Tactical Wealth: From Military to Money

Here's what getting outta the military looks like

You're on terminal leave.

You're getting ready for your first taste of freedom

after what's essentially the last vestige

of indentured servitude in the civilized world.

You're running around gonna medical

and PSD to wrap up a bunch of s**t

that seems kind of semi-important.

But the Yeomen, who's the only person in the world

who can sign your checkoff list,

is on a two and a half hour lunch.

Then they send you to a TAPS class.

I remember when I went to taps,

they hand you this book from Navy blue to corporate gray,

as if the only thing that you can do

after a career of shooting bad guys in the face is put on a

suit and fill out g*****n TPS reports.

Well, I always thought there had to be more

that if you could take a 20-year-old kid,

throw 'em into combat in some far flung place in the world,

ask him to conduct diplomacy operations

with village elders while dodging VB IEDs,

and also, by the way,

stealing truck parts from the supply depot in order

to keep his Humvee running, that

that kid could probably do anything in the world.

That's why I built this podcast, tactical Wealth.

'cause it's not just an idea that the same drive,

the initiative, the ingenuity that lets you survive

and thrive in military service

can also catapult you in the civilian world.

Thousands have done it, built wildly successful civilian

careers, and I wanted to capture some of that magic.

We're officially wrapping up season one

and it's been an incredible ride.

Over the past couple of months.

I've had the privilege of sitting down

with eight extraordinary veterans, founders, operators,

innovators, each on their own unique path

beyond the military.

They opened up about transition money,

business healing, and growth.

They showed us that the mission doesn't end

when your service does.

It just evolves whether you're already out

or starting to think about what's next.

This episode is here to remind you that your best years

of service and success can still be ahead of you.

Getting outta the military is a big shift. I've been there.

You go from having structure mission team to suddenly having

to figure out what's next,

where your next paycheck comes from.

And for a lot of people that transition is hard.

But here's the truth. You have options more than you think.

Whether you wanna build a business, invest smartly,

or just get your financial house in order, you're not alone.

And there are resources out there.

But the first step is being informed.

Financial literacy isn't optional, it's a weapon.

Information isn't the new M four,

it's the AC one 30 gunship of weapons.

The most firepower you can have.

The most firepower you can bring to a problem set.

And the sooner you learn how to use it,

the better equipped you'll be to build the life

that you want after your service.

You can integrate into the community, you can be

of service in new ways,

and most importantly,

you can build wealth without losing your sense of mission.

Now, if you're sitting there wondering, yeah,

but is this possible?

How do I do it? Let me remind you that some

of the most iconic business leaders in America started

exactly where you are now in uniform.

Let's talk about a few of them.

Sam Walton, founder of Walmart

before building one

of the largest retail chains in the world.

Sam Walton was a captain in the US Army Intelligence

Corps during World War ii.

He learned logistics, structure, leadership, things

that helped him launch a single Ben Franklin variety store.

From there, he reimagined retail, focused on low prices,

and eventually grew Walmart into a global empire.

His discipline, his service mindset, they didn't disappear.

After the military, he applied it to business.

Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, Phil Knight, served

as an officer in the US Army

and was later stationed

with the Army Reserve after his service.

Took a trip around the world where he came up with the idea

of importing high quality running shoes from Japan.

That idea turned into Nike

and what he started in the trunk

of his car became a multi-billion dollar brand

that reshaped sports culture and of course business.

How about Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy.

Bob served in the Marine Corps

and he fought in Vietnam

where he was wounded and earned a purple heart.

He grew up poor. He barely passed high school

and even flunked outta college.

At first, after the military, he got his degree.

He taught himself how to code.

He eventually sold his first company for millions

and he used that momentum to start GoDaddy,

the internet domain giant.

Today, he's a major philanthropist

and he uses his wealth

to support other veterans and communities.

John Paul DeJoria, co-founder of Paul Mitchell

and Patron Tequila.

Now, this is a name that sometimes people overlook,

but JP served in the US Navy.

He started off as a janitor

and a door-to-door shampoo salesman.

Eventually he scrapes together 700 bucks

and he co-founded John Paul Mitchell Systems.

Later he launched patron tequila, which many

of you probably know pretty well.

That's wild, is how much of his success was built on grit

and creativity, not on privilege.

These aren't just business leaders, they're veterans.

They've been where you've been.

They've worn the uniform, they've carried the weight,

they've faced adversity.

And then what'd they do? They built companies.

They showed us what's possible when you channel the military

mindset into entrepreneurship, discipline, execution,

resilience, and you don't have to build Walmart or Nike,

but let these stories serve as proof positive as examples

that it's possible to build

that something meaningful after your service.

And look, we don't even have to go to the Fortune 500

to find some incredible examples.

We had three of them right here on Tactical Wealth this

season at 17, Brendan Barman enlisted the US Army

as a 19 Delta Cav Scout.

In 2011, he deployed Afghanistan with the four four Calvary

and Task Force Spartan.

During that deployment,

he sustained some pretty serious injuries in combat,

which began a three year recovery

and ultimately a medical retirement.

But Brendan didn't let that be the end of his story.

Fueled by his own experience with trauma,

he became a thought leader in neurotechnology and healing.

He co-founded reboot centers in Utah,

which is a treatment facility focused on neurovascular

health for behavioral recovery.

Then he launches neuro labs where he developed Nova,

an AI powered VR platform to treat brain trauma and PTSD.

He's combined science, innovation, an empathy

to help veterans and civilians heal.

And he's built partnerships with the Department of Defense

and global mental health institutions.

He's not just building a company,

he's building a legacy of healing.

So you got four years of service, you're transitioning out

of the army, you have a traumatic brain

injury, and you got a

GED. Yep.

What happens next? Life fell apart.

I got divorced, um, couldn't get a job at McDonald's.

I wasn't a soldier anymore.

I didn't know where I rated in life.

Um, and I kept losing friends with suicide.

And so I decided the military said I would never not have

seizures, never be able to be combat deployed.

I was gonna go do that. So I I I worked real hard

and got back to a, a state

where I've had seizures since 20 12, 20 13.

Um, got my mind right, got my body right

and then I went back to contracting as kind of the,

the path back to combat.

But I got kept losing friends

and just decided there was a weakness in the medical system

that needed to be looked at.

And that's where I put my attention was, uh,

identifying a physical injury of PTSD

that no one wanted to, to see.

And that evolved into a wild journey of working

with other veteran entrepreneurs

and side projects and, Hey, I'm doing this thing.

Do you wanna come help me on it? And just trying to hustle

and steal to build a self-fund

and build a company over 10 years.

And all the, the crazy

side pass you kind of go down when you do that.

I mean, you know, as building your own business.

It's wild out here. It's the, it's the network, you know,

and, and the work you do that take you

where you're going. And

You went to school also along the way? School

Research mainly. So we,

I, I mainly got my degree doing

research in a thesis. And how

Did you do that?

Uh, I had a question and went and answered it.

So I, I wanted to know the physical injury.

We identified the blood flow injury in the brain that TBI

and PTSD leave from a neurovascular coupling standpoint.

The decoupling injury that we identified.

I helped create the protocol to restore it.

Um, we put together our findings and I published

and got a call

and they said, Hey, do you want to come defend this?

And in front of a panel, I said, yeah, I told my wife,

no way in hell I'm gonna pass and I'm a high school dropout.

And and six weeks later

we got the call that it, it went through.

I was like, oh, alright.

So I got my, my first PhD in philosophy

and I'm working on an official PhD in neuro right now.

So I mean, one of the things we do on this show is we

model pathways for other veterans

as their transitioning outta service.

You're in the military

and you're sort of the quintessential example, right?

I assume when, you know, when life fell apart outside

of like disability pay,

you didn't have a million dollars in the bank.

Right? And so we're trying to show veterans pathways

in order to level up in life.

Yeah. When they get out.

Um, for you were the most important pillars

of that transition. So

First and foremost, everybody always here is discipline.

Like you gotta have a plan

and a plan's gotta have actionable items that you can follow

through no matter how you feel, no matter what's going on.

And with that discipline has come with

that financial literacy.

So I didn't have that in the military.

I mean, I had the, you live in the barracks

before you get married and your paycheck

get paid on the first 15th.

I'm gonna take that check in half

and I have my drinking money for first weekend,

second weekend, third weekend, four week.

Like that's what I knew. Yeah. That's all I knew.

Uniform li uh, comes in, I'm gonna go buy a new uniform.

Like that's how we lived.

Um, and then I got out

and I realized like, oh, like how do I pay rent

and electric and gas?

'cause there are three different bills.

I didn't have that in the Army.

I was a child when I went into the military

and they paid all of that.

It just, I had a place to sleep.

I had internet, I had power, I had hot water.

Uncle San took care of me pretty well.

Yeah, it was a, it was a cush deal.

You had to learn all that. I think delayed.

And after what we experienced, that was the hardest kind

of hurdle initially

to even like figure out like if I had the freedom

to go be an entrepreneur or, or discover something.

'cause it's survival state.

Most guys get out and you don't have a support network.

Military. Once, once you you're out

and you're off base, that's your last time.

They keep going. The, the rotations keep happening,

the trainings keep happening and that life moves on

and you're kind of frozen in survival state.

So I, I had to learn that piece, uh, was pillar one.

And then the second pillar really came down to community.

Like we are lucky enough that what you experienced,

what I experienced in the military,

that we can forge a bond pretty quick, quick.

But those bonds and, and a lot of veterans watching this,

if you've done business with veterans, a lot of vets prey on

that to get like the quick fix of Let me get in there,

take from you as much as I can real fast, move

to the next guy and the next guy I learned like it's,

this is a slow, steady ride.

I've been at it for a long time and I would rather wait two

or three years and take things slow

for the perfect growth opportunity to happen.

Um, and so that patience that comes

to like the second pillar of community.

The third one would be patience.

Like nothing is gonna happen overnight.

Someone's gonna tell you they, they gotta wait for you

to make a million dollars in a year building a business.

I gotta wait for you to spend 4 million this

month to try to even make that happen.

Right. Right. It's not gonna happen. Buddy

Brian Ferguson, fellow Frogman,

Brian Ferguson's Foundation in leadership started early born

into a military family.

He later graduated from the US Naval Academy,

became a Navy SEAL officer, deployed

to Afghanistan in the Middle East.

He led innovation units in Under Sea Special Operations.

And he even served as a presidential appointee

in the Department of Defense.

Today. He's taken all that experience

and he's the founder of Arena Labs,

a human performance company

that helps frontline healthcare teams

optimize their stress management, their resilience

and their performance using tools inspired

by elite military training and cutting edge science.

Their product Arena.

Strive is the first digital performance

coach for clinicians.

It's already at use in major hospitals,

and it's being evaluated by the Air Force

for military medical teams.

Brian's also a faculty member at Singularity University.

He's co-founder of the Liminal Collective,

and he's an advisor to organizations focused on innovation

space and veteran transition from combat zones

to operating rooms.

Brian's mission has essentially stayed the same,

serve others at the highest level

and build systems that unlock human potential.

Because I think one of the challenges

for people when they get outta the military is like,

there's not a huge civilian market

for underwater demolition, right?

Yeah. There's nobody, like, you can't really put

that on your monster.com or LinkedIn resume,

and people are like, oh, I need

that kind of blow a boat for me.

Right? So like, um, what do you think are like the skills

that you actually pick up through military service

that are most translatable in the, in the private sector?

I, I thought a lot of coming in this

'cause it no, a passion of mine and,

and I'm, I'm grateful for what you're doing here is like

how, you know, I've, I've intermittently over the last nine

years done a lot of work with people transitioning out.

I've either special operations

or other parts of service and I struggle.

I, I like what is the meta lesson?

And I think number one, um, we were talking

before the show, I think especially in special operations,

people are entrepreneurs at heart.

But that doesn't mean you should start a company.

Um, and I think most people in the military are hungry

to have a high sense of agency

and impact, which is usually not gonna come in a when you're

a cog in a large, large organization.

So the question is, where do you fit?

Um, I think for me, the, the probably the meta lesson

that I take away of those leaders, number one, it's, I mean,

the very cliche, but it's about people.

And then how do you think about for yourself the,

the threads that allow you

to feel like you're still serving something

bigger in creating.

And, and I think that again is like, that's, it's a,

it's a trite statement, but I, what,

where I see people struggle is we take

for granted when you're in military service,

you're always serving.

Like that's the subtext of everything.

And I think when you leave and just dive into something in

the private sector that's strictly about revenue

or profit, it just sucks the soul a little bit.

So you have to start with like, how am I gonna pull

that threat of service

and then like, what's the risk calculus I'm

willing to take in this next season?

And that's totally different for everyone.

Yeah. I I, I think

that part when you at least consider the culture

of entrepreneurship, and I think one of the things, one

of the reasons we wanted to have this conversation was

to really like, tease out this idea of like, okay,

you come outta service, uh, and you want to build a company.

Mm-hmm. Like, who, who is that appropriate for?

Who is it not? Uh, if you do decide to do it,

what are the things you should be thinking about?

Um, so let's, let's talk about that risk calculus

and that risk profile.

Like, it's, it's different if you serve,

if you serve 20 years, you're used to a regular paycheck,

maybe you have your TSP Yeah.

But you have like a family to support. Yeah.

Like the slope for entrepreneurship is steeper, right?

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I mean, to hit that quickly, um,

what I do, you know, some of the work I've done in, in

around this question is I think at a basic level, um,

someone in going into special operations

has a pretty high individual risk calculus to say, I'm, I'm,

you know, I'm betting on myself when it, you know,

if you go 20 years and you come out

and you've got three kids and, um, you're,

you're the sole income earner, it's a lot harder to have

that same approach.

However, if you shift your risk calculus to zero, I think

that's where people end up really

yearning for something more.

Um, and that's the work to say, where on

that spectrum am I gonna shift?

Um, I will say, I mean, starting a company,

I advise most people against that

because it is, it is insanely all consuming

and difficult as you know.

Um, however, you know, what I see now is like the,

the people who've come out, um,

and in some way the, I think kaj the thing that I often,

the, the, the starting place, I mentioned service earlier,

but when you're in the military, especially for,

for 20 years, like it's imp you sort of forget you are,

your time is someone else's at the end of the day.

And so it's the reason people squabble over, you know,

a per diem trip or dive pay

because it really is like, you can't,

you don't have any other way to make money.

And so that becomes a point of contention when you get out

of the military, your time is now wholly yours.

And so I think the way to start is to say, you know,

I call it this sort of portfolio lifestyle.

When you're getting back up that learning curve

to say, where do I wanna sit?

The more you can control your own time

and allocate it carefully to, to, you know, being

around new mentors, new people, new challenges,

it helps make that, that clear.

Now, I know that's challenging if you've been in

for 20 years, but I, I think there are still more creative

ways to do it than to say, I'm gonna take

a full-time paycheck and give my time again.

But now it's gonna be a big company

where there is not that threat of service.

And I think that's where you start

to see real tension for people.

Yeah. I mean, look, I,

I felt this tension myself when I got off active duty.

I said, never again will I be in a position

where somebody can tell me like, you have to do this

and you have to go mm-hmm.

There, um, and you have zero choice

or else they'll throw you a jail, right?

Mm-hmm. And then somebody reminded me like, well,

that's okay because outside of the military,

indentured servitude doesn't really exist.

So you're, you're good. You're, you're absolutely good.

But I do think this is an important principle.

One of the things that you talk about that I think is

so profound is this idea

that you can be an entrepreneur without

starting your own company.

Yeah. Explain that to people so they understand.

Yeah. I mean, there's this, some

of these words feel a little corny,

but the idea of intrapreneur is one that comes up a lot.

And, you know, the, the question is, you know,

if you exist in a large, a large business

or some sort of a large infrastructure, that's a, a,

a big set of companies where you have a lot of autonomy

and creativity to either focus on leadership

or mentorship that allows people

to feel like they're building and creating.

Um, the classic definition

of entrepreneurship is starting

something solely on your own.

Now that might be, if you're, you're gonna go out

and just, you know, a lot of people get out

and want to be sort of advisors

or coaches, um, I think that always hits its own limit

where you start to realize you're exchanging time for money,

and that becomes its own indentured servitude.

I went through that when we first started arena.

We were a services business, like a consultancy.

I was on the road all the time.

I was in hospitals all the time,

and it was, it was grinding me.

Um, but the classic, you know,

I think the definition people sort

of revere is I'm gonna go out.

I've got a big idea. I'm gonna start a company.

I'm gonna raise a ton of money. I, with

that comes insane responsibility that, you know,

inside the military, even on the hardest day,

you always know you've got a huge

institution behind you to back you up.

Whether that's, you know, literally in kind

of being rescued in a bad situation tactically,

or just in, you know,

a legal dispute when you're building something on your own.

You know, one of my, the, the sort

of early hires in our company,

Glenn Trachtenberg uses this great analogy, which she says,

you know, when you're an entrepreneur,

in some ways you're glamping.

Right? Or you're in a big company

and glamping is, Hey, like, you're trying this thing.

And if it doesn't work out, I'm gonna go back

inside the main lodge and I'm gonna, you know, I've,

I've got nice toilets

and infrastructure inside warm showers.

Building something from scratch is like being in

the Alaskan outback. Yeah, you're

In the hinterland. Yeah. And

If you don't figure it out, it is existential,

like the company goes away.

And if, if you've bet all, if you put all your chips on

that, that means you're back to square one.

And that is a very high risk calculus.

Um, so, so that's where, like,

there's a whole longer conversation there,

but I think it's sometimes it's okay to go out glamping.

If you've earned it for 20 years in the military

and you want to have some of those creature comforts

for your family, that's totally reasonable.

Rich Devinney Rich served over 20 years

as a Navy SEAL officer,

completing more than a dozen deployments around the world,

including to Iraq and Afghanistan.

He held leadership roles

inside the Navy's most elite SEAL team.

But Rich's most powerful contribution came when he was

tasked with revamping our seal

selection and training process.

He there realized that the keys

to elite performance were not just skill, it was attributes,

adaptability, resilience, drive, team ability,

the intangibles.

He helped launch Seals First Mind Gym

where they trained mental performance and stress resilience.

This was a revolutionary approach in special operations.

Now, after retiring from the military, rich took

that knowledge and he built a company around it.

He founded the Attributes Inc.

Which is a consultancy that helps elite teams,

fortune five hundreds.

Pro athletes unlock peak human performance.

Not by focusing on what you do,

but by focusing on who you are.

He's now the bestselling author of two books,

the Attributes, which lays out 25 internal drivers

of optimal performance

and masters of Uncertainty, a playbook for turning stress

and chaos into clarity and action.

Rich teaches leaders how

to thrive in unpredictable high stakes environment.

And he's living proof that leadership forged in the SEAL

teams can not only survive but thrive in the civilian world.

Right? But what did you find to be

the most consistent attributes?

And I think this ultimately will transition to

how people transition in civilian life.

What did you find to be the most important attributes

in terms of people's success in making it through training?

I only know the dumbest one,

and you could like disprove me of this myth.

Like, what I seem to know is that water polo players

and wrestlers have a, a higher percentage

of completion of training.

Like, right, right. That is, that, is that seal mythology

Actually rowers too. Crew. Uh,

And Rowers. And rowers, yeah.

Yeah. Amazing. So that's true.

Actually I didn't, that's not seal urban mythology. It's

Not, yeah, it's not, it's not, um,

urban legend. Yeah. So,

And why is that?

Oh gosh. I mean, you know,

how many, how much time do we have here?

I mean there's, okay, so, so there's a couple things here,

but I think, I think one of the, let's,

let's talk first about attributes

and then we can talk about uncertainty.

'cause I think a lot of it has to do with uncertainty, um,

as much as it does with attributes.

First of all, when we talk about attributes, the attributes

that are required to be a, a great seal

or on a SEAL team are gonna look different than the

attributes required to be a great teacher or surgeon

or salesperson.

Okay? So, so the, the, the groups, every group,

every organization, every team has, its, its unique set.

Um, when it comes however to, uh, making it

through seal training

or even just military service, I think one

of the most important attributes

for anybody coming outta the military is courage.

And that is a distinct attribute. Okay?

And the reason is because courage is, is it, it has nothing

to do with what you've done for a living.

Okay? Courage is literally this ability

to step into our fear.

When we start to feel that fear arise, our, our,

our autonomic arousal, our amygdala, uh,

amygdala gets tickled.

And we are presented two choices. We know those choices.

They're fight or, or flight, okay?

What neuroscience has discovered is whichever we choose is a

specific switch in the brain.

Okay? So if we choose to flee,

that's one switch that gets clicked.

If we choose to fight, IE step into our fear

a switch, uh, that's another switch.

And that's known as the courage switch. Okay?

And we by the way, get a dopamine reward when we do that.

As soon as we hit that switch,

we get a dopamine reward for doing that.

Okay? Now, all this to say that, um, that

that fear response, well first of all, that proves

to us neurologically what we've all known philosophically,

which is you cannot have courage in the absence of fear.

You must have fear present to access that courage switch.

That's one. The next thing we have

to understand is fear is subjective to the human.

Okay? Um, it takes different levels to tickle that amygdala.

You could have a group of navy seals in a gunfight

with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, who are literally in

that moment feeling less fear than the 8-year-old.

You just asked to step in front

of the classroom and introduce themselves.

Okay? Um, so you can be a generally anxious person, but

because every day,

all day you're stepping into your discomfort,

you're stepping into your stuff,

your courage level is very high.

Okay? You could be someone who does crazy stuff, okay?

I, you, I think you've seen the, the documentary, uh,

free solo about Alex Arnold.

Yeah. I mean, it's insane.

When you watch this guy, he climbs 3000. It's

Petrifying to even watch Yeah.

When you get sweaty palms watching no ropes climbing,

you know, but they looked at his brain in this,

in this documentary, I dunno if you remember,

but they, they recognize

that his amygdala doesn't get

tickled the same way other people.

It takes a while for that to happen, right?

Which means he's not necessarily accessing his card

switch as often.

Now, again, I'm not saying Alex is not courageous,

but I'm saying that, that we as human beings under need

to understand that we, we, we are very

and can be very courageous people.

All this to say, our transition,

whatever transition we're making from one mountaintop

to the next hill, okay?

Courage is a huge piece of that.

And we have to understand as military people,

that we have already exercised this, this attribute a lot,

and we are good at it.

And if I were re, if I were to have anybody rec

or recommend anybody lean

on anything, lean on their courage.

Because that means you are good

at stepping into your discomfort.

It's going to be uncomfortable, it's gonna be,

you're gonna feel that fear, but we can do it.

And that the confidence alone in any military, uh,

member making a transition should be, you know

what I do courage pretty well. This is what I'm gonna do.

Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about that transition.

How it was personally going from that military mountaintop

to the private sector.

Um, there's gonna be fear, there's unknown,

there's uncertainty.

Yeah. Um, how did you deal with that?

Um, and what was your sort of strategy after a,

after an extraordinary career?

So, so, uh, lemme just talk about the neurology

of uncertainty and dealing with it,

which gets in the second book.

Um, when we are, um, when our autonomic arousal goes up,

our immediately tickled, um,

we are feeling uncertain, we're feeling anxious.

Um, we have to understand that there's, it's

because our brain is constantly trying to make sense

of our environment, okay?

And in doing so, it's trying to distinguish

or determine three important factors.

Those factors are duration, how long this is gonna last,

pathway, what's my route in, out,

or through, um, and then outcome.

What's, what's gonna be the end state of this?

If we are an absence of one

or more of those three things, um, we start

to feel uncertainty, challenge and stress.

Our amygdala gets tickled. All that stuff starts to happen.

Give you an example, okay?

Uh, illness, you and I get strep throats, okay?

Strep throat is a known disease

or a known a known illness, okay?

We know that people get better from strep throat

and there's a known antibiotic for strep throat.

So if we get strep throat, we are an absence

of only duration.

'cause in other words, we, we know the,

we know the pathway antibiotic,

we know the outcome, we're gonna get better.

You might react to the

antibiotics a little bit different than I do.

It might take me three days. It might take you one day.

So duration is the only unknown there.

Our uncertainty, stress,

anxiety level is moderate or, or mild.

Now, maybe we get the flu, okay?

Flu, also known, uh, illness.

Most people, at least in in today's environment,

don't die from the flu.

Okay? But there's no real thing you can take for the flu.

There's no medicine for the flu.

There's, there's techniques people say,

but there's no real known thing.

And we don't know how long typically it

takes for someone to get through their surgery.

So we're an absence of duration

and pathway, but we know the outcome.

Our anxiety, our stress, our uncertainty level is moderate.

Now, say there's a disease that shows up

and, um, no one's seen it before.

Some people are dying from it.

Some people are not dying from it.

There's no vaccine, there's no cure right now.

Um, and the, and we

don't know how long we're gonna be in this thing.

This might sound very familiar 'cause this was 2020, right?

You know, and in those case, in that case,

we were in absence of duration, pathway

and outcome, the whole thing.

So all this to say that the, the, the technique

that can be used in any environment of uncertainty,

challenger stress, really anywhere is

what I call moving horizons.

All moving horizons is, is you're looking at your situation.

You ask yourself, what do I know? What kind of control?

You pick something and you move to that.

And in doing so, you've created certainty

by creating your own DPO your your

own duration pathway outcome.

Uh, so a real, a real simple example

that you will resonate with is in buds.

Um, you spend hundreds of hours running around

with those Dan boats on your head, okay?

Um, and I remember being, uh,

during hell week, it was like three in the morning.

We're on the beach running with these things.

And you know, there's a, you know, there's sandburn.

So you're next to a sandburn, and I'm miserable.

And I say to myself, you know what?

I'm just gonna focus on getting the end of this sandburn.

What I realized later on that I did was I,

I picked a horizon

and created my own DPO duration from now into end

of Sandburn pathway from here to end

of Sandburn outcome, end of sandburn.

And in doing so, I created a dopamine.

Uh, I, I gave myself dopamine to get to the, to get

to the end of the goal, and then gave a do got a dopamine

reward at the end that allowed me at the end of that

to come back out, ask the question,

pick another horizon and move to that.

And so all this to say is first, every single one of us

as human beings has done this before.

You can think of times we've done this.

It's basically the neurological equivalent

of eating the elephant one bite at a time.

The other thing is that we can apply this to any aspect

of life, but especially in these moments of transition,

the most important thing we have

to remember when we're transitioning,

where we're diving off our mountaintop into the new valley,

is that we have to a, have an objective.

We can talk about the overall objective that,

that new mountaintop, but then we have

to chunk our environment.

We have to start picking horizons

and moving through those horizons.

What do I know? What can I control? Do that.

Once you do that, what do I know what to control? Do that.

So I would say the best,

most important tool is moving horizons in a transition.

Yeah. Out outstanding. So you're coming outta service.

It doesn't matter whether you did a four year enlistment

or whether you did 24 years of service.

Um, you have to have a dive plan.

You're gonna, you know, plan your dive and dive your plan.

Yep. But no dive plan, uh, goes from entering the water

to hitting the ship, right?

You're gonna have way points along the line Yeah.

And, and along the way.

And you're gonna hit, and you're gonna hit those small,

achievable goals, right?

That cumulatively will get you over

that next horizon. Yeah, fascinating.

And, and, and manipulating your neurology, right?

You're manipulating your dopamine reward system in a way

that allows you to continue to stay motivated and not quit.

Anytime we quit anything, it's

because we've run out of dopamine.

And so as we, as we pick out these horizons, they could be,

they could be, I'm gonna take 10 breaths.

They could be, I'm gonna wait till the next meal.

They could be, I'm gonna make this phone call.

But those horizons are managed

subjectively by the individual.

So you're managing that, that motivation system

or dopamine system in a way that that moves you

through effectively and efficiently. So

Whether it's building a billion dollar business like Sam

Walton or Bob Parsons, pioneering neurotech like Dr.

Brendan Barrowman, rethinking healthcare performance,

like my friend Brian Ferguson,

or reshaping leadership like Rich Devinney.

The point is, it's possible veterans are builders,

operators, problem solvers.

Whether you're transitioning out right now

or 10 years down the line, it's never too late

to start to look.

If you're listening to this

and you're getting ready to transition outta the military,

or you're already out and you're feeling

stuck at your current state in life, here's a quick roadmap.

One, get clear on your mission. What fires you up?

What problem do you wanna solve? Two, get educated.

Financial literacy, business basics, funding.

There's no shortcuts here. You gotta learn the game.

Three, build your network. Community is everything.

Talk to other vets, talk to entrepreneurs and ask questions.

Four, start small. Rightsize this.

You don't need a massive business on day one.

Five, validate your idea.

Take a step, stay disciplined.

You already know how to show up.

Apply that same discipline here.

And six, keep serving, whether it's customers,

clients, or your own team.

Build something that serves something greater than yourself.

Your transition isn't the end,

it's the beginning of a new mission.

At Tactical Wealth. Our mission's simple

help you build wealth with purpose, whether that's

through business investing

or creating a legacy for your family.

We're here for it. Season one might be wrapping up,

but we're just getting started.

We got big things ahead,

and I can't wait to share more with you soon.

Until then, stay sharp, stay driven.

And remember, wealth isn't just about money.

It's about freedom, it's about

impact, and it's about mission.

See you soon. Hey, thanks again

for locking in with us today.

I hope this episode stimulated the old brain housing unit.

Step one to becoming richer is becoming smarter,

and I hope some of the lessons

and ideas from today have sharpened your knife.

As always, I hope you're taking notes,

but more importantly, that you're taking action.

Thanks again to Seabert, er,

and Seabert Financial for the support.

And remember, stay tactical, stay driven,

and don't forget to bang that subscribe button.

Tactical Wealth is a GE Media production, brought to you

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Listeners should consult a qualified financial professional

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