Pod Insights The Jedburgh Podcast Nobody Is Coming To Save You: Jumping In With Green Beret Scott Mann About this episode Nobody’s coming to save you. It’s a simple phrase, but one that can mean the difference between success and failure. Elite performers know that when it’s time to take action, they need to be ready to execute with precision and without excuse.
Scott Mann https://rooftopleadership.com/ is a retired Special Forces Officer, the architect of Operation Pineapple Express, and a leader who knows how to get results against the odds.
Scott first joinedFran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/ after the withdrawal from Afghanistan to share how he took a stand when few would. Now he’s showing us just how to apply an action first mindset to anything we set out to do.
Our rainy Sunday morning conversation from the banks of New York City’s East River was the perfect backdrop to break down his new book; Nobody’s coming to save you: a Green Beret’s guide to getting big shit done. https://scottmann.com/?_gl=1%2A1ezpuqb%2A_ga%2AMTM1NjQyMjM0MC4xNzMxMDYwMzE0%2A_ga_SMNKWS0NF8%2AMTczMTA2MDMxNC4xLjAuMTczMTA2MDMxNC4wLjAuMA..
Scott defines the churn; the divisiveness, fear-laden complexity of the world that is in our face 24/7 across our devices. He shows us how that has put us all in a trance of distraction, disengagement, disconnection and distrust where transactional relationships focus on performing for each other instead of connecting. As a leader of action, Scott gives us the cure; which rightfully so will be MESSY.
Jump In with Scott and Fran as they wake up New York City, then head over to our YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jedburghpodcast channel or your favorite podcast platform to catch all our coverage of the 2024 election cycle and our national security series with today’s most prominent Special Forces leaders.
HIGHLIGHTS
0:00 Welcome to New York City2:07 Why is Nobody Is Coming To Save You?4:05 The Four D’s6:40 The loss of social connection17:20 Get MESSY to get s**t done18:35 Storytelling matters
QUOTES
“We are in our own form of that unprecedented churn.” “The average attention span of a human in the west is eight seconds.” “We’ve atrophied the ability to tap into what’s below the waterline of our human nature.” “Now it’s a verb. ‘I’m going to unfriend you.’” “We’ve lost the ability to make human connection in a meaningful way..” “We ignore storytelling at our peril. Everything has become bullet points.” “It wasn’t the stories they told; it was the stories they asked to hear.” “All of us are capable of strategic outcomes if we set our mind to it.”
The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are an official program of The Green Beret Foundation https://greenberetfoundation.org/. Learn more on The Jedburgh Podcast Website https://greenberetfoundation.org/jedburghpodcast/nobodys-coming-to-save-you-jumping-in-with-green-beret-scott-mann/. Subscribe to us and follow @jedburghpodcast https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/ on all social media. Watch the full video version on YouTube https://youtu.be/weu1HPzLC5k.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:05 Fran Racioppi? Welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast. I'm the creator and host, Fran Rychopy. Each episode, I speak with transformative leaders, visionaries, drivers of change, and those dedicated to winning no matter the challenge. The Jedburgh Podcast is founded in the lineage of the special operations Jedburgh teams of the past and is an official program of the Green Beret Foundation, supporting our nation's US Army Special Forces and their families. Democracy is as ugly as it is beautiful. For centuries, Americans have gone to the polls to exercise freedom and choose their leaders. Every election is heralded as the election of all elections, and the democratic process brings out the best and the worst of American society. As challenging as democracy may seem, the opportunities it presents separate the United States from much of the world and ensures that America remains an idea as much as a
0:50 Fran Racioppi? location. To cover the 2024 election from the top of the ticket to the bottom, I sat down with some of today's most influential members of Congress and other leaders seeking to bridge the divide and lead through the good times and the bad. We cover policy, leadership, the role of veterans, and what's next for America. Tune in as we navigate the election battlefield and visit the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation for our full series coverage. Follow us on social media, listen on your favorite podcast platform, and watch us on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front no matter the challenge. "Nobody's Coming to Save You," it's a simple phrase, but one that can mean the difference between success and failure. Elite performers know when it's time to take action. They need to be ready to execute with precision and without excuse.
1:33 Fran Racioppi? Scott Mann is a retired Special Forces officer, the architect of Operation Pineapple Express, and a leader who knows how to get results against the odds. Scott first joined me after the withdrawal from Afghanistan to share how he took a stand when few would. Now, he's shown us just how to apply an action-first mindset to anything we set out to do. Our rainy Sunday morning conversation from the banks of New York City's East River was the perfect backdrop to break down his new book, "Nobody's Coming to Save You: A Green Beret's Guide to Getting Big Shit Done." Scott breaks down the churn, the divisive, fear-leading, complex world that's in our face 24/7 across all of our divisions. He shows us how that's put us all in a trance of distraction, disengagement, disconnection,
2:15 Fran Racioppi? and distrust, where transactional relationships focus on performing for each other rather than creating connection. As a leader of action, Scott gives us the cure, which rightfully so, will be messy. Jump in with Scott and I as we wake up New York City, then head over to our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast platform to catch all of our coverage of the 2024 election cycle and our national security series with today's most prominent special forces leaders. Scott, welcome back to the Jedburgh Podcast.
2:45 Speaker 01 Thanks for having me back, friend. Cool to be back, man.
2:47 Fran Racioppi? Well, last time you were with us, we were on the other side, looking at the World Trade Center from down in lower Manhattan, 44th floor, beautiful view that we had that day.
2:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:58 Fran Racioppi? Little bit nicer, blue sky day. I was hoping for the same thing here in Long Island City, but I wanted to spend some time with you right here.
3:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's amazing.
3:05 Fran Racioppi? Looking at the city behind us because it's like eight in the morning and we're going to talk about "Nobody's Coming to Save You: A Green Berets Guide to Getting Big Shit Done", because nothing gets shit done like this city and nothing gets shit done like Green Berets. So we put two of them here on the pier early in the morning on a Sunday. We can get some shit done.
3:24 Speaker 01 No place I'd rather be.
3:26 Fran Racioppi? Let's talk about the book for a minute because it's been a bit since you and I had a chance to catch up. Like I was saying, last time we talked about Afghanistan.
3:33 Speaker 01 We did.
3:33 Fran Racioppi? We talked about Operation Pineapple Express. We talked about your efforts to get so many people, instrumental efforts to get so many people out of Afghanistan. Couple of years later, we still reel from so much of the effect of what happened there in so many ways as we've had conversations on this podcast, whether it's been with senior military leaders, whether it's been with politicians, we attribute so much of the chaos almost to those moments of getting out of Afghanistan and what that meant. And here we sit. On the eve of an election.
4:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:06 Fran Racioppi? Couple of weeks away and it's hard to think or start to have conversations about are we in chaos? Where are we? But at the end of the day, regardless of the situation around us, we have to make things happen.
4:18 Speaker 01 We do. That's right.
4:19 Fran Racioppi? Why write this book? Why now?
4:21 Speaker 01 I think you just framed it. I mean, honestly, I think that was the, for me, that was the biggest reason was you and I both learned as young Green Berets from really awesome NCOs that when you're out in those rough, trust depleted places, I call it the churn. Um, you know, nobody's coming. Whatever you're out there with is what you've got. And the bulk of what you're going to do in addition to your lethal skills is, is how the, the relationships you build and the connections you make. And that's going to get you through it and you're going to do it from the bottom up. Right? And that to me, as I look at the country today and where we've evolved to, we are in our own form of that unprecedented churn. Distraction and division and disengagement today are higher than it's ever been. And I think it's an unprecedented
5:03 Speaker 01 novel set of social conditions Fran, that are in front of us right now. Leaders, business leaders, community leaders, politicians. We're so divided and if we don't, what got us here is not going to get us there. We need a set of skills that looks a lot like Green Beret skills to get big shit done. And so that's why I wrote this book was to try to help leaders who are stuck in these novel circumstances that we've been talking about right here at home to still move things forward. Cause I think our institutional leaders are really struggling.
5:31 Fran Racioppi? You brought up a couple of the Ds. You call them the four Ds.
5:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:35 Fran Racioppi? Distraction, disengagement, disconnection and distrust.
5:39 Speaker 01 Right.
5:39 Fran Racioppi? And you attribute that to the churn. That's what you're using to describe this churn. This really this never ending nonsense in a lot of ways that goes around us. Break these four down for a second.
5:50 Speaker 01 Yeah. So let's start, you know, contextually with places that you and I worked with when the, when the global war on terror was still going. So for example, if we moved into a, a small village in Afghanistan and rural Afghanistan and we needed to work with that village, right? And you go in there, let's say that village has been through years and years of violence and war. That elder sitting across from you that's tickling the trigger of his AK-47 deciding whether or not to. To dispatch you in that first meeting is not necessarily the enemy. Although he feels like the enemy, he looks like he could be the enemy. The reality is the enemy is is more about the the the social circumstances that exist in that village. You've got to find a way to navigate through that and connect with that guy. I think that's the same thing here. Those four Ds, I believe that's far more the enemy than the Democrat or the Republican, the mask or the no mask.
6:36 Speaker 01 It is this set of conditions, starting with distractions. The average attention span of a human in the West is eight seconds. And that's down. So like I think about this show over the last couple of years. Right. When we first started this show, we talked about the promote, how we're going to promote it. Yeah. And everyone was like, okay, you have to have a minute. You have a minute of engagement. Yeah. This is three and a half years ago. Yeah. So our promos could be 60 seconds long. Then we realized after a year, wow, we're losing. We're losing people at 45 seconds. Yeah. Okay, cut them down 35, 40 seconds. Right. We're down now, three years later, 15 to 25 seconds. After that, they're gone. Well, I mean, that proves my point. And the and a lot of it has to do with these dopamine dispensers that we carry around with us, you know, I mean. Where they're viewing us. Absolutely. And and it's a it's a dichotomy, isn't it? Right.
7:19 Speaker 01 But it has conditioned us to be much less attentive. We're we're distracted far more. Uh, Adam Gazali, in the book, The Distracted Mind, he says that we are ancient brains trying miserably to make sense of a high tech world. Our our myology just hasn't changed. So that's the distraction piece. Then you've got the disengagement piece, right? Which is the absence of purpose. Disengagement scores on average in corporate America today are somewhere around 85%. 85% of the workforce and the management says they're disengaged. That means they lack purpose. And that's a huge leadership problem. If you don't know what your purpose is, or you don't know what your why is, you know, we're meaning seeking creatures. And so that's a real thing. And then the final two, uh, the disconnection. You know, we're really disconnected from each other, but we're also disconnected from the natural world.
8:03 Speaker 01 We've lost the disconnection to our human nature, who we really are at a primal level. And then the distrust. Two thirds of Americans no longer distrust, no longer trust their neighbor. And when you add all those Ds together, that is a novel set of circumstances that make it very difficult to get your stuff done. Well, there's a few points in here that I think about when I read the book and when you talk about these four.
8:23 Fran Racioppi? And what comes to my mind, and you bring it up in in the book is transactional relationships.
8:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
8:30 Fran Racioppi? When everything is done through our phone now post covid.
8:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:33 Fran Racioppi? You know, we live in this world where it's zoom. Okay, well, get on a zoom, get on a zoom. We're in a world now where people don't pick up the phone and call you and actually have a voice conversation anymore.
8:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:44 Fran Racioppi? I was in the car with my daughter the other night taking her to a football game. We're supposed to pick up her friend. We're driving to her friend's house about half a mile from the girl's house. And she's running the other way down the street.
8:55 Speaker 01 Huh.
8:56 Fran Racioppi? And I said, hey, Lily, call your friend. We're on the way to pick her up, but she sees we go in the other direction. I can't. I'll text her.
9:02 Speaker 01 Wow.
9:02 Fran Racioppi? You'll text her? That's ridiculous. How about I open the window and I yell, hey, we're right here, which is what I did.
9:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:09 Fran Racioppi? And then my daughter's yelling at me that, why would you open the window and talk to her? Well, I don't know. We're going to pick her up. She's not at her house. But that's how crazy it's become when we talk about this transactional relationship. Where people don't sit in front of each other and talk.
9:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was just in a coffee shop right over here while we were getting set up and it said, no wifi available. Pretend like it's 1995. And I thought, that's so cool. But so to your point, that's a reflection of our disconnection from our nature. It's from the natural world. Like, that's not how humans are actually wired to communicate. We're wired to communicate like what we're doing right now, face to face. And this this beautiful city that you see behind us. You know, metaphorically, when I talk about this in the book, the tip of the iceberg of our human nature, or what I call the human operating system. It's the modern world. It's where we live, work and play. It's everything. And you look behind me at that skyline and you think that's what the world is really about. That's everything that exists around us. But what we don't see is what's below the waterline of that iceberg.
10:05 Speaker 01 Which is our primal biological nature, you know, the hunters, the gatherers. 250,000 years of hardwired interpersonal connection experience. And those things are invisible to us these days and we've disconnected from them. We've lost, we've atrophied. The ability to tap into what's below the waterline of our human nature. Things like yelling out the window, hey, we're going this way. We've that's atrophied. And while that's happening, everything that's moving so fast and swirling around us, it puts us in a trance state. And I really try to make that case in the book. There's like, most humans are in a trance right now. We don't realize that we're walking around in this transactional world, literally like robots.
10:46 Speaker 01 Disconnecting from our nature and leaving tons of opportunity and value on the table that is social capital.
10:52 Fran Racioppi? Talk about leadership for a second because we have to lead through these times.
10:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:57 Fran Racioppi? And I want to do in a minute, talk about some of the difficulties and challenges that America faces and we face as leaders right now. But when we talk about leadership.
11:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:06 Fran Racioppi? Go back to why, why do Green Berets get shit done?
11:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:09 Fran Racioppi? Well, Green Berets get shit done because we select people for certain capabilities.
11:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:16 Fran Racioppi? When I work with companies and I work with organizations and athletes, I always bring up the fact that it's very easy to be good at what you do. When it's a blue sky day, your company's making money, customer retention is through the roof. You're winning games, you're scoring points, you feel good, you're not injured. Most people can find a way to be successful, but the reality is, is we live in this VUCA world. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity.
11:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:46 Fran Racioppi? And we need leaders who come out and are able to actually adjust, change, adapt and do things in the face of the challenges. Because that is the reality. The reality when we build a business, when we play a sport, when we lead others is that we are going to be challenged more than not.
12:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:04 Fran Racioppi? And do we have people who are ready to do that?
12:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, and you know, Tim Spiker says that the leaders that are most worth following are inwardly sound and others focused, right? And, and I always think about Green Berets throughout my career and that was certainly most of who they were, you know? And they were very, they were very steady and stable inwardly and they were always looking at the other party and how that affected what we were doing. They were others focused, they were, you know, they were really paying attention to the, the operational environment, the human terrain. And that's great when you're working in these low trust, high stakes areas around the world that we get, we got dropped into. And that where Green Berets still get dropped into. Now, the problem is the churn is here.
12:44 Speaker 01 These unprecedented social conditions of division and distrust are here in our cities, in our communities, in our election system. Where people will unfriend each other over a candidate. High school friends that have been friends for five decades will unfriend each other on social media and never speak to each other again. And. The outcome of an election to the point that they would end a friendship and we've normalized it now it's a verb I'm going to unfriend you right like you and I did that when we were kids but I would play with you the next day right but now it's become this normalized verb and that's a leadership problem you know leadership is the management of energy yours and those around you and how you manage your energy and how you connect with other humans is everything and I think we've lost the ability to make human connection in a meaningful way and if
13:29 Speaker 01 we don't get that back I think it spells disaster for our civil society not just in our bottom line but in how we actually can govern ourselves
13:39 Fran Racioppi? we've come to a point where we can't find mutual agreement through disagreement if that makes sense
13:46 Speaker 01 Civil discourse
13:46 Fran Racioppi? I've gotta and for me to be right you gotta be wrong
13:49 Speaker 01 yeah
13:49 Fran Racioppi? and there cannot be any sort of other way to look at it we can't sit down and say look you know I don't agree with you these are the reasons why but let's find some common ground or maybe we're just gonna agree to disagree on this point but later on down the road you're gonna have to help me yeah I had a chance a couple of years ago now on the show to talk to Newt Gingrich
14:09 Speaker 01 right
14:09 Fran Racioppi? and also Patrick Murphy
14:10 Speaker 01 yeah
14:11 Fran Racioppi? former secretary of the army and congressman and those are conversations that we had there which was you know we used to live in a world where the two sides of the aisle could come together and they could sit down and say okay we're gonna find a resolution even though we may not agree
14:25 Speaker 01 yeah
14:25 Fran Racioppi? and we seem to have lost so much of that and it's become this polarizing effect one of the things you bring up in the book rightly so I believe is that we as people emulate leadership
14:36 Speaker 01 yeah
14:36 Fran Racioppi? well our elected leaders
14:38 Speaker 01 yeah
14:38 Fran Racioppi? are the people that we see every day
14:40 Speaker 01 yeah
14:40 Fran Racioppi? as society
14:41 Speaker 01 right
14:42 Fran Racioppi? and now when they're out there fighting arguing not getting along creating this example for us as adults and our children we're all subject to that behavior
14:52 Speaker 01 yeah I refer to them as divisionists and I don't even think that's an actual word but I
14:56 Fran Racioppi? I like it
14:56 Speaker 01 but I I think it works in in describing this because again this perfect storm of the churn that we have you have this reality that you know humans are like all mammals we form in groups and out groups that's what we do and when we're afraid we get even more inclusive or we get we All back into those groups, the people that look like us, think like us, vote like us. It's just what we do. But in America, one of the things that has made this civil society different, you know, Robert Putnam says that this is a society of bridging trust. We have this ability to bridge beyond our in-groups and bridge into other out-groups. And that's, that's been the social capital that's kept the secret sauce that's kept this country strong, that makes businesses high performing. But what's happened in the last five to 10 years is you've seen a downslide away from that bridging trust.
15:42 Speaker 01 Back into what bonding trust where you only trust the people in your in-group. You only trust the people in your tribe or your party. And the leaders of this country at the institutional level have always been the vanguards of bridging trust. Because it's not a state of nature that occurs normally, like you have to, you have to put that in place. Well, they've opted instead for this divisionism. Where they foment division between in-groups and out-groups in favor of a narrow agenda. Rather than doing the more uncomfortable thing, which is to bridge us together. When's the last time you heard a politician or a policymaker actually talk about connecting and bridging as Americans? You don't hear it anymore. It's not even in the language. It's not even in the grammar.
16:23 Speaker 01 So if those divisionists are doing that, then yes, we mirror that at a community level. And it's a very, very scary outcome. Well, how would you get the likes? Exactly. And that's the trends, that's the tip of the iceberg piece, right? We start to think about and assess our relevance in the world based on how we are perceived. Not in the natural world, but in a re-presented reality. Right? How am I perceived here? And that's not even the natural world. So it causes us to be performative. And how we operate, there's filters all the way through, right? It's, it's duck lips and selfies. And that is not how we actually operate with each other as humans. And which means our social skills atrophy.
17:07 Fran Racioppi? Well, and you end up in a state too where you begin to judge almost your self-worth by what an algorithm is telling you.
17:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:15 Fran Racioppi? Right, and we forget that this is still kind of a machine and this algorithm is looking for certain things that may be pushing it out to people or not, and that's actually what's judging you and then you're looking at it going, "Well, I only got five likes, I only got so many impressions of this thing, therefore, I suck, I'm not good."
17:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, I go into this deep on the book and I hope people will check it out because there's a level of entanglement that we have with digital technology, particularly mobile technology, and before we get into the AI realm fully, we need to get a better sense of the human operating system and just how ancient and primal it is and how ill-equipped it is to actually deal with this rapidly advancing technology. We need to really get clear on that, and I hope people will check that out, man, because like what you're talking about, the way we assess our relevance in the world based on an algorithm, it's a very dangerous way to navigate the world.
18:06 Fran Racioppi? Yeah. All right, you gotta move two steps to your left, so that you can get out of the rain. All right. I want to ask about, what do we actually do?
18:19 Speaker 01 Right.
18:20 Fran Racioppi? So, once we've identified it, which you talk about in the book, is the very first step, we've got to identify that this is the situation we're in.
18:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:27 Fran Racioppi? Once we do that, now we gotta get messy.
18:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, get messy, and that's getting below the waterline of that, if the iceberg is that metaphor for the human operating system, the tip of the iceberg is the modern world, below the waterline is the traditional world, it's where we all come from, it's hunters and gatherers, and it turns out that we are just well-dressed Neanderthals, man, I mean, we are still just as primal as we were 250,000 years ago, we still navigate the world the same way, the brain, our biology really hasn't changed, but we've disconnected from that primal reality. In other words, what's below the waterline is invisible to us. So, we gotta get below the waterline and we gotta realize that it's kind of a messy creature that lives down there, and the acronym that I use for that is Meaning Seeking Emotional
19:10 Speaker 01 Social Storyteller Who Struggles. And if you start to look at yourself and those around you through that lens, it can give you levers and tools to actually have more authentic influence in that world over there.
19:28 Fran Racioppi? One of these ones I want to dig into here is your second S of storytelling.
19:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:32 Fran Racioppi? Nick Lavery, who you know, a good friend of mine, and we've had a lot of chances to sit down and talk about this concept of the silent professional versus the quiet professional.
19:41 Speaker 01 That's a great, that's a great way to frame it.
19:43 Fran Racioppi? We've got to get out there and tell these stories.
19:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, we do. We do. I mean, storytelling, look, let's back it up, okay, because I really think it's important, particularly many folks that are watching or listening to this, storytelling when you first hear it because of the transactional world. You think, okay, bedtime for Bonzo, or this one time at band camp, or no, no shit, there I was. That's not the storytelling I'm talking about. What we need to understand is that at a primal level, our brain is a metaphorical pattern matching organ. The brain actually makes sense. It has a mandate to make sense of the world, and it does it through storytelling. Storytelling is a 70,000-year-old sense-making tool. And so, we ignore storytelling at our peril, Fran, but what's happened is in the transactional world,
20:27 Speaker 01 everything has become bullet points, and talking points, and elevator pitches, and so we've left story out of the equation. Right? And leaders get up in front of their people at an all-hands meeting, instead of talking about their story of struggle, and what they had to go through to get to where they are, and what they can learn from it, they talk about three ways to be great like me. And it's unwatchable. So we've omitted storytelling from how we engage other humans, and I think that's exactly why we're treating each other the way we are. We've got to get back to being better storytellers.
20:55 Fran Racioppi? Well, you've got to genuinely care about other people, too.
20:57 Speaker 01 You do.
20:58 Fran Racioppi? And what they go through, because once you identify a person's story, and what they went through to get to where they are, why it was important, what made them, then you can appreciate their positions. But because of the nature of this transactional relationship, where I only know you on LinkedIn, and what you want to present to me, because social media is fake, right, and what you put on Instagram, well, now, I think I know you, but I don't know you. Then when we disagree, or we agree, I actually don't know where you come from, or why you believe what you believe, so how do I then find common ground with you to actually come to a resolution?
21:31 Speaker 01 In Operation Pineapple Express, which, by the way, a lot of volunteer groups did the same thing we did. We just told our story of it, but in one of those situations where we were desperately trying to get my friend Nazam, you know, into the, into the gate, he had been out in the crowd for, for three days at this point. He had no food, no water. And the Marines were getting ready to toss him and the Taliban had formed a checkpoint behind him and his phone was on 10% power. So it wasn't looking good and we got on a phone call with a diplomat who gave us one minute to tell us what the hell we wanted. In that one minute, we told stories about how Nazam had worn ladies high heeled shoes to get accepted in the army to pass the height requirements.
22:10 Speaker 01 How he had gone to the Afghan Special Forces course, our Q course had been shot through the face defending US Green Berets. And we, we hit it like in a minute and he got real quiet and he said, did I tell you guys I was a Green Beret before I was a diplomat? And there's no way that we ever would have got to that had there not been a narrative exchange. And then he brought him in. And the point here is that I go back to all the great Green Berets that I ever knew. They were awesome storytellers and even more than that, it wasn't the stories they told, it was the stories they asked to hear. When they would go into these environments where most people would immediately reach for their weapon. These guys could ask questions that started with what and how, and they would get the other party to share stories.
22:50 Speaker 01 And the next thing you know, like they're actually moving forward on an initiative together because of the dance of storytelling between those two individuals. And that kind of narrative competence is what we need in the country today.
23:01 Fran Racioppi? You know, it's funny, people ask me what Green Berets do and I tell them their primary job is to get shit done.
23:08 Speaker 01 To get shit done strategically.
23:10 Fran Racioppi? We were talking before we started about my, my day job, you know, where I started the security and operations company here in the city. And we do the majority of our work here in New York and then around the city. We have almost exclusively Green Berets and soft guys who work for the company for that very reason.
23:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:26 Fran Racioppi? Because they just get shit done and it doesn't matter what you ask them to do, they figure it out.
23:31 Speaker 01 It's a mindset and I've had people ask me of late, like, how did you write a play when you weren't a playwright? How did you act in the play when, you know, you weren't an actor and get Gary Sinise to produce it? Well, doesn't everybody do that? Like that's the approach, right? I mean, that's what you do. You, I saw a need to. Inform civilians on the cost of modern war. And I saw a need to validate and heal those who lived it. And so it only made sense to do it from the state. So I'm going to surround myself with the best people. They can teach me how to do that. And I'm going to listen and learn and eventually iterate and figure it out. I credit all of that to the Green Beret NCOs and warrant officers who taught me that that's how you get big shit done. But the reality is, is that what's in that book really is the roadmap for doing that and a range of other things like you're talking about.
24:14 Speaker 01 I mean, the fact of the matter is, all of us are capable of strategic outcomes if we set our mind to it. But it also requires not just a mindset, but I think it requires a skillset. And a lot of that skillset is to navigate this transactional world that we live in with better human connections.
24:30 Fran Racioppi? Well, I encourage everyone to get out there and read the book because it's a phenomenal read and it gives you the roadmap and it really lays out where we are in society. I'll tell you what we did. We got it done this morning because we're standing here in the city and the rain's picking up behind us, but we seem to have found the one spot under this cover that kept us dry.
24:47 Speaker 01 Which I never found when I was on active duty, right? But we seem to find it now.
24:52 Fran Racioppi? Don't worry, we still got to walk out of here together. So it'll get us. But nobody's coming to save you at Green Beret's Guide to Getting Big Shit Done. Scott, man, thanks so much.
25:00 Speaker 01 Thank you.
25:00 Fran Racioppi? Great seeing you again, man.
25:01 Speaker 01 Good to see you again.
25:06 Speaker 02 American Jedbergs went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces and the Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jedburgh Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Ruchel. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights, and other long and short form content. If you like what you heard, give us a like and leave a review. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Extra Threads. Send your comments and inquiries to [email protected] . As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jedburgh Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special Forces and their families. Thanks for joining us on this episode.
25:52 Speaker 02 How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.
Next #147: Hostage Diplomacy: Surviving Venezuelan Captivity - Former Wrongful Detainee Jose Pereira of the Citgo 6 Page updated November 7, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated