Leadership Lessons From the Cleared Hot Podcast

Jon Becker: My guest today has such a diverse skill set that it's almost difficult to summarize. Andy Stumpf enlisted in the Navy when he was a junior in high school, entering military service in 1996. After completing boot camp, he went on to basic underwater demolition SEAL training, also known as buds.

After earning his trident, he began his SEAL career attached to SEAL team five in Coronado, California. In 2002, he joined the most elite counterterrorism unit in the Navy, the Naval Surface Warfare Development Group, aka DEVGRU or SEAL Team six. While on a combat deployment, an Iraqi insurgent shot Andy in the hip at close range with an AK-47. Doctors told him it would be years, if ever, before he recovered the use of his leg and returned to full active duty.

Four years later, after extensive work, Andy returned to the Naval Special Warfare center as the leading petty officer for second phase buds training. While completing his two year instructor tour, Andy submitted his package to become a commissioned officer. In 2008, he became the first e six selection, commissioned through the limited duty officer program in the history of naval special warfare. Upon commissioning, he joined SEAL team three and completed his final combat tour in Afghanistan.

Throughout his 17 year career, Andy executed hundreds of combat missions throughout the world in support of the global war on terror, including the hostage rescue of Jessica lynch. He was medically retired in June of 2013. His awards and declarations include five bronze stars, four with Valor, the Purple Heart, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Valor, three Navy and Marine Corps achievement medals, two combat action ribbons, and the Presidential Unit Citation.

After retirement, Andy continues to support the SEAL community and their families. In 2015, he set two world records after jumping from 36,500ft and flying over 18 miles in a wing suit in an effort to raise $1 million for the Navy SEAL foundation post military. His business experience includes managing corporate development, licensing and charitable initiatives for a global fitness brand.

He also founded a consulting firm dedicated to ensuring that the lessons learned from the global war and terror are utilized by business leaders as well as federal, state and local entities. Andy also hosts the fantastic Cleared Hot, a podcast with close to 20 million views on YouTube.

Hope you enjoy my conversation with Andy Stumpf!

My name is Jon Becker.

For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Andy, thank you so much for being here today! It's great to see you, man!

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, good to see you, too!

Jon Becker: So maybe just for those that are not deeply entrenched with the Andy, Laurie, I gave a bio of you, but why don't we give just a quick summary of your career in the teams, just for context.

Andy Stumpf: Well, first, I wasn't aware that there was any Andy Laurie, and I really hope that there isn't and that there never will be.

But as far as my time in the military, I joined in 1996 and boot camp Occupational, a school for what the Navy calls it, straight to the SEAL pipeline. So right into buds, early 1997, checked in in January, finished that up. Basic airborne jump school in Fort Benning, Georgia, one of the most horrendous experiences of my life.

And then checked into SEAL team five on the west coast. Stayed there until 2002 where I went through selection at a command on the east coast, then went back to buds as an instructor. Picked up a commission at that point. So twelve years of enlisted service, then did five more years as an officer.

Actually, four years and eleven months and one day. Don't want to be imprecise because somebody will like to call me. I'm a liar because I shorted the government, you know, 29 days or however many days are in June or actually July. I don't even remember last day of June or last day of July. 2013 was my last day. But did a final operational deployment at SEAL team three and then finished my career off as the operations officer at the training detachment that oversees all the training for the west coast SEAL teams.

Jon Becker: What made you decide to go from enlisted to an officer? That's kind of an interesting career strategy. Why'd you do it?

Andy Stumpf: I felt key hold at the time. I didn't have I – If I had picked up e seven, so in. And I can only speak about the navy, but in the navy and specifically the SEAL community, the jump between e six to e seven, I would describe it as you are launching from middle management on the enlisted side of the house to a leadership role. You're going to become a chief, so you're going to be holding a senior enlisted role inside of any operational detachment. And there are administrative roles as well inside of SEAL team or a SEAL command that you can kind of work your way up to in a SEAL command. It would be the command master chief, the senior e nine at any one of those commands.

But there are mandatory positions that you have to fill along the way. And the. The main thing that they're looking at, when you go and you submit your package to the chiefs board, which occurs one time per year, and I've never been at a chiefs board, and they're actually, the people who are there aren't supposed to talk about it that much, but you get a little bit of the rumor mill, and they say you have, you know, your record. It literally is probably not a manila envelope, but it's inside of a. Just a, you know, a binder. You have about 60 seconds to maybe two minutes for somebody looking at your record, and it'll get separated into potentially, yes, further scrutiny, and immediately, no.

And the first thing that they're looking for is your LPO tour, your leading petty officer tour. What you do as an E6, if you have that box checked, you're probably going to get some additional scrutiny on your record, and then they're going to start racking and stacking you against the people who have also submitted their records. But if you don't have it, it gets swept off the table. And, I mean, I don't care how many awards you have, I don't care what kind of SEAL operator you are. You either have that box checked or you're not even going to get looked at.

So I was doing my LPO tour in 2005, and I got injured overseas, and I got medevac'd out of the country before I completed my LPO tour.

I did not do enough days for it to actually count, so they counted it as incomplete. And I didn't realize that at the time, but I submitted my chief packages two years in a row. In two years in a row, I did not get picked up for chief. And I would say my words, not anybody else's, but I would say my package was competitive in comparison to my peers.

And I actually was able to talk to somebody who was at the chiefs board who said and told me that they watched what happened with my particular record, and it wasn't even looked at because that LPO box was not checked. And I could. I was at Buds at the time as an instructor, and I could have done a shore billet tour as an e six that would have satisfied that. But at a shore billet command, at least when I was in, that is a 24 month tour that you have to complete for it to count as being done, and then you can submit your record.

So I had come from the East coast command, and there was already somebody who had just started their LPO tour. So I would have had to wait for them to finish, then get put into that position, do that job for 24 months, then submit my package, and hoped that I was still competitive among my peers.

So that would have probably been a 36 to 48 month wait, just, you know, a hamster spinning on a wheel at the e six rank, which isn't a bad rank by any stretch, but I wanted to continue to progress in my career, so I started researching other options, and I found a program called the LDO program, or the limited duty officer program that does not require a college degree. There was nothing in there requiring an LPO tour to be completed. Essentially, it's a potential to get commission based off the merits of your service record.

So I submitted a package, and in the SEAL community, it's the same package for both warrant officers, or LDO's, and I believe at this point, they no longer use the program inside of the Navy because, of all things, a lack of participation. They could not get enough people to actually submit a packages for the commissioning program.

So I put together a package. You know, you have to do some essays, you do an oral interview with some officers at the command that you're at. They write their recommendation, you submit a package, and months later, a Navy message comes out, the advancements come out, and there you go.

There was my name on the piece of paper. And so it was a way for me, when I joined the military, I had no desire, never even had a thought of switching over to bevereze an officer, because I have zero college. Barely scraped my way through high school, and for all of the other commissioning sources, a four year degree is, you know, the minimum entry to put your cards out on the poker table. And I didn't. I didn't have that. I didn't have any interest in doing that.

And I certainly, if I'm being honest, I wasn't prepared to go to college at 18, as I think most people actually aren't. I would have done much better later on in my life. But that was the. That was the route for me to no longer be stuck. So I went from being an e six on September 30 to an 01 on an 01E. The E just means enlisted or previous enlisted on October 1st of 2008.

Jon Becker: It's interesting! It's almost like the Marine Corps Mustang program, you know, where you. They're all very similar.

Andy Stumpf: Yep. Yeah, very similar.

Jon Becker: So did you. Did you promote then as an officer? Did you leave as an zero one? What was your career path from there?

Andy Stumpf: Fortunately, on the officer side, if you are still in the military and have a heartbeat, you're going to get advancement every two years. So two years after becoming an 01, they advanced me to zero. Two years after becoming an o two, they advanced me to zero three, and I was medically retired as an 03E. And again, the e just means prior enlisted.

And it's important because if you were to go from an e six to an zero one, you would actually take a decrease in pay, and so they make sure that you're not going to take that decrease. And I don't think it's about to until about the zero three level that the pays would start balancing themselves out. So it's actually a very important designator if you make that switch from enlisted to officer.

Jon Becker: But, I mean, the reason you didn't complete your LPO tour is you were shot, right?

Andy Stumpf: Yes. I describe it as a workplace injury that prevented me from completing my roles and responsibilities.

Jon Becker: I feel like shot in the pelvis with an AK-47. Being described as a workplace injury maybe understates it a little bit.

Andy Stumpf: It was not an awesome day in my life. And it. You tell people. If you tell people you got shot, I in person, you know, especially in person, if you're in a conversation, which I avoid telling people anything about my military career in person, it leads to a lot of bizarre questions and some really weird facial expressions, and I have just found it's best to avoid it.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah, I think. I think in mixed company, that's probably true.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah. You horrify people.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, fascinating. We were talking about this before we. We started recording, but it's the whole, you know, we want to be removed from violence. We don't want to think about it happening. So how – So you were. You were shot pretty close range, AK-47, right?

Andy Stumpf: Yeah.

Jon Becker: What happened? What did it do to you?

Andy Stumpf: I mean, it laid me flat on my back. It wasn't in my pelvis. It was basically, it was. What would it be perpendicular directly into the side of my legende?. A millimeter or two from my femur, but very high up on my leg to the point where it would have been above where a tourniquet could have been applied, but it didn't interact with my pelvis. And quite frankly, if it had, I probably would have died first.

Jon Becker: The greater trochanter at the top of the femur.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah. I mean, it's just the pelvis has so many veins and arteries and blood flow, and what are you going to do to stop bleeding on that? You know, tourniquets are an amazing thing, but if you. I mean, you can't tourniquet a pelvis. And I know that they have.

Jon Becker: You know, shove jaws in and hope it stops, maybe.

Andy Stumpf: Or if you had a set of the, you know, high speed pressure, you know, cuffs or pants or a pelvic, which we don't carry in the field, nor do I think that that was available at that time. It spun me towards the person that was shooting and just put me flat on my back. And my first thought, actually, when it hit me was, okay, my leg just shattered.

And I remembered the medical training that they, I mean, they constantly reinforce. You know, when it comes to internal bleeding, you can fit your entire blood volume inside of your quad in hamstring space. And by the time I hit the ground, the first thought I had was, I probably have a few minutes left, and I'm going to bleed out internally into the, you know, to the body cavity of my left leg.

Jon Becker: So did it broke the – it broke the femur?

Andy Stumpf: No, I still never broken a bone, and I've never had surgery. The round. My suspicion is, I never saw the person, and I was the first person over a wall. We were, to the best of my recollection, we were. We were looking for a kidnapping cell, and I don't think they had actually kidnapped somebody. I think it was signals intelligence that was leading us to take action before they did.

And again, this is back in 2005, so I apologize if I'm my, you know, for anybody listening out there that might have been there who knows the story better than me, hit me up and let me know, because I'm doing the best I can with my memory from a long time ago, and I've been hitting the head a lot. So give me a little bit of. Give me a little bit of grace on that.

So we go out there and, you know, we were kind of stumbling our way through a block. You know, it was in the area in between Baghdad and Fallujah. And, yeah, we're stumbling around making some noise, and some people saw us at the end of an alley and they ran back into a house. So we pursued them. Wasn't the right house, but we made some noise. I think there was a shotgun breach that occurred inside of that structure.

And we came back down and we were using some electronic equipment to be the way to broadly describe it, to geographically isolate the individuals that we were looking for. So I was, we were kind of following the, you know, the sensor expert at that point, waiting for him to say, hey, this is where we're going to go.

So he finally says, hey, this is where we're going to go. And I was walking point at the time, and for people who don't understand the military vernacular, if there's a file formation, that just means I was the person up front. And I remember walking past that house down the alley, and the lights were off when we came back, and the guy said, hey, this is going to be the building we're going to be going into.

The internal lights were back on, and we put a ladder up on the fence. Most of the residential area over there is probably going to have somewhere between a six to ten foot fence and wall, and it's very thick dirt wall or mud wall.

So I climbed up on top of the ladder, and I was actually looking at the courtyard in the side of the structure that was facing me. And, you know, night vision goggles are great, but if you have a darked out courtyard and a really bright window, it actually washes it out a little bit.

So I was looking underneath my night vision goggles and kind of just scanning the area, there's some other windows and never saw anything move, never saw a shadow, never saw an indication. I assumed that there were people in there because the light had come on, but I never saw any indication of movement. Sensor guy finally said, hey, we're gonna, this is the place. So we were gonna commence the assault.

I went over the wall, waited for a couple other people to approach, and was making my way to the breach point. I was gonna hold security for my buddy, who was gonna put up a c six strip charge on the door, which is an awesome way to announce your presence.

Way better than yelling, police, police, police. Never been a cop, but let's just say it rings people's bells.

And Jerome, if you hold security and you let everybody hide and you turn back around, you're like, you a*******, you took all the hiding spots. I guess I'll just curl up in the fetal position and go ahead and send that thing. So it was a lot like a modern house where if it looked like, it would look like an l like this for your viewers.

The window that I was looking at was over here, and this section was almost like an extended garage that came out, but it wasn't a garage. There was just another set of windows that were blacked out. And the door was in between a lit window, kind of a walkway coming out, and where that extended garage was be – I was going to hold up on the corner, but I didn't want to turn my back to the window. I at least wanted to take a look into it.

And as soon as I swung my head to take a look at it, a round got cracked off, and so I didn't see it. And my suspicion is the person just raised their gun up and started firing. But there was rebar in the windows, which is not uncommon over there.

And the first round out was the one that hit me, and I. I am pretty sure it nicked the rebar on the way out. So as it was coming towards me, it was kind of coming apart. Most of the copper jacket in the second or third round that was fired at me actually traveled about six inches down my belt, and the copper jacket of the AK round is actually fused to my belt. It melted to my belt, which is fortunate that the first round hit me because it spun me towards that person, which allowed it to travel down the side of my belt as opposed to me being in the other direction and going through that one. Definitely would have interacted with my pelvis.

So it kind of came apart, and it – There's like, I have a lot of frag on the left hand side of my leg, and it didn't break the bone, but it interacted in some way with the sciatic nerve on my left leg. So it was. By the time I got to the hospital in the green zone, my main complaint was actually my ankle. Not that getting shot felt great. It certainly wasn't a massage, but the nerve pain. And I didn't know it at the time. I didn't understand why my left ankle was hurting so bad, because it felt like somebody had taken a sledgehammer and just smashed it.

So the doctors were very, they were, you know, gingerly cutting off my shoe, and, you know, they cut your pants off, all that. And my pants were covered in blood at that point. And they put me through an x-ray of my ankle, and they're sitting there looking at me like, dude, your ankle is totally fine. Like, how about you go f*** yourself? Because my ankle does not feel totally fine whatsoever.

And come to find out, it was just, that's the, you know, that was the terminus of my sciatic nerve. So when it either, I'm sure your audience is familiar with looking at ballistic gelatin and you in super slow motion where you can see the shock waves or the concussive waves as it impacts the gelatin.

So either the round itself, the pieces of the ferrous metal off of the bar, the copper jacket coming apart, or even just that concussive blast as it was going into my leg. It fried my sciatic nerve. And that's what was causing the extreme pain in my ankle, but flat on my back. I actually got pinned underneath the vehicle as a relatively sporty firefight ensued, both on our side of the building and on the far side and then on inside of the building. But I was one of eight people that got wounded on target that night. I was one of the less substantial injuries.

So there was little birds landing and putting people in the birds and flying them back to the green zone. And I ended up getting put in the back of a. It's not an Abrams take. I can't even remember the terminology at this point, but it was basically an armored personnel carrier and got taken back to the green zone that way. But I mean, that was it kind of in a nutshell. You know, I never saw the person, never saw any indication that they were, other than the lights being off and then going to on. Never saw an indication of them being that kind of locked and loaded, ready to go, and then it just kicked off.

Jon Becker: How long had you been at DEVGRU when that happened?

Andy Stumpf: Three and a half years.

Jon Becker: Okay, so, yeah, I mean, you're experienced operator at that point, then you come back. Obviously there's some damage.

What's the recovery like from that?

Andy Stumpf: I mean, you'd have to define recovery. It's never going to be 100% for me. I am as active as humanly possible, but I have to be really cautious with some of the stuff that I do. I still have definitely reduced sensation in my left leg. It starts at about the kneecap, and as it wraps over the top of the foot, I start. It's not that I can't feel anything. It's this really weird delayed. It's like if you were to run your fingernails down the side of my shin about 5 seconds later, it's this incredibly bizarre sensation of pressure. It certainly doesn't feel like the fingernails themselves, but it's not numb either.

But the biggest issue that I've dealt with is there's instability in my left ankle because of my, you know, plantar effects, plantar flexing and dorsal flexing. I can push down, but I have a hard time pulling my ankle up. And when I do, my foot rotates just a little bit to the inside, which lends me to rolling my ankle to the outside.

So I have to be cautious in terrain. And I've modified just the way that I train, whether it's strength and conditioning. Like, I can do sprints forward and backwards. I avoid lateral things that are dynamic because I don't want to put that much pressure on the outside and have it roll over. I've done it. Like, my left ankle is just covered in scar tissue.

And having said that, I live an incredibly active lifestyle and I'm still able to do the things that I want to do. I'm just really cautious. So I'm getting ready to go elk hunting in southern Montana here in two days. And I pick the way that I move through terrain based off knowing things that my ankle can tolerate and then places where I have to be really, really careful.

Jon Becker: But you, I mean, you. You got back to full duty status after, right?

Andy Stumpf: Yes. Some of that is probably because the military wasn't paying very close attention to what I was doing, and I was just like, hey, I'm good. And they said, okay.

Jon Becker: Nice! But at that point, you left. So when you come back from injury, you leave DevGrU and go out to the west coast.

Andy Stumpf: It was my choice to leave. I needed some downtime. I was, you know, as soon as I made it through selection, it was in late 2002. They actually, we finished. They pulled the people who were going to go to my squadron early, and we went and augmented the cars I'd tail. It was after the ambush or assassination attempt, whatever you would want to describe it as. It was very, very tail end. And they kind of just backfilling in bodies so they could rotate it out and turn it over to the civilian organization that took over.

But then it was the initial invasion of Iraq, and then back to Afghanistan, and back to Iraq and Afghanistan. It was just this ping pong back and forth. And, I mean, it's. It's not rocket surgery to determine what that's going to do to a family. You know, multiple years of 270 plus days a year gone, a couple years and over 300 days a year gone. And that. I don't mean that's overseas, but you, you know, you still have to train. If you're going to have individual time to work on your career, you're gonna have to go to those schools. There's currency training, there's all sorts of stuff that are required to do the job.

And at some point, you're gonna be faced with a decision. Do you want to destroy and implode your personal life, or do you want to take a break for a second? And I think most people, to include myself at that time, view that as a, you know, it's a stupid way to phrase it, but it's, oh, okay, do I need to fix my family, and I'll have to sacrifice my career to do so.

And it's a stupid way to view it because I think you do need both. I mean, if you are. If people who want to be single and pursue that line of work, I actually think it would be a little bit easier if you go the other route and you are married or in a committed relationship and you add children to that. It's not destroying your career. It's making sure that you're still a holistic human being on the other side of that and you're taking care of the other responsibilities that you need to, even though one of the hardest things to do is just to take a break and I, you know, go somewhere else. I didn't want to go to shore duty. I did not want to be a buds instructor.

And then I looked back on my time in the military, and it was the most rewarding tour that I ended up having. So it was my choice to go there and do that. And I didn't know. I had no thoughts of the officer route or anything that would happen after that. That was just the first step that I took because that was the billet that was available for me to take the break that I needed.

Jon Becker: Were you married at that point?

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, I got married very young. I was 23. I had. By the time we moved to San Diego, I had two children. And my third, my daughter, was born shortly after arriving in San Diego.

Jon Becker: I mean, especially at that time, you know, right post 911 and the, you know, kickoff, the global war on terror, like the op tempo for all of the tier one units, was just insane.

Andy Stumpf: I mean, it was just insane for everybody.

Jon Becker: Sustainable.

Andy Stumpf: I mean, it was. It was insane for everybody. From National Guard, from the, you know, I hate, you know, one of the things I. That the Sof community, again, personal opinion. I speak only for myself. I don't speak for the soft community. One of the things I personally think that is perhaps lost on a lot of people in the soft community is that our job is not possible without all of the galactic levels of support from either the conventional military or the supporting personnel, the supporting arms that make our job possible.

Like, I don't know how to turn a wrench on a helicopter, but I really, really, really want there to be a mechanic who understands how that thing flies. Because when things go wrong, they have the flight characteristic of a rock. So it's….

Jon Becker: Cause they are a rock.

Andy Stumpf: They are. I'm not a huge fan. I have not had amazing experiences inside of helicopters, but you have to. It takes all of those things, you know? Oh, tip of the spear. It's like, I get what you're saying, but even framing it in that way, it diminishes everybody else.

That makes your job possible. I mean, soft is a spoke of in a wheel that has hundreds of spokes. And even at the highest level, like, you still have to have the whole wheel to be able to do your job.

Jon Becker: Yeah, for sure. And at that point, the entire wheel is spinning like a f****** hamster wheel. Right. It is just. Yeah, you know, it is. You know, everybody is getting, you know, force reactivated and redeployed and, you know, it was. I just remember even.

Even from the stuff that we were supporting, that, like, it was crazy.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah. I mean, I would describe it as the wheel honestly, coming apart in some ways. I mean, they had to institute what was called the IA program, the individual augmentee, where people who had non combat related mos or NECs, depending on which branch you're in, are getting orders and you're gonna go overseas.

And don't get me wrong, they weren't, you know, manning a 50 cal in a hummer or a panda or something like that, or going out on operations. But if you are supporting combat operations overseas. You are absorbing the risk that is associated with being there. And it got to that point because there was not enough people to do what was required.

Jon Becker: You said the time you spent training west coast seals was some of the most fulfilling your career. Tell me why.

Andy Stumpf: Because you had direct impact into the future of the SEAL community and what it was going to look like. You had the ability. I remember going through as a student, and I was. I was young. I think I was the youngest guy in my class, barely 18. And I remember looking at the instructors, and even on my first day of training. It was almost surreal up until they started kicking the living s*** out of us and not. Not talking, like, punching in us in the face. I'm talking about all of the things that you can go find on YouTube about SEAL trading and crawling through all the sand and laying in all of the ocean and all the telephone poles and all that s*** that goes on there. It's all essential.

But I remember looking at the people wearing the blue and gold shirts. It's a navy blue shirt with green shorts, and it says UDT SEAL instructor on it. And I remember thinking, this is where I've always wanted to be. And I viewed those people. It's a little bit of a sloppy terminology, but I just viewed those people as heroes, like, oh, my God, these are my absolute heroes. And it's a dangerous thing to think about somebody in that way, because not all human beings are good.

You know, some human beings are going to take that position, and the fact that you feel that way about them and they're going to manipulate you, and they're. They don't have a positive intent. They have a malicious intent. They're there for themselves and not for the community and not to give back.

And I remembered that as a student, and when I went back as an instructor, I constantly reminded myself of that. And it's your chance to sit down as often as possible and to talk to these kids, because most of them are absolutely kids and be a role model and be a mentor and answer their questions. I would try to do. When students were in second phase, they had a curriculum on the schedule called core values, which was often taught by a chief or above.

So e seven, eight, or nine, depending on who was available. And for a couple of weeks, there was no e seven, eight, or nine, and I was an e six, and I would just go in there and I would just answer questions. And the questions that the students had, some of them were about war, but a lot of them were, do you think I should get married? What's it like being an operational SEAL when you have kids? How should I, you know, should I be worried about money? I'm 19 years old, you know, should I buy or rent a house? What do you think about this? What do you like? Legitimate questions.

And the power of somebody in that position to sit down and treat somebody like a human being and pass on the knowledge and mistakes that you have made in the hopes that people don't repeat those things, that they can be a better version of you and do things that you were never capable of, I mean, I don't even know what's more. What's more powerful than that, of that. It was just so rewarding to see that you actually have your fingers in the clay of what will become the community.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting. I think it. Mentorship is really undervalued in a modern environment. I think we overemphasize education. We overemphasize training, meaning learning to do a technique. We have come to a point where we really kind of underemphasize mentorship. You know, you go back not that long ago, and you became something by working with somebody who was that thing, and they spent time teaching you, and you learned through their eyes, and you inherited a lot of their mistakes without having to make them, you got their lessons learned.

And I think the problem with the modern approach of, I'm going to train you to do a technique, and I'm going to educate you about the theory, but we're not going to connect those two, is you lose some of those lessons and you lose some of that just osmotic learning of sitting with somebody that really knows what the h*** they're doing and can say, no, no, no, you don't do that. And I think what you lose often is the why.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, I mean, it's – One of my favorite questions is to ask why it's easy to teach somebody a tactic, and if they can, at a rote level, produce the results that you're looking for through that tactic, I mean, that's a good thing. That's a good starting block, but if they understand where it came from and why we need to implement that particular tactic at any given time, I think that's more powerful.

You know, mentorship takes a long time. I'm actually glad that I got to experience the SEAL teams pre 911. I did two deployments as a SEAL before 911. My first one was to Japan, and my second one was to Guam, and it was a crawl, walk run approach. I mean, it is an occupation that, for one, you can never master.

There are just too many things that you're always fighting currency with, whether it be, okay, hey, for this month, we're going to go out into the desert, and we're just going to do, you know, weapons, and we're going to shoot rockets and throw grenades and worked on tactics on the ground. Oh, s***. Two weeks into that, we need to add some vehicles, so we're going to fight out of vehicles, and then you come back like, hey, guys, we're almost not current with diving, so now we need to shelve everything we just did in the desert.

We're going to go spend two weeks diving on a ship, and then you come out of that, oh, we haven't jumped in a while, so now our jump pay, you know, and our currency is we're going to have to do two weeks of that. Well, we got to get the zodiacs out now after that, and we're going to go do oth or OTB over the horizon, navigation over the beach, swimmer scouts, reconnaissance, and just, oh, hey, now we need to go do room clearing, but we got to go do it on a ship.

Now, we should probably fast rope in. So we need. It's just, it's this never ending, let alone proficiency in any individual skill set. Maybe you're a comm guy. You need to go to an advanced course. You need to have an understanding of all of the equipment that you have.

Maybe you're a sniper, right? You need to stay current on your long guns. Maybe there's a new long gun platform coming out. You need to go get issue.

One of those things are the optics, the, you know, the combining those two things that, you know, taking pictures, sending them back over satellites, you know, long before you're ever going to get to pull the trigger. And like, those are just, those are two not minor jobs, but those are two roles inside of just this massive skillset that an operational element has to be able to maintain.

So it just, it took me probably four years until I wasn't wildly dangerous to everybody around me. And I'm not talking about my enemy.

I'm talking about to myself and the people that I was working with. The mentorship in that the mentorship is how I graduated out of that.

Not graduated like, you know, move the tassel to the other side of your hat, but just slowly gained enough experience that I was able to operate on my own and I had oversight and I was allowed to make mistakes in training environments and additional oversight and started learning those lessons.

And eventually you have enough knowledge and experience that you can have oversight off the next crop of new people that are coming in. But it's not something that you can do overnight. You can teach people tactics pretty quickly. Mentoring them and getting them to a place where they can mentor others occurs on a timeline that is largely unacceptable to a lot of organizations.

Jon Becker: No. And it's, you know, especially in law enforcement now, it's a huge problem because guys are not staying very long. I mean, people are, you know, retiring at 50, and if they're getting on a team, they begin on the team and they're not there that long. And there's a high level of rotation and force movement. And trying to maintain broad skill sets has become very challenging, both law enforcement and military.

What, you know, if you, based on the experience you had doing that, if you were going to give counsel to a team that's trying to maintain a broad skill set, what are your lessons learned from that? Like, how would you approach that differently now if I said, hey, you're the commander of the SWAT team. They need to be able to dive. You know, they need to be able to shoot, they need to be able to do that.

What would you do differently than what you see being done, you think?

Andy Stumpf: Well, I don't know. What SWAT teams are doing now, I have obviously zero law enforcement experience, but to apply that same question to the SEAL community, which I can at least speak from a little bit of experience on, you might be better off actually task shedding and giving some of those responsibilities to people that can actually focus on it.

You know, at a JSOC command, it's not that they're different people. You just remove a lot of the things that they have to be good at. I mean, we would spend six to 8 hours a day sometimes in the kill house because our job was to find, fix, and finish, locate where somebody is. You know, not like by fix them in place. I don't mean put a fence up around them, but you'd be relatively sure that that's where they're going to be. So fix their location, and then at some point, you're going to have to cross the threshold of the door.

Well, we spent almost all of our time doing that. And then we would integrate with assets, whether it's, you know, ground assets, airborne assets, bring in, you know, the PJ's and CCTs, and they're working in the training the stack with us. But that is what we focused on. Did we meet diving criteria so we could maintain our pay? Yes, we did. Would we all probably die if there was an actual combat swimmer operation? Oh, f*** yes, we probably would have.

And the reality is a conventional SEAL team is better suited, in my opinion, for a combat swimmer operation than development group, because a conventional team actually takes the time to focus on that. And that's okay. And I said, it's the same people. But if you're expected to do ten things every day and all of a sudden I say, hey, we're going to put you through some additional selection. And we're actually.

This time, we're going to be selecting you based off of your ability to perform as a. As opposed to trying to determine whether you are physically and mentally hard enough to do this job, because that's already occurred earlier in the pipeline. And if you make it, your roles and responsibilities are going to go from ten to two. I mean, how good can you get at those two things?

And I'm painting with a broom here a little bit. It's not like we were only required to do two things. There was still currencies and skill sets and all those things, but the support staff jumped from, like, maybe a three SEAL operators at a conventional team to one support staff to anywhere between 10 to 15 support staff per operator. You can task share, you're not pmsing a lot of the gear. It gives you that ability to hyperfocus.

So, you know, for a SWAT team, maybe the SWAT team should task, share some of the things or load, you know, offload some of those responsibilities that degraded their ability to focus the time in the direction that they need to and for the leadership, what I would do is I would take the time to rack and stack the priorities of the team, because if you can define what your actual mission statement and mission set is, you can plan backwards and then schedule your time accordingly.

If you don't do that, you're just a flag that's being blown around in the wind or a compass that's spinning, because it's like, oh, hey, we haven't shot in a while, so let's go shoot. Or, hey, we haven't dove in a while. Let's go dive. Like, hold on a second. We have limited time.

Or, you know, from my understanding from SWAT teams, unless you're at a massive organization like LAPD NYC, it's a tertiary duty.

You know, you're not just a full time SWAT operator. So you might be out on a beat. You know, you might be focusing on canine stuff.

For all of these things. I would really take a look at the requirements and allocate your time appropriately and get rid of the s*** that you can get rid of. It will. It will inherently make you better at your job because there's just less to focus on.

Jon Becker: Well, I think one of the big differences between my military clients and my law enforcement clients, especially when you move more into, you know, specialized units, whether they're eod units or SEAL units or whoever is there is a very clear understanding as to what constitutes your mission set. Like, there is – This is what capability looks like. You know, even. Even you think about a marine unit before they float, it's like you have to demonstrate all of these capabilities because you are building towards, you know, I always use the analogy of an Ironman.

Like, you're not Iron man fit, right? I've run a number of ironmans. You're Iron man fit one day. And prior to that, you're f****** exhausted or in recovery. And. But you're. You're building a level of fitness, and when you're deploying, you're. You're building a level of understanding, a level of skills, and you have a predetermined. This is what. This is what mission success is going to look like. You have to be able to do these. Let's just make it simple.

So you have to be able to do these five things to be deployable. I think one of the challenges for law enforcement is the skillset has gotten broader, the requirement has gotten broader, but it is a constant state of readiness, not a deployment cycle. And there isn't in most agencies, a defined mission set of this is what a successful SWAT team looks like.

Andy Stumpf: I mean, I would put that into the category of a leadership failure. The people at the very top need to be prioritizing those things.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think it's kind of that mission task list mindset. Right. Of this is what you've got to be able to do. And I think that there've been a lot of things that have transferred from the global war on terror from military to law enforcement. And I think, unfortunately, one of the things that hasn't transferred is that I think that some of that leadership capability of this is how you maintain readiness, and this is how you define what the essential tasks of a unit are. Would be great if they were passed down. And they just kind of haven't been.

There's been so much focus on tactics and movement and shooting and, you know, all of which are important, but some of the really good lessons learned. You know, like you said, coming out of training the seals of just maintaining readiness is a real challenge for most agencies.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah. But I think it needs to be remembered. And again, my opinion, only the role of law enforcement is more difficult than the job that I did. I had very tight brackets when I deployed overseas that I knew I had to be on. And my goal was to get as current, incapable, and lethal as possible before I went overseas, because all of those things are going to start sliding in the wrong direction as soon as you get overseas. There's no multimillion dollar movable, 360 degree, multi story light, variable kill house in Baghdad, in Bagram, or at an out station that you're going to be at.

So all of those reps that you're getting leading up to deployment, that is developing this hyper level of ability and focus and sharpness of the blade, it starts dulling as soon as you stop doing those things, which is as soon as you deploy overseas. And I needed to be really ready for what happened when I was overseas.

But again, to use a relatively rough analogy, like my time cardinal got put into the machine when I went overseas, and I pulled it out when I got out. Nobody's calling me at my house saying, hey, there's a barricaded shooter four doors down. Go get your s*** because we need you, because you're on the SWAT team. I would go home and I was able to be home.

The law enforcement occupation, all the – I'm very good friends with a lot of sheriffs and officers up here where I live in northwestern Montana. They're not. You're never really off. I mean, most of them are carrying 24/7, they are working shifts in the communities that they actually live in, and all of the other duties are just in addition to their regular shifts.

So I got buddies who are doing, you know, either on SWAT team or on their narcotics team, or they're on search and rescue and they're on call and they never know what's going to happen and when. So that constant state of readiness is so much more difficult to achieve and hold than preparing for something that is 6 months away or 12 months away or 18 months away, depending on your jort cycle.

Jon Becker: Do you think that as a result, it may be better to, you know, like you said, to task share, to be more specialized, try to maintain a smaller skillset that is a little more focused?

Andy Stumpf: I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer for that. And there's so much deviation in size of departments and the way that the roles and responsibilities are aggregated that I don't think it's possible to answer that. I think you have to do the absolute best that you can to be as prepared as possible.

And if you are, I mean, if you're, and I never worked with the LAPD SWAT team but I'll use them as an example because I know they have a team that is dedicated to that and they're not out there writing parking tickets and then going to do SWAT calls. Maybe some of the people are the support staff, but if your role is tactical in that way, you have the advantage when it comes to allocating your time.

And you absolutely should be planning and, you know, reverse planning from what it is. You're actually the nucleus of what your job is.

I mean, if you're at a department where you're the search and rescue dude, but you're also. I mean, I got a buddy up here who's. He's a – Or he was – He's the deputy sheriff, but he's also the coroner for the entire valley. So, you know, like, he's going from a traffic ticket to going to. Not that I think he puts tags on people's toes. I don't know what the h*** he does. But every suicide call, every fatal accident, and then, you know, search and rescue, this high speech, and like, good luck trying to be able to do all of those things that I think the best that you can do is, is to try to achieve the highest level possible.

But the leadership at those organizations where people are dual hatting or triple hattering or whatever foreheading is, they have to be aware that you're never going to get somebody to the, probably even the 80th percentile. It's a constant battle against currency. And I think the best thing that you can do for your people is to provide them the tools and resources necessary so they can do the best that they can.

Jon Becker: I think it's also defining what constitutes ready. Like I see it all the time. And I recently interviewed a guy from RCMP and we had a whole discussion afterwards about standards and setting standards. And, you know, we kind of concluded that the majority of time people are defining standards. They're defining what they would like to see, but not what is necessarily sustainable.

And so as a result, what ends up happening is, well, you know, Andy missed the run cut off this month, but, you know, he's been injured, so, you know, we're going to give him a pass and we'll, you know, make it up next time. And, and pretty soon, you know, it's not a standard anymore. It's a guideline. It's a, you know, it's a notional thing.

And I think that that is a big failure of leadership to give a clear, this is what we expect you to do because our expectations of law enforcement, I mean, I've dealt with law enforcement for 38 years. Right? That's literally where my career started was with LAPD and La sheriff's teams were the first two teams that really trained me and I spent time with and the breadth of skill set that we have placed on them, especially post 911.

You know, it's like, well, you know, you have to be ready to run a Patriot mission because, you know, could be a w and D mission and we want you to be able to do, to dive and to do all these things. And it, you know, the full time teams manage to hold it together in the same way that the SEAL teams do. But, you know, there's less than three dozen full time tactical units, that is, you know, 60 guys doing that mission in the United States.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, it's wild. I mean, I personally, when it comes to standards, I think that the, and the world that I came from the battlefield should set the standards and everything should be tailored towards that. And standards, you know, you talked about the drift in the standards. Standards have to be objective, not subjective, either meet the standard or you don't. And it has to be blind and it also has to be published. Here's the standard that everybody has to meet.

Nowhere in the standard does it say anything about man or woman, because I got that. I get that question all the time. What do you think about women being sealed? I don't give a s***. As long as I can meet the same criteria that I had to meet, I don't really care.

But if you deviate from the standard in the interest of diversity, equity and equality, then I start having a problem. Because when you go from a one way range, which can be super fun, and you can hide a lot of inadequacies, and you go to a two way range, the bullets flying downrange don't give a s*** whether you're a man or a woman, and your survivability is based on your ability to perform at levels of exacting standards and only levels of exacting standards. Nothing else matters.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's a really valid point. And I think that in the drive for equality, for inclusion, for whatever, we've seen this all over the country where it's like, well, you need to lower the standards and you need to make the standards more fair.

And we're having a hard time and police departments are having a hard time getting people right now and they're having a hard time keeping them. And I would say worldwide, because I deal with teams all over the world, I would say worldwide, 70% is a pretty good number right now. If you're provisioned for 60 guys and you have 42, you're doing pretty well.

Andy Stumpf: I think it's important to remember that the fair is generally in northern Iowa and there's a merry go round in cotton candy.

And other than that, you should probably stop using that terminal.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Andy Stumpf: Because nobody anywhere who is actually trying to achieve anything, whether that be with the utmost integrity or a criminal enterprise, they don't really give a s*** about fair. Fair is a great academic principle that fails in the real world. And, you know, I am all about equality of opportunity. I am not about equality of outcome.

Again, publish your standard. If man, woman, child, horse, I don't give a s***. This is what you have to be able to do. And if you can't do it, whether or not you like the fact that you're not going to get the opportunity to pursue that occupation, it is for your safety and the benefit of the other people that would be on the team tasked with doing that job. So f****** get over it.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think. But I think part of that is writing good standards. Part of that is making the standards defensible. You know, we pick the standard because now it's not a, you know, it's not a random, you know, you got to be able to run a 555 miles because if you run a 556, you're too slow. There has to be some rationale to it. Let's talk….

Andy Stumpf: Let's talk about this, too. First off, everybody should stop running. All right? You need to go learn how to fight so you can stand there and fight, because running is for cowards personal opinion. I only speak for myself.

Jon Becker: That's great!

Andy Stumpf: It's fascinating to me, you know, running was a part of the PRT physical readiness test in the navy as well, and can't think of a time ever where I got to lace up some new balances or whatever running shoes I had and wear shorts and a t shirt or not if I wanted to, obviously sunglasses because I was a seal. I mean, I had to have those on gators, probably.

But, yeah, every time I had to run, I had about 80 pounds of s*** on me or 100 pounds of stuff. So your 550 time, you know, or you're, oh, I'm doing a 4430 miles. That's incredibly impressive. What's your max deadlift. Could you pick a dead body up off the ground?

Could you drag me in full kit? What's your mile time with all your stuff on? Like, to me, those are the more important things, as opposed to a strip down. What's your, you know, your 1 mile time?

Jon Becker: That's interesting, you know, because physical standards, physical fitness standards and physical capability. I just recently interviewed Kelly Starretta.

Andy Stumpf: Yep, I know Kelly well. I worked with him for years on the crossfit side of the house.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And, you know, the thing I love about the way Kelly expresses what constitutes fitness. I asked him if you were, you were. You were the guy that was defining fitness for a SWAT team and defining a program for a SWAT team or for a soft unit because he's worked with kind of everybody. What would it be? And he said, I'd spend a lot less time in the gym, and I'd spend a lot more time playing and running and doing things that were fun.

And, you know, I would. I would have people that had the ability to move fluidly. And from your perspective, running, running, SEAL training, you know, what. What do you think matters in, well, in physical standards?

Andy Stumpf: Initially, I would disagree with Kelly, and he's a good friend of mine, and I disagree with him. And it's not his fault that he thinks that he's never done the job.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Andy Stumpf: And you risk. You risk confusing what you see and what you think versus the demands of actually going and doing it.

Anybody who's ever worn kit for an extended period of time understands how important strength actually is. And strength can be taken too far. You know, I used to say there's nothing, there's no negative side effects for picking up heavy s***.

Well, there is if you become a powerlifter and you go down that path and, you know, the. Let's just maybe call a spade a spade here. The most successful power lifters in the world are taking a little bit more than chicken breast and powdered protein, and I'm fine with that.

Like, live your life however you want to. I actually wish everybody would tell the truth because maybe I'm interested in what you're taking because you look awesome and, you know, I need to do my own research.

So, not to get completely off topic, but it's – You can be too strong, but you can also be too fast. I mean, if you look at the body type of people who are finishing first at marathons all around the world, they are not super. Well, it's – They're great at marathons, and for them to be finishing at that level that they are in marathons, they are doing exactly what they should be doing. They are specialists.

A professional power lifter is also a specialist. I think for, from a tactical perspective, you have to be a very well rounded generalist, but it needs to be based in strength training. You shouldn't overdo it to the point where you're overstressing your joints, but just go where 60 pounds of body armor and all your other accoutrements on your gear, whether it's radio, water, mags, frags, flashbangs, whatever it may be stuff.

Yeah. And then, you know, let's not forget your helmet with, you know, some night vision goggles on top of that thing. And that's.

Anybody who's ever worn MVGs for a full cycle of darkness, you take that thing off, it's like, oh, that's the best feeling I've ever had.

Even if you balance your helmet out and you start and put counterweights on the back and. Or a battery pack, whatever it may be, or then you just totally. And you add to that, you know, the dynamic of moving around in a vehicle.

So it's not like it's an incredible load on your neck, but you're taking that load on your neck and for people who've worn body armor, they know it's the. The strain on your trap muscles is unbelievable. And you take that off, and you feel like your shoulders are naturally rising up because they're finally allowed to move.

And you know, I was never a fan of having things strapped to the side of my legs. I tried to keep it on my hip at best or above, just because I could move over things better. But to be able to do that, you need to be strong.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Andy Stumpf: And that's. And we haven't even talked about, you know, I've never encountered a barbell or a linear object that is equally weighted on both sides in real life. And just because somebody can deadlift 225 pounds on a barbell does not mean you can pick up your buddy who weighs 225 pounds in his kit, throw him over your shoulder like you can in the movies, or drag him out of a compound.

So you need to be strong. And I would base a lot of that, that training. In functional strength training. I would use nonlinear objects. I would be using kettlebells. I'd be using sandbags. I would be doing drags. I would be doing poles. Equal balance of upper body and lower body with two things in mind.

One, capability and two, longevity. Because if you don't strength train in that environment and protect those joints from those loads of. I mean, I can't. Again, I can't speak to anything in the law enforcement world, but the. It's the classic military heavy kit syndrome of neck, shoulders, back, and knees. The number of people that I know that are struggling with issues with those particular joint groups, it's. It's nearly countless.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think that a lot of times, what ends up happening is that the focus on strength becomes a focus on linear plane strengthen, you know, bicep curls, bench presses, and not rotational capability and stability. And all of the stuff that hurts you when you pick up something, you would pick up a person. You pick up a ram, you pick up a heavy object and rotate with it or go over something with it. All of that.

Andy Stumpf: There's show muscles and there's work muscles. You can really build your show muscles in the gym. And I'm not saying they don't serve a purpose and they can't work, but I just, you know, I challenge people. Look at a construction worker as an example, and you look at all of the machines in a modern gym.

Let's say you build retaining walls for a living. What's fixing that range of motion? What's fixing the plane like on a Smith machine where the bar is locked into place and you have to move along that plane. The answer is nothing. There's nothing on a construction site that looks anything like a barbell that's equally loaded on both sides. And you move it in the way that you do in a gym. So why would you train in the gym? To be better on a construction site?

And the answer is, well, you could do your show muscle stuff, but then make sure you're actually, you know, replicating. My father was a mason, and it was bricks and blocks and buckets of concrete and wheel bills full of concrete and picking things up. And of course, I had no understanding of training back then because I was eleven and he was paying me $1.50 an hour, which I still think you should go to jail for.

But, you know, I look back at all those things that the job required and the best way to actually train for that. I mean, take care of your ego first, because, you know, you want to have your, you know, your back and bias your chest and tries. You want to look good with your shirt off. I totally get it.

But you'd probably be way better served off using non linear objects, things where one side of the body at a time, full range of motion, extension, flexion, rotation, all of those things, building those muscles to work in that manner, because that's how human beings actually work and move outside of a gym.

It's really weird if you think about it. You go into these gyms and you see so many people on the machines, and I'm not trying to begrudge people working on the machines by any stretch of the imagination, but the range of motion and the locked in linear way that they're moving, it doesn't exist outside of the gym. So what are you training for?

Jon Becker: And I think that's exactly what Kelly's point was, is like, we spend too much time in these linear movements. We spend too much time doing, you know, bicep curls and, you know, leg extensions. And, like that matters. But in the end, building those muscles to an excessive level is giving up all the stability that comes from nonlinear movement, right, from rotation, from going over things, and, you know, all of that.

And I think that, you know, I think, I think you guys are actually in agreement there is more about doing things that are, you know, replicative of what you're gonna do in the field. But it's not as easy as just going to the gym is.

Andy Stumpf: No, but it could actually be more fun. I mean, I, for the first eight years, that I was in the teams. It was back and bys on Monday, chest and tries on Tuesday, and Wednesday was leg day. By that, I mean, I ran because I hated doing any squats or, like, weighted stuff with my lower body.

And then, you know, Thursday comes around, probably time for back and buys again, maybe throw some shoulders in there, a little shrug action, because, yeah, that's totally necessary.

And then, you know, back to chest and tries. So, I mean, I get it. I've trained in all of those modalities, and I wish I could go back and slap my younger self in the face and say, hey, sit down for a minute. Let me talk to you about what the job is actually going to require, and let's train down that pathway.

Jon Becker: So you would do more of that kind of stuff. What else would you do if you were, if you were going back now and redesigning the way the teams are training physically, what else would you do?

Andy Stumpf: Emphasize recovery and rehab. I'm not. I'm not up to speed on all of the science that is associated with either, you know, sauna or. I mean, honestly, I don't stretch a lot or do yoga at all, but the number of people that I have talked to who have claimed to have life changing experiences, specifically on the yoga side of the house.

I'm not saying it should be like mandatory yoga for SWAT teams, but there's something to be said for, you know, if you think about building all this capacity and muscles, a lot of the time is through the concentric phase of motion, really extending those muscle groups as well and working on flexibility is a great thing.

You know, cold therapy, I just. I would emphasize it's so easy younger in life, and it's another thing that people, you know, when you look at performance enhancing drugs, people think, oh, it makes you stronger in the gym. It does. Through the mechanism of. It allows you to recover faster so you can spend more time in the gym. It's actually, it shortens your recovery cycle. It's like, okay, so recovery is actually critical, and it is – And I put almost no emphasis on it when I was training at a younger age.

And if you think back, like, how could you really help wear and tear throughout a career? Start making those things a priority from the beginning, which people may not want to do. And as a leader, you might have to be a little bit more positive in the nature of control when it comes to those things. And in the long run, it's incredibly beneficial.

Jon Becker: Well, I think you can, you know, just, just watching your show and guys that are now at the end of their careers and the damage that they have all endured. And, you know, you think about how long it takes to build a seal, how long it takes to build a good swot operator, how much money you invest, how much time you invest. Set aside the moral obligation to the operator.

Just from a practicality standpoint, recovery is a h*** of a lot easier thing to do and to teach and to put emphasis on than it is to like grind people up the way that we have in the last 20 years. And I mean, you know, there's obviously a huge moral component too. Like, I have a huge problem with the fact that we are spitting guys out on the backsides of their careers with this, with, you know, with drug issues, with, you know, all kinds of stuff.

And then, you know, like, hey, yep, good luck, you know, and creating an incentive for you not to report anything because if you tell me you're hurt, then I'm gonna take you off duty status. So you're not hurt, right? No, I'm not hurt.

Then you get to end your career and it's like everything's broken. Everyone I know that's leaving the teams, you know, whether it's the SEAL teams or the green side of the house, are having, you know, seven surgeries and, you know, and struggling to remember their kids names and like, it just. It just feels like we're really not serving our warriors well.

Andy Stumpf: I think the responsibility has to be shared.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Andy Stumpf: It can't be placed completely on the requirements of the job. We're not talking about autonomous robots for the most part. We're talking about highly motivated, highly disciplined, intelligent individuals. And I get it. You don't want to say that you're injured because you might have to take a knee for a bit and maybe you might miss out on the big miss, whatever you might think that is.

But I'd rather miss out on a couple big misses and be able to know my kid's name and sleep at the end of the night or when I'm in my forties, fifties and later on and be a functional human being, then knowingly not say anything and not advocate for myself and be destroyed at the end of that. I think the lion's share of the emphasis needs to be placed on the individual and not the mechanism.

Jon Becker: Do you think that that's something we teach? I mean, is that how do we change that culture and create that individual responsibility and nothing else? Create the education? I mean, I feel like a lot of times you know, you're making decisions when you're.

When you're a, you know, 23 year old seal, 24 year old seal, whatever you're making, you know, like past Andy is gambling, future Andy's, you know, mobility and not even realizing it's occurring.

Andy Stumpf: I think the most powerful thing that you can do, if I look back to 23 year old me, the most powerful motivators were the people that were farther along in their career, especially the leadership that I looked up to.

And I modeled my behavior largely based off what they modeled to me. So I think the most important thing that could happen is senior leaders who are in positions of influence need to model the behavior that they want to see from the people underneath them.

Jon Becker: That is a fantastic way to put it. And it goes back to mentorship. Right? Us taking time to invest in you. And let's talk about leadership for a minute. So you've had roles in the civilian world. You've had roles, obviously, in a number of different elite military units. And I know that you teach leadership. Now talk to me about what you see. The big failures in leadership are currently.

Andy Stumpf: I think, one of the biggest failures that I've seen writ large in the business world is they take the military leadership model, and they try to apply it to the civilian world, and it doesn't work. If I were to line up a SEAL team, say, there's a hundred people there, just for easy math, you take somebody who knows nothing about the military, and let's say it's in the wintertime, so they'd be all in their dress blues, like, oh, man, these uniforms look awesome.

And they would have absolutely no idea who the top performers are or the lower performers. They'd have no idea who the good leaders are versus the bad leaders, because they don't know what they're looking at. But inside of that 100 people, I'm going to tell you right now, every single person knows who the dog s*** leaders are and who the great leaders are.

And the problem that I see from the civilian world is they look at the seal, and I can only talk about the SEAL community. They look at the SEAL community, and they go, these people must be the best leaders in the world. So what we're going to do is we need to get them all, and we need to hire them in our organization and just treat this organization and do what you did in the SEAL community. And what they're missing is, you know, there's only one gold standard in the SEAL community, and that is success.

And when you are working for an amazing leader, and what I'll say is this, the best leaders that I ever worked with in my life were in the SEAL community. And the largest, most steaming piles of human excrement that I ever worked with from a leadership perspective were also in the SEAL community. It would have been invisible to anybody outside that internal group because the end state or the end result, it never changed.

If we had a great leader, it made our job really easy and we were successful. If we had a s*** leader, we succeeded in spite of them because everybody around that person picked up the slack because we were all so incredibly bought in on what it is that we were doing for a living. But if you only viewed it by the outcome, it's like, here's success, here's success, best leaders in the world. And the reality is there's two very different mechanisms that are at play.

And what another thing that is lost on people looking at military leadership is you have to remember how bought in somebody is at a SEAL team. So you volunteer to join the military. You go to boot camp, Navy boot camp, I think it's very fair to say, is not the hardest evolution in the world. It might be challenging for some people, but take it easy. You're going to learn how to fold your underwear in a manner that is, quite frankly, disturbing.

And your t-shirts and you're going to stack them there. You're going to learn how to march. You're going to learn military terminology, naval terminology. And you're going to a little bit be molded from a me centric world that you came from in the civilian world to a Wii centric world of the military.

Well, somewhere in there, if you want to be a seal, you're going to have to go volunteer to take a screening test. You're going to go take your screening test. And if you passed, you're going to have to go pick an occupational school. Or at least this is the path that I went through an occupational school, go graduate that, and then you're going to go to buds. And so that's a crucible in and of itself right there.

Then you get out of buds. You have, you're not even a SEAL yet. You've just made it through an additional training pipeline, a selection course. You don't, you don't know s*** about your job, so somebody's going to have to teach you your job.

And now they have like this 18 month training program that I think is fantastic. I believe it's still called SQT, SEAL qualification training. Everybody gets issued their trident at the end of that. And I think it's fantastic because that way, everybody going to a SEAL team, east or west, has a baseline template and foundation of tactics, techniques, procedures. A standard has been met.

And that way, each individual team can't set their own standard because if you have to work together, it gets really weird. And I'm sure you've experienced this in the law enforcement, like, whoa, why are you guys doing that? Why are you saying that? It's just way better if everybody's from the same playbook.

But then you get to your SEAL team, and then every day you're competing to do the best you possibly can at your job, you still have to meet the standard. And by the time you arrive at a SEAL team and you have your trident, buy in is not a question. Everybody, anybody who was not bought in to what it is the SEAL mission is, was gone a long time ago.

So it, you have incredibly motivated, incredibly disciplined, incredibly bought in people all aiming in one direction, knowing that success is the only criteria that matters. I've never worked at IBM, but I don't think that's the culture there. You know, it doesn't take.

But here's the thing. If that's not the culture there and the military leadership model, even in the SEAL community, we talk to our each other in a certain way. We are very harsh with each other, and it doesn't come from a place of trying to hurt your friends or the people that you're working with. It actually comes from a place of love and wanting to be the absolute best in the world possible at what it is that you're doing.

And you can talk to those people that way because they're bought in. You take that philosophy and model and try to bark at people like that in the civilian world. There's going to be people there who this is the only job that they could get. There's going to be people there who are just trying to build their resume so they can go somewhere else and make the money that they want to make and everything in between those so that buy ins not there. You can't treat people that way.

And that's why you oftentimes see military leaders leaving the military, trying to apply a leadership model from the military in the civilian world, and they fall flat on their face. It's not, you can't replicate it in an environment that isn't the same ecosystem that we came from. And it seems to be lost on a lot of people.

Jon Becker: I think it's a very valid point. I mean, I've seen in my career a lot of people come out and struggle, and they struggle because they come from an environment that is, if you look at it from a SEAL standpoint, you have a very thorough selection process that is down selecting to a certain personality type and a certain level of motivation and a certain level of engagement and like you said, a certain level of commitment.

And in a civilian organization, whether it's a law enforcement organization or private business, that's not true. Like, I've run a, you know, a bigger and bigger business every year since I started my business at 17. And every year the population changes, the number of people change, people's life, circumstances change, and you don't have the ability to control them in any way, shape or form. They can always vote with their feet.

And so it is a very challenging environment because it's, you know, for lack of a better term, a multi thread environment. And everybody's motivated by different things. And I do think that there has been certainly an overemphasis. And I think there are a lot of things. I mean, I teach a class on culture centric leadership that is all about elite practices. Right?

There are certain things that elite teams all over the world, whether it's law enforcement, military teams do that are fantastic and can culturally be moved into commercial organizations. Like you said, the ability to directly and candidly communicate with one another, that can exist in the civilian realm. Now, it doesn't necessarily, you're not going to have the ability to say the kinds of things you can say to each other.

You know, as a guy who's been immersed in SWAT teams and spec option, it's my entire life, you know, there is a direct level of communication like, hey, man, you get a little fat there. What happened to you?

Andy Stumpf: Go talk to somebody.

Jon Becker: Work in a civilian environment.

Andy Stumpf: Go run a business that has 15 employees and talk to them like that. Let me know how many you have at the end of the week. It's just – it's a completely different. And, you know, having said that, you know, there's foundational principles and characteristics of leadership inside of the SEAL community that broadly apply. I don't care what you do for a living, for sure. It's how you apply them that actually matters.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I completely agree with you there. I think that it is certainly, you know, leading in a complex environment like a military special operations environment. There are a lot of really good things. It's just, it's kind of like we talked about the training. Like, I find that some of the stuff that carry, that should carry over doesn't carry over.

And some of the stuff that does carry over just is lost, and you see it. I mean, I've watched several friends that have come out. They're really good military leaders, and they get out into a civilian environment, they're like, dude, I can't do this. These f****** people aren't motivated, and they don't care about their jobs. And, you know, welcome to the real world.

Andy Stumpf: I didn't go through the selection process that you did. Welcome to what the 99.5% of the American population is used to.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. Did you find when you came out and started working in the civilian world, you struggled with that?

Andy Stumpf: No. I mean, honestly, at the end of the day, I tried not to take myself too seriously, and I tried not to take the job too seriously. It's just an occupation. It's what I did. It's not who I am. And I had an opportunity. You know, like I had mentioned before, I was working with Kelly Starrett when I was working for CrossFit.

And so I was teaching the CrossFit conceptual or the level one seminars at the time, doing a lot of the conceptual lectures and just interfacing with people on weekends. And you just kind of, you know, you can kind of learn. And it was a nice off ramp of one experience and an on ramp onto the other one. So I had the good fortune of kind of having a foot in each bucket before, you know, that day. You go and sign and get your DD-214.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And you're still doing some kind of commercial marketing stuff and some of that on the side. Right?

Andy Stumpf: What do you mean by commercial marketing?

Jon Becker: Well, because you were running. You were doing, like, commercial marketing stuff for CrossFit. Right? Helping to build the brand and that.

Andy Stumpf: I was running all of their sponsorship agreements. So my last role that I held there was two. One of them was managing all the corporate sponsorship, so I was managing the Reebok relationship with another employee who had a law background, and then I was a pilot for the organization.

Jon Becker: Got it. So talk to me about the SEAL foundation, because I know that's something else you're very passionate about and have put a lot of effort into, including setting a couple of world records.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, there's actually. Well, there's quite a few SEAL foundations. So, I mean, depending on how you phrase it, the organization that I specifically was fundraising for years ago was the Navy SEAL foundation. But there's a SEAL future foundation.

There's all sorts of derivations of that I can't speak intelligently about what all of those other organizations do. I can speak a little bit more intelligently about the Navy SEAL foundation, but, you know, the community that they're trying to service is, you know, directly in the name. So that shouldn't really be a surprise to anybody. But it's. I look back and there's a lot of emphasis that's placed on the warfighter, which is good. It's a hard job. I actually think I….

One of the ways that you can make a war fighter even more lethal is to support their family to the best of your ability, because there's nothing that sucks more sitting on a blackhawk a minute out from an objective that might get a little bit spicy. And you're worried about the call you just had with your wife because, of course, every time you go overseas, the washing machine explodes or the dishwasher explodes or the refrigerator stops working or fill in the blanken, you try to handle all these things on an administrative of logistics side.

And this, you know, Murphy's law, the second you go overseas, oh, my car doesn't work, or this that or the other, and having counseling resources and support for family, having resources for childcare, having even just the ability for spouses or significant others to get together. The military is not great at providing those things, and I don't think they ever actually should be.

And I think there's an essential role for non government organizations and for nonprofits that can really step into that void. Because one thing that I still do believe is that the vast majority of Americans are very patriotic. I mean, there's a certain conversation that could be had about how service in the military has kind of been reframed and just the aims of what this country stands for and the vernacular in some groups is shifting a little bit. I think we're going to be okay.

And I think it probably has shifted throughout the course of the history in the United States. But most people will ask you, how can I help? And my answer to those people now, now that I have an answer for it, is work with organizations like the Navy SEAL foundation.

Support them. Or, you know, if you come from an army family and you're in special operations world, there's a Green Beret foundation.

You know what I mean?

You can find an organization that speaks to your DNA, your family DNA, whatever it may be, and support them, especially if they are supporting the warfighter via support for the direct family members and the SEAL foundation. The Navy SEAL foundation has got, I mean, I can't even begin to get into the programs they have, whether it's healthcare related for people post military service, educational benefits for family members, Gold Star spouses and children benefits. I mean, I could. I would just point people towards the Navy SEAL foundation website.

Make sure you have a cup of coffee and a good amount of time to look through what they offer on their website because it's very robust, but it's all designed, again, my description and my thoughts on it, to support the warfighter via supporting the family network.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it. And you're right. I think it is very difficult for the government to provide the level of support.

Andy Stumpf: I don't think they can. Yeah, I don't think they can. And I'm glad that there are a people out there who want to start organizations or nonprofits that are dedicated to that area. It's, you know, again, you look at the military, how many things do you want the military to be responsible for? Just like the operator that has to do 40 things versus the operator that has to do. For which, I mean, what level of proficiency do you want? Do you want them to suck at everything or be fantastic at four things?

Jon Becker: Yeah. And right now, the government as a whole pretty much sucks at everything. So I have heard that. I wish they could get a couple of things that they were good at and do it consistently. Yeah. I think that there's a lot to be said about local community support, and whether that community is the local steel community, or it's people that live in Coronado, or it's people who live in San Diego county or whatever. I think that we've lost a little bit of that supporting the local community, and I think that we would probably be wise to bring some of that back.

Andy Stumpf: I think so. I think that, you know, it's easy to point people towards national organizations. At this point in my life, I generally start people at what you just said at find something local, find something that is meaningful to you, where it's easy to continue to support an organization or an entity when you can see the impact of what your support is providing.

You know, I don't know, pick a random charity for the United States, and I can't think of an example of one right now, but donate $100 to a massive organization that services the entire United States and let me know how you saw the impact of that. Hundred bucks. Yeah, it's tough. Not impossible, but tough. Much easier to see those instantaneous impacts when you start with a local search, and then you can work your way towards a national.

Jon Becker: 100%. I mean, we started a family foundation and initially, your inclination is to donate money to big things that are going to make huge differences. And you realize that, you know, if you give, you know, insert name of large organization here, because I don't want to malign any of them. But, you know, your hundred dollar gift to that will not have the impact that your hundred dollar gift to the local, you know, veterans of foreign wars or, you know, homeless shelter or pick something that is local where that money will actually make a difference.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, I don't want to talk. Yeah, I don't want to talk people out of supporting national causes. My point was, you'll see the impact of it quicker at a local level and from a sustainability perspective of continuing support. When you can see the fruits of your labor, it's a little bit easier to sustain that support.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Let's talk about the show for a minute. What prompted you to start cleared hot? Like, what, what was the motivation behind it?

Andy Stumpf: So I kind of operate under the theory that you should listen to people that are either more experienced, more successful, or smarter than you. For me, that is very easy because I am a functioning moron. So almost everybody that I encounter has more experience, more intelligence and more success than I do.

Jon Becker: Totally understand.

Andy Stumpf: If I had written out of hundred things while I was in the military that I was going to think about doing when I got out, you would not have seen the word podcast on there because I didn't know what they were until far, far too late. I'm definitely a late adopter, and I got introduced to them when it was around the time that I was doing the jumping stuff for the Navy SEAL foundation for the fundraising.

And I did a podcast called the Wodcast Podcast. And it was actually a very crossfit specific podcast. And there was a man on the show called Tate Fletcher who introduced me to Brian Cowen and Brendan Schaub, who hosts the fighter and the kid. And later on, Tate, I guess Tate has known Joe Rogan for quite some time. And he was on an episode with Joe shortly after he and I had met. And afterwards he called me up. He goes, hey, man, you and I are going to go on Joe's podcast. I was like, okay.

So I went on the podcast, had no clue the size, scope, scale of his show. I honestly, as far as I knew about Joe, I think I knew he was a comedian, but it was like, cool, I'm going to get to sit down and talk to the fear factor guy. Maybe we'll talk about eating, like, raw bison testicles or something. I really didn't know what to expect. I was not immersed in that world at all.

The second time I went on, I went on by myself. And in between those two, Joe and I kind of linked up directly and became friends. And he's a fantastic human being, Joe is. A lot of people ask me about him, and I just tell him he's the exact same off the air as he is on the air, and he is for where? For his station in life. He is one of the kindest people and legitimately cares, and I wish more people could see that side of him, but it would be impossible to, you know, he's the listening audience. There's no way he can really show that to all those people.

Second time I was on there, after we wrapped it up, he goes, you know, you should look at starting a podcast. And I was working with a brand. The law enforcement people will be familiar with this brand, 511 tactical. At the time, I was one of their ambassadors, and I had told the guy that I was working with because I think I had worn something 511 on the podcast that time, and I had told the guy that I was working with as kind of my liaison there about what Joe had said.

And he goes, you know, why don't we buy you your first kit? And so it was really Joe's idea. I just kind of took his advice, and I was working with a brand that was willing to put out some capital to buy a very inexpensive, very small kit that was two microphones and a zoom.

I think it was the HD six recorder. I literally had, you know, microphone stand, and I would hold it in place because they would wobble back and forth with a rogue fitness five pound plate that you'd put on the end of a barbell. And that's where it all started from. And I, a friend of mine came up with a name, and I like creativity and the ideation.

I struggle with that a lot of the times. It's not my strong point. I definitely lean on people for creative ideas. You know, the logo behind me, this is, John Dudley created the arrowhead logo there. It was somebody else's idea to get the neon sign, somebody else's idea to go from two microphones to four, add video. And just about every step I have taken along the way and almost everything I've done in my life, I have not been the originator of the idea.

And I definitely try to be open and honest about that. I listen to people when they, when they talk, I listen to people who are successful, and when they give you advice, and I try to do the best I can to follow through. And so, very long winded answer to the short question, but that's how it came to be.

Jon Becker: What do you see the mission of the show is?

Andy Stumpf: Ah, the mission of the show. I don't necessarily know if it has one, and I don't necessarily know if people realize how cathartic it is for me to actually create the show because it allows me to explore areas that I am interested in and just listen to people who are passionate about things, talk about what they're passionate about.

And I've been able to reconnect with some friends who I used to work with and have conversations about things that we never had when we were in the military, and maybe because we didn't feel comfortable doing so or, I don't know, maybe as you get older, a little bit of the square edges end up rounding a little bit.

But as far as me, like, my guiding principle is I try my absolute best to be open and honest and transparent and just tell the truth and to highlight the shortcomings of my life and who I have been along the way, the shortcomings of my military career, the mistakes that I have made in the hopes that somebody doesn't have to make them the way that I did because some of them f****** hurt. And they did make me the person that I am. But that doesn't mean that everybody has to make those mistakes to be the person that they want to be.

Jon Becker: Yeah, sometimes we can learn from the mistakes of others and not have to repeat them. And, I mean, that is ultimately the guiding principle for the debrief. Right. Is take people that have been in these situations, take people that have led in these situations, and put them in front of the broadest professional audience we can. My entire career has been focused on protecting tactical operators, and that might be in my day job with. With gear, it might be in stuff that I teach, and it may be this. I mean, this grew out of us doing a lecture series.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And we would do, you know, because we deal with teams all over the world and a lot of different teams and have a lot of conversations, and I went to a lot of debriefs, and, you know, sometimes I would sit in a debrief and just go, man, God, I wish, you know, this. Everybody needs to hear this debrief. And that just didn't happen. There isn't that mechanism to share it, and sometimes it's because the information is not information that can be widely shared, but, you know, as you know, there are ways to talk about this stuff that is, you know, can be open source and nobody really understands.

But people that do it for a living walk away thinking, oh, s***, I'm, you know, I don't, I don't want to do that. So, yeah, I totally, totally identify with that.

Andy Stumpf: Even the most sensitive things that I was exposed to in the military, there are ways to talk about them in a broad sense.

There were. People can leave with the message that you're trying to convey without releasing anything that's sensitive from a TTP perspective.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think that, you know, the thing is that most of the lessons learned in operations are not, you know, it's not classified technology, it's not how you got there or, you know, sources or methods. And, like, most of that doesn't matter for purposes of the. This is what I learned. And, you know, because the screw up is, I mean, tech always fails, the gear always fails. Right? That is a given in the, in the world.

But I think that it is those interpersonal relationships and leadership and training and that stuff that really is very generic, but it's sitting down with people that have that experience and having that conversation.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, I agree. Podcasting is an amazing medium because it's global in its reach. You can really expand the size, scope, and scale of the impact you have.

Jon Becker: Well, I mean, you're sitting in Montana, I'm sitting in California. You know, we're sitting here face to face, even though we're, you know, hundreds of miles apart and recording in, you know, hd and perfect audio without ever having to sit in the same place.

And it's just the ability to bring information, especially to a selected audience. I mean, really, like, what? When I watch cleared hot, I'm watching cleared hot because of the kind of people you're curating.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, it, you know, my list litmus test for people that I'll host an episode with is whether or not it's interesting. I mean, I'm fascinated by what other people are passionate about, and I like learning. I don't. You know, one of the lessons that was taught to me early on is if you ever get to a place where you think you know everything, you probably should start looking for a new job.

And I think, I mean, honestly, even from a mental perspective, I think the desire of continued and pursuit of knowledge and learning, it helps from just keeping you as youthful as you can be, you know, keeping the muscle between your ears, which I believe is to be the most important one, exercising just like everything else that people are training.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, in the end, you are either getting stronger or you're getting weaker.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah. Yeah. I think those are pretty much the two binary choices.

Jon Becker: There is no. There is no homeostasis. You're not like, you know, you're not just sitting around and doing nothing and getting better. You are. You are getting weaker, you are getting dumber, you are getting fatter. And I think a lot of what I'm trying to do, you know, every year in personal life and every year in professional life and is constantly strive for. How do I get a little bit better?

Andy Stumpf: Well, you're definitely getting weaker if you run a lot. And that should be remembered and tattooed on somebody's forehead.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's very fair.

Andy Stumpf: Learn how to fight.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's very fair. What? So talk to me, like, on the show, if you look back over the course, how many shows have you done now?

Andy Stumpf: If you add in the Friday episodes, somewhere between 400 to 500.

Jon Becker: So 400 or 500 shows. When you look back, what sticks out? What are the really profound memories?

Andy Stumpf: That's a tough one, because I have. I have talked with so many different types of people. I think the most profound thing in general is just how powerful other people's experiences are for them. If you never leave the world that I came from, what you're going to find is people having generally similar experiences that are powerful. But it's a narrative that's as old as time.

That's anybody who's ever been in a profession of arms. And you start talking to people about the experiences that they have had in their life. And maybe that experience is horrendous. Upbringing from a family that was both physically and mentally abusive and what they were able to do with that and how they dealt with it or somebody. You know, I've talked a lot with a lot of people about the positive impacts of psychedelics that it can have.

But I hosted an episode that'll be out here in about two weeks with a guy that, you know, at a young age, almost broke his brain with a psychedelic experience. And I wanted to talk to that person because I don't think it does. It's a disservice to only focus on the potential positives and not highlight the potential risks associated with this type of stuff. It's just the power of these experiences that people have.

It just fascinates me, and that's the biggest thing that I take away from it.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think we forget the power of story. Right? Human beings evolved because of story. What separates us from animals is the ability to relay information and the ability to share. And before written word, before anything we had story.

Andy Stumpf: I mean, that in an opposable thumb and a much larger brain.

Jon Becker: Yes. Yeah. But there, there's a pretty good argument that that much larger brain evolves from the ability to communicate in part. Right? And I think that it's that. I think that's what makes especially long format podcasts what you're doing. What I'm doing, what Joe Rogan's doing, the sitting down with somebody to actually have some time to know who they are and not just catch a 30 second sound bite of them passing on a news coverage or a video.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, I would agree.

Jon Becker: What's coming up? What's coming up on cleared hot that people need to be watching for?

Andy Stumpf: Let's see. I got about four episodes in the can right now. So that's about a month worth of the Monday releases. You know, I just had an hour long, just over an hour long conversation with Sebastian Junger. It actually came out today. I have no idea when this episode will come out, but for people hearing this and you're in the veteran community, I would go back and listen to that. It came out November 10th. He was never a soldier himself, but he has written so much about the impact of that environment and what it can do just to the human psyche. It was a really cool conversation to have.

I got Border Patrol agent talking about the realities of what he saw on the border and talking very openly about what the current border. I don't want to use the word crisis because I think it's overused situation actually is. Who else is in the can? Just talked. Did a podcast with a guy yesterday, Backseater in both f, just taking the lessons learned from, you know, being a military aviator and how he has passed that forward.

And his whole purpose in life now is to try to influence the younger generation, the people that, you know, are somewhere between the 18 year or late teens to, you know, late twenties and taking those lessons and making sure that they're not lost. So that's what's kind of on the near term horizon that what I've already got in the can.

Jon Becker: What’s the best way for people, I mean, obviously cleared hot on YouTube. What's the best way for people to engage with, with what you're doing?

Andy Stumpf: It depends on how they want to get engaged. If you're going to be an a******, then just do me a favor and don't bother because I'm not going to read your comment anyway. I'm not crazy. Active on social media platforms. I would say Instagram is probably the one I'm the most active on. And it's just my name. Andy Stumpf with the number two. One, two. Yeah. This is the podcast. You know, the podcast just put in cleared hot podcast. You'll find it on all the traditional platforms and that's probably the best way.

Jon Becker: Beautiful! So I'd like to end with five questions. Rapid fire, quick answer, you know, initial reaction. What is your most important habit?

Andy Stumpf: My most important habit? Consistency.

Jon Becker: That's a good one. What's your favorite current online resource? Website or podcast?

Andy Stumpf: Pornhub. That's a joke, by the way, man!

Jon Becker: My favorite one is that as an educational source.

Andy Stumpf: I'm not here to judge people. Maybe it's educational, maybe it's recreational. I don't f****** know. My favorite online resource. It's fascinating. We have access to more information than human beings have ever had access to. And some people, they, they really lose the forest for the trees.

Honestly, as dumb as it is to say YouTube, I have learned so much by just going to YouTube and typing in. How do you. The setup that I'm using right now on Riverside, I was. I actually switched over to doing some remote stuff on Riverside and I went to YouTube. How do you do this? How did the cameras that I have in the studio, the equipment that I have in the studio, where do you get studio lighting?

What lighting should you use? How. And I just went to YouTube and put that stuff in there and d***, there's so much information.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's fascinating. It is both made us stupider and made us smarter at the same time. It really is fascinating how I can make an argument that we've gone down to an eleven second attention span. But then Joe Rogan has the most successful show in the world. So it's kind of bifurcated us into, you know, book reading morons and people that actually want to get smarter for sure. What do you think the most important characteristic of an effective leader is?

Andy Stumpf: God! That is tough to put into one. But if I could put it into one, it would be control of your emotions at all times, regardless of what's happening in the world around you. It's just infectious. Both for the escalation of emotion and the de escalation which will help you objectively think.

Jon Becker: What's something you've changed your mind about the past few years?

Andy Stumpf: The reason I can't have an answer off the top of my head is there's actually been quite a few things that I've changed my mind about over the years, you know, the military leadership model and just leadership in general is one, for sure. I have definitely changed over the years. How I speak about it.

I actually end up cautioning most organizations, I will literally open a speech about leadership, cautioning an audience about applying the military leadership model without understanding what it is that they're doing. I mean, as dumb as this sounds, love. I was married for 19 years and eleven months and got divorced. And I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life by myself because I didn't think. I didn't think it was a real thing anymore. And then I found somebody who changed my mind about that.

Jon Becker: That's fantastic! Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because the older you get, the more you realize that in the end. And several of my mentors in the last few years have died. Guys that, when I first started my career, took me under their wings and made me smart.

And you do come to the realization that none of the s*** you did matters.

Andy Stumpf: It doesn't. I am.

Jon Becker: The most matters is the relationships.

Andy Stumpf: Yeah. I am the most disinteresting person to my children on the face of the earth.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Andy Stumpf: I am just their dad. I'm just their dad. They don't give a s*** about any of the other stuff that I do. And I could spend all of my time trying to do this, that or the other and define myself by occupations or occupations and job titles and totally f*** up my relationship with those kids. And that's actually all that matters.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I've watched so many of my friends, and I grew up in a house that I didn't want to grow. I didn't want my kids to grow up in, and so did my wife. And so there was a conscious focus on our kids and putting the kids in the center of life. And it is fascinating, as the kids have gotten older, you realize that it, like I was jokingly say, you know, how many other people's kids would you be willing to kill to protect your own? It's, you know, if your answer is all of them. Exactly. That is the only right answer.

Andy Stumpf: For clarity, everybody out there, we're talking about this metaphorically. Your children are safe around me.

Jon Becker: It's fine fictitious, Damon. It is only a thought exercise. But, yeah, it really is fascinating how you think you understand what love is and what caring about something is. And then you have kids and you realize, like, oh, my God, I totally get it now. I think that's, I think love is a really good answer. Question. Last question. What's the most profound memory of your career?

Andy Stumpf: God, I don't even think about it that often anymore. Probably the day I got out, to be honest with you, I had spent so much of my time earlier in my life thinking about what I had wanted to do, but it didn't extend beyond that first job. And then it comes to an end, and you have to have a conversation with yourself about what's next, who do you want to be, and how do you want to get there?

A lot of people struggle with that, and that's okay. I don't think it's designed or possible to be super seamless in that. And I also don't think that people should avoid struggle and come to this realization where life is all about feeling good and everything is easy. I think it's designed to be difficult. But that day where you have to hang, literally and metaphorically, you hang one uniform up, and then you have the rest of your life in front of you. Try to figure it out.

Jon Becker: That's a great answer! That's a great place for us to stop. Andy, thanks for your service to our nation. Thanks for what you're doing with the podcast, and thanks for joining me today, man!

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, you're very welcome! Let me just be very clear, I didn't do that much. I didn't. I mean, I'm just being honest.

Jon Becker: I love that answer! Thanks, man!

Andy Stumpf: Yeah, of course.