What was your childhood like? Any particular experiences/stories that shaped your adult life?

I truly am a blend of my mom and my dad. My mom was a reading teacher while I was growing up, and my dad is a business owner and entrepreneur. Today, I’m the co-founder of an online education company, so I quite literally put a blend of the things I’ve learned from both of them into what I spend my working hours on.

The moment, though, that I can trace everything I’m doing now back to is September 11th, 2001.  I was a freshman in college at the time and going to school a couple hours north of New York City when the attack happened. That attack and its aftermath is what led me to join the Marines, which led me to deploy to Iraq twice, which led me to realize the need to re-evaluate how we train people to make decisions and lead others in complex environments so we can prevent the next attack, big or small, from ever happening.

What advice would you give to a younger self (20-year-old you)? Place where you were at the time, and what you were doing.

The most important piece advice that I would give to that college junior self getting ready to join the Marines would be to volunteer for everything.  Whether in a volunteer organization or to lead teams in your company that no one else wants to do, everything you volunteer for creates a set of experiences that most other people don’t have. It doesn’t matter if that experience helps you to learn new skills or allows you to better relate to other people in your organization, that experience is what will continue to separate you from those less driven than you. As experience is what helps to develop your intuition, recognize patterns and commonalities between situations and see opportunities that everyone has missed, gaining a wide variety of experiences is key.  But experience isn’t going to just come to you, you have to go out and find it.

This is something I started to figure out as an officer in the Marines when I began to realize how much you could learn about the people and equipment in an organization by simply volunteering to be a part of whatever needed to get done. This is also something that I continue to do today as a volunteer City Team Leader with Team Rubicon. Especially for readers who are looking for ways to improve how they network and extend their relationships, here is an article I recently wrote about why volunteering and joining groups like Team Rubicon can help you accomplish that goal in a way you feel good about.

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?

The current focus on “life hacks,” shortcuts to growth and best practices for improvement is something our society and business owners has got to let go of. Everywhere I turn lately, there’s someone talking about how professional development courses need to be shorter because people have shorter attention spans and can’t dedicate time to the serious study of a topic.  You certainly don’t want to waste your time, but the idea that there are shortcuts to getting life-changing results with a fraction of the effort is ridiculous. If the problems your company or your profession were facing could be solved in 140 characters, don’t you think the problem would have been solved already?  True professionals who are and will change the way we live, work and secure our country are the people who have put in the time to develop mastery of their field, build meaningful relationships and have a greater degree of depth than what the “experts” are saying our attention spans can handle.

What is one thing that you do that you feel has been the biggest contributor to your success so far?

Writing. I’m certainly not the best writer in the world, but the act of writing my book, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life, writing blog articles for The CP Journal and short summaries of articles for The Weekly Profile (our company’s weekly newsletter) has helped me achieve a much higher level of clarity about the things we teach and how we view security and business. The impact that writing has had on my communication skills is immeasurable. It’s also allowed us to develop a loyal audience of people who want to see the same types of changes in the world and our industry that we do and who want to help cause the shift in focus to prevent the acts of violence we’ve seen in recent history, instead of just reacting to them. The act of writing is still a challenge and a skill I’m continually trying to improve, but it’s hands down one of our company’s biggest contributors to success.

What habit or behavior that you have pursued for a few years has most improved your life?

Learning how to learn. Over the last few years, I’ve put at least as much effort into learning about the process of learning as I have into the various topics I’ve studied.  I believe that the benefits of this effort are just starting to pay off and are resulting in an acceleration of my ability to comprehend new fields, add depth to my craft, and truly leverage my time to develop myself.

This mindset comes mostly from Robert Greene’s book, Mastery.  Taking a look at his three-phase model of going through an apprenticeship phase and a journeyman phase before having the opportunity to reach a degree of mastery continues to be very helpful, especially the apprenticeship portion as you are just beginning to learn about a topic. I really can’t recommend that book enough.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do?

If I have lost focus or am feeling overwhelmed, I typically do one of two things.

1. If the task I’m working on has to be done and done right away, I change my setting. I might go to another room, a coffee shop, a local brewery or anywhere that lets me refocus on the task by changing the environment. The new setting often helps me reset and get back to whatever it is that has to get done.
2. If the project I’m working on isn’t time-critical, I’ll go for a run or walk my dog. I live in the foothills of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains and can be on mountain trails amongst just trees and silence in minutes.The goal is to come back from that run or walk refocused and able to finish that task.

While the first choice is something that I find to be very effective for helping me re-focus, I look at it like a Band-Aid, as it’s only a short-term solution that doesn’t address the underlying problem.  My goal is to be able to work deeply wherever I am on whatever task needs to get done, so physically moving to a new area is counterproductive to that goal and is limited to the times when I have to deliver on a deadline. Otherwise, I’ll try to clear my mind and then come back to retackle the issue, building the habit of working deeply in that specific setting and on that specific task until it becomes natural. A great book about building your ability to focus is Deep Work by Cal Newport, another work that I absolutely recommend.

What’s a book(s) that have influenced your life the most? Why?

I’m a big reader and have a long list of books that I come back to often, but the book that I’ve been gifting more frequently than any other for the past couple of years is Mastery by Robert Greene.  This book really changed the way I looked at learning and development in how it establishes the steps a person has to go through on their way to becoming a true master in their field. By defining the phases of development in the way that he does, Greene has helped me to take a step back from whatever topic I’m studying and put into clear terms what goes into learning how to learn.  Especially with the pace that technology continues to impact the way we live and the way it will change careers and industries in the future, Mastery has helped me understand how to learn and provided me with a perspective and skill that will never become outdated.

Do you have any quotes you live by or think of often?

Coined quotes don’t necessarily play a serious role in my life but, on top of the bookshelf next to my desk, there’s a copy of Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield that I reference often. The book is about the difference between professionals and amateurs and often catches my eye throughout the day since it is a copy that Steven Pressfield gave me right after Jason Riley (my co-author for Left of Bang) and I signed our contract with his publishing company.  When I look at the book, I often find myself asking, “Am I acting like a professional today or am I behaving like an amateur?” While I like to think the answer is usually a clear one, it’s the book that prompts me to re-focus on what I should be doing.