SPEAKERS

Greg McKeown, Griff, Phil Randazzo 

Griff     

So I’m a huge fan of American Dream university because I had a fairly rough transition. And nobody was there to help me through the transition the way that Phil’s helping people now. And I think there’s a great analogy between transitioning veterans and guys working in entrepreneurship. And I found that through my transition as well. So I joined the military via West Point, I graduated in 2001, which meant I graduated right into the war, which is nothing that any of us were preparing for, or they really trained us for. And then as young lieutenants, we were thrust through combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. And after five years, I had a new wife, two kids, so on 18-month-old daughter, and one six-month-old daughter, and I just knew what we were doing wasn’t going to work for me. So now I have the burden of the family, everything else and I had to transition out. And it was really a struggle, I failed miserably, financially, emotionally, spiritually had a lot of problem with drinking, get now because of some of the habits built in the military. But slowly over time, I’ve been able to work myself out of that through a variety of different practices. And now I get to share that with American dream you in the hopes that all these young transitioning, veterans don’t have to make the same mistakes about it.

Greg McKeown     

What were what made the transition the hardest? Was it the habits that you’re describing that you had picked up in the military? Was it the actual military combat itself and the PTSD that we can sort of imagine coming with that? What do you feel was the thing that made the transition so hard?

Griff     

I think financial stress was the worst. Yeah, I was my, my wife was in the military at the same time to so we were two captains, I was deploying all the time. So I was making my full Captain pay, jump pay, hazardous duty pay, you know, all the different kinds of pays, you can get. And it was all tax free, because I was deploying all the time. And when I came back, I was spending and living as if I were not going to live another past the next deployment. And so then when you do live past the deployment, you come back, you’ve got all these just really poor habits, between your finances between your consumption between your time management that you’re just so accustomed to, and then all of a sudden, you get out of the military, and somebody’s not paying you to work out two hours a day, feed you all your meals, and pay a healthy amount of money to do it. So we had a 75% pay cut, in 30 days, between two people with two kids transitioning out of the military with no jobs and civilian life.

Greg McKeown     

And all the structure that went with it, the whole system, around your lifestyle, so much of that was being provided, or at least supported and sustained by the military system. And all of that is lost as well.

Griff  

Correct. And you have somebody setting your schedule, for the next 18 to 24 months, and you generally know what it is. So that provides a lot of consistency for you, you know, you got to show up a PT at six in the morning. Generally, you’ll be home, you know, 5 to 6 at night, and you’re just going to rinse and repeat. And so there’s just a healthy, comfortable rhythm that you get into. And then it’s gone. Now you have to establish your own rhythm. That was very challenging.

Greg McKeown     

So really, the habits that you’re talking about, aren’t, Oh, I got into drinking more heavily in the military, it wasn’t that it was all these other habits that you came to rely on. That once you were left on, once you were left to your own devices, you found harder to maintain. And that’s when you slipped more into the drinking that you just described. Is that am I hearing that right?

Griff     

I would have to say that in the military, you’re just busy all the time, you can’t operate in an inebriated or drunk state. So the responsibility of the job requires you to be sober and to be focused on what you’re doing. And then in the very few moments, you have free time, yeah, you like to cut loose and celebrate with your friends. So now when you’re in the civilian world, and you have a free afternoon, and you’re not prepping for the next mission, or you’re not packing your gear for the next deployment, or you’re not doing all the other duties that you have, Oh, you got free time. Well, what can I hat do I normally do when I have free time have a beer.

Greg McKeown     

You lost the systematic, positive habits, but kept, at first, at least the unintentional negative habits agreed and now suddenly fall into this much more undisciplined way of living because you don’t have all that external discipline acting on you

Griff   

Yeah generally you can come home have a few beers. And you’re relaxed at night and hang out with your kids and go to sleep. And that’s fine, right? If you want to do that, it’s great like no, no problem. But when that turns into six, seven, 30 days in a row, then it becomes a problem. Yeah, and then and then you your earlier point of the emotional stuff from combat is, once you get through that transition period in life, and you’ve figured out your finances, and you’ve established a comfortable way of living, that’s when all of the closet doors where you shoved all those emotions into over the past, you know, four, 5, 10, 20 years, start tumbling out. And that’s when you start dealing with those emotional challenges as a result of the military.

Greg McKeown     

So there was two phases of transition really, there was the phase one you’ve just described. But then phase two, there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t dealt with, sometimes use the metaphor here, the little black box, we just shoved it all in there. As if Okay, we can protect ourselves from that. But at some point, it has to be opened again,

Griff     

It has to. We say specifically in Special Operations, that we’re professionals in compartmentalization. There’s a lot of events where if you were to take a normal person, say, your yoga instructor and put them through, they would be traumatized for life as a result of the experiences that a 19-year-old soldier went through. But then that 19-year-old soldier, and that moment, they can’t feel their way through those emotions, they know that those emotions in that split-second break, could potentially lead to you dying, or your buddy dying. So you have to box all those feelings up, shove them in a closet and get back down to your operations and procedures to get everybody home safely. That doesn’t mean those emotions left. You didn’t leave them behind, they’re still in there, and you got to deal with them at some point in time. And until you do they hang with you. And they cause damage in your life that your subconscious, your subconscious is not going to let you out run.

Greg McKeown     

Did you feel that you were taught how to compartmentalize was that a, a, you know, a conscious training? Or is that just born out of the necessity of the moment of living and dying and what you need to do to survive?

Griff     

I think the concept of negative withdrawal when it comes to reinforcement of a behavior, if you screw something up in exercise, or in training, or you feel emotional about something, someone will come and yell at you and they go screw your feelings, whatever, it doesn’t matter, get the job done. This is what matters. So over a period of time you start changing your actions to remove those negative interactions from your life. And you’ll receive positive affirmation. And that’s just a habit you build in the military. The guys who become emotional about things are typically counseled Shawn to set to the side, and they’re not dependent upon one the time really comes to do your job.

Greg McKeown   

That is, yeah, makes perfect sense. The. But I’m trying to sort of imagine what that really does to the unpacking later. Because I think I think people even outside of a military experience, have, have people come along and say, Well, you know, don’t, you know, don’t let them see you cry. Just get on with the job. I mean, certain messages of that, I think, get shared with, with people generally, but you’re describing a very intense well, command and control mechanism for shoved aside, put that aside, that’s not to be trusted. That’s not to be dealt with, you know, you are weaker if you let all of that out. And we could discuss the pluses and minuses of that within the military experience. But clearly, clearly, it gives you a big and growing set of homework to handle when you get out.

Griff      

It comes at you to the assignments come to process this and that weirdest moments. They’re just gonna hit you when you got that open space and time you never really thought about something for years and all of a sudden a thought was a smack you in the head and I remember one clear as day was 2005 we were in Iraq and we were chasing a high value target and we hit the wrong house. And I just remember in that moment, seeing a family you know, zip tie the dad or the bag over his head in the middle of the living room floor and the kids are screaming and crying and whoops sorry, like wrong house. Wow, we got to go. Next house over. You know, in that moment, I you know, if it were me now I would feel absolute empathy and compassion for those children. I feel sorry for the family, I’d feel sorry for disrespecting the dad. But in that moment, you can’t take that time to do that. And I just remember just one of those flashbacks just hit me a bitch, that scene of being in that living room and seeing the absolute fear in that families face and knowing that like, Hey, I was running that mission. We did that. How do you process that? How do you say you’re sorry, to somebody who probably never find or visit again? How do you how do you deal with all of those things? And it’s just a real challenge to work through.

Greg McKeown     

When did you get that flashback, was that still while you were serving?

Griff     

I’d have to say it’s probably 2008 2009. So it was a couple years after sort of the phase one that which we had previously mentioned, usually lasts about two to three years.

Greg McKeown   

Because you just got again, you’ve got to survive. Correct? Yeah, financially is, is first and foremost. Because suddenly, you’re not, you don’t have somebody taking care of that.

Griff     

Yeah, all of your effort is spent learning a new job learning a new skill set. I mean, I was a fire supporter for the Ranger Regiment, which means I was running around in the ground with a radio controlling airplanes and helicopters, shooting rockets and bombs, enemy combatants halfway around the world, there’s little to no transition of that skill to the civilian role. It’s actually zero, there’s not a completely different trade, aim to be a professional at it, put a roof over your head, you can put food in the fridge, all those other things, and those become the priorities. And so you’re solely focused on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and providing those things and you’re looking past yourself. Because in the military, you have that servant leader attitude, I will sacrifice my own feeling and emotional well-being to make sure my people are cared for. And now you’re doing that for your family. But once they hit that point where you know they’re cared for, and you can relax a little bit, that’s when phase two happens.

Greg McKeown     

Hmm. That stay with phase one for a second. What did you learn that worked? Like, what is something tactical and feel I could bring you back in here as well, like in that first phase, beyond this five day, which, which I get instantly is insufficient. You can’t transition all of that skill set, change, mental change, the mindset change, the emotional change? I mean, you can’t do that in five days, right? That that is not going to happen in that window. So what have you learned? Either Griff from your own personal experience or Phill from working with all these different people, for what actually helps with transition? How can you make it easier?

Griff     

I’m glad you posed that question, Phil, and I were actually discussing this before the podcast here. I counsel a lot of guys on this now. And as I tell as many people as possible, stack cash, sell all of the things that you haven’t touched any year, shrink your footprint, get yourself a nice nest egg. So you’re not so fearful about the financial transition of leaving the military. I remember when we laughed, we had a hard time making those changes. And we kept those bad habits for years. And eventually we read a book, it’s called. It’s all too much. I can’t remember who the author is. But it was about just decluttering your home. And you know, my wife and I went on a date night and picked a book and like, Oh, this looks like a good book. And we read it. And then we started removing all of the non-essential things out of our lives. And we noticed how much better we felt how much more time we had as a couple to spend together has been with our kids. And that just amplified, and we just kept doing that it kept simplifying our lives to find out what was essential. And then that is what gave birth to phase two out of phase one. Because once we can make the strain on ourselves easier, phase one happened faster.

Greg McKeown     

Okay, that’s fascinating, not what I was expecting at all, in your answer. The book is, it’s all too much an easy plan for living a rich life with less stuff. It’s by Peter Walsh, for those that are interested, and you’re saying, I mean, you said stack cash, you’re saying, look, if you can simplify the complexity, right? That’s an advantage. But really this idea of like, have buffer, have financial buffer, do whatever you can to create some buffer so that you can start making decisions with a better state, not out of a state of constant anxiety. paralyzing anxiety over oh my goodness, how do I make the rent right now? You’re saying that that was job one.

Griff     

That was that that that shouldn’t be job one for all of the transitioning service members right now. If you’re a year out, you need to take an honest assessment of your life needs, sit down with a spreadsheet and look at your budget and see whatever you can do to make that budget on the bottom line grow in 12 months, however much you can get it there, you should grow that. And that’s going to give you the mental and emotional freedom to make the transition smoother and make your decisions from a position of strength instead of a position of weakness.

Greg McKeown   

But I feel like that’s such good advice for anyone making a transition, including everybody, even in a pandemic, where you say, Look, don’t just rush back to everything that was before. Pause, what really is essential? What have you learned that matters? What can you What can you remove from your life and even just that very blunt way of saying, like stack cash, so that you so that you are freer, to be able to make decisions that feel right, rather than just feel rushed? How did you do that in? I mean, how would you recommend somebody does that, in the first 90 days of a transition?

Griff     

The military has a great program, although they’ll store all of your belongings for up to two years after you transition of the military, and they’ll pay for it. So what I recommend is just packing your bags as if you’re going on vacation, packing your basic cookware and essential things that you need for your family, taking everything else, shoving it into storage, and then live your life that way, and see how it feels. And when you need something, go to that specific box, grab it and leave everything else in the box. And I guarantee you after about a year, you’re going to be very motivated to just get rid of that storage shed and everything else and send it.

Greg McKeown     

So you literally just saying hey, you sell it, get rid of it, get rid

Griff     

If you haven’t touched it a year, you don’t need it. I mean, there are a lot of sentimental things that people want to hang on to you. But do you need to hang on to every drawing that your kid did in fourth grade? Now, you want to hang on to a cool one frame it nicely put it in a place where you can admire it, yes. But you don’t need to keep everything

Greg McKeown     

Let me just bring Phil back into this conversation for a second. So So Phil, what have you noticed is you work across so many different people transitioning? What is the thing that you would say is number one skill to deal with transition in phase one?

Phil Randazzo     

Yeah. So just to echo what, what Griff said is, you know, a year out is great. But the most successful transitions that we’ve worked with over the years, they’ve started 2,3,4 years out. And what am I mean by that is exactly what Griff said is that they need to really simplify their life. And what I’ve seen Greg is that the most successful transitions I’ve seen are people that have taken a little bit of space before they transition out meaning they don’t leave the military on a friday and start a new career on a monday. They take time for themselves to take some space take some time away to just think and just kind of process some of the things that that Griff was talking about right all these stored up emotions and pain that are just you know constantly you know coming out in the form of of body pain i know griffin i’ve talked about this before you know the body keeps the score. So I what we’ve really seen is that like what Griff said his skills translate into very few things in the civilian world basically he would have gone to be a government contractor to do what he does but what skills do translate to translate are the team building, showing up on time, working well with others putting the mission first all of those things translate completely into the civilian world but they’re surrounded by that when they’re in the military so they don’t realize that the habits that they formed that do translate into the military and that they don’t have the confidence when it comes to that and what I see Greg and one of the questions that I’ve always wanted to ask you over the years because we’ve referred your book essentialism to so many people i mean 1000s and 1000s of people because it’s such a fantastic book is how does somebody when they find out when they want to go really deep i’ve had these conversations with hundreds and hundreds of soldiers they really struggle sometimes with the courage to go deep and and Iwas talking to Griff earlier you know there’s a another ranger I’m talking to who wants to be a full time coach and he’s got a great contracting job making six figures he doesn’t have the confidence in himself or maybe it’s the fear to jump into becoming a professional coach to do that even though he knows he’ll be happier there’s some courage and there’s some confidence and maybe there’s some fear that comes along with that and so that’s where always the conversation ends up and i think it also comes down to programming as a kid and I think Greg you were alluding to this a little bit earlier that this isn’t just military programming right it’s don’t show fear don’t cry don’t show emotions i know as a child i grew up with that in a pretty tough household so i want to pose that question to you and to Griff is how do you develop you know all these programs from childhood and then let’s say the military to have the confidence and the courage to go do what you’re meant to do in this world.

Greg McKeown     

So just on this, on the emotional you know, phase two, really, what have you learned referees come to you What have you learned about what someone has to do to be able to deal with that so that they can let it go so that they can move on and start using that? Those mental and emotional resources for something more productive?

Griff     

So I struggled with this significantly. Yeah, I grew up in a military family. My dad was a West Point graduate as well. I grew up idolizing folks in the military, I went to West Point drank the Kool Aid there. Everything that I saw downrange conflicted with what I was told growing up, you know, that be all that you can be get an edge on life in the army, right? We see this happen in all the war movies, the hero, the guy who gets the girls, the guy who goes downrange and kills the most people and comes back alive. Right? And then, and then they live happily ever after. That’s not the true story. That’s not how it works in real life. And so you come back and you start reconciling. And they call it moral injuries, you did things at ages 19 or 20, that you never would have done growing up in an American Christian home here at 16 or 17. And now you come back, and you’re expected to act within those rules and behaviors again, and under that rule set in America after you’ve done all of these things, and you’re you are mentally and emotionally conflicted. How did this happen? How did you do all these things? How did all these incidents happen? Why are you feeling so bad as a result of doing all of the things that you were told to do that would make you successful?  

I did everything that I thought I was doing was right throughout those years, I excelled in what I was asked to do and supposed to do, and it may not have been the right thing to do, but that’s okay. Because under those conditions under everything that I knew and believed, I believed I was acting with the best of intentions. Now, since I’ve done that, that’s okay, now I can free myself of the burden of that, that choice and that responsibility. I know I can start actually working on the injury itself. It’s like you can get mad about getting into a car accident all you want to, but really, what you need to do is just focus on your PT and you get You know, get whatever your injury fixed again, that’s the fastest path of you to success. And so I don’t know if that answered your question correctly, but I do think people just have to let it go to a degree and then then you just really need to start focusing on the injury itself, not why it happened, but focus on the injury.

Greg McKeown     

Well, you said something I thought very interesting, because the idea of moral injury, and then particularly this idea that you felt, well, cognitive dissonance would be the term.

Griff  

I love that term, I love that.

Greg McKeown    

And you felt this, the world is supposed to work like this, this is the moral path, you took that moral path, and found it was full of, well, full of morality, it was full of all sorts of confusing and, and contradictory experiences. And you’re trying to come to terms with that, but I love that. The insight was, it’s okay. It’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay to be a sucker. It’s okay to misunderstand how the world works, it’s okay to have assumed good things that weren’t so good. That’s what that was the key, that phrase was key to being able to let go of that first self-punishment. And this was the first phase in you’re getting past the beating yourself up part phase. And so that you could even do the real work itself. Am I hearing that right?

Griff     

That is correct. Yeah, once, once I was able to actually let go of that, then I was able to take a stock of myself and my personal situation and really determine what was wrong and what I needed to do to work on it to make myself better again.

Greg McKeown    

And what was that?

Griff     

I would have to say it was how I interacted with others. You know, growing up, you know, 18 years old through 27 years old in the military. And you again, take on all those bad habits, all that trauma, they reacting in certain other ways. And then I realized that I’m because of this trauma, I’m affecting all of the relationships that are around me in my life, my wife, my kids, my business partners, everybody else. And because I’m causing this trauma, I’m not only continuing to not heal on my own, but I’m actually hurting other people in the process. And once you start realizing that your trauma is hurting others, that’s really a big signal flare to start working on yourself.

Greg McKeown    

And what did working on yourself look like?

Griff     

I actually started working out again, one, cut back on my drinking significantly, to almost zero. Daily meditation, I really started focusing on my diet, a lot of reading, and big fan of Dr. Joe Dispenza, Breaking the habit of being yourself. That’s a great one. And, you know, just being more mindful, just really focusing on mindfulness. If you know, hey, I’m feeling an emotion, something’s coming up, okay, that’s an emotion. It’s a real thing. It’s a chemical response going on within your body. It’s science. Okay, what is this emotion and actually have an emotions wheel that used to sit next to my desk because I wasn’t raised in a very, you know, emotionally developed kind of household. They never talked about empathy. They never talked about compassion. They never talked about all these other things. And now as an adult, post military service, I’m trying to figure all these things out and they go, Okay, I’m feeling this. What’s the emotion that goes along with it? Bam, I’m feeling exhausted. Okay, why am I feeling exhausted? What are the conditions that are leading to me being exhausted? How can I change my life in order to remove this negative feeling from my life?

Greg McKeown  

Hmm. You didn’t even have language for the basic emotional constructs, not just for the more complex emotional challenges that you just experienced, and so you had to you had to introduce you know, the ability to name emotions at all.

Griff   

Correct. And I’d have to say the majority of people in my circle grew up in similar households. They have a similar toolset, toolset as I started with it’s I think it’s a huge issue. They’re not teaching. I think now they are more than ever in elementary school, all those basic fundamental emotions and feelings. But for our generation, that was a Hey, fell off your bike in Scripture new, don’t cry, get up, wash it off at the hose, get back at it again.

Greg McKeown    

Yeah, it’s not even just a military household that can create this. It’s just being emotionally literate requires development, just like just like reading, writing, speaking. I mean, we have to be trained and developed to do these things. But for empathy and the family of empathy, most of us have not had any formal training in this.

Griff     

Yeah, my first job getting out of the military was I was building homes for a large national home builder. So it was actually very similar to the military in which I would show up to work early, I would have 30 to 50 guys on a jobsite working on a variety of different tasks on a very tight timeline with constrained resources. And I was using the same skills and tools that I had verbiage wise, working through the military and it was failing miserably failing. And one of my mentors and sightsee, risers pulls me aside, he’s like, hey, Griff, I just want you to know that the military doesn’t hold the keys on leadership. There are really great people who are able to move others to accomplish very difficult task that never spent a day in the military. So here, take this book and he gave me Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Hmm, just a classic and spend all of my days driving around the jobsite to and from work, listen to that book. And it changed my life. It really goes to show you how you interact with others in your life can positively or negatively impact your life. And it’s really up to you and how you start that valley or how you drive that interaction, how you use your emotional tools to create more positivity and flow in your life.

Greg McKeown     

Yeah, in that moment, what sounds revealing, what sounds revealing to me is that is that suddenly, the General Military approach to leadership is just one approach. You suddenly say, Oh, well, yes, leadership is emphasized there, but maybe one type of leadership is emphasized. And there’s a whole different set of leadership skills you need, when you don’t have the military system.

Griff     

Correct. And that’s why I appreciate Phil and what they do at American DreamU is because your pop leaders out of the military, they aspire to be better leaders. And Phil brings great leaders in you have never served a day in the military. And they’re inspiring. They move the soldiers and those veterans, you know, people who we put up on a pedestal and they look at the speakers that Phil brings to his programming. And they’re inspired by it. And actually, it’s moving the needle for them in order to learn these skills and these tools and to make their transition smoother.

Greg McKeown     

That it’s a great transition back to now to Phil’s question, how do you help someone to actually transition to what they really want to do? When they’re already being paid for something completely different? What can you do when they want to take that step, but they’re scared to do it?

Phil Randazzo     

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. That it’s just that confidence and that courage? And how do you break past that fear?

Greg McKeown     

Yeah, I mean, I want to speak to this, because a question, not surprisingly, in the back of my mind through this conversation is inspired by, not by just by Essentialism, but also now by Effortless, effortless, as a, as a principle, is not saying life is easy. It exists because life is hard. Because transitions are hard, or certainly can be because learning, not having the skills you need for the thing you’re trying to do, can be complicated and painful, and all of this. So it’s not trying to somehow pretend the world is different than it is. And yet, with all of that, I still want to ask the question like, how could you make it effortless? Like what might an effortless process look like? For let’s now say with your question, for helping someone make a transition between what they’re doing right now that they’re paid to do to the thing that they really want to do, that they’re currently terrified of. It’s just almost brainstorming here together. If we wanted to help someone, make the transition. to doing what they really want to do in their life, effortless, what would we do? What would the conditions be? That would make that much, much easier than they’re thinking it has to be?

Phil Randazzo     

That’s a great, that’s a great question, Greg. And I’ll defer to Griff as well. And, and I think that’s where, you know, we bring in both veteran and civilian leaders to kind of share where the landmines are in their path. And if you know where the landmines are, you know where to avoid. And I think that makes that process a little effortless. As we’re making very difficult decisions in this world right now with this transition, and you’re talking about military, military transition. And those decisions that we have to make each and every day, at the end of the day, we’re exhausted. And if we could make fewer decisions, I think that gives us more energy to do, and to have that courage and that confidence to move forward.

Griff     

This is a multi-phase response here. I think perception is the first thing that you need to really discuss when you’re talking about Effortless. Is it Effortless or does it seem Effortless? That’s the question like is it an effortless action? No, no action is effortless. But does it seem effortless? The first time you do anything, it’s really hard. That never gets easier. You just get better. Right? And how do you maintain the confidence in that to make it seem effortless?

Greg McKeown     

As I have studied the principles and practices of effortless execution. I’ve been surprised at the stacking capacity there that you can you start with getting one thing a little less difficult. And then you go well, what else can we make a little less difficult? What else are we making more complicated than it has to be? To me you know, I’m thinking for these, you know, the person that you raised earlier on, Phil, that they’re in a job that earning money. They want to do coaching instead? What would the exhausting path be? What would the path of maximum courage be? Well, I mean, I think you would put them completely on their own. So they have to figure out everything themselves by trial and error. I think you’d need to put a huge gap financial gap between where they are and what they jumping to. I think you’d make them feel that they had to do it one jump, you know, jump the huge chasm on their own. So it would take superhuman effort to do it. With those are the things you do to make it harder. And I think for a lot of people, that’s exactly the position they find themselves in. What we needed to build a bridge we need to do is find a way that actually is doable. There’s a sense people have when they know a thing is doable when they it’s a physical thing. And they literally use the phrase, I can do that. I think I could do that. And as soon as they feel that there, there’s a change talk about the body keeps score, the body relaxes. And you just move into what I call an effortless the effortless state you you, you just sort of, Okay, I feel a bit more at peace with this. I think I can do this. You’re not in a state of anxiety and stress. I think I can do this. So what can we do for the individual? You’re saying thought? I mean, I think that one thing I would say is, let’s find someone who is already a coach. Maybe we tried find two or three people that are already coach making good money. And let’s just have a even a half hour conversation with them about how they made the transition. How did they start? What was the very first thing they did? What was the first client they had? What was the first paying client they had? How much did they charge for that person? How did they find them? Okay, what is the minimum amount you need to earn to be able to survive, to not live exactly as you’re living now, but you could just pay your bills, what’s that minimum number? So you say, Okay, well, I don’t need to immediately have all of the money I’ve currently have, but this is the amount I would actually need to be able to live and make it through. Okay, that’s something you can do. Your third thing we already mentioned is from Grif is okay, could you start just saving up a little bit right now, so that you can ease the transition once the time comes? So so you have a bit more buffer for the journey? I think the next thing is this is not one jump. Especially I’m just dealing with the coaching story exactly that you posed, Phil. But with, with coaching specifically, you don’t need to do it all. One time, quit your current job, take on this other thing. See, be bold, go big, no, I think go small. I think I’m thinking of Patrick McGinnis who taught me the principle of the 10% entrepreneur. And you say, okay, could this person become a 10% coach, at first.

So I think the principle underneath a lot of what I’m saying here is to reduce the cost of mistakes and learning and progress. You want it to be as cheap as possible.

How do we make it so that so that they can learn, cheaply? And then be able to have the satisfaction of a little bit of progress and a little bit more?

Phil Randazzo     

Yeah, I think I think that’s brilliant. And what I found is that these little things that they do each day to get them to where they want to go, is going to give them a little bit of confidence and a little bit of confidence and a little bit of confidence. And that little bit of confidence built up each and every day is going to be compound, confidence, whatever you want to call it. And then that will equal the courage to make that final decision at some point. Like you said, Greg, they can become a 10%, coach or 10% entrepreneur. And you know, my goal, Greg, and I can’t wait for your book to come out is, you know, to help these transitioning, soldiers or marines and sailors and airmen to find the clarity, to go deep, to get to get essentially. And then do it effortless as possible, right? And do it in flow. So that what Griff says it’s now things that he did five years ago that felt like took a lot of effort now, it’s much more effortless, it almost seems like you’re in flow. And so Griff, I would love to have, you know, to have you share a little bit of your story about how you, you know, you turn what you did into combat flip flops.

Griff     

We make fashion and lifestyle products in war zones, we do so to create stability in jobs, because stability in jobs creates security, which gives a better opportunity for education, which is going to lead to more advanced employment over time, a nation over 30 to 40 to 50 years of these principles will hopefully rise themselves up out of poverty, and radicalism and oppression. So we make full flops and scarves and jewelry out of landmines and we use our profits to put little girls to school in Afghanistan. That’s what we do. And we did it by starting with no entrepreneurial experience, no footwear manufacturing experience, no online commerce experience, zero, nothing. We started from ground zero and everything. And over the course of failing a lot. As you mentioned, one of our lines, Greg is fail cheap, learn fast. That’s just one of our principles as a company is we’re going to we’re going to fail like try something fail as cheap as we can fail as fast as we can learn from it, improve repeat. And then when you have that confidence, then that’s going to give you the courage to take the next step. So it’s knowledge, confidence, then courage. And, and that’s all we did throughout the entire process of development company. As we didn’t, we knew we didn’t know a lot. But whenever we didn’t know something, we sought out the answers to it through people like Phil or other mentors. And then that gave us the confidence that we could at least assemble a plan and take action along those that new new data set, and then make the step to do it. And it’s just a process that we just kept working through over and over and over again.

Greg McKeown      

What I love, one of the things I love about what you just said, and it’s a theme that’s growing up here, is courage has a place, but you’ve got to make things as sustainable as possible, because you don’t know how long the journey is going to take. Griff Phil, give us your final best counsel, your best actionable advice for somebody who’s going through a transition right now and how they can make that a little more effortless.

Phil Randazzo     

You know, I’ll jump in on this one. I think they need to ask for help. I know a lot of people in the veteran community and a lot of people just in a civilian role, don’t want to ask for help for maybe fear. You know, reach out. It could be through a book, it could be through LinkedIn, it could be through any means of, of connecting with others. And I know we’ve been kind of an unconnected world for the last 14 months, is just reach out people want to help. I think finding what others have done in and what they do on a daily basis. What they’re reading, what they’re watching how they’re taking care of themselves, physically sleep, all that stuff. I think that is so critically important. And I think it’s so overlooked, not taking care of ourselves. But just reaching out. And there’s so many great resources right now. And I think people can get lost in some of those resources. So finding someone that you can trust, to lead them to the right resources, I think is absolutely critically important. And I think you know, American Dream U is one of those places where we’ve really taken the time to do that. But I think that is so critically important. And then be patient with yourself. Be absolutely patient with yourself. because like you said, Greg, you don’t need to make that you have the courage to make that 30-foot chasm leap. You just need to start building the bridge piece by piece by piece to get there.

Griff     

One of my favorite transition mantras is it’s who you were, not who you are. And there’s a lot of guys who identify where their time in the military as if who they are. You grew up, you know, small child through your household and 18 you were who you were at that point, and you were very assured of it and that was based on all the experiences you had up to that moment. And then you transition into the military and then you did what you were supposed to do. And you live the lifestyle to meet those requirements and needs. And there’s a lot that people identify with that, that made them successful and got the ribbons on their chests and they had all the good stories. That’s not who you are for the rest of your life. You’re going to have a way in many more years outside of the years of service than you ever did. And it would really be a shamed if you just stopped there yeah you have to keep growing and learning and enjoy the journey the whole way it’s who you were not who you are.

Greg McKeown     

I love this and it reinforces the principle that’s been in my mind recently that our greatest contribution lies ahead of us not behind us a friend of mine is writing a book on that principle more on that later but I feel like that there’s so many opportunities for us to say well basically the glory days you know we have arrested development because well he that was when I was in the military well that was when it was high octane and I was doing something that mattered and in that or it’s a high school I was on the this team and I was popular in this way or it’s it can happen quite early in our development that we say well that was the pinnacle that was the peak or it could be could be when we first get married or first have children at any point can be a point of fixation and it limits us from being able to discover. The best lies ahead to something amazing around the corner our greatest contribution lies ahead of us I’m sure that is true for all the work at American Dream You and I’m sure it’s true with all the work that you’re doing Griff as well greatest contribution lies ahead of you my intent today is to share the great work that you’re doing with as many people as possible to me that’s important that is essential. Thank you so much both of you for being with us on the What’s Essential podcast

Greg McKeown

Credits:

  • Hosted by Greg McKeown
  • Produced by Greg McKeown Team
  • Executive Produced by Greg McKeown