974: Navigating CHAOS with clarity, resilience, and evidence-based decisions w/ Brian Baxter

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, but I am not the only Brian in today's episode, which is rare for me to say on the air.

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But today's guest has got me all sorts of excited because this is someone who has an incredible background rooted in service, such an incredible professional career that I love the fact that he is now one of us.

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He is a fellow entrepreneur who is continuing to bring his expertise, in the very different way that he sees the world, to more positively impact so many different industries, so many different people, and really we're going to learn from him today, because this is someone who has such a strong insistence on evidence-based decisions in leadership, in both business and personal life.

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I think that it's something that all of us, as entrepreneurs, we are rooted in emotion, we're rooted in passion, and today's guest is really going to ground us in ways that shows the way that he sees the world, the way that he thinks and the way that he's practiced in his professional career to really get at the real facts, the facts that are going to make us make better decisions in ways that move us forward societally, professionally, personally.

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Let me tell you all about today's guest.

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His name is Brian Baxter.

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Brian is the founder and president of Performance Critical Inc.

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Which is a company whose vision is stronger relationships, enhanced universal safety and a reinforced public trust.

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Now a little bit about his background.

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He is a retired 30-year veteran of the Texas Department of Public Safety, where he served as a patrol trooper, a SWAT team member, an undercover narcotics agent I bet he's got stories for days an organized crime investigator and a people leader from first-line supervisor to senior executive.

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Brian has a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice and a Master of Science in Applied Psychology, and is a combat infantry veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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Outside of what he does with his business, I so respect the fact that he also volunteers with a nonprofit organization called Gentlemen Incorporated, whose mission is to eliminate the demand for sexual exploitation by identifying and changing the behaviors that create it.

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This is someone who's so fascinating, so brilliant.

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I'm excited for all of us to learn from him and his experiences today.

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So I'm not going to say anything else, let's dive straight into my interview with Brian Baxter.

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All right, brian, you've got a lot to live up to today.

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But first things first, welcome to the show.

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Hey, thanks very much.

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I'm excited to be here.

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I really appreciate you having me on.

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Heck.

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Yes, we appreciate you coming on this show and you've got such an incredible perspective and vantage point with all of your prior experiences.

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So, first things first.

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Brian, you've got to take us beyond the bio because you've done so many incredible things, but, at end of the day, who the heck are you?

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How'd you start doing all these amazing things?

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uh.

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So I guess it's appropriate to start backward and move back toward the beginning.

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I, right now I'm I'm in grandpa mode, although I don't have grandkids yet.

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Uh, I'm my wife and I live in san angelo, texas.

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We've got three kids.

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Obviously, all of them are adults now.

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The youngest is a sophomore at Angelo State University.

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The way we got here was a long road of moving around the state with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

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My wife's a nurse, so I often said she could get a job anywhere, and I may have taken advantage of that a time or two as I promoted and relocated throughout the state over three decades.

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At one point I had a moment of weakness and I told her well, I'm moving you guys around all over the place.

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When I retire, you get to pick where we live.

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And so she remembered that and held me to it, and that's how we got to where we are now.

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Is she selected San Angelo because it was her favorite duty station that we had over those years?

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Are now?

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Is she selected San Angelo because it was her favorite duty station that we had over those years?

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But I wouldn't trade anything.

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I wouldn't do anything differently, except maybe try to do a little bit more.

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I started out as a patrol trooper in Austin, had a great time, a lot of great experience, did a lot of work downtown Austin, in the Capital District, which is an area that's controlled by the state of Texas.

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Had a lot of experience, learned a lot.

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I was fortunate enough to be selected for the SWAT team and served on the SWAT team and again had a lot of different experiences going through dangerous doors, helping hostages, helping people that were, you know, in a really bad way.

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We got to be what I've heard said, the best part of some people's worst day.

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And then I went into narcotics work and that's where we came to San Angelo the first time.

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Again, you're right, I've got a lot of stories.

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A lot of those stories get forgotten until I'm in the context of friends that were there and they bring them up.

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Sometimes you don't talk about that one or sometimes you really rejoice in the happy memories.

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But the end of my career, the grand finale, was spent in the training division and I really got to influence a lot of people, got to be a part of the training of a lot of troopers, got to be a part of instituting a tactical emergency casualty care program that's been attributed to saving dozens of lives to this point.

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I got to contribute to leadership development, employee development and really got to do what I've wanted to do my whole life, which is be people-centric and focus all of my efforts and energies on helping myself and other people become better.

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So I've had a great life of service, great life opportunities, and I just feel blessed to have experienced those things.

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Yeah, Brian, I love and appreciate that overview as someone my uncle also in upstate New York.

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He's former SWAT as well, and I think it's so fascinating that after his career was over, he decided for new beginnings and went out and started his own business, much like you've done as well.

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And so I've got to ask you the question, because I don't think societally we expect that sort of transformation after this type of career, one where you're literally putting your life at danger, that you want to be an entrepreneur, you want to deal with accounting and you want to deal with sales and you want to deal with customer service and all these things that come along with owning your own business.

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Where did that transition come from?

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Obviously, coming from a place of service is natural, but I'd love to hear the beginnings of your entrepreneurial journey too.

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I'd say that the mission came from a place of service.

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Sincerely, I want to help share what I've learned over the years and share what scholars that I've worked with and where my career path and the career path of science and the scientific method intersect and I want to use that to help everybody make better decisions, to focus on the empirical and not the emotional, to really use research and become more cerebral creatures in our decision-making models, so that I would say came from a place of service.

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I think you're making a lot of assumptions that I want to work with accounting and all those things.

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I think that comes from a place of necessity and to do what I'm hoping I get the opportunity to build and do.

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Those are what I would call necessary evils, that I'm learning as I go and I've learned a ton along the way, a lot of discovery learning, I'd call it.

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Yeah, brian, I love the way that you phrase that and understanding the mission versus the necessity, and yes, these are things that all of us face as entrepreneurs.

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But I really want to ask you this because, hearing you talk about using evidence-based decision making and obviously your background, you have been in very chaotic environments.

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I'm sure that there are stories you can tell that literally none of us can relate to, and so much of what guides you through there is that training, preparation, is such a key part of what you've done.

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I once talked to a police officer here in Florida when I asked him how are you prepared in these moments of pure chaos, and he said it's not the first time I've thought about it.

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If it's the first time, I'm never going to be able to deal with it.

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So, brian, leveraging all that experience that you have, but also the training that you have and the perspective that you bring to others through the work that you do, give us some insights into how to, in these chaotic environments, which a lot of us deal with, that aren't physically chaotic like what you've dealt with in business.

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In life, we all face those things.

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How do you slow time down?

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How do you bring it to the point where we can think clearly in those moments.

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I would say that your friend in Florida has it right you can't.

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Well, you should try not to let something be the first time you've experienced it.

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When you experience it in the wild, when we sit at a traffic light in our car and we're at a red light and the light turns green and we're preparing to go, we usually don't just mash on the gas and go through the intersection.

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We usually look to the right and the left and if we see a car that's moving what we think is a little bit faster than what would allow them to stop before they get into the intersection, we just maintain our position and then go after that car goes by.

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That's because we've thought about it before we've experienced it, we've mentally rehearsed it, and I think we've got to do the same thing in all aspects of our life.

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You know, when it comes to stressful encounters, whether it's in combat or in business, I would say that we have hardwired physiological responses to things that are stressful and we have an opportunity to train our brain to create a pathway that says we can look at this as a pathway, that says we can look at this as a threat or we can look at this as a challenge and I think the more we look at those physiological responses in our body when we come across an experience or a set of circumstances that make our heart rate go up, make us start breathing a little bit faster and make our skin tingle and make us look around and we feel like we're scared, the more we can program ourselves to respond to those situations as challenges, the better off we're going to be and the better we're going to perform, versus if we just automatically see everything as a threat and start thinking of ways to avoid or defend or just remove ourself from that situation.

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Yeah, hearing you talk about this, it's such interesting food for thought, because it really introduces the fact that we're always processing data.

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When you talk about these physiological things, and even using that example of driving through an intersection, we're not consciously thinking of all the cars that are around us, but we are tracking that, whether we realize it or not, through our mirrors, through what we saw before the light turned green.

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We're always thinking about all of these things, which begs the question of how do we cut through the noise?

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Because when we talk about getting to the facts and obviously you help and train people and educate people on how to use the right facts to come to the right sorts of decisions how do we separate out the noise from the stuff that actually matters?

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Because this is the last thing I'll inject into this part of the conversation is, it seems to me like it's important to always consider the macro versus the micro, and we can see different things depending on how close or far we're standing from a situation.

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How do we make sense of all this stuff, brian?

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You know this is a rabbit hole that we could go down and really talk about for hours, but I'll say that the body does a lot of that naturally.

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For example, you probably drove to where you are right now and you hit the brake a number of times.

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You stopped and went a number of times, you turned the steering wheel a number of times.

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You turned the steering wheel a number of times, and although you can tell me what route you took to get to where you work, you probably can't tell me how many times you looked over your left shoulder.

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You can't tell me how many times you stepped on the brake, because those are the micro details that didn't represent a significant impact to you getting to work.

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A significant impact to you getting to work.

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What represented a significant impact was being on the right road, stopping at the red lights, going at the green lights, turning right, left when appropriate, and our body does that automatically, so you're not going to remember the things that you didn't have to focus your attention on.

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So when we talk about divided attention and selective attention, as it affects what we bring in as far as data, it also affects our memory and we can also take that same approach to a challenge.

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I have a colleague who says that he likes to broaden his view when he starts getting overwhelmed.

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If he's overwhelmed on what's right in front of him, he starts broadening the view.

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What's the ultimate end state?

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What do we want this to look like when we're done?

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What can I do right now to pursue that end state and to do these things?

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He uses an acronym WIN.

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What's important now, and that's usually focusing on the macro in the moment, and then, when we come back to it, we can fill in the gaps and take care of the details.

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Yeah, I think it's so fascinating in this conversation seeing you weave through all these different components of your professional background.

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Obviously, I feel like your master of science in applied psychology is showing right now, brian, because it makes me want to ask you about the brain.

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Obviously, it's the most powerful force that we as humans have, and when you use the term like selective attention, I think about what's the correct way for us to approach a problem or an opportunity, any of those things that we may face, because of the fact that we are so good at training our brain to look for certain things.

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If you and I went outside right now and we said, have you ever noticed how many white cars there are on the roads?

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We would start to notice all the white cars.

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So we can train our brain to see certain things or overlook certain things.

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What's the right approach then?

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Do we go into it with a goal in mind?

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Do we try to go into it with a totally clear slate?

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How do we even start approaching these things?

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There's a balance there.

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There's a balance of the goal, which you have to have.

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If you don't have a goal and if you don't write it down, it's not real, it's never going to happen.

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But you have your goal and then you have an open mind that is going to allow you to perceive and remember and analyze actual data and actual evidence, as opposed to bias confirming evidence.

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Your point about the white car you're right.

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We could go outside, and if you told me to start looking for white cars, not only am I gonna notice more white cars, but if the goal is to count how many white cars we see, I might see a gray car or a light yellow car and I might go ahead and say you know a light yellow car, and I might go ahead and say, yeah, that's white and I'll count it too, because my my goal has now become a, created a bias for my data analysis, and so I'm so focused now on finding white cars.

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I'm finding cars that are kind of white cars and I'm counting those as white cars.

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The balance is maintaining our objectivity, which is one of our core values at Performance Critical maintaining our objectivity and looking for white cars, but only counting the actual white cars, no matter how much we want to have more.

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We got to look at what's actually there and only what's actually there.

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Yeah, which obviously we could talk about.

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So many different motivations behind human behavior, but part of me wants to ask you this question of how do we avoid that natural human behavior, whether it's greed, whether it's biases, whether it's, there's a million different reasons why we all behave the way that we might behave.

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How do we remove those uniquely human elements?

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Because, at the end of the day, we are still humans and it is hard to be an Excel spreadsheet or just an AI model.

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Yeah, well, you don't is the answer.

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Nobody's ever going to be a completely objective observer of anything.

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Everything we do has some hint of bias.

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So I think, to answer your question, one of the things we can do is to be just almost painfully transparent in what we do and share our ideas, ask questions, bounce things off of mentors and confidants and get other input and other ideas to kind of check ourselves.

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And that's part of the integrity piece to this is, you know, if I'm going to have integrity, I'm going to check myself against someone or something that I trust, some other sounding board or some other, you know, verifier.

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Yeah, there's no way to remove bias, but you have to become aware of the bias and embrace the fact that you have the possibility of that bias before you can even come close to working around it.

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Yeah, I think that's such an important topic, especially because one of my favorite quotes ever is we don't see things as they are.

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We see things as we are.

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And I think back in business terms in 2020, when the pandemic hit is a lot of people shut down business and things really ground to a halt, whereas I saw opportunity, I was inspired by all those stories I heard about the 1930s, when the Great Depression created more millionaires than at any other point in history, and I said to myself I'm going to find the opportunity here, and so that's what I saw.

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I started two companies that year, one of which sold a couple of years later, and that was a huge success for me, and so I started to see those things.

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But I also think about it's a word that you introduced to this conversation.

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It's an important word, which is perceive.

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We perceive all of these things.

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What's real, brian?

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There's very few things that are objectively real in the world, but hearing you talk about this, I think about if we're making evidence-based decisions.

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You and I could go out to dinner and I could say, gosh, this waitress has had a terrible day today and to me, that's based on my perception, of course Whether she has of the world.

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How do you remove that emotion?

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Obviously, you talk about not removing our biases, and we can't remove those.

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But how do we start to at least have the awareness to say this is something that's coming from my past experiences and from my vantage point, versus saying this is what's real in a world with few real things?

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This is truly real.

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Yeah.

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So earlier, when I was talking about the challenge versus the, the threat, and and through repetition and through intentional focus on, on retraining our brain and creating that pathway, we want to condition ourselves to respond to things as challenge and not a threat, I would say, whenever we run across something that we feel emotional about.

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This waitress has been rude to me.

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She must have had a bad day.

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I'm going to share that with my friend and tell him she's had a bad day.

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That's criticism, and I think it's very important that we also condition ourselves, create a pathway that prepares us to respond to those situations with curiosity rather than criticism.

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Ask questions.

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You know, I think it was a comedian oh gosh, I can't remember which one it was but he said a profound thing.

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He said only look in someone else's bowl to make sure they have enough, never look in someone else's bowl to see if they have more than you.

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And that takes us kind of to the conversation about naive realism, where we think our view of the world is the view of the world where we think that.

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You know, I grew up in suburban America and I had two parents that are still married to this day.

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That's probably the situation that most people have, and it's couldn't be farther from the truth.

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Our naive realism is something that, just like our biases, we have to be aware of and and although we'll never cure it, we'll never make it go away.

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Being aware of it allows us to respond to things with curiosity rather than criticism, so that we can ask ourselves things like why am I emotional about this?

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Why does this topic or this subject or this conflict make me feel angry, make me feel sad, make me feel threatened?

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Why am I feeling what, make me feel threatened?

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Why am I feeling what I'm feeling?

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And when we ask those questions, we can then proceed with a much better plan.

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Yeah, I think all we need to do is log onto Facebook to see the fact that everyone is absolutely convinced that their view of the world is the view of the world.

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I really like the way that you articulated that, which leads me to thinking about performance critical in the work that you do with your clients.

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I would imagine that most of them, brian, have the feeling that they are being objective, that they are removing emotions from all of these things, and they probably think, well, yeah, this sounds great, it's common sense.

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We all know these things inherently.

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How do you bring them to the point of realization and self-awareness?

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What does that moment look like when you're working with these clients?

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That's a wonderful question.

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I have seen both sides of that.

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I've had clients that have told me this law enforcement encounter with this citizen is awful.

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The police did everything wrong.

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The police were abusive, they used excessive force, they were disrespectful to my client and here's the video, reports, the statements, everything I want you to look at.

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And I've also had the other side, where my client says, hey, look at this officer, he did everything right and still this bad result occurred.

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And I have seen both of those cases and presented evidence and analysis, the evidence to show that they were wrong.

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They were looking at this with a bias.

00:21:19.417 --> 00:21:25.474
Either if I don't like the police, I'm going to look at what they do as being wrong immediately.

00:21:25.474 --> 00:21:32.510
And if I am the police, or I support the police, or I don't want to draw that dichotomy.

00:21:32.510 --> 00:21:48.569
But then I'm going to see things in a little bit more of a pro-police fashion, when where we need to be is seeing the police and the citizen that's involved with that police encounter as being a part of a community and look at the facts objectively.

00:21:48.569 --> 00:21:54.462
Rather than police have a hard job, so we need to look at it this way.

00:21:54.462 --> 00:22:00.721
Or the police are tyrants, and so we need to look at this in another light.

00:22:00.721 --> 00:22:20.329
I've seen it both ways and I've had to get good at talking to people and explaining to them how these human factors, these biomechanics, these situational factors, distance, sound light all contributed to what happened.

00:22:20.329 --> 00:22:37.451
And we may not immediately see it that way through our own brand of naive realism, but when we see the evidence, and it's presented in a respectful and diplomatic fashion, most of us have a tendency to be intelligent enough to change our minds.

00:22:38.292 --> 00:23:02.852
Yeah, and I think that is such an important statement and really topic from you here today, not just within the scope of the work that you do, not just in the scope of our entrepreneurial journeys, but, gosh, I wish all of society would embrace this mindset, because I'm going to totally butcher this quote, but it's something along the lines of the mark of a wise mind is the ability to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time, and I think that's so important for us to measure both sides of those.

00:23:02.893 --> 00:23:08.781
But I think, at the root of it you brought up earlier in our conversation today, which is curiosity of the ability to entertain.

00:23:08.781 --> 00:23:10.244
What if this is true?

00:23:10.244 --> 00:23:13.789
What if what I think is actually the opposite of reality?

00:23:13.789 --> 00:23:27.261
And I think that's so powerful, which, thinking about the work that you do with people, I would imagine that it takes some degree of rapport for you to have that relationship with them, to even create an environment where they're willing to entertain these things.

00:23:27.261 --> 00:23:36.243
And so that's why I want to pick on your background as an undercover narcotics agent, because I'm sure rapport is the name of the game there, brian.

00:23:36.243 --> 00:23:40.979
As entrepreneurs, all of us need the ability to generate rapport with everyone that we're interacting with.

00:23:40.979 --> 00:23:43.893
So what are some of those secrets there from your background?

00:23:45.355 --> 00:23:48.863
Before you can generate rapport, you got to make contact.

00:23:48.863 --> 00:23:59.535
You have to actually connect with a person and in sales they tell you to use someone's name a lot, and they're not wrong.

00:23:59.535 --> 00:24:05.215
If you use someone's name and you personalize the interaction, they're more likely to listen to you.

00:24:05.215 --> 00:24:14.932
This isn't just true, and you know, setting up an undercover meeting or getting someone to talk to you or selling something.

00:24:14.932 --> 00:24:24.393
It's true in a de-escalation situation, where the police or the fire department or a nurse in the ER is trying to de-escalate a situation.

00:24:25.155 --> 00:24:30.455
You have to first establish contact and that means getting someone to be engaged with you.

00:24:30.455 --> 00:24:48.036
They are voluntarily now engaged with you and then you can start to build rapport by finding things that you have in common with them, by sharing similar views that you pick up from them, and it all stems from giving that unconditional respect.

00:24:48.036 --> 00:24:55.349
I had a mentor who said I give you my respect and I'm going to work to earn yours, and that's part of rapport building.

00:24:55.349 --> 00:25:03.816
If you give someone your unconditional respect from the onset until they lose it, then you can start working on earning theirs.

00:25:03.816 --> 00:25:10.240
Then you can start working on earning theirs and then, once you've done those things, established contact and you've built rapport.

00:25:10.240 --> 00:25:31.553
Then, and only then, can you start to maybe influence behavior, whether it's talk them into buying something that you want to sell, talk them into meeting you at a certain location to help you recover some evidence, or talking them into cooperating and de-escalating a police citizen encounter.

00:25:32.694 --> 00:25:35.903
Yeah, it's really powerful insights and I think that that is so important.

00:25:35.903 --> 00:25:42.520
I mean, it's something that we all inherently know that the most beautiful sound to all of us is the sound of our own name when someone is addressing us.

00:25:42.520 --> 00:25:48.096
So huge kudos to you on bringing that to light, because I do feel like we lose that and I'm going to blame.

00:25:48.096 --> 00:25:53.153
As someone who went to business school, I blame all the times that we dehumanize even business.

00:25:53.153 --> 00:25:58.695
Where we talk about B2B companies, business to business, we forget that it's always a human on the other side.

00:25:58.695 --> 00:26:00.965
No business has ever bought something before.

00:26:00.965 --> 00:26:05.155
It's always a human being making that decision, and so I think that's really powerful.

00:26:05.537 --> 00:26:21.971
I'd love for you to talk to us more about your company on the whole and the way that you operate, because, as someone who's gone through everything that Performance Critical puts outwardly into the world, I really appreciate it's right on your website your four core values integrity, objectivity, public service and extreme transparency.

00:26:21.971 --> 00:26:29.307
You operate, brian, in a world where it's I want to say it's a delicate industry.

00:26:29.307 --> 00:26:33.538
Obviously You're working with Delicate Matters and we're talking about public trust.

00:26:33.538 --> 00:26:43.454
Talk to us about operating in that world and how you've made sure that Performance Critical stands for all the things that you stand for and brings that service to all the people that you interact with.

00:26:45.097 --> 00:26:45.618
Well, I would.

00:26:45.618 --> 00:26:58.349
I would start with, uh, some of the interactions I've had with my peers where, uh, the phrase or the term public trust is is almost laughed off as an intangible.

00:26:58.349 --> 00:27:01.717
And if it's intangible, then how do we work to accomplish it?

00:27:01.717 --> 00:27:10.939
And, and I bite my tongue and and, uh, I respond with curiosity rather than criticism and I ask them why don't you think it's tangible?

00:27:10.939 --> 00:27:36.785
Because, to me, the public trust is defined as when we get to a place where the public gives the police the benefit of the doubt, when the public assumes the police's best intentions and, despite what you see on Facebook or nightly news, the majority of the people, the members of the public, do assume the police's best intentions.

00:27:36.785 --> 00:27:48.246
It's the outliers that not only have the bigger, uh, the, the louder voices, but they also make for better news and better headlines.

00:27:48.246 --> 00:28:09.336
So, when you're focusing on the public trust and another part of that vision statement is universal safety enhancing universal safety that's not just officer safety, that's not just the safety of the person who's encountering or who is in this encounter with the officer, that's everybody's safety.

00:28:10.211 --> 00:28:11.837
So you have to have decision-making tools.

00:28:11.837 --> 00:28:19.916
You have to have things that you've rehearsed as we discussed earlier, things that you've rehearsed in your head, for example, a decision-making tool in a hostage situation.

00:28:19.916 --> 00:28:25.881
To really break it down and make it simple, you have to figure out who's going to get the most of your energy when it comes to protecting them.

00:28:25.881 --> 00:28:30.534
Who deserves the greater degree of focus of the police on the scene?

00:28:30.534 --> 00:28:34.971
Is it the hostage taker, is it the hostage or is it the police themselves?

00:28:34.971 --> 00:28:40.935
And so we make that decision based on who has the least amount of control over the outcome.

00:28:41.518 --> 00:28:46.174
And the person who has the least amount of control of the outcome of a hostage situation is obviously the hostage.

00:28:46.174 --> 00:28:58.018
A lot of people think the police have the most influence on the outcome, but in fact there's only one person who can turn that entire event off if they wanted to, and that's the hostage taker.

00:28:58.018 --> 00:29:10.051
So the hostage taker gets the least amount of consideration, not because their life is less important, but because they own the greatest amount of control over the situation, and the police fall right there in the middle.

00:29:10.051 --> 00:29:18.279
So when we have a decision-making tool like that that we can objectively put things in an order and then move forward accordingly.

00:29:18.279 --> 00:29:28.376
We can explain that later to say we didn't treat your child, your defendant or I mean your client differently because they were the hostage taker.

00:29:28.376 --> 00:29:34.156
We treated them differently because they had the most control and this hostage, on the contrary, had the least amount of control.

00:29:35.119 --> 00:29:40.855
Yeah, a real life example from hostage situations about preparation being so important.

00:29:40.855 --> 00:29:59.741
So, brian, I do want to squeeze this question with you in here today as we come towards the end of today's episode, and that is truly about that preparation, because I'm sure in those moments where, when you were serving as a patrol trooper, when you were serving as a SWAT team member, you didn't even realize all the things that you were being uniquely prepared for in your future.

00:29:59.741 --> 00:30:09.602
Obviously, you were aware of the job training for the now, but I always love that fact that everything that we do in life uniquely prepares us for everything that we're going to face in the future.

00:30:09.602 --> 00:30:22.594
So, with that in mind, as a fellow entrepreneur, what are some of those things, now that you're running your own business, that you look backwards and you think to yourself gosh, I didn't realize from the battlefields that this was setting me up for entrepreneurial success.

00:30:22.594 --> 00:30:25.221
Draw some of those comparisons and analogies for us.

00:30:30.450 --> 00:30:32.333
Well, I'll start by saying I think I might still fall into the one entrepreneur category.

00:30:32.333 --> 00:30:39.125
I'm still at the very beginning stages and would not compare what I know or my experiences with most entrepreneurs.

00:30:39.125 --> 00:30:54.615
But, being in that game, I'll take you back to an experience that I had when I'd been a trooper for about 15 minutes and I was driving a black and white patrol car and I was the king of the world and I could do no wrong and I knew absolutely everything, just ask me.

00:30:54.615 --> 00:31:08.781
And I was driving by a parking lot in Austin and I saw a guy parking on a red curb and he was going to run into the building and then run back out and I rolled down my window and I hollered at the guy.

00:31:08.781 --> 00:31:13.161
I said hey, you can't park there, which is kind of a trope now.

00:31:13.742 --> 00:31:22.933
I said you can't park there and he shouted something back at me and I my god, I drove over there because I'm gonna find out what this guy has to say to the, the texas dps.

00:31:22.933 --> 00:31:24.316
And I said what'd you say?

00:31:24.316 --> 00:31:33.097
He said I said you could have handled that differently and spoken to me more kindly, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

00:31:33.097 --> 00:31:35.971
I heard what he said, I understood what he meant, I owned it.

00:31:35.971 --> 00:32:02.578
I changed my behavior from that day forward and I would say that that experience has helped me through more decisions, more circumstances and more conflicts than anything else Just the knowledge and the awareness to respond with curiosity instead of criticism, and to respond with kindness whenever we can, because you just have no idea what somebody's situation is.

00:32:03.681 --> 00:32:10.313
Yes, I love that real life story and I'm so grateful that it came so early in your journey as a patrol trooper.

00:32:10.313 --> 00:32:14.050
It's it goes right in line with things don't happen to us, they happen for us.

00:32:14.050 --> 00:32:19.532
So I wish it would be a Hollywood ending, Brian, if you and that person kept in touch all these years later.

00:32:19.532 --> 00:32:20.757
He's still impacting you.

00:32:20.757 --> 00:32:21.720
So I love that story.

00:32:21.720 --> 00:32:22.891
I wish.

00:32:23.251 --> 00:32:23.692
I'd like to.

00:32:23.692 --> 00:32:25.897
I'd like to talk to him and tell him I've done better.

00:32:26.558 --> 00:32:33.394
Heck, yeah, honestly, I really do love it and before we wrap things up, I do want to.

00:32:33.394 --> 00:32:44.037
I knew that it was going to be important in today's episode and conversation with you to talk about the volunteer work that you do, because I think it's such an incredible mission and there's a lot of problems in the world and there's a lot of different ways that we all feel that we can solve these problems.

00:32:44.037 --> 00:33:00.092
But when it comes to sexual exploitation, it's a complex topic, as most of the things that we're talking about here today, and so you doing that work to eliminate the demand for that, even focusing on that side of the coin, talk to us about Gentleman Inc and all the work that you're doing there.

00:33:01.234 --> 00:33:02.739
Well, I'm glad you're sitting down.

00:33:02.739 --> 00:33:08.549
You'll be shocked to hear that there's a pretty significant element of psychology in our methodology there as well.

00:33:08.549 --> 00:33:13.679
Our motto is do better, be better, demand better.

00:33:13.679 --> 00:33:32.820
And by do better it means if, right now, if you have self-destructive or destructive habits like consuming pornography, for example, or going to strip clubs or in other ways passively hopefully passively contributing to sexual exploitation, stop do better.

00:33:32.820 --> 00:33:35.498
Then, once you've done better, you become better.

00:33:35.498 --> 00:33:46.578
You change the neural pathways that give you that dopamine response to watching certain kinds of movies or going to certain kinds of places or doing certain kinds of things, which all contribute.

00:33:46.789 --> 00:33:54.196
There's mountains of evidence that show that pornography and strip clubs contribute to commercial sex and sexual exploitation.

00:33:54.196 --> 00:33:58.076
Then we become better and we no longer want to do those things.

00:33:58.076 --> 00:34:08.905
We get our pleasure and our joy from going to the gym or playing golf or spending time with our kids or just doing more productive, healthy, sustainable things.

00:34:08.905 --> 00:34:11.396
And then, once you become better, you're not done.

00:34:11.396 --> 00:34:13.476
Then you've got to demand better.

00:34:13.869 --> 00:34:33.505
Then it comes time for you to have some frank conversations with your buddies, with your brothers, with your dad, with your uncles, with your nephews, and have that mutual accountability where you can share with them your experiences, because another one of the things we like to say is having done it does not preclude forbidding it.

00:34:33.505 --> 00:34:41.423
You now are armed with the experience to talk about why you shouldn't do these things, and then it spreads like wildfire.

00:34:41.423 --> 00:34:44.998
Everyone in your sphere of influence gets that information.

00:34:44.998 --> 00:35:04.356
We lose our anonymity to do these things and not be discovered, and I think if there was one contributing factor that we could remove to make people healthier emotionally and mentally in their adulthood is to remove abuse of children.

00:35:04.356 --> 00:35:15.304
One of the most significant forms of abuse of children is sexual exploitation, and so by addressing this, we're not only fixing the men that create the demand for sexual exploitation in the first place.

00:35:15.304 --> 00:35:22.853
We're potentially helping to fix children and make them better in the future and be even better examples than we'll ever be.

00:35:23.715 --> 00:35:30.721
Yeah, brian, I really appreciate your insights there and how powerfully you share that and really challenge us to be better, to become better.

00:35:30.721 --> 00:35:54.784
Obviously, it starts with that doing better and then to demand better and I'm going to interject this real quick for listeners is that if they tune into today's episode and they didn't expect to hear us talking about these types of topics, I think that that's such a core part of the work that you do in the world and I think it's a challenge to all of us as entrepreneurs that to make the world a better place, we have to be willing to confront and to talk about these type of topics.

00:35:54.784 --> 00:35:59.972
So I'm so appreciative of you and really all of our guests.

00:35:59.992 --> 00:36:28.650
Whether we're talking about deep and sometimes controversial topics like this one, the ones that a lot of people shy away from, this is the real stuff and the fact that you layer it with your psychology background, I think it's very powerful for us to realize that this is the stuff and it fits right in line with demanding better of ourselves and those around us and we, as entrepreneurs, we have this responsibility to be the change that we wish to see in the world, so hugely appreciative of the fact that you talk about these things, and the last question that I always like to ask in these episodes is super broad.

00:36:28.690 --> 00:36:30.155
You can take in any direction.

00:36:30.155 --> 00:36:40.293
You've been such a wealth of knowledge here today, a lot of food for thought for all of us to think better and to start doing things differently from that place of objectivity and finding those facts.

00:36:40.293 --> 00:36:44.673
So, with all of that in mind, brian, what's the one thing that you want to leave listeners with?

00:36:44.673 --> 00:36:48.311
Knowing that they're at all different phases of their entrepreneurial growth journeys?

00:36:48.311 --> 00:36:50.818
What's the one thing that you want to impart on them today?

00:36:52.400 --> 00:36:59.117
I would say, one of the most important things that we can all remember is this phrase your ego is not your amigo.

00:36:59.117 --> 00:37:03.476
If we're putting ourself first and every, we've got to do self-care.

00:37:03.476 --> 00:37:04.701
We've got to take care of ourselves.

00:37:04.701 --> 00:37:09.137
We've got to put our oxygen on before we help the person in our seat next to us.

00:37:09.137 --> 00:37:17.434
Self-care is important, but if we're always putting ourself first, we might be missing out on more than we think we're missing out on.

00:37:17.434 --> 00:37:25.523
So I would say respond with curiosity rather than criticism and, most importantly, respond with kindness whenever you can.

00:37:26.710 --> 00:37:28.514
Yes, I love that advice.

00:37:28.514 --> 00:37:31.762
It's so poignant and so relevant here at the end of today's episode.

00:37:31.762 --> 00:37:47.137
And, brian, you said a little bit earlier that you might still be in the entrepreneur phase, but I'm going to argue that entrepreneurs we are measured not by years, not by revenue, not by our client rosters, but by the impact that we commit to and that we do the work and we take action towards.

00:37:47.137 --> 00:37:48.139
So huge kudos to you.

00:37:48.139 --> 00:37:56.385
You've been such a wealth of knowledge here today and I'm sure that listeners will be super keen on finding all the ways that you are influencing the world with Performance Critical.

00:37:56.385 --> 00:37:58.068
So drop those links on us.

00:37:58.068 --> 00:37:59.572
Where should listeners go from here?

00:38:00.853 --> 00:38:04.862
The Performance Critical website is performance-criticalcom.

00:38:04.862 --> 00:38:06.972
You can find all of our services there.

00:38:06.972 --> 00:38:19.563
You can find biographies there, and I'll go ahead and tell you that there's no Gentleman Inc website, but there is a Facebook page for Gentleman Inc and it's just that Gentleman comma I-N-C.

00:38:19.563 --> 00:38:29.184
There's Facebook and Twitter X for the Performance Critical page as well.

00:38:29.831 --> 00:38:31.759
Yes, listeners, you already know the drill.

00:38:31.759 --> 00:38:34.820
We are making it as easy as possible for you to find all of those links.

00:38:34.820 --> 00:38:39.081
Brian's business website is at performance-criticalcom.

00:38:39.081 --> 00:38:40.273
Super easy, though.

00:38:40.273 --> 00:38:44.577
Wherever it is that you're tuning into today's episode, scroll right on down and you can click right on through.

00:38:44.577 --> 00:38:45.619
So don't be shy.

00:38:45.619 --> 00:39:00.518
We're also linking to Brian's personal LinkedIn If you wanna reach out to him and have a conversation with him, or even just thank him way too shy to reach out to people who they hear on podcasts so click right on through.

00:39:00.518 --> 00:39:00.900
You'll find Brian.

00:39:00.900 --> 00:39:01.943
It's super easy to find him and get a hold of him.

00:39:01.943 --> 00:39:05.375
So, brian, on behalf of myself and all the listeners worldwide, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

00:39:06.356 --> 00:39:07.661
Man, thanks a million for having me.

00:39:07.661 --> 00:39:08.282
I had a great time.

00:39:09.989 --> 00:39:15.581
Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

00:39:15.581 --> 00:39:19.557
If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

00:39:19.557 --> 00:39:28.773
Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at thewantrepreneurshowcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

00:39:28.773 --> 00:39:37.554
There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

00:39:37.614 --> 00:39:39.599
These are not sponsored episodes.

00:39:39.599 --> 00:39:41.211
These are not infomercials.

00:39:41.211 --> 00:39:44.699
Our guests help us cover the costs of our productions.

00:39:44.699 --> 00:39:55.652
They so deeply believe in the power of getting their message out in front of you, awesome entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, that they contribute to help us make these productions possible.

00:39:55.652 --> 00:40:04.139
So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just want to invite you check out our website because you can send us a voicemail there.

00:40:04.139 --> 00:40:05.471
We also have live chat.

00:40:05.471 --> 00:40:10.101
If you want to interact directly with me, go to thewantrepreneurshowcom.

00:40:10.101 --> 00:40:11.530
Initiate a live chat.

00:40:11.530 --> 00:40:20.923
It's for real me, and I'm excited because I'll see you, as always every monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and sunday here on the entrepreneur to entrepreneur podcast.