Episode 36 from The Grit Theory. 

Today Lindsey and I are joined by the indomitable Craig Kaiser who is a husband, father of four, business owner and community leader. 

Highlights include: 

–          Everyone is entitled to the privilege of not allowing an excuse for yourself.

–          What do you have to lose? 

–          The curse of affluence and comfort. 

–          There is no guarantee that it will pay off. 

–          You must be humble enough to learn from the failures. 

–          You are either getting better or worse. 

–          Fight for every inch.

–          America is the tribe. 

For a bit of motivation check out Al Pacino’s “Inch By Inch” speech from the movie Any Given Sunday.

Did you find value in today’s conversation? Pay it forward, 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;08;20 – 00;00;17;04

Jon

Hello and welcome to The Great Theory. This is John Mayer. I’m joined with Lindsay. And today we have the indomitable Craig Kaiser with us as well. How are you doing today?

00;00;17;06 – 00;00;19;02

Craig

Doing good. Glad to be you guys.

00;00;20;00 – 00;00;40;07

Jon

It’s fun. So a little bit of a backdrop that I think is really neat is the last night we hung up for the second time as families. You’re the football coach for our boys and you have four girls. We have four boys, so it’s always fun to get our families together. But the two times we have succeeded in getting our families together, so far it’s been like under just insane circumstances.

00;00;40;23 – 00;00;42;01

Craig

Yes. Yes, it has been.

00;00;42;12 – 00;00;46;05

Jon

You invited us up to date the first time and like you’re all summer.

00;00;46;05 – 00;00;46;20

Craig

Square again.

00;00;47;08 – 00;00;48;00

Lindsey Mayo

Broke out.

00;00;48;05 – 00;00;53;17

Jon

From a forest fire. So we just get up there and are making firebreak and stuff and then grill out.

00;00;54;04 – 00;01;13;10

Craig

Yeah. Friday afternoons, The last couple of weekends have just not been not been ideal. I mean, and that’s cool. It says a lot about your character. Actually, we hadn’t even really. We’ve met a few times up until that point. You know, I’m so-and-so, his father, your so-and-so, his father, you know, shake hands and, you know, you guys were supposed to come up to the house that that evening.

00;01;13;23 – 00;01;28;13

Craig

And I was actually on a conference call with my business partner. We have some strategic executive things going on in the company right now. So. Pretty important phone call and I’m getting text messages from my family that lives around here saying, hey, is up fire by you guys. And like.

00;01;28;19 – 00;01;28;26

Lindsey Mayo

What?

00;01;28;26 – 00;01;35;03

Craig

Fire in the back of my mind is like, oh, no, there’s no way for no reason. Just pure ignorance, Like it’s going to be somewhere else.

00;01;35;05 – 00;01;36;09

Jon

I can’t see it from my office.

00;01;36;09 – 00;01;51;04

Craig

It’s Friday afternoon. It’s going well. Like there’s going to be a couple beers on beer crack open here in a little bit. No, it’s going to be somewhere else. And about an hour later through that call, my wife like she doesn’t come into my office. If she knows I’m on a conference call, she comes in, she goes, we’ve got to go.

00;01;51;04 – 00;02;05;19

Craig

We’ve got to evacuate. Unlike. Oh, man. Okay, we’re within a certain radius. So I get in the car and I drive down the road a little bit and I look over my shoulder and the smoke is a half a mile away from me. And we live just for people listening in the context we live in The Forest Service.

00;02;06;02 – 00;02;06;29

Lindsey Mayo

Fires mile.

00;02;06;29 – 00;02;08;05

Craig

Is it’s a big deal.

00;02;08;07 – 00;02;09;08

Lindsey Mayo

It’ll travel fast.

00;02;09;11 – 00;02;25;15

Craig

Yeah. So I look back and I’m like, Oh, no. You know, a bunch of four letter words. And the first thing goes through my mind is when my house burns down, I’m still going to have to pay the mortgage. Yeah, right. That’s great. Right. Which I’m not going to be able to do. So I run back home. It was a feeling like I had never really had.

00;02;25;15 – 00;02;40;25

Craig

Throw the girls in the car real quick, grab a couple of guns that weren’t in the safe. And, you know, my wife grabbed some stuff. They get in the car and go. And at that point, I kind of realized how real it was. My girls are all crying and I’m like, What are your girls crying for? Dad? We don’t want you to die.

00;02;40;25 – 00;02;58;07

Craig

And yeah, I’m probably not going to die, but we’ll see. And so I get going. You know, they leave. I jump in the skid loader and it was so close, I just drove through fence lines to get to where the fire was. And long story short, you know, I had just met John and I’d been working the skid loader for a little while.

00;02;58;07 – 00;03;12;09

Craig

I turned around on one of the cuts I was doing and there’s John standing there next to his pickup with his chainsaw. And I immediately knew, like, that’s my guy. That’s that’s my kind of guy right there. You didn’t know who I was in. You didn’t know how bad it was up there. I mean, you let him go.

00;03;12;09 – 00;03;18;17

Craig

You said he needs to go. Lindsay Yeah. And you didn’t know. I mean, you never know what might happen up there, but.

00;03;19;01 – 00;03;38;19

Lindsey Mayo

Yeah, Liz called me and was like, Hey, we’re going to have to postpone. Yeah, there’s fire. We’re evacuating. I was like, You let me know what you need. I’ve lived through this many times. I’ve been from Southern California. I’ve evacuated multiple times. Yeah. And he was driving home, but I had called him and I go, They need help.

00;03;38;23 – 00;03;56;26

Lindsey Mayo

How can we help? He goes, I’ll grab my chainsaw. I was like, Yeah, Cause I told him I was like, Craig stayed clear. Fire, Break this out in the other. You guys change my shirt, put on different boots, and I’ll grab my chainsaw and go. I was like, Cool. I have their address. And he’s like, You probably won’t be able to reach him because if he’s he doesn’t have his phone on him and he’s like, All right, I’ll show up.

00;03;57;04 – 00;04;01;15

Craig

And he did, yeah, showed up. So I was ready to go. Oiled, gassed up. That’s right.

00;04;01;15 – 00;04;03;14

Jon

You brought the tank to you. I think he.

00;04;03;14 – 00;04;08;17

Lindsey Mayo

Didn’t even turn the car off when he got in through the gate. He just left it running and was like, I’m in and out.

00;04;08;18 – 00;04;09;11

Craig

That’s cool.

00;04;09;11 – 00;04;10;01

Lindsey Mayo

But you let me know.

00;04;10;01 – 00;04;18;02

Craig

That’s how much time it was that every minute was needed to happen. Yeah, They threw they threw the. They threw the kitchen sink at that fire. Yeah.

00;04;18;12 – 00;04;22;11

Jon

Which was such a good thing. And I was really fortunate. His I know there’s a.

00;04;22;16 – 00;04;24;16

Lindsey Mayo

There’s a fly. He’s driving everyone crazy.

00;04;24;16 – 00;04;27;18

Jon

From the frickin devil.

00;04;27;18 – 00;04;29;29

Craig

They’re together again. Yeah. I have to stop this.

00;04;30;03 – 00;04;35;15

Jon

Yeah. So we’re dealing with, you know, mild, very mild discomforts here in the studio today.

00;04;35;27 – 00;04;41;14

Craig

But the same fly that landed on Mike Pence’s head, I’m pretty sure. Yeah, same one.

00;04;41;21 – 00;04;57;28

Jon

So we’re up there, and by the time I get up there, I didn’t really get do anything, which. Which is neat because the fire was starting to shift. So you finished up in the skid loader? We jumped in the truck to see if there’s any other properties that needed help further down the road. And then we went back to the house.

00;04;57;28 – 00;05;06;01

Jon

Right. Okay. I guess the danger is mostly gone unless the wind changes because it blew past and we still had a grill out.

00;05;06;05 – 00;05;07;14

Lindsey Mayo

Yeah, Yeah, there’s a lot of fun.

00;05;07;23 – 00;05;23;21

Craig

Well, that’s it. John was like, Well, I guess, you know, if. What do you want to do? I was like, Well, I mean, I’m not leaving tonight. And by then I’d had a couple beers because I was pretty thirsty and I was like, Well, you guys might as well head back up. And I think my family got back almost the exact same time Lindsey and the boys got up there.

00;05;23;23 – 00;05;25;17

Craig

Yeah, had a great had a great time.

00;05;25;20 – 00;05;26;11

Lindsey Mayo

Yeah, it was awesome.

00;05;26;11 – 00;05;26;18

Craig

Yeah.

00;05;27;19 – 00;05;39;24

Jon

So, like, you fast forward. So that’s our first night together, which is neat. And then, you know, two weeks later last night, we plan on hosting you guys here. It’s like, okay, this will be fun. Or supposed to be Friday night, right? No, Saturday.

00;05;39;24 – 00;05;41;11

Lindsey Mayo

So it’s supposed to be last night. Yeah.

00;05;41;16 – 00;05;47;28

Jon

So Saturday. And then your baby girl fell off the trampoline, broke her arm. Friday night. Needs surgery Saturday morning.

00;05;47;28 – 00;06;09;01

Craig

Yeah. And there’s more to that, right? When you hear falling off the trampoline, you just assume that, you know, got launched off the side. And no, that’s not what happened, was trying to get to the ladder because her sister had moved the ladder fell off the edge of the trampoline, trying to get to the ladder. And. Yeah, so and at the time I just put replace a new oxygen sensor in my pickup.

00;06;09;01 – 00;06;30;24

Craig

So been trying to figure out the gremlin in that thing for like eight months. Finally figured out, okay, it’s the sensor. So I driving around making sure everything’s good, someone like a nine, nine and a half, like, finally got to pick up run. It’s good. Another Friday night, like, yeah, Dawn for a beer time for beer. Going to crack when open pulling the driveway from like a9596 to like a one.

00;06;31;06 – 00;06;48;17

Craig

My wife Elizabeth, meets me in the driveway. Amelia fell off the trampoline, broke her arm. I got to take her in. Oh, okay. All right. So she takes her in and, you know, luckily, it was just a broken bone. Those heal pretty quickly. But she had had surgery early the next day, so. Yeah, we went to the trunk.

00;06;48;17 – 00;06;50;15

Craig

Her treat. She’s a tough little girl.

00;06;50;18 – 00;06;58;25

Lindsey Mayo

Yeah. The fact that she was even out was amazing yesterday to get to see her and still just like, half awake because she’s tired, but she’s like, I’m not going to miss out.

00;06;58;25 – 00;07;01;01

Craig

She was not going to miss her. Trick or treat. Right.

00;07;01;02 – 00;07;04;07

Lindsey Mayo

She had determination right there. So I’m going to show up.

00;07;04;09 – 00;07;20;15

Craig

She she was not settling for. No, I’ve been looking forward to this for a month. I’m not going to. Yeah. Not going to not miss Trick or Treat. And then we got in the pickup. It was her decision like, well, do you want to go see Jeremiah and Gabe? And they look, she’s like, Yep, I want to go see them.

00;07;20;22 – 00;07;28;29

Craig

Yeah. Okay. All right. But we’ll go over there for a little bit. And she had a great time, slept on the couch and. Yeah, yeah, it’s been a, it’s been unique. Every time we’ve hung out, that’s for sure.

00;07;28;29 – 00;07;31;11

Jon

It has been. I’m all for breaking the streak.

00;07;31;20 – 00;07;33;04

Lindsey Mayo

Unique. Yeah, it’s been easy.

00;07;33;04 – 00;07;40;08

Jon

I’m okay for, like, a more, like, you know, normal thing whether they were show up with girl some food we some fun no one gets hurt nothing no.

00;07;40;15 – 00;07;42;11

Lindsey Mayo

Significant property gets given out.

00;07;42;15 – 00;08;09;18

Jon

Damage but I think this a really fun intro to like how our relationships kicked off and stuff because I mean, the show is the grit theory and grit is courage, bravery and determination despite difficulty. Right. And if you if you’re going to look at someone like who emulates that your whole family does because of the things that are clear, you are hoping to encourage and lead your girls in and your family with in.

00;08;09;18 – 00;08;30;27

Jon

You and Liz are a powerhouse team and having you watching you like coach the boys in football like no hit them harder. No, this is the point of the sport and all that type of stuff. And we’ve talked a lot about raising a generation that’s not super soft and flaccid and weak, raising tougher, tougher kids to do the work that needs done and also pursuing that for ourselves.

00;08;30;27 – 00;08;38;26

Jon

So it’s just like it’s a great snapshot in action in real life of some of the principles we talk about and are fostering and encouraging.

00;08;38;29 – 00;08;57;07

Craig

Sure, yeah. And it might not even just be raising a tougher generation. It’s a it’s a generation that you’re going to anticipate that there’s going to be struggles just anticipated. Get ready for it. And right life is not easy. And that’s like when I first met your boys, I knew they had the mentality that I’m going to have to work hard.

00;08;57;07 – 00;09;15;02

Craig

And the harder that I work, the better I’m going to become, right? And I knew right away they come from a good family. But yeah, I mean, that’s part of it’s not just being tough. It’s I know this is going to be a struggle for the grit side of it. I’m going to go through it regardless. I know it.

00;09;15;02 – 00;09;31;24

Craig

And when I get through those struggles, it makes it even better, right? You get to the top of the mountain. It’s tough. It’s really hard to walk to the top of that mountain. It’s not worth being top of the mountain if you just see that it’s a plateau. If you don’t see the things below that you walked through, why you get why get to the top.

00;09;32;02 – 00;09;45;10

Craig

Yeah, right. That’s the it’s the struggle and it’s the grittiness of getting to your goal is what makes the goal. You know, that’s, that’s the satisfaction of the achievement. It’s not even so much being there that I went through all of that.

00;09;45;14 – 00;10;04;02

Jon

It’s the journey of it, right? Yeah. That’s why these rights we hold to be self-evident life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not the destination, not someone giving you what you want, but to be able to struggle in the journey of life for something that’s worth struggling for. Absolutely right. Like that is freedom. That is all those things.

00;10;04;02 – 00;10;25;16

Jon

And and one one thing. It’s like, okay, I want to get better today than I was yesterday. I want to you life’s going to suck. There’s going to be hard things, but I can make that like we can make almost losing your house into a fun night. We can make your we can still have a good time. Despite someone getting hurt, we can still make good things out of bad situations.

00;10;25;16 – 00;10;39;28

Jon

And that’s part of the gift of hitting the switch of, Hey, just be prepared. Difficult is going to come. But if you face it head on, if you face it with intentionality, then you’re in control of your response and if you’re in control of your response, you can really hope to dictate the outcome.

00;10;40;12 – 00;10;40;17

Craig

Right.

00;10;40;28 – 00;10;41;21

Jon

Which is pretty neat.

00;10;41;28 – 00;11;06;27

Craig

And it’s the difficulty that that improves you. Right back to your example. Yeah, it was difficult going and cutting that fire line, but it’s improved my home, right? It’s yeah, this morning I was out there this morning with the chainsaw cutting down, you know, 10 to 12 trees. Now I need it for firewood. But it’s, it’s if I’m not sure if I wouldn’t have had that experience that I would go through the fire mitigations, the what some people might call struggle or work.

00;11;06;27 – 00;11;29;14

Craig

I’ve grown to the point in my life where part of the struggle is almost what you look forward to, right? Because your brain’s going to tell you you don’t want to do ever. Every human brain is going to tell you you don’t want to do this. Some people have grinded through it enough to realize that to themselves, that the further I go, the harder I push myself.

00;11;29;27 – 00;11;51;12

Craig

That is my reward, right? So I get up this morning, start cutting some trees down. But if that experience wouldn’t have happened, I don’t probably wouldn’t have done that. If I would have done something else right now with the girls breaking, you know, Amelia breaking her arm, we’re probably going to be a little bit more cautious with things that, you know, maybe maybe turn the throttle down on the motorcycle, things like that.

00;11;51;12 – 00;11;55;24

Craig

My kids aren’t, you know, invincible, things like that. But yeah.

00;11;56;24 – 00;12;19;00

Jon

It really is a good picture. So help me understand a little bit about your past. I’m going to share the highlights I’ve picked up on conversation. Not all of them. Just just a few of them that really stood out to me. So kind of pick yourself up by your bootstraps, especially through college, right? They have a lot of resources at your disposal going through college years and stuff because we talked about how you enjoyed some raw liver at that time.

00;12;19;11 – 00;12;20;20

Craig

The only thing I could afford. Yeah.

00;12;21;03 – 00;12;26;16

Jon

So like, there’s that in the picture. I know that you spent a significant amount of time in South Africa.

00;12;27;05 – 00;12;30;04

Craig

Was, was West Africa, Sierra Leone, specifically.

00;12;30;04 – 00;12;33;03

Jon

So I was way off West Africa.

00;12;33;03 – 00;12;34;14

Lindsey Mayo

Geography. It’s important.

00;12;34;18 – 00;12;50;21

Jon

And then at some point in all of that, you also decided to leave a job to start a business. I imagine a well-paying job to start a business which always comes with a lot of risk and get married and have a bunch of kids in a time where a lot of people are wanting to focus more on themselves.

00;12;50;26 – 00;12;51;05

Lindsey Mayo

Or their.

00;12;51;05 – 00;12;53;00

Jon

Pets or their pets. And I guess.

00;12;53;15 – 00;13;26;07

Craig

So. Yeah, there’s yeah, yeah. The 38 to 45 year old, I wouldn’t really even call them an adult that calls their pets their children. Yeah, it’s, it’s actually I, I don’t want to make light of that because I actually feel sorry for some of those folks because it is an expression they want more to their family than they actually have and they likely want another you know, they either want a husband or wife and kids, but yet, you know, you use the word risk.

00;13;27;02 – 00;13;52;27

Craig

Some people look at that relationship as a risk. Well, if I enter this relationship and I lock my and I lock myself down, that’s how they look at it. What am I going to miss out on? It’s they’re looking at a 100, 180 degrees the wrong way. What are they missing out on now by trying to keep this lifestyle that is that they liked when they were in college in their early twenties and they’re still living it?

00;13;52;27 – 00;14;15;21

Craig

I’m not knocking that. And I’m sure some people really do want that. But with their calling, their pets, their kids, there’s clearly something there that they want more than what they actually have. Mm hmm. But yeah, I mean, risk is a thing that happens to me at least at least once a day on meetings.

00;14;16;09 – 00;14;27;13

Jon

Well, let’s just own it. So what happened? We’ve decided instead of relying on someone else coming to watch the kids to train them so that we can do a recording. So today’s recording number two today sort of fuller days.

00;14;27;14 – 00;14;28;28

Craig

It’s a long day for those kids, man.

00;14;29;00 – 00;14;30;07

Jon

It’s 4 hours total.

00;14;30;12 – 00;14;31;14

Craig

That’s a long day, buddy.

00;14;31;15 – 00;14;44;23

Jon

And frankly, that’s the first time we’ve had someone come up during a recording. So all in all, I’m I’m proud of them. They need to continue to learn and build that discipline. We’re instruct them in that. But hey, we’ll keep rolling.

00;14;45;03 – 00;15;03;20

Craig

Oh, yeah, we got to do there’s no obviously, I mean, I’m not a big deal at all. But like you said, there’s, there’s been some Yeah. I would people that I wouldn’t want that happened with some like some conference calls and just words like Yeah that, that noise you just heard that’s my daughter there because she got the motorcycle stuck against a tree.

00;15;03;27 – 00;15;07;00

Craig

You know, I’m going to I’ll be back in like 30 seconds, correct? Yeah.

00;15;07;07 – 00;15;25;10

Jon

And I think that there’s a difference between, like, I don’t know, part of the journey. We were talking just before recording about, man, right now things are an uphill fight, right? But two of the choices Lindsey and I made in our protests and stand for freedom and some of that and then just other life events like everything seems to be an uphill fight right now.

00;15;25;10 – 00;15;43;09

Jon

It’s like that’s life. And we don’t want to have to rely on something we don’t have control of. To be able to keep doing the work we think is important, like having these conversations. So having a small interruption from time to time and being transparent about it, owning it, and then continuing forward, they’re going to learn each thing.

00;15;43;09 – 00;15;55;15

Jon

I’m immensely proud of how the kiddos are doing and we’re going to develop that self-reliance to continue doing the work we want to do. So, you know, thanks for your understanding and and that’s why I want to address it and talk about it for a second instead of just try to edit it out. Oh yeah.

00;15;55;21 – 00;16;00;16

Craig

No, I wouldn’t put it out in a way that’s it’s real. We’re having a real conversation sitting with each other.

00;16;00;22 – 00;16;06;24

Jon

With real deeds across the table. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. There’s nothing real special about it. Uh, to your question.

00;16;08;04 – 00;16;34;09

Craig

I guess, you know, I, I came from, I come from a family that I won’t ever. I will. My parents worked far too hard and made way too many sacrifices to me for me to sit here and say I was born. I was raised in a poor family. Mm hmm. We didn’t have a lot I knew a lot of families in our community that had a heck of a lot less than we did because their their family, for whatever reason, didn’t make the sacrifices and didn’t put the work in that My parents did.

00;16;34;21 – 00;16;56;29

Craig

But we still didn’t have a lot. And what I guess the biggest privilege that I had growing up was a privilege to never make an excuse for myself. Hmm. If you don’t make the team, that’s your fault. You know, I don’t. I don’t care what the coach said. If he was mean to you, if some you know, if some kid took your position because he’s the coach’s dad, that’s irrelevant.

00;16;57;09 – 00;17;21;16

Craig

There are no excuses. Did you get up the next day? Did you start going out and playing catch with yourself? Did you run sprints? Did you do something more than every other than what was asked of you? We never were allowed to make an excuse, and I’d say that’s the biggest privilege and the best thing my parents could have ever done for me is never if something’s not going the way I wanted it to in life, that’s on me.

00;17;22;03 – 00;17;42;27

Craig

I have the power and authority to be able to make that that change. Right. And I guess that’s, you know, that’s kind of how I started, whether it was athletically, you know, I knew the only way I was going to go to college was through sports. Mm hmm. I come from a very, very, very small school. I mean, I graduated with 22 kids in my high school class.

00;17;43;25 – 00;17;47;11

Craig

There were virtually zero college athletes that came out of that school.

00;17;47;12 – 00;17;48;13

Jon

And where is it located again?

00;17;48;20 – 00;18;11;01

Craig

It’s it’s called Marino High School. It’s a northeastern portion of Colorado. Okay. Plains Country, I played eight man football. I mean, it was it’s not a powerhouse type program. I mean, I would get invited to some of these recruiting camps at bigger colleges. And this this legitimately happened to me, John, because I worked I worked every summer. I didn’t get to go to a lot of football camps.

00;18;11;01 – 00;18;30;07

Craig

That’s how you get recruited. Typically. I was working in a grain elevator through most of my high school summer, so I finally was able to take a week off my senior year. I went to this one camp and did very well, got to, I think number two or three in this group of the corners, eight man football, you don’t have corners.

00;18;30;07 – 00;18;46;07

Craig

So I didn’t even know what that was. There was a kid that was going to USC. He was ahead of me, another kid, he was going to Florida. And then there was me, a kid wearing merino high school football shorts and the position coach from CSU. He really liked me. And he goes, Hey, man, we’ve never seen you.

00;18;46;07 – 00;18;51;05

Craig

Where you from? And I said, Well, I’m from Marino. Well, he thought I meant Marino Del Rey, California.

00;18;51;18 – 00;18;53;13

Jon

Yeah, that’s what popped into my head when you first submarine.

00;18;53;16 – 00;19;14;24

Craig

Well, you self, right? But everybody thinks, Oh, Marino And you know, he’s black, dude. So he’s like, Oh, yeah, we played Marino. Well, I’m from Northeast Colorado, right? I there’s not a there is mostly white farm kids so I think this how naive and ignorant I was as a, you know, 17 year old high school kid. I was trying to think the biggest school that Marino could have possibly played.

00;19;14;24 – 00;19;31;22

Craig

And I’m like, you mean like, did you go to Jackson or something? And he goes, Wait a minute, man, Where are you from? I said, I’m from Moreno High School. I’m like 2 hours away. This is like this to the point. My story is there are no excuses. I could have made so many excuses of why this happened.

00;19;31;22 – 00;19;52;23

Craig

This next thing happened. I didn’t have the privilege to make an excuse for myself. The coach turns his back on me, walks away. The next day I was in a different group. I was in the number two group. He didn’t say another word to me, and no other coaches ever said another word to me. Now, in other circumstances or in other, if I came from different families, I could have made every excuse in the world.

00;19;53;12 – 00;20;09;07

Craig

You know what? Screw that coach. You know, he’s looking at you for how you look and where you’re from, and that’s why you didn’t make it. I didn’t have that. I never had that. My excuse was, you know what I something I did weren’t wrong. Either messed up in a drill or I did something there, or I said something I shouldn’t have said.

00;20;09;25 – 00;20;26;27

Craig

And that’s why I got moved to the other group. They didn’t like me. So I better get better at what I’m doing. And that’s how I’ve lived my entire life. Got recruited by Sheridan State, played football. There was on some incredibly good teams, played with a lot of guys that played in the NFL for a very long time.

00;20;27;06 – 00;20;50;23

Craig

Danny Woodhead I was his lifting partner for two years, which I was. He was a freak. I still was a freak athlete. I mean, he’s a there’s there’s a lot of special people in the world that play extremely professional sports. Danny Woodhead is one of those guys. He is special on every he touches a sport or a ball, he’s going to be the best person you’ve ever seen do it.

00;20;52;00 – 00;21;09;18

Craig

But I was privileged because they put him with me because I, I would grind in the weight room. I worked really, really hard because I had to. If I’m playing on competing against guys like him, I had to work really hard because I wasn’t nearly as talented talent as him. Graduated and then life punched me in the face again.

00;21;10;15 – 00;21;34;11

Craig

Graduated in 2009. I was going to be an engineer in the oil and gas industry. Oil and gas industry shut down that year. I could have made every excuse for myself that, you know, the world’s cards are stacked against me. I had no excuses. I got the first job I could find Lay in concrete in Sterling, Colorado. I was living in my buddy’s basement, and I did that for probably like two or three months.

00;21;34;11 – 00;22;01;13

Craig

And my plan was actually go into the military. My buddy was getting my buddy was training for buds. He was getting ready for the pipeline. And I was considering maybe getting a contract and joining him. Meanwhile, I have an amazing woman that loves me very much at the time, my current wife Elizabeth, and I realize I don’t really want to I don’t want to be deployed and do the the special sacrifices that those guys because I don’t think I could do it.

00;22;01;14 – 00;22;27;13

Craig

I tip my hat to those guys and their families, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that. All right. So I realized quickly, I don’t want to lay concrete the rest of my life. Not knocking that my grandfather laid concrete his entire life. But this was kind of the the pivot point in my life was I was kind of talking shit like everybody knew I was fairly intelligent, like, what are you doing laying concrete?

00;22;27;28 – 00;22;47;01

Craig

I was like, Oh, I’m going to go to school minds. Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine. My plan was never really go to the Colorado School of Mines. I was I was afraid. I didn’t think I was smart enough. I shouldn’t be there. And one day, unknowingly, my buddy and I got a lot. His name is Jake Lockhart.

00;22;47;01 – 00;23;03;23

Craig

I have to thank him a lot for. For this because my life is radically different. If we weren’t sitting in that bar and he didn’t call me out and he didn’t mean to, but he called me out on my own, that was a one time in my life. I was making excuses for myself. Hmm. Nothing’s worked out and got crapped on here, here, here.

00;23;03;26 – 00;23;23;29

Craig

Whether that’s true or not, to let that in my head. He called me out. And then you mean we’re sitting there at the bar and he’s like, Hey, Craig, He was living in Golden. That was my excuse. I didn’t have a place to go live. Yeah, right. I’m safe. And Sterling, my hometown, laid concrete. It’s all right. He was living in Golden at the time, and he goes, Well, hey, man, I heard you want to go to school.

00;23;23;29 – 00;23;36;01

Craig

Mine’s like, Yeah, man, I just don’t have place that was my excuse. Just want a place to stay. And he goes, Well, hey, man, like a bedroom just opened up in our house. You should come live with us. At the time, I’m like, Oh, shit, you.

00;23;36;01 – 00;23;37;04

Lindsey Mayo

He just called me out on it.

00;23;37;04 – 00;23;53;13

Craig

I did is like, I don’t have an excuse now. Yeah, I. I have a place to stay. And I’m like, oh, man, I just, I, I don’t think I’m smart. Every doubt, every human emotion of doubt hit me at that point, Like, Now, what are you going to do, man? You’ve been told all these people. You going to go to school now?

00;23;53;13 – 00;24;14;01

Craig

What are you going to do? So for the next I think it was like six or seven months. I saved every penny that I could. I mean, when I was when Liz would come and visit me because we were living in different towns, I was saving everything we could. When we went out and ate, we would go to Subway and that was like eating out for us was, you know, each one of us got our own Subway sandwich, so we still didn’t have much.

00;24;14;01 – 00;24;31;16

Craig

So saving my own personal money to go to a school, I wasn’t even a student. I didn’t apply. I just showed up. I showed up. I don’t pretty sure this has never happened in the history of that whole school. I just showed up. I showed up. I started taking 15 credit hours of the hardest courses that I could find.

00;24;31;17 – 00;24;33;04

Jon

How did you get enrolled or do you just.

00;24;33;14 – 00;24;53;19

Craig

Say, Well, the school doesn’t care. They’re going get my money regardless, okay? There’s no guarantee that I’m I’m not in the program, so I’m just it’s just going to go in the document documentation in the school that I’m here’s my name. I’ve taken these courses and here’s the scores that I got. Yeah, right. So if I want to keep doing that, I can and maybe eventually I can get in the program and graduate.

00;24;53;19 – 00;25;14;23

Craig

It’s an enormous risk. I mean, who would do that? Yeah, there’s no guarantee you’re not even going to get a degree. And I called a professor there cold, called him out of the blue. His name is Dr. John Curtis. Super highly respect that that individual. He called me back on a Sunday evening. I mean, this is one of the most prestigious professors at this incredibly prestigious school calling back.

00;25;14;23 – 00;25;30;11

Craig

A guy laying concrete was living in his friend’s basement, Sterling, Colorado. And he’s answering my questions like, well, I’m probably not going to be able to get in for this semester. Like, what should I do? I just want to become a better geologist. I want to get information. What can I do? Go show up and start taking classes.

00;25;31;00 – 00;25;46;17

Craig

He goes, No, no one’s ever done that but you all. You have to. He’s there’s no guarantee. Like if you don’t pass the classes, you’re not getting anything back. Yeah, you’re going to pay for this classes upfront and they’re and he’s like what class you want to take. I said, this one, this one, this one, this one. He goes, this.

00;25;46;23 – 00;26;03;10

Craig

Those are some of the hardest course we have in the geology program. I said, Well, if I, if I got one shot out of trying to get as much information as I can, zero expectation that’s going to pass any of these classes. Yeah. And so I show up day one, I’ve got like a sweatshirt that’s got holes in it.

00;26;03;10 – 00;26;21;28

Craig

I mean, I look, I am a construction worker. I look like one. And we’re going through at the start of all these graduate level classes and everyone’s introducing themselves who they are, you know, And he goes, Come on, peanuts. And the reason I remember his name, because he stole my friend, his name was Coleman Pino. He was getting a Ph.D. in geophysics.

00;26;21;28 – 00;26;39;06

Craig

He was already like a drilling manager in this this Indonesian drilling company. Yeah. So he’s like, That’s my dream job. This guy’s already doing it and I’m in the class with him. So it goes around and I’m in the very back of the classroom sitting with my hood on like, Please don’t make me have to introduce myself.

00;26;39;29 – 00;26;42;21

Lindsey Mayo

Don’t call on me. Please don’t sit here in the corner.

00;26;42;21 – 00;27;00;08

Craig

I just sit here and like, you guys can kick me out at the end of semester and laugh. And I introduced myself and Craig Kaiser, and I came from a school that none of them had heard of. And I’ve been laying concrete for the last ten months, and I kid you not. People started laughing at me. They started laughing like, What is he doing here?

00;27;00;08 – 00;27;19;00

Craig

Because there’s this persona and mentality that if you’re in that school, you’re the smartest person on the planet. There’s so, so smart. And they’re really not. They just they did they worked harder than most people do in high school and college, and they do their work rather than go out and get drunk and drink beer at Chadderton State, which is what we did.

00;27;20;03 – 00;27;36;21

Craig

But they literally laughed at me and I and and this is my own fault. I bought into that too. I was like, know they’re right. I shouldn’t be here. I’d already spent the money, so now I’m going to go to work. And I remember it was like our second test. And this was probably the hardest course that we took that that I took at that school.

00;27;38;08 – 00;27;58;24

Craig

The professor put a distribution of the test scores up there and he goes, This is going to be your hardest test of the semester. And puts the distribution up there. And the the the P 50, the 50th percentile was like a 45% on the test. I mean, it was a weed out class. It was a mediocre test. And I just like put my head down.

00;27;58;24 – 00;28;03;21

Craig

I’m like, oh no. And there’s like a couple of people got like two or three percents and puts a distribution.

00;28;03;21 – 00;28;04;13

Jon

Oh, goodness.

00;28;04;13 – 00;28;24;15

Craig

Somebody’s got 100%. Somebody’s hit 100% on that test. And I’m just like, Oh my God, there’s like one of those people are in this class. There I am over there, the two or 3%. And I knew what that moment was like. Verification. I need to be back and Sterling Lane concrete. Every human out was just piling on here.

00;28;24;15 – 00;28;40;19

Craig

The enemy was piling on me. I told you you shouldn’t be here. Yeah, Told you you shouldn’t be here. But I work hard and worked hard all week on that. Studied? I mean, when I was eating dinner, when I was eating fruit, I was sitting there studying, and I loved the information. So it wasn’t that much. It wasn’t like I was having to grind through it.

00;28;40;19 – 00;28;59;12

Craig

I liked it. Yeah. And I’m you know, he’s going through handing out tests. And the kids that laughed at me in that class were on the far edge of the distribution. They got their asses kicked in on that test and they were laughing because the laugh, their laughter was an excuse. It wasn’t their fault. They didn’t score right.

00;28;59;12 – 00;29;04;03

Craig

Well, this is just one of those tests that everyone it’s made for. Everybody fails. Yep.

00;29;04;03 – 00;29;06;02

Lindsey Mayo

There’s no personal accountability for it. Yeah.

00;29;06;03 – 00;29;28;29

Craig

No, they had zero. They just laughed it away. Oh, well, don’t worry. We’re super, super smart. We’re sitting in the front of the class. We write, we ask all the right questions, and I’m just sitting back there and I’m just has got my. I knew that was the moment where I’m going to realize I shouldn’t be here. And I got my head over my head and the professor like, drops the test in front of me and he puts he was putting them all face down and he says, good job.

00;29;28;29 – 00;29;37;04

Craig

He hadn’t said anything to anybody. He puts the test in front of me. He says, Good job. And I look up and I’m looking around as if he’s talking to someone else.

00;29;37;04 – 00;29;37;13

Jon

Yeah.

00;29;37;22 – 00;29;52;28

Craig

I said, me. And he goes, He goes, Yeah, good job. And the guy sitting in front of me, he was like ten years older than me. He was he was a professional. He was already working several geology jobs. You just come in. It was a night class and he turns around, he goes, You got the 100, didn’t you?

00;29;52;28 – 00;30;10;06

Craig

And I said, I don’t know. I said, Look at it. And he picked the paper up and he looked at and he goes, Yeah, you got 100. I just got up and I walked out, walked out and I mean, it’s such a like a swing of emotions. You shouldn’t be here. Like the enemy tearing, tearing you down. I told you you shouldn’t be here.

00;30;10;06 – 00;30;36;04

Craig

Yeah, I told you. And then God finally said I. You need to trust me. Yeah. And, you know, I’ve had some tears in my eyes because I was so proud. But that’s the most Forget all the athletic stuff. Like that was something I knew I wasn’t very good at, and I just worked. And that’s like, it just goes to show that, you know, most people would not have taken that risk to even get to that position later that semester.

00;30;36;14 – 00;30;57;26

Craig

I need a job. I still wasn’t in the program. I, I still wasn’t in the school. So I needed a job. I was out of money. I was going to go back and lay concrete for another ten months to reload, you know, and then come back and do the same thing. And I was going to do that until they made me leave, until the actual program said, okay, like he’s got his past everything.

00;30;57;26 – 00;31;15;18

Craig

Like, what else are we going to do with him? Yeah. And I got to the end of that semester and I needed a job. And there was one company at the school mines career fair. School Mines is like one of the highest ranked schools as far as job placement. I mean, you’re going to get a job and a good job going to that school.

00;31;16;18 – 00;31;33;10

Craig

Not I couldn’t get one interview. I wasn’t in the in any program. So they didn’t want to talk to me. I mean, I’d show up early. I’d wait in line. When people would not show up to their interviews. I’d sit there and I’d wait and they still want to talk to me. Well, there’s one there’s one outfit there that not a single student signed up for.

00;31;33;10 – 00;31;51;07

Craig

And it was a mining company out of Africa. And I found out why is because none of their professors wanted their students to interview with this companies because it wasn’t actually a company. Now, these students knew about that because they had professors and they were in the program. I was just begging for interviews. Yeah. And I finally got one.

00;31;51;07 – 00;32;05;16

Craig

But it wasn’t had anything do school minds. I was going to go trip Piper on a on an enzyme drilling rig because of, you know, one of my previous contacts was like, Hey, man, I need a job. I’ll just go roughneck for a summer. I need money so I can keep going in school. I’m doing pretty well. I just need money.

00;32;05;23 – 00;32;20;22

Craig

So I. Okay, come work on the rig. So I had that job in my back pocket and I interviewed with this company and it sounded like an Indiana Jones like fairy tale type thing. It was nuts. It was the craziest thing ever. Like, Yeah, you’re going to go live in the movie Force of the Year of Sierra Leone.

00;32;20;28 – 00;32;48;26

Craig

You know, we’re still in Sierra Leone’s. And I’m like, No. And he’s like, well, and he’s he’s like way super excited about this. I’m like, like, who are you? He’s like, Oh, well, I’m one of the investors in the project. Oh, typically, like, that’s going to throw up some major red flags. Like, what’s an investor doing here? Recruiting an intern it at at a career fair and it should have put up but I needed I was so desperate for money I was willing to take a risk that was that made zero zero sense.

00;32;49;08 – 00;33;06;14

Craig

Zero sense. I take and we talked about this last night genre. It took every vaccine known to man, I got sick, I was on hydroxychloroquine, I was on azithromycin, and I had asthma at the time. I’ve never had a respiratory illness since taking those two drugs. Just a little side point there. Yeah, but this was ten years ago.

00;33;06;15 – 00;33;28;15

Craig

I get over there, I quickly realize it was everything that they had told me was a lie. Get into Freetown. There’s no there’s no electricity in Freetown. There’s no running water. It’s a very, very difficult place to live. And I they fly me or they fly me into Freetown, and it’s just a nightmare. It’s the hottest place on the planet.

00;33;29;03 – 00;33;47;11

Craig

Stinks like there’s rust. It’s just a really hard place to live. Next day they drove me up in the forest, and I quickly realize there is no company. They have a concession, which is essentially a lease on an enormous piece of ground. They know where minerals being found and they need to find it. So they kick me out of the car.

00;33;47;11 – 00;34;09;12

Craig

They said, okay, we’ll go find it. And I live for I live for the next three months with the Monday tribe in the Khumbu Hills, in a tent looking for you, looking for it. And we found it. Have some amazing, amazing stories and experiences with it, and we can spend an hour on that if you want to. But it gets back to the point of risk, the privilege of not making it.

00;34;09;19 – 00;34;28;20

Craig

That’s the privilege I have. And it’s really done well for me in life. And every single human on the planet can have privilege. I don’t care what religion they come from, what what their skin color looks like. It doesn’t matter the privilege of not allowing an excuse for yourself, right? That was that is what has really benefited me in life.

00;34;29;16 – 00;34;50;22

Craig

I didn’t have a reason to not take that risk, to take this job. If this goes well, boy, this could really, really help me out. My goals that I’m trying to do. If it goes bad, it could really, really go bad. And everybody in my life was saying, don’t do this for both of those two kind of pivot points in my life and don’t go to school.

00;34;50;22 – 00;35;05;17

Craig

And people my own family said this. They’re like, man, don’t go to school. Don’t go there. You’re going to embarrass yourself. You’re not smart. Take shit in the school. I was told that by and I laughed because I knew they were right. All right. You’re right, man. I’m just going to try it. I’m going to try it. Right?

00;35;05;23 – 00;35;21;21

Craig

No excuses. I’m going to throw it out. They’re going to try it. Don’t go to Africa. What are you doing? You don’t You’ve never even been outside the United States. You should not be doing that. Both of those decisions. I had someone saying, you know what, you should try it. I’m going to support you. And it was wasn’t my wife at the time, was he?

00;35;21;21 – 00;35;40;24

Craig

My fiancee at the time was my now wife, Elizabeth. And she supported me when no one else would when I wouldn’t even support my own myself. Yeah, right. I had more doubt than anybody about these things. No one was telling me anything that I wasn’t telling myself, but one person was telling me something that I wasn’t telling myself, You can do this.

00;35;41;23 – 00;36;01;20

Craig

I believe in yourself, you can do this. And she, believe me, came back and we did that and then got some I mean, I had after that happened and I was safe and get made it back was allowed into the did very, very very well in the program. Got a job at a very good company, a dream job.

00;36;02;10 – 00;36;28;09

Craig

And I tell you this because a lot of the people who were being hired at the same time, I would just say they retired the first day they walked in the building. Yeah. I mean, it’s a phenomenal job, great salary, amazing benefits, you know, before one K’s just going through the roof. And I looked at this and I saw people just settling, just any I don’t know if they’d ever taken a major risk, especially relative to the things that I’d been doing for the last four or five years.

00;36;28;09 – 00;36;48;02

Craig

Yeah, I don’t think they’d ever taken a risk. They had achieved what they were, what they were set out to do, and they just coasted. They were their goal was to coast for the next 35 years and retire. And I looked at this and I’m like, I’m going to fall into this trap if I’m not careful and had a great job.

00;36;48;02 – 00;37;09;25

Craig

And I quickly realized how corporate America works and I did not like it. And if you’re not supporting the right ideas and you’re saying the wrong things and taking risks, yep. That most people will not. It doesn’t work very well. And at that point. I was married with my wife. We had bought a house together about that house.

00;37;09;25 – 00;37;28;04

Craig

We didn’t even have enough. We we had so little money I had to go. And Jake, back to Jake Lockhart, my buddy who first called me out. I went and stayed with his dad in Trinidad, Colorado, and I stayed in his fifth wheel for a week, putting shingles on roofs so that we could afford the bare minimum of our down payment on that house.

00;37;28;21 – 00;37;55;00

Craig

So we didn’t have much at all. Right. But, you know, we got living living quite a bit more safely after we took that job. And we’d had two girls at the time and me and my wife had a conversation like, do we? I’m not happy doing this. Like, we’re kind of settling here. Do we quit this job and do we forfeit a salary with kids and a mortgage?

00;37;55;00 – 00;38;13;17

Craig

And do we do we go out and do it ourselves? And it was that all the risks I had prior to that, when it was just me making just it was just falling on me. If I fail, it’s just me. Those were difficult decisions to make. But now it wasn’t now. Now it was if I fail, it’s. I’m bringing my wife down with me.

00;38;13;17 – 00;38;15;16

Craig

I’m bringing my kids, my family down with me.

00;38;15;17 – 00;38;16;19

Jon

Talk about a motivator, huh?

00;38;17;04 – 00;38;22;18

Craig

It but. But it’s scary. It’s a huge motivator. But it’s scary. You have that weight.

00;38;22;24 – 00;38;23;22

Jon

Of fears motivating.

00;38;24;05 – 00;38;48;09

Craig

You. Absolutely. Absolutely. I better run faster. Yeah. Lions coming. Yeah. And that was. That was the thing. And in my in my head was like, no, stay safe. But there was my wife there saying, no, you can do this. We can do this. And let’s, let’s take the risk. And what’s let’s go, let’s swing, let’s step in the batter’s box and let’s swing because so I mean, and that’s a good analogy.

00;38;48;09 – 00;39;06;23

Craig

And whether you’re a sports person or not, if you look at a professional baseball game, you know, 99.9% of people in the stadium are sitting there watching and critiquing and criticizing and saying what this person is doing wrong and that person’s doing wrong, and they wouldn’t have done that right. And then you’ve got the people out in the field that are taking the risk.

00;39;06;23 – 00;39;22;18

Craig

They put the work in to be able to take the risk. But most of those people, if you plucked someone out of there, let’s say you got the guy playing softball on Saturday night, right. And wears the whole uniform and get up to the softball games. And he’s in there, man, I could hit off this guy and you pluck him out of the stands.

00;39;22;18 – 00;39;45;28

Craig

And so you take step in the box. You’re going to take a cut, man. And not only that, you’re going to tie this financially to a performance. Yeah, he wouldn’t do it. I guarantee they wouldn’t do it. But that’s the same thing with stepping out of into more of an entrepreneurial, not guarantee taking a major risk. It’s it’s very, very scary.

00;39;45;28 – 00;39;51;22

Craig

It’s very scary. It is. And you need to have someone there with you that knows you can do it.

00;39;52;05 – 00;40;15;01

Jon

So. So before we jump into the idea of because of really what I think you’re hunting down on right now is like this decision point to settle or not and why would you choose not to But you just unleashed like a volley of awesome ideas concept saying samples from your history and I just want to cap a few of one those darn warrior women who won’t let you settle because they have their eyes on a prize.

00;40;15;06 – 00;40;33;26

Jon

Right? There is something about them. I happen to be married to on myself. And when when your own doubts filled out, it’s amazing how that incredible force of nature can really help to to quiet out a world’s worth of doubt and give you the courage to keep going forward. Right. So that’s a very fun thing.

00;40;34;20 – 00;40;45;20

Lindsey Mayo

But what was the whole reason we left the military? Yeah, he was like, I have this idea, but I don’t think it’s a good one. I was like, Let’s do it. What do we got to lose? He’s like, Well, we have a lot to lose, actually, because like, our.

00;40;45;20 – 00;40;47;12

Jon

Home or food, like.

00;40;47;12 – 00;40;48;28

Lindsey Mayo

So we’ll figure it out on the other end of it.

00;40;49;04 – 00;41;10;13

Craig

That statement of what do we have to lose is also a privilege that nobody ever takes in consideration. Right. And there’s a there’s a disadvantage to influence, in my opinion, because a lot of the people that I worked with at that very big cushy job come from fairly affluent families. It has nothing to do with race or background or even.

00;41;10;13 – 00;41;32;22

Craig

Right. But but they they had never been down to nothing. They had never known what it felt to have to. The only protein you’re going to get is eating that raw liver. Right? It’s like, man, I want to see your senior roommate grab T-Bone steak off the shelf and running his dad’s credit card through it. And they’re like, Man, I’d like to eat some protein tonight, too.

00;41;32;22 – 00;41;58;17

Craig

And I grab some problem. The only thing I can find it didn’t taste like steak at all. At all. But that’s the thing is the the level of risk that you’re willing to take is is a nearly direct correlation to the status of where you’ve been in life, of like how hard of you hit bottom. Because if you’ve hit bottom hard, you realize, oh, that’s fine, I can stand back up, I can.

00;41;58;17 – 00;41;59;15

Lindsey Mayo

Survive out there.

00;41;59;15 – 00;42;31;24

Craig

Yeah, it’s yeah, you know, it is and it’s scary. I can come right back from it. But that is something that that influence will. And I’ve been trying to balance that with my family. Right. I’ve worked extraordinarily hard to try to provide in a way that that I didn’t have when I was younger. Right? But the things that allowed me to and have allowed me so far to succeed had nothing to do with with affluence, if anything, if I would have had those some of the kids I knew growing up, me seeing them have more than what I had.

00;42;32;08 – 00;42;56;08

Craig

It made me so it made me so mad that seeing my parents work that hard and we still didn’t have very much. And I saw how hard they work and I knew that coming from nothing. I know I can get there, but if you’ve never had to build yourself up to that, then the, the, the just the tiniest thought that you could go below where you started.

00;42;57;09 – 00;43;17;13

Craig

It’s going to keep those people from taking risks. And is it almost a curse of affluence where yeah, I cannot take this risk because what would happen if these things given to me were taken away? Now, thank God I don’t. I didn’t have that. I was blessed with. You have no excuse, men. Go swing the bat. Step up to the plate, take the risk.

00;43;18;01 – 00;43;20;13

Craig

You fall on your face. Stand up. Do it again.

00;43;20;23 – 00;43;40;01

Jon

Right. One What we’re seeing a lot there is like the comfort of, you know, affluence. And comfort in my mind are very sit there, synonyms right there very closely. If you have affluence, it’s easier to be comfortable. Comfort wants comfort, right? If you let yourself have a relaxed morning, you want to relax, stay in it. Just it’s this never ending desire.

00;43;40;12 – 00;44;10;24

Jon

And one of the problems that we see with life in general in our country, with desiring the risk of freedom over the safety of some sort of assurance. Right, is that people just are afraid of what can happen if they have to do difficult things, if they’re not accustomed to that. But when you’re accustomed to doing difficult things, it changes the entire equation and makes the desire to not settle or the greater to pursue.

00;44;10;24 – 00;44;33;24

Jon

New pioneers of thought and ingenuity in doubt, like the ability to create value and to lead your family in a new direction and to make it so that they have shoulders to stand on that further improve the human experience. You know, it’s a it’s truly an incredible thing. And that’s where I think there’s this sinuous lie of don’t take the risk also, Right?

00;44;33;25 – 00;44;48;13

Jon

Like, don’t take the risk. No, you’re in a great spot. You know, there’s both sides of the coin where it’s like, oh, why would you want to mess it up? Why do you want to do this? And it’s like, even if you’re in a blessed position to start with, you can choose to do difficult things. You can choose not to settle.

00;44;48;20 – 00;45;06;11

Jon

You can choose not to retire when you step into the quote unquote dream job in roles that there’s more and that there’s an entirely new way of creating value, that it just takes the courage and the audacity to risk it. Yeah, right. And it can oftentimes end very poorly before it gets better.

00;45;06;22 – 00;45;28;01

Craig

You know? But if it’s worth it, if the risk is worth taking, it’s going to be extraordinarily uncomfortable. Right. And that’s that’s risk. And and you nailed it, right? Humans, I don’t care who it is. Humans naturally want to be comfortable. Yeah. I don’t care if it’s the guy on the last day of Bud’s and he’s on the beach at Coronado and he is freezing.

00;45;28;13 – 00;45;46;15

Craig

He knows he’s still got to go, but in his mind is telling him, I want to be comfortable, I want to be warm, I want to be dry. I don’t want to do this anymore. And he is grit like his grit allows him to keep going. But that’s no different like that. Grit is no different than your daily decisions.

00;45;46;15 – 00;46;08;12

Craig

Like you said, John, is, you know, if you start your morning nice and comfort an easy well your your mind is going to want to keep you there. Yep right. It’s daily decisions and that’s I guess that’s one thing that I do want to try to get across. It isn’t one single thing that has allowed me to get to where I am, and I’m not trying to come off as like, Hey man, I’ve crushed it.

00;46;08;12 – 00;46;32;08

Craig

I’m where I want to be. Absolutely not there. Right? But it’s tiny little decisions that through the course of, you know, I mean, how many times did I sit down and over a beer with a buddy and say, yep, I’m going to go to this school, I just don’t have a place to say. And I made that decision countless times when all I needed to do was one single time.

00;46;32;11 – 00;46;53;21

Craig

Say, You know what? I’m going to put my money. I’m going to just do it right. It’s it’s all of these tiny little decisions that we think are inconsequential, just like you said, Lindsay. You know, I you know, it’s it’s we’ve been there before, right? What do we have to lose? How many times have we all said, what do we have to lose?

00;46;54;19 – 00;47;12;05

Craig

But we don’t do it because we’re afraid of losing something, right? Everybody does it. It’s just all of those little decisions and it’s kind of cliche and corny, but the the Al Pacino speech on any given Sunday. All right, you guys remember that? You know the movie of any given Sunday.

00;47;12;06 – 00;47;13;19

Lindsey Mayo

I’ve seen it. I spent a while.

00;47;13;20 – 00;47;31;13

Craig

And Al Pacino is like given this speech. And it’s in my opinion, it’s pre the best movie speech ever given. But it’s not even just about football. He’s talking about the inches. Right. And you either you either gain an inch or you lose an inch with all of your little decisions throughout that football game. We might as well see that for our lives, right?

00;47;31;13 – 00;47;51;04

Craig

Yeah. Yeah. Were either gaining an inch or we’re losing an inch every day or every decision or every minute that we’re going through that through life. And he says what really matters at the end of the game or at the end of life or at the end of whatever goal you’re trying to get to. Did you go in, grabbed that inch, or did you let somebody else go grab it?

00;47;51;04 – 00;48;10;20

Craig

Cause someone’s going to life or life is a competition and it’s a beautiful competition. I don’t want to live in any world or any country where it’s not a competition. Correct? Because then you’re living in an autonomous, you know, country where it’s North Korea and you have no freedoms and you don’t even know what happiness is because some your definition of happiness has been passed down to you, correct?

00;48;10;22 – 00;48;32;10

Craig

Right. In America, every day is a risk, right? Because you have a risk to either get worse, get further away from your dreams in your goals, or you have the ability to get closer to that every single person who lives in this amazing country has that ability. Now are some of those decisions and some of those paths easier for other people?

00;48;32;10 – 00;48;49;19

Craig

Absolutely it is. I’m trying to make that that point or that case at all. Absolutely. It’s easier for some people. But if any point through my my, you know, path, I’ve said, well, I’m not going to take that risk because that person didn’t have to take it. That person didn’t have to work as hard as me. That person didn’t have to.

00;48;50;02 – 00;49;05;17

Craig

If I’m just focused on what they’re doing, I’ve lost that inch. Somebody else has gotten it because I know there’s somebody else out there not making an excuse, not saying that if I would have done this or if I would have been this, or if I could have came from this family or this last name, or if I could have had this investor pick up the phone.

00;49;05;25 – 00;49;20;26

Craig

All right. This goes to like business. If I could have just had an investor like them who would pick up the phone and get me that placement to give me that order. It’s not about me anymore. I’m just making excuse for myself because I don’t want to go and take the risk and keep going to where I know I think I can.

00;49;20;26 – 00;49;38;08

Jon

One There’s this fun little poem. It’s all the shooters would have seen could haves. All of them ran from one tiny Little did you know. It’s like when you accept like that and you just do it right. You just take the action, you embrace the risk, and you don’t look for an out. You don’t look for another reason.

00;49;38;08 – 00;49;42;18

Jon

It’s empowering. It’s it’s the intoxicating gift of.

00;49;42;25 – 00;49;43;06

Craig

Of.

00;49;43;21 – 00;50;02;28

Jon

This country. Right? Absolutely. The gift to be able to do that stuff. And coming back to your sitting there, it was having conversation. You’re just getting settled into a job, not as in settling with your life, but you’re just getting used to this job. You’re doing it for a little while and then you decide, Do we want to settle or do we want do something different?

00;50;03;17 – 00;50;10;14

Jon

And you guys obviously don’t work for them anymore. Yeah. So you chose not to stay there and what?

00;50;11;01 – 00;50;29;04

Craig

Well, I’ll see what happen from there. I was so I was so enthralled with that job. I loved that job. I mean, every every other Friday we would get off for the first year and a half. I didn’t take that Friday off. I would show up every Friday that I had off because I loved the job. I love the work, I loved contributing.

00;50;29;22 – 00;50;45;21

Craig

I think that that I mean, the work I was doing, I was working for an oil and gas company for pulling fossil fuels out of the ground, which at this point in the narrative in Western culture is that’s killing humanity. I look at the complete opposite way. Look at what it’s done for poverty across the world with it, with energy.

00;50;45;22 – 00;51;04;21

Craig

And because I’ve lived in places where they have no energy and it’s awful, it’s terrible. The human condition is just absolutely atrocious. And I believe I’m passionate about that. My energies are really, really good thing to have. So I was passionate about that and I was coming in and I was very happy about it for the first year, year and a half.

00;51;05;09 – 00;51;21;15

Craig

And I had never worked in a big corporate job before and I thought everybody but I played on a lot of teams. I thought, everybody is for team in a Dhaka. We are going to drive this. Everything we do is going to benefit this company. How much work we put in, the money we spend. All this stuff is going to benefit, which will benefit all of the employees.

00;51;21;17 – 00;51;21;27

Jon

Correct.

00;51;22;23 – 00;51;40;11

Craig

And I quickly learned that’s not the way it is. Right? I’m just naive, just absolute. And there’s some beauty to to, you know, being a little bit ignorant. Right. I guess I’ll say that I am I am ignorant, right? I believe when someone tells me, hey, you get up and you work hard every day and you can achieve whatever you want.

00;51;40;11 – 00;51;58;09

Craig

I 100% believe that, right? You got to be a little bit ignorant to believe that because you see people that work hard and it doesn’t work out that well. But those people, I also make an excuse why they stop doing it. All right. So there’s a little bit of ignorance there. But I quickly learned, you know, that’s a this isn’t going to work for me.

00;51;58;09 – 00;52;17;19

Craig

And Liz, my wife didn’t like it either. She didn’t want to be part of it. And at the time, me and another business partner, mine, we came up with some ideas like Came Man, I know based off of these geologic principles and what you know about engineering, there’s a lot of hydrocarbons that we can recover out of this area.

00;52;17;29 – 00;52;38;16

Craig

Nobody cares about it. Nobody wants to do it. We’ve tried to push it with our company. They don’t want anything to do with it because it’s not coming from the right people. And we started we started taking risk. We on my on my days off, I’d take vacation. We started traveling the country and talking to every private equity group and venture capitalist group that would to us, which wasn’t very many.

00;52;38;17 – 00;52;47;15

Craig

Yeah, right. I mean, who who the hell are you two guys, right? You don’t have any executive experience. You don’t. You don’t come from a big, rich, wealthy family. Like, who are you guys?

00;52;47;17 – 00;52;51;03

Jon

Yeah, this is a well-established industry. Oh, it takes money to make money.

00;52;51;04 – 00;53;09;29

Craig

Oh, enormous amounts, right? Even to get a phone call with some of these people. I mean, it would take us months. So, I mean, we finally got some meetings lined up and, you know, I’d take a day off flight to New York or Dallas or Houston or wherever we needed to go. And long story short, you know, this is after this is risk, right?

00;53;09;29 – 00;53;29;28

Craig

I’m there’s no guarantee same school months. There’s no guarantee any of the work time and effort I was putting into this stuff was going to pay off in any way. We’re spending money. I mean, I’d come home from work and I’m staying up till midnight or 1:00 and doing mapping and things like that, putting presentations together and no guarantee this is ever going to pay off.

00;53;30;02 – 00;53;52;01

Craig

Yep, that’s in my head. It’s likely not. But it was like, keep trying. Like who cares? Who cares if they say no, which a lot. Almost every group we talked to said no. And that’s like getting punched in the face. You know, you spend two or three months talking with an equity group and you given all of your ideas and you pour your heart and soul into them and they send you an email back like a one sentence email, sorry, we’re not interested.

00;53;52;01 – 00;54;08;09

Craig

We’re going to pass. Yeah, right. And then you find out two years later that they actually did sponsor a team for $300 million in the exact same area that you were trying to get under, the same exact geologic principle. So you basically took your idea and sold it to someone else. That’s life. That’s how you know, that’s life.

00;54;08;20 – 00;54;27;12

Craig

And it sucks. But, you know, we kept going and after a couple of years, we got a commitment from one of the biggest private equity groups. And as far as energy goes in the world is Warburg Pincus out of Manhattan. We were committed $750 million to buy Bonanza Creek Energy. At the time, Bonanza Creek Energy was going through bankruptcy.

00;54;27;22 – 00;54;46;26

Craig

So the timing was perfect, absolutely perfect. And, you know, as a 28 year old guy and I was sitting in a in a in a training session and it was a big enough deal. We knew that it was going to hit the news. Whoever got the bid, we knew it was us. And one other group was was in the process.

00;54;46;26 – 00;55;03;26

Craig

You know, I’m driving a 96 Chevy pickup with the same pickup I drove in your house. I was going to say, you’re still driving that one. Yeah, I’m driving that one. That’s a pickup. I’m driving to work and I’m sitting there waiting for like a either a Bloomberg or a Yahoo Finance News article to pop up that day of whether we got the bid or not.

00;55;04;11 – 00;55;30;01

Craig

And my my partner texted me and he says, well, it’s in the news. So I refresh my screen and it wasn’t us. We lost it. Right? We we lost the bid. So I stayed. Yes, I was no, I was not going to be an executive of a almost billion dollar company. I was a geologist at the time and I mean, that hurt that does that took that was a punch in the gut.

00;55;30;01 – 00;55;45;24

Craig

And I got home that night and, you know, I’d been doing this for like, you know, almost two years at this point. My wife, you know, she would see me go off on a weekend and try to talk to a group. And we put a lot of time and effort into it. And I had to tell her, like we we lost we lost it.

00;55;45;24 – 00;56;08;26

Craig

We didn’t get it. And yeah, she said, okay, right far I and that was like an uplifting deals like you don’t care you’re not mad. It’s like, no, like why? Why would I be mad? I mean, how many, how many how many people would have ever thought before you were going to call rescue money that you would have been in those rooms, in those meetings and gotten that commitment.

00;56;09;26 – 00;56;31;05

Craig

So. Well, I’m still kind of shocked that we did that, that that actually happened. But yeah, so that didn’t work. And so then a few years later, myself and another business partner, we came up with another idea and we had done fairly well in a couple other deals and it wasn’t like real money because we it was just on paper.

00;56;31;10 – 00;56;49;07

Craig

It’s not like, you know, here’s 200 grand sitting in a duffel bag that’s like, Hey, good job on this deal. Yeah. So it’s like it wasn’t really real anyway. So he’s like, Well, we’ve got some money off of this deal. We did pretty well. Should we start a company and should we start spending this money immediately? Sounds like, You know what?

00;56;50;16 – 00;57;21;22

Craig

Screw it. Let’s go. Let’s. Let’s do it. Let’s. Let’s swing. Let’s go to town. It’s the business model that we’re currently doing now. It’s it’s very similar to Zillow. It’s a huge business model idea, which really, really hard to sell and get people to understand. But we’re six years in at this point and every day is getting an inch or losing an inch and if we’re not and this is no different, any other thing in life, if we’re not out there getting the inch, there’s plenty of people out there to scoop that inch up.

00;57;22;06 – 00;57;46;24

Craig

And I love being in that environment because I just I just I don’t know if my brain could function or I could function in a society where I have the free, the freedom to succeed or fail. And it’s up to me it’s not up to anybody else. It’s not up to some bureaucratic decision or political decision or where I’m from or any of those consequences.

00;57;46;24 – 00;58;12;05

Craig

Right. In America, it’s a beautiful thing. It doesn’t matter. It’s going to be more difficult for certain than others, 100%. But in this beautiful country, if you if you are gritty enough, if you are willing to be told no, I mean, if you are so, so thick headed that the word no doesn’t mean anything to you anymore. Now, it doesn’t just go out the window, right?

00;58;12;05 – 00;58;31;17

Craig

You learn from what? Why didn’t this group see us? Why didn’t this group see us? And you better yourself every time. And you see why that person said, No, I’m not going to give the next person the same benefit of doubt. I’m going to make them find a different weakness, and they’re going to have to come up with a different excuse to tell me, no, if you keep doing that in this beautiful country, it’s amazing what people can do.

00;58;31;22 – 00;58;57;03

Jon

If if you draw breath and have enough time. It’s very difficult not to win if you’re indomitable. And it’s really the American spirit, right? Like, yeah, we had a couple ships of deeds come over their families and I’m like, Oh yeah, let’s try the New World. And that grew into a few states and they’re like, Yeah, we’re going to tell the greatest superpower, human superpower in the entire planet to go fluff themselves in that where you don’t want them to bother us anymore and to do these things to us and take advantage of us.

00;58;57;18 – 00;59;24;04

Jon

And the United States is born and on and on it goes, you know, take take the West and build. And now here we are. It’s the American spirit. It’s indomitable. You if you are indomitable, it’s amazing what can happen. And that is what I think the American spirit is. In looking at your story, you just summed up the American dream and entrepreneurship in a nutshell, but everyone wants to focus on the wins and the examples of people succeed.

00;59;24;08 – 00;59;25;21

Craig

Yeah, it’s not how you get there, right?

00;59;25;26 – 00;59;55;04

Jon

You just shared a story of which 99% in years and years and years of struggle were failure. Learn, reapply, failure, learn, reapply with no guarantee of anything ever coming from it. And you just kept going back to the drawing board, kept reengaging, and then you got something right from the years of learning. You earn something from the years of learning from the years of application, from the choice to just wipe off your wounds and keep pushing in.

00;59;55;16 – 01;00;06;20

Jon

You finally got the opening that you were working for to be able to do your own company and to keep pressing forward. And now you’re fighting day in, day out for that inch so someone else doesn’t scoop it up like you said it.

01;00;06;22 – 01;00;26;01

Craig

It because because the interests don’t stay with know. That’s what people don’t realize. It’s not like, okay, I’ve got this and it’s mine forever. You know it’s not those knows that people people are always going to tell you and doubt you and say that you’re wrong and there’s not. I mean that’s that’s human nature, right? There’s there’s there’s business decisions why people don’t want to invest.

01;00;26;06 – 01;00;50;26

Craig

It’s most of the time looking back, this was an enlightening, enlightening thing is every time we were told no or I was told no through life, go go back to the football camp. It’s crushing for me. As a younger guy, I was my dream, like a head coach is interested. This position coach is interested, man. This is I mean, this guy is going to USC in front of me like I’m doing pretty well, most likely.

01;00;50;27 – 01;01;10;00

Craig

What? What? I thought the reason why he said no and turned his back and walked away is probably a completely different why they actually did that. And he’s the more I thought about this I mean I was very very torn up about it for a long time. I was like, man, he’s he just he cares about you know, small town, white farm kid.

01;01;10;00 – 01;01;30;15

Craig

Like, he doesn’t care. Do this, this. No, he probably looked at it from at least I hope so anyway, objectively saying and he’s never played corner we’re going to throw him he’s going to get thrown to the wolves like they’re wanting him to play early He’s never played corner he doesn’t understand the fundamental I didn’t at the time Yeah but that never went through my head right.

01;01;30;16 – 01;01;51;24

Craig

It’s just automatically you think of the most atrocious reasons why people tell you, No, there’s probably legitimate reasons why people are telling, you know, and if you just turn that off and allow yourself the excuse of, well, it’s because of this, someone’s planted the seed, you’re always going to have to struggle with this. You’re always going to struggle with this and you automatically default that.

01;01;52;00 – 01;02;01;00

Craig

That’s the reason why people are telling, you know, you never written, you never have the ability to learn the real reason why people are telling, you know, yeah, okay, well, we’re spending.

01;02;01;27 – 01;02;02;24

Jon

And there’s value in that.

01;02;02;24 – 01;02;03;28

Craig

There’s massive value because.

01;02;04;00 – 01;02;05;15

Jon

There’s learnings on where you’re weak.

01;02;05;15 – 01;02;06;10

Craig

Absolutely.

01;02;06;10 – 01;02;21;27

Lindsey Mayo

We also have to be courageous enough to ask, why did you say no? Right? Like you, sometimes you have to be like, okay, I understand. You know, you said no, but can you tell me why? You know, take it as that learning experience and go, okay, can I do better next time?

01;02;22;13 – 01;02;45;27

Jon

Yeah, Because if your performance wasn’t perfect, I’m remembering a conversation we had earlier with Marcus and he was talking about how he left a game. Right? He’s an athlete also. I think you heard that episode as well. Yeah, I did. And he’s all upset because the coach wasn’t leaving him in and his dad’s like, Well, did you essentially play every play perfectly without any errors and gain every advantage for your team you could?

01;02;46;06 – 01;03;05;23

Jon

Right? That’s the essential takeaway from it. He’s like, Well, no, of course not. He’s like, Well, maybe you should. It’s the same thing for you. It’s like, Well, I don’t know his reasons now I want to assume that’s all these things that give me an out like those kids in the class for school minds who were laughing when they saw their poor scores and then the kid that they were making fun of the back of the class got only 100.

01;03;06;09 – 01;03;26;02

Jon

Right. You don’t give yourself the out. And I think one of the things over time, like you’re saying, Lindsay, is not just like one step in maturity is to say, okay, there’s probably legitimate reasons. I hope there’s legitimate reasons here that I didn’t have the perspective to see being in the position I was in. And then the next step of maturity is to say, okay, because I assumed this, I’m going to seek it out.

01;03;26;15 – 01;03;29;28

Jon

Right. Hey, they should let me know it and get the job. Can you help me understand why.

01;03;30;07 – 01;03;30;21

Craig

Exactly.

01;03;30;24 – 01;03;36;06

Jon

I want to improve myself so that I can better serve the next organization I do get with? Right. Hey, why don’t you want a son?

01;03;36;07 – 01;03;50;17

Lindsey Mayo

And they might not always give you the why. I mean, that’s something that you got to just be like all I want. And it’s like, okay, well, I’ll keep chugging along and strange. They do give you the why, and you’re like, Oh, wow, I do see where I made that mistake. And that was a huge one. I really appreciate that.

01;03;50;27 – 01;04;07;09

Craig

It takes humility to have that, though. Yeah, it takes humility is like, so, okay, here, here’s this business idea. Here’s this business model we’re pitching to you. What do you think? Run it through. You know, however many traps? Nope, we’re not going to do it. Okay, Why not? What do we need to tweak in this business model that’s going to help?

01;04;07;09 – 01;04;11;25

Craig

Okay, well, you’re spending too much jionni and you’re one way and someone’s doing what’s.

01;04;11;25 – 01;04;12;08

Jon

Jeannie.

01;04;13;03 – 01;04;17;06

Craig

General administer like general administrative costs. So it’s like your overhead of a business, right?

01;04;17;06 – 01;04;18;23

Jon

So to find you to get things.

01;04;18;23 – 01;04;38;10

Craig

Going pretty much. Right. So yeah. So we would, you know, hire X amount of engineers, whatever your lease rates were in offices. Like how much are you spending to run the business on top outside of, you know, standing up a rig and drilling wells, things like that. What are your extremely manageable? And every cost is manageable, but you know, what are you basically what are you paying people?

01;04;38;10 – 01;04;55;14

Craig

Things like that. And you know what some of these groups were they were that legitimate concerns of, you know, this is you’re spending too much here. Here, here. And it helps you. You have to be humble enough, though, for them to say, well, you’re just not looking at it. Right. And that’s the culturally that is the the younger culture.

01;04;55;14 – 01;05;20;24

Craig

I won’t even say younger culture is just, you know, where the narrative is going is like you can’t be just a goat and, you know, knock down this fence and say that, you know, I’m going to keep hearing no. And he keep hearing, if you don’t change what you’re doing, you’re not going to get a different result. But you have to you have to be humble enough to say, you know, listen to the feedback of every time you’re told no, because it’s going to happen way more time.

01;05;20;25 – 01;05;22;00

Craig

People say, you take.

01;05;22;00 – 01;05;22;09

Jon

It into.

01;05;22;09 – 01;05;38;15

Craig

Account, take it into account and better yourself from it. Yeah, even, you know, some of the time it may not even be legitimate, but that really allows you to do, you know, kind of self analyze and let you see like, how can I get better at this? Well, I looked at this and I’m doing this, this, this, this.

01;05;38;20 – 01;06;00;23

Craig

Now the guy’s just an asshole. And there’s going to be some of those people, right? Most of the time people have a legitimate reason of why they’re saying no, and it’s not a bigoted reason. It’s not anything like that. It’s because this is a competitive life that we are in and everyone’s out to about to grab those inches because you can take those inches away from people.

01;06;00;23 – 01;06;22;12

Craig

And it’s you made an earlier point. Jon’s like, you know, sacrifice and make a decision. Make a decision. You’re never really done right. You’re never done. And the ignorance of believing what people say at that this was later might even have been the same camp, that football camp. I remember a high school coach got up and said, Guys, this is very, very simple.

01;06;22;14 – 01;06;38;17

Craig

It’s probably one of the most vivid things I’ve remembered from any coach saying anything, and I didn’t even know the guy’s name. It was a huge group of people and he was just, you know, I think it was a break. And he just wanted to say this thing. He said, Guys, and it’s a very simple thing. You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse every day.

01;06;39;18 – 01;07;02;19

Craig

Now, most people, they’d probably heard it 200 times, went out one, one out the other. But for some reason that has stuck with me from that day forward is like, did I get better today or did I get worse today? Did I get the edge today or did I lose the edge today? And every decision that I’ve made and trust me, I’m not a person sitting here saying I win every day and I crush.

01;07;02;19 – 01;07;24;01

Craig

I don’t I lose a lot of days. But I have to be honest with myself. And I think you guys are the same kind of people. Yeah. When you go to bed at night and say, Did I win today? If you just sit there and say, yeah, for more, for whatever reasons, like, Yep, I won today and I own win, win, win win and you’re never really if you don’t if you haven’t admitted that you’ve lost some days you’ve never really won one, correct.

01;07;24;07 – 01;07;47;14

Craig

You if you’ve never lost. And that’s a really important thing. If you’ve never lost, if you’ve never hit the bottom, you’ve never really been on top, you don’t know what you don’t know what it’s like to to lose. Yeah. And that’s like we got young kids in sports, right? You know, And you’ve got kids that never lose, never lose all the way, you know, from Pee-Wee’s High School, this and that.

01;07;48;09 – 01;07;49;14

Lindsey Mayo

Because they participated.

01;07;49;15 – 01;08;06;17

Craig

Because they participated, they’ve never felt that crushing blow that, you know, you didn’t you didn’t get a play today or you got put on your back or you did this or this and that, they’ve never felt the pain of defeat and loss. And if you don’t feel that, you don’t really know what it feels like to win, and that’s business.

01;08;06;17 – 01;08;18;02

Jon

Sports anyway, in the simplest way to describe is like, if you don’t know what it’s like to be really hungry, then being full is not a satisfying, you know, it’s that dichotomy of you need both to flavor the stew of life. You need both.

01;08;18;08 – 01;08;18;16

Lindsey Mayo

Yeah.

01;08;19;02 – 01;08;36;04

Jon

And, you know, so so looking at all of this, why not settle? You know, today you’re still, you know, you’re fighting for the interest. Oh, and one other thing. The whole concept of either you win the day or you don’t, that there’s this whole idea of like you’ll hear people always talking about how they’re maintaining, Oh, I’m just in this maintaining program right now.

01;08;36;09 – 01;08;49;20

Jon

I’m just had a stage life or things are good, so I’m just going to sit here. You know I like this, I’m just going to keep doing the work to keep this. And like, I genuinely don’t believe you can maintain a lifestyle and I don’t think you can maintain a place in your life because seasons are meant to change, right?

01;08;49;20 – 01;09;11;22

Jon

Like nothing is infinite. And because of that, whenever I hear that or I think about I’m falling into the trap myself. I’m like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I can’t artificially keep this going. I can’t maintain this level of output or performance forever because I will kind of like a frog in a kettle, allow myself to be lied to in the thinking I’m maintaining.

01;09;11;22 – 01;09;28;19

Jon

But in reality, I’m very, very, very slowly decreasing. Right? I’m falling down. I’m slowing down, I’m getting worse. So I think that there’s a lot more truth in either take the ensure you give the inch, you either win the day or you lose the day. There is no I maintain the day period, but that’s a lie.

01;09;28;20 – 01;09;29;10

Craig

I agree with you.

01;09;29;13 – 01;09;38;17

Jon

In with that. And to me that’s kind of one of the actionable takeaways for us from from the conversations like, hey, don’t give yourself the out of I maintain the day. Did you win or did you lose it.

01;09;39;01 – 01;10;10;15

Lindsey Mayo

Yeah. And be really critical on yourself. Like you have to start looking within to be like, okay so you can win maybe in like one or two areas, but that means you for sure are lost in another area. And then it’s like, okay, so was that loss the overall arching of the day? Because if it’s like, oh, well I may, you know, like I want in my fitness today I did great and nutrition this, that and the other, but I didn’t interact at all with my children and we really needed to talk through these issues because things are happening.

01;10;10;15 – 01;10;19;11

Lindsey Mayo

It’s like, Yeah, sure, I won the day. No, you didn’t. You just messed up like a whole day with kids and like, that’s hard to get back.

01;10;19;20 – 01;10;38;28

Jon

And, you know, I’m really glad you brought that up because life is not so simplistic as one goal that we get to pursue, especially, you know, all of us here as parents and all of us here have many responsibilities. It’s like it’s not just did I win the day in business right now? That is one of the critical factors of did I win the day Certainly and it affects everything else.

01;10;38;28 – 01;10;40;28

Jon

But was I a good father?

01;10;40;28 – 01;10;41;27

Craig

Was exactly a.

01;10;41;27 – 01;10;58;14

Jon

Good husband, a good friend, you know, was I you know, properly aligned with the ideals that I pursue and serve? You know, there’s all these facets that must be taken to account to really have that comprehensive win right. But yeah, today was a slam dunk. Or now.

01;10;59;00 – 01;11;20;20

Craig

Lindsay, for you to just simply ask that question kind of defines of a it speaks a lot about you is who you are as a wife and a mother because it does appear that in our society, just like you said, John, if you’re crushing it in the business meeting, you crushed your work out and you do everything that’s great for you individually, well, then you’re winning, right?

01;11;20;21 – 01;11;45;28

Craig

It doesn’t matter. Your kids are falling behind in school in that your your your, your frustrated or things like that because it’s it’s about you individually. And that’s why we love being around you guys so much. It’s not about you individually, John. It’s not about you individually. Lindsay. It’s not about Gabriel. It’s You are a family, right? You are a family in the and that’s a that’s a very, very important thing.

01;11;45;28 – 01;12;07;23

Craig

Did the family get an inch today or did the family lose an inch today? Right, Right. And you have to take into account so many different things that so many different variables. The older we get, the more complicated it gets, the more difficult it is to know if you’re winning or not. Right. And the thing is, I guess like them, the more gritty your day becomes, the more gritty your life becomes.

01;12;07;23 – 01;12;15;04

Craig

In my opinion, I think that’s where you’re knowing if you’re gaining the inch or losing the edge. It’s not easy to get those inches. It’s very hard.

01;12;15;04 – 01;12;16;09

Lindsey Mayo

It’s hard to fight for them.

01;12;16;09 – 01;12;26;29

Craig

The enemy hates it and he hates it when you chalk up a win for a family. He hates it now when individuals are chalking up wins themselves, he’s cheering them on. Great job because.

01;12;27;01 – 01;12;32;18

Jon

No further isolation, which leads straight to the the greater propensity for someone to stumble and fall. Right.

01;12;32;27 – 01;12;56;20

Lindsey Mayo

It goes into that, oh, I’m doing all of this for the family and I’m but it’s not getting into that. It’s, you know, you’re bettering yourself and you’re leaving them behind and it’s like you have to take them with you. You have to take your partner with you. You have to figure out how to build a community and be like, I know today was hard, but we’re going to get it better tomorrow.

01;12;56;26 – 01;13;02;28

Lindsey Mayo

And like, how do you you know, you got to come behind people and really go, let’s all take this inch together.

01;13;03;00 – 01;13;23;15

Jon

Yes, That’s one of the things I failed as a as an officer in the military is I was crushing it. I was crushing it. Sure. As a as an officer and as a soldier. Right. Like everyone I worked with were blown away, very unhappy when we made the decision to leave. But I realized I was catastrophically failing as a husband and, as a father.

01;13;23;18 – 01;13;42;13

Jon

Yeah. And that was it. Because I was gone a lot. It was because of how I had set up success and what I was doing, and it was all based on this counterfeit truth, otherwise known as a lie, you know, for a bit of humor of, well, I’m doing this for them, right? I’m making the sacrifice so that they can stay safe.

01;13;42;13 – 01;14;05;22

Jon

I’m making these sacrifices and working these hours so that they can have X, Y, and Z so that my boys can grow up in a free country. So that all this jazz. Right. And what I really realized is that was an excuse for me to be selfish and to do something that, though difficult, was not difficult, as fully absorbing the comprehensive picture of what was required of me.

01;14;05;28 – 01;14;06;15

Craig

Exactly.

01;14;06;15 – 01;14;31;01

Jon

And we decided to leave the military. And, you know, the story goes on from and that’s not the point of today’s conversation, but the value of it is are we comprehensively winning? And, you know, looking just not too long ago, we we released a short episode where we talked about how we will not comply and how we are protesting government mandates specifically as an overreach on our freedoms and.

01;14;31;01 – 01;14;54;01

Jon

I’ve been thinking about that a lot and the risks that are coming in the coming months because of those decisions. You know, for us financially and all these other things. And I can’t help but think two things. One, I couldn’t do any of this this pursuit to fight for the win of the day and everything. If it wasn’t for how my faith has evolved into something genuine and real, because I wouldn’t have the courage or the audacity or the bravery to take on the risks we’re taking.

01;14;54;01 – 01;15;00;20

Jon

If I didn’t feel that they were in line with what I believe, the calling on my life and for my families, you know, So that’s that’s big deal.

01;15;00;25 – 01;15;24;17

Craig

Well, if you have faith in Jesus Christ, there really is no risks on this planet other than not having faith in him. I think of think of what you think of what you think can be taken away from and that you want to hold on to. Well, money is this is that the only thing that can be taken away from me that I truly concerned about is my family.

01;15;24;25 – 01;15;53;06

Craig

But I know with faith in Jesus Christ that can’t even be taken away from the enemy, can do whatever he wants on this planet, and he does awful, horrendous, terrible, terrible things on this planet. But you know what? He does not have authority over my family or my, my, my any anyone that has to do anyone that has faith in him, in Jesus Christ, the devil has no authority because life does not end right.

01;15;53;06 – 01;16;11;20

Craig

That is the inch that never goes away. I yes, and I’ve never really thought about that until this conversation. Right. We’re battling for human inches here. We have what we think wins and losses. And I think they’re they’re absolutely legitimate. But at the end of the day, there is a goal to what we are all doing here. Right?

01;16;11;21 – 01;16;37;08

Craig

There’s a goal and it’s not to, you know, make a business successful or become a professional athlete or this or that. It’s not that. It’s at some point I’ve told this to my wife and my daughters. I said, regardless of what happens on this planet, we will be as one in front of Jesus Christ, in front of God, and we will be in a place where there is no pain and suffering and, you know, sloth and greed and the seven deadly sins.

01;16;37;08 – 01;16;57;02

Craig

There is none of the evil and terrible things that happen on this planet. It’s just the good things. And could you comprehend, can you wrap your head around a place where just the amazing good things, just word, the Holy Spirit, right? If you just had that and you have the enemy, right, that is the goal, right? And if you that’s the inch that never goes away.

01;16;57;02 – 01;16;58;06

Craig

That’s eternity. Yeah.

01;16;58;06 – 01;17;25;08

Jon

Yeah. And it’s interesting because the I’ve had an interesting journey along this line of conversation. And for me that one of the things I think about because in going back to our entire conversation of why not settle, right so how dare I settle is kind of my thing. It’s like I can’t earn anything from this gift, but the decisions I’ve made and where I should be compared to where I am on certain aspects of our life and and things like that.

01;17;25;08 – 01;17;58;05

Jon

It’s like the very minimum I can do for the gift that we’re describing of salvation and for the the gift of having a mighty God to serve. The very the least I can do is go for broke every single day to the best of my ability to gain the most comprehensive ones I can for my family, to build community that can come together and have families now supporting one another, to bring people into the fold, to find those who are downtrodden and cast out right and like miserable and say, hey, like no, there is hope for you.

01;17;58;05 – 01;18;17;09

Jon

Pick yourself up, let’s start doing some work, let’s start building, embrace this whole difficulty thing and let’s build something you can begin to be proud of. And you’re not alone. And let’s strive and that’s where, you know, the highest view of what is the great theory about. It’s using the freedom that we’ve been given and have to create more freedom so that people can live fulfilled lives.

01;18;17;09 – 01;18;32;14

Jon

And you Lindsay on coffee and great her show talked about one of the main things she is passionate about is building community. It’s like, here’s the gift of what we’re accomplishing now. We’re sitting with you having these amazing conversations. You live 10 minutes down the road, which is country neighbors.

01;18;32;25 – 01;18;35;01

Craig

Yeah. Oh, yeah, we’re neighbors. Yeah.

01;18;35;26 – 01;19;03;18

Jon

Yeah. We’re the equivalent of like, two houses down. Yeah. And. And it’s all just even. Yeah, I guess it’s a different type of wind, because even if I’m taking some losses, the momentum is beginning to build in the direction, right. That we are fighting to fight for. So it’s like one of our goals is to build community communes being built and we may lose in a couple other battles or different fights or different aspects of the the game as we continue forward.

01;19;03;18 – 01;19;20;20

Jon

But there is momentum in all these fights as well. And that’s there’s something a little bit redeeming about this. I’m pulling on the idea as we’re speaking, but think about the family. If we lose the day for the family, but we’ve won the last nine right then the momentum of the last nine will help us to overcome the loss of the 10th day.

01;19;20;24 – 01;19;33;24

Jon

And we can then that doesn’t mean you ride that momentum, but there’s some grace in that. There’s a little of peace and okay, we can dust ourselves off. It’s a new day to reengage and win today because we failed on this aspect of life yesterday.

01;19;34;06 – 01;19;36;00

Craig

Right? Yeah. You’re not always going to win.

01;19;36;00 – 01;19;36;20

Jon

No, no.

01;19;36;25 – 01;20;16;05

Craig

And you said something, you know, back. Back to settling, right? Why would you not settle? And I’m sure there will be people listening who who don’t believe religiously the way that I do. Right. But as far as settling the regardless if you’re religious or not, the most altruistic thing that you can likely do is apply yourself and the skills that you’ve had, whether you think they’re God given or not, to improve your community, improve if you improve your and your self, improve your community, improve those around you, the most altruistic thing you can possibly do is to be good to your, you know, your theme, gritty, to keep grinding, to keep for, to keep applying

01;20;16;05 – 01;20;40;02

Craig

yourself as best as you possibly can. That is the most altruistic thing, right? If you apply the skills that comes, everybody skills are somewhat different. If everyone settles and everyone just relaxes and goes through, well, we’re fine. We’re good here. We don’t have do anything more. You can see what happens with those societies and without getting political or whether that’s socialism or communism or what it is.

01;20;40;09 – 01;20;49;04

Lindsey Mayo

Take it as health. It is. I mean, if you look at it just, you know, from a health if I go eat McDonald’s every day, I’m going to turn into that.

01;20;49;05 – 01;20;49;21

Craig

Exactly.

01;20;49;21 – 01;20;54;23

Lindsey Mayo

I’m not going to you know, you miss your vegetables. That’s settling. That’s comfort easy.

01;20;54;28 – 01;21;23;21

Craig

And that’s a draw on humanity right now. Someone is going to have to at some point. That’s going to be a major draw on the work and the services of humanity in itself. So regardless of you, whether you believe that’s a Christian principle or whatever other religion principle, that is an altruistic, if you believe in humanity, you want to benefit humanity, you should want to strive to make yourself the most positive, healthy, motivated, hardworking person you possibly can.

01;21;23;21 – 01;21;23;28

Jon

Yep.

01;21;24;08 – 01;21;26;25

Craig

And that’s if you settle. You cannot do that.

01;21;27;00 – 01;21;49;10

Jon

And what I love about what you just highlighted is that is one hell of an ideal, right? And I do appreciate it because for the first significant portion of the show, we avoided politics and religion completely. And I realized people myself, at least I don’t know about people I know for myself. I’m tired of counterfeit. I’m tired of putting up a front.

01;21;49;10 – 01;22;07;21

Jon

I’m tired of not being genuine, authentic. I don’t even know what it means to be genuine, authentic. But we’ve made the commitment to ourselves that we’re going to walk in that direction. Let’s figure out what it means to be true. Well, I’m not gonna say we. I’m figuring out. Let’s. Let’s. Let’s see what it looks like to be publicly authentic to who I am and see where the chips fall.

01;22;08;01 – 01;22;23;08

Jon

And, you know, part of that was realizing I may have to let go of some relationships. I certainly hope not, but I may have to if I’m going to be genuine and authentic and just share what I actually believe, what I actually think. But how much better will be on the end of the line If I can stand in who I am.

01;22;23;14 – 01;22;50;13

Jon

Right. And to your point that the person of who I am is someone who’s pursuing to become better every single day holistically, and now everyone else benefiting from overflow like it’s selfish of me to hide and to try to please everyone. It’s selfish of me to not be transparent and authentic when in reality if I can just share the best I can and own that I can encourage others to do the same and I get stronger.

01;22;50;22 – 01;22;59;17

Jon

And in through that I can better serve my wife, my neighbor, my children, my friend. And that is something I think worth fighting for in pursuing.

01;22;59;29 – 01;23;20;01

Craig

Yeah, if someone’s willing to say, I can know John, John, I can’t hang out with you anymore, man. You know you don’t like this. You don’t like that. You’re not on my team. You’re not in my tribe. Mm hmm. Right. Which I don’t. America is the tribe. Yeah, you’re American, right? This America is the tribe right now. There’s going to be disagreements.

01;23;20;13 – 01;23;48;10

Craig

Obviously. There’s to be different views of opinion. America is the tribe, and I’m in that tribe. Yep. I’m American, right? Correct. I don’t care what my last name is, where my family came from, their circumstances and the hardships that they went through, it’s irrelevant. We are on this American team and this American tribe. If if someone is going to say to you, Well, John, I just can’t be your friend anymore, I don’t know if that was ever a friend to begin with.

01;23;48;10 – 01;24;01;11

Craig

There’s plenty of folks that that I consider good friends. They don’t they don’t have the same religious beliefs that I do. They don’t have faith in Jesus Christ the way that I do. They don’t look at politics the same way that I do. Yeah, they’re still my friend. Yeah.

01;24;01;11 – 01;24;04;14

Jon

It’s not a requirement to be to same. Absolutely. God, I don’t want that.

01;24;04;28 – 01;24;36;18

Lindsey Mayo

You know, I want someone who’s going to to challenge me, push me further, kind of have a litmus test, right? Like, Oh, well, I believe this completely different than you. Okay, so how, how do we come together? Like How do you create friendship through that adversity? Right? And like, how do you it’s not that difficult. I think people make it this like on tangible thing that you can’t reach because it’s like, Oh, well, we’re not exactly the same with that.

01;24;36;25 – 01;24;38;24

Lindsey Mayo

And I think that’s a really big lie.

01;24;38;28 – 01;24;56;06

Jon

That is the line. That’s where the fear comes in. I think it’s worth what we’re speaking to is true, but there is a genuine fear and it’s real, and I think it’s fair. But there’s also encouragement in the fear right? Like what if I really share that I’m a Christian? I believe that Jesus Christ, my king. I think that’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, right?

01;24;56;13 – 01;25;17;08

Jon

What if I share that? I think that our country is in duress right now and our freedoms are under attack and they politicize something that they should never have politicized because they’re playing with people’s lives. And that’s wrong and that’s evil, right? What if I share those things and then I lose friends? To your point that the fear is I’m going to lose friends, the fears, I’m going to be ostracized, the fears I’m going to become weaker in my life, are going to be ruined because of these things.

01;25;17;08 – 01;25;36;27

Jon

And I think those are real concerns. But the freedom, the truth and the choice is to say, what is it? Do I believe it to be true or not? And if it is, let’s take the risk in. Let’s walk towards the fact of like, oh, now we’re building these new relationships that are all the more stronger now. These friendships I thought were in peril or even better because of it.

01;25;37;03 – 01;26;01;02

Jon

And that doesn’t mean there’s not going to be loss through it. But typically, at least what I’ve found, the more and more real I’ve gotten over the years is that it’s improve the situation holistically. Even if I have to let go of things partially, you know, And I think it’s and the only reason I want to highlight it is because there are people who are on the fence, I think right now in a lot of topics of life who are wondering, should I be silent or not?

01;26;01;14 – 01;26;13;08

Jon

Should I make this change or not start doing the gym? Should I speak up about what I think? Should I take the edge? Should I take the fight, the interest? Should I settle? Not and I’d say fight for the cause. That is why that’s the only reason to be here.

01;26;13;15 – 01;26;34;09

Craig

Yeah, it’s hard. I think there’s a there is a growing fundamental problem with. I mean, these are no the concerns you just laid out. That’s nothing new. There’s always been differing opinions. And the the tribe of the United States has been incredibly strong for a very, very long time. What’s going on? And I think this is a fundamental shift in just how humans are communicating.

01;26;34;26 – 01;27;08;11

Craig

And I think it is probably one of the worst things that’s happened in human history is social media, because that’s not how humans are meant to interact. If anything, they highlight, let’s say, and I just had a real conversation like this with a good friend. We may disagree with 5% of political policy decisions may be 5%. However, if we would interact solely online on and whatever the I won’t even say their names because they don’t deserve the respect, the.

01;27;08;11 – 01;27;08;26

Lindsey Mayo

Platform.

01;27;08;26 – 01;27;37;10

Craig

The platforms on any of those platforms. All you see is the 5% difference that you have with an individual, not the 95% that makes that makes a collective tribe, that makes everyone proud to be the United States, where all you see day in and day out, no matter how aligned you are with somebody, something is going to be said on that platform and it’s going to it is the most cancerous thing on both sides.

01;27;37;16 – 01;27;40;00

Craig

There is no sides to this. It is a way for.

01;27;40;10 – 01;27;42;29

Lindsey Mayo

It’s a cancer. That’s a great way to put it, is cancer.

01;27;42;29 – 01;28;08;28

Craig

It’s a current cancer in our global society that is ripping people apart. It’s not one individual or ideology or anything. It is it is highlighting if, in my opinion, the it is the enemy’s playground, because all everything, everything of the seven deadly sins regard put the religious context to the side. I’m not trying to Bible Trump or anything here, but think of the seven deadly sins.

01;28;08;28 – 01;28;19;25

Craig

Let’s just take a couple of them. Greed for one, right? Look at social media. It is built around. It is built around. Look at what this person, depending on what platform it is. Right.

01;28;19;26 – 01;28;20;18

Jon

Or envy. Right.

01;28;20;18 – 01;28;49;29

Craig

Like envy and yeah, all of it. Right. It is pride that is social media. Look at how I can build this thing up to make this something that I’m really not. Right. Yeah, it is social hinges on the fundament that what regardless of what religion you like or whether you identify for a certain religion religion brought humanity to a point where it developed to where it is today.

01;28;49;29 – 01;29;11;07

Craig

And now we are crumbling right now on these, you know, 3000 year old won’t call them rules, but guidelines of hate stay away from these things in life because it’s going to lead you down to a path of evil and failure. And you’re going lose that inch every time you fall into one of these seven deadly sins. Or you do this or you do that, you’re going to lose an inch.

01;29;11;07 – 01;29;18;12

Craig

You might think that you’re winning. Right? And we talked about. Right. You might really think you’re winning, but. Well, it’s yeah.

01;29;18;26 – 01;29;42;14

Jon

It’s interesting. All these social constructs, right? The the seven deadly sins, the different books of wisdom, different religions, all these things. What they really do is they teach you one how to improve yourself. Right? Take the intro. But the other thing is they teach you how to better interact with other human beings. And I think that’s where if that is a good thing, let’s assume that’s good for us to learn how to better interact with one another and build things that are valuable, right?

01;29;42;14 – 01;30;02;25

Jon

I think that’s a good thing. Then that is a force for good. Anything that would then look to degrade our ability to work better together would be a force for bad, right for evil. So it’s like when you look at something like social media that absolutely. And all these platforms, you only get 530 seconds, 60 seconds tidbits into something.

01;30;02;25 – 01;30;25;15

Jon

And then the more polarizing and exciting and frustrating it is, the more attention it gets. You have this thing that is naturally engineered because of the less attractive pieces of humanity and work crap to your attention to become more divisive and work less well together. And so they’re so it’s very difficult to separate that those two things. Right.

01;30;25;15 – 01;30;55;10

Jon

And that’s where grit theory, such a difficult challenge is. Like one, we want to share the story, but the story we’re sharing is improve yourself, improve your name, improve your society, right? It’s hey, let’s focus on the things that make us more competent at working together, you know? So it’s going in that direct line of thought of how can we bring people together and find the beauty and the dissonance, find the beauty and the difference, find the beauty in the noise, and then use the differing perspectives to build something even greater still.

01;30;55;25 – 01;31;15;27

Jon

And sometimes that means, at least for now, playing in that playground so that at least one point of positivity can be put out there. And oftentimes that right now at least it looks it’s not getting as much attention as you’d like it to. And there’s a whole bunch to go into that. Just strategically, it does even make sense to play the game.

01;31;15;27 – 01;31;45;04

Jon

And if not, how do you spread the word? Right? And those are those are different, different topics. I think it is interesting. There’s a lot that makes money but encourages hate and separation and there’s, I think, a critical need for us to find the things that help us come together and work to create a better tomorrow and right the wrongs of the current day so that we can have something that our children can take from us and continue that work moving forward.

01;31;45;18 – 01;31;49;05

Jon

And kind of summed up. I think that’s why it we should never settle.

01;31;49;19 – 01;32;13;29

Craig

Yeah, well, you said a point earlier, John, of why you’re family. You never settle. You’re always adapting and moving in the same way as a as as our beautiful constitutional republic. Right. It’s it’s we’re it’s never going to settle. It’s never going to stay consistent and stay the same as challenges arise. Good people wanting to grab that interest.

01;32;13;29 – 01;32;36;12

Craig

It’s very difficult very difficult to grab the right inch if those people don’t, you know, come forward and make decisions and take risks, then it’s inevitable what will happen. Right? You don’t just like if you if you’re thinking you’re settling. I know what direction you’re going. I know whatever. It’s a family, a country, an individual. If you think you’re maintaining.

01;32;36;19 – 01;32;50;19

Craig

Yeah, that’s that’s what you’re maintaining. If you’re maintaining the democracy or the republic or you’re maintaining the family or maintaining yourself. Mean you’re not maintaining. I know what I know what trajectory you’re going. Correct. And it’s not where you want to be.

01;32;50;19 – 01;33;14;07

Jon

It’s not up. Yeah. So looking at all of this and as we as we wrap up our conversation for today, one of the questions that we keep asking ourselves is how can we make some of the ideas that we talk about applicable for whoever’s listening for today, for tomorrow, Right. So, Craig, you’re here. This your first time with us, I imagine there’s more conversations for us to be had, obviously aftershow, but definitely on the show also.

01;33;14;23 – 01;33;19;25

Jon

But as we’ve gotten to really explore your story and your families adventure and what you’re doing.

01;33;20;06 – 01;33;20;21

Craig

Yeah.

01;33;21;08 – 01;33;38;19

Jon

I’ll give you a second. You have to shoot it right off. But how would you if someone asked, okay, well, how can I show greater and bravery and how can I become more determined? How can I develop grit so I can create a better life? Right? What would be one actionable thing You would give them?

01;33;38;19 – 01;33;59;24

Craig

You know, it’s a it’s a good question to gain the interest. It’s it’s harder than losing the inch. I mean, every day, whether it’s and I know a lot of people hear and see that’s cliche like before you try to change the world, make your bed, you know, like pick up your room. And I’m not saying this because I do all of these things, but these are just simple questions I ask myself.

01;33;59;24 – 01;34;17;18

Craig

So someone’s listening. How can I get how can I get on that train? Like, how can I get going, do something you know is good for you, but you don’t want to do. It’s that simple. I mean, most of these things that are going to progress you through life, you’re naturally not going to want to do them right.

01;34;17;18 – 01;34;38;01

Craig

You’re you really think that guys get up in the morning, a Navy SEAL gets up in the morning, say, man, I can’t wait to go lay down in the bay. Yeah, I can’t wait to go do a surf party. No, they don’t. But they know if they I’m going to go through this knowing that I do not want to because it’s going to make me better and it doesn’t have to be doing, you know, buds.

01;34;38;01 – 01;34;55;22

Craig

P.T. It’s as simple as, you know what? It’s easier to make a frozen very simple like and I was at this, you know, in college and stuff it’s easier just make a frozen pizza night or do I want to, you know, get some hamburger out and make something decent for me? One was far one was far easier than the other.

01;34;56;04 – 01;35;18;08

Craig

And that’s almost every decision. If it’s the easier it’s almost whether you’re looking from it like a religious perspective or work ethic perspective, the more the easier the decision the more likely you’re losing that inch If you’re going with the decision, was like, Man, there’s an easier way to do this. John. You get up at four in the morning and you go running.

01;35;19;05 – 01;35;39;23

Craig

There’s a lot easier decision than getting up when that alarm goes off, right? Yeah, but you do it right. Not everybody’s got to get up at four in the morning and do that. It didn’t you didn’t start by running at four in the morning. No, no. Right. It’s the little inch every day and that’s what makes the difference And that’s what that coach says in that speech.

01;35;39;25 – 01;35;45;29

Craig

Yeah. You’re not going to get up tomorrow morning. I’m not John. I don’t do the workouts. You do. I wish I you know, I would be.

01;35;45;29 – 01;35;47;01

Jon

Careful. If you say you wish.

01;35;47;14 – 01;36;03;18

Craig

I’m going to I’m going to get to that point. But what I was saying is I wish I had the determination to get back to that level, not I wish I could do that because that’s an excuse for myself. I well, I wish I wish I could do that. Well, that’s an excuse, Right? You have something innate that I don’t have.

01;36;03;25 – 01;36;26;11

Craig

That’s B.S.. Yeah. You’ve grinded through and you’ve made decisions that I haven’t made for myself, right? I don’t need to for me to get back to where I want to be physically. I don’t need to get up and run six miles of for him tomorrow. I need to go home and I need to do something that I don’t really want to do but I know is going to be beneficial to me and I need to go about it.

01;36;26;11 – 01;36;41;18

Craig

And I need to go back and say man, I really don’t want to do this. No, I’m tackling it. I’m going to knock you down. I know. I mean, imagine that. Imagine the enemy is in front of you and you’re saying, F-you, I know you don’t want me to do it. I know you’re telling me you don’t want me to do it.

01;36;41;24 – 01;36;47;10

Craig

I’m going to punch you in the face. I’m going to show you how hard I’m going to do it. Yeah. And that’s anything. Yeah.

01;36;47;20 – 01;36;57;25

Jon

Well, Kirk, thank you for coming today. And the one actual take away is pick something hard and do it and dare not settle. Right. Take That. Yeah. So thank you.

01;36;58;10 – 01;37;12;23

Craig

Thank you guys.