Order of Man - 123： Left of Bang ｜ Patrick Van Horne

00:00:00.000 Gentlemen, we all know the world can be a dangerous place. Some would argue that it's

00:00:03.960 becoming safer and others would argue it's becoming more dangerous. But either way,

00:00:08.600 the potential for you and I encountering a threat in our day-to-day life is a real possibility and

00:00:13.900 one that we as men should be prepared for. My guest today, Patrick Van Horn and the author

00:00:18.940 of Left to Bang teaches us how to use nonverbal communication to assess threats, the common

00:00:24.080 physical language all humans use, how to use combat profiling to keep yourself and others safe,

00:00:30.000 and how the Marine Corps Combat Hunter Program could save your life.

00:00:33.280 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly charge

00:00:38.160 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time. You are not

00:00:44.020 easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is who you are.

00:00:51.200 This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:00:55.540 you can call yourself a man.

00:00:58.100 Men, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler and I am the host and the founder of the

00:01:02.600 podcast you're listening to right now, The Order of Man. Whether you're new or you've been around

00:01:07.260 for years, I want to welcome you to the show today. My job here, guys, is to interview the

00:01:12.360 world's most successful, intelligent, and interesting men on the planet, get them to tell us how they've

00:01:18.340 done what they've done, and then share that information with you so you can produce the same type of

00:01:22.620 result in your life. Now, some of the guys that I do interview, you are going to know and they're

00:01:27.420 familiar, like Lewis Howes, Jocko Willink, Grant Cardone, Andy Frisilla, so many more, and frankly,

00:01:32.860 some of the guys that I interview, you won't know yet, but either way, every single person I bring on

00:01:38.160 this show has some incredibly valuable insights to share with you. So just a couple of quick

00:01:43.220 announcements before I get into the conversation today. We have our first live event in Kansas City

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00:02:31.720 slash event. And the second thing I want to make mention of is our ever-expanding, ever-growing

00:02:36.760 exclusive brotherhood, The Iron Council. I've just got to say, I am blown away with the caliber of men

00:02:43.660 inside of The Iron Council. I know you will be too, but regardless of whether you're blown away

00:02:47.660 with those guys or not, I know we're going to help you produce some big results in your life,

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00:03:07.520 Now, guys, I am really, really excited to introduce you to my guest today. His name is Patrick Van

00:03:12.820 Horn. He's a former infantry captain with the United States Marine Corps and has been instrumental in

00:03:19.300 helping develop and teach the Marine Corps Combat Hunter Program to Marines and military,

00:03:24.660 law enforcement, government agencies, and civilians like you and I. His book, Left a Bang,

00:03:30.160 has been recommended to me over and over and over again. I finally decided to pick up a copy

00:03:35.000 and I think I read it in two days. I just could not put the book down.

00:03:39.800 And since it was one of the best books that I have read so far this year, and I do read a lot

00:03:45.060 of books, I decided to reach out and extend an invite to have Patrick on the show. Guys,

00:03:49.320 let me tell you this. He does not disappoint as he talks about how he helped implement and develop

00:03:55.000 and train this course to his Marines during his two deployments to Iraq. And more recently,

00:04:00.000 his work with his behavioral analysis training company, the CP Journal.

00:04:05.180 Patrick, thank you for joining me on the show today.

00:04:07.320 Thank you for having me.

00:04:08.120 Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you. I didn't tell you this, but we've got a membership group

00:04:12.500 called The Iron Council. It's our mastermind group. And last month, we read your book,

00:04:17.920 Left of Bang, which is what triggered me wanting to reach out. So I'm glad we could connect. And I

00:04:22.220 want to set the framework for our conversation. When you say Left of Bang, what is that even referring

00:04:27.740 to?

00:04:28.460 Well, the title of the book itself was about preventing violence. And so if you think about whatever event,

00:04:33.780 whatever act you don't want to happen in your life, that event is bang. And when you take bang

00:04:39.480 and you put it on a timeline, bang is time zero. It's directly in the middle of that line.

00:04:45.200 So when we talk about getting Left of Bang, what we're talking about is that you have the ability

00:04:49.720 to recognize the pre-event indicators, the warning signs that exist that let you know bang is about

00:04:55.880 to happen and provide you with enough time to intervene so that it doesn't actually occur.

00:05:00.620 What are the bangs that people would experience? And when I say people, I probably ought to say

00:05:05.560 civilians because you wrote this book, which is basically the Marine Corps combat hunter program.

00:05:10.660 And now we're transitioning this information into civilian life. What are the types of bangs

00:05:14.800 people are going to experience?

00:05:16.540 At the end of the day, it's whatever you don't want to happen. It could be something like violence,

00:05:21.360 like being around a terrorist attack or some of these active shooter incidents that we've seen

00:05:26.980 in our country, but could be on the other end of the spectrum as well. It could be

00:05:30.540 little things like getting pickpocketed or getting mugged. If you're in business,

00:05:35.900 it could be losing a sale because you blew the presentation or didn't realize you weren't

00:05:41.340 reading the room very well. And you missed those cues that could have let you know,

00:05:44.400 hey, there's still time to bring this back on the path. So it's really just whatever

00:05:48.920 thing you don't want to happen.

00:05:51.780 So are the cues then, and this is really fascinating because I spent some time in 2005,

00:05:55.860 2006 in Iraq, in Ramadi. And of course we were faced with dangerous situations, life,

00:06:01.220 life and death situations every single day. Is there some commonality between botching a

00:06:07.360 presentation, for example, or somebody not resonating with that presentation and then

00:06:10.860 being faced with a life or death situation in combat?

00:06:13.600 Absolutely. And it comes down to situational awareness. And when you think about what situational

00:06:18.600 awareness is, it's really two things. It's knowing what it is that you are looking for

00:06:24.140 and how are you going to put that information together so that you can make a good decision?

00:06:30.060 So if you think about, you know, that worst case scenario, something like an attack,

00:06:34.480 how are you recognizing people with a violent intent? And the way that we taught that in the

00:06:39.340 Marines was here are these, what we talk about in the book as six domains of human behavior,

00:06:46.000 six different ways you can break a situation down to really identify the component parts.

00:06:51.300 And then how do you use that to establish a baseline so that you can identify what's normal

00:06:56.420 in that marketplace? And, you know, for your case, Ramadi, Iraq, the same process and the same

00:07:02.360 behaviors apply to something like a sales presentation. What behaviors are you reading

00:07:07.140 in the room and how are you putting those together to determine what's normal? And how are you looking

00:07:12.180 for those things that are not normal or those things that might provide you that advanced warning

00:07:16.280 that, Hey, something's going bad here. So I want to break down these six domains, but before I get

00:07:21.420 to that, because as I read the book, I thought this is really valuable. There's a ton of information

00:07:24.720 that's really pertinent. I think even more so probably today than it's been maybe even in the

00:07:30.400 history of us being a species. But is this something that can even be like, how quickly can somebody

00:07:36.880 process all of this information in a real time scenario? Because there's so much going on here and we can get,

00:07:43.160 get into this a little bit. Uh, it seems like it might be difficult to do everything that you talk

00:07:48.280 about in the book in the moment. It could be, but think about when you first learned how to drive a

00:07:54.200 car, right? Like driving a car is one of the most complex things that you can do. You have to figure

00:07:59.300 out how much pressure you put on the brake or the gas to go as fast or as slow as you want. How far do you

00:08:04.460 turn the wheel to, you know, change lanes versus turn a corner, uh, turn signals and checking the

00:08:10.580 mirrors. There's a thousand tasks required to drive a car to make it go from A to B. And that's

00:08:16.280 why as you know, 16 year olds first learn how to start doing this, they get into so many fender

00:08:21.700 benders because the act of driving a car is so complex that they don't have any mental energy 1.00

00:08:28.280 left to look further down the road or really take a look at and see who's about to cut them off or

00:08:34.340 that traffic is slowing down. It's really the same thing when it comes to this behavioral approach to

00:08:40.000 situational awareness. At first it can seem a little clunky because we're going to start to

00:08:44.700 identify or establish some words and some terminology to simply define what it is that

00:08:49.580 you're seeing. But once you get comfortable with the mechanics of it, then the process is natural,

00:08:55.020 just like it is to drive a car. And then you can really start to really see some of the benefits

00:09:00.020 that, you know, just that increased level of awareness of the people around you.

00:09:05.280 Yeah. I mean, this makes sense because if I were to go back 20 years, I'm 36 years old. So if I went

00:09:09.040 back 20 years, I can vividly remember going through the steps of turning the vehicle on,

00:09:14.980 taking the brake off, putting it in gear and checking my blind spots, literally going through

00:09:20.100 step by step. But I don't do that now. I just turn the key on and go. Although I probably still run

00:09:25.640 through all of those steps I did 20 years ago. Absolutely. Now you can do it while texting on

00:09:30.060 your phone, eating a cheeseburger, steering with your knee while still seeing that car, you know,

00:09:34.980 20 feet ahead of you that's about to come into your lane. Yeah, that makes sense. So one of the

00:09:39.440 things that you talk about in the book is that all of us, and I think this is going back to our

00:09:43.880 previous discussion, how all of this permeates across every facet of life or every situation

00:09:48.900 you may find yourself in is that most of us, if not all of us as human beings have this common

00:09:54.520 physical language. Can you talk to me about that and how we might be able to recognize this in other

00:09:58.720 people? Sure. And one of the other things that goes into, as we start to talk about what these

00:10:03.200 different indicators are, think about the fact that you're not starting to drive today. You've

00:10:08.360 been people watching your entire life. Sure. Right. What we're going to do is maybe just establish a

00:10:13.520 terminology so that we can make a little bit more objective sense of what we're seeing and also

00:10:18.240 communicate it to someone else. Can I, and let me stop you right there because this was actually

00:10:22.740 really fascinating to me before you get into the common physical language you talk about, and you've

00:10:27.160 mentioned it twice now during our conversation, the terminology. Why is it so important that we

00:10:31.920 actually have some of this terminology? This was a really fascinating component in the book when I

00:10:36.560 read through it. The biggest thing that comes down to the, or I guess the benefit of the terminology

00:10:41.040 is simply a matter of confidence. And I'm talking here mostly for civilians, not police officers,

00:10:46.200 not security professionals, not Marines or soldiers. But if you've ever gotten into an elevator and you

00:10:52.160 went, man, just this guy makes me feel weird. Or you've been in a restaurant or a bar and you went

00:10:58.200 like something's going on here. And then you went to tell one of your friends and the moment you

00:11:02.800 couldn't explain to someone why you had that weird feeling, you erase it. You just go, oh, it's just in

00:11:08.620 my head. This is, this isn't anything real. And because you couldn't even explain to the person that

00:11:13.900 you're with why you got that feeling, they don't know what to be looking for either. They're looking at a

00:11:19.880 person for the first time and going, ah, I guess, I guess he looks normal. Like what's the big deal? And when you

00:11:24.680 can't communicate it, I think the biggest impact is on your confidence to trust what it is that

00:11:30.160 you've been seeing and to really believe in that feeling that you have that, Hey, something might

00:11:35.020 be going on here. And, and I guess the followup to that is to be able to react confidently based

00:11:39.700 upon your intuition or your feelings. Absolutely. Yeah. I know I was down in, uh, in Arizona this past

00:11:45.580 weekend and a man was walking past the hotel and he walked past the doors where there's automatic

00:11:51.560 doors and my children were playing right there. And I said, kids come over here. And I immediately

00:11:55.280 thought about your book and I thought, why, why did I say that? Like what triggered? And I told my

00:12:00.400 wife, there's something suspicious about that guy. And she said, really? What? Just like you're saying,

00:12:04.220 but I was able to tell her, well, he was shifty. He was not concentrating on what he was doing,

00:12:09.440 which was walking. He was looking at different things. And so there was a few elements that really

00:12:13.300 stood out to me that said, I need to go on alert here. So this is how, what you just did your brain

00:12:19.280 or as a human being, your brain is naturally pattern seeking. We love to identify patterns

00:12:24.760 and we naturally focus on those people or those things that break from that pattern.

00:12:29.620 What we talk about in the book is how to replicate that same natural intuitive process

00:12:35.860 in a little bit more of an analytical way so that when you get that feeling, you can kind of revert back

00:12:41.640 to looking at it objectively. What's the baseline here? If this is what's normal, what's going to make

00:12:47.080 someone stand out? And by doing it analytically, we can improve our intuition. And if we get that

00:12:52.820 intuitive feel, we can also back it up with the ability just to simply explain to someone, this is

00:12:57.600 why, you know, I'm doing what I'm doing now. Do you find that most people, this is maybe a tough

00:13:03.500 question, but do you find that most people trust their intuition or they try to validate or justify

00:13:10.400 why they should not trust their intuition?

00:13:12.580 I think that depends on who I'm talking to. If we're working with people from the military or

00:13:18.440 police officers or security professionals, they have a tendency to trust what it is that they're

00:13:23.600 seeing, but they also see a lot of bad things and think of, think about a lot of bad people all day

00:13:29.700 long for their job. For most people though, you don't, you know, you didn't go down to, you said it was

00:13:34.040 Arizona. You didn't go down there to hopefully identify a shooter. You went down there to have a good

00:13:38.700 time. Right. So you're not really looking for, I mean, you're aware of it, but it's not your purpose

00:13:43.880 for being down there. And you don't want, like, I don't want something to go wrong. So I feel like

00:13:49.540 I might try to justify away something that is actually going wrong because I don't want it to

00:13:53.800 actually happen. Absolutely. I mean, you don't want to be in the spot where you have to do something.

00:13:58.600 You can get a go a day without having to defend yourself. Sure. That's better off. All right.

00:14:03.400 So let's go back to then some of those common physical characteristics or language. I interrupted

00:14:08.720 you and went off on a tangent, but I wanted to come back to that.

00:14:11.640 Of course. So I want to, I'm going to distinguish between the way that we wrote about it in the book

00:14:16.400 and the way that we teach it and talk about it now. So in the book, we wrote about the,

00:14:21.680 what we refer to as the six domains of behavior, which are six different ways we can take a scenario and

00:14:27.120 really look at the individual behaviors based on a field of science to identify some objective

00:14:33.200 terminology. Since the book was written, we've evolved the program quite a bit to make it a

00:14:39.080 little bit more functional. And so I'll kind of translate between the two, but there are now what

00:14:43.720 we refer to as these four pillars of behavior that we can use to analyze people. The first is how we

00:14:49.400 assess an individual person. So every single person at every moment in time can be categorized in one of

00:14:56.040 four ways. Their behavior shows that they either are dominant, submissive, uncomfortable, or comfortable.

00:15:01.420 And every person at literally every second of the days in one of these four groups in the book,

00:15:06.860 this is what we refer to as kinesics, which is the study of body movement, which then gets interpreted

00:15:12.620 into body language and biometric cues, which are the uncontrollable physiological responses to stress,

00:15:19.300 things like blushing or sweating. So we've put those together just to simply assess an individual

00:15:24.200 person. Yeah. Because when I hear, I hear those two. I, in fact, as I was going through this and

00:15:28.840 thinking about what I wanted to talk with you about today, I thought those were very similar

00:15:31.820 and wondered how those actually differentiated from themselves.

00:15:34.660 So one is just more internal to the, or things that are happening internal to the body,

00:15:38.620 the biometric cues. Something that you can't necessarily control. It just happens because.

00:15:43.380 Correct. Okay. And then the kinesics are the physical movements in your, that your body makes.

00:15:47.800 Right. Okay. That makes sense. But now we don't even distinguish between those any longer. It's simply,

00:15:52.300 we've put all of those indicators together to make an assessment about an individual person.

00:15:57.900 Okay. And from there, we can take a look at groups, essentially identifying the relationship

00:16:03.020 that people have between them based on the amount of space and separation they keep in the book. This

00:16:08.020 is what we refer to as proxemics. Then we can look at how people relate to their environment,

00:16:12.480 which is from the book geographics. And then we can take a look at the atmospherics, which is how we now

00:16:18.880 assess the collective mood. And so these four ways are just simple facts. You can state about your

00:16:24.460 surroundings to simply make sense of it, to establish what's normal. And then a person with

00:16:29.620 a violent intent is going to stand out from that baseline. Once you've put that together,

00:16:34.540 how do you begin to establish the baseline or establish what is normal? Because what is normal

00:16:39.940 at a soccer game in South America versus what is normal at a baseball game in Arizona might be

00:16:47.700 completely different? 100% correct. And so we start with how we assess the collective mood,

00:16:53.660 which in the book is the way that we define positive and negative atmospherics. The first

00:16:58.420 thing that you do when you walk into that soccer game is determine, do people here feel safe? And if

00:17:05.620 they do, we're going to start to see these indicators of positive atmospherics. If the area has positive

00:17:11.020 atmospherics, that's going to mean that people should be comfortable. And because people can be in only one of

00:17:17.120 these four groups at any moment in time, if the baseline is people who are comfortable, I'm now

00:17:22.080 searching for people who are dominant, submissive, or uncomfortable as the things that are going to

00:17:26.600 attract my attention. But if you go into the example that I always like to use as an airport baggage

00:17:32.040 claim, when you go and you start to assess the collective mood, you're going to see a lot of

00:17:36.460 people who are displaying what we refer to as the uncomfortable cluster, anxious, nervous, jittery.

00:17:41.800 And so that area has negative atmospherics when people don't feel either safe or if they're

00:17:47.680 feeling stressed because these are perceptions of stresses and threats. So in an airport baggage

00:17:52.920 claim, people who are uncomfortable are what are normal. So that means we're searching for

00:17:57.440 dominance, submissiveness, and comfort as things that are not normal. So what's the baseline in one

00:18:02.860 area could make you stand out in another. So we always start by with that collective mood. Is it

00:18:08.080 positive or negative? And does that result in people, you know, should people be comfortable

00:18:12.920 or uncomfortable in the situation? I like that you use the term cluster too, because if I remember

00:18:18.580 correctly, if you just see one trader characteristic or biometric, whatever it may be, that's not enough

00:18:25.240 information to make a correct decision on the situation you may find yourself in. Am I understanding

00:18:31.000 that correctly? Absolutely. You know, if you think about a person who's standing with their arms crossed,

00:18:35.800 that person, the fact that their arms are crossed can mean a thousand different things.

00:18:40.340 Right. And so if we're making a, an assessment about someone off of only one indicator, we run a

00:18:46.400 pretty serious risk of being just completely wrong in our assessment. And so if we find three indicators

00:18:52.740 that all lead to one of these four conclusions of dominant, submissive, uncomfortable, or comfortable,

00:18:57.740 then we can be reasonably certain that what we're seeing is an accurate reflection of what's going

00:19:03.660 on in their body and in their brain. So by finding three, we kind of reduce that risk of just being

00:19:09.440 wrong in our assessments and minimize the number of false positives that we have about people.

00:19:14.540 This is the biggest hangup I've always had with the quote unquote body language experts,

00:19:19.500 because I grew up in sales, essentially commissionable sales. And so we'd have body

00:19:23.920 language experts come in and they'd say, well, if you fold your arms, that means that you really want

00:19:28.020 distance between you and your client or your client wants distance between you. I'm like,

00:19:31.440 it might just be that they're cold. So I think there's a really good distinction here when you

00:19:35.720 start operating in clusters. You know, I mentioned that we use clusters for accuracy, but the other

00:19:40.660 thing that we, that it offers is that it allows for speed in our assessments too. When I was first

00:19:46.960 learning how to do this before I became an instructor in the combat hunter program, you might read that

00:19:51.680 book on body language and you see there's a thousand different things a person's body might do. And

00:19:55.980 you'd go out to a restaurant that night after reading the book and you try to put all this

00:20:00.340 together and you stare at someone for 15 minutes and you're no closer to making a decision about

00:20:06.120 them just simply because you're overwhelmed with information. By establishing these clusters, we

00:20:11.740 quickly identify, you know, based off of three indicators, which one that they're in. And then we can go

00:20:16.960 back to our purpose for being there. If you're in a sales situation, you can't dedicate that much or that

00:20:23.900 amount of mental attention just to reading the person that you're talking to. You have to deliver

00:20:28.460 your pitch and you're trying to remember what's next. And you're looking at multiple people in

00:20:33.240 that room. And so by establishing these clusters, you can quickly assign someone to it. And then you

00:20:38.560 can always just come back to make sure that they're still there. So it's not just accuracy, but it's

00:20:44.080 also just speed and functionality and understanding that we're human beings and we can't process an

00:20:48.880 unlimited amount of information all the time.

00:20:52.320 Right. So when you talk about being a combat hunter, what is that? How do you tie that all

00:20:58.260 together? I mean, how do you define that? What does that look like?

00:21:01.120 So the combat hunter program was created in 2007 based off of what was happening in Iraq at the time.

00:21:07.540 And you said you were there during, uh, in 05 and 06, which was especially in Ramadi, the peak of how bad

00:21:14.900 the situation got. Right. The Marines and the army as well, but mostly the Marines in Ramadi or in

00:21:22.580 Western Iraq, we'd become very reactive. We were essentially waiting to get shot at, waiting to get

00:21:29.000 hit with an IED so that we could respond because our enemy had taken off their uniform. We lost our

00:21:35.680 ability to identify who they were until they chose to open fire on us. And 2007, then General Mattis,

00:21:43.780 now our secretary of defense. So this is unacceptable. We can't tell Marines go get shot

00:21:49.340 at, but I know that. Yeah. And so he directed this creation of the combat hunter program, which was

00:21:55.700 solely designed to teach Marines. How do you go out there and look at these marketplaces and identify

00:22:01.340 people with a violent intent before something bad happens? So we can take the fight to them,

00:22:06.860 or we can start to change what we're doing or force them to adapt instead of us simply reacting to them.

00:22:12.900 So what is your role in this? I mean, did you help build the combat hunter program? Were you

00:22:18.160 instructing? What is your role in the whole thing?

00:22:20.440 I came into combat hunter a little bit after it was created. So I wasn't there for the creation.

00:22:25.780 I came in and then ultimately became the lead instructor in what the Marines call combat profiling,

00:22:31.640 which is just the behavioral analysis portion of the course for the last three years that I was in

00:22:36.440 the Marines. And after being the lead instructor in the program and having to help recreate some of the

00:22:41.860 content as there were some changes and some turnover, that is what led to the opportunity to

00:22:47.940 write the book and then continue to teach and train people how to do this today as a civilian.

00:22:53.860 So let's talk about that term combat profiling, because I think anytime you put the word profiling

00:22:58.800 into any context, it has a negative connotation, but what you're talking about is not a negative thing.

00:23:05.180 It's a positive thing. And it goes so much deeper than racial profiling or any of these other types of

00:23:10.240 profiles we could create as human beings. Racial and religious profiling, it's not a matter of being

00:23:16.080 politically correct for the reason why we don't use it. And it plays no part in our process.

00:23:20.760 It's simply one of effectiveness. You know, when this program was created in Iraq,

00:23:25.720 everyone was of a certain religion. Everyone was of a certain ethnicity trying to recognize threats 1.00

00:23:31.140 in Iraq based on racial or religious, you know, segmentation would have been just extremely

00:23:36.460 ineffective. And plus, you can't choose the color of your skin, but you choose to become violent. 0.93

00:23:42.200 So we don't look at race. We don't look at religion at all. The reason it was called combat profiling,

00:23:48.020 to be perfectly honest with you, is if we called it behavior pattern recognition and analysis,

00:23:53.660 no one would show up for the class.

00:23:55.540 This is a marketing decision.

00:23:56.880 Oh, yeah, completely. You call it combat profiling. Marines would fill the room 0.93

00:24:00.200 every single time. But again, it's not race. It's not religion. And so I wouldn't get too

00:24:06.360 wrapped up around that word profiling, but really look at what we're talking about in our process.

00:24:12.560 And I think the danger too, in just limiting to the way somebody might look or religion they may

00:24:18.400 subscribe to is you miss a lot of what actually could be happening. I mean, I know when I was in Iraq,

00:24:24.340 you know, you'd have women and children that would pose a threat, but typically and traditionally,

00:24:28.720 you don't look at women as children as a threat in war.

00:24:32.080 Absolutely. We were looking for military age males.

00:24:35.360 Right.

00:24:35.540 So, and if you're between like 15 and 75, you probably got searched most days that,

00:24:40.500 you know, Americans were over there, but we were getting attacked by women. We were having 1.00

00:24:44.960 men dress up as women to avoid detection. And they did avoid detection simply because 0.99

00:24:50.300 someone wearing traditional Iraqi female clothing couldn't possibly be a threat.

00:24:55.740 We missed a lot of the people that we probably should have, that we, not probably, that we

00:24:59.920 certainly wanted to talk to.

00:25:02.260 And so how would that have differed had the combat hunter program been more readily available

00:25:07.920 and combat profiling would have been more well-known?

00:25:11.600 I think the biggest thing was simply the mindset that it put Marines in was that we didn't have to

00:25:17.160 wait. We could go out there and hunt for these insurgents and these people who are planning attacks

00:25:23.180 against us. And if we could do that, we didn't have to let an attack ever happen. You know,

00:25:28.960 especially when fighting a counterinsurgency, you're better off when the more days you can

00:25:35.080 string together where locals don't hear the sound of an explosion or they don't hear the sound of

00:25:40.120 gunfire, it leads to the stability that you ultimately need. And by being able to go out there

00:25:45.800 and identify when something was being planned, we could control how that kind of played out.

00:25:51.580 So maybe the explosion didn't go off. Maybe there wasn't gunfire. And the greater the sense of

00:25:56.420 stability, the better we can ultimately, you know, allow for the conditions that you need to

00:26:01.180 stand up a government, which obviously, you know, they're still dealing with and still having some

00:26:05.940 problems with today. But if a Marine, if it means that more Marines and soldiers or contractors

00:26:12.740 and everyone else gets to come home, that's certainly a win for us.

00:26:16.360 How does a civilian apply this without allowing it to dictate a lot of the way they function,

00:26:22.400 I guess? And maybe that's not the right word, but almost take this to an extreme where it actually

00:26:27.140 reduces functionality in their life. Because as a Marine or a soldier, that's your job full-time.

00:26:33.420 That's what you do. There's no other consideration, but as a civilian, you're a father, you're a husband,

00:26:37.860 you're an employee or a business owner. And so there's so many other things that we are

00:26:41.580 constantly consumed with. The goal by establishing this process is to simply let you know, like,

00:26:47.680 let's say you walk into a restaurant with your family, you can look around and quickly go through

00:26:51.960 this process and go, yeah, we're safe here. There's no one here that attracts my attention

00:26:56.440 and sit down and enjoy your meal and your time together. But by going through the process,

00:27:02.140 you can also be confident that when you walk into a room and you see something that doesn't make sense

00:27:06.640 and something that doesn't fit the baseline, you know that there's a decision that you have to make.

00:27:12.120 It doesn't always mean that you leave. It just, maybe it's put yourself in a spot where, you know,

00:27:16.600 if it does go badly, you can protect your family or position yourself to the opposite side of the

00:27:21.660 room. So you're not near an argument. It doesn't mean that you have to live, you know, a paranoid life

00:27:26.740 by defining it the way that we are. The goal is simply to make you confident that, yeah, there's

00:27:31.820 nothing here I have to worry about. Or, hey, this person is, you know, might be up to something.

00:27:36.440 We got to take a look at them a little bit further. And so our goal is simply not, or surely not

00:27:42.100 paranoia by any stretch of the imagination. Before I moved to Colorado, I was living just outside of

00:27:48.360 New York City and my wife spent a lot of time on subways and trains throughout the day. And sometimes

00:27:53.060 she would just be on the subway platform and look over and a guy was acting a little strange and

00:27:58.240 because she could kind of articulate it to herself of why that person attracted her attention.

00:28:02.860 She would just wait for the next, you know, train three or four minutes later, not just choose not

00:28:07.460 to get on that one. So it didn't really change her life. It was just a little bit more confidence

00:28:12.100 with what was happening around her.

00:28:15.880 Guys, just a quick pause to tell you about our elite mastermind, the Iron Council. I am sure

00:28:20.000 that you know by now, and you've heard all about what we're doing inside the council,

00:28:23.640 but we have been adding so many new features inside the brotherhood. And I want to make sure you're

00:28:28.040 aware of those. We now have a 30 day quickstart guide to get you headed in the right direction

00:28:32.480 immediately, immediately, and speed up the amount of time it takes to see big, big results in your

00:28:37.920 life. And that is exactly what we're after. We're after results. You're busy. I'm busy. The men already

00:28:43.440 joined up with us inside of the council are busy. We don't have a lot of time to talk about or do

00:28:48.520 things that aren't actually going to work in your busy life. So we spent the last couple of years

00:28:55.100 honing and refining and testing strategies that are going to help you produce those results in

00:29:00.600 your relationships with your wife and your kids and your friends and your colleagues, your level

00:29:04.720 of fitness, nutrition, sleep, exercise, diet, your business, growing your bank account, any facet of

00:29:10.280 life that you are interested in improving. We're going to give you some strategies and some tools and

00:29:14.400 some resources. And more importantly, the accountability that you need with other brothers who are extremely

00:29:20.880 motivated, just as motivated as you are. So if you're interested in seeing what we're all about,

00:29:26.300 head to order of man.com slash iron council. You can learn more there and claim your seat at the

00:29:31.340 table. Again, it's order of man.com slash iron council. And now let's get back to my conversation

00:29:36.340 with Patrick. You talk about predetermined decisions. And I think this is so important

00:29:42.440 because you might get caught in the moment and not really know what to do. And so with the example,

00:29:46.740 with your wife, she would just wait for another train. That was probably a decision that she had

00:29:51.720 already made in her mind so that when it came time to make that decision, it was easy. Talk to me about

00:29:56.080 the importance of those predetermined decisions and maybe even what some of those might be.

00:30:00.960 So, you know, when we look at a person's situational awareness, the more focused you get on a person,

00:30:07.100 the less awareness that you have of everything else going on around you. And it also starts to elicit

00:30:12.300 what happens inside your body during the stress response. So if your decisions are not pre-planned,

00:30:19.100 you either one risk hesitating and delaying your decision because you're not sure what to do,

00:30:24.180 right? Or you're just not making a high quality decision because you're making it under stress.

00:30:28.760 And so when we would think about what you might expect on, let's say a subway platform,

00:30:32.780 you identify someone that doesn't look right or someone that attracts your attention. As long as they

00:30:38.100 get on that train, then you can just simply wait for the next one and not be too worried.

00:30:42.300 If they don't, if that train comes and goes and they haven't gotten on it, maybe that decision

00:30:46.040 changes. Maybe at that point, she leaves the subway station or it gets near, you know,

00:30:50.620 sees if there's any police officers around or anything like that. But thinking through exactly

00:30:55.540 which course of action that you are going to take, this makes it a little bit more simple.

00:30:59.200 And then you don't, you don't have to worry so much about hesitating or delaying either.

00:31:03.460 What role, and I'm going to come back to something you talked about earlier in the term was

00:31:06.720 political correctness. And this is just run rampant in society and it's getting worse and worse.

00:31:11.060 What role does this have to play positive or negative in what we're talking about?

00:31:15.400 We always kind of ignore that politically correct, you know, those conversations we,

00:31:20.060 because we started, because this program was created in the military and because of the threats

00:31:24.720 and the risks that our country faces right now, we're not making any, at least internally to our

00:31:29.560 company. We don't make any decisions that are politically correct. We don't recommend those

00:31:33.260 for our clients. We simply look at what's effective. We don't use race or religion,

00:31:38.600 not because it's a bad thing to say, but because it's not going to help us recognize threats.

00:31:44.060 You know, when you look at some security companies out there that use fear to try to get people to

00:31:48.780 make some changes in their life, fear is a very short-lived emotion. It doesn't really

00:31:53.120 lead to behavior change. So it's not a politically correct decision to not market through fear.

00:31:58.380 It's one that doesn't work out.

00:31:59.840 And so when we hear these politically correct conversations, you know, we kind of just listen

00:32:04.180 to them to see what's, what the sentiment is. But at the end of the day, every decision that we make

00:32:08.780 and we do it because we believe that we owe it to the students who come through our courses or the

00:32:13.920 companies that we consult with, that we owe it to them to be effective, not to be politically

00:32:18.720 correct. And that's how we kind of judge what we're going to do or not do.

00:32:23.420 And that's such a good point. I mean, we, we talk about this a lot in the conversation of

00:32:27.180 masculinity and manliness is it's more important to be effective and get the job done than maybe

00:32:32.560 even necessarily to be right. And I know that sounds funny, but we're so worried about our

00:32:36.840 ego or offending other people. And it's like, is this going to help you get the job done? Yes or

00:32:40.820 no. That's what we want to do. Well, think about what you see right now with police officers. And

00:32:46.000 there's a lot of deescalation training that's happening in law enforcement right now. And all deescalation

00:32:52.560 is, is taking someone displaying the dominant cluster and getting them into the

00:32:56.820 comfortable cluster because the dominant cluster reflects and is the manifestation of the fight

00:33:02.180 response in your body, getting them to the comfortable cluster where fight or flight has

00:33:06.660 not been triggered is simply a matter of safety, right? But it's oftentimes presented in this way

00:33:13.200 of, Oh, it's a politically correct thing. No, it's, I don't want to get punched in the face. I don't want

00:33:17.380 to get attacked. And I don't care how I have to do that. I might have to suspend the ego for a little

00:33:23.000 bit, but as long as they get to that end state of not being dominant, that's a win for me any day

00:33:28.720 of the week. How feasible is that to take somebody who may not be clearly thinking or, or deep into

00:33:35.060 that dominant position to move them to a completely different state? Is that something that's very

00:33:42.000 likely and feasible? Sure. You know, if you think about the fact that every person is in one of these

00:33:46.400 four clusters at any time, dominant, submissive, uncomfortable, or comfortable, let's say, uh,

00:33:51.280 you said, do you have a son? You said, I have three sons and a daughter. How old's your oldest son?

00:33:56.040 Nine. Oh, perfect. So let's say you, you're, you come home and your son is angry and he's yelling and

00:34:02.460 he's being aggressive for a nine-year-old. You have four choices to make. Am I going to get him from

00:34:08.600 dominant to comfortable being dominant myself by being submissive myself, by being uncomfortable

00:34:13.440 myself or being comfortable myself? And as the dad, you might walk in there and say, he's being

00:34:19.340 dominant. I'm going to be more dominant than him. And if that works to get him to calm down,

00:34:24.620 that's great. There's other times where you might walk in, your son just might be angry

00:34:28.740 at something, you know, external to your house, something happened at school or, uh, with his

00:34:33.880 friends. And it might take a submissive approach of being non-threatening, making yourself look a

00:34:38.520 little smaller to make him realize that you are not the focus of his anger. You are

00:34:43.420 not the reason why he's mad. And by making yourself a little smaller and less threatening,

00:34:47.900 you get him to open up and then he begins to transition from that dominant cluster into the

00:34:52.820 comfortable cluster. And so you get to choose which of these four postures you take that are

00:34:58.360 going to be most effective. And by defining behaviors the way we are, it also provides you a

00:35:02.880 feedback loop. If you are talking to your son and you start off and you're noticing four or five

00:35:07.940 indicators of dominance and you take on a dominant posture yourself and you look at him and all of a

00:35:12.740 sudden you're seeing six, seven, eight indicators of dominance, you go, okay, that's not working.

00:35:17.220 You're not working.

00:35:19.220 No, you have to switch, you know, tactics. But if you take on, let's say a submissive 0.69

00:35:23.400 posture and you notice, okay, we started out, he was at like six indicators. Now he's down to

00:35:28.340 three or four. He's not calm just yet, but he's on the path. He's at least making progress

00:35:33.960 towards that. Maybe you need a little bit more time. And so it's just, when you think about how you

00:35:38.300 deescalate or how you calm a situation down, it's just choosing one of these four clusters

00:35:42.760 and thinking through your body language and your words and your actions to figure out,

00:35:48.380 is this going to work or not for this situation for this person?

00:35:52.760 Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting because I think as men, we're so, whether we are doing

00:35:58.320 it consciously or subconsciously, manipulating other people. And I don't say that necessarily

00:36:03.120 as a negative thing, but we want them to do what we want them to do, especially if you're

00:36:06.500 in a leadership role. But what you're saying is rather than focus so much on that, yes,

00:36:10.460 you have to understand what the indicators are, but turn that internally and focus on yourself

00:36:14.780 and people will respond to that. I know, for example, with my son, one thing that I know

00:36:19.520 just works really well with my oldest, not so well with my second son is I can go up to

00:36:24.780 my oldest and just give him a hug and say, let's breathe. And that will calm him down. If I did that

00:36:30.640 to my second son, he would probably want to punch me in the nuts or the face. If I tried that 0.98

00:36:34.820 with him. Yeah. So that's a pretty comfortable way. Almost saying like, there is no threat. There

00:36:41.100 is no stressor here. And by you almost not acknowledging it to a point of listening or

00:36:46.200 like the words themselves, that works for him. And your other son, that display of comfort

00:36:53.140 when he's mad might just incite him even more like, I want to get mad. Right. Exactly.

00:36:58.600 And that makes him more mad. Yeah. That's interesting. Well, I want to bounce back. I know

00:37:02.760 we've kind of bounced all over the place, but man, I was so blown away with all the information

00:37:05.880 in this book. One of the things that you talked about was Cooper's color code. And I'd like you

00:37:11.120 to go through that because I think that gives us a pretty good indicator or at least a framework

00:37:15.160 for us to operate as to how comfortable we should be or should we be on alert or where

00:37:20.160 we should be in any given environment. Sure. And so Cooper's color code was originally

00:37:24.980 created by Marine Lieutenant Jeff Cooper, since expanded on by Army Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman

00:37:30.420 on his great books that we have had on the show, actually. So perfect. Yeah, you make that even

00:37:36.220 better. But they identify these five different conditions that we could use to assign someone to a

00:37:42.020 different essentially classification for their situational awareness. At the low end of the

00:37:46.320 spectrum, you have condition white, a person who is situationally unaware. These are the people

00:37:50.800 walking down the sidewalk, texting on their phones, playing Candy Crush, Pokemon Go, whatever it is

00:37:55.520 that they're doing on their phone. And because they have no situational awareness, should a threat

00:38:00.480 present itself, they're completely unprepared to deal with it. They're very often the first victims.

00:38:05.380 From condition white, you have condition yellow, which is a relaxed alert. This is when you know

00:38:09.680 there's bad stuff out there and you are actively scanning your surroundings, trying to find it.

00:38:14.320 But you haven't found anything specific yet. As soon as you do find something specific that attracts

00:38:19.200 your attention, you escalate into condition orange, which is when you create your plan.

00:38:23.400 And then after condition orange, you have condition red, which is when you put your plan

00:38:28.700 into action. And the reason we talk about these conditions, especially in relation to

00:38:33.640 situational awareness, is you obviously never want to be in condition white, especially if you're with 0.73

00:38:38.920 your family, out in public. You know that there could be something bad happening out there. So if you're

00:38:43.320 unaware, that's usually a bad thing. But by being in condition yellow, this is the peak of your

00:38:49.760 awareness. And this is a relaxed alert. It's something that you can maintain indefinitely.

00:38:55.120 So by using this process of establishing a baseline and using these behaviors, what we're doing

00:39:00.560 is teaching you what to look for and how to look for it so that you know when you have to go into

00:39:06.840 condition orange. As soon as you go into condition orange, you begin focusing on a person, your overall

00:39:12.540 awareness goes down. You don't want to stay in condition orange for too long simply because of that

00:39:17.440 limited bigger picture. But if you don't know what you're looking for other than visually seeing a

00:39:22.820 gun or seeing a knife or seeing a fight, you never get into condition orange soon enough. And so you

00:39:28.760 end up being very reactive. And so our goal is to simply, again, just kind of go back to instill

00:39:34.260 confidence to know when, yeah, there's something here that's going on. We have to do something about

00:39:39.480 it. Or, hey, there's nothing happening here at all. There is no reason to get into condition orange

00:39:44.140 here in this situation. So let's just have a good time.

00:39:47.280 And I imagine this comes with experience too, because one of the things that you talk about is

00:39:51.400 that experience is better than intelligence. For example, I know a lot of smart people probably

00:39:58.060 get caught with their pants down. And you're talking about being more experienced. How can

00:40:02.000 one get more experienced with this stuff without putting themselves in life and death situations?

00:40:06.680 We just like to, the way we often recommend it is to go to a place that you feel safe and where I

00:40:13.760 usually end up at coffee shops when I'm out practicing this, because you can sit there for

00:40:17.100 a very long time and not attract any attention. But just simply every person that comes through the

00:40:22.180 door, practice assigning them to one of these four clusters. And each time you identify a different

00:40:28.340 factor that shows dominance, a different factor that shows discomfort, your ability to recognize

00:40:33.820 these goes up exponentially just because it becomes more and more natural. So you don't

00:40:39.060 have to do this with solely recognizing threats. Do it with, definitely don't do it with your family,

00:40:44.220 but do it. I almost said that. That would probably be the wrong advice. But do it out in public,

00:40:50.680 a place where you feel safe, where there's a low risk of getting, you know, attacked or drawing

00:40:54.820 attention to yourself. Luckily, most people are happily in condition white. So you can sit there and observe 0.93

00:41:00.260 people. And most people around you are not going to even notice that you are, you've been staring at

00:41:05.680 them for too long. And so just the better you get at the, again, these are the mechanics of

00:41:11.820 observation. So assigning people to these clusters, the more natural it becomes. And you'll be able to

00:41:17.180 do it even more intuitively over time as you get more experience. Well, Patrick, we'll wind it down on

00:41:23.740 time today. I want to ask you some, two other questions. One of them we talked about, I gave you 30

00:41:28.740 minutes to prep for this, which I know is not adequate, but I feel like you can do it. And that

00:41:33.280 question is, what does it mean to be a man? To me, it means to be capable, whether it's, and it could

00:41:39.980 be any number of things, whether it's something at the home, whether you can fix something or cook

00:41:44.280 great dinner or capable of work, the guy who's just trusted, or is what we've been talking about

00:41:49.360 capable to ensure the safety and security of your family. And so the reason that we teach what we do is

00:41:55.560 simply to help people and help your listeners become more capable and more well-rounded in

00:42:01.500 their ability to be that man. Right on. How do we, how do we connect with you and learn more about

00:42:05.880 what you are up to? Everything that we're doing is you can find on our website, which is cp-journal.com.

00:42:13.100 And that dash is really important. Otherwise you'll end up on the, uh, confessional Presbyterian 0.64

00:42:17.940 journal, which is something that's completely different. Like what? So these guys have pivoted what

00:42:22.900 they're talking about completely. Exactly. So cp-journal.com. And, uh, from there you can find,

00:42:29.760 uh, links to, uh, pick up left to bang or courses or a lot of the free articles and videos and pictures

00:42:35.080 that we have up on our site. If you want to practice. Right on guys, make sure go out and buy

00:42:39.900 this book. I promise you will not be disappointed. I've got mine tabbed, highlighted, folded. I mean,

00:42:45.340 I've got notes in the margin. I really appreciate Patrick, your work and everything that you've shared and

00:42:50.420 your service to this country, of course, as well. Uh, thank you for taking some time and sharing some

00:42:55.180 of what, you know, in your wisdom with us today. I appreciate the opportunity to come on your show.

00:43:00.860 Gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Patrick Van Horn as much as I did. Like I said,

00:43:05.320 in the beginning of the show, left of bang is one of the best books that I've read all year. And I know

00:43:10.500 you're going to want to read it for yourself. You can head to order of man.com slash one, two,

00:43:15.960 three as an episode 123 to get the links for this show. In addition to a link for the book left of

00:43:22.360 bang. In the meantime, make sure you get your last minute registration in for a live meetup in Kansas

00:43:27.680 city. Again, August 12th, 2017 at order of man.com slash event. And also go find out what it's like

00:43:35.700 to join our exclusive brotherhood, the iron council. And you can do that at order of man.com

00:43:40.340 slash iron council guys. I will look forward to talking with you on Friday for our Friday field notes,

00:43:45.560 but until then take action and become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the

00:43:51.880 order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant

00:43:56.900 to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - July 25, 2017

123： Left of Bang ｜ Patrick Van Horne

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