From Navy SEAL to Visionary Leader — Marty Strong on Creativity, Conflict, and the Art of Strategic Agility

Summary

Podcast Summary: From Navy SEAL to Visionary Leader — Marty Strong on Creativity, Conflict, and the Art of Strategic Agility

Podcast: The Amazing Authorities Podcast
Host: Mitch Carson
Guest: Marty Strong
Date: November 5, 2025

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Episode Overview

Mitch Carson interviews Marty Strong, a retired Navy SEAL turned CEO, bestselling author, and visionary leader. Marty shares his remarkable journey from accidental SEAL, through decades of military service and adversity, to influential business leadership and authorship. The episode covers themes of resilience, creativity, the transferability of military skills to business, leadership evolution, and the essential (often overlooked) role of conflict and fresh perspective in organizational success.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Becoming a Navy SEAL—By Accident

• Marty’s Entry into the SEALs:
  • Received SEAL orders by mistake after graduating radar school, with no initial understanding of “Underwater Demolition SEAL” (UDT/SEAL) (02:00–03:00)
  • Volunteered after being convinced by a Vietnam SEAL Master Chief.
• Mental versus Physical Challenge:
  • Rigorous physical demands dominated, but personal psychological resilience (from a tough childhood) was crucial (05:00–06:45).
  • “You basically just had to put your head down and grind forward and ignore all the naysayers, the whiners, the people were coming up with excuses, including the voices in your head…” – Marty (05:00)

2. The Long Road to “Operator” and Leader

• Post-Qualification Humility:
  • After ten months of training and the SEAL Trident, new SEALs realize how little they know.
  • “You’re like 2% of their capability and understanding and experience level. The best thing for you to do is keep your mouth shut, your eyes and ears open, and learn…” – Marty (07:38)
• Experience Required:
  • “Operator” takes ~6 years; leader, about 7 years; seasoned leader, up to 13–14 years.
  • Leading leaders is a different challenge than leading technical experts (13:40).

3. Leadership Lessons from the SEAL Teams

• Key Attributes:
  • Rolling with setbacks, exploiting lessons from defeat, and evolving through pain.
• Mentorship and Team Dynamics:
  • Binary operator evaluation: “He’s a good operator” mattered more than popularity (11:00–12:00).
  • Early SEAL teams fostered a culture where even junior members’ ideas were valued if they made sense—an early example of inclusive innovation (35:15–36:06).

4. Transitioning to the Private Sector: Transferable Skills and Hard Lessons

• From SEAL to Finance:
  • Faced significant challenges: MBA didn’t teach sales, cold calling and client building was humbling (20:30–25:11).
  • Crucial breakthrough: leveraging public speaking and briefings skills from the military to run seminars and one-to-many selling (25:40–26:15).
• Role of Discipline and Adaptation:
  • Military discipline and continuous learning mindset aided business adjustment, but technical selling wasn’t a natural transition.

5. Reinvention through Crisis: Applying Special Forces Mindset to Business

• Post-9/11 Pivot:
  • Moved into counterterrorism consulting, leveraging SEAL expertise for infrastructure, Olympic security (28:20–30:02).
  • Key transfer was leadership under pressure and risk management, especially guiding organizations through “asymmetrical” threats.

6. Authorship and Sharing Authority

• Books and Vision:
  • 10 novels and 3 business books, including recent “Be Different”
  • “Be Nimble” – On leadership and crisis.
  • “Be Visionary” – Building and operationalizing vision.
  • “Be Different” – Creativity, imagination, innovation, and breaking institutional conformity (30:02–34:47).

7. The Science (and Loss) of Creativity

• Children start highly creative:
  • Studies: Creativity rates drop from over 90% in children to less than 3% in adults, largely from societal and institutional suppression of the forager/explorer mode of thinking.
  • “It wasn’t chemical, it wasn’t biological... it was the institutional impact on our brain’s natural desire and mechanical ability to be creative.” (33:00)
• Call to Organizations:
  • Value and harness “fresh perspective.” Rigid adherence to tradition stifles innovation (34:47–36:08).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Surviving SEAL Training:
  “You basically just had to put your head down and grind forward and ignore all the naysayers, the whiners, the people were coming up with excuses, including the voices in your head…”
  — Marty Strong (05:00)
• On New SEALs’ Knowledge:
  “It only takes you about a week to realize you’re at the very bottom of the food chain. The best thing you can do is keep your mouth shut, your eyes and ears open, and learn from everybody…”
  — Marty Strong (07:38)
• On Authentic Leadership:
  “You’re never the best you can be, but it’s better than being what you were last year.”
  — Marty Strong (13:05)
• On Creativity’s Decline:
  “The reason for that wasn’t chemical, it wasn’t biological... it was the institutional impact on our brain’s natural desire and mechanical ability to be creative.”
  — Marty Strong (33:00)
• On Groupthink & Innovation:
  “It’s myopic and self-destructive for organizations to not tap into [fresh perspective]... In the SEAL teams, the most junior person could come up with the idea. And if that made sense, we went with it.”
  — Marty Strong (35:14)
• On Productive Conflict:
  “Friction and tension can equal traction. Conflict avoidance means you’re not going to get the traction. Conflict avoidance means you’re never going to get the good stuff.”
  — Marty Strong (38:58)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-------------|---------------------------------------------------| | 01:53–03:00 | Marty’s accidental entry into SEAL training | | 04:57–06:45 | Psychological resilience and surviving BUD/S | | 07:29–08:20 | Post-qualification humility in SEAL Teams | | 10:42–13:40 | Leadership evolution (operator to seasoned leader)| | 20:21–26:15 | Transition to financial services, selling skills | | 28:20–30:02 | 9/11 shift: From finance to counterterrorism | | 30:07–34:47 | Writing, creativity decline, and “Be Different” | | 35:14–36:08 | Value of fresh perspectives in organizations | | 38:47–39:08 | Friction and conflict as drivers of innovation |

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Where to Learn More or Reach Marty

• Website: MartyStrong.com
  (Books, speaking, and more)

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Tone and Style in Episode

• Candid, Humorous, and Reflective:
  Marty and Mitch share personal stories, self-deprecating humor (on their names, childhood, and struggles), and honest depictions of setbacks and successes.
• Motivational with Practical Wisdom:
  Emphasis on real experience, continuous learning, humility, and adapting to discomfort.
  “If you’re not learning, you’re stagnating. If you’re avoiding conflict, you’re missing the good stuff.”

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Final Takeaway

Marty Strong’s journey exemplifies that resilience, creativity, and humble leadership—honed through adversity and a willingness to learn and adapt—are the true hallmarks of genuine authority. You don’t have to have all the answers, but you must be willing to seek, synthesize, and challenge the status quo—whether storming beaches or boardrooms.

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Memorable Nugget:

“Friction and tension can equal traction. Conflict avoidance means you’re never going to get the good stuff.”
— Marty Strong (38:58)

Transcript

[Mitch Carson]

Welcome to the Amazing Authorities podcast, where game changers, visionaries and category leaders share how they built their brands, platforms, and global influence. Your host is Mitch Carson, international speaker, media strategist, and creator of the Instant Authority system. If you're ready to learn from those who've done it and want to become the go to expert in your space, you're in the right place.

Marty Strong is in the House today. He is a former Navy seal, a retired Navy seal. He's also been a leader in business, a CEO, currently has. Has had many leadership roles, and I don't think that's by accident with a name like Strong. I almost thought this must be a Hollywood stage name. Coming from la, people change their names. But here he is a CEO, a former naval officer, and a Navy skill with the last name of Strong. It just wouldn't work if it was Marty Week. So here you are, Marty, thank you for coming to the Amazing Authorities podcast show.

[Marty Strong]

Thanks for dredging up my, my childhood trauma. That was what everybody would call me as Marty Week.

[Mitch Carson]

Are you, sir? Oh, my gosh.

[Marty Strong]

Well, or actually they would call me 40 week because they had to play on both of them. So.

[Mitch Carson]

Well, my, my first name is Mitch. And, you know, you can imagine what the, the, the B word was that followed when people used to, to. To tease me. But that's, you know, I think we're, we're grown men now and probably doesn't happen, but, but on rare occasion. But I thought I would ask. Yeah. So this is a Strong name, literally and figuratively. And why did you become a seal?

[Marty Strong]

Well, people that have seen my interviews, read my books, know it was an accident, a. A mistake in orders. I actually went through boot camp. Found out years later what happened. I went through boot camp and was brought to the pool to do some testing to see how fast I was, because we had a bunch of relay races to do. And part of the deal was I had to stay there and swim, but also do whatever else people that were controlling the pool told me to do because they didn't want me to disrupt. It was me. And like, four of the guys didn't want us to disrupt their. Their flow, so we did all that. And I go, you know, from boot camp to air traffic control radar school for 16, 17 weeks. And I graduate and I get my orders to a ship. I think I'm getting my orders to a ship in the Mediterranean and big snowstorms hitting the Great Lakes area. I gotta get the airport o'. Hare. And they hand me my orders and they say, Report no later than 07:30 tomorrow morning to underwater demolition, SEAL training. And back then, I did not know what those letters meant.

[Mitch Carson]

Oh, my word.

[Marty Strong]

Sure wasn't the ship I was told I was going to. And that's what kind of started the Odyssey. I. I showed up and I thought I was going to try to talk my way into getting the right orders, and instead, a crusty old Vietnam vet SEAL Master Chief talked me into volunteering.

[Mitch Carson]

Now, did you go into the Navy right out of high school or was it after college? Okay, so you were. You were.

[Marty Strong]

Yeah, right after high school? Right after I turned 17, actually.

[Mitch Carson]

Geez. After 17. Okay. So your dad or mom had to sign off on for you to get in?

[Marty Strong]

My mom did, yeah.

[Mitch Carson]

Okay. Did she regret it later, or is that. Was it a good decision?

[Marty Strong]

My mom was like a schizophrenic alcoholic. I don't think she realized she signed it. Matter of fact, I know she didn't know she signed it, so I don't think she realized I was in the Navy until maybe 10 years later. So.

[Mitch Carson]

Okay.

[Marty Strong]

Okay.

[Mitch Carson]

Well, yeah. And what did you. What did you. Was it what you expected?

[Marty Strong]

Well, first of all, I didn't know what to expect. I was a big war movie buff, you know, and I grew up with the TV show Combat 12 o' clock high. All those kinds of.

[Mitch Carson]

Oh, yes, I remember them well.

[Marty Strong]

Yeah. And we all kind of wanted to be World War II guys because that's what, you know, was on the screen. So I understood, once I started the training, I understood what they did to some extent, but most of it was really classified back then. There weren't any books or movies. So. And then once you start getting into the selection process, you're not really thinking about a week ahead, let alone two, two days ahead. You're basically going from meal to meal trying to survive. It's kind of like a POW mentality. You're getting beaten up so much physically from all the. It's just continuous exercise. It's just like a marathon that never ends. And so you end up getting fatigued, and then you get mentally fatigued, and then you start to wonder if you should be there or not be there. It's a volunteer program. You can quit anytime.

[Mitch Carson]

Right? Ring the bell. I've seen the movies.

[Marty Strong]

Okay. Yeah. You ring the bell three times, and the. So the way to survive it is to listen to that voice in your head and then just tell it to shut up and just put one foot in front of the other. So almost anybody that's ever been through any kind of special ops selection process will tell you. You basically just had to put your, put your head down and grind forward and ignore all the naysayers, the whiners, the people were coming up with excuses, including the voices in your head telling you, hey, this would be a good excuse. Or here, here's a disclaimer. You could quit right now and nobody would even know. So and then all of a sudden one day you look up and it's graduation day.

[Mitch Carson]

So what was hard? The mental challenge or the physical challenge because you were just a young pup at that point time in the moment.

[Marty Strong]

It was absolutely all the physical because I didn't understand enough about psychology, let alone my own psychology. Came from a divorced family. I realized much later that a lot of that gave me psychological resilience in a way that, you know, if you don't expect the day to be a good day all the time because you don't know what you're walking into as a teenager, that kind of preps you for, for what they're putting you through in the selection process. They're looking for people that can roll with roll at the moment, be defeated, be, be tired, be set back and then basically not let it get them down and more so actually attack the next problem even more vigorously so and learn from whatever they, whatever they can pull out of the, out of the loss. So those are the people that make it through. Those are the people that are trainable as seals or Green Berets or MARSOC Marines or Air Force Special Ops guys. Those are, that's the trainable raw material that everybody's looking for in the selection process of their various services.

[Mitch Carson]

And how many weeks do you have to go through in order to get that pin? Which I, I've only seen it in the movies. Yeah, so, so it's, yeah.

[Marty Strong]

So traditionally it's 26 weeks, six months. They've cut back a couple of weeks in the last few years and, and added a next phase after the traditional buds called seal qualification training sqt. So they go through another four months after that. So now it's almost a continuous 10 month block from the day you start. And if you graduate at the end of that 10 month block, that's when they put the, the Budweiser or the SEAL try, we call it the Budweiser Seal Triton on your chest. And then you is one. Except you find out that your first SEAL command, you, you still don't know anything.

[Mitch Carson]

Oh, is that right? Okay, so then you go into the serious training after that. I I mean, I don't know what it all entails. And don't tell me too much. You don't have to kill me.

[Marty Strong]

Yeah, it's all serious training. But what happens is you at each level, you know, you graduate the BUDS process, then you get through sqt, graduate that, then you get the trident. So you feel like, okay, I'm a SEAL now. And then you go into a SEAL team and these people have five, 10, 15 years doing the job and they've been all over the world, massive amounts of experience and they're, you know, you're like 2% of their, of their capability and understanding and experience level. And it only takes you about a week to realize you're, you're at the very bottom of the food chain. And the best thing for you to do is keep your mouth shut, your eyes and ears open, and learn from everybody or in any way you can. That's the only way you can make up the delta there.

[Mitch Carson]

Are you, Let me just. How would I ask this question? Are you saying that after going through 10 months of serious high level training that you're, you're not really qualified, that they have to put you under their wing and, or do you just know enough to survive?

[Marty Strong]

Well, you've got technical skills at a very basic level. Okay, so let me give you the difference in the extremes. You may have gone and landed on a pile of rocks at night with the Pacific Ocean throwing you up there. Maybe it's really cold because the winter and you've gone through that traumatic experience that lasted four or five hours and then maybe an SQT did something similar to that that lasted a little bit longer, so a little bit more cold, maybe hypothermic. And then a year later you're at a Seal team and you're 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle on a mountaintop. Jeez. And it's a whole different level of cold and a whole different level of fatigue because you're out there for 4, 5, 6 days skiing with 110, 120 pound pack on your back. And in some cases you're also towing a sled off of a hips, off of a hip belt. So every time you think it's bad, or every time you think it's bad enough and you've kind of arrived, somebody shows you a cliff in, in Greece with huge waves slapped against it, you're trying to come in on a rubber boat. So it's, there's always something out there.

[Mitch Carson]

That, that humbles you and challenges you going forward. How many years did you serve 20? Oh, my word.

[Marty Strong]

Okay.

[Mitch Carson]

I hope you have a nice pension or something for all of that that time. All right, so let's fast forward to now becoming you learn to lead at some point. At what juncture? 10 months. You clearly know 2% compared to the grizzled guys with the deep facial hair that we see in the movies that are out there. I think more. One of the more popular ones is this fellow named Jocko. I. I've seen. He's got a podcast and some of the others. What's the other. The other guy that did two different trainings. You can't break me.

[Marty Strong]

Goggins.

[Mitch Carson]

Yes.

[Marty Strong]

David Goggin.

[Mitch Carson]

Yes. Yes. At what point did you feel in your journey that you had arrived.

[Marty Strong]

Oh, wow.

[Mitch Carson]

When you became a mentor to the new guys that had just gone through buds.

[Marty Strong]

So I put in two different categories. One would be leader, and the other one would be what we call operator. Operator is the term we use for somebody. And here's the. Here's the. The common question. And the same thing in all special ops. Somebody brings up a name, what kind of guy is he? And you'll get, he's a good guy and he's a good operator. Oh, he's okay, but he's a good operator. Or he's a great guy, but he's not a very good operator. You get a binary. A binary evaluation. So the operator part's really important. It means you're technically qualified, you're experienced, you've got lots and lots of supervisory credentials under your belt. Jump master, fast rope master, dive dive supervisor, all these different things. So you've been running the evolutions. You've locked people out of submarines. You jumped out, you know, 18,000ft. You've done all these different things in charge and technically executed what the task is. And I would say probably about six years in, I felt like I could do that. It didn't mean. Didn't mean that I'd been a combat veteran yet or anything, but it meant that by rank I was supposed to be mentoring and by experience, there were everybody that was in my group, in my platoon, were different gradients, less than me, except for the two or three people that were senior to me and. And then in leadership, it was probably about seven years. And that's when I had to start making decisions. We were a lot more disconnected in those days. We didn't have all the connectivity we have now. We didn't have the Internet. We didn't have satellite. Satellite navigation didn't exist. Satellite AI, Nothing like that. So what happens if they send you someplace to Europe and you'd be on your own? I mean, you wouldn't, you wouldn't even have access to a fax if you wanted to fax something back. So if you wanted to say something to anybody, you just had to pop a snail mail envelope in a, in a post office box once you found out how to use that country's mail system. And you may or may not get that letter back for another couple of months. So even, even phoning was very, very difficult. So they expected you to show a lot of autonomy and judgment and maturity and didn't matter how old you were. I was a pretty young guy. I was probably 22 when I became a leading petty officer of a platoon. So I was the fourth guy in charge of the platoon. And that seventh year during that deployment, I had to become whatever they needed me to be as a leader. And that's when I really felt like I, I was learning. I was still making mistakes. I was asking for lots of advice, making fewer and fewer mistakes by the end of that year. And, you know, that's kind of the, the leadership, the leadership quandary. You're never the best you can be, but it's better than being what you were last year.

[Mitch Carson]

Right, right.

[Marty Strong]

So you're always kind of trying to evolve, you know, evolve, get stronger, evade big catastrophes through your, your, your wisdom and in your use of judgment. And in time for me, probably by the time I was in for 13, 14 years, where I felt like I was a seasoned leader, like I could actually not relax, but I felt very comfortable in the role, and, and I had leaders working for me too. Leading leaders is a whole different game, as you know, than just leading operators or, or technical people. So. Yeah, so six, seven years for the leadership. Thirteen, when I really felt like I was in a good place, probably six years for the operator role.

[Mitch Carson]

The reason I asked that is there, there, I believe you have to go through the pain of being a grunt, if you will, to get to where you've earned your stripes. The proverbial I've earned my stripes, and I know that probably comes from the military. You've earned the stripes and earned your rank. I for years was a Taekwondo master, so I taught people to earn their black belts in Taekwondo. And when I wrapped a black belt on their waist after about four to five years of rigorous training to reach that point, I said, now you've just mastered the basics, the real learning begins. There is a reason for my question, because you just said it took about seven years. And then after you teach, when someone arrives at a second degree black belt, then, okay, they're in their, in their zone because most people quit after they tick that box or they feel like they've arrived. But I guess the seals, how long is their commitment.

[Marty Strong]

Listed? Is still four years. Very rarely does anybody get out before they hit 20 years, which is their first, okay, mark for retirement officers. So they, they can do two years and two years active, two years reserve, and then most of them stay in at least four years. And then they start having a decision point when they get to be a senior lieutenant, which is a equivalent of a captain in the Air Force or the army of the Marine Corps. And because they know the next phase is there's more staff work, there's more desk time, you know, you'll rotate into, into a combat leadership role eventually. But it's a different thing. Up until that point, those four years, you're like all the enlisted SEALs. That's why the SEALs, the, the, the identification pin is gold for enlisted and officers because in the Navy officers, if you're an aviation guy, the officers have gold. The enlisted have a kind of a pewter silver color. But seals all go through the same training. They go through the same thing. Got it back in the 60s, back in the 60s they said we're going to give the same exact recognition to enlisted end officers.

[Mitch Carson]

Well, that's great. And what made you decide? I mean you, you assumed and grew into leadership roles actively as a military man. You were enlisted at one point and then you became an officer later, I presume.

[Marty Strong]

Right.

[Mitch Carson]

And how did you earn officer status? Did you have to go to college?

[Marty Strong]

Yes. So in the US Military to be a regular commissioned officer, you have to have a four year degree. There are other programs like limited duty officers and warrant officer programs, but the, the standard kind of commission deal, you have to have a four year degree. So I got my degree over time. I was a, I was up for senior chief. So I was up for the position second to the highest level for enlisted rank when I was approved for Officers Candidate School. So I basically did 10 and 10, 10 is enlisted and 10 is an officer. And I, I basically did it not because I did for the payment. There was a pay jump. I had little kids, I had real little kids at the time. And I wasn't sure what the heck I could do if I got out of the Navy. So I decided this is the best way to stay in the Navy and you know, pay for my, pay my bills. I was In San Diego at the time.

[Mitch Carson]

Oh, that's an expensive city.

[Marty Strong]

Yeah, yeah. But for me, the cool thing was, remember the four year thing for officers? So I just done 10, so I'm gonna do another four years of operating as an officer. Like, no staff work, no paperwork. So I ended up 14 years of getting to play and, and getting, getting to, you know, learn and become better and better. Better as an operator and a combat leader.

[Mitch Carson]

Right.

[Marty Strong]

So that's a lot of time.

[Mitch Carson]

So when did you decide, Was it the 20 year mark? You said, okay, I've had enough, and now I want to make some real money or I want to try the private sector, or you felt you had served your country long enough. What was that click?

[Marty Strong]

There's a combination of two things. I have 80% disability. I had a parachute accident, messed my backup, and. And I came back from a deployment as a task unit commander, and my next position was going to be my first staff position, and I was going to staff meetings standing in for somebody else, and I got to see the environment, I got to see the conference table world. And, you know, at this point, I'd been 17 years, and I was lucky enough that that four years for me got extended to about six and a half to seven years of operating and leading teams overseas. And it was so radically different than those 17 years to sit there in that room and have people haggling over supplies or haggling over whatever. And those two, those two combination, in combination. I said, yeah, it's. I've done my time. Something like, you know, you get older, it's like the NFL. If you don't realize and recognize it, somebody comes up to you and says you're about half a step slower than you were last year.

[Mitch Carson]

Yeah.

[Marty Strong]

And it's, it's a little bit harder to get out of bed each day because you got all the broken bones and all, you know, all the ortho catches up with you. And so you get to a point where, you know, you can't run as fast, jump as high. Your stamina and all that stuff isn't as good as the, the bulk of the operators who are in their, like, mid-20s, late 20s. Yeah. And they're polite about it. They'd run down the road past me. Morning, sir. You know.

[Mitch Carson]

And it's just an acceptance, you know, it's. It's so true. At some point, you got to pass the baton and move forward. All right, so then you transition after 20 years. You did your 20 years, you locked in your pension, and, man, that's A. That's a long time. And then you went into the private sector.

[Marty Strong]

How did.

[Mitch Carson]

What skills were transferable into the private sector? Was it a wake up call for you when people didn't just salute and move on and follow that and they were picking their nails?

[Marty Strong]

I was sensible enough by that time to have heard a lot of stories from people I knew that got out. It wasn't. It wasn't an easy thing. I mean, when I was in the teams when I was younger, the only job anybody thought we could possibly do was a police officer because we were good with guns.

[Mitch Carson]

Right? Right.

[Marty Strong]

It wasn't a transferable. Our medics could get into the medical field, healthcare, but all the rest of us, that was all we had going for, so. But I had a. By that time, I had an mba and I said, all right, I think I'm gonna find something where I can use that. And I found something where I could not even use that by managing, Managing investments. I wasn't managing people. I wasn't managing departments and divisions in a corporation. That's what an MBA is for. And they don't teach you how to sell in an MBA program or.

[Mitch Carson]

No, they do not.

[Marty Strong]

My undergrad was in business. Do not teach you how to sell. And the second you're out there, you find out that selling is the world. And it's the easiest thing to do as an entry level person. It's the hardest thing to learn. An entry level person, if you've never been exposed to it didn't come up in a family business that, you know, you were hawking the family's, you know, products, whatever. So I struggled a lot. I academically, I passed all the licensing and all the things I had to do. And then I was told, okay, go out and find some. Some, you know, new clients. And the way you did that was cold calling and cold walking and going to convention centers and setting up booths. And that was the conventional way to build a business. You know, five people become 10 people. 10 people start referring and it starts to blossom, but it takes a long time. And the firm else. But they didn't pay a salary. You had a salary for the training period until you got your licensing, and then you had to live off of commissions and fees. So if you weren't out there and it's a pretty good. It's Darwinian for a lot of reasons. I mean, you could do really good. And then you rest on your laurels and all of a sudden you start sinking back.

[Mitch Carson]

And what were you selling exactly, Marty?

[Marty Strong]

Mutual funds. I Was. I was investing people, people's money in stocks, bonds. Eventually I started getting into foundations, trusts, different kinds of larger.

[Mitch Carson]

So Were you series seven? Did you have to get a series.

[Marty Strong]

Seven, series seven, series six? 65. I had 63. License, disability, life, and, you know, long term disability insurance. I had. I had a whole bunch of them.

[Mitch Carson]

Who were you? Who, who were you under. What, What. What was your.

[Marty Strong]

I started with. I started with Lake Mason.

[Mitch Carson]

Not familiar. Well, the reason I'm asking, because at 28, I went in. I worked for Merrill lynch and went through their training program and had to do the same thing. So you're bringing back memories. That was another lifetime ago, but it.

[Marty Strong]

Was Merrill lynch probably did more sales training and. And they're, they're harsher. They're like the Marine Corps of financial services. I thought in ours it was more, find your niche, do what you want to do. You know, if you want to just do bonds, you want to just do stocks, you want to do international, go for it, you know, and. And that's fine. I mean, I like autonomy. I was used to that. What I wasn't used to was not knowing how to do anything technically. So I sat around and moped for about four or five days after getting my license and calling about three or 400 people per day. Yeah, Then I. Then I realized, you know, there's a thing called a headset. So, you know, I was getting like, ufc, Jiu jitsu ear. Yeah.

[Mitch Carson]

Oh, I know it. I know it, bud. I did it. Smile and dial, smile.

[Marty Strong]

Dialing for dollars, punching plastic for. For punching plastic for money. It was all kinds of different things, but. And I got to a point where I just said, all right, if I don't start making some money, I'm gonna have a hard time paying my bills. And, you know, I got kids and stuff. And then I saw this magazine. It's glossy magazine, and it was in the office, and it was just. It was like a success magazine where they touted all the. The heavy hitters, the, you know, the big players, and they had it. Almost every category on purpose, every division was a different category of the services of the company. And you can go and see people that were doing real estate, investment trust people were doing mutual funds, people that were doing UITs, all these other kinds of things. And I looked at it and I thought, well, hell, I'll just call those people. They're apparently successful. I know it sounds kind of like Napoleon Hill, but that's what I. That's how I did in the team. You go Find the guy who's good at this. Go find the guy that's been to that particular weird place in the world and you sit down at their knee and you go, tell me everything you possibly tell me. You know, just vomit everything. You know, I'll take notes. And so I started calling all these people up and I started getting really good advice about what not to do for sure. And, and then eventually what I did is I ended up taking some advice and I started doing seminars. And I had been a briefing officer for the admiral in charge of the seals. I was very comfortable in front of people and it was, I didn't have to learn anything. That's the first time anything connected from my prior life.

[Mitch Carson]

Bravo. That was what I was waiting for. That's the gem. You transferred skill sets that you learned from the military being a leader and then you found selling one to many at that point.

[Marty Strong]

I mean you got the discipline system, the military, you've got the, you know, show up early, I, I'll work everybody else, that kind of stuff. But that there wasn't, I wasn't grinding my way to sales. It just wasn't happening until, until the, the seminar thing kicked in and then I started to take off. So. And then within a year or two I ended up getting picked up by UBS and then did fee based portfolio management.

[Mitch Carson]

Nice. And. But then you got into some other lines of work. Where did that evolve?

[Marty Strong]

Primarily because of 9 11. So when 911 happened, I was in a regional manager's office and the TV was between me and another guy. We couldn't see it, but he could see it. And everybody in that office had friends in New York from either prior jobs or, or with ubs. And then the sound was off. So when the second plane hit, somebody came in the door and yelled what was going on? And we turned, started watching that. And you know, having been through enough of those drills and some of them are drills and some of them are real, you know, you go off and you know, get shot at and sometimes you just load up in planes and sit there. But I knew what was going on at home. You know, the SEAL teams, I knew everybody was getting this, getting their calls. They're being told, get your butt in here and say your goodbyes because I don't know if you're coming home tonight. And so I thought, okay, I'm done making money for, for rich people. I'm going to see if I can get into this somehow. And in a roundabout way, after I sold my book of business that I was at the eight year point in financial services, I, I connected with a two or three different companies that needed counterterrorism expertise. Not, not the kinetic type but the brain power type. What are the bad guys thinking? So I ended up being a, the counterterrorism profiling expert at the Athens Olympics in 2004. And I also did work for the same US company that got that contract for a lot of the different infrastructure in the United States. And then I ended up in Baghdad for seven months doing work like that. So the, it was completely different obviously from wearing a suit and, and you know, looking at the market every day. But that did absolutely transfer my old skills. But mostly in the leadership area. I mean in all those cases, because I'm talking to senior leaders and they're looking for some kind of risk mitigation. They're looking for this, this you know, brass ring that's going to make it all, all better. And all I'm telling them is all the ways that somebody can attack you and defeat everything you've put in place and there's there and they, they don't want to believe you. But then you, then you have to basically lead through that moment, say you can't just blow off the reality of this and then you teach in things like defense in depth and security in depth and things that will mitigate it even further. So it experience.

[Mitch Carson]

How did they find you?

[Marty Strong]

It was weird. I ended up doing a, I did a speech unpaid because I didn't realize I could, I could charge for it. And there was a guy in the, in the audience who came up to me, asked if I had a card and he was with a think tank and near eating proving ground up in Maryland. And they were just given some kind of counterterrorism thing to do a contract from the Pentagon. And so he asked if I could come in and be kind of a, an expert on the asymmetrical aspect of it because everybody had this think tank, were all infantry and kind of straightforward conventional military types and he didn't have any special ops guys. So I went in there and started looking at all the things they were supposed to talk about and discuss and write up and had a lot of fun. And then they referred me to another large company, SEIC and SAIC called me about the Athens thing and then that kind of boomerang around for a couple years and. But eventually I settled out in a large defense company and I was back to leading first a little tiny group and then a division and then whole subsidiary company.

[Mitch Carson]

And now you've written a book.

[Marty Strong]

I've published ten novels.

[Mitch Carson]

Yes.

[Marty Strong]

And three business books. Yes. The last one of which was real recent, called Be Different.

[Mitch Carson]

Do you have a copy handy?

[Marty Strong]

I don't. Okay.

[Mitch Carson]

I'm actually, Tell us where.

[Marty Strong]

I'm actually, I'm actually packing out to move to Florida as we sit here.

[Mitch Carson]

Oh, okay, well then that, that'll explain. But tell us about the book so the listeners will know where to get it, the title.

[Marty Strong]

Sure, yeah. Well, all my, all my books just go to mortystrong.com you'll find access and links to Amazon and everybody else. So my first book, Be Nimble is about leadership and scaling and the crisis around those kind of dynamics. The second book was Be Visionary. So it was about how to develop a vision and convert the vision into a working concept and then eventually an operational strategy. And the third book, Be different is all about creativity and imagination and innovation. And it was inspired because I was on a, I was on, I've been on several boards, a lot of technical boards, which are kind of strange, I'm not a real techy guy, but, but again, it's that asymmetrical thing. You come in and you're the one person, the weird person in the room that doesn't know why or ask the dumb questions like why is it red? Why does it have three legs instead of four? And everybody kind of looks at you and then. What do you mean? And then they'll realize, well, hey, yeah, he's right because you don't know, you're just, you're just throwing something out there. So I was on a, a board that did robotics events for kids, which then connected me with a bunch of brain scientists and, and educators that were working on how to basically how to spark creativity in kids and in young adults. And I went a step further. I started talking to people and realized through brain science and through a lot of, of studies have been done that the, the assessment test for creativity that, that were being given to 6 year olds that showed like a high, you know, mid 90 percentile capability to be creative. By the time these same, these same research studies got to people in their 40s, it was like 2 to 3%. And the, the reason for that wasn't, it wasn't chemical, it wasn't biological, it wasn't anything that people might think. What, you know, you don't suddenly become non creative after puberty. It basically was the institutional impact on our brain's natural desire and mechanical ability to be creative. So you've got two sides of your brain and not left and right, but there's two little switches they discovered. One is a focus task oriented switch and the other one is called the forager or the explorer switch. And ancient humans used both of them to their advantage. When they found a safe place, they were exploring and looking. They had lots of food and water and everything. They'd hunker down and they'd focus on building, building a life there until they ran out of food. And then they had to go to the explorer switch and start risk taking. They had to go over the next hill, the next mountain. And then once they found a place, they switched back to task focus. And what we've basically done in modern society is we just focused everything, shifted everything over and only rewarded the task focus side of the brain. It doesn't mean the other side isn't active or, or able to, to be, to be switched on. Yeah. So if you think about it, being told to comply, obey rules, regulations, restrictions, intellectually, ever since you're probably 7 or 8 years old, you can't be, you can't be a lead guitar player in a band. That's not for you. Just do your, do your studies. There's only one way to get to the answer that division problem. I don't care what your, your grandfather showed you. Yeah, the answer is, their answer is the right one. But you didn't get there the way we, we're telling you to get there. You know what I'm talking about. And then you eventually get to college. It's the same thing. College is just a huge history lesson because everything you're teaching is books about what has been in every single category. Then you get to your workplace and if you have the audacity to raise your hand because you have an idea, everybody looks at you like you have three heads because you haven't spent the time, you don't have the tenure, you don't know what you're talking about. And because you're new, how could you possibly have anything to offer? You have to wait until you're like us in five or six years and then you can, you can raise your hand to tell us what we all know you're going to say, because we've all decided what the answer is. So it just, that's what the book's about. It's basically recognizing these things. And then how do you shake your, shake your way out of it then how do you use it to, to be happier and to build things, whether it's businesses or life.

[Mitch Carson]

You believe a fresh perspective is good. Let's say somebody comes in with no knowledge about how things have been historically or in a, in a business environment or possibly military, but comes in with virgin eyes and may look at things through a completely different lens. Do you think there's value in that or should they wait until they have earned their, earned their status?

[Marty Strong]

I absolutely think there's value in that. I think it's, it's myopic and self destructive for organizations to not tap into that now. It's, it's hard to do it right. It's hard to say, throw out everything you think you know, everything comes to your head, whatever, and we may not use 95 of it and, and do it in a way that they don't become depressed or resentful because you're not taking anything on. But in the SEAL teams when I first came in the Vietnam era, guys would get a job, we look at it and everybody would throw their, their thoughts out. Everybody, the most junior person had never been shot at, who just got off the, the bus could come up with the idea. And if that idea made sense to everybody, we went with that idea. Oh, everybody, everybody had, you know, and you knew, you know, you knew that you probably were going to come up with the idea very often, but you also knew there was nothing wrong with saying it. It was the one time where they didn't crap all over the new guys.

[Mitch Carson]

So it's brainstorming, it's classic brainstorming then.

[Marty Strong]

Because that's how they beat, beat the Viet Cong over and over. As the Viet Cong adapted to them, they would change what they were doing based on this constant learning process. And anyway, that, that's like I, I've been on. Nice thing about being on a board, if you're the, the oddball, they're, they're going to defer to you out of, out of, you know, grace and professionalism. So you, at least you get to say something. I can tell you. Put your hand down. But I'll tell you, I've been on a board with nothing but engineers and they've been doing something for 20 something years. And when I ask them, you know, what is the secret sauce? What is it that makes you different? What differentiates you from another group doing the same thing? And I get them all staring at me and I, and I, I say, well, maybe we should find that, Put it in a bottle, right? So then I go out and to a bunch of these, these events and I see it and I come back and I lay it out and they're looking at me and wow, he's right. After 20 something years, none of us articulated what is really special about what we do because we're focusing on it as engineers.

[Mitch Carson]

Yeah, they have a different mindset. The one engineer, the most famous engineer is probably Elon Musk. And he was asked the question, what study, what curriculum would be beneficial for someone going to college? And he said engineering because that's a different type of thinking. Now he's an entrepreneurial engineer to the nth degree obviously. And he's addressed that, I think, pretty well.

[Marty Strong]

Yeah, I've read four books on him. Walter Isaacson's book, Elon was fantastic book. And he's, he's got, he's got a personality where he's steadfast as far as engineering instincts. Until he proves himself wrong or somebody else proves him wrong. He'll be adamantly, you know, opposed to any change once he locks on it until somebody proves him wrong. And then he'll switch on a dime, it'll just boom. Right. So he's open minded. At the same time he's, he's, you know, I guess bombastic and very irritatingly focused, which intimidates a lot of people. Right. I mean, Steve Jobs did the same thing. Engineers ran away from him, but the ones that didn't run away from him ended up being the guys that created all the devices we're using today. Because you have to be challenged and you have to be, you have to have, you know, debate that. You know, sure, there's friction and tension, but there's also traction when you have that kind of discourse.

[Mitch Carson]

So friction plus traction.

[Marty Strong]

Yeah.

[Mitch Carson]

Equals, opens the door to, to a successful strategic change.

[Marty Strong]

Yeah. Friction and traction. Friction and tension can equal traction.

[Mitch Carson]

Friction intention can equal traction and traction.

[Marty Strong]

Conflict avoidance means you're not going to get the traction. Conflict avoidance means you're never going to get the good stuff.

[Mitch Carson]

That is our nugget today, that is a really good nugget of differentiation is what is the key to making change when you've got all these smart people. And I think you've IDed it nicely there, Marty. So where can people get in touch with you?

[Marty Strong]

Martystrong.com Martystrong.com you go there and all my public speaking programs, my books, everything, all available there.

[Mitch Carson]

Great. Well, Marty, you've been a great guest today and thank you for that big nugget. And that came towards the end of our, our interview today. And I'd love to have you back at some point in the future once you get settled into Florida. I don't know, you're leaving Virginia Beach, I think it is. Isn't that where you are? What, what city in Florida you're going to?

[Marty Strong]

Near, near West Palm Beach. Okay, okay.

[Mitch Carson]

You're on the Atlantic side. And let's see how you contend with mosquitoes. But that's, that's why I left Bali. I lived in Bali for a while, and one day I woke up one night after sitting out for dinner. I'd been there in month eight and my legs from the knees down were covered with at least 100 bites. I said, I'm done. Packed up in the morning, left my villa and moved back to Thailand. Just wasn't willing to endure that pain anymore. Or discomfort, I should say, was enough. Well, Marty, you've been great. Thank you so much for being an amazing authority on the Amazing Authorities podcast and we'll have you back again in the future.

[Marty Strong]

Thanks for having me.

[Mitch Carson]

Thanks for tuning in to the Amazing Authorities podcast. If today's episode inspired you, take a moment to subscribe, rate and leave a review. It helps more experts like you rise to the top for behind the scenes access to and free resources to boost your authority. Head to MitchCarson.com until next time, stay amazing.