Episode 65: Undefeated with American Veteran Hero Joel McKinley

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso.

Greetings, friends. This is Mike Stromco coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This is a very special Unstoppable Prophet podcast, because as we head into Independence Day, we wanted to bring you something that was important to something that we are so privileged to have, which is freedom. And we thought there's no better freedom fighter. And that's a phrase that has come to my mind as I prepared for this. To have with us this morning is our very own freedom fighter, which is part of our UPP family team, Mr. Joel McKinley. Joel, good morning, sir.

Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Hey, you're welcome. Thank you for investing time to be here today. And so we want to dig in because like I said, it's a very special, unique podcast. We're going to blend our own freedom fighter and share a little bit about his story so we can get to know him better. But how it really blends in with the three Ps, which is people, processes, and promotion, which is at the core of the Unstoppable Profit producer program. So, Joel, thanks for spending some time with us this morning and just share a couple of minutes about who you are, where you've come from, just so everybody gets to know you a little bit better.

So I grew up, I was born in Colorado Springs, but I come from a military family. So.

You lived in Germany for six years and you know, Louisville, Kentucky, and just kind of all over the place. So I am definitely one of America. I've been all over the place.

With that. I joined the army right after I graduated high school at 18 years old and just recently retired about a year and a half ago after 20 years.

Well, thank you for the service to all of us, to our country and in support of our freedom. And I know there's trials, loss of very close friends that you've been through, and we may or may not get into that today, but, you know, why did you join the army in the first place?

Wow. So that's a two part question. So when I was a kid, getting to see my dad come home in uniform, just packing his stuff to go out to training, or, you know, going to the first Gulf War, I Just remember that. Just this crazy sense of pride. And just looking at my dad and just like, he was a superhero. Like, I just thought he was the toughest guy on the planet. You know, he was.

He just represented strength to me and just honor and integrity and just a man of his word. So, you know, at 18 years old, it's very difficult to say, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. So, you know, I just kind of looked at my dad and I said, you know, I want to follow my dad's footsteps. And he always instilled a deep sense of pride in our country. And, you know, it was the idea of America.

It was.

No matter what was going on or, you know, how imperfect we are, the idea of America, that we have the opportunity to. To have the freedom and that we have the ability to change. We have the ability to grow and to develop. And like you say, you know, we get the ability to grow through adversity, and that's the idea of America. And that's. I just wanted to serve that, and I wanted to devote my life to enabling that going forward.

Well, thank you for that. And, you know, you said something that will spark another question, if I may. So you said, grow through this adversity, and that's something that we talk about within our UPB circles and agency circles and beyond. We made a decision a few months ago to grow through this adversity, not necessarily go through this adversity, not just to exist, but to grow through it. So what would you say to somebody based on, you know, I mean, look, 20 years, you were in Baghdad in the middle of IEDs going off and everything else, like I mentioned, you know, watching those close to you that couldn't come home and all of that that we can't even begin to imagine. So somebody who might be watching and. Or listening to this right now, who might be in the middle of this pandemic thinking, oh, you know, forgive me, woe is me. What would you say to them?

It's all training. So, like when I was in the army, you know, basic training, you think it's the most difficult thing on the planet, and then you get out and you laugh, you know, at how relatively easy it is to everything else that you're going to continue to do moving forward. They're just stepping stones, and you always have to elevate what you enable yourself to go through. So you always want to do something more difficult because it prepares you for something in the future. It's always going to, you know. Yeah, I mean, essentially it just prepares you for more difficulty as you, as you grow older.

Wow, that's awesome. Yeah. Getting better every day, right?

Every day.

And I know that we talk a lot as well. Our old friend Benjamin Franklin, who I wish I could interview, I just tell a friend about that last night. You know, if you are failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail, right?

Absolutely.

So thank you for your preparation and what you went through has prepared you in a great way and to contribute to Unstoppable Nation. Thank you for that. So what did you love most about the military? I mean, through your experience, the people.

Yeah, the first P, that was my favorite. It's amazing that you can sometimes you only spend two years at one of your duty stations and you build lifelong friendships and it's because you are constantly connecting with them and spending time and investing that time to build those relationships. So when we talk about, you know, building COIs and building relationships, it's the same thing. And that only comes through consistently connecting with them, finding out what you can do for them and, you know, just giving. Because just like in the army, it's. You're willing to sacrifice your life for your friends. You could that same passion can absolutely be in your business if you're willing to sacrifice for them because you know that they will do it for you because you build that connectedness.

Wow, that's powerful. Thank you. And it's all about, you know, together everybody achieves more, right?

Absolutely.

And that's a form of a team, these friendships, these, you know, shoulder to shoulder. And it's so important in today's world because, you know, business is not easy and it's getting harder all the time. So you mentioned earlier. So you served a lifetime, if you will. So 20 years. Thank you. So through that 20 year journey, serving our country and standing toe to toe and shoulder to shoulder with your fellow soldiers, what did you enjoy the most about the whole experience?

So, like the job that I enjoyed the most was, or like the duty assignment was being a drill sergeant. By far, I mean, just the most rewarding three years that I got to do in the army. The job is taxing. It's 85 to 100 hours a week. I mean, you're there to wake them up and put them to bed and then you have life to live after that.

But it's.

You're taking someone from, you know, an 18 year old kid like I was, didn't know anything about the army. Just, you know, what I saw my dad and it was all what I created in My mind. And in 14 weeks, you make them a soldier. And they are. They just get it. And it's through that rigorous training that you continue to give them. And as you see those little aha's, like, they start to get it. You're not screaming at them so much, and they just get it, and they just start doing it. And it's amazing. And it's. Ultimately, it's because of the amount of time that they invest in their training, the amount that you invest in them giving them everything, you know. You know, the biggest thing is the drill sergeants that were the most successful are the ones that gave more. It was the ones that, you know, like, I would always stay late to teach the kids something more. I would tell them, hey, if you do really well in training today, I'll teach you something out of the Ranger handbook, you know, after, after. And the kids would think, yes, and they would perform, perform so much better. And ultimately, it was because they wanted knowledge, they wanted you to care about them.

It just.

I loved it. I mean, a lot of those kids, you know, will reach out to me and say, hey, drill sergeant, you know, thank you so much. This was 10 years ago. And they reach out to me and they say, you know, now I'm a drill sergeant. And I'm just like, man, that's. It's awesome. And it's. The army will. When you leave, people, you know, they. They inflate themselves to think, the army's not going to go on without you. Well, we're undefeated in over 200 years. The army continues.

And.

And ultimately, the way you leave that legacy, that lasting impression, how do you make your mark is from the next generation, is giving to the next generation. So they teach the same lessons, they have the same passion that you do moving forward.

Undefeated after over 200 years. I love that thought process. So thank you. Thank you again for your service. So you also prompted something that made me think about the quote from the late, great John Wooden, the. Well, the undefeated college basketball coach, so successful. He said, it's what you learn after you think you know it all that counts. Right? And kudos to those who wanted to learn more after it was all over. That's fantastic. So. And thank you for the difference that you're making in the lives of so many UPP members as our accountability for you director. It's a perfect fit for who you are and who you become because of your service to our country. So thank you for that. So let's jump into the three Ps a little bit because you have an opportunity to help. You know, and I've heard you say this before, as a drill sergeant, part of your responsibility was when they come in raw at 18 years old, was to strip them down, correct?

Absolutely.

Because they come in with their own mental agenda and their own maybe physical agenda, maybe not. And so you've said your first job was to strip out everything that they thought they knew and build them up into the army way, if you will. You know, and we find that as well. You know, a lot of people come in and they know a lot of things about business, but they may or may not be the right strategies, right?

Absolutely.

So that's where the beauty of the three Ps is. It's really just a great thought process and system of people processes and promotions. So let's blend that together. So how does your military experience.

Translate to the UPP family? And we'll start with the first P, right?

I mean, it is. It's all about people. And, you know, as a leader in the army, you don't get to pick your people. You know, we don't have a hiring system. The recruiters do that. You get who you get. So ultimately we have to make them into the people. And we do that by putting them first. Because ultimately, if they're not where we need them to be, we have to develop them to get them there. And that's what makes the Army's P the first P. So good, is because it's all about them. You know, when we eat chow, you know, the leaders eat last. And they're. I mean, there's the book Leaders Eat Last two. And the reason for that is because we want to show them that they are our priority, their development, because they're going to take over for us. And, you know, but ultimately it's when you get them to the point that you need them to get to.

I mean, everything just works better. I mean.

So investing in your people, developing them, training them, and some people will bring an organization to where they are not performing at their peak performance. And ultimately, you know, you may have to release them into the marketplace, you know, but, you know, as you.

It's all about, you know, getting the right people. Because when you get them to that point where you train them, everything works better. When you have the right team in place, everything performs better. You know, it just. Everything functions top notch. I mean, and that's the reason that we're undefeated, is because we invest that time in getting them to that level.

Training, you know, the late, great Zig Ziglar he said, motivation is like bathing. It's recommended daily. But I have borrowed that iconic quote from Zig and I've inserted a lot of things into that motivation slot. But one of my favorite things to insert is training is like bathing. It is recommended daily. And so what I am hearing is, with regard to the first P, the process is training. We have to continue training on a daily basis. And we are going to jump into another area of that in just a couple of minutes. But, yeah, thank you for that. And we have also learned together that the goal of a leader. Right. Is to build up leaders beneath us.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you.

Train them to take your job.

Say it again, please.

Train them to take your job.

Yep. Train them to take your job. That's a fantastic thought. So let's talk about the second theme. Second P, I should say. So expand on that more. How does the. Your military experience translate to the second P?

This is my favorite one, because everything, everything in the army is a process. There is a regulation for everything. I mean, the way you lace your boots, the way you wear your hair, everything is a regulation. There's a manual for everything. If you don't know it's in a book, open the book and read it. It's in black and white. There's no, well, I think it's this. I think that it's definitive. So when you have that, there's no question. There's no, well, you know, so and so is going to do it this way, but we're going to do it this way. There's not the my way, your way, it's the way. And ultimately, in businesses, when the, when these independent owners want things to run, they have to have it run the way that they want. It's their agency. They are the owner. Whose business is it? It's their business. So when they lay out these processes.

And you continue to refine them and innovate and change them as times change, to change is inevitable. But as they continue to develop that and you get those right people, you plug them into your system and it continues to run exactly the way that you want it to run.

Fantastic. So change is inevitable. And if we want things to change, who has to change? We do. Yeah. Fantastic. So how did you see that change actually develop before your eyes over the 20 years that you served?

I mean, there's been a lot of changes through. I mean, if you look at, you know, the Iraq conflict, we had never fought a war against insurance like an insurgency like that before. You know, we had some experience with it in Vietnam, but we've always been trained. I stand here, you're there, and we go towards each other and we see who wins. We had to completely adapt. And our vehicles weren't. Weren't set up initially when we went over. I mean, nothing was. When the roads blew up, we were like, what happened? And we had to continue to change and develop and come with new creative ways to keep ourselves alive. Ultimately, that's what you have to do with your business, is you have to continue to change what is happening in the marketplace, what is going on. Okay. We need to change. We need to innovate. We need to get better. We need to do more. We need to shift our thinking. We need to not be stagnant and just be stuck where we are in our mindset. Our mindset needs to be able to shift, because when you do that, you can meet any enemy and win.

Wow. There is so much gold in what you just said. Thank you for saying that. And what we talk about in business as well, within the UPP circles are the agency circles. Grow or die, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, that's the two options. And so we've got to find a way to survive. And so much of that is the change. And so. Thank you. I mean, your encouragement and who you've become and your transparency and sharing your story. One of the things that we've developed in the agency side is the. The SIA way. So, you know, to an extent. Would you recommend that agency principals and leaders also create their own way? Absolutely.

Absolutely. You have to, because it's your business. If it's not the SIA way or the whatever your agency is way, then whose way is it? Whose business is it?

Aha. You're succumbing to somebody else's way.

Absolutely.

And there's no direction, and the leaders have nothing to follow.

Purpose, direction, and motivation. That's what the army says an army leader is. You provide purpose, direction, and motivation.

Purpose, direction, motivation. Great phrase. Let me get that down.

Purpose, direction, motivation.

Love that.

When we talk about leaders, ultimately you have to. And we talk about training. You have to. You get basic training, and that makes you a basic soldier. But. And there's some people that can. They can coast through their career. But, you know, we have. Once you become an nco, you have to go a sergeant. You go to schooling to help you become a better sergeant, and you can stick with just those basic schools that you have to do. But ultimately, you have to invest in yourself and in the Army. The things that you do are you Invest in specialized schooling. So, like, we have a UP member who went to the same school as I did at Ranger school. I mean, it's called the army's premier leadership school. And it's, it's painful. I mean, but ultimately it teaches you the greatest lesson I've ever learned. I.

Became a much better leader afterwards. You know, they sleep deprive you and they food deprive you, and you're just marching forever and you know, you're droning out like you sleepwalking essentially. But ultimately they say, all right, here's your mission.

Go lead.

And you're just, you're exhausted. But ultimately you have to know, like, it doesn't matter how exhausted I am, how much, how hungry I am, how tired I'm. Because, because I have soldiers to lead, I have to do for them. And you just get this surge of energy and you just, you lead them and you have to lead these other people that are starving and they're sleep deprived. But ultimately that's where it's not about you, it's about them. So that's why it's the greatest leadership school, Airborne school, master gunner school. It's investing in yourself to make yourself a subject matter expert in different areas. Because then you share that with, with your team and you build them up likewise. Wow.

So I have to ask, what is the greatest lesson that you've ever learned?

It was that when you learn what your actual limitations are, that, that is because I thought, I'm so hungry, I'm starving. I lost 30 pounds in like three weeks. And they're like, hey, lead. And you learn what your actual limitations are. It's. You thought your baseline was here. No, no, no, it's not. You can always do more. You can always give more. There is more to give. It's within you. You just have to let it out. And sometimes you have to have it forced out, but it's in there.

So what would you say to somebody who thinks that they're at capacity or they can't do any more? In business you can.

Why would you put that self limiting thought in your mind? Don't limit yourself. Your life is limitless. But you have to own that thought process. You have to have that mindset. That's your skill set. There is no limits. You just need to address what it is, you know, that you are allowing to limit yourself.

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you for sharing from the heart. So we talked about the first P, which is leadership and building up leaders beneath us. And beyond that, the second P, which is everything is A regulation, a manual, Purpose, direction, motivation as a result of that. So let's jump into the most fun sexy P, if you will, the third P, which is promotions. How does the army translate to promotions?

I mean, when we wear our physical training uniform, it says army right across the chest and we wear it everywhere. I mean, it's the only piece of your military clothing that you can wear with your civilian attire. Wear, why? Because it's a promotion. It's, hey, look at the Army. Look at us. We have recruiting centers, strategically placed places. They sponsor events. Like, I was watching a UFC fight the other day and it said, this is brought to you by the U.S. army. And it was. There was army commercials tied in and it's on the canvas, but they put their logo everywhere and they rebrand themselves. I mean, when I joined, it was be all you can be.

They did.

Army of One. They did. I mean, they're always changing there to meet the mindset of the marketplace.

So, I mean, the army is constantly promoting.

Yeah, but the other thing that was coming to my mind is you were saying that as an encouragement to everybody out there. Their message is simple. Would you agree?

Absolutely. Always.

It's not complicated. Army of One. I mean, anybody can handle one, right? You know, we're the army or whatever. Whatever. Over the years, how it's changed. There's a company that is very similar that I've learned in my own personal training and development in that same thought process. So I got, I got an off the wall question for you that you're not expecting. You ready?

Sure.

I'll give you a second to get ready. It's really simple. So are you a Droid or an iPhone user?

IPhone.

Okay, exactly. That's the company.

So why did you choose Apple?

I like the. I like the design. I like the simplicity of it.

They don't change. They add new features, but they don't change how the overall system works. So the system is always relatively the same and the upgrades are. The changes are so subtle that it's always easy to use. It's not like I have to figure this phone out for the next five hours.

Right?

Yeah. Okay, cool.

Right, Right, Exactly. So when I learned that, when I wrote my sixth book, the Unstoppable Profit Producer, I was doing a lot of research on how the COVID was going to be designed. And one of my coaches, because we believe in coaching, said, look at this Apple box. Have you ever looked at the box that the iPhone comes in?

And my coach said, what do you see?

I said, nothing but white with an apple in the middle said, exactly. You've got to keep it simple.

Because, you know, a confused person doesn't act right.

Absolutely.

Yeah. That's something that we teach and we've learned together as well. Great stuff, great stuff. So thank you. So what was your greatest lesson from your military career that can help the people listening?

I love this. I love this. And this was something that I asked. I mean, I trained over 5,000 soldiers as a drill sergeant in three years. And I asked every single group, I said, who joined the army to be mediocre? Obviously there's never going to be a hand that goes up because nobody wants to be mediocre. I said, who joined the army because they wanted to be the Rambo, Conan the Barbarian, like you wanted to step foot in, in front of the enemy and they automatically surrendered because they knew that you were the best trained soldier in the world, that they knew that it's over. We cannot win with that one single soldier that just put foot on the ground. I said, who wanted to be that? They're all like, yeah, super excited, super pumped up. And I said, okay. Don't forget that. I said, you know when no matter what happens, no matter how much adversity comes in the army or you have to do things that you don't like, don't forget this 18 year old kid looking you in the mirror, don't let him down, no matter how old and how disgruntled you get. And I would turn that around when I would teach senior leaders, organizational level leaders, and I would say, ask them the same question, say, when does it change?

Why does it change?

Never. They never had an answer. I said, it's your fault. It's all of your fault. It's my fault. It is because we stopped fostering that love that they had, that passion. And I said, think back to yourselves when you were a private. I was like, when you looked in the mirror, I said, you wanted to be that too. I was like, how many of you have achieved that? How many of you are continuing to work on yourself to get to that point, even if you never reach it? How many of you are striving for it every day? I said, when you go home tonight, look yourself in the mirror. And every morning when you wake up, look yourself in the mirror. You remember that 18 year old kid, how driven he was, how much he wanted it, how much he just wanted to be the best.

And stop letting that kid down.

Wow. Thank you for continuing to share the message beyond learning not to let people down in that arena. That is extremely powerful. And you know about this one and I know you have your own as well. And this is what we teach and we believe there's only one person standing between you and success. So as we begin to head to wrap this up, our mindset is our skill set.

Our mindset is our skill set. So as they become more. As they became more in the military realm and now what you've learned after you left the daily military realm, what would you recommend? The most important thing to do and encourage people about feeding their mind because their mindset is their skill set.

You have to feed your mind. It's your fuel. It's just like with eating or race cars or whatever. You don't put E85 gasoline in a race car. It's not going to go fast. So if you're putting, you know, poor, like reality television or something into your mind, that's what you're going to perform at. That's the fuel that you have. You're putting E85 in. If you want to perform, put high octane stuff in your mind. Put high octane stuff in your body. Absorb high octane stuff because then you will be a race car.

Fantastic. Yeah. If you are a UPP coaching member and you are watching or listening to this, that is why we feed you so much. We don't want you to operate ever on 85 octane fuel. We want you to have the highest level of fuel available. So we want to continue to bring it to you. So it is ok. You will be fine. So it is of their own accord, right? Or the phrase that you guys. You and some others that I have a relationship with. Sua sponte, right?

Yep. Sua sponte. It means of their own accord. It's. They're doing it because they want to. They're doing it because. Not because they're told or because they have to. They're doing it because it's what's with. And you know, they. There's. There's just a lot of, you know, the army has creeds about the infantryman's creed and the ranger creed. And it's all, you know, a couple of paragraphs. And you memorize them. And the reason you memorize them is because you internalize the words.

You know, like there's. It says always I fight on through the foe to the objective to triumph over all. You know, I yield up to weakness, to cowardice, to hunger, to fatigue. Like nothing will stop me. And when you internalize those, it's just like reviewing your goals. When you internalize your goals. When you memorize your goals, when your goals are in front of you every single day, you internalize them and they become part of you. You could, I mean, who wants to leave a part of them the same as it was? You continue to work through them and grow and get better and make bigger and more audacious goals. And the reason you do that is because you internalize, but you have to see it in front of you every day.

That breaks the thought another mind as we wrap up. We are in the middle of the great reset right now. We have an incredible opportunity that is really in our lifetime will probably not come around. The ability to reset. I know you experienced that in your accountability for you director's chair, if you will. You're finding people that set out in the beginning of the year with goals and they knock them off because they're high performing nature and they get to. They don't have to. They get to reset.

Absolutely.

What incredible opportunity. Mr. Joel McKinley, thank you so much for sharing from the heart. Thank you for your contributions to Unstoppable Nation and supporting them and holding them to the fire so that they can not only achieve the goals that they set out to achieve, but absolutely explode the goals that they set out to achieve. And as our mission is within the Unstoppable Profit Producer program, we are looking to impact people's lives personally and professionally. And you, sir, as we move up to Independence Day and celebration. We get to celebrate Independence Day because of your fighting for our freedom over a lifetime. Thank you for that, sir. Thank you for sharing today. Thank you for being on the podcast.

No, Mike, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of the UPP family. Thank you for everything that you do because you truly embody what it means to, you know, the pursuit of happiness. Because, I mean, SIA inspires happiness. And truly, every conversation I've ever seen you have with anyone, they always leave with a smile on their face. You always inspire that. You always create that opportunity for everyone. Continue to give back. So thank you for everything that you do because you are what I consider to be one of the greatest Americans on, you know, in history. Know, for everything that you do not.

That's an undeserved compliment, but thank you for that.

Just getting better every day. I mean, we've got to get better every day. So we want to encourage everybody. If you're watching this and or listening to this and you got value out of the podcast, please share it with somebody else. Please make sure you subscribe and encourage other people to subscribe as well. Because our goal is to bring the best of the best to the podcast, to inspire, to motivate, and to further define purpose. As you talked about today and your gold nuggets that you continue to drop, let's go ahead and have some fun for just a second. We might as well share with the world what you and I were talking about before we went on. We were talking about something that I learned today in my own personal development. About bananas. Right? Yeah, that was kind of fun because I'm a banana guy, because it fuels my bicycle riding ability. And you have children as well. So in my study this morning, they were talking about a schoolteacher who would write encouraging messages on the bananas for the kindergarten age kids. So when they come pick up a banana, they look at the banana and it would have an encouraging message on it, like be awesome today or something like that, Right?

Yeah, that's awesome.

So now we have what I learned is talking bananas.

As we learn in the third p the promotional realm from our greatest mentors. Look at what everybody else is doing and do the exact opposite, right?

Yep, exactly.

We're going to develop talking bananas.

Joel McKinley, thank you so much, sir, for being on the podcast today. Make a difference, be unstoppable, and leave no regrets. We'll see everybody on the next episode. Have a great day.

All right, thanks.

Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.