How Practice Saved My Life Applying HBPRA Under Fire

Alright, we are recording. Hello, everyone! Thanks for tuning in. Super excited about our guest today, Greg. We've got our buddy and now employee, former advisory board member Dan Chavez on the podcast. For those of you Patreon subscribers, you probably know him already. We did a little talk with him on there to get his background, but I wanted to bring him on here to have all of our listeners listen to his perspective on things and learn a little bit about what he does for a living because it's one, it's really fascinating, and two, he's part of the team now. He was on our advisory board for a couple of years pretty much, and he was helping us out with stuff like we do with different folks on our advisory board. And then basically, he got to the point where, "Okay, Brian, I'm not doing any more of this work unless you start paying me." So, I just said, "Dan, funny how that works."

Dan, I was thinking about hiring you. Are you interested in a job here?

So it took a little bit longer than we wanted to get it to line up, but it finally did. So here we are.

The key is to fire Dan before that first paycheck. And then, you know, too late. You get what I'm trying to say? Yeah. God damn it. Too late.

Yeah, that's how I, that's how he, that's how I got him back on that second week of calls. Like, "Dan's late." And he's like, "Oh, sorry, I was checking to make sure that check actually went through, and it did, so we're good." Which I respect. So, but that's a little bit...

Yeah, exactly. Especially with this crew.

But I wanted to bring you on, and I'll let you kind of introduce yourself in terms of your background and stuff, Dan, because you do a much better job than I do, and I'll butcher it. And so why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about you and kind of what you bring to the team.

Sure. First, thanks, guys, for everything, for having me on the podcast. I've listened to so many of these episodes, and they're great supplemental material if you've been through the course. They're great standalone, but also really deep-diving into some of the big core components that you guys teach. And then it was great being on the advisory board and is absolutely mission-aligned for me from an individual purpose to be supporting public service, public safety, first responders in their roles, and to have some type of impact in what they do on the day-to-day. So back...

On that, on that, Dan, too, before you jump into your background, I just like, that's profound. This must be really magical for you to listen to this podcast and then hope one day, "I could be a guest on The Human Behavior Podcast."

Who doesn't say that though, Marren? Your dream has come true.

Exactly. Who doesn't want to fulfill their destiny by being on this show and our seven listeners?

Exactly. Three of whom are here right now. Right.

So, I'll just say, I'm not, I came to this profession late. I'd say Act One was, you know, married my high school sweetheart, joined the military, raised a couple of daughters, wonderful daughters. So I don't know if that's the way they say you should do it out of the playbook, but that got me into my mid-30s right there. A lot of operational jobs, a lot of, just, you know, "Hey, do this, do that, do the other." So, at some point, my mid-30s, I kind of got my act together, I would say, and went back to school, and ended up finishing my undergrad, went, did a graduate program in what's called instructional design. So, it's a subfield of education, but it's not K through 12, it's not university, it's really for applied workforce development. So this would be law enforcement, could be emergency services, hospital, and it originated out of military training needs in the '50s and '60s. So it's incredibly applied, and it combines instruction with what we know about how people learn for task-based performance in a role like being a police officer, like being a firefighter, etcetera, etcetera.

So coming out of that program, I've been working probably for the last 15 years in the field. And I would say the highlight of my profession previous to working with you guys, of course, is, was working at the New York City Department of Correction and running the Correction Academy. So I was the number two person in charge and really was responsible for the day-to-day operations and the curriculum oversight for Department of Corrections. We varied anywhere from 8 to 12,000 uniform officers, plus about 1500 non-uniform staff. So all of their professional development, but more important, all of their proficiency-related training related to actually going out there and doing their jobs on a day-to-day basis in Rikers (on Riker's Island). Eight facilities, and incredibly diverse populations of individuals that they have to come in contact with, problem-solve, and support on a day-to-day basis.

So I did that for three years, and towards the tail end of that, as you guys know, that's when I found out about Greg's work, your work, Brian. A friend of mine, Jack Cwell, gave me the book Left of Bang. And in the intro to Left of Bang, you'll see, as you guys know, an acknowledgment to Greg Williams as being the owner essentially of the IP for the Left of Bang concept through what he did with Combat Hunter. And I would say my only, my one wish is that I had met you guys sooner because I feel that the concepts that are being taught here are so incredibly relevant to anyone in a Department of Corrections environment because you're going out there, you talk about things like a baseline or an anomaly. Those are things that those men and women have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. It's just an incredibly complex environment. They're dealing with gangs, they're dealing with mental health issues, just an incredible variety. And this, this really is such a robust framework that I wish that I had known you guys sooner so that I could have advocated for it, because—and I'll say that's a workplace kind of situation that I know it works and would work there.

But the last thing I'll say is that I know it works because I actually had to use it. So, I think this is important. Last year, I think it's been about a year now, I was involved in a shooting. My wife and I, we were, we've been living down here in Southern Jersey for about a year and a half. So, one of the things that you guys taught me actually is just kind of like build your baseline, understand what's going on. And I had been doing this. So, on a particular day, I'm out with my wife. We're walking around, and everything's normal. Streets are good. Right amount of people. So we go into a bar, and we're there probably for about an hour. It's maybe around 9:00. Around 10:00, there's two entrances. They go ahead and they close one of the entrances. And I'm just kind of actively processing this information kind of according to what I know. "Alright, when we get up and leave, we're going to have to go out this door because that one's closed."

So we get up about a half hour later. We're getting ready to leave, exiting that door, and we hear what sounds like gunshots. Immediately, duck down. Now, because I've been kind of processing this, I'm thinking, and my wife says, "Is that, was that, was that fireworks?" I said, "No, that was definitely a gunshot." We paused for a second. I initially thought, "Okay, maybe there's a gunfight happening outside." Immediately, probably it might have been a second later, this guy bursts through the door. So we're getting ready to leave. He comes in, and the look on his eyes is he's running for his life. Now, what I expected is, thinking the gunfire was going outside, he's just going to duck down and kind of wait it out like the rest of us. He comes running by as fast as he can. So immediately I update, "Alright, this is not an outside shooting. This guy is being pursued, and there's a high likelihood that somebody's going to burst through the door behind him. That's going to be the gun." Everybody inside scatters.

I think what's significant, though, is I know my heart was racing. I was primed to flee, but I immediately thought, "I'm running this way, but I'm looking for the kitchen. I know there's a kitchen back there, and I know it has an emergency exit because they all do." So I'm running back there as fast as I can. I get to the kitchen. It's dark. I turn around. There's only one person that came in behind me. Unfortunately, that's the same person that came in through the front door. So, it's me and the individual being pursued. We're in the kitchen. I stop briefly, kind of get my bearings again. I can't find the exit. So, here I am again. Now, I don't know where the exit is. What am I going to do now? So I decide that I'm going to go out. I don't hear anything outside in where I just came from. So I'm going to go back out. I'm going to see if I hear something. If there's—and I'm essentially going to try to go back out the way I came in if that area is clear. If it's not clear—and remember, think of this—if it's not clear, I hear something, I'm going to retreat back into the kitchen. I'm going to anticipate that he's going to come in, and I'm going to—this would be the frying pan strategy, right? I'm going to look for a frying pan or something, and I'm going to try to disarm him when he comes in. Hoping that's Plan B. Hoping that's not the case. But I got back out there. I listened. I looked around. I didn't hear anything. I didn't see anything. I ran immediately, sprinted out the front door. I ran down the street, was able to reunite with my wife. So, you know, you talk about in extremis (in extreme circumstances), everything that you guys taught came back to me in that application, not because I remembered it all, but because I had been doing it on a regular basis, including that night.

So that's, that's there's a couple of things, couple of things that anybody... Yeah. Go ahead.

Real quick, real quick. So, one, that's an incredible story, and there's a lot I think we're going to jump into that, and I appreciate you for sharing it because it's, it's, you know, it's, it's always not a good feeling when you're in a gunfight and you don't have a gun, and you were unaware that this gunfight was going to happen, right? It's one thing if you know it was going to happen, but it's a completely different situation. So, I know even some of like your military, and you know, you're an Army Ranger, like actually in Ranger Battalion, and so you, you know, you have some of that, but that's not really what you're relying on in any of this, right? So you have some exposure, which I love because your wife goes, "Hey, was that fireworks? Was that?" And you're like, "No, no, that was definitely not." Right? So, so there you got some things working against you, but I did want to hit two things real quick that you hit up when you were talking about your intro. One, with like, I did want to gloss over because we'll get into it a little bit later, but like your work at like a New York City Department of Corrections and training programs and implementing new policy and procedures. I, I mean, I, I don't have much experience in New York City, but I grew up in Chicago and understanding how politics work and how different influencers and to get stuff done is like, I would rather go work with the different clans in Afghanistan and try to get them to do something than I would going into New York City and trying to get everyone on the same page. And then the other thing you're talking about like, "Hey, I wish I'd met you guys sooner." That's similar to like what my, my wife says to me sometimes, "I wish I'd met you sooner because then I was younger and I wouldn't have settled for you." So I understand kind of like what where you're going with that, but buyers are more prevalent indicators.

Yeah, yeah. So, but go ahead, Greg. Let's, let's jump in.

I, I, I think it's funny that Brian and I parallel our thinking a lot, and so the first comment I wrote down is Brian's first comment, "What sounds like gunshots?" We'd be surprised at how many times we're doing a post-incident interview, and people say, "Well, it sounded like balloons or a car backfiring." And it never, the context and irrelevance were all screwed up. What happened is your system said, "I don't want to believe this is in progress." And certainly your wife's did, but then you quickly realized, "Hey, in this context, that's most likely gunfire based on a number of factors." Second part was, I'd never heard of Riker's Island having such a robust program run by an inmate. So you're to be applauded for that, doing that in general population while you were in Scotson there to go home. Exactly. I'm joking there, folks. It was a great accomplishment. And then the, the final one, folks, notice, I want you to draw your attention to Dan's story. He abandoned his wife for the entire section because she hadn't attended the training, and then he gets reunited with his wife once things have calmed down and they're safe. So, Dan, how did that work out for you? What conversation go?

Oh my god, I can imagine being a fly on the wall for that one. "Thanks you..."

Thanks a lot, guys. Yes, exactly. I'm glad your training helped you be more survivable in this instance. Yeah. She has another, her side in coming out of this was actually the—there was a rectangular bar. I ended up going around one side and ended up in the kitchen. She went around the other side, and so did the gunman. So her side of the story is that she's—the gunman is looking for this guy, but he's brandishing his weapon. Like you look behind you, and that's the person you see. So that was, that, you're right, that wasn't a pleasant conversation.

So, go, go, go there for just a minute because here's the problem with the charlatans. Here's the problem with the, the, the glad-handers that are all over talking about the types of, "Hey, you know, I, I once led, you know, my wife to the store, so now I'm a leadership consultant." What's going to happen is they're going to look at the story and they're going to say, "Yeah, it would be nice to believe if it was true." Okay. So, were the police called? Was it an actual shooting? What did you find out about the case afterwards that solidified your resolve that this was a no-shit incident that you were involved in in real-time?

Sure. So, I can send anyone the articles if they want. They've got pictures outside of afterwards that people nearby took pictures, and me and my wife are in the pictures outside. But yeah, they did, they did come, they cordoned off. The police came, they were searching, they actually found the weapon, they found the assailant, and that case is proceeding through the judicial system. So...

And was somebody injured during this shooting?

No, there were shots fired. Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. Yes, big one actually. So one of the reasons that they had blocked the other door was because they were getting ready to charge cover. And so there was a single standing line. This is—so, as we attempted to exit, there's a young lady standing immediately on the outside of the sidewalk. She was shot in the head.

Okay.

Yeah. So, I, I didn't mean to.

And the reason I, I, I brought that up, Dan, is I'm familiar with the case. And the idea was that you only glossed over that because, again, you went down and in. Okay. The up and out was all the things that were happening externally. And the idea was that your focus led you to safety, and your wife instead latched on like a lamp right to the shooter and followed the shooter around till they abandoned the gun with the gun. I'm not saying it was a bad, not a bad strategy somehow, is, you know...

Now, now, in the longer term of evolution, you get what I'm trying to say on the bear, right?

There, I don't want your wife hating me, right? But...

Right there, in the right, right, right there, if I'm stuck in that situation, I want to pick a side. I mean, who's side are you picking right there?

If I'm running alongside the gunman, I'd say, "You're misunderstood." Do you get what I'm trying to say?

That guy deserved it, I'm telling you.

I'm just saying. Yeah.

The most surreal moment is when I turn around in the kitchen, I see, I recognize that the guy in there with me is the one being pursued. He sees me, we make eye contact, and he says, "We got to get out of here."

Exactly. The understatement of the year.

Yeah. He's, he's, he's already trying to co-opt other people. "Oh, we're in this together." It's like, "Dude, I don't know you. That guy ain't looking for me, bro."

So, you're going up on the stage to speak. You got the audience that's ready. It's the, you know, the, the, the luncheon for the journalist, all that other, and you notice you got toilet paper hanging from your shoe. Well, that's exactly the same feeling you get when you check your six in the kitchen and you find out that the guy fleeing from the gunman is latched to you. Think of the luck. Think of the gravity that, the, the inertia that had to occur that both you and your wife were just out for a drink, and all of these situations happen. And see, the problem sometimes, Dan, is that when we teach military and when we teach police, and those folks are used to getting in a scrum, you had zero expectation of scrum when you went out. You were going to a bar. It was a local bar. You were going to have some dinner. And you know what? The chaos happened around you and therefore involved you. And Brian and I try to tell that to a lot of people, whether you're a teacher or whether you're a student or whether you're HR or anything else. These are the incidents that you're really training for. The Jack in the Box. That's completely unexpected. So, when you gave yourself a report card, because you're an intellectual and an academic, when you gave yourself a report card, what did you like? What didn't you like?

Well, I'll say, and so I say, just to be accurate, I don't consider myself an academic per se, but I consider myself somebody that's interested in the body of research that's out there and how it can be applied as a practitioner. So that's just, that's, that's my perspective. What I would say is, I definitely afterwards see that the proverbial walls were closing in on me. I didn't have complete, I did not remain completely prefrontal cortex. "Oh, that's this, that's this, that's this, that's this, that's this, that's this, that's this." And in fact, I could feel in a sense that, you know, your limbic system saying like, "Alright, buddy, I got it. This is my time." And I'm like, "Just hold on. I can, I can handle this. I can handle this." So what, what I liked was that I managed to stay, even though probably my, my world or the focus came in, that I managed to stay processing it from a prefrontal standpoint. That's a big thing. Now, where did I, where did I go wrong or what? I completely lost, lost visibility and awareness of my wife. Absolutely. And we talked about that. So, so I don't, and I don't, I don't know where that came from, or maybe you guys can help explain, but that's the biggest one, right? I, there was still a part of me that fled only thinking about, you know, my survival, let's say. And I would have loved to have said, grabbed her and said, "Hey, come with me, we're going this way." So that's the part where I say, you know...

I think it's interesting because I think you have the myth of the prefrontal cortex, and Dan, I'm never going to second-guess you. I wasn't there. But the idea is that you thought that you were still in control and making decisions. And I would tell you that's what you reflected upon. I would say in the moment your limbic was in full operation, and then when you had the gift of time and distance afterwards and you reviewed it in your head, you said, "Oh, here's where I made a choice." I think part of the proof I would offer for that is the fact that you did in fact abandon your wife. Let's not play this episode forever. But the idea, but the idea is there, when we think about this, who's the most important person in our universe? We are. It's not our baby. It's not our wife. It's not our dog. Everybody loves to think that. But again, those are points of reflection. In the moment, the idea is that your survival system is geared towards you. Okay. Now, larger allegory of the cave, of course, I want my tribe to survive, but not in warfare that's hand-to-hand. In warfare that's hand-to-hand, if I don't survive, my seed doesn't go forward. And at that exact moment, you are on impulse power. You are down and in. You are completely on an internal, and you were in survival mode. So later, when things calm down, and now months later than the incident, you reflect upon it, and what do you do? You give yourself to Jason Bourne. "Well, clearly I'd led everyone to safety, and I was the one playing the violin on the deck." No, no. And that's not an insult, Dan. That's how we process critical incidents and to archive it so we don't drive ourselves crazy. Behavior. Right.

Exactly. Because you don't want to say, "I was scared shitless and I peed a little." You don't want to ever do those things, right? Now, you would do that in the moment in there with that guy, you know, in the kitchen, "Holy shit, I'm peeing!" Okay? But you're not going to do that an hour later, and certainly not a month later. So that's your reconciliation, and that's your healing coming through. But the idea is, you did exactly what you were programmed to do, and the additional training that you received from the U.S. Army and from the Ranger Battalion and from, you know, your time on Rikers and all those other things, they helped inform your limbic. So when you went full-on limbic, those experiences came to the forefront.

Exactly. You, instead of one, you had three. You, you know, so totally agree how you feel about. You see, I'm going... You can tell me this is maybe, "Hey, limbic system has taken over," right? Whatever. And but you're still getting some data. Is I, I, I recall even when, so I fled, but I knew I wasn't fleeing away necessarily. I had a target in mind, let's say. When I came out, realized I had a dead end, I knew I had to, I had another if-then, "I'm going to do this," and "if then," and "if not." So, tell me, is that part of the conscious, because sense-making, I had to go out and sample.

Right. Right. But stop for a minute thinking, stop thinking like an intellectual for just a second, and think like Neanderthal. Take a giant evolutionary step back. Where in your story...

Right.

No. No. Hold on. Where in your story did the, "Oh, by the way, the girl got shot in the head." "Oh, by the way, the guy with the gun was running next to my wife behind the other side of the bar." Those things were afterthoughts. You know why they were afterthoughts? Because you had lived them and they're no longer relevant to the survival steps you took previous to them. Do you get what I'm trying to say? And your brain...

Your brain is in a loop that's not going to, to go back to those points until later, until the survival was taken care of. And now you have to become the hero of your own story. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Because if you don't control the narrative, you feel powerless. And that's why it came off, "Oh, yeah, yeah, by the way, she was shot at. Oh, yeah, that my wife I found her outside." You didn't, why? I didn't describe them in my...

Precisely because it would have been a story had you done it at the beginning, and I would have been suspect. I would have been suspect. Was he really there, or is this something he read? Was he across the street at a cafe? But that's the way the brain works. And so those things were, were deeper. Do you get what I'm trying to say? In your, in your unconscious mind, and didn't show up until later. So good training is going to allow you to reflect on those. So, an instructor-led AAR (After Action Review) after the incident would have been much more helpful than a Dan-led AAR after Dan's incident. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Because then, then you are going to build those moats and walls and barricades and barriers, and that sometimes inhibits learning. So, if you're a cop out there and you're listening to me and you think you just got involved in a scrum and you think that you can survive it without external intervention, you're wrong. You need peer review. This is where the only time I'll, I'll advocate peer review. You'll also need a professional to unpack some of those things, and you'll have to go back to a trainer and go, "Here's the choices I think I made, and here's the actual choices I made. Where's the disconnect?" Do you get what I'm trying to say? Because now if you had to relive that incident, Dan, think of all your things you would have done differently. You did great. You did great in the survival situation. Everything was wonderful. But those things that you thought about afterwards now would have been considerations. You would have earlier armed yourself even with a street tool. Do you get what I'm trying to say?

Yeah. Even when I went back into the kitchen, I didn't grab a frying pan initially.

There were knives, and there were tools. Exactly. Yeah. And you never interviewed the guy. You would have done a brief street interview grabbing him and going, "What am I up against? Is there five of them or one of them?" Do you see those type of things that we're talking about now?

Did not occur to me.

So training becomes an in-progress loop, and it becomes an update. So, so you can't walk away from that and just tell the story without each time you're telling the story, you're making some stuff up, but what are the key takeaways that I can learn to make myself stronger, right? And in two years, that story is going to take on a life of its own. You know, you had the choking baby that you had to contend with and all that other stuff. That's just how our memory works each time you visit.

You were, you were in the kitchen because fire back there.

The shooter was after you. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So...

Order that was still on the on the skillet.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you notice you never brought up what you drank. You never brought up what you ate. You never brought up those. Why? Because they're ancillary to the central point. And your amigo doesn't give a damn about those, right? And that would take a long...

That highlighting that point is even you're like, "Oh, yeah, actually a woman was shot in the head." Like, absolutely, Jesus, Dan, that's the most chaotic part of the story. Not to you, it wasn't, because it didn't happen to you. And that's a completely, what Greg's getting at too, is like, that is a completely normal way to think. I'm sure absolutely, if your wife had ended up in the kitchen with you, you would have been able to say, "Alright, babe. Here, stay behind me or do this or go over there." But it didn't. And this, and, and you didn't have control of those circumstances. She goes left, you go right. Well, then that's it. It evolves. And, and if you're that connection isn't made right away, then you're, you're both of your brains. And because she, I guarantee she wasn't thinking of, "Where's Dan?" She was thinking of, "How do I get out of here?" You know what I'm saying?

So, so I...

It's, it's very powerful how that stuff happens. And then Greg brought up a good point that sort of...

Reflecting on something, it's tough reflecting as yourself because it's only everything's going to come through, you know, my, it's my internal baseline and how I want to see myself. And, and part of that isn't, you know, people think like, you know, one, being an eyewitness, you know, giving an eyewitness testimony is you're, you're never going to be very accurate, even when you're trying really hard, right? And so people, then you, the story changes so you can cope with it. Your brain's doing that for you. You're not, you're not trying to embellish or negate something wrong that you did. You're just, your brain's going, "Ah, let's, let's remember it this way," because that's an easier way to process it. And then, depending on what happens, you know, if like, you, you, you, that that could corrupt you even more. "Oh, my god, I didn't do enough," and now I have PTSD from it because I have some sort of survivor's guilt. I mean, that's how that stuff kind of starts to take place, and you don't really have a say in it in the moment, but you kind of do it as a, as a, as a reflection point. And so that's like, Greg, your, your point of, you know, that an AAR led by someone. This is almost why like, you know, a police officer asking you questions about it, "Okay. Well, when then, then let's walk through then, where did you go next, then?" "Oh, now it's coming back," because you're replaying it your mind versus you just trying to, "Hey, let me write up my statement and send it to you what happened." It's like, "Well, no, if I lead you through it, I'm going to get better information out of you, and, and you're going to be able to recall more." So this is, it's a good, good point.

And all the, all, and Brian too, to that end, Brian and I worked on a number of studies that were with ONR (Office of Naval Research) and ARRI (Army Research Institute), Army Research Incident Office Naval Research, a lot of the stuff that had a fringe that went to suicide, and Brian worked with me on those programs. And then it went to PTS (Post Traumatic Stress), and Brian worked with me on those programs. And we were from completely vastly different backgrounds, but the idea is what we were trying to get at is how the brain processes the information. And if you get a chance to relive it in the moment, and then call attack, freeze, and change the outcomes and give yourself different options, your brain likes that. Your brain likes to understand now that, "Hey, there's Waldo," you know, solving the Sudoku because if not, you're constantly second-guessing those and undermining your own choices. And Dan, that's a primary reason that Brian and I didn't push. We waited till you were ready to relate that story to put it on the, the, the show. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Had we done it too close, there, there were times that you and your wife didn't want to talk about it, and you certainly didn't want to talk about it, and you were becoming emotional over it, and you know what, we're not going to get anything good out of that. So, so let's give it the time to heal, and then let's unpack. And I like unpack because after-action review, I get it, but I feel so clinical, right? But what we're doing is just unpacking the incident from different perspectives. Have you been to that restaurant since? I mean...

I made it a point to go to that restaurant. That's brilliant. And walk through those steps. I sat in the same, and I'm going to sit in the exact same place. Um, yes, absolutely. Within a week. But there was some resistance from my wife to ever go back. "Why do, why do we ever go back there?" And I said, "Because, because this is our narrative, and the narrative is not, as far as I'm concerned, not going to be, 'And then I never went back there again.'" That's...

You own your narrative. And, and you know that, that the idea is that you took an active role in your survival. So, you're a survivor. And that's hugely important to revisit. See, the one thing about going to training is that if you never use that training, is that training efficient? Is it effective? You know, has it built anything other than your confidence? And you're one of the few people, look, I, I, I've been with coppers that had a 30-year career that never drew their gun except on a shooting range. Brian was with Marines who deployed who never saw combat. As amazing as that seems, your story is now different, right? So, what are you going to do with that? And, and then the, you know, just my, Brian, I know you got an additional, but my final question, Dan, for you to think about, and it's a compound one that you don't need to answer today. What parts of the training that you received do you remember just being right there at the forefront? Do you get what I'm trying to say? Because if, if you were overwhelmed during it, then none of the training was sufficient. Make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. I, I know the answer to that already. And, and so I, I'll just say this, it's what you guys have said, "Start out with just, just start building the baseline. Go out there and start just, just naming things." So we, we, you know, you guys, it's a big concept of being, you can't be down and in, the idea of like, "I'm on my cell phone. I'm thinking about what happened yesterday. Did I leave the burner on?" You know, that's all down and in. And if you're being, you know, you guys have said, if you're being up and out, if you're naming things in your environment and processing them, then you can't be down and in. You know, and, and that's so that is the thing that I have been doing. "Oh, look. That's a white car. Oh, that's a white car. That's a Hyundai. It's a white car. That's a Hyundai. That's a late model. That's a white Hyundai late model. Oh, shoot. There's somebody in that car." You know, like that's that. So, I was. So, on that night, the geographics, we'll say, were static. Like I, I, I, like, so when I came, like when I was making my reactions, I already knew the door was locked, for example. So I knew I had limited egress. Yep. The, and the reason I didn't think, you know, it was so calm. I didn't think it was like a big gun battle at any point because people would have cleared the streets had there been like multiple gangs, right? It would have been a different atmospheric shift, let's say. So...

Yeah, that's what I was going to, going to say. That like, there wasn't like gunfire back and forth. There weren't people screaming everywhere. There wasn't loud other commotion. It was like almost these single static thing that like each thing kind of sound running this almost linear. So like, there is a little bit of time in there, so you didn't get that overwhelming feeling. So, so that it didn't feel like there was some, "Oh, this is it. Like we're, I'm done here."

Right. It wasn't like an external stampede, right? You say, "Holy crap!" It was actually just internal to the bar, triggered by that one person. If I was outside, I might have thought, "Huh, it sounds like there's something going on in, in that bar." But the atmospherics outside were, there was very gentle wave, let's say. So, so, Greg, what, what, and I would say to anybody that's picking this up, is if you're building the baseline, you may think like, "Oh, I don't know the whole thing. I don't know the whole system." But every little bit helps. And if there were six things that I needed to know on that night, I already knew three of them because I was just doing it actively. I was actively processing those things that, that you guys are teaching. And so that's the part that made it less of a load to actually make my decisions.

So, so let's talk about that. Let's talk about reducing cognitive load and not resorting to discovery learning. When you witnessed them lock the back door, that was significant to you. Not only did you recognize it, you noticed it, but you had a level of interest. "I wonder why they're doing that." And then you solved for X by saying, "Oh, I see. They're going to have one point of entry so they can charge because it's later in the day." All that stuff happened in nanoseconds. And the reason for that robust, fidelity-filled baseline, that's a thing that you learn how to do, and then you become better at it. Imagine the discovery learning of you going back and finding out that door was locked while you were running.

Well, it now we're going back at the Jack in the Box, and everything is popping up. And now guess what that does to your feedback loop? Now you've got inhibitions within the building, and now you've got classic obstructions to overcome within your own story. And guess what? You're now on Plan C, trying to update as quickly as you can, and that gunfire is coming closer. The idea is that it didn't have to be for somebody that was a fatal event. It didn't. And, and for somebody else, they're going to go to jail for a good long time. And for a couple of people, they're going to be so traumatized their life is going to be different. So just because it was that and not an armed Sinaloa Cartel shootout doesn't mean it was less significant. And the idea is, what can we learn from this training at these events to pay forward for the next person that might go through the looking glass? Because that's what this is. I mean, you would have never anticipated ever say, "Hey, baby, before we go out tonight, remember our rally point is, you know, you know, Dairy Queen across the street." That's how I operate. That's how Shelly operates all the time. And everybody goes, "That's so weird."

And the talking part of it, I learned that from Jack Webb, late '50s, early '60s, black and white training when I was going to the police academy. Jack Webb would sit in the passenger seat of a scout car and go, as you're driving around—Jack Webb, folks, from the Dragnet series and from many other great movies—but Jack Webb would go, "Guy on the steps, look at this. He's walking out of the store. His hands are free. Hey, there's a guy with a suitcase. He's walking ac—Oh, he's getting in a cab." And he would narrate while he was going. And people are going, "Wow, that's, you know, situation overload." For me, it's not. For me, when Brian and I are together, we're constantly doing that. And Dan, you've witnessed that. You've seen that in a sled. And so, if I can't talk, I'm pointing. And then we're acknowledging those things in an environment. One, it makes life so much more fun. Okay? And the second thing is that level of awareness makes sure that you're not caught off guard. You did things even unconsciously that helped you succeed through this incident. "Where's the exit? Where am I sitting?" Those things. Everybody does that. But then you said, "Why is that guy locking the door? What are those sounds outside? Why is this guy running?" You've seen people run before, Dan, but what was different about his running? You said the look in his eyes. What was different about that? And you've met thousands of Riker's Island inmates that have gone through all kind of prison wallet experiments and stuff. So, you knew those kind of looks.

Yeah.

And you knew what those meant. So the idea is that you're using your intimate knowledge of a situation and the training, and using the situation at hand to say, "I have anomalous behavior in progress, and therefore it drives my decision." And guess what? This isn't an ML (Most Likely). I can see by the people running and hiding. It's not a most likely course of action. So what does this most dangerous course of action mean to me now at this time and at that place? You know, and, and this is the first time I've heard the entire story. I've only heard pieces of it. And it just becomes abundantly clear that you're the right kind of person for this. This training enhanced what you already have naturally and took you to that next level.

Well, I'll say, you know, my wife, she's, she's a New Yorker. She grew up there. She's, she's very good at this type of stuff innately. She just, she, she has it. I'm, I'm, to, to me, almost some of these, these cues might, I might have missed them before from an aptitude standpoint. I think when we talk about creating like a framework, that's, that's where, you know, what, what you do, what the two of you guys do as experts is, you have this framework, right? You have this model, and that's why it's so easy to pick these things because it's your thousandth incident. But even having a framework to slot this in and be able to start practicing, it gives coherence. I would say, it gives language to something that doesn't have a name initially. Right? So it, it's almost like when we learn emotions, we say, "Oh, we eventually learn like I'm angry. I'm, I'm sad." Right? We, we associate labels to our internal states. And, and when I think about this, that's what it is. It's given me language to process and label internal states to allows me in a sense to communicate with myself, right? And then, and then say, "That's this, that's this, that's this, that's normal or that's typical, that's not typical. I pay attention to this." So, I'm a very process-driven person, and for anyone else is that, that is. It's like it gives you the template to just start plugging in and practicing. And you know, I, I, I'll see somebody get out of the car. "Oh, she's out. She has flip-flops on, and she's got her keys in her hand." So, where's my explanatory story? I think that she's going to potentially a coffee shop within a block, and she's planning on coming right back because otherwise, why would she keep her keys in her hand? And I look at her shoes. I say, "Those certainly aren't walking shoes." And so I create, and so that's just it. So, but it's a, it's an entire framework that, that anyone, including a person like me who's not a public safety individual, right? I'm not out there on the front lines doing that work. But it shows that it's applicable because it's, it's human, it's human behavior. It's, we're, we're, we're all the same in, in these predictable ways. And you just got to spend enough time to, to practice recognizing it after you've been taught.

Yeah.

Very, very briefly on Dan's comment, Brian. Listen, Dan, one of the things I got in a huge arguments with, with ONR and ARRI and all the other think tanks, I take KSAs and I make them KSAs to the third. So it's knowledge, skills, and attitudes, aptitudes, and abilities. And most say knowledge, skills, and abilities. Yeah, I get that. But the idea is your attitude is a survival mechanism. Okay? Your aptitude and attitude combine to reinforce your abilities and either help you or become that anchor to draw you back. And so when you train the whole brain, you train the whole person. You know, anger and, and, and fear and love are so closely linked that your brain can't tell the difference. Your brain understands that there's an electrochemical neurotransmitter that's saying, "Now go look, watch." And that's why we're drawn to watching people fighting or watching people fornicating. There, there's a cultural imperative. There's a survival mechanism triggered in our brain that goes way back to the earliest days. And so training has to understand that because if not, you're just flipping tires and climbing the rope. You're just putting rounds downrange. And that's not enough. That, that may feel like enough, you know, but that goes back to the argument, "Well, 10,000 reps," and that's all horseshit. 10,000 reps, 10,000 steps, all these are, are things that people make up to make themselves feel better. But you got to go back. You got to take a giant evolutionary step backwards and see for yourself what works and what doesn't. That, that's priceless. That really is. Sorry, Brian.

Yeah. No, I, I, this is, I appreciate you sharing the story and kind of being able to break it down that way. And like Greg's saying, it's the first time I, I heard it all. But I, and I, I did, I want to get to kind of, some of the other stuff you talked about in your intro and kind of what you're doing with us. So, you know, you're, what we, we brought on Dan as the Vice President of Training, Innovation, and Performance, right? So, you have this background in instructional design and human performance technology. And, you know, typically in my experiences with folks like that in the past, it's very sort of, before knowing about what you did, you know, I always had this because I, I too, I went and got my masters in applied psychology because it was, I wanted to get that academic, you know, side of it. I wanted to see what they were doing with the private sector and what how they were talking about it. And I, most of what I learned, I was like, "Okay, like this is well-intentioned and this is crap," or "It's not going to work," or "Like this is like not, this isn't training, and this is all theoretical-based." And I, you're, you're saying it's almost like, I have a problem with like when they're going, "Oh, well, we got to, you know, you need better mental health, and that'll help out." It's like, "Well, okay, like, yes, I'm all for everyone getting better mental health and how we talk about it. Absolutely. But what the crap does that have to do with the mission of your organization, what you do?" It doesn't. Like, you know what I'm saying? It's like maybe some of the mental health reasons is because you have shitty leadership, and they're, you know, they're, they're not being, you know, managed and led correctly. And so people aren't feeling incentivized, and they're down on their job because of all these issues over here, not because of there's something wrong with their crap mental health. You know what I'm saying? But that, that's just one example that just popped my head. But you have this whole background in, in this, you know, instructional design, human performance technology. And what, when we first started meeting and talking, like there was a lot of stuff that we really, really agreed upon at sort of a philosophical level about training and about education, learning and performance, and measurement. And what these conversations you and I have been having, you know, that are like, I mean, it's mind-numbing. I literally have to like, "Alright, Dan, I'm done. And I got to go lift some weights now because that's, that's too much."

Too much of that woke up a mental sweat as well. Is that the dictionary you're reading?

No, but but it, it, it, it's really good and you are very, you, you're, you're deliberate and you ask great questions and you cut through crap because you want to get to that point because everything has to have a purpose and meaning and a reason in a sense and it, it's all tied to what your performance is. It's not tied to what, how you did on the crap test. I don't care what your multiple choice test was wrong, right? I care if you did it correctly, right? I don't care if you remembered the word I use. Did you make the right decision and, and were you able to articulate it, right? And, and that's what it comes down to. And so there was, there was a lot of that that we agreed upon. And because there's a lot of really, really well-intentioned poor training out there and I, that's the my, my the most, you know, apolitical, non-partisan way I can see it. And it's just like, there's a lot of people wasting a lot of time and I feel bad because they, they really want to make a change and they're really trying to do good but they don't know. So you're bringing in this outside capability and you're obviously...

You're a little skeptical is what I hear up front.

Well, yeah. Yeah. Up front like I am with everything though, right? It's like, "Okay, we'll crap, prove it." And then the way you would talk about, I was like, "Oh, no, Dan gets it. He, he just has a way better lexicon in this, way better understanding of how to explain it to an organization and to a person in charge and to this than I can." Like, because I have my, my own experience and my tacit knowledge where I can say, "Yes, I agree with that." But like, I can't always tell you why because I just go, "Well, I just crap know that's going to work and your crap sucks." And it's like, "Well, you can't." Obviously, I, I don't say that to people unless it reaches a threshold where they've pissed me off, but that takes a lot, right? But, but, but, you know, I, I, you, what I'm getting at is, I'd like you to talk about that background and what you bring to, to the, to the table here and what that means and how important it is to look at these sort of outcomes-based and what you're going with and starting with that versus, "Oh, this is what I think happened, so let's get, you know, the new thing on our web belt to put on there," or "the new computer system," or "the new camera," right? It's like we, we go to those things but, or we go to those things with a G, right, because we can point to them. But, but you start from a completely different kind of, kind of place. So, so I'd like you to kind of talk to listeners about what that is and about, you know, your process and how you do it.

Sure. I think that's, so there's a couple things you mentioned that I think are, are relevant here. And one, human, what is human performance improvement (HPI)? Human performance improvement is kind of an umbrella. It's, it's a research-based body of evidence that includes training but also includes a number of drivers that are performance-based. So, and it starts always with looking at an organization and the job role and then the tasks and responsibilities within that. So that's where you start. And I think typical training starts in reverse. It starts they, they've got learning objectives, training objectives and then somehow from there they're going to try to fit it into performance if they can, and then organizational outcome. It just doesn't work that way. And I think also they don't even traditional learning and development doesn't have a proficiency-based lens. They're more, they have more of a development lens, right? Like, "Here's some information. Oh, you're going to go digest it and it's going to manifest in some way." Well, I look at it as an HPT (Human Performance Technologist) does as kind of a third-party, third-party system, in the same way K through 12 is. You send someone to training, and just because, you know, my 8-year-old comes back and says, "You know, second grade is awesome," like, "What did you do?" Like, "Well, we just, we had free time a lot." You're like, "Well, that's not, that's not why I'm sending you to school. I'm sending you to school to learn to read and write." You know, it's these proficiencies, right? And so, HPT takes that same approach. Actually, we look at the stakeholders. The, the, the person going to training certainly is a stakeholder, but they're not the sponsor, let's say. So, our, our whole perspective is from an organizational perspective, what is this person's job? What are they supposed to be performing? And what does good look like? Because then you can start looking at, well, how are you measuring that? And in a public safety standpoint, they'll say, "Oh, you know, I wish our, our, our police reports were better. These suck. I don't know what this even means," or, "Our satisfaction scores with our, with our customers, with our, you know, the community, we'd like them to be higher. We'd like to have less use of force," et cetera, et cetera. So once you start having organizational conversations, they can point to metrics that will be that will inform their performance, and those things lead then, "Okay, from there, how does that involve the role? How does that involve the task? How does that and then the skill and the proficiency level?"

One of the things that you all offer is an expert-based model. So, it's something that we can look at that's robust in the sense that you can say, "Okay, for somebody that's new to the field or new to the skill, what does, what is good look like?" And then somebody that's two years or four years in, and, and it scales from there. And we have the ability to adapt our instructional processes. So, big picture, that's what we're trying to do. We're, we're using learning as a, as the tool or the, the medium, but it's not the end. The end is the performance, and we start there, and I think that's fundamentally something that's mirrored in the training, and you all use a, whether you realize it or not, it's a scientific approach, right? It's, "If this were true, then I should have this, this, this to be able to, you know, stack it up as evidence." And that's, that's exactly what we're doing. We're, we're coming up with those metrics in advance, having the conversation about desired results at the organizational performance level, and then saying, "Okay, did we move the needle or not?" And that is just, you can't get there using a traditional instructional or, or learning and development approach. So that's how I see kind of one of our differentiators and why we can say we're an enterprise-level solution in the same way that getting, you know, getting a new system of cards or getting a new computer system. We are a human resource enterprise capability.

Oh, one, one argument I would make for all the street trogs like me out there, what Dan just said is, "Show us your work." What he just said is that we show our work, and it doesn't matter what the answer or the outcome is. It matters the process that you got there because then you'll make better decisions, and your answers will become better because you'll have that gift of time and distance. I love the way you put it. The only argument I would make, Dan, when you said, "What does good like, look like?" in Greg speak, I would say, "What does good enough look like?" would be fair, or, "What does right look like?" Because the expert model has to set conditions, right? Because task condition standards, I get it. Yeah, you're, you're, you're showing me your process. That doesn't guarantee outcomes. That guarantees that the process will be followed, right? But the process has to have feedback loops into the human actor so that human knows where they are along that process so they can update that information and go, "I'm on thinner ice than I was. I got to take a knee. I got to go back. I got to take cover." And, and I've yet to see another program. Well, I tell you what, I, I, I've seen one that withstood my—and not that I'm anybody—but my rigorous standard, and that was Arbinger. So the cool thing about Jack Cwell is I knew of Jack before I actually finally met him down in Texas, and we both didn't know each other, and he came up completely saying, "Okay, so if this is where this system started, I want to meet you and Brian." And how long did we spend, Brian, talking to them, unpacking where this has come from? So, Dan, your process is literally epitomizing what it is that we've tried to do by showing anybody that's a business owner, a check writer, or wants to guarantee the legal, moral, and ethical outcomes of the unit, you're showing them this is how it's done. And it just happens to be that our system follows that. And the parts of our system that didn't, you're going through and updating now to ensure compatibility. Is that a fair assessment?

Absolutely. And, and one thing I would add to that is that, that fundamentally, we're a criterion-referenced organization, right? So we have evidence, and, and traditional training is going to send you to training for an hour or two hours or four hours. And that's part of our challenge too, helping organizations on behalf of the practitioner, that public safety officer that's in there, that him or her getting better at a particular skill is not a, a function of time. It's a function of, of proficiency to that level, that level of standard you're talking about, Greg. And, and, and we can, because we can show our math. We can advocate for the not longer, maybe sometimes it's shorter. You don't need two days for this. You only need a day, but it's because you need to spend this much time on this. They need to have an opportunity to, to process it, make sure that they're understanding it, and then get some level of practice proficiency before they go out the door. So...

Yeah, it can't just be the, it can't be just a certificate mill where you say you were exposed to this material for 40 hours. Well, that's wonderful. But if there wasn't a rehearsal and a practice and internal thought process where you got to reflect on the training that you were doing, those are all absolutely essential to adult learning and retention.

Yeah. And learning education is only coming around now. And I, there's just been this ton of work that, you know, everybody, you can see that people are goal-based. You see it in public safety. Even officers sometimes that come in, first, will fill up the back rows, right? So there's, there's a strategy there, right? And it's based on their experience. "I don't want to get called on. I don't want to be spotlighted. I don't want to be embarrassed," right? So they're coming around to the idea that, "Oh, these learners are not just like, we can't just shove information down their skulls." You know, we, we have to account for the fact that they're all thinking people, right? They have agency, and unless we can develop training in a way that shows that they've processed it and are able to show us that, that it's theirs now, right? Because like you said, you want them to be able, we're, we're teaching people how to be, how to think independently.

Exactly.

In extremis, right?

Exactly. And Dan, you were there. Brian, you were there, too. Remember coming out of the academy, the first thing your first FTO (Field Training Officer) says, "Forget every damn thing that you learned because you're on the street now." And then you got out of FTO, and you're on the road with your first senior vet partner and, "Forget every damn thing that you learned. Hey, you're not at Parris Island anymore, Marine." You know, you're in the crap. The problem is that those things have to exist together. If they don't exist together, then your knowledge isn't experiential. And, and yes, there's a difference between training and education, but they have to be in line because if they're not, then your brain doesn't understand that those goals are aligned. And therefore, it's going to jettison what it doesn't think it needs, in extremis. And if you do that, you're again with that God damn Jack in the Box. All of a sudden, you're at that back door, Dan, and it's locked. And that's a damn shitty place to be.

Yeah. Well, that's on my business card, by the way.

What you acknowledge is that people have choice. And, and I've seen it now in the course, Greg, that, that we have designed opportunities for people to decide, you know, "Yeah, that makes sense. Actually, I do that. I don't do that. Yes, I'm willing to accept that." So, it's, it's almost implicit in the course design that, that people come in and regardless of whether what we're training is true or not, they still have to be willing to accept it if it's going to be effective. And I think that's one of the, being an expert in the field yourself, that's something that's implicit in the training. I think it's, it's very powerful, and we see on Day 2 and Day 3 participants is one of the things I do is I sit at the tables a lot. And so what you're saying is that I'm part of this process, or I'm partially responsible for the outcome. It's a rhetorical question, and the follow-up question might be like, "Well, what makes you say that?" But that's a great sign that, and we're putting in mechanisms that's going to trigger for those that are willing to start having those conversations with themselves. So, I think that's critical.

Yeah. And your use of true, again, I'm a word guy. So your use of true, whether it's true or not, what that means is in your Haberman sphere, in your brain, in your experience, whether you've had this happen or whether you understand this knowledge, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that you're a white belt. What you have to do is understand that other people have had these experiences, and therefore the artifacts and evidence, you can, you can cherry-pick those. You can create experiences from them that you can pay forward, and, and that becomes a truth. The lemon shark attack. You know, I know my truth. So the, the idea is when you go through there, exactly, when you go through and you're sitting with them, they're telling you their story. And if their story aligns with the outcomes of the course, and they can carry that back with them and use it on the street, what a powerful time expenditure. And what's the money worth? You know, I, I don't know where people come up with how much they charge, but you know, we're not charging enough. And, and, you know, when, when we're in class, it, it's proved to me every day when those people come up and go, "Hey, I remember you. I did this. These things happen." And Brian and I get inundated with emails where people say, "I'm using this every day." That nothing makes me more proud of the legacy that we've created through the training because it's not us, it's the training. And, and how far it can take an organization. One, one of the things, and maybe you can kind of help, both you, Greg, and Dan, but like what I, what I will typically see, and this is like, without getting into all the reasons why we do it, you know, with, with confirmation bias and sort of fundamental attribution errors, but we'll see, "Okay, this person is really good at their job, you know, that they, this is the ideal person, or this is what they're," and then we go, "Well, what is it that they do?" It's like, "Well, man, they're number one on the PT test. They can outshoot everyone. They're the stud on the mat. You know what I mean? Like, they can drive in reverse better than I can drive forward," right? And so, we look at those skills and go, "Okay, it, it must be these things that we need to be more proficient at." And my thing is like, "Yeah, that person's all great at that stuff, but, but, you know, it's that the PT standard doesn't help you make better decisions. It's, yes, you want the better shape you're in." You know, you can go into that, but like when we're talking about in extremis decisions in a sense, a lot of that kind of goes out the window and isn't really going to affect it. It's, "Can you think through the problem?" And, and, "When did you, when did you actually recognize that you were even having a problem?"

And are you thinking through the right problem? You're exactly right. That's the thing. And, and so I, I think there's a lot of, and I know you kind of brought that up when it goes to like, "Well, how are you measuring it?" Because we'll see that we're like, "Alright, we want to get them to do this, and we got them to do that." And then we're like, "Okay, yeah, we can train people how to do that and how to see those things and better articulate it." But like, um, what are you looking for as an outcome? What are you trying to measure here? It's like, "Oh, well, we get all these complaints from people about this thing." It's like, "Okay, well, how are you addressing that?" It's like, "Be, well, that now becomes our metric." And, and sometimes it's not even the right metric. And that's why everyone falls back on the, on the things like that. It's always like, "What's the one mile run time?" It's like a, a, a foot race. That's like the oldest form of competition between people, and that's how we're deciding like, your, your, you know, how to emulate this person is a foot race. Think about that for a second. Like how complex is that? It's, well, it's not. It's like, so we, we break it down like too simply sometimes because I, I don't think people know how to measure the things that matter sometimes. Does that make sense? And I, I'm not exactly sure where the question is. It's just my trying to way of articulate like, hey, these are the things we need to look at. This is the problem that, that's I understand that you think that's happening every day because maybe it is, but, but that's actually not a contributing factor to this issue over here.

And Dan, I'd like to go second. And I'd also like to bring to everybody's attention. Dan was on the advisory board not to glad-hand us and pat us on the back and tell us how good we were doing, but to step in a room and go, "Time out here. Why did you say that? Why was that slide used? Where are you thinking?" So, Dan, you can be as critical as you want in your response, and, and I'll go second if it's okay.

Sure. So, one of the things you said, Brian, like the, the indicators of what's happening, but that the, I think what's really hard for organizations and even individuals is to recognize that what's not happening is also a valid form of measurement. So, if it's and sometimes you got to be creative. It's, it's, "Okay, we had X number of pursuits, and we caught the bad guys or whatever." But if you say this, "These two officers had the same number of, of tickets, and there's like one-tenth of the pursuits. So that means nobody fled from them." What are they doing that's containing the, the flight? You know, that, that's also a way to look at, at, at something, a measure of effectiveness. So, so that's one thing. It's, it's really working with, even with like, "Okay, Greg, you'll say sometimes like people, a lot of times have more time than they think they do." So kind of external, getting people to go deeper in their thought process is, is which, which then says, "Oh, we could use this as a measurement." And the flip side of that in training is, I'm a big advocate for quote-unquote "show your work," but I like to do it visually. So, I'm a horrible artist, but imagine if you're training on something and you're telling people describing the key components of a horse, and you say, "Okay, draw to everybody. Doesn't matter what it looks like, draw the horse." And they draw it like I draw one with three legs. And so when you walk up and you look at the other, "Oh, that's interesting. That's, where's the fourth leg on this, right?" But what Brian said to me once is like, "I'm just glad that they got three out of the four legs." What are we talking about here? So those are both valid measurements, but done in a way that's actually everybody can look at objectively. So I think those are, those are, you know, a couple of measurement, a couple of ways that we tackle measurement.

So let me go way off the reservation. I know that's going to surprise both of you to answer the same question that, that Dan did, and I love the "show me your work" reference, Dan, because we're right there together on that. So I had, I don't know if it's luxury of dealing with a lot of battalion and brigade commanders in combat zones when they were bringing back body bags, and the number one thing about, "Get them to training early and often, and make sure that these people are trained for the appropriate skills in combat," which a cognitive portion is a huge piece of that, not just shooting and killing and blowing things up and running and jumping. What they would do is they would say, "No, you're right. So, this is a guy I'm going to send to training." And I'd say, "This guy? You're damn sending me this guy to training?" "Yeah. Why?" "Well, because I can't send this guy. He's my EXO, and he's too essential to the mission. And I can't send this guy because he's my greatest company commander, and his guys are racking up the numbers." He can't send that guy because these two guys are his best squad leaders, and they're doing. So, what you end up with is you give me the sick, the lame, and the lazy. Now, they'll still learn something, but what's the impact to your organization when they come back? So the measurement, the longitudinal measurement, has to be what are the outcomes you're seeing on the ground at your agency when you've only had two or three people that you sent to the training? Were they given enough information to impact how things were done? Were they changing the culture of your organization? And was it for the better? Where, where were the, the, the things that you didn't even consider, and all of a sudden you're seeing a difference, and you're reading a difference, and the community is reacting differently? To me, that's the most important thing. So if you don't spend the money, and if you don't send them to training, and if you're not sending the right people, then reap the damn whirlwind.

And, and on top of that, I don't think that's so far off, but when you look at Combat Hunter, what was the imperative for that, Greg? Like, what, you know, when General Mattis says, "Hey, I need a program for this."

He was trying two major reasons. One, it was the single most kinetic part of battle, and they were losing the most Marines ever in their first contacts when they were going. So he was doing a duplicitous effort. He wanted combat—back then it was urban hunter, but Combat Hunter. He said, "Greg, I don't want anybody going in and being surprised by what they're seeing, even though they're going to a different country that they've never been to, and they don't understand the language." And that was easy. Okay, what you're doing is setting up the conditions to say, "I don't want their first contact on the ground to be any worse in combat than it was here in training before they went." And that was exactly the mandate Brian got at the infantry immersive training, is that, how can we prepare them? And you know what? People go down different avenues. The smell generator. "Hey, let's get legless vets and have them flop around on the ground in the blood and, and let's make noises, you know, and explosions," or, "And those are all good things." But you know what? At the end of the day, those are not as much as giving me choices. And if I have choices to slow time down, if I understand that if I give myself a nanosecond here and there, I'll likely come to a better conclusion. If I understand that the artifacts and evidence that are adding up around me will give me a picture of what I can expect at the end of it. Those are all wonderful things, and they start with curiosity, and they, they don't start with intellect because sometimes we don't get intellectuals. Sometimes they don't hand me somebody that's got a college degree, and that person has to be just as prepared as the person next to him that's a PhD to go through that door. So that Mattis was, was everybody says wrong. I've never heard him called Mad Dog, and I'd like you to do that to his face. And then people talk about the warrior monk. Mattis was a thinker, and, and Mattis was a combatant commander that wanted less body bags coming back. And Mattis would ask...

I'm sorry. Ma...

Mattis would ask all the time, "Which part of this training would you want your son or daughter to take before they deployed? Was it that one? Was it that training?" And you know what? Overwhelmingly, it was always Combat Hunter. It was always ASAP. They wanted to go before their deployment. Sorry, Dave.

Yeah. No, no, you made the great point, though, that, that it was a leadership imperative with an organizational outcome that spurred the training where knowledge was the, the intervention, or knowledge is what you needed. You weren't, you weren't sticking your hand out saying, "Who wants to come to this training?" The senior leadership has said, "This is a priority, and we have metrics. We have too many service members dying, and they're dying because of X, Y, and Z, and I want you to train, train to a performance or criterion outcome," right? So that's, and that's where we're at with, we're saying, "This is not, hey, this isn't a, a great workshop, guys. Glad got you got great Level 1 course review. Who cares?" Yeah, they want to be proficient, but these are, you need to understand if you're a senior leader that this is fulfilling your organizational mission and equipping with your, your staff with the tools and the knowledge they need to be able to effectively and safely do their jobs out there. This isn't just like, "Oh, hey, this is a great workshop." This is about fulfilling your mission.

It's on both sides of the badge. It's on both sides of the street. It's on both sides of that community. And it's got to work from your, your, your person that doesn't believe in God to the person that's at church every day, to the, you know, the lowest member of the community that has the least to offer the community and is living in a box, all the way to the Chief Operating Officer from the company. It's got to be everything that everybody can use anytime, and that's human-to-human interaction. So, if you start there and you say, "Okay, here's the right place to start." And you say, "Here's the likely outcomes we'd want. We want to build trust in that community." Well, we want a safer officer that's less likely to use force unintentionally. We want to deliberately take, and that's what Dan does, folks. If you wonder what Dan does with the organization, he gets on there and he goes, "Why do you need us? Why do you really want Arcadia?" Because this is what Arcadia brings. And if you're buying this, it's not what you think it is. It's not this, this other thing. And, and I think that because we're so deliberately purpose-built, because we're bespoke for that agency, we change stuff that we do for that agency to make it personal to them, their community, their leadership, their outcomes. And, and I think that's different, too. And somebody's going to say, "Well, you know, a^2 + b^2 = c^2 is also always a^2 + b^2 = c^2." Yeah, it is here. But when we get to Mars, things get a little sketchy. So the idea is that on your way to the call, things change. And if you're not updating that information, then you're going to inevitably run into the man with the gun with your loaded gun, and then you're going to say, "Wow, you know, a number of people were shot." Surprise, surprise. Can we change that? And the idea is that everybody right now wants to change the culture of police work. Now, what you want to do is you want to update a human to make them a better decision-maker under critical stress. And don't you want that for your kid? Don't you want your kid in school to anticipate that shit's going wrong at the lunchroom and come home? That's the stuff we're talking about. An advanced critical thinking mindset is different than the type of training that most people are buying and most books that people are invested in.

Yeah. So, Dan, I wanted to kind of, well, be, be respectful of your time and everything. Well, actually, I don't have to anymore.

Not anymore. I'm paying you now, so I don't have to be respectful of your time. No, my calendar appears free, Brian.

So what's minimum wage for a day?

I get, I get, I get all the Holiday Inn Express points I could ever imagine.

Exactly. That's right.

Well, it goes back to, well, a couple things. It goes back to, I guess, not, you know, my, my background growing up, we were middle class, but my parents worked hard. They were the first ones to go to, they were the first ones to graduate from high school. You know, my father grew up, my father's a rancher. He grew up in southeast Colorado. He lived in a one-bedroom adobe house that my grandfather built. So, you know, we come from like a humble means. So I think especially after I got in my mid-30s, I was, I was already thinking like, I, I, I have a limited amount of time. I have a limited amount of resources. What, what is, what is most effective? And, and this came down to the course even choosing instructional design versus educational psychology. Is the way my counselors described it. One is descriptive and one is prescriptive. So, one being kind of explains the situation or tells you what's going on. The other one explains how to do it. It's procedural. So I find and, and then working through the last 12, 15 years, most training is descriptive. You like, "Oh, that was great. I'm more aware. I know about, I know about this at a better level." But it's not actionable. It didn't give you, it didn't translate into skills. So, this didn't, I went to that training. I went, I paid sometimes for training, and I'm still not a better, I don't have a better sales approach. I don't have a better, um, I, I can't, you know, do this claim any faster. So I, I think my own worldview was what is training or learning if you think about it, is it's adaptation, right? It's when it comes right down to it, it's, it's change for your environment. It's, it's fitness. And so along those lines, I find or feel like HBPRA (Human Behavior Pattern Recognition and Assessment) is a really, is low on the BS factor. It's not, it's, it's not going to pontificate about why we're the way we are so much, or, or give any, it's just, it's just low BS, I would say. And it's just the mechanics of what we know actually works. And it's put together in a way that is accessible, and we even talk about access in, in training. It's accessible. Anybody can get to it and start using it really, really fast. And the fact that it's stable, and it's built on these principles that we know are true about how humans behave. And again, like there's all these different theories, right? But you guys focus on the autonomic system, that which is, there's nobody's arguing about that. So like, all of it, it's, it's, we talk about organizations that are low sophistication, high organization. We're an example of that, in my opinion. We're not, we're not, you know, a lot of times people come out of the training, they're like, "You know what, I knew most of this stuff already. I never thought about it in this particular way, but now that I've combined it in this way, I'm 10 times more effective or my confidence level is so much higher now." So, to me, it's, I, I appreciate the fact that you guys have some humility. You're not pretending to be or have created something that didn't somewhere piece exists, but you're saying, "Hey, here's, in, in this approach, it works." And the more I started digging into it, there was evidence for all of it. And I said, and, and I'll tell you, and that coupled with, kind of my passion or sense of purpose for helping public servants. Those combined and say, "This can really help people, and it's very performance-based," which is my, my personal, you know, point of view professionally. So these, these worlds kind of collided, and I just said, "I, I have a real, a real calling in a sense or desire to to support what these guys are doing." So, that's why I'm here.

I, I, I think that was a, the great answer, Brian. I'm glad we're recording this. And I want to add, Dan, I've never been accused of humility. So, actually hearing that word in my name in the same sentence, what a bombastic guy I am. But no, that's, that's wonderful, and it's noble. And you know what? At the end of the day, folks, you got to understand that, that Brian and I and Dan don't sit around a table and pat each other on the back and go, "Harrumph, that was wonderful, Harrumph." We're constantly adapting and making sure that what we're bringing is the best, most efficient cognitive model for your brain, for, for your performance, and, and that's not easy to do. People don't like being introspective, Dan. People don't like being told that their baby is ugly, right? Yeah. You know...

We, we had what, a 15-minute heated conversation on one photo this morning.

Before we recorded this.

Followed by one that, that where one word threw us into a tizzy. But you know what? Isn't that wonderful? Remember the old murder board days in the military? It's no different. It's no different. We're passionate because we, we only have one chance to get it right. We only may see you one time, and some of this information is going to be relevant to you. Yeah. It's just too important. And, and I think that's why, Yeah.

I can't stay dry.

The stake, the stakes are too high. It's way too...

That's right. I can't, I can't, I can't, you know, this is only the second job. When I was, when I was younger, I worked as a job placement person for people with special needs, with adults with disabilities. And I thought, "Here's a population that really can do good work. Get a tremendous sense of satisfaction and pride and well-being from working." And I'll tell you, we, we had probably like 15 people on the rolls. And I went into every grocery store. I was like, "You're getting one of ours, you're getting one of ours, you're getting one of ours." Because from my perspective, it's like, they're too valuable. Like, that's you can afford it, and this is something that needs to happen. It's, it's purpose-driven, and, and you will be better for it, and...

It's going to pay you back exponentially. Exactly. I'm just, there's, I'm just, "Yeah, it's me again because you may not realize it, but your staff is going to benefit. You're going to save lives. You are going to reduce friction in your community. You are going to engender trust if or when you start getting exposed to this training." So I, I, I'll say it on high and on low. Like, "Oh, tell me the objection, and I'll, I'll give you a reason why, you know, I'll, I'll overcome it because it's, it's too important for you, for you not to be exposed to it."

Great point.

So, yeah, I, I appreciate that. Dan, and I appreciate you kind of sharing the story and talking a little bit more about you, and I know we'll have you on again for some future in-depth discussions and then, of course, on Patreon as well for those folks who, who are subscribed. I do have to, have to promote that too while we're on here. And remember, everyone, that you can, you can go on there and find out more. But, any, any last thoughts from Greg? I'll go to you and then Dan give you kind of the last thoughts.

Now, we take a long, long time to get somebody from nowhere to on the advisory board, and then we take years to take somebody from the advisory board to finally put them on the rolls. And we have probably such incredible deep thinkers. Dr. Joan Johnson, for example, you know, we, we think of a person that's on the board that'll never be on day-to-day because she's in high demand. Clark De, you know, Sim Trumitus. Why are those people there? Because they're thinkers. And then tapping into Dan's ability to apply that to what we do on the day-to-day when we're out in the public, Brian, has just been so essential. I knew it was going to be great, but Brian, this was really you saying, "God, you got to take a look at, you know, what we could become." And that's what it is. It's the transformation. We have, we have broken the surly bonds. Wait a minute. That's flight. And are moving up and out at a tremendous rate, largely because of thinkers like Dan. And so, Dan, welcome aboard.

I appreciate that a lot, Greg. And if you notice, I was on the advisory board, but unlike Joan or Clark, I'm in low demand. That's, that's exactly. We can afford you. That's, we can't afford those guys. Yeah. So, Brian also...

Real bargain. I do have one final thing to say. Just one quick legacy. Legacy Seafood. Milledgeville, Georgia. I'm in love with their food and waitress.

Legends.

Legend is good. Also...

Starts with an L. Go to Milledgeville. How many God damn fish places are there?

It's a beautiful place. That place is amazing. Their food is incredible.

Amazing. And the food, the value. Come on, Dan. After you. Sorry.

Well, I appreciate the accolades, Greg. You know how I feel about you guys and the work. What, what, what I am doing also is, I would love for anybody that's listening, that wants to reach out and give feedback or say, "Hey, you know what? The course is great. This is what I found particularly impactful," and, "Or hey, you know what? You guys are missing an opportunity here by not expanding on this more." Right? That we are, we are in listening mode, and I'm kind of the designated person to, to gather that information. Yeah. And then kind of share it with the team. So I would, I, it's really a request that listeners send me an email. Send me something. We can get in touch just informally, say, "If I, Dan, if there were two or these three things you guys could start focusing on or re-emphasizing, this would, this would do it," because in the end, I'm an advocate for you as the practitioners. So that's, that's my final word, Brian. I appreciate...

I'm on SRO, so I'm impacted right now. So just know that.

Couldn't, couldn't hold that one in.

I can't close. I can't get that one out. Close.

So, oh man. Alright. Well, I think on that note, we'll go ahead and wrap up here. Appreciate it, Dan, for coming on and talking to us. We'll have you on again, but thanks everyone for tuning in. And don't forget that training changes behavior.