Podcast: Living an Uncommon Life with Former Navy Seal Garrett Unclebach

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See below for the unedited version of the transcription from the podcast.

Lantz Howard 0:02
Hey friends, welcome to another episode of champion hope. I’m your host Lantz Howard and today I’m honored to have an outstanding guest and friend, Garrett, Uncle Bach with us. Please be sure to like, subscribe and share this episode with your friends. Garrett shares at the end, the essence of what we talked about today, and what he calls squeeze the lemon. Squeeze the lemon is a metaphor for getting everything out of life. We all want more out of life. I want more out of life, you want more out of life. And so dive into this episode, and learn what you can apply in your life to get more out of life. champion hope is built on the premise that champions on the outside are built with hope on the inside. And I guarantee you there are principles in today’s episode that will fill your heart up with current and allow you to live the champion lifestyle that you desire. But first, you need to download hope on the inside. Garrett is a navy seal. former Navy ships sail I should say he was enlisted at the age of 19. He served six years. And now he serves as a business coach, consultant, venture capitalist and real estate developer. He lives in the North Dallas area and is a recent father as well. I’m honored to share this episode in our time. Together, you can find out more about Garrett at Garrett Uncle bach.com. Or you can also find him at the crucible dot live I will share that in the show notes. And finally, if you’re looking for quick wins, I have created a book for you called jumpstart 46. quick wins for the modern Christian man, how to be fully alive from the bedroom to the boardroom. This is for you. I know some of you may not listen to this entire episode. So go grab the book at champion hope.com download and start to apply principles that will change the course of your life forever. In the meantime, continue to listen to Garrett share his wisdom on what it means to be a man who lives all out for the kingdom of God and pours his life into you today.

Garrett Unclebach 3:11
not just hearing myself this morning because that’s fun. But I do look forward to getting to know you better Lance, and I look, I looked at coming on your podcast as a great opportunity to do that. And I know you want to hear from me. But I’m also hoping I get to hear from you a little bit this morning and learn something. Absolutely. Well thank you. So I would I would totally botch a bio,

Lantz Howard 2:33
So, Garrett, thank you for being a guest on today. I’m honored to have you. I’m honored to be here. Thank you. It is a brief connection out I’m beach about 10 months ago that we met. And we spoke about more than on a glorious sunrise overlooking the ocean. And I was just moved by that morning, by your presence, your ability to speak live and hope over people and some honor that you can give a little bit of your time on behalf of a few people this morning.

Garrett Unclebach 3:05
Thank you. I appreciate that. And I’m honored to be here. And I look forward to

Lantz Howard 3:35
seal teams and buds and all the different classifications of schooling but give us a bio of of the Garret of what I would what I say. Give us an official bio, and give us an official bio. Okay, sure. I’ll do both at the same time. Okay.

Garrett Unclebach 3:56
So I was born in North Texas, Denison, actually birthplace of President Eisenhower, to an amazing family, one of the you know, we don’t get to choose the family that we’re born into. And that impacts a lot of what happens to you in life. People think it comes from Spider Man, Uncle Ben said, you know, to whom much is given, much is required. But that’s actually what the Bible says. And I took that upon myself. So being raised in a great home, sent me off to be experienced a culture where I learned about servant leadership. I knew from a young age that I wanted to join the military, that I wanted to do something with my life. Normally, I hit this at the end, but I’m going to hit this at the beginning, because this is really kind of kind of sets the stage for the intro. There’s two things I heard very often in life and everywhere I go, podcasts, business, ministry speaking, coffees lunches, I always tell people about this to people, you know, they’re asking me like, you know, how did you do that? How did you do this? I call this the infinite potential unlock Lance. There’s two things that I was Told very often in life by my parents, and then also by Pastor Keith, before he was even pastor Keith. And early in my life, he was uncle Keith, I heard these two things often, one that God has a plan for your life. And then the second thing is that you can have anything you want in life, as long as you’re willing to pay the price for it. I call that purpose and potential, you know, purposes, God has a plan for your life. And you know, even though I’m speaking in business lands, and people didn’t ask me to come there and talk about that, I tell people that so you don’t have you don’t have to believe that. God has a plan for your life. But I know that God has a plan for your life, I know that there’s something that you’re put on this earth to do. So when you know those two things, it really sets you up to say, Okay, what am I going to do with my life? Not and, and not asking life? You know, what is what’s the purpose of my life, but life is asking you God has put things in our hands you as the steward, what do you want to do with your life? So again, very informal intro, right, you gave me that opportunity, with that mindset at an early age, because everything for me is mindset, that mindset and early age, I knew I wanted to join the military. I had someone in my life early, who was a pilot, who I looked up to, and he went on to be an F 16 pilot. And I thought I wanted to be a pilot for most of growing up. And then my senior year in the military, I was really getting set on it. And my parents knew I wanted to join the military, but they didn’t really know like when it was going to happen or anything like that. And my parents like to tell a very, I guess it is dramatic story of me just leaving them a note. Because I had if you know anything about the military process, you go through what’s called mepps. Military entrance processing. I think that’s what the acronym stands for. You got to go do an overnight like medical screener and stuff like that. And then you sign a contract that you join the military. Well, I left my parents a note. At the end of my senior year in high school, hey, I won’t be home tonight. And here’s why. I’ll be back in the morning. Because I had to go do medical processing. Now, Lance, I do believe, like proverbs said, Proverbs says, the multitude of counselors, there’s wisdom. But this was a decision that I knew I needed to make for myself, for a couple reasons. One, no one’s ever going to encourage you to go do the hardest thing that you can do at that age. Nor are my parents going to encourage me to set off on a path that has a high opportunity of ending with me dying, right, so I knew that this was a decision I had to make on my own and then people would support me afterwards. So join the military right after high school, went into buds started with class 286 between injuries and getting rolled, graduated SDT got pinned as a seal with class 289 went on to Team three did my six years in the military you can ask me the question later if you want to on why I got out of the military. So did that did two deployments with field team three so honored to be at SEAL Team three. Man talk about like walking in the footsteps of legends like so many of the people that that are talked about today. seals that are very popular from Team three at least people that are well known and people that I look up to most prominent being most likely Jocko. You know when I joined SEAL Team three and Jocko is still active duty. I remember just hearing all the time Jocko this Jocko that and I’m like who was this guy and what kind of name is Jocko? You know, that was my favorite but you know Jocko, Chris Kyle, Dan Crenshaw, Congressman, from Houston, Johnny cam astronaut, like all these and Michael mandsaur Medal of Honor winner, so many amazing people that have gone through team three, and I felt is very special to go there and to learn from that culture. So but got out of the military, went and worked corporate on a really large project, learned a ton

sold my way into an opportunity that normally selling with my credentials wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do that was great. And then my father told me throughout that whole experience, he knows me, you know, and knew me at that age. And he knew that I would end up working for myself and the leader and the man. You know, people are natural leaders. Some people are not natural leaders. I am a natural leader, Lance, I’m so glad I went to the military where I learned how to be a good follower. Because that’s a hard lesson to learn and is stubborn. Some people would call it tough, I’ll just admit that it’s stubborn, as stubborn as I can be. That’s a great, that was a great place to learn how to be a good follower. And we can talk about that a little bit too. And then now what I’m doing today, so after a little bit of corporate time, now working for myself, I coach individuals Personally, I coach businesses on teams, leadership and culture. It’s about 30% of my time, about 60% of my time is on real estate development. That’s my primary adventure. Do a lot there. And then the rest of my time I give away to men’s ministry. Or to pouring into other people. And I do a few other things on the side. But those kind of come and go. Those are the three main focuses of my life, my coaching practice, which all of them are ministry to me, my real estate practices ministry, my coaching practices ministry, and then I do and then I, you know, do ministry for my church as a director of men’s ministry. But I don’t do that on a paid level. And because I choose to do it that way, I want that to always be my gift was want to give not just, you know, I don’t want to just tied to the church. But when I give my time and my town to the church as well,

Lantz Howard 10:33
it’s good. And six months into being a father,

Garrett Unclebach 10:37
yes, thank you. And then the closing, I am a husband to an amazing wife, my wife, Lindsay, for those who know her. We are two sides of a coin. She’s all the things that I’m not, and vice versa, and she had so much to my life wouldn’t be who I am today without her. And we just had our first little girl, first of many in January, and her name is Grace. So yes, send me all your parents. I’m here for all kinds of parenting advice, because I’m six months into this, and I got it all figured out.

Lantz Howard 11:11
Oh, man, our oldest is 11. And our youngest is will be six soon. Oh, three, right, four, four girls, for girls. Man. Sounds good. Last you got a tribe. So Garrett, when when talking with I know you’ll take this with a grain of salt, successful men where they’re going to coach and practice myself or what you’re doing? What is it that you find impossibly speak from your personal experience that helps you become successful in meaning that share share one of those dark moments of life, because it’s in the crucible of suffering, that we become who we are. But oftentimes you get on podcast or you show up at you know, meetings, and we don’t share the Dark Side of Life. But what was one of those moments for you? Possibly It was one of deployment, possibly it was even before the seals? What was that crucible of life that that really shaped and formed? who you are?

Garrett Unclebach 12:23
That was two questions. Let’s Let’s go with the first one. Okay, back to my crucible or crucibles, plural. But you asked, you started to ask, you know, what is kind of common? or what have you seen in successful people, when talking to successful people?

Lantz Howard 12:41
First, I’ll

Garrett Unclebach 12:41
give you my, what I won’t, I won’t do a thesis on a definition for success. But I will say that success is a pattern. Something I like to say that’s kind of a joke that helps people remember is that you’ll never hear anybody say they’re successful at the lottery. Right? people win the lottery, people, you see that, but you never hear anybody say like I’m very successful at the lottery, right? That means that’s because success is a pattern. It’s something that you can can do, that you can do perpetually, something that you can look at your life, and you can see where you’re going. That’s what successes, so on success, for me trying to achieve success in my own life, and from learning from other people. And Gosh, if you’re not learning from other successful people, you’re not going to be very successful. So that these two things kind of go together. And you know, what I’m going to talk about, and everything I say is from my own perspective of the world. So some of what I’m get seen, is successful and other people is also a reflection of something that’s a winning philosophy for me, you need to know people have their own philosophy for winning their own philosophy for success. You know, some people’s philosophy of success is like I’m a grinded out, you know, no one will ever work as hard as me, that’s not mine. But that is like an example of people’s winning philosophy. Anyways, winning philosophy for Garrett, someone who’s on my personal board of advisors, what is personal board of advisors, just like a company has one. I have a personal one. Most of these people are not living or people that I have a relationship with. A few of them are. But there are people that in my mind, I gather counsel from one of those people, it’s funny, but it’s true. It’s Forrest Gump. The reason for that is what his winning philosophy is, I’m just gonna keep running. Right? Like I’m not gonna I’m not worried about what other people are doing. I’m just gonna keep running the race. And man, that was a that was part of my journey and buds. I can tell you so many stories, Lance, like the guy who was my roommate, who was the best athlete in our class was ranked number one. His father was a master chief seal.

Lantz Howard 14:47
Funny enough,

Garrett Unclebach 14:48
his first disguise first name was Lance. Lance would tell me everyday like yeah, you have no chance here. Like you’re not gonna make it and All I said was, you know what, maybe you’re in Maybe you’re right, I don’t know, your dad’s a seal, you’ve been doing this for a long time, you probably know more than me, what I know is I’m still gonna be here tomorrow, I’m gonna still be here the day after that, that that’s what I do know that I’m just going to keep running. So that’s been some of my own winning philosophy. Let me wrap that up into something that I get the opportunity to be around people way smarter, way more successful than me. And that is intentional Lance, I’m trying to always be around people like that. And something that I’ve heard very often, if you go listen to podcasts that are out there, where you where you have, like extremely successful people on there, people that have built very large companies, people that have a mass billions of dollars in their life or done other things that are also extremely successful. You listen to those people talk, you will hear this, I believe you’ll hear this in almost Everyone’s story, they got to the point where they thought they should be achieving success. And they weren’t. And then they just kept going. And that these people will all tell a story of they looked back and looking back or they’ll say like, I thought I should have been there at this point at this level of effort. But I just kept pushing, and I just kept pushing. The reason most people aren’t successful Lance, whether it’s in the pursuit of their life, or just in a workout plan, is because they get to the point where they think they should be seeing results. This is entitlement, right? You think you are entitled to results based upon your level of effort, can talk about that all day. People get to that point where they think they should be seeing results. And they say like, Well, you know, I’ve given this effort, I’ve done this stuff, how come? I’m not getting the promotion? How come I’m not seeing the fruit of it? Right? And you got to look at it the other way, you got to say, Oh, well, I must not be because we live in a world that’s principle base that’s governed by a set of rules that God created for the universe, the sunsets, sunrises, you sow seed, you will reap a harvest. If you’re not reaping a harvest over and you’ve got a pattern of continually sowing, then you’re obviously just not doing things, right. So don’t look at your your level of effort and say, Where are my results, look at your results and say I must, I must need to put in more effort. Obviously, if I put a seed in the ground, and I’m watering it and it hasn’t grown yet, either it needs more time, or I’m doing this wrong. But don’t look at the seed and say what’s wrong with the seed. It’s like when I go to the range, Lance, people always want to shoot with me, we go shoot. And if it’s not someone like I’m working with one on one, I like to bring this they’re having fun. They’ll shoot for a second. And then they’ll ask me to shoot their gun. Because they’re at five yards, their rounds are like this far apart, and all shoot their gun. And you know, five yards, three or four rounds, they’re all touching each other. I’m like, No, there’s nothing wrong with your gun. Right? It’s the input that you’re giving to it. And we got to look at ourselves that way, we got to look at our opportunities that way. Not what’s wrong with the gun, not what’s wrong with you know the universe, it’s not giving me the results I deserve. You gotta look at it from the other perspective, I obviously am not putting in the right level of effort. So I’m just wrapping all that together. From on from winning philosophy, want a guaranteed winning philosophy is something that I’ve seen very often and others is, and this comes from being principle and practice based living on systems not just chasing outcomes. Or it’s like, Look, this is what I do. This is how I do things all the time. And these things always lead to for these things always lead to success. Right? And when you focus on that, and not, you know, why am I not getting the results that I want for my effort? That’s when you’re going to find success? So I think that answers your first question.

Lantz Howard 18:28
And that’s is that is Yeah, talk about that first. Oh, there’s a scope of depth there. I mean, just the consistency, right? Most people give up, right? Right before they have some type of breakthrough. But a lot of people aren’t even willing to put in the energy and effort to have a breakthrough. You know, they’ll show up to the gym for a week. And be like, well, I did not lose five pounds or 10 pounds or, and I’m like, it doesn’t work that way. You know, and for myself, just recently completing to Spartans. That’s fine. The last two and a half years has been the most consistent. I’ve been in the gym. I was super consistent before that. But but the work time and energy and the breakthrough, you know, everybody looks at me like Oh, how, how do you do it? And I’m like, just show up one more day, you know? So yeah, the consistency is there. So so on a personal side of things. Wouldn’t when you’re in that impossible, you can share that the story here. A lot of people can’t can’t make it through that valley. For various reasons, but the mindset isn’t there. The consistency, isn’t there. The victim mindsets there. But what’s your what’s your story that shaped you? That’s like I can overcome this. I can keep moving right. For example, I’m thinking about even just like Last week for myself, I was on a coaching call with a potential new client. And it didn’t go. It wasn’t good. It didn’t go great, you know, but I was attached to outcomes versus just just letting go and serve this person, right. And for two days, I was just kind of in this weird fog space, and just trying to get back to the grind. But for you, Garrett, what is it for you that when you think about those, those crucible moments of life or being deployed, that allows you to get back up? And know that there’s another day?

Garrett Unclebach 20:33
Gosh, okay, what are the crucible moments? I would? So I would say, what are the defining moments? What are the what are those moments in my life that build resiliency? Because the crucible isn’t where you build resiliency, it’s where it’s tested. Right? The creating the crucible is a furnace, you know, so what you put in there is, is is a determination of what’s going to come out? You don’t you don’t get in the furnace, and then try to figure it out. Right, right. And so we can talk about some crucibles that tested who I am. But I think what you’re asking are, what are some of the things that build who I am, what’s built some of my mindset. Now in every human being, Lance, you have choice, right. And we’re getting into philosophy here, which is fun, too. But if you ask me, like what made me then I’m going to set the foundation for that. So part of that is understanding that every human has choice. Life is controllables. And uncontrollables. You can’t ever do you want to make like you can’t make your child be something, but you can have a great degree of influence on it. So I told you those first two things, the infinite potential unlock for me, that kind of set me on a trajectory, right? Being. And this seems strange, but being emotionally healthy, gives you an amazing amount of strength. And I have that because I grew up and a having great relationships. Lance, I tell people a story of you want to know how powerful consistency is and a father, I remember at 12 years old, having an experience with some that we were out, me and my dad liked to hunt, we were out on a hunting lease with some other guys. And there is this guy named john. And I remember telling my dad was so foreign to me, I said, Dad, when you’re not around, john acts differently. I had that was foreign to me, Lance that ended that somebody would not act the same way with everybody. Because I had a father who was the same at church, who was the same with my mom was the same with me and my sister, who was the same with his business, he was the same person everywhere. So so strange to me, to be around that. So with that, some of the things that are natural to me, I think all men have violence within them. And violent seeing and looking at violence like that’s, you know, not of men shouldn’t be violent. Well, we’re made by a creator who knows how to do violence. And violence is not necessarily violence. Violence is not, you know, moral or immoral. Violence isn’t good or bad. Violence is just the ability to take swift action. And so I have a natural, natural, I would say naturally, I have a little more violence in me than other people. I’d like to show people this picture. It’s not sitting by my desk, because I’ve got to get in frame, like show people this picture of me in a karate class, Taekwondo, when I was seven years old, and everyone else in the class rants like looks like they’re playing. It’s all a bunch of other seven year old boys. They all look like they’re playing with Pokemon cards, where it like there’s a picture of us doing kicks, you know, in the class. And I literally, like, I look like I’m about to rip somebody’s head off at seven years old. Like there’s some, there’s some violence in me. But that’s not a bad thing, right? So I took some of the things that are natural to me, I took the fact that I knew God has a plan for my life. And and on that, I didn’t know that at when when my parents started saying at five years old, but I’d heard it a lot. My parents sowed seeds into me early of God has a plan for your life. You don’t know what that means at five. You don’t know what that means at seven or 10 years old or even 12. But you know what i did Lance’s I did remember? Excuse me, I did remember hearing that all the time. And so sometimes you can say thanks to your children, to other employees. But don’t be discouraged and think like, Oh, well, they don’t know what that means. They don’t have to know what it means. they’ll remember what you said, right? And those things are so much more powerful. When you can sow seeds of thought into somebody and let it grow for 10 or 15 or 20 years, I look back at some of the things that my parents said, and I’m just like, Man, that’s so amazing that I was hearing that at such a young age. But anyways, I’m going in a bunch of different directions. It’s all good. Part of what made me is knowing that I wanted to do something great with my life, and then deciding that I wanted to serve other people, having the mindset of to whom much is given, much is required. That’s an important scripture in my life. And so then I set out to join the military. There’s really a lot of things throughout my life that created a way of thinking, a way of thinking of what’s possible, a way of thinking of looking at field training and saying, not how many people have failed. But hey, look, people have done this before. Like, if somebody can do it, I can do it.

Yeah, I would say it’s hard to summarize, like, you’re, you’re, you’re asking me to summarize my entire life. It says, what has made Garrett. And if I try to tell that whole story, it’d be like eight hours long. So let’s jump into some other questions. So that I don’t like to do a really long tangent of the history of here.

Lantz Howard 25:41
Absolutely. When you were when you were in seal teams, what is one of the one of the moments that you think about one of the stories that is meaningful to you?

Garrett Unclebach 25:52
Man, one of the most powerful stories, Lance, is our first deployment. So people you would think you would think, in the seal teams or anywhere, any place that you put on a pedestal that obviously ever was one of the things for me, Lance is I grew up in a leadership culture, I grew up around really strong men. And I’m like, man, I want to be around like the most elite individuals on the planet. And for in many ways, the seal teams are the most elite people on the planet, some elite levels of the discipline, elite levels of teamwork, elite levels of synergy of team where 10 men become far more than just 10 men some amazing things there. But also some things that were disappointing, right? disappointing in some men’s type of character, disappointing in some men’s life choices, I would say disappointing. And some of my leaders, the chief of my first Platoon, the chief is like the lead enlisted guy, normally your chief or you would think any leader you have in life, just say, you know, he’s my leader, you would think your leader is going to be the best guy is going to be the most talented guy, the most capable guy, the leader of my first seal platoon. He was a nice guy, he had good character, he’s one of the worst seals I’d ever met at that point, just wasn’t really great at the seal job. He’s a good person and a good heart. Didn’t intentionally do things wrong, just wasn’t his skill set. A lot of the younger guys were better than him at just about everything, which isn’t really the way it should be. You would think that your leader is more gifted and more talented, especially the one leading you into combat, right? Well, here’s the deal. What’s really interesting about that platoon was when you go on deployment, you don’t go through all this training that seals go through to go do an easy deployment. If you paid the price to do that job, you want the hardest deployment, like please send us to storm the gates of hell. That’s what every CEO wants for deployment. But with the deployment, it’s a little bit of a lottery. You don’t, you don’t really get to pick the leaders at a much higher level kind of just assigned deployments out. Right, but so there’s a little bit of a lottery to it, some guys, you know, back to back to back three deployments or in a row like amazing deployment, amazing deployment. Other guys get deployments, that’s like, Man, that was, that was a waste of time, what it felt like, that’s not within your control. Our first deployment where we were going, the mission we were doing, we hit the lottery, like everybody wanted to do this, people have been trying to figure out how to get this mission, like to send a platoon on this mission, our platoon got it. But here’s the negative Lance, we had a chief who was not great, not a good leader, there’s actually a process in the field teams to get your leader removed. And this guy checked all the boxes. But if we had tried to remove that leader, we also wouldn’t have got that deployment. So what you know, which is more important to you, this is an amazing lesson for the first like few months, Lance, we were all just pissed at each other, our performance really low, and, you know, to ourselves and to each other. Whenever things didn’t go wrong, we would always just blame the leader. Like, you know, if we had if we had somebody here who actually knew what they were doing, like maybe our platoon wouldn’t suck so bad. And we just blamed everything on him. And as we like we were starting to walk down that road of like, maybe we should get this guy fired. We also realize if we fired him, we lose this deployment. And what we decided was that the, you know, we didn’t come here to make sure like we didn’t, we didn’t go through all this training, to make sure that people get judged properly. We didn’t come through all this work just to make sure that drew gets fired. For what you know, for not being great. What we did decide was we came here to do a mission. And this is like what we want more than anything is to do this deployment and succeed at this mission. So instead of making sure that our chief looks bad or gets fired, or whatever, we’re going to make him look Look as great as possible, we went from a mentality of, you know, maybe we should throw our leader off the ship to, you know, Lance here in my platoon, the mentality change from Lance, if you don’t row as hard as you can for our leader, I’m gonna throw you off the ship. General Patton says this is a great example of that. General Patton says

good tactics can save the best strategy. But bad tactics can ruin the best strategy. So strategy is knowing what to do. That’s a leaders job, right? tactics is how you do it. General Patton was a leader giving the strategy. He’s saying that to men saying, look, I can have all these great plans, you can have great leaders, whether I have good plans or bad plans, your level of execution, how well you guys in the team work together really is what determines success, not me or your other leaders or our grand plans. And so that was amazing lessons for me, Lance that I never thought I didn’t think that’s what I was going there to learn. I thought I was going there to learn how to be great myself, how to learn from other great leaders. And instead, I learned how to be great with a leader that wasn’t very great.

Lantz Howard 31:12
The life lessons, the principles that can be unpacked in that. I mean, how many times as men, for example, oh, my wife is the problem. Or Oh, you know, like we could go down the co worker, but like, like, flip that on its head for a moment, like, what can I do as a man to make my wife look amazing, right? Because more than likely, I’m the problem, right? Just as you as you kind of unpacked in that scenario. And we hear you know, for you, you’re unpacking a life lesson based on the navy seal. But that is so common, you know, so common on our own self differentiation of like, we oftentimes don’t want to control our own world. Instead of we want to look at the hula hoop, somebody else is in charge of. And we’re trying to control what’s inside their hula hoop versus focus on our own learning. But I love what you said about the ability to like, I’m going to try to grow faster and harder to make my leader look good. I mean that

Garrett Unclebach 32:12
Yeah. Because again, it’s the sense of entitlement, right? People think that they’re entitled to a good leader. And whether it’s your family, it’s at church, it’s in business, it’s in the military, you say like, well, I wouldn’t, you know, I’d actually give 100% if we had someone who could lead us to victory. But if we don’t have that guy, or we don’t have these, all these conditions that I think need to be met, then I’m not going to give my best. If that is you, you’ll never win at anything. Something. So great wisdom from my dad, you know how you get sometimes you hear a lesson that just punches you in the face. This is one of those lessons, I was complaining to my dad in high school. And don’t use your if you’re a young person, listen to this, don’t always use your parents, as you know, an outlet for all your complaining, they don’t want to hear all of it. I was complaining to my father about a teacher in high school and a problem and everything. And his response was really simple. And his response was, well, thank God, you’re there. Because I was telling him all about the problem, right? And how the teacher didn’t get it. And my basically my dad’s response was, well, thank God, you’re there. Because you understand the problem. It sounds like you know how to fix it. So well,

Lantz Howard 33:24
thank God, you’re

Garrett Unclebach 33:24
there in that problem. And that’s a, that’s a mindset issue, right? It’s a mindset that says, if it’s gonna be, it’s up to me, it’s not somebody else’s job. It’s my job. I can’t control what my leader does. I can’t control what anybody does. That’s in the huge category, and all of our lives have uncontrollable, what is controllable is what I believe the attitude that I have in the choices that I make.

Lantz Howard 33:50
So so let’s go there for a moment about fatherhood and what we talked about earlier, what’s on your heart, about the product and environments that you’re cultivating. And even trying to tie in an earlier comment about speaking, life over people like, just because they don’t understand what you’re saying now doesn’t mean that they won’t remember. And then in a decade from now, their life will be transformed by it. Right, that so much of what is going on in our head is our thinking process and our cognitive process. And we don’t realize how powerful it is. Right? So as a father now yourself, and a product of an amazing environment that you’ve been blessed with? What is it that’s on your heart as you try to cultivate an environment worth living in stewarding raising a daughter in shepherding your wife? Like what what environment and products are you mindful of right now in this season? helped me understand the question a little bit better. What what are the intentional things that you’re doing? To raise a daughter? What are the intentional things that you’re doing? To pass on what you’ve been given from your father.

Garrett Unclebach 35:04
So right now, I would say, the biggest transference of all of the things I’ve been given, I give out more in, in business and in men’s ministry, but I do the same thing at home, the greatest value that you can give anybody is consistency. So again, I learned that from my father, people, what, whether it’s in business, or it’s with my family, how consistency leads to trust, and when people will trust you, they’ll follow you. And everyone’s if you if you’re a leader, you need people to be able to follow you. And if you’re listening to this, and you’re wondering if you are, you’re a leader, you are, we’re, even if you know, if you don’t, if you don’t think you lead anybody, the first person you lead is yourself. If you can’t lead yourself, you can’t lead other people. And even in leading myself, Lance, I have to be consistent. Because that’s where confidence comes from trusting yourself. Like I have. People want to ask, like, how do you build confidence? How do you build discipline, those two things go together, I have great confidence in grade discipline, Lance, because when I tell myself, I’m going to do something, I do it. Those are the worst people you don’t let yourself down. Don’t lie to yourself, don’t say you’re going to get up at this time in the morning. And then don’t get up. Don’t say you’re going to do this workout and then Don’t do it. Don’t say you’re going to complete this task and then not do it. Because then you don’t trust yourself. If you can’t trust yourself, you don’t have credibility with yourself, you’re not going to have credibility with other people. So it all starts with leading yourself, my wife trust everything that I say. Because not only am I not dishonest, because it’s one thing like honesty and dishonesty is more of a moral issue. Integrity is an impossible standard to live up to just quick off the front of Garrett’s brain glance, I have an opinion, that integrity is not a core value that you should have. Because the definition of integrity is does what I say meet reality, that’s integrity, that what you say meets reality, that’s an impossible standard to live up to. Right, because I can think that I did something, but your perception of it is different than in your mind, you know, what I said does not meet reality. That’s, that’s a tangent, that’s a different conversation. I won’t go down that road, but with my wife, because I do what I say not just with myself, but with her with everyone. That creates so much not just trust, but cohesion, seal teams were operating very well, on a lot of unspoken communication. There’s a lot of rules and principles that we live by. And were with another unit that you haven’t trained with that doesn’t know you, it’s so slow, it’s slow. So, so cumbersome, versus assaulting a target with a field team that I’ve trained with, I can take like one small action Lance, like just by the way, you know, I go into a room like people can’t see in the room, they can just see me go into the room, they see the way I turn that what they based on what they hear the way that I stopped, all these small things within a second have communicated so much to my team. And then and one they trust that I’m going to do the same thing every time. Right? Live it that that consistency. When standards are clear, people can operate really well when standards are not clear when the rules aren’t clear. People don’t know how to work with you. And there’s always frustration, there’s always unmet expectations comes from poor communication and poor consistency. So to come back to your question of how am I pulling that stuff into my family? How much you know, how am I seeing the fruit of that, again, it just comes back to live in the same way everywhere. Like if you if you know what your principles are, and the values are that you live on, and you live them everywhere. That’s how you find success. Anyways, for me, land success is not you know, did I achieve this outcome success is that I live my values. That’s how you measure success. Because part of outcomes in life, our outcomes are influenced by uncontrollables things that you can’t control. So my personal measure of success is that I control everything that I can control the way that I wanted to control it. And I can do that with my family, I can do that with my child, I can do that in every area of my life. So I know it’s kind of a broad answer. But

Lantz Howard 39:16
no, you bring up a valid point. And it reminds me of a conversation today get two days ago with the leader about values because your life is so oriented, you know where you’re going based on those values that you’re bringing it up. But my concern and my fear is that so many men possibly listen to this, or who desire to achieve eggs. They don’t know how to articulate their values. I don’t have them written down. They don’t even know where to begin. So so if you’re going to walk somebody through like, like 123, like, like, let’s have some pragmatics out of this, like what are some practical ways that somebody can have some values to begin to align their life and point it in a meaningful direction.

Garrett Unclebach 40:01
So what you’re talking about relates to mastery. And what I will say on the topic of mastery is that most people don’t want to do the work Lance, most people, so you want to become, you want to be able to shoot the way that seals shoot. I spent hours and hours and hours on the range 1000s and 10s of 1000s of rounds, where the objective was Lance at three yards, shooting my pistol at paper, which is not the most fun thing to do, shooting my pistol at paper at three yards, trying to put the bullet through the same hole every time. And when you can master the basics that well, then when you start moving around and doing a bunch of crazy stuff, it’s all about the same. The way that most people live their lives is the way that most people want to learn for me, when we go shoot on the range, they want me to like, show them how the gun works real quick. And then let’s like run around, and you know, do a bunch of action shots and do you know, a training sequence or some time drills and some reloads and all this stuff. And you’re not, you’re never going to become a master that way you can practice those things for hundreds of hours trying to get good at those, like the macro tasks, and you would never set a record time. So to bring that back to your life, the understanding your philosophy, which is the way that you think understanding the framework of the world that you live in, is not a short task. But if you don’t know those things, you will sell yourself short. The stuff that you’re talking about your vision, knowing what you want out of life, that’s the most important question. Like, Lance, if I asked you, what do you want? And you can’t tell me, I can’t help you. Like when I coach people personally, like that’s something that we work on, like, literally What do you want, like if you can’t articulate the life that you want the marriage that you want the business that you want, you’re going to struggle, you can work your way into this equation both ways. And when I do with businesses, it’s kind of iterative, where you can start with vision of Okay, what do you want and back your way down into the values that support that. But you can also do it from the standpoint of knowing the beliefs that you have, and the principles that you have, quickly to understand the difference between beliefs and principles. Both of them are true. One of them is observable, one of them is not. principles are observable, observable and universal. Gravity is a principle you don’t have to it’s not a belief, right? There’s a lot of things that are principle based, it governs the world that we live in other things, our beliefs, you and I know them to be true, but they’re not always provable. And that’s a long conversation, I won’t, because it really is like an hour long to really break down. What is it that you believe? And what are the principles that govern your world? And you don’t, you don’t have to define all the principles, but what are the ones that really impact the things that you do the most, from their, from their you set your values. values are what you value the most, but they’re a reflection of who you are. They’re a reflection of, you know, your, what’s unique to you, your experiences, your genetics, all the things and I won’t go into all those things, but everything that’s unique to you, plus the world that you live in. That’s that’s what God has put you on this earth to do. And your job is to develop that to the best of your ability and then do something with it.

Lantz Howard 43:32
So

if I was to ask you, yeah, what is like what is it that Garrett wants? Right, but I perception Garrett’s a Navy SEAL get successful? And that, there’s a second follow up question two, this is that a lot of CEOs or real estate investors or guys that have achieved eggs are Kingdom leaders. It seems like some guys get to some level of achievement. And they begin to rest. But other guys, they get to some level of achievement. And they’re like, Man, this is amazing. And this is so life giving to be pouring in purpose into other other people. And I’m thinking of a conversation of a leader that we’d know. And he’s like, man, my goal is to be able to give away seven figures a week. And I’m like, this is mind blowing. So, so two questions are like, what is it the G want? Like? Possibly? I won’t even define it, you know, but what is it that Garrett wants in the season of life? And speak into that flip side of that of how does somebody keep going after what they want when they achieve some type of success?

Garrett Unclebach 44:55
Yeah, great question. So I’ll answer very quickly and clearly First one of the things that I want, I won’t talk about all of them. But something that is a part of the vision for my life that is an umbrella over everything that I do is what I call a full life. I want I want all of the life that God created for me. And something that people need to understand Lance’s in the context of being a Christian or just in the context of being human. You can screw up your life, you can miss live your life, you can get to the end of your life, and maybe you’re going to heaven, you can get the end to the end of your life, and maybe you had a family, but you can get to the end of your life, and you’ve wasted your shot. And that is, honestly, that’s my greatest and only fear. Lance’s not living up to my god given potential. So that full life umbrella sits on top of everything that I do. But give me the rest of the question again.

Lantz Howard 45:49
So So On the flip side, you know, if you’re speaking into the same thing, the guy that’s 5055 60 that’s achieved a lot of things. And they’re ready to coast but, but in our day and age, like, they’re like, Man, you got in 2025 30 years ahead of you. Yeah. And this applies to, you know, many different man, but I’m visualizing people, how do you keep allowing them to go after what they want, as they continue? To achieve certain ranks blind? Yeah, so so so like, even even even a deeper thought behind this is all I’m always wondering myself, like, when is it enough, like, right to be fully alive to have this full umbrella of life for me to some degree, it’s like, I can get X, but I also have to be content.

Garrett Unclebach 46:38
So the surface of my life is develop, to develop my gifts and give it away. It would, it would be a mismatch of my values would be a mismatch of my identity, to come to a point in life solely based on time, where I say, now my life is about me. The filter for me is living my life about other people. And something I say often that I believe 100% is if you want life to be easy, live a life. That’s not that easy that that is a coast, but a live an easy life, and that I know where I’m going, I always have energy, if you want to easy life, make life about everybody else. It’s not about you, if you want to make life really hard, make it all about you. If life is all about you, there’s never no one ever wants to help you. If life is all about you, you know, other people are always letting you down, you’re always stressed, you’re always frustrated, you get the end to the end of the day, and you’re tired. When you have when you have a vision and a mission for your life. That is not about you, but it’s about other people that it serves something bigger than you, you don’t run out of energy, you’ve always got more energy than you need. When you serve a vision and a mission that is bigger than you the only thing you wish you had more of was time. And when it’s this isn’t like oh, I’ve worked so and I’m not going to put hours on it. Because there’s always some dude who you know, says like he works 23 hours a day, I work super hard. And that’s all I say I won’t put a bunch of time on it. But I get to the end of my day, and unfulfilled, I still have energy. I’m not saying man, I’m glad that’s over. When it’s the only time I rest during the week is I’ll take some time and my Sunday afternoon. You know, after I’ve served at church, I come home and I spend time with my family intentionally because I know intentional rest is good. But it’s not because I’m tired. It’s not because I’m worn out. It’s not because I’m you know, just trying to push off the thought of Monday morning. Every day is exciting when you know how much God has put in front of you. And my prayer constantly, Lance is just that no amount of money will ruin me. And my prayer constantly is that I can always feel the weight of the people around me that I carry. And I can see how far God wants to take me. Like when you know those things, you’re always going to be you’re always going to be full of energy. So I would challenge whoever’s listening, if you’re stressed out, if you’re tired about where you’re at in life, really, really look with and take some time to reflect and ask yourself, Am I really connected to a purpose that I believe in? Because it and you know, people can’t? That’s a hard thing to do. But you can. And if at the end of the day, it comes down to Lance, do you hurt enough that you’re going to change that you’re going to really break down? Why do I think the way that I think what do I want to do with my life? Am I aligning everything with that? Or am I just gonna stay in the rut that I’m in frustrated and tired? But you know, it’s better than the unknown. And that’s what people are afraid of lands people won’t change. Because as much as it hurts where they’re at, they’re afraid of well, what if it gets worse. And that’s, that’s living an outcome based life, not living a values based life, values based life says, Well, whatever the challenge is, it doesn’t matter. I know what I’m going to do. And I know that the measure of my life is not by the outcomes, but by how I lived. So it all it all kind of works. Got it.

Lantz Howard 50:00
I mean, this is Monday that we’re recording it right? How many people showed up to a job. They’re just miserable, right? Because they’re, they don’t believe in the purpose enough. They don’t believe in themselves enough. But yet, in order to get where they want to go, they’re not going to sacrifice and do the hard things to make a more meaningful life on the behalf of others. Instead, they’ll just sit and sit in their own misery all week long, till the day they die. They feel like they’re working for somebody else, but they’re really just doing it for them. Just Just a couple, just closing. God being our infinite creator. And God having measurably more than we could ever ask or imagine, for myself and for Garrett. And Garrett’s life is here. God’s measurably more life is over here. Like, what is the gap that you’re trying to listen to right now walking with God, like, becoming that full expression of what he has for you? What is what is the gap? Yeah, what where’s where’s, like, God has this life for Garrett. And Garrett is trying to walk with God. Right? What? Where’s that gap for you? Like? How do you keep walking in the in the abundant life of Jesus?

Garrett Unclebach 51:27
Yeah, great question, Lance. I wouldn’t say there’s a consistent, yep. But there always are gaps. And so more than just like, talk about maybe an issue that I’m dealing with, or that I’ve dealt with, let me tell you how I continually resolve those issues. It’s from a perpetual honest reflection. So something that I say to people that I work with a lot is it’s not about how hard you run. But it’s more important that you recalibrate often, what I don’t want to do is like, take a charge from God, and take a charge for what I think I’m supposed to be doing. And go run hard on that for five years, and then come back and check in with God. I people do that. And people do that people do that in their marriage. People do that in their business. And they end up in a place that it’s like, well, how did I get here? Because you got you’re out of alignment you got disconnected from you got disconnected from God, you got disconnected from your vision, you got disconnected from your values, and now you’re hurting. And what’s more important than running really hard. And making sure everyone knows how hard you work and all this other stuff that people get focused on recenter, refocus, recalibrate, often, if you’re like, Okay, man, I know you probably read your Bible every day, that’s important to you. If we want to be Christians, and this is a, this might offend somebody, if you want to be great Christians, we should probably read the Bible every day. If you’re not, that’s like saying you want to be a professional bodybuilder, but you don’t ever go to the gym. So how I’m all I’m constantly result, and I’m not perfect. I’ve got those gaps all the time. But I don’t try to have the same gap, you know, yesterday that I have today. And if I have an issue, I’m gonna pray about it, I’m going to do the work and I’m going to resolve it. So I’m constantly seeking those gaps and resolving them and not having the same ones over and over. But that’s, you have to decide that you’re willing to live with that tension, that you’re willing to live with that pressure of, hey, whatever it takes, I’m going to do the work. Instead of, you know, trying to get to a place where it’s like God, will you finally just like let me chill man. Because that no, the answer’s no. That’s not what he wants for you. That’s not that’s not who he is. And He created us in His image. He created us to be creators. He created us to be great stewards.

Lantz Howard 53:49
we’ve, we’ve given into that lie, the lie of the enemy of like, comfort and chill and complacency. I mean, it’s the modern life that so many men have come to believe. And it’s like, that’s not the life that God has for you. But for some reason, we believe the lie the Satan that’s offered in that.

Garrett Unclebach 54:10
It’s, it’s, it’s James, the the brother of Jesus, and so many things I could say about him. But when you got to grow up with Jesus, and you watch them, and you were you were a doubter, you were a kind of believer, and then you became a full on believer he had James has a unique perspective. So I was like, when I’m reading James, you know, Paul is so amazing. But like when I’m reading James, he just has a perspective that nobody else has, right? Because Jesus was his brother. James four, he says, I think it’s 422 James four he says, but what what is life, but a vapor here today and gone tomorrow, like if you don’t take inventory, that’s your life is going to be short and that you only get one life. You’ll miss live it and I just don’t want to miss live my life Lance. And when you have that eternal perspective, that King perspective, we just have a short opportunity to be a great steward here on the earth, you won’t be tired and you won’t be on disciplined, and you won’t be wondering what you should do.

Lantz Howard 55:10
It’s good. Good. I want to honor your time. Just say thank you tremendously for for being here. What would you leave us with Kingdom man, businessmen, entrepreneurs, the new dads at home, the guys that are trying to level up in life.

Garrett Unclebach 55:42
You know, I would say this Lance. There’s that there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of wrap ups I could give. But I’m gonna give you the one that’s on my heart. And it’s connected to some of the stuff we’ve been talking about. And that is squeeze the lemon. Kind of like the James four verse, people squeeze the lemons, a common phrase, right? Just means like, get all of what you can get out of that lemon. You know, don’t don’t waste anything. And look at your life that way is just an opportunity, not just James for, but James 112. I think, Second Timothy, God has not given you a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and love and a sound mind. If you’re feeling afraid, and anything, know that that’s not from God, God has given you a spirit of power and love and a sound mind. That spirit, that is the breath of him. You know, in Genesis, it says, He breathed into us and created our spirit that wasn’t just a breath of oxygen. But that was a piece of themselves. Understand that you are spirit, soul and body, that God breathed His Spirit into you and you have a purpose on this earth and squeeze the lemon, don’t look at Don’t let life pass you by I want to get everything I can get out of this. I want to get the xo a life, the crown of victory that life has for us, because I’m going to come to the end of my life and it’s going to be over and there’s no going back and changing. And so really, if I could just charge anybody with this is to squeeze the linen somewhere. Some of that came from for me, Lance, great opportunity I had is at a very young age, encountering death many times and really thinking that my life was over. And to, to encounter mortality at such a young age as a gift. It’s a different conversation. But it’s as I’ve seen people who really like get all the way into their 50s and haven’t really encountered their mortality. Until then. I don’t think that that that’s not the gentle life, that we want to have different conversation. But anyways, when people haven’t met their mortality till a later age, you can kind of miss it. But you don’t have to go into combat or be in a car accident or anything like that, to have that encounter with your mortality, to really grasp the eternal perspective, squeeze the lemon and eternal perspective, Kingdom perspective, go together. And if you can, if you can just look at your life, that way of like I want all of it, I’m going to push, I’m going to get to the end of my life, and feel like I gave my all if you can know that, that’s the greatest feeling you’re going to feel that would be amazing. So I guess that would be my wrap up instead to tell people to squeeze the lemon and get the most out of life. Don’t miss live your life.

Lantz Howard 58:19
Thank you Gert. And I would I would just say echo back to you. I mean, it goes without saying thank you for for serving our country. And we could have another conversation about you carrying that flag in your pocket and serve our country for six years. But But thank you, but also want to just say thank you and honor you, even for the last few minutes here of, of if people are going to squeeze the limit, I think one of the greatest things that you’ve just shown me just in our time together here and going back to the beach and listening to you preach was like the word of God flows out of you naturally. And I know some people look at what people do athletes do, or and we have to realize like what you do, like you’ve been spending time with God. Like you memorize scripture, you think about scripture and just leaving everybody with this. This thought of like, what Garrett just did a mention a few scriptures. To start there, like start there, just get one or two scriptures. JOHN seven about the living water flowing from his heart, you know, Psalm 42, about painting for the water of God. So start somewhere and get I just want to say your product of the word. Thank you for that. I mean, because there’s so many of us, myself included, that we can continue to grow, whether it’s with our first scripture memorization, or another 20 or 30 that we need to add into that but thank you for modeling that and living that out in your life. So

Garrett Unclebach 59:50
can I say one quick thing I know that you’re wrapping up, but if we’re just talking about reading the Word to those who are trying to grasp it, you know, like if you this is a conversation, I’m having Many people, if you start telling me about your favorite movie, you can quote it. And you can tell the story of it. You know, it’s not like you can rewrite the script, but you like you know some of the good lines. And you can tell the story of what happened in that movie. Like, the Bible can be scary to Christians, the Bible can be scary to people who don’t know, God. But start, but if you’re really trying to develop the word within, you know, the story of what happens in the Bible, read all of it, and really just be able to tell the story. You don’t have to quote the whole thing. But what happens in Genesis, what happens in Exodus, what happens in Matthew, like, be able to tell the story of the Bible, and then when you really meditate on that stuff, you don’t have to be like, I don’t have you know, some people do Lampson. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. But some people have like their list of all the scriptures that they’re trying to memorize. The ones that I can say, are the ones that have just stuck in my heart. And on that, just real quick, I know we need to wrap up the scriptures, when when you go through tough times, you’re not going to remember the scriptures that you just tried to memorize. You’ll remember that you’ll remember the ones that are on your heart. At our men’s annual men’s event, every year that I put every I put the guys through this grueling gauntlet of a challenge. And then we do a scripture test at the end. When everyone’s exhausted. And the scriptures you thought you had memorized, they’re not on your tongue. It’s only the ones that are on your heart. Because when you’re when your brain tells you, your heart will take over, right and you need those scriptures on your heart, not just in your mind.

Lantz Howard 1:01:29
That’s good. That’s powerful. Thank you. Well, peace encouraged a brother, thank you for your time. Thank you, Lance is an honor to be here.

If this episode was helpful and meaningful to you, please like, subscribe, and share this episode. And the best gift that you can offer is to head over to your favorite platform and leave a five star review. This is great encouragement and allows the show to continue on and the message to spread to help men who are focused on Jesus to live all out with their whole heart and to be champions on the outside because hope on the inside is where life is found. Thanks for joining us today. And thanks again to Garrett for sharing his words of wisdom and helping us be men who live with our whole heart in every aspect of life. Now may you go be a champion and pour hope into others