← Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
From Special Forces to Savage Freedom: One Man’s Fight to Rebuild America #175
02:01:03
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- [00:01]
Jeff Duden
If you are a former Special Forces Green Beret, serving our country for 17 years, if you drove 18 hours from Texas to North Carolina to rescue your three and a half year old daughter who was stranded by Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, if you saw the need and filled the gap for the isolated, freezing, starving people in the aftermath of this incredible, devastating travesty, and if you sounded the alarm, put the word out to the Special Forces community and lit the fuse of the mission that would one day become known as the Redneck Air force, organized over 2500 sorties over 45 days, delivering thousands, hundreds of thousands of pounds of supplies to people in desperate need, your name can only be Adam Smith.
- [00:45]
Adam Smith
Wow, you got me on that one.
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Jeff Duden
Right off the bat.
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Adam Smith
Right off the get go.
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Jeff Duden
Right off the get.
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Adam Smith
We didn't even, didn't even get anywhere. We haven't even started this thing and you already got tears in my eyes.
- [00:59]
Jeff Duden
Well, it's true. It's true. And that's what you did. And sometimes in the face of great need and great opportunity, people step up. And sometimes, you know, people. I mean, Churchill, you know, or whatever it is, but that's what you did. It was incredible. I went to school at Appalachian State. You know, we supported the efforts, but not in the way that you did. Thank you for what you did.
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Adam Smith
Well, I. Thank you. I would never compare myself to Winston Churchill, not ever in a million years. But I talk about an intro. Holy crap, man. I'm really grateful for that. Thank you very much.
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Jeff Duden
Yeah, absolutely.
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Adam Smith
You got me. Well, I didn't expect to have tears in this, this podcast. Today's going on, man.
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Jeff Duden
Well, look, stop. Because I cry. Easy.
- [01:44]
Adam Smith
Oh, man, you got me. Wow. Yeah, it's. It's. I don't know, it's hard to hear. It's hard to hear that part, you know, because you, you, we, all of us that were there, we all played such a critical role and everybody had such a real legitimate critical piece in everything that took place on the ground on the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. It's eye opening, I think, to see what amazing, professional, capable individuals have the ability to do when they shift their focus from war fighting to life savings. They all, I think, in a lot of ways, are one and the same. But, you know, the. The aftermath wasn't just all of what you read, which is kind of incredible to think about it, but it was the conversations that we all had with one another, which was. I didn't realize I needed this in my life. Like, I didn't realize that I needed to find purpose again. I didn't realize that, you know, I had guy, veteran after veteran come up and say, I needed that. Like, thank you. I need it. They were. They were thanking me for them to. Volunteering for the work that they put in because they felt like there was an opportunity provided to them that they really needed in their life. It was very, very surreal experience.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
Well, when you live the life that you did in the military, operating at a high level, and you have these skills, and then you get into civilian life, and not all of them translate. And some of the videos that I saw were talking about how precise and how disciplined the operation was. And when I saw that, I looked right back at the way that we responded to disasters. And I also was reticent that maybe I didn't do more or I didn't find my way into your camp, because that's what you do. The first thing you do is recon. You know, what is the actual state of. On the ground in a disaster situation, if you're a relief company and if you wait to the news media to tell you what's going on, you're seven to 14 days later behind the power. You're already behind.
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Adam Smith
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
So the first thing you do is recon. Leaders have to get in there and actually see the need on the ground and be actually taking actions. Right. Based on the resources they have available or garnering resources to respond, the next thing is safety. Okay. Are my people safe? Are the. You know, are the occupants safe? Are there any rescue missions that we need to do? Do I have. When I would go in first, Is there a safe place for us to land? You know, where's. Where's gonna be the landing zone? We would have to secure a warehouse or even a parking lot.
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Adam Smith
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
I mean, you know, if there's a. If everything's flooded in Hurricane Katrina and we find Hurwitzman's store, you know, furniture. Furniture store, and they have a massive parking lot. I say, well, we'll help you. Can we use your parking lot as a landing zone? And then we'll start deploying resources in there. We'll circle the wagons, we'll have a big generator, and that's where we'll live for the first few days.
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Adam Smith
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
And then it's just logistics.
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Adam Smith
That's it. You know, it's. I had a conversation with some. Who did I talk to? I talked to some guys that used to be with Blackwater. You know, their Katrina response was pretty. Pretty epic. They got a phone call from the federal government that said we need a lot of help with X, Y and Z. Blackwater mobilized something like 3,000 personnel within a four day period and pushed them all down into the, into Louisiana. The response? Yeah, and we had a conversation and his response was, you know, the number one battle and disaster relief is not life saving rescues. It's not, you know, getting people. It is logistics. And it's the logistics of every part of that effort.
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Jeff Duden
That's right.
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Adam Smith
And if you can understand that part, that's all we did. I mean, the one thing that we did that the county couldn't do, the state seemed to not be able to do. Then the federal government was completely. Oh, man.
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Jeff Duden
Just absent.
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Adam Smith
Not just absent, like incompetent. And I just, I'll just. It just is what it is. The last administration, how they functioned and operated, the communications that they had, was absolutely incompetent, competent. Now, the people on the ground that were there from the federal government, some of the people that I met were just spectacular people. They really wanted to do the right thing and they wanted to help people that were helping people. And they're really, really, really solid in their response. In fact, they helped us help people on the ground.
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Jeff Duden
Where was the money, Adam? Where was the money that I've seen? I responded to every disaster for 25 years that made landfall in the continental United States. Every Single1 for 25 years. FEMA was always large and in charge. They were showing up. There's thousands of trailers, there's thousands of housing. Like they had resources.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
Why were there not resources for these people to deploy?
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Adam Smith
I, you know, do we do it's.
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Jeff Duden
Anybody know?
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Adam Smith
No, I don't think they do. I think I can speculate and I'm willing to speculate because I think it's a fair speculation. We were in the middle of a national presidential election. One there was a lot of fallout already from the Biden administration that was taking place and the communications gap between the state. People don't realize or understand. The state has to declare a state of emergency. It's done by the governor. The governor. Then once that declaration is met, there's a certain amount of money that opens up from the federal government. But then the state governor has to request a major disaster declaration by the federal government. Once that's approved by the administration, then it activates the Stafford Act. Right. And when the Stafford act is activated, there's another pot of money that opens up. And that's what gives us the ability to deploy FEMA into the field. So they take a federalized agency like FEMA pushes them into the field, then there's an entirely different route when it comes to requesting usar. So search and rescue, it's United States search and rescue organizations. Right. The FEMA task forces that are around the country. For that to happen, a county has to make a request to the state, the state has to make a request to fema and the administration then has to be approved by the administration, pushed back down to FEMA to activate whatever task force is going to come into the region. Then that they get a mission number. That mission number assigns them a point of control, which is whatever the county that made the request. This is the crazy part, that that USAR team can't move. That's where it's located. It's direct control. So it's opcon. It's operational control is from that county based on that mission number. That's how it functions and operates. So let's say one county doesn't really need that support or assistance anymore. Then there's another county that needs it more. Unless there's a mission number tasked to that USAR team, they can't shift action or go to a different location. Right.
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Jeff Duden
So people in the field that see the need, there are constraints within which they have to operate, which is the.
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Adam Smith
Problem with the bureaucratic process. Of all the red tape required for disaster relief, major disaster declaration, the movement of funding and personnel, the movement of materials into the area. We didn't get our first federal supply drop unrequested, mind you. Like it happened, not requested until day 13.
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Unknown
Okay.
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Adam Smith
Or day 12. And it was, it was a Chinook, a National Guard Chinook that landed and offloaded pallets of, of MREs and a pallet of water. Well, at that point, we'd already had £3 million of supplies on the ground.
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Jeff Duden
Wow.
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Adam Smith
Right. So it didn't. We didn't need a plus up from the federal government with materials and supplies. What do we. What we needed from them was we needed them to activate a army of inspectors, people that can come out and look at property, people that can come out and caseworkers. That's what they needed on the ground more than anything else. The search at day 13, search and rescue was done. Right? Right. We had moved into human remains detection. So the critical piece we needed from the federal government was not more supplies. We needed adjusters, we needed inspectors, we needed case workers. We need human remains detection teams that could flex all over the western portion of the state to start doing human remains detection and marking locations to do body recovery. Yeah, that's what we really needed.
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Jeff Duden
Where were comms in day 13?
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Adam Smith
By day 13, I think we had the cell towers were back up again. But power in general was still not spotty. Yeah, it was not great. The water infrastructure was even worse. I mean, the, you know, three miles of water main was torn out of the ground.
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Unknown
Wow.
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Adam Smith
From one reservoir and that the other reservoir was like a mile and a half of water main that was torn out. You're talking about 36 inch pipes buried at, you know, three and a half or four feet below the ground. Gone. Completely gone. So no power, no water, which was a huge issue. And, and then in the first, you know, five to six days, there was no communications. So cell towers were out. Radio communications between emergency services were gone. Because they use a trunked radio system without getting all of the detail, has to have digital throughput for the repeaters to work properly.
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Jeff Duden
Right.
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Adam Smith
They didn't have that. No Internet because the infrastructure was destroyed. So comms was. We did it with Starlings.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Adam Smith
Yeah. We were lucky. We had a guy named Mike Coriel show up. Mike is the chief electrical engineer for SpaceX. He apparently, he's a direct report to Elon and he apparently, when the disaster happened, he called him and said, I'm going.
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Jeff Duden
How did he get. He just, he just decided.
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Adam Smith
He just decided to come. Yeah, he just like, I'm going to.
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Jeff Duden
Wow.
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Adam Smith
And I'm not 100% certain how he showed up to our location, but he knew a dude that knew a dude that knew a dude that said, you should go here. And that's when he got to Harley Davidson. But that's kind of how it was for everybody. That's how Glenn Beck showed up. That's how J.D. vance showed up. That's how Congressman Corey Mills showed up. That's how President Trump showed up. I mean, everybody showed up into that space because we were at the right place at the right time with the right people. Right. You know, and that was. He was one of them. And because of Mike and his connections, we had, holy crap, you know, Starlink show up on the ground. Generac generators show up.
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Unknown
Okay.
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Jeff Duden
These people are showing up. The first question that anybody asks in these situations, because I've been in hundreds of them. Who's in charge? Was that you?
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Adam Smith
Yeah, it was me.
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Jeff Duden
Okay.
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Adam Smith
Unfortunately.
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Jeff Duden
Look again, you have to step up. Can you walk me through the first 24 hours after the storm hit?
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Adam Smith
Yeah. So we were in Texas, we're in Austin. My fiance and I are in Austin and we're at a for profit wealth management business conference. For her company. And the next day we're driving to Dallas, Texas to speak at the Texas Valor Project and they partner with Defenders of Freedom and coast to Coast. And they all do. They're all veteran nonprofits that treat veterans for post traumatic stress, but specifically focused on traumatic brain injury. So the recovery from TBIs. So the next morning we're going to go speak at their event. We lost comms Thursday night at about 10pm with my daughter and her mom, my ex wife. They lived next door to us on Highway 9.
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Jeff Duden
And where was that? What day did the storm hit?
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Adam Smith
So that was Thursday night. Now the storm hit Thursday evening. The water crested Friday midday. It's like I think 10:30 or 11:00 o' clock in the morning.
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Jeff Duden
Right. And they lived near, with about 40.
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Adam Smith
Yards away from the river that washed away Bat Cave and Chimney Rock.
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Jeff Duden
Got it.
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Adam Smith
And we lived next door about 80 yards off of the river or so, maybe a little bit further. We lost comms Thursday, Friday morning. We didn't have any communication and we left early. So, you know, 6:00am Central Time, 7:00am Eastern Time, still no comms. By the time we get to Dallas, still no communications. And I go to my buddy that was the founder of tvp, I said, hey Chris, like we can't not stand. I got to get back to North Carolina. And so we hopped in the truck and we just bolted and we drove the rest of the day breaking every law you could possibly imagine when it comes to driving a truck. And we were able to finally get into North Carolina about 3am and the first route we took, we tried to cross I40, but I40, the French Broad river was still so high that I40 was still flooded.
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Jeff Duden
Right.
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Adam Smith
And we're not talking about like people don't realize when, when I say flooded. The bridge, the overpass of the bridge that we crossed to cross the water, the water was only six feet below it. And the Dagon Bridge is like 45, 50ft above the water.
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Jeff Duden
Yeah, like this is way down there.
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Adam Smith
Yeah. We're not talking about small amounts of water. Right. We're talking 40, what is it? 40 trillion gallons of water fell in a 24 hour period from the storm. There were some locations that water was up to 80ft deep with some of the rivers that got flooded. So you know, this is not, we're not talking about small amounts of water here. And we could, we couldn't get in. We tried to cut our way in. Every road was either completely washed out from mudslides, washed out from the flood, blocked with debris, trees Were down, power lines were down, Everything was down. And we're right in the middle of it. And on Friday, we pushed out a request to a friend on social media and said, hey, if anybody has a helicopter, please get in contact with us because that's the only way we're gonna be able to get him out. And By Friday, probably 1am I looked at Taylor, my fiance, and I said, you know, I. They're probably dead. So I don't. This is not. We're not gonna rescue them. Like, we're not rescuing them. They probably are dead. Where the house is located, the amount of damage and debris I'm hearing from guys, right.
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Jeff Duden
And the time of day. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people were just like, we'll see what it's like in the morning.
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Adam Smith
Yeah, really? They were. And then, and then the water rising, it came up so quick. It was, it was a really fast elevation of water. Couldn't get in. Saturday morning we made contact with the pilot and God love him, Aaron Rudolph. What a phenomenal human being. He actually owns Rudy Diesel Performance and Supply. It's a large, it's one of the largest diesel supply companies in the country for performance diesel parts. He's such a good human being. He owns his own helicopter. He met us at the Harley Davidson at like 9:30 in the morning. Nine, 9:30 in that window. And then Aaron and myself flew into the. Flew back into the property and landed in front of my house.
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Jeff Duden
Okay.
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Adam Smith
And everybody was okay.
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Jeff Duden
So the property wasn't washed away. They didn't have to climb up into the mountain.
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Adam Smith
Not at all. No. They're by, by only by God's blessing. Their, their house didn't get washed away. The water came up and, you know, got to the bottom of their house, like basically to the bottom of the first foot. It's only one story, but it's an elevated house. So it came up. But the bank on the far side was lower than the near side bank.
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Jeff Duden
Okay. So it had somewhere to go.
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Adam Smith
It did. And there's a mountain that comes. The mountain face comes down and touches the edge of the water about 55 or 60 yards upriver from the house. So it created this eddy. So water just came up and went down. It wasn't like moving water was washing away the house. It just came up and went down. The house across the way was flooded. The house 200, 300 y river was completely gone.
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Jeff Duden
Okay.
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Adam Smith
But their house was okay.
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Jeff Duden
That's just fortunate.
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Adam Smith
That's it.
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Unknown
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Adam Smith
So that's the first 24 hours or so.
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Jeff Duden
Okay, so you got. Where did they. Where were we able to relocate them to?
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Adam Smith
So she has a. She has family in town. That's the reason why we're. That's the reason why we moved to North Carolina, first place. So she has family in Asheville. So we relocated my daughter and her to her sister in Asheville and they stayed with them. And. And then we went back to Greenville to pick up another load of supplies and drove back up the Harley Davidson.
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Jeff Duden
All right, so now you've taken care of your personal need.
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Adam Smith
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
You have a. You have a training business. You've got a speaking. You're doing speaking.
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Adam Smith
Yes.
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Jeff Duden
You're a busy, successful person. What made you stay there? And just say, you know what? This is an opportunity where I need to step up, and if it's not me, maybe it's nobody else. Like, what was that. What was the decision point for you? And then what. What did you do the first seven.
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Adam Smith
Days it was landing. It was. The decision point was. Was after Megan and Toby were good and we got them out.
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Unknown
Yes.
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Adam Smith
Seeing the amount of devastation. This doesn't have this. The amount of devastation in the region was so dramatic and so expansive and it's. You can't. You've seen disasters all over the country for the last 25 years.
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Unknown
Yes.
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Adam Smith
You've seen some of the worst disasters in the country in the last 25 years. I don't think anything like this has happened in the last 150 years in the United States.
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Jeff Duden
Right.
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Adam Smith
I mean, we're talking about the amount of wind damage, the amount of flooding, the amount of water movement, the amount of landslides happening all at the same time.
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Unknown
Yes.
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Jeff Duden
But it would have been easy for you to turn your back and say were fine.
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Adam Smith
Yeah, we're good. Because the family's good. Right. Yeah. But my neighbor wasn't okay.
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Jeff Duden
Right.
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Adam Smith
They didn't have any power. They didn't have any communication. Hell, their family didn't even know that they were alive until we landed. And when we landed, there was a starlink on the bird. And so we landed with a starlink on the bird and everybody was able to connect to the starlink. All the local. All the local community there. Where we live.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Adam Smith
And push out information to their family, let them know they're okay.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Adam Smith
I don't know, Jeff. I think the decision point was the fact that, like, we're here.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Adam Smith
Nothing else is going to happen until this is handled. My house had water in it. I couldn't move back into the house. My daughter and her mom's house, luckily they could move back into it. But there was still water damage from the roof and some damage had happened from debris falling and things. My former brother in law, their house had a huge branch that landed on it. My next door neighborhood, they came out scot free, but they had no power. All the water was going to be gone.
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Jeff Duden
Right.
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Adam Smith
And the neighbors up the river lost their house completely.
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Jeff Duden
Had you negotiated at this point or collaborated with the owner of the Harley Davidson dealership?
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Adam Smith
No, no.
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Jeff Duden
To make that.
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Adam Smith
No.
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Jeff Duden
So the first thing you have to do is you've got to designate a landing zone.
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Adam Smith
Yeah, well, so we did that. I did that without permission. We're just going to be straight up.
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Jeff Duden
I want to look at that motorcycle.
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Unknown
Yeah, yeah.
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Jeff Duden
And oh, by the way.
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Adam Smith
Yeah, just FYI, there's a helicopter landing. That's exactly. Yeah. We already planned the HLZ happening and then when we got to the Harley on Saturday morning, the Harley Davidson. So the general manager, his name, Steve Larson, phenomenal human being. Yeah, Steve and a bunch of his guys were already on site assessing the damage. Right. And I saw Steve and I was like, hey, I got a helicopter that's going to land here that's already planning on landing here. I just want to make sure you're good with it. I mean, even if you're not good with it still landing, like just be really clear. I just want to make sure that I do my due diligence on this one. And he goes, no, no, not a problem at all. That's great. Bird landed, we did our thing. When we came back, they were still there assessing damage. And so I went to Steve and I said, hey, we got some supplies. We're gonna push some supplies out of here, if you're okay with that. And he said, yeah, man, like we're, we're not opening. Sure, yeah, sure, no problem. That was on Saturday. Sunday. We had, Sunday afternoon we had a crew of volunteers, random, another organization called Charlie Mike, another veteran based group of people, they showed up and they just happened to come past the Harley Davidson and a couple of helicopters had landed and we had pushed some supplies out and they went, who are you? What are you doing? Who are you?
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Unknown
What are you doing?
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Adam Smith
Let's connect. So they showed up.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Adam Smith
Then my buddy Johnny Wilson from Texas calls me on Sunday. He goes, I'm coming up now. Johnny has a long standing. He's a former Green Beret, he's well connected to the community. He's a very, very good guy. He's the founder of coast to coast. He's like, I'm coming up. I'm like, well, let's go. Bring it. So Johnny drives up, he gets up there Sunday night. By Monday morning, we've now gone from me and Taylor to 15 to 20 people or so, all veterans, most of us special operations veterans on the ground in western North Carolina. And we've also collected something like 25 or 30 pallets of water at this point.
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Jeff Duden
Okay. So trained.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
Experienced.
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Adam Smith
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
You're speaking the same language.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Adam Smith
Everybody understands.
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Jeff Duden
So there's no. One of the things that we always had to do was we had to train people. We had our team.
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Adam Smith
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
But then as you get more people involved, it's like, we need to teach you the protocol as to what's going on. But you guys had it.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
So that was probably the best 15, 20 people you could have posted. We had.
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Adam Smith
It was killer. And every group that showed up in the next sort of 48 hours, a majority of them were special operations veterans.
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Jeff Duden
Awesome.
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Adam Smith
Or guys that took permissive leave. Active duty dudes that left their job on permissive leave to come help.
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Unknown
Wow.
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Adam Smith
Yeah. So, you know, by Wednesday, Thursday of that week, 70, 80 special operations veterans on the ground, 1.2 million pounds of supplies on the ground. Three dedicated or four dedicated helicopters that they just. They were flying into another location. They heard that we were getting shit done, so they decided to come and co locate with us.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Adam Smith
By day eight, we had a 4,000 gallon jet, a fuel tanker on the ground. We had 3,000 gallons of 100 low lead on the ground so we could refuel birds. We had a National Guard liaison that showed up. He deployed himself from the. So they got. They got activated. And he heard. He heard what we were doing. He's like, I got to go check out what these guys are doing. His name is Bertha. Warrant officer Bertha. That's his last name. He shows up and he goes, how can I help? And we're like, well, dude, we need that. We need more air assets. We have bigger missions that we want to run. You know, we have 60 kilowatt generators and 100 kilowatt generators that are back here that we want to push out to community centers and get them hooked up. Yeah, we need sling loads like we need Chinooks to sling load these birds out there.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Adam Smith
And so he's like, all right, cool, no problem, man. So he started sitting in, requests the National Guard. The National Guard would then cut away aircraft for us to use. And then we would direct the national guard aircraft on a mission to Do X, Y and Z.
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Jeff Duden
Almost like it's supposed to be.
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Adam Smith
Almost like it's supposed to be. Almost like that's how it's supposed to work.
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Jeff Duden
Yeah, yeah.
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Adam Smith
Yeah.
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Jeff Duden
You would think.
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Unknown
Yeah. Yeah.
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Adam Smith
Well, you. One would assume. One would assume, you know, if, I don't know, federal government had figured it out.
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Jeff Duden
Yeah.
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Adam Smith
Sooner.
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Jeff Duden
I mean, I guess they'd have to have people that were trained and ready.
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Adam Smith
Or the state, you know, which is another. Oh, God, that's just such a long. Yeah.
- [23:04]
Jeff Duden
I have a. I have a very good personal friend who is. He was the undersecretary of defense for policy.
- [23:10]
Adam Smith
Okay.
- [23:11]
Jeff Duden
General Tony Tata. And now he is up for the undersecretary of defense for readiness.
- [23:16]
Adam Smith
Okay.
- [23:16]
Jeff Duden
Which readiness? This place. Now he's got to go through Congress and he's got to get approved. Yeah, that's happening right. Right now or this month or whatever it is. But, like, this is a readiness issue.
- [23:25]
Adam Smith
It is. It's a huge readiness issue. Yeah, it's such a huge readiness issue that in the last six weeks or seven weeks or so, we've been putting together a product, a deliverable that we want to be able to give to the federal government in the states, if we can. And the product is a overview of deficiencies and shortfalls that we identified during the storm. But more importantly, it's a restructuring of what FEMA could be. It's a restructuring of how the National Guard could function when it comes to disaster relief. And it's a. Hey, I don't know if you know this, but you have these assets available that you aren't using. Right. There's a huge amount of specific types of airframes the National Guard has, which is perfect built for disaster relief that they're not using for disaster relief. They use Blackhawks and Chinooks. Those things suck for disaster relief. They're way too big. They have way too much. Way too much of a footprint.
- [24:13]
Jeff Duden
Oh, you can't get in.
- [24:14]
Adam Smith
No. You can't land.
- [24:15]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [24:16]
Adam Smith
And if you do, you're stuck, you know, but they have a huge fleet of other types of airframes. So we've been working with a good friend of mine who owns a contracting company. They have one of those birds, and we've been in communications about how to use those birds best because they actually flew that aircraft in and around western North Carolina to provide disaster relief and support.
- [24:35]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [24:36]
Adam Smith
On their own dime.
- [24:36]
Jeff Duden
All right, so on social media, we saw race car drivers that donated their helicopters. I saw Cletus McFarlane.
- [24:42]
Adam Smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good old.
- [24:43]
Jeff Duden
Good old McFarland, was he working out of your.
- [24:45]
Adam Smith
So he was flying out of Hickory, but he. He and I connected a couple of times. He landed at our location a couple of times to pick up some supplies. You know, your. Your NASCAR drivers, the Biffles out there. Like, great, dude. He landed at our location multiple times to pick up supplies and take. Take runs out there.
- [25:00]
Unknown
Okay.
- [25:00]
Adam Smith
We kind of became a halfway stop. So, yeah, if we didn't have dedicated air. But by the time we were done, we had probably 15 or 20 birds.
- [25:07]
Jeff Duden
You're the advanced base, basically.
- [25:09]
Unknown
Yeah, yeah.
- [25:10]
Jeff Duden
You're taking. And then. And then. So how much of this was public? How much was. It was private? Did. Where did the. £1.2 million. How many. How many. How many pounds of supplies?
- [25:19]
Adam Smith
Ultimately, close to five and a half million pounds.
- [25:22]
Jeff Duden
Five and a half million pounds of supplies. So that's an. That's a. That's an enormous amount.
- [25:27]
Adam Smith
It's a huge.
- [25:28]
Jeff Duden
Where did it come from?
- [25:29]
Adam Smith
Everywhere. It came from all over the United States.
- [25:31]
Jeff Duden
Samaritan's purse.
- [25:33]
Adam Smith
So Samaritan's Purse had their own operation, right? You know? Yeah, yeah, they had their own operation going where they were buying supplies and materials. But a majority, I don't actually think we got any supplies from Samaritan's Purse. During the height of the operation. We had. So we had. We partnered with another nonprofit called CCRT out of Indiana. A good friend of mine is the founder of that organization. They do disaster. They actually made, I think Times magazine front cover one time for a rescue they did after a major flood.
- [26:03]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [26:04]
Adam Smith
They coordinated fixed wing aircraft to land at Statesville Airport.
- [26:08]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [26:08]
Adam Smith
And then we had ground transportation to transport supplies from Statesville to Harley Davidson's and some other distribution location in the area.
- [26:14]
Jeff Duden
That's like an hour and a half.
- [26:16]
Adam Smith
Yeah, about an hour and 20 minutes.
- [26:17]
Unknown
Okay.
- [26:17]
Adam Smith
Then we had helicopters take supplies from our location out to predetermined HLZs, helicopter landing zones. And on top of that, prior to like any of those pieces happening, we had recon teams going forward. So we would push out two or three man recon teams with a Starlink. Yeah, they get on the ground, they get ground reality. They'd understand exactly what's required or needed. They cut in an HLZ if need be. So they literally would fell trees on people's property to cut in an hlz. So we could bring a bird in, put it down, and drop off these supplies to them.
- [26:47]
Jeff Duden
And the supply chain has to start all the way back from Statesville.
- [26:50]
Adam Smith
No, has to start from Even before wherever it's originated from.
- [26:53]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. And then all the way out to this home in the middle of the mountains where you've got an elderly couple that needs. Yeah, they need.
- [27:00]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [27:01]
Jeff Duden
Now, were there people that. You know. Now there's two things you can do. You can either bring supplies in or you can take the people out. What were those negotiations like?
- [27:09]
Adam Smith
We didn't negotiate. We didn't. There was no negotiation.
- [27:12]
Jeff Duden
You would take people out?
- [27:13]
Adam Smith
No, we just leave them there.
- [27:14]
Jeff Duden
You just leave them there?
- [27:14]
Adam Smith
Yeah. People didn't want to leave.
- [27:15]
Jeff Duden
They didn't want to leave.
- [27:16]
Adam Smith
No, these are the people. This is the. These are. These are people of the Appalachian.
- [27:20]
Jeff Duden
Appalachian.
- [27:21]
Adam Smith
They do not want to leave their home. That's right. Their home. And for the most part, you know, look, we might have been the redneck air force, but if you want to talk about the redneck ground force, when we landed our helicopter. We landed Aaron's helicopter Saturday morning. There was already chainsaws and tractors and backhoes and dozers and good old boys on tractors, you know, drinking their Bud Light and digging the. Digging the roads out. A majority of Highway 9 wasn't cleared by any of the federal, state, or county capability. It was done by good old boys.
- [27:50]
Jeff Duden
Do you think the federal government would have took a different approach and just saying, we're not bringing you anything. You need to get in and we need to take you.
- [27:57]
Adam Smith
I don't think they could. One, I don't think they would have done it. Two, they would have never gotten away with it.
- [28:00]
Unknown
Okay.
- [28:01]
Adam Smith
Not in that area. No. You're talking about a part of the country where most people are carrying, you know, and most people are willing to defend their property.
- [28:09]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [28:09]
Adam Smith
So you're not going to dictate that they have to leave their property unless you're going to declare martial law. And then it's a completely different conversation.
- [28:15]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [28:15]
Jeff Duden
Fair enough.
- [28:16]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [28:16]
Jeff Duden
What's the state on the ground today?
- [28:22]
Adam Smith
There's progress. Some of the most hardest hit areas. I mean, there's still a lot of recovery that has to happen. Waterways are still pretty trashed right now. A lot of debris cleanup and debris contracts that are getting pushed out there for debris to get removed from the region. You know, there's still a lot of people, like we're right now building a house for a gal named Miss Judy. She lost her house. Her story is crazy. Her husband died in July of last year, and then the storm hit and she lost all three of her homes, and she's retired with. Without a retirement income. And the Two other properties that she had on her lots, she rented at a pretty very fair rate.
- [29:04]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [29:04]
Adam Smith
So she lost her income plus her home.
- [29:06]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [29:07]
Adam Smith
So we've met, Mr. And her plot of land was 200 yards from Harley Davidson's corner.
- [29:14]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [29:14]
Adam Smith
So we could see her house right. From where we were operating at. And so she became kind of one of the very first ones that we. Man, we gotta. We gotta do something for Ms. Judy.
- [29:24]
Jeff Duden
Sure.
- [29:24]
Adam Smith
How do we get her house back up and running again? How we get her home? She's still living in a camper. I mean, I just moved back into my home three. Three and a half weeks ago.
- [29:31]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [29:32]
Adam Smith
So people are still living in campers. People are still. They are still. They are still homeless because their homes were completely destroyed.
- [29:38]
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah.
- [29:40]
Jeff Duden
Where did you grow up?
- [29:42]
Adam Smith
Southern Indiana, outside of Louisville, Kentucky.
- [29:44]
Jeff Duden
Okay. Okay. And what were you like growing up? Sports.
- [29:49]
Adam Smith
Yeah, that's my mom and dad.
- [29:50]
Jeff Duden
Oh, really?
- [29:51]
Adam Smith
Yeah, I was an ass.
- [29:51]
Jeff Duden
It was all a blur.
- [29:54]
Adam Smith
I was a jerk.
- [29:55]
Jeff Duden
Really.
- [29:55]
Adam Smith
Well, I mean, no, my mom would say I was a good kid. I just. I just was way hyperactive and talked too much.
- [30:00]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [30:00]
Adam Smith
Yeah. I played soccer growing up. I played football in middle school. I played football a bit in high school. Was in the ROTC program. I played the tuba. I actually was one of the younger. I think one of the youngest members of the, like, Louisville Philharmonic in sort of that area. Playing. Playing music out there with those guys. We played. Got a chance to play with them. I got a chance to play with the thing called a tuba. Christmas. I don't know. I did a little bit of everything.
- [30:23]
Jeff Duden
Okay. And then what was the decision to go into the military?
- [30:26]
Adam Smith
I was. I was a kid that was in, like, second grade, and I drew a storybook that, you know, I wanted to be an Air Force pilot.
- [30:34]
Jeff Duden
Got it.
- [30:34]
Adam Smith
Then I wanted to be a Marine in the Force Recon. Then I was like, I don't ever want to eat crayons. This is stupid. So I want to do something different. And so by the time I think this, I was probably 12 or 13. I really wanted to be a Green Beret. Like, that was the thing I wanted to do. And. Have you ever seen the John Way movie, the Green Berets?
- [30:51]
Jeff Duden
I have, but I can't think of a scene in it.
- [30:54]
Adam Smith
Well, it's. It's phenomenal. But one of the greatest scenes in the whole movie and is when one of the guys on the team shows up with a Jeep randomly.
- [31:04]
Unknown
Okay.
- [31:05]
Adam Smith
And John Wayne's character says, where'd you get that or do I want to know? And the guy that pulled up with the Jeep said, I just found it laying around.
- [31:13]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [31:13]
Adam Smith
And then they went about their business.
- [31:14]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [31:15]
Adam Smith
And I was like, oh, man. Like, I know that. I know that's probably against the rules, but I really like the way they operate.
- [31:20]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [31:22]
Adam Smith
So that. That was. That was one of the reasons.
- [31:24]
Jeff Duden
All right. How old were you when you enlisted?
- [31:26]
Adam Smith
17.
- [31:26]
Jeff Duden
You're 17?
- [31:27]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [31:27]
Unknown
Okay.
- [31:28]
Jeff Duden
So right out of high school.
- [31:29]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [31:29]
Jeff Duden
And. And then where. Talk me through your service.
- [31:33]
Adam Smith
I did a little bit. Everything I spent. I deployed to Bosnia early on, I deployed Afghanistan. Then I went back to selection in the Q course, and then I went to. Oh, man, where was. I went back to Afghanistan again. Then I went to the Defense Intelligence Agency for a little while.
- [31:50]
Unknown
Okay.
- [31:51]
Adam Smith
And then I ended my service in Guatemala. So Guatemala was the last couple of years that I was in when I was down South.
- [31:57]
Jeff Duden
So 17 is close to 20.
- [31:59]
Adam Smith
Yeah. Well, I thought. I thought Clinton was going to win.
- [32:01]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [32:02]
Adam Smith
I wasn't going to do that. Eight years under Obama and the rules of engagement that he changed and the regulatory process that he put in place for guys to do their job was really bad. Actively prosecuting soldiers for doing their job, especially special operators that were doing their job in Afghanistan, Iraq, and then, you know, after Benghazi. And Clinton is sitting in front of a congressional hearing, and we're talking about the loss of lives of American soldiers and contractors that were there to keep CIA personnel safe and protected. And her response was, what does it matter now? I'm like, I can't. No, I'm not gonna. No.
- [32:39]
Jeff Duden
Not gonna do it.
- [32:39]
Adam Smith
Not doing this. So we had to make a change.
- [32:42]
Jeff Duden
Got it.
- [32:43]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [32:44]
Jeff Duden
And then when did you start The Savage Company?
- [32:46]
Adam Smith
2019.
- [32:47]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [32:48]
Adam Smith
So I left, and I did a. I was a director of training for a company called Norse Tactical. Yeah, they are very successful. They're still around. They're based out of the. Louisville, Kentucky. No, no. Believe it or not, they're all training. Okay. So they don't do any products. They do all training. And they train. They train exclusively law enforcement and military personnel. They don't do any civilian training.
- [33:07]
Jeff Duden
All right.
- [33:07]
Adam Smith
And the company is phenomenal. The guy that founded it, Todd Triplett, former Navy seal, phenomenal human being, really. He's one of the. He's. I call him a unicorn. He's like, you meet. Yeah. All these stories about seals and their bravado and things along those lines. Yes, that's true to an extent. Todd was never. That guy. Tripp. Trip is just, he's just a good, good human being. And for a long time, I really hope, like, I owed him a life debt. That's a, that's a story for another day, but.
- [33:32]
Unknown
Okay.
- [33:32]
Adam Smith
Finding, Finding my way into Norse was a huge transition piece for me coming out of the military. It was very, very beneficial because it really did save my life, gave me new purpose.
- [33:43]
Jeff Duden
Good. You know, and you struggle a little bit in transition.
- [33:46]
Adam Smith
Oh, big time. Big time. You know, you. You think you're gonna do something for life. And even if you do do something for life, when you step away from that, your whole identity is wrapped around the job that you do. It's actually pretty interesting. It's the same problem that entrepreneurs have and business owners have.
- [34:04]
Jeff Duden
We can't stop.
- [34:05]
Adam Smith
No. And every time there's this success and you hit the mountaintop, there's a bit of existential crisis that happens.
- [34:14]
Unknown
Yes.
- [34:14]
Adam Smith
And there's this moment where you're like, well, shit, now what do I do? Who am I now?
- [34:19]
Jeff Duden
Well, and the question is that you get is like, is it when is enough enough? And it's like, well, it's not about the accumulation. It's about the journey. It's about the people. It's about the challenge. I was thinking about that this morning.
- [34:32]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [34:33]
Jeff Duden
And it was, I mean, like, you know, I've. I'm 56 right now. We're building a huge, probably one of the industry's fastest growing franchise platforms in the home services space. You know, I built one.
- [34:47]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [34:48]
Jeff Duden
And then I helped people build a lot of different things. And now we're building kind of this big whopper on ourselves. And, you know, and at my age, I've got a. I'm looking at it and saying, okay, what's my path? When am I going to. When am I going to jump off? And then what's going to be next? And I thought about it. I said, I'm never going to stop because. And this is, you know, stupidest thought I had. It's because I don't want to have to stop getting my hair cut every three weeks.
- [35:17]
Adam Smith
But think about it, okay? It's. That's fair.
- [35:21]
Jeff Duden
Give me a second. It's fair. Let me walk now. Let me make the case for this.
- [35:24]
Adam Smith
So.
- [35:25]
Jeff Duden
So here's the deal. Like, if I didn't have anything to do, if I didn't have this to do, or I didn't have to go speak, or I didn't have a conference coming up, or I wasn't going to be meeting with candidates or working with Our franchise owners. There would be no reason for me to keep myself up.
- [35:39]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [35:39]
Jeff Duden
So why would I work out? You know, why would I do this? And how could I even afford. Honestly, you know, like, I pay a good bit for my haircut. The guy comes in, he opens the shop because my schedule is tough. So I give him a good tip. He's a great guy.
- [35:54]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [35:55]
Jeff Duden
I meet him at 8 or 8:30 in the morning. They open at 9.
- [35:57]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [35:58]
Jeff Duden
And, you know, and I can. It's a business case for me to have that procedure and that discipline in my life. And without, you know, some sort of a doing something. Then there's 20 things like that that I wouldn't have to do.
- [36:12]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [36:12]
Jeff Duden
I think I would become very untethered, very lazy. I think it'd be. I'm going to. I have an addictive personality, so I'd be susceptible to, you know, other things. Other things. And I just. And I said, you know what?
- [36:24]
Adam Smith
It's.
- [36:24]
Jeff Duden
It's. It's not about retiring. It's just more about adapting.
- [36:30]
Adam Smith
That's part of. I think, you know, let me. Can I add to that? Because I think that's a critical piece. I think.
- [36:34]
Jeff Duden
I think if you tell me you like my hair.
- [36:37]
Adam Smith
Your hair's gorgeous, by the way. It's a great job. Well, I get it. Make sure you tell your barber. It's amazing.
- [36:41]
Jeff Duden
I get it cut frequently. I work on that.
- [36:44]
Adam Smith
First Peter, chapter 4, verse 11. And it says, if you have the gift of speak, then speak always as if God is speaking through you. And there's more to that. But that. That particular line really got me. And the reason why it. It got me so much is because after first Peter, chapter 4, verse 11, the reason why it got me was because after the disaster, we had been so engrossed and involved and so just poured into it and so invested into it that at the back end, I was like, I don't. I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Like, I got to figure out a way to make money, because if I don't make money, I can't feed the family.
- [37:30]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [37:30]
Adam Smith
We canceled all our contracts.
- [37:32]
Jeff Duden
Sure.
- [37:32]
Adam Smith
So we have no income. We're not going to. I don't want to take money from the nonprofit that we've created and take a payroll. I don't want to do that. We got to. We gotta. I don't. I don't want to make money off of a donation. I want to make money. You know what I Mean, like, I want to create it.
- [37:45]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [37:46]
Adam Smith
But that was. The piece was in the battle of trying to figure out what's the next step. I actually had a podcast interview at the beginning of the week, and the guy I'm talking with, this, this young kid is like 24, 25 years old, and he's creating a lot of success for himself in life. And he's working with another company that's creating a lot of success for them. And he's, he's very devout. He's a very devout Christian fellow. And he says, you know, this reminds me of, of First Peter, Chapter 4, Verse 11. And I was like, what's that? And he said the phrase and I went, oh, shit, I need to think about that for a second.
- [38:14]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [38:15]
Adam Smith
I think who you are at your core drives you to be a creator. And as a creator, you understand that you have the ability to create impact in the other, in other people's lives. Right. That I don't. It's not about the accumulation of stuff.
- [38:31]
Jeff Duden
No.
- [38:32]
Adam Smith
I mean, stuff is fun. Don't get it wrong. Like, I love my motorcycles and.
- [38:35]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [38:35]
Adam Smith
You know, I like going on rides and. That's. Right. I like eating my steak. That's all good and well, but if you have the ability to create a space for others to also create success.
- [38:46]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [38:47]
Adam Smith
The impact that you create is so much further felt than just going and buying a car.
- [38:54]
Jeff Duden
For me, unretiring was this, like, I mean, I could have. I sold my company at 50.
- [39:00]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [39:01]
Jeff Duden
And did well. And it was a sense of obligation. And it started with my kids. And it was, first of all, they don't need to see me doing nothing. They don't need to see me over consuming, you know, they don't need to see me, no offense to anybody at the country club every day drinking martinis at 4 o' clock, you know, smithering around, you know, like, yeah, what am I doing?
- [39:26]
Adam Smith
Like, being unproductive.
- [39:28]
Jeff Duden
How productive is that? And it started with that concept of obligation to them. And then I told them, I said, you know, if I was a farmer, I'd be teaching you how to farm. If I was whatever, I'd be teaching you how to do this. This is what I do. I build businesses with great people that want to change their life, that want to be in transition, that want to make something for themselves. And I get to work with these people. And sometimes it's hard because not everybody's good at it, and sometimes it's amazing and you go to their kids weddings, but it's just Real, like it's real life.
- [39:58]
Adam Smith
It is.
- [39:58]
Jeff Duden
You're in. You know, it's nothing. Being a franchisor has nothing to do with being a corporate entity because it is all about the people. It is all about the relationships. You do your best to create the system for them. And the guide walls.
- [40:11]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [40:12]
Jeff Duden
And we do our part and they do their part, but it's this huge. It's this huge interdependent relationship.
- [40:19]
Adam Smith
Yeah. Symbiotic. There's a symbiosis to it that has to take place.
- [40:23]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. And like, okay, well, this is what I can show my kids. And if, you know, as they get older and they get into their careers, whether it's here somewhere else, you know, this is what I can show them. And then it says, why would I take everything that I've spent 25 years getting the crap kicked out of me, learning, bleeding, you know, all of this stuff, and then just run away with it.
- [40:45]
Adam Smith
Yeah, that's right.
- [40:46]
Jeff Duden
And not expand the reach and relevance of this business model we call franchising. Not try to impact another thousand families, you know, and maybe, you know, not all of them make it, but, you know, like, the overwhelming majority of them do. And then, you know, what you do with the ones that they decide it's not for them. Look, we've had. We've had a family die in a plane crash, two kids coming back from Cooperstown, baseball. We've had. We've had divorces, we've had cancer. We've had people go into recovery. I mean, we are, you know, we're 250 strong now, families. And we are a cross section of the population. And things happen, you know, so it's so, like. So how do you deal with those people to make sure that they have a software landing and that they don't lose, you know, any. A penny more than they have to lose losing those. So, like, whether or not, like, once you step across the line, and it's probably very similar to, you know, whatever the. The qualification to be a Green Beret is, like, once you step across the line, you cannot recontract.
- [41:40]
Adam Smith
No. Yeah.
- [41:41]
Jeff Duden
If it's, like, it's. If it's. Do this, shoot that, you know, train this, show start, you know, go hide in the mud, whatever it is, let's do.
- [41:50]
Adam Smith
And you're in. Your recontracting actually is losing the privilege to be that.
- [41:53]
Jeff Duden
Yes.
- [41:54]
Adam Smith
Like, that's. There's a. I think that you. I think it's a. I think it's a privilege, truly a privilege to be Able to have, be able to do the job. Like to be a Green Beret is a privilege. It's very hard. It's hard to get, it's hard to get selected. The training is hard and challenging. The long term capability and maintaining, you know, professional outcomes is challenging. And God knows I've stepped on my toes a time or two. But I think what you're doing is, there's a privilege. And it's not that you're privileged, it's that it is a privilege.
- [42:20]
Jeff Duden
No. To be in life with these people.
- [42:22]
Adam Smith
Exactly. It is, it's, it's an, it's an honor, it's a blessing, it's an opportunity and it's, I think that's powerful. Have you ever heard of, have you ever done any game theory study at all?
- [42:31]
Jeff Duden
Not study, but I'm familiar with. I think I'm doing game theory when I'm being strategic.
- [42:35]
Adam Smith
Yeah. So. Well, the difference between like a finite game and an infinite game and the definition between the two.
- [42:40]
Jeff Duden
Yes.
- [42:41]
Adam Smith
I had this conversation a long time ago about what is my purpose in life. And it said this is. And it's, it just resonates with what you're saying. And that was, you know, for me, my purpose is to create impact. And the battle that I had was trying to define me and define my purpose. I had no clue what that would be. And then I started studying game theory and this is my takeaway, which I think is. It works for me. You can use, you can have it if you want. So in a finite game, it's got defined roles, defined players, a defined total number of personnel. There's a definitive winner, a winner and definitive loser. Even in a tie, there's still a definitive winner and definitive loser. Right.
- [43:20]
Jeff Duden
There's, at the end of the game.
- [43:21]
Adam Smith
Somebody wins, somebody loses.
- [43:22]
Jeff Duden
That's right.
- [43:23]
Adam Smith
And, and the only way to win in a finite game is to win. Right. Like to defeat your opponent in the infinite game, the only way to win is to keep playing the game. Like the Cold War, for example. The Cold War was an infinite game. The United States won because the USSR couldn't keep playing the game. Yeah, that, that's how you win. The infinite game is to continue to play. Yeah.
- [43:41]
Jeff Duden
The other people die.
- [43:42]
Adam Smith
Yeah, exactly. Or they can't play or whatever it might be. So when I started looking at purpose was like, man, who am I? Who am I supposed to be? And what, what is my purpose in life? I thought I was supposed to be great. Well, I'm not doing that anymore. Well, you know, I thought it was supposed to help my buddy with his business, and he helped me. I'm not. I'm not doing that anymore. Maybe I. You know, me opening gyms was supposed to be the thing I'm supposed to do. I'm not doing that anymore. You know?
- [44:04]
Jeff Duden
Oh.
- [44:05]
Adam Smith
Consulting, disaster relief, all that stuff. Like. Oh, I'm not. So my takeaway was if I can play my infinite game enough to impact someone else in order for them to just play a small part of my game, even. Even just an infinitesimal amount of it, and then they play that game, and then they pass their game on to their children, and part of that game includes the small tiniest percentage of the game that they picked up from me. Then I always win.
- [44:36]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [44:37]
Adam Smith
And I never lose. And it's not because I'm out to win. It's because my game will continue to be played even when I'm dead.
- [44:44]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [44:44]
Adam Smith
And if I can do that for my daughter.
- [44:47]
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah.
- [44:49]
Jeff Duden
That's the through line.
- [44:50]
Adam Smith
That's.
- [44:51]
Jeff Duden
It is impact.
- [44:52]
Adam Smith
And if I can leave an army of thousands.
- [44:54]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [44:55]
Adam Smith
That are there to support her when I'm gone. Because for one minute of one day, at one point, they heard something that resonated.
- [45:02]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [45:03]
Adam Smith
Or they connected to something that connected to them. That is how you win.
- [45:07]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [45:07]
Adam Smith
I wish just people would see that.
- [45:12]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [45:13]
Adam Smith
You know.
- [45:14]
Jeff Duden
No, that's. That's right. On. There's a great book called the On Purpose Person. And it's. It's a small book. You can also go to the onpurposeme.com and for like two. You can. So the purpose. The book is a fable, and it's a tennis tournament. And you start with your eight Life accounts, and then you start at the top of the page and the bottom of the page, and you write all the things that are important to you in there. And then you run these things off in a tournament. And the first time I did it, it took me like six months to actually get. Because think about all of these things. And you've got to say this over that.
- [46:00]
Adam Smith
Oh, yeah, right. Oh, that's awesome. Wow. Okay.
- [46:03]
Jeff Duden
And like, so you end up with these pieces of paper and you're like, well, yeah, but this is this, but this is that. And the reason you do it, the top and the bottom of the page is so that you don't rake them in order of importance. So you don't have all your important ones knocking out all your other important ones at the same time.
- [46:17]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [46:18]
Adam Smith
So you're building a bracket.
- [46:19]
Jeff Duden
It's a bracket. Oh, Right here. We're on the second day of March Madness.
- [46:22]
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah.
- [46:23]
Adam Smith
Literally building a bracket.
- [46:24]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. 64 things that you think matter to you in spiritual and family and finance and career, and all these different areas, these different buckets. Right. That. The logical buckets that you would make it. Dave Ramsey has seven. I think they have eight in the book.
- [46:38]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [46:38]
Jeff Duden
And. Okay, and then you run these off, and at the end of it, you come up with it. I exist to serve by. And a. Two word.
- [46:46]
Adam Smith
Whoa.
- [46:46]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. So what was. What was yours? You exist to serve by impact. Creating impact.
- [46:51]
Adam Smith
Creating impact.
- [46:51]
Jeff Duden
That would. That would. Okay, so now I just saved you a $11.99.
- [46:58]
Adam Smith
Thank you. That's perfect. Yeah.
- [47:00]
Jeff Duden
But so where I landed, it was different when I did it 10 years ago, 15 years ago now, but when I did it three years ago, it was inspiring entrepreneurs, you know. What does that mean? Well, it means connecting dots, giving them tools, providing education. I have people that I worked with in a company that I recently sold. There's a franchise sales organization. Organization that I was a part of that I solved. And there's this one really great young guy in there that's a. In operations. And he just. He's just. He was a. It was a guitar player. You know, really. I mean, you see the pictures of him with the long black hair, like, full on. Full. Full on now. You know, clean cut, fit, you know, family guy, moved his family out here north. Just. I have so much respect for this guy. And when I talk to him, there's like one or two things he goes, he. And it was something that I said that he has adopted as a principle, as a guiding principle in his life. It's exactly what you're talking about. I spit all these things out. Over the hundreds of hours he's listened to me speak or whatever it is, and he's got two or three things that he is now building his. His life and his family on.
- [48:03]
Adam Smith
It's. Isn't that the most humbling thing?
- [48:06]
Jeff Duden
That's amazing.
- [48:06]
Adam Smith
It's the most humbling thing. I've had a couple of guys call me. Actually, one of the greatest phone calls I ever got. It was a guy that called me that went through tactical training that I put on when I was the director training for Norse Tactical. And there was a. There was a standoff where they had an active shooter barricaded in a window, and he was shooting at law enforcement officers outside. And the SWAT team were ready to go. And we had this conversation with the SWAT guys. I have this conversation with all the guys I train especially like. Especially SWAT officers, is how do you know your tactics work if they've never been tested? And more importantly, when the time comes, you have to remember what your task is, and your job is to go home to your family.
- [48:52]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [48:53]
Adam Smith
So when. When push comes to shove and you're presented with lethal force and lethal intention, remember your tactics, remember your training, and utilize that warrior mindset of, I want to go home to my family. I'm not going to operate out of fear. I'm going to operate out of confidence. Fear is always existent. Fear never goes away. People who say they're not afraid are psychopaths. It's 100% not a thing. Right. Like, it's a real thing.
- [49:14]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [49:14]
Adam Smith
That. To operate through fear with clarity and consistency is how you can literally separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to individuals who apply their specialty to their skill set and those who do it as a pastime. Right. And so he. He called me and he said, I just want to call you and tell you thank you. He said. The conversation that we had about this. To your point.
- [49:36]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [49:37]
Adam Smith
About this mentality and the training and the tactics he showed us, he said, we were able to get an angle on this guy without him ever knowing we were there, and we were able to. We were able to. To eliminate the threat.
- [49:46]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [49:47]
Adam Smith
Without him ever knowing we were there. And the guys outside got to go home to their family.
- [49:51]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [49:51]
Adam Smith
And I got to go home to my daughter.
- [49:52]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [49:53]
Adam Smith
And I was like, man, that's. That's amazing. That is. I'm so like, thank you for calling me and telling me that, because that is like, there's nothing. There's nothing better than that.
- [50:05]
Jeff Duden
And that was as a result of the training.
- [50:06]
Adam Smith
The training.
- [50:07]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [50:07]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [50:08]
Adam Smith
As a result of the training.
- [50:08]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [50:09]
Adam Smith
It's. It's just. It's humbling.
- [50:10]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [50:11]
Adam Smith
You know, you.
- [50:12]
Jeff Duden
You saved a life or more.
- [50:14]
Unknown
Maybe more than one.
- [50:14]
Adam Smith
If people. You know, I think the thing is, is that if people could remember that everything they do in life, in every moment, is an opportunity to create impact.
- [50:23]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [50:24]
Adam Smith
That was. Here's a phrase that we just happened one day at a speaking event. I said, you know, we're talking about identity, purpose, mission. And in the military, you have task, purpose, mission. Right. And as a civilian market space, you have identity, purpose, mission. And, like, who are you? Why are you? What are you doing? And we're talking entrepreneurs. And I said, you know, at the end of the day, I am a dad. Right. I am a dad. I am an entrepreneur. I am a former Green Beret. I have failed. I'm not a failure. I have made mistakes, but I'm not a mistake. I have created success, but I'm not a success. I am Adam. And the whole room was kind of dead silent. And I stopped because what I just said was profound to me. And I said, I am made up of all the moral and ethical things that I believe that I'm supposed to live my life by the principles and guidelines that are handed to me from God in Christ. And ultimately, if I can live by those principles and guidelines, even though. Even though I make mistakes and even though I fail and even though I'm imperfect, then I know who I am. And I'm Adam. And my purpose is to create impact. And I know that definitively. And my mission is however I choose to deliver impact into the world. And today. And I said that today, you are my mission. And I was like, oh, crap, that's good. We can't forget that part.
- [51:48]
Unknown
Yes.
- [51:49]
Adam Smith
You know, like this right now, this is my mission. I really. I'm so excited to get to be here with you.
- [51:53]
Jeff Duden
Oh, awesome.
- [51:54]
Adam Smith
You know, conversation we had on the phone, just good conversation, man. And I just. I'm grateful to be here and just appreciative that you have me here.
- [52:02]
Unknown
I've.
- [52:03]
Jeff Duden
I've really hooked into this concept of body of work, and I've started training on it, and it's kind of what you just said. You. We are a sum of all of our actions or inactions.
- [52:12]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [52:12]
Jeff Duden
All of our decisions or lack of decision. And every day we have an opportunity. And I used to tell my kids, I'd Coach, I coached 30 season, my kids, sports. I'd say, you know, you have 99 decisions that you're going to make deciding on whether you hit the snooze button and whether you make your bed when you get up. And then what do you eat? What do you do? Do you honor your parents on your way out the door, or do you. Do you snap at them? Do you smile at somebody when you walk into the school without them smiling? Do you make it. You say one little thing to somebody without having to say it that makes an impact in their day. Do you. Do you. Do you do your homework or do you scroll? You know, like, you. Like you have all these little decisions that we make during the course of the day, and you just. You have. And I've started training to a subtract and an ad ledger. So people come into this deal, and some of them are wildly experienced in business. And they might have worked for a huge corporation. But guess what? When you're running a small business, much less when you're starting one, there's a subset of activities and behaviors and decisions that you need to make without a corporate structure around you. So you might have to subtract a lot of things. You might need to go backwards before you can go forward because you were running a $7 billion international medical business.
- [53:25]
Adam Smith
Yeah. Yeah.
- [53:26]
Jeff Duden
But that has very little to do with you showing up in your market and having your first 100 companies conversations. Almost nothing to do building a fencing business. Yeah. So, you know, so like, at the end of the day, we have a ledger. At the end of the week, at the end of the month, and at the end of our life, there's a ledger, and we are exactly where we are. A exact sum of the things that we didn't. Didn't do. The actions we took or didn't take.
- [53:50]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [53:51]
Jeff Duden
The decisions we did or didn't make.
- [53:52]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [53:53]
Jeff Duden
And that puts us exactly right where we deserve to be, based on our own, you know, the things that we did and didn't do.
- [53:59]
Adam Smith
Do you know the poem, the dash?
- [54:01]
Jeff Duden
No.
- [54:02]
Adam Smith
Look it up.
- [54:03]
Jeff Duden
The dash.
- [54:04]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [54:06]
Adam Smith
It's a poem. The dash. It is.
- [54:10]
Jeff Duden
You were saying something a few minutes ago, and I wanted to ask you a question about it, and it was about, you know, you know, the wheat from the chaff and how people in certain situations show you who they are.
- [54:21]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [54:22]
Jeff Duden
That's. Was the underlying. What you were talking about.
- [54:24]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [54:27]
Jeff Duden
How do you. How can people motivate themselves to be as good in peacetime as they are in wartime? How can you know? It is. It's. You know, you people step up to the challenge. For me, I'm so much better when things are hard because things get. Everything slows down for me in.
- [54:51]
Adam Smith
In the midst of chaos.
- [54:52]
Jeff Duden
Everything.
- [54:53]
Adam Smith
Everything is simple.
- [54:54]
Jeff Duden
People. I see stress on their face.
- [54:55]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [54:56]
Jeff Duden
I see people that started with more than nothing, so they think they actually have something to lose. They haven't been through it before. There. There's ego wrapped up in fear, wrapped up in. What does this mean?
- [55:08]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [55:09]
Jeff Duden
You know, there's change of pattern. Now they got to do something different.
- [55:12]
Adam Smith
Do something different.
- [55:13]
Jeff Duden
And I just see it. And like, that's. For me, the entire game slows down, and I just. I just see everything. And that's. And anything that doesn't matter immediately distills goes away into things that don't matter and the things that do.
- [55:28]
Unknown
Yep.
- [55:29]
Jeff Duden
But I'm not a great peacetime leader.
- [55:31]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [55:32]
Jeff Duden
I just, I get. It's just not, it's just not hot enough for me.
- [55:36]
Adam Smith
Yeah, well, that's, that's actually one of the biggest issues in all of the, you know, business engagements that I've done. One of the number one problems and, you know, I've. I was a. I hate saying the term, but I was a coach at a coaching company out of, out of California. Right. And was kind of one of the seeds. It was one of the early on men's targeted coaching organizations. Kind of the birthplace of a lot of the stuff outside. I mean, you know, it took some Tony Robbins, it took some, some of the other major names early on and then combined some other stuff. You know, there was a common trend, the mathematical equation of an exponential gain from 0 to 1. Do you know what that is? Money Chance.
- [56:18]
Jeff Duden
I didn't get through algebra.
- [56:20]
Adam Smith
Okay, so fair enough. Well, what's one to two is 100%, right?
- [56:25]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [56:25]
Adam Smith
Yeah. So one to two is 100%. Zero to one is considered undefined.
- [56:30]
Jeff Duden
It's infinite.
- [56:30]
Adam Smith
It is. So, so the 0 to 1 change in so many people's lives, what happens is you have, you have successful entrepreneurs that grow their company, then they get to this place where they hit a target, and then when they hit that target, they've lost the chaos of growth.
- [56:43]
Unknown
Yes.
- [56:44]
Adam Smith
And then the loss of chaos of growth. They have an exponential, an existential life crisis. They lose the definition of self. They no longer have new targets to go after. So they burn it all down so they can start at zero again and go from zero to one.
- [56:57]
Unknown
Yes.
- [56:57]
Adam Smith
And this is a repetitive. It's a habit, but it's also an addictive habit. Right. And it's a habit that we see in a lot of guys who are successful entrepreneurs. And the challenge is shifting focus from the 0 to 1 creation of this chaotic startup where it's easy to make decisions because this doesn't matter. And this matter. Well, what happens if we go from 1 to 10?
- [57:19]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [57:20]
Adam Smith
Like, granted, it's not an infinite definition of increase. Like, we can define what that exponential increase looks like comparatively to 0 to 1. However, what's the impact that 1 to 10 makes in the lives of everyone else?
- [57:32]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [57:33]
Adam Smith
Because that 0 to 1 is chaos.
- [57:36]
Unknown
Yes.
- [57:36]
Adam Smith
It is the. It is the heat of battle. It is the fire of creation.
- [57:39]
Jeff Duden
And that's what I'm made for.
- [57:40]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [57:41]
Jeff Duden
What I've learned to go from 1 to 10 is who, not how.
- [57:43]
Adam Smith
Yeah, get out of the way. Who.
- [57:45]
Jeff Duden
It's now like, immediately. The sooner it becomes about the Who's.
- [57:49]
Adam Smith
Yep.
- [57:50]
Jeff Duden
The better chance you have of success.
- [57:52]
Adam Smith
Ultimate 100, 100 and I. I think motivation is bullshit. You know, at the end of the day to be motivated to do something. You know, emotions only last 90 seconds unless we feed them. That's a scientific reportable report. Right. That's a thing. They only last 90 seconds. Motivation is a, is a. Motivation is a feeling, an expression of feeling. It's only a 90 second feeling unless you feed that feeling. So reason why it's being negative is so easy because it's easy to feed negativity. Really hard to feed hope. It's really hard to feed joy. Right. That's why when we say joy is a state of being versus, you know, a negative aspect is not a state of being. It's an emotional response. So motivation can't be the drive, can't be right. It has to be discipline and it has to be disciplined actions that also self awareness. If you don't have discipline action, you don't have self awareness. Then you become the, you become. You're the guy that goes. Everything's tweezy. I have to break something to make a problem so that I can be the hero in my own mind of fixing the problem that I created. That I'm the only one to have an answer to fix this problem because I created the problem that I have to fix fix to begin with. And then look at my value of the problem that I created that I can fix this problem.
- [58:58]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [58:59]
Jeff Duden
That's how small businesses stay small.
- [59:00]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [59:01]
Adam Smith
And that's, that's how, that's how guys never get beyond that place. That's how entrepreneurs never move beyond that piece.
- [59:08]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [59:08]
Adam Smith
You know, individually. Yeah. The business will only ever grow as big as the, the self awareness of the leader of the company.
- [59:14]
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah.
- [59:16]
Jeff Duden
Putting, putting people, putting the right people around you for influence. Putting the right people around you that have this, that have unique abilities that the company needs.
- [59:27]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [59:27]
Jeff Duden
Getting out of the way, having humility, being. But also leading from the front.
- [59:33]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [59:34]
Jeff Duden
You know, and there's a, there's a, you know, the community, it comes. Now, I love to say some people get paid by the hour or some people get paid commission, but leaders get paid by the conversation.
- [59:43]
Adam Smith
Oh man, that's really good. Say that again.
- [59:46]
Jeff Duden
Some people get paid by the hour, others get paid commission, but leaders get paid by the conversation commission.
- [59:52]
Adam Smith
Oh, that's good.
- [59:53]
Unknown
Yeah, I love it.
- [59:56]
Jeff Duden
That's from a guy named Dave Zierfoss. He was the president of Husqvarna North America. So I pay that forward.
- [60:03]
Adam Smith
That's awesome.
- [60:04]
Jeff Duden
That's brilliant, though. But at the end of the day, it's these interactions that we have and our skill and our clarity and people understanding that we actually care. You know, there's tough conversations that, like now I know there's two or three a day that I have to have and you know, and, and if there's not, then I'm probably not having enough conversation.
- [60:25]
Adam Smith
Yeah, that's exactly.
- [60:26]
Jeff Duden
I mean, because not everything's good, you know, people. There's no shortage of clarity that needs to be created in any situation.
- [60:32]
Adam Smith
You know, we, We. You asked who was in charge of the stuff on the ground.
- [60:38]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [60:39]
Adam Smith
Reluctantly. Me, you said. I said. But the thing is though, is that we started off with two, and then we turned into six, and then we turned into 25 and we turned into 70, turn into 120. By the time we were done, we had close to 26 or 2700 volunteers come through in like a 45 day, 60 day period.
- [60:57]
Unknown
Yes.
- [60:57]
Adam Smith
You know, 2500 air sorties. It was like 2492 air sorties in a 45 day period. We moved close to, you know, in the height of it, we moved close to four and a half or four. Four and a half million pounds of support supplies. Yeah, we. I started calculating man hours. I started calculating per pound landed material on site based on all of the transportation logistics, all of the cost, everything else. If we looked at the total expense of everything that we did, the estimated value was close to $80 million. The estimated value.
- [61:30]
Jeff Duden
Wow.
- [61:30]
Adam Smith
Was. Was. Would be there. Like if we're talking about a landed.
- [61:33]
Jeff Duden
Cost per pound, you created an $80 million business out of thin air in 60 days. 60 days.
- [61:38]
Adam Smith
In 60 days.
- [61:38]
Jeff Duden
And didn't get a thing for it.
- [61:39]
Adam Smith
No, not a penny. But the experience we got was amazing. And the fact that we had the ability to do so.
- [61:44]
Jeff Duden
You probably did eat off the. I'm sure you grabbed a bag of chips here and there.
- [61:48]
Adam Smith
Oh, every once. Oh, 100%. Yeah. We. And a bottle of water on a regular occasion. Yeah. No, I, you know, the gain we got from it was, was. Was phenomenal when it came to. Look, we had veterans that said, thank you for this.
- [62:02]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [62:02]
Adam Smith
Thank you for the opportunity. I needed this in my life. I didn't realize I needed purpose again.
- [62:06]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [62:07]
Adam Smith
And. And they found solace. And they also react. Redefine themselves and recognize that their sole purpose in life is to not do this one thing, but they can do this other thing. We also, we found deficiencies and Disconnects in emergency management services. And we found huge deficiencies in the readiness of state, county, and federal capability to respond to a disaster. Like this is an outlier to disaster. Right. It's a black swan event. But we have to have. We have to have better resiliency and a national structure and a state structure and in the infrastructure to make certain that if something happens like this again, which it will, the reaction or response and outcome is not as bad or dire as this one was. Yeah, it can be better. We saw that piece, and the biggest piece for me is a complete and utter reinforcement of everything I've already learned and everything I've already done, plus all the new stuff I learned. You talk about when you get to that point when it comes to the fire. I'm really good at the fire.
- [63:01]
Jeff Duden
Right. Clearly.
- [63:02]
Adam Smith
Oh, chaos is like. Everything slows down, and I just like you.
- [63:06]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [63:07]
Adam Smith
Not important. Important. This is the focus. Don't even worry about this.
- [63:10]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [63:10]
Adam Smith
When we get into sustained operations, I hate my life. Hate it. And for me, it was all about how do I replace myself? Like, I have to constantly be replaced so that the operation can grow and I don't become a single point of failure. And as we did that, so I was running air operations, and then Johnny showed up. And then Johnny was. He's running air operations because of his background. And then we had, you know, guys that actually run air operations right now for another organization. We had them running air operations. So we had civilian pilots that were coming in and they were deconflicting stuff, and they were helping with their operations. Well, how do we do logistics coordination? Well, there's a guy that shows up whose profession is logistics when it comes to the reception and shipping. So shipping, receiving, and the monarchy. You're good with this. He's like, I got it. I'm like, cool. You got this piece. You got this piece. You got this piece. Everybody come in. Here's the vision.
- [64:00]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [64:01]
Adam Smith
Now I know what my job is now. My job is to not direct effort. I have to get away from that. My job is now as a coordinator of resourcing. Resourcing and networks.
- [64:10]
Unknown
Yes.
- [64:11]
Adam Smith
And vision. I got to project it. So that was the piece, guys. This is what we're here for. This is. This is who we're helping. This is the mentality you have to have. And, you know, the rule was, like, when you go out into the public, you go out with a smile on your face. You go out with a warm handshake, hope in your heart, lighten your eyes, and you let them know that we're here for them every single day. This is your job.
- [64:33]
Jeff Duden
What great leadership.
- [64:34]
Adam Smith
And they, and they and we and they and they, every one of them, they saw it, they understood it and they just. And they, they actioned. Yeah.
- [64:41]
Jeff Duden
This is the culture. This is who we need to be.
- [64:43]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [64:44]
Jeff Duden
To be successful, to do this.
- [64:45]
Adam Smith
To do this. And we're going to demonstrate what it can be. We're going to demonstrate what the possibility of disaster relief could look like if you bring in a multitude of subject matter experts who understand that the common picture and the desired outcome is more important than the individual glory. And if we can do that, then it doesn't matter who the head is, who the face is, who the, who the mouthpiece is. Just so happens that I'm good at talking.
- [65:06]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [65:07]
Adam Smith
I got a face for radio and apparently a mouth for God. So if we can do one of them both, then we're good. Right? It doesn't matter who that person is. We all have our role to play. If my job is to spread the message, to keep awareness up so that we can continue generating funding, so that we can keep resources coming in, then that's my job and that's what I'm going to do. Really? Well, if that includes making certain that you're bought into the vision, I'm going to do that. I'm going to make sure you understand exactly what the outcome, desired outcome looks like and what the bigger picture you're involved in. Because you as an individual can't feel significant by moving one package of paper towels here to another package of paper towels here, or by loading a helicopter. If you don't understand the impact that you just had by making that one package of paper towels move from there to the helicopter.
- [65:50]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [65:50]
Adam Smith
Because what you just did was you just gave supplies to a family who's been isolated for the last six days that we had to cut an HLZ into and they've not had any really outside contact. So we're going to move £5,000 of supplies. And you did that. You made that happen.
- [66:03]
Unknown
Happen.
- [66:04]
Adam Smith
It wasn't me.
- [66:04]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [66:05]
Adam Smith
It wasn't the air crew guys. It wasn't like it was you, the person that moved the pound of material from point A to point B.
- [66:11]
Jeff Duden
Well, that's this really a subtle difference. The subtle but significant difference between a target and a goal. Oh, yeah. Okay. So a target, like you're, you're doing this and you're not thinking probably any farther in advance saying when is because you're not thinking when Is this going to end? You know what's going to end when we're done? Yeah, it's going to go as long as it needs to go until we're done. So the target today is this landing zone, these supplies, this person here, I've got to make this call, we've got to make sure our pipeline's full. We're running low on this. We got to get that. You know, we only have this commitment on aircraft for this long. How are we going to fill that? So you're, you're, you're, you're moving, you're slightly ahead and you're looking all up and down the supply chain.
- [66:55]
Adam Smith
That's the first five to six days, 100%.
- [66:57]
Jeff Duden
You're, you're slightly ahead, you're looking all up down the supply chain. You're, you're thinking about resourcing, but at the end of the day, it's near term. It's like, what are we doing today? What is the target today? What are, who are the families that we heard from for the first time that now need their diabetes medication or need refrigeration or need these types of things? So you know, just, it, it's, and then in the face of, in the face of, you know, you don't know when it's going to be over.
- [67:22]
Adam Smith
You don't. And that's, that's when as if you, again, if you are in that leadership role, you have to be able to remove yourself from the day to day operations. So you can see second, third, fourth order possibilities and potentialities. Yeah, right. For us it was okay, well, we're in by day seven. The guys in the operations, they didn't need me directing operations anymore.
- [67:44]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [67:44]
Adam Smith
They had it. They understood the desired outcome, they understood the, the vision. They knew the direction we were going for. They understood the day to day targets that we had to set. Cool. Literally my buddy comes and goes, hey, dude, like, we're good. I know that, like you're worried, but we're good. You do you. And I went, okay, roger that. I took a step back, looked at the operation. It was solid. Okay, what's the next consideration? We haven't had water. There's no running water.
- [68:08]
Unknown
Okay.
- [68:08]
Adam Smith
Okay, so now we're going to build an entire effort around water and that's a whole focus is going to be clean water solutions and how do we get potable water to these, these assisted living facilities and how do we get running water, these assisted links, what are these solutions look like? How do we get filtered or filtration systems to homes that don't have water. How do we make that happen? That's the next piece. So then we start asking questions. So now we're prep. We're back in preparatory phase.
- [68:29]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [68:29]
Adam Smith
Right. So now we're going to prepare to do this effort. We have to collect our assets. We've got to know what assets and liabilities we have. We've got to understand who has a. Who is a subject matter expert in this space and what's the network that we have already developed that may have access to the materials we need for X. Y. And so we just start an entire new vertical. I mean, it's nothing. But it's nothing different than business first. The first vertical in the company was supplies distribution.
- [68:51]
Jeff Duden
Right, cool.
- [68:51]
Adam Smith
Logistics. Got it. Next vertical in the company is clean water Solutions. Cool. Got it. Next vertical in the company. In the. In the company is winter considerations. Are we prepping the ground for that? This is week three.
- [69:02]
Unknown
Yes.
- [69:03]
Adam Smith
At week three. Which is still in October or still in October? November. Right. So end of October. No, this is still in October. Okay. What's the winter gonna look like?
- [69:11]
Jeff Duden
Weather.
- [69:11]
Adam Smith
Yeah. So here's the next consideration. How are we prepping the ground for that? What does that look like? We need propane. We need buddy heaters. We need warm clothes. Let's. Okay, let's not do warm clothes. We need campers. People are homeless. How do we fix that problem?
- [69:23]
Jeff Duden
Sure.
- [69:24]
Adam Smith
So now we do the. Another preparation phase, another asset inventory.
- [69:29]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [69:29]
Adam Smith
You know, and that's. That's literally. That's how it went. Every 10 days there was a new cycle.
- [69:36]
Jeff Duden
So if I'm doing my math right, your daughter's turning four right about now.
- [69:39]
Adam Smith
In April. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [69:40]
Jeff Duden
What's her birthday?
- [69:42]
Adam Smith
April 13th.
- [69:43]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [69:44]
Unknown
All right. Yeah.
- [69:45]
Jeff Duden
Awesome. My daughter turned 24 yesterday. And my son turns 21 April 27th.
- [69:50]
Adam Smith
Oh, okay.
- [69:51]
Jeff Duden
And then I got a 27 year old. So I'm just a little bit ahead of you.
- [69:55]
Adam Smith
Well, yeah, a little bit. I started late when it came to kids anyway. Yeah.
- [69:58]
Jeff Duden
So you've got a four. Four year old.
- [69:59]
Adam Smith
What's.
- [69:59]
Jeff Duden
What kind of country do you want her to grow up in?
- [70:01]
Adam Smith
Not this one. Not how it is. I want her to grow up into the country. Oh, man, that's a hard question that you'd ask him. I want my daughter to grow up in a country where you can have your opinion and you can express your opinion without the fear of violence being taken upon you.
- [70:26]
Jeff Duden
Does she drive a Tesla?
- [70:32]
Adam Smith
Look, no. None of us do, luckily. But. But what did you say earlier. What, is this still around?
- [70:37]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, you know, it used to be everybody's making fun of Teslas. Teslas. But, but, but, yeah, we still have the Subaru for memes.
- [70:48]
Adam Smith
Yeah, my ex wife drives a Subaru. God love her. Well, there we go. No, you know, I don't know. The cyclical aspect of our nation is one that leaves us kind of guessing what's next. And there are some unprecedented things taking place under this administration right now. There's a huge effort to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. And I can tell you firsthand personal experience, there is a heap of waste, fraud and abuse in the United States military through the DoD, in all aspects of the bureaucracy in general.
- [71:23]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [71:24]
Adam Smith
So what's going to happen next? I don't know. I can tell you that the current efforts that are being taken are efforts that I support. I agree with eliminating fraud. I agree with streamlining operations. This concept of a. I just had this conversation about contracting the other day. Contracts in general operate on a cost plus model.
- [71:40]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [71:40]
Adam Smith
When it, when you're dealing with the federal government, a cost plus model does not support innovation. No, it doesn't generate an innovative thought process. It's just, okay, I'll do this. This is what it costs, and here's my profit margin on the back end. But at no point does that incentivize being better, more efficient, more effective.
- [71:58]
Jeff Duden
No risk.
- [71:58]
Adam Smith
No zero.
- [71:59]
Jeff Duden
There's no risk.
- [72:00]
Adam Smith
At what point are we going to put the impetus, responsibility on the contractor to demand better from themselves rather than just giving the money?
- [72:07]
Jeff Duden
I'll tell you something else I learned doing a lot of government contracting over the years. They do not have the mechanism to take money back.
- [72:15]
Adam Smith
That's true.
- [72:16]
Jeff Duden
Okay, so let's just say, okay, this money's deployed. You win a contract, it's $20 million, and then all of a sudden, you're halfway through it.
- [72:25]
Unknown
Yep.
- [72:25]
Jeff Duden
And this. And you recognize that the scope of work does not require $2 billion of the work. It's just absolutely not required. You go back to the contracting officer and you say, hey, we don't have to do this. We don't have to do this. It doesn't need to be done. You know, and, you know, as, as, you know, regular citizens and people that don't understand how things work, it's like it was, we don't have to bill you this. And the contracting officer might say, find something else to do because I can't take the money back from you.
- [72:54]
Adam Smith
True. 100%.
- [72:56]
Jeff Duden
And like, there's no return policy once A contract is awarded.
- [73:00]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [73:01]
Jeff Duden
It doesn't matter if it's, if it's an 8A or if it's a service veteran owned, you know, veteran owned small business award or any of these awards. Right. There's, you have all these different award mechanisms and all these different award vehicles. But at the end of the day, man, like, it, it never comes. There's no, they don't have the refund department. So like, what happens is, well, we're going to get this much and then we're going to be real efficient with it and you know, we're just going to turn in the schedule of values to show like how the values of the contract, we're done. But like there's no real, the, the, the, the cap. The open market check and balance does not, not exist.
- [73:37]
Adam Smith
It doesn't.
- [73:37]
Jeff Duden
And that's really a problem.
- [73:38]
Adam Smith
It is, it's the same. It's the same. It's a similar issue in the DoD and the DoD and a lot of the agencies actually is if you don't spend it, you don't get it.
- [73:45]
Jeff Duden
That's right.
- [73:46]
Adam Smith
Right. So there's a, there's a projected budget. They're going to allocate you so many dollars and if you don't spend all the dollars, then you're not going to get that budget the next year.
- [73:51]
Jeff Duden
And then what happens? Then you find that $14 million needs to go to this thing and like, we got it, this money has to go somewhere.
- [73:58]
Adam Smith
And then they go, oh, look at all the money we spent last year. We're going to definitely need a 10 bump in our budget for the next, the next fiscal year.
- [74:04]
Jeff Duden
That's right.
- [74:04]
Adam Smith
So rather than it being 10 million, well, now we need $12 billion.
- [74:07]
Jeff Duden
You know, it's, and look, I mean, think about the size of a, I mean we, we have to balance our budget here at the company, but think about the size of a 1.9 trillion, trillion dollar budget or whatever the budget is. So like the thing is, humans couldn't possibly even do it.
- [74:20]
Adam Smith
No.
- [74:20]
Jeff Duden
There's nobody that could look over it.
- [74:22]
Adam Smith
No.
- [74:22]
Jeff Duden
And say this, that or the other thing. So you have all these pockets of, of inefficiency, you know, personal agendas, you know, not accusing anybody of anything, but like, maybe some of the money finds its way back, you know, through these different, I'll accuse them 100 organization, you know, organizations.
- [74:38]
Adam Smith
You don't have to do it, but I will, I'm okay with it.
- [74:41]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, but I mean like, so now it's going to this ngo.
- [74:44]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [74:44]
Jeff Duden
Who's then following the money back, you know, so it's like, it's, well, we're going to give it to them for this cause because it meets this requirement that Congress said. And then it goes here and ultimately it filters. Well, we can't turn it back in. So this money now goes to somebody and it finds its way into the pockets of people that didn't do a thing.
- [74:58]
Adam Smith
Yeah, exactly. And that's. But that's, that's the standard and has been the standard for far too long.
- [75:02]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. So like, that's just like the. Not only is the, is the process and the people involved in the process and the organizations that exist only for the purpose of getting that money, and then it goes to somewhere that's not helping any American citizen whatsoever.
- [75:16]
Adam Smith
Yes, that's exactly right. The desired outcome of, hey, this is the critical piece. You know, the taxpayer system in general, our federal income taxes, is based on a voluntary system. Now, they say that there's laws to enforce it, but at the end of the day, it's still a voluntary system. I mean, you volunteer to pay your taxes. It is what it is. I would say that, you know, the next American revolution is not people standing on the corner lining up in the streets with guns. I think the next American revolution is en masse, people not paying taxes. Yeah, you want to talk about protest? The only way to truly protest our government anymore is not by the right of violence, it's only by the right of the dollar. And if we can en masse as a populace, go. Imagine if, if 80 million people in the United States of 333 million people decided all at once, you know what? We're not paying taxes this year.
- [75:59]
Jeff Duden
Well, there's only about 90 million people at work.
- [76:02]
Adam Smith
So take, take 50% of that even, you know, you take 50% of that even if it's 25 million people, the en masse. Well, we're not paying taxes this year. You've misallocated, you've misappropriated. You've spent our dollars on things that we don't support or agree with. You've taken our dollars and lined your own pockets with them. No. How about just, no, we're not going to pay. That's the next American revolution. People think that the revolution is going to be some violent outcome. I don't think that's going to be the case. I think the revolution is going to happen, is going to be, is going to be in mass. People just being done with paying taxes to a federal government that doesn't align with their own values.
- [76:35]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [76:37]
Jeff Duden
Well, I think, you know, from a. You know, we had talked earlier, you know, Dr. Carson has said in many times, I've heard him say, you know, that the future and the direction of our country is dependent largely upon who controls the. The courts, who controls the media, and who controls the schools. And so it's like, okay, well, you know, I mean, we've. I mean, I grew up watching the news, and generally I believe that they were telling me stories that were accurate. And you know, and, and I don't know if, you know, I mean, like, you have the Internet, so now you have this massively fragmented place where people are getting their information. You know, millions of sources, every Tick Tock account, every Instagram account, you know, cable news, streaming, blah, blah, blah. So, so, okay, has that risen? So in the, in the wake of that chaos, there is ways for people or organizations to influence groups of people and have become very effective at it. You know, one way, whichever side of the echo chamber you want to be on. Right. I mean, I get, I get fed everything that I look at.
- [77:48]
Adam Smith
Oh, yeah.
- [77:49]
Jeff Duden
Times a thousand percent.
- [77:50]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [77:50]
Jeff Duden
So it's like I can't even get outside of it anymore.
- [77:52]
Adam Smith
But that's, but that's because you're the product.
- [77:54]
Jeff Duden
No, Right, right. So. So the question is, is. Is like, okay, what's. Where is the single point of truth? And. And is there a single point of truth? And is it.
- [78:04]
Adam Smith
If we.
- [78:04]
Jeff Duden
Will we ever be able to get to. I mean, and it's almost like there's no liability for lying anymore.
- [78:10]
Adam Smith
No, there isn't any liability for lying.
- [78:11]
Jeff Duden
I mean, there's no liability for misrepresenting things, which is propaganda.
- [78:15]
Adam Smith
Obama passed a bill when he was in office that gave permission to American media companies to produce propaganda. But that's an actual thing. It gave permission for American media companies to, one, not have to disclose sources, not have to do fact checking, not have to do any backlash. They can produce propaganda now without recourse.
- [78:33]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [78:33]
Adam Smith
With zero recourse.
- [78:34]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [78:35]
Adam Smith
The only recourse now is whether or not the American people are going to believe them.
- [78:38]
Unknown
Right.
- [78:39]
Adam Smith
And unfortunately, the algorithms that we have in social media. You are the product in social media.
- [78:43]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. I just, I almost don't believe anything anymore, but I don't think that's good.
- [78:47]
Adam Smith
No, they'll know. It's, It's. I mean, it's okay to. I think it's important to question the things that you hear, and I think it's important to use your ability of critical thinking. Which is not taught in school. Critical thinking is not taught in school. You're taught what to think, not the process of how to think. Right. And there's a dramatic difference between the two. I think critical thinking is.
- [79:08]
Jeff Duden
Is.
- [79:09]
Adam Smith
Well, you have to have it. If you're an entrepreneur, business owner, you have to be a critical thinker.
- [79:12]
Jeff Duden
All right, so let me ask you this. I grew up saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
- [79:15]
Unknown
Yep.
- [79:16]
Jeff Duden
I grew up reading the history books. I am anchored into my initial inauguration into information. Is it true?
- [79:28]
Adam Smith
Which part?
- [79:29]
Jeff Duden
The history books that I studied when I was in second grade. Sure. Is it?
- [79:32]
Adam Smith
Sure it is.
- [79:33]
Jeff Duden
How do we know?
- [79:34]
Adam Smith
Well, to the victor goes the spoils. Right.
- [79:38]
Jeff Duden
The winner writes the history.
- [79:40]
Adam Smith
So the fact is, the answer is, yes, it is true. The question is, what's missing?
- [79:45]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [79:46]
Adam Smith
It's not. It's not that it's untrue, it's what's missing.
- [79:49]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [79:49]
Adam Smith
I think if we look at the history of the world, we're reading the history of the world through the victor. We're not reading the history of the world nine times out of 10 through those that lost. Right, Right. When we talk about the history of Carthage and the Carthaginian Empire, we think about how Carthage grew and it became expansive. And then Rome conquered Carthage and then Persia conquered Carthage, and then the Ottoman Empire conquered Carthage. Right. Like, so we know the history of all of those, but we also know the history of Carthage and the Carthaginian Empire through some of its writings, but a majority through the victors. So what's missing? I mean, so is it. Is it untrue? Like, did Rome not conquer Carthage? Yes, it did. Definitively. Obviously, that's a true thing. Okay, well, what's the piece that we don't know?
- [80:31]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [80:32]
Adam Smith
So I don't know if it's to question that it's not true. I think it's the question, what don't we know that we don't know?
- [80:38]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [80:38]
Jeff Duden
Because if there's things that they did that they weren't interested in reliving, then it just never made it into the books.
- [80:44]
Adam Smith
Let me give you an example. So when I worked at the DIA for a little while, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and one of the very first things that you do, once you get your clearances and everything done, you go to your office and you get read on to specific programs.
- [80:55]
Unknown
Yes.
- [80:55]
Adam Smith
Now, with a tssci, Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information. So TSSCI clearance capability, the whole, you know, sensitive compartmentalized information. Compartmentalized is a critical piece there, which Means that if you don't need to know because it doesn't have a direct impact on what you're doing, you're not read into the program. Right, Right. So there's a multitude of programs in the United States that if only if you're involved with it or it, it overlaps what you're doing, then you can be read into it. And I remember sitting, and the first programs I got read into were on VHS tapes. Right.
- [81:29]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [81:30]
Adam Smith
And when we got done with the first day. So these are programs I got read into from like the 70s and late 70s, early 80s and mid-80s. And when we got done, the briefer came in and said, all right, what are your thoughts? Do you have any questions? And I was like, I didn't know that that was information that I could know. Like, I didn't know that that was possible to know that I didn't know. Right.
- [81:48]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [81:49]
Adam Smith
And he was like, I know. And over the next couple of days, like, imagine what else you're going to learned that you didn't know that you didn't know or could even be known. And I went, oh, shit, this is going to be crazy.
- [81:58]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [81:58]
Adam Smith
And then over the next two days, I got read into even more programs. So, you know, the, the comes back to what's missing. Like, what is the information that I didn't know. I didn't know.
- [82:09]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [82:10]
Adam Smith
And how does that or change or affect the trajectory of my life anyway? You know, this concept of speaking my truth is all horseshit. You don't. Nobody gets to own the truth.
- [82:21]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [82:22]
Adam Smith
Right. To the victor goes to spoils. So I guess we could say maybe that, you know, the Persian Empire owns the truth that they wrote. But like, you don't get to say you speak your truth. No, you can, you can talk to your experience.
- [82:34]
Unknown
Yes.
- [82:34]
Adam Smith
You can have a conversation about your emotions. You can have a conversation about your feelings.
- [82:40]
Jeff Duden
You could even have an opinion.
- [82:41]
Adam Smith
You got 100%.
- [82:42]
Jeff Duden
That's, that's based upon your experience.
- [82:45]
Adam Smith
Yeah, absolutely.
- [82:46]
Jeff Duden
I can't tell you how many times I've, I've. I felt so strongly about something and then I got a new piece of information.
- [82:51]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [82:51]
Jeff Duden
And it's just like, huh, if that's.
- [82:54]
Adam Smith
True, I don't have to change I'm wrong my opinion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then we come back to, so then what's the definition of truth? I think truth has to be based on objective fact, not subjective response.
- [83:06]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [83:07]
Adam Smith
And that changes the metrics that we use to measure.
- [83:12]
Jeff Duden
How did our country get so off of truth? Because this is at the core of my biggest. It's really at the core of why I came out of retirement to build this company.
- [83:20]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [83:20]
Jeff Duden
Was because I wanted to. I wanted to contribute to economic freedom for families on Main street usa. Because I saw that we had a shrinking middle class, that we had, you know, the ends of the curve. The wealth are getting much wealthier. The wealthy are getting much wealthier.
- [83:37]
Adam Smith
They are.
- [83:38]
Jeff Duden
The less wealthy are getting less wealthy. And the middle class, which is the strength of our country. And if you look at Venezuela and Argentina and other places that have struggled, it's when they lose their middle class, then anarchy comes. So. So my thing, I'm looking around, sitting here in 20 and 21, and I'm seeing that. I'm seeing things that a young generation of people are passing off as truth that are absolutely, factually untrue, 100%, scientifically untrue, 100% and. And absolutely against anything that my experience tells me would be true. And I'm just like, I can't run away to the country club.
- [84:16]
Adam Smith
It is.
- [84:16]
Jeff Duden
I've got to mix it up. I gotta be in the game.
- [84:19]
Adam Smith
There's not a single point of tilt here. You know, I mean, if we look at the history of the United States, especially over the last 60 to 70 years, it's not like there's one critical point where this was this confluence of ideas and actions that tipped the bucket over.
- [84:33]
Jeff Duden
No, no, no. It's been building for decades.
- [84:35]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [84:35]
Jeff Duden
But then they just, like, turn the light on a little bit. They crack the door and they let some of the lights shine out, and then they're like, oh, there's no, There's. There's people. Let's just, let's just. It's time to go. What was the consequence?
- [84:49]
Adam Smith
What was the consequence?
- [84:50]
Jeff Duden
Was the consequence.
- [84:51]
Adam Smith
When they cracked the door open, what was the consequence?
- [84:53]
Jeff Duden
They saw that they. They were going to be unopposed.
- [84:55]
Adam Smith
Yeah, exactly. There was no negative.
- [84:57]
Jeff Duden
There was no opposition because people were being nice.
- [85:00]
Adam Smith
And, and for the. I remember, Gosh, man, I can remember this. You know, I saw the trajectory shift under Obama. And then when, When Trump took office. I remember when Trump took office, you had to be secretive, you had to be quiet, you had to whisper right corners. You couldn't just speak to your conservative position because, you know, we were going to get canceled and we're going to get eliminated. And then Biden took office, and the same thing happened. You still had to be secretive. You still had to be quiet.
- [85:29]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [85:29]
Adam Smith
Now, remember, second year of the Trump administration. I was sitting in a coffee shop and the, you know, the Black Lives Matter stuff was going on and everything was going on. And I just, I said out loud in this coffee shop, I was like, at what point is someone going to speak against the five year old child who was executed gangland style because of his father's involvement with the gang? I was in Chicago when this happened. It happened in Chicago. Kid was taken out of his home, murdered in an alleyway because his dad was involved in gang action. And the kid was murdered in the alleyway. And the next day he got 30 seconds of airtime. But all the other stuff going on with Black Lives Matter and everything else had all of the attention. At what point do we look at society as a whole and say like, we're actively being manipulated. Yeah, we're. We're actively being coerced into taking a position of division.
- [86:22]
Jeff Duden
I would say agitated. 100% we're being agitated.
- [86:25]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [86:26]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [86:26]
Adam Smith
And I think, you know, to your question, where did it go wrong? Well, I think it went wrong a long time ago.
- [86:32]
Jeff Duden
You know, I was, I was, I got off TikTok, man, because I was on TikTok. And all of a sudden, man, it was just people getting beaten all the time, People getting beaten, people throwing things, you know, people eating in a restaurant and getting mobbed and all this stuff. And then I'm like, I'm getting so mad. Right. But then I go out and I do my daily things and I go to restaurants and I go to the mall and I go here and there and everybody's so nice.
- [86:54]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [86:54]
Jeff Duden
I'm like, this is a reality in that moment.
- [86:57]
Unknown
Yep.
- [86:58]
Jeff Duden
But it's not my reality.
- [86:59]
Adam Smith
Correct.
- [86:59]
Jeff Duden
So I stopped looking at it because I didn't think it was doing good for me.
- [87:02]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [87:02]
Jeff Duden
You know, and regardless of, you know, you know, and look, like you said, maybe people will one year just not pay their taxes. That's a protest.
- [87:12]
Adam Smith
Yeah, it is that.
- [87:13]
Jeff Duden
And that would be in like, look, so I'm not against protests and I'm not against people protesting for what they believe.
- [87:18]
Adam Smith
But.
- [87:19]
Jeff Duden
I know, but I am against organized criminal. Criminal activity for the purpose of maintaining power.
- [87:28]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [87:29]
Jeff Duden
And. And then using that power to then steal from us.
- [87:34]
Adam Smith
Yeah, I support that statement 100%. You're not wrong. And if you look at organized criminal activity, you can look at a multitude of different aspects of organized criminal activity that's taking place. I mean, you could even see. Well, let me just. Here's a recent interaction during the last administration, during the election, a disaster happened in western North Carolina. And you had a huge outpouring of grassroots efforts that built upon themselves. And not only that, they gained huge national attention and recognition. I think we did 170 or 180 interviews. We were some of the very first ones. I was, unfortunately, some of the very first ones to do a live interview on national television. I've been on Fox News multiple times because of this, right? There was a driven rumor that was pushed, and I have a pretty good idea of its generation and things like that, that I was actively directing militia personnel on the ground to the tune of, like, a thousand militiamen on the ground, and that we were threatening FEMA and any sort of state or federal capability. Right. That if they came around, that they would not be welcome and we would. We would hurt them. Right? That was the rumor that got pushed out. That rumor made it to usasak, United States Army Special Operations Command. That rumor made it to the first Special Forces Command. There was conversation being had at first Special Forces Command to revoke my tab orders. That rumor got to Special Forces association, which is a Green Beret nonprofit, also the Special Forces Charitable Trust, which is another Green Beret nonprofit. That rumor was getting circulated amongst all of these organizations so people would stop coming to us, Special operators would stop coming to us. Right? Now, we heard of another nonprofit that got into a standoff with a police force, like, drew their guns and drew down on this police force, right? And we heard about it and that. We heard that. And that came from a channel of information.
- [89:30]
Jeff Duden
Was that a rumor or was that true?
- [89:32]
Adam Smith
Well, I don't know. I heard a rumor, okay.
- [89:34]
Jeff Duden
Heard this rumor, okay?
- [89:36]
Adam Smith
Eventually, I got into contact with the leader of that nonprofit, and I was like, hey, I heard this rumor. And he goes, are you serious? We heard that was you. And I went, are you serious? He goes, yeah. I went, wow. I said, what else have you heard about us? So we heard you guys were running militia. We couldn't even come and work with you guys because we. Some of us still have contracts right now with the federal government where we're going to lose our job.
- [89:57]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [89:57]
Adam Smith
And I went, no kidding? He goes, no kidding? I went, man, that's. That's crazy. Hey, did you hear about this rumor? He goes, I heard about that rumor, too, but I heard it was this organization up here. And I went, no kidding? Here's the crazy part. A lot of the rumors that I heard about special operators on the ground came from official government channels, right? Now, I'm not saying that they're the ones that generated it. And I'm also not saying that they didn't generate it. Right. What I am saying is that if we look at the status quo and the current modus operandi of the media, the government. The government, Big G. Right.
- [90:30]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [90:30]
Adam Smith
Not necessarily individuals, but the government. There's. There has always been a definitive effort, especially in the last 25 years, to discredit those. Discrediting. The ability of the federal capability spin.
- [90:43]
Jeff Duden
Is I, you know, I started hanging out in D.C. in 2015.
- [90:49]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [90:50]
Jeff Duden
Through my relationship with some political people and through my participation in group called ypo.
- [90:56]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [90:56]
Jeff Duden
So I started going to things and I started hanging out and you know, right around the Capitol and just, you know, getting access to things. I actually went through the process, early process to be an ambassador to a foreign country.
- [91:08]
Adam Smith
Okay.
- [91:09]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [91:09]
Jeff Duden
Which was cool. So, yeah. You know, top of a hotel, different people coming in, you know, that you might know, at meeting me sitting down, you know, getting to know me a little bit. You know, I had my off the racks suit on and you know, and you know, your phone goes. First time I saw my phone go into one of the sleeves.
- [91:26]
Adam Smith
One of those bags. Oh, yeah, yeah. Faraday bag.
- [91:28]
Jeff Duden
And you know, there was, I don't know, 33 countries available. And you know, I, you know, it was education process about what is an ambassadorship. What do you do?
- [91:35]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [91:36]
Jeff Duden
How does it work? What do you, I mean, it's, you have to pay money, actually. You have to support your. There's. You get things, but then you have to do things on your out of your own dime. So generally these people have some money.
- [91:47]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [91:48]
Jeff Duden
Because they, they need money to execute on that. Now the money does come back to you in different ways and contacts and you know, the, the ambassadors I've met, they're just brilliant, smart, knowledgeable, usually highly educated people and they have the ability to navigate, you know, I'm in these countries and they understand politics and all that kind of stuff. And there's a purpose for ambassadors in intelligence. Very much so both gathering and delivering 100. And you know, they're oper. Ambassadors are operators. Yep. They're basically operas. So. And then we still had some kids and the wife's like, we're not moving to freaking wherever this.
- [92:24]
Adam Smith
Yeah, we're not going to Morocco.
- [92:25]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, we're not going. We're not moving to Morocco, as nice as it might be. And so I'm going through all that and you know, I really had these rose colored glasses around how things operate and, and what it is and what I realized, I just I mean it's, it's, the spin is unbelievable. So the fact that you guys were executing and all of this positive narrative starts coming out and all this positive social media and all of this stuff goes on and FEMA was slow.
- [92:54]
Adam Smith
They were slow.
- [92:55]
Jeff Duden
They were slow. It's not like, like you said, good people showing up well intentioned.
- [92:59]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [92:59]
Jeff Duden
Trying to get a sense of the resources that they had.
- [93:01]
Adam Smith
Not their fault.
- [93:02]
Jeff Duden
No, not their fault.
- [93:03]
Adam Smith
It's not their fault. It's the, this is the, it's so frustrating. Right. Because, because what I'm gonna say, I'll get lambasted about it, but it doesn't really matter. It's not their fault. Because FEMA doesn't have the authority to self deploy.
- [93:16]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [93:16]
Adam Smith
They cannot self deploy. It has to be approved by the administration in position.
- [93:22]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [93:22]
Adam Smith
Has to be. They can submit the request, but at the end of the day they can't self deploy. It's not like FEMA goes, oh, disaster, let's go out and do things. It doesn't work that way. There's a very specific process that has to take place.
- [93:33]
Jeff Duden
That's right.
- [93:33]
Adam Smith
The failure for what happened in western North Carolina was that the governor, Governor Cooper failed his job. He did not do his job. He did not do it well. He submitted a request for whatever the airport, 12th Airborne Corps or whatever it is out of Fort Campbell to stand up, to come and help. And then he said, no, we're good. Then he submitted the request again. And then they stood up and come in. They came into the state. Sure, he, he authorized the deployment of the National Guard, but to the tune of like, I don't know, 1400 total personnel, national Guard personnel. And when they got on the ground, God love them, they didn't have a solid grasp of what they needed to do because ground intelligence was so sparse. Then the request of FEMA directly after the declaration of disaster and declaration of state of emergency wasn't done in such a way that it was timely and effective.
- [94:15]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [94:16]
Jeff Duden
So let me share something. I was in the disaster restoration business for 30 years.
- [94:21]
Adam Smith
Forever. Yeah.
- [94:22]
Jeff Duden
Okay. In a disaster situation, the private companies go in and they're on the ground first. And the challenge is, is that there's different coverages for windstorm than there is for flood.
- [94:38]
Adam Smith
Right.
- [94:38]
Jeff Duden
There's not for, for residential flood. Outside of flood zones, there's no coverage. The motivation for restoration companies to deploy into these areas. They were going to. You would. Because I've done this and you know, if there's like a, there's a windstorm and then there's an area that was flood like in Katrina and what coverage? And you go in there and it's like, you know, you know, they don't have coverage. Well, if they don't have coverage, I'm not going to invest $25,000 in labor and materials and equipment because they, they might not be able, they're not going to pay me.
- [95:08]
Adam Smith
Right.
- [95:09]
Jeff Duden
So it's not, I'm just a private company. I mean it'd be nice if I could, but I can't do that for hundreds and hundreds of homes. I go bankrupt. Okay. So in this situation, you know, it wasn't the, I would assume that the restoration businesses now they would go to the dealerships and car in places and places that were self insured or places that had money. They're probably all over those types of places. But the people living in homes outside of flood zones that were affected by flood had no coverage.
- [95:35]
Adam Smith
You're correct. And even people that lived in floodplains didn't have coverage. Okay.
- [95:38]
Jeff Duden
So FEMA can usually, they can usually, you know, bankers hours their way into these situations because the private companies are already taking care of the triage of the situation. In this situation it took somebody like you to step up and, and provide that function. And then people were screaming. Right. Because you know, and people were screaming and then as the federal government's kind of getting a black eye, I mean FEMA's kind of rolling in like they normally roll.
- [96:06]
Adam Smith
Yeah. And.
- [96:07]
Jeff Duden
But it just, it was a different type of situation.
- [96:09]
Adam Smith
Well, FEMA's never been designed, no, they've never been designed to be a, a first 48.
- [96:14]
Jeff Duden
They're not a first responder.
- [96:15]
Adam Smith
They're not. That's the county level and the state level's responsibility do that. And that's, that first 72 hours is supposed to be county, local and state capability.
- [96:23]
Jeff Duden
But the press was bad and it was going at them.
- [96:25]
Adam Smith
It was.
- [96:26]
Jeff Duden
So the first thing that comes back from, you know, inside the beltway is.
- [96:30]
Adam Smith
Well, we need to cover ourselves.
- [96:31]
Jeff Duden
Let's make them look bad. Yep, 100%, you know, and then that'll give us a little bit of time and stuff. And unfortunately that's just the way it is. It is because it's, because what happens is if, if the press is going bad on FEMA, then it goes directly to the administration.
- [96:43]
Adam Smith
100%.
- [96:43]
Jeff Duden
So the administration says spin it 100%. And that's just the way it works.
- [96:48]
Adam Smith
And here's the thing, you know, after all the, after all the interactions that we had after all.
- [96:51]
Jeff Duden
Probably now getting audited.
- [96:53]
Adam Smith
Oh, 100%. I know I am after this conversation. This. There's a definitive.
- [96:57]
Jeff Duden
No, probably not.
- [97:00]
Adam Smith
Maybe not maybe, you know, there's an, there's a, there's a solution to the problem.
- [97:04]
Jeff Duden
What's that?
- [97:05]
Adam Smith
And it's a pretty simple and straightforward solution. You reduce the overall size of fema, you amend the Stafford act so that the responsibility for long term recovery goes to the agencies that are supposed to do do it. Hud, sba, DOT and a few others.
- [97:17]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [97:18]
Adam Smith
FEMA becomes a. FEMA becomes a, for all intents and purposes, becomes a bank, becomes a place for funds holding as well as a plus up force for a privatized disaster relief organization. And you take a privatized disaster rescue and relief organization, you put them on a fair, it's an FFP contract, fair fixed price contract with a cost plus model on the back end for deployment.
- [97:40]
Jeff Duden
Sure.
- [97:40]
Adam Smith
They stand in readiness. They have ability to sustain capability. They're always on retainer. And in the process of not deploying to disasters, they build resilience capability. They become ground operations and intelligence. They interact with the state level, in.
- [97:52]
Jeff Duden
The county level and that's the way our DOD works.
- [97:54]
Adam Smith
That's exactly how our DOD works with contractors. And if you put a contract on the ground within the first 24 hours, you can establish the hub and spoke deployment capability. They have the ability to do logistics because they're already knowledgeable, they have search and rescue capability, they can do debris and damage assessments while they're interacting with the EOCs on the ground. Then at the 92 hour window, or the 72 hour window, whatever that window might be, 96 hour window, then FEMA, USAR guys can show up and plus up the efforts of the guys that are on the other ground and then they can deploy an army of adjusters and inspectors and caseworkers, which is what their focus should be anyway. And if they do that now you've niched down FEMA from being this, you know, indefinite recovery agency to a 90 day agency that shows up plus up an effort that local contractors are already doing or regional contractors are already doing, then they bring in the dollars and they're bringing in that $42,000 grant, that $750 real time of relief aid for in and around purchases. Right. They also can become advocates to those damaged by people that are victims with insurance companies that want to back out of the deal. So now you have a 90 day window for a federal agency that doesn't have to do long term Recovery that still has the ability to assist with these other guys. But then you put the impetus, responsibility on the agencies that have. Why is FEMA doing Housing and Urban Development when we have Housing and Urban Development as a federal agency that's already got long term disaster recovery in it. Why is FEMA saying hey, we're going to help rebuild roads when you have the federal Department of Transportation that already interacts with the state level Department of Transportation. Why are we removing this responsibility from agencies that know how to do it? It's ridiculous, it's ineffective, it's inefficient, it's redundant and it's horribly redundant. Which means that now we have multiple pots of money that's getting allocated to these agencies that's bloating the bureaucracy further. When we could streamline everything, we could cut the federal budget for FEMA in half from 33 billion down, probably down to 20 billion or even a little bit less than that. And then we take some of that overage that we have and we contract private, capable, capable teams. But here's the thing. Rather than waiting for the administration to say you're approved to deploy, you have a privatized disaster rescue and relief company. Their contract and scope of work gives them the authority to deploy. They don't have to wait for a thumbs up, they can go in pre stage. They've already got interactions with the state as soon as a storm happens. They're providing rescue, they're supporting local authorities in that 72 hour window.
- [100:18]
Jeff Duden
Well look, we had GSA schedules. Yeah, it's a GSA schedule. So like we had, we had agreed upon emergency restoration prices.
- [100:26]
Unknown
Yep.
- [100:26]
Jeff Duden
We had air duct cleaning prices, we had mold remediation prices, other prices and we had schedules with the government so that if somebody had a need and the pricing was already agreed to, fixed. Yeah. So it's like. Oh you're, we're, they would just literally one page, I mean had like the five different lines on it. He's going to reference this GSA schedule. You know, keep your, keep your hours, keep your time, keep your units. And so like there's nowhere, there's no time, you just go, you don't handle business, you just go handle business. And then you just make sure you count everything.
- [100:54]
Adam Smith
Well that's a piece. If you do a, if you do a fixed fair price model that puts an organization on retainer, that and then has pre staged GSA scheduling on a, on a pre position contract, on a deployment cost plus model, it's a win.
- [101:06]
Jeff Duden
Win for those not understand it's GSA's General Services Administration. Which is the biggest, is it the biggest property owner or the biggest property maintenance company? Property maintenance company in the, in the, in the country. Because the government owns the overwhelming majority of buildings and assets. So the GSA schedule is for that. There will still be abuse.
- [101:25]
Adam Smith
Oh, but, but unequivocally somebody's already like.
- [101:28]
Jeff Duden
Oh, I got my, I got my 300 air movers in the trailer. They're on site. So I'm going to bill you for them.
- [101:33]
Adam Smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [101:34]
Jeff Duden
They never moved out.
- [101:35]
Adam Smith
They never moved out of the trailer.
- [101:36]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [101:37]
Jeff Duden
You know what, that's a rounding error because they, they're there.
- [101:39]
Adam Smith
It's going to happen.
- [101:40]
Jeff Duden
They got there.
- [101:41]
Adam Smith
Yeah, it's going to happen.
- [101:42]
Jeff Duden
So it's, you know, maybe, and maybe that's just part of the logistics because if I didn't have them there, I'd have them on another job somewhere else or I did.
- [101:49]
Adam Smith
Well, it's, it's, it's, you know what? We see the same thing happening with like debris removal. The debris removal industry is something that I've learned a lot about. And you've got these debris removal monitoring companies, they hold no risk. Have you ever heard about this before? Removal monitor companies. So the, the debris monitoring company monitors the efforts of the contractors on the ground.
- [102:09]
Unknown
Yes.
- [102:09]
Adam Smith
Okay. That are doing the debris removal. Their sole purpose and the only thing they contract on, and I'm not kidding you, is debris evaluation. How much debris is there and what's the estimate around it? That's a product they provide. And then if you're a contractor and you show up and you load your truck with debris, I watch you load truck. Your truck with debris that we have approved fits the schedule that's already been put out, the criteria that's been put out by fema. Right. So we watch you load that debris. Then after you load that debris, we scan that we, that you loaded that debris and we create a billing ticket for you.
- [102:40]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [102:40]
Adam Smith
And then you take it to a, you take it to a holding area that you as debris tech or I'm sorry, not debris tech or Tetra Tech. There's a multitude of different monitoring companies that are out there, but you as a monitoring company don't manage the primes and the tier ones manage the lay down yard. So all you do is then provide an estimate of how full that trailer is.
- [102:59]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [102:59]
Adam Smith
And then you punch that into the card and then you give that and that's how your contractor is getting paid. Your contractor is getting paid by a random estimate. Made by an unskilled, unqualified estimator on how much debris is in the trailer at the back of that trailer. And the only, the only risk these debris monitoring companies carry. This is it. I'm not exaggerating. This is lowering the risk payroll for the individual they've hired to do the job. They don't have any equipment. They don't have any heavy equipment on the site. They don't have any invested dollars into large machinery.
- [103:29]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [103:30]
Adam Smith
And they are billing at usually between 30 and 50% of the total amount being billed to the site.
- [103:36]
Jeff Duden
But we know how it happens. Okay. So here's what happens. Somebody figures out that these debris hauling companies and they go back after a disaster and they do the math and they say, well, we paid $500 million for debris removal, and the market price would have been $500 a pole. And if we do the math, we paid for five times as many poles as was. Even if we would have put every. If we would have put every house in New Orleans in the dumpsters.
- [104:06]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [104:06]
Jeff Duden
You know, like you. Like that's the way the math works.
- [104:09]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [104:09]
Jeff Duden
And they're just like, it's by every measure.
- [104:11]
Adam Smith
Yep.
- [104:12]
Jeff Duden
The volume of what happened. We paid 400 extra million dollars. So let's get somebody to watch them.
- [104:19]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [104:19]
Jeff Duden
So now they double down.
- [104:20]
Adam Smith
Yes.
- [104:21]
Jeff Duden
On it and they create another layer.
- [104:23]
Adam Smith
They spend a dollar to not pay a nickel.
- [104:26]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [104:26]
Adam Smith
When in reality, if we go back to. What about a fixed price contract?
- [104:29]
Jeff Duden
And it's a really. A revenue share.
- [104:31]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [104:32]
Adam Smith
And like all. It's a simple fix.
- [104:34]
Jeff Duden
There's going to be abuse because people are going to take advantage and they're going to justify it.
- [104:37]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [104:38]
Jeff Duden
Kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, it's, you know, there's. I don't know, there's. There's so much. There's so much beef in there, man, to trim. So much fat.
- [104:49]
Adam Smith
Fat. A lot of fat.
- [104:50]
Jeff Duden
A lot of fat to trim.
- [104:51]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [104:51]
Jeff Duden
Adam, before we get out of here, can you talk just to see.
- [104:55]
Adam Smith
Look.
- [104:56]
Jeff Duden
Savage. Freedom. Savage. Savage. Off. Training, preparation. Who do you. Who, who do you train? Why do you train them? How do you do it? And I noticed on the website, you've got survival, you, you've got tracking, you got home defense, you got vehicle defense, you've got all of these things now. Your life has changed over the last five months because of the service that you've done. And I know that you're doing. You're speaking at a lot of really high impact events. And I think you're really in demand. And I think your message is resonating with lots of people and your leadership. I also had some things about leadership. You know, your leadership style is so on point, you know, like what, what, what, what are you doing now? And how has your life changed? And, and where, where is the savage. The savage beast?
- [105:40]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [105:40]
Jeff Duden
And what do you see for it going forward?
- [105:42]
Adam Smith
That's a good question. So we, you know, Savage Consulting was born in 2019. And then I was immediately. Was it 2019? I can't remember exactly. It's 2019 somewhere in that window. But I was immediately whisked away from the creation of that company because I was brought on to be a mentor coach for another coaching company. If you've ever heard of Wake up Warrior guy named Garrett J. White, he owns his business out in California. He has this thing called Warrior Week. It's a men's focused business event. But you know, you put guys through basic training, like experience and you force them to look at themselves and the model. It works.
- [106:16]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [106:17]
Adam Smith
You know, there's some long term success, there's some guys that don't hold to it, but it's what it is.
- [106:20]
Jeff Duden
So kind of a, kind of a watered down series of training that somebody might go through to be a Green Beret or a SEAL or.
- [106:30]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [106:30]
Jeff Duden
Or, but, but also, but you got to start from the ground up. It's got to be things that civilians can do. But weapons training, no weapons training in that one.
- [106:38]
Adam Smith
So that was all, that's all like, you know, there's, you do log PT in the ocean and you know, there's, there's some, it's just a lot of creating discomfort and. But it's a physical discomfort to help guys put their egos down and actually have a conversation.
- [106:50]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [106:51]
Adam Smith
You know, like, like successful entrepreneurs. These guys are independent, successful entrepreneurs.
- [106:54]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [106:55]
Adam Smith
Okay. No, no real peer to look at them and go, hey, dude, you're, you're a liar. Like, you're, you're full of crap right now. We need to have a real conversation. But so that, that happened. Then I went back to Savage Consulting and then Savage Freedoms Defense. Defense was born. And Savage Freedom's defense really is a focus on like teaching all. It comes down to self preservation. I hate the term self defense. I think it's overused. I think there's a better consideration self preservation. Self defense would indicate like reactivity being reactive. Self preservation requires a proactive response to the world. So when you're driving, you have to have good situational awareness. How do you make yourself a hard target versus an easy target. What sort of preparation do you do before you travel overseas? What information are you trying to gather, what websites you look at at to get the right information before you go? What's a risk assessment on your home? Have you ever done a risk assessment on your home? What sort of security system do you have? You're a high net worth individual and you have a family that you want to keep safe and protected. Because you're high net worth, you are a target. What does that look like? What sort of training are you giving your family? Yeah, you know, what's your evacuation plan on the house? And if somebody breaks into your home while you're there, we automatically know without a question that there's already in lethal intent. Right. The castle laws all over the United States indicate that. So how are you going to protect your family? And how do you keep them safe in that. That instance?
- [108:11]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [108:11]
Adam Smith
So, you know, self preservation goes into a whole bunch of pieces. What you talked about. So shooting, fighting, home defense, vehicle defense.
- [108:20]
Jeff Duden
Things along those lines. You know Tim Schmidt, who's the founder of the US Concealed Carry no Association.
- [108:26]
Adam Smith
Do you know Tim?
- [108:27]
Jeff Duden
Yes.
- [108:27]
Adam Smith
No, I've never met him.
- [108:28]
Jeff Duden
Do you know who he is?
- [108:29]
Adam Smith
Yeah, I know the name, but I have never met him.
- [108:30]
Jeff Duden
Oh, he was just on a podcast this week.
- [108:32]
Adam Smith
Oh, really?
- [108:33]
Jeff Duden
Amazing gentleman.
- [108:34]
Adam Smith
Oh, man.
- [108:35]
Jeff Duden
Amazing. I will, I will make that connection.
- [108:37]
Adam Smith
I would love to make the introduction.
- [108:38]
Jeff Duden
You know, Chris Moss.
- [108:40]
Adam Smith
I think I've met Chris.
- [108:41]
Jeff Duden
Do you?
- [108:41]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [108:42]
Jeff Duden
Okay. He would. He'd also be another good invite. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna introduce you to Tim for sure. Like just a really great guy, lives in Nashville, a million members of the US cca and just, just really a great. So I'll, I'll make that introduction to you, but, you know, very, very special. All of the things that you just talked about. Those are the things that we talked about.
- [109:03]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [109:03]
Jeff Duden
Where do you sit in a restaurant?
- [109:04]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [109:05]
Jeff Duden
You know, where do you sit, like. And his thing is, is to get. Not to confront people.
- [109:09]
Adam Smith
No, it's to get away from them.
- [109:10]
Jeff Duden
It's to get away from them.
- [109:11]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [109:12]
Jeff Duden
To make sure a situation never happens in the first place.
- [109:14]
Adam Smith
Yeah. Yeah. So that's that good, solid situational awareness.
- [109:17]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [109:18]
Adam Smith
The question is, is that when you can't not confront them.
- [109:20]
Jeff Duden
That's right.
- [109:21]
Adam Smith
What do you do then?
- [109:21]
Jeff Duden
That's right.
- [109:22]
Adam Smith
Right. And how do you. And how do you. It's the same conversation have with law enforcement officers. Law enforcement. Is this. A lot of times law enforcement's Reactive.
- [109:28]
Unknown
Yes.
- [109:29]
Adam Smith
Right. But how do you be proactively reactive? So like what actions do you stay taking before that happens?
- [109:34]
Jeff Duden
Well, and if somebody's not at least trained to a minimal viable effectiveness, then the situation can't slow down because you don't have any training upon which to fall back on.
- [109:49]
Adam Smith
Correct.
- [109:49]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [109:49]
Jeff Duden
So your heart rate's gonna. If somebody comes into your home, you see on the camera, let's just say you, you, you look on the, you know, somebody, the dogs are barking, the alarm goes off, you hear, you hear the door opening. You look on your camera and you see that there's people that have guns and they're hooded and they're breaking. You're breaking into your home and it's.
- [110:07]
Adam Smith
2:45 in the morning and your child lives across the way from you. It doesn't live on the same side of the building or house that you live in.
- [110:12]
Jeff Duden
That's right. So now your heart rate goes to 200.
- [110:14]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [110:15]
Jeff Duden
You, you know, does in, you know, and it's just like different people. People have no idea how they're gonna react.
- [110:21]
Adam Smith
No idea.
- [110:21]
Jeff Duden
You know, they talk about the gunfighters back in the day. It wasn't the quickest, it was the ones that could remain the calmest. That's most of the shots miss.
- [110:30]
Adam Smith
Calm and mobile.
- [110:31]
Unknown
Yes.
- [110:32]
Adam Smith
So like we said before, fear is always a factor, no matter what. It's the ability to operate through fear with consistent, disciplined actions.
- [110:40]
Unknown
Yes.
- [110:41]
Adam Smith
That overcome the fear response and make you more effective when you make whatever you're applying.
- [110:45]
Jeff Duden
But if you're making it up as you go along because you've never been trained or you've never thought through the situation, if you haven't had a single rep. Yep. You're, you know, you're, you're as big a threat to your kid. Oh 100% you are as the people coming in you.
- [110:57]
Adam Smith
You've never considered like how to deconflict fires inside of your home so you're not shooting through a wall. You've never done a medium shoot. Like, you've never taken the, the gun that you may carry and the rounds that you carry and shot through different mediums to understand how that rounds affected by those mediums.
- [111:09]
Jeff Duden
That's right.
- [111:09]
Adam Smith
You know, if you're shooting through on a three quarter inch plywall or drywall and you have two slots, a three quarter inch drywall, what's a, you know, what's a hollow point 45 do when it impacts the first one and how does it affect the shoot through on the other Side. And if that's the case, where your kids.
- [111:24]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [111:24]
Adam Smith
You know, where do they. Where, how high off the floor do they sleep? Right. You know, what angle of fire are you taking to try and avoid not hitting them? These are, these are pieces that people don't even think about.
- [111:33]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [111:33]
Jeff Duden
I mean I've got a Glock Gen 345. I got an MP5, I got an HK9 Viper, you know, so like of those three. And then you have a shotgun. Okay. So you know, which, you know, if I'm playing what's the game? If I'm playing Fortnite, which.
- [111:50]
Adam Smith
What are you gonna go with?
- [111:51]
Jeff Duden
What do I go.
- [111:52]
Adam Smith
Yeah, do I go with.
- [111:53]
Jeff Duden
Okay, you know, I just open up the drawer.
- [111:55]
Adam Smith
Yeah.
- [111:55]
Jeff Duden
Like what's the, what's the most reasonable thing? Arm and ar. Yeah, well, but look, that's 3000 FPS that's gonna go through the.
- [112:03]
Adam Smith
Depends on. Depends on the load you're carrying. Depends on if it's hollow point. A hollow point depends on what the grain wet of the round is.
- [112:08]
Jeff Duden
Why? Because of capacity.
- [112:10]
Adam Smith
Well, not just capacity, accuracy.
- [112:12]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [112:13]
Adam Smith
You got to think about if you are. If you are in full freakout mode at 2 o' clock in the morning and you've never had somebody break into your home and there's a potential lethal capability or lethal threat and you have. Let's say you're not running a full metal jacket. Let's say you're running a half jacket at soft tip 2, 2, 3 round or hollow point which isn't going to have a lot of blow through. Right. And you're running a lighter grain or a slightly heavier grain weight which is going to reduce overall muzzle velocity.
- [112:35]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [112:35]
Adam Smith
If you run that round, the accuracy that you have on a 14 and a half inch barrel comparatively to a three inch pistol barrel is going to be dramatically different.
- [112:43]
Jeff Duden
Well, that's fair. I've got a couple rocky rivers. There's American made and we've got the, the double I open sights. The red dots.
- [112:52]
Adam Smith
Yeah, red dots.
- [112:53]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [112:53]
Jeff Duden
And I mean like you don't even have to look that close to. I mean like that's like to me like wherever that. And wherever that dot goes, like that's where the round goes.
- [113:01]
Adam Smith
I'll send you a picture. I'll send you a picture of my rifle. And it's build. There's some stuff that you can add to it to make it even more like ergonomically sound really that much more easily to apply.
- [113:10]
Jeff Duden
But whatever it is you're gonna pick up, you better have Trained with it?
- [113:12]
Adam Smith
Yeah, 100% or trained with something like it.
- [113:15]
Unknown
Yes. Yeah.
- [113:16]
Adam Smith
And have enough experience in the training to like, you should challenge yourself. You should stress inoculate. There should be, you know, you should go for a run, get your heart rate way up and then get on it. Get on the pistol and immediately take a shot to make certain that you can control your rounds. There's, there's pieces of training that you can do that. Yeah, you can't, you can't, you can't do a two way, a two way range.
- [113:33]
Jeff Duden
Look, I was, I was a decent free throw shooter, so I think, you know, it's pretty good. That's pretty good on the line under pressure.
- [113:41]
Adam Smith
That's fair. Yeah, that's fair.
- [113:42]
Jeff Duden
But I did, you know, and like, I. It's interesting. I don't think I've ever said this out loud, but I thought it a lot of times. So athletically, for whatever reason, I ended up being on some really, really good high school teams.
- [113:55]
Unknown
Okay.
- [113:55]
Jeff Duden
And we won some games in the last minute, last seconds, like in the playoffs to continue to go on. And the ball was all always ended up in my hands.
- [114:04]
Adam Smith
Oh, really?
- [114:05]
Jeff Duden
And I just don't know. I just don't know why, but things were just slow, like fortune, the way the play was called, the way things happened or whatever. But it just, it just, I just kept making a play and, and you know, and like could have easily not easy place the balls that could have been dropped, easily dropped that would have killed, you know, we would have gone on or whatever it was. And for whatever reason, like the world slows down for me and I've always just had that, you know, that little, like you put me in a situation and the thing slows down. So. But you know, I could probably brush up on some of the. In home training, but.
- [114:38]
Adam Smith
Well, dude, if you want to do some training, let me know.
- [114:40]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [114:41]
Adam Smith
I mean, you're not that far.
- [114:42]
Jeff Duden
No.
- [114:42]
Adam Smith
You know, two hours away.
- [114:43]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [114:43]
Adam Smith
And I've got some nice ranges out towards the Asheville area that you can come out and train and shoot. Shoot with me and that would be good. I'd love to do it. Be a blast.
- [114:49]
Jeff Duden
We'll do it.
- [114:49]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [114:50]
Adam Smith
All right.
- [114:50]
Jeff Duden
Do you have time for a curveball and a fastball?
- [114:52]
Adam Smith
Oh, yeah, we have time, man. It's. Now we're on your time.
- [114:55]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [114:56]
Jeff Duden
Well, that's fine. That's fine. Okay, so I've got a curveball in a. Well, first of all.
- [115:01]
Adam Smith
Well, can I add to that real quick?
- [115:03]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [115:03]
Adam Smith
So that's Savage Freedom's defense.
- [115:05]
Unknown
Yes.
- [115:05]
Adam Smith
The other piece is Savage Consulting.
- [115:08]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [115:08]
Adam Smith
And that is operational overhauls. That's public speaking engagements.
- [115:12]
Unknown
Okay.
- [115:12]
Jeff Duden
So you go into a. Give me an example of a business that would be an ideal customer for.
- [115:17]
Adam Smith
Literally any company that's trying to break a plateau.
- [115:19]
Jeff Duden
Okay?
- [115:20]
Adam Smith
Nobody's special. Everybody thinks that their freaking business is special. No, but there is no such thing as a special company. I don't. I don't care who you are. It doesn't matter if you're working in the concrete industry or you're a call center in Florida or if you do directional drilling in California. It doesn't matter what your job is. If you've already created a modicum of success, then you're a subject matter expert in that space. Sure, you don't need me for that. However, how do you break the Plateau? You're at 5, you want to hit 10. How do you break the plateau? What's your leadership look like? Who do you have, what seats do you have to fill? And what seats do you not have filled? And who do you have them filled with? Right. What's communication capability look like? Have you looked at expanding the operation through other verticals or doing vertical integration with other potential companies you could buy?
- [115:58]
Unknown
Yes.
- [115:59]
Adam Smith
What are those pieces look like? Operational effectiveness and efficiency. What does that look like? So those are pieces that, you know, the niche company is not. There's not one specific company. It doesn't matter what company. You're not special.
- [116:10]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [116:11]
Adam Smith
You're a business. Businesses have the same. The same requirements, no matter what.
- [116:15]
Jeff Duden
What's an engagement look like in terms of time and scope?
- [116:18]
Adam Smith
Usually the first engagement is going to be a week on, on site to do an evaluation.
- [116:22]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [116:23]
Adam Smith
So I spend five full days with the business. I talk to as many people as I can, understanding what's not getting fed to the leaders, the CEO and the CEO, they may not understand ground reality. So to get both perspectives, identify where the gaps are and then brief the gaps. And then it's usually two days a month moving forward over the first, the next six months. And that is to apply whatever the lessons learned are and whatever effective changes we can put in place.
- [116:48]
Jeff Duden
And then you've got basic tools that are probably fundamentally, from your military experience that say, when we have this communications problem, logistics problem, execution problem, these. This is what we would do.
- [116:59]
Adam Smith
Yeah. This is how we fix the problem.
- [117:01]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [117:01]
Adam Smith
And this is how we bridge the gap, and then we start evaluating numbers.
- [117:04]
Jeff Duden
Got it.
- [117:04]
Adam Smith
What does that look like?
- [117:05]
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah.
- [117:06]
Jeff Duden
Awesome.
- [117:06]
Adam Smith
But the thing I love the Most is speaking.
- [117:08]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [117:08]
Adam Smith
Speaking engagements are the best.
- [117:10]
Jeff Duden
What. What do you. Do? You have canned talks? Do you have a keynote? What do you. Or how do you prepare?
- [117:16]
Adam Smith
I don't do any of that. I don't. I don't have canned speech. Like, there's a lot of speakers that go out and they have it. They have a can speech. I don't do any of that.
- [117:22]
Jeff Duden
You ever just got in front of a huge room and just be like, you know, nothing's coming to me?
- [117:26]
Adam Smith
No, I haven't had that. I actually like to show up early. So if I'm going to do a keynote, I'm not a. I'm not a show up an hour before speak and then leave.
- [117:35]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [117:35]
Adam Smith
I get there for the entire event. Right. I listen to as many speakers as possible. I have a conversation with as many attendees as possible. What I've come to find is that normally there's a common trend amongst the group. There's a. There's a common trend amongst the group.
- [117:48]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [117:48]
Adam Smith
That I'll hear and I'll pick up two or three of the most common trends. And then when I go up after listening to all the speakers, there's also gaps left and the speakers will talk on a thing, and. But there's a gap that's missing. Right. And that doesn't necessarily address the common trend. Right. So then when I go up, that's what I speak to. I speak to the common trends that I've heard amongst the attendees and the gaps that are left behind by the other speakers, and then that becomes a keynote.
- [118:10]
Jeff Duden
Where would you direct people to get in touch with you?
- [118:13]
Adam Smith
You can reach me@therealadamsmith.com okay. And send me a message. You can also reach me at savagefreedoms.com savageops.org or savage freedomsoporations.org which is Savage Freedoms Relief Operations. It's a 501C3.
- [118:26]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [118:27]
Adam Smith
Born from Hurricane Helene. You can reach me at Instagram.
- [118:29]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [118:30]
Adam Smith
Savage Freedoms.
- [118:30]
Unknown
All right. Not.
- [118:31]
Jeff Duden
Not hard to get a hold of.
- [118:32]
Adam Smith
No, not at all.
- [118:33]
Jeff Duden
All right, well, we will put all of that in the show notes.
- [118:35]
Adam Smith
Okay.
- [118:35]
Jeff Duden
And people will be able to reach out to you there from this.
- [118:38]
Adam Smith
Got it. All right.
- [118:39]
Jeff Duden
I got a curveball and a fastball.
- [118:40]
Adam Smith
All right, let's go.
- [118:40]
Jeff Duden
Okay, here's the curveball. Do I really want to say this to Yvette?
- [118:47]
Adam Smith
This is gonna be a good one already.
- [118:48]
Jeff Duden
It's not. It's not. It's not. It's just a thing like. Okay, so under incredible pressure, I usually say Gun to your head. That's not a thing to say.
- [118:55]
Adam Smith
You can go with that, that's fine.
- [118:56]
Jeff Duden
Okay, so gun to your head, you know, like you have 30 days to start a business. Okay. That you are currently not in.
- [119:04]
Adam Smith
Okay.
- [119:04]
Jeff Duden
What, where is the opportunity that you see if you said, okay, I have to start a business and I. 30 days.
- [119:10]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [119:11]
Jeff Duden
And you know, what is, what is across? What have you observed? What's. If you just said, I've got to do this, where's the opportunity in the market that you see right now?
- [119:19]
Adam Smith
Oh my gosh, in 30 days. I have to make a decision right now.
- [119:23]
Jeff Duden
And you don't stop what you're doing or anything like that. But what's a bit like, what's a great business that you're like, wow, that, that should be a business or this is a business that I see that, you know, I should jump on.
- [119:34]
Adam Smith
It's in the tech space.
- [119:36]
Unknown
Okay.
- [119:37]
Adam Smith
I think that there's a critical gap in communications infrastructure for emergency management services across the United States.
- [119:42]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [119:43]
Adam Smith
And that's not, that's not a business I'm in.
- [119:46]
Jeff Duden
So build a platform.
- [119:46]
Adam Smith
Yep. It would, the, the, the piece would be a radio communication system, a pre existing technology that could be easily deployed in, in any aspect, at any time, for any reason that has multiple redundancies. That way emergency management services and critical infrastructure doesn't disappear at any point. It doesn't matter what it would be. Doesn't matter if it's a disaster or doesn't matter if it's a first responder taking care of a call out for police or you know, ambulance services. Power goes out. This is a deployment capability that's pre existing technology. So you don't have to create anything new. You just create a deployable package that you then own.
- [120:23]
Unknown
Yep.
- [120:24]
Jeff Duden
Find a who. Yeah, find a who to do it.
- [120:27]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [120:27]
Jeff Duden
And that'd be. That'd be great. Alright, here's the fastball. This one's going to come right down the middle at you. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's lives based upon your journey, what would that be?
- [120:36]
Adam Smith
The only wrong decision is the one that you never made. So sitting on the couch, accepting being okay is okay, is not okay.
- [120:44]
Jeff Duden
Perfectly said. We'll end with that. Adam, it's been a pleasure, man. Thank you for your service. Thank you for who you are, thank you for what you've done and thank you most importantly for what you're yet to do.
- [120:54]
Adam Smith
Thanks for me having. Thanks for having me.
- [120:55]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, it's been great. It's been Jeff Duden. We have been on the home front with Adam Smith. Thanks for listening.