Brungardt Law's Lagniappe
A little extra perspective from Brungardt Law conveyed through conversations with individuals of various backgrounds exploring the interplay of practices, policies, and laws with decision making and leadership. An opportunity to learn how to navigate towards productive outcomes as well as appreciate the journey through the experiences and observations of others.
Brungardt Law's Lagniappe
From Breakdown to Breakthrough: A Conversation with Ron Holloway
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Drawing from lived experience in high-stress government service, Ron Holloway explores warning signs that often go unnoticed, how institutions respond when people break, and why true strength lies not in endurance alone, but in adaptation. Ron is a former U.S. Department of State Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) special agent and Foreign Affairs Officer in the Rewards for Justice program, who later served as a Human Capital Advisor for DSS. Now a certified professional career coach and resilience consultant, he works with leaders and organizations to turn disruption into opportunity and is the author of Antifragility: 10 Principles to Live By to Turn Crisis into Opportunity.
In careers defined by pressure, uncertainty, and constant readiness, mental health often becomes the quiet fault line beneath the surface. Too often, mental health is treated as an afterthought, acknowledged only once strain becomes visible or crisis unavoidable. When that fault line finally shifts, it forces a reckoning with identity, strength, and the limits of endurance, revealing the possibility not just of recovery, but of growth shaped by self-awareness, support, and redefinition of what it means to truly thrive. Welcome to Brungart Laws Lang App, where we provide a little extra perspective through conversations with individuals from across the spectrum of society. I'm Maurice Brungart, your host. I enjoy engaging with experienced, knowledgeable, and passionate people for the opportunity it affords to enrich our own understanding of the world through their eyes. The more we learn, the more likely we can become better versions of ourselves and guide others towards the same. Today's guest is Ron Holloway. He is a former U.S. Department of State Diplomatic Security Service Special Agent, Foreign Affairs Officer in the Rewards for Justice program, and senior advisor for human capital development for diplomatic security. He is now a certified professional career coach, resilience consultant, national security media commentator, and author of Anti-Fragility 10 Principles to Live By to Turn Crisis into Opportunity. Welcome to the program, Ron. Thanks, my friend. It's good to see you again. Absolutely. Well, why don't you tell the audience a bit about your background?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I moved around as a kid, but I consider myself Alaskan because that's where I spent my formative years. Uh and my environment shaped me in that way. I uh I'm the oldest of five, which will be relevant later when we start talking about how I ended up where I am. And uh former special agent, former Army human human intelligence collector, and uh, like you said, senior advisor responsible for training our special agents, 2,000 agents, 40 uh 48,000 support personnel to be able to lead in a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. I earned a master's degree, leadership organizational development uh from the University of Texas in Dallas. My BA is international relations in Japanese. And uh now I work on helping businesses and individuals thrive during what some call crisis that I just call change in the status quo.
Speaker:Tell us about your time in DS.
Speaker 2:Uh so I guess my time in DS started uh long before people realized I was in DS. So in the Army, uh at 18 years old, I went to language school in DC. And there was a DS agent learning concurrently, and that's where I first learned about DS. So I learned about it at 18. I had to complete a five-year enlistment and get my four-year degree to apply. So I stayed the course for those nine years and became or that time, and I became a special agent at 29. Uh, as an agent, you know, we're kind of jacks of all trades, and they say masters of none. So I found a niche to master in, which was major event security. So keeping athletes and fans safe at events, multiple Olympics, multiple World Cups. And uh the World Cup South Africa was kind of my last uh real role of responsibility as an agent. And as you know, and the the audience will learn later, is I had a health health change that seemed like a crisis at the time and did have you know a lot of pain involved. Uh that changed me and uh changed me for the better. And uh became first social media influencer in the government because I wanted to teach all these things I hope to share today to my fellow agents as a way to protect them. Not just I couldn't do it physically, but I could do it mentally and psychologically. And here I am uh in just outside Dallas, Texas. And we're looking at our snowfall in a place where uh we don't have any of the equipment to clear the snow and infrastructure that went out last time. So we're just being ready, being flexible, and uh, I'm looking forward to the snow.
Speaker:Well, that's the name of the game, Semper Gumby, always flexible.
Speaker 2:Uh regarding Semper Progretiens, right?
Speaker:Yeah, uh regarding your time and major events, uh, for the benefit of the audience, if you could give them some context in the sense of you know that fell within the protection uh responsibility of DS and what the major events coordination unit uh exactly consisted of and what they did and whom they were supporting.
Speaker 2:So 2004, Athens, Greece was the first Olympics post-9-11 during the global war on terrorism. And as that time, they decided uh we're going to take the lead. State Department was the lead on Olympics, DS is the lead on organizing the intergovernment agencies and the protective functions for major events like the Olympics, World Cup, Women World's Cup, you name it. Um, and I started off there when I was working in protective intelligence. I uh had a protective intelligence team. We analyzed threats and investigated threats to teams, terrorist threats, what have you, uh civil disobedience. Moved on. Uh, I think my next event was Trino, Italy, where I was a field liaison officer responsible for uh the uh training ice skating rink and short track speedy skating uh rings or rink. Uh one of the funny things from that is my daughter just saw the famous uh figure skater from that time, Johnny Weir, on TV, and I was able to tell her, hey, I protected that guy and all of his backstory and know how he acts in real life. So my kid thought that was pretty cool. I moved on to higher roles. I was embedded in a team in Germany for the World Cup and also in 2006. And let's see what other events. Vancouver, 2010. I was in the major events coordination unit. We're the headquarters unit responsible for the interagency uh on the macro level, advising the on-the-ground uh coordinators who were there two years in advance and setting up logistics and providing guidance during the events. First was uh in that capacity, and that in that role was the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, where we didn't have any snow. And uh then following that, like we had some issues in setting up for South Africa's World Cup, and they sent me in as a subject matter expert because at that time I had worked more events than anyone. Um, and I was the lead advance, and I had to get all of these people who had been fighting, who didn't have a plan, and all outranked me to work together to make this thing work. And I learned about communication, leading up, leading down, being a meta leader, so being able to lead not only vertically up and down, but horizontally with my peers. And uh high stress situation I was in. I was a young man, 35. Uh, there were some signs that I was gonna break down. I was having nightmares at night. My worst possible nightmares being eaten by rats. I had a nightmare about that. I was having some anxiety attacks or panic attacks at night that I didn't know what they were. Thought I was having a heart attack. And uh after that assignment was finished, and something happened in my personal life that just added to the stress.
Speaker:And those nightmares were occurring during your temporary duty assignment and sport major events there in South Africa, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was when I was down there, and you know, I was the first one in, last one out when it comes to DC-based people, and I had a lot of pressure on me because I was sent there by the director to be the one to get it on track, even though I was a journeyman-level special agent, and I was dealing with very high level, even the ambassador of the embassy, trying to get them to work together. And it was just a lot of pressure. I put a lot of pressure on myself, and uh just all added up. And I had an underlying uh mental health condition that hadn't manifested, and it did, and I had a breakdown. Uh 35 years old, two kids upside down on my house, and my body is my my whole system was like a car that's driving down the road. I was on my way to London, so I'm going to this cool location. I was gonna be there two years, but I'm going down the road and suddenly it's like the radio turned on really loud, and the windshield wipers turned down, and the engine started making noise, and it was just sensory overload, and my system couldn't handle it, and uh I broke to the point that I was in an altered state. I mean, you don't get as low as I got at that time, mental health-wise. And I was fine. If I went in 2010, I I didn't go in the hospital. Happened again March Madness, 2011. And uh I ended up in the hospital under an observation. They said I had depression. Uh, they said that because I was using counter inter counterinterrogation technique so that I could keep my job. And I got the wrong medication, and then shortly thereafter, I uh was in the hospital again in psychosis, and uh that's when they determined at that time that I'm on the bipolar spectrum and that I had gone from mania into full-blown psychosis.
Speaker:To interrupt you uh momentarily and uh going back uh uh momentarily, so you mentioned you were using your counter uh intelligence interrogation experience, alluding to your time in the army, when you were under uh uh professional medical care observation in order to keep your job. If you could elaborate on that, that way the audience understands what it is you're talking about, what your concerns were.
Speaker 1:Uh yeah.
Speaker 2:So if you have a mental condition, it doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna lose your job, which I didn't know. Uh they're gonna look at it and put you through it's called a fitness for duty evaluation, and they're gonna look at what your diagnosis is, uh how bad it is, and whether or not you are compliant and responsive to treatment. But I also had to sign a paper saying that I would go along, and if I didn't go along, I could be put in jail. So the counter interrogation technique was if they didn't ask me what else, I didn't offer, so I answered every question with one point, and I didn't give them the full story because as an interrogator I know the key else. What else happened, what else happened. And the narrative I understood at the time myself, and that I was because I didn't realize I was bipolar, um it it fit, they accepted it, they kept me there for a week against my will. And uh I had worked at the survival school in the army, uh, one of them, and uh I treated it like a POW. And to my to my misfortune, I did that because had they caught it earlier and had gotten the treatment I needed, I may not have progressed in my illness to the point that I did. So I would say go along. The treatment is good for you, work with the doctors as a team, and uh don't get stuck in denial or anger toward your situation.
Speaker:So, your concerns again were fear of losing your job as a federal law enforcement officer. And would it be safe to assume in the question it was also a fear of losing your national security eligibility?
Speaker 2:Um yeah, the security, security clearance eligibility. There was a lot that I did not know about how law enforcement looks at something like I was experiencing. It turns out there were three agents a month that were going into the fitness for duty evaluation, and I had never been educated in how the process works. I know there's a stigma against people with mental health conditions. I know that we are one of the stigmas is that we're dangerous, even though most people with a mental health condition are victims of crime, of violent crime, as opposed to perpet perpetrators, and I'm in a security organization, and if I appear to be a threat, I will get mitigated. So I had all of these things in my mind, and then the stress also is I'm in DC, single income, housing crisis, it just burst. So I'm a hundred grand upside down on my house. Uh my kids were young. So I had financial pressures on me, and I'd lost over 25% of my income. So I wasn't just trying to keep my job, I was trying to keep my family fed. And that was the only job I knew.
Speaker:And you had mentioned uh the the nightmares. Uh could one say that those were potential red flags, or they were red flags? Because you know you never experienced those types of uh negative dreams in the past, right?
Speaker 2:No, never. And I wasn't aware of their significance. And a lot of times, you know, it's something happens, you go back to sleep, you wake up the next morning, you feel fine and fresh. And it wasn't happening every night. But it it was atypical, it should have been a red flag. If I knew I had this underlying mental health condition, which my father also had or has, and uh what the warning signs, maybe I would have backed off. And if diplomatic security had a better understanding of mental health and stress they put on people and made it okay to talk about those challenges, maybe they would have shifted and I wouldn't have had the degree of stress that basically broke me at this fragile spot.
Speaker:So when we say if diplomatic security only had uh their fitness for duty uh evaluation process is reactive in nature, and what you're referring to is a framework that's proactive in nature.
Speaker 2:Right. And that was part of what I was responsible for developing when I was a senior advisor for human capital development.
Speaker:When uh you were going through this sort of personal tsunami, um I assume you had moments of lucidity and then moments of uh being overwhelmed by uh the effects of bipolarity, correct?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay, yeah. I mean, yeah, it was uh disabling to a point.
Speaker:Um and at one point, if I recall, you experienced a temporary bout of visual restrictions, almost blindness, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. Uh 2010, I was manic. I was out wandering DC. I wasn't in full psychosis. I checked into a hotel. Uh I started having delusions. I thought I had to save my friends. Uh luckily I didn't think I would I could fly, so I didn't jump out the window and try to sit do it do a Superman. But I'm trying to make it out of this hotel, and I'm going blind. And in my mind, I just keep going. And what it was a weird blindness in that I couldn't see below a certain level. So, for instance, I got on the elevator and I could only see the buttons for the floors that were higher than when I was. I couldn't see the buttons that got me down to the lobby.
Speaker:Was it like a total blackout or just uh a blur?
Speaker 2:It wasn't total, it was like I couldn't see certain things. It was like I said, it was it was almost like I was blind from the nose down. I didn't know to lower my nose.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker 2:Uh so my sensory was all messed up. So sounds were amplified, smells were amplified each time. Uh, like I said, my system went haywire as if my car started doing all this crazy stuff.
Speaker:Yeah. And uh, how many times were you hospitalized due to this? Twice. Twice. Okay. Twice. Uh and it was, I take it based on what you've told us so far, it was after the second hospitalization that they diagnosed you for being bipolar. Uh okay. So during that second hospitalization, this is what they determined you were no longer engaging in your uh POW uh mindset uh tactics, right?
Speaker 2:No, when I showed up, I you may recall is I had to be strapped down to the bed. I was in full psychosis, speaking in some strange language, I thought was Lakoted, and I thought the Terminators were coming to get me. So I was strapped down. I was hitting the leg with a tranquilizer, which is crazy because I was out like a light, uh saying some pretty crazy things to the nurses and flirting with them while I'm crazy. Uh but yeah, I woke up on a hospital bed with no sheets, so I don't hang myself. And people coming around me, and I don't know who they are or what's going on, and telling me to take medicine that I no one had ever told me about the medicine. And immediately was disorienting, and then I oriented myself to the space. Huh. So But another thing was after the first time I went in the hospital, second, my wife said, This is the last time I'm taking you. I'll have to get there myself because she was terrified bringing me up there, and she was right to say.
unknown:It.
Speaker 2:So I didn't want to put that on her. So I just faced reality, radically accepted that something was wrong. And uh my only survival through this fitness for duty, taking care of my family is to truly get into treatment, get myself better, and uh listen to the doctors.
Speaker:Did you feel that your identity shifted during this time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Um like I said earlier in the intro, I'm the oldest of five. Uh, not only that, is I had a rough childhood. My father had mental health problems. He had once walked into the bedroom uh gonna commit a murder suicide. Uh, spent time in a women's shelter, and then one time he broke into the house uh to try to rape my mom, and she fought him off, and then he stormed out. He was in this psychotic, weird space, homicidal, and I became a protector as my identity for the rest of my life. That was who I was. I became a bodyguard for my mom and my sisters long before I was ever a special agent. If anything, it was the reason why that field appealed to me because finally I would be around other people who have vigilance, I thought, and I wouldn't have to protect because I protected everyone. Uh, hyper-vigilance, and you may not know this, but give an example if you and I were to walk down the street together on the sidewalk, I would walk on the side next to the street and have you walk on the inside, and you would never know I'm doing it. And all of that lifetime from age seven to age 35 of being in that state was really what led to the break. It wasn't just the stress of that moment of being in a stressful temporary assignment. I I likened it to breaking a bone. When I was a child, I broke a bone. It mended, but it hadn't been treated, so it didn't mend properly. So there was a structural weakness, and I had been walking on this unmended, this mended but not properly mended bone, and then enough pressure came and it snapped.
Speaker:When the doctors told you, uh hey, Mr. Holloway, you're bipolar.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker:How how how did how did you receive it? What did it provide a moment of clarity, or did you find you were immediately defensive to it? Uh did it feel like a weight was lifted off your shoulders, or all of the above?
Speaker 2:No, it was a I was glad that I wasn't schizophrenic. And uh which you know carries a more of a stigma than bipolar. I didn't know much about bipolar. Uh I didn't like having a label. But I think something I know about survivors is they get to a place of acceptance faster than non-survivors. So you go through the grief process a lot faster if you're going to survive. So I had to accept it. I needed some kind of a diagnosis in order to have some kind of treatment. So I accepted the diagnosis, I did the work because I want to keep my job. And my strategy to keep the job was because most people get put out. Is I know I'm being watched by my boss in major events. I went in, I went back to work immediately, all frizzled and frazzled. I'm being watched. I know that people love an underdog, and I can't at all lose my cool because uh people will think I'm a there's already a stigma that I'm a threat. So I changed my behavior. Uh how I identified myself again. I was in SEER school, uh, survival school. And I quashed any beef that I had with anyone. I became very polite. And uh since I knew that I was being watched, I wanted the reporting that went back to the seniors, is that Ron's really getting into this, doing what's right, so that when they do the final assessment, they're already cheering for me. And it worked. I couldn't stay an agent because I had suicidal ideations and some other issues, but they did retain me. I did retain my security clearance, and they eventually, after a three-year period that I was under that stress, I found another job, and I was still able to provide for my family. And yes, it changed my identity, but my identity was also that I was a survivor.
Speaker:In terms of individual institutional support, how did this play into that time?
Speaker 1:Uh as sure.
Speaker:So go ahead, don't mean it or uh how did it play into this time uh as you were in crisis mode? Uh and please forgive me, uh, but again, it's the words that come to mind. Um and then transitioning out of crisis mode, sort of the recovery process. Uh how did individual institutional support play into this? Uh, and what did you find worked best in your recovery?
Speaker 2:Okay, so official uh uh institutional support. We have something called the peer support group, supposed to help people when they're under duress. For whatever reason, they never contacted me. I learned about them probably about a year into this journey when I contacted them to help me find a job. I had spoken to that the person in charge of that group a total of two times.
Speaker:Do you support I had? Do you think perhaps it could have, I mean, at the risk of speculating, uh, do you think it could have been that instead of them reaching out proactively saying we would like to support you, but this is sort of out of our purfew, uh or not?
Speaker 2:So part of the issue structurally in the organization is I belong to Med, not DS, even though I was still in a DS role. Um and by med you mean state med. Yes, state medical department. Uh so there was limits to what they could do officially, but I had support that was informal, that was probably a lot more important. So friends, people like you, like a few people who really stuck with me and understood, tried to understand what I was going through. Um, I write about it in my article for the Foreign Service Journal. Uh I was the people I worked with, my supervisor had had had been through a fitness for duty. He had a breakdown. And he was he's a real gentleman, so he was good to me. Uh, our office management specialist. Uh I became closer with her, so that I wasn't stuck in my head at this cubicle all day long. But the truth is you need support, even with people, you feel alone. And uh the onus was in my wife, of course. My family supported, but as far as official work stuff, that's it. Official and unofficial. But the truth is you have to go on the field and play. So no one ever questioned me about going to a doctor's appointment, no one ever questioned me if I went for a long run uh and worked out. They gave me that, and it was it was uh mutual effort because I also stayed cool and tried to be as helpful in the ways that I could in the office. But survival rules of survival, there are a number of them that could help you. One of them is maintain a positive attitude, and other people can help you do that, get to a place of acceptance. There's a whole host of them, and I recommend everyone read Deep Survival, Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. And I know I gave you that book a long time ago, and I've given it out to probably about a hundred people. But I I veered away from your question, so I'll let you go back, get me back on track.
Speaker:Sure. So, what did you learn during this time about workplace culture and how they can truly support individuals in crisis? And I'll reframe this uh to ensure we remain on point. You know, it for those out there that may be listening, whether they run a small mom and pop shop or someone who is in a larger organization, private or public, how can a workplace culture help someone who experiences a mental health issue such as yours, regardless of what the underlying cause is?
Speaker 2:Right. So destigmatate destigmatizing it is huge. Uh, understanding the pressures that you put on people as a leader and knowing when to turn the pressure off. Um it's kind of different between public and private because public can accept you being less efficient and less productive. Whereas in the private sector, they can't afford to have someone who's not doing the job to the fullest that they're profitable. So it's kind of there's a different, there's a different reality there. Um but awareness, uh, people in charge who are creating the pressure, knowing when to back off and when when they can do it. Uh having medical. So resilience became a big thing about 2010 in the private sector. Resilience was the business buzzword of the time. So making medical health affordable, letting people take as much time to go to the doctor as they need. Uh, big one is treating people who are in duress with respect. Uh and those are the ones that come to mind. Resilience ended up meaning everything to everyone. It became the buzzword, like I said. So resilience in some places meant having a lactation room, which I didn't need, but you know, someone else might uh seeing the whole person. So a lot of times we can get we see the work facet of this person and not the totality of the person, as to their history and the stressors going on in the rest of their lives. So I think those are the big ones that are as opposed to you know all the bells and whistles stuff.
Speaker:Where what do you think is the biggest mistake people can make when a colleague, friend, relative is undergoing a mental health uh issue?
Speaker 2:Assuming you know what they're going through on a superficial level and giving advice. Um speaking in you have to understand this person may be in a more heightened state of agitation. So you have to be aware, and one of the things I say to people, I use this analogy, is if I have a third-degree burn physical, and you can see it, well, then you know not to slap me on the shoulder in that spot. But if it's underneath a shirt and I you don't know about it, and you hit me on the shoulder, I might react in an extreme way that you're not expecting. And understand that this person dealing with this mental health condition, you may not understand it. You may not see it on the surface, depending on how they carry themselves. But you have to know that you can't go around slapping them on the back. You got to kind of modify and take a gentler approach with them, gentler to honest.
Speaker:Okay. Um you mentioned the private sector went through a shift, resilience becoming a buzzword. Uh, let's delve into that momentarily and the value as a model of care that institutions can create if they don't have, or if they have it, that they reassess that it's creating uh a mechanism for people to truly recover, return to work, and be productive individuals again. Uh if you could elaborate from your experiences, what progress have you seen in both government corporate environment during and since that time?
Speaker 2:Well, something I really pushed when I was in, and I wrote a white paper about it after I was sick about the fitness for duty and the mental health issue, and and DS is law enforcement in general, is uh awareness that people can have these things, you don't know it, knowing how to give knowing symptoms of a bigger cause and picking up on them earlier so that you can adjust knowing that someone else, your employee may not respond to things the same way you do, as say a CEO. And if you have if you create a high stress, high pressure uh environment where the nature of the field you have is high stress, high pressure, then if you want to be successful, you have to know when to shift it back, otherwise, you're gonna burn people out. Signs of burnout, uh things to watch out, or signs are things to watch out for, observation of your people, uh larger scale in an organization, looking at overall morale, um, understanding how certain decisions are going to affect either an individual or the organization at large in terms of the emotional state of the organization. So, for instance, in the private sector, a big one that gets people are mergers. People hear a mergers coming, they don't know if they're gonna have a job, they don't know who the CEO is, there's a lot of uncertainty. And in that place, people's imaginations can go wild. And mergers, a lot of times, they have issues because unless both sides agree to the mutual benefit as opposed to a takeover, it can be very hostile and uh unsettling for the employees. And going back to what we were talking about yesterday, is the idea of choke points, knowing the choke points are ahead. So for the audience's sake, when we run a protective detail, a motorcade run, we analyze the route and we look at certain spots where we're most likely to be hit because they have certain characteristics. So maybe different routes converge at that spot, so on time and place, uh predictable. Maybe it's that spot has high sidewalks, and it's a narrow street that can be closed off from the front and the back. So that's a good place to attack you, a good ambush spot. And because you can't always be in a heightened state of alertness, uh, we look at vigilance with using something called Cooper's colors. So white, you're completely clueless, but you can be in your house. Then yellow, it goes up depending on the situation, and it has its characteristics. Red, you know that you got to pay attention. And then I think it's black, is the last one, you're dead. And you need to know when you're going from orange to red, and what's perspective, what's going on with your company and adjusting things accordingly so that your people don't go into the black.
Speaker:Considering in the United States, the vast majority of the economy is moving forward on the backs of small and medium enterprises. What happens, or what have you been able to observe, if any, and if you can't comment, just say so. But again, going to the you know, mom and pop shop, someone who you know it's you know, two to five employees, including the business owner, um, or even larger. But when it's the actual entrepreneur, the owner of the business that is experiencing this moment, um, how do they contend with it?
Speaker 2:So I think the ones who best contend with it, and I've got a framework, the four Ps, uh, perceive that something's changing in your environment that will affect you. Prepare accordingly, whether that's psychologically, financially, or materially, knowing in the moment of truth when impact comes, and your industry is affected, how to prevail over that moment, whether it's using the aid framework of assess, identify options, decide on a course of action, and execute, so that you're not trying to figure out what to do or other crisis leadership models. And then also looking at where if you transform your business, where you can have prosperity and uh profit in a New environment. Let's take away the element of surprise by being aware. Let's not allow whatever this thing that could be a crisis become a crisis because it surprises us. Allow to shift our identity as an organization, whether a small business or a large business, to change with the markets, to change with technological change, all of these external factors that you're dealing with as a business. So having intelligence, an intelligence process, an intelligence-oriented way of looking at the world. I mean, I would I really say this prosperity thing because it is all these things that people call crisis, I call change in the status quo. And if you adapt earlier and better, if you change as a catalyst for adaptation, adapt earlier and better, you're the fittest, and it pays to be the fittest. And you may have to change your organization's uh identity, what you produce. If you think of yourself, you say, I have five employees, I have five great employees. They're trained, we have unit cohesion, uh, they trust leadership. You have that, right? If I couldn't just remember that and know that that can be applicable in another kind of business that's more in demand, and I can get to that business before the other competitors in my in my field, well then I can prosper. But you got to be able to shift your identity and you shift your identity and you adapt earlier and better the competition by beginning adaptation earlier, and that's what I teach people in the moment, the moment of everything comes down to preparation. Either invest it in, you uh challenge the bias that tomorrow will be just like yesterday. You remove ego from the equation, and flexibility is life, and rigidity is death.
Speaker:Well, let's translate or apply this again to the business owner in the following way. So, from your experience, uh and you mentioned, not only did you have the stressors that came along from work, you also had those in uh that were tied to your tendency and desire to protect the family. And then there's the financial stressors, you know, the debts and whatnot. Um, those I think are easily transferable to a self-employed individual, whether they are running everything on their own or they have people working for them, it still transfers over to that self-employed entrepreneur. And my question is there are plenty out there that they probably go through the same scenario as you. Again, they're trying to take care of their kids. Uh they are dealing with debt issues, uh, they are trying to take care of their own employees, they're trying to ensure the business thrives because there are no guarantees. You can have uh a business that is in demand, uh, but you got to be able to keep up with it. Uh and you know, you could be very popular and you could have good brand name recognition, but again, uh you could falter for whatever reason, and your brand name uh actually could work against you because now everybody associates it, so on and so forth. And what I'm getting to is now the person who owns the business, they are starting to enter into a potential mental crisis, which is being uh created by all these external stressors, or they may have an underlying issue that was never realized before, like in your situation, but now it's being triggered by these external events, and they don't have an organization large enough to have a framework in place, right? Like a corporation or a government organization that can uh create a process when one of its people, right? So, how does a business owner, what would you suggest they do to prepare for that potential contingency? Because I'm sure it happens day in, day out.
Speaker 2:So okay, so we're gonna back up to what happened before I broke. Because there was a lot that happened that actually prepared me for it. I'm a constant learner. I learned about psychology. I had been tested as a child and had a survivor mentality already. So my trauma from earlier prepared me for my trauma later. Okay. Um I was fortunately for me, I had hit on the right books. As a soldier, I had discipline. One of the things I have to survive is develop is to bring some discipline to what I'm doing. I have to be observant and change my own thoughts, which means I have to catch them before I go down a rabbit hole. I had vigilance that helped me in that respect. Uh books, and I mentioned deep survival. Deep survival both contributed to me breaking because I started to see how accidents are created visibly. And uh, but it also they had prepared me for this moment of truth. And I literally took what was in that book, wrote out a treatment plan and an approach to what I was doing to recover, and gave it to my therapist. Another thing I would do, and it goes back to listening to this podcast, reflecting on it, taking the nuggets from learn from somebody who's already been hit. Yeah, and so investing your time wisely. And then as a small business person, there are so one I think people my strategy for dealing with a crisis is not to let it become a crisis. And it becomes a crisis when you've missed the tripwires. And it'd be there were indicators ahead of time, me having nightmares, me overeating, whatever that were signs that I was gonna break. Had I known that, I may never have broken. Other things that helped me is I had a flo I had studied philosophy already. I was very interested in Bushido. I was learning about samurai and the the that mindset as a young man. I would move to Japan uh to study for that reason. Uh I had invested my time in learning Aikido, which had a certain philosophy but also technique, uh principles to it that helped me. And then I have some things that are part of how my I am neurodivergent. I diverge from the norm. So I'm I happen to be very good at pattern recognition and seeing secondary and tertiary effects of things. And I was actually tested when I went into the I'm also most likely about to be tested for autism. And some of the benefits of that are pattern recognition. So I can see things coming based on earlier parts of the pattern or cycle taking place. And I was actually, when I went in the army, I joined it, I I I launched at 18. And my job as an interrogator, we all had a language, and they would give us a test, the defense language aptitude battery. And I had scored so highly on it, and it not only tests your ability to learn a language, it allows it, it tests your ability to learn rules in real time and apply them immediately because I'm uh it was all gibberish language. It wasn't gibberish, it wasn't an actual language that I was being tested in. So I was able to recognize patterns, uh, see where something maybe related in some way to a romance language or a Germanic language, and just to kind of say I I was fortunate to have that quality that at 18 they wanted me to go to West Point because they told me they wanted officers that think like me. Uh, so I have personal qualities that come from what people think of as a disability, the autism part, but they're the positive qualities, so I had that going for me. Part of the bipolar is you it comes with creativity, many artists that we know of, uh, writers, Martin Luther King Jr., Van Gogh, they were all on the spectrum. Uh so I could have both focus and expansiveness, which gave me a real a real advantage when I started dealing with bipolar or my my situation because I could take things I already learned and reapply it. I could take Sun Tzu's The Art of War, with part of which is know yourself. If you don't know yourself, you don't know your enemy, you're screwed. So I had to have self-awareness and self-knowledge. I also had to know my adversary, this mental health condition, how it attacks, how to defeat it. If I have those two things, I can win. So here I am as a soldier learning Sun Tzu, later applying it in real life. Uh Aikido in my mind, as I visualize this issue, I am facing a larger opponent that is aggressive. I can't meet it head on with strength. It's more powerful me than me in that way. But I can blend with it, I can use techniques to bring it under control, and I can keep moving. And I can maintain my center, uh you know, and I keep maintaining your center physically, but also maintaining your center your center mentally. So I was able to maintain my center. But going back to your question, another one of my expansive answers is opportunity favors the prepared mind. So learn constantly. And since you are a human and everything you do is by with and through other human beings, study psychology, study philosophy, study behavioral economics, anything to do with human experience, know it really well. And that will help you when you're dealing with your own atypical human experience.
Speaker:So would it be safe to say that even a self-employed individual who has very little time on their hands uh for other activities because they have to get up early in the morning, make sure the kids get off to school, then get everything ready for the business, meet with clients or customers, ensure their employees show up on time, see if they can find an alternate because another employee called in sick, unavailable, uh, so on and so forth. Oh, the delivery truck didn't come in with the necessary goods, uh, whatever it is. And they say, Well, I, you know, that's fine and dandy. I don't have time to do all that. By the time I'm done at the end of the day, you know, it's 10 o'clock at night or what have you. Uh, but would it be fair to say then they should find the time and build it into their schedule to sort of project into the future, you know, what are the most likely situations that could cause enough stress for me, I could have a breakdown. Because if I break down, my business will go under. And then my family will start. Exactly. So there's consequences. So it would be safe to say they should proactively make it a point to try to schedule in sort of that preparatory time. Because it's one thing, you know, if someone suffers a devastating accident, so to say, that is physically impactful, but they still have their mind. They could be telling people, hey, go tell employee John Doe or Jane Doe to please do this and this. They can still think ahead. But if your mind is what's affected, you can't do that, right? Um, so going to what you're saying, uh, you're talking about learning constantly, uh, preparing. And now here's the the yang to the yin, so to say. The the the importance of health insurance. Oh, yeah. And uh if we could deviate momentarily, you know, any comments you may have on how important that is uh for organizations to understand uh that mental health needs to be covered. Uh and concerning the regarding the current climate, uh, where there are cuts being made, uh, this could have unforeseen ripple effects down the road as a whole on the economy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And we're having a lot more atypical stressors than we're used to in our lifetime across many domains. Uh going back to your the original part is if you have limited time, you have to be very efficient. And to be very efficient, you need to be intentional and know what is going to give you the most bang for the buck with what you learn. So if you listen to me and you think I've got a good point, one of the things I do as a teacher at Southern Methodist University sometimes is tell people the right books to read and what to get from them. So find yourself good teachers online, good teachers wherever so that you can save, not wasting your time reading a bunch of crap. Know what you're looking for. Listen to this podcast instead of binging Netflix. Uh and then the other part about health insurance, which is kind of funny because I didn't tell you. I have I try to have income diversity. I don't have a lot of money, but I have income diversity, so I have different businesses. I'm actually getting my uh insurance license to sell life, health, and annuities. There are aspects of your preparation. One of the things I want to tell people, all the things they can do because it takes away some of the scariness. There is your physical preparation. So an organization can give you time to exercise and discounts on gyms, which a lot of them do. Um, you have your psychological preparation in terms of the things you learn and the things you learn to do in terms of self-awareness, so you catch those tripwires and self-regulation, so that when you are experiencing a decline in performance because of your psychology, that you know how to move out of that back into a place of health and productivity. You have your fiscal bucket of preparedness, so health insurance, uh two months of savings, so you have a buffer, and all of these different things, social preparedness, so investing in your friends and family. It's good to become have a try. And you want to do all of this stuff before you ever get tested. You want to have your operational readiness. So, yes, an organization, all of those things an organization can help with. Giving you access to your 401k without penalty, uh having that gym membership. Sometimes organizations, bigger ones, will have mental health counselors on site. And then a lot of times what's what's big in particular the tech world and other other younger fields is they're aiming for optimization. So let's optimize ourselves as people and uh mental health. We're high performers. If I'm aiming to be an Olympian and I put in the effort to be an Olympian, well, I might not be an Olympian, but if I drop down, I still might get a scholarship in college. So let's overshoot what we want we want to be able to do.
Speaker:Let me ask. Let me ask you a question since you talked about you know self-education, um, you know, physiological preparation, you know, so exercise or a sport or whatnot, an outlet in that sense, which has its own uh uh impacts and influences on the mind on a biochemical level. Um investing in friends. Out of those three, if you if someone had to choose, because again, they only have one hour. An hour in the gym, an hour reading, or an hour with a friend, where should they invest their time?
Speaker 2:I think you should break that hour into 20-minute segments. You have three things. Invest 20 minutes in the gym in a productive exercise, and while you do it, exercise some discipline in your nutrition. Put 20 minutes into what'd you say, the financial bucket? Uh no, 20 minutes into your friends, and 20 minutes into your friends might just be sending someone a text. It doesn't so these and you want your investments to have high ROI. Return on investment. So, how can I exercise in 20 or 30 minutes that has the best effect? What kind of exercise for me is running? Um, how can I best interact with my family and friends? Well, when I come in my house, I have two kids and a wife and uh three fur babies. Can I be intentional with them when I'm with them? Can I set an example? Because I don't have a lot of time with my family, they're all living lives. Little things add up, so you don't need to just choose one or the other. Spread it out. Now, I would say one of the biggest stressors anyone has is financial. That's the one that really hangs over your head. So I would I'm I'm less likely to have that stressor on me if I have a bucket, I have a fallback.
Speaker:Since you've been able to take your experiences, professional, and the lessons experienced through the personal in the form of uh this uh mental health uh moment that you experienced and extrapolate from there and condensed into a publication, anti-fragility. So if you've turned crisis into opportunity, um share with us the the core ideas uh and the practical applications.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I have 10 principles that I learned. Uh and I gotta get into what anti-fragility is in the first place, right? Fragile, I get hit, I go down, I break. I'm the first piggy and I get eat. Resilient, I get hit, I get knocked down, which means I lose some time, but I come back. Maybe I don't come back the same, but I make it back. Robust, I get hit, I don't get better, and I don't get worse. I'm like a cow chewing cud in the rain. Anti-fragile is actually the opposite of fragile in that I get hit, something occurs, and I turn it to my advantage. Not only and because I have built a brick house. My 10 principles help you build that brick house. And my way of thinking of turning it to my advantage is knowing what the wolf behaves like, what makes the wolf come down from the mountains. I don't have to be the fastest runner, just faster than the slowest person in the group, and know that when the wolf comes down my chimney, pot is there, and I not only kill the wolf, this is where it becomes a benefit. I take him out and I make a coat and I wear it in a towel. And if we can build a system to do that, and that's what's in my book, you're gonna fare a lot better psychology when the world's going crazy. I'm hunting opportunity in the crisis, and I do that by there. Are no atheists and foxholes, so I have a spiritual life, helps me have perspective, helps me give up some of the things I can't control. As you think, so shall you be. So I am mindful of the kind of thoughts I have, I know myself. Man, I'm I'm coming, I haven't read my own book in a while. It all comes to me naturally, but uh oh, the mind and body are one. To say, and that's not to be esoteric. To say the mind and body are connected implies it's two different things. No, they're one. What affects you physically, whether it is your microbiome in your gut causing depression or signals in your heart, you actually have neurons on your heart affecting your cognition, or vice versa. The kind of thoughts I'm having are making me mentally ill. It's you are one big organism that has all those components. So attending to them is huge, and it's a huge uh competitive advantage. Philosophically wise, I guess investing in these buckets gives you a competitive advantage. Not only brings you back, not only survive, but thrive.
Speaker:Do you have real-world examples you could share?
Speaker 2:Uh let's look at a company that I use a lot. There are quite a few. No, let's back it up. Let's use what I did during COVID. So I have a group, uh unlisted, invite only on LinkedIn called Semper Progredients, which is Latin for always forward. In that group, I would teach the stuff I'm teaching to about 300 special agents, ranging from the director of DS to new members to retired people, and I have a few professors mixed in. When COVID hit, I processed it. One, I was prepared psychologically because I've been hit before. I processed it by saying, like a security guy, is there a new threat in my environment? Know your enemy, right? See them early. Yes. Okay. Can it be fatal? Yes, it can be fatal. What is my proximity? Okay, I'm in DC. The cluster is in New York, the cluster is on a ship off the coast of California. Okay, I have some time. I don't need to rush. What are my mitigation measures, right? So I can maintain six feet of social distance, don't touch my eyes, wash my hands, wear a mask, and upon consultation with my doctor, if I want, I can get the vaccine or not. Those are the things that are in my circle of control. The next step is, and what came to my mind was Marcus Aurelius. And any ill that befalls you, ask yourself, how do I turn this to my advantage? And that from a business standpoint, your advantage is understanding those mitigation factors, secondary effects, is what will become, how will that change demand for certain things? Right? So in order to have six to survive, in order to have six feet of social distance and be able to maintain connectivity in my company, we pretty much have to have telework. Okay, who provides the product or service that holds a scorecard for that thing and was already known for it? Zoom. A huge demand driven by circumstances. Changes in the circumstances create a huge demand for Zoom. And had you invested on March 20th, 2020, when everyone else was rushing out to get toilet paper, and you bought Zoom stock that day, you would have quadrupled your money in seven months without hardly any chance of a downturn. It wasn't going to suddenly drop off. A new technology that we're using had now become mainstream. Another one I use. So I right now I'm looking at things, changes. So I said I'm getting an insurance and annuities license. Okay, the world is unstable. We are going through puberty, which uh we're seeing changes politically, economically, socially, technologically, legally, and environmentally. All of these things that that play into each other. All of those things changing create demand for something. So I'm learning, I'm getting certified in life insurance, health insurance, and annuities because they are the safest financial products. When people get scared, their psychological need financially is for safety. When they're not scared, they're trying to optimize and get rich. So consumer behavior has changed, and I have adapted earlier in my skill sets to capture the benefit of that change. For you. So as a business owner, let's take you for example. You are a special agent, you are doing legal work. Your legal work can cover different areas, but as a special age, so one of the things going on is changes in attitudes towards violence, political violence. Democrats who had opposed guns, because I track it through social media sites, are changing their attitudes towards firearms. You have been through training to run a range and teach marksmanship to your guards and people overseas. There is a market for you to train, teach these things to your friends who are Democrats. And if I can focus on that, I have my basis covered. I'm not threatened by what everyone else is threatened by. And I hunt that opportunity before the other agents do get in on it early, well that I benefit financially during this crisis. All of these changes create new demands, and all those demands create new opportunities.
Speaker:Definitely. And for you, what is an anti-fragile organization look like?
Speaker 2:It adapts, it's aware, uh leadership and others are able to make more good decisions than bad decisions. They know they know how to handle the situation, they know what's going on in their industry, they know what affects it. It's just like anything. Good intel. It has good intel, it has self-awareness of the state of the organization. The leaders can maintain a rational mind, reason, rather than being overtaken by their emotions. That's where I come in as an executive coach. One of the things, one of the best, best compliments I ever got is the person said they felt like they had a brain massage. So, do I have that resource to uh get through that stuff? The best organizations are the ones that pick up on change earlier, prepare accordingly, and are excited about being able to thrive on the other side while the competition is dying off. And I'll give you one more business example, and then we'll pass. This is the one I teach uh to the students, the Amazon effect. Right? So back in the day, you know, I know, there were two main big box electronics stores. You had Circuit City and you had Best Buy. Then a new competitor, a new threat came into their market. It was disruptive and was changing the way sales are done, and it started offering your product. You could now buy those DVD players from Amazon and have them delivered to your door. Circuit City went into the grieving process. Kubler's five stages of grief. Denial. So this isn't really happening, it's no big deal. This will never work. This Amazon thing. This isn't right. Depression, they realize they're screwed, and it's too late to fix themselves. They try to bargain, make a bargain with God, make a bargain, whatever, and then finally you get to this place of acceptance. And if you don't get there fast enough, you're gonna die. Survivors get to a place of acceptance of their situation earlier than non-survivors. Now let's look at another organization. Best Buy. Best Buy right now is the last man standing. They control the big box market. Best Buy adapted. They changed how they train their salespeople. They weren't on commission, so they they can make money on small stuff. They train their salespeople to not only sell to the husband, but to also sell to the wife because they realize she's the decision maker. She has the purse strings. They started selling things that at that time you wouldn't get from Amazon. So refrigerators, washing machines, high-end stuff, home theater systems. You can go into a Best Buy and they have that whole section where you can sit down and see it and customize it. You can't do that on Amazon. So they started selling new products. And then they provided a service that you can't get off Amazon, which is the Geek Squad. So you can actually come in and get your computer repaired. They adapted in those ways. They adapted earlier and better than Circuit City, and they were the fittest. And when I last look at their revenue, which was a while back, they were hitting about 12 billion in revenue a year. Circus City is dead. HHGreg is dead. That is a good model of what you need to do. Conversely, another model of what not to do is Kodak. Digital, a new uh product comes into the market, a game changer, digital cameras. Kodak held the scorecard for film. Kodak and Fuji, right? Kodak had the technology for digital imaging. But for whatever reason, they went into that process where they didn't think this technology is going to be adopted. They kept selling regular cameras. They focused on film because they identified as a film company, not an image company. Eventually they tried to make digital cameras, but it was too late, and they went bankrupt. A company that had been around for a hundred years. That we'd we all recognize Kodak when we go to buy film. They died. They came back and they focused on digital uh they focused on scanning equipment, much smaller, less profitable. But they could have used that brand recognition and tweaked their organization to sell what was in demand, and they didn't. Part of it is hubris. We get if we get powerful, we get egos, and hubris kicks in. So we don't want to change. But again, if you want to be a good company, particularly now, learn about the grief process. Go from change to acceptance as fast as you can. Because once you get to acceptance, you can adapt earlier and better than your competition.
Speaker:Oh, I forget who said it, but uh the quote of oh if you don't like change, well, you're gonna hate irrelevance.
Speaker 2:Oh, I like that. I'm gonna use that. I'm gonna use that. I I'll I'll give you one from the Tao Te Ching from uh Taoism. Flexibility is the way of life, rigidity is the way of death. You gotta bend with change and not let it over. You need to be like bamboo instead of an oak.
Speaker:As we round the corner here, um for those that are listening, that may have flags popping up in their lives, but they don't realize it. Uh or they realize they they are experiencing a moment of crisis, whatever it is, mental, physical, uh, or external. Uh what core suggestion would you have for both?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll say this. We are all in a drastically and dramatically changing world. The world order is changing, technology is changing. If you know you are in a field, in a technical field, and you can be replaced by AI, don't get mad at AI. Learn to use AI or learn something new. That's a stressor. You're going, that indicator of change is already here. The world is getting more stressful, economics are stressful. Learn to regulate yourself, be self-aware of your emotional state, know thyself, right? The Greek maximum. Maximum. Know thyself. So get to know yourself, right? Be curious about yourself, know what your personal triggers are. If you're seeing triggers, pick them up with your indicator and adjust accordingly. So if you find you're getting stressed, if you know, like my case, maybe your case, I don't know if your parents are still alive. If you are like us and you know you're going to have the stress of aging parents, well, let's optimize your mental health now for that moment of stress. But right now, if you're suffering because you're in a place like I might have been, I hope that I gave you some tools to apply. I hope you have one of the critical things is hope, because if I can go from trying to speak Lakotan strapped to a bed to where I am now, uh, you can get through today. Uh but yeah, and as much as it sucks, be excited about all this change.
Speaker:Would you say it's rather than being afraid of it? Would you say it's also equally important if you don't have them right now? Uh make sure you have the right people in your life.
Speaker 2:I would say read my book. It's on Amazon. If you have Kindle, it's already included in your Kindle subscription, and I I make a few pennies per page read. And uh it's gonna narrow a lot of, it's gonna save you time and it's gonna help get you prepared to capture the opportunities that what the world is calling crisis, which is just changing the status quo. So learn psychology, learn philosophy, learn about if you're in a new economy, have financial issues, learn how the economy works. Listen to an economy podcast, and also guard the gateway to your mind. If you are doom scrolling, you're making yourself sick and it's addictive. If you're watching fake news that's always pushing buttons to make you angry, find your intel somewhere else that's not emotionally charged. If the anchors are emotional, you're trying to trigger your emotions, and emotions become addictive. So step away and try to find reason and balanced news and accept. Accept right now that we are going through massive change and you're gonna have to adapt or be irrelevant.
Speaker:Any final messages you want to share with listeners?
Speaker 2:Uh when we're seeing what's going on, we got a whole bunch of big bad wolves.
Speaker 1:Build your brick house, all the stuff I told you about, and uh prepare to make that coat and wear it into town.
Speaker:Okay. Well, Ron, thank you for sharing your experiences and observations to our listeners. As always, thank you for joining us on Burgart Laws Lanyat, where we provide a little extra perspective because the devil is always in the details. Please invite others to listen and give us your feedback. Ron, again, gratitude.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, brother. Thank you for the opportunity.