Brock Briggs  0:00  
I'm sitting here looking at myself in the recording hat. And I'm like kind of wondering, this is going to be something I'm going to get into a little bit later, it's talking about more about video and how that plays into this podcast. But I'm sitting here and I'm like, man, maybe I should be leery of uploading video. Because maybe people will see that I wear the exact same shirt or like four of the same shirts. And now, I have like, can't unthink about that. And it's something I've been thinking about for like the last handful of episodes. And I'm like, man, what if somebody's going to notice what this episode is going to be about is me talking through what I have learned over the last year in a couple of different ways. So I categorized kind of everything that I had learned into two major categories. The first one is going to be about podcasting. And the second one is going to be about the veteran and kind of military community as a whole. They're both kind of separate, but I think important to talk about. And if you're not interested in hearing the podcast talk, I will encourage you to actually stick around because I'm going to draw some correlations to other bigger things about life and business that I think resonate with the themes of my learnings in podcasting. There's going to be maybe a couple hot takes. With we've got that to look forward to. And a couple other just interesting thoughts that I've had, I'm imagining this as a bit of a fireside chat. So I'm going to start with podcasting. And one of the very first things that I had really come to realize about podcasting in general. And it's something that over the last couple of years, I've been a very avid podcast listener, and but just kind of like observing and just consuming that media format. Without a whole lot of other thought about it. What I didn't realize was happening is that I had actually steadily built kind of mental relationships with people that are hosting podcasts. And it's weird to think about that if you are also an avid podcast listener, you know what I'm talking about, you kind of feel like you know, who the people are, who the hosts or who the guests are, you feel involved in that scene, and almost as if you have some kind of say about what they talk about. And it's kind of a strange sense of entitlement. I think that that's driven by a couple of things. One, and this is like, my first observation is that podcasting is a very deep trust, but low signal or one way, medium. And here's what I mean by that. So the deep trust is kind of what we're just talking about. There are a couple of podcasts that I listen to, that sometimes I listen to him two or three times a week, for an hour long over the period of a year or two, like that's a substantial amount of listening time. And so over time, even though that it's it's one directional, you're kind of just on the receiving end of this information. And thinking about that, as in terms of what I'm doing. I really liked that. And I'm going to come back to that in a second. But the second part of that statement is the low signal medium. Because it's one way, I don't really know what's going on the other side of that. The and I don't think that as a listener, this is something that you think about, like I don't really think about the fact that all of those people that I've listened to and in my ears while I'm running and running errands and doing all these things, I don't think about the fact that they don't really know who I am, I just am consuming the content. But when you're in the shoes of a podcast host, you're trying to kind of like bridge that gap. And that's one of the things that I've actually struggled with when it comes to this podcast is because you're I'm talking but you don't really ever get any direct feedback. You're not like looking at somebody I am interacting with the host. But I'm also not hearing if the listeners directly have an issue. Did they like it? Why are they listening? And then attempts to actually speak with the listeners on a show or it's impossible almost. And I shouldn't say impossible. It's something that I'm working towards, and other hosts, I think do a really good job of, again, something that's I'm going to talk about in a little bit, but it's on the roadmap. This is this whole section I'm going to tie into business and some other other topics, but you really have to think about what is the journey that the person on the other side has experience. Let's say that you're writing a book, let's say that you're a boss, it's like kind of the foundation of communication. How is that person entering the experience that you're providing them? And then, you know, that's one part of it. And then the other part of it is the fact that like your content, like what you're actually delivering. So those are just kind of some interesting thoughts about the space. The next thing that I, what that first sentence feeds is this statement that I heard another podcaster make recently about why he does podcasting. And it really resonated with me, because I feel like it aligns with who I have, like spent a lot of my life being, and that's kind of a people person. What he said was, I do podcasting because I want to be known well, but not well known. So let's, let's take that sentence apart. The first part, you want to be known well, like you want other people to know who you are, they you want them to know, your intentions, they you want them to know about you that you were a good person you want to be understood, I think is what it is. Well known is the complete opposite of that, though, where people know nothing about you, but you're widely distributed. It's not narrow at all. And there are a lot of people who know of you but like, don't know you intimately. These are the this just kind of a differentiator, when it comes to how you want to not only deliver yourself in on a podcast, but just like on the internet as a whole. Do you want to just like have a massive following I've talked with and see a lot of stuff on LinkedIn, and all these other platforms where people are like touting their follower count and whatever. But it's like, what does that do? Do you actually get any value from that? I don't know that having 10,000 Twitter followers or LinkedIn connections, or whatever actually means a ton. Unless you're able to actively benefit from that. Maybe having a larger audience, like maybe you can sell whatever your product or services to them more, I'm not sure. But I think that there's a certain beauty that comes with a niche audience a niche focus, where people can dial in and learn about you and that relationship is closer. And something a mission that I personally have in this is to stay in that known well category, I don't want to I want my opinions to be transparent. I want people to have an idea about what I believe and why that is. Even though the whole purpose of this podcast is literally me talking about how I'm changing my mind about a lot of things. But I'm trying to be transparent about that. And that's the goal. This has been a good medium for me, because I get to still talk to people. One of the things that I struggled with before writing a newsletter, semi regularly was that don't really that you get even less feedback doing that. But at least during the periods of doing an interview, I get to experience like talking to a new person and getting the the fruits of that. I think the the takeaway from the segment on like being known well versus well known as thinking about how that maybe applies to where you're sitting at? How are what you're doing now, positioning yourself, maybe that maybe that's online, maybe that's in your business, maybe that's anywhere in your relationship. How is your position, setting you up to be well known or known? Well, and either is fine. I don't think that either of those things was bad. I was just trying to explain, hey, I want to be known. Well, I want people to know me. But that may not be everybody's goal. I think that there are some pros and cons to both. But the question is, is like which one do you want to be and does what you're doing now set you up to be received in that manner. Earlier I was talking about this being a low signal medium. In addition to

you not receiving direct feedback from people that listen, there's also really poor analytics for podcasting. So if you're if you aren't in the podcast space, and you don't know anything about these, really briefly, podcasting is kind of run on an older technology called RSS. And what that does is it presents a challenge Because to actually like track who is listening and like accepting that RSS feed, because there are just tons of things that can accept RSS feeds, so, like Spotify to Apple podcast to, there's just all these platforms. And it's difficult to have one system or like one unit of measure that it's applicable to all of them, because they all do it differently. And that's kind of, it's been a good thing and a bad thing. Like, I've tried to not do this podcast for numbers, it's always kind of lingering in the back of my head, but I'm working on that as a focus. But from the actual trying to understand the analytics that I do have that Spotify provides, it's kind of difficult to know whether they're reliable, I sometimes don't know if that's, hey, is this actually how many people are downloading and listening? Or is there something that I'm missing here? I think the takeaway there is to make sure that you're really understanding what you're measuring. In your business or personal life, I'm going to talk a lot more about finding something to measure in your life, generally, that's going to be one of my last topics on the vet side. But when it comes to be a creative project, whether it's something that you're working on, like what are you? What are you measuring? And how is that helping you get to whatever goal it is that you're trying to achieve? They, I'm not a big fan of the phrase, what gets measured gets managed, I don't think that that's entirely true. But there's some credence to why that idiom, or that phrase exists. And it's because hey, you're gonna, if you're looking at a certain number or record of performance in some way, shape or form, you're going to be doing things to see that number go up. And that kind of feeds into why social media is dangerous. And like, oh, I want to see more followers and more likes and more this or that. But when it comes to your personal life, as well, we are coming up on the the new year. And so we've got goal setting, in your health and all of these different things. Don't wait, first off, don't wait for the new year started today. But to think about what you're measuring. And if you aren't measuring anything, that might be a problem. When it comes to getting feedback, I mentioned a lot on many episodes, why I asked for reviews or ratings for the show. I'm currently doing a giveaway for offering ratings, which we'll see the outcome of that. I'll drop that in the next episode. And there'll be links to it in the show notes if you want to listen but not going to I'm not going to talk about that right now. The asking for ratings is twofold at reasoning, one, because having better ratings like actually pushes you up in the charts when it comes to ensuring that your podcast is discoverable by other people in the Apple podcasts and Spotify and whatever ecosystem that you live in. So that's one thing. But the second thing is that because of the lack of feedback, again, ratings and reviews are a way for people to offer their unfiltered opinion about you. And then ideally, you can take that feedback and improve. But you actually have to get the feedback for that too, for you to do anything. And so that's the kind of the the driver behind getting that it's one thing to be asking for feedback, that that's a good thing. And I think that that demonstrates a certain level of professionalism, not just on podcasts, and but anywhere. When you're asking for feedback, that means that you want to do good, and so that that's a step in the right direction. I think that the next level that builds on top of that is actually being ready to implement the feedback that you're offered it I kind of look at it as like these tears or whatever, there's Justin Welsh writes a really good weekly newsletter, and he shared this image today, where it shows like this fear, and there's these different waves that come out of it. And at the middle is just like, you're happy and like, everything's good, there's no challenges or whatever. And then the next level out is, you know, aware of some things to work on and like, oh, kind of sort of trying to do this. And then it's like, you know, the next level out is getting asking for feedback. And then the next level just like it kind of keeps building and building on each other. But you need to be willing to actually do the thing that you're being told to do, whether it's coming directly from a person or not? So because of the lack of people coming in, and nobody's writing in and saying, Hey, this is what exactly you should do on your podcast, I'm having to look at other signals for viability. And that's in sadly, download numbers to some extent. But other metrics about just like the content type. Is it? Is it a topic or topics that people are having conversations about having to use and like, get your hands into all these other ways to feel and suss out whether you're actually solving a problem. The next little segment that I've picked up about podcasting is kind of a better understanding of time in general. It's, now that I've done this for the last year, it's hard for me to think about a time when I, like, hadn't done it, and would try to imagine maybe how much time to, for somebody to actually put a podcast together. So I don't exactly know what I thought. But I know that the requirements that it takes to actually put this on are significantly larger than I thought they would be. I was listening to right before getting started with this project. I was listening to an episode with Tim Ferriss, and he was talking about starting a podcast. And just like, if you were to do it over again, just all the typical questions about how to just like kind of inspire somebody around like the podcasting space. And something he said, I have, like, held on to this from the very beginning. And that was actually my kind of the gas on my fire starting it, that I was going to be able to do it. And it was something to the effect of he said, however much time and money you think you're you're planning to spend, by putting it on, multiply that by three, both of those things, your time and your money. And you're getting closer to what running a podcast will take from you. And that blew me away at the time was like, Man, how much is it like you just get a mic, like, throw it up, do a couple interviews, like it's good, it's good, like, No, I mean, you can do that. But there are going to be all these things that just kind of get in the way. And I don't know that you as like, a person in your craft and like your artistic process will actually improve. And I think that that's a sign that you're like trying to lean into it when Hey, like I could do this for less time. But I'm trying to cater to a specific quality level on whatever metric that might be, everybody's gonna have something different. But you want to lean into those things, and continue to improve at your craft, whatever that is. But this, this probably takes anywhere from 15 to 20 hours a week, sometimes. There's a week or a couple of weeks ago, I recorded like six interviews in a week. And I didn't feel like talking for several days. There is the administrative load of organizing, like I am on my computer all day long, not just for work and school, but also spending time with that. And you're going to be sending a lot of emails, you have to reach out to a lot of people. And I I am really concerned and care for the quality of my interaction with people. When I reach out. I'm not just like firing off a million emails and just saying one sentence, Hey, come on my podcast. I tried to spend time sourcing interesting people, and then do enough due diligence on them where I think that they would be interesting enough to talk to and provide value. And then find something in their background that

allows me to kind of make the bridge to them. I really like going into emails and introductions with something to say, hey, like, Oh, I just listened to your interview with this person. It was great. It doesn't have to be anything crazy. It's even better when you have a warm introduction or something that the longer that I'm in this space has benefited me is using AI. I know a friend of yours or recently. Now having interviewed a bunch of people in the vet space, I can say hey look, I see that your mutual friends with this person. I interviewed them like they will will attest to the fact that it was like a fine experience and I didn't gank them or do anything weird. And so that instantly gives you like some credibility to that. So that's like one of the ways that the podcast is getting easier, I guess this is kind of turning in from like, why is hard to how it's getting easier. There are some benefits to it as it as you grow. One of the reasons that I spend a lot of time and care a lot for the interactions that I have with the guests on the show is trying to understand what I can do as a differentiator. And so this is going to be kind of the the bigger takeaway from the time that it takes to win you want to work on like a creative craft or something that takes a long time, a passion project, if you all you need to be willing to offer something that's differentiated in business, or if you're selling a product. People buy it for typically one or two reasons. One, it's good value, like the cost compared to what they get from it is low or perceived as low in their eyes. Or there's nothing, nothing else like it, like this is the best one. When it comes to a creative endeavor, especially in a world where we've got Tic Toc, and we've got all these short form attention, getter things. Understanding what your differentiator is, is incredibly important. And I think that there are three different ways that you can differentiate, not only like when you're selling something in a business, but also in kind of creative content. One who your customer base is, one of the things that a lot of content creators talk about is the value of understanding who you're who you're selling to. Who are the people on the other end of whatever it is that you're selling or giving them if you don't know who those people are, how can you even be sure that you're talking to them? Because you may not be. And a lot of your decisions should be based on what people in that demographic look like. So that's one way you can differentiate is knowing who your customer base is. And why does the person who is listening to your podcasts or buying from your business? Why are they different than the person that's standing next to them? The second differentiator that I think there is, is what you're offering is

what are you what product or service? Are you offering to somebody? And how is that kind of coming across? Are you looking to entertain a person? Are you looking to teach them something? Are you offering to some solve some sort of problem? Those are the reasons that people buy things they want to they want to learn? They want to solve a problem, they want to be entertained, you know, where does your offering fall into one of those categories. The last way that you can differentiate is the medium that you do that in whether that be podcasting is traditionally audio, but people are like turning that into video. And so that's just an example with that. But if you write maybe you write a book, and kind of the advent of newsletters, that's a different type of medium. There's so many different ways to deliver what you're offering is. And it's good to experiment, find out what it is that your people like that you're offering. And the medium should kind of be dictated by the customer base. What is it that they where do they like to receive their news? Think that this was had a funny thought. Thinking about who your your customer base is and how they like to receive information spoken with have had several funny interactions with grandparents or older people who have maybe like, never listened to a podcast before. And so it's always funny. They're like, Oh, what do you do? And it's like, well, well, I host a podcast. What is that? Like, of how do you even describe this? It's talk radio, but recorded. Understanding why that would that would you're not going to have a very easy time going after maybe an older age demographic with podcast. Testing. There's some exceptions. But that's just one example of why the medium is important. And then also understanding what the customer wants when it comes to that. All of this talk about like learnings and stuff from podcasting, kind of brings me to my last point that I want to talk about, and like the direction that I'm looking to take the podcast, what you can expect from me going forward, I am in the process of working to get this podcast onto YouTube. While it would be easy to just like upload the soundtracks to YouTube, that's not exactly what I want to do long term, and I'm trying to spend the time and money to get that to a viable and reasonable experience to actually view on YouTube, it's so so visual, not a lot of people are just going on there to listen to sound. So I'm trying to make the necessary moves to make that an reasonably enjoyable experience for something that's not designed to be video. So I'm going to be I'm working on YouTube. And another kind of initiative that I am going to be working towards in this new year is working more on top of funnel. And let me explain what I mean by that. So this is kind of like a general marketing term, if you work in marketing, you'll kind of be familiar with this. But as people, as customers, as listeners, as whatever you want to whatever you want to call them, in whatever line of work you're in, whoever you're selling something to. There are different ways that they get down to the point of buying a product, or listening to a podcast, whatever it is. And so there are things that you need to do to kind of like help them reach that point, like a buy signal, when you when somebody buys something from you, that's the highest signal of faith that they can, they can kind of have. And it like I said before, it's not just as simple. They don't just like show up and buy something usually, oftentimes, they need to be kind of nurtured and like communicated with earlier on in the process to get them to that buy decision, especially for something that's discretionary. So what do you do, to kind of help or kind of feed and this is like a funnel formation is like, let's just imagine a triangle and down at the, the upside down triangle down at the point of the triangle is that's the buy decision. And there are people up above that. And so you have to kind of feed that they call it feeding your top of funnel to get people to that bottom portion of buying or in my case, listening to a podcast, I have done a very poor job, just due to the requirements of putting this on altogether of something that I is actually very easy. And it's like posting to Instagram. That's such a simple thing. But I have been so overcome with the responsibilities of just delivering a weekly show that this is a kind of up until recently about all I can handle. When I think about podcasting, podcasting is an extremely as I said at the beginning, deep trust low signal medium. It's at the bottom of the triangle. It's it's a big commitment to ask somebody like hey, you know, if you meet somebody new and they asked what you do, maybe you recommend them, hey, you listen to my podcast, think about the requirement. Think about what you're asking them to do. You're asking them to sit down. And like maybe like especially if they're going to have a conversation with you about it afterwards, they probably feel obligated, in some sense to listen to it like in depth so that they can talk about it. So for that they need to be paying attention. And especially for VI format where it's like kind of a it's not a lighthearted just bullshitting conversation. There's usually some deeper topics discussed. And so people need to be listening to that. So I'm asking or I have spent the last year asking people to listen to an hour and a half show. From somebody they don't know about a topic maybe they don't even care about like that's, it's a tall order. And I'm like coming to terms with that and accepting that. So how I'm thinking about it is that I need to do more things to kind of feed the top of funnel and like how can I get more people into my ecosystem with lower stakes offerings, and that might be short clips on Instagram. You know, people that's a low time requirement medium, spending time on Instagram to watch a 32nd clip. The same with watching short clips on YouTube, Facebook, anything like that. But maybe that's reading an article, maybe that's there's almost name anything else. And that's like, probably going to be an easier ask. And that's what my point earlier about podcasting is that like the tip of the triangle in terms of the highest hardest thing to kind of get somebody to do. So I'm going to be spending more time upstream on helping this get found, in short form shorter form mediums. And looking for kind of like lower risk ways for people to try the podcast, if that makes sense. One of the things I also in looking to do is to continue to experiment with new content types. So this content type right now is something that's a little bit different. I'm not sure if you guys are into that. I need to try it to find out though, that might be also doing like a news type episode, like once a week to cover some relevant news, doing historical deep dives on interesting characters. Like there's, there's several other content types that I'm thinking about in terms of trying to create an engaging experience of that people want to listen to and enjoy. So those are some of the things that you can be on the lookout for me or from me this upcoming year. All of those things are kind of their experiment IV. Not sure if that's a word, there are experiments, I need to try them out. And I need to do that in order to continue to grow and to find more people. And the next segment is going to be about talking about what I have changed my mind on on the veteran community. And there's a couple other some interesting tidbits in here. I've said this to some people recently on the podcast is that I almost feel like I changed my mind on most things in the last year, which is interesting, because I have actually just just a couple weeks ago, passed over the point of being four years out of the Navy, meaning I have now spent more time outside of service than inside the service.

However, the last year versus the three years prior to that has been probably 10x The amount of like processing, and realizations come to about service than in the prior three years. And I think that the takeaway from that is why it's important to talk about it, write about it, do whatever you got to do about it, to work through what you got going on. Using your time to write down the things that you're thinking and talk to other people who have experienced the same thing has been that's been extremely valuable for me in this process. And I don't think that a lot of people are, maybe people were also in my shoes and looking to just kind of put their service behind them and move on and not think about it. I think that there's some benefit to be having the types, those types of conversations. And it certainly has opened my mind up to a lot of things. And like I said, I'm better in my effort of public transparency is talking about all the things that I don't know. One of the first things that I have changed my mind about and this will this is going to be kind of a larger theme that resonates through a lot of the rest of the points. But this is something that Ryan Patel said, I talked with him on episode 50 or 51. He said, There are no broad strokes with this community. Spend some time thinking about what that meant. I think that what he's getting at is that a lot of people will just kind of bucket veterans into one group and say, oh, you know, their event or whatever. And that's it. That's a good thing. That's part of our identity. It's it's all of these things, but there are a lot of generalizations that are made. Beyond that that may not be entirely accurate. We've got a extremely unique population, very wide reaching and age, race, sex, like everything. Just the same way as like a normal population. Now, there's not a whole lot of difference there. What I think brushing the community with broad strokes does is one, not only is it not accurate, but too It also gives people the wrong sense about their own service. A kind of like, is telling them what they should or should not believe. I instantly think of kind of the notion a lot of people have that vets are like these damaged people that have mental issues and have all these problems. If you tell that to enough people, like how many people are going to believe that that is how they are. And all these programs for veterans that are there to help us and whatever and a lot of them kind of pitch vets as these people that really need help. And I think that we do, there's certainly some people that need more help than others. But what I'm getting at is that you're you're almost kind of boxed into an identity that that may not pertain to you. One of the conclusions that I've kind of come to about veterans in this category is perhaps the the title of veteran is what brings us together and what unites us. But it doesn't necessarily define us unites but not defines. That might be like one of those, like, too catchy of phrases to use is to use in the circumstance. But there's going to be many unique feelings across service members or people who have served in the past, regardless of us having the same title, or defining characteristic as being a veteran at one point or another. I think taking that idea to the next level when it comes to like not painting broad strokes on people. It also supports the idea that there's no one way to do anything. There are lots of ways to do stuff. One of the ways that my brain kind of operates is when I come across like a new idea about something I'm instantly like, Oh, this must be the one thing that I was, I was missing all along. And I've like totally changed my mind. And as I kind of I felt this much more so with early guests. But as I begin to talk to people who were further along in their time out of service, or in their career is the way that they present their career path, as like, oh, veterans make great authors because of this, or veterans make great small, medium sized business owners because of this, like those are all things that have kind of like thought along the way. And at one point or another maybe thought or believed that there was like a recipe for getting out of the service and that we all ought to go do something in reality is that there isn't a formula. There are a lot of things that we're good at just in the same way that the rest of the population is. And each person is going to be uniquely suited to something else. This probably parallels my own journey and just not knowing sometimes not knowing what the thing that I should be doing is. And so you guys are getting kind of maybe a taste of my own personal journey as I kind of explore the different careers and opportunities out there. And that's very meta, like I'm originally thinking about starting this podcast about like exploring different careers and resources and whatnot for other people. But in reality, it's me who is getting education. And hopefully, people on the other end of the other end of the earphone that's me. One of the things here's some of these next couple of things are going to be kind of hard. I am eating my words on so many things and it feels good. It's kind of liberating in some way. But now thing I have here is, in the past, I have been kind of critical of people who stayed in, I think mentally and critical, that may not be the right word, looking at my experience, and that's the only thing that I'm judging on clearly, like, I'm not considering other people's experience, like, they may have had a better one than I did. But I look at some people, and I'm like, Well, why would you want to stay? And man, that is really fucking ignorant. That is a really, really bad thing. And that's just, it's so wrong. It's not good. The recipes are just as bad as not, but I have like, let my perception of how things have gone like dictate how I think other people ought to ought to act or what they ought to do as if I've had some kind of like arbiter over that. I get closer and closer every day to accepting the fact that you can't change people's minds about things. They have to, there's only two ways that you can do that. Either, you need to help lead them to their own conclusion about why it the way that they believe is wrong as it is, or you need to show them by making what you do so loud, that they can't help but notice and recognize that. So I think that I have just spent a lot of time projecting my own thoughts and experiences on people that I think oh, maybe you, maybe you should get out. Reality is, is like there's some people who really enjoy the service. And not saying that I didn't, I enjoyed parts of it the way that most people do. But back to that thing that I've seen before, there's just not a formula. What I haven't gained more sympathy for

is when people don't like something, whether that be a job, could be any job, not just the service, but anything and they don't want to take the actions to change it. And I think that there are a lot of people, unfortunately, that are still in the service, that just want to be there to complain about it. This isn't me talking down, I spent a lot of my time complaining and that was wrong. But what I'm seeing is that there are a lot of people that are just looking to complain about life in general. And it's frustrating to hear that and to have sympathy for it when they don't want to make the choice to change and to be different. One of the next things that I have changed my mind about is a lot about the enlisted and officer divide. One of the things that prompted this is a couple of weeks ago on Facebook, they have like the on this day posts and I was looking at that and there I made a status back in must when 2015 So seven years ago ish. And I said something to the effect of officers let's see what did I say something about how officers walk around puddles and enlisted walk through them. And I remember the day that I made that status and I was actually meant it literally and metaphorically at the same time because I was walking to work that day of walking from the barracks to my building. And there was an officer in front of me and there was like a very kind of a noticeable puddle there and naturally he walked around it and I think at the time I like I was like oh and I mean it was he wasn't in like a dress uniform or anything. And it was raining and so we're kind of wet already. But he walked around the puddle and just in a working uniform and I think in my head at the time I must have thought that he was like for some reason a coward for not walking through that. Like he kind of it was it was a very large one and he like kind of like considerably go out of his way to like make sure that he like didn't step in it and it but it wasn't that deep and like it Was it was very conceivable in work boots that you should you could just walk through it like it was a pain to walk around. So it wasn't just like I'm grossing this guy for no reason. He could have just walked through it, but he didn't. And so I think in my head, I was like, oh, like, enlisted were were workers, like, were the tough ones were all these things. And I think it I'm not sure why I really felt this way. But you kind of almost feel pinned against officers in some way. Like, there's all these jokes about. You know, like, making a joke enlisted to officer like, oh, no, I work for a living like who like I know that I've said that 100 times. But you kind of like you feel like that. They're your enemy, kind of. And that's weird. Now, in hindsight, it's like this is literally your boss in some capacity. That may not be like true for everybody. But there's always just kind of this gap there, this enlisted officer gap. Maybe that's the search for a common enemy, and you just kind of like want somebody to dislike. I'm not sure what it is. I have changed my mind about that, obviously, to about the nth degree. And first and foremost, like, at least half the people I've had on the show have been officers. And I'm not sure if that's coincidence or not. But there are some really fantastic officers, current and former. That's that is bar none. I wish that I had my mind positioned in a way where I was willing to look for those opportunities to make those types of connections, not that it feels like that would even be possible. Like as a junior enlisted troop, you're not like trying to think about how your division officer might be like your, you know, a professional connection on LinkedIn or something someday like that. You're just not thinking about that. But now. Now that I'm out, it feels like I've kind of really gained some like status like as in I'm just like a normal person. And it feels like different to talk to people who are officers, I don't know what that is about how somebody is going to have to respond to this and tell me I'm not freaking crazy for thinking this way. Which is kind of like weirdly how I feel about all these things. And kind of why I'm a little bit nervous to post this episode. But it's kind of like weird ramblings about ideas and why I'm not thinking correctly, obviously. But I I've changed my mind on that I really was not open and like be I didn't I certainly didn't feel that I was being looked at in that way and obviously was not giving anybody else the benefit of the doubt on that. I think I was thinking about this topic earlier today. And kind of just daydreaming on why that problem kind of might exist. And the thing that I had think about or that I kind of referenced that I've never heard it pitch this way is that the enlisted to Officer gap is kind of another reflection of like the blue collar white collar conversation and I mean quite literally it's like typically like what's accepted as the difference between blue collar and white collar is like blue collar is labor and white collar is like degree sitting at a desk type job which an officer world the officers has the degree like the the enlisted don't typically like it's, that's what it is, but I'd never really thought about it in that way. I think one of the things that that relates to is people are kind of naturally looking for something to complain about. And enough I've mentioned this before, but looking for a common enemy. And it's like oh, this is this person or this group of people or whoever is the reason that I am this way or this is their the reason for something bad that's happening to me which is just not true, but people would rather complain rather than try to fix things or be different. If I'm sensing a trend in the last couple of things here just tired of also listening to complaining. But I'll try to keep my bitching to a minimum so enlisted to Officer divide I that was kind of a short side The thing, and like I said, I've had the pleasure to talk with some really fantastic officers on this show. And I think they are doing a lot to kind of influence the community in a good way. But just like with any job, there's the possibility for bad leaders, that's going to happen at some point. And I think the point is to not get soured about that, and certainly not soured about an entire, like, group of people that is much larger than just that one bad experience that you've had.

Next thing that I've changed my mind on. Okay, so veteran resources, this is a big one. I don't know what they were teaching us at tap, or taps class, or whatever it's called. For some reason, when I got out, I feel like I did not know anything about anything. I didn't know what resources to find, I don't think that I really took advantage of anything that was available to me. And I think that it was largely driven by ignorance slash lack of knowledge about them. This last year, I have been exposed to so many veteran resources, it is just unfreaking believable. There are so many veteran service organizations or so many companies, there's so many individual people that literally live to serve the veteran community, I just had been blown away by that. Starting out, I was like, oh, there's not that many veteran podcasts like six months, and I'm like, wow, there's a lot of veteran podcasts. There are so many people in this space that are like looking to help out and improve you. If you, you just kind of look for him. I think that that's that's the takeaway there is, if you're not finding them, you're not looking in the right places. And this is going to kind of feed into my next topic, but the you as an individual getting out of service, like need to take the initiative, because it's not the military's responsibility to ensure that you get out and are just totally set up. And you know, you have a job and you're happy and you love it. And this and that. There's a ton of resources out there. Put yourself out there, make some connections on LinkedIn. Google them. Like there's just, I don't think that there's any reason why everybody can't be finding something a company or somebody to help them just because there's so many. There's, I don't know how many veteran service organizations out there, but there's like in the 10s of 1000s. Like, it's so so many. Any type of background, it will, there will be something that will appeal. Speaking to veterans service organizations is kind of my, one of my next realizations, or No, I have a thought on that. And I, this might be a little bit of a hot take, but I'm trying to make sure that I understand how and why I think this way. Coming to see how many veteran service organizations there is, has been a good thing, it's opened my eyes up and I'm the space is not as scary as I thought it was, like I said, coming from a perspective of feeling that there's no resources and then, you know, as somebody who maybe doesn't need a ton of help, but wants other people to make sure that they're getting the help that they need. That's encouraging to me because I know that the vet community will be taken care of. Now, that said, the exposure to that amount of VSOs has kind of made me suspect of some with that many, I start to kind of question some of the incentives of some and certainly nobody had had on this podcast or anything. Not even close to that. But I I worry when the pitch of the company starts to be about money, rather than the impact of the organization. And sometimes I get scared that like maybe as like a nonprofit organization when your company Usually reliant on funding to continue fulfilling your mission. And, you know, we need that. There are lots of underserved communities even within the vet community. But it's I had, like I said, I just worry that it becomes this like fundraising loop. And it's just like money, money, money, money, money, and we're forgetting about why we're even there in the first place. Some of the things that I kind of look for, because I hear about nonprofits and people like kind of fall into my DMs all the time about like this nonprofit, that nonprofit on LinkedIn, which is kind of weird. But one of the first things that I always go and do is, like, let's take a look at their financials as a nonprofit, they are nonprofits are forwarded tax exemptions. Because of that, so one of the first things that I want to do is like, Okay, how much let's take a look at where they're spending their money. And like, what's that what that's going to. And I think that that's should be or is in the interest of people who may be listening to the show, is to look for those things and hold nonprofits accountable. I, it's great to see when nonprofits post them on their website means, hey, we want people to see this and to read it. And to know about it, this is what we're spending our money on. And this is how much charitable giving was made in the last year. And I don't even know any like, I'm not here to like name drop, I don't even know the name of a bad example. I just seem like things I've seen. But nonprofits where maybe people are like paid exorbitant amounts of money, like things like that, that's kind of a red flag. I have spoken with people on this show that I've talked about ways to watch out for nonprofits. I think that that might have been with Max from vrna. He was talking about nonprofits. But that's something that you could do as an individual to kind of like, suss out whether a nonprofit is, you know, putting all of that information out there and whatnot. I think that the the mission of a nonprofit is extremely important, what problem are they looking to solve? And then honestly, I like to look at what the impact is, like, try to connect the dots from what the the organization is doing, or what they say that they're doing on their website. And then draw that to some stories of like, Are there interviews where people have like, gone and talked about the impact that that organization has had? Or like? Are there stories written online about it, like there are tons of ways that you can help find details to see that that's kind of like being carried out? And so just like with anything, and especially, you know, if you're going to actively give to a nonprofit, like make sure that it's one that aligns with your values? And is there actually fulfilling the mission that you think that they're fulfilling? I'm not downbeat or against nonprofits, I want to make that abundantly clear. I just think that and care about impact the most, and hope that the focus can be about doing the thing that they say that they're doing as the number one and not just, Hey, all we care about is getting more donations. My next takeaway from the vet community is around the types of people that the military breeds. And I think that that is servants, the military breeds, servant leaders. And I think that honestly, we are called as individuals to continue to serve after our enlistment is a regardless of whether you joined the military to, quote, serve your country, maybe it was some people just join for the school benefits. Maybe they joined for whatever, regardless of any of that, at some point, you were responsible for the safety of our country. And that's, that's a big commitment. And I think that that should be honored. unrespected. Now, where I think we run into problems is, because the military is so demanding, I think it's very easy to get an idea that somehow the military has taken a lot away from you, that was not something that you knew about. And let me kind of explain that. One of the statements that I had, I've heard, I heard this recently, and I got kind of upset, because I know that I have like, thought it in the past, and I really have moved very far away from that. But the phrase,

I'm excited to get out of the military, what it took from me. And I think that that's a very toxic, scary statement, for a couple of reasons. First off, you signed up, you enlisted, you sign on the paper. You may not have known exactly what that was going to entail, but you agreed to that uncertainty. So let's just talk about what's owed here. And I don't think that there's there's not a ton of owing on behalf of the military to you because of anything. That said, they do have a basic responsibility to keep you alive, feed you clothe you do all of those things. And I think that, although it leaves a little bit to be desired, do make an effort to invest in your future beyond the service. Now they've got a retirement plan they've got they send you the taps class, effectiveness of that will leave for another discussion. But there there are things in place that are designed to help make that transition as smooth as possible. Kind of within their power, I suppose. I think the attitude that somehow the military has harmed you is not the right approach. And I think it really breeds this attitude of like entitlement. I don't know if that's, it's kind of a scary word. But that's its entitlement, I think to some extent.

You were part of the service, because you are not most people, you're mentally stronger than most people, you're might be physically stronger than most people. You're that servant leader that we're just talking about, like, you're a lot of things that other people are not. And so I think that for that reason, you're kind of called to a higher standard, when it comes to the way that you ought to act. And like I said, why it emphasizes the importance of getting out and continuing to be a servant leader in your community, in the lives of the people that you live with your friends, your family, all of those things. Now, there's a lot of different ways that you can do that. I was speaking with a mentee the other day that was said something to the effect of I'm nervous that I and I hope that he doesn't, I don't think he'll be mad that I bring this up, but I'm not going to name drop. He said something to the effect of I'm nervous about getting out because I think I feel like all of these organizations and like where I go to look for jobs and stuff, like kind of what I'm coached into being is just this miraculous leader. And just like this, frickin hard charging navy seal that just like, comes in and saves the day and like is this glorious victory and battle and all of these things, and that's kind of the way a lot of people pitch or a pitch service members about how we should be pitching to our employers. Oh, were great leaders were all these things. And he said, I'm worried that I'm not. I'm not a leader. And I was I thought about that really long and hard for a second because, again, another thing that I've said that's probably not right. veterans, veterans are all leaders and I'm not sure where I stand on that. I think that There's this dynamic where you're going to enter the workforce. And people will likely look to you for leadership in some way, shape or form. I know that certainly when I went back to school, I was the de facto project lead on every single group project, because everybody's like, Oh, you're the oldest, your and you may not be the oldest and whatever you got to do, in fact, you probably won't be. But in that circumstance, like the, my age, and like my status as like a veteran was like, that made me that guy. And I think that there are some assumptions that will be made about you, in whatever workplace that you go to, particularly if it's a civilian one, that people will kind of look to you that way. I'm not entirely sure where, where I stand on that. Yeah, I think that the military does give us the skills and trains us to be leaders to some extent. Not even to some extent they do. But I don't know that everybody is a leader. That's something that I'm gonna have to think about. But that's, that's kind of where I'm at on the leadership thing. I do think that the service is non negotiable, though. I think that you ought to be plugged back in with your community. You're a pillar in your community, give back, continue giving back. And maybe not even just as a way that is, it's not required by service. But it's something that's good for you. And I know for a fact that we have all learned to do that. Well. The last thing, the last realization that I've had about the vet community service in general, is kind of coming back to this question of, what are we optimizing for in life, when you are spending your last minutes alive on this earth? And let's just say for instance, that you knew that it was going to be your last few minutes. What is it that you think that you're going to think about? Is it going to be it's maybe your family to some extent, I think in large part, you're going to be holding yourself to an internal scorecard of sorts. You're going to be comparing and stacking up your performance of in your life to how you maybe think that you ought to then the important part about the scorecard is that it's it's a measure or reflection of you. It's your your goals. You know, your impact the things that you did, to have some sort of influence on the world. I think about this quote, and I mentioned this on a prior episode, but it's something to the effect of what would happen if on the last day of your life, you met the person that you could have become, I think about that, like way too frequently. It's kind of a kind of a strange thought. But that that's what the measurement is, that's, that's what we're optimizing for. We want to like, we want those to be the same person we want to have held ourselves to the highest possible standard and act in a way that's that's according and moves move that forward. Something that I used to feel in my kind of maybe younger, late teenage angsty years is and I talked with a lot of people that kind of think this way. But they talk about the universe or the world, or just life as like somebody that is out to out to get them. And it's like there are these forces that work that are working to conspire against them and like make them not successful. The only person that you're fighting against in this life is yourself. You are fighting the summation of your own problems. You are fighting the entirety of your own mind and The weaknesses that we have or our shortcomings are false. That's That's what we're fighting against. That's the true battle. I think that the scorecard, in the end, is going to be a measurement of how we did in that fight? Did we let our emotions get the better of us? Did we go and do the thing that we said that we would do? Did we give our word and then keep it? Did we wake up every day and act in a way? That is reflective of the fact that we are called to live and act differently? I certainly sure hope so. The last thing I'll leave you with today is this. A couple of weeks ago, my spouse, Aubrey and I were discussing the phrase that that people you hear it all the time, in the service say is like, you know, things were different back in my day, like they used to be tougher than they are today. And we're kind of like, comparing our own experiences usually, like, in my head, it's always like some crusty old guy, old retired guy talking about how the new Navy or the new whatever is weak. At and Ron were nothing compared to how it used to be. And I think it's easy, like, you don't even have to be the crusty old guy to say that. But we find ourselves saying that, even just you know about this, like, you know, old kids today, or, you know, it's the, you know, work today, people just don't want to work anymore. Like it's all these different kinds of like phrases, and they're all kind of saying the same thing. And it's making a comparison about how different it was for us. Over time, over some some period of time, maybe two years, maybe it's, you know, weeks, whatever it is likely years. I can't help but think, what if it was actually us? Who changed and not the experience? What if today's Navy, today's army, today's Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, whatever, is, is actually the same and we are just different.

Maybe we were in that exact same position at one point, but our own growth, our own internal personal mental, physical health has improved to the point where the standards of today look easy. It's hard to imagine the navy or any military organization changing a terrible amount over you know that many that it's a pretty slow moving organization as a whole. And so I don't think that I think that we as people have capacity to change much quicker than that. And that's kind of the point of what I'm saying here is maybe it was us who changed and not, not the thing around us. Something to think about. I hope that we're changing. I really hope that we are and I really want to look back in a week from now, a year from now 510 years from now, and look back and say, yep, he was executing. He was attacking every day. He was doing the thing. I appreciate you tuning into my fireside chat. I would love to hear your feedback. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this episode on everything that I've changed my mind on. I would be remissed to say that there will be less of these next year. In fact, I hope that there's more. I think that there's a lot of power in being able to change your mind. Be open to what the world has for you. Get out there and keep attacking