The WAY to WOW Shows
The 24-Episode Campaign: Strategy 3
February 17, 2026
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:02] Who are you [music] and where are you going? What do you want? [music] Hello and welcome to Business Lessons from the Military. I'm your host, Kevin Bemel, and I'm here every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific to talk about military history, doctrine, and leadership practices and then distill from them lessons that we can apply to our businesses and professional practices.

[0:38] So, uh, today I'm talking I'm I'm doing the third episode of a 24 episode long, um, program [clears throat] that really looks to aggregate, uh, military doctrine and apply it uh, in a systematic way to um to to running our businesses. And so um this is the third topic on strategy and there's uh I think I've divided the

[1:15] 24 uh the 24 episodes into five categories. So I think we've got one or two more in the strategy category and then we'll move on to to the next one. So today I'm going to be talking about strategic patience and and I have to say that you know um the old saw is patience is a virtue and uh you know if if if only we all were you know as virtuously patient as we need to be right I think it's it's one of the most difficult uh qualities to to acquire. I'm not sure

[1:55] anybody has it naturally. So, um, you know, if if if we look at what's going on, um, in the business in the business world, in the economy today, so there's we're we're in another period of uh technological change, perhaps even upheaval. [snorts] Uh certainly globally um the situation in terms of trade, in terms of tariffs, uh relations between countries is um I is is volatile. Um and

[2:35] and so how all of this is going to end up I think is is difficult to say. uh and and I think there's there there is a sort of inclination to do something, right? You have to do something. Well, here's the thing. Often times, doing something doesn't help and it may make things worse. And so this idea of strategic patience I think is particularly

[3:11] uh apt to where things are at today because it's going to be the companies who have a clear vision uh or I should say a clear strategy. Vision sounds very sort of woo woo woo, you know, vision, but a clear strategy that have confidence and have the patience to to each day do the things that need to be done. that will end up um being the ones to benefit

[3:46] uh if not just you know work their way through all of the change that's going on economically and and geopolitically in the world today. So I I'll I'll I'll take an example of well actually I'm going to save that example um for for when I I um get into how we can apply strategic uh patience to our businesses. Let's as as is the custom on the show, let's first look at the military perspective the this in this

[4:22] aspect of of doctrine. So um when we talk about strategic patience especially in war right so what we're really talking about is pursuing long-term object objectives without overreacting to short-term pressures. Okay. Um, so we're we we will um we, you know, from a military standpoint, we're going to emphasize uh endurance over speed. We're

[4:57] going to emphasize containment over confrontation. We're going to emphasize preservation of resources. We're going to look to control escalation. [snorts] And perhaps most importantly, we're going to look to align with political and economic capacity or reality when when decisions are made from a military perspective. Okay. So um excuse me. [clears throat]

[5:34] If we if we take for example uh World War II, okay, World War II lasted at least the actual declared part of the war for the United States began on December 8th, 1941 and it ended in August of 1945. So just shy of four years about 3 years and roughly 8 months. Okay. So there was a lot of pressure early in the war to do something and that

[6:10] pressure was coming from a number of sources. Part of it was coming from uh Joseph Stalin, the leader of the USSR, who uh wanted the uh the allies, primarily the United States and Great Britain, to launch [clears throat and cough] an invasion into Western Europe to take off part of the pressure that he was experiencing on the Eastern front. Okay? and he pressed and pressed and pressed for this and I think wisely um

[6:47] especially Winston Churchill really uh he didn't fall prey to that pressure by Stalin uh because although England had been fighting already for uh you know two or three years uh the United States was a a a new entrant to the war starting at the very end of 1941 and really needed to figure out how it was going to

[7:22] act militarily and and more importantly how it was going to be successful militarily. So although [clears throat] there was some activity in the Pacific, most notably the Battle of Midway uh which happened in the earlier part of 1942, um [clears throat] Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa didn't take place until toward the end of 1942. Um and and by the way, Stalin was not the only uh the only person pressing for action. there was political pressure

[7:58] from within the United States to do something as well. But the reality was that [clears throat] the United States neither the United States Army nor Navy uh was particularly well-manned at the time of of Pearl Harbor. And so, uh personnel needed to be drafted, recruited, put through training, equipped, all of that had to happen. um as well as industrial production uh aimed at building the material of war. planes, tanks, guns, ammunition,

[8:33] you know, jeeps, all of these things that needed to be brought up to an even higher level than it had been in 1941, where the United States was supplying some some material to Great Britain and Russia, but now needed to equip our own armed forces in addition to our allies. So all of this took time and it took patience on the part of leadership both civilian and military leadership. So both um [clears throat] Frank Knox who

[9:10] was the uh secretary of the navy and um shoot I'm going up on the name of the secretary of the army. Uh yeah, I' I' I've lost his name, but but both of them realized that their services needed to be expanded and properly equipped before they engaged in major combat operations. Uh so did George Marshall who was the chief of staff of the army and uh Ernest King who was chief of naval operations. So uh and and the the um combatant commanders as

[9:47] well um they they too were not in favor of taking precipitous action uh because they they knew a couple of things. One is if if they lost that would have a terrible terrible impact not only of course on the killed and wounded but also on the overall morale of the members of the armed forces and the morale of the public uh who whose support was needed in order to pay for and build and from whom would be recruited the personnel that would be

[10:23] necessary to win the war. So all of that required patience and and indeed [clears throat] uh it was it was the the right approach. So [clears throat] another example of uh strategic patience from a military standpoint is the cold war. So [clears throat] uh the cold war indeed may be the defining example of strategic patience. So rather than fighting a hot war with the Soviet Union, right, um the United

[10:59] States and her allies really chose to to play the long game as you know as as we say in sports in dealing with the Soviet Union and the communist threat. So the ends that were sought in the cold war were to prevent Soviet expansion and preserve the western economic system i.e. capitalism. The ways that that was done was through containment, deterrence, um creating alliances and

[11:34] creating greater economic integration uh in particular in the west among the western so-called democracies. they're really all republics but uh among western countries who had an essentially capitalistbased system and then the means that were used in it to eventually defeat the Soviet Union were first of all industrial capacity. Now, by the end of World War II, uh the Soviet Union had expanded its

[12:12] industrial capacity, although it was still significantly smaller than that of the United States. uh but having the expanded uh economic capability that that was developed during World War II, the you know what what was needed was patience so that the the ability of the Western economic system to to expand and innovate uh could eventually um essentially crush the Soviet model of of central planning. and and such. Uh so

[12:49] that was number one. Another means was technological superiority. So [clears throat] a lot of the innovation that gave the western economies their strength came through technological development. This was why, by the way, the launch of Sputnik, the the uh first satellite um by the Soviet Union was so devastating to Western countries, especially the United States. It seemed to indicate that the Soviet Union

[13:25] was technologically in in um innovating faster than the United States and therefore was a much stronger and more formidable uh enemy than people in the United States thought. that in the event um the the the launch of Sputnik um and and the advances that uh the Soviet Union was making in space exploration really had far more to do with the lack of any initiative to do that on the part

[14:00] of the United States than any ability of the Soviet Union to uh develop technologically and innovate more quickly than the United States. And indeed, when the space race was launched and this and the space race was part of uh attaining victory in the cold war, the United States uh pretty quickly surpassed what the Soviet Union was doing. And of course it was an American who or in essence uh two Americans were the

[14:36] first to set foot on the moon. So the United States won the space race. Uh so uh technological superiority and innovation was another means by which uh the the cold war was won. Another one which was a ways but also a means was create alliances uh such as NATO.

[15:11] So while [clears throat] NATO was really a military alliance, it also brought uh greater economic integration with it. Um because by uh coordinating militaries more effectively, so things like uh weapons, weapons and weapon systems could be developed that were um that could be used across members of the NATO alliance um more effectively. And so uh you know

[15:48] we eventually saw um and and again the United States became the dominant military supplier throughout the cold war. And today we see that uh you know many of the planes, tanks etc that are used in the world um are are made by the United States um and sold to to our allies and in general uh their technological capability is superior to pretty much everything else out there.

[16:23] And then finally, another aspect, another means for winning the Cold War was creating sustained public support. So here's the reality of of the United States. You can say it's a cultural aspect perhaps, but Americans don't like to sit home each night and watch the news or listen to the news and hear body counts. In indeed, this was one of the reasons why the Vietnam War became untenable. I

[17:01] remember as a boy watching the news each night. My my father and mother watched CBS News with Walter Kankai. And when when the when there was reporting on the Vietnam War, one of the things that was always reported was the number of Americans killed, the number of South Vietnamese killed, and the number of North Vietnamese in Vietkong killed. And it was it was always interesting because the number of North Vietnamese I'm sorry, the number of South Vietnamese killed, South Vietnam being America's ally, was always a multiple of the

[17:37] number of Americans killed. And then the number of North Vietnamese in Vietkong killed was a multiple of the number of South uh Vietnamese killed. I always I I I I it was always interesting from from my sample from my standpoint as a child to see that and I never understood you know why that was the case. Now were those numbers accurate? um you know, who knows at this point. Um but um that I think that be the way the numbers were presented was an attempt to sustain public support for the Vietnam War. And

[18:13] in the event, it just didn't work because the there were too many Americans being killed. There was too much just death, destruction, wounding going on. and and and in the end that's that's why I think uh Americans eventually turned against the Vietnam War. Um it wasn't half so much philosophical as it was just not liking to see you know the body counts. So um the you know so sustaining public support uh can be done much more easily without kinetic combat. Okay. And so

[18:53] people talk about the Afghanistan war lasting for 20 years. Well, yeah, one of the reasons it could last for 20 years is over that time period relative to any other war, there were, you know, few deaths. I'm I'm not discounting the number of people who were were killed, but just over a 20-year period, the number of deaths was quite low compared to if if you know, World War II, for example, had had lasted for 20 years at the at this similar death rate. I mean, half a million Americans were killed in

[19:28] World War II, uh several thousand were killed in Afghanistan over a 20-year period, right? And indeed there was likely public support for military action to continue in Afghanistan uh at the time that um President Biden uh pulled the American military presence out of Afghanistan. And one of the reasons why was there wasn't this sort of nightly, you know, body count that that indeed the number of deaths, especially in the latter half of the 20-year period, was remarkably low given

[20:07] what was at stake there and how difficult the situation was in Afghanistan. So um rather than seeking a decisive clash in the cold war, okay, US strategy focused on time as a weapon um forcing systemic weakness by the Soviet Union to surface, right? And it was really an opportunity for the United States to use its uh long-term economic capacity and might uh to essentially

[20:43] outdo the Soviet economic model. And in the end it was that I think coupled with um as communication uh developed and people in the Soviet Union who were being told you have a great life the more they saw what life was like in the west they came to the conclusion no we don't I mean we don't we we don't have any of the stuff they have in the west and so by taking the time to let the Soviet people see that um they you know that

[21:20] that in the end was what what won the cold war. So it was strategic patience. So speed in the cold war would most likely have been a liability not a benefit. First of all, it could have risked rapid ex escalation uh even nuclear catastrophe because both the United States and uh the Soviet Union had very large nuclear arsenals and in the heat of war one or more of those weapons might have been used and

[21:55] that that would have been disastrous. So uh another uh liability to using speed would have been overextending uh weakened economic conditions, domestic economic conditions. So during the cold war, the United States was not continuously prosperous. It went through periods of recession and and so in order to sustain a war, especially what was almost for sure going to be a long-term war, uh you know, the United States needed to build its economy. And

[22:33] so if if speed had been used, it could have easily um overwhelmed American economic capabilities, especially to fight if if for example if the war was being fought on Russian territory or on Soviet territory, very very much more difficult to sustain uh both both of course militarily but also economically. And uh you know sometimes uh tactical winds um can produce uh strategic setbacks. So uh one of the ones that

[23:10] comes to mind is um uh the United States was flying uh these these large uh spy planes. They were called U2s over the Soviet Union collecting data. and one of them um um I believe was shot down but anyway it it it crashed and the Soviet Union was able to um hold that up. See this is this is sort of like the fecklessness of the American system. Um you know look everybody knew everybody was spying on everybody else. uh but this sort of

[23:47] tactical loss became quite embarrassing for the United States and and so you know multiply incidents like that and very quickly uh you know you have an erosion of public support um you you have greater strain on the economic resources the United States and that's not a that's not a path to victory that's a path a path to uh to to to losing So um strategic patience requires leaders to

[24:23] absorb provocations uh without losing discipline. Okay. So strategic patience is not uh um is is not accommodating the enemy um letting them uh you know gain victories um at at cost to oneself, one's country. It's It's not um uh um I'm I'm trying to remember the word u that um gosh um appeasement. It's not

[25:00] appeasing uh the enemy. Uh what it is is it's making an affirmative decision about how one is going to respond in the from a that's best from a strategic and a long view standpoint. Okay. So let's take uh actually no we're not going to take a break. Um let's let's let's move on now to uh to translating strategic patience into business. Actually, you know what? Let's let's take a quick break and we'll be back to talk about the business

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[26:12] Call us today at 213-264-4396 or visit magnumprops.com. Okay. So now let's let's translate the military doctrinal idea of strategic patience into uh into business. So first of all uh we need to match investment horizons to strategic reality. So the co cold war planning was was assumed to be over you

[26:49] know decades not quarters. Okay. Everybody well not everybody but most people realized that [snorts] unless we were prepared to essentially invade the Soviet Union and and bring about regime change, it was going to be a long long period. And so a cold war was was preferable um to you know once the United States made the decision to withdraw from uh uh from Eastern Europe at the end of World War II there was there was no way to effectively go back

[27:24] in especially when um after the the massive military draw down after World War II. So, the only way to win uh the what was a a sort of political and economic war against the Soviet Union was a long a long-term cold war. So from a business standpoint uh infrastructure platforms investments in in artificial intelligence these all require long horizons and looking at short-term

[28:00] return on invest investment metrics can kill the long-term advantage. So we see this playing out right now. So over the last u maybe couple of weeks or so all of a sudden it it it it seems like investors are looking at these huge investments in AI that many companies are making the the Magnificent 7 along with other companies and all of a sudden for some reason they've decided that the that that you know they're not going to pay off or the the time horizon to pay them for them to pay off is too long.

[28:37] they've gotten much more negative about them. But the reality is that AI, whether it's large language models, whether it's automation, these are fundamental changes in how economies and indeed uh how economies are going to operate and how people are going to live their lives. And they're not going to be figured out in the short term. They're not going to be figured out in two quarters or four quarters or even eight quarters. We're talking years and years for them to be figured out.

[29:12] We saw this before with the when the when the internet was was being developed and and how the in the impact that the internet has on our lives today I don't think was anything like what was potentially conceived uh back in its in its nenty the same thing with uh cell phones especially smartphones how what we can do with a smartphone phone today, right? When I when I, you know, pick up my my, you know, iPhone, my little teeny

[29:48] iPhone, as somebody observed the other day, the computing power in that phone is in many cases as much as, if not larger than the computing power in a mainframe computer, you know, 50 or 60 years ago. It's it's it's just quite astonishing. Um, but it's taken that half century of of technological development to figure out how that's how that's going to play out. Um, I was listening to an interview

[30:23] of the uh CEO for AT&T talking about his uh fiber optic, not his, but talking about AT&T's investment in fiber optics, h how long it's been, how much longer it's going to take. These are long-term investments. They're going to take a long time to pay off, but they're how companies will uh stay competitive, if not dominate in the future. And and this is one of the challenges of the American economic system, especially the reporting of

[31:00] quarterly earnings. It it it puts pressure on uh CEOs to try and do something right. doing something is the opposite of strategic patience. And the reality is although there are times when uh when quick reaction is required typically that's because something of a crisis nature has happened and so there needs to be some sort of rapid response to it. So for example, the the Tylenol uh not debacle that when when there was some poison

[31:36] Tylenol that that that killed some people. This is going back I think 2530 years ago. Strategic patience was not the right strategy uh for an incident like that. Okay. It had to be dealt with quickly and effectively. Okay. The debacle with CocaCola and New Coke. Okay. Once Coca-Cola saw that the the public, it's its its customers were rejecting new Coke, they they had to re respond rapidly to that problem.

[32:12] Okay. Uh but in general, strategic patience is what's called for. So among other things, patience allows compounding to work. So for only gaining 2 to 3% a year in sales, that doesn't sound like a whole lot, but compounded year over year over year, okay, that that really builds up, it builds an ever stronger business. So um if if the if the payoff strategy okay so

[32:49] the payoff strategy or the payoff horizon I should say needs to match leadership's tenure in order for this to work. Okay and that's that's where it becomes a problem. So uh um you take the example of Starbucks which has had what three or four CEOs over the last several years. I think one of the problems is Starbucks is a mature business. Its opportunities for rapid growth just aren't there like they were 20 years ago

[33:26] or 25 years ago. Okay. And the idea of bringing someone in who's going to turn things around in a year, it's just it's not going to happen for a business of Starbucks size. And so Starbucks would be better off exercising strategic patience. Now, it appears that the new CEO who came from Chipotle uh is having some success. um perhaps he's just, you know, better able to deal with the problems that Starbucks faces, but he's also keeping things very lowkey

[34:04] and that's the smart strategy. Doing a lot of flashy things that bring attention, create an atmosphere where people expect something to be done. That is that is the opposite of strategic patience. Okay. So leadership tenure needs to match um payoff horizon on investments and then the strategy of strategic patience will work. Okay. Next [clears throat] businesses need to resist escala escalation in a

[34:39] competitive arms race. So militaries in general have to avoid reacting to every single provocation because sometimes those provocations are designed to create a cycle of reactions that are coming rapidly so that the reactor can't think through what needs to happen, makes a mistake and now create now loses a battle and then that become that compounds. Right? So uh you know we we can we can see this in

[35:16] in how military strategy is being handled by the current administration. Countries do things to provoke the United States, but we don't necessarily immediately respond. You can tell there's some strategic patience being exercised there while a plan is figured out as to what to do. and then oh all of a sudden there's a response and bang whoever you know perpetrated the uh you know the the the incident somehow ends up suffering greatly for what they're doing. So uh you know America's enemies

[35:53] I think make the mistake that because we're not ne we're not necessarily responding quickly we're weak and we're not going to respond. No, we're just taking our time to figure out how can we respond best in the way that will have the greatest impact with the least cost in lives and and treasure to the United States. Okay. So, in business, not every competitor's move deserves a response. And indeed, things like price wars and feature wars, hiring sprees, they often

[36:29] destroy value. So, you look at what uh Facebook did. Um I think we're going now back about six months ago or so. They were going through this rapid hiring spree, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire people who it who Facebook or Meta actually um thought could uh give a shot in the arm to their ability to develop AI. And in the event um most of the other companies did not respond to what

[37:06] Facebook was doing. They acted with strategic patience. And that's to their credit because um Meta spent a ton of money and then after a very short period realized, wait, wait a minute, we're not using our resources wisely. Okay? And they're, you know, they were spending at such a rapid pace. I think they realized this is not sustainable. And so they had to back off and the poaching of person of people from other companies whether it was chat uh chat

[37:42] GPT or anthropic or whatever that the poaching of that personnel appears to have if not completely stopped uh dramatically declined. Okay. It would have been a mistake for these other companies to start bidding up salaries to retain their personnel. Uh because all that would have done is create a a salary arms race, if you will, that would make the the cost of developing uh artificial intelligence and developing strategies that will allow the

[38:18] investment to pay off. it would have made it more difficult, more costly etc. So strate among the things that strategic patients did for the companies that didn't respond to meta is it it preserved their optionality if there was a particular individual that a company just felt they had to retain. Okay, they have the option of going after your, you know, working to keep that one person without it being a general melee in terms of trying to retain all the personnel. Okay, so

[38:57] reactivity almost always signals weakness, okay, not strength. So I make a big distinction between the words react and respond. and we want to respond. Okay? So, if a competitor is doing something that we think might damage our business, we don't want to react. We want to take some time, exercise some some strategic patience, and then respond appropriately. First of all, determine is this really a threat? And if it is, figure out what is the

[39:33] most effective way to respond. Okay. Next, so we can when when we exercise uh strategic patience, we're using time to expose the fragility of a competitor. Okay. So, uh endurance endurance reveals we structural weaknesses uh from from a military standpoint, I should say. Endurance allows structural weaknesses weaknesses of an enemy to

[40:11] become exposed. That is the essential lesson of the Cold War. By outlasting the Soviet Union, by outproducing the Soviet Union, by taking the time to show people in the Soviet Union, that indeed what they were being told did not comport with reality. Okay? The United States was able to win the Cold War. Okay? But it it was able to do that because the communist system

[40:46] is inherently weaker. Okay. The idea that one person or not not literally one person but a small group of people can control an economy in such a way that it will be stronger than a than an economy where millions of people the decisions of millions of people uh work out to optimize what's best for the economy. It the communist system is just not going to work. And by the way, we can see this happening to a certain extent in real time between the United

[41:23] States and China. So, China there's no doubt that China has a lot of economic strength, but undergirling its economic uh its it's I say I should say undergirling its position as the second largest economy in the world are a lot of structural weaknesses. So how they've dealt with real estate over the last 10 years or so has created a lot of structural weaknesses and indeed the the the collapse of real estate prices in China has made pe

[42:00] middle class people there feel much poorer than than they you know want to feel right the um you know China's um reliance on um sort of lowlevel industrial manufacturing, okay, means that they're not developing their workforce, okay, China's one child policy that went on for decades, which favored uh male children over female children and has caused a huge imbalance so that

[42:37] there are millions and millions of young men who want wives, but there aren't enough young women to go ground has caused a a big cultural problem in China which adds to the uh the economic fragility of that uh of of their economy. Right? So it's it's by no means a given that um the Chinese economy is going to be able to endure and indeed uh you know it was projected that uh China

[43:13] was going to overtake the US economy a few years from now. Clearly that is not going to happen. Okay. So uh so by by um um by taking the time to let a competitor's fragility uh become evident, strategic patience becomes an excellent strategy. So while the the example with China is is an economic one, let's look more specifically at a business. So from a from a business standpoint, so for example,

[43:49] unsustainable pricing, right? Pricing something at below cost, that's not a sustainable model. Now, sometimes businesses will think, well, I'm going to do that to grab market share and then I'm going to I'll increase my prices and become very profitable. So the problem with that is unless the product unless your competitor's um ability uh to um let let me this unless your undercutting your competitor's pricing is going to

[44:24] essentially put them out of business that strategy is not going to work. Okay? because um your competitors will outlast you and and in fact you'll be the one to go out of business because you're not even meeting your costs let alone making any kind of profit to return to investors. Right? Another another uh problem that that becomes exposed through strategic patience is overleveraged growth. Right? So we've we see cases where um and this happened um back in the dotcom boom back in the

[45:01] early 1990s. Uh companies uh raised tons of money, they borrowed tons of money, they had um visions of huge growth and and in the end they couldn't sustain it. they were too overleveraged and the growth in revenue just was not sufficient to deal with the leverage that these companies had and so a a huge number of them failed. right now. People are trying to apply that lesson uh to in particular the MAG 7 with respect to uh

[45:39] their AI investments. But it's not an apt comparison because a lot of the funding for the AI investments by the Mag Magnificent 7 is coming from actual cash flow revenue that these companies generate. I mean, these companies have huge, huge, huge revenue, okay? And they're only just now beginning to look to in some cases borrow money, okay? But the lenders I'm I'm listening I've been listening to some podcasts discussing it

[46:14] in gen in general it appears lenders are being you know pretty conservative pretty smart about how they're looking at the mag 7 using leverage to to fund their AI investments and the idea that they're going to become uh overleveraged well of course it's possible but I would say it's it's not particularly likely at least as things are right now. Okay. And then finally um uh using time to expose competitor fragility also another factor in that is the

[46:50] cultural burnout. So companies that have a very you know fastmoving we've got to be doing this this isn't they exhaust their people. So if we pursue a more disciplined, a more strategically patient strategy, we're likely to retain the resilience and capacity of our teams so that that growth can continue rather than wearing them out by constantly, you know, saying to them, do something,

[47:25] right? I I have a friend I was actually talking to him last night and he's he's with a tech company and the CEO of the tech company came to him uh I guess it was last week and basically said you got to do something about this and and he's he's had this discussion with with his with his boss several times. He said there's nothing to do. Okay. All that's going to happen if if you force me to do something is I'm going to wear out my people the same way other parts of the company have worn out theirs trying to

[48:00] do something that in the end doesn't pay off. Right? So we you know patient firms let other companies exhaust themselves but they look to play the long game. Okay. and eventually the market punishes impatience. Okay. Next um with from a strategic standpoint we want to build institutions not just products. Okay. So among the uh institutions

[48:38] that the Cold War built were NATO, which I've talked about before, but also a much leaner and yet lethal American military. Now, you might say, well, the American military isn't near as big as it needs to be these days. And and I I think in general, I would agree with you. However, the amount of force that the United States military can project today kind of per service member is far greater than it was half a

[49:14] century ago. And one of the reasons that's the case is because the military has looked to take advantage of what the United States of the things for which the United States is most powerful which is economic might and technological innovation. Okay. So what a single pilot of um of a fighter attack aircraft can do today is enormous compared to what could be done in say World War II or for that

[49:50] matter even Vietnam. So this this um you know the the building of alliances and and the building up of lethality in the military. Okay, these are these are institutional programs if you will. So um over the last half century um one of the things that the United States military has done is dramatically increased its ability to work jointly. meaning the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Air

[50:25] Force to work together in a much more cohesive factor. So, I talked about this when I did the episode on the invasion of Grenada a few months ago, and I I invite you to uh to watch that episode to understand more about this. But at the time of the invasion of Grenada in the uh late 1980s, I believe it was uh you know the the the Navy ships that were responsible for shelling um or not for shelling, I mean for um landing the Marines and such, they couldn't they

[51:00] couldn't communicate with the Marines um once they got on shore. Right. Right. It was it was crazy what went on. uh today those kind of problems just don't exist. Okay. And and and it's partly because of what the you know the military learned uh in situations like Grenada. Okay. But and and also for all the talk of of um uh the uh degrading of the NATO alliance, right? That's not what's really going on here. There's there's there is an effort actually to make the

[51:37] NATO alliance stronger. Okay. By um making it by creating a true alliance, not one where uh all the other countries are essentially relying on the United States military but rather looking to rebuild the military capacity of Germany, of France, of Great Britain, of the other members of NATO. Okay. So building institutions not just products is a factor of strategic p patient. So in business we

[52:12] want to look at governance we want to look at culture we want to look at systems okay because it is through those factors that institutions are created and become enduring. Right? So with one of the companies that I oversee as as the administrator of an estate. So when I took over the the company, the philosophy was very much do something and do it now, right? And the people that work there, they were just they

[52:48] were exhausted. They were just beaten up. Okay? Now our cultural byword is we work to live. We don't live to work. Okay. There has to be some meaning behind going to the office each day even though we work we work uh virtually but going to work or doing our work each day. If if we're doing our work only just because we're doing our work, that that is not enduring. Okay. And and

[53:27] some of the issues with which we're dealing are quite complex. Um some of the factors are outside of our control. And so rather than doing something, we're taking a step back and figuring out how do we approach these problems. So, we we have a property. It's it's it's in the downtown LA area. It's besieged by, you know, they're called homeless people, but in this case, it's really criminal vagrants um masquerading as homeless people, right? And the city of Los Angeles has just not been

[54:03] proactive in dealing with these kind of problems. And and the property about which I'm speaking is not the only one. It's hundreds if not thousands of properties um in in the greater downtown Los Angeles area that are are suffering because of it as well as the small businesses that occupy these properties. And so we've exercised strategic patience by first of all figuring out okay what are the what are the roots of the problems here and how and and how can we deal with them effectively and and one

[54:40] of the best victories we've had is we've been able to uh um convince uh staff members of the council person's office for that area of Los Angeles, there's a real problem here. And now the councilman's or the council person's office is engaged. And that's good because that also helps get the Los Angeles Police Department engaged, right? Individual officers, they knew what was going on. They wanted to help, but without the backing of their supervisors and the higherups in the

[55:15] LAPD to commit the resources to do it, it's hard for the individual officers to have the impact that they want to have. Now, we're starting to see that, right? And so, that then coupled with the things that are within our control, uh, better better lighting for the property, um, you know, fixing the property up so it's more presentable, right? those those things together will will be what eventually brings success for us with this problem. Okay. But it's it's it's been by exercising strategic

[55:52] patience that we've been able to get there. Could have thrown a ton of money at it wouldn't have been the right thing to do because in the end without dealing with these outside issues i.e. the city etc the money would have been wasted. Okay. So, this is all part of building up the proper governance of this company and how it manages properties. It's part of redoing the culture there so that people feel valued so that they can develop resilience so they can um have take

[56:30] satisfaction in their professional accomplishments. Okay? And developing systems, right? so that we can work so that when things have to be done, we can do them with the least amount of you know time. We can do them most efficiently, right? And and people people know and can rely on how things are supposed to happen, right? So again, institutions outlast tactics. So um this is another situation where if leadership is turning over rapidly

[57:06] causing uh you know per rapidly periodic changes in governance and culture and such that is a problem right of leadership is is is a a critical uh part of um strategic patience. Okay. And then finally um preserve strategic credibility. So um deterrence in the cold war worked um because overall the United States was pretty consistent in how it pursued its

[57:44] policy. It didn't let itself get goated into escalation or or you know Lord forbid you know nuclear escalation, right? it. We just kept pushing away economically um and and and as much as possible standing our ground militarily and we wore the Soviet Union out. So in from a business standpoint then um this translates into first of all creating stable relationships with our customers and clients by by giving them a road mapap that they they can see okay

[58:19] this is how this is going to work. So when customers or clients have problems they're they can be worked through as long as they see that we have a plan. Okay, that we're not doing things ad hoc. Okay, the employees also they want to have predictable leadership. They don't want to feel like they're always operating on tent hooks. Okay. and partners or investors, they want to re they want to invest in reliable firms

[58:54] where they have a sense that okay, these people know what they're doing. They have a plan. They're going to calmly execute that plan and so there's a high likelihood that it will be successful. Right? So um talking about this the same company I mentioned um in the last example another client of the company had a pro property that's it's really been problematic for them. So, among other things, it's occupied by a cannabis tenant. And the cannabis industry has largely collapsed here in

[59:29] in Southern California. And the owner was really in a dilemma what to do. And in in helping the company address that, my my philosophy again was strategic patience. Let's just keep dealing with these issues calmly, rationally, okay? Let's work with the tenant until it becomes completely not viable to work with the tenant. Let's deal with the problems as they come up thoughtfully. Let's not

[60:05] rush to make decisions. Let's communicate clearly and rationally to the client, okay? and that'll work the problem through. And as a result, um, you know, standing here today, I can tell you that this particular client is very happy at the resolution that she's gotten of to this situation that really has taken probably uh, the better part of a year um, with with kind of the most rapid movement happening happening over the last, you

[60:41] know, two or three months. Okay. But that's oftenimes how it happens. Strategic patience often pays off by then things working out quite rapidly because all the groundwork has been done. Okay. So inconsistency erodess advantage faster than competition. Right? We need to play our game. We don't need to play into or be suckered by how the competition wants us to play the game. Okay. So again, uh

[61:19] strategic patience is not passive. It's deliberate strength backed by confidence in a long-term plan and positioning that we believe will be successful for our businesses. So that's that's the lesson behind the military doctrine of strategic patience. I encourage you to apply it to your business and professional practice. So uh we're we're running just a couple minutes over time here. I thank you very much for joining me today. Tomorrow at

[61:54] 10 a.m. Pacific time is my show People Making Money. I hope you'll join me then. And then next week full slate of shows. Remember, every other Thursday is my show Jiggers's Place at 5:00 p.m. Pacific time. We have a cocktail and a smoo. Hope you'll join me for that. If you have questions, comments, or criticisms, links to the show notes, uh links to social media will be in the show notes. Love to hear them. And that just leaves me to thank you again for watching and sign off as I always do. Marie darling, you are my bell. Courage at all times, my