L.O.G. 198 Clark Dever Part Deux

All right, well, good morning, Greg. Good morning, Clark. Good morning, afternoon, evening to all of our listeners, whenever you're tuning in. We've got for today's episode, back on to record the Part Deux of Clark Dever's interview. We had a great conversation with you a couple weeks ago, got some really good feedback, and so obviously we want to make a Part Two of it and have you back on to talk about some of the things. So, first of all, good morning, everyone, and thanks for being here, Clark and Greg.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Greg. Thank you to the audience for having me back. I know what fentanyl tastes like. It's a good way to start any...

It's Monday, station. It's Monday. It is Monday when we were recording this. So, yeah, we had the worst travel weekend for me, just so you know. And so everywhere that we were: the snow, the weather, the wind, we need more fuel, we don't have enough fuel, employees didn't show up, too many employees showed up. So, if I'm a little man-caddy this morning, yeah, it was not much of a weekend. It was not a good weekend. But we get to see you, and you're just such a breath of fresh air to an already bloated corpse.

Fun. Fun way of segueing into fun. Thanks, brother. I'm happy to be here.

All right, well, I think we're going to start this conversation with sort of a little bit of a carryover from the previous one, because we got some great feedback just on post little clips. I know I did, and you did on LinkedIn, and kind of what people took away from it and some of the feedback they gave. One of the things that you brought up, because you had mentioned how in your line of work, especially being an entrepreneur in different areas, you're looking at a few years, let's say around five years, with an employee. And what does that mean to develop them and get what the company's out of them, and sort of set them up for success as well? It's interesting that you kind of take that approach, because there's a lot of folks that feel that this social contract of going to work for a company and putting in your time and moving up the ranks and then retiring out of there, that's kind of gone in a lot of areas. I mean, you still see that a lot in government sector, or different areas like that, or different service areas, like teaching or something like that. But for a lot of companies, they don't offer that anymore. Part of it is that, okay, is this the changing direction of capitalism where it's at, or is it also changing needs of people and what they're looking for out of work that has changed a lot, too? So I want to throw it to you to kind of get you to explain how you see it and how that formed your opinions that you were even talking about in the last episode.

Sure, Brian. Yeah, so, when I talk about employees, again, I view them over this five-year time horizon. And it's not just because, obviously, I would love if they stayed that long, and we had that kind of work, and it was the value there. But for me, it's really about making sure that I'm not too quick to judge, right? Because we're all humans and we all have things going on in our lives, over a long enough time period. And so what that five-year time horizon does is it allows it, if you build it in culturally for the team, for people to be more accepting of the fact that Brian is having a rough couple months because his kid's sick, right? And so it allows the team to kind of shift the workload. So I try and look at the superorganism, whether it's the team or the company, and optimize for that, but at the same time, optimize for the individuals as well, right? And so it's a balance, and it really comes down to creating the right culture. Because, as you were saying, this social contract that we grew up hearing about, maybe depending how old you are, has broken down significantly, right? Like there's no work somewhere until you retire and get a pension. So I believe that it's the job of the leadership to prepare your employees to be worth more when they leave, whether it's on their terms or yours. And I believe very strongly that when it is your employees, when they come to you saying, "Hey, I'm interested in this other role," and it's outside the company, it's your job to support them, right? It's your job to help them on that path. And I've had employees who worked for me who were just national-level, national-caliber people, but they're real early in their career, and I've pushed them out of the nest at points, right? Because, again, if you take this long game instead of thinking of things as, if you play the infinite game, I might work with them again in the future, right? And if I get them access to those resources, and they, and now they went from being a very talented early career professional to someone who has now had the best training and the best things that money could buy, and then five, ten years later, I'm looking for that role again, and I give them a call, maybe then I can poach them away, and now I have an even better employee for the next venture or whatever. I mean, those things. And I just believe that if I'm hiring you, I like you, and I want you to be successful, period, right? Treating people human first. And if you take this human-first approach to management, I think it works out better for everyone.

It does. No, you brought up a lot of good points, because you, and you started with, "Well, look, we have to, we have to optimize for success for our organization," and which means, "Success for the person." If they're successful, the organization's going to be successful. And it's all about, you, at the end of the day, you do have to make a profit and pay the bills, right? And I think a lot of folks get drawn into that very sort of tactical-level thinking of, "What do we need right now?" Especially in sales jobs, I hear it all the time where it's like, "Well, end of the month, end of the month!" It's like, okay, but you're working on these deals that take several months, if not longer sometimes, to cultivate. So really it's, "What is your year?" But then you have to break that down to smaller goals, because otherwise people just, "Oh, I'll hit my numbers," you know what I mean? So it's making that balance of trying to get it in. But what you brought up about developing people, it takes you back to, I've heard that quote before, I don't know who's attributed to it, where someone says, "Why are we investing in all these people? What if we train them and make them amazing, and then they leave?" And then the guy was like, "Well, what if we don't do any of that, and they stay here?" And that's such a great point. And you take that long-term view. And I've seen Greg do that, and I've, so I've done that with other people where you don't know where you're going to run into that person. And because of how we are so connected as a society, you don't know when that's going to come back to you. So like you said, I've done that with people before, and then years later you run into them somewhere, like, "Holy [expletive]! Hey, you really helped me out in this area." And it was something I didn't even know about, but just letting them do whatever they need to get done, or develop them in a way. And then years later, they come back and they're like, "Hey, I want to introduce you to someone." And that starts to lead to work for you. I mean, so, and it's really, that's the way of looking at that sort of strategic-level thinking and that long-term view of it, because you don't know how that's going to fit into your life later on. Sorry, Greg, I know you...

No, no, no. I think you're both spot on. Laser-focused for a Monday. I'm playing catch up here. But I would tell you this, I would tell you that you're young, I'm old. You still have amniotic sac fluid on you. I'm [expletive] crusty and dusty. But I will tell you this, when you take a look at probably the first Gregism that you learned, Brian, was, "Train your replacement from day one." And I don't know if you recall when you heard that in context, Brian, when we first met, but that was me from the very beginning. Everybody on the team has to know your role. You have to be better at your role than anybody, and you have to constantly be taking your skills and transfer them laterally to everybody, because you're not always going to be there. And so that's just good common sense. I'll also tell you this, when Shelly and I decided to leave police work at the job where we had better benefits than the Detroit Lions football team, we're getting paid more than executives at General Motors. We decided to leave and go down a different path with our lives. And everybody was like, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, nobody leaves!" And they kept coming in and they offered us counseling, and it's like, "No, this is a strategic move. Do you know what that means? Do you know what it means that we're going somewhere else to do something which is going to improve our place, our career trajectory? Our arc is going to be different in a Fidelity field than fun and exciting and dangerous." And we're going to do this knowingly. And they're like, "Yeah, but if you've got more than two or three jobs before you're 30 years old on your resume, you're a hobo, and nobody will hire you." What happens is, you guys see the world in this fast, detail-oriented, information-everywhere way, and everything is fast. We didn't. We saw you lived on the same block, and you died within a mile of the school that you went to school with. You had all the same friends your entire life, and you all graduated and came back in weddings and all these things were interconnected. And, you know what? Life doesn't have to be like that. That's looking down, and in many times where people failed to look up and out. And I think that speaks directly to your point about developing somebody to go out in the workplace. Because if you're not doing that to your kid, and you're teaching them the value of those skills when you get into the workplace, and how this job is just preparing you for the next job, right? I mean, there's, the social contract is, there's no such thing. The only social contract is birth, is the sexually transmitted disease that always ends in death. And what you do in between is what you define yourself as. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So, I look at it, and I look at you guys, and I go, "Man, you're truly pioneers. You're headed for Mars." What did we do? We go, "Hey, the dead thing in the sky, the moon. Let's see if we can get somebody on that. A monkey? Let's send a monkey." No, a dog. We looked right in front of us and thought we were amazing. So, you guys really need to understand that we're still anchored backwards, and so when you come up with these ideas, we resent it sometimes, right? And that's unhealthy. But I just want you to acknowledge the fact that we still don't get it, and we're learning, begrudgingly, right?

Right, Greg. I think that's a great point and a strategic point from a generational difference. But I actually think that the more people are doing that and trying to, "Oh, everything's happening fast and I can go here and there's more mobility now," right? But then what is everyone complaining about? "Oh, it sucks here," or, "I want to go there. We need to get back to this." Everyone has their own little farm living off it. I was like, "Wait, what is it? It's like some a commune you want to start, a cult called socialism? All raise goats?" So we have kind of a socialist way. Look at it. I was not expecting that out of you, right? But the idea, but we're all still looking for that. So the tenets still remain true, because I would say even for your generation, Greg, that social contract wasn't there either, in a sense. Because what would happen? Okay, "Hey, we're outsourcing these jobs. Sorry, we're shutting the plant down." And that shuts down the whole world.

Yeah, when we were growing up, General Motors was paying $35 to $38 an hour to start. So what role are you going to make in the big three? And I was going like, "Well, I don't want to work in an auto plant." Everybody goes, "No, you're not." And you can be admin, or you can be this. Brian, I had to get out of Detroit, and it wasn't because Detroit was violent, or I hated Detroit. I love Detroit. Yeah, but I had to see what the other side looked like. I had to go. And that's why we're still pushing to foreign countries, because America is wonderful and beautiful, but you don't respect and admire America unless you've been here, come back, and you go, "Damn, we have it pretty good here," you know? Yeah, it's all good.

I was appreciating how much things have changed over time, and just that thought process and how we do have these different members of our workforce who literally grew up in different eras. I think everything has been compressed. And the fact that we have right now, I mean, there's like four different generations in the workforce right now, and the communication challenges are intense. I was reading an article today about how millennials and Gen Z use emojis differently. And I'm like, "Oh, Lord, help me." Like a customer, right?

And I don't understand emojis. Brian laughs at me all the time because I know where the emojis are on my phone, so what I do is I hit five or six in a row randomly, and I send that as a message. And then Brian has to, like an archaeologist, figure out what the hieroglyphics mean today. And the funny thing is, after a while, he figured out they mean nothing, because I just don't get it. So I communicate, I get exacerbated. I get so exhausted with texting that I like to call. Why? Because I think that calling is the old-fashioned way, but that's how I communicate best, in person. And then Brian tried to talk to me about the cave paintings. I still use... I was insulted one time. I was briefing at CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command). Mattis had just made his, "PowerPoint as the last bastion of the unimaginative." PowerPoint is evil. "Nobody uses PowerPoint because it's [expletive], and here are my six slides," are PowerPoint. I'm like, "[expletive]!" Right? But I went in and my slides were just photos. There were a big picture with no words or anything. And I said, "Look at this guy," and, "Watch the center." And I had the room enthralled. Well, Brian said it's because you do the old cave painting thing. I don't know it, but I'm trying to be hip with the generation. And I'll give you one very brief aside. So we're working mids, and I see this sled that's coming out of a garage. It's creeping, no lights on, goes down the street halfway, then turns the lights on, turns onto a major street and heads North, and it kicks it. So I pull it over, and I'm like, "Okay, it looks like a stolen car. The guy's trying to take it to a chop shop from one to the other." And it's an old dude. When I walk up, I go, "Okay, this car is antiseptic. This is beautiful. What's going on?" Now I know this is a left wrist because he's holding ten and two, and his left wrist is a beautiful watch. And I said, "So, retired GM?" And he goes, "Yeah." And I go, "What are you doing down there?" And he goes, "I lived there. I could never get out of the [expletive] that I lived in. And now the only thing I've got is this watch and that car. And every night I drive up to Rochester Hills, and I go to a 24-hour Denny's, and I meet with my friends because we all retired from the same place. And it's a shooting gallery where we live." And that taught me something. That taught me that you got to get away, you got to cut the ties, you got to move, you got to stay mobile, you got to, you know, "Publish your Parish." I know that's a stupid one. Or "innovate or stagnate." And I hate those. But that's what you do, Clark. I look at you, and I go, "Man, where's Clark going to show up next?" And I love that about you. Yeah, that's one of the things that Brian and I, we talked a good long time, folks. I don't know if you know, but Clark's also on our board. And being on our Advisory Board in the old days was a very honorable thing, but it was all door-booters and car-rammers and shooters and looters. And so the choice for Clark took the longest, but you were our first choice. That's the funny part. You were our first choice because you're so innovative, intellectually, and you've got the cognitive elasticity that we want in a friend. So, I don't know if that's a compliment.

Well, thank you. Thank you. It's funny, two things out of that story. One, I'm pretty sure it's the screenplay for Gran Torino, and it doesn't actually happen in your life. A key takeaway is that personal finance is really important, right? You had someone who made really good money their entire life, and at the end of the day, it was only the things that they were given to them as they were walking out the door that they maintained, as far as their wealth. And so, going back to how we think about employment in this new era, one of the benefits, I guess, that I offer my teams and my companies is anyone on the team can come take basically a crash course in personal finance from me. And I focus on any entry-level employees coming in. I hold it quarterly, and I talk to them about how you set up your investment accounts, how you balance your budget, and those sort of things, because it's not really taught anywhere in the school system, even in college. And so I think it's really critical, right? It's good for our society. And as a manager or a leader, I want my team to be successful. I actually care about these people. And here's an opportunity, usually, for them to make good money for where they are in their career, and I want them to start habits that will carry them through the rest of their life. And I think from a business standpoint, it's very important to realize that the insider threat is real. So why not try and help mitigate the largest threat surface area you have? When we talk about clearances in the government, they're looking for leverage, they're looking for people in financial distress. So as a commercial enterprise, why wouldn't we want to try and solve that ourselves, to maintain the security within our own organization?

No, no, you're spot on too, because it's the sword of Damocles. When you're out of money, when you're thinking about living paycheck to paycheck, when you're not sure how you're going to pay those bills, then it's as if the sword of Damocles is hanging over everything you do. So, hey, listen, we're running late, so we want to stop at McDonald's, "Flip, can we really afford McDonald's today? Can we do this, or do we pay the light bill? Do we pay that?" And I know I'm going to white belt level, but seriously, you're talking about something that scares the [expletive] out of me more than gun violence, because you're talking about what you're really talking about is resilience, and resilience in a number of different ways, right? If I'm looking at this from a company versus an individual perspective, you know how there's a lot I see on social media, and it's a big thing now, like the "Preppers" and people doing all this stuff to prep for whatever they think is going to happen. I kind of make fun of some of them because I'm like, "This is the most ridiculous scenario I've ever seen in my life." But I love all of them, because what they're teaching is personal resilience. Here's how you can do this, and even sometimes financial too, because you'll have some people, "Look, you can go buy this food and make this much food out of just this." And I love it, because the more self-reliant you are, obviously the better the society is as a whole, because you're no longer pulling from, you're no longer a drain. So if I look at individual resilience, that leads to organizational resilience, and that's at that even just that personal financial level. I mean, I was lucky enough when I was doing government contracting, while I'll go over the security stuff, it paid really well. And when I got into it, it was because I kind of knew people, and they were able to look at my background. I probably shouldn't have been there, meaning, a lot of people I was on the first started with, they had to put their resume was a little bit better than mine. So I'm looking at my resume and then looking at my paycheck, going like, "Hey, there's a discrepancy here. I'm a little heavier on the paycheck than I am on the resume. This might not last forever." And the idea was, I could always work my way up from there, but I had to sit there and go, "I'm only getting paid Walmart," or while I'm working overseas, and it was really good money, but then when I come home, I'm not getting paid. So I have to manage that. I have to know what that means to me, and that can be really, really tough to do, especially when everyone looks at, when times are good. But it's easy to have this carefree attitude, but you don't want to be the Clint Eastwood in that neighborhood living off that pension. And you want to talk about, you can take it from a political or social perspective. You want less government? Well, the more self-reliant the people are, the less government they need. And that's going to make the government nervous. But the idea is, just looking at it from a resilience perspective, what does that mean, resilience? You brought it up earlier with, "What's going on with this employee? Are their kids sick? Do they need that extra day? What does that do?" And financially, you're taking this 360 approach. And that sounds daunting, right? That sounds like, "Well, either I'm in a company, that's not my responsibility. I hired you to do a job. Why don't you go do your job?" It's very easy to say that, but that, like Greg was talking about, you're looking right and you can't see the forest for the trees. You're looking right in front of your face. That's not going, that's a short-term way of looking at things. That's not a long-term vision. And I think for our viewers' sake and our listeners' sake, we have to address that. That's how you get into the thick of it, because all you're doing is looking at the immediate results of that action right around you. You become overwhelmed easily, and then you become distraught or anxious, and you don't have to do that. So, Clark, give us a couple of things that you would counsel people on that, and I'm not going to tell you, give away everything people pay for, but how do you reduce that anxiety? What's some of the leverage that you use with your intellect?

So I think the problem that a lot of mid-level managers feel is they don't feel like they're empowered to make those calls. And if you don't architect the culture, at the end of the day, it has to be the executive leadership has to buy in, right? "We're going to treat our people like we would want to be treated." It's really that simple. It's an old maxim we've all heard it before. But you need to buy into that, and the leadership needs to delegate, empower the lower tiers to call those shots, right? Because at the end of the day, I know I still have to make my quarter, my month, whatever, as the manager, as the team lead. But if I can't with the resources I have provided, then I need to explain the decision-making process and why. And I need to communicate early and often, right? A lot of this bad news doesn't age well. But if you say, "Fundamentally, our values fall and are these things," then we are a value-based organization, right? Because that's how we create the culture, and that leads to our success. And you have to maintain that, right? Because if you just, it's just words on the wall, and you don't live it as the leader, your team's not going to live it, and it's just a waste of energy. And no one feels good about it. Going back to this concept of, "Hey, I want to look at a five-year timeline, not just this quarter," right? So I'm playing an infinite game and not a zero-sum game. And then also, I want to promote them out, maybe into the world if I need to. Again, going back to Greg's point, we always need to be training our successors, right? We need to be bringing in new blood, we need to be acculturating them. But when you do this, when you have this mindset, you're able to attract the best talent in the world. Because they come in and they interview, and they interview your team, and your team is like, "This is the best shop I've ever worked at. The management's awesome. They give me the ability to make the mistakes I need to make and to learn." And because of that, I feel safe taking risks. And so we do more innovative stuff than we would if I didn't feel safe taking risks. And I think, not the cascade, but I think this is actually a big problem in the DOD (Department of Defense) right now, is that people are promoted into these places because they were successful 100% of the time, right? Where we need to shift a lot, especially because my experience working with the DOD is from the innovation side. We need to shift, we need to be promoting people taking big at-bats, right? Like there's three people on base, we're going to take a swing, and we know that there's probably a 50% chance this is going to hit, but it's not going to end your career if you make the best decision with the data you have at the time. Because that's what we need to do in order to maintain our level in the global marketplace. And America has always been, that's a fundamental value, right? We're risk-taking and we're innovative, and we've lost some of that, and I think we need to regain it.

Well, again, no, no. And Brian might hand it right off to you, but I would tell you that this is an allegory for life, because everything that you said can be used at home. Everything that you just said could be used to fix police work. Everything that you just said we see when we're teaching leadership to C-suite executives. Brian, would you agree that all of that is great?

You brought in and you brought up a number of things. It, and this is what a lot of folks coming from the military don't, everywhere I go, whether it's private sector, law enforcement, military, and we're talking, people said, "Look, a lot of folks, you actually know a lot more information than you think you do. You have a lot more experience than you really think you do. You might not be able to articulate it, realize what you're learning at the time." And one of the things is with the military, like you said, it goes back to, "You're always training your replacement." And you're learning, you're supposed to have a mentor who's training and teaching you for that next role. And a lot of organizations don't do that well, because especially if it's like a sales role, it's like, "Well, no, this is about competition. Look, I get it, the more I go sell, the more I make, and I want to be better than this person." And I get that at an individual level. But what the military does is, because of how it's set up, and I try to tell people to do this with companies, "Do this." Is you make a lot of assumptions, and those assumptions may turn out to be wrong, but you can't operate as if they will be wrong. Meaning, I'm going to assume, Jim Clark, I just hired you. Okay, "I'm in it all the time for this job. I'm going to assume that so are you. I'm in it to win it. You're going to be here for the long run. You want mission accomplishment as badly as I do." And then if I do that, and if I make those assumptions, maybe it is six months from now or a year, you're like, "Hey, this isn't for me." Well, okay, great. I can pivot then. I can find someone else then, right? But I can't sit there for six months or that year, going, "I don't know, do you think Clark's going to do it? Do we think he's going to be in it?" Because that just slows down the OP TEMPO (operations tempo) and your speed so much, because you're creating all of these conundrums, or creating this turbidity in the way you think and operate that's going to slow you down. So just sometimes, making those assumptions, going and being clear about it, and saying, "Hey, look, this is what we believe in. This is what we're here to do. I have full faith and confidence in you. We want to go 100% all the time. Let me know if you have any..." And just taking those assumptions and going with it. Those people who are on the edge, they'll get on board. People love a challenge. They love autonomy. They love being able to make their own decisions, but still having a safety net. So, if I just create that environment and let people thrive, the cream will rise to the top. But it has to be for the life of the organization and for the employee. And what I mean by that is, I'm going to go back to white belt psychology for anybody taking notes. When you take a look at why cops are blowing their brains out at the police station, and why soldiers, sailors, Marines are leaving the service, and then within that magic window are shooting themselves, it's because you take a look and you think end-of-career decisions or end-of-life decisions, you're thinking of "Do Not Resuscitate." And that's because the agency doesn't have a plan to tell you, "You were a vital member of the community. You still can be. You just don't need to be here anymore." And start that separation early enough that that person knows that there's an offering, Brian. There's a place that I can exit here safely and still be a meaningful member of whatever I need to be a member of. Because when you don't have that, you get up every morning going, "I used to be somebody," and that's self-destructive, and that's horrible. And that's as bad as the weight of having finances, not having a next job to step into. Searching the want ads and circling stuff, I know nobody uses papers anymore, obscure reference, but trust me, that's a place. Society, or suicide, lingers in our society, and we don't shine a light in there very often.

Yeah, Greg, to follow up on that, I think from the commercial standpoint, that's what all of the cultural things I've been discussing provide: the groundwork of trust that allows your employees to have the conversation with you, that, "Hey, I'm thinking about leaving," or, "Hey, I want to go into this role." It might even be within your organization. They might just want to go to a different team and do a different thing because that's part of their journey. And if they don't trust you to not freak out and, "Oh, you're betraying me," or whatever, I mean, I've seen just horrible management. And I actually blame a lot of it culturally. I think the only management and leadership that we see in sitcoms and TV is, "Oh, my boss, he's incompetent," right? So it's training everyone to be, they're just meming what they've seen on TV, as opposed to, because not everyone's going out and reading the books and learning the psychology. But creating that psychological safety that allows you to have real discourse about their growth. And I believe very heavily in my monthly one-on-ones. I think we talked about it last time, but I ask them to score their stress level in the office and at home. And then we dig into that a little bit more in the office, and I leave it up to them whether we talk about their home life. But on a scale of one to ten, what is your stress level at work? And then the work one, I'll ask, "Is it because the volume of the work, or is it because of the type of the work, or the people that you're working with?" Because oftentimes you find out that two individuals just butt heads. And if you can just Jiu-Jitsu, like I just shift my weight a little bit, and all of a sudden I pass the guard, and we're flowing. And if you can put someone else as that interface, now all of a sudden they went from being an eight and hating their job and wanting to leave the organization to being a five, and they're like, "This is great. I'm kicking ass." And that's a huge thing with just a tiny little effort. But if you don't ask the question, you're never going to find out that answer. And on the family load side, that's when you find out, "Oh, my dog just died," and, "My mom has cancer," and that sort of stuff. And they go, "I am at an eight or a nine," the other whatever, "16 hours of the day." And so being able to go like, "Okay, well, let's figure out how we can take a little off your plate and spread it across the team, and give you the freedom to operate and handle that stuff, process this." And when the team sees you do that for the individual, they believe that you're going to do it for them, so they happily take on that work in the short term. And you create, again, the psychological safety that, "He's not just going to fire me because I'm having a bad month."

No, no. And your empowerment is not entitlement. And what I mean by that is that you're saying what we say all the time in self-defense and in security, and in anything about situation awareness, is you're largely responsible for your own safety and security. But somebody has to empower you and tell you that so you understand that part of that is coming up and saying, "I feel vulnerable, I feel uncomfortable, I feel anxious about this." And now having a dialogue, creating that dialogue within teams and cells. And people fail to understand why we still go and assign cells at the very beginning of any one of our courses. But then by the end of it, you go, "Oh, that was a great move!" Because what does it force you to do? It forces the outside of your bubble, meet other people. You're responsible for this, and we assign that to you. And you're going like, "Yeah, but I'm in the middle of this class." We try to get you to bring your guard down just enough so some of that water spills into my cup. Because if I don't understand what you're going through, if I don't understand your optics, if I don't understand what you just left at the hotel room or in your car in the parking lot, then, and that's again, we're right back to talking about, "What's the matter with marriages? What's the matter with cops?" Everybody else, we fail to take the other's perspective. And because a lot of that, too, is answered, especially with larger organizations where they'll try to do that stuff. And you can tell they have good intentions, but the execution of it is horrible, and it doesn't do anything. It's like, "Okay, yeah, we want to help with this, excuse me, mental health and resilience." Okay, "Free yoga classes for everyone on Tuesdays!" And you're like, "Okay." And it's, "Oh, and free gym membership and here all the snacks in the break room!" It's like, no, people don't care about that [expletive]. It's about, "Do you actually just care about me?" Can that manager, can that leader have that conversation with me to know that, "Hey, man, if I could just start my day 30 minutes later, I could get my kids off easier, and I'm not going to be freaking out and doing burnouts on the way here at every stoplight because I got to get in so quick." Those little things, that's what people care about. For the most part, people are going to work hard, and they're going to, they're going to rise to the level of your expectations. I mean, they will. If you set it, and you're clear, because that gives me fulfillment at a psychological and sociological level. I need to feel like I am doing something that is good and that is benefiting the team, and that you care about. And so if you can do all of those things, and I can feel empowered in my job, people work their ass off for that stuff, and they just want to be, for the most part, "I want you to, I want to feel taken care of." Now, everyone knows, at the end of the day, it's a business. So if it's not making money, it's going to fail. Everyone knows that going in, though, that's what everyone understands.

Yeah, but you, you guys are so, I've got to go back to street, because I'm the dumbest rock in the room all the time. But I will tell you this, if you went up to those employees and did exactly what Clark and Brian are talking about and you said, "Okay, for this birthday, we're going to buy a generic cake and everybody's birthday is going to be on this day, and we're going to come in, we're all going to sing, and then we're all going to go back to our cubicles and work our asses off," or, "For your birthday, you can get off 15 minutes early," what do you think people would choose? What do you think people would go to? The idea is that you don't know if you're not asking those questions. And then you're saying, "Well, that's total anarchy," because the next thing it would cause is people coming and going if they... You know what? Some of the best environments to work are those types of environments. And the other thing is, we can't tell you what to do, we have to listen sometimes. So when we had a change, look, when people are going to war and dying, our class was all on delivery all the time. We were autocrats, and it was didactic, and "Shut up and take as much of this as you can, it'll save your life." And then when it wasn't that anymore, and it was specialized forces and missions, then we went back to sort of a 50/50. And now it's completely turned around where it's a thinking man's game, the man or woman, I don't notice the distinction. So when we're in the class, you're responsible for teaching us as much as we're responsible for teaching you. And if that is in a workplace, I think that's a healthy workplace. If it's in a marriage or a relationship, I think it's a healthy relationship. Good stuff from you two.

Yeah, so a lot of the undertone here is that when we're talking about resiliency, it's about taking a long-term vision of things and building towards it. I mean, I think a lot of your audience can probably relate: they're running distance, or training a martial art, or something like that, right? And I think that if you want to build that mental resiliency, those are great places to do it. The first time I ran a marathon, I couldn't even run a mile when I started the training program, right? I finished, and I was dying. I finished my first mile, and I was laying there. But I went and I researched it, and I laid out the plan, and then I just did the work every day. It says, "Okay, I had 20 to your mileage, I had 20 miles. Okay, today's the long run, you're going to do a long run." And it sucked. But I went from it being impossible to run a marathon to six months later, I ran my first marathon. Wow! And so it goes back to that quote, "People overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years." I mean, that's almost 100% congruent. Same thing with Jiu-Jitsu. You train, and when you walk in, you're a piece of spaghetti day one, right? You just flop it all over the place, and everyone's just kind of dealing with you and trying to make sure you have a good and safe time so hopefully you come back. And in the long run, it may take you multiple years, but eventually you're carved out of wood, and then eventually you're a killer. And I think those are steps along the path. But every day when you come in and you do the work, you face setbacks. You're dehydrated. Like right now, I got some cauliflower ear that I'm dealing with. You get hyperextended by accident because you didn't tap early enough, right? All of those little setbacks teach you that life, if you want to be successful in life, you want to be successful in your job, not every day is going to be smooth. But if I show up and I do the work consistently, I can overachieve from where I think the goal actually is, and where I think I'm capable, because your capability keeps building, and you get this compounding interest that makes you a very strong candidate in the end. And so I believe that one of the things that our culture maybe lacks in the broader sense—again, your audience tends to be a little different—but is that experience with "routine failure" as they like to call it, right? My wife's always like, "How'd it go in the gym today?" And I'm like, "I'm here. I survived," right? I didn't get injured. That was a good day. And I might not even know what I learned today, but I learned something, and you accrue all these lessons over time, and then you get kind of the clarity of thought and the ability to respond. And that resiliency, that mental resiliency, is the most important component of leadership. I think, too, because there are also times as a manager where I can't tell my team what we're facing right now, because I'm still processing it. We're still trying to figure out what the plan, the course of action, is. What's the likelihood that the worst-case scenario happens? And if that's the case, what's our course of action there? And what's probably going to happen? And you're stuck as this leader where you've built this team, you've built this culture of openness and communication, and in this moment, you can't share, right? You have to wait, and you have to hold the line until the decision is made, and then you have to execute against it. And if you haven't built up that mental toughness around that prior to, those moments are excruciating.

I love the way you brought up, I want to hit one thing here, because martial arts, or running a marathon, all that stuff, it's a perfect example. And you said, our audience is a little different. And they are, but we're also not. And what I mean is, what it comes down to is, "How do I conceptualize those lessons you learn in that specific arena over to other parts of my life?" And that can be very, very difficult. Meaning, we can get really, really good and understand all these lessons and know exactly what you're talking about, but then can't do that in our job or can't do that with our family. And it's like, it's like meeting someone, like, "You ever meet someone who's like, they're jacked, they're in the gym all the time, they count every single calorie, they do their meal prep, they're so disciplined in this, and then the rest of their life is a complete mess?" And you're like, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you have all the tools necessary to do all these other things. You've demonstrated that consistently." And that can be difficult sometimes, because we look at everything as, "Well, this is different." It's like, no, no, it's absolutely, the tactics, techniques, and procedures are different because the job is different. But the fundamental, the fundamental framework that you're going to use for success in one area should be the fundamental framework you use in all parts, because it makes it easier to translate that information or that process over to a new domain. And that's what it is for a lot of people. It might be a new domain, or a new way of thinking, or a new job. But it's the same underlying elements that are going to make you successful. So just focus on those. When, when I don't, it's like when you don't know what to do, well, typically rule number one is like, "Hey, always look cool." Rule number two is, "Don't get lost." Always know what you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing, refer back to, "Always look cool." But the idea is, I always say, "If you don't know what you're doing, refer back to those foundational elements that made you successful in every other area." And go, "Okay, well, I know if I work really hard at this part, if I know I'm really good at this thing, I can exercise those strengths." And then someone's going to come along and go, "Oh, hey, you need to add this," or, "You need some help in this area." I just, I love those analogies that you use, because they're so powerful and they work. But we forget them sometimes. We really do forget them. And what you did, too, Clark, and everybody that's taken notes, Clark just gave you a perfect street definition of "duty to intervene." Because if you're a member of a high-functioning team, family relationship, again, all of it's the same, and you see somebody else that's involved in their downward spiral, or that person is deep thinking something because they're on a time constraint, walking up and going, "I got it from here, boss." And being able to off-ramp some of that anxiety is wonderful. Now that doesn't mean that you're taking over. That means that, "Hey, I'll do some of this ancillary crap so you can get focused on whatever it is." And Brian and I have to do that all the time. There's such emotional content in our courses, and we're on transmit all the time, that we're not thinking about us. So we've got to take just a little bit. And people, if you haven't been to a class, "Kiss My Ass," you don't know what I'm talking about, because we're leaving it all on the stage. And it is a stage. And so you're out there, and you're trying to chug water in between the line, and remember what's coming next, and anticipate this, and read the class, and read the room, and read the stuff. And so what will happen is, we'll get so emotionally caught up in what we're doing that we can't speak because we're overwhelmed and overcome by emotion. And so the other person has to read that, and Brian will step right in, or I'll step on Brian. And that shows that you've got a healthy relationship in your organization where somebody goes, "Hey, the boss has got a lot in his rock. I'm going to alleviate some of that by handling these other issues that they don't have to worry about." The idea is everybody gets to the end zone. I remember a thing, and it's a Marine-centric thing, so I'll tread lightly. But I remember we were up at Stumps (Marine Corps Base Twentynine Palms, California). And there used to be a thing for the Marines that had a march, do an EIB (Expert Infantryman Badge) style road march, Army reference, from Pendleton (Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California) to Stumps. And they had to carry all their gear and all this other stuff. And it was, everybody that did that talked to me about it like it was having a child. "This is the most amazing thing I've done. We used to do it all the time. It was a big pride thing." And a leader took all their gear out and instead inflated one of their air mattresses in Iraq to make it look like they had the same weight, because they wanted to spring in their step and be out in front and lead from the front. But what they didn't understand is, we're back to social contract again. What they did is they yanked that gosh game Saddam statue down with the big vehicle and didn't understand that everybody was going, "[expletive], that's kind of our home." He, he violated that trust. And you guys talked about trust a lot. That, to me, was a story that's so compelling in my brain, I'll never forget it. You have to get out and do the work. You have to get out and buy the Band-Aids. You have to get the liniment, because it's going to hurt. Nothing comes easy. And if it does come easy, that means that you're being, you're in an ambush, right? You're coming up to something that's going to kill you. And you guys talk about resilience, that scar tissue that you build from those mistakes is going to be stronger and more resilient than anything that you can imagine if you stick with it. So my dad used to say, "Showing up is 90%." I would say that showing up is hugely important, but sticking with it and then knowing when to get off is another part of it too. And I think you guys are hitting on that. So it doesn't matter if I'm HR, or if I'm working at a 7-Eleven, or if I'm a teacher, or whatever else, I should be taking a bunch of notes today from you two.

One thing that you touched on, Greg, that I want to go back to is, this applies across all domains, right? I'm talking about the business side, but also in your personal life, right? I have two children, and there's moments where it's like, you're looking at your partner, and you're like, "They're tapped. This is it," right? You need to interject. And most of the time, my wife is an amazing parent. It's usually me, right? I'm, I am emotionally compromised at this point, and I need to just break contact and go to a different room and just settle down, right? Because I'm not going to live in a fight with a five-year-old. That's it. So it's just about creating the gift of time and distance, as you guys like to say.

You're exactly right. And doesn't that salvage relations when you don't? Like, I want to say things in the moment because my immense German head says, "Say it, it'll make everything better." And the minute that it trips out of my mouth, it's like, "God, I could have waited a little longer. That could have stayed in the oven a little bit longer to be a perfect sentence." And then afterwards, I beat myself up about it. So what I had to do is I've had to rest up that and go, "Okay, if I make that pause before I say it, and I have these thoughts and I worry about it, guess what? I can get right past that." But we don't want to do that. Why? Because we're biased about us, and our egos are such that, the greatest thing. Brian, Clark and I are all martial artists, and we have been for decades. And the thing about martial arts teaches you that there are times you need to stay in your lane and shut your effing mouth and just sit on the tatami and wait for the instruction, right? And sometimes getting spanked by an expert, your significant other, when you're dealing with kids, maybe that's the right thing to do. I value Shelley more than any other human in the world. Shelley's reined me in and said, "Where are you going? Where are you right now? What do you think you're doing?" And we need that. And some people call that the angel on his shoulder and the devil on the other shoulder, or your guardian angel or something. I have Shelley. I don't have to worry about that. She kicked my ass every day to make sure that I'm censored. And that's a good thing, though.

I like to think of it like, "Do you know how ridiculous you look as a 40-year-old man, look at a five-year-old?" Right? You're emotionally compromised. Your ego is running the show right now. If you were to film this and watch it ten minutes later, you'd be like, "I'm such an [expletive]. What the hell did I do right here?"

Exactly.

And so, another trick for the listeners at home, if you're fighting with your significant other, assume child's pose. It's very hard to be in an argument with an adult while you're both in child's pose. It'll solve all your memories.

So true. And, Clark, I'll add one to that that we talk about all the time: "Happy baby, happy baby, not child's pose, happy baby." That's even better. See, when you're looking at a situation, every once in a while, turn your slide view inside of your head and imagine everything around you surrounded by police tape. And if you said police evidence tape, there's nothing more sobering than going, "Hey, if I'm not on point right now, if I'm not focused on what's going to happen, this might be the place that Axon records me in my own death, or where the shootout." And I know that seems extreme, but you're saying the same thing. Take that step back mentally, give yourself the gift of time and distance. And if what you're seeing is revolting to you, maybe you've got to stop it now, before it gets in the end. Because once, look, it's hard to unring bells, and we all know that, yet we'll allow our mouth outweigh our brain sometimes. And these are good, you guys call them hacks now, but these are good rules for living a longer, more meaningful life.

I think another thing, to kind of pivot a little bit, but to go back on this progression, as humans, after a while, we're all chasing our personal best, right? That's the thing, "Oh, I'm competing against myself. I want to be awesome." I think it's really important to see how far you've come, because incremental deltas in your day-to-day performance aren't that satisfying after a while. One of the things that I started to do towards the end of my distance running career was I would get to, say we're running a half marathon, it was a race day. I'd get to mile ten, and then I would just look for someone who wanted to quit. I would look for the mom who was like, "She's been training for this and she's done, she's tanked," right? She's gassed out, she's walking. And I would just pick her up, and I'd be like, "Hey, I'm going to go run this next three miles, and I know you can do it. You think you can't right now, but we're going to go, we're going to go finish this together." And I would just have my squad of moms chasing me across the finish line. But to see them come over that last little hump, they're there. We all know we can run a 5K, no matter what shape you're in, right? It's just a matter of will. And to see them cross and just break down, and like, "This is a lifetime goal." They may never run more than that again. But to take that moment and remind yourself, that beginner's mind, to hang out with the white belts again, that really shows you your progress and kind of reminds you that this incremental work that you're doing every day is really improving you more than just the little incremental bits. So, how fulfilling is that?

Brian Marren, I used to take pictures of myself when I was on the treadmill, and I was on the elliptical, and send them to Brian. And it was because my first foray into getting back into shape and not being morbidly obese and having Greenpeace push me back into the water all the time, was that I said, "I'm going to get the equipment, but I'm not ever going to turn it into a coat hanger. I'm going to be the one that goes down there every day and has a plan and does it." And you know what? I couldn't do it. So my first treadmill was five minutes, and then my first elliptical was two or three minutes. So I got winded and I got off. And so I would revel in that, and I would say, "Okay, next week it's going to be eight minutes here, and it's going to be five minutes here." And then I kept doing that, and guess what? I'm here now, and I feel really good. I had to run from one end of the goddamn Denver airport to the other to catch a flight that ultimately left before I got there, not because of my fault. But I looked around and I said, "You know what? I used to be this gelatinous mass that would just be a blob of sweat, and people would get out of my way. I used to get on the plane, and people would see that I'm sitting next to them, and they'd do the 'Oh, [expletive],' and I'm asking for the seatbelt extension and stuff." And I'm not that. But, you know what? Just like martial arts, it was the first step that was the most important. And the first step to your finance, the first step to your personal success, first step to personal safety, your relationship strength—this is magic. This is the stuff right there on the ground that's going to get you there.

And we don't always, it kind of even goes back to what you're talking about at the beginning, Clark, we're developing people and employees and having that long-term view, and what it is. And like you said, we can't, it's very hard. Humans aren't really wired to understand compounding interest, right? We're not wired to understand statistics at all. We don't understand probability. It's very foreign to how humans are wired. And so it seems counterintuitive, right? It's a lot of data science is about, and it's like, "Well, here's what the actual data says." And then people go, "Yeah, I get you." But we still, even in the presence of overwhelming evidence, sometimes it's hard for us to make that quantum leap right there to go, "Well, where's this going to go in the future?" And to your story about running with the moms or something, I mean, it's great. It's funny because I've had a situation before where, same thing, someone asked for my advice, and then they started asking me questions, and I went on and on for a half hour or 40 minutes about something. They were like, "Oh my God, thank you so much! This is perfect!" And I turned around after they left, I was like, "Damn, that was pretty good advice. I should probably listen to this. Where did that come from?" I was like, "I literally didn't know where that came from," because I was at that point, too, where I was like, "Well, I stay in my lane. I'm not going to give life advice to someone. I'm good, really, really good at one thing, but the rest is kind of [expletive]." You know, I had to learn the hard way and figure out for myself. And I was like, "Oh, yeah, I guess I kind of learned a lot." And then I'm like, "Man, I can listen to my own advice." And it was so funny because those words hadn't actually come out of my mouth yet. Maybe those thoughts had been in my head, obviously, because they asked me a question, I answered, they loved my answer, and it seemingly helped them. But because I had never spoken them before, because I had never said someone before. And so the point I'm getting at is, when you are, it goes back to what you learn in the military, you don't realize you're learning, is when you are that mentor, or you're forced to go turn around and teach something you just learned, or show someone else, it, it, it, it sort of compounds that interest in a sense. Meaning, you get just as much out of it as that person, because you're learning it better, or you're seeing it now as, "Oh, wait, now I'm the person giving advice. Crap, I don't even listen to that sometimes. Wow, maybe I should." And you'll see that with different self-help gurus or even fitness people where they'll end up going down that path where they're no longer doing well, and they're out of shape, and they're this. But they're also just literally pioneers in their field of what they do, and they're like, "Or drinking bourbon out of a champagne flute," you know?

Exactly.

And you're like, and they're like, "Yeah," because they're so hyper-focused on helping others, right? They're not taking the time for themselves. When that mass drops down, they're not putting it on first, they're putting it on someone else. And so just simply developing those habits, or taking on that mentorship role, even in the moment, like you did. I love this story with the running the marathon, telling someone, you're really telling yourself, "Oh, hey," you know what I mean?

100%. And the reason I would help out moms is because the psychic energy of, like, "Yo, this isn't harder than labor," like that, that was always my thing. Having gone through my wife's labors with her, I'm like, "It's only three and a half miles. That's, what, 30 minutes at worst? Come on, you've got longer than this," right? Like I could always flick the switch, and then we'd finish strong. But I think the important thing, really what we're talking about, is taking the time to reach back to the people that are earlier on the journey than you, and help coach them up to where you are and show them, because we can all be mentors in our own ways. Somebody to somebody, there's somebody out there that's going to...

Exactly. And I will warn you of this, Clark, because I don't know if you've worked out with Marren recently or have yet. Marren is not the one where you go, "Get it! Come on! And one more!" You don't do that to Marren. He'll stop immediately and turn at you and go, "I don't need you to value me. I've got it from here. Don't lose his mind." And so it has nothing to do with you. And I hate cheer-up in Ottawa, but let me, let me be miserable here. This is between me and the barbell for right now. Okay, this is me. Let me commiserate. We were up, and we had a full house in the gym, one of the nicest gyms that we've ever had on the road in Ottawa. And Brian was using this heavy ball thing, and it just, he bounced it wrong, and it came up and it just hit him right under the chin in the face. And you could see, you could see, and I think he was going down, you know? And so I'm kind of watching, and I know better. You just leave Brian to his own devices. And I'm seeing him, and he's looking for a place to land, and he's going, "Okay, I'm going to get the standing eight count here." And so this other guy stops and is going to say something, and I'm shaking my head and going, "Don't. Just let him. Let him rub some dirt on it, walk it off." And then what Brian did is he incorporated it as if it was part of his routine. He went to lighter balls and kept throwing him at his face, right? And it was just great to see that because he's wonderful because he doesn't get involved in stuff unless somebody asks him. But when he does get involved, you got to shut up because it's really important stuff. But that day in the gym, Brian, I so wanted to come over and put my hands, but it was, it was like a 25-pound slam ball, but it was bouncy, and I didn't realize it. So I picked it up and did my first one and slammed it down, and it just bounced and just uppercut me right in the chin and almost knocked me out. I was so angry, and I just kept going, and I just made sure I wasn't slamming in front of my face. Gave me a better workout, though. I mean, honestly, it worked out a lot harder than I would have.

Oh yeah, you did. Yeah, you did. It was pre-homicidal rage, is what we call that psychology.

Yeah, that'll happen. Well, there were a bunch of, there were a few other things I had wanted to get to. But I think because the arc of the conversation went a different direction, which is totally fine, I think we might have to save that stuff for another whole discussion because I don't want to take, I want to be respectful of your time as well, Clark. And but, we kind of covered a lot here from where we started. And a lot of it came down to, we started with almost at a societal and organizational level. But what did we end up with? Is really it's about a personal individual level, which is actually, I think, important to understand because everyone knows, "Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. I've got to, there's always room for improvement. You can always develop yourself." But because you brought it up, too, Clark, as you talked about leadership and culture, and it's all about the culture of the organization. And it's like, "Okay, if you work for some large organization, you feel like you might not have any say in what that is." It's like, "No, no, but you actually do." And it's like, I used to tell guys in the Marine Corps that they would get pissed at the way things turned out or what happened. And all of a sudden, things change, and you have planned to do one thing, and all of a sudden your weekend got taken away because you're going on some training up or all that. And it's like, "Hey, you, there's, you can't change the Marine Corps individually. You, or you can't as an organization. This is never going to happen. It's its own beast. Not any one person controls. It's just this moving orb that constantly is adapting." But what you can change is, one, obviously, how you, how you take things and how you handle them. But you can change those around you. You don't have to, you didn't like what that leader did. You didn't like how that was [expletive] and they all of a sudden made you do that. Guess what? Then don't do that to the next guy. Just don't be that person. And so when you start with those small changes within a team, within your family, within your house, and yourself, that's actually all you need to do. If you just focus on what you can control individually, then that's it. That's that because that, that has an exponential effect on those around you, right? And it really does. It's just because then that person then goes, "Hey, I'm not going to treat someone that way." And then next thing you know, that team starts getting stronger and better and more effective over time. So if you just, when you're looking at these big, big things that you want to change, it's just a series of small steps, which is a series of small actions. It just starts at that lowest local level possible, leads to a, that compounding interest over time is what leads those massive changes. I'll throw it back to you, Clark, but it's kind of like we're just kind of recapping everything we went over big picture here.

Yeah, no, I think that's a very astute observation. And I think it is important. It goes down to that personal responsibility. If you're unhappy with an organization, then maybe you should look at yourself in the mirror, right? What are you doing? What fights are you willing to fight? If you're, it's hard sometimes when you're kind of mid-level management of an organization, you feel like you have these edicts and you're stuck between your team and the senior leadership, and you have to choose what battles are worth fighting. And what information do you pass up, and what do you take care in your own house? And those are really, there's books on that. Yeah, we could go deep in that, but that's really what it comes down to. And then if you're an individual contributor, it's the same thing, right? What standards do you hold yourself to, and what standards do you hold your teammates to? And that really is what culture is. It's the interactions between all the players in the game. And I think that we can all make the world better by, again, taking that personal responsibility for trying to be our best and helping others be their best.

I think somewhere somebody's listening to this podcast right now and is going to be able to get out of their shell, or grow, or fix something that's broken, or go in and tell somebody, "Hey, listen, I'm in trouble." Those are the types of conversations that I hope that somebody gets out of this. Because at the end of the day, we don't do TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures), but again, these life hacks that we talked about on this show. And there's somebody out there that might be able to come back and say, "Hey, you helped me when I needed it the most. You offered a hand up, not a handout." And those are all, it's compelling, really good stuff.

No, and I thank you guys for sharing all this, and the different stories and everything we went over. And I love how you kind of wrapped it up there, Clark, with the culture, the interaction of the players of the game. I mean, that's a great way to look at it from perspective, because if you look at it that way, it sort of allows you to psychologically take a step outside of what's happening and look down at that system and go, "Okay, we're a bunch of characters in this game. How do we want these interactions to go? Where do we want this to happen?" And so I appreciate that. So, thank you guys both for everything. Everyone listening, thank you for tuning in. Oh, I do want to have maybe a third conversation eventually. But I think it is actually deserving of its own episode, is talking about this AI and specifically the ChatGPT that I've been messing around with. I know you have. And there's the Graph one. I've got to send you the GraphGPT, where it's kind of similar, you can make these cool little graphs. And then I, of course, went on there and tried to make, have you ever, I don't know what that movie was with Tom Arnold where he sings the song, "I Am My Own Grandpa." Let's see this whole thing. So I was like, "Can I map this out on a graph?" So for an hour and a half, I'm like, "What am I doing? This is like, I'm entering commands into an AI system to give me the worst..." Anyway, so I think, folks, we'll have to have a whole other separate conversation on that, because I would love to get your perspective, because you take us outside of, it's still falling in line with what we do with hpbrna, but it's taking it from a different perspective. So I would love to do that. Any final words from either of you for this episode?

I just, to follow on that real quickly, generative AI is obviously changing the landscape. And I'm pretty bullish on it, but it's going to have its drawbacks as well. And there's a thousand different generative AI apps in this marketplace that I follow now. So if we don't address it culturally through podcasts and forums like that, it's really going to blindside a lot of people. So I'm with you, Brian, we'll schedule that and we'll go deep.

All right, yeah, it's always so fun having you two on a call, because most of the time I don't know what you're talking about. And so I'll bring my Nokia flip phone and I'll sit quietly by. But I'm excited by it. And Clark, you have to know, I value your friendship and your opinion. It's always fun having you.

Yeah, it really is. We do appreciate it, and thank you guys, and thank everyone for listening. Don't forget we got more on the Patreon side as well. If you enjoyed The Human Behavior Podcast, share it with your friends, please, and tell someone about it. And don't forget that training changes behavior.