Episode 35 from The Grit Theory.

Today Lindsey and I are joined by Kirk Van Everen, my fellow brother in arms, business partner, and very good friend.

Highlights include:

-The standard is the baseline.

-Fighting to be average in high performing circles.

-Earning your seat at the table.

-Weathering life’s storms and pushing into opportunity.

Did you find value in today’s conversation? SHARE IT!

Also, check out Be Relentless: If the obstacle is the way, then we must be waymakers HERE.

Do you want to learn more? Check out:

The Book: Be Relentless: If the obstacle is the way, then we must be WayMakers.

The Podcast: “Be Relentless Podcast”

The Fuel: Sisu Stamina, Performance Evolved

Linktree: Here.

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Episode Transcript

00;00;00;26 – 00;00;22;17

Jon

Oh, hello everyone, and welcome to the great theory. Lindsey and I today are joined by the one and only Kirk van ever. Now, this is very exciting for me, and I’m going to have to control myself not to be too passionate about it because all these.

00;00;22;17 – 00;00;23;27

Lindsey

Kirk True.

00;00;24;04 – 00;00;24;18

Jon

And you.

00;00;24;18 – 00;00;26;23

Lindsey

Probably need to give a little bit more background than just.

00;00;27;00 – 00;00;29;16

Jon

I thought like the mystery shrouded it, you know? I think so.

00;00;29;17 – 00;00;30;12

Lindsey

No, probably not.

00;00;30;19 – 00;00;32;01

Jon

How would you define the background?

00;00;32;07 – 00;00;42;01

Lindsey

I mean, really? Yeah. Well, you guys have worked together. You started a business together. You’re really, really good friends. Best of friends. Really?

00;00;42;02 – 00;00;50;08

Jon

Okay, you’re butchering this. Let me try it. Yeah. So we serve together, right? We started business together, and we’re really good friends, so.

00;00;51;02 – 00;00;51;22

Kirk

So we.

00;00;52;11 – 00;00;55;07

Jon

We got that going. Welcome, man. How are you?

00;00;56;09 – 00;01;13;07

Kirk

I’m great. This is. This is just so cool being able to jump in on the great theory and be a part of this. And, you know, I really appreciate you guys having me on. We talk basically every day, so I don’t know why this is any different, having a microphone in my face now, but it’s pretty cool. I’m excited.

00;01;14;06 – 00;01;36;27

Jon

It is cool. And one thing that’s fun is you’ve been helping support the theory from its conception, right? Like a lot of the cool logo, graphics and fun things we do are our day to you. A lot of the initial editing and that and that’s because we’re partners with our company called Sauce Solutions in our product. CC We’re building, which will come eventually depending on manufacturing delays, but we’re, we’re pumped about that.

00;01;37;26 – 00;01;39;27

Jon

It’ll come. And you’re in Germany right now.

00;01;40;17 – 00;02;04;10

Kirk

Yeah, Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it’s been cool because I’ve been behind the scenes in a small capacity for grit theory, just watching it, watching it grow and watching, you know, how far it’s come from its first episode until right now. So I hope I don’t like take things right or wrong, but it’s been quarter to kind of just be a part of its growth.

00;02;04;10 – 00;02;15;08

Kirk

And so yeah, and then here I am in Germany, eight time zones away and you know, it’s yeah, this is great. I’m excited. So we’re.

00;02;15;08 – 00;02;15;19

Lindsey

Excited.

00;02;15;19 – 00;02;15;26

Kirk

Too.

00;02;16;19 – 00;02;35;00

Jon

Perfect. Well, let’s give a little bit of context and you’re one that I’d like to be on have on the show more is like a regular CO gas type of thing for different conversations. But to do that well, I think it’s good for people to know a bit more about you, what you’re your background is and and why we’ve stayed so close to the year.

00;02;35;00 – 00;03;02;17

Jon

So you know from how I understand you and I’m going to keep it real wave tops you’re essentially one who, despite maybe what you feel like, chooses a path of difficulty and has from from early on, you know, choosing a school like West Point over a traditional college, using combat arms over a support branch, choosing to go to Ranger school when you don’t need to and on and on and on the list goes.

00;03;02;17 – 00;03;15;06

Jon

So where would you want to start that story as far as where you start to make decisions that lean towards demanding more of yourself versus not? And how would that lead you to you know, today in a nutshell.

00;03;16;14 – 00;03;54;16

Kirk

I’d I’d say a large part of it had to do with my upbringing. My my family, I’d say is the biggest catalyst for the way that I approach life. You know, I was thinking about this earlier today before, you know, jumping on and, you know, my my parents and always had high standards for me as a kid when it came to grades, when it came to, you know, athletics, it wasn’t like they were really hard on me, but they didn’t applied like they didn’t applied like a like a like mediocrity.

00;03;54;16 – 00;04;17;21

Kirk

They didn’t they didn’t encourage anything. But, you know, I would say excellence. But if I came in with, you know, straight A’s, it was like, okay, cool. This is what you’re supposed to have. This is what you’re supposed to do. So it kind of just retooled how I approached performance. It it changed the way I looked at the decisions I made.

00;04;18;02 – 00;04;38;07

Kirk

You know, it wasn’t like choosing the easy path wasn’t really always on the table, you know, I could do that in a lot of ways. But, you know, for me, I, I think just early on it’s like, of course I’m going to go take honors classes and of course I’ll go onto a sports team and of course I’m going to go to college and pursue, you know, just difficult challenges.

00;04;38;07 – 00;05;00;06

Kirk

So it wasn’t it was always just kind of a norm for me growing up. My parents steered me in that direction and they were always very good influences on me. They prioritized education. My dad is a my dad’s a coach. He’s a he’s a Division one athletic coach. And so, you know, our talks or talks growing up or was always like inspirational speeches was just like the way that we talk to each other.

00;05;00;06 – 00;05;29;28

Kirk

So I was I was very, very lucky in that capacity. And I didn’t realize it till I, I was older. How much of an impact it had on my, like my azimuth and direction in life. So I think that’s probably where it started. And and then from there, the Army’s kind of had its own way of steering me through life, and I got very lucky and some of my and some of the things that happened and it was just sort of unusual circumstances.

00;05;29;28 – 00;05;52;04

Kirk

But, you know, I just happened to grow up right on West Point. So the exposure to being there, you know, I mean, you still have to get in. But, you know, the people that I grew up around, a lot of, you know, high performing, very squared away officers that were just family friends. But, you know, they were always kind of just encourage me like, oh, you’re going to go to West Point.

00;05;52;04 – 00;06;19;04

Kirk

Right? And that’s just that’s just how things fell into place. But I don’t think I questioned whether or not I would have gone if I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t, like, grown up as a kid, running around on post, like, completely oblivious to what the cadets did. So so I think like that chance, you know, like my the, the fact that I lived on post, I’m sure influenced that decision.

00;06;19;18 – 00;06;41;01

Kirk

And then when it came to posting, you know, I had I actually had torn my senior year at West Point, I had torn ACL, so I ended up having to stay at West Point after graduation. That changed the way the branch or the posting went. So when you pick a location, once you commission as an officer, you have an opportunity to go to different posts around the world.

00;06;42;17 – 00;07;00;11

Kirk

You know, I was competitive enough to get Germany, but at the last second I got switched to Italy and Italy. I would not have had the grades to get right out of West Point. So just the way things lined up, I end up getting dropped into this environment that around very like minded people. So that kept me on the course, the same exact path.

00;07;01;04 – 00;07;17;10

Kirk

So I’ve had like this little bumpers throughout my life that have kind of kept me on this, you know, can be consistently pursuing difficult opportunities and yeah, I mean, I think that’s how it unfolded. So yeah.

00;07;17;29 – 00;07;36;12

Jon

So you’ve really benefited from being environments that have a high standard of entry, you know, being great. Now your dad’s a coach, your family’s like, Oh yeah, is, are the expectation well done. And then you’re also looking at living on West Point as a child growing up, going to there. And for those who don’t know, West Point is just like a top tier university.

00;07;37;00 – 00;07;43;09

Jon

It’s for the Army specifically and the equivalent for the Navy. I think Indianapolis, right.

00;07;43;09 – 00;07;44;26

Kirk

It’s Annapolis.

00;07;45;00 – 00;07;48;17

Jon

It’s Annapolis, just a little off there. I’m not an easy to forget.

00;07;48;18 – 00;07;52;00

Kirk

Yeah, no, me neither. Easy to forget academics that I’ve come to. So yeah.

00;07;52;01 – 00;07;53;13

Jon

Same and then.

00;07;53;21 – 00;07;54;18

Lindsey

Go Army beat Navy.

00;07;54;18 – 00;08;11;11

Jon

Yeah. And then so so we have all that jazz and then you go from there to Italy in the unit at Italy’s pretty high speed. So once again, it’s kind of like the expectation is you’re going to demand the most of yourself, which took you to Ranger School and beyond.

00;08;11;28 – 00;08;37;17

Kirk

Right? Yes. I mean, you said you just show up and and everyone I mean, immediately you feel like you’re, you know, swimming with sharks, I guess at West Point was when I first got there was like, oh, my God, everyone’s so smart, everyone’s fit and everyone’s so squared away and disciplined and mature. And it was just this like I got waterboarded immediately into this environment where everyone around me is like, Well, now this is like, this is how far you can go if you really push yourself.

00;08;37;17 – 00;08;54;23

Kirk

Like if you don’t know that that’s there, that like that letter rung is there to reach up and grab, you won’t even attempt to grab it because you’re surrounded by people that just, you know, that are operating on like a lower frequency. And I mean, that’s that’s that’s fine. If that’s your choice. But, you know, I think it holds you back as a person.

00;08;54;23 – 00;09;19;07

Kirk

If you don’t even know, you can reach up that high and grab that next ladder rung, whether it’s physical, mental, you know, social. I mean, however, this, you know, emotional, there’s all different disciplines that you can excel in. But if you don’t, if not an environment that curates that, that encourages that, it’s very it’s very hard for someone to break out of that and even know that there’s another level to it.

00;09;19;07 – 00;09;39;04

Kirk

So West Point was like that for me right off the bat. Like I’m I’m like just barely struggling to stay in West Point and pass my classes. At first I was completely overwhelmed. And then once I kind of re geared and figured out how to, you know, at least first tread water, then I kind of learned to excel.

00;09;39;05 – 00;10;10;02

Kirk

And that’s exactly the same thing happened in Italy. I went in thinking that, like, okay, I’ve got my stuff together, you know, physically, mentally, like I just came from West Point, you know, it’s fine. Like, you know, I think I’m I’m well-prepared to excel in this unit. And I show up there and I’m surrounded by it’s collectively like to the best of the best for the conventional army, you know, on the on the noncommissioned side, I’m surrounded by just absolute war heroes, people that were in like the most harrowing battles in Afghanistan.

00;10;10;12 – 00;10;36;15

Kirk

And I’m just this second lieutenant who shows up. I’m like, yeah, I, I immediately am humbled by just being around these professionals. Right? And then there’s the officers, and those are officers are all the cream of the crop from all of their respective commissioning sources, who probably Italy was the number one pick on their list of options and only the people that were at the top academically, physically, you know, performed overall, only those people got to go to Italy.

00;10;36;15 – 00;10;53;22

Kirk

So by chance, because I got reassigned from Germany and Italy, now I’m dropped into this this like Shark Tank immediately surrounded by the most top tier people. And I start to again see, oh my God, look, look how far you can reach up and push yourself.

00;10;54;21 – 00;10;57;00

Jon

Like I always knew Horizon, right?

00;10;57;15 – 00;11;20;02

Kirk

Yeah. I mean, it just totally it just showed you what was possible when you really it’s like you think you work hard and then you see how hard people really can work in. Like, oh, wow, there’s, there’s levels to this. And I’m not on that top level. Like, there is a whole another dimension to physical performance that you can unlock if you’re willing to put in the time.

00;11;20;08 – 00;11;41;13

Kirk

So, you know, Monday morning it’s like, okay, yeah, we’re going to run 12 miles. That’s that would be mind blowing for me to just casually do that. But that’s like that was just the expectation on Monday. That’s Monday morning. It’s not like a an endurance day or any kind of like special race or anything unique. That was just your Monday.

00;11;41;13 – 00;11;41;19

Kirk

Yeah.

00;11;41;29 – 00;11;57;25

Lindsey

Just what made you want to keep going, though, even though it was this top tier and you’re saying, you know, you can reach for more, why did you not quit after that? What? Like what what drove you to continue to fight for excellence?

00;11;58;19 – 00;12;17;26

Jon

Yeah, because real quick to add on to that question, I mean, we walk past it as if it’s a given, right, that if you’re in a high performing circle, that you’re going to aim to climb to the top of that circle. But that that’s a distinct choice, not not an assumption for people. Lots of times people go into a high pressure situation and they do the opposite.

00;12;17;26 – 00;12;30;09

Jon

They’re like, How can I get out of this situation? Do something that’s more comfortable, but I don’t have to try as hard? And so each of these tiers, you have this decision you make to press in. And I think that’s what you just asked.

00;12;30;09 – 00;12;50;15

Lindsey

About, right? Yeah. And I know you were saying your upbringing and like it’s now been kind of like, well, this is what we do, this is what’s expected. But I mean, now you’re an adult, you have a career, you’ve gotten good experience, you know, And it’s like, okay, well, I could do something on the other side of the military other than, oh, you’re a certain number of years and things like that.

00;12;50;15 – 00;13;08;00

Lindsey

Right. But it’s like, how and why did you want to continue to push for that excellence? Because you could have been, you know, easily, like, I’ll show up, I’ll do my time, I’ll kind of just coast that, you know, But you didn’t do that and you’ve never have. So yeah.

00;13;08;03 – 00;13;08;07

Kirk

I.

00;13;08;17 – 00;13;12;11

Lindsey

Wanted the why behind it if you have a why. I know that’s kind of a question.

00;13;13;00 – 00;13;32;16

Kirk

No, no, no, no. I mean so on the one hand I think there’s a and I think a lot of people probably experience this, but for me, I this fear of I think there’s like some, some social shortcomings that I have as a person where I have a fear of appearing incompetent, of a fear of letting people down.

00;13;32;29 – 00;13;56;23

Kirk

I do have like a I have a fear of of appearing incapable of doing stuff. So out of like, out of just the survival instinct to not, you know, be the weak link on the team to you know, especially in a profession where your performance truly does and can very much so make the difference in like life and death situations.

00;13;56;29 – 00;14;22;06

Kirk

I never wanted to be a liability to people. So being around, being in this team, I think the best way to put it is like, I don’t think I ever worked harder to be average. It’s a weird way to put it, but like, I don’t think I ever worked so hard to just be average and, you know, an average, you know, in an I, you know, if you isolated from what normalcy is, this is high performing.

00;14;22;06 – 00;14;39;05

Kirk

It’s great. And I’m not trying to say anything about myself, but it’s just it’s sink or swim there. You know, you either keep pace with everybody else around you or you sink and you lose your job. And I remember it. So that’s that’s part of it. I think that’s like I have this personal fear of like letting people down and like failing others.

00;14;40;11 – 00;15;22;25

Kirk

You know, there’s some social insecurities for sure. It’s like, I don’t want to be the guy that can’t do it right. But at the same time, I, I think that idealistically, you know, as soon as I showed up in Italy and I referenced earlier, I was surrounded by noncommissioned officers that had just come out of this. I mean, it had been a few years back, but they had, you know, a we f eight or Operation Enduring Freedom eight, my unit in particular, it had suffered tremendous amounts of losses, losses of life, some of the most harrowing battles of the global war on terror.

00;15;23;18 – 00;15;40;08

Kirk

So, you know, you you go to work with these people and you’re like, oh my God, you’re on the back of the book War by Sebastian Junger. That’s you as a private first class. You see them on the back cover. And now he’s a, you know, a sergeant first class. And he’s a fast sport. You know, he’s he’s you know, he’s he’s a true war fighter.

00;15;40;08 – 00;16;01;19

Kirk

But the things he says matters. So like, there’s this like there’s this urgency to get in line and shape up and get your stuff together, you know, because, you know, from real world experience, their real world experience, it matters like, hey, this is why you need to be this is why you have to sharpen your blade. This is why you have to come to work and be masters of your craft.

00;16;02;29 – 00;16;14;18

Kirk

You know, that’s not really a pressure thing, but it’s it’s incredibly motivating when you know that y they tell you something that. No, the Y behind the things that they tell you.

00;16;15;20 – 00;16;48;10

Jon

What’s really good about that is that is an excellent example of where where you have to earn your seat at the table. Right. These guys have all the real world experience and autocracy that you need to be like, Yes, I’m going to listen to you. They’ve earned their seat at the table. They’ve earned the right to be confident through well-honed competence by not just studying, not just writing about it, but by living and acting it out and being forged through real life consequences.

00;16;48;10 – 00;17;05;05

Jon

And in this case, specifically battle. So there’s that. That’s why you have to pay the tax to get in the entry fees. That’s why you actually have to prepare and own yourself and then strive because when you’re called upon, you have to show up. And after you’ve called upon, you have to teach. But that’s how you earn it.

00;17;05;05 – 00;17;21;19

Jon

It’s only through actual action. And the other thing that jumped to my mind about what you said is that the social pressure just to like you’re in an environment that’s so higher performing, so much higher performing than what you’ve become accustomed to, they’re like, I just have to strain to become average in that environment, in that circle. Yes.

00;17;21;20 – 00;17;45;27

Jon

And what I love about that is we talk a lot about compare yourself to who you were yesterday to grow, Right? That’s one side of the coin. The other coin is you have to be incredibly intentional about who you spend your time with because just as strong of a pool as it is to put yourself in a high performing circle that pulls you are mediocrity will pull you down if you’re with if you’re with people who aren’t striving, they’re going to pull you down.

00;17;45;27 – 00;18;08;16

Jon

And that’s where you if you define your inner circle, really when you define in inner incredibly jealous of who you spend your time with in the environments you place yourself in, you get this opportunity like you’ve defined where each step of the way you keep finding and then placing yourself over time intentionally into circles where you’re with high performing people who you have to strain just to become average amongst.

00;18;08;29 – 00;18;16;17

Jon

And that is one heck of a life hack, if you will. Yeah, and where community and partnership matter right.

00;18;16;18 – 00;18;27;09

Lindsey

Away, right? People go. I mean, you’re sitting in an amazing position currently, which we haven’t even gotten to. And I think the little steps along the way have gotten you to where you are.

00;18;29;01 – 00;18;29;22

Jon

Yeah. Yeah.

00;18;30;11 – 00;18;47;26

Kirk

I mean, I love what you’re saying, John, because, I mean, if you think about it like, you know, rising sea, the rising seas will lift all the boats, right? So if, like, if you’re there, like, in your rounds, this high performance, high performers, you know, for any number of different motivators, it’s going to it’s going to increase the standards to which you hold yourself to.

00;18;48;06 – 00;19;05;23

Kirk

So, you know, when you show up to work and every single leader in your formation has a Ranger tab on and you don’t have a Ranger tab on it, you know, it becomes I don’t see necessarily ostracize, as you put it, but you feel you feel left out. You feel like you’re you.

00;19;05;23 – 00;19;07;01

Lindsey

Have to like discreditable.

00;19;07;11 – 00;19;23;01

Kirk

Yeah. Because I mean, you know, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t wish myself to have to gone through the experiences that those NCOs went through because they lost a lot of friends. It was awful. But at the same time, like, how do you earn? How do you how do you cut your teeth? How do you earn your street credit and your seat at the table in an environment like that?

00;19;23;13 – 00;19;40;21

Kirk

And, you know, for us, new lieutenants that were showing up, a lot of it was going to Ranger School, a lot of it was being tactically proficient. A lot of them was leading from the front, you know, in through example, you know, lead from the front by example every day. Right. That was how you could earn your seat, the table.

00;19;40;21 – 00;19;56;02

Kirk

And it and for me, it was very clear to me that if I’m going to be around these just absolute meat eaters, true apex predator people, I needed to step up my game. And and that fueled everything that I did.

00;19;56;21 – 00;20;16;20

Jon

And what’s awesome about what you just said is I can’t help but think like all of us at some point or another and often times in different cycles of life find ourselves in new environments in which we’ve not earned our seat at the table for that environment or that pursuit. And because that’s part of life, it’s helpful to focus on, Well, what what can you do?

00;20;16;20 – 00;20;38;11

Jon

You know, you can’t nor would you want to go back and experience the same battles to earn the same credibility that the leaders that you’re now with who are swinging heavy around you have. So what do you do to begin to earn credibility in a new pursuit? You become tactically proficient. You become a master of your craft, whatever that craft may be.

00;20;38;18 – 00;21;15;14

Jon

You just bear down and get after it. And what that does is it forges somewhat, use one condition for the chaos of the real world events, whether that’s business or war, what have you. And it also is really the only way that the only way forward. Because if if you do that, what you’re doing by leading, by example, by becoming master of the skills that you need, by sharing that knowledge and showing up every day and holding yourself to that standard is you’re creating someone who when everything gets incredibly serious or real, you’re when you fall to your baseline of training and conditioning.

00;21;15;22 – 00;21;22;27

Jon

It’s going to be at a level that’s high enough to ensure that you perform well. And then that is difficult to do.

00;21;22;27 – 00;21;46;27

Kirk

Yeah, I heard a one bitten commander put it this way. You know, you don’t rise to the occasion. You fall back to the last leg of your training. And that, I think, applies in anything else. It’s like, what is your what is your baseline? You know, if if you know, if it if you have pushed the envelope and every discipline in your life, you know, when things get difficult, you know what you can handle.

00;21;46;27 – 00;22;16;27

Kirk

You know where like you know you what you’ve accomplished and then you compare that to what you’re going through now. And when you see that dichotomy, it’s a hell of a lot easier to to to maneuver your way through it. So, you know, I think that and that only comes through lifestyle choices. I think, you know, working hard, working out, eating healthy, surround yourself by good people, you know, keeping an inner circle like my choosing, picking and choosing the right influences to be around.

00;22;17;23 – 00;22;39;16

Kirk

I mean, I can even say, like, our relationship, you know, to you, to you both my relationships, you both, you know, I mean, it’s a perfect example of that. You know, you both live in a fast lane of life that I don’t know how you guys can keep up a fight, but by proximity and just by just the outer, outer fringes of it, even from 8 hours away, that has a huge impact on on how I look at problems, how I look at stress, how I look at difficulties.

00;22;39;16 – 00;22;43;29

Kirk

So I could not agree more. Well, yeah, let’s.

00;22;44;07 – 00;23;02;26

Jon

Let’s transition a bit off that. Right. So we’ve had a fun time talking about some some of the history and some of what like makes you you. But then we also have a lot of collective history. The three of us and yeah, and you and I specifically, I mean you are eight after all, which is, which is excellent and we’re just going to breeze past that.

00;23;03;06 – 00;23;10;19

Jon

Yeah, we’re going to be past that. But, uh, what is it now? Four years. Five? Yeah.

00;23;11;06 – 00;23;14;16

Kirk

We’ve been together 2017.

00;23;14;17 – 00;23;15;13

Lindsey

Was it 17.

00;23;15;28 – 00;23;16;18

Kirk

17 or six?

00;23;16;18 – 00;23;18;26

Lindsey

Was it 16 I think. Mm.

00;23;18;26 – 00;23;21;04

Jon

I think we first met in 16 and we started.

00;23;21;09 – 00;23;24;01

Lindsey

In 16 and started becoming really good friends. More than 17.

00;23;24;12 – 00;23;24;16

Jon

Yeah.

00;23;24;18 – 00;23;33;19

Kirk

Yeah. That’s when I switched over to be a fire direction officer and I got paired with you who is like, save my save my ass at work every day. Oh my God.

00;23;34;10 – 00;23;42;29

Jon

What’s really funny about I am going to share this story really quick because it’s how we met. And what I love about how we met is Kurt doesn’t remember us meeting for the first time.

00;23;43;05 – 00;23;44;18

Lindsey

That sounds. That’s fair.

00;23;44;21 – 00;24;01;01

Jon

So what happens is it’s like three in the morning we’re doing an exercise out in the middle of nowhere, and I have to go talk to someone who’s in a Humvee, this truck up on a ridgeline. So I jump over to do that. I ripped the door open to joke around, to yell at the guy, to talk to you.

00;24;01;11 – 00;24;12;22

Jon

And when I ripped the door open, I know that there’s a human on the side of that door who pops up like a squirrel beanie on his head. Eyes could use like, Huh, What’s going on? That person’s Kirk.

00;24;14;07 – 00;24;16;29

Kirk

Yeah, that explains why I remember that. Yeah. You were.

00;24;17;06 – 00;24;17;20

Lindsey

There.

00;24;17;20 – 00;24;33;00

Jon

You were dead asleep, man. And I was like, Oh, sorry. And close the door. You went right back to sleep. Talk to the guy who you talk to. You walked away. And then we met legitimately, like a month later in person, and we both remember that. But yeah, it was kind of a it’s an amusing thing for me to remember that time.

00;24;34;10 – 00;24;57;04

Kirk

And we were very different phases of life at the time too. I mean, it was yeah, I was a, I was a captain, a pre command capped at the time. Fort Carson, Colorado. And then I had just left my, my job, which was, which was a comfortable position for me at the time, not by the amount of workload but it was something I’m very, very familiar with.

00;24;57;15 – 00;25;17;19

Kirk

And then I transitioned to a completely different side of field artillery that I had literally no experience in. And I remember talking to the state commander is like, Don’t worry, you’re you’re going to be paired with Lieutenant John Mayo. And I and I had not worked with you closely yet, but I had heard about you and I’d heard that you were just this rock star lieutenant.

00;25;17;19 – 00;25;35;20

Kirk

And I’m like, Oh, they got them little fire me to log. It’s like, this job keeps the boat afloat. So yeah. So that was. It was. And then after that point, we just integrated like this. We synergize and created just like a fire direction enterprise was that word was on my Oh yea. Actually it was pretty funny. But yeah, we, that was fantastic.

00;25;36;00 – 00;25;37;05

Kirk

That was amazing.

00;25;37;17 – 00;25;56;05

Jon

We had a lot of fun and that was what started our, our relationship, right? We, we were thrust together to, to work together with an underperforming team and build something from there. And that was fun. And really I think the important thing there, I’d rather start to focus on the present in the future. But what’s nice about that is that was our foundation.

00;25;56;05 – 00;26;18;27

Jon

It was like the friendship and what grew into a partnership, and it’s far outlived the time that we served together. So, you know, 18 months, two years, we work closely together and then I exit the service. You are in Afghanistan and kind of life goes on for like 6 to 9 months where we’re both just figure it out.

00;26;19;06 – 00;26;37;25

Jon

You’re transitioning from command. We’re figuring out life on the civilian side, and then things get hard again and we find ourselves talking more and more through some life difficulties. Yeah, and you decide to make some choices from there. That been trajectory changing for us.

00;26;38;22 – 00;27;05;15

Kirk

So to your point, John, and again, not to not to over inflate, you know, the things that I was going through at the time. But for me personally, I was going through a very, very rough patch. And you and Lindsey were such a consistent drumbeat of support for me when I needed it most. I mean, it was, you know, my parents were they’re my close, you know, closest friends were there.

00;27;05;15 – 00;27;33;10

Kirk

But I mean, John, you I mean, you’d like would drop everything and be on the phone with me for like 2 hours just to get to the core of the issues. And it it was such a I was so moved by this gesture because it requires a special kind of relationship for you to set aside the million and one priorities that you both have and then to to halt everything.

00;27;33;10 – 00;28;09;15

Kirk

When you see a person of friends truly in need and just focus on them. And it wasn’t like you’re just like a sounding board or I can just talk into and you just feel like, yeah, it sounds like a lot. Sounds tough, man. I hope everything works out, which is what most people do. You took it so much further and that 100%, I pulled us back together and and from there I you’d think that like at the time the fix for that wasn’t necessarily like to jump into more complex stuff and add more on our plate.

00;28;09;15 – 00;28;29;10

Kirk

But I think that you recognized that I, I would benefit from shifting my focus to not that it was not that it was like, you know, drowning in vices or whatever. Like, you know, so a lot of people will turn to alcohol, other vices to fix their problems. I’ve fortunately never had never done that. But, you know, I will.

00;28;29;10 – 00;28;55;23

Kirk

I will. I will implode. I will I will be very self-destructive because I’m very because I’m very hard on myself, because I called myself the very high standards right when I needed it most. A couple of key, consistent, close friends were there to kind of pick me up off my feet and work me through this this mental scaffolding in order to kind of continue forward and move forward with my life.

00;28;55;23 – 00;29;28;05

Kirk

And, you know, these things, they’re very personal issues. But it was you know, it was it was it was a divorce during the pandemic while separated from my immediate family. So it was a lot of stuff. At the same time, it was just moved to a new country and a lot of things had just kind of fallen apart and very, very quickly and very suddenly and and I remember the two of us talking, and you had pitched this idea to me and the loose, and we can get into that for sure.

00;29;28;13 – 00;30;07;12

Kirk

But but essentially, it was a new a new venture, a new goal, goal on the horizon line for me to pick my head up and look to something, to pour my energy into something that I a creative outlet, something that could turn that had a tremendous potential to grow. And it and it became this anchoring point in my life and through through us deciding to that we we, you know, handcuffed to each other essentially, and have been have been have been tied at the hip since.

00;30;07;12 – 00;30;08;12

Kirk

So, yeah.

00;30;09;02 – 00;30;30;04

Jon

And to be fair, so what that was specifically is like one, I needed it also but for for different reasons. And I realized when and what it was, it’s starting a business. So I got this idea. I was unhappy I’d left as well. So just in fairness and for context, so you’re going through hell and we’re working through hell together, right?

00;30;30;04 – 00;30;47;22

Jon

Day by day for months. And you know, at that point and I’m in South Carolina, had left the service an easy job, very little demanded of me, and I was growing more and more dissatisfied with the kind of language being just the language.

00;30;47;25 – 00;30;50;19

Lindsey

For your comfort, dissatisfied with the comfort.

00;30;50;27 – 00;30;53;23

Jon

There’s just no growth, there’s no drive. Everything was like.

00;30;53;23 – 00;30;59;22

Lindsey

So I was pushing you unless you were pushing yourself. And it was it was really kind of starting to eat away at him.

00;30;59;24 – 00;31;16;05

Jon

It was like a cancer was poisoning me. And I realized, like, I need to do something to change or I’m going to lose my mind or lose who I want to become. And as I was thinking about cycle, maybe I could start a business that could drive some goals for me to become a better person, a better husband, a better man.

00;31;16;18 – 00;31;34;22

Jon

And as I see that, Ezequiel would be really fun to do this with someone and you immediately jump to my mind. It’s like, Oh, it’s perfect. He’s going through absolute hell. He needs something to focus his mind on that’s constructive. Yeah. And of course, let’s add weight to let’s add weight to the chassis here. Let’s see if we can see.

00;31;34;22 – 00;31;52;09

Lindsey

But that was also right after we had just moved, he had started a new job. It was literally the middle of pandemic. So this is you guys started officially started in July of 2020. Yep. So like, this was not I mean, ideal quote unquote times, but it.

00;31;52;09 – 00;31;53;03

Jon

Was perfect timing.

00;31;53;03 – 00;32;14;11

Lindsey

But it was perfect timing. It was perfect timing for both of you. Me, too. I get lumped into all of this. I get that. But yeah, it was it for both of you. It gave you your creative outlet. It gave you something to focus bigger than yourselves. And you guys really enjoyed working together. And I think that was even some of that part of starting the business was that much better.

00;32;14;11 – 00;32;24;21

Lindsey

You guys like to bounce ideas off of each other and kind of just tap into this flow system that you guys really get going when you’re in good competition and have the time to.

00;32;25;02 – 00;32;29;03

Jon

You know, Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

00;32;30;15 – 00;32;54;09

Kirk

Well, I was just going to say, like to that point, there’s so many people that during the pandemic that I mean, there was like the the point of like maximum stagnation for these people. I mean, when you would you would see these people again, they would, you know, like they would look different. They, like, gained a tremendous amount of weight or they just basically vegetate is like people that just you know, I mean, if that was the way they wanted to navigate their time.

00;32;54;12 – 00;33;21;27

Kirk

Sure. And people ask me like, well, what did you do during the pandemic? Right. And it’s like, well, I started a company. So. Yeah, yeah. Not exactly the most conventional, not exactly the most conventional answer. But, you know, we that the two of us, your mind melded. And, you know, I had had a tremendous amount of confidence in you as a professional, but also as a friend, because, you know, you have to the smartest people in the you know, in the world in a room together.

00;33;22;21 – 00;33;47;09

Kirk

But if you if you’re unwilling to work with each other or you don’t have a good personal dynamic, you’ll be each other’s throats. And even if you do have disagreements, they’re not constructive. They’re just you just you just pull each other apart. And and then, like, you give up working with each other very early. John and I had gone through a gantlet of extremely stress, you know, stressful training events in austere conditions.

00;33;47;20 – 00;34;15;05

Kirk

We had survived the test many, many, many times. And, you know, there’s there’s just this you know, there is there was a foundation there that that created a sense of reassurance and stability that whatever we would get ourselves into, you know, sink or swim, we’d still be friends at the end of the day. And we you know, and we would just reattach it and go from there.

00;34;15;05 – 00;34;21;08

Kirk

Like I knew that no matter what we would, we would come out the other side still, still so good friends and so close.

00;34;21;11 – 00;34;49;13

Jon

So yeah. And so one of the fun things about is like, so we’re going to have much, many more conversations about our business, especially when it comes out of the shadows. Because for the last coming on 18 months, we’ve been senselessly slaving in the darkness with little to show for it publicly, right? But we’ve been working towards something that we can stand behind in, and that will solve problems for people genuinely and bring forth a solution.

00;34;49;24 – 00;35;16;02

Jon

And it meets our vision. Right. And we had to start a bit adversely. But but it worked for us. We knew what the vision was like. It was very clear. And the vision, simply put, is we want to use our freedoms to create freedom. We want to whether, you know, as as you’re transitioning from service with me being out, we want to continue to serve this country and be champions for freedom, because that is what is at a very high level.

00;35;16;02 – 00;35;57;25

Jon

So amazing. And figuring out how to do that, where we can afford to start that fight, how we can perpetuate it and grow it into something of ever greater levels of accomplishment and provision, that that was a painful couple of months of figuring out what direction to start with, where to go, things like that. And, you know, one of the things that been separately but attach that became a reality from struggle of how the heck can we champion freedom and encourage people to strive for more and everything else was the great theory, you know, So like from that one decision when chaos was around and the pandemic’s happening and everyone’s isolating and shutting down and

00;35;57;25 – 00;36;11;10

Jon

Netflix and chilling and your life is gone to hell, I’m unhappy. And we decided to move back across the country again. And we haven’t seen each other since we left Fort Carson, Colorado, together. It’s been over two years now.

00;36;11;10 – 00;36;12;09

Kirk

And yeah.

00;36;12;09 – 00;36;36;05

Jon

All this chaos is happening every excuse in the world to stop talking, to just complain about it. And the one thing I’m comfortable giving both of us credit for is we decided to push in, in the difficulty to find the opportunity in all the chaos and to start building this rickety plane that’s barely flying but flying. And it’s been so much fun, you know?

00;36;36;22 – 00;36;53;25

Kirk

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s there’s a lot there’s a lot there. You know, we talk about finding opportunity amongst the chaos, you know, who’s able to pick their heads up above the of the static and the white noise and and just kind of see where where you can grow, where you can build, where you can create value.

00;36;54;17 – 00;37;17;17

Kirk

You know, I mean, personally, professionally, there’s there’s opportunity all around, even in the worst of moments, you know, I mean, you get some of the best lessons learned, the hardest Lord, you know, so so, you know, looking through it, you know, and and it’s scary. Yeah, I will say that fortunately, very fortunately, my job provide I do have job security through the military.

00;37;17;17 – 00;37;37;29

Kirk

So, you know, for what it’s worth, it was able to give me at least some consistency there. I didn’t worry about losing my shirt and it did give us the ability to stretch your legs a little bit and try a new direction and things. And it was it was a it was a wonderful new venture. I can you know, I haven’t learned this much.

00;37;38;14 – 00;38;11;02

Kirk

And all these new disciplines and skills in such a concentrated amount of time since probably my time at West Point taking, you know, seven classes in any given semester. I mean, and the density of learning and the density of growth was so staggering, it just felt so good to finally get back into it. And it was not without tremendous work, but it just felt like it just felt so good to lean in, to just embrace into it, embrace the situation and lean into it, and then try to figure out what you can make out of it.

00;38;12;14 – 00;38;24;14

Kirk

It’s just it’s a beautiful concept, and I don’t think I’ve ever I don’t ever feel like I’ve ever done that and then regretted it. So yeah.

00;38;25;26 – 00;38;44;21

Jon

And that really sums it up. I’ve never I’m, I’m the same way. I’ve never regretted choosing something that’s harder but towards a better like reward than taking the easier path. Like I’ve never looked back and been like, Oh, I wish I didn’t do that work out or I wish I didn’t do that thing that ultimately made life so much better for my family.

00;38;44;21 – 00;39;05;05

Jon

But it’s really hard for a couple of months or a couple of years. Yeah, there’s benefit to undergoing suffering for a better potential. And you know, I can’t help but think right now about this is not a normal guest conversation. This is really you know we’re we have someone on and we get talked for a while and then that’s kind of their story and they move on with life.

00;39;05;05 – 00;39;33;18

Jon

This is really an introduction for those who listen to the theory. And for us, because you and I are partners, we are close family, friends, all three of us are very close. You’re your uncle to the boys and we intend on walking through life together for as far as we can see, as we build source solutions, as we build great ideas and just live life and thrive and build our families.

00;39;33;18 – 00;40;00;08

Jon

And with that, yeah, we intend on having you on the show frequently in the same capacity. It like, you know, another guest host who shows up hangs out and is part of different conversations, different, you know, welcoming different guests and things like that. So in my mind, this is just the beginning. It’s not a it’s not a story start to finish, but it’s an introduction, a peek into your life, into why we matter to each other.

00;40;00;20 – 00;40;06;05

Jon

And a to be continued. Lots of exciting things ahead type of deal.

00;40;07;03 – 00;40;25;00

Kirk

Yeah, I can’t wait to be a part of it because I’m going to be in the picture and I’m here for it.