The Art of Manliness - Protection for and from Humanity

00:00:00.000 I'm Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.060 When celebrities, dignitaries, and executives go out and about and travel around the world,

00:00:15.140 they're often surrounded by bodyguards whose job is to protect them and their loved ones.

00:00:18.760 My guest today offers a look at what's involved in offering these professional protective

00:00:22.580 services for VIPs and how average citizens can apply the same principles to protect themselves

00:00:26.960 and their families. His name is Todd Fox. He has an extensive military and law enforcement

00:00:30.580 background, and he's the founder of Close Protection Corps and the author of Protection For and From

00:00:34.980 Humanity. Todd and I discuss why the soft skills around mindset constitute the foundation of personal

00:00:39.720 protection and the prep work that's necessary to keep both VIPs and normal folks safe, including

00:00:44.280 the process of advancing, it's called advancing, we're talking about what that is, and a system

00:00:48.100 from the Vietnam era you can use to make yourself a hard target. We then discuss what you can learn

00:00:52.180 from the Marine Combat Hunter Program, the Cooper Color Code, and the OODA Loop to develop better

00:00:56.120 situational awareness, and we enter a conversation with the hard skills you should learn to protect

00:00:59.620 yourself and the order you should learn them in. After the show's over, check out our show

00:01:03.020 notes at aom.is slash protection.

00:01:12.540 All right, Todd Fox, welcome to the show.

00:01:15.260 Thank you.

00:01:16.080 So you got a book out called Protection For and From Humanity. You are the founder and director

00:01:22.500 of a personal protection services. It's a layman's term. People would say you're a bodyguard.

00:01:28.600 But tell us a bit about what you do, your background, how you got involved in what you do.

00:01:32.580 Okay, so that's all correct. And I think the common reference point would be bodyguard. But

00:01:37.540 I own a company that's called Close Protection Corps. And I started out in the Marine Corps straight

00:01:42.780 out of high school and went into professional fighting, which now is known as MMA. Back then it was

00:01:48.480 called No Holds Barred or Vali Tudo if you're Brazilian or Japanese. And then eventually transitioned

00:01:55.140 into law enforcement and worked on a SRT team, which is Special Response Team. And I started the

00:02:01.700 protective services company in 99. And it was based out of LA, predominantly executives and entertainer

00:02:10.660 types who were going down to Mexico on vacations or for business. I'm a Spanish speaker. So that was

00:02:16.740 kind of a very easy transition for me to make. And then eventually it shifted toward entertainment

00:02:23.820 type. So we're probably 80% entertainment focus, which is film and music. And then the rest are

00:02:29.820 dignitaries, executives and miscellaneous. So our start was in the Latin market. So starting in Mexico and

00:02:37.380 then kind of moving into Colombia and Brazil and throughout the region. Now we're shifting a

00:02:43.740 little bit more toward training civilians after 20-ish years of training military law enforcement

00:02:49.120 and focused on operations. Gotcha. So besides the celebrities, I mean, what kind of dignitaries

00:02:56.060 are you talking about? Like political leaders, things like diplomats? Yeah. So a lot of times we'll get

00:03:01.060 national or international diplomats. So the State Department typically does the protection for U.S.

00:03:08.660 diplomats, but sometimes they'll have other people that are connected or related to them or dealing

00:03:13.400 with something and they'll hire us for it. Or it may be a foreign diplomat that's looking to get an

00:03:18.240 outside source in because maybe they don't trust their own host nation or they don't have the degree

00:03:24.360 of confidence that they want. And so we'll be brought in to supplement and or set up complete security for

00:03:30.160 that kind of diplomat. Gotcha. So this book is, you're basically taking some of the big picture insights

00:03:37.260 from what you do in protecting dignitaries and celebrities and things like that and showing

00:03:42.780 civilians, private citizens, how they can use those same ideas to protect themselves and their loved

00:03:47.880 ones. But you start off the book, I thought it was interesting, you make this distinction and you

00:03:52.240 think, I think it's an important one, you started the book off with this, the distinction between

00:03:55.820 security and protection. Why is it important to make that distinction when you're talking about the

00:03:59.960 work you do? And yeah, what is the difference? It's a nuanced difference. You know, security,

00:04:06.100 when you look at definitions, which usually when you educate someone, you're trying to look at what

00:04:10.640 the baseline definition is. It often refers to security as a state of being free from danger

00:04:16.520 and the reality of life that just doesn't exist almost nowhere. If you're out and you're free and

00:04:22.100 you're active and you're doing things, you're not free from danger. There's always danger and it

00:04:26.500 comes in many formats. So protection conversely for us is more of a mindset. And in terms of definition,

00:04:33.220 it's, you know, to protect, to shield, to defend someone from harm or danger. And that better aligns

00:04:40.340 with our operational missions. And it also aligns with our training objectives. So, you know, the focus

00:04:47.100 for our clients or students is more in alignment with protecting them or defending them or shielding

00:04:51.140 them from something that could harm them. All right. So your job, you can't eliminate all risk.

00:04:56.900 It's impossible. But your job is to protect clients from as much risk as possible that's there,

00:05:01.960 even though you can't eliminate those risks. Correct. Gotcha. Well, and I think, I think

00:05:07.980 oftentimes when people hear, you know, protection services, bodyguards, the first thing they think

00:05:12.880 about are sort of those hard skills, like the Jason Bourne stuff, like how to use a firearm,

00:05:16.780 combatives, Brazilian jujitsu, how to drive tactically or whatever. But most of this book

00:05:23.780 is that mindset stuff you're talking about. It's very, it's very soft. It's about mental models

00:05:28.740 and how to make decisions. Why do you, and you started off the book talking about,

00:05:32.860 you have to have the right mindset when you're thinking about protection. Why is it, why do

00:05:37.380 you have to start there with mindset and what kind of mindset do you need to have when you're

00:05:40.980 thinking about self-defense? Well, first, let me address the fact that everybody fixates

00:05:46.960 on the hard skills, right? The shooting, fighting, driving, that's normal. And that's what people

00:05:51.960 think about when they think about what we do. The problem is that, you know, everything starts

00:05:56.880 with your brain, which is why I'm focused on mindset. No matter what you do, it has to have

00:06:01.520 some pathway in your brain. You have to understand something and you have to have some frame of

00:06:06.300 reference for what could solve the problem. So that's really where we're at. Also, I'm not a

00:06:11.220 very big guy. I'm 5'10 and 185 pounds. So relative to protection, you know, everybody's

00:06:17.420 expecting this big, huge guy. And so my primary tool, as with anybody working in this business,

00:06:23.440 is your brain, how you utilize your brain, how quick you can see something, how you can

00:06:27.860 correlate it to a possible solution, how quickly you can implement that based on how your brain

00:06:32.220 works. So that's where the mindset is. It's more critical than any piece of hardware.

00:06:37.280 You know, a gun, like I talk to people about a lot, is an inanimate object. You have to do all

00:06:41.980 these things with a gun. You have to have a magazine. You have to load rounds into it. You have

00:06:45.900 to insert it into the mag wall. You have to cycle the slide and get the round in the chamber.

00:06:50.760 You have to align your sights. You have to press the trigger when your sights are aligned. There's

00:06:55.180 so many things that have to go on first, but all that stuff is done by your brain. And so,

00:06:59.900 you know, the gun alone is nothing. The car alone is nothing. You think of your brain kind of as an

00:07:06.140 operating system, right? And that's what we want. We want this operating system functioning at a high

00:07:10.720 level and we want to condition the operating system first. And then the hard skills are basically the

00:07:16.080 tools that are provided. So for us, that comes second. The first is the brain and the mindset

00:07:21.480 and utilizing it because you don't always have the actual tools that you may need in a situation.

00:07:27.460 So a lot of impromptu stuff occurs in protection when you're in a foreign country and you're dealing

00:07:32.140 with high stress situations. So, you know, we typically use our brain first and we try not to

00:07:38.300 go where there are problems. So if I know, you know, hey, we shouldn't go to Iraq because there are a lot 1.00

00:07:43.620 problems in Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen or Syria or you name it. So I try not to go there. And then

00:07:49.500 when I have a client that needs to go there, we try not to go to the hotspots within that particular

00:07:53.980 region. And then when we do have to go there and we start seeing these indicators or anomalies from

00:07:59.960 the baseline that occur in that environment, we try to get out of that environment. And then the last,

00:08:05.080 the very, very, very last thing we do is utilize our hard skills, our shooting, fighting, driving

00:08:09.320 to defend ourself when we can't leave, when we can't evacuate, when we can't escape something. So

00:08:14.620 the whole point for us is use the hard skills to create the opening to get out. But the better

00:08:20.020 option, obviously, is to be smart and don't allow yourself to get into the situation that forces the

00:08:25.060 hard skills.

00:08:26.320 Yeah, that's, you spend a lot of time in the book talking about what protective services do. They,

00:08:29.960 their whole job is to avoid the risk at all. And so you have this section, you know, response options.

00:08:35.240 And the first one that you just said that the best option is don't be where danger commonly occurs.

00:08:39.940 And then the good option is leave at the first sight of a problem. And then you said the last

00:08:44.200 bad option is stay and fight. And I think oftentimes when people think, oh, self-defense, like I got to

00:08:48.900 learn to stay and fight. It's like, no, most self-defense is learning how to do number one and

00:08:52.980 number two, like don't be where danger is and then leave. So you don't have to fight at all.

00:08:58.060 Yeah. I, you know, you think about that and, and, uh, you know, I've had a storied history,

00:09:02.420 you know, between the military and law force, even as, as a kid. And, you know, I've done martial

00:09:06.140 arts my whole life and I don't mean esoteric martial arts. I mean, fighting, combative martial

00:09:10.140 arts, boxing, wrestling, jujitsu, Muay Thai. And, you know, as a young kid with a lot of testosterone,

00:09:14.880 I was involved in a lot of fights and, you know, I wasn't smart enough in the moment to realize that,

00:09:21.420 no, I'm not starting a fight, but I keep getting in fights. Why is that happening? Well, I went to the

00:09:25.000 places where fights are going to occur. You know, if you go to a location that has fights frequently,

00:09:29.940 the chances of you getting a fight are much higher than normal. If you go to a place where fights

00:09:33.760 almost never happen, you don't end up in a fight. And so that's the biggest part. And it, sometimes

00:09:39.140 it takes a little effort. A lot of people will say like, oh, that's common sense. Yeah. It's common

00:09:43.300 sense, but no one thinks that way and no one applies it that way. So, you know, it's a huge part

00:09:49.220 of our job is just to understand where we're going, what risk exists there. And generally we do that

00:09:55.060 through historical analysis, right? So you say, you know, where you're at, there's Bob's bar and

00:10:00.500 then Bob's bar, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, there's fights from, you know, let's say nine

00:10:05.980 o'clock at night until two in the morning when they close. Well, that's probably the ideal time 0.99

00:10:10.480 not to be there if you don't want to be in a fight. And so something simple like that, you know what,

00:10:14.540 we're going to go on Thursday and we're going to go at six o'clock after work instead of going at 10

00:10:19.280 or 11 or 12 on a weekend. Little simple selections and decisions like that help us to, you know,

00:10:25.400 survive and also thrive in those conditions. Well, and another thing you talk about that you

00:10:30.300 and your, what your protective services do to avoid where danger is at, commonly occurs is this thing

00:10:35.660 called advancing. What's advancing and how does that help you avoid conflict or problems?

00:10:40.840 Yeah. Advancing is a critical and fundamental and core part of protection, right? Any type of

00:10:47.280 protection, whether you're talking about executive protection, dignitary protection,

00:10:50.580 celebrity protection, overseas, high risk security, doesn't matter. Advancing is essentially the

00:10:56.620 choreography of what you're going to be doing. So it's admin and logistics. So advancing would be

00:11:03.420 me going ahead to look at an airport, to look at a hotel, to look at a restaurant or a venue,

00:11:10.400 to look at the routes to going to and from and to create plans based on the information that I'm

00:11:16.040 gleaning from a particular situation. So you can do it in writing, you can do it through physical

00:11:21.520 walkthroughs. Modern day, pretty much for most of what we do is we create a document that tells

00:11:28.520 somebody what we want, whether it's, you know, a director of an airport or the general manager of

00:11:33.380 a hotel or the owner of a restaurant. And we'll send it out to them and say, Hey, here are the things

00:11:38.340 we'd like for our visit with, you know, XYZ person, you know, can we get on the phone and talk about

00:11:43.080 this? And they say, yeah. And so you get on the phone and you start talking to them about what

00:11:46.780 your needs and wants are. And you start asking about, you know, how is this situated? How is

00:11:50.960 it laid out? How do you operate? Where are ins and outs? And then they say, okay, well, we're going

00:11:54.620 to send you a floor plan. And, you know, these are the options that you have for dining locations.

00:11:59.280 And these are the servers that you could potentially have. And you kind of walk through

00:12:03.160 all of what could happen. And so, Hey, if that doesn't work out, if we have an issue in this

00:12:08.700 area, where are we going to, right? You figure out where your, your safe havens are, your temp

00:12:12.680 holds are, and all of that's done before you get there, because it's much more difficult

00:12:17.200 to figure out a solution under stress while things are going upside down. So you do the

00:12:22.540 advanced work basically to create plans and options. If I know where all the doors are,

00:12:26.940 if I know where the emergency medical equipment is, or fire equipment is, if I know who the key

00:12:31.900 players are, and that's another big component of advancing. If I'm meeting the owner of a place,

00:12:37.000 if I'm meeting the general manager of a place, I'm meeting the director of a place, those guys

00:12:40.860 can override their existing system. So maybe a entry level person, like a front desk manager

00:12:47.020 can't do something, but the owner of the hotel or the general manager of the hotel can override

00:12:51.780 what their policy is saying, no, no, no. In this case, we're actually going to violate our policy

00:12:55.800 and we're going to do what that client wants. And so meeting with those people and knowing who has

00:13:00.480 the power, the authority and knowing the physical setup, it's critical. And we typically do that

00:13:06.360 during the daytime. We do it at nighttime. We do it on holidays. We want to see what it's like in

00:13:11.180 different environments and different conditions if we can do it. And on a bigger team and a larger

00:13:15.760 scale, you have a dedicated advanced guy who goes ahead and does that. So if that gives you any kind

00:13:22.600 of idea of what the general objective is for an advance. Yeah. So it sounds pretty thorough and like

00:13:27.680 you guys create like contingency plans based off of this thing, but like how would, like say a civilian,

00:13:32.220 right? They're planning a trip somewhere. Like how could they use some of the principles of

00:13:36.960 advancing for their own protection? Sure. And a lot of people ask this, you know, I get

00:13:42.180 this for the last 20 plus years. Hey, I'm going here. I'm doing this. What should I do? How should

00:13:46.580 I think about it? And my answer is that you start with collection of historical data, right? So I start

00:13:53.160 to look at, you know, what is the murder rate like in this place? And what is the economy like in this

00:13:58.080 place? And what are the cultural norms and what type of currency do they use? And what language

00:14:02.400 do they speak? And I start gathering the general data. And then once I have that, I might start

00:14:06.600 getting into very specific data. And let's just say you're taking your family on vacation and you're

00:14:11.240 going to Cancun, you're going to Mexico. Well, Cancun is a tourist spot. So it's not like kind of

00:14:16.760 mainland Mexico. So you wouldn't assess it the same way you would assess something like Sinaloa,

00:14:22.000 the state of Sinaloa. But what is happening there and who is there and what's law enforcement

00:14:26.900 like there? And what are the common scams there? And then I would find sources, parallel structures

00:14:32.160 to what I'm operating under, like in this case, the government. So I'd go to the US government and

00:14:36.800 I'd use something like the State Department's entity called OSAC, Overseas Security Advisory

00:14:41.440 Council. And I start looking at something they have called crime and safety reports.

00:14:46.880 So now all of a sudden I have the crime and safety report and I'm starting to get data from that

00:14:50.460 and I'm figuring stuff out. And then I go back to where I'm going. Okay, which airport am I coming

00:14:55.940 into? How far away is it? So what's the drive time like? What's the traffic like? And then I

00:15:00.780 start to look at, okay, well, are people targeted in cars like carjackings or do they do express

00:15:05.540 kidnappings there? And what kind of countermeasures can I create? Because I know this going in.

00:15:09.760 And then my hotel, I start to look online and see what past incidents tourists have had there at that

00:15:15.040 hotel in Cancun. And then I start to reach out to those people. Hey, who's this person? And can I

00:15:19.540 contact them? And are they open to giving me their personal information? Can I get the GM's cell phone

00:15:24.060 number? And you start to create these things from a distance. And then when you get there,

00:15:28.200 you spend a little bit of time. Let's say you have a family of four or five people and you are a

00:15:33.680 more traditional family and you're the male role model and the family is the father or whatever you

00:15:37.940 are. You would say, hey guys, come in and unpack and stay in the room. I'm going to walk the hotel

00:15:42.720 for five or 10 minutes. That's advancing. That's what you're doing. You're learning it and preparing

00:15:47.220 yourself for a bad situation. And a lot of guys will say, well, I'm not paranoid. And I said,

00:15:53.160 well, neither am I. I'm just prepared. And because I'm prepared, I'm more relaxed and I can enjoy

00:15:58.160 myself because I have a ton of options because I know this property inside and out.

00:16:02.340 Okay. So another thing you need to talk about in the book in order to avoid problems is also

00:16:06.640 understanding how the criminal mind works and how they pick targets because that can help you

00:16:12.240 avoid being a target. So what is like generally, what is someone who wants to do bad things to you?

00:16:18.980 What are they looking for in a target? And then what can you do to be less of a target?

00:16:23.880 Okay. So generally speaking, a criminal needs something of value, right? And most people

00:16:28.220 think about this in terms of money, a wallet, a purse. Some people think of it in terms of an

00:16:33.080 asset, something that they have that can fetch value through fencing it. Some people think of

00:16:38.620 like a carjacking in terms of the actual car. Those are pretty common ones. So they need something

00:16:43.040 of value. So if you have something of value, you're a potential target. If you look like a weaker

00:16:47.380 person, you're a potential target. If you have a relationship to an entity, let's say information

00:16:53.740 based, you know something, like you work on the stock market, you have some type of insider trading

00:16:59.300 information and they want that. You yourself as a person are of value to them. Or in a foreign

00:17:05.120 country, a lot of times you as a human are of value assuming someone's willing to pay for you to get

00:17:10.300 you back. And so those are the typical things of value, like things that have cash value immediately,

00:17:16.780 like things that can be taken to a pawn shop, things that produce information that's of value

00:17:22.280 that will later result in money or the person themselves when you look at kidnapping.

00:17:26.460 So those are the three common things. And then from that, normally doing things like advanced work

00:17:32.060 essentially shows you where exposure points are, where choke points are, shows you kind of how the

00:17:37.720 culture moves or flows. So the biggest part for us is not having something like your Rolex watch on,

00:17:44.640 not having a bunch of jewelry on, not taking the cash out of your pocket or wallet when you're paying

00:17:49.560 for something and you've got a handful of cash that everybody around can see. Things like moving in

00:17:54.640 groups. So if you're moving three or four or five, you're a less desirable target because the chance

00:17:59.540 of them being successful is pretty low. And even when you're overseas and you're by yourself, there

00:18:04.840 are things that you can do to look bigger than you are. So if I start to kind of walk into a group of

00:18:10.700 two or three or four people that are moving down the street, I blend into that. I'm not right in the

00:18:14.460 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

00:18:19.300 even more like I'm with them. And if I'm laughing when they're laughing, I look like I'm with

00:18:23.120 them. So a lot of little things that you can do, your posture, your demeanor, your eye contact,

00:18:28.360 all of these things will make you a less likely target. And in general, it's back to mindset,

00:18:36.020 right? Do you look like somebody easy to take money from, to take a life from, to take whatever

00:18:41.720 it is? And if you have the right posture, the right demeanor, and you blend and they don't even

00:18:46.380 see you, chances of that happening are pretty slim.

00:18:49.400 Yeah. You said in the book, in protection, you call this target hardening, right? Make yourself a hard

00:18:55.560 target.

00:18:56.260 Correct. That's exactly what it is. So, you know, you figure out what the target is and then you

00:19:00.120 reverse it and you figure out how to make it hard to get access to that target. And we talk about

00:19:05.060 that through a bunch of different systems that we use, threat and vulnerability assessments in

00:19:10.120 particular.

00:19:11.400 Well, let's talk about that. Like, let's go through that sort of methodology that you used to do that

00:19:16.720 threat assessment. Yeah. So we, we break it down into different categories. So we have

00:19:21.800 a threat assessment, we have a risk assessment, and we have a vulnerability assessment. They're

00:19:26.100 different things. And I realized that that vernacular is common vernacular. And for most

00:19:32.100 people, you know, threat, risk, and vulnerability are the same, but for us, it's not. And even in the

00:19:36.380 security or protection industry, people use that word, those words interchangeably and they're not.

00:19:41.020 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

00:19:47.960 percentage of likelihood. So I'm looking at more at numbers, the chance of occurrence, and then that

00:19:53.100 occurrence being successful. And then vulnerability is essentially assessing the flaws or the chinks in 1.00

00:19:58.480 the arm or the weaknesses in the existing security structure. So we go in and we do assessments on all

00:20:04.940 of those things. And we talk about a couple of different assessment processes that we use in the real

00:20:09.080 world in the book. We talk about something really simple that anybody that went to business school

00:20:13.220 would learn about something like a SWOT analysis, where we're looking at strengths, weaknesses,

00:20:17.860 opportunities, and threats. And that's kind of a, what we would refer to as a down and dirty

00:20:21.780 assessment system where you're just doing it on the fly. It's not something you're sitting at a

00:20:25.700 desk thinking through or brainstorming or in a working group. That's just a, hey, I'm here and I'm

00:20:30.200 trying to break it down quickly and I'm going to do it in two minutes. And then we get into much more

00:20:35.140 complex systems. And one of the ones that we talk about in the book is the Carver methodology.

00:20:40.860 And that is exactly target hardening. So Carver basically is a Vietnam era system that was a

00:20:48.760 targeting analysis system, right? So it was used to find targets that the US would want to target

00:20:54.540 inside of Vietnam. And this system for us is not that because in protecting people, you're not,

00:21:01.560 you're not targeting others, you flip it and you figure out what the adversary would target for

00:21:06.740 you. And then you harden those particular points. So Carver is an acronym. It stands for criticality,

00:21:13.880 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 1.00

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.

00:30:24.820 Correct.

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,

00:30:34.340 you're are responding.

00:30:36.120 Absolutely.

00:30:36.360 Right. So, because, so talk about that asymmetry and like what you like between a protector and

00:30:43.040 attacker.

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?

00:35:27.020 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 0.75

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 0.97

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 0.99

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, 0.88

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

00:47:17.560 when he started the plan.

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

00:47:50.300 up as fast as you can.

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

00:48:49.860 to be ready for a self-defense situation?

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 0.90

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

00:54:35.660 your work?

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. 1.00

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.

00:55:37.400 Thanks, Brett. Appreciate your time.

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

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00:56:35.120 Remind you not only to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - March 01, 2021

Protection for and from Humanity

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