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Sam Taggart 00:39
This is Sam Taggart with the D2D podcast and I am coming at you with Zack Knight just like the knight in shining armor. And a couple little announcements though before we get really rolling is we have D2DCon full fling, and it is going to be secret and you cannot get your ticket yet because of COVID but we are going to be hosting it January 7 through the 9th and it will be a private Leadership Summit. Not so much like we have in the past. So we are capping it at around 400 to 500 we’re trying to find a venue so that no COVID people can shut us down. What’s interesting about this whole podcast was Zach Knight as he is the first millet he’s contracted by the government to be as COVID response guys so I’m actually we’re gonna jam on COVID for a second now that you told me that I’m like “shoo all these listeners want to hear this” because this guy has a you know, he huge background in police force and specially in training policemen and he has a consulting business on security not like the security as we know it like we’re selling security systems. He sells like security people that like bust a cap and like break your legs if you do stupid stuff. So is that this this will be This will be fun. This will be fun, Zach so so I’m going to talk COVID for a second because it’s kind of thrown a loop in all of our events. We host a ton of live events. And anyway, I I was always like, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? And I’m like fetch I’m throwing DDD con, we’re still doing it. It’s happening no matter what. I’m going to find a ranch in the middle of nowhere, so no police can mess with us. And we’re just gonna throw it anyway. So come at your own rest. So it’s for the leaders and the bad days, then it’d be a little bit more private, so it’ll be fun. So anyways, Zack, welcome to the show. I had to make that announcement real quick. Before I can to welcome you on because everybody’s probably wondering What the freak is going on with our big event. But um, yeah. So tell us a little bit about you your background in a nutshell. And give us the give us the lowdown.

Zack Knight 02:33
Yeah, Sam, I appreciate you having me, my friend. always excited to hop on another podcast and you pretty much hit the nail on the head man. I became a cop at 21 did that for seven years. And I did everything from undercover narcotics to swat, you name it, I did all the fun Call of Duty type stuff. But it wasn’t big and bad enough for me. So I put it two weeks in and left the police department to go directly into the military, where I became an infantry officer. Most recently in 2019. I was deployed with special forces in Afghanistan, where we ran combat missions every four days. And I was the muscle behind there planning essentially with my platoon of 35 guys, all through that once I left the police department I actually started one business which is knife protection. The is more of a security consulting firm where we you know, kind of highlight the weaknesses, essentially SWOT analysis type, where we highlight strengths and weaknesses of security. And then since then, I’ve started about five other businesses. The most prominent one currently is be tactical leader where we focus on premier leadership and building cultures and organizations.

Sam Taggart 03:43
So it’s so fun I I’ve read, I recently interviewed a few kind of military, retired police retired, you know, this has kind of been a theme lately, where you’re taking this whole military police structure and techniques and tactics and putting it into business and leadership and sales. And so, you know, I’ve done a recent podcast, I’m actually going to make this completely different podcasts than the last one on a similar topic, but we’re going to talk the word tactical. What the frick does that mean when you say I have a podcast so those that like podcasts, he’s got a podcast, go check it out. It’s called be a tactical leader. But the word tactical What the freak does that even mean? Because it’s really kind of a military term. It sounds like but what does that mean?

Zack Knight 04:27
It is a military, even law enforcement SWAT type term, but when I relay it from the battlefield into the boardroom, tactical is all about the tactics, what tactics can you use, where on my show, I really interview top level CEOs, consultants, people that are at the premiere of what they’ve done and have been doing. And I find out the actionable advice. How can you be tactical about growing a sales team? How can you be tactical about building a diverse workplace? You know, it’s really those action steps of how you’re doing it smartly and intelligent. Where you don’t have to worry about the the crappy product, if you will, of not having that really honed in workforce.

Sam Taggart 05:09
Love that. So now you take the military case. So what are the common threads between military police force and business?

Zack Knight 05:19
You know, I think the biggest piece is that it really set me up for great time management, and great self discipline, where as an entrepreneur, now I’m sure a lot of people can relate. there’s times where it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning, right? If you’re on your own schedule, and you don’t schedule it out appropriately, you know, do your proper time management, I’m still wake up at 430 in the morning, go work out get my day going early, before clients start calling. And some of the newer entrepreneurs that I’ve coached a big part of that is poor time management, where they just can’t get enough hours in the day because they want to sleep till nine because it’s their schedule, right. And then by the time dinner rolls around, you’re already worn out, and you’re watching Netflix, and a big piece of what I focus on is that premiere time management where you’re just getting more out of your day, because we don’t have the 24 hours as it is.

Sam Taggart 06:09
I love that. So, you know, do you feel like in today’s world, you’re seeing more and more of a class of entrepreneurs that tried to kind of cut out the discipline element to being successful.

Zack Knight 06:23
Yeah, I think that’s a big piece of it, that’s kind of that similar, similar to that tactical piece that I really like speaking on, with my own clients where, you know, if you’re not disciplined, you’re never going to be strategic in what you’re doing and tactical, essentially the same word for strategic, right? How can be strategic and everything you’re doing. And if you’re not planning that out, I’m very specific about my starting with my morning routine, where, you know, it starts with waking up feeding the dogs writing three things I’m grateful for in the mirror, and then going directly to the gym, you know, there’s no other change to that every morning, where my day is structured like that. And having that type of discipline just sets the tone for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the year, where if you can maintain that, and can continue that consistency, because consistency is key across everything we do right as entrepreneurs, so it’s just a big piece of it, where a lot of people I think are missing that at times.

Sam Taggart 07:15
So you’ve you helped a lot of SEO, like one of your businesses kind of coaching SEO and operations and things like that, because that’s really where things get tactical sales is one thing, you know, it’s like, very much so brute force, right? And then if you had to think about it’s like, we got the brute force and the sales and then we got like the SEO elements, the systems the operations, that’s very tactical and technical. So the question would be when you talk about consistency morning routine, have you noticed that there’s tactics and techniques of consistency and business routine? Like is there elements of like, you know, you’re like great when the morning have a crush it you know, be disciplined, but it’s like what are the disciplines in the everyday work life you’ll see as a America break this down to the sales individual. So if you’re coaching, let’s say a sales rep. And obviously, you know, what’s fun, guys. So offline, Zack, and I jammed he did do door to door he worked for the weed man. So he would sell literally kilos of marijuana. Door to Door and that’s right, right, the weed man?

Zack Knight 08:17
That’s so wrong. Don’t ruin my brand. That’s so wrong. Well, we would cut the grass not sell the grass, totally different things.

Sam Taggart 08:26
So knocking on doors saying Hi, I’m with the weed man. Not that weed. This weed, not the stuff you smoke. No. So anyway, so he’s been in our shoes, he gets it, he seen it. So you probably can relate to that door to door guy that’s getting his face kicked. And so let’s start there. What is the what is the consistency discipline that you would say to that guy? That’s not just about winning the morning, but winning the day? What would you give him?

Zack Knight 08:50
A big piece of where I see operations meet sales is structure, right? That’s a big piece of sales process, right? You have to have that process you’re walking the client through. And if you don’t have that structured and discipline, it kind of just becomes you blurting out a whole bunch of random nonsense, right? But there’s, if you’re really good at door to door sales, if you’re really good at sales, in general, you have that sales funnel, where you’re talking people through, you’re starting with the you know, the highlight all the way down into where where’s the value in what you’re talking about, where’s the value for that client. And if you don’t have that conversation structured, it’s kind of just like you talking to talk. So it really becomes that operational tactical piece of planning that out so that you know exactly where you want the conversation to go. And it gets to be routine where every client kind of goes through that same funnel, and you’re able to easily explain the value to that particular client.

Sam Taggart 09:46
Love that. Love that. Now what about in business? Where did that where does the consistency and discipline element show up as like a CEO or eye level leader

Zack Knight 09:58
You know, a big piece Have it for me at that sea level. Individual is a really focuses on consistency as a leader. And that goes, there’s a wide variety that that kind of delves into a big piece for me. And what I love to talk about is servant leadership. Kind of like a facilitative, leader style, where you’re consistently showing up in that way. You’re not, you know, bipolar, where one day you’re facilitator, the next day you’re dictator, you know, there’s got to be consistency of how you show up for your operations for your organization.

Sam Taggart 10:38
You know, how many times you know, I mean, time, yeah, you know, times I see managers that are like, one day like, Dude, what’s up, man, let’s go, come on, guys. And then the next day, they’re like, hey, if you don’t sell today, I’m freaking out. And you’re just, you know, and you’re like, Whoa, dude, where did this little incredible hold come out of like, jeez, you know, so I noticed it a lot. And I, I, I try to be very conscious and consistent, as well, because I have, I have days where I’m like, I literally want to slap somebody. But that would be inconsistent with how I my Mo, as a leader, so

Zack Knight 11:13
Because you set the tone as a leader, like, literally every person in your organization is going to feed off of you. And if you’re there to facilitate for them, and helping them accomplish the mission, they’re gonna then facilitate for you in the organization where you’re now having them facilitate every piece of your mission vision values, because you’re their facilitator, it just becomes a cycle of great teamwork. And that’s really what it’s about. But it all starts with that leader.

Sam Taggart 11:38
Love that. So let’s talk about just like simple parallels. So let’s say I’m in a battlefield. You know, you obviously served overseas, you probably had some crazy stories, you have any like crazy story, just in a nutshell that you’re like, you know, you’re in Afghanistan, home girls, like, Hey, what’s up? And then she has like a bomb strapped to her or something like, I don’t know. Like, there’s got to be something is there some like wild story that we’re all like waiting to hear? Or in the police force?

Zack Knight 12:07
I’ll be honest, there are some but it’s classified, and I’d have to kill you know, you know, honestly, the funniest story, and it’s kind of a simplistic thing, but the army doesn’t really feed you well. In Afghanistan, you can’t get food, we’re four days from the nearest base, where every we’d get food deliveries once a week, and at least three of the floor trucks will get blown up on the way to us. So we’re either eating shrapnel or eating really terrible army food, which is about like eating trapnell. And the Afghans we worked with would bring us food. And it’s like, Man, this is really good food, but you never question what it is because this is good food. Right? Yeah. And come to find out. As we’re departing the country, we finally find out that the bread that they make, they make with their feet, kind of like we make wine in the States. Then granted, these are not the most hygienic people. So for eight months, I’m sitting here eating this foot bread that is delicious. Mind you, if I had never known it would have been great.

Sam Taggart 13:10
athlete’s foot does have a good flavor. Let’s just say it’s a little bit of dust. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. That’s nasty.

Zack Knight 13:20
And not to mention the going away celebratory feast we had we actually had to put around the clock goat protecting it from extra seasoning, because we call it a guy. Yeah. So I’m gonna leave that very vague. But if you can kind of

Sam Taggart 13:37
Yes, I can only imagine. I can only I can use my imagination on that. Okay, so so you’re out there in the battlefield? I’m assuming you were in, you know, were you ever in firefights? I’m assuming, right?

Zack Knight 13:50
Yeah, there were there were a couple times. I say a couple times. Like I said, we ran operations every four days with the greenbrae teams. And we lost a few guys here. And there. We got ambushed a couple times. Overall, from our team, we lost five guys from the camp we were on over the course of those eight months. So you know, a lot of people don’t realize what’s actually still going on over there. Then I would say every other day, we had a bomb or a mortar go off near us a rocket go by us at least every other day. And we don’t have the aerial defense that you do on the bigger basis. We were out on a faab way out in the country. Where’s just us? And yeah, so it’s still an active battlefield. A lot of people don’t realize how active it really still is.

Sam Taggart 14:36
That’s crazy. So I want to appreciate you for your service and what you’ve done and your team. So how, like, you’re in this active battlefield. So let’s let’s call that the streets. Okay, so we got the streets. I’m out there firing away selling deals. And, you know, every once in a while we lose a we lose a soldier meaning they quit and they go home, they can’t hack it. We’ll call that the equivalent of losing a soldier. What’s the importance of team and the platoon versus being the sniper being just the one man, I’m gonna just run out into the frickin film and shoot some people like, like, how is it? Why is teams so important when it comes to? Like when you say your platoon Like what? Like, how does team play a part instead of the individual?

Zack Knight 15:23
Man, it’s without a team, nothing happens, right? Without proper delegation, nothing happens. And given that I was the highest ranking guy in my area. So I dad 35 guys reporting to me more some with more years on their belt, some with more years in the military. And the crazy thing about how it worked is I got that platoon. Two months before we were in country running these operations. So I literally had two months to develop a culture within these 35 guys of black, white, Hispanic, Asian, from 18 to 48, that just a wide variety of backgrounds, socio economic backgrounds, similar to a diverse workforce that you’re going to have in large organizations. And I had two months to condition them, train them, but also lead them to where if I say two words on the battlefield, they react, right. They know, I’m speaking during high stress, there’s no question of why is that jackass saying that? Sorry, if I can’t cuss on this one. But bleep that one out. But why is that aihole saying that and questioning them, you know, and where I correlate that back to the battlefield is if you’re losing soldiers, something’s wrong. You’re losing employees, they’re quitting. They generally never quit a job, they quit the boss, right? So it really takes a level of introspection to look at why are these people leaving me? Why are the people not buying into our mission? Why are they not accomplishing our mission? What happened that was sabotage and a big piece of how I looked at that situation was through Extreme Ownership. But Jocko Willink book, absolutely love it, but it’s how I buy into being a leader is if something doesn’t happen, if we don’t hit our quota, if we don’t hit our sales number, if we don’t hit X, Y, and Z, who’s responsible? I am, that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna go find the cause of why we didn’t hit those. The end of the day, if I’m a executive vice president reporting to the board or reporting to the C level, still my responsibility to hit those numbers, and you have to take that ownership. And when you take that ownership, the team takes that ownership. And then that team environment just again feeds off itself where everybody’s taking ownership for the smallest detail. those details don’t get missed, those sales don’t get missed, those clients don’t get dropped off. And that’s a big piece of again, that culture is so vital, especially in a high performance sales team. I mean, that’s a stressful, you get rejected every single day. It’s nothing but no, no, no one door slammed in your face, literally, for those door to door folks out there. And it takes a lot of resolve to continue that mission and continue fighting. If you don’t have that leader taking ownership and kind of shielding the team from all the BS coming down from the big boss, then there’s just going to be a miserable work environment and miserable culture and zero morale to go accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish. 100% 100%

Sam Taggart 18:15
And we see it so often we see kind of this from the top down. Sometimes that leader doesn’t know how to create this culture and they don’t take ownership over the culture. They’re kind of like I just got dealt with a bunch of crappy reps. You guys are lazy. Like why aren’t you performing? Like, follow me on a team a players like Where can I go find talent? You know? And I’m sure everybody that joined your platoon, you weren’t sitting there like, yeah, that guy’s a frickin shooter. You know what I mean? You’re probably like, if I could have a bunch of those guys, my life would be really easy. But I got dealt the cards 18 year old punk that’s like nervous one to go home because he’s scared out of his mind. And he got the 44 year old dude. It’s like, why would I listen to you? You’re like, half my age. Shut up. You know, I mean, I I’m sure you’ve been in that situation. Me too. I’ve just done it in a sales army versus the, you know, actual Special Forces Green Berets situation. So what’s interesting is you had two months of conditioning. So talk to me about this conditioning. And I am in the training company, right? We have consulting, we have online training, we have bomb squad people, we literally called the bomb squad and they have missions and they drop ship into companies and just like blow them up. It’s sick. So yeah, dude. It’s very and I have a tactical Partner Manager position in my company where I have to, we call them TPM. And everyone’s like, What the frick is a TPM? What’s a technical Partner Manager, like they literally you’re managing your partner, they’re like, they do everything for you. They build your training and onboarding, they build your you know, your your online training, they do your video editing your design, like they do all the system so that you guys can go sell and recruit like that’s like what our business is, right? So but what’s funny, is, you said conditioning for two months, I had two months of conditioning. So was this pre going out there to Afghanistan or was There’s out there in Afghanistan, I had to condition them, like talk to me about conditioning.

Zack Knight 20:05
So this was actually two months prior to leaving United States, we, we had a two month train up, where it was literally learning everything from individual soldier tactics, all the way up to training how to move as a unit how to drive vehicles, because their military vehicles are different beast, right. So whatever equipment we’re falling in on in country, we got a little bit of training here before is literally lives on the line out there. And a big piece to your point when you’re training these people, 60 days is not a long time. But really thinking about how much time and effort you can put in in 60 days, there’s a lot you can accomplish to reshape a underperforming sales team if you’re doing it right.

Sam Taggart 20:47
So do you feel like when you deal with companies, and you deal with the military and police force and all this kind of stuff? Like do you feel like a lot of times they don’t put enough emphasis on this conditioning phase?

20:58
I do. I really do. I think even speaking on my experience from law enforcement now, I think there’s that whole community is underserved in training, they’re under trained, they’re under underperforming because they don’t have the tactical technical expertise to accomplish the mission. Now, is that the failure on the individual? I don’t think so. I think the failure on that is the organization or the leader that’s unwilling to pony up that money. They’re unwilling to spend that money to train their people. And there’s an old adage that I absolutely love that says, What if we train them and they leave? And the scary part is, what if you don’t train them and they stay?

Sam Taggart 21:44
You heard it firsthand. Didn’t he nugget right there? What if you train them and they leave? You know, many times I hear that, like, it’s just like, so are you playing to lose? Like, are you you’re literally playing to lose, like, and I hear all the time. They’re like, well, I don’t want to pay for your training. And I don’t want to consolidate and for these guys to quit, and I’m like, What if you train them? And what if you don’t train them? They stay? Or what if you don’t train them and they quit here in the same boat? Like, like, I’m like, do you think the chances are higher if you actually had some systems and tools and like, you’ve invested time, energy and money into this? Because it’s it’s it’s embarrassing, like and I go to company after company after company. I was with one yesterday and I was like, how many videos you but they have 200 sales guys, I got like five videos and I’m like, Okay, well, what happens when a guy has a question about this? What happens? The guy has a question about this. It’s like, the like, the whole like, like now you these resourceless he literally is resourceless No, you’re not. That’s a frickin word. Scene resource. recourses are a word. Okay. So I don’t want to like shift gears too much. We don’t have tons of time. But I get well, I guess I’m training. So let me one last question on this conditioning phase best practices in between, you know, how much of it was classroom versus in person versus, you know, experiential versus online? So you found a good mix in, in business or military like, like, what have you found is a good mix to really, like you said, I have 60 days, some people got six days. So you know, like, Is there a good percentage allocation that you found has been kind of a good mix?

Zack Knight 23:27
You know, that’s a heck of a question because it’s so difficult to put a solid number on that. And I have 12 years of experience training people from field training as a law enforcement officer training at the academy as a teacher, to I moved from there went to Dale Carnegie and taught the Dale Carnegie course here in Atlanta, moved from that and started teaching people through the military as a certified trainer in the military. And now it’s turned into coaching in business and coaching people through operations. And, you know, what I have found is you have to have a great mix of all of the above. But the brain can only handle as much as the book can absorb, right or brain can only absorb as much as the bucket handle. Which means if you’re sitting in a classroom for eight hours a day, not getting up getting energy getting moving, I feel like there’s a failure. There were some days Yes, we have to sit there for eight hours to get through the PowerPoint. But death by PowerPoint is a real thing. And if you don’t have that applicable training, or your hands on, and you’re actually out there, you know, I show you, you show me and then you go do I think it’s a great process where that’s how we structured it in law enforcement, you start off by watching me, you know, and then you do a little bit, and then you go do and I think that’s such a great structure attached. But yes, there’s book learning, there’s video learning, there’s all that attached to it, but until you’re politically putting that into gear, I don’t think it’s going to be one of those actually holds in there. And a lot of people shy away from it because that’s where the expense comes from. Right. That’s where the man hours come from where you have to have that trainer on top and it And people can look at it like, Man, that’s too much money. But think about the ROI. You’re getting back from that investment in training. You can’t, you can put $1 sign on, and I guarantee you to see what’s performing afterwards compared to before the training. There’s so many other intangibles attached to morale, motivation, culture, by providing that train, that’s going to totally shift that entire sales team that will revolutionize the overall performance of the organization.

Sam Taggart 25:30
Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. What do you when you say, you know, this, dude, it’s, I don’t mean to like toot our own horn. But that’s why we built the bomb squad. A lot of people saw us is like, Hey, we’re just like an online training thing. Or, you know, you’ll just do a zoom thing. I’m like, No, we F and like, like, Saturday, I ship out to go to Dallas to go knock doors with a dude in Dallas to like, show him He’s like, he just needs to get fired up. I’m like, I’m out there. Let’s go. And I think that a lot of people forget that element of like, see one, do one and then teach one I found like a big piece of conditioning is even though there may be two weeks in, have them teach the little men like the new hire class, have them teach, teach the correlation. It’s like, Okay, you’ve got the the training next week. And then it’s like, what, I’m the new guy. Exactly. And it forces them.

Zack Knight 26:25
That is the best way to learn, man. Every time I teach another course, I learned something else about the material I’m teaching. And it is so powerful to have. That’s exactly what we did. And as part of our train up was that 18 year old is teaching the rest of the platoon how to take apart a weapon, because he will never forget, because he wants to make sure he’s performing during that training. So he’s never gonna forget how to take that weapon apart to clean it is so powerful to do that.

Sam Taggart 26:53
I I can’t explain enough how many times you’ll go all year and the one dude did the training the whole time? You know what I mean? That like, there’s that? Hey, guys, here go Sam. Again, you know, I’ve heard enough to say. It’s like No, dude, like, get everybody involved, get them invested, get them, get them fired up by them having to be the one to present and you guys sit your butt in the chair and be the student. Because a lot of times I’ve learned a lot of stuff from that new guy been like, that actually probably would work. Dang, that was creative. You know what I mean? Like, I think a lot of times when it comes to training, we get stuck thinking we know best. So then we’re the only ones that should be teaching. And it actually diminishes opportunities for everybody else. So I love that. Okay, so shifting gears because I have two like weird non sales related non even, like probably more so just my own frickin selfish questions. One has to do with police right now. And one has to do with COVID right now, obviously, you’re probably feet, you’re probably pretty vested in this whole cops in the world. Like, you know, you’re you’re a white cop, and everybody’s getting shot out and stupid. Like, it’s just like the whole thing with this whole thing. And I don’t get like political. But I’m curious, what’s your two cents on this whole situation?

Zack Knight 28:10
Man, let me lay a little bit more context around that were in 2014 2015 when Ferguson happened, which is really the epicenter for all of this started with BLM. And that whole movement. About three weeks after that happened, our SWAT team shot and killed a black guy. And I pleased here in Atlanta in the community, I literally grew up playing t ball in. And it turned around to being people that I grew up with, started spitting on because I’m a white bald guy, right? There’s a lot of hate. They’re attached to me, we’re in a uniform. My wife, who is black was also a police officer was called a traitor to our own people, because she’s a black cop. And there are so many things about that, that enraged me overall. And now they’re calling to defund the police. And that’s such a good luck if you defund the police. And I think that that’s kind of a symptom, right? I think the big part of what needs to happen is a standardization of training. Again, we’ll talk about training all day long, a standardization of training across the country, where if you go from here in Atlanta, to a suburb department in Atlanta, completely different standards, completely different policies, not to mention going from here to California, or here to Chicago here to Minneapolis. The crazy thing about what happened in Minneapolis, is that those officers acted within their policy, because policies are so different across everywhere. There’s zero standardization, and what needs to happen to standardize those policies, standardized training, that is so vital. When that officer did, obviously is egregious and ethically I don’t agree with but you can’t point and say you weren’t trained that way. And that’s a terrible thing to happen and something so high risk that literally deals with life and death every single day.

Sam Taggart 30:06
Yeah, I, I couldn’t agree more, you know, when they started taking away funding, I’m like, guys, these these dudes are risking their life to help protect us and making very little money like and have very little resource allocation. And I’m like, I think that’s the last thing like, like, that’s why I kind of brought this up as I go. It’s a training issue, which is a funding issue, which is a, you know, what it takes to become a cop issue. And I’m sitting there like, yet we’re gonna scale everything back and just let the streets go wild like that. That seems like a really good answer. So I’m like, I’m glad we’re on the same wavelength. And I’m like, I, I see that, you know, when we talk about conditioning, it’s like you spent six months conditioning. It’s like, Well, yeah, they go through a police academy. But like you said, the standardization is different everywhere. There’s so many, you know, and blame the entire police force in the America, black, white, Asian, Mexican, doesn’t matter. There’s, there’s black cops, white cars, Mexican cops, Asian, you know, I mean, like, at the end of the day, like, why don’t we just get better a trend and up level, the standard and crime is crime, whether it’s a white dude, an Asian dude committing crime, like, it doesn’t matter. Like, we just need to know, how do we pull the trigger when we need to pull the trigger? And what’s the right way to do it? So I think that I think you’re so right. And by doing that, you see the abnormality? Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.

Zack Knight 31:32
No, no, sorry, my internet went crazy. Um, by standardizing that you give then can pointed direct finger abnormalities, it’s no different than training a sales team, you have to have those metrics, right. And by creating standards, you can use metrics and KPIs to see what’s abnormal, you can break it down to being that scientific quote, unquote, if you will, but there has to be that standard in place first, before you can ever do that. And point a finger to that was completely out of line, you know.

Sam Taggart 32:02
So in I love how to tie it to sales, it’s like if I can train my sales teams and standardize it and create a company standard, these abnormalities are gonna happen, but they’re going to be a lot less. And here’s the thing with conditioning and better training, comes better predictability of success. A lot of people are nervous investing into their program. But I guarantee you, you’d spend $10, to make $100 over and over and over again, if you knew that that $10 investment into training made you $100 back. The problem is, is you just don’t have a system to track and report that to know that that $10 actually gave you that $100 back, or you’re trying to be ignorant and egotistical to say, No, that wasn’t it, it was just the rep. It’s like, I promise when you manage a system and not the people, you can plug all sorts of people in data and you have enough data to track, I promise that you’re going to see an increase the more conditioning you do that’s just plain and simple. Take any sports athletes, take any musicians take any kind of profession, better training equals better performance, plain and simple. And I think this is why I brought up the cop thing is I was like, man, I think it’s a training issue, too. That’s why I was gonna segue there is because I was like, it just bugs me that they’re getting all the scrutiny and I’m like, it has nothing to like, Yeah, dude messed up. And it messes up all the time. But it’s like, yeah, you didn’t sell that guy, you’re gonna you’re gonna scrutinize him like, Hey, you You didn’t sell today. It’s like, Well, you didn’t train me. It’s like, oh, okay, that’s fair. Because I could have that same argument. Right? And then the last thing is COVID. So you being involved in the whole COVID response. Talk to me about kind of your opinion on that. I’m just I’m curious. The Zac opinion. And I know I’m not trying to get super political, but you can say I’m opinionated. Man, I don’t know to measure if this is a setup or not. No, dude, hey, just say no, I just said f I’m throwing a 500 person live event whether there’s a red or we’re in the green. So that’s fair. That’s fair. Well, you got up.

34:02
Sorry. Yeah, my it started storming real bad here. So if my internet goes crazy, wave your hand and me sorry. Yeah, so my stance and again, it is in my opinion, is not the opinion of the army. It’s not the opinion of yada yada yada. My own opinion, is that it has been a gross overreaction knee jerk reaction to something that is no worse than the common flu. And something that again, and this it’s crazy to turn everything back to training. But a lot of what I do with my security consulting firm, is prepare people for the unknown, you know, prepare people for certain certain situations to avoid this type of issue. Avoid an epidemic grant and nobody could have predicted an epidemic like this right? But if you are trained and you’re prepared and how to respond in in my own space, I’m training people to how to respond to an active shooter situation. I’m training people how to evacuate or re evacuate, and something’s happening outside you need to get back inside real quick, no different than you can train for an epidemic and prepare for an epidemic of whatever proportion where you don’t have to knee jerk and totally crap on the economy crap on businesses, small businesses struggling so much right now, for the simple reason that people want to mask that’s not going to do much CDC is put out Department of Public Health has put out and I’ve worked hand in hand with both during this process since April, beginning of April, both of them put out the level of effectiveness is minimal by adding a mass to the situation is no different than with the common flu, wash your hands be hygenic don’t touch a bunch of dirty stuff. You know, like it really can be that simple. But people want to feed the beast of what it could be. And it just may it’s really wrecked a lot of good things we had going in the country.

Sam Taggart 36:00
Yeah, no, I it’s fun to hear from like, 70 has been kind of on the inside, that it’s refreshing. Because, you know, it’s been really annoying to watch some of the policies and the, you know, like, I was literally sitting outside and a cop walks by is like, Where’s your mask? I was like, what, like, what do you what are you doing? Like, I’m outside, I’m sitting by myself like, I was like, What? I’m like, really? Dude? Like, Come on, give me a break. Anyway, so I I’m glad to see you’re on this dead. So anybody that hates us, then Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend anybody, but life goes on. Okay, so I appreciate you being on the show. Man. This has been really interesting. I hope those that listened could get some value. So go follow. Be a tactical leader podcast, also Instagram. Share this, like we’d love to hear your guys’s comments and thoughts and ideas for topics that people are struggling with. So that we can we can obviously give you guys more value. So thanks for being on the show, Zack. And we’ll see you guys all in the next episode.