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“Get off my bus!”
In an instant 23 young men and a couple of intrepid young ladies grabbed their bags and dove for the exit. I was second in line, right behind a corn fed girl from Iowa who plowed over the drill sergeant like a John Deere tractor on high test fuel on her way out the door.
“Don’t you touch me,” he screamed as the mass of raw recruits spilled onto the parking lot in front of the “Indoc” building at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
It was a week before Christmas and three in the morning. A cold wind whipped between the huge dormitory buildings as the latest group of Air Force “Rainbows” instinctively huddled together for protection against the elements and a drill sergeant with about half a dozen stripes on his sleeve. A vein on his neck throbbed angrily as he paced in front of us, slapping a long clipboard against his leg.
“I’m Sergeant Martin. You’ll call me Training Instructor Martin. Is that clear?” The sergeant shook his head in disapproval at the mumbled response. “You all are about the sorriest bunch of maggots I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Recruits are generally prepared for a certain amount of degradation and contrived punishment in boot camp, but the reasons behind this brutal process remain a mystery to most.
”Put your bags down,” Training Instructor Martin shouted.
Exactly twenty three thumps later the sergeant turned and came to attention. “Flight, ten-hut.”
In the Air Force a platoon or group of trainees are often referred to as a “Flight.” The words “Flight” and “ten-hut” were new to most of us, but a handful of our group knew enough to stand up straight and silent—at the position of attention. We copied their actions.
“Now, we’re going to try that again,” the sergeant said. “I’m going to give you a command. A command comes in two parts, the first part is known as a preparatory command, and the second part tells you what to do. Listen carefully and do this as a group.”
“Flight, pick ‘em up.”
We each bent down and grabbed our bags off the ground as the sergeant shook his head in disgust.
“Flight, put ‘em down.”
For the next twenty minutes we practiced picking up and putting down our bags until everybody learned to do it together. By four in the morning we knew how to put our bags on the ground with one thump and had passed the first test of survival in boot camp.
Which led us to the next challenge: moving as a unit in a dignified, military manner—a technical description for a one syllable word: “march.”
“I want you to listen carefully,” the sergeant said as he walked around us. “Less than one hundred yards from here is a warm dining hall. There are some hard working people in there that have spent the entire night making breakfast, just for you.”
My stomach growled at the mere mention of breakfast. I had spent over 14 hours in various airports and planes making my way from Alaska to Texas. Breakfast sounded like a great way to start the day.
“But you’re not ready for breakfast,” the sergeant said to a chorus of groans, “because you do not know how to walk yet.”
Over the course of the next 8 weeks the Air Force subjected us to a trial by fire where we learned everything we needed to know to survive and thrive in the strange new world we had volunteered to join. And the transformation was nothing short of a miracle. Within hours of arriving as individuals we were marching and responding to commands as a group, learning the lay of the land, and mastering Air Force customs and courtesies.
Boot camp training is intense and finely tuned from over 200 years of U.S. Military experience in turning civilians into soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines in minimal time and maximal efficiency. But it’s more than that.
Could you imagine a young man leaving high school and jumping into the cockpit of a fighter jet without first graduating from undergraduate flight training? Or perhaps walking into a hangar and safely removing a jet engine from a C-5 Galaxy with no training or supervision?
It’s not likely the Air Force would let you anywhere near one of its weapon systems without training—which makes sense. But as civilians and aspiring entrepreneurs we assume the right to jump into various business opportunities or investments with zero training or experience—and then get pissed and blame the business, industry, or our investment advisor when the business or stock market goes south—and takes our last dime along for the ride.
There is a better way, and if you’re so inclined or motivated, you can use the same boot camp methodologies used by the military to transform your small business dreams into reality. Here’s what you’ll need to do to succeed:
· Recognize that starting, building, and operating a profitable business will require training, and perhaps a shift in the way you think.
· A careful identification of your strengths and weaknesses, followed by a deliberate plan of action designed to capitalize on your strengths while beefing up your weaknesses.
· Creation of short and long term goals and a thoughtful consideration of what you will be willing to do and sacrifice to achieve those goals.
· A commitment to take the daily actions necessary to achieve your goals.
· The perseverance and determination to press on when your body and mind screams “stop.”
Throughout your training and self-development, always remember as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Every artist was first an amateur.”
Learn more about perseverance and overcoming obstacles in my Amazon Kindle book, The Wealthy Networker.