Brian Cook | How Great Leaders Set the Conditions for Success

All right, welcome to Fearless. We have an awesome show today. I've been so excited about having Colonel Brian Cook on the show for, for, I don't know, at least a month now. And, uh, he has just got the most amazing story. Fearless, of course, is brought to you by Fuel. If you're not familiar with Fuel, I can't encourage you enough to check it out, myfuel.io. The fastest-growing learning platforms on the planet right now, global, and specializing in microlearning. In other words, how do I learn a 300-page book in an hour and actually apply it? The proof now is that it's 15 times more impactful than traditional education and training because you're doing it, you're applying it, you're not studying it in a classroom, you're getting out on the field and doing it. And that's how you really learn. And Brian's gonna certainly be talking a lot about that. So go to myfuel.io, certainly subscribe to Fearless and share these episodes. We've just had some phenomenal guests on the show. And today, this is absolutely an honor to have Colonel Brian Cook here. Brian spent 33 years in the military and ran an $18 billion-plus budget for Army training. He's a West Point grad. He's going to talk a little bit about that. Brian was an All-American water polo player. I mean, so he was a strong athlete. Went into the military. He can tell you stories about that. Served 5 tours from Desert Storm to Afghanistan. And I mean, learned just immense lessons on leadership and fearlessness and courage and things like that. So we're going to talk about that. Brian's got 4 kids, 2 daughters, 2 sons, and a couple of grandkids, so maybe he'll speak a little bit about that. His wife is a scientist, PhD scientist, who was instrumental in Brian's career development as well. Maybe he'll talk about that. You don't do these things alone.

Right.

You surround yourself with great people. You're going to learn a lot about leadership here today and just some Fascinating story. I'll just conclude with Brian's been dead 4 times, and he might talk just a little bit about what that was like and how he bounced back and made adjustments in his career. He's the author of the book Set Your Table, which just came out in August of this year, and he's actually recording the audio for it right now in his own voice. He'll talk about what does set the table mean anyways, and the title of this show is Setting Your Table. What does that mean? I'm not going to give the punchline. I'll let Brian do that. So with that, Brian, Colonel Brian Cook, wow. Thank you for joining me on Fearless. And give us, give us just a quick overview of some of the things you want to share throughout this episode.

Well, first of all, first of all, thank you so much for the platform and Fearless, the team Fearless that's going to put this together or has put this together. I I know this is all work and we're doing valuable things for each other. And if, when you read the book, you'll find out that's part of what we have to do. We have to be open to new relationships, expand us and guide us in a new journey. I have brand new networks because I'm a brand new author and not just an old colonel, which maybe I still am. Let's— A little bit of paradigm there. But yeah, so Set Your Table came to me in a conversation with the great Eric Keister. He is the the leader of manuscripts. And we had this conversation. He said, you have a book in you. And I already knew that. I mean, this is my 4th book. Uh, 3 are not published, but they are saved. One is a journal of Desert Storm. And so when we had that conversation, he put me on the stage for about 5 minutes, just, you know, role-playing. He said, go, what would you tell people? And at the end of it, he goes, Brian, You keep saying this thing, set your table. And then he asked me to define what set your table is. And really it is, as we know now with the book, right? Setting the conditions before the crisis or even awesome thing happens in your life. It can be either or. But if you're not ready to absorb it, it will absorb you. And then you're eating at someone else's table with a different agenda. You might be at a table you might not want to be with, right? There are questionable people in all, you know, all realms of life, you know. So, that's the baseline. And then, of course, to set your table, just like being a leader, if you want to be a leader, it's not about how you take care— how you lead, it's how you allow others to lead. And that is a level of transparency that all great leaders know, so that I have to be able to trust my subordinates openly and let them lead, make mistakes, and have the tensionful conversations here. That, you know, it's same thing with setting your table. You've got to do the upfront work to get ready to set your table, and that upfront work oftentimes stops people, right?

Yeah, well, and you talk about how delegation is absolutely a critical tool for, for great leaders, and then accountability. So delegate but hold accountable. And you also like to use the word nourish. You got to nourish your team, nourish your players, grow them, so to speak, and recognize that that takes— you got to work through fear to do that because a lot of people are afraid to delegate. Right? They're afraid to make tough decisions around accountability. Look, but you know, as an athlete and then, of course, in the military, you get chewed out from time to time.

Right.

You're held accountable.

Yeah.

If you don't perform, somebody else is going to take your place, take your job. I know you were a great fan of Eisenhower. Because he studied great leaders and you studied him along with so many others. So, tell me a little bit about Eisenhower, your experience with Eisenhower.

Yeah. So, what this is really a beautiful part of the book is when you study yourself, you figure out where you've got nuggets. And I, prior to writing the book, I really didn't understand the level that Eisenhower had an effect on my life. And principally because I had great smart mentors. Probably looked at the back of the book, 4-star General Mike Murray, you know, the former National Security Advisor blurbs the back of my book. I think that's awesome. But these are guys who, when they see a guy like me, just like when I see young up-and-comers who have a lot in their tank and aren't being served by having tough challenges to go after, I was one of those guys. So these guys say, well, look, and I'm, I'm always like, when I was very young, how do you do all this? Like, oh, is it a time management thing? And so, and you can look it up, the quadrants for, for Eisenhower came out. And of course, the quadrants for Eisenhower helped him in the Pentagon. And so very cool story. I come out of Afghanistan. I led an 85-man NATO team called Future Operations for ISAF Joint Command. And as I'm coming out of Afghanistan, I go into the Pentagon and I become the ADOT, the Assistant Director of Training for the United States Army. And I have this quirk about me. Every time I get a new job, I go to the youngest member, staff member, right? Like the secretary to the general. And I go, what's the worst part about my job? And the rule is you cannot answer a question with a question, which she did. Like, her first thing was, you don't know? And I'm like, oh, wait a sec. Right? And she goes, oh. And she took me back into a classified area, opened a class— a top secret classified safe, and handed me a 3-ring binder. And that was not secret. You know, it's like inside the Army, you, you're on a network that's already classified called NIPR. So it's, you know, Army classification now called COUI, all the way to top secret. And the, and the conversations that have been had in the last 6 months about an $18.4 billion budget called a PEG, Program Executive Group. And I'm like, I had managed some money. I managed $28 million in the desert in National Training Center. I was the S4 for a great unit called the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. So I had some reps, but the difference between $28 million and $18 billion is literally exponential, right? I mean, oh, and of course I'm not that guy. Like, I don't have a Yale MBA. I just I mean, I wish I could, but, you know, things happen when you go to comment. Anyway, so long story short, I go, the beauty of the Pentagon is the smartest people of the world work in the Pentagon. If you ever have a problem that's military-centric and you're in the Pentagon, you can find one of the top 2 people, maybe 2 out of the 3 smartest people in the world are there. So I set on a quest. And I found that guy, Eric Fox. He had worked in money in the budget, and he— I bought him coffee or lunch for 3 weeks straight till I filled a binder of notes. And I think I, like, I had the good feeling I knew it. And then people were like, how? What? Where's Brian Cook been all this time? How does he know all this stuff? Back to the microlearning, right? Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning.

Yeah.

You, you have to understand Learn something, share it with another that knows it, and share with another that doesn't know it. So you have a clear path to explaining what you are, and then you learn it deeper. It's a phenomenal it's a phenomenal way to get small micro wins that are actually failures because you're never gonna we know this now we we're never gonna know it all there's no way there's well. Claude and OpenAI may help us, but we're never going to know it all. We are in a dynamic society that's changing. And so if you're a perfectionist, I have something to tell you. You're never going to be perfect. That's so scary. But don't— let that go. It'll help you if you know you're going to make mistakes. Even— I worked for Mark Milley, you know, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That guy made mistakes. He didn't like it, but the 4-star generals and 3-star generals, they make mistakes and they like it when smart people go, hey, boss, that seems a little off-kilter. Or, you know, are you having a bad day sometimes? I mean, I just had a conversation with a PhD doctor friend of mine, former lieutenant colonel. Are you having a bad day? What's going on, man? That's not like you. And he goes, no, no, no. Here's what's going on. That mindset, we have to find that mindset in others and connect it up. Yeah.

Well, you know, you and I talked earlier. We just have so much in common. And, you know, I was never in the military, but in athletics and in business consulting and leadership development. And we have a mantra when we run Kaizen events, you know, rapid change events. And I've done this with the Navy and with the Army. I run events. I mean, the mantra is better, not best. So when we run a rapid change event, basically the logic is, it's not perfect now, it won't be perfect by the end of the week, but we're going to have proof that it's better. And that just takes a little, a lot of pressure off the team because they're like, oh my God, we have to make this perfect, or there's just too much risk, it's not going to happen. I'm like, relax, you know what, we're going to make it better, and then we'll do another Kaizen event, And we will continue to make it better and better and better. By the end of the week, you know, the team that is nervous on Monday is high-fiving at the end of the week. But I want to return back to something you said that is so critical for this audience. It has been critical in my career, and that is to surround yourself with brilliance, books, podcasts, people you know. If you don't know anyone brilliant, find people who are brilliant and study them. You studied Eisenhower and all the work he did on leadership. I know we kidded about this earlier because I know you were a General Schwarzkopf fan, but I was actually doing a speaking engagement with him and spent a few hours on a private jet flying across the country. And to prepare for that, because I really want to know my audience, I read this entire book, It Doesn't Take a Hero. This is— look how thick this book is. I got notes in the back.

It is so good.

I studied him and then spent some time with him just discussing, you know, leadership and things like that. This is kind of silly, but here, here's the two of us. You probably don't even recognize me back in the day.

The mustache is top shelf. I gotta say that. I love the mustache.

30 years ago, but I still remember very clearly some of the things that he said. So to the audience, and this is why I'm such a fan of Fuel, myfuel.io, is because we've got some really amazing faculty members where you learn very quickly and you learn by doing. And not to mention, we've got podcasts like Fearless bringing on people like Colonel Cook. So, Brian, you know, speaking of Eisenhower, is that where you learned the term coup d'état?

Yeah, not Eisenhower. So that is Brother Clausewitz. Interesting part of my career is I went to Command and General Staff College. In Turkey, I learned Turkish. I was supposed to be an attaché. Things got crazy after 9/11 and didn't happen. But so I spent my staff college time over in Turkey. Well, the Army thought that was qualifying, and it wasn't. And so I got passed over for staff college, and my leaders, the guys I had served with and guys who have you know pinned medals on my chest, were like, "All right, Army." You got this wrong. This is Brian Cook. He was a 2nd lieutenant with a Bronze Star. You know, it's— my reputation preceded me. So I went out to the desert, which is kind of— you and I just talked about Christianity. You can go out to the desert to find yourself, right? I went out to the desert with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and I did the book version, the non-resident version of our staff college and the Marine Corps Staff College. To prove the Army wrong. And then in that time, I became the operations officer, basically the COO for this huge organization called the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and took them to combat and back was our planning. And in that timeframe, I was given 2 books by— I don't even know if General Hogue remembers this, but he sent— he gave me 2 books, Thucydides, the landmark Thucydides. The landmark Thucydides. And then, and then, oh, I got an echo. Do I have an echo? Okay. And sorry, it's coming through wild. So the landmark Thucydides, we can talk about that. But then Clausewitz, On War. And as I read it, he, it scared the living crap out of me because he says all great leaders have this thing, coup d'oeil, the glance of an eye. And I mean, when I was a young man, major, lieutenant colonel, all that stuff, I was trying to be that guy. But if you don't get the reps, you'll never have the insights, right? It's like I had a guy once tell me, hey, when we have robots, we'll just win all wars. And I'm like, how are you going to train the leaders of the future if they don't go through the struggles of tactical battles? That's the problem.

Yeah.

Right? So that's developed, supposedly developed through warfare and tension, right? Over and over and over again. And thanks to Mrs. Clausewitz for pulling it all forward for us. If you know the story, Clausewitz had a little bit of a sobriety problem, and his wife actually wrote much of his writing. But kudo is kudo is what we're efforting is as leaders. Should I spend the smallest amount of time at least seeing the environment? The clarity of the environment sets the conditions for really good positioning of your assets. And then once you have that positioning in place, you can execute with confidence. I mean, this is all really a tie back to what we would say war theory and war planning, the combination of two. If you know by your resonant Experience the kudoi, what you're facing, and you recognize it as a pattern of patterns. This is back then. This is you know Dr. Gillian, my wife, would tell me. There you go, Brian. You're patterning, right? Put that, then use your position, your assets to use them effectively. Now maybe not all at once, and then execute. Like I I like to tell people, I am not the battle. I am the war. So, we know this. Every great leader knows that. Sometimes you have to lose to win.

Yeah!

Sometimes you don't jump into a fight right away because you want to see how the guy swings. Is he going to take you to the ground? Is he going to grapple? Or is he just a straight-up brawler? I don't care. I can beat you. I just have to know clarity, positioning, execution.

Right.

And so that's the difficulty here. There is one piece of the mindset, John, that is the freedom gap. Like, you have a— you have an idea of who and what your organization might want to be, and you are here now today. In between that is your decision-making. You have to be open enough to lose a couple of battles because you will be strong enough to win the war. I will find the assets, the people, the resources To win the war, and I personally already know that because I've lived that. I already have the kudo. Yeah. To say, okay, hold on. And you know when I talk to business leaders, they're like they all want to go straight to the back end of this book and talk about how to set the community table, which it just gives you goosebumps how good that is, right? I worked very hard on that on those chapters. But if you don't do the predecessor work, you're actually going against, you know, the essence of this book. Set your table, then build, you know, build your community, right?

Yeah. Well, you know, right along with kudo, you know, just to repeat for the audience, you know, kudo essentially, you call it the glance of the eye. And you and I talked earlier about this. Again, I wasn't in the military, but as an athlete and as a quarterback, You know, you walk up to the line of scrimmage, you better have a little kudo because you got to, in an instant, read the defense and quite possibly make an audible, make a shift. But that's— you don't have a lot of time to sit there and think about it and, you know, radio the coach and say, what do you think? They just changed the defense on me.

Right.

You know, it's fast. You also talk about intellectual courage along with that and the importance of getting multiple perspectives before you defend your position, yeah, you might want to look at it from a couple of different perspectives. And so great leaders surround themselves. I love Abraham Lincoln, the book Team of Rivals. He surrounded himself with people who challenge him.

Right.

And people like John Kennedy said, we're not going to make a decision immediately if everyone's in consensus. That seems odd.

Right. Why would—

because it's groupthink. If everybody's just going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that. Great leaders go, what are the reasons why we shouldn't do it?

Right.

Think, right?

Right.

Why shouldn't we take the first punch? You just said it. Because you might end up getting whooped, right?

Yeah.

And then you talk about, in terms of setting the table, 3 steps. And the 3rd step is really about the community, which you were just talking about. Cultivate, set the table for the community because communities need great leadership. question about it. We've got communities, uh, failing miserably because of the leadership. But before you get to community, uh, talk a little bit more about like positioning and, uh, what do you mean? Or the 3 steps really.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, so let's do step 2, build your table. I just want to touch on a second, foundationally, we are all broken Uh, people, you will in the battles of life hurt yourself, be hurt, right? And watch hurt happen. That is the way life is designed. Phil Sutz says 3 things that are, uh, certain in life: pain, uncertainty, and constant work. You're gonna feel pain— emotional, mental, physical pain. Period, full stop. So I need everybody to hear this. Look, you have to get your foundations right. Do not put yourself in a compromised position. Do not sleep 3 hours at night. That's not enough. And so I changed it in the book to not, uh, about, um— we've made it into a hustle game, right? It's hustle maxing. These new, you know, hustle bros, like, this is what it's all about, bro. It's just about hustle. Oh no, okay, it's not about hustle. I just wanted to say that out loud. You need it. You need to prepare yourself to be the best version that you can bring to your team, who might just be your wife and you, you know, and your dog, or your wife and you and your kids, you know. And then you build out from that. So it is the 5 foundations are sleep, move, eat, focus, breathe. Most people skip breathe. Don't skip breathe. James Nestor has a great book on it if you don't want to leave, you know, read the small part in my foundations chapter. And then you set your personal table. And setting your personal table is part those foundations and part having the mindset and the grit to know what's possible for you.

Mm-hmm.

You are worthy. You're worthy of the challenges that the good universe is going to throw at you. And so get ready, be an asset, And when you feel like a liability, fix yourself. So, that's personal. And then we jump into relationships. If you have not heard of the Harvard studies or any of the relationship stuff, you can— David Brooks and Scott Galloway and I'm trying to think of Jim Collins. I was listening yesterday to Jonathan Haidt. Relationships are the single biggest indicator of our fight against all forms of immortality. Like, what? Wait, we know. I mean, we know we have to connect. And so in our AAA, you know, highly masculine, how much testosterone do you have society in the military, we forget that it's really about love. I have never served in a unit as a commander and not loved my unit. And people are like, oh, whoa, kernel and love? Yes, that's how it works, right? It's, it's, it's the actuality. So then after relationships and you're filled, your tank is full, right? Your foundations are set, your mindset is set, your relationships are feeding you. Do it in your professional life. Whatever you are doing to offer your, like, fuel, right? Whatever you're doing to offer your wisdom to the world and your you know, gifts to the world, do it up here. Don't half-ass it. Just do it up there. There's no good reason why you should not be 100% when you commit to an idea or an effort or, you know, or a community, which is really the next step. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, it just makes me think one of the great tips I got a long time ago is you become, uh, like the people you hang around with.

Oh yeah.

So if you really want to be successful, audience, hang out with really successful people and just surround yourself with, with brilliance. I mean, listen to how many books Brian references and the things he's done. Um, and I, I mean, I'm surrounded by, in a library here, of, of books that changed my life in, in great ways. Uh, so Brian did 5 tours from Desert Storm to Afghanistan. And Brian, a little while ago, you used the word tank in a different, in a different way. But I know you were a tanker, I guess. Yeah. How you call it, you know?

Yep.

Give us a minute or two of what that's like.

You're, you're gonna— Well, we, we alluded to the connection, right, between deciding in moments in, in athletic endeavors. And when you get to command the sons and daughters of our nation, And that same leader be, you know, a tactical leader, you get to live in that flow state more than I ever, ever probably should have. The gift is amazing, right?

Yeah.

When you are on— when you're in an M1 tank, 4 people in an M1 tank, you have driver, loader, gunner, tank commander. And then I was commanding the entire unit, which had 3 more tanks. That was me as a 23-year-old. First, first real true field problem in my unit. I got there about 17 days before we flew, and I was the youngest tank platoon leader in the Big Red One, 1st Infantry Division. But that— the actual act of going to combat was very interesting. So I pulled my guys together and I said, we do a lot of things Because we're being graded. What are the things that we would skip if the grade didn't count other than binary? Yes, no, we win the battle. And my gunner Hopkins, amazing man, like black belt, six-pack abs. I mean, he drove me— he was— he took care of my tank when I was not on it. Hopkins was amazing. He looks at me, goes, why do we do fire command? Why don't you just take it down to the essentials? That loader knows what to load based on the target you say. And so when we went into battle, all I had to say is, uh, fire, right? Fire the gun. Everything else is already done. Those types of things. And then when you're in battle, just like life, you'll, you'll never ever go to a battle that goes As planned. There's no way. Like I tell— used to tell my students, right? Beauty of planning is it's never going to work. So you get to play with it for the rest of the time that it exists.

Yeah.

And that in and of itself trials you, right? So that's the leap to operational. I just did it without even thinking about it. But tactically, we have missions. I had the mission to take 4 tanks and Engage the Iraqis as best as possible and unfortunately, yes, kill people and destroy stuff on behalf of the first responders.

Yeah.

So that's the tactical. That's the mission. When you connect multiple missions to operational success, that's operations. So Operation Desert Storm, right, is a scaled version of Brian Cooks all over the place in staff, in helicopters, in artillery, and they make an operation happen. And then we combine operations to have strategic value. So sometimes just an operation, but you had an entire set of operations at NATO, in the desert, at CENTCOM, at home, making sure that what we created was strategically what America wanted. And most people skip that because you get—

Yeah.

I mean, you can have a million movies just in the mission set, right? And the operational set too, right? And then strategies. But yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. So that—

so right now, let me just on behalf of America, thank you for your service. It's fascinating to hear these stories.

It was worth it.

I want to ask you this question about, about fear and fearlessness. You're in a tank, you're commanding about 4 tanks, I think you said, and How did you deal with fear in general? With not just maybe fear you felt, but fear among your troops?

Yeah. It's courage, right? So you have to think, I was, so I was loved deeply by a father who taught me about some great leaders like Kennedy, right? Kennedy has an old book on courage. And the big takeaway is that Like, fear exists. It is your natural— you're not abnormal if you have fear in your mind. You know, it's normal. Courage is recognizing that fear is there and going anyway.

Yeah.

And that, I mean, there's so many different connections to what we've been talking about. One, don't, don't— we call it paralysis by analysis. Don't think you have to have a perfect solution to be right. Don't, please. You'll die with a with a bunch of ideas in your head and just a bunch of regret. Go get it, right? That's the one. But and then it is a liar. What my dad taught me is fear is a it's a song now, but fear is a liar at the end of it. It is telling you that you shouldn't go. Because that is scary or full of weapons or like we had an RPG bounce off my tank. That's an emotional event. I don't care who you are. It will put fear in your soul. But then you have a—

Yeah, I was just gonna say maybe that's the title of your next book, Fear Is a Liar.

Well, it's terrific because what happens is you have to combine that mindset That I am, I am on this earth, and you can read chapter 16. Where is God in the story? I am on this earth as a result of blessings from I'll call it the universe because I have Taoist friends and Buddhist friends, and I love their injections here too. But I grew up Christian, and I'm here specifically. I know now because he brought me back. You know, I mean the the. Fall seven and get up eight. I'm like literally halfway there, you know me? Yeah, you got it.

You got it.

So when you feel, but when you feel you have the value, right? You are worthy. You have gifts, and fear steps in your way, and you're guiding, you know, a tank platoon of America's sons and daughters. Guess what you get to do? Set the example. Come on, lead with courage. It's like. Boom! I mean, if you go to the definition of heroes, right? Most people don't know this. We think it's a tough guy that hustles really good in America's version of it right now. No, no. It means strength for two. That's what hero means. That you can— that you, regardless of how much fear and bad stuff is out there in life, will step up for another. That's it. And if everybody did that, John, geez, how much Greatness we could create. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Brian, I got book titles going through my head right now. Yeah, for 2, there's your next one. You know, you, uh, but I, you know, I wanna, I wanna just say this, and then I wanna ask you to just a little bit to share your experience having been dead 4 times. But what I wanna share here is that I think training and preparation is absolutely essential. So anyone in the audience listening to this, is what's going to help you develop the courage to move through anything that's frightening to you. Prepare. Whether it's getting up on stage to give a speech, whether it's going into an exam, whether it's going into a job interview, whether it's leading a troop, prepare. And I know the Army does that brilliantly, doesn't it, Brian?

Yeah. So this is like, Well, I'll tell you, 9:20. So we went on, you know, at 10. At 9:20, I stopped the clock on my AMRAP, the many— as many reps as possible workout in my gym. Because, John, I want to show up as the best version of Brian to this. I hit the old— the yoga this morning and the cold plunge both happened this morning.

Oh yeah, I love the cold plunge.

Yeah, I was in real— I was in 40-degree, uh, day before yesterday, and I don't think I like 40 degrees. I'm good at 53. 43 is very cold.

I just did 17 minutes in 48-degree, uh—

God bless you. Yeah, you have more than me. But you— but I mean, that's the preparation, right? That's the clarity that I get from walking through my foundations from last night, getting to bed on time, all the way to 40 minutes before I got here. Make me the best version of Brian to have this conversation with you and hopefully share insights that go well beyond this, you know, hour worth of conversation. That's essential. Then the other part about it is you give permission for others to do the same. We have this weird society where this always-on apocalypse wants to dictate how much time you spend in your corporate life, professional life, Even in your family. And the notifications are ridiculous. I mean, I worked for IBM for 3 and a half years. I mean, I got emails at 11 o'clock at night, need by morning.

Yeah.

No, no, no, no.

Yeah.

Somebody's got a time management problem and it's not me. But do you have a way free or the fear going to stop you from talking to that boss? Not me.

Yeah.

I mean, unfortunately, probably shortened my time at IBM, but I'm not really mad about it. You've got to be ready to engage, right? It's like ready to engage in whatever comes your way. And hopefully it's not one of those crises where you sit down and cry. It's like, hopefully it's not one of those that you have to wipe tears from your eyes, stand up and go. And I've been blessed to have those moments. In my life, right? And that's—

yeah. Yeah, well, that, you know, I just, Brad, I just, I love your passion and your enthusiasm and your resilience. Again, to the audience, it's essential to learn resilience. So because you're not always going to get it right and you're going to have to pivot a lot and you, but every time you learn something, you grow wiser and wiser, but you have to pivot. And certainly You had a major pivot, Brian, after 33 years serving, basically going out on a medical discharge after being flatlined 4 times. We can maybe finish up with just a little bit around that. But I also wanted to just— I mentioned I just did 17 minutes in the cold plunge, 48 degrees. I want to just not suggest that to anybody if they're not—

You got to build up to 17 minutes, bro.

Yeah. And the thing is, is what I do Brian, is contrast. So it's, it's infrared sauna, cold plunge, infrared sauna, you know, within a 45-minute, uh, typically to an hour period. And so the 17 minutes was broken into 3 intervals. So I didn't do it all at once. Most I've ever done all at once is 10 minutes, but still, you're just numb, you know.

Right.

Uh, but the health benefits are phenomenal. And the other thing I know you do every day is meditate.

Right.

I do too. I think it's critical, again, for our listeners, Carve out 20 minutes a day. No matter what time I start during the day, I build it into my morning.

Right.

Get centered. Just get centered because the minute you wake up and you're looking at the phone and you're looking at the email, now you're sitting at somebody else's table.

That's exactly right.

Set your own table, set your boundaries, and then be somewhat rigid about it. You know, vigilant. I like the word vigilant. And I think clearly you're that way. So just to wrap up, You know, I'm sure people are compelled. I know I was about these, these death experiences and what that was like. And I think you said the third one was in front of your daughter. And that was quite—

That's the one that hurts. Right? That's where I knew. You know, I now know it as, you know, the biggest gift, the big, the biggest thing you can show people if you're a big, strong leader that does 17 minutes of cold plunging and everything you do, and people are like, Oh man, how did I get there? You, you have to say, I need help. And that was it, that third one. Um, so it started, um, actually in my first shoulder surgery in 2015. Um, I— this is interesting— pulled my bicep and, uh, off my forearm playing rugby in Afghanistan. So, uh, when I got back to the Pentagon, my shoulder started hurting. We took a look at my shoulder, it was 60% off the tendon up on the Northside, and so they were going in to reattach it, cut it and reattach it. Anyway, I die right in front of my wife for forty. They have it forty-one seconds on the medical report in my medical records, and that one shook me. Like I remember post-surgery going, what is? Why am I here? You know, you this whole thing death is supposed to be have a finality to it.

Right.

But, you know, I worked it off, right? I was at the Pentagon. Let's just go, you know, more podcasts, more this, more that, $18 billion budget. You know that, already covered that story. But then in 2018, April 2018, I came back from a trip down to Training and Doctrine Command. I was actually providing design methodology to the team. And I got to the couch with the wife after we got back and I died. She ran upstairs to get her phone. Um, I stood up the first— so first of all, you don't know unless you're in a horrible car crash or something. You don't know you're dying if you do one of these, uh, heart failures. You don't like that. You take— you don't go into a near-death experience and pick up some ticket from, you know, the Great Peter and he's like, all right, you're dead. At least not in my version. You just go away and come back. And so that one, I went back, I stood up afterwards and yelled to my wife like, what are you doing? And she's like, I'm calling 911. And I'm like, why are you calling 911? And then, uh, we went to the hospital. They thought I was all like studly and everything, and so they just sent me home. See your primary care physician on Monday. We make hamburgers that night and stay in for a Netflix You know, I think I'm stacking my hamburger. Everybody's eating their dinner. I'm stacking my hamburger and the lights start going out, you know. And, uh, I got to the back of the couch so I didn't slam on the floor. I got the back of the couch, just squatted. And, uh, that was the one. And Grace was right there, saw me do it. She ran down the street and got a good friend of mine, Pete Haas. And, uh, that was the night I went in the hospital. And that's like, wow.

Yeah.

But the last one, the last one, what occurred in a hospital with a tilt table test that pulls all the blood to your legs and causes you to pass out, at the 11th minute, I left. And I woke back up with the nurse on my chest giving me compressions. And I don't know why I said it. I said, I didn't know we were so close. When I came back, and she was hitting me like, you were effing dead. And like, oh, okay. Um, but every version was kind of rapid until that last one. I was able to pray and be with my wife prior to the tilt table. And when I was under, I recognized all of them, but it felt like I was— let's do it like 100 meters deep underwater, if you've ever scuba'd and looked up at the Shimmer, I call it.

Yeah.

Underneath shimmer of the ocean. Yeah, I'm an old surfer from Southern California, so awesome to be under, but if you don't know how long you're gonna be there, it feels deathly. And then, yeah, right before I came to, that last one, uh, image, and an arm came through the water and grabbed me. And when I came to in the hospital, the very first one, Sarah says, well, this shoulder was numb, so I couldn't move it. My arm went up like this, you know, to grab something. So I have a picture of that. I'll send it to you post, post-show. But it's really an amazing feeling, right? Because you cannot deny it at 4 times. that the gifts that you have inside your soul are valuable to other people, or the great man, woman, being would not have brought you back.

Yeah.

So it charged me. And of course, then the Army kicked me out. And so, consequentially ended everything that I was since high school. I went to West Point, What? It's 2 months after I graduated from high school, I stepped on the line with the man in the red sash and started my West Point journey and started my 33-year Army journey.

What?

Now it's all over.

Yeah, now what, right? Yeah. And what?

Yeah, you can either listen to the liar and do what's easy, and I— look, there's lots of easy buttons for Medically retired colonels, plenty. Or you can say, what are those gifts and how would they get to everybody I love? And that's what the book's about. That's really where it all started, right? So it's kind of a nice circle.

Giving it back. So yeah, again, to the audience, get yourself a copy of Set Your Table, um, seriously. And it's coming out on Audible, uh, yes, Brian said. There it is. Yeah. And so, Brian, I mean, we're gonna have to get you back on this show because there's so many things that I'd still love to talk to you about and how you've reinvented yourself, so to speak, after that 33-year career and the things you have going on now.

Yeah.

Truly, truly amazing. I had a guest on just a couple of months ago, Roderick Jefferson, actually on Juneteenth, and Roderick was flatlined after a a major nighttime stroke where there's just a 2% chance of survival.

Right.

And Roderick just told a fascinating story about his experience. So yeah, if you think you're having a little, a bad day, audience, hopefully some of my guests are giving you some real hope and inspiration because like Brian said, fear is a liar. Don't believe it. All right, recognize it, you know, prepare, train, and, and work through it, not thinking you're going to get it perfectly right because you're, you're not, you know. And, uh, anyway, so that's that. Next week I've got Dan Clark, uh, another just truly fascinating guest. Uh, Dan's, uh, flown to the edge of space in a U-2 spy plane. He's advised the White House on a number of things. He's truly a fascinating guy. I think he's written something like like 36 books, right? Truly amazing guy, you know, Hall of Fame speaker. And Dan's gonna share some ideas around the topic of Raise the Bar. So join me next Friday on Fearless. Again, this is brought to you by Fuel. Go to myfuel.io and seriously check it out. If you haven't already, subscribe and share this episode. Subscribe to Fearless with John on YouTube. We'll see you again in a week. Brian, any final closing thought?

Uh, I think we covered a lot, but I would just say in the end, look, get on with it. Come on, we need great people all over the world, especially in America right now. Get on with it. Come on. And you know, you already know 2 people who will help you right here, John and Brian, right? I am so glad, by the way, that I went before Brother Clark, that guy is amazing. So come back next week. This is gonna be amazing. I'm coming back for sure.

So yeah, indeed. And I've heard, Brian, I've heard you say this, and I really want to repeat this to the audience, that you are worthy. Believe in yourself. Because I was raised being told I'm not worthy, right? It was a program that I had to get through. It took me into my 30s before I finally shifted that paradigm from I'm not worthy To I am worthy. Yeah, I am worthy. And that's, it's truly important. And think clearly about what success means to you. Because a lot of people have a definition of success, you know, I got a lot of money, and I'm famous or things like that. But unless you're joyful, and you're excited about life, reverence for life, you feel a sense of inner peace. You could have all the money in the world and be miserable and physically unfit and emotionally unfit. So really think about what success means to you and live with peace and live with joy despite the chaos that's going on. Because we live in a world where there's no real certainty.

Right.

So get used to it and navigate it and lead like Brian has talked about. Lead in your community, lead on your team, lead in your business, lead your family. But lead with courage and emotional intelligence and awareness. And yeah, so absolutely. With that, next week, Dan Clark. Again, thanks so much, Brian. I'm going to get you back on here. Let's do it. I'd love it. All right.

All right.

Get yourself a copy of Set Your Table too, everybody.