Captain Brad Geary
speaker
303 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Captain Brad Geary’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I don't see us providing a lot of incentives to our young troops to want to serve when they see the administrative system and the NJP system abusing their own doing things like they did with us. And I've lost count of the people that have hit me up on LinkedIn after our show. Same thing happened to me. Same thing happened to me. I mean, thousands of people.
And you start connecting dots and talking to other people who know of other thousands in the Army and in the Marines and in the whatever. This is a really, really alarming trend. And we are driving people out of the military because we punish so severely, sometimes unjustly. Sometimes even when a guy does something right, the punishment is so disproportionate that it's driving them out too.
I'll give you a great example. One of my candidates when I was at BTC hurt himself and then he goes home for Christmas break and his mom gives him some CBD pills. And she's like, hey, this will help your healing. There's a lot of science on it. This doesn't have THC. Don't worry about it. And he's like, OK. So he does it. Now, he violated a Navy instruction.
You're not supposed to take CBD, whether it has THC or not. But it did have THC. So he popped positive on a test. So we did the investigation. He confessed immediately. He was a really, really sharp young man. Totally honest and forthcoming. So we said, all right, let's find a way to help this guy fall forward.
We took him to Mass, and I found him not guilty of knowingly ingesting a controlled substance because he didn't knowingly ingest THC. But I did have to find him guilty for knowingly violating U.S. policy. But it was a much lower offense than knowingly taking a controlled substance. And I thought, this is a way to help him fall forward. Great.
I still had to drop him from the program, but wrote a huge letter on his behalf. This is a man of honor. He has integrity. He confessed. Let's go, he's gonna be a phenomenal leader in the Navy somewhere else. So we catapulted him off to success. I get a call from him, hey, sir, having some hangups. They're asking for an admiral letter. So I ask Admiral Howard, he writes a letter on his behalf.
Okay, we'll get him to another community. Another year later, he calls me, hey, sir, I'm up for my security clearance review because I have a guilty mass to my record. I need you to write another letter for me if you're willing and able to convince them to renew my security clearance that I'm still trustworthy. Okay, now the year goes by. Hey, sir, I'm up for promotion.
They're stalling my promotion because of our mass two and a half years ago now. Can you write me another letter? Sure, write you another letter. And so what we saw is that administrative, bureaucratic machine just take over and continually punish this guy because, well, these are our processes and these are in our instructions.
And so we just kept beating him down years after he should have been able to fall forward and recover from what was a bad mistake but, like, should be survivable.
And that's what we see. That's a micro example. But I think that's what sailors, soldiers, and airmen are seeing at a macro level consistently with their friends. Like, why would I keep serving when I make one small mistake that would cost me nothing as a civilian? Not even a blip on the radar.
But look what happened to me, and look what happened to my buddy over here for the next four years he's dealing with this.
Yeah.
It's demoralizing. The human toll is huge. It's huge.
Yeah, I don't know in combat yet, I guess, because these guys are just getting into the workforce right now, right? So I think the last ones that saw combat were probably millennials, but we're making that shift right now, and I think it's an important shift. It's interesting. Simon Sinek wrote a book.
He's written a few, but Leaders Eat Last is one of my favorites, and he talks about these generational differences and how important it is as leaders to evolve to be relevant to these next generations. So my observations with Gen Z, we talked a little bit, very high EQ, very impressive. They have a low tolerance for abuse of authority. They're unimpressed. It's interesting.
Some people look at them as you're too disrespectful. Like you don't value the hierarchical structure that we've put in place. I don't see it as that actually. I think it's that they've got a lot more courage to stand up to authority than any of us ever did. Let me give you an example. We had this young guy in Bud's, and he had a mistake out in town.
And so he was going to come before me as the CEO board, that whole process we talked about last time, where I was going to determine whether he was going to stay or go in our system. And like we talked about, every candidate writes a letter. It's their last appeal. I read it before we bring him in and then question him and make our decisions. But the title of his letter was Fear No Man.
We're like, that's interesting. That sticks out. That's a little different. So already I was like, what's this guy's deal? So my CMC, Dave Hanson, is like, hey, yo, let me put some rounds across this guy's bow. Let's try to rattle him. Let's find out what this is all about. Is this ego? Does this guy have an ego here? So dude comes in, sits down, and my CMC is just letting him have it.
I mean, like yelling, like if you've ever been on the receiving end of Dave Hanson giving it to you, not a great place to be. And I'm watching this guy's body language the whole time, just like you and I are sitting here right now. Dude, if we had a pulse oximeter or whatever it is, I don't think his pulse would have jumped one beat. Dude just sat there and took it. He was so secure in himself.
And he was like, hey, I don't think I made a mistake. Here's what I did. Here are the facts of my case. I stand by it. I regret that we're in this room and we found ourselves here, but I stand by my decisions and what I did and my choices. And we're sitting there, and so we're like, this guy's impressive. And so I hit him up on the last question I asked him.
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