You know only 3% of the of the United States is even eligible as a population to join the military did you know that yeah and less than 1% of the US population has ever been in the military which a lot of people don’t realize tell me a little bit about your journey with
The military what got you started in the military when did you join how old were you just give me the whole shebang yeah so I’m I’m 46 so you can guess uh I was 911 happened I was 24 years old uh I was working in a gentleman’s club as a as a
DJ they paid me a lot of money in cash I may or may not have been paying taxes and I met this guy named Tony Q and Tony Q had been working in a strip club for 26 years and had put two of his daughters through college and I looked
At that and I said that’s not what I want to do with the rest of my life I have got to get out of this job I will do whatever anyway 911 H or uh 911 happens while I’m working at the gentleman’s club and um I go and I have
Two frat brothers one of them Marcus Cole he was a a a C130 pilot and he was an instructor at Corpus Christie for the Navy and then the other one was an e6b Navigator named Antonio Edwards he passed away from Sarco dois a couple years ago during Co um
And they had joined they were in my fraternity they joined before me so I was like okay I’m going to join initially I was going to be uh the Marine Corps officer they did not have a slot in intelligence uh that I wanted and then so I went to the Air Force and
I said I’ll do Intel for you guys if that’s what you want and they said sure they made me take the afoqt and I scored like in the highest percentile for nav pilot they said you’re either going to be a pilot or a navigator that’s the
Only way we’re going to let you join so I ended up joining I said I want I’ll be a p I’ll be a navigator um then they asked me again when all Navigators they asked you to apply to Pilot School I was not interested in giving 11 years of my
Life to the US Air Force so um I I did four years as a navigator it was like three years of training four years as of my enlistment or whatever uh and I flew a casy 135 I have 700 hours and a casy 135 and probably another 200 hours in a
Cess 172 um and then I was also a mission planner for a while and then at the end I had a um what’s it called a by the way it took me a year and four months to get in when when your country goes to war everyone try a lot of people
Want to join the military believe it or not when 9 happened it was hard to get in the US military as an officer you know only 3% of the of the United States is even eligible as a population to join the military did you know that yeah and
Less than 1% of the US population has ever been in the military which a lot of people don’t realize um so so I I end up um when I’m in there I ended up getting a diagnosed with seratic arthritis they don’t know it might have been the jp8 it
Like some people think it could be like an allergic reaction to all the diesel fuel or whatever um when when I got it they could not allow me to fly anymore without taking prazone which is a steroid so I was Den and then I went I moved into Counter
Intelligence after that and I did that for about a year and a half and then I got out uh the biggest transition for me and there’s a bunch of things the in the military you learn leadership studies and I don’t know if what it’s like for
You in the Army but for us I was constantly updating a master’s degree on like what good leadership looks like and what bad leadership looks like and I saw some bad officers I remember certain officers and if you’ve ever seen this the guy who always wants to intimidate
You but like you can’t get clear instruction from him and you can’t tell if that was an order if he was joking that guy who’s too stoic that’s a bad leader believe it or not even though we think of General Patton that’s a bad leader uh then we have the the other
Leader who’s like it’s never her fault or it’s never his fault or the leader who isn’t proficient in their job meaning they’re they’re a company Commander but they can’t drive a tank anymore you or they’re out of shape right they’re out of RS like that guy
Also was an issue it’s like I had one um I had one squadron commander she was a good pilot and she was a good commander and that was great and then the next one after her was neither she did not wasn’t able to do either one of those things
And so and she got fired and I didn’t even know I didn’t know a commander could get fired I didn’t know how reliev of dy I didn’t know how that worked so that was that was something that I learned while I was there when I got out
And I moved to Vegas I remember recognizing the ability of like me being accountable and showing up on time to things like for instance we’re doing access Vegas after this uh I had 25 girls book for the show and I just knew by by the time we did it there would
Only be nine sure enough there’s nine it’s just for some reason I’m not trying to pick on girls specifically but like people who work at nightlife like they don’t they’re not accountable to their word like when you’re in the US military they will throw you jail you don’t get
To not go on a deployment you go to jail like it’s like that so the lack of accountability is something when you get out that’s probably the number one thing I had to get used to is that people could be wealthy enough famous enough or good-looking enough to just like say
Something and then not keep their word and then nothing would happen to them and I was just wasn’t used to that and so so it’s really funny because you’re talking about the Brotherhood you leave I created that Brotherhood again with men of action my my my mentoring course
My my performance coaching course I treat it like their US military offic and we’re going through cfic instructor training that’s what I I teach it it’s for me when I went from a mission navigator to an instructor Navigator I kind of took the way we do pre- briefs
And all that kind of stuff and I put it into my course with multiple modules and things that they had to study up on and like a curriculum they had to read and I try to do that and I try to keep accountability community and networking
In my course as close as I can and I also encourage physical fitness uh more so than the US Air Force did by the way the uh I I try to do those things um uh in my course to replicate the good parts of being um in the military now there’s
Also the people who are in the military not a lot of entrepreneurial mindset not it’s the US military does not promote entrepreneurial creative mindset it just doesn’t it promotes following directions and reading checklists which is fine I mean there’s a lot it’s uh discipline um Mission morale and discipline that’s
What it promotes and um when you get out one of the things you want to be able to do when you get out is not continue like go from being a piece of a cog and a machine to another Cog and machine just in the priv sector although you can make
A lot more money right um but what I would recommend people do is like you it’s one of the hardest things wasn’t learning that the the people outside the military were unaccountable it was learning how to work with the people who were unaccountable because I still want
To make money I still want to run a business I still want to be an entrepreneur sometimes I have to work with people who don’t have the same level of Integrity or accountability that I do it’d be great if all my vendors were just like us but they it’s
Just not possible and so we look for people who are like that but at the same time I also know like I have a I do a show I host a bikini competition or I do a show and I have a bunch of girls who like do not see the same level of
Urgency in being on time and accountable that I do and so I just have to learn to work with them and just like you know not be judgmental the term I use is Discerning without being judgmental so that’s the thing I’ve learned after getting out of the military is I’m still
Discerning there’s certain people I don’t want to work with but I’m not judgmental towards them like I was you know sometimes you know in the people are sometimes in the US Military
source
