An Operator's Guide: FM 01-47, A Field Manual for Men with Lee V Busby

Retired U.S. Army Special Operations veteran Lee V. Busby joins the show to talk about his new book An Operator's Guide: FM01-47, A Field Manual for Men

Links from the show

• Built to Operate
  https://built2operate.org
• An Operator's Guide: FM01-47, A Field Manual for Men Book
  https://amzn.to/3TzGJKp

About Lee V. Busby
Lee is a retired U.S. Army special operations veteran with 20 years of service including assignments with the 75th Ranger Regiment and 1st Special Forces Operational Detatchment-Delta (Delta Force). His career includes 12 combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He served as both a team leader and a team member in high-risk, high-performance environments where trust, preparation, and accountability meant the difference between success and failure.

Throughout his career, Lee learned that leadership is not a title, it’s earned through competence, consistency, and taking responsibility for the team. He also learned the importance of building strong teams, developing the men beside you, and knowing when to lead from the front and when to support from within the team.

Today, Lee brings those lessons forward by coaching and mentoring young men and working with teams to develop discipline, character, and ownership. His focus is on helping young men learn how to be strong teammates before they try to become leaders and helping men understand their responsibility to develop the next generation.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Lee, welcome to the show. How are you, man?

SPEAKER_00 0:17

I'm doing great. Thanks for have having me, Brandon. This is uh great to see you again.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Yeah, man, I feel like it was just yesterday you were at the house. And when I told Yvette you were gonna be on the show, she said it might have been a few years. It's so hard to tell because with the pandemic, it was like a real time warp. But any which way, I'm excited because you have a new book out. And as I was reading it, five quotes jumped right out at me that I bookmarked here, and I want to start out with a few of them and then we can unpack them. And for listeners, these aren't in any particular order here. You are always teaching people how to treat you with what you allow, tolerate, and reinforce. We can unpack that in a minute. There's another one here. When you keep a promise to yourself, even a small one, your confidence grows. This is one this one really hits home with me. Uh if your life depends on motivation, you'll quit every time life punches you in the mouth. And then there's two other ones. There's one really good one. Before I read these other ones, let's give listeners some background on you. Mr. Lee V. Busby is a retired special operations veteran with over 20 years of service in the United States military, including assignments with the 75th Ranger Regiment and First Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, aka Delta Force. His career includes 12 combat deployments, serving as both a team member and team leader in some of the most demanding operational environments in the world. And you've also had a commercial career a little bit. You did a just in an HP and you've done consulting and worked at a tactical company. So thanks again for being here. The book, just so everybody knows what we're talking about, you can grab this on Amazon. I highly recommend it. An Operator's Guide, FM 0147, a Field Manual for Men by Lee Busby. Lee, thanks a lot for coming.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Thanks again, Brand.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Yeah, so I mean, I read a few quotes. There's like so much to unpack here. I call your book or the principle in it, radical responsibility or self-responsibility. One of the things that hit home, and then I want to talk about maybe go back a little bit on how you even joined the army and then because for listeners, the army really is a fundamental part of Lee's life that is the backbone of a lot of the things in this book that you've either learned through uh being taught and then and then probably some mistakes that you've made along the way that sort of uh corrected you to to be able to learn them. I've been together with my wife for thirty years. Um not married for thirty. We've been I I think Yvette was doing diligence on me to figure out if I was crazy. And then I think we were together so long that she just figured out that she just accepted it, you know the how that works, Lee. Um a after a while. But people ask her, like, how do you stay you know, how have you been together and married for 30 years? And I I s I said, Well, I'll give you one piece of advice that and then people interrupt me and they're like, I know the advice, you you've gotta, you've gotta compromise with one another. And I say, Well, actually, that's that's good advice, but that's probably advice you should take with everybody in your life, your friends, your family, that's gonna happen. I said, But the one thing that you absolutely need to have for a successful relationship is you have your relationship has to be something in addition to your already existing life. And I think that gets to the fundamental core and what really hit me about your book is that you gotta figure out who you are, because if you can't figure out who you are, you're not gonna have a relationship with somebody, you're not gonna be able to lead anybody. You may think you're going to lead them, but they're gonna see through that. So I've sort of rambled on here to set the stage, but a ton to unpack. Can we jump back and just do your early years and figure out how what made you join the army?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Right. So I grew up in uh Jackson, Michigan, and uh I went to college right after high school for the wrong reasons. I went on a track scholarship and I ran, I went there to pole vault. And after a couple years of pole vaulting, I found myself in an environment where I knew if my dad knew what I was doing, he wouldn't be proud of me. So I had to change my environment. I needed some structure in my life, I needed some responsibility. Um, so my coach called me and said, Hey, come over to the office, sign next year's uh scholarship. So I walked over there and I said, Hey, I'm not coming back. I'm gonna join the service. Um, kind of quickly go through this. My my older brother was in the Navy, so I went to the Navy recruiter. They don't do Navy SEAL contracts in the 90s, and uh a Ranger recruiter said, Hey, this is the hardest thing, so I'm like, sign me up. So I went with a ranger contract. And then as soon as I went through that pipeline and ended up in Savannah, Georgia at first range battalion, um, my platoon sergeant had long hair. And at the time you had to have closely shaved on the side, no longer than one inch on top. You cut your hair every Sunday. And I'm like, hey, what why does a platoon sergeant have long hair? And they're like, Well, he just made Delta Force. And I'm like, well, what's that? So I got introduced to what Delta was very early on, thinking that Rangers was the highest pinnacle. So I had a lot to learn. I um I spent four years in First Range Battalion. Um, I had some really good leaders that gave me responsibility and allowed me to show what I could do. And then I tried out for the unit um very early on. I was 24 years old when I made selection, just to give you an idea, the average age of an operator is 36. So, and that kind of was an eye-opener, like that whole process. You go through all these psyche valves, um, and you sit down with a psych and you take all these tests. And once you make it, um they tell you who you are. Like, hey, this is what makes you successful. If you're gonna make it here, you need to work on these personal things. And I was 24 when that that kind of opened my eyes of my own personality of things I had to work on. No one talked to me that way before. So that kind of stuck with me.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Um let me ask you a question. Well what do you I mean, that is super young for that unit. That that is for for listeners that don't know, that is like Lee said, the average age is 36 there. What do you think you had? Well, you probably know because you took all the psych vows that allowed you to or them to accept you. Because four years and then going into that unit is is a big leap.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Right. Well, I'm not gonna guess or speculate on the selection process because it's kind of one of the best kept secrets in the special operations. But I can tell you that um moral moral courage, um, not being afraid to be in a performance-oriented situation, like you're not hiding behind everybody else. It's a it's a singleton, hey, these are your scores. We're in the rest of the army, it's all buddy team or ranger buddies and team and team this and team that. And it was all about selection as an ongoing process at the individual level. And some guys can thrive in that type of environment, and some kind, you know, some guys creator.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Do you think your sports background being a pole vaulter helped you?

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah, I talk about some sports. I think there's two, there's two types of sports. There's an individual sport like wrestling or pole vaulting, where you're part of a team, but when it's time to perform, you're out there by yourself. And it either you make the height or you pin the guy, and the ref raises your hand and pulls down on the other guy's hand in front of everybody, in front of your mom and your dad and your family and your friends. But then there's sports like hockey or lacrosse, where it takes a whole team to move the ball or puck through it. And being able to play both ends of that sports, you know, allows you to be an individual, but also gives you the skills to come together as a team and be a team member also.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

So you get a scholarship, which most people would love, you're Paul Volter, you decide that that's not living up to some expectations maybe that you felt like your dad had, and maybe you and yourself had for yourself at some level.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

You join the army, you figure out that that the Rangers is the first step, you go into this next place, which is arguably the pinnacle of that community, and then what happens?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Well, the timing when I went to selection for the unit was in 2001 when the towers fell. So it was kind of like being in four years in Ranger Battalion training for combat, training for combat, but you never saw it. You never knew when you were gonna actually go check yourself, you know. And then when I started going through the pipeline there, you knew we knew something was gonna happen. Like once you finished training, you were gonna squadron and you were gonna go get after it, right? So that kind of uh pressure was like real. I wanted to test myself, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Well, you got a test, didn't you? At 12 deployments.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

I ended up doing 12 rotations between Iraq and Afghanistan, and testing yourself once is the easy part. It's it's doing it again and again and again and again, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

So you you go through that, which probably we could do 29 episodes on and the lessons there. But you do 20 years, which still meant you're pretty young when you decide to retire.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

So, you know, through that whole evolution of combat, I've had you know both knee surgeries done a couple times, an ankle surgery, a shoulder surgery. And at some point, you know, you kind of move up in ranks, and um a job opened up at CIA headquarters representing the command. So, what I like to talk about is my career, I had a lot of tactical, and then my last five years, I did a lot of strategic. So I replaced a colonel up at the up at the agency, and when I got up there, you had to tell we I had to tell our information to someone to carry it to someone to brief the director. Um, that this is where I really learned where how important relationships are, but also how an organization runs, not on paper, but how an actual organization really runs. Um, so in a very short period of time, I realized that Intel was um currency. And then I was briefing the director twice a week, and um I learned a lot about myself, what I was capable of doing, going from you know, being on the range for hours and shooting every day to doing combatives to skydiving to going in there and be able to work with Intel and consume energy information and then bridge that from the military to civilian world, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:29

What do you think is one of the two biggest takeaways from that communication? Because that's really a communication uh skill that you learn there.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Well, one, you have to understand my first time I briefed briefed director Brennan, I flocked big time. Like I went in there knowing the operation, you know, up, down, left, right. And um, I knew it from a very tactical level. So he didn't ask me what he asked me one question, I couldn't answer it, and the and the briefing was over. And I realized quickly it doesn't matter what I think about what I'm presenting, it's I need to know who my audience is. So I really had to reshape on how I thought and figure out how that person is looking at my information and how that information is going to affect their job. And that's what I presented. And after that, the the conversations are like, Lee, you got five minutes to brief your Porsche. I'm like, okay, 20 minutes later, he's asking me questions. And what I realized was if you could, if you could answer a question, he would ask you another question. And most of the times people he would ask people questions. I realized they wouldn't answer it. They kind of did this song and dance thing around it. And he's like, okay, but I would answer the question, you know. So it turned into more of a conversation. And I think that's, you know, that's how you can exchange information and understand what the other person's priorities are, so you can, you know, influence them.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

So you really made a shift from being focused on your air quotes for those listening presentation to putting yourself in that other person's position to understand what they need to receive and what and and how they're going to use it so that you can tell yourself. And I think that's a big shift that's hard for people to make because you in many ways Lee really need to be confident in yourself to be able to do that because it's not about making yourself look good per se, it's about giving the person who's receiving what you're delivering the thing that helps them.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Well, I think you're the last person should should be in your in the forefront of your mind when you're briefing because I'm I'm carrying information that's good for the United States of America. It's good for the Department of War, good for uh special operations, good for the unit, you know what I mean? And I'm at the very bottom. So that funnel as information goes in, it should affect it that way. Um and and it was and I learned a lot about myself being able to change my tone and change my delivery, but it doesn't change my character and who I am, right? I talk to a boss different than I talk to a peer, different than I talk to a subordinate. A lot of people just keep the same communication style, and that usually causes some type of friction because you kind of need to change your tone or your delivery depending on who you're talking to.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

So you do five years at the agency.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Right. And that was uh I was really I really wanted to hang up my guns. Like I didn't want to be the typical, oh, I'm gonna go teach people how to shoot. I've spent enough time on the flat range shooting, you know. I got it. Check. And I'm not a gun guy. The guns were part of the job. What I liked about it was it was very, very uh fast moving. It was very physical, but it was also a puzzle to be solved. It was very, you know, fast-paced, cognitive thinking, prioritizing, reprioritizing, you know, um, and then developing young men underneath me, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

So did were you in your head, did you have the clock at that time and said, hey, look, uh, 20 years I'm getting out, or was there a moment that you just said, hey, I I need to do the next phase?

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Well, I was kind of on the on the cusp there. I I I felt like I was really giving back to the unit by being up there as an NCO um instead of an officer. And I was making, I was, I was influencing. I was briefing people and I was influencing, and I was I was um giving good um advisory to the not only the unit commander, but the JSON commander, the three-star general that sits at an ADMA at the at the agency. And I felt like I was giving back, I was ready to get out. I was 40 years old, and one of the uh one of the officers was getting ready to find out if he got a job in the Pentagon. And if he would have gotten the job he wanted, I would have stayed in longer to be his senior enlisted advisor because I felt like the experience to do that would really open up my my aperture, right? Getting away from the special operations and going in there and seeing a little bit different different. So I was willing to stay longer, but it just didn't pan out.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

So you retire, you're 40.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Did you have a plan?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Yeah, I went to um out to California to a program that helped with transitioning. Uh it's called Breakline, which was great. They break it, they brought in a bunch of uh um uh um professors that kind of went over, you know, 101, you know, marketing one-on-one, business one on one, they kind of get everyone kind of back into the mind frame. And then um they did these mixers every night. So we went to all these different startups and we got to practice our pitch. And this, and I really got to understand how to communicate with civilians. So I was talking to the agency people in the beltway where they know a little bit about the military. And we're kind of talking about the same geographical space. Maybe we have a different idea of how we're going after it. But now I'm in Silicon Valley talking to people who have no clue what what my background is and how does it affect um the civilian world. So that was a really eye-opener. And through not through there, but right after that, I got um an offer from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. I met a guy there, Brian Corona, who is I still talk to today, is great. But he's like, you're different than everybody. Because he's like, we're doing this interview, and he's like, So tell me what type of leader you are. And I'm doing all these, you know, interviews, and I'm like, how about how about instead of asking me what type of leader I am? Because it depends if I'm am I leading five, 40-year-old engineers or am I leading five, 12-year-old Boy Scouts? Because my leadership style has to change on the people and the environment, right? Here's a great question. Ask me where are the men at that I led. And and it just really kind of took the conversation and and I built a program for HPE. I was there for about a year, and um they were losing some sales to startups, they were moving faster, getting new logos. And so basically, I took the sound the same type of philosophy of targeting terrorists overseas of find, fix, finish, and exploit, analyze, and I just kind of shifted that towards companies and people. And I built target packets on companies and people and then briefed uh sales execs. I mean, I kind of condensed the program there. But um, I built the program, we built it out, and uh we had we had very good success in with it the first couple months, and then they sold that part of the company off. So my boss left, his boss left, and I'm the only one there going, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Well, so let me ask you a question, because in the civilian world, most people wouldn't do that in an interview. So was Brian like, did he sit back in his chair for a minute when you said, Hey, a better question to ask is this?

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Well, I was I was I've been doing these interviews and talking to all these different companies, and uh, I was getting frustrated because the questions are so generic and like they're looking for the right answer. Like, let's have a conversation. Like, I'll tell you, you know what I mean? Like, I am different, you know. If you go and ask a bunch of MBA guys a question, they're all gonna give you probably three to five answers, and they're gonna be kind of, you know, in the same area. And where I grew up with planning operations was you plan with no constraints. You plan the best operation you possibly can do with no constraints, and then you go back and you you kind of you kind of go back and make it so it's you know, hey, this is this part's not legal. Okay, bring a lawyer and see what we can do. This part, all right. Hey, we need more resources. Okay, can we get two more helicopters? Hey, we need a repeater here. So plan for the best operation and then you know fix it as you need to. And that's you know, I'll give you five courses of action, and one's gonna be the most expensive, but most likely the outcome's gonna happen, and then it's gonna kind of get petered down from there, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Right. So you go to HP, they sell the company, you're left alone, basically, which I I know how that feels, and now uh so you decide to move on. Yep, you do some consulting and then work at it.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

I worked for um uh I ran the protection detail for Bill Foley, who owns the hockey team out in Vegas, um, and then did some more consulting, and then they had the um the shot show there in Vegas, and that's when I met um Jason Beck, who owns Tier Tactical, TYR Tactical. Um, and then he brought me on. So I did I did some work for him for like four four years.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

So you do work for him for four years, then I look on social media and you're on a sailboat, and a mutual friend of ours I'm talking to who who work with you, they're at the unit. I'm like, what is Lee doing? And he's like, Oh, well, Lee's sailing around the world and he wrote a book, and I'm like, hey dude, like you should tell me. Like, so I looked up your book and I was like, man, this thing's like really interesting. So how did you how did you go from the commercial world to sailing on a boat or from what it looks like from all your adventures and your videos? You're traveling like all over the place, all over the world.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah. So from tier, which I need to shout out to Jason because when he brought me in to that executive team, he let me sit on every meeting. I sit in on every meeting, and then after each meeting, I he allowed me to ask questions. Why did you say this? What are you doing this? Can you show me why you're that? So he really showed me how, and it's a family-owned business. So he just got to show me the business side of it, and I got to ask questions, right? And and we developed a real good friendship. Um, once I built out the hard armor side, he asked me to do business development in Europe. So I went and did that. And then he asked me to do business development with the police in the United States. And at the time, um, I'm um I'm with Nikki, and she's really wants to sail on a sailboat.

unknown 22:14

Uh

SPEAKER_00 22:14

I've never owned a boat in my life. And um, I'm like, well, find us a course to go to, and I'll we'll go take a course down at BVI and let's see, let me see what it is. So we go down there and we take 101 and 103 and all the different courses that week together. And at the end, I'm like, I can do this. So back at work, Jason wants me to kind of push towards the police side. And I'm like, I think this is a good time for me to get off the get off the train and go do this. Six months later, we bought this Leopard 48 and um yeah, we we started sailing. I've always had um interest in leadership and the dynamics of relationships of how things work. When I was at HPE, I had to interview, I interviewed the whole, all the different departments because not too many people or companies can give you a line block chart of a company and say, this is how our our company moves. You have to get down there and ask people, okay, this is this is how information really flows around here, and this is how decisions are really made. So I've always been interested in leadership and wanting that. As a as a E9 sergeant major, the job I did at the agency was basically a senior enlisted advisor. So I would take in information, brief people, and then the the command, and I would, he would ask my opinion, right? Um, and I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed being a set another set of eyes and ears for the boss, knowing he's got all these people pushing information to him so he can make the best decision, right? Because I only have this much um this much visual of reality, and he gets to see it through everyone else's lenses. So kind of fast forward a little bit, and I was so I'm out on this boat and I'm gonna write a leadership book, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:03

And you decided that.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Well, yeah, I've I was I was doing it kind of like an exercise because during the break line and the transition from the service, I took a lot of my in the in the military, you always have a notebook on you, right? So I have all these notebooks with all these lessons learned, and every time I messed up, I would write it in there and write down why it happened and what I could do next time. I don't mind making mistakes, but I do make I do mind making the same mistake twice, right? I mean, it just burns my like, come on, you're learning. Um, so I started pulling all those notes together because I'm like, there's something here. So I'm starting to organize it, and I'm like, it's like I'm starting the book in the middle, you know? So that's when I kind of put all that stuff aside. And I started, I started with the operator's guide. Because before you can lead anyone else, you have to be able to lead yourself, right? And if you can't lead yourself, no one's gonna follow you. So that's where I kind of went with that type of like, okay, the first thing we have to do is we have to have self-awareness of ourselves before we can start leading other people, because to lead other people, you have to have awareness of them. But to do that, you have to be able to be self-aware of yourself, what what your ego or what your pride is keeping you from seeing or saying. So that's where this book came from. And and it's called the FM0147, and 01 is for September 11, 2001. And then 47 is my operator training course date. That's my number, my class I went through. So I got a couple Easter eggs hidden in there.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Oh, yeah, I was wondering about that. Uh, and for listeners, FM stands for in the military field manual.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

And the book is written kind of like a feed man field manual. It's not a life story about me. There's very little in there about me at all. It's it's it's to kind of give you a system or a guide for you to kind of think for yourself and what your own personal standards are. Because I can't tell you what your standards are. That's up to you, right? Because you have to enforce them.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Now you talk about in the book uh that this is for men, and you you refer to men a lot. But I just want to tell readers that I was reading this book every morning at breakfast, and my wife and I sit together every morning and eat generally, and uh, I forget what happened. I I don't know whether I was on a bike ride or something, and and the book was sitting there, and she just started flipping through this. So she's like, she she flips through it and she's like, Hey, what what's that what's this book? Like, are you okay? And I was like, Well, one, it's Lee. I was like, You remember Lee and and and she remembered you uh from coming over to the house and whatnot, and and then I was like, it's a it's it's for it's for men, and she's like, Well, I could see it's for men, and it definitely and I think men, which we can talk about in today's world, and I don't know if it's an online world, Lee, or what it is, but I think this idea has come into the world that there's like some penalty for being a man, which is sort of weird to me uh from growing up in in our sort of we're uh generation that you and I grow up in. I don't want to sound like an old guy who's like, oh, things have changed, but like what when you're a man, you're a man. Like, that's it. But I will say that this could apply to women too. It's pretty it it's not an agnostic testosterone type book in that sense. It's it's more about understanding yourself. And maybe you you can unpack that for for listeners a little bit here on how you set it up, because it it is it goes it starts at the beginning of what you really need to do and then sort of progresses into where you're going to go, which is to lead people, or if you're not quote unquote, you're always gonna lead some group of people. That's just how life works.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Right. So I wrote the I wrote the book in a from a position of of my authority, right? I was in first range battalion when when there were no women in that unit. And then I went to selection and I ended up in special operations, and there's not a lot of women there. Now, there are women in that, but they're not direct operators. Um, so when I wrote it, I wanted people to know this is coming from me from my position of authority. And then I and then I went back and forth about, well, you know, people aren't going to buy it because it's for men. And then and then I was like, you know what? Society needs it. Like, it's okay to be a man, it's okay to be masculine, right? But part of that is understanding what masculine really is, you know, be in control of your emotions. But you know, I kind of get a a little chip on my shoulder and I'm talking to someone or or like, oh, you're aggressive. I'm am I am I aggressive? Am I aggressive or am I do I have passion in my voice? Oh, you're it's toxic masculinity. It's like because I care about what's going on, right? I'm showing a little bit of emotion about and saying, no, these are the boundaries. If you're working with me, you're not gonna talk to me that way, or you're gonna be on time, or if you're gonna have me come to a meeting, I need some type of agenda so I can be ready, so we're not playing stump the chump, you know? Like it's okay to have boundaries in your life, and and part of being a man is being able to do that, say no, and being able to control your emotions, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Yeah, I I I totally agree. And I get it from people. They'll say you're they don't they'll say with me, they're like, You're you're you're so intense. Yeah. I'm like, I I like don't don't mistake the intensity for aggression. Exactly. It's not aggression, it's that's how much I care and and it's hard for me. I I don't know, it's hard for most people unless they're sort of psychotically, but like how do you how do you downshift into this calm? I mean, I I don't mean that you're not calm, you're not like it's just you're intense. Like, yeah, here's what we're doing, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Yeah, let's let's get on board. Let's what's tell me I'm wrong, you know what I mean? Let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Let's most of it but I think that comes from one maybe s something in in us as people individually. I think some of it is biological, right? But at some level, like let's not mistake that men have testosterone and testosterone does XYZ. And it and it's not okay to, in my mind, to say, well, men are aggressive and they do bad things. Like that that's not that that's not an excuse and it shouldn't ever be tolerated. Right by the same token, there's just like fundamental differences here that some of us, you know, in in the bodies that we have can't necessarily control.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

But I also think, you know, at some point, I'm like, why am I going to governor or govern myself, make myself smaller so everyone else feels more comfortable. You know what I mean? Like, this is it. Let's talk. Like, and does this make you feel uncomfortable? That's probably something you need to work on, you know. Like your your ego is uh telling you, oh my god, this guy's he's he's too intense. Well, you might have some things to work on yourself.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Yeah, one thing that I I I've never known why anyone would expect someone to concede their either advantage or their true self. Right. Like I mean, why would you concede that? And one of the things you say in your book here, this is in uh let me see in the field manual. This is chapter three, says you don't discover who you are, you build who you are. Can you unpack what you meant there?

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Yeah, I think all of us have this idea of who we want to be, and behavior determines that. So, you know, I want to be the best person I can be. Um, and the whole best version of myself they is kind of over you know stated, but you can I just I want to keep getting better and better. And the only way you can do that is have an understanding of who you want to be in the future and keep making decisions that move you towards that way, putting standards in place and doing what you say you're going to do and like build that person out. Um, and and you're gonna run into roadblocks. I know I have, you know, but being able to pick yourself up and say, no, I can still move, I made one bad decision in my life. It doesn't keep me from still moving forward to be who I want to be. Because, you know, I I met I met a Vietnam vet. They brought him into the unit to watch us train, and then afterwards we got to talk to him. And I was still, I was probably like 20, 27. And I was like, this guy's a he's this guy's a war hero. I mean, medal of honor winner, several silver stars. And uh, I'm like, I'm gonna go talk to him. So I go up and talk to him, and the guy is amazing. But I realized really quickly that he was still 19 years old Vietnam guy. And I promised myself after that conversation, emotionally, I will continue getting better, right? I will continue growing emotionally. So that's what I took from that learning experience. And I just think that we need to keep working on ourselves. And it's not, it's not, and it's not like therapy working on yourself. It's it's getting out of bed when you say you get out of bed. It's you know, making the call or or going to the gym or eating the way you want to, or being prepared, or showing up. Like people will show up in the meeting and you can tell they're zoned out or they're you know, their minds on something else. When I'm participating in something, I'm focused. You got my focus here, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:57

I think what one of the things you say in your book that sort of encompasses or explains this is you say most men live trapped between two identities, the man they want to be and the man their habits have created.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Yeah. That's pretty that's pretty spot on, I think.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

Well, how what do you what what for for a listener listening to that, how would you unpack that a little bit? Do you think that people their habits get created by an environment that they didn't gain control of and they just let it happen? Because I mean that happens to a lot of us. Bad habits happen.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah, but I think a lot of people aren't are running on some type of script autopilot, and they're letting their emotions dictate their behavior, then their behavior, you know, determines their life. And part of that is being able to understand that these are my standards, and my behavior dictates what my standards are. So when you see how I act, you can see who I am. Like everyone's worked for the boss who's like, do this, do this, do this, and then they're doing the opposite. There's no standard like a double standard, right? So build it out. Build out, okay, these are the behaviors that I am going to hold myself to or the standards. I don't like the word discipline. Oh, I have the discipline because people think if you have discipline, then you have to get up at 0, 4, 30 and do this, and it's not about it's about standards and knowing what you what your standard, what your standards are, your personal standards.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Well, how do you figure that out?

SPEAKER_00 35:43

I mean, it doesn't happen overnight, but I I hold myself accountable and I look at myself in the mirror, you know, and I want to be proud of who I am. And I want I want to be proud that I'm the people around me are proud of who I am, right? Like goes back to college and I look at myself in the mirror, and you know, and I'm just like, if my dad knew what I was doing, he would not be proud of me.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Why is that?

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Change my environment, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Why why why what why did you think he wouldn't be proud of you?

SPEAKER_00 36:14

I was smoking, you know, smoking weed and pouring around, you know, stuff that I shouldn't be doing. And um, the environment was there. Um, so I wasn't proud of myself either. I knew I was doing the wrong thing. I knew I was kind of slipping into that that lifestyle, and I didn't want that. And I knew my dad would not be proud of me. And my dad was growing up, when I did something wrong, my dad didn't yell at me, didn't spank me. He just didn't talk to me, and it would crush me, right? I'm like, my dad's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

So do you think that people that that that was a voice in your head somewhere? Do you think that everybody has that voice in their head and just some people are willing to listen to it and some people push it aside?

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Well, I think there's a bunch of studies out there about the percentage of people that have a internal monologue or voice in their head. So I'm not gonna get into that too much, but yeah, I think most people do have some type of dialogue. Um, and I think if you go against it, usually you kind of not you don't feel good, you kind of go against yourself, you situations don't turn out the way you want them to. It's kind of like having that um subconscious, you know. That subconscious that that's how I pre that's how I kind of look at my internal voices. It's speaking for my uh subconscious that sees everything because I can only see a little bit of life, right? My brain is filtering reality to me, but my subconscious is taking a lot more in. And that's how I kind of train my internal voice, like, hey, tell me what I need to know that I'm not seeing. And those are the type of conversations I have with myself now, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Well, and you say in here in the book something about when you do the thing you say you're going to do every day, you you you get stronger. So do you think it's one of those things where you listen to that? At first, you were in college, you you didn't you didn't leave right away, but you probably heard the voice month or year beforehand, and then you basically lean into these things and they compound themselves.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Right. Yeah, and then and then you start making decisions and putting yourself in the right situation, and and usually that creates opportunities, and people see that. I I I uh I rose very quickly in the military. I pinned on my E9 in like 17 years, um, which is unheard of. And I was very fortunate that I've I could look down and just work on my stuff, either as an individual or if I was in charge of people. If I did my job, I knew my leader would take care of me. And that's something I didn't see when I was in the civilian world, right? That's not it doesn't quite work that way.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

Is that the is that because of the trust?

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Yeah, I think I think when you're in a unit like that and everyone understands what the mission is, everyone knows what the goal is. You you're cheering for everybody. I want everyone around me to succeed because I don't want any weak links around me, you know? Because we're not talking about losing revenue, we're talking about loss of life.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Right. So how do how do you how did you bridge that gap in the book or or just in your philosophy as you approach because the book ultimately is about coaching and I mean it's about being figuring out who you are, sort of walks you through this process through multiple chapters.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

And you're not gonna read one chapter and just for listeners and like get this over in a night. There's like who you are and what your standards are are are like hard work. But if you're not willing to do the hard work and you don't build the foundation, you're not going to be able to get successfully to the end, my personal opinion.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Uh about about anybody. But how how do you think, you know, how do people in the civilian world where it's not life or death, it's about money and and you know, if you boil it down, it's it's it's about money and I I use the word fame, but it's about it's it's about power, fame and power, which are very, very, very different elements than life or death.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Right. So I would I if I could reframe that, I look at it as status and money, right? Those are the two things. If you have money, you spend your money to get status, right? If you have status, you use your status to make money, because those are the two things that most people, especially men, and that's what women are attracted to, right? Power and status, or right. But I think I think the biggest advantage I had was taking this time off of work and being on this boat by myself and being able to not have the radio on, not have the TV on, not have a phone in my hand, and actually be able to think about some stuff, you know, like truly put time aside to think because you get distracted. You were talking about it earlier. It's like it's in the real world, you're present. Um, you have uh uh some type of, hey, I gotta be out of the house by this time, traffic's like this, I gotta be at work by this time, I'm leaving by this time, and you're in this grind. So when do you have time to think? Um, and that's what really allowed me to put this book together. And I tell you what, it's made me a better person just putting all my own thoughts together and and and seeing you know who I am.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

How long did it take you on that boat with no? I mean, you have comms, but the comms on on these things are very different than having this phone and internet Wi-Fi, like you even told me something. Like, hey, if I don't get back to you, it's because I got no I got no cell signal, I got no Wi-Fi. Like, how long did it take?

SPEAKER_00 42:23

To put the book together, it took me it took me about six months to kind of put all that stuff together. And it, you know, I went over and over it. I sent it to a couple buddies. I sent it to a really good buddy that I served on served with on the same team, and his first comment was, Did you did you write this to me? And I'm like, we have a lot more in common than you think.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Yeah, right. I I think that's so you know, I think that's a just to stop here for a second and and and talk about this point, because I think it's really importantly w what you said there was even even when you got out of the military, you did take a break for a minute, but then you went to a job. And I think, you know, the there's you know, I always say because I'm do a lot of things in spreadsheets and finance and business models and things like that. Like there's what the spreadsheet says, and then there's first point of contact when it hits the market and you know, shit hits the fan, for lack of a better way to put it, and things you couldn't model and and things like that. I think that's what um generally happens here in life. Like we we can talk about that. But one of the things I tell people is when they switch jobs, and I and this isn't like some Brandon insight that I came up with is just because I've failed so many times in in doing this, but I say, you know, if you switch jobs, you should you should take a break. And and it and it's not it's not two weeks. Like you will not unpack yourself it or unwind yourself in two weeks. Like it just it doesn't happen. I don't care what anybody says, it doesn't happen. It takes you know, I would say after twelve weeks you might your heart rate might start to figure out itself. Now, I do say there's probably listeners out there Be like, oh, Leah and Brendan are talking about this luxury 12-week thing. I got two kids. I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a Capri Sun, and put the do the the Doritos in the bag this morning to get my kid out the door. Like I got it. Like that that that's that's first point of contact. Having said that, you really need to carve out these times and and maybe even if you can't you don't think you can financially afford it, I would argue that the cost of not doing these, at least in some transition in your life, will far outweigh the dollars because you won't be able to achieve the next level of dollars, which isn't about chasing material things, it's about the reality of the world we live in that the mortgage due every month and the electric bill comes and you gotta pay it, right? So you you got to make money. Um but the cost of not doing at least in a minute of having these times to think, I don't know, Lee, what you think, but I I think it the the cost is so expensive that you will ultimately hurt yourself if you don't take a step back.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Especially going from if you're changing um profession, you're moving industries. Like I went from, you know, working in the Department of Defense out into the real world. Like that's a transition in itself. I think the bigger that transition is, the more you need time for yourself to kind of, you know, get yourself schooled up for that. But also for me, I think it was really important to do the civilian stuff and working at tier was really helpful to see all that and then take a break from it. Okay, now I have some understanding of the real world, civilian side and military side, and now I can really, really determine on how I want to spend my time. I spent a lot of my my 20s and 30s with the mindset of I'm not gonna be 50, right?

SPEAKER_01 46:16

And I just What do you mean you're not gonna be 50?

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Well, I was doing rotation after rotation, and you know, I carried a lot of guys to the helicopter and never saw them again. You know, got a lot of bot a lot of buddies.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

You didn't think you were gonna make it to 50.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Yeah, and and I trained that way and I fought that way, which also made me a better operator, but also long-term planning, you know, you're like, whoa, I still okay, now what I now I'm 40, I'm getting ready to retire, I got all my fingers and toes. What what am I gonna do? Right? So it was definitely a mind shift, and then also um realizing that my number one resource is my time and how I spend it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

Now that you've been on the boat, you know, people do that, a lot of people do this now, Lee. They, you know, whether it's a boat and they sail, I I I have some friends who've who have done that and literally taken their kids out of school on it for a year. Because ultimately, the boat's sort of expensive, but can be expensive, but it's not more than a house in general in today's world. And um it's really not that expensive to live on the boat comparable comparably. But now that you've been, how long have you been on the boat now?

SPEAKER_00 47:31

Uh just over two years.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

Two years.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 47:35

So like are you are you gonna ever go back now?

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Like, is it like yeah, we are actually. We're getting ready to uh we're talking with a broker right now. Um when we decided to go this route, um we really wanted this experience. And it was the experience wasn't like, hey, I'm gonna become a sailor. The experience was I'm gonna be a safe captain so we can move this big condo around and and see this island and see that island and explore this and swim with the turtles. And you know, it was a mode of adventure, right? And that was the whole pro the whole premises of getting on the boat, it was being able to move around and have an experience. And also, I'm not gonna do the same thing for 20 years again. I want to go out and I want to experience other things, you know, change my environment because that's how you ultimately grow.

SPEAKER_01 48:27

What what's what's the most memorable thing you saw or did on this two years on the boat with Nikki?

SPEAKER_00 48:38

Oh goodness. Uh the most memorable is probably has to do anything I can think of, some type of wildlife pops in my head. You know, so from sailing, and then you see the pot of dolphins, you know, a hundred meters away and they turn and they come and swim with the boat, or being off of off an island, and you look out and you see, I think I counted 17 turtles like this big popping up at one time. Like just being being in awe. I have so many pictures of sunsets and sunrises. Like, I never slowed down to look at that stuff when I was younger because it I didn't allow myself to be in awe. And now it feels good to be able to slow down and look at that and take it in. Like, I don't take it for granted, you know, a sunrise or a sunset.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

Did you now did you do the Bahamas and and the Caribbean?

SPEAKER_00 49:31

Yeah, we've sailed the Caribbean, the Caribbean. So we bought the boat and like uh right right at the very beginning of hurricane season in uh BVI. So we started sailing south to go to Grenada because that's what everybody does. You have to be either down in Grenada or up north of Rhode Island for that's what most cruisers do for your insurance to protect your boat. Got it. So we started sailing south through the Caribbean Caribbean island hopping, and that's when uh hurricane Barrel came through down south, and all the storms were going south, and we're just kind of moving our way. And I'm like, at this time I'm starting to become a weatherman too, because you really have to understand not just your local weather, but how weather it all affects each other, right? Um, which is amazing to learn more about planet and how it all um affects each other. But we ended up sailing through hurricane season, the whole hurricane season. We started sailing down through the Caribbean, and then November came, hurricane season's over, and we started sailing back up north through the through the Caribbean, and then we sailed into Charleston, which I'm at right now, um, exactly one year from when we got on the boat. So the first year, we didn't port at all. I mean, I I mean I got fuel and that was it. But besides that, we were living on the hook or on anchor, um, or we were hooking up to a buoy ball, but we were we were learning how to sail. And I I think that's part of my planning as an NCO is okay, I know how to do it. Now to get good at it, I have to just do it over and over. I gotta have time under canopy, so to speak, time under sale. But being able to put a plan together, mitigate risk, and to be able to change the plan when new information comes in, I have that down. You know what I mean? I have the planning process down, I have the knots down. I've rock climbed for years and gone to schools. Skydiving is very similar to how a sail works. So there's a lot of things that uh, you know, cross cross-reference each other. So I just had to get under the sail and and sail the boat.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

When you wrote the book, was it what when I first wrote my book? I I thought I was gonna whip out the book. I wrote on how to do a business plan. I've been teaching that for over, I don't know, 15 years. And it was so hardly. I mean, and and I I know that subject, like backwards and forwards, I could teach it right now. You know, if somebody said, hey, go teach a course, I could teach it right now. Was it was it harder to write the book? I mean, and and on the subject you wrote is harder arguably than just the structured business plan because you're you're really writing a psychology book.

SPEAKER_00 52:12

Yeah, so I kind of I kind of use it as a cheat code by making a field manual because I am not a good writer or storyteller in that aspect. But what I've done at the agency of becoming like a strategic briefer was being able to understand the topic um and then having bullet points just to remind me to stay, okay. I need to cover this and this and this, right? And I have a couple field manuals here on the boat, and I was like, you know, this is this is the concept I want. I want, I want really clear and concise, and then just bullet point statements where you can consume the information and the way people don't read anymore. I thought it was a way that men could consume the information. So it kind of I think I kind of cheated by putting it in a way that it's very it's very military in the fact that it's here's clear and concise, here's some bullet points that that um support it. All right, next topic. Here's some questions to think about. And in the book, there's nothing, it's not like I reinvented the wheel. I mean, it's this is stuff that you already think about. It just puts it in the forefront of your mind and makes makes you talk about it. And the other thing about it, and I kind of since we're talking about the book a little bit, is I dedicated the book to all the men who couldn't come back from overseas to help mentor their sons or their nephews or their neighbors. And I think that's part of it. Like chapter eight is about mentorship. I think as we get older, it's it's our duty to kind of help younger men and mentor them. So that's why it starts with awareness and kind of ends with mentorship.

SPEAKER_01 53:51

I want to talk about one uh another segment in here or quote. You said most men don't need therapy, they need alignment, they need to live in a way that matches their inner compass. And it someone and we touched on this, but I and I I don't want to beat I'm not beating a dead horse because I think it's really important, is that this inner compass thing is really your standards. And uh someone said to me, I I met a guy, he hired me on the spot, and he and he said he said to me, I uh at one point down the road, I was like, What just by the way, like we spent it I spent a day with this person because I had gone down to look at this project that they needed help. It turned out it turned into a four and a half year, almost five year job, like l little job. But I said to him, I said, Why like you hired me right away, like you're su this guy's super successful, super wealthy, like you know, sort of a legend in his industry. I was like, why why did he hire me? He's like, Well, I I he's like, you have an incredible c moral compass. You know, you know what your compass is. And and to be honest, not that I wouldn't be honest, but to be more open on a podcast, um I always I guess I always had the compass, but I didn't recognize it in that way, Lee. I no one ever said to me, you know, it's just not generally how people talk. Like, oh, you have a moral compass, I can see it, and I know that because you have that, you're trustworthy, you're gonna try to do the right thing. It's not that you're not gonna make mistakes, but you're gonna understand what that true north for you, which aligns with goodness in and not evil, I guess, in the world is. But if someone's listening, a listener's listening to this and they say, Well, hey guys, you and Lee are really awesome, and you've you've done your Zen thing on boats or wherever you've done it, and found yourself, like how do you figure that out? It would I I think at the you know, at the end of the book, to your what you just said, it the the book progresses from individual to mentorship. You really need to find a mentor to help you get through this. Like, you can read the questions at the end of your book. I mean, you can read uh what areas of my life are inconsistent with the man I want to become, but if you don't know who you want to become or you don't know what your standards are, you can't find that, or who am I mentoring, influencing, or challenging, or what daily actions will define me as a legacy man. You you really need a coach or mentor to get you there, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 56:52

Well, I think some people will, but I don't I think some people, you know, they you don't have to start with that big question, like start with the little things. You know what you do in your behaviors that you're not proud of. It could be um smoking a vape or you know, swearing, or just start with the little things and start plugging away and chipping at them until you're kind of going the right way. And the whole moral compass. So for someone to see that you have a moral compass, they're watching your behavior, but more importantly, having moral courage, I think, is important because you can have a moral compass, but if you don't have the moral courage to stand up when the people around you are doing something wrong and say, hey guys, we're not doing that. I think I think that that is more speaks to who you are as a character. Like I said, you can change your tone and you can change your delivery, but you don't change your character when you do that, right? And that's kind of your moral compass, you know.

SPEAKER_01 57:51

Well, did you I mean the military in your 20 years there, it I I h hesitate to use the word mentorship, but you know, they use the word leadership, but you're being mentored the whole time, aren't you? I mean, I mean, as you come up through the ranks.

SPEAKER_00 58:07

So the officer corps got a really good mentor portion to them, and they're built in their culture. The NCO community, not so much. It it kind of it kind of goes on the person, the individual. I had I did go out to people that were outside of my chain of command and like had said, Hey, can can you be my mentor? Can I come and talk to you about something? And when I think of that, it's like I need I need to go to someone who knows more than me or can at least sit in the bleachers and look at look at my life through a different lens and provide an environment that's safe for me to kind of like, okay, this is how I'm thinking, like, this is what I'm seeing. Like, is is this wrong? And and and have like be able to bounce ideas off someone, not give me the answers, but give me the right questions to keep me thinking, am I doing the right thing? Is this, do I need to say something? I don't need to say something, or do I want to go in that direction? Um, I think it's really important for men to have mentors. And and I think men, especially older men, and and it's kind of like everybody thinks the book's for young men, but um, there's a lot of older men out there that don't know how to mentor. They think they think mentoring is telling them what to do, and then if they don't do it, they're like, oh, they don't listen to me. You know, it's it's providing a space and and asking the right questions to get that young man to kind of think through the problem, you know, and you kind of help them with that.

SPEAKER_01 59:30

And you teach that in the later chapters of the book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:34

I think it's important. And you know, it's kind of like um two ears, one mouth, right? When it comes to communication, you should use them in that ratio.

SPEAKER_01 59:43

That that's true. The other thing that just as a really golden nugget, I don't know if you've said it in the book, but I did remember one of your videos that came up on my Instagram feed, uh, you said I don't know, it was something you could correct me here, something to the effect of don't take advice or don't take mentorship from somebody who hasn't done what you're trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:08

Right. I think it's important. I and there's I have a couple things I've been churning on lately about that topic. One, when I started voting, I I didn't know anything, so everyone has advice, right? And I'm and so people would give me advice, and I'm like, okay, and then I'd be like, that's not good advice. I'm like, you know, so be careful who you're getting advice from. And then as I'm starting to coach people, other, of course, other coaches reach out to you and they want to know how you're doing and what I so I look people up and in in LinkedIn is I don't know if that's a whole nother conversation, but I look up these people and they went to school for leadership. And then they then they get into coaching, and I'm like, well, when when were you leading someone under a high stressful environment where where you had to have really good leadership, right? I mean, it's easy to lead in in easy times. It's really easy. And it's also an easy it's easy to lead when when you have the right team and the team is aligned and they all know the mission. I learned that after I got out of service at the unit, they would change leaders every 18 to 24 months, but our performance never dipped. We sometimes we had a good leader put in, sometimes we didn't, but our performance never changed because we didn't have the best people, we had the right people aligned with the mission, and they were not gonna let it fail, right? And those type of teams, you don't have to have good leadership. What you need is someone out there who's just providing an environment for you to do your job, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:47

Yeah, I think I think what happens, Lee, in today's I don't know, it's not today's world, it's just human nature, is you you you want someone to help you because you you want to bounce it off. Sometimes you're doing that for no other reason, you already know the answer, you just want to make sure that you you you you're maybe thinking right or whatever, but I would say generally your gut is gonna tell you the right answer. You just have to build confidence in listening to that.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:17

But what we don't ask when someone gives you the advice is either you don't do your diligence, to your point. I mean, LinkedIn is not the end-all of end-all, but it it certainly gives you a um in general a high level. Most people put most of the stuff on there today. But like you should do your diligence and ask uh have you done this? And right and it's uncomfortable because this person may be older and and you don't want to be disrespectful. But I I would just emphasize that point to any listener listening to this like do your diligence is one of the things when people say they want to raise money and they go to venture capitalists or they go to angel investors, and they never, ever, not ever, generally they don't interview the investor. They the investor holds the authority, air quotes, because they have the checkbook, but the entrepreneur or founder never confronts, like, is this the right investor?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:22

Uh uh, what is their personality? What are the what are their three references? Because I want to call your three references because you're so you want so bad. I'm using this analogy because it's it's I think it's a good one. You want so badly to get that money because you think that money is the answer to end all of everything, but you do that in life when you want this mentor, and you're like, I just want help, but you don't do your diligence.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:47

And that doesn't leave you in a good spot, does it?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

No, it doesn't. But it goes back to kind of what I was talking about. The agency is knowing who you're know know who you're briefing, know the lens that they're looking at your business. And building a business is two things. Right? You have a widget or an app or whatever, but also also building a business is building relationships. And that investor is one relationship that you should be able to lean on, right, from a position of authority to help you. Now, your ego and pride have to get out of the way to do that, but you need to understand they have the right background to help you, right? Because they are going to be rooting for you. If they're investing in your company, they want you to succeed. So learn how to be self-aware of your pride and your ego, set that aside and make sure you're partnering or you're building a relationship with someone who does have the right background, has the right personality, not someone who's like, you need to change, you need to change your stuff to this. Like, no, listen to me. It's kind of like the book when I first shared it with a few people, and then when I launched it, people were like, Hey, can we change, are you gonna change the name, you know, take off the four men? And it almost made me want to keep it more, right? I mean, no, this is how I feel in my gut that like this is a field manual for men. Now, like you said, anyone can really read it. And I had I had a couple people write in on Amazon reviews, a lady named Nancy, and she bought two books, one for each of her sons. She read it and then gave them both to her son. She's a single mom. I was like, I didn't even think of that. You know what I mean? It gives you a kind of like, hey, these are the questions I should be answering my son to make sure he's on the right path. Um, but building relationships with the right people, I think is very important. And that's going through break line, going out to California. I learned that. In the military, you work with everyone around you. They can be an asshole, right? They can. But out in California, a lot of people are like, well, I only work in the civilian world, you don't have to work with people you like. I'm like, well, I like that idea, right? I like that a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:55

What I have found is that in the civilian world, sometimes working with people that you don't like but are good at what they do is a skill that you should learn. And and I I'm not saying you, as Lee, I'm saying anybody. in in life. And I only say that because one of my business partners that I've had in my career, and it didn't work out in the end it worked out well, but it didn't work out well, if that sort of makes sense. I he and I would never hang out together in the sense of oh hey come over to the house and have a barbecue. Not not that we wouldn't eat together and we didn't eat together as a t with the team. But he and I just didn't do that. And I I don't I wouldn't say that I didn't I didn't not like him but we were just not like on the realm of personal personal lives. We're just not gonna do the same thing or be in that same world. But when it came to business like it worked and we wasn't butting heads. We didn't butt heads we actually flowed together and I learned more from him I still like there's times he's the best operator not operator as in your world old career operate but but a business operator in business operations that I have ever seen ever and I learned more from him in two and a half years than I've learned from anyone in the in the operations of business world and it was a good lesson for me because early in my life I I I'd be like I don't want to work with an asshole. And he's not an asshole. Now some people might say it's an asshole but some people say I'm an asshole you're asshole because we're intense and blah blah blah like right right opinions vary. But I think that that teaching yourself and forcing yourself to do that sometimes is a good thing because otherwise um our good friend John would say you become a self-licking ice cream cone and if you become a self-licking ice cream cone that that doesn't end up well generally well I think I think there's a lot of confusion there with some people where they go to work and they want to be friends with everybody there, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:20

And at the unit you got all these guys who've gone through this tough selection process and you guys are very similar because they they're f they're looking for the right type of person. So you have a lot of similarities. So I do have a lot of friends from that community but not everyone's a friend right it kind of goes back to the moral courage or the moral character like building relationships with people that have the same type of morals I have I want the mission is more important than my friendship or I shouldn't say friendship. The mission is more important than if we get along so we can set that aside and we're both working towards the mission personalities might butt heads like you're saying at the barbecue side but at work you might work really well together because you both know what the mission is and that's what you're focused on. Right? You're not there to be best friends with anyone right right and that's hard. I mean admittedly it's hard to do a lot of people because people get their socializing at work instead of outside of work with people. And that's one of the things that I love about sailing is because I run into I run into people for all walks of life that have a different background than me who look at things different than me and that experience I can't I can't go do it because I'm already 50 years old. Like that's what I really enjoy about meeting new people with different back I can I don't need a bunch of guys cookie cutter dudes who have the same exact background because they're gonna solve the problem probably the same way.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:48

Let's get some people with and that's diversity right that's real diversity people with different backgrounds well yeah we we on we'll we'll save that one for another show we we can do as many podcasts as we want but we're not gonna do that one today. So you're I mean this has been fun you're you are you got a broker you're in you're in Charleston you're gonna sell your boat are do you have a like what's next like what I I mean you got your book you're you're doing coaching I know you're gonna build this whole program like are you did you and Nikki decide where you're gonna live like do you have that much of it?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:26

No we're still planning just like we're on the boat like one week at a time but I tell you this so when I was in the service I knew what my mission was I knew what my purpose was right and then when I got out I thought my purpose was to go be a businessman or or go make money and and in this the whole boat evolution I realized what I really enjoy is being able to help young men and men build a team align a team and then what and just watch it like not be the center of the focus but being able to take all my leadership and all my experiences strip away the war right because we don't need war stories they're fun maybe in the evening strip all that stuff away and use that to help people like let's fast track this stuff um it kind of it kind of goes right into what up the coaching that I'm doing I just I just had a meeting with the coach of a Division II lacrosse team that I implemented a preseason program for and he got a hold of my book through a ranger buddy they got my phone number and he called me on a Friday and he's like hey how do I how do I implement your book into my program and it was kind of a baffling question to me. He's a coach and I was like hey let's can we do this call on Monday so I thought about it over the weekend and I built a program and that's really got me going in this direction was all right we're gonna talk about self-awareness we're gonna talk about individual standards team standards communication and behavior and if we can set just those standards for the team move the responsibility of discipline from the coach to their peers everyone's aligned and you're gonna have a high performance team and the coach you know when he called me he's like last year we were 17 and one I graduated all my starters except one this year I got a bunch of freshmen and sophomores and I Lee he's like Lee we might be competitive and um they ended up going 18 and oh winning their conference and the coach was voted coach of the year and he's like I have never seen an arc of maturity in these young men I have in the whole 23 years I've been coaching. He's like Lee they weren't they weren't talking about the refs they weren't talking about the other team they were taking responsibility raising their hand hey that's my bad look let yep that's my fault and they were taking ownership and they were coming to practice ready to practice and not come into practice goofing around and ready for the coach to start practice. Right. And I think that's where you really see because young men coming together with that type of like they want to win they just you got to give them some standards and tell them what right looks like and tell them what what wrong behavior it is not okay for you to roll your eyes at your teammate and disrespect them. Like that's not what you do to a high performance in a high performance environment. So just lay that out. So I built a course over the weekend I pitched it to him on Monday and and I gave him I gave him the copy of it and like this is what I want to do. So that's what we did. We implemented it and from there I was like well this works in a sports environment business is different. Sports is very hierarchy it's it's kind of it's close to the military there's someone in charge you got your captains um but in business it doesn't work that way people can vote with their feet they can just leave um so what I did was very similar concept but what I did was I I incorporated um it's called the predictive index or PI. I don't know if you've heard of it it's like a psychological evaluation. And the reason I picked PI is because it's two questions it takes you about six to ten minutes to answer them as long as you don't try to overthink it. And it kind of predicts who you are what your strengths and weaknesses are and I took this when I was at tier and like I said I've gone through the psych evaluation of the unit. So I took this real quick and I was like click click click click I got my results back and I'm like this is really close. Like yep I've been working on that yep that's me I got to pay attention to that so that was always in the back of my mind from tier so being aware of who you are helps you lead yourself. But also let's say you're a CEO or you're an entrepreneur and you're you're scaling a company hiring people's tough right and a lot of people can fake the funk for an interview they can fake it for about three months and then you're really going to see who they are. So I needed a tool in there to kind of have a for lack of better words selection. So now I can put the parameters of what type of person I want in this position. And I'll use two positions. So you have business development position and you got your CFO. You don't want the same type of person in those type of positions. You want a business development person is going to be a little bit more hey don't tell me what to do just point me in the right direction support me as I go probably not the most admin person in the in the company but he's social he knows how to talk to people he knows how to develop relationships. Probably not the most formal person, right? And then you have your CFO who you want to be very formal you want his T's crossed and his I's dotted and he wants to know hey I need to know all the details I can so I can forecast our longevity or how we're spending money. So it's a different position you need different personalities. Now you do that across your whole executive team and your CEO your entrepreneur now he has a snapshot of who's on his team and we can say okay when we're working together this person needs more information than this person. Hey I need to give this person more time to digest it before I ask them I can't just bring them in here in a meeting hey we're changing everything blah blah blah what do you need like they need some people need time to digest go through it. So now it turns into a leadership tool also because one as a leader which out in the civilian world you don't get a lot of chances to lead right like really lead um so now you can say this is my team and you can use you can use the PI to help build your team out also so you're not right looking for the best person you're looking for the right person right I know I what kind of want got on my soapbox a little bit was I was it was it was awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:00

It's a it's a good framework. So you're gonna take this now that you've got this plan you're gonna sell the boat buy move somewhere but start teaching this to people who are interested either you're gonna either gonna teach the teacher or you're gonna teach it yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:16

I would like to teach it myself for a while. I think it's important um the courses I developed for the athletes it's I could give it to someone and they can do it word for word. It's a script because it needs to be the same every time it's kind of like selection everyone has to have the same um dil how do I say everyone needs the same information the same way so it can be interpreted the same way, so to speak. Right? Because if you if I pitch the course to half your team this way and pitch it a different way you both interpret it different then when you come together you're still not aligned. But if we all do it the same way now we know what our standards are our parameters are our behaviors are now we can build the team out what our culture what our we want our culture to be by using those standards. It's more of a system right here's the system plug your your standards and your behaviors into it and now everybody knows now we're not no one's guessing right because that's a there's a lot of guesswork out there especially when you start a new job. Who's this? Who talks here?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:19

How does this work like you know who's sleeping with who if you leave if you leave things to guess work people are going to make up stories in their head and you're not gonna be able to control them and they're all going to have different ones so right but I mean this sounds really exciting. I I want to wrap up here I'm gonna put you on the spot which you may or may not like but you're a man who's been under high pressure before so um if you were to boil down for the listener of this episode three HBTs I call them high percentage tips what would they be that they could take away just from this episode and start implementing to start on that journey of figuring out what their standards are and who they are.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:07

Right. Well yeah that is putting me on the spot I think the first the first thing that popped in my head was communication right I think in any environment um communication causes more problems um than anything else right because you can interpret something or you fill in the gaps because you don't want to ask the question. So being able to communicate effectively and but also being able to listen effectively because that's part of communication right and I think as a leader and a subordinate um it's important to learn how to effectively listen. So that's probably the first one is is being able to listen to your subordinates but also be able to effectively communicate what you want. I guess the other one I always go back to awareness. I'm always I'm always trying to look at myself and being aware of how I'm affecting people um how am I presenting my way myself in the way that I am proud of myself I'm showing up prepared I'm showing up on time um giving people respect you know stand just standing up to shake someone's hand right just having that self-respect um and the last one I think that one's kind of if you want to know if you want to know the the if you have a problem go to the person closest to the problem right if you have if you work in a machine shop go talk to the guy that works the machine don't let his communication filter all the way up and then you get some type of watered down story.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:51

Go out there and just you know a good a good solution can come from the janitor you know if he might be the closest one to the problem I have never heard that one and that is probably one of the most important ones um so one communication two awareness and three go to the person closest to the problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:13

Right. And I think I learned that from like General McChrystal we one time at the early on in the war we were doing so many different operations and they were time sensitive and they were like we had to break down our radios take them out of these vehicles and put them in this radio and it put time on getting out the door to go after a time sensitive target and we asked for more radios and they're like oh you can't have more radios and then General McChrystal came down to the NCO level down to us and he goes hey what don't you have and we're like we want more radios and he goes well why why haven't you asked for them so our request didn't even make it to him we had radios the next day right so I think that was like a lesson learned like sometimes the guys at the top that make decisions they don't get a full picture of what reality looks like you know it it's true there's a lot of filters out there civilian world too so a lot of people will filter stuff because they're protecting their job or they're protecting their department they're not they're not more they're not worried about the mission of the company they're more worried about the mission of what affects them which you know it's true and we could do a whole show on that truthfully the truth is this has been really fun your book is an operator's guide FM 0147 a field manual for men by Lee Busby you can find this on Amazon Lee where's the best place for people to find you if they want to reach out learn more builttooperate.org is my website so there's uh a link there for the book and there's a link there to reach out to me with email I'd love to have discussions with people out there.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:51

Right on we put that in the show notes for you Lee thanks for making time uh on the boat looks like a a nice day down there in Charleston uh thanks a lot man it's good to talk to you good to see you again let's not uh wait so long next time for sure man look forward to seeing you soon bye everyone