How to Find Your Tribe and Purpose, with Otis McGregor

Hey, welcome back. To the show, we’re here today with my co-host Carol and our guest, Otis. Otis, how are you doing today?

Hey, I’m doing great, man. It is, uh, it is a Colorado summer. We just had a thunderstorm, and now the sun is out. It doesn’t get any better than that.

No, it certainly does not. Otis is a retired Lieutenant Colonel Green Beret. He is the CEO trying to find a purpose, and he’s the co-host of the camera notice show, and we just love the heck out of you despite your best attempts to sabotage that relationship.

You can’t get rid of him, uh?

No, I keep dropping you off on Alice, some farm somewhere, and you keep wandering your way back. I don’t know; he’s kind of like a

You want to get rid of him, but you know he keeps coming back.

Yeah, you put an ointment on him, and it just doesn’t work.

I have an ointment story.

Oh God, here we go.

Yeah, my wife shared what she worked on in the pharmacy. It’s not pleasant, but I’m assured anyway.

Because that’s the show, this show is unfiltered, illicit, and no holds barred. So, a gallon comes in. They treat her for a rash and a yeast infection. They give her a pill and a cream. And they come in the next day, husbands flipping *** because, like, what did you do to her? Nether regions, or like, what are you talking about? She came in for a yeast infection, and you gave her this cream. The cream was for the rash on her arm. What do you do when we need more cream? They use the entire tube of cream in the wrong area of the body. Did you even take the pill for the yeast infection? Here’s the deal: You can’t make a horse drink, but you sure as heck can stand on their head until they drown or drink.

Didn’t the pharmacist take the time to explain? The pills for the yeast infection and the cream for the rash.

There it was listed as exactly what it was for. And they asked, “Do you have any questions?“

Right?

They said no.

They misspoke. They had a tonne of questions because of the next day’s events. We’re not here to talk. Think about rashes. Get some ointment and leave me alone.

Otis, I want to know, since this is the Titan Evolution Podcast, what makes you a Titan?

Good question. a desire to help people. And probably a no-quit hard-headed attitude.

I can vouch for the hard-headed part. It’s so full disclosure, people that are seeing this for the first time. Otis and I have known each other for over a year. We both have military service.

We’re both in an elite group of amazing people with whom we’re all involved. Then, and we’ve had just a tonne of information, like every week or two or three times a week, we’ve chatted with each other, I’ve been on your show. You’ve been on my show, my other show, and you’ve had a lot of history in the last year.

There’s history, yes.

One year is probably too much already.

Yeah, but don’t you think that this week? It’s in the mastermind. It pretty much got everybody even closer. Even if you knew Otis before, I’m sure you got to know him more intimately. And please do not take that wrong and go with it as trash. I mean this in a very innocent way, OK?

If you listen to our last episode with Mario, we know you’re the one with the dirty mind, so I don’t know why you’re trying to flip it on me.

Yeah, we did end up. I’m with the dirty mind, but you guys threw up the softball FY.

We did. We did. I love Otis for a lot of reasons. One is one of the reasons that we invited him; he’s a real person. He’s going to be real with you. He’s not going to allow BS to slide.

Will there be some BS? There will be some BS, but the real BS that doesn’t belong has nothing to do with you lying to yourself. Oh, this doesn’t let you get away with that ****

No, no, I hate that. Yeah, you’re not authentic.

Yes, but don’t you come from the generation, Otis, and I’m not too far behind you either? I mean, we’re about the same age, so aren’t we from that generation where there are no excuses? I mean, you have to take ownership. Regardless, right, there was no ‘oh hey. You know, this is my excuse for this time. This is my excuse. It’s like no. But take ownership, man.

Yeah, yeah, but I’ve often thought about that and had to bite my tongue many, many times to just quit your ********

Put your boots on and let’s go. Shut up and quit it.

I mean it. I get in trouble now if I say things like that, but that’s fine. That’s just who I am.

It’s not a PC anymore, is it?

No, it’s well, you know.

As I said, there are some bad things about some of the things that.

But you know, I’ve had to deal with guys that have fallen behind me. And you know, in the Green Berets and what it’s done and some of those guys, because they kept that attitude, unfortunately, made some poor decisions and they weren’t with it. Yes, we no longer exist. Now, that’s extreme, but that’s the bad side. Of all the bottled-up, there are a lot of other times when you should just put down your ******* wine and get to work.

I mean, it is. You know, the world was me. Oh, I just need a rest. It’s the weekend.

So, I just need some time off. I need to sleep late because I spent 20 years in the Navy and just don’t. I just wake up when I feel like it. Right now, because I have a tough career flying airplanes, I just got years out of it.

Well, if I had something to look forward to, I’d probably have no problem getting out of bed on time. That was a personal jab from Otis, right to the jaw since I’ve been retired. I haven’t woken up to an alarm clock. And I am fantastic with it, but Ellis has something early in the morning. He wants me to come to him and sometimes I’m awake and sometimes I remember that we had it scheduled for after I wake up and he’s now capable. Well, it is not on my schedule. Hey, you know what? It’s not scheduled in my calendar. Send me a calendar invite. Right? Then I can set the alarm for it.

Alright, yeah, I’ll send it to you.

So, I forget every time I get back. I get a message, I’m like, “Oh yeah, that.” Is it this week? I forget.

I’ll just say this: I’m thankful that you do not have the wake-up early disease. I’ll just let you know that I am very happy for you that you do. I do have that because I do.

God, I wish I could wake up later too. Or how nice would it be just to get up a few hours later and feel much more energized? Do you have an internal time clock? That’s all. I should say that the internal alarm just gets you up. Regardless, you’re just OK, regardless of how late it is. You went to bed, right?

I suffered from that when I was still on active duty, but since I retired, I’ve gotten over that. Maybe it’s because I only did 22 years instead of 25

Yeah, that was it. Those last three of them were critical.

The last three of the last three weeks

Yeah, because I had no problem with any of my time at any point during my military service getting up at whatever time they had set for me, but now I’m in retirement. I do not give a rip, I do not schedule anything before 10:00 AM, and I don’t think I ever will. Because I don’t have to tell us a little about your tribe and purpose. What it is, why you started that, and what you’re trying to do with it

And by the way, also tell us how you came up with the name.

It’s a lot to remember. That’s like three things so well.

First off, what we’re doing with tracking purposes is helping people understand their purpose and living life with intention. So, living life to pursue your purpose is what we do. That’s what’s part of it. The other part of it is that you don’t get anywhere. You don’t have success, enjoyment, or fulfillment unless you have other people around you.

And when you have a tribe around, you have people you can count on, people you can rely on, and people that will. They will call you out and say, “Hey, did you do that?” Did you do that thing you said you were going to do? Didn’t you do it? That thing you said you were going to do, and when we, as humans, have that in our mind, we’re in that mode of

I don’t want to let Travis down because I know that he’s going to call me up and he’s going to give me *** because I didn’t get it done.

So, I’d better stop this BS stuff I’m doing now and get it done. And when we do that and have the people around us to celebrate, we have the people around us to help. That’s when we have the success that we want. They have got to be like-minded people. They’ve got to be people in that tribe who want to help others and see others succeed. Succeed in living that life of abundance. You just can’t do it on your own. I don’t care who you are, whether you’re Elon, Steve Jobs, or you name all the Bezos. They’ve all got somebody. They all have a team around to help.

Who was Mario talking about that too?

Yeah, surround yourself with like-minded individuals because you can’t. It is a very lonely path.

And if you want to go far, the African proverb, the African proverb, which I almost missed, the African proverb, and I hate that it’s just an African proverb. But I haven’t been able to trace it back any further, but if you want to go fast, go alone. Do you want to go far together? So, if you want to get that big, quick, fast win, then you go right ahead.

But see what it’s like the next day by yourself.

I say yes, I feel that at the grocery store, right? And then there’s this: If I go with my son? I just tell him he’s 14. I say, “Hey, we’re going to speed run this.” We’re going to run and get all this stuff and get out of here in like under 10 minutes. Well, I can do that. I can do that fast, alone or with him, but if my wife’s there, we can travel a long distance, but not very quickly. Just like, like you can’t go.

Quick through the grocery store. You can go far when you’ve got a whole crew of people with you. Not fast.

That’s right, that’s right. And then you asked me how we came up with the name. Truthfully, I was chatting with a good friend of mine, and we’ve been chatting off and on, like every couple of weeks or so, for about an hour or so every couple of weeks over the last three or four months. Period, and he’s a branding guy, and he called me out because the business used to be named LTO Enterprises, which is great. If you’re a consultant business in the government contracting space, that sounds pretty powerful, right? light on the product.

Right, and what did it mean, Lt.?

Oh, listen to this

But officially, that was what it stood for because the kids when Facebook first came out, and I’ve never been on Facebook to see if it’s still there. They created a Facebook page that was called “listen to this” and they would grab some quotes and things. Maybe Travis is that kind of guy. They will look and see if it’s

He’s going to go look it up, yeah?

Uh, that.

I don’t know.

And the kids were at that age where it was really fun for like a week or two, and then they, I don’t think, played anything else.

So, it is.

Well, whenever you know they want a pet or something, it’s like, “Oh, the first two weeks are gung ho.” After that, they lose interest because it works.

That was the name of the business and my friend. The brand guy, Ethan, Says, “There’s your name.” Your business name sucks. We kept chatting, and then in like the third month or so, it was like boom. What about traveling for a purpose, literally? Both of us just kind of hit both of us the same way.

I love it. I love it and have your hat, but I think I took it to my boyfriend’s house. I was wearing it in Canada, so I left it there, so I’m like, I’m so bummed because I searched everywhere for it because I was going to wear it during this.

You know the Canadian Border Patrol will confiscate it when you try to come back in.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

Yeah, so that’s what I mean. It was, you know, some discussions of, you know, some things I had done.

One of the things that I think was the linchpin in the Green Berets and others was referred to in a larger community as “special OPS.” This referred to the special OPS groups working in Afghanistan as different tribes. We referred to them as the tribes.

Oh, interesting.

And so, it was very much like that, and that was when it snapped. When that memory comes to be yes,

Yeah, I love the name. I love the name.

Thanks, thanks. Yeah, it’s growing on me. I like it too because it says what?

What are we supposed to do in opposition? Listen to this: LTO Enterprises, which everybody else should be doing.

I looked up. Listen to Otis is still a Facebook page. Last entry: January 19, 2016. People wave their hands at the ground and never pick up a shovel.

Oh my gosh.

Listen to Otis.

That’s surprising in 2016. Wow, there’s a new entry.

That was six years ago, probably when you still had color in your mustache.

Uh, not much.

In the pictures I saw online, he had a red mustache.

I did. Yeah, it was red. 

It’s pretty cool right about there.

I only had the bottom, and it was great.

I was like, “Uh, really, that’s funny.“

I had some people ask me if I dyed it because it was so balanced like that, but

My son’s a redhead. So imagine a red-headed Asian mixed child. So, what do we call it?

Call him “ginger Asian.”

It’s got to be tough. Yeah, I know you, you started driving for a purpose, and it’s probably because you had some frustrations. What were those frustrations that drove you to create this thing?

Uh, well, what?

I did when I retired from the army. And I planned to get a job, which is damn near the worst plan you can have. The worst plan you can have been to do nothing. Nothing, that’s probably. It would have been better. I probably would have been more satisfied with doing nothing than getting a job, and you know, the way I like to refer to that is that it put me on a path of wandering the job desert for seven years. I never lacked jobs, but I never liked the jobs. I never liked the people I was with.

The people were OK, but the culture, the organization, and the values were not. It never aligned with me, and I didn’t understand what was happening. I just knew that. I learned these two lessons from two of my former NCOs right before I retired. Or I could say no, and I could quit. It’s OK to do both.

You have to face the consequences if you do that, but nobody is coming. The sheriff’s not coming to arrest you because you’re a WL. So, I had those two, and I told my bosses that if they needed me to do anything, I would. I’ve got a rugby game or, you know, a kid’s birthday or why cannot I have plans? I’m not going to do that. Do you want me to go next week?

Sure, I’ll do that. So, I’d say that and then. Then, when these companies, and all of our great companies, no, no dig on them. They work for; they’re all great companies and great people that work there, but they didn’t align with me; they didn’t align with my values; who I am; what I wanted to do; and I didn’t know that. And it wasn’t until, you know, a moment of clarity in the Home Office here one summer afternoon that It’s been six years now, 6-7 years now.

I was like, who am I feeling? I hadn’t even yet another day of feeling sorry for myself, and something that day clicked in the fact that I realized that since leaving the army, only two things in my life had been consistent.

My family and rugby, because Right after I stopped and retired from the Army, I started coaching boys’ high school rugby. And I asked myself a while ago why I quit all these paid jobs—and still doing this job that took all the extra hours and didn’t pay me anything, which cost me a lot of money. And as I looked at that, I realized, you know, it was that it was being their coach.

It was their coach that fulfilled me. It was teaching, mentoring, guiding, and challenging.

Those young men hold them accountable. And I started doing some research, talking to friends, talking to people in my network about what it is, how to do it, and making a conscious choice not to become a professional rugby coach at that point in my life.

Good call.

Yeah, yeah, probably a really good call. I shifted my consulting business into leadership and business coaching, which I’ve been doing ever since. And it’s fantastic. You know, the other thing that it’s allowing me to do is give back to my veteran tribe, our veteran tribe.

You know, I coach soon-to-be vets through a couple of organizations. The Commit Foundation and the Honor Foundation help these men and women figure out what they will do so they don’t suffer the same frustrations that I do. I’ll challenge him. I’ll hold him accountable. I told him I wasn’t telling you how to do it. I’m not giving you a checklist. You’ve got to figure this **** out. I’m going to give you some tools. I’m going to give you some direction, give you some advice, and ask you some hard questions to make you start thinking. When they wrap up, they have confidence in what they’re going to do, where they’re going to go, and what time to set their alarm in the morning, so

I know that was a dig. I know I’m aware. That was A Day doesn’t bother me at all. I know it was a dig, but I wanted to say that you touched on something that I feel is extremely valuable. You said that you wouldn’t give them the answers, and in my leadership career, my path through all these different positions, I frustrated a lot of people in the military because I wouldn’t give them the answers. I was under the assumption that I could give them the answer today, but tomorrow they would either know the answer or not. If they didn’t know the answer, they would come back to me, and then I was training them to come to me with all their problems, which I don’t have time for. So, a lot of business leaders that I am talking to have a question that I asked. And it’s right in line with not giving them the answers. Are you robbing the world, society, and civilization of the next big innovation because you’re telling your employees what to do or telling them how you did it instead of letting them figure it out on their own?

Yeah, that’s a great way of looking at it. I take that one step further, in the sense of, you know, the knowledge I’ve got here. Suppose I’m not teaching, sharing, and mentoring that with others; I’m being selfish. *********** I mean, so if I’m not developing the people in my team to take over my job, that means I’m insecure about my job and who I am.

I should be teaching, mentoring, and showing them how to do what I do so that I can continue up, continue to grow, or the business can scale. As long as you’re holding it and telling people exactly how you want it done, they will sit around and wait for you to tell them how to do it. Every time a problem comes up, or like you said, Travis, when something comes up, they’re going to talk to Lieutenant Commander Jones and figure it out in the city because I don’t know, you know, we don’t know how to do it. We have to ask the boss.

I would do it. Yes, we must. Don’t ever learn how to think. They don’t know how to problem solve, and you want them to problem solve. You don’t want to sit down. And you know, give them a blueprint every single time. Alternatively, you could do a B & C.it out, and you’ll know what to do if you fail; at least you tried.

But you have to be willing to accept that failure as a leader.

Yeah, you have. You have to give them that. That responsibility, that ownership of it, whatever they come up with, you’ve got to praise him. You’ve got to show him that, hey, good job taking a look at this. Have you considered this in your calculations as you’re doing this up? You know, I haven’t looked at it. I might try to do that. You can’t criticize them, especially in the first couple of weeks. You have to praise only and then ask if they’ve considered things.

The only way they will come to it is by their discovery and on their own. And I love training people to teach them how to think, so I don’t have to do it. A lot of my success has come through laziness or selfishness.

I almost said that, but I was just going to be nice and keep my mouth shut.

Don’t you dare be nice to Carol? Don’t you dare me?

Man, you are doing a great job. You’re a phenomenal you. You’re training all these people to do it. I am because I don’t want to be the only one called in the middle of the night. I want someone that’s already qualified to do it. I want to go on vacation, and I can’t go on vacation because none of these other clowns are qualified. I’m getting qualified so I can enjoy time with my family. Right or I don’t want the shop, the office, the command, or whatever to fail when I walk out the door. Because I’m holding all the keys to the kingdom. I remember distinctly being an E5 and ready to leave the squadron to teach. So, I did some instructor duty and I had two proteges. That was all right, guys. The show is going to be all yours here in a few months.

Here’s the deal:

You guys are going to run it. I’m going to be here if you have any questions. I will do the things, but you guys will be in charge. You guys will be running it, and you know we’ll all be the safety net while you’re still here. And it wasn’t a couple of days, and they were ***** at me because it looked like I wasn’t doing any. Anything right? I’m on the computer doing some online courses or whatever, waiting for them to come in and out and tell me what was happening.

And I told the boss he was right. I told the maintenance control for the aviation maintenance control.

They run the nerve center of all the stuff that gets done for the listed guys and I had him come in once, and they were both upset. You know what I know.

You said, “I know you said it’s going to be this way, but you’re just doing nothing.” We’re doing all the work, and you’re doing nothing of this, that, or the other, and I won’t stand for it. I was like, “I know you guys feel that way today.” I understand exactly how you feel but trust me when I say this is the path, and it will be revealed to you in time, which is hard to do. It’s a hard thing to hear. This is difficult to accept, and when I left, they were essentially like “good riddance.” that you’re gone. And within the next three weeks, they both called me and said I figured it out.

I found out what it is that you’re doing. You let us do the work and fail while you were still here to bail us out because we didn’t skip a beat after you left. We were able to do and run and accomplish everything they were doing when you were here, but we’re doing it with us in charge, and there’s been no drop-off. We appreciate that you didn’t appreciate what was happening, but now that you’re gone, it makes so much sense, and we’re so glad you did it that way because we hadn’t had to learn the hard lessons yet.

But that reminds me of something I talk about, and I’ve done a couple of talks on and shared with people, and that’s the trust triad. As a leader in leadership, you have to have these.

Of these three trusts, you have to trust yourself. You have to believe in who you are. With the information you have, believe that the decisions you make are the best you can make at the moment.

You have that moment when you have to decide. You have to trust your team to do the job that you hired them to do. Otherwise, why are they there? If you hire somebody to do a job, let them do it. Don’t do the job for him. Don’t show him how to. Do the job, don’t spend all your time doing the job for him. Let them do the job you hired them to do, and when those two are in place, the third one comes into play: the team trusts you and your performance. They believe that every decision or action you take as a leader has your best interests at heart. And mine for the team for the team’s success, not the individuals, not the leader. Not that guy; he’s just in it for himself.

None of that. They believe you, as the leader, have their best interests in mind. So if you trust yourself, you trust your team to perform, and when that happens, your team trusts you. So that’s the trust. Try it.

Well, that sounds familiar because it’s in your book. Which I have read, and it’s behind you.

It’s what enables your team’s success, and yeah.

Yeah, we all got a copy.

I don’t have any more, which is good.

You know, despite all the ****, this is about me. I’m sitting here. I found this Facebook page. I got the hat and the book. I’m on tap for this episode because I’m still preparing even though I don’t wake up as early as he does.

There you go.

Oh, my goodness

I don’t leave my hats in Canada. I tell you that much.

Oh, you guys.

Or is it already?

I finished it. Put it back on the shelf. If you don’t know if you haven’t picked up a caveat, Carol has her book. The Elegant Disruptor is available on Amazon, and I see it right there on my bookshelf because I read it the first day, I got it to read 90 pages quickly, and it had a lot of familiar things in it.

If you know what I mean, please note that I love talking about Tribe and Purpose and the things you’ve done. What did it take to get there because you weren’t always the Lieutenant Colonel? You weren’t always a green beret. You weren’t always leading LTO to listen to this. You aren’t always hosting the camera. Notice that you had to go through some stuff to become who you are today. What kind of **** Did you have to go through to get here?

Uh, well, after 25 years in the army, I’ve seen a lot of ****.

Yeah, you had me at Army right there.

Well then, let me ask you one more question. What led you to the army? Did you already know you wanted to? To go in. The army when you were younger.

What led me to the army was not being able to fly truthfully. There it is where I grew up, and you can also hear this part of the story. When you look up my TEDx talk, I grew up in the shadow of a Strategic Air Command base. My dad designed fighter jets, so all I ever wanted to do growing up was a fighter pilot. In my first year in high school, I told Dad that, and he said you can’t do that because you wear glasses, and that’s the last thing you want to do. He’s going to the Air Force and not be a pilot, and I said, “Alright, next best thing, Army.”

The next best thing is not the army but going ahead. It worked out for me.

Yeah, yeah. So, my father persuaded me to do so. I should go to college because, you know, for similar reasons. I don’t know the exact reason, but you should be a commissioned officer to get better pay and a better career. Because I told him I wanted to have a career in the army. I went to A&M and did everything I ever wanted to do there until the Army decided I should do what they wanted. All I ever wanted to be at A & M was a mechanical engineer. I was an airborne ranger and infantry officer, and the Army decided I should be an engineer. That’s the first one. That was a huge disappointment in a room full of all my classmates fighting back. I don’t know if I was fighting back the tears or was probably more pissed off. Rather than crying and feeling sorry for myself,

Pist off is what it really was, and so I normally wouldn’t change it when in the army as an engineer. While there, I decided I would show the army because I discovered there’s a thing called green berets. I think I’ve already heard about the Green Berets. I didn’t know how you became one, I discovered. How do I become one? So, I volunteered to become a “green beret” so I wouldn’t have to worry about being an engineer. In my first four years as an operational detachment Alpha team leader, I had some unbelievable opportunities. I took my teams to some ****** places and some awesome places, such as Switch. Winter warfare training for six weeks in Norway? I mean, and then shitholes like Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, those sorts of things. But after my team time, I had to pay the piper because that’s how the military works. If you have fun, you’ve got to pay it back somewhere. Somebody understands that. And the job that I had in DC; I was ready to quit. I was trying to figure out the right form to use to resign. My commission resigned from the army. Get out. It was that bad of an experience, and it’s also where I learned that there’s no separation between work and home life; it’s all life.

That was my first experience with that. My wife, Miss Suzanne, told me off the ledge, quite literally. Why? Why don’t we see if we can get back to it because you know how good it was?

Did you enjoy that? Let’s see if we can just get back there. meaning here in Colorado, and I was like, “fine, fine, you know?” Yeah, that’s pretty much all fine. We’ll see; when I got back here, it made up for it and kept me going. Because I received a lot more, I still have some ****** things to do, but they’re cool things. Those are the next. That was 910 years, whatever the number was. Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, that’s kind of where my plan ended when I got out of the army. I had no plan, so yeah.

Interestingly, I think it happens in many people’s careers, especially in the military.

I knew I wanted to become a Navy chief once I finally got into a service that let me in and let’s be honest; I was fighting for it and working my tail off. And then this officer program thing came up as an option, and I applied to it, which was a huge slog for years. You know, getting through to college, getting into flight school, and finally getting the wings. It’s a journey. It’s a struggle. And then when I got it, I was like, “Well, that’s it.“

I accomplished all my goals, and now what do I do?

And you flounder, you’re out withering on the vine trying to figure out what the next thing is, and you’ve got to have the right people. You’ve got to have the right. If you want to be directed to it, you can ask the tribe around you. Right, uh? It was the word “purpose,” I think.

But you know, the end of my Army career was very similar. You know, it was like I could do the same sort of job that I was doing in other places. But it’s not going to be any different.

Yeah, just different scenery and different people.

Yeah, I said, “That’s not what I want.” I want to do it. I want to continue to grow, move on, and take on the next new challenges, yeah?

So, do you work with clients one-on-one? One or both? Do you do teams or what exactly? Do you do that from that perspective?

We do group coaching. I guess that’s what I should say to be straight up as we’re transitioning to group coaching. We’ve got our power tribe, which is focused on veteran business owners. We are only starting with the green beret.

I’m looking forward to Power Tribe next month because I’ve heard there will be no slack between Travis and me. That’ll be like being back in the team room.

So, is this purely for the military only, like veterans?

The power well that the green beret wanted will be just for green berets. But the Power Tribe concept is for anybody. You know, we focus. You ask what our focus is on, and its small business owners are veterans, but it’s business owners. This causes business leaders and executives to question whether they are doing the right thing.

Is this really who I am? Is this still what I want to do? Is this who I want to be? Are these the same feelings that I was describing to myself? I’m also excited that we’re kicking off Know Your Tribe.

So, you mentioned my podcast with Camden, my son, who you know, we’ve been doing the camera notice show now for three plus years. Well, he’s also part of a tribe. Purpose and Camden are kicking off Know Your Tribe right around the same time in July and the beginning of August. Know Your Tribe is focused on early-career people. You know, people who have gone through four years of college, whether they’re dead or not, are kind of taking that first job, and they’re going through this.

Is this all there is to life? Is this who I want to be? In life, is this how I want to do it, and do I want to continue doing it? Is this the life that I want to pursue? I don’t understand, or I need some guidance. I want to be part of something bigger than myself, and that’s where knowing your tribe comes in. So that makes me very happy. I can just imagine what it would have been like for me 30 years ago to have that kind of focus and to know what I wanted to do.

Don’t you wish that you had something like this?

I know that back in those days because I know I went and got a dog, and that’s just what we were taught. I almost felt like we were being groomed to think that this was the right way to go.

Yeah, and all, you know, I’ve had. We had that conversation with Doctor Gruder this morning. We had him on our show, and we talked about how this attitude, whatever the name is, the K through 12 education system, is all about pushing you to go to a university; if you don’t go, don’t go to some sort of college. You’re a failure in life. How messed up that is because, as you said, that’s what the culture we’ve created is. You’ve got to go to college, and then as soon as you’re done with college, you’ve got to get a job. And guess what, you don’t have to do that. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work for you, but that’s part of what knowing your tribe will help people understand that those who have already taken those steps don’t have to stay on that path.

But corporate gigs are not that working for a corporation is wrong. If it’s the right fit, the right culture for you, and has the right values, align with your values. That’s what it boils down to.

Yeah, I mean, the education system isn’t broken. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do.

It’s successfully created people intelligent enough to get the job done on a factory floor and generate taxes without asking too many questions. Or it was designed for, but it’s no longer serving the greater humanity or greater purpose when I don’t know how it was for you all to go to school. But you only really get one point of view. And then you are taught by people cultivated by that system without many interjections. And then you go into Congress and look at a group of people with the power who don’t want to teach you how to get outside of that, outside of their control. So, it’s a never-ending loop of you just going to keep getting what you always got because the people in charge don’t have the power to change it. They’re not going to change it because it benefits them. People inside the loop aren’t going to change it because they don’t know that they’re stuck in the loop. It’s hard to read the warning label when stuck in the box.

Yeah, very true. Very true. Yeah, as you’re describing it, it reminds me of the education system in Uganda. Yeah, well, it’s interesting that Uganda was a colony of Great Britain, right?

And they had an oppressive education system to squash free thought. Problem-solving, and what’s interesting is that even though you’re gone, that has. You know, it is no longer a colony of Great Britain. The education system and the way that they teach are the same. I had a guy that worked for me there. He was 100, but he would do exactly as you said, going back to problem-solving. We’re talking about earlier. I gave him $200.00 and said, “I need you to go to the store to buy this water valve.” He would go to the store and buy that thing. Give me the three leftover pennies or whatever, right? But if he went to that store and they didn’t have that water valve, he would just come home. He wouldn’t say, “Oh well, this valve does.” What other valves do you have?

Will this one work? Is this one going to suffice?

No, he would. You’d say he would not solve the problem, not come up with a solution. They drove back home and then called me up and said they didn’t have it.  Jeffrey, I love him to death. He’s still around now and then, and we keep in touch, but it’s not the same.

Dude, did you ask? He asked him if they had anything else that might work. Work, no, you said we needed this one.

And, yes, I’m going to admit right now that’s exactly how I operated when I first joined the military: I went to do exactly what they said to do because I didn’t have the wherewithal, mentorship, or anything else other than to do exactly what the thing was. I didn’t know how to ask the important questions or to understand. And really, until someone told me that it took years of mentorship from other people, reading, and listening to different things even to get the idea that what I had been shown, taught, and programmed with wasn’t all there was.

I’ve been that exact person. I was the Jeffrey in your story. When I first got in, if I thought and like I reached out to people, I know some people I still talked to that knew me and my first command, and I told him what I’m doing now. They’re like, “No way,” because of the person they knew.

Who couldn’t possibly do the things that I’m talking about? You know, they only remember me from that point. That singular point in my story arc of growth, ups, and downs, and anything else they only remember from that time. that one point in my development. You know, Tony, sometimes we cast people off there. We don’t have time for different stages of their evolution in that stage, and there’s nothing necessarily.

You know, right or wrong about that, but we forget that people have an evolution that has an arc, and we all learn different things at different times.

I remember being a financial consultant and personal financial planner, helping people with some things in my 20s and 30s, talking to people in their 50s and 60s that hadn’t learned the lesson yet because there’s no magic formula. There’s no like, “Alright, by 22 years and four months, you should know exactly this amount of stuff and be able to apply it.” There’s no such thing. There’s no rulebook; there’s no formula, there’s no such thing. I am a fantastic navigator.

Even though we lived in Oklahoma City for the better part of 20 years, my wife navigates her way to the mall and back because she simply wasn’t imbued with that particular gift.

You know, fortunately, in today’s day and age, we have GPS, but back in the 80s and 90s when we were, you know, doing our stuff like

That’s what you had.

You either knew it, or I did. On the map, that was the only option. You bought an atlas or a map of the gas station. Or you already knew the only option. You couldn’t Google it. There was no GPS to plug it into like you had. You had the skill, the map, and you had to know or rely on somebody else to get you there.

Well, you got lost. Let’s just put it that way, yeah?

What have you got?

One day, my wife called me. She’s going to kill me when she hears this. She called me. Here are her exact words: This was before smartphones. She calls me. Say hey, baby, she’s like, “Where am I?”

Oh God, oh God.

I don’t.

I don’t know, babe. I don’t know how to help you. It’s like, where are you? She’s actively driving as she’s doing it. This is it; you know. From the old Nokia group, you know? ‘Push the button, phone.’

The flip phones

Yeah, I don’t even think it was a flip phone. I think it was the generation before. That was because we were cheaper, poorer, or both. She’s driving around. I was like, well, you have to tell me what street you’re on, and she’s naming all these little streets. But for those who don’t know, Oklahoma City is essentially a gigantic grid. It’s a one-by-one-mile grid that spans like ten cities in the metro area. You can get on Western and drive through something like five cities in one straight shot. It’s a big grid. So, she’s naming all this stuff, but she’s naming it like the streets in between. And I’m like, you got to give me a major one, and she tells me, and I was like, “Oh, you’re great, you’re between a bunch of interstates.“

Pick a direction and go; you’ll get on one, and I’ll get you home. She’s on the only part that doesn’t have a direct onramp, and she drives through that, just like now. I’m lost like this. This stuff happens, but if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there, which I want to finish up with notice. I’ve got to ask you: What is the one location? You want people to find you.

Your tribedeskpurpose.com has a lot of info there too. Click the “get started” button to sign up for the Monday News Monday Moments newsletter. I love sharing that, kicking your week off with a Stewart quote and something I learned.

Yeah, I get those in my inbox every weekend, and when I wake up every day at 10, I delete them after I read them. You didn’t let me finish. How would you jump to that conclusion? Do you have any parting words for us to help the audience?

Thirty words of wisdom, yes.

Become a Titan like you are.

You’ll always be happy if you live with intention and pursue your purpose. But if you try to do what other people want you to do, who else do you think other people want you to do? I think that you should be

You’ll never be happy. You’ll never be satisfied. You’ll always be frustrated. You’ll always be behind, so figure out what success is. It appears that for those living in pursuit of that success, life is a lot better that way.

Thanks again for being our guests today, even though there’s no love lost between us.

Can you lose something you never had?

Oh yeah, we’re going to end it right there.

The show has concluded.