Jason Bresler served as a Marine and is now a firefighter in the New York City Fire Department. In this episode, he talks about his experience in Fallujah, what it takes to become a firefighter, and the lessons he learned from battling both human enemies and hot flames.
00:03:16.700the critical importance of generating tempo in highly competitive, complex, and resource-limited
00:03:22.580environments. More specifically, there are a few lessons that my Marines and I learned time and time
00:03:28.360again. And lessons that I think or firmly believe transcend the battlefield. And those would be that
00:03:35.300technology. Technology is helpful, but it has considerable limitations. And leaders in units that rely too heavily
00:03:43.040on technology for victory often experience defeat. And as a Marine, and I think this is true for many
00:03:51.820Marine commanders, we look at the purpose of technology as being to enhance human performance, not necessarily
00:03:57.620replace it. Another lesson I learned relates to the mental aspect of performance.
00:04:04.560And I firmly believe that the mental aspect of performance is too often neglected.
00:04:09.500A combat unit that possesses great technical and tactical skill and superior physical conditioning must
00:04:15.560still possess mental toughness to achieve success, as well as resilience in the face of loss or even on some
00:04:21.880occasions, catastrophic loss. Mental toughness is really the product of will.
00:04:27.620And I like to say skill is great, but Will Trump's skill and mindset certainly matters.
00:04:33.560And last, another lesson I learned that I think is invaluable is that training is imperative.
00:04:39.500And it must be three things. It must be responsible in that it must not cause harm or injury to your troops.
00:04:47.560But at the same time, it must be relevant and realistic. And it must be three dimensional.
00:04:53.500And what I mean by that is it must include tactical, physical and mental aspects.
00:04:59.440Nearly everything we do in combat is nothing more than a series of basic actions.
00:05:05.380But those actions done under tremendous pressure.
00:05:08.380And one of the things that my team learned, particularly in Fallujah, and we had reaffirmed for us on several occasions,
00:05:15.380is that regardless of how much you train and how many scenarios you train for, you inevitably find yourselves in situations
00:05:21.320that you have no SOP for or even a mental model for.
00:05:24.320And as frustrating as this can be, the bottom line is that a well-trained outfit that possesses unit cohesion
00:05:31.700will have the skills to mitigate the unanticipated predicaments.
00:05:35.260So they're just, you know, a few lessons that I learned that were certainly true in combat and I think transcend the battlefield.
00:05:47.080Right. So it seems like some of the phrases and words you've been saying, it seems like you're highly,
00:05:51.820you're heavily influenced by John Boyd and his OODA lube. Would that be, if you talk about tempo and complex systems and unit cohesion,
00:06:00.840that's stuff that John Boyd talked about 50 years ago.
00:06:04.040I would certainly consider myself a scholar, a Boyd scholar.
00:06:11.080In recent years, I've had the good fortune of being mentored by a Marine commander, retired Marine colonel by the name of Mike Wiley.
00:06:20.560Colonel Mike Wiley was one of Boyd's peers in the Marine Corps, and they worked to bring reform to the Marine Corps.
00:06:30.800So I certainly am, you know, a huge advocate of Boyd and think that his work, you know, the lessons that he learned and sought to share with others.
00:06:46.880And that aspect, that mental toughness part really interests me.
00:06:51.220So you said that, you know, will trump skill, but how do you train that?
00:07:04.580And, you know, it's kind of a cliche, but it starts with your why and understanding your motivational factors and those motivational forces.
00:07:14.760And I think any time you're part of a team and you're part of something bigger than yourself,
00:07:19.160you're going to be more likely to display mental toughness, particularly when you're experiencing some level of suffering,
00:07:27.840whether it be from fatigue or hunger or sleep deprivation.
00:07:33.020And I got to borrow, you know, kind of Stu Smith's take on it.
00:07:36.600Stu is somebody who certainly had a lot of influence on me as a member of the Leadership Under Fire team.
00:07:40.800But Stu breaks it down to something as simple as mental toughness is learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
00:07:46.600And I think that every day, if you're doing things to make yourself uncomfortable in some form or fashion,
00:07:51.960you're consistently and continuously developing mental toughness that will pay dividends for you in combat.
00:14:47.840And but but ultimately, I would probably conclude by saying that the traits and skills to make us a successful firefighter
00:14:55.140are generally predicated on on having the right attitude.
00:14:59.280Right. And even among those who get selected for the department,
00:15:03.180are there things that younger guys new to the job, new to the job struggle with?
00:15:07.820Yeah, there's certainly things that guys struggle with.
00:15:11.760And like I said earlier, similar as it is to the military, there's certainly differences.
00:15:17.840One of the great things about the fire service is, you know, for starters, is it's it's steeped in tremendous tradition.
00:15:25.600And one of the best things about the fire service is that junior guys, you know,
00:15:30.940particularly places like the New York City Fire Department are extremely deferential to senior guys.
00:15:35.140And, you know, this generally is a good thing.
00:15:38.140Of course, there's sometimes where this dynamic somewhat parochial is not ideal because departments resist change.
00:15:45.300Sometimes even when it's in their best interest.
00:15:48.140But but generally, the tradition is what makes the fire service special and unique.
00:15:51.720But guys and gals who are entering our X kind of need to know this up front because ultimately it takes time to earn the respect of senior members.
00:16:00.660And some of the things we communicate to guys in the Patty Brown program or vets that we mentor is, you know, we don't really it doesn't really matter that you what you did prior to joining the fire department.
00:16:09.120You could have been a Silver Star recipient or Division One All-American.
00:16:13.060And it doesn't really matter to most guys when you walk into the fire your first day.
00:16:16.720What matters is your willingness and effort to establish yourself as a capable firefighters, as a as a capable firefighter.
00:16:23.780And firefighters and fire officers are confident, but they are also equally humble.
00:16:29.340Even guys, you know, guys with 35 years in the business, some of the guys I work with possess a tremendous amount of humility because they know that firefighting had quickly has a way of humbling you.
00:16:51.400So, you know, in addition to being a firefighter, you also, as we said earlier, you have this leader development course called Leadership Under Fire, where you take the lessons you learned in combat and teach them to organizations like in the areas of business or sports.
00:17:04.820So, I mean, what is what is the leader development course look like at Leadership Under Fire?
00:17:09.280Well, much of it's based on things that that I and members of my team and the Marines I served with learned in combat, specifically in Fallujah at the height of the insurgency.
00:17:23.440And we we came back and we spent a few weeks and months and probably even years reflecting on our experiences there and our lessons learned, many of which were, quite frankly, counterintuitive.
00:17:34.720And we sat down and we said, you know what?
00:17:40.000You know, they transcend just the battlefield and they have a lot of value in all walks of life, business, finance, certainly firefighting, law enforcement, sports.
00:17:49.600So that's why we we named the concept Leadership Under Fire and it's team based.
00:17:57.240But in some instances, what we find is that folks in business, sports or even the fire service are uncomfortable with a leadership philosophy that was developed in combat.
00:18:05.940But here's what we communicate to them.
00:18:07.160And here's the bottom line, whether you're a leader in business or finance, sports or the fire department, you're managing resources in a time competitive environment where there's a tremendous amount of pervasive amounts of uncertainty, risk, fluidity, friction, competition and most significantly the human factor.
00:18:27.100And at Leadership Under Fire, we firmly believe that successful leaders are those leaders who are capable of thriving in uncertain and dynamic competitive environments.
00:18:38.220One of the things that combat reaffirmed for me time and time again was that the best leaders were those who were not just tactically competent, but those who were physically fit, mentally tough and most significantly morally fit.
00:18:52.040And I think Leadership Under Fire, we really work to continue to prepare leaders and organizations for the moral, physical and mental rigors critical to peak performance and mission oriented leadership in highly competitive settings.
00:19:04.580And you can make the argument that there's value in this in any trade or industry.
00:19:12.020Right. So let's talk about this mission oriented leadership.
00:19:16.760Is that just like having the why of why you're doing what you're doing?
00:19:19.700Well, I certainly think that's a key component.
00:19:24.440I think any leader needs to understand the why.
00:19:27.440And what we're starting to see now is something that the Marine Corps probably recognized a few years ago, compliments of folks like Colonel Wiley and John Boyd,
00:19:35.400is that folks will ultimately need to understand the why and the what and how it will naturally follow, particularly in instances where there's a breakdown in communication.
00:19:44.380But as it relates to mission oriented leadership, what I view mission oriented leadership as ultimately the willingness and desire of leaders on the part of leaders to prioritize mission accomplishment and the welfare of their subordinates over their own self self interest.
00:20:04.120So most military units, especially the good ones, even in combat, prioritize accomplishing the mission over self preservation.
00:20:12.980And I think that mission focused leadership is a commitment to ensuring that your priorities as a leader are consistent with the explicit mission of your organization.
00:20:22.280You know, as being a member of the leadership under fire fire team, I've had the good fortune of speaking to firefighters and fire officers around the country.
00:20:35.040And one of the first questions that I ask fire officers is, what is your primary responsibility as a fire officer, as a fire lieutenant, as a fire captain?
00:20:42.080And surprisingly, an overwhelming majority of them tell me that they think they what they think they're supposed to say, ensuring the welfare of my men or my troops or my subordinates.
00:20:54.500But the bottom line is, it's not really consistent with the mission statement of the fire service, which explicitly states that we serve to protect the lives, property of the lives and property of our of our citizenry.
00:21:06.640And so mission oriented leadership has, I firmly believe that has more influence on performance and outcomes than any other factor.
00:21:15.400And it, you know, even in whether it be combat or firefighting or law enforcement, that safe and favorable outcomes are not the product of risk aversion or rigid command and control.
00:21:25.400You know, these types of things, but rather the product of doing mission oriented types of things, the right things at the right times for the right reasons, with mutual trust, you know, between the commander and his subordinates.
00:21:43.220And so that that to me is what leaders mission oriented leadership is, Brett.
00:21:48.000Yeah. And how do you convey that mission to your subordinates, right?
00:21:52.900I mean, I think a lot of people who are in leadership positions, like they will come with some fantastic vision, but the hard part is helping getting others to catch that vision as well.
00:22:02.780So what do you do to help people get the why, get the mission of what you're trying to do?
00:22:08.120I mean, honestly, it's not a, you just need to talk about it and you need to talk about it consistently and everything that you do, you need to be able to connect back everything you do organizationally and everything that, you know, your folks are doing individually or in smaller teams.
00:22:24.200You need to be able to tie it back to the mission.
00:22:26.460Um, something as simple as I was talking to a mental performance coach reach recently, he was talking about bringing some cultural, um, change or, or seeking to enhance the quality of performance of a particular organization.
00:22:39.120And he said that he had surveyed his folks and said, sat down with all the individual and said, what does it mean for you to be a, what does it mean for you to be in this organization?
00:22:47.540What does this organization mean to you?
00:22:49.280Like when you think of this organization, what, what, what does it convey?
00:22:52.560And he said, he asked like 50 different folks and he got 50 different responses.
00:22:56.460Um, you know, that, that's certainly problematic where I think if you, you, you were to come to my files in Brooklyn, you were asked the guys individually, Hey, what does it mean to be a member of this rescue company?
00:23:06.880What does it mean to be a member of the New York city fire department?
00:23:09.740By and large, they may use different language.
00:23:12.100Um, and it may speak semantics, semantics, but, but I think ultimately they're really going to convey the same thing to you.
00:23:19.260And I think that that, that display or that communication reaffirms that there's, there's a strong commitment to,
00:23:26.400uh, to mission oriented, um, goals and mission oriented teamwork and mission oriented leadership.
00:23:33.380And, uh, you talk a lot about thinking critically and making decisions.
00:23:37.300That's an important aspect of leadership, but doing so in a competitive pressure filled environment where things are constantly changing is hard.
00:23:45.360So how do you get better at making decisions when the pressure's on, when you're under fire, uh, so to speak?
00:23:54.720And certainly, um, you know, it's high in this question because the fact is even, uh, the military units they've seen combat the most probably spend much more time training than they actually, um, find themselves in combat.
00:24:07.320But one of the first things that we try to do or try to impart to leaders is a better understanding of how they actually make decisions.
00:24:14.340And what we find is that many folks think they make decisions in a very rational, methodical fashion, um, in a high pressure situation.
00:24:21.280And this, however, isn't necessarily the case and science, namely psychology and, and to some extent neuroscience suggested our brain has two modes of decision making, um, which any of your, you know, yourself or any of your readers that have read Kahneman are familiar with.
00:24:35.820But, you know, the system one and system two models, or what some refer to as hot and cold system one, of course, being the primary mode when we were in a high pressure situation.
00:24:44.260Um, and the science suggested decisions are based more on intuition, experience, and training than deliberate, uh, analytical process.
00:24:52.880Um, ideally we, we, we build a large file cabinet experientially.
00:24:58.460Uh, but the fact is at the end of the day, even the most motivated firefighter or Marine can't really control the quality of real world activity.
00:25:06.060Um, but he can control how many, how much time he spends physically training and thinking about performing under fire.
00:25:12.980Um, and, uh, I think like yourself and so much of your audience, uh, consider myself to be an avid reader and what leading scholars are telling us is consistent with what great leaders have all, have always intuitively known, um, that reading and thinking about scenarios, particularly scenarios that we haven't experienced firsthand, but possibly are likely to experience creates a mental model that will be then useful when we're making decisions under, under stress.
00:25:36.540And, uh, and, uh, I would probably be amiss if I didn't reference a quote from perhaps one of the greatest war fighters, um, in the Marine Corps and certainly modern history.
00:25:46.140And that's general James Mattis, um, kind of re reaffirms even just the value of, of reading and the influence it has on our decision-making capabilities is that thanks to my reading, general Mattis said, thanks to my reading.
00:25:59.040Um, I've never been caught flat footed by any situation.
00:26:03.040It certainly doesn't give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.
00:26:09.100And I think that that mindset, um, you know, certainly serves to, to prepare leaders to make decisions in stressful environments.
00:26:38.080Is it how fast something's going or is it, I mean, I think Boyd was talking about tempo a bit and he was sort of, I don't know, it wasn't very clear about what he meant by what, what do you mean by tempo?
00:26:48.360And why is it so important for winning the day?
00:26:51.460So the challenge sometimes is to take something that Boyd understood and, and first try to understand it.
00:26:57.100And then the second challenge is to try to be able to integrate it into what we, what we do and make it practical.
00:27:02.180Um, and then probably the final challenge is then to communicate it to, uh, to others.
00:27:07.280So this certainly isn't going to be, um, temp, uh, you know, a view of tempo from the 30,000 or probably 40,000 Boyd, Boyd level.
00:27:15.400But, you know, as it relates to kind of leadership under fire's take on, on tempo and how we view it relative to, to combat and firefighting, um, we view tempo really as being speed, speed relative to a problem set.
00:27:28.540So not necessarily speed for the sake of speed, but speed relative to the problem set or, or more, uh, probably more accurately.
00:27:35.920It's the ability to react faster than your opponent.
00:27:38.060And whether it's sports combat, uh, law enforcement, firefighting, or business, if your team possesses the ability to develop a plan, uh, and execute it faster than your adversary or your competition, you're much more likely to defeat your opponent.
00:27:54.340Uh, one of the best examples of this in sports is the know how to offense, right?
00:27:59.660Or in baseball, a catcher calling his, his, uh, his own game, um, that creating that pace that your opponent cannot necessarily keep pace with both physically and mentally, um, you know, has, has tremendous effects.
00:28:15.660Uh, on the battlefield, uh, the most effective units frequently can employ what we call an implicit command, which is really, uh, to some extent, very similar to a know how to offense where tactical actions are executed with a great deal of, without a great deal of instruction, um, because small leaders, uh, are trained to understand their commander's intent, right?
00:28:36.180And the, the mission, regardless of the circumstances.
00:28:38.820Um, and what's significant here is the commanders are willing to sacrifice control for initiative in the same way that a football coach, uh, that's using a know how to offense is willing to, to, to sacrifice some control, but for that greater initiative on the, on the field.
00:28:53.920And the biggest requirement for generating tempo really is, uh, is mutual trust, a dynamic of trust between a commander, uh, and a, or a coach and a subordance or players that favors rapid, rapid action over, over, uh, deliberate action.
00:29:08.820But tempo is, um, you know, it's, it's, it's graduate level stuff in terms of actually, uh, not only understanding it, um, and its components, but being able to actually generate it in a highly competitive, uh, environment.
00:29:24.900One of the obstacles to generating tempo lies in the fact that I think that humans are really uncomfortable with uncertainty and many leaders, uh, would often prefer to, you know, generally collect more information, develop a more ideal plan.
00:29:38.820Wait for more resources and kind of enable the situation to develop, reducing their level of, um, um, of uncertainty.
00:29:46.500And there are certainly instances where having the patience to allow the situation to develop is prudent, but in many cases, the best approach is to, is to execute a plan and execute that plan rapidly in such fashion that your opponent cannot, cannot keep peace, uh, cannot keep, uh, pace with you.
00:30:02.020Right. And it seems like also, uh, mission, mission focused leadership would, would comes back into play here because you want everyone in order to make those moves on their own.
00:30:10.580They have to know the why of the mission.
00:30:12.240Right. And if they understand the why, and if they understand the mission, then you're ultimately able to use mission tactics where you're not, you know, the commander or the coach isn't communicating the what and how to his, to his folks.
00:30:24.840Um, they're doing it without that, without that, that communication transaction that saves tremendous time.
00:30:30.940And if you're doing that and your opponent isn't, you have a tremendous advantage.
00:30:33.940And that's why it's, it's not seed speed for the sake of speed, but it's speed relative to the problem set or speed relative to your opponent.
00:30:40.880You don't need to be fast. You just need to be faster than your opponent.
00:30:43.880Well, one of the maxims you live by and you talk about on the side is becoming harder to kill.
00:30:48.960Uh, why should a leader who's not in the military, not a firefighter, why should, why should they focus on being harder to kill and what kinds of things make a man harder to kill?
00:30:59.940Yeah. Great question, Brett. So I should probably start by, um, mentioning kind of the origins of, uh, this hard to kill cliche or, or mantra, um, and why we use it in leadership under fire, um, why we apply it to the fire department and why I think it has value beyond the fire department.
00:31:18.040But a few years ago, I returned to the New York city fire department following combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
00:31:22.540And I began to think differently about some of the cliches are very commonplace in, in, in the fire service.
00:31:29.740Um, one being be, be safe, you know, firefighters often tell their fellow firefighters at the end of a tour, when they're going home, when guys are reporting in for work, Hey, be, have a safe tour, be safe.
00:31:39.300Or some chiefs like the mantra, everyone goes home, meaning everyone, every firefighter goes home at the end of a tour.
00:31:44.660And, um, you know, certainly these things come from, from their heart and with noble intentions.
00:31:52.740Um, but what's happened is in recent decades, the fire service, the American fire service has embraced the culture of safety that at times, um, you know, that seeks to reduce the risk of injury and death to firefighters.
00:32:06.640And this is obviously certainly noble, um, but the framework subsequently promotes several myths and fallacies at times.
00:32:13.460And it leaves subordinates, uh, and kind of line officers sometimes confused as to what the mission is.
00:32:19.580Is the mission the one I'm supposed to accomplish explicitly, or is it a mission me, me putting my, my folks and their welfare and my own interests first?
00:32:27.480Um, and there's sometimes a little bit of a, of a conflict, a moral conflict that has taken place in the fire service.
00:32:34.640And the same is probably certain true, certainly true for, for law enforcement.
00:32:38.560Um, so the leadership under fire team then believed that making yourself hard to kill, which is a mantra we had used, uh, frequently in combat was much more appropriate and scientifically valid.
00:32:50.020Um, because similar to combat, the hard to kill paradigm promotes mission accomplishment while also seeking to enhance survivability or rather reducing risk to injury and death.
00:33:00.820And ultimately there, there are five fundamentals of making yourself hard to kill, um, and your troops hard to kill or your teammates hard to kill.
00:33:08.640Uh, and they are one instilled tactical discipline, all right.
00:33:13.620And tactical discipline is understanding the consequences of your actions and inactions, um, in an operational environment.
00:33:21.400Two would be develop brilliance with the basics.
00:33:23.720Like I mentioned earlier, uh, those, those guys are best, the best firefighters and the best combat operators generally are just very, very good at the basics, but being able to execute them under tremendous pressure.
00:33:35.300Um, the third fundamental would be understanding the operational environment and seeing the bigger picture.
00:33:40.300So even at the individual level, when you're executing an action, you understand what the ramifications are as it relates to everyone else in your team or everyone else on the battlefield or else on the fire ground or everyone else in your, uh, you know, in your, in your business.
00:33:52.520Um, another fundamental is conduct realistic and relevant training.
00:33:56.760I think I mentioned earlier, but it's this type of training needs to be three dimensional.
00:34:00.340It needs to be a tactical and technical element, a physical element, an equally significant, a mental element.
00:34:05.380And number five, the fifth fundamental would be to just develop that, that sense of mental toughness, developmental toughness, learning to be uncomfortable.
00:34:13.100And I think you put those five things together and you're going to enhance your, your level of survivability, whether it be on the battlefield, um, on the fire ground, it fires in emergencies or, or, or in business.
00:34:25.140You're going to be, uh, you're going to be, as we like to say, hard to kill.
00:34:28.100So, so what's the connection between a leader's mental, moral, and physical abilities?
00:34:34.660I mean, what role does mental toughness play in physical, physically performing well under pressure and vice versa?
00:34:41.280Well, as far as the connection between a leader's mental and moral and physical abilities, uh, the leadership under fire team, we as a team view performance, uh, about the performance of a leader as a hierarchy comprised of four tiers.
00:34:55.960And if you look at those four tiers, the bottom tier is your fundamental skills.
00:35:00.760Those are your, your tactics, your techniques, your procedures.
00:35:03.800The second tier then is physical conditioning, um, the stamina, the mobility, the agility, um, the endurance.
00:35:11.980The third tier then represents mental toughness and mental toughness ranges from everything from, from being mentally tough to having, um, developmental skills to being a critical thinker.
00:35:23.200And then most significantly that the top tier of that hierarchy is, is more obligation.
00:35:29.300And what we think is that the best leaders, those who really create a legacy and are to be emulated, um, are those leaders who foster an appreciation for every tier of that performance hierarchy, ranging from the fundamentals, uh, to the moral imperative, the moral obligation.
00:35:44.000Our team believes that using this performance hierarchy to sequence personal and professional development helps create better people and ultimately better people are, are better leaders.
00:35:54.340And when we talk about better people, you know, leadership on fire, we're not talking in general terms, but specific ones.
00:35:59.900We want to help build the leader who embodies and can articulate the values of moral and ethics in leadership.
00:36:06.060A leader is mentally strong, resilient, um, and a reflective, critical thinker.
00:36:12.540And, uh, you know, the exciting thing about this today is what started in Fallujah 10 years ago has evolved and has evolved beyond the fire department.
00:36:20.460And we're doing this today with leaders in public safety, sports and business.
00:36:25.160Let's go back to this, this, this moral aspect.
00:36:27.420Cause I think, I think people would see how you can develop physical fitness.
00:36:30.800You can put them on a physical regimen program.
00:36:32.520There's a, you can teach better mental models and how to think and make decisions better, but how do you, how do you develop a moral compass within a leader?
00:36:44.740Well, let me first start by saying that I believe that leaders who are not morally fit, um, or, or rather unable to analyze the ramifications of their decisions and actions from a moral perspective aren't leaders, but are merely managers.
00:37:00.000And my father, um, who's a retired fire chief, someone I look up to, uh, immensely likes to say leader, managers do things right, but leaders do the right thing.
00:37:12.560And I, I believe in the leadership under fire team believes that moral fitness is demonstrated by doing the right things at the right times for the right reasons.
00:37:21.980And that's certainly not an easy, certainly not an easy, easy, easy task.
00:37:27.480Um, but similar to the same, you know, to the fashion in which leaders develop, uh, mental toughness and leaders develop technical skill and leaders develop physical fitness.
00:37:38.620Um, they must also actively develop, uh, moral fitness.
00:37:43.440And, you know, like I earlier, as it relates to how do you develop, how do you become a better decision maker under stress?
00:37:49.500You spend a lot of time thinking about it.
00:37:51.300And the more time you spend thinking about moral and ethical dilemmas in, in great scenarios, in great situations, whether you're a business leader, whether you're a fire chief or whether you're a combat battlefield commander, um, I think you're much better prepared, uh, to make the kind of decisions that are consistent with the leader that the type of leader.
00:38:13.420That you want to be and are consistent with what your expectation or, or your clients or your citizenry or your constituency expects from you.
00:38:21.900Well, Jason, this has been a great conversation.
00:38:23.980Where can people learn more about leadership under fire?
00:38:26.160Well, Brett, uh, for starters, we have a website, www.leadershipunderfire.com.
00:38:31.720Um, we also host a national conference each year that features, uh, accomplished leaders with wide ranging operational experiences, uh, from the battlefield, competitive sports, law enforcement, business, the fire service.
00:38:42.200And, uh, our fifth annual conference is upcoming.
00:38:45.840It will be held in Columbus, Ohio in March, 2017.
00:38:49.380And that's a great place to come and familiarize yourself with leadership under fire and find yourself surrounded by, by like-minded folks.