25 Years Later - Be Worthy of the Sacrifice | Full Auto Friday | 9.11.2026

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Shall we get into it before we do? I am aware that today's episode is airing on the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. I've had quite a few people who have asked me my thoughts about that event, who have asked me to do an entire episode on that for this Friday. And I'm more than happy to share my thoughts about where we are right now as a nation and any concerns and commentary that I may have. But I'm not going to dedicate this entire episode to that day for a few reasons. One, I don't like telling people how to think or how they should feel. I think conversations around what we should be talking about or topics of discussion are fantastic. Telling people how to talk about it or what they should believe is not my jam. And I'm worried, as sometimes I am on anniversaries like this, that there will be a lot of content that is like that today. And that is not who I am, that is not who I want to be. More power to anybody out there who makes whatever type of content and commentary they want to. I have no judgment, no shade against that. That is just not who I am. So that's why the entire episode is not going to be dedicated to that. My thoughts on where we are now versus where we are then, it's come up a few times in conversation in the last few days. I was just in Los Angeles yesterday doing some work with change agents. There's some really cool episodes coming out, some in-person ones. We spent half of the day with the Los Angeles Police Department ASD or Air Support Division, their helicopter division. Super cool. Got the whole walk and talk, saw a bunch of stuff. Their simulator, the TFORD, the flight officer and how they work with the tactical flight officer and how they work with the pilots. And then the day before the day that I flew in, I sat down and had a conversation with Marianne of Enzeller, who hosted the National Geographic series, I believe it was traffic. And while we were talking, the conversation was not targeted heading in that direction. But the topic came up and one of the things that I have been thinking about recently and this came up in conversation with hers, it's hard to believe that it's been a quarter of a century since that day. More than half of my life, pretty close to half, but I'm not 50 yet. More than half of my life has been in post 9/11 era. And she was in a journalism school at the time and she was the only person that was available, who I believe spoke Portuguese at the time and at the school. And she was instantly asked to go and report even though she wasn't done with the journalism course. So we talked a little bit about that, but even more so about how it felt then 25 years ago on that morning and how it fuels today. I understand because I lived it and I felt it in the days after 9/11 as anybody who is near my age or is old enough to remember the aftermath, not from a destructive perspective. I think that's impossible, maybe not impossible, but very difficult to forget given the videos and pictures that remain the 9/11 museum, which I recommend everybody to go see if they ever have the chance. It's very moving. I would do it at the tail end of your day, probably not the beginning because that might set you up for a little bit of a rough emotional day. It's not possible for me to forget that. And I'm glad that I got to see the cohesiveness of our country in the days and weeks. Some people have described it in months afterwards. I don't think it lasted months and I think that's okay. I know that we go through seasons and phases in our personal lives and I know that happens in our society as well. I know there are many people who are perhaps upset or frustrated that the anniversary of 9/11 doesn't have the reverence to some people that it has to others. And I have found myself feeling that way from time to time and then I remind myself that as somebody who half of their life has occurred post 9/11 and the trajectory of their life drastically changed because of the events that happened that day. My perspective and how I feel about it is unique. And somebody who doesn't have those perspectives is going to feel very differently. People are also naturally very good at forgetting how painful some things are. If you don't believe me, when I say that, talk to somebody who has multiple children. I've never given birth, but I've been present when it happened and I'm not going to describe that event as pain free or even enjoyable. Maybe there are some people out there who enjoy that, but I'm going to say you're probably in the statistical minority. The point is, as a species, I don't think we would exist if we didn't have the ability to process and then slowly round the edges on how some things are incredibly painful physically. I think that's true psychologically as well too. Otherwise, how would we move on and evolve as a species? We would be unable to live our lives. We would be stuck in this environment of pain and anger and I don't think continued life in that area for a really long period of time. Is that possible? So I think the body does what the body does. I think the mind does what the mind does. Is that harder for people to do if they lived through it, if they lost a loved one if their life was directly impacted for sure? But you can look back at any major event in our nation's history, horrendous events, and maybe we'll just keep it to military things. World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the engagements that we were involved with in between all of those. I hear the way that my father talks about his experiences and his generation and then I see and hear the way that everybody else who wasn't directly touched by it talks about it through the impact that it had on their life or not at all, especially as the clock keeps taking away. It becomes something that you've heard about. It becomes something in a history book or in a documentary or in a TV show. And I don't know any way around that. I don't know any way to stop that from happening and that might be essential to happen so that our society can continue to move forward. Not saying I want people to forget, but I don't think living in an environment of pain and frustration is the key to being fulfilled in life or our species continuing to evolve. So as much as I can understand people's frustration, I've arrived at a place where I understand why people who didn't have it directly touched their life, I look at my own children. To them, 9/11, they know what the attacks were, but they didn't live through it. It is something that they have asked me about. It is something that they were taught about in school. How could they possibly have the reverence and why would I possibly have the expectation that they do for something that they didn't actually live through? It's a little bit different, I think, as well in the modern information age. You know, we, especially the global war on terror, I don't know, I mean, there was videos of journalism in Vietnam for sure, but I think the vast majority of that conflict was not watched in real time, the way post 9/11 kinetic campaigns were. We live in a different era. We didn't watch Pearl Harbor go down live. It didn't have that imprint on people watching those things the way that we had the ability to do so through our phones or TVs or just the different access we had to information. War was literally being fought in your living room on your TV, at least, obviously not literally. That I think has some impact as well, too. I actually think the impact of that is negative in nature because I'm worried that that level of exposure to it and that frequency to it, it turns down the dial for people. Those things should be exceptionally hard to watch. It should be emotional and heartbreaking when you watch those things. But if you watch them all the time and your feed is full of those type of things and you want to go on to YouTube and you consume those type of videos because of interest to you, I mean, at some point, what do you have to watch to even have that emotional reaction to it? So, my worry is that the narrative around 9/11 will drift from what was. Did our country make missteps before and after 9/11? Yeah, of course. We're not perfect by any stretch and we're a collection of people, even in our highest levels. And it's pretty clear to see, especially in modern day examples, that those at the highest levels are not always making the most informed decisions. And there is no argument whatsoever that there was a high level of corruption in the military industrial complex certainly served itself above all others during that 20 years, not all the time, but their buffet table was full, for sure. Their cup runneth over when it came to the amount of money that they made from those 20 years of staying conflict. I just don't want the event to be described as anything other than it was, which was a terrorist attack on this country at the foundation of what it is we believe, or what we stand for, I should say, because I'm not here to tell people what to believe. And one of the beauties of this nation is the ability to believe and express those beliefs however you want to, regardless of the person next to you or you're surrounded by people who vehemently disagree. They're not going to cut your head off. That's a good thing. I'm going to call that a net positive. It was what it was. And I want it to be remembered for that. We can talk about all the steps, the correct ones and missteps afterwards. And I guess I'll close with one of the things that I think about often that help me get to this place of it's not that I don't care that people don't seem to be as moved by these universities. I do care and I always will care because of the level of direct involvement that I have. And I saw it happen live for the second aircraft going in. But one of the conversations that at least my co-horter friends had often was about death. And specifically, what would they want for friends and family of theirs? What would they want them and how would they want them to live their life if they were to die in the service of their country? And I never once heard someone say, I want them to spend the rest of their life in agony. And in sadness and emotionally distraught. I never heard that. But what I heard time and time and time again was that the only hope for those left behind was that they would live the most fulfilling and enriched life humanly possible. And you don't do that by living your life through your rearview mirror. You do that by looking forward through the windshield. And that's not to say that I ever want the names to be forgotten because they shouldn't be forgotten. And they never will be able to be forgotten by many families, thousands of families in this country. But it's okay to not live in that level of anguish. And I actually think the key to moving forward is to be able to find a place where it's not about forgetting them. It's about remembering them and keeping them in that place of reverence. But I would suspect, and this is of course me talking wildly out of my ass. If given the choice, I don't think anybody who died in the United States on September 11th would choose to die, right? They would have, you know, if you were given a choice to not be in the building that day, what do you think most people would say? Yeah, I'll take a hard pass on that one. Totally get it. But if you were to ask them, what would you want for our country? Would you want us to be trapped in a time machine? Or would you want us to be able to move forward? Never forgetting what happening, what what happening, what happened. And being able to do something with that and use that for a new foundation moving forward or an enhanced motivation or an enhanced purpose or an enhanced direction. I think most, if not all of them, would land on that as opposed to putting an anchor in the ground and being unable to move forward. I don't think they would want other people's lives to be destroyed. I would think that they would want their life to have meaning. And I think the best way that you can do that, and I've said this many times, is to be somebody that is worthy of the sacrifice that other people have made. How better to do that than to go express as many freedoms that you have as possible with your foot as hard on the fucking gas pedal as humanly possible, as often as possible. If you do that, you still need to check the rear view mirror to see what's behind you. But most of your vision needs to be out the windshield in front of you. So that's where I land on this 25th anniversary of 9/11. Let's get into the questions. I'm not a psychopath. I don't put it on fruit. I haven't tried that yet. I don't understand how it does it, how it pulls the flavors out, how it makes everything that I eat taste better, but it does. My recommendation to you is to head over to firecracker.farm to check out what they have to offer, because they have legitimately very spicy hot salts. But they also have new stuff, like the vanilla heat flavor, which I'm pretty sure Alex's daughter had the idea for. They sent me some. It has been my absolute go to and then everything in between. It's going to come in these stainless steel push button grinders. All you got to do is drive the plunger down with your thumb and you can control how much. I don't have a crazy heat tolerance. So I'll generally use one or two pumps, but you can go as insane as you may like. So you can get them on firecracker.farm or we actually sell these in the coffee shop here locally in Calisbell. Or if you live somewhere that has a black rifle coffee, you can get them in store as well. Alex and his family are creating these products together at their small family farm. So this is your opportunity to really level up your seasoning game, but also support the American dream for a family that is all in on this. And they're doing it together. So it's an amazing opportunity. The best way to do so, probably from most people, head over to firecracker.farm. Check out what they have to offer. I would suggest the vanilla heat. You won't regret it back to the show. Really taking the right turn from the topic I just discussed here. We go question one. Hello sir. Thank you for years of entertainment and enjoyment with your show and your book. My family listened to it this summer on a cross country road trip and it was one of the most honest books I've heard in a long time. Thank you. I appreciate the feedback and that is exactly what I was hoping people would receive the book as. I'm struggling with what to do with some new information. I learned this summer and would appreciate your input. I learned through a series of events that the man on my birth certificate is not actually my father. I had the DNA test verified at an independent lab in the name of being thorough. The DNA match was to someone I grew up calling Uncle. I'm 27 and feel a lot of emotions now that I'm slowly working through. My mother and father were POSs, also known aka pieces of shit. In every sense of the word, my childhood was filled with all forms of neglect and abuse that I can't help but wonder now how my life would have been different if I would have been exposed to my biological father's side before his passing. I've toyed with telling my family and reaching out to my newly discovered half siblings but I'm not sure how to or what to say. Also, I've tried my whole life to stop the cycle of trauma that has plagued my last name and I feel like telling them the truth would just hurt them in ways I'm sure I can understand and to me it's not worth hurting people who haven't hurt me. Any thoughts you have would be appreciated. Wow. This is the first question like this I think I've ever received and what I'll say is first take your time to make this decision. You are 27. You have lived under one premise for 27 years and now you realize that that mirror has been shattered and a new reality is presenting itself to you. It's okay to take a little bit of time. The information that you have is not going to change moving forward. It seems to be very definitive in nature and there's no rush to meet your biological father which you knew as your uncle because he has already passed so there's no rush there. You have the opportunity you can sit with this. We have no choice as to the families that we are born into where you're born in what kind of childhood that you have but you do have a choice with what you do with it and I'm sorry to hear that your mother and father were pieces of shit in every sense of the word. I'm going to assume that they knew as well and I guess man that would be an interesting family conversation if everybody was alive and you could get to the bottom of whether or not they knew or they didn't know, because I guess that could be a wrinkle. It's not going to change my advice that I give you, but that would be certainly an interesting conversational wrinkle that could make Thanksgiving awkward, I digress. I think it's great that you are doing everything that you can to not pass generational trauma down. There are some people that do, and then there are some people who make it at their mission in life to never have that cascade downhill. You are not responsible for the things that happen to you in life, but you are 100% responsible with what you do with those things, and you are owning that, and I really like that. I've had a few conversations recently, and I will leave the specifics of all of them out, but even here locally in conversations with a few friends of mine, there have been some life-changing situations, professionally, not personally, but they're predicated on telling the truth. I am sure if I sat here long enough, I could think of a reason to not be honest and truthful and maintain your integrity at all times. If I had to think about it deeply enough, probably the only way I could get myself to that would be if it was truly to protect somebody that was innocent. But even then, I still go back and I land to or land on. I'm not aware of many pitfalls or a downside to telling the truth, because at the end of the day, given enough time, the truth is going to come out. And again, speaking of a professional situation that I have no direct attachment to, and I've just heard about very recently, if an individual had just owned up to a mistake, literally just owned it to other human beings, where there is no way that they could sit there and say, man, I can't believe you made a mistake. What a piece of shit. I've never made a mistake. I guess they could say that, but that would say a lot to you about your boss, and you probably need to find a new job if they say something like that. If you admit a mistake to another human being, I think the likelihood of that person saying, you know what? I know exactly what you're talking about, because I've been in your shoes. Now that doesn't necessarily mean there won't be consequences, but at least you are starting from a position of absolute integrity and you're owning your shortcomings and shortfalls. I think that is a goal that we should all aspire to, easier, simple not easy, easier said than done. Well, in this instance, the lie is what kicked it off and given enough time and enough interest and enough probing around, what ended up happening? That's right. You can probably guess the truth starts to emerge. It floats to the surface like a buoy that was underwater just a little bit. But eventually that line holding it gets sawed and sawed and sawed, and then bloop, it pops to the surface. Well, for the person who chose to lie up front, you don't get to come back from that nine times out of ten or 99 times out of a hundred, because now there are more issues. There is the issue of what happened and then there's the issue that, especially if you're in a leadership role, and you didn't take accountability for that, and you are supposed to be setting the standard for your organization. But at the end of the day, what you just set the standard and example of is when something doesn't go your way or you don't want to admit accountability, you lie about it. Then when you get found out, you take the choice to then start apologizing, not because you want to, but because your entire hand has been called, guess what ends up happening. Kudalu, motherfucker, see you later, and that person is gone. We are all replaceable. Remember that occupationally. Regardless of how good you think you are, what your resume says, what your numbers are, we are all replaceable. There's somebody out there who is better than you, and there are probably a lot of people out there willing to work equally as hard if not harder for the role that you may have. Remember that. When presented with an opportunity to tell the truth, I think you should, and that applies to this situation, you didn't even realize that you were carrying this for 27 years. I'm going to make an assumption that your uncle, well your uncle probably was involved in the conception phase of this, but I'm going to say your uncle knew, and the person you had called dad before that knew, and obviously your mom, because again, takes two to tango, if you will, so who actually burdened you with this lie was them, and I don't think you need to carry it. Could it potentially have difficult conversations downstream with your family? Yeah. Most of the people, it seems like that you're describing in this, are no longer here. And again, you didn't create this. This burden was placed on you unknowingly decades ago. I don't personally think your life would benefit for shouldering it for decades more. And also, now that you know the truth, why would you want to participate in a lie going forward, what is to benefit from that? You could say again, while I wanted to, as you described in your email, potentially protect the people that are in my family, protect them from what? The people directly involved don't seem to be alive. Could it potentially change the way that they feel about somebody one layer or above in the family tree? Yes. Is it going to destroy everything that they think about them? No. I don't think so. Especially if they're not there. It might change it a little bit. But at the end of the day, my suspicion is, if you share this with your family and that side of the family that you didn't realize you were so genetically associated with, I think the response will be shock up front, but a warm reception afterwards. And my hope would be in doing so, they could feel a little bit of that void of the family. It doesn't seem like you had growing up. It seems like you didn't have the best environment and knowing now that at least one of those people and the mother, the traditional mother and father that you were thinking about, wasn't what you thought they were, I think there's a better than not chance that your idea of family and how you are treated by family will improve. Now it may not, let's say they respond to it in completely the opposite way that I may think and it goes horribly. And we never just want to see you again. We don't want to talk about this. Keep your mouth shut. The DNA tested, whatever the exact opposite of what I initially described was, okay. You at least got to put that down. What they do with that information, if they want to pick it up and put it in their backpack, that's their choice. But let them make that choice. You get to put it down and take a step away from that. And if they show you that that's how they're going to be when presented with the truth and a situation that they had no direct hand in either, right, they're a generation removed from it, then perhaps they're not the family that you thought they would be. My suspicion though is that you're going to get arms wrapped around you metaphorically and literally. And probably more of a cohesive familial unit than the one that you grew up in. And I think that will be a net positive. But all of that is predicated in what I said at the very beginning. I cannot think of a good argument for not telling the truth. Is it painful at times? Yes. Is it uncomfortable at times? Does that mean sometimes you have to tell people things that they don't want to hear? Yes. But that's what friends, good friends and family do. They tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. And relationships based on the foundation of truth in my experience are far more enriching and long-lasting than those where somebody in there has a massive backpack that's stuffed full of a lie. Don't be that person. Put it down. Give them the opportunity to do so as well. And then you all can step away from it. That's all I have for question one. All right. Question two, shifting gears. Hey Andy, I'm going to try to make this as short as possible and keep the dumpster fire that is my life as concise as I can. I've always had a mediocre life. I'm going to stop right here. Don't, life is hard enough. Don't tamp yourself down when we are all surrounded by other people more than willing to tap dance on our head and do the same thing for us. I'm not saying I want people to describe their life in overly grandiose fashion and make stuff up, lie about the things that they have done. But just be proud of who you are and what you have accomplished. Like I said, life is tough. Don't get yourself into the most frustrating game of all, which is measuring your life versus somebody else's. And I feel like that's where this comes from. I've had a mediocre life in comparison to what, all right. Be careful the things that you say to yourself. continue one, trying to live as the Gray Man, Jack of all trades master of none, I served in the 101st Airborne Division as a Chinook mechanic from 1999 to 2004 and deployed to Iraq in 2003, as Vanilla as it can be. Again, hard stop. Please don't talk about your military experience like this. This goes right into describing things as having a mediocre life. 0.05% of the US population will experience directly military service. So you have done and then with the combat deployment to Iraq in 2003. So you've already accomplished something that 99 point whatever the rest of the math is on that. 95% of the population is never going to experience. I'm not so sure I would use the term mediocre to describe that. Now, or is everything in the military as sexy as something else? No, it's not. But does that mean that you in any way, shape or form should diminish your service, should not be proud of the things that you did, should not be proud of the fact that you served your country to include you joined in peacetime in 1999 to include a combat deployment to Iraq in 2003, which was very early on in Iraq. That's not Vanilla by any stretch of the imagination. I know a lot of emphasis is placed on special operations and I say this every time somebody talks about their military experience in terms like this. Although the shiny object may be special operations. Special operations is not capable of doing their job without an enormous amount of facilitating and enabling conventional units. Actually, especially in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, it would be possible, I guess, to fly and hit something in leave. But we needed conventional forces to control the areas that we were working in, blocking forces, buy with and through. They were the battle space commanders. They were the battle space owners. They were living in those areas. And quite frankly, sometimes we would come in there and make their life harder because we would come in, hit like a sledgehammer and leave. And they're the ones who were left dealing with that. Is that fair? No, we've discussed this many times that the fairs in northern Iowa, you can go get cotton candy and ride the merry-go-round. But that is the way that that role was structured. But to think that your service is Vanilla, please stop talking about yourself in the terms that you are carrying on. After I got out, my mom convinced me to run the audio gear in our church. She was the music minister, so I filled in one Sunday. And now 21 years later, I'm still an audio engineer. Okay, it would seem as if the on-the-job training worked. It's not my full-time job. I have a well-paying oil field job. But I certainly could and usually do fill a lot of my free time doing work for my current church. I have reached the point where volunteering and free are no longer good enough for me. My love of audio engineering and desire to do it have already aided in losing connection with one of my kids. And my other son is starting his career as an audio engineer because he grew up hanging out with me because that's all he knew. My question is this, how bold should I be about asking for some form of pay? I'm not okay stepping away from it, but I am scared if I give the ultimatum of pay, ultimatum of pay me or I walk, that they will call my bluff and then I'm host. I have started a podcast so there's some engineering for me to do there, but it's nothing like a full band and a nice PA system. I feel like I'm trapped and being take advantage of pay with smiles, so to speak. Any help would be appreciated. Okay. For somebody who will describe themselves as having a mediocre life and for somebody who will say even though they served for the four or five years that they did to include a combat deployment that it was vanilla. I am not saying that you are asking to be taken advantage of, but I feel like in just the way that you have described two times and how you describe yourself that you may struggle advocating for yourself or standing up for the value that you think that you are bringing, whether it's in church or other areas of your life. I don't think you have to be bold when it comes to this. I mean, it's not as if you've been doing this for a week. You've been doing this for 21 years and human beings are incredibly capable of a lot of things, but I am yet even though there are some people out there who claim that they can do this. I am yet to meet somebody who can actually read another human being's mind. If you are unable or unwilling to advocate for yourself, there is a better than not chance that the people that you are volunteering for have no idea that you feel this way and they think that you're just doing this for love of the game. That's not their fault if they feel that way. If you haven't said anything or if you haven't advocated for yourself, because again, until we can do a Bluetooth connection and I can literally read the thoughts of another human being, the only way that I am going to figure out what somebody is actually thinking is if they tell me or I ask them and then they tell me. That's it. Those are the only two ways that I am aware of that you can actually determine what people want, what they can express that they need or how they're feeling. Absent that if you don't say anything and I don't want to use the term fault, I'll just say your hands are on the steering wheel of this situation. So I don't think this is a matter of being bold. I don't think this is a matter of coming in with an ultimatum either. This is a matter of, and I have no idea how churches are structured or where this goes. Actually, I don't know who gets paid what in a church. I know that many churches ask for donations or tithing. I don't know who in a church gets a salary. I don't know what the business structure looks like at all. So I'm well over my skis talking about that, but I'll assume that there is somebody in the church structure that is getting paid. If not multiple people, I just don't know how far that goes down. You're providing a professional service. If you just ask yourself this, if you were providing this service to an entity, just erase the word church and write in band or theater, whatever it may be. Is that a paid role? If the answer to that question is yes, then I don't think anybody is going to have this unrealistic expectation that you provide a service for free. That just might be the status quo for the last 21 plus years, because that's the agreement that was entered into maybe before your time. Or when your mom convinced you two plus decades ago, and nothing was ever said, times change, situations change. Your life has changed. You are at a place now where you are budding up against, you know, you've given back for 21 years with this service to the services that they are providing to people. I don't think there's anything unreasonable or unfair. I don't know again who you would talk to, but I'm sure there's somebody in your chain of command or somebody that you work for or report to at the church and just express to them exactly how you feel. And you don't have to be bold. This actually goes back to the previous question. Just be honest with them about how you feel and where you are now. You don't have to be mean about it. You do not have to deliver an ultimatum. You could actually phrase this as a question, and you could say, I have something that I want to run by you and I just want to get your thoughts on this. What do you think about your email? Obviously, don't read the email to them, phrase it however you want, but explain to the person how long you've been doing this, where you're at in your life, and how you are feeling. And don't beat around the bush. I mean, again, I'm not been very clear about my thoughts on religion. I just don't know. And so I don't know the specifics of how people conduct themselves in church, but I want to believe it's based on honesty, right? I mean, wouldn't that be a great place for it? So be honest. Don't beat around the bush. You don't have to be a dick. Just say, hey, this is where I'm at, and I'm getting to a place where I need to get your thoughts on restructuring what it is that I am doing, or how I am doing it, or that I can no longer do this for free. I'm at a phase in my life where things have changed, I'm at a place where I can't continue to provide this service for free. Are there any options that we could discuss? Put it back into, whomever you may speak to, put it into their court, and then zip it. Let them think about it. Maybe they don't have an answer that day, but you expressed how you felt. You left them with a question, and then you can begin the pickleball game of the conversation back and forth. They'll come back to you with these are the things that are available, or maybe, hey, that isn't a possibility. And in which case, I still don't think you need to deliver an ultimatum. There are ultimatum being one end, and you continuing to do what you are doing right now, being the other one free, or I'm out of here, something in between. And you also need to define for yourself before you go into this conversation. [BLANK_AUDIO] If you want to get paid for this, how much do you want to get paid? Go in there knowing either what you need or what you want to feel happy with the situation and continuing going forward. Because if you don't, they may, in that moment, come back to you and say, "Oh, you know, never even really thought about that, but what do you think about this?" Or they might come back to you and say, "Well, the role that you're filling, what would be the going rate for that in whatever it may be, like I said, for a band or a theater?" The role that you have now, what's the commensurate pay for that elsewhere? Have these answers going in so you can have a thoughtful and informed conversation with the person who's actually going to make the decision. But hit it right on the nose, and I don't mean violently, just pick the right time and place. You know, five minutes before a service begins, probably not a good idea. I would actually structure this as a non-casual conversation. I would ask whoever it is that you are going to talk to, I would ask to talk to them at a day and at a time where there are no other church activities going on. Because I wouldn't want to have them thinking of other things. I would let them know that you would like a little bit of their time. You want to talk about what it is you've done for the church for the past 21 years and that you have a few questions. That's how I would phrase it. Get that strict time, put a bound around it, 30 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, whatever you feel comfortable. Keep it inside of that and realize this might be multiple conversations that are supposed to a one and done or, depending on how you phrase the meeting, the meeting that you want to have, it could be a one and done. You could give them enough information up front that they could in the back of their mind already be thinking about it and have some level of expectation about what it is you're going to talk about. You get together, they might have for you a fantastic offer. Now, what are you going to do if they say that's just not the structure that we have? This hasn't been the way that we've done it before and we're not in a place where we can provide you any type of monetary compensation. Well, that's a different situation and for you, you are going to have to make that call on your own. What are the pros and cons of this is the juice worth the squeeze. Again, that's not necessarily an ultimatum because you're not telling them this amount of money or I'm out of here, you're telling them where you're at, how you're feeling and what you would like to see structured if they say that's not available. Just like any other occupation that you may be working at, you have the choice. Do you want to continue to work under this status quo where do you want to go find additional work elsewhere? I can't answer that for you. That's a bridge you're going to have to cross when you get there. Only you can answer for yourself how much your time is worth and how much you want to give away of your time for no monetary compensation because there's, of course, you're serving the public and the city and the connections you have with the people that are in your community, so that's an amazing thing as well. But I think we can all agree that's not going to buy you food at night or put a roof over your head. It's an amazing aspect of your life, but there are times in your life where that's not enough and that's okay. Maybe you'll get to a place where you do want to come back and volunteer, but get through this situation first, have a good conversation with them. Don't be afraid to advocate for yourself. That is my biggest fear of based off of the two different examples you gave describing your background. Stand up for who you are. I'm not saying sit there, beat your chest, know your value, know your worth. Present it to them, let them chew on it, come back and you can make a decision from there. That's all I got for question number two. Today's episode is brought to you by Hexclad. All right, guys, listen up. Fall is here, football is back and that probably is going to mean game day meals, Sunday hosting, for some of you a lot more time in the kitchen. Cooking for a lot of people can suck. The last thing you want to do is have food that is sticking to the pan, burning, uneven heat or cleanup that is turned into a full time job. Game day cooking should be pretty simple. You get a good sear, some solid heat control, an easy cleanup and no baby in your pans when you're trying to get food on the table for your friends. This is where Hexclad comes in. Hexclad has changed the game by combining performance of stainless steel with the convenience of nonstick all in one pan. Most cookware forces you to choose between great performance or an easy cleanup. 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Make sure you let them know that I sent you back to the show. All right, finishing up for today, a little bit military-related. Andy, I was recently accepted to the Naval Academy and wanted to compete for a steel officer slot. I knew you were both an O, meaning officer, an E, meaning enlisted, so I want your perspective on something. There's a lot of noise online claiming steel officers just do admin, though they don't do the cool stuff, that they are disconnected from the enlisted guys, that they are generally irrelevant/not respected by the enlisted guys. Since you've lived both roles, what's the actual reality of an officer's job on an operation? Do they just sit back and watch from afar? Is it a fulfilling cool guy job, or are you just a manager/admin guy? Are they generally viewed as one of the guys? Trying to make an informed decision before I commit to the U.S. and a route, meaning U.S. Naval Academy. Man, good question. How do I answer this the most effectively? The roles are different. I don't know, well, first off, I don't know how much online chatter anybody should really listen to. Sometimes, online chatter is just based around chatter to get views on whatever it is people are trying to create or sell, right? A click-based economy and ecosystem. Some of the times, most of the time, I don't even know if people believe the shit that they're saying. They're saying it because they know it's controversial or that it could stir something up. And I actually think often they don't care about a casual relationship to the truth. So just use with caution, everything you see online. The jobs are different. Are officers enlisted, commingled on target? This, comma, but it also depends. I'm also saying this with 13 years out of the military at this point. I am dated. I am not connected to the current kinetic nature of the modern day, still community. I can talk about it for the lens of my own experience when I was back in. So don't think that I'm trying to project as to what is happening right now in September of 2026. I can give you my experience and exposure from when I was in. So the roles are different. And they should be different. At the end of the day, the OIC or the officer in charge is exactly that. He is responsible for the conduct of the operation, the success of the operation. Now, and accountable, by the way, I mean, many people are accountable underneath him, but the chain of command exists and the person at the top of that is going to be an officer. Is there more admin in the officer world than the enlisted? Yeah. Yeah, there definitely is. But that changes depending on your rank. So when I was in, oftentimes in a normal platoon structure, you would have an officer in charge in an ALIC or assistant officer in charge. Those two officers will allow to branch out and then you could have, you know, squads or teams of eight, which then you could break into four, you know, mutually supporting positions. Of course, you could go even farther down into two. A lot of the time though, you'll get assigned as a third officer. And that is a role that I would say is a good blend of both because a lot of the admin tasks are going to be handled by the OIC and the A OIC. They're going to ask you to help for sure because of professional development and very soon within a few years, you're going to be doing one of those roles, likely the A OIC. And they're going to mentor you into that. But also, you're going to get to spend a lot of time with the boys, the enlisted guys who while paperwork is being done. And yes, there is more paperwork on the officer side of the house. But on the enlisted side of the house, there's a lot more menial tasks that occur as well. When you're out there, maintenanceing your equipment or you do, you know, jump operations and you've been in saltwater, you're getting through a block of training, but there is always work that is not fun, that is not sexy, that doesn't make the movies that needs to be done. And it looks a little bit more like it, my experience, at least physical labor on the enlisted side of the house and a paperwork drill on the officer side of the house. And they both get to go do things that are not in the movie Navy Seals. I don't think there was a slick of paperwork in that movie, the sons of bitches. I know of third officers that have gone to sniper school, third officers that have gone to JTAC, free fall, a lot of the schools that would be traditionally more in line with the enlisted career path. And that's a great way to gather baseline experience. Now I actually have seen third officers handled in a variety of ways. Again, for the A O I C or the O I C, I can't answer specifically what it looks like on target, because it just vastly depends on what it is that you're doing and how many people that you have with you. If you run short of people, yes, the officer is going to hop in there. If you have and there's a time and place for that, but there's also a time and place for the officer not to be involved directly in the tactical problem or program, because they need to have a little bit more of an up and out view. They need a 30,000 foot view of what's going on. They're oftentimes coordinating and relaying back what's going on over a variety of networks to inform battle space commanders or whoever it is they may report to. If you're looking down the sites of your gun, you don't have the ability to do so. But as an example, you're working as a platoon and you're patrolling through the desert and this is just a super basic drill that we did all the time. You're in a single file formation. Let's say it's a contact right. The first thing that's going to happen is that you're going to orient yourself towards the contact and you're going to return fire because rule number one of a firefight is to win it. But what you don't want is your OIC on a 60 or a saw or an automatic weapon just go into town not making a tactical decision or a tactical call. At that point, maybe an initial volley, but then that person detaches a little bit from the tactical problem looks around and makes a decision on how the element is going to maneuver. He's not the only person doing that senior enlisted personnel are doing exactly the same thing, but they're going to wait for that person who is in charge to likely make the call. If you're inside a structure and you're clearing and you run short, yes, officers, super standard procedure. If you see an officer holding like down a hallway on their gun focused on a tactical issue, we would bump them out because it's a better role for them to have an understanding of what is going on on the entire target than just down one hallway. And again, these are general principles and there are specifics for time and place. And that's why I said I can't give you probably an ultra precise answer like you're looking for. And it just truly varies on the what type of target. How many people you have with you? So it's very, very fluid. I don't find that officers are disconnected from the enlisted guys. Some are, but that's not about the rank or the role. That's about the person. At the end of the day, it depends on who you are as a person. Will you always need to maintain the professional boundary, especially when in a leadership role? Yes, absolutely. Does that mean that you need to be disconnected from the enlisted personnel? No. And I wouldn't advise you to do so. That is how rifts will be created. Again, fluid. And at the OIC level, you're very, very tight with the boys. Again, this is personality dependent for, but for a personality that gels well with them, you're very tight, very, very tight. One level above that would be the troop commander who has two platoons reporting to him. Is he as tight with both of the platoon? No, not really because he has a different role. The executive officer who would be or it been there's, you know, there's operations officer and all this, but let's get to the two IC of a team. The executive officer is he tight with all the boys the way that the troop commander is not even remotely close. He probably doesn't even know the names of everybody that's working for him to be totally honest, meaning everybody in every platoon. He could find the name, but he probably couldn't put a face to a name. Let's go a layer above that. The commanding officer, are they connected in any way? Yes, however, comma, same issue. The more you get in those elevated positions, yeah, you're probably going to be less detached from the boots on the ground reality. That's okay, because as you get into those roles, you are focused elsewhere, and where you really shouldn't be focused is down the sites of a rifle. Now, in a 20-year career, does that mean on an officer pipeline in trajectory, you'll get less time down the sites of a rifle? Yes, I think demonstrably so. The enlisted pipeline is pretty awesome. You can stay as a shooter, depending on where you go and what it is that you're doing for an entire career. For every, there's an operations master chief as well too. There is a troop master chief or senior enlisted advisor. There is a command master chief, and at those level as well, just like I described on the officer side, there's a level of detachment away from the tactical environment. The people, again, names to faces, recognizing people knowing that they're, you know what I mean? There's just you have different roles. So that does exist on the enlisted side as well. But if you wanted to, if you wanted to take a heavy hand on the steering wheel of your career, yeah, you could avoid those things or keep yourself down in that tactical world a little bit longer. It really just depends on what it is that you're looking for. Do I know officers who were tactically in the mix and loved it and then later on transition to that up and out mindset as they ascended through the links, the ranks and felt totally fulfilled? Yes, a ton of them. Do I know officers who are resentful for the amount of combat experience and exposure that enlisted people got in comparison to the trajectory of their career? Yes, many. You know, let's also throw into this. We don't know what the world is going to throw at us. There might be 20 years of non-sustained global war on terror, environment between now and when this person serves, and you might not get any real world tactical experience or exposure. At that point, depending on what the world is throwing at you, and as you're getting older, your life is changing. You might be getting married. You might be having kids. You might be looking at what's going to be next. Professionally, it might benefit you on the officer side of the house to be looking at those leadership roles, looking at the joint tours, looking at additional educational opportunities, whether it's master, it's their doctor, it's just exploring everything else that the military has to offer. The military is so much more. Even the SEAL community is so much more than just looking down the sides of a rifle and pulling the trigger. I know that's what it's portrayed as, but there is so much more to it. So the jobs are different. Our officers just managers, admin guys. No, I wouldn't describe it like that up until a certain point. And I still wouldn't describe it as a manager or admin guy once it gets out of that tactical world. They're the ones, you know, I was never a commanding officer, so I can't tell you the exact, hey, these are the 15 things that you're responsible for. But it's their ass on the line. Skippers have been relieved from performance or lack thereof or, I don't know, crimes committed by entire platoons or disbanding platoons. Skippers get relieved. Task unit commanders get relieved. Officers get relieved. I don't know if I've ever seen, I have seen an exo get relieved, but that was for a personal issue, which doesn't need to come up in this conversation. You know, the choices we make are the choices we make, not all of them are good. And yeah, don't be a dumb in your civilian life and you're going to be okay. So yeah, actually, I do know of an exo that got relieved, but it wasn't for something tactical. Those are the ones who are advocating for the team in areas that you'd never see, meeting with the group commanders, meeting with the battle space commanders, pitching capabilities, trying to find work for people that work for them, but they're never going to get to go onto the battlefield themselves. So it's all, it's these many, many moving pieces. I'm not going to say one's more important than the other because I think they both need to exist. Could enlisted guys operate tactically without officer oversight? Yes. Would they be better off doing that? I would say no, depending on the personalities and the officers because there are officers that can absolutely drive performance into the ground, which goes back to it's more about the person, not about the role that they're holding. You find a really wrong person in a leadership position and you can just destroy a high functioning team and just it's an anchor that you tie to them. But it's the cohesiveness and the blend of the two and an understanding like this is my core competency, this is your core competency. There's immense overlap, but let's work to keep that overlap fluid and where it needs to be. And when things come up that are in your core competency, you focus on that knowing and trusting that we're doing our job. When things come up in our core competency, focus on that knowing that you know and are doing your job. So it is the balance between the two. I think the force is enhanced by having both. I know you're trying to make an informed decision right now. I would say you have to earn your way into the community first. I get what you're looking at here. Should I go as an officer? Should I go as an enlisted? Both of those have to make it through the training pipeline. So don't forget that as well. And that's what I'll leave it with because I can't tell you which direction to go because I don't know what it is that you are looking for. And also think about later in life. Think about what you want to do when you're 45, when you're 50. Numbers that I didn't even understand existed when I I was in. Think about those things and then also keep that in the back of your mind. This is going to end at some point. Is the tactical role up front so sexy to me now that I'm willing to only focus on that and what I'm about to say is not necessarily true, but this does happen to some people that that's all that they want and they skip so many professional development possibilities. Other things that they can get from the military, other opportunities to stay in that world and then when they get out, there can be a void. Or do you want to have a role where or be the person where you want to get a mix of both. You want 100% to get involved in the tactical world as much as possible. But then as you are maturing, as you are growing, as you are gaining an age and experience, lateral that, take that experience to help empower and enable those that are underneath you while also well rounding yourself and you get to a place when you do get out, you are running and gunning because you are set up and you took advantage of every opportunity that you can't. I can't answer that for you, but both of those people start to make it through seal training. So don't forget that, all right? Think short term and long, but then don't lose track of the fact that regardless of, you know, this enlisted officer discussion that you're having, which is a valid one, is all predicated on you making it through training. So let's make sure that we're doing everything that we can to make it through training as well. And also competing for a seal officer slot never did because I didn't go through the academy. I have heard is extremely competitive. Far more people want to go than there are slots available. So you better bring your fucking egg in and I mean physically and in the interview process as well. Be undeniable, which means you need to put the work in now. The rest of this stuff is a little bit more of a downstream conversation. It's great that you're thinking about it, but don't forget about your three meter target, which is actually getting accepted to the community and then making your way through it. And that's all I have for this Friday. See you guys Monday.