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After I retired from the military, 20 years of service, my life literally got flipped upside down. You know, I was a raging alcoholic at the time, diagnosed with ptsd. I came out broken and bloody. But I also showed people that you can recover. You can come back from anything that's happened and you can have a successful life. Zeb Whitehead is a transformational speaker, coach, and Navy veteran. He helps veterans, first responders, and high performers build unshakable confidence, overcome self limiting beliefs, and create purposeful lives through resilience, personal growth, and intentional leadership. You can pay all the money in the world to go to seminars, trainings, whatever, but if you don't stay with it, you don't stay consistent. It's not gonna work.
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What would you say to the kid out there who might not know what his path is gonna be right now?
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It's a fear. We're worried about being vulnerable and putting ourselves out there in fear of rejection. Maybe things don't pan out the way we want them to. But, you know, that's the cost of success. That's the cost of dreams. You're gonna be out there and you're gonna get rejected.
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But
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A
it spans the globe like a super high cold Internet. Elvis Presley. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
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B
It's not over until I win.
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A
The Living youg Legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy that's extraordinary. The impossible. Oh, that is sensational. Jordan, open Chicago with the lead. You said Paul is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your dream.
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B
All right. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of the Living your Legacy podcast. I'm your host for today, Jason Tyler, and I am joined by Zeb Whitehead. Zeb, welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to have you here, brother.
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A
Absolutely. I'm glad to be here.
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B
All right, so you just got finished recording your episode of Operation CEO with our wonderful interviewer, Kofi. And I'm not just saying that because he's in the room somewhere with us. You guys can't see that, but he's in here. But what? First of all, how are you feeling now on the other side of it, you feel a little bit relieved to get the story out?
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A
Absolutely. Yeah. I was sweating a little bit, but I feel good, man.
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B
It's usually like a weight off the shoulders once you get it out. What would you say, you know, as far as for the audience, this is kind of their first time getting to know you. What would you say is like the number one lesson you want people to be able to learn from your story?
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A
Number my story. I wanted to be an example to everybody. You know, I've been through the battles. I came out broken and bloody. But I also showed people that you can recover, you can come back from anything that's happened and you can have a successful life. And that's really what I want people to see is, is no matter what's happened, you can come back.
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B
Yeah, that's a, that's a powerful message. Especially, you know, I, I do, I talk to a lot of guys, you know, a lot of our service members that come on for Operation CEO and one of, one of like the core things that is like a narrative through line throughout all of them is just being able to, you gotta be able to take some punches.
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A
Yeah.
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Because life's got hands. Life will throw those boxing gloves on you.
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What Mike Tyson said, right? Everybody has a plan to get punched in the mouth.
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B
Yep, exactly. Funny enough, I've shot for Mike Tyson on four separate occasions. That man is hilarious. On the fourth occasion, he was like, hey, cameraman, how many times are you going to take my picture? Love Mike. Love him to death. Hopefully he never sees this episode because he's gonna hate that impression. Talk to me a little bit about, you know, how do we get the zeb that's sitting in front of me today? Walk me through a little bit of that, of your journey.
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A
Yeah, so it's been quite the journey. You know, I grew up a very adventurous, adrenaline seeking kid. You know, I knew it was a big world out there. I wanted to do everything. Very grateful for my parents that they could put up with that. One of my biggest fears actually into adulthood was when I had my own kids, as you know how karma is. And so I was like, oh, man, imagining how I was as a kid. And now I'm having my own kid. It was. But I got fortunate there.
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B
Yeah, you got lucky on the other side.
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A
Yeah, they, they didn't take that same path. But so, yeah, growing up, you know, wild kid, always into everything. I was a good kid though, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't bad, but definitely the black sheep of the family and going out and experimenting, exploring everywhere I could. Which then transitioned into the teenage years of doing rodeo and more adrenaline fueled things. And lo and behold, you know, I feel bad for my mom because I joined the military as an aviation hydraulic mechanic. So she was relieved. Right. You know, oh, he's just going to be a mechanic. And then, you know, a month into boot camp, I sent her a message saying, oh, yeah, mom, I just joined the Special Forces. And so. Absolutely. And my mom used to go. My mom used to go to my rodeos, and she used to watch me ride bulls. And so, you know, that takes quite a toll on a mom, watching her.
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B
Oh, yeah. My. My cortisol levels would spike through the roof.
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A
Right? Yeah. And then, you know, she thinks I finally moved past that, and then here I go and join Special Forces. Yep.
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B
Gotta do it. That'll do it.
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A
Yeah.
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B
What. Where was kind of the. What made you decide to join the Special Forces?
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I didn't.
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I.
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Well, I mean, when I. I did it on a. I was sitting in a class in boot camp, and it was a STD course and showing, you know, and they were. It was pretty gross and, you know, trying to deter sailors from growing on the world and doing what they do. And so a Navy SEAL recruiter came into the class and asked for volunteers to go take the physical assessment test. And I raised my hand. I said, if you take me right now, I'll go take your test.
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Anything.
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Just didn't have to be in this classroom with no. I had no clue about Special Forces or getting involved with it or anything. I just wanted out of that class and went and took test pass. Me and one other individual passed, and
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the rest is history.
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A
The rest is history.
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B
So, you know, one thing that I talk with a lot of guys on this show about, especially our service members, is kind of like that transition back into civilian life. And with your story, it. Your main message being like, you can come back from anything. What was kind of your. What was your experience of being in the service and then going back into the civilian world?
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A
It was really, really tough. My life literally got flipped upside down at that point. My. My transition may be a little bit more extreme than others, but the things I was dealing with, they're still dealing with as well. A month after I retired from military, 20 years of service, got ended up getting separated. You know, I was a raging alcoholic at. I was physically very unhealthy. I was on high blood pressure medication, got diagnosed with ptsd, got put on medication for depression, anxiety, and had to make a choice, you know, and so a lot of those difficulties of separating from the military and going back into the civilian life is challenging for a lot of veterans because it's a different world. There's a lot of different experiences while you're in the military. And it. It. We. We have our own language. We have our own way of communicating to each other. We. We have a bond that. Between each other that can never be broken. You can go anywhere in the world, anybody in different branches of the service, and you just connect automatically. And that is very difficult to find outside of the military or other service based industries like that. And that's one of the struggles people deal with and that's what I hear the most, is they miss the camaraderie.
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Yeah.
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They miss that bond with their brothers and s. So, you know, my, my advice to anybody like that is find something, find a program, find a, any activity you can do with like minded people. Get yourself involved in things. Don't wait for it to come to you. It's not going to come to you. You got to go out and find it.
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B
That's, that's really, really poignant because I feel like for a lot of people who don't have the military background, don't have that service background. I like that you brought up. Don't wait for it to come and find you. You got to go and find it. Let's say, for example, you know, you got a kid out there, he's out in the audience and he's listening to this and he's got an interest in cars, let's call it cars. And he really wants to find other people who are like minded, who want to, you know, want to do car stuff, build cars, go buy, go buy them and flip them. He's not going to be able to find those people. Like the Internet might give you the facade of being in that level of community, but he's not going to find those people until he goes out and goes to a car meet and talks to a couple guys, right, and says, hey, what'd you, what'd you do with your motor? What's, you know, what, what size turbo are you running? Like different things like that. So I think that's a great piece of advice for, you know, our audience. They're super entrepreneurial, they're business minded and a lot of them are searching for that level of community. What do you say, what would you say to the, the kid out there who might not know what his path is going to be? Right now he's kind of just struggling with figuring out where to go. What's your advice to that person?
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A
So we all have to start from a basic foundation. I think as you were saying, a lot of people think the process starts with having that identify, identifying what you want to go out and do. Especially for a young person. If you were in the same mindset I was, where you wanted to do everything, there wasn't one specific thing that you wanted to do and so in order to narrow that down, I think what a good place to start is just work on yourself. Start developing skills that translate to anything you want to do. So build up your mental resiliency. Start reading self development books, build up your confidence levels. Just start a hobby. You know, if, if you're interested in, in cars, go to a local car meet because those guys love talking about their cars and they will gladly take you under their wing and start showing you.
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B
I'm a former car guy. I will, I would, I would yap somebody's ear off if they let me.
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A
Yeah, I've built quite a few myself, but yeah, so get out there. And then we, we, I think we have a. It, it's a fear and we don't, we're worried about being vulnerable and putting ourselves out there in fear of rejection. Maybe things don't pan out the way we want them to, but you know, that's the cost of success, that's the cost of dreams, is you know, you're going to have those hits, you're going to be out there and you're going to get rejected. But you need to learn to deal with it. That only way to learn to deal with those things is being exposed to it.
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Unfortunately, we have to learn the hard way.
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That's right there.
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I'm, I'm hard headed as anything. And that's one thing that I've learned about myself over time is, oh, any lesson someone tried to impart on me early on through, like guidance, I didn't pick up on it the first time I had to go bang my head against the wall. I feel like that's par for the course. I feel like that's a guy thing. Like we just got to go bang our heads.
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A
Yeah. You know, I think that's the entrepreneurial spirit too as well. I think when you see those people, take another look at them and you know, because that's the mentality we have to have. Right. That' that's why we'll go try things that haven't been done before. Or somebody says they can't be done, you turn around and say, watch this. Yeah.
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When somebody tells me something can't be done, I just do this here.
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Yeah.
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Are you sure about that?
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That's right.
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That's my, that's one of my favorite.
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Here's our saying together. I always tell people, hold my juice box, watch this.
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B
Now you guys don't know who he's referencing, but Trisha is in the room with us. So we're going to speak about Trisha Very, very kindly for the remainder of this episode. No, I'm just joking, Zeb. I want to take a second here to just kind of pivot into the now and into what your business is currently. Now, we talked about it a little bit at the beginning with creating your title card, but you're in mental strength development.
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Yeah.
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Talk to me a little bit about the. Just the. What are like, some of the key teachings that you're bringing for. Because my dad is in that as well. He's also doing mental strength development. He's a sports psychologist for the Jamaican Olympic team. So there. I know a little bit about that road. But talk to me about, like, your ethos on it.
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A
Yeah. So basing it on the people that I serve, veterans, law enforcement, things like that, we, whether you notice it or not, we develop very strong mental strength. Our. Our capabilities are phenomenal. We do things every day that most people aren't even aware of. Right. You might see on the news every now and then, and. But this is things they do day in and day out, and they develop a phenomenal skill, a priceless skill that the world needs. But what happens is when they transition from their career out into the world, they're. They're exposed to things they haven't been exposed to before. And a lot of these people get into these career fields at a young age, and so their adult life is. Has been in that career, and so now they're transitioning into something new. And the biggest piece of advice I can give to people is get into the book, Start learning. Because the tools that you currently have, being from those career fields, they're kind of pushed upon you. You have to develop them. You don't. You don't have to learn and absorb them, but now you do. You're transitioned out of that. So now you've got to want to go out to learn. And by absorbing that knowledge and strengthening your mindset, you start to become aware and you can become vigilant in the new world. Before it was dangerous. Right. What's around the next corner? Am I going to get shot? And, you know, whatever it may be, that's hyper vigilance in that environment. But now you're in a new environment. Right. So now you need to look for opportunities, you need to look for new skills, you need to build. You need to see what the economy is doing. Whatever it filled, you're in now, that's where your eyes are focused on.
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B
Yeah. And some of those are like the intangibles. Right, Right. You got to be able to turn not only your actual physical eyes towards something, but your mind's eye to something that's like. It's not physical. It's not here with us in the room. Like, the economy is not a physical thing that I can go out and go grab, but I gotta be able to be village vigilant English and, like, know that I gotta pay attention to that.
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A
Right.
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B
Yeah. What. What would you say to. You know, I think we talked a little bit about, you know, just kind of that transition back to civilian life, but for our veterans out there that have made the transition and are having a tough time, I know for a fact a lot of the service members that I've spoken to on this show, even if they're not still actively serving, they're still reaching a hand out to their left and right and trying to make sure that their brothers are well kept. What's your. What's your message to those guys out there?
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A
Thank you. For one, I've had the pleasure of helping other veterans as well, outside of coaching in need. And it is another great service that they are providing by reaching out, looking out for their brothers and sisters. You know, every. We just celebrated Memorial Day, and I take that back. We're not celebrating Memorial Day, but I think a lot of people have lost the. What Memorial Day actually stands for.
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Yeah, all we think of it in here on the beach is the, oh, we're getting the air show this weekend.
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And so it's important, especially for those guys, that they reach out to their brothers and sister, make sure they're okay. We do suffer in silence often, and it's. It's just a. A gift that they're giving back even outside of their service. So, again, thanks for all of them that do that.
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B
You mentioned you said something there, suffering in silence. And I want to just take an opportunity here as we kind of wind the pod down. I want to take an opportunity here to just first of all, commend you for sharing your story. Because I think the first step to, for a lot of the veterans out there is to hear somebody else say it, and so they don't feel like they have to suffer in silence. Your testimony is the story that gives somebody else the permission to share theirs as well. So I want to thank you for that and thank you for your service as well. But, you know, we're here at Inside Success. I ask this of all of my clients that come here on the show, what is Zeb Whitehead's number one tip for success?
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A
Consistency. There. Nothing will happen if you're not consistent. You can pay all the money in the world to go to seminars, trainings, whatever, but if you don't stay with it, you don't stay consistent. It's not going to work. So stay consistent. Find the passion, find the purpose, find your why. And with those, just those ingredients right there, you'll be successful.
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B
I liken it to chopping down a tree with an ax. I don't care how hard you swing that ax, you're not going to do it in one swing.
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A
That's right.
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B
You got to be consistent, and you got to keep hitting it in the same spot over and over and over again, and then eventually you'll get there. The chainsaw is an invention that diluted consistency down into. I'm just going to hold this thing here so I don't have to keep swinging.
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A
You know that. To have. Great analogy, because the way I heard it was the stone cutter, he's got his hammer and his chisel. He's trying to crack this huge granite rock. Thousands and thousands of swings and nothing. You see? Absolutely nothing. One day he's so exhausted, he's like, one more swing, picks it up, hits the chisel, rock splits open. But I think that's where we've gone wrong, right? Is we're waiting for somebody to make that chainsaw.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know that. Now, that cutter, that's going to slice right through that rock. But unfortunately for the path of success, the guy that developed that chainsaw and that saw that custody rock, he's a great entrepreneur because he found a need and he filled the need. But that's not going to happen for those in the beginning. And so it does take work. It does say it may take years. Don't put time limit on it. Just keep moving every day, take action steps every day.
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B
That'll do it. Now, Zeb, for the people out there that are watching. And first of all, guys, if you're still tuned in at this point, I want to make sure you check out Zeb's episode of Operation CEO, which will be coming out shortly after this podcast airs. So make sure you check that out. You're going to get a full deep dive into his story, his time in the military and his time after. So make sure you guys check that episode out. It's coming out right after this podcast episode airs. But, Zeb, for the people out there that are watching, where can they find you? On the Internet, the world Wide web, the social medias, all the things.
- [19:11]
A
Yeah. So I have. I got my website. It's a life coach, zeb.com I'm also on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. All it's at Life Coach Zeb.
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B
Life Coach Zeb. So I'm just going to point in a bunch of directions here. And my editors know that that means put those links somewhere on the screen. I don't know where, but put them somewhere. Probably down here somewhere. But, guys, this has been another incredible episode. Zeb, thank you so much for being on the show. It has been an incredible pleasure having you here. Any last words for the audience members out there?
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A
Absolutely. Just chase those dreams. Don't let anybody tell you different.
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B
I love it. I love it. This this has been a great episode, man. This has been great. Guys, this has been another one. I'm your host, Jason Tyler, and I'll catch you guys in the next one.