General Anthony Tata: How Leading on the Battlefield Translates to Real World Leadership

It was just one of those self fulfilling prophecies that you know, as I began to believe that I was a good leader, I actually became one and got to command some of our very best men and women that serve our country.

Greetings. I am Jeff Duden and we are on the Homefront. Homefront Brands simply building the world's most responsible franchise platform, encouraging entrepreneurs to take action to transform their lives, impact communities and enhance the lives of those they care the most about. All the while delivering enterprise level solutions to local business owners. This sounds like you. Check us out on homefrontbrands.com today and start your next chapter of greatness. Building your dynasty on the home front. I will be here looking for you. And today we are thrilled and excited and honored to have Brigadier General Anthony Tata retired on with us today. Tony, welcome.

Great to be with you Jeff. Thank you.

Yes, absolutely sir. And I'm going to read some background here and it's going to take me a minute but you know, when you've done a lot, there is a lot. So I'm going to read through a little bit of background here so. Mr. Tata is a 1981 West Point graduate who completed graduate studies in International Relations from the Catholic University of America and the School of Advanced Military Studies. He also served as a National Security Fellow at Harvard University's JFK School of Government. Tony served for 28 years in the United States AR army commanding a paratrooper battalion in the 82nd Airborne Division and an air assault brigade in the 101st Airborne Division. He served as the Deputy Commanding General of the 10th Mountain Division and Joint Task Force 76 in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007. He also served as a Deputy Director of Joint Concept Development and Experimentation as well as the joint IED defeat organization. Mr. Teta's operational deployments and missions include Operation Uphold Democracy to support Haitian stability, Operation Joint Endeavor in Bosnia and Croatia, Operation Jungle Warrior in Panama, Operation Joint Guardian in Kosovo, and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He is the recipient of the Army Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Combat Action Badge, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Kosovo Campaign Medal and the Ranger tab. Upon transitioning from the military, Tony served as the Chief Operating Officer of Washington, D.C. public Schools, Superintendent of Wake county, which is Raleigh, North Carolina public school system, and Secretary of Transportation of North Carolina. And his business background includes the Presidency of a defense startup company, leadership of companies in the airborne collection, infrastructure and oil and gas industries, and also last but not least, served as the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy prior to Assuming this, he was performing the duties of Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy to the United States. Tony, welcome.

Great to be with you. Joe.

That was a mouthful.

I managed, I managed to stay awake during my own bio.

You have a very artful and impressive humility about you for somebody who's done so much and doesn't really need to say much about it, but I'm so thrilled and honored to be on with you here today. There are so many things that we can talk about, but maybe like to start just to kick it over to you and share a little bit about early life. It's always interesting where people come from and what influenced them. And so if you don't mind, you know, kind of. Where'd you grow up? What was, what, what you do? Do you play sports? Family Guy? What was, what was going on?

Yeah. So, Jeff, born and raised in the Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Virginia area. Both parents were school teachers. My dad was a high school football coach. Mom was really a school counselor. I have an older brother, I'm the middle child and a younger sister. We were all three athletes, as you might imagine, with a football coach. That and my big sport was baseball and I wrestled also, and I played both played on two state championship baseball teams in Virginia beach and placed fourth in the state of Virginia in wrestling. Should have won, but I choked in the semifinals. I got recruited to wrestle at West Point and I already had a. My older brother was playing football at the Naval Academy. He was a kicker for the Navy team. I enjoyed growing up in Virginia, around Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown. My mother's from the Blue Ridge Mountains, where not far from Front Royal and Newmarket and all the Shenandoah Valley battlefields. And so I was enamored with the history of particularly the Revolutionary and Civil wars and, and the courage it took to, to fight those wars and, and the lineage of West Point graduates during those conflicts. And so I was inclined to go to a service academy and my mother importantly being a guidance counselor at the time, understood they paid you to go, you didn't pay to go. They, they pay us like half of a sergeant's salary, so. And it all goes to books and uniforms and all that. So you don't actually make any money. It's all an accounting trick. But at the end of the day, I had an older brother at Navy and remember two schoolteacher parents. I was at West Point and my sophomore year at West Point, my younger sister who ran a 4:42 mile in high school, was a three time Virginia State champion miler. She calls me Crying at West Point, saying, dad's trying to make me join the air Force. I'm like, what are you talking about? She goes, he's trying to make me join the air Force somewhere in Colorado. And I'm like, put dad on the phone. And she had received an appointment to the Air Force Academy. And so my parents wanted the hat trick. Each kid at a service academy and. And importantly, nothing out of their meager teachers savings accounts. And I said, dad, look, Kendall, my sister is going to be a state or a national champion miler. She placed second in the nation. Ultimately, I said, there's no need for her to go to the Air Force Academy. She's going to get a scholarship. You know this. And I said, plus, I'm in the second class. Mixed with women. There are two classes right now that are all male and two classes that are mixed because in 1977, they brought in the first or 76, they brought in the first female integration into the service academies. I said, it'll be okay one day, but this is not an environment right now for your. For your daughter. My sister, and particularly someone as well as I know my sister, her being a daddy's girl and being out in Colorado, it just won't work. Trust me. So she ended up getting a full ride to the University of Virginia, his alma mater, where he had played football and baseball. Then I went to West Point. Initially, I thought, okay, I'll do five years, get out and become a baseball coach, kind of emulate what my parents had. And I'd always had this dream of being a professional athlete. And even though, you know, I quit growing at 5 foot 9, one day I'm out there shagging grounders at shortstop at West Point, and my tactical officer comes up to me. Every company. There were 36 companies, and everyone had, like, an active duty captain. He comes out, pulls me over to the foul line and puts his arm around me and says, tony, are you going to play pro ball? And I said, well, sir, you know, I appreciate the compliment, but I don't think I'm that good. You know, it kind of went way over my 86. Good, because you need to focus on academics. And I'm like, are you telling me I'm in trouble here? He goes, no, but you need to focus on academics. So I did. I tightened down. Thankfully, I had a roommate who was a genius, and he helped me study. He studied by teaching me. All was good. I graduated just like everybody else graduated and, you know, had a good career and the military. And, you know, my brother Went on to be an attorney. He got out after seven years. My sister's teaching and coaching. Got two amazing kids, you know, today. Brooke, my daughter, 34 years old, pregnant with her first child. My son Zach, 29. They just had their first child last summer. So I'm officially a grandfather, though I don't admit to any being anywhere near that age to be grandfather capable.

Well, I tell you, what a. What a. What an incredibly productive family and serving not only in the teacher's role, serving a huge, important role with children, but also serving the country. So we all appreciate the sacrifice that your family and contributions that your family have made. So at that point, Right, So it's a. It's a great school, if you can. If you can do it. People that get out of there, they. They have a real leg up in a lot of ways. So. So that was your decision point there. Why'd you stand so long?

Well, that. That was the professional athlete story that I didn't really finish. But when I got into the military, I started thinking to myself, I'm doing very physical things on the most important field of all, the battlefield, and I'm being paid to do it. And I said, well, that's kind of like being a pro athlete. I'm jumping out of airplanes. I'm doing ruck marches, you know, 10, 15, 20 miles. I have to be in optimum shape to be able to do this paratrooper business. And it was my version of becoming a professional athlete. And I started getting pretty good feedback on my leadership. And I, you know, I. I firmly believe that, you know, we all have mentors and, and in our lives that either intentionally or unintentionally give us, you know, feedback both good and bad. I remember take. Going to take the LSAT, the Law School Admission Test, back in 1982 or whatever. I'd been out of West Point a year, and, you know, my brother was talking about taking it, and my dad was like, it'd be great to have a lawyer in the family. And. And so, you know, I did well on it. And I went over. I was down in Fort Benning, Georgia, and I went over to Auburn University and took it and, you know, had lots of offers. The army was expanding its fully funded legal education program. And so I needed a letter from my battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jack Daywood. I'll never forget this big, giant Special Forces guy from Vietnam. And he took me, he said, tony, let's go to lunch. He took me to lunch and he said, you don't realize how good a Leader you are. And I'm saying this with all the humility in the world. I'm just telling you what he said. And he said, you can go be a lawyer, but just understand that you'll be working with the worst 10% of the Army. You'll either be prosecuting a dirtbag or you'll be defending a dirtbag. And because operational law at the time advising commanders on drone strikes and all that, that had not come into full stride yet, lawyers in the military at the time, though important, were really focused on discipline and courts martials and all of that. And he said, your leadership is better applied to the wide range of men and women that we have serving in the military. And you know, I was like a 24 year old lieutenant and that filled my head big, right? And, and, and I thought, and I did, I thought about it and prayed about it and I said, you know, let me go a few more years. And it was like for the first 10 years is okay, let me go a couple more years. And, and, and the feedback just kept being very, very positive. And I thought about what I was doing as a leader and I was listening to my, my troops sort of paraphrasing back to them what I was hearing. And I was, I was trying to make good decisions based on what I was hearing. And, and I was learning at the same time because any, you know, 20 something lieutenant captain has a lot to learn and it's a tough ski slope to navigate when you have all these super experienced non commissioned officers that are used to young green lieutenants and captains coming in. I just tended to continue to rise to the top and that was positive reinforcement that kept me hanging around. Then I was promoted early to major, promoted early to lieutenant Colonel, assigned premium battalion and brigade commands and two of our premier divisions. It was just one of those self fulfilling prophecies that you know, as I began to believe that I was a good leader, I actually became one and, and got to command some of our very best men and women that, that serve serve our country.

As you look back was do you have a favorite command? And I don't know if you is it might be like, you know, picking a favorite kid.

Yeah, well, it very much is.

So you may not want to answer it.

No, no, no, no, that's all right. I'm a distinguished member of the 502nd, 504th and 505th Parachute Infantry Regiments. And the 502nd is a famous, they're all famous World War II parachute infantry regiments. The proudest moments of my life are Serving in probably those two divisions. And if I had to choose one, maybe by a hair's breadth, it would be the 82nd because they're still an active jump unit. And so the 101st has helicopters and they do a lot of tactical mobility around the battlefield. The 82nd is a strategic rapid deployment force. And the alarm in that unit and the discipline probably seemed just a little bit tighter because you had non commissioned officers responsible for leading and managing the back of the airplane as, as you're pushing soldiers out for airborne operations. So that, that little difference there with the airborne operations piece, I think makes a difference.

You handled that very diplomatically, as expected. Hey, what is that? When people hang behind a helicopter on a rope and they fly through the air, what's that called?

Spies. S P. So I'm, I'm going to get the acronym wrong. But it's, it's an extraction technique. So they drop the rope out. You've got what's called a Swiss seat around you with a snap hook in it. The rope has certain loopholes tied in it and you hook into that and, and you're extracted out. It's, it's a, it's an extraction technique.

Nice. I appreciate all that. You know, I'm interested back in the 80s, building your career. And then we've got the military today culturally, how we think about things in this country, how we think about freedom, how we think about honor, how we think about service. There's been a lot of change in that. And then just technology, I mean, I can't imagine with the technology that I have access to today, the military must have access to is just mind numbing. And I guess we probably need less people or we need different skill sets today, obviously what's the military today versus maybe what it was when, when you were coming up in it. And maybe what are the challenges they're facing.

Great. Question 1 is the military is simply a reflection of the fabric of the country for the most part. So I was concerned the other day I saw a Wall Street Journal poll that essentially said there had been a 72 to 38% drop in patriotism and sort of a commensurate drop in religion, value of religion and community service all, you know, sort of a double halving of the people, you know, above 50% to below 50% by a fair margin. And then a opposite trend in the value people place on money. And I got to thinking about, I read a book called the Economic Stages of Growth by Walt Rostow back in the. He wrote it back in the late 50s. And he was predicting the sixth and final stage of the course of this country from modern society or traditional society to preconditions for takeoff to take off to high mass consumption. He said, I don't know what comes after high mass consumption, which was sort of the logical end state of an industrialized nation with wealth. He said, I'm going to call it secular spiritual stagnation. It's a non religious stagnation of the national ethos and spirit. I think that we may be at some level approaching that where there's this vacuum for whatever reason is occurring. There are still many, many patriotic people. But if only 38% are saying patriotism is important, there is some erosion going on in the, in the ideal of America, the support for this country. And I, I lay all that out because people, you know, mothers and fathers and students and, and kids sign up for the military based upon mostly their desire to serve their country, in part because of the incentives, economic or education or both. What you really want are people that just want to be there and serve. And whether they want to play with guns or they want to go see the world or where we are today is we're not able to meet our recruiting goals. Where we were when I came in, we were having to cut the army in half because Vietnam had ended. We were entering the Cold War. And we are at 800,000 troops in the army. Then we're at 455,000, I want to say today. And we're having a hard time meeting that standard. So think about that. And it's an all volunteer force. So if we're struggling to meet really what is kind of our bare minimum standards for Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, then that's a symptom of some societal issue. So I, I think we're really, you know, struggling today to try to figure out with all these divisive concepts, and I'm not a political guy, but that, you know, the, whether it was the vaccine or experimentation with social concepts and all of that, I think there are some parents and men and women that are just opting out and saying, I don't want to be part of that. It's not reflective of my values. And so there may be, the country at a national level may be like an iceberg calving off in a direction where a good part of the country still is love America, patriotic, want, want to, you know, protect and defend and all of that. And so we're at a real tipping point right now, in my opinion, with respect to patriotism. You know, loving this country and wanting to defend this country and provide for the way of life. Because I, I, I can promise you I've been all over the world in many, many different countries, as I'm sure you and, and, and many of your listeners have. There is no better place in the world than the United States of America. And it's up to, you know, our kids and even, you know, homefront brands. I mean, what you're doing about rebuilding the middle class and your focus, I respect that so much. And that's kind of where it's tied to this conversation and that that's where our military comes from primarily. And so how are those people feeling connected with the country? And I would argue that, you know, there's, there's a disconnect right now, man.

There's so much to unpack there, but if I can just connect, connect a few dots. So I am passionate about that. I am passionate about this country. I am passionate about, I'm not going to take whatever I can contribute and go run away with it and, you know, take my time to another country in a fishing boat somewhere. I'm going to stay here and do what I can.

Right.

I read a book called America Alone. I don't know if you've ever read that book, but it was a pretty interesting read. It talked about, you know, all the changing trends. It talked a lot about birth rates and how birth rates affect the rise and fall of countries and, you know, if they get below a certain point and then how other countries have exceptionally high birth rates. One of the things that stood out to me was that it's the young people that have the passion in a country. It's the young people. You need a high birth rate of young people to wage war because that's where people, you know, the, the young people have the energy and the passion and they have all of this idealism and they want change and they're trying to make something of themselves and what's around them. If you're telling me that we've gone from 76% to 38% in patriotism, that vacuum is going to be filled. The vacuum is going to be filled by something else. But they're, but they're not going to be any less passionate about what they choose to fill that vacuum with. So if it's not going to be good for the country, individual responsibility, you know, ask what I can do to contribute in my community, that it's going to be something else that's going to be getting all of that all of that passion.

Right.

You know, if it's a lack of respect for authority, then yeah, that's going to be hugely detrimental because those are the people that are going to have the energy. You know, I'm of a, I'm 55 this year and a lot of people of my boomer generation or whatever they call us, I mean we're flag waving and what can I do to help you? And if there's a job in the community needs to happen, we're likely to step up and do it. I don't have the vitriol the 25 year old Jeff Duden used to have. So it's interesting that you say that and I think that's a concerning trend. I mean, especially it just right off the bat. The military offers so much to people and if you stay in long enough, pension and income and opportunity to get experience, everybody, literally everybody, everybody that I know that's been in the military, you can see it in them. You know, whatever they're doing now, they, they have a, a certain provenance, the way they carry themselves, an amount of discipline. So it's interesting. So how does that then, how does that translate, Tony, to what's happening with veterans today? I saw a Couple of statistics. 200,000 people a year that are becoming veterans from all the services or seven people a month, I saw in another place. So the numbers don't really work if that many people are leaving the service and we're not able to recruit enough to get our ranks where we want them. Like what happens?

There's a couple of fronts on that question. One is how do we take care of the men and women who have served our country and transition now to civilian life to be able to enjoy the sacrifices, the environment that they sacrifice for? You know, one of the things that I'm working with, with you and Nick Dionakis and you know, Ben Carson Jr. And some others on, are tapping into that transitioning pool of active servicemen and women into veteran status and trying to help them with their career transition into franchises, small businesses, etc. That's one area where people like us can try to make a difference with that community. And even if we're only impacting a few thousand men and women, that's a few thousand men and women. On the other side of it, this imbalance between those coming in and those leaving, you know, you've got to fill that pipeline. The way the services are doing it is maybe not the best way to do it, but they, they got to have, know, warm bodies in the military. And so they're adjusting the standards, shall we say, so they take a look at. Well, it used to be if you used marijuana, you couldn't come in. So they lowered that to, you know, some, some acceptable rate.

Yeah. On the base. You can't use it on the base.

Right, right, right, right. And, and weight standards, physical standards, those kinds of things. And there might be an argument where, okay, if we can get enough fit men and women to serve in our combat units, then it doesn't matter the physical condition, because as you mentioned, there's technology coming in, robots, AI drones, all that. Maybe there's going to be this offsetting. But at the end of the day, it's a cultural issue. As we started the conversation out, and if the culture is not what the parents who are talking to their children about joining the military, if the culture isn't consistent with their themes, then I think we've got a real issue about being able to provide for our national security. And it's a real red flag that we're 60, 70, 80% hitting our targets and goals.

Look, nobody rises to low expectations. So if you've got lower standards and create different classes of people, people to be able to fill the ranks. I mean, my impression of the military is you have a job, but everybody, everybody fights when, if you have to.

Right.

I mean, what pitches in? And that means if there's anything that needs to get done. But I get it. I mean, there's, there's certain people that are going to be really good at, you know, if you've, maybe if you played a lot of video games, you can really drive those drones really well.

Right, right, right.

It's a big challenge. I can, I can definitely see it. So as I think across the landscape of the world today, I get to see you a lot. And we've, we've done a good bit together over the last few years. But I also often see you a lot of times on the television talking about current events. And in the times that I get to see you, it's amazing to me that the, the depth of understanding that you have about what's going on out there. So as we think about rain or China, Taiwan, you know, what, what's, what's going on today that, that you're particularly interested in.

Yeah. So, Jeff, you know, you and I have talked before about the levers of national power. I like to think of them in diplomatic information, military, economic, only in that order, because the acronym spells dime. And I can remember it easily. When you think about historically, the way our country has operated. We tend to lead with the chin of the American soldier. Marine, airman, sailor. Why do we do that? It's the most obvious way to show action and get results. But often the best solutions are a more nuanced mix of those four levers of power. And it requires some sophisticated understanding of how to apply economic leverage, how to apply diplomatic leverage, how to apply information leverage, control of information, release of information, ultimately, how to use the military to do what we call flexible deterrent options. Because at the end of the day, I had a friend text me yesterday asking, you know, do I think we should go to war with Ukraine? And I'm like, no, absolutely not. And she said, well, that. That surprises me. And, like, what surprises? I thought all generals would want more. And I said, like, most generals I know don't want war because, you know, we've lost men and women in combat. To me, war is like, you know, Colin Powell said, you know, it's. It's the last option. It better be, you know, a real serious, vital national security interest to go to war. And that requires us to lay out what our national security interests are so we know what those triggers are to go fight. I'll give you a really good example. When I was a paratrooper at Fort Bragg, we were going to. And I was the chief of plants, we were going to invade Haiti. Jimmy Carter, Sam Nunn, and Colin Powell went down there the weekend that we were supposed to invade. They landed at Port au Prince International Airport, and they had to remove every obstacle that the Haitians had put on the airfield. The Haitians removed them, the Haitian government did. And Cedras was being a bad guy, the dictator there, and Francois, the chief of police. For two days, nothing. We get told Sunday, pack our bags, we're going. So we fill 112 airplanes full of paratroopers and equipment at seven bases across the eastern seaboard. It's all very visible. Even though it was a secret airborne invasion, it was all the news there was because cnn, you know, was. Was on the rooftop filming the. The Port au Prince airport, which was the most obvious drop zone. So we take off, and we are three, four hours in the air getting ready to shoot the gap between Haiti and Cuba. We get told to turn around. So we come back, I'm like, what happened? We all know what happened. Jimmy Carter, the diplomatic arm, laid an agreement in front of Cedrus and said, you better sign this. And Powell said, the 82nd Airborne is on the way. You have a few minutes right there. So that's Diplomacy and that. And there was an economic component. They essentially were going to buy a place to go live, and no soldier was killed. But we accomplished the mission. Now, you had a lot. You had 4,000 angry paratroopers that didn't get to jump out of airplanes in combat. But, you know, at the end of the day, we accomplished the mission without hurting a single soldier. And so today you've got Ukraine. Russia has violated that border. Territorial. You know, the rule of law internationally is very important. How do we, through the collective security arrangement with NATO, which is a very important strategic alliance to us, accomplish our own national security interests while not ceding too much of our sovereignty, if any, to that collective security interest? And I think because it's so politicized nowadays, you can't really have that conversation anymore without being attacked as a Russian stooge or whatever. But at the end of the day, our leadership should be focused on what's best for the United States of America, what's best for the citizens, the people of the United States of America. That's what our Constitution says. That's what the, the loyalty to the office. When people swear to take, you know, protect and defend the Constitution, that's what they're swearing to do. Not to help NATO. We help NATO because it's in our strategic interest to have a buffer between Russia and the United States. The humanitarian aspect is important. Believe me, I'm, I'm a huge humanitarian. At the end of the day, it's not what decisions should be made on. We saw what the humanitarian goodwill stuff does in Somalia. We went in there and there was no amount of, of love or humanitarian goodwill that was going to take those, you know, rogue bands in Somalia and make them understand that we just wanted to help them. There was no strategic vital interest there. And that's a really good comparison. We do have a strategic interest in Ukraine and maintaining the sovereignty of NATO and making sure that, that Russia doesn't breach that and create an Article 5A tech install incident. But it's NATO's a fractured institution in the wake of the Afghanistan withdrawal that I don't think that went as well as anybody hoped it would. You know, we left everybody hanging there essentially, and everybody had to get out. And we had 30 nations in there. And now you have kind of NATO nations taking care of themselves, buying Russian oil, doing all the things that may be counterproductive, while also saying, hey, give me some of that NATO Article 5 security umbrella.

And it's a complicated issue, the complexity of these matters. As an American who did not serve. I watched these things happening, and as I lay my kids down, I've always trusted that we had people that were not political. There was rooms of people that were leading our military strategy that, you know, we're kind of running the show over there. I wonder today in this highly politicized environment that, you know, are the decisions for people like you and other leaders in our military, are they as easy and clean, or has it. Has it gotten more difficult for them to check in and make sure that, you know, the decisions that they're. That they're making or the actions that they're recommending are going to be politically acceptable to whoever they're reporting into?

Yeah, I think right now we're. We're a fairly divided nation, Jeff. And so I think that there's a lack of diversity, I'll use that term, in contributing to the decision making, and I mean diversity of people who believe that maybe we shouldn't be involved in Ukraine, people that believe that we should be involved as far as listening to different segments of society to be able to represent the people that they were elected to represent. Right now, it feels to me a little bit like they're just doing what they want to do, which is a shame because, you know, there's been an opportunity for diplomacy. You know, another really good example of diplomacy was Bill Clinton and Wes Clark. Bosnia or Serbs attacked Bosnia, Croatia, Herzegovina, Kosovo, just as brutally as Russia's attacking Ukraine. Every bit torture, slaughter, tanks, artillery, jets, bombs, you name it, I saw it. I was there. Wes Clark and Bill Clinton got the warring factions into Dayton, Ohio, and hammered out a deal, cloth, locked the door, slid pizzas underneath with some Diet Cokes and said, don't come out till you got a deal. And they came out with the Dayton Peace Accords that created a zone of separation, and it stopped the fighting. To this day, we still send troops to that peacekeeping effort, and there's not been any real serious fighting going on in. In that region for, you know, 30 years. And. And it's because of diplomacy, and we got none right now. So I think they're kind of frying their own fish. To what end? I don't think the American public really, really understands.

No, I. I certainly don't. Well, let's shift gears, because over your shoulder I see my favorite book that I read last summer, Chasing the Lion, and I would love. I know you've got a hard stop, you've got important work to do, and. But we have just a couple minutes left, so I'd love to hear a Little bit about your career as an author. I know you've got a new book that's come out right now, so we'd love to hear about it. Have you, have you promoted? But I think you're. Is it 16 or 17 novels that you've written?

So Total Empire over my shoulder is book 15. That just came out last month. Yeah. And I turned in book 16 called the Phalanx Code, and Chasing the lion is book 14. Chasing the Lion, Total Empire, Phalanx Code are all part of a series with General Garrett Sinclair, our protagonist. I can remember when I was 12, I think I was standing in the front yard playing catch with my dad, and we took a break, sat on the steps, and he said, so, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, I want to be a fiction novelist. And he's like, where'd you get that from? And I'm like, well, you know how much I like to read. You know, I'd like to write those kinds of books. And he says, well, you got to put food on the table. My dad's the son of Italian immigrants. My grandparents, they moved from Italy to Detroit through Ellis island, and, and so very, you know, humble origins there. And I'll tell you, I just, I kept writing and writing and writing. I've written all my life. And finally, you know, I started studying how to write, the craft of writing, reading about how to write. And I wrote three, four books and just, you know, met, met the right people and sent a few manuscripts in and publisher said, hey, this is pretty good. And suddenly I've had eight, two book contracts, essentially. I feel very blessed and privileged. And they're Tom Clancy style novels. The good guy has to stop the world from exploding and perhaps meets a friendly woman along the way.

Well, I tell you, they are freaking good, man. I mean, like, really good. I was on a vacation. I was on a boat with my family, and I threw it in my bag and it was the perfect, the perfect thing to keep my mind right where I was. And, and, and in your story. So, Anna, do you have a Threat series? And from what I understand, 100% of the proceeds from this get donated to the USO Metro DC Hospital as well. And that's been very material for those people to get that. Congratulations on the new book coming out and thank you so much for the career of service to, to this country. We can't say enough how much we appreciate what you've done and the impact you've made and continue to make by, by keeping these issues in front of us. And speaking so candidly, last quick question, and you may or may not have one, but if you had one sentence, this is kind of unfair to dump on you right here. But if you had one sentence to make an impact in someone's life, you know, what would that be? Do you have a mantra that may be used with your kids or your troops or, or people? What, what would you tell people?

I've always been a big believer in listening and learning and then choosing a path. Have some humility, listen to people, learn about what's going on, integrate that with your values and beliefs and then figure out where you're going and what you're doing. Not everybody wants to be a leader. Many people do. You know, there's that old saying, listen, learn and lead. But a lot of people just kind of want to execute and be somewhere. Maybe not leader, but be part of the team and so listen and learn and be a good team member. If you're not going to be a.

Leader, Tony, where can people, if you wanted them to connect with you, where's the best place to find you or to maybe grab a book? Do you have a website?

Yeah. Ajta.com ajtata.com and there's a little connect with the author there. And my, my email is author. Jt. Com.

Well, thank you, Tony. It was so great having you on today and we didn't talk about it, but you are an advisory board member to Homefront Brands who is the sponsor of this podcast. So thank you for being on today.

I'm proud to serve with Homefront. Thank you, Jeff.

Thanks, Tony. And as always, this podcast has been brought to you by Homefront Brands. All the while we are delivering enterprise level solutions to local business owners out there on the home front where it counts. So if this sounds like you, check us out@homefrontbrands.com reach out to myself. Tony will be here hanging around and start your next chapter of greatness, building your dynasty on the home front. We will be looking for you here, Tony Tata.

Thanks, Jeff.