Podcast episode

Episode 8: Why Things Always Go Wrong: The Peter Prinicple

Hosted by Chris Albert

The Warrior Soul Podcast

Transcript~94 min · Chris Albert, Randy & Jeff

Machine-generated from the episode audio and lightly edited — may contain errors.

Chris Albert

Good afternoon. Welcome to the Warrior Soul Podcast. This is episode eight. Today is a really special episode of the Warrior Soul Podcast because I've never actually had guests on this show before. And I searched and I searched for people to like me and finally found two guys named Jeff and Randy.

And they're from the AlphaCast, which is another veteran run podcast. And I'm gonna introduce them in a second. But first, I wanna get into today's subject matter. And a couple of months ago, I put out a survey to the veteran community. My main point in doing this survey was to try to find some of the common struggles that we see.

And so the question was, what is your greatest struggle? What are you currently struggling with the most? And so I'm gonna read you a few of those answers, and then we're gonna get into today's subject matter. First one is this. One of my biggest struggles is keeping a job.

I do well in advance, learn and build character amongst my counterparts than my higher staff than my higher staff superiors. Yet with this outcome, I have noticed that I am the first to be laid off or dismissed to being a kid when in fact I'm the age of 29 with salt and peppered hair. I'm usually pressed aside because of my young looking demeanor, that I'm a child or a young man knowing nothing until the subject arrives over my military tattoos and short frank answers my service. Afterwards, since that moment, either highly revered or treated as if I might snap at any moment because I'm a veteran. Always with this situation, I know that I am doomed for a layoff or slotted to be transferred to less work, less job sites.

It always seems I may have just kept my head down if I just kept my head down, I would have been alright. Yet on the other hand, with my salty, crusty veteran outlook, I strive through I strive through it till they know that I am not giving up, until I get back to the mix of work and won't give up so easily. Six years after my separation, I still haven't found the camaraderie as I did with in my unit, squad, and team. I usually end my day with phrase of the day equaling what could say, expletive, deleted. I'll just say it.

Fuck. Fuck my life. That is what my struggle is like while working, looking for work or whatever. Here's another response. Basically, I feel like I'm not pretty much doing anything good anymore.

Like being deployed, we were helping people and protecting our great nation. And I don't feel that anymore. I just live day to day. And it's the same thing over and over with my job and life. And in turn, I feel depressed.

Let's go to the next one. I've been home for nine years. I have struggles with PTSD and depression. I sought help from the VA, took meds, received counseling. I got to a point where I was functioning without meds.

My marriage failed. I was knocking the ball out of the park at work, but they kept giving me more and more responsibilities. I cracked at work and went from a hard charger to a terminal lance. For those of you who don't know what a terminal lance is, basically, it's an e three who is not going to rise above that rank. I had a breakdown after my mom was diagnosed with cancer.

My dad's health declined. My wife tried taking my son away. The Iraq dreams came back about a year ago. I started having episodes of hypervigilance, scanning the grocery store parking lot, knowing I'm not in Iraq, but completely feeling like I'm in another combat patrol. My arms weren't postured as if I was holding a rifle, but I had a sensation that I was at the low ready.

I wake up at night sometimes and reach for my service rifle, etcetera. I now have extreme anxiety issues. I've been in treatment again for about nine months. I did have a period where I was drinking more than I was comfortable with, but I come from a family of addiction. I forced myself to stop.

I'm barely capable at work any longer. I leave sometimes because of panic attacks. This fucking sucks. Here's the next one. For me, the hardest part has been transitioning from the marine corps to civilian.

We handle things differently and expect institutions as well as older adults to have a professional sense about Learning to adapt to their chaos and lack or organization at times is frustrating. During the summer, I attended a course at a university. And I was I was told I was too rigid, too bossy, and was almost like Jekyll and Hyde in my personalities. This does not mean I possess multiple personalities, but I do not put but I do put on different hats for different occasions. As marines, we were taught to be professional, but we also understand that there's a time and place for play.

My husband is currently a marine, and so at home, we talk to each other in a language we both understand. However, the outside world doesn't talk or act in this manner. As a veteran, you almost feel closer connection with veterans, active duty, and patriots because they understand you more. That's just a few of the responses I got. And as we all take this journey, we are all going to run into what seem like walls, what seem like impenetrable force fields that keep us from moving forward, that keep us from moving towards our goals, that keep us from being happy, and that keep us from being comfortable in our own skin.

Today, we're gonna talk a little bit about a book called the Peter Principle. And as we go through this book, I want you to understand something about it. The Peter Principle is a theory made by a social scientist. And as a former social scientist, I can tell you this. When we talk about theory, we're not talking about a measure of reality.

We're talking about a pattern that's observed. And this pattern doesn't necessarily speak to reality. It just helps us to understand reality a little bit better. The book itself is very insightful, though it is a little bit heavy on the social science at times. But what I want you to take a grasp of as Jeff, Randy, and I are talking about this is that you are not necessarily trapped in anything.

You might feel like you are, but you're not. And the reason is because of something we're gonna find in the Peter Principle. Most of your holdbacks in life are because you yourself have to grow. You yourself have to move forward and become a stronger and better human being if you're gonna get over a lot of these things. And so rather than sitting there and saying I'm trapped. Rather than sitting there and saying the world doesn't love me. The world doesn't like me.

The world wants me to fail. You have to understand something about the world. The world is always gonna act like the world. You on the other hand, you have a job, and that is to learn about the world. And in turn, to learn about yourself and how you can strengthen yourself in order to get to the point where the world doesn't seem like a scary place anymore.

So with that, before we get into this conversation, I wanna introduce my two companions on this show. They are Jeff and Randy, and they run a veteran oriented podcast named AlphaCast, which I had the pleasure of being guest on last week. Jeff was a he did six years in the air force. He was at Elmendorf air force base, and he did three years at Fort Polk. He got out as a staff sergeant.

The Alpha cast is his fourth business effort, and he's been everything from a car salesman to a wildland firefighter. And he's a father to two girls. Randy is a United States Marine Corps veteran. And he was in the air wing. Currently, Randy works as a government contractor, and he is somewhere overseas.

What rank did you get out get out as, Randy?

Randy

I was a sergeant when I got out. K.

Chris Albert

Randy was a sergeant when he got out. And by the end of his enlistment, he was a crew chief and aerial observer gunner. So both these guys have been out there in the world for a while. And what I wanna do is just have Jeff and Randy talk a little bit about their podcast, what they're about, and what kind of message they're trying to bring to veterans in the wider community. So Jeff or Randy, take it away.

Jeff

Yeah. Well, hey. This is Jeff speaking, by the way, but thank you very much for having us on your show. I really appreciate it. As far as the AlphaCast, you know, here a couple of months ago, I basically decided there were a whole lot of voices out there that are representing the veteran community, but I don't think they represent the veteran community in a very positive light.

So what I decided was that Randy and I needed to start a podcast in an effort to try and reach out to veterans who might be in a period of transition. Somebody that's maybe gotten out of the military or like your first respondent that you read to your survey there. Somebody that's been laid off of jobs or whatever the case may be, and just try to remind them that you're not a failure, you're not different, you're not inhuman, you are extremely skilled, extremely capable, and you can go on and take life by the balls. And so that's really been our message. And something I'll say is our episode zero, if somebody wants to learn a little bit more about the AlphaCast, they can find us on SoundCloud, AlphaCast Media.

But episode zero explains it really well. And I think that between Randy and I, we have some pretty valid experience about what it takes to kind of fall into civilian life.

Chris Albert

Awesome.

Chris Albert

Definitely. And and, you know, we had our conversations last week about what we thought was going on in the veteran community and some of these different types of negative influencers that we see. You know, the the guys who were kind of making PTSD cool. The guys who are kind of making being an asshole cool. And, you know, I've got love for all of them.

Mean, if they're going out there and they're putting their voice out there, awesome. At the same time, you have to question yourself and you have to think, is this really helping the community? Is this really helping veterans move forward? Is this really helping veterans to advance as a class? And when it comes down to it in my mind, I think that it's really a bunch of guys saying, you know what?

The world is the problem. We're not the problem. And when I say we're not the problem, I'm not accusing veterans of being a problem in and of themselves. What I'm saying is that you have it within your control to grow. You have it within your control to change.

And that's something I really wanna get into today with the Peter Principle and this material. Randy, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with AlphaCast.

Randy

Basically, just like Jeff said, he called me up one day and gave me this spiel. And it was he explained to me kind of what he wanted to do through motivating vets, and it was just something I had been thinking about for a long time. For a little while there, I bought in the same sort of things of I'm not gonna fit into society. I'm gonna have so many problems. No one out there is like me.

They don't understand. But the problem that I had, and I think a lot of problems that veteran has, they're putting the spotlight on themselves, and it's not so much about each individual. You can as veterans, we can adapt to anything. We have. We've already shown that.

And we talked about that in episode zero l. You go to boot camp or basic training. You're not you're not holding on to how you were when you were 17 in high school.

Randy

You you adapted to this new way of living and moved on and progressed and grew with that. And there's I don't really see too much of a difference between going from civilian to military, and then to military back to civilian. They're still growing. There's no reason to to hold on to any kind of animosity towards anyone else because they haven't experienced the same things that you have.

Chris Albert

Right. Right. And that's a really good point. When we talk about animosity and we talk about anger, you know, a lot of the things that we forget is that going from civilian to military, we had that transition, just like you said. And for for us to think that that transition is gonna be any easier from military to civilian, that's something we have to put into perspective.

That's something we have to think. You know, it's gonna take some time. It's gonna take some work. Just like it took work to get into the military. It's gonna take some work to get ourselves into the civilian world and to be productive members of civilian society and to feel comfortable again.

So Jeff recommended this book and it's called The Peter Principle and it's by Lawrence J. Peter and Raymond Hull. And Jeff, tell me a little bit why you wanted to go over this book and what this book did for you. And maybe relate it back to some of your own experiences as a civilian and in the military because this applies very highly to to the military as well.

Jeff

Yeah. I'll I'll tell you that I stumbled on this book, and it's it's kind of a funny book to me. It's humorous in the way that it tack it tackles a specific issue. I stumbled onto it after I mentioned The Office, the TV show. I read that Michael Scott was the epitome of the Peter Principle. Basically, it is is that everyone has in them a level of incompetence.

You have a point which is your ceiling in any given specific skill set. So what I like to do is I like to think about myself in this type of situation, and I think about what my weaknesses are. Now I believe that in a lot of cases I have untapped potential. I have skill sets that I've never even used that can take me as far as I wanna go. But if I get into the wrong line of work, I absolutely have a ceiling.

I have a level of incompetence. And a perfect example was a job whenever I was a manager of a housekeeping staff at a hospital. I was very, very bad at that job. I got paid well, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit in the office.

I wasn't very good at managing that specific group of people, and it wasn't a good fit for me. And so I was at my level of incompetence. And this book is amazing in that it showed me all of the things that I was doing that were basically signals or signs, symptoms of incompetence. And one of the things that I've mentioned was letting papers stack up on your desk. And then I had a constantly cluttered desk, and if somebody came and they needed me to make a big decision, I said, I can't do it right now.

I've got all this stuff to handle, all this stuff on my desk, all these papers that I need to look at. The reality was it junk. It was all trash. But the book is there's a lot of different examples within that book of that same concept of, you know, basically these are signals that basically you've reached your complete level of incompetence.

Chris Albert

Right. Right. And the point of the book was to explain why there are so many incompetent people throughout the world. Right? And so this guy, I believe it's Doctor.

Peter, Doctor. Lawrence J. Peter, he basically came up with this theory and he said in any hierarchical situation where there are ranks, meaning like most corporate jobs, most government positions, most military, well, all military positions, people will eventually rise to their level of incompetence. So at some point, you know, for example, you could be an outstanding secretary or an outstanding middle manager. And you could have all your people lined up, all your sales lined up, but the second you get promoted to vice president, you're introduced to something new and something you're not trained for.

And so at that point, you're going to have reached your level of incompetence. So because you're not qualified for the job, you're going to start messing things up and your work is going to be crappy and you're not going to be a happy person. I think is one of the other points that Doctor. Peter makes. You're going to feel miserable.

You're going to feel completely out of your own skin. And I think that

Jeff

Well, it's any hierarchy that promote that promotes based on merit.

Jeff

And so he used a specific example of a mechanic. You have a guy that's working inside of a mechanic shop, and he's extremely good at his job. He loves it. He's an excellent mechanic. So they promote him to shop foreman, and now he's managing people instead of working on cars.

Well, the problem is he doesn't have that skill set. Maybe he's not as good at talking to people, he's not as good at managing an office, dealing with paperwork, whatever. And so he basically left his core competency, the thing he was great at, the thing he was happy at, because he felt driven to take that next step to get promoted. And then he, you know, found his level of incompetence. I think it's interesting, but it's so accurate.

Chris Albert

Absolutely. Absolutely. And and I definitely think it's accurate, and it it speaks to different patterns we see. One of the things that I that that I saw from it though is that because it is a piece of social science, it is almost a cold reading of human nature. And what I what do I mean by that?

I there's almost something cynical here. And it's in Peter's advice to for create what was it called? Creative incompetence. So his advice to people who don't wanna reach their level of incompetence is to appear incompetent at the job you're currently in. So he said, you know, if you have a desk and you're normally really neat, throw a bunch of papers on your desk, make it look like you're going out of your mind with your job, but you're getting your work done so that you don't get fired. You know? And and Yep. And that way you'll never get promoted.

And I remember back when I was a corporal in the Marine Corps, I didn't wanna get promoted to sergeant for anything. Because a little bit about me, I absolutely love being a Lance Corporal. It was awesome. Like, it was the best time of your life. And, I think for those of you who are in the military and listening, you have to understand something.

If you're a private PFC, Lance Corporal, e one, e two, e three, dude, you are in the prime of your life. You're getting paid. You don't have to worry about anything except being told what to do. You are basically set. Alright?

And so bottom line is appreciate that and be present and learn everything you can and and, you know, be a good marine, soldier, sailor, airman. But at the same time, appreciate what you have right now. Because once you pin on those NCO stripes, you are going to be in another world. You're going to be dealing with a bunch of things that you hadn't dealt with yet. And you're not really gonna know what to do with them until you go to your corporal's course, until you go to your sergeant's course, and and you're trained to.

But but back to the book, I mean, that was a really cynical way of looking at things in my mind. What do you think about that, Randy?

Randy

I don't think it was too cynical. I think it he made some good points. Every point that every principle he discussed, I imagine someone that I've known at some point or even myself in in some instances where it's not a level of complete incompetence, but can sort of be self aware of where you stand in that. And it's a lot easier to where someone else is competent. They there's plenty of examples in the book of like teachers, they started out teaching young children. Okay?

Then they get promoted to the primary teacher, then assistant principal, then principal, move up to a superintendent. And while they even were very confident up to the point of being principal of us, once they reach superintendent and they had to deal with parents and the district and everyone else having a problem with what they viewed as their incompetence, they kind of proved their own incompetence through that just by not knowing how to deal with those people in that situation.

Chris Albert

But what about the point of, you know, create creating incompetence so that you don't move forward or creating your own creating a situation where you're not gonna get promoted?

Randy

Oh, yeah. No. I just like you said, you love being a Lance Corporal. I didn't I wasn't a corporal until about three and a half, almost four years in, and that was a really long time. I got the NJP as most of us do.

I didn't do my MCIs. I didn't do anything that require that was required of me to pick up e four corporal. And I was at the highest level of competence as a lance corporal, as a senior lance corporal in the entire unit, you know, with the most qualifications. So I was very competent there as a Lance Corporal, but I don't myself down to make everyone think I couldn't get promoted. That's something I may not have realized at the time, but something that a lot of people do.

Chris Albert

And do you think that was good for you, or do you think that was

Randy

No. No. No. No. That wasn't good for me.

I didn't know I didn't know my confidence level, but I just I also didn't know my potential. Mhmm. And once I went on to corporal and sergeant, I realized that I could handle it and I had grown. And in that instance, it was not good for me.

Chris Albert

Right. So at that point, you you learned that you had to grow and you learned you learned some things about yourself probably from becoming a corporal. Right?

Randy

Yes. I did. Yeah.

Chris Albert

What about you, Jeff?

Jeff

I I have an I have an interesting take that probably answers your question a little differently. As far as is it a cynical take on life to say that you have a level of incompetence and that you should do what you can to stay at your level of competence. I would say that I do think that's cynical but I think that we have to embrace something. Anybody that was born from the baby boomer generation or anyone after has been told their entire life that you are a snowflake.

You are absolutely an individual and you could be president if you wanted to.

Jeff

The reality is you everyone has feeling. You have a place of confidence and you have a place of incompetence. But I don't think the key is to go out and find the thing that you're passionate about. I don't think your goal should be if you love singing, that doesn't mean you're gonna be the best singer in the entire world. I think that what you should do is find what you're confident in. Find something that you're good at and exploit those talents and drive that as far as you possibly can. I don't know if it's, it is cynical to say don't try and grow up. I do not recommend somebody don't truly wanna try and better yourself every single day, but you should try and better yourself in the things that you're great at and the things that make you happy.

So I think you would be an excellent example of that. You've taken fitness, which for a lot of people is a hobby and you've turned it into not only a lifestyle, but a business. And I think that's exactly what everybody needs to do.

Chris Albert

I think that, I agree with you on a couple of points. I think that you need to find what you're good at, but there's a few things whenever I'm trying to work with somebody and trying to get them to move forward. There's a few things that I ask them to do. And the first is this. I asked them what they wanted to be when they were five years old.

Right? To think about that. And then I asked them what they wanted to be when they were 12 to 14 years old. And the reason why I asked for those two ages is because when you're five, you're dreaming. Right?

Your mom tells you all this stuff and you have this kind of magical view of the world. When you're 12 to 14, you actually have you're at your prime IQ. Right? That's when you are probably at the smartest you're ever going to be in your life and your greatest ability to absorb information. And I'm speaking statistically, I could talk about myself when I was a 12 year old and I was a freaking idiot. But when I think back to it, what I wanted to do when I was 12 to 13 to 14 years old, I was really into fitness and I absolutely loved training and I absolutely loved anything to do with exercise. And thinking back on it, that kind of played out in my life. At the same time, as I went on in my fitness career, I continued to find that I was rising to my level of incompetence. So I think that society has these ways of trying to encase us into specific job fields. So to give you an example, when I was at the height of my training career, I was almost miserable.

And I was miserable for a few reasons. The first thing was this. I was spending so much of my time putting into other people. And giving, giving, giving. You know, people don't understand this about the the training profession.

When you are doing six to eight sessions a day and you get toward the end of your day, every one of those clients takes a little bit of energy out of you. You. And the more tired I got, the more crabby I got. And the more crabby I got, the more I started to go back to things that I used to do in the Marine Corps where I would I would almost you know, it was back when I was feeling like I wasn't really into being a Marine anymore. Like, I was just kind of tired of it.

And I was just kind of, you know, I can't wait for my enlistment to be up. And so by the by the end of the day, I was always just doing things just to get people through the session. And one day I woke up and I said to myself, I have to do this for the rest of my life. I'm not going to be a happy person. And so that's when I started to get into online training.

And that's when I started to explore my passion from a different level. And that means, you know, I started doing videos. I started doing the online programs. I started to be able to take on more clients and I started to make more money because of that, because my limits were kind of taken away. And then at that point, I also there there came a point when I was doing that that, you know, I had a 100 clients online.

And so I was spending all of my time constructing programs and I was sitting in front of an Excel spreadsheet for eight hours a day. And that's when I said to myself, you know what? It's time for me to stop the fitness thing for now. I still want to create fitness content. I still want to put things out there.

I still want to write books. But doing the online training has brought me to my limits and my capacity of being able to do it. And so what I I think the the big thing is when you're exploring your passion, when you're exploring what you're good at, you also have to make sure that you don't fall into becoming a technician. And because when you become a technician, what happens is you kind of pigeon yourself hole yourself into doing those things. You pigeon your pigeonhole yourself into doing the technical things that make up whatever your trade is, whatever your business is.

The best thing to do is to look at alternative ways of doing it. So you might not be the best speaker. So you might not be able to go on video. You might not be able to do a podcast, but maybe you can write. You might not be the best, you know, the best music player, but maybe you have a great, awesome ear for music and maybe you love music.

Maybe you can write reviews about music. And I'm going into the entrepreneurial world right now, and I I don't necessarily need to do that. But my point is when you're looking at your passion, look at it from multiple perspectives, and you always have to think of the end game in mind. Are you gonna be happy when you're actually doing the job that you want?

Jeff

Right. And, well, the my my take on the whole thing is that you you find your competency. You find the thing that you're good at, and then you you pursue that. And you have to accept that things are gonna turn somewhere down the road. And I I read an interesting thing and it was a long time ago and I wish I could remember who wrote it.

It was basically that a guy started a business and let's just say that he started out selling blue squares, whatever the blue squares are, just any product. Over time, as his business started to grow, he realized people actually wanted red circles and then he started making red circles and then he found that he was really good at making the best green triangles. His business evolved along with him and along with his skill sets and along with his competency. But if you find yourself in a place where you're uncomfortable, that's whenever you need to be able to stop and reassess. You need to say I'm in a position where I have to make a decision.

I have to make a change right now. Just like you did. You were in a situation that was uncomfortable. Your workload was too much. You weren't happy with your life, but you knew where your competency was and you decided to reassess and then change, adapt.

And that's what I think that veterans are particularly good at. Every single job that I ever did when I was in the military was either thrown in my lap or it was supposed to be the same job that I've always been doing but I was in a new place and the policies and procedures were completely different. So the key is to utilize that specific skill set, is part owned. You're born with it, you have it, you're raised with it, and then partly it's trained. I learned that in the military, that I have to be flexible and adapt. It's no different in the civilian world whenever you start looking at your life and your job. You say, am I competent here?

Am I happy? Am I doing good work? And if the answer to any of those questions is no, then reassess and take a new step in a new direction.

Chris Albert

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's a big thing. I I really think that flexibility is key. The the ability to grow, the ability to learn as a human being.

Now, Jeff, you you run four businesses. Right?

Jeff

Yeah. Yeah. Have.

Chris Albert

So so tell me tell tell us a little bit about that. Tell tell us a little bit about those experiences. You don't have to go too into depth, but tell us about, you know, the processes that you went through each time going through it when you realized one wouldn't work, when you would when you realized that another one might work, and and you moved on?

Jeff

Yeah. So how much I wanna go into it, I'm not sure. But I'll tell you that my very first business, I started when I was 20 years old. My grandfather, when I was a kid growing up, used to make and sell outdoor furniture. And as he passed away, we noticed the legacy was starting to go to the wayside. So I started making and selling outdoor furniture.

I was really, really good at making furniture. I was really, really good at talking to customers and making sales. I was really, really bad at managing the back end of the business. I just wasn't any good at it. And I remember very specifically one day I took a load of furniture to a trade show.

I had sold a couple of thousand dollars worth of furniture in one weekend and I was super pumped and I had this fat stack of cash in my hand and I gave out some to my help and then I put gas in my truck and I paid for my lot at the trade show. And then I drove to the house and I had all this money in my hand and I started doing math And if you counted for all the materials that I spent, the help that I paid for, the lot, gas driving there, I actually lost a couple of $100 on that weekend. And that was to me a wake up call. It was time to get out of that business. You can't hemorrhage money.

I spent a long time trying to figure out if there was any profitability in it at all. And the answer was pretty much no. The cost of materials was so high and the cost of new customer acquisition was so high that it was nearly impossible. So that business was really just a learning experience from being a first time business owner. The second business I started was a carpet cleaning business.

And I started that just after I finished cleaning hospitals as a as a housekeeping director. And I don't know why that I thought that I would be good at cleaning carpet since I was so bad at cleaning hospitals. It was a profitable business right out the gate. I made good money. I would probably still be doing it if it wasn't for some bad decisions I made in business partners.

But I'll I'll say I'll say that, you know, what what's more important to me is the alpha cast right now. And whenever I start to think about Randy and I's roles, I think that we're playing more to our strengths now than I've ever played to my strengths in the past, which would be, I'm really good at talking to people. I'm really good at being a a vocal sort of perspective. I think I'm a creative mind, but I'm really bad at the back end side of the business. And I've told Randy this, I couldn't possibly do this without his help because he's a lot more detail oriented driven in that manner than I am.

Chris Albert

Awesome. And and, you know, that's that's some gold right there. Because one of the things I've learned, and I I failed as a business owner too, is that with every business you do, it's like getting another MBA. It's like getting another degree. And even if you fail at it, with anything in life, if you get defeated, it's not a failure.

You get defeated, you learn something from it. Absolutely. You learn a little bit more about yourself and what you're good at and what you're not good at. And so as you're rising to your levels of incompetence within each thing, it tends to teach you a little bit more about yourself, which what you're going to be happy doing, what you're good at, and it also teaches you your weaknesses. So it forces you to start to look to other people to try to start to form a team.

And, you know, looks like you guys have done that. You've you've formed the team, and you developed, you know, this this alpha cast, and you are working off of each other and happy.

Randy

We are very happy doing this. Yeah.

Chris Albert

That's awesome.

Jeff

I'm I'm happy with Randy.

Chris Albert

You're happy with Randy?

Jeff

I I I want them to make a joke about he's also my partner in life, but I don't want anyone to think it's Yeah.

Chris Albert

That's okay. That was gonna be my joke. So so tell me, what have you learned from doing the AlphaCast? What what has it taught you about, one, about yourselves, but also about the veteran community and about podcasting, about communicating?

Jeff

Well, I'll I'll tell you that it it's still a learning process. You know, we're we're new. And as I told you whenever we interview interview you that we haven't officially launched yet. So we've done what I call a soft launch. We're on SoundCloud, but we're not really anywhere else.

So we're still kind of learning as we go. I will tell you that I wanna say the greatest shift in my mentality is I was so upset about the negative voices in the veteran community that I wasn't paying enough attention to the positive voices that are out there. I think yours is one, but there's several. I mean, you talked about Jocko Willink and then Leif Babin are are two great guys. And I'll say that recognizing that there are 23,500,000 veterans as of the last, you know, study that I saw.

And 23,500,000 veterans are out there kicking ass and taking names every single day. And those are the people that I wanna talk to. And so we've been able to make some really good connections. And I hope that as we continue moving forward, we'll be able to bring those voices to people that are in that period of transition like we talked about.

Chris Albert

Cool. Randy, what about you?

Randy

Yeah. Same thing. I there's not enough just the way society views us and the way we view ourselves, I don't think is, in the grand scheme, it's not positive. It's not popular to be proud of yourself and and everything that you've done, realizing the strength that you've showed and everything you've gotten past. And that's part of being in the military, one of the skills that you learned that you can't it's really hard to place a finger on and say, I have this skill. You don't realize it because while you're in the military, everyone else has the same skill for the most part.

But, yeah, there's not enough positive light shed on success stories in the military, and we wanted to bring some light to that. Kinda put away some of the negativity. I just like Jeff said earlier about everyone's a snowflake, we've kinda mobilized and made things popular and romantic in our society that should not be popular and romantic. You know, drug and alcohol addictions, suicide, psycho psychological disorders. We've kind of put this put this crown on it and made it like this nice, pretty thing that should be looked at in a a glorious manner, and it's it's really not.

And we'd like to put a stop to that by showing everyone the positive light of what being a veteran is about. And as far as podcasting and the business side, the only thing I knew about podcast was the few podcasts that I had listened to before. And I knew nothing about running a business, what that entail, but I've learned and it's pretty exciting to me. I like doing it.

Chris Albert

That's cool.

Randy

I like being a part of this.

Chris Albert

That's awesome. I and that's the thing. Part of this was you guys keeping an open mind about what you're gonna be able to do, what you what you would do based off of, you know, insight, based off of travels that you've had, based off of your experiences. And you you found something that you love doing. I wanna ask you guys this question.

Why do you think there's this tendency? Or why do you think that people are gravitating to a lot of the negative voices in the veteran community? And let just for our purposes, define those negative voices. Tell tell me what those negative voices are and tell me why you think people are gravitating toward them.

Jeff

Can I can I use profanity here? Are you saying

Chris Albert

Absolutely. I I said fuck before, so I'm gonna put the I

Randy

explicit wanna make sure that was intimidated.

Chris Albert

I'll put the explicit mark on iTunes. It's our first time doing it, but and I tried not to curse, but if you wanna curse, by all means, my brother.

Jeff

Yo, Phil. Well, it's just these guys that have this stay the fuck away from me kind of mentality. And extremely vocal and super angry, and they refer to every single civilian out there as a potato, which I get, I guess. You know, I do feel like the average veteran is a little bit sharper than your average civilian as far as when it comes to making critical decisions or thinking on your feet. But I I I don't understand it.

It doesn't make any sense to me. I don't understand the you know, a lot of the guys that that would have no reason to have PTSD or have any kind of trauma would be so willing to embrace that kind of I don't know. It's it's like it's like you it's like a badge of honor or something. You know? Like, you wanna wear the t shirt that says stay away from me.

I'm dangerous kind of thing. And it doesn't it doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't compute. I think that maybe a part of it is trying to fit into a community. And I just feel like maybe they're because they feel like they're displaced, You know, they they missed a brotherhood.

They missed the military. And and they and they they see this huge group of people that that have similar backgrounds and similar experiences, and and they're all doing the same thing. You call it social proof, I think that's that's accurate. I think that maybe they found somebody doing something, and so they all do it together. I don't know.

Randy

Yeah. Just The same thing. I think our society, like I say, I think has noblized certain things that are extremely negative. Not just drug, alcohol addiction, psychological disorders, but crime. Like, there's there's so many things that should be negative, we should look down upon, but it's it's become popular in our society to not be successful or to not rise up because now you've put yourself in a position where you face more adversity than the other guy because I can't place my finger on it or why anyone wants to be sympathized for or looked down upon. I don't get it. I think we need to get away from that as much as possible, not only for ourselves, but for the society that views us in a certain light.

Chris Albert

Mhmm. Just just to clarify couple of things and and all great points. One of the things I mentioned when Jeff and Randy were interviewing me was this concept of social proof. And I've talked about it before on this podcast. And basically what that means is that when you see somebody who looks like you, has your similar background acting or doing something, it makes you more likely to do it too.

And so, you know, we've had this issue of veteran suicide and, you know, the the 22 a day campaigns and things like that. One of my arguments, I said this in my first podcast ever, my first podcast episode was that I wasn't gonna mention it anymore. I didn't wanna mention it anymore. And there there's a few reasons. One, because it's not accurate.

It's more like one a day. But two, the the big thing in my mind is that if we keep saying this 22 a day thing, this this 22 veterans a day thing, it's going to make it more likely that more people are going to commit suicide based off of what we know about social proof. When I think about a lot of these types of negative influencers and what they're doing out there, I really see a couple of different things. Coming from the fitness industry and working in a business where I had limited contact with a lot of other veterans, I was working with with straight civilians in the fitness industry. I was heavy into YouTube.

And I have a YouTube fitness channel that a lot of people know me from. And what I noticed from the YouTube community was that people would do things just to be controversial or just to shock people, just to get more views. And while part of me thinks that a lot of these guys are legitimately sending, you know, help me calls out over the Internet. You know, there's some guys who are getting into this just to speak their minds, and I applaud them for that. At the same time, I think that there's some people out there who are mainly just trying to get views and mainly just trying to get likes on Facebook.

And in my mind, that's that's awful. That's that's not a good thing.

Jeff

It's self serve. It's not. Absolutely. I've mentioned this before, and it's it's a little bit unrelated to Peter Principle. But I mentioned this before about a guy named Grant Cardone.

Have you ever heard of that guy?

Chris Albert

10 x. So Grant Card what's that? 10 x. 10 x everything.

Jeff

Yeah. So he he said that whenever he basically got successful, the day that he knew he was gonna be successful was the day that he decided that he was gonna stop wasting his time with people who aren't driven, who aren't successful. I think that's something that maybe a lot of people should consider, that the people that you associate with absolutely have an impact on your mental state. If the people you're associating with aren't driven, they don't have goals, they don't have dreams, all they want to do is sit around, and they want to gripe about life and how it's beating them down. Those people are going to hold you back.

So that's our point. That's the point of the AlphaCast. That's why we're doing this. There are so many veterans out there who are successful. I mean, you go on the veteran business listings, and there's, you know, tens of thousands of veteran entrepreneurs out there, if not millions, who are extremely successful and and just happy and living life and making it happen. And I don't understand why we as a community don't wanna say, I wanna hear from those guys. I don't wanna hear from the guys who didn't do anything.

Chris Albert

Mhmm. Do you think there's an element of fear there? Do you think there's an element that a lot of veterans are feeling that Peter Principle there where, you know, they feel like they're they've hit their level of incompetence? Do you feel like they're they're afraid to get uncomfortable? They're afraid to learn new things?

Jeff

I I think that a lot of people don't understand what uncomfortable is. You know, we we live in a first world society. We live in The United States Of America. I mean, there are very few people out there in The United States that are legitimately starving to death. I mean, we're talking about proportionately.

There are very few people out there that are living on the streets and literally, if they choose to, well, can cannot get out of it. You know what I mean? There are very few people out there that don't have some kind of option. And a lot of times, the people's own mentality is what's holding them back. And so when we talk about entrepreneurship or whenever we talk about finding a new job, getting employed, if you're sitting at the house and you're comfortable right now, if you're sitting in your, you know, in your bedroom or you're sitting on your couch and you're eating some Oreos and you're watching, you know, judge Judy on TV, yeah, you're comfortable.

You're comfortable physically, but you should be extremely uncomfortable if you are not progressing in your life. You should be uncomfortable sitting on that couch. Your future is where the real comfort is at. I I tell Randy all the time, we're gonna get I'm not gonna say it, but we're we're gonna we're gonna have ladies on private jets. That's gonna happen.

Chris Albert

That's awesome. I laugh, but honestly, dude, make it happen.

Chris Albert

Yeah. Think huge.

Jeff

That's it. And You know? And and, you know, of course, whenever you get down the road, your your your dreams are gonna change. You're gonna moderate, and you're gonna say, well, I said that, but I was just joking around. You know?

But at the same time, I'm looking for a level of independence, financial independence, employment independence. I'm looking for just a level of security, but the only kind of security that really matters to me is the security that you can have in and of yourself. I don't wanna rely on some job that could come or go at any time. You know, I don't wanna rely on someone else to to feed me or take care of me. And by the way, you can work for somebody else and be successful and and and be fine and live a happy and wonderful life.

I'm not I'm not against employment. You know? I I have an interest in entrepreneurship for as myself. But for someone else, you work for somebody else. That's fine.

But you should seek out financial independence. You should want to not depend on your job. You do your job because that's what you have to do right now. But someday, your house is gonna be paid for. You're not gonna waste any more money as a former car salesman.

You're gonna waste any more money on stupid cars. You know? And you're gonna get to that point where if if you lost your job, it doesn't matter. You're not entirely reliant on someone else. And for me, that's the dream.

That's the goal.

Chris Albert

Right. And and I think that a good point, and and I'm gonna steal this from from Gary Vaynerchuk. I know that's kind of, what's the word, pop culture ish almost now because Gary's so popular. But if you are working every day and you have a job and you go to work every day and you're happy and you don't complain, you have my 100% highest respect above anybody else in the world. My my grandfather, he was an Italian American.

He went. He worked every day. He had two jobs. My mother, she had three jobs working when me and my sister were children. And she put food on our table.

She was a single mother, and she never complained. But if you are unhappy with your life, if you want something about your life to change, and you're not doing anything to change it, well, it's time. It's time to do something. It's time to move to something different. And with today's technology where, Jeff, Randy, and I are talking to each other in a network that spans around the world right now, none of us are in the same location.

It's possible for anyone. The barriers to entry are lower than they've ever been. So if you wanna do a side business or if you wanted to just get on the Internet, explore some hobbies that are gonna make you smarter, make you work better with people, make you a little bit happier, productive hobbies, then you can do that. It's there for you.

Jeff

Absolutely. Think hobbies is a good point. A lot of businesses are started through hobbies. People just enjoying tinkering with something, and then they produce something. That's, to me, the most important part of life, is just produce something.

Have some kind of output. I'm gonna go back to the Peter Principle here. Randy had an interesting point that maybe he can talk about a little bit better, but the automaton thing, you know, where the bureaucracy of government and the bureaucracy of workforce. You just check boxes. You you fill out papers, and that's what you do all day.

But your what is your real output? What is it that you're actually creating? You know, in in your specific case, Chris, you know, you're you're making the t shirts. You've got your educational platform that you just launched. You've also got your podcast, and you've got your YouTube channel.

And then, of all those avenues that you have, each one of them you're creating or producing something. And if you're in a place in your life where, let's just say that you have a job that is unfortunately administrative and you're not actually producing any end results, get a hobby. Do something so that you can express that creative outlet and find your competency in something that creates something.

Randy

Awesome. Radio With the administrative anything that's where your job is to check boxes, at least take some pride in in your work. From the time we're young, we're we're told to go to college so you can get a good job. But you have no idea what a good job is, and any job can be a good job. It's just as you said, Chris. If you can go to work and be happy and be satisfied with the work that you've done, you have everyone's utmost respect.

And that that's kind of a big deal that people don't realize. They think they wanna make the most money and not use tools, work with their hands, but they've never maybe they've never given that any thought as an option. And if you're going to if you're going to an office and sitting in front of a desk stagnant and not really sure what's going on, what to do, what your purpose is, that's gonna make you very, very unhappy. The thing that Jeff is talking about, the point that I had was about it's one of the Peter's inversions was professional automatism. So it's it's just about being by the book.

And people always say the ends justify the means. Well, in professional automatism, the means justify the end is backwards. So they'll have a checklist that was created to do something in a certain manner, but then in the end, the checklist is all that matters to that person. And to me and you, that seems incredibly incompetent. But to their supervisors, they may think, okay.

He's great with that checklist. He always checks all the boxes. He's a competent employee. My example that I had was Chris, I know you know exactly what I'm talking about. IPAC.

Are you familiar?

Randy

IPAC. It's got the administrative I wouldn't call it a branch, but there's one on every base. You have to go there when you're going on terminal, getting on the Marine Corps, PCS Mhmm. That kind of thing. First of all, I wouldn't I'm not gonna call everyone at IPAC a misfit from every other administrative shop, but I don't think exactly what you said earlier.

Chesty Puller is not happy with IPAC. None of you are going to just have him. So it's just saturated with this automatism and incompetence. I was getting out of the marine corps. I had thirty days of terminal leave.

And it was the day was before I was going on terminal. I submitted my package a month in advance, give them plenty of time. I've seen plenty of people who get screwed over and have it messed up. So I was gonna do the right thing, have my shit squared. And so I go in there the day before.

I'm going on terminal and say, hey. You guys got my my stuff signed? And this female PFC with the lazy eye and drooling out of the corner of her mouth comes walking up and, can I help you? She's winded from the desk to the front to the front door. Yeah.

I submitted my my package a month ago. I just wanna see where it's at. I gotta go on terminal tomorrow. So, like, oh, our our OIC hasn't signed it. He's been really busy.

Can you come back in a couple weeks? Like, no. I think you just missed my last sentence, the part where I said I'm going to terminal tomorrow. And she said, okay. Well, can you check back later with the OIC, see if he can sign again?

I said, hey. Is that him right there? She's like, oh, yeah. That's him. Like, hey, sir.

Can I talk to you for a second? Yeah. Sure. What's up? I'm going on terminal tomorrow.

Can you sign this? Sure. Yeah. No problem. And it's just like it's not just IPAC or TSA or any government bureaucratic administration, whatever.

You see this all over the place.

Chris Albert

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, one one of the problems, I think from a child, we're taught to check from the time of being a child, we're taught to check the box. And when you get when you get to school, you you're basically educated on working in a bureaucratic system because that's the way our schools were shaped.

They were shaped for people who were going to eventually take jobs, who were going to eventually work in very structured environments. The problem is when you get into a situation where the environment isn't so structured or or maybe the environment messes with you a little bit. And all you know how to do is that particular function. They talk about that in the Peter Principle. Right?

I think there was a teacher where the the classroom flooded and she kept teaching. She kept her students in there. But and the principal came in. He was like, what are you doing? Why haven't you evacuated?

And she said, because you didn't give the alarm to evacuate.

Chris Albert

That's a that's something we see. That's something we see amongst people in a highly bureaucratic organizations because they get conditioned. They get conditioned to certain things and they're conditioned to their function.

Randy

Of our Not jobs common sense.

Chris Albert

What was that?

Randy

Not common sense.

Chris Albert

Right. They get rid of all common sense. And I, you know, we've seen that, you know, with PFCs and privates just getting out of boot camp. You know, they they have problems just talking to people or or or putting sense sentences together sometimes like I am right now. You know, they almost don't act like human beings anymore.

And, you know, you have to take some time with them once they get out in the fleet to make them into human beings again, make them into critical thinkers again. And when you go through SOI, that gives you a little bit of a period there. But usually when people get stressed, that's when this type of thing starts to come in. You know, they start to make these really dumb errors that if they had any common sense whatsoever, they they wouldn't make. At the same time, I think that all of us as human beings, not just veterans, but as human beings, what we have to do is really look at ourselves and find these things.

Find where we're lacking common sense. And put ourselves out there into that almost unsure environment from time to time in order to develop the skills necessary to adapt, to take on whatever the world wants to throw at us. You know? And I give the example of like bodybuilders a lot of time. You put a bodybuilder in a squat rack or doing a Smith machine squat.

That bodybuilder is probably going to be able to do, you know, 500, 600 pounds. You put that bodybuilder into an Olympic front squat position where he's gotta use some thoracic extension. The environment's a bit different. And so he's not gonna be able to do very much at all. And so for those of us who are working in these controlled environments or living in a bubble, you know, any of you college students out there who are currently doing your four years at school, or any of you veterans who left the military to go to college, you got to understand that's a bubble as well.

And that's someplace that you're gonna get really used to. But once you get out into the world, it's gonna be a little bit different. And if you're just getting up with your enlistment and you're about to head head up in the world, you have to understand that the world is gonna be a little bit different. But you have to steal yourself toward that, and you have to understand that if the world's different, it's not the world's fault. It's you.

You gotta grow. You gotta learn things. You've got to to put yourself in situations that are gonna teach you.

Jeff

Absolutely. Something that I say, it's right along with what I said earlier on, is that you have to find your competency. The only way that you're going to find what you're good at, the only way you're to find your strengths and your aptitudes, is also find your weaknesses. You have to be defeated, just like I was in business early on. And you also have to be kicked in the teeth every now and again to learn exactly how strong you are.

And then whenever you're able to dial in and find your specific strengths, now you can really start seeking what I think is true happiness. You know, not just a level of comfort, but a level of driven, goal oriented labor that will eventually provide real comfort down the road. And I think that's key. Know, whenever you get out of the military, it is an extremely different environment. The people that you talk to don't think the same way.

They don't talk the same way. They don't even walk the same way. And and I'm this is me talking as an airman. You know, I mean, I come out and I just noticed that your average civilian, in my opinion, isn't as as apt to be able to think critically or to think quickly or to be able to make decisions on their own. They're not as obviously, they're I'm generalizing.

But it was a different world. And so it took me a period of adjustment where I really had to learn exactly how I fit into this new world. And the only way to do that is to, as Randy said so many times, immerse yourself in it. You have to be fully involved in what you're doing to find your weaknesses and your strengths.

Chris Albert

Awesome. And one of the things you said before where you have a lot of these guy guys out there that are talking about every other civilian like they're potatoes. One thing, you know, if you're having a problem integrating into the civilian world and you're trying to find your place, you know, take take the girl I mentioned at the beginning who was having an issue in college dealing with her her her fellow classmates. One of the things you can start to think about or the way you could change your thinking is rather than thinking about them as these awful human beings who just, you know, they're completely lazy, haven't been able to do anything, haven't talked about anything, haven't done much of anything in their lives. Maybe you can switch it around and look at the value that you can provide to them.

Maybe Absolutely. You can be a mentor to some of these civilians. You could teach them a thing a thing or two, and maybe that could give you some purpose.

Randy

something that I like to start yelling at them and

Jeff

No. So something specifically that I like to talk on is understanding that you can't, in any shape, form, or fashion, change the way other people think. You can't I mean, you if you have a political discussion with somebody that has the complete opposite views of you, and then you'll see how true that is. You're not gonna change someone's beliefs. You're not gonna change their own personal mentality.

So the only thing that you change is how you react to the people that you engage with every single day. The only thing that you have any power or control over is your own personal thought process and emotions. And so there's a perfect example that I have when I was in the Wildland Fire Fighting Academy. I had a very good buddy of mine. He's a marine veteran.

He was a tanker. And he was a big tough dude. Know, he was a bodybuilder, full beard, you know, and he and I got along really well. Because we both have a kind of shared background, even though, you know, obviously I wasn't a combat troop. But we were standing in one day, as wildland firefighters, part of our job, you know, we hike up in rocky terrain, and we're swinging axes all day long, carrying chainsaws everywhere.

So it's a physically demanding job. And there were some guys in our academy class that were doughy, is probably the best word that I can use. And so we're sitting around, we're having a discussion about how, hey, class is going to be out early this week, so why don't we take that extra hour that we're still getting paid, and let's go do some PT together. Let's do some kind of group fitness routine and see if we can start upping our levels of fitness. And everyone was extremely resistant to it.

They weren't interested. No one wanted to work out. No one wanted to exercise. And so this big, tough, former Marine stands up, and he looks at everybody in the front of the classroom, and he says, you know, if you guys don't want to go be physically fit, and this job requires physical fitness, then you need to walk out right now, and maybe GameStop is hiring down the street. Now I laughed because that's 100% accurate.

If you can't do the physical demands of the job, I don't want you I don't want my life in your hands at some point on the fire line.

Jeff

But everyone got upset. Everyone got extremely mad. They got upset with him. I think one guy cried. I don't know.

I don't remember. But everyone was extremely emotional about it. And then he got written up. He got in all kinds of trouble because their mentality is different. Now, he can't change the way that they would react to something that he says.

The only thing he can change is what he says.

Jeff

So if he had come at it a little bit differently, he could have taken some of these kids, 19, 20 years old, and he could have said, hey, guys, you know what? Here's the job. This is what we're gonna have to do, and someday, my life may be in your hands. Now I trust you because you're intelligent, and I know that you can work hard. However, let's make sure that our physical fitness is on the same level, and then lead from the front the way that you were taught to do whenever you're in the marines or the army or air force, wherever you were.

Lead from the front and show them how to be physically fit.

Jeff

If he had done that, I think that he might have had a much greater impact on their personal fitness levels.

Chris Albert

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's it's not how with it's it's what's it called? It's not what you say. It's how you say it. And if you're able to approach it approach a person in a way that you're gonna get them to want to do something. I mean, you can go back to Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Outstanding book. The only way he says the only way to get people to do anything is to get them to want to do it. And, you know, I I know I'm a fanboy for Jocko Willink, but if you if you listen to him, you listen to his podcast, you know, this is a one of the most badass Navy SEAL commanders of all time. One of the things he preaches is that even in the military, if you want somebody to do something, you have to get them to want to do it. You can order them.

But if you're just ordering them and you're not just and you're yelling at them and screaming at them and and telling them to do something, then they're not gonna do it to their utmost ability.

Jeff

Right. And this this spreads to every facet of everyday life. It's it had you know, beyond business, beyond employment, every single facet of everyday life. And there's some kind of philosopher a long time ago that said that you can only get something that you want. You can only acquire something in one of two ways.

You can take it by force, so you can steal it or you force somebody to do it through threat of life, limb, or property. Or you could use your reasoning and you could encourage them through either what you just said, by being the example or by leading from the front, like I said. Or you know, just being using your cunning, you know, how you communicate with people. And so if you're having a hard time communicating with people, just like that person that's having a difficult time in college, you have to be able to accept that you actually do have a weakness. While your strength may be making decisions and being a hard worker, you have to be self aware enough to say that I have a weakness and that I can't get these people to do what I need them or want them to do because I'm communicating poorly.

Chris Albert

Exactly. And again, that goes back to some of the answers we saw at the beginning of the podcast from a survey you put out. You know, that Marine who feels like civilians around him are looking at him like he's too young, or they're they're looking at him like he's gonna snap, or they're looking at him as being somebody who's just not mixing well in our culture. I think part of that is that that marine has to do some work.

Chris Albert

He has to really and and that's not to say that, you know, he's he's a bad human being. It's just to say that you have to do some work on yourself in order to get that transition down. You have to realize that not everybody, when you get out, is gonna think the same way you do. And that's okay. Right?

Jeff

I I think that maybe go ahead, Rick.

Randy

Sorry, Jeff. One thing I don't tell a lot of people about myself, but something that at least the first guy, if not some of the others that wrote back to your survey, fake it until it becomes natural. Mhmm. Just try that on for size. Just fake it.

And you don't have to change. You don't have to think any differently, but that might have kind of a positive influence on your demeanor and the way that you see other people. If you make if you can make people other people be happy around you, you might find yourself doing a little better in life.

Chris Albert

I would I would I agree with you, but I would modify that and say, change it to respond, don't react. Right? Right. And the difference between responding and reacting is responding means you've had a chance to think about it. And you have a chance to say to yourself, what do I want out of this at the end of the day?

I want a job. I want to, you know, have a good life. I wanna be able to work with people, and I wanna be able to run a team and be a leader. So let me approach it this way rather than what would be the reaction. And if you react, reacting is based off of emotion.

It's based off of your natural tendency to do something. And the problem is that if you react, you're predictable. Or if you react, you might convey an image that you don't necessarily want to convey.

Jeff

I I 100% agree with you. And do you remember the do you remember the movie Office Space? Did you see that one?

Chris Albert

Yes. One of my favorites. Oh, yeah.

Jeff

Yeah. So you got this guy, his name's Michael Bolton. Right? And then someone says, why don't you change your name? And he said, why should I change?

He's the one who sucks. Right? Well, that's kind of a lot of people's mentality whenever they get out of the military. Why why should I change? They're the ones that suck.

Chris Albert

Jeff, just for the younger the younger crowd out there because I know all of us here, old dogs, know who Michael Bolton is. Explain who Michael Bolton was because he's You know what? Such a giant in the music industry.

Randy

Jeff, I'm pulling down some of your albums. You got right there.

Jeff

I'm not a I'm not a big fan of his particular body of work. So I'm not familiar with Michael Bolton's music. I do know that that he was a big musician. Yeah. But I don't really know his stuff.

But, hey, you know what Michael Bolton did in Office Space when he went into the interview with the two Bobs? I love Michael Bolton.

Randy

Best armist race. All time.

Chris Albert

So yeah. Exactly. And and just for those of you who don't know, Michael Bolton is, like, the epitome of softcore, like, really, I guess, like, 50 year old women loved him at the time. Department store music. Department store music. And he had this deep voice and he had this crazy like nineties slash eighties hair. And the guy in the movie, his name was Michael Bolton too. And so everybody, when he said his name was Michael Bolton, they would immediately go to the singer.

And and there was these two consultants who were there to hire or fire people. And what was the famous line? It's, oh, your name's Michael Bolton. Do you love his music? I absolutely love his music. It doesn't get better for me than when he sings when a man loves a woman.

Randy

Do people really not know who Michael Bolton is?

Chris Albert

I don't know. I my I don't know. Just a backstory on this, and then we'll get back to it because Yeah. Because we gotta get the show over with in a little bit. But I'm from Connecticut originally, and I'm from Fairfield County, Connecticut.

And Fairfield County, Connecticut is a funny place because you have the poorest of the poor and the absolute richest of the rich people. And so I I grew up in a town called Norwalk, and Michael Bolton's house was on the border of Norwalk and Westport. And my aunt Catherine, who's a little bit crazy, but she's a she's an awesome old Italian woman. She absolutely loved Michael Bolt, and she made an absolutely awesome pasta fazool. And every week for about three or four months, she would make a pot of pasta fazool.

She'd put it in a container. She'd go up to the front gate of Michael Bolton's house. She'd put wave in the camera. She'd say, hey, Michael. I brought your pasta fazool to you.

And she'd leave it at the doorstep. But that's that's the power that Michael Bolton had over older women.

Randy

Over older women. I get taste. It's funny time I go to Megan Fox's house. My famous dish. My.

Jeff

Well, I had a whole point to that. There was, like, a whole thing.

Randy

No. I was just

Jeff

what I was getting at was that you can't change the way people think. That's that's my whole that's everything. That's everything in life is that you can't change the way other people think. And if someone perceives you as a tough, old battle axe because you were in the military, and if someone looks at you and they immediately say, oh, that guy's a veteran, well, you're carrying yourself in a way that meets those stereotypes. So look at how you're handling yourself.

Now personally, there are elements of being a veteran that are extremely, think, noble or there are things that you wanna be proud of. And there are good stereotypes such as punctuality or being able to lead or being able to follow or being a good decision maker. Those are all positive stereotypes for the military. There are also negative stereotypes. So you have to look at yourself and say, stereotypes am I enforcing with my behavior?

Am I doing things that lead people to believe that I might possibly snap? Is it the way that I'm talking or the way that I deliver information? Do I come across as a bully? You know, this guy, that marine that that was in the fire academy with me, ended he up getting terminated because he had he got into a drunken altercation with another guy. And he got terminated while we were in the academy.

And they were so scared of him that they said he lives somewhere in the vicinity of where we're currently holding this academy, And I know that he has guns, so

Jeff

Be careful. Look out. If you see him, let somebody know.

Jeff

And and I'm standing here like, this this is a I mean, he's my friend. Know, like, we're we're we were all friends with this guy. You know, what are you talking about? And so he carried himself in a way that affected the way people perceive him.

Jeff

And you can't change the way people perceive you. You can only change the messages you're sending out. That's my whole I think that should be anyone's takeaway from from anything. And whatever you listen to AlphaCast, whatever you listen to your show, I want people to think about how can I improve myself so that I am a better communicator, I'm a better leader, I'm a better entrepreneur, I'm a better employee?

Chris Albert

Right. And that's something something I wanna emphasize about that. That was not that Marine's fault at all. Right? It was Right.

It was their perception that that led to that, but it was his responsibility. And what's the difference there? By fault means that you've actually done something. Right? You've actually done something intentionally to create that kind of image.

Responsibility plays into the way you carry yourself and the things that you don't do actively that give people a certain perception of you. And it's your responsibility to to see to your own self image. Right? And so that doesn't mean that that marine was a bad person.

Chris Albert

That doesn't mean that he was a shitty crazy person or that he was, you know, actively trying to alienate anybody. What it means was that it was his responsibility to learn about the job, to learn about the people around him, to learn about the world around him. And so that's the difference there. And so if anybody's going through this, I don't want them to think that, you know, we're blaming veterans for any of this, but we're not saying that it's your fault. What we're saying is that it's your responsibility.

And there is a better way of doing things. There's a there's a much better way of doing things because we want you to be successful. We want you to be have a great life.

Jeff

You have to have you have to have ownership over your life. You have to have ownership over the messages you're sending out. You have ownership to over your image. Just like people that would Randy spends like six hours a day doing his hair, putting on his shirts, changing his outfits. But you have to have accountability for yourself over everything else.

And there was one particular moment, and I'll probably remember this for the rest of my life. It was just before this guy got terminated. And he and I sat down at the table. He had been quiet all day. He hadn't been talking to anybody.

He was clearly upset. And I sat down and I started talking with him. And was like, man, what's what's going on? And he started telling me that all of the guys because we were from different district offices throughout the state. And his office was pretty tight knit at the very beginning of the academy.

They were all really close. There was about eight or nine guys just from his office, and they all got along really well. And I was sitting there talking with him, and he said, you know, these guys have been talking to HR about me. My guys have been talking to HR about me, and they've never brought any of this to me. They've never said, hey, we have an issue with the way that you talk to us, or we have an issue with the way that you do this or that.

And he was legitimately hurt. And, you know, a lot of people don't wanna come across as as as sensitive or vulnerable or anything like that, but he couldn't help it. He was genuinely affected because there were people that he that he really cared about, that he wanted to see succeed, and that he wanted to see work hard and increase their physical fitness and learn their job. He wanted that for them. But just in the way that he was delivering his tone the messages he was sending out, They didn't trust him or they didn't feel like that he had their best interest at heart. And that hurt him to the core. And in my mind, I'm sitting here and I'm listening to him and I said, listen, man. You have got to learn how to communicate with your team. You have got to learn because you're not broken. You're not dysfunctional.

You have different life experience. And that's true no matter where you come from. Let's take the military completely out of the equation. And let's say that I grew up inside of a house that was dilapidated and falling apart. I'm talking about me personally.

I didn't have air conditioning until I was 19 years old. Okay? There were holes in the floor in the kitchen that you could see down to the dirt. That's how poor I was. Now I'm from Southeast Texas, and I could talk to everybody just like this if I wanted to.

I could I could talk about trucks, Ford, better than Chevy all day long. I could do that. But I've had to learn that you have to you have to deliver the message that you want to send in order to get the results that you want. I'm responsible for that. Nobody else.

Chris Albert

Absolutely. And if I showed up in your East Texas town with, you know, my pointed leather shoes and ripped jeans and my gold chain and my button down shirt unbuttoned all the way down to my chest, people would probably look at me in a funky way. Right? And and that's the thing. It's it's you have to understand what situation you're going to.

You have to have that situational awareness. You have to school yourself a little bit on the people. You have to school yourself a little bit on people you're working around. You have to know your people. You have to know your fellow students.

You have to know your coworkers. You have to know your family members, right? Yep. If you want to manage that, you know?

Chris Albert

And something else from the beginning of the podcast, you know, the Marine who said he was scanning the parking lot and he was hyper vigilant. And this is something that that I want to bring up for the end. The thing is if you're hyper vigilant right now and you've gone through an experience like combat, it does. It changes you. It you're never going to be the same person you were before you went.

Ever. But it's not the fact that you're hypervigilant. It's the way you're visualizing it. The way you're understanding it. You're understanding it as a problem.

You're understanding it as something that's a handicap. You're understanding it as something that's plaguing you. The fact of the matter is what has happened to you is an increase of senses. You are in touch with certain parts of your brain that ninety nine percent of people who exist in this world today aren't in touch with. But at one point in our evolutionary history, a lot of people acted like that.

A lot of people, you know, they would see something they'd be constantly scanning because we as human beings at one time were food for a lot of other animals here on this planet. Exactly. We developed that instinct. So the way to approach this, the way to approach something like that, if you're having nightmares, if you're having hyper vigilance, understand one thing, you're not crazy. You're you're not insane.

And the thing is no amount of telling yourself you have PTSD or telling yourself that you're sick is gonna get rid of that. What has to happen is you have to give yourself time. Over time, you're gonna start to calm down, but it's gonna take a long time. And in the meantime, when it happens, don't break down to yourself and say say, you know what? I screwed up.

You know, the day I live in right near San Bernardino, California. And the day that they had those terrorist attacks there, you know what I was doing? I was sitting on my floor here with a rifle in my lap with the lights off looking out the window because I also heard that the terrorists lived down the street from me. And, part of me was like, well, why did I do that? Why did I do something like that?

How how insane was that? But then the other part of me was like, no. That was the most rational thing I could do at the time. That was that was me defending my home, defending my family. And if a man can't do that, then then what's up?

You know what I mean? What what's wrong with this world? So never feel like you are insane because of anything like that.

Randy

Yeah. I I I'm trying to make it very early. That's just a Tuesday for me.

Chris Albert

That's a Tuesday for you where you are in the world?

Jeff

I I missed I missed something there. I don't know. I did too.

Jeff

No. Well, I what I was gonna say is I I say it so often that I can't speak on PTSD. I can't speak on trauma. I can't speak on any of this. Obviously, I didn't experience it.

But but what I can say is that we know know what PTSD is as a culture. I think we've got to that place where it's extremely well researched and it's getting more researched every single day. There are absolutely treatment plans out there. If someone's going through treatment for a specific type of stress, then they've already taken the right steps. But it's not a, I just go to treatment once a week or once a month, and then I'm okay.

Anytime you have any type of psychological issue or anytime you wanna you have a bad habit even that you wanna break, you have to change how you look at the world. And and it's a constant and concerted effort. And so you speak speaking specifically of the situational awareness of scanning the parking lot, there are a lot of people that don't have that skill, that don't have that experience, that don't have that instinct.

Jeff

And there are people that have an interest in developing that. So they force I I am myself, I force myself to try and be more situationally aware. I look around everywhere I go, I try and, you know, pick out the exits as an exercise in just trying to be aware of my surroundings. It's not that I'm worried necessarily that someone's gonna kick in the door and and and kill me, but I absolutely I feel like I have a responsibility for my own physical safety, the safety of my children, to know what's going on.

Jeff

And I think it's interesting that as you work into and I try and develop that skill set by exercising it every single day. If you have something in your life that's creating stress, in my mind, then you need to be changing the way that you look at it and working at it every single day to turn a potentially bad habit or what you perceive as a bad habit into something that you perceive as a good habit.

Chris Albert

Well, guys, we're just about out of time. I want to give you both the opportunity to tell everybody where you're at, how to reach you on social media. So, guys, give me your individual Twitter handles, your individual Instagram handles, Facebook. I'll put those in the show notes as well. And I want each each of you to give me a little bit of a closing comment of what you what you want people to remember.

You buy here on this podcast and and put a note in there about AlphaCast.

Jeff

Okay. Well, I'll go ahead and start. I we we do this pretty well. Randy and I have some practice. So you can go ahead and find us on SoundCloud at AlphaCast Media.

And then I ask anyone that listens to the show if you enjoy it. Please leave some feedback, like, comment, or subscribe. So that way we can understand what our audience is looking for. And at the same time, we're trying to grow our audience, so share that. Randy?

Randy

Same thing. I we wanna help people. We're not just doing we're not doing this for ourselves. It's not about a business or making money.

I'm seeing too much negativity, and I wanna bring some positive light to veterans for themselves and for the way society views us.

Jeff

Yeah. And then our social media, everything is at AlphaCast Media. So we're Yes. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We only have one account.

Randy and I don't use separate accounts. So at AlphaCast Media.

Chris Albert

Out. We share everything. Out. Well, out there listening, I wanna thank you for listening in on this conversation. It has been absolutely awesome.

Be sure to check out AlphaCast. I was a guest on their show. I think they're gonna release the pod that episode pretty soon.

Jeff

Yeah. It we're so we ran into some snags. I think either this week or maybe early next week, we're gonna release Pete Bell from Incfiddle Cool. Sat down with us. And then you're gonna be the week after that.

So if not next week, then the week after.

Chris Albert

Awesome. Awesome. And these guys have some great guests, and I'm looking forward to seeing their podcasts grow. And for everybody out there, regardless of where you are or what you're doing, always know that there's an opportunity for you to grow. There's an opportunity for you to learn.

And if you feel like you're stuck, one of the best ways to move forward is to think about how you can help other people, much like these two are doing. Think about ways that you can offer value to this world. Think about things that you've experienced that other other people might like to know. And through that, you might find something that you're both passionate about and that you're good at. So until next week, I will talk to you guys all soon.

I love you all. Peace.

Chris Albert

Host of the Warrior Soul Podcast and founder of Warrior Soul. Worldwide trainer and nutrition coach, contributing author at Testosterone Nation and Muscle and Strength.

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