I’m Shawn Tiberio. Welcome to the Shawn Tiberio show where the good, the bad and the ugly about being your own boss are all on the table. Now we all know every day as a business owner is not easy. There’s no money tree that’s just growing and rain in those bills requires us to show up every single day and put in the work. So congratulations for showing up today. To learn something will help your business grow. Now let’s get real. What’s up, everybody? Welcome to this episode of The Shawn Tiberio show, the best place for the real talk of round entrepreneurship Sales and Marketing. And today I’ve got a special treat for you guys. I did a keynote presentation for the Kellogg’s Corporation on 10, November 2021 day prior to Veterans Day, and I got the ability to get hold of that recording of that talk. And I am gonna share it today with you guys. sit back, enjoy, relax, listen in, as I kind of dissect and talk about the lion mentality and why individuals like veterans, entrepreneurs, why we are so dominant, why we have the ability to quickly turn on a switch and own our space. If you’ve been wanting to feel like you can just let that lion mentality out if you want to just become the king and the ruler and really dominate your industry. This episode is for you. Hope you guys enjoy it. Sit back and listen to Kellogg’s keynote presentation from Veterans Day 2021. Well, I really appreciate that warm introduction. And I’m sitting here staring at this photo that you happen to pull out of I don’t know what archived. But man has given me some flashbacks. And it happens to come on a very special day. In case there’s some other marine veterans out there, I want to wish everybody, all my Marine brothers and sisters, a super happy birthday today is actually the Marine Corps 246 birthday. It’s always a fun time of year leading into Veterans Day. It’s kind of like a double whammy holiday for US Marines. And I’m super excited to be here today speaking with all of you great individuals. And I was actually, before I got into anything I was listening, as you guys were going through some of the updates and some of the things that Kellogg’s and caveats and what you guys are currently doing and what 2022 is starting to look like already. And it warms my heart as a veteran. And it’s not just a veteran, but somebody who works with a lot of veterans, whether they’re entering into the more traditional workforce, or they’re exploring, and maybe tapping into this entrepreneurial side, it really warms my heart to hear that there are some really good organizations out there like Kellogg’s, who are putting veterans as a focus point and not discounting or not maybe overlooking simply because they don’t come from a very traditional backgrounds, right, not all military leaving that active duty transition out, have your typical four year degrees, which I see a lot in the space where that becomes a mandatory requirement sometimes. And that can hurt. So I want to say thanks to Kellogg’s number one for having me here today. But number two for just really uplifting and putting

veterans as a focus point. And when when I got asked to be here today, I was asked to kind of talk on a couple of different things and um, over the last probably week we can have really been kind of sitting down and putting some thought to why is it that veterans and pardon me if I get a little bias at times Marines, always kind of at that front forth. But why is it that veterans seem to excel when leaving active duty, kind of no matter what ends up being put in front of them? I was looking back at my very non-traditional career. I got out of the Marine Corps back In 2011, as Caitlin was just saying, I literally left high school about two weeks after graduating and went straight to boot camp. By the time I got through boot camp through my job schooling, which was at the time, a very peaceful operation, nothing crazy in the world was going on. I got my very first duty station, I was asking for the East Coast, I wanted to stay near home, I’m an Ohio guy who wanted to be more in the North Carolina region. And they hit me with orders. And those orders were for about as far east of the East Coast I could ever see. And that was Okinawa, Japan. And my first two years, like right out of the gate, I got smacked with big adversity. I’m 18 years old, I want to stay home, I’m not gonna lie, I was a super big mama’s boy. And very tight into my family as an Italian. And I get hit with this, you got to go live in a completely different country, a language you don’t know, 18 years old, right out of the gate. And oh, by the way, let’s throw another monkey wrench on this whole thing. And let’s put 911 into the mix. And what you thought was gonna be kind of a peace operation. Nothing really crazy going on. Even though I joined as a, in a combat arms job, I was an explosives guy. All of a sudden, 18 years old, my life and my world looks different. And you fast forward through what many of us can look back and remember now as we just got done celebrating the 20th anniversary of 911. This past September here, I went straight from Okinawa, to coming home to straight into Iraq to multiple Iraq deployments to Afghanistan tours, and a 10 year Marine Corps career that really kind of shaped everything about myself and I left active duty in 2011. Again, on a random life, shake up a random, kind of like, stir the pot, create some adversity, I was sitting at home at Christmas time in December of 2010. And I was looking at my family around this table. And I kept asking myself, if I kept going in the direction I was going here, how many more of these am I going to have meeting how many more Christmas dinners like this am I gonna have many more family moments like this am I gonna have, I’ve had a number of close calls throughout multiple combat operations, training environments, the whole nine yards. And on a whim, without really any game plan. I kind of just got the attention of my family and said, I’m leaving. I’m leaving active duty. And I’m getting out. And I remember clearly, my grandfather, if you guys could see where I’m standing right now. It’d be all the way at the other end of this room. He was sitting at the far end of the table. My father was sitting right next to him. They both put their forks down first off to get an Italian to put his fork down at a holiday meal. That’s a challenge in itself that managed to pull that off. They put their forks down and they looked at me and they said, What are you going to do? You have no school. You have no real career. The Marine Corps is all you’ve known for the last 10 years. That is your career. You’re almost there to retire, what is going on? And I said I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just know that it’s time to make a change. And there’s something better out there for me and my grandfather who loves them to death. We actually just lost him. Earlier this year. I forget who it was. It said I think they had somebody that was in the army and in artillery, I believe I heard. My grandfather was an artillery veteran from the Korean War as well. He looked at me, he said, words that will never ever leave me and they’re really words that fuel me every day. He said, You’re an idiot. You’re an idiot for leaving. My father echoed him. They turned around and grabbed their forks and I went back to eating. For the next five months, I sat there pondering, am I making the right choice? Is this really what I want to do? This is really the next step.

And as May of 2011 came around, I started to get a little nervous. But deep down there was something in me that said no continue on, there’s something else better for you out there. And I left active duty with no real game plan. And I say this story because there’s a lot of individuals excited at times that they’re in that same boat. They know there’s something more that they want to achieve. There’s nothing that there’s something different. There’s the next chapter in their life story. But they really don’t know what that looks like. I can promise you nobody’s on active duty right now. sitting there going when I get out I want to work for Kellogg’s when I get out I want to work for X brands. Know nobody’s sitting there saying that right now. But as they get out, it’s through some of these programs through some of the things that corporations and organizations like you guys are doing that helps guide and shape that next step, that next chapter. And as I sat back this last week, week and a half, and really started to kind of challenge myself, why is it that I was able to walk away with no game plan, and Excel and don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with where life’s at right now. Built and scaled a couple different businesses, building a couple more businesses right now, we launched a digital agency last year, right at the heart of COVID turnaround where we’re almost to the million dollar mark, and that there’s been some great success. But I sit back and I go, I’m still not there, it still hasn’t gotten to the full level that I know I can get to. And when I talked to a lot of other veterans, and I talked to other military members about this, there’s one core trait that I can almost without a doubt say, no matter what branch they come from, no matter where they served, no matter what job description they had in the service. There’s one core trait that they all possess. And it’s a trait that to the non veteran can sometimes be misconstrued as arrogance, it can be misconstrued as cocky, it can be misconstrued as trying to advance too fast right, the showboat the show off simply because this trait is bred into every individual who’s ever stepped foot on a military boot camp base. From day one, this trait is built in and as I dug deeper, and I really started to dissect it, it came back to everything that I’ve I’ve kind of created this, this brand, unleash your inner lion, the fact that I have lions all over the place on the wall, this concept of fortifying your mind in my book, I talk about becoming a lion. And it’s because there’s a trait that is so similar to veterans. So similar to that military individual. That is almost a direct replica of the trait that makes the lion, the lion and as I was preparing today for this talk, I was talking to my father, I was talking to my girlfriend, I was talking to some other individuals. And I said I gotta I don’t know how to bring this up. I’m going to be speaking to Kellogg’s and I hope Tony doesn’t get too mad. So no offense Tony, the tiger, loves you to death. But there’s a reason why lions are the king. And as I studied over the last couple years now, what it is about this lion, what it is about the lion inside of us, what it is about this trait that we kind of possess that a lion has it comes down to this one simple word. And that is the attitude. Now, when I say attitude, I don’t mean are they happy all the time? Are they excited all the time? When I say attitude, talking about the way that we think, talking about the way that that trade, kind of rewires some things in our minds. And if you’ve ever studied a lion, there’s one thing that has always shocked me about the line.

They sleep 20 hours a day. Let’s sink in for a second. Imagine yourself right now, getting to stay in bed for 20 hours a day, and only having four hours of the day to actually do something for some of you that probably sounds like a dream. But others you would kind of almost cringe like I don’t know if I can. I don’t mean personally I couldn’t stay in bed for 20 hours. You know, lions can sleep for 20 hours a day. And he’s still the most feared. The most respected. The most eager, the most committed, the most dedicated, the most loyal, the most trustworthy individual in the heart. It’s not because he’s the biggest, the fastest, the baddest, the meanest, no, there’s other animals out there that very easily in that 20 hours that this lion is asleep. could take it out. So why is it that the lion is able to kind of own and kind of dominate their environment. When a lion is awake that four hours, that four hours is everything to them, they have one mission when they wake up, and that is to win that day, for a lion, that means I got to get a kill. So I can feed my pride, I have to support and defend and make sure that my pride stays protected. But it’s not just the fact that they have to provide or that they got to get this food, there’s something deeper beneath and and as I continue to pull this onion back and peel it apart and really look at it, I found where it is that the trait of what we see in a lot of veterans and why they become so impactful so quickly to organizations, it comes down to this attitude of the lion around the thrill of the next challenge. Go back to 2011 When I got out, but no real plan. And I have no idea what to do. I got home. When I got home, I got back to Ohio, I was living out in California at the time, it was my last duty station. I got back there and every one of my friends from high school were still there. We’re still doing kind of the same old, same old and they all kept asking me, What are you going to do? How are you going to do it? What’s going on? Why aren’t you doing it? Why didn’t you stay and all this stuff? And the answer was always the same? I don’t know. I don’t know. And after a day, two days, five days a week of that their questions started to shift. How is it that you’re still excited about being here with no real plan? How is it that you’re able to get up every day? And figure out the next move? How is it that you’re not depressed? How is it that you’re not just a client at the bits to have something like just happened for you why? How is it that you’re so eager to attack? And the more I look at it, it’s just like that lion. I see when the lion wakes up and he goes out for the hunt. It’s not about the kill. It’s not about the food. It’s not about taking down that hyena where the zebra. It’s about the thrill of the hunt. It’s about the gratification of putting in the work. To get the reward back. It’s the challenge of knowing he has to work hard, he has to go after it. If you’ve ever watched a lion on a hunt, there’s a lot of times they stumble on zebras, hyenas, gazelles that are injured. Because you see the gazelle mind or the zebra mine, all they think about everyday when they wake up is running faster than the slowest one in my pack. So I didn’t eat today. Survive survival mode. It’s kind of like the individual that punches the clock. I just gotta get through today, I just got to get to five o’clock. And I’m off work, I’m good. For the lion, oh, when they see that injured individual, when they see the person that is hurting, that’s a little slower. That isn’t up to 100% capacity. You’d think that would be easy for the lion. That’s the easy kill. Gazelle tap lay there and can’t move. That’s an easy one. I don’t even have to work today. I can just go get it and feed my family. You know, one of the lions ate it and ignored it. It actually sits there and it watches it.

It almost protects it to make sure it can get up. Why? Because it has no thrill in going after it because it doesn’t challenge it. And that was the answer. When I really started to look at how we shut down this little voice? How do we get through? When I say we have veterans get through this transition period, the unknown, the confusion, the chaos. We all know that PTSD is on the rise like crazy with veterans, we lose 22 veterans a day. And why is it because they can’t find the next hunt. They can’t find that next piece that’s going to get them that excitement. So when I hear about programs like this, where you guys are actively going and looking for these individuals, giving them this opportunity, just know that this is the thing that they’re craving. This is what they want. They want something that’s going to be a challenge. They want to be pushed, they want that adrenaline, they want that feeling of accomplishment when they get there but it’s not just the first step. It’s the next step that now is the next part. That’s the next challenge in front of me: challenge my business partner every single day. On this, we laugh, we talk about this all the time, we have one of our best months in the last year and a half. Back in October, we almost doubled our business this year, in one month. And when the month closed out, we celebrated briefly. And I looked at my business partner, I looked at our whole team. And I say guess what, it’s now a new month. It’s time to go again. We got two more months left in this year, it’s time to go again. Let’s close this year out strong because 2022 We’re going even harder. We’re going even faster. And it’s because of this element. And not kind of wrapped down with this. So I want to read you guys a creed. This creed is when I have business executives and I have young entrepreneurs come to unleash your inner line program. This is a creed that they all leave. They’re embodying and embracing and it’s kind of a spin off of any branch of the service that has their creed. The seals have a creed Marines have a creed army’s got a creed. This is what I call the lion’s creed. And it is simply this. You might be smarter than me. You could well be stronger than me. You might have more luck than me. You cannot defeat me. You will not detach me for my purpose. You will not detach me from my goals. You will not destroy me. You will never destroy me. I wake up every day with intention. Alert, ready, focused. whatever I want. I go after whatever I go after I get that matters to me. I will get it, I will have it. You cannot defeat me, You cannot detach me for my purpose. You cannot distract me from my goals. You cannot dethrone me. You cannot destroy me. I am Alliance. And as I look at that creed as I say that cretins like I watched those individuals that I’ve been working with very closely over the last couple years since we launched the unleash your inner lion program. And I watched them embody that creed every single day. I see this trait thriving more and more. As you guys go forward into 2022, as you guys bring more veterans into this organization. I challenge those that are in front of them, to challenge them a little to give them something that helps drive that desire for the hunt. Because through that, you’ll start to realize that this trait of just wanting more and more and more is not cocky. It’s not ego. It’s not this desire to just be at the front of everything. But it’s actually the true trait that embodies teamwork, because that’s the other side of a lion. They don’t do anything alone.

A lion alone is a very vulnerable lion. A lion with its pride is one of the most dangerous things in the world. A team with a lion mentality that is solid, that cannot be separated. That is a very dangerous team. When you let a veteran let that Lionheart out. When you give that veteran that ability to bring that into its environment, it can rally that around, it can pull all this together. It doesn’t have to be the top of the leader. It’s just contagious. And when teams come together, great things can always happen. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, rate and review this podcast as well as share it out with your fellow entrepreneurs. Congratulations again for showing up today. Now get out there, take action, and I’ll talk to you again. On the next episode.