Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Purpose and Leadership

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Regularly scheduled Q and A for this Friday's episode: The first question comes from a 27-year-old who has spent years working hard but has yet to identify a personal mission. How do you discover your true purpose while avoiding the regret of unfulfilled potential? The second question addresses a sudden policy change in a law office, where a young attorney struggles with the implications of a new, more formal dress code. How do you navigate leadership challenges while staying true to your values? The Speed of War Comic Series: https://www.thespeedofwar.com/ Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/  

Well, dang, it's Friday. We're back. Pretty straightforward for today, some Q&A, different topics. Let's get into it. Full Auto Friday number, who knows what. Away we go. All right, dudes and dudeettes. Here we go. I got a really cool email this week. I'm looking at danger close now. All right, dudes and dudeettes. Here we go. I got a really cool email this last week. and I'm going to read it to you because in the days or times where I feel like I don't know what I'm doing with the podcast or who it's reaching or where it may go, stuff like this is pretty cool. So let's open with this. It's not a question. It's a request. Or as in the very first sentence, I was wondering if I could ask a favor. You see, my husband found your podcast a handful of years ago and he listens to it religiously. He showed it to me a few years back, and it's safe to say we are hooked. We often have to listen to the episodes separate from each other due to our work schedules,

but we still love listening and then talking about and debating things you have talked about with your guests. It's something that makes us laugh. It's something that has taught us to listen to each other differently. Our love story is a little different than most. We met on a mountain during the summer, working a dude ranch together. I told him if I could finish school, I was headed into my junior year. of undergrad at the time. I would follow him anywhere. We did three months of long distance, and then he moved to the Midwest so I could finish school. We did one summer, or one more summer,

I should say, at the ranch, and I finished school. We then moved to southeast Idaho, where we have built an incredible life together. We have an amazing son who makes us laugh and a humble but wonderful life. My guess my point here is he's an incredible man. He's been through an incredibly rough handful of years, both personally and with his family. I have watched him change drastically in the last four years really questioning what he wants, believes, and who he wants to be. I asked him one day what sparked the quest for him, and he said, it was Andy, listening to him and how he thinks things through and challenges not only those around him, but his own beliefs made me look at myself. Well, I agree with him, in that I think you were and are an incredible influence. I also think he needs that credit.

I couldn't agree with you more on that point. I am only capable of changing my own life. I guess it would be my hope that in real time talking through very idiotically, is that a word? Yeah, it's a word. That's how I feel about it. Sometimes how I feel about things in challenging my own beliefs that it could help people question their own beliefs and behaviors.

But let's be clear, I can't change either of those things. only the person responsible for the belief in behavior can. But that is an amazing thing, and it's one of the things that keeps me doing this podcast when I hear that sometimes those thoughts or words or expressions have that influence and that they can help people make that change in their life. He is the one that challenges himself to be the best man, father, and husband he can be. He is the one who shows up day in and out for the life that he wants. He is the one that holds my hand through it all and makes my day.

days better. He is the one our son looks up to and adores. I guess I just wanted to say things. I have an embarrassing amount of quotes written down of things that you have said that have sparked me to laugh or sit and ponder. Your relationship with your dad is so fun to listen to. Your hunting stories are something we enjoy and it is our bucket list to make it to your coffee shop one day. Well, let me tell you, if you ever come to the coffee shop, first coffee's on me. And the second one too. You guys can have two coffee. It's not a big deal. One last thing. Our 10-year-winning anniversary is on August 2nd, 2024, what would be a full auto Friday, almost like it's today, August 2nd. I guess I was wondering if you would be able to read this email and do a shout out to one of your

fans who has been with your podcast almost from its inception and a person whom you have greatly influenced. He is one hell of a man and would hopefully not fall over in his chair while listening if you were to read this. And if there was to be any confusion, his call sign is Mountain Man. Questions. So many questions. I can think of a variety of ways to get a call sign that is Mountain Man that aren't awesome. But I'll leave that there. Anyway, Andy, thank you for your time, your service and the way I believe. And for the way I believe you help execute the First Amendment to its finest by listening and helping those around you. Be well and be safe. What a cool email. Beyond that, happy anniversary. Ten years, a decade is no small feat. Having been there myself

and heading that direction again with Leah, anybody who will sit there and tell you that a 10-year relationship is full of only sunrises and sunsets and beauty and It's only on the uptick. There's only great things. Those people are called liars. Ten years is a lot of time to share with one another. That is a lot of room and space to grow, to explore, to try to figure out who you want to be. And at the same time, with somebody else who is on that same journey as well. So happy anniversary. That's an amazing thing. I hope you have 10 more amazing years. You said southeast Idaho. I'm going to have to look up Idaho after this. I should have done it before. Can't be that far from the coffee shop.

get your ass up here at some point in time, and we'll figure out something cool to do for your anniversary, just the three of us, four, if you want to bring your son, in the coffee shop, and it'll be awesome. Thank you for your email. Thank you guys for your support and for listening to the podcast. And like I said, I'm glad that it has the ability to have the impact that it can for some people,

whether or not they action that is totally up to them. Okay, so let's get into some questions because that's probably what people are here for. Question number one, I've listened to your podcast for the last several years, and I have always appreciated the way that you think. You communicate logically without losing sight of what's important and aren't afraid to call bullshit when necessary. I've had this question for a while, but wasn't sure if I should or could ask, or even who the right recipient of such a question might be. I am 27 years old this Friday. Man, I bet you this is another one that falls on the day that this comes. out. So that is fortuitous and actually not intentional, specifically for this email. I've always worked

hard, and I'm not afraid of discomfort in the pursuit of my goals. Yet I've never had a dream in air quotes that you put in the writing. I've never really known what the mission, I've never really known that mission that is mine that I can pursue wholeheartedly with every ounce of energy that I possess. Yet I don't want to simply labor my entire life fulfilling other men's dreams. If I'm going to work this hard, why not work to make my own dream a reality? One thing I've always respected about your former community is the sense of unified purpose. Each of you had slash have in the pursuit of your dream. Each man has to seriously be committed in order to make it through whatever selection pipeline is being pursued.

Whether that be Buds, SFAS, which is Greenberry Special Forces assessment and selection, I believe, etc. The common bond forged in that shared commitment not only to the mission, but to the men on your right and left, That is a powerful thing, one that in many ways I envy. My question is, how do I identify my dream? Not a simple question and probably not a fair one. However, I know you have kids that are college-aged in finishing off high school, and I'm curious how you'd encourage them in identifying their own path. One of my greatest fears is not fulfilling my own potential. I don't want to look back in 50 years with regret, knowing I didn't make the most of the opportunities in front of me. I'm well aware of how quickly time flies and don't waste what I have been given. Every day is a blessing.

Any thoughts or insights you might have would be welcome. Damn. Okay, that's actually shit. This is a deep question and a point of clarification here about myself because I resonate very deeply with this email because at the age of 46, so just under two decades ahead of you, and I turned 47 this year, so I'll just call it two decades. I also don't know what my dream is, and I think that's okay. There's a lot of talk about people, you know, find your mission, find your dream, pursue it with everything that you have. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

But I don't think you or I are unique in the fact that we don't necessarily know what that thing is, and I do believe that is okay. So I'm going to start with my kids because you reference that in the email. One of the least favorite questions that I hear people ask children often is, what do you want to be when you grow up? A lot of that, especially for people who don't have kids, I think is actually a metric of them being uncomfortable talking to kids because they don't know how. If you don't have kids, I totally understand how it can be hard to have a connection with them

or have a conversation or communicate with them, especially as they're younger in life. And I don't think there's anything wrong with asking a young man or woman, what do you want to be when you grow up? But are we, is that a self-limiting ideology? Most of the time for a guy, you're going to get a firefighter cop or somebody in the military for young men. Young women, I don't really have the answer to that question. Maybe somebody can or people can reach out and let me know what their daughters have said. My point in this is, if they actually followed through with that, we would have a shit ton of firefighters and police officers and people in the military. And we don't. Why? Because as you grow up, the way that you feel about

things changes, right? Early on in life, spoiler alert, maybe don't play this next segment here. If you have young children that are in the car, I'll give you a second to put it, to turn it down a little bit, because I'm about to destroy a myth here. Yeah, earlier in life, I believed in Santa Claus, as most people did. Why is that? Because you're really, malleable, you're really impressionable, you believe everything that your parents say. You have no context on the world around you. Your brain is not fully formed. Why don't I believe in Santa Claus anymore? Because I know who Santa Claus was. And I kind of knew who it was, but I wanted to hold on to that belief for a little bit. The point in all of this is the way that you think evolved

throughout life. So I don't ask my kids, and this is getting back to answering your question. I do not ask my kids, what do you want to do when you grow up? Instead, I say, I say, say to them, what do you interested in? And whatever they answer with, I do my best to help them pursue that. Because I know, just anecdotally, a data point of one, I can only use my own life. The very first job that I knew I wanted to have was as an oceanographer growing up. Don't ask me why that was. This was before the age of like 11, probably because I liked the ocean. I didn't know what an oceanographer does. I still don't know what an oceanographer does. But I would tell people, that's what I wanted to do. then I heard about becoming a Navy SEAL.

And let me just tell you my opinion change on that one. And I would have told you until pretty recently within the last decade that that was my dream in life. Actually, I'm going to take that back. I'm going to rewind it to a decade and a half ago before I got to the military. It was my dream in life. It was my purpose in life. It was my mission in life. if that's all you have and you attach something to an occupation, you're fucked.

Because I don't care who you are or what you do. You are going to time out at some point in time. You can be the best person in the military. At 30 years in, when you're 48, if you joined when you're 18 or 40 years in, which I don't even know if possible you could do that. You are not going to be as useful to the organization as you want to be. It is going to end, and I believe the life expectancy in the U.S. is somewhere in the mid-70s. Are you going to live the rest of your life looking in the rearview mirror? Or are you going to be able to enjoy the time that you have left by looking through the windshield

and pointing your vehicle in a new direction that you want to go? I don't know of any dream or purpose or mission that lasts a lifetime, other than perhaps, I want to be the best version of myself. I want to make the world around me a slightly better place than the world that I came into. And yes, I get it. That's a grandiose statement. And I don't know. Maybe that'll be better on the inside of a fortune cookie wisdom. But you could follow those two endeavors for a lifetime. You can't follow an occupation for a lifetime. I mean, I guess maybe you you could if it was in the church, you know, if you wanted to go down a religious path. I only say that because some people I've seen who work at the church are super old, so maybe they don't time out at all or much later on. I don't know. Totally an aside.

My point is to get back to your email, it's okay to not have a dream yet or to not be able to identify a dream in the near future. I'm 46. I do not know what I want to do for the rest of my life. What do I enjoy most in life? Time with my family is one thing. And these are things that I've determined later in my life. Money is valuable to me only from the essence of buying me the ability to do what I want to with my time with the people that I want to be around.

Family, loved ones, close friends. Other than that, yeah, money can buy some cool shit and people say, hey, money doesn't buy happiness, but it can buy some really cool things and you can have great experiences with them. To me, though, time is the most important aspect of that. So I want to have the time to do what I want to do with my family. I deeply enjoy sitting down across this table and having conversations with people on topics that they find to be interesting. I'm fascinated by what makes other people tick. I know that I like to be physically active.

Of course, I like doing jiu-jitsu. I like hunting. I like being outside. I like snowboarding. Nelson's trying to get me to start snowmobiling. I keep trying to explain to him that I need another hobby like I need another hole in my head, but it's just not, it's just like bouncing off of him like it's teflot. I am at a point, and you mentioned this in your email. One of my greatest fears is not fulfilling my own potential, right? And I don't want to waste what I've been given. I don't want to look back in 50 years with regret. No, I get in to make the most of the opportunities in front of me. That is such a powerful statement right there.

And my advice to you is this. Start saying yes to things that you're unsure of where they may lead you. I have redefined myself in my life so many times post-military because the military was the dream that I had. And I got towards the tail end of it and had a crashing realization. What the fuck am I going to do with the rest? of my life, the time that I have left. Who am I? What do I want to do? Now, paired with that exit from the military about a year later, I mean, I made this decision and I quit a job without having anything else in the back burner and went from making six figures to zero dollars overnight.

I take that back. I was getting a very small military pension at the time is about two grand. I economically slammed myself into a corner. And it put me in a place where I started saying yes to every opportunity to put itself in front of me. And I didn't know where they were going to lead. And that made me extremely uncomfortable when I started doing that. And I would not be sitting here today talking into this camera and microphone had I not done those things. I would have never become a professional skydiver and base jumper.

I would have never become introduced into the world of public speaking. I would have never met Joe Rogan and developed a friendship with him that led to him recommending me starting a podcast, which is what led me many years later to be sitting right here in front of you all right now, recording this particular. particular podcast answering this question that you sent in. I taught military members how to skydive. I did technical advising work on a television show. I did stunt work on a television show. I just took every single opportunity that presented itself to me as long as it was interesting and also as long as it paid. I wasn't doing a lot of volunteer work at the time when I was trying

to figure out how I was going to pay my mortgage. Purpose tied to occupation, I think is dangerous. purpose tied to yourself as an individual and who you want to be, I think is the route forward, because that transcends the occupation you may have. If you want to be the best version of yourself possible, you can do that regardless of the uniform that you may wear, the work clothes, whatever pin, shield, badge, whatever you got, whatever you're going to put on, that desire to be the best version of yourself transcends all that. And that's an amazing thing, because it'll help you in the beginning and middle, of course, in there, but end and post career, whatever it may be. And I think that's a beautiful thing.

We put so much pressure on young people to define what the trajectory of their life is going to look like. And I think it's a mistake. Do I wish I had started Jiu-Jitsu when I was 20 instead of 40? Yes, I absolutely do, because my body would feel a lot different. Am I thankful that I started it at 40? Yes. Did I want to start it at 40? No. I think I've told this story. Nelson would not shut up about Jiu-Jitsu. Every time I saw him, Dada-da-da-da-Jit-Jit-Jitsu. One day, we were at my house, downstairs in my basement. It was late at night. We had been having adult beverages. He was talking about chokes or this, that, or the other, and he said to me, if you start now, you will never tap me out.

And I said to him in that moment, when is the next class? And I will be there, because he knew the right words to use with me. And it has led to me meeting my wife. It has led to me traveling the world to bucket list locations with my wife, with my wife, teaching her teaching, not me. I'm not a coach by any stretch of the imagination, her teaching jiu-jitsu around the world, me being able to travel in those locations to be with her and to support her with a group of friends that I didn't have outside of that activity. Did I know that was going to happen? No. would I have these friends and opportunities had I, I'm sorry, would I have these friends and ability to go to these places had I not taken that opportunity? That's what I meant to say. No, I wouldn't have. You don't know what's on the other side of the door until you walk through it.

If you get into a room, so I took all these other opportunities as I was getting out of the military. I would take it to a certain degree, and then I would look at it from a perspective of reward. I would say yes to almost every opportunity, and I would go, I would give it a little bit of time, and either I wouldn't enjoy it or it wouldn't be economically sustaining enough for me to continue doing it to invest my time. So I would go back out the door and I would close it, but at least I knew what was on the other side of that, and that is what I recommend for yourself. If you don't want to have regret about not taking or making the most of your opportunities in front of them, start fucking saying yes. You don't know where it's going to lead you? Good.

open the door even faster and jump into that thing. You're uncertain of whether or not you're going to be able to make money doing it. That's okay. Dive forward until you can determine that and then turn around. You have so much runway in front of you. And that's a beautiful thing. You are at a time in your life where you can be riskier than I can be when it comes to taking opportunities because you have more time to recover than I do.

There are some things now in my life that I will continue to do. that provide economic stability. Outside of that, I can be risky and pursue them. You are at a point in your life where you can probably be even riskier with the things that provide economic stability for you. Take advantage of that. I agree with you.

I don't think there's anything worse than sitting on your deathbed full of regret. It's not the person that I'm going to be and that's not the person that I want anybody else to be. I am going to bang this race car against every other car on the track, hit every obstacle, hit every wall, below the tires and barely get this sucker across the finish line.

That's what I would rather be, as opposed to the pristine race car that stayed in second gear and the transmission is perfect and the paint is perfect. And you maybe gain five more years in life because, I don't know, maybe you had less stress or something like that. Not for me. That's my insight. That's the advice. I feel like I rambled there a little bit, but hopefully that was helpful for you.

That's the path that I would take. That's the path that I would recommend that you would take. All right. Two questions left here. I forget how long I've been at this. So this one's a little bit longer. I'm going to save that one for next Friday. Let's talk a little bit about, actually, you know what, screwed. I'm going to get into it. I hope all is well. I want to start this by saying I have the best boss I have ever had in my six odd years in the legal profession, both clerking and practicing. He's a genuine, generous man, and he's been an excellent mentor to me since I started working with him. He's relaxed and emphasizes us spending time with him. He's relaxed and emphasizes us spending time. family, not working ourselves into the ground, gives us a day off anytime we ask so long as we don't abuse it and the work is done and genuinely seems interested in our families. For example, he went to the length of inviting my wife and I to dinner to explain the work we do and wouldn't let me sign on until my wife, who is the real big cheese, signed off too. He's just a great person and boss overall, and I have no complaints. That said yesterday, we encountered what I consider

to be our first real disagreement. It wasn't loud or obnoxious. He never mistreats us. raises his voice or shows us any disrespect. I came back from lunch and was told that there was a new dress code that was instituted effective immediately. He changed the code from look nice, which could be nice jeans or khakis and a polo. Sometimes we all slacked off and wore sweatpants if we weren't meeting with clients or in court or prepping for a trial, or we were prepping for a trial, to shirt tie slacks every day regardless of what we're doing. Even if that meant sitting behind the computer banging out emails, which is the majority of what attorneys do, don't. let us fool you. Obviously, as an attorney, I'm expected to present well and have no problem

with looking professional. I have always dressed like a business professional if I had meetings with other attorneys, clients, potential clients, etc. As someone who has worked in bigger firms while clerking through law school and after graduation, I know that expectations of law offices and potential clients are different. He's been in business for himself from the start and doesn't have that perspective. Believe it or not, suits and ties are often regarded as somewhat pretentious, especially in the areas that I practice. There's been a shift in the all lawyers wear suits mentality, even pre-COVID, and as a somewhat elderly attorney, he's not updating with the times. I attempted to voice my concerns respectfully and made sure not to come off as pretentious or entitled. I was brushed

off and told I could wear my jeans and polo on Friday, even though the majority of the firms in my area utilize a dress code of polo shirts, slacks, nice jeans, and shoes, or something similar, essentially what we've always done. Both paralegals and myself are now in a spot where we are having to go buy a new wardrobe on a whim. Believe it or not, us young lawyers aren't rolling in the dough until six or seven years into practice, especially in the state that I work in. My real issue, I think, is that a suit can present issues when interviewing clients. Clients consults are effectively friendly interrogation. There's a reason detectives take off their coat and tie when trying to extract information from people. They want to appear personable and build rapport. It's a scientifically reinforced principle, and it's never failed me. I think our personable culture has been a strong asset to our firm, and I'm worried if we start elevating ourselves in a suit and tie every day, it may rub some of our clients the wrong way. I pulled a previous repeat client on the issue and was told that if I'd have been wearing a suit the first time we met, she'd have been uncomfortable and reluctant to share the full story with me, which obviously

creates issues down the line during the discovery process, especially if you find out the client has lied. I know from listening to your podcast that sudden policy changes usually don't work. To quote, Colonel David Hack Hackworth to some degree, strong employees, troopers to hack, will rebel if given spontaneous mandates with arbitrary instructions. You've led men in the toughest conditions, and I want to pick your brain on how you'd have handled such an order from your superiors, knowing I'll be in charge in a few years once my boss retires, I want to avoid unnecessary lapses in leadership. If I'm being an entitled jerk, please roast me for it.

I can handle it. Okay, you're not being an entitled jerk whatsoever. And let's talk about this in the scale of bad problems to nuclear issues. If, you know, actually I should think back. Let's write it from a scale of problems that are not that complex and not meaningful to nuclear. Okay, if nuclear is at a 10, this is at a one, right? This is a dress code that I think your concerns may be valid from that perspective of how you're interfacing with clients and the input that that could have.

Manageable, though, I think, to say the least. Because, well, I'll get to that in a second. The number one thing that I stressed when I was in a leadership position and we were going to have a change in policy, a change in doctrine, whatever it may be. If I had the time, right, and my old job, there are times where you don't have the opportunity to explain to people what's going on. You tell them what to do. There is no why and there is no how. You are directive or prescriptive in what you say to them. That is not this situation, right? If I were the boss in this situation in this law firm, accompanying the guidance would be a sit down with the employees at once explaining the why. Because that's what's missing here. You don't understand why. And my advice to you is this. You know, you attempted to avoid your concerns respectively. I would couch that differently.

I would go talk to your boss. He's a great boss. He seems like he's been a mentor to you. He's respectful. This person is going to sit down and talk with you. I would frame it through the lens of almost the question that you have asked me. You know, I'm looking at myself and my own role in this firm. I'm looking at my leadership trajectory and my leadership arc.

And there are probably going to be times when I'm in a leadership role where I'm going to have to make decisions like this. And I just want to understand why you chose to make this decision. Why is such a powerful question. But you have to phrase it properly in the right setting. Have a conversation with him and ask him why. Understand, develop an understanding through a conversation. Because again, nobody's shooting at you. Nobody's on fire.

This isn't an emergency. Ask him why he made that decision. If you can couch a conversation like that and hopefully have a two-way dialogue, I suspect once you understand his why, you are going to be able to craft a discussion that is going to let you modify this, I'm going to call it a uniform standard. Working around the office, if he wants to prevent a more uniform professional standard in the office, because that's what he wants to be consumer-facing, I can understand that. much like you said, though, there are ways that law enforcement tries to gain rapport.

They'll shed the jacket. Sometimes they'll either loosen the tie, take the tie off, whatever it may be, depending on what they're wearing. Do you have the opportunity to do that as well? And you're having this conversation with him and explaining, I don't think I would bring up that you canvassed a previous client. I would leave that out of it for now. He might have a negative reaction to that because that might sound to him like you are kind of piling up on him and you are gaining momentum and energy elsewhere to try to, you know, kind of bully him out of this position. Explain in that conversation your concerns but go with solutions that still work with the guidance, but give you a little bit of flexibility,

right? If you have rapport and you have trust, he's going to listen to you. So I would talk about things like, you know, your concerns about potentially the first client interaction that you have. If we're going to, I'm assuming that you don't do these client consultations in an open setting with a bunch of people around. So I would ask, is it okay because of the concern that I have when I go into do a client consultation, can I shed my jacket in an attempt to reduce the barriers to communication or a difference between the client and potential attorney? I don't think that there's really an argument against you being able to do that.

Not only does that help your client, it's going to help your firm, especially if you pick up that client. I'm not an expert on how the legal practice works, but I'm pretty sure you guys get paid by having people that you represent. So the more people that you have, it's probably reasonable to assume you'd make more money. And then therefore the firm would do better. See where I'm going with this?

It all starts with the why. Don't lead with your objections. Leave with the question. Where did this come from and why? If you can develop an understanding of that and smartly go back to him with the concerns that you may have, I think you're getting it a lot farther down the road. Sometimes people do emotional shit.

And sometimes they need a little bit of time to breathe before they can come to that realization on their own. He may not have an answer to your question for why. And if he doesn't, give him some space. Give him some breathing room and maybe say, hey, let's reconvene and come back. Don't try to press the issue. It's not worth it. If people's hair were on fire, if people were dying, I would say press the issue. On this one, you can work your way to victory or what you think is victory or your criteria

for a, I don't want to say a better working environment, more manageable working environment. You can do that through interaction and a much more Socratic method of asking questions. That would be my advice. It's a solvable problem. When you are in that leadership role, make sure your people understand

why you're making the decisions that you are. If you have the time to explain it to them, there will be times where you can't, but that doesn't mean you can't go back after an event has occurred and explain it to them. If you want them to be bought in, they have to understand. It is your job as the leader to make sure that they understand. And that's all I have for this Friday. Hope everybody has a great weekend.