Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 66 - Christmas/New Years/Kick off to 2019

Episode Date: January 7, 2019

This episode closes out my 2018, and launches me in to my 2019.  The lessons I learned about humanity, the human psyche, psychology, and the human condition during my time as a BUD/s (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) Instructor, and how I implement them in my daily life. 2018 In review, goals and aspirations for 2019.  My thoughts on the departure of General Mattis, and an update on my BJJ journey.  Enjoy

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm back. We were back. Probably more I'm back in this case because it's just me today. And for those of you who have been asking where I went for the last couple weeks, well, I was hanging out with my family. It was the tail end of the year. I am at the mercy of individuals and organizations' schedules for a lot of my year. But when it comes to the tail end of the year, I like to shut it down a little bit. I know I had put a post out. saying I was going to do an episode release on actual Christmas week, and I didn't do that, because instead I took my sons up to the mountain because we got a ton of powder, and let's be honest, the powder is not going to board itself. So I took some time for myself and for my family, and I'm glad that I did because I feel refreshed, ready to dive into 2019, which I'm going to

talk about a little bit, because that's one of the questions that came up. But before we get started, Let's talk about today's episode. Actually, let's talk about how I'm an idiot. And most of you listening are thinking, yes, Andy, tell me more because you're an idiot all the time. And you know what? You are correct. But in this particular instance, I'm talking about the fact that I have had a relationship now with Black Rifle Coffee for over a year, and I have been totally negligent in talking about them on the podcast. So even though they're not actually a sponsor of this particular episode, I'm going to say, say that Black Rifle Coffee is in fact the sponsor of today's episode, episode 66. I say that because I just finished a trip down to their corporate office in Texas last few weeks of December, and I was reminded that I have a code that I can provide to anybody who is listening, and the code's going to give you 15% off of your purchase. Now, it is a one-time use code, and the code is, cleared hot. Lowercase letters, you can either do that in one word or two, so you can combine

cleared hot into one word or put a space in between the two. They will both work. But if you go to Black Rifle Coffee's website, which is black rifle coffee.com, normal spelling on all three of those things, get in there, search around, surf it up, find something that you'd like coffee-wise, order it, and then you're going to get the chance to put the code in, gets you 15% off, which is why they are, in fact, the sponsor of episode number 66. So if you're a fan of coffee and a fan of the podcast, and you want to support Black Rifle Coffee, then go to their website, use the promo code, cleared hot.

And again, it's a one-time use, so shop wisely. That is it. Let's dig into the first episode of 2019, episode number 66. the Christmas slash New Year's Eve special. Here we go. Okay, got the red smoke. North or south. Okay, copy.

West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. I'm all winter, man. They give it to me. I need it. You're cleared hot. Copy, cleared hot. All right.

So I'm only going to answer a few questions today. And I'll kind of explain why as I'm going through. Because one of the things I'm going to talk about is my thoughts on 2018 and what I plan on doing personally and professionally going into 2019. And I'm not going to tip the hat as to what I'm going to say, but I'll just say that I'm going to try to keep the Q&As where it's just me talking somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour, because I think that's a better juxtaposition when I have a guest on. It's very easy to fill up an hour and a half to two hours. Next week as a perfect example. I got a killer guest, longtime friend. He was there the night

that I got shot. He actually was the guy that pulled me around the corner, the night that that I got shot. I don't think we've ever even sat down and talked about it. And we're going to link up and we're going to throw down a podcast and talk about the things that he was doing or has done or is doing. And actually what we're going to talk about is him specifically because I'm sick of talking about myself. But that will be a longer episode. So I want to have a little bit of a balance. Q&As will be shorter. Conversations will be a little bit longer. So the few questions that I selected, I picked them based off of the volume with which they seem to be asked. I seem to get a trend of questions often. One of the subjects that I'm asked about often is when I was a

Buds instructor. So this question comes from Twitter from John Roberts at J underscore M underscore Roberts 88. As a Buds instructor, Buds is an acronym that stands for basic underwater demolition seal training. It is the six-month initial screening pipeline towards becoming a seal. You are not a seal at the end of buds. Along with that, everybody who has ever been to buds should be able to tell you for the rest of their life which bud class they were in. Bud's class they were in. If you encounter somebody who says that they are a seal and you ask them what buds class they were in and they tell you that it is classified or they give you some wacky number like one alpha Charlie 6 November or anything other than a in this modern day three-digit number, they are totally full of it.

And that has nothing to do with the question, but since it's opening up with it, I might as well explain that. The first question I asked people, when they say, hey, yeah, you know, I was a seal or fill in the blank, it said, oh, cool, what class were you in? It should roll off the tongue. For anybody wondering what the 212 in my social media account names is, that was my Bud's class. I was Bud's class 212, and somebody out there on Instagram specifically has the name Andy Stumpf. but I have the name Andy Stumpf 212. So that's where that comes from. Now to the question, Mr. Roberts.

As a Bud's instructor, what did you learn about human psychology and the human condition? How have you applied it professionally and personally? This is a killer question. People ask me about buds all the time. Parents will often ask me about their children's odds of, success successfully graduating the program and a lot of times people will just reach out to me for more information about the program even though the internet being the amazing resource that it is they can probably find more information

than I can provide and more often than not people will hit me up and say hey do you think I can make it and the answer to that is if I'm being honest I have no idea the biggest lesson that I learned about human psychology the human condition or just about human beings, homo sapiens in general, is that the mind has no match. I didn't, the things I'm about to talk about, I didn't really see as a student because I was more concerned with actually making it through the day and making it through the evolution. So a lot of these observations that I have are from the instructor side of the house. Far less stress and my observation abilities were much greater.

as a buds instructor I time and time and time again would watch people push past a point of panic and push past and ignore every single warning signal that their body could give them

and then pass out underwater now when I say pass out underwater they were the phase that I taught was specifically diving and we administered a test called pool competency you get four attempts at the test two of them recur on one day, two of them will occur on the next.

If you fail two on the first day, you don't get all four attempts on one day. You get remediation, which is additional training and instruction. You get the chance to practice again. And then you get two more attempts the second day. If you fail the test four times, at best, what is going to happen is you're going to get rolled back a class. In buds, or at least when I was an instructor there, each student likely has available to them one performance role. and one medical rule. So if you're struggling with the obstacle course, if you're struggling with the four-mile run times or the two-mile ocean swims, and it gets to a point where you meet the criteria to not graduate that phase, they will likely recycle you and give you additional time to train. If you fall off an obstacle on the obstacle course and you powder your femur, you're more than likely going to get a chance to rehab, retrain, and attempt again.

but if you've had a performance role and you come to pool comp and you fail it the fourth time you are going to get ejected from training regardless of who you are because you will only get one or the other so these students would take it as far as they anybody on earth can take it and for those of you who've never held your breath to the point where you're getting ready to pass out it's not a comfortable experience add on top of that a moderately complex and system-based test that occurs underwater in the scrutiny of a one-to-one in student-to-instructor ratio where your dreams and aspirations may be hinging on the successful or unsuccessful completion of this test. And you can imagine the environment that I'm in.

And I would watch these students, they'd start to panic. They'd start to get the warning signs of running out of available breath hold, the chicken neck that everybody's seen, and probably experience themselves. That in and of itself is not an indication you're getting ready to pass out. When you start having bubbles escape with that chicken neck, you're a few seconds to pass out.

This is things that you learn after watching quite a few people pass out underwater. And I would watch these students who had at any time an escape button to that environment. If they wanted the test to end, if they were in too much pain, if they had too much panic, all they needed to do was to extend their right arm out to full extension with the thumb,

facing into the air. As if you're looking for a ride to hitchhike, the instructor will come down and end the test appropriately, bring you to the surface. You're obviously not going to pass. And occasionally that would happen on the first three tests. Now on the fourth test, because of the potential outcomes, what you would see is you would see people take it to a point where they start to panic. You would see them take it to a point where every warning signal in their body is alarming and you can tell that they're just fighting to hold on. And time after time after time again, I would see people push that point. And instead of listening to those warning signs, they would take it to the point where they would pass out, which in real life would be deaf because they have weighted gear on them.

But an instructor will bring you to the surface. But they would do that because they didn't want to fail. Time and time and time and time again when I was an instructor. I would watch people who would obviously be limping for some reason on a four-mile timed run. and you would send them to the medical department afterwards and come to find out that they are running on a set of broken ankles or a severe set of stress fractures or a broken tib fib or a broken femur. I've seen all of those things and in combination and a human being still running on them and I can only imagine the amount of extreme and excruciating pain that they were in.

And I've watched people that I would consider from the outside if I was just to take a snapshot and do the classic cliche, judging a book by its cover, I watch some of the fittest, fastest, and most capable students or ones that I perceived to be quit because they lost control of their mind and their thoughts, and essentially that boiled down to them becoming either overwhelmed or frustrated, and they live the rest of their life with regret. So the biggest thing that I learned about human psychology, human condition, and just being a human being, is that there is no match for your mind. And if you can maintain control of your mind

and direct it and stay in control, there's almost nothing that you can't accomplish. And if you're gifted the genetic lottery and are physically capable but choose not to focus on the mental aspect, you're more than likely going to fail. People will say all the time, you know, buds, it's all mental,

which is slightly true. However, it can't be accomplished online. And if you're bound to a wheeler, chair with no physical capacity, you're also not even going to get a chance at it. So there is a physical condition to it. But physiologically, looking back at the students and then thinking back at the class that I was in in the late 90s, physiologically, I would say nearly every student is the same. You will have outliers, the people that are just unbelievable D1 and above athletes in run, swim, fill in the blank. but most people were the 80th percentile.

They were okay at running, okay at swimming, okay at the obstacle course, and we'd finish in like a big group on a four-mile-time run. There'd be three or four guys up front who are crushing it, three or four guys in the back, and then the vast majority, I'm talking 100 students, would finish together in the middle. So physiologically, almost everybody is the same. Height weight's going to vary a little bit,

but from a cardio, a strength, a stamina, endurance perspective, there wasn't that much difference. So why do some people graduate and others don't? What muscle is failing if largely physiologically were all the same? And the answer is, again, your mind. Surf torture is a good example of something that is not physically difficult, but a test or a task that is designed to break you down mentally. So when I went through Buds, it was called surf torture.

When I went back as a Bud's instructor, it was called surf conditioning, because God forbid we call something torture in the modern day, which it wasn't torture, it was certainly uncomfortable. So it's somewhere in between torture and conditioning. It is a simple exercise. You have an entire class, turn to face the ocean. They link arms with the man to their left and right. You're as an instructor directing this over a bullhorn with a steaming hot cup of coffee,

probably a few feet away from where the ocean is going to touch your boots, because why don't you want to get wet? That's ridiculous. The water's cold. So on a bullhorn, you say forward march, you march them out, and usually somewhere to about nipple level on their chest, you tell them to take their seats. So everybody rocks backwards, their feet come up in the air,

and hopefully, if you've mastered your craft, the surf starts breaking on their face, hopefully the water's going up with their nose, you know, general relative uncomfortableness for the student, general entertainment for the instructors. That is the goal at all time as an instructor is to entertain yourself and your fellow instructors. Wintertime, water's super cold. It doesn't sound that bad.

Like if you just finished a run and you were hot, it sounds like something that might cool you down. Well, at 2 o'clock in the morning, when you've been doing this for hours, it's a little bit of a different experience. But it's not physically difficult. You're laying down, the water is breaking over the top of you. Does it hurt? Yes. Is it an injurious hurt? Absolutely not. What it is is a dull knife blade being jammed into your brain slowly and then it's being twisted. What it's doing is it's mentally breaking you down and what you see as individuals reach a point where they say they can't take it anymore, they jump up from that line of students, they run out of the surf and they quit. And in that situation and in every situation in buds where somebody decides to quit. It is not because of a lack of physical ability. It is a lack of ability between their ears.

So again, the mind is what has no match. Another lesson that I learned while I was there. And this one I'll say, I think, is true on both the student side of the house and the instructor side of the house. And I'll say that because there are many things that as a student, the instructors do not see. A good example, this would be when you're paddling the boats out in the ocean. The instructors, while you are on land or right there, they are in your face because that's their job. But they will task you. Actually, Hellwick is another good example of this too, where you're paddling very long distances. They will task you from going from one place to another, and then while you're in the ocean, you're in the ocean with your boat crew.

So there are things that the instructors see, and then there are things that only the students see. But when it comes to the human condition, humanity, and the human psyche, one of the things that I'm I left with an understanding of is that the true you, and I'm talking about myself as well, is not the you walking around in everyday life when it's 70 degrees and you have shorts and flip flops and sunglasses on and everything is going well in your life. The true person you are shows up when the chips are down. The true person that you really are shows up when you're cold, when you're wet, when you're tired, when you're in pain, fill in the blank. And it shows up when nobody else is watching.

And that's why I say there's things that the instructor staff sees and the things that the instructor staff does not see. And this is why I would say Buds is actually so important. It's an initial screening process that leads to a job that has occasionally very sensitive operations with very little oversight. If you successfully make it through and get to an operational element, you have earned a level of trust, and you are going to be treated in a manner that is commensurate with that trust. So you may be managing millions of dollars worth of equipment. You may be managing live fire evolutions.

You may be managing the lives of individuals underneath you, and we have to make sure that you are actually the person that we want in that position. Now, no selection process is perfect. and I've talked about this on the podcast before. There are people that slip through the cracks because they can hide that true behavior of who they are even in the moments when people are there actively paying attention trying to ferret out that behavior.

Like I've mentioned previously, the honor man of my Bud's class, Bud's Class 212, Ben Seifert, still in jail for cutting people up with a spider coat knife on the East Coast with his wife. I served with people who were drug dealers, literally setting up drug networks, people who had issues with spouse abuse,

child abuse, child pornography, rapists, additional murderers, fill in the blank. There are weeds in every lawn, regardless of the size, to include the SEAL team. Now, that is not saying that the SEAL team has problems with any of those things that I just mentioned. Those are the vast minority statistically is such a vast minority.

Unfortunately, oftentimes their actions can paint the majority, and that's not the way that it is. So the selection process for seal training is very good, but it's not perfect. But the reason that it is what it is, and the reason that I say that the true you is not the you walking around when everything is going well, is that I've seen it over and over again,

the degradation of behavior when somebody gets tired. the degradation of behavior when somebody has to miss a meal and they're tired. The even further degradation of behavior when you have to miss a meal, you're tired. Oh, and by the way, you're going to be laying in the ocean for the next hours. Buds, in my opinion, is designed to push the human being, the human spirit to the lowest point. And that as the instructor staff, we sit back and we watch holding people accountable to the standards and selecting for individuals that do not have character traits that we want to work with or have the people that we have an immense amount of trust and respect in the SEAL teams working

with. It's easy to say you're not selfish. It's easy to say you're not egotistical. It's easy to say you're not deceitful. But what happens when the chips are down? I have seen changes in behavior in my own life. I'm the last person to ever say that I am perfect. I've snapped on people because I've hungry.

I'm snapped on people because I've been tired. I've been selfish when it comes to we have limited water supply and you know what I drank more than I probably should have I'm guilty of it just I think like every other human being is but for me it is the anomaly not the norm what is concerning is one is the norm not the anomaly so pushing people to their lowest points you see selfish behavior you see egotistical behavior you see deceitful behavior and cheating and then you also see people who when things are absolutely at their worst they are the most selfless they will truly before being concerned with themselves they'll look to the left and right and care about the welfare of the people that are with them over themselves they will truly be humble they will truly allow somebody else to take the credit or empower somebody else to do something in an environment where they may have more capability and let them take that credit for it same thing goes with

honesty owning up to mistakes Those are the things that we're looking for, that selflessness, that homelessness, that honesty. It's almost the, it's not the whole bedrock, but it's definitely the foundation of leadership and expected behavior inside of the SEAL teams. But that's what the purpose of the training is for, is to really pull out and elicit who you really are. There's a saying in the teams, everybody wants to be a frogman on Friday. Because on Friday, when the weekend's coming and you got two days off and you're probably at a kegger on the beach, it's really easy. But that's not the true you.

So do yourself a favor, and before the world pushes you into a position where you discover who you really are, find out for yourself. Push yourself to that point before the world tries to bend you. And then the last thing, I think I'll say when it comes to buds, and what I took away as lessons as a buds instructor, is that although it's common for people to say, and I hear your parents, saying this to their kids, you know, you can be anything that you want to be. And everybody is created equal. The reality is from what I've seen with my own eyes, and again, this is all I can talk about is my own eyes and my own experiences and my own opinions. I find that to not be the case. Everyone is not created equal, and not everybody can be anything that they want to be.

If your maximum height when you are an adult is five foot tall, you're probably not going to be in the NBA. Is it impossible? I guess it's not impossible, but the odds are certainly stacked against you. What I will say is that I absolutely, even though everybody's not created equal, I do 100% believe in equality of opportunity, but I don't believe in equality of outcome. And I don't even really necessarily want to go any deeper into that. It's a topic of conversation. If you're interested in that particular conversation, go search up Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson. They were probably a lot of things that Jordan Peterson just talks about in general. But what it is is, you know, you're focused more on providing opportunity for people instead

of ensuring that everybody gets the same outcome because in air quotes, it's considered to be fair. I think it's essential in the buds world, and I'm going to tie this back into buds because having and holding standards is critical. It actually could be one of the main things that makes the SEAL teams what they are. The camo that we got to wear, or they're wearing now is awesome. The gear is awesome. It's lightweight. It's high speed.

There's night vision goggles and all that stuff. That's not really enables the SEAL teams to be able to do the things that they do. And for that matter, any other special operations force. It's the standards that the individuals in that community are held to. and the fact that they are so high and performance is the key metric. That is what enables the SEAL community and special operations community

to do things that often makes people sit back and scratch their head and go, how did they do that? When it comes to standards, they have to be blind and they have to be open to everybody. Like I said, a quality of opportunity, I think, is essential.

But if you start modifying or lower standards to achieve equality of outcome, then I think we have an issue. I don't believe in absolutes, so I hate the terms never and always, but every time I have seen this happen, and when I say seen this happen, I'm talking about a modification of a standard to meet a certain end state that did not terminate in performance. It hasn't worked out in an optimal fashion. It has been highly other than optimal. So, hold the standard. Have a standard, first off, then hold the standard.

And you're going to have some difficult conversations when you do, because some people will meet them. Some people will not take the time to remediate and train and give ample opportunity, but for some people it is an impossibility, and you have to come to grips of that, in my opinion. Last thing I'll say, which I just already said anyway. So started in 2019 off by lying to you. The last thing I'll say about buds, and probably the thing I took away, the most, well, not the most, but this one sticks with me, and I try to reinforce this with my own children. People are capable of more than they believe or give themselves credit for. People,

me, you, everybody who's listening to this, everybody that you know, are capable of more than they often believe in themselves or give themselves credit for. If I, as an instructor, had made a living by betting on who I thought would quit, if I had to walk up, and judge people by their cover, I actually would have been bankrupt incredibly fast because I was wrong more often than not. The people that I often thought were going to be the ones to throw in the towel. And I'll be honest, it's because I was totally stereotyping. Like, look at this little beanpole, he's not going to be strong enough. I mean, everybody makes snap judgments like that. I'm just verbalizing that I occasionally would as well as an instructor. Nothing negative about it,

but in an environment where seven out of ten and sometimes eight out of ten people don't make it, you kind of get used to discussing the odds with other instructors, I can't even count how many times those individuals, if I'd put money on them quitting, would have taken my money. Because they dug deep and they found something in themselves that allowed them to do potentially something that they didn't even think was possible, or they least had questions about. And then there was the people who seemed the most likely to succeed. And most of the time, I would point this at, like, the best runner in the class, the best swimmer in the class, the best person at the obstacle course.

They just had, they were dominant, almost always, in one particular evolution. But they couldn't dig deep. And those people, and this happened in my class. Fastest runner, one of the first people to quit. Best swimmer, the first person to quit in Hell Week. And I'm not sure when it came to the obstacle course. But I remember those first two individuals. Most of the time, and to include from my class, they were either a single sport or a single modality

specialist. They were really good at one thing. So they had one strength, which means multiple weaknesses. Buds, like I said, is designed to push you to your lowest point, which will elicit those weaknesses and they will be exposed. And if you're used to only training your strengths and not dealing with your weaknesses, Buds is going to chew you up and spit you out, and your head's going to hit the bell three times along the way on your way out the door. Life's going to do exactly the same thing. So the way I have tried to, to answer the tail into this question. How have I applied this personally or professionally? I actively try not to avoid what I am afraid of or what I am weakest at. What I actually do is

try to identify those things and I go at them as opposed to going away from them. Myself personally, I would much rather be a generalist than a specialist because I think life in general rewards the generalist, not the specialist more times than not. And from what I have seen, In other people, as an instructor and as a student, like I said, I saw people do some amazing things that they probably thought were outside of themselves. I always try to tell my kids, you know, give yourself more credit than perhaps you think you deserve. Believe in yourself more than you do right now. And when people say you can't do it, just put that in your engine and let that thing burn so damn hot that you can rev the engine and then run over that person. that told you you can't do it. And that's what I have. When it comes to Buds and my takeaway,

what I learned about the human psychology, the human condition, and how I apply it personally and professionally. Next question has to do with a common theme at this time of the year, New Year's resolutions. And I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but it essentially said, what are your New Year's resolutions for 2019? I don't know if I've talked about this in the past. I would have to go back, but I actually don't do New Year's resolutions. I have done New Year's resolutions in the past, and I didn't really have much success. It was a far too short-term optic and goal for me.

And I personally, if I know, oh my God, only times I've done this, and I'm sure people listening have done this too. I'm going to start working out on Monday. When Monday comes around, I'm going to hit it hard. I'm also, I'm going to clean up my diet on Monday. Now, mind you, I'm saying that on a Monday. So what I'm doing is giving myself a seven-day noose to tie around my neck.

And if I do this same thing with resolutions, like, all right, now for 2019, I'm going to do this. For like the last three months of 2018, I just give myself far too much rope because it just seems like there's always a next Monday that I can push it to. So I have avoided setting those type of reset dates for me, and I just have focused more on kind of reviewing the year that I had and setting some long-term, not short-term goals for the subsequent year. Because there's a variety of ways you could get to the end state for the long-term goal, and I kind of let those work themselves out. But for me, the priority is to set that big goal for the year or the macro goal for the year. And then I focus and start digging in on the micro. So my ear and review, I mean, I'll go through it with you guys, what it looked like for me. And that seems to be like the term of the day.

I know I heard Tim Ferriss and a bunch of people talking about it, so it's certainly not unique to me. But I break it down into two categories. I have personal and professional, and I kind of think about the worst thing that happened in my year, the best thing that happened in my year on both of those. personally for me the worst thing that occurred to me in 2018 was the loss of a very close friend his name was alex sonnenberg and he died a wingsuit base jumping in france which is an activity that i had shared an immense amount of time with him doing i was actually there for his first few base jumps i was there for his first cliff jump in italy without a

wingsuit i was there when he first put a wing suit on i actually he's the exact same size as me so I used to send him my old wing suits and I don't want to say I because it would be up for him to say I don't want to say that I mentored him in the sport but we certainly spent a lot of time together and his loss was I mean it was tragic he he died on in June of 2018 and I happened to be in essentially the backcountry here in Montana with my family we were doing like a three-day weekend off the grid. And as soon as I got into cell phone coverage, my phone just started exploding. And before I even called anybody back or really even read any of the text messages, I was able to determine just by the people that were reaching out to me, we really only had one mutual connection

in common. And I knew what had happened before I swiped to open my phone. And then, you know, the reality kind of came crashing in on me. And I called and confirmed with an old friend. It was a mutual friend of both of us and it was what it was. It was the worst for me because still I'm questioning my future. I don't know if I'd call it soul searching, questioning my future, or more maybe reevaluating my personal why as to when it comes to wingsuit base jumping. Shortly after Alex died, my wife for the first time verbalized to me that she would like me to reconsider that behavior, which I take very seriously. And we've had conversations since then where she has expressed that if I want to continue, it's not something she's going to put her

foot down on. But the fact that she did verbalize it and where I am in my life and the potential that I have to lose versus the reward that I have to gain, it's something that I've been really thinking about heavily and has been weighing on me since his death. And I still don't know where I sit on that. Skydiving for me is a no-brainer. That one, as far as the risk versus reward, is skewed so far to the reward. That's a no-brainer, but we will see how it goes. TBD, to be determined on whether or not I'll continue wingsuit base jumping. Now, on the good side of the house, the best side of the house personally, I had my first full year in Montana, so not just me, but my family. We crossed the border July 1st of 17, so I had

half of a year. And then this year, we got the whole thing. So we got to experience four full seasons. Family is healthy and they're flourishing. And I mean, what more could I really ask for? And then the last thing I'll say, for me, personally, one of the best things that I did in 2018 is I started jujitsu. Jiu-Jitsu. I think I just said it too fast.

BJJJJitsu, that's what it's called. So don't call it anything else, psychos. I don't talk about it too much. I'll answer some questions about it when people ask me directly. And the reason I don't is it's not because I'm not proud of it. It's because I'm still trying to figure out what the hell it is. And I'm utterly terrible at it. I understand a few things.

I understand some concepts, which doesn't mean that I can execute them in practice. But I say it was one of the personal best for me because it's an incredibly healthy outlet. It's challenging. It has real world impact. And I suck at it, which for me drives me to want to improve at something that has a healthy outlet. It's challenging and real world impact. So it's like this self-licking ice cream cone of good things. So that was by far one of the best things personally that I did for myself this year. Professionally, man, sometimes I'm a mess when it comes to the professional size. So for the

worst, I had to encapsulate it in some wasted opportunities. And they were my fault. The opportunities that I could have taken that I didn't because I either drug my feet or I didn't understand what the opportunity was and neglected to ask for additional information. Those are on me. I mean, all the deficiencies, they're on me on the professional side of the house. On the good side, started some new ventures. Free Range American is one of those. I absolutely love what the brand stands for, but what I really like about it is that I'm doing it with my best friend. So John Dudley and I, are basically taken over the world i mean i think that's what's happening i'm not sure i don't have a metric

for that slightly anecdotal but i think we should be in control i don't know in three or four weeks probably a full world domination is the goal but it's been cool uh to do something that blends personal and professional i've had bad experiences with that this is not the case um the podcast i'm going to put that in uh the pro side of the house for 2018 i started like mid 2017, no idea where I was going to go with it. 2018, I developed a better understanding, became more comfortable with it. And then for 2019, I have a better idea of what I want to do with it. And I think perhaps a better idea of what type of voice or outlet that I would like to use it for.

So hopefully that will come to shape. And I can tell that story a little bit more going into 2019. And then, of course, on a professional level, we moved to a new state and to a new city. was able to provide for my family in this new location. And if I had to, I'd sell my freaking blood to make sure we could stay here because Montana's awesome, but you shouldn't move here because the traffic is terrible and it's really smoggy and the population's really high. So obviously that's a joke.

It's the most amazing place on Earth. You should come check it out. And goals for 2019. So I said I talk about macro goals. The macro goal for me, I can encapsulate in one word because this goes back to the wasted opportunity on the professional side of the house. Efficiency. I need to do a better job of streamlining the things that I do.

I know that I have wasted time in a lot of areas, and I know I'm wasting time in some areas that have almost no value to me, and I need to clean that up because I don't want to become stagnant. In my opinion, on a professional side of the house, if you become stagnant, that is one step away from the trap door. I have no desire of being some incredibly wealthy individual. To me, wealth has nothing to do with money and everything to do with how healthy your family is and them being able to live the way that they want to, which obviously requires money.

I just choose to focus on the family aspect of that as opposed to the financial, even though they are intrinsically tied. So I like what I do. I like the things that I do, but I know I can do them better. So that's my macro, be more efficient. And then some of the micro things that I've been thinking about, I already mentioned one, be more selective with what I agree to do and participate in. Simplify any areas that have excess complexity.

A good example of this is, I'm looking at right now, rebuilding the cleared hot podcast website. Because as it sits today, when I upload Libson is the host of the podcast, which is the, I guess, the repository of the actual raw file. And then the RSS feed, which I still have absolutely no idea what that is, spits it out to all these other entities that kind of sniff up the information and they post it. But I manually have to go in and do a few of these things,

and it's not uncommon that I will forget to do it or I'll do it late. And that's a classic example of how I'm not being efficient with my time. So I'm going to rebuild it until it is a one button click and it uploads to everything, because that will be a better experience for me and hopefully a better user experience for those of you who are being gracious with your time and choosing to listen to the podcast. On the efficiency side of the house,

this ties in with being more selective. I need to value my time more. So instead of saying yes to the vast majority of things, I need to be selective. And this one is true of more than just business side of the house. This works for exercise. This is for business. This actually kind of works for food.

Volume isn't always the answer. Putting your nose to the grindstone harder may not get you the end state you want. It may just grind your nose off. So I'm not looking for volume. I'm looking for quality. And that's all bracketed under my microgoal of efficiency for 2019. Last question for today. This one, when I put the message out

on Twitter about questions over the holiday period. This one, I would say, came up more than any of the other ones, and it was, what are my thoughts on General Mattis departing as the Secretary of Defense? My answer is, I don't know where I'd land, actually, on this particular topic. General Mattis is a well-respected, educated, experienced soldier. It would be a completely true statement to say that he has lived a full life in a profession of arms, He understands it from a boots on the ground level to a tactical, an operational, and a strategic level. All three levels of war.

He has an understanding and has navigated all three of those tiers. So the dude knows what he's talking about in that environment. But that doesn't answer the question, because the question is, what are my thoughts? And essentially what somebody is asking is, do I think it's a good thing or a bad thing that he left? I don't know where I land on this because if he had – if I look at an individual or someone, in a leadership position. If he had moral in character or philosophical disagreements with his boss and he wasn't able to execute his vision, well, it's probably a good thing that he left, because perhaps he could find a different way to impact those arenas. If he was failing at his

roles and responsibilities or the duties of the job, well, yeah, it's probably a good thing that he left because they could bring somebody else in that could be more capable or competent. but I don't know if that's the case. If he was the bridge between experience, understanding, temperament, and sanity, then that's probably a bad thing that he left. If he was filling that gap and creating the band-aid for those things, it's probably a bad thing. If he was being replaced or is going to be replaced by a yes-man, then, yeah, that's probably a bad thing, too. But I think it's too soon to say, and I really don't know enough about the details to say either way.

But what I can say is that changes in leadership, they don't necessarily scare me. And I butted up against this in the presidential election of this last cycle, when it was the last two candidates were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And people were saying, if Donald Trump becomes president, we're not going to survive 30 days. Then that became 60, 90, fill in the blank. The world was going to explode. He's going to blow everybody up. The world, he, you know, everything was going to come to an end and it was going to be relatively. relatively rapid, and here we are, two years later, and I'm not going to make a value judgment

as to which direction our country is going, but what I will say is the country still exists. Changes in leadership don't scare me because there's mechanisms in place to ensure checks and balances, even inside of the military. So inside of the military, on average, you're on a 24-month rotation, if you're at a conventional team. This is Naval Special Warfare specifically, at least when I was in, this might have changed. But essentially, it was a 24-month rotation and in that you would do a workup period you do a schooling period a workup period a deployment period and then most of the team i should take that back not most of the team the leadership roles in the team would vaporize and become refilled so the key positions would refresh every

single rotation and that starts at the top right you're commanding officer the ceo the exo which is the executive officer the number two the operations officer the number three the command master chief the senior enlisted personnel who works side by side with the commanding officer. Your troop commanders, which are the, they're not necessarily the maneuver element commander. They're the commanders of multiple maneuver elements, and then the platoon commanders. Each one of those billets that I just talked about

refreshes every 24 months. Sometimes people from one tier underneath that would step up into that role, but at least from the COXO ops and CMC, and yeah, not troop commander doesn't really apply. So COXO, O, O, O, CMC, those are going to come from a completely new area. So your established, entrenched leadership is gone every 24 months.

Some of those leaders were better than others. Some of those were way worse. I can't think of a single instance in 17 years where all of those people agreed or shared identical beliefs or work ethic or morals or even leadership styles. And in my opinion, that's a strength, not a weakness. I think the fact that there was diversity in the approaches and the beliefs and the morals,

I think that's a strength. And like I said, let's say somebody rolled in there and they just couldn't work well with the team. Well, we had the ability to get rid of them and a new body would come in. Or they might be able to nurse it to that 24-month time period and then they're going to get ejected along with everybody else and the team is going to rebuild itself. I think the worst environment that could happen would be the team stays together for 48 months, or 72, or 96. That to me would have been the lack of check imbalances, because people would have been able to root their fingers in, and then they would have been impossible to remove, which is exactly how I feel about most politicians.

I stay out of the political arena. I don't comment on it often, but what I will say is that I don't, I have an inherent distrust for career politicians, who people who make themselves or work themselves into a position of perceived irreplaceability in a political environment. And I say that because, again, in my opinion, I see them serving themselves, not the people that they were elected to serve. And that's a problem for me. So when I see somebody leave, and then I'm not saying that's the case with Mattis, because I'll tie this back to Mattis.

I see somebody like Mattis leave. It doesn't, it's not the end of the world because somebody is going to replace them and is going to have to interface with the current leadership. If the current leadership isn't doing a job or the job in the manner with which the majority of Americans want it to be done, then that current leadership is going to get refreshed. And then again, the sect-deaf is going to be refreshed along with all the other major appointments. So I personally think that our government and the government and the government, the way that it was created is an amazing thing because it allows for the checks and balance and the swinging of power and the voting in and the voting out and people can serve and depart

when they feel like they can no longer be of service. That to me doesn't scare me. But as far as my thoughts on Matt is leaving, I don't know. I just don't know that much about it. So I guess what I'll do is wait and see. All right, one more question. I lied twice on this podcast. Adam Gregory from Twitter at AC Gregory 94. Still doing Jiu-Jitsu. If so, how is it going? So let's end with Jiu-Jitsu, even though I talked about it a little bit.

You're damn right. I'm still doing Jiu-Jitsu. Whether or not I'm getting better at Jiu-Jitsu, that's the real question right there. I think the best description of it would be a foreign language, and I am in the alphabet stage of A, A, B, B, B, like I it's a lot it's there's so much to think about and then I think there's sometimes where you should be thinking about so little and I have a I struggle to

balance between the two but I love it like I mentioned earlier I go to a gym up here in Calespell called Straight Blast Gym they are a member or not how about that they're an affiliate of a member of Straight Blast Gym International which is a killer organization. I've actually commented many times to the buddy of mine who, in all honesty, drug me in there to get started. How fortunate we are in a valley that has just over 20,000 people, that there's three of these SBG gems within a 20-minute drive. So it's unbelievable, the resource that is here. But my overall thoughts on jujitsu, I'm definitely still doing it. I'm definitely going to continue to still do it. It to me seems, uh,

I don't want to say death by a thousand paper cuts, even though that's kind of what it feels like when you're rolling, because things get incrementally and progressively worse. So how is it going? To answer your question, how it's going. It's going good, because I'm still going, and I think that's all that matters. Regardless if people would say I'm doing well or people would say that I suck, it doesn't matter. It's not going to change the fact that I'm still going to go, because my journey through Jiu-Jitsu is going to be different than anybody else's journey. but if you're going to go and do something that's challenging for you that you suck at and you want to get better at,

I'm going to root for you regardless of who you are. So, yep, still doing it. It's going. It's going. That's the answer. Neither good nor bad. It is just G-O-I-N-G going. And that's it for today.

Next week is going to be an interview with an awesome dude who has an awesome company and an awesome story. So until then, that's it. See you. Thanks, everybody, for a support and podcast. I really appreciate everybody who has reached out to me via email or the contact buttons on the website. If you got this far in the episode, you obviously listened to me talking about redoing the website, which is something I'm going to have done within about a month. And in doing so, I'm also going to just kind of update and refresh some of the t-shirts.

I don't know what you call? Merchandise, I guess. I don't know. Swag. And actually, I'm going to do much along the lines of my professional goals, efficiency. I want to keep it simple. I just want some simple t-shirts that just say cleared hot on them. I'll keep the Be the Example T-shirts in case that statement resonates with people.

It's something I tell my kids every single day when I drop them off at school. And probably just like a lightweight zip hoodie sweatshirt is what I'm working on as well. And that's about it. Stickers or all the other stuff that I have in there. But I'm hoping to improve the experience for the people who are taking the time, which I value to start. support and listen to the podcast. So I'll update you guys when and gals when that's actually done.

I'd say within 30 days. What else? Free Range American is still kicking ass. Do you want to support a brand that's about motivating people to get off their ass and go do awesome shit? That is certainly a brand for you. Free Range American.us. And lastly, if you have not written a review on iTunes, I mean, I don't even know who you are anymore. Go on there and click one star and say, hey, you're, you're, you.

You suck. And I'll be like, okay, cool. Like voice your opinion, good, bad, ugly, indifferent. I mean, I'm not going to take anything personal. I'll make changes as I can. If there's something that I can prove, I will improve it. And if it's out of my control, like the sound of my voice, then you're kind of screwed. But that is it.

Thank you for the support. I'll write a review. If you didn't write a review or you did, tell somebody about it. And that's about all I got. See you guys next week.