The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 615: Brad Thor - The Art & Science of Storytelling, Creating Surprise, Billions, Ray Donavon, & The Willingness (& Ability) To Break The Rules

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes and all episodes of The Learning Leader Show Notes: Brad Thor best selling author of 22 thrillers... Excellence as a leader… What has Brad seen from the military leaders he's studied: Empathy - Understand what it's like from their perspective. LISTEN - Care for your people. Actually LISTEN to them and be there. Creativity. Innovate, and think of new creative ways to solve problems. Effective storytelling - Don't start with the weather. Leave out the parts people skip. Don't be boring. This same advice is useful for leaders when communicating with your team. Put yourself in their shoes. How can you most effectively share your message without being boring. The more entertaining it is, the more likely they'll remember it. Effective storytellers - Plotters (outlines, Dan Brown), Pantsers (write by the seat of your pants). Brad is a pantser. Take the first 4 ideas and throw them out. You need the element of surprise. Create surprise. Be comfortable breaking the rules. Loves Ray Donavon and Billions for the element of surprise "No joy in the writer, no joy in the reader." "No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." Brad has served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security's Analytic Red Cell Unit. Excellence as a leader (McChrystal) - Empathy, Listen, Creativity. PBL - Problem-Based Learning. John Bettis (country singer). How do you recharge your battery? International travel. Immerse yourself in another culture. Loves politics. Ran for President. Advice for writers – "Gotta Keep Writing" Mary Higgins Clark did it for 2 hours each morning before her family woke up. Whatever it is we want to be great at, we have to get the reps. Consistency beats intensity.   00:53 The Art of Storytelling 04:13 Elements of Effective Storytelling 08:26 The Importance of Surprise in Storytelling 11:33 Writing Process and Challenges 20:43 Research and Realism in Writing 27:04 Leadership Lessons from Writing 30:59 The Importance of Open-Mindedness 32:01 Pre-Publishing Feedback Process 35:09 Homeland Security and the Red Cell Unit 39:05 Maintaining Creative Energy 42:38 Political Ambitions and Leadership 50:57 Advice for Aspiring Writers 54:36 The Benefits of Reading Fiction for Leaders 56:43 Conclusion and Final Thoughts  

The mind's like a parachute. It has to be open to work. And if people are going to come to you because they want to make you better and they want to offer you advice, this is where the listening comes in. I always think it's a good thing for a leader. Don't assume you know what's motivating the other person. Keep your mind open. Keep your ears open. And what's amazing is those customers, the ones you depend on, they're the reason you're in business. The customers will tell you what they want more of. And sometimes they'll tell you what they want less up. And that's like striking gold. episode is brought to you by Insight Global. I love the leadership team and the people at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader today to learn more. That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader show, presented by Insight Global.

I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful, Month. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off. You also receive details about how our book, The Score That Matters, will help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 666866. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Brad Thor is the number one New York Times best-selling author of 24 thrillers.

including shadow of doubt, near dark, backlash, spymaster, the last patriot, and blowback. Brad has also served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security's analytic red cell unit. And in 2008, Brad shadowed a black ops team in Afghanistan to research his thriller, The Apostle. This guy lives an incredible life. During our conversation, we discuss what it means to be an effective storyteller and how how we can improve our storytelling ability. Then Brad shares his daily routine to be a prolific producer. He signed a contract with Simon & Schuster to write at least one book per year.

And during our conversation, he shares how he does that. And then we also talked about all of the military leaders he's shadowed over the years while researching his books. And what he's learned from the best of the best. best. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Brad Thor. Brad, it is awesome to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. I'm glad to be here. You know, you're the first podcast I've done where our backdrops pretty much match up and look like we're in the same room together. I love it. I love it, man. It looks good. It looks really good. So I know this may be a little

bit different from the typical podcaster media you do because I focus heavily on leadership and sustaining excellence as an individual and then for your team. And you write some of the greatest thrillers that have ever been written. And so I was most interested to tap into your mind of like, how do you do that? How do you write these great stories? How can leaders learn? What can they learn from you in order to become better communicators, better storytellers, to inspire people towards a stretch goal, for example. So to start, Brad, I would love to, let's start high level, and then we'll drill down. What makes a great story? Okay. I was thinking you were going to ask me what makes a great leader and I was going to roll into. We're going to do that too. We're going to do

that too, just to kind of set the table. I'm the son of a United States Marine. Okay, my dad's no longer active Marine. The Marine Corps got him out of the south side of Chicago. He went to school and the GI bill, started his own company. I consider myself as an author. I have people work for me. I consider myself a small business person. That's just to kind of set the table because I actually think that your listeners and the viewers of this podcast, and I probably have a lot more in common than people might think. But what makes for a great book? First and foremost, my job, Ryan, is to entertain people. So I'm your summer beach read. You take me to the lake. You take me to the pool. It's toes in the sand, book in the hand. And what makes a good book, I think, is something that people

can't put down. So I love it when I do interviews and I get introduced. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the reason I didn't get any sleep last night is because of our next guest, Brad Thor. I write short, crisp, cinematic chapters. I want people to keep turning those pages. I have a cliffhanger at the end of every single chapter. So I'm in entertainment. So that's primarily my number one job is to keep you entertained throughout the book. If I do that, then I've done my job as an author. I call what I do faction, where you don't know where the facts end and the fiction begins. I really do a lot of research for my thrillers. And I've done 23 with the current character, protagonist Scott Harvath, and I tell people that my books are like the James Bond movies.

If there's a new bond film in your local multiplex and you've never seen a prior bond movie, it's okay. You can go see that bond movie. You're not going to be left behind. You're going to know who he is, what he stands for and what he does. Same thing with my books. But I realize that it is show business. So on the business end of things, as an author who is putting these books together, I have to constantly keep in mind that I'm competing against, you know, binging a series or the thing that I, hate, which is just constant scrolling because there's no end of scrolling. And it takes a lot of self-discipline

to finish a book. And I know that. So I want to create, when I create a book, what makes a good book is that people lose track of time. And they keep going and going and going. And listen, you know, if you buy a hardcover book, you're spending about 30 bucks. You're buying an e-book. You're probably spending about 15. audio book is right in that e-book kind of range. So you can go out and make more money. What you can't make more of is your time. That is a finite commodity. You could be spending that on other hobbies. You could be spending it at work, developing your business even further. You could be spending it with your family. So it's incumbent upon me to give you the best thrill ride I'm capable of because I want you to come back. And I don't want to waste your time. And that's part of the way that I was raised.

My dad, like I said, was a Marine. My mom had been a flight attendant in the 60s for TWA. And I was taught that even if you push a broom, you'd be the best damn broom pusher you can be. And that's what I try to bring to the writing of my thrillers. So good. Let's break down the element of stories because that's what you do. You're a storyteller. You tell stories for a living. You create a world. And within that world, the characters live. And there's a constant movement and action and suspense. and cliffhangers. So all that goes into it, but at its essence, right, you're a storyteller. So if you had to break down the elements of storytelling and how to do it effectively, because

I think this could help all people, certainly leaders, because leaders need to tell, be effective storytellers, I think to move people and inspire them. What are those elements of effective storytelling? It's a good question. I think everybody is going to be different when it comes to what makes for good storytelling. A certain amount of it is just raw talent. There's two types of writers, two types of storytellers. We call them plotters and pancers. And plotters are big outliners. They think of every single thing. My buddy, Dan Brown, is an outliner. I got to see the outline for Da Vinci Code. Dan was kind enough to share it with me years ago. And it was fascinating what Dan left out. And that is one of the greatest pieces of advice that Elmore Leonard used to give the fiction author used to give young writers is he used to give two pieces of advice. Number one, don't start. with the weather. It was a dark and stormy night. Don't start with that and leave out the parts that people skip. So my dad used to read Clancy and swore that Clancy got paid by the word. And my dad would skip these long passages about like how the guidance system on a missile works. And I swore that I would

never put that in my thrillers, that I would leave out the parts that people skip. It's not important to know what kind of propellant goes into the missile or how a gyroscope works, in my opinion. And that bogs the storytelling down. And I have to be fluid. Again, I know I'm competing against a lot of distractions. So I don't want to bore people. So it's most important that you know that there's a couple of maybe a couple of green berets that are hiding in the bushes and have this laser that's painting the side of a house. And that's how the hellfire missile is going to find the house.

So as a storyteller, don't bore people. How about that? As the number one thing, don't bore people. I used to promise when I sat in assemblies in high school, I used to promise myself that if my high school, ever had me back. I would not stand on the stage and bore these poor kids the way these adults would come in and bore me as a high school student. I know you and I are going to talk about the benefits of reading fiction, but to be a good storyteller, you have to have empathy. That's something else. Don't bore people. Have empathy. Put yourself in their position. And that's what I do as a writer.

I write the kind of books I would like to read. So a good leader not only knows his team and his audience, he can read the room and can move on the fly a little bit too. I think that's, I think anybody who's a good leader is creative and has that ability. So don't bore people, be empathetic, understand how you can read the room. And then one of my greatest pieces of advice is when you have to tell a story, take the first four ideas that pop in your head and throw them out. Because those four ideas, if they're occurring to you,

they're probably occurring to your audience. And if you want to keep your audience's attention, surprise them. Give them things they did not think were coming. And I think probably the final piece of advice I would give for storytellers is be comfortable. In fact, make it your talent to break rules. There were 10 commandments that came down. Two had to do with adultery. There were zero about telling a good story, right? So you can do whatever you want. Ignore the rules, but you have to entertain people. If you want them to listen, if you want them to absorb what you're saying, you have to entertain them. Don't be like everybody else.

Don't bore them. Actually have them hanging on what you're going to say next and have them look forward to hearing your stories. Because if people recognize you as a good storyteller, they're going to look forward to the next story you have to tell and the story after that and so on and so forth. So if you can tell as a leader good stories, people are not only going to look forward to those stories, but their ears and their minds are going to be open to the information that you want to share with them. I love the element of surprise. I'm with you. I think that's what makes the best stand-up comedians in the world are really good at that.

They say obvious things in a way that maybe you haven't thought of before, but then they also surprise you. And I think that's something you're also really good at. Can you think of an example, whether it's something you've read or written or watched where it opened? Because I think the openings of stories, the openings of books, the openings of chapters, movies, shows. A quarterly town hall, if you're the CEO leading it, the opening is so important where maybe there's humor, maybe there's surprise, suspense. Usually starts with some sort of good story, though. So can you think of an example that you could point people to say, oh, okay, that's what Brad's

talking about? Listen, I think every TED talk, every good TED talk that blows up starts with something surprising. Okay? This is you've got to grab the audience's attention. You've already been introduced. People know who you are. So it is that first thing out of the box. You know, there was this old thing about Chekhov's gun. If you're going to put a gun on stage, you have to fire it by the end of the play. You can't just have a gun sitting there, never fire it. And I'm a big believer of fire the gun immediately. Fire it. Shock people. Grab them. Because if you grab them once and you really surprise them, they're going to expect some more. more surprises. And that's what put people on the edge of their seat. You want people leaning in, leaning forward to what you have to say, leaning forward into what you have to say. So if you can really give them a bang up front, you will have them for the rest of the talk if you keep

peppering in some surprises. But what you're doing is you're basically setting the bar for whatever story you're going to tell by surprising them right out of the gate. And that's, that to me is what makes a successful storyteller. I used to love watching the, I believe it was on Showtime with Liv Schreiber, Ray Donovan, the series, which everything that could go wrong for this guy would go wrong. And I would think that I knew what was going to happen next and they constantly, again, went through like the four things that probably came into the writer's minds and threw them all out and then started kicking around what a five, six, and seven look like. So that for me is one of my favorite all-time TV shows, Ray Donovan, because he constantly surprised me. I tuned into each

episode not knowing what's going to happen next. Billions is another one where these guys were constantly in the business world outdoing each other, whether it was the, you know, the AG going after the Axe Capital or whatever it might be, Paul Giamada. I was constantly surprised by the twists in the turns. And that's good storytelling where I'm on the edge of my seat. I don't know what's going to happen next. And I can't wait to see where you're taking me in the next couple of minutes. That's so cool. I got to tour the Billions Riders Room with Brian Coppelman when I was in New York to record with Brian. And that was a thrill for me just to hear, one, how he assembled that team as well as then the process. That's why I'm fascinated by writers like you guys, because you create

these worlds and these characters within these worlds. And yet somehow keep coming up with new and fresh ideas and new misadventures and new conflict intentions to bring up and then resolutions and then cliffhangers. It's like, how do you do that? How much of it is, were you born with this versus how much have you developed this skill to keep people on the edge of their seats? You know what? If I could have picked any talent to be born with, I would have chosen to be a singer. I love the great American songbook. So I love Nat King Cole and Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra. That would have been the talent I would have chosen. I've done, as I said at the beginning, 23 books in this series.

And you would think it would get easier. And it doesn't. It gets harder because I have to come up with, like you said, I have to come up with scenarios from my character that he hasn't been in before. I've got to keep him fresh. I've got to keep revealing parts of him. So it is a constant ongoing discovery of the character in his world, even for me. And when I talked about, I never finished my previous thought.

And I'm sorry, I talked about Dan Brown being a plotter. I got to see what was in Da Vinci and more specifically what was not in the Da Vinci Code. I'm not an outliner. I'm what they call a pancer where I come in every day. I don't know what's going to happen next. I want to have the same experience writing one of my thrillers that you do reading it. And there's a quote by Robert Frost that I love very much. And he said, no joy in the writer, no joy in the reader, no surprise in the writer.

So I'm a pancer. We joke in my house that my wife knows if it's a red wine night or a bourbon night by the look on my face when I leave the office. You know, how badly did I paint myself into a corner? And on those rough nights, when it's a bourbon night, my wife will say, listen, I know it doesn't seem like you can figure out a way to get your character out of this tonight, but you're going to figure it out tomorrow when you go back into the office. And again, that's the, you know, you toss in the trash can those first four ideas and then you really start workshopping five, six and seven. So you said a pancer. Am I saying that right? Seed of your pants. Yeah. See to your pants. So it's so sorry. That's your pants. You fly by the seed of your pants. How often are you looking at the blank page? All the time. All the time. And I will admit I'm a perfectionist. Okay. That is just part of my personality. And that makes it even more difficult because I'm constantly saying to myself, can this be better? Is the way this character said this the right way? And

And so I toil. I really work hard. People think that you do this many books and, oh, you must have a formula. I wish. I wish there was a formula. There isn't. I approach, nope, I approach every single book as if it's the first thriller I've ever written. And I ask myself, is this idea and the execution of the idea good enough to get me a contract with Simon and Schuster and will it land me on top of the bestseller list across the country? So I am always only as good as the, the most recent thing I've done. I got a great big body of work, 24 books in total because I did a spinoff series called the Athena Project one year about an all female Delta Force team.

But it's always about how good is the most recent thing I've written and then trying to get better with next year's book. Are you always only working on one book at a time? Or do you sometimes have multiple ideas working on multiple books at a time? I've got more ideas, I think, than I'll ever be able to put in book form in my lifetime. So, but it is pretty much one book at a time because I'm looking for a big geopolitical set piece for my faction that I want to use as the background, the backdrop for the book. So I'm not, you know, working on a book that's three years down the line from now. I'm just focused like a laser on whatever the current project is.

I spoke with Ryan Holiday recently. He's written 12 nonfiction books. Yeah, yeah. Love him. Met him in an elevator in New York. He's the best. Oh, that's cool. We just recorded in Austin, but he is always like the second he finishes. he's starting the next one. So before the book even comes out, like the next book is almost done

in some cases. Are you like that? Are you on a pace like that that second you finish the book, you turn it in and then you're working on the next one or like you're pacing like? I mean, so first, you know, Ryan does nonfiction. I do fiction. Right. And I tell people it's like the difference between NASCAR and Formula One. They both have four wheels. They both go around a track. And that's where the similarities end. So I mean, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I joke around about Stephen King, too, that Stephen King has got a, he creates his own world as he goes. Me, because I'm doing stuff like Clancy and Ludlam, that kind of espionage thing and special operations peppered in there. I have a certain amount, I have a box that I'm in.

I can't have Navy SEALs with laser guns. They have to be carrying the weapons that seals carry or if I'm talking about guys out of the unit. It's got to be, all the tactics have to be correct and everything. So I do a book a year. And the amount of time, it's like how people say, how long is it take you to write a book? And I say, how long is a piece of string? Each piece of string is different. Each book is different. So some require more research for me. Some require more travel where there's many more locations I want to go to in research before I write the book. So everyone is different. But I have a, I'm under contract with Simon and Schuster to produce a book a year. So each book takes a different amount of time. They're like kids. Every single one is different. So and then when I'm not writing, I'm reading Ryan stuff, believe it or not. I just, I just shot a video this morning for Amazon and Simon and Schuster in India. And they asked me to recommend three books.

And the first one I recommended was The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan. I'm a huge fan and ambassador for Ryan's work. Do you ever get to the point? So you have a book of your contract. And let's say you're close to finishing it. You're like, God, this one just doesn't measure up. Like it just isn't all there. It's not to my standards, but I have to ship it because I committed to this contract with

Simon & Schuster. Have you ever got to that point? I've never gotten to that point because I, for me, so one of the best pieces of advice I ever heard for writers block was to give yourself permission to write a crummy first draft. And what that does is it removes the, it kind of takes away those, that lends a perfectionism. It allows you to make mistakes and things like that. And the fact is that if you've got any talent as a writer, you're not going to write a crummy first draft. But giving yourself permission to do that, permission to fail, helps to kind of widen, open up the tap a little bit more so more the water comes out.

But no, I am writing the book for myself. So I'm not going to write garbage and get to the end of the book and go, wow, this whole book sucks. It's going to be to my standard. and every year, whether the readers notice it or not, I'm trying to raise the bar. So I'm reading books in the offseason about writing, about character development, about plot twists and things like this. So I'm constantly trying to improve my craft so that I get better. And I think it's because I care so much and I am such a perfectionist that I'm still at this point in my career, 24 books in where I'm adding to my audience constantly. and we're putting, we are meaning me and Simon and Schuster together,

we're putting up books that people enjoy and people look forward to and plan their vacations around every year. And I think that's just because of my commitment. I don't work for Simon and Schuster. I work for the readers. And I serve at their pleasure. I have a job for as long as they will allow me to have the job. And so that's why I work so hard on my books is because, again,

these people can go make more money. They can't make more time. And I want to be a good steward of their time. And if I'm a good steward of their time and I tell them a great story, they're going to let me go back and write another book and tell them a great story next summer. And so that's how I focus on my business. So Stephen King wrote on writing. So he wrote a book about writing about storytelling.

Have you thought about doing that? No. It would bore the hell out of me. You want to do that? You don't think it would be good? You know what? I went to the University of Southern California. And at one point, they said, keep an open mind about coming back.

in teaching here at some point. They said you might get to the point in your career where you want to come back. And I think that would be fantastic. I don't think I could do a nonfiction book like that. That to me, it would bore me. I got to be honest with you. It would bore me. I'd rather, that doesn't mean I don't want to transmit that information, but I would rather be in a classroom setting. I'm very much an extrovert and I like to interact with other people. So that's how I would like to communicate that knowledge is, you know, whether it's a master class or whether it's going back to USC to teach or teaching at Vanderbilt or something here in Nashville, something like that. I think with human interaction, that to me would be more exciting and more fulfilling than writing

a book. So one of the things I was when I was talking with your team about your background in your history, I love the amount of work you put into understanding the worlds in which you're creating. For example, it's like in 2008, you shadowed a black ops team in Afghanistan to research for your thriller, The Apostle. So that part of your job, one, seems really cool, but also seems that it shows your dedication and commitment level to really grasping and understanding what you're writing about. You don't make it up. Like you're actually living it. You're there. You go there. You go to the place. Can you take me back to that story when you're shadowing this black ops team in Afghanistan to research for your book and like what that was like

and what you learned from that experience. It was funny. They told me at the very end of the couple of weeks that I was over there that they had reserved a hotel room for me in Kabul that if I had, if we had touched down in Kabul and I stepped on to the tarmac and started trembling, they were going to secret me away in a hotel room and let me sit there for two weeks while they did what they had to do and then they were going to come back and get me. I didn't. I actually really had a good time over there. In fact, the best fried chicken I've ever had was in Jalalabad in my life. It was fantastic fried chicken. It was really interesting. I learned a lot. I learned that there's capital T Taliban and little T Taliban, which the best way I can equate that is it's like people that get involved,

maybe in L.A., the blood's in the Crips, and somebody has an association with one of those gangs because it's necessary for survival. They're not necessarily a gangbanger themselves, but that's necessary for survival. I learned a lot about the Pashto code called the Pashtun Wali, which we did not go into a single village where we were not invited by the village elders because of their code, which is if you're a guest, they will fight to the last man in the village to keep you alive. So that was pretty cool. And then what was interesting is the team that I was with always introduced me, explained who I was, and what I did for a living. Because in Afghanistan, there are a handful of professions that are very highly respected.

One is physician, and the other is actually author. So there was a lot, I got a lot of street, I don't know if we call it street cred, but it opened a lot of doors. They don't have a lot of authors rolling through Afghanistan, particularly the places we were at. So they asked a lot of questions. They were really interested in writing books, and, you know, they would tell me if they had read certain books by Western authors

and stuff. It was very, very interesting. There was one other thing. I wanted to go down to Kandahar. There was something that was going to be happening in Kandahar that I wanted to see. And I told the guys I wanted to go down there. And one of the guys on the team who was responsible for kind of knowing what the temperature was in different places we had to go to, said, you know what, that's too hot. We would need to take a truckload of Panscheris with us to serve as extra guys on triggers.

He's like, we're not going. And so we cut that out of our trip. and had we gone, there was a massive suicide bombing that happened right at the spot we're going to go to. And they were taking out a police chief with the suicide bombing. And so the guy who had said no to that, who I'd said, okay, well, if we can't go, we can't go. He then made a joke. He said, Brad, you don't even get to decide where we stop to use the restroom for the rest of the trip. He said, your instincts are so bad. He said, if we had listened to you and gone down there, who knows, we could have all been, you know, victims of this terrible terrorist attack. So,

So anyway, the attack itself was not funny. The fact that they acted like somehow I could have seen it coming, you know, that was just kind of busted my chops for the rest of the trip. So it was a fascinating, fascinating time. And I think added my trip over there really added some great color to that, to that thriller, The Apostle. There's something about being there. I think that is a leadership learning too, Brad, because it's one thing to sit in the office

and to talk through things with other leaders, it's completely different to go there, see customers, be on the front lines. General Stanley McChrystal talked about that on this podcast, how he couldn't stop doing that, even though it was dangerous for a four-star general, but he had to get out on or near the front lines with the people on the ground

to get a real feel for what was happening. And it seems like that's something that is very important to you, because you want to make your books are fixed, and their novels and their thrillers, but in a way, part of what makes them good is how real they are. And I just sense that that's a big value of yours. Well, first of all, that's high praise indeed. So thank you. And the details are the bedrock of a good thriller.

There's that old expression, and it applies to details. You watch the pennies and the pounds watch themselves. You need to pay attention to the details. One of the things that drives me crazy is if I'm reading somebody's book, and they put a safety on a Glock. There is no manual safety on a Glock pistol. And that's a very simple piece of technical information. And if you blow that, now I start not being able to trust you.

You know, there's a willing suspension of disbelief that happens. When you ask people to come into the world that you create, you're not going to psychologically bump them out of the magic and the world that you've created. But when I read authors that get something that simple wrong, now I'm kind of putting walls up and everything. Now I'm looking for more stuff that you're going to have that's incorrect. I'm not perfect. I have made mistakes. There's no question. But I really pride myself on having developed a network of experts in all of these areas, whether

it's the intelligence community, the special operations community, the diplomatic community, law enforcement, just on and on and on. And I've got these people I call my sharpshooters. And I'm able to share the manuscript with them before it goes to press so that they can say, hey, I think I know what you were talking about here, but you said it wrong, that kind of a thing. So a lot of people have this image of just the writer toiling away in seclusion, just being in isolation. And it's not true.

Without the wide network of experts that I have, without them, I wouldn't be able to write my books. When you think about, Brad, the amazing leaders, you've had the good fortune to be around, whether it's a special operations community, your dad, others where you've gotten to witness it up close and personal, your own life as a leader running a business because you are, what have you found to be some of the commonalities among leaders who seem to sustain excellence over an extended period of time? Well, I will include Stanley McChrystal in this, since you mentioned Stan and a very good friend of mine worked for General McChrystal after General McChrystal left the military, and I got to meet him and introduce him at a function.

So I got to spend some time with him. There is number one. We talked about empathy, right, in being a good storyteller. So I think empathy is key for a leader. It's one of the reasons that I love that TV show undercover boss. The idea of a leader disguising himself so that he can go in, whether you've got a bunch of franchisees or whatever it might be. But this idea of going in and being able to see things get closer to the customer and see the experience from the customer. and see the experience from the customer's point of view, if you do that.

And at the very least, to see the experience of your employees, your team, no matter where they fall kind of in the organizational hierarchy. So I think empathy is critical for good leadership. We've been given two ears and one mouth. I used to always love that expression. You know, you're supposed to listen more than you speak. But I don't think you can get into a position of leadership without being a good listener. Because if you're not a good listener, you're not going to be able to.

to one, detect when there are problems, and two, fully take in the information as to what's causing the problem so you can come up with a solution. Creativity, obviously another big thing for leadership, but I'm a big believer in being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes, whether it's a member of your team or your customer, and then being a good listener because there's a lot of stuff, even when they're not talking, people are talking. So there's so much stuff that your team and your customers will tell you if you're willing to listen. I know authors that hate reading bad reviews on Amazon. And I just say to myself, well, that's just foolish.

That's a virtual suggestion box sitting in the lobby of your business. Why would you as the leader as the author? Why would you not want to hear what people have to stay? I know it can be tough when people knock you. You have to have a thick skin. Art is really tough because it's very subjective, right? I could write the best book in the world and I'll have some guy go, this is the worst thing I've ever read. And I can have a thousand people say it's the best thing they've ever read, but the one

that sticks with you is the guy that's complaining. Now, if he says it's just he didn't like it, okay, that's subjective. If he gives you details, that's like finding gold. If he says, okay, I didn't like this, this and this, agree or disagree. I'm not a big, I'm not a believer in the customer's always right. The customer is often wrong. In fact, one of the things that's interesting about being an author is you do get people that want to play gotcha. you. So they show up on your Facebook. I caught the big author in a mistake. And I'm always respectful. I always say thank you because I appreciate that it's very rare is that somebody playing gotcha. Okay. Oftentimes when I get somebody who shows up on social media to correct me, it's because they love the books. And they want to help the author and make me a better author. But what has happened more often than not is that I'm corrected. They're not. So there's a French expression that's very funny. And it's, It translates to encourage the others. And you would think that it was a whole thing about,

I believe it was one of Napoleon's colonel. No, it was like a lieutenant who ran away from a battle because they didn't think he could win it. And they had them drawn and quartered or something like that to encourage the others. And I used the term in French. And I had five or six people jump on Facebook and say, no, no, no, no, it's to discourage the others.

And then I said, no, no, no. It actually is a funny play on words. And it is to encourage the others. And I put a nice link in to Webster's for where it is. But I've had people say, oh, that gun's not made in 38 caliber. And I'd say, actually, 10 of those guns were made. Three went to the Saudis. Four went to the British royal family.

Here's the article. But the mind's like a parachute, right? It has to be open to work. And if people are going to come to you because they want to make you better and they want to offer you advice, this is where the listening comes in. Again, I always think it's a good thing for a leader. don't assume you know what's motivating the other person. Keep your mind open like a parachute.

Keep your ears open. And what's amazing is those customers, the ones you depend on, the one, they are the reason you're in business. Your team absolutely extremely important that you take care of them and they function well. But the customers will tell you what they want more of and sometimes they'll tell you what they want less of. And that's like I said, that's like striking gold. I'm curious about your pre-publishing process of getting feedback from those you trust.

So I've written a 3D books so far, Brad, all nonfiction. How many? Three. Nonfiction. And one of my parts of the process is when it's technically done, then send it to this early group, small group of people that I really trust that I think are excellent writers. A few of them are lawyers. So they're like properly trained from law school.

A few of them are just a creative writer. writers, one of them writes fiction, and I say, hey, just like redline this thing to death. And I'm not going to take every suggestion, but I will definitely look at it and consider it. And that's been one of the most helpful processes for me with all three books of sometimes changing things or thinking about them or re-wording them or rewriting them before it actually goes to print. What's your process like when you feel like you're either done or close to done? Do you have a team? Do you have a group of people that you get feedback from? Or are you like, you know what? I've done this a long time. I know what I'm doing. When I get this thing done,

I ship it and we go. What's it like for you? So I have my sharpshooters who are not creative writers. They're, you know, CIA guys, people from the seal community, guys out of the unit, whomever they may be. And I share with them former administration or yeah i try not to bug guys if i know they're currently working for the government like in an administration i had a very good friend of but i had a very good friend of mine who was the hostage czar his name is robert o'brien and i did a book uh called backlash and i had included the hostage czar in there and i was really delicate with how much stuff i asked him so i didn't ask him to read the whole book i'm like here's a couple of chapters you know based on what it is i think you're

kind of doing there and could you critique him that kind of a thing so i'm looking for contents, not creativity. I don't want people to say, oh, you could have written this sentence different or whatever. I just want to know, hey, no. In fact, yeah, the Marine Corps white top helicopters used to be this type of helicopter. We've now switched them. Those all just came into service in the last 18 months. That kind of stuff I'm interested in. So I get that. I finish the book. My wife is my first reader. And I call her Zorro, because she goes through with a red pen and she'll just, she'll take out stuff if she thinks it's repetitive or it doesn't drive the story forward. She's fabulous. She could have been a professional editor at Simon & Chuster.

She's great. So she'll go through it and then I'll look at the suggestions and I don't always agree with her. And then I will make the changes and then send it to my editor at Simon and Chuster. And by the time my editor gets at Simon and Chuster, it's extremely clean because my wife, you know, the Oxford comma, I mean anything at all. You use this word. You meant this word or this is a better word to use. She's really helpful because instead of just saying, I don't want. like this, she'll make some suggestions. She'll say, you can say this in one sentence instead of two,

and here's how you do it. So I'm very lucky that I have somebody who could be a professional editor just in the other room. Wow. Another cool part of your background and experiences, you served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security's analytic red cell unit. How did that happen? What was that like? So in the aftermath of 9-11, when the Department of Homeland Security got stood up. One of the things the federal government realized immediately before the 9-11 commission was ever impaneled, they said this attack was successful because of a failure of imagination on our part. So they said, we're never going to be caught with our creative pants down again. And they set up this thing called the analytic red cell unit. And the goal was to bring creative people from outside

DC and northern Virginia into that part of the United States to help them brainstorm how terrorists might strike, what targets they might strike at home and abroad, that kind of a thing. And so I was invited into it, Michael Bay, the director of the Transformer movies and the Benghazi, the 13 hours movie, Michael Bay was in there. And it was pretty cool. I call it the Las Vegas of government programs, because what happens in the red cell stays in the red cell. I can't use any of it for my books. Michael Bay can't take any of it and put it in a movie. You know, as we discussed, my dad, longer active Marine, but once a Marine, always a Marine. My dad served his country by picking up a rifle. I am honored to have been asked to serve my country by just using the gray matter between my

years. So it's one of the proudest things I've ever done in my life is to be able to just be part of the red cell unit for the government. So you were coming up with creative ideas of ways people could attack us and sharing like. Yeah, this is these, these are some attack methodologies that might be employed or they would feed us little bits of information. So you wondered, did, I don't know, pick anybody, I'm just going to randomly grab the Defense Intelligence Agency, did they have some clues where they couldn't understand how they fit together? Like, hey, we've got these Michael Jordan shoes, these kicks that were bought in Brooklyn,

but they showed up in Karachi, washed up on the beach. And the kid that found him had been arrested in Lahore three months earlier. and he had a cell phone chip that was sold out of a store in Dallas. How might all these things knit together kind of a thing? So we didn't know if these were creative exercises or if they were feeding us bits and pieces of puzzles that they had not yet been able to figure out what the full puzzle looked like. Wow. Was there a lot of pressure in that room?

Was that tough? No. What was it like? They were actually really, really good at creative people are tough to keep focused. and, you know, and to keep of, you know, they're not good after lunch because they all probably had a glass of, well, we didn't drink wine while we were doing this. But the creatives can get distracted very easily, but they had good facilitators who really understood, because it wasn't just one-on-one. They put us in a room with a bunch of people that, you know, we never knew what

agencies the other people work for, but it was pretty obvious. You know, all the alphabets in the soup had people there. And they were really good. My wife did, when she was in medical school, She did something, a different track for learning called PBL, problem-based learning. And she went on to teach PBL afterwards. And I remember going to some of the PBL sessions with her. And it was very interesting on if you had somebody who dominated a discussion, there are actual physical cues you could do where you give them a little bit of your back and you don't give them the attention.

And it slows them down from sucking all the air out of the room and hogging the full discussion when you had other people that needed to participate. So having been exposed to that through my wife, it was fascinating to watch the facilitators do the same thing. There's some of this stuff, the psychology, into how to solicit the best out of everybody in the room. It's a real art form. Wow. So cool. For someone like you that has to be a prolific producer of something, that also, I think, translates to all leaders.

Leaders need to be prolific in what they're doing each day. I'm curious about how you regularly build up energy in order to do that. You've got to use your brain constantly. You've got to write. You've got to do this all the time. And you've been consistent for a long time. So what is your routine? What is your process like in order to build up the energy in order to be a prolific producer of things?

So I have a friend here who's a very successful songwriter here in Nashville. And his name is John Bettis. and John wrote most of the hits for the carpenters, and he's written for Madonna. I mean, he just had a lot of success. And Bettis is just a brilliant guy, so creative, very, very smart, very funny. And Bettis asked me a great question once, Ryan. He asked me, he said, Brad, how do you recharge your creative battery? I'm like, what are you talking about?

And he said, well, I'd finish an album. He said, I'll tell you my process. I would finish an album with the carpenters or whatever, you know, star I was working with. And I'd hop on my sailboat. He lived in L.A. at the time. And he said, I'd sail to Catalina, and I'd anchor off Catalina for a week. And I didn't have a cell phone. I only ate what I could pull out of the water. And he said, that helped me reset. So in between, I love to travel. International travel is my thing. I had a television show on public television for several years called Traveling Light before I became

an author. And so immersing myself in another culture, always may be a better American, but being able to shut off the news and the constant bombardment that we have coming in at us. I'll put out of office on the email and I'll actually respect it. I mean, I just won't, I won't answer the emails. And I'm very clear, there's a couple of people that know if they text me. If it's an emergency, I'll do it. So that's important between projects. You need to reset, whatever that is for you. I mean, I have no idea, but for me, it's international travel. The actual writing of the books, the process, my children are gone now to college, so I've got an empty nest, but my process is still the same. I treat it like a job Monday through Friday.

I get up, I work out, I get into the office by about 8.30, and then I'm here until 6, 6.30. It's not constant writing, but it is, you know, seat of pants to seat a chair. I mean, the water doesn't flow unless the tap is open. That's an old line about writing, and you can't rewrite a, you can't edit a blank page. So there's all of these great sayings about writing, but you really do have to put yourself in the chair, sit in front of the computer. My computer, you can't see. I'm looking off camera because there's a wall, and I have a standing desk. I have a great, beautiful desk.

I never use it anymore. I've got this standing desk that I can raise and lower all the time, and I roll my computer over to the blank wall. I don't want to look out the windows. I just have to sit there because when I write, the story plays out on the movie screen of my mind. And again, I want to have the experience writing it that you do reading it. So it's very cinematic for me. And that's the way I write, short, crisp, cinematic chapters. But it really, it can be tough because I am a voracious consumer of news.

I get a lot of inspiration from what happens in the news. And I'm not a sports guy. Politics is my baseball. I am fascinated by politics. I've worked on presidential campaigns, been to the White House. Didn't you run for president? it or you thought about it? I announced. Yeah, I did. I did think about it. And then I ended up leaving the Republican Party because I just was unhappy with the way it was going. And so I've been,

I've been an independent since for several years now. So I just didn't like the direction that it took. And that again, as part of being the son of a United States Marine, we talk about character being destiny and all that kind of stuff in the importance of integrity, just all of the things that you would think about that you would put under kind of the umbrella of what makes for a good leader. That was drilled into us by my father growing up. It's hire slow, fire fast, all the things you want to look for in your team. And then if you are assembling a team, if you have the privilege of leading a team, what are your duties? Not only to shareholders in your customers, but also to your team members. And so we really were taught that we're stewards

of this country. We don't own America. It's incumbent upon us to leave a free or more successful stronger, better defended, more successful nation to the next generation. Because again, we're caretakers. We hand it off and we should hand it to the next generation better than it was handed to us. So we had a lot. We, we marinated in leadership and what makes for good leaders growing up particularly with my dad, who's a Marine. Wow. So I mean, to announce to be to be the president of United States is a like massive thing huge ambition like where were you at in your mind at that point to say like I want to make a run with this thing let's go I'm going to be very honest I don't like Trump I never thought he was a man of good character I couldn't stand him and I really don't

believe that I don't want to see another here's where this is what I'm motivated by Ryan I don't want to see another 9-11 to bring us together the way we were on 9-12 I think people ask me what do you think the greatest national security risk is to the United States? And I say the internet. The internet has been so bad for us culturally. I don't think we've reaped enough benefits. You see what Instagram does to young girls and even young men, young boys. I just think the internet's terrible. I think it's, we're doing this interview right now, be the internet. That's great. There's not enough goodness in the internet to outweigh the badness in my estimation. I didn't like the fact that people were not directly challenging Trump. He can do his word salad

and run rings around people. And he just avoids answering questions. So when I did that, when I said, I want to run, that was during the, it was in the lead up to the primaries. I wanted to see if I could pull enough to get on the debate stage with him, to really put issues about character and leadership and that kind of stuff. And what makes America great? It's, you know, I had to build a wall and all this nonsense.

You know, his tariff war with China, the amount of subsidies that went to U.S. farmers, it was twice as much as the U.S. auto bailout. And Americans don't know this because they don't have. have the attention spent. Not enough Americans know. There's plenty who do. I can't say Americans don't know this. But there are so many things that I think are important in, we are the greatest nation in the history of the world. If you were a soul up in heaven right now and God was saying, okay, you can be born at any time in history and in any country, but I'm not going to tell you what color you are. If you have any handicaps, what your sexual orientation is going to be, none of that.

You just get to pick the time and the place you're born and roll the dice on everything else. you would pick America right here today, right now. And I think that matters. And I think protecting what we are is important. That said, I also understand the surge in populism that we've had. I mean, it's not just us. It's Brexit in the UK and things like that. There's a lot of ways in which globalization failed the United States. You have these towns where grandpa worked at the factory. My dad worked at the factory. Shit, the factory's closed. What do I do now? And it's not like, like the Dust Bowl and all these other kinds of things where there was no government assistance and people had no choice. If you wanted to eat, if you wanted to survive, you packed up everything you owned

in your car and you drove someplace else where the jobs are. That doesn't happen now, right? People can get a certain amount of government assistance. And by the way, I've never met anybody who's on government assistance who likes being on government assistance, but people can get glued in place. And we've got the fentanyl crisis and people are abusing drugs and things like that. I, I, I, I think that we were very short-sighted in maximizing profit. I'm a capitalist. I like maximizing profit. But when we began to offshore everything, I don't think anybody, not the politicians, not a lot of

people in boardrooms, I think the focus was such that people didn't take a breath. There wasn't the empathy to say, what does this do? We're now taking our business away from this factory in the Rust Belt. What happens to those people? And now we're reaping that just the way the Brits did. too with Brexit. There was a reason right up until the vote. They thought, oh, we're not going to exit the EU and all this kind of stuff. And it showed a lack of empathy. It showed a lack, they wanted to paint people as hillbillies or just uneducated blue collar workers. These are your fellow

country men and women. You can be a capitalist. You can be about maximizing profits. I know I like to see profits maximize at companies I invest in. But we have responsibility as citizens, as Americans. I just think, again, mine's like a parachute, got to be open to work. I think we're kind of learning, unfortunately, sometimes we only learn lessons in hindsight. And I think we're learning a big one now. And again, the populism, it's not just here. The Germans have it. The French. I mean, this is not just an American issue. It is a global, particularly in the Western world, it is a big issue. So that's the kind of stuff I wanted to be on stage talking about. I didn't want Trump to be able to rope a dope the other people. And having worked on a couple of presidential campaigns,

I understood that if you want to really get into it with this guy, you've got to be able to kind of put Marcus Queensberry rules aside and go after them and not let them rope a dope you and get some answers. And then I realized it's, I wasn't going to pull support that I wanted to pull and the country was going a certain direction. And I was watching the Republican Party fall in line behind Trump. And I was like, no, okay, this is this is not the part. You know, listen, I'm a sunny Reagan optimist. Reagan wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I thought he was fantastic. I really liked him. I liked his personality. Like what he did as a leader. I thought he was very, very courageous, creative, empathetic, funny. Goodness, that guy was funny.

So I just felt compelled to rise to the level to the calling that we were taught as kids in my house, that we are responsible for this country. into like I said, hand it down to the next generation better. So that's, that's what had influenced that. I don't feel like my, my family, my family jokes, Ryan, that like Alan on, there should be a 12-step program for me, except it would be called on and on and on. I feel like I found what you're really passionate about. I don't think that's the end of your politician days, Brad. I don't know. Like you're going to run again for something? You know what? I have this dream.

My wife doesn't, my wife doesn't like politics. So I have this dream about going back to Chicago. I feel like you love it though. I do. I do. I love it. I have a friend of mine back in Chicago who's in the media back there and he keeps encouraging me to come back and run for mayor of all things of Chicago.

And I told him, I said, you know, if I ever did do that, I would launch my campaign from a very significant place. I'm not going to give it away because if I ever do it, I wanted to be just surprised. But I've thought about it. I don't know that I have. necessary background to go for such a high office so quickly. But you know what? I mean, at some point, my kids are grown up. They are insulated. You know, I would hate to run for politics and have, you know, all the slings and arrows coming my way. And my kids active on social media and having to

hear that stuff. But as they become adults, that might be, I don't know. We'll see which way the country's going. And, but I would love to see us again. I don't want another 9-11 to bring us together. I really hope that doesn't happen. Yes, 100%. Do look for. forward to seeing this announcement in Chicago here in the future, though. One more question, Brad, before we got to go, I'm curious for somebody who is a bit earlier in their career who wants to be a professional writer. They want to earn their living through writing, which is insanely hard. You've been doing it for a while. A tiny, tiny percentage of people who want to do it actually get to do it. So I know it's a long shot for everyone. But what life slash career, because I know there's

a life element too. It's not just the career part. What life slash career advice would you give to a person like that? You just got to keep writing. You got to keep writing and writing and writing and rewriting. Mary Higgins-Clark used to get up two hours before the rest of her family and sit at her kitchen table and write. And she's one of the most successful authors ever. I mean, Stephen King was a school teacher and he was writing. So you just need to do it. You know, writing is something you can always get better at. So that's the other thing, too. I mean, I'm, I met this, you're like we said, over two decades, 24 books, and I'm still reading books about how to get better as a writer. I don't think I'll ever be finished learning how to be a writer. So, and I would also say,

so many people I see jump right into the self-publishing thing. And I don't know if you want to make a career. Some people can. Some people can. But I think, you know, I don't want to be so kind of high bound and old school to say, you know, the only way to do it is through a traditional New York publisher kind of a thing because there's plenty of people doing it on on on the internet and things like that. It's it's hard. I got to tell you, I don't know that I've got a magic piece of advice. I was very lucky. I came out of the TV world where I had a bit of a brand developed already because I was doing my travel show nationwide on public television. I was able to parlay that in my stuff with the Department of Homeland Security. I was able to discuss not what

happen in there, but terrorism issues that was really, really big. I mean, my first book came out only a couple of months after 9-11. So that for a long time with the global war on terror, that was a big subject. So I think to sell books, you have to figure out a way to let people know about your books. And that's probably the biggest thing is you could write the best book in the world, but if nobody knows about it, you're not going to sell any copies outside your family. So that's the key is how do you have a non-fif, if you're a fiction author, what's your non-fate? hook because traditionally, you know, if you want to do TV, local TV, all that kind of stuff, normally authors aren't good interview subjects. So there's a built-in resistance to putting authors on

TV. It's a great way to sell books and to let people know about them. But Sose probably ads on Facebook and things like this. You just have to be creative. You have to realize that it is a business. You have to write a great book and then you have to figure out ways to sell it. Because even if you have a New York publisher, you're still going to need to know how to sell your books because you're going to want to augment what they're doing. I don't know if that's helpful. That's actually a curveball. I hadn't considered that question, to be honest with you, Ryan, so I don't necessarily have a canned answer ready to go on that one. It's a tough question. No, no, the other thing, too, I actually have one more, is a lot of us, I put myself in this camp of we're strivers,

we're trying to sustain excellence ourselves as leaders and build things. And so we read a lot of nonfiction. And sometimes that puts the fiction on the backburn or even these. great thrillers like you write. And you tease this earlier that there is a lot of science to back up the fact that us, again, putting myself in this camp, need to be reading more fiction, need to be reading these thrillers. It'll make us better. Can you share a little bit about why the primary group of people who read nonfiction should actually read more fiction? Yeah. Particularly if you are a leader, which involves a tremendous amount of problem solving, right a good majority of your day as a leader is like constant problem solving so uh there is a

there is a very solid um base of scientific study that shows that if you read fiction we're not talking about nonfiction now we're specifically talking about fiction again if you read fiction that your empathy develops so we talked about how important it is for leadership to have empathy So your ability to be empathetic increases. Blood pressure comes down, which a lot of leaders need. And it also helps with your creativity. So reading different characters, points of view and all this kind of stuff and trying to guess what's going to happen next in the book, actually, listen, we all know, your brain's a muscle. It's got to be exercise like every other muscle.

Fiction exercises the brain in such a way that it contributes to great leadership skills. empathy, problem solving, creativity, and you have the added physical benefit of lowering blood pressure. So that's just some of the things that there's a good body of science out there that supports how good reading fiction is, particularly for leaders. Love it, man. And if you're going to get started, maybe on your first fiction thriller, why not start with Shadow of Doubt? This is by Brad Thor here, my guest. And then once you get started with that, I have a feeling it will make you. Because like you said, these are like Bond movies.

You don't have to read them in an order. You could just pick them up, pick anyone up. And I think once you get hooked on one, and I know you have probably countless examples of this, you'll then go to the next and the next and the next and the next because you realize, oh, I didn't realize I like this stuff. But this is amazing. I love reading these fiction books. I'm going to keep going.

So I highly recommend. And let's start, especially if it's your first one or if it's not, hit up Shadow of Doubt by Brad. Well, I appreciate that. And I have to tell you, what's really interesting is my protagonist is dealing with the greatest leadership issue of his career in Shadow of Doubt. So he's got one foot in one particular arena, one foot, another, and there are all these forces back in D.C. that want to pull him over the line one direction where he doesn't know if he wants to go.

So he's wrestling with what it means to be a leader and what he wants his future as a leader to deal with. So he's a spy. There's lots of action, but there is this subtle kind of theme about what is leadership that reverberates throughout the book. So good. Brad, thank you so much for being here, man. I know we went on a wide range of topics beyond just writing thrillers, but I really appreciate learning more about you, your background and the stories. And I certainly think this will be helpful for leaders. I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Brad Thor. A few takeaways from my notes. Effective storytelling. Don't start with the weather. Leave out the parts people skip.

Don't be boring. I think the same advice is useful for leaders when we're communicating with our teams. Put ourselves in the shoes of the audience and think what does it feel like to be receiving this message or this story? How can we most effectively share our message without being boring? And remember, the more entertaining it is, the more memorable it will be. So if we're trying to clearly communicate something and make sure that the message, We need to think about the story. Think about making it entertaining. Then excellence as a leader. What Brad is seen from the military leaders he studied. Empathy. Understand what it's like from their perspective. Again, goes back to the storytelling. Listen. Care for your people. Actually listen to them and be there. And then creativity. This is how we innovate. This is how we think of new creative ways to solve problems. And I like the end, the advice for writers. Gotta keep writing. Mary Higgins-Clark did it for two hours each morning before our

family woke up every day. And so whatever it is we want to be great at, we have to get the reps. Consistency beats intensity. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Brad Thor. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show. You write a thoughtful review. You rate it five stars, hopefully. And by doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.

And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.