Month: April 2016

What it’s like to be Wealthy

I don’t generally follow the lives of celebrities, but the death of Prince has flooded my Facebook news feed, and as I read through articles about his life and untimely death, I actually felt sorry for him.  These celebrities are surrounded by vultures and parasites masquerading as friends. They fill their mansions with strange acquaintances and try to satiate the void in their lives with sex and drugs to no avail.  Saturday night, as I laid on my couch, I had an epiphany:  I am a very wealthy man.

I woke up Saturday with a daunting task.  We recently moved to be closer to my work, and we have a large storage unit that had to be emptied.  I rented a 16′ Budget truck and drove 50 miles to the storage.  On my way I got a call from a friend who recently returned from deployment.  We talked for almost the entire drive, about his deployment, our kids, and even about CONUS Battle Drills.

When I got to the storage unit, I posted a pic on Facebook and asked if anyone in the Fort Bragg area could come and help.  Within 3 minutes of the post, and old college buddy of mine asked for the address and drove 30 minutes out of his way to help.  A few hours later when we had the van loaded up, he volunteered to drive 90 minutes out of his way to help me unload as well.  When we were done, we sat in my garage and drank a beer to celebrate the task being complete.

Not long after that, I messaged a buddy of mine from Iraq.  He’s going through a tough divorce and I wanted to check up on him.  My heart broke for him and everything he’s going through.  I said a prayer and returned the rental truck.

It was right around dinner time when I got a phone call from my first platoon sergeant back when I was a cherry 2LT in the 82nd Airborne.  He wanted to tell me that he was going to be a Command Sergeant Major for the 10th mountain!  My whole family celebrated with him over the phone.

After dinner I laid on the couch while my three kids piled on top of me to watch some cartoons before their bath time.  It was there, in one of the most precious of moments holding my kids, that I realized just how wealthy I really am.

I don’t own a multi-million dollar mansion.  I don’t have an expensive car.  I don’t own a yacht, and I live on a budget.  I don’t have a lot of “stuff”, but I am incredibly wealthy.

I am friends with some of the greatest men this country has ever produced.  Warriors, real heroes, men whom books are written about, and they call me to celebrate and mourn?  I am undeserving of such an honor.  I am undeserving of so many blessings God has chosen to bestow upon me, but I am ever so grateful to Him.

Are you living your life like a celebrity?  Moving from one shallow relationship to another, filling your life with strip clubs and alcohol?  Because let me tell you something, if you have served this country, then you have walked among giants, and those men call you brother.  You have great wealth at your fingertips, if you’re ready to recognize it.

-LJF

Getting out of the military is hard!  Don’t make it harder on yourself by not being prepared!  Buy CONUS Battle Drills:  A Guide for Combat Veterans to Corporate Life, Parenthood, and Caging the Beast Inside!

What is an Assault Rifle?

Ok, so I recently saw someone else bitching about Assault Rifles, and I realized that lots of people need an education.  Regardless of where you stand on the debate, you need to know what you’re talking about.  So this is me doing my part.

It’s ok not to know something, it’s not ok to be willfully ignorant, profess yourself wise, and then make demands off the law based on your ignorance.

So lets start with proper terminology:

Clip:

Magazine:

Round:

Trigger:

Automatic

Semi-automatic

Let me take another second for those last two, because some people don’t seem to get that one.  Whoopi Goldberg told Rand Paul that no one should be allowed to own an automatic weapon.  Thing is, automatic weapons are already illegal.  She did mention, however that she owns a pistol.  I would have loved to ask Whoopi what kind of weapon she owns, because i’m sure she’d be surprised to find out that this:

shoots just as fast as this:

In the right hands…Here’s proof:


All semi-automatic means is that one round is fired each time you pull the trigger.  In an automatic weapon, you pull and hold the trigger and it keeps firing, like this:

Notice that belt of ammunition in his hand and how his finger isn’t moving off the trigger.  One squeeze, lots of pew.

Now, for the term “Assault” rifle.  The M4 Carbine seems to be a favorite for this description.

But did you know this weapon functions exactly the same way?

It has the same size magazine, same rate of fire, same ammunition.

The look of a weapon doesn’t make it more lethal.  Calling something an “assault” rifle, or saying “military grade” is just a scare tactic and it makes you look stupid to anyone who knows anything about guns.  Besides, I don’t own any “assault” weapons, I only own defense weapons.

The point is that having a rail system, collapsable stock, gangster grip, and painting a weapon black, doesn’t make it more dangerous.

It’s the user that makes a weapon dangerous

And honestly, in the hands of the right person, lots of things can be just as deadly

In the end, however, you’re going to have to convince me and my compatriots why we shouldn’t be allowed to defend ourselves.  This is Why I Always Carry.

 

Oh, and if you do get a law passed, you’re going to have to get the guns from us, and to that I say the words of King Leonidas when the Xerxes asked him to drop his weapons:

 

LJF

 

 


Getting out of the military is hard!  Don’t make it harder on yourself by not being prepared!  Buy CONUS Battle Drills:  A Guide for Combat Veterans to Corporate Life, Parenthood, and Caging the Beast Inside!

American Badass: Harriet Tubman

The news about Harriet Tubman replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill has brought one of my favorite Americans into the limelight.  Although I’m glad Americans are showing a fleeting interest in history, the white-washed version we got in school doesn’t necessarily highlight what a badass Mrs. Tubman actually was, so i’m going to attempt to send you back a hundred and sixty years to get a feel for what level of sacrifice she actually made…

Your heart is beating furiously in your chest as you suck in huge gulps of the cool and humid night air.  Your feet ache from the pounding of the branches as you run as fast as you can through the woods.  Scratches on your face and neck begin to sting as the sweat pools inside them.  You ran this way to draw the dogs away from your family.  Now you hear them in the distance, closing in on you.  The barking of the hounds makes you think of what they will do if they catch you, and the mere thought of it brings lucid memories and the scars on your back seem to burn once again like fresh wounds.  It pushes you to run harder into the darkness.

The light of the moon and the north star are all you have to guide you, but the tough wooden terrain is slowing you down, and the dogs are only getting closer.  You feel a sense of dread and nervousness, helplessness begins to overcome you and tears well in your eyes.  Fighting back the emotions makes running even more difficult; if they catch you this time, they will surely kill you.  You imagine your little child growing up without you and how someone will have to explain to her that you are never coming back; the thought gives you new determination.

As you hop over a log into a small break in the woods you glance up at the night sky and immediately spot the north star.  The beautiful star that means freedom, that means you will hold your baby one more time and sleep without worry that someone will come for you.  Just like that star, however, freedom feels unreachable, and now you can hear the men’s voices and the hounds.  It seems that no matter how hard you push, they keep closing in, and then you remember a special tip they had given you, “you’ll never beat the dogs, gotta beat the handler instead.”  You spring into action, running left, then right, then back, forward, in a circle, and back to your original position.  “That should make him think the dog has lost the scent,” you think to yourself and take off smiling to your rendezvous.

Exhausted, you reach a trail cutting through the  woods and see “Moses”.  She is standing with a small group, putting them into a cart, a pistol in one hand, your baby in the other.  You let out a sigh of relief and hop out of the trees onto the trail.  Moses spins on a dime and you’re face to face with her, staring right into the barrel of her pistol.  There’s a moment as you stare into her eyes that you realize why she never loses a passenger.  There is no hesitation, remorse, or fear, she is focused, determined, and steely-eyed.  “Get in,” Harriet’s words signify the end of your enslavement as you take your baby in your arms.

Harriet was dubbed the “Moses” of the underground railroad and had a perfect record of never losing a soul in her many trips out of slave states.  She knew the terrain, moved like a ghost in the woods, mentally strong, and physically tough, always ready to defend herself and her passengers with deadly force if necessary.

“There was one of two things I had a right to:  Liberty or Death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”

If I could sum up what the essence of being an American is, I would say “liberty or death.”  We churn out the toughest motherfuckers on the planet because we are willing to fight and die free men before we will live long lives as slaves.  Mrs. Tubman is, in my opinion, part of an elite few that through their example we can learn what freedom really is.

She didn’t only fight to free slaves in the underground railroad though, she was also a union soldier.  Oh yes!  She led a group of long range scouts in South Carolina, feeding key terrain characteristics and intelligence to union generals.  I want you to fully understand the badassery of that.  She was a black woman leading a small band of men through the heart of the deep south.  The fact that a non-white was leading troops, and even more so that she was a woman, is a testament to her great skill!

 

When the war was over, she joined yet another movement and fought for the right of women to vote.

Look, here is a woman that was born a slave, escaped several times, helped others escape, led men in battle fighting for her freedom, then fought peacefully for her right to vote.  She started at nothing and is a century later a household name.

Given the choice between a slave owning president who grew the federal government and the moses of the underground railroad…well, this here Cuban-American would be honored to carry around a reminder of American grit in my wallet!

Harriet Tubman $20 bill

LJF

 

 


Getting out of the military is hard!  Don’t make it harder on yourself by not being prepared!  Buy CONUS Battle Drills:  A Guide for Combat Veterans to Corporate Life, Parenthood, and Caging the Beast Inside!

Why the headhunter won’t work with you

I can’t stress enough the importance of having a headhunter in order to get a job.  Unless you already know someone in the company you’re applying with, as much as they like to tell you otherwise, monster.com isn’t going to get you the job.  You have to get a headhunter, more on that here.

I spoke to a friend of mine, Eddie, that works as a headhunter for Lucas Group.  I’m not getting paid to say this, I just honestly believe they are the best firm out there. If you’re talking to someone else, I recommend you give Lucas Group a call, they’ll work with Officers and NCO’s alike, but there are some people they won’t work with.  So here’s an hour long conversation about a candidate they won’t work with given to you in 700 words…

“You must have the right attitude”

I’ve said this before, and I discuss it in great detail in the book, but you are starting a new career and you need to realize that.  Look, I don’t care if you were a Brigade Commander in the military, you don’t know anything about my business.  If you think that you’re better than my team because you wore a uniform, then you don’t belong on my team.

You need to come out of the military with some humility.  You can be proud of what you did, and you should be, but if that pride makes you look down on others that didn’t, then you’re going to have a tough time and i’m not going to hire you.  Tell me instead that you don’t have a problem starting at the bottom.  Say, “It’s an opportunity to learn about the business and I’m confident my skills will get me promoted quickly.”  Bam!  That’s what I want on my team!

 

The right combination of “shuns”

“You have to have the right combination of the 3 ‘shuns’: Location, compensation, occupation.  If you tell me ‘I want to be a program manager in west chicago and make $120k a year,’ I’m going to say ‘good luck.'”  

You need to have realistic expectations of what kind of job you can find when you get out.  There was a boot shop in Fort Bragg that had a sign that read, “we do 3 types of work: Good, fast, and cheap.  Pick any two.”  That saying is very similar to what you need to consider in your job hunt.

Location

“I can’t tell you how many times i’ve heard, ‘I need to stay in Dallas, my girlfriend is from there.’ Then I have to take my recruiter hat off and put on my life coach hat…”

Location is the 3rd question of the big 4 questions, go read more about that here.  Although there are occasionally good reasons to limit yourself geographically like a special needs child or a sick family member, generally you should consider a wider net.

Compensation

“I had a guy tell me, ‘well with BAH, Flight Pay, and Jump Pay i’m making about $130k a year, so I expect to make something commensurate to that.’ With a history degree? There’s no way.”

You need to be realistic about what you’re going to make.  That’s one of the reasons why finances are the 1st of the big 4 questions. You are going to take a pay cut, just wrap your mind around that.  Plan to live off your base pay and understand what that means to your budget.  This way, if you get a job higher than your base pay, you’ll have extra spending money.  Don’t worry, I have the utmost confidence that if you want it, you’ll be able to get promoted quickly above and beyond your peers. More on finances here and here.

Occupation

“I have guys tell me that they only want to do program manager jobs.  Dude, you don’t even know what’s out there and what you’re qualified for.”

The 4th big question is to understand what you want to do, and i’ve explicitly said “lead people” is an acceptable answer.  It is important for you to want to do something that you find interesting, but you should keep your mind open to possibilities that you might not have considered.

“If the alarm goes off in the morning and your feet don’t immediately hit the floor, you have a job not a career and there’s very little compensation or location that is going to make up for you being miserable 40, 50, or 60 hours a week.”

So basically if you’ve read the book or follow the blog, chances are you’re going to get a headhunter to work with you because you’re not going to make those mistakes right?  I’ll close with one final quote:

“The biggest obstacle in these guys’ career is themselves.”

-LJF