Katzenberg: Well, welcome, everybody, to a very special episode of Call to Service.
Kennedy: I love that name, though. Servant, Service. What does it mean to be to actually to do service? My wife and I were just talking about like post-service when does service end? I did 20 years in military, I’m retiring. You know, am I done with service? No. Right. Like I just got 20 years of training about how to do more service and be more impactful. So I’m doing it with the right heart of a servant. How much service can I provide? Give me some of that.
Katzenberg: Well, I think the biggest thing there, you said the word “retirement”. Right? I think a lot of people think, oh, they’re working towards some end.
Kennedy: That’s the launch pad.
Katzenberg: Thank you for bringing us into the HQ, as you call it. As a first-time visitor of this place, it is incredible. It’s what? A gun shop? Yeah. Pro shop. What else do we have? What else do we have here?
Kennedy: We have a self-defense, martial arts school, jiu-jitsu school. We have all of our fulfillment. For all of our tactical gear to include lots of 5.11 stuff. We have the offices for TKO, Noble Defender, Gracie Humaita Cedar Park, and Sheepdog Response. It’s also our classroom for where we do most of our central Texas law enforcement, military, and civilian self-defense courses. So, like, this is, um, all of the things.
Katzenberg: All the things. And for those of you that are listening to this, we’re sitting at a, what—eight, ten foot beautiful wooden table covered with some of the most impressive weaponry from all over the ages.
Kennedy: Yep. Texas Oak.
Katzenberg: Texas Oak, Samurai swords, World War I bayonets. Yeah. I love it.
Kennedy: It keeps you grounded. You know, I you know, we have lots of raw stuff in this office, like lots of wood, lots of cedar. And, you know, the the few animals that adorn the walls are local. You know, Texas elk and Texas bear and Texas bison. You know, it’s it’s cool just to make sure that your your feet and soul are well connected to the Earth, you know, and the soil.
Katzenberg: I love it. I love it. Well, you know, something that has always impressed me about you, Tim, is how connected you are to your environment, how much you actually care. You know, about the world around you, a future, future human society. And it’s I think you’re your persona to folks that don’t know you. You know, you’re a little bit of a mad man, a little wild man, but, you know, if you’ve read if you’ve read your book, you understand why. You’ve lived quite the life. But, you know, for most people out there, they look at you, they, you know, how could I be a little more like that guy? What are the things I can learn from Tim to be a better human? And for 5.11 right now, so much of what we focus on is training. And I know, with all of your business, training is a core tenet. Yeah. But what what are you training for? Like what? What does that mean to you? The full extent of the word “training”?
Kennedy: Yeah. The scariest thing is the unknown. You know, like you’re responsible for what you’re in control of and what you’re not in control of. You have to be as prepared as you can be for those unknowns.
Like, heaven forbid something bad happens. Know, I don’t get to pick where it’s going to happen. When it’s going to happen. What’s the motivation behind the people doing it? You know, the the all the five Ws. I have no say in any of that. I think the only thing that I have seen is me how trained am I? how in-shape am I? How often have I been to the range? How often have I been on the mats? How often have I, you know, been rehearsing situational awareness or my emergency action plans? How many times have I gone through that? You know, if you look at all the special missions units, why do they. Why do the men look like these Greek gods right? They’re Adonises. It’s because they train all the time. You know, how are they so good at the basics, these fundamentals that they can execute regardless of the circumstances, ‘cause they train all the time, ’cause they, you know, mission success, the only measurable thing about lethality is can you can do the job and survive and you can’t do it unless you train, train, train, train, train.
So with so many of those things taken from me, the five Ws, I’m still in charge of me, right? Like no help is coming, no backup is coming. You know, I don’t I don’t have a team behind me to run through the door, you know, like, maybe it’s just my wife and my kids. Am I prepared? Am I trained and equipped to do whatever is required of me to preserve and protect the lives of everybody around me?
It’s easy, a yes or no. You know, like you’ve either done everything that you can to prepare for that or you haven’t. And if you haven’t. Shame on you.
Katzenberg: Well, you know, taking a step back. I know. I—I train a lot for worst case, you know, my concealed carry draw. You know, how are my hand-to-hand skills, etc.. But knowing that realistically, what’s most likely to kill me is a heart attack. Right? Yeah. Right? So to do that, it’s not just your physical fitness, it’s also your mental fitness, because we run hard. We burn the candle at both ends and blow torch it up the middle.
Kennedy: Yeah, it it’s. It’s the lazy solution. The lazy solution is, you know, I can I can have a, you know, a point second or 0.1 second draw time from conceal like that. That’s great, you know, but your brain’s not going to be working if you’re not cardiovascularly in-shape.
If you didn’t sleep the night before, if you haven’t been eating clean, and like the the major tenants, the major pillars, the major cornerstones about what makes a human be an optimized human that can go and do a volume of work that will perform under extreme circumstances with an incredible amount of external stress. Those are some really clear, measurable things about like this total human optimization.
Are you getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep? You know, are you fulfilled spiritually and mentally? are you physically trained? Like is your body capable to grab your kid, run a few hundred meters, you know, jumping over things, sliding underneath things, you know, and then, heaven forbid, have to throw a tourniquet on a couple of people, then draw your gun and run back into the fray. You know? You’re not. Most people aren’t, and they think that there’s going to be some easy solutions, some techniques, some draw like a gun is going to solve your problems. And the truth is, it’s not you know, it’s ultimately down to the individual and his ability, his capacity to do work. And there’s only one way to get that done. And that is through hard work and training. A lot of hard work in training. This is not there’s not an easy way.
Katzenberg: So walk us through that. What does a typical week look like for you? How do you break down your week? What are you doing? What are you eating? I mean, obviously, you’ve got a lot of work commitments. You’re running half a dozen businesses. You’re a father, I mean, a husband. How do you break—How do you find the time? How do you how do you how do you make it happen?
Kennedy: One of the many reasons I’m going to sidestep your question and get back to it, but one of the main reasons why we have these on the table is ‘cause the same way that a human is conditioned to do this job what a protector or guardian, sheepdog, you know, insert like any name to it, whether you’re a first responder, you’re in the military, whatever, it’s very similar to the process that these are forged, you know, like this this this was a chunk of metal somewhere, not even, like it was a bunch of minerals that were heated and melted. And then they took it and they pounded it. And they heated it and they pounded it and they cooled it, and they heated it, and they pounded it and they heated it and they pounded it. And they continue this process. I mean, this arduous it’s literally torture to this material as they slowly remove the impurities ‘til it starts taking the shape of something useful.
You know, if you started choking right now and you’re like, I can’t breathe like I can make an airway with this, I can save your life. I could cut a tumor out of your back with this, the same way that I could push this through your lungs and your heart. You know, that ultimately, this is just a tool that’s forged in the same way, that we’re forged the same way that our mental toughness gets for this in the way that our grit gets forged, the same way that our cardiovascular gets forged. And the same way that our muscles get strong. It’s through pain and suffering and stress. So for me, in a week, there’s intentionality and there’s discipline. There’s not like this moment of inspiration where I like I think about my kids, you know, and all of a sudden I’m inspired to go to the gym and lift weights. You know, I love my kids and they do inspire me. But that feeling comes and goes like a fart in the wind, you know, just like it’s in and out at a whim.
Discipline, a regiment and intentionality are the things that are—that carry through. So you can actually stay on this road, this process of this forging fire, of becoming a useful tool, to be able to be a contributing citizen to your society, to your tribe, to your church, your school, to what you know, to your employer. Every one of those things is this this painful process. So for me, it’s about 10 to 12 training sessions a week. You know, I do. I swim, I do yoga. I—I’m in a gi for jiu-jitsu a couple of times a week. I do No gi wrestling a couple of times a week. Strength and conditioning. I do four, five—six times a week. Make sure I get my striking in there, whether it’s boxing or kickboxing.
And, you know, cumulatively in these these sessions and, you know, people like me, I don’t have time. Like, nobody can say to me that they don’t have time. Nobody travels more than me. Nobody runs more businesses than me. You know, nobody loves their family more than me. Like, we’re probably all the same. You know, we have every excuse to—to miss a hockey game to, you know, not show up to lacrosse field, to, you know, not be there for date night.
The same excuses that will make you not be at the gym, make you not go to the range, make you not step on to the mats. The same egos that are going to prevent us from actually going out there and being humbled like every single one of those, everybody has the exact same excuses. So then it really just comes down to intentionality, discipline and regiment. Like, are you going to put the good habits to work and create good habits so that you can eat clean, you can sleep well, you can be a good husband or wife in every imaginable way, father, and that you can do real work. The good business of keeping blood in good people and letting blood out of bad people.
Katzenberg: One of my favorite lines. So to that end, you speak a lot about eating clean, and so much of what is killing Americans is what they put in their body.
Kennedy: Yeah.
Katzenberg: What do you put in your body?
Kennedy: I put real food. You know that big old boy back there? You know, that fed my family for a year. You know, one bullet, 140 grains, 6.5 *Ka-bap!* Fed my family for a year, you know, just killed a bison that over your left shoulder there, you know .33 Nosler to the—we call it the chef’s kiss *Clonk* you know just center punch that dude—400 lbs. off the bone meat think about 400 lbs. You know, I’m giving meat away for Christmas to people, you know, that’s how much meat there is.
And, you know, I got chickens in the backyard. And not everybody has the opportunity to do that, you know and I know that healthier food is more expensive. Shame on this industry where they’re pushing, you know, this processed and sugars and fried and I mean, just crap.
They literally just want you to eat crap and, you know, they they can’t make money off you unless you’re sick. I don’t want to be sick. Obviously, I’m I love freedom. And I talk about freedom all the time. Like I’m a freedom for everyone in every imaginable way. But more than freedom is sovereignty. Sovereignty is my ability to do something without somebody else being able to say anything about the way that I do it. And if you’re not healthy, you can never have sovereignty. I’ll be dependent on medications. I’ll be dependent on a doctor. I’ll be dependent on them for something to provide me, something for me to be able to sustain my life. Forget that. No. The only way you can have true sovereignty is to be individually responsible for yourself, to provide for your family, to be able protect your family. It’s nobody else’s job but yours. But people want to shun that responsibility. They’re like, “Oh man. So much work.” Yeah, it is, bro. Welcome. Welcome to the fray.
Katzenberg: Well, that. That feeling of self-reliance. Right? I think pandemic put us all back on our heels a little bit. And for a lot of folks, they woke up and they realized, I’m not in control of my destiny and I want to be, right? So many of us, I want to be in control. So more people, yeah, they’re buying firearms. They’re learning to hunt. They want to go, they want to get off the grid. All of these things. For someone who’s maybe new to this universe, they want to step into it. Now, how do I how do I begin? What’s the first step to this? Yeah, owning my own destiny, having that personal sovereignty.
Kennedy: The worst thing is the feeling, that fear, that apprehension. Can I even go to the grocery store to get food? Is there going to be a line? There’s civil unrest. You know, people are burning down grocery stores and they’re, you know, setting cars on fire the same time that COVID was happening, the same time that we’re like kind of peaking in some civil disobedience in a lot of areas in the urban cities. And people have already lost that feeling. They’ve already forgot how scared they were. They forgot what it felt like to like, am I going to have food for my family tomorrow? You know, am I going to get a disease that I don’t know what the symptoms are? Like Is this airborne? And they’ve already forgot about that and back the inspiration that that moment of feeling that you need to go and do something, how fast that goes away.
You know, we are coming out of a pandemic where everybody thought that we might die, you know, like that we can’t get food. And already we I mean, we knew for a fact healthy people were living just fine and obesity and people with bad diets, people struggling with other preexisting health conditions like how dangerous the world looked to them.
It was discipline and regiment that that kept those people healthy is the intentionality of of being healthy and eating clean and working out, often, you know, being outside, you know, finding activities like hiking and hunting. I call these people “survival curious”. You know, they’re like, I think that’s interesting. You know, I remember being scared, but they haven’t made the decision to do the things that they need to to start preparing for it.
You don’t know when the next pandemic is going to happen. You don’t know when the cities are going to start burning again. You don’t know when the the next election goes wacky and people start freaking out. You know, you have no idea, you know, it could happen, you know, in two weeks from now. It could happen in two months from now. But ultimately, you’ve either prepared or you haven’t.
One of the SOF truths, the special operations truths, we know that you cannot prepare for an emergency after the emergency’s occurred. Right? Like, I can’t create special operations for an emergency after the emergency’s happened. They either exist and they can respond to it or they did it. So how can special operations exist before an emergency? That’s right. Training, intentionality, regiment and discipline. You know, working on the fundamentals, working on shoot, move, communicate, medicate.
So like, if you’re if you’re one of those, like, “Man, I’m curious about hunting.” Go! Start! You know? Like go take a course. YouTube only scratches the surface and I think people think that there’s this quick, easy solution to learning about an activity or a trade, and they can do it by just watching it. You can’t. There’s not an easy way to get it to get good at this stuff besides just doing it. We have a provider course where we’re showing people how to do land navigation, how to clean animals. You know, these people are coming in like they’ve never seen an animal die in front of them before. Like, I mean, that is how new this is to them in their lives. Like maybe they’re walking down the road and they heard like *Ta-donk!* and they look over and the cat got run over. That’s the closest thing. When I shot that bison, there were a whole bunch of people that have never seen an animal die before. They had no idea what to expect, you know? And and, you know, they’re crying before the shot even rang out. And then the animal like, *Snaps* was just gone. And, they’re like, “That’s it?” That’s it. Like, it’s dead. That’s that’s all it was—eating grass. Just chilling, looking around at other bison. And there was blackness. It never even heard the shot. And for you to get good at how to clean it, you know, how to kill it, how to preserve it, how to feel, dress it, how to freeze it.
Like, those are all things that you that you have to research that you have to struggle through. Am I using the right knife to clean it? Am I using the right bullet? Am I using the right gun? Am I using the right optic? those that’s all work, that’s all training and that’s all time.
Katzenberg: That training continues at, you know, as an entrepreneur, right. You have quite, quite the businessperson and how do you how do you get better at the work and how has your history and brought you to the point now where you literally can manage six. Six? More. Eight? Ten?
Ten, twelve different businesses all at once because that itself is such a skill that requires training, requires discipline, and knowing that you have to be physically fit to even keep up with the pace.
Kennedy: Yeah, if you’re faithful in the small things, you’re going to be faithful and He’s going be faithful in the big things, you know, that’s a scripture reference. But it’s true in practice, you know, Mattis was asked, “What is the most important thing that you can do in a day?” He says, “When I wake up, it’s to make my bed,” you know? And then and then after that, you know, to drink some water. And then after that it was to have a healthy breakfast. And then after that, it was to exercise, you know, like you’re 45 minutes into the day and you’ve already made four great decisions that are setting you up for a volume of work, for capacity of work that is going to continue to trend in this positive way, this great decision then makes another great decision easier, and then the next decision’s easier, and then it just gets easier and easier to make good decisions.
So then when you have hard decisions, you have all of this momentum of all of this energy of success because you’ve been faithful in the small things. My bed was made. I had a great breakfast, you know, I made my kids breakfast. I drove my son to school. And, you know, I had some intentional moments with him. I mean, like, first thing, when my wife walks out, the door is walking over to her and hugging her like, “Hey, good morning. Hope you slept well. Is there anything I can get for you?” You know, I know every one of those decisions. They’re little decisions. But they create this energy, this momentum that you can carry and through all that you do. So then I sit down in front of a computer. You know, I have like sixty-five emails and I start triaging them immediately. Like these ones I don’t need to answer. Here’s ones that I can forward. Here’s are the easy reply tos, and that gives me like the eight that I have to do, right? And those eight that I have to do. I need to take a little moment with intentional intentionality, focus on, okay, what is the appropriate way for me to handle this?
I love Lincoln, where Lincoln would write letters and he put them in his desk drawer and never send them. I do the same thing. I will I will compose this response and then I just shelve it and then come out and I talk to Karl. I talk to Matt, you know, or the COO, the director. I’m like, man, working through this thing, you know? And they talk, and as we flush this out, boom, right back to computer. Two paragraphs, off we go. And now I got seven more emails to do, you know. But the first one was done right, and the second one is going to be easier. The third one’s going to be easier, even easier. And then I crush through those, right?
Maybe I get another workout in, you know, maybe I can get another one in there before I get to pick up my kids and take them to lacrosse practice. And while he’s at lacrosse practice and, you know, connect with his coach, make sure that he knows that I’m there and I’m present. His coach is there to coach him. I don’t need to be coaching him. I’m not going to be one of those parents. Right? Like I’m going to go ahead and make sure I have the right coach because I was intentional in picking the team and picking the coach and picking his, you know, which team or which club he’s going to be going to be in or which even activity—is he in chess, is he in piano, in lacrosse, in hockey, in football, in baseball, is he in soccer, you know, depending on where you are and what your goals are and what your values are, every one of those is a choice, you know, and if you’re going to pick soccer, you have maybe twenty choices where you live. Maybe you just have one. Maybe you have to pick a different activity, but with an intentionality there. Now I’m going to go ahead and trust that I made the right decisions so that the coach can do his thing and coach and now I have an hour to get back to work. Alright, maybe I’m going to be editing and curating the new reel. Maybe I’ll be working on social media. Maybe I’m shooting you text message, right? Like, what’s the next shoot? You, you know, like, is there a way that I can help and then I have an hour of I’m present in the right place. But now splitting my time for dual purposes. I’m giving you twice as much at the same time. So back to intentionality. There has to be—not that I’m being strategic with every moment of my day, I still need to be present, but I have to be productive when I’m present.
Katzenberg: Productivity, you know that. That’s one thing that yeah, I don’t think most people see unless they’re in your your circle, just how productive you are. What amazes me is that you not only can be a good father and businessman, but you’re also educating the future with your school. And could you walk us through what what was the intention there? And and are you able to bring all those things forward to the next generation through this? How is that coming to pass?
Kennedy: Yeah. I mean, what kind of hypocrite would I be if I was like, hey, here’s all these things that I espouse, but I’m not going to passing this on to the next generation. Like here. Here’s all these things that all these values and characteristics, you know, integrity and ethics that I believe in. But, man, it just can stop with Generation X, you know, like absolute hypocrite, right?
I purpose filled and purpose driven life know like why do I do these things? Why do I, you know, work with these non-profits? Why do I spend so much time overseas? Afghanistan, Ukraine, Mexico. You know, it’s because I know what my purpose is. And, you know, my my purpose, the mission of this company is to preserve and protect and provide for humans, for human life, to preserve and protect human life and be able to provide for our families and for our friends and for our tribe and for our community. And, you know, with that, if you just took that and figured out what are all the different ways that I can support that, and you do not have educating the next generation, you know, imparting these values, our next generation, you’re a liar or you’re lazy and you’re just there for the cameras. So we have kind of two initiatives.
One of them is our physical school called Apogee, and that is a Socratic school, you know, bursting at every single seam, trying to find more property to expand into and every one of the studios, it’s truly Socratic, so it’s learner-driven. So the heroes in the studios, so the kids in the classrooms, they’re the ones that are kind of driving the whole ship in there. You know, there’s a guide that’s a teacher but not a real teacher. Their guide another Socrates and the guide is there to be this bumper of, you know, “Is that is that the best way for you to solve this problem? Is there a different formula that would be better for it?” And they’re just knowing which questions to ask to encourage this inquisitive mind. So those kids, those heroes can go and do the research and struggling through it is part of the process, a process that’s been removed from most school systems where we’re spoon feeding them the way to take a test, but not ever teaching them how to learn, how to discover, how to explore, how to adventure, how to have a curious mind.
And I will take a curious mind that knows how to do work over someone that can pass a 100% on a test that is useless knowledge. I want somebody that is learning to be able to do and is learning to be able to be than just learning to know such a clear difference between those two and the delta between these two products of a human is one that can go and do work and one that just knows stuff. And I want so many more of these citizens that can go and do that are independent and self-reliant compared to the lemming and the consumer. I don’t need more consumers. We need creators, we need builders, we need engineers, we need architects. And we need people that want to go and build the next Golden Gate Bridge or Chrysler Building, you know, that will figure out how to cure cancer. Give me those.
The second initiative is Apogee Strong. And that is a it is mentorship program for four fathers and four sons about how to be the leader of your home. You know, this is to put man back in being a gentleman, you know, knowing what it feels like to have calluses on your hands, how to change a tire, how to, you know change the oil in your car, how to balance a checkbook, things that are just seem so antedated but are so important for the development of a man. And I don’t think there’s anything more dangerous than a broken man. You know, there is no such thing as toxic masculinity. Masculinity is this beautiful power thing that is this compelling force for good that will provide and protect and preserve, that will hold open a door or reach out his hand to help somebody up. You know, that will help an old lady cross the street.
Those are all graceful forms of of a good man. And then there’s the broken man, the young man that’s going to walk into a Uvlade, you know, a broken man that is going to walk into a supermarket and try to shoot people of color, like those are broken, damaged little boys. And at some point they missed their opportunity to learn how to be a man.
And this second initiative that Apogee Strong is trying to teach fathers how to build young men and young men, how to grow into becoming true contributors that are individually responsible and are good citizens. I believe in this stuff. As you can see, I’m like *Brah!*
Katzenberg: Well, you know, fatherhood in particular. You know, your dad is is quite, quite the guy. [Kennedy] He is. Love the guy. [Katzenberg] And so, yeah, he is he is he is the epitome of that of the word badass. I would say. So what what lessons do you have? You know, for those of us that are trying to be better fathers every day in a world where our kids are addicted to iPads and are fed crap either by their friends at school and are always bombarded by this machine of marketing and materialism. And we do our best. But the machine’s out there, we can’t be with them.
Kennedy: “Do as I say, not as I do,” is the worst disservice to your family. They see everything. They see whether you sweat, they see whether you struggle. They know how you respond under stress. They know when your voice starts getting raised, when you start talking to your ear, your husband or wife, you know, they know those things.
And, you know, no matter what you say, like “This is what it looks like to be a good human,” you know, like “But I saw you be an asshole,” you know, “you tell me whatever you want.” So the first thing you have to fix you, you have to be a good human.
You have to be a good man. You have to be a good husband. You have to be a good employee. You have to work hard. You have to struggle. You have to get up before they do knock out that first workout and welcome in the morning with a hot breakfast, you know, like and doing that every single day, building those good habits and having that intentionality. That’s what pays dividends.
Like you go out there as this hypocrite, this fraud selling snake oil to these children, they see right through it. They’ve been marketed to since the day they were born. You know, it’s 2022, this entire generation, every time they pick up their phone they’re being marketed to, every time they walk down the street they’re being marketed to. Every time they turn on the radio they’re being marketed to. They know real and they know fake. No matter how clever these marketers try to infuse into every single element of their life, they know. They know fact from fiction, and they surely know it through you. So either you’re the good person that you that you’re espousing to be, or you’re not.
So first is fix. You go struggle, go do hard things, let them see you fail and then get back up. You know, like get thrown from the horse and get back up there one more time. You know how many times you get thrown before you just quit? Have they seen you quit? They remember when you did. You know, did you quit on your marriage? Did you quit on eating healthy? Did you quit on your diet? Did you quit on the gym? Did you make the blue belt stop doing jiu-jitsu? Did you work your concealed carry draws dry firing because you felt so inspired because you saw John Wick for like three weeks and then it’s over. They see it all. They’re not documenting it. That’s not in their journal. Maybe it is, but they remember. It’s infused in their DNA now.
Katzenberg: So freaking true.
Kennedy: It’s a bummer. There’s no either—there’s no easy way to any of this. You know, like, I wish like, there’s no easy way to be a good father. There’s no easy way to be a good shooter. There’s no easy way to be a good grappler. There’s no easy way to be a good boxer. Like it is hard.
Katzenberg: I think it all comes back to training in general. Train your mind, training your body [Kennedy] Amen. [Katzenberg] and then discipline.
Kennedy: How do you train your mind? By training your body. There’s no like breathing meditation technique. Then all of a sudden you have grit. Where do you get grit from doing hard things. How do you do hard things? By training.
Cool. You want to be on the podium at a shooting competition, put in the work, right? You want to get a gold medal around your neck at the next jiu-jitsu tournament? Cool, put in the work, you know, you want to be a good father where your kids are going to look up to you and smile and like their eyes light up when you walk in the room? Cool, put in the work. You want to be a good employee where you’re getting promotions and they’re like, “Dude, I cannot wait to put this guy in the C-suite and he’s going to be running this new department.” Cool, put in the work. There’s not an easy way. There’s not.
Katzenberg: Well, it’s—and it’s so funny that those little movements that you make and it might be just hitting the gym, working out, you’re watching workout video on YouTube and getting that workout in every day. That’s that tone for your—for your mindset and your body and and moves you along. And that’s I think there’s something so powerful in just physical fitness. When I think about you’re having a shitty day. Workout. [Kennedy:] Yeah. [Katzenberg:] You know, you’re bummed about whatever that thing that happened. Workout. You know, you want to get better at those things even if it is writing those emails, workout, get the blood flowing, get—it’s almost a cure all for everything.
Kennedy: And so sometimes working out this insurmountable task right? Man, it’s so hard, do I—do I have the time? I don’t even have the energy. I’m so tired. But when you start making those little decisions, it just gets easier, you know, when you’re eating clean, your body wants to go and do work. When you’re getting good sleep and you’re eating clean, your body wants to go do more work.
You’re working out, you’re eating clean and you’re getting good sleep. Your body wants to go do more work, right? You’re now being amazing partner, intimacy wise, and then you’re getting great sleep and then you’re eating clean and then you’re going to go to the gym and getting good work, and then I’m like man, I’m feeling really, really good now. Like I want to go do more work. What else can I do? And just keeps compounding, you know, until I know you like you look at your day, you’re like, “I’ll get a lot of shit done today.” You know?
Katzenberg: Yeah, well, you know, what I found is one of the most powerful motivators to just to get—get going, right. Is to have that mission. Like what? What are you training for? What is that thing? And it can’t be arbitrary. Got to be a thing, right? Oh, I’ve got a 5K I’m going, I’m doing a marathon. Whatever. I want to win a shooting competition, whatever that might be. What would be your advice to folks that because hopefully this will come out right around the, you know, beginning of 2023 New Year’s resolutions. It’s every gym owner’s favorite time of the year when people come in, write the check and then never show up. What would be your advice to those folks that are like, they’re pumped, they’re motivated, they want to get out there and start working out there and change their life and want that that domino effect of positive behavior to happen. How do you how do you get going? How do you stick to it? What were some hacks you’ve learned.
Kennedy: That that feeling of the New Year’s resolution that’s going to come and go fast, you know, that race that’s going to come and go, it’s the habits. They’re going to stay. You know, it’s you practicing consistently over time, consistency plus hard work and time will equal success. Like you want to work backwards from success in any given activity, in any modality. You take consistency over time with hard work. You’re going to get that. So how do I consistently put this into habits I want? It is all like it’s on my, my calendar: Exactly what time I’m going to be getting up. My my phone shuts off and says, you’re not allowed to continue to work. After this hour, it’s time for you to go to sleep. You know, there there’s checks and balances in my life, like friends that have shared values physically, entrepreneurially, philanthropically. And I have that as my inner-circle where like, if I don’t do that, if I didn’t show up to one of my morning workouts, what do you think would happen with my training partners? Like, you know, my training partners. What do you think would happen?
Katzenberg: You receive endless amounts of sh*t.
Kennedy: For r—I mean, like, they’d also be knocking on my door within a day. Like literally, like *knocks table* “What is going on?” You know? “You better be overseas or you better be dead.” You know, those that “If you’re overseas, I’m going to be looking at our digital tracker to make sure that even though you’re overseas even though you didn’t tell us about it, jerk move, that you’re still doing work over there.” You know.
Katzenberg: I find myself often defending you, Tim, because there’s a lot of people out there.
Kennedy: Don’t waste your time.
Katzenberg: And sometimes I agree with some of the criticism, but, you know, but I would say most people you you have a public persona that is very true to you as a human. But I guess there’s a lot of haters out there. Yeah. What what? Who is the true team? Kennedy:. Who are you if you were going to describe yourself besides those Instagram monikers?
Kennedy: Man, I think ah… a servant. You know, if when we’re at this table every Monday, you know, with the kind of leaders from departments, we almost every single time, every week start off with reviewing how we were servants to the people that we that we work for, whether it’s people attending courses, it’s somebody that I’m traveling with for a nonprofit, a speaking place. Was I truly a servant? Was I coming from a position of trying to provide for them the thing that they need for them to see success?
You know, with the rising tides, all boats will be raised. Like I truly believe that. I want all of my competitors, you know, to to see absolute success. There’s no reason that every single one of us that are whatever we’re providing training or defensive tactics or government contracting like are there not enough fish in the sea for me to help every single one of my friends? Because I worked for them before we came into this entrepreneurial world. Of course there is. So who am I? Man, I hope I’m a servant to my family, first and foremost, that I’m a servant to my church, that I’m a servant to my community, that I’m a servant to my colleagues and associates that I work with here regardless, if I own the business—it doesn’t matter. Like I’m here with them, right?
Their success is my success. My success is their success. Every person that walks through the doors here to get training for us, maybe they’re in the parking lot at the next Uvalde. Maybe they’re at the finish line of the next Boston Marathon. Maybe they’re at the next movie theater in Colorado. When somebody walks in with a gas mask, like what a disservice it would be had I not prepared them from position of a true servant to give them everything they needed to be, for them to be the best versions of themselves, to be able to protect and preserve the lives of those around them.
Imagine if the story went like this: That truck in Uvalde, as he was trying to make his way into the parking lot but turned too late and like kind of crashed. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the video and then he gets out of the car and one of the people that was sitting out there was in that parking lot… *Claps* And that’s the end of the story. No—no broken families. No little kids screaming in a classroom. No police officers hiding and cowering behind corners. None of that happened because somebody had been prepared. Somebody had been trained, somebody went to the right place to learn how to do it and the people that were teaching them wasn’t from this egotistical position of knowledge or power, but rather servants, you know, like I’m a servant to the Constitution, I’m a servant to everything that I am involved in. I’m trying to be a servant, but instead, just *Crack!* That asshole dies. That’s the end of the story. Give me some of that. You can’t do that if your heart’s not the right place. You can’t protect the Constitution if you’re sitting there like “Rah, rah, rah, rah,” rather; “How can I help?”
Katzenberg: Well Tim, thank you very much for welcoming us into your home away from home here and for this great week together and for being a guest on Call to Service. Appreciate you.
Kennedy: Stay Free.
