0:01 and where are you going what do you [Music] want hello and welcome to business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bamel and we're here every Tuesday at 10: a.m. Pacific time to talk about business history and Doctrine and the practices of great military leaders and distill from them ideas that you can use
0:37 in your business and professional life to make them better so this is my way excuse me this is my way of of giving back to you my fellow citizens for the support that you gave not just me but all of my military colleagues during the 16 years I was in on active duty and and in the uh reserves and and all all the billions of dollars that was spent on training us and and and and engage with you on on this subject and
1:13 talk sometimes talk about a little bit of military history or in this case I'm going to be talking about one of the uh classic military texts so a few weeks ago I talked about Sun su's Art of War um one of one of the I think the two best known books on on warfare and the other is uh General carlvon kltz is on war and you can see it's actually a relatively short book um although in
1:48 this case the the type is pretty small so it's it's a lot packed into a uh in in into a short book and uh for those of you who watched the show last season and and you heard me talk about Marine Corps warfighting Doctrine so I think you will find that a lot of of of that Marine Corps Doctrine comes from Von kltz and and so this will be kind of a summary of a whole series of shows I did last year but it'll also give you
2:24 some new ideas that you can apply to to your businesses so uh um excuse me uh I'm going to talk about this this isn't going to cover every idea in the book certainly there's there's way too much there but I'm I'm going to talk about seven eight maybe nine ideas from the book depending on on how time goes uh to give you an idea of the richness of the ideas in on war and and how they translate virtually Ono one in into our
3:00 Business and Professional lives so in in in no particular order of importance frankly um one of the the lessons and and and I I promoted this in my social media posts for the show was the the idea of the the Trinity so of course in Christianity there's the Trinity the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit of the Holy Ghost right and and and this idea of a trinity exists in religion um for for for Millennia in Judaism when a man and a
3:36 woman get married um that marriage is actually considered to be a trinity because God becomes a party to that Union to that marriage as well uh so the these this this kind of idea of a of of three is is there there's there there's there's a spiritual nature uh to to the number three and that's why I think often see the Trinity uh discussed in in in different uh doctrinal um ideas so K clawz talks about the Trinity of
4:11 War as being passion chance and reason so these are the three forces that act uh in Warfare uh to determine the results essentially so there's passion there's the emotion s of the people and and if if you're talking about a land battle and and and you have uh one uh one group that is highly motivated very passionate about uh the
4:47 battle at hand or the war at hand perhaps they're fighting on their Homeland uh and they view they view the war and the battle as an an existential endeavor you've got another group maybe they're Invaders and so their their families are safe across the ocean or something like that or they're safe you know back home um and and they may not have uh as as deep an emotional commitment as deep a passion to pursuing this battle as people who are protecting their homes
5:22 the the flip side though can can be this can be the can be the case as well so you can have an attacker um who believes that their their cause is so deeply righteous that the passion for their cause is so great that they overwhelm even a a force that's def depend defending its its homes and families so passion the emotion of the people involved um and by the way I'm talking about Battlefield passion but there can be passions at at
5:58 the command Center where there's a a passionate dispute um between between uh parties about what should be done there can there can also be uh a um a a sort of um I don't want call it a lack of passion but but a a a an attitude of resignation that's an emotional phenomenon as well that can set in that can be equally as devastating as as the the passion to to
6:34 actively pursue the battle so the emotions of people is is one of the key uh forces in Warfare the next is chance or the uncertainties of the situation so uh the war is an inherently uncertain Endeavor uh so we we've seen this with the United States the United States has faren away the strongest military in the world and yet in the last since since at least Vietnam uh
7:12 smaller weaker forces have caused the United States to have to withdraw have have caused the United States ongoing military pain and defeats or at least have been able to essentially draw a a um uh not a truce what's the word I'm looking for um the United States has not been able to defeat them um they haven't been able to defeat the United States a stalemate is what the word I'm looking for they've been able to draw a stalemate with the United States despite being much much
7:48 weaker than the United States we saw this in gwad the global war on terrorism okay and and and many many battles like that and so there is an uncertainty that that exists in war that even when somebody might think oh clearly we have the the decisive advantage in weaponry and personnel and training etc etc but but that doesn't necessarily mean that um you know that that particular force is going to be uh Victorious and so um there's there's
8:24 uncertainties about um how the enemy is going to react all kinds of things that make it virtually impossible to go into a war and to go into a battle absolutely sure of Victory and the third one is reason the the the rational calculations of leadership so there are some reasoned aspects of warfare uh my my favorite example you've you've heard this many times on the show so in World War II uh
9:00 General George Patton right he he mobile Warfare keep pushing keep going don't stop and regroup but keep the pressure on the enemy okay that is a rational reasoned leadership decision or I should say that was a rationed reasonable leadership uh position taken by Patton and and and its basis was that as long as we're keeping pressure on the enemy the enemy has to react rather than plan and and attack us and so we're more
9:36 likely to gain Victory by by constant pressure on the enemy right so these three forces uh passion chance and reason come together to really Express the nature of war and we have a similar dynamic in the business world so we have the emotional ISS isues of people okay and people can be very dedicated to a business Enterprise they can be dismissive of it they can be just
10:11 kind of H about a business Enterprise and those can all so employee motivation can have a big impact on whether a particular business is successful the same thing is true of customers right it's not just the people who work for the business but people who patronize the business whether it's a a product or a service business people can be excited about it and people can be n i i don't you know I don't care about this this is nothing to me so I was in a meeting this morning with the uh the independent
10:48 trustees Alliance a group of members we get together uh every few months to talk about matters related to our our profession and it was interesting to note that there were some members with a with a a passionate interest in in our business as independent trustees in helping other people in our business become better at what we do so we we raise the tide for everyone um and there were others that you know they were more content to just sit and listen and and
11:24 they they didn't say anything they didn't ask questions so now that's that at least from appearance's standpoint there's a passionate group and maybe a less passionate group now it could also be there was a shy group and a and a notshy group okay but in any event the the the emotions of people in business are a key force in determining the success of the business okay Chance uh uncertainty also of course a big factor in business we don't control the economy
12:00 the economy is the sum total of hundreds of millions in the United States and billions of people in the world and we have to accept that we don't know how the economy is going to respond especially on a micro level okay even on a macro level though while we you know economists make predictions and and and we can say well we know Supply demand have a big impact on on the way the macroeconomy works and
12:36 we know that if you pump a tremendous amount of money into the economy while the amount of products and services that are available to be bought is relatively stays relatively the same we're going to have inflation so those kinds of things are are more certain but the duration of inflation this the amount of inflation all of these things are are hard to predict and as much as economists use different models to try and and predict these these phenomena they they they remain an area
13:13 of of uncertainty uh and and so excuse me a new product we can think oh this is the most brilliant thing people obviously need this and yet when we release it on the market ah you know nobody's interested so there is the inherent uncertainty of business that is another force and finally there is reason strategy in business just like there is in Warfare and and and we we have planning we have strategy we have tactics all of them can be based on data that we get from our customers from the
13:50 data that we get about our employees about the market about the economy right so we can do some rational planning okay and that is also a potent force in the business Arena so somehow where the three intersect uh passion chance and reason okay or emotion chance uh and reason however we want to express these those forces come together in a way that determines what happens in our businesses what happens uh in in the
14:25 economy in general okay so um we we need to be mindful of all of these and understand what can we control and what what do we not have control over right so we can have some influence on The Passion of the people involved in in our business in our businesses whether it's our employees whether it's our customers through influence marketing or advertising whatever we can have uh in we we have control over our strategy the reason part of it it okay but there's
15:00 always the chance part of it that we don't have control over and so we we have to we have to deal with that as well okay so that's that's one that's one idea coming out of clous Switz another is the pracy of strategy and objectives okay so Claus witz is is is famous and you can see it here on the on on the cover of the book War is not merely a political art but also a political instrument okay and and war is is is really um an extension of politics
15:40 okay so we we tend to think of of of War as being this thing that happens when when maybe nothing else will work or when people are hopeless that's not necessarily the case if you go back to World War II for example Japan deciding to go to war with the United States was a calculated strategy that was part of its overall political strategy to gain dominance in the Western Pacific and to relieve itself
16:17 from the imposition of embargos and such that were restraining its power and the idea J Japan's fundamental strategy and and I talked talked about this uh believe it was last week when I talked about the the the Pearl Harbor debacle Japan's or imperial Japan's idea was to attack to to launch a surprise attack on the United States in an effort to push the United States back on its on her heels and essentially get her to uh negotiate and and make uh
16:55 compromises and concessions that the Japanese Imperial an wanted in order to continue to build its um Asian co- Prosper Co co-prosperity um project that that that it had been working on for a a good uh you know almost 10 years at that point I believe it was so um so this this idea of of War as an ex as an extension of politics that is one of the central um uh clous CLA witan ideas
17:32 so and and and so then when we talk about business and we talk about business strategy and we talk about business tactics they all need to be in service of the clear objectives of the business okay so uh for example you may have a b you may have a goal an an objective to to double sales in your business in next year in 2025 okay that's a laudible goal but how does that
18:08 relate to the fundamental objective of your business okay so let's let's take an example of a health care company okay why are you engaged in providing Health Care is it because you want to make a lot of money okay is it because you want to improve the health of of your uh clients or customers what is your fundamental objective what we might call your
18:43 mission okay and and this is not as easy to figure out as it seems and there was a time you don't see it as much now but uh when you know every business was saying well we have to have a mission statement the problem with a lot of those mission statements were that they described a bunch of goals but they didn't get down to the nitty-gritty on sentence summary of why the business existed beyond the
19:20 economic idea of the business and here's the thing economics in business serves the idea not vice versa you look at any successful business and you will see it's the idea being served and that led to the economic success not the other way around whether it's cocacola and providing this this delicious refreshing beverage that gave people a pickme up um and and and and
19:57 and so and and became so popular that it also became enormously financially successful whether it's a company like SpaceX where the core idea was to create reusable vehicles that could make access to space and and uh other planets the moon much more accessible and could and could democratize space travel and which and and SpaceX now to has become uh financially successful it's the idea that drove the financial success not the
20:34 other way around okay and so when we look at business strategy and the creation of objectives they need to be in service of that core mission that idea that is the to use the French term raon Detra the reason for being of that business if the only reason for a business to exist is to make money that business is probably not going to be successful or at least as successful as it could have been if it had a a mission that could really ignite The Passion of
21:11 of the owners and the people working for that company okay uh next is the fog of War if you again if you remember any of the shows I did on Marine Corps War fighting Doctrine I talked about the fog of War so so no matter what you do during a war their information will always be incomplete it will be there will be uncertainty some information will be misleading it may be the enemy purposely
21:47 putting out information that's wrong in order to trick trick the other side into thinking that something's going on that is not okay again famous example from world War II the D-Day Landings in Normandy right there there was a whole Shadow Army made up around George Patton that was the that the information about it was allowed to get to to the Nazi High command that Patton was going to be attacking at the poal why did the Allies do that because
22:24 by putting out that misleading information when the Allies actually attacked at Normandy that kept Adolf Hitler from moving the forces he had guarding the podal to oppose the Normandy Landings and so it made it easier for the Allies to be victorious at Normandy right so information is is incomplete it's misleading it's it and this creates uncertainty I.E this idea of fog we we're never operating in a completely
22:59 clear environment we we cannot okay now what does that mean for the business side of things well number one we're never going to have complete information and if we're going to delay decisions until we have so-called complete information we're never going to be able to make a decision so we have to get comfortable with the idea that decisions have to be made based on the information that is available and with
23:36 an understanding that even the information available may turn out to not be accurate or correct information okay now obviously the larger the stakes of a decision the more time and resources we're going to invest in in a in a in in accumulating or in getting information in getting intelligence okay but the reality is even for a a a a
24:11 decision that could mean the survival of the business we're not going to get perfect information we're not going to get if we have so much information that we're absolutely sure that what we're doing is correct we're probably fooling ourselves okay because that goes back to the Trinity there's always that that chance factor involved the uncertainty of of war and business and so we have to get comfortable with the fog of war and we also have to get comfortable then with
24:48 having made a decision continuing to monitor how the execution of that decision is going so that if we need to we can pull back on that decision make another decision or or not necessarily pull back but but move on but take a different you know a slightly different route we make adjustments to to the decision so that in in real time based on feedback that we're getting for the decision made um maybe as we as we
25:26 pursue a decision we'll get some feedback that will help clear some of the fog right and so we need to adjust things a little bit tweak them or maybe make larger adjustments in order that we raise the likelihood that we'll be ultimately successful okay and so that's the reality of dealing in the fog of war and in the fog of of business okay next is this idea of center of gravity so K CL Switz talks
26:01 about focusing on an opponent's center of gravity either their key strength or their critical vulnerability right so their key strength may be in the form of let's say it's a Navy this this is a this is I think an easy example to see so let's say the key strength of a Navy uh certainly in United of the United States of a key strength would be an aircraft carrier because these days an aircraft carrier not only protects itself it protects all the other ships
26:36 in the strike group that are with it right so that's that's a key strength but it's also a critical vulnerability because if the enemy could syn that aircraft carrier now they've rendered all the other ships that are with it much mo more vulnerable and and that is and interesting Dynamic for us to realize is our key strength can also become or can I shouldn't say can also become can also be a critical vulnerability if that strength is
27:11 somehow destroyed right and so that's what that's what you see in the Navy today and there's a debate in the United States Navy whether we should even continue to have aircraft carriers they're such huge platforms they cost so much money they have so many people on them are they really a key strength anymore or are they really a critical vulnerability you see the same debate going on with respect to man Aviation so there are many I was reading an article about this I think it was yesterday the day before um among others Elon Musk is
27:48 saying that we shouldn't have manned aircraft anymore because that is a critical vulnerability that we don't need to have because can use unmanned aerial vehicles to do everything that manned Vehicles man manned aircraft can do now that that may or may not be the case I'm I'm not I'm not going to debate that issue uh today only to only to show this idea that one of the key strengths of the United States Navy for example is
28:24 our Naval aviators they are probably the best in the world I know I know people in the Air Force think that they're better Pilots but the fact of the matter is the ability to land on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the water is a skill that most if if if none of Air Force aviators could could do without the special kind of training that Naval aviators have okay so you have a key strength there and yet at the same time you it it's also a critical uh V ability so how you know how does the
29:00 Navy uh how is the Navy going to deal with that going forward that that issue of the center of gravity that is that is the Navy so in a business to we have key or core strengths but we also have weaknesses we have them in our businesses and we need to understand them in our competitors okay just like in Warfare we need to understand our own key strengths and critical vulnerabilities and those of the enemy we need to do the same thing in our businesses so uh to go back to the example of Cocola so one of its key
29:38 strengths is its enormous brand awareness there is virtually no place on Earth that hasn't heard of cocacola and For Whom the cocacola logo does not resonate that is a key strength however ever Coca-Cola also has a key vulnerability in that it is one of the least healthy things that we can consume it's basically drinking sugar right and and and so you know in in in limited amounts
30:14 presumably it's it's okay but the amount of Coca-Cola that a lot of people drink especially here in the United States is definitely a critical vulnerability right and you can see lots of health advocates who if they had their way they would outlaw uh soda pop not just not just Coca-Cola of course but but all soda pop Pepsi Mountain Dew all all that stuff right um there are schools that uh don't permit uh children to drink soda pop they've gotten rid of of um what do you call them vending machines with with soda in them and that sort of thing
30:50 right so um when we when we look in business about when we look at our businesses we need to examine them with an eye to what are our key strengths and what are our critical vulnerabilities and if if we have a key strength is that key strength also a critical vulnerability that if it were uh attacked I put that in quot because you know business is not a kinetic activity like Warfare where we're going to you know well God forbid I mean we we
31:25 saw the the murder of the um United Health CEO you know God forbid that that business does become that kind of kinetic activity but where are where are where May our core strengths also be critical vulnerabilities because they're they're subject to being undermined by a competitor okay and and this is so you know you see this well I actually I haven't seen these commercials for a while but I used to see I'm trying to
32:00 think of the I think it was a water company and they would they were attacking soda pop as being you know sugary you know horrible stuff for you and you should drink water instead right um and they've had a lot of success with that by the way I know for my daughter she will not drink soda pop she she will only drink water okay obviously a healthier choice for her um but the um you know your our competitors will try to take advantage of our critical vulnerabilities so in in my I'll use my profession as an example so the key
32:37 strength U of being an independent trustee or a private trustee is you know for example we'll go to the home of of a beneficiary or we'll go to the home of a grantor sit down with them talk with them see what's there we'll go to the home of a decedent and deal with the personal property that was left behind we'll do that ourselves in some cases whereas a trust company which is another organization that provides essentially the same Services as an independent
33:12 trustee they're not going to do those kind of things okay they're not set up to do it it's just out of their Ken uh so a key strength of of a private uh trustee or or a an independent trustee is we can provide much more personalized onthe scene service than a trust company does okay so that's our core strength uh our core one of our core vulnerabilities though is we typically don't have the kind of
33:49 financial strength that a trust company has and because ours is a new profession many many people in the probate the trust and and estate and probate world have never heard of us and so when they do they're kind like what's that why would I want to have an independent trustee I'd rather have a trust company to handle things they've been around for a hundred years I know they're going to be around for a hundred years more so that's a critical vulnerability so in my in my business I have to accentuate the strengths that my
34:24 profession brings to the table while demonstrating that the critical vulnerabilities of my practice are actually not nearly as great as they may be made out to be by say trust companies um and that indeed the core the key core strengths are really much much bigger and more important to a client than any critical vulnerability would be one of the ways that that's that that happens here in California is you have to be licensed to pursue my profession so
34:59 people look at licensing as a a a form of credibility um building aspect of a profession another way that that we're doing it is through this organization I mentioned the independent trustee Alliance where we've come together and professionalized our our our business are our are standing we we created certifications that attest to the knowledge and experience of the people who have those certifications right so all of those are designed to address
35:34 critical vulnerabilities that we have and shift the center of gravity which is the original topic that I was dealing with right so we need to be aware of those things and and and deal with them as they actually are not as we hope they might be okay next is the um the culminating point of Victory so it is the case often times in war
36:10 that an advance will be so successful that uh the the advancing Army will outrun its ability to resupply itself okay and so the the logistic logistic aspect of keeping that Army supplied fails okay and at that point what the the the ability to to be aggressive turns and now the momentum
36:45 becomes a liability or at least a vulnerability right because now the the Army is far Advanced but it can't get food to its soldiers it can't get ammunition to to defend itself against a Counterattack right and so there armies need to have a sense of where is the culminating point of Victory and you we saw this in World War II so uh Bernard Montgomery Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery the the the most senior British ground Commander he
37:23 believed in pushing to the point of Victory and then consolidating his stopping consolidating his ground or even backing off a little bit consolidating his hold and then moving forward again okay whereas Patton believed in continually moving forward never sto to to solidify your hold always push forward now the genius of Patton wasn't that he had the idea to do that it was that he had the ability
37:58 to motivate his staff to be able to handle the logistical problems that would otherwise have Arisen by this continual pushing so Patton's Army didn't run out of food didn't run out of ammunition okay and that's why he was successful with that type of warfare uh Bernard Montgomery was not able to do that he that was not a a a a skill that he had and so he had to stop periodically in order to make
38:34 sure that his legistics his Supply train kept up with him and he didn't move to the point where all of a sudden now he was vulnerable to Counterattack okay so understanding your own business with regard to the culminating point of Victory is important some businesses may be like Patton where they are so well organized so highly integrated everybody is so on top of their game they can always be pushing forward and they and they don't have to worry about outstripping their Logistics others just
39:12 may not work that way for a variety of reasons okay now if you are a solo shop like me right it's hard to constantly be pushing right because for one thing gets physically and mentally exhausting after a while and so then mistakes start happening and so I think you know the size of business the people involved the objective of the business all of these play into understanding what is the culminating point of Victory and I know
39:47 for myself I plan to take downtime at the end of each calendar year in order to assess in in in in order to assess the year that's happened in order to examine my plans for the year going forward and also just to rest and and build up my strength not unlike each day we need to get some sleep each Peri business period we also need to my my metaphor that I've used before sharpen our axes we need to
40:22 take some time uh to do that so now if you have a large company where you're able to maybe you're a Manufacturing Company where you're able to run multiple shifts so you can always keep production going you never have to worry about not having enough product to sell and you have multiple uh Outlets uh in order through which you can sell your product and some sell well during times of expansion and others sell well during times of recession so maybe you can
40:58 always be pushing forward in the way that General Patton did okay but in other cases if you've got a product that it sells well when the economy is booming but when things are tough like they'll take take the Cannabis industry here in in California at least here in Los Angeles so cannabis was selling really well when the economy was great but as inflation heated up and as wages didn't keep case a lot of cannabis retailers Distributors and cultivators have gone out of business because it
41:34 turns out that cannabis is more of a luxury item or at least that's how people treat it as opposed to a staple right so if you're if you're manufacturing um food right people need to eat no matter what the economic circumstances are okay however there's a difference between you're providing you know fresh fruits and vegetables and you're provid you're providing caviar and champagne right caviar and champagne when the economy is booming are doing
42:10 well when the economy is not booming probably not doing as well whereas people you know generally speaking eat at least some fruits and vegetables no matter what the economic conditions are right so we need to look at our our center of gravity our key strengths and critical vulnerabilities and those will help guide us to understanding what is the culminating point of victory for our particular business okay and I'm gonna I'm goingon to talk about uh one
42:45 more excuse me and um and that is uh uh that well let's see uh okay so the nature of competition and and and this relates to uh so so CL claw said you know war is a dynamic interaction between opposing forces where actions provoke reactions which in turn provoke other reactions and it's back and forth right War does not happen in a vacuum okay it's two forces or
43:23 maybe three forces coming together in conflict and so we can have the best plan in the world but we can't necessarily predict how the enemy is going to react to our attack and so while we may think they're going to respond one way and plan for that if they respond a different way we we need either to have uh alternate response plans depending on the enemy uh reacts or we need to very
44:01 quickly be able to uh change our response in order to deal with the the the re our enemy's reaction as it's actually happening one of those two things and really probably both because no matter how many contingency plans we have we may not have the one that exactly matches how the how the enemy reacts to our attack or if maybe we didn't initiate the attack maybe we we were the we were the counter attackers okay but the the enemy
44:36 is if the enemy attacks us and we Counterattack that's not the end of it right there's going to be a Counterattack to our Counterattack and so we've got to be anticipating what those will be have multiple response plans and and in the end we also need to be flexible enough that we can tweak if not make larger changes to our response to how the enemy comes back at us in order to be successful so the same is true in business and that is in in
45:11 business rarely if ever are we the sole supplier of a product or service there's almost always competitors now one of the difficult things is we may be the only uh company supplying a particular product let's say and we may think okay we've got a captive Market we have essentially a monopoly because we're the only ones providing this however we may be misreading the industry that we're in
45:47 okay i' I've talked about this example before so the railroad industry thought that they were in the business of of moving Goods by rail okay unfortunately for the railroad industry they didn't realize that wasn't their business their business was transporting more broadly people and goods okay and by not understanding that uh trains in terms of of passenger
46:23 trains lost out to buses and airplanes okay and for a while they started losing out to trucks in terms of Transportation of goods okay now railroads have have have well I mean passenger railroads for all intents and purposes doesn't really exist as a business in the United States there's Amtrak but Amtrak has has not made money um except for on on certain you know ver certain very specific routes Amtrak has lost money for decades and Dees right so there's no real
47:00 viable passenger rail business in the United States anymore however the freight rail business has rebounded from its low point and has become a profitable business and that's because it has recognized it's it's in the goods transportation business not the moving stuff by rails business and so it's integrated with with Trucking with air Etc and and and indeed uh when you know this has all become a very complex system in the United States
47:35 okay and so um when we talk about the Dynamics between opposing forces we have to be aware that even though we may think there is no opposing Force we we may need to pull back our our lens and say wait a minute indeed there are opposing forces it's just we've we've misread the market in which we're operating okay and and and so we we need to keep a very
48:10 close and continuous eye on the nature of competition to make sure that we we don't lose out to our Rivals so I was um talking with uh I I don't remember who it was um sometime in the last few weeks about the crypto industry so when people hear crypto these days I think they they're generally thinking about cryptocurrencies and and so so crypto is you know it's you know things like Bitcoin and doic Coin and those kind of
48:46 things and certainly that remains a part of crypto but um where crypto evidently is is really having an impact on business is in the movement of money okay so whereas in the conventional banking system um if I put in an order to move money let's say on a Friday afternoon okay those funds probably won't move until Monday and so in fact
49:23 if I need funds to get somewhere by Saturday and it's Friday it may actually be faster for me or I mean I can move them I can move the money more quickly by going to the bank pulling those funds out of the bank getting on an airplane flying where I need to go and delivering the funds to where they need to go that will be faster than the the the conventional bank money transfer service the way it works right now crypto has no
49:58 such um uh limitations so uh crypto can be sent 24 hours a day seven days a week holidays included and and and it's in the nature of the blockchain technology that undergirds crypto that allows it to be moved around and so crypto the crypto industry is morphing in into a payments industry where people can convert let's say
50:33 dollars into a stable what's called a stable coin where one coin is worth $1 those stable coins then can be transferred 24 hours a day seven days a week where on the other end the recipient can transfer them back into dollars from the stable coin and and so if you've been Hearing in the in the news recently different discussions about how the crypto industry uh you know supported uh president Trump in in the recent presidential election um it
51:09 has from from what I've been learning about the industry it has much more to do with this broader view of the crypto industry than it has to do with various cryptocurrencies okay and so this is why uh these the crypto companies are are so interested in what's going to be happening to them from a regulatory standpoint because they're actually in the business of moving money which which is in direct competition with the banking system okay
51:47 now I don't I don't know if banks have have coton on to this yet but if they haven't they need to beware um because banks are not uh you know they don't have a monopoly anymore over moving money more and more so you know people are looking for alternative ways of of moving funds that that are more aligned with with their lives and their businesses okay so um all of these so so the nature of competition we
52:23 really need to understand that in a much more complex way way uh than than than we might think and and and again K clous Woods can help us with that so I I went over I think about eight ideas from on War by General Carl Von ktz I encourage you to to to get the book and read the book I I will put a link to the book on on Amazon it will be a an affiliate link so if if you click through on the link and buy the book I I think I get you know like two or three cents or something like that um but again it's it's one of the two
53:01 most iconic books on Military strategy and and so many of the ideas have a onetoone correlation with how we run our businesses and professions I think you will find a very rich mind there from which to get ideas that will help you uh in in your professional lives so I thank you very much for joining me today today especially those of you joining me live I always get a kick out of watching my little ticker here um and on how many people are are uh watching me as I go um
53:37 and I I know there's there's usually H one friend of mine L man from uh from Africa who watches so I just want um so I just want to say um hi to you uh and thank you for tuning in and tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time is my my show people making money I had to think about that for a second and I'm going to be talking about a subject that I think has really really should be top of mind to anyone who is is looking to maintain
54:14 achieve and maintain Business and Professional success and that is continuous skills and knowledge Improvement so the reality is that we live in a dynamic business environment and technology is changing ways of doing things are changing how people look at different aspects of their lives are changing and we have to keep up with these changes in order to keep our businesses not ju not just viable but strong so we need to have a plan of
54:50 continual or continuous I should say uh education Contin building of skills so that we can be prepared to to make those you know to to to make the right strategic and tactical and operational decisions and hopefully you will include business lessons from the military in that see um you know Shameless plug for my for my for my show and that but this is this is one of the ways that that we can come together to figure out what do we need to be doing what do we need to be thinking about uh
55:26 what skills do we need to be working on in in order to maintain momentum in our professional lives so that's again Wednesday at 10: am and then next week Monday at 10: am uh Pacific time is my show trust in Estates weekly it is exactly what it says and then a week from today I'll be back with the next edition of business lessons from the military so again thank you so much for joining me today wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and signing off as I always do Marie darling you are my bell
56:04 courage