Finding Purpose After Service: Continuing the Mission of Helping Others - Chris Roness & Wes Piatt | Ep 26

Wes Piatt  
I'm basically at the doorstep of being bipolar as when I thought maybe I was bipolar, like my mom was. So I started to freak out about that. And thinking that, you know, the best thing to do was I have two daughters, they're seven and four now. And at the time, they were one, three. And I was like, now if I'm going to end this, now it's time to do it, I to get out of here, my daughters won't remember me, my wife can marry somebody new, they'll have a great life, it'll be good. And they won't have to deal with the just awful things that me and my sister had to deal with growing up. So I'm in the garage, walking towards my beer fridge, I'm about to do the whole thing again and start drinking, you know, really like solidifying my plans to make this happen, which is already in the works. I had two friends during the pandemic that were in, I was in the military with a committed suicide. And I remember being so pissed that they didn't call me, you know, just call me and let me know so I can at least try to make you feel better. And so I told myself that that would be one of my steps. Before I did it, I had to totally so I was gonna go through and marvelous reach out to people.

Caleb Roth  
Welcome to the Stacking Habits podcast with your host, David, Matthew and Taylor. Our mission each week is to dig into the habits, rituals and routines of guests who are living life to the fullest. But remember, knowledge without action is worthless. So be sure to take what you hear and put it into practice. turn these words into words in your own life. Without further ado, let's dive in. Well, gentleman, I

got some notes. I listened back to the pre call that Chris was on with our business partner, David, David, unfortunately, cannot join today. So you're stuck with the B team. Myself and Matthew and Matthew. I did see you're catering to the audience. You got a black rifle coffee mug there, right?

Matthew Osborn  
Oh, yeah, do black right. Yeah.

Caleb Roth  
Yeah, way to go. I'm

Matthew Osborn  
a super fan though. I slept outside of their woman opened up near me and got their coffee for a year mug because I was 15th in line for their opening of their new location. So I like black rifle is good. Outside again. But it was fun to do once

Chris Roness  
the same as had a camp out at midnight. So it could be 15th in line.

Matthew Osborn  
It was I think I got there at like 11pm The bummer of those first 50 in line get the free coffee for a year. And I think the 50th person showed up I want to say at like 450 or 5am or something like that. And so I could have shown up at like 5am and still gotten gotten the price line but me but you have the experience. I know. I did get my cup does a number 15 on it, which is cool. But

Chris Roness  
yeah. Oh, nice. Murphy's Law, man.

Caleb Roth  
That's it. And then gentlemen, I've got I've got a couple of things. I know, Chris, you started you matter. Yeah, she's actually that part of the boot campaign is that whatever my research was showing me the boot campaign. Yeah, there's another like, you matter. It's like selling merch and is for suicide prevention? I'm guessing that's why same thing. Oh,

Chris Roness  
my, my little different. Here's what it looks like, oh, no, okay, you matter matter. Because in the military, we love our acronyms. That's one. So I did combat search and rescue for my entire Air Force career. And I did some nuclear security fine Hueys. But both of those things in aviation in the Air Force. That acronym is when we use when the wings are falling off, and the engines are on fire and things are going really bad. This is what we use to stay calm and the immediate action phase of things. So I just took that acronym and adapted it to life. So m just means maintain control, keep flying the machine, stay calm, keep living your life, right. analyze the situation. This is the one when you talk to me about thinking, you can start taking what is happening to you and imagine the worst case scenario and start freaking out really bad. So analyze the situation is identifying the facts to what's really going on and just focusing on those facts and how to resolve them. The next is taking immediate action or an Air Force take appropriate action. Well, we practice for crisis in the aircraft all the time, we actually put ourselves in those emergency scenarios, because it's always, especially in helicopters, always an accident waiting to happen. And so we put ourselves in those scenarios, we can get them out of them. And you can do the same thing in life. And that's what I teach with matter. So that's what they do is they take immediate action based off of a plan that they pre built, and then ours refer to that plan. But the biggest part of take immediate action is what I think we're gonna get after today, which is called what I call your lifeguards, call your lifeguards, those are that that's a tight knit group of thought four or five people that are your trusted confidants and we connect them on Marco Polo, except for one has to be where you're at, but more about that later. But that's that's what matter is, it's the bottom line is this when when veterans leave the service, right, they lose their team, they lose their tools, they start to lose their purpose, their identity themselves, and then they lose their way and that's how they become one of those 22 a day. So in order to actually do suicide prevention, you need to do suicide avoidance which means get ahead of all of that. So you matter is a system that teaches them how to reconnect to their team gives them the tools to prepare for any crisis that can happen but also just HARD goals and how to get ahead of them. And then And then the last part is how to be their own hero in that darkest moment. So you got it

Caleb Roth  
that's a great lead in and then the two of you together started we bus as well. So we'll probably get to both of those I would imagine.

Chris Roness  
Really West gets a credit for starting we bus he was the man. We were connected through Megan at Marco Polo. And now we're a team, where we've combined we bus and you matter together to help our help a whole bunch of dads just be awesome.

Caleb Roth  
You guys met on Marco Polo? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. What's shakin a hand yet?

Yeah. It's crazy. To be

Wes Piatt  
the CEO of my company. You meet this guy and look at him, you have a conversation with him? You have two conversations with them, you have three conversations with them. And you go, okay, you know, I got it. I need you to help me with something. I don't know what it is. But something and hey, I got this thing I'm doing right now, can you help me with it, it's just the 50 or so dudes across the country that are really like exercising vulnerability in a brand new way that I don't think anybody's done yet. So during the pandemic, I'm a small business owner, I'm a CrossFit gym owner, I've been doing that for about 11 years now, former firefighter I used to also be in the Air Force, as well as in the Air Force for four years. And during the pandemic, our business shut down, we went through, you know, the whole story, I'm sure you guys have heard a million times and you know, know somebody, if not a million people that have been through it. So we, in the middle of that thing, I started having a lot of really Child Trauma stuff come back up, my mom was bipolar, and had schizophrenic episodes like growing up, my dad was in the Hells Angels. And there's a whole a whole story behind that, that we could talk about as well. But all that stuff started kind of coming up. And, and also, you know, a few scenarios I was in when I was in the military too, started coming up and stuff that I didn't ever have any problems with before. And so I, you know, did what everybody did during the pandemic, and took a really good liking to Tallboy drinks and you know, the newest IPA or whatever it was, and friends were dropping off six packs at the door. And we were doing that, you know, and it was like, alcohol sales went through the roof primarily because of me, I think. And I had one of those nights where I was like, basically just done thinking that like I'm, I'm I'm basically at the doorstep of being bipolar is what I thought, I thought that all of this stuff that was coming up in the way I just couldn't control myself anymore, the way that the life was just kind of crumbling down around me, it felt like maybe I was bipolar, like my mom was. So I started to freak out about that. And thinking that, you know, the best thing to do was I had two daughters, they're seven and four now. And at the time, they were one, three, and I was like now if I'm going to end this, now's the time to do it, I can get out of here, my daughters won't remember me, my wife can marry somebody new, they'll have a great life, it'll be good and they won't have to deal with the just awful things that me and my sister had to deal with growing up. So I'm in the garage, walking towards my beer fridge about to do the whole thing again and start drinking you know really like solidifying my plans to make this happen which is already in the works. And I just decided for some weird reason I felt this kind of like weird push over, I have a treadmill in the gym and just do some sprints to what happens. So I have done the assault runner and just started doing interval sprints for like 30 seconds on two minutes off and for like an hour. And then afterwards I laid on the ground. And I just had two friends during the pandemic that were in I was in the military with committed suicide. And I remember being so pissed that they didn't call me you know, like what the fuck man like just call me and let me know so I can at least try to make you feel better. And so I told myself that that would be one of my steps before I did it. I just totally so I was gonna go through motorhomes to reach out to people so long story longer as switch license i i went on to Instagram and just basically put up a thing going hey, I'm a dad. I'm a small business owner. I'm really struggling. I feel like you know this might be the end and if you feel the same that hit me up because I need somebody to talk to and thinking that that was gonna be like crickets and you know okay another check on the box and let's go to the last one and then you know, we're out of here. And there was the opposite it was just it was like 500 doppelgangers came into my Instagram inbox, you know and we're just like speaking my story but from all over the nation. And I was just like, Whoa, how can you feel so alone? With so many people around you like I own a gym? I'm you know, I know a lot of people here in town. I know a lot of people And I feel like that helped me also rationalize the idea of ending it like, Look, I know that I am not normal in this situation looking at me people I know look at how this isn't normal. And that's one of the cool things I guess you could say about social media pretty trashy right now, right? But there's, there's opportunities everywhere if you look for so that started the ball where all of a sudden I'm on Instagram trying to reply to all these people that all these guys that are coming in and, and it was starting to become a problem for me. Like I was like, I don't have the time. And now I'm starting to feel that my wife at the time was using Marco Polo with her couple of her girlfriends from from college. They call themselves the three amigos. They're so cute. They're amazing. And they and they would sit there and talk and everywhere. Yes, she's just walking around with her like this on the house. Staff and, you know, I'm like, How are you talking about? They just answered the phone, like whatever you want. Are they at work? Or what's going on? She's like, No, it's just app and like, you just basically Lima FaceTime message. And then they reply whenever and I was like, Oh my God, I need that. And then because what a better way than, you know, typing to actually like see somebody you know us right now this is so much better than if we're doing a phone call and doing this right. It's like me, our connection is so much better. So that's where that started. And then it grew so much actually. Marcopolo reached out to me and was like, your guy? Yes. Yes. i Yeah. what app you're on. Like, do you understand this is Marco Polo, like most of this is all women basically, like we got two other dudes on here. One thing Chris RONIS, he's running this thing. Another name does this and stuff. And I was like, Oh, that's cool. She's like, you know, and then I told her I was a veteran. She was alright, that's it. I got introduced you to Chris. And so me and Chris hooked up that way through Megan of Marco Polo. And then me and Chris just started a side conversation on Marco Polo, just going back and forth about his matter and how I ended I was like, Dude, that's what I'm looking for right now, you know, as I need you. And I need the systems that he already had set up of the ways to you know, take somebody who was like we've already actually deployed a couple of his you matter things with people hit me up on Instagram at like 2am going, Hey, I don't know you. I'm from Texas. My My husband is driving drunk right now. He is, you know, about to go kill himself. He's an ex veteran reached out, I don't know what to do. And I reached out to switch I reached out to another company here called the Overwatch collective who was amazing, I should check them out. And they were just they were on it. Like, luckily, they got one of the guys that are washed collective happened to be working with at that time. He's a cop. So he was on the night shift. And he was able to actually reply right then send help, because he knew somebody in Texas in the community there, we're able to link up and even wake up switch. And it was like literally, a special forces unit quick reaction team, like, and we also had another I mean, sorry, going too long. We're just so excited talking

Chris Roness  
about the total QRS, it was all due

Wes Piatt  
to so I mean, another issue here in Gilroy itself, and we had a family whose son went missing, and we literally had like, all of us come together and like find this kid. Like we found him we went and figured out where he was nobody could find them at Costco and find him and like we were able to, like use our resources in this dad groups come together find them. But anyways, that's what me and switch met. And that's how this whole thing kind of started. But the difference between switches thing and my thing is that they're they're the same they're combined we use you matter stuff in Rebus, but what we do and we Bas is that we we are not allowed to share advice. That is our golden and only rule that's really in there. And that means is you can come from any experience. So if somebody comes on there, and they're like, you guys, I got two kids in the morning, they will not get dressed and get ready for school and I'm driving crazy like this. What do I do? You know, I don't know what to do. Instead of coming on there and being like, well, I don't have kids. I've never been through this but I know what you should do grow or I didn't have that problem. My kids are great, but here's what you should do, bro. It was keep your mouth shut unless you've been through that experience. And they don't even say what they should do just share what happened to you and what you did. Yeah. And then so what ended up happening was we had this group like one person came on with this one problem and you have like five dudes from like varying age ranges to we're talking like people that are bout to have kids have kids my age have kids and teenage have kids just getting into college, have kids that are in their 30s and 40s and stuff all coming in going, here's what I did. Here's what I did. Here's what I did. Here's, here's what I do. All completely different. And now this guy just gets to kind of if he wants to and whatever else and we check back in and it's like how did it go? And it's just been such an organic freakin honestly fireball that like we're going like, oh my god, we gotta get a handle on this thing. And then that's when I was like, he switch. I need help brother like, I gotta put this thing as you can tell, I'm very passionate, and I will let my passion definitely get in the way. And so I was like, I need you to step in and to bring those systems and how helped me with this to make it actually something that will not help people for my lifetime, but hopefully help people in like my daughter's lifetime and their lifetime. So that's, that's us. Yeah. Passion

Chris Roness  
West. That's what we love about you the most good fitness knowledge, man, all this stuff, you know, I'll echo that everything Wes just said about his Marco Polo. How he got into that you could you could peel that story off and put it on my book. And it would be the exact same story, my wife happy as a clam during pandemic, talking to her friends that were in Germany, I was like, what? She's in Germany, how are you talking to her what, and that's how I got involved in Marco Polo, too. And I realized really quickly, that it can be a beneficial tool to help veterans because they're spread out across the world, in the military change assignments every three years. So you might have had a friend that first assignment, you might have a friend from high school or college and, and you might have another friend somewhere else. But what happens is when we get into struggles, we only go to maybe that one person that we trust the very most, and they may or may not be where we're at. And we might talk to all of them, but they aren't talking to each other. And so they don't really know, they all just have a piece of the puzzle. So when you connect them together a Marco Polo, and they all know what's up, and they can all be there for you. It's been amazing. We have one guy that did something different than I think the power of that platform really didn't have to be at platform, a guy or gal, but guys, because you know, we don't have emotions, right? We're

Caleb Roth  
good. We buried somewhere deep within,

Wes Piatt  
I think what I brought to the, to the platform, whatever, we have us what's the emotion like I grew up with two women, my whole life, you know, and stuff. And so I'm, I'm more on that side. And I think that that's what I kind of set as a platform underneath us too, as well. And then I went, Okay, I need a special forces, helicopter pilot to be our CEO on top of that, right. And so there's like this perfect ying yang that we got going on in there.

Chris Roness  
But one of the things that happened, that was really cool, we didn't plan for it. It was just you it's the whole thing is organic, right? It grows and changes the conversations change. And, and what we were talking about a year ago isn't even on the slate right now. But there's one guy in particular that felt comfortable enough with his group of men he'd never met personally, except for one to share some childhood challenges and traumas and experiences that were horrific. This guy put it out there and you never heard once a suck it up, dude, you know that you never heard what you heard was full of crap, dude, I'm here for you. And in other dudes, hey, I kind of had a similar experience, hey, I had a similar and they're all sharing that. But the coolest part was this dude comes back on a day later. And then a week later, and he says, You know what, guys, I went back and watched my video. And I felt better for having tilt that story like it's just a big weight lifted. But when I went back and watched it again, the more weight was lifted off in like two weeks later, it came back to this guy's I've been watching it every day for last two weeks. And I don't even need to talk about that anymore. It's just a part of some Miam. Now it doesn't only

Caleb Roth  
was there there's a few parts of your story I want to kind of circle back on here. So a big part of our podcast where we talk a lot about intentions. And I'm sort of changing my my words around that now I call it frameworks. It's kind of a thought or a feeling or an idea. And it's exactly like your rule where you're not allowed to give advice or tell someone what they should or shouldn't do. You're literally just sharing your experience. And I think frameworks are really the idea. So first, it's a frame that work. So it's a frame, it's an idea. It's a worldview, it's something that's the way you see the world or try and make sense of the world. And then you apply it and so you put it into action. And the best ideas in the world don't really matter unless you put them into action. And so a few things in your story stood out. One was you change your state and Tony Robbins talks about this a lot, you're in your garage, and we're gonna go get some alcohol again and kind of repeat the same cycle that you've been used to. And it said something triggered in your head and said, No, dummy, jump on that treadmill, go go put your body through a little bit of motion that changed your state. When you did finally reach out, you sounded like you were sort of you kind of had this idea that no one was going to connect back and then you would confirm your bias that you were alone. And instead it was just the opposite. When people reached out, was it people jumping in and saying, Hey, I'm here for you? Or was it them? Just the process of sharing their stories where you go, Oh my gosh, like, this is not something that's unique to me.

Wes Piatt  
Yeah, exactly that what I was telling my wife, nobody's understands my unique, completely unique situation, right? Like, I think I'm realistic to understand that my life wasn't the worst life in the entire world not even close. I'm also realistic to understand that there's people out there that have had more similar situations as me to like I get it but it's there's a difference between knowing that there's people out there that have been through what you've been through and being around people that have been through what you've been through, and then being able to see vicariously through them. That changes possible, and great change is possible and the direction you want to go as possible. That's what I didn't have around me. And that's what these guys were were supplying me with was not only that they were going through the same thing, but that they were also thriving after it. And they were still making it through. And they were finding a way to make it happen. Because they had friends that they were leaning on, not because they were definitely strong enough to do it. He was because they have other friends around them that they really need on to, and they were bringing them in with them. And they're gonna do can I bring my friend? And I'm like, of course, I'm like, Okay, what about my button? Can I bring him like, yeah, do you like it? Bring them on, you know, like this? And then I was like, whoa, okay, remember the first rule of fight club? Let's, let's start there. You know?

Caleb Roth  
So let's What was that framework? It sounds like it was literally just the idea of being connected and letting someone else into your story? Is that what you found to be the most impactful? Or is there another thoughts or mindset or framework that that you've sort of picked up on?

Wes Piatt  
That's a great question. I would say that it's more about what's happening now isn't working. So we have more depression, anxiety, more men with issues more women with issues we have transgender as an issue we have everything in the world right now is a hot issue for somebody. And what we keep trying to do is fix the problem. Keep trying to fix the problem. We got to fix it, we got to fix it. I think we just need to take a step back, take a deep breath. And go, we're all fucked up. Excuse me. We're all going I'm going over a little sickness to you guys. Sorry, my throat. So I got two sponges, you know, seven and four that come back from school? Yeah, you

Caleb Roth  
got back to human petri dish.

Matthew Osborn  
I keep my coffin all over the place. And,

Wes Piatt  
yeah, so I think it was like, I knew growing up with my mom being as honestly, brutal as she was, and I love my mom to death. Like, she's, she's my mom. And I understand why she did what she did. I completely forgive her for what she did. But she tried to raise me in the fashion of men don't cry, you know. And, like, to the point where if I was, you got beat once a week, that was just it, whether you did something wrong or not, and you're getting beat once a week, and you didn't get the it didn't stop until you stop crying. That was the way you got you stopped, right? And so I know that that shit doesn't excuse Can I cuss on here? Is that okay? Yeah, you get okay. I know that shit doesn't work. It doesn't work. And I also I've also been after that I went through the military, which is another realm where they that happens kind of again, right? It's like, shut up, do we got to do and get moving. And it those two scenarios are completely different, right? Like one is a chemical imbalance. And another is like, we don't have time, we might die. You need to do this, you know, and so I understand the differences there. But it also was a good transition. It wasn't such a big switch for all the sudden I was like, I'm in college, like, let's just do drugs and see what happens. You know, I think that would have been bad, right? And so I was able to go to transition into that military and see that like, Okay, this is good, too, though. Like, there's no way to have balance here. And I think this is maybe a little too much as well, I got out and I went into firefighting. And I was a wildland firefighter for a while. And then I was a City firefighter for most of my career. And then I became a gym. And so I feel like I went through the gamut of like, exactly what doesn't work and what I feel I would want if I was suffering, and which I've been through, and I understand exactly what that feels like. And it's just that somebody connects and goes, I understand. Yeah. I mean,

Chris Roness  
you asked a really good question about the framework thing I want to I want to just jump in here, because that story I shared earlier about that guy, we did share a framework with him, because most guys, we don't want to talk about our trials and our tribulations because we don't, just like Wes said, you know, I'm a tough, man, don't cry, I can suck it up. And this is my deal. And what happens is when we do that, it just manifests in some other way, right? Like addiction or, you know, anger or depression or anxiety, all those things. But once you let that secret out, it no longer has power over you anymore. But nobody wants to let that secret out. Because we're worried about what people will think about us, oh, they're gonna think I'm weak, right or whatever. Not realizing that everybody's so busy thinking about themselves or not thinking about us. But in that I had this friend when I was a kid, that this this guy. I mean, the stuff that he was going through in life as a kid was like, Whoa, to the point where at the bus stop one time, he saw this kind of emo kid, and the kid was all depressed. He goes do What's going on? He's like, Oh, my parents are getting divorced. He goes, first time, you know, like, Hey, dude, it's gonna be all right, you know. But what he would do is this, he would use this method where he would just when he was telling what was going on in his life, either something he had been through or something he was going through. And I use this model all the time. It's really good. And I'm sure it's nothing new or unique. But it was something that he grew organically. That probably echoes everything that's out there now. But he was just genuine, right? He was, he was not letting his ego get in the way of just saying, Hey, I went through this thing, man. But he's talking to you, like, you're right there. Like you're real. He's not being overly emotional about Isaac, and what through this thing. And here's the challenges. And here's, here's what I thought was gonna happen. Here's what I believed in here, you know, all that stuff. Right? He throws it all out there. Then he goes, but here's what I, here's what I learned from it. Here's what I gained from it. Right? And now, I'm living this way because of that thing. So he had figured out how not to be a victim early on as a young I mean, we were like, 10, right. And I just, I took that, and I grabbed onto it. And I use that my whole life. And I teach that as part of the matter, because as soon as we, you know, just say what our story is, hey, this relates, it's like this. Here's a good example, when we were kids, the principal had a paddle hanging in the, in the window of his office, right? And that paddle man, it was, I mean, when you're when you're 10, that paddle had to be four inches thick, and it had a monster hole. You know. And if I were to tell the story about that paddle, as someone who got beat by the way moves, man, think about how they would tell their traumas it would go like this. I go to the principal's office, and he beat me. Right. But guess what, they probably never happened, that principal probably never use that paddle. Or if you did, it was one time. 20 years ago, that story still gets transpired throughout it passed to all the kids, right? And the story is, Hey, man, principals got a paddle. He's not afraid to use it. Check it out. It's in the window. I heard Billy Squier and Joey Thompson got nailed with it last week. So you better behave, you know, and that's the lesson, right? I'm gonna be good because I don't want to get whooped by that paddle. And that person will probably never used it. But if we did just told the story of pay, principle, beat moons paddle and hurt. And Saturn cried about it. No one's gonna learn anything. And that's the difference.

Caleb Roth  
The interesting. So here's, here's the million dollar question for both of you. How do you get men specifically but but any human? So we'll have a lot of people that aren't in the military, that aren't veterans that are going to be hearing this and they're looking for the skills or the knowledge, tidbits that are transferable to them. million dollar question I have is this, how do you get people to recognize and open up and share, especially in the middle of it. For me, it's really easy, just partly my religious upbringing. But it's easy for me to share my stories of trouble once I'm on the other side. So it's kind of easy to say, Hey, I had this problem. I went through it, it was hell, it was miserable. It was whatever. But there's hope I'm on the other side. How do you get men specifically to be comfortable enough to open up when they're in the middle of the valley,

Chris Roness  
that's that shared experience piece, you know, by by being able to have the courage to tell your story. Every time you tell your story, it's like peeling off a layer of an onion, you you might cry a little bit, maybe. But after a while the onions gone, right, you keep peeling that layer off, you heal. But when you can tell your story in a way like I demonstrated to another person who's going through it right then and there, particularly if you have that shared experience, then they recognize that, wow, if they can tell their story, I can tell mine too. And there is a caveat to that. You're never going to tell your story until you're around people that you feel you can trust, right? You're not just going to. And that's one of the challenges, honestly, where some of the Department of Defense fails as they they teach a lot of suicide prevention. And what they what they do is encourage people to tell their you know, their near peers or their co workers what's going on, then that may happen. But normally, it's just trying to teach them how to look for signs of someone going through it. But we don't spend the time teaching them how to go find your people you trust to build that. And it takes like 300 hours just to build that kind of relationship. Right? I don't know, what does that say about? Well, you

Wes Piatt  
think? Yeah, totally. I think yeah, it's, I think that for any thing that grows to be successful around something like this, it starts with a core group of peace, small core group of people that were willing to just really be vulnerable and open up and share everything. And I think that first year that we have this group of like, like 12 dudes that are together, that we're really just being honest with each other and sharing everything and we got together did like a weekend at a buddy's house and like, you know, just, I just really was like, you know, honestly eFLIP Like, if this doesn't work out, I'm just gonna kill myself anyway, so who cares? I might as well just be like, super vulnerable and Go for it and just like, share my soul and see if anybody's willing to share it back. And they all were. And I think that when everybody else started hopping on the platform, like, what happens with most people is that they hang in the background for a while they come home and go, Hey, my name is and then they kind of sit there they watch and see they're watching, they're watching. And then all of a sudden, they may have gone through five things. Like you said, Caleb, you know, and then all of a sudden, now they're gonna go, Hey, I'm going through and try it. And they jump in on this one. And they go, Hey, now I'm ready to share. And then all the guys are like, yeah. Awesome, let's go. And then they're like, oh, okay, my buddy. We're like, Hey, first of all, Fight Club, you know,

Matthew Osborn  
I see a lot of in person connections happening from your Marcopolo group. So you guys have or does a lot of it kind of stay on that platform. It

Wes Piatt  
does stay on the platform. But we've recently actually made it more regional based in order to keep to keep that happening. And to try to get people to do that. And started to get the main group got way too big. And so now we have west coast, Central Mountain, East Coast, and there's about 15 dudes or 20 dudes in each group now, so they will get together and see each other. I would say, honestly, probably once a year, something like that, you know, which is pretty cool. Actually, if you ever met online and you've been really vulnerable with and you're willing to meet up with him once a year and like, actually, like go to top golf and do whatever else to go ride, go karts? Or you know, shoot or do whatever, like go hunting or something we got that. We're thinking this summer actually have a Linus we call we miss camp. We'll talk more about that a long time. Yeah, we just camp again, number two this summer. So you guys should try them? Actually, we'll keep in touch. It'd be cool if you guys came out and experienced it. Yeah,

Caleb Roth  
incredible. I think one of the principles you actually hit on, I think it was Chris, the idea of going first, I think once people see especially men, you see someone else take the risk and sort of stick their neck out there and share what they're going through. And all of a sudden gives permission to do it. And so I would say, I guess there's that old phrase, if you look around the poker table, and you don't see the sucker, you're probably it, I would say if you look around a group of people you're with and you don't see some vulnerability, then frickin go first, like, take that chance, say something because I guarantee you're not alone. And someone else is going to be feeling that same thing. And who knows that it could just lead to a crazy level of depth. A

Chris Roness  
lot of this to Caleb, for me comes from having an aviation background in the US Air Force, we, you know, we we fly as a crew and many of our aircraft and we have these kinds of conversations, we take these courses called cockpit resource management, where we talk about those different human factors that can come into play that would prevent you from saying something, or maybe you should say something. And an interesting fact is that most guys have so much more cheesy Mo. There's a there's a great video out there of an Apache pilot getting ready to fly through some trees. And he's like, You think I can make it this, but he's like, nope. And he's like, Oh, ye of little faith, and they, they go through the trees and you know, hit him, basically. But you know, women in the cockpit are much less comfortable with that machismo and they're the first ones to speak up. And so in the cockpit of most aircraft, the voice of like, our low level bug for our radar altimeter is a female voice because we pay attention to that. So I just highlight that because unless you're the first guy to speak up, I've been in scenarios where everybody's like, Yep, okay, we're gonna do this. And then one guy is like, you know, guys, I'm just looking at the risk and looking at that and question, you know, then all of a sudden, it was like, Okay, I'll speak up since they spoke up, right? Totally.

Caleb Roth  
That's great. All right, Wes, you mentioned weenus. We got to go there. I understand. I understand the acronym was originally we and us. And so walk us through where did that name come from? And then I'm guessing it's obvious why you shifted away from it. But let's talk about the weakness.

Wes Piatt  
Okay. So originally, it was weighing us worldwide. It was originally weighing us then it became weighing us worldwide, because everybody began actually went worldwide put up a thing saying when us or weenus, worldwide on TV or something at the Manchester United Soccer game versus somebody else. So we call the international at that point, which is fun. But then it the reason why the weenus was because one of our buddies, who helped us actually started the group originally Zeke, his step son, when he was young came out of the room one day when he was having his first morning, Hey, what's this thing going on here? And he walks out and he's, you know, walking out real slow, and he's in his boxers and, you know, Zeke sitting on the couch. And and so he's like, What's up, buddy? And he looks at me, he goes, my weakness is broken. And he looks down on a note, he's like, Oh, God, it was just this whole moment that he was telling us and we were just laughing and having a great time. We're like, that's it. We're calling it weenus worldwide. That's what we are. And we found out like the weenus has the skin on your elbow and stuff and then it was weenus camp and then we live gentlemen are like hey, let's make this thing and so we thought weenus running around is probably not a good you know, way to get people to come and join the group. So we actually got together and we created the acronym of course, because a lot of us are actually from the military and so we have a stands for we are unique, bold system. So like we don't give up I smell the chair experiences. And we're very vulnerable. And we're opening up and we're just kind of doing, doing it the way that we think that generationally will help will help the world. So yeah, that's

Caleb Roth  
awesome. Now, are both your programs exclusive to veterans? Are they open to any men? Hello?

Wes Piatt  
Right?

Chris Roness  
Yeah, mines take what you matter is tailored for veterans, but it's for anybody. It's just, you know, because there's acronyms and whatnot, veterans are drawn to it. But it's really focused on anybody going through a struggle or trying to achieve a hard goal. Right. So you had to do that, because he wanted to try and achieve a hard goal, their struggles, right? It's not linear. Yeah,

Caleb Roth  
that's something we've really learned in the business world is you think success is linear, and it just grows and everyday is better than the next and every week is better than sorry, than the last. And that's just not the case. It sort of comes in spurts. And a lot of times you go backwards a step or two or five, and then you sort of find yourself in a in a new window or new room and you're like, Oh, I guess this is growth. It's not at all what I expected, it would look like. And I think that's one of the beauties of it, especially when you connect with other people and hear similar stories. And you're like, Okay, I thought this was just a stair step. And this was certainly not that. It seems to be

Wes Piatt  
a path, right? It seems to be the way that people become very successful in anything they do is by just not giving up during that hard stuff. Right? distances. Yeah.

Caleb Roth  
Yep. Well, Chris, talk to us a little bit about habits. David mentioned that you had to kind of an old school piece of paper with some, some bubbles and circles. So again, we talked about the frameworks and the ideas, the trick becomes how do you actually implement those and put them into practice? And David said, you have some tips relative to a piece of paper? Oh, yeah.

Chris Roness  
You know, little shout out to James clearly who I've never met, but I swear to God, we must have grown up together, because a lot of the stuff in his book is stuff that I've I applied my whole life. And when I read his book, I was like, yes, yes, yes. And he did a great job of making some things are clear, concise, and precise. But one of the early things I learned, you know, there's goal setting, and then there's habits, right, and how you get to have it, we talked about thinking, right, your, your whatever you're thinking about, generates a word, or a series of words to describe that thought. And it's also going to determine the emotional level, and the magnitude of the emotion associated with that thought. So thought words, that's going to generate an action or inaction. That, right repeated over time is what becomes a habit that repeated over time, that habit repeated over time becomes a lifestyle, right. So that's the trick, but it's not linear either. I mean, life is so full of challenges and struggles, I can tell you that I haven't had the same schedule for the last six months, not one day has been the same as the day before, even though I would have liked to have gone to the gym at the same time a day. It didn't happen for me this last six months, because life really threw a lot. But I make this old school thing, I'll show you a picture because it's kind of funny, I drew it out in pencil, it's covered. This is the aviation trick it's covered with with scotch tape, write on it with pencil, and I can erase it and do it again next week. And I only give myself three colors. Green, I got it done. Red, I didn't get it done. In Black, it doesn't apply for this day, or this event. And I use it around this tool, I teach guys that I'm not gonna go in depth on you. But it's called the gas gauge to get awesome scale, our whole mantra and you might matter is get awesome, and then stay awesome. We're getting awesome Z's and go to the gym once staying Awesome. That's the grind. Right? That's what we're talking about with habits and lifestyle and, and how you. And the whole point is to avoid getting yourself in a situation where suicide, for example, is just not even like, it's not even a variable in your decision making calculus because you're so busy figuring out how to live a full life and get after it. So these tools, when you use it, do I get red all the time. But red is feedback. It's not I failed at it. It's it didn't work. And I had to challenge myself to critical thinking, why didn't it work? Was it because it was some one off thing that happened this week that just got in the way? Or was it because I didn't calibrate that goal, right to achieve that habit I'm trying to get to? Or is it because I'm going through a struggle, and I need to adjust my goal to adapt to the struggle, I'm going through it that way I can achieve the outcomes I desire. Right. So anyway, that's that's that cheat sheet. That's one of the tools that teach, but it's like anything. If you don't if you don't do it, if you don't pay attention to it, you know, you're not gonna get anywhere. Consistency is the key. Yeah,

Caleb Roth  
as we as we preach in the business world, what gets measured gets managed. I think that's a Peter Drucker quote, but it's the same idea. You have to sort of build a scoreboard and I love that yours is, you know, front and center paper somewhere probably in your notebook that you take everywhere with you. You kind of touched on a piece that is really important when it comes to habits and that is how do you handle the reds or how do you handle when you miss something? And I know at least for me, my propensity my tendency is to sort of beat myself up and say, Hey, you say You're gonna go five days this week, and you only made it three. And it's that, like, there's lots of ways to shift it. I love that you kind of created your own framework around it, where you just said, Hey, read is simply feedback. It's somewhere I missed. And then what do you do from there? Because my tendency tends to go, well, maybe I didn't want the goal enough, or, you know, I'll try and I'll try and re negotiate with myself. So what do you do you like that framework? You say it's feedback? And then then where do you go from there? Well,

Chris Roness  
so the trick is, when you do the feedback, that's part of the habit building. I have a time of day I set aside every night after the kids have gone to bed, the crazy is done. I could I could sit there and watch Netflix all night, or, or I can grab my journal, right? That's what I do I journal and I can look at the goals for the day, and did I achieve it or not, and why. And that's immediately when I recalibrate for the next day or for the next whenever that next event is going to be. And it could include pay that next event was supposed to happen tomorrow. But whatever the significant thing is that's going on, is it going to be done until two weeks from now. So I need to recalibrate that habit. For example, I tore my shoulder, my elbow and my knees are shot. And in the middle of all of that, sharing with you a little bit of stuff, we had some major family health issues that have taken me sideways out of my regime of going to CrossFit every day. But part of that is mindset. And my mindset isn't I can't do this now. And it's not an it's never going to be well, I'll just do five CrossFit workouts on Saturday. No, it's not about making it up. It's about what can I do, I just identified what I can't do. And as soon as I recognize what I can't do, I no longer focus on that and focus only on what I can do. Guess what, I can still do air squats, I can still do core work with ABS and other things, right. And so I start thinking about what I can do, because I have an outcome of staying in a certain level of shape. For me, my purpose is my children, I got four kids under 11 Dude, and I'm 53 One of those is a boy when he's 18 on the really old man, and I gotta be ready for my A game. You know what I mean? I

Caleb Roth  
tell my kids, I've got a I've got five girls now and a son. And I told the girls, we just had a little one six weeks ago, and I said, Hey, this gives me a whole new perspective. And I'm much younger, I'm 36. But you had 18 years to that I'm going to be in my mid 50s when she graduates high school. And I said this right here, baby Mabel is my motivation to stay in shape. And then of course, I had to throw some humor in there. And I told the girls, it's because when when I get older, I still want to be around and healthy. So I can pick on you as much as I possibly can. Yeah, well,

Chris Roness  
you know, I want to throw this out there to Caleb is that, you know, these aren't things that Chris Wallace just thought of himself. You know, I was very fortunate. And I gotta give mad props to the United States Air Force. Because when you join a community like that, I changed my environment, right, I went from small town, Wyoming kid, maybe getting a little bit more trouble with the law than I should have been. Because I just didn't have a vector, you know. But once I was able to get into the Air Force as an enlisted troop, and start getting mentorship from people who had been there who'd done that, and I put my ego aside to listen to what they were trying to do to help me grow because sometimes, those are hard pills to swallow when someone gives you, Hey, man, I noticed this, you might want to change that, or here's your outcome, you know, okay. But once you learn how to put that ego aside, in, in, the best thing I learned was in karate is a steak, you know, and since they would be like, hey, if someone punches you in the face, that's your fault. You tell them oh, thank you. So gives you something that's gonna make you grow because of something maybe you could do better. Or maybe you're failing app, you should listen to it. Tell them thank you. That's all you say. And then move forward. Right? So the US Air Force gave me access to a whole new environment and environment of people who are trying to do what make themselves better humans. So they can be the best human weapons system possible to defend our great nation and our Constitution. Right. And by being in an environment, I learned a lot of these tricks just along the way, and I couldn't even tell you who I learned half of these from, but that first thing I showed you that goal sheet, I can tell you exactly the guy I learned that from, and it was an ROTC when I was in my early 20s. In college, that was the first tool the Air Force gave me was just from this young, senior in college Cadet that taught me that was pretty cool.

Matthew Osborn  
I'm curious, what's the do you guys have an average age of people in your group? Or do you guys see really young guys coming in there and really old guys coming in there? Or is it mainly somewhere in the middle?

Wes Piatt  
I would say? I would say it's probably within like the 40 year old age range, but we've got everybody from 50 down to 20.

Matthew Osborn  
Like you're saying kind of like that you had that mentor in your life and you're younger, I was curious if that kind of mentoring is able to happen in your group if you have those kind of wide age gaps. And do you guys just given your experience? Do you guys recommend young people that are maybe looking for direction? Do you guys still recommend military as a way to kind of like you said, change your environment vector yourself, give yourself kind of a new, new purpose. Do you guys recommend that to young people that seem to be kind of lost in their ways young men specifically

Wes Piatt  
So, first,

Chris Roness  
I'm going to keep this as short, concise and precise as I can, because we could do a whole podcast just on that question. But what a lot of people don't realize is when you join the military, you also have the opportunity to further your education. And if you did it, right, like some people I've seen Do you can join the military do for your, for your time and service, gain real world experience working on the job and leave with a four year college degree? And people don't know that that's possible? It is, do you got to work hard? Yeah. But imagine going into the world four years with just a college degree, the struggle is always well, I can't get the job because I don't have experience, you know, or you leave the service. And you're like, Well, I got the experience, but I don't have the degree. But you can do both. And I would say, if you don't know what you want to do in life, absolutely. Consider the military because you will be instantly surrounded by great people who are meant to you and help guide you along that path to find your journey and your way. Yeah,

Wes Piatt  
for sure. I think that just like with anything that depends, you know, is the answer for me. You know, depends on the person where they're coming from and their situation, I'll say the same thing if we had longer talks about it. That's true. Yeah. I think of all the positives on both ends, you got a kid that's, you know, maybe a little privileged and needs to be brought down a couple notches, the military will do that for you. And they'll humble you, you got a kid like me, who is really looking for mentorship and the fatherhood side of it, or the motherhood side of it. Like that's, that's there for you, Mike switch talked about going in the military, and having, you know, is ego humbled in a way. And I remember growing up, and, you know, I hang out and fire departments constantly, because I just loved I wanted to be a firefighter since I was five years old. And I didn't realize it until I became an actual firefighter. And kids started coming into the station. And it was like, Hey, where are you coming from? And they're, like, go down the street. And I'd walk them back to their house. And I'm like, Hey, where's your dad? They're like, Ah, I don't know. Like, I don't have a dad, you know? And I'm like, Yeah, that was me, literally walking down the street going in there looking for somebody to look up to. So I think it's applies a lot for people that they just don't realize. And yeah, I would recommend it for just about anybody for sure.

Chris Roness  
Yeah, I think I think the greatest gift I got from it for me looking back at who I was not exactly a life like Wes when he was a kid, but I was definitely authorized to know better and, and I might have had too many speeding tickets to the point where I had to get a morals waiver to enlist in the US Air Force. That's a fact. But I didn't

Wes Piatt  
go to go to jail or go to the Air Force, and he chose the Air Force.

Chris Roness  
It wasn't quite that yet. But morals, I wouldn't have told you guys about all the speeding tickets in the first place, you know, but But I appreciated that. But what they gave me was discipline. And I think that one tool above all else was so helpful it for me in my 20s because I remember wiser older men than me going, you know, what you lack is self discipline. And I didn't even know what that meant. I remember looking up in the dictionary, and still not understanding how to apply. Okay, great. I see what it is, how do I apply that. But being able to go and understand what that meant and experience through experience, right? Through a world where there are expectations, and if they're not met, there are serious consequences helped me for sure, you have heard themselves, visors that might disagree with that. But that's how I've

Caleb Roth  
heard self discipline is much harder than discipline. I know that from my own experience, as well, when you're in the environment, whether it's parents or military or school, or whatever the leadership may be, it's often easier to sort of fall into line or just push back and rebel hardcore against it, depending on your personality. The self discipline part is sort of that refined piece. And that's, that's where habits come into play. Especially. But question for both of you. And I guess I'll start with you, Chris, is at what point did your vector sort of materialized? When did you realize what direction you were headed in? Or realistically? Or better? Better yet? Which one you wanted to head in? Did you that sort of show up? As the self discipline sort of kicked in partway through the military? Is that something you found once you got out of the military? When When did that vector show up for you? You

Chris Roness  
know, I'll tell you the irony is, I spent my whole life thinking, I wanted to be a pilot, and I did and I and that's what I got to do. And that was an incredible struggle and journey. And but it wasn't until I left the military that I really recognized my purpose for what it was that vector that you're talking about, I think is ever changing as you grow this point in my life, where I hit a major change in lifestyle, right? I mean, this was my entire life for 27 years. I did this kind of replay because the combat search and rescue we have a credo that we take very seriously it is it is it is a conviction, right? It is these things we do that others may live, and I've lost brothers because they have literally lived and died by that credo. And the more I thought about it, as soon as I retired, I realized that if I rewind my whole life, I was a lifeguard in high school and I cared about other people to the point where I was willing to put my life at risk to help them, once I separated or once I got more senior in rank you you're flying less, you're not doing the actual mission of going out and flying and saving guys, you're doing more administrative stuff and you're realizing that I can help a whole lot of people the pen truly is mightier than the sword by doing greater strategic things help people as a whole right policy and government programming and these kinds of things that I was involved in. When I left the service, I realized that that credo was still everything true for me, these things I do, that others may live. And it was, it was a journey to get to that point. And I'm still going to unravel and learn it. But I don't mean live, like, let me rescue you so that you can go back and live whatever lifestyle you were living tomorrow, I mean, live a life full of awesome is thinking about ending it or doing anything else other than being awesome. And being a contribution to our society. That's, to me, that was the long journey. But the aha moment didn't come till after the military life ended. You

Caleb Roth  
know, I love that framework, because it's very simple. I do these things so that others may live. And yet it's profound that applied to the military, it applies to what you're doing now with you matter, it applies to your family, I'm sure. And it's kind of an interesting corollary to that is, I think we're changing as a society and what capitalism looks like, I think the old version of capitalism, and I won't get too far down this rant, because I could talk about it for a while, was sort of the invisible hand, which is where everybody does what's best in their own interests, and then sort of society balances out. And that may have been the case at one point, but what I love about economics, capitalism, everything now is whoever serves the most people tends to win the most. And so if you're out there with your mindset is, Hey, can I take care of my brothers and sisters? Ultimately, your needs end up being more than that as well. And it leads to that abundant life. So I love that framework. I'm out here so that others may live?

Chris Roness  
Well, yes, that's, that's what we have to as you take care of the people and they'll take care of the mission, right?

Caleb Roth  
Yep. That's beautiful. Wes. Were you directionless as well as we get into it? And then then I want to kind of switch gears to talk about the lifeguards, and then we'll sort of land the plane here.

Wes Piatt  
Yeah, totally. Man. I wasn't actually like I said, from the time I was five, I knew what I wanted to do want to be a firefighter. I went into the military, I got my GI Bill, I became a firefighter. And then I found CrossFit on my last deployment, actually, when I was in the military, and I was like, this is cool. We're almost in that, you know, and I got on. And that's my main gig is I run the CrossFit gym, and I work for crossing headquarters on their seminar staff. And so I travel around the world on the weekends, and I teach coaches how to coach CrossFit. I've been doing that for over 11 years. And so it was, it was actually my last, my last call as a firefighter. I was a firefighter in Pismo Beach for a while, and it's a big retirement community. So about 90% of our calls are left to assist. It's just, you know, somebody, it's a Life Alert, and you go up to Betty's house, and you pick her up and you go, Hey, do you want to go to the hospital, she has nothing, she signs the thing, and we make sure she's okay. And we take off. And that's what we do. And we were going back to one of those ladies houses. And this time, it wasn't for her, it was actually for her husband who had a heart attack. And when we showed up, she was actually laying on top of them, because she tried to help them but she threw her back out and landed on him. So she laid on top of her dead husband, while we showed up. And you know, I worked on her husband for ever knowing that it wasn't gonna, nothing was gonna happen. And it was like on the way to the hospital in the back of the van that I was going like, No, at this point, I had already opened up my CrossFit gym, and I was commuting back and forth. And I was running the CrossFit gym, and I was being a firefighter. And I was just like, I'm gonna keep this from happening. I'm not gonna allow these people to let this happen. So now we have like, we have a Parkinson's class, we have a stroke class, we have a 60 and over class in our gym, and it's all about just not allowing them to get there. So I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And then just stumbled into this thing as aside from Yeah, same thing with Rebus. It's like just happening. Let's

Caleb Roth  
beautiful. There's a similar thread where you, you kind of said, hey, I want to go upstream. You know, I want to help I want to help people, right? That's a similar thread between that and CrossFit. And you're just saying, let's just do it when they're a little bit younger, and just kind of educate more people so that we can we can kind of get out in front of this thing. Yeah, and

Wes Piatt  
the cool thing is now it's not even doing it when they're younger. It's actually getting them past when they're bound. And we're bringing them back and we're getting them back in there. And we're I mean, we're taking people that are we call it our no shuffle club. They literally walk in and they're like shuffling because they have Parkinson's and we teach them within 30 minutes how to walk their walk in like, oh, no, no, it looks like they look like a really cocky person is what they look like when they're walking because they have to take it kind of slow and they do one of these things when they go Yeah, but it's yeah, it's it's yeah, it's just it's just doing the thing that I that we all want to do, which is help people right, and actually make this world a better place. It must be rewarding to see I'm sure it's like freaking gasoline for your soul. Really. You can't even imagine Dude, holy cow. Yeah.

Caleb Roth  
So there's a phrase and I don't know who it's attributed to, but we use it business it applies to really all of life as well is the idea of whoever you spend, you know, the five people you spend the most time with, is essentially who you become. And so that's kind of a challenge to, you know, not just look in the mirror, like what kind of person am I, but kind of look at your friend group. And then I think you guys have taken this concept and use that lifeguard terminology and applied that. So walk us through that. And that'll that'll be sort of how we want things down today.

Chris Roness  
It's so crazy that you mentioned that because there's overlap. It's not how I came up with the lifeguards, you can see the five and that's you in the middle, right. But the concept actually I did a whole bunch of research on this suicide for I spent two years like just studying it because I also have a background in the government of acquisition and requirements and requirements is really the study of understanding what the warfighter needs to accomplish their mission. And then you go and figure that out and spill it out. And so as I was using my aviation acumen and my requirements acumen, and then studying this problem, I came across research by a man named Robin Dunbar, you may have heard of him, he's got a number is called the Dunbar number. It's 150. That's the most people you can know in your life. So I found everything you'd ever written. And I went through all of it. And one thing kept coming to be unanimous, which was the number five, five is the most close knit people you can actually manage in your life. So to your point, yeah, it's also who you become the most like, right. And as I studied this other problem and understanding men and how we think the lifeguard piece just came down to challenging men to two simple things, one, figuring out who their lifeguards are their five most trusted confidants and then guiding them on who it could be, but also, who it isn't, like, it's not the guy that drags you to the bar on Tuesday night, even though that guy is probably awesome to hang around with. And he's probably a really good time. Probably not the guy. If you're working on your finances, it's not the guy that's way in debt and has like 50 million credit cards that are overdue, right? There's one rule to lifeguards, and that is the proximity rule. And the proximity rule just says look, when you start to identify who they are one of those people has to be in close physical proximity to where you live. Because as a minimum, you need to move a couch at some point in time, hang out with, right. And the other part of the proximity rule is one of those people, it can be that same person as the one that's close to you. But one of those people needs to be in close emotional proximity to you. Oh, okay, switch. Was that mean? Well, that is that dude, cousin, parents, friend that you call up and you're like, Hey, man, all this crazy stuff just happened to me? Good. And then you hang up the phone and are like doing that due to long time as he's good. And I just know that voice. There's something not right. But if they live 1000 miles away, how they're going to help, right? So that's why we use Marco Polo to connect them together. Because they can all see each other you, you guarantee, I can ask each of you right now, how many trusted confidence do you have in your life, you're gonna tell me two to three, two to three. Unless you live in a small town, you might have more, but two to three, because oh, by the way, that's a national average. And it's been that way since the 80s. But of those two to three, if you're married, by the way, your wife can't be one of those lifeguards, or your significant other. But here's why. Because that's the relationship you're trying to protect the most. Right? And if you invite them to that safe space, or that could be that relationship that you're trying to get help with from your buddies. But as soon as you bring them in there, they're gonna be like, what they said were, because they don't want to cause strife in your life. You might, you might have the best relationship in the world, but you're still gonna have a different opinion over which pillows or how many go on the couch in the bed, right? I think. So. That's why you don't want your spouse to be one of those. That's the only other rule to it. From there. It's having the courage to connect them together. And I'm telling you as someone who retired from the Air Force, 27 years as a colonel, the last thing I want is my high school buddies that knew all the knucklehead stuff I did being connected to my colonel buddies for professional military career, right? That's, that's what I'm thinking, with my ego about being worried about what people think about me. It really, those are the people that helped me become successful. And because of the ones that helped me become successful, they want to help me continue to be successful. So I just need to have the courage to connect my social groups together. That's the hardest part. But once you do it, this is what happens every time every time I got 50, these men's groups going on Marcopolo right now, when they connect, they go guys have a really tough time. And then and usually the alpha in their group, whoever they pick for their alpha is like, Dude, I had something similar and here's what I did. And they're like, no, do you? Well, I can get through this too. And every single time boom, and then that's it knocks down the barriers and they've been amazing. Lifeguards is critical. No matter what you do, if you don't, if you don't listen to anything else we said today if you're watching this right now, make sure that you're tuned in feature for us. No Children are connected to each other somehow. phone text Marco Polo. I like Marco because it's more authentic than a text. It's more convenient than a scheduling a podcast resume. They can leave the message when where they're at. But you can really see what's going on in the world. Less can be like, Hey, guys, um, good. Meanwhile, I see dishes piled up and there's like, right in his hairs. You know, Wes, I'm gonna send you a one on one, Marco. And if I live in Gilroy, California, and probably driving over just to hang out. There's a whole lot more to that, Caleb. But the last piece I want to give you is, the gas gauge that I was telling you about that we came up with what it is, is it's a way of giving guys a way to score seven areas in their life of how they feel about them, numerically. And then in the end, what happens is a numerical value to describe the emotional stuff going on in your life without describing a single emotion. So that's part of what helps the lifeguards open up to each other because they go Hey, dude, I just took this course from this guy. It's called you matter. There's some corny stuff, whatever. And then I did this and I scored things and I got to score and I'm at a, I'm at a seven. Okay, seven cool, and he walked him through. Two weeks later, the guys can vacate dude, you told us to ask you how that number was? How are you? Oh, man, I haven't even looked at that. Because it's a subjective number they created. If life is better, they'll inherently give it a higher number. Life is worse. They'll give it a little No, I'm at a five, five. What's it be like, dude, switch five, what's going on? I'm like, I feel like

Wes Piatt  
talking about it. Well, I'm to the screen and give you a hug.

Chris Roness  
He's a lifeguard that's in proximity. He knows right away, dude, I'm coming. And we're gonna watch a game. And I didn't tell him anything. I just want to know. Yeah,

Caleb Roth  
give us real quick, practical example. How do you connect to people? Because I know a lot of people will get hung up on that where they go, man, I can't imagine connecting these two different people from two really different worlds. Do you just have a phrase that you say, or sort of kind of an intro or pickup line, if you want to call it that?

Chris Roness  
Just a real simple intro is hey, man, tell us who this person is, when you met him, and what they mean to you, you know, and explain why you're connecting. And it usually goes like this. Like if I was doing this with West right now. But like, hey, Wes, I'm going to introduce you to a couple of buddies of mine. Their names are Caleb and Matthew, you've never met them, dude. But you've known me so long that we're like this, you know, I met Caleb, you know, my first assignment in the military. And I met Matthew When I was in college. And those dudes don't know each other either. But I'm trying to make myself a better person took this program called you matter, or here's some goals I want to work on. And here's the struggles I had going through. And I trust you guys. And I just was wondering if you'd be willing to let me connect you and introduce you to these guys cold on this app, or whatever. That's kind of how it's

Caleb Roth  
beautiful. Like that? Well, Chris, in West, we could talk for a long time, thank you so much for your service, first of all, and it's really refreshing to see both of you carrying on different missions, sort of missions you picked up from the military, but having that kind of vector and that sort of direction. And that's really inspiring. As we wind things down, could you just leave a quick note? Or if you have one last comment to share, please do that. But then also, how can people track you down and learn more about you matter, and we bus

Wes Piatt  
can find leave us? We by scientists on Instagram, find me at West pi TT 2013 on Instagram, where you can email us we've assigned t@gmail.com

Chris Roness  
You can find you matter, you matter.org or you can hit me up Chris at Chris ronis.com. And there's Chris wallace.com web page that covers all this stuff, too. But you matter.org also on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. And if I were to leave you guys with one parting shot, it would just be this. Get awesome. Yes.

Matthew Osborn  
You matter.org is spelled differently, right? Correct. Yeah, it

Chris Roness  
is for bringing that up. It's m H ER, so it's y o u and then m a t r.org.

Caleb Roth  
Perfect. And we will link to all of that in the show notes. And until next time, thank you for jumping on. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys for having me.