6 Lessons Learned as a Green Beret that Make Business Success Virtually Automatic

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What is up guys? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Today we are going to do a little bit of a deeper dive on a recent post that I just made about how my career in SF has translated very well to building a business. And mainly the theme is just personal development and self-development and building habits that bleed into multiple areas of your life and in turn, make your business more successful. And [00:00:30] most of these things you're pretty much required to learn and develop when you're in soft. If you choose a career in soft, whether it's green Berets or Navy Seals or rangers or you want to go to the tier one level, whatever it may be, these things are kind of non-negotiable if of course you want to be more than average, if you want to be an above average soft guy.

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So I'm going to get into six big things that have [00:01:00] really, really moved the needle in my business, launching my business that I launched. I'll get into some details, but I launched it in 2021, it's now 2025. I didn't start officially doing it until I got out in 2023. I didn't officially start actually making money, so it wasn't like a real business. It was more of just like a profile or a page, a podcast content, things like that at first. But I got out in 2023, April of 2023, and I kind of needed to start making money in order to maintain my livelihood because [00:01:30] I stopped getting army paychecks. So these are some things that really, really have helped me along the way. It's not like a one day thing, you just start doing these one day and you're just automatically going to see success.

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It's a slow drip and it's just getting a feel for and embracing, I would say, the process that leads to the outcomes that you want. So I'm going to give a little bit of a backstory, then I'm going to get into each of the six things that have [00:02:00] moved the needle most. And I'm also going to explain why they moved the needle most. And just to answer a question that probably a lot of people will have, not everyone listening to this is looking to become an entrepreneur or start their own business, run their own show. I totally understand that, and it's definitely not for everyone. And honestly, I would say if you're not interested in doing that, you're probably going to have a lower stress life overall. But it is highly, highly rewarding. And if you are interested [00:02:30] in it or if you watch this episode, listen to it and it sparks something in you, then these things can really help out.

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But even if not, even if you are not in soft yet, or you're looking to go into soft, which is probably most people who are listening to this majority percentage wise, then it's going to help you with your pursuit of soft as well. It's not like these things are just applicable to starting your own business or if you are interested in just being a better professional in general or if you are just looking to be more productive. And [00:03:00] I would say just improve your overall character and improve your effectiveness as a man or a humid, I should say. This stuff can apply to women too. So just because you're not looking to be an entrepreneur doesn't mean this episode's not going to have any value for you. So just getting out of the way. And one more thing to get out of the way too, it is Cyber Monday week.

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If you are listening to this on the day it comes out Wednesday, the 3rd of December, you are in luck. The programs, if you miss the Black Friday 50% off, they're now Cyber Monday, 40% [00:03:30] off all my programs on the website. The code is Cyber Monday, all one word, cyber Monday, no space. So again, that goes until the end of the day, Wednesday the third, until the end of literally the day. So 11:59 PM and if you are in need of a program, they're all linked in the description. You can check those out and go from there. So let's go into the episode. I'm going to start with a little backstory only to provide some context and make it so that you think I'm actually credible and not just bullshitting [00:04:00] some random business owner that if you've heard of me, of course you know about TTM, Terminator Training Method my business.

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But if you haven't, I guess this intro is kind of just to give you a little bit of context. So you're listening to someone who actually not necessarily is an expert on building a business but knows what they're talking about because I've actually seen some success and I've got some evidence that it's actually effective that these things are effective. So flashback all the way to 2021. That's when I first started making content [00:04:30] for Terminator training. I did not have any clients. I honestly didn't have any programs. I created an Instagram page, and by the way, this is going to be mostly off the cuff. I have some notes, but it's going to be mostly off the cuff because I am kind of just going to go however my brain tells me to go. So I had no clients, I had no programs, I wasn't making any money off it.

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I I created an Instagram page. I was making content, tried to do a post a day, and I started making podcasts as well. These podcasts [00:05:00] were all audio only. There was no video. I rarely showed my face. I didn't start showing my face until pretty soon after or pretty close to when I was going to get out. And then of course now I show my face because I'm out mainly to just abide by the quiet professional mantra that soft is supposed to abide by. So I didn't talk about my job. I honestly didn't talk at all about tactical fitness almost at all about tactical fitness or hybrid. I did talk a decent amount about hybrid, but prepping for selection. [00:05:30] All this stuff I talk about now, I didn't really talk about back then because A, I didn't know that I wanted to pursue this exact path, this type of avatar.

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Pretty much my former self guys who are prepping for selection and guys who are in that are looking to improve and enhance their fitness and their longevity and perform better at their job or guys who are already in soft that are looking to go to the next level, the tier one unit level, I was just talking about general fitness because I've always been really into it. I've always been obsessively into it and I love every [00:06:00] aspect of it. I love strength, I love conditioning. I love endurance. I love power building. I love speed. I love agility. I don't love mobility, but I do like lifting with a full range of motion, which is a great way to improve your mobility. But you probably notice I don't talk about mobility drills that often because I think a lot of people over-index them, neither here nor there.

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But I also love the non-training aspects of it, the nutrition, the sleep, the lifestyle, the habits that really contribute to your gains and your potential ability to adapt and recover [00:06:30] from your training and perform to where you want to perform. So I figured I'd start sharing that kind of stuff. I didn't really even have the plan to get out and start doing this. This wasn't necessarily my exit strategy when I first started TTM. It was just I enjoyed doing it and I figured I would share some stuff that I knew and maybe build a little following for myself. And this definitely paid off down the road, but at first I wasn't going for virality or max followers or anything like that. I just enjoyed making fitness content. So I [00:07:00] did flash forward a couple of years to 2023 when I actually made the decision to get out.

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I was at my, just before my 12 year mark when this decision point happened. And when you're in the military or when you're in the army at least, I'm not sure how other branches do it, but once you hit 10 years, your next contract that you sign if you want to sign it has to be indefinitely. So I would've had to do eight more years if I wanted to stay active duty or get out or go [00:07:30] National Guard, which I wasn't really all that interested in because I really wanted to go all in on Terminator training at that time. I was starting to decide like, yeah, I'm probably going to get out and also, yeah, I'm going to start putting all of my eggs in this basket, this Terminator training method basket and see where it takes us. So got out in April of 2023, about to this day, about two and a half years ago.

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And at that time I had no clients. I had I think four programs out. My first four programs I believe [00:08:00] were hypertrophy Kickstart, Jack Zel, and then S-F-A-S-I made SFAS, I believe right around the time I got out, maybe slightly before, maybe slightly after, I can't remember exactly, but we would probably get on a really good month 10 program sales. I remember we had, my wife and I would sit down, my wife didn't work for the company at this time. She does now, which I'll get into, but we would sit down and make goals and I remember one of our goals was to sell 10 programs in a month. And so most months [00:08:30] we probably sold three to seven programs, but again, I had no clients by that summer. By July 4th, give or take, I had three clients and they're what I like to call kindness clients, people that I knew that just wanted to help me out.

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So one was my dad, one was my wife's really good friend who's also I'm really good friends with as well. And one was a former coworker, a former teammate at 10th Group. His wife was interested in doing some postpartum fitness stuff. So they all agreed to [00:09:00] work with me and I say agreed just because, like I said, I don't think any of them really needed me, but they wanted to help me out. And so I didn't charge them all that much. I can't even remember if I charged them anything. I think I've charged 'em probably a third of what I charge people per month now, maybe even a quarter. So not that much and went well, and they enjoyed it. They got good results. And then I started to get into where I was like, how am I going to niche [00:09:30] down and really focus on one population or one avatar or one general avatar, for example, general people, people who just want to be fit and healthy gen pop athletes, tactical athletes, soft prep.

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And I landed on soft prep and one of the things I'm going to get into is one of the reasons why, one of the six things I hired a coach, a business coach at the time, will Siller, who is amazing. He was amazing as my coach and he still is amazing, makes great content. [00:10:00] If you're a coach, you should definitely follow him and listen to his podcast. I can't remember what his podcast is called, but he's full of gems. Will Siller Consulting, I believe is his Instagram handle. I'll try and link it in the description. But we worked together for a while and he was like, you'd be foolish not to target your former self, pretty much your 22-year-old selection prep self. And so that's what I went with and I started to shift. If you look back, not that anyone's going to do this, but if you were to go back on my Instagram, probably around the May, june, July, 2023 [00:10:30] timeframe, you might notice that I started making a lot more content like I do today.

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Not so much general fitness and not random, but general fitness advice for general population. So that was the transition. And I finally got my first actual 18 x-Ray slash option 40 client and his name was Jake. Unfortunately, he's passed away recently in a skydiving accident, but he was my first actual self prep client and he went to Ranger regiment and he was crushing, unfortunately, he [00:11:00] loved to skydive and had a skydiving incident relatively recently and didn't make it. But either way, that's also kind of beside the point, but it's pretty much like the start of actually doing this, what I'm doing right now, and I continue to make programs, we continue to sell a little bit more programs over time, but skip all the way forward to today. And it is currently the beginning of December of 2025. Again, two and a half years later, give or take.

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And at this point we [00:11:30] have the amount of clients that I originally had that summer three. We have a waiting list that is over 100 times the length of that. We get usually 12 to 15 inquiries for coaching every single week. And if you have been one, I appreciate your interest in working with me, but unfortunately I just don't have unlimited roster space. So if your application fits and I see it and my wife deems it, she has this system that she enters people's [00:12:00] applications into that spit out their ratings as far as if they're potentially going to be a good client or not. If you are, then eventually I should be reaching out to you. But at this time just there's only so much we can do. There's only so much bandwidth. I've had double as many clients as I have right now and just I felt like I was not a, I felt like I wasn't going insane.

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Always, always, always working on client stuff, never working on the business, just always working in the business, which is important of course, working in the business. If you're a coach, [00:12:30] you should work in the business. Any coach who doesn't, honestly, I don't agree with, but you also have to work on the business too. And for a while, up until a few months ago, it was just me. I was running a one man show. Now my wife is thankfully who's a rockstar. She's really, really good at all the things I suck at and hate. So we compliment each other really well and she's helped me tremendously and I'm way less stressed now as well. And the business is doing great. But either way, long wait list, I've got [00:13:00] really, really high quality, hard charging absolute animal clients and we sell the amount of programs that we used to sell per month per couple hours.

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Now, although I don't have the biggest booming business of all time, I don't have the biggest small business of all time. I'm not the most savvy individual when it comes to marketing, when it comes to sales, when it comes to a bunch of different business stuff. I've learned quite [00:13:30] a bit along the way, self-development, learning stuff, teaching yourself stuff, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But I feel like it has definitely grown faster in two and a half years than I would say the average bit. Definitely, definitely than the average business. So I feel like that gives me a little bit of credibility as I go through these things. So we're going to go through each of the six. I'm going to explain what it is. I'm going to explain why it has helped me and also just kind of get into why it potentially could help you.

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Again, whether you're pursuing entrepreneurship [00:14:00] or you're pursuing soft or you're pursuing just being a better overall professional or individual. So number one, represent, look the part, although there are Green Berets and there are SF guys, by the way, when I say SF Soft Green Berets, I'm going to kind of use those all interchangeably, but just know that it means general soft guys throughout the whole thing. If it's something specific to Green Brays, I'll try and identify that. But however it comes out of my mouth, that's kind of how it's going to be. Just kind use [00:14:30] it as the general, oh, special operations. Got it. So I've heard plenty of soft guys say that it's not that important to look the part as long as you can perform the part which yes, you have to be able to perform the part AKA pass and meet standards, physical fitness standards, like actual objective physical fitness standards.

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But there's also a subjective component and that is looking like you're actually a Green Beret. I've always had very, very strong opinions on this, but if someone finds out you are a soft [00:15:00] guy and they're shocked, they're like, oh my God, I would've never guessed. Yeah, I guess that's kind of like a good thing because you want to blend in. But let's be honest, 95% of soft guys don't blend in. 95% of soft guys are pretty obvious with whether they look like soft guys or not physically, the way they dress, their tats, their hair, their baseball caps, everyone kind of wears very similar. Most people kind of wear similar stuff, so it's not like you're blended in that much if you're looking like a melted candle, [00:15:30] even though that's what the average person looks like. But I have heard people say it doesn't really matter what you look like, it doesn't matter.

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You don't have to look fit as long as you are fit. And I disagree with that wholeheartedly. Mainly because presence, which happens to be the first, I believe it's the first bullet on an N-C-O-E-R, which is presence. Of course presence is not just the way you look, but that's a factor for sure. So if you are lacking one of the big aspects of one of the most important [00:16:00] things on an N-C-O-E-R bullet, then you probably got some work to do. But it goes way beyond that because even if that was not the case, it wasn't on the NCOR, no one cared about your presence as far as actual paperwork, ratings, guess who does care about your presence? People, you're briefing people, you interact with people you've never met before. You want to make a first impression on whether it's a general that you have to brief for your team to get allowed to do a mission, whether it is [00:16:30] another team that you are linking up with and you want to establish a really good first impression, whether you're a new guy who shows up and goes into the team room and everyone is sitting there waiting for you and you walk in, do you think it's going to be better for you to look like you don't train at all or that you're overweight or you look like a melted candle or you look like a pear?

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Or do you think that team's going to get a better first impression if you look in and you look like a stud? Now you don't have to look like fucking Rambo. You don't have [00:17:00] to look like a men's health cover model. You don't have to look like a bodybuilder. You don't have to really look anything in particular other than the fact that you should look like you actually train and you take yourself seriously as a fully grown male, not just a green Beret, not just a soft guy, but a fully grown male people who take themselves seriously. Guess what? They keep their training and they keep their nutrition in check and their lifestyle habits that contribute to their body composition and their overall presence. So first impressions are huge. There's a stat that said something like [00:17:30] 75% of whether someone is going to like you or not, whether someone is going to be agreeable with you or not.

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And you can kind of extrapolate out of that whether this person's going to listen to you and you might potentially try to get something from them, which is like SF in a nutshell, trying to get your way, basically get people to follow you and listen to you. 75% of that is based on your first impression. If your first impression as a soft guy is I have a double chin and I have not seen my [00:18:00] dick in a long time and my gut hangs over my belt, not a very good first impression, you're going to have to have some sort of come from behind victory at some point. You're going to really have to put the work in to prove yourself down the road when you could just have a really good first impression by actually looking the part. Of course, the way you look is not everything.

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You have to be actually able to communicate. You have to have a decent amount of charisma and you have to be kind of confident, assertive, but it's a lot easier to be confident and assertive when for a fact you do all these things behind the scenes [00:18:30] that result in you looking the part. And lastly, I have discussed being a walking billboard. Quite often if you're walking around main post and depending on what group you're at, say you're at third group, you're walking around Fort Bragg and there's a bunch of 82nd guys in the PX and they see a Green Beret walk in and he looks like a fucking stud. They're going to be a lot more apt or likely to want to pursue selection and [00:19:00] potentially ultimately becoming a green Beret. Then if most of the green Berets they see are fat out of shape, don't look like they give a fuck and clearly don't respect themselves enough to keep their lives in check, whether it's fitness, nutrition, a combination of both, honestly, a combination of both is what's going to actually allow you to look the part.

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So all those things combined are reasons that it's, in my opinion, definitely important to represent. Look, the part, be a walking billboard. Fitness coaching [00:19:30] is no different of course, this is kind of specific to fitness. If I was an accountant, if I own my own accounting firm, if I own my own law firm or whatever, people probably wouldn't care that much about how I looked, but I still would as a customer if I was hiring a lawyer and the two lawyers that I was kind of determining which one I should go with or not. One of them was sloppy and out of shape and just clearly didn't really care about being a well-rounded individual, a well-rounded human, [00:20:00] which involves keeping your shit together in the kitchen and training. I would probably go with the person who looks like they are better put together that has that better presence that actually looks apart.

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But fitness coaching, absolutely. If I was fat out of shape, floppy looking, most likely, way fewer people would actually listen to me because even if I do know what I'm talking about, why don't I actually practice what I preach? There are plenty of fitness coaches out there, personal trainers, whatever, that don't [00:20:30] look like they train at all. And although there are exceptions, like yeah, okay, your standard NFL coach is not going to look like your standard NFL player, but a lot of them used to. Lot of them used to play in the league. Louisie Simmons, one of the greatest power lifting coaches of all time. Time, one of the most famous people in the fitness industry of all time. He was kind of round fat, rotund out of shape, but he wasn't always like that. He was like that towards the end of his life.

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And also he was still super strong. He was coaching powerlifters. He [00:21:00] didn't really need to be super shredded. Lots of powerlifters are very, very strong of course, but also overweight. So there are always going to be onesies and twosies examples of coaches that just don't walk the walk at all yet, still get a lot of people to listen to them and are successful, but it's the exception, not the rule. And I would much rather be a walking billboard for my image and my brand, my personal brand, my company, by actually looking like I [00:21:30] train and take myself seriously in the kitchen. Then just telling everyone to do all these things but also not abiding it by myself. Of course, I don't train just like everyone that I tell how to train for selection. I'm not training for selection, just that would be kind of dumb for me to be training for selection at 37 years old when I'm already out and have no need to.

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It's not very longevity friendly, but I do train and I'm consistent and I feel like it sets a really good example for the business. And so therefore, [00:22:00] I feel like looking the part a K, a representing a K, a being a walking billboard, whatever you want to call it, is one of the most important things you possibly can do, especially for a fitness coach. But just as a professional, being better put together is absolutely going to give you advantages in life. Remember that first impression thing no matter what, I don't care if it should be like this or not, people are going to judge you when they see you regardless of what you're doing. The first thing they look at is just [00:22:30] your general structure, whether you're put together or not, whether you're like you maintain your hygiene, things like that. And one of those things is do you look like you actually give a fuck with your nutrition?

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Do you actually give a fuck and train consistently? Do you actually keep yourself well put together? So that is number one. Let's get into number two, and that is going to ruffle some feathers and that is wake up early. So this is not a required thing, but I don't think there's a single [00:23:00] thing that has moved the needle more in my business, especially before I got out, which I'll get into here in a second. But also now than waking up early, not just waking up early and fucking off actually waking up and getting after it and starting my most important tasks first thing in the morning. That way I'm getting 'em done. I'll get into some specific benefits here in a second, but when you're in the military, you're going to pretty much have to get up early no matter what, because if you're in the regular army, you're going to have PT formations probably at six [00:23:30] 30 every day and do the math on when you have to get up, you got to show up early, blah, blah, blah.

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So you're going to have to get up pretty early if you're an SF generally, unless you have a team that does required PT together all the time, which is kind of uncommon. Usually it's PT on your own. Once in a while teams will link up for group workouts, but it's less common. You usually don't have to show up to work till nine o'clock, which is one of the perks of SF if you happen to be on, not the team that comes in every morning and PTs [00:24:00] together. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but the way that they go about it, I won't get into the details, but it's not the way I would do it. And it limits the fitness on certain people of the team that could otherwise train on their own and make better progress, but neither here nor there. So you don't have to show up till nine.

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But the people who generally are the most successful, the most above average soft guys come in and train on their own beforehand or they do something productive and needle moving in a positive direction before [00:24:30] maybe they show up to work early and get some important work done before the team shows up in a bunch of distractions. Really hard to work on computer work in a team room, especially if not everyone else is doing it. It's just lots of distractions. But either way, I would start to do this. So of course I've always gotten up early when I was, before I started CTM, I would get up early and go train, get my workouts in at least my first workout of the day in before work started. I would usually train again either at lunch or later in the day or sometimes [00:25:00] both. Not that I'm recommending three a days, but that was back before I kind of knew any better.

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So when I did start TTM, I needed to find time to work on it. Of course, I could work on weekends and I did work on weekends. Pretty much my entire weekend was spent on working on TTM for the last year and a half of my career, but also I needed to work on it during the week because I was trying to build credibility. I was trying to build a following. I was trying to build a brand, and especially towards the end when it was legit, my [00:25:30] actual exit strategy, even though it wasn't that when I first started, it was that at the end I really needed to make sure all my T's were crossed and i's were dotted. So I would get up super early. I would get up usually around three 30 in the morning and I would start working and I would work for a few hours before I'd show up to work, and then I'd usually work out later in the day.

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So I would typically get up at three 30, start working by 3 45, 4 o'clock and work until six 30 ish, then get ready for work, drive to work. It's like almost an hour commute for me on most days, just depending [00:26:00] on the traffic. So I would have to leave before eight, I would usually leave before eight, but that right there, those couple of hours undistracted in the morning were absolutely massive and they're so massive that I still do this now. But one of the reasons that I recommend getting up early. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea. I know not everyone's a morning person. Some people are night owls. It's usually a genetic thing. You have a chronotype, blah, blah, blah. But I personally don't think I'm [00:26:30] at a super early bird. Naturally, I kind of just taught myself to be one by doing it and staying consistent with it and going to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time.

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You just kind of get used to it over time. I'm definitely not a late night owl, but I feel like most I'm right in the middle there. If I naturally was left to my own accord, I would probably sleep from 10 to six, 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM But I trained myself to get up way early. Of course, the army kind of trained me to get up really early, but then I would start taking advantage of that time to actually work [00:27:00] on the business. So some of the main advantages of the early morning are one, there's nobody up to distract you. You're usually going to be the only one up. No one's going to be chirping in your ear, no one's going to be texting you. Hopefully your kids, if you have kids, they're still asleep. My wife is still asleep for an hour and a half after I get up every day.

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Back then it was like two and a half hours. And so you just have this undistracted time to yourself. Additionally, it's not beautiful outside. The [00:27:30] sun's not out. Nothing is tempting you outside. It's just dark. So it's not like you're having this major feeling of FOMO when you're working in the morning also getting a very, very important task done or a task that really demands a lot of your attention and focus done first thing is such a great feeling because it's now out of your way and you get to kind of chill out for the rest of the day, not necessarily chill out and not care about anything, but you're not still thinking about that. It's not weighing you down. So that's another huge one too. You don't [00:28:00] have to necessarily get up and work on your most important thing. I don't do it every day.

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Some days I work on something that I've been working on for a long time that I really need to focus a lot on because oh, by the way, that's another one. Your focus and your motivation and your willpower and your ability to limit distractions first thing in the morning is going to be highest just naturally, no matter who you are, it bleeds off throughout the rest of the day. Your brain works better. At least most people, their brain works better first thing in the morning because they just haven't had all this other stimulus throughout the day. They haven't done all these other things throughout the day, especially [00:28:30] with the habits people have these days where they're just scrolling all day or watching YouTube all day, sitting inside being really inactive. I can't imagine because I've accidentally done this before where I just kind of fucked off most of the day.

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And then I try to work and be really productive and grind and get into it. And it's incredibly difficult, at least in my opinion, in my experience. So that's another one. Additionally, another great thing about getting up in the morning and knocking shit out is even if the rest of your day just goes haywire, [00:29:00] you get all these unexpected things that come up. You can't work on anything. At least you got a couple hours of early morning work time done, and you would be shocked how much you can get done in a short period of time, hour, two hours, three hours in the morning if you're just fully focused and not distracted by anything and you have all your notifications off. I leave my phone plugged in the kitchen till like 8:00 AM every day and I get up at four 30 now. It's absolutely amazing.

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And lastly, it's just simply cathartic to wake up early in [00:29:30] the morning and know that you have probably got more done than most people will do all day today. And those most people, by the way, have not even woke up yet. They're still asleep. It's just a really fricking good feeling. And today, these days, now that I have another employee, sometimes I will work for a few hours in the morning and that's my entire workday. And then I'll go play golf. I'll go train, I'll walk the dogs like three or four times. I'll sit around and read. I'll watch some YouTube golf. It's a really good feeling. I don't do that very often. That [00:30:00] might be two or three days a month, but those are really good days. And if I woke up and did all that stuff but I didn't get my early morning work done, then I would be thinking about it and it would be weighing on me all day long.

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So of course, that's just me, but it is definitely something that I'm sure other people would feel too if they tried it out or if they were pursuing something like this. So before moving on to the next one, I really want to cover something because I know for a fact someone [00:30:30] in their head right now is thinking it's not healthy to get up at three 30. It's not healthy to sacrifice sleep, to wake up early and get your work done or wake up early, whatever you're doing in the morning. For some people this may be get up early, get your training in that way you can work the rest of the day. You don't have to worry about training, whatever it may be. And you're right, it's not healthy if you're also going to bed too late and therefore getting not enough sleep. But if you push your bedtime to the left, which it should be a requirement, if you push your wake up time to the left and [00:31:00] to the left basically just means earlier.

(00:31:01):

I don't know if that's a military term or what, but pushing something to the left is earlier. Pushing something to the right is later. Forgive me if that is a well-known thing. But anyway, that's a requirement. You got to get up early or you got to go to bed early too in order to get up early. So I would go to bed when I was still in. I would go to bed at seven 30 or 8:00 PM. Yes, there are some sacrifices you have to make at nighttime, but if you think about it, most of the things you do at nighttime are not all that needle moving generally at night. Once it gets dark out, people [00:31:30] are watching tv, watching YouTube, scrolling. They're binge eating on stuff, they're partying, doing things that are fine to do once in a while. Totally, totally fine. I watch TV every single night.

(00:31:41):

I watch YouTube every single day, but I'm limited. I actually limit myself. I make rules. But if you're just doing that every single night instead of going to bed, then you're kind of just wasting time at nighttime. And if you get used to just making those sacrifices and pushing your bedtime to the left and you wake up early and you [00:32:00] do that consistently, your body gets used to it pretty much. You don't need an alarm anymore. You're just used to sleeping from eight to three 30 or eight to four or seven 30 to three 30, things like that. So it is a doable thing and you can do it without sacrificing your health. So usually the night owls, the people who think they're night owls at least, but usually night owls, oftentimes night owls in my experience aren't actually night owls. They just like doing all those things.

(00:32:26):

I just went over at nighttime and they consider themselves night [00:32:30] owls and they sleep in the next day. But usually that's their biggest rebuttal is like, why would I ever sacrifice that much sleep? Yeah, if you're going to go to bed at 1:00 AM you should not be getting up at 3:30 AM but if you're going to go to bed at 7, 7 30, 8 o'clock, then it's okay to get up super early as long as you're still getting enough sleep. So figured I'd finish that one on that because I know it is on the mind of certain people because I've talked about getting up early before and some people absolutely blow gaskets gets the next one is going to be fit [00:33:00] fo. FIT FO stands for, figure it the fuck out. And when you're an sf, it's basically the way of life. You are going to get a lot of assignments, you're going to get a lot of things expected of you that you don't have the knowledge to complete.

(00:33:14):

You don't have the skills to complete, you don't have the resources. Sometimes you may not even have the time, but guess what? You're still going to get that excitement and you're still going to be expected to do it at a high level and you're not going to be expected to complain or ask for extensions or bitch moan, [00:33:30] whatever. You got to get that done no matter whatever it may be. And especially when you're new and you haven't been around for a while, you're going to get a lot, your team's going to give you a lot of things to test you out. Like, Hey, let's go see if he can fit fo this, whether it's by himself or whether he is smart about it and goes and finds an expert, finds someone who can help him out. And this will kind of tie into the next one.

(00:33:54):

But figuring it the fuck out is a huge thing. And the same goes [00:34:00] for business. I still have to fit foe every single day because there are things that come up or things that I make come up accidentally subconsciously that I need to figure out whether it is how to market, whether it's how to do sales, whether it's how to put systems together, coaching systems to make it so that I don't have to do every single thing every single time I come and get a new client. I can actually create systems and plug and play and I don't have to write this brand new template every single time I get a new client. I [00:34:30] already have the template. I just plug in certain specific things to make it more specific to that individual. All these things I just didn't know about, didn't have and had to figure out along the way.

(00:34:40):

And I'm, like I said, still figuring things out, have to figure out how to record this, how to edit it, how to put it on different platforms, and it's a lot of different things and you're not going to figure it all out on one day or half a day or one week. It's just this constant fit foe game. And I think it's enjoyable being able to, [00:35:00] the ball's in your court, you got to figure it out. You can figure it out yourself. You can go on YouTube, you can listen to podcasts, you can read books, you can ask somebody, you can hire someone, a coach or someone to talk to you for an hour about a certain subject that you don't know about but you want to know more about. Those are all aspects of FIT fo, and that is pretty much the essence of day-to-day life as a Green Beret, I am sure it's probably pretty similar in a lot of other units, but a lot of people think that [00:35:30] sf, you just have all these insane resources available and it's so easy to just do what you want.

(00:35:35):

If you want to go to the range today, you can go, if you want to get this vehicle, you can go take it and go. If you want to jump out of a plane tomorrow, you can just call up the Air Force and they'll come pick you up and you go jump. That's not what it's like in higher units. Tier one units, it's not quite like that, but it's closer, but not in sf. Sf, yes, you have more resources, you have more funds, you have more opportunities than regular military, but it's [00:36:00] still not just like this panacea of, Hey, whatever you need, we got you dude. We're going to make your life super easy. Low stress, it's just not what it's like. So you got a fit fo. And same thing with business. You got a fit fo. If you don't, you're business is not going to last because a lot of people too will find something that they need to figure out and they'll try and figure it out, but they don't really give it a real try.

(00:36:25):

They'll give it maybe a college try and they'll be like, this is too hard. I just can't figure it out. I'm done. [00:36:30] Most things can be learned in one day. Honestly, most things can be at least baseline level learned in the equivalent of one day. Not necessarily you have to do it for 24 straight hours, but if you put three hours in eight days out of the next couple of weeks, you're going to be doing pretty well 24 hours, you're going to know more about a certain subject that you want to know about that you don't know about now than you otherwise could if you just tried it for a few hours and then just gave up, which is [00:37:00] what most people do, which is why most businesses fail, which is why the bar is kind of low. And if you have that fit for attitude, you are automatically going to be at advantage even if you haven't seen it yet.

(00:37:11):

Maybe you're just getting started or maybe you just haven't really figured out exactly what you want to figure out to push yourself or your business or your career to the next level. But once you do figure that out and you have this fit FO mindset, you're going to be able to figure anything out and you're going to be confident that no [00:37:30] matter what, even if it's some crazy thing, you're eventually going to be able to get it. So this one's huge and I can't emphasize it enough, whether you're being an entrepreneur or doing something different, if you're the guy who can always be relied upon to fit foe, everyone's going to want you around them no matter what because most people just aren't. And it's basically like a superpower, even though it's super simple. It really just takes volume and resourcefulness and removing the self-limiting [00:38:00] belief that certain things you're just not good at and you can't figure out.

(00:38:03):

So that one's huge. Let's get into number four, which is similar, but more specific to seeking help from other people, from experts. In sf you are, like I said, you get a lot of assignments that you just don't know exactly how to complete the assignment or complete the assignment as instructed or complete the assignment to your standards or the standard, whoever is giving you that assignment [00:38:30] has, if they have high standards, you want to complete it to those standards. And sometimes you won't have a ton of time, or in most cases, maybe you are completely okay with completing it, but you also have 12 other tasks that you have to do. And oh, by the way, this one is not really in your wheelhouse. So you usually want to put most of your focus and energy into the ones that are in your wheelhouse, but the other task still needs to get done.

(00:38:57):

So what do you do? You as [00:39:00] part of the Fit foe, you go and find an expert. SF has a bunch of support personnel that not all of them are great at supporting, but some of 'em are really good. And when you find the really good ones, you remember them and you stick to them and you always go to them because they are always willing to help. The good ones are really always willing to help. They really want to help. They want to do their job. Whether you need a map printed out of some obscure place or you need some intelligence of some mission or some [00:39:30] terrorist organization or some group that you're looking into or whether you need to get stuff sorted out administratively, med Pros or your personnel, your S one roster, whatever it may be, there's an S shop, S shops, for those who don't know, I don't even know what the S stands for, but it's almost like in the civilian world, hr, finance and other components of your business or the business that assist with the main movers, the main operators, and [00:40:00] it's just like that in sf.

(00:40:01):

There's S one all the way up through I think S six and they all have their own different things that they focus on their own areas of expertise. So that's just one of them. Of course, when you're deployed, you might be given something to do and you have no frigging idea. Maybe you don't even speak the language of the country that you're in. Guess what? You're probably going to have to find someone who does speak that language and have them help you communicate with whoever you need to communicate with or understand whoever's talking that you want to understand what [00:40:30] they're saying, but you have no idea what the language is. Hiring or getting with someone to help you out is massive. So in sf, if you can find a way to delegate and or find a way to recruit an expert to come in and help you get your job done or get the job you've been given done, especially if it's not your job, because guess what?

(00:40:51):

Sometimes even though you have a certain MOS, you're going to get a job that has nothing to do with that. MOS, especially 18 deltas, believe it or not, the 18 delta course is [00:41:00] very difficult getting through it, very, very difficult academically. But once you get to a team, unless something's going down, unless something's bad is going down, you're usually just helping out the other moss or you are doing something that has nothing to do with being an 18 delta. Maybe you're going to S shop and trying to find someone to help you out with a certain thing that has to do with 18 Fox stuff or certain thing that has to do with 18 Charlie stuff. But the 18 Charlies are always the busiest people on the team, so they can't do it right now. So guess what? The idle [00:41:30] delta, the idle handed delta is going to get recruited to do certain things that normally in 18 Charlie would do, but guess what?

(00:41:36):

Can't do it right now. And you the 18 delta have to figure out how to do it. Generally speaking, there's someone who's better at it than you, whether it's a Charlie on a different team or the B team, Charlie or someone who is a regular Army support engineer. You go recruit them and you figure it out. You hire an expert or you find an expert. The good thing about the army is you don't have to hire anyone. That's their [00:42:00] job. And if you find the right person, they're going to help you out. If you find the wrong person, they're going to have all these excuses of why they can't help you out, and then you're probably going to make them help you out anyway, but it's just not going to be to your standard. And sometimes you just do it yourself, but again, I rant.

(00:42:16):

So very, very important. Anytime you want to get something done faster or learn something really, really fast and cut out all the noise, just find the signal or you [00:42:30] want to get better than you otherwise could on your own, or you just want to take something off your plate, that's when you go find an expert and hire help or find help and they help you out. Same exact thing. In business I've had currently as of now, I've had three business coaches. Right now I have two active business coaches and I talked about Will Schiller in the past. He's my former coach, and I would be probably 25% [00:43:00] as successful as we have been as a business, had I not ever hired a coach and try to just do all this stuff on my own. Yes, it's an investment. Yes, you have to pay for coaching.

(00:43:11):

That is just kind of how business works and what you get for ROI on any of these investments is if you hire the right person or if you find the right person more than worth it. I think a lot of people think that finding free stuff, which by the way is totally fine, finding [00:43:30] free stuff online. I pride myself on making as much free content as I humanly possibly can, but I have to sell stuff otherwise I wouldn't be able to continue making free stuff because I'd have to do something else for a living. But even if you have to pay for someone, even if you have to sit down and talk to someone for an hour virtually, and you have to pay 'em $500, but you really, really want to know something or a thousand dollars or some people charge a couple grand for an hour of their time for a console, if you really want to know that thing and you really want to [00:44:00] not go through all the painstaking process of trying to figure it out yourself, then it's usually going to be highly worth it because especially on the business side, you're going to make that money back.

(00:44:09):

Hopefully. If you're investing in the right things and you're actually taking the person's advice and applying it, you're going to make that money back and then some, and it's going to be way less painful, way less stressful, and it's a worthwhile investment. And even if it's something that you're good at too. So this is huge. I am a fitness coach myself. I basically spend most days thinking, [00:44:30] eating, breathing, living, programming, nutrition, et cetera. And I also have a fitness coach right now. I hired a fitness coach a couple months ago, mainly because I have limited bandwidth and I also, I'm human, so sometimes I might need some accountability and someone else watching over my shoulder, and I determined it was a good idea to get a coach because it would take a lot of bandwidth that I have to think about [00:45:00] all my training, all my nutrition, et cetera, off my plate, give it to an expert.

(00:45:04):

He does it for me. I just go execute, and now I have all this other free bandwidth and time to give my clients what they paid for services and make content and run my business and grow my business. So I think there's this stigma around getting coaches, and honestly, I kind of had this mindset myself early on before I realized the value of it where like, oh, if [00:45:30] I can just do it myself, what's the point in paying for it? Generally speaking, people who are well off in life are always going to pay for convenience, always. The people who are cheaper and the people who think that everything should be free. You don't really want those people buying your stuff anyway, in my opinion, but also they're just always going to be like that. So if you identify yourself as someone who really hates paying for things and is always looking for freebies, one tip that I'll give you a little [00:46:00] bit off the cuff for, it's not really part of this episode, but the sooner you stop looking for free handouts, the more you're going to grow because you're going to get better higher quality stuff because oh, by the way, people who put out high quality stuff charge for it.

(00:46:14):

They don't charge for all of it, but they charge for their services. That's what allows them to continue putting out high quality stuff because it actually supports their livelihood. So that freebie mindset, not very good as far as being successful just in any area of life, [00:46:30] and you're always going to be trying to do it yourself, always doing it not as well as you possibly could. It's always going to take you way longer than everyone else to get certain things done. And hiring help is incredibly important. Honestly, I'm not even trying to use this as a coaching pitch. Like I said earlier, my roster is completely full. I don't need more clients, so I'm sorry if you're looking to hire me, I wish I could help every single person that's watching this. I wish I could help every single person that's ever applied [00:47:00] to coaching, but I just can't.

(00:47:01):

But there are other experts out there, plenty of other experts out there, hit me up offline if you want some recommendations. If you're looking for a coach but you haven't heard back from me or whatever, definitely hit me up DM or shoot me an email and I can give you some experts or solid recommendations for people to work with, but can't emphasize that enough. If you need something figured out fast or if you want to do it the best it possibly could be done, maybe not the best of your ability, maybe the best it could be done, which is way better than your ability. [00:47:30] Hiring help, even if it's a lot of money. I have spent a thousand dollars for a 30 minute consult before with a highly qualified person that I learned a shit ton from, and I've made way more money from the information I gathered in that consult, then I paid for it.

(00:47:49):

So it was highly worth the investment. One last thing, make sure when you are taking courses or signing up for seminars [00:48:00] or go into seminars or chatting with people, hiring them for a consult or even coaching, even if you have a coach, it's not their job to do things for you. It's not the person providing that advice, their job to walk you through it hold your hand. Their job is to give you what you need to do, the blueprint you have to go execute. I think a lot of people think, especially maybe not necessarily in this population, but a lot of clients, a lot of fitness clients, [00:48:30] especially gen pop, think that if you just hire a coach, that's the last step. The coach is just going to do everything for me. That's not how it works. The coach tells you what to do, shows you what to do, guides you through how to do it, but you still have to do it yourself.

(00:48:43):

You're going to get great results if you do it yourself. You're going to get zero results if you just expect the coach to do it for you. I've had a couple of people in the past. I don't have guys like this anymore just because we're very particular with who we choose to bring on. But I've had a couple of people in the past that have said, [00:49:00] I just didn't get any results. And then I'll look at their logs, like their conditioning log, their training log, their nutrition log, and nothing's logged. It's like, did you even do any of the training sessions, maybe you did and you just didn't log them. But I have this really convenient app that allows you to log everything that allows me to see stuff, give you feedback and help you have a better experience and get better results. But if you just don't do anything, you're not going to get results even if you have a world-class coach.

(00:49:27):

So just remember that. That's kind of an off topic. [00:49:30] It's on topic, but a little bit of a side tangent about a very specific thing that I have noticed in the past. So just remember that. But let's get into the last couple. Next one is work to standard, not time. The great thing about SF is generally, of course, not every single team's like this, but for the most part, if you are done for the day, if you don't have any work left, and also you've checked in with everyone else on your team, who, by the way, I was a Delta, so usually I was done my work pretty [00:50:00] early and I had to check in with the Charlies and the Bravos and the Echos and the team sergeant to see if they needed help with anything. And usually they did and I would usually help them.

(00:50:09):

But when the work in general is done for the day, there's no reason to be there anymore. So if that happens to be 10:00 AM then you can leave, you can go train, you can go home, you can go do whatever the hell you want. You can play golf and it's awesome. That's one of the main perks of being an SF as opposed to the regular army, at least. I'm pretty sure the [00:50:30] military in general is like this, but you have to stay to a certain time on the clock, even if everyone's done way before that time occurs. And I have never been in the Army. I was an 18 x-ray, so I got to skip that part. But nothing sounds more like a waste of time to me than just keeping your entire unit, your entire platoon, whatever it is at work, when there's nothing to do, it bewilders me why that's a thing.

(00:50:57):

But it is a thing. And I know a lot of professional [00:51:00] environments are like that too, where no matter what, either you have to work to a certain time or you have to act like you're working to a certain time. And I think that's pretty foolish. And also another advantage of SF is if there's no work to be done, then you don't need to come to work. You don't have to take leave or anything, but sometimes on a Friday we'll get stuff done. And today, Thursday, Hey, does anyone have anything to do tomorrow? No, let's do a closeout meeting and let's take a three day weekend. Awesome. [00:51:30] Those are both awesome aspects of sf. However, also you have the opposite end of the spectrum where you're going on say a two week trip and maybe you sleep two to three hours every night and you work 20 plus hours every single day, whether you're actually doing training stuff, whether you're deployed, whether you're doing a JS A, whether you're doing some sort of intelligence type exercise, whether you're jumping out of planes, whether you're shooting guns, planning for mission, whatever it may be.

(00:51:58):

Some of the days are really [00:52:00] long, and even when you're not gone, maybe you're home, you might have to show up at 6:00 AM one day and do a range all day and maybe take an hour dinner break and then go all night on the range or do a mission or something like that. And then guess what? You might be able to go home for a couple hours and sleep and then have to come back and do the exact same thing again and again and again. So it's not all sunshine and rainbows. There are definitely some really, really long days that turn into multiple days and so on and so [00:52:30] forth. We used to call 'em half day pluses. Anytime we would have training into the evening, we would call it a half day plus. I don't know why, but that was just like our little team joke.

(00:52:38):

But basically what I'm trying to get at is you work to standard, you work until the standards are met, and ideally you have really high standards on the good teams that I was on, the really good teams, we had very, very, very high standards, higher standards than any other team in the battalion. Honestly, my last team that I was on, we were the top team in the entire battalion out of what, there's six [00:53:00] ODAs in each company and three battalions in each or three companies, each battalion. So we were the number one team out of 18, and it was because we had super high standards and we worked two standard and sometimes working a standard was working really, really long days or multiple days in a row, multiple half day pluses in a row in order to get to where we were comfortable that we met our standards and higher up the commanders.

(00:53:25):

The sergeant majors would also think that we have met and exceeded the standards. So [00:53:30] that's a super important part about working to standard. You actually have to have standards and if you want to be successful, they have to be high standards, very high, higher than people around you or other people in your community, whatever you may be pursuing, whether you're in SF or you're doing the entrepreneur thing. So learning about high standards and working to standard as opposed to working to some arbitrary time was a huge catalyst to me getting out or honestly starting my business when I was still in and working when I wasn't actually at work for my [00:54:00] day job as well as now, like I said earlier, some of my days I play golf at 7:00 AM and I've already finished work for that day, not very often, but sometimes. But when I was starting out the first two years of running TTM, I took three days off one birthday, one on my sister's birthday when she came to visit in North Carolina, which is March 24th, I think it was March 24th, 2024, and one Christmas, Christmas of 2024, I took off.

(00:54:29):

My mother-in-law [00:54:30] was in town and she would not allow me to work. And I say off, I still check my app for client messages and things like that, but I didn't actually work three days and dating back before that because I was trying to build TTM and also had my day job as a green beret. There were no days off. I did not take any days off. Is this necessarily something I'm recommending? No, not necessarily, but that was my standards back then. I had to work 12, 13, 14, 15, sometimes 16 hours [00:55:00] certain days in order to meet my standards for that day. I was working just standard, not time. If I met the standards at 5:00 PM I'd stop working at 5:00 PM If it was six 30, stop working at six 30. If it was three o'clock, stop working at three o'clock. And of course your standards are going to kind of depending on what you're working on, they're going to change a little bit.

(00:55:17):

They might change day to day, they might change week to week, they might change quarter to quarter, whatever it may be. But that's just the reality of it. Now that I have a little bit more bandwidth because my wife is handling all the other stuff that I used [00:55:30] to handle and used to take me way longer and be way more of an emotional event than it is for her to do these things, like behind the scenes, I still have high standards. I still work to those standards, but my days are not quite as long. Once in a while, absolutely, I'll work a 12 hour day, 14 hour day. Today's Tuesday. Today's always my longest day of the week, and I started working at four and I probably won't be done working until five 30 because I got a group call with all my clients this evening, and usually those go till five-ish and then I have to do some updates [00:56:00] based on that call for my clients and that's great, and I freaking love it.

(00:56:06):

Absolutely love super long grinding days, but I'm not doing that because I feel like I have to work a certain number of hours and I'm also not like if I were to get done tomorrow, tomorrow, Wednesdays are usually my weekend days where I don't work as much. I try to reset, enjoy myself, chill out. I still do work, but my [00:56:30] standards are not as high on Wednesdays most week. But I'm also not going to just try and make myself sit at my computer for a certain arbitrary amount of time till a certain time on the clock and just say, oh yeah, I put it in a 12 hour day. Most people who brag about how long they work, and I realize this is kind of ironic because I'm sort of talking about it right now. I'm not trying to sound boastful, but just kind of reality of starting your own business, you're going to have to work a lot of hours.

(00:56:56):

It's just kind of the nature of it, unless you luck out and you found [00:57:00] some crazy business that most of it can be automated. But anyway, most people who brag about their ridiculous work hours could easily work way less. If they just put more focus into what they were doing and had less distractions and actually got into some deep work sessions, they wouldn't have, it wouldn't take them 12 hours to do what they're doing. It would take them six or seven or four or three. I think there was a stat, and I could be butchering this really, really bad, but most people who work eight hour work days, I think they [00:57:30] work like 10% of that time. And that might even be generous these days because there's just so many different things to distract people and most people just don't feel as fulfilled by what they're doing, especially if you're working for someone else, which nothing against it, nothing against working for someone else.

(00:57:45):

But if you're working for someone else and the standards aren't really all that high where they're not really upheld or you're not really given deadlines that challenge you or assignments or projects that challenge you, then I don't blame [00:58:00] people for working 10% of their workday. But at the same time, if it was a work to standard type thing, which if I had a big company, it absolutely would be a work to standard type thing. But for them, if it was a work to standard type thing, they would probably work a lot harder and then they would leave and they would go do whatever else with their lives rather than just kind of try and make two hours of work last eight hours, if that makes sense. So working a standard, not time, also having very, very, very high standards, ideally higher [00:58:30] standards than anyone else you're competing with is a massive one.

(00:58:34):

And it's something I learned in sf and honestly, it's a huge thing that I'm going to continue to use and benefit from and recommend to other people consider as well, if it's a random Tuesday and to meet your standards on that Tuesday, you have to put in a 15 hour day, not that the time matters, but maybe you have to then great if it's a lower workload day and you don't have a ton of standards to meet [00:59:00] and you want to be done by 8:00 AM 9:00 AM 10:00 AM great too, and it's a great feeling. It's definitely of course stressful because you're setting these standards yourself and you have to live up to them, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It's frigging awesome and I'm going to always work to standard and I'm always going to recommend other people work to standard, not time. Let's get into the last one, which is important for whatever goal you ever have in life, not only important, but non-negotiable, and [00:59:30] that is to plan and prepare anytime you are nervous about it.

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Let's talk about preparation first. Anytime you're nervous, uncertain, unsure about something, generally speaking, it's because especially if it's something that's coming up that you need to perform to a certain standard or a certain level, whether you are doing a speech in front of a bunch of people or whether you're going to selection or whether you have some sort of job interview, if you're super nervous, anxious, uncertain, it's almost always because you have not done enough preparation. [01:00:00] Almost always, yeah, you're going to feel a little nerves if you're about to go speak in front of a thousand people, even if you prepare for it and you do a bunch of repetitions, you're going to feel a little nervous. But imagine if you hadn't done those repetitions or maybe you'd done a couple and you're like, eh, whatever. I'll just wing it. You can be a lot more nervous, especially if you're just not natural at that kind of stuff.

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I'm not natural at going and speaking in front of people when I first got in. This is kind of a side story, but it's relevant to this. When I first got into sf, [01:00:30] one of my biggest fears was going and briefing. And by the way, 18 deltas have very short, minimal things to brief in team briefs, like whether you're doing a training mission or a real life mission, it's not that much. But one of my biggest fears was going to brief general, like a one star, two star general, which actually has happened throughout my career. And the main reason I was apprehensive and very, very nervous and anxiety ridden was because I didn't put enough [01:01:00] preparation in. I could have easily signed up for Toastmasters and practice this all the time, practice generally talking in front of people. I could have done improv and learn how to talk back and forth to people and come up with things on the spot, but even if I didn't do those things, I could have practiced my part of the brief over and over and over and over and over again until I just knew it not necessarily memorize things word by word.

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I don't think that's all that great of a strategy, but when you practice it a bunch of times, you don't need to know it word for word. You can say [01:01:30] different words each time if you know the content and generally how you're going to deliver it. You don't have to be perfectly word for word, but I didn't do that and I would just show up to these things. Very nervous. I did fine. I didn't make a big fool out of myself, but I was nowhere near as good at speaking as I could have been as I am now or as I was later in my career because A of course got used to it, but I also learned how important preparation is. And so that's one of the main things about preparation. [01:02:00] Anytime you are uncertain about something and you want to do really well at it, there's a very strong chance that you're uncertain because you just aren't prepared for it.

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You're not prepared enough for it. Same with selection. If you're super nervous going into selection, yeah, a little bit of nerves, great healthy respect for the course and the difficulty of it, great. But if you're absolutely terrified, it's probably because you're blade running, whether it's physical fitness wise or you just have never done land nav, you never practiced land nav even though you could have most likely you're anxious about [01:02:30] it because of something that could be changed. You actually making the effort and making the sacrifice and going in doing whatever needs to be done to get more of a warm and fuzzy to develop that evidence that is required for confidence. If you have never done anything successfully, why would you be confident in that thing? You need some sort of evidence that you can actually do what you say you're going to do or what you're trying to do.

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Otherwise it's just a shot in the dark and preparation is everything for that. Getting the reps in, even [01:03:00] though it takes a long time, even though it's higher volume, even though most people don't do it, it's still absolutely critical. And lastly, another example for prep is meal prep. Everyone's heard about meal prep. The commonality among every successful nutrition intervention that I've ever been a part of, whether me coaching or me doing it or me helping someone else like a friend, family member, there's been planning involved. It's pretty much non-negotiable. Planning, preparation, knowing what you're [01:03:30] going to eat at certain times on certain days and having that ready to go is going to pretty much make or break your nutrition intervention if you're always just deciding what to eat or going with a crowd or you just don't have anything, I'm hungry. What should I eat?

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Where should I go? Whatever. I'll just get this quick thing. Yeah, it can work on paper, but does it work in practice? Almost never. So preparation, hopefully those drive the point home, and that wasn't even necessarily a SF type thing, [01:04:00] but planning, which I'll get into right now, is very much a mainstay, a staple for being on a successful ODA, at least a lot of people from the outside looking in, they'll see a really successful mission like the Osama bin Laden raid where the sail team six went in and killed Osama bin Laden and think like, oh, wow, they executed that really well on the ground. And yeah, they did, but guess what they planned for? I don't remember how long it was. It was well over a year, [01:04:30] and they did rep after rep after rep and iteration after iteration. That's the important thing too.

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When you plan and you do rehearsals and you do repetitions, you iterate, you basically rate yourself or have ideally have someone else watch you and rate you and you make that. They basically give you some things to improve and you make that improvement and then you go and do it again, and then the same thing happens. You go, you don't do it perfectly, but you improved what you needed to improve on last time and now you get a new thing to improve, iterate, super important for [01:05:00] business. Also super important for soft. So when you're in soft, if you want your team to be successful and really make a name for itself, and also there are certain situations where you're either going to get a mission or another team's going to get a mission, whether it's training mission or even a training opportunity where you get to go somewhere cool and do some cool training stuff or even a real life mission.

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And the only thing that is separating you from this other team is the quality of your brief, the quality of your plan, which by the way, [01:05:30] planning and prep both go into this because if you prepped for it a lot, everyone on the team did, ideally you're going to have a better brief, it's going to present better, but also the plan has to be good. You have to have that plan dialed in. If you have a terrible plan, but you're amazing at briefing it, chances are you might not get that mission if you have a really, really good plan, but everyone on your team's all ate up and you can tell that they just haven't prepared for it, they haven't done the repetitions, you're probably not going to get that mission and that other team, even if your team is way [01:06:00] more capable on the ground of actually doing whatever that mission is or whatever that training opportunity is, you didn't brief it well enough and the other team did, so the other team's going to get it.

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It's very much like that in sf. So super critical. Here's the deal N sf though, the plan always changes. So you have these long-term training calendars, you'll have these meetings with your team, you'll talk it over. We're going to plan ahead and then it'll all change almost every time no matter what. If [01:06:30] you have a three month training calendar, chances are 50% of that, 75% of it is either going to happen on a different day or different days than it's planned or it's not going to happen at all, or it's going to be longer or something else is going to swoop in and take its place. That happens quite often too, and it can be frustrating, but it also just solidifies the point that planning is that important because the more you plan, the better you're going to get at it, the more efficient you're going to get at it.

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You have to be efficient when things are always [01:07:00] changing and you have to come up with plans hastily, and it has to be a plan that's actually viable and realistic and going to work. So planning, preparation, huge n sf, guess what? Continuing with the theme also very, very important. If you're running your own show, there have been weeks that I skipped planning for whatever reason. Usually I sit down on Sunday afternoons and usually takes me 45 minutes to an hour and I write out every single thing I'm going to do the upcoming week down to [01:07:30] the hour. I have hour time blocks. Some things take me longer than an hour. Some things take me less, but I write out what I'm going to do. If I know what's going to take me less, I'll write multiple things for that time block or I'll just take a break for the rest of it or whatever it is.

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But I have had weeks where I don't, and it's always a complete shit show. I am anxious, stressed, uncertain. I never know what to do. I always am like, oh, I have three things I could be doing. I'm just going to start doing one. No, I should be doing the other thing. I'm going to start doing that other thing. [01:08:00] Oh, no, no, I should be doing this other third thing. I'm going to do that instead. And it's now no way to go about your life. No way to go about your professional life. It's an absolute nightmare in my opinion. So what I used to do was just plan for the next day. I would at nighttime when I was finished for the day, I would do my little end of day review and then I would plan out what I was going to do the next day.

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Now I've taken it a step further and I do it for the week every Sunday. I do it for the upcoming week. Do these plans change? Absolutely. Do I stick to it perfectly every [01:08:30] single week? No, but I have gotten better over time at sticking to it because I practice it and I do it over and over and over again. And at the end of the week I do a little end of week review and judge myself. Pretty much rate myself on how well or how poorly I stuck to it. And furthermore, I usually just do this in my head, but sometimes I'll actually write it out, especially when I was first starting. I would write out how it negatively affected me, how not sticking to the plan, negative effect [01:09:00] negatively affected either me or my business or just my overall sanity throughout the weekend.

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Usually it definitely has a major negative effect and it's no way to live. So planning however you want to do it, you don't necessarily have to do it the same way I do, but it is absolutely critical. And preparation is too, I have been doing podcasts for a really long time, so I don't necessarily do a ton of preparation. I'm just used to it, but episodes like this I have to prepare for. I didn't take a ton of notes for this one. I didn't write down a ton of notes and I didn't go really off my notes [01:09:30] all that much, but I had those notes written out and I made the post about it. And I just feel so strongly that these things are beneficial for a lot of people that all that stuff that I did beforehand, even if it wasn't a perfectly written out outline, allows me to deliver it here confidently, even if it's not perfect, but it's comprehendible and not a complete shit show because I did that planning in preparation, and that's just one example.

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Business wise, [01:10:00] if I had to go and speak at an event, you can bet your ass. I would be signing up for Toastmasters tomorrow and going as often as possible and creating my presentation and practicing it and getting reps, getting reps. If I had something coming up and I needed to move things around in my schedule, I've got to have some planning skills, some sort of planning skills, a way to change plans, a way to adjust plans, a way to shorten things, a way to lengthen things. It seems simple, but most people suck at planning. Sorry. Most people [01:10:30] don't do any planning. They just do whatever they feel like doing in the moment. Some people do a little bit of planning, but they don't take it all that seriously. They don't always do it. They're not consistent with it. And it shows most successful people really in any area of life have planning down to a science and they have their own strategy of planning and preparation down to their own science.

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And the reason that they're so successful is most people don't do it. So their competition is kind of just winging it and [01:11:00] winging it can work for certain things, but it usually does not work. As well as having a plan, sticking to the plan, changing the plan if necessary, adjusting, iterating, like I said earlier, and making sure that if your plan involves something that you're going to have to perform on, you prepare for it, whether it's physical preparation or mental preparation or preparing for what you're going to say, how you're going to say it, how you're going to deliver it, super critical. So those are the six major things that have moved the needle most that I learned in [01:11:30] sf, that I developed in sf, and that hopefully you found some value in whether you are pursuing SF yourself, whether you are pursuing entrepreneurship, whether you're pursuing going and working at a high level job and doing really well for yourself, or whether you're just trying to be a better overall general human.

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I think most of those things can at least be valuable in some way to you. So hopefully you guys enjoyed that episode, had a really good time, as you probably could tell. I got [01:12:00] a little animated at times and went on some rants, but that's just the way I am. But hopefully you got a lot out of it. And yeah, if you have any questions or comments or feedback, anything you want to discuss, drop 'em below, I'll check it out and we will go to town on it. So yeah, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I'll be back soon with another episode. Hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving and has a great December. And reminder, those programs are still 40% off with the code Cyber Monday. If you're interested in [01:12:30] a program. Our guys chat soon till then. Terminator out.