RV (00:02): Every single month, we probably get about a hundred cold pitches for people to be on our podcast. And we say no to at least 99% of them. We usually only meet guests by people that we know personally, but every once in a while, there’s one that will grab me and I’m like, this is a no brainer. And this is one of ’em. And I am, so I’m just meeting Dean Stott, who you’re about to meet. We’re just meeting for the first time ourselves. But when you hear this guy’s story, it’s gonna blow you away. So he started out in the British Special Forces rose to the ranks to be in, you know, the, the kind of the, the premier in that whole world, right? He was in Special Boat Services. And then what happened is, after that, he got into private security. RV (00:48): He has evacuated people from Israel and Benghazi and like, I mean, this guy has been in the middle of like the craziest war scenes you can imagine. So he also is a world record setting cyclist. So fast forward here to a couple years ago and he rode, I want to get this right. So he began training to cycle the longest Motorable road in the world, the Pan-American Highway. He completed a 14,000 mile route from Argentina to Alaska. In May of 2018, he achieved two world records. He raised 1.4 million US dollars for mental health awareness charities. In the process, he passed through 14 different countries on this expedition, crossing some of the most dangerous passages in the world. And in the very final stretch, he continued for 17 hours and covered 340 miles on his longest day. So he then recently released a book called Relentless, just kind of sharing this experience, this inspiration, and I think the overall mindset of unrelenting pursuit of excellence. RV (02:02): And so I was blown away by a story. Plus I like having a lot of personal friends who are in special forces. And, and so with that, welcome Dean. I’m so honored to meet you, man. Thank you for being here. Morning, Roy. Thank you for having me. So I wanna start with what your dad told you Yeah. Early in your life because I am someone who I pretty much do everything to avoid physical pain. And so whenever I meet people who do the extraordinary physical feats, I’m just blown away. And you’ve, you, what part of what amazes me about you is you’ve become, like the number one in the world in three completely different, at least three completely different areas that are very competitive areas. But it started, the first one was this British Special Forces journey, and it started, and it didn’t sound like your dad was so much behind what you were doing there in the beginning. DS (02:59): Yeah, no, my, my father, he was in the military himself, which was quite shocking when I, I know, I, I always wanted to be a fireman. And I went through school went to college, and I decided that I didn’t really want to go through college. And I, I, I’ve always surfed since a young boy. So I went on a surfing holiday, which was supposed to be for two weeks, and it turned out to be six months. And this was long before the mobile phone. In 1994, my father found me working in a surf shop and sort of highlighted to me that I’d, I’d wasted my education and what was I now gonna do in my life. And so to silence him, I said, well, I will join the military. You know, I’d always wanted to be a fireman, but at the time, I think there was 2000 applicants for one job. DS (03:37): There was a huge recession in the uk. So I was not gonna get that, that job straight away. So my mindset was join the Army, do three years, get get what I can from the military, get some discipline, and also build up in the way I wasn’t the physique that you, you see nowadays, I was about five foot seven and weighed about 130 pounds. But my father told me I would last two minutes. It wasn’t the, the comfort and words of motivation I expected. And so for me, I was like, well, I can argue with my father all the way back home now for the next five hours, or I could just be silent. And the best course of action was action itself. So the Monday morning, I walked into the careers office and I joined the Army. But then my father, once he saw that I was being serious, he then started to get, get behind me. DS (04:22): But I never had aspirations of doing the Special Forces. My father was the the Ted Lasso of the of the British Army. He was the Army soccer manager and coach. So his career was very sports driven and not like special forces driven. So I didn’t really have an insight into that world. And in a very short period of time, within three years, I’d done every arduous course you could do in the military. I was a para airborne, I was a commando. I was a diver. And already in the tier two special forces. And then the next, the next option for me was tier one Special forces. And as you touched on in the opening dress, I joined the Special Boat Service which is your, your, the equivalent here is SEAL Team six. But I was in ar I was in the Army, and I was told I couldn’t go to the Special boat service. DS (05:10): It was just for the Royal Marines only. But unlike here where Delta Force and Seal Team six have their own training, ours is actually combined. And so again, I ignored them. I, I still put my application in and we started with 200 candidates, and then six months later, I was one of the eight candidates that was successful and the first, one of the first to join a special boat service. And I think now 15% of the special boat service come from the Army candidates. So again, yeah, there was a lot of times in my career and in my life that I was told that I couldn’t do anything and I just, just kept my head down or tried to keep my head down. As they say, they tell you to be the gray man on these courses. I was the gray man for about two minutes. DS (05:51): . What does that mean, gray man? So the gray man on a course, especially a course like that, you don’t wanna be bringing attention to yourself for good reasons or for bad reasons. With, with such a large course, you just wanna blend in. You don’t wanna bring bring any exposure to you. But obviously af as the six months progress and the numbers dwindle, yeah, you will be, people will start to know you, but you try and be as gray as long as possible. I was a gray man for two minutes on a six month course. They literally called my name out on the first parade and asked why I was going to SBS. But for me, I, that’s additional pressure. I, I just take that, I just turn that into positive energy. It just gives me that extra fire. RV (06:29): Yeah, I mean, I love what you said of like, rather than arguing with your dad, like you just take action. I like so many people, their first step is to run their mouth and like brag about all the stuff they’re going to do, or they tell everyone like, here’s the new thing that I’m doing. And they receive all this praise before they’ve actually done anything or, or all this resistance before they’ve actually done anything. Like that must be one of your core philosophies. DS (06:59): Yeah, it is. Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, yeah, as you said, they’ll run their mouth off. And some people don’t. I don’t think they realize what’s actually involved. And a lot of people, you know, I personally, I get a lot of messages from people I want to join the special forces. What, what can, what do I need to do? And they almost think it’s, it’s one pill, you know? Or it’s, it is 1, 1 1 one course that you go on. It is, it is an accumulation of, of stuff. You know, I’m not here now in front of you telling you my story because I did it in the last two years. It’s what’s I’ve done over the last 30 years to get here. And I think some people when they, they have the right intentions in their mind to do it, but actually when they realize how difficult or what’s involved, you know, and then there’s also things that can come in a way, you know, I’ve said it before, I’m gonna go do this, and actually something else happens and changes the course direction of my life, and then it, that doesn’t actually come to fruition. DS (07:49): So for me, I just think yeah, have it intentionally in your head. And also, I’ll give an example for some people say, I’m gonna run the LA marathon. I only only say that ’cause it’s next weekend. They have the intentions of doing it, but no one actually believes you until you’ve actually put a date in the diary or you’ve actually signed up for it. You know, that’s when I start to think, right? ’cause Once you’ve signed up for it, you’ve let the world know of your intentions, and then there’s that additional motivation to do it. Just talking about it, you know, you could keep talking about it for the next three or four years. RV (08:20): So, so this leads to a a, a question I wanted to ask you is, what happens when you sign up for something RV (08:31): And you have this moment where you suddenly realize it’s harder than you expected? Right? So, ’cause there’s the, there’s this like honeymoon period when you first sign up for something like, all right, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna run a marathon, or I’m gonna join, you know, special boat service, or I’m gonna be the the first guy to like ride 14,000 miles on my bicycle. And then there’s gotta be a moment where, you know, you’re in training and you go, whoa, this is harder than I, like, this is harder than I thought it would be. It wasn’t just proving to my dad, like in the moment, like, oh, I was gonna prove to my dad. But then you get into, you know, training or whatever, there’s, you’ve gotta have had those moments. What do you do in those moments? Especially the first ones? DS (09:15): Yeah. Well, like, like the 14,000 miles, and that was in 2018. If I was a young 18-year-old boy, I probably wouldn’t have achieved that, you know? So when I was in the military, as I mentioned, I had no aspirations of special forces. But each time I went on a course, whatever course it was, I was physically getting stronger, but mentally I was getting stronger. And so I sort of took that experience in, into the next course and then into the next course. So I do, I, I always say you can’t be experienced without experiences. So my bike ride was an accumulation of everything I’d experienced in my time in the special forces for my time in the private security. And I just adapted that to that. So, so for me, I was confident that I could do it, otherwise I wouldn’t have put my name to it. DS (09:57): So for me, I think, yes, it depends where you are in your life and whether you’ve had experiences before that’s gonna help you with, with the new challenge. But I like to get out my comfort zone. So for me, I’ll, I’ll go back to the bike ride. I’d only cycled 20 miles before I applied for the world record. Wow. But what they did is I managed to get as much information as I could from books that I was reading. I spoke to the previous record holders. And I just literally used that information. I got the experts around me to help me. I knew that I could cycle. I knew I had the endurance and the mindset, and I had to choose cycling because I had a parachute accident, which ended my special forces career. So I had to find a sport, which, which wasn’t gonna hamper my knee. And so for me, I, I had been tested before, physically and mentally, so I knew that I just had to do that on, on a bike. But everything else, it was the planning, the coordination, the logistics. My wife ran all that as well around me for me. So also having a good team around you helps you as well. And getting, and getting knowledge of the experts as well. RV (11:02): Yeah. So I, I hear you on that, like sort of preparation, research and sort of strategic selection. What about, what about the moments though, when you want to quit? Or like, I mean, like you’re talking about building this mental toughness. Mm-Hmm. . And I feel like there have to be moments where you go like, this isn’t worth, like, where your brain, like the voice inside your head says like, this isn’t worth it. This is too hard, this is stupid. Why did you sign up for this? This, you’re gonna get hurt. Like, yeah, you have that voice that says, this isn’t working and it’s not worth it. Yeah. And you’ve been able to move past that and literally life and death situations. But even in like, you know, cycling, which is not really a life or death situation necessarily, how do you get past that moment? DS (11:50): Yeah, I think you have to, you have to have a motivation, which is personal to you. You have to be motivated to do, to do that. You know, when I was in the Special Forces, there was some guys there and they, they were there because their dads were in the Special forces. Oh, that’s not a motivation. ’cause When it gets hard, you know, it has to be personal to you. Why do you want to be it? Why is it, you know, when it gets hard, when it gets scary, you know, you need something that’s gonna, that fire to, to push you through. So that, that was that. But with the, with the bike ride, you know, we did it for, as you touched on, for mental health charities, there was 11 mental health charities that we raised the money for. And so I knew that one of the charities called Place to be the, they were gonna get a hundred thousand dollars, a hundred thousand pounds, which enabled 14,000 children to step into a school psychologist. DS (12:41): And so I would then revert that into miles. So every mile I was cycling enabled a child to do that. So there’s ways of tricking, tricking the mind. But actually, I, I never had pressure from the sponsors. I never had pressure from the charities themselves. I actually put my, it was my own pressure. I told the world that the ethos of the UK special forces was young, relentless pursuit of excellence. So how does it look to the world if I don’t finish this challenge? So I put myself under my own pressure, but my own motivations. But I also, that’s why I, I aim for the world record. So that’s why I applied for the world record. Sorry. So I had something to aim for, you know, in the military we’re very objective driven and target driven and mission driven. And so that was the mission. DS (13:22): And you know, I think after the first week I was 39 miles. The world record was 117 days. And I was aiming for 110 days because when I’d put all the planning together, looked at all the potential scenarios, it was natural disasters, coups, things that are out of our control. You know, you can’t control the uncontrollable. So I gave myself a week’s fudge. So should we encounter any of that along the way? It was eaten into that week. And I think the worst position I was in on the whole challenge was the end of the first week. ’cause We had such strong winds. I was 39 miles behind Target, but my target was still a week ahead of will record. And from then on, it was always gains. And so mentally wise, I was always in a, always in a good place. I was hitting the targets and I was now a ahead of target. DS (14:06): So I see people, other people doing challenges or doing, doing things, and they’re like, well, I’m 10 miles behind today, I’ll catch that up tomorrow. But you dunno what’s gonna happen the next day. You could have another bad day and then be 20, 30 miles behind. So that message with your head mentally when you go to bed. So I always say, stay on that bike, stay in that canoe, make those extra five phone calls at work. Make sure you where you are, where you are supposed to be at the end of the day because you are then in the right mindset and head space going in on the next day. You are not trying to catch yourself up. RV (14:38): Uhhuh. . Yeah. Yeah. I mean, staying ahead to that plan, I mean, that and having margin, I think that’s like, drives me nuts. Like you know, my, my wife, she’s the most brilliant woman I’ve ever met, but there’s something when it comes to getting in a car and driving somewhere, she, she doesn’t factor the idea of traffic. Like, it never comes in. It’s like, it’s, it’s this much time to get there and it’s like, well baby, we could hit traffic. Like there could be construction, there could be, there could be something. And it’s, it’s, it’s weird. You have to like, develop that consciously where to go. You, you, you talked about fear. Okay, so we’ve been talking about basically pain. Yes. Going, okay, what do you do in the moment when it gets hard? Mm. But you’ve also been in no, no shortage of life and death situations. RV (15:31): I know that you have become perhaps what many would say is the, is the number one leading expert in the world in evacuations. Yeah. You’ve done evacuations in, you know, the, the highest stake situations you can imagine. Mm-Hmm. There you’re not facing pain as much as you’ve gotta be facing fear. Yeah. there is, you know, literally you could turn around at any second and lose your life. Yet you’re running into those situations. You’re going there repeatedly you’re thriving. How are you, what is your strategy for managing the fear in those moments of the, you know, the potential life and death at any moment? DS (16:15): Obviously there, there’s fear comes in all shapes and sizes. You can, there’s so many fears for me with, with this, I was confident in the plan. You know, I would be more fearful if I wasn’t confident in my plan or there wasn’t a plan in place. So the, the, the very first time I did this was back in May, 2011 in, in the Arab Spring in Libya. And I soon identified these, these largest security companies were charging six, seven figures, sums of crisis management evacuation plans, which weren’t actually in place. And that still seems to be a lot of the cases today. So I bought 30 weapons off the black market. I buried them between tuna and Egypt, and designed my own evacuation plans. And I put them in place. And then when your American ambassador got killed in Benghazi, I was there that evening and got an oil company. DS (17:01): And yes, there’s a lot of things going on, but where I’ve been successful in this is I don’t bring in westerns my own teams, guys that look like me. I use local resources. I use as many local people as possible. It’s understanding the demographics, the politics, and the tribal influences of the countries. So actually the success of the majority of mine has been down to local influence and, and support and sort of capitalizing on that. Because as you, as you touch on the Special forces, Hollywood doesn’t help matters. You know, what you see on the movies is called the offensive action. The bo the, the bombs, the bullets and the biceps. You know, that’s, that’s 25% of what we do. 50% of what we do is, is support and influence its hearts and minds. It’s being embedded by locals actually understanding what’s happening on the ground, ground truth, and not what’s being reported on the media. And so that’s where the success has been for me. And that’s, and going back to your question reduces my fear because I’m not fearful ’cause what I’m seeing on TV, because I actually know what’s going on the ground, the ground truth, where things are happening. And we are probably one or two stages ahead. RV (18:08): Interesting. That’s fascinating. So you said 25% is bombs, bullets, and biceps, 50% is influence, you know, the support, DS (18:16): Support, support and influence hearts and minds. Yes. Small things just being embedded with locals, working with better winds, working with tribes in all these countries and really understanding, you know, especially for ex for example, Libya. Libya has 167 tribes. You, you know, I mean, you have to really understand the nuances with that. So when I had the the Benghazi incident, the easiest option would be to drive from Benghazi to Tripoli in about eight hours along the coastal road. But coming from Benghazi, you can’t get a driver from Benghazi to Tripoli. You’ve gotta go through Misrata to Tripoli. There’s various tribes along the way. And so what I did is I headed south to Zella. I had a safe house in Zella. We stayed there for 36 hours. We just actually see what was happening because at this point we still didn’t know what was going on. DS (19:04): We didn’t realize the American ambassador had been killed. And that gave us this soap period. But unbeknownst to the drivers, I had other drivers coming in from Tripoli. And so I could send those drivers home and use those. Because again, if you didn’t really understand those tribal in infants and, and things like that, you could, you get yourself in trouble. You could think, right, I can just drive to to, to Libya. So they’re, they’re the sort of things I needed to understand is what people can I use, who are the best people that are gonna help me get to certain areas? And when I evacuated the Canadian embassy from Tripoli to T is 18 military in four diplomats. My fixer, he was from ra, which was the border of Tuni. So he knew everyone along there, but also his cousin was the president of the GNC, which was the new interim government. DS (19:51): So it’s really just having the right people, the right key people. And also the key to me is it is showing respect to the locals as well. So the British Embassy, when, when I evacuated the Canadian Embassy, the British Embassy got shot at, at every checkpoint the week before, which was obviously worrying the Canadians. So myself and my fixer went out to the checkpoints. We didn’t speak to the guys with the guns, we spoke to the tribal elders. And we actually just sat down with, and we were just very transparent. We’re like, this is who we are, this is our intentions, and this is when we’re gonna do it. And they, they let us in, let us through. It is just because the British embassy decided to speed through without stopping or even negotiating. So a lot of it’s, you know, it’s just simple communication and respect. RV (20:36): What’s the other 25%? DS (20:38): The other 25% is probably , it’s probably surveillance is gathering the information, huh? RV (20:45): Yeah. DS (20:45): ‘Cause You obviously, you can’t act on, on any of that without without the, without the information itself. So surveillance. RV (20:52): Yeah, it’s fascinating. I mean, it’s almost like what you are doing also with like your bike ride you’re talking about. It’s like a lot of this is the gathering information and the intel on the front end. Yeah. Then, then creating a plan. And if you do that, then the last, it’s only the last 25% is like the muscle. DS (21:09): Yeah. Well, I, I, you know, one of the things we do in the special forces is I think that you guys in America, they call it a, a washup, we call it a hot debrief. So every time we came off the ground, whether it’s on operations, on exercise, anything we do daily before we clean our weapons, get showered, have food we do a hot debrief. ’cause It’s still fresh in your mind. And so as soon as the helicopter landed, we’d be off and the the ops officer would have us in. And it was three simple questions. It was, what worked, what didn’t work? And if you were to do that again, what would you do differently? And these are great lessons because each operation’s slightly different. So when I did the bike ride, I was getting information from books that I was reading and, and articles, but I wasn’t getting that critical information for my plan. And so I reached out to the previous record holders and I asked them those three questions and all their issues were in south and Central America, bureaucracy, languages, spares to the bikes. They all started in Alaska and finished in Argentina. So for me, I was like, well, why take a gamble with a second half? Why not get address those issues early? And so that’s what I did. I turned it 180, I started in Argentina and finished in Alaska. And that, that was my plan, and that was literally from the information I got from them. RV (22:22): Wow, that’s wild. They were willing to, they were willing to just talk to you and share it. DS (22:26): Yeah. Which was a great, a great surprise to me. Yeah. It seems to be, you know, with the world records, you’re there just to set a bar, you know, you want other people to help. You know, I’m helping a young gentleman at the moment who’s wanting to beat the world record next year. And so, yeah. You know, for me, I wasn’t a cyclist. I dipped my toe in it just to, to prove a point. I started cycling at the age of 40. And so, you know, he’s a younger guy. And so for me, I was like, well, here’s the information, here’s what I learned. And, you know, hopefully you can learn from that. But there are other factors that you can’t control. Weathers, you know, when I went through Nicaragua, I think four weeks later, there was a coup, you know, there’s certain things that are outta your control. RV (23:05): Yeah. So I’d like to talk about that for a second, because, you know, let’s say you do all the planning, right? Like you’re gonna launch a business or pursue some goal or dream, right? You do all the planning, you get all the surveillance, you get the right people on board, they go to help you, you then, you know, overcome your fear. You’re in the situation, you’re doing the stuff, but then sometimes there are things that just happen outside of your control. Yeah. There, like, you could do everything. You could do everything, right? Yeah. And suddenly there’s this thing that takes place that you, there’s no way you could have planned for, you didn’t plan for. What’s the mindset that you use in those moments to, to sort of deal with or reconcile and move past the things that happened that are like, that you didn’t prepare for that just were completely out of your control? DS (23:55): Well, there, there was a, the, I would use, probably use the bike ride as a good example. You know, I, I headed from south to north. I 10 days off the South America world record. My wife was the campaign director. My wife, you know, she, she’s the team. You know, I would talk about the success of individuals, you know, people would’ve seen me on social media, but it was the team around me. My wife was very much the, the lead for that. But actually we had a a, a RV and a four by four, which was gonna get shipped from Fort Lauderdale to Panama. Because coming from south to north, we were having to change vehicles at every, every border crossing we could get one from Alaska to Argentina if you crossed the Darien gap. And so my wife rang me when I was in Ecuador to tell me the vehicles hadn’t been loaded onto the shipping container. DS (24:39): So that was out of our control. But my wife and my pa and a couple of friends they drove, they flew over and they drove the vehicles 4,000 miles in eight days from Fort Lauderdale down to Panama, through Mexico and all the la Central American countries. Wow. So that was, you know, we didn’t see that, but we reacted to the situation change, and it kept to the team moving. I then get into North America on day 70, and I’m 14 days ahead of the world record. So mentally I’m, I’m in a good place. You know, I’m now in America. Everyone speaks my language, the culinary options a lot better. And my wife then rings me five times, and I think, you know, normally she keeps distractions away from me. I think there’s something wrong with our children. And she then tells me that we’ve been invited to Harry and Meghan’s wedding, which was, which was nice. DS (25:26): No, prince Harry and, and Meghan. Wow. So I was like, and this was their, this was the charity that we were doing for, was for Harry, William and Kate. It was one of their charities called Heads Together. And I said to her, I said, that’s nice. She goes, no, you don’t understand. You are now one day behind. So going into that phone call, I was 14 days ahead, 10 minutes late, I’m now a day behind, because the last flight out of Alaska in time for this wedding was Day 102. So I had to change that I way that I cycled in, in North America. I had the luxury being able to cycle at night because in South America and Central America, it’s safer to be off the road. And so I I cycled North America. I had 17 days planned. I did an 11 and a half days. DS (26:06): I literally, I got to Lubbock in Texas the next day. We had 16 mile an hour winds in tornado. So it’s now two days behind. And there’s a, there’s an app on your phone called Windy tv, which is very popular with sailors and cyclists. And it gives you the strength and directions that the winds forecast for two weeks every hour. And so I just put pen to paper. I had to cycle 340 miles in the next 36 hours to miss the next weather window and just played chess with Mother Nature. So I was using what resources I had available to me. I picked up a 50 mile an hour tailwind in Cheyenne, you know, which covered 270 miles in 11 hours. And so that’s where I gained that time. And so, you know, the, the situation that the objective hadn’t changed the timelines had. DS (26:52): And so I got a week outside and then I got a in a town called Whitehorse. And I get a, a phone call from a friend saying, have you seen this guy who’s, who’s a professional cyclist sponsored by Red Bull? He’s already got free hover endurance wheel records. He’d come out on social media that day and said he wanted to be the first person to cycle the Pan-American Highway under a hundred days. So every time I kept hitting my objective, my objective kept moving. And so I was, I could have stayed on the bike and just, you know, come in at reasonable time, but I just, for me, I wasn’t happy. So I, I pushed myself even harder. I cycled I cycled for 20, 28 hours in the last 36 hours to come in, in, in in 99 days, 12 hours and 36, 56 minutes in minus 18 winds and snowing in, RV (27:41): It was what it was 99 days. DS (27:43): 99 days. 12 hours and 56 minutes. So again, and I think on the, on the last two days, I had 250 miles to do. And I was like, well, I’ll do 150 miles today, I’ll do a hundred on the last day. And we’re well in under a hundred days. I did the first 50 miles and we got to a a roadblock and they, they, they were like, you cannot pass. I, I hit the roadblock at noon. They said, you cannot pass till eight o’clock tonight. So they took eight hours off me. So even to the very last day, there were things that are outta my control. So I just, you know, the success of this was a, was having a plan, but also being flexible with that plan, just reacting to the situation changes. You know, for me, first question is, is anyone gonna die? No. Then we can always make a plan, get the kettle on, and we’ll make a plan. But yeah, that wasn’t, when I was back in UK making that plan, I didn’t factor this other cyclist. I didn’t factor tornadoes. I didn’t factor royal weddings. There was stuff that were outta my control. RV (28:41): Those dang royal weddings, man. I mean, you get invited to those things, they just screw everything. They just really screw everything up. DS (28:48): Yeah. Yeah. RV (28:50): Well that’s so cool, Dean. DS (28:51): Yeah. RV (28:52): I so, so the book is, the book is called Relentless Ya. Where do you want people to go to like, learn more about you and the book and stay in touch with what you’re doing? DS (29:02): Yeah, so you go to my website, deans.dot com. You know, a lot of this stuff will be up on there. I’m on the normal social media, media handles Instagram and Facebook. And you can also buy the book either on the website or through Amazon. RV (29:17): And then if there’s somebody right now who’s listening, who is in one of those moments where like either they are experiencing pain, right? Mm-Hmm. They have a goal. They’re either experiencing pain, they, it’s harder than they thought, or perhaps they’re experiencing fear. There’s some threat that has showed up, or perhaps they’re just facing some, you know, outside circumstance beyond their control. Yeah. And you know, they’re sitting in that moment right now debating whether or not they should keep moving forward and sort of pressing towards the objective and towards the goal and towards the mission. What, what encouragement would you give that person right now? DS (29:58): I think what I used to use for some of my recruits on the commando calls when they were fearful on certain tasks that we were doing was anticipation is worse than participation. You know, your mind plays tricks on you. You think that is impossible. I’m scared. And actually, once you push through, once you leaned in and got through it, you look back and think, actually that wasn’t as bad as I thought. So that was probably my, my leaving comment for them. RV (30:23): I love that. I love that anticipation is worse than participation. Make the plan, take the action, have faith in the plan. This is so good. Dean, thank you for sharing your insights with us, brother. And thanks for the protection you provide and for the way that you push and, and, and challenge all of us through what you’re doing, man, we wish you all the best. DS (30:44): Thank you so much, Rory. Appreciate it.