Speaker 0 | 00:07.878
Welcome to Dissecting Popularity Nerds. I’ve been very excited to have this conversation with you, mainly because I like playing, who doesn’t like playing, I don’t know, Army or whatever we want to call it. And I really, really love, anyone that follows you, I’m just going to tell everyone right now that’s listening and we are recording this. I like it to be very, I like this to be raw and natural. Everyone needs to follow you immediately just for the video content. I mean, I am a jujitsu practitioner. And so what comes with that is many cops, ex, I don’t know, military, whatever you want to call that, and people that have been locked up in jail. And we all get together and beat each other up. And it’s a lot of fun. And we’re all good friends together. And I had a. a brown belt um who works at the submarine manufacturing um i don’t know factory whatever we want to call that you would know better than me and kid remain okay and uh he was on subs for years and says that when he left he actually just wanted to go back which sounded ridiculous to me and i would ask him about you know were there ever leaks he’s like oh hell yeah he’s like asked me about he’s we had a fire one time and you know and i had to fix this you know thing on the sub in the middle of i don’t know wherever they were which you couldn’t tell me because it was classified and um put out a fire and then fix this all underwater which is crazy so i’m assuming you have some good stories no i definitely have good stories that you know crap happens man it’s just it’s
Speaker 1 | 01:42.953
him and you get that’s why you train all those hours and you remember when it actually happens so uh you really don’t even think about it to be perfectly honest you just kind of do it so
Speaker 0 | 01:53.284
So I don’t know where to go with you. You are a general manager at a data center?
Speaker 1 | 01:59.308
No, I, you know, I, you know, I very, very fortunate got after Navy after 21 years after my command tour, it’s kind of like, well, then fortunate enough to work at, you know, Meta AWS at Oracle, but I kind of wanted to build something that was my own and that was lasting and try something new. So, uh, I had a mentor, Chris Crosby, CEO of Compass Data Centers, and he asked me if I want to come over and run his modular business that he had bought. So I’m like an incubated startup inside of a large data center company. And so really focused on more modular data center deployments. So it’s really, to be honest, I couldn’t have asked for a better timing with hybrid multi-cloud and
Speaker 0 | 02:42.937
AI. Is this like off-the-grid type stuff that we have?
Speaker 1 | 02:46.559
No, it could be. Oh, man. we’re doing middle of nowhere and we’re doing, you know, downtown it’s, you know, as people come back, you know, good example is people come back from the cloud and they want a hybrid cloud, most likely their data center wasn’t updated. So it’s much easier just to, for me to drop something in their back. Cause I can do it quicker, cheaper, and we know we use a composite. So it’s a little bit different, something that’s going to last than them trying to, you know, kind of redo their old data center to make it fit high density racks or fit new, even standard computer racks.
Speaker 0 | 03:16.607
Just. I find that any data center people, even closely related to data center people, are very happy people. Oh, I mean,
Speaker 1 | 03:25.690
it’s… I mean, people can’t see this,
Speaker 2 | 03:27.410
but…
Speaker 0 | 03:27.570
They’re very happy people. Coders, no. Not happy people. Not always happy people. I mean, if I’m going based on pure, absolute stereotypes and pigeonholing people, everything, every data center guy I know loves his job. Even if he’s remotely connected to a data center. Every coder I know is…
Speaker 1 | 03:46.496
somewhat yeah i don’t know i would like to say yeah that’s interesting interesting supposition i don’t you know never noticed that but i don’t think if that is where people are happy we’re in demand or you know we can’t can’t get it they’re in demand it’s just i mean the job is fun
Speaker 0 | 04:02.280
i just think something about you know well you tell me what’s the on the on the on a daily basis what do you have to what do you have to play with what do you have to do on a daily basis i mean is it like is it Is it racks and compute power and energy and plugging things in? Or what is it? I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 04:19.356
As a incubated startup, it’s about building a product, getting it out there, and getting your first sales. I make it a little bit harder because I’m doing both DoD, federal, and enterprise. Okay. So it’s just getting that stuff done. But to be honest, I don’t have to convince anyone anymore. Probably a year ago, I had to convince people why this made sense. Now people get it. You know, modular data centers are flexible dirt. cheaper. You can deploy them with the same quality or higher quality than a hyperscale, and they’re very flexible. So you can have a megawatt of 41 kilowatt racks of four hopper chassis right next to when Brace Blackwell comes out at. you know, eight Grace Blackwell 70, you know, and 72. So they’re 576, you know, kind of cluster. I just think it gives you the ultimate flexibility.
Speaker 0 | 05:10.381
Talk more, please tell me more. Tell me more. What more flexibility? Why would I want a mobile data center? Do I have any?
Speaker 1 | 05:16.607
This is a mobile wall. This is just a hyperscale quality data center that you can put inside your crown. So instead of having to a stick build, which is permitting You got to have the land, which will take you 18 months to two years. I can build a megawatt in, let’s say, eight months at a fraction of the cost. And I can guarantee my quality is just as good or better than a hyperscale data center.
Speaker 0 | 05:40.582
Just since people might be listening, who would be interested the most in this?
Speaker 1 | 05:46.186
Your customers are everyone. That’s the best thing. Those data center companies are going for the big seven, the clouds and the platforms. I can go after everyone else. And most people who are considering this, they’re not talking ones or twos. They’re talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these. So just all distributed network, distributed edge, distributed compute, AI, you name it, it’s all happening right now. It’s just no one’s talking about it because everyone’s talking about large data centers and AI and everything. And we use terms like generative AI that happen to take a bunch of AI and jam it together when there’s a bunch of four verticals of what that is.
Speaker 0 | 06:25.544
So I mean, it’s a little bit over my head. I’ll be honest with you. I’m somewhat of a simpleton and you are way smarter than me in this, in this.
Speaker 1 | 06:34.009
I mean, just imagine it’s, you know, you want, people want time to market, you know, time to market stick build. It takes a while to do it. Um, when you actually have to do it, cause you know, it’s the permanent, it’s the building it’s, you know, it’s, it’s higher in fire. It’s getting all that stuff up where modules are manufactured and you bring to the site and you install it when you can. install one, depending on how you’re doing it within four to five hours if you’re using what we’re using. It just makes a very usable, flexible way to do it. The problem has been everyone’s version of modules is that rusty ConnexBox that’s in the back, or they’ve been bitten, like I have, by ConnexBoxes that leaked. We’re trying to solve all that by giving them something that’s going to last a long time, but something that just brings all that flexibility in, and we’re not treating it as a throwaway data center. diesel routes electricity all right base load we can do micro grids whatever whatever the person wants i’m even trying to jam one in a jam spider a bad word but going to idaho to try to attach it to a micro reactor so it approved the use case average customer size doesn’t matter doesn’t matter first customers are you know dod and fortune 40 customers and i guess the difference is also we’re doing this as opex so it’s a it’s a service model So companies that want to maintain themselves cash rich or they’re not sure about the future, we front the capital, we build it, and we lease it to them under operating terms. So it’s just like a big data center, just same kind of business concept, just put to coming to you instead of you coming to them.
Speaker 0 | 08:08.336
You’ve got some old experience at Facebook. I had a cable guy that was cabling Facebook back in the day.
Speaker 1 | 08:15.699
Who was that?
Speaker 0 | 08:17.628
I can’t remember. I’d have to look back now, but I just remember talking with, I think that was 2007 or something. How old is Facebook? How old is Facebook? I don’t even know.
Speaker 1 | 08:29.555
It’s a good question. I don’t know.
Speaker 0 | 08:31.296
All I know is that the cabling alone was ridiculous.
Speaker 1 | 08:35.659
Yeah. It’s a very complex network, and it’s an interesting design of that network, but it requires a lot of cabling, a lot of switches.
Speaker 0 | 08:44.632
I find it fascinating. There’s just a little box on a cell phone. It’s just a little app. It’s just an app, but it’s this massive universe.
Speaker 1 | 08:52.614
It is an app, but it’s a platform that integrates a lot of different software stacks under what that platform is. And to be honest, it’s a great design. It has awesome failover capability. They used to just randomly point to a data center. It’s not random, but then they’d shut it down to see how… Facebook does when you shut down that data center. So they’re built to be redundant and resilient. And you can do that when you’re your own customer. Very tough to do when you’re waiting on enterprise to be your customer.
Speaker 2 | 09:27.409
Can you swap that,
Speaker 0 | 09:28.310
though? Now you just made me think, can you swap that? Could you be your own customer if you weren’t? Probably not.
Speaker 1 | 09:34.715
I think you’d have to build your own network. There are companies that are popping up that are They’re trying to do a GPU cloud, and in theory, they could be their own customer. But that’s what this whole… I guess they could be their own customer because there was a whole push to on-prem cloud. You see sovereign regions, which they’re deploying a cloud inside someone’s fence line. And Oracle came up with that, I guess, two or three, you know, I guess it would have been four or five, two or three years ago, four years ago, where, you know, we just put a cloud inside someone’s fence line or someone, you know, to give them data sovereignty or they can go hug their servers.
Speaker 2 | 10:15.866
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Speaker 1 | 12:41.789
you know submarine stories a lot of my a lot of i don’t know if i can’t tell though because it’s all you know you kind of you quickly get up to that classification level where I gotcha.
Speaker 0 | 12:53.232
I can’t talk with my cousin either because he was merchant Marines and, you know, he was laying cables forever. And I’m like, well, what do you mean? I can’t tell you that.
Speaker 1 | 13:00.994
I mean, I will tell you what I love most about submarines, you know, in today’s age to be a captain of an air, you know, an air squadron or a ship, you have your boss right there. So ultimately you can always go to your boss and call them up on some sat high climb or whatever. Ask them their opinion or they’re watching you on some kind of feed on a stopwatch. It’s just you, you can’t go up and ask your boss for help. You know, you’re at a space that if you get caught, your front page is CNN and all these world leaders are going to read about you, including the president.
Speaker 0 | 13:36.041
So has that happened? Has that ever happened?
Speaker 1 | 13:39.244
I can’t say anything about it.
Speaker 2 | 13:41.826
I mean, I just like,
Speaker 0 | 13:42.647
I’m just trying to think of the last time that that something like that has happened.
Speaker 1 | 13:47.411
That alone should tell you something. something. But I mean, so it’s the last message of you’re alone and unafraid out there. You’re out there, you know, 40, 38 years old, commanded a submarine, you know, average age is like 22.
Speaker 0 | 14:00.057
And you’re out there on the- How do you deal with that psychologically, like being down eight months at a time or something?
Speaker 1 | 14:06.280
People, everyone’s a volunteer. You can’t be forced to go on submarines. And you kind of just, the people that don’t like it just kind of, they- We have themselves out. You have some people that you have to metaback off, but that’s very rarely when that has to happen. Most of the time, you’re all good. But I tell you what I love about submarines is that it’s just something you don’t get it in the outside. It’s the mission, and it’s the team. I mean, the team is your 130, 140 people. Guess what? You’re all going to die as one. You’re going to succeed as one. It’s a very… different than working on the outside the way you kind of come together there’s officers enlisted but there’s not really you know no one really treats that as a differentiation like yo you must i’m an officer so you must call me sir all the time it’s more you know people working together to accomplish a mission it’s just a It is. It’s so hard to describe to someone who’s never been out on submarines. It really is. You become tight because you make a mistake, you all die.
Speaker 0 | 15:08.744
I think you did a good job.
Speaker 1 | 15:12.825
It’s something I miss. And I often, you know, I posted this week about it saying, hey, military, I know you want to get out and you can’t excited to get out, but you were never going to have this sense of mission and sense of purpose and sense of team ever again. You just don’t get that in the outside. It’s. And they’re well, I’m not saying companies are bad or well-intentioned. It’s just different. And people will miss that.
Speaker 0 | 15:35.193
Yeah. Like real brotherhood.
Speaker 1 | 15:37.574
Yep. Is my sisterhood. I mean, you’re all, you know, submarines are mixed. So, but it’s just a, you know, it’s a, it’s, it’s just such a hard thing to describe where you’re living together day after day, succeeding or failing as one.
Speaker 0 | 15:49.979
No, I, I don’t, I think you did a good job. Uh, live or die as one is, you know, that’s, that’s. Pretty much, we have to work together. There is no other option. It’s not like you can just be kind of half bought in.
Speaker 1 | 16:05.183
Yeah, I mean, if there’s a fire, guess what? Where the hell are you going to go? You have to go towards the fire and put out the fire, because if you don’t…
Speaker 0 | 16:11.946
We had that happen.
Speaker 1 | 16:13.667
Yes. I mean, everyone’s had casualties. I mean, never, not nuclear stuff, just, you know, you have other problems.
Speaker 0 | 16:21.732
Electrical, whatever.
Speaker 1 | 16:22.953
Electrical problems or…
Speaker 0 | 16:24.722
you know motor bombs or something like that not another anything with the nuclear side just with your non-nuclear components well um and obviously you’re just not going to answer what you can’t answer but how what’s your what was your longest deployment no i think you know most
Speaker 1 | 16:41.372
time you deploy six to seven months you might spend two you know 90 days is probably the max you’ll ever fill away from port But, you know, I think I’ve done 100 day one away from port. You know, a lot of that’s been submerged. And that’s the, man, that’s when your cooks are great because they have to get super, super creative. You know, you do 90 days underway and you are eating like the last of the last of the last. You’re like beanies and weenies and spam. That’s what you’re eating. And they have to get super creative. And that’s why the Navy, the submarine force spends so much money on their, they send their, all their CSs to culinary school because. that’s what makes people happy and you got to super creative at the end completely shut down ever just sitting on the bottom of the ocean all right you can’t yeah we’re all nuclear so you can’t do that kind of stuff diesels can we can um so yeah you always have to keep moving always moving always moving yeah we don’t have i mean you can hopper but
Speaker 0 | 17:39.934
Is that because someone will always know where you are? Someone will always be able to target you at some point or something?
Speaker 1 | 17:44.497
I think it’s just dependent on the mission because the benefit of a nuclear reactor means you can go anywhere and go anywhere quick. So it’s unlimited fuel. So a diesel can’t do that. They’re plowing around at a very slow speed on the battery, but they’re super quiet or they’re recharging the batteries and they can go a little bit quicker. So the nuclear gives you a lot more flexibility to get to places than a conventional diesel sub.
Speaker 0 | 18:08.690
That’s pretty sweet. Yeah, I know. It’s really cool.
Speaker 1 | 18:11.091
But, you know, how I got into this is, you know, a submarine has like 12 megawatts of IT load. I mean, think about it. It’s a, you know, it’s a container-based system that you have a sonar. You want to be able to switch over a server. So you, if you really, they’re pretty modern right now. If you actually look at some of these submarines, I mean, have the new Virginia class, you feel like you’re on a Starship Enterprise. You have fire control on one side, sonar on the other. You have the pilots up front. It’s not traditional helms and planes. um it really is a different look but it’s it’s a lot of its computer based so it’s not that hard of a transition it’s easy to transition because mechanical electrical you’re dealing with that but now you definitely that’s what i some marine people know cloud they just don’t know they know cloud it
Speaker 0 | 18:53.149
says the first thing that when i googled that came up deadly quiet how quiet are we talking yeah very very quiet i mean you what you’re doing is you were looking for like
Speaker 1 | 19:02.778
single narrow band totals like and every submarine is different this isn’t like jonesy and you have a stupid computer you push it through though but every submarine is different you might have a pump that has a different winding of that pump and so instead of 300 hertz it puts out 305 you know 301 hertz and that’s how you know it’s it’s that kind of submarine and it’s just baron and doppler because you don’t i mean that’s there’s no active you’re not going active you’re trailing them just on passive and you
Speaker 0 | 19:31.434
Is there internet down there?
Speaker 1 | 19:34.055
Nope. Nope.
Speaker 0 | 19:36.257
No. No internet. There’s no going to the cable in the middle of the ocean.
Speaker 1 | 19:40.319
No, it’s different. You know, when I was first as a J.O., I mean, you had a thing called a family gram. So it was 50 characters, I think, and you got five or six of them on deployment. So they would, you know, their family would write you and send out this family grab and you read it. But now, you know, they’re my ex-own suits where they got internet. I mean, they got… email so you could actually send and get an email you you’d always download the email that was like you cleared all your radio message traffic make sure you got all the email packets to get down and then you go to submerge and you distribute all the email but you have to come up you have to come up to get it you have to come up and you have to contact you have to get a satellite you have to log on a satellite this is fascinating i love that right here now imagine this you actually have to look through the email because the last thing you the last thing you want is an email that you can’t do anything about. You’re going on mission and you don’t, someone tells something that they’re just going to stress about. So a lot of people choose not to hear that because you, you can’t do a damn thing about it. So, you know, a lot of that, some of that emails you’re holding onto until, and you’re talking to them towards the end of it. So they don’t know. And plus you get some, you get some interesting emails too.
Speaker 0 | 20:50.547
Let’s just say everything.
Speaker 1 | 20:53.570
Everything from I’m sleeping with your best friend, this is it, to I’ve seen everything on email. There’s word filters. They write in Spanish, different languages. It’s kind of funny.
Speaker 0 | 21:05.919
Yeah, that would be miserable.
Speaker 1 | 21:07.560
You got to do it.
Speaker 0 | 21:09.282
Yeah, that would be difficult.
Speaker 1 | 21:11.423
Yeah, but it’s not like carriers nowadays. You can get on Facebook. You got your Starbucks there and everything. You don’t have that on a summer and you’re really… It’s definitely you have to let go of the outside world.
Speaker 0 | 21:24.083
There’s a Starbucks on the aircraft carrier?
Speaker 1 | 21:26.504
I think it’s Starbucks on aircraft carriers. 5,000 people. My first time on a carrier, I did look at the aviators. They had this drill going on. On a submarine, everyone participates in a drill. The aviation squadron shut the door and they were playing Guitar Hero.
Speaker 0 | 21:46.806
during a reactor drill i was it was very very tough for me you know because you can’t do that out of summary the my mind is uh you you it’s very few times that i that i actually get shut down on the show i’ll be honest with you it’s very few times that i’m that i’m in the lack of words but it’s you know it’s what builds the military and how they do their networking how they transmit information it really is no
Speaker 1 | 22:12.107
different than how the cloud does it you know even nowadays the same conversation I’m having with DoD and what I’m doing for DoD is the exact same conversation I’m having with the enterprises, no difference. And so that’s what I really try to help veterans out a lot where I don’t… My whole thing is don’t limit yourself. You know a lot more than you think. You don’t have to go in and be an ops person. You probably know a lot more about engineering, a lot more about product, a lot more about sales than you think you know. And that’s where I think veterans are not helped by keeping you know… hiring where they try to jam them in where they think they belong or they pay them lower pay because they can get away with it. I mean, there were kids out there who were E3, E4 junior list of a family that are on food stamps or they’re going to a local food bank to be able to survive. It’s just so wrong on how we pay the military.
Speaker 0 | 23:05.947
Okay. So I guess just take a few minutes then to tell me what the advice is or what… um oh yeah you’re gonna go there because i have um i it’s it’s kind of one of those sensitive issues where i don’t usually go there because i wasn’t in the military but i’ve had numerous people that were on the military on the show and i’ve had many conversations offline after the show and
Speaker 1 | 23:29.801
they tell me things like phil we don’t we can’t talk with people like you we can only talk with each other uh i think it’s i think it’s it’s worth you know i like talking about this you see all my I post, I put on it. I’m glad to talk about it. No community is great. I think shifting from a military to civilian is a lot harder than we’re led to believe because everything is different. We always were like, well, I have the same leadership. It’s different. It’s 100% different because on a ship or in a squad, you all think the same. I don’t care what background you’re from, you’re ultimately, you think the same. When you go in the civilian world, no one thinks the same. They’re all different backgrounds. They’re different generations. They have different motivations. I think the easy lane answer is to say is, well, this new generation doesn’t like the work. I posted something about this recently. They just know they’re just a different generation. They have different things that motivate them, not like you’re motivated. You just got to figure out what that is. You don’t have to do that in the military. Very hierarchical, very top-down driven. In the end, you can just say, Phil, do it because I told you to do it. And you might argue and say, no, I didn’t ask. I order you to go do that. And so that’s ultimately what you can fall back to on leadership. But we do learn a lot in the military. It doesn’t matter if you’re a soldier, if you’re doing artillery or tanks, the modern technology that we learn and what people don’t outside of it since they haven’t been in the military is they don’t understand that. We’re trying to do stuff now. I’m starting with the Navy and try to get that out to the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Space Force and everyone. We’re showing these hiring managers and leaders what we actually do. In fact, we’re going to have a trip out to a carrier with some tech leaders here in June just to show them what people do. I honestly think they’d be amazed at what these kids who are 18 years old are learning to do for their country and the kind of software computers and networks that they actually work on. To give them, to let them know that we’re not just a one-trick pony. We’re not just janitors or ops people. We can do anything out there. And what you get with a veteran, what you can’t find, it’s very tough to get. You get loyalty and you get will. You can teach skill all day long. You can never teach loyalty and will. That’s the best thing you get from a veteran.
Speaker 0 | 25:51.879
Probably some ability to handle things under pressure as well.
Speaker 1 | 25:57.603
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s… what makes me stress is not what makes everyone stressed. Like to me, you know, you’re, you’re trailing some other sub, you’re in some exercise area, you know, if you get caught, you’re in trouble. That’s stressful to me. You know, I missed a timeline is not stressful. It’s very different. You definitely handle stress a little bit different, um, on that kind of stuff. One minute, which is good. And it’s bad. You might, you might be perceived as blowing off your boss just because you’re more cavalier about it, but it’s just a, it’s definitely,
Speaker 0 | 26:25.735
what do you mean? What do you mean more cavalier? Because you’re like, yeah.
Speaker 1 | 26:29.277
It’s just, you know, you see people who haven’t bet on that. They get super stressed out over timelines and deadlines and everything. And it’s, to me, you get stressed over life and death, not because you might’ve missed some, you know, some sprint that you were doing. You can just push it to the next sprint. It’s not like Phil’s not going to die if I miss this sprint. They might be mad with me or might be upset. But ultimately, I’ve been yelled at before. I can be yelled at again. I’m not going to die.
Speaker 0 | 26:56.272
Oh, can we just go back to an environment where everyone yells at each other?
Speaker 1 | 27:00.553
It makes things easier. It does make things easier, but it’s wrong. I mean, it’s wrong, but this is the thing I’m trying to get at. Is it wrong?
Speaker 0 | 27:06.794
Because that’s my parenting style.
Speaker 1 | 27:09.295
I think it is. I think it’s an easy way to do it, but in the end, it’s not. And it’s just white people end up yelling. It’s just their own ego feels threatened in the end, I think.
Speaker 0 | 27:19.138
I like it.
Speaker 1 | 27:20.418
You’re trying to motivate that person. Actually, some people need to be yelled at. Let’s be honest. My kids, one kid needs to be yelled at. The other one, if I yelled at them, they would give me the middle finger and walk off and do something. It’s just no difference. Some people need that hand on the shoulder. Some people need to be yelled at. I mean, by yelling, am I belittling or anything? No,
Speaker 0 | 27:40.428
I had a boss tell me once, he used to ask me, is their bucket full? If their bucket is totally full and they’re your number one performer all the time and everything like that, then you treat that person different than the person that’s, I don’t know, real vanilla and new and learning. And like. You just can’t expect them to know everything.
Speaker 1 | 27:58.153
I think we in the military, oddly enough, we don’t have a zero defect mentality. We have a thing called if something happens, we like to point the finger, yes. But we like to point the finger because we know who did it. We like to draw up the lessons learned. We like to train everyone on those lessons learned. So you were expected to fail and everyone learns. But if you fail again, that’s not good. But. you are expected to fail. I think sometimes.
Speaker 0 | 28:21.025
It means make the same mistake again.
Speaker 1 | 28:22.686
Make the same mistake. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 0 | 28:24.168
I’d have failed multiple times, just not the same.
Speaker 1 | 28:25.969
You’re allowed to fail multiple times, just not the same mistake. And even if you do fail the same mistake, it might be something different because you might be tired or you were put in a bad position because it’s the end of the workday. But I think we in the outside almost have this zero defect mentality where we’re told that our whole life depends on getting this right. And you wonder why people you know. cheat or you wonder why people do things if you put that kind of pressure under someone where their livelihood is dependent on them completing something you know you are not going to get the best work out of that person despite what you think zero defect yeah it’s a zero fee defect go look at wait what do we call it no what is it zero defect or is it zero that’s a zero defect mentality it’s it’ll drive behavior differently and so this Let’s go back to the Navy submarines.
Speaker 0 | 29:15.748
What’s the correct mentality called? What do we call the correct mentality?
Speaker 1 | 29:18.849
It’s a learning culture, expectations. No, there’s definitely egregious stuff you can’t cross. Anything where it affects reactor safety or something like that. But anything short of that, you will make mistakes and that’s okay. You just have to learn from it. But I think we need to bring that attitude to the civilian world too. Because too often, I attribute my success to your success. And that’s why I micromanage you. Because I’m really afraid if you mess up, then I mess up. And so that’s why you get leaders who micromanage because they can’t let go of their ego. And they don’t want their ego to be bruised ahead of them. So that’s why they micromanage to people that are kind of under. But I fell into this before. But once you recognize that a lot of your decisions are driven by your ego, and you’re okay to sit there and say, I don’t know. or I’ll find out for you. Or we always feel like we have to have the right answer and we expect that from our people. So we just need to accept people are going to make mistakes and learn from them. Let’s be honest. So a smart person, I could tell you all day long how to do something. Until you screw it up, you’re not going to do it. Now, here’s the trick though. You got to make sure they screw up by hitting a ditch and make sure they don’t hit that telephone pole because a telephone pole is going to kill them and a ditch is just going to make them learn.
Speaker 0 | 30:36.542
The fail forward mentality. Yep,
Speaker 1 | 30:38.443
exactly.
Speaker 0 | 30:39.344
Fail forward. They don’t teach it in school. There’s a lot of things they don’t teach in school.
Speaker 1 | 30:42.166
But I think we’re not set up for that.
Speaker 0 | 30:44.008
Are we getting weaker as a country?
Speaker 1 | 30:47.151
I don’t think so. I think it’s just a different generation that requires different motivation. I think it’s an easy way. If you look back on that thing I posted, it was like since 1933, it had newspaper clippings back. It was almost the same thing saying this generation doesn’t like the work. They don’t know what to talk about. It’s just different. And we got to accept that. And you got to learn that every person needs to be managed differently. But I don’t think we’re weaker as a company because of it, a country because of it. Trust me, go down to your base, go talk to your sailors in the military. They’re kind of a cross section. And I think you’ll see that they are very dedicated and they still have that kind of dedication. Now, people who don’t join the military, I think they just view the world differently, but they can have that same dedication. You just got to lead them right.
Speaker 0 | 31:34.149
There’s a change. There’s definitely a change. Again, like you said, people are people all around the world. And I’m sure you’ve seen a lot. People are people. It’s not like they just grew up in a different generation and have access to different things, I guess.
Speaker 1 | 31:50.401
Yeah, well, consider this. When I was five years old, six years old, I would go outside and play and come home for dinner. What do we do with our kids nowadays? We make them carry a phone so we can always check in on them. They never get that kind of independence. And we are constantly checking in on them, getting rules. And also, they have this social media, which they communicate friends and they communicate self-worth with their Facebook. If you look at, there’s a great book out there which kind of associates what depression in this generation really when Facebook started having likes on it, because that’s how they view their self-worth. And so that carries over into the workforce. People, they view their self-worth. by being praised, by getting that trending video and stuff. And you got to understand that. And so I didn’t have to do that. A pat on the back was all I needed, maybe a handshake or something like that. You can’t do that with the generation that’s right now. It’s just different.
Speaker 0 | 32:49.151
All right. So how do we do it? We got to turn up a Facebook page for the company? No,
Speaker 1 | 32:53.193
no. I think it’s just, you got to figure… I mean, you also don’t want to cross the line. I mean, I think you have to have a hard discussion where people might not want… People tend to shy away from hard discussions. I think with leading some people right now, you have to have a hard discussion. I think people want to work well. They have to just know what the expectation is, and you can’t expect them to know what that expectation is. And so, yes.
Speaker 0 | 33:16.022
You need to lay that out clearly.
Speaker 1 | 33:17.742
Exactly. And recognize they might not want to be praised in public. Some people are very afraid of being praised in public or singled out in public too with another downer. It’s just… you have to understand what motivates it. It’s just harder now because so many different nationalities, so different backgrounds. But if you do it right, and you like, I think people, when they look at management, they contribute success to how many people I have. And they’re okay with 20 directs, you can’t motivate and you can’t lead 20 people, it’s impossible. You need to look at how do you get a team that you can actually spend time and motivate. And if you’re a manager, guess what, you shouldn’t be writing stuff, you should be helping them. develop as leaders and encourage you then they should be doing the work but i think we do it the other way around which we feel like we have to do 20 people’s worth of work ourselves and that’s what i think people struggle with and as they get more and more people they try to keep on doing more and more the pressure goes up the ego starts
Speaker 0 | 34:15.623
to kick in and they become you know even worse of a leader it’s um when does the leader well i have so many so many first of all the one of the things that i think was very, very beneficial that I think can be very beneficial. We could maybe brainstorm this right now because you can help me where I fell in the gaps was doing a self-evaluation form for my team members. So you can do a self-evaluation form. So you don’t even have to do the evaluation. You don’t have to do the quarterly or yearly evaluation yourself. Just give that to them and have them rate themselves. A level of organization, like a 10 in this category looks like, you know, I use all the tools given to me. I’m constantly looking at different ways of using new technology and calendars to communicate with people in a streamlined way, whatever it is. Right. And a one is I wait for people to remind me that we had a meeting today and show up five minutes late with my throwing my shirt on, you know, whatever it is. Do a self-evaluation form. Let them evaluate so they know what success looks like in your category. But I want to hear from you what questions we should be asking them. So for example, how do you like to receive feedback? Whatever. What else should we have on there? Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 35:22.143
How do you deal with interrupts is the one thing. I’m okay with interrupts. I don’t mind. I have ADD. I’m very much like Squirrel. So you can drop any interrupt on me. I’m fine. Some people, they don’t like that. They plan their day. They plan their week. If you interrupt. them. It gets them off kilter. They’re unhappy. You just got to understand the people you’re with. But I think the biggest thing is just what your expectations are. I think we make the assumption that if I was to tell you, Phil, I want you to do this, that they can read your mind. But they can’t read your mind. And to be honest, they might see something differently if you were. And it’s this idea of what… you said and what they actually heard. And you have to make sure that’s the same. Too often, I think we make the assumption that since I put it out there, they heard exactly what I said. And that’s why you have to have that discussion of what do you think I meant by this? What’s the timeframe you meant by this? How are you going to get it done? It might seem kind of micromanaging, but I mean, this is a source of all arguments. So my perspective, I don’t think anybody wants to come to work and say, I’m just going to blow off everything today and sit up my chair and, and. And I think we assume people are ghosting, but I think those people are unmotivated. But that’s another story. But I think we got to…
Speaker 0 | 36:37.742
We might be in an office space just like, you know, I usually come in, I sneak in about 15 minutes late, try to sleep in the back door so Lombard doesn’t see me. And then I space out for about one to two hours and I just stare at my desk. It looks like I’m doing work, but I would say on any given week, I probably get about 15 minutes of air.
Speaker 1 | 36:54.707
Exactly. Exactly. You got to recognize that and recognize and motivate people. But in Sen, we’d like to throw people at problems instead of fixing problems. But going back to what I was saying about the argument, I can guarantee if I say something to you when you get upset, you’re going to get off that call and you’re going to tell yourself a bunch of stories about, I can’t believe my boss just did that. Am I going to get fired? Whatever. But if you actually short circuit that, and if you ever have a problem, you’re worried about that. and say, hey, you know, Phil said this, this is what I’m saying in my head. And you resolve the problem. I think if you, if people actually had that honest conversation where they could have that honest conversation where this is how you, and yes, it is touchy feeling, I get it. But you know, when you said, you know, you’re an a-hole that made me feel like blah, some people could care less. I’m not in the military, whatever you want to call me, sounds good to me, but some person, you know, tomorrow.
Speaker 0 | 37:52.468
But it’s,
Speaker 1 | 37:52.768
you know, what’s the story you’re telling yourself? No, this is what I actually meant by saying you’re in a hole. I was wrong. I probably shouldn’t have said that, but I was trying to say you need to get there. You have to have these honest conversations and recognize that everything revolves around communications. Just because you pass something doesn’t mean that they heard it. And another thing is, you know, this idea of cognitive dissonance, which is we, when we wake up in the morning, we look in the mirror, we’re always going to say, we do a good job. Anything, any times you. Even if they mess up, they’re going to try to justify why they messed up. And you have to recognize that kind of stuff. And that’s the cognitive dissonance where they’re always going to come back, look in the mirror and say, hey, I’m doing a good job. And so you have to reach them and show them how to get better without bruising that ego. And so they just go back to the fallout term saying, Phil doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
Speaker 0 | 38:42.801
Well, that’s why I like the self-evaluation. Because you can go through and you be completely honest with yourself outside where I’m not there. No one’s there to answer these questions for you. Right. I’m just telling you what is expected of your role in this. And you can go through and rate yourself on these. And where do you think you need help? And then you can come to me and ask for help somewhere in this area. I don’t, I mean, to me, that’s very helpful. No,
Speaker 1 | 39:01.848
I would agree. And, you know, my first, you know, what the biggest suggestion I had when I left the military was don’t do anything for 90 days because you have to learn how the civilian world works. And you have to understand that these are, there are similar problems that you face, but different solutions. So, you know, we come in. And we have a nine o’clock meeting. A lot of people don’t show up for the nine o’clock meeting. And I was like, wait, what the hell? Why don’t you show up for the nine o’clock meeting? It turns out some people live two hours away. And so they prefer like an 11 o’clock meeting. And I was just imposing my will. You had a startup meeting and you talked during that time. And so you just can’t make those kind of assumptions. And by what you’re talking about, that self-assessment, that’s how you level set everything. Hey, some people think they’re a 10 if they just show up to work in flip-flops. And- maybe a hat and they write a sentence down. But some people will view it differently.
Speaker 0 | 39:54.903
What’s the balance between, so if the military… Does a lot of things very very well, and there’s this kind of they don’t do a lot of things very well Trust me no no the things they do do well is what I’m saying, and there’s other things that they don’t do well Yeah, but the things that they do do well whether that be whatever works from a for example one of the Because there’s things that society does not do well either right which is everyone’s entitled to their own opinion and everyone’s right and there’s no um you know we all are thought leaders nowadays and right and like what it really is a thought leader versus the guy that actually my favorite is what’s a servant leader i bet you have a servant what does that mean i mean i think that means i work for my people i go to give the people the tools that they need and i ask them what they need and i ask things like um what do you think I meant by this? And how would you like to receive feedback? To me, a servant leader is doing everything that we just talked about. That to me is a servant leader.
Speaker 1 | 40:53.204
But everyone says they already think they really are,
Speaker 0 | 40:55.085
I guess is the point where it’s like- Everyone wants to be seen as a good leader when in reality, everyone thinks that they could be the better leader. And my answer to that question is put everyone in a room where they can all write down- all of the things that their leader could do better on a piece of paper and then have one random person type up all that advice, put it in a vanilla envelope and send it to you. So you have no clue what actually, you know, but that would be a real servant leader being very humble and ready to like, go cry yourself to sleep at night.
Speaker 1 | 41:25.280
And that’s really the thing. It’s the ego. If you’re a true servant leader, you’re going to put your ego out there and you’re going to get punched and you got to be okay with it.
Speaker 0 | 41:32.243
Oh my gosh. I’ve cried myself to sleep almost.
Speaker 1 | 41:34.724
I think a lot of people have problems with that. They recognize it. I didn’t. fell victim of it too, where it’s, you got to recognize what your ego is going to make you do.
Speaker 0 | 41:42.048
Once you realize that everyone hates you, you’ll, you’ll grow. Once you realize that everyone secretly talks about it behind you, behind your back. And you know, no one really is your friend. Uh, you’ll quickly learn and you’ll quickly be like, I’m horrible. Uh,
Speaker 1 | 41:59.318
you can’t make everyone know to that point, you can’t make everyone happy. And if you try, you’re just going to, you’re just going to kill your team. You can’t make everyone happy.
Speaker 0 | 42:07.450
What’s the balance between, we can’t be like so crazy, like, you know, no direction, no discipline, lack of military to, you know, what’s the balance in between? And I just, I really feel for people when they say we’re coming back into a civilian society and be like, isn’t there any order around here? What is wrong with everyone? How does anything get done?
Speaker 1 | 42:33.966
um what is this insanity that i have to put up with um i don’t know i mean i think it’s it’s a balance and i don’t i think it’s something you just have to get through and figure it out yourself but it also really depends on your team too i think some teams you could be a little more hands on some teams you can’t um and you just got to figure out what that is but you you have to you do have to draw the line somewhere like you know you have to draw the line but i think We, as people, don’t like to have those tough conversations. We’d rather just ignore it. And so when you ignore it, though, you’re screwing the other person because they don’t know how they’re going to get better. So we’re afraid of that. We’re afraid of that conflict. And we’re afraid of that truth to power. And we’re afraid to bring it up to our boss because, to be honest, the boss makes it hard because he screams at you or is very tough to approach or he’s not a servant leader or says, you know what I mean?
Speaker 0 | 43:29.565
Yeah, Yeah. I think some of the best mentors I ever had forced me to have the tough conversations. What did they used to say? Have the tough conversations or whatever it was. I don’t know. I just remember a lot of coaching conversations where I had to really map out what was going on first. I really had to be a good listener. I really had to be empathetic. I really had to sit down and say, hey, I heard this the other day. I heard this whatever it is came up. Want to hear, is that true? What really happened? What were you thinking? What was going through your head? I don’t know. I just want to hear what’s going on and then just sit there and listen.
Speaker 1 | 44:04.380
Yeah. And I think what we also mistake too is at least the military, for 20 years, I was taught leadership from day one. I might not have gotten right, but I have lots of scars on how to do it. I think some of these people, they get to a higher level up there and I see and we suddenly go, you’re now a leader, go forth and be a leader. And then when they screw it up, we’re wondering. How do they screw this up? Even though they’ve been given no training or anything, they’ve just been told to go out there. You’re now a manager.
Speaker 0 | 44:34.953
You’re talented. You did the best in the group. Here you go. You’re now a leader. And the last person that should have been the leader, maybe the guy that did the worst should have been the leader.
Speaker 1 | 44:42.156
Exactly. I mean, I think people’s talents lie in different areas. And I think you have to give them the tools to be successful. You can’t just sit there and, you know, some people will do. I’m not saying everyone’s going to do it, but I’m saying people will do a bad job. You have to give them the tools that they need. or you have to give them the space to fail. And I don’t think we do a very good job at that. I think we are a zero defect.
Speaker 0 | 45:02.980
Oh, gosh. Once you’re the leader, you’ll realize real quick. That’s why I tell people, look, I’m not a leader. I want to be. I don’t want to be the chief. I’m great at taking orders. Just give me the orders. Anyone that’s ever been a member of a nonprofit organization or been put on a board and said, yes, okay, I’ll join. And yes, I’ll be on the administration. All of a sudden, quickly, you’re like, oh, my gosh. What did I get myself into?
Speaker 1 | 45:30.175
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 45:30.860
especially in a nonprofit because you cannot choose who was a member of your community. It’s just the community. It’s everybody out there. There’s no, I mean, there’s just a nonprofits are very, very hard because a lot of it’s volunteer work. Anytime you’re dealing with volunteer work or anything like that, you cannot, you don’t have a choice. You don’t choose who’s in your community. You don’t, I mean, there’s elderly and young and everybody out there and you’ve got the guy that got out of jail and you’ve got the guy that’s trying to deal with this and that. And then you’ve got, People with marriage issues. And you’ve got all of this stuff. And that’s very, very, very, very difficult.
Speaker 1 | 46:05.571
So I’m like non-pop. It’s like leading in the middle.
Speaker 0 | 46:09.353
What?
Speaker 1 | 46:10.113
It’s like leading in the middle. You can see everything you just said. Sounds like I know.
Speaker 0 | 46:15.416
I just was like, why did I say yes to this? Please fire me. Please. You can’t quit. You can’t quit. You said, yes, you were. You were chosen. You were chosen. You can’t quit. No. Oh, please. Just give me orders. I would love to go back to just taking orders. No,
Speaker 1 | 46:32.011
but I think different sectors do it differently. I think the tech sector is its own little microcosm of idiosyncrasies, just like the marketing sector or the sales sector. It’s just we have our own little different problems in each thing of the sector. I just know tech well because that’s what I’ve been doing. But I do see stuff like an investment banker is going to feel very different than what a tech person thinks. It just is what it is.
Speaker 0 | 46:58.773
No, but when it comes to the end of the day, when it comes down to IT leadership or someone leading the helm and has a group of people underneath them, everything that we just talked about is very, very, very, very relevant. Yeah. And I’m just trying to think of the things that might be different when it comes to, I don’t know, technology and technology leaders and the things that we might be missing on. I don’t know. Is there something that we’re missing on? Oh, I think it’s something.
Speaker 1 | 47:24.054
I really do think it’s that. the fear of failure in our ego drives us to everything. And it might be just because you, that’s what your boss expects at zero defect and crap rolls downhill. I think we got to recognize the way smart people learn is that make mistakes and you have to give them the freedom to make mistakes. You just have to make sure when they make a mistake, they’re not hitting that telephone pole and, and shoot themselves in the foot and killing their career.
Speaker 0 | 47:47.013
But you have to get in the ransomware and the whole company shut down.
Speaker 1 | 47:50.316
And you have to get them. Like I used to, you know, If you had a paper, if you’re, this is a great way to say it, let’s say you’re at a company that likes to write a lot of papers and you take that paper and rewrite it for the person because you’re afraid the boss is going to reject it because you know the boss. What is that teaching the person?
Speaker 0 | 48:08.435
Nothing, nothing.
Speaker 1 | 48:09.435
That’s what happens when the next paper comes up. You’re going to rewrite that one too. But what you’re doing is afraid that that person is going to represent you to the boss and by transitive property that your boss is going to get mad at you because of that. And rather the boss should get mad at you. Because you should be taking responsibility, but you have to let that person do it.
Speaker 0 | 48:29.700
What if it’s a really big paper that’s going to get published? What if it’s a really big paper? That’s my problem. My problem is like, this is too big. Miles doesn’t know this is too big. We have to be careful.
Speaker 1 | 48:39.689
Did someone die? No. Then they can… Yeah, for me, it’s a very… It’s just a very high thing.
Speaker 0 | 48:44.994
What if someone will starve to death? What if someone will starve to death?
Speaker 1 | 48:47.476
No, starving to death, that’s probably good too. But for me… And I… I wish I could say I’m perfect on this. I’m by no means perfect. You know, when the stressors come in, you tend to, you think here’s what you feel like when you’re not under pressure and there’s where you act when you’re under pressure. They are two totally different things. So you got to look at yourself.
Speaker 0 | 49:06.169
I’m feeling very insecure right now. What’s that? I’m going to be very vulnerable right now. I’m feeling very insecure. You want to give me a coaching conversation?
Speaker 1 | 49:14.875
It’s. You have to do that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 | 49:18.017
How about this though?
Speaker 0 | 49:19.038
What’s the opposite though? Because the other thing that I love to do, that I love to do is say, yeah, you got it, man. There you go. Like you said, you’re now the leader. You’re it, go for it. And then that’s it.
Speaker 1 | 49:32.767
No, that’s the way it should be. If you owned a solution, guess what? You’re going to be invested in that outcome. If your boss owns the solution, let’s be honest, you’re not going to be as invested. You might be invested, it’s because of fear. It’s you’re exactly right. Go out. This is your thing. Let them learn it. Let them be.
Speaker 0 | 49:49.955
What should we do? What guiding questions should we ask? Like, hey, how do you think we can improve results here? Or how do you think it can become more of a big deal? What should we be asking?
Speaker 1 | 49:58.924
Ask questions early. Don’t let people waste 40 hours a week on something when you know that’s not going to work. Let them come to the answer. Don’t tell them what it is, but don’t let them waste a bunch of time. Give them your guidance of how you feel. You know what I mean?
Speaker 0 | 50:14.648
Could this possibly be a massive fail? I’m just curious. Where do you think this could be really stupid? No. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 50:21.770
but save them. What you want to do is make sure they’re doing work that’s good work. And. But you want to make sure that if you know something is a problem that you let them know, but you can’t do it in a way where they feel like you’re telling them what to do. It’s just, hey, why do you feel like this? Have you thought about this, this, and this? I can guarantee you make them ask the five whys and you’re helping them ask the five whys and you teach them to be curious. Guarantee they will come up with the right answer themselves, but don’t let them waste an entire week. But if you get in early, ask questions, be curious, have them ask questions. you will stop them from wasting work and time.
Speaker 0 | 50:58.746
This is such a selfish podcast for me. I’m loving it. I’m feeling, again, very insecure. This is a, for everyone out there, this is a leader, this truly is a leadership podcast. How about this? You’re on a submarine. Yep. That’s it. We’ve got what we’ve got. That’s it. There’s no firing someone. What are you going to do? Go send them to like, just go sit in a bunk for the next 90 days? No, man. You got someone in the wrong seat on the submarine. You got someone in the wrong position on the submarine. We’re on the submarine. There’s no… The ship has already set sail. It’s already sunk. We’ve already sunk the ship.
Speaker 1 | 51:32.974
What do we do? This is easy. And every person who’s been on submarines will appreciate it. You know, it’s off-going sonar soup. Come to the con and relieve the sonar soup. Sonar soup, take your watch section down to the war room, and we’re going to have a critique. It’s very easy. The off-going person comes in. You slip them in. And you make sure that you get the lessons learned from that, but you don’t put up with it. You can’t, you cannot let that, if they make a mistake, you have to correct it immediately.
Speaker 0 | 52:02.843
Where does the old person go if they’re in the wrong position? On the Stub Marine, again, we can’t go anywhere. Where does that person go?
Speaker 1 | 52:09.986
Are you talking wrong position? Yes,
Speaker 0 | 52:12.687
I’m talking like we have made a mistake. This person should not be in charge of the torpedoes because they know nothing about how to, I don’t know. Who knows? We’ve just decided.
Speaker 1 | 52:24.625
It’s easy. You’re the, you’re the, you have the ultimate say you would sit there and say, you don’t have it. This person has it right now. Give me your, you know, give me your keys to the ammunition or whatever.
Speaker 0 | 52:34.710
And then where do we put that person? Where does said person go?
Speaker 1 | 52:37.192
It goes to crank, goes to clean in the galley or goes to, goes to watch dishes or shoot trash, shoot trash.
Speaker 0 | 52:45.597
What’s that?
Speaker 1 | 52:46.597
Oh, you base. I mean, you can’t, what do you think you do with the trash? You basically compact it. You put some weights on it and you shoot it out the bottom. It’s, I mean, it’s, it stinks. It’s tough. That’s the, you know, it’s, you just put them doing that stuff. You like, they have all the time where you get to take all disqualified from watch. You make a mistake, you get disqualified from watch. You have an upgrade program before you can ever come back in. Sometimes you’re permanently disqualified and you’re lined out of the watch bill. And then you have to, we have to figure out what else to do with you.
Speaker 0 | 53:13.249
Is there a criteria? Is there like a shooting trash criteria? Like if you do this, you will go to shooting trash. If you do this three times, you will be going to shooting trash, whatever it is.
Speaker 1 | 53:23.789
I think it’s a balance you have to make on how your submarine is and what point you’re trying to make on your submarine. There’s definitely, they have a thing called a mast too. Like I can take you to mast and in theory, put you on bread and water. I can dock you pay. I can lower your rate. I mean, there’s a whole load of things that you can do to do that because you’re not just doing it for that person. You’re doing it for everyone else because you’re making an example out of it and you’re trying to prevent behavior. But usually the easiest one is really, it’s just the… you know,
Speaker 0 | 53:50.256
that’s the capital punishment argument. That’s the capital punishment argument, which I happen to agree with. It’s not, it’s not meant to like punish one person. It’s meant to prevent preventative measures. The bread and water. What kind of bread?
Speaker 1 | 54:03.241
I don’t know. Whole wheat, maybe some sourdough, whatever they get.
Speaker 0 | 54:05.802
That was great.
Speaker 1 | 54:06.822
I can be honest. I’ve never assigned someone bread and water, but you sure as heck can keep it on liberty. And that’s, that’s bad enough. You seen all your friends go out on Liberty and you’re stuck on the boat. That. That alone is enough to…
Speaker 0 | 54:21.009
That’s worse.
Speaker 1 | 54:21.830
That’ll drive someone’s behavior.
Speaker 0 | 54:23.811
How long is liberty? How long is liberty?
Speaker 1 | 54:25.993
It really depends. Sometimes it really depends on your rank and where you’re at. But junior people might have to be home from 10. And the chiefs and officers might have to be home at midnight. It really depends on where you’re at and what the threat level is and that kind of stuff. Or you can be really creative, though, and say at the end of the night, you have liberty as long as I’m off the boat, but you have to be in… 50 feet of me. You know why that’s good? It’s because then all the drunks come to you and you could help them back instead of just having them come back themselves.
Speaker 0 | 54:58.668
Mm. The, you must have so many stories. You must have so many stories.
Speaker 1 | 55:02.929
I have so many stories and I have so many stories. This is why my hair is like this. I have so many stories, man.
Speaker 0 | 55:08.090
I’ll be honest with you. You look a lot younger live than you do on your, on your LinkedIn profile. I don’t know if that, did I deliver that message correctly? Can we, can we have a coaching conversation with how I delivered that?
Speaker 1 | 55:19.713
Yes, you did. Direct feedback is what I like and I got to figure out how to do it.
Speaker 2 | 55:24.194
I mean, honestly,
Speaker 0 | 55:25.035
I did not think I would see someone this young and good looking. Is that the feedback that you would like to have?
Speaker 1 | 55:30.604
I like that feedback and my ego likes it. I don’t know if it’s necessarily true, but I appreciate it.
Speaker 0 | 55:35.947
It is absolutely 100% true.
Speaker 2 | 55:39.608
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Speaker 0 | 57:59.269
I mean, you have a very authoritative LinkedIn profile picture. I’m sure if we put this through some kind of AI, like, um, like, you know, rating function, you’d get at least a 79.
Speaker 1 | 58:07.975
Oh, I have a bunch of pictures from my memory days that I get put up there and definitely not the authoritarian picture.
Speaker 0 | 58:16.902
The, um, so it’s. I don’t know where to go. This has been an absolute pleasure. I’m going to, well, let’s leave it with this. Are there any conspiracy theories? We don’t have to name, we don’t have to name any of them. Are there any conspiracy theories that you may happen to know are true?
Speaker 1 | 58:32.963
Um, I know I’ve yet to see a USO, so I don’t think the aliens go inside the water. And I definitely haven’t heard them. Like they make it sound like the submarine picked them up. Oh,
Speaker 0 | 58:43.666
but the cut, but the flip side is.
Speaker 1 | 58:46.287
Dave, you’ve seen them.
Speaker 0 | 58:47.787
Hmm. And you believe it.
Speaker 1 | 58:49.756
100 well ufo is just an unidentified flying object that doesn’t know that that could be to be honest it could be us i’ve seen i’ve seen stuff that we have that you know you get up to that level and you hit you see some secret some secret squirrel stuff and you would be so we don’t and you might not know because you don’t have the right classification to know what that what the heck that is
Speaker 0 | 59:11.204
How about the whole Dunn’s, this whole Dunn’s thing that seems to be like taking over the internet somewhat, like these underground tunnels and stuff. I mean, I do know from being in DC for a long time, if you just live in DC, like, you know, for a lot, you just know there’s crazy stuff. Like, oh, yeah, the three underground bunkers that hold 50,000 people that are good for the nuclear half-life and all that type of stuff.
Speaker 1 | 59:30.141
I’m sure that stuff’s out there. I mean, it is, they’re not going to tell you about it because it’s going to make. and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 0 | 59:38.368
Any other really cool stuff that we need to talk about? That way I can say, if you listen to the whole episode and we won’t allow you to fast forward, you will hear nothing classified.
Speaker 1 | 59:48.134
Nothing classified. Let’s just say I’ve had several close calls and some of the stuff I’ve done makes Bly Man’s bluff look pretty tame.
Speaker 0 | 59:59.112
Have other people had close calls that they didn’t live to tell about?
Speaker 1 | 60:03.453
Yeah. I mean, you’ve seen submarines have ran aground before on charts that weren’t updated, going super fast.
Speaker 0 | 60:10.796
Ooh, how fast can the sub go, nuclear sub go? Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 60:13.458
25 plus knots underwater.
Speaker 0 | 60:16.879
That’s like, what, 30 miles per hour or something like that?
Speaker 1 | 60:19.420
Yeah. And you can go infinite. I mean, you could do that forever. So you don’t have to come down and conserve fuel because you’re just burning some neutrons.
Speaker 0 | 60:27.956
What are we doing to make more oxygen down there?
Speaker 1 | 60:31.138
You use hydrols. I mean, you basically take the water and you split it off, pump the hydrogen off board.
Speaker 0 | 60:37.203
They can do that fast enough.
Speaker 1 | 60:39.085
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 60:39.625
That’s pretty sweet. Basically, a massive rebreather. A massive rebreather. Yep.
Speaker 1 | 60:43.568
Guess what? If you’re ready to make people more productive, you crank up that oxygen, people are awake.
Speaker 0 | 60:48.272
Yeah, but we’re getting tired.
Speaker 1 | 60:48.812
People are making them tired. You crank down that oxygen, people get tired. You have a whole thing called field day, and you crank up that oxygen big time. And they’re cleaning this. when you’re cleaning that sub every single week you crank that oxygen up so everyone’s awake and energized sweet dude um giant squids uh i have not seen a giant but i have hit a whale though i think we had a whale i put out to jo just in the middle of nowhere just driving your sub and the whole sub boom that lurched up it was not a problem with that i don’t know what else the damn thing could have been
Speaker 0 | 61:21.436
So you can’t see it. Is there any like,
Speaker 1 | 61:23.396
there’s no windows on it. Like I said, but can you,
Speaker 0 | 61:25.537
is there like cameras? Can you look out of the sub underwater? There’s nothing cool to look at.
Speaker 1 | 61:29.559
No, you’re, we’re watching on,
Speaker 0 | 61:31.620
there’s no like, you know, cameras.
Speaker 1 | 61:33.901
No, no cameras. It’s just, you’re looking for sound and you’re looking for sound propagation and all that works. And when you become very, very good at sound propagation and you know, how it sound does. And then the ocean, uh, and how salinity pressure temperature all variant.
Speaker 0 | 61:49.747
Um,
Speaker 1 | 61:50.948
You can hide. I mean, there’s plenty of ways you could hide in the ocean by knowing what the bottom type is. Hiding behind mountains so the sun will get reflected. There’s a lot of stuff that you do.
Speaker 0 | 62:00.950
How cool is the darkest depths that… Well, we can’t probably go… Can we go very deep, though?
Speaker 1 | 62:06.772
We can go pretty deep, but we also have other things that we can push out our submarines that can go pretty deep, too.
Speaker 0 | 62:12.254
That’s cool.
Speaker 1 | 62:13.254
I can guarantee if you think about it, they’ve done it.
Speaker 0 | 62:16.295
Sweet.
Speaker 1 | 62:17.075
Anything you think about, they’ve done. weird underground caverns or something i mean you know these weird nothing like that that’s like that you know i will i think the best times are in a submarine is when you’re trailing someone else’s submarine and you know that captain of that other team thinks they’re full you know they’re like you know they think they’re the best of the cap in the world and you’re just trailing them for days and days and weeks and weeks and they don’t know and they have no clue you’re there that is the best feeling in the world when you’re you’re putting a smack down to some someone else’s submarine uh and you’re trailing and they had no clue you’re there do they ever find out and you let them know and you know i mean yes you will go there are some times when you will it’s it’s a very deliberate you make sure they know i hate a hole i know you’re right there so get away from my carrier strike group we have you and that’s when you will go active and you will or you’ll drop a bunch of sonar buoys on them so they don’t know you’re trailing them but you will do a prosecution uh and
Speaker 0 | 63:13.616
uh is there like this whole like you know kind of like what you’ve seen from all these underwater movies like various different ways of like divers leaving the sub is there any time divers leave the sub underwater yeah i’m back and that’s what i did that’s what i did yeah we have a we had a dds chamber so they went out they had their own little submersible did some did some sale stuff come back uh how how good is the technology nowadays for a human to leave the sub like how because i’m a certified diver so i only have the basics but like how you know i that one
Speaker 1 | 63:40.892
I mean, you can go pretty deep. Imagine, you know, all the mixed air breathing and everything. So they can go pretty deep and do that stuff. But, you know, a lot of the times the divers are, you know, the SEALs don’t do all the work. We have Navy divers too that support the SEALs. And so just because you see someone doing deep diving, we’re the time they’re, we’re like a Navy diver. And like on some of the videos that I post, they’re not the SEALs, they’re the Navy divers that we had on our GN.
Speaker 0 | 64:03.670
Yes. The diving videos, like up against the sub, like that, that stuff there is just, I could watch that all day long.
Speaker 1 | 64:09.315
Yeah. It’s a. It’s unique and it’s fun. And I’ve got great stories. I just wish I could tell them. But I tell you, you lose that clarity, you miss learning what’s going on. I go to these Boston DOD stuff and I’m sitting here trying to figure out what’s going on as much as I can. That’s why I’m excited to get my clearance back.
Speaker 0 | 64:27.076
Sweet. Well, sir, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. I don’t know. We talked a lot about leadership. I don’t think the…
Speaker 1 | 64:33.858
And to be honest, I didn’t get it right. I know we didn’t get it right. I have a ton of scars, though. You will fail, but it’s how you fail and you get back up is the only way you’re going to learn.
Speaker 0 | 64:45.259
Just a shout out to your company, just for the sake of it. Who should we be sending your way?
Speaker 1 | 64:52.544
Anyone who wants to upgrade their on-prem data center. They need to deploy in the middle of nowhere. You need to have high density racks. all-indoor common optics solution and we work with some of the best like dell and hpe and we work with verizon at&t for transport so you know we can give you a full a full turnkey solution also our stuff is rated as a f5 tornado shelter and a category 5 hurricane shelter and if you’re really you’re nice to me you can come shoot it with any k47 or 50 cal or you can use a flamethrower on it too if you if we really like you it’s a just bow ak all right we we don’t build much we build them out of composite so we don’t build like traditional modules it’s composite we should do like an event we should do like a 50 a 50 caliber event you want to do that i don’t you have to want to come down to florida you can have all day long you can shoot it leave it for florida tomorrow that’s tomorrow let’s go and shoot it and do everything you want to it it’s it’s indestructible it’s how you guys providing the guns because i don’t know if i can get my hands on a 50 cal by then yeah we can uh we can provide guns you
Speaker 0 | 65:54.070
What else can we do? How about RPGs? I’ve always wanted to farm RPGs.
Speaker 1 | 65:57.070
Well, it can handle, it was built for, it was built for upgraded ballistic armor and Humvees, so it will handle six pounds of 64 at 10 feet with 20 millimeter ball bearings. I actually have a picture, but I could share a picture with you after, after the fact of us being exploded.
Speaker 0 | 66:14.215
Can we make that the cover of this episode?
Speaker 1 | 66:16.576
Yeah, I mean, I could send you some pictures of people shooting. Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 66:20.037
let’s send, Greg Liddell, my French producer, by the way, um, let’s get these pictures let’s do this for this episode we didn’t do some special crazy divers and you know squids and stuff like that there’s nothing like shooting a two by four at walls it makes you really think about what kind of shelter you’re going to go in for today you know the what was the there was one last oh uh will you get do you guys do international stuff so okay so like you know other countries that you know might need this type of stuff yep
Speaker 1 | 66:54.206
Definitely reach out to us and we can give you references and customers and DoD, you know, who we’re working with right now.
Speaker 0 | 67:00.952
Yeah, I think we need to do a Dissecting Popularity Nerds partnership. We need a special vendor of choice, you know, a special, you know, crazy vendor of choice. Thank you so much, sir.
Speaker 1 | 67:13.204
Thank you.
