podcast had a guest on it and she did it.
Cool.
Awesome.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
So this whole concept to me, look good and feel good to do good.
There's like an inner demon within me.
You know, and I'm going to call it that.
That says, how vain.
Right.
How vain.
And in reality though, vanity, no, this is about diving into the divinity within us,
like recognizing who we are and appreciating that.
And as I studied your message out, I thought and meditated more and more on like, you know,
how do we get this concept across?
How do I get this concept across to people?
How am I receiving this?
You know, vanity is about like changing your image, right?
Becoming something that you're not in the process of like dealing with maybe your appearance
and also how you feel, you know, you want bigger muscles, you know, against the fact
that it might be hurting your health to go to the extreme of size that somebody wants.
That's me is vanity.
What you're teaching people to do is to learn to improve their health and appreciate their
authenticity for like who they are, what they look like.
And I just love it.
I was like, this is awesome.
And you're doing that for veterans, people who've served us.
So one, thank you for your service and thank you for what you're doing.
Like do you mind just diving into that concept a little bit, the vanity versus the being
able to be confident in who you are.
Sure.
Absolutely.
Thanks first and foremost for having me on the podcast, Jackson.
This is a real hoot.
It's not often I get to be on the other side, right?
So this is, this is going to be a real treat.
So to answer your question, let me start with a quote.
It's my favorite quote.
It's actually on my Facebook profile and I've got a t-shirt with it as well.
I like it so much.
It's from Socrates.
So it goes way back.
It says, no citizen has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training.
What a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength
of which his body is capable.
So for me, it comes down to responsibility.
Looking good is a reflection of how responsible you are.
If you physically look good, you're lean, you're strong, you've got muscles.
It means A, you're able to dedicate time for yourself to stay fit.
But when I see a fit dad, especially a fit veteran, I know they're getting after something.
And that's what I want to convey.
In order for you to get after something bigger than yourself, the mind and the body are not
two separate entities.
They are the same.
And so yeah, we can work on our mental health.
Yeah, we can work on being more present.
These are all important things.
But for me, and from what I've learned over the last few years, that comes after your
body.
Your body needs to be doing hard things.
It needs to be healthy.
And once you have that as a foundation, the mind starts to follow the body.
And that's where I think fitness and health has a critical component, especially for veteran
health that's being completely overlooked and where I'm hoping to fill the gap.
Dave, I cannot personally thank you enough.
You can speak.
I almost spit my gum.
I'm going to dive into this like big.
It is very hard to shift my paradigm.
I'm very self-assured individual, well-studied.
I really know what I know.
I believe it.
And it doesn't make me hard-headed or stubborn.
Like you got to have something big.
And you just did that with the Socrates quote in a number of ways.
The aspect that he talks about us not as individuals, but as citizens, right?
As an individual, I might have it.
But I was like, dang, that's forceful.
That's like, who are you to tell me I don't have the right?
But then I can't argue with the fact that I have a civic duty as a global citizen and
as a American citizen, right?
As a community member locally, like I have to step up.
Thank you.
I can't argue with that.
You're welcome.
No, I can't.
I argue myself about that.
And you just shifted something in my paradigm that says, damn, he's right.
I owe this not just to myself.
It's not about the selfish aspects.
It's about me being a representation to others.
It's about me being as capable as possible for those that I serve.
Like, well, you said it, not me.
I get to color commentate.
Well, it's hard to argue with a 2000 year old Greek philosopher.
I like making arguments that are basically unwinnable.
So that's why I use it.
And it's so powerful.
And it was the Greeks that were really influential in ensuring that fitness was just part of
your lifestyle.
And if you look at the old statues of any of the Greek philosophers, they're all jacked.
They're all ripped.
Yeah.
Couldn't be a coincidence.
This bad bod is going to be shifting and you get the credit for it.
So, I'm not that seriously.
Thank you.
I'll get to be the plus to the veterans that you help since I did not in that capacity.
So with that said, let's dive into three resources as well.
Socrates is one of them.
We count that now.
But three other resources if you want to that can help visionaries stay dedicated, their
process of fulfilling their visions or discover how to do it.
Yeah.
Okay.
So like I said, off camera, I've got a lot.
So for me, I needed a lot of help, especially when it came to accepting the fact that I
was going to become an entrepreneur and I had a vision.
To me, the term visionary just, it didn't really sink in well with me.
It just had a negative connotation in my mind.
Right.
Until I accepted the fact that, no, I have a different vision.
I have a vision that actually I don't know anybody else that has this vision and I've
yet to find one as well thought out.
And that's not to toot my own horn.
It's just I've spent a lot of years thinking about this and building.
So in terms of resources, I guess we can go back kind of to the start.
It was just changed my mindset.
So my mindset had to change and it may sound kind of cliche, but it was the book, the four
hour work week.
Yeah.
That completely shifted by Tim Ferriss.
I was a teacher at the time.
I just more or less left the military and that book just made me realize, oh, you can
do something.
Oh, there you go.
You got a shelf.
Yeah.
I mean, right.
I mean, in terms of the tech and everything it talks about now, it's outdated.
However, the message is if you come up with a vision, which I had never done period.
So that book set me on the path of figuring out what I actually wanted to do and what
actually fired me up.
And I realized it isn't teaching, although I thought it was.
I thought I was going to be a high school teacher the rest of my life.
So that's one thing that helped me change my mindset.
Another one, another one, uh, relatively recent is a book by Jocko Willink called Extreme
Ownership that yeah.
So really popular duties, the Navy seal, by the way, he's got a great podcast when I was
having a really rough time.
I just been released from the military.
I was having a brutal time at work.
I eventually left my career as a teacher and I was suffering from undiagnosed post-traumatic
stress.
I was dealing with my injuries from service.
I had two young children.
So things were just spiraling.
My one through line, my one standard every day was I would get up every morning super
early around like 4 30, 5 AM.
I would go to the basement and I would listen to Jocko Willink on my TV and I would do some
exercise.
And that led me to reading his books and his books just allowed me to get a better perspective
on owning what is going on.
So I was putting blame on the military.
I was putting blame on Veterans Affairs.
I was putting blame on my wife.
I was putting blame on everybody else except myself for the condition I was in.
That book called Extreme Ownership said you got to stop that.
You're the one that is responsible.
So it shifted me away from a victim mentality to a very engaged responsible mentality and
that completely changed my frame of reference.
And so it translates it to my business too.
If something's not going well, well there's not many people in my business.
So therefore I'm the problem.
So if marketing is not good, marketing department, hey you got to pick up your game.
So that was a really important resource and it's an excellent book.
Very well written.
And then I would say lastly, this is more I guess nuts and bolts, but my favorite business
influencer right now is Alex Hormozi.
So you're tracking, you know what I'm talking about.
I'm a huge fan boy.
Huge fan boy.
So I've got the acquisition.com hat.
Have you got one?
Oh come on Jackson.
Oh come on.
I should have it.
I don't have it here unfortunately.
I need the vanity metric.
I need that too.
I've got the audible and he wrote about my first startup in his book.
So that's cool.
Oh, that's awesome.
I didn't know that.
That's really cool.
So yeah, no kidding.
So acquisition.com is his website.
It's got more, his philosophy is I want to make my free content so good that you don't
have to go out and buy any other courses until you get to your million dollar profit valuation
and then you can be one of our portfolio companies.
I love that model and that's ultimately what I'm aiming at in terms of what I want to do.
I want to provide so much value for the veteran population in terms of fitness and health
that they don't have to go anywhere else.
So his two books, I mean the most recent one I've got right here, $100 million leads.
Huge, huge.
$100 million offers before that.
I think I've read it four or five times already.
Completely changed everything about my business.
So you know, some are more mindset, some are more tactical but those definitely be my favorite
three right now.
Yeah, I love that.
I love the authenticity from what you can see.
You can't ever claim that somebody's perfect or that we know all their angles but there's
so many little instinctive things that Alex does that tells you he is sharing with the
world like exactly what he's up to and how he's up to it and why he's doing it the way
he's doing it.
It's rare to find that type of leadership in the private sector and John Lee Dumas is
another good example of that with Entrepreneur of Fire and posting his earning reports.
It's just like man, you got to love that.
They're willing to do that.
I think even if John had a bad month, I think he would share it.
He hasn't had a bad month in forever.
He's king of the world on podcasting but from what I learned about him behind the scenes,
he is that type of leader and Alex, same thing.
Talking about podcasts, right when we launched ours and I watched a 45 minute video I didn't
have time for like three in the morning because it was him and he's talking about his strategy
and when he hired his podcaster team, he told them like they wanted to know how they could
like keep the job because everybody in marketing and growth is constantly worried about getting
fired because that's what business owners do.
And so there's this like yes man culture that's horrible and he's like, all right, just stop.
He's like, I'm going to do this for 10 years and I'm just going to go.
I don't care about the beginning metrics.
We're going to do it the right way and we're just going to keep optimizing and if it doesn't
work in 10 years, we'll shut it down but like you're good with me for 10 years, be responsible.
I'm sure there's some values in there but that growth mentality right there is what hook
line and sinkers me to Alex or I'm like, yeah, he understands a lot of the harvest.
He appreciates it and builds with it.
So we're going to be right back everybody.
We're going to jump into a little bit of a break.
I'm going to get my bearings on some of the accolades of Dave Marl.
We're going to be talking a little bit about his podcast as well, the Hard to Kill Podcast
and of course, we're talking about looking good, feeling good and ultimately going about
doing good and how he serves veterans and now of course, through our medium beyond.
So we're back.
All right.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Calame.
I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
Hey what's up everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
It would really help as a podcaster if I did not have a Zoom recording processing in the
background while trying to host the show.
So lesson learned, turn that off.
Thanks for everybody's patience.
A little bit of technical glitch there and just know that if you're in the beginning
stages of what you're doing or even at the top of the mountain and you stumble and fall,
welcome to life.
That's part of growth.
So own it, keep going, be awesome.
We're going to talk about the sponsors of course real quick, give you some additional
resources that we promote that we're excited about.
In this case, one's a client and one is not.
Both were on the show, The Law Spot with Melissa Gray.
I didn't get to do the pre-show with her and so when I saw that I had an attorney coming
on my stage, I was like, oh no, I don't want some pretentious person who's going to condescend
with everybody and I didn't get that.
I got an actual human being who happens to be a rock star attorney as well who knows
that law doesn't have to be complicated for business owners.
I've been looking for somebody like her for years.
Now granted passively, I do take more risks than most people when it comes to my own wellbeing
in business.
I do like to pioneer certain things.
That said, I understand very well the value of being a wise steward of what it is you're
doing.
She is ultimately our chief legal officer at this point as well as helping us understand
how to help prepare better the business owners who are also trying to build up their legacies.
Keep in mind, when I was a restaurant connect, somebody trademarked our business because
they found out we had it too even though they knew we had it first.
We had a $20,000 trademark battle that crushed us and hurt us a lot as a startup.
In addition to that, Apple patented our software while I was there too and I was like, what
the heck do we do with this?
Thank goodness we did not waste another $20,000 on a futile lawsuit against Apple.
My point is, if you don't have somebody on legal counsel or retainer right now and you're
in the process of discovering that, consider her in your lineup because she's an absolute
joy to talk to.
She'll help you understand what you're doing and I absolutely love working with her.
In addition to the law spot, you got recovery unplugged.
Andrew Sosin came on the show.
I did get to do the pre-show.
I just wanted to talk to him for days on end having talked to him and seeing what he's
up to, helping people with drug and alcohol addiction treatment and treatment beyond that.
There's so many addictions we take for granted to our own dismay, whether that be Netflix,
whether that be some app that you're addicted to and maybe not addicted, maybe just play
that app a lot, you're addicted.
We're distracting ourselves from being our best selves and usually because we're in an
environment where we don't feel like we belong.
That's my one intuition from that based on a great Ted talk called Everything We Know
About Addiction Is Wrong.
What's really cool about Andrew is he's got over 400 team members now on this and he's
in several different cities and COVID pushed them online.
Now they create a virtual space to be able to help people come in and connect with it.
He's attended Tony Robbins Conference 22 years in a row as well and he was recently in a
mastermind on the Virgin Islands with Richard Branson and who was it?
Robert Kiyosaki, a Virgidat Port ad.
I just have absolute... I'm just amazed with everything I've learned about Andrew.
Now I know a lot of you may have an addiction or may not, but you know somebody who does
and this is a great resource that has a 24-7 hotline too to help out.
If we can help even one person with that, reverse their life, change it and come back
to a life well lived, then this is absolutely worth having Andrew's company Recovery Unplugged
on there.
If you're a musician, you'll really love what they're up to.
The Water Project.
They don't have a water bottle on me.
I like to have it for this, but the Water Project is my cause of choice to constantly
triumph.
I really love what they do.
I love the transparency they have around it.
There are millions of people in this world who don't have easy access to water.
I can run downstairs and get it in less than 15 seconds and I take that for granted every
day.
I don't want to.
I want to remember there's millions of people who don't have that.
It's our opportunity to be able to help people in countries like Africa.
What the Water Project does is they allow you to see like a crowdfunding.
You can see what you're contributing to, which community, how many people are going to be
affected by it.
You can see what they're building and you get to see the outcome when you contribute
to that community.
They track everything with social posts.
I just thought that was brilliant and genius when I saw it several years ago.
When I see these kids smile and celebrate water like my own children celebrate Christmas
Day, it simultaneously breaks my heart, but allows me to think, you know what?
I can have that type of impact on somebody.
Maybe financially we can.
Maybe COVID's hit hard.
You don't have the ability to give $5.
My request is that you either rock the mic or you simply share that message or maybe
you tag somebody right now you're thinking of who might be able to care about that, might
be willing to give back to it.
You might end up inspiring somebody who ends up giving $100,000.
You never know, but the generational impact that would have on thousands of people does
so much good for this world.
And so I hope you join me on that.
If you have another cause that you'd rather see us talk about and contribute to than by
all means, don't hesitate to drop that in the comments as well.
It's not a competition we can give abundantly.
There's 8 billion people out there who need our help.
And I hope that that we do a little bit to inspire you to join us in the process of trying
to do just that.
So we got Dave Morrow coming on stage with me.
He just dropped some wisdom for those of you who weren't tuning early.
I highly recommend going back to that.
The starting story with him was absolutely awesome.
He's helping 100,000 veterans lose 2 million pounds.
So somebody could boil him down to, oh, he's just another fitness coach.
Not with the philosophies that I just heard, not with what I see.
He's also got his podcast, the Hard to Kill podcast.
Again, maybe it's about personal training.
I think he's got some interviews on there if he doesn't.
Well, yeah, I see Adam Sheridan on there, in fact.
And I'm excited to dive in and learn more about that resource.
You don't need to know everything about somebody in order to bring them on your stage or in
order to engage and start building a holistic relationship.
One, I think you do need to be in a safe environment.
We're podcasting from two different parts of the world.
I think I'm safe with Dave.
Two, there's enough presence for what he's built to show that he is very much on an Alex
or Mosie pathway.
He's on a Tim Ferriss pathway.
He's on a, I don't know if it's a Bill Gates pathway yet, but what he's up to and how well
he's shaking his head no.
Regardless, he's maximizing his opportunity to help and do a civic duty to help all of
us create an even better world.
And I've just been super impressed with the few minutes I've had.
So let's dive in without further ado.
Dave, thanks for the honor of being on Vision Pros Live.
I appreciate it, man.
Hey, it's really cool to be here.
I'll be honest.
I mean, we have a common vision in terms of the water project, actually.
I just pulled up my old fundraiser I did with my kids.
I used to have a water project fundraiser every year at the high school I used to teach
at.
It's called Mr. Moro's Water Warriors.
It's still there.
It's still archived.
So I used to raise a few hundred bucks every year.
It's a project that's dear to my heart too.
So it's really cool.
Oh man, that's awesome.
That is great to hear.
Man, just you're making the bromance grow a little too fast.
All right, Dave.
So Dave, let's dive in right away.
What's your vision for those that you serve?
I summarize some of it.
I'd love to hear more details.
Well, as you put just so eloquently, yes, I'm trying to help 100,000 veterans lose 2
million pounds.
And the reason for that is because I believe that this new cohort of veterans that fought
the global war on terror, terror is the next greatest generation.
The only issue is that we're suffering from a lot of health issues.
One of them is obesity.
We're more obese than the general population to the tune of about 44% of us are either
overweight or obese.
So in order to tackle that serious health condition, which is obesity, we need to come
up with better solutions and those solutions require coaches like myself.
And so I've put here that I'm the engineer of the veteran renaissance.
That was actually a term that came up on one of my podcasts on the Heart to Kill podcast
where I feel that there's this new resurgence of creativity.
And I believe it's because it's been about 10 years since the majority of the fighting
ended during the global war on terror.
And we're more or less healed up or getting close enough to healing up.
And I'm seeing it.
I'm seeing breakthroughs in psychedelic treatments.
I'm seeing plant medicine, seeing breakthroughs in terms of business creation.
We are a large group of human beings that have a unique experience that needs to be
shared and much like the first greatest generation that came back from the second world war,
they got after it right away.
They got right back into the workforce and they built the greatest civilization in human
history.
We don't have the same numbers, but we're getting back on our feet and I want to be
part of the solution to help them all thrive because I got the benefit from physical fitness
because I was in bad way.
I had to figure it out on myself.
I don't want other veterans to have to do that on their own.
So I want them to learn how to reduce the amount of pain that they're in.
I want them to listen to some of the most amazing influencers, doctors, the planet has
to offer on my podcast for free.
So these are the things that I want to convey as strongly as possible so that this group
of individuals and there's about 22 million in the United States and about 600,000 in
Canada and then globally, I don't quite know the numbers, but I'm sure there's probably
a few more million.
How do we unite our efforts and bring our commonalities, which was war, to the point
where we can share our experiences, grow, thrive and have a massive impact in our communities,
in our countries and that's my ultimate vision moving forward.
I love that.
I love that you brought up Alex Hermosy too and how his acquisitions company is going
about it.
I saw his Facebook ad the other day talking about, I believe the ad talked about buying
your business, but I was like, model that.
That is a fantastic message and the way he was going about it.
I was like, this is so cool.
You remind me of the American version of what we're building too, a first class business.
I don't know if you probably don't know this.
My vision is to bridge the economic gap between North America and South America.
How do we do that?
Empowering Latinos with work opportunities and helping them understand the value of the
fact that there is a LinkedIn out there.
There is a Canva out there.
There's a Fiverr, there's an Upwork.
Most Latinos in foreign countries that I've talked to, all the research we've done in
the last 14 years, they don't even know that those programs exist.
There is an opportunity to get hired in those capacities.
They see it as the same exact thing when you have people who in the case of where they're
coming back and they've got all this energy, they've got all this strength.
Some of them might not know how to channel that towards a meaningful purpose, towards
an opportunity of their own.
You're carrying that torch leading the way.
I'm seeing the same thing in terms of Latinos where if they've never been given an opportunity
to exercise their skill sets that they've learned by using social media and really sharing
posts and things that are funny and all of that and realizing, wow, they're digital marketers
at heart.
They just don't get paid to do it and they don't know that they could get paid to do
it until they know it.
They can't believe it.
Then once they believe it, we can inspire them on a path to show them that they're actually
quite good.
They can be quite good at doing that.
Anyway, that's my side of it.
I love what you're doing because I don't have the time and strength to do both.
Somebody's got to take care of home base.
While I'm out there and I say somebody, all you visionaries listening, we're not excluding
you.
I'm including you on that.
We all can step up back to that civic duty that Socrates talked about.
We have an opportunity to do that.
On the personal side, shifting gears away from business a little bit, what is your personal
vision, Dave?
It's centered around wealth and abundance, truly.
I see it much differently now than when I was a bit younger too.
Whereas I would see wealth as fat stacks of cash.
Now I'm seeing the different aspects of wealth.
Being healthy is to me, that is the greatest, I guess, if you want to call it force multiplier
you could possibly have.
For me, health is the only thing that really matters because all the other things could
be gone.
But if you have your health, at least you have the potential to do something.
Same with my kids, focusing on health, making sure that that is abundant and we work on
that.
Ultimately, my vision is to A, have a very good home life, build a very strong family
unit, reunite elements of my family.
Families are smaller these days.
I'm an only child.
Who becomes family?
We can start bringing friends to the mix and ensuring that we have a full table when we
have dinners and anchor them in ritual and some really good family values is one of my
main things.
I want to be able to do it all over the planet.
I want to be able to travel.
Part of what I'm doing is to ensure that myself, my wife and my children can experience all
the planet has to give.
That is exploring things like the pyramids and going to South America, which I haven't
been to yet.
I want to touch all seven continents because after I got back from Afghanistan, I just
saw so much potential and so many experiences I could be having that if I was to continue
to think small, I just wouldn't do it because I would be focused on work, pension, house
and just not enjoy life.
When I came home, I had an entirely different outlook on life because it could have been
gone in an instant over there on many occasions.
That really reframed things for me.
I want my family to be able to experience that and then those that are in my sphere,
I want to be able to give back as much as humanly possible.
I don't want to hold back and I feel great when I'm able to return the favor and to
provide and to be there for friends and family.
That just makes my day.
Whether that's bringing them on trips or having nice meals, that's it.
I'm a simple guy.
I don't need fancy things.
I need experiences and ultimately, I want my family to have them too.
That's my personal vision.
I love that.
That is a more holistic view of wealth than most young people consider.
At the same time, I think the younger audiences, now that they have access to the four-hour
work week, now they have access to people who are publicly able to display that type
of a life, whether it's fabricated or it's real, it still has an influence on your decision
and what you choose to pursue.
I'm not by any means condoning what is fabricated, but there's an influence that's there.
The older generations, a lot of them are learning from a sense of regret.
Man, I gave my whole career to this.
Some of them live in bitterness and want to drive the younger people to do the same because
they feel it's the only way.
Maybe it's part of a protection process as well, but what you stand for, what you represent,
what you're doing, it aligns holistically too with what I want.
Some of us are also divorced.
I'm twice divorced.
Even though I had that sinnerness on the family, it didn't work out on either one of those
occasions, but it doesn't mean that, again, those of you who are divorced out there, you
can't gravitate towards having those same holistic family values and still wanting them
and instilling them.
The same is true of those of you who are like, wow, I can't really relate to a life like
Dave talks about it, being able to travel the world and be to all seven continents.
Don't give up on yourself.
Consider having an open heart to those types of realities because it is possible to overcome
your circumstances.
I think part of it is the book you shared, extreme ownership, having an extreme dedication.
When you have an extreme dedication to good things, that's not unhealthy.
It's extreme dedication to things that can hurt you if consumed too much of that can
end up hurting you.
There's just something about your essence, your aura, the way you're going about it,
Dave, that has me say, yeah, man, thank you for rocking the mic, showing people the possibilities
of this.
We're all going to dive into a darker subject right now though.
I'm going to switch gears completely on you.
What is your worst leadership experience ever?
This is, I want to put a caveat on this.
For everybody listening, this isn't about Dave's experience.
It's about him cultivating what story.
It could be somebody else's story.
It could be something you learned about how Hitler was doing things, et cetera.
The point being, if we don't learn from history, it tends to repeat itself.
When we learn from somebody else's history and experience and we apply it to our lives
like Tim Ferriss, that four-hour work week, we can use that to our advantage.
With that said, what's the worst leadership experience ever?
Yeah.
Well, I spent 15 years in the military, so I had a lot of different leadership roles
and experiences.
One of them is during the summer, we had a performance drill team.
Drill is military marching with weapons.
You have a lot of really interesting ones in the US.
The Marine Corps one is phenomenal.
We were trying to emulate that.
We hadn't really done it before, so I was in charge of that team to build it out.
It was pretty cool because it was very creative.
I'm a creative guy.
I had a great group of troops, but we were getting run ragged.
We were being tasked to do all kinds of extra stuff.
My guys weren't getting enough rest.
We were traveling around the country.
It was getting rough, so I started getting a little bit prickly and pushing back on my
leadership saying, we're not going to do this anymore.
We'd be ordered to do some stuff, and I just said, no, we're not.
The relationship became really contentious to the point where I got dragged into an office.
I got publicly humiliated and then fired from my job, which never happens in the military.
That was a terrible experience because I learned pretty quickly that you can only push back
so far until things go sour for you.
Now, the learning experience I had from that, so the lesson learned was that I need to be
a little bit better at politics.
I need to be able to express my displeasure in a bit better fashion rather than, sir,
you're all left out.
Diplomatic.
It didn't work so well.
That wasn't so diplomatic.
It wasn't so diplomatic.
It was so dramatic.
To basically touch on Jocko Willings' book, Extreme Ownership, he touches on this.
He goes, you're going to run into leaders that aren't the best.
That's just human nature, but how do you deal with it and how do you own it?
Why is that leader treating you the way that they're treating you?
What are you doing that is influencing that?
Are you actively engaging in conversation?
Are you creating the space for dialogue?
I realized, no, I wasn't.
I was just reacting.
I was getting upset and I was reacting to the situation rather than sitting down, crafting
a plan, being like, hey, this schedule is way too much.
I learned a lot from that because it made me realize that there's a way forward that
doesn't require me to be so on the nose.
I can leverage my ability to communicate and formulate an argument and be okay with the
fact that, hey, you know what?
I did what I had to do.
I was the leader in this situation.
Whether or not the outcome was favorable, I know I took the appropriate action in my
position.
That was the biggest lesson learned from that experience because it was pretty rough on
the ego, let's put it that way.
Yeah, I hear you.
I am very familiar with, I'm a lot like Donkey from Shrek, a lot like that.
When somebody says, when Donkey tells Shrek, wow, only a true friend will say something
that brutally honest.
If somebody who would have come to me as a leader and you were to say that, man, you're
really effing everything up, I would be like, oh, teach me how?
You're the one person who will tell me that.
The challenge of being that personality too is if we don't get out of our own way, whether
you go to realize that not everybody wants to be approached that way or likes to be approached
that way and until we learn to shift how we approach circumstances like that too, like
where we continue to end up ruining relationships.
On both sides, there's an opportunity there and whichever side you're on, entrepreneurs,
like visionaries, it's because you've got the opportunity to explore that for yourself
but also for those that you're serving.
Thank you for sharing that as an experience.
What's your best leadership experience ever?
Yep.
Another military experience.
Actually the picture is right there.
That's why I've got it there.
So I don't know if you can see it that well but that was the team that I had the honor
of leading in Wales during what's called the Cambrian Patrol.
This is the premier patrolling competition in NATO.
So it is brutal.
We trained for well over a year, selected the team, handpicked guys and it was me and
my good buddy Simon.
We really put a good training package together.
We developed a team that we're still in touch today.
A lot of these guys went on to have stellar careers but the funny thing is we weren't
successful.
We didn't end up finishing the patrol successfully.
So although it was a failure, it was still the best leadership experience I ever had
because the amount that I learned going into it and then on the actual patrol itself, the
lessons learned were just incredible preparation, managing guys in very stressful situations,
life-threatening situations even really tested my ability as a leader.
Although we weren't successful, I found Solace in the fact that the boys were like, you did
a great job, man.
That was you did the best you could do that was solid and we're still friends to this
day.
If I could go back and do it again, that would be awesome.
But we're a little bit older now and I don't think it's in the cards to have a non-military
person that would go back and do it again.
I think our post-traumatic stress from that event is strong enough either way.
The event was definitely a crucible and just the lead up to it and everything we had to
do to get that done because it had never been done before at my unit and it had never been
done where we just had an entire team just from my regiment go over and we planned everything
and got everything executed.
It was a big deal.
So when I reflect back, that was by far one of the best leadership experiences I had.
I love that and that is an emulation of a double down on your vision of wealth and those
relationships that have stood the test of time because of that shared experience.
I also love that it's based in what could be called a failure at the same time like
how many of the billions of people on earth ever even had the chance to compete on that
stage in that position.
I hope Carmelo Anthony doesn't hate me for doing this, but I'm going to use him as an
example on that regard.
I'm judging from an external perspective, but what I've seen from my basketball knowledge
is in his younger years, I think he was one of the big reasons why he never actually won
a championship.
I thought he really got in the way of his teams with ISO basketball and he made shifts
where he's trying to get on a championship team later and he started the move and he
was never able to make that happen.
But at the same time, I read in another, I think it was an ESPN that had a full article
about M7, his tech company, and he talked all about how his life beyond basketball is
way, way like basketball is not it for him.
Oh my gosh, for a basketball player to claim that, the world, let's set that idea on fire.
No, he didn't buy into the shut up and dribble concept.
He understands his legacy beyond the game.
I'm sure he knows that that legacy of a championship could do at the same time once more his humility
to recognize how there's a greater picture.
It's not about being better than everybody else as much as being your best self.
And I gained a tremendous amount of admiration for Carmelo and what his overall purpose was.
And once again, I didn't make the G League.
I didn't make D1 basketball.
So it's easy to point fingers and say, well, that person lost, that person failed and completely
missed the opportunity to appreciate the greatness of what was done and what you guys went after.
So now I think it's a freaking championship level trophy.
You know, like that you guys are even there.
Now that's my lesson, but if there's one final lesson you could share with the world, like
if this was it, today's was that opportunity.
What powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
I would say that you're never out of the fight and if you're a visionary, you're going to
be lonely.
You're going to be super lonely.
I've been lonely for a long time, a long time, Jackson.
And it's doing things like this that I'm starting to realize, oh, staying in the fight, grinding,
staying committed to what my vision is, is why I'm able to do these things now because
five years ago, guarantee you, I wasn't on any of these podcasts.
I wasn't interviewing world renowned experts on my podcast.
I wasn't talking to anybody at the government about my training programs, about incorporating
them.
That wasn't on the agenda, but I saw that this could happen.
I literally had a vision of it and it may sound kind of woo woo, but it's like it's
being manifested as I saw it five years ago because I just never gave up.
And even though last year was probably one of my roughest years in business and personally,
I just kept on replaying in my head, Alex Ramozzi.
He's like, just stay in the game.
You've got unlimited at bats.
Stay in the game.
The reason why people fail a business because they just quit, stay in.
And thankfully we have access to great minds like that now for free.
I can listen to that episode as many times as I want to motivate myself.
I don't have to call them.
I don't have to know them.
I don't have to have a special subscription.
It's free.
So for all those visionaries out there, and again, it's still kind of awkward for me to
kind of lump myself in with the visionary crew.
It's just keep on taking those at bats.
Keep on taking those at bats.
If you believe in it, eventually it's going to happen.
And you mentioned earlier, time horizons, right?
Well, 10 years.
And how's the expression goes?
You underestimate, no, you overestimate what you can do in one year, but you underestimate
what you can do in 10.
So I'm a long game thinker as well.
I don't necessarily think things are going to happen in a year or two, but in 10 years,
is my podcast going to be very highly ranked?
Absolutely.
I'm not going anywhere.
Is there going to be a book that I'm going to write that's going to knock it out of the
park?
Likely.
But that might take 20 years.
I don't know, but I'm not going anywhere.
So if you don't like me too bad, you're going to see a lot more of me.
That's right.
Hey, man, I like what The Rock said about that.
He said, some people don't like me.
Some people don't have good taste.
Leave that right where it's at.
And I'm going to come right back to your quote because who knows?
Maybe this is the last opportunity for us to talk about that too.
And this is a WooWoo channel, by the way.
If people want to call it that, that's totally fine.
Like this is all about vision.
And vision is all about the abstract and what people can't see and our passion and dedication
to and beyond.
Two things.
You reminded me of the vision that I had of my daughter when she was three years old.
She wasn't born yet.
I didn't have her.
Wow.
Yeah, no, I definitely believe and understand the value of visions and what can come forward.
It was amazing to see her develop in life and to be like, whoa, this was you.
Like I knew that.
And two, in addition to that, never out of the fight, going to be lonely as a visionary.
I've worked behind the scenes on projects for so many great young leaders.
I'm not talking Oprah level.
I'm not talking Dave Ramsey level, but I am talking Tim Ferriss level who is on his way
to that.
And my job at Video Power was to help Jake recognize who's scalable and who's not.
That was it.
I had to make that assessment and call because we wanted these 7, 10, 30 extra turns.
You can't do that for a brand that's not scalable.
You just can't.
So I had to tell Dr. Eric Berg, your website's trash.
It's garbage.
I didn't tell him like that.
I got a few little warmups in before I did, but that diplomacy thing, Dave, I'm working
on it too.
And he, as a leader, took great notes.
I was excited.
He was at 106,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Now he's at 11 million.
Oh yeah.
Dr. Berg is?
Yeah.
I've been watching him for a while.
I didn't realize he got that big.
He was growing at about a million per quarter last year before, you know, some, and naturally,
you know, people who grow, it's easy to shoot the bird and it's flying the highest, but
I believe he's still absolutely crushing it.
He was a phenomenal leader, right?
You remind me of a Dr. Berg, not from your brand being a trash physician, the opposite.
You're like already past that stage.
In addition, we were working on Johnny Dumas of Entrepreneurialist Channel, his Kickstarter
launch.
We were working with Dan Martell on the SaaS Academy.
We're working with Michael Hyatt, T. Harvecker, Lewis Howes.
And I had to call Lewis Howes secretary and say, you got to tell him to reshoot the ad.
Like, this is going to destroy his reputation.
One simple adjustment in the beginning of his video was going to ruin the whole thing.
And she, you know, she's like, what?
He's sick and he's flying out tomorrow.
And I was like, look, if he goes on, he says this line.
And I'll just tell you guys what the line is.
Think everybody's done.
Like, what was the line?
You know?
Yeah.
You got me under my seat.
I'm watching this ad.
And he says, oh, you're watching this because you're an entrepreneur.
Right.
And I said, no, no, no.
As a prospect, I'm going to say, no, Jackie, I'm watching this because I'm trying to get
to my other video and I can't wait to skip it now.
Oh, I mean, I like, who are you to assume that I'm watching your ad because you want
me?
She goes, no, no, no, stop right there.
I get it.
Like, I'll have him reshoot it.
Right.
It's like, what should he say?
And I said, and this was back when Jake was first person teaching everybody to say, hey,
if you're not an entrepreneur, feel free to skip this ad.
Respect the audience.
Give them the chance to bow out.
You know, as you push them away, so to speak, or allow them the space to choose what they
want to do, that'll allow them to gravitate back towards you and say, hey, wait, I am
an entrepreneur.
I kind of want to watch this.
So that process, right, the little bitty tweaks, you know, I didn't make Louis Housel's house
or Dr. Berg, neither did Jake.
But we found the leaders who were emulating all the right characteristics.
And so what I would say right now, and this is again for every visionary who's out there,
you need a little beam me up, come and talk to me because I do catch the value and who
people are.
But you have not only all the potential, Dave, but your systems, the way that I've seen them,
they're on track.
They are the things that need to be done in order to scale and make the impact that you
want to make.
So you got a huge fan in me.
Thanks.
I really appreciate that.
It's been a long, hard route just to get to where this is.
Yeah.
Well, you hit it, dude.
You know, you're going to be lonely as a visionary, if you're a visionary.
Tracy Childs was the first person to tell me that.
We were at, I was at Icon for Infusionsoft and Tracy Childs is the founder of Wishlist
Member.
And at the time I didn't know that and know what that was.
But we ran into each other in like three different rooms, just like passing.
It was kind of one of those like, what's up, man?
You know, like head nod situations.
And the third time we ran into each other at this restaurant, he goes, come over here,
dude, like I'm talking.
So I sit down and talk to him, Wishlist Member had over 100,000 courses hosted on it, online
digital courses.
This was back in 2015 or so before it really all took off.
And he trained Stu McLaren, who also goes out there and teaches people about courses.
But Tracy said, Jackson, he said entrepreneurship is so lonely.
I love these conferences because I get to meet people like you and we get to interact
and we get to see each other.
But like when we go home, it's like, I'm really relate to my neighbors.
My neighbors don't really relate to me.
I was like, so this is where like we pulled it all together.
We talked for hours at that conference and he became a super good friend.
So you again, you remind me of these leaders who are doing things so right.
And I don't know where you're at on that path, Dave, but that's the cool thing.
It's really hard to tell the difference between wait is Dave Morrow, that he gets started
before I found out about him before I found out about Tim Ferriss.
Or not.
So yeah, rockin it, dude.
Keeping your best self.
I really appreciate that.
That's that's huge coming from a dude like yourself.
So I'm taking that to heart.
Although I've had a hard time a whole life accepting compliments.
I'm going to really let this one sink in because this means a lot.
So I really appreciate that.
Well, that's great, man.
And again, you already did something huge for me with this look good and feel good.
And I hope audience this did the same for you, whether it was a Socrates quote or something
else.
We talked about looking good and feeling good to too good.
Do you have an extra two minutes?
Let's not go too far over that, but an extra two minutes to explain to the audience a little
bit further.
Like what can they do?
What are some of the steps they can take to make sure that they're going about that and
you know, with the path of least resistance, you know, it's hard to find sometimes.
Well, you said it already subconsciously steps.
You can literally start taking steps.
And when I work with my veteran population, so I have a program, I call it the beast,
fancy name, but ultimately you're going for a lot of walks for most veterans.
And I would argue most men is that this is a program that's that's geared for men dissolving
your ego and forgetting about how cool you were in your 20s when he used to go bench
press and do curls for the girls.
That's going to be a hard thing for you to do, because I'm going to tell you, no, just
go for a walk for 20 minutes every day.
Do it consistently for a month.
That's that's that's your that's your main mission right now.
And I want you to get about eight to eight to ten thousand steps in.
Can you do that?
Cool.
If you can start doing that, you're going to be more healthy than over 90 percent of
Americans.
Let me say that again.
If you walk every day for 20 minutes a day, you're going to be better off than over 90
percent of Americans, because over 90 percent of Americans don't get 20 minutes of exercise
bare minimum per day.
And I'm just talking low intensity steady state that's going for a walk, walking your
dog, doing gardening, no barbells, nothing.
Just go for a walk.
We would see a dramatic change in our society if people just spent 20 minutes every day
doing that.
You don't need any programs.
You don't even need a coach.
I'm trying to put myself out of business, guys.
Put me out of business.
Put all of us out of business.
Just go for a walk.
That's it.
I love it.
I am so in line with this.
It's so validating when the guru, I'm just going to use it, right?
When the person who's leading the way validates the reality of what we want to believe or
what we have believed.
When I went through my first divorce, my coping mechanism was walking.
When I was separated from my family at that point.
So I would walk and I would listen and I would get bored, but I had nothing else to do.
I couldn't work 24-7.
I love what I do, but again, you got to have some breaks.
I found myself listening to Ted Talks.
I found myself listening to scriptures.
I found myself listening to what's called general conference talks.
I was filling my brain at the same time.
Or I'd call a family member or an old friend and just talk to them or listen to them about
what's going on.
I did.
I lost 40 healthy pounds.
I got back into a much, much better shape.
Before this recent spout of continuous bronchitis, I was trying to do the same again.
Now over the last week and a half, I've been back to that doing these five, seven-mile
walks.
I got an executive assistant in the Philippines.
I use that time as well to talk to her at night and see what does she need help on and
how can I work on some training?
Oh, hey, here's some sales principles.
We go through these deep hour-long, three-hour-long conversations where I'm walking her through
all the elements of how she can help and how she can move her brand and her business forward
as well as move our brand forward.
There's lots of things that you can do besides come up with a reason not to do it.
That is something you can choose to do as well.
But 10,000 steps.
Now, if I would just add 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups to that as well per day, I would
have a six-pack.
It wouldn't be hard to do.
That's what I was doing back then too.
It did get me real close.
Well, to add one last thing too, you can see in the back here I've got a logo here.
That's an app that I'm helping build out as well and it's for the veteran population.
It's called Voluntold because it's a term we use in the military where you get voluntold
to do things like, hey, we need volunteers, but it's like, hey, you're doing it.
We're kind of ordering you, but we can't, so you're doing it anyways.
We're volunteering veterans to start walking again and it's a game.
The goal is to gamify things.
A Pokemon Go for veteran health?
You got it.
You read it.
You know exactly what I'm talking about.
The reason for that is because if you can start that, like in Anima Sano, Corporate Sano,
kind of touching back to what we started with, a sound mind and a sound body, you can dramatically
affect your neurochemistry if you just start going for a walk.
Imagine it's fun.
Imagine you get points and imagine you can compete against your friends.
We're so fired up about this project and we're hoping to have the phase one release by the
end of this year that this is going to be one of those signature projects that I was
so really fired up to be a part of when me and my buddy kind of came to the moment where
we had the vision together.
We're like, why don't we do this?
We can do this.
So this is kind of like our pet project and I can't wait to have more info for everybody
coming down the pipe.
Likewise, I love that.
That's amazing.
So I hope it was okay that I showed that and pulled that out.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, we're getting close.
We're getting close to getting our app kind of fully built out.
So we're going to start the hard marketing process very soon.
We are too at ablehealth.us.
So we'll have to talk about the overlap on those because there's some awesome opportunities.
Visionaries who are listening in, we will have the action steps on the landing page
so you know what steps you can take next.
Of course, you can reach out to Dave and myself at any time.
You can also leave a comment if you want to ask a question there.
We're happy to dive in and make sure those are attended to.
Most importantly for you though, as a visionary, I'd like to extend an invitation to click
on the button at the top that says, be our guest.
If you've got a vision that you want to get out into the world and you want to help people
with, then don't hesitate to come on our stage and rock the mic with us.
It doesn't matter if you're celebrity status.
You're Natalie Portman, you're Jim Carrey, or you're John Doe and you're like, man, I
don't know if they would want me.
Give us a shot.
Give us a chance to see and explore your vision.
It might be the catalyst for you to take it even further or you might just end up blessing
more than two lives and mine included.
And I hope you want to do that.
So feel free to like, comment, subscribe, and by the way, Jim Carrey, Natalie Portman,
if you heard that, we would also love to have you on the show as well.
So definitely feel free to apply and thank you guys for joining us on the show.
Take care, everybody.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time
and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision.