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What do you consider like say your vision of what you're trying to accomplish?

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So I have kind of two tracks and they are completely separate. I'm an investor, I'm a

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CEO of a healthcare company. I've built companies, sold companies over the years. I've worked with

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large companies, kind of where I learned a lot of it. I was a portfolio manager for UBS for eight

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years at one point after I got out of the seals. And that's kind of the professional work track.

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And right now I'm working with this healthcare company and growing it for the next couple years.

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Okay. The personal track, I'm a writer, I'm an author. I published nine novels.

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Wow. As I'm sitting here, I'm four chapters away from my 10th novel,

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First Draft. So that'll probably come out next year. And I've got three business books. So all

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the proceeds of my novels are donated to the Seal Veterans Foundation, which was my intent for the

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very first novel. I had no idea I was going to write nine others. But once I put that out there,

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I couldn't really take it back. So all the proceeds from that, from all my fiction stuff go to that,

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which there's a special part of their fund that has to do with finding money for veterans that

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are suffering from PTSD or traumatic brain injury. But because of when they served or when they got

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out, if it was before the military, you know, acknowledge those concerns, acknowledge them as

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actual, you know, problems, physical problems, they missed it. There's a gap. So if you were

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in the military from like 2009 on, you're covered. It's in your records. It's a part of your

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disability, et cetera. But if you were in before that, you're out of luck. So that's what my money

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goes to a program that helps find consultants that know the VA system and get these people into

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doctors, get all the stuff identified and tied to their service disabled, whatever the event was.

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All the business books, I just, I use them to help leverage my professional speaking and my

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consulting, which, so the consulting speaking and writing the business books is kind of the three

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legs of the stool on my personal business side. And then I've got my work side. So my vision is

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to get out of the work side and just do, and do the writing and the consulting and the speaking

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as a full time gig. Cause I enjoy it. Yeah. I really, really enjoy it.

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Exactly. Gotcha. Sounds great. I mean, obviously you have to have some sort of a, you know, you

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have to have some sort of a steady income. I'm sure that that's what you basically do with your,

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with your business. But at the same time, you're saying, you know what, if this other thing works

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out great and this is something I like, you know, you obviously, you feel passionate about it.

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That's where you really want to go. I mean, strangely enough, you would look at me,

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I'm actually, obviously I got my, my actual business is I'm an IT consultant and you know,

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it, it puts bread on the table. I enjoy it. I'm not just saying I don't, but you know, my,

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I'm helping out with first class business because I got to Jackson Callum, who's my, who's a,

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he's a personal friend of mine. And he said, Hey, you know, I can really use your help. I can really

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use your expertise, your, you know, your background in consulting and, and things like that. And we

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really would like to have you on board. So I was like, well, I'll do what I can. And I've been

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working for the past couple of months and been kind of getting into this new thing of, you know,

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having these podcasts and stuff like that. I mean, I'm a chemical engineer and I basically just kind

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of, you know, sit down on a computer and just sit there, tap away. And that's about all I do.

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So this is really, but I love, you know, getting to know people and, and, and hearing the background

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stuff like that. But it's really interesting to hear what you're saying there. Appreciate that.

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Yeah. So that's, that's really my personal vision is to segue away from a regular job

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environment and focus entirely on those three other aspects that I really enjoy doing.

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Absolutely. So if you could, let's see, just look at, probably like I said, there's no banner.

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So what other, what could people learn from you from what you've done and just what, you know,

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what, what could you convey to them through, I'm sure you're speaking inside and stuff like that.

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What is this something you could provide to others so they can learn from you and, and gain that,

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you know, that, that vision or, or even just the motivation to do certain things.

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Well, so I wrote a book called Be Visionary. So it kind of codifies my thoughts.

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There you go.

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Second business book that kind of codifies my thoughts about

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that it's okay to dream. It's okay to, to kind of wildly, you know, with a sense of awe and wonder

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contemplate the future out to a horizon. That's, you know, at least two years out and not just

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professionally, but also personally look at it. Sometimes they're intertwined. Sometimes they're

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not. And that particular book, the essay kind of runs you through the first couple of chapters.

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It's okay to dream. It's okay. It's okay. It's not weird to do it. It's not weird to come up with

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ideas, even if the ideas won't, you know, won't fly or they don't pass the smell test. That's

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okay. What's really not okay is not coming up with any ideas. It was just sitting there

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and just conforming to what's going on and, and in bottling up those impulses, right? Now

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from a mechanical standpoint, if you're the leader of an organization

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and you don't have a strategy, like a good comparison is the United States versus China.

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So China's got this, this, uh, this road strategy, this, you know, it's, it's like a 50, 60 year

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strategy and everything they do economically, militarily, socially, fiscally, um, is, is focused

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and is aligned. It's coherent to that strategy and they're very patient because you should be when

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you're, you know, performing a strategic process. The United States, we kind of hop around

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administration to administration and almost to the point now where, you know, it's, I don't know if

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you ever watched, there's an old movie, um, where Clint Eastwood was a, a D I, not a D I, a, uh,

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a Sergeant in the Marine Corps. It was like the invasion of Grenada. Okay. And, and he takes over

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a recon platoon and every time he gets in there, they're all a bunch of slobs. And so he says,

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we're going to run every morning and you better be, you know, in a green t-shirt or you, you

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better be in uniform. And so he goes, well, it's a uniform, whatever I'm wearing. And so he says,

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well, it's a uniform, whatever I'm wearing. So they show up and because he's wearing a black shirt

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with a Marine Corps emblem and they're all in green shirts, he takes him on a terrible run.

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And he goes the next day, you better be in the right uniform. So every single day they're wrong

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until about the third or fourth day, they show up with every issued color t-shirt and whatever he's

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wearing, they put it on and then he's right. Because he, he's trying to teach them to adapt,

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improvise and overcome because they're recon guys and they're all up by themselves. They don't have

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a whole lot of help. It's just, it's a, it's a vehicle. Right. And so that's what I try to

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convey in the book that it's okay to, you know, try different paths, but think big and think kind of

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long view, because there's more than enough people out there running around thinking short view and

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thinking rear view mirror kind of about life. Yeah. Or reactionary. Yeah. Yeah. And then the

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third book be different is all about creativity and innovation. It's about the brain, how it's

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designed. Matter of fact, five minutes ago, I finished working on an article that's going to

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come out with two other guys. One's a brain scientist and another guy's a, just a super brain.

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We're doing a series of articles about kind of, I'm more the applied brain power element to the,

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to the series. And then the other two ones are actual brain scientist, PhD guy, and the other

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guys, just a real smart, smart guy about the way the human mind works in general. So the three of

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us, we get just enough soft and hard information in there that it's compelling. But the third book

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is about kind of the same thing. It starts out with it's, it's okay to be creative and innovative,

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but guess what? You get a pass if you're an adult and you don't feel that way because

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all these studies have shown that it could strip the way for me or, or pound it out of you by

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institutions. And, you know, and I asked, you know, rhetorical questions. And when was the last time

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somebody really encouraged you to come up with a crazy idea and raise your hand, you know,

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it's the exact opposite. You know, you want to be a big league ball player, you want to be,

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you know, lead singer in a rock band, whatever it is you want to be, you can almost point to that

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time where you uttered it and you were shut down by your family, your friends, everybody. That's

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stupid. And, and so what happens is over time you get conditioned. And so the first couple of

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chapters explain that conditioning, you know, you're, you're, you're taught to go with the flow,

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to comply, and you get into school and school teaches you history. There's nothing about the

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future in school. I don't care what category you want to pick. They're talking about future medicine,

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they're talking about everything we know about medicine up till today. They're talking about,

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they're talking about future buildings. They're talking about here's all the physics and engineering

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related to buildings of today. So we're all coming out steeped in history, but not really taught how

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to critically think of how to create and develop the future. That's why there's so few people that

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stand out because they're the lone voice. And if they have any talent, they make a breakthrough.

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Right. But you can teach that to anybody. And the point of that third book is that it's not a

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biological issue. It's not like, I was going to say, what is it when, what boys, I just forgot the

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phrase, puberty. It's not like puberty. You don't, you don't get to eight years old and suddenly

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there's a chemical change in your body and you can no longer dream or think, think, think about things.

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I no longer question everything. It's something that's, that's pounded out of you. So it's, it's a,

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it's a learnable skill. It's biologically in place. As long as you don't have any kind of Alzheimer's

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or any other kind of dementia or anything that's inhibiting your biology, you can be 70 years old

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and taught how to do this. But the first thing you have to do is you have to kind of shred all

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this baggage. And, and that resonates in my speeches. And I mean, I've given a lot of speeches on that

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third book. It's in presale right now. It's coming out towards the end of this year. And I work with

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best robotics, I'm on their board, which is all about teaching kids and doing these big competitive

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things with building robots. And the kids do that without any guidance, without any teaching. They

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basically started building robots. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you

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tuned into Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes

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continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more

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engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for

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giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and

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becoming a Vision Pro yourself.