In this episode of The Last 10%, host Dallas Burnett converses with Patrick Leddin, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, former Army Ranger, Vanderbilt professor, and co-author with James Patterson of 'Disrupt Everything and Win.' Patrick shares his incredible life journey from growing up on the south side of Chicago to leading paratroopers in the Army and building successful businesses. He provides valuable insights on resilience, the power of disruption, and how leaders can navigate the accelerating pace of technological change. The conversation also delves into Patrick's collaborative book with James Patterson and explores stories of individuals like Tom Diei, who used disruption to create positive change. Ideal for leaders, coaches, and those aiming to level up, this episode offers actionable advice on embracing disruption and finishing strong.

Hey everybody.

We're talking to Patrick Ledon today.

What an amazing guy He is a leadership expert, wall Street Journal bestselling

author former Army Ranger Vanderbilt professor and co-author with James

Patterson of Disrupt Everything and Win.

He has some incredible stories from jumping out of airplanes

to hiking Mount Kilimanjaro.

Building an incredible business with his wife.

You don't want to miss this incredible conversation.

Welcome to the last 10%.

Your host, Dallas Burnett, dives into incredible conversations that

will inspire you to finish well.

And finish strong, strong.

Listen as guests share their journeys and valuable advice on living in the last 10%.

If you are a leader, a coach, a business owner, or someone looking to

level up, you are in the right place.

Remember, you can give 90% effort and make it a long way, but it's finding

out how to unlock the last 10%.

That makes all the difference in your life, your relationships, and your work.

Now here's Dallas.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I am Dallas Burnett, sitting in my 1905 Koch brothers

barber chair in Thrive Studios.

But more importantly, today we have an amazing guest.

Patrick Ledon is a guy who's lived an amazing life from leading

paratroopers in the army to building successful businesses, teaching at

Vanderbilt now he's co-authoring books with legend James Patterson

on turning disruption into success.

I'm so excited about this conversation today.

Welcome to the show, Patrick.

Hey Dallas.

Thanks so much for having me.

Hello everybody.

So glad to be here with you today.

Now Patrick, you hail out of Nashville, which is obviously

one of my favorite, favorite towns, and you have been there for quite some

time because of Vanderbilt and stuff.

But I would love for you to share with our listeners kind of a

backdrop of your story, just kind of your journey through your career.

So you wanna know my origin

Origin story, baby.

That's right.

Yeah, man, I'll just lay it all out there for you.

So, um, I'm probably one of the least likely persons to have a

professorship at Vanderbilt University.

I grew up on the south side of Chicago actually.

The area that I grew up in has had a little bit of a claim to fame

recently because I went to the same Catholic church growing up as the Pope.

my goodness.

church.

Wow.

on the south side of Chicago.

His house was probably like three blocks from mine.

I mean, I could ride my bike

Oh my goodness.

in the seventies.

I didn't know him.

my oldest brother actually went K through eight with him, so he knew him.

I did know his mom, 'cause his mom was pretty big in our church.

and as a growing up as a Catholic family, I was an altar boy and

he was an altar boy and all that.

So I like to jokingly say that, probably when I was baptized,

the pope was like my altar boy.

I dunno.

So anyway,

That's awesome.

the youngest of five.

My dad, worked for the phone

Okay.

and, attended bar and did a couple other

things to kinda make ends meet.

I came out of, high school, not really sure what I was gonna do.

I went to community college first and, quickly Didn't do well, put it that

way, and decided I better join the army.

So

Hmm.

the Army and I started to get my life on track a bit.

I was pretty decent at the army.

I don't know, they just told me, turn right.

I turned right.

They told me turn left.

I turned left, told me, shut up, I'd shut up.

And there they like rewarded you for that.

So I just kept going.

So.

I ended up going through my undergraduate using a scholarship

from the Army and, went to infantry school, airborne School, ranger School.

Ended up going to a unit called the 82nd Airborne

Wow.

Wow.

married pretty early, got married right outta

college to my wife Jamie.

so we've been married 34 years now.

Congratulations.

yeah.

Yeah.

And I have two grandkids.

so the time in the military was mostly spent at Fort Benning and Fort Bragg.

got to jump outta planes and lead soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division.

My last job was a company commander in the 82nd Airborne Division,

and then I went, I made a 180.

I decided, okay, I wanna do something different.

Hmm.

I got out and I went into consulting and I went into KPMG

consulting, which was literally at the time I jokingly said it was going from.

Bdu, battle dress uniforms to Brooks Brothers because it was

like a complete different setting.

And the reason I went there, a buddy of mine said, what are you gonna do?

I said, I'm not exactly sure.

He is like, well, come join us at KPMG.

I'm like, what do you do?

He is like, we build slides and make spreadsheets.

I'm like.

Okay, that sounds okay.

He's like, get to wear a suit.

I'm like, okay.

So I got there and I just, I hit it at the right time on the project that I was on.

when I first showed up, there were two people from KPOG on this

project, and I was the second person.

Wow,

we reported to another company that was the

primary contractor on this project.

fast forward three years later and I'm in charge of the project, the subcontract,

the other contracting company's gone, and I've got 38 people reporting to me in a

good

project.

gracious.

from zero to 12 million in, in a few years.

And I actually decided at that point I'm gonna start my own gig.

So I

Wow.

Started that and my wife and I did it together.

I started as a, what we would now call a side hustle Dallas, but we

didn't have side hustles back then.

It was a side hustle and I was moonlighting

All right.

bi business and suddenly it was like taking off.

So I decided to leave KPMG.

I started working in a human, created a human capital consulting firm.

got to work with a lot of great partners like Franklin Covey,

and a ton of great clients.

And we sold that in when, 12 years later.

12

a few offices, we

years later.

12 years later, somebody came along and made

us an offer we couldn't refuse.

We sold it and along the way the army kept paying for school, like

the GI Bill and all that stuff.

So I

Yeah,

keep going to school.

sure.

I got my doctorate along the way from the University

of Kentucky Then after we sold the business, I'm like, okay, I

guess I'll, I'm gonna try teaching.

So I like, where do I want to go?

And I said, Vanderbilt's a great school.

I wanna live in Nashville, see if I can get in there.

That's awesome.

as my then 80 some year old, aunt told me, she goes, get your

foot in that door and just keep pushing.

So I said I did, I got in, I started for a summer.

I got offered a full-time contract.

And, then I became the director of the program of the largest program at

the university undergraduate business.

Wow.

there for 12 years.

And that's where I met James Patterson.

And I decided once we started launching this, research project that the university

sponsored on disruption that I ran for a few years, once the book came out,

I'm like, okay, twenties, were running around the woods in the army, thirties

to forties, building a business into my fifties teaching college students

and now I'm gonna change the world.

You gonna change the world, it's time to change the world.

I love it, man.

That's so cool.

the world needs a little changing.

So.

Oh, listen.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

those are all the highlights, man.

There's plenty of screw up mistakes,

no.

balls, you name it.

We could dig into all those too.

No, it's really good because I feel like that, and

we were talking before the show and you were telling me something

about your experience and stuff.

It just, you just had a variety.

I love, I love guests that, that have this breadth of experience because

you have such perspective on different things and going from the military

to consulting, then to education.

You've got this breadth of experience that, that you, have.

Amassed.

And I just think that's really fun.

I wanna talk to you a little bit about resilience.

We're coming into the end of the year and, people are, you know, kind of

gearing up for the holiday season, but man, they're probably, some people are

probably like, woo, I need a break.

'cause they've been grinding hard this fall and resilience is

something that's so important.

And, we do a lot of work around burnout and resilience as well.

Battling, battling burnout and finding out how to be more resilient.

We were talking before and parachuting out of the jumping out of planes,

like something like 69 times, which is, oh my gosh, this is incredible.

But one of those times you actually injured yourself, in your back.

what is it about that would you say about that experience that really kind of taught

you some things about resilience that you carried through the rest of your career?

Well that incident that you're talking about, so yeah, I did jump.

I was, I jumped 69 times.

I kinda wish I'd done one more.

70 seems like a nice, even number was really great.

And it's funny jumping in the military, especially in conventional.

I'm not, I wasn't in the special forces unit, so they tend to get up

in helicopters and jump out pretty quick, maybe do a few in a day.

The conventional forces, when you're just dealing with a lot of soldiers, it

just takes a lot of time for every jump.

so you're gonna jump onto the plane at two o'clock in the

morning, which is a normal time.

you're gonna be reporting at about noon, like 14 hours ahead of

Oh my

because there's lots of inspections and making

sure everybody's in the right order and the manifest is correct.

And there's all that type of stuff.

if you have hundreds or thousands of soldiers are all lined up in a field and

then you have to get on buses or they call 'em camel cars, like you would literally.

Put cattle in, stick everybody in there, drive them down and you gotta go through.

Then you gotta get your para, you gotta rehearse everything.

Then you have to put your parachutes on.

Then it has to be inspected, and it's just a big, it's a big long process.

And then of course, when you fly in the airplane, the Air

Force is getting training too.

So it's not like you just get in the plane, they drive you over,

fly you over and you jump out.

They fly around for two hours or something like that.

Oh my

So

goodness.

pro.

My point is a long process.

for 69 jumps I probably tried to jump 120 times with weather

and this, that, and the other.

All

Oh

that

wow.

yeah.

So this one particular jump.

there's a thing that can happen.

There's lots of things that can happen that can go sideways, right?

Your parachute might not open,

Hmm.

great.

these are static line jumps.

So you jump out of the plane and the plane, maintains your static line.

It deploys your parachute for you, only jumping from 800 feet.

So if you jump out of the plane and you have four seconds for your parachute

to open, if it doesn't open in four seconds, you have three seconds basically

to react before you hit the ground.

So seven seconds to fall, about 800

Good.

it's, it's,

Right.

different than like 10,000 or 20,000 foot jumps.

when I jumped, you would jumped pri, primarily two airplanes and one held

64 people, and the other one held 120.

In either case.

In both of those instances, a plane would fly over the drop

zone, and in one minute's time everybody would be in the air.

So 120 people dump out of a plane in one minute.

Theoretically.

Theoretically, the idea Dallas, is that they open up the two back doors on the

plane, the side doors, and you obviously you have half the plane going out, one

door, half plane going out the other door.

Everybody extends their arms, so they are separated by about one second,

and in theory, the first jumper goes out and then the next jumper goes out.

And then theoretically, you imagine everybody's staggered all the way down.

So we have spac.

But sometimes that doesn't happen.

And what you're referring to, it didn't happen.

So I jump out of the plane that night and I go, I count 1000, 2000, 3000, 4,000.

That's when you check for your parachute and you could feel it tugging.

so I was like 1000, 2000, 3000, ugh.

Because I got hit in the back of my neck by somebody else's boot.

we just hit underneath the airplane then, that's not the desired thing to happen,

but there's drills so you know what to do.

And I was a jump master, so that meant I put people on airplanes too.

So, um, like in, in the Army, not to go too deep into this, but there's three

different levels of parachute, wings.

So you have the basic wings, which means you've jumped five times

and you went to airborne school.

You have the senior wings, which puts a star over the top of them.

That means you're a jump master, you've done certain things, and you've

jumped, I think 30 times is the number.

And then, the next and so many years on jump status, and then

the next level or the high.

S level is Aretha around it, which is a jump master, a master para I should say.

And that's what I was, so I jumped a lot of times and all that and

put a lot of people on airplanes, so I knew the drills really well.

In this particular case, when you're hit, when you're a tangled parachute, that's

called a high altitude entanglement.

opposed to low altitude, you might steer into each other.

This is higher altitude.

It just happens.

So I look up and the, what you don't wanna see is you don't wanna see what they call

a cigarette roll, which is basically your parachute just rolled up into itself.

Hmm.

you have no parachute.

But I looked up, but we didn't have that.

We actually had two full canopies, which is the best case scenario.

the second best case scenario is you have one full parachute.

You can still make it with two people, but two is great.

So the problem is you can't control how you land or anything like that.

we came down the whole way the, I remember the jumper above me the whole time.

He was above me.

I was below him and I was talking to him in the air.

I was just telling him, okay, don't worry, we have two full canopies,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We'll be safe.

Just hang in there.

Don't pull.

Do not pull your reserve, parachute.

'cause that can complicate things, you know?

Just stay with what we got.

And we came all the way down to the ground.

It was funny.

I was calm all the way down to the ground.

I was calm.

And then we hit the ground pretty hard 'cause.

you're not controlling for wind or anything.

You're just hitting the ground.

And I hit the ground and this old army sergeant major came running up.

I didn't know he was a sergeant major at first.

It was dark.

He just saw us, he saw that we were tied together in, in the air as we came down.

So he ran over to see if we were okay.

he said, are you okay?

And I stood up and I said yes.

And then I was like, holy crap, what just happened?

That's when it like hit me.

I was like, oh my gosh.

oh

So anyway, that,

my gosh.

the story of that particular situation.

I could, it does extend because I had a bad habit.

that my would frustrate my wife.

So you go on these, you go on these parachute jumps or late time, late

night operations or whatever, and you might get home at three or four in the

morning and your face is camouflage, you're covered in camouflage paint, and

you're just, you're tired, exhausted.

So I would do like the world's worst shower, you know, kind of shower off.

And I'd usually get in trouble for, leaving camouflage on the pillows

or whatever, and not getting it all off by my ears or whatever.

And and I remember that particular morning she woke me up and she's like.

What happened to you?

I'm like, what are you talking about?

She goes, you have a boot mark on the back of your neck.

Oh

that's,

my

I actually had a boot

goodness.

the,

Gracious day.

see the outline of this bruise.

Good

yeah, that still

gracious.

me a little bit of hassle.

Right now I'm dealing with, three bulging discs in my neck

Oh

and it's been, you know, 25 years.

But

man.

it turns out the guy who I was tangled up

with was one of my soldiers.

Which I didn't know because

Oh.

you're all mixed in these planes and stuff.

so yeah, it was Corporal Davidson was his name at the time.

Yeah.

so anyway, what that taught me is, a couple things like, you can't prepare

for every crisis or every disruption.

that's one of the biggest challenges we deal with right now is that.

Tomorrow, the world can be different and there's no playbook.

Hmm.

in that particular case, there was a playbook.

I knew the process to follow, and I trusted what I'd been taught to do.

I tried to keep myself as calm as possible.

It wasn't the first time I'd ever jumped out of a plane.

So you talk about resilience.

Resilience in my opinion, isn't built by like, get in the room for two hours.

We're gonna teach about resilience.

You're gonna come out, you're gonna be

No.

No.

you build up resilience by getting lots of reps. And getting knocked

down and getting back up again and again.

And you start to learn okay, I survived that.

I learned something, I can get better.

So if it had been my very first jump, I don't know if it would've got me back

in an airplane, but because it was like, probably like my 40th at that point,

I was like, yeah, I keep doing it.

The only time I was ever like, nervous jumping outta a plane,

honestly was probably my last jump because, it's your last

Oh, right.

you know, something could go bad type of

Yeah.

but somebody asked me one time like.

She went to ranger school.

What was it like to go to ranger school?

And I'm like, well, I didn't get up outta bed one day as a teenager.

I'm like, I'm gonna go to ranger school.

you work your way toward it.

And that's what we do in life,

Right.

People listening to this podcast, if they look at where

they're at right now, even if they see lots of great things they want to

achieve going forward, which is awesome,

sometimes

you can get a little down on yourself

just like, look at your resume.

And not to print it out.

Beautiful one, just like go through your experiences, chart it out and

you realize, man, I've had lots of ups and downs and I figured that

out and I can figure this out too.

Yeah.

that's what makes, life exciting

Yeah.

to try to figure these things out.

What's amazing to me is that you got a boot mark on your neck

at like the 40th jump, and you're like, yeah, I got another, 20 or 30 left in me.

that's incredible, man.

That's, that is resilient.

I mean.

know, I, it had to be something like that because it happened

around 1995 and I didn't stop jumping until almost the end of 97, so, yeah.

Wow.

it

Just moving, just keeping moving.

that's awesome.

Well, you know, I think this, that's a great story about moving through

that and just dealing with it.

But, and I love how you talk about resilience is that resilience is not

something you necessarily get in a class and it's more action oriented.

it's like, I love how you said it, it's getting the reps. And it's getting knocked

down and getting, and getting back up.

'cause I think that's exactly right.

when we, have some type of failure.

I love, uh, I was, we had a speaker one time that was a Navy Seal and

he said that he had a company.

And it, and bless their heart, I know whoever was coming into

the company, they had no idea what they were about to get into.

They walk in and they're in this interview and they push their resume across

the table and he just like crumples it up and throws it in the trash.

And he is like, I don't care about this.

This is your glossy whatever resume.

He goes,

Oh,

I wanna see your reverse resume.

And then he slides his reverse resume across the table, which is,

you know, all the failures and the, the things that didn't go your way

and all the things that, you know.

That that's a great

Yeah.

I call it the white space, but it's the same type of thing I have.

I've had students, especially students, 18 to 22-year-old, you're

trying to figure out like, what do you wanna do in your career, in

life, and, I think I'm like, I'm 57.

I'm

Yeah.

all that

Good luck.

That's right.

you're trying to figure this out and then you come across

and some of them were like, attracted to what I've done or what, whatever.

And they might look at my resume on LinkedIn and they'll say, can we grab

a coffee and talk about like, how did you do this, that, and the other.

I'm like, guys, that's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

all the lessons are learned in the white I didn't dare to

yeah,

of thing,

exactly.

world might, yeah, it, maybe I should put 'em all out there.

I love that idea.

The reverse

Yeah.

I said, the white space, that's where all the lessons are

That's it.

Yeah.

this award or achieved this thing or whatever it might be.

Yeah.

I didn't do it like out the gate.

In fact, I screwed up five times.

and then I figured I was the last person that would ever be

recognized for whatever, and then it

Yes,

which is great too.

I.

Yeah, that's, I mean, I, I told you, I started off saying

I, I dropped outta community college.

I mean, that's, that's not the best, that's not the best, you know, but, but

the funny thing was, I didn't talk about that for, I didn't talk about it for 20

Yes.

Right.

wife didn't know about it

Yeah.

years,

Oh, wow.

she's like, what?

I'm like, well, you know, I like the pool hall a

Right.

was fun.

That's not, that is true.

The.

Well, I think that's so true though.

I think the resilient, there's a, you know, there's a saying that you either

win or you learn, there's no losing.

You just win or learn.

And I think that would be something that would be akin to what you're saying

because when we quote unquote, lose.

If we learn, then it's not real loss.

And that's really what keeps you moving.

That's a resilient person.

Because if I lose, yeah, okay.

I lost, but I took this nugget with me and that helps me next time.

And then next time a little better.

And then next time a little better.

it's that kind of curiosity and improvement and all of

that kind of rolled into one.

So I love that.

Although I do, although you know that people say sometimes oh,

there's no such thing as a problem.

They're all opportunities.

Sometimes there's problems sometimes I don't wanna learn, I don't wanna grow,

I don't wanna develop, I just wanna take care of this thing and never see

Yeah.

And, and I'm okay with that.

Yeah.

Like fixing something around my house.

I don't look to be a handyman.

I'll pull out the YouTube video.

I'll figure this thing out, and I'll hopefully

Never have to do it again.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Agreed a hundred percent.

Well, I wanna talk a little bit about your work because I think that, I was

just listening to this clip the other day and, it was very interesting and

they were talking about the national debt and they were essentially like,

this is a problem that's so bad that it ultimately, it's gonna be very difficult

to solve because it just, because of what would be necessary to do it.

Unless we have this massive innovation and, you know, robotics and AI essentially

increase the productivity of our economy so much that we can essentially outrun.

the debt and the interest in pay it all off.

And I was like, wow.

I don't know if that's like, I, I was sitting there like, man, I don't know

if I'm encouraged that there is a way or if that is the way and that's

just terrifying the way that there, the way that they would position it.

we'll grow our way out of

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

And and they weren't saying that we couldn't cut spending.

It was just saying that the likelihood that you can do that in

this democracy is, would be tough because of all the political stuff.

but I was looking at that and I was like, you know, we're having

these conversations right now.

Literal conversations that when I was a kid was like, science fiction,

we're creating, like, I don't know that, the Star Trek with that guy,

that was a robot data, you know, I mean, like we're talking about, we're

talking about that actually being real

talking Star Trek, the next

The next Gen.

It's not even the first, it's not even the first Star Trek.

It's the second Star Trek.

So

Yeah.

that's coming.

There's so many things coming to reality right now, and I think that

the speed of these things that people, especially in the workforce leaders that

they're trying to manage through and lead through the speed of change it.

We thought it accelerated in the last 20 years, but it's, it feels like it's

picking up and getting even faster.

And there's even more disruptions with this AI technology and

robotics coming out, even quantum, computing and all these things.

It's on the horizon that's not that far off that, that are actually

Yep.

very quickly.

So I thought this was a fantastic, your work on in disruption, was so important

and so relevant and timely because.

It is exactly what a lot of leaders are facing right now

in their work and at home.

and I think there's a lot of fear that goes along with that, right?

So people are.

Wondering if the, if my job is, you know, I think this, this last month a Amazon

laid off a lot of workers and I'm, I mean, I think that a lot of that has to do with

some of them being able to be, replaced by either robotics or AI or whatever.

And so it's like people looking around, kinda looking over their shoulder

like, what am I supposed to do here?

And yet this is an incredible opportunity that we are on the cusp of, so I

would love to just hear your thoughts.

First of all, what inspired you to write the book?

Oh, thanks.

Yeah.

So, um, when COVID hit, I imagine most people on this have heard of that.

When COVID hit at the, where I was at the university and the chancellor

sent out through his office a note.

asking professors, if anybody's willing to teach a class online up

to a hundred students, let us know.

And just to put that in perspective, Vanderbilt wasn't teaching anything

really online, and classes really weren't a hundred people, right?

So

Wow.

it.

You go to Vanderbilt and you're gonna sit in a class with 25 people and you're

gonna be taught by a professor, not a ta.

It's a very, you know, kind of experience.

And, so I thought, this is an interesting opportunity.

I'd like to teach a class on leading business through crisis.

It was something I was interested in.

I'd done some work in, I wanted to do that class.

It seemed like a topic that was relevant, certainly based upon going into COVID.

So they approved it and I started teaching it.

then COVID, ended petered out.

We came back, whatever you wanna say.

Yeah.

With COVID, nobody wants to say

Yeah, yeah,

show up

yeah.

but we got back in the classroom and the class kept going.

Well, unbeknownst to me, a gentleman named Michael Ainsley who had.

Michael Ainsley was the former CEO of Sotheby's, the auction house.

Yes.

a Vanderbilt alum.

He had a crazy ride because he was on the board of Lehman Brothers

when Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Oh my

having to deal with that.

goodness.

he's a Vanderbilt alum who was asked by someone else to go

speak at a class at Brown University.

And Michael went up and spoke at Brown University.

It was a class about dealing with adversity.

And when that, when he was done with that, he came back and he said to

the Chancellor at Vanderbilt, we should have this class at Vanderbilt.

These guest speakers.

And then have you ever seen that Plinko game on, on prices?

Yes.

if people aren't familiar with it, you're in these,

you, I guess you guess on prizes and you get the price right?

And you get these chips kind of, um, you know, these discs and you climb

up to the top of this board and you drop the disc in and it kind of bing,

bing, bing binging, pops through the pegs on the board and lands in a slot.

And sometimes you get money and sometimes you get no money or whatever it might be.

It's

Right.

kind of a random thing.

I felt like it was a little game of Plinko that happened because here I

am, a professor running a program.

Tom, the bottom, I'm at the bottom.

The board and the chancellor drops this Plinko chip in and it bing,

bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

And it lands on me because they said, oh my gosh, you wanna do class on adversity?

This guy does a class on disruption.

Why partner you two together?

partnered with Michael Ansley and the idea was we'll do one section every

semester where we have guest speakers come in for the entire session.

So.

It was, it was really interesting.

So one example I would give is we would have Doug Parker come in,

who was the chairman at the time of, CEO of American Airlines.

come in with Sarah, Nelson, who was the, president of the

Flight Attendants Association.

So you got labor and management coming in, in front of 25 students to talk

about how they dealt with crisis.

Just really interesting conversations.

Right?

And one gentleman who joined us one class session was James Patterson, the author.

Wow.

James Patterson started out by telling his story.

He said to the students, he said, first of all, he said, are you living a good

life or do you feel like you're on one treadmill just to get another treadmill?

Just to get another treadmill just to.

it up, you know what's going, you know how you see your life.

And he said, I'm, he said, I'm living a good life.

And here's how I went about doing it.

And he talked about how

Wow.

people don't typically know this, but he was the CEO at one

point of Jay Walter Thompson, which is the largest, advertising agency at the time.

He was the CEO of that at 38 years old.

Oh my

creative

goodness

or something like that.

I did not know that.

Wow.

Yeah, getting the job.

He said, I disrupted their whole process because you had to bring a

portfolio of ads that you make up in and drop the portfolio off, and

they review it and they see if they like it or not for an interview.

He brought in one, one week, then he made up a whole different one and brought

it the second week and then a whole different one and brought the third week.

He's like, thankfully they hired me on the fourth week, but he disrupted

their whole hiring process He took over as CEO and he kinda had the itch.

He wasn't fulfilled by it.

He had been writing something on the side and he decided, you know what?

I'm gonna, I'm gonna quit the role of CEO of this company,

which he'd been very successful.

I mean, James Patterson wrote the line, I'm a toys us kid,

Oh my

he's like

gosh.

Oh

at advertising,

my gosh.

writing.

Yeah.

So he jumped out of the, advertising world and went all in on writing,

and then he just disrupted writing.

He got in there and he said, why do we only write one, book a year?

Why?

Why is that the rule?

Why can't we do several?

Why do we have to only write in one genre?

Why can't I write in several?

Why is it wrong to write with different authors?

Why can't I write with lots of partners?

And he just did all, and now he's, I mean, his numbers are staggering.

Over 425 million books sold.

I had no idea.

you say nobody gets wealthy writing books?

Well, there's one, him and JK Rowling, he, writes with multiple authors.

He, writes in multiple genres.

I think he put out nine books this year.

What.

from working with him, yeah, with working with him,

he's very engaged in all nine books.

It's pretty wild.

So anyway, he went through this whole thing in the presentation.

He called it the Power of Disruption.

And when it was over, I was like.

That's really interesting.

I would love to dig more into how do people take a curve ball thrown at them

approach it, at least from a positive perspective instead of saying, oh

gosh, this is gonna destroy everything.

Mm.

of that, they look at it and go, is this fertile ground?

Mm

cool that could happen

mm.

So I approach them and.

Note to everyone.

Don't do what I do.

I did.

So I sent him a note that basically said, I like you, you like me?

Let's write a book together.

He did.

he didn't answer that note.

10, 10 days, 10 days later, I gave it a second shot.

And this time I was a little bit more like, here's why I

think it would make sense.

And when I started my business years ago, um, I, like I mentioned Franklin Covey,

I got really close to them very early on.

They were, I did a lot of contract work with them.

They were a client of mine.

I had a chance to work with Steven Covey, who wrote Seven

Habits, highly Effective People,

Wow.

get a little close to him.

So I saw how it worked and I was able to explain like, here's what

could happen if we did a book in this space and did it well.

It could impact a lot of people, et cetera, et cetera.

And he said, okay, let's do it.

then it was a little bit like, okay, let's do it.

What does that mean?

And trying to figure out the dance for the partner is always

Wow.

And us about 10 months to get the, the outline where we felt

Mm-hmm.

and.

About eight months into working on that, I, I approached, I went back

to the Chancellor at Vanderbilt and I, this is kind of crazy.

this is crazy.

So I went to the Chancellor at Vanderbilt, which I built a little bit of rapport

with him, but in general, you kind of avoid the chancellor, I mean, right.

You don't, you don't go, you don't go there.

You don't go there unless you need to.

But I thought, I think I've got this interesting opportunity.

So I went to the Chancellor, and this is exactly what I said.

I said, chancellor, dear Meyer, I have a 15%, one 5% chance of writing a book

with the world's bestselling author.

If you give me what I want, it'll be a 50% chance, and if I do what I promise you

I'm going to do every month, the chance of that happening will go up two to 3%.

He's what do you need?

I said, I need some funding for a research team.

And he said, you got it.

So tech, I guess at that moment, I walked out the door with 50%, now I promised to

him that I was gonna do two to 3% work every month and move it toward a hundred.

If you take two to 3% and average those out, that's obviously

two point a half percent.

If you had two and a half percent every month to that 50% the month it hit 100%.

We sold the book.

Good gracious day.

Hey, hey, that's

you know, there's a

a heck of estimator right there.

in, there's a lot of value in spreadsheets.

There's also a lot of value in the back of the

Yeah,

and just lead it to your experience.

yeah.

So that was kind of crazy.

obviously I made an appointment with him and said, Hey, here's the math a

hundred percent we just sold the book.

that's ins.

yeah.

That's incredible.

Oh my gosh.

that project we worked on, it took about two and a half years,

two and a half, three years of research where we went out and we interviewed, 350

people and you do long form interviews.

You know

Mm-hmm.

it takes to 350 people,

oh,

took a

that's a long time.

and doing them, and then.

Going through the transcripts and coding it and trying to figure it out.

We're trying to figure out, obviously when you're going through these people, you're

looking for people who do certain things.

People who've had certain experiences who have dealt with adversity or challenges.

And then we went through those and we started to realize what's the pattern?

What did they tend to do

Hmm.

and what strengths did they have?

Are there consistent strengths?

And so that's what the book is really about.

It's a book of their, ended up being a book of 32 of those 350 stories.

But it's not just a book of story.

I mean, books of

Wow.

great.

but each story advances a, an idea.

like the first story in the book is all about understanding the fire inside you

or in your team or in your organization, like understanding kinda your purpose.

hmm.

And we used a story there about a young lady who, became the

first black, puppeteer, on Sesame Street.

how she got a message during COVID and said, Hey, are you

still interested in doing this?

And she's like, oh my gosh, yes.

And how she, with two young kids who still figured out how do I do this?

During COVID with my two kids, trained to be a puppeteer.

And I actually had dinner with her.

I saw her this past Saturday, and I said, Hey, I'm gonna be

in New York on x, y, Z day.

And she said, we're gonna be there too.

She said, you should come by and visit Sesame Street.

So I might get to go see

Oh, that's so cool.

Oh, that, I would love to do that.

that's a great visit right there, man.

So there's lots, and every story kind of builds on the idea.

It introduces the mindsets and the roles you could take on,

the behaviors you could take on.

And some of the stories are, really well-known people that we interviewed.

There's a few of them in there where people are like, oh,

I kind of know that person.

But a lot of them are people you've never heard of before.

So I say it's like household names to un unsung heroes.

'cause there's a lot of people, it's like, I didn't know that

person, but that's really

I think that's really good though, because

that makes it relatable, right?

So if you're only reading about CEOs and Hollywood actors and the person that maybe

doesn't see themselves or put themselves in that category may just disconnect.

But if you have that mix of this is people that's just from every

day to, to famous or, influential.

I mean, I think that just makes it more, It just makes it more tangible

for everybody, for all the readers, and it's very interesting too.

mi you want a couple ones that are like really aspir,

like they're all aspirational in a way, but some of they're like,

wow, that is, I'd be reaching for the stars if I was that person.

And then some of them are like, I can relate to that.

Yeah.

situation.

You wanna mix them in there.

And that's where the research team is really great at helping me think

through Which one will work here and then run it by Jim and see what he

think Patterson, see what he thinks.

And and just really trying to figure out, 'cause the other side

of the coin is like, gosh, you still have, 318 really great stories out

Oh wow.

all of them informed the book in various ways, but just

all of 'em couldn't make it in,

So

unfortunately.

ask you a bit, 'cause whenever I interview,

especially in this format, I'm always, there's always surprises.

Like in these conversations, you just, you come away and you're like, ha.

I did not know that that was An unexpected, surprise.

So what was something out of those interviews that would you say in going

through this process and looking at all the transcripts and reviewing

all this, was there anything that jumps out in your mind that was the

biggest surprise out of this project?

Yeah, there's a few things.

kind of more macro thing is when we were going through the process of trying to

figure out the behaviors, so what are the behaviors that these people exhibit?

We didn't find a tight list of three.

Mm.

didn't find if you do these three things, you're gonna

be a great positive disruptor in the

Mm

What we found is about 16, we not about, we found 16

behaviors that we kept showing up.

They kind of rose to the

mm.

What's interesting is no one was killing on all of them.

some people were good at like one, seven and nine, and some people

were good, good at two, 10 and

Wow.

and there was no magic combination.

If you had this one, you were guaranteed to nail it.

what I took away from that really was that.

All of us have some positive disruptor strengths.

And these are things like a vision.

looking at the brutal reality of where you stand.

That's one thing to like cast a vision.

It's another thing to go, okay, I wanna be a basketball player

in the NBA, but you know, I'm 57

Yeah.

five eight.

That's not gonna happen.

Right?

But some people are good at one, some people are good at others,

some people are good at both.

another behavior would be something like, they stand firm in the face of doubters.

When people tell them they can't do it, they're like holding from

yeah, I can make this happen.

Other people had really good instincts.

They could trust their guts.

Other, some people you would not wanna go to Vegas with, they don't

Yeah.

good instincts at all.

Right?

So, so the neat thing about it is we all, I would argue that everybody,

'cause I've talked to a lot of audiences, not go through the behaviors

with them and they'll raise their hands at the ones they think they're

strong at and they all show up.

Different people have different things.

So I think that's one of the beauties of this.

and it isn't like a situation where it's like, oh, if you violate one of

these, you blow up the whole thing.

It's like, no, some of these people violated some of these things too,

but they leaned into their strengths.

So I think that at the macro level, kinda really stuck with me.

more specifically.

There was one instance that really stuck with me and actually.

I mentioned Franklin Covey.

Patterson and I sold a license to build a course on the book that Franklin Covey's

launching November 17th of this year.

Wow.

And, yeah, it's about innovation and they found one of

the stories as compelling as I did.

They went down to Florida and filmed this story.

But it's a story about a guy named Tom Diri.

and very quickly for the audience, Tom lives in South Florida.

was in school 22 years old, getting outta college, planned to go to Manhattan

and work in consulting, but at the same time, he was concerned about his.

Brother Andrew, who was 20 at the time and was aging out of

the school system in Florida and Andrew's on the autism spectrum.

And Tom was kinda like, I'm gonna do this.

I could have this great consulting career, but what was my brother going to do?

Tom, that was a disruptive moment.

what's he going to do?

fast forward to today, Tom is currently the, owner and operator

of three car washes in Florida called Rising Tide Car Wash.

And of their 100 employees, 90 of them are in the autism spectrum.

Oh

it's just an amazing story.

If you're

Oh wow.

go to the car wash.

Right?

And by the way, they're more productive and more profitable

Oh,

other car

a hundred percent.

the

A hundred percent.

Yeah.

it isn't because it isn't just because of the

goodness of the cause, right?

I mean, people might be like, oh, I really care about this, cause

I'm gonna take my car there.

People will do that, but if their car's not getting clean, they're

not gonna keep coming back.

Tom had to learn how to kinda work his way through.

it's a great story.

It's an amazing story, of a positive disruptor that's an unsung hero that

most of us never heard about, that people will start going, who's Tom Dei?

And I love to be able to tell that story, but what really, what, for me

personally, what kind of hit me was.

I went down and interviewed him.

We got a chance to, I got a chance to tour the place and this is like when the

book was still on a hope and a prayer.

Hmm.

sit down in the break room slash office of the car wash.

I'd never been folks, I'd never been in the break room, supply

room, office of a car wash.

I'd always been in the other room adjacent to it where you get the stale

Yeah.

Right.

in this room.

I'm in this room with Tom, and we're talking for about an hour and a half.

And as we were finishing up.

put it in perspective, the room is crowded and congested.

It has like supplies in there for cleaning.

It has supplies in there for the vending machines.

It has a couple desks and people's clothing, and it's just, it's compact.

Tom's wearing a red polo shirt, and as I'm walking, as I'm walking out, I just turn

around and there's really a lot of value.

I know you do a lot of coaching work and there's a lot of value,

but asking just one more question.

I had one question hit me as I was walking out the door and I turned around and I

said, Tom, just one more question for you.

What would your 22-year-old self say?

What would 22-year-old Tom Diri say if he saw a 30 5-year-old Tom Diri sitting

in a red polo shirt at a car wash?

And what would the kids say?

He was wanting to go to Manhattan, say, when he saw you in today,

and Tom responded, he would say, I'm in the exact right spot.

Wow.

Wow,

let that hit you for a second, right?

I'm in the exact right

man.

first of all, for Tom to know it and know it

like that I'm in the right spot.

I wish that for all of

Oh yeah.

because one of the things we talk about in the research in the

book is there's these four fundamental facts about disruption that we all

just have to wrap our heads around.

first one is, the status quo is a deceptive little devil.

If you like things the way they are, they're not gonna stay that way.

So you know, prepare for tomorrow.

But also if you don't like things the way they are, if you're going

through a really tough time, it's not gonna stay that It's gonna change.

there's a lot of good in that.

Yeah.

second fundamental fact is it's okay that things are going to change

because you're wired to deal with this.

Are we have big brains

Yes.

That can think of amazing things.

we can, do that last 10% really strong.

We can make that choice, right?

Yeah.

We can lean in, we can pull back, we can make, we

can regulate our, how we use our time and a lot of different things.

We also have really great experiences.

We talked about that reverse

resume or that white space We can look at our experience and

go, okay, I got through that.

I can get through this.

And then lastly, we have resources.

We have people around us.

We have technology that our ancestors never had that can do amazing

things, so you're wired to disrupt.

So again, first one

disrupt status quo is a deceptive little devil.

Second one, you're wired to disrupt.

Third one is relationships in life provide headwinds and tailwinds.

They pick you up or they hold you back, and it's really good to surround

yourself with people who lift you up.

And if people are holding you back, it's really good to kind of disrupt that

relationship and have a conversation.

You know, you're going into the holiday period.

Yes.

of people are gonna be going around the dinner table

with people who they feel like have historically held them back.

Now might be the time to disrupt that relationship a bit.

It doesn't mean storming out of the room, it doesn't mean ending it and saying,

I'm never gonna talk to you again.

It might mean putting some new boundaries in

Mm-hmm.

Or it might be like saying, Hey, I'm not

that 15-year-old kid anymore.

Here's who I am today.

Yes.

Right?

And at the same time, you might realize that there's some people around the table

that you're actually holding them back.

Right.

do I do about that?

And

Yeah.

fundamental fact is, the one I wanted to get to on this

thing is that, your time here is finite.

Make it count in ways that matter.

Hmm.

That's what Tom Dey was really showing us that day.

I'm in the exact right place.

I could have went embedded a consultant in Manhattan and maybe

had a really great life, but for me, I would not have had the best life.

I think that's really cool.

I would say at a macro level, we all have strengths.

And at the micro level, gosh, that idea that Tom said just really hit me powerful.

Man, I love how you started and ended with that same idea

of purpose, because when you said that first story, there was so much purpose

in that, in understanding and finding and living and working in that purpose.

And I think that's really encouraging.

Whether you have disruption.

Pushed on you by something external that you weren't expecting that catches

you off guard, or you are the disruptor and you're required to disrupt.

and you know that is what's,

that's, well, that's the thing.

That's the thing man, is Dallas, is that we are all, we are all the disrupted.

are all the disrupted.

We are all being impacted by ai.

We're all being impacted by the economy.

We're all being impacted by the next dinner conversation that somebody might

say something at dinner table at home, if you even have one of those anymore.

I mean, we're all the disrupted.

Some of us choose to be the disruptor.

Yes.

a positive, what we call a positive disruptor.

That's a really key word, positive,

Yes,

when you're a positive disruptor, you're

coming from a source of purpose.

You're saying I'm doing this because our purpose of our team is that

I'm not doing it to be a curmudgeon or difficult or just blow up the

meeting to be blow up the meeting.

I'm doing it and asking a challenging question we wanna get

because we wanna get better.

and what we found is that you would almost think that, oh,

the opposite of a positive disruptor is a negative disruptor, and it's

really not the opposite of the thing.

The thing that keeps all of us from being positive disruptors is

a relentless pursuit of the status

Of the status quo.

a relentless pursuit of comfort.

Complacency, yeah.

that's what gets us.

So the ability to say, you know what, and see it in ourselves.

And Challenge ourselves or have people in our lives who can challenge us.

I think all of us need to have, this isn't in the book, but just a random thought.

I think all of us need to have three voices in our lives.

We need to have the voice that challenges

us the voice that tells us the truth and the voice that encourages us.

And sometimes that can be the same person.

Oftentimes it's not.

mm.

um, you know, my mom passed away about, 14 years ago

in December, and my mom was always a good voice of encouragement.

Mm.

So, you know, luckily I've had other people feel that my

wife is a great voice of encouragement.

So you need to have those people.

wife is also a great, voice of truth to me

Mm-hmm.

and so the, and you know when you get it 'cause somebody hits

that truth button, you're like, oof.

Ooh.

Yeah.

Right.

And then also a voice of challenge saying, you, you could do more.

I see it in you.

Yes, yes.

think we need those things.

Yeah.

I love that.

I, I mean, man, that is spot on.

I know that if you're listening to last 10%, if you're coaching

a team, you just got a huge value bomb, and he just dropped on that.

I love that.

I would love to, just as we close the show, because this is, we could

talk for three hours for real.

I just enjoyed this.

This has been a great conversation, but as we move to the close, I would like to

ask, what would you say to the listeners.

Who may be a little bit concerned about the transformation that we're seeing with

AI and robotics and things like that.

How, what would you speak to them in this, in at this time if you had something

to say based on your work in this book?

Well, I, I would first say that, you know,

whatever you're feeling about it.

That's all right.

Right.

Some people are anxious, some people are fearful, some people are hiding from it

and acting like, you know, I can wait this thing out, or I can retire, or

whatever it might be, and it won't hit my industry in the next 10 years or whatever.

process your way through those things.

but then.

just look at it for what it's, sometimes the pendulum and sometimes

in our lives will swing from anxiety and fear to just ignoring it.

But ne neither of those perspectives are actually very helpful.

What's most helpful of oftentimes is hit it face on and think let

yourself think about the demo rollercoaster, but then say, okay,

let's get real about this thing.

I would say a couple things.

I've heard it said that.

When it comes to technology, we often overestimate what it's gonna do in

the short term and underestimate what it's gonna do in the long term.

we overestimate it in the short term over underestimate it in the long term.

So is AI gonna transform our world?

Yes.

Is it gonna transform your world today?

Some of you.

Yeah.

All of us over time.

Mm-hmm.

Um, I also know when you look at companies when they're looking

right now, there's a lot of conversation about the ROI of the AI investments, and

they're not seeing it, they're not seeing the return on their investments right now.

there's some reasons behind it.

sometimes they'll, because CEOs of companies are a

little bit concerned about.

I wanna use, I wanna figure out AI better.

I wanna use technology better.

I can see the benefits for it, but I'm not gonna put it on this main project

that could actually mess up our strategy.

I'll put it on these other side projects.

Right.

So.

If they're not pointing the bat at the main thing, they're not

necessarily gonna get the big ROI.

So that might be one of the reasons too.

So I would say that organizations are trying to figure this thing out.

Do I think that, it's going to impact leaders?

Absolutely.

I think that you're going to have work being done by, you know, carbon based

life forms, and you're gonna have work being done by silicone, things.

I think that, your span of control is going to

Mm-hmm.

I remember growing up you'd have like five

to eight people reporting to you.

It as kind of the typical span of control of a leader.

We're seeing flattening of organizations.

We're seeing span of control changing because they're saying, well, technology

can help with this, that, and the other.

but ultimately I think that when you, if you spend your time, no matter

what the topic is, and I'm not a futurist, I'm a humanist, I'm a human.

Behavioralist, I should say.

I, what I can tell you is it's.

Technology's gonna keep coming.

there's a lot of things that are gonna happen out there that you

can be concerned about, did you not to be able to do anything about,

spending a lot of time thinking about that is probably wasted time.

a picture like you're on the airplane and everybody else is worried about ai.

So they're, this is kinda silly example, but you're on the airplane

and everybody else is playing games, watching TV or sleeping.

You're the one saying, those are all good things, but I'm gonna focus on getting

something done right now, type of thing.

So kinda expand that like everybody else when they think about AI as

they're playing games, they're sleeping, they're concerned, they're whatever.

Yeah,

in your hand?

what's in your hands?

What can you do right now?

I love it.

that's where I think we can put our best energy.

So I was talking to somebody not that long ago who's concerned about ai very,

this is like very specific, but he said to me, he was explaining like why

he thought AI was gonna take his job.

He had a fair argument.

He said, AI, chat pt, these tools like this, you give 'em a prompt.

They can write some really great stuff.

It's not always but it's like 70 or 80% right, and then you

can play with it from there.

This guy's job was to write a lot of copy and a lot of speeches in his

organizations that the ceo EO would give.

He's like, I'm writing speeches for the CEO.

The CEO just used a speech that was written by chat, GPT.

I'm gonna lose my job.

Hmm.

What I said to him in that moment was, you might lose your job.

Let me ask you this.

Do you see

I.

a world AI existing that you can actually be more valuable to

the company, not less valuable, do you see with the existence of ai, you could

still make yourself more valuable here.

And he thought about that for a moment.

And basically what I was saying is, do you see the disruption as AI as being

nothing but destruction you see it as fertile ground for something different?

He thought about it for a moment, he said, yeah, I think I, I could, I said, okay.

In the book, we talk about five roles you can take on, and each of them,

because we talk about the fire inside, each role has a fire idea to it.

So there's a trailblazer, a Pathfinder, a Tinder gatherer,

a firefighter and a fire chief.

Those are the five

Yeah.

said, which of these five roles would you take on?

And he's like, I think I would take on the, the trailblazer role, which is you're

like, you're moving toward the change and you're leading out independently.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out and learn as much as I can about this right now.

I'll become the guy at the company that knows ai and then I'll spread it.

I'll take out a torch bearer role and spread it kind of as a movement.

Okay, let's look at your strengths.

What of these 16 strengths, which ones do you have?

And he looked through 'em.

We talked about it for release.

I got a couple of these things who could help you, you know?

So basically by the time the conversation was over, I mean,

might AI still take his job?

Maybe.

at least he's doing what I hope most of us will do.

He's putting himself in the driver's

Oh yeah,

you know,

yeah.

it's gonna take me, I'm gonna give this thing a fight and

I'm gonna learn a lot in the process.

And, not a fight to like destroy ai, a fight to leverage AI,

Yeah.

my thought partner,

Well, and that's the thing is that what you gave him was

empowerment man, and encouragement and truth all at the same time.

Because what you said was, Hey look, it may take your current role.

But it, that doesn't mean it has to get rid, that doesn't mean the

company's gonna get rid of you because what you just empowered him to do

is go in and create and add value in either it's better the way that he's

doing it with AI or just using AI and being that guy in the organization.

So it's just a different role.

So he's just transitioning to a new role that doesn't exist.

Let's say that the company does get rid of

him like six months from now.

He gives it a valiant

Hmm.

says, yeah, it's not a good utilization of our resources.

Yeah.

what has he done in the last six months?

Has he worried?

Is he worried?

Probably some, but not as much as he would've if he just thought about it.

I'm waiting for it to marched down the hallway

Yeah.

me.

It's just more like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do something.

So, in the book really the first chapter is all about purpose.

Basically, we don't spend much time.

Other than that, we don't really spend much time other than that,

talking about purpose because there's a lot of great books and tools

out there to help you think about

Mm-hmm.

what the rest of the book is saying, okay, while

you're trying to live out that purpose, life is gonna throw stuff

Yep.

Let's talk through how you deal with that

Man.

That's awesome.

the rest of the book is exactly like.

It's really all about the power of

That's wonderful.

So let's close the show by saying this, number one, when does the book come out?

And how can people find you and connect with you and buy the book?

Yeah, thanks for asking.

It's actually

Okay.

and it hit the New York Times bestseller list,

Oh, congratulations.

That's awesome.

Congratulations.

doesn't, this copy doesn't have, but right at the

top now it says New York Times

Nice.

yeah, and, it, so it's out.

People could find more about me.

My name's Patrick Ledon and got in the show notes if you want.

It's just Patrick led in.com,

Okay.

easy.

Patrick ledon.com.

All right.

Now we always ask the guest on the show who they would like to

see as a guest on the last 10%.

A young lady named Lucy Westlake.

Who I interviewed, I interviewed her.

I actually wrote a book a few years ago.

it hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list.

Oh, nice.

up.

See?

Yeah,

yeah, I went from self-published to

published by a big house.

It was published by another big house to writing with Patterson.

That's talk about resilience,

that's the order.

She's in this book and she's the youngest, female North

American female to climb Mount Everest.

And just a great story about a young lady who, with her dad, they, they

started hiking it when she was a little girl, like seven years old.

And then over the course of time, they ended up going to High Point in

every, every state including, Denali

Oh wow.

And and then she climbed Kilimanjaro and she climbed

Aconcagua and she was able to climb the high point in, Russia.

and she's a really gifted athlete.

She ran track at, university of, Southern California, and, decided she, and then

she decided she was going to, Really lean.

She did triathlons someone, she was a little girl.

She recently decided, I'm gonna get back into triathlons and

qualified for the wor fe women's world triathlons in New Zealand.

she's, but more

Wow.

prowess, right?

'cause it's great that she has all this athletic skill.

Somebody might be like, but I'm Patrick.

I don't have all the athletic skill.

it's just her heart and her energy.

and her.

She's really interested in, some really interesting topics around,

How do we make sure these mountains stay clean and available for

the next generation and beyond?

And I just love a 22-year-old thinker like

That's great.

so many ways.

Wonderful.

Well, we'll have to reach out to her and, see if we can get her on the show.

That would be an amazing episode.

So I appreciate that recommendation.

Patrick, thank you for your time today.

Thank you for sharing all your wisdom on the last 10%.

I know our listeners really enjoyed having you on the show.

Thanks so much, man.