Order of Man - ANDY STUMPF ｜ A Quiet Professional's Guide to Chaos

00:00:00.900 Every man will eventually find himself in water over his head.

00:00:05.420 Maybe that's a business that's sinking, a marriage that's struggling,

00:00:09.740 or a season of life where you can't just see the shore.

00:00:14.040 And what most men do is panic.

00:00:15.880 They thrash around, they burn through all of their energy,

00:00:18.400 and they make emotional decisions they could potentially regret for years.

00:00:23.840 But the men who make it through aren't really that much stronger or more talented.

00:00:29.020 They just stay calm, focus on what they can control, and take the next breath.

00:00:34.860 Now, my guest today, former Navy SEAL Andy Stump, knows this better than anyone.

00:00:39.140 We talk about the drown-proofing evolution at BUDS and what it actually teaches you,

00:00:45.540 which might be a surprise to you, why you should have the emotional responses but never make emotional decisions,

00:00:52.940 and the quote-unquote chunking approach that Andy says is the most useful tool that he's ever

00:00:59.840 utilized. But we also get into why most guys quit and those who do regret it for decades,

00:01:05.400 the difference between being a quiet and a silent professional, and why telling the truth is always

00:01:11.500 enough. And the last thing is what real wealth looks like once you stop chasing more.

00:01:18.300 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly

00:01:22.740 chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You

00:01:28.580 are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is

00:01:35.080 who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:01:40.800 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, welcome to the Order of Man podcast. I am your host and

00:01:46.840 the founder of Order of Man, Ryan Michler. Thanks for tuning in today. We have been going for 11

00:01:52.100 and a half years. What an amazing thing. That's a long time to have started this business over a

00:01:57.900 decade ago in the world of podcasting and people not knowing what podcasting is. But more importantly

00:02:02.820 than that, it's a long time to be helping men who want to improve in their lives. And every single

00:02:09.020 day of my life since 11 years ago, when I started this, I've been talking with guys who want to be

00:02:14.680 better fathers, husbands, business owners, community leaders, and we're faced with all sorts

00:02:20.140 of existential crisis and threats and problems that quite literally threaten our way of life

00:02:30.000 and our desire to be the kind of men that we want to lead as we serve our families and

00:02:34.800 businesses and communities.

00:02:36.180 So this is a resource that will help you do just that if you're tuning in for the first

00:02:40.460 time.

00:02:41.300 Hopefully, you'll get some insight from the podcast today.

00:02:44.000 Now, before I get into the podcast, I've got some good friends over at Montana Knife Company.

00:02:49.660 I've got a hunt coming up as of the release of this podcast uh this weekend it's one of my favorite

00:02:54.920 hunts I go on this every single year and every single year uh well as long as I get myself a

00:03:01.800 harvest I end up using my Montana knife company knives if you're looking for a good knife in the 0.98

00:03:07.100 field as an everyday carry in the kitchen or whatever you might be doing as a man look no

00:03:13.440 further than Montana knife company and make sure you use the code order of man all one word order

00:03:18.520 of man at checkout and you'll get a discount when you do. Now, let me introduce you to

00:03:23.700 my guest. A lot of you guys know who this man is. I've had him on the podcast multiple

00:03:27.180 times. His name is Andy Stumpf. He's a retired Navy SEAL who made it through BUDS on his

00:03:31.980 first attempt, which is common, but also it's not uncommon to not make it through based

00:03:39.140 on a lot of factors that we talk about today. But he later returned a decade later, if I

00:03:44.080 remember correctly as an instructor where he spent time with students you know right after

00:03:49.500 they rang that bell and we talk about that on the podcast uh the conversations the regret that he

00:03:55.500 heard and nearly every single one of them shaped how he thinks about time and discipline and

00:04:01.040 perseverance and after being medically retired he built a career that includes years with crossfit

00:04:06.600 and work as a corporate and charter pilot flying jets across the u.s and internationally he's also

00:04:13.560 the author of his latest book, Drown Proof, his first and latest book, Drown Proof, with

00:04:18.060 a forward by Jocko Willink. And he hosts two podcasts, Cleared Hot. A lot of you guys are

00:04:22.060 familiar with that. I've been on Cleared Hot and also Change Agents. He's been training

00:04:26.480 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for nearly eight years. And as you'll hear in this podcast, spends

00:04:31.520 his fall chasing big game with his wife in the back country of the United States. Enjoy

00:04:37.040 this one, gents. Andy, what's up, brother? Good to see you. It's been, what, a month

00:04:42.240 and a half or so since uh we got back from immersion camp but man sounds like you're a busy

00:04:46.140 guy has it only been a month and a half uh let's see yeah end of august so yeah about a month and

00:04:53.340 half crazy right well the tail end of the calendar always gets busy if you're into hunting in the

00:04:58.500 northwestern states you have 60 days to basically get it done so right after immersion camp leah

00:05:03.180 goes to masters in vegas and i usually start doing hunting trips trying to get in what i can

00:05:09.420 in the limited time i have how does she do this year at uh at masters um unfortunately for the 0.55

00:05:16.740 last few years she hasn't had the competitive run that she's wanted to and for people out there not

00:05:21.140 familiar especially at the masters world competition uh competition half the people are

00:05:26.260 done after their first match so they pay a good amount of money and you train all year long and

00:05:29.940 you go out there and travel and she fell into that category for this year um which hasn't always been 0.97

00:05:34.960 the case you know she's been a world champion multiple times at different belt levels and

00:05:38.460 she's at a phase in her jujitsu where she would describe where i think she's not performing the

00:05:42.000 way that she wants to but she's fantastic about it you know i've never seen her even get home

00:05:46.340 a day or two later upset about that more than anything it's just logs on the fire for her to

00:05:51.940 try even harder and work even harder it seems like anybody who has been training jujitsu long

00:05:58.260 enough it's no longer i mean competing is great right you've got competition it helps you understand

00:06:03.320 where you stack up against the competition there is a level of ambition and drive that goes with

00:06:07.880 it helps you be better but anybody i've ever met is like no i'm stacking logs like you said i'm just

00:06:12.900 here to train i'm here to get better and that is a part of it but not the entirety of why i'm

00:06:18.180 training jiu-jitsu i've heard from a lot of coaches say somewhere between three to a maximum of five

00:06:23.840 percent of jiu-jitsu participants actually compete so it's a very small uh sliver of people who

00:06:29.220 actually participate in the activity and for most people are doing exactly i think at least as a

00:06:33.620 non-coach perspective and just a hobbyist participating in it they're there for the

00:06:38.380 social aspect to get a workout in to learn a new skill i mean anything other than spending

00:06:42.600 thousands of dollars per year traveling around the world for competitive snuggling

00:06:45.760 that's a that's a good way to say it like competitive snuggling folding your clothes

00:06:51.060 with people still in them is another one i've heard uh it's pretty accurate for sure how long

00:06:55.320 have you been training because you what maybe what eight nine years somewhere in there ten years

00:06:59.640 no uh just under eight years i think eight years okay yeah yeah getting ready to come

00:07:07.140 yeah eight years man you've been doing obviously you train a lot you know and and we've had the

00:07:12.500 chance to roll in the past part of the reason i have less hair on my face above my neck is 1.00

00:07:17.740 because of you i don't know if you remember when you scalped my beard and ran around like an indian 0.51

00:07:22.060 and uh we're pretty proud of your uh your trophy but that was when the beard got shorter

00:07:26.780 fault oh totally my fault yeah i should have i should have tied it up or shaved it first or

00:07:31.860 whatever but yeah no no no same as yeah it's like the nfl man if it's outside of the helmet it's

00:07:37.340 fair game if people want to grow a beard i'm going to choke you right through your beard or

00:07:40.440 with your beard it's your choice it's it's interesting it really speaks to your mentality

00:07:45.080 because and i'm not even saying it's a bad thing but first off that's not my mentality those are

00:07:49.260 the rules of jiu-jitsu if you have a beard that's a handle that's not my rules that's jujitsu

00:07:54.360 all right fair fair let me say it this way most people don't do that even though i agree with you

00:08:01.800 a hundred percent i agree with you yeah so that's funny man no it's good it was good to see you at

00:08:08.160 immersion and good to see the families doing well um obviously on the back of a lot of success with

00:08:13.420 the book drown proof i'm actually very curious about the um the the exercise that you know the

00:08:20.860 the book covers based on, we've all seen it in movies. We've all heard about it. Like what is

00:08:25.040 the actual exercise where you guys have your hands tied behind your back? And you know, I don't know

00:08:30.440 if you're like going down and picking up bricks or what you're doing, like explain the actual

00:08:35.020 exercise you guys do in buds. It's very simple. Uh, it's your feet are tied together. Your hands

00:08:40.940 are tied together behind your back and you bought the, the actual test itself as you bob up and down

00:08:44.980 for an hour and then you have to swim the length of the pool down and back then you bob again they

00:08:51.100 throw a mask in and i don't know why they do this particular section but they throw a mask in

00:08:54.900 you pick it up with your teeth you bob a few times you do a front flip which i don't know

00:08:59.760 what that accomplishes and then you swim your way over to the side of the pool and for people

00:09:04.260 hearing that like wow that must be tough the reality is it's a very crawl walk run evolution

00:09:08.480 you practice doing that without any restraints on your hands or feed then there's velcro ones

00:09:14.020 that you can let go if you need to. And then during the test, it's a one-to-one student ratio,

00:09:19.840 meaning each student has another student assigned to directly be looking at them with instructors in

00:09:24.320 the pool as well. So it's not like you just throw them in there and expect them to do that. And the

00:09:29.540 reality is it's one of the easier evolutions. If you're comfortable in the water, which hopefully

00:09:33.520 you are going to that particular training pipeline, if you're comfortable in the water,

00:09:37.960 it's not that hard. You exhale to become slightly negatively buoyant. I think it's a

00:09:42.320 10 or somewhere between 10 to 15 foot deep pool you sink to the bottom you bounce off

00:09:47.640 catch a big breath on the way up and slowly let it down on the way back down again and if you

00:09:51.440 think about it the instructor's ability to really communicate with you or participate with you is a

00:09:56.640 fraction of a second while your head is above water and you can totally just zen out if you

00:10:00.200 want to and just enjoy the hour it's it's really i'm not this is not tongue-in-cheek it's really

00:10:06.380 not that hard of an evolution i mean it looks from the outside in and it looks it looks difficult and

00:10:12.100 I don't want to discount it cause I've never done it. So I can't speak to it, but it seems like the

00:10:16.220 key would be, would be to keep calm. Like don't get frantic. Don't outpace yourself. Like just

00:10:23.000 keep calm, keep cool, keep collected, do your routine and you'll be fine. That's literally all

00:10:28.860 it is. And again, if you were to just take people and they didn't get practice in that every single

00:10:34.420 day, almost leading up to the test, it would be perhaps an insurmountable task. But by the time

00:10:39.260 they actually are taking the test. They've done the introduction to it. They've done practice.

00:10:44.160 They've done a practice test. I mean, it's not, I'm not saying it's simple, but I am saying it's

00:10:50.200 easy. Yeah. Well, I'm curious what you think. What, what does that look like in the real world

00:10:57.100 for somebody who isn't going through that training? You know, what, what, what is making

00:11:00.860 yourself drown proof? What, what exercises and things should you be doing on a daily basis

00:11:05.240 that will help you overcome other obstacles that will inevitably come up in your life?

00:11:11.480 Yeah. Well, first off, it has nothing to do with being drown proof. They may call it that,

00:11:15.840 but you can also look back into the history of real world seal operations. And in training,

00:11:20.480 people die in the water, not often, but it does happen. Um, when I was serving active duty,

00:11:25.440 they found two guys dead at the little Creek pool. They think it was a double shallow water

00:11:29.100 blackout that they actually had a safety observer. Then they were doing something or one guy was

00:11:33.200 The other one went in and had a shallow water blackout as well.

00:11:35.720 They don't know.

00:11:36.140 They found both of them at the bottom of the pool.

00:11:38.400 One of the last deaths at Bud's was somebody who vomited underwater and aspirated it.

00:11:42.780 There was the death of the two active duty seals in the Persian Gulf that fell off of a boat or a caving ladder climbing a boat a few years ago.

00:11:51.000 I know of a guy who drowned in a river, crossing a river.

00:11:54.440 So the reality is it doesn't make you drown-proof in the evolution itself, although it occurs in the water and that is in the name of it.

00:12:00.160 It really has nothing to do with the water and has everything to do with just controlling your emotions regardless of what's happening in the world around you.

00:12:06.140 It's about following procedure, whether you want to or not, prioritizing the things like you already mentioned, just staying calm, thinking about what you need to do and being calm and executing those.

00:12:17.020 And that is what gives it broad overlap into the civilian world because that's what people need to do when things start getting out of control.

00:12:25.300 You need to start focusing on the things that you can control, which is just yourself, how you talk to yourself, how you set your goals, how you think about yourself, how you focus on time, how you focus on the obstacles that are in front of you or the problems that you're trying to solve.

00:12:40.320 You have complete control over all of those things, and that's what you focus on.

00:12:43.120 So again, they call it drown-proof, but it's anything but making you impervious in the water.

00:12:47.980 i mean i think that's a good distinction because regardless of your training whether it's in buds

00:12:54.860 or different different types of training or the real world there are things that come up that

00:12:59.560 you just are beyond your control i am curious though what is your take on the concept of

00:13:05.460 stoicism because i think a lot of people look at it and they think oh suppression of emotion

00:13:09.160 that's not what stoicism is i think a lot of people think that but i'm very curious about

00:13:14.040 your relationship personally with the emotions that you experience on a daily basis?

00:13:21.160 I mean, I think I have the same emotional capacity and range as anybody else.

00:13:25.800 Stoicism to me, which I'm not a deep student of, I understand the written works around that

00:13:31.480 and Marcus Aurelius is often named as one of the most famous stoics. And I like a lot of his work,

00:13:38.340 but the reality is it's not about being emotionless. To me, stoicism is about removing

00:13:42.780 emotions from your decision-making process so you can maintain your objectivity it's you have to you

00:13:47.900 you need to have emotions i think having emotions is probably one of the more beautiful things

00:13:51.800 about being a human being i mean that would be super weird i i guess you'd have to fall into

00:13:56.500 the range of a sociopath or a psychopath that has to fake those emotions you know there are a mirror

00:14:03.100 of the people that are around them because they're not capable of having those emotions themselves so

00:14:07.220 they mirror and project what they are in the environment with i wouldn't want to live like

00:14:11.280 that. But I also don't want to live in a world where people allow their emotions to interact

00:14:17.540 with their decision-making process, which I think is very common. And it doesn't help. There's no

00:14:22.700 upside to involving your emotions to your decision-making process, but there is probably

00:14:27.060 an unlimited downside if you let your emotions take control. So stoicism to me is that. It's

00:14:32.800 recognizing when those two are interacting and doing my absolute best to be as whole of a person

00:14:38.960 as I can be and have that emotional range but when important things come up or I need to make

00:14:43.040 decisions I have to be able to separate emotion from objectivity so I can actually work my way

00:14:49.020 through what's happening as opposed to being blinded by how I feel when you first said you

00:14:54.620 should remove it altogether I at first I was like no you should have some of that but as you explain

00:14:59.560 that it actually makes sense now that you say it that way to differentiate the two like the way

00:15:05.000 that I hear you saying it is I can acknowledge that I'm angry, for example. Totally. And then

00:15:10.320 once I acknowledge I'm angry, okay, there's a warning light. I need to do something about

00:15:15.360 whatever situation I'm dealing with and let's remove the anger factor and let's walk through

00:15:20.260 the resolution factors. It's totally appropriate to have emotional responses, but you shouldn't

00:15:26.540 make emotional decisions. Those are two very different things. How in the moment, um, let's

00:15:32.660 say through your previous career as a Navy SEAL

00:15:36.360 or even the work you're doing now,

00:15:39.220 how do you, in the moment when you do feel like,

00:15:42.560 well, let me back up.

00:15:44.020 How do you acknowledge and recognize in the moment

00:15:46.260 that emotion is creeping in?

00:15:47.920 And then secondary to that question is,

00:15:49.780 when it is, what are things that you do to say,

00:15:52.860 oh, hold on, that's emotion, let's fix this,

00:15:56.380 let's course correct?

00:15:59.160 I mean, I think for people, time is their biggest asset.

00:16:01.820 If it's not life, limb, or eyesight, why are you rushing?

00:16:05.560 We live in a world where people have artificial emergencies all the time.

00:16:09.540 And I'm not here to tell anybody how to live their life.

00:16:11.680 But if you look at all the decisions that you may be required to make throughout the

00:16:15.220 course of an average day, how many of them are actually emergencies?

00:16:19.840 Hopefully none.

00:16:20.960 I mean, I'm not saying that they're not important, but hopefully none of them are

00:16:24.180 emergencies.

00:16:24.720 So why not take as much time as humanly possible or as much time as available to

00:16:28.500 work your way through that?

00:16:29.420 And for me, I can recognize the emotions pretty easily, and I think most people can too if they can stay kind of in check with who they are.

00:16:36.120 Like for me, anger, I oftentimes will start feeling a little bit flush in my face.

00:16:39.900 That's something I've been able to recognize.

00:16:42.080 Like or my shoulders were tense a little bit if I start getting frustrated.

00:16:46.320 And it's just an ability to check in with yourself and take a deep breath.

00:16:50.000 And again, I would just for most people just use time.

00:16:52.740 Use time as your greatest asset because if it's not – I mean like life, limb, or eyesight, you probably need to make a decision pretty quickly.

00:17:00.320 But even in those moments, don't rush to your death, right?

00:17:02.480 Take the time you need to think through it.

00:17:04.360 But anything else outside of that, I mean take a breath.

00:17:06.780 Take five minutes.

00:17:07.480 Take a walk.

00:17:08.140 What's the downside there?

00:17:10.080 You make a better decision.

00:17:11.200 Oops.

00:17:12.500 Yeah, too bad.

00:17:14.180 Yeah, I've noticed that too.

00:17:15.420 like for example i might get frustrated or impatient with my kids and if i if i just

00:17:22.440 immediately bounce towards response or resolution i usually end up getting more and more frustrated

00:17:28.500 and short with them i might yell at them raise my voice say something dumb but if it if i'm like hey

00:17:34.300 hold on you know let's take a breather you go to your room or hang out for a minute i'm gonna go

00:17:40.380 over here i'm gonna go on a quick walk we'll reconvene but it's interesting because we have

00:17:44.520 I don't even know where my cell phone is, but it's funny when people are like, Oh, I need to

00:17:48.420 have my phone on me just in case there's an emergency. I'm like, well, what'd you do 20

00:17:51.400 years ago, 25 years ago, maybe 30 now I'm getting older. So it's like, you didn't, you didn't have

00:17:57.440 your phone on you and everything was fine. But as much as I love technology, I mean, you and I

00:18:03.240 wouldn't be having this conversation without it. I think it actually makes us more agitated,

00:18:08.760 more impatient more on edge all the time maybe you have to participate in that though you have

00:18:16.420 a choice so i instead of blaming the device you're probably better off blaming your usage of the

00:18:21.920 device just a tool right i mean i could take a gun and defend somebody but i can also you know

00:18:28.540 violate somebody else's rights with a firearm you could have five hours of screen time per day

00:18:33.220 and most of that being on social media getting anxiety and frustrated and emotional about what's

00:18:39.360 going on in the world and things that aren't directly impacting your world or you can have

00:18:42.360 a 30-minute screen time and use it for looking up critical pieces of information that you need to

00:18:46.700 make decisions in your daily life same tool you know different utilization of the tool which will

00:18:52.400 lead you to a different outcome yeah good point do you have do you have hard and fast rules or

00:18:58.780 is it at this point for technology let's say specifically where it's like hey i'm gonna not

00:19:04.140 be on my device before 10 a.m or is it just a lifestyle at this point where there's no longer

00:19:09.840 rules that you follow it's just part of the way that you've etched it into your daily your daily

00:19:14.040 plan i think it's a little bit more fluid i actually the the exercise of being on social

00:19:21.140 media for a long time doesn't make me feel good it doesn't enrich my life and honestly after a

00:19:26.780 certain amount of time, I almost I'll say to myself, like, this is gross. Like, why am I even

00:19:30.740 doing this? What am I getting out of this? And I it's cool to see my children. I have a 23 year

00:19:37.080 old, a 21 year old and an 18 year old. They're kind of rallying against social media. At this

00:19:43.500 point, they were raised on it. They don't remember a time where the Internet didn't exist or having

00:19:47.460 a smartphone. And two out of the three of them don't even have social media apps on their phone.

00:19:52.080 They'll download it on Saturday, use it for an hour and then take it off so they can check in

00:19:56.620 and see what's going on but they they are less interested in being connected 24 7 even though

00:20:01.460 they are the ones that grew up in a world where they don't remember not having the internet

00:20:04.640 which to me is a is a good sign it seems to be people in our generation and older who didn't

00:20:10.280 have it and remember a time before it who struggle more than those that were born into the world with

00:20:15.700 it for a i don't want to say a safe utilization but perhaps a healthy utilization yeah that that's

00:20:23.020 interesting. I almost wonder if that's a byproduct of looking at past eras and saying, Oh, you know,

00:20:29.680 I wish it was that way. I wish it was that way before I want to live how my grandparents lived

00:20:34.960 or whatever, even though we never experienced it. There's a lot of, I was going to say nostalgia,

00:20:41.480 but I never experienced it. But at the same time, I think like, I would love to live like my

00:20:45.380 grandparents lived. Um, I wonder if it's some of that or they're just burned out on it. Do you

00:20:49.960 think that's a, do you think that's a trend with that generation or do you attribute that more to

00:20:54.480 how your kids were raised and the conversations you guys are having? I mean, I can only speak

00:20:59.200 for my kids and what they tell me about their social circle and I'm sure it's hit or miss,

00:21:02.960 but anecdotally it's more their generation doing that. And I don't think, and again,

00:21:07.940 I can't speak for anybody other than my kids. I've never heard them express a desire to live

00:21:12.440 as previous generations have, but I have heard them talk about just kind of being exhausted by

00:21:18.720 24 seven connectivity and being bombarded by information. They just don't like it. Even though

00:21:23.280 again, that's the world that they grew into. Yeah. I really don't think that, I mean,

00:21:29.440 humans evolve, but I really don't think that we are, I mean, we're not designed and we certainly

00:21:35.300 haven't evolved to the point where we are constantly bombarded with the levels of information

00:21:39.880 and advertising and marketing and stimulation that we currently receive. I mean, I know this

00:21:45.360 weekend, for example, um, I'm going out to some sand dunes here in Southern Utah. I'm going to

00:21:49.960 spend a couple of days in camp out there disconnected largely. I mean, I still have my

00:21:54.340 phone on me. Um, but I'm, man, I'm looking forward to just being unplugged from the rest of the world.

00:22:02.120 You can do that any day you want to. That's the, that's the thing, but people don't often think

00:22:08.580 that they can, right? Like, or, or here's a, here's an interesting one. You'll run into somebody

00:22:12.980 to convenience store to your point or the grocery store or whatever. And you're like, Hey, how's the

00:22:17.120 week going? They're like, Oh, I can't wait for the weekend. It's like, it's Monday, dude. Like

00:22:21.740 you're going to live five days before you get to the two that you can finally live your life. Well,

00:22:26.380 you, like you said, you can do that today. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's easier to pretend as if you don't

00:22:33.980 have complete control over what it is that you're doing. Uh, but the reality is, especially when it

00:22:38.560 comes to electronics and disconnecting, you don't have to go out to the sand dunes or like I just

00:22:41.900 to the five day back country, nothing trip with my wife, you know, and we were at a place that had

00:22:46.960 no cell communication, but I also could have the airplane mode button on my phone, you know?

00:22:52.980 Yeah. I think it goes to what you're saying is like, how do you utilize the tool effectively

00:22:58.180 for what you're trying to produce? Do you find that people largely know what it is that they

00:23:06.060 want and what they're trying to accomplish, or are they just sporadic, chaotic all over the place

00:23:11.060 and don't have any idea, which is why maybe we can't utilize tools as effectively as we otherwise

00:23:16.060 could. You're going to have to ask that question to somebody smarter than myself. I struggle just

00:23:21.320 to keep my own life in check, let alone gauge other people's. Yeah, it is. It is hard to,

00:23:28.720 I mean, it's an interesting position because people do look to you for insight, advice,

00:23:33.600 inspiration, probably what's your relationship to that? Like, do you, do you like that? Do you not

00:23:38.460 like that there's this whole concept of you know the silent professional um so it's kind of

00:23:43.860 interesting well there's a difference between the silent professional and the quiet professional

00:23:48.980 and those two are often confused and again i can only speak from the community of people that i

00:23:55.240 come from the vast majority of people that served during the era that i did read the book men with

00:23:59.400 green faces which was a very traditional book about seal uh experiences in vietnam had that

00:24:05.280 book not been written, I don't know if it would have inspired as many people in that generation

00:24:09.460 that would have come after it. And the generation before me, actually, and probably the generation

00:24:13.360 before them were inspired by that book. I think it's important to have those things that can be

00:24:20.500 beacons or that can be a portal to people to discover things they may not know anything else

00:24:27.480 about. My only issue with any of those mediums is when their relationship with the truth starts to

00:24:32.000 go awry. People's earned experiences are theirs to do with whatever they want to. So if people

00:24:37.880 want to write a book, I don't care. Write a book. If people want to host a podcast, host a podcast.

00:24:41.980 I don't care. You earned your experiences, but all I would ask is that you tell the truth. I think

00:24:46.560 it's when people get off the rails with that where things start to get into trouble. And

00:24:54.340 And we need people who still want to do those very difficult and dangerous jobs.

00:25:01.380 I believe that the vast majority of people out there are a good representation of what that can be and what it can do to your life.

00:25:09.900 And I'm glad that it has those touch points.

00:25:12.200 And you can be quiet about the things that are sensitive without being silent and saying nothing.

00:25:18.220 And perhaps people who would have been amazing at fill-in-the-blank job never hear about it.

00:25:22.600 I mean there's pros and cons to both for sure.

00:25:24.340 Right. So what I'm hearing you say is being quiet is a level of discernment about when and what ought to be shared at certain times. Is that what you're saying?

00:25:35.880 That and how you do it as well. I mean, you don't need to be egotistical in nature. You don't need to be braggadocious. You don't have to layer 15% of BS on top of the truth.

00:25:47.300 I mean the reality is enough – what people do is enough.

00:25:52.000 I mean this is the issue that Tim Kennedy got himself into.

00:25:54.300 He had an amazing, fantastic career and layered what we gained with 1% of BS on top of that, which then I'm not going to put an overall quantification of what it ended up being.

00:26:04.820 But at the end of the day, it's like, dude, your resume is unbelievable.

00:26:07.600 You didn't need to do any of that.

00:26:09.120 But by doing that, look at what it did not only to your legacy at this point but the struggles you're going to have in the future.

00:26:16.360 all you had to do was tell the truth man like what you did was enough it was more than the

00:26:20.580 vast majority of people on earth will ever do and that's what you're referring to as as the

00:26:26.120 relationship with truth once it starts to become fabrication and lies and embellishments well not

00:26:32.340 only that it also not only does it undermine a person's own legacy but it also i mean i'm look

00:26:39.380 i'm not responsible for other people but i am responsible for like you said telling the truth

00:26:45.040 and when you don't and you undermine it it paint it tarnishes not only your own reputation but the

00:26:50.960 way people perceive what they might have actually pursued but it undermined all of that and it made

00:26:58.660 it harder for those people that you say you're trying to serve yeah there's no upside to not

00:27:04.380 telling the truth and for people out there you may be getting away with it right now but give it

00:27:11.660 enough time and the roosters are going to come home on that one and like you're just not going

00:27:16.220 to escape it with enough time yeah yeah i like what you said though your resume in in his case

00:27:23.560 yeah obviously has done some amazing things but all of it got undermined by himself by nobody

00:27:31.780 other than himself and that's i mean again my worst enemy is always going to be myself you know

00:27:37.180 and his apparently is his as well. And I think that's probably a pretty common theme.

00:27:43.180 You talk a little bit about that, quite a bit about that in the book as far as just taking

00:27:47.840 responsibility, taking ownership of your life and not putting it on other people.

00:27:54.280 Why do you think people struggle to do that? Is it ego? Is it a risk of feeling stupid in the eyes

00:28:04.700 of other people why why do we do that because it sucks i mean it's not fun to sit there 0.98

00:28:12.520 especially publicly or in front of your family or a group of your peers and say this is who i want

00:28:18.980 to be and this is who i am currently and i tried to do this and i fell short i mean i get it it's

00:28:23.820 not fun to do but it's where the actual growth occurs i mean i don't think that one's that hard

00:28:28.740 to answer. It's if, you know, falling short of who you want to be, especially publicly just isn't

00:28:36.840 fun. So I think a lot of people try to avoid that. I don't think it's much deeper than that.

00:28:43.580 Guys, I'm going to step away real quick. Andy said something in this conversation that struck

00:28:47.300 with, that stuck with me. Most of us are our own worst enemy when it comes to asking for help.

00:28:53.460 You know, nobody's making you feel foolish for not having it all figured out. I have not really run across that

00:28:59.680 But you're doing that to yourself

00:29:01.520 And while you stay quiet your health and your marriage and your business and your relationship with your kids stay exactly where they are

00:29:09.580 Or even worse fall behind and that's why I built the iron council 10 years ago

00:29:13.740 Now this is one of the original brotherhoods

00:29:16.500 Uh that helped shape this whole

00:29:18.900 men's movement, but this is a brotherhood of men who are doing more than talking about being better

00:29:24.180 men. We don't want to just talk and yap and sing kumbaya around the campfire. We're actually doing

00:29:29.140 work. And when you join us, you will get a 12-week battle plan and an app to track a battle team of

00:29:37.720 men who will hold you to that plan and weekly sessions every single week with me, with expert

00:29:44.000 guests, with other members in the Iron Council, and you'll get monthly assignments, challenges,

00:29:48.900 and years at this point decade uh worth of of resources to draw from there's no contracts you

00:29:55.180 can leave any time i see things popping up all the time guys are putting up this membership or

00:30:00.140 that membership but we've been doing it for 10 years we know it works and more importantly we

00:30:04.760 know it doesn't work i don't want you to waste my money i don't want you to waste your money

00:30:09.380 i want you to get the most out of your and my time and that's why we're all in this together

00:30:14.780 so if you are the type of man who wants to get involved in something that will actually move

00:30:20.560 the needle and work to build lives your life your family's life your wife your kids your friends

00:30:25.940 your colleagues your co-workers this is possible we've done it over and over and over and over

00:30:31.780 again but you need to stop going at it alone check it out orderofman.com iron council that's

00:30:37.760 orderofman.com iron council do that right after the podcast for now let's get back to it

00:30:44.680 with Andy. I think that's true. The one that I think is pretty insidious or even just a little,

00:30:51.180 uh, a little harder to acknowledge is just asking somebody for help. Like I had, I had a buddy over

00:30:59.880 a couple of days ago, Ian went, he was on the podcast and, uh, he's, he's fit, you know,

00:31:05.880 he's into fitness. He loves fitness. He loves being physically healthy. And it was amazing to

00:31:10.280 me, it wasn't difficult, but I still found it challenging to say, Hey man, how can I do this

00:31:16.660 thing better? And I'm amazed at how often I won't ask for insight or help, whether it's business

00:31:21.820 related or relationship related, because I don't want to sound foolish to people I care about people

00:31:28.120 I'm influenced by. That goes back to what I just said a minute ago. I think for most people, they

00:31:34.280 are their own worst enemy. I mean, speaking for myself, I can say that's demonstrably true. And

00:31:39.680 what you just described, nobody's making you feel that way. That's you putting a stumbling block in

00:31:44.580 front of yourself, which you can choose to do or not do, or go around or go over whatever it may be.

00:31:50.060 Yeah. Because I've never asked somebody a question and a thoughtful question anyways, like, Hey, um,

00:31:56.180 Hey Andy, you, you did this move in jujitsu. Can you, can you show, I'm curious, like,

00:32:00.440 how does that work? I've never asked a question like that. And somebody said, you idiot,

00:32:05.380 you don't know how to do that. Everybody's always like, Oh yeah, cool. Let me show you. 1.00

00:32:09.680 Yeah. That would be, that would just mean you're training at the wrong gym.

00:32:13.120 Totally. You're around the wrong people, right? Yeah. Yeah. Or you're training with that. That

00:32:17.780 guy's an asshole. You know what I mean? That's basically what that comes down to. 1.00

00:32:21.100 Yeah. Yeah. What other lessons from the book do you feel like, you know, you either had,

00:32:26.340 you'd like, you really enjoyed writing because they related to you personally, or you felt like,

00:32:31.780 Hey, this is an important point and topic that maybe most people get wrong. I mean,

00:32:36.520 a lot of us understand the relationship with ownership and Jocko wrote the forward to the

00:32:41.160 book. And so there's extreme ownership, but were there other points that you just really enjoyed

00:32:45.720 writing? Cause it made sense to you or you learned something hard along the way.

00:32:50.640 I don't know if there was a section that I enjoyed writing more than the other writing.

00:32:55.080 Yeah. I mean, but the section in the book that has been the most useful tool for me,

00:33:01.320 uh, was the section about chunking and how you view time, which was the reverse engineering of

00:33:06.420 talking to the BUDS students about why they were quitting. And for the audience who may not be

00:33:10.580 aware, the attrition rate at BUDS is 75 to sometimes 90%, depending on the month that

00:33:16.400 the training is occurring. And these kids, which is mostly what they are, and I say that looking

00:33:21.080 back at myself too, I mean, I can't even fathom what the instructors must have looked at our

00:33:26.600 class and just be like, wow, this is the end of our community. It's spending time with the

00:33:36.860 students. When I went back as an instructor, 10 years after being there as a student was

00:33:41.280 fascinating because if people quit in your class, you really don't see them again because your

00:33:44.840 training day continues. And then honestly, they're kind of thrown to the wood chipper of the big Navy.

00:33:49.800 They have to sign some paperwork, but they stopped training immediately. They're pulled

00:33:53.780 from the training evolution they clear their stuff out of the barracks of the class that's it's

00:33:57.660 currently in the curriculum and you just you don't see them but as an instructor you get to spend a

00:34:02.980 good amount of time with them in that moment right after they quit or in the days right afterwards

00:34:06.580 and i always try to be extremely respectful because they were in a heightened emotional

00:34:10.520 state for sure and the number one emotion that the vast majority would tell me is they regretted

00:34:15.640 the decision that they had made and so that to me is like okay well you know let's how did you get

00:34:21.020 there? What happened? And you have to take a few things off the table because there's a few other

00:34:26.920 reasons why people quit. One of them is just life happens. People will get notification like, hey,

00:34:30.600 a family member died or a family member has a terminal disease or whatever. It's like, dude,

00:34:35.680 get out of here. Go take care of that. The training pipeline will be here for you when you come back.

00:34:39.520 Just go live your life. Injuries are another one where they've been hurt more than once. You only

00:34:44.280 get one injury role in training. So if you get a second one, you're going to get removed. So

00:34:47.640 So you have to take those out of the equation because although sometimes when the life happens, people quit or oftentimes when they do, I'm not going to put that into the category as somebody else who just decided they couldn't do it anymore.

00:34:59.100 That person literally just had to go take care of life, which like I said, come back as many times as you want to.

00:35:04.220 People don't realize you can actually do that.

00:35:05.960 And some of the most recognizable famous seals have gone through and didn't make it through on their first time.

00:35:12.640 And I know ones who – I mean I know a Medal of Honor recipient, Mike Monsoor, who jumped on a grenade and saved four people's life.

00:35:18.060 He did not – he quit in Hell Week the first time he was in training.

00:35:20.880 And his unwillingness to not give up and to come back ended up costing him his own life years later, but it saved the lives of four others.

00:35:27.960 And I know people who have gone through three times.

00:35:29.640 But again, point of all that is you have to take those people off the equation because those are kind of anomalies and it's not what I was interested in.

00:35:36.540 I was interested in the kids who said, this is all I've ever wanted to do in my life.

00:35:40.820 I'm never going to give up.

00:35:42.080 There's nothing that you can make me do as an instructor that would cause me to quit.

00:35:45.700 And the next thing you know, you see their helmet under the bell.

00:35:47.900 It's like, dude, what happened, man?

00:35:50.440 And they all really described the same thing.

00:35:52.500 They got frustrated and overwhelmed in a moment, and they made a decision that they regretted.

00:35:57.120 And what got them there is all that they could focus on was where they were in training and how much farther they had to go.

00:36:04.080 That's all they could see was the distance that they had to travel before they achieved their goal.

00:36:09.640 And then you talk to the people who are bomb-proof, and they're doing the exact opposite of that.

00:36:13.920 They don't even know where they are in the journey.

00:36:16.440 They know they're on a journey, but they just focus on the next step.

00:36:19.740 And if you think about it, that headspace, not counting your steps, not keeping track of the distance.

00:36:26.740 I mean lift your head up every once in a while to make sure you're still on the path, but then get yourself right back down and look at the next step.

00:36:31.620 It doesn't really matter how many steps you take because as long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, regardless of the duration or distance of your journey,

00:36:39.260 you're going to get there. And those students, you can't make quit. It's just, you can't get

00:36:45.220 them. My job as an instructor was to apply the curriculum and then facilitate a headspace where

00:36:50.500 people would start to doubt themselves and ask themselves questions like, how long can I be this

00:36:54.460 cold? How long can I be this tired? And of course we wouldn't tell them how long it was going to be

00:37:00.040 because there's a huge difference mentally between showing up with an instructor and he says, hey,

00:37:04.960 we're going to run for four miles, keep up. And the same instructor showing up, knowing that the

00:37:09.700 instructor knows you're going to run four miles, but he says, Hey, we're going to run until I'm

00:37:13.380 tired and you better keep up. There's such a different emotional state there between those

00:37:17.560 two people and what they are expecting. The latter is way harder because you don't know how to gauge

00:37:21.760 your effort. You don't know how long it's going to be. So it's hard to plan for something like

00:37:26.320 that. Like how do you play a football game? If you don't know how many quarters there are,

00:37:30.600 It's like, I don't conserve energy. Do I not conserve energy? What do I do here?

00:37:36.220 Play at a time. It's the same thing in buds, right? It's a play at a time. It's an interaction

00:37:39.840 at a time. So those students, what they, what they almost all described was they found themselves in

00:37:45.620 that headspace and they were cold or tired or, you know, hungry or not, whatever it is, like

00:37:50.480 whatever physical thing was happening. And they convinced themselves they couldn't do it for as

00:37:55.840 long as they thought they were going to be asked to do it for. But the reality is nobody told them

00:38:01.160 how long they were going to do it for. So they became their own worst enemy and they quit.

00:38:04.780 So I think you can reverse engineer that. And that chunking concept, which isn't mine,

00:38:08.480 other people have described it as horizon shifting. So you set a shallow horizon,

00:38:13.620 you get to it, and then you shift your horizon on and on and on. And there's no right or wrong

00:38:17.240 answer to the size of the goal or the distance of the step. It's whatever you can tolerate.

00:38:23.320 and i need to be clear with the audience it doesn't make things easier it just makes them

00:38:27.980 more digestible it allows you to wrap your head around it and not become overwhelmed by the macro

00:38:34.400 because you're living in the micro that's how i've accomplished everything that i've ever done

00:38:39.540 in my life it's literally the most impactful tool that i've ever used so chunking is basically you

00:38:45.140 know let's use writing a book for example it's like okay i'm not going to worry about hitting

00:38:48.880 the new york times bestseller list i'm not going to worry about a hundred thousand words or whatever

00:38:52.960 I'm going to worry about writing this segment today.

00:38:56.280 And that's all I'm going to worry about.

00:38:57.880 And tomorrow I can worry about writing the next segment.

00:39:01.220 Yep.

00:39:02.380 Or like I need to, for me, it was easy.

00:39:05.300 I started writing the book in the 2024 election cycle and the publisher was like, Hey, unless

00:39:10.400 your book is political, we're not going to put this out this year.

00:39:12.720 And I said, okay, that's cool.

00:39:13.740 So I didn't have a very strict timeline associated with it.

00:39:17.120 So I was on my own to write as much as I wanted to, which I really enjoyed the process.

00:39:21.000 some days I would write 5,000 words. Some days I would write zero. I took a couple of weeks off

00:39:25.540 in between and I wrote when I wanted to, because I was able to do that. It probably would have been

00:39:30.340 a different process had I had a, a, like a guillotine timeline waiting three months from

00:39:35.400 then. But all I, I mean, if I sat down and I felt like I could express what I wanted to

00:39:41.020 and get it from my head to my fingers, then great. And if I didn't, I didn't worry about it,

00:39:45.320 you know one day at a time yeah one you know flashing cursor at a time i mean that's i i

00:39:53.660 remember when i wrote sovereignty i wanted to write it fast because i knew if i if i did what

00:39:59.780 you said you did it it would be it would be harder for me i think um and so i just committed i'm gonna

00:40:05.780 write a thousand words per day and and i did i wrote a thousand words per day and sometimes i

00:40:10.100 kept 100 and sometimes i kept all 1000 but it wasn't like i'm gonna hit this deadline i'm gonna

00:40:15.660 do this thing it was no i'm a thousand words a day i anybody can do that you can do that

00:40:19.860 and that seemed to work for me which is kind of the concept of chunking it sounds like

00:40:23.900 well and people hear that and for them that might seem insurmountable it's like cool do 250

00:40:29.200 you know or 200 whatever works for you it doesn't yeah it doesn't matter that's the cool thing about

00:40:33.260 is it's not prescriptive you can take the concept and you can take you know how do you eat an

00:40:38.220 elephant or a whale. It's one bite at a time, but I'm not here to tell you how much you should

00:40:41.580 shove in your mouth. Right. I'm curious. I want to go back to these, these, uh, young, young men

00:40:48.940 who, who quit, uh, rang the bell, so to speak. I have always been kind of curious, you know,

00:40:54.640 following them five, 10, 20 years later, like if that would be a regret for that long, or if they

00:41:02.860 have to, I mean, they'd have to navigate that decision somehow. I almost wonder like what,

00:41:07.660 what what do people tell themselves to justify let's just call it underperformance doing something

00:41:13.900 less than they know they're capable of i've run into some of them so i can actually answer that

00:41:18.840 question for at least the ones that i ran into i've probably run into about a dozen uh that i

00:41:23.960 put through training and that quit while i was there every single one of them described a haunting

00:41:30.260 and regretful feeling about that decision for the entirety of like 10 years 12 years whatever

00:41:37.420 the whole time we're talking two decades later at this point yeah the whole time which probably

00:41:41.860 isn't healthy you might want to go talk to somebody and work your way through that but i get it i mean

00:41:46.320 it's the probably it's i would say it's the number one thing i don't want to have on my own deathbed

00:41:49.780 is to sit there and be consumed with regret on things i wish i had said or done or spent time

00:41:55.080 with you know i can't think of anything worse how do you know or begin to evaluate because a lot of

00:42:03.420 a lot of people talk about quitting right and that's what we're talking about now and then you

00:42:07.860 have this and i don't care what you call it but some people call it quitting and then there's the

00:42:12.140 idea or the concept of pivoting how do you know that maybe i should ring the bell because this

00:42:20.220 is not for me and that's a that could legitimately be the case or no i'm just being weak

00:42:25.920 i don't think anybody can tell you that from the outside that's going to be an internal

00:42:31.880 decision. I mean, I wish I could, people used to ask me all the time, Hey, do you think my kid

00:42:39.420 could make it through butts? And the only honest answer is I have absolutely no idea. You cannot

00:42:43.480 look at somebody and determine that from the outside. If they let the instructors bet on the

00:42:48.800 students, like who was going to make it through and who wasn't, they'd be broke. I mean, I was,

00:42:52.180 I was six foot, 150 pounds the day I started training. There's no way that somebody was

00:42:58.500 pushing all their chips in like, yep, Andy's going to make it through. We had, we had division one

00:43:03.120 college athletes. You know, we had, uh, guys that were probably lighter than me. We had a, uh, like

00:43:07.400 a legit division one long distance running star. There was a dude who played football. It looked

00:43:12.360 like he was carved out of marble. And then there was most of the rest of us who looked, I mean,

00:43:16.540 really, really underwhelming, super young. But if I think back on my class, none of those people

00:43:23.460 that were anomalies on either side made it through like the D one guy was one of the first guys to

00:43:28.140 ago the track and field star quit on a swim uh one of the first ones you know because he finally

00:43:33.240 got challenged with something that he wasn't good at and that guy had been catered to his entire

00:43:37.340 life um and you know and had a team of coaches behind him for that one specific activity

00:43:42.240 but in the end of the day it wasn't any of those outliers it was just super average people

00:43:48.320 that wouldn't give up and you there are people who get into that pipeline and the job is not

00:43:55.400 going to be right for them, but you can't tell that looking at them that that's, so I can't

00:44:00.060 answer your question. That's an internal one. And I think that's a real tough conversation for

00:44:06.140 people to have because it's way easier to tell yourself, I need to pivot. This may not be right

00:44:10.640 for me as opposed to just saying, Hey man, I just didn't have what it takes. I quit, you know,

00:44:15.220 being honest with yourself and just moving on from that. It's okay. It's not, it's, it's not

00:44:19.320 a job that everybody should do clearly i mean it's one of probably the rarest jobs in the world

00:44:26.020 quite frankly so yeah and not in a good way you know what i mean like there's pros and cons to

00:44:30.620 the job probably more cons to the job than pros it's a very weird job and depending on the time

00:44:36.320 that you serve and the experiences that you have it can definitely change the trajectory of your

00:44:40.520 life and if you let it it can destroy your life yeah well i i imagine that's the case you know

00:44:46.880 it's interesting when you were talking about the d1 athletes and the and the superstar track

00:44:50.960 athlete and all of that it's almost the um the plight of the naturally talented where

00:44:58.180 things just come easy and then the minute they get challenged in any difficult way i mean i look at

00:45:03.660 my son so my son just graduated he's playing college lacrosse now and at the risk of you

00:45:09.500 offending him like he's not a suit he was not born a superstar athlete uh same but the kid

00:45:16.600 he just works his tail off i mean he goes and throws a ball a rubber ball with his stick at the

00:45:23.960 wall every day 400 times a day that like doesn't miss and that's the kind of thing that i see and

00:45:31.740 i'm like oh that is what made up for any lack of talent relative to these kids who come out of the

00:45:37.600 womb just ready to play ball there's not that many of those kids i mean there's very there's 0.59

00:45:42.720 one michael jordan and a bunch of other people who had to grind their ass up to make up for the 0.78

00:45:46.940 deficiencies that we all have in physical abilities i know it's everybody wants to be michael jordan

00:45:51.760 sorry you know what i mean like there's only one and in every sport has that and there's more than

00:45:58.780 one person that's that physically gifted but the vast majority do it through hard work not natural

00:46:03.100 talent. And even those people that do have natural talent, I mean, look at how hard Jordan worked as

00:46:08.120 well, too. It wasn't just that. Totally. He was grinding. Totally. What do you, uh, so when you,

00:46:14.240 when you talk about being, you know, average, so to speak in, in going through training,

00:46:19.160 what is it, what, what can you attribute you being able to make it through the training and

00:46:26.020 have a successful career in that very rare and not, not so great industry like you talk about?

00:46:30.780 I mean one thing that I think helped and I don't know if this is necessarily a good idea but I

00:46:37.440 didn't have a plan b I didn't have anything else that I was considering doing which I would say

00:46:43.580 the con to having a plan b could potentially be depending on how enticing it is you could really

00:46:48.380 talk yourself into it depending on how bad things are going for you in the moment so I don't think

00:46:53.580 it's bad to have a plan b but if it's a 50 50 toss-up between wanting to do two things you get

00:46:59.180 to those low moments where the instructors are trying to facilitate you questioning yourself,

00:47:03.820 you might have some interesting conversations with yourself.

00:47:07.380 I got introduced to the idea of breaking things up like complex tasks or long tasks into short

00:47:12.820 duration stuff when I was young, working for my dad.

00:47:16.060 And that advice was reinforced to me by other students in training.

00:47:19.000 So just kind of adopting that and being able to shut out everything other than the moment

00:47:22.540 you're in and just move on.

00:47:24.720 Those were, I mean, honestly, I'm not telling in cheek when I say I didn't have anything

00:47:28.080 else to do.

00:47:28.640 That's literally the only thing that I had ever wanted to do, and to me, the juice was worth the squeeze.

00:47:33.240 So you compare that or combine that with the mental approach there.

00:47:36.960 And what I didn't realize at the time is I was exceptionally lucky not to get injured.

00:47:41.260 I didn't realize the injury rate until I went back as an instructor.

00:47:44.620 I was able to make it through – straight through on my first try, which is not anomalous, but there's a lot of people that get rolled one class or two for either a physical issue or a medical issue.

00:47:54.220 And unfortunately, that didn't happen to me.

00:47:55.660 so what are the uh what are the typical injuries is it like uh stress fractures broken bones

00:48:03.160 tears that sort of thing overuse normally run into yeah yeah overuse injuries it's impact stuff

00:48:09.380 the obstacle course is a wood chipper um people fall off stuff you know so uh hands ankles arms

00:48:17.080 and legs for when you know when they reach out to try to brace themselves when they're falling

00:48:20.280 overuse from the running um shin splints i mean and the thing is too it's not it's not that i was

00:48:26.760 uninjured going through training you're always nursing something i mean the training pipeline

00:48:30.020 i'm sure yeah it's designed to be like that so everybody like you know vitamin i and by that i

00:48:35.680 mean the old ibuprofen 800 which is unhealthy but is the only dosage that the military seems to give

00:48:40.980 you and they give you an entire sandwich bag full of them um you know the vitamin i helps from time

00:48:46.720 to time. That's not medical advice. Anybody out there listening, um, but overuse overuse and then

00:48:52.640 the ballistic stuff. And honestly, it's from falling in accidents. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting.

00:48:58.120 Yeah. I've had quite a few seals on and other special operators and it's interesting to hear

00:49:03.000 like what just the amount of just wear and tear on the body is just incredible. And it's incredible

00:49:10.220 too, what the body can handle and also what the body can come back from, which is pretty amazing.

00:49:15.400 yeah when you when you separated from service what what was that like because i know

00:49:23.320 i mean every every person who listens to this has an identity right we wrap up our identity in our

00:49:29.160 job or our marital status or whether or not we're fathers or what we do for work or what our

00:49:34.940 activities and hobbies are what what was that like for you leaving something that by all accounts i

00:49:41.520 think I can say that you really enjoyed and you found an immense value in what was that like for

00:49:46.980 you? I think my off ramp was a little bit easier. One, I knew that it was coming. They were, they

00:49:52.640 pushed me towards the medical retirement process, which is a lot of appointments and paperwork up

00:49:57.960 front, but you kind of, I mean, working with the person that you submit it to, they're not the

00:50:02.580 person that rates their record, but they can look at it and say, yeah, based off of what I have seen

00:50:06.260 and results on records like this, you could probably expect this outcome. So I knew I was

00:50:10.300 probably going to be medically retired, but that whole process took over a year to go from all the

00:50:14.180 appointments. You have to go through all of the appointments. One of them might be this month,

00:50:19.940 and the next one, the specialist you need to see might be in two months. You get all that stuff

00:50:24.160 done. You actually do all of your VA appointments up front. You submit the paperwork. I think I got

00:50:29.140 the results back in like six to eight months. Point being, I knew that it was coming. I knew

00:50:33.120 that there was an off-ramp. Also, I had started working for CrossFit in my off time for years

00:50:37.840 before that. So economically I knew how I was, yeah, I knew how I was going to pay my bills.

00:50:42.420 So the combination of those two things, it was sad for sure. Like I was bummed that that wasn't

00:50:48.400 what I was going to, well, that wasn't what I was going to do anymore. But I always reminded myself

00:50:53.260 there's a difference between what you do and who you are. You know, I mean, it's, and I always knew

00:50:56.920 that even if you do 40 years, you know, at some point you have to hang the uniform up. So you

00:51:00.500 might want to have a, an identity and a life outside of that particular job. So I focused on

00:51:05.420 that and planned because i mean i had a great boss too he's like listen we already brought your

00:51:10.680 replacement in so there's actually nothing for you to do so just come in check in to make sure

00:51:14.380 you do all your admin work stay in touch with me and then start setting up what's going to be next

00:51:18.040 for you which was great you know he gave me the time and the ability to really create parallel

00:51:22.460 tracks and then by the time i needed to go from one to the other you know it was just a short

00:51:26.680 small adjustment of the wheel yeah that's that's interesting i mean just to have that overlapping

00:51:32.500 And it's funny because you talked about not having a plan B, but in that case where you knew plan A was not going to work out, you started to implement that plan B and have a strategy for how do I overlap these two things so there's no gap where I'm like, what the hell am I doing?

00:51:48.080 I don't know what I'm going to do with my life or my time or who I am.

00:51:50.960 The gap is where people struggle.

00:51:53.240 And again, I'm not here to tell anybody how to live their life, but for military members, people who are going to do 20 years, I try to tell them, give yourself at least 12 months, but optimally 25.

00:52:02.500 war before you get out to not ignore your military duties, but just start thinking about what you're

00:52:06.800 going to do next and explore stuff to figure out what you like. What, what angles have you taken

00:52:13.560 in life post post-service that you've explored that you did not expect or anticipate your life

00:52:20.880 to take you towards the corporate flying? I never thought I would have gotten into that. And then

00:52:26.940 being able to do part 135 uh aviation which is charter flying on demand flying so flying jets

00:52:34.080 kind of all over the world all over the u.s to the bahamas turks and caicos hawaii canada mexico

00:52:39.960 like all over the place i never thought i would i would have never guessed i would have dipped my

00:52:44.380 toes into aviation that was kind of just taking an unforeseen path that presented itself in front

00:52:49.300 of me with the support of an organization behind me that's probably the biggest one

00:52:52.920 what what did that look like was that something that you thought oh this would be cool i'll give

00:52:57.720 it a try or was there a path outlined for you like what did that what did that path actually

00:53:03.660 look like because i think people are presented with all sorts of opportunities and they could

00:53:08.880 be life-altering if we said yes to just like one small step so i started flying after i got out of

00:53:16.200 the military just because there i had a couple months off in between when i checked into the

00:53:20.360 training command before we picked up a class. And then years later, uh, the founder of CrossFit

00:53:26.300 called me. He was like, Hey, you have your pilot's license, right? I was like, yeah,

00:53:29.560 I didn't even remember that. I told him that I did. He was driving like this triangle of death

00:53:33.520 between Watsonville Prescott and San Diego, which is about eight hours per leg. And he was like,

00:53:38.940 okay, he's like, I'm tired of doing this. We're getting an airplane. You're going to be the

00:53:42.360 pilot. I'm sending you a company credit card, start training again. And I only had my private

00:53:46.100 pilot's license at the time. And so then I worked away all through the licenses. But when I was

00:53:50.340 doing my instrument rating, the Czech airman or DPE, designated pilot examiner, who was

00:53:56.540 administering my instrument rating test, they have to have an observer from time to time as well

00:54:01.760 from the FAA to make sure that they are doing their job well, right? Like there is no top of

00:54:05.840 the pyramid. Everybody's got a boss that's going to come and check them out to make sure. Well,

00:54:09.800 this guy was super cool. He was a previous Air Force dude. His name was Scott. He sat in on that

00:54:14.060 and where I parked the plane was like two blocks from the FISDO or the flight standards district

00:54:18.720 office for the faa and a lot of people who fly or they don't want to interface with the faa i loved

00:54:24.280 it i would go see those guys all the time and i became really good friends with scott like if i

00:54:27.400 had a question i'd just go ask the faa like i don't care like you guys are the ones i'm going

00:54:31.020 to end up talking to if i do this wrong and get in trouble anyway i'm going to go to the horse's

00:54:34.860 mouth you guys tell me how to do this or what my quite it was great uh and i recommend that all

00:54:39.100 pilots interface with the faa in that way if you have the ability to do so don't make them like

00:54:43.480 this monster you know like with the you know this the grim reaper with the scythe just waiting to

00:54:48.180 cut your head off, which they will if you go outside of the boundaries of that, but

00:54:51.800 just have a relationship with them.

00:54:53.960 He was also the Czech airman for a charter company, and they were looking for a right

00:54:58.260 seat pilot in a Gulfstream G4.

00:55:00.580 He was the one who presented me that opportunity because of the relationship we had developed

00:55:05.080 and the relationship he had at that charter company.

00:55:07.700 So that was the unknown variable that was presented to me that I could have never guessed

00:55:11.120 was going to happen.

00:55:12.980 And it was at a time in my life where I was like, screw it.

00:55:14.660 Yeah, well, give it a try.

00:55:15.940 and you know the next thing you know you're flying jets kind of all over the world it was awesome

00:55:19.580 that's interesting when you say that i mean what stands out to me is the concept of networking

00:55:25.220 and it is amazing how often i see people and look i'm guilty of it too or maybe you're not in the

00:55:30.320 mood or with the ffa thing faa thing um it was just that people thought they were they were the bad

00:55:37.100 guy they were the enemy so we're not going to go like across across party lines and converse they're

00:55:41.720 the punitive agency if you mess up right like they write all the rules so it's like it's the

00:55:46.520 same way a lot of people view cops highway patrol whatever it is like they didn't write the rules

00:55:50.240 but they're there to enforce them and so it's like don't get pissed about a cop enforcing the 1.00

00:55:55.360 law the guy didn't write the law it's his job to enforce it on the faa side some of those bastards 0.94

00:55:59.700 actually wrote the laws but it's also their job to enforce it as well too it's you know what i mean 0.96

00:56:04.820 like but i do i treat the cops like i don't i don't care if a cop pulls me over i'm like hey

00:56:08.780 what's going on man you know you know me like i don't it's i i treat everybody the same way i

00:56:13.800 don't and i don't try to network that's not to me that's not a concept that i actively try to do i

00:56:18.020 just try to treat everybody with as much respect as i'm not a social ladder climber and i have a

00:56:23.940 small social circle that i'm not looking to add to in life the more i go on it's just been painful

00:56:29.280 every time i have tried to um so to me it's not about networking it's just about treating people

00:56:35.960 with respect. That's a good way to frame it. I mean, I've always looked at it as networking. I

00:56:41.060 know that has, for a lot of people, a negative connotation. I don't think it is because I'm

00:56:45.100 looking at adding value and I'm looking to build relationships, but I definitely understand the

00:56:49.800 framing on that. I don't want anything from people. When I interact with people or if I

00:56:54.800 have a relationship with them, I'm not looking at them to fill a puzzle piece. I don't want

00:57:00.600 anything from them. I would love to enhance their life and provide something to them, but I do not

00:57:05.800 I'm not a handout type of person, meaning I have my handout expecting something from other people.

00:57:11.820 Right. When you said you said something interesting, you said that every time I think you said every time you tried tried to climb the wrong or the ladder, it it ended up painful, I think, is the word you used.

00:57:24.360 Like, what are you referring to? Like, how has it been hard to do that for you? What's what's gone on in the past?

00:57:30.060 I've been burned a couple of times, especially on the business side of the house, by trusting people and my fault.

00:57:35.460 A lot of that was trust but not verify.

00:57:38.500 I legitimately encountered somebody who was a covert narcissist.

00:57:42.040 I didn't even know what that was until after about a year and a half to two years of dealing with this person.

00:57:46.400 And that was a fascinating experience in self-doubt and questioning your own – it was amazing, like textbook covert narcissist.

00:57:58.080 And it was amazing the manipulative power and the mirroring effect that they were able to have.

00:58:02.160 And you look back now and you're like, man, I really miss this.

00:58:05.460 Um, I mirroring as in, as in telling you what you want to hear now, like your favorite things

00:58:13.220 are their favorite things. Your ideas are their favorite ideas. Whatever you love,

00:58:18.580 they love it even more. Can't even wait to tell you that's the mirroring, right? It's always,

00:58:23.040 they, they give you more of what they think you want. Um, and it's intoxicating, um, for sure.

00:58:30.680 but at the end of the day, for sure. Right. And I'm as fallible as anybody else. I just,

00:58:36.740 to me, my most valuable asset is time. And I have people in my life that I care very,

00:58:41.580 very deeply about. And it's not that I'm like walking around as a Heisman, shoving people

00:58:45.680 away. I am just much, much, much more cautious now with people that I allow into my social circle.

00:58:52.520 Yeah. I think that makes sense. Do you think, do you, have you ever taken that to the extreme

00:58:57.340 where you felt yourself like being too distant or pushing too many people too far away? Has that

00:59:02.560 gone to the opposite end of the spectrum at all for you? I'm looking for that. Really? I'm looking

00:59:06.460 for that place. No, not intentionally. You're like, I want to get there. I'm not an extrovert.

00:59:11.880 You know, my wife is definitely more of an extrovert. I'm a little bit more of an introvert. 0.96

00:59:15.100 I enjoy interactions with people, but it doesn't, uh, if her and I go to a party, uh, like a social

00:59:20.660 gathering, a jujitsu one, I leave with an empty cup. She leaves with a full one. And that's not

00:59:24.460 I don't like the people that I'm with.

00:59:25.920 It's just, that's not my jam.

00:59:28.220 Yeah, no, I get that.

00:59:29.620 And it's good to know that about yourself too.

00:59:31.160 So you can then just address it appropriately, right?

00:59:34.200 Yeah.

00:59:35.000 Yeah.

00:59:35.360 There's some things that, that, that fill my battery and there's other things that empty

00:59:38.980 them for me, large social gatherings.

00:59:41.300 They just, they don't fill my battery up.

00:59:43.860 Yeah.

00:59:44.980 What's, uh, what's, what's next on the horizon?

00:59:47.100 I mean, you've got this, you've got the book, you're, you're, you've got, uh, you're, you're

00:59:51.900 flying, you've got, you know, black rifle coffee.

00:59:54.460 you're hunting like you're doing all the things what like what is next for you do you see anything

00:59:58.900 where you're like i want to pursue this i want to travel or i want to try this weird obscure thing

01:00:04.500 what do you think that is for you we have some travel coming up just for snow sports i'm taking

01:00:09.060 my wife to japan in early february we've had just horrible ski years up here for like the last three

01:00:14.400 or four years um it was a bucket list for her so i'm going to take her there we're going to

01:00:19.560 australia for the world cup my dad wants to see it it's probably the last year he'll physically

01:00:23.100 be able to travel. And my sister was born in Australia, in Melbourne. So we're going to go

01:00:27.180 there for about 10 days. I travel for work. So to me, the allure of travel has been lost a little

01:00:33.460 bit. The aviation stuff, I'll probably add another license on the helicopter side, probably a

01:00:37.960 commercial license, not because I want to get paid to fly, but it's just another cool thing to dig

01:00:41.920 into. And it's another chance to continue learning. And it forces you, you're like,

01:00:46.100 I don't really want to do this. Not the flying aspect, but the studying and the knowledge base,

01:00:50.800 which does make you a better pilot once you understand the national aerospace system and

01:00:54.340 all the rules and regulations um it's kind of to me i don't have the book was the last like big

01:01:00.800 professional thing like okay i gotta get this done or i want to get this done beyond that i don't

01:01:05.380 have a overarching professional goal for 27 other than probably refining the things that i am doing

01:01:11.540 and hopefully trying to find more efficiencies in them to recover more time to end up doing the

01:01:16.200 things I want to do with the people I want to do it with. Yeah. What was the draw with the book?

01:01:21.060 I mean, cause I imagine, uh, I imagine you have been solicited for years and years and years to

01:01:28.620 write your stories, tell your story, whatever. What, why in 2024 is when you said you started,

01:01:35.040 why then? And what was the appeal for you personally to write the book and put it out

01:01:39.100 there to people? Because Mike Lover tricked me into writing it. It was supposed to be,

01:01:43.360 book. I'm joking. I'm not joking. It was, he pitched me an idea. He said, let's write a book

01:01:49.900 together. We'll pick eight or nine topics, social issues, whatever it may be. I'll speak about it on

01:01:55.260 my side from the green gray side. You speak about it on your side from the team guy side, the Navy

01:01:58.960 side. He's like, I don't know of a book like that that's ever been done. I said, okay, that sounds

01:02:02.960 cool. We picked a date that we were going to get together and we picked a few topics that we were

01:02:06.500 going to write about. And we showed up at that date and he had written absolutely nothing. So

01:02:11.000 So he had, though, found a book agent and this guy who makes pitch decks for books, which is these incredibly really like visually rich PDF documents that I don't have the ability to do.

01:02:22.160 I'm not good at design.

01:02:23.920 And I think actually Mike did this intentionally.

01:02:26.300 I think he just wanted me to write something.

01:02:28.700 And he's like, oh, yeah, I don't have anything.

01:02:31.400 Whoopsies.

01:02:32.060 But take what you've written and give it to this guy, which I did.

01:02:35.120 He created a pitch deck.

01:02:35.940 We gave it to the book agent.

01:02:36.900 and she shopped it around and said we'd you know you'll probably hear back in like six months

01:02:41.320 because for people out there who don't know this publishers are not looking at books every single

01:02:44.660 day they kind of they tranche them together and they'll do like once a quarter they'll look at a

01:02:48.680 bunch of them she shopped it around yeah they batch them up which makes sense uh she shopped

01:02:54.260 it around and i think within a few weeks i got a couple offers from a few different publishers and

01:02:58.980 it landed with saint martin's press um but that was the draw it wasn't my idea mike legitimately

01:03:04.440 tricked me into doing it. And I wouldn't have continued had the book pitch guy or not the book

01:03:11.060 pitch, but the, actually, I guess that's what it is. Yeah. He creates the book pitch. If the,

01:03:15.640 the deck he created hadn't gotten the response from the agent and the publishers, I wouldn't

01:03:21.880 have continued, but it did. So I finished it off. I, uh, I, I follow you on Instagram and it's

01:03:28.960 interesting when I see you repost stories or somebody, you know, is reading their book or

01:03:32.540 they share a lesson or whatever it might be from the book. What is the, what's the most rewarding

01:03:36.880 thing for you and having you do something that you really had no intention of doing initially?

01:03:44.640 I mean, I think the podcast falls into that category as well. I have probably at this point,

01:03:49.580 two dozen emails of people that reached out that said that they didn't kill themselves because of

01:03:54.900 something that they heard in the podcast or a change of focus or shift in mindset from either

01:04:00.160 the book or the podcast. And I can't think of anything else that is more meaningful than that.

01:04:05.200 Yeah. I was telling somebody the other day I had, uh, I had, he's, he's now a friend,

01:04:10.380 but he literally had his, a gun in his mouth and he decided to come to an event that we were

01:04:17.580 hosting. And this was probably eight years ago. And he came out and he was, he was a shell of a

01:04:24.100 man compared to what he is now. And he said that if that event didn't go well, or, or he didn't

01:04:29.380 feel like what he needed to feel like he was going to home going home to finish the job

01:04:33.160 and he came out and it transformed his life i'm not saying i transformed his life i i will say

01:04:39.900 that we created an environment that allowed him to make different decisions and he started to make

01:04:45.380 different decisions and then um eventually found through crossfit actually uh somebody he fell in

01:04:51.040 love with asked me to to go out and marry those two so i i i got my pastoral license in the state

01:04:57.600 of louisiana to marry them and that's the kind of stuff that is just so significant and that goes

01:05:02.580 back to what you were saying earlier about just wanting to add value to people's lives and it's

01:05:08.880 amazing what you can do when you put yourself out there in new and interesting ways it's better than

01:05:13.980 money people paying you to do stuff that's for sure yeah well there's a lot of um there's a lot

01:05:21.880 of uh motives questionable motives when that's your when that's your intention right and i think

01:05:28.940 one of the things that i admire about you and even on this even on this call is you can tell like

01:05:33.920 you're just you're being authentic you're being honest i asked you a couple questions like i don't

01:05:37.520 know most people won't do that but that's so refreshing to hear people say that when they

01:05:42.360 actually don't know or don't have an opinion about it yeah i don't i don't begrudge people

01:05:47.660 for doing everything they can to make money. I get it. I mean, it's, it's what makes the world

01:05:51.900 go round. What worries me is if you ask people what their number is, what they would be comfortable

01:05:56.680 making, it's just more, that's a dangerous spot always. And, uh, to me, it's not about what you

01:06:02.100 make. It's about what you spend. You know, it's actually way more important to manage your output

01:06:06.480 than it is to try to just keep your input growing and growing and growing, which is hard to do

01:06:10.280 because there's lifestyle creep, all of those things. And I have a different relationship with

01:06:14.980 money now than i did when i was younger like don't get me wrong i bought galactically stupid 0.98

01:06:19.280 shit with money that had almost no you know what i mean like you're like i can't wait to have this 0.98

01:06:23.080 then you get it and you're like well yep exactly yeah it's like gathering dust and then you look 0.98

01:06:29.680 at it and you're like huh that wasn't a very good utilization of money but i bet this next shiny

01:06:33.740 thing now to me i from to me my number is i want to make enough money that i can say no that i can

01:06:40.100 do what i want to with my time that i can go to japan with my wife and snowboard that i can hang

01:06:43.740 out with my kids and take them to a jujitsu camp in december like we've done for the last five

01:06:48.400 years that to me that's wealth that's all i care about yeah that's awesome man well i've really

01:06:54.400 enjoyed getting to know you over the years it's probably been i don't know nine years eight nine

01:06:58.260 years somewhere in there and to see your evolution to see how you yeah it's why time flies man it's

01:07:03.640 crazy but to see your evolution to see how you've developed to see the amount of people that you've

01:07:07.360 helped it's inspirational to me um and i'm glad i get to call you a friend and really honored you

01:07:12.340 join me today yeah man anytime tell me uh tell me where to go for the podcast for the book for

01:07:19.100 anything else you want to direct guys to so they can learn more about what you're up to

01:07:22.800 i mean you probably just google my name just andy stump i mean i have a website andy stump.com i

01:07:29.560 figured that was probably a pretty original way to uh make a portal for everything i mean i host

01:07:34.900 two podcasts one is cleared hot one is change agents one is an in-person interview setting

01:07:39.360 Um, and the other one, we, I do remote episodes with people that I work with ironclad, a

01:07:43.560 production company, and they look for people who are change agents, people who are out

01:07:47.500 there making change or, you know, kind of trying to be the first through the door.

01:07:51.000 So there's that the book is called drown proof and I'm on social platforms for some

01:07:55.860 version of my name, just Andy stump.

01:07:58.280 Yeah.

01:07:58.720 We'll sync everything up guys know where to find you.

01:08:00.680 And guys, I would highly encourage that you do because there's a lot of good information.

01:08:03.860 And like I said, I appreciate you coming on today, man.

01:08:07.100 Yeah, for sure.

01:08:07.520 Thanks for having me.

01:08:09.360 Gentlemen, there you go. Mr. Andy Stump. I've had him on the podcast multiple times. I think

01:08:14.060 this is a three-peat at this point. And every time, get a ton from this guy. We've been able

01:08:18.280 to train together and laugh together and shoot archery together. And it's been really, really

01:08:23.800 an honor to get to know Andy, an incredible human being doing incredible things. So I hope you

01:08:28.940 enjoyed the podcast. Make sure to check out a copy of his book, Drownproof. Head to the library,

01:08:33.540 head to Amazon, go to Barnes and Noble. I don't really care. Wherever you get your books, go

01:08:38.240 check it out learn apply most importantly and become a better man and again guys that's all

01:08:43.860 about what we're doing is becoming better men so if you want to do that at a deeper level a more

01:08:49.080 committed level a more engaged level and connect with other men who are doing the same thing check

01:08:54.380 out the iron council we're closing it down here shortly at the end of the month so get on it

01:08:58.740 quick orderofman.com iron council all right guys we will be back for my ask me anything with kip

01:09:06.480 Sorensen tomorrow. But until then, go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to

01:09:12.400 be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life

01:09:17.500 and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - October 20, 2026

ANDY STUMPF ｜ A Quiet Professional's Guide to Chaos

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