Episode 49 - Michael Julian Says You Must Do These Things To Survive The Next Active Shooter Event

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. So you guys have a huge treat today. You know, there's so many things that happen in the world that you kind of have that moment where you wish you could do something. And my guest today is literally the solution for that. I remember when, just dating back when Sandy Hook happened 10 years ago and I really wanted to get involved. I ended up joining this nonprofit called Kids for Peace and was really involved with helping schools and creating kindness and checklists and really focused on that. We ended up getting, gosh, I think it ended up being like a million kids involved. And it was really great to be able to. To impact in that way. And now, 10 years later, just so many more things are happening. And this guest actually has a way to help you in times you want to have survival training. So he has a program that's basically a live active shooter survival training program. And I'm so excited to be able to talk to him about it. We actually met a year ago. I was in a CEO group and the last year of my business. And he's just the person that really challenges you to become a better version of yourself. I know in the short time I was there, he did that for me several occasions. And I'm just so excited that he was able to come on, so. Hey, Mike.

Hey, Stacy. How are you?

I am good. I'm good. I'm so excited that you were able to take the time. I know how busy you are right.

Now, especially times are. Yeah, we're doing what I do. It's. It's crazy, unfortunately. It's terrible, actually. But luckily we've got kind of a solution, so we feel pretty good about being able to help people in situations that normally they would be just absolutely so frightened out of their mind, they wouldn't be able to move. But I'm happy to be on with you today.

Yeah, thanks. So for the listeners, if you don't mind, I know I gave a little brief Introduction. But I'd love you to just kind of talk about your background and your story and then we can kind of dive in from there.

Sure. So my father started our company after he was first in the Navy, then he was in law enforcement. Then he went out into the private sector and started the company called National Business Investigations. And it was an investigations and security company. I was born after the company was created and really grew up in the business. My whole life I've been doing private investigation work, corporate investigations, corporate security, bodyguard work, consulting, you know, everything security, physical security and investigations related. Since I was really 16 years old, I guess is when I first started doing work for my dad. So that's what we've been doing. We've since grown dramatically. He passed away in 1997, very suddenly at the very young age of 57. And I was at, I think 29 years old. Found myself owning, well, running a company that, you know, with no, no business experience. So the only thing I'd learned is what I seen my dad do. He wasn't necessarily somebody that sat me down and taught me business and I hadn't taken business classes. So since that time we, we've been, you know, making it better and refining it and becoming more sophisticated. Now we're a national company and we provide security investigative services, services all over the. All over the country. And then, you know, my claim to fame now really, and what I focus most of my energy on is I created an active shooter survival training program called alive, and it's an acronym for Assess, Leave, Impede Violence and Expose. I started working that about. Working on that about 2013 because I was frankly just angry and frustrated because I was watching bad people do bad things to good people and the good people didn't know what to do to prevent the bad people from being successful and hurting them. So I decided I would start teaching this, I would start teaching active shooter. And I went to some courses put on by other people and I didn't like what they said or didn't think it was good enough. So I created my own and I've been teaching that ever since to tens of thousands of people all over the world. And I've got over 100 instructors from here to Mexico City to Canada to Australia that teach my course. So now this is what I spend the most of my time on. And I've got a really good president that runs my companies, but this is my passion project. This is what I do now.

Yeah. And I think it's so amazing when you're driven by that Purpose of you really wanting to be able to make a difference, knowing that you can, and then not having anything else out there that's good, and then you being able to create the thing that actually is able to help people learn about how to do something when something like this happens.

Yeah, and.

There are a lot of programs out there and I think any training in this regard, any training is better than no training because not knowing what to do or not having confidence in what you think you know to do will leave you paralyzed and you'll do the wrong thing or nothing at all. And, you know, there's fight, flight, fight flight and freeze. And unfortunately, so many people in these situations, they freeze. And so my program teaches empowerment and it covers the psychological aspects of why the killers do what they do. So you understand their thinking. Because, you know, what better way to counter somebody than if you know what they're doing and why they're doing it and what they're going to do next? And then I get really deep into the, the psychology of the mental aspects of, of survival and, and the security mindset, the survival mindset. And you know, I teach people that they do have a say in the outcome. Just because somebody is shooting and people are dying doesn't mean it means it's time for you to kick it into high gear and do whatever is necessary to survive that situation. So there are other programs out there and most of them I would say are better than nothing, but I just happen to be a little bit biased and have gotten some. Mine's very, very comprehensive. I mean, I cover a lot of things in it. And you know, it's been praised by military and law enforcement for being very direct and honest about what you're dealing with and how you need to deal with it.

Yeah, that's, that's unbelievable. So if someone's in the situation where there's a shooting wherever they are, what's the best? Like, I know obviously your program is going to give the extensive version, but like, what would be the best way that they could combat that? Is that where the acronym comes in, where the first thing they're going to do is assess?

Yes. So basically when as soon as you hear the shooting or you recognize that there's somebody trying to harm you, it doesn't have to be a shooter. I mean, we, I say active killer, active shooter, and active assailant interchangeably because, you know, there are people that kill multiple people with edged weapons, with fire, with a run over them, with a car, with explosives. They're not active shooters. They're active killers or active assailants. But as soon as an event begins and you realize that there's somebody trying to do you harm, then you just start the five steps of alive. The process is very simple. The A is for assess. Once you realize what's going on, you take a deep breath to get a burst of oxygen to your organs because your blood's pump, your heart's pumping from the adrenaline and now your organs are starving for oxygen and you mentally hyper focus on the fact that right now you've got to block every other distraction out. Like, oh my God, I'm never going to see my kids grow up because this person's going to kill me. That is a defeatist victim mentality that you won't survive, okay? You'll end up doing the wrong thing or nothing and it will get you killed. You have to take action. So once you've assessed the situation and you realize that you actually know what to do and you consider your options, can you leave? Can you impede the killer? Or do you have to commit violence against them? Once you decide what option to take or what your best course of action is, you immediately call 911. We have found through the years of studying, I've researched all of these active killer events and many of these killers, 50% or so of them typically kill themselves. Sometimes they kill themselves just by hearing the sirens of the approaching law enforcement. So the Sooner we call 911, the sooner the clock's ticking, the sooner law enforcement can arrive. And then once they. And it's like in the assess. Once you, once you've assessed and you call 911, then you have to enact your plan. Which by the way, of course you can be calling 911 while you're leaving, while you're impeding, or while, well, maybe not while you're committing violence, but at that point it's all bets are off and you're going to do whatever you have to do to survive. But the second step is leave.

Yeah, before you go there, I'm just wondering. So when they are. So they're taking the deep breath, which I love that advice for everything actually. They're blocking the distractions. They're then figuring out the best course of action. How are they figuring out the best. And they're calling 91 1, obviously. But how are they figuring out the best course of action for themselves?

Great question. Well, the first consideration you want to do is leave. Just like run, hide, fight. I don't like run. I use leave because it's more calculated and in control. You want to leave. So you're. Right now you're deciding, okay, based on where I know that, where that assailant is. Where can I go to extract myself from the hot zone, from the danger zone? How do I get out of here? So that's your first consideration. And if you can't do that because they're blocking the entrance or exit, you have to go to considering. Okay, can I impede them? Am I in an office? I can shut and lock the door and put my desk in front of it and get behind the desk because I know law enforcement will be here soon. And the assailant will either engage law enforcement, they'll try and flee, or they'll kill themselves. So that's when you go to that step.

And then what do you do with the people that are like, I need to protect everyone else that's here? What is their. What do you advise them to do?

Well, we call them sheepdogs, and they are the ones that protect the flock. And if there's people, I'm hoping that a good sheepdog that decides, okay, not only am I gonna make it out of this thing alive, but I'm gonna make sure all my people around me do as well. They're calculating in their mind and they're figuring out courses of action. How can we get out of here? How can we block that person out there? To create time and space or we don't have any time. We've got to prepare to commit violence against them. What weapons can we use? How do we. How do we position ourselves to attack them? You know, can we. Can we swarm as a group and that sort of thing.

Gotcha. Okay, perfect. And then the next one.

Well, that's the next one. Then, you know, if you. Like I said, if you can't leave, you want to impede them. And again, I don't like Hyde, because hide is, you know, what we do when we're scared of the boogeyman. We're grown adults. We're empowered. We're not weak. We're not going to be victims. And we are going to take action. So we are going to impede the killer's ability to get to us by creating time and space. And that may. That may mean building a blockade. That may be just locking a door, putting stuff in front of the door, tying a belt around the door to a desk so they can't open the door. Whatever. Whatever is going to make it harder or take longer for them to get to you because they know. They know that time is limited. And the government.

They have their own definition of an active shooter. My definition is anyone attempting to kill as many people possible in a short amount of time as possible. It's that simple. That is their motive. That is their objective. To kill as many people possible in a short amount of time as possible. And they know that time is short because they know law enforcement will be on their way very shortly. So they have to finish this, you know, finish this task that's. It's so monumentous in their. In their warped world that they're literally going to try and kill a bunch of people and then probably kill themselves, and then their life will be over. So they're not going to spend a lot of time trying to get through a barricade because they know that time is precious. They're going to move on to what, you know, easier targets.

So so far, you're. You've done the A with the, which is assess, the L, which is leave, and the I, which is impede.

Yeah. And so now if you can't do the first two and the person's right there, or you've got no other options, or you're. You think you're. You're in a room and you think you're safe, but just in case, if they come through the door, you're going to have to commit violence against them. And that, I mean, with, you know, absolute commitment and intent to eliminate that threat as far as going to. By taking their life, if that's what it takes. Because if it comes down to you or them, you need to do whatever you got to do to stay alive because you've got people that care about you that you want to go home to. So at that point, you're looking around for weapons. If you don't have one readily available, you're positioning yourself in the room behind the door. So when they come in, you can attack them. You can swarm if you're in a group. And that is, you know, that that one is the scariest one and the one that most people have the most trouble with because.

It'S not really in our nature to be violent towards each other. That's more created over time. I mean, we're capable, but it's not something that we want to do right off the bat. Normally that comes from some past issues that make it either to where it's easier or we want to hurt other people. But a lot of people really struggle with the idea of committing violence against others. And I try and teach them to be empowered and to understand that if I teach, if you're going to react up until the violence part, you have to act rationally, not emotionally. Because when we act emotionally, we react emotionally. Oftentimes we'll make mistakes. Well, when we're talking about life or death, we can't make mistakes, so we're going to be rational. But when the violence kicks in, if you decide you want to be emotional at that point, then you are going to. The emotion rage is the one you're going to use against that person because they would dare to try and take you away from the people that you love and that love you. So that's when you're going to go completely, 100% commitment to eliminating them, no matter what it takes. In my program, I talk about stabbing a pen through their eyeball into the gray matter in their brain, which will disrupt the electrical thought process and they're no longer a threat. If that's what you have to do to go home to the people that care about you, then that may be what you got to do.

Yeah.

And what do you think is the best way for someone to already precondition themselves to act rationally and not emotionally? Is there something they can do ahead of time so then when they're in that situation, it's going to be able to help them?

Well, a lot of that comes down to personality and experience, life experience, maybe training. However, everybody can get better by training themselves. And in my program, I do, I call it a visualization exercise where I literally tell everybody, okay, now close your eyes. Picture yourself where you know, somewhere where you spend eight hours a day. A lot of HR managers and risk managers hire me to come in and teach their employees or if it's a school or whatever. So I will say, okay, now close your eyes. Imagine yourself in your office or in your classroom. Smell the smells, hear the sounds in your mind's eye. Picture yourself and whatever activity is going on on a normal day. And then I say, okay. Then all of a sudden, pop, pop, pop comes from a direction that makes sense. So if it's outside your door, your classroom door, or your office door, or it's in the parking lot, but whatever, you now realize that those are gunshots. You immediately go into the assess process, you take a deep breath, you center and focus yourself and you start considering what you're and you try and leave first, if you can get out of the danger zone. But either way, now you're going to be picking up your cell phone and letting 911 know what's going on, because we have Got to get law enforcement on the scene as soon as possible. As soon as law enforcement shows up, the shooter diverts their attention to law enforcement. Diverts their attention to trying to escape or diverts their attention to taking their own life. Any way you go, they're now not trying to kill innocent people.

Yeah. I love that you run them through the visualization so they're able to almost already have seen it. So then if it doesn up happening, they've already sort of been through that in their mind.

Yeah, it. I don't want to say it desensitizes them, but it's not as shocking. Like, the more you. The more you see something, the less sensitive to it you are. So the more you practice something, the less shocking it will be, the less scary it will be. And the more your brain is working instead of the emotional response of fear or shock. So that's really. That's my way of. Again, I hate the word desensitization, but acclimating them to that type of response so that their immediate response isn't just becoming paralyzed in terror. They actually go, wait a minute. And I've got a survivor, someone that took my course. Her employer brought me in in 2014, and two years later, she emailed me and said, I was in your class. Two and a half years ago, I was at the Route 91 Music Festival in Las Vegas in front of the stage. And when this all went down and we hit the ground, I realized, wait a minute, I know what I'm supposed to do. I took this training, and she followed the steps, and because she realized she had the training and she was focused on remembering and carrying out those steps, she was not focused on dying, not focused on being a victim, not thinking about never seeing her loved ones again. And so the training is really what allowed her to keep it together and engage the situation, take action and survive.

Wow. That's unbelievable. So is the E so exposed? Is that what E is? Is that exposure therapy?

The E is for. The E is for exposure position. And the reason I put that in there is I want people to be thinking in terms of when we. When I think this is over, what am I supposed to do? I don't want to leave them hanging and go, okay, well, I'm in a safe place now. What am I supposed to do? Or whatever the exposure. The E is for exposure position because a couple of reasons. One, you may think it's over, and you may come out of whatever safe room you're in, and there's the shooter walking back down the hall or they're clearing a jam, or maybe there's a second shooter and now you're in danger again. Or, and even worse, you may come running around a corner and start a law enforcement. I mean, the SWAT team may be coming through, clearing the building, and you come around the corner and they accidentally flitch and pull the trigger and shoot you and kill you. And that has happened. So the E is for exposure. Position carefully because you don't want to, you know, there still may be danger. And you also may not want to get hurt by the, by the good guys when they come in looking for the bad guy.

Wow. It's amazing. Just, I love programs like this where you can just tell how much work went into you designing it. And I can't even imagine, like, how long it took for you to like, come up with each of these steps because it just sounds like it was so just like thought out to every minus, minuscule detail it.

Well, yeah, and thank you for recognizing that. And a lot of people have said that there's so much. Comprehensive is the word that I hear a lot from people that have taken other trainings. There's a lot of bits and pieces that go into some trainings. I went to four courses on how to teach active shooter before I created my own. And I took what I thought was the best of each program and I made it my own. So it's very all inclusive, all encompassing. And again, it's not just focus on physical survival. I focus very heavily on the psychological perspective and mindset of survival. Because if you can't, if your brain locks up and won't tell your feet to run, hide, fight, it's not going to do you any good to know how.

Totally. So this podcast, it's called do the Thing. And the thing is really anything that someone wants to be able to do for, from opening a business, selling a business, starting a relationship, doing a nonprofit, making major impact change in the world. And obviously this definitely falls under that category because they can really do the thing by either taking the program and being able to impact change if something were to happen, or by bringing it to their organization or if they're the CEO running the organization or a school. So I was just hoping you could kind of talk more about how people can do the thing with your program by either implementing it in their business school or personal.

Absolutely. And remember, you know, look, my program, I'm no Tony Robbins, but my program, at the end of the day, is based on empowerment. People need to understand that if they're truly committed to something like surviving.

And they go about the steps that they've learned on how to do it. Their chances of doing it are dramatically different. So my training can really be applied. A lot of my philosophy can be applied to other aspects of somebody's life when they want to, you know.

Go through a barrier or knock down an obstacle or something like that. But my program, yeah, so my program is.

There'S an online program that's easy to take. There's a 1 hour, 2 hour or 3 hour option and then there's also a 20 minute annual refresher course. And it's all based on a video of me teaching in class. So it's kind of like watching me teach live. But there's things like a survey at the beginning, there's some downloadable stuff you can have for free. There's a test at the end. You get a really nice certificate to hang on your wall if you want it. That's the online program. I also do virtual webinars using our wonderful Zoom, which now everybody knows how to use thanks to the pandemic. I can put up to 500 people on a webinar and teach them with an hour or two hour using the PowerPoint. But most people like the in person training. So I'm finding myself traveling quite a bit and giving. A lot of my instructors are traveling as well. And the in person is anywhere from an hour to three hours as well. And then of course I wrote a book in 2017, my book was published and it's called 10 Minutes to Live Surviving an Active Shooter using Alive. Because the book is based on, on my program, my presentation with some other stats and research and data and stories put in as well. But that's, I call it a survival manual because it's literally, it teaches everything I teach in my online and my in my in person program is in that book and that's available as well.

That's amazing. So why, and this is probably a dumb question, but I have to ask it, like why if when you're talking to an organization or a school or whoever you're talking to about your program, like why wouldn't they say yes? Like wouldn't this be just a no brainer for anyone to do and implement? What holds people back from doing something like this?

You know, Stacy, that's actually not a stupid question. That's an excellent question and I'm more than happy to answer it because if anybody listens to this podcast and is like the people that have turned me down, I hope they'll listen carefully. To what I'm about to say, I have had organizations, some, you know, these multi billion dollar online technology.

Silicon Valley companies. They're very, I don't know what you call them, very liberal, I guess would be one way to say it. They're extremely liberal. They're very pro peace and anti anything bad, including guns. And this isn't about guns. This is about the reality of anybody that's trying to kill another person. I've had them tell me. Well, because you have the word violence in your acronym, we're not going to use you because we don't allow violence in our culture. We don't let people speak about violence. We don't let people talk about violence. We don't let people be violent. And my response is, well, what happens when somebody that does not adhere or subscribe to your culture shows up to your culture and enacts violence against your people? If you don't accept that it's a reality and you're not prepared for it, you. The only thing that's going to happen is you're going to suffer and they're going to succeed. Now if you still don't want me to want to hire me, then I wish you well and I'm sad for your employees. But the bottom that the truth of the matter is, and I've got videos in my presentation of active shooter events. They're not gory, you don't see blood, but they are real active shooter events. And you know that the people that you see in the videos end up dying because of it. In my evaluations that I've always given, the second line is what did you like the least about the presentation? And always I get multiple people saying I didn't like the videos. And then on the next line they say, but I'm glad I saw them because it made it real. And what I'm doing is giving people a dose of reality. So that does desensitize them a little bit or it does sting their brain and stimulate them into thinking about the possibilities and how would they react and what would they do? Because most people have never consider it. Considered it. They will not be prepared for it. And when it happens they'll be stuck dumbfounded and frozen in fear and they'll end up dying.

Yeah, I mean I think that's why, or I know that's why I was so excited to have you on. Just because, I mean that's why I mentioned it in the beginning is I did the Kids for Peace and I still believe in that. Obviously I want kindness and all of that. But I just. There's got to be more, right? There's got to be more education for people to. To help this. You know, we're all looking in shock and awe of what's going on. And, you know, there's actually something that can help, which, you know, is the doing the thing part is actually learning. So then you know what to do when something's. If something's going to happen.

Absolutely, absolutely. You got to be prepared. Yeah.

So I wanted to. You talked about this a little, and I wanted to talk about a little bit more because the other thing I talk about a lot on this podcast or people that I have come on are those soft skills that you mentioned that people are learning through your program. Because, you know, everything we learn can get applied to other things that we do. And we talk a lot about flexing muscles, you know, here, like learning these skills to flex muscles to do other things. But, like, what are some of the other. Besides, like, let's say there is no shooting, you know, and they've taken your training. What are some of the ways that your program can help them succeed in life? Because, I mean, it sounds like with the empowerment piece, with the visualization piece, with the conditioning for the rational versus emotional, there's a lot of little nuggets in there that can actually really help people.

Yeah, well, you know, one of the big ones is I talk about my program being very goal oriented and goal driven, because, I mean, without goals, you're just kind of walking through space hoping to get to a destination. And. And that's why my book is called 10 Minutes to Live. During my research, I discovered that 10 minutes is about the. The longest, that 90, probably 99% of these active killer events last for 10 minutes or less. Virginia Tech, 10 minutes exactly. Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, 10 minutes exactly. 69% of them last less than five minutes. So I teach being goal oriented and finding a finish line and focusing on that finish line so you're not distracted by the naysayers. In normal life, let's say we call it the negative people that say, oh, you can't do this or you can't do that. You don't listen to those. You're not distracted by those people. In an active shooter event, you're not distracted by the thoughts of never seeing your family or the people you care about again. So I really think that being goal oriented and focused on, on a, on a finish line and attaining those goals, that's stuff that you can apply to business, to parenting, to being A good friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, you know, business person, whatever. So I think the folk, I think the focus on goals is a really big one. I also talk to people about, you know, the psych. I'm big on psychology and I talk about the psychological mindset and effects of certain stimulus. Like fear for instance. Fear is just a stimulus. It's how you process that, that stimulus and what you do with it that will determine whether it's a good thing or bad thing. If the stimulus of fear puts the hairs on your neck up and you stop and don't walk down a dark alley at night, instead you don't walk through it and you don't. Something bad doesn't happen to you. That fear. Imagine if you hadn't had that and you just walked aimlessly down an alley or you engaged somebody on the street or in a dark parking lot that, that you know, you didn't feel good about. Instead you, you like said no and you jumped in your car. So I talk about that, I talk about situational awareness and something that I call being proactively reactionary. Being proactively reactionary, which is kind of a, you know, you know, it's like jumbo shrimp. It doesn't make sense. Right. It's a contradiction in terms of. That is about having an imagination and creating a reaction to a situation before the situation happens. So you're proactively creating a reaction and you can do that in any situation. You can do it in, you know, you're driving home and you know that your spouse is gonna, is upset with you and they're gonna fight when you walk in the door and you proactively create your reaction while you're cool and you're level headed so that when they go off on you, you can take a deep breath and then start to speak with them calmly and rationally which will de escalate that situation. So there's really a lot of different kind of life hacks I think or helpful hints that you can apply to really many, many different aspects of your life.

Yeah, that's really great. I'm like being able to already predict how you're going to react when something happens. That's a huge, that's a huge thing right there. Sorry, I'm like really absorbing that. I'm like, that would be cool with my kids especially.

Sure, absolutely.

So another thing actually I just mentioned kids. I was wondering is this something you're ever able to offer to kids at all or is there anything there that you're able to do?

Many middle school and High school kids have taken my program and read my book with good reviews and good feedback. The way I present, it's real, but it's. I don't try and shock people, I prepare them. I never, I never scare people. Like when I have a presentation, I never have somebody I know come in through the back door, dress, you know, pretending to be an active shooter to scare people because I would never throw a baseball at someone's face before I taught them how to catch a baseball. So I don't do anything like that. So really my program can be absorbed by younger people and understand it without being, you know, creating PTSD with them. As far as elementary kids, I haven't taught a classroom of elementary kids. I've taught plenty of teachers. But if I was going to be brought in to talk teach kids, I would be very calm and non dramatic about telling them that if in certain situations they need to walk over to what's called a hard corner where they can't see through the window of the door to see them, put your desks on end, get down. If you have backpacks with books in them, put those in front of you and that type of thing.

So that's what I would do with smaller kids. But with middle school and high school kids, I've had a lot of really good feedback from my program.

Yeah, I mean, the ultimate do the thing is somehow if this could be almost like the fire drill where there's a way to pre plan if something happens. It's almost like they do it with a fire drill. Why couldn't they do it with something like this? Would that be too scary, do you think?

It wouldn't be scary if it's done right. Look, you know, remember when your kids were real small and they were first starting to learn how to walk, or they just were walking and they're running up towards you and all of a sudden they trip and they fall down and the first thing to do is look up at you to see what your reaction is. And they don't actually have a reaction until they see and feel the energy of your reaction. If you go, oh my God, are you okay? Then they start to cry. If you go, hey, good job, that was a nice one, then they giggle, get up and run away. So you have got to teach small children in a way that they can be receptive and they can absorb and they can assimilate that knowledge in a way that isn't scary. The worst thing we can do is create PTSD in a kid that may never ever, ever need to practice what we teach them. Yet they're afraid of it possibly happening. And now they're freaked out all the time. They go to school, we walk them through it and we calmly let them know that. Because we want them to absorb that energy and they want. We want them to react rationally. We want them to listen and watch and pay attention and do what the teacher tells them to do. They will have enough stress when the time happens. Let's not preempt the stress so that even before the situation happens, they're already freaking out about it. You know what I mean?

Oh, totally. So I have a lot of teachers that listen to this. So would their best step then just sharing your. I mean, they obviously can do it themselves, but would it be sharing your. Your stuff with the principal? Is that kind of the way that it goes? And then they can decide if it's just the teachers or the teachers and the students that are getting trained.

The teachers can take the program anytime they want from any computer they want at home if they want to, by going to my website and going to the online program. Or they can talk to their school administrator or their principal and saying, hey, can we take a look at this program? That's normally the way it gets done. And then they set something up. And I usually, you know, I usually have a long conversation because this can, you know, the two biggest teachers unions in the country tried to get active shooter training taken out of schools because of the mistakes of some of the other companies out there by literally scaring these poor teachers and kids by doing simulations without them knowing it was coming.

I usually have a conversation. I explain the program. I let them know what's going on. So if there's certain areas that we want to dilute or buffer just a little bit, but most of the time, the presentation that I give is the presentation I give. I've rarely ever been asked, hey, can you tone this down? Or anything like that? Because, you know, after the thousands of times I've given it, I've. I've got it pretty well dialed in to my audience. So I know, like, for instance, the presentation I give in Atlanta, Georgia, or South Carolina or Texas is different than the presentation I would give and say, Seattle or San Jose. There's different cultures and different mindsets. My goal and my job is to engage every audience member on their level and never turn them off by being political or saying something they don't like so that they will stay engaged. They will ingest this information and remember it so that if, God forbid, the situation ever comes up. And this applies to not just active shooters, any form of violence. You can use my program, but I want them prepared and remember everything so that if the time ever comes, then they're ready to react appropriately.

Yeah, it's incredible. I'm so glad we had a chance to talk today because, I mean, I obviously known about your program and.

How it impacts people, because I've seen it from the other side, but I didn't realize how involved you've gotten it through. Being able to actually empower people and creating visualizations and helping them overcome fear and just all these different aspects of it. I think it's unbelievable.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, and I'm always looking for new instructors. About once a month I have an instructor certification course that's, that's two days long. And I teach people how to teach my course. And I give them the PowerPoints and the literature and the marketing material, anything they want or need so that they can go out and teach the course. And I've, like I said, I've taught over. I've taught, I think, 115 instructors now in the last three years, all the way to Australia, believe it or not. So I'm always looking for new instructors that can help me. I can barely keep up with the instructors I have because the demand is there and it's a good program. So fortunately it's available to people. It's just a little hard to. It's a little hard to satisfy the need right now, Especially since in the last month the horrific things that have happened.

Yeah, I could imagine. So, you guys, the do the thing is literally you being able to teach this or getting in your school, getting in your organization, or just learning it for yourself. I think it's. There's so many things to it. So, Mike, okay, you are someone that always does the thing with everything you do. You took over this business in your 20s, you created this program, you wrote a book. So many other things that we haven't even talked about on this episode. But what would you say would be your number one piece of advice for people on doing the thing?

I think, well, look, the best thing that we can do.

Possible is to avoid these situations.

So.

I think if we can be a little bit more compassionate to our fellow man and when people are hurting, we can talk to them or if they're doing something that scares us, we can talk to somebody else. If we can get, get behind, get, get underneath or in front of this problem before people get to the point where they want to kill other People in themselves. I think that would probably be, that would be the best way to avoid the situation altogether. So is that what you mean by doing the thing?

Yeah, well actually I mean that was even better than doing the thing.

That'S, you know, that's stopping the problem from it even stemming right in the beginning because you're being compassionate with another human.

The problem is we're not in control of what everybody else does. So if we all did that, we'd have fewer of these. But not everyone will. So I think as far as doing the thing, the thing needs to be everyone needs training. They need self defense training and they need.

Response training in this sort of situation. So as far as doing the thing, everybody needs to get training, whether it's mine or somebody else. That's what I would recommend everybody do.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Also, while we're on this topic, I just wanted to mention fear just for a minute because you have so much experience with that. What do you think's the best way to either walk through fear or help help through fear? You know, is there like a big piece of advice that you have that, that you could like a little nugget you could leave with us, clarify your.

Question so I understand.

Yeah, so just with the amount of experience that you have on helping people.

Overcome fear, I was just wondering if there was something that you could leave with the listeners on being able to overcome fear.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Great question. So here's the deal. Like I said before, fear is a stimulus. Fear exists like hunger exists because if you don't eat, you'll die. Thirst exists because if you don't drink, you'll die.

Exhaustion exists because if you don't stop moving around, you'll die. Fear exists to help you get, prepare for and react to danger that can literally take your life. So when you start to feel afraid, understand you've got two options. You can allow that fear to disrupt your logical brainwaves, your rational reactions, your brain from making good decisions.

That will end up getting you killed. Or you can go, I'm going to accept this stimulus as something positive because I know not doing that will get me killed. So I'm going to stay calm and I'm going to process this information that's coming through my eyes and my senses, my ears, my nose, and I'm going to process it in a rational, logical way and make a logical, rational decision on how to respond to it. Because if the opposite will get me killed. So let's face it, if you're in a bad situation and you're scared to death. Just know that processing that stimulus one way can very easily get you killed. And processing that stimulus in the opposite way will very likely help you stay alive. That's what you need to focus on.

Amazing.

Yeah.

That is the nugget I was looking for. Thank you. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you wish I asked you how.

To get ahold of me in case you want my training perfect.

Yeah. Share it.

The website is activeshootersurvivaltraining.com it's pretty self explanatory. Activeshootersurvivaltraining dot com if you want to see what courses we offer, just go up to the top menu, click on courses. We've got the in person, the live virtual, the online and the instructor certification course. You can buy my book on the website as well. And you know, we intend to be the best known, most used active shooter survival training program in the world. And we're on track to do it because it's a good program. And again, this is the type of thing where it's unfortunate that we need to do this, but it's better to know it and not need it than to need it and not know it. So why not just know it?

Yeah. And I love how you explain just by knowing it. It's going to help them with so many other things in their life too. I feel like there's just so much, there's so many benefits to doing it.

Well, look, the more empowered, the more, the more obstacles and hurdles that you overcome, the better your confidence is, the better your confidence is, the bigger challenges you'll take, the more big challenges you overcome, the greater your confidence is. So the more greater challenges you will take on. So it's just, it grows, it snowballs and it's a very positive growth. So why would somebody not want to know this stuff? And you know, the first chapter in the first edition of my book is it'll never happen to me. And unfortunately there's something, it's an actual condition called the optimism bias. And really that's fancy terminology for living in denial. You cannot live in denial because this could happen. And it's not just an active shooter. Any form of violence that can unravel in front of you, you need to have the mental, the mindset and the, and the physical preparation and knowledge to react to that situation so that you don't, so you, you're not harmed. So this is the type of thing that honestly everybody, everybody needs. If again, I don't want to say mine's the only program. There's programs out there, but everybody needs this type of understanding and knowledge. And I mean, it could come from something like Tony Robbins or one of these other great motivational speakers to make you feel empowered so that when this terrible thing happens, you don't go negative, become a victim and do the wrong thing. You stay empowered. You know, you've got a say over the outcome and you do the right thing.

So good. Thank you so much for coming on. I feel really privileged that you're able to take the time and talk with me today.

You're very welcome. Thanks for having me on.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message atdothething.callcast co or email us at hello do the Thing podcast dot com.