Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Okay, got the red smoke.
Gun runs north and south, west of the smoke, west of the smoke. Okay, copy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on, win it, baby. Give it to me. I need it. You're clear hot. Copy, clear hot. Well, hello, everybody.
For those of you who are beyond the audio only experience, you could probably tell things are looking a little bit different in the studio because I'm working on some stuff behind the scenes. This is just a different lighting package. January is going to have some pretty cool updates, some cool stuff coming for 2026. I don't want to touch on it too early.
Chapter 2: How can I advocate for my parents' medical health?
I like to talk about things after they've already happened and not this over excitement of things that I'm really looking forward to happening and then they maybe don't. I would rather under-promise than over-deliver. That's probably a better way to put that. So, yeah. Man, it's December. Unbelievable. I'm creating this episode right before I go to Costa Rica for a jiu-jitsu camp.
If you listened to last Friday's episode, my wife Leah was talking about we're going to Hero BJJ in Tamarindo. Actually, by the time this comes out, I think I'll be home because I'm recording this. To come out while we're on the road, regardless. She's doing a camp in February. Go to last two Fridays Ago's episode where we did the full family Friday.
And you can check out all the camps that they have there. So if you want to come hang out with us in February in Tamarindo, go to town on that front if you want to. I find it to be a very nice break where I live shorter days, overcast days. A little bit lack of vitamin D for sure. You need to supplement if you live up here in the Northwest.
And then that break in February or even this break in December is super nice. You can kind of recharge, spend your time in the sun. It is what it is.
Chapter 3: What advice is there for dealing with burnout in law enforcement?
And then I owe a 2026 year in review. And, man, maybe that's a good way to kick off today. I have some questions, which I'll get to here in a second. But I've been thinking about just looking online and, God, it is an emotion-filled battlefield of landmines everywhere. And I'm just thinking about 2025.
And I have no doubt to support that there's been more emotional things that people have been posting about or less or more conspiratorial things or less. It feels like it's a little bit more emotional. And maybe that's just what I'm seeing. And it's so easy to blame the algorithm for what it is that you're seeing.
And people forget that your algorithm is actually a curation of things that you interact with. And I've started messing with this a little bit. Specifically on Twitter. Man, it can be super aggressive and super negative. But then I realize it's just showing me more things that I engage with. And that's true of all the platforms. So messing around with I want to see less of this type of content.
Messing around with muting particular things that ā Or they're at the edge of invoking a little bit of an emotional reaction, but then the more you think about it, you realize it's not emotional.
The person that you're reading something from, they're having an emotional reaction to something that is important to them, which might even be nonsensical or just completely non-meaningful in your life. And I don't want to invest any time in that. And that's what got me thinking about 2025 and all the stuff that's happened on the internet. And I was thinking about specifically Charlie Kirk.
That was still pretty fresh for me, mostly because of the interaction I had with my kids on that particular topic, talking about what they saw. I hate the fact that they live in a world where they saw that and they weren't searching for it. All three of them did.
And the impact it had, a little bit of development of numbness to that legitimate type of violence and death, which is exactly what that was.
Yeah.
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Chapter 4: How can I overcome imposter syndrome in my career?
So that particular incident, man, you want to talk about conspiracies corking out into every different direction. Was it the bodyguards? Were they hand signaling? Was it multiple shooters? Were they trained by the agency? Was this dude a straw puppet? Is this a false flag attack? Is this an inside job? Did Israel do this? Everything. Was he wearing body armor? He wasn't wearing body armor.
People making these videos about ricochets and all of this stuff is demonstrably visibly untrue. And people are making so much content about this and then other people are engaging and arguing back and forth. And I think I understand why people don't want to feel helpless. They want to ā and I had a bunch of people reach out to me like, I'm trying to get justice for Charlie.
Chapter 5: What are the challenges of being gay in the military?
I get it. You're sleuthing through the internet and getting emotionally attached to things that are highly conspiratorial in nature. And I'll be the first person to admit that conspiracies absolutely exist. That doesn't mean that all conspiracy theories are true, but people do conspire to do things. But oftentimes the simplest solution is probably gonna be the most likely one.
And I've come to the realization that people get emotionally attached to it because they don't like feeling helpless. And I don't like feeling helpless either.
But I don't know if any of the people that reached out to me saying that they were looking for justice for Charlie by trying to spread at the top of their lungs information that was clearly not accurate, might have been emotionally compelling, but not accurate. I just wonder how it has served people.
If you were to look back and maybe the Charlie Kirk incident isn't for the listener out there, that doesn't speak to you. You've paid almost no attention to that. Cool. Is there anything that you did get hooked by in 2025? And I'm asking myself that question as well, too, because I try not to.
I try to be balanced in the amount of time that I spend because I look at the amount of time that I spend on things like that. And at the end of the year, I ask myself, did it serve me well? Do I wish I could get that time back? Do I wish I could have done something different with that time? More productive, more meaningful, more purposeful, any of those things.
I mean, legitimately just fill in the blank. And I've come to find that almost everything I do on this device that we all have, and this is a part of our life and it's, I do believe we're going to figure it out and figure out ways to manage it appropriately as opposed to it managing us. That's the risk versus reward or the pro versus con matrix that I think we should all run consistently.
Maybe once a month, look at your screen. Actually, what does the screen time come on the iPhone?
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Chapter 6: How do I balance my parents' health care with my own responsibilities?
It comes once a week. Man, those numbers are startling sometimes. And so I'll look at that number and I don't want to because it's higher than I want it to be. And I'm working on that. But I look at that number and then I ask myself, OK, what did I do with that time? Is there legitimate time inside of that large number where I spent doing things that were required for my business? Yes.
Was it the majority? No. And you have to be able to honestly answer that for yourself. So for me, there is some business that I'm doing. There's also a lot of business that I'm not doing and doom scrolling or wasting my time or it's just it becomes habitual picking that thing up, almost just laziness.
Or we've been programmed by our robot overlords to just constantly go to that anxiety rectangle anytime we feel like we have idle time. Don't be by yourself, make sure you're consuming something. And again, that's not, in my opinion, the fault of the people that create these apps, even though they are designed to monopolize your attention. They are designed to be addictive.
I get it, and I know that. So at the end of the day, if I spend too much time on them, whose fault is that? And the answer is that it's mine. So at the end of the week, I ask myself, what did I do with this time? And then I'll ask myself, if I could have that time back, is there anything else I could have done that would be more productive? And the answer is always yes. It's always yes.
And so I just, I look for whatever reason, I've been looking at that, my engagement with things like that online in 2025, that is something I want to change in 2026. So a little bit of an early year end review for me, but I'm curious out there for the listeners and viewers, because I feel like I am not in the minority when it comes to
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Chapter 7: What tactical skills can I practice outside of formal training?
Consumption time on devices, but objectively, if you were to look back at it in chunks of a week or a month or a year, and somebody could give you that and just say, hey, you have an opportunity to do this over again. Would you want to spend that time differently? For me, that is a hard, hard yes. And I bet a lot of people are like that too.
So I need to change that up front because I don't get the opportunity to do that, nor does anybody else. But I can...
change my future behavior when I inform it from my past behavior and I actually ask myself hard questions and look myself in the mirror and take control of the things that I have control over which is only really myself so for everybody out there if you got emotionally involved in something you saw online this year you argue politics Or conspiracy theories or everything in between.
And I'm not telling you you shouldn't do those things. Live your life the way that you want to. But ask yourself. Sit down. Take a breath. Take stock of the time you spent and ask yourself if you were well-served from that time spent. Did you change anybody's mind? Did you get justice for anybody?
Or did you just spin out a little bit and get angry and argue with people that you don't actually know? It didn't have impact on their life because they weren't actually listening to what you said. They were more concerned with saying what they wanted to say and then moving on. Tough questions, but important ones.
And on that note, maybe we just get in here to question one instead of me just rambling about my personal thoughts and the thing that monopolizes my thoughts when I'm laying in bed and I can't sleep, staring at the ceiling fan, which is not on. So it's far less entertaining in the winter months because you can't watch it go round and round.
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Chapter 8: How can I apply lessons learned in military training to my current role?
You just sit there and you look and you realize ā Man, I need to get the vacuum out because the front leading edge of that fan is really dusty. Today's episode is brought to you by Spartan Forge. I love talking about this app for a couple of reasons. One, I love Bill Thompson. He is one of my favorite people. I've had him on the podcast twice. I highly recommend you go check him out.
He is the CEO and founder of Spartan Forge. And just if you do go listen to those episodes or you're familiar with them, just imagine taking somebody with that level of military experience in that particular field and For that length of time, his network, his knowledge, his know-how, and turning it into this app. Now, is it based around hunting? Of course.
I've said this many times and I'll keep saying it. I use this more for aviation than I do hunting, but it is a fantastic hunting tool. So right here in front of us, we're looking at LIDAR and UAV mapping. This stuff changes the game when I'm out there flying. And even if you're looking at terrain, you're doing an analysis or a study, What is underneath the foliage? What's the slope angle?
What am I looking at here? Because you can look at imagery all day long, but if you can't see through the foliage, you actually don't know exactly what you're getting yourself into. Contour lines are great. Having the ability with LiDAR to look through that and maybe even find game trails or foot trails is even better. They have deer movement prediction.
We're taking Intel analysis of human beings and targeting and applying it to wildlife. In-app live pin sharing. This is very analogous to a Blue Force tracker. But this pin sharing, you can send this out to a group. You could set a group. You could set boundaries. You could track each other sharing information. It is a fantastic tool for communication. Again, I talked about LiDAR.
Here's another visual representation of what that looks like. And another thing, I'm on their website right now, spartanforge.ai. The technology aspect here, you come over here to CyberScout, this is going to be in your... web app. So not on your phone yet, but this is basically an embedded AI. And here's some examples of things you can ask. What's the best arrow setup for an elk?
What's the weather in my location? How much soybean seed do I need for 3.23 acres in Southwest Wisconsin? If you don't have a mentor getting you into the hunting world, this is not a replacement for that, but this is a gradual way to start gathering information while you look for that mentor. Spartanforge.ai. This is the easiest money I spend every month on my app subscription, spartanforge.ai.
Back to the show. Question number one, Andy, first and foremost, thank you for being available and opening yourself up to help others answer questions. My pleasure, and I've said many times I really enjoy this. I like the process of questioning my own beliefs. Why do I believe what I believe? Where did that belief come from? What's it founded in? Is it founded in emotion?
Is it founded in fact, in knowledge, experience, whatever it may be? And I believe in believing things very deeply but not holding on to them too tightly, being open to having my mind changed. So here we go. I've been in my line of work for 11 years. I work for a small agency of 10 people including the boss. We are currently down two positions.
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