Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 84 - Listener Q and A

Episode Date: June 4, 2019

Advice for future military officers (or officers of any kind I suppose), Tips for giving kick-ass briefs/presentations, Balancing the dichotomy of being patriotic and accepting of the shortcomings of our nation, Acts that establish an individual as evil, and a brief update on my BJJ journey.  Enjoy

episode 84, a day late due to technical difficulties. And I'm not even going to get into it. We're just going to dive right in. So on the business side of the house first, this episode is again brought to you by Duke Cannon. And I say this, I think every single time, one of my favorite brands couldn't be happier that they are a sponsor of the podcast. I was buying their stuff before they reached out to me.

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You need to go to Duke Cannon, normal spelling on both. D-U-K-E-C-A-N-N-O-N-O-N dot com. And if you do that and use the promo code cleared hot, and the way I'm looking at it is one word, all-capital letters. You're going to get 15% off your first order. And if you do an order over $35, you will get free shipping. Duke-canon.com, promo code. cleared hot. They have a variety of stuff, but I can't recommend the big-ass brick of soap enough

because it's big. It's like a brick and it'll last you forever. In two months from when you buy it, it'll be the size of a normal bar of soap. So how can you beat that? And that's it on the sponsorship side of the house. Episode 74 is again a Q&A and I received over 100 questions. I obviously cannot answer all those. I do my best to weed through them and not repeat. from other Q&As, so I think I got five. One, two, three, four. Yep, I have five questions. Hopefully, they are helpful in cover a variety of topics.

Let's get into it. To the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Can't be clear not. First question for today. Do I have any tips for giving a kick-ass brief? And to that, I'm going to add presentation. Brief or presentation?

Yes. Yes, I absolutely do. I think I spend probably somewhere between a third to a half of my year traveling around the world doing some variation of public speaking. And what I will say is that I, in a million years growing up or years ago, never thought that that would be the case. It was, again, another example of me taking the advice of somebody who was farther down the road than I was, that I looked up to. and it seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed to play into something that I enjoyed doing. So I pursued it and it built.

But having said that, the first time that I got up and actually did public speaking of any kind, it wasn't great. And I've actually seen studies that say fear of public speaking outweighs or exceeds the fear of death. Now, I'll be the first to admit the struggle is real, but I think maybe we could keep that in perspective just a time. So worst case scenario, if you have to give a brief or a presentation, the worst thing that's going to happen is you might get embarrassed or you might lose your job, both of which are completely recoverable.

On the other side of that coin, death, you know, if the fear of speaking outweighs the fear of death. Death, not so much when it comes to recoverable. So let's just keep it in perspective. It's going to be okay if you get up and you fumble a brief. At worst, you're going to have, you know, some consequences in your life. but at best you could learn from it and improve. My first intro into public speaking was through the military

when I went back as a Buds instructor and I was forced to brief the students. And then from there I got introduced to the CrossFit world and began speaking at the level one seminars on the weekends, which built into the public speaking and interfacing with brands all over the world. That trajectory definitely helped me. And one of the things that I'll talk about is practice, because when it comes to giving a kick-ass brief or a kick-ass presentation,

the practice is going to help. So we'll dive right in. I have a couple of bullet points. For anybody out there who has to brief or do presentations. Number one, and I'm going to number of these, but they don't have to be in any particular order. Know your material. It's challenging to get up in front of a group of strangers or even sometimes a group of your peers. Don't make it harder or worse for yourself.

Take the time, and this goes right back to the process, which might be hours or days or whatever you feel that you may need to truly master the material that you are going to be presenting on. There's nothing more unsettling than standing up in front of an audience and internally questioning whether or not you have a true understanding of the material you are about to present. So practice. But I believe you can also overdo it. You don't want to stand up there and be a robot. I think that also has very negative effects. So you have to find the balance between the two. You have to have a comfort level, but you shouldn't be this monotonous, monotone robot. It's really hard for people to follow along

when that's how you present yourself. So know your material. Number two, be yourself. It is painfully obvious when somebody is playing a part as opposed to just being themselves. If you are a confident person, be a confident person, but look out for being or portraying yourself as being cocky. And when it comes to personalities and being yourself, also understand some people are naturally more comical or funny or use humor in the way that they speak more than others. And there's a time and a place for that. And I have found very often that that can help break the ice in many situations. But you have to know your audience and you have to know yourself. So if you're not naturally somebody who will interject humor to maybe diffuse the anxiety or nervousness of a situation, I would not recommend that,

you try to do that in front of a mixed audience where you're doing a presentation. It's going to come off as very awkward. So know your audience. Know the time and place, but also have a good understanding of yourself. Manage your information flow. This one, to me, I believe, is huge. I don't want to say modern day. That sounds weird for whatever reason.

PowerPoint presentations or visual presentations have massive pros, and I also think massive cons. One of the biggest cons to the visual medium when it comes to presenting is slide overload. And I have seen this happen. I have been the recipient of a presentation or multiple times where this has happened. And I've also made the mistake

of just completely overloading people up front with slides as well. What happens is if you put up too much information, what you will see, and I have seen this standing in front of an audience trying to present, instead of listening to what I am saying, what the audience is doing is they're reading through the bullet points on the slide.

And you lose control with the pace of what's happening. You're probably speaking to bullet point number one or two, and they're on bullet point four or five. They're not listening to what you're saying. They're reading what you have presented to them. So if you use bullet points, consider a very simple animation, like an appear where it just pops onto the screen.

Definitely avoid fancy and, flashy animations. I've had to sit through some of the most painful briefs where words and animations are flying in from both sides and they're cartwheeling in and spinning or making a sound effect. And I just, I can't recommend against that enough. Keep it very simple, but manage the amount of information that you are feeding to people. And perhaps that's a good way to think about it. You are feeding people information. They need to come to you for the information, not an inanimate object that is next to you, which will draw their attention away from what you're saying. So what has worked well for me in these PowerPoint and visual presentations are pictures.

They anchor my talking points, and the pictures themselves provide me a mental reminder of what I actually want to talk about. And I only use a few pictures, and I always, not always. I'm a lot of fan of using terms always or never. I generally use the same ones. and it took me a while to find the right pictures because the ones that I use are very rich, both in breadth and depth of information and ability to speak to.

So instead of loading up bullet point after bullet point after bullet point, I will put up one picture and use that picture to anchor my talking points. It's a mental roadmap for me, and it makes me much more comfortable because once I see that picture, I get to describe the picture, and then I get to dive into the information that I am trying to power, along that ties directly that picture. And what I'll often do is have a picture covering the majority of the screen, and then I will put up one or two bullet points as I speak to them

to tie the two together. So the bullet point and the picture work together to solidify your point. All right. Where are we at? That was know your material. Be yourself. Manage your information flow. Pay attention to your audience. Man, I have messed this one. up. Speaking is very difficult, especially directly after lunch. You want to talk about the worst time to go up in front of an audience. It's after a carb-loaded, caffeine-free lunch where people are just doing touch-and-goes at their table, and you can see, you can just see that they're struggling not to pay attention, just to stay awake. So you have to pay attention to your audience. There's some things that you can do if that does happen. One, try to look at and engage everyone.

If you see people drifting, which you will, regardless of the time of the day or the situation, change something about your pace or just change something about your presentation. It could be your pace. It could be your tone of voice. One thing I'll like to do is ask a question. And also consider that if you've been speaking for a while and you're going to be up there or scheduled to be up there for a significant period of time, there's nothing wrong with taking a break. If you see your audience drifting, do something to bring them back or take a break and regroup.

If you're up there and your tone of voice is incredibly monotone, you're basically feeding ambient to the crowd. If you're up there looking down only your material and you're not engaging the audience or looking at the audience, that is one of the fastest ways that you are going to lose them. So short and simple is usually best when it comes to descriptions, when it comes to pictures, all of the stuff I've actually talked about. And use the level of detail that you need, but avoid complexity and overload. If you start droning on, again, you're going to go right back to that pace, your tone of voice, and people will start drifting. And then the last thing I'll say when it comes to a presentation delivery is that be aware that everybody feels the same way before they get up and speak.

I've been speaking now publicly for years. I still get nervous before I go up. But right before I go up, I take a deep breath and I remind myself that I'm confident in the material and in my presentation of, the material. And also, I remind myself that people will likely judge me far less harshly than I will judge myself. I've never had a perfect presentation. There's always words that I'll stumble on or I'll get lost in my thoughts for a minute and have to navigate my way back. And internally to me, it drives me nuts, but I'm the only one judging myself that harshly. So don't worry if you're nervous. Try, you try not to be. But do you? Do you? Do you? You try not to be. But do you? You

your best. Do your best to manage your nervousness. How? Well, follow the tips I gave you, and you'll be more prepared and naturally less nervous. Take that deep breath, go up there, and nail it. Question number two, I get this one all the time. An update on my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu journey. I don't know how to answer this other than to say it is ongoing. And to me, right now, and maybe for the rest of my life, Brazilian jiu-jitsu feels like a foreign language. It was slash is sometimes full overload initially. I understood nothing.

It was much like when I went to China for the first time and somebody came directly up to me and just unloaded on me in Mandarin Chinese, and I didn't have a clue what the hell that person was saying. I literally understood nothing, but I would imagine having, well, I haven't actually taken any language courses in Spanish in high school, which, full disclosure, I think I got a C-minus, so I didn't do very well.

But I think it starts off with just being able to recognize some sounds. And then from there, you can isolate some letters and learn the alphabet. And then you can pair letters into small words, which is still going to be gibberish, because you can't write in a complete sentence. And then later, you can recognize and then craft your own sentences. And then I think the journey towards fluency is, never ending. So where am I on that path? For those of you who are asking on an update on my journey, I have absolutely no clue. That would be a question for the coaches that are watching me as opposed to

me trying to answer about where I, I guess, where I feel like in my own head. If I was forced to answer, I would probably say, I would estimate I'm somewhere in the isolating letters and still learning the alphabet phase. I'm 10, 10 and a half, almost. almost 11 months in, currently a three-stripe white belt, and I have success some days, and I get smashed on others. And I think that's just the way it goes. And somebody asked me how often I train, and the answer to that is as often as possible. When I'm not traveling, that means every day. And the training usually looks like a one-hour class, followed by a one-hour open mat, Monday through Friday, if I can do it, and then two hours of open mat on Sunday.

somebody asked me if I've done any competitions of which I've done one it was a local put on internally by the gym I trade at SBG Montana and outside of that I have not been able to mostly due to scheduling conflicts I would like to do more and if my schedule allows me to I definitely will but that's it I take it one day one class and one roll at a time and I don't know I don't know if there's any other way to do it question number three I really like this question, which is why I picked it. How do you cope with the dichotomy of remaining patriotic and seeing some of the really incredible blunders and outright wrong things that you have seen our government do?

Like I said, I love this question. And my answer, or the analogy that I think I could use to best encapsulate my thoughts on this is parents. I look at my kids. I obviously, I love my children, unconditionally for who they are now and who they want to be and what they will become in the future. And at the same time, and I think any parent would agree with this, they do some horrible and horrendous things to each other and often to other people. They have said and will say horrible things and bluntly. are not and will not be uncommon as they navigate their way through life. I truly believe that children sharpen their teeth on the bones of their parents, but it doesn't make us stop loving them, and we don't give up, and we don't give in. And we don't, because we see the best, or I can only speak for myself, I'm not going to use

the term we, I'll speak for myself. I don't give in because I see the best of who I've ever been in my kids. and when I say that, they have the ability to be so much better than I am. And I see their potential. And so I'm never going to give up when it comes to my children. Now, this question is obviously tied to our government, but I view our government as a collection of people. And therefore, perfection, just like in my kids, is not possible.

So ask yourself, how often do you make mistakes or how often do I make mistakes? And the second question is, is it reasonable to assume everyone else makes mistakes with the same frequency as you do. My answer to both those questions is yes, and I don't really expect a job title to drastically change people's behavior. I think there are more than enough examples out there of it doing the exact opposite, of it just maintaining their behavior or sometimes even make it worse. I would hope that it would change their behavior for the better,

but I am not naive enough to think that perfection is possible. Has our country made incredible blunders? Have we done things that are horrific? 100%. Absolutely. Without question, without doubt. And in my opinion, or the question I ask myself is, what should we do about it? And the answer that I fall on is the same thing that I do with my kids.

I address it. I ensure that they accept responsibility for it, or I accept responsibility for it, if it's something that I drove the behavior. and then I try to learn from it. And I know it's cliche to say that you can't change the past, but we can learn from it and hopefully not repeat it. And you can't do any of those things. You can't learn from and hope to not repeat if you choose to ignore the things that have happened in the past.

And like I said, I'll be the first to admit that our country is not perfect and we've done some horrendous things. So how do I remain patriotic? How do I manage that dichotomy? Well, I've seen the best that we have to always. offer, and I believe in our potential, just like my kids. And I look at my life, and I objectively try to look at myself. I think the only difference between me and most other people in this country is the optic

through which I view the world. And I spent many years in places that get very, very low ratings on TripAdvisor. And my time and experience in those environments, it has forever, and permanently altered the way that I see the world in specifically this country. Now, there are many ways to see the world. By that I mean travel. And I'm also not saying that the path that I took is superior to any other path, but it is different.

And when I come home, or every time that I've come home, especially from those type of trips, I am left with the feeling that the opportunities and freedoms that we have are not unique, but they're also not common. I'm very aware that there are many first world countries in the world, and I'm not making a comparison or a contrasting statement against those.

I've just spent enough time and places where freedom and opportunity do not exist to ever lose appreciation for what it is that we have. I'm proud of what we have, and the potential for what we could be as a nation, and also critically aware of our shortcomings. So I try not to obsess over either the shortcomings or the potential. We have to find a balance in between the two.

And I don't think it's safe or a good headspace to only focus on the negative or to only focus on the positive. I think you have to have a blend of the two. So I try not to obsess over either. I try to always look for a way to be better as a person or to improve the situation that I'm in. I try to set an example for my kids and anybody else that might happen to touch me in my life. I try to write things that are wrong when I see them, and I try to be gracious, as gracious as possible, and give people the space they need and the moments that they need it. But also to try to be there for them should they need it.

And I fail at every one of those things more often than I would care to admit, and so does our country. But that doesn't mean you get to give up. So maybe perhaps, I don't know if people would really describe me as an optimist. I think pessimist might come out more often. an optimist. I don't know. I would consider myself to be a realist, but that's how I balance the two. I accept the ugly, and I'm aiming for beautiful, for lack of a better word. Next question. Advice for future officers. Oh, yes, I have some advice for you. Your career, when you begin your career as an officer, is going to be a marathon. It is not a sprint, and please do not treat it like a

sprint, there is no reason and no driving force for you to have to change the world on your first day. So please do not go into wherever it is you're going to be working on your first day as an officer and try to exert control and power over the people that work for you. Just slide in there, maybe introduce yourself, right? They already know you're an officer. It's okay to not have all the answers. It's actually a good place to be because collective knowledge is always going to trump individual knowledge. So it gives you the opportunity to solicit for feedback. And when you're doing that, it gives you the opportunity to develop relationships and highly recommend future or junior officers find senior mentors on both the officer in enlisted side of the house. The career paths are different,

as are the experience, and therefore the knowledge. And having an understanding of both will help you navigate the bureaucracy of the military, because one thing you're going to find, rapidly if you're new to the military and you're new to being an officer. The military at its core is a bureaucratic organization. Senior enlisted leaders and senior officers have more time in the saddle. So pull up next to them, ask them questions. With that, don't be afraid of your new position. It's okay to step in there and own it. If you're going to do that, don't be overbearing and also understand that standards are often talked about in the military. And writing a standard on a wall or a motivational statement on the wall is one thing.

Living up to that standard or holding people accountable to it is another. So remember that what you allow in your presence is your standard. It doesn't matter what it says in your ethos or in your notebook or in your job description. Your standard as a leader, which is what you are as an officer, is what you tolerate in your presence. And if you can't hold that standard, I wouldn't expect your people to hold it either. So be very cautious of what you ask your people. Make sure that you also can hold the line. Last question for today.

It's a short and sweet podcast. I love it. In your mind, what acts distinguish an individual as evil rather than as just misguided or confused? What acts can people never redeem themselves from? Also an interesting question. And I had to think about this one for a bit. And I realized that I don't look at the distinction between good and evil very much in the context of individual actions. For me, it's much more rooted in the context of intent.

I was talking about mistakes two questions ago and how often I make them. Mistakes happen. And sometimes when you make a mistake, people are going to suffer and they might be even injured or killed by those mistakes. for myself personally, I can forgive, I hope, I think, just about anyone for just about anything they do if it was truly accidental. There should be consequences. There should not be a free pass. But I do believe that people should be provided a road to redemption. You should be gracious enough to allow people who truly make a mistake, an accidental mistake, to have a road to redemption. Now, if your intent, though, is to harm, or more specifically to prey on other people, specifically those that are not capable of defending themselves, if we arrive at that situation, I have absolutely zero tolerance for that. There's a huge difference in my mind, and that to me is the difference between, good and evil, I guess, for lack of a better term.

In my opinion, evil is rooted in the intent to damage or destroy. And there is no accident in the actions and those intentions. There's actually calculation. And I'm not smart enough to know whether or not someone can come back from that place. I would like to think that the human body and mind is capable of doing so, but I have serious doubts as to whether or not somebody can come from a place of true evil and arrive somewhere other than that. A choices really are tolerated or take action.

And that's actually a broad question in and of itself. In my opinion, in my life, there is no choice, though. You have to take action. And what does that mean? Well, it can mean a lot of things. And a lot of those things may make people uncomfortable. The actions that may need to be taken when you truly encounter evil, and that's okay. I'm willing to take those actions, so no one else has to.

And there are many people who are just like me and far better than me who are standing ready to do so as well. So if you encounter evil, however you may define it for yourself, all I can really say is don't tolerate it, step into the void and do something about it. And that is all I have for this week. Thanks again to Duke Cannon for supporting this episode of the podcast and the cleared hot podcast in general. Like I mentioned at the beginning, you can get 15%. off your first order and free shipping on orders over $35 at Duke Cannon.com. D-U-K-U-K-E-C-A-N-O-N-O-N.com. When you use the promo code, cleared hot, one word, all capital letters, go check out their stuff.

They're an awesome brand. They've been a great sponsor, and I really appreciate their support. What else? I don't think I have anything else. I think that is it for today. Short and sweet. Appreciate all the reviews that people have written on iTunes. good, bad, ugly, reach out with emails.

I'm doing the best I can to respond to as many as possible. Full disclosure, I'm completely upside down to my inbox right now. I'm definitely falling behind in my ability to respond, but I will continue to do the best that I can and when I have some opportunity and a little bit more, a little bit more horsepower between my ears, I will try to crank through as many as humanly possible. And that's it.

If you guys want to fly the flag, go to clearhoppodpodcast.com, hit the shop tab. There are a couple T-shirts. I actually need to reorder those as well. Like I said, failing miserably right now, but give me some time. I'll pull it back out. That's all I got for this week. Hope you enjoy the episode. See you all next week.