Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Clint Bruce: On Becoming Tribal - Navy SEALs to Entrepreneurship

Episode Date: February 10, 2016

What allows one man to move from elite sport (NFL) to elite special forces (Navy SEALs) to serial entrepreneurship? Clint Bruce shares his approach toward life and performance, and his search for elite. In this episode: -Transitioning from SEAL team to business -The importance of performance from the neck up -Business as a delayed gratification -The difference between a profitable and provisional business -Clint's three businesses and what they represent -Knowing who he is -Building a team vs. a tribe -Becoming a tribal person -Coping with pain -Why being blessed is a by product of doing well for others -Defining risk -Meaning of gratitude_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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a phenomenal human being. And I'm excited to share what he's come to understand. And the goal of these conversations is to identify their psychological frameworks, folks that are on the, on the podcast. And that's basically how they see themselves and how they understand how the world works.

And to also identify the path that's led them to have robust and sturdy practices that allows them to continue to explore their own potential. And the essence is that all of us will walk away with a bit more of a deeper understanding of how we can train our mind and our craft in a similar fashion to some of the world's exceptional performers. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions.

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But in essence, he's got this combination of all the things that are meaningful to me. He's an elite athlete, and that's only important because it's a demonstration, an objective demonstration of understanding the gap and the nuances and the artistry and the commitment to be able to explore potential in a certain arena. He's also a Navy SEAL. And he was at one time a commander of SEALs Team 5. He's also deeply dedicated to giving, and he's built a community and a series of businesses that he allows former vets as well as former athletes to share inspiration, to share strategies to enhance leadership for corporations. All right, so in essence, he's the founder and the president of the company that I just was speaking about called Trident Response Group.

And in essence, that's a global intelligence and advisory group that's based out of Texas. And just quickly before we jump into it, the essence of why I'm paying attention to this is that he's a great example of how sport is simply an avenue to learn and an avenue to demonstrate the thinking and strategies behind excellence. And he used all of that in his Navy SEALs and special forces, as well as his business structures. And sport's just platform to for us to be able to tease out the patterns that precede and support and challenge people on their own pursuit. Okay.

Enjoy this conversation with Clint, follow his journey from the United States Naval Academy to the NFL, to Navy SEALs, as well as his current business endeavors. Okay, so let's jump right into it with Clint Bruce. Clint, thanks so much for coming on the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm excited to jump into this conversation. Well, it's my pleasure to be here. It's fun to see what you guys are up to and to be able to be a part of it. All right, cool.

So one of the things that I've come to understand from your experience is that you have a clear understanding of taking the lessons you've learned from being a special operator and the physicality required for that as well as the thinking and export that, to use a phrase that you're familiar with, to export that into business and helping others. So can you walk us through how you became attracted and why you wanted to become one of the elite fighting forces in the world? Yeah, sure. That's a great question. So I would tell you that there's this video that my church gentleman, it was pretty funny. It was just kind of this extemporaneous interview. And they said, why did you join the military? And I thought about being a patriot.

I also talked about how I watched a lot of Chuck Norris movies when I was growing up. Watching these Chuck Norris movies probably had a little more to do with it than anything else. I'd always been attracted to that individual who would distinguish themselves from everybody else beyond just rhetoric. Who is the person who could take rhetoric and turn it into repetitions that could then produce results? And so from a very early age, I was always interested in those people and those kind of terrains that allowed you to do that.

And obviously, as a young guy growing up in Texas where patriotism is a big deal, you learn about the Special Operations Committee and specifically the SEAL teams. And so that just kind of became early for me. Okay. And so what I can guarantee is going to happen in our conversation today is you're going to drop lots of pearls of wisdom, lots of nuggets, like moving from rhetoric to repetition to results. Was that idea early on in your life or was that, I know that phrase came

later, but was the idea of moving from ideas to ways to practice those ideas, was that an early concept for you or is that something that also came later with, with the phrase? What happened for me is it really, I watched that get lived out. And so for me, it really just became the words to describe what I, what I saw my father do. And, you know, I watched that get lived out. And so for me, it really just became the words to describe what I, what I saw my father do. And, and, you know, I watched my,

my, you know, growing up in kind of a farming and ranching family up in Arkansas. I watched my uncle, who's really just one of the hardest workers I've, I've ever seen. And he's produced the most significant results. And he also talks less than almost any other human I've ever met in my

entire life. So, so that's what she said. If he said something, then inevitably it was going to become a result. Okay, this was your uncle you said? Yeah, it was my uncle, my uncle JC. What did your uncle do? He's a rancher.

He's a farmer. And then, okay, in my mind, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by rancher. I grew up on a farm as well. Yeah, so we ran cattle, hay, hogs, all that other stuff in Arkansas when I was growing up. So he kind of ran the farming side of my family. And then really, my dad was in the business world. So to be able to watch my dad grow up kind of with the work ethic of a farmer. I mean, you know, farmers talk a little, do a lot

and produce as much as they can. And so those are the words that I just found to describe what I watched these most impressive people in my life consistently do. Say something, relentlessly pursue that thing until it produced the result that they said at the very beginning or beyond. And so for me, it was just always, I've always tried to find ways to really quickly distill these fairly complex and audacious things into these things that I could remember when things got really hard. Okay. And then I'm assuming that your dad and your uncle were brothers?

That's a fun relationship. So my uncle is my dad's brother-in-law and my uncle is married to my father's older sister, who's about 12 years older than my dad. And so a lot of my memories are hearing about how hard my uncle was on my father. So, so to be able to see those,

so, uh, you know, it would, calling Hayes and would be probably pretty gentle. Uh, you imagine what you can get away with doing to your, your younger brother-in-law on a farm that

you own when his older sister's at the house. So it was funny to watch my father get raised by my uncle in a lot of ways. Because my dad's dad died when he was young. And so my uncle was very much kind of a father figure for my own father. And then to just kind of see how these things, you know, what works on the farm works in business and then see it work on the football field as well. So, you know, I was just constantly as a student of people who were really doing amazing things around me and I'm a marginally talented guy.

So I was always looking for that performance advantage, that angle, because I've always been aware at some point in time, talent doesn't matter. It matters up to a point, but all things being equal, what's the difference between two talented men? For me, it's always that performance advantage, that intellectual angle that there's one playing chess, there's one playing checkers, and the guy playing chess is always going to win. I learned to think like that and then talk like that and then encourage those around me with those things that encourage me. That's so good.

One guy playing chess and one guy playing checkers. And the guy playing chess is going to come out on top because he's using different parts of his brain and he's thinking differently, right? It's multidimensional, if you will. Yeah, I'd say one of the things I've learned the most from it, I've become fascinated. You know, one of my really close friends is a he's a really decorated climber and one of the things i was watching him i was just kind of asking him how he did these things i love climbing physically i'm not built like a climber but i enjoy it just because it's hard it's challenging one thing i love about climbing is if your brain is where your hand is you're about to fall because your brain has

got to be three or four or five moves where your hand is. So that ability to distance what you're physically doing with what you're physically about to have to do to be able to kind of run those two parallel streams of consciousness was fascinating for me. And climbing for me was just something you watch these guys do really well.

It's literally like they're running a big screen and a little screen and both of them are consuming information and making decisions on it. And that's only the product of really knowing your craft and understanding what you do. And that's one of the, it's very much a Zen tradition as well as modern science. We'll back up that idea. And another way of thinking about it is that the mind that stops loses. And so, you know, an unfettered mind, a mind that stays in motion, that stays connected to now, is by definition always moving.

Because now it's moving. And so that's one of the really rich trainings that we can challenge people to do, athletes, at least I do, is to challenge them to stay connected to one thing at a time, as as like a breath or simple as the basics of a movement and when yeah and you're talking about the same exact thing yeah and it's one of these things like for high ultra high performance at some point in time is very simple it would be but recognizing the simplicity of it is very hard so you had to go through all these different ways to figure out you know that these have been true since the original Olympics where the groups were just trying to figure out who could run

faster if they didn't have to kill each other. It's interesting what you just said a moment ago, the fallacy of multitasking. The brain is not wired to multitask. You literally can't do more than one thing at one time the way the brain is wired. Recent imaging has shown us this. The guy

who can channel switch the fastest, if I can look at this and process this, look at, so if I can look at this and process this, look at this and process this, look at this and process this, your ability to microprocess and micro-decide on all these performance terrains that your endeavor requires, that's the guy who's always going to... And so we hear this thing like the game slows down. Well, no, it doesn't. The game doesn't slow down.

It feels slower to you because you can process so much information so fast. Bruce Lee was fantastic at this. One, you could argue that he had peaked his physical response times. I believe the final frontier of human performance is from the neck up. You look at some of the athletes in the league today, some of the athletes in other sports, the humanity is very rare to see in the specimens that are striding the earth right now. The final frontier of human performance is from the neck up. And the guy that can figure that out, or the female athlete that can figure that out,

has all the advantages. Because at some point in time, you're going to compete with someone who is as or more gifted than you physically. So you're either just going to be willing to lose that, or you're going to believe what the achieving average, like me, has always known, meaning there's going to be some mental performance advantage and my job is to find it what do you yeah i mean there's there's not one thing that i'm going to disagree or even be curious about what you just said because we're going to both nod our heads that sure you know talent the development of talent there's a there's

a process to do that which we know that find a great environment, find great teachers, and sometimes that's nature, sometimes that's others. And then work diligently and deliberately in a nauseating way to figure out the nuances, the small pictures, if you will. Okay, so if we're going to nod our head to that, how do you think that the lessons that you've learned from special operators, football, the farm, and translate into business? So what I would tell you is business is an interesting animal. In Camden, I found business to be maybe the hardest thing I've ever had to do because I've never done anything where you have to delay gratification for so long. So in football, at the end of 60 minutes on Sunday,

you know if you worked hard enough, you know if you did all these other things. In business, I'm just now beginning to see the kind of fruits of good decisions that we made 10 years ago. And so to really, you know, all the performance elements are still there, but, you know, the requirement of patience and endurance and all these other things is more so in business and so for me i had to go this full circle to realize that there's no magic to being successful in business the way to be successful in business is the same way to be successful in football is the same way to be successful on the farm

and the same way to be successful at home that this you know it just it just still works and sometimes it takes us a long time to realize that it's all kind of still the same way to be successful at home, it just still works. And sometimes it takes us a long time to realize that it's all kind of still the same. And that's encouraging once you figure it out. Then you've got to deal with shame because you're like, no, I should have known that sooner. Okay, yeah. Okay, so let's dive into the transitions, the space between, if you will.

So you've transitioned from the farm to school to – I think you played football in high school, right? I did, yeah. So I played football in Texas, big-time 5A football here, and then played football at the Naval Academy, then played a little bit in the NFL, and then went through SEAL training, and then came back out into the NFL, and then left and went back into the SEALs for a long time, and then started my company 10 years ago, you know just relentlessly pursuing elite uh since uh since eighth grade and whatever and whatever available avenue okay so let's pick one of those transitions let's pick the transition from um oh gosh let's go let's just do the easy one from Naval Academy. Sure.

Yeah, let's do that transition, and let's see if we can deconstruct or dissect how you did successfully translate the lessons you learned from all the previous experiences into the new experience that you have not yet done. Yeah, I would say that the most significant transition would be the one from when I left the SEAL teams and went into business. Because when you look at the Naval Academy, you look at football, you look at the SEAL teams, there's an element of physicality to those things. So that would have made you an excellent operator. Probably it was only a degree or so different that would make you an excellent football player. And then just being in the military, this physicality, the most stark and brutal transition was when I stepped away from the operational world and the athletic world into the purely business world because it was the first time in my life my physicality really didn't have anything to do with my success other than maintain some type of brand. And so, you know, when I became a business man, my bench press never mattered.

It couldn't have cared less. You know, all these things that I've cultivated and invested in, all of a sudden, they weren't part of the performance portfolio. And so it was really jarring. It was really unsettling. And it was really one of the first times where I had to go through a season of struggling with, I don't know how this is going to work. I don't know how to produce this result.

Because, like I said, it was the first time I'd ever pursued something that physicality wasn't a big part of it. And so when you went through that phase, which is like everything that I've learned in the past, or let's say 50% of what I learned in the past, is not directly useful. There's the glow from all that I've learned, but I'm not sure exactly how to apply a bench press into business.

But certainly the work ethic to become better at bench presses, that's the easy part. But when you came into that place and you said, man, I'm a blogger. Well, it's not as easy as you think. I mean, it's not as easy as you think because you quickly discount. You think there's some magic formula that's unique and new to this performance terrain so there's a season at least for me where i forgot that the fundamentals matter i thought there was some some magic formula that could all of a sudden produce

results faster than the hours and hours and hours in the weight room and the hours and hours and hours in the film and hours and hours of you film, and hours and hours of being a mentor. Yeah, all these fundamentals. And so what was interesting is because it was such a unique terrain for me, I, for some reason, completely abandoned all that I do to be true of becoming successful because I didn't know, and not willfully, but it was more ignorant, because I just didn't know if it still worked.

Being on time matters. Repetitions matter. All these other things. These truths that were just applied physically, if you just apply these truths intellectually and economically, they're going to work just as well. But there was a season where I didn't realize it. It looked like everybody else was getting rich quick, and I wasn't.

Okay, so that unknown. My observation has been in that unknown it there is it cripples people from moving forward because it's like man i don't know what what to do next i don't think i can do those things those look so different than what i've done in the past and or if they take a step at it and they're in it that the the fear and the anxiousness and the not being successful at something is so frustrating that that also slows the process down and creates hostility in the working environments as well as internally so what did you do when you didn't know and you were still moving trying to move forward like deconstruct that part of the transition for us. Because I think that there's so many of us that are in phases of transitions.

And if we can just highlight your unique insight through that transition, we might be able to have some insights that we can share as well. Yeah, so a couple of things. One, I'm very good at pain. I'm very good at pain I'm very good at suffering and for some reason what I found is I was what I I just kind of moment where I realized I was trying to do things I was trying to find the easiest way to do things and in there's this kind of moment where I realized hey Clint find the easiest way to do things it's never worked for you not the way, and what are you trying to make easier?

Are you trying to make practice easy? Because making practice easy is going to make Saturday very hard. Are you trying to make workouts easy? For me, when something gets hard enough or painful enough, all of a sudden I start thinking very clearly, and it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate for me that sometimes I have to let it get that painful to realize it's all still very true.

I don't know if you're that unique in it because procrastination is a way that some people completely fold as soon as it gets difficult because their central nervous system is wired for it's so peaked on a regular basis that as soon as you add more intensity it like spills over but at least that's like an easy model to work from but but there's many of us that like uh intensity and so that we create it through procrastination we create it through uh trying to do difficult things we create it by having electrically charged conversations, sometimes that are needless and sometimes that are important.

So what do you do as soon as it gets difficult? And then what do you do when it's not? So what I do when it's difficult is what I do is everything. I find the guy that's doing it best or this kind of guy that's doing it slow. I ask him how they're doing it best or this kind of spin of guys that are doing slight or what I have to do the best. I ask them how they're doing it. Hey, how are you doing that? Because none of us are trying to do things

exactly the same. So there's, you know, there's no competitive fear for them. They're like, well, I can't get my secrets. I'm not trying to build a custom home. I'll just watch you build a custom home better and faster than anybody else. And I'm interested in that process

to produce this result this quickly with that much, you know, retention. And so and so I always find this symphony of skills and I just I just ask them how they do it and then I kind of distill that into some kind of this um you know amalgam of what I particularly need uh the second thing I do is I always pay attention to what I'm making harder than it needs to be I have this subconscious ability because I know I can grind and I know I can uh do hard things I know I can grind and I know I can do hard things. I know I can just take more pain than a lot of people. But I also constantly let things get to a point where I have to grind and suffer.

Like there's some sense of pride in just being able to take more pain than other people. And there was a season in my life where that was that was probably fine um but but now i've become very aware of when i'm making it harder than it needs to be and why and stop it and figure out how to get back on track and produce these results yeah i'll give you a great example and it's almost embarrassing to admit this i have you know i have probably kept post-it note in business i mean i'm one of these guys that you, yellow Post-it notes all over the place. You know, I will buy this time, all this other stuff. And then about seven years in a row, six years in a row in my business, I looked around and I was looking at one of my offices and I was like, there's no Post-it notes up here.

And it was just like a lightning rod moment where I realized that I wasn't setting goals. I was dealing with, you know, the five-meter target in front of me. And my vision never got past the five-meter target because there was nothing pulling me towards the 30 and the 60 and the 90 days. And I need that kind of vacillation between five, 50, 20, because it stimulates something. And so I become this, like, 20, because it stimulates something. And so I become this great jab guy. Jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab. So every day was a jab, and it was like every once in a while, I'd go left jab or right jab, but my whole world was jabs

because I wasn't setting this goal of throwing a hook or an uppercut or a combo. And I started to pay attention to, I saw this picture of me in college and one of my roommates had taken a picture of me at the Naval Academy. And you just look around, you know, there's all these post notes. And I can remember, as soon as I saw that picture, I remembered exactly what this post note said. I remember as a freshman at the Naval Academy saying, we're going to go to a bowl game and win a bowl game.

And at that time in 1993, there was no reason to believe that we would go in a bowl game we just weren't that good then you know my senior year we were nine and three top 25 of the nation beat california aloha bowl and literally i wasn't surprised because i'd said four years ago that we were going to and you know 80 other guys believed it as much as I did. And so in business, I found myself not informing the reality that I wanted to create. And that's the simplest target. It'd be like going out to range and shooting. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits,

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Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY at felixgray.com for 20 off okay so um there's a difference between grinding and efficiency and it sounds like you're saying i know how to grind i know how to do difficult things i can deal with pain and suffering and part of the business world and part of maybe relationships is the efficiency of being uh doing the thing that you're doing really well and that's probably part of the path that we're both going to be searching for. And you can't have one, I think, I don't know if this is too trite,

but I don't think you can have one without the other. Not successfully. I can think you have one without the other, but to think that they can exist independent of the other produces a jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab,

jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, Okay, so now with that kind of thought, I love this idea of the jab, jab, jab, jab it down, does something happen? What is it about for you, particularly Clint, that when you write something down about the next thing that you want to build or create, why just that process, does it help you?

Well, for me, it's, it's almost as simple as, you know, as a linebacker, there's 11, I can tackle 11 people in a given play. In a given play, I can literally, there's 11 people I can tackle because they wear a different color helmets. But how do we win games? Well, tackling 10 people that don't have the ball doesn't help us win the game. I got to find that one guy with the ball.

And so for some reason, that engages a focus and a clarity in me. And I've always been that way. I've always been that, you know, what are you grinding for? What are you chasing after? I've always been a way. I've always been that, what are you grinding for? What are you chasing after? I've always been a very target-centric person. For me, putting up these notes and these things and pictures and all this other stuff, for me, it's just figuring out, hey, who's got the ball right now so I can chase that dude and hit him as hard as I can.

If that's a business opportunity, that's whatever. Money doesn't excite me. I'm not a very materialistic guy. I don't look at money as any kind of scoreboard that I envy. That worked to my... That was a negative for me because it took

me a while to realize that money is simply the currencies of what I do now. I have this great old ball coach, Dick Bumpus, legendary defensive coordinator for TCU, just retired. He told me once, he goes, Clint, pretend money's tackles.

I said, what do you mean? He goes, dollars are tackles because you wanted to make every tackle on the team because you knew that would help us win. He goes, in your world, the deal is just a tackle.

The more deals you can make, the more likely your team is going to win. I was like, oh. And so all of a sudden, because money doesn't fire me up. There's nothing about it that excites me. It's just paper. But what money can allow me to do, the tackles that I'm able to.

You know, when I started making money, not money, and just, you know, tackles, then all of a sudden it engaged this passion in me that business, frankly, doesn't. I don't really. It's just you're running a provisional business and a profitable business. A profitable business means you make money. A provisional business means you make money and you know exactly why. And you're able to purpose that profit towards something that's bigger than you.

And I've always wanted to be involved in provisional things, not just profitable things. You can be provisional if you're not profitable but being provisional excites me being profitable you know I know a lot of profitable people that are miserable where'd you learn where'd you learn this concept this idea that it had meaning for you I don't know that I don't know that I can pinpoint it as a place I've learned. I've always just been around people that are attracted to these intangibles. Like for me, the word, you know, integrity is as real as this building across the street from me. It's not this abstract intangible. It is a real quantifiable thing. You know, love is a real quantifiable thing.

Faith, loyalty, honor, these are quantifiable things. I mean, they're every bit as real as this wonderful Texas peanut brittle I got for Christmas. I mean, it's just because I can't touch it doesn't mean it's not real to me. I've always been blessed and had the urgency and necessity to personalize these unquantifiable things so much that they've become real to me. I love it. Okay, so talk us through the three businesses that you have right now and how those three connect to, one, your deepest passion. Because you said money doesn't excite you,

but the provisional process does of business. And then the segue into this for me is, I know you've got three businesses in it, what the provisional process does of business. And then the segue into this for me is like, I know you've got three businesses in it, but walk us through how they connect to what matters most to you. And at the end, I'll ask you like what matters most to you. Yeah. Well, let me, let me, let me flip it only in the sense that, so, so yeah, so I, I'm blessed to be part of three different companies. One is called TRG, which stands for Trident Response Group.

And TRG gives us the opportunity to work with the best leaders in America and help them feel like they're ready every day. As families and as businesses, we do, you know, TRG exists to answer four questions. One, how do I anticipate, plan for, and respond to my reasonable and perceivable risks all around the world as a business leader and as a family leader? Two, how do I equip my most important relationships? risks all around the world as a business leader and as a family leader. Two, how do I equip my most important relationships? How do I educate my most important relationships? And how do I entertain my most important relationships? And so those are the four things we do.

And we do them as good as anybody else out there. And why I love it so much is I'm always, from a professional perspective, I'm only trying to do two things. One, I want to work with the best leaders in America, and two, I want to create careers for veterans. So I want to work with the best leaders in America, and I want to create careers for veterans. So in TRG, we get to work with the best leaders in America and help them feel safe and ready for the most realistic risks

as they lead their world, right? In Hold Fast, which is a speaker's bureau, we get to work with the best leaders in America as they try to build and abide by these proven performance truths that we know work in these no-fail environments called war. You know, it's not academic. You know, the consequences of failure in the military and any of the sacrificial services are stark.

And then thirdly, Carry the Load is more of a nonprofit than a business. And Carry the Load is a foundation that we built to, one, protect leaders from forgetting that there are those that are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for us and to protect the families from thinking that America's ever forgotten the one that they love and miss a lot. And so for me, all three of those things are knitted together by really my big three. My big three are I got three little girls that I'm incredibly blessed with

and this amazing wife and all I want to be is the kind of guy I want my girls to marry. So every day, I got to be the kind of guy I want my girls to marry. I got to find,

I got to work with the best leaders in America and I got to create a career for veterans. So TRG and hold fast and carry the load are just the three ways that I do that it's like you're a quarterback you either you know pitch it run it or throw it uh you know those are the three ways you get the ball down field so my three ways to get the ball down field and I hate offensive analogies because I play

linebacker and I just I don't I don't understand the desire to play offense it doesn't make any sense to me uh that's kind of a joke my dad told me when I was young he said if you're not athletically talented enough to score touchdowns learn to hate those who can I'm like cool that looks like a linebacker so that's that's why I play linebackers so so TRG and hold fast and carry the load are just my ways to be the kind of guy I want my girls to marry someday, to work with the best leaders in America, and to create amazing careers for veterans as they come home. So that's every day.

Clint, when you talk about those three businesses, two for-profit, one not, and the mission behind them and the purpose related to it, what happens for you when you put words to what you're creating? As you're speaking, what happens to you when you when you put words to uh what you're what you're creating as you're speaking what happens to you it becomes real it becomes it becomes the post you know well if you i mean you can see me right now like and i was i was just kind of like the mysterious sky machine still kind of freaks me out a little bit but it's almost like when i'm describing those things i'm like crouching down in my linebacker position. It didn't just engage. That's why I was asking. It engages a certainty and an intensity and a clarity. Man, clarity is such an important deal.

You know, when I talk about this jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, another way to describe that is the tyranny of the urgent. And so if you're running a life of this tyranny of the urgent going, you know, fire, fire, fire, fire. If you're not a firefighter, but you're putting out fires every day, then you don't have a good plan or you have a good plan. You're not paying attention to it. And so for me, it's like I can still remember this before every mission, before every jump, before every snap. It's just the world goes quiet and everything gets real simple.

And I know exactly why I'm here and what I'm supposed to do and who I am. And as a veteran, one of the things we talk about, I'm really blessed to give this presentation called All the Way Home. And All the Way Home is this kind of, it's not just my journey. I think it's every veteran's journey. But there's a difference between being here and being home. Being here is geography. Being here is an X on a map. Being here is a street address. Being home is knowing why you're here. And when I go, hey, listen, I want to be the kind of guy I want my girls to marry someday. I want to work with the

best leaders in America. And I want to create amazing careers for veterans. And the way that I do that is with TRG and with Whole Fast and with Carry the Load. It's like all the noise is gone, and I know who I am, why I'm here, and what I'm supposed to do. And I'm throwing jabs and hooks and uppercuts. Maybe throw a kick in there every once in a while just because, you know, it's fun to feel froggy. But I just get this clarity that I think we all want and need in our lives and okay

so for you when i was watching you to have this conversation right now uh your physical your physicalness changed and i'm wondering where you felt it all over yeah yeah there's no like for me, I've always been kind of a – I don't know if I – correct me if I'm wrong here, but I've always been a very kinesthetically aware guy. So I just – I got knocked down a lot as a linebacker. But I got up real quick because I always knew how I was oriented. I'm like, oh, my butt's between my – my head's between my butt

and I've got to get up like this way. So I got knocked down so much I knew how to get up quickly and so so for me I tend to um shortening that brain body synchronization has always been a real big deal to me because otherwise you can't unleash them at the same time and if you ever just there's usually throwing a punch and throwing a punch at something and so that brain body connection is a really big deal. And so I'll start to feel everything get synchronized, everything slow down. There's a really cool movie.

It was a good movie. It was called For Love of the Game with Kevin Costner. And there's a point in time where he goes through the mechanism and everything just kind of shuts down. And it's just him. And he has to reset it like three times

towards the end of the game. I love that because that's life. If you don't know why you're there, you're not going to be able to handle the what's that are coming at you if you're trying to do a hard thing. And so for me, it's like kind of breathing oxygen again. And I have to remind myself to do it. Yeah, so you just did it by talking about it is one way that you connect to it and that's why i was asking like where it was and and that alignment that you have between the words that you're choosing the mission uh that you're on and then your experience of it in the present

moment that alignment's really powerful when somebody has that alignment and they're and they're truly connected to it it's they've become a powerful being. And what you'll hear me talk about a lot is from clarity to conviction. And the work is to become clear about what your life's mission is, what today's mission is, and then, which is the big picture, small picture. And once somebody has conviction, then they know what to fight for and they know better how to fight. And so can you talk about the difference between a team and a tribe? Yeah, I can. And I would tell you that word is a great word. T.E. Lawrence, who most people know as Lawrence of Arabia,

he said one time that an opinion can be argued with, but a conviction is the best shot. And if you want to know if you're dealing with someone whose opinion that they want to beat you or it's a conviction they want to beat you, it takes about two seconds to figure that out. Is it this guy's opinion that he wants to beat me or is it this guy's conviction that he wants to beat me? And you know that with urgency and precision and kind of all these other things. And from seeing that in groups, there's a difference between a team and a tribe. And teams are people that have loosely agreed to be together

for a particular common purpose, right? A tribe is someone that's completely aligned for those reasons. And so a team is a group that is, you know, we wear the same colors, we're on the same bus, we get paid by the same guy, we play the same people, right? A tribe is that plus this total willingness to kind of submit itself to the bigger why. You know, so having this common why and the conviction to see that why all the way through, that's what tribes do. And that's why we talk about tribes, and that's why tribe is a different word than just a team.

You know, teams are interesting things because they're brought together for a myriad of different reasons. Tribes are always only brought together for one reason. It's the collective survival and advancement of one particular cause. Very, very simple cause. One is kind of survival, and the other is this kind of transcendent idea that is easy to bend yourself to. And so when you're dealing with a team or tribe, you just, they know why they're there. And you can affiliate for a million different reasons, but if you affiliate for a common purpose and find ways to repeat that over and over again, man, you're going to have an amazing life.

And that is my singular gift, and it's a gift because it's a necessity because I know I'm not an extremely talented person, but I've always wanted to do mighty things. I've always known that I need a tribe. So I've always been very tribal. And where I found myself to be not part of a tribe, I asked myself, can I create a tribe out of this? We have the core components of a tribe. Or do I need to cut away? Because there's just no way to make this team a tribe.

You know, you have groups, you have teams, you have tribes. Groups, I have no real time for. You know, teams, I hang around with until I can figure out if we have the capacity

and potential to become a tribe or not. And is your family a tribe? Because it costs me too much. It costs me too much. It costs me too much to not be part of a tribe. Yeah.

I interrupted you what was your question no no i love that last thought um i was asking is your family a tribe without question yeah without question i mean the gift i can give my daughters is a tribal family yeah um that that is that is the standard i can set for them. That is the, you know, remember one of my big three is be the kind of guy I want my girls to marry. So do I want my girls to be in a relationship that's not tribal, that's just this general agreement that we're married because everyone else around us is? Or do I want my girls to kind of demand this tribal family that they grew up in of whoever

tries to win their heart. There's a movie, Secondhand Lions, and there's a scene where Hub McCann kind of describes who he is. And it's really one of the greatest scenes in all of cinema. It's Robert Duvall. And he goes into this wonderful

kind of explanation of who he is and what he's done and kind of how he defines himself. And he ends it and he goes, I've loved one woman with a passion that a flea like you would never understand. And so he defines himself. And he ends it and he goes, I love one woman with a passion that a flea like you would never understand. And so he defines himself with this reckless, quote unquote,

foolish total love for this, for this woman. And I just felt like my, my kids deserve that. So that's how I'm going to love their mom. And that's what I look for is someone that I can love that recklessly. You answered. Yeah, I would hope.

Given the description of a team. Go ahead. I know. I think we're on a funky delay. The reason I asked you that question is because not everybody's on a team. And lots of people are in groups. And when people are thinking about how can i and where can i create a tribe oftentimes the first and most important place to create a tribe is in the family unit and yeah so what that requires tell me if you

would agree with this what that would require is literally um sitting down and being very clear about what the purpose of this family unit is set out to do. And if it's to collect as much money as possible, I guess that can be a mission. But it seems as though... For what? Like, that's just making tackles. That's exactly it, right. I want to make 100, like, I would start at every goal, every season, I'm going to make 130 tackles this year. And the reason I wanted to make 130 tackles this year is because I figured if I made 130

tackles, then we had a good chance of doing well on defense, which is all I can influence. All I can influence is doing well on defense. And so when I'm on the field, you know, 76 snaps a game, if I want to make 130 tackles, I need to make 10 tackles a game. So I got a bat, you know, one of seven. That's very reasonable. But that was my metric. Otherwise, I'm not going to be surprised to make 10 tackles a game. So I got a back, you know, one of seven. That's very reasonable. But that was my metric. Otherwise, I'm not going to be surprised to make 10 tackles a game. That was my expectation.

You know, but to back it up a half-noth when it comes to being in tribes, you know, the foundational way to find yourself in a tribe is to be a tribal person. And a tribal person knows this. To do anything bigger than me,

I need something more than me. That is the foundational awareness that a tribe member has, is they are tribal. They need something more than them to do something bigger than them, and they know they want to do something bigger than them. So if you want to have a tribal family,

you've got to be a tribal person. And a tribal person knows that they have to bend themselves to something. You can't be your own wife Why can't it doesn't work. When I went through buds, I watched 250 guys, not be a big enough why to make it, you know, but when the, why, the 12 of us who saw the guy next to us go, Hey, that's my, I know why I'm here and I'm here for that guy.

And I'm here to do this. And, but if you become your own, why I, if I'm competing with you, I hope you are your own. Why? Cause I will decimate you. Um, cause you're just not willing to take enough pain,

uh, that you take for someone next to you. And so you gotta be, you gotta be a tribal person in order to have any kind of tribal ecosystem around you. Yeah. Yeah. And that's exactly the difference between somebody who will fight a fight tribal person in order to have any kind of tribal ecosystem around you, you know? Yeah. And that's exactly the difference between somebody who will fight a fight and somebody

who has conviction. And I think you use the idea behind when somebody has an opinion versus conviction. And, you know, one of the phrases that a special operator, a dear friend of mine shared with me, he said, Mike, when he says, one of the things that i've learned deeply is that when something matters you'll do whatever it takes oh yeah and it's that statement like so connecting to what matters most and then going doing whatever it takes yeah i mean because you know why you're there i mean knowing what matters most that's your why that's the why you're there and instead to to be weighed and measured and not found one team, that's a big why.

And so for me, whenever I'm not had a why, then, you know, I find myself not willing to unleash the best part to me on the problem. And, you know, the people around me and the problem deserve better than that. And so I'm going to I'm going to find a way to go do something else. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that.

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Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Okay. So is your relationship to the why, is it giving back? It sounds like it's giving to others, not giving back, but giving to others. And I'm wondering if you have a spiritual framework as well, because much of what you're talking about sounds like it would.

Well, I'm a Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ. He is who he is. He is he did what he said he did he did it for me and so if i believe that then i believe everything and what that is is flipping this two three to four you know do nothing out of selfish gain but in others but serve others thinking i'm more important than yourself i mean that's been ground into me and what i found is even if you if you're not a Christian, if you don't believe what I believe, that golden rule applies. If you're pursuing others and you are making sure they're okay,

you can call it karma, you can call it whatever you want to, but in my 41 years, I've just seen the givers win more than I've seen the takers win. And that doesn't mean the takers don't win. Takers win, but sometimes they win fleetingly. Football is four quarters.

And it's like boxing is 12 rounds. I'll give you rounds as long as I want to fight. And so we tend to look at others who are doing better than us. But it's impossible to kind of pierce the veil of what their true reality is because we don't know what it costs them to do better than us and so as i've grown as a businessman i've seen these guys because i'm a competitor and i you know i see guys that they're doing better than me i'm like you know and then i realized what it costs them to do better than me and i don't want that and so yeah my my my moral framework and and kind of kind of big why I've been informed by my faith. And, you know, most of the men and women I know who have kind of had these lives that they're really proud of and excited for are guided by a faith.

And then so how would you help people very concretely get connected to the mission or the tribal purpose for the family or to take that insight into their business adventures if they're an entrepreneur or they're leading a particular unit. If we just get down to the family thing, I think we can make it really crisp. Would there be a one, two, three, four, five different things that you would encourage people to do to get really clear and to become more tribal? Yeah, one of them is, you know, I can only really speak to the,

call it a husband or a son. You know, like as a husband, I want to be the kind of guy I want my girls to marry someday. I want to set the standard for what a husband says, does, thinks, and acts. And let me be honest, I fail at that consistently, but I always know where I'm going. So my girls are willing to endure this inefficiency

because daddy published his plan and he's pursuing his plan. He just had a bad moment. Right. What I would tell you is people tend to need less encouragement to be a great family person. Let me take us over to the professional side. I have this really fantastic conversation with a very successful guy and it's about the motivation in business. And I think we all need to understand the difference between provision and profit, right?

And I think if we can make that leap and collectively as a nation, stop focusing on profitability and start focusing on being provisional, we're going to become more profitable. And I had a conversation with a guy and he looked at me and he goes, Clint, he goes, I can't make another million dollars. I'm like, well, I can't either. So let's go to the wildfire house he goes he goes no no what I mean is every minute another million dollars I make it doesn't do anything for me and I'm like okay well I don't I can't empathize with

that but we started talking and I said I said can I tell you what I think and he said yeah I said I think you've been doing this for so long and you're so good at it and it's become so easy for you that there's nothing thrilling and challenging or hard about it. And because you're

a competitor and because you're a goal-centric person like everybody is, you've lost your goal. And he goes, what do I do about it? I said,

here's what I want you to do. I said, give me the name of five people that are your biggest competitors. Five people. They said, just give me their initials. Don't even tell me their names. I don't even know their names.

I said, so write those five down. He wrote those five down. I said, and tell me the three best guys, like best human beings, and the two worst. And he knew them right off the bat. I said, of the two worst, who do you want to beat in a submission? So they either go away or they change. And he knew the name. I said, all right, for the next six months,

set your vision for your company to do this. But it's now become your personal mission to find where that guy is and compete with him in anything. Even if it's different than what kind of the big blue arrow of the company is. But you find him and you compete against him and you pitch where he's pitching and you just decimate him because bad guys when they win they don't do good stuff with their provisions you know they get another hooker they buy some more drugs they do all these other things that don't help america but when good guys beat bad guys bad

guys tap out i said it's your personal mission to ruin this guy so you need to become a better person or you can go to jail and go away. And he's like, okay. And he called me like a week later. He's like, Clint. He goes, it's like I'm a 20-year-old man. He goes, listen, everything I loved about what I did. He loved what he had built.

He loved what he had done. He loved everything about this company he built. But he'd fallen out of love with why he did it. And so at the end of the day, he was a competitor. And all competitors want to beat someone who say they're better than them. And if we have an opportunity to beat someone who says they're better than me and they're a bad person, man, that's just America 101. Find someone who says they're better than you that's a bad person and smoke check them.

And it just engages the best parts of us. And so it all comes back to that desire to become provisional and to find something or someone or a problem. And it doesn't need to be a person. It can be a problem. Yeah. So I've got two thoughts. One is, did that strategy work? And the second is the way I see competition, I think, is quite different than you.

And not one is wrong and one is right. But the way that I see competition is that it's more of a striving toward rather than a striving against. And to compete against, I find, can be purposeful and it can have intensity. And then as soon as I conquer that task, now I've got to find a new thing to go do, a new person to compete against. And the way that I found some sustainability in it is competing together, competing. So knowing that that person's on the other side of the net, knowing that I want to get my tribe right and get my tribe's mission really clear, and then be really precise and efficient and powerful in the thing

that i'm trying to do and loving up to those guys across the net are doing it in the wrong tone or tenure and because you know what we need people like that to keep us sharp and keep us and for me i i just described it both of those like oh yeah i just got both of those i mean like for me it's it's just it's it's just the bigger one is the competing four, right? It's driving this kind of transcendent goal. It's not personal. But if I can change someone's mind on the way to the high ground, I'm beating them in the submission and going, wait a minute,

maybe sign a great contract, go get a bunch of champagne, hook up with these girls that I have no intention of ever talking to again. Maybe that might cost me a game. That might cost me a contract. That might cost me an opportunity. If that steers him towards the good man, then I'll beat him all day long. Because for me, it's a personal application of the striving for. I have this high standard of men.

And if I can make you hurt hurt or you become a better man then that's competing for i've just chosen a terrain that you've made available to me to try to get you to be a better man and so for me it's both it's it's there's no real difference between the two for me because my my goal is not to punish the person my goal is not to my goal is to win in this big game called, listen, I got three daughters, and I want them to have an abundance of choices of good men that are going to pursue them and protect them. And if that means making it really challenging to be a bad man, then okay, that's just creating a good feel for them. So I just want to make it really hard and dangerous to be a bad guy.

What has been the most difficult thing you've ever been through yourself? That's a hard one. You know, loss is a traumatic thing. You know, losing my father at a young age, that was brutal. How old were you? He started dying at 17, when I was 17, and died when I was 18. Which, I mean, I had a wonderful dad for a long time. There's guys I know that never had a good father for a day in their life.

But it was, you know, I miss him, which I still have him. But then watching my friend's kids go through life without their dad at a younger age and all these other things, those have been brutal. You know, I've got this big bucket of pain that there's just a bunch of stuff in it and it all kind of looks and feels the same. I tend to move on very quickly because you have to. And that doesn't mean get over it. That just means you can use pain and tragic pain as an excuse or as fuel.

And I had a great buddy that told me one time, good pain pushes out bad pain. And I just love that. And so the way to make bad pain good pain is get to work with the energy that it gave you and so for me it's hard to answer that question because I've been a part of and endured and everybody's got pain, everybody's got tragedy and that's just mine

and if I agree with you and if I hear it correctly one of the largest sources of pain was loss of your father at a young age. Sure. And then I'm imagining you experienced pain through loss of brotherhood in the military experience, but I don't want to make that assumption. That was the whole origin of Carry the Load. The whole origin of Carry the Load was finding a way to reconcile. So one, you have the pain of losing your friend, and then to double down by looking at a nation that you don't make cares that you lost your friend and so for me i had to take this um this this energy of and this

anger going wait a minute you know these these people don't care that i lost my friend and do something with it to find out if i was right or wrong and i'll tell you i was wrong america loves her sacrificial services and is willing to and wants to acknowledge them and say thank you to them or to their families when we fall all day long. And I've got five years of memorial made to prove that to myself and others. And when you have 16,000 people on Sunday of Memorial Day during a thunderstorm in Dallas, Texas, Dallas, Texas, wanting to say thank you to the families of someone who's lost. We've got a young guy like Chris, a young frogman who just swam

and linked to the Mississippi from the top to bottom for the Gold Star family, saying, hey, I'm swimming the river, so people pay attention to me. So when they pay attention to me, I can say, hey, pay attention to the Gold Star families. That's called doing something with it. And either, you know, pain is like this dragon. You're either going to ride it or it's going to eat you. And there's called doing something with it and either you know things like this dragon you're either going to ride it or it's going to eat you and there's no two ways about it it's you know you're either the process of getting eaten or you're the process of putting a saddle on that sucker yeah the coolest guy you know so i want to ask this question how do you

what how do you figure out how to ride the dragon because my experience i think you'll appreciate this has been most men and i'm using that word purposely because i don't know what it's like to be a woman but most men um they have an inner dragon and they put it in a basement they put a cage around it and they lock it and they appease it and they appease it you know appeasement accommodation and happiness permission yeah put it in a basement and appease it is permission for let's move. But then something happens. It's that dragon.

It dies. And that apathy of not exercising. The apathy that the dragon experiences. And the dragon's the analogy for emotion, right? Yeah, it's the personification of some unreconciled thing. Yeah, and maybe it's dark, maybe it's light, we're not sure, but it's this intensity. But if we put it into this basement and put a lock and key on it and don't exercise and don't know how to work with it and don't know how to feed it, that it becomes this really heavy load to drag around and my experience has been opening the cage and feeding it and having it having a relationship with it you can nudge it when you need it to be intense

sure and you can ask it to quiet down when you don't want it to breathe fire but it's like just ruse banner with a non-switch yeah you know usually bruce banner trying to avoid the over usually like all right here's how i let the hulk out and here's how i make him go back in you know and what i would say you're doing two, all right, here's how I let the Hulk out and here's how I make him go back in. You know, and what I would say, you're doing two things. There's you and what that and your energy, frustration, whatever it is does to you. But when you don't master that thing, you're essentially dooming anyone like you,

anyone experiencing what you've experienced, anyone that knows you within your sphere of influence to your exact same thing. So if you're unwilling to handle it on yourself, you're crushing two people, yourself and anyone that you could influence and spare the pain. That's why I'm such a huge fan of authenticity. And, you know, the best leaders I've ever been around are not perfect. And they're free with that. And they're like, hey, let me tell you about the seven seven times i messed up and that's never made me doubt their leadership if anything it's made me want to be

around more and learn from them more and so that willingness to to you know shame is a shovel that satan will use to bury you and the only reason say that again i said shame is the shovel that satan will use to bury you there's no provision for shame. There's no value in shame. Shame at the end of the day, I measure shame in time. There's the event and then there's the period of time where you're unwilling, unable to, or unwilling or unable to do something about it.

And that is time that you never get back. And so I have no, I try to have no room for shame because, you know, that's just time is the one absolute immutable thing that we're all dealing with the same amount of and it gives that away. And, you know, I think when you kind of come from what I've come from and been through the military experience, so if you become aware of mortality, and so the thought of wasting time is the most egregious

offense to life that I can think of. And shame is one of the great tragic wastes of time. And all you got to do to not let shame win is to share some of your pain with somebody else. There you go.

The quietness of shame is what keeps people drunk and addicted and hidden. And the exposure of saying, this is where I did something wrong and saying it to an intimate, intimate partner or someone that you deeply trust. Just the saying it makes all the difference. And it's a physiological and you'll feel it like me.

And I do this all the time at my office. You know, there's guys that like, I'm watching you about to do something that I did. Here's feel it like me and i do this all the time at my office you know there's guys i like i'm watching you about to do something that i did here's what it cost me and because i care about you i can't like we jokingly say like when i rip somebody here's what i mean i respect i respect you i have integrity so i can't tell you what's right is wrong what's wrong is right and i have a purposeful vision for your life. So when I rip you, it's because I respect you. Because I have integrity and I want you to have it too.

And because we're here in this room for the same reason. And so I cannot rip you right now. And I expect you to rip me. Okay, so on that idea, concretely, what is it that you do? What have you done with the dragon, riding the dragon or letting it slay you, and what have you done, as concrete as you can, moving from rhetoric to practice,

from our earlier conversation, that when you felt something that's been deeply painful for you, how have you helped yourself move through it? I'll give you a great example. So for me, Carrie Lowe's a great example of this. If I think about something more than three times and it upsets me more than three times, then I force myself to either get over it or do something about it.

And it almost doesn't matter what I do about it. Doing something about it is always better than doing nothing about it. And the iterations of that. So I speak that like, hey, I'm not going to let Memorial Day not be celebrated the way I feel like it should be. So, boom, that's the rhetoric. And then the repetition is like, hey, let's try it like this. Well, okay, that didn't work, but let's fix it and let's do it again. And then you just do the repetition until it produces some type of result where you're like, man, can you believe we just did that?

I mean, it started five years ago and then also given away $1.1 million last year to existing nonprofits that are taking care of firefighters, law enforcement, EMTs, and paramedics every day. Like, I couldn't have even foreseen those results, but I knew that we weren't going to let Memorial Day just fade away in this nation. And so we were just willing to try, fail, fix, and try again. And so that's a great example. Yeah, that is a great. And if I just want to connect this to pain, what I'm hearing is that you felt pain. And if you've noticed, been aware that you've said something one, two, three, four, too many times about that pain, then you say, okay, let me put something into practice. Something. Right.

And it almost doesn't matter what. It's got to be positive. It's got to produce a positive result. Yeah. And then in yours, the wildness of it is that you gave away $1. Something million to people that can benefit from the pain and the action that you took to better their course now. Yeah. It's amazing. Over five years, we've given away more than $3.6 million.

We've walked with almost 75,000 people. We gave $1.1 million last year. You know, this year, we're actually, I don't think i even told you this we're uh we have what we call memorial may and for the last four years we've stepped off from the cemetery of west point and walked to dallas and every five miles we walk with the families who was lost before this year we're starting at west point and we're starting in seattle yeah we're going to walk both seaboards and we're going to come into tex Texas. It's an amazing opportunity to put your pain to work. Yeah, so we did talk a little bit

about that. Obviously, I work up in the Northwest and I love it there. I'm based out of Los Angeles. We're coming right through LA down to San Diego. Two questions. One is for folks that are listening. How can they help

you on your path and to help others move from pain and rhetoric to results? And how can people help? So let me just stay along those lines. Let's start with carry the load because that's a really important one. We have 22 veterans kill themselves every day and I'm just not okay with that.

And I don't think the nation should be okay with that. And I consider many of those to be combat casualties, even though they happened here, because they didn't get the help they needed and they didn't ask for it. And there's some personal responsibility involved with suicide as well. And so Carried Load is one of the ways we're helping people come all the way home by saying, hey, listen, everything that you did that you don't think anybody cares about, here are numbers that would tell you that people care a whole lot about it and so go to carrytheload.org

and learn about it, figure out what's going on near you and plug in during May and say thank you to those who've been willing to sacrifice for all of us with a whole fast listen, they're in an extraordinary amount of truce about performance and becoming a higher version of yourself and becoming a tribe

that military service and athletic endeavors have revealed to us and we want to share them with you and your organization and in the process of doing that we get to create these amazing careers for veterans when they come home and if you can go to you can go to clintbruce.com and learn more about that or holdfastu.com as that comes online and then finally with TRG if you're a leader and you're listening and you want to have really good answers for the reasonable, foreseeable risks you have as an individual and as a family and as a business, then look at TridentResponse.com. And in that portfolio of endeavors, if we can pull out of that

and plug it into your world and help you become a higher version of yourself and lead people well, then we want to do that. And that's, that's how we only have hard days and no bad days. That's the difference between being home and just here. And so that's, that's, that's today.

You know, and that's tomorrow. And that's last Tuesday and six months from now, because I know why I'm here. And, um, awesome. Okay.

And then you'll keep me posted on how I can help through'm here. Awesome. You'll keep me posted on how I can help through the Seattle. Love to. Whether that's getting some of the guys out or some of the coaches out or even some of the leaders in Seattle and Los Angeles, I'd love to be part of that. That'd be fantastic.

One of the things we say in Carry the Load is we ask, who are you carrying? Because someone's walking five miles for someone. There's someone in your life that served in the military, law enforcement, fire fighters, and rescue personnel that was willing to sacrifice for you and the rest of us, and you want to share that story of them with us and with the nation because you're proud of them. And I can't wait to hear it. And that's my favorite thing is to listen to these people that you're proud of. And, you know, sometimes when they're gone

people ask me all the time, why are you so passionate about speaking? I was like, listen, because I'm sharing with you something I learned from these amazing men and women I got to live life with and sometimes they're not with me anymore. I want to share with you what I learned from them in a way of bringing them back to life to me, even for just a minute and it makes you miss

them even though you didn't know them and that that's a the symmetry there because they thought you were worth dying for they didn't even know you and so when i can make you miss a man that you never knew by sharing with something i learned from him then man that's it that's a well that's a well-used day i love it was there a moment in time, Clint, where you realized this was so important to you? I don't remember when it wasn't that important to me. And it's not because of me. It's just that's what I was raised around. I don't think I ever had a coach that didn't drill into me that the team mattered most and even to

even at their expense I mean I just I was just being incredibly blessed on this right side of an equal sign with a bunch of pluses in between you know so for me to be like this is very much a a product of this incredible good fortune I've had to have these amazing people in my life, have these incredible experiences. And sure, there's tragedy distributed among things, but when you experience tragedy and you're surrounded by amazing people and you always know why you're there, you tend to endure those and come out scarred but still there. And that's life.

And so there's this's life and the reason I ask that question is because you're highly motivated you've got a deep hunger and a drive to do well in life for others and I haven't heard you talk about yourself really yet well I think it's a byproduct honestly

being blessed is a byproduct of doing well for others. I've just been able to experience that. I've found that to be the less you matter to yourself, the more you tend to matter to others. It's a byproduct of living that way, at least in my experience. Is there a word that cuts to the center of what you understand most, or a phrase? Yeah, for me, it's hold fast and stay true. I mean, that's just kind of always been my battle cry from when I was a...

Can you talk to people who are not sailors? Yeah, without question, I will. I love this phrase, by the the way what it stands for yeah so for me as a young guy who just kind of buried my father and just kind of left my family and you know i've got a sister and a mom and a brother and you know knew i needed to go do this so i could take care of them i just kind of always had to have these little personal mantras these personal battle cries and and i love being in the navy. I love everything about it. I love the history, the legacy, the lore, and our language.

And one of the phrases that I just embraced very quickly was this saying, hold fast and stay true. And it's not unique to the United States Navy. It's a maritime saying. But where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, it became ours and mine. What it is, is in olden days when the ships were made of wood

and the men were made of iron and you were out like this heart of the sea thing out right now. Imagine when that huge wave crests over it, what the men on the ship would do and women as well. They would go, hold fast, hold fast, hold fast. You know, they're telling each other to just grab the stuff that lasts.

Grab the things that are tied down tight. Grab the proven things, the things that are weathered, that have been there before. Just hang on. Because those things make you. And stay true is for the leader. And what they were saying is like, hey, there's a place we were going before it got really hard. And you're either going to let the wind steer us, the waves steer us, the storms steer us. You're going to stay true.

And so for me, I just kind of had a very, God gave us two hands. And one is to have ideas and the other is to do these ideas. So, you know, the way my life works is my wife and girls are always going to be thumbs up. And I have TRG, hold fast, carry the the load and then just whatever mission needs to happen right now and that's my life and so that's what i'm going to hold fast to that's what i'm going to stay true to and those who want to go there with me are already there that i'm trying to get up to that you know that's it keeps it simple it keeps me just from just jabbing all the time and air and you know not getting anything done i love it um so hold fast

stay true that's i used to write it on my knuckles for every game h-o-l-b-f-a-s-t and i'd write stay true on my palms because you know when you're weathered when you're tired you're sitting on the bench you put your hands up to your forehead and you see it stay true you're like all right i remember why i'm here you know and you think like you line up against a guy and he's got hold fast on his knuckles like this boy is gonna play okay like this guy came to play he's got hold fast the only cooler thing i've seen is all this mma fighter and he had to stay down on his knuckles f-t-y-d-o-w-n i'm like that's pretty cool that might be cooler than hold fast but uh but stay down isn't my battle cry hold fast stay true stay true is. I love it. Okay, cool.

In the process of you becoming who you are, what does the word gratitude mean to you? Gratitude is a mandatory function. It is like breathing, eating, sleeping, you know, for me, gratitude and saying thank you and being appreciative is, it has to be there. It's as much a core function as anything else. And I've also found it to be very humble. If you have a gratitude mentality, you tend to acknowledge that you need something more than you need to get and stay where you are. And so for me, gratitude,

I don't like being around people who don't say thank you a lot. Not to me. You say it to me, that's fantastic. It makes me feel good. I watch. I watch and see. I make personnel decisions based on the absence or presence of gratitude. If you don't have gratitude, then you're not something I want to be around. Not because

I want you to say thank you to me, but that for me, that's a performance metric just as much as speed, strength, power, flexibility, intellect, humility. Gratitude is an indication of the presence or absence of humility. And humility is a core component in being part of my team. And so for me, and I think gratitude can manifest itself in a lot of different ways like some people are very verbal about it some people are very demonstrative

about it, some people are very silent about it but I tend to look for those you know there's some guys that just I've been around that just never really had relationships but they're extremely grateful people and I think it's incumbent on me as a leader to look for how that guy is saying thank you and if it's different than and I think it's incumbent on me as a leader to look for how that guy is saying thank you.

It's different than how I say it. Who cares? Sometimes I'm like, how do you show people you appreciate them? They'll tell you. They're like, man, I put my arm around their shoulder. That's as close as I can get to saying thank you. I was like, listen, when I watch you put your arm around someone's shoulder, that's as meaningful as the trivial thank you

that you just throw out. And so I think gratitude is a core. With us, the way I, you've got to be doing three things when you work with us.

You've got to, I call them the three C's. You've got to compete, you've got to contribute, and you've got to have a catalyst. You've got to be competing in something because we're just always better

when we're competing in something. It tends to engage the best in us. You've got to be contributing in something, meaning you've got to be competing in something because we're just always better when competing in something um it tends to engage the best so you got to be contributing to something meaning you got to be invested in something that can't benefit you in any real material way and you got to have a catalyst meaning you're seeking some higher version of yourself and so that's just who i need to be around people are competing contributing and having a catalyst and because that's what i mean when you say catalyst are you saying like a hardener that's what no no so catalyst for me is an expediter it's a it's an optimizer so for me a catalyst is uh uh seeking some higher version of yourself acquiring a new skill becoming better

at something so we talk about performing pursuing elite and i talk about curiosity curiosity is the precursor to cash how can i I do this faster? How can I do this better? All a catalyst really is, is it's something that makes a reaction occur faster or better. And so I love being around people who are always trying to, you know, at the office, I have a former Seattle Seahawk,

David Vobora. He's literally one of the most curious guys. They're like, I've never seen a guy try to do different things like a bozu ball and a kettlebell what are you doing? you already look like Thor maybe this can increase so he's constantly

finding some 1% efficiency or 1% better and that's where I'm learning a new language the brain requires reps and curiosity is the way to give the brain reps and that's what I'm learning a new language. The brain requires reps, and curiosity is the way to give the brain reps. And that's what I call a catalyst. It also is deeply interested in novelty, things that are new.

So curiosity feeds that as well. And then are you, like, so you understand risk pretty well. What can you teach us, about risk taking and the the thinking that precedes the risk and the preparation and the the analysis of risk taking so so i would say there's calculated risk there's there's there's um so i love the word audacity and audacity for me is is calculated risk and it is this kind of magic formula of passion gifting and curiosity and uh if you're gifted for something and you have a passion for it and you're curious those are going to lead to risk events you know and so there's really two terrains of risk there's there's um influence risk

and impact risk and impact risk is risk you can do something about you can either manage your risk you know like hey look you have a lot of tornadoes um that's influence risk you can't do anything about whether there's tornadoes or not but you can build a storm shelter that's this and so for me uh i look at the word risk as something I need to be ready for. And so I just kind of look at my own life and I go, hey, risks are things I need to be ready for. What does ready look like? And ready is this ready equals resistant plus resilient is the simple formula I use in my head. And resistant is being ready for your most reasonable and foreseeable risks.

And resilient is being ready for your most reasonable and foreseeable risks. And resilient is being ready for the extraordinary risk. And these are risks that are thrust upon us because we're participants in the world. The audacity risk that I'm talking about, those are professional risks. Those are risks that you don't have to incur, but you're going to because it's who and what you are. It's like Travis Pastrana. We had the Nitro Circus guys here at the office the other day. It's fascinating. You look at what those guys are doing. You're like, man, that's just going to be a

quadruple backflip. That doesn't make any sense unless you're uniquely gifted and passionate to try to understand performance boundaries of a motorcycle and a man. You look at Felix Baumgartner and you go, why would you want to jump out of a balloon at 160,000 feet? For the guy like Felix you look at Felix Baumgartner and you go why would you why would you

want to jump out of a balloon at 160,000 feet and then for the guy like Felix Baumgartner like

why wouldn't I want to see what the limits of human performance at the stratosphere are and so

who you are has a lot to do with the risks that you can take but what I would tell you for me that falls in the

bucket of competition you know competing with some lesser version of yourself is competition. So this is a whole other topic. This is risk. I hope I'm not making it more confusing as I talk about it.

No, it sounds like what you've done is you've compartmentalized different types of risk. Sure. And then if you, so that when you see something that is interpreted as risky you can put it into a bucket or a category and then from that you've got a process to deal with that type of risk yes yeah there you go okay cool okay so let's let's move into this um maybe you can just respond uh like quickly or unpack it as deeply as you want if I just ask you some quick questions. Sure. Okay.

Do you see yourself as being street smart or more analytical? I believe I'm street smart as a byproduct of being analytical. Okay, so your strength is being analytical? Yeah. Well, I would tell you that my objective as a young chunky kid on a little Arkansas playground was to not get

beat up. So how I didn't get beat up would be called street smarts, but understanding how not to get beat up is a byproduct of analysis. Why do I keep getting beat up? Who's probably going to beat me up? How do't either make them like me or not get near them. I don't know that you can...

If you are street smart, I would tell you that you are analytical. It's just which word you like to use to describe it. Yeah, the difference between those two for me is analytics is an internal processing and street smart is the ability to pick up the cues in the environment quickly and accurately and um i think that people have one strength or the other because it's really

an information processing um mechanism i would say that my academic career would say i'm probably more street smart than i am analytical okay so you would say you you would say the way that i just described it you'd say no i'm probably more street smart than analytical to the extent i understand what you said yes your grin is funny okay uh do you prefer that for the non-committal committal yeah that's i'm right in the middle okay uh slow pace do you prefer a slow-paced environment or a fast-paced environment? Fast. Fast. Do you make mistakes in slow-paced environments?

Not any more than I make in fast-paced environments. Okay. I find fast-paced environments to be more stimulating and exciting. Okay. But I don't think there's a performance difference between the two. For you, okay. Unfortunately. Do you prefer to take risks or follow rules? But I don't think there's a performance difference between the two for me. For you, okay. Unfortunately.

Do you prefer to take risks or follow rules? Take risks. Okay. Need for control. Do you have a high need for control? Only in what I think I'm the best in the room at. But everything I'm in the room for requires more than me, so I'm quick to defer control to the subject matter expert. Okay.

But what I'm good at, I'm like, hey, you might want to let me do this. But I never try to control the whole campaign. I do try to control the one or two things that I think are critical, the reason I'm in the room. Okay. What was your rank in – I was an officer. What's interesting as an officer is you're not the specialist. You're never the group. Okay. What was your rank in... I was an officer. What's interesting as an officer is you're not the specialist.

You're never the specialist. All the operational skills, the special skills reside at the enlisted level. So you're a talent aggregator and a talent deployer as an officer level. Did you come in as an officer? Yeah, I came in as an officer at a naval captain. Yeah, okay. Intellectually competitive or physically competitive? Both.

I mean, I love competing. So for me, it's just, hey, we're playing football or chess. It doesn't matter. So I would tell you that as I've gotten older, I've become more intellectually competitive. My physicality is Wayne. I'm going to try to get you to play chess quicker than we're going to play arm wrestling. Okay.

For your inner dialogue, are you more critical to yourself or more positive? I have coached myself into being appropriately critical and generally positive appropriately critical and generally positive and are you the same way to other people i'm probably more uh positive with other i'm probably more critical of myself than others um yeah i would say i'm definitely more positive with others than i'm critical is that does that work for you?

Or is that something you'd like to change? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, no, no. Like for me, there's no real value in hypercriticality to either yourself or other people. I mean, for me, criticism comes, I'm kind of a one-third, two-thirds guy. What's the problem?

Let's get to work fixing it. So problem, cause a problem, solution, repetitions, results. And so for me, I think I'm not critical as much as I'm willing to make a critique. But then we get to the business of getting better at it. Okay, so maybe concretely, like what's the most destructive thing that you found yourself saying to yourself? Oh, man. Without kind of the kind of mental prohibition from doing it, I can hate myself just about as much as anybody else could ever hate me.

You know, I just think all of us can dance with that self-focus expectation. I have these expectations of myself that a lot of times, I'll give you a great example. When I became a daddy, I was very hard on myself for not being a great daddy, but I don't remember having a daddy. I wasn't asking anybody how to become a good one. That's an unfair critique. At eight months old, it's like, what's a daddy I need milk I'm tired so you know I think I can have unrealistic expectations of myself in new endeavors that I should be

performing at a level that reality wouldn't say I should be performing at if there's one thing I have to be mindful of it's my expectation that I should be better at something faster than reason would say I should be better at something faster than reason would say I should be.

Okay, got it. Okay, and then that sounds like what you would say to yourself is, God, what is wrong with me? Why am I still doing it like this? Some of the way that that manifests itself in me is much more, I'm wasting these people's time. Yeah. To waste my time or these people's time. Yeah. To waste my time or other people's time is, like I said, that's the one absolute.

So to find myself, to think I'm unworthy of their time, that's probably my biggest thing is deeming myself worthy of someone else's time. It's probably the one thing where I can, if I'm not careful, I can let myself run down that rabbit hole. It's amazing that that would be the one thing when your entire DNA and design of your exterior world is

to help others. And it's probably not a coincidence that it comes from that thought, which is, am I wasting? Am I giving enough? Am I doing right by other people? Well, it's the Jack London quote. The proper function of man is to live, not merely to exist. I shall not waste my time trying to

prolong it. And so, you know, I'd rather be ashes than dust. I'd rather be a splendid meteor with a better adamant magazine glow than a giant slumbering planet. And so that that where I'll, if I'm not careful and I have to, I have to guard against myself and I have empowered those around me to prevent me from doing it is if

I feel like I wasted my time and wasted other people's time by not being as good at something as they expected me or I expected me to be, I can spiral pretty quickly. And the way that manifests itself for me is, you know, there's a variety of different, you know, drinking, not working out, making some other choices. You know, so I don't like my potential to be able to do any of those things. So I just like, you know, the problem with telling everybody they can tell you you're getting fat is they tell you you're getting fat. So you're like, daggum it. Okay, I'll get on the gerbil machine a little bit here and see if I can tell something.

So I'm more afraid of wasting. And I've used that fear in a positive. Like, I don't want to waste anybody's time. And so that protects me from doing it you know that's good okay uh do you prefer fast decisions or or methodical slow decisions fast yeah pressure comes from pressure comes from oh is this a complete sense deal? Yeah. Is that what that is? Yeah.

I transitioned without saying anything. Yeah. Pressure comes from expectations of myself and others. Okay. Which one is the larger index? The expectations from yourself? Myself. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I'll put more pressure on myself and most people will. Do you do anything in particular to increase your awareness of your inner dialogue or to increase your awareness of your mission or purpose yeah so i try to manage my inner dialogue i try to i try to have as much outer dialogue as purposeful and outer dialogue i tend to live in community i tend to live out loud um i've found myself to not be a great internal conversationalist and so i just i just i try to manage how much I'm talking to myself because I find the conversations I have like this one

to be more constructive and actionable. And so I try to be very disciplined about my internal dialogue. It's like Olympic lifting. There's great technique to olympic lifting okay and so you know i've tried to use technique uh for anything to get influence performance do you do anything in particular to increase your awareness of your dialogue uh yeah i listen to it you know i every once in a while like you know you know what do you i you know, I journal a lot.

I forget where I put my journals. And so I just, you know, that's a problem with concussions. But, yeah, I mean, I tend to be pretty creative. I tend to do things that show me how I'm feeling, if that doesn't sound too strange. A lot of times when I go into a workout, I don't really know what the workout's going to be. I have a general objective for the workout, but what I find myself gravitating towards will tell me where I'm at right now. If I'm in a smash mentality, I'm like,

ooh, Bruce, you may need it. There's something going on, you gotta figure it out. I'll just talk to my friends about it, like,

hey man, you know, I ask the closest friends I have how I'm treating them and, because that's where I think you'll make

your most mistakes is with people, you know, forgive you. And we're not necessarily mindful of it. I'm like, hey man,

have I been pretty short on the phone recently? They're like, yeah, dude, you've been a jerk. And I'm like, ah, okay, here we go. necessarily mindful of it. I'm like, hey man, have I been pretty short on the phone recently? They're like, yeah, you've been a jerk. And I'm like, oh, okay, here we go. What a cool question. I've never, not once, have I ever thought about asking my friends that question.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the great thing about my friends is like, it's a foot race. You're either going to ask them or they're going to tell you. So this is like, you know, I've learned, I've become self-aware that I'm not very self-aware. So self-awareness is important. So we're like, all right, how do I empower someone to do that with and for me? Have you played with any types of meditation or mindfulness trainings yourself? I'm a huge visualizing guy.

I think you could call it visualizing meditation. For me, I've always been a real I'm not fast, so I have to play the game three or four times before I ever play someone. On game day, that looks like I'm fast. I'm not fast. I'm just direct. I just don't.

I watch so much film of how you run that I see these thousand little things you do before you lower your shoulder, and I'm just going to be there before you. And so visualization, goal-making, the process to make a goal, hey, is this the right goal? I think you count all that. With my faith, being in the Bible every day and just kind of not reading it for reading it, but reading it to go, what does that mean?

How do I apply that? Yeah, whether you believe in Jesus or not, you can read Proverbs and live by Proverbs, and you'll be just great. There's so much wisdom in there. And so, yeah, I think all those forms count as kind of like a meditation or a grounding. Cool. It all comes down to? Intent.

The crossroad of my life was? Am I going to be a doer or a sayer? I love it. Lots of people do. Not many people say. Which one am I? Success is? Having hard days, but no bad days.

If I had the chance to do it over again? I wouldn't. Love? Every day. Flow? That is a peak performance state. Relationships. Matter.

My vision. Is clear. I am. Quite prude. It sounds like you're an extrovert, right? As opposed to an introvert processor I don't know I've heard people define an extrovert

as someone who recharges by being around others I can recharge by myself I can recharge if there's a purposevert, that's probably what I am I'm more of a I'm more of a purposevert that's too close to pervert. I didn't mean to sound like that.

Good luck trying to sell that idea. Yeah, you should explain that one. Yeah, I think I can find myself craving, you know, just having a backpack go up in the woods, but I also love being in a room full of my 20 great friends. I think I'm one of these functionally schizophrenic guys that just depends on circumstances. Do you do what you think is right or what you feel is right?

If there's no time I do what I feel is right. If there's time I try to align what I think and feel. Yeah, okay. I think what I feel is right is very informed by how I think and what I've learned in the past. Yeah. Yeah.

I would, I would agree. But it's like, how do you, how do people make decisions? If you had to fire 25 people from your company, uh, two weeks before Christmas,

like, would you just look at the books because that's the right thing for the company? Or would you look at family structure? I look at family structure. Yeah. I do. I, look at family structure. Yeah, that's it. I do. If I have to choose between being heart-led or head-led, it's much more natural for me to be heart-led than head-led.

Yeah, okay. I have to discipline myself to be head-led. Okay, all right. And then what do you hope the next generation gets right? There's one thing I hope, and something I'm encouraged about is personal accountability. I think personal accountability,

we as a nation have, and I believe it's changing, but I do believe we've lost the passion and commitment to personal accountability. And I think we can turn on the news every day and see that. There's someone always explaining why someone, you know, I create personal accountability and I love, I'm inspired by leaders that are personal accountable and I don't see that

many of them in DC. There's a difference between responsibility and accountability. And listen, it cannot be your fault, but it is your responsibility. And too gone are the days of going, hey, my responsibility. It is my responsibility. You know, something happens on my watch, my responsibility. And I think we need to cultivate and mandate that. There's too many people trying to get away with stuff. And, you know, the guy's like, yeah, you got me. My fault.

You know, I'm like, all right, get your spanking and let's get to work because you've got the good stuff. But personal accountability needs to be brought back. I love it all right um last last conversation is how do you define or articulate or capture the idea of mastery mastery is a verb for me mastery is an action it's like leadership leadership's an action you're not a leader if you're not leading you're not a leader if you're not leading. You're not a master if you're not mastering. So for me, mastery is like cooking.

It's like it's this constant pursuit of some peak level performance that you just know you're never going to get. And so mastery for me is a verb. It's a motion word. It's not a static word at all. And so I would find mastery is the pursuit of something more than what you are today and the

expectation of those around you are doing the same. But not the expectation without the personal pursuit. Yeah, there you go. Wow, look at that. Alright, cool. Clint, thanks for... Every time we connect, I appreciate our conversations and to see

your conviction and your clarity and the way that you articulate what you've come to understand and the man that you're working on becoming for your girls, your wife, the men in your world that you served with and the community that you've served for us. So grateful for knowing you and also grateful for what you've done. And I can't wait to figure out how I can support the mission that you're on. I appreciate it, man. I appreciate the opportunity. And one of the things I'll leave you with is people all the time go, hey, thank you

for your service. And my response sometimes is jarring for them because here's what I say. They go, thank you for your service. And I go, you were worth it. And one of the reasons I say that is because I believe that. I mean, that's what we think we're overseas. Like, man, I hope these people are worth it. And the people who come up to you and say, thank you for your service, in that moment they are worth it.

And it's a convicting statement, too, because it should challenge them to be worth it. Honestly, there's 18-year-old barrel-chested freedom fighters over there thinking, I'm worth it. So I just got to be worth it today. And so to your listeners who would say thank you for your service, just know that if we were sitting in a room, I'd look at you in the eyes and I'd say you were worth it. And then I'd challenge collectively for you and I to be worth it today.

And then let's get to the work. That's so good. Well, if you and I were going to have another conversation with somebody who's on the path of mastery, what would you be curious about from them? Like, could you carry a message? Could I be the carrier of a message to them for you? What would you want to ask them?

Yeah, here's one of the things I'm fascinated by right now. I'm fascinated by balance. How do you find people that call it a balance? Like flow. When you said flow, flow is one of my favorite words.

People say fight or flight, and I go, no, there's this middle state in between called flow, which is your ability to spend time and expand this concept of time where you know

you're a fight or flight. And it's, it's, it's, Bruce Lee must have felt some other people, like, you know,

because he had, he had built, he built such a flow state and, and in my kind of season of life right now from a businessman, like,

I'm fascinated by these guys that, you know, I call it MHLE, make hard look easy. Who are the guys that make hard look easy? Because most of the time

what you'll find is that's not pure talent. That is the recognition of talent and then the investment of time. So you recognize talent and you invest time and that's how you make hard look easy. And it's fascinating for me to see guys that run hedge know, run hedge funds and, you know, don't miss soccer games, you know, and when they do miss soccer games, you know, their kid's okay with it because, you know, my dad missed this one, but he's been to the other ones, you know. I'm fascinated by balance because balance creates more available time. It doesn't create more time. It creates more available time.

And so that would be one of the things I'd love to do. How are you working on it? How do you manage to do these things that would make me believe that you have 30 hours in your day instead of just 24? That's a great concept. And I struggle with that in my own life as well. How can I do the things that i want to set out to do and at the same time um be present enough for all of them and there's because there's only 24 hours and i'm trying to get eight hours sleep on a regular basis which is

seems to be difficult and um i think it's a myth and i'm going to take your question and i'm going to ask it to uh the next person that I get to have this conversation with. And I will ask... The one hack on that? Yeah. So there's an affliction and there's a hack. So you and I do what we love. And because we do what we love, we don't work.

And because we don't work, it's hard to create work-life balance, because our work is our life. And so it's... But here's one of the hacks that I found. What I found is people that tend to have the most balance, the appearance of the most, they're working within their talent. And so the world will tell you you need to do this because this is what talent does.

And the innovator, I think there's two kinds of businessmen, and I call them Stanfords and Harvards. Harvards want to run the world, and Stanfords want to change the world. And that's okay. We need both. What I've found is the guys that appear to have the most balance, they're doing what they love. And they recognize that what they love can provision for themselves and those around them. So you look at Jack Link.

Jack Link's meat snacks. I met one of those guys the other day and they had me at meat snacks with a beef jerky and a Southpaw campaign. But there's a guy who's like, listen, I like making beef jerky and there's a lifestyle

that beef jerky, being outdoors and hunting, is perfect for. And so they've created this whole ecosystem based on just what they really enjoy doing and what they find muscles to be pretty good at. You know, that's what you can tell in the league right now, the guys that still love playing football or the guys that, why the guys that find a way to still love playing football is just like

marriage. You got to marriage is work. So we're our professions. And so there's a, there's a talent awareness and honesty. You know, if you love basketball, but it's not your talent, then I'm sorry that you love basketball, but you're uniquely gifted and talented for something.

And if you find that thing and invest in it, then you may find yourself with a life that you never thought possible. And even if that's not sexy, you sexy, who thought beef jerky was sexy? Now you've got a Sasquatch campaign. It's the coolest thing on the planet. Too good. Okay, I'll pass that on. I'll start curating some insights around that.

My initial pass out of myself is that balance is a myth and work-like balance is not something that I'm trying to understand. What I'm trying to understand is how to be more present where I am so that I can experience it with depth. And that is the gift to others and myself wherever I am. So that's where I'm from. I would not disagree with that.

I would describe balance, if we could reframe what balance means, it's life at ease. Meaning those people that tend to make i think people that make hard things being a parent's hard the guy who makes being a parent look easy even though he's doing a hard thing and so we it may be a i would not disagree with your yeah i i think work a lot of balances because it's it's the pursuit of a whole life that you're completely present in no matter what phase of the day you're in. That's exactly right. That's what balance would be to me.

Yeah, cool. We're on the same page. All right, man. So, Clint, thank you again. And if you've been following along for us here, where can we find more information about you, Clint? I know you've got a couple of websites. Yeah, carrytheload.org. Wait, wait, I'm sorry. say it really clearly so people can follow carry the load.org there you go tridentresponse.com and you can either go to clintbruce.com or holdfastu.com i never thought i'd ever have a clintbruce.com but there was another clintbruce that was you know trying to talk about

crocheting and I'm like no no clintbruce and crochet will never be mentioned in the same sentence so I gotta own that domain so do you have any social media connections as well? I'm a novice I do but I don't know

what they are I'd ask my daughters and they'll tell you what my Twitter handle is. Get that to me in case people want to ask you some questions. Okay. So thanks so much. If you enjoyed this conversation and the path of mastery that Clint is on, send us some information. You can hit me at Michael Gervais. You can find this conversation at findingmastery.net. You can also find us at Facebook on forward slash Finding Mastery.

And help us out and write a review on iTunes and share this and send this to somebody. And I'd love to challenge people that are listening now to help out. If you've been sucked in and connected to what Clint's doing, send him resources, questions,

information, figure out a way to help with time and talent and possibly finances as well. So Clint, thank you again. I can't wait for the next time we connect. Yeah. Same here. Hold fast and stay true brother.

All right. Best. All right, man. Bye bye. All right. all right thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery with us our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you we really appreciate you being part of this community and if you're enjoying the show the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button

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