0:00 hello and welcome to business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and we are here every Tuesday at 10: am Pacific time that's 1 pm on the east coast and uh um an hour in for Central and mountain time and I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday evening uh who lives in Columbus Ohio and he was telling me about um seeing the the full solar eclipse which we we couldn't see here in Southern California so uh you know L we think exciting
0:35 things don't happen um in in in so-called flyover country right kind of kind of an insult uh um they they they had something there that we hear in Southern California didn't have a chance at so but I digress as they say so um on business lessons from the military we talk about uh military history Doctrine the practices of great military leaders and we apply them to our um professional and business professional careers our businesses in order to make them work
1:11 better and there's I haven't said this for a while um so I I I think it Bears repeating that um we spend um what close to I think it's $900 billion doll a year on on our military and of course it's there to to provide for National Defense that's its that's its reason for being as as they say um and and yet for for that investment um it it seem or for that cost really it seems like we ought
1:46 to get some side benefits and one of them I think is comes from the uh the amount of training that goes on in the military and how we can re purpose that whether it's by bringing veterans into our businesses or um bringing practices from the military into our businesses so there isn't anything in in human endeavor quite so existential as as Warfare and uh while the vast majority
2:22 of people in the military never see uh kinetic action they're never in battle um especially in in in sort of you know ground combat like we might see in a World War II movie um nonetheless we all go through various types of training that um prepares us for the riggers of military life so even though when I was on an aircraft carrier we were in no danger um at at any time no real danger
2:57 I mean in in terms of combat um The Dangers on an aircraft carrier are quite profound um for example if you're walking on the flight deck during flight operations and not keeping uh keeping track of where you are and what's going on you could easily walk into a propeller and you know kill yourself um you know walk through jet wash um and there's all kinds of uh precautions that are made to prevent such things but in the end it comes down to the performance of the
3:33 individual sailor or Marine on the ship uh to make sure that that that he he's not injured and a lot of training goes into how do we perform these dangerous operations for example refueling a jet um on the deck of a carrier in such a way as to minimize um The Dangers involved so it's it's a it's kind of an interesting phenomenon um that I noticed very early on in my military career so when I first got to okanawa I was
4:09 stationed with the Marine Corps there and there was a big campaign going on to encourage um uh safety among the Young Marines that were there especially in in terms of doing things like driving motorcycles and such um and and and these campaigns were like you can kill yourself you can get hurt blah blah blah blah it's like you know you have to be safe you have to be safe you have to be safe and I and it it was a little it was a little bit strange I thought because you're we're training these
4:44 marines to generally speaking for amphibious Warfare which is some of the most dangerous type of combat in which uh a service member can engage and yet we're beating into their heads be safe be be safe be safe be safe so uh I I I I I I personally would have thought a better message was um to be aware of the calculated risks that you're taking that's really what we want from from our Marines um and and and and but but
5:21 nonetheless there's all kinds of training that goes on that um helps service members deal with the rigors of of um whatever it is they have to do even even an old chaplain like me so um so what I wanted to do today and the the the topic for today's uh show is train like real life so much of TR the training that happens in the military certainly the training that I got in my career career was
5:56 designed to be as much like real life as possible so I'll give you a few examples um when I was slated to uh go to uh I believe it was Iraq um I think I was going to be uh um um performing Jewish High holiday Services there I think that's what was going on if I remember correctly I I ended up not going because uh my wife at the time ended up getting diagnosed with cancer and they pulled my orders but in
6:32 preparing for that combat deployment I had to go through training one of the things I had to do in that training was go through the humy trainer and this humy trainer you you you get into it you there's four people in the trainer two in the front two in the back and being an officer and a chaplain I was in the back and I had on my my my flak jacket my kevlar and uh you know I was all sort of you know kitted out uh to be in in a in a convoy or as if I
7:08 were going to be in a convoy and the way the trainer works is it turns you upside down right and you have to get out so presumably I don't know you you know you've hit an IED and it flipped the the humy over or for some other reason it flipped over right and the challenge is you're you're strap in and if you just let the straps go bang you're going to fall on your head and you have a helmet on but it's still going to hurt so the idea is what what what they train you to do is you you
7:43 hold your hand against the ceiling of the Humvee while now you're upside down so you're holding yourself in your seat and then you one you you first pop one seat belt and then the other and you put your other hand up and you lower yourself you know down onto the the ceiling and and you sort of you know squirm around until you can then crawl out the window right and I mean that's exactly like it would be um you know in in real life with the possible exception that you know we might be getting shot
8:18 at while that's going on which of course makes it even less comfortable so another training we had to go through what's called field Med training field medical training right and if we're out there and for whatever reason a Corman isn't available so whoever is there with the medical bag helps take care of the Wounded Marines right so one of the things I had to learn how to do was put in an IV and we actually you actually had to stick someone with the IV so I I I
8:56 remember um talking to uh some some of the Corman at uh um I think it was one of the dental clinics about this afterwards and I'm like you know I would never be allowed to do something like that in in civilian life that that would just never happen you have to be you have to go through you know a Long training course and all this kind of stuff um and and they're like yeah sir you know what what we do medically here in the in the milit in the Navy in the Marine Corps is completely different than any we would do um in in civilian life um and and
9:33 it's and it's true but of course if you're in if you're on a let's say you're in a convoy and you get attacked and someone needs to have whatever um you know blood put in or or or some kind of um iv put in it's got to happen it doesn't matter whether you know you whether there's a registered nurse around which there almost for sure is not or for that matter even even a Corman it's it's not like you have a lot of Corman in a convoy probably only I I suspect only have one or two depending on the size of the Convoy and if there's a lot of people around corman's gonna
10:08 come by and and say you know insert this IV on this guy and I'm gonna be like okay and I got to be able to do it so um you know those those are now again these are things that you're not going to have in real life although I I could imagine you know God forbid you're in a car accident the car is side down you know you're not wearing a helmet so you don't want to just let yourself out of your seat belt and bang you're hitting the roof of the car right it's a a handy thing to know to put your hand up um having said that um there are um and so
10:45 actually I'll give you a couple of other examples that aren't as obvious so the ones that I just gave you those are actual preparation to be in a combat zone okay but when I was going through officer training so um officer training at least for uh staff Corps officers what was called um um um ois officer indoctrination school it's it has a different name now but in any event when I went through ois um it you we went to Naval Base Newport which
11:22 is in Newport Rhode Island um for a Southern California guy like me I was there I got there U midt and finished in December because I went to ois and then follow on chaplain school and by the time I left there was snow on the ground it was it was cold it very very cold and it was very very damp so um you know we were right on the water of course um we had there were ships in the in the docks there um and one of the things that was
11:58 happening at during that when I got there was um birds in particular Canadian geese were flying south for the winter and if you know anything about geese um geese like to poop and they particularly like to do so on the grassy areas surrounding the buildings at Naval sta Naval uh Station Newport and so um every day we had physical training of some sort um they would be calisthenics or running or whatever it was and they were always
12:35 conducted on fields covered with goose poop which not not not a pleasant um uh you know thing to do um and you know they would line us up and we would we would we would have to space ourselves out according to whatever it was we were doing and you know if you were total okay and know 30 push-ups or whatever it was you dropped you G and if and if there was goose poop right in front of you it's like you know if you tried to avoid it the training the the chief
13:10 petty officers who were training you they they would they would just get like is there something wrong you know Mr bemel I mean I fortunately I escaped that particular thing because I realized you know pretty pretty like right away um that that you you just had to kind of do what they told you to do that that's how you stayed out of stayed out of the line of fire so to speak and and so after training you know you were you were you like goose poop all over right um and I thought you know why why do this I mean it it didn't make
13:47 any sense to me okay um and then subsequently um when I did my shipboard deployment um so on a ship the the bathrooms are called the head or the heads um that has to do with how U people uh you know evacuated themselves on wooden sailing ships um but anyway I many many times I would walk into the male officer's head and there would be water on the deck so the deck
14:22 is what you call the floor in a ship and I the first time or two I really didn't think any of it um and then one morning I walked in and there was there was quite a bit of water on the deck and I noticed that the water was not clear and there were a couple of Junior Sailors in there cleaning it up like like hey what's going on man and they're like oh the drain lines backed up again and it's like oh lovely I mean the floor was basically covered with you know human feces so you know by by that St
14:59 standard exercising among the goose poop didn't seem so bad um but I I I will say that you know I I'm not sure that that's exactly what our Chiefs had in mind however what I think what I think they had in mind was you can't be so um sensitive to cleanliness and and you know I I grew up in a house where cleanliness was godliness period like you know you did my mother and insisted on a you know spens fan house and and it it was really a difficult experience for
15:36 me to get used to um something less than that and yet you know in the military a lot of times you just can't be um worried about the cleanliness of your surroundings it's just not practical if you're in a fob a forward operating base uh you know in in Iraq somewhere um you know you're probably not taking a shower for the time that you're up there which you know sounds awful but man you really appreciate that shower uh once you finally get back to the main base and and you can take it so um another uh again strange thing that went
16:12 on was um we were required to take showers without hot water so with cold water so while in September that wasn't so bad um by the time you know October rolled around and it was really cold the water coming out of the showers was ice cold I mean and and you know just just but for survival you would turn on the water wet yourself down turn it off soap yourself up turn the water back on rinse
16:48 yourself off and then turn it off otherwise just to be under that cold water was unbearable absolutely unbearable I think we only had um hot showers once or twice for the entire five-week period of ois and um we were we were told and and now to sort of add insult to injury one of our duties was to um when we were on watch was to go and make sure that the temperature was set correctly for um the various boilers they were the where the
17:24 water was heated um and so you know we the the temperature could have been set so we had warm showers but it it just wasn't that wasn't part of what we that wasn't part of the training and and and again so you know I didn't when I was on when I was on another base we had warm showers it was no big deal when I was on the carrier surprising for me who' never been on a military ship before we had hot showers and as much as we wanted and I was asking somebody about that one day and and they said well you know we've
17:59 got two nuclear reactors on board we've got more hot water than we know what to do with when you're on a nuclear carrier but if you were if but when I was on a submarine which was also nuclear powerered they didn't use any of that for for the showers so we took a shower on a submarine just exactly like we took a shower in officer training and in fact you couldn't leave the water running while you were taking a shower that was a complete waste of water um and so you know you would turn the water on wet yourself down turn it off soap yourself
18:35 up turn it on rinse yourself off and that was it and and you know you that shower you made it as quick as possible because there were only I think two showers um available maybe maybe it was three for all 110 20 whatever number of people there were on that submarine right and so you know again although it it it it was you know it seemed pretty awful awful when we were going through officer training um we were training like it would be in real life at least the sort of you know worst
19:10 part of real life and um I I was lucky as a Chaplain to be able to be on a submarine um I don't think any of my officer classmates got to go on a submarine um but um you know they do their best to make sure everybody gets a a fairly similar training regimen and so um that's one of the things if you end up on a submarine you're going to end up taking a very short cold shower now that was on the fast attack boats I I don't know how it works on the larger what are called the Boomers the nuclear missile uh equipped submarines but um in any
19:47 event um the military you you train like your like you're going to experience in real life and and I I I would say I I never experienced that really anywhere in in the civilian world now hopefully in the civilian world you know we're not having to take cold showers or you know exercise in in goose poop or whatever um but I will say that um you know the kind of like the
20:22 kind of training I I've done in order to get my get a real get to maintain a real estate license or uh my professional fiduciary license it has almost nothing to do with how practice really works so and that that's always seemed kind of odd to me and it's really like I'll take getting a real estate license really the the the plan seems to be just get through this training as quickly as possible so you get your license so then you can get out and
20:58 learn how it how the business really works and I think that that's that's a shame because it's a lot of wasted time and effort well it's important to know the laws and regulations and and so a class like that you know a class on Law and regulation probably is not going to ever be particularly exciting um you know classes on management or appraisal or whatever I found rarely did they have much if anything to do with how the business actually work and so I know
21:34 when I when I uh taught those classes I don't do it anymore back when I had my real estate company before I joined the Navy one of the things I did was I tried to bring as much of real practice into those classes as possible so that even though these were um you know pre-licensing courses or whatever or they were continuing education courses they were as relevant to real life as possible and I do think that in and and this goes not just for licensed training
22:09 I think for any training that we develop in our businesses we should be making it as real as possible so if we're doing sales training we should set up um training just like um you would you would experience so um I I have a friend who's who's uh in financial services and he does a training um once a week in the evenings and while you know sometimes it's good he'll have guest speakers or whatever um
22:46 rarely if ever does he actually sit you know two people down even um uh virtually and have them go through what they would actually go through um if they were um you know talking to a perspective client or perspective customer now what's interesting is um they adopt they adopted a new um program this is I think about a year ago now called money Sherlock and the training for money Sherlock is all actually using
23:24 the technology in in roleplay situations so that people get used to using it just like they would in real life now that's that's in my opinion that's the ideal training and that's just that's so much how things are done in the military is make it as close to what you're G to actually be doing as possible right you you know in the military they'll try and minimize the danger although actually I have some statistics on this um that's right I forgot I downloaded this I you will you'll find this a little bit interesting hopefully
24:01 so um in um when it comes to here let me okay here we go so when it comes to um excuse me deaths and accidents in in the military so generally speaking um the um the I'm sorry when it comes to um uh deaths in the military so just take a tip just I'll take the most recent year we have information for 844 people died in the military in
24:38 2022 of that 265 were accidents right which was probably training accidents okay 333 were self-inflicted 144 were illness uh 30 1 were homicides the deaths in 22 2022 due to hostile action zero okay now in the prior year 2021 there were 13 deaths due to hostile
25:14 action out of a little over a thousand but there was there was 310 due to accidents another words there was like roughly 25 times as many accidents um due to training than there was to hostile action and even in in the hottest days of the war um most of the time training accidents were on par with or maybe slightly below um the the deaths due to combat
25:49 so take take the year um 2009 there were 467 deaths due to accident 346 due to um uh you know combat um in 2007 there were 561 due to accidents 847 due to combat so you can see that um when you take into account um uh and and and let me let me just add to this um the highest death toll uh due
26:26 to combat was in 200 7 847 that's out of a total of 1953 so it's still less than half of deaths in the military were were were were due to combat so it shows you that the the the mere fact that training leads to such a significant percentage of death shows you that um the military trains like it like it lives um and and of course we don't want to make training in the civilian world that dangerous that that there's you know too many
27:02 liabilities connected with that nonetheless we can make it most similar to how our our team members our employees are going to have to actually um you know do their work in order to best prepare them for what it is they're going to be doing so whether it's working with customers and and and setting up um trainings where you have people come in let's say it's a clothing store and they be they behave like customers and and you give people an opport you give your your sales team an opportunity to interact with them and
27:38 and be observed and get some pointers on how to do better whether it's um you know uh um uh your staff in a restaurant and they interact with um you know um you know people pretending to be customers and dealing with certain scenarios that you want them to be able to deal with right all of that can be set up in such a way that makes it as similar to how their job is really going to work as possible so no matter what your business is my feeling is if you're gonna or my opinion is if you're going to go to the
28:14 trouble of setting up training make it as realistic as possible okay first of all um that's how you can train people the best second of all it'll it'll be the least Bor B in training that you can give and that's a big problem all this computer-based training that like we do a lot of computer-based training the military it it's it's almost universally awful and people just click through it as fast as they can they're getting nothing out of it other than a certificate saying that they completed the training but in terms of any real
28:49 impact it has on educating uh service members or anything almost zero almost zero and in some cases I think it's it's negative because people are just they just dislike it so much and they feel it's such a waste of their time clicking through this computer-based training so um while you know learning an academic subject um there may be some Merit to computer-based training um in general be unless all we're doing in our work is computer-based um that's that's not the way to train our people so
29:26 that's our show for today um it's it's it's a lesson well learned a few se stories um hopefully that you had a chance to enjoy and uh so tomorrow at 10: am Pacific time is my show people making money my guest is Vanessa Donaldson that name may ring a bell with you Vanessa was my guest a few weeks ago and uh she has such an amazing story we only we only we didn't even get halfway through it so we decided to book another show with her so she we have an opportunity to hear um at least most of the rest of her story so I invite you to
30:02 join me again 10 o'clock tomorrow morning Pacific time people making money and then next week on Monday at 10: am is my show trust and Estates weekly and then seven days from today all again all at 10: amm Pacific time is the next edition of business lessons from the military so thanks so much for joining me I always appreciate having you here and signing off as I always do Marie you are my bell all the