Rise From The Ashes
Welcome to "Rise From The Ashes," the empowering podcast designed for thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionary CEOs ready to turn their challenges into triumphs. Each episode delves deep into the heart of resilience, offering you a front-row seat to the comeback stories of business leaders who have dared to face adversity and emerge victorious.
Join us as we explore profound narratives of failure and success, narrated by those who have walked through fire and rebuilt their empires from the ashes. Hosted by seasoned experts, this podcast provides an in-depth look at the strategic maneuvers and bold decisions that define a resilient entrepreneur.
From life-altering challenges to innovative strategies, "Rise From The Ashes" equips you with the insights and tools to forge a path to success. Whether you're a battle-hardened CEO or a budding entrepreneur stepping into the arena, this show guides you through the tumultuous yet rewarding business world.
Tune in to transform adversity into opportunity, ignite your entrepreneurial spirit, and start crafting your remarkable success story. At "Rise From The Ashes," we don’t just tell stories—we inspire you to create your legacy of resilience and triumph. Listen now and begin your journey to becoming a phoenix in the business world.
Key Themes:
- Resilience and overcoming adversity
- Strategic business insights
- Entrepreneurial success stories
- Leadership and innovation
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Rise From The Ashes
From Soldier to Speaker Oakland's Path of Leadership
Transitioning from a life of military discipline to the ebbs and flows of civilian workplaces, retired US military colonel and leadership speaker Oak shares a goldmine of experiences in our latest episode. His narrative, from commanding operations to penning a book on leadership, unfolds a saga of adaptability and personal growth. Listen in for Oak's poignant tales that underscore the essence of empowering communication and the importance of instilling a strong work ethic across diverse professional landscapes.
Imagine a leadership style that's not about authority, but about fostering resilience and inspiring communities. That's the journey I recount, tracing my own strides from a high school basketball court to the rank of lieutenant colonel, all thanks to the profound impact of early mentors. Oak and I dissect the misconceptions of control in leadership roles, stressing instead on empowerment and the cultivation of a robust society that can weather any storm.
Wrapping up, we reflect on the formidable path to 'Leading With Purpose.' Oak bestows upon us actionable insights for honing leadership skills and learning through every stumble. This episode is a testament to the unwavering significance of accountability and setting a vision for the future. Join us for a deep dive into the heart of inspired leadership, and leave feeling equipped to carve a legacy that transcends your tenure.
Colorado’s best business coach, Baz Porter, has a new mindset strategy mentoring service to help you unlock new heights of growth, prosperity, happiness, and success. Book your first meeting with the coaching visionary at https://www.ramsbybaz.com/
Friends, our time together is coming to a close. Before we part ways, I sincerely thank you for joining me on this thought-provoking journey. I aim to provide perspectives and insights that spark self-reflection and positive change.
If any concepts we explored resonated with you, I kindly request that you share this episode with someone who may benefit from its message. And please, reach out anytime - I’m always eager to hear your biggest aspirations, pressing struggles, and lessons learned.
My door is open at my Denver office and digitally via my website. If you want to go deeper and transform confusion into clarity on your quest for purpose, visit ceoimpactzone.com and schedule a coaching session.
This is Baz Porter signing off with immense gratitude. Stay bold, stay faithful, and know that you always have an empathetic ear and wise mind in your corner. Until next time!
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Rise from the Ashes. We're in season four, I believe, now, and it's been incredible. I've had some incredible speakers on and I've had some incredible stories of inspiration, resilience, overcoming real grit and turning that into success. My next guest and I'm privileged to have him here he's a retired colonel from the US military. His name is Oakland, and Oak is here to share his story with you and give it a snippet from his life and where he's turned his leadership skills into a very successful speaking career, which is what he does today. Oak, please say hello to the world and tell everybody what you do and who you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, baz. I've really been looking forward to being on your show. Like you said, I was in the Army. I did 23 years on active duty in the United States Army, retired a lieutenant colonel. I started my career as an infantry officer. Then I switched over to armor cav. For my last 18 years, when I retired from the Army, I did the day-to-day operations of a food bank, a very large food bank along the Gulf Coast of the United States covered 52 counties in Mississippi, alabama and the panhandle of Florida, and I took over that job about a month before the BP oil spill in the Gulf. So I was a little busy during that time. And then I've done my last 12 years. I've been recruiting for Army ROTC here at a local university here in Florida and I retired from my day job one October and now I'm just. I wrote my first book and published it in February of 2021. And now I'm out speaking to different organizations and at conferences about leadership and success.
Speaker 1:I love that and you say you had a career in the military and transitioning from that, what was the first challenge for you leaving the military and entering civilian life? That's got to be a scary thing for anybody, but you spent most of your life serving others in a leadership position within the forces. What was the transition like for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I got ready to retire from the army, I had a lot of people who wanted me to come work for them in the corporate world and the business world and I really had no interest in that. I just didn't. I still wanted that service piece of it that had always been part of me and I wanted to do that and so the food bank worked out really well. It's still in the service. You're still serving other people and helping other people. The still in the service. You're still serving other people and helping other people.
Speaker 2:The hardest thing was two things. Number one, how you speak to people, because it's a little different. I was never rude to people, but you just speak to people in a different way In the military. It's very direct. It's not a whole lot of fluff. I didn't work with little old ladies working at the food bank. The principles of leadership didn't change with little old ladies working at the food bank, so had to re. The principles of leadership didn't change. They don't change. Leadership is leadership. It's about people and trust. How you implement them and how you communicate them absolutely changes depending on what your profession is. So I had to re relearn that and the other piece. That was a real shock to me.
Speaker 2:In the military, you work till the job's done. Whether that's five o'clock in the evening or 10 o'clock in the evening or two o'clock in the morning, you work till the job's done. Not so much in the civilian world. I always tell this story.
Speaker 2:We were getting ready. We were planning the largest handout that we did every year. It was an annual event and it was the largest event we did every year and we were planning it, and so about three weeks out, we're trying to put the final touches on it and I'm in this conference room with a bunch of people and about four o'clock I see people closing their notebooks and putting stuff away and I'm like what are you doing? And they said it's four o'clock, it's time to go home. I said we're not done and they said but it's four o'clock, it's time to go home. I said OK, if you want to leave. I said but before you leave, I want to make one thing absolutely clear to you. Three weeks from now, when we're handing out food, and some 19-year-old unmarried young lady has to go home and can't feed her two-year-old daughter because we didn't get this right, it's your fault, how many people do you think left?
Speaker 1:Zero? Yeah. Reframing an outcome? I like that. Yeah. Look at mentoring and the evils of mentoring and, of course, micromanaging. Is there a defining moment within your career that you realized that was going on and you went? That doesn't resonate with me. I have to stop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been lucky in my career in the Army. I had some great leaders that were servant leaders who understood how to lead. I've also had some bad ones, as we all have, and I had a micromanaging leader. I was selected to be the scout platoon leader, and every infantry and armor officer, as a lieutenant, wants to be the scout platoon leader. That's the job, and I got selected for it. But about three weeks before I was going to take over, the mortar platoon had an accident and it killed the lieutenant and three soldiers, and so my boss called me in the office and said hey, I know I picked you for the scout platoon, but we got a problem in the mortar platoon. We got to fix it and tag you're it Great? Yeah, I was a soldier. I did what I was told. So I went home that night and I came up with a plan on how I was going to fix the platoon, and he said oh, by the way, in six months they're going to get evaluated. So you got about six months to fix it.
Speaker 2:I came back in the next day and I said okay, boss, this is how we're going to do it. This is what I want to do. And he was shaking his head, yes, and saying, yeah, field on Monday. And he said and we're going to fire live ammunition. And he said, no, you can't do that. I said that's why you pay him. So I eventually convinced him.
Speaker 2:We went out Monday morning, wasn't going to put any live ammunition in that tube until I realized that they knew what they were doing. So we were going through dry fire runs, just going through the motions of how the things they got to do, and all of a sudden I saw him stop and I was looking at him and I realized they weren't looking at me. They were looking behind me and I turned around and there's the Lieutenant Colonel I'm a Lieutenant. And I said, okay, he's checking up on the new platoon leader. I got it After lunch doing the same thing, going through some dry fire stuff.
Speaker 2:And they stop and they turn around and there's the lieutenant colonel and I said, okay, guys, take a break. And I grabbed the lieutenant colonel. I said, sir, let's go for a walk. And we walked out into the woods and I said look, this is really simple. Either you are going to fix this platoon or I'm going to fix this platoon. We both can't do it and I don't care which way you can fire me, you can move whatever. Either you do it or I do it. And after a whole lot of yelling none of which was by me he finally figured out that I was right and he left me alone. And six months later, when we did the evaluation, we got a perfect score. The evil of micromanaging and I talk about the evil of micromanaging here's the problem is that when you micromanage somebody, you cheat not only that person out of that experience, but you're cheating everybody who ever works for that person out of that experience, because they don't have it to pass on. So you could be affecting your organization for the next 5, 10, 15 years.
Speaker 1:It's a common thing though, especially, though, especially, with, I find young leaders who are coming up and they got so, they think they've got something to prove so in any environment. They've come up through the ranks of the training, whatever it is, and suddenly they know everything. 18 years experience, three years experience. Just got out of training, just got out of depth, whatever it is, and suddenly everything right. How about you listen, how about you learn from people who've had the experience? So just sit down with respect and take your notepad out or your recorder and listen to what we're doing and then take a leaf from that book, because it's come with experience. I like what you said real.
Speaker 2:Real life experience.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And here's the problem that I see, and not just with young leaders. I see old leaders doing this too, but certainly young leaders. You're absolutely right, is that? Look, we all have an ego. Anybody who tells you they don't have an ego is lying to you. And we want people to have an ego because that's what drives people to be the best at whatever they do. That's what drives people to be successful. You want people to have an ego, but good leaders know when to put that ego aside and use the skills, knowledge and abilities of the people they have working for them. Bad leaders don't know when to do that. My first platoon a brand new, it's like you said, brand new out of school, brand new platoon leader. I was 24 years old. My first platoon sergeant had 23 years in the Army. He'd been in the Army almost as long as I'd been alive. Why would you not listen to somebody like that? But there's plenty of leaders out there who won't.
Speaker 1:I like what you said about the ego as well. It's recognizing that everybody has one, but also having the awareness to allow it to play out. In the current environment, ego drives what creates certainty and uncertainty and many other things, but it's having that, that inside intelligence, the emotional intelligence, to say I need to shut up, I need to listen, and warren buffett and Warren Buffett taught a lot of people this Ask more questions than you actually speak and listen more 80% more than you talk, all of the time.
Speaker 1:And that's what he teaches in what he does and that's how he became successful. You've had lots of obviously had lots of mentors, what has been an unconventional wisdom you've been taught that isn't often taught by the manuals, but suddenly stuck with you for that period of time that you were serving and also in what you do today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been lucky. I've had some great mentors. Some of them ended up two, three, four star generals, so I'm not sure why they picked me to mentor, but they did and I was lucky. I took full advantage of that. And to me, leadership is about, again, people and trust period. You're leading people and they have to trust you if they're going to follow you, because that's what allows the leader-led relationship to happen is trust.
Speaker 2:And I'm a firm believer that some of my best mentors were servant leaders and drilled into me you got to take care of the people that you have the privilege to lead, and it is a privilege to be the leader. And so one of the things that one of them taught me was get to know the people that you have the privilege to lead. Now I got it. You got to keep the leader-led relationship. I got that. But that doesn't mean that you can't get to know people. And he said and there's a couple of ways to do that. He said number one get out from behind your desk. Nobody wants to follow somebody who's sitting behind a desk all day, I'm sorry, he said.
Speaker 2:And number two an easy way to get to know people is go out every day and find one person in your organization, just one and find out one new thing about that person. Not about work, about their personal life what's their spouse's name, what's their kid's name, what sports do their kids play, what's their hobbies, what do they like, what don't they like? One person, one thing every day. And he said and a good way to do that, he said, is never, ever turn down a chance to go get your own cup of coffee. I don't care how high up in the organization you get, you go get your own cup of coffee. He said two things happen when you do that. Number one you build that trust. They realize you're no better than they are. You've got to go get your own cup of coffee, just like they do. And number two, he said if you're lucky, you've got two or three different ways to get to the coffee pot and back to your office and you stop along the way and you talk to people.
Speaker 1:That's the coffee bit is so natural as well it is. People don't often see the power in that. I want to ask you a question that's really I think it could be thought-provoking for you. Why did you choose the career in the military? What was that turning point for you? You must have been fairly young when you joined. What was the thought process behind that? Would you suddenly wake up and go all right, we're going to the army and that was it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it wasn't that. I grew up in a, I would say, a poor family. There were certainly people poorer than us, but we certainly didn't have a whole lot and my father never graduated from the eighth grade. My mother never graduated from the 10th grade.
Speaker 2:But my father made it very clear to me I was going to go to college and I was going to get an education and I was going to end up better than he did, and so he drove me and drove me and I did well in school and I was looking at colleges and I thought about the military academy at West Point and through an ROTC and all those things, to become an officer and I decided to do that. And one of the reasons I decided to do it and certainly one of the reasons I decided to pursue that path and absolutely one of the reasons I stayed as an officer in the Army throughout my career was I realized that nowhere else in the world does somebody like me happen, where I come from that type of a background and yet I get to retire a lieutenant colonel in the army. And I wanted to make sure that my kids, your kids, somebody else's kids, all had that same opportunity to make those choices in life and to better themselves, and so that's really what it was about for me.
Speaker 1:I love that and I think you're right. It's about the future. It's about teaching our next generation, but learning from our mistakes and going. Don't do it that way. That way it doesn't work and it creates what I call unlikely mentors, and they're the most unassuming people in your life. Do you have any people? I know you've had many mentors. Have you ever had one that has come off left field and sort of come out of nowhere and gone holy? What was that all about?
Speaker 2:Probably one of the first mentors I ever had in high school my high school basketball coach Coach, Terry Nitzwicky, who I still stay in contact with. He was one of those guys who understood that it wasn't just his job to come up with, to develop a good basketball team, and he did that. We had a decent basketball team. But he understood that it was about developing young men to be better young men and to eventually be good men, good fathers, good husbands, good citizens, good people. And he absolutely made an effort at that and worked hard at it and understood that it wasn't just about him. It was about those young men and women because, you're absolutely right, that's our future. I never turned down a chance to talk to young men and women because we are going to reap what we sell. If we don't do a good job of raising young men and young women to be good men and good women in this society, then we deserve everything we get.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Now it is about that and I love that message that you have. I've never seen you talk on stage, but I endeavor to do so. Don't worry, I might sign up just somewhere. I've never seen you talk on stage, but I endeavor to do so. Don't worry, I might sign up just somewhere. But when we look at resilience and leadership, especially in leadership, what are the misconceptions within leadership that you commonly see?
Speaker 2:Yeah it really comes down to. They think that I'm in charge and you are, in the end, you're responsible for everything that does or doesn't happen in your organization. I got that, but that doesn't mean that you have to maintain all the authority. And I talk about three words that unfortunately in today's society, here in America especially, we use them interchangeably and they are not interchangeable. There's accountability, authority and responsibility, and a leader has to understand what those three words really mean. You hold everybody accountable, including yourself. Everybody's accountable for their actions, for their performance, whatever it is they're doing.
Speaker 2:Authority is something you, the leader, have that you can give away to somebody else, and you should. Anytime you assign somebody a task, a job, a mission, a project, you should give them the authority to make it happen. That's something that you own, that you can give away, and the more you give away the better. And then responsibility is yours as the leader. You are the responsible. Your name is on the blame line, sorry. You don't get to pick and choose what you want to be responsible for. You don't get to pick the good things and not the bad things, sorry. Everything that happens is your responsibility and unfortunately, I don't see a whole lot of that in the world today.
Speaker 1:How would you teach somebody or train somebody to change that within themselves? What would be the steps you would use to help them recognize that?
Speaker 2:that within themselves? What would be the steps you would use to help them recognize that? Yeah, so I think it's got to start. If you really want to do it, I think we've got to start early and make people understand what those three words mean as a leader. But then I think we just have to keep reiterating to people who are in leadership positions today that they are the one responsible, that they, when they do something again, we hold everybody accountable. So you're accountable for your actions, your decisions. You don't get to hide behind. Somebody else told me to do it, sorry, when you made that decision to follow it. Now. You're accountable, you are responsible, and just keep reminding people. That really is what leadership is about, because it isn't about you.
Speaker 2:I've had my hand in commissioning over 580 lieutenants for the United States Army and for this country and I told every single one of them as often as I could, but certainly on the day they got commissioned it is not about you and it is all about you. It's not about you and the title you're going to get or the privileges you get. Or did you get more pay and live in a nicer house and drive a nicer car? Look, leaders get those things Okay. That's okay, as long as that's not the only reason you want to be the leader. If that's the only reason you want to be the leader, then please go do something else, because you're not going to be a good one. It is all about you and how you treat and empower the people in your organization and how you run your organization, and that is your responsibility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and I think, going back to what you said earlier about the ego, what was your biggest lesson within the ego and how did you overcome that as a young transformational soldier going into the career you do? You have you had within the military and then coming into speaking on stages, and that's, I know it's nerve-wracking for anybody who has never bespoken on stage and it's your in your thinking about it. Being in front of several hundred people to several thousand people is always nerve-wracking. You. They don't, the butterflies never go away, but it's also that ego element when you're there in that position. Like you said, you had a responsibility. How did you combat the ego within yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really started with that first platoon sergeant, sergeant First Class Pinson. I remember him like he was yesterday. He was about 6'5", 250 pounds, big country boy from Mississippi, and the message that he gave me that day, the day I took him here I'm a brand new second lieutenant and I think I'm it. And I walk up here and my commander, my company commander, takes me out there at lunchtime and all morning the platoon has been doing dry fire for a dismounted live fire or assault. The platoon has been doing dry fire for a dismounted live fire or assault. Soldiers running across the objective and machine gun bullets and bullets flying right in front of them as they run across. Well, they had just done dry fire, they hadn't done it yet.
Speaker 2:So I show up at lunch and Sergeant First Class Pinson puts his arm around me and said grab an MRE, sir, and let's go have lunch underneath this tree. And so we went over there and we sat underneath the tree and he said look, you are the boss, you're the leader. We'll do things any way you want to do them. However, I've been in the army for 23 years. I've seen it done every which way it can be done. If you're messing up, I'm going to tell you. If you still want to do it that way, we'll do it that way, but it's my responsibility to tell you when you're about to mess up.
Speaker 2:And so I can remember I was smart enough to at least listen to him. But I remember one day I walked into the office. Probably about a month, maybe two months from then, I walked into the office and I told him. I said hey, sergeant Pinson, I want to do this. And he looked at me and he said are you sure you want to do that and that? And at that moment I said to myself okay, oh, okay. Okay, you're the platoon leader, but put your ego aside and let's listen to what sergeant pinson has to say. And he kept me from doing something pretty stupid that's all but you.
Speaker 1:the key thing is here you actually listened and you took it on board and actually acted on it accordingly, right? A lot of people take time to do that because they want to learn the lesson the hard way and they think they actually know better.
Speaker 2:You didn't, and a lot of people would have taken that conversation that we had under that tree. They would have said what's this? I'm the leader, I'm the lieutenant. Why am I listening to this? I've seen plenty of leaders do that, and even at higher levels. I've said plenty of times that some of the best leaders I've ever seen are people who worked for me. Sergeant Pinson is one of those. I give him a lot of credit for turning me into the leader that I am today.
Speaker 2:Master Sergeant David Powell, who worked for me in my ROTC program, was probably and I say he worked for me. I have no doubt he was a better leader than I was and gave me some, helped me run that program things, and so I listened to him. And not only did I listen to him, but I actually actively sought out his advice on things. When I had a problem or an issue, I would go to him and say, hey, Master Powell, how have you done this before? I'm sure you've seen it. And he'd tell me Now, in the end, I'm the one, I'm the leader, I'm responsible. So I got to make a decision, if that's if I want to do that or not. But at least listen to them. They. You'd be shocked at some of the experience and knowledge and skills that those people that work for you have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it also has another effect, I think as well, where it brings people together and they put people on the same level and they have, they build, build different experiences in into that training or teaching that gives them more empowered outlook and a better result at the end of the peak, at the end of the training. Would you agree?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I may have done the same, been involved in the same training, but at my level, what my involvement was much different than the involvement that Master Sergeant Powell had Like. I just had this conversation this morning with somebody who was an enlisted soldier and he said a lot of officers don't understand. They're the ones who come up with all these brilliant plans Some of them not so brilliant and we're the ones that have to implement it. And a lot of leaders forget that. I tell leaders all the time, everything from brand new young leaders to CEOs. If you think that you're the person who's going to get your organization from this point to that point, you're sadly mistaken. It's the people that's going to work for you, the people that are working for you that are going to get you there. You have to give them the big picture of what you want it to look like In the end. Give them the resources, the time, money, people, equipment, whatever they need, give them the authority to make it happen, and then get out of their way and let them do it.
Speaker 1:I love that advice. If there was a movement you could create not just this is a movement as in a global next level for the next generation what would that be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the advice I give every person that I get a chance to talk to is I'm Catholic and at a Catholic church we have this thing called the holy moment and I absolutely believe in it and I tell everybody that I can tell your goal is that every day you go out and find one person, not 10. If you can do 10, good for you. One person and you make a positive difference in their life. Imagine how much better our family, our neighborhood, our community, our city, our state, our country, the world, would be if everybody made a conscious decision to make a positive difference in at least one person's life every day.
Speaker 1:I love that. Now I know you've got a book out at the moment. Would you please explain what it is and where people can find it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's funny because when I wrote the book, I thought I was writing it for young men and women that were aspiring to be leaders, and I did that. People who have read it and if you read the reviews I think I hit that on the head. But I also I've had I had a two-star Marine Corps general who read it Just sent me a message on LinkedIn and said I just read your book, it was awesome. He said I didn't learn a whole lot of new things. He said I did learn a new couple of new techniques, but what I really took out of your book was this as I was reading along, I'd come across something I'd say to myself you know what?
Speaker 2:I used to do that really well and I don't do that so well anymore. Maybe I need to dedicate some time to get back to doing that, because we all need that little nudge every once in a while to remind us what it was that helped make us successful. But there is no talk of theory in my book. I don't even think I mentioned the word theory in the book. It's all about everyday things that everyday leaders can do to help improve their skills and abilities and to empower the people that they have the privilege to lead to make them better, which then makes your organization better.
Speaker 1:I think that's one of the things that make you so unique, because you're coming from a wealth of experience and actionable steps and a lot of successes, but equally a lot of failures, and that's important to recognize the failures.
Speaker 2:Anybody who says they haven't failed is lying to you or they haven't done anything.
Speaker 1:But that's what creates true leaders Because, as you go back to what you said earlier, it's the accountability side of it, it's the responsibility of yeah, that didn't work so well, but what did I learn from it. And, going back to assess it, and that two-star general that messaged you to remind him to resharpen his tools I'm a huge believer in reflection.
Speaker 2:I get people all the time telling me I I learned from experience. And I say you don't learn anything from experience. You learn from the reflection on that experience. The experience doesn't do anything for you. It's looking at it and saying, okay, what was I supposed to do, what did I do and how can I get better at it? Even if you were successful, you can still get better at it. So you should reflect on successful things as much as unsuccessful things. But I think that the whole key to that is that you have to understand that everybody you and everybody that works for you is going to make a mistake. I promise it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:I had a boss who retired a four-star general and he told me one day he said, oak, if you didn't make a mistake today, you probably didn't do anything. My philosophy has always been this you make a mistake, I don't care. What I care about is what did you do after you made the mistake? Did you try to hide it? Did you try to blame somebody else? Or did you walk up to me and say, hey, boss, I screwed up and this is how we're going to fix it. Okay, up, and this is how we're going to fix it. Okay, let's go fix it, because we're all going to make mistakes. Own it and fix it. That's the key.
Speaker 1:And I love that advice for anybody. Where is the book? Is it online? It's probably online, but can you just direct people where it is, so I can put a link in the description, right.
Speaker 2:So it is on Amazon and it is available in hardcover paperback, ebook and audible, and I did the reading for the audible the only other voice on there is my wife. She read the forward because she wrote it, and she read about the author, my bio. She read that Everything else is me. I read it and then, if you want a signed copy, then you can go to my website, which has my email, my phone number, my social media links, and get in contact with me and we'll figure out how to get you a signed copy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just the website. What is the website? Mcculloughcom? Awesome, and then links will be in the description below. Links will be in the description below. Oak, I want to thank you for your time and your energy and your love here and also your experiences, invaluable to people who are already aspiring to be the speakers and also going to the military. Do you have any parting words for anybody who has listened to this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that the advice I give, especially young men and women, but anybody. I was just talking to somebody right before I came on the show that made a career change about six months ago Figure out who you are, go to your values, go to what you believe. Figure out who you are, figure out what you want to do in life and if it isn't what you're doing now, then that's okay. Figure out how to get where you want to be and then do it. Actually. Sit down, come up with a plan of how you want to change. If you're already in a profession, how you want to change it to be something else, or if you're a young man or a young lady, figure out what you want to be and figure out a plan on how you're going to get there.
Speaker 1:But you've got to plan it out, it doesn't just happen and figure out a plan on how you're going to get there. But you've got to plan it out. It doesn't just happen. I love that advice, oak. It's a pleasure and always as always, I think you're an inspiration for many people and it's a privilege to be with you here today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me on this show, Baz. I really do appreciate it.
Speaker 1:No, the privilege is mine. I will assure you, and I thank you, simon, for myself. Thank you very much for joining us. Please share the episode, go and re-watch it, re-listen to it. It's on YouTube and all the other platforms as well. From myself and from Oak today, I hope you have an amazing day and, whatever you do, lead with purpose and inspire with legacy. Be blessed, stay safe.
