
this podcast.
I just wrapped up aconversation with Lieutenant
Colonel Scott Mann, retiredGreen Beret officer, who is just
an absolute gem of a humanbeing.
He has done so much for ourcountry and so much for people
in general as far as hisleadership approach, sharing his
(00:38):
stories, advising others toshare their stories and to
connect others to share theirstories and to connect.
You know, we talk a lot aboutthis idea of the churn that is
so much divisiveness and there'sso much distraction, all these
things that are going on in ourworld that is kind of dividing
us, and how we need to be ableto go past that, move through
the churn and be able to connectwith each other on, you know,
(00:59):
these true, true heartfeltlevels, to really realize that
we have more things in commonthan we do dividing us.
And I think it's very importantin this, you know, set and
setting in this timeline that,uh, we're talking about right
now and we we really jump into alot of that with this book.
Nobody is coming to save you.
A green braids guide to gettingbig shit done.
(01:19):
It is a phenomenal read, uh,and he gets raw.
There are some stories that aretold here that are just very
emotionally impactful and weunpack those today in this
conversation to really explorebeing able to go to that depths
of detail of talking about someof those ugly sides of your life
(01:41):
in order to share those storiesand maybe help other people
along the way.
There's many organizations he'sbeen involved in that we talk
about today.
We didn't get to talk about allthe books because we wanted to
focus in on this one, right, butthere are many books he's
written.
Again, everything will be inthe show notes below.
I highly suggest you guys gocheck that out.
They're all phenomenal booksand I think you're going to get
(02:03):
something from all of those.
And we talked about last out,uh, the play that he produced,
wrote and acted in and now isgoing back on another tour, this
first time that he won't be thelead actor, but he's obviously
beginning of November.
Next week we will be having thefirst two shows and there's
(02:29):
going to be a lot more that willbe coming up in that 2025 tour.
That's, you know, kind of we'reat the helm of.
So if you want to see that inyour city.
You know there'll be linksbelow to where you can go ahead
and request that and get thatgoing on.
And again, I highly suggest youguys go check out the notes, go
check out his website,scottmancom.
You know I don't want to giveeverything away that we talked
about, so I'll just leave it atthat and make sure you tune in
(02:52):
to this podcast, share it withyour friends, share it with
those who you think might needthis, share it with your veteran
community and non-veterancommunity.
There's something for everyonehere in this conversation.
I think it's very, veryimportant.
It's very uh, the timing of ofthis, of my interaction with
Scott and, you know, releasingthis uh, obviously right before
the election here.
I think it's very important.
There's a lot going on and wereally need to uh try to be able
(03:15):
to work through the churn andconnect with each other on the
most human of levels, because Ithink that's very important
right now.
We need we need togetherness.
We don't need divisiveness,right, we see this every single
day, but we need to cometogether and realize that we're
going to be doing better worktogether.
So again, thank you so much,scott, for joining me today.
Thank you for all the listeners.
Make sure you go check out theshow notes, go check out
(03:36):
scottmancom and make sure youorder your copy of Nobody Is
Coming To Save you to save you.
Or check out the audio bookwhich Scott reads, which is
phenomenal.
I've read it and I've listenedto it Both great ways to get
that in.
So, without further ado, here'sthe podcast with Scott Mann.
You guys enjoy.
Thanks, hey, scott, how youdoing today?
Hey, good to see you.
(03:56):
George, thanks for having me on.
Yeah, absolutely, man, listen,I definitely have a lot to talk
to you about your new book,nobody Is Coming To Save you,
which is phenomenal.
Absolutely love it.
I know you have a bunch ofother books.
You've written a play.
There's so many things I wantto dive deep into, but I kind of
just figured we'll start at thevery beginning with a lot of my
guests.
I'd like to give listeners alittle bit of 101 and kind of,
(04:18):
if you can tell us a little bitabout where you're born and
raised and maybe kind of goahead and thread that through.
That day at the Soto shop whenyou were 14 and, uh, a special,
uh, you know, meeting there thatkind of spawned the next move
in your life.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, no thanks for having me on.
Um.
I was born, actually, inClifton Forge, virginia.
It didn't live there long atall.
Uh, mom and dad, uh, my dad wasa young forester at the time
and we lived in a little singlewide trailer and dad was quickly
transferred from there and wemoved all over the southeast.
(04:51):
George, in little logging towns, because of the nature of his
job, ended up spending a goodamount of time.
Most of my family's fromwestern North Carolina.
So I have very deep roots inthe area that was hit tragically
by Hurricane Helene and a lotof my latter year influence in
terms of the stuff that's inthat book nobody's coming to
(05:16):
save.
You came from my lessons inAppalachia, but a lot of my
youth was spent in Arkansas,particularly a little town
called Mount Ida.
Farming and logging communitydidn't even have a stoplight,
and when I was 14, green Beretwalked into our soda shop and
really changed my life.
His name was Mark and he wasjust one of the coolest dudes I
(05:37):
ever met.
The way he carried himself, theway he conducted himself, and I
just knew there was somethingabout him that was different.
And I think, more importantly,he sat down and took the time to
talk to me as a 14-year-oldgrunt who was kind of invisible
in that town in a lot of ways,had been bullied to some degree
and just didn't fit in.
A lot of times I felt awkward.
(05:57):
That was kind of common withmoving around a lot, and Mark
took the time to explain to meabout what Green Berets were and
special forces that's theofficial title and how they work
by with and through indigenouspeople and help them stand up on
their own and how differentthey are than all the other
groups that kick in doors and dothey actually they go in with
(06:20):
12 and they come out with 12,000.
And just the notion of thatsounded so romantic and
appealing to me that I justromantic in the sense of
adventure.
You know that I just I couldn'tget it out of my head and I
decided right there at 14 yearsold that that's what I was going
to do and that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So what did that look like from that point in time
obviously finishing out highschool and then you decided to
go in right away and go aheadand enlist what was your
timeline there and kind of inyour journey to become a Green
Beret.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well, I mean, I really did look at Mark a lot
for how he led as a mentor andyou know he was a detachment
commander, a captain, at thetime when I met him and he made
it pretty clear to me that youGreen Berets are an NCO or
sergeant-based organization, butthat one of the biggest honors
out there is that if an SFofficer, if you truly love the
(07:14):
organization and the men whoserve in it, then you can really
make an effort to take care ofthem and be top cover for them.
And I liked that and, moreimportantly, I just wanted to be
like Mark.
So I went to college.
I didn't do very well.
I got a degree in politicalscience, barely enough to get
commissioned at the universityof central Arkansas and was
commissioned into the U S armyand then that began my journey.
(07:37):
But you know, even as aLieutenant I you can't just go
try out for special forces.
You have to wait about four anda half years until you're a
captain.
So I went to other schools likeranger school and air assault
school and I failed all of themmultiple times because I was a
runt and it was very difficultfor me, but I just kept going
back.
That was one thing that myfather and mom taught me was
(07:58):
just to never quit.
And so I would just keep goingback, recycling, recycling,
until I eventually made it.
I even recycled thequalification course for special
forces several times butultimately made it, got my Green
Beret.
But it was man, it was hard.
I mean it was a 10-year, youknow, from the time I met Mark.
A 10-year journey, butcertainly about five years, five
(08:19):
, six years in the Army of justfrustration and failure, until I
finally was awarded that GreenBeret and then assigned to 7th
Special Forces Group in FortBragg, north Carolina or the
artist formerly known as FortBragg.
And I spent gosh 10 years therebefore 9-11, working in Central
and South America during the90s, which was a pretty sporty
(08:42):
place to be.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, so you know, in in this particular book, you
know again, I'll dive into someother books, cause I think it
kind of leads up and it talksabout a lot of the lessons.
Um, you know, one of the thingsof perseverance you just talked
about, um, you know, for thosewho are not familiar yet with
this book, you know, can yougive a little bit of background?
What is that you?
You know your decision on whyyou wanted to write this book in
this period of time and what isthe premise behind, and then
(09:06):
we'll kind of dive into somemore deeper questions there yeah
, I mean, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
I think this book has been brewing inside of me for a
long time.
You know, I have written a lotof pieces.
I look back on it and I can'treally even remember writing
them.
I think that all of them and Ithink this is true for all of us
in the creative space is, youknow, they find their way out of
us and they're gifted to usfrom another place, right?
So I don't.
(09:30):
I don't remember any conscioustime when I just said I'm going
to write this leadership book,but what did strike me was that
all of my other works had beenabout the military and I really
hadn't written.
People were asking me well, withPineapple Express and you guys
getting the Afghans out, how didyou do that when you didn't
have any money, resources orauthority?
Or, you know, how did you writeand perform a play when you're
(09:53):
not a playwright and you're notan actor?
And it got produced by GarySinise.
You know and to me that was notextraordinary, nothing about
that's extraordinary it's.
It's a process that I've beenusing for years that these Green
Beret sergeants taught me ofgetting big stuff done when
nobody's coming to help you.
There's a certain approach thatyou can take from the bottom up
(10:14):
to get very big things done.
My wife, monty and I would talkabout it.
I'm like isn't that intuitive?
She's like, no, that's notintuitive.
There's a process that you havethat is worth sharing and I
call it rooftop leadership, andI have for years.
I did a TED Talk on it, but I'dnever written on it, george.
I'd never written on it.
So about six years ago Istarted working on it and it's
(10:36):
gone through so many iterationsand tosses in the trash can and
curse words and you know,finally, this past November, I
landed on a version of it that Iwas very happy with.
I felt like I included thestories that were right and,
frankly, the times were rightfor it, because everyone you
look there seems to be thisshortcoming or failure of
(10:59):
institutional leadership andpeople don't really know what to
do with that.
And my position is it's okay.
I mean, america's gottenthrough times like this before
because of the resilience andleadership of our people, but
we're up against a newdiabolical threat that I call
the churn, and we'll talk aboutthat, I'm sure.
But the conditions forleadership have changed here.
(11:21):
So I wanted to put a book outthat had those Green Beret skill
sets of leading when it's hard,from the bottom up and get it
out there, and that was reallythe impetus for it.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Well, before we jump into the churn and the idea of
that and kind of the maincomponents, you know this idea
of rooftop leadership.
Obviously, there you're inAfghanistan you're talking about
, you know, you guys getting ontop of the roofs and basically
defending these villages againstthe Taliban.
But can you go ahead and maybedive in a little bit more and
kind of explain the idea of whatthat rooftop leadership is and
(11:53):
how you're bringing people upwith you?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, I think that to do that is to back it up a
little bit and even furtherexpound on the mission of Green
Berets and when I talk aboutwhat Mark explained to me in
that soda shop of how they workby, with and through indigenous
people.
You know, imagine a situationwhere you have an area in the
world where terror groups areoperating in these dusty
(12:16):
villages that are under governed, dilapidated, dealing with, you
know, hunger issues, foodshortages, water shortages, and
they basically go in there andthey set up shop, much like
gangs do in East LA.
They take advantage of thechallenges of that civil society
and they manipulate it to theirown, they provide some things
(12:38):
that allow them to set up shopand then from those places they
project things like 9-11 againstus from these far flung, and
sure you can get in there, and11against us from these far flung
, and sure you can get in thereand kick the doors in and take
down targets.
But it's like mowing the grass,like what you really need is to
enable that community to standup against those bad actors like
an antibody, and to do thatyou've got to live there, you've
(13:00):
got to get in there, you've gotto grow your beard out.
You've got to don indigenousscarf and you've got to live
among those people and, overtime, inspire them to stand up
on their own to defend their owncommunity against these bad
actors and then, as a secondaryeffect, those bad actors don't
have a safe haven to projectagainst us.
It is a very long, tough,agonizing process that is, I
(13:25):
tell people at Green Beret andModern Times is a combination of
John Wick, lawrence of Arabiaand the Verizon guy.
You know, you've got to be ableto take care of business at a
coercive level.
You've got to be able toconnect, like Lawrence of Arabia
, and tell stories and listenand build relationships and
rapport, even when it's hard.
And then the Verizon guy'salways building these networks.
(13:46):
He's always, you know, makingsure that he's connected.
And that's what Green Berets do.
You know, even in the earliestdays of Afghanistan, when they
were deep in enemy territory,they were sending out
transmissions that were gettingread by the Secretary of Defense
and translated into policy forthe rest of the United States in
the global war on terror.
That's what I mean by theVerizon guy.
(14:07):
They're networked and I thinkthose you know.
So those that's what's happeningin that village and it's not
easy because in the beginning,most of the people in that
village are in their own kind ofchurn.
They're disconnected anddisengaged and distracted and
they don't trust each otherbecause of years of conflict.
And so how do you go in thereand make these connections and
(14:30):
ultimately get them to go up onthe rooftops and fight for
themselves?
Well, you have to go up on therooftop yourself first.
When the attack comes, you goup there and you fight and you
try to defend the community fromthese bad actors that are
coming in, that have heardyou're there.
It's kind of like theMagnificent Seven, you know, and
at first nobody goes up there,nobody's coming, it's just your
guys.
And then one night there's amuzzle flash across the way on
(14:52):
one building that's not yours,and it's a farmer that's decided
to defend his home because ofthe rapport and the
relationships that you builtwith him, by treating his
daughter who had a medicalcondition.
And then, two nights later,there's another muzzle flash.
It's.
You know, fear is contagious,but so is leadership.
And by demonstrating that andbuilding rapport when trust risk
is low, over time, within a fewweeks, every rooftop in the
(15:15):
village is firing backcollectively against that threat
, against that churn, and that'swhat I call rooftop leadership
the, the ability to move peopleup to a rooftop when it's when
it's hard, and they go there notbecause they have to, but
because they choose to, based onthe relationships and rapport
that you built with them.
And, uh, yeah, that's it in anutshell, man.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Well, you know you talked about too, like with the
farmers there and you had a veryum, a very interesting story
too is kind of talking about aconnection with your grandfather
there too, and I know thatthere were some farmers there
and they were kind of pulling upthe earthworms thinking that
they were bad, and you had aconnection there.
If you could maybe tell thatstory a little bit.
It's just something that hithome for me with with your story
(15:57):
and your grandfather and kindof your history there too.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, everything in my book is story based and you
know, there's just certaintenets to rooftop leadership
that I believe are reallyimportant.
You know, one is recognizingthat the enemy is not the
Republican or the Democratsitting across from you, it's
the social conditions that welive in, it's the churn to
recognizing that this thing Icall the human operating system,
(16:21):
that we are very primalcreatures and that you know I
look at those arrowheads behindyou and that love you have of
indigenous culture we are nodifferent at a biological level
than those ancestors.
I mean, we are still exactlythe same makeup and we have all
the same tendencies, good andbad, but we've disconnected from
(16:42):
those tendencies bad, but we'vedisconnected from those
tendencies.
And that disconnection from ourpast is a major problem today,
particularly when we're tryingto lead.
And as an example of that, whatI talk about in the book is
that you know, when we learnedas Green Berets that if you're
going to lead in any environment, there's a saying in special
forces is go local or go home,like if you're just going to go
(17:06):
in and kick the door in and thenget out, that is a short-term
effect.
If you're just going to walkthe halls as a ceo and chat
everybody up once a month.
So you're seen, that's just ashort-term effect, it's cosmetic
.
You've got to get in there andyou've got to live and work and
play among the people you serve.
(17:26):
And it's not easy but it'snecessary.
And as an example I gave, thatwas in rural Afghanistan I got a
phone call from a captain who Iwas very fond of and he was a
really good officer and he wasconcerned.
He said we need to show yousomething.
And we were doing this missionwhere we were village stability,
where we were living out inthese communities.
(17:46):
And they had just got there andthey the freshly tilled fields
and the and the young men wereout in a line across the field,
as you can imagine, on theirknees pressing and killing the
earthworms with their thumbs.
And you know, I'm standingthere next to this captain in
disbelief with my jaw on theground, because I grew up around
(18:07):
farming too and I'm like that'snot a good idea.
And he, he was a South Georgiafarm boy and he's like no.
And I was like what the hell'sgoing on here?
And he's like we're trying tofigure it out.
It took weeks to get to thebottom of this, but what we
finally figured out was thatthese young men who had returned
to their community afterdecades of war and civil war,
(18:30):
they had been in refugee campsand in Afghanistan.
All of your farming, all of youranimal husbandry, all of your
grazing practices, all of yourtimber management is in an
indigenous tribal society which,as you know, is oral in nature.
So all of your institutionallessons for land management and
responsible stewardship arepassed from father to son.
(18:51):
Well, because of all the yearsof war and the displacement of
the elders during the Sovietoccupation, most of the elders
went into refuge.
Most of the elders were killedRight, and those few that
survived went into the refugeecamps and they didn't share
stories about farming practicesbecause they figured they'd
never go back.
So the next generation offarmers never farmed.
(19:17):
And so when we went intoAfghanistan the first 10 years
of the war, while we're drivingaround throwing soccer balls out
the window and, you know,encouraging people to vote, it
never dawned upon us that thesefloods of people that were
returning from Quetta, pakistan,didn't know how to farm.
We were writing up all thesepositive metrics about how
people were returning, but theywere returning to farms and to
(19:38):
civil society realities thatthey didn't know how to deal
with their civil society at aninformal level was as broken as
any ministry and formal civilsociety in Kabul.
But we didn't know because weweren't local.
So 10 years later now we'reliving in these outposts with
the locals and we're seeing that.
(20:00):
Oh wow, that's what it's aninstitutional gap in memory.
So you know we did.
We brought out Department ofAgriculture experts and rural
farmers from Oklahoma and theystarted helping build model
farms and within a couple ofmonths you started to see a
complete change in foodproduction in these rural areas,
and most of them the areas wewere.
(20:21):
They went from subsistence toactually being able to sell
their goods.
And guess what?
It was a direct corollary totheir willingness to go up on
that rooftop.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yep man, it was a fascinating read there and your
connections, and just to see howthere are those gaps and you
don't know what you don't know,and if that stuff is passed
along the line and thegenerations, and all of a sudden
it stops, no matter what kindof information, intelligence it
is.
You know these practices thatthey're generationally have gone
(20:51):
back you know so many hundreds,thousands of years, and then
all of a sudden there's a gapthere too.
So it was.
I found that a very fascinatingstory.
Let's jump back into the ideaof the churn.
You know you mentioned a coupleof times.
You know you mentioned in thebook.
You say it's volatile, divisive, fear-inducing, breeds
uncertainty, complex, crowded,ambiguous and so many more
things.
But you talk about kind of themain components of the churn.
(21:13):
I'd love for you to kind oftell people about what it is
that your belief and what youkind of define that is, and then
we'll, you know, kind of go ina little bit further about how
that is affecting all of us insuch a mighty way on a
day-to-day basis right now.
Oh, man.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, no, I I'm really glad we're getting into
it and it and it is important, Ithink, to step back in as
humans and look at what's goingon around us.
You know, the first specialoperations imperative is know
your operational environment,because the operational
environment is always changingand it has changed under our
feet like tectonic platesshifting under the earth.
(21:46):
You know, and I think peoplewhen they look around for
example in this election youlook around and you see friends
who went to high school togetherunfriending each other on
Facebook over a candidate.
You know, and I don't meanunfriending each other in like
when you and I were kids andwe're like I'm not playing with
you anymore, and then the nextday you go back.
Yeah, I'm talking aboutunfriending, like ending
(22:09):
relationships and become a verb.
You know this unfriending andwe've normalized it Like it's.
People do it all the time.
If you don't like this post andunfriend me, it's.
It is a.
It is a caustic, corrosiveenvironment, and you see it in
the way people treat each otherin public.
You see just the, the, the, thespew that comes out of the 24
seven news cycle, and so I callthat the churn.
(22:32):
It's this metaphorically, it'sthis roiling set of social
conditions where it's so muchharder to sell, to inspire, to
lead, even to have Thanksgivingdinner or whatever your favorite
holiday is, with extendedfamily.
Because there's all thesethings you can't talk about
anymore.
Civil discourse is gone, andwe've normalized that to such a
(22:53):
degree because most people areoperating in this fear-based
trance state that they don'teven realize they're doing it.
They've got their heads down intheir dopamine dispensers or
iPhones and they're actuallypawns of these divisionist
leaders that seek to advancetheir own narrow agenda with
in-groups and out-groups, whichis very primal.
And so what I say is that thebiggest problem, this churn, the
(23:18):
enemy is not the Republican orthe Democrat sitting across from
you, it's not the mask or nomask.
It is this novel, unprecedentedset of social conditions that
we're dealing with that we'venever dealt with before, and
what the leadership trainingwe've had up to this point?
What got you here is not goingto get you there.
It's more about.
It looks a lot more likeAfghanistan than it does America
(23:41):
in many ways, and a big reasonfor that, george, is because you
know that metaphor of theiceberg that I'm always talking
about in the book, where the tipof the iceberg is the modern
world and the bottom of theiceberg, the part you can't see,
is the traditional world.
It's the world where we allcome from those arrowheads that
are behind you.
It's that world, but we allcome from that world Like that
(24:04):
world is not that far removedfrom us.
Jared Diamond says that we arefar more traditional than we are
modern, but we've forgottenthat world.
We have forgotten that that'swho we are, and we think that
we're so advanced and sosophisticated that we're not
susceptible to that primal,feudal behavior where we
(24:27):
demonstrate in groups and outgroups and contempt.
But we're very much capable ofit and we're doing it without
even realizing it.
So those conditions are what Icall the churn, and the final
thing I'll say about it the wayI.
The real essence of it are thefour D's, which is distraction.
We're disengaged.
We, you know, we're sodistracted, the least little
(24:48):
thing pulls off focus.
Our attention spans like eightseconds.
We're so disengaged.
85% of the population claims tonot have purpose at work.
We're disconnected from ourpast and from from the natural
world because our heads are downin our phone and we're
distrustful.
Two thirds of Americans saythey don't trust their neighbor.
(25:10):
And if you look at thiselection disconnection we've got
going right now.
I mean, I'm actually I think alot of people are looking around
going.
Are we going to have civilunrest, you know, after November
5th?
I mean, I never thought I wouldsay that in my adult life in
this country.
So all of those things are thechurn.
And my point, george, is thatwe as leaders, as parents, as
(25:31):
coaches, we've got to recognizethat that is the enemy and that
there is a way to lead throughit.
But just doing it on instinctand just doing it on, you know,
uh, winging it is not going toget it.
You're going to actually getsucked into the churn with
everybody else.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Well, and you talk about, like, the opposite of
churn is clarity.
How do people, how do you uh,you know advise folks to be able
to then recognize the churn,see that these things are
happening, looking at those fourD's and then rising above it,
working through it and beingable to build communities that
can quiet that churn and movethat away, so that we can move
(26:05):
forward and kind of come back tothat cohesiveness, that idea of
that tribal nature, theseindigenous communities, these,
these, these connectors that youtalk about and you, you
mentioned in your leadership.
But I'm I'm curious as far aslike, okay, we have this.
Here's the issue set in frontof us.
What is your advice to folks tobe able to be able to move
through that in the most fluidway?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Put, your own oxygen mask on.
First right Is is recognizethat we are the most emotional
creatures on the planet.
We navigate the world withemotion and when we get afraid
or angry, which is unfortunatelymost of the, that's where we
are most of these days.
Because of the 24 seven newscycle, the economy, the social
(26:48):
media, we stay in this in-group,out-group, fear-based,
anger-based mentality and thesympathetic nervous system
remains up at fight, flight orfreeze and it's not supposed to
stay there.
That is for when there's asaber-toothed tiger in the
bushes or your kids are in aburning car.
It is not for when your 401k iseroding or your candidate's
losing.
A sympathetic response is notappropriate.
(27:11):
We want to be in theparasympathetic state, which is
calm and connect, rest anddigest.
Both of those are in ournervous system that are as old
as those arrowheads and both arenecessary.
But in the modern world, a lotof these divisionist leaders and
social media and 24-7 newscorporate media they have
(27:32):
fomented a circumstance where weare in the sympathetic state of
fight, flight or freeze all thetime.
There's always a tiger in thebushes and that's not one, it's
not healthy, but two.
It's not appropriate forleading your kids or having a
discussion at Thanksgiving andyou end up surrendering your
agency.
As Dr Ivan Terrell says, angermakes you stupid, right, because
(27:54):
you surrender your higherintelligence functions of the
frontal cortex.
They shut down because you'rein survival mode.
So what I say is put your ownoxygen mask on first.
You've got to, we've got tochange your state.
You've got to get yourself downto a parasympathetic state of
calm and connect where you'reopen and you're ready to
actually assess your environmentand you look like you trust
(28:14):
yourself right, ready toactually assess your environment
, and you look like you trustyourself right.
And that means you've got topractice self-leadership in that
moment, the best way to do that.
I remember when I was operationcenter director in Kandahar,
afghanistan in 2005, and we hada chopper go down and had my
best friend on it and a bunch ofteam guys that I love dearly,
and they were just spewedwed,spewed all over the battlefield
(28:38):
and I didn't know how many weredead, how many were alive.
It was a show and um, I wasterrified and but, and everybody
in the operation center waslooking at me.
It was like your worstnightmare realized, and what I
ended up doing was I.
I said, give me a second.
I literally stepped outside, um, I did like 10 burpees and I
did diaphragmatic breathing,three horizontal breaths, and
(29:01):
asked myself a couple ofquestions what can I control,
what can I not control?
And then I walked back in theoperation center and I was in a
state where I could actuallynavigate the situation, and that
became something that could bemirrored, because fear is
contagious, but so is leadership.
And so what I say and I justdid a LinkedIn newsletter on
(29:21):
this this morning I believeputting your own oxygen mask on
first means, first of all,immediately disengage from
whatever event just triggeredyou.
If it's social media, put thedadgum thing down.
If it's 24-7 news, turn the FoxNews off.
Quit having it run in thebackground.
Turn the alerts off on yourphones during election season,
you don't need them ever, butturn them off now.
(29:45):
Do a digital detox the momentyou start to see yourself get
worked up.
Then go move.
Dr Tyrrell says that movementand meaning are inextricably
linked.
Go do burpees.
Dr Tyrrell says that movementand meaning are inextricably
linked.
Go do burpees, walk around theblock, go play with your kids
and do breath work, do three tofive diaphragmatic breaths, you
know, and then go back into thesituation.
(30:06):
Just that alone, just that willreduce the sympathetic state
response of probably 90% of thestuff we deal with during the
election and beyond.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
You know you mentioned the digital detox and
I've heard you talk about thisbefore in the different interim
points throughout the year thatyou actually do that.
Can you go ahead and maybeshare that with listeners as far
as your kind of routine withthat?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Getting ready to do one and why it's important.
Yep, getting ready to do one injust a week or two, a big one.
And why it's important, yep,getting ready to do one in just
a week or two, a big one, like a10-day digital detox right
after the election.
But so I kind of you know, lookthese devices are.
I understand the role they playin our civil society and I get
(30:52):
it and it's part of my business,but there is a level of
entanglement with these devicesthat our primal brains doesn't
understand.
And if you don't believe me,watch somebody walking down the
street, walk into a lamppost orwalk across a crosswalk, or see
a family sitting together at arestaurant, all on their phones
in each other's presence.
(31:12):
Our prime, adam Ghazali Ghazali, says that we are ancient
brains trying to make sense of ahigh-tech world and failing Our
primal brains.
Just don't.
You know, multitasking is amyth.
It's not true.
You can't multitask.
The brain works in sequence.
Yet we think that we can be onthis and have a meaningful
(31:36):
conversation with our teenager,and it's not true, right?
So the level of entanglement inthese things and the way that
they tap into our deepest primallevel of of dopamine, and and
and and just the need for statusand so many of these other
innate needs that we have.
These things fill them in avery diabolical way, and that's
(31:57):
pre-AI.
So when I talk about theentanglement is what we're
dealing with here, and we haveto disentangle ourselves all the
time.
And if we don't think of it astentacles, they just get deeper
and stronger around you, and soyou can cut those tentacles off
and disentangle and then go backin and do what you have to do.
(32:20):
But I believe you have to besuper intentional about it.
You have to know that that isindeed part of the churn and
that that thing puts you in atrance-like state, it elevates
your emotional arousal aroundfear and anger, it reduces your
connection to the natural world,all of those things.
So go the opposite directionwith these digital detoxes.
(32:40):
I say, you know, at least onehour before you go to bed, turn
the dadgum blue screens off.
I know I don't touch my devicesuntil 10 am.
I don't even look at them, Idon't roll over in bed and check
.
I mean I do not.
I do all my rituals and then at10 AM I'll I'll get onto those
devices and even then I'll getsucked into the rabbit holes,
but I try to build exerciseroutines and things throughout
(33:02):
the day that remove me from themand I'll leave them in the room
and then I say, like you know,maybe once a once a month or
once a quarter, have a Fridaythat you have a no, no comms day
and everybody knows it.
Those devices are shut off, andthen once a quarter, a macro
detox three, five days where youjust put them up.
(33:24):
And I've been doing that and Ihave to tell you it is one.
It's increased exponentially mycreativity and my ability to
get more done and I just, I justfeel better.
I mean I really do.
I, once I get past the jonesingof that thing being out of my
hands for a little while, I feelbetter and I just think we're
going to have to get more andmore deliberate and intentional
(33:48):
about techniques and proceduresfor the digital detox,
particularly as AI makes its wayinto our world, or we're going
to become so entangled that itdoesn't end well for our species
.
I don't think.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Well, and that's something, too, that I've
noticed whenever, you know,especially when I have my entire
family around me because, youknow, I got two daughters and
the idea of, like that, if Ineed to get that phone call, if
it ever comes through right,there's like this tethered
feeling that I have.
But when we're all together,we're at the ranch or wherever
on vacation, the idea that thatphone can go and sit in a drawer
(34:22):
and we just connect the.
The level of authenticconnection that I have with
people when phones are down issomething that there's no second
you know place to.
That it's incredible andthere's so many things you can
learn about people when you putthose down.
When somebody hears that, youknow they, they, immediately
it's like our Pavlov's dogs.
Like you know, we go to that,like we have to get it and it's
(34:44):
like it's so false sometimes.
Oh, okay, someone wants to sellyou something you know that was
important to break a you knowtrue connection, a time with
someone else and, uh, you knowthat distraction is this there
every single day.
It's more part of the churn andI, I hear you, man, the detox
is very valuable.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, and I talked about it in the book and I give
some suggestions.
My favorite one, though, is thewhen the phone hits the floor
of the airplane and even thelittle three-year-old baby's
like was that mine?
You know it's like it's, it's,it's synchronized swimming,
swimming.
It's the only piece of kit thatwe carry that.
If it hits the floor of anairplane, everybody on the plane
knows what it was and theywonder if it was theirs.
(35:21):
Any other piece of kit hits thefloor.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
No one cares oh, it's so true.
You know what I want to kind of, you know, turn into another
direction real quick, because inthis book you talk about
something that was very personal, powerful, um and uh, just
really, and when you comingforth and sharing, and that was
what happened back in 2015.
(35:43):
And you kind of mentioned thatyou have a TED talk that you're
going to and you had this ideaof what you're going to write
and you spoke with someone aboutyou know, realizing your true,
authentic voice and self.
And then you realized, hey, Ineed to change what I want to
you know, prepare and share onthis TED talk.
And then you realized, hey, Ineed to change what I want to
you know, prepare and share onthis Ted talk, and if you can
kind of bring us through thatjourney and what it was that
(36:03):
made you want to share thisstory, how you went about it and
how you included your familyand conversations and what that,
that turning point for you.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Uh, if you don't mind diving into that a little bit,
yeah, you know, it was two yearsafter I transitioned from the
army in 2013.
And I thought I had the worldby the tail.
You know, I was the highperforming Green Beret.
I had done all these coolmissions and I was retiring on
my terms.
I didn't like where things weregoing in the army with
(36:32):
Afghanistan and I felt likethere was more for me to do on
the outside than the inside.
And I was going to write a book.
My kids were still at home, mymarriage was still there and,
within you know, a few days oftaking off those desert boots
and putting on the Tampa Bayflip-flops, I started to
experience the snakes in my headsquirming on a massive level
(36:54):
and, by 18 months later, I hadbecome devoid of purpose.
I'd lost my passion foreverything.
I was walking around my housein a bathrobe I'm not even
knowing the last time I'dshowered.
My boys would get up and leavethe room because they didn't
know what version of dad theywere going to get, and it was a
really, really dark time, george.
(37:15):
I mean, it was a time when Ifelt like I was no longer
relevant, and that's the worstfeeling in the world.
And and uh, I I started um,planning and and and preparing
for, you know, taking my life,and just because I, just I, I I
had, and, and it was reallyinitiated by, uh, the levels of
(37:37):
division at home.
I didn't have a word, the churnat that time, but it was this
just, everybody was so dividedand you know, to come back from
multiple tours in combat and seepeople treating their neighbor
with the contempt that wetreated the Taliban or Al Qaeda,
or worse, and you're like whatthe hell was this, even for you
know, and and you start toquestion everything and, um,
(38:02):
everything was just so, uh,divisive and I just like, well,
I don't even, I don't even knowwhat this, what was the most
point of leaving, losing allthose friends?
What was the point ofeverything?
I gave up my marriage is nowalmost gone for what you know
and it allowed all of that stuff, that the survivor's guilt, the
(38:22):
moral injury, that PTS thatwere endemic to me from the war,
to just ravage.
And so I almost, you know, Iwent into the closet and almost
took my life.
And it wasn't the only time thatI went into that closet, that
day that I described in the book, there were other times.
That was the closest I evercame, and it was my hands were
shaking I mean, they still shakewhen I talk about it now and
(38:46):
and but you know, I emerged fromthat really just, you know, in
almost in a, in a, in atransition purgatory, you know,
where I couldn't live and Icouldn't die, and I just didn't
know what I was, I was supposedto do, and I, for grace of God,
I mean I found storytelling as amodality to heal myself, as a,
(39:06):
and then as a way to heal othersand help others heal themselves
, and then to bridge gaps, likewhat you and I are doing right
now.
I mean, look at how fast webridged, you know we met for the
first time and then, justlooking at your Arrowhead
connection and listening to yourstory of how you got into that,
it like took me right in andthere's all these connections,
and I found that and it saved mylife.
(39:27):
It didn't change my life, likeit.
I mean it saved my life, youknow, and and I was so grateful
for that that I thought this iswhat I'm gonna do the rest of my
life.
I'm going to pursuestorytelling as my way of giving
back to the world and and doingmy part.
And so when I had gone to thisTED talk I was already it was my
(39:50):
third one.
You know how you get like I'vegot this this is a great, nice
vanilla topic on leadership andI had just lost another friend
to suicide.
And so I was sitting therewatching these other TED Talks
and it wasn't the one I wasspeaking at, but I was there as
a coach and I was watching themand I thought I can't do this.
I can't get up on that stageand not talk about what just
(40:13):
happened to my friend and whatalmost happened to me.
So I told Monty that I neededto change my talk.
I think it was like three weeksbefore the talk and I've never
said this to her.
But I want to thank theorganizer of that Ted Talk,
kimberly, because she didn'thave to let me do that change
and she did and she trusted meand I'm grateful that she did
(40:34):
that.
Ted Talk has got over like abillion views and I think it's
helped a lot of people.
I've had a lot of people tellme that they were in that closet
, and so that's kind of a longdescription there.
But that day was a veryprofound day for me because it
was the darkest of my my scarsbut it ended up being the one
(40:56):
that has probably been the mostgenerous sure in repurposing and
helping people well and I I seehow helpful that can be.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
And just you being so brutally and raw of your
honesty.
You know there are so manyveterans who that transition out
and all of a sudden there's alack of the brotherhood,
sisterhood, that kind ofcommunity they're spinning.
I mean, I've talked to so manyof them, your story your closet,
(41:26):
I've had multiple conversations, I've worked a lot of different
veterans and veteranorganizations and support groups
and really trying to emphasizemental health.
This will be the first podcastin my veteran month.
Forget veteran day, the veteranmonth, right, there's so many
other people who have their time.
I want to make sure that I do asmuch as I can to raise
awareness for these people whohave sacrificed all you know and
(41:47):
, uh, it's, it's somethingthat's so important to me to key
in on and I I love it when Ihear people talk about being
there, because I think thenother folks who are going
through that struggle they canidentify with that and so many
do and you know, with so manythat we lose every single day.
It's, it's something that Ireally want to, you know, bring
(42:08):
awareness to the idea of like.
Also, when you got to thatpoint too, and you realize that
storytelling was going to be ahealing part of your journey and
for others.
I'm curious, though, like, howdid you make that transition
from that day to then realizingthat, going and telling your
story?
Like, what help did you get inorder to be able to kind of take
(42:33):
to that next step and moveforward?
Because I'm you know, whenpeople get to these points in
their life, a lot of times theyneed those helping hands or
those platforms, thoseorganizations, and I was curious
about, like what it was your,your, your path through that
fire, and if you could maybetalk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yeah, happy to.
I you know, and you're, you'reright, we're coming into, as
we're recording this, we'recoming into.
You know it's November, I don'tknow if you do this, but
November is also the month ofthe military family, and you
know.
So our whole military communityjust has so much to offer, and
I want to reiterate that toanyone listening to this.
(43:09):
If you're a civilian and you'rewondering how do I help, you
know the veteran community, howdo I?
One of the things that I thinkwe need to shift our mindset on
20 years after the longest war,or 20 year war, and then three
years after the ending of thatwar, our veteran population in
our military community, in myassessment, and our first
responders are a nationaltreasure about the churn that
(43:36):
we're in and what we couldpossibly be going through, not
to mention the fact that I thinkthere's a very high likelihood
of a catastrophic complex terrorattack on the united states in
the next two years.
I really do, and I'm not goingto get into that now, but what I
will tell you is, if you lookat how our veterans operate and
how they lead, they are the mosthighly suited leaders for the
times that we're in in thiscountry.
I mean we need them at everylevel.
(43:58):
We need them in politics, weneed them in corporate America,
we need them leading ourcommunities, coaching our travel
ball teams.
I'm not saying they're theend-all be-all, but I'm saying
these are men and women that wedropped into Iraq and Syria and
Afghanistan.
Syria and Afghanistan that evena private in the 82nd airport,
(44:19):
at 18 years old, was dealingwith diabolical civil society
situations that would make mostseasoned diplomats spit up a
hairball.
And these young men and womenare out there right now staring
at a bottle of Jack and a 45 ormedicating on Oxy or or just
wondering was it even worth it?
And I'm not saying all of them,but like it is more than it is
(44:42):
more than just ending veteransuicide, it is more than just
getting these men and women,it's getting them back in the
game, because we need themleading us here at home.
I think they're our last besthope for this country.
And so to your question.
You know civilians, I believe,play a critical role in the
reintegration of the militarycommunity back into civil
(45:04):
society, in your ability toconnect deeply with your
neighbors who are veterans, withyour coworkers, in your ability
to hear their stories withoutjudgment and then to walk that
path with them into the nextlevel, into the next ridgeline
at their shoulder.
It's more than just thank youfor your service.
It's like looking and listeningand going.
(45:27):
Okay, let's walk that path, getyou over these couple of bumps
so that you can lead me.
And so what happened was anexample of that was a buddy of
mine, who was a business owner,heard my story, what I was going
through, didn't tell him aboutthe closet, but that I knew I
was relevant.
I knew that I was lookingaround at this society that was
so broken and divided anddistrustful.
(45:49):
And here I had done my wholelife in places like that.
I'd learned how to buildrapport, do active listening.
You know to lead through toughtimes, and I could teach
corporate leaders how to do that.
But every time I would try and Iwould tell stories about it, it
would get stuck in my throatand I would have this anxiety.
And he said you need to gostudy with Bo Eason.
You need to go study with BoEason, former NFL football
(46:12):
player, turned actor, turnedplaywright, turned storyteller,
and he helps people like you dothis.
So I did.
I had nothing to lose.
I flew out to California and Iwatched Bo on stage and, george,
I'm telling you, like nobody inthat room moved when this guy
was on the stage.
I mean, we were breathing inunison and it was for me it was
(46:33):
like seeing Mark in the sodashop again.
And I went up to him afterwards, I elbowed my way past
everybody.
I think he thought I wasstalking him it probably was and
I explained to him, you know,with some urgency, who I was and
what I was doing, and he justlooked at me and he said I'm
going to help you.
And he did.
For two years that man pouredhimself into me and he showed me
(46:55):
the elements of storytellingthat are the primal, physical
aspects, the breath work, how toreally bring your story alive,
how to take those scars, likethe closet and men that I lost,
and turn them into narrativesthat were actually helpful to
other people, what I call thegenerosity of scars.
Then that ignited for me apassion where I started studying
(47:17):
with indigenous storytellersaround the world.
I started studying under othercoaches, I started studying
acting, I wrote a play.
All of those things that cameout came from that couple of
those handful of civilians whosaid we're going to help you,
here's what, here's, let's dothis, and and then all of a
sudden I was loose and I wasback to being that high
(47:40):
performer that I knew how to be,and I still am.
So that was my journey with it,and it's not unique.
I don't think there's anythingunique about what I just said.
Storytelling for me was mymodality, but there's a range of
ways that civilians andveterans and military family
members can work together tomove through that dark stuff and
(48:01):
get on the other side of it.
And then we turn them loose tolead us here at home because
they know how.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Amen, man, thank you for sharing that, and you know
there's so many valuable lessonsthat come through this book and
the idea of being generous withyour scars, I think, is so
important that we can share thatand really connect with people
on that true heartfelt level ofwhat we're going through and how
we.
There's so many things that wehave.
(48:27):
There's more things that wehave in common right than the
divides, but we have to be ableto sit down and look at that and
see that, rid ourselves of thedistractions and realize that we
can all come together and worktogether and build something
better.
It's all there for us.
But I think so many times theblinders are on, whether it's
the phone or the screen, or thedistractions or the chaos, the
noise.
I mean, like you even talkedabout in the book too.
(48:49):
You know there's the group inthe middle right.
There's like two thirds of thepeople that are sitting there in
the middle that arecollectively there, and then you
have this other third, these,you know, the sixth on the, on
the edges.
That are the ones that are theso much noise and distraction to
us.
But really we have so much morethat holds us together and I
think that that's something thatit's very important for us to
take note of.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
I agree that, uh, more in common calls them the
exhausted majority.
Um, there is this study that Irecommend anybody watching this
podcast check it out.
You can just Google it.
It's called the Hidden Tribesof America and it was one of the
sources for my book Towards theEnd.
When I talk about better daysand the upswing and it's a
(49:30):
really good read I mean it'salmost unbelievable to think
that two thirds of our countryare this exhausted majority in
the middle, who really have apropensity to work together, who
really are tired of all thespew and the churn.
And then, all of a sudden, it'sexciting because two thirds is
(49:51):
a super majority in any in anydemocracy.
Two thirds is a super majorityin any in any democracy.
Two thirds is a super majority.
You could literally vote outevery divisionist leader on both
sides of the aisle, everyinstitutionalist who seeks to
take away our agency, and we canreclaim a lot through the
(50:11):
electoral process if we can justlook inward and recognize that
it starts with us.
But there are a whole bunch ofpeople to your left and to your
right looking to connect.
They just and to go up on thatrooftop.
They just need one person to doit.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
Absolutely.
I definitely suggest peopledive into that, and you'll learn
more about it in the book too.
Another story that I'd love foryou to kind of share is that of
the stay in step and the CIrecovery center.
I just love the idea too.
You got Simon Magata, thesenior executive from Toyota,
and you know if you could kindof maybe you know, build that up
as far as what it was why youwere getting involved in wanting
(50:54):
to help, you know, bring thisfacility about.
And then just the story of thatwalkthrough and how powerful
that was.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Yeah.
So you know I like to bring instories in this book that really
show there's no reason for youto not fulfill on what it is
that's keeping you up at night.
And if you don't believe me, um, there's a story in the book
about a green beret named Romy,who's one of my best friends,
(51:25):
who was shot through the neck,uh in Afghanistan and really
never should have made it out ofthat Valley.
But his best buddy, um, did atracheotomy on him in the back
of the vehicle under fire movingbackwards through a riverbed
and then breathed for him for aan hour or longer and helped him
(51:45):
, uh, stay alive and and justthat.
That story's not even in thebook.
That story of how they savedhis life, brought, brought him
home, is epic and um and butRomy was paralyzed from the
shoulders down, he was on aventilator and they didn't think
that he would.
Um, his wife Gabby, who they'veknown each other since they
(52:08):
were 14 in Venezuela they gaveeach other their first kiss at
14 in Venezuela and, um, shelearned of Romy's injury on her
birthday and she grabbed her18-month-old son, andres in
Fayetteville and drove up toWalter Reed and, you know,
stayed at his side for monthsand then I was working at the
agency and I got called over andI was there when he was in that
(52:31):
hospital in those first moments, and no one thought he would
make it, except Gabby, if youwere crying when you walked in
the room, romy's room shouldthrow you out because there was
no crying allowed in the room.
Because she said all he can'tmove his head, so all he can see
is your eyes and he can't seefear.
We have to be strong.
(52:52):
That was where her head wasRight.
We have to be strong.
That was where her head wasRight.
So, um, now fast forward.
Uh, several years later, andthey moved to Tampa where we
lived, grace of God, and theywent to the James A Haley spinal
cord injury.
Uh, and you know, the realitywas they, they.
He was still paralyzed from theshoulders down, he still had a
(53:12):
diaphragmatic stimulator.
So he has, during the day, hecan breathe on his own, but
think aboutator.
So he has, during the day, hecan breathe on his own, but
think about it, like he has tothink about every breath he
takes.
Can you imagine doing that allday long, actually constantly
thinking about your breath, andhe does that, and then, um, and
then he they convinced thedepartment of defense to do a
stem cell surgery on him inPortugal that might give him a
(53:36):
chance to walk again.
It didn't, except that it gavehim feeling back in his
extremities uh, hot and cold.
It regulated his ability todeal with urinary tract
infections and things like that,and so there, but to for it to
work he had to work out.
He had to do a lot of physicalexercise and with assisted
weight lifting and things likethat, and of course, as a scuba
(53:57):
guy on a team, he loved thatstuff.
So, but when it was time forhim to retire because they kept
him on active duty through allthis, he knew that he was going
all the way across from Tampa toOrlando to do this twice, three
times a week to do theseintense workouts.
And it was making a difference,because most spinal cord injury
(54:17):
people like Christopher Reeve,they atrophy and they pass, and
the insurance system doesn'treally keep them going.
And so Gabby and Romy knew ifRomy went into medical
retirement from the military,that was it, that he would
atrophy, and so they wanted toopen their own spinal cord
injury center.
They invited me over for dinnerwe were dear friends and then,
(54:41):
uh, basically ambushed me withthe request to be the chairman
of the board and I'm like, do weeven have a board?
And they're like, well, thethree of us.
So, yeah, yeah, three start,yeah.
And but you know what?
That's how it started.
It started at their kitchentable and I went home and I was
in tears because I told my wifeyou know, I'm like I'm going to
(55:03):
fail them, you know, because Ihave no clue what I'm doing and
she looked at me in her truespecial forces wife style, said
baby, when has that ever stoppedyou from anything?
And so we just started.
We just started and we juststarted building connections and
making building relationships.
(55:24):
And at some point we broughtsome other people on the board.
But we told the story, george.
We told their story and theytold their story.
We would take him to New York,we would fly him to LA, and it
was so difficult having to lifthim in and out of those seats
and so hard on him but we did.
And at some point we ended upwith a 5,000 square foot
facility with no furniture oranything and we were about to be
(55:47):
foreclosed on.
And Nagata, we got word thatSimon Nagata from Toyota was in
town and wanted to talk to someveterans, so we convinced them
to come to that piece of crapbuilding with no furniture and
no exercise equipment.
And we turned Gabby loose onhim and she she went in as they
(56:08):
were walking off.
Romy looks at me and he's likehe's toast and uh, within
minutes she, she had completelypainted the vision of this place
and he bought it and asix-figure donation came in.
Within months we were openedand now they're in a
10,000-square-foot facility theyhave.
(56:29):
Hundreds of people have comethrough there.
Three veterans have learned towalk again.
People have come through there.
Three veterans have learned towalk again.
They are really setting.
There's now interns from, Ithink, a University of Central
Florida, south Florida, from PT,that come in there and work.
You've got to see it.
It's unreal.
I would encourage anybody to goto stayinsteporg and watch the
(56:50):
video.
Donate to what these people aredoing.
Romy is usually out there onthe floor working out to this
day with still can't move belowhis shoulders.
It is.
If you, if you think that youcan't get big stuff done when
nobody's coming, spend threeminutes at stay in step.
But I'll end on this.
It all came down to everysingle thing that's in that book
(57:10):
Human connection, purpose,storytelling and struggle and
emotion.
Those are the realities and ifyou just tap into those and
build social capital around that, there's no ceiling for what
you can do, and Romy and Gabbyproved it.
They still do.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
That was a profound part ofthis book.
There's many times where I'vejust had to put it down because
there's so many emotionalmoments you sharing, you sharing
what happened there.
You know in your home thisstory and so many others.
I mean it's it's a very, verypowerful book.
I think everyone should go andread it.
I'll have the links in the shownotes.
You guys make sure you go checkthis out.
(57:47):
It's phenomenal.
I mean you have a lot of otherbooks that people can go and
check out and we'll we'll haveall the links down there below.
You know another thing that'scoming out.
You got some other Last Out.
You got some more productionsof the play.
If we can go ahead and beforewe sign off, if you can talk a
little bit about that and youknow what's coming up, so we can
kind of, you know, let somepeople know about that.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Yeah, absolutely, thank you.
So the Last Out play is a playyou'll read it in the book if
you haven't already but it'sabout a modern Green Beret and
his family trying to navigatethe wickets of war, and it's
meant to educate civilians onthe impact of war while
simultaneously healing andvalidating those who lived it
using storytelling.
(58:26):
All the cast members areveterans and military family
members.
It's in its third tour.
We're about to start our thirdtouring season.
I am excited to say it is abrand new cast and for the first
time, I'm not in it.
I'm the executive producer.
But the cast is phenomenal.
They are so good I can't sayenough about them.
I mean, I don't want to say toomuch because I want people to
(58:49):
go see it.
So here's the thing we're goingto be performing the play
November 6th in Tampa.
November 8th in Danville,kentucky.
If you go to lastoutplaycom,you can get tickets there, but
we're putting the seasontogether for 2025 right now and
we're going to do at least 12tour stops in 2025.
(59:09):
If you want the play to come toyour town, reach out to me,
scott, at scottmancom, and letme know.
You know, uh, let me know thatyou'd like to bring the play, uh
and we'll, you know we'll talkabout it.
It's about a I think it's abouta 20k lift to get it out to
different locations, um and butit's powerful man and uh, we've
(59:31):
been doing it for three yearsnow and and people love it.
It's so raw and emotional andwe do a talk back afterwards.
I'll be at every show so we'llhave a chance to meet and I just
recommend it for any community.
George, I'm telling you it is sogood for our communities in
this time of churn to have thisplay come to your town.
It's good for local veterans,it's good for military families,
(59:57):
the families that have lostpeople, vietnam veterans who
feel forgotten, and then justcivilians who want to learn more
.
I just can't say enough aboutit.
Maybe we can get it to Houston.
Man, I'm going to make a pitchtonight at this veterans event
to bring it to Houston.
So I'd like to stay in touchwith you on just you know what
we can do.
Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
Oh, I'd love to do anything I can to get that and I
think there's there, we know,substitute going seeing that
person.
But if people do, right nowthey have some interest and they
want to go and check out.
There are some film productionsof the play that they can go
and see and where all can peoplego and check those out?
Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Thank you, Amazon prime.
It's on Amazon prime, I thinkit's on Google Plus and Apple TV
also.
And again it's called Elegy ofa Green Beret Sorry, Last Out,
Elegy of a Green Beret.
And then all proceeds of thefilm 100% go to our Heroes
Journey storytelling program.
So even if you just watch thefilm, you're making a huge
(01:00:52):
contribution.
We just showed the film Georgeon the Special Forces
Association cruise.
We had hundreds of Green Beretsand their families all the way
back to Vietnam watching thisfilm in this packed house and it
was one of the most emotionalthings I've ever seen.
Everybody that watched it justfelt like it was their life up
there.
So if you're wondering aboutauthenticity in the film and in
(01:01:13):
the play, it will rock you.
It will rock you, and so Iencourage people to see the film
and get out and see the liveversion.
Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Well, and for the other things you got going on,
for people who want to kind ofkeep you know up with you know
when the production schedulesare going to be going on, what
cities are going to be comingthrough next, when you might be
given some you know talks aboutthis book or maybe future ones
too, how can people go ahead andand follow along this journey?
Give us some websites and somesocials so people can kind of
join in, if you don't mind.
Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Everything that I do on my bodyof work is scottmancom Every,
my for-profit, my nonprofit.
I've recently started a Patreonsite, a Scott Mann Patreon site
, where, if people want to godeeper on the storytelling or
like in Houston, we're going tobe filming behind the scenes,
with me reuniting with theseAfghan commandos that I'm going
to be meeting and my keynote andhow I prepare for keynotes and
(01:02:05):
how I recover from keynotes.
A lot of people want to get youknow, they want to take the
nobody's coming book and godeeper.
So if you want to do that,scottmanncom has tons of stuff,
but Patreon is a great way tojoin in for the cup of coffee.
You know, you can.
You can hang out with me, askquestions.
My podcast is there.
And then, finally, one otherthing that I'll throw out there
that's on the Scott Mann page istwice a year I run a
(01:02:27):
storytelling workshop called OwnEvery Room and a lot of
business owners, a lot ofcorporate professionals and
nonprofits come to this to learnhow to tell their story in a
really powerful way.
And, what's cool, it's at adude ranch in old Florida.
It's very intimate, like 50people.
I teach it personally.
(01:02:48):
It's the only time that I dothis, like myself, twice a year,
and you will develop and repyour story over and over with
partners and then around acampfire, and so it's just a
really old school way to learninfluence and storytelling the
Green Beret approach, but whereyou can own a room when you walk
into it.
The way that I try to do it,and that's March 1st is our next
(01:03:09):
one, and again scottmancom.
It's there and then we'll doanother one in the fall.
Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Phenomenal.
I definitely encourage everyoneto go check that out again.
I'll have all the links in theshow notes below.
You know, scott, before we signoff, you know there's a
question I'm very curious yourtake on it and that's one about
legacy.
You know I wanted to know isthis something that you think
about in your day to day lifeand what you're putting out,
you're producing, the peopleyou're helping and the idea of
(01:03:42):
how you want to view your ownlegacy?
Is that something that is apart in play in your day-to-day?
Or is that something that youkind of look back and you're
like, oh, I've contributed here,I've done this.
Is that something that youthink about consciously?
And I'm just kind of curiousyour take about that 100%.
Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
For both my wife Monty and me, the tracks that we
leave.
As my dad says it, they'reeverything.
The impact and relevance are mytwo main metrics in how I
navigate the world.
Am I having an impact and am Irelevant?
Those are my metrics.
Everything else is whatever Imean.
It's just fuel, it's airspeed.
To be more impactful and morerelevant, I believe that the
(01:04:19):
human operating system says thatwe are meaning, seeking
creatures.
If we don't have purpose, weperish, and so the epicenter of
purpose for me is legacy.
What tracks am I leaving behindin my relationships with my
kids, with the capacity that Ibuild in this world to do what
it does after I'm gone?
(01:04:40):
So that's why I'm not in theplay.
I want to be in the play.
I miss the play.
I love that play, but my legacyand my tracks say no man, that
thing needs to be traveling anddoing what it does without you
in it, because that's where itcan do the most good.
So you better believe.
(01:05:02):
That's how I look at the worldis through the lens of leaving
tracks, and I hope that morepeople will do that because, at
the end of the day, when we,when we were at the end of our
life.
You know, I think the onlymetric that's remaining is
whether we take a long breath ora short breath.
You know, honestly, I think itcomes down to that A long breath
where we realize that we'velived a fulfilled life and a
short breath of regret.
And you know, I'll take theformer, you know, and I believe
(01:05:26):
that assessing constantly andreassessing the tracks that
we're leaving, the legacy thatwe're leaving behind, is the
best way to ensure that we getthat long breath at the end of
our life.
Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Well said.
Thank you so much, scott, forjoining me today.
Is there anything that we mightnot have covered, or is there
any special message you have tothe listeners that you want to
convey before we sign off?
Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
I don't think so.
Except that thank you, I mean,for everything that you've done
and continue to do, and I wouldjust encourage people through
these challenging times thatwe're in and they are, they are
challenging to really focus onhuman connection when everybody
else is focused on surviving isis to bridge across those in
group and out groups, make ahuman connection even when it's
(01:06:07):
uncomfortable, especially whenit's uncomfortable and when all
else fails.
Just ask somebody to sharetheir story and that alone can
bridge almost every situationthat we face.
An open-ended question thatstarts with what or how and lets
the other party tell you theirstory, and then just listen with
the interest and intention andcuriosity of a two-year-old and
(01:06:32):
everything else will sort itselfout.
Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
Amen, scott.
Thank you again so much forjoining me today.
Everyone, make sure you gocheck out the links in the show
notes below.
Follow along, let's go aheadand get last out into Houston.
All right, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Sounds good, thank you once again.
Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
I appreciate you, sir , my pleasure you.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Son of a
Blitch podcast.
I'm your host, George Blitch,and guys, you're going to love
this podcast.
I just wrapped up aconversation with Lieutenant
Colonel Scott Mann, retiredGreen Beret officer, who is just
an absolute gem of a humanbeing.
He has done so much for ourcountry and so much for people
in general as far as hisleadership approach, sharing his
(00:38):
stories, advising others toshare their stories and to
connect others to share theirstories and to connect.
You know, we talk a lot aboutthis idea of the churn that is
so much divisiveness and there'sso much distraction, all these
things that are going on in ourworld that is kind of dividing
us, and how we need to be ableto go past that, move through
the churn and be able to connectwith each other on, you know,
(00:59):
these true, true heartfeltlevels, to really realize that
we have more things in commonthan we do dividing us.
And I think it's very importantin this, you know, set and
setting in this timeline that,uh, we're talking about right
now and we we really jump into alot of that with this book.
Nobody is coming to save you.
A green braids guide to gettingbig shit done.
(01:19):
It is a phenomenal read, uh,and he gets raw.
There are some stories that aretold here that are just very
emotionally impactful and weunpack those today in this
conversation to really explorebeing able to go to that depths
of detail of talking about someof those ugly sides of your life
(01:41):
in order to share those storiesand maybe help other people
along the way.
There's many organizations he'sbeen involved in that we talk
about today.
We didn't get to talk about allthe books because we wanted to
focus in on this one, right, butthere are many books he's
written.
Again, everything will be inthe show notes below.
I highly suggest you guys gocheck that out.
They're all phenomenal booksand I think you're going to get
(02:03):
something from all of those.
And we talked about last out,uh, the play that he produced,
wrote and acted in and now isgoing back on another tour, this
first time that he won't be thelead actor, but he's obviously
beginning of November.
Next week we will be having thefirst two shows and there's
(02:29):
going to be a lot more that willbe coming up in that 2025 tour.
That's, you know, kind of we'reat the helm of.
So if you want to see that inyour city.
You know there'll be linksbelow to where you can go ahead
and request that and get thatgoing on.
And again, I highly suggest youguys go check out the notes, go
check out his website,scottmancom.
You know I don't want to giveeverything away that we talked
about, so I'll just leave it atthat and make sure you tune in
(02:52):
to this podcast, share it withyour friends, share it with
those who you think might needthis, share it with your veteran
community and non-veterancommunity.
There's something for everyonehere in this conversation.
I think it's very, veryimportant.
It's very uh, the timing of ofthis, of my interaction with
Scott and, you know, releasingthis uh, obviously right before
the election here.
I think it's very important.
There's a lot going on and wereally need to uh try to be able
(03:15):
to work through the churn andconnect with each other on the
most human of levels, because Ithink that's very important
right now.
We need we need togetherness.
We don't need divisiveness,right, we see this every single
day, but we need to cometogether and realize that we're
going to be doing better worktogether.
So again, thank you so much,scott, for joining me today.
Thank you for all the listeners.
Make sure you go check out theshow notes, go check out
(03:36):
scottmancom and make sure youorder your copy of Nobody Is
Coming To Save you to save you.
Or check out the audio bookwhich Scott reads, which is
phenomenal.
I've read it and I've listenedto it Both great ways to get
that in.
So, without further ado, here'sthe podcast with Scott Mann.
You guys enjoy.
Thanks, hey, scott, how youdoing today?
Hey, good to see you.
(03:56):
George, thanks for having me on.
Yeah, absolutely, man, listen,I definitely have a lot to talk
to you about your new book,nobody Is Coming To Save you,
which is phenomenal.
Absolutely love it.
I know you have a bunch ofother books.
You've written a play.
There's so many things I wantto dive deep into, but I kind of
just figured we'll start at thevery beginning with a lot of my
guests.
I'd like to give listeners alittle bit of 101 and kind of,
(04:18):
if you can tell us a little bitabout where you're born and
raised and maybe kind of goahead and thread that through.
That day at the Soto shop whenyou were 14 and, uh, a special,
uh, you know, meeting there thatkind of spawned the next move
in your life.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, no thanks for having me on.
Um.
I was born, actually, inClifton Forge, virginia.
It didn't live there long atall.
Uh, mom and dad, uh, my dad wasa young forester at the time
and we lived in a little singlewide trailer and dad was quickly
transferred from there and wemoved all over the southeast.
(04:51):
George, in little logging towns, because of the nature of his
job, ended up spending a goodamount of time.
Most of my family's fromwestern North Carolina.
So I have very deep roots inthe area that was hit tragically
by Hurricane Helene and a lotof my latter year influence in
terms of the stuff that's inthat book nobody's coming to
(05:16):
save.
You came from my lessons inAppalachia, but a lot of my
youth was spent in Arkansas,particularly a little town
called Mount Ida.
Farming and logging communitydidn't even have a stoplight,
and when I was 14, green Beretwalked into our soda shop and
really changed my life.
His name was Mark and he wasjust one of the coolest dudes I
(05:37):
ever met.
The way he carried himself, theway he conducted himself, and I
just knew there was somethingabout him that was different.
And I think, more importantly,he sat down and took the time to
talk to me as a 14-year-oldgrunt who was kind of invisible
in that town in a lot of ways,had been bullied to some degree
and just didn't fit in.
A lot of times I felt awkward.
(05:57):
That was kind of common withmoving around a lot, and Mark
took the time to explain to meabout what Green Berets were and
special forces that's theofficial title and how they work
by with and through indigenouspeople and help them stand up on
their own and how differentthey are than all the other
groups that kick in doors and dothey actually they go in with
(06:20):
12 and they come out with 12,000.
And just the notion of thatsounded so romantic and
appealing to me that I justromantic in the sense of
adventure.
You know that I just I couldn'tget it out of my head and I
decided right there at 14 yearsold that that's what I was going
to do and that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So what did that look like from that point in time
obviously finishing out highschool and then you decided to
go in right away and go aheadand enlist what was your
timeline there and kind of inyour journey to become a Green
Beret.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well, I mean, I really did look at Mark a lot
for how he led as a mentor andyou know he was a detachment
commander, a captain, at thetime when I met him and he made
it pretty clear to me that youGreen Berets are an NCO or
sergeant-based organization, butthat one of the biggest honors
out there is that if an SFofficer, if you truly love the
(07:14):
organization and the men whoserve in it, then you can really
make an effort to take care ofthem and be top cover for them.
And I liked that and, moreimportantly, I just wanted to be
like Mark.
So I went to college.
I didn't do very well.
I got a degree in politicalscience, barely enough to get
commissioned at the universityof central Arkansas and was
commissioned into the U S armyand then that began my journey.
(07:37):
But you know, even as aLieutenant I you can't just go
try out for special forces.
You have to wait about four anda half years until you're a
captain.
So I went to other schools likeranger school and air assault
school and I failed all of themmultiple times because I was a
runt and it was very difficultfor me, but I just kept going
back.
That was one thing that myfather and mom taught me was
(07:58):
just to never quit.
And so I would just keep goingback, recycling, recycling,
until I eventually made it.
I even recycled thequalification course for special
forces several times butultimately made it, got my Green
Beret.
But it was man, it was hard.
I mean it was a 10-year, youknow, from the time I met Mark.
A 10-year journey, butcertainly about five years, five
(08:19):
, six years in the Army of justfrustration and failure, until I
finally was awarded that GreenBeret and then assigned to 7th
Special Forces Group in FortBragg, north Carolina or the
artist formerly known as FortBragg.
And I spent gosh 10 years therebefore 9-11, working in Central
and South America during the90s, which was a pretty sporty
(08:42):
place to be.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, so you know, in in this particular book, you
know again, I'll dive into someother books, cause I think it
kind of leads up and it talksabout a lot of the lessons.
Um, you know, one of the thingsof perseverance you just talked
about, um, you know, for thosewho are not familiar yet with
this book, you know, can yougive a little bit of background?
What is that you?
You know your decision on whyyou wanted to write this book in
this period of time and what isthe premise behind, and then
(09:06):
we'll kind of dive into somemore deeper questions there yeah
, I mean, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
I think this book has been brewing inside of me for a
long time.
You know, I have written a lotof pieces.
I look back on it and I can'treally even remember writing
them.
I think that all of them and Ithink this is true for all of us
in the creative space is, youknow, they find their way out of
us and they're gifted to usfrom another place, right?
So I don't.
(09:30):
I don't remember any conscioustime when I just said I'm going
to write this leadership book,but what did strike me was that
all of my other works had beenabout the military and I really
hadn't written.
People were asking me well, withPineapple Express and you guys
getting the Afghans out, how didyou do that when you didn't
have any money, resources orauthority?
Or, you know, how did you writeand perform a play when you're
(09:53):
not a playwright and you're notan actor?
And it got produced by GarySinise.
You know and to me that was notextraordinary, nothing about
that's extraordinary it's.
It's a process that I've beenusing for years that these Green
Beret sergeants taught me ofgetting big stuff done when
nobody's coming to help you.
There's a certain approach thatyou can take from the bottom up
(10:14):
to get very big things done.
My wife, monty and I would talkabout it.
I'm like isn't that intuitive?
She's like, no, that's notintuitive.
There's a process that you havethat is worth sharing and I
call it rooftop leadership, andI have for years.
I did a TED Talk on it, but I'dnever written on it, george.
I'd never written on it.
So about six years ago Istarted working on it and it's
(10:36):
gone through so many iterationsand tosses in the trash can and
curse words and you know,finally, this past November, I
landed on a version of it that Iwas very happy with.
I felt like I included thestories that were right and,
frankly, the times were rightfor it, because everyone you
look there seems to be thisshortcoming or failure of
(10:59):
institutional leadership andpeople don't really know what to
do with that.
And my position is it's okay.
I mean, america's gottenthrough times like this before
because of the resilience andleadership of our people, but
we're up against a newdiabolical threat that I call
the churn, and we'll talk aboutthat, I'm sure.
But the conditions forleadership have changed here.
(11:21):
So I wanted to put a book outthat had those Green Beret skill
sets of leading when it's hard,from the bottom up and get it
out there, and that was reallythe impetus for it.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Well, before we jump into the churn and the idea of
that and kind of the maincomponents, you know this idea
of rooftop leadership.
Obviously, there you're inAfghanistan you're talking about
, you know, you guys getting ontop of the roofs and basically
defending these villages againstthe Taliban.
But can you go ahead and maybedive in a little bit more and
kind of explain the idea of whatthat rooftop leadership is and
(11:53):
how you're bringing people upwith you?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, I think that to do that is to back it up a
little bit and even furtherexpound on the mission of Green
Berets and when I talk aboutwhat Mark explained to me in
that soda shop of how they workby, with and through indigenous
people.
You know, imagine a situationwhere you have an area in the
world where terror groups areoperating in these dusty
(12:16):
villages that are under governed, dilapidated, dealing with, you
know, hunger issues, foodshortages, water shortages, and
they basically go in there andthey set up shop, much like
gangs do in East LA.
They take advantage of thechallenges of that civil society
and they manipulate it to theirown, they provide some things
(12:38):
that allow them to set up shopand then from those places they
project things like 9-11 againstus from these far flung, and
sure you can get in there, and11against us from these far flung
, and sure you can get in thereand kick the doors in and take
down targets.
But it's like mowing the grass,like what you really need is to
enable that community to standup against those bad actors like
an antibody, and to do thatyou've got to live there, you've
(13:00):
got to get in there, you've gotto grow your beard out.
You've got to don indigenousscarf and you've got to live
among those people and, overtime, inspire them to stand up
on their own to defend their owncommunity against these bad
actors and then, as a secondaryeffect, those bad actors don't
have a safe haven to projectagainst us.
It is a very long, tough,agonizing process that is, I
(13:25):
tell people at Green Beret andModern Times is a combination of
John Wick, lawrence of Arabiaand the Verizon guy.
You know, you've got to be ableto take care of business at a
coercive level.
You've got to be able toconnect, like Lawrence of Arabia
, and tell stories and listenand build relationships and
rapport, even when it's hard.
And then the Verizon guy'salways building these networks.
(13:46):
He's always, you know, makingsure that he's connected.
And that's what Green Berets do.
You know, even in the earliestdays of Afghanistan, when they
were deep in enemy territory,they were sending out
transmissions that were gettingread by the Secretary of Defense
and translated into policy forthe rest of the United States in
the global war on terror.
That's what I mean by theVerizon guy.
(14:07):
They're networked and I thinkthose you know.
So those that's what's happeningin that village and it's not
easy because in the beginning,most of the people in that
village are in their own kind ofchurn.
They're disconnected anddisengaged and distracted and
they don't trust each otherbecause of years of conflict.
And so how do you go in thereand make these connections and
(14:30):
ultimately get them to go up onthe rooftops and fight for
themselves?
Well, you have to go up on therooftop yourself first.
When the attack comes, you goup there and you fight and you
try to defend the community fromthese bad actors that are
coming in, that have heardyou're there.
It's kind of like theMagnificent Seven, you know, and
at first nobody goes up there,nobody's coming, it's just your
guys.
And then one night there's amuzzle flash across the way on
(14:52):
one building that's not yours,and it's a farmer that's decided
to defend his home because ofthe rapport and the
relationships that you builtwith him, by treating his
daughter who had a medicalcondition.
And then, two nights later,there's another muzzle flash.
It's.
You know, fear is contagious,but so is leadership.
And by demonstrating that andbuilding rapport when trust risk
is low, over time, within a fewweeks, every rooftop in the
(15:15):
village is firing backcollectively against that threat
, against that churn, and that'swhat I call rooftop leadership
the, the ability to move peopleup to a rooftop when it's when
it's hard, and they go there notbecause they have to, but
because they choose to, based onthe relationships and rapport
that you built with them.
And, uh, yeah, that's it in anutshell, man.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Well, you know you talked about too, like with the
farmers there and you had a veryum, a very interesting story
too is kind of talking about aconnection with your grandfather
there too, and I know thatthere were some farmers there
and they were kind of pulling upthe earthworms thinking that
they were bad, and you had aconnection there.
If you could maybe tell thatstory a little bit.
It's just something that hithome for me with with your story
(15:57):
and your grandfather and kindof your history there too.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, everything in my book is story based and you
know, there's just certaintenets to rooftop leadership
that I believe are reallyimportant.
You know, one is recognizingthat the enemy is not the
Republican or the Democratsitting across from you, it's
the social conditions that welive in, it's the churn to
recognizing that this thing Icall the human operating system,
(16:21):
that we are very primalcreatures and that you know I
look at those arrowheads behindyou and that love you have of
indigenous culture we are nodifferent at a biological level
than those ancestors.
I mean, we are still exactlythe same makeup and we have all
the same tendencies, good andbad, but we've disconnected from
(16:42):
those tendencies bad, but we'vedisconnected from those
tendencies.
And that disconnection from ourpast is a major problem today,
particularly when we're tryingto lead.
And as an example of that, whatI talk about in the book is
that you know, when we learnedas Green Berets that if you're
going to lead in any environment, there's a saying in special
forces is go local or go home,like if you're just going to go
(17:06):
in and kick the door in and thenget out, that is a short-term
effect.
If you're just going to walkthe halls as a ceo and chat
everybody up once a month.
So you're seen, that's just ashort-term effect, it's cosmetic
.
You've got to get in there andyou've got to live and work and
play among the people you serve.
(17:26):
And it's not easy but it'snecessary.
And as an example I gave, thatwas in rural Afghanistan I got a
phone call from a captain who Iwas very fond of and he was a
really good officer and he wasconcerned.
He said we need to show yousomething.
And we were doing this missionwhere we were village stability,
where we were living out inthese communities.
(17:46):
And they had just got there andthey the freshly tilled fields
and the and the young men wereout in a line across the field,
as you can imagine, on theirknees pressing and killing the
earthworms with their thumbs.
And you know, I'm standingthere next to this captain in
disbelief with my jaw on theground, because I grew up around
(18:07):
farming too and I'm like that'snot a good idea.
And he, he was a South Georgiafarm boy and he's like no.
And I was like what the hell'sgoing on here?
And he's like we're trying tofigure it out.
It took weeks to get to thebottom of this, but what we
finally figured out was thatthese young men who had returned
to their community afterdecades of war and civil war,
(18:30):
they had been in refugee campsand in Afghanistan.
All of your farming, all of youranimal husbandry, all of your
grazing practices, all of yourtimber management is in an
indigenous tribal society which,as you know, is oral in nature.
So all of your institutionallessons for land management and
responsible stewardship arepassed from father to son.
(18:51):
Well, because of all the yearsof war and the displacement of
the elders during the Sovietoccupation, most of the elders
went into refuge.
Most of the elders were killedRight, and those few that
survived went into the refugeecamps and they didn't share
stories about farming practicesbecause they figured they'd
never go back.
So the next generation offarmers never farmed.
(19:17):
And so when we went intoAfghanistan the first 10 years
of the war, while we're drivingaround throwing soccer balls out
the window and, you know,encouraging people to vote, it
never dawned upon us that thesefloods of people that were
returning from Quetta, pakistan,didn't know how to farm.
We were writing up all thesepositive metrics about how
people were returning, but theywere returning to farms and to
(19:38):
civil society realities thatthey didn't know how to deal
with their civil society at aninformal level was as broken as
any ministry and formal civilsociety in Kabul.
But we didn't know because weweren't local.
So 10 years later now we'reliving in these outposts with
the locals and we're seeing that.
(20:00):
Oh wow, that's what it's aninstitutional gap in memory.
So you know we did.
We brought out Department ofAgriculture experts and rural
farmers from Oklahoma and theystarted helping build model
farms and within a couple ofmonths you started to see a
complete change in foodproduction in these rural areas,
and most of them the areas wewere.
(20:21):
They went from subsistence toactually being able to sell
their goods.
And guess what?
It was a direct corollary totheir willingness to go up on
that rooftop.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yep man, it was a fascinating read there and your
connections, and just to see howthere are those gaps and you
don't know what you don't know,and if that stuff is passed
along the line and thegenerations, and all of a sudden
it stops, no matter what kindof information, intelligence it
is.
You know these practices thatthey're generationally have gone
(20:51):
back you know so many hundreds,thousands of years, and then
all of a sudden there's a gapthere too.
So it was.
I found that a very fascinatingstory.
Let's jump back into the ideaof the churn.
You know you mentioned a coupleof times.
You know you mentioned in thebook.
You say it's volatile, divisive, fear-inducing, breeds
uncertainty, complex, crowded,ambiguous and so many more
things.
But you talk about kind of themain components of the churn.
(21:13):
I'd love for you to kind oftell people about what it is
that your belief and what youkind of define that is, and then
we'll, you know, kind of go ina little bit further about how
that is affecting all of us insuch a mighty way on a
day-to-day basis right now.
Oh, man.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, no, I I'm really glad we're getting into
it and it and it is important, Ithink, to step back in as
humans and look at what's goingon around us.
You know, the first specialoperations imperative is know
your operational environment,because the operational
environment is always changingand it has changed under our
feet like tectonic platesshifting under the earth.
(21:46):
You know, and I think peoplewhen they look around for
example in this election youlook around and you see friends
who went to high school togetherunfriending each other on
Facebook over a candidate.
You know, and I don't meanunfriending each other in like
when you and I were kids andwe're like I'm not playing with
you anymore, and then the nextday you go back.
Yeah, I'm talking aboutunfriending, like ending
(22:09):
relationships and become a verb.
You know this unfriending andwe've normalized it Like it's.
People do it all the time.
If you don't like this post andunfriend me, it's.
It is a.
It is a caustic, corrosiveenvironment, and you see it in
the way people treat each otherin public.
You see just the, the, the, thespew that comes out of the 24
seven news cycle, and so I callthat the churn.
(22:32):
It's this metaphorically, it'sthis roiling set of social
conditions where it's so muchharder to sell, to inspire, to
lead, even to have Thanksgivingdinner or whatever your favorite
holiday is, with extendedfamily.
Because there's all thesethings you can't talk about
anymore.
Civil discourse is gone, andwe've normalized that to such a
(22:53):
degree because most people areoperating in this fear-based
trance state that they don'teven realize they're doing it.
They've got their heads down intheir dopamine dispensers or
iPhones and they're actuallypawns of these divisionist
leaders that seek to advancetheir own narrow agenda with
in-groups and out-groups, whichis very primal.
And so what I say is that thebiggest problem, this churn, the
(23:18):
enemy is not the Republican orthe Democrat sitting across from
you, it's not the mask or nomask.
It is this novel, unprecedentedset of social conditions that
we're dealing with that we'venever dealt with before, and
what the leadership trainingwe've had up to this point?
What got you here is not goingto get you there.
It's more about.
It looks a lot more likeAfghanistan than it does America
(23:41):
in many ways, and a big reasonfor that, george, is because you
know that metaphor of theiceberg that I'm always talking
about in the book, where the tipof the iceberg is the modern
world and the bottom of theiceberg, the part you can't see,
is the traditional world.
It's the world where we allcome from those arrowheads that
are behind you.
It's that world, but we allcome from that world Like that
(24:04):
world is not that far removedfrom us.
Jared Diamond says that we arefar more traditional than we are
modern, but we've forgottenthat world.
We have forgotten that that'swho we are, and we think that
we're so advanced and sosophisticated that we're not
susceptible to that primal,feudal behavior where we
(24:27):
demonstrate in groups and outgroups and contempt.
But we're very much capable ofit and we're doing it without
even realizing it.
So those conditions are what Icall the churn, and the final
thing I'll say about it the wayI.
The real essence of it are thefour D's, which is distraction.
We're disengaged.
We, you know, we're sodistracted, the least little
(24:48):
thing pulls off focus.
Our attention spans like eightseconds.
We're so disengaged.
85% of the population claims tonot have purpose at work.
We're disconnected from ourpast and from from the natural
world because our heads are downin our phone and we're
distrustful.
Two thirds of Americans saythey don't trust their neighbor.
(25:10):
And if you look at thiselection disconnection we've got
going right now.
I mean, I'm actually I think alot of people are looking around
going.
Are we going to have civilunrest, you know, after November
5th?
I mean, I never thought I wouldsay that in my adult life in
this country.
So all of those things are thechurn.
And my point, george, is thatwe as leaders, as parents, as
(25:31):
coaches, we've got to recognizethat that is the enemy and that
there is a way to lead throughit.
But just doing it on instinctand just doing it on, you know,
uh, winging it is not going toget it.
You're going to actually getsucked into the churn with
everybody else.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Well, and you talk about, like, the opposite of
churn is clarity.
How do people, how do you uh,you know advise folks to be able
to then recognize the churn,see that these things are
happening, looking at those fourD's and then rising above it,
working through it and beingable to build communities that
can quiet that churn and movethat away, so that we can move
(26:05):
forward and kind of come back tothat cohesiveness, that idea of
that tribal nature, theseindigenous communities, these,
these, these connectors that youtalk about and you, you
mentioned in your leadership.
But I'm I'm curious as far aslike, okay, we have this.
Here's the issue set in frontof us.
What is your advice to folks tobe able to be able to move
through that in the most fluidway?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Put, your own oxygen mask on.
First right Is is recognizethat we are the most emotional
creatures on the planet.
We navigate the world withemotion and when we get afraid
or angry, which is unfortunatelymost of the, that's where we
are most of these days.
Because of the 24 seven newscycle, the economy, the social
(26:48):
media, we stay in this in-group,out-group, fear-based,
anger-based mentality and thesympathetic nervous system
remains up at fight, flight orfreeze and it's not supposed to
stay there.
That is for when there's asaber-toothed tiger in the
bushes or your kids are in aburning car.
It is not for when your 401k iseroding or your candidate's
losing.
A sympathetic response is notappropriate.
(27:11):
We want to be in theparasympathetic state, which is
calm and connect, rest anddigest.
Both of those are in ournervous system that are as old
as those arrowheads and both arenecessary.
But in the modern world, a lotof these divisionist leaders and
social media and 24-7 newscorporate media they have
(27:32):
fomented a circumstance where weare in the sympathetic state of
fight, flight or freeze all thetime.
There's always a tiger in thebushes and that's not one, it's
not healthy, but two.
It's not appropriate forleading your kids or having a
discussion at Thanksgiving andyou end up surrendering your
agency.
As Dr Ivan Terrell says, angermakes you stupid, right, because
(27:54):
you surrender your higherintelligence functions of the
frontal cortex.
They shut down because you'rein survival mode.
So what I say is put your ownoxygen mask on first.
You've got to, we've got tochange your state.
You've got to get yourself downto a parasympathetic state of
calm and connect where you'reopen and you're ready to
actually assess your environmentand you look like you trust
(28:14):
yourself right, ready toactually assess your environment
, and you look like you trustyourself right.
And that means you've got topractice self-leadership in that
moment, the best way to do that.
I remember when I was operationcenter director in Kandahar,
afghanistan in 2005, and we hada chopper go down and had my
best friend on it and a bunch ofteam guys that I love dearly,
and they were just spewedwed,spewed all over the battlefield
(28:38):
and I didn't know how many weredead, how many were alive.
It was a show and um, I wasterrified and but, and everybody
in the operation center waslooking at me.
It was like your worstnightmare realized, and what I
ended up doing was I.
I said, give me a second.
I literally stepped outside, um, I did like 10 burpees and I
did diaphragmatic breathing,three horizontal breaths, and
(29:01):
asked myself a couple ofquestions what can I control,
what can I not control?
And then I walked back in theoperation center and I was in a
state where I could actuallynavigate the situation, and that
became something that could bemirrored, because fear is
contagious, but so is leadership.
And so what I say and I justdid a LinkedIn newsletter on
(29:21):
this this morning I believeputting your own oxygen mask on
first means, first of all,immediately disengage from
whatever event just triggeredyou.
If it's social media, put thedadgum thing down.
If it's 24-7 news, turn the FoxNews off.
Quit having it run in thebackground.
Turn the alerts off on yourphones during election season,
you don't need them ever, butturn them off now.
(29:45):
Do a digital detox the momentyou start to see yourself get
worked up.
Then go move.
Dr Tyrrell says that movementand meaning are inextricably
linked.
Go do burpees.
Dr Tyrrell says that movementand meaning are inextricably
linked.
Go do burpees, walk around theblock, go play with your kids
and do breath work, do three tofive diaphragmatic breaths, you
know, and then go back into thesituation.
(30:06):
Just that alone, just that willreduce the sympathetic state
response of probably 90% of thestuff we deal with during the
election and beyond.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
You know you mentioned the digital detox and
I've heard you talk about thisbefore in the different interim
points throughout the year thatyou actually do that.
Can you go ahead and maybeshare that with listeners as far
as your kind of routine withthat?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Getting ready to do one and why it's important.
Yep, getting ready to do one injust a week or two, a big one.
And why it's important, yep,getting ready to do one in just
a week or two, a big one, like a10-day digital detox right
after the election.
But so I kind of you know, lookthese devices are.
I understand the role they playin our civil society and I get
(30:52):
it and it's part of my business,but there is a level of
entanglement with these devicesthat our primal brains doesn't
understand.
And if you don't believe me,watch somebody walking down the
street, walk into a lamppost orwalk across a crosswalk, or see
a family sitting together at arestaurant, all on their phones
in each other's presence.
(31:12):
Our prime, adam Ghazali Ghazali, says that we are ancient
brains trying to make sense of ahigh-tech world and failing Our
primal brains.
Just don't.
You know, multitasking is amyth.
It's not true.
You can't multitask.
The brain works in sequence.
Yet we think that we can be onthis and have a meaningful
(31:36):
conversation with our teenager,and it's not true, right?
So the level of entanglement inthese things and the way that
they tap into our deepest primallevel of of dopamine, and and
and and just the need for statusand so many of these other
innate needs that we have.
These things fill them in avery diabolical way, and that's
(31:57):
pre-AI.
So when I talk about theentanglement is what we're
dealing with here, and we haveto disentangle ourselves all the
time.
And if we don't think of it astentacles, they just get deeper
and stronger around you, and soyou can cut those tentacles off
and disentangle and then go backin and do what you have to do.
(32:20):
But I believe you have to besuper intentional about it.
You have to know that that isindeed part of the churn and
that that thing puts you in atrance-like state, it elevates
your emotional arousal aroundfear and anger, it reduces your
connection to the natural world,all of those things.
So go the opposite directionwith these digital detoxes.
(32:40):
I say, you know, at least onehour before you go to bed, turn
the dadgum blue screens off.
I know I don't touch my devicesuntil 10 am.
I don't even look at them, Idon't roll over in bed and check
.
I mean I do not.
I do all my rituals and then at10 AM I'll I'll get onto those
devices and even then I'll getsucked into the rabbit holes,
but I try to build exerciseroutines and things throughout
(33:02):
the day that remove me from themand I'll leave them in the room
and then I say, like you know,maybe once a once a month or
once a quarter, have a Fridaythat you have a no, no comms day
and everybody knows it.
Those devices are shut off, andthen once a quarter, a macro
detox three, five days where youjust put them up.
(33:24):
And I've been doing that and Ihave to tell you it is one.
It's increased exponentially mycreativity and my ability to
get more done and I just, I justfeel better.
I mean I really do.
I, once I get past the jonesingof that thing being out of my
hands for a little while, I feelbetter and I just think we're
going to have to get more andmore deliberate and intentional
(33:48):
about techniques and proceduresfor the digital detox,
particularly as AI makes its wayinto our world, or we're going
to become so entangled that itdoesn't end well for our species
.
I don't think.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Well, and that's something, too, that I've
noticed whenever, you know,especially when I have my entire
family around me because, youknow, I got two daughters and
the idea of, like that, if Ineed to get that phone call, if
it ever comes through right,there's like this tethered
feeling that I have.
But when we're all together,we're at the ranch or wherever
on vacation, the idea that thatphone can go and sit in a drawer
(34:22):
and we just connect the.
The level of authenticconnection that I have with
people when phones are down issomething that there's no second
you know place to.
That it's incredible andthere's so many things you can
learn about people when you putthose down.
When somebody hears that, youknow they, they, immediately
it's like our Pavlov's dogs.
Like you know, we go to that,like we have to get it and it's
(34:44):
like it's so false sometimes.
Oh, okay, someone wants to sellyou something you know that was
important to break a you knowtrue connection, a time with
someone else and, uh, you knowthat distraction is this there
every single day.
It's more part of the churn andI, I hear you, man, the detox
is very valuable.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, and I talked about it in the book and I give
some suggestions.
My favorite one, though, is thewhen the phone hits the floor
of the airplane and even thelittle three-year-old baby's
like was that mine?
You know it's like it's, it's,it's synchronized swimming,
swimming.
It's the only piece of kit thatwe carry that.
If it hits the floor of anairplane, everybody on the plane
knows what it was and theywonder if it was theirs.
(35:21):
Any other piece of kit hits thefloor.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
No one cares oh, it's so true.
You know what I want to kind of, you know, turn into another
direction real quick, because inthis book you talk about
something that was very personal, powerful, um and uh, just
really, and when you comingforth and sharing, and that was
what happened back in 2015.
(35:43):
And you kind of mentioned thatyou have a TED talk that you're
going to and you had this ideaof what you're going to write
and you spoke with someone aboutyou know, realizing your true,
authentic voice and self.
And then you realized, hey, Ineed to change what I want to
you know, prepare and share onthis TED talk.
And then you realized, hey, Ineed to change what I want to
you know, prepare and share onthis Ted talk, and if you can
kind of bring us through thatjourney and what it was that
(36:03):
made you want to share thisstory, how you went about it and
how you included your familyand conversations and what that,
that turning point for you.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Uh, if you don't mind diving into that a little bit,
yeah, you know, it was two yearsafter I transitioned from the
army in 2013.
And I thought I had the worldby the tail.
You know, I was the highperforming Green Beret.
I had done all these coolmissions and I was retiring on
my terms.
I didn't like where things weregoing in the army with
(36:32):
Afghanistan and I felt likethere was more for me to do on
the outside than the inside.
And I was going to write a book.
My kids were still at home, mymarriage was still there and,
within you know, a few days oftaking off those desert boots
and putting on the Tampa Bayflip-flops, I started to
experience the snakes in my headsquirming on a massive level
(36:54):
and, by 18 months later, I hadbecome devoid of purpose.
I'd lost my passion foreverything.
I was walking around my housein a bathrobe I'm not even
knowing the last time I'dshowered.
My boys would get up and leavethe room because they didn't
know what version of dad theywere going to get, and it was a
really, really dark time, george.
(37:15):
I mean, it was a time when Ifelt like I was no longer
relevant, and that's the worstfeeling in the world.
And and uh, I I started um,planning and and and preparing
for, you know, taking my life,and just because I, just I, I I
had, and, and it was reallyinitiated by, uh, the levels of
(37:37):
division at home.
I didn't have a word, the churnat that time, but it was this
just, everybody was so dividedand you know, to come back from
multiple tours in combat and seepeople treating their neighbor
with the contempt that wetreated the Taliban or Al Qaeda,
or worse, and you're like whatthe hell was this, even for you
know, and and you start toquestion everything and, um,
(38:02):
everything was just so, uh,divisive and I just like, well,
I don't even, I don't even knowwhat this, what was the most
point of leaving, losing allthose friends?
What was the point ofeverything?
I gave up my marriage is nowalmost gone for what you know
and it allowed all of that stuff, that the survivor's guilt, the
(38:22):
moral injury, that PTS thatwere endemic to me from the war,
to just ravage.
And so I almost, you know, Iwent into the closet and almost
took my life.
And it wasn't the only time thatI went into that closet, that
day that I described in the book, there were other times.
That was the closest I evercame, and it was my hands were
shaking I mean, they still shakewhen I talk about it now and
(38:46):
and but you know, I emerged fromthat really just, you know, in
almost in a, in a, in atransition purgatory, you know,
where I couldn't live and Icouldn't die, and I just didn't
know what I was, I was supposedto do, and I, for grace of God,
I mean I found storytelling as amodality to heal myself, as a,
(39:06):
and then as a way to heal othersand help others heal themselves
, and then to bridge gaps, likewhat you and I are doing right
now.
I mean, look at how fast webridged, you know we met for the
first time and then, justlooking at your Arrowhead
connection and listening to yourstory of how you got into that,
it like took me right in andthere's all these connections,
and I found that and it saved mylife.
(39:27):
It didn't change my life, likeit.
I mean it saved my life, youknow, and and I was so grateful
for that that I thought this iswhat I'm gonna do the rest of my
life.
I'm going to pursuestorytelling as my way of giving
back to the world and and doingmy part.
And so when I had gone to thisTED talk I was already it was my
(39:50):
third one.
You know how you get like I'vegot this this is a great, nice
vanilla topic on leadership andI had just lost another friend
to suicide.
And so I was sitting therewatching these other TED Talks
and it wasn't the one I wasspeaking at, but I was there as
a coach and I was watching themand I thought I can't do this.
I can't get up on that stageand not talk about what just
(40:13):
happened to my friend and whatalmost happened to me.
So I told Monty that I neededto change my talk.
I think it was like three weeksbefore the talk and I've never
said this to her.
But I want to thank theorganizer of that Ted Talk,
kimberly, because she didn'thave to let me do that change
and she did and she trusted meand I'm grateful that she did
(40:34):
that.
Ted Talk has got over like abillion views and I think it's
helped a lot of people.
I've had a lot of people tellme that they were in that closet
, and so that's kind of a longdescription there.
But that day was a veryprofound day for me because it
was the darkest of my my scarsbut it ended up being the one
(40:56):
that has probably been the mostgenerous sure in repurposing and
helping people well and I I seehow helpful that can be.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
And just you being so brutally and raw of your
honesty.
You know there are so manyveterans who that transition out
and all of a sudden there's alack of the brotherhood,
sisterhood, that kind ofcommunity they're spinning.
I mean, I've talked to so manyof them, your story your closet,
(41:26):
I've had multiple conversations, I've worked a lot of different
veterans and veteranorganizations and support groups
and really trying to emphasizemental health.
This will be the first podcastin my veteran month.
Forget veteran day, the veteranmonth, right, there's so many
other people who have their time.
I want to make sure that I do asmuch as I can to raise
awareness for these people whohave sacrificed all you know and
(41:47):
, uh, it's, it's somethingthat's so important to me to key
in on and I I love it when Ihear people talk about being
there, because I think thenother folks who are going
through that struggle they canidentify with that and so many
do and you know, with so manythat we lose every single day.
It's, it's something that Ireally want to, you know, bring
(42:08):
awareness to the idea of like.
Also, when you got to thatpoint too, and you realize that
storytelling was going to be ahealing part of your journey and
for others.
I'm curious, though, like, howdid you make that transition
from that day to then realizingthat, going and telling your
story?
Like, what help did you get inorder to be able to kind of take
(42:33):
to that next step and moveforward?
Because I'm you know, whenpeople get to these points in
their life, a lot of times theyneed those helping hands or
those platforms, thoseorganizations, and I was curious
about, like what it was your,your, your path through that
fire, and if you could maybetalk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yeah, happy to.
I you know, and you're, you'reright, we're coming into, as
we're recording this, we'recoming into.
You know it's November, I don'tknow if you do this, but
November is also the month ofthe military family, and you
know.
So our whole military communityjust has so much to offer, and
I want to reiterate that toanyone listening to this.
(43:09):
If you're a civilian and you'rewondering how do I help, you
know the veteran community, howdo I?
One of the things that I thinkwe need to shift our mindset on
20 years after the longest war,or 20 year war, and then three
years after the ending of thatwar, our veteran population in
our military community, in myassessment, and our first
responders are a nationaltreasure about the churn that
(43:36):
we're in and what we couldpossibly be going through, not
to mention the fact that I thinkthere's a very high likelihood
of a catastrophic complex terrorattack on the united states in
the next two years.
I really do, and I'm not goingto get into that now, but what I
will tell you is, if you lookat how our veterans operate and
how they lead, they are the mosthighly suited leaders for the
times that we're in in thiscountry.
I mean we need them at everylevel.
(43:58):
We need them in politics, weneed them in corporate America,
we need them leading ourcommunities, coaching our travel
ball teams.
I'm not saying they're theend-all be-all, but I'm saying
these are men and women that wedropped into Iraq and Syria and
Afghanistan.
Syria and Afghanistan that evena private in the 82nd airport,
(44:19):
at 18 years old, was dealingwith diabolical civil society
situations that would make mostseasoned diplomats spit up a
hairball.
And these young men and womenare out there right now staring
at a bottle of Jack and a 45 ormedicating on Oxy or or just
wondering was it even worth it?
And I'm not saying all of them,but like it is more than it is
(44:42):
more than just ending veteransuicide, it is more than just
getting these men and women,it's getting them back in the
game, because we need themleading us here at home.
I think they're our last besthope for this country.
And so to your question.
You know civilians, I believe,play a critical role in the
reintegration of the militarycommunity back into civil
(45:04):
society, in your ability toconnect deeply with your
neighbors who are veterans, withyour coworkers, in your ability
to hear their stories withoutjudgment and then to walk that
path with them into the nextlevel, into the next ridgeline
at their shoulder.
It's more than just thank youfor your service.
It's like looking and listeningand going.
(45:27):
Okay, let's walk that path, getyou over these couple of bumps
so that you can lead me.
And so what happened was anexample of that was a buddy of
mine, who was a business owner,heard my story, what I was going
through, didn't tell him aboutthe closet, but that I knew I
was relevant.
I knew that I was lookingaround at this society that was
so broken and divided anddistrustful.
(45:49):
And here I had done my wholelife in places like that.
I'd learned how to buildrapport, do active listening.
You know to lead through toughtimes, and I could teach
corporate leaders how to do that.
But every time I would try and Iwould tell stories about it, it
would get stuck in my throatand I would have this anxiety.
And he said you need to gostudy with Bo Eason.
You need to go study with BoEason, former NFL football
(46:12):
player, turned actor, turnedplaywright, turned storyteller,
and he helps people like you dothis.
So I did.
I had nothing to lose.
I flew out to California and Iwatched Bo on stage and, george,
I'm telling you, like nobody inthat room moved when this guy
was on the stage.
I mean, we were breathing inunison and it was for me it was
(46:33):
like seeing Mark in the sodashop again.
And I went up to him afterwards, I elbowed my way past
everybody.
I think he thought I wasstalking him it probably was and
I explained to him, you know,with some urgency, who I was and
what I was doing, and he justlooked at me and he said I'm
going to help you.
And he did.
For two years that man pouredhimself into me and he showed me
(46:55):
the elements of storytellingthat are the primal, physical
aspects, the breath work, how toreally bring your story alive,
how to take those scars, likethe closet and men that I lost,
and turn them into narrativesthat were actually helpful to
other people, what I call thegenerosity of scars.
Then that ignited for me apassion where I started studying
(47:17):
with indigenous storytellersaround the world.
I started studying under othercoaches, I started studying
acting, I wrote a play.
All of those things that cameout came from that couple of
those handful of civilians whosaid we're going to help you,
here's what, here's, let's dothis, and and then all of a
sudden I was loose and I wasback to being that high
(47:40):
performer that I knew how to be,and I still am.
So that was my journey with it,and it's not unique.
I don't think there's anythingunique about what I just said.
Storytelling for me was mymodality, but there's a range of
ways that civilians andveterans and military family
members can work together tomove through that dark stuff and
(48:01):
get on the other side of it.
And then we turn them loose tolead us here at home because
they know how.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Amen, man, thank you for sharing that, and you know
there's so many valuable lessonsthat come through this book and
the idea of being generous withyour scars, I think, is so
important that we can share thatand really connect with people
on that true heartfelt level ofwhat we're going through and how
we.
There's so many things that wehave.
(48:27):
There's more things that wehave in common right than the
divides, but we have to be ableto sit down and look at that and
see that, rid ourselves of thedistractions and realize that we
can all come together and worktogether and build something
better.
It's all there for us.
But I think so many times theblinders are on, whether it's
the phone or the screen, or thedistractions or the chaos, the
noise.
I mean, like you even talkedabout in the book too.
(48:49):
You know there's the group inthe middle right.
There's like two thirds of thepeople that are sitting there in
the middle that arecollectively there, and then you
have this other third, these,you know, the sixth on the, on
the edges.
That are the ones that are theso much noise and distraction to
us.
But really we have so much morethat holds us together and I
think that that's something thatit's very important for us to
take note of.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
I agree that, uh, more in common calls them the
exhausted majority.
Um, there is this study that Irecommend anybody watching this
podcast check it out.
You can just Google it.
It's called the Hidden Tribesof America and it was one of the
sources for my book Towards theEnd.
When I talk about better daysand the upswing and it's a
(49:30):
really good read I mean it'salmost unbelievable to think
that two thirds of our countryare this exhausted majority in
the middle, who really have apropensity to work together, who
really are tired of all thespew and the churn.
And then, all of a sudden, it'sexciting because two thirds is
(49:51):
a super majority in any in anydemocracy.
Two thirds is a super majorityin any in any democracy.
Two thirds is a super majority.
You could literally vote outevery divisionist leader on both
sides of the aisle, everyinstitutionalist who seeks to
take away our agency, and we canreclaim a lot through the
(50:11):
electoral process if we can justlook inward and recognize that
it starts with us.
But there are a whole bunch ofpeople to your left and to your
right looking to connect.
They just and to go up on thatrooftop.
They just need one person to doit.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
Absolutely.
I definitely suggest peopledive into that, and you'll learn
more about it in the book too.
Another story that I'd love foryou to kind of share is that of
the stay in step and the CIrecovery center.
I just love the idea too.
You got Simon Magata, thesenior executive from Toyota,
and you know if you could kindof maybe you know, build that up
as far as what it was why youwere getting involved in wanting
(50:54):
to help, you know, bring thisfacility about.
And then just the story of thatwalkthrough and how powerful
that was.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Yeah.
So you know I like to bring instories in this book that really
show there's no reason for youto not fulfill on what it is
that's keeping you up at night.
And if you don't believe me, um, there's a story in the book
about a green beret named Romy,who's one of my best friends,
(51:25):
who was shot through the neck,uh in Afghanistan and really
never should have made it out ofthat Valley.
But his best buddy, um, did atracheotomy on him in the back
of the vehicle under fire movingbackwards through a riverbed
and then breathed for him for aan hour or longer and helped him
(51:45):
, uh, stay alive and and justthat.
That story's not even in thebook.
That story of how they savedhis life, brought, brought him
home, is epic and um and butRomy was paralyzed from the
shoulders down, he was on aventilator and they didn't think
that he would.
Um, his wife Gabby, who they'veknown each other since they
(52:08):
were 14 in Venezuela they gaveeach other their first kiss at
14 in Venezuela and, um, shelearned of Romy's injury on her
birthday and she grabbed her18-month-old son, andres in
Fayetteville and drove up toWalter Reed and, you know,
stayed at his side for monthsand then I was working at the
agency and I got called over andI was there when he was in that
(52:31):
hospital in those first moments, and no one thought he would
make it, except Gabby, if youwere crying when you walked in
the room, romy's room shouldthrow you out because there was
no crying allowed in the room.
Because she said all he can'tmove his head, so all he can see
is your eyes and he can't seefear.
We have to be strong.
(52:52):
That was where her head wasRight.
We have to be strong.
That was where her head wasRight.
So, um, now fast forward.
Uh, several years later, andthey moved to Tampa where we
lived, grace of God, and theywent to the James A Haley spinal
cord injury.
Uh, and you know, the realitywas they, they.
He was still paralyzed from theshoulders down, he still had a
(53:12):
diaphragmatic stimulator.
So he has, during the day, hecan breathe on his own, but
think aboutator.
So he has, during the day, hecan breathe on his own, but
think about it, like he has tothink about every breath he
takes.
Can you imagine doing that allday long, actually constantly
thinking about your breath, andhe does that, and then, um, and
then he they convinced thedepartment of defense to do a
stem cell surgery on him inPortugal that might give him a
(53:36):
chance to walk again.
It didn't, except that it gavehim feeling back in his
extremities uh, hot and cold.
It regulated his ability todeal with urinary tract
infections and things like that,and so there, but to for it to
work he had to work out.
He had to do a lot of physicalexercise and with assisted
weight lifting and things likethat, and of course, as a scuba
(53:57):
guy on a team, he loved thatstuff.
So, but when it was time forhim to retire because they kept
him on active duty through allthis, he knew that he was going
all the way across from Tampa toOrlando to do this twice, three
times a week to do theseintense workouts.
And it was making a difference,because most spinal cord injury
(54:17):
people like Christopher Reeve,they atrophy and they pass, and
the insurance system doesn'treally keep them going.
And so Gabby and Romy knew ifRomy went into medical
retirement from the military,that was it, that he would
atrophy, and so they wanted toopen their own spinal cord
injury center.
They invited me over for dinnerwe were dear friends and then,
(54:41):
uh, basically ambushed me withthe request to be the chairman
of the board and I'm like, do weeven have a board?
And they're like, well, thethree of us.
So, yeah, yeah, three start,yeah.
And but you know what?
That's how it started.
It started at their kitchentable and I went home and I was
in tears because I told my wifeyou know, I'm like I'm going to
(55:03):
fail them, you know, because Ihave no clue what I'm doing and
she looked at me in her truespecial forces wife style, said
baby, when has that ever stoppedyou from anything?
And so we just started.
We just started and we juststarted building connections and
making building relationships.
(55:24):
And at some point we broughtsome other people on the board.
But we told the story, george.
We told their story and theytold their story.
We would take him to New York,we would fly him to LA, and it
was so difficult having to lifthim in and out of those seats
and so hard on him but we did.
And at some point we ended upwith a 5,000 square foot
facility with no furniture oranything and we were about to be
(55:47):
foreclosed on.
And Nagata, we got word thatSimon Nagata from Toyota was in
town and wanted to talk to someveterans, so we convinced them
to come to that piece of crapbuilding with no furniture and
no exercise equipment.
And we turned Gabby loose onhim and she she went in as they
(56:08):
were walking off.
Romy looks at me and he's likehe's toast and uh, within
minutes she, she had completelypainted the vision of this place
and he bought it and asix-figure donation came in.
Within months we were openedand now they're in a
10,000-square-foot facility theyhave.
(56:29):
Hundreds of people have comethrough there.
Three veterans have learned towalk again.
People have come through there.
Three veterans have learned towalk again.
They are really setting.
There's now interns from, Ithink, a University of Central
Florida, south Florida, from PT,that come in there and work.
You've got to see it.
It's unreal.
I would encourage anybody to goto stayinsteporg and watch the
(56:50):
video.
Donate to what these people aredoing.
Romy is usually out there onthe floor working out to this
day with still can't move belowhis shoulders.
It is.
If you, if you think that youcan't get big stuff done when
nobody's coming, spend threeminutes at stay in step.
But I'll end on this.
It all came down to everysingle thing that's in that book
(57:10):
Human connection, purpose,storytelling and struggle and
emotion.
Those are the realities and ifyou just tap into those and
build social capital around that, there's no ceiling for what
you can do, and Romy and Gabbyproved it.
They still do.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
That was a profound part ofthis book.
There's many times where I'vejust had to put it down because
there's so many emotionalmoments you sharing, you sharing
what happened there.
You know in your home thisstory and so many others.
I mean it's it's a very, verypowerful book.
I think everyone should go andread it.
I'll have the links in the shownotes.
You guys make sure you go checkthis out.
(57:47):
It's phenomenal.
I mean you have a lot of otherbooks that people can go and
check out and we'll we'll haveall the links down there below.
You know another thing that'scoming out.
You got some other Last Out.
You got some more productionsof the play.
If we can go ahead and beforewe sign off, if you can talk a
little bit about that and youknow what's coming up, so we can
kind of, you know, let somepeople know about that.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Yeah, absolutely, thank you.
So the Last Out play is a playyou'll read it in the book if
you haven't already but it'sabout a modern Green Beret and
his family trying to navigatethe wickets of war, and it's
meant to educate civilians onthe impact of war while
simultaneously healing andvalidating those who lived it
using storytelling.
(58:26):
All the cast members areveterans and military family
members.
It's in its third tour.
We're about to start our thirdtouring season.
I am excited to say it is abrand new cast and for the first
time, I'm not in it.
I'm the executive producer.
But the cast is phenomenal.
They are so good I can't sayenough about them.
I mean, I don't want to say toomuch because I want people to
(58:49):
go see it.
So here's the thing we're goingto be performing the play
November 6th in Tampa.
November 8th in Danville,kentucky.
If you go to lastoutplaycom,you can get tickets there, but
we're putting the seasontogether for 2025 right now and
we're going to do at least 12tour stops in 2025.
(59:09):
If you want the play to come toyour town, reach out to me,
scott, at scottmancom, and letme know.
You know, uh, let me know thatyou'd like to bring the play, uh
and we'll, you know we'll talkabout it.
It's about a I think it's abouta 20k lift to get it out to
different locations, um and butit's powerful man and uh, we've
(59:31):
been doing it for three yearsnow and and people love it.
It's so raw and emotional andwe do a talk back afterwards.
I'll be at every show so we'llhave a chance to meet and I just
recommend it for any community.
George, I'm telling you it is sogood for our communities in
this time of churn to have thisplay come to your town.
It's good for local veterans,it's good for military families,
(59:57):
the families that have lostpeople, vietnam veterans who
feel forgotten, and then justcivilians who want to learn more
.
I just can't say enough aboutit.
Maybe we can get it to Houston.
Man, I'm going to make a pitchtonight at this veterans event
to bring it to Houston.
So I'd like to stay in touchwith you on just you know what
we can do.
Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
Oh, I'd love to do anything I can to get that and I
think there's there, we know,substitute going seeing that
person.
But if people do, right nowthey have some interest and they
want to go and check out.
There are some film productionsof the play that they can go
and see and where all can peoplego and check those out?
Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Thank you, Amazon prime.
It's on Amazon prime, I thinkit's on Google Plus and Apple TV
also.
And again it's called Elegy ofa Green Beret Sorry, Last Out,
Elegy of a Green Beret.
And then all proceeds of thefilm 100% go to our Heroes
Journey storytelling program.
So even if you just watch thefilm, you're making a huge
(01:00:52):
contribution.
We just showed the film Georgeon the Special Forces
Association cruise.
We had hundreds of Green Beretsand their families all the way
back to Vietnam watching thisfilm in this packed house and it
was one of the most emotionalthings I've ever seen.
Everybody that watched it justfelt like it was their life up
there.
So if you're wondering aboutauthenticity in the film and in
(01:01:13):
the play, it will rock you.
It will rock you, and so Iencourage people to see the film
and get out and see the liveversion.
Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Well, and for the other things you got going on,
for people who want to kind ofkeep you know up with you know
when the production schedulesare going to be going on, what
cities are going to be comingthrough next, when you might be
given some you know talks aboutthis book or maybe future ones
too, how can people go ahead andand follow along this journey?
Give us some websites and somesocials so people can kind of
join in, if you don't mind.
Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Everything that I do on my bodyof work is scottmancom Every,
my for-profit, my nonprofit.
I've recently started a Patreonsite, a Scott Mann Patreon site
, where, if people want to godeeper on the storytelling or
like in Houston, we're going tobe filming behind the scenes,
with me reuniting with theseAfghan commandos that I'm going
to be meeting and my keynote andhow I prepare for keynotes and
(01:02:05):
how I recover from keynotes.
A lot of people want to get youknow, they want to take the
nobody's coming book and godeeper.
So if you want to do that,scottmanncom has tons of stuff,
but Patreon is a great way tojoin in for the cup of coffee.
You know, you can.
You can hang out with me, askquestions.
My podcast is there.
And then, finally, one otherthing that I'll throw out there
that's on the Scott Mann page istwice a year I run a
(01:02:27):
storytelling workshop called OwnEvery Room and a lot of
business owners, a lot ofcorporate professionals and
nonprofits come to this to learnhow to tell their story in a
really powerful way.
And, what's cool, it's at adude ranch in old Florida.
It's very intimate, like 50people.
I teach it personally.
(01:02:48):
It's the only time that I dothis, like myself, twice a year,
and you will develop and repyour story over and over with
partners and then around acampfire, and so it's just a
really old school way to learninfluence and storytelling the
Green Beret approach, but whereyou can own a room when you walk
into it.
The way that I try to do it,and that's March 1st is our next
(01:03:09):
one, and again scottmancom.
It's there and then we'll doanother one in the fall.
Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Phenomenal.
I definitely encourage everyoneto go check that out again.
I'll have all the links in theshow notes below.
You know, scott, before we signoff, you know there's a
question I'm very curious yourtake on it and that's one about
legacy.
You know I wanted to know isthis something that you think
about in your day to day lifeand what you're putting out,
you're producing, the peopleyou're helping and the idea of
(01:03:42):
how you want to view your ownlegacy?
Is that something that is apart in play in your day-to-day?
Or is that something that youkind of look back and you're
like, oh, I've contributed here,I've done this.
Is that something that youthink about consciously?
And I'm just kind of curiousyour take about that 100%.
Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
For both my wife Monty and me, the tracks that we
leave.
As my dad says it, they'reeverything.
The impact and relevance are mytwo main metrics in how I
navigate the world.
Am I having an impact and am Irelevant?
Those are my metrics.
Everything else is whatever Imean.
It's just fuel, it's airspeed.
To be more impactful and morerelevant, I believe that the
(01:04:19):
human operating system says thatwe are meaning, seeking
creatures.
If we don't have purpose, weperish, and so the epicenter of
purpose for me is legacy.
What tracks am I leaving behindin my relationships with my
kids, with the capacity that Ibuild in this world to do what
it does after I'm gone?
(01:04:40):
So that's why I'm not in theplay.
I want to be in the play.
I miss the play.
I love that play, but my legacyand my tracks say no man, that
thing needs to be traveling anddoing what it does without you
in it, because that's where itcan do the most good.
So you better believe.
(01:05:02):
That's how I look at the worldis through the lens of leaving
tracks, and I hope that morepeople will do that because, at
the end of the day, when we,when we were at the end of our
life.
You know, I think the onlymetric that's remaining is
whether we take a long breath ora short breath.
You know, honestly, I think itcomes down to that A long breath
where we realize that we'velived a fulfilled life and a
short breath of regret.
And you know, I'll take theformer, you know, and I believe
(01:05:26):
that assessing constantly andreassessing the tracks that
we're leaving, the legacy thatwe're leaving behind, is the
best way to ensure that we getthat long breath at the end of
our life.
Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Well said.
Thank you so much, scott, forjoining me today.
Is there anything that we mightnot have covered, or is there
any special message you have tothe listeners that you want to
convey before we sign off?
Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
I don't think so.
Except that thank you, I mean,for everything that you've done
and continue to do, and I wouldjust encourage people through
these challenging times thatwe're in and they are, they are
challenging to really focus onhuman connection when everybody
else is focused on surviving isis to bridge across those in
group and out groups, make ahuman connection even when it's
(01:06:07):
uncomfortable, especially whenit's uncomfortable and when all
else fails.
Just ask somebody to sharetheir story and that alone can
bridge almost every situationthat we face.
An open-ended question thatstarts with what or how and lets
the other party tell you theirstory, and then just listen with
the interest and intention andcuriosity of a two-year-old and
(01:06:32):
everything else will sort itselfout.
Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
Amen, scott.
Thank you again so much forjoining me today.
Everyone, make sure you gocheck out the links in the show
notes below.
Follow along, let's go aheadand get last out into Houston.
All right, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Sounds good, thank you once again.
Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
I appreciate you, sir , my pleasure you.
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