Go All In: How an Australian Military Veteran Is Making Every Moment Count, With Robert Brus. (#97) — Transcript
Updated: Oct 26
THE PICTURE OF WEALTH · EPISODE 97
Dustin Serviss speaks with Australian military veteran Robert Brus about his Go All In philosophy, leadership and applying lessons from military preparation to business and life.
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This transcript was generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain transcription or speaker-attribution errors. Refer to the recording for exact wording.
Chapters
[00:00:00] Discovering a creative outlet
[00:05:19] Podcasting and reinvention
[00:11:08] Adapting when the world changes
[00:16:08] Rethinking the pursuit of happiness
[00:21:26] Working underwater in the navy
[00:26:32] Why you cannot do everything alone
[00:30:52] Comfort and modern life
[00:36:16] Training concentration
[00:41:49] Breathing, distraction and priorities
[00:46:32] An airborne-operation lesson
Guest & resources
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Robert Brus: I never had a creative outlet in my life before because I'm not a musician. I'm not really a writer. I love music. I love art. I love, you know, television and movies like everybody does, but I've never had a creative outlet for myself. And when I discovered podcasting and I discovered, you know, that that idea and that mindset of commitment and success and doing whatever it takes to succeed, I I really found myself. And it was a bit of a rebirth. I was forty when it happened.
[00:00:27] Dustin Serviss: Welcome to the picture of wealth or TPAW as we call it. I am your host, Dustin Service. That is the voice of Robert Brus coming to us from Australia. Now Robert is, I call him an influencer, a mind, leader, and, he has a company called Go All In, which is a consulting business and teaching business owners how to do multiple things. Again, strategy, growth, how to build a podcast. He's done a number of things. But what we got into was a... Was his paramilitary training. Robert was in the military for, almost twelve years, and we broke down some of the leadership skills that he learned along the way and how
[00:01:02] Dustin Serviss: he helps take those leadership skills from the military and some of the specifics, like jumping out of an airplane and parachuting into some sort of training exercise or a mission and what preparation and what people can do to transport that knowledge into their business because it's similar. We we, you know, don't know everything. Everything isn't set. And all of a sudden, you know, you do your best, but you're you're going flying through the air and something doesn't work. That's just like business and entrepreneurship. So without further ado, I give you Robert Bruss. I'm excited to have Robert Bruss on the show today and have him explain
[00:01:36] Dustin Serviss: and break down how to get better in life, how to get better at hacking, all the mindset, different things. He has got a resume that you guys will want to dig into, and I am certainly curious about it. Rob Russ, thanks for being on the show today, and tell us a little bit more about Go All In.
[00:01:53] Robert Brus: Good day, mate. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show. It's funny having the polar opposites of weather going on. You just said to me that you come off the ski fields and I'm about to go to the beach. It's literally the opposite in opposite end of the world. It's the funnest thing that I love to do about podcasting and recording these interviews, getting to meet people from all over the world. I've been doing the podcasting for about almost five years now. When I kicked off, I, the pretense of me beginning my podcasting journey was all about wanting to write a book.
[00:02:24] Robert Brus: Hundred and fifty pages into a book, and I realized I didn't want to write a book. And the reason I didn't want to do that is because I felt like that my ideas were just fixed. And I was putting these ideas down and and it's like I was fixing them in time and space forever. But my opinions changed from one hour to the next like every human on planet Earth. And I thought, well, what's a better way of doing that? Maybe I can do this. What's this podcasting thing? What's this all about? And so I began my journey doing that. And, you know, the the very the very difficult thing about starting a
[00:02:58] Robert Brus: podcast, I think maybe sometimes it can be the hardest thing about starting a podcast is what on earth do you call a thing? Over the last couple of years, I've helped more than forty people launch their own shows. So, you know, in the process of becoming a successful podcaster myself, I've helped other people do the same thing. My life, I I kind of looked at my life and thought, what can I do? And this is what I say to my clients all the time. What can I talk about for a thousand episodes? And the reality is, like, you... You've gotta talk about something you're deeply passionate about and that you can
[00:03:34] Robert Brus: talk about all day long for hours and hours at a time without getting bored or without running out of ideas. And it really forced me to actually reflect on my life. I look at the way that I approach things. And most people do this, you know, in one version or another, but I tend to actually overcommit to things. If I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna commit to it, and I'm gonna go all in on
[00:04:00] Dustin Serviss: it. Yeah.
[00:04:01] Robert Brus: And I look at what I've done in my life in the military as an entrepreneur, as a parent, as a partner, and I'm really, really committed to following through and seeing the success that I've always aiming at. So I think it's really important that you've got goals in your life and you've got targets that you can aim at. And I've always been somebody who's definitely done that. But when I've decided to commit to those goals, I really go all in on it. And that was sort of the the genesis of my podcast, and it was a real creative outlet. And I never had a creative outlet in my life before because I'm not a musician. I'm not really a writer.
[00:04:41] Robert Brus: I love music. I love art. I love, you know, television and movies like everybody does, but I've never had a creative outlet for myself. And when I discovered podcasting and I discovered, you know, that that idea and that mindset of commitment and success and doing whatever it takes to succeed, I really found myself. And it was a bit of a rebirth. I was forty when it happened. And I kind of I thought to myself, you know, when I was at school, I was that typical STEM male. So I don't know what it's like in Canadian society, but in Australian society at school, boys are pointed at mathematics, science, physics, chemistry, those sorts of things.
[00:05:19] Robert Brus: And I really loved all of those things. I love those engineering type topics and I loved all of that, you know, that, engineering type thinking. But the reality was I was never exposed to anything creative. I never did a music lesson. I never, you know, played the guitar or played the drums or did some acting or some stage, something like that. And it wasn't until I was forty years old that I discovered that for myself. And in the process, I got really good at it and I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people. I think my count is... The Go All In Show is about a hundred and sixty, but I've had,
[00:05:49] Robert Brus: you know, probably half a dozen other shows as well. I think the totality of all the recording that I've done and the interviews that I've done personally is about eight or nine hundred or something like that. I'll stop counting a while ago, but it's a lot of interviews to get to meet a lot of incredible people. Everyone from billionaires to small business owners to everything in between. And you know, the one common thing that we have in this human experience is when somebody's got a goal and they really commit to that goal and they really have a single-minded focus on that goal, it usually happens much
[00:06:20] Robert Brus: faster than you ever think possible, which is a really cool lesson to share with people.
[00:06:24] Dustin Serviss: Well, it's very cool to work with people and see them accomplish their goals using, the framework. You you set me up with so many places, I wanna go. My brain goes, to two places. So we're gonna park the paratrooper, military thing because I know there's some lessons we can learn out of that. But first, this... I I didn't realize this about you, but in your early years of being a younger person, society might have been different back then and we just might not have noticed. There was this sort of this... I don't wanna wanna say because, again, I'm I'm forty one, and I wrote a book, and I started the podcast about two years ago.
[00:07:01] Dustin Serviss: So right about where you sort of Right. Had this age forty epiphany. So, what I think maybe it is is that, you know, when your younger self, you're eighteen, nineteen, you wanna be somebody, you wanna you wanna make money, you wanna grow something, you wanna build something, you wanna you wanna some status. And the the way in my head back then it was, maybe this is different for lots of other people, I don't know, was make some freaking money. So make some money, figure out how to, you know, then doors open. And maybe now, you know, you're more established, you have a family, we're more sure of ourselves, maybe we have money.
[00:07:37] Dustin Serviss: And now it's like, well, wait a sec. Maybe it wasn't as glamorous as I thought it was gonna... You know, I had this vision that... And I I remember my old business partner, we had a number. And it was like, we used to say, man, if we could ever make that much a month. And, you know, it... You know, that was ten years ago. And, you know, well, that was, like, twenty years ago. But that was ten years ago I hit those numbers, and it was, like, well, I still get up, and my wife is still my wife. And, life's still much the same. So I I know I give you a lot of verbiage there, but is there something that you could... You see, with...
[00:08:12] Dustin Serviss: Maybe is is society different, or are you different?
[00:08:16] Robert Brus: Yeah. You're you're a hundred percent right, and you highlight something that's really important that's not spoken about a lot. And I'm glad that you brought that up because it gives me an opportunity to maybe amplify it and put some words around it that you haven't heard before and to share that with your audience as well. Often when you have a goal, you aim at that target and you hit that target with a single-minded focus much sooner than you anticipate. So you you and your you and your oppo there had the idea of earning x amount of dollars per month. You hit that target and then you're like, oh, okay. Now now what?
[00:08:45] Robert Brus: I had a similar circumstance to you, albeit it played out in slow motion. Career in the military started when I was seventeen and I left when I was twenty nine. So over that period of time, because I got out between the Navy and the army, over that period of time, I achieved every single thing that I wanted to do with my life. And by the time I left at twenty nine years of age, I was like, now what? And the last posting that I had was at the parachute school. And what do you do at the parachute school? You drop up to work and say to the boss, what are we doing today? And he'd look at you and go, what do you think, idiot?
[00:09:22] Robert Brus: Go and get a parachute. We go on skydiving. And you'd go skydiving seven or eight times a day. And, you know, the military has a way of taking the fun out of all that stuff. It's kind of fun for a while, but it's, like, a bit unfun at the same time as well. But by the time I left, I had this incredible job and this incredible experience for the last couple of years of my career. But then I'd also achieved everything I wanted to achieve. I traveled, I'd been in operations, I'd keep indoors, I'd done everything that I'd wanted to do. So then I was sort of left as a almost like a a clean skin. Like I left, I did everything I wanted to do.
[00:09:57] Robert Brus: I'd grown out of like running around with a gun and kicking in a door. Now what? Alright. And and I had to advance to the next part of my career. And to your point, you know, am I different or is the world different? The world was very similar, very, very, very similar all the way up until twenty nineteen in December. And I believe that not a lot had changed all the way up until then. But in the last three years, in the last, you know, twenty nineteen, twenty, twenty one, or twenty two, the lot... The end of twenty nineteen, it's changed radically. Chinese Communist Party have infiltrated every single one of our telephones.
[00:10:36] Robert Brus: The Russian disinformation has infiltrated every single one of our brains in politics. It doesn't matter what country here in the world. And there's all sorts of different ideologies floating around which have never been proven to work. We had a system on planet Earth previously all the way up to twenty twenty that was working incredibly well. Life was prosperous, you could be whoever you wanted to be, you could make as much money as you wanted to do, Those incredible opportunities in the world. But I think in the last three years, that's all changed. And unless you've positioned yourself correctly for what's coming down the Pike, Addison,
[00:11:08] Robert Brus: in the next couple of years, I think you're gonna find it's gonna be very, very different again in the next three to five years as we move forward. Individual as well as we all do. We grow and we develop and we have different ideas and different thoughts and feelings about the way the world works and how you interact with it and where you belong. You know, but the reality is world has shifted fundamentally at the same time as well. So you really got to shift and move to adapt. And, you know, in the military when you're lying on your guts and you're loading your rifle and you're shooting and you're just starting, you're shooting at a target,
[00:11:48] Robert Brus: round bolt adjust. And you want to make sure that those two rounds are going exactly where you're pointing that rifle. And if you've never fired that rifle before, you do a thing called a zero. So you're zeroing the rifle, you're getting the scope to match up to where the actual rounds are going. And I'm really careful about all of the radical changes that we're seeing in the world. And I, you know, maybe a little bit brainwashed from the military and from the army, but I regularly do a two round bolt adjust. I stand back from what I'm doing going, hey, how is this affecting me? And then if I need to readjust my zero, you know, you would have
[00:12:24] Robert Brus: seen it in a in an army movie before where he's turning the dial and the scope on the top and then on the side as well. What he's doing is he's getting the little cross references into the right places. And, you know, you've got to stand back and do that two round bolt adjust. Stop what you're doing. Have a look. How is this affecting me? And then fix your zero and then get yourself moving back towards your targets and keep moving forward. The world has changed a lot in the last couple of years. And unless you are flexible enough to maneuver yourself and your business within the confines that are narrowing evermore every
[00:12:55] Robert Brus: single day in all of our societies, you're gonna find yourself in a lot of trouble and dependent on the government, and no one wants to be dependent on the government. So you'd be really careful of that.
[00:13:05] Dustin Serviss: What would you say, so again, the... Oh, man. I'm so excited about this. So we are waiting into uncharted territory, for the conversation. So again, some people, if you're political and don't like that stuff, maybe step out. But if you like hearing sort of how politics affects your mindset, The one thing that that we found in coaching clients and working with financial planning clients through the pandemic was, there was a lot of people, I'll say, intaking and processing a lot of things that and and then letting those things impact their their life. So that, you know, you start seeing negative sort of mindset set in
[00:13:45] Dustin Serviss: on things that they were pretty positive about before. But, you know, going kayaking with their friend, you know, whether stuff's happening or not, that still can happen if you organize it. But once your head starts to, like, get swirling and you start being focused on other things, you can get distracted. So how do you how do you balance how much you take in? Because being military background... And again, I do lots of life insurance work, so managing risk and analyzing risk is something that you are deeply, well versed in. It's your life. So I don't know anyone else who could talk to this talk.
[00:14:20] Dustin Serviss: But managing risk in paying attention to what's going on in the world and living your best life now, how do you how do you balance that? Well, time
[00:14:32] Robert Brus: is a constructive. Time is a constructive of humans. That's that's the way I answer that question. Time is a construct. Think about it. Where are you right now when we're talking right now? We're in the present. On
[00:14:42] Dustin Serviss: the Internet. Well, we're
[00:14:44] Robert Brus: in the we're in the ether. Right? In the magic ether somewhere floating. Right? But the reality is we're in the present. Whatever time it is there for you now, it's the same time here. We're just talking on the side of planet Earth, and technology allows us to connect. But if I sit here for a moment and I think about all of the bad things that have happened overnight in Ukraine, you know, the artillery strikes and all of the death and destruction and the chaos of the world, that can actually drag me, drag my energy all the way down really quickly. And if I sit in that energy and I stay in that energy, it can be really, really bad.
[00:15:16] Robert Brus: But the reality is all that stuff has already happened, but I'm thinking about it in the present. But then if I let that stuff that happened already affect me into my future, When I get to that point in the future and that becomes my present, that drags my energy down as well.
[00:15:31] Dustin Serviss: That's it.
[00:15:33] Robert Brus: Yeah. So you... You've gotta be careful that you're not you're not... I don't believe that you're driven by your past because the past has already happened. You can't change it. But I also don't believe that you're propelled to your future. I think that you're kind of drawn to the future, but the future that you've got for yourself is created by the mindset that you have in the present. All about your state of being and your state of mind and that the energy that you're feeling inside of yourself when you're watching that negative news story or you're watching that funny cat video or that stand up comedian
[00:16:08] Robert Brus: that's given you a little bit of respite from the craziness of the day will determine what your future will be. So there's no such thing... I don't believe there's any such thing as happiness. There's this, there's this centralized part of where you are. Happiness is a little bit right of the middle and sadness is a little bit left of middle. But most of the time, we're not happy or sad, we just are. You gotta be careful of looking for happiness or looking for something that's gonna make you feel better, meaning a better investment, making more money, better business decisions. Those things are not gonna make you feel better.
[00:16:43] Robert Brus: Those things are the outcome of the work that you need to do, and you're doing that work because you're looking for a result in your life. And it's very, very difficult to manage those things and to divide those two things apart from the result that you're getting and the feeling that you get and the feeling that you're getting as you're actually trying to get those results to happen for yourself. I think it's really important that people be a little bit more mindful of the energy that they're receiving from all of the inputs that we're getting from social media, from views, from politics,
[00:17:14] Robert Brus: from your friends, from your family, and all of those things. And then that energy is taken on board. Okay. Cool. And and instead of putting that energy back out, just step aside and let that go past you And let it go, let it flow through you on the other side of it. And don't let that impact what's going on in your life. Yeah, sure, it's important. It's important to keep one eye on on the news. It's important to keep on the news. It's important to keep one eye on
[00:17:40] Dustin Serviss: on the news. It's important to
[00:17:40] Robert Brus: keep one eye on on the news.
[00:17:40] Dustin Serviss: It's important to keep one eye on social media. It's important to keep one eye on social media.
[00:17:41] Robert Brus: It's important to keep one
[00:17:41] Dustin Serviss: eye on social media. It's important to keep one eye on social media. It's important to stay connected to your friends
[00:17:42] Robert Brus: and your family. But don't let that determine how you live your life. And for some reason, we've all forgotten in the last couple of years, you think that with all of the lockdowns and all of the craziness that we experience, that we would be more interconnected than we ever were. And we are in some ways, but people seem to be more lonely than ever before, despite the fact that they can talk to somebody in Canada on the other side of planet Earth, like, with a snap of the fingers. It's it's strange things. So I would say that you've really got to concentrate on your own personal energy and understanding how the things
[00:18:15] Robert Brus: around you are affecting you and making sure you're not putting out that negativity. And if you're only putting out those positive vibes and good thoughts and good things that are out there, knowing it's the power of thinking positive. It's cliche and a bit cheesy and corny, but it's true. It works. I've only... About the people in my life, I feel, like, happy. Like, I feel like I get to go see my business partner. I get to go see my mum, my brother, you know, my friends and the people that are around me. They're really... These people have happy dispositions. They're not negative.
[00:18:46] Robert Brus: You know, they've got some negative opinions and we disagree about certain things, but it's not a it's not really a big deal. It doesn't impact on my relationships with them. And it certainly doesn't impact on the way that I live my life. And I feel like my life is progressing in the right direction and things are feeling really good and they're constantly on the upward gradient. Some days they're more upward than others and... But as a whole, they're kind of progressing forward nicely. It's it's a good way to live. It's a good way to feel.
[00:19:12] Dustin Serviss: It's it's a it's a it's remarkable, I guess. Maybe it's my stereotype of when you come out of the military, you kinda can be jaded. And, but I think let's go to military story now. Let's get to, you know, let's get to, you know, through those... That was, from seventeen to twenty nine, you said? Twelve years, there. So from start to finish, that's a pretty good career. And from, you know, adjusting your minutes of angle on the first, you know, couple of shots to the end, is there any stories in there of, you know, I'm just thinking just general leadership stories where, you know, the...
[00:19:50] Dustin Serviss: You know, things weren't going, you know, the way they were supposed to and you guys emerged, victorious, whatever that means. Because I think for a lot of people, they are... They know this stuff we just talked about. They know that they shouldn't watch the news. They know they shouldn't watch the stock market every day. But they just can't... They go service. They say to me, I know. I know. I know. I'm not supposed to... And and those... They'll almost after a while, you know, get to the point of, like, yeah. I haven't really watched that much because they know that I'm gonna... What I'm gonna say to them.
[00:20:21] Dustin Serviss: And I'll say, hey, you know, you're... You know, the investments that we do are are more long term, buy and hold. You know, don't look at them for weeks. It's okay. It's not going to zero, you know, knock on wood. But we're talking about big things. So for people, you know, in your career, you have a story of, like, it didn't look good. You couldn't get you couldn't get the groove on, and all of a sudden, you guys emerged victorious. Get... Like, put us... If you can, without breaching confidentiality, put us in, like, in your boots.
[00:20:50] Robert Brus: Well, I I don't really have any war stories. I've only really got funny stories and funny things.
[00:20:54] Dustin Serviss: A lot of...
[00:20:55] Robert Brus: So much funny so much funny stuff happens to you in the military, which is never really spoken about very much on a podcast. So, you know, I'm not gonna tell you a story about some gunfight and we nearly died and then we've Yeah. Yeah. Got through some bullshit like that. It's none of that. So when I was a young guy in the Navy, one of the, the jobs that I had, so I was a combat systems operator, so radar sonar electronic warfare gear. So that's my day job. But the other side job that I had on the ship was as a ship's diver. So the ship's diver is required to... When the ship comes alongside, we go and we go and put the grates
[00:21:26] Robert Brus: on the ship so it doesn't, like, suck in all of, like, plastic bags and all sorts of things. And you do all sorts of work under the water. You know, you might have to, do do a probe on the actual prop to make sure, the engineering part of it's all working. So, it's a it's an okay job.
[00:21:43] Dustin Serviss: That port is so messy with bottles that it sucks into the impellers and stuff?
[00:21:48] Robert Brus: Oh, man. Animals, dead stuff, like, horrendous. Like, I could tell you some stories there, but, you know, it's not, it's not not very pleasant. But, you know, you're looking for a lesson there, so I'll I'll share this lesson. So one of the one of the jobs of the ship's diver is if there's ever a man overboard, a warship can recover a man or woman overboard one of three ways either with the helicopter, which is the most complicated way because you gotta pull the helicopter out and unfold the motor blades and take off and go and do it right. So that's typically used if someone's fallen overboard and we haven't known about it for some time.
[00:22:21] Robert Brus: The next way is with a boat. That's the most common way that we do it. So the... You know, because it's pretty quick to get the boat in the water, just kind of put it the winch there and get in the water. And the third way is with the swimmer. The water and they've realized straight away, so the ship is steaming along in a in a particular direction, the lookout says man overboard, it brings the alarm. Your ship just does a big three sixty degree turn and it probably takes you know, half a kilometer to turn around, you know, because of warships moving along, spinning along, and it pulls up alongside and points the front of the
[00:22:53] Robert Brus: ship or the bow of the ship into the swell and it just rides the swell there back and forth. So it was, the the middle of the night we're in the exercise and I've been in almost all of the oceans on planet Earth and the biggest oceans are just out here where I live just between Australia and New Zealand in wintertime. And we have a thing called the Southern Antarctic Groundswell. So you have these southerly swells that come in between Australia and New Zealand and you have these massive waves, man. I've been in category five cyclones before. They're the biggest cyclones you can have, and the waves out here off the
[00:23:22] Robert Brus: East Australian exercise area are bigger than category five cyclones. And I I heed... I was lying in my bed, and I heard man overboard, man overboard. And it's like the exercise. Right? And I was like, okay. Waiting waiting for, you know, like, recovery with the helicopter or the boat, and they said recovery with a swimmer. I'm like, man, that's me. Really? I I run down to the back of the ship, get my wetsuit, grab my fins, grab my mask, get back and the ship is stopped in the water. Right? And when it... When a ship stops in the water in the open ocean, the thing's like pounding, man, pounding just with the swells.
[00:23:55] Robert Brus: And the swells must have been probably fourteen, fifteen meters. And the ship stopped in a slight... Virtually, like, rolling sideways and up and down. So I get right to the to the folks who are on the ship, and there's just a dummy in the water. Right? So you can see the dummy. And, there's a a bunch of people. There's about seven or eight people on the folks there. So they put, like, a helicopter strop around your waist as if you're gonna be winched into a helicopter. I wear that around my waist, and I jump into the water with my mask into the water. And then I lie on my back, and I'm looking up at the guys
[00:24:25] Robert Brus: above me, and they're pointing left and right. And you're just swimming on your back until, oh, I hit my head on the dummy. There's a dummy, and I unclip the strop, flip this other strop around the dummy, turn around, and I give them a... Put put my hand up, give them a thumbs up, and then they pull you in. And as they're pulling me back into the the ship, and bear in mind this is nighttime at winter in fourteen or fifteen meter swells, or the biggest biggest swells, you know, I've ever been in. And I think that's what they're testing, right? That's the whole point of the exercise. But as the as the, the dummy gets pulled up the side of
[00:24:56] Robert Brus: the ship, they they pull the dummy up, it's all good. And as the as the ship goes up in the swell, all of the water gets sucked into under the side of the ship. And I'm thinking I can feel myself being drawn in like the the world's strongest rip. I'm drawn in. And as the ship as the swell comes down and the ship comes back down, it like pushes you back out. They're like spits you back out. And and they're holding on to me with this line. And I'm thinking, if this line goes, like, how are they gonna get me out of here? Well, they're gonna have to come put us as a real man overboard.
[00:25:30] Robert Brus: I think they have to put the boat in the water, the helicopter, and they're gonna come come get me. So I was not really worried that when you... I don't know if you've ever been near a warship, do you look up at a warship? They're pretty tall. But as the things coming out of the water riding on a fifteen meter wave, and I can see the sonar dome on the bottom of the warship, I'm looking going, wow, man. That's that's like high, and I can feel myself getting sucked into it. And then it comes down and go, it's spat out by this giant wave. Anyway, after about twenty minutes of this, I'm like, ready? Go. Just just... And they pull...
[00:26:01] Robert Brus: They eventually pull me up. I got up and I I looked up at the captain and I thought, you idiot. What did you make me do that for? And he kind of looked at me, goes, good job, well done. Went inside the bridge and fired up the ship and off we went on our exercise. And and I looked at everybody there and I thought to myself, you know, in the military, you don't do anything by yourself ever. And it's a metaphor for life. You don't do anything by yourself ever. And if you think that you could jump off the side of a warship at nighttime to try and save somebody in a fifteen meter swell without being
[00:26:32] Robert Brus: tethered to a rope and having ten other guys holding on to you, you're wrong. And it's a metaphor for life. If you think that you can dive into business and if you think that you can do everything by yourself, that you can write the content, you can build the website, you can shoot the video, you can record the audio, manage the money, and you can actually work out the balance sheet, and work out the profit and loss, and then invest the money that you've... You can't do that stuff by yourself. And it's a lesson that stuck with me forever. Business and I feel like there's too much coming at me, I always remember
[00:27:06] Robert Brus: those ten guys that were pulling on the rope. And all I need is just some more people behind me, helping me pull on that rope. Things will go a little bit faster. If I need another developer, I need another advertising guru or somebody to write me some copy. I can just go to Upwork and all of the world's knowledge is right there at my fingertips. There's kind of no excuse. But in small business and in life in general, we have this myopic view thinking that we know the answers to everything and we can solve all of these problems. The reality is you don't have to. And you know what? It's just way more fun when you do it with other people.
[00:27:36] Robert Brus: And that's a that's a lesson that stuck with me. And it's not really a leadership lesson, but it's a reminder that you don't have to go it alone. And nobody in the military does anything by themselves ever. You know, it's a fallacy that Jason Horn runs around with a gun by himself trying to catch bad guys. It's bullshit. There's twenty five people in an ops center behind him telling him where to go, what to do, and you know, where did he get the weapons, where did he get his boots from, you know, there's a logistics guy behind him. So, you know, for every for every one infantry soldier, and this doesn't matter
[00:28:05] Robert Brus: what army you're in, for every one infantry soldier on the front line, there's ten to fifteen people in the rear behind them. So nothing happens in isolation in the military. But for some reason in life, we we feel like that we're isolated. We have to do everything. If you don't... So remember that lesson and I share that story of the ship going up and down to... As a visual way to help you to to remind you of it.
[00:28:25] Dustin Serviss: It's very fitting to to surround yourself where there's some influence of the five closest people around us. And so, you know, you know, your ex spouse, your your new spouse, your coworkers, your boss, you know, whatever. It's like, you wanna change your direction, you might have to change some of those influences. And again, you know, substance and all that stuff can be part of it as well. But, in, in in that story of of the military and your background, is there is there, like, anything else that pops out from the standpoint of, like, thinking like your colonel or your captain or whoever that they they shared a message down.
[00:29:08] Dustin Serviss: Again, I just watched that thing with my video with you with my kids, and it was... It's colonel somebody, and his message is make your bed. Have you seen that guy?
[00:29:14] Robert Brus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. William the comedian.
[00:29:18] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. That guy. So is there any leaders in your past that have given you tools that you still use today that are some of your go to moves or any comments or, you know, make the bed, all that kind of stuff?
[00:29:36] Robert Brus: You know, it... That's a that's a great question. It's it's probably a little bit more practical. And and again, I'll share some some funny stories with you if you like. It's not so much about the leadership, but it's more about the attitude and the mindset. When you play for your country, you you don't you don't really notice these things because all of this stuff happens gradually to you. But anybody that's in the military plays for their country. You're playing first grade. If you're if you're in the United States Marine Corps or you're in the Canadian Army or you're in the Australian Army, you're playing for your country.
[00:30:09] Robert Brus: You're you're like... You know, if even if you're the stores guy at the back folding blankets, you're still playing for your country. And you you've gotta bring your a game. And the thing that I took away from the military is, you know, I did so many courses. You do hundreds and hundreds of courses. It feels like... It was probably... I probably did fifty courses, but it feels like hundreds. Right? It feels like you're actually on a course learning about something. So one of the really great things that you get from the military is learning how to learn. Do you learn how to assimilate knowledge and information quickly.
[00:30:40] Robert Brus: So I'm always really fast to pick up new skills. But once you've picked up those new skills, there's always a really high expectation that you're actually able to deliver, which means you
[00:30:48] Dustin Serviss: have to bring your A game. And I think we we we live in a bit
[00:30:52] Robert Brus: And I think we we we live in a bit of an over civilized society in some ways. And I don't mean that in a negative thing. I just say that as an observation. Like, I don't really have to think about where I'm gonna get my food from because the fridge is full of food there for Christmas. You know, I don't have to go to the shops till the next week because it's a week worth of groceries sitting there. You know, if I'm thirsty, I don't have to think about it. There's a tap right there. But like, I don't have to think about very much. Life is easy. You know, it's the Christmas break. Should I be working? Well, you know, no one else is.
[00:31:21] Robert Brus: But before I was here, I've been sitting in my computer since, you know, for the last three hours working. And after I finish here with you, I'm gonna work for another four hours or go to the beach first, have swim, and then work for another four hours of Sabo and then go and report another podcast later today. And everybody else is on holidays. You know, the the work ethic that I developed from the military has been, culmination and a product of all of the leadership that I've ever encountered, really. Because the people that are in charge, the officers that are in charge, the
[00:31:46] Robert Brus: that are in charge, the NCOs that are in charge, and then your own personal leadership and your own personal responsibilities forces you to bring your A game. You know you gotta bring your A game, but it's a rare person, a rare person, military or not, that can bring their A game consistently. And if you could be mindful enough to think about when you turn up to work at nine o'clock on a Monday morning after your Christmas holidays, whether it's your work, your job, or somebody else's business or your own business or whatever it might be, whenever you turn after you go, okay, I'm gonna do this the very best of my ability no matter what.
[00:32:18] Robert Brus: And my daughter, so I'll close out this comment and these thoughts with this. My daughter, has, left school. She hates school. Just school just wasn't for her. So she's going to, to TAFE next year, which gives her some more qualifications. So she'll get a diploma, she'll do a whole bunch of other things. But I've said to her that there's only two settings for you. If you if you don't want to go to school anymore, it's either work or sleep. Your choice. You you pick. And, you know, and maybe Your choice. You you pick. And, you know, imagine if I was your old man, right? It's like, I'm I'm pretty hard on it like that.
[00:32:51] Robert Brus: And I say it to her like that. It's work or it's sleep. There are your two choices. And she's gone away and got a couple of jobs. Know, she's only sixteen years old, so she's not very old. So she's working in a hamburger shop, she's working in a restaurant, and she works in an ice cream shop. So she's got three jobs, right? So she's working quite a quite a few shifts and she's making some money and doing okay for herself. And I'm trying to breathe that work ethic into her. And I'm trying to breathe that work ethic into her. And I'm trying to breathe that work ethic into her. And I said to her, when you ethic into her.
[00:33:14] Robert Brus: And I said to her, when you go to work and if you're flipping burgers or you're, you know, you're putting salad on buns or you're doing that, what I want you to do, yeah, what I want you to do is I want you to look at the people around you. Yeah. I want you to pay attention to the people around you because they're gonna be sad, sorry, complaining, whinging, negative about everything. And I want you to make burgers to the best of your ability. I want you to do the very best job you can every time you go there. And it's not to win brownie points with a boss. It's not to be a better employee or be the employee of the month.
[00:33:50] Robert Brus: But it's to actually build and breed that ethic inside of you that when you do something, you do it properly game every single time. Whether you're flipping a burger, you're changing a tire on a car, or you're dealing with somebody's financial planning, you bring your A game every single time no matter what. Because if you go there and complain about that job or you complain about your business or you complain about those customers, you'll eventually leave that job, you'll go somewhere else. And guess what? You'll complain about that job, you'll complain about that boss and those customers and all that bullshit that goes there.
[00:34:22] Robert Brus: So in order to stop yourself from doing that, game every single time and be the best burger flipper you could possibly be. Be the best ice cream scooper you could be. Be the best table runner you could possibly be. And I've seen that complete fundamental shift smile on her face. I pick her up late at night sometimes because she hasn't got a license yet, but just loving life. And, you know, and and all of that comes from my brainwashing, which is what it is in the military of being as professional as you can, as skillful as you can, and bringing your a game every single time you have to. But it's a rare person that can actually do that.
[00:35:01] Robert Brus: And I share that to remind the audience that you can do it. Anyone could. Do it. You've done it before. Just do
[00:35:06] Dustin Serviss: it more often. I don't know, listener, if, you're thinking what I'm thinking, but my brain instantly goes to concentration. So in this day and age, maximizing our concentration, I think, is... It's unspoken about. I think it's maybe unstudied. Maybe it is studied. I just haven't looked into it, but I I... This is almost sharing some of my personal baggage that right now, you used to be able to dive deeper into things when your business was smaller. When your business is smaller, you could have all this time to be creative and mess up stuff, try it again. Now, you you know, you get a successful business, you got staff, you got
[00:35:42] Dustin Serviss: demands to pull... You know, different things are pulling at you. And and it... There's exciting things that are pulling at you too, but you can't maybe put as much time as you want it. So you could either, you know, farm it out to Fiverr and Upwork and all these things to try and... But some of that work can be... Some of it's good, but the... You know, if it's really... You've got a vision, you need to spend enough time and concentrate long enough to get the wheels in motion to hand that off to to be built. But in the military, did they have any sort of training or exercises on concentration?
[00:36:16] Dustin Serviss: I'm envisioning, like, in in exercises or whatever. It's like there's, like, stuff happening all over and how you concentrate and not get lost in drifting thoughts. So you go... You're drifting thoughts and you're not paying attention, you get shot. So, you know, know, is there is there any exercise they did where it was like... And I don't wanna take any words in your mouth, I'm assuming, but it's like exercises, training, a course. One of those fifty courses, is it on concentration or any comments on that?
[00:36:44] Robert Brus: It's not so much that they train you. What you do on a day to day basis is not much different... Excuse me. It's not much different to any other job. So there's so many office jobs you have in the military. Right? But if you make a mistake in that office job for the infantry guy on the front line like me, it might cost me my life because you haven't moved enough water forward. You haven't moved enough ammunition forward. You haven't moved enough dude forward, and it and it might impact on the operation. So it's it's not so much that the military teaches you how to operate better. The consequences of you operating incorrectly are much steeper.
[00:37:21] Robert Brus: Yeah. Because people's lives are at risk. So one of the one of the things that I learned in the military to focus my mind and to eliminate distraction. Though it's less about concentration and more about removing distraction. You know yourself when you sit down at nine o'clock in the morning or wherever you start work, you you you begin your day. You're okay. Cool. I don't I don't know about you or the the people listening or watching this is I try and lock out a time block my day. I block... I look... I only look at my email for fifteen minutes in the morning if I don't get past it all bad luck. Fifteen minutes at the end of the day.
[00:37:57] Robert Brus: And then the first half of my day is spent in prioritizing exactly what matters to me. And if I've got a series of appointments throughout my day, whether they're Zoom or physical or something like that, what I'll do is I'll block my calendar out in fifteen minute increments to make sure I get those things done. And I'll do that before I start the day. So, you know, if I if I kick off at nine o'clock, I've blocked out my calendar at eight thirty in the morning, look at my email for fifteen minutes. And if I've got a bunch of meetings, then I'll time box those, activities that I need to do. So prioritizing and executing what's going on.
[00:38:28] Robert Brus: In the military, it has it has a the job that you do has a way of forcing you to be front side focused or present mind focused. Because you can't be distracted when you're looking down the sights of a machine gun at a target or you're on a live fire exercise and a live fire range and your mates to the left and the right of you and you're running forward, run down, call, observe, aim, fire, and then your mate gets up, bounce forward in front of you. He's in your two o'clock position. I can't shoot there. So what the military does is it forces you to focus in the here and now. One of the things that I I love the most about my final posting
[00:39:09] Robert Brus: at the, at the parachute school was... So you guys got up in a lot, right? And and generally, as a rule of thumb, knuckle dragon, door kicker like me a pretend student for someone wanting to be an instructor. So we beat the students for the instructors. So they get their instructor rating so then they can take new students. So you do a lot of fundamental stuff, a lot of basics stuff, which makes you really, really good at skydiving because you're doing the same thing over and over again and you're not really doing any advanced things. But you get to the to a point where you get a little bit desensitized to what's going on.
[00:39:44] Robert Brus: And what it does is it is it allows you to get your heart rate under control. And when you get your heart rate under control, so you and I are sitting here, resting heart rate, fifty, sixty beats per minute, and I'm okay. It's the strangest feeling in the world to have your heart rate completely under control, your breath under control, but the adrenaline surging through your body from the top of your kidneys, the physiology that you have there. Usually when you have like a bit of an adrenaline spike in your blood or something's happening, it's a fight or flight thing, right? Or you might be at the top of the mountain when you're about to
[00:40:17] Robert Brus: drop in on your snowboard and you're like, woah, man. And your breathing is a little bit rapid, it's elevated, it's cold, your senses are heightened, all of your attention is focused on that one thing that you're actually doing. And you're not really even thinking about what it is that you're doing because years of experience of skiing and snowboarding for you allows you to do that. I wouldn't really think very much about skydiving. I'd go through my emergency drills, you know, people throw punch, blah, blah, you know, reserves if something goes wrong. But my heart rate would be completely under control, but I could feel the
[00:40:47] Robert Brus: adrenaline just coursing through my body because my brain knows it's fight or flight. Right? It's strange thing. It's the it's the paradox of both of those things. And I've taken that lesson in my life. And I've taken that and used that as a lesson that when I sit down at my desk and I... And I finished... Like, I'm pretty disciplined with the way that I operate. Because if you're not disciplined in the way that you operate, you just kinda... Life just happens to you, and you're just reactive to everything all the time. The phone ring. No. I just pick up the phone. I'll talk to that guy for twenty minutes or I've gotta take that that
[00:41:18] Robert Brus: went away, and then I I got back into it. And then I I began working for ten minutes and I got a text message. I stopped and looked at that. And scientific studies have shown that every distraction that you had, it will take you twenty minutes to get back to where you were. So if at quarter past nine in the morning, I finish with my email and I begin the activity that I need to do, whatever that might be. If I continue that activity to nine thirty, so in a fifteen minute time box like that and and the phone rings, if I pick up that call, it'll take me twenty minutes to get back to the nine fifteen date of mind.
[00:41:49] Robert Brus: And that's why people's productivity comes all the way down. If I take the skydiving analogies and the shooting analogies and all the things, the totalities of the experiences that I've learned in my life to try and get your breathing under control, keep that adrenaline under control, keep that distraction at bay, and to keep those things going because you have to learn, you know, to to coin that jocko bullet phrase he uses all the time. He says you have to prioritise and execute. So pick the things that are are the most urgent for you in your day and go through your laundry list of to do items like that to
[00:42:19] Robert Brus: maintain your productivity and do it without distraction. Because if you can do it without distraction, you will be so much more productive. And if you can maintain the discipline of maintaining the time boxes inside of your calendar as well, rock around for a cup of tea or coffee or just a little break that you need to have. Lunch will rock around really quickly as well. You feel good, you feel productive. How can I be more productive? Manage your time, manage your mindset, manage your distractions, keep keep your breath and your heart rate under control. And if you're doing something that requires surges of adrenaline or something like that
[00:42:52] Robert Brus: for some reason, get that under control as well.
[00:42:55] Dustin Serviss: So just to close off on that, so we're we're in the back of the, what is it, the c one thirty gunship or something massive? Is that, what people jump on over? That's the movies. That's what I'm envisioning.
[00:43:05] Robert Brus: Oh, all sorts of different airplanes. Yeah.
[00:43:07] Dustin Serviss: So the door drops down. Why sometimes, when the military are running out of the back of the plane, is the the cable attached and the parachute pulls, like, right away when they are out? And why sometimes do they free fall just out the back?
[00:43:24] Robert Brus: So inserting troops via airborne operations is the most complicated thing you could possibly do in the military. There's actually nothing more complicated than airborne operations. So what what they typically airborne soldiers are their primary goal is to take an enemy airfield. So what we do is we fly over an enemy airfield at a thousand feet and we'll try and get two battalions on the ground within, like, five minutes. So you get, like, five hundred thousand men on the ground, and then you can assault the airfield and and take the airfield. So you have a static line, which is what you're describing, how it's connected to the aircraft.
[00:43:58] Robert Brus: So you jump out of the airplane and then, the static line pulls the parachute out of the pack that you're wearing and you don't even have to really even think about it, but you can't fly that parachute either. There's no toggles on those parachutes. There is sort of you kinda pull on the rises a little bit and you get the ground pretty hard, man. It's like jumping off a two story building. And, when when I joined when I joined the army, I was a hundred and eighty four centimeters. And when I left, I was a hundred eighty one centimeters. Wow. Yeah. So I've kinda lost three centimeters and not because of osteoporosis or I got
[00:44:30] Robert Brus: herbal genetics or something, but from crumping in, otherwise known as a splat cat. That's what they call them in the Australian army, splat cat. So and the the other way to insert paratroopers, of course, is by free falling them in, which, typically can happen from anywhere from above tooth... Well, not really, probably above four thousand feet to anywhere to thirty thousand feet, depending on what the, what the target is, what you're trying to do. You can be, jumped out at twenty five thousand feet on oxygen, open your parachute straight away and fly fifty or sixty miles to a target.
[00:45:03] Robert Brus: So there's all sorts of different ways to insert troops, but many things can go wrong. And it's so unbelievably dangerous.
[00:45:10] Dustin Serviss: Like Yeah.
[00:45:11] Robert Brus: It's it's... The danger factor is just... It kind of... It mitigates and negates actually doing it. Although real world operations have happened in the last couple of years in Afghanistan and Iraq, lots of Americans jumped in. I'm not sure if any Canadians did. And and I know that the Russians tried to jump paratroopers, two battalions of paratroopers into hospital airport, and then they got their asses completely kicked. And for one reason or another, they're using World War II tactics to try and make it happen and it and it didn't work. And if you rewind the clock all the way back to World War II
[00:45:44] Robert Brus: when Hitler used, the full screamer, the German paratroopers to jump into Crete. He said after that, he'd... They would never ever use paratroopers ever again. And so it kind of...
[00:45:56] Dustin Serviss: You're kinda slowing down if they if they notice you, you don't got much place to go.
[00:46:00] Robert Brus: Back in the back in the day in World War two, they they didn't have the rises that came up from your shoulders. So if you think of a parachute, it doesn't matter what sort of comes up from your shoulders, right, get your hands up on the risers there. Back in the day in World War two days, it came out from the small of your neck to out of out of your back there. So... And and they landed like a cat. They did this cat landing. Now imagine jumping off a two story building, hands and feet first like like a cat, like on all fours. They break arms, break shoulders, break legs, break backs, all sorts of stuff.
[00:46:32] Robert Brus: And most of the troops that jumped out in that operation in Greece, they... Most of them were broken and they were combat ineffective, and that's why they lost us.
[00:46:40] Dustin Serviss: Well, thanks, for that. It was a sidebar. And then I got one other sidebar question. So when you... Let's hear it. Did... Were you able... Because I do life... Lots of life insurance. And so managing risk and trying to help the underwriters understand who these people are that we're trying to help get the policies for. Were you able to get life insurance in... During that time?
[00:46:59] Robert Brus: When when we went to East Timor in nineteen ninety nine, it was the biggest operation since the Vietnam War for the Australian Army. And I can remember, the the boss coming out and saying, hey, if you wanna get an insurance policy, here's where it is. If you're cured in operations, this is what happens for your family. This is how it all works and stuff. And people were reading through the policies, you know, so I'll just don't get paid much money. They're like, I can't afford that. I can't afford... If I get my arm blown off, I could have that.
[00:47:26] Dustin Serviss: I could have that one.
[00:47:29] Robert Brus: So it it was... I was just... I just like, whatever, man.
[00:47:32] Dustin Serviss: If, you
[00:47:33] Robert Brus: know, I'm not... That's gonna happen to that guy.
[00:47:35] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. That's right. Yeah. I'm twenty eight or twenty five. That's right. That's right. Well, then you get a little older and you start seeing a few people around you. Well, Robert, I, I had a lot of fun with this podcast, and I'm sure we could do another one. But where, where could people find you? And then I have one final question for you.
[00:47:52] Robert Brus: Yeah. Sure. The best place to find me is on YouTube. If you just head over to Rob Brass official on YouTube, or you can find me over on Instagram at Rob dot Brass seven seven. So I'd love a connection. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear your comments and see how you're going with your time management. If you're able to time box your calendar, let me know that. If you need to add with that, I'm happy to help you as well. I'm happy to have a chat too.
[00:48:12] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. Listener, I did check out Rob's, YouTube. It's got a great following. Lots of, interesting topics there. So, Rob, final question. What is your ultimate picture of wealth?
[00:48:24] Robert Brus: My ultimate picture of wealth is recurring income that never stops and never goes away, where I don't have to swap my time for money. It's something that I work towards every single day on a bunch of different projects. I've got several dreams of recurring income coming at me already, but I've also got lots more in the pipeline and I'm looking to grow that. You know, the ultimate picture of wealth for me is somewhere in the vicinity of about two hundred grand a month in recurring income, where I've done the work once, and I'll get paid in perpetuity for that using online tools, online systems.
[00:48:53] Robert Brus: So that's what I'm working towards and lots of great things happening in my world, and I love that.
[00:48:58] Dustin Serviss: I love it. You've, you were the first person to actually be open about a number and just say it and, recurring revenue. Love it. Thank you very much, for being on the show today, Rob.
[00:49:10] Robert Brus: My pleasure. Thanks very much.
[00:49:13] Dustin Serviss: Thank you for tuning in to this episode. If you enjoyed the show, please like and rate the show, share with a friend, or use your new knowledge in your next conversation. If during the show something gave you a pang of inspiration, motivation, or sense of uncertainty, act on it now. Get the clarity you're looking for. Find the permission you seek. Go to service wealth dot com to discover how others are learning how to take Fridays off, or buying a recreation property, or spending more money. If you're an organizer of an event where you believe my philosophy on finance
[00:49:40] Dustin Serviss: lifestyle design would be applicable, go to service wealth dot com and book me as a speaker at your next event. If you want a copy of our new book coming out soon, send me a message on Instagram or Facebook, and we will be sure to get you a first copy.