L.O.G. 218 But Im Not a Cop

Okay, it looks like we're up and rolling and recording. Good morning, Greg, and good morning, Scott Kirschner. Thank you so much for coming on The Human Behavior Podcast today.

Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, it's gonna be— I know it's a pleasure, yet. I'll tell you in a minute. Let's see... All right, to be determined, exactly.

So for everyone listening, we had a— I know you heard a short bio of Scott, and he'll tell us a little bit about himself. But we had a great conversation with Scott, and he reached out. We kind of talked about, he's got his training company out there in Arizona, and he's got a great background. And one of the things he brought up that he hears a lot is people who say, "But I'm not a police officer." And he's talking about in terms of victimization, and what people should do in situations, and what they shouldn't do. And you teach and train a lot about this, but when you said that, I've heard that too, and it kind of resonated with me and a lot of people. So I want to jump into that. But I mean, we'll talk about everything that means. We've got some cool infographics that everyone can check out and get out there. But I want to kind of throw it to you first, Scott, and tell us, like, tell the listeners just a little bit about yourself and what you do, and kind of how, I guess, then you came to link up with us.

Yeah, so Scott Kirschner, I am the owner and lead instructor with Dedicated Threat Solutions, where I teach mostly officer survival courses to government employees. And I focus a lot with probation and parole officers, corrections detention officers, code enforcement officers, fire marshals, building officials, animal control officers. And I tend to stay away from police officers just because they have access to so much training already. So I'm trying to hit a market that doesn't have the ability to get out there and get some good, solid training. Background is, I have a history of martial arts training. I was a probation officer, corrections officer—where I started—parole administrator. And after all those careers ended, I started my company, and I'm just doing training right now.

That's awesome. And Brian, I want to make sure that we know that both of us are excited and happy about the Scott Kirschner episode. We think it's going to be a great one. What I was alluding to earlier is there's a wildfire out this back door. And it's later in the week when we're recording, so God only knows if I have to evacuate during the podcast. So Scott, if we do that, you'll see me like carrying gear out and stuff. That will cue you up to that, so we don't throw you off so much.

So a fire would be an anomaly in your area.

Yeah, and then you're gonna have to come to a decision. Okay, okay, see, now we're on to something. Yeah. We're really lucky to have you on. We've both followed you for quite some time, and we hope that you've had a chance to follow some of our work.

Oh, absolutely, yeah, all the time.

And so what—and what you brought up, and I'm glad you brought up kind of who you focus on with the training—because when you get into areas outside of, let's say, military and law enforcement, you kind of gain a lot of insight. A lot of what Greg and I get to bring to the table too, is because we've worked in so many different areas: from private companies, to military and SOF (Special Operations Forces) units, and conventional forces, here, U.S., abroad. What it does is you kind of realize, "Well, there's kind of a lot of the same issues here." Yeah, they're addressed differently. Maybe your role in the situation is different, but that doesn't mean that the threat or the problem that you're dealing with is any different. And it comes down to how are we dealing with it?

Now, typically, as you know, humans are very reactive. And then we try to apply, typically, a good response of a sort of a tactical response—maybe fighting, shooting, whatever it is—something like that, which makes sense. I'm not saying that's unnecessary, but there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens before. And getting that insight kind of into those other, maybe, "underrepresented" areas or things you don't see a lot of... I mean, you can just go on social media or the news or whatever and see something about police training or military training. So, when you get into those other areas, I feel like there's some gems in there because you have different policies and procedures, you have different protocols, you have different responsibilities for the person. And they don't have a gun belt and a radio and support and backup, or any legal authority sometimes. So it's like, what do they do out there? Your decisions are a lot more complicated. You really have to focus on using your brain and thinking through this, because you can't rely on any of that other stuff, because it's kind of something you've seen or that makes sense.

No, that totally makes sense. And, you know, I think back to, you know, I started teaching martial arts years and years ago, and, you know, through them and all of the different groups that I've taught, the common theme is, "But I'm not a police officer." And it's as if being a police officer is that metric that everybody has to live up to regarding safety or response training, and that nature. And people don't understand that violence doesn't care who you are. You know, if somebody's attacking you, your response is going to be generally the same. If you're going to block, your block should be the same. If you're going to run, you're going to run. If you're going to use a weapon, a firearm, the techniques are all the same. It's the principles that people really fail to understand. So it's getting people to realize that it doesn't matter whether you're a police officer or not. If you're being attacked and somebody's trying to hurt you, you have to do a response.

And in thinking about it over the years and hearing, you know, "But I'm not a police officer," and another common one is, "Just walk away," as if you control the whole situation. We forget that there's somebody attacking you. Yeah, that you feel like you can just walk away and just kind of formalizing it... People do, when they do that, what they're really using it as is a protective mechanism to say that "I'm different, so that violence won't happen to me." So they'll rationalize why they're different, they'll justify why everything's going to be okay. And then what they end up doing is they ignore and deny the issues that are going on. And the problem with that is then that is going to determine their mindset. And their mindset is going to be, "This isn't going to happen to me. I'm not going to be a victim of violence." And then that's going to form a mental model that, "Hey, everything's good." So they're going to go on and just do what they do, which leads to them not planning. So they're going to go, whether they're doing a job or they're just in their personal life, they're just not going to even be thinking about safety. They're not going to be proactive about it. They're not going to have the mindset that they even need to practice avoidance, any kind of mitigation, situational awareness is a concept they've heard but they don't apply it. And then all of that's going to lead to complacency. And I always say, "Complacency is just—it's a formula of, you know, denial plus routine is going to lead to complacency." And then let's unpack that for a minute, Scott.

Yeah, exactly. So I would say this: we've got listeners, we've got viewers, we've got people that watch the episode and see us. We've got people that are just driving, working, listening to us. And every one of them's got a yellow pad out, and they want to take home some truths from this. So you've given us five, plus a great metric to remember them. I would say for everybody listening, I want you to remember, in the news just days before we're talking to Scott, there were two encounters that were pretty prominent in the news. One was the employee from a—I think it was Walmart; doesn't matter for the story—that observed the shoplifters and videotaped them in the store, followed him out to the car, all the way to the car. And then that person got released, they got fired, and there was no violent encounter whatsoever from either party, from the person that was following him and doing illegal videotape, you know, on public property. Then, within hours of that same day, there was an encounter at a Dollar Store, I believe—do your own homework—where the person was shoplifting from the shelf, and the counterperson came up and said, "Hey, you're shoplifting from the shelf." And that female that was shoplifting stuck a gun in her grill and said, "Don't turn this robbery into a homicide."

So what you're talking about is a panacea of likely events. And what I loved is the lens you gave us right at the beginning. You gave us the lens, two of the things were code enforcement, animal control. Having worked in law enforcement for an extended period of time, the code enforcement people get no love from anybody. No, they get no love from cops, right? They get no love from the street. Okay, they get no love from the courts, because they're in a position—and it's a squeeze play—nobody loves them. And they do some of the hardest work out there, okay? And because codes need to be enforced. The second part is animal control. "You're gonna do what? You're gonna shoot my animal? You're gonna give me an $800 ticket that I can't afford for a pit bull at large when my neighbors knew?" And it's constant confrontation. It's just those two roles, of all the roles that you talked about. And because all three of us have that martial arts background, when you're talking about the mindset, the mindset is that you gotta be, you know, like Brian and I talk, always be de-escalating. You gotta always be doing it in every encounter: on the phone, when you're sending a text, you got to think, "How is this going to be read and stuff?"

So my question, before we get to the denial algorithm, which is a great one: why do you think that people are more inclined to just come up with, "So hey, I'm not a cop," right? "I'm not a police officer. I, you know, this doesn't—I can just walk away." Where do you think that comes from? Where to help us frame how you came to that conclusion on your own?

The way I came to it is, you know, it was really reinforced—this is kind of an interesting story. So when I was a probation officer, I was an officer survival instructor. So I was teaching firearms, defensive tactics, use of force, low light shooting, all of that stuff. And we had a probation officer who was assigned to a U.S. Marshals task force, and both the probation officer and the Marshal were going to arrest somebody, and they both ended up getting shot. Both survived, but the probation officer ended up getting paralyzed and is confined to a wheelchair. And after that incident, I was just talking with a lot of other probation officers just to see how they were doing and stuff. And it was interesting because so many of them would always start off with, "Yeah, that that's terrible what happened, but that wouldn't happen to me because I'm not in the fugitive apprehension unit," right? "You know, I don't I don't arrest people on with warrants and things of that nature." And that's the day where it really clicked for me with this whole "I'm not a police officer" thing. It's just this protective mechanism to say, "Yeah, we might be similar, but you're so different from me that I would not be put into that situation." So it goes back to just being a protective mechanism for them to, in their mind, to not deal with the reality that you can get hurt, you can get attacked despite all of your efforts, because there are bad people out there that will do bad things.

Yeah, yeah.

And second part of that, Scott, and Brian, indulge me just for a second. The protective mechanism, you're using lexicon words that are very appropriate for the situation. They're just a little off of what Brian and I use, like when we write or when we teach, but it's the same concept, and that's beautiful. So, when you're talking about a protective mechanism and a mindset and a mental model, and the failure to plan leads to complacency, you bring up the word denial. And denial is a part of each of those five components. And when we did studies for years and years, and for four decades of studies, the top three things that we found out about denial that every human encounters—and this is across the globe—is number one is, "Oh no, he didn't." That just didn't occur right in front of me, you know, whether it's in a car, whether it's—

This isn't happening, right? This is the first part.

Yeah, and then real quick, too—

Good, because that takes on many forms, but I love what you did is like, "Oh no, you did not just say that." That's a formula. Exactly, because you're you're self-denying, right? Because it's a transport, or even repeat them, or even repeating back what someone said. What exactly, you know what I mean? Like if that's the first state, right?

Yeah. And then the second state, because there's only three. The second state is, "Better him than me." You see something happening, you go, "Holy crap, better him than me." And you don't mean to do that. And this is where parts of PTSD come from, because you feel instantly guilty that your buddy booted the door and got shot, or that you're watching a video of a copper getting down, or whatever else. And then the final one is, "What can I learn from this non-standard observation?" And that's why we usually look at things like this. We look like an RCA Victor dog at things, and we freeze. See, when you're good on coffee table, and he talks about fight, flight, freeze, what he doesn't go into is that freeze is a function that your brain uses for enhanced survival. Right? Like on the mat, you can't freeze because a person's doing a move on you. But when you're standing back and you've got that gift of time and distance, you normally do freeze and take a look and go, "Hey, what are they doing?" And we call that, Brian and I, when we see it on the freeway, we call them rubberneckers. Traffic slows down in your lane, and the 5 is screwed, or the, you know, whatever freeway that you happen to be on, I-70. And you find out that there's no obstructions whatsoever in your four or five lanes going westbound, but on the eastbound, there's a pedestrian incident or there's an accident. And everybody's got to look. Well, that's normal human nature. That's how humans are wired to learn from their environment. So what I love that you did in the in those first five is you said, "Hey, listen, not only are there nine total in your process, but in these first five, denial is a component of each one of them." Denial can be internal, the protective mechanism. It could be part of a failed mindset, you know, "Hey, better him than me, that'll never happen to me." It could be part of the mental model, "Everything is fine here, this is never going to happen to me." I love that because when we can see it, Scott, from that aspect, and I don't have to be a tire-flipping, rope-climbing, you know, bench-pressing 500-pound expert to be a survival expert, right? How do you—do you agree with that? Do you see the angle we're coming at here?

I totally agree. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And Brian, did you get where I was trying to to shape that?

Yeah, yeah, so yeah.

Because that goes right into when you, when you talk about that sort of protective mechanism, right into the mental model. So if you, if you, if you're in that denial stage, you're going to use a bad mental model. If you, if you can, if you can at least get some sort of recognition that this is not a good situation, right? That mindset and then mental model can shift instantaneously to to, "Now I have options. Now I need to react." So, because a lot of folks haven't seen, touched, tasted, felt what those situations are like, it's just it's not obvious when when it is obvious to other people, right? So part of that is that that sort of recognition of, "Oh, wait a minute, this is what that guy was talking about." "Oh, wait a minute, this could be..." You know, everyone loves breaking down all of these videos of things that happen to people, and it's just all at "bang." It's like, "Hey, man, like when this person drove into that gas station, there was three people watching them pull up to that pump, one here, one here, one here. At that point, it's, 'I'm gonna put this thing in R and I'm gonna go to a different gas station.'" So, so how do you—what have you seen in in these areas of like, how do you get people to get to that sort of recognition? I mean, just that just the initial phase of, "Oh, this is one of those things." How do you create that that sort of leap or that change in the way they look at it?

Yeah, so I'll I'll review incidents of people in their profession that have been injured and killed doing their job. And I let them know that that's you, right? Same circumstances. It was just their bad day. And it's not to to victim-blame, but I let them know that this protective mechanism that you try to put up, this wall of denial, is not going to serve you well. So understand that there are people who do exactly what you do, who get injured and killed in the line of duty. And you have to take some ownership over your safety, right? And generally, you know, sometimes people will get it right then and there. Sometimes they'll still have the "yeah, but." And then, you know, we'll talk about, in in every class I teach, everybody's got a story. You know, when I, when I first started working with code enforcement officers, what I ended up doing is I wrote a book, Officer Survival for Code Enforcement Officers. And as I was writing it, I just talked to a ton of code enforcement people. And everybody had a story, everybody had an incident. But yet, so many of them will deny, like, "But that's not going to happen to me." So I I think it's just educating them that it does happen to you, that there's no safety bubble that's going to magically protect you despite the fact that you don't want it to happen to you, which is a normal feeling. But you still have to be prepared. And you could be prepared in a way that doesn't make you paranoid or hyper-vigilant. And you can do your job with exceptional customer service skills and serve your community well and be safe at the same time.

And you you hit something really powerful there, and whether whether you kind of came across that intuitively or whether you understand that just because you're an instructor and you're a trainer, so you know not just the material, but you know, when you're a trainer, instructor, teacher, whatever it is, not just the material, it's how you do this. You have to understand, right, how to teach and what that means, right? But you brought up something that that "everyone has a story." And that is compelling because that's what we use a lot in classes. And even when we're, I mean, you listen to Greg, you listen to podcasts, how many stories does he tell just on one podcast, right? But there's a there's a there's a point to that. That is the oldest form of knowledge transfer. This since there has been, whenever you think mankind started, it started with storytelling, right? Before we ever had writing or reading or any of that stuff. Right? I had to tell you what berries you should and shouldn't eat. Right? We would tell those through stories. And guess what? Humans were—have always been lazy and always had attention issues. So I got to make it compelling, right? And so when you take someone in that course, like you said, or something, and you get them to tell the story, now you're tying this material that you're you're going over with them to their own personal story. That's a faster way to do things than anything else, because then they make it their own. And once—and I'm glad you hit on this, because that's what I got to about the recognition, like, "Oh, wait a minute, I have been in that situation before. Not the one you showed me, not that video, but but I've been to something close." And kind of once you can sort of establish that connection, all right, now we have—all right, now I see what you're talking about. No, the next part is, you know, getting to apply the skill set and not falling into complacency, because that's kind of what what you brought up and you brought up a little algorithm that I love. So I'd love you to kind of jump into that. And you wrote "complacency," and you wrote it: "denial plus routine equals complacency," which I love. But I'd love for you to sort of unpack that for our listeners. What you mean by that.

Yeah, so if your mindset is that you have a safety bubble around you and it's not going to apply to you, that's setting up a really bad stage. But a lot of people talk about, we'll say complacency, you'll hear people say, "You know, don't be complacent." You hear it all the time, but nobody ever discusses the process of it. And really what causes complacency is you are doing your job or living your life, and every day nothing happens. So you now have formed a history of nothing happening. Then what happens is you're going to go to work today, and your mindset's going to be, "You know, nothing happened yesterday. Nothing happened last week. Nothing happened last, you know, month, last year." Now you start predicting that into the future. So complacency is where nothing into the past has happened. You assume nothing's going to happen today, and then you just generalize that to the future. And when you add that with denial, that that's a bad place to be. That that's really cementing in your complacency. And then you just go about your day in blissful ignorance until the "oh crap" moment happens. And then you're in a really bad spot, because mentally you're not ready for it, you've probably done no training for it, and you magically wish you can disappear and we're not there anymore.

So there are so many definitions that Brian and I could assign to that, yeah, go in and talk about the way our training is. But I'll I'll answer that with a story. So Shelly and I were relocating from the ranch to Gunnison, Gunnison County proper. And there were a number of days that we couldn't occupy one and move out of the other. So there's a little Holiday Inn Express in town, and we were staying there. And so we've got all our stuff packed up in vehicles. It's so cold outside in Gunnison—it gets cold in the winter—so it's probably 35, 40 degrees below zero. And at the Holiday Inn Express, every night, at the same exact time, it was just before one in the morning, the smoke alarm would go off. And the first night, everybody went out, no matter how cold it was. Second night, about a third of the people went out. By the third night that that alarm went off, and it was triggered by the cold rather than, you know, the smoke alarm. Shelly and I were the only ones outside. And we continued to be outside each morning it went off. The electrochemical neurotransmitters, your neural pathways, will fight you, and they will fight what's right in front of you. And that you're seeing by having chemicals create a path that's saying, "Now it's no longer dangerous." So the more it occurs, the less I'm going to pay attention to it. And attention comes from the word attend. We attend to things in our environment. So therefore, when they don't have a scorpion's tail, or the dog doesn't bite us, or we don't trip and twist our ankle, it's no longer dangerous. And the longer that run goes, you know, it's Homer Simpson putting "how many days without an accident." The longer that run goes, the more dangerous it is to yourself. So I love that. And I want to offer you a million-dollar idea next time you're teaching in person. If your students are old enough and they remember what a pinball machine is, I would take all of these incredible things—and Brian will have the graphic up, folks. You got to see the graphic, you got to reach out to Scott, he's a great guy, you'll learn a ton. I would have each one of these as being a place on the pinball, and you and your situation are the ball. And as it goes up, it might hit mindset or complacency. It might fall into that that nexus down at the bottom of the violent encounter, right? So can you paddle fast enough that you overcome your stress response? Do you get what I'm saying? Because you can turn it into a game. Because what you what you've got is the human condition. Brian and I don't know anything about the rest of the world, but we understand human performance like nobody else. And we understand the limits of human performance when it comes to human behavior. And what you've done is you've outlined in a linear fashion, it's the same thing, it could be a game of Plinko. But what you've given us is you've given us, "Hey, when these things start adding up, it's going to be a rough day." And I love that. I I love, look, I could have this simply on my visor, right? And every morning before I go to work, my my "take a knee" moment, my on-duty roll call is, "Bring down the visor and look at it." I had, at the station house, I had a picture of a badge tuning that we're involved in, and a victim at the end of the shooting and the officers. And I had it blown up in black and white. And so every day that I opened my locker, I saw that. And that tuned me, that got me prepared. I may never encounter this situation again, but if I do, I'm ready for it. That's hugely important. And I think that's what Brian, I feel, that's what I I get when I see that graph.

Yeah, no. And then that's what we love it, because it it's it's broken down into these kind of this pathway of how it how where it starts from and then where it ends with. And, you know, if it if it leads to victimization, because everyone kind of goes the opposite, "Oh my God, this is what happened." But no one ever really kind of goes, "Well, here's all of the events leading up to that. Here are the factors involved." So you broke this this down. And and one of the things you you do talk about too is you kind of continue down that is the stress response and perceptual distortions. And I I, you know, I would love to hear how you kind of talk about this because there's there's a there's a lot of ways to do it. We go super, super in-depth with that kind of stuff. You can get into different, all the the again, a lot about neuroscience and why this happens and all of a sudden about the the catecholamines and electrochemical neurotransmitters that respond during these situations. But I always look at it sort of as, um, you know, it's hard for me to understand, "All right, you're you're in Arizona right now, so it's like 300 degrees or some somewhere right around there, right?"

310 right now. Yeah.

Every day. So you're one of the few people in the state, because I love—I live in in San Diego County. I don't live right by the beach anymore. But normally this time of the year, we get invaded by "Zonies" (Arizonians), we call you guys. And they all come in and take over our beaches and and and come to the bars that I like to go to and make them crowded. And I don't like that. And and as you can tell, they're from Arizona. But anyway, but but, um, the idea is, I can't, when you get out to these extremes, it gets, uh, sometimes it it the effect becomes exponential. I can't tell the if I walk outside, I can't tell the difference between 42 if it's 42 degrees or if it's 47 degrees. I'm not—I don't know. I don't know what that is. But at the extremes out out there, like you can tell the difference between 101 degrees and 106. It's it's almost like exponential, you get what I'm saying? And I look at that almost as sort of our perceptual distortion of how things, uh, how we how we recognize and understand and measure and assess. So I'd love to kind of throw it to you to to mean what you mean by by perceptual distortions and then what those response outcomes are.

So when I talk about the stress response, I I do tend to go into a little bit more detail because again, I think back to a lot of the training classes I went to, they breezed over that topic. You know, they're going to say, "You know, you might you're going to get stressed out, you know, use your training and fight through it." But that doesn't tell you a whole lot.

You know, "Come get me there." Yeah.

So that's why I break it down into the psychological and physiological reactions to stress. So psychological is going to be fight, flight, or freeze. And out of those, you know, optimally, if we can, we want to like just leave. But we don't get always to make that decision. I I always say freeze for human beings is not a good thing at all. In the animal kingdom, it works, but for humans it doesn't work, especially if somebody's attacking you. And and I tell people, if you find yourself in that freeze moment, you've got a really short period of time to get back in that fight, otherwise you're going to get killed if somebody's attacking you. And I also say, when it comes to freeze, I don't care how well trained you are, if some somebody attacks you and comes at you, you know, that anomaly that we talk about happened, you're going to get startled, right? And you might freeze for a second, but you got to pull yourself together pretty quick to get out of that. And then, you know, there's fight. Now, a lot of places, especially with active killer incidents, they always talk about run, hide, fight, which I don't like that program, because it's taught in this linear fashion of run, hide, fight. And people will always refer to fighting as the last resort. And I I don't ever say that fighting is not a last resort. It might be a least preferred option, but it might be your only option, in which case you you gotta fight. So I go over those.

And on the physiological, I'll talk about, you know, the chemical dump, right? You know, the catecholamines, epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol that you're going to get that, and the effects are going to be almost instantaneous. You're going to get heart rate increase, blood pressure increase, your respirations are going to be impacted, all of that. And then I'll go into talking about how those can lead to perceptual distortions like tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, time slowing down. And the reason why I bring these up is if people don't know that that's happening, they're thinking something is so far wrong with them that they're not up to the fight. And then if their mindset is already not solid, they might just give up. So I I kind of just baby-step them through that whole process of, you know, what's going to happen psychologically, what are your options, what's going to happen physiologically, and then that can all lead to perceptual distortions. And then I talk about, you know, one of the ways that you can just address that in the moment is through breathing, you know? And one of the tips I always give people is if you walk into a situation or something happens and you have any inclination that it's going to go bad, I always tell them, immediately take two deep breaths. Now, people will always say, "You know, autonomic breathing or box breathing," which is great, and I I teach that, but I always say at the beginning, just pre-load your brain with some oxygen, because we know that sometimes people will hold their breath when they're stressed out. So I I try to get them to breathe. And in all of the classes I teach, I have a participant workbook, and I'll give people exercises to do, because I know what you learn in the class, by the time you leave the door, 90% of it's probably gone. You may have taken notes on some things, but I want them to walk out with something that they can refer back to and give them exercises and activities that they can work on. And if they work on it, it's going to take them to a whole new level. So that's kind of how I address the stress. And everybody's going to have stress. I mean, you're not getting out of that.

Yeah. And so this podcast, you're going to be playing it for your folks at the next class, and your family members are going to see it, and our folks are going to see it. So I tell everybody, "Take a knee. Let's go through the looking glass. Let's be on-duty roll call for just a minute." So absolutely everything that Scott's talking about, a sound scientific principles, physiologically sound. Let's talk about it from a different anticipation point, or or intervention point. So the reason that freeze is on the menu is because light, motion, and edges trigger orientation. So whether it's in the animal kingdom or the human kingdom, when something is moving towards you or moving quickly, and all of a sudden you sense-make that this might be a potential danger or opportunity, what you do is orient towards it to catch up on what available information that is. Now, that freeze gets longer and longer and longer when you haven't rehearsed and you don't have a plan. And that's why there are the antelope that get bit by the (e.g., a predator). Right? That's why there are the people that that give money to the beggar that it's not genuine, or failed to see that there's a robbery in progress and just go up to the liquor store and put their items on the counter while the guy's standing next to him with a gun. And we've all seen that. So the idea of a holistic approach to anything is you have to understand that everything in your brain—it's 360. Like, for example, the the release of the endorphins and the epinephrine response, and why adrenal cortex is pumped, are all for that moment, because we don't want to waste a lot of time in and out of those. We only want to front-load our brain and our body and our heart for them when it's in progress. So, so the increased blood pressure, all of those things are things that God, Buddha, Vishnu, Allah put in us specifically for emergencies. So if we're surprised by them, we're idiots. Look, simple, this is how it's going. So you can actually use those instances to warn you that something's up. Because people talk about their instincts. I would tell you this: your instincts are reading the environment. Okay? That's your amygdala sending out these signals and reading the baseline. And so all of a sudden, your body and mind become aware of these incongruent, you know, nature of some signals in the environment, right? That's to—and you used it with, "Hey, let's pre-load the brain with some oxygen," brilliant. "Let's not move from a position to position unless it's a position of cover. Let's make sure we back up a little bit and use our aperture to scan to see if there's additional people walking up on me when the person with the gas can comes up to me." So what I like, Scott, is that that you're going down to the lowest common denominator. Brian and I have learned to do that with everybody, but we have to in class sometimes, like you do, say, "Okay, now let me take a knee here," or, "Let me go to the dry erase board and show you why." Because, you know, the biggest problem with human training and teaching and education is, "They never taught this in maturity's class. They've never tried this in my DARE class. I I never had to go through socialization skills in sociology." So I love what you're doing. I love your approach. Again, because we're friends and I can say this, I would get used to taking the numbers off future generations of your chart because you're showing it how a scientist would show a continuum or a timeline. But you and I both know, Scott, that you don't choose where you come in and where you go out, right?

Right.

So absolutely. So here's the thing, maybe maybe it needs to be a cluster, you know, like molecules with the atom. And and so, you know, because you always have a desired outcome, even if you don't know it, right? But but you're not sure which of these is going to be bigger or smaller or more important than the the first or the last. Am I saying that right to you? You're catching what I'm—

Totally accurate. You know, in in, um, I I teach a class on fear management, and I go over the fear model that I have that really talks a lot about the stress response. And I start the model off with you as an individual. Like, you're the first part of that model. And I talk about, you know, how everybody talks about situational awareness. I I start it off with self-awareness.

To the table, yeah. Absolutely.

Your your mental, emotional, physical condition. Where are you at with that? And at first, when people see that, they're they're like, "What is this? Is like a counseling session?" Right?

Yeah. "Like, what is this doing here?"

Because nobody does any honest self-reflection, right? They think, "Well, I'm with myself all the time. I know who I am. I know what I do. I know why I do what I do." But most people don't. And, you know, you talked about earlier, everything we should be de-escalating all the time. But let's say you have a a chronic back condition, and you're always in pain, and it's maybe leading to a little bit of depression. And by the time you get out of bed in the morning, you know, you're already below the average baseline for somebody. And now you're interacting with people, and, you know, your your temper might be a little off. Somebody says something to you, and your response to that is not going to be about de-escalation. It's going to, you know, end up escalating it. Even if the words you're saying are what you should say, your body language isn't congruent with your words, and you're giving off the vibe that you're pissed off. And and then it goes in the direction you didn't anticipate. So I I think a big part of this too is self-awareness. Where do you where do you fit into this whole process as well?

Absolutely. And you kind of you you both hit on that. Greg sort of, you just did it explicitly. Greg did it implicitly in a sense, because what you both talk about there, um, when you brought up the, "All right, I tell people to take a couple breaths," because you're what you're doing is, obviously, you're oxygenating the brain, possibly lowering cortisol levels. And you what you're doing too is giving—you're creating some time and distance, right? You're giving yourself, "Hang on, I need to attend to whatever this is because I'm having this physiological reaction." And then Greg went further when he talked about the eye and you've got light, motion, edges, and it that's what attracts your eye and then you orient in that direction and then these catecholamines start kicking. But but the thing is, um, you don't always know why that's happening, meaning that's an autonomic response, okay? So right then and there, I know if I'm having some sort of autonomic response to whatever's in my environment, something is going on. Now, maybe maybe it's a, um, a false positive. Maybe it turns out to be something that that wasn't something, I I misread something. But but just that recognition alone of going, "Wait a minute, something's going on." I don't always need to know know what it is, because Greg and I teach—this is also a good, "Well, that's why I love having you on," is because you're giving great, you know, tactics, techniques, and procedures that you can use in any situation. And I love that we don't do that, because we we go so far into sense-making and problem-solving, and we go, "Well, that's that's kind of on you and your role in the situation." But that's also because we go into so many other areas, like I don't teach—we don't teach personal self-defense, that's not what we do. We teach human behavior. So we're going to go super into detail about that. But then you, Scott, doing what you do, go, "Oh yeah, I see what you guys are talking about. I see that every day here." So it's it's great to see that, because, you know, if I build in that time and distance like you're talking about, I have these these very, uh, small things I can do that that's giving me the advantage in this situation. And and so, um, and the the other reason why we kind we we don't get into those things, because they're different for everyone. You brought up one, I can't remember, you know, exactly what you said, but earlier when we're talking about, you know, you show videos from someone's specific line of work to get them to realize it, or, or, you know, little things you can do. Like I I do the morning, especially when we're on the road. I get up every morning and when I brush my teeth or getting ready in the mirror, I literally have to look at myself and go, "Someone, you know, may try to kill you today." Not that it's going to happen, not look around every corner, it's not about being hyper-vigilant. It's just to flip that switch to go, "Okay, we're in a new environment. You're not at home, you know, you're not in your little office cave, right? This is you're out here in the world." And and that's enough for me. But everyone's a little bit different. Some people do the the, remember the Stuart Smalley, "I'm good enough. I'm smart. And doggone it, people like me," you know what I mean? Yeah. And some people go, "I'm never gonna do something like that. That's the dumbest crap I've ever heard." Okay, fine. It's so my—I'm almost like systems agnostic for the most part. If something works for you and it doesn't give you some sort of corrupt file folder or or, you know, a negative way to see things, then it's it's likely gonna work. And so I'm when it comes to the things, I I love what you're saying about that. And and I I also want people to understand and know, if you're at that point where you need to take a breath, your what people call intuition, your limbic system, is reading something in the environment that your critical cortex has not picked up on yet, right? And your conscious awareness isn't there yet. So so which is okay, great, you can always get better at that. But just understanding that that unconscious awareness is the fastest, most powerful thing that you have. So it's a kind of about refining that. So I I don't know where I was going with a question. No, no.

I was going to ask you a question, but then I lost my own training. What I love is, I'm fascinated by how Brian's brain works.

Because so are all the doctors I see.

Exactly, exactly. And all the drugs you take. He cluster-bombed us with logic. But I want to unpack just a little bit there, because there's a lot there. It's essential to go to Scott's training before you go to Brian and I. It's essential to go to Brian and I's training before you go to Scott. You're somewhere along that spectrum. And the idea is, because if you were going to get a degree from Greg and Brian, of course, but but if I was going to give out degrees because I give out a certificate on a napkin, I hate certificate mills. But I would give out the Human Behavior Generalist degree. Why? Yeah, because if you know enough about the human condition, and how psychologically, sociologically, and physiologically you interact with your environment, and your environment interacts with you, you'll be okay. You're gonna have a good life. And and you're gonna have a productive life. And I'll give you an example of that. Scott Kirschner, your self-awareness idea is well taken. And Scott specifically broached the topic of "before the event," left of bang. I would say that Brian touched on during, and Brian exemplified after. Because after is the self-awareness checklist, the after-action review, where you have to do off-duty roll call: "How did I do? What do I need to do better? Wait, I'm not going to keep that gun in the trunk. That's not working for me," or whatever situation it is. And during the the thing, I want to talk to you about on during, and then give you another million-dollar idea. During, when you smell decayed flesh, or you smell cordite, or your foot crunches on the broken glass on the floor, those sense triggers are designed to cue to orient you internally. So light, motion, and edges orient me externally, but scent generators and and sounds and those things. And so when when people go, "Oh, well, I'll get tunnel vision." You're supposed to get tunnel vision. As a matter of fact, your brain is on tunnel vision all the time. It relaxes when you're in an environment that we would consider routine clinically. Why? Because you can't be hyper-aware all the time. So this is a great discussion. Folks, get that yellow pad out. Lick the end of the pencil and start writing. Kirschner, this is a great one, because I love where we're going. I can envision, you know, the the balloons you buy for a dollar a bag at the Dollar Store—not where the ones are robbed—and you blow them up. And behind them, just have an index card, and they have "mindset" on one, and "complacency" on the other, and "violent encounter" on the other. And for your check on learning, hand somebody a dart, or you know, a dart, you know, something to throw, a shuriken, I guess, would work too, you know, Japanese throwing star. And have them throw at the board, and when that balloon pops, behind it, it's "failure to plan." Okay? You're faced with the situation where you "failure to plan." What are you gonna do? I love the idea of the architecture. And I'd also say you need a graphic of a pair of scissors somewhere. Why? Because if these are each hanging together in some fashion, like from a spider web or whatever graphic that you got—this is how my brain works—you, Scott Kirschner, are teaching your folks, "You can intervene at any of them. When you see that the game is starting to go that direction, you see that that failure to plan and the complacency are adding up, and this is likely to turn into a violent encounter." I love that because everybody comes to the class, no matter what experience level they are, and they come to us with their bat belt on and their, you know, story, "My vest took a bullet, and in 1927, I stopped a car with my hand," and we get all of that. And then they confide in us and get real close and go, "So, just give me the one or two things I need to know." Well, there aren't there aren't one or two things. There's a bunch of things. You've categorized nine things, and those nine things to you and in your system are hugely important. Gichin Funakoshi had 14. Okay. Ueshiba had 27. My my Uncle Paul had four. Okay? But the idea is what you're doing is you're creating an algorithm for future events that are likely that you can rehearse every day. Like people would say they would come down before the class started, and there were stretch racks and buddy stretching and everything going on. You'd have some of the people that would just unpack their stuff and go out on the mat. And you're like, "I'm momentum." You know what they would tell me? You know what their logic was? "I'm not going to get the stretch tonight when I go out on the road." Yeah. Then you're an idiot. Yeah, rationalization again. You see an effective mechanism. You see a lion, you see a lion warm up before it goes and chases down a gazelle. But am I lying that that when we see that it's so illogical? But again, when you're talking about the mindset that's necessary in survival, it takes time. You're born with everything that you need, but from the minute that you're born, the minute you're out of the womb, you're dying. And so some of those things are falling off or falling back. So, and I just want to retouch that one point. Somebody comes up to me all the time and goes, "Well, what training should I go to?" Your training, of course, you should go to my training. That's how to keep the lights on. But I'll tell you, it's not just my training. There's that that Marine that does the the "dude tips." I love that. Here, a little vignette. You know, "Basic dude tips," or whatever you're talking about. Fishing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, he's awesome.

You should do some of that. And you know what you should do? You should do a little bit of reading. And you know what you should do? You should go to Scott Kirschner's class. And, you know, there there are some people that that, uh, carry a weapon all the time, and they need a higher level of training with the weapons or barricades or something. But then people go, "So where do I spend my training dollar?" Well, you have to be the you you have to plan your day and say, "You know what, likely am I going to encounter over the next week, month, year?" And then put to it. Like like, for example, good nutrition is just smart. Sleeping is just smart. Flexibility and and strength training and all that other stuff is just smart. So that's got to be some of the training you're doing every day. And if you don't, guess what? You talk about victimology, victimization, you're there. You know, more coppers, right? So so mental health care, right, and physical health care. And then how do I massage that? A strategic, operational, and tactical. Brian, or I and Brian, correct me if I'm wrong, we're a little more on this topic towards the strategic end of things. What's the overall goal of all of them together, right? The the generalist again, I'm going to the white belt. You know, the best best black belts I ever met put a white belt on and came right out on the mat. You know, you get where I'm going with that. Yeah.

And and I I I think I like the way you put it as general versus specific. And and we can go, you know, really, really in deep on the on the generalization of human behavior that you can see in all things. But, you know, a lot of people don't have the time to learn all that. They don't have the time to do that. They need to go, "What's in it for me? What applies to me?" And so I'm kind of curious, Scott, then, because you you know, work with those different sort of roles and everything from someone who's in like like code enforcement, you you do have some role, you have some authority. This is versus maybe just the public, you know, I'm worried about my company and some sort of active killer incident or school. So how do you sort of, I guess, thread that needle then for them? How do you make it relevant to them? I know you brought up the example, but, "Hey, I'm going to show a video from from your," but they're still, you know, I I always like, and I'm sure you do too as an instructor, like, "I want the guy or girl who's, you know, been there, done that in the back with their arms crossed like, 'Yeah, whatever, I've seen this before.'" That's who I'm going for. That's who I want them roped in. It's like, how do I get people that don't think they need it or or get it like you? You do that with different audiences. So how do you how do you do that?

Yeah, a couple thoughts on that. So in my program, I I like to just call it a foundational program because I start with a class on mindset, then fear management, I'll go over de-escalation, then I'll go over some like tactical things to do while you're out in the field doing your job. And then I'll I'll kind of end it with how do you survive a violent encounter? So I try to give a a nice baseline of, "This is what you need to know," and regardless of their job, because, you know, a code enforcement officer is a little bit different than a fire marshal than a parking enforcement officer than, um, you know, an animal control officer. But they'll have that that baseline. And I'll tie the relevancy to their job with, again, those job-specific incidents that have come up. And then on the flip side, too, you know, when you have the one person that's just hell-bent on like they want to sit back, argue, and go, "You know, this this just doesn't apply or anything." A lot of times I don't spend a lot of time on them anymore, because they don't want to hear it. I I'd rather spend time on the people that are open to the information. It's like all the bickering you see on social media, right? People want to argue and then they'll say, "Well, you know, give me the proof, give me the proof." And then if you give them the proof, then they're gonna go, "Oh, but that's biased towards your opinion." Yeah, right? So so it's like, just stop, and just don't even—I'll give them the information. You know, I remember when when I worked for probation, when I first got hired, there was essentially very little safety training. There was the verbal de-escalation and some people got OC spray. And then the state adopted like a whole safety program where everybody was required to go through a 40-hour defensive tactics academy, which I was teaching. And then they implemented a 40-hour firearms training program. And not everybody had to go through that, but everybody had all of the POs had to go through the defensive tactics. Now you had people that were on the job for 15 years, and they're like, "We don't need this. This is stupid. I don't want to do it." And a lot of that really was just insecurity, like, "I'm too old for this," yeah, or, "You know, they're changing the job on me." And I remember, I can't tell you how many times in class I would have somebody at the beginning of class who would be like, "I don't want to be here. This sucks. I don't know why we're doing this. This is going to impact my, you know, relationships with those who I supervise." And by the time the class was over, they'd pull me aside and go, "Hey, this was phenomenal the way you presented it and taught it." Like, they thought we were going to do like Navy SEAL training, you know, for for Tier 1. And and that's not what it was. And when they saw the applicability to what they did, their mind, their mindset just totally shifted. And and that was the case. There was very few people that I ran into towards the end that would go, "Yeah, this still sucks. This was a waste of time." Everybody ended up finding some value in it. So at that point, you just got to let the training work its magic.

Yeah, it's so true. I'll give you another one, I'll give you another one that we've all encountered. You come into the class and a person starts edging up towards you and you know that you got the 96.5 going, and they finally get up to you and go, "Hey, I just want to tell you before we start that I had a rotator cuff injury. And so if we ever go kinetic, it's gonna..." Or you're out on the range and they go, "Hey, just want to tell you, new leather gear. And so I'm going to be a little behind the power curve, but I'm gonna catch up." What you're doing is your protective mechanisms are preparing to fail. You know? And you know you're gonna fail, so you want to ease the landing. And the idea is, folks, you are in charge of those thoughts. You don't have to walk in every room with your balls or your vagina outside of your pants and go, "Here I am, take a look at me." But you know what you do have to have? The competence. And that breeds the confidence. And the way that you do that is you got to study all the time. I got guys that are still wearing polo shirts to class, and they got their, you know, 5.11 pants and all that other stuff. And you go, "Okay, no offense, but you you couldn't chase me down an escalator." And and the idea is, "When's the last time that you got into a scrum?" I know mine. I know Brian's. Right? I know the idea to that. And and you just can't be that person. You can't be that training sniper that we have out there. And you can't also be such a specialist. Like, you don't have a doctor that's a specialist in Lasik that goes, "That whole heart surgery stuff is bull, you know? I don't have that." Right? Because in the professional realm, you understand that there's a seat at the table for all professionals. You know? So Brian and I watched a podcast, not a podcast, sort of a webinar the other day, and everybody on there was a subject matter expert in A, B, and Z, you know, A, B, and Z. And Brian and I specialize in the entire alphabet and making words and putting them into sentences and writing a book. So we took away from that great stuff. We got it. Patwell says it the best, "You you get what you're looking for." So if you look for a shitty training, you're gonna find it. If you look for great training, you're gonna find it. I like that. And that's we're finding you, Scott. Scott, what you're doing is you're saying that, "I'm going to stay, uh," Brian used it earlier, "training agnostic when it comes to certain things, but there's certain general rules and concepts—ice cube tray, the holes in them—that everybody needs to learn. And if you learn them, you'll be smarter, safer, and harder to kill." That's what I'm getting out of it. Yeah.

You know, one of the things that I do a lot, especially with code enforcement officers, I tell them, "Get a like a 3x5 card and write on that card 'every day, every inspection,' and tape it in your vehicle, so that every time you get in your vehicle, you look at that and you're resetting yourself back to zero so that even throughout the day, you're not getting complacent."

Exactly. That's your mental reminder. "Every day, every inspection." And if it was a police officer, it would be, "Every day, every call." Just to get that. You know, there was a a really super wise guy who came up with this: "Anomaly plus baseline equals decision." You may have heard—I I can't track down who it is because the big guys remember that guy's guy, a big guy.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, he's he's done a thing or two. You know, when when somebody, when we talk about, "But I'm not a cop," or, "I'm not a police officer," or somebody's mindset is, "You know, you could just walk away from everything." You take the anomaly plus baseline equals decision, and what they've done is they've already put into that equation the decision: "I can just walk away." So now they think that they know the—in their their baseline—that everything's going to be okay because that's their mental model. But now when they encounter that anomaly, which is a threat or a violent attack, you know, they don't know how to use their time and distance, they don't know how to use their environment. They're they don't know how to react to the stress. Their their response is going to be no response or slow or ineffective, and they're going to be victimized.

It no. And you you actually hit a good point there, um, with the baseline plus anomaly equals decision that that has to happen in that order. This this is not like a technical mathematical algorithm where you can switch out, and it has to happen in that order. So you have to know what the based on what's normalcy before you can determine what those incongruent signals are. And that, and then, like you just said, then you have to figure out, "What's the best decision given all of the given exactly my role in this situation? What I'm what am I trying to accomplish here? Uh, what's going on?" And and you're right, because what everyone does, "Okay, well, I'll just do this when that happens." It's like you're you're giving yourself answers, um, to the—you're giving yourself answers and you might be given a different question as a problem. It's like those answers don't apply to the next question you're going to see. And so if you keep trying to jam that in there, it's going to be the wrong answer to that question. And and well, we always say, because this is what I I always have to go back. And why I kind of brought up earlier about you teaching these great, you know, TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures), people like, "Well, then what do I do in that situation?" Like, "Crap, I don't know. That's up to you, man. Like, that's your role. Like, you know, I'm a parent, I do this." It's like, "Oh, why are you there? At this point, you should have left a long time ago with your family." You know what I mean? Like, and and and so getting people to understand that that the decision is on them can be can be sort of tough sometimes because you, I'm sure you see it, everyone wants what? "Give me that checklist. Just give me, just write it out, and I'll follow it and and we're good," right? "This is what I need to look for."

Yeah, it really comes down to understanding the principles, and there's not enough people focus on that. You know, a good example of that, you both know situational awareness, like, is that a hot topic now? Everybody is teaching situational awareness, and you could tell the ones that are true experts versus the ones that are are not, because the ones that are not will often just give tips. You know, "Do this."

Yeah, "Do that." Yeah.

Right. And there's such surface-level stuff, you know.

Everything we've talked about, they sell. And on LinkedIn, they get the clicks. And on YouTube, they get to go. You're exactly right, Scott.

If you ask them a question, right, they can't go any deeper in their knowledge. Everything we've talked about today, there are so many layers and depth to it. And there why we can go wide and deep on all of this stuff. Exactly. You know, and people are hap sometimes they're just happy with that surface-level stuff, and they don't even think about the deeper. And you'll appreciate the deeper knowledge if you ever encounter a problem, because it's like driving down the freeway, you're going, you know, 65 miles an hour, everything's fine, cars next to you are fine. But all of a sudden, car in front of you, their wheel comes off, and everything's different. What do you do under that case where you don't have time? You've got to do something right now. Yeah. And that's what a violent attack is. You know, you can't just walk away from an ambush attack, you know? But there are people out there that will claim you could just walk away from everything.

Yeah, and a good way to a good mental model for those of you that are still listening, and the the listeners that are still in at the hour part, they get it. And that's why they're the ones that have taken notes and using those notes. And we highly recommend that you use these notes. I would liken it to something like, uh, cooking. Okay? So "baseline plus anomaly equals decision." In cooking, I find out that I don't have the proper oven temperature, or my grill propane is lower. And I decide mathematically, "Well, I'll just do it at 210 degrees for an hour longer." No, I'll stop. You're gonna die. There are three things that you can change and things that you can't change. "Well, I've got baking soda instead of baking powder." Wait a minute, yeah, a totally different thing. And what you're talking about is most people say, "Don't worry, you know, just run to the Circle K." What if you don't have the Circle K? In between you and the Circle K is that ambush point. So the idea is, anomalous behavior dictates a response. But your range of response is limited by your training, not your education. Training. And that's the key. You know, the the idea is, you can't allow the situation to dictate the response. You have to be cognitively flexible and anticipate a number of situations where the same response, because you got to be, you know, you can't waste a bunch of calories every day or you're going to be this skinny gazelle that doesn't make it. So I'm totally in, totally down with you. And I don't want anybody to take my comment wrong on certificates. What I'm against on certificates: get them, get degrees, those are great things. But what I am is all of those letters that are at the end of your name. If I show up on a webinar, if I read your stuff and I'm not getting that, I'm getting just the pro tip of the week that you were talking about, right? And the idea is that pro tip of the week is like a white belt move. "Hey, make sure that your luggage..." Shut up. You know what I mean? Do you remember the Force Protection stuff that we all had to take, where it was like, "Don't go on the fifth floor because you may break your legs jumping out of the fifth floor?" Oh, thanks, Captain Obvious. What we're talking about is changing your mindset to improve your life, to improve your lifestyle. And in so doing, your safety and security. You know, danger and opportunity look the same when they walk across the street. You got to know which one you're going to go after, right? Because if you don't, you might have a fight on your hands. So and it could be a big consequence for that, you know? And there's a consequence in everything you do and everything you walk by. There's a consequence in the things you don't do, those those advantages or or or ideas you don't follow up on. So we all know that, but but guess what? There's a whole group of people that don't. And and that's why this kind of podcast hopefully will shine a light on it.

Yep.

All right, that's, um, that's actually probably a pretty good way to kind of wrap everything we were talking about there, Greg. Um, there's a lot we we brought up and I'm gonna I'm gonna try and get this out and see if I can attach it, what you talk about with your, um, sort of steps to victimization because it's it what it's great to—it's all like what we do is you're giving words to a seemingly ambiguous or nebulous thing when and if they're not, you just have to cut through it with an understanding, right? So if I go, "All right, what what is what is this happening? Oh, I see, I've experienced some of these before. Yeah, I know what that's like. I I've been, you know, frightened by something before." Um, and, you know, and understanding too is, I'm sure, so how many times has someone driven a vehicle before in their life? I don't care how short the distance is, whether it's a block or across the country. Like, we've all done that thousands and thousands and thousands of times. You've only had maybe a couple of times when you got into an accident, right? And and maybe it wasn't much, maybe it was just someone, you know, bumped into you or you missed and hopped up on the curb and scraped the side fender. Whatever the situation is, we there there's not a lot. And and they're often not, you know, fatal or not catastrophic accidents. So that gives us that false sense of security about driving. Well, everything in life, every human interaction is the same way. You know, 99% of the people you meet are good people trying to do the right thing. And so so it's not something that you're you're that is likely to happen to you. So that causes us to fall into these. But if I have words and and to to understand how these things coalesce and how they come to be, well, now I understand how victimization happens. And what that does, it does also empower the individual even just cognitively to know like, "Oh, I have a say in the matter. Oh, okay, good. I it's not it's like, yes, the criminal always gets a say, but but I have one too." And maybe the situation is, "I don't have much, but I've got something." And maybe other situation is like, "No, this is one I can actually control." And and having that understanding of awareness of it is is is a like the first step for for people, I think, uh, to see something. So, um, yeah, you know, I I I'll throw you, Scott, to kind of have some some final thoughts and words. Yeah, I really appreciate you coming on and talking about this stuff, and for reaching out to us and sharing this stuff with us and our audience.

Oh, this has been great. You know, I I think back, you know, earlier you mentioned about people who watch videos and they kind of give their analysis. And and I do a lot of video analysis. I I look at a lot of videos. And what I notice is if I'm in a group and I'm going over a video with somebody or I hear somebody give feedback on a video, they're doing it with the benefit of hindsight bias, of course. They're not viewing it as if I'm that person in the moment not knowing what the outcome is going to be. You know, and I I think that tells a lot also about mindset, you know, because, yeah, you'll look at a video and you know what the ending is going to be. And then it's easy to say, "Well, I would have done this." But the person in that video doesn't know what the outcome is going to be. There are so many unknown variables. And again, it it all comes down to mindset and and being open and willing to to do what you need to do to protect yourself and if needed, others as well. Um, there's so much to this stuff, we can go so deep on so many levels.

Yeah, and which is great. Idea for a future episode.

A great idea. You're going to be around. We're going to be around. Brian, let me throw out this caution to everybody that stuck with this this long. If you're out there and you say, "Now I put on my school shooting hat. Now I put on my negotiations hat. Yeah. Now I'm going to the 7-Eleven. I am now in Sing-Sing from the old Larry, Moe, and Curly." Dude, stop that. Be a generalist. You can specialize in a bunch of different things throughout your career, but be a generalist when it comes to seeing the danger or opportunity around you every day. Much more important than situational awareness. Yeah. You know, everybody wants to know when your book's coming out.

Ah, oh yeah, yeah. I appreciate the plug, man. No, yeah, the the textbook will be ready soon. I'm, uh, I I had to get a bunch of stuff put together, and I want to make it a really cool thing for everyone who who orders one. Um, so we've got some treats that are going to come along with it and some other cool stuff. So I want to make sure it's—I'm just, I gotta make sure it's it's it's ready and right and everyone gets it and is like, "Yeah, man, this is really," I want when someone to get it, you go, "Man, this is pretty cool."

Put mine on reserve.

I will. I've got I've got plenty of societal—same thing with with it on reserve. So so don't worry, we're gonna have plenty of copies. That's for sure.

Awesome. So in the episode notes, in the episode notes, look for Scott's, uh, "But I'm Not a Police Officer," so you can get a book, a copy of the book. I love the idea that you're working in niche markets where a lot of people don't spend a lot of time, and it's essential, essential. Thank you so.

Thanks for coming on, buddy. I appreciate you.

You guys are awesome. Thanks so much. And thanks everyone for listening. Don't forget that training changes behavior.