Protection for and from Humanity
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Summary
When celebrities, dignitaries, and executives go out and about and travel around the world, they are often surrounded by bodyguards whose job is to protect them and their loved ones. My guest today offers a look at what's involved in offering professional protective services for VIPs, and how average citizens can apply the same principles to protect themselves and their families.
Transcript
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I'm Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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When celebrities, dignitaries, and executives go out and about and travel around the world,
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they're often surrounded by bodyguards whose job is to protect them and their loved ones.
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My guest today offers a look at what's involved in offering these professional protective
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services for VIPs and how average citizens can apply the same principles to protect themselves
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and their families. His name is Todd Fox. He has an extensive military and law enforcement
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background, and he's the founder of Close Protection Corps and the author of Protection For and From
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Humanity. Todd and I discuss why the soft skills around mindset constitute the foundation of personal
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protection and the prep work that's necessary to keep both VIPs and normal folks safe, including
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the process of advancing, it's called advancing, we're talking about what that is, and a system
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from the Vietnam era you can use to make yourself a hard target. We then discuss what you can learn
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from the Marine Combat Hunter Program, the Cooper Color Code, and the OODA Loop to develop better
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situational awareness, and we enter a conversation with the hard skills you should learn to protect
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yourself and the order you should learn them in. After the show's over, check out our show
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So you got a book out called Protection For and From Humanity. You are the founder and director
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of a personal protection services. It's a layman's term. People would say you're a bodyguard.
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But tell us a bit about what you do, your background, how you got involved in what you do.
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Okay, so that's all correct. And I think the common reference point would be bodyguard. But
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I own a company that's called Close Protection Corps. And I started out in the Marine Corps straight
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out of high school and went into professional fighting, which now is known as MMA. Back then it was
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called No Holds Barred or Vali Tudo if you're Brazilian or Japanese. And then eventually transitioned
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into law enforcement and worked on a SRT team, which is Special Response Team. And I started the
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protective services company in 99. And it was based out of LA, predominantly executives and entertainer
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types who were going down to Mexico on vacations or for business. I'm a Spanish speaker. So that was
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kind of a very easy transition for me to make. And then eventually it shifted toward entertainment
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type. So we're probably 80% entertainment focus, which is film and music. And then the rest are
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dignitaries, executives and miscellaneous. So our start was in the Latin market. So starting in Mexico and
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then kind of moving into Colombia and Brazil and throughout the region. Now we're shifting a
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little bit more toward training civilians after 20-ish years of training military law enforcement
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and focused on operations. Gotcha. So besides the celebrities, I mean, what kind of dignitaries
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are you talking about? Like political leaders, things like diplomats? Yeah. So a lot of times we'll get
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national or international diplomats. So the State Department typically does the protection for U.S.
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diplomats, but sometimes they'll have other people that are connected or related to them or dealing
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with something and they'll hire us for it. Or it may be a foreign diplomat that's looking to get an
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outside source in because maybe they don't trust their own host nation or they don't have the degree
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of confidence that they want. And so we'll be brought in to supplement and or set up complete security for
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that kind of diplomat. Gotcha. So this book is, you're basically taking some of the big picture insights
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from what you do in protecting dignitaries and celebrities and things like that and showing
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civilians, private citizens, how they can use those same ideas to protect themselves and their loved
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ones. But you start off the book, I thought it was interesting, you make this distinction and you
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think, I think it's an important one, you started the book off with this, the distinction between
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security and protection. Why is it important to make that distinction when you're talking about the
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work you do? And yeah, what is the difference? It's a nuanced difference. You know, security,
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when you look at definitions, which usually when you educate someone, you're trying to look at what
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the baseline definition is. It often refers to security as a state of being free from danger
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and the reality of life that just doesn't exist almost nowhere. If you're out and you're free and
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you're active and you're doing things, you're not free from danger. There's always danger and it
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comes in many formats. So protection conversely for us is more of a mindset. And in terms of definition,
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it's, you know, to protect, to shield, to defend someone from harm or danger. And that better aligns
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with our operational missions. And it also aligns with our training objectives. So, you know, the focus
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for our clients or students is more in alignment with protecting them or defending them or shielding
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them from something that could harm them. All right. So your job, you can't eliminate all risk.
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It's impossible. But your job is to protect clients from as much risk as possible that's there,
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even though you can't eliminate those risks. Correct. Gotcha. Well, and I think, I think
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oftentimes when people hear, you know, protection services, bodyguards, the first thing they think
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about are sort of those hard skills, like the Jason Bourne stuff, like how to use a firearm,
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combatives, Brazilian jujitsu, how to drive tactically or whatever. But most of this book
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is that mindset stuff you're talking about. It's very, it's very soft. It's about mental models
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and how to make decisions. Why do you, and you started off the book talking about,
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you have to have the right mindset when you're thinking about protection. Why is it, why do
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you have to start there with mindset and what kind of mindset do you need to have when you're
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thinking about self-defense? Well, first, let me address the fact that everybody fixates
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on the hard skills, right? The shooting, fighting, driving, that's normal. And that's what people
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think about when they think about what we do. The problem is that, you know, everything starts
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with your brain, which is why I'm focused on mindset. No matter what you do, it has to have
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some pathway in your brain. You have to understand something and you have to have some frame of
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reference for what could solve the problem. So that's really where we're at. Also, I'm not a
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very big guy. I'm 5'10 and 185 pounds. So relative to protection, you know, everybody's
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expecting this big, huge guy. And so my primary tool, as with anybody working in this business,
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is your brain, how you utilize your brain, how quick you can see something, how you can
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correlate it to a possible solution, how quickly you can implement that based on how your brain
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works. So that's where the mindset is. It's more critical than any piece of hardware.
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You know, a gun, like I talk to people about a lot, is an inanimate object. You have to do all
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these things with a gun. You have to have a magazine. You have to load rounds into it. You have
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to insert it into the mag wall. You have to cycle the slide and get the round in the chamber.
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You have to align your sights. You have to press the trigger when your sights are aligned. There's
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so many things that have to go on first, but all that stuff is done by your brain. And so,
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you know, the gun alone is nothing. The car alone is nothing. You think of your brain kind of as an
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operating system, right? And that's what we want. We want this operating system functioning at a high
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level and we want to condition the operating system first. And then the hard skills are basically the
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tools that are provided. So for us, that comes second. The first is the brain and the mindset
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and utilizing it because you don't always have the actual tools that you may need in a situation.
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So a lot of impromptu stuff occurs in protection when you're in a foreign country and you're dealing
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with high stress situations. So, you know, we typically use our brain first and we try not to
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go where there are problems. So if I know, you know, hey, we shouldn't go to Iraq because there are a lot
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problems in Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen or Syria or you name it. So I try not to go there. And then
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when I have a client that needs to go there, we try not to go to the hotspots within that particular
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region. And then when we do have to go there and we start seeing these indicators or anomalies from
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the baseline that occur in that environment, we try to get out of that environment. And then the last,
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the very, very, very last thing we do is utilize our hard skills, our shooting, fighting, driving
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to defend ourself when we can't leave, when we can't evacuate, when we can't escape something. So
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the whole point for us is use the hard skills to create the opening to get out. But the better
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option, obviously, is to be smart and don't allow yourself to get into the situation that forces the
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Yeah, that's, you spend a lot of time in the book talking about what protective services do. They,
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their whole job is to avoid the risk at all. And so you have this section, you know, response options.
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And the first one that you just said that the best option is don't be where danger commonly occurs.
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And then the good option is leave at the first sight of a problem. And then you said the last
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bad option is stay and fight. And I think oftentimes when people think, oh, self-defense, like I got to
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learn to stay and fight. It's like, no, most self-defense is learning how to do number one and
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number two, like don't be where danger is and then leave. So you don't have to fight at all.
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Yeah. I, you know, you think about that and, and, uh, you know, I've had a storied history,
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you know, between the military and law force, even as, as a kid. And, you know, I've done martial
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arts my whole life and I don't mean esoteric martial arts. I mean, fighting, combative martial
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arts, boxing, wrestling, jujitsu, Muay Thai. And, you know, as a young kid with a lot of testosterone,
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I was involved in a lot of fights and, you know, I wasn't smart enough in the moment to realize that,
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no, I'm not starting a fight, but I keep getting in fights. Why is that happening? Well, I went to the
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places where fights are going to occur. You know, if you go to a location that has fights frequently,
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the chances of you getting a fight are much higher than normal. If you go to a place where fights
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almost never happen, you don't end up in a fight. And so that's the biggest part. And it, sometimes
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it takes a little effort. A lot of people will say like, oh, that's common sense. Yeah. It's common
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sense, but no one thinks that way and no one applies it that way. So, you know, it's a huge part
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of our job is just to understand where we're going, what risk exists there. And generally we do that
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through historical analysis, right? So you say, you know, where you're at, there's Bob's bar and
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then Bob's bar, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, there's fights from, you know, let's say nine
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o'clock at night until two in the morning when they close. Well, that's probably the ideal time
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not to be there if you don't want to be in a fight. And so something simple like that, you know what,
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we're going to go on Thursday and we're going to go at six o'clock after work instead of going at 10
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or 11 or 12 on a weekend. Little simple selections and decisions like that help us to, you know,
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survive and also thrive in those conditions. Well, and another thing you talk about that you
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and your, what your protective services do to avoid where danger is at, commonly occurs is this thing
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called advancing. What's advancing and how does that help you avoid conflict or problems?
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Yeah. Advancing is a critical and fundamental and core part of protection, right? Any type of
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protection, whether you're talking about executive protection, dignitary protection,
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celebrity protection, overseas, high risk security, doesn't matter. Advancing is essentially the
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choreography of what you're going to be doing. So it's admin and logistics. So advancing would be
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me going ahead to look at an airport, to look at a hotel, to look at a restaurant or a venue,
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to look at the routes to going to and from and to create plans based on the information that I'm
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gleaning from a particular situation. So you can do it in writing, you can do it through physical
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walkthroughs. Modern day, pretty much for most of what we do is we create a document that tells
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somebody what we want, whether it's, you know, a director of an airport or the general manager of
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a hotel or the owner of a restaurant. And we'll send it out to them and say, Hey, here are the things
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we'd like for our visit with, you know, XYZ person, you know, can we get on the phone and talk about
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this? And they say, yeah. And so you get on the phone and you start talking to them about what
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your needs and wants are. And you start asking about, you know, how is this situated? How is
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it laid out? How do you operate? Where are ins and outs? And then they say, okay, well, we're going
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to send you a floor plan. And, you know, these are the options that you have for dining locations.
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And these are the servers that you could potentially have. And you kind of walk through
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all of what could happen. And so, Hey, if that doesn't work out, if we have an issue in this
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area, where are we going to, right? You figure out where your, your safe havens are, your temp
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holds are, and all of that's done before you get there, because it's much more difficult
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to figure out a solution under stress while things are going upside down. So you do the
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advanced work basically to create plans and options. If I know where all the doors are,
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if I know where the emergency medical equipment is, or fire equipment is, if I know who the key
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players are, and that's another big component of advancing. If I'm meeting the owner of a place,
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if I'm meeting the general manager of a place, I'm meeting the director of a place, those guys
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can override their existing system. So maybe a entry level person, like a front desk manager
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can't do something, but the owner of the hotel or the general manager of the hotel can override
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what their policy is saying, no, no, no. In this case, we're actually going to violate our policy
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and we're going to do what that client wants. And so meeting with those people and knowing who has
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the power, the authority and knowing the physical setup, it's critical. And we typically do that
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during the daytime. We do it at nighttime. We do it on holidays. We want to see what it's like in
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different environments and different conditions if we can do it. And on a bigger team and a larger
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scale, you have a dedicated advanced guy who goes ahead and does that. So if that gives you any kind
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of idea of what the general objective is for an advance. Yeah. So it sounds pretty thorough and like
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you guys create like contingency plans based off of this thing, but like how would, like say a civilian,
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right? They're planning a trip somewhere. Like how could they use some of the principles of
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advancing for their own protection? Sure. And a lot of people ask this, you know, I get
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this for the last 20 plus years. Hey, I'm going here. I'm doing this. What should I do? How should
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I think about it? And my answer is that you start with collection of historical data, right? So I start
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to look at, you know, what is the murder rate like in this place? And what is the economy like in this
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place? And what are the cultural norms and what type of currency do they use? And what language
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do they speak? And I start gathering the general data. And then once I have that, I might start
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getting into very specific data. And let's just say you're taking your family on vacation and you're
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going to Cancun, you're going to Mexico. Well, Cancun is a tourist spot. So it's not like kind of
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mainland Mexico. So you wouldn't assess it the same way you would assess something like Sinaloa,
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the state of Sinaloa. But what is happening there and who is there and what's law enforcement
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like there? And what are the common scams there? And then I would find sources, parallel structures
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to what I'm operating under, like in this case, the government. So I'd go to the US government and
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I'd use something like the State Department's entity called OSAC, Overseas Security Advisory
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Council. And I start looking at something they have called crime and safety reports.
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So now all of a sudden I have the crime and safety report and I'm starting to get data from that
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and I'm figuring stuff out. And then I go back to where I'm going. Okay, which airport am I coming
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into? How far away is it? So what's the drive time like? What's the traffic like? And then I
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start to look at, okay, well, are people targeted in cars like carjackings or do they do express
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kidnappings there? And what kind of countermeasures can I create? Because I know this going in.
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And then my hotel, I start to look online and see what past incidents tourists have had there at that
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hotel in Cancun. And then I start to reach out to those people. Hey, who's this person? And can I
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contact them? And are they open to giving me their personal information? Can I get the GM's cell phone
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number? And you start to create these things from a distance. And then when you get there,
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you spend a little bit of time. Let's say you have a family of four or five people and you are a
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more traditional family and you're the male role model and the family is the father or whatever you
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are. You would say, hey guys, come in and unpack and stay in the room. I'm going to walk the hotel
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for five or 10 minutes. That's advancing. That's what you're doing. You're learning it and preparing
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yourself for a bad situation. And a lot of guys will say, well, I'm not paranoid. And I said,
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well, neither am I. I'm just prepared. And because I'm prepared, I'm more relaxed and I can enjoy
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myself because I have a ton of options because I know this property inside and out.
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Okay. So another thing you need to talk about in the book in order to avoid problems is also
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understanding how the criminal mind works and how they pick targets because that can help you
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avoid being a target. So what is like generally, what is someone who wants to do bad things to you?
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What are they looking for in a target? And then what can you do to be less of a target?
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Okay. So generally speaking, a criminal needs something of value, right? And most people
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think about this in terms of money, a wallet, a purse. Some people think of it in terms of an
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asset, something that they have that can fetch value through fencing it. Some people think of
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like a carjacking in terms of the actual car. Those are pretty common ones. So they need something
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of value. So if you have something of value, you're a potential target. If you look like a weaker
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person, you're a potential target. If you have a relationship to an entity, let's say information
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based, you know something, like you work on the stock market, you have some type of insider trading
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information and they want that. You yourself as a person are of value to them. Or in a foreign
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country, a lot of times you as a human are of value assuming someone's willing to pay for you to get
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you back. And so those are the typical things of value, like things that have cash value immediately,
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like things that can be taken to a pawn shop, things that produce information that's of value
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that will later result in money or the person themselves when you look at kidnapping.
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So those are the three common things. And then from that, normally doing things like advanced work
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essentially shows you where exposure points are, where choke points are, shows you kind of how the
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culture moves or flows. So the biggest part for us is not having something like your Rolex watch on,
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not having a bunch of jewelry on, not taking the cash out of your pocket or wallet when you're paying
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for something and you've got a handful of cash that everybody around can see. Things like moving in
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groups. So if you're moving three or four or five, you're a less desirable target because the chance
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of them being successful is pretty low. And even when you're overseas and you're by yourself, there
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are things that you can do to look bigger than you are. So if I start to kind of walk into a group of
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two or three or four people that are moving down the street, I blend into that. I'm not right in the
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group, but I'm a couple feet back and I look like I'm with them. And if I'm wearing local clothing, I look
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even more like I'm with them. And if I'm laughing when they're laughing, I look like I'm with
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them. So a lot of little things that you can do, your posture, your demeanor, your eye contact,
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all of these things will make you a less likely target. And in general, it's back to mindset,
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right? Do you look like somebody easy to take money from, to take a life from, to take whatever
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it is? And if you have the right posture, the right demeanor, and you blend and they don't even
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see you, chances of that happening are pretty slim.
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Yeah. You said in the book, in protection, you call this target hardening, right? Make yourself a hard
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Correct. That's exactly what it is. So, you know, you figure out what the target is and then you
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reverse it and you figure out how to make it hard to get access to that target. And we talk about
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that through a bunch of different systems that we use, threat and vulnerability assessments in
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Well, let's talk about that. Like, let's go through that sort of methodology that you used to do that
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threat assessment. Yeah. So we, we break it down into different categories. So we have
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a threat assessment, we have a risk assessment, and we have a vulnerability assessment. They're
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different things. And I realized that that vernacular is common vernacular. And for most
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people, you know, threat, risk, and vulnerability are the same, but for us, it's not. And even in the
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security or protection industry, people use that word, those words interchangeably and they're not.
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So for us, the threat is the means and source, kind of like a gun or a knife or a bomb. A risk is a
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percentage of likelihood. So I'm looking at more at numbers, the chance of occurrence, and then that
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occurrence being successful. And then vulnerability is essentially assessing the flaws or the chinks in
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the arm or the weaknesses in the existing security structure. So we go in and we do assessments on all
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of those things. And we talk about a couple of different assessment processes that we use in the real
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world in the book. We talk about something really simple that anybody that went to business school
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would learn about something like a SWOT analysis, where we're looking at strengths, weaknesses,
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opportunities, and threats. And that's kind of a, what we would refer to as a down and dirty
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assessment system where you're just doing it on the fly. It's not something you're sitting at a
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desk thinking through or brainstorming or in a working group. That's just a, hey, I'm here and I'm
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trying to break it down quickly and I'm going to do it in two minutes. And then we get into much more
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complex systems. And one of the ones that we talk about in the book is the Carver methodology.
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And that is exactly target hardening. So Carver basically is a Vietnam era system that was a
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targeting analysis system, right? So it was used to find targets that the US would want to target
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inside of Vietnam. And this system for us is not that because in protecting people, you're not,
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you're not targeting others, you flip it and you figure out what the adversary would target for
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you. And then you harden those particular points. So Carver is an acronym. It stands for criticality,
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which is the critical value of a person, place, or thing. Accessibility, how accessible,
00:21:19.100
how easy is it to gain access to a person, a place, or a thing. Recoverability, which is if it's attacked,
00:21:25.280
how quickly can it recover, whether it's a physical structure or person or information or a database
00:21:31.000
or anything like that. And then vulnerability, which we talked about briefly, which is a chink
00:21:35.640
in the armor, a weakness. So they have all this security structure in place, but where's the
00:21:40.120
weakness? The weak person, the weak physical door or link or locking mechanism. And then E is effect,
00:21:47.940
meaning the effect of the attack. Obviously, the effect is pretty self-explanatory, meaning
00:21:54.280
if we're targeting a person, the person's death would be a high value effect.
00:21:59.040
But if I'm attacking that person physically and I break their pinky toe, it's going to have a pretty
00:22:04.720
low value effect. And then in our system and also in the governmental side too, they assign a point
00:22:10.420
value to each of these to get a number at the end to kind of see how good the target is or how bad the
00:22:16.080
target is. And we want to make a bad target. And so we'll talk about that a little bit more.
00:22:19.440
But the last one in Carver is recognizability. So think about that in terms of an attack happens,
00:22:27.200
how recognizable is it? And if you are a terrorist, you want it to be super high, right? So if you
00:22:33.300
think about 9-11, you think about the planes going into the towers, that's seared into people's
00:22:39.580
memory. So the terrorists get a five point. On a one to five, they get five points for that because
00:22:44.080
that's seared in your memory. Now, if you think about other things, like for us, think about the
00:22:49.660
Secret Service or something like that. People penetrate all of the time these layers that the
00:22:53.560
Secret Service have, but they never talk about it. And they don't talk about it because if other
00:22:57.900
people hear that it's possible, they may try to do it. So they reduce the signature or the
00:23:02.800
recognizability by not talking about it, by suppressing it, by doing a bunch of little things.
00:23:08.860
So it's not common knowledge that people penetrated it or do on a regular basis.
00:23:13.240
So that's Carver. That's one of the systems that we use. C-A-R-V-E-R, criticality,
00:23:18.280
accessibility, recoverability, vulnerability, effect, and recognizability.
00:23:21.240
And so if I figure out what's critical to me, like air and blood, I safeguard those things.
00:23:26.960
So I put, say, body armor on or a helmet on. Accessibility, I want to reduce access for
00:23:32.740
outsiders to my celebrity client. Recoverability, well, if I want to recover, let's say I have
00:23:37.820
trauma kits with tourniquets and quick clot and Israeli bandages, or I have an AED, some
00:23:44.260
type of defibrillator. That helps me recover if I am attacked. Vulnerability, I start to look
00:23:48.640
around. And if I know maybe a person in my group has a certain type of dependency or habit that can
00:23:54.560
get me in trouble, I know that that person is potentially my vulnerability. And then when
00:23:58.680
there's an effect, I try to reduce that effect. And then I try to reduce the ability of the public
00:24:03.160
to see what occurred. So that's kind of a, it seems like a long-winded explanation,
00:24:08.320
but I really, really cut that down to something simple.
00:24:11.620
Right. And so this is all going back. This is how you harden your target,
00:24:14.520
basically. You go through this process. Yeah. You figure out what they want and what
00:24:17.760
they need and how they'd go about getting it. And then you basically shut down those methods and
00:24:22.320
you make it very hard to do any of those things. And when you're doing this as a professional,
00:24:27.020
how long does this take? I mean, does it get really detailed and drawn out? Or have you gotten
00:24:30.920
to the point where you can do it on the fly? Yeah. So this, that's a great question. This
00:24:36.200
is dependent upon who you're working with, how much they value security, what the risk level is.
00:24:41.340
When you start to talk about politics and religion and fame, those things change drastically versus
00:24:49.360
you going on vacation somewhere with a normal family. So if we have somebody that's saying
00:24:54.980
really crazy things and we have clients that do that, that's going to make this process much more
00:25:01.120
arduous and much longer in terms of time. And then we're going to have to get the budget
00:25:05.320
financially to be able to do this. Now that's assuming we've been told they're going somewhere and
00:25:09.860
doing something and we didn't get a short fuse mission where it's like, yeah, we're going here
00:25:13.140
tomorrow. And there's zero chance of advancing that place. Oh, Jakarta tomorrow morning.
00:25:18.980
Okay. That's a little bit short. We're just going to have to adjust on the fly if we don't have people
00:25:23.840
in country that are able to do it immediately. So we get all of that. Sometimes we get months to plan
00:25:29.340
for events and activities and trips. And sometimes we get days. And in some cases, you think about
00:25:36.320
restaurants or events, you have a friend and he tells you about this great place. And then you
00:25:39.820
turn to your protective security guy and you say, oh yeah, we're going here. And you have zero time.
00:25:44.400
So now we're in a car and I'm trying to look on my phone at the layout of this restaurant through
00:25:48.380
image searches and histories or make a quick phone call to somebody that's in that region and see if
00:25:54.200
they can jump ahead because I know it's 45 minutes away and they're five minutes away.
00:25:57.740
So it changes drastically, but it goes from months literally to, or even years when you look at the
00:26:04.560
Olympics and then the Olympics got pushed back and you start to look at the planning for that, but
00:26:08.840
up to and including like, hey, we're going in five minutes. So that's a pretty broad span there.
00:26:16.360
We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:26:20.400
And now back to the show. Well, let's say like the regular person, could you
00:26:24.200
do like a Carver methodology for like your home? Is that something you could, that would be useful?
00:26:28.960
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What's critical in your house, right? I would say that, you know,
00:26:34.140
you, your family members, whoever you have, maybe your pet, those are critical things in your house.
00:26:38.500
If you look at the human or pet side of it, and then you'd figure out how to limit access to that
00:26:45.480
through certain mechanisms, physical mechanisms. You'd figure out what things, if you were a tech,
00:26:50.300
can you do in your house to keep that up? And you look at the vulnerabilities,
00:26:53.320
the weakness of your physical structure to come in. You look at the effects of somebody like doing
00:26:58.040
some type of home invasion, and you start to harden things based on that. You can do one that's purely
00:27:03.400
physical. And we do a system also, and I believe a small portion of this is in the book, that we use
00:27:10.140
this system where you basically have the layered security approach. And if you're doing your house
00:27:15.880
as a physical entity, like the first thing you'd want is power. Because without power, you're in a pretty
00:27:21.060
bad spot. You don't have lights. Maybe it's, you know, right now where I'm at last week,
00:27:25.840
it was below zero. And you don't live too long in below zero conditions with no heat,
00:27:31.700
no electricity, nothing like that. So you'd figure out how to safeguard your power. And you'd figure
00:27:36.820
out how to have redundancies like generators. You'd figure out, you know, okay, do I have firewood
00:27:41.040
on hand? And how long do I have access to food for? And if I don't, do I know how to hunt?
00:27:46.720
You start to put these contingencies into place, but the layered security approach is probably more
00:27:51.280
appropriate for your home if you're asking for a normal person, right? So how you do that is you
00:27:56.260
deal with the outside in and you start by deterring people, right? So if you have good lighting around
00:28:02.120
your house, the chance of a criminal getting caught is much higher, being detected is much higher.
00:28:06.360
So you have nice, good lighting. Let's say you have a fence. Let's say you have a dog. Those are all
00:28:10.440
deterrents and people don't make the attempt because they say, okay, the house next door doesn't have
00:28:14.620
those things. So that's your kind of starting point. And then you come in and the next mechanism
00:28:19.420
that you have is a detection mechanism. Say like your alarm. Your alarm might not be a deterrent.
00:28:24.140
No one knows you have it, but when they breach or break into your house, the alarm starts going off,
00:28:29.200
right? That is a detection method. It tells you just like your fire alarms would, your sprinkler
00:28:35.160
systems would, your carbon monoxide detectors would, a detection method. So the detection method,
00:28:40.600
dog, if you watch cameras actively or you have them that alert, that's also a detection mechanism
00:28:45.940
as well as your alarm. So you detect it. Now you want to delay it, right? So let's say you move
00:28:52.000
your family members into a specific room. It doesn't have to be a safe room, but you move them into a
00:28:56.060
spot in the house where it's hard to get to. So now this person has to go through one room or two rooms
00:29:00.860
or three rooms or into the basement. And along the way, they have to break these doors down or do
00:29:04.500
whatever. You're basically delaying that attack. And so you set up that kind of method in your house
00:29:10.680
and you look at what things in your house can be used to do that, to delay the attack. And then you
00:29:16.280
look at what response methods you have, right? Do you have guns? Do you have knives? Do you have
00:29:20.780
really good hand-to-hand skills? Do you have the police on speed dial and you have a great relationship
00:29:26.520
with them? And then the last phase for us is mitigation. And so as a homeowner, you start to look
00:29:32.800
at what insurance policies do I have, right? And in the world that we deal with, we deal with lawyers
00:29:38.220
and managers and agents and people like that, that assist us in mitigating these circumstances.
00:29:44.220
But for a homeowner, it would be, do I have a homeowner's insurance policy? Do I have a medical
00:29:49.000
insurance policy? Do I have, let's say I'm on a family trip. Do I have a policy that gets me back
00:29:54.100
to the US and gets me to a private clinic? Because maybe in Cancun, the hospitals aren't high-end hospitals
00:30:00.800
that are trauma level one hospitals, or they're just not sanitary. And I have a better chance
00:30:05.080
of dying going to the hospital than not. So I have these policies in place and that would be
00:30:10.060
a mitigation feature. So I think that kind of speaks more to your private citizen home environment.
00:30:16.800
No, that was really useful. And we've been talking about, this is like, we haven't even gotten to the
00:30:20.680
point where we're recognizing threats. We're just doing the pre-planning phase.
00:30:25.080
And I think you make this point, the reason why you have to do all this groundwork is that
00:30:29.160
when you are in a protect mode, you are at a, you're at a disadvantage, right? Because you're,
00:30:36.360
Right. So, because, so talk about that asymmetry and like what you like between a protector and
00:30:44.000
Yeah. So the, the, the, the unfortunate truth, and a lot of people won't say this, but the unfortunate
00:30:48.780
truth is that the, the attacker typically has the advantage and we break down a lot of different
00:30:55.000
systems and scenarios and processes. But when you look at the general attack cycle and you look at
00:31:02.300
kind of the key factors, the attacker gets 75% and the victim or target gets 25%. So the first phase of
00:31:11.820
that is, is the attacker picks the location that they're going to attack you in. Then they pick the
00:31:17.760
time that they're going to attack you. And then they pick the method of attack that they're going
00:31:22.500
to use. So now they get the time location and method of attack. Well, all of that is acting,
00:31:27.900
right? And then the target is getting to select their response to the attack, which is a reaction.
00:31:35.120
So now you have action versus reaction. And most of us that have been around a little while realize
00:31:40.020
that action is way faster than reaction. And really the only way to offset that is through
00:31:48.040
training and through training, you have these exposures and hopefully you recognize it before
00:31:53.000
it happens. You start to see that that person's watching you or moving with you. And you start to
00:32:00.040
mirror kind of your movements and positions and angles. And this kind of thing, early identification
00:32:04.840
can help you thwart the attack and you never get to the point where they actually attack.
00:32:09.920
So that's the first phase. And then the second is through training and they get to the attack phase
00:32:14.140
and you have, let's say, martial arts skills, or you have firearm skills, or you have edged weapon
00:32:18.580
skills. Your chance of survival goes up through the roof. Also, when you look at this kind of stuff,
00:32:24.720
training creates this ability to recognize certain patterns and then make you or keep you calm
00:32:31.000
in that situation. It builds up a tolerance to things and it also creates pathways neurologically.
00:32:37.560
So there's a guy named Klein that wrote a great book on this and it's focused on recognition prime
00:32:42.700
decision-making. So think about in your life, anything you've done where you've never done it
00:32:48.460
before and it's a pretty serious thing. And now you've got to go in and do this brand new thing under
00:32:55.080
stress and maybe the potential loss is really high for you. You're going to be nervous. You're going to
00:33:00.260
have an increased heart rate. You're going to have physiological response to stress elements like
00:33:05.480
tunnel vision, loss of fine motor. So it's all these things, pulling the blood to the center
00:33:08.620
and all these things will work against you, not for you in this particular case. So when you have
00:33:13.320
recognition prime decision-making, you basically, your brain says, oh, I've seen something similar
00:33:18.140
to this before and I think I know the solution to it. And you're calmer and you go to your solution
00:33:23.500
much quicker. So your response time, your reaction is better because you've trained it,
00:33:28.300
you've planned it, right? Right. So you're trying to close that asymmetry that exists as much as you
00:33:33.400
can. You can't get rid of it completely, but you can reduce it. No, it's almost impossible. And
00:33:38.360
especially if you're unaware of your environment, especially if it's a new environment, especially
00:33:42.460
if the criminal is really good at what they do and they're good at blending in and masking
00:33:46.360
themselves and they ambush you. You never want to be on that side of the ambush. It's always better
00:33:53.200
if you think of the military to be actually setting the ambush and deploying versus being
00:33:57.860
the one dealing with an ambush. That's a horrible situation. And you're seeing it a lot right now
00:34:02.180
in law enforcement and they're on the backside of it because they're bound by the law and
00:34:07.400
a person acts and then they only get a chance to respond to it. So it's a tough situation to be in.
00:34:13.860
So we've been talking about prep, things you can do before an event happens to reduce your reaction
00:34:21.460
time. But let's talk about when you're actually on the scene, so you're executing the plan.
00:34:27.700
During that time, I'm sure a bodyguard, protective service, whatever you want to call it, they've got
00:34:32.340
to maintain situational awareness so that they can know if they need to respond or do something.
00:34:39.040
So talk about that. How do you guys train for situational awareness? What does that look like?
00:34:46.280
Well, there are a lot of different methods that we use and that we train, but probably the one
00:34:51.620
that's easiest to talk about comes from the Marine Corps. And they had a program called the Combat
00:34:56.920
Hunter Program, which I think now has become pretty famous because some of the guys left it and started
00:35:00.900
talking a lot about it. But we use a lot of similar methodologies. So for us environmentally,
00:35:06.640
having some type of environmental awareness is critical to doing our jobs and knowing when to
00:35:12.140
stay, when to leave, when to go to hard skills. And we talk about that normally, understanding the
00:35:18.440
environment, knowing what's normal in terms of baseline. So we try to establish these baselines.
00:35:23.540
I know what's normal in... You're in Tulsa, Oklahoma, right?
00:35:27.200
So I know if I go to the BOK Center in Tulsa, for example, I know what behavior is like there. I know
00:35:33.460
what people's accents like. I know when they come and go, how they behave, what the structure is.
00:35:38.180
I know all of these things ahead of time. So I know it's normal. The whole reason to know what
00:35:41.800
normal is, is to be able to detect or identify an anomaly, something that's not normal. And when I
00:35:48.600
can detect something that's not normal, I can focus attention on it and say, okay, is this anomaly
00:35:53.100
critical? Meaning you can hurt me or is it benign? And the truth is that most anomalies from the baseline,
00:35:59.240
they're benign. They're not going to hurt me. It's just that guy's weird or that guy's homeless
00:36:03.700
or that guy, he's on drugs or whatever it may be. And then when you have that anomaly,
00:36:10.300
anomalies come in two general formats, which is anomaly above the baseline and anomaly below the
00:36:15.220
baseline. So an anomaly above the baseline would be in addition to the environment, right?
00:36:19.860
So you're somewhere and there's always three people there and now there's four or five. That's
00:36:24.700
anomaly above the baseline. You're somewhere and there's always three or four people there and now
00:36:28.120
no one's there. That's an anomaly below the baseline. And this gets talked about in the
00:36:32.860
Middle East a lot where a military team comes into a market, a bizarre soak, and it's teaming with
00:36:41.000
people. People are all over, all ages, a lot of activity, a lot of sales, doors and windows are
00:36:45.680
open. And they come back the same time the next week and there's 50% of the people there,
00:36:52.620
almost no women and children, doors and windows are shut. People are looking left and right
00:36:57.340
actively. That's an indicator. That's an anomaly that certain people are missing. Certain things
00:37:02.520
have changed. And then you would adjust your behavior based on that. And so from a situational
00:37:08.540
awareness perspective, that awareness that there's an anomaly, and let's say we connect it to three
00:37:13.680
things. That's the norm for us. Here's an anomaly. That's one anomaly. Now we have a second anomaly.
00:37:19.080
Now we have a third anomaly identified. That pretty much tells us we need to change.
00:37:23.000
So we have three options. And I think in the book, I refer to it as the three Cs. But
00:37:29.040
the first option is to continue as planned. Yes, I see those anomalies, but I don't think
00:37:34.220
they're critical. I think they're benign and I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.
00:37:37.160
So that's continuous planned. So I continue just doing my behavior, whatever, whether it's a route
00:37:42.420
driving, whether it's a physical activity, moving something, walking through a bazaar, whatever it is.
00:37:47.280
The second one is to change. Change my behavior, change my route, change my plan. I don't continue
00:37:54.200
as I normally would because we're trying to avoid something like an ambush or being targeted in some
00:37:59.260
sort of way. So any minor change will throw off that enemy in a general sense. So instead of going
00:38:06.640
down that main street, I'm going to go over two streets, down another street, and back around. And
00:38:11.240
I'm going to enter from a different location than I normally would. And that's changing behavior.
00:38:16.080
And then the last one is kind of the most extreme one. I've recognized an anomaly and I've got two
00:38:22.660
or three or four anomalies and I think that they're critical. And I think it's something that my skill
00:38:27.540
set, me as a team of one or two or five or whatever I have, can't meet that threat. I'm going to cancel
00:38:33.360
the operation completely. I'm going to pack up. I'm going to leave. I'm going to cancel.
00:38:37.220
Those are kind of components of situational awareness for us. The situational awareness alerts us to
00:38:43.440
something and then it also drives our decision. Gotcha. And so I imagine this situational
00:38:48.380
awareness ties back into what we were talking about earlier, like advancing. In order to know
00:38:52.100
what the baselines are, you'd have to come to, say, Tulsa and experience what the BOK Center is like
00:38:58.220
on a busy night with a concert or something like that. So you can establish the baseline and then
00:39:03.180
you can know, by knowing what the baselines are, you're able to know what the anomalies are.
00:39:06.580
Correct. A hundred percent. Okay. And then also you talk about the idea of just
00:39:11.840
being aware of your environment, like having that head on a swivel and you talk about the
00:39:15.980
Cooper color code can be useful in developing that head on a swivel idea.
00:39:21.800
Yeah. So Colonel Cooper was a former Marine who developed a bunch of different systems that were
00:39:28.200
really unique and special in his time. Some of the stuff today is dated in terms of how we see it,
00:39:35.140
but the reality is that his material is timeless. And so Colonel Cooper, when he got out of the
00:39:41.380
Marine Corps, he went to Pauldin, Arizona, and he started the first gunfighting school and it's
00:39:47.220
changed names several times, but it's best known as Gunsight. And he had a number of books that he
00:39:52.600
wrote. Principles of Personal Defense is one of them. If you read that from 40 years ago, 50 years ago,
00:39:59.640
it's literally applicable today. It's pretty amazing. He was well ahead of his time.
00:40:04.500
So Colonel Cooper's color codes were not like the governmental color code you see now about
00:40:10.560
airport warnings and stuff like that. His color codes were more in alignment with your emotional
00:40:15.720
and mental, your awareness states. And he started with white and white was and is basically unaware,
00:40:23.500
unprepared. You're staring at your phone. You don't expect anything to happen. You're in a state of
00:40:29.960
bliss and you're disconnected from everything around you. And there's a large portion of society
00:40:34.680
that operates that way today. And when something happens to them, they're shocked. There's zero
00:40:39.940
chance of them responding to it because they're going to be caught off guard. They're going to be
00:40:43.380
surprised. And the common thing we hear in protection or law enforcement, in the military is
00:40:48.880
they came out of nowhere. Well, nothing happens out of nowhere. There were plenty of indicators.
00:40:53.560
You just didn't see them because you were in a state of white. So generally speaking, the only
00:40:57.600
acceptable times for being in a state of white would be something like sleeping, taking a nap,
00:41:03.160
some form of intentionally disconnecting to restore your body. The next phase that he spoke to is yellow.
00:41:11.200
And yellow is kind of a general state of awareness. And he talked about it in terms of just accepting
00:41:16.520
that, hey, something bad could happen to me today. And I need to acknowledge that and be ready to
00:41:21.620
address it if it does occur. And so part of that is just looking around, like take your eyes off your
00:41:27.260
phone and look in front of you, look to the left, look to the right, look up above you and just kind
00:41:32.220
of pay attention to what's going on around you. For people that have those skills already, like
00:41:36.740
people that are great people watchers, they have a lot of information that a person that's heads
00:41:41.320
buried in their phone will never have. And so they can make better choices, generally speaking.
00:41:45.820
So yellow is a condition that he said you can stay in indefinitely. So your heart rate doesn't go
00:41:52.880
through the roof. You're not panicked. It's just, hey, something can happen. I'm good to go. So if you
00:41:56.880
are in the state of white and let's say you're 60 beats a minute, then in the state of yellow,
00:42:03.100
you're also 60 beats a minute for your heart rate. Then he moved on to orange. And in orange,
00:42:09.660
basically what he said is you've identified something that is an anomaly, something that
00:42:17.320
could harm you in your environment. And now you're making the decision that if that entity,
00:42:23.100
if that thing presents or crosses a certain threshold, you're going to act, you're going
00:42:28.460
to do something specific. And so we talk a little bit about that in the book too, in the terms of
00:42:32.260
if then thinking. If this guy reaches in his waistband and pulls out a metallic object that looks like a
00:42:37.860
gun, then I'm going to take my gun out and shoot him. And that's an extreme example, but it can be
00:42:42.140
anything. So if this happens, then I'm going to do that. And so this also gets back to recognition
00:42:46.780
prime decision-making where you're training your brain so that you don't go into some type of panic
00:42:51.500
mode. Like, okay, I had already established what this threshold is and now he's crossed the threshold.
00:42:56.940
So that's the orange, which your heart rate starts to go up at that point. And you're starting to get
00:43:03.100
that feeling of anxiety. And then he gets into the red. The red is when they've tripped that wire,
00:43:09.560
when they've crossed that threshold. Now this guy reaches into his waistband and he pulls out that
00:43:13.760
metallic object that's shaped like a gun and he starts to point it at you. That's when you actually,
00:43:18.640
in theory, execute whatever it is that you plan to execute. So we have the if moment and now you've
00:43:24.560
got to do the then thing, whatever it was. And so you're in the fight in phase red. And so you
00:43:29.740
typically have hormonal heart rate at that point. So your blood pressure and heart rate will skyrocket.
00:43:36.300
And then on Colonel Cooper's system, the Marine Corps added to that something that didn't exist
00:43:41.600
before, which is black. And black is essentially like you've gone into a tailspin, you've disconnected,
00:43:49.100
you've frozen, and you're not in the fight or flight. You're frozen. You can't act or don't act or
00:43:54.740
don't have the capacity to process it mentally. So those are the phases that Colonel Cooper
00:44:00.380
identified 50 years ago and they're still valid today. Yeah. So basically we want to stay in
00:44:06.020
condition yellow. Correct. Yeah. You want to be aware. It doesn't take any energy. It doesn't take
00:44:11.120
much effort to just look around. And if you have to look at your phone, great. Look at your phone,
00:44:18.120
but then look up from your phone. Don't fixate on it. So I'm aware of what's in my environment. Oh yeah,
00:44:22.920
there's somebody I've never seen before. There's a car I've never seen before in my neighborhood,
00:44:26.660
or there's somebody doing something that's very abnormal and whatever, or it's just kids
00:44:31.840
joking around playing. I know those kids, they live two houses down. Okay. It's not that big a deal.
00:44:36.360
So it's just being aware of what's happening around you.
00:44:39.520
Well, the other thing you talk about in the moment situation is as a protective service agent,
00:44:44.120
you have to make decisions on the fly in environments that are constantly changing,
00:44:47.940
they're fluid, they're dynamic. And so you've got, I say, decision-making tools that you can fall back
00:44:54.340
onto to make those decisions faster. Because the faster you can make a decision, the more likely
00:44:59.420
you'll be successful in protecting your target. And one decision model you use or talk about in the
00:45:04.540
book is the OODA loop. For those who aren't familiar with the OODA loop, what is it and how do you use
00:45:09.120
that in your work? Yeah. So it's a good one. It also ties into the if-then-think. It also ties
00:45:16.320
into the recognition prime decision-making and then these color codes. So these are all crossover
00:45:21.180
subjects. And that's kind of why I pull them together in one book. These are not things that
00:45:24.860
I just created out of my brain. These are existing systems that I see as connected. And in my background,
00:45:30.860
military, law enforcement, fighting, protection, all these things utilize all of these components.
00:45:35.640
But the OODA loop in particular was created by a guy named John Boyd, who was a colonel in the Air
00:45:41.320
Force. And Colonel Boyd was a fighter pilot. And basically, he came up with this system to address
00:45:48.600
the thinking and decision-making cycle as a fighter pilot. So who would win that dogfight?
00:45:54.140
And what he came up with in a nutshell is that every time that he'd engage in these dogfights
00:46:00.300
against other fighter pilots, he would observe, right? He would orient to it, whatever he observed,
00:46:06.580
and he would decide what he's going to do. And then he would act. So O-O-D-A, observe, orient,
00:46:13.400
decide, and act. And he had to do that. And it's a cycle that's ongoing. So every time the situation
00:46:18.480
changes, if that plane's not where it was before, it changes course or movement or angle, now he's
00:46:23.040
got to start that OODA loop again. And so whoever can cycle through it the fastest and act typically
00:46:29.060
wins that fight. And so it's the same thing for us. We want to observe something. We want to orient to it.
00:46:34.600
We want to decide what we're going to do. We're going to be able to act. And if we can cycle
00:46:37.320
through that faster than say the bad guy, we typically are going to win that fight because
00:46:42.440
we're preparing for it mentally through mechanisms like the OODA loop. And that's kind of how we look
00:46:48.000
at making decisions. So we try to shorten the OODA loop. The faster that you can cycle through
00:46:52.920
the OODA loop, the more the OODA loop of your adversary is expanding. And so his chance of actually
00:47:00.560
reacting and dealing with your change and your behavior, think about it, it starts again for
00:47:04.900
him. So now you're here and he's coming to attack you. You've observed it. You've oriented yourself
00:47:09.580
to it. You've decided what you're doing. You start to act. Now he's got to change his OODA loop. He's
00:47:13.280
got to start a new OODA loop for attacking you because you've changed the scenario that existed
00:47:19.780
Right. And I think it's something that people need to keep in mind is an attacker's OODA loop,
00:47:24.680
he knows it's going on before you do. So you have to basically start orienting.
00:47:29.560
And that's with all this planning stuff we've been talking about. You're orienting yourself
00:47:33.660
so that if you find yourself in a situation where you're in an attack situation, attack
00:47:38.540
response situation, you're able to start that OODA loop as fast as possible. And so you're
00:47:42.020
not like starting from square one. You actually have a plan in place that you can, okay, you
00:47:47.020
observed, you got your plan, and then you're going to decide and act and then speed that
00:47:51.580
Absolutely. That in a nutshell, you're exactly right. In a nutshell, you're preparing yourself
00:47:56.960
for something. Specifically, like any type of training, you're literally giving yourself
00:48:01.120
options for a bad situation. And that essentially increases your probability of survival, which
00:48:07.700
is our end objective, right? For us, preservation of human life in particular, our clients and
00:48:12.880
then ours is critical. And that's what we're after. And so the more we plan, the more we prepare,
00:48:17.000
the more we put these systems in place, the more we thought through all of these things,
00:48:20.660
the higher the probability of survival is. So you got it. I'm glad you said that.
00:48:25.920
Well, so we've been talking like this mental stuff and that's what most of it is. Like
00:48:29.000
you said at the beginning, like protection is primarily, it starts with your brain. The
00:48:32.440
other stuff, the tactical skills, those are just tools. So let me, let's hit on you. And
00:48:36.900
again, in the book, you sort of touch on them because I think you're trying to make the
00:48:40.100
point, like what's really important is this mindset stuff. But let's turn on, what do you
00:48:44.620
think for just a regular person? What are some useful skills, hard skills they can foster
00:48:53.880
Yeah. The objective is not to get to the hard skills, but the reality is that sometimes plans
00:48:59.560
fail. And I've certainly been in a lot of environments where that's happened. As much
00:49:04.320
as you've prepared, it just didn't work out the way you planned. And so you got to back
00:49:08.400
up to the hard skills. And ultimately for us in protection, the hard skill is what creates
00:49:13.220
that distance between an attack and your principal and gives them a chance to get away or escape.
00:49:18.900
Right. But for a normal person in the day-to-day kind of environment, you start to think about
00:49:23.360
how you live and what you do. Most people live in a house or an apartment and most people,
00:49:27.500
you know, they move from that point to a car and they get in the car and they drive. And driving is
00:49:31.640
extremely dangerous, way more dangerous than most things that we do. And then they go and they meet
00:49:36.760
with people at a workplace. And maybe in modern times, people are stressed and disgruntled and
00:49:41.600
maybe things didn't work out right. Now you are working around people that are maybe volatile.
00:49:46.340
And then you're going to places where things are happening or you're traveling on a vacation.
00:49:50.160
So if I just look at it from that perspective, the first thing that I would say is learn a medical
00:49:56.000
skill. You know, one of the basic courses, and they'll call it a lot of different things,
00:50:00.600
but it came from the origin of what's called TCCC or Tactical Combat Casualty Care. And this
00:50:06.480
TCCC course is great. It's the guys that founded it, the guys that have contributed to it have done a
00:50:13.040
great service for the military and law enforcement. But even for the civilian side, if you start to
00:50:18.400
understand how to address medical issues, first in helping other people, but also in saving your
00:50:23.080
own life. And I mentioned it a little bit earlier on, but if you have not a first aid kit, but like
00:50:28.100
a trauma kit, right? Where you have things like tourniquets and you can apply the tourniquets to
00:50:33.200
other people, you know how they work, how they function, where to put them, how long they'll last,
00:50:37.580
all this good stuff, you can save someone's life. But equally important is you can apply it to
00:50:43.340
yourself and you can apply it under stress and you can apply it with one hand. And you start to learn
00:50:48.020
how to do that stuff. You start to learn how to use things like quick clot, right? A carterizing
00:50:52.840
agent, right? A hemostatic agent that we can apply to something like arterial spray. Like, okay,
00:51:00.020
I hit an artery, I nicked an artery, and now I'm going to bleed out in less than a couple of minutes.
00:51:04.200
I can utilize this particular tool to help me survive. And can I put it on and where do I put
00:51:10.140
it on and how do I put it on? And then things like Israeli bandages or pressure dressings and
00:51:15.300
things like chest seals for gunshot wounds, for pneumothoraxes. So I start to learn the medical
00:51:21.720
side. How do I move people, right? If it's me by myself and I'm with somebody that's, you know,
00:51:26.840
I'm 185 and I'm with somebody that's, say, 300 pounds, that's going to be hard to move them.
00:51:32.320
So what methods can I use to manipulate their body when they're injured or incapacitated?
00:51:36.860
That's another thing to learn. If I have these skills and then I have the hard items that like
00:51:42.680
the trauma kit, where do I put the trauma kit? Well, I should probably have one in my car. I
00:51:46.320
should probably have one at work, maybe at home. So wherever I spend the most time. So I would start
00:51:51.040
with something like medical, and then I would move into something like driving. And the reason I say
00:51:54.880
driving is not because most people are going to need protective and evasive driving. You don't need to go
00:52:00.420
spend 40 to 60 hours because somebody's chasing you. But the reality is you spend a ton of time
00:52:05.980
behind the wheel of a car. And that very, very heavy piece of metal that you have can kill someone
00:52:11.760
else or you. So just learning how to manipulate that under stress, which happens in protective
00:52:16.940
and evasive driving. People are shooting at you or chasing you or you're driving in teams.
00:52:21.820
That kind of training, I think, is really beneficial to an average, everyday, normal person.
00:52:26.340
So those were the places that I would start. And then after that, I would get into martial
00:52:31.240
arts. And as I also mentioned earlier, I would focus on combat martial arts. It's not to say
00:52:36.580
that Tai Chi and Aikido and all of this that are more esoteric don't have a place, but I'm
00:52:42.080
talking about the martial component of martial arts, less art, more martial. And that would
00:52:47.080
be jujitsu. That would be boxing. That would be Muay Thai. That would be wrestling. Those
00:52:52.420
things actually do what they're going to do in a fight in training. And so those are massive,
00:52:58.060
massive advantages to have if you're attacked physically or otherwise. And it also produces
00:53:03.380
a different mindset too, because I know, let's say I'm going to train jujitsu, which I am.
00:53:08.620
I'm rolling around these guys and they're trying to choke me and break my limbs and throw me and
00:53:12.460
smash me down into the ground or against the fence or in a wall. I have to fight back and I have to
00:53:18.520
build this mental focus. I know the fight's not over. I'm continuing to fight until the end.
00:53:23.480
And even in a controlled environment, the timer goes off and now I find another person and I start
00:53:28.980
the process again. It's mentally conditioning me to deal with hardships and to not stop under
00:53:33.760
stressful situations. So martial arts, but combat martial arts would be where I go next.
00:53:38.840
And then I think after that for the civilian sector, then I would do firearms. And the reason I
00:53:43.760
leave that for last, not because it's not valuable, not because it's not the most valuable,
00:53:47.100
but because you can get into a lot of trouble with guns. You can shoot yourself. You can shoot
00:53:52.640
someone accidentally that you love. You can leave a weapon somewhere, lose a weapon. There are a lot
00:53:57.220
of problems that come with it as well. Even things like weapon retention on your person, that's a whole
00:54:03.160
separate skill that a lot of Americans don't even train. So that would be last. And there's a ton of
00:54:08.840
schools that you can go to learn about firearms. I mean, they're everywhere, but I would do that last
00:54:14.000
just because I think that it takes more attention and the cost of a mistake in that realm. It's
00:54:20.480
catastrophic. So it's important. It's very important, but I would learn the things that
00:54:25.840
occurred in a daily life more. So medical, driving, martial arts, and then into shooting.
00:54:32.480
Well, Todd, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and
00:54:36.040
We have a few websites. Probably the best one, if you want to learn about the business side of it,
00:54:42.580
would be tourprotection.com. And that talks about some of our entertainment clients. We can't list
00:54:48.020
executives or dignitaries, but we can talk about entertainers because they talk about us.
00:54:52.340
And then if you're interested in training, phaselinex.com, phaselinex.com.
00:54:58.440
And then for the younger group, which is below my demographic, if you're on Instagram,
00:55:05.420
at tourtraining, T-O-U-R-T-R-A-I-N-I-N-G, at tourtraining. So those are the best spots.
00:55:12.840
And for the book specifically, you can buy it on our site at tourprotection.com,
00:55:17.980
or you can go to Amazon or Apple or any purveyor of books that are out there. And it's in paperback
00:55:24.960
format, which I would recommend because you can make notes on it. You can see things in a
00:55:29.420
different way than you would digitally, but we also have the e-version available.
00:55:34.940
Fantastic. Well, Todd Fox, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:55:39.220
My guest today was Todd Fox. He's the author of the book Protection for and from Humanity. It's
00:55:43.480
available on amazon.com. You can find out more information about his work at his website,
00:55:47.040
todafox.com. That's Todd with two Ds. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash protection,
00:55:52.160
where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic.
00:55:54.960
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:56:05.280
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00:56:08.600
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00:56:35.120
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