From the Frontlines to the Boardroom: Military Wisdom and Executive Impact with Brandon Young and Blayne Smith

Today, I’m honored to introduce you to Brandon Young and Blayne Smith—co-authors of the impactful book “Perseverance is Greater than Endurance: Lead with Resilience. Grow through Adversity. Win Together.” 

What do Brandon, a former US Army Ranger, and Blayne, a former Green Beret, know about leadership? Quite a bit. Their experiences in high-pressure environments have shaped a practical, values-based leadership philosophy that’s both insightful and relevant.

When I received this book, I immediately read it from cover to cover and have even begun re-reading it. And I did something I don't typically do: I highlighted the heck out of it, I scribbled in the margins, I dog-eared pages, all the things.  It was too good not to! The parallels to nursing really resonated with me, as their insights about leadership apply equally whether you’re in a war zone, a corporate meeting, or on a busy hospital floor. 

Brandon and Blayne are the driving forces behind Applied Leadership Partners, and they’ve formed strategic partnerships with major companies like Nike, Walmart, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Amazon. They emphasize the importance of adopting impactful leadership practices to create strong, cohesive teams. And if anyone belongs here, they do. As I told Brandon and Blayne, their credibility got them in the room, and their humility keeps them in the space. 

On top of their achievements, they also host the Applied Leadership Podcast, which I genuinely enjoy. The format is refreshing: two friends, one question, half an hour, zero script. Their conversations are not only thoughtful but also sprinkled with fun, addressing topics about life, business, and leadership. Nurse or not, you need to hear Brandon and Blayne’s powerful messages delivered with experience, humor, and humility.

In the five-minute snippet: You’ll get to see just how well they know each other—it’s a fun take on the Newlywed Game! 

For Brandon and Blayne's bios, visit my website (link below).

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Transcript

[00:00] Michelle: Today I am honored to introduce to you Brandon Young and Blayne Smith,

[00:05] co-authors of the impactful book,

[00:08] Perseverance is greater than Endurance.

[00:10] Lead with resilience. Grow through adversity.

[00:14] Win together.

[00:16] What do Brandon, a former US Army Ranger, and Blayne, a former Green Beret, know about leadership?

[00:24] Quite a bit!

[00:26] Their experiences in high-pressure environments have shaped a practical,

[00:30] values-based leadership philosophy that's both insightful and relevant.

[00:36] When I received this book, I immediately read it cover-to-cover and have even begun rereading it.

[00:43] And I did something I don't typically do.

[00:46] I highlighted the heck out of it. I scribbled in the margins, I dog-eared the pages,

[00:52] all the things. It was too good not to.

[00:56] The parallels to nursing resonated with me as their insights about leadership apply equally whether you're in a war zone, a corporate meeting, or on a busy hospital floor.

[01:09] Brandon and Blayne are the driving forces behind Applied Leadership Partners and they form strategic partnerships with major companies like Nike,

[01:19] Walmart, Starbucks, Microsoft and Amazon. Have you ever heard of those?

[01:25] They emphasize the importance of adopting impactful leadership practices to create strong, cohesive teams.

[01:33] And if anyone belongs here, they do.

[01:36] As I told Brandon and Blayne, their credibility got them in the room and their humility keeps them in the space.

[01:45] On top of their achievements, they also host the Applied Leadership Podcast,

[01:50] which I genuinely enjoy.

[01:53] The format is refreshing.

[01:55] Two friends, one question,

[01:57] half an hour,

[01:58] zero script.

[02:00] Their conversations are not only thoughtful,

[02:03] but also sprinkled with fun,

[02:06] addressing topics about life,

[02:08] business and leadership.

[02:10] Nurse or not, you need to hear Brandon and Blayne's powerful messages delivered with experience,

[02:17] humor and humility.

[02:19] In the five-minute snippet:

[02:21] you'll get to see just how well they know each other. It's a fun take on the Newlywood game.

[02:27] Here are Brandon Young and Blayne Smith.

[02:44] Well, good morning,

[02:45] Blayne. Good morning, Brandon. Welcome to the podcast.

[02:51] Brandon: Good morning, Michelle. Thanks for having us.

[02:53] Blayne: Yeah, good to be here.

[02:54] Michelle: I'm excited to talk to you two gentlemen.

[02:58] Brandon, DD Finder put the bug in my ear that you need to talk to Brandon and Blayne.

[03:06] They're just two amazing guys and you would love them. And so anybody that DD loves and trusts is somebody that I couldn't pass up.

[03:20] So thank you so much.

[03:22] Brandon: Wow, thanks. That's. He's very kind and he's one of the best. So we really appreciate him connecting us.

[03:30] Michelle: Yes. He works with your wife, is that correct?

[03:33] Brandon: That's true. Yes. They both work in interventional radiology at this point together,

[03:39] and they've been teammates for quite some time now. And, you know, DDis a really,

[03:46] really exceptional author.

[03:48] We've had a chance to read his book, Ready Left, Ready Right and it was like, whoa,

[03:55] that's.

[03:56] Michelle: That's heavy. I agree.

[03:57] Brandon: That's some real stuff right there. Yeah.

[04:00] Michelle: Can't wait for his next one.

[04:01] Brandon: I know. We're almost there.

[04:04] Michelle: All right, well, we're just going to jump into it. And Brandon, why don't you start. Give us a little backstory. Who is Brandon Young?

[04:12] Brandon: Sure. Oh, wow. So I am. Oh, man. Who is Brandon Young? That's, I don't think I've ever been asked.

[04:20] Blayne: Now, come on.

[04:21] Brandon: I know. Geez.

[04:22] So I am.

[04:24] I guess I'm a couple things. I'm a follower of Jesus. I'm a husband. I'm a dad.

[04:30] I am a former US Army Ranger. I conducted four rotations to Afghanistan while I served as a Ranger,

[04:37] and I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area.

[04:40] Graduated high school,

[04:41] immediately enlisted for the United States Army.

[04:45] Left California. That was about 30 years ago. Never went back. And since then, I spent 11 years in service, nine of which as an Army Ranger and got out about 16 years ago.

[04:57] And have done  just a host of different roles, both in the commercial sector of healthcare. Actually got into cancer diagnostics, was a sales representative and then sales director for a cancer diagnostics company that was a subdivision of Quest Diagnostics.

[05:14] It's actually where Blayne and I met.

[05:16] Then had the chance to work in nonprofit. Blayne and I both worked together at a national veterans serving charity that helped over 150,000 veterans reconnect to over 200 cities across the United States.

[05:30] And also did a little bit of work in the child welfare space. And, you know, here we are five and a half years ago. It was, our timing was impeccable, Michelle.

[05:39] We started our company three days before everything shut down for the COVID lockdowns in 2020.

[05:46] And so I am a co-founder and principal of Applied Leadership Partners.

[05:51] And our mission is to come alongside great leaders doing great things in the world and share hard earned leadership wisdom that helps them be more effective for the long haul.

[06:00] Michelle: Wow. Fantastic. I love it and I'm gonna say thank you for your service.

[06:08] I always feel like that is inadequate,

[06:14] so sometimes I say I value my freedom and I appreciate my freedom, and so I thank you for that.

[06:21] Brandon: You're Welcome. I appreciate that.

[06:23] Michelle: Okay, Blayne, you're up. Who is Blayne Smith?

[06:28] Blayne: All right, well,

[06:29] I grew up this, maybe the backstory might be helpful. I grew up mostly down in southwest Florida in the 80s and 90s to a couple of Midwestern parents. So my folks are from Missouri and Illinois,

[06:40] respectively. And we moved down there when I was very small.

[06:43] And my folks did a lot of things to sort of make a living as I was growing up.

[06:47] They had a lawn service business, a pool care business.

[06:50] Ultimately, my dad went back to driving a truck and pedaling freight in the Teamsters Union, so very kind of blue collar house. And so I was steeped in their values of kind of like, work hard, keep your powder dry, live within your means, you know, be humble, stuff like that.

[07:07] And graduated from high school in 1997, went off to West Point for college.

[07:13] And that was another transformative experience for me. Sort of taught me who to be as a young person, as a young leader, and to kind of grow up to be a man.

[07:21] I graduated in June of 2001.

[07:24] Sort of thought my army career would be short and uneventful because that's the way the world was back then. And then only a few months later, 9-11 happens, you know, know, everything changes.

[07:34] And the next, you know, nine or ten years looked very, very differently than I had imagined or really anybody did.

[07:39] And so those events, my time at West Point, really compelled me to want to serve in the army to the greatest extent I could. I spent some time at the 1st Cavalry Division in Fort Hood, Texas.

[07:49] I was a tank platoon leader and a reconnaissance platoon leader for a while and did a tour in Iraq in that capacity.

[07:55] Had a chance to work with some guys from the Army Special Forces, the Green Berets, while I was on my first deployment and decided that's really what I wanted to do with the remainder of my Army time.

[08:04] So I came home and went to the qualification course and eventually made my way onto a Special Forces team at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and served a few more years in that capacity, including a combat rotation over to Afghanistan.

[08:16] That was really very difficult and changed the future of my life quite a few ways as well.

[08:22] Exited the army in 2010 like Brandon. Husband, father, had two young kids. One had just been born about a week after I got home from deployment and tried to be a regular person in the real world for a while.

[08:34] Spent some time in healthcare.

[08:36] Met Brandon,

[08:37] moved on, as he said, to working in the nonprofit space for about five years.

[08:41] I personally learned a ton there. I went over just because I thought my friend had a cool idea going, and it might be a fun thing to do for a couple years to take a break from corporate America.

[08:51] But I found out pretty quickly that I really loved working in the social impact space, and I really liked being a small business leader.

[08:57] And I had the privilege of being employee number one there. And then, you know, five years later,

[09:03] having a relatively large organization that was operating all over the country. And so that's really trial by fire, especially leading volunteers. You learn an awful lot about leadership by managing an organization that's got 1500 volunteers.

[09:15] And then we decided to do this crazy journey starting a little over five years ago. And I think the reason that we started in the first place and we've stuck with it is because Brandon and I both have a really deep,

[09:26] abiding passion for leadership and service. And we've thought a lot about it throughout our careers, and we love to continue thinking about it and working at it and bringing some of these messages to other people.

[09:37] Because ultimately, we've come to believe that most problems, like capital P problems, are leadership problems. And there's very little we can't do with good, sound,

[09:48] committed leadership. And there's very little we can do right, regardless of how many resources we have if we don't have good,

[09:54] sound leadership. So I think we've at this point, committed the rest of our professional lives to figuring some of this stuff out and sharing what works with as many people as we can.

[10:03] Michelle: Phenomenal.

[10:05] What a rich bio.

[10:07] And again, thank you. I appreciate my freedom and I value my freedom. So thank you for your service.

[10:14] I want to thank both of you for sending me your book.

[10:18] And I got it out and I read it cover to cover, and I got my highlighter out and just marked that thing up, and I wrote in the margins, and I do all the things that are not typical of me doing to books, but there just was,

[10:39] There are so many great gems in there. So I'm gonna get a little bit book specific right now.

[10:48] So the title of your book, Perseverance is Greater than Endurance.

[10:52] What inspired that title? And how do you define the difference between the two, perseverance and endurance?

[11:00] Brandon: Yeah, we really, so we define the difference between the two is that,

[11:05] you know, endurance is for periods of defined hardship. So it is getting through periods of defined hardship,

[11:15] whereas perseverance is transforming to grow through seasons of adversity, which we would say are marked by change and uncertainty. And so a really simple way that we try to illustrate that is that you think about a marathon.

[11:32] Marathon's kind of one of those key endurance events, and it is a marked course. It's 26.2 miles. No matter which marathon you run, it's going to be 26.2 miles.

[11:42] And when you sign up for it, you'll be able to see the map, and you'll be able to know where the aid stations are, you'll know where the hills are, you'll know all that kind of stuff.

[11:50] And so it is very much defined. And as you navigate that, you know, it requires a lot of endurance. And by the way, we should note that endurance is incredibly admirable, and we would say it's very important.

[12:03] But on that course from point A to point B, by the time you get to point B, you're essentially a more tired version of who you were at point A.

[12:10] And that's endurance.

[12:12] Not the same with perseverance. By the time you get to point B,

[12:15] you are not the same person who started the course at point A. You have transformed. You have grown to become the person that the situation calls for and to accomplish goals that you had set out for yourself and maybe that you thought you weren't going to achieve, especially when change and uncertainty really hit.

[12:34] And the way that we really came about this is that,

[12:37] as we said, we started our business in March of 2020. It was March 17th. Three days later, everything shut down.

[12:43] And for the first time in our adult lives, Blayne and I felt like we were kind of on the sidelines of an American crisis. You know, keep in mind, he,

[12:52] you know, was in Officer Basic course when the towers fell. And, you know, I was in the Middle east eight days after the towers fell on 9-11. And so we kind of were used to being on the spot during a crisis, for lack of a better term.

[13:07] And we really weren't in this regard. We, you know, we had two wives, Blayne's wife at the time, as an intelligence professional working with the Special Operations Command. My wife was an ER nurse at the time.

[13:20] And so we thought, you know, what are some ways that we can be the most useful to folks out there? And what we did actually in those first couple months is we just hosted a bunch of free consulting sessions.

[13:31] We talked with people from all over the United States and a host of different industries.

[13:38] And what we kept coming up against was what we kept hearing was leaders saying, we're holding on, we're trying to get through,

[13:50] you know, let's flatten the curve we're trying to get through. Maybe we'll be back together by Easter. Maybe things will open up.

[13:56] And it was this consistent creation of what we would call false finish lines,

[14:01] which is normal. It's a sign of unsettling. And Blayne and I just kind of thought a lot about it, and we talked to a lot of these leaders, and we were like,

[14:08] oh, this is very similar to some things that we experienced in the military and in the war.

[14:16] And we started to kind of think through, like, there's a real difference here. I. You know, we've got a lot of really smart, tough, thoughtful leaders who are making a lot of very difficult choices and just trying to hold on to get through to the other side of this thing.

[14:31] But in reality, what needs to happen is that, you know, they need to maybe change a little bit of the way that they're going about things. They need to change a little bit of the way they're looking at things.

[14:40] Change who we are. And that, by nature, is perseverance. That is that metric of transformation as we are navigating all of these difficult decisions, because people were making very difficult decisions, and they were.

[14:54] But they were kind of mostly holding on. And we would hear all this all the time, quote, when are things going to go back to normal?

[15:02] And it just reminded us that when life calls you to persevere,

[15:07] there is no going back to normal. There's no going back anyways. And life really is replete with change and uncertainty.

[15:16] And so we wanted to put a frame together that maybe just helped see what is actually happening here that will then also equip leaders to make some of those hard choices.

[15:28] You know, do some of the acceptance of what can be controlled and what cannot be controlled and. And really grow through what they go through instead of just holding on and getting to the other side of something with no determined destination.

[15:42] Michelle: Yeah, boy,

[15:43] a lot of stuff resonated there going through Covid as a nurse in a hospital.

[15:51] You know, we had all of those same challenges. And,

[15:55] you know, of course, now looking back five years later, I have to say,

[16:01] many nurses just endured that period.

[16:04] And then many nurses persevered and are changed by it today,

[16:11] some for the positive and some,

[16:14] I guess you could say, for the negative. Although I don't know if pivoting or leaving the profession is a negative, because it's something that that person needs to do for them.

[16:28] So there was a lot of that going on,

[16:32] and I really appreciate that, you guys.

[16:35] You know, you picked up on that, and 

[16:39] You took that and you created Applied Leadership Partners, which we're going to talk about.

[16:46] Blayne, do you have anything to add to that?

[16:49] Blayne: I think Brandon covered it really well.

[16:52] It was a bit of an A-HA moment for us, and once we saw it, we couldn't stop seeing it.

[16:56] Everywhere we looked, we saw it even in our own lives. We started catching ourselves saying, like, oh, we just got to push through this, or when things open back up.

[17:03] And it was just like, no, no, no, no. We're always moving forward,

[17:07] and it's an invitation. You know, we would say often that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,

[17:12] and we don't take it lightly. We're not saying it's easy,

[17:15] but there are a lot of opportunities in our lives where we're given the opportunity to learn, to grow, to evolve, to adapt.

[17:22] And we can make the choice whether we want to do that or whether we just want to exhaust ourselves in an effort to hold on and keep things the same.

[17:29] And,

[17:30] you know, we think that the perseverance route is better in most cases.

[17:34] Michelle: Absolutely agree with that.

[17:36] Okay. In the introduction,

[17:39] there's a line that says, to live and lead well,

[17:42] we must persevere when there is no marked course,

[17:45] whenever the ups and downs hit us,

[17:48] and when we're scared that we aren't enough.

[17:51] This is why we wrote this book.

[17:54] So what message do you hope readers take away from the book?

[17:59] Blayne: So I sum it up sometimes in a single word, which is hope.

[18:03] And I think when you dig into that a little bit,

[18:05] that might sound like,

[18:07] understand that you're not the only one going through this,

[18:09] understanding that this process is totally normal. But we can put some language and some framing through it so you can understand it and work through it.

[18:17] You know, I think also challenging folks to realize that the work of leadership is mostly dealing with the stuff that wasn't in the brochure and that we need to let go of the narrative that things are going to follow a prescribed path or that we can kind of achieve our way through hard work and following the rules or whatever to getting where we want to go,

[18:36] and that most of the really great stuff in life is on the other side of facing up to our fears, facing up to our inadequacies. You know, going into a situation that we're not sure what the outcome might be or if we have the skills or the experience to do it.

[18:50] That's what people need from their leaders in these moments. And I think that's what we can offer to ourselves if we actually want to get where we're trying to go as individuals.

[19:00] And I hope that the book really sheds light on that for people and allows them to know, like, look, this is a normal human process.

[19:07] Again, it doesn't make it easy, but when we can understand it, when we can see ourselves in it, when we have a little bit of framing through which we can navigate it,

[19:14] we can kind of accept it and embrace it for what it is,

[19:17] and we can see ourselves to the other side of it. And maybe most importantly, we can do it together with others.

[19:23] Because I think one of the hardest things in leadership is believing you've got to do it all yourself or you've got some sort of uniquely difficult challenge laid out before you that, you know, is like an insolvable riddle.

[19:34] But, you know, it's not.

[19:36] It's hard, but it's not impossible. And I think that's what we're really trying to convey to people is like, let's lean into this. We can do it together,

[19:44] you know, if we understand it and we take it one step at a time.

[19:47] Michelle: I think I certainly got that after I read the book and through the book, through that,

[19:53] that the situation was hopeful. And I found myself reading the book and saying, oh, man, I wish I would have had this book when.

[20:02] When we were going through Covid,

[20:05] because it would have been so helpful.

[20:07] It would have instilled that hope that I think so many of us lost.

[20:12] So many physicians, nurses, other medical professionals during that time suffered such moral distress because we knew what we needed to do. We knew what was ethically responsible to do, and because of the circumstances,

[20:31] we couldn't do it. And there's nothing that makes you feel more hopeless than that.

[20:38] So I think your readers will definitely take away that message of hope.

[20:44] And I recently, I'm kind of a nerd,

[20:48] but I recently took the word HOPE

[20:53] And for me,

[20:56] because I tend to sometimes get into a negative headspace. And for me, this is what pulled it out.

[21:04] Hope is Harboring Only Positive Energy.

[21:09] And so for me, that's really been helpful.

[21:13] And so I just wanted to share that.

[21:15] But I think the reader will definitely bring hope home from reading your book.

[21:21] Brandon, there's a line in your chapter, Winter Strike 2003, that resonated with me.

[21:27] You said Rangers were doing what Rangers do, protecting one another and manning their posts.

[21:33] I loved them.

[21:35] I love them.

[21:36] They gave me strength and they gave me purpose. They gave me a reason to go one more day, even though I felt the weight of the world upon my shoulders in this shithole country.

[21:46] And you went on to say the boys gave me a reason to persevere.

[21:51] And I think many nurses would identify this as trauma bonding,

[21:56] which we are very familiar with.

[21:59] Would you say that that's an accurate statement or would you describe it differently?

[22:04] Brandon: No, I think trauma bonded is one of a couple of ways that you could describe it. I mean, the way I would describe it is exactly as I stated, which is love.

[22:15] Blaine often says that his team is something. Was something like brotherhood, but more. And I think that that's a really great way of putting it, because it's been said many times, and I'll just repeat what people far smarter than me have said, is that, you know, soldiers, when they.

[22:31] When they go to war,

[22:33] are fighting more for who is to their left and right than against who is in front of them.

[22:38] And I. I think that's a really apt way of stating it. I think, you know, when you dig into the psychological complexity of what's happen,

[22:46] do think there is certainly trauma bonding that is occurring. You know, I think that we used words like shared experience in the military that really knits people together at times.

[22:58] It's shared suffering.

[22:59] In this specific scenario by which you're talking about this, this happened to be a.

[23:07] A moment where we had just taken our first casualty in the war on terror on our third rotation,

[23:14] Sgt. J. Anthony Blessing, who was killed on June 14, 2003, by a roadside bomb outside of Nangalam, Afghanistan.

[23:22] And Jay was a friend. He's a guy that I had come up with in the Rangers and we often say grew up with. Right. He's a guy I grew up with because he's like a brother, but somehow more.

[23:35] And, you know, he was gone in an instant. You know, he was. He was gone.

[23:40] And that was.

[23:41] That was devastating. And it was layered upon the fact that I was gone as a father. I had just gotten married. Kelly's mother had passed away.

[23:51] We actually got married in the living room so that she could see us get married. And then she died two days later. And then I deployed about a week after that.

[23:58] And then nine months later, my son was born, and I wasn't there. And I was around for about 3 of the first 36 months of our marriage. And so it felt like I was just getting one punch in the face after another.

[24:11] And.

[24:12] And so I would say that for sure there was trauma bonding going on there. There was also that that love that. That extends so deeply based on the shared understanding.

[24:24] Because I think what a lot of people experience in that environment is something I can certainly say that I experienced, which was I. I felt like I fit into a family for the first time in my life when I became a ranger.

[24:41] Sometimes I share with people that it felt like I arrived at the land of misfit toys and could recognize myself and everybody around me,

[24:49] and. And it was great.

[24:50] And so it was.

[24:53] It was true love and care of one another exacerbated by the trauma bond which is experienced in that shared suffering. And really, what we wanted to expose here is that perseverance is an endeavor best done together.

[25:11] It's not. It's not something that you just need to get on, you know, do on your own.

[25:16] You know, you don't need to be Billy badass, you know, Mr. Tough Guy. I can.

[25:21] I can run harder,

[25:23] run longer, run faster, do all that stuff. All those guys can do that.

[25:28] They can all do that.

[25:29] That's not the point. You know, the point is, is that you're gonna be faced with things that there's just no.

[25:36] There's no manual for.

[25:37] And the best way to get through it is to grow through it together with one another.

[25:42] Michelle: Well, I love your take on it. And again, I could see,

[25:47] you know, I. I like that you did mention the trauma bonding, but also the love. And I could feel that, you know, working alongside my nurse colleagues, my physician colleagues,

[26:00] and wanting to come in and work extra when they're short because you're worried about your colleagues. And it's like, the patients are always going to be there. Like, that's why you're there.

[26:13] They're the focus. But the other reason why you're there is to take some of this strain off of your fellow humans.

[26:23] So I like your. Yeah, I like that a lot.

[26:26] Brandon: And I saw that all the time with. I'm sorry, Blaine, I just gonna say I saw that all the time with.

[26:31] With Kelly in the ER during COVID And it was. It was a real interesting experience for us because the roles were reversed, you know, and when the beginning of our marriage,

[26:40] she was at home holding down the fort, and I was deploying in the midst of COVID I was holding down the fort, and she was deploying to our community hospital, and it was consistent, like, you know, picking, like, hey, we're.

[26:52] We just got five more patients.

[26:55] We're down a person.

[26:57] I'm like, do what you gotta do. You know, like, you.

[27:00] Michelle: You.

[27:00] Brandon: You know, stay. Support the team. I get it. I just wanted to kind of add onto that. Blaine, I'm sorry that I interrupted you.

[27:06] Blayne: No, no, I was just gonna add. I. I think there is an important distinction between what we'd call a trauma bond and the bonds that Brandon and I experienced. And what I mean, is this the true kind of love, brotherhood, sisterhood?

[27:20] You know, that real deep connection that we experience and others do in other walks of life is formed in ways big and small over a period of time.

[27:28] And so the people that Brandon grew up with in the Rangers and the people that were on my team with me,

[27:32] we shared a lot of quiet, ordinary moments together, a lot of training and physical training and other things along the way. So that when we were in these moments of real,

[27:43] you know, real adversity, real trauma,

[27:46] we were building upon a base that was already there, and it sort of fortified and cemented a lot of what we already had.

[27:52] I think some trauma bonds occur, like with a group of people maybe that you don't know very well, but you go on a car trip together and then you have an accident or there's this thing, you get stuck in a snowstorm,

[28:01] and you. You have this thing where you feel like your brothers and sisters because you went through a very short, intense period of trauma together.

[28:08] And I think a lot of people that experience that find out weeks, months, years later that, like, maybe we actually don't have that much in common. Maybe we're actually not that close.

[28:15] Maybe we actually don't know each other that well,

[28:18] but we sort of felt like we did because we went through this very intense, short period of trauma together.

[28:23] And I think you have to be very careful in a trauma bond like that verse.

[28:28] What we experienced, which was a bond that had been forged over a long period of time and was very tight, and then it was just sort of reinforced, forced in these periods of intense trauma.

[28:37] So that's maybe one way to differentiate those that could be helpful.

[28:40] Michelle: That's very helpful. And again,

[28:43] I think the concept of over time is really important because many nurses work together for many years, decades,

[28:54] and we know each other really well. We know what's going on at home, we know their personal struggles.

[29:00] You know, I. I'm much more apt to come in and work extra or work longer, because I know the nurse next to me, her husband is at home,

[29:11] you know, fighting cancer, and she wants to be there with him and with the family.

[29:18] And so I'm going to go. Yes, you go. I'll stay.

[29:22] And you only get that. Absolutely. What you said, just by spending time with people.

[29:29] So thank you for that differentiation.

[29:32] Okay, in chapter four, change the enemy gets a vote. There's a one liner that really stuck with me.

[29:39] We do not plan in order to predict what will happen in the future. We plan in order to prepare for the future we cannot predict.

[29:49] So can you guys elaborate on this?

[29:52] Blayne: Sure. I think summed up, we share with people all the time that preparation is greater than prediction.

[29:59] And what we mean in that chapter and what we mean in that line is that none of us can predict the future. And yet we all, we all tend to spend a lot more time than we should trying to, you know, we want to see a little further down the road or we want to be able to see around the corner.

[30:13] We want to know what's coming next so that we can perfectly prepare for it. And a lot of times we don't do the things we need to do as leaders or just as people because we're waiting for more information or we'll take that next step forward when we have a little more accurate picture of the future.

[30:28] And some of that is prudent. But it gets to be too much pretty quickly.

[30:33] Conversely, there's a lot of things we can do as people and as teams to create those bonds, to build those relationships, to fortify our trust, to train ourselves in ways that will allow us to be effective in a wide range of potential scenarios that could play out in the future.

[30:51] And so what we often advise teams to do is spend as much time as you can on the things that will relationally and sort of tactically prepare you for being able to deal with a wide range of potential scenarios that, that could occur within your, you know, your respective field or within your endeavors.

[31:10] But don't spend too much time trying to thread the needle and get it just right. Because while occasionally that will pay off,

[31:17] often it will not. And if your plans are too precise and too precious,

[31:21] they also become too fragile.

[31:24] And so think about who you are, who you're trying to become, what you're trying to accomplish,

[31:29] what sets of skills, attributes, relationships are going to allow you to be successful in a pretty broad span of eventualities versus, okay, we think this is how it's going to go.

[31:41] Let's, you know, let's prepare to a T and then go into it that way. And so it's a bit of a mindset shift for a lot of people.

[31:49] It doesn't mean like heck, heck with it. Let's just go into it and see what happens. No, we think preparation is incredibly, incredibly important.

[31:57] It's Just a matter of are you preparing to be resilient in an uncertain future,

[32:02] or are you predicting what's going to happen and having probably too narrow a path to try to walk down?

[32:08] Brandon: Yeah, I would just add one thing to that, which I think when you do have that preparation,

[32:15] when you've. When you've done the work to prepare, it can help get through some of those ethical dilemmas that naturally pop up. I think all the time about the ethical dilemma that nurses and care providers were facing in the hospitals during COVID for example,

[32:32] you know, being like, there are certain procedural things that we do, like how can we possibly reuse PPE when we know that we have been trained,

[32:42] it has been beaten into our heads, that we cannot use the same PPE that we have used in one room going to the next. And yet the ethical dilemma here is that you have a patient in the next room who desperately needs care and you don't have any more ppe.

[32:59] What you got is what you got. And so what do we do? Well, if we're prepared to conduct the mission, which is care, provide patient care to the best of our abilities,

[33:10] then we have to sacrifice some of those things that we have locked in our brain, you know, some of the predictive paths. Well, the predictive path is that I will come out of this room, I will discard this ppe, I will put on fresh PPE that I know is sterilized,

[33:24] and then I will go into the next room. Well, I don't have that anymore.

[33:27] Michelle: Right.

[33:27] Brandon: So. So it. It. That preparation helps you to acknowledge some of those things that, like, you know, I've got to prioritize patient care right now.

[33:38] I have to find another way.

[33:41] And so that's where you would start to see all of these different methodologies of, you know, I know that there was like, some, like a light treatment on some of the PPE to try and sterilize doing the best that they can.

[33:53] And that's really what it comes down to, is just do the best you can with what you have when. While you have it, in order to accomplish that mission. Well, if you're so locked into prediction,

[34:04] what we find is that, you know, it can really.

[34:07] It can really put people in a place where it's very rigid thinking.

[34:12] And we're so kind of married to either whatever that, you know, SOP is or what we have predicted will happen that we can't actually move around it to accomplish the mission.

[34:23] And that's. That's how I think it can come to life.

[34:26] You know, on the floor,

[34:28] in. In the patient care setting, day to day.

[34:31] Michelle: Yeah. And thank you for that,

[34:33] Brandon. And man, you guys,

[34:36] that was me in my 20s. I had this pathology where I would actually, when I started a new book,

[34:44] I would read the last page first,

[34:48] because I want to know how it ended.

[34:52] I want to know how it comes out, you know, and my late husband just thought that was,

[34:57] like, really?

[34:59] So. Yeah. And. And,

[35:01] you know, I. I can see that we were rigid in a lot of our thinking,

[35:07] especially during COVID and it didn't serve us well.

[35:11] So hopefully for the next thing, the next big thing that's coming,

[35:16] which we know it will, we will have a different mindset and.

[35:21] And a different outcome.

[35:23] How have readers responded to the book in ways that you didn't expect?

[35:29] Blayne: Hmm,

[35:30] that's interesting. I. I think for me,

[35:33] I. I hoped that readers would find the book to be sort of honest and genuine.

[35:40] And I think people have largely given us that feedback, which has been incredibly heartening and a bit of a relief, just to be honest, because when you share so much of yourself and your personal story and you leverage your personal story to try to share lessons,

[35:52] it's a tricky place to write from because we're trying to teach people in a way, and we're trying to encourage people and let them know that we're beside them on the path.

[36:01] But at the end of the day, there's a lot of advice in the book. And so,

[36:04] you know, I find myself always nervous in giving advice, even though to a degree, we. That's what we do for a living.

[36:10] I think that what's been interesting to me and was a bit unexpected is just some of the things that Brandon and I have thought about for so long and we've shared so many times.

[36:21] So many people are seeing these things for the first time.

[36:23] And so I'm having friends and colleagues and other people that are coming back and saying, like, oh, I read this part in chapter six, and that really stuck with me.

[36:31] And I'm finding myself constantly surprised in what people are pulling out from the book, because I might think that this is really the crux of the book, or these few things are really the most important,

[36:42] and everything else is all kind of supporting evidence.

[36:44] And yet people will find a wide range of things in the book to be the most important to them. And I think that's been really cool, is just to see what people are pulling out of it and what's resonating with people.

[36:57] And it's just a pretty big scattershot,

[36:59] at least Brandon, maybe your experience has been different, but it's not like everyone's coming back and saying, like, yeah, these two or three things consistently jump out. It just seems to be all over the place.

[37:08] And that's.

[37:09] That's been pretty cool. I don't think I could have predicted that.

[37:12] Brandon: Yeah, I would add on to that. I mean, the.

[37:15] We've had a lot of people say that they appreciated the humility by which we have approached this. I think one.

[37:22] One person wrote down in a review, this is no chest thumping war story.

[37:28] These are two human beings that are just being really vulnerable. And so when you think about that from a ranger in a green beret, that's I think, a little bit unexpected for a lot of readers.

[37:41] So that means a lot to us.

[37:42] And then the other thing that, that I would say that I've heard a number of times that I know really means a lot to Blaine and myself is people have shared.

[37:54] Thank you. You have put into words what I have been feeling and not been able to put into words. Thank you.

[38:01] And that has meant an awful lot. And the last thing that I will say as well is that we don't take lightly the fact that we are sharing stories that are shared experiences.

[38:12] There are, you know, teammates, there are platoon mates that are all involved in it.

[38:17] And what has really mattered a lot to us is that these men have come back to us and said,

[38:25] well done.

[38:26] Thank you for. Thank you for telling these stories. They needed to be told. And I appreciate how you did it.

[38:32] Michelle: Yeah. I just would imagine the impact is far reaching. And,

[38:37] you know,

[38:38] you guys know why you wrote the book.

[38:40] But then for the reader to get something and to have so many different experiences from the book is that just has to be so gratifying to.

[38:52] To see that come to fruition and to see things unexpectedly that maybe you didn't set out to. To have that effect, but then that's what it was.

[39:04] So that's a beautiful thing.

[39:06] Well, thank you guys so much for talking about your book. I want to talk about your.

[39:11] Your consulting business,

[39:14] and that is Applied leadership partners.

[39:17] So how. How do you guys differ from other leadership training or coaching models?

[39:25] Blayne: So I'll give you. I'll give you a couple here.

[39:27] In many ways, I think we're not different in the sense that we come in, we work with teams,

[39:33] we train people, we try to deliver a good outcome so that they could be more effective.

[39:37] I think we might focus a little bit differently. And one of the ways is that we're really focused more for the Long term. And so we think that making you a little better right now or making you even a lot better right now is not really the goal because we're going to tend to revert back to our old patterns and habits and what feels comfortable.

[39:54] And so most of the people we work with, we work with over a pretty long period of time. We have an ongoing relationship because we want to give them what they need in order to be sustainably effective.

[40:06] And we feel very fortunate that we have a chance to do that. So we're not trying to transform or kind of entertain our clients by coming in and just being just so smart, so engaging and like, in a way that they're just like, wow, that really blew my doors off.

[40:22] You know, as much as we try to do a good job and we think we're, we're very effective presenters,

[40:26] we really focus exclusively on the experience of the people in the room. And so we often say, like, a little prayer before we go in and just say, help us to give these people what they need and what they're asking for.

[40:38] That's going to help them be effective.

[40:40] Let's resist the urge to be profound. It doesn't matter whether they think we're the coolest, the smartest,

[40:46] you know, presenters in the world. What matters is they look at themselves differently when they walk out of this room and they believe more in themselves, they trust their teammates more and things like that.

[40:55] And so I don't know that, that.

[40:57] That there aren't other people doing that. I'm sure there are,

[41:01] but I think we looked across the landscape at leadership development and said we can't be entertainers. We can't be flash in the pan. We can't get people all jacked up and then bail on them.

[41:10] We've got to get on the path with them, walk alongside them, and most importantly, make this about them, them so that they're getting what they need to do their mission.

[41:19] And. And we can't make it about us.

[41:22] Brandon: Yeah, I would just. Just add to that one of the ways that we do that. We talk a lot about the intersection between credibility and relatability.

[41:30] Look, it's not lost on us that,

[41:33] you know,

[41:33] we're two guys that spent 20 years in the special operations world. We have six combat rotations between the two of us. Blaine's a West Point graduate.

[41:42] He's a Green Beret, I'm a Ranger. It's not lost on us that a lot of people look at that and find it very appealing. There's, you know, we're Very blessed to have a country that really appreciates and respects the military, especially folks who have done some of these special operations missions and whatnot.

[42:02] We are also guys that have both spent 30 years in the, you know, together combined in the, in the commercial space, in the nonprofit space,

[42:11] you know, leading community level engagements, leading in Fortune 500 companies,

[42:18] building partnerships with some of the most,

[42:21] you know, culturally relevant brands on the face of the planet, like the Walmarts and the Nikes and the Amazons.

[42:27] And so I lay all that down just to say that, you know, we, we.

[42:32] One of the things that makes us, I think, uniquely different, that our clients have come back and shared with us, is how much they appreciate the fact that knowing our pedigree and what we have experienced, that we can come alongside them and acknowledge, validate them in many ways and say,

[42:48] like, yeah, you know what, what you're going through is. That's pretty freaking hard.

[42:52] You know, leadership changes,

[42:55] reductions in force,

[42:57] mergers, acquisitions,

[42:59] capital events, all of these different things.

[43:02] It's hard. It's really freaking hard.

[43:05] And just the ability to relate with others and as Blaine said, you know, just join them on the trail. Like, we want to be at the T with you, we don't want to be talking at you from the front of the room.

[43:16] And we have found that people have really appreciated the humanity of that,

[43:20] understanding that, you know, we have done some pretty difficult things in some pretty asymmetrical environments.

[43:26] Michelle: I.

[43:28] How I see this is, you know, your credibility obviously matters and your reputation kind of precedes you before you walk in the room, you know, and an army Ranger, a Green Beret, those things are respectable and admirable and your credibility gets you into the room,

[43:48] but what keeps you in the space is your humanity, is your humility.

[43:54] You guys come off as just two regular guys,

[43:59] you know, but when you look at your, your bio, you're just like, what?

[44:03] These guys are, you know, amazing.

[44:06] So. Yeah, well, thank you for kind of expounding on that. Credibility is important.

[44:12] It gets you in the room,

[44:13] but what keeps you in this space is really your humanity and your humility.

[44:20] I wanted to just kind of focus a little bit on healthcare,

[44:24] leadership in healthcare, because in my opinion, in my experience,

[44:30] in the nursing realm,

[44:32] it has been lacking.

[44:35] So, you know, I talk to a lot of nurses now through the podcast and many nurses are just burned out, but they still show up every day.

[44:44] So how do you help leaders move beyond just kind of enduring to actually leading with purpose in these high stress environments?

[44:57] Brandon: That's a great question.

[44:59] And there's no simple answer to this. So we'll start by maybe offering a bit of an umbrella framework by which we encourage leaders to look at this entire dynamic. And we suggest that there are five factors of perseverance, and that's change, uncertainty, acceptance, choice, and growth.

[45:21] So it starts with change. Things come at you fast and often and often without notice. This brings about uncertainty.

[45:26] Uncertainty peaks a bit of a base human emotion, which is fear.

[45:32] We are very fearful of the unknown, and that fear can be the friction that holds us in place. And so I like the fact that you talked about purpose here because we believe that one of two things will either make you move off of that mark.

[45:43] When you're frozen in fear, it's either gonna be purpose or pain. You will run from your pain or you will run to your purpose.

[45:51] And as you make that choice to run towards your purpose, then we get into this third portion, which is acceptance.

[45:57] It's important to accept what you can control, what you cannot control,

[46:02] to understand what you can influence, even though you can't really control it, to accept the reality of what you're facing and then lay out your options with all of that understanding and start making some choices.

[46:13] You know, Blaine often says we don't get credit for what we can do, we get credit for what we do.

[46:18] And that comes into making choices.

[46:21] We like to say that when you start to choose, it's when you start to choose, you become,

[46:26] you transform because you're choosing to be your creeds, your ethos, your values, your mission, your vision, your purpose, all of these things that we put on the walls and they're all over the walls of the healthcare institutions across the United States of America and beyond.

[46:43] But when you make choices, you start to make choices in keeping with those values and you take them off of the successories and the platitudes and you root them down into your heart in the manner in which you function as a leader and you function as a culture and that leads to growth.

[46:59] And we, we say all the time that, you know, you become a wiser, more prepared leader who is ready for those next challenges and those next transformations. And so,

[47:12] you know, take it back to specifically the healthcare space by which you're talking about. I happen to hear an awful lot about this because I'm married to a nurs.

[47:21] Her mother was a nurse. We've, we've got. Her father's was a pa.

[47:25] We've got, you know, that on lock in the healthcare dynamic.

[47:30] And, you know, I, I think that you start to See some things that are in conflict. I, I think it's fair to say, and you know, you please correct me if I'm,

[47:41] if I'm off balance here, but based on my observation,

[47:47] nursing is a very eat your young culture.

[47:50] I think nursing does a really good job at just eating their young instead of building them up and growing and really investing in that regard.

[47:59] I think that candidly that the profession has probably come to the, you know, extent of the usefulness of that approach.

[48:07] I don't think that that approach is going to help out much longer into the future, especially as healthcare organizations, you know, you really working in these care team environments.

[48:18] Far more is expected of nurses today than there has ever been expected of nurses. Not just to be on top of the latest,

[48:27] you know, patient care paradigms, but also to continue to be the patient advocate at the bedside and between, you know, the, the primary provider,

[48:37] you know, mid level providers. Like a lot is being asked of nurses and I think that when you look at the change and uncertainty that has been thrust upon the healthcare environment and really thrust down because it cascades, you know, as we say, rolls downhill.

[48:53] It all goes down to the point of care. And the nurse is at the point of care at the bedside to be the patient advocate, to be, you know, that intermediary.

[49:04] Well, there's, you gotta start changing the way, you know, that you cultivate nurse leaders, the way that you cultivate, you know, young nurses, the way that you bring people up, the way that you, you know, train.

[49:15] And, and that is, that is just one very small example of what has reached the extent of its usefulness, I. E. The extent of its endurance,

[49:24] and probably needs to experience a little transformation, a little perseverance so that you actually have more anti. Fragile cultures, antifragile nurses, nurses who are more resilient right there at the bedside of all that has been expected of them.

[49:41] So that you are consistently optimizing patient care. That, that's very meta. But that's how I would start to answer that.

[49:48] Michelle: Yeah, I love it.

[49:50] Blayne: I was gonna say, I, I can add a couple little observations I've made that I think we should keep an eye out for in healthcare in particular.

[49:57] I think when you are in a field that is very technically heavy, meaning you need to have real training, real skills, real technical capabilities to be effective.

[50:07] And when you're in a field where the work is often coming to you and you don't have a lot of control over the inflow of the work,

[50:15] it's very easy to push something fluffy like leadership off to the side because you get very narrowly focused. And so you think a lot about what is this person's technical capability,

[50:26] what are their credentials, you know, what is their licensure.

[50:29] And you think a lot about what do I need to do right now?

[50:32] Because there's stuff coming in and we can appreciate how challenging that environment is. But you can also see pretty clearly when you step back from it why leadership isn't flourishing in that environment.

[50:42] And I think what really needs to be done is that people that work in those types of environments need to make a concerted effort to step back and look at how this is working.

[50:52] Because as Brandon really clearly laid out, if people are burned out, if they're disengaged,

[50:57] if they're half hearted into this kind of thing, we're going to make way too many mistakes. We're not going to keep enough good people on the floor and we're not going to get the results we want.

[51:05] And companies that make widgets that are kind of like a commoditized widget, but you got to put a brand around it to make it aspirational and sell it,

[51:12] they step back and they think about what does our business represent? What are we trying to do to delight our customers?

[51:17] How can we make this experience an 11 out of 10 for the people that come to our theme park, etc. Because you're having to pull people in and you've got to train your entire team to embody that ethos and exude that energy so that people want to participate in what you're selling.

[51:31] And healthcare often isn't that way. And I think that if we want to be excellent at this, we've got to put that hat on. We've got to say, look, our clinic, our hospital,

[51:41] our urgent care needs to be the best in the business. How do we delight our customers? How do we make this an 11 out of 10 experience?

[51:48] And in order to do that, how do we make it a great experience for the people that work here? How can we clearly communicate what we're trying to achieve, what we aspire to be?

[51:56] And then what kind of leaders do we need to be for these people in order to deliver on that? And it feels like a nice to have,

[52:02] and we understand why it feels that way, but it's not a nice to have, it is a need to have.

[52:08] And if we don't proactively carve out the energy in the space to do that kind of training, to do that kind of thinking, to do the kind of relationship building,

[52:16] it simply will not happen.

[52:18] And we're just not gonna get the results we're looking for if that's the case.

[52:22] Brandon: Yep, that's right. And, you know, we say all the time, your culture is what you allow.

[52:26] And, you know, you can if you wanna see where the, you know, look. Look for the smoke to see where the fire is. Like, check out your attrition rate.

[52:33] You know, what is your employee attrition rate? You know, how. How's it. How's it working out for you? Is. Is another way to kind of say it. And I think we're seeing nurses particularly leave the profession in droves.

[52:46] And that's. That's really a shame.

[52:48] That's really a shame because no nurse that I know, and I know a lot of nurses get into the profession because they just think, oh, this will just be an easy gig, and I'll just, you know, make good money and all this kind of stuff.

[53:02] The nurses that I know get into the gig because they feel it is. It is a calling in many senses. They feel they. They have the passion to care for others when they are experiencing their very worst.

[53:14] And,

[53:15] you know,

[53:16] how can we find ways to reciprocate that?

[53:20] You know, by providing some of that sound leadership that really helps to shepherd people through these difficult times, as opposed to just saying, hey, hate it for you. Suck it up and deal with it.

[53:31] Well, how's it working out for us? You know, take. Take a look at our retention rates and let's, let's ask the question, how's it working out?

[53:38] Michelle: Yeah, I think you're right. On with the culture aspect. There is a culture in nursing,

[53:44] and I do think institutions take advantage of the culture of the nurse always giving so. Giving so much to the patients, giving to the managers, giving to the institution,

[54:01] whether that's in terms of, you know, overtime,

[54:05] whatever it is, and denying ourselves, denying care for ourselves.

[54:11] You know, we can care so much for everyone else, but it's really difficult to turn that around and then care for ourselves.

[54:20] And so I think that that culture definitely needs to change.

[54:25] And Brandon, to your point earlier about nurses eating their young,

[54:29] you know,

[54:31] I was in it for 36 years,

[54:34] and,

[54:35] you know, I saw some very minimal improvements over that over those three decades.

[54:42] And I still think that we need to do a lot of work on that, and I hope that that will change. But.

[54:49] And also something that you said, Blaine, about leadership, you know, nurses know inherently what good leadership is.

[54:59] And I've obviously, I've worked with a lot of managers over my years, and the managers that when things were falling apart on the unit that shut the door to their office and,

[55:12] you know, stuck their head in the computer or said, you know, there's a meeting I have to go to. No, I can't help you.

[55:20] That was just a slap in the face that was giving us the middle finger.

[55:26] I'm so thankful that the last 10 years of my career were spent with leader who,

[55:33] when things were falling apart, she changed into her scrubs and became one of us.

[55:40] Right.

[55:41] And I think there's so much to be said for that.

[55:44] And I have said over and over on my podcast that my institution in particular, but I know this happens everywhere,

[55:52] is that management sees a nurse on the unit that is a really strong leader, because nurses can be leaders without a badge that says, I'm a leader.

[56:08] You know, I'm a manager, I'm a director,

[56:11] whatever it is.

[56:12] And so at that bedside level, at that boots on the ground level, nurses are leaders every day in the decisions they make in their critical thinking.

[56:22] And one thing that happens is managers say,

[56:26] you're a really good leader.

[56:28] You should be a manager.

[56:30] And then they don't support them, they don't give them any tools that they need to be an effective manager.

[56:38] And managing patient load and then managing people,

[56:44] entirely different.

[56:46] So I think that's where

[56:48] Yeah, I think that's where we fail and we really could do better there.

[56:52] Brandon: Yeah, Michelle, I'm glad that you just said that, because that is definitely happening in the healthcare sector, and it's also happening in a variety of other sectors out there. And it is a common conundrum.

[57:08] It's the individual contributor who is excellent,

[57:12] who leads, you know, without authority. Because you're 100% right, you know, leadership. You know what one of our favorite authors, Seth Godin, says, leadership does not require an authority, but it does require responsibility.

[57:25] And, you know, you see people who take that responsibility out there,

[57:28] and what happens is they get identified, they get promoted, and then they never get invested in.

[57:34] Nobody ever invests in their leadership development.

[57:37] Even though we invest in their development as an individual contributor, we want to make sure that they know all the things to do at the bedside and they know all the.

[57:44] All the, you know, what they need to do. And so they develop these instincts that are well suited for an individual contributor. Well, once you get into a leadership position, some of those instincts might not be quite so well suited.

[57:57] Right. Like the instinct to always jump in and maybe, you know, stick that IV because your teammate is not very good at IV,  well,

[58:04] it's nice that, you know, you're jumping in, but they need that development.

[58:08] We need to let them, you know,

[58:10] let them fail a little bit. And I know this might sound a little bit masochistic, but, you know, in the Rangers we would do IV, you know, practice all the time.

[58:18] You get stuck five, six times until you get it right.

[58:21] You know, maybe you do that within the team and obviously not at the, at the point of care with the patient.

[58:26] But the point is that, you know, if you're constantly jumping in and rescuing,

[58:30] then you're not giving somebody else the ability to actually learn.

[58:35] And that's just one small example of many. And it's one of the reasons actually that we have put together a leadership development program for frontline leaders that is actually a self paced 12 module program that is able for people to actually develop in their own.

[58:56] We have a number of videos that people get access to and a workbook to really think through.

[59:01] Because what we have found is that, you know, for the organizations that really do prioritize this, you know, it's, it's great, they invite us in, we get to come alongside.

[59:10] But there's a lot of organizations out there where people are getting promoted and they're not getting invested in. So we wanted to actually deliver something for people to actually get that when there is an absence of that from the institutional level that they're serving in.

[59:25] Michelle: That's so valuable and so needed because I've seen it so many times in my career where these nurses are promoted to management positions and they spend the next two years completely frustrated and then they leave,

[59:42] they're just, they're burnt. And you know, they said this isn't what I signed up for.

[59:47] So I think anybody that can invest in those types of courses to help support leaders is a great thing.

[59:58] So on that point, talking about the bedside nurse that maybe is influential but doesn't have a proper,

[01:00:07] you know, badge that says I'm a leader,

[01:00:10] what advice would you give to that nurse who wants to move into leadership,

[01:00:15] but maybe they just feel unprepared or even overlooked.

[01:00:21] Blayne: Well, I think leadership is a lot like parenthood in that you never really feel totally prepared. So just for one, embrace the fact that you have to kind of to learn by doing.

[01:00:29] And so I don't think anyone's ever like fully,

[01:00:32] you know, ready to, to be a leader.

[01:00:35] I think the other thing that's important is to have honest conversations with your leadership. So if you feel like you've been overlooked a little bit or you've got more potential.

[01:00:42] At some point, it's important to kind of advocate for yourself. And I think we see this go awry sometimes in which people will vent their frustration to their colleagues or there is a bit of a passive aggressive approach where it's like, well, I've been doing this and I'm not being recognized for what I'm doing,

[01:00:55] so I'm going to start doing less.

[01:00:57] I mean, obviously those things are not the things that we want to do. And it's easy for me to say it, it's a little harder to do it in the moment.

[01:01:04] But I think being really candid and just forthright with your leadership and with what your goals are is super important. And by the same note, I think that leaders need to be keeping an eye out and having these conversations with their people because we can't just assume that everybody wants to take the same path.

[01:01:20] We saw this a lot when we were in commercial healthcare sales is that there are some people that want to get in that sales role and they want to stay there because they're really good at it, they're comfortable with it.

[01:01:29] They have all these customer relationships. They don't really want to get into leadership or those kinds of things because they're, they're good at doing what they they're doing.

[01:01:37] There are other people, and Brandon and myself were probably in this camp.

[01:01:41] We just wanted to be good enough at sales to make a decent living and get promoted to leadership because, like, we were tired of being on the road by ourselves doing sales calls.

[01:01:49] We actually wanted to go back to having a team and leading people.

[01:01:53] And even if we had to make a little less money and have more responsibility, we were happy to do that. But if we're not having these conversations with our people, we can't really know and we shouldn't assume.

[01:02:03] And so I think there's a level of communication that really matters here in terms of getting maybe additional responsibilities or some reps at certain things, or just being on the same page with your leadership about what it is you're actually trying to get out of the job.

[01:02:17] And if that's being left unsaid, it's pretty easy to get crossways on that. And you might feel overlooked, but part of that might be the fact that, you know, your leader is also super busy and they just haven't taken the time to really have a meaningful conversation with you about it.

[01:02:32] Michelle: Yeah, great advice, great advice.

[01:02:34] Thank you guys so much for talking about Applied Leadership Partners. Before we close here, I want to touch on the fact that you guys have a podcast,

[01:02:44] so Applied Leadership Podcast. I love your format, just the two of you.

[01:02:50] I love the short episodes, under 30 minutes.

[01:02:54] When I started podcasting, I wanted my episodes to be short, too.

[01:02:58] And my daughter kept saying, don't put a timeline on it. You know, if you're just. If. If things are flowing, just let it keep flowing.

[01:03:06] So that's kind of how mine has morphed. But tell me about your podcast and just the purpose.

[01:03:12] Brandon: Yeah, we wanted to just, so the format. Thank you for noticing the format, Michelle.

[01:03:19] We say at the top of our time, it's two friends, one question, half an hour, and zero script.

[01:03:26] And we again, just wanted to maybe open up a window into the humanity. And the aspect of what we're doing is, you know, leadership is difficult. Like, we don't have all the answers all the time, and we take difficult questions from anybody who wants to give us one.

[01:03:44] And please, you know, folks who are part of the Conversing Nurse community, please join our community as well. There's room for all of us.

[01:03:50] Blayne: Send your questions.

[01:03:52] Brandon: Yeah, send your questions to contact@ appliedleadershippartners.com because we really do. We'd love to hear some of the questions that people are wrestling with out there.

[01:04:01] And we just wanted to do a couple of things.

[01:04:05] One, we wanted to join people out there on the trail that, you know, maybe we'll never get to work with their company. Maybe we will. Maybe we already are working with their company and just kind of continue the conversation, continue to wrestle with difficult things that are out there that are in the space.

[01:04:21] We also wanted to give people a window into the way that we create together.

[01:04:26] You know, everything that we do at Applied Leadership Partners, we create together. And oftentimes what we do is we take really hard concepts or questions or words that are floating out there in the leadership ether, like empowerment or empathy, and say, like, what do we actually mean when we say that?

[01:04:45] Right? Because you could, you know, go to any floor out there and you could ask every provider on the floor to describe to you, what does empathy mean? And you're probably going to get 20 different answers.

[01:04:57] Well, we like to talk about that so that we say, well, we know what we mean when we say this. We know that when we say trust,

[01:05:06] we believe that there are four components of that. We call it our care model, C, A R, E. And it's candor, authenticity, reliability, empathy.

[01:05:14] If we can, you know, exercise candor,

[01:05:17] a proactive brand of honesty. If we can exercise authenticity, be who you are and let other people be who they are.

[01:05:24] If we can exercise reliability,

[01:05:26] say what we mean and do what we say, and if we can exercise empathy,

[01:05:30] try to understand how somebody else feels, try to understand somebody else's perspective,

[01:05:37] then we're probably going to increase speed to trust, and then we can really build this patchwork of trust between us.

[01:05:43] We wanted to let people see how we think about these things and talk about them and just kind of share in that regard so that we could be on the trail with people that, you know, maybe we've never met you, but we sure would like to, and you're part of our community is jump on in.

[01:06:00] Michelle: Yeah. I really love it. I'm a big fan, and props to you guys for doing it unscripted, because I have tried to do solo episodes unscripted,

[01:06:13] and it is so hard.

[01:06:15] I just find myself, you know, just hitting these walls all the time.

[01:06:20] So it's really difficult. It's really fun. And I think it shows you guys, again,

[01:06:26] you know, your reputation precedes you,

[01:06:29] but I think it shows that you guys are just two guys talking about things that we all struggle with,

[01:06:38] whether we're a leader or not. You could be,

[01:06:42] you know, a stay at home mom. A stay at home mom is a leader.

[01:06:45] And there are. Yeah.

[01:06:47] Brandon: And big ups.

[01:06:49] Michelle: Yeah. And so these principles can apply to everyone. So I highly recommend your podcast. Love it. And good luck in the future with that.

[01:07:01] Blayne: Yeah.

[01:07:01] Michelle: So as we close, guys, I wanted to state an interesting fact that we were all guests on the Behind the Shield podcast with James Geering.

[01:07:12] Brandon: James Gearing. I just saw your episode drop, Michelle. I was like, oh, James Geering is amazing.

[01:07:21] Michelle: Oh, so much fun. And I listened to both of your episodes and just amazing. Yeah. And DD Finder was the also a guest on James's podcast and on my podcast.

[01:07:32] And so we've stayed in touch,

[01:07:35] but I know James has gotten many great guests who were recommended by other guests. So the question for you two gentlemen, is there someone you recommend as a guest on this podcast?

[01:07:49] Brandon: Oh, that's interesting. My gut reaction.

[01:07:51] Michelle: You're don't to have to tell me right now.

[01:07:53] Brandon: My gut reaction is actually Garrett Cathcart,

[01:07:57] co founder of More Perfect Union and executive director of More Perfect Union.

[01:08:03] And More Perfect Union's mission is to really, you know, bridge this divide in America right now. You know, I think we're all tired of,

[01:08:14] you know, being pitted against each other and separated.

[01:08:18] And I did say co founder. His other co founder is Jake Harriman.

[01:08:22] And he is also an incredible human being. These are just two incredible human beings that are doing yeoman's work in America with volunteers all across the United States of America that look like all of us all across the United States of America and just kind of trying to,

[01:08:41] trying to just bridge this divide. Like we gotta stop this because we're, you know, we're stronger together and far more connects us than separates us. And that's really.

[01:08:50] Those are my off the cusp recommendations.

[01:08:55] Michelle: Thank you. Yes. And I agree with you. So, yes, absolutely, Introduce us. Blayne, is there anybody that you would recommend?

[01:09:04] Blayne: I think you need to meet Joe and Melanie Quinn in Brooklyn. Our dear friend Joe Quinn worked with Brandon and I at Team Red, White and Blue.

[01:09:13] He's just a phenomenal human doing work at the community level in so many ways.

[01:09:19] And his wife is a longtime nurse at Presbyterian in New York City. Has been in the thick of it for a long time and I think is a nurse practitioner now.

[01:09:28] So she's really got the chops and has been doing the work forever.

[01:09:33] And I think they would be an interesting couple to talk to and maybe get separately, but maybe together to get their different perspectives on healthcare, nursing,

[01:09:41] engagement in the community. I mean, they're just,

[01:09:44] they're an awesome couple. They're incredibly busy. They have three young kids. They're like one of

[01:09:48] They're one of these families that you're just like. I'm not sure how they're actually doing it, but in any case, I really love those folks.

[01:09:54] Michelle: Oh, amazing. Thank you so much. Okay, well, where can people find your book and where can they connect with both of you? Where can they find your podcast?

[01:10:06] Blayne: Yeah,

[01:10:07] so our website is the easiest place to find all that stuff. So it's appliedleadershippartners.com.

[01:10:13] you can also go to perseverancebook.com, which is a direct link to where you can grab the book anywhere online.

[01:10:19] But from there, you can connect with our podcast. You can learn more about us, you can ask us questions.

[01:10:25] Brandon and I are reasonably good at the social medias, especially on LinkedIn. So if you're active on LinkedIn, find Brandon, find myself, find Applied Leadership Partners.

[01:10:33] We'd love to hear from you and connect with you there a little less. So perhaps on the other social media platforms. But our website's pretty solid. We're working on it.

[01:10:41] We're working on it, but

[01:10:43] Michelle: But the website's a real learning curve. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

[01:10:47] Brandon: Yeah,

[01:10:47] it is. But you know, Come find. We're working at it. Come find us on our Instagram @BlainePS and @BrandonYoung14.

[01:10:57] And I would be remiss if I don't just ask and say like, you know, please consider going out and buying a copy of our book. We, we really think that it will help you.

[01:11:06] We hope that it'll help you.

[01:11:08] We put a lot of heart and soul into it and so you can get anywhere you like to get books and there's even an audio version. So we hope that you will,

[01:11:17] that you will grab that and that it will be an investment in your leadership and you know, it's kind of our gift to the world. So we hope that you do that and enjoy it.

[01:11:27] Blayne: Yeah, yeah.

[01:11:28] Michelle: Yes,  I second that motion. I highly recommend it. And I actually have started reading it again,

[01:11:36] Because sometimes the first time around.

[01:11:38] With a book like yours that is so stuffed full of these gems, it's like sometimes they don't have the effect the first time and you've gotta, you remember like something about it and then I just gotta go back and read it again.

[01:11:57] So I highly recommend it. And I'll put the link in the show notes for people that wanna find it.

[01:12:03] And guys, we're at the end, which means it's the last five minutes. And even though we have had a lot of fun during this whole time,

[01:12:12] we're gonna have more fun because we do a version of the Newlywed Game since there's two of you. Oh, obviously you're not newlyweds, but it's really fun and it gives us a kind of a picture into how well you guys know each other.

[01:13:10] So my first question is for Brandon.

[01:13:14] Okay,

[01:13:15] Brandon, Blayne has the day off.

[01:13:18] Zero responsibilities.

[01:13:20] How does he spend it?

[01:13:22] Brandon: Ah, well, he's gonna start off by making a wonderful breakfast for his wife and their daughter Penny. So Jenny and Penny, if there's a school day going on, he's gonna take Penny to school.

[01:13:34] He's gonna enjoy that. He's maybe, maybe he's gonna put her on her new mountain bike and you know, let her kind of, he'll walk beside and then he's gonna get his mountain bike and he is gonna go out there and he's gonna rip some trails and you know, maybe he finds the time there to maybe even get nine holes of golf in.

[01:13:53] Maybe even meets a buddy for a beer at the end of the day.

[01:13:56] And then I see him and Jenny making dinner together and just kind of reflecting and. Yeah, that's mostly how he would spend his day.

[01:14:04] Michelle: That sounds like a perfect day.

[01:14:07] Blayne: Nailed it.

[01:14:07] Michelle: Okay, Blayne, what's one word Brandon would use to describe your leadership style?

[01:14:21] Blayne: Steady. Maybe.

[01:14:23] Michelle: Yep. Love it. Okay, Brandon, there's a billboard on the highway with Blayne's picture on it. What is the message?

[01:14:35] Brandon: Oh, man.

[01:14:37] Michelle: Blayne's just waiting. Like.

[01:14:41] Brandon: We got this.

[01:14:43] Blayne: Oh, I was gonna say you can do it. There you go.

[01:14:45] Brandon: Well, I know

[01:14:48] Like we got this. This man is a master of the hand on your shoulder. We're gonna do this and we're gonna do it together.

[01:14:57] Michelle: I love it. Okay, Blayne, what is something that Brandon is never without a water bottle.

[01:15:07] Brandon: A water bottle.

[01:15:08] Michelle: He's been holding it up the whole time. Yeah. Hey, you've got to stay hydrated.

[01:15:13] Brandon: Gotta stay hydrated, man. You gotta stay hydrated.

[01:15:16] Michelle: Especially at, especially at 5280, right?

[01:15:20] Brandon: You ain't kidding. You ain't kidding, sister.

[01:15:23] Michelle: I know, I know. Okay, Brandon, what's something about Blayne that would surprise our audience? Like a hidden talent or an unusual habit?

[01:15:37] Blayne: Something came to his mind. He doesn't want to say it.

[01:15:39] Michelle: I saw that.

[01:15:44] Blayne: Oh boy.

[01:15:47] Brandon: Well, I mean, this might be a softball, but he is,

[01:15:52] he's kind of like a lifelong guitar learner.

[01:15:55] He's been what I think he calls himself a 20 year beginner.

[01:16:00] And so he's actually quite good at the acoustic guitar and singing while he plays the acoustic guitar. And we have only had one client take us to task on this.

[01:16:12] Who?

[01:16:13] Our friends made Blayne and I get up and do a little bit of karaoke. And what they discovered is this guy can sing.

[01:16:21] Michelle: Wow. That is a hidden talent, Blayne. Very cool.

[01:16:26] Blayne: It's not that hidden talent talent. I mean, I have an acoustic guitar in the background of my screen.

[01:16:31] Michelle: Yeah. So that's true. Right. Okay, Blayne, does Brandon have a pet peeve?

[01:16:37] Blayne: Oh man.

[01:16:39] So Brandon is particular in the most endearing ways and so I will,

[01:16:44] I will say, in addition to his firm belief that water should always be cold and coffee should always be hot.

[01:16:50] The other thing I will say is that Brandon is a very thoughtful,

[01:16:55] generous gift giver.

[01:16:57] So it's weird. He does not want to show up empty handed. And even if, like we're at a client site or even if we're at an event where people are kind of thanking us for something, we still often show up with like something to offer them to say thanks or express our gratitude or make them feel like they're part of the team.

[01:17:15] But I think most people wouldn't categorize it as a pet peeve, but it almost is like Brandon is very consistent and determined to make sure that people feel wanted, seen,

[01:17:28] valued, and gifts is a way that he often does that.

[01:17:33] Michelle: Brandon, you and I are like soul brothers and sisters in that aspect. 

[01:17:39] That's one of my love languages. I absolutely love giving gifts and

[01:17:43] And yeah, it can get over the top. People that know me well, they're like, oh my God, like you stop.

[01:17:50] But it's just something that I love to do.

[01:17:52] Blayne: We've walked the streets of New York City for a longer than I want to describe trying to find the perfect bottle of wine or whiskey to bring.

[01:18:00] Because it's important stuff

[01:18:03] Michelle: It is important. Yeah.

[01:18:04] Brandon: You know why? You know what the pet peeve underneath it is,

[01:18:08] is nobody should ever be made to feel like they're walking alone.

[01:18:13] The pet peeve underneath it is you are

[01:18:17] We are with you. And you're on our team and we're on your team. And that's 

[01:18:23] why we'll walk. Poor Blayne. He's so kind.

[01:18:27] Michelle: I love it.

[01:18:27] Brandon: He's so kind. He's like, dude, just. Can we just decide on something. Exactly. Okay, Brandon, whose desk is tidier?

[01:18:39] Brandon: Blayne's. 100%.

[01:18:43] Michelle: Okay, last question.

[01:18:44] Brandon: You can't see. There's a disaster right over off the screen right here.

[01:18:51] Michelle: I love it. Okay, last question is for Blayne. How would Brandon finish this sentence? Leadership is ________

[01:19:00] Blayne: Wow. How much time you got? We have to do a whole another hour and a half here.

[01:19:04] Okay. I'm gonna say. He would say leadership is non negotiable.

[01:19:13] It's important.

[01:19:15] It's not a nice to have.

[01:19:17] Michelle: I love it. That's a great point to end our talk on. And again, Brandon and Blayne, I want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing your expertise in leadership.

[01:19:30] I want to thank you again for your service to our country.

[01:19:34] I value and appreciate my freedom and so I thank you for that and just man there. There's not two more,

[01:19:44] like just down to earth guys that I have chatted with. So this has been a real joy for me.

[01:19:53] Thank you. I appreciate you.

[01:19:54] Blayne: Thank you, Michelle. It's been a blast. Thanks for having me. Seriously.

[01:19:57] Brandon: Thanks so much.

[01:19:59] Michelle: You guys have a great rest of your day. Have a great flight. Blayne.

[01:20:02] Brandon: Take care, Michelle. Yeah, man. Pick you up soon.

[01:20:05] Blayne: Take care.

[01:20:06] Brandon: Bye.