Run Toward Fire | Mark Grdovic | The Sean Trace Show

In this episode of The Sean Trace Show, I sit down with retired US Army Special Forces officer Mark Grdovic for a powerful conversation about leadership, courage, resilience, and what it really means to step toward hard things when most people instinctively pull back. 

We talk about the mindset behind volunteering for the unknown, how elite teams are built under pressure, and why real leadership is not about control but about earning trust, casting vision, and preparing people to think for themselves when things get messy. Mark also shares lessons from his years in Special Forces, his work as an instructor, and the deeper meaning behind his book Those Who Face Death. 

This conversation goes far beyond the military and into the real-world struggles people face in business, family, personal growth, and everyday life. Have you ever had a moment where running toward the hard thing changed who you became?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We all have areas we are good at or strong at, and we have areas that we're not good at. I would use the phrase attack your weaknesses. Like if there's a topic in your job, whatever it is, doesn't matter, and you know you're not that good at it, again, there's two ways this can go. Some people will barricade themselves in the area I'm good at. That's what they will talk about, that's what they will showcase themselves, and we'll make it clear that I'm super good at this, and they will avoid their weakness area. I would tell you, you know, I use the term attack weakness. If there's an area you know that you're not particularly good at, put the effort in and remove that as a weakness. Get smarter about it. The example I'm talking about, when I was a lieutenant, you know, it's a weird area, but like I didn't know much about um nuclear, chemical, biological stuff, which is an area within the military we're supposed to be good at. Um, and I didn't know much about enemy vehicle. This is back when the Cold War was a thing. I didn't know much about the different types of equipment that the Soviet Army used. I don't know why I did this. I was, you know, 21 years old, but I took it upon myself to start researching and learning and reading. And subsequently, I became somewhat of an expert in both of those categories. And that made my resume as an I used to be an infantry officer before I was a special forces officer. That made my resume more powerful. I was a much more rounded professional. When I came into Special Forces years later, I used to tell my instructors the same thing. There's things you are good at. Don't be that instructor that barricades yourself and only talks about what you know. Go seek out what you don't know from the other instructors. As, you know, if you're if you're fortunate enough to go become an instructor, this is your opportunity to balance out your professional knowledge. And the best instructors did that, whether it was historical knowledge, you know, of things in the past that maybe I didn't know about that that war, that conflict, or the lessons of it. Um, but that's what I would say is if you have areas that you are that are weaknesses for you in your profession, attack them. Don't accept them and don't avoid them and don't hide, don't hide them off to the side. I hope that's an answer. I think that's a decent answer.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Welcome everybody back to the Sean Trace Show. I'm your host, Sean Trace, and I have an absolutely awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Sure. Thanks, Sean. Uh my name is Mark Gurdovich. I'm a retired U.S. Army uh officer, spent 23 years in the Army, 20, uh, 19 of which with special forces. I retired from uniform in 2012, uh, and now I still support the military as a defense consultant and contractor. That's awesome. I was gonna say it's probably also worth noting, yeah. And I recently published a book about my experiences in special forces called Those Who Face Death, the Untold Story of Special Forces in the Iraqi Kurdish Resistance, which is about the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That's wild.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

How did you I want to ask about the book, uh, but I want to actually first start off with how did you get into this career and this path?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Um that's a great question. Uh I was a I was a kid growing up in New York City, uh, probably like most teenagers, you know, sort of wandering looking for what fit. And I literally read a book when I was 15 years old about special forces called Mission MIA. It was a fictional account of special forces, but it was it was very well researched and well written. Um and there was something about that that just clicked for me. The the the story, the the depiction of the camaraderie of the guys really just resonated with me as a 15-year-old. I think I knew I wanted to join the military already because my grandfather had served in the Navy. Um, so that put me on a path where I went to college, went through ROTC with an intention of going into the Army, and then uh got a commission in the Army in 1989.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

That's awesome. Once you got into the Army, what was the path from just joining up to becoming a, you know, a Green Beret in Special Forces?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Um, yeah, it's an interesting path because at some point, you know, a recruiter will swing by and say, who thinks they're interested in trying out for this? And that is the first critical moment in this path. And I tell people this all the time, you know, they'll ask me, like, hey, what was the hardest part about becoming special forces? Because it is a long process. It takes about a year and a half to two years. Um, it was that moment right there of volunteering. And I say that as a former as a former instructor, the thing that stops most people is not some physical fitness test or some swimming test or some, you know, written math test. It's the willingness to try and step into the unknown and volunteer. So I volunteered in um probably 1991. You had to be in the Army for a couple of years before you could volunteer. Got uh selected to go to what's called selection. So you go away for four weeks to a specialized course where they it, which is really, really hard, but very, very professional. And from that course, they either say, Hey, you're not what we're looking for or you are what we're looking for. You go back to your unit, close out your unit, and then return to Fort Bragg to begin now the year-long or plus process uh in the special forces course. So that for me was in 1993. I spent the bulk of 1993 in special forces training. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

You know, one of the things that's interesting too is because when I look at that, I'm gonna give an example. There are people I I had a firefighter come on, and he was one of the coolest people I talked to. And he said that there's two types of people people that are most people when they see a fire and they do what you should do, or they run from the fire. He's like, that's the logical good thing to do, keeps you alive, keeps people safe. And he's like, that's what he would recommend 95% of the people to do run from the fire. But he said, But there's five percent like him that just have a different switch. And when there's a fire, he says their first reaction is not to run from the fire, it's to run towards the fire. And do you feel like you were always one of the people who ran towards the fire? Or was it something that, you know, was pitched to you and you said, I want to be part of that? You know, how did you become that?

SPEAKER_00 6:22

You know, go down that you get it's a it's a very good analogy because that that's very accurate. Um, it translates as well. Like, hey, this is either something you are for a variety of reasons attracted to, almost to the degree of it's a calling for the individual, whether you're a firefighter or you know, some other profession, um, and others are like, oh my gosh, I don't want to do that. Um and one of the interesting things, and it's it's standard across all the military. Like one of the things, whether you're a Navy SEAL, you know, Army Ranger, uh coming out and telling somebody, hey, this is really hard. It's not for everybody, it's only for you know the best of the best, whatever, that's actually the kind of thing that will separate people very quickly and be like, ooh, that sounds really hard, sounds really scary. There's a chance I could fail. And then there's other ones, it's just there's something about I'll take that challenge, you know, and and the recruiter will even tell you again, hey, just be aware, most people don't succeed in this. There's nothing wrong with trying and not succeeding, but most people don't succeed. And that there's a a swath of people that are attracted to the personal challenge and not dissuade by it. Um and then again, getting into it, then you find out, okay, was I correct? Is this sort of what I expected or is it not? And sometimes people would be like, hey, you know what? This isn't exactly what I thought. It's not really for me. Um, it turns out it was what I had hoped it was. It was exciting. I thought we were doing really good and important work. I liked being surrounded by the same crop of people who were willing to volunteer. You know, it's a that's a very specific all-volunteer force. So it's very, very professional and very motivated driven people. And that was great to work with. So that's what kept me in it after I got into it, you know, that I I just I wanted to do it as long as I could. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Well, let me ask you this, too, because you've spent decades in special ops and and leadership roles. How has the definition of leadership changed over time?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Um, yeah, it's a it's a great question. So I was thinking about this, and I literally was was thinking uh back to when I was brand new in the army, a second lieutenant, 1989, and you know, and I actually looked it up now. If you if you were to look up the definition of the word leadership, you're not gonna find a great definition. It's very Webster-esque that leadership is the art of leading or something like that. You know, and I remember somewhere, and I'm gonna paraphrase this, in in my military education early on, the definition of leadership that I saw said something to the effect of the ability to inspire. And this is a critical piece of education and distinction that the role of leadership, you know, should not be perceived as I have the authority to make people do things because I am in charge. It's you have a responsibility to lead them, you know, and the way you lead them is not by forcing them to do it, but to inspire them to want to do it, to follow you, the leader and follower relationship. And to think of it in those terms changes the entire dynamic that it's not, it's not so much just an authority you have, but it's a responsibility you have to get people inspired to give you their best. And that's to me, and looking back on my career, there's been times I've been very successful, and there's been times where, yeah, I could probably handle experiences better, and hopefully I learned from those experiences. Um, but that still holds very true that I think that's the the quality or style of leadership that's most effective.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

I today had a tough call um with an employee that I wasn't able to give him the news that I know he wanted to hear. But in the call, I expressed how committed to this person I was and how if he would be patient with me and work with me, um I know that we can get him the results that he wants and the package that he wants, but just I need a couple months. And if he's able to work with me on that, I I believe that we can get there. And he sat there and he said, uh, Mr. Sean, I want to tell you a couple things. He said, first of all, you're the realest person that I've ever worked with, and I look forward every single day to coming into the office with you. You know, he sits right over. I I don't have my own office, I share an office with a couple of my team members. I it was my space, and then I was like, Well, I like you guys being in here with me. So, and then we have an editing suite over there, and I've got another editing suite downstairs. And he's like, These are the most fun. This is the last couple of months have been the most fun I've had in a job in a long time. And he's like, I believe in what we're doing, and he's like, I I want to show up because I want to be here with you. And I was like, man, that made me feel really emotional inside. And I was like, I didn't realize that I was making an impact like that. But I think one of the things that I had to realize is that when I try to lead, you know, I would not necessarily do it right, but when I come in with a a vision, a direction, a purpose, and then I try to instill that and I I share that with the people around me, like, and they buy into it. Like there's a reason. We're not just making videos, we're not just making a podcast. Yeah, I'm trying to make the world a better place, and I I want you guys to help me do that. And they they they're like, dude, we believe that we can make this world a better place and we're here for it. And that just made me feel good inside, you know. But it just took finding a way to share that vision, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

But it's funny, like, you know, you and I don't have a long history, we don't really know each other, but you know, you're speaking my exact language the same way I've described this many, many times. You feel obviously, even you just describing that, you feel a responsibility to them. To, you know, you have to provide something to them. That in turn has created them where they now feel an obligation to deliver on on, you know, and not just solely for you, but for this project. Um, so there's a relationship there that is getting the better results versus you know, other styles where it's I told you to do this, you know what you have to do. Um, yeah, it's it's that's a that's a fantastic example, actually.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

But you know, it takes it takes shuttle up and it takes understanding that it's not always easy. But if you can show up and you can kind of keep your head on straight, it it works. But you know, sometimes it's hard to make those decisions that are important, you know. And when you're operating in a high-stakes environment, you know, what does good decision making actually look like in the moment?

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Um it's hard. Uh, but um, but I'll but I'll say this for any organization, it doesn't matter, you know, special operations, the military or or business or wherever you are, if there's a scenario we envision, hey, it's gonna be hard if this scenario, if this crisis is occurring, you're gonna wish you had prepared for that, not in crisis. And what I mean is I'm not talking about this developing a plan, but like if a lot I've seen this in the military too. A lot of people have this idea that when it's real, if if we should go to combat, let's say, suddenly I'll act differently, I'll I'll do things differently. You're not, you know, the way you live day to day is either the same or a better version of where you're gonna act under duress. You know, so if suddenly you realize like in a crisis situation or I'm gonna call it under duress, that it's harder to operate, your your bandwidth to just mentally your mental capacity is gonna be somewhat reduced. That's just normal. That's stress. And you're gonna be grateful or wish that you had prepared yourself and your team and that relationship to be in place during that time of hard decision making. Because, like, I mean, it it's it's surprisingly very similar to what you just described, the way you described your own project, you know, you you had that sound like you're doubting yourself or you you're constantly checking yourself. And the results are probably good, but that's, I would submit, that's exactly the way a leader should be, that you're not super confident, you're positive. You're confident, but you're always questioning yourself to a, could I do this better? Is this good enough? Is it, is it correct? You know, and hopefully 99% of the time it is, but that doesn't mean you don't still double check yourself. Your team is now also used to your leadership style, and they also recognize, hey, this may not be perfect. The environment may not be perfect. So you're gonna either make, you're gonna make decisions as quickly as you can with semi-perfect information, and the team is gonna adjust to that and not get frustrated because they understand, you know, you're probably doing the best you can. You don't have all the answers. Um, if you don't have that relationship and it's developed in the steady state, it silly doesn't click into place when it's when it's time for duress. I think that answers your question. I hope it does.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yeah, it does. I have an example. I'm the analogy king, man. I I have uh I love it, man. So the other I got my daughter into Muay Thai, and um I my nephews also study there. And it's interesting because when I first moved to Southeast Asia, Vietnam, the kids were lean and bouncy, and then I saw the introduction of Western fast food, I saw it come in 2001. The first like Western fast food restaurant went in, and the kids just went like this. And now you have a generation of round kids, like round, rotund, and the boys like all waddle, they waddle, you know, and my nephews. Luckily, one one of them's real fit kid, and the other is needing a little motivation. We'll just say it like that. I'm not gonna throw anyone to the bus, but he needs some motivation sometimes. And when we go to Muay Thai and train together, I pay for all, I pay for both of them to study with my daughter because I, you know, those are the closest, her two cousins are the closest things that she has to siblings, and I want them to be able to do these things together, and I know that they'll all be there for each other when they grow up, you know. And one of the things too is like they were just training like this, moving slow. And I mean, I just I'll be there and I train with them. And I I go, I from all of my great coaches in sports and in martial arts, um, you know, everyone taught me to train hard. Push 110, 120, don't let up. Because how you go in training, like when we would practice for sports teams, you know, my coach said, How you're practicing right now is how you're gonna play in the game. So don't give 20% here because you're gonna get off to the game and not be able to do it. So I was telling them, run, you know, I'm just like, run, force, run, you know, you know, nice little force gum preference, and and like getting them to put in the effort, get them to keep moving. And one day my nephew went up when he was sparring with another kid, and the kid whooped his butt, whooped him up good. And afterwards, I pulled him aside. I said, What'd you learn from right there? You know, I want to see what you learned from that. He's like, I got beat up pretty bad. And I was like, Yes, you did. And why? And he's like, and I said, He's like, I don't know. I said, I think I do. I think you guys are joking around too much in your class, and you learned a big lesson today. We're not here to joke around, you're here to learn how to protect yourself in a fight. And you just learned that in a real fight, you're gonna lose. And since then, he's been going to that class, still having fun, but training the right way, getting focused and trying to keep his head on straight. But you know, how you train is how you perform. And I don't think enough people realize that.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

So you made me think of something. I'll tell you a quick uh story. So um twice in my military career, I was an instructor at the special forces course. I actually actually used to own the officer portion of the special forces course training, which I loved. I love being an instructor and a trainer because I like, I like that mentorship aspect. And one of the things I used to teach the captains, so for for anybody who's listening, trying to imagine, like there's probably a stereotype based on movies and TV shows of what special forces is like. Some of it's accurate, some of it's kind of accurate. But simply put, special forces personnel, they do work in very complex and ambiguous and challenging environments overseas. Unlike some of the other stuff you may see, whether it's movies or not, special forces traditionally work in smaller teams with not a lot of American apparatus around them. So it's challenging. You know, they'll be with a whole bunch of indigenous forces. Uh they're they're immersed in a different culture, a different way of doing things. So they got to be pretty adaptable and pretty flexible. And in the course, we put students through all sorts of scenarios that are really, really difficult, really, really weird stuff. And the truth is, there's not really a good answer to some of these scenarios. And it was, it was always fascinating to me to watch a young good officer from the Army, like a regular, you know, good officer who was raised in the Army, trained, trained in the Army. But now I bring him in here and I'm I'm sort of introducing him to the real world, the real, the sloppiness of the real world. And as his mentor instructor, to also tell him, hey, I'm gonna give you a hint, there's not a correct, there's not a super correct black and white answer to the scenario we just put you in, right? So once you tell them that, you could, you could see their brain starting to think, but they're still looking at you like, what do you want me to do? I'm like, I don't want you to do anything. I want you to to think about this problem I put you in and come up with the best option and let go of this schoolhouse nonsense of there's a right and wrong answer. I want to see that you're thinking, that you're taking in all the you know analysis and making the best of your crummy, you know, I'll say the choose the best of your bad options. And I I can tell you, getting the captains, uh students are usually captains, getting them to accept this reality. I I used to swear you could see the gears in their head start to turn. Like you I used to refer to it as like breaking the rust off on the gears in their head to understand that you have to continue to think. And one of the other parts of that we used to tell them is and this is a big this is like a big secret, big trick of the special option community schools. It's not uncommon for something to go wrong on a on a training, you know, a training exercise mission. Happens all the time. And an instructor will come to the student and say, Hey, uh, that was bad, what just happened. You guys got lost, you're late, you lost a piece of equipment, maybe, whatever. And they will imply that it's you're probably not going to pass this patrol, we'll say, use that terminology. And the students that fall apart, because I told you it probably wasn't gonna result in a good outcome, totally emotionally and mentally fall apart, sort of give up. And then there are other students, and this helps because you know, if we tell them, hey, this is what I expect of you, regardless of what you see, you know, like any scenario in the world, it looks promising, it doesn't look promising. Continue to give it a hundred percent of your effort. Don't modulate your effort based on your estimation of how this is gonna go. Because if you're hopeful for a good outcome, the best option is give it 100%. Even if it's gonna fail, that was the best course of action. And I I used to say it's it's funny because you would when the way you were describing the Muay Thai, I used to tell students, and many of them are now, some of them are actually general officers still in the military, doing very well, that the solution to the problem might be right around the corner and you can't see it from where you are. So don't drive. Your effort. Don't give up on that. Continue to give it, you know, 100%. Because when it changes, it will change very quickly. And then suddenly you'll be on a successful path that you would not have predicted 15 minutes ago. Your story made me think of that.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

I love that. One of the things too, though, is I also like the idea of um when you were talking earlier about like people. Did you ever watch Star Trek? I love Star Trek. Yeah, yeah. I I think I know where you're going. Kobayashimaru was the one I was thinking about. It's exactly the same thing.

unknown 22:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Kobamayashimaru, for people who don't know Star Trek, was when the candidates go to cadets go to Starfleet, they have this, it's like a scenario. They're working out in the in the simulator, and essentially it's a no-win situation. And the whole purpose is not to win the simulation. The whole purpose is to figure out how you handle pressure and what you do. And because at certain times, like there's not easy choices, you know? It's not easy choices. And you know, the biggest thing that you can do is figure out how you're going to handle that stress and how you're going to handle that that hard challenge, you know? So that's the first thing that popped into mind when you were you were talking about that. But it leads, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

I'll give you another example. As an instructor, like the students are doing the best they can. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not that good. Like sometimes they're not, you know, they're not doing great. And as an instructor, you know when, hey, their plan's not that good. Now I can I can just come in here with a clipboard and tell them, hey, your plan wasn't good. I'm gonna, you know, no-go this effort, this patrol, or I can let it play out, you know, and I can also shape some of the scenario to where you're gonna now see why your plan was not good. And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna punish you in a grade, but I am gonna actually probably punish you in your experience, meaning like you plan this poorly. As a result now, you guys are gonna be running all night long trying to get to the next helicopter pickup landing zone because you couldn't make the one of tonight. And it's gonna be a rough night, you know, and or those kind of things. Like I remember a student for real, we were we were doing a parachute jump onto a drop zone, and a student broke his ankle. I mean, it unfortunately happens. I knew that. The rest of the team didn't know that. The student team. So I went over to them and I started talking about, hey, do you have everybody? I know they don't. And they sort of start, it's real, it's midnight, it's dark, you know, and they tell me they've got everybody. I know they're not telling me the truth. But I'm not mad at them. I kind of know what's going on. So I say, okay, when are you guys going to head out? And they tell me it's gonna be a few minutes because they think they're gonna find the guy they can't find, who's already in my truck in an ambulance. So I come back fully knowing that they're not telling me the truth, fully knowing there's a guy they're missing, and I ask them, what's going on? Eventually they come clean and say, we're missing a guy. I don't tell them that his ankle's broken. I say, okay, this sucks. This is really messing up your plan. You've lost a guy. Uh, he could be dead, he could be captured by the enemy. We don't know. So I said, so now what? What are you going to do? And this is what I'm talking about, where it's really not a good option. There are very few good options. But these are the kind of instructor, trainer, mentor interactions that teach them to, I need you to keep engaging, I need you to keep thinking, and not treat everything like a simple point, black and white answer. It's a continuous spectrum of adapting constantly to the stuff we didn't predict. We just have a lot of fun as instructors. Sounds awesome.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

I I think if we could train more people to be able to adapt to things that you can't predict, we would have a much less stressed population. I don't know if everything would be better, but it'd be a lot stressed. But I wanted to ask you this like, because a lot of people think leadership is about being in control. You know, it's kind of touching on that, right? But you've fled in unpredictable environments. How do you lead when things are uncertain or breaking down?

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Yeah. Well, this and this this comes back very much to that initial description or definition of leadership I gave. You can't control. Control, control is almost an illusion. And like, yeah, I could, I could try it. I'm regardless of the scenario, I can almost guarantee it will not be the most effective uh potential that I could reach with my team. If I've prepared them to be free thinkers, to to know that they can trust me, that I expect them to use their initiative and adapt. And they it's it's interesting the relationship because like I'm I'm talking about I want them to develop a trust with me that they know I'm okay with them adapting and using their initiative. But that only works if I give an actual good guidance on the front end. You know, I can't be one of these like absentee leaders that just expects them to be brilliant and come up with great stuff. I have to do my part of this formula. So if I give good, you know, and I look you actually used the word vision before. That's a very, very important term uh for military officers. You know, if I've if I've demonstrated a real vision and I've articulated it in a way that makes sense and I have a relationship with them where they understand me, they know they can ask questions if they don't. Um, and they also know if something goes wrong and you don't have a chance to talk to me, you know what to do, and I expect you to still use your initiative. And that's because I'm not going to be um overly controlling. I'm more about was my guidance good enough for you guys to move out. If I do that with my team, my team is infinitely, exponentially more powerful than if I'm trying to control it all. Um, you know, and I'll I'll make a plug from my book. For what it's worth, the story in the book is very, very much an example from beginning to end of what I just described. It's where we empowered our entire unit to think this way. And we went into the most, at least in my experience, the most incredible example where things were not working correctly, things were falling apart, and the and the 15 subordinate teams that I had were able to just take off and do their thing and not have to communicate with me because we had prepared them this way. But it's something, it doesn't happen overnight, and it goes back to like you have to raise your team and develop a relationship. You know, the phrase we would use is either garrison or peacetime, so that when it is that terribly difficult environment, it's familiar. You're ready. You can you can make this adjustment.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

I love that. You're ready to adjust because you've you've mapped out what some of the possibilities might be. You've looked at where this thing might go, and you've kind of like that. The uh the the Stoics have the idea of premedatorium allorum, the idea of planning for everything to go wrong, and then you're ready for it, you know. So it's like, you know, okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Um let's imagine there's there's another aspect that too, that's similar to the word control. Like some people will interpret what I just said as, oh, so plan for everything. I can't plan for everything. I can't plan for the unknown. I'll do my best. I'm a pretty good planner, and we do stress planning very, very much. But there's a difference between me being all over how are you going to do it versus do you know what I need you to achieve? And I'm now talking about activity versus achievement. And if my subordinates know what's important to accomplish or achieve, you know, and maybe I did know the way they intended to do it, when the circumstances change, we focus on the achievement, not how we were going to do it. Because how we were gonna do it doesn't really matter. It's getting to the end stage. So, like the scen the scenario I was talking about, you know, in the book, the conditions have changed dramatically. I mean, it frankly, it's it's almost like a movie script unrealistic how much they change. But because the guys were just indoctrinated largely by me of this is what we're trying to accomplish, when it was, when the scenario was wrong, they quickly realized this isn't gonna work. We have to change what we're doing. And the the environment didn't allow them to check back with me uh because we ran enemy territory and we we really weren't in uh we weren't in constant communication, let's just say. So the teams just adapted and came up with different stuff that I didn't tell them to do. I told them what we needed to accomplish. And you know, we we massaged it a little bit as it developed, but that's what made us incredibly powerful. That that mindset of the accomplishment is clear because of the good vision and guidance, the subordinates understand it, and there's a relationship between us where they feel comfortable with this moving forward. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

I don't have the um the experience leading special ops teams, but I do have the experience of trying to teach my daughter how to wear contacts the last month, and it has been a nightmare. And uh it was a nightmare because of the challenges of just having to get her across the finish line and training her to do this. But it was like we went in the last month from her revolting, you know, us having to shove these contacts in her eyes to tonight, she did it all herself. And I want to say a couple of things though. Last week it was incremental, and every single step of the way, we praised the wins. You know, she's like, I'm so sorry that I did it bad that tonight, I'm so sorry. It was like, are the contacts in? Well, yeah, but I said, No, the contacts are in. That's a win. Like right now, who cares? And then tonight was the first time that she put them in by herself. That I did recognize that because she was like doing this, and I was like getting it. And I said, you know, we need to go back to the doctor and have them work with you on you doing it yourself. I'll help you open, hold your eyes open wherever you need. But here's the thing at the end of the day, if you do it yourself, you're gonna have a lot more, you're gonna have less anxiety about it because you're gonna get your control back. And it was spot on. Once she got her control back and she was doing it herself, and she was the captain of that little process. She did it was fluid. She got her contacts in and in three minutes tonight. The first night, it took us 50 minutes to get like both contacts in. But the whole and most important thing was to praise the winds. And the other day, we had a math teacher that was working with her. Like, she goes to public schools in Southeast Asia, and let's just say they're not teaching critical thinking. That's not how they roll. They are, this is how it works, and do it this way. And so finally, I was like, I am really pissed off about the way her math is being taught. It's been a long time since I was doing that level of math. And I was just like, I need to get some help. I'm gonna find someone. So I interviewed a bunch of tutors, and I found this one lady from Malaysia that grew up and lived in Europe, and she was just literally the most awesome math teacher I've ever I've ever met in my life. And she sat down with my daughter, and she was like, All right, there's two ways. This is what your school's teaching, this method. But she's like, There's a lot of places that you can make mistakes in there. There's a lot of things. If you do one wrong calculation, it's gonna throw off the whole thing, and it's really hard to catch it. So, what I'm gonna do is to teach you this method of doing it. And if you do it this way, one of the cool things that you're gonna find is that you're gonna have less mistakes and it's a lot easier to do. And she's like, My daughter said this, but my teacher will get mad at me if I do it that way. And the the teacher, the other teacher, the tutor, was like, I'm gonna tell you a secret. With math, it doesn't matter how you do it. What matters is that the answer's right. And she says, if your teacher, is she gonna complain if you have the right answer? And my daughter's like, no, she cares about the right answer. And the teacher, the private tutor was like, Exactly. I'm gonna validate you on getting the right answer. And she's like, if you want to do it this way, great. If you want to do it this way, even better, you know. But the idea is get to that end goal and figure out how to get there. And don't, you know, so I see these two sides, the teacher that validates achieving a goal, and the teacher that's about the process, and not the process, but their process.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

And that's can be dangerous at times, you know? This it's a lot of responsibility, uh, whether you're a teacher, instructor, trainer, mentor, and and it fits leaders too, but like the way you interact can inadvertently inhibit someone's actual learning. Um, and like you made the story made me think of this. You know, I used to tell the students, I don't want you to perform for me. I don't want you to tell me the answer you think I want to hear if it's not what you believe. And like now I go back to these these there's a thing actually in educational circles. I learned this years ago in Great Britain. It's called the transition curve. And it talks about how if you want, if you're, if you're training someone or if you're educating someone on um techniques and you really hope that they embrace these techniques, like let's say your organization uh has a culture and you want them to adopt these as their own, you can force them on them and not, they may tell you, okay, I learned it. It's the four-step process. This is what you told me I'm supposed to say. But the first chance in the world world to do something, they're not going to follow it because they don't believe in it. But if you allow them to practice it and fail, and then they come back and they try it the way you suggest it, they now understand why, you know, their their former preconceived notion failed. And now they actually just they don't just learn, but they adopt these techniques as their own. They believe in them. And it's it's the subtlest of differences of how you interact with your subordinates that you know that it's that trust again. Like, are you inhibiting them and they're just telling you what you want to hear? They want you, they what they think you want to hear, or are you getting them to think, to learn critical thinking and interact with you and then eventually get to a higher level? Right? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

I love that. I love like really truly empowering people because you know it's like I if you enjoy if you enjoy analogies, here's here's one for you.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

I love it. Give me an analogy all day. My my original college degree was in geology, uh, and this is probably the extent of my use of that degree. But, you know, the hardest substance in the world, diamonds, and the one of the softest substances in the world, graphite, both made of 100% carbon. The difference of what turns that carbon into graphite or diamonds is the subtlest changes in pressure and temperature. So, you know, this entire discussion is along the same paths. It's the subtlest of differences, you know, transform your subordinates, your students, your trainees, your team members to achieve their potential or to go in a different direction and just give you the limited, you know, the minimum of what they need to do to keep you off their back.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

I love that. One of the things too, like, because that leads to my next question. Like, what separates a strong team from an average one? You know, especially when the pressure is high. And is it the pressure that separates the two teams, you know?

SPEAKER_00 36:52

It it's so much of what we just talked about. Um, you know, I'll I'll say also, like, if you've prepared this, uh it I was thinking about this. When we we faced, I like I said, some some scenarios and some adversity that was ridiculous. We shouldn't have faced it. And I remember, well, this is also on the period I'm talking about is relatively soon after 9-11 in 2001. So it was a weird, it was a weird time to be in the military, to say the least. And I can remember coming back to the guys, and everybody wanted to know what's going on, what are we doing? And one of the things that struck me that was really amazing, everything I said to the guys, they just literally shrugged their shoulders, like, okay. And then I thought, did you guys hear what I just said? You know, we might be going to Afghanistan, we might be going to Iraq, we might have to do this or that. And they were like, okay. And I say that with like not to be flippant about it, but they had a degree of emotional, you know, intelligence and emotional stability that had prepared for the uncertain. So, like the degree of uncertainty that would crush people that don't deal with this all the time, and a person might look at special forces and go, how do those guys do it? This is the environment they're trained for. You know, and it may sound it may sound silly to make this comparison, but like it, like, for example, if I told you you had to go to uh a foreign country, you know, and go to combat, that's overwhelming. That's emotionally overwhelming. However, if you've spent time, yes, you've spent time training on soldier type skills, got it. You've also spent time in countries very close to the country I'm talking about. So you're familiar with the culture, you're familiar with the way the people there think. Maybe you're familiar with the language. It's not as much of a culture shock to you or a shock to your nervous system. And it's the same thing when you get when it's your it's your job, like the fireman running toward the fire, a normal person would look at that and say, How do you do that? Well, one, you're trained for it and you're prepared for it because mentally you've spent time thinking about this. So that the leap, you know, like I'll call it the synaptic leap in your in your nervous system is not as great as somebody who's never dealt with this. So if soldiers, whether they be special forces or regular soldiers, if they just sit in the United States and never do anything, the the notion of going to full abort is overwhelming and and potentially too much. But if they've done some things and special forces soldiers will have a tendency to do more challenging things through their careers, it does help prepare them. And that's it just made me think of that. The emotional stability and preparedness that they've gained in their regular experience prepares them for those crisis experiences or those are those more complex scenarios.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Do the hard things and do the hard things before you know you need to do them. I was watching this great like special this video on special forces, and these two guys that were, these three guys that were special forces in the US went to train some of the best special foreign assist units around the world. And what was interesting is seeing what everyone was practicing all the time. You know, you you got to see the guys in Jordan, the Jordanese like special forces, and they were doing wild stuff in the desert, and it was very, very high level, very cool, and like watching their training, but then watching like the Norwegian special forces and like the stuff they were teaching people about the snow, and it was just like wild to think about these guys out there surviving in like this this this this climate and in these ways, and it was like because but they it was like I don't want to downplay it, like it was nothing for them. It was extremely challenging for them, however, exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, they were able to do it because they had done it again and again and again and again.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

So I'll also give you an example. You know, I talked about how if your team feels comfortable using their initiative because they feel that it's within your guidance, I'll give you an example. So when uh when I first told some of the guys, I think we're going to Iraq, like when we started to get a sense of, hey, this is the next, this is the mission, I think we're going to Iraq. And as I said, surprisingly, everybody just adopted adapted to it very well. Because everybody was still pretty freaked out from 9-11, and and people wanted to get involved. We wanted to do something. But the funny thing is, so we started getting all of this equipment. Like people are now, different organizations in the military are pushing equipment to us, things that we haven't seen before. So I remember walking around the area and we had just gotten something called Blue Force Tracker, which at that time was a new thing. It was about the size of um a little bigger than a paperback book, about this big. And it was an electronic device that would give off a signal that you could display on a digital map. We, in the military, we had never had that before. So this was a brand new thing. So we just got a whole bunch of them. I walk into one of the rooms and the guys were disassembling them. Uh, you know, and part of my brain is like, oh, what are you guys doing? But it's because they run on these very, this is a very military thing, this unique battery that is not common to any other battery and it only fits these. So we we're not going to be able to use these 24-7 on this weirdo US Army battery. So they disassembled them, went to Radio Shack, and got the wiring and soldered it so that we could run these off of a um basically a cigarette lighter adapter in a car. You know, and half my brain wants to be mad that they're disassembling this new piece of equipment, but half of me's like, wow, that's actually brilliant. Um, some of the guys contacted GPSs were a relatively, this is 20 years ago, GPSs were a relatively new thing. And Garmin's GPS that was about this big, um, well, it was about that big, the Army GPS was about this big, also took a different battery that was very unique to that only. The guys had contacted Garmin and explained who they were and said, hey, could we get software to do? And they they've listed a bunch of things that were important to us, like planning for drop zones and aerial resupply. And Garmin sent them that software. Um, so they basically communicated with a civilian company in a week and got, you know, the civilian GPSs modified specifically for our needs. This was going on constantly. Like everywhere you walked, people were doing things to make things better. And they weren't doing, they weren't moving slowly, they weren't asking permission, they weren't breaking any rules, but they were just they were thinking, they were constantly engaged and they felt empowered to do that.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

That's awesome. That's really awesome. Yeah, I want to ask you this though, because all of the stuff you're telling me is just so powerful. But like a lot of my listeners are, you know, people that are maybe had don't understand like what it's like to be in special forces. They, however, they'll look at these people that have accomplished great things and they're sitting there stuck behind their desk in a job they hate. You know, I have a family member, I'm not gonna say his name right now, but he's very close to me, and he hates his job, he hates where he's at, and he just does not know how to make a change. He's got a dream thing. I'm trying to get something going with him as well. And, you know, but yet he's not happy. And like a lot of people feel overwhelmed and stuck in their careers over in their lives. How would you advise someone to start building real confidence, capability, resilience that you know that? you've you've seen in special forces in their daily life.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

Um I'll tell two things about that. You know, and one goes right back to what I had said earlier about what's the biggest um distinguisher or disqualifier for people succeeding in special forces. And it's and it's the it's the first step of volunteering. The the rationalization to yourself of, oh, I don't want to do it or I don't think, you know, people will talk themselves out of something because there, there's a little bit of fear about the possibility of failing. So really, they're basically going to accept failure because they're afraid of a possibility of failure. They're going to, they're going to accept a lesser degree of failure, be meaning I'm not going to try because I'm afraid of failing. So that's a normal, I get the rationale of that, but it's incredibly self-defeating. And you know, if you have a support network that can help somebody, that's great. But it's really up to that individual to accept you're going to have to assume some degree of risk to get some degree of gain. If you want to stay in the comfort zone, you're going to be more comfortable, but you're never going to get to where you want to get to. So that's kind of the first thing second thing is a little bit of a simpler version. You know, and it's not just special forces. This was actually when I was a lieutenant I was thinking about this in the infantry. So when I was brand new in the army, this and this applies to any job, we all have areas we are good at or strong at and we have areas that we're not good at. I would use the phrase attack your weaknesses like if there's a topic in your job, whatever it is, it doesn't matter, and you know you're not that good at it, again, there's two ways this can go. Some people will barricade themselves in the area I'm good at. That's what they will talk about. That's what they will showcase themselves and will make it clear that I'm super good at this and they will avoid their weakness area. I would tell you, you know, I use the term attack weakness if there's an area you know that you're not particularly good at put the effort in and remove that as a weakness. Get smarter about it. The example I'm talking about when I was a lieutenant, you know, it's a weird area, but like I didn't know much about um nuclear chemical biological stuff, which is an area within the military we're supposed to be good at. And I didn't know much about enemy vehicle this is back when the Cold War was a thing. I didn't know much about the different types of equipment that the Soviet Army used. I don't know why I did this. I was you know 21 years old, but I took it upon myself to start researching and learning and reading. And subsequently I became somewhat of an expert in both of those those categories. And that made my resume as an I used to be an infantry officer before I was a special forces officer that made my resume more powerful. I was a much more rounded professional. When I came into special forces years later I used to tell my instructors same thing. There's things you are good at. Don't be that instructor that barricades yourself and only talks about what you know. Go seek out what you don't know from the other instructors. As you know, if you if you're fortunate enough to go become an instructor this is your opportunity to balance out your professional knowledge. And the best instructors did that whether it was historical knowledge you know of things in the past that maybe I didn't know about that that war, that conflict or the lessons of it. But that's what I would say is if you have areas that you are that are weaknesses for you and your profession, attack them. Don't accept them and don't avoid them and don't hide, don't hide them off to the side. I hope that's an answer. I think that's a decent answer. It's a huge answer.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

I I one of the reasons that I I love this podcast is because I for a long time had a horribly weak network. I felt alone in my career I felt like adrift and I I made this realization that first of all I created this podcast because I wanted to um to make an impact in the world especially for like my daughter I want to make this world a better place but I realized you can't do all these things alone you need people you need people around you who can work with you who can help you who can build with you and I decided that you know I needed to strengthen my network but like cold calling people doesn't really work like hey can I talk to you about who I am and what I do and people are going to like dude what are you trying to sell me you know so I decided that I wanted to have real organic conversations with people and find out about them find out what they do find out how how and why they tick. You know and it it was like a magic sauce for me getting clarity uh going forward. And it was it's been powerful. But one of the things that I'm realizing is that you have to be willing to look at what you're not good at and to embrace that and go, yeah this is what I'm strong at. But so many of us lean into our strong suits and so few of natural makes sense. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

You know you got that thing but you know where is what's your Achilles your Achilles heel you know you got to figure that out too I mean people will say this is a nice way of saying you know we don't grow when we when we stay in our comfort zone. It's it's through discomfort that we adapt and grow. One of my favorite you know quotes Wayne Gradsky you know you miss 100% of the shots you never take. Yep. And I think that's that's it that's that's it in a nutshell if I would dare to bet anyone you talk to if you if you stop them and said hey let me ask you something name the most successful parts of your life and then they said well it's this or this or this whether it be their prof you know their personal life or their profession. And then you could probably say can you draw that back to where you had to make a decision of to either do it or not do it and how back then when you were you know the younger version of yourself, how uncertain you were if this was a good idea. Every everything in our lives that is good can probably be traced back to that. Now granted sometimes there are bad decisions but like it goes back to like if someone doesn't like their current situation, I hate to say that it's up to them to do something about it to break that cycle and you know maybe it's I'm like I love dry race boards. You know I will go to a dry race board and I will start writing things down just to to help my mind orient to it. Find someone else whether they be a mentor or someone to get advice or a sounding board there's always something we can do to change our circumstances for the better.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

I 100% agree I 100% agree there is always something you can do and the worst thing you can do is nothing is just sitting there and and just expecting your situation to change.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

And and I'll I will I will warn everybody and it goes back to and there will be no shortage of rationalization and reasons of why you shouldn't do something. You it will be so easy and it's a it's a it's a it's a process that you can unfortunately exercise that you get used to talking yourself out of things, convincing yourself it's the smarter move to just stay where I am and wait for some other magical thing to come it's hard. It's hard stepping out of your comfort zone and it's hard making a decision that that has an unknown outcome. And it's like I said it's very easy to rationalize why you shouldn't do something. Super easy it's like beyond easy if you could go back in time and give yourself one bit of advice what advice would you give yourself Yeah that you you know you asked me this question and I know it says if you had one one one thing. So I wrote down like four things. That's a good thing to do. And I well I was thinking in terms of like leadership like the young version of me as a leader like when I first came into the army um when in charge be in charge and and that means take responsibility for good and bad. Don't you know it's it's just one of those things like bad things happen sometimes and the person in charge is generally responsible. Good leaders take responsibility and then deal with it. And that's something that's hard for a younger a younger person, a younger leader to accept but it wasn't my fault. I didn't know I I 100% get that but pointing to blame and looking around and like avoid the person in charge needs to say hey it's my team I'm responsible for the good and the bad they do. So when a charge take charge and and take responsibility for a younger person in a leadership role always conduct yourself or behave in a way that you assume you are being uh you're being watched and listened to because your subordinates are watching and listening to everything you do. There's no, you know, well I was I was just kidding around or I was off the clock. Your behavior sets the tone for everything. So set the example that you want to set you know be be the leader be the leader that you want to be and don't feel like oh but I didn't think everybody was around or I just I I said something to him in confidence. Everything you say everything you do is is it represents you. It's official so act act as as act accordingly be authentic have humility um and give credit to others when it's due you know so take responsibility and take some credit but make sure you always give the credit to the people who are who are you know who have a hand in it. I was talking to a young special forces team leader literally a couple weeks ago and he was he's heading to a team and he was talking to me about you know we had we spoke for hours about leadership. And and the thing I told him it's hard for a young officer a captain who's probably 25 26 years old and he's going to take over a special forces team of older NCOs, all seasoned all older NCOs. That's a challenging environment. And you know there can be a bad stereotype but well why is the younger guy in charge it's not because he has the most years it's because he's been trained to be in charge. That's his that's his function just like a guy who's a medic or a guy who's you know an engineer. But I would tell I told him be the leader they need not the leader they want. You know, it's not a popularity contest. You do want to create a strong sense of team and team but at the end of the day if you're the person in charge you have to make the decisions that might not be popular. Don't let that dissuade making what you know is the right choice and the right decisions. So I use that phrase be the leader they need not the one they want because that might not be the same thing. I love that last I'll just say uh I'll this goes to your comment about vision you know for a leader um you took you talk about vision vision is a very important term to me your role as a leader is not to be a cheerleader you know it's this is why I used to explain it's not to be a cheerleader it's to be a psychic. Like I don't need you to look back on what we did and be like, hey everybody did a great job. You should do that, but that's not your primary role. Your job is to look forward into the future and give us some guidance. And I know you don't have any more magic knowledge than I do but that's your job. You know it's still your job providing guidance and vision out of imperfect information that helps the team achieve their full potential. And it takes practice to do that. You know, and I said it because I knew a leader one time, he's an officer and he used to always say I don't know what I want but I'll know it when I see it. And I felt like that was a real cop out because he was basically saying I'll just continue to praise the guys when they come up with good ideas, but he wasn't he wasn't able to define his own vision and give it ahead of time. And I I tell all leaders, going all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, the way you described even some of your projects, the leader should have a sense of responsibility to his subordinates. They're not there to serve him or her. He's there to provide a leadership service that enables them to achieve their full potential. And that takes practice. I love that I love that where can people go to find out more information about you and what you do? My book has a website right now. The name of the book is Those Who Face Death Those Who Face Death the Untold Story of Special Forces in Iraqi Resistance I know that's a mouthful but if you go to those who face death dot com or markgurdovich oneword.com uh it'll take you to Amazon and and the webpage and you can you can read about my bio and more of my history and there's some free samples enough this bonus material of the book uh on the website. If you don't mind if you have just five more minutes I'd love for you to tell me a little bit about the book though and why you wrote it. Yeah sure so um the book is the story of uh my unit one of the 10th Special Forces group that was assigned in Iraq to open up a second front in the northern half of the country um working with the Kurdish guerrillas that are called Peshmerga. So basically our mission was to coordinate the Peshmerga's efforts to be in support of the larger invasion. The Iraqi forces had 60% of their forces north of Baghdad. So we were supposed to tie up as many of those forces as possible. It's a pretty challenging mission uh you know the theory of it is we would go into into enemy territory, link up with these Kurdish guerrillas and then organize their forces you know to be a threat to the Iraqi forces. There's a series of things that happened that made that mission very, very challenging if not impossible. And we were able to overcome each one of those in a series in a sequential series that's even looking back at it now is somewhat amazing. What's unique about this story one is that uh it was largely conducted out of sight of the broader military. So the military really doesn't know that much about this story. And I have to say my procrastination is uh is is bad that it took me 20 years to write this story down. I wanted to do it for 20 years and I um there's no real reason why I just didn't do it earlier. But I was always amazed that the military still does not know this story. So that there was a there was a drive that I wanted to get this to the military so that they would actually know the benefits of this story and be able to glean the lessons learned for future generations. It's also in my opinion a very uh action packed exciting story because what's unique is I was the second in command for the unit, uh referred to as the S3 or the operations officer. So I wrote the plan and I saw the entire plan executed. There's literally only one other person that has that same knowledge of the entirety of the plan. There's lots of people can tell you their little combat stories and they're really really good but I was able to kind of weave this story into a complete from inception to planning to preparation to all the crazy things that happen during execution in an entire story and that's kind of unique. And as I said I'm really I'm actually kind of glad that the military now is in a position to learn the lessons that benefit from this story 20 years on. That's amazing. You know are there any like central themes that you think are really powerful in the book that everyone can pull from Yeah I mean it's interesting because if you you probably glean from our conversation, you know, my instructor mindset, I deliberately in the back of the book actually wrote some there's two annexes in the back of the book, which are actually you can also download for free on the on the book uh webpage I talked about. One is why we were successful in the operation and the other one is some other a uh what we'd call after action review points about the actual operation. And much of what we've talked about today, the the actual examples of that operation are articulated in the story how we overcame adversity, how the team prepared when you're told, hey, we're sending you into enemy territory. You're going to be on your own. There's not going to be medevac and close air support and quick response forces like once we get you in, you are on your own. I talk a lot about how the teams prepared for that, how they responded to it and then how they did on the ground. So that's pretty interesting. So I think the book appeals to multiple audiences. I mean if you're a military person and you're really interested and you want to know some of the lessons of this type of special operation or you're intrigued by special operations, it's a great story for that. If you're somebody who's just interested in what I'd say almost a pretty good action historic adventure, you know, it'll appeal to that audience as well. And then also someone just if you have a general historic knowledge about military operations and conflicts we've been in, I provide an entirely different piece of the pie that's been missing about the conversation about the war in Iraq. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:27

Well I would love to to talk more about if you'd love or love if you'd ever like to come back on because honestly the simple title of your book Those Who Face Death is interesting to me because I think it ties into that people who go toward the fire instead of people who walk away.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:45

Oh I gonna let me I should probably explain that too um the term Peshmerga which is term it's the Kurdish term for gorilla it translates to those who face death.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

So the title is somewhat of an homage to the Kurdish Peshmerga that's awesome those who face death you know one of the interesting things is that I think that we don't think about um facing death enough because um we get easy lives these days everything's convenient I mean think about like food delivery it used to be you had to go drive someplace to get food later at night not anymore press that to the app it's uh your doorstep but when you face challenges when I was on the people asked me what I learned from those 12 plus years where I had really bad food allergies and suddenly my food allergies went away I I don't understand why but they did it was wild. Um but from those 12 plus years of where I had to eat that way and I still eat very healthy um it was that a super appreciation for the simplest of things you know when I was able to have a glass of sparkling water people go you even like that I'm like it's it's like heaven for me because it's something that I can enjoy you know uh not having cheese for 20 years and then being able to eat a piece of cheese again like our lives are precious things and we should value them above all else and value those of them around us. But when you look at your own mortality if you look at that every single choice becomes more powerful.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:29

Similar to that I'll say one of the things about the Kurdish Peshmarga I loved working with them I I still communicate with a bunch of them um this story you know if anybody's thinking listening to this and thinking oh you know uh it's not necessarily it's not it's a story of what happened. It's not it's not pro or it's not anti-war it's the story of what happened. And what's unique also about this story is that's different than a lot of people might expect it's very personal. And what I mean is we special forces are on the ground 100% embedded with these Kurdish forces. We are fighting the war with them. We're not doing it you know remotely we're not doing it in the normal American fashion it's a very personal view of the war. They're called Peshmerga those who face death because their guerrillas, their militia are their final line that protects their population and has for gen for decades against genocide. So like to work with these guys, they have a mindset of you know they're not just military members like they are the final line of defense for for their population that that's had it pretty rough for several decades. So you know there's a very interesting part of the story that's not common or not familiar of what it's like to fight alongside those kind of fighters. And uh that that's why the story was so personal for me and has some relevance as we're talking current events and what's going on