Task Force Entrepreneur
Task Force Entrepreneur (TFE) is a podcast for entrepreneurs interested in the service industry. It began as a way to document the creation of a new service-oriented business, and aims to provide a no-fluff narrative on all things entrepreneur!
Task Force Entrepreneur
What the U.S. Army Special Forces Taught Me About Finding Your Why
In 2007, I was in Northern Iraq, assigned to the 25th Infantry Division. While there, I decided to try out for the elite U.S. Army Special Forces. While I never fully got a chance to test myself in their selection process, I learned a lot preparing for it, and got some amazing wisdom dropped on me by some senior Special Forces soldiers. In today's show, we dive into what I learned about Finding Your Why. Originally aired August 24, 2023.
Hey everybody Mike here, and welcome to Task Force Entrepreneur. The podcast I started went from being a tech engineer to starting a house cleaning business. Yep, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I hope you enjoy the show. Hey, what's up? Everybody Mike here, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1:In today's episode we're going to talk about finding your why, and this is really a topic that is near and dear to me. It's something I not just read in a book but had some experience with, and I want to share that with you. But before we get into that, what is your why? What is the whole concept of a why, and I'm sure many of you have heard this before. So what does it really mean? My definition of the why is it's the one thing that will keep you motivated and going, even when things are hard. That's how I would simplify it. So let me give you a story of how I kind of ran into this concept. So let's see, I'm turning the clock here. I'm turning it back.
Speaker 1:I was in the US Army. I was actually in Iraq, so I was deployed and I was interested in joining the US Army Special Forces and for those of you that don't know the process, to join Special Forces and be selected is you go to a selection. So it's a process where you fly there, you get checked in and everything, and now you're assigned there and it's literally a whole selection process where you have to do a bunch of things. But the reason selection is very hard and a lot of people don't make it through is because it's filled with uncertainty. I mean, picture waking up at four in the morning. You've gotten two hours of sleep and someone says all right, let's go, we're running. Let's add to that You're nursing a stress fracture in your left ankle, you've got a horrible headache, maybe you have some awful blisters on your right foot because you guys marched 15 miles a day before. But guess what? It's time to run. You don't get to ask questions, you don't get a break, you get to go. Now, of course, if you don't want to do it, you just quit and you leave selection. So you can see very quickly how this is a tough situation for a lot of people to handle, and it's tough. It's already hard enough if I said, hey, we're going running, we're going to do five miles and you don't feel like it. But what if I said we're going running and we might do two miles, we might do eight. That uncertainty really messes with people. So that was my goal.
Speaker 1:I wanted to get to selection right, which is only the first process, first part of the process to becoming a Special Forces soldier anyway, but I want to focus there. So at some point I'm deployed to the Middle East and I am in the US Army of active duty and I wanted to become a Special Forces soldier and I knew some folks that had been through the training before. So they gave me some tips and I started training with a couple of other people. So our training oftentimes would be working a 12 hour shift and then going on a ruck march where you carry a 60 pound or so ruck sack on your back and you do miles and miles, and miles. You know, I think one night we did like 17 miles, which was just basically a giant loop. Needless to say, we were pushing ourselves really hard and definitely to our limits. I mean, I don't think to this date I've ever thrown up from running, but gosh, I was definitely close many, many times. So, and on top of that, by the way, you're in the desert, so it's a little warm while you're doing all of this stuff.
Speaker 1:So anyway, while I was doing all of this and trying to train and get better, there was this old, old Special Forces soldier there, and he was very wise. It was just one of those I don't know how to explain it I was very young, he was much older. He seemed to know what he was talking about. So every word that came out of his mouth about Special Forces I was listening. So one day I asked him. I said you know, what advice do you have for me when I get out there? You know what's the thing that can help me? And he thought about it a minute and he said you need to find your why and you need to make sure that, whatever your why is, when things get hard, when you're ready to quit, when you're throwing up, when you're, you know, completely physically, emotionally, mentally exhausted, this needs to be the one thing that will make you get up and push through the pain and all of that. And this guy in particular told me that for him, his why was his daughter. So he, you know, he said I had this massive heavy pack on my back, I was exhausted, I felt like collapsing, and every time I got to that point I would think about her. And then he was. You know, he would get up and summon a little extra strength and keep going. So that's where I learned the concept of why and that was a really, really powerful way to learn it for me.
Speaker 1:Now, for you all, you might have heard the concept through Simon Sinek. He's an author written. Start with why, find your why, a couple of books on the topic and you know, if you wanna really dive into it, that's a great resource. But you know, I'll tell you kind of one of the stories that I picked from one of Simon's books was he was talking about sitting down next to a guy on a plane and you know he, basically the guy was in the business of steel. He manufactured steel, which, you know, nobody really gets up, wakes up in the morning excited about steel, but this guy did. You know, it was kind of one of those interesting moments, I think, and the reason that he was so passionate about this business was not because of, you know, steel, right, the reason he was passionate and very successful was because he was very motivated to create steel with low carbon emissions and to make products that were easier to recycle. So his why was to keep the environment clean for his kids and his grandkids and their grandkids. So when you're motivated by something that big, you don't quit.
Speaker 1:And I think it's natural at this point to think well, how do you find your why? And you might be tempted to cop out and say you know my kids, my wife, my husband, you know whatever right money. But I would really recommend that you take some time to think about how you work, to write down the routines that you went through when you were performing your very best in the past, and then to also take stock of, kind of the high level skills that you possess currently. So for me just to give you a practical example when I sat back before I started Mission Cleaning Services, you know I really asked myself this question many times and my answer was usually that my why was financial freedom, which you know has benefits that trickle down to other things that I care about, like making a positive impact in the world and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:But I really started thinking about it and I realized that, if you go back to any time in my life, the times that I really excelled were when I was serving somebody else, providing some kind of service. And you know, it might be just as simple, as you know, holding a door open or helping a stranger push their car off the road or, you know, after an accident or whatever, right, it could just be something that helped somebody else. That's when I realized that, you know, those are the moments that I personally got a lot of value from. So then I continued that. Right, I looked at what skills I had currently acquired. Right, so I'd like to be in service of other people in the community. And then, as far as skills, I have technology skills as far as you know, creating websites and marketing and advertising campaigns with Google ads, that kind of thing. I also have sales experience and oh yeah, by the way, I can clean. Hopefully you see where I'm going when I paint it the way I just did for you. It's pretty obvious that a cleaning business just makes sense and that's pretty much the. You know, that was kind of the aha moment that I had.
Speaker 1:So I guess, just kind of closing this out, my advice would be that if you're on the fence trying to find your next thing, really do some soul searching, look for that why. What is your why? What motivates you? What is going to push you through those dark times when you're injured and it's raining and you don't feel like going on that run. Hey, finding your why isn't super easy, but you know what is? Giving me a review, which you know that was a bad plug, but seriously, reviews mean everything with podcasts and I don't have that many, so if you'd leave me a review, it would mean a lot. Thanks and have a great day.
