Andy Stumpf

You could bring the whole class in.

You could punish them.

You could remediate them.

You could try to teach them.

Or you could sit back and identify the people in the class who are influential amongst their own peer group and then dedicate some time to working directly with them and allow them to use that influence that they have already developed amongst their peers.

to influence the entire class.

There are no right or wrong answers in how you do that, but just like every tool, some are more well-suited for the end state, some can get you there faster.

So as an instructor, I was always interested in trying to figure out who inside of each one of the classes had the influence.

And sometimes it was the senior leaders, but not always.

Sometimes it was the older person.

If you're just wanting to join the military and have the military experience, I don't think going in at 26 years old is going to negatively impact you.

I think it will very positively impact you actually because of the life experience that you bring with you.

If you wanted to go into a special operations pipeline, at some age, the math is going to slowly start to trend against you.

Just because of the physiology required and the physical nature of those selection processes, process I, whatever the correct word would be.

But statistics are just that.

They are accurate often.

But just because you are a little bit older and the stats say you have a slightly less –

statistical likelihood of being successful doesn't mean that you necessarily will be because they're accurate sometimes and not accurate others.

They're a broad representation of everybody that tries.

I wouldn't wait too long if you want to go down a special operations pipeline only because the jobs are very physically taxing in nature and physically demanding even after you get through the selection course.