Green Beret Sniper: Behind Discipline and Pain Is Everything You've Ever Wanted | Tim Kennedy

🚀 Main Street Over Wall Street is where the real deals get done. Join top investors, founders, and operators for three days of powerful connection, sharp strategy, and big opportunities — live in Austin, Nov 2–4. https://contrarianthinking.biz/msows-bigdeal Codie Sanchez sits down with Tim Kennedy, a Green Beret, UFC fighter, and author, to discuss the principles of discipline, hard work, and resilience needed to crush your goals in 2025. 🚀 Tim shares his no-excuses approach to success, grounded in grit and relentless effort, while Codie breaks down actionable strategies to build wealth and achieve freedom. Together, they dive into: ✅ Why discipline beats motivation every time. ✅ How hard work and consistency can compound into massive success. ✅ The steps YOU can take right now to outwork, outlast, and outsmart the competition in 2025. This episode is packed with valuable insights and no-nonsense advice for anyone ready to stop making excuses and start making moves. 💪 Want help scaling your business to $1M in monthly revenue? ⁠Click here⁠ to connect with my consulting team. MORE FROM BIGDEAL: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ OTHER THINGS WE DO: 🫂 ⁠Our community⁠ 📰 ⁠Free newsletter⁠ 🏦 ⁠Biz buying course⁠ 🏠 ⁠Resibrands⁠ 💰 ⁠CT Capital⁠ 🏙️ ⁠Main St Hold Co⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Codie Sanchez?

  North Carolina. You just came back from North Carolina. You had shared quite a bit publicly about what was happening there. You flew in on the ground. You heard about everything else Tim has going on in the world. But where I wanted to start was maybe a little bit of the bad before we get to some of the beautiful silver linings you had too, which was, can you tell us what you saw there and what you guys were doing?

• 0:24Speaker 01

  I saw failure. You know, we say that no one's ever coming to save you. This is an idea that I think all special operations lives by. You know, we have to be, one, intrinsically motivated, but more importantly, we have to be completely self-sustained, whether it's SEAL Teams, the Green Berets, Rangers. When you go into a place, the expectation that's no one's going to come and get you. It's a scary thought that that is the case for an American. That was the case there. These people were completely isolated. They had their lives, their existence, where it was so dire, it was just like this tiny little thread that was keeping them alive. Now that temperatures are plummeting, you know, there's still isolated areas of western

• 1:08Speaker 01

  North Carolina and Tennessee that are, you know, this is biblical epic level proportions of disaster. We, by the fourth day, had a third trip going into Raleigh and into Charlotte to pick up more body bags. And of course, none of this is reported because it's an election year. The number of missing is still in the hundreds. And again, not being reported. And then, in addition to no one's coming to save you, I, in the first few days, we are in direct conflict with the people that are supposed to come and help you. They didn't like that.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  The individual responsibility idea of, do you want, get out of my way, I can do more than you can, you have five helicopters, I now have fifty-five helicopters, how about you give us air priority and you get out of the way, and they're like, but what if one of you guys mess up, I'm like, we won't, just literally get out of our way, but they were trying to control airspace for their five helicopters, because they didn't like the operations that we were doing, which were in conflict to the priority of theirs, and everybody that comes and works for us has to be, not just positive energy creators, but they have to, when they go into an area, they can't take off of the economy in any way, so they have to bring their own water, their own food, their own energy, their own communication ability, whether it's Starlink or Iridium phones,

• 2:41Speaker 01

  and I was trying to put a young man with his young, beautiful wife and their brand-new infant child into a hotel, and when I got to the hotel at four o'clock in the morning after doing a health and welfare check on the infant that had run out of baby formula, and they hadn't showered in five days, I go to the only hotel, well, there's two in the town that had power, and it was completely booked up with federal FEMA personnel, and I was pissed.

• 3:13Codie Sanchez?

  So, first of all, you're not, this isn't your first disaster area that you've gone into, both as an active-duty member of the military, which you still are currently, but also, you know, with a nonprofit organization or an NGO like Save Our Allies, you know, that was you in Afghanistan as well, during the last...

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're starting with some heavy stuff, good morning, Monday morning, everybody.

• 3:38Codie Sanchez?

  They're like, I thought we were talking about P and L's.

• 3:42Codie Sanchez?

  But what I wanted to go to from there is, you know, I was reading this tweet that you did that I thought was so good, and you had some silver lining, which was you said, "A ninety-two-year-old Army Ranger vet volunteered to help the crew do evacuations. He said he is ready to go if we need him, said he hasn't jumped in forty years, but has enough under his belt to help. I love the American spirit." So, were there, was there an American spirit that you saw despite it all?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll super swing to the positive side of this, the... From Afghanistan to Western North Carolina, the response of the American people, the generosity of the entrepreneur and veteran community to do what the government couldn't even do. You know, we're 35 trillion dollars in debt because our government is so gigantic, yet it took a few individuals stepping up, you know, Isaiah 6:8, "I heard the voice of the Lord say, 'Who shall I send?' And I respond with, 'Here I am, send me.'" Like, that was the war cry to thousands of capable, incredible people. And that 92-year-old is, I tweeted that to represent an idea.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  There were 25-year-olds with Toyota Overland. You know, we make fun of them, and it's totally fine that we do, because they're kind of dorks.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  And they, you know, came in from Tennessee, or they drove up from Northern Florida, from Louisiana, from Mississippi. And they got a couple of chainsaws in the back, you know, still, or Husqvarna. And FEMA has roadblocks, and they're like, "You guys aren't allowed to go up there." Like, "You can't get up there." And they're like, "Want to make a bet?" You know? Like, "I'll take two of them rednecks in a Toyota Overlander that over 100 PhDs from the federal government." And they literally would, they could get into areas that nobody could get into. And they were bringing life-sustaining support to these people in these secluded areas. And it was just a will to make a difference, you know? Grit. It was grit. So American.

• 5:47Codie Sanchez?

  I love that. How do you organize chaos like that? Like, I saw pictures of you in your, sleeping in the back of your truck with, like, diapers next to you, baby formula, a little stove range. How do you organize a group of people in a time of chaos?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Triage of, you know, setting your priorities.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  And then being able to look at the resources that you have and apply the resources to those priorities. That applies to everything that you could do in life. Whether it's like, in my case, I have four kids at home and like a gorgeous wife. I got businesses. So in a day, I set my priorities of what I need to do. And then I look at the resources that I have where it's, you know, assistants and directors. And then I execute those things in accordance with the priorities. You know, in a disaster area, I look at the priorities of work that we have to do. You know, life, limb, eyesight, prioritize that by age. Obviously, in the bell curve, the older and the younger are most more vulnerable.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  And then look to a map. And then look at the resources that we have. Cool, I have 25 overland vehicles, 55 helicopters, a total of 900 personnel. We have two warehouses full of sustainments supplies. So let's go ahead and task organize and triage. The people that we need to get to and then take the resources that I have. And address those in accordance to the priorities.

• 7:28Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, I think a lot of people imagine when you say special operations that you're just like, we're gonna go shoot some motherfuckers, right? They just think you guys are badass.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  We are.

• 7:36Codie Sanchez?

  You are.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  All right, Chris.

• 7:38Codie Sanchez?

  That is true. They're very dangerous men. But they don't realize how much planning, logistics and sophistication goes into what you do. So how have you translated that to the business world? Like I've been in your office where you have like 47 businesses in one office. And you have, you know, all of these sort of independent operators. What do you think you brought? Like, what was the skill set that you brought that was the most critical from the military to civilian life?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  There's no difference in leadership from military leadership to civilian leadership. Leadership is leadership. And when it comes to strategy rehearsals and time management. Civilian and military approach to that, I think should be the same. It's one of the many reasons that you see so many people, so many successful people from the special operations committee.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Take a very, not that they're regimented, but they are disciplined in their approach with, you know, Jaco with Jaco Fuel and Origin, or Evan Hafer with Black Rifle Coffee, or Mike Glover with Fieldcraft Survival, you know, the list just goes on of these successful special operations entrepreneurs, you know, and they really just take the models that they learned in the military and they apply them, you know, so, yeah, we do, the majority of our work is in planning. If I'm going to be going into a meeting, I know who I'm meeting with, I know what the ask is going to be, I know financially what I am going to benefit, the return on investment, and then, in addition to the planning, kind

• 9:13Speaker 01

  of strategic approach to it, we also, we, this one-third, two-thirds rule, we also spend two-thirds of our time rehearsing and kind of war gaming what the potential outcomes could be.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Oh, I like that a lot.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bin Laden, before they go in, of course, they planned it, right? If they had a month to plan it, they spend one-third of their time, they spend 10 days of their time planning. The other 20 days of that month, they just rehearse it. They rehearse and they rehearse, they rehearse their contingencies, they rehearse their reloads of a helicopter going down, which it did, Navy SEALs, you know, 20 days, one-third, two-thirds of rehearsals.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Running a podcast or any content operation is a grind. The editing, the clipping, the captions, it's enough to make anyone quit before the fun even starts. Enter Riverside. This tool is your content powerhouse. Forget decent quality virtual calls, Riverside gives you 4K video, pristine audio, and makes dead weight tasks disappear faster than bad ideas. Their text-based editor slashes silences and edits errors with one click. Needing some extra clips? Riverside's AI Magic Clips finds the moments people actually care about and delivers them to you. No guessing, no endless replays. And here's the kicker, you don't even need to record in the platform to use its features. You have the option to upload your footage to Riverside, letting it handle the heavy lifting. So you can save your brainpower for the creative stuff. So stop drowning in edits, get busy creating,

• 10:40Speaker 02

  hit the link in the description, use code Cody, and thank me later. So how does that play out in your normal life? Like, would that be like when you go into a meeting, you have a brief for every meeting, like a military brief, like, here's who's going to be there, here's the agenda, here's what I want to get out of it, somebody preps that for you, it goes on your calendar, and then, is that what happens?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, but before it goes on my calendar, It kind of goes through a refiner's fire of do I have to take this?

• 11:04Codie Sanchez?

  It's a good question.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Can Carl do it? Can Matt do it? Can Nick do it? Can Matt Boudreau do it? So depending on the business, is this something that requires my time? And if it's not something that I have to address, if it's a problem and they're coming with a solution, I don't have to be in there. You already gave the solution. Did I already? So there's this beautiful thing that's happening in the military right now. They're reorganizing the way that they do leadership in something that's called mission command. Mission command is a decentralized approach where I'm empowering the next lowest leader, the subordinate, to assume risk and responsibility and be able to make the decision on their own as long as they're in alignment with the philosophy and commander's intent.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  So I, my job is to communicate clearly my intent. Like this is what we're trying to do with this business or with the culture. And then the person that is running that project shouldn't be able to make all of the decisions. The only time it should come to me is if like, there isn't a solution, so here's three bad options.

• 12:11Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  And then I'm like, ah, that sucks. Let's go with option B, which is the least of the three.

• 12:17Codie Sanchez?

  I always giggle that I think the CEO's real job, like everybody wants a CEO job and all it is, is you get the worst problems all the time that nobody else can solve.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Worst personnel problems usually.

• 12:26Codie Sanchez?

  Yep.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  And then worse financial situations.

• 12:29Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. The other thing that I've really noticed with you, like getting to know you over the last year or so is you do a really good job setting expectations and communicating very concisely. So I was wondering, like, did you always know that? Did you learn that?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  No, I'm retarded. Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  And you ask my wife if I'm a good communicator. No.

• 12:55Codie Sanchez?

  Maybe not that type.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, one, it's discipline, but I think it's become a byproduct of just not having time. And then when you don't have time and you look at the available time that you have, and everybody says that time is this like most important resource. I argue that attention is the most important resource. I could be doing something specific with my time, but if my attention is elsewhere or 100% my attention is focused on

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Something else or ineffective or inefficient in the time that I have. It's I'm just wasting my attention.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  So to that, to answer your question concisely. I know really, I'm pretty self-aware of what I'm good at. And all of the other things, I'm not going to spend my time on because I'm wasting my attention on those things. I'd rather just defer to the expert. You know, as I'm over there talking to Chris and I'm struggling through a couple of things. And, and he's really good at those things. So I was like, can we go talk about these things? So I can use your expertise to answer things that I don't truly understand about how to invest in, in some things that are coming across the desk. He's like, yeah, yeah, jujitsu, coffee, money.

• 14:16Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, he, you know, it's interesting because I found the people who are the most successful typically have the least knowledge ego out there. Not that we don't all have big egos. I'm sure you have a big ego in many ways, but you're like, no, no, no, I don't care where the information comes from. If it's better than me, smarter than me, gonna make me more money, gonna make me more efficient, I'll take it. And, and I think a lot of times the people who don't succeed are the ones that they think they gotta do it all by themselves.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  I couldn't agree with you more. And, and as I've had like five different careers in my life at this point. From, you know, fighting for world championships to, you know, obviously in the military, the entrepreneur, author. The Walt Whitman approach of, you know, don't, don't be judgmental, be curious. Your ego will always get in the way of that. You know, it's like, I know everything and I will be judgmental about how much money you have or your approach to business. Inversely, the like, the opposite end of that is, I mean, I just want to understand more. I just want to know more and I'm so curious about it. How many times am I asking you about how to do something or what to do? It's that curiosity is what gives us growth.

• 15:23Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, it's so good. You know, you said another thing that I loved, which was you tweeted, a wise man once said, be careful who, who you let on your ship. Because some people will sink the whole ship just because they can't be the captain. What do you mean by that and how do you watch out for that?

• 15:39Speaker 01

  I think there's three kind of.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Energies with people. You have people that create negative energy. You know, they they they're just like a succubus of of joy and attention and and they need to be in these positional places of authority. And then you have kind of new energy neutral people that they they want to contribute, you know, but they they also have their goals and their ambitions. Those are amazing employees, you know, those are incredible people. And then there's just the natural leaders. That's the Mike Wilmers. That's the General Georges. That's the Maddises that

• 16:18Speaker 01

  bring a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of expertise, no ego, and they joyfully will stand in the back while somebody else gets the credit for their accomplishments.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  It's a really dangerous thing.

• 16:34Speaker 03

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5, only at McDonald's for a limited time.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  Pricing participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 16:51Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Who we surround ourselves with, you know, it's it's scriptural. It's very clear, you know, that

• 17:25Speaker 01

  you effectively become who you surround yourself with. This also studies have shown economically, financially, your circle plus or minus $100,000 is where you you're going to end up.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  It but I am disgusted as to the ladder climber that's always looking for like a rich person to hang around. That's a disgusting person. But, you know, the the the people that I get to spend time with are joyful, kind, energy positive people that are incredibly successful as a byproduct of of who they are as a person.

• 18:03Codie Sanchez?

  So when you're looking for those natural leaders and the energy positive, what do you, how do you find them? Like, can you tell when you, when you go and meet somebody, can you immediately look at, look at them in the windows through their soul and say, ah, that's you?

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I, having been, been embezzled a few times, I, I say,

• 18:21Codie Sanchez?

  Have we all?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a great judge of character, right? Uh, a trained interrogator that gets, yeah. Back, back to no ego. Um,

• 18:33Speaker 01

  in the interview, you can usually tell pretty quickly, uh, somebody that's sincere and authentic, somebody that, uh, is kind and generous. And especially for like middle management

• 18:49Speaker 01

  or above, I always go and eat with them. I always want to share a meal with them. Uh, I want to see how they treat the staff. I want to see how long it takes them to buy, to, to pick what they're gonna eat.

• 19:01Codie Sanchez?

  Amen. That's top, top priority.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Man, you walk into, you know, we, we got great coffee in Austin. And they're like, hey, want to grab a cup of coffee? And they're like, yeah, let's meet at Starbucks. Cool, not getting hired.

• 19:13Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, see? Ah, I didn't even prep him with that. I have a war on Starbucks.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not just philosophically, because like we're on opposite ends and, and they're a competitor. But, um, there's terrible coffee with horrible milk. Um, but, and then you walk in and they're like, you know, I want a soy latte with, yeah, 2.5 pumps and like you spelled my name on the cup wrong. Um, and you know, how they tip, I judge on that to see if they're a generous person or if they're like boastfully being generous, um, because they're with me or if like they're tipping to be appropriate and kind and they like see a server's name and they, and they use their name when they're addressing them. Like all these little tiny things are just little snapshots into who this person is. They sit down at the, at the table to order, you know, and they're like,

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Imagine that person in your office. I will wear their skin in like five days as they like. Yeah, so like you gotta create authentic opportunities to see who these people are. And anybody when they're well fed, they're caffeinated, they're dressed up nice and they walk into the office, nice and prepared. They could put it on a show for 20 minutes. You gotta take them out of that environment to kind of get a picture of their character.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  That's a hard thing to do sometimes.

• 20:30Codie Sanchez?

  It's a really good point. I also think about when I look back at like where I've gone wrong with my dad has one that I love, which is you can't do a good deal with a bad guy. And I mean, I think about that a lot in business, or at least you better be real thoughtful if you're gonna do a deal with a bad guy and you better make sure to CYA. But one of the things that I've noticed too is it's hard for bad guys to last past like four or five PM. Like it's like it wears off throughout the day. And so I think that idea of just like increasing the surface area of exposure is a really easy way to figure out, do I actually want to work with this person? Do I like them? The other thing that I've noticed, I'd be curious if you have anything else about people who have been bad for you because I do think

• 21:14Codie Sanchez?

  your your worst decisions won't usually be the actions taken, but the humans chosen. And so like I've noticed also those types, underhanded digs, passive aggressive, like real high indicator for doesn't really like you. Doesn't like maybe super high charisma, but doesn't actually like you. Have you noticed anything else that you thought, oh, anytime I see that, out?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I try not to be like snap judgment on.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Because we don't know what's going on with in somebody's life, but there's definitely in the aggregate and like the collective of how they treat other people. In that idea of, you know, after 4pm.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Again, that that surface area of trying to find opportunities outside of this conducive environment for them to put on a show where when it's special operations during selections, whether it's Bud or Special Forces selection or any of the other units, you're always being selected. When we're recruiting, I wouldn't go and recruit somebody because they were like the best and the fastest. It's when they weren't on, well, used the field, they weren't on the field, but and they're on the bench and their team is out. And how are they supporting them? How are they encouraging them? When they come back in, hey, great job.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Have you thought about doing this? Those are all selfless opportunities where they're not looking for the limelight, rather they're looking for ways to encourage the team to succeed. And you know, when you look at professional athlete recruiters, they love going to games where that star player that they're there to recruit is playing against not a pure level team to see how good this person is. They already know how good they are. They're trying to get a peek into that person's character. Like, are they picking up gear at the end of the game? When the person has a rough, when one of their teammates has a rough session on the field or on the ice and comes off and they're like, oh, man, you're doing great. You know, like, let's, let's, let's keep going. Like, you can get

• 23:23Speaker 01

  this. Those are the snapshots where, again, that motto of you're always being, you're always being selected, you're always being graded, you're always, where it's really difficult in the work environment to see into somebody's character and to see what their grit looks like. And when somebody shows you, believe them.

• 23:47Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  When they, when, when they're a passive aggressive dick, they're a passive aggressive dick. When they're leaving early to go do the thing that they need to do, hey, I gotta. Believe them and you will never, I have never let someone go in a layoff or fired somebody that I was not immediately relieved within forty eight hours that that was the right thing. And I wish that I had done it months prior.

• 24:13Codie Sanchez?

  Me too.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Ever.

• 24:14Codie Sanchez?

  I know, I've never once regretted a fire, which is fucking crazy.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  But every single time you're like, why did I just do it like two months ago? It would have saved me, it would have, every single time.

• 24:23Codie Sanchez?

  Every time. Um, you know, you've also said something that I loved.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  I see a lot of stuff.

• 24:29Codie Sanchez?

  You said, you want to avoid idiots in your life, live a life they can't exist in. What do you mean by that?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  So, and I mean it, I mean, I was just texting with Andy Stumpf as I was driving here. Hands free, I wasn't like on my phone. Um, and I was, I was not disparaging people, but I was rather praising the, the small circle of people that I have now. And, um, and this small circle in, in the refiner's fire, when you're making a weapon in, in a forge, you, you take a chunk of metal that's, that's of good quality, but it still has a lot of imperfections in it and it has to take a shape. And you stick it in the fire, you heat it up, which is, which is torture to the metal.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And you take it out and you pound it. And every time that you pound it, those little tiny bursts of fire, tho- those are imperfections coming out of the metal. And then you submerge it and you repeat that process hundreds of times. Um, and then whatever that tool is supposed to become, a hammer, a sword, it then starts taking the shape of that. And your friends have to be that way. If it's a, if it's a crappy piece of metal, um, it will break, it will rust, it will oxidize, it will chip, and, um, it will fall away and ultimately, ultimately become useless. That circle, I cannot have idiots in my life and there are no idiots left in my life because they can't exist in the life that I live.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Um, that's a life of selflessness, that's a life of discipline, that's a life of commitment, that's a life of monogamy to my wife, that's a, a life of, of purpose for my children and.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  It's so clear and it's so obvious when people don't share those values. We're on a work trip and I'm walking in the lobby. The bar is to the left, the elevator is to the right. I know that our first meeting is at 8 a.m. in the morning. I was just in New Hampshire for SIG and our first meeting was there at 8 o'clock. We're about 25 minutes, so I knew I had to leave by 7:30. I wanted to make sure I got a good, healthy breakfast with plenty of water. So, moving in reverse planning, that means my workout is gonna be at like 5:45, 6. Gives me a 45-minute workout, 20, 25 minutes to get eggs, shower, dress, leave by 7:30. So as I'm walking in, I know that's what my morning's gonna look like.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  The person that I was traveling with saw a couple of cute little hotties in the bar. It could not have been more clear. Option A, go left. Option B, have a plan, go right, go to the elevator, take a shower, go to bed, wake up, work out, go to my meeting, go home to my wife. Sure, I could go left and like, maybe I'm not gonna go hook up with them, but I'm just gonna talk to them, you know? Then I'll have a couple of drinks too. But then they're like, oh, the bar's closing, last call, maybe we'll just go upstairs and we'll just hang out for a couple of times, we'll take a couple of drinks to go. Then we go upstairs to the room and we're hanging out. And like, obviously the slippery slope of a bad decision, all was the genesis, the catalyst was walking through the door without a plan.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  So that person cannot exist in my life. That person is not gonna be in my, in one of my companies. Cause if you're faithful in the small things, you can be faithful in the big things. And if you're not gonna be faithful to your wife, you're not gonna be faithful with my money. If you're not gonna be disciplined with what you're gonna be doing with your time, you're not gonna be disciplined with my time. And you can get fucked. You know, like, get out of my life, I don't want it.

• 28:11Codie Sanchez?

  Round of applause to that. No, 100%.

• 28:17Codie Sanchez?

  I think, you know, in a world in which discipline is not normal and in which people do not put those on high who do good things, but who do flashy things, I think finding other people who have that same moral compass is rare and beautiful. And so, and, and, you know, especially for people who have options. One of the other things you've said, Jesus, you have said a lot. You're talking all the time, is that, you know, and it might not have just been you. You might have been quoting somebody else. Maybe it was Jordan Peterson, about how he said that, you know, it's not, what does he say about the violent man? It's like, do you remember his line?

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 28:55Codie Sanchez?

  Okay.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll get to wave tops because it's a long quote, but ultimately, the bluff, the bottom line up front is, a weak man is not a good man because he's not capable to do one or the other. A strong man that's capable of violence, but chooses to be kind, chooses to be gentle, he's clearly morally a good man because he is capable to do violence. That weak man is just frankly useless. He can't protect you, and if he can't protect you, then he definitely can't hurt you because he's weak and useless. The, on the other end of the spectrum is the man that is capable of great violence. And rather, he gent, he touches you gently, his hands are calloused, he has never set down the sword, but he has

• 29:39Speaker 01

  never used the sword against you, but rather only to defend you. And that, that, it's beautiful concept, whether it's in business, in the military, as a, you know, I've, I've never had a har, a harsh hand to my children, not once out of anger. You know, I woke up at 5:30 this morning to go to Gracie Amite, Cedar Park, to train with Giancarlo Bedoni, the two-time ADCC World Champion, who was teaching class at 6:00 a.m., to come home to make breakfast for my kids before they went to school. And...

• 30:09Speaker 01

  That is the standard that I expect from everybody that I'm gonna spend time with.

• 30:13Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, it's beautiful. What about when you were not this level of man yet? Because you are very open too about not having been that forever, like all of us. Can you, can you attract great leaders and team members if you are not a great leader and team member?

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can. There are, especially in the military. You know, it's, it's hard because sometimes, often, the worst get promoted. And um.

• 30:43Codie Sanchez?

  Everybody felt that before? They're like, yeah, my boss.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  It happens in business, it happens in the military. And really great leaders will go into a bad leadership

• 30:57Speaker 01

  problem because they run towards the sound of gunfire. They turn and they face the problem and they want to address it. And they see whether it's a culture problem, a leadership problem, a substance abuse problem in leadership. They put themselves in, and they're, so they're, they're going to that bad leader. Not for that leader, but rather for the benefit of the collective. And like, give me that guy.

• 31:22Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, chosen hard.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:23Codie Sanchez?

  I love that. Okay, I want to open this up to questions in a second. But what, like, this is a room full of either current owners or entrepreneurs or those who want to delve into it. And I'm sure all of them would love 60 seconds with Tim to say like, what piece of advice would you give me? I know it's broad, but what would you give a group of aspiring on their way entrepreneurs and owners?

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, growth is not linear, you know, in business or more often as a person. You know, if, if you read my book, Scars and Stripes, you'll see failure after failure after failure after failure after failure. I didn't fail at the same thing twice. So I'm either like extraordinarily versatile in all the ways that I can fail at something.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not an attribute that you want to be good at. So I'm writing a book right now called The Purpose of Pain. And this, every moment of growth in my life has come from adversity. Every single.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Opportunity for character development, the catalyst was a mistake. Um, you know, I put my hand on the stove and I burnt my hand. I learned not to put my hand on the stove. Um, I was dating Kira Gabriel Batalla in, uh, college. She was like four or five years older than me. She was like a 10. I was young and like a six and a half. And, um, you know, and she's hooking up with like three other dudes. She broke my heart. I learned a lesson, you know, not at the six, not to hook up with the 10 that, that, uh, you know, it's a good lesson.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You go into a partnership, um, with a guy that doesn't have the moral values, but has, you know, the acumen to, to look successful and to look the part, but you didn't take him to lunch. You didn't see how he treated the waiters. Um, but you did know that he had a side thing with his wife. And then lo and behold, he embezzles you for, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Who here is surprised by that? Yep. You know, yeah, I was. If you want to know how dumb I am, there's another example, like the list is long and distinguished of all the ways that I've messed up. Oh, yeah. But embrace the suffering, embrace the adversity, embrace, um, the struggle because that is the process. Like that, that title, the purpose of pain is, um, it, we're in an era where everyone's getting softer. Everybody's getting weaker. Everybody's getting poorer. Everybody's getting, you know, like sicker. Um, it doesn't have to be that way. You can just rather go the, the opposite direction of

• 34:10Speaker 01

  the mass, the, the masses and choose discipline, choose regiment, choose pain, choose struggling, choose adversity and, um, and the, on the far side of that hard work is everything that you've ever wanted.

• 34:25Codie Sanchez?

  Agree. Yeah, well, the other thing too is if you guys ever are not motivated, Tim's Instagram is incredible because this psychopath does all these workouts nonstop. And you'll notice one thing about them, or I do, he's always like laughing or smiling while he's doing the world's worst workout of all time. And I noticed this because my husband's sort of the same way. He's like, finds joy in pain, sort of. And so, he's a great follow on Instagram. But I also love that about you is, you know, you almost smile, you wickedly smile while you're suffering.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that once more into the fray is

• 35:05Speaker 01

  the Scottish people lifting up their kilts and, you know, whipping their ding-dongs around before they charge the English. If that happened, like, that is historical. This idea is, we're outnumbered three to one. They have heavy cavalry, but I'm gonna like whip my dick around to let you know like where my headspace is at. That is this idea of like, I'm looking at the scariest thing. I'm looking at adversity and struggle. But I've surrounded myself with extraordinary, wonderful people. And I'm gonna go into it with joy. And happiness and joy is a choice.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Everybody, all of us, I'm not gonna go into all of your lives. All of us have struggles. And, you know, if I don't believe this curated editorialized crap that's on social media, if you could pull back a couple of layers and see some of the struggles that I have in my life right now. I still got to wake up at five whatever, kiss my beautiful wife on the cheek, you know, go get a rad workout with a two-time world champion that's way better than I am now in my mid 40s. And it's season like the peak of his career and mopped the mats with my soul. And I was in joy and gratefulness the whole entire time.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  And that was a choice. I landed from a trip overseas in the wee hours of the morning last night. You know, flew over the Atlantic at whatever midnight in a red eye to come here and get a great workout and then come here and have a great conversation. Jet lagged as heck, but filled with joy and gratefulness. So it's a choice.

• 36:47Codie Sanchez?

  I love that. Okay, let's, yeah.

• 36:52Codie Sanchez?

  What a good human. Okay, I'm gonna come to you for a question too. One thing I'll say also is if you guys haven't checked out, I know they're always filled, but he has these sheepdog response courses here, which I'm gonna have a bunch of my female employees take too. But they're incredible for team building and leadership. And so, learning how to offend one another, learning how to do hard things, it's another thing that I think's really cool that you did. Okay. And the only thing I'm gonna ask is we don't have a ton of time. Tim literally has to jet out of here, so we're gonna usher him out. He's not gonna have time to like, sit and take pictures. It's our fault for programming scheduling, so just let him beeline out of here.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  I have 17 minutes.

• 37:27Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, we're gonna ask, we're gonna go right here to a question.

• 37:33Speaker 06

  Tim, I wanna say thank you for your incredible service to our country. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change, your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 37:53Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 38:22Speaker 06

  We're gonna go in fast mode here because I know there's probably tons of questions for you. Thank you again for your tips on your empathetic energy that you glean from your folks that are gonna bring into your company. But what are your sneaky one to two questions that you ask folks? Where you, where they reveal more of themselves?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, one is, um, what does a typical day look like for you? Like, I can tell you from 5:30 a.m. tonight, or this morning, until 8:30 p.m. tonight when my kids go to bed. I'm not gonna go into what I plan on doing from 8:30 until 10:30 from when my wife goes to bed.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  But from literally 5:30 a.m. until 10:30 tonight, I know every minute of my day has been planned. And I'm not looking for...

• 39:13Speaker 01

  You can look at somebody's calendar and I know if that is a $5 million entrepreneur, if that is a billion dollar business owner, just by your calendar. And similarly, the role that I'm hiring you for, your approach to your time should be equivalent and appropriate for the role that you're about to go into. So that's one, what is your timeline like? And then two is, I want to see failure. I despise like, you know, the question of, what do you struggle with? Like, man, I struggle with caring so much. Yeah, come on.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  The, I love the transparency, humility, that is a really good indicator when somebody truly gives you a fault. You know, like something that they're struggling with, their, their, their, their child has diabetes and they're, you know, and I'm in the business of protection and preparedness, you know, and they, they sit there and honestly, like, power goes out, my insulin is going to last six months, my kid dies in seven. And I can see they're, like, they're scared. Man, I want that person on my team.

• 40:29Codie Sanchez?

  So good. All right, Alex, yeah?

• 40:33Speaker 07

  Hey, Tim, how are you? I'm a business owner who helps other business owners and I'm on a mission to help as many business owners as possible duplicate their efforts and get out of the day-to-day operations in just 90 days so they have more time to work on their business versus in their business. I'm curious to know, what is your best piece of advice to help business owners who have limiting beliefs that no one can run the business better than them?

• 40:56Speaker 01

  A successful, future business owner, non-entrepreneur, and there, I get the phase of the grind, the business owns you, where later you own the business. What, for, for that transition to happen is you're going to have to be able to build. Mentor and then ultimately delegate responsibility and authority to the people that are going to be running that. And that is a selfless act. That is you having faith and a little bit of courage in the people that you are bringing into your organization to do it. And they're going to do it better than you. Your ego will get in the way every single time. I promise you, every single person in my office, Matt Smith, Yakko Kalili, Zach Mayo, Carl Kringle, they are smarter than me.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  They are better at what they do than I could ever like the, what they do in the business is better than what I do. Matt Boudreau, running Apogee, he's a thousand times better than, than what I could do in that same role. And like having the confidence that that person can do that thing, you, that business will own you forever. Until you make that transition to you owning the business and empowering other people to do it for you.

• 42:06Codie Sanchez?

  Beautiful.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  You're working a lot in North Carolina. I know, or at least from my understanding, you specialize more in the triage side. But we have a bunch of people with trades businesses here. So is there, can we partner with you or can we, is there an organization that you partner with? That we can donate materials, time, people to help rebuild the community?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was a great question. I appreciate it.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  This was the first time that we've actually ever done a, a United States CONUS based disaster response. And it was because it was in North Carolina. Uh, North Carolina is the home to special operations on the army side. It's also the home to our headquarters, um, in Charlotte, North Carolina. So it would have been really selfish for us not to pivot some of our resources to a disaster there. And we are definitely.

• 42:54Codie Sanchez?

  Name of the organization?

• 42:55Speaker 01

  It's Save Our Allies. Um, and if you email, um, [email protected] or you can just drop my email down.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  What is the one for Save Our Allies? I think it's [email protected].

• 43:11Speaker 01

  We have Caroline who runs all partnerships and we we partner with probably twenty thirty different people in governments and then fifty sixty businesses that have legitimate contribution. Um, there's a lot of people that, hey, we can help. So our name is on something. So we can say we're there to help. No, like, we only, General Donio, he's a three-star general. Um, he does not allow anybody to contribute. Um, he will like eliminate them from an organization in a heartbeat if they're not bringing significant resources to uh the table. We just don't have time to manage hundreds of of small, uh, I want

• 43:56Speaker 01

  to have my name on a billboard for an investment type partners. So like, on the construction side, we're doing, we're rebuilding bridges and roads. Um, you know, we're we're fixing houses, building entire downtowns that have been decimated. Uh, so we would love, love help. SaveOurAllies.org is the organization and that's uh the way to go.

• 44:18Codie Sanchez?

  Anna, I'm gonna make sure you get one of Tim's books too. Beautiful question. Thank you for being a giver.

• 44:22Speaker 06

  So given your experiences in the high stakes fields of like military, MMA, business, do you have any like principles or mindset shifts that you have found most valuable for thriving under pressure and then how that can be effective in like high-paced business environments?

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Yep. Uh, there's a special operations truth that says you cannot prepare for a crisis after the crisis occurs. Um, the soft truths are um the cornerstone to the book that I'm writing, The Purpose of Pain, The Purpose of Pain right now. Another one that applies to that is that people are more important than hardware. Those two soft truths, the first one, you cannot prepare for a crisis after a crisis occurs, and that people are more important than hardware. I can have, you know, the nicest computer on the desk of all these employees and I can have the best chair, you know, a standing desk and like, you know, whatever the the the current twenty twenty four work optimiz- optimization environments are. But if the person's not the right person, um, and if I'm not recognizing

• 45:19Speaker 01

  that, me mentoring and building the next leader is the most important thing that I can do. Um, I'm just wasting my money and pouring stuff uselessly into equipment and stuff because people are the most important commodity. And you have to prepare when I said before I go into a meeting, preparation occurs and rehearsals occur. Like, I don't just have a white paper about what I'm about to, who I'm about to talk to, which includes their bio, what their ask is going to be, what we want to do in that partnership. I then rehearse. I will sit down with Carl and we'll go over, like even role-playing and wargaming, what that conversation is going to be like,

• 46:03Speaker 01

  how a couple of different options as the conversation unfolds, you know, and then I'm pleasantly surprised when somebody brings in something that I didn't prepare for. I'm like, yeah, sick.

• 46:14Codie Sanchez?

  Okay, last question here, just briefly, please, my dear.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  I speak quickly. My question was, you were talking about the switch in military attitude of new leadership. How can we get that not only in our businesses, but also into our society and especially into our governments? I'm from London. We have the NHS. It's a nightmare of middle managers who are afraid to do anything and be held accountable for anything ever going wrong, even if it would be the reasonable choice. What's your hot tag on what we could do to enact that change?

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Individual responsibility in the preamble of the Constitution. Please, if you don't have the Constitution and you haven't read in a while, please pick it up and read it. The entire idea of we, the people, was only possible because the people were a capable, individually responsible group of people. And they carved their existence out of the wilderness. They fought Indians and bears. Then they had a tyrannical government that said they're impose a 5% tax on a single commodity. And they threw tea into a harbor and then one shot heard around the world. They killed every single one of those people that represented that government and then kicked them off the continent. And that was only possible because the people were strong,

• 47:26Speaker 01

  the people were disciplined, the people were educated. And like in the military, we are able to do mission command as our new command approach, because we are going to have faith and confidence that down to the small unit level, they are training the soldiers in their key medal task. So every unit has a medal, mission essential task list.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  A cook is going to have a way different metal task than an infantryman. An infantryman is going to be able to shoot, move, communicate, medicate. A cook is going to be able to purify water, you know, remove bacteria from, from food and be able to provide nutrients to the fighting force. Very different metal tasks. But I, as a leader, I'm going to have high confidence that once I give my intent, that they're going to be, being able to execute that because I have trained them and I have mentored them and I've prepared them to be able to assume the authority, the responsibility, and then I'll authorize them to go and take that. Uh, those, and be able to take, make those decisions without me being there. And there'll be a learning curve. They're going to make mistakes, um, just like you would.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  It's not like if you were in that role, you're going to bat a thousand, you're going to make mistakes, just like they will. And you will use those as opportunities for both of you to grow, one, you as a leader, and then them as an individual to be able to contribute in a more meaningful way as time goes on.

• 48:47Codie Sanchez?

  Beautiful. All right, Tim Kennedy, everybody.