[00:00:00.110] - Brandon Reece
Well, my friend,
[00:00:01.150] - Chris Nordyke
I feel like we're back in the saddle, bro.
[00:00:02.680] - Brandon Reece
We're kind of ear to ear right now.
[00:00:04.440] - Chris Nordyke
And that's not just— well, listen, I mean, we've been on a string here.
[00:00:07.630] - Chris Nordyke
I mean, with Kerry Jones last week, and that just published. I mean, awesome conversation with a generational restorer.
[00:00:14.530] - Brandon Reece
Oh yeah.
[00:00:15.090] - Chris Nordyke
And then, wow, it's just continuing in the same.
[00:00:18.620] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, some rad back-to-backs. So this is one of two shows. So the next 2 weeks we're going to be talking to a couple of fellows that wrote a book called Bring Your Own Pencil. So today is Griffin Brand And then next week we'll have actually Griffin and his co-author. But man, dude, Griffin, you know, for those of you that are from the industry, you've probably ran into him. He's been part of the PE development happening with High Ground. And so, and he was the one on the ground at a lot of these shows interacting with contractors. In fact, that's how we met 3 years ago.
[00:00:51.050] - Chris Nordyke
Well, I just like, I mean, he's your prototypical entrepreneur, you know, like while he was in the Army building the, he doesn't go deep into it, but building a real estate portfolio, flipping houses while he's in the 75th Ranger Regiment. Yep, like special operator. And here's a guy, if I remember the story right, at 26, he's hanging out with diplomats and all the alphabet letter agencies. And as a 26-year-old in Afghanistan, and he goes into some of the leadership lessons that he learned. I mean, just a really incredible person that I think all of us can learn something from.
[00:01:26.870] - Brandon Reece
So yeah, and it's just stage setting, to be honest. Like, guys, like make sure you're paying attention because you're not going to want to miss next week's episode on the back of this. This is just kind of gets everybody fired up.
[00:01:38.890] - Chris Nordyke
So good.
[00:01:39.490] - Brandon Reece
But Griffin, man, smart, intellectual, fast on his feet, super articulate, and just drops bombs for like an hour straight. And then we get to do some more of it later. So anyways, guys, this is going to be one hell of a show. Trust me. All right, let's go.
[00:01:52.650] - Chris Nordyke
Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart Boots podcast?
[00:01:56.190] - Chris Nordyke
I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us.
[00:01:59.870] - Chris Nordyke
Welcome back to the Head, Heart Boots podcast.
[00:02:02.760] - Brandon Reece
I'm Chris and I'm Brennan. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:02:13.310] - Chris Nordyke
I'm noticing that, and I really appreciate it.
[00:02:15.390] - Chris Nordyke
I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:02:16.270] - Brandon Reece
No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. Well, well, my friend, welcome to the show, dude. Like, I am super excited to get into this interview with you. I've got some backstory I'll open with in a moment, but Griffin, thanks, brother, for joining us. I'm excited.
[00:02:32.480] - Griffin Brand
And thank you both for having me. This is a show that I've listened to quite a bit, one that people talk about all the time. And so it's absolutely a pleasure to be on here and talk with you two gents today. I'm excited for it.
[00:02:42.520] - Brandon Reece
Right on.
[00:02:43.120] - Chris Nordyke
That's awesome. I think I'm trying to piece together when we first met. I think it's been close to 3 years.
[00:02:47.340] - Brandon Reece
Oh yeah.
[00:02:48.580] - Speaker 3
All right.
[00:02:48.920] - Brandon Reece
Right. Maybe 3 plus.
[00:02:50.280] - Griffin Brand
I think it was the original RIA that I went to 3 years ago. Yeah.
[00:02:53.940] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah.
[00:02:54.360] - Griffin Brand
I didn't even know how to spell restoration at that time. I was so new to the industry. I didn't— I'd never even touched a dehumidifier before, but not that I'm that much further along 3 years now later, but I can spell a little bit better, I guess.
[00:03:08.730] - Brandon Reece
Oh man, I'm excited. So, so for some of the folks that have maybe paid attention, we have a little bit of some crossover in our audience, but you and I talked earlier. I was actually on your show, a veterans-focused show where you talk a lot about giving veterans guidance on where to go once they leave active duty in the services. And that was awesome. It just had a great exchange. But it just kind of unpacked a little bit more for me, our connection in terms of our services in the armed forces and being part of the US military. We're going to get into that with you. Obviously, you took a very specific direction with that, which will get a few of us fired up, a little bit of hoo in the background when we get into that. So I'm excited. Anyways, dude, let's do two things. I want to stage set really quick with the audience what we're doing, because this is a two-show opportunity. So we're going to release these episodes back to back. The first one, we're meeting with you specifically. We're going to have some opportunity to learn your backstory, see what it is that the leadership development journey has taken you on and where it's ended you with the release of a book.
[00:04:10.780] - Brandon Reece
By the way, the foreword was done by General McChrystal. So for any of you that actually pay attention or fans of the military or anything, what a hitter to have read your book and then affirm you. So that says something. So we're going to get into that. But then the second episode, the following week's episode, is going to be with you and your co-author Dan Casey. And we're going to talk about the book itself. And by the way, I've already gone through, done some executive summarization of it. It's gold and it's usable gold. So anyways, stage setting for that. The second show is going to be all about your book and you guys as authors. But today, bro, let's get into the story. Let's, let's walk the journey. What was it like, baby Griffin? Early days, early days, all the way up to now you're an author and you're getting ready to share with the world some awesome insights on how we can be better, better leaders with plenty of military stories. Yes, please.
[00:05:03.350] - Griffin Brand
Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I really appreciate it. Yeah, General McChrystal, you mentioned, was kind enough to read our book, to preview everything, write a blurb for our cover. And what's crazy about that story is I asked him, I asked him if he would do that. It was basically a cold email. We may have met in person once, you know, long ago, but he served before, before my time. When I sent him these suggested blurbs for our cover, He didn't even take any of the ones I was trying to save him work. But he's such a great dude. He read it on his— of his own accord, and he wrote his own blurb. Like, all of— he just threw out the suggestions that I gave him. Instead of pressing the easy button, he took his own time to digest the material and write his own blurb. So I just thought, you know, what a phenomenal guy. For one, he's incredibly busy. So the fact that he would even consider that to begin with. But two, it speaks volumes for the community, right? It's not about us or our book in any way. That's just the fact that the special operations community, the military community at large, And a lot of these— and the reason I say this, because a lot of it translates to the blue-collar services industry.
[00:06:00.850] - Griffin Brand
Like, it's such a tight-knit community. We want to help one another, we want to lift each other up. And the fact that he would— that General McChrystal would do that, given all of his competing demands, just, I think, speaks a lot for him, but also for the greater community and how we help one another.
[00:06:13.070] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, that's huge.
[00:06:14.270] - Griffin Brand
So back to your, your question, let me get to the background of where I come from. I'm— I was born and raised in Southern Virginia, went to school in North Carolina in Charlotte and played football there. But before I played football there, I grew up aspiring to play football somewhere else. I thought I was going to play in the NFL. My family, we grew up going to Virginia Tech home football games. I don't know if you guys play football out there in Oregon, but in Southern Virginia, Virginia Tech is everything. The Ducks do these days. That's a good point. But anyways, I grew up going to Virginia Tech home football games, and that was my childhood. Every Saturday in the fall, we would go to the Tech home games, and frankly, I didn't miss a Tech home football game until I played— from the time I was born until the time I went to college to play myself at Davidson, I hadn't missed a Tech home football game. And so that was everything to me. Flash forward to my high school years. I had a couple substantial knee injuries, and the second one was actually so severe that I had to— my mom very graciously moved for about a month.
[00:07:14.740] - Griffin Brand
She and I just moved to Ohio and got surgery from the Cincinnati Bengals doctor because all of the local doctors said, you'll never run again, much less play organized sports. And so, of course, as a 15-year-old, like, that's devastating news when you want to play in the NFL. So we go get this surgery, but that, that completely changed the trajectory of my life. I realized I never fully recovered after that surgery. I realized the NFL was probably out of reach. Playing at Virginia Tech was also pretty much out of reach as well. Not to mention the fact that I topped out about 5'10". So that didn't help any of these, these ambitions. So I ended up looking at schools that I could go and get a good chance at making it into med school., and Davidson was one of those schools. So I thought I was going to go be a doctor. I get to Davidson trying to figure out ways to pay for it. And I learned about ROTC, a way for the Army to pay for your school. And also they might pay for med school too, if you're a good enough student and like do well enough in undergrad.
[00:08:05.700] - Griffin Brand
And so that was the trajectory I charted out for my life. I'm going to go get selected into med school, have the Army pay for it, be a doctor in the Army. At the end of the day, I'm a doctor, have a great solid profession. And partway through Davidson, I started getting a little bit more interested in the military thing., and I had a really difficult phone call with my parents where I called them and said, hey, Mom and Dad, I know you are banking on me being a doctor. I'm actually deciding to pivot. I'm switching from being a biology major. I'm going to go be a Spanish major. Very marketable skill, by the way. And I'm also going to try and go special operations in the military. I'm not going to be a doctor anymore. Wasn't— my parents are incredibly gracious. They didn't— it wasn't a freak out, but I think Behind the phone, they were losing their minds like, "What just happened? What is he thinking here?" But, that's what I did. So, I commissioned into the Army, had a number of great experiences that I'm happy to dive into more detail, but ultimately was selected into the 75th Ranger Regiment and had phenomenal experience there, kind of a career and in some ways a life-defining number of experiences there that affected how I view any opportunity, how I view leadership especially., and really set the standard for how I view organizations at large because of the standards that the 75th Ranger Regiment holds so close and what makes them so special.
[00:09:22.400] - Griffin Brand
So I'll, I'll pause there for any, any double clicks you guys have, but kind of framing.
[00:09:26.380] - Brandon Reece
You're already going right where we want to go.
[00:09:28.740] - Griffin Brand
Yeah.
[00:09:28.820] - Brandon Reece
I just, you know, something I just want to highlight, and I think you and I have touched base on this several times, you know, what the military in general, right, wrong, and different, how you feel about it. Like that's not what the conversation's about. I will tell you, who, though, that like the military is near and dear to my heart and it's the backbone of the freedom that our nation gets to experience. So we definitely have an opinion on it. But, and when it comes to military service, what is so powerful is that they put an immense amount of weight and responsibility on very young people and they find a way to equip them enough to actually do a pretty damn good job of it. And when you start going into, like you said, the different tiers of special operations, then all of that begins to get ratcheted up aggressively. Aggressively. What some people may not know is that in the Army, the Rangers, you're getting exposed to some higher-level strategy, combat tactics, techniques, warfare fighting, even though the general body of that group is still young. Whereas when you get into some of the upper-tier special operations groups, you're starting to get more senior people that already have several years of operating experience in the field.
[00:10:37.720] - Brandon Reece
And so again, I think what's unique about what you grew up in is an environment where there's still a higher level of responsibility being delegated, but it's still on really a young group of individuals to take on and shoulder those responsibilities. So what did you see in those early phases of getting accepted into the 75th Ranger element? Like, what were you being exposed to? What started to happen to shape those leadership perspectives?
[00:11:03.260] - Griffin Brand
You're absolutely right. There's 18-year-olds that make it through Ranger selection, uh, you know, on the enlisted side., and all of a sudden they're in a squad performing operations on some of the most highly sensitive, highly dangerous, and really complex objectives in the world. And here they just graduated high school. So it is a pretty incredible situation. And then on the, on the officer leader side, like it's the same thing. You, you might have had the, the good thing is on the officer side, you have to have done virtually every job, especially if you're a platoon leader or company commander, you have to have done that job in the regular Army first. So you do have a little bit of experience, but I'd like to share a little bit of a personal anecdote here. A lot of my life has been defined by getting through doors that I was told were closed. And one of those doors is Ranger Regiment. But going back a little bit, I was told, you know, so I commissioned into the Army as an armor officer. I was told that there's no way you can go from an armor officer to get into the Ranger Regiment.
[00:11:59.310] - Griffin Brand
It's for infantry guys and some specialty enablers, but there's, there's no MTO or like there's no slotting for an armor guy. And somehow or another, you know, I went to selection, was able to get my foot in the door there. I got selected, was told by multiple super high-up commanders that even though you've been selected now, you still can't go. I was like, what do you mean? They told me yes. But all that to say, I just want to encourage people. Like, there's always— there's a great book called The Third Door. There's always a back door to get in. It's— there's always, you know, there's the front two doors, the front two lines to get into some opportunity or restaurant or whatever it is, but there's always a third way in. And I think a lot of my life has been defined by trying to find that third way because everyone is telling me that there's not. Everyone's telling me that there's no way to get into this. And so Ranger Regiment was the first example of that. You mentioned getting opportunities where, frankly, you may not be qualified for, you may not have been trained for, but you have to figure it out and lead appropriately.
[00:12:55.210] - Griffin Brand
And one of those was while I was in Ranger Regiment, my second major deployment to Afghanistan. There's a— this very rare position, and it's the, the one special operation operations liaison to the U.S. ambassador to all of Afghanistan, typically reserved for a more senior officer, typically a major or sometimes a lieutenant colonel. But for whatever reason, I guess my battalion commander thought that I was up to the task. And so I'm put into the, the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. I'm one of the few uniformed military people in the entire embassy. And oh, by the way, I've— I'd only been to Afghanistan one time before, and that was just for a brief deployment. So I didn't even really know the geography of the country, much less how to consult the special operations communications tactics for the State Department there, the— or the ambassador. But I find myself, you know, a couple weeks into being in country, sitting at a table with the US ambassador, a bunch of super senior State Department leads, and I'm the only one in uniform, the only one at all that has any sort of military perspective. And here I am, I'm like— I think I was 26 at the time, still learning what, you know, what happens in Afghanistan and how things are interacting.
[00:14:02.490] - Chris Nordyke
And—
[00:14:02.800] - Griffin Brand
to flash forward through kind of that situation, I concluded the deployment by bringing an entire group. There were about 20 different groups of all sorts of agencies and 3-letter groups that everyone can probably guess on this call. And I ended up bringing them all together in a working group, but it was because I could take the approach of acting very humbly saying, "I don't know what I don't know, but what I do know is everybody needs to be talking better." And I understood that there are a lot of disconnects between these various organizations. And so I was able to kind of throughout the course of that deployment see things more objectively and bring the right voices in the room. We had a lot of really great success as a result of that because we got people talking a similar language in the same room. And that was for me, the guy who had, you know, had only spent a couple, a couple of weeks in Afghanistan before this and had no business being there. But I think, you know, the moral of the story is like, Sometimes that objective perspective is very helpful. It actually is referencing the book Range.
[00:14:59.820] - Griffin Brand
It's on the bookshelf behind me with David Epstein, but talking about how oftentimes a generalist is better for some specialized problems or mission sets.
[00:15:08.300] - Brandon Reece
Gosh, dude.
[00:15:08.700] - Griffin Brand
So I just—
[00:15:09.650] - Brandon Reece
yeah, I got to stop you for a moment because I think that this is one of those scenarios where we could blast past this and miss something, a piece of gold that you dropped for us. So I just tried to kind of summarize very quickly what I heard you just say. And I think if I messed it up, you can clarify for us. So Bold confidence in what we do know and admitting what we don't is what set the stage for you to be an optimal leader in that particular environment in that moment. Is that fair? Did I summarize you correctly there?
[00:15:40.670] - Griffin Brand
Absolutely.
[00:15:41.550] - Brandon Reece
I mean, because that— I mean, you're a young man at this point, probably. How old are you at this point?
[00:15:45.640] - Griffin Brand
I think I was 26.
[00:15:47.160] - Brandon Reece
26. Okay. Luckily you've got some college, second deployment, but you're talking about three-letter groups. These are government-funded groups, boys and girls. So these are, these are not the folks that you're running into at the local grocery store, and you as a young man with very little experience have to corral these individuals that all have high ego, high expectations, high drive. Like, these aren't slumps on the couch, and you just went in boldly with what you understood, and you were very open and honest about what you didn't. And I bet you it built trust almost immediately out of the gate. Am I wrong there?
[00:16:20.050] - Griffin Brand
No, that's, that's absolutely right. And one, one thing I found, and it's something again that I had learned just being a platoon leader in the regular Army before this experience, was You can never know what's truly going on in the situation unless you show up there in person, unless you feel, physically touch, experience what somebody is going through. And so, you know, as a platoon leader, a lot of, a lot of guys would get mad at their soldiers because a vehicle wasn't working properly or they didn't know a certain drill on the machine gun or whatever it might be. But the only way to truly understand the problem and diagnose it and fix it is by just physically going there and checking on it. And this isn't a plug for micromanagement anyway. I think that there's a way of doing this that allows them to be their best and operate outside of you. But what I found in the embassy was, again, nobody at that table was probably under the age of 40. So I'm a lot younger, definitely less experienced. But I found that if I went to each of their offices, if I went out on a mission with each of them, or just kind of shadowed them for a little bit of time, I could find out all of the issues they were dealing with at a high level, of course, but then learn how I could link in another organization to solve that issue or to better communicate, because for whatever reason, because they'd been there before, because they had been doing it for a long time, they just hadn't been cross-pollinating things that they were learning.
[00:17:33.540] - Griffin Brand
And it was up to me, the newbie guy, to just say, hey, I don't know what I don't know, but what I do know is I can come in and see what you're doing. I can come in and experience your day to day and make— just draw a couple of little connections to make a difference.
[00:17:45.040] - Brandon Reece
Super powerful, man. Like, I, I remember reading General McChrystal's book, and this was ultimately what he brought to the special operations groups when he was leading those units, you know, overseas is, is that he just created a path for more transparency. And my limited understanding is, is he held the line that these heavily egoed, siloed special operations teams with a lot of risk and a lot on the line, he held the line of we will be honest and transparent with each other. And by doing so, he shifted the ability for them to succeed in a very complex and dynamic environment. And as far as I understand, historically, he's one of the first generals to make those silos break down and begin to open up communication with these groups. And this is from all armed forces groups, local and international. And it sounds like you did a, a small version of a very similar perspective, like get on the ground and open up communication and then net the benefit of this gained kind of insight, right, that we can leverage as a team versus being siloed and on our own.
[00:18:53.850] - Griffin Brand
I love McChrystal's phrase fast and flat, and that was the goal of his operate when he started off in Iraq and then later in Afghanistan. His goal was to flatten the organization so there weren't 20 levels, 20 layers between information at the edge and the senior leader who's making a decision. If you can flatten that, to where a decision is— something happens at the edge of that action and a decision is made as quickly as possible after that. And if you can also give subordinates— I like to— the military uses the term left and right limits. If you can give them those left and right limits and then let them operate to the best of their ability within those, then they can make decisions a lot more quickly. They can know that it's nested within the higher commander's intent or their overall kind of command philosophy. And you see much better results. And that's why we talk about McChrystal's actions in our book, because it was such a revolutionary approach to warfare. And that's really the only reason we had any level of success in Iraq and later in Afghanistan. Of course, a lot has transpired over the last couple of decades since that.
[00:19:53.800] - Griffin Brand
But yeah, you have to keep things fast and flat. And the second that you have siloed information, siloed organizations that are not communicating between one another, that's when huge breakdowns happen. And that's exactly what we were seeing in that— in the Afghanistan embassy.
[00:20:08.320] - Brandon Reece
Oh my gosh, dude, I am— I don't know if you can tell on camera, I keep getting the hairs on my neck standing up because there are moments when we're in the middle of a show where you can just tell there's information exchange that's happening that's really valuable regardless of what my opinion is. And I feel like we're in one of those moments, dude. You, you are sharing gold that someone could hold on to and go do something with as soon as they get out of the cab of their truck and stop the show. And we're just getting going. Like, I can only imagine what's going to happen when we get Dan Casey on for phase 2. But dude, flat and fast. What was it? It was flat. What was the phrase?
[00:20:48.790] - Griffin Brand
Fast and flat.
[00:20:49.970] - Brandon Reece
Fast and flat. Guys, operators, business owners, leaders, what can we do to get flatter in our organization for the sake of speed? And what can we do to break down these silos that are closing off communication that's critical to our success. Oh my gosh, dude, we've got a journey. We have— we're just getting started.
[00:21:10.130] - Griffin Brand
If I could just make it a hair more practical for some— for an operator, for a business owner, whoever. Yeah, I think people hear that and they're like, how can I have everybody report to me? That just sounds crazy. It sounds like micromanagement. It sounds like I would have my hair on fire even more than I already do. What I would suggest, and this is what General McChrystal did, was he started a video teleconference, basically a massive Zoom for everyone that was under his command. Again, privates and like lower enlisted weren't on this, but every major decision maker in his command would hop on this Zoom call basically every single morning. Thousands of people across Iraq and later across Afghanistan. And he would put out— he would have informed people speak on updates from their, you know, their neck of the woods, what their kind of piece of the fight. And then he would put out his like overall commander's intent or commander's update for each day. And that way information was flowing very quickly across the entire network. Like you said, special operations was known for having a— people called it a tribe of tribes.
[00:22:08.230] - Griffin Brand
Like everyone was their own little tribe that didn't share with other tribes because they were so insular, so secretive, so elite that they just got really contained in those bubbles. And he, he burst all the bubbles and he started calling it a team of teams. And that was really the revolutionary concept. And he kind of— the most practical way he did that was that, that large teleconference that he did every single morning. So maybe as a business leader or general manager, whatever, a great move would be to somehow imitate that philosophy somehow every morning, maybe once a week, whatever it is. Just put out your philosophy, put out an update to everyone across the organization so that everyone is on the same page. And it's, you know, one click for you or one quick type. It consolidates all of that rather than you feel like you have to have everybody report to you nonstop. So just Just 2 cents there.
[00:22:53.150] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, I think like what comes to my mind is like an owner creating a 5 to 7 minute Loom video. Sure, it goes out, it's transcribed, it's got a summary of it, every single person in the organization gets it. Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:06.410] - Brandon Reece
One of the things that he did in conjunction with that, and it applies, is that there was this encouragement of off-to-the-side conversations then with those leaders. So basically what he did is he set the table that we support each other. This is a we event. It's a team sport. Here's what we gotta cover right now during this time frame, but please, if a piece of intel is coming in from the CIA over that's operating here and that makes sense to you and what you're currently operating, you two get off to the side, start exchanging information immediately. Let's, let's take, let's find a path to support each other with the shared intel. And so again, like going off of what you guys did, let's But there's the general output of keeping everyone operating on the same page. And then it's this encouragement of we're all battle buddies in this company. Like if you know something or have experienced something and it's critical to protecting the brand, get into a meeting with this individual immediately. Let's share that information and make sure we empower each other. So just something to add to that I think is powerful.
[00:24:04.280] - Griffin Brand
Well, and General McChrystal would also call— he would, he was known for calling like squad leaders and platoon sergeants and platoon leaders. Very young guys, he would call them directly. And it's like probably terrifying to get a 3-star at the time calling you and asking what you're seeing on the ground. But he wanted to know, you know, he couldn't be everywhere at once. But what he could do is get perspective from guys that were at the very edge of decision-making. And so he regularly would touch base with those people and just so that he knew what was happening at the edge of all the action. And he— in that way, he could in some way be everywhere at once and be in all parts of the the country of Iraq at the same time.
[00:24:39.600] - Brandon Reece
So powerful, man. It's good stuff.
[00:24:41.850] - Chris Nordyke
So non-military guy here. I think one of the things that I've read a lot of stories and obviously many people listening to this, whether they've got military background or not, have seen a lot of the movies that have been done about Afghanistan. And it would seem that historically there was a unique kind of chaos on the battlefield and operating in that particular territory. And I'm so curious for you to talk about those experiences of like how, how do you live out the commander's intent in such a uniquely chaotic environment. And, and of course, also the geographic, you know, elements too. It's, it's very mountainous, incredibly rugged, right? From a battlefield standpoint, what were some of the experiences that you had when you reflect on kind of the leadership principles you took away from the battlefield in such an interesting environment?
[00:25:29.210] - Griffin Brand
Like, it's a great— yeah, it's a great point because like you mentioned, Afghanistan has incredibly diverse geography. You've got very mountainous kind of northeastern part of the country. You've got desert in the south and the Kandahar region. So I mean, in a lot of ways, it's a beautiful country. Like, you could have ski resorts there if there wasn't tremendous tragedy and, you know, things over the years. So it is a very complex place because you're not fighting a nation-state. You're not— in Afghanistan, we weren't— like, the Taliban, other groups weren't wearing uniforms, and so there was no way of knowing who the enemy was at all times. And in fact, most of the time, they intentionally used noncombatants to shield themselves or to divert things, and they would, they would meet in mosques, which are obviously no-strike zones. So incredibly divert— incredibly difficult operational environment. And that's why the war prolonged so long. That's why there was no kind of definitive end to things, because frankly, we're fighting a very, a very experienced foe, a very experienced group in the Taliban. And then of course, when ISIS got involved as well, they had a unique flavor to it.
[00:26:31.210] - Griffin Brand
But all of that presents a very unique leadership experience, to say the least. And so I think I think what I personally took away from that are a few things, but I think the main thing being, just like I talked about entering the embassy with very little experience, you're going to find yourself in situations where there's no precedent. You're going to find yourself in situations that don't fit the exact parameters of what the commander's intent is. It might check a couple of boxes, but then there's always this little variable like, but it's different in this one way. And so how do I respond knowing that I'm not going to get reprimanded later on or knowing that I'm not breaking some sort of rule here? And I think in a lot of ways there's nothing new under the sun. But I think business leaders find themselves in the same situation all the time. I think guys, because of technology changes or the growth of their business or a competitor entering the market, whatever it might be, they find themselves in situations that look a lot like things that they've seen in the past but have a wrinkle that doesn't fit the exact mold.
[00:27:25.670] - Griffin Brand
And so they don't know exactly how to respond to this new challenge that's presented. And I think the one thing is making just the best decision that you can. I think people can overanalyze situations. They can— the cliché phrase, analysis paralysis. I think a lot of times if you've experienced a similar situation before, you've got it, you've got a gut feeling, you have a pretty good sense of how this should be reacted to. And so understanding that within yourself and responding accordingly, I think is really, really important. But also having the humility. So on the one hand is being confident and acting within what you feel within yourself. On the other hand is having the humility to ask around, to ask to ask other people, to bring in third parties, or to bring in whoever might have an informed perspective to help you. And so countless times when I was in the embassy in Afghanistan, I would call up a more senior officer who was working a different job within Afghanistan or doing something different and just be like, hey, hey, sir, how do I respond to this? How would you respond? Or how would you think through it?
[00:28:23.000] - Griffin Brand
Who would you bring into the conversation? And just having that humility to be like, look, I've never dealt with this before. And I know you've got a lot more experience than I do. How would you approach what I'm dealing with? And I think, again, just being able to say, I'm not sure. I love the phrase, if you ask for advice, people often give you money. If you ask for money, they give you advice. It's kind of the same in this situation. If you ask for advice, people are going to give you some, some gold back. They're going to give you something that really helps. And so that's kind of the approach that I took. Always be willing to say, look, I don't know how to deal with this, but what I do know is I'm going to I'm going to learn really quickly, work really, really hard, and I'm going to collaborate with others because there's a lot of others that are way, way better, way smarter, way more experienced than I am.
[00:29:02.540] - Brandon Reece
Oh my gosh, this is awesome. Okay, I'm super want to nerd out a little bit more here. So let me— help me understand this role that you held at the embassy during this window of time. And in conjunction with that, I think what I'd be super curious about hearing is what was like the one or two things that just kind of blindsided you? Like, like you obviously knew you were going into an environment that was new and uncomfortable, but what absolutely caught you off guard in this new environment?
[00:29:32.990] - Griffin Brand
Well, the very easy answer here, the first one was COVID. So I went, I went in the middle of 2020, which was, uh, I spent virtually the entire year of 2020 in Afghanistan. And that was of course when the country was in utter chaos. Most people, I don't have the exact data on this, but most Afghans over the age of 60 died of COVID So So, you know, we'd be targeting a guy, we'd have a whole target deck built out, and then all of a sudden we'd get notification or some sort of report saying, you know, he already died of COVID So it's like, well, that makes our job a lot easier. It kind of took, took care of some target packets for us. So that was one, one surprise was just not only am I entering an entirely new environment altogether with Afghanistan, with the embassy, with the, you know, all the State Department dynamics that I was pretty clueless to beforehand. But on top of all of that, we've got COVID, which nobody knows how to deal with. We had people— soldiers were quarantined in Afghanistan for months at a time because they kept on testing positive because, you know, we just didn't know if the tests were working or not.
[00:30:32.340] - Griffin Brand
We didn't know what was, what was free to leave quarantine and what wasn't, what was still contagious. And so it was just an incredibly dynamic time all around. I guess the, the other answer here, maybe the harder answer to fully articulate, is part of— and I haven't really talked about this before, and I'm not— I haven't thought through it a ton, but part of my role there was helping negotiate prisoner releases. So at the time, there were some Afghans that were being held prisoner by the Taliban. There were some Americans that were being held prisoners, prisoners still, like civilian Americans. And we had some Taliban prisoners and negotiating those. And I wasn't the one directly negotiating, but I was part of the kind of the working group that was working on how we would negotiate, what the exchanges would be, when it would take place, how it would happen, all that sort of stuff. For one, I had not done that before, and two, it was incredibly difficult negotiating for what I felt was always kind of the short end of the stick. We were really trying to keep diplomacy with the Taliban and figure out how to also approach this prisoner situation as kind of an act of goodwill.
[00:31:36.020] - Griffin Brand
And so I think, suffice it to say, I was completely out of my element and trying to figure out, learn a lot of social dynamics at the same time as contributing to this group that was working on those those prisoner exchanges. So that one very much caught me off guard, something I never anticipated working on, something I— the Army absolutely does not train regular people to do. Had not— I certainly had any— hadn't had any training before that point, but hopefully responded accordingly. And I think that the group had— we had a good bit of success, but thankfully there were a lot smarter people than I working on it as well.
[00:32:08.500] - Brandon Reece
What a challenge, man.
[00:32:11.150] - Speaker 3
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[00:33:04.780] - Speaker 3
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[00:33:37.520] - Chris Nordyke
You mentioned target packets, which tells me that you were involved in some direct action missions. Like, I don't know if I'm saying this all right, I just steal this from movies. But, you know, I think when people that haven't been in the military, we think about combat and war, and it's the highest stakes experience that any of us could ever be involved in, really, right? Life and death, right, are the stakes. Were there any moments of truth for you during your service where in the midst of those, the highest stake environment, that you've taken away with you?
[00:34:07.880] - Griffin Brand
These are great questions, guys. I appreciate it. And you're causing me to think on my feet here, and I really like it because some of these things I haven't thought about as thoroughly as I'd like to. This is, again, a story that I have not told before, but would like to just kind of process it here with you. There was a significant insider attack on the US Embassy while I was stationed there. So when I was stationed in Afghanistan at the embassy, there was an insider attack, meaning an Afghan local had been let off the compound during COVID To attend to his family. He had then been let back onto the compound later, but while he was off, in hindsight, they learned that he had been radicalized. The Taliban or some other group had gotten to him and incentivized him in some way or another to perform an insider attack when he was let back onto the embassy. So when he came back on, he conducted this attack and severely injured multiple U.S. people on the, on the compound. Thankfully, none of them died miraculously, and he was quickly neutralized. The Afghan was So, and that happened kind of right around the corner of a building.
[00:35:09.040] - Griffin Brand
Like I heard parts of it happening. Thankfully wasn't directly involved in that attack, but it kind of, you know, when things like that happen around the corner, it causes you to question a lot of things. Like, is any single Afghan on this compound safe? How paranoid do I need to be? Like, you're already on high alert, obviously being in a war zone with, especially with rocket fire coming regularly and those sort of alarms going off on a regular basis. But the thing, I guess the lesson I'd like to tell here is, or the story I'd like to tell is there are these two Afghan local guys who I had become friends with. They worked on the embassy, really nice guys. I could just like see it in their eye. You know, you just kind of get a sense that somebody is a good person. I had this sense about these two guys and they didn't speak any English. I spoke, you know, maybe a couple phrases of comprehensible Arabic. And so it wasn't a communication. It wasn't any sort of like real relationship. It was just like we made some jokes that didn't involve words.
[00:36:04.250] - Griffin Brand
I saw them and they just like seemed like great guys. And I was so tempted to avoid them and to completely end that relationship after the insider attack. But after a lot of kind of introspection and thinking about the situation, I was like, you know, the best thing that I can do— of course, I was always like, I always had a weapon on me. Like, I was always well protected and well prepared, you know, as much as I could be. But I decided I would continue this relationship with these guys. So I would, I would actually seek them out, especially right after the attack when they were kicking a lot of Afghans off the, the embassy compound there. Like, a lot of things happen as a result of this attack, but I decided to kind of take the opposite approach. I would lean further into that relationship because I just had a sense they were good guys, and that would be the only thing that would make them feel like they could continue to contribute, because frankly, they were helping the American effort. And so I don't know if there's anything to unpack there, but, you know, sharing the story kind of live here is something that, you know, everyone's got humanity even in the least humane situations.
[00:36:59.770] - Griffin Brand
And so I felt like it was my, my kind of role to lean into that.
[00:37:03.330] - Brandon Reece
What is— dude, I'm sorry, bro. I am just so fired up right now. I can't even give Chris a moment right now. You said you just processed this live for the first time with us, which, by the way, thanks, bro. What is the takeaway? What, what did that tell you as you're kind of reprocessing this right now in light of just releasing a book and these— you're about to take on a whole new freaking journey. We haven't even got there yet. What about that? What happened in that moment? Like, as you're re— telling this right now, what stands out to you? What are you going to carry with you into this next adventure that came out of that experience?
[00:37:38.910] - Griffin Brand
For the longest time, I thought that I didn't have empathy. I didn't think that I was an empathetic person. And in fact, when they run personality tests on a lot of special operations folks, they see that they are very low on the empathy, empathy score. That's notorious across— because I mean, you have to in some ways steel yourself to what you're going to face. You have to block things out, really compartmentalize things that you see or witness or do. And so empathy just is not a part of the culture, as you can imagine. And I, for the longest time, didn't think I was empathetic. And in many ways, I kind of leaned into that as well, that I didn't have empathy. But I learned through this and other similar type situations, maybe not to the same degree, but I learned that I am an empathetic person. I learned that to be the best leader that I can be, you have to really put yourself in the shoes, as cliché as it sounds, of these other people. What are they dealing with? How can I go out of my way? How can I imagine what they're thinking or going through in a way that will keep them as part— keep them in the fight?
[00:38:36.870] - Griffin Brand
In this situation, they were doing good work on the embassy for us. And so by me leaning into that, they were able to continue doing that work and do it to the best of their ability. And I wonder how many times in a business or as a leader, I wonder how many times we have situations where the best response is maybe to be more empathetic rather than drawing a hard line, rather than pulling back. Maybe it's to step in for a second and try and imagine what they're going through. What— and again, it goes back to McChrystal's thing of fast and flat. Like, that's how you best understand what's going on at the edge of decisions is by being empathetic, trying to understand what those people at the edge are feeling, seeing, experiencing.. And if you can be empathetic and really step into that role with them, then you will best know what's going on at all parts of your organization as well.
[00:39:24.630] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, it's kind of where my head went. Like, I think our experience with business owners and being, being owners, you know, sometimes your employees are going to make bad moves and every now and then you're going to have an employee that takes advantage of the company or actually harms the business, right? I mean, we've had, we've had owners that have dealt with situations with office managers stealing money. You know, and like some of the worst outcomes that really harmed the business and they become jaded and they become suspicious of everybody. And oftentimes even like updating policies, well, now we aren't going to do this anymore. And, and they, they get stuck there and it really negatively affects the whole rest of the team because they feel that suspicion, right? They feel that guardedness and that, that new caution around everything.. And I think it really holds a lot of owners back. And so I think that's a perfect analogy for, you know, look, we can't, we can't judge the whole group and act as though everybody is out trying to screw us, right? When those kinds of things happen.
[00:40:26.420] - Griffin Brand
And in no way am I advocating for giving people unlimited chances or turning an eye to things like— in no way is that the case. But I love Adam Grant's book Give and Take, if you're familiar with that. And he presents the 3 types of people. There's the givers, there's the takers, of course, but then there's the matchers in the middle. And I think a lot of studies that— and he proves it in the book— a lot of studies show that the most successful people are givers. But one of the caveats he mentions is that they're not givers all the time and they're not givers to every person. If a giver in contact or is working with or interacting with a taker, they have to recognize that and become a matcher. Like you don't, you don't just blindly give to somebody who's just going to keep taking and taking. It is okay to become a matcher in those situations where you give a little and make sure that they're giving a little back and you don't just keep on giving more of the rope. And so I think it might be a lot easier said than done, but to the degree that you can be a default giver and then have the wherewithal and have the, the discernment to become a matcher when you need to with certain people or when somebody burns you in your organization like that.
[00:41:31.140] - Griffin Brand
And I think that allows for much better outcomes. But defaulting to a giver can be really hard for some people. It's not natural for everyone, but it does in the long term result in way better outcomes.
[00:41:42.540] - Brandon Reece
You know, there's, there's, you know, we got really dialed in for an extended period of time. It seems like this happens where we get kind of stuck on a topic or an area of focus that just seems to be super relevant across the board. And for a while, we really got stuck— I don't— stuck. We were really leaning in on this aggressive accountability around extreme ownership. And so just really quick, like, extreme ownership is kind of like this idea. It's like, no matter what, it's your bag. Like, you, you've got to be able to understand and assign some responsibility to something. Otherwise, you effectively neutralize your ability to affect change, make a difference, right? Whatever. And this idea, we, we started to really try to apply it with teams from the perspective of how we showed up and took on our own roles and responsibilities. And inevitably, when you start talking to people about this idea of extreme ownership and them really owning the outcomes of their performance, almost every team member can immediately point to someone else in the team that affects their performance, right? So it's like, you know, in the Resto space, of course, it's like coordinator versus project manager.
[00:42:51.340] - Brandon Reece
There's this grind that happens where PMs are looking for this level of support. Coordinators need PMs to do X, otherwise they can't do their job. And so immediately when we start to talk about this idea of extreme ownership on our own performance, people are quick to identify, well, what happens when XYZ person continues to not do their job? And part of what we would say in that is, okay, well, when you're a victim of them not doing their job and you don't do anything to compensate for that, how effective is that for you? Like, are you winning? No. Okay, so then extreme ownership means step in, do what you need to do to continue to be successful in your responsibilities. And then the idea is like, we're only going to do that though for so long. So if we're a leadership team and we're telling our team to take extreme ownership over their role, and I'm asking Susie or Jojo to step in and compensate when a peer doesn't do their job, I can only allow that though for so long before I have the responsibility as a leader to correct the problem with the preempt.
[00:43:49.050] - Brandon Reece
That continues to skirt their responsibility and not do their job. My point in sharing that is that's what you're talking about. Like, that's a, that's a, that's how we would do that in real life is we teach the team member, look, if you, you are ultimately responsible for the outcome of your performance. And sometimes that means you leaning over the table or doing whatever's necessary to succeed in your roles and responsibilities. But, and You're not just going to blindly take that over and over and not raise your hand or not set the expectation that that's not a good peer partnership when your friend on the team continues to fail to do their job. So in my mind, that's a real-life application of what you're saying is start by default as the giver, extreme ownership, do what's necessary, but then become a matcher at some point so that you don't continue to be abused or taken advantage of. And I think in general, as a leadership group, we need to pay attention to that. And we have to be the person that steps in and stewards well and protects our team members from being the giver that keeps giving to a taker.
[00:44:51.700] - Griffin Brand
I completely agree on the, on the Extreme Ownership. And I think one, the second side of Extreme Ownership that a lot of people don't give a whole lot of credit to, or maybe they don't acknowledge as much. I love the side that you're talking about where you take ownership of the outcomes, you take ownership of what the work you produce. And what is actually happening in the organization. But the second, the alternative side is taking ownership of the inputs. And I think that's— it's a topic we talk about in our book. And I know I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit here, but if you can own the inputs, let the outputs take care of themselves. If you own the habits, if you own the procedures, if you own the, the task that you're, you're doing on a regular basis, if you can own what's going into accomplishing your mission, your job, your performance, whatever it is, then you can let the outputs, the outcomes take care of themselves because you have done all the preparation, all of the, the work that needs to be done on the front end. And I think that's, that's a big topic we talk about in the book because a lot of people get really focused on goals.
[00:45:51.020] - Griffin Brand
They get really focused on where the organization is going, what they've accomplished in a week, a month, a year. But what's going to drive all of those? What's going to make a difference? What's going to make this year better— what's gonna make next year better than this year is changing your inputs, changing the habits that drive all the rest of those.
[00:46:07.580] - Brandon Reece
Solid, man. Okay, let's keep your journey moving here. So kind of tail us out on career, military career. When, when did that end and where did you end up going post that career?
[00:46:19.900] - Griffin Brand
Yeah, so I ended up after about 8 and a half years, ended my time in the Army. And as I was getting out, the Army has this incredible this incredible program called the SkillBridge or Hiring Our Heroes. But there's a number of different programs, but you can effectively work for— it used to be up to 6 months. They've started changing some of the standards, but you can work for a period of time for a civilian organization while still being paid by the Army, effectively getting job training as you're getting out. And so for about a year, a little over a year, I did that SkillBridge. And then my first time right out of the Army, I worked for a real estate private equity firm raising capital. And this goes back to the third door concept, like getting in places you're not supposed to be. I don't have a business degree. I have zero finance background. Like I said, I was a Spanish major at Davidson, and my Spanish is incredibly rusty now, so don't, don't test me on that. But I found a way by cold calling. I had been investing in real estate, kind of residential rentals and fixing and flipping properties, doing all these things while I was in the Army.
[00:47:19.970] - Griffin Brand
And so I learned that the people that are most successful typically start doing the residential thing and then they get into commercial real estate investing through syndications or funds. And so I was like, how can I skip the line? How can I skip ahead to where all these guys are ultimately going? And so what I did was just I cold called the founders or the CEOs of all of those top organizations that I most respected. And I was like, hey, I'm 6 months of free labor. I have special operations experience. I think I can bring some value to organization X, Y, and Z. How can I?, you know, what would it look like to work together when I get out of the Army? And so actually the one that was at the top of my list, the one that I most respected and wanted to work with is the one that I ended up going to. And I started off as a quote unquote unpaid intern and they ended up hiring me as their director of investor relations. And so I led their investor relations department for a little over a year and then transitioned from there into the restoration space.
[00:48:11.610] - Griffin Brand
Again, another door into the restoration space that I never should have had opened, but I found a way to kind squeak my foot in there. And so that's kind of that, that part of my story, getting out of the Army.
[00:48:21.100] - Brandon Reece
And that again, that was with PE, right? So you're, you coming into our industry or to the restoration space was as part of that PE movement as they were pursuing businesses in our industry.
[00:48:33.670] - Griffin Brand
That's right. Yeah. After doing the real estate thing for a little over a year, I realized real estate wasn't, it's a great business. People do very well, but it lacks some of the variables that operating a business has, like there aren't as many people involved. There's just a whole intricacy and it's good. It's some of it's good. A lot of it is not so good. But operating a business and helping grow businesses and acquire them just has a lot more variables. There's a lot more exciting, at least in my mind. And so I made— I'll fast forward to this story, but I made a connection with the CEO of High Ground Restoration Group, Ben Ballsley. And the connection was pretty funny, actually. I made a stupid joke in a line at the food line at an alumni event that I wasn't supposed to be at to begin with. And that connection led to meeting Ben. Ben started trying to help me as I was getting out of the military, try and connect me to people to look for additional jobs, and ultimately decided to bring me onto his team. He took, took a risk on me.
[00:49:28.460] - Griffin Brand
Again, no finance background, no private equity acquisitions, M&A background other than raising capital for real estate, which is a very, very different type of endeavor. And I think we had a lot of success. And so started with High Ground. In 2023 in the fall. And that was kind of coincided right as I was officially getting out of the military, finishing that SkillBridge time, finishing the real estate thing. And again, have kind of been at this table that I don't necessarily deserve a spot at, but just learning quickly and figuring out along the way and hopefully making an impact just through humility and stupid hard work. I tell people that if I run into a wall, I will either find a way around it, over it, I might dig under it, but if I can't get any of those, I will headbutt through it until it falls down. And so that's kind of the only way I've had success in a lot of situations.
[00:50:18.240] - Brandon Reece
I love it.
[00:50:19.040] - Chris Nordyke
So, so at HighGround, what, what aspect of the M&A process were you in? Were you sourcing deals? Were you doing due diligence, integrations? What was your focus?
[00:50:28.170] - Griffin Brand
Yeah, at HighGround, it was the full gamut. So when I first joined the team, the real intention was like, let's, let's increase our M&A pipeline by deal origination. Building relationships with owners, getting deals into the LOI process, the letter of intent, and then working towards closing. And then as I was there for longer, I started growing in my, my kind of purview. And so it started from, I said, from, I would tell people, from cold call to close, you know, originating the deal, trying to build relationships with owners, get people on the phone, meet them at conferences, whatever, you know, go show up in person at their businesses. And then get them all the way through the LOI process and to closing. And then HighGround has a phenomenal integration team that is completely focused on getting companies onboarded into the business, changing whatever technology needs to happen, helping them with that whole process. I mean, it's a phenomenal, phenomenal team and the integration process is taken very seriously. So that wasn't as much of my purview, but from call to close— and I think I might have told you the story before, Brennan, but One of the first things I saw when I joined Restoration was I showed up at DryForce Restoration down in Dallas.
[00:51:35.840] - Griffin Brand
And again, very fresh out of the military, I still didn't necessarily know how to talk to civilians incredibly naturally. And so I— but I get to DryForce and I walk into their kind of warehouse, their bay early in the morning. And what I see is the military. Weirdly enough, I saw a line of vehicles perfectly lined up. Up with a load plan. All of their techs were there for the day doing some like little version of calisthenics, getting their route plan, getting their kind of briefing for the day from the project managers. And, and I was like, man, I am right back in a military motor pool.
[00:52:08.170] - Chris Nordyke
I feel at home.
[00:52:09.050] - Griffin Brand
And that's what's crazy is how similar the restoration business is to the military and how I think military leaders are phenomenal placements for restoration businesses because it feels very similar.. And there's a lot of very similar type people. I think a lot of younger military folks would, would do phenomenal as, you know, project managers or techs or whatever within mil— within restoration businesses as well. So the overlap there really caught me off guard, but was— made me feel a lot safer and at home in this industry from the beginning.
[00:52:39.300] - Brandon Reece
Dude, I— you've hit something on the head. It's funny because it seems like our feeds and stuff are so invasive that as soon as I say something about a topic, right? I get all the variables coming at me. And this is actually— recently I've seen at least two brands pop up that have a specific focus on placing veterans inside operations. And, you know, I think the broader blue-collar industries in general, as they, as they continue to become more sophisticated, faster-paced, recognized again as what they are, which is the backbone to the American economy and and super critically important to the future of the United States, like hire a veteran. Like, again, like with anything, there's dirtbags anywhere you go. Like, don't get me wrong, but if you're an entrepreneurial-minded organization that wants to move fast, adapt and overcome, be flexible, be nimble, hire veterans. Like, they literally spend the vast majority of their career adapting and overcoming because crap is changing all the time. And you don't get a lot of time to sit around and have an opinion or a perspective on why things changed and what it means to you. It's like, get your shit together and let's go.
[00:53:50.810] - Brandon Reece
Like, here's the new definition of success. We're going to maneuver around it. We're going to adapt and overcome and find a way to win no matter what. Well, who doesn't want a roster of that in their organization regardless? And so, I mean, you and I have talked about this a lot. I think that a smart move that any business owner or entrepreneur could make get connected to whatever local military groups you have access to, whether it be an active duty post, whether it be recruiting, whether it be education programs where they're taking transitioning service members, whatever. Get veterans in your roster, man. They, they just know how to move with the changes in the business and they really don't get caught up on, yeah, but yesterday you told me it was this. Like, we get over it and we move forward. So anyways, yeah, I beat that drum. I think it's valuable.
[00:54:39.430] - Griffin Brand
Yeah, thank you for that. And what I would say is, you know, as a restoration owner, anyone in the restoration business knows what it's like every single day to deal with somebody on their worst day, to deal with catastrophe, to be standing in the nastiest water you could imagine, have to make a decision, have to calm somebody down. That is literally what the military trains soldiers to do. They've already been doing that for years. And so I think they're just uniquely suited to be in these dynamic situations. To comfort people, to react calmly, and to make a difference. And again, the headbutting the wall thing is not unique to me. That's what the military trains people to do. Find a way to yes.
[00:55:15.490] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, find a way to yes. What an awesome way to close that, that little segment. Okay, so we've got to pivot here a little bit because we need to do some stage setting because we're going to get you and your coauthor Dan Casey back on later today, actually, and start talking more about the book. So, okay, you've had an unbelievably great run in the military, lots of successes, developed some very unique skill sets, prepares you to take the third door into a couple new opportunities post-military. You're now in this PE environment, finding success there, learning, earning your own street cred now in an environment that's new to you. What happens next? Like, bridge the gap between that and now we're going to be talking about a book here in a couple hours this afternoon.
[00:56:01.620] - Griffin Brand
Well, what I saw lead to success in both the military and in the business world, when I was comparing notes with my co-author Dan, who played football with me at Davidson, what we noticed was he saw the exact same things, the exact same attributes, the exact same actions or focus to lead to success within the football world. On the sidelines, the best coaches had the exact same philosophy. And so like, we think there's something here to kind of keep pulling the thread on.. And as we looked at it, Bill Walsh has been an idol of Dan for a long time. He was the head coach of the 49ers in the '80s, created them from, you know, took them from being the laughingstock of the NFL. They were atrocious to being an NFL dynasty, won 3 Super Bowls in a decade. They won another one right after he retired. But he wrote this book called The Score Takes Care of Itself, and in that book he kind of lays out all of his leadership philosophy. That he took to the 49ers to turn them around. And the core of that was the standard of performance. It was like, like, these are the inputs that you must get right to make sure the outputs happen as you want them to, or that the score takes care of itself.
[00:57:07.480] - Griffin Brand
And so when we were comparing notes on what leads to success in all these different industries, we're like, there's a, there's a playbook for success, but we don't really see it in other books. We're not reading the book that we are thinking through. We're not reading all the concepts that we want because we— and I guess it just doesn't exist. So let's just make it ourselves. And so we decided to take all of these lessons from history's— some of history's greatest leaders. Again, none of the stories in the book are our personal story. It's all from the great— these great leaders from throughout history centered on the leadership principles of Bill Walsh and how those are reflected in all other industries, whether it's the military, whether it's, you know, historic exploration, whether it's innovators, whether it's entrepreneurs. We kind of take all of these and bundle it into our book, Bring Your Own Pencil, and we view it as just a leadership reference guide. Each story is pretty, you know, it's a pretty short kind of punchy book where you can reference a chapter. Each one goes by in maybe 5 minutes. The book itself is relatively short.
[00:58:04.540] - Griffin Brand
And so a leader who's busy is about to walk into a boardroom or about to walk into briefing all of their technicians or whatever they're facing, can pull it out, reference a couple of the stories, have anecdotes to pull from, feel energized or feel lifted up as they go into these situations. And we just— it's also small enough to fit in your pocket. So we're big fans of just carrying it around with us because we personally reference it regularly and think that it's a helpful guide for others too.
[00:58:30.440] - Brandon Reece
So cool. Okay. So I'm going to— I mean, maybe this will come up a little bit more in the second seg, but like you're making some pretty strategic decisions around this. Like there's a lot of commitment going on to writing a book, putting it out there in the open for the world to have opinions on. But it sounds like there's going to be a lot of full-time support and, and leaning in on this particular adventure. Is that something we can chat about briefly, or do we wait on that, or is it a little early to tell?
[00:58:59.530] - Griffin Brand
Yeah, we can, we can talk about it. We, we think that the book has tremendous potential. Like you said, General McChrystal was kind enough to, to endorse it. We've had several NFL coaches that we've spent some time with that are fans of our, the writing, fans of kind of the topics that we talk about. It feels like it resonates a lot with their coaching philosophies because again, Success leaves clues and there's a blueprint for what it looks like to be successful in any industry. And so, yeah, we're trying to see what direction that the book goes. I'll let him tell a story, but Dan, my co-author, will be coaching in the NFL imminently. And so there's a lot of similar kind of opportunities that we're seeing with the book. And so excited for the direction that it heads. You know, frankly, it was a really fun project to write. And the part of writing it, the act of of, you know, putting our thoughts on paper, really refining them, editing it thoroughly. Just that whole process over the last year, couple years really, helped us think about these things a lot more thoroughly and really develop our thoughts into what's more helpful for us as leaders and for many of our future endeavors.
[01:00:02.270] - Griffin Brand
So we're just like, you know, it made us better people, and we hope that it has even a fraction of that impact on others that end up reading it.
[01:00:08.690] - Brandon Reece
I love it, man. I love it. First and foremost, Griffin, thank you I scribbled a note partway through our talk, like the value X, like the multiplier in terms of value when I— based on the quality of the guest. And you just— we just get the honor sometimes to have some folks on the show that their mind is just wired in such a way that the way they communicate is super clear and effective. Rock Solid, the leader and founder of Rock Solid, a nonprofit that provides playground builds for Cancer, for kids suffering from cancer. He's one of these individuals. I don't remember what show number it is, but he just came on and just drops golden nuggets, like every word that comes out of his face. And bro, I want to affirm you, like when you communicate the thoughts that, that are rattling around in your dome, it's good, it's clean, it's clear. There is something happening here, and I think that you are going to have an audience because people need to slow down and listen to what you are communicating because it's valuable and you're doing it in such a way that's special.
[01:01:14.190] - Brandon Reece
I think that's the challenge. We know a lot of people that know stuff, but not all of us have the ability to articulate those thoughts in a way that the audience can quickly scoop them up and do something value-added with them. And you do have that, man. So I just want to affirm you in that. You've been a great guest. I'm excited to get you guys on again later, not just for the book, but in general, because I think just hearing you process leadership concepts and thoughts is powerful, and it was motivating and helpful for even me. So thank you for being with us, dude. And I am really psyched to get back on the recording with you and your business partner here, or your co-author here in a couple hours.
[01:01:49.410] - Griffin Brand
Yeah. Thank you guys so much for having me. I will just one last thought again, and I really appreciate that as well. Kind of leaning into the unknown constantly with not only with the book, but with a lot of other decisions. And like we mentioned, always trying to find a third door. But one thing that I just keep on coming back to is clarity insight doesn't precede action. You have to take the steps first and then the insight or the epiphany moment will happen afterwards. And I might be butchering this phrase, but you have to cross the river by first feeling the stones. You can't see the right steps, you can't see the right path, but you have to take that step in order to find the right direction across whatever you're facing. And so I would just encourage people if they're facing something that is there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of unknown or uncertainty, apprehension even, just to take the next best step and you'll eventually cross that river. But you have to, you have to take the step before you can feel the stone under your feet. So thank you guys, Brennan, Chris, so much for having me again.
[01:02:50.080] - Griffin Brand
Been a huge fan of the show for a long time from that first RIA conference when I joined the restoration industry brand new, the greenest stick in the room. I first heard you guys like You guys are one of the great voices. You guys are one of the great leaders yourself and influences within businesses across the industry. So thank you for what you do. Thank you for the way that you impact not only the industry, but individuals, business owners. I think you guys make a lot more impact than you, than you realize. And we need people, we need more people like you who are great communicators, who are ambitious and humble leaders to advance the industry. And so I'm just incredibly thankful for the work that you guys do and just to have a conversation with two great guys like yourself because it's always fun to talk to you both.
[01:03:35.610] - Chris Nordyke
Awesome, my friend.
[01:03:36.590] - Griffin Brand
Thanks, man.
[01:03:36.820] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, that's rad.
[01:03:37.610] - Chris Nordyke
We'll see you here in a little bit.
[01:03:38.740] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, that's a wrap. All right, guys, remember, pay attention. This is a two-parter, so 2 weeks in a row we'll be hanging out with the great Griffin and, uh, learning some awesome stuff from you and Dan Casey. Thanks again, brother.
[01:03:49.820] - Griffin Brand
Thank you, guys.
[01:03:53.130] - Brandon Reece
All right, everybody, hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head Heart and Boots.
[01:03:57.650] - Speaker 3
And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps.
[01:04:10.470] - Chris Nordyke
Thanks for listening.