66. Pursuing Self Mastery with Tony Nash

Brock Briggs  0:00  

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt podcast, the show for current and former service members looking to grow. Today you're gonna hear from someone who has thought a lot about internal growth, Tony Nash. Tony is an army officer and the host of the Got Your Six podcast, another podcast you should be listening to. He hosts business and thought leaders for quick episodes that are high impact and perfect for a morning commute to get you driving hard on the day. If I had to sum up our conversation, it would be to say that we discussed self mastery. If you've read meditations or anything stoicism related, many of the concepts and ideas learned in that way of thinking underlie the principles we talked about today.

Tony talks about how to use physical triggers to slow down time, how to free yourself from the need to be good enough, and why we need to meet resistance every single day. We also talk about the power of repeated small actions on a long time horizon, something that we really jammed on working in the podcasting and media space. Tony brings it in this conversation. He's incredibly smart and makes big ideas seem small when it comes to relentlessly executing. Two quick things before we start, I've got my hands on a massive amount of Scuttlebutt podcast stickers that I'm trying to get out to listeners. If you read the newsletter, you already got this, but if not, head over to scuttlebuttpodcast.co. And in the most recent newsletter, you can find the link so I can mail you some merch, no cost to you, just to thank you for listening. 

Second, I've got this crazy goal of trying to hit 100,000 downloads this year. I'm putting in 110% effort to produce high quality conversations that help you think deeper, make more money and act more intelligently. While you're listening, take two seconds and share the show on your social media and tag me, maybe something you've learned, a good “screenshot” of the episode. Any of that is great. Those are going to be what helps get us to 100,000 downloads this year. Sit tight, you've got Tony Nash coming to you in three, two, one.

Brock Briggs

Tony, probably the most important thing that we need to get started with here tonight is the thing that you're the most proud of, but you never get to talk about.

Tony Nash  2:41  

I don't know what that would be. I think I'm proud of a lot of different things. But I'm very open to discuss all of them. 

Brock Briggs

Let's get into it. 

Tony Nash  

And there's some things that I'm proud of that they didn't end up working out. Or you know, they just kind of you work through them as they go on time. We've already started the conversation. It's like, uh oh, this is gonna be one of those things where it's all platitude based. It depends on like, what like Ranger School, proud of that. Graduated West Point, proud of that. Master's degree, proud of that. Being in the army, proud of that, being able to show up for people, to show up for myself on a daily basis, right? Not every day I feel like I achieve what I set out to do, but I at least find something during the day to be proud of. 

So maybe it's you know, waking up making the bed and then being able to come back home after a tough day and like seeing the bed made like that to me, that's like, all this stuff. We're gonna do it again tomorrow and try again. Those are the things like I'm proud of it. So it's like this vast array like I'm proud to be a husband. I'm proud to support my wife who's also in the military. Yeah, so there's just a ton of things, but I feel like throughout conversations with different people and especially, you know, this being a podcaster like you're able to kind of talk about those things. So I don't really think I have anything that I'm proud of that I haven't talked about enough.

Brock Briggs  4:17  

You strike me as the type of person and I'm getting to know you don't know you super well yet. So correct me if I'm off base here, but when somebody tells me that they are proud of little things like that, like the making the bed in the morning, I get the feeling that you are somebody that just kind of like exudes that like happiness and like joy all the time. Is that true?

Tony Nash  4:47  

No, not at all. And it's more a sense like I'm trying to especially where I'm at now like in my life, not physical location. Trying to be more in touch with like, what emotions or feeling, emotions versus feelings, right? Because feelings are like they can be fleeting, right? And then being able to just kind of sit in different states, whether it's like sadness or happiness, frustrated, you know, all those different, you know, you're looking at the wheel, right? 

And you can kind of see the different colors. So it's not always one sliver of that circle, but really trying to best understand where I am in time and space inside that circle and then pull out some of the substance, even if it's uncomfortable trying to like, just look back at, alright what do I feel this way for? How did I get here? What does that do to me physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, all of that. But I do tend to be generally positive and I would say, outgoing person.

Brock Briggs  5:54  

How do you create that relationship with yourself where you can be in touch with those things and talk to yourself about how you get somewhere? As anybody who's listening likely knows the military does a very, very good job of suppressing that. They want you to run towards gunfire there. They've done a very good job of retraining us to not think that way. Because it doesn't matter how you're feeling in the time of like distress. You have to act. And a lot of times, there's not even in debriefs or looking back on things, you don't really feel the exact same as you did at the time. You know, it's all hindsight bias at that point. So how do you think that you've retrained yourself to be in touch with that?

Tony Nash  6:54  

Sure. And I'd also say like we do train to reflect in those pauses, right? Like we take tactical pauses on operations or missions or even during, you know, firefights, you do take the time to kind of understand the situation throughout. So there is the action piece of it too. But you also have to be able to, if you just continue to charge headfirst, you're gonna put yourself and those that lean on you and support you as well as you're supporting in danger. So I think there is a piece on both sides in this. Again, this is from the army perspective. 

So I can't really speak to like other services, but I would assume, having talked to other people doing the podcast, everybody has like a different term for it. But there is this pause or slight reflection during action or while action is going on to like, maintain that like kind of calmness throughout even when things like your adrenaline spiking, things are gonna like a million miles an hour. And it just seems like everything's going super fast. It can also feel like things are going very, very slow, almost like in slow motion.

Brock Briggs  8:05  

You mentioned a few minutes ago that there are things that you're proud of that maybe didn't work out. You mentioned a lot of very admirable, big accomplishments. What are those things that you're proud of that didn't play out?

Tony Nash  8:21  

The opportunities that I didn't try out for or looking to go places or do things where I self selected early on for a number of reasons. I'm proud of those because that was a turning point where another opportunity would come up. Let's go back to grad school. I was fortunate enough to get into an Ivy League school. There's other ones that I applied to that I didn't get in but I was fortunate for the friends and opportunities that I've had and made connections where I did get into and had I gone somewhere else I won't have those connections. Maybe have same connections are similar, but the ones have just aligned better. 

Also failure, right? Like I've seen when I've put myself in a position to be successful and put energy and effort behind it action. I am successful regardless. But when I don't and I know that like we all have that voice in your head like you haven't done enough. You start to see that over time. And then when you like you said you look in hindsight, you're like I didn't do enough here for this event or this extra or whatever. I need to be able to put energy back into this thing coming up. Because otherwise I will just repeat the same result again and again and again.

Brock Briggs  9:49  

I think it takes a certain level of understanding about oneself to be able to look at past outcomes and understand that the outcome isn't always what the thing is to judge yourself against. It's, hey, the outcome of this thing maybe wasn't good or bad, but it was how I reacted to it or you acted differently. Like, it's something that you are mentally working on. Maybe I think of myself, like trying to be slower to anger about things of like, I'm like, you know, this situation didn't really go well. But I had patience in that moment. And that was like that felt like incremental progress, even though the end result may not have been like that great. Is that kind of what you're speaking to do you think? 

Tony Nash  10:43  

Yes. Like, you're frustrated. And maybe you write down that frustration in a notebook or you type up an email to yourself or pull up your phone and type out a quick note. And then you never send and then you look at it, like, do I really feel this? Or is this something that just kind of like, in me right now because of other events and variables that are in place? And then you kind of look at it, you're like, oh, well, I really don't really feel that way. Have you ever, like been mad and looked at yourself in the mirror?

Brock Briggs  11:12  

Oh, man, there was nothing that will make you feel so silly. 

Tony Nash

Yeah

Brock Briggs 

When you do that

Tony Nash  11:20  

Right, and it's kind of the same thing. It's like, you're able to really like literally reflect and see. All right, let's take a quick second, let's take a tactical pause and see where we're really at. And kind of sit into that sit into those feelings and thoughts and actions. And like, just pull it back a little bit.

Brock Briggs  11:46  

What do you think that you have learned about yourself and what you need personally from those tactical pauses as you call them?

Tony Nash  11:58  

I think over time, it continues to evolve, right? Sometimes it's, you know, how do I become a better husband? How am I better leader? How do I interact with people better or from a different vantage point of really meeting people where they're at? As opposed to trying to like, put everything out that I want to say? And then, but instead of receiving what they're trying to say, like, how does that then change how I think or feel or handle the situation, right? Because how often in the Navy, when you had people in, say there was an event and somebody disappointed you or frustrated you and instead of like flying off the handle and going right in on them and you're like, alright, what happened? And they were like, well, this extraneous event thing happened. And you start to kind of sit back and like, well, I can't be too frustrated about that. I can be frustrated about those two things, but not all of this is on them.

Brock Briggs  13:01  

It happens. 

Tony Nash 

Yeah

Brock Briggs 

It's difficult

Tony Nash 

There is definitely a time when somebody just needs to, you know, get kind of like, you know, get the business as they say. 

Brock Briggs 

I think that that area and like being able to slow time down is something that I have struggled with very badly in my entire life. And it's something that's what I'm working on personally right now. And that's why I'm interested to kind of hear how that process has kind of developed for you.

Tony Nash  13:40  

Yeah, and I by no means have it all figured out. But there's like sometimes, right? When I'm in an event that I think is very surreal or I just can't believe it's ongoing, I literally take my hand. For people that can't see the video, like I'll take my thumb and my index finger like pinch the webbing in between to kind of just like, it's the same thing as like people were like snapping a rubber band on the wrist, right? To just kind of, literally I pinch myself.

And just like alright, and when I do that I can like go back to an event or a time and space like I can pinch myself and remember when I did that at ranger school because I was like, holy shit, I'm here. There's been other events like getting married, all these other things that have been very fortunate to have in my life. I can go back to just buy it through physical touch. Again, me personally, that's worked for me that's been a thing to just kind of like, slow everything down and really just kind of take in the moment.

Brock Briggs  14:35  

So it's almost like a physical trigger. 

Tony Nash 

Yeah

Brock Briggs  

To like get back to that. Did somebody teach you that? Or is that just something you put together yourself?

Tony Nash  14:45  

I don't remember learning it from someone directly. But you know how people always say like pinch me or something. So I was just, I would literally, you know, just have to do it myself.

Brock Briggs  14:55  

Huh, that's interesting. I’lll have to try that. I never heard that before. But I mean, I've heard the phrase and maybe that's where that comes from, marking a moment for your future self to kind of like come back to and be able to come back and reflect on in the future.

Tony Nash  15:10  

Well said, much more eloquently than I just went on for about 20 minutes.

Brock Briggs  15:16  

No, no, I am tracking with you now. Because it's extraordinarily difficult to, like you said in those times, where you're looking back and you've got the benefit of hindsight bias of, hey, well, this is how it should have gone. But when you can say, hey, this is how I was feeling in the moment, you can kind of like, address that head on. Do you teach that to the people that are under you?

Tony Nash  15:48  

Not directly, I wouldn't say maybe like a one on one conversation. But I do look for opportunities to express gratitude to individuals, I think more so now than before. Because it's one of those things, I think, especially whether you're a high performer, especially in that group, right? People are just like, alright, that person can do a lot of work. So they need more work to be more successful. And I've kind of gotten that from like different mentors and people I've come across where it's, you also need to give high performers time and appreciation, say like, it's not just like, hey, you're doing a good job, keep it up. What specifically is that person doing that you need to show them appreciation for? 

And that has allowed to kind of really slow down and say, alright, you know, like what am I grateful to them for doing X thing, Y thing. And that directly kind of goes into like, almost like the physical touch, like the pinch me thing. But it's verbal. But when you say it, it's not just a rush, like, hey, great job, Steve! Keep it going, like really appreciate you handling that thing two weeks ago. But you kind of have to sit in that moment. And it might be a little uncomfortable. People will be like, what did I do wrong? Like, nothing. I'm literally taking some time to say thank you because I'm genuinely grateful for what you're doing.

Brock Briggs  17:17  

It's funny how often that surprises people.

Tony Nash  17:20  

Right. And the first time too, it's uncomfortable because you're like, well, I just kind of want to tell you, thank you. And we can kind of, you know how you doing, keep it moving. But you have to really kind of sit in that. And let the person know that it's coming from a place of authenticity and being genuine.

Brock Briggs  17:40  

Has the army been everything you thought it would be?

Tony Nash  17:44  

No, more so.

Brock Briggs  17:47  

More in a good way?

Tony Nash  17:49  

Yeah, I mean, I didn't really have. I mean, I've been in almost 13 years and I still continue to evolve my outlook on the army and everything because the people change, right? I'm not always with the same people just like when you were in, you weren't around the same people constantly. So you're gonna have different conversations, you're gonna have different experiences, different events, different past experiences that they bring into those conversations. And it always fascinates me to kind of learn more about the people and the opportunities and then have those shared experiences, both good and bad throughout and, you know, being able to go with it, going through it with someone who's also seen it from a different perspective. Being my wife like that just continues to evolve my understanding and my fascination around the army and the people inside of.

Brock Briggs  18:48  

Do you think that that's because of the Army and the Marine Corps? I'm kind of guessing, to my understanding, are much more people businesses than they are another type of business?

Tony Nash  19:03  

What would you say based on your experience? What did you kind of see it as?

Brock Briggs  19:09  

What I've gathered from this podcast primarily and speaking with people in other branches and hearing the way that they talk about their jobs. And then as I take that and reflect back on my time in the Navy, the Navy is very much job oriented. You come in, you're skilled to do a certain thing. And so the only thing that they need from you is to show up every day and do that. There's not a lot of focus on cohesion around the people that you're with. If you kind of aren't getting along you might get transferred you might go somewhere else. 

It's not really about the people. There isn't conversations about how we're gonna like, all get along or how we're all gonna like, tackle this objective together, which I am guessing and like fantasizing that maybe the army and the Marines are more so about a unit. It's an interview I just did recently, was talking with a retired Army Command Sergeant Major. And he said that the army is a people business. And that's kind of where I'm getting that from. It's more about the individuals and coming together as a team more so but then, like I said, with the Navy, it's just, hey, you have this skill.

Tony Nash  20:36  

Yeah, I think, again, not having been in a submarine or you know, on a ship, I still feel like there's a component to that. Because there's a people component to that because you can't turn a ship. When one person can say, hey, turn the ship. But it's still gonna take every other person that helps turn the ship to turn the ship. So there's still that connective. And maybe that's hard to see because you are so skilled in your one specific area. So it's the forest versus the trees kind of conversation.

Brock Briggs  21:09  

I think one of the things that I missed out on in a big way is being able to see that bigger picture. And that may be just being junior enlisted that not really thinking nobody's paying me to think that way or think about a unit or a group. And even at an E-5 level it was desirable because I was good at this XX skill.

Tony Nash 

Right

Brock Briggs 

Not about like, there's not leadership training, like there is in the other branches that I hear of anyway.

Tony Nash  21:44  

Yeah. So there's not like an LPD, like a leader professional development setup both in like the nsync and then like, the petty op, right? I think that’s correct.

Brock Briggs  21:55  

Yeah, yeah, you're right. 

Tony Nash 

Okay

Brock Briggs 

Yeah, there's nothing like that. 

Tony Nash 

Okay 

Brock Briggs 

And this is just another very large difference that I see and how the different branches kind of conduct themselves. And sometimes, well not sometimes, a lot of times, I wish that I had had that. And I wonder if my experience would have been different had I had that and don't get me wrong. I made great friends. They just wasn't like this bond of like, hey, I'm part of this unit at my job. Really, that wasn't there.

Tony Nash  22:42  

And that's one of those things we talk about. I mean, you've been able to have it in through your conversations in the podcast, where you go away from kind of like the small talk of like, water cooler. How's that local sports team to like, deep conversations, the more you kind of get to know people and you start to really pull back and kind of challenge your own beliefs in a sense, where you're able to hear from someone else's point of view. And then before jumping in, you know, throw out your piece to it. You kind of just sit back a little bit and you're like, huh I didn't really consider like that. 

How does that change my perspective, if at all? You know, because what's fascinating is when people have debates and it's not like talking heads, where they're screaming at one another, like just trying to yell and you know, for like the circus of it. But when you have a conversation and people are at least can understand the point they're trying to make. And then watching that happen in real time is absolutely fascinating. Because I've walked away going into a conversation like I didn't really consider that perspective to it.

Brock Briggs  23:57  

What is something that you've changed your mind on recently?

Tony Nash  24:01  

Man, there's a bunch of stuff. Where to go? I think this is more of a recent thing. But I think it's been something that I've started to do more of to think clearly. I've started to write more. And by writing more, write less and it's not something like publishing things out to people or anything like that, but just kind of writing down my thoughts and then seeing all right, going back. And is this really what I wanted to say? All right, like, the number one key on the keyboard is the delete key, right? That's the one that's used the most on all of them, right? 

It's not a letter. It's not a special character. It's the delete key. Because in order to write clearly what Mark Twain, Winston Churchill all said I would have written a shorter letter to an extent they said this quote, I would have written a shorter letter if I had more time. So really, getting out with what you think or want to say, what I want to say and then going back and alright, how does this really look like and then what is the actual substance inside of it as opposed to just a bunch of words coming out at once? I think that's been something that I've continued to reinforce time and time again and only just become more convicted in that belief.

Brock Briggs  25:26  

It's amazing what you not only find out about yourself, but you realize how much you don't actually know about anything until you start writing about it. I have so many interesting conversations where I will talk with somebody and they are coming across as a bit of an expert or are trying to. I perceive them trying to be I say, why don't you share that with people? Like if you're really that good at something, you should be teaching other people. And what I presume is the reason why is people go to start and they realize that, oh, actually, I don't know that much. And it's not a good feeling. It's like, you're directly you feel this conflict because you're so sure of something in your head and you go to write it down and you find yourself contradicting yourself like what you're writing is in direct disagreement with what you're thinking.

Tony Nash  26:32  

Absolutely! I think the other thing, too, is people will get paralyzed by action because they have so much that they want to say they don't know where to start. So they're looking at this, like massive mountain or what's, you know, this massive elephant and instead of taking it like one piece at a time and just kind of like pulling it apart or starting somewhere. Like, that's too much. I just, you know, we'll just go on to the next thing.

Brock Briggs  26:59  

Do you use writing prompts? Or how did you get started with writing? 

Tony Nash  27:05  

Ah, I'm not a good writer. That’s it, right? Like, just like going to the gym or working on something and getting reps at it. Like, I'm not good at it. But I see people that are great. And you start to like, alright, what do I really like about how this person does X? Not saying I want to become them. But I want to understand what I think is well done about their work. And then you search be like, okay, if I think this is a redeeming, you know, admirable quality, how do I start to build that in? It's the same thing, like when you're in third grade or second grade, I can't remember when, like handwriting, you're tracing over letters, right? You don't just go like, freestyle and just let it rip. You're tracing over letters. So you got to start tracing over things that you identify with and like, this is what I deem is good. How do you then replicate it?

Brock Briggs  28:07  

It's interesting, there are I've heard several people talk about copywriting and how to write good copy for sales pages for posts for anything really, it's something that gets people's attention. And many great copywriters advocate for exactly that. They go find something that's really good. And they just copy it, they just write it over and over and over again until you get the form that it's supposed to be written in. And so it's interesting that you bring that up because that's sometimes what you may literally need to do.

Tony Nash  28:47  

Absolutely, it's just like, you know, anything else, right? You have to be able to do the action and action in order to be able to see results.

Brock Briggs  28:57  

You were speaking to the conciseness that people write with. And I think that that is one of the more ultimate tests of whether somebody really knows the subject or not. Because when you know something, you're able to say it in very few words. It doesn't take a lot. And generally the longer form something goes, the more something's trying to be proven.

Tony Nash  29:22  

I took an improv class in grad school. And there was an exercise that we did where it was have a dialogue in five minutes. Okay, so we're doing that right now. All right, repeat the same dialogue with that person in two minutes. And then one minute and then 30 seconds and 15 seconds and then five seconds. That gets her real fast. 

Brock Briggs  

That's really interesting 

Tony Nash 

To that exact point

Brock Briggs  29:51  

Yeah. Well and I think that, especially when you're trying to get good at something, like writing like anything and I kind of I'd like to talk about podcasting and how this might relate to that is it comes from the reps. It really it's not about being able to just like necessarily be good at something. It's about like, you got to do something a shitload of times, like a lot of times. How do you think that your mentality about putting in reps has changed doing a podcast? You're coming up on 100 episodes. You're very, very close. You probably got the rest of them recorded through 100, I'm guessing. But

Tony Nash  30:45  

Yep. Yeah, you'd be correct. And this is kind of like an ego pack. I really, really, really love when people say, you make like, I can't do that or whatever, like, but they don't see all the hard work that goes into doing that thing. For instance, like podcasting, it's not the caption writing or contacting people or hearing no or not hearing anything at all, from reaching out to like potential guests or trying to put something together to like, promote an episode. So there's so many reps that I had no idea about getting started. And I'm only showing up because like, I committed to myself to like, show up. And there's been times where I was like, I don't know if this is gonna happen this week. 

And for whatever reason, you know, just because of like, we said we're gonna do this, so we gotta do it. I made this commitment to myself. You just keep doing it. And then it just repeats again. And that's the War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I don't know if you've read it, fascinating book. And it's something that like I literally have next to my bed that I'll pick up from time to time. And it just talks about resistance and how you have to meet resistance not just at one point, but it's a daily occurrence. And the more you're able to meet resistance and get through it, the more reps you'll have to get in. But also, the more you start to understand and appreciate what you're doing, right? The artist versus a professional is really like a center theme throughout that book.

Brock Briggs  32:28  

My hat is off for all of the work that you've put in because I really, I don't fully understand it because you're way down the road for me. But my hat is off to you because I know that you have been feeling resistance on this. I want to talk a little bit about how you got into podcasting. And one of the I have many questions that I'm eager to ask because you have all these amazing guests on but never really get to hear from you as much as I really want to listen to all your episodes. Why start Got Your Six?

Tony Nash  33:08  

That came to me. We have like a home gym. And then during COVID, I used to always like what stop a workout and like go run off to go do something that will have to come to my head. And I had to train myself like no, I'm here. Now I have to be in the gym, get the workout in because I don't have time later. This is a priority now as opposed to like trying to like, go away from it. So I started like writing things on whiteboards that I would think of and during the course, like a week or workout, I started thinking how can I use a platform because I saw people as well as myself trying to find identity post service. And I was still in service. I was just not part of a direct formation, right? I wasn't around people in the military. And I was like, well, this is kind of what I think this thing looks like. 

And then as I continue to like pull away and you know, like we were talking about hitting the delete key a lot. I really came here Got Your Six, what does that look like? Alright, six questions. It's got to be short, quick to the point. And really take an opportunity to see where veterans as well as current service members continue to find passion, not even passion purpose on some sort of purpose driven mission, wherever that may be, like I said, whether in service or in a service and that's ranging from professional athletes to CEOs, small business owners, you know, across the board. So what's my list like, like who's on my list? 

So I started putting together this Excel list of people that I thought would be good. The only barrier to entry is you either have to be in service or have served at one point. I think my list right now is at 570 people and I've created bios on all those people that have like one pagers and it's just evolved throughout as I continue, then obviously, the first episode and where it is now is different, right? That's great because it's have evolved in just like you like your 1000 times better than I was at this point than where I was back. But it's not, we're not comparing or trying to compete against each other. I am grateful that you're able to rise faster. But we're just trying to do our thing in different ways.

Brock Briggs  35:30  

I think that that early insight that you had is an important one and important because the military will really take everything that you give it. And I was just kind of, I was writing a post on Instagram before this and thinking about how I wish that I had been pursuing or at least thinking about trying to find the thing that like lit my fire while I was in. I don't know what the hell I was doing for four years, but screwing off for a lot of it. And I think that that, sadly, is the case for many people. And that's also not just in service. That's probably universal. 

But I think that we both feel particularly partial to service members and finding that because you've got this proven track record of being tough as nails able to accomplish these really good things they're thinking about all of that that's left on the table with all this huge stack of high performers that aren't pursuing their bigger calling. Not that being in the service or serving for 20 years or whatever that is, is not a big calling. 

Tony Nash 

Sure

Brock Briggs  

But there's gonna be a day where you walk away and you're gonna have to do something.

Tony Nash  36:57  

Right. And that goes back to what we talked about with the delete key, it's less is more. And by having that time or even just considering, what do I want to do? What does that all look like? If I just start small, I don't know where that's gonna grow into, but it's gonna grow into something. And what opportunities come from that? Who knows? What's the old like, is it a Chinese proverb where like, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is like now? 

Brock Briggs 

Yep

Tony Nash

And it's just starting with something, right? Look, the same thing happens in like companies and organizations like, Instagram look like Yelp when it started. And it had a bunch of other shit with it. But they really found that their picture ability and people alike, you know, gravitated towards that. And that's what started launched Instagram and you know, across the board, your version one never looks like version 1000.

Brock Briggs  37:57  

I think it's very easy to see people that you maybe admire or look up to that it kind of looks like that they have it all figured out. You know, it's like this “overnight success”, you know, little do they know, they spent overnight editing

Tony Nash  38:15  

15 years in the making 

Brock Briggs 

Right

Tony Nash 

Exactly

Brock Briggs  38:18  

15 years in the making indeed. That's exactly right. And that it's daunting and it keeps people from starting just anything. It just, it doesn't even have to be exactly what you're gonna end up doing. But you just need to start something today. And then tomorrow, make it a little bit better. And do it again and one more day.

Tony Nash  38:44  

We always talked about day one, but we never talked about like day two.

Brock Briggs  38:49  

Right. Yeah, let's, yeah, we were on day two, around these parts. 

Tony Nash 

There's nothing wrong with being on day two. 

Brock Briggs  

There's not. It's okay to be on day one. And day two is certainly easier than day one, that hump of just like starting something is tremendous. Like that is a huge burden. And there's a little bit of a sense of relief, I get thinking about not doing that. I'm sure that there will be other things that I need to and I currently there's a list of things that I'm on day one on that I'm kicking the can down the road on but podcasting is something you can kind of come back to and say we're on day two for this.

Tony Nash  39:38  

Think back to the Teddy Roosevelt quote that everybody loves to talk about the Man in the Arena, right? There's a person sweating dripping in blood, the whole thing. But when you're up in the stands in the nosebleeds, that person looks really really small. You know, so for them to move a little bit doesn't really seem to look like a lot. But the person in the arena when they take one step, that's huge. But you don't see that when you're up in the nosebleeds or anywhere else inside the stadium. Because it really doesn't do anything for you. It doesn't move you physically doing the thing being in the moment, man, that’s the best. 

Brock Briggs  40:21  

There's a sense to that it makes you feel more connected to reality. Like, you're not just like an NPC walking around in the world and life is happening to you.

Tony Nash 

Right 

Brock Briggs 

You're able to like I'm physically altering and is like starting to write or starting a podcast or any type of I would put anything creative into this same type of thing. You're bringing something into existence that wasn't there before. You're altering your life and somebody else's eventually. That's big. Like all it takes is once.

Tony Nash  41:08  

Right. It's one to zero, just like in computers, is it a one or a zero? The same thing when people like go do wild events or I was talking to somebody the other day, they talked about dry January 75 hard came up. And he presented the team, right? Like people have these massive results because they've had to do seven massive, I think it's five, seven or five massive things every day for 75 days straight. So not just one thing, like a ton of like five things. So you're gonna see these like crazy results. And crazy me like very drastic results at the end of the 75 days because it's not just one thing that you focus on. It's multiple things. 

Brock Briggs  41:53  

Have you done 75 hard?

Tony Nash  41:56  

I did in grad school. Yeah

Brock Briggs  41:59  

Okay. It's brutal. 

Tony Nash  

Yeah

Brock Briggs

It's absolutely brutal. That is a very unpleasant challenge to do, but

Tony Nash  42:10  

When you look back on that, what are you the most proud of? 

Brock Briggs  42:18  

I think that I’m kind of through this same sort of feeling on another on something else that I'm kind of working on while I'm going to school. But I think the thing that I'm most proud of is, after a little while, it becomes less about the things that you're doing that are part of like the it's the two workouts a day, you know, it's the water, it's your 10 pages, your picture or whatever every day. That's like level one thinking and like dealing with those every day is like kind of what you're going through for the first like month. But then after that, what it becomes is a game of like time management. And I think that that looking back on my experience doing that is I was so proud of seeing what I was able to accomplish while still doing that. 

That is a really interesting observation that I had is about myself and probably one of the first times that I realized that is me, I need to like settle myself down with work to the point where I just can't move. Because that's the only way that I can break through these barriers of like, seeing how much what my output is, like, physically, whether it's working out. I really enjoyed these, like ridiculous, like physical competitions and like races and like mentally like that was and physically too a challenge. But I enjoy things where it pushes you up to the next kind of tear of and you're seeing like, oh, I have a new floor, basically. So I think that that's my thing.

Tony Nash  44:02  

And to what you were saying too, is like you don't remember the days that were like the easy ones. You remember, you can probably think back to like where it was like 10, 11 o'clock at night you're like, oh shit, it's almost I gotta get this thing done. 

Brock Briggs 

Right

Tony Nash 

I've gotten this far. Like, I'm not gonna throw everything away within this next, like 15 minutes. And those are the ones you look back and you probably think like, yeah, that's suck, but like the time management piece like.

Brock Briggs  44:32  

I think that there's an element of that with podcasting, too. And I was one of the questions that I had actually we're flying all over the rails and this conversation which I love is it's absolutely perfect. How many times have you thought about quitting podcasting? 

Tony Nash

I don't even know what number 

Brock Briggs

Really?

Tony Nash  44:56  

I don’t keep track of that. Because like,

Brock Briggs  44:58  

But it's more than zero, right?

Tony Nash  45:00  

Oh, yeah, yeah. 

Brock Briggs 

Okay

Tony Nash 

Yeah, it's like anything else in life like, this is hard, right? Like growth is tough in any endeavor, creative, life, relationships, right? It's gonna be challenging. And it's very easy to be like, well, what happens if I don't? What if I just stop, you know. But here we are doing the thing.

Brock Briggs  45:33  

Where do you think the line is drawn where your commitment to something and the fear of losing your streak is what keeps you going? Because it's never clear to me when that obviously changes over. But it has me thinking about that because it does happen at some point, certainly 75 hard a weekend, it's not gonna be any big deal to start over. 

Tony Nash 

Sure

Brock Briggs

Day 40, you're hurting, you really don't want to give that up.

Tony Nash  46:11  

Right. I think it comes down to priority. And not everything obviously priority dictates things to be in a certain order. When things get out of that order obviously, the priority changes. But then you have to look at does this thing become more important than the other things? Like, is dopamine hits on social media more important than doing work for the podcast or spending time with my significant other? Where does that stuff rank, right? I can tell your significant other, duh duh duh duh. And I can say that, but am I doing that? And then when you start to look at your actions and how they correlate to your thoughts, that's when you really start to see to your question, right? Where is that line?

Brock Briggs  47:08  

I like that. I think that that's the right way to put it. And it's obviously gonna be different for everybody else. But it needs the thing that you're working to do needs to go up the rank on the list.

Tony Nash  47:28  

And the more clearly you can convey or understand yourself, right? How simply can you convey the why behind doing it, the higher it's gonna be on the list.

Brock Briggs  47:40  

Well, I think having the pursuit of a big ambitious goal, like 75 hard or having that weighing on you is a driver. But it also is a detractor too because if you're not careful, it becomes that thing where it's like it's too big to accomplish. It needs to be like just achievable enough to get you to the point where like you need to unlock the next door of like, oh, this is actually like a 10 year journey that I'm going down. And I think that that's maybe you feel similar going down this podcasting journey. But why no when I started out, I said, I am gonna try and do this for like 10 episodes, see what happens. And then the 10 episode doors open and it's like, okay, maybe six months and then now it's like, okay, I like this enough now. Now it's the tenure door and it gets bigger and bigger as you go.

Tony Nash  48:46  

Zero to One, right? That's all you're trying to do.

Brock Briggs  48:50  

That's all you got to do, just make something out of nothing.

Tony Nash  48:54  

Yeah. I mean, it's there, right? All this stuff is there, just like a block of marble can be turned into something just absolutely stunning. But when you look at the block of marble, you're like, oh, that's just a block or it doesn't move me or anything like that. But when you start to really take piece by piece away from it, to your point, right? That's where that tenure plays. But it's small, small, small changes along the way.

Brock Briggs  49:31  

What do you think your biggest learning from your 100 some odd episodes that you've done? 

Tony Nash  

Take myself less seriously. 

Brock Briggs  

What is that? What do you mean by that?

Tony Nash  49:45  

And when I say by that is it's great to have and want to do all these things. But just focus on going from zero to one. Getting an episode out, like doing all the things like the basics, everything else is I enjoy the conversation. That's why I keep showing backup for podcasting. At the end of the day, it's the conversations I get to have with other people, learning from others is where I just completely vibe out. All the other stuff, that's part of it. There's been a lot where I've tried to start to do and go adventure in other areas, oh, this is great. 

I think I need to go in this because I gotta grow the podcast and it needs to be like this massive thing. It's like, hey, who gives a fuck? Does it really give you that much more value to go do that thing? Or is it just having conversations with people and talking about that with others and then then being able to learn and implement what you've talked about in that conversation in real life. And when I start to get away from that, that's when I get frustrated, that's when the doubt builds up. That's when the imposter syndrome comes in. That's when they're like the thought of quitting comes in. When I just go back to having a conversation, that's a zone baby.

Brock Briggs  51:08  

I think at a certain level of performing a baseline of just putting out a weekly episode or whatever, after doing that for a while, you get comfortable with that new norm, that new baseline of like, hey, this is a requirement. This is something in my life. That will be here. It's on the priority list, as we talked about, it's up there, not above the spouse. But it's up there.

Tony Nash 

Exactly

Brock Briggs  

As those other things and I'm curious what those other things are that are wanting to kind of like distract you or add on to that. And I want you to talk about that here in a second. But as those kind of creep in, we have to kind of make a conscious decision of like, we're fighting the feeling of like, oh, is it just gonna be this? As if like somehow putting out a weekly show is like not enough or not big enough or you're not the number one on the downloads chart.

Tony Nash  52:11  

And then I also realized, like, hey, jabroni, what's your job? What do you do? I'm in the army. That's what I enjoy doing. And at the end of the day, like, that's the profession, that's what I'm a part of. The podcast is a creative pursuit to kind of allow me to reflect on my time. And when I have these conversations with other people, whoever they may be, I'm able to appreciate more of what I'm doing, right? Because a podcast isn't a full time gig. It's not where I get my income. It's not how I provide for my family. It's a very selfish endeavor on my part, right? So I can't let it take away from those other things that I absolutely truly cared about to be priority. Does that answer your question? 

Brock Briggs  53:12  

Yeah. Well and I wanna get back to my original question, I guess was, what are the things that are distracting you in your eyes? Or those extra things that are giving you that impostor syndrome or fear?

Tony Nash  53:28  

I think it's not doing the work, like we talked about when it's not focusing on something that's going to start a conversation with somebody. I think about, oh, I gotta do all these other things that really don't matter. But I think they do. And I just need to focus on doing the one thing now. That's when all that other stuff, that doubt all that stuff comes like just the gates open and all just comes over me. And I have to like swim out of it.

Brock Briggs  54:06  

Who is the best guest that you've had on? 

Tony Nash

The last one

Brock Briggs  

Or is that one of those phrases that it's just the best is the most recent because it's the best or is that actually? 

Tony Nash  54:21  

That's actually that's just how it goes, like I am better each I have a better understanding of the world of doing this. So I'm gonna be able to be better for the person that I'm talking to each episode. Like I'm better now because of this episode for future episodes and they Got Your Six podcast because of your interaction in their dialogue.

Brock Briggs  54:43  

I got you. Let me put this a different way. Who have you learned the most from? That's actually what I'm trying to ask. 

Tony Nash  54:52  

Yeah, no, no and that's the thing like I've learned from everyone, right? It's not like a volume based thing where it's like, I've learned 10 pounds more from this person than another person, like, if I didn't learn from Nate Boyer, from Merging Vets and Players about, you know, a thing, it's also that I implemented into my lifestyle here. And that helped me become a better person or be better in this individual engagement with an individual or what I learned from, you know, a content or active service member who is a content creator and how they approach their process and their understanding, their appreciation for the art. It's hard to pull back and say, this is the person I learned the absolute most from. Because everyone's conversation has impacted my life in one form or the other in a different aspect. 

And I'm not trying to be like a cheesedick and say, like, oh, everybody's great. No, they really aren't like I go to the people I want to have on the podcast to have the conversations with because I know I'm gonna learn something from them. And I'll start a conversation that we've talked, you know, back and forth a little bit. It's like, alright, this is what we're gonna talk about then we go into it just like you and I, like you sent me a list of questions that you're gonna ask, we've hit like four of them, you know and there's nothing wrong with that. Because you never know what's gonna happen in the conversation. Because your perception, your perspective, and your understanding of the conversation is gonna change because you don't know what the other person is gonna bring to it.

Brock Briggs  56:42  

I think that that's one of the things that makes podcasting incredibly difficult because you're balancing having a good conversation with being present. And often those are at odds. One of the things I wrote a thread on Twitter about this the other day. I was talking about how my approach to creating each episode has evolved over time. And it is been extremely helpful for me to not even think about what the listener hears. A baseline of let's have some good audio quality, let's make sure this isn't just us coconut joking for an hour and a half. But in the moment, this is you, Tony Nash or the person, you are my customer. 

And I need to be like there. And if you want to talk about something that is not in this list, then we need to be there to talk about it. One of my favorite and you'll probably have had experience with this. One of my favorite things that happens is when somebody says they'll mention something offhandedly. And they'll say, I don't know if you want to talk about that. And I'm like, I absolutely want to talk about that. Whatever you just said, I got all night. Let's talk about it. Because that is like, that's the throwaway comment of I want to talk about this but I don't think that you're interested. 

Tony Nash 

Yeah

Brock Briggs  

So good

Tony Nash  58:23  

That's the same thing is when you say like, hey, how are you doing? And people are like, do you really want to know? Like, I wouldn't have asked, right? And that's when it's like, all right, yes. Stop everything, pause, freeze, flag, right? Like, let's go into this thing. Because whatever you got going on, needs to come out. Let's talk about it. Absolutely. Or the other one, I think as you saw, like, you play back the video, you'll start to see like my grand started just get bigger and bigger as you were talking about. I don't want to talk about that thing is when people like I have never talked about that before. And it's very cool because now you share a moment together, were you able to unlock something unique to the, you know, to that interaction?

Brock Briggs  59:10  

Well and it's something that wouldn't have happened otherwise. And those are things that you can't craft that. You can't anticipate that there are a couple of good podcasters that it sure seems like they can somehow like fabricate that out of midair. But I am far from figuring that out. That's for sure. You've told me outside of this recording that you would love to do a talk show, which would be basically your show 30 minutes snippet in like a talk show type format. Talk to me about that.

Tony Nash  59:48  

So let's go back to our conversation earlier about the person in the arena. That's me in the bleachers looking down and saying that looks interesting, but not really knowing all of the aspects that go into that, right? Because not all the works done to get to that goal. What I found, especially through like podcasting and like, the higher I continue to rise in the military, is I have such an appreciation for this system. The outcome is great yet, right? The end state is what you're looking for. But the system in order to get to that thing, because you might be going to achieve an end state. And along the way, you're like, wait, wait, wait, this is not the thing we're trying to get to. Knowing the bigger picture, we have to kind of, we're gonna have to kind of shift a little bit and then continue to move forward. 

Because maybe that's not the objective that you're trying to hit. It's something else, but along the way you've picked up, but you only could find that by going down the road of doing, right? Like there is time, this was a story in grad school where people wanted these like very high profile, well to do internships, right? At the McKinley, the Goldman Sachs, all those places. And then sometimes the people who would compete stay up late at night, during the interviews, doing all the prep. They would go through all these conversations and all this work. And then they might get there. And they're like, they look around like, I want nothing to do with this. But they can only get to that point by having done the work. It's another thing when you say alright, this is not what I want, but you keep going forward. 

And after something, you're like I really don't care about this thing. It doesn't fill me up. That's when I think it's too late. Dialing all the way back to your question, that's a mark on the wall right now. But the last six months, I've been able to grow, you know, in a different role in the military. You know, it's just been me, I've been able to focus on this thing because of other life events that are ongoing, outside of my control. What that looks like in two months, three months from now, wildly different story. But it's about showing up today, doing the thing right now. And then doing it again tomorrow. But I can't look into the future. And I can't look in the past. I can only do right now.

Brock Briggs  1:02:30  

There's absolutely no substitute for doing the work. And it's so ironic that you have to do all of this work just to figure out that it's not something that you want to do. It's terrible.

Tony Nash  1:02:47  

I think it's a blessing. Because you have to start doing something, right? 10 episodes, maybe you start doing 10 episodes of a podcast, you're like this isn't what I thought I'm more a consumer than a creator. That's fine. I can't draw for shit. Like, you know, I can do my thing. But like, I have not forced myself to put in the 1000s of reps that are required to get to where I think it's good. And that's okay. It's not something that I'm driven by right now, maybe down the road. I might get into, you know, painting or whatever. Who knows? But I do appreciate having a creative outlet, whatever that may be. 

Brock Briggs  1:03:39  

I think that more people are creative than they think.

Tony Nash  

1,000% 

Brock Briggs 

The perception that most people have is that creativity is about drawing or painting, like you mentioned, but the reality is it some sort of expression of unique ideas and experiences that you have whether that manifests itself in writing or audio or coloring or whatever it may be. 

Tony Nash  1:04:09  

Yeah, metalworking.

Brock Briggs  1:04:11  

There you go. Metalworking sounds better than coloring. 

Tony Nash  

Yeah

Brock Briggs

Go get your coloring books out.

Tony Nash  1:04:17  

Yeah. I had some very well done coloring books before.

Brock Briggs  1:04:21  

Oh, yeah, I'm sure that it's a sport 

Tony Nash  1:04:24  

Like we all do that growing up. At some point we all are fortunate enough to have some sort of creative outlet. But for whatever reason, throughout life, it doesn't tend to be the thing anymore. Which is kind of like it's sad because it allows you to, right? Going back to where we started this whole conversation, allows you to take that pause and reflect and see as you put energy and effort into this thing. How everything else that's brought you to that moment is then reflected in it.

Brock Briggs 1:05:07  

I want to talk about the pillars. You've got some content on your LinkedIn profile that outline a few pillars that are like life objective mantra type pillars that you kind of speak to.

Tony Nash 

Sure

Brock Briggs

Want to go through these one by one. And we can just kind of riff on them. I don't have any big direction that I'm looking to take with them. But 

Tony Nash 

Okay 

Brock Briggs

Just wanna hear what you think about them. And we can kind of see where it takes us, okay? Servant leadership, this is an extremely popular phrase in the military. What does that mean? What is servant leadership?

Tony Nash  1:05:57  

I think before we even get into that because that's such a very, like, massive question. Instead of like, what does it mean? What does it look like, right? What is servant leadership do for anybody, right? Because if you think about it, it's almost like these two words are in contrast to one another. You have someone who you would deem a boss and a personal servant and then you put in like, in your head for some sort of hierarchical establishment of where these two things exist. But it's being able to through a team effort and group of some sort, right? For instance, the military knowing that no one is better than the other person, right? There's separation in the most obviously, through rank but that really boils down to experience. And knowing when you can have people step up as well as kind of step back in order to get things done along the way. Like you lead to serve and serve to lead.

Brock Briggs  1:07:09  

I found myself pausing quite a bit because you have like responded in so many ways that I have like not expected and it's been good. You've been really good at keeping me on my toes on this. I appreciate it. And I'm thankful for it. The most unscripted responses, I think I probably could have guessed. So I think that I need that.

Tony Nash  1:07:34  

I just, man, it's just like you were just, I can only speak to what I know at this point in time and space, like I can't claim to know something else. And there's been times where like, maybe you not embellish, but you like start to lean in. And then you're instantly met with like regret,because you're just kind of taking other experiences that you actually haven't lived. And you're like, well, I've heard about this thing over here. So I'm gonna kind of put this into my space. It's like, whoa, you can't really own that thing yet because you haven't done it. 

Brock Briggs  1:08:10  

Yeah. Do you think that the military does a good job of teaching servant leadership?

Tony Nash  1:08:16  

I don't think it's fair to umbrella that underneath the military, right? Because it's the individual leaders that you're fortunate enough to be around as well as, right? It’s always the leader, right? You can be the person to your left and right, that you learn a lot from but it's being able as an individual to understand all the different signals or all the noise that you're getting all at once. And then separating that into signals that you deem to be attributes that you want to embody and use going forward in life, right? Like how many different leadership styles are there? There’s many people that exist in the world.

Brock Briggs  1:09:03  

There's certainly way more ways than one to be a leader.

Tony Nash  1:09:07  

Right. And yes, there's ways that are taught. But the practice of doing it, and honing that craft. You know, maybe you have people that like just geek out about learning about leadership and understanding. Hey, how did this you know, business leader, turn around this company? Alright, what can I learn from that implement into this? Maybe something maybe nothing, right? It's like, if you were to consume every book that you ever saw in your life, how much knowledge would you have in your brain? Be massive, huge. What are you able to access all of that knowledge? Right, like people talk a lot about this Chet GPT which I think is fascinating. It's absolutely really, really interesting. 

When it really comes down to asking the right questions, providing The right prompts to get actionable insight of what you're looking because it's able to scan so much data. But if you just enter at a basic level, you're gonna get a basic answer. But the deeper you're able to kind of go and set the scenario in the situation. It's just like leadership, right? The more experience you have, the better you understand a situation. Do you think that more or less, right, and then that could also be like, you can also learn a lot from somebody who's less experienced because you're, you know, your heart and in your ways, like, this is the only way I can do this thing. And somebody else comes along, like, well, instead of trying to, like, jump over the door, or go around the door, why don't you just open the door? You're like, should I open the door?

Brock Briggs  1:10:57  

Do you think that leadership is overly talked about?

Tony Nash  1:11:04  

Again, that's one of those things. I personally think. You can't talk about it. It depends on what level you're talking about it in the sense of like, are you talking about like the word leadership? Or are you talking about a specific instance, and an action and really kind of diving deep into a very microscopic thing? Because I know, right? What's the endgame? What's the end state? What do you try to get out of it? Or like, people can deep dive into wine? Like you and I could talk about wine. But when it comes to this very specific bottle, from this Valley in France, that does this wind, because of this soil in this climate? You start to realize, like, I don't know shit about that. But I can tell where the legs, you know, this thing has got legs and the tenants, right? So it really depends on like, what certain like circle or conversation you're in.

Brock Briggs  1:12:13  

Are you a big wine guy? I know. You were talking like you were saying all the words. That's leadership, although,

Tony Nash  1:12:23  

right? Like you can just leadership this man can talk all day long. But once you're actually doing the thing. What is it other than words?

Brock Briggs  1:12:40  

The second pillar that you have is life tactic. This one was a little bit more difficult for me to understand. So jump in here, learned behaviors, belief in the value of failures.

Tony Nash  1:12:57  

Think about it. Like their habits. More or less, right? You implement something, right? Like what when you get up in the morning? What do you what's the first thing you do? Coffee, right? But how do you get from your bed to coffee?

Brock Briggs  1:13:18  

Stand up, I

Tony Nash  1:13:18  

guess. Right? So you got you, you go through an established routine, right? Just like in the military, you have some sort of like tactic or like Battle drill that you implement time and time and time and time and time and time again. But when that situation happens, we have to implement that tactic. It might not look exactly like you guys implement it, but it still has the same elements to it. So understanding Wow. You want to go to the gym every day. But for whatever reason, all you can do is maybe get like a quick run in or even less like you just spend 10 minutes in like a bottom of a squat. 90 minutes. That's a long time. You spend like, a minute and a half in the bottom of a squat. Did you still get a workout in? Depending on your level and you know, how many times you've shown like, maybe that's that's massive just said, when's the last time you sat in the bottom of a squat? For like, an extended period of time?

Brock Briggs  1:14:19  

It's been a while. Yeah. But it's

Tony Nash  1:14:23  

recognizing what is the actual understanding what am I trying to get out of this thing. And then getting to that end state, right, going back to the systems. That's what I tried to talk like when I say like lifetags, etc. That's what I think being flexible with it's not always gonna look the same every time while you're still working towards whatever that end state is. I keep pointing over here, like you're gonna see something but that's just kind of like, my hands come out of camera.

Brock Briggs  1:14:51  

I'm imagining it. Yeah. Thank you. So are you saying that there is no value in doing an action, even though it may not look like your typical daily action, so you don't have the 45 minutes to an hour to lift, but you go and do the action, even for a short period of time to kind of remind yourself of what you're supposed to be doing. Maybe life gets in the way, for some reason you physically can't do it, right? But you're gonna go kind of put yourself in the headspace even for a minute of I want to get a workout and then go about your day with whatever the circumstances are to kind of like keep that habit is that. 

Tony Nash 

Yeah. I like that. I think that I found myself doing that subconsciously. Weirdly. 

Brock Briggs  1:16:01  

And I think that if you have a habit, you kind of do that innately. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I've never heard it called that or that action referred to though,

Tony Nash  1:16:13  

right? I think it's Jurassic Park reference. So

Brock Briggs  1:16:17  

if Oh, dude, I'm ready for that. Drop it. But I find

Tony Nash  1:16:21  

life finds a way. Oh, man. So

Brock Briggs  1:16:26  

good. That's the first Jurassic Park Park reference on here. So in the same way that your most recent episode is your best one. This is also my best. Clever Girl Clever girl. The classic It is the third pillar? Well, I mean, I have to think about that one, I'm probably gonna have more to say to you, it will certainly be beyond the scope of this podcast. But

Tony Nash  1:16:56  

this is not our only conversation. We both know that

Brock Briggs  1:17:00  

they have right? Yeah, I'm never talking to you again. This is hit the

Tony Nash  1:17:05  

VIX hit the bricks. My man if

Brock Briggs  1:17:10  

this was a one time relationship, single serve Gary transactional

Tony Nash  1:17:15  

respect, right? Respect. I appreciate you being upfront about that.

Brock Briggs  1:17:20  

The sad thing is, there are a lot of podcasters that treat guess that way. And that is for anybody listening that is interested in podcasting. If there's a way that you want to make sure that you don't stay in this game very long is treat your guests just like you're never talking to them again.

Tony Nash  1:17:41  

And in the inverse to the there's the flip side of that not every guest is your best friend. Yeah. Right. Like your if you're doing again, there's many different styles of podcasting, like Mr. Bollen does a great job where he recant stories, Mr. Who, Mr. Bond, former Navy SEAL, one of the top YouTubers in the game due to stud. And he tells true crime stories, right, it's just him going through he like the amount of work he puts in behind the scenes to get to where he's at. Because he started doing YouTube's YouTube clips, and then now he's evolved into podcasting. Or, you know, this is specifically like interview based podcast where you're bringing on another person. And depending on your, you're not always gonna be able to contact that person again, because a lot of other shit going on, you're not set a priority on the list, but take the time you do have with them, and appreciate that. Don't go into it. 

Thinking with the expectation, and I think that's one thing I may not have talked about enough, is really expectation management when it comes to podcasts, like they're gonna people who don't respond, they're gonna people who say no, there may be people you have to contact seven times in order to get them to come on, if you do an interview, again, interview style podcast. But you have to have expectation management. You know, because you don't know if that person behind the scenes is talking you up to other people and saying, hey, this was a great episode. I really enjoyed going on, you know, to this podcast because this, this and this because of how they made me feel. It's all about that engagement in that interaction with the other, the other person and how they walk away how you made them feel because they could have walked into having an absolute shit day. 

Or they could be super high. Like they just got like this massive promotion or whatever. You have to be able to meet them where they're at. And be able to give something to them other than time, or maybe that is it. It's just time. Because it might not help you but it helps somebody who listens. How many times do you come across an article on the internet where you're like searching for something or like you're looking to do some sort of like content creation and just trying to or just trying to understand something better. And you look at an article and you're like A person wrote it like eight years ago. Like this is a really good, this is great. And you go to some other stuff, you're like, Oh, this is just getting better and better, and then it just stops. And you're like, what? This is all amazing stuff. What do they do? And I mean, there's been times where I've reached out to people like, Hey, I read your article from eight years ago. This is, thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know this wasn't hard. I know this was hard for you to do. But I'm grateful that you did it. Because you never know who's looking.

Brock Briggs  1:20:37  

Goes back to the point where we're talking about of never quitting. Finding your thing. And because you don't know who's gonna be listening or reading eight years later,

Tony Nash  1:20:50  

I think it's yeah, it's understanding when to quit. If you do quit, right, but like that thing, right? How many people how many times have you seen or read about somebody who's like, had three or four failed businesses? And it was the fifth one that like, took off? Right? I believe they learned something along the way. Absolutely. A third pillar,

Brock Briggs  1:21:18  

inspiration, make someone want to do something. If I had to actually sum up what this conversation is, as I'm always thinking about titles during the conversation like that, yeah, that would probably be the title of what we've talked about so far. make someone want to do something.

Tony Nash  1:21:39  

It's internal, right? Inspiration is internal. I'm not in the convincing business. I'm in the conviction business. I'm trying to understand the fuck I'm doing on a daily basis. And if I'm moving in a direction that, you know, when you're moving in the right direction, you have that like Spidey Sense, whatever people want to call it. That just gives you those like that energy in that passion to like, continue to move in that direction, then you also get the same when you're like, I don't know if I should be here. This isn't isn't really my jam.

Brock Briggs  1:22:17  

Does podcasting give you that? Does it give you the spidey senses?

Tony Nash  1:22:22  

Yeah, I wouldn't. I want to keep doing it. If I didn't get something out of it. I would hope not. Yeah. But again, people do people do. And we've talked about this, you hear where you continue to go down a path because you feel it's the right thing to do. You've sought all the hard jobs because you felt those are the ways that I need to be able to everything else suffers. Right? This is a story. When I tell every time I get emotional. So bear with me. Did you? Were you ever part of a walking to the plank ceremony in the Navy? No. So I heard about this once. I have never seen one. But I believe that the true story. So anybody who wants to call me out, please do. That's how we all get better. But I heard this thing called the walking the plank. Persons retired. And they're facing the formation. Right. 

And right before the end of the ceremony, the formation does an about face and turns around. So the person's looking at backs, the heads and everything. And there's American motion. And then the individual who's retiring has to do an about face and walk the plank to whatever their next journey is. Sometimes there's family there. Sometimes there's nothing there. You know, at the end of the day, the Army goes rolling along the military, whatever that thing you're doing will continue to go on. You have to be able to continue on your journey down the path. But who's with you? comes a point, right? Where it doesn't just happen overnight. There's different events that happen along the way. Some microscopic, small little events, they compound over time, just like we're talking about zero to one and if you're willing to sacrifice all that just know what's there for you and the other side

Brock Briggs  1:24:55  

I've heard you make that reference in your pocket. house before, I haven't heard it talked about in the navy or otherwise. But I think that the message there is incredibly important. And sometimes the outcome isn't exactly what you think it's gonna be. There's no and that kind of leads to one of the questions that I had about this particular pillar. If we can't necessarily make other people do anything we want to aspirationally like, inspire them. With the things that we do. How do we inspire ourselves?

Tony Nash  1:25:47  

How did we get here today? How are you and I having a conversation? This isn't my podcast. What made you show up today?

Brock Briggs  1:26:01  

wanted to have a fun chat with the homie. What else? I'm working towards finding out what my thing is. Yeah.

Tony Nash  1:26:18  

And you learn by asking questions. It's not the answers. Everybody wants the answers. Everyone wants to X. Everybody wants that quick shortcut to get to that thing. But we lose focus of the questions are what really matter. It's all about the journey. It's all about finding your journey.

Brock Briggs  1:26:44  

Thinking about that? I don't know how you don't get your I don't know how you don't inspire yourself when you hear that? Which is kind of you answered my question perfectly. But it's, you have to be thinking about, hey, I have to be on my own journey here.

Tony Nash  1:27:06  

Yeah, let's be honest with yourself, which is really hard. Because very hard, we will talk so much absolute shit about ourselves inside of our own head. Like, if we were to talk to another person, we'd probably be like, arrested or beat up or both? Or a number of other things, right? But it's very easy to like get inside of our own heads. Like why aren't we enough? Instead of asking, like, why aren't we enough? It's just really the emphasis inside of the question. That dictates a different answer.

Brock Briggs  1:27:48  

One of my favorite quotes, I'm not even sure if it was actually him. He might have stolen it from somebody else. naval Raava. Khan. I'm sure you're familiar. Yeah. He talks about joy and joy being happiness at rest. And I think that that's what you're getting at joy or acceptance of being incomplete. Being on the journey, not arriving, maybe ever. I don't know if you ever really arrived. Sure what the end point is, sorry.

Tony Nash  1:28:36  

People say like, Alright, hey, you just won the Superbowl. What are you gonna do next? Like, it's, you know, I'm gonna Disney like, nobody ever says like, I'm gonna just make sure people do take in the moment and appreciate it. But everybody wants to know, after you achieve some sort of end state, what the next thing is, as opposed to just kind of sitting in the moment. You ever seen an interview where it's just like, they just put the microphone next to that person? They don't ask a single question. They just kind of like, take it in, right? Because we want to know, we want those answers. It's the answers that we seek, as opposed to just the content have been in the moment.

Brock Briggs  1:29:16  

It's incredibly difficult. Super hard. It's not easy. It takes a lot of work to do to exist. Well and be okay with just like you said the moment the process acts. Yeah, that's a lifelong conversation that you're getting out right there. fourth pillar, discipline. Delay delayed gratification.

Tony Nash  1:29:54  

Yep. Hard. It's kind of falls in line with what we're just talking about. Yeah, right is it? If you want that thing tomorrow, it's not gonna happen. It ain't gonna happen. If you want that thing, 10 years, right? It might be something that happens that's even better than that thing that you want right now. I've seen a lot of people talk about this on like Twitter, a lot of places where we overestimate what we can do in a day. And we underestimate what we can do in a year.

Brock Briggs  1:30:28  

We're not designed innately for long term thinking, yeah. I don't think that that's something that comes natural to us now, because you're trying to survive. I'm sure that you've read it. meditations, Marcus Aurelius, stoicism, this conversation is reminding me a lot of that self mastery that he talks about. And that makes it the happiness at rest, that okayness the stillness that that speaks to, of just that learning to delay the gratification that is already the end result there, there never will be a day where you will feel satisfied enough, probably. And that's an unbelievably difficult thing to accept.

Tony Nash  1:31:29  

And being able to appreciate satisfaction when it does, because it is fleeting. Because there, when you do put in the work, and you get something that you've worked for, we can't bottle that up, you have to just be able to sit in it because it happens so quick. And all that hard work, all that energy, all that effort, all that sacrifice goes towards that thing. That goes by so fast. So you have to be able to stop yourself and sit in that and experience it. Because if you don't, that's when people will look back and say was all that effort, all that energy, all that hard work, worth it. 

Never really sat in it so you don't know. Alright, I got a quote over here. Like forget the fruit, slay the beast focus on the work. I got that from Joe Byerly who, from the green notebook, phenomenal blog podcast, Jesus stood guest to the front of the show. And every night not only up there, but I also have it in the gym to you, when I start to get out of sorts start to get over my skis start to get overwhelmed. Think back like am I doing the work? am I focusing on something that won't happen today, but the work is gonna happen today.

Brock Briggs  1:33:00  

But I'm not doing the work. It's so easy, especially in this content. I hate calling it a game. But let's be honest, it's a fucking game is it's it's incredibly easy to get hung up on. You talked about it earlier, all of these other things that are not just putting out a weekly episode. And it comes back to like, hey, will, is this what I'm thinking about is what I'm obsessing over what I'm worrying about right now. Is that getting in the way of the bare minimum? Is that pushing that bare minimum thing forward? And if it's not, it usually is. Exactly. last pillar, encouragement. Do people hear what they want to hear? When it comes to encouragement? Where do you think that encouragement is genuinely useful?

Tony Nash  1:34:22  

So when you have a conversation with someone and they're coming to you, usually there's three things that they're seeking one of three things sometimes all sometimes too, you know, but it's usually falls into one of the three buckets. I call it MVP, right? Motivation, validation, permission. And all those can be wrapped up in encouragement in different forms. Great, encouraging. Yes, you are valid in your thought process or your understanding of the situation. Right, that empathy, permission all those things like we were just talking about 45 seconds ago, all those things aren't, don't get you are above and beyond the bare minimum. 

Just, you know what you need to do. Don't worry about those things, or do worry about some of them. Right? But more or less, no one's ever said in a commerce, if I give you permission to do that thing that you're asking me like, it's more like you have, it could be like, I don't know, if I, man, you got this, you got the skill sets, you can do this. And then motivation, it's like, well, I know you can do this, because I've seen you do this, this and this. All those are just different forms of encouragement.

Brock Briggs  1:35:46  

How do we, maybe this is an answer we covered in the last pillar. But how do we encourage ourselves? Because all of those things, we shouldn't need those from other people. We shouldn't need motivation from other people. We shouldn't need validation from other people. We shouldn't need permission from other people. I know. We talked about Jack Butcher before he talks about the permissionless apprentice a lot that a big concept he has coined. How do we encourage ourselves through each of those things, you just, you just look in the mirror.

Tony Nash   1:36:31  

We all know what we want. We all know what we're seeking. taking that step, being in the arena, inching a little bit closer to that thing gives you that encouragement. But along the way, like you can only have your head down for so long.

Brock Briggs  1:36:55  

And you're gonna have to look up and be like,

Tony Nash  1:36:59  

is this the right path? Am I have I found someone who's done this before? Because I could be going rate to go back to another analogy, like pilots, every degree that they're off, for every mile, they can end up you know, you're flying a degree offer 60 minutes, you're 60 miles off course, right? But if you're trying to control come in and be like, Hey, you're just trying to veer off course get back on. Okay. You can continue to fly in your path. And then to the permission permissionless apprentice, right? It's like, you're not asking so we're just gonna do this thing, right? 

How many times has that happened, where you've gone above and beyond for something else, or done something to like, if you want to reach out to somebody that's like, super, that you put out in like this pedestal. And just by saying, sup isn't really gonna do anything. But if you say like, hey, I saw this thing. We have this in common really appreciate you did it. That's more than sup. And then you provide some sort of like value behind that. That instantly rises. I mean, I'm sure you start to see it too. People are always hitting you up about like, oh, I see you do a podcast. Let me create some content for your other stuff. Like okay, cool. Great. Some kind of like, what are you going? What are you got? Crickets? Like, there's no traffic and the extra mile

Brock Briggs  1:38:41  

you were just talking about air traffic control, guiding us back to the path. What do you think about us going down a path that maybe nobody has gone down? There isn't that voice or that person? And especially if you have aspirations of doing something that nobody has done before. You're going to a place where nobody can guide you. There's no comeback to the course conversation at all.

Tony Nash  1:39:18  

I would say I would. I would push back on that and saying maybe that specific thing that you're looking to do. But there's elements that have kind of gotten you to that point that you can then reference, Roger Bannister in the four minute mile. Everyone said can't happen. Not possible, not humanly possible. He broke it 90 days later, and then within the next like year, there's a number of people that broke and be his time. Remember, people have been running before. So, yes, there is something to be said about trailblazing. But those trailblaze others are taking and collecting from other people who have gone about different paths to get to where they're going.

Brock Briggs  1:40:10  

In some ways, we need to learn from others, but not necessarily look for their path, just the guiding principles that got them to their perceived success. Yeah, or even somebody

Tony Nash  1:40:27  

just call you out. Like, you start to get oh, you know, inflated or whatever. And they're like, A, is that really you and your movies that. You know, it could be something like it, it could be someone who has nothing to do with that thing that you're pursuing. But they can give you that dose of reality. And it could be someone you've never interacted with before. Because another gym analogy. You can see somebody trying to like struggle it like deadlifts so much weight. Especially somebody beginning I love, like beginning something new. 

But you could be giving tactile cues as a coach to that, like, say you're coaching an athlete. And you're like, Hey, do this, you know, pincher, pinch, like engage your lats, all this stuff. And then somebody from across the gym says, like, your hamstrings look loose, and they're like, oh, and then whom weight goes right up. They never interacted with that person. They didn't know who that person was. They might never see that person ever again. But now they're a better they can do the movement better. Because it just finally got through at the right time.

Brock Briggs  1:41:44  

How do you use these pillars to make daily decisions?

Tony Nash  1:41:50  

I think we've talked about that throughout this conversation. You know, whether it be servant leadership, the life tactics, inspiration, discipline, encouragement, I think it just kind of all funnels in to just who I am as a person through different experiences and events that we've discussed over the course of our conversation. But it's not like a It's six o'clock at night, when we put in a little bit of discipline, here just kind of become ingrained in who I am.

Brock Briggs  1:42:26  

I don't think that this would be one of those things that would take away from what you're currently working on. But I would absolutely love to read some work that you put out on each of those. Just to kind of put a bug in your ear. Yeah. I got you. Tony, this has been a very, very fun conversation. We could probably go all night, but I'm gonna close out with one or actually one serious question. And a fun one. Okay. Which one you want? First? serious? Serious? What do people misunderstand about you?

Tony Nash  1:43:15  

Just like anyone else, they only see a tie time, like a snapshot. Like if you look at film, right? It's a frame. But when you start to go and ask and understand and really engage with someone, you start to learn more about them, right? Because one of the questions you asked me just like are you always happy like luck now? I'm always not always not happy. You know, I, I experienced life just like anyone else. went for it one step at a time. To being able to maybe this isn't me, like meeting people where they're at. Tonight you met me where we're at. I'm grateful for that. Sure, hope so.

Brock Briggs  1:44:07  

The much less serious question. Why did you stop opening your podcasts with aloha?

Tony Nash  1:44:16  

So I did four years in Hawaii had a blast. And as time has gone on that is no longer like it's a part of me. It's that appreciation of where I've been. But that I've have I've evolved right like just like your episode one isn't the same as where you where you're at now. You have to continue to evolve who you are as a person. Yeah. I look good from time to time. Curious

Brock Briggs  1:44:47  

if you were from there or vacation there. Yeah, at the end of the day, I'm just a kid from Buffalo New York, man, right? That's what it is, bro yeah, I'm excited to see and be having this conversation again. Where we will have this conversation again before you hit 200 episodes, but in the same way, you've evolved from Episode 121 Episode 100. I'm very excited to see what the next 100 looks like for you.

Tony Nash  1:45:25  

Thank you. You too. 

Brock Briggs  1:45:28  

Where do you want to send people and how? How can myself and our listeners be useful to you?

Tony Nash  1:45:38  

Useful I've never been asked that question before that's that's a fascinating I'm gonna come back to in a second. As far as me Got Your Six podcast. Check it out weekly episodes drop Monday. The Tony Nash doesn't get as much love as it should. Because a lot of it's directed towards the gotcha six podcast either one, you know, I would Got Your Six Podcast is a blast. Listen to an episode. If you don't get hooked, that's fine. Let me know. Always looking to improve useful file find what you're looking for. Gold now let me back up. You know what you're looking for. Do one thing today to to work towards that.

Brock Briggs  1:46:22  

But no, put it any better way. That's exactly what we need to be doing. Tony, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much!

Tony Nash  1:46:28  

Thank you!