Join Tim in this episode and conversation with Mike Gibbs with Go Cloud Careers.
Michael Gibbs is the CEO of Go Cloud Careers, a global organization that provides training for elite cloud computing careers. Go Cloud Architects and Careers is focused on helping individuals achieve their dream technology career. Michael is a technology expert with 25 years of experience in networking, cloud computing, and IT security. After a successful career with Cisco Systems, where he served in senior leadership as the lead enterprise architect in the global healthcare consulting practice, Michael founded Go Cloud Architects. Michael is a highly requested speaker and industry thought leader who presents at key conferences throughout the world. A passionate educator with 20 years of experience in coaching and mentoring others; Michael is also a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert, a Google Professional Cloud Architect and holds a Master’s of Science (MS) and Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) from Widener University.
About Go Cloud Careers
Go Cloud Careers is an educational organization that builds high-performance cloud computing careers. Go Cloud is founded on one premise – we get you hired. While other organizations focus on certifications or just technical proficiency; Go Cloud students develop a practical and deep knowledge of the cloud computing roles and responsibilities to build an elite tech career. In addition to technical competency, the core instructional emphasis includes teaching the skills necessary for elite technology roles. These include leadership skills, attitude, emotional intelligence, communication skills, presentation skills, sales skills, interview skills, and more.
Go Cloud students finish with more than just certifications, and by combining these executive-l
evel skills are more desirable to employers; and will ultimately be more effective in their careers long term.
Educational instruction is provided virtually. Students can learn from anywhere with a unique in-person-like experience, through the latest video and audio technologies. Instruction is not a slideshow with a voice-over presentation.
Full Transcript:
Tim Chrisman: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another edition of Podcast for the future. I'm your host, Tim Chrisman we're joined today by Michael Gibbs. The CEO of Go Cloud Careers, a global organization that provides training for elite cloud computing careers. Go cloud architects and careers is focused on helping individuals achieve their dream technology career.
Michael is a technology expert with over 25 years of experience in networking cloud computing, and it security after a successful career with Cisco systems where he served as a senior leader in enterprise architecture, as part of their global healthcare consulting practice. Michael founded go cloud architect.
Michael's a [00:01:00] highly requested speaker and industry thought leader who presents at conferences throughout the world. He's an educator with 20 years of experience in coaching and mentoring others. It's it's exciting to be able to have somebody like Michael Gibbs on today and let's get to it.
All righty. Thank you for being here today, Michael. It's great to have you,
Mike Gibbs: Tim. I am so excited to be here with you today. Thank for ha thank you for having me.
Tim Chrisman: Yeah, gladly. Sorry. Before we get too far into things I want to hear where, what got you started into this tech world?
You alluded to, there's a good story here. And if there's one thing I like it's a.
Mike Gibbs: Well, Tim, it's a unique way. It almost happened by accident. So realistically speaking in my youth, the first job I applied for at 18 years old is I tried to enlist in the Marine Corps. All right.
I'd been there. I'd been a competitive swimmer, a competitive runner. I had a 700 pound [00:02:00] deadlift and I'd been practicing martial arts for about 10 years and I was all excited. I went to the movie. Did you say 700? Yeah, it's in high school. All right. Yeah. So I was training for this, my whole life. Yeah. I walked into the Marine Corps.
The guy says, you look big, do you play ball? I said, I don't play ball, but I can fight. And he said, we can make you fight better. And I said, URA I'm in. And then I went and filled out some of the forms and they were like, you have asthma. I'm sorry. So what did I do next? I became a firefighter paramedic.
Okay. I, that to pay my way through school, I was with all veterans the whole time. Absolutely loved it. Became a. Okay. Now while I was in school becoming a nurse, I realized that was not for me. I worked about three days as a nurse and said, oh, this is not me. Yeah. Yeah. Went back to working in like doing the kind of transport nursing from hospital a to hospital B became a nurse practitioner and had my own internal medicine office.
Oh wow. Which I liked. And here's the thing. I was practicing internal medicine. It was great. Yeah. I just loved tech. It was so crazy that I was [00:03:00] buying $30,000 of tech back on around 19 96, 19 97 routers switches. I had a room, it sounded like a jet engine. I just played with
Tim Chrisman: it all day. And, that was back when a router was several thousand dollars.
It was, yeah, it was spending
Mike Gibbs: $30,000 a year on it because it was my passion and my wife. Oh yeah. My room at two o'clock in the morning. And she says, Mike, dear, she's you've been playing with tech now for six hours. You could actually do this as a job. I was like
it Dawn on me. And it's I'm not gonna go back to college again. yeah, but what I did is I called a local computer training school. Pay like $5,000 for a boot camp. Nobody was interested in me. Yeah. Took two more certifications. Nobody cared, spent $11,000 in a boot camp. Nobody cared. Did two more certifications, nobody cared.
And then I found a way to get hired. Ah, I called 50 recruiters all over the country and said, what's your perfect network engineer. Yep. I made a list. And then I said, okay, this is. And this is what I'm hearing is [00:04:00] perfect. Yeah. I said, if this is what I need to be, let me build my plan. Yeah. I built my mission plan and I went, okay, no, I'm gonna do this first, this second, this.
And did that went on my first interview and wasn't hired as a network engineer. Like I planned, I was hired as a senior network engineer cuz the hiring manager says to me, oh my God, like you're so good. And you have zero experience. You're already better than two thirds of my team. Six months later, I was the lead architect and I've been mentoring people for the last 20 years to get hired.
And it was all based upon my initial research. Yeah. Not mind you in the last 25 years. Sure that thousands of hiring managers, what's your perfect hire. Yeah. And thousands of recruiters, because the key to getting hired, the key to winning anything is perfect planning and known, know yourself, know your enemy.
You'll never be, you'll never fear. A thousand battles know yourself and not your enemy for every win. There's one loss, know your enemy and not yourself or everyone. There's one loss. And like most people, unfortunately they don't know themselves or their enemy and they. Yeah,
Tim Chrisman: no. And I think, that idea [00:05:00] of going to the people who are doing the hiring and being like, Hey, who do you want?
Who is it? You would want not, not me right now, not looking for a job doing a research project. I think that's fantastic. And now that's so much easier. You can Google that. But we, even though it's easier. You're one of two people I've ever talked to that has actually mentioned doing something like that.
I think it's, you saw how well that worked and how long did it take to actually do the research? Even with college? For me, from
Mike Gibbs: the time I decided to get hired at the time I was my first unit work engineer was about four months and I was actually the lead architect on that team. Six months later, a job that they wanted, 15 years experience.
Right after that, I went to wall street. They wanted 15 years experience. Got it. In fact, I've never been on a job interview for which I didn't get hired in my entire career. And the reason is I always know exactly what the hiring manager wanted because I've spent, I've asked thousands over the last 20 years.
Yeah, no, my students do so well too. Cause they know exactly what the hiring manager wanted and they become [00:06:00] that. They don't fake it. They become.
Tim Chrisman: No. And I think, you mentioned sun zoo there. I think that's a perfect example be of the sorts of wisdom that a lot of people overlook
Mike Gibbs: when
Tim Chrisman: exactly they're thinking.
Okay. I, I wanna be a network engineer. Let me look at two Google sites about what is a network engineer do. And then they're like, okay, I'm done. Why does nobody wanna hire me? It's
Mike Gibbs: it's weird. And it's a lot worse than. For some reason, people ask people that are not hired what to do to get hired.
they have certification providers that have a vetted interest in selling them a certification, and then they get certification in 10 people's different careers. What they need to do is it follows, ask somebody that's an expert in the career. Someone that's made it somebody with 20 years experience.
That's actually why I came outta retirement to create this program. I didn't mean to. OK. Yeah. Yeah. What happened is I. As ridiculous as this sounds I was, retired, enjoying myself. Sure. And I had opened the blockchain cryptocurrency [00:07:00] mining data center at McFaren, ki Kansas. With some friends considered the cheapest electric we could deal with and I went out there.
And cuz you know, electric is expensive. Yeah. In my house I was dealing with $4,000 a month of electric and I wanted to expand and it would've been 12 to $15,000 of a month of electric that I needed. Plus I live in Florida, so it was getting too hot in the house from the heat and the owner that I rented the warehouse from had seen, I brought in all these interns that I trained and they're like, Mike, your people are unbeliev.
Could you train my kid? And I said, sure. So I said, I'll spend two to four hours with him every week. And I literally bought 'em, the three best selling cloud training courses. Cause I thought there'd be some substance there. Sure. And I was just tutored on Friday and after three days he calls me back and says, I can figure this thing.
I can figure this thing. What is it? They're not joking. Yes. What it was. Wow. And I watched these three courses and they were basically, people that knew nothing, they were in their home and they were making PowerPoint slides with audio. And what I heard was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And here's the reason the [00:08:00] people never did their job. They were teaching some, they didn't understand. So they couldn't explain it simply enough. And what they were teaching was a hundred percent irrelevant. Yeah. So I said, let me interview a thousand people that have done this and see if I could hire any, I couldn't hire.
So that's why came outta retirement to create the programs we did. And that's why our students now get hired every day.
Tim Chrisman: That's incredible. First off, now this is now at least the second example of you saying, Hey, I need data and getting way more than a representative sample, which is impressive. That's a lot of people to serve.
Yeah. That's impressive. How do you so you called in the nineties, but what. And sorry for the tangent, but like, how do you do that data collection? I'm fascinated by
Mike Gibbs: how this, for me, it was pretty easy because I was doing architecture work. Okay. Architecture work is designed, present and sell.
So realistically speaking, I'd go meet with a client about a billion dollar opportunity. Sure. I'd come back to my team. And somebody had to design it now. Nothing. There's no Rambos out there. Yeah. Yeah. Everything is [00:09:00] a team or a platoon, so I'd go back to my company and I'd have to go reach out to three executive vice presidents.
Three senior vice presidents, 50 directors and directors, and say, I need your people for this amount of time. Yep. So while I do that, I'd be, Hey, what's your perfect hire. Hey, what's your prep? Had I go to the. And when I go to the customer site, cuz I was consulting I'd again each week, run into multiple customers and ask them what they want.
Yep. Yep. It's always about ask ask, but the recruiter people, constantly, they used to reach out to me cuz I had a good LinkedIn profile or resume. I'd get 10 to 15 to 20 interview requests per day. Wow. It was pretty easy. It was like bait on the fishing hook. They were just, yeah.
And then I'd say, Hey, by the way, what do you really need? What are you hearing from these employers? Plus CIO magazine is also relatively good. And I have routine executive conversations with business leaders to find out what are your business problems right now? Yeah. What do you need to do? And that's what happens with experience, There's two ways to build your career.
You can focus it on just skills where you could say skills are half of the career, but emotional [00:10:00] intelligence, executive presence, communication skills, business ACU, and CXO, relevancy leadership. And that's where I've enhanced my skill. And that enables me to better ask questions, but then again, I come from medicine, that's, I'm used to asking people some very uncomfortable questions
Tim Chrisman: well, and I'm sure, from that being your earliest experience, you're like, I can never ask a worst question than what I've already asked.
I don't know,
Mike Gibbs: the questions I've had to ask to save lives are so ridiculous. If you think about it, that there's, yeah. I'm not afraid to ask anything at this point.
Tim Chrisman: No, it's that's a great way to look at it. Because all entirely too many people are try to avoid asking questions for whatever reason.
But if there's a paramedic trying to save your life, you would prefer, they ask a question. Oh yeah. Is that, that different than when wanna interview for a job? Why not ask
Mike Gibbs: questions ahead of time? It's not any different. Yeah. In fact, I like to say that medicine is how I learned architecture.[00:11:00]
Okay. And, here's the thing. I had a different tech career and that's one of the reasons I found the go call careers. My tech career vector was very different. Yeah. In less than one year, I had reached levels that people that didn't get to in 15 years did. Yeah. And there were a few reasons for.
See, what do most people do in their careers? Learn a little of this, a little of this, a little of this, a little of this and a little of this. Make some injectable trades in the master and. Which means they're not good enough to do anything right now, in other worlds, we get it. If I've got a sniper, they don't train to be a breacher.
They're trained to come in and out being stealthy, making their wind calls, knowing their ballistics, their ballistic cos, and drop, et cetera. That's their world. They don't train for somebody else's job. Airline pilots don't decide to become paramedics cuz they think it's gonna become fly think and better flying a plane.
Yeah, but we have someone that wants to be an architect, which is a design present in CEL dub. And they're learning coding, they're learning maintenance, they're learning automation, artificial [00:12:00] intelligence. It's wait, great. Now, you know everything else other than the job I need you to do. So by medicine, I actually learned really how to be an architect.
What's medicine. Do somebody comes to the office, ask 'em some questions about their chief complaint. I examine them, make a diagnosis in a. What's architecture, Mr. And Mrs. Customer, tell me about your business goals, your business pain points, your business challenges. Diagnose them, make an assessment, examine their systems, just like the doctor will with the stethoscope.
But in this case, it's something different. Make a diagnosis and make a plan. Now whether the plans, a prescription are an architecture, it's the same career. And at go cloud careers, we're constantly helping people transition career. In most cases, most of these careers are actually the same. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same skill that you're doing.
So part of transitioning careers, part of earning more is showing them, look, these experiences that I have are relevant. Yeah. I work with a lot of veterans. Yeah. I've got a special program for veterans. Veterans have the ability to take direction. Oh yeah. No. And veterans don't crack under [00:13:00] pressure.
It's true. And, Veterans are mentally tough to execute through pain, through challenges. So they don't quit so easily. Yeah. Yeah. So when I deal with veterans and I deal with a lot of them, it's pretty easy to position them to the right kind of people. If you want someone that's strong, motivated and won't quit until they win, hire a veteran.
Yeah. And it's a matter of just pulling out the things that make people good. A week ago, I got a psychologist or first cloud architect. And when I met her the first time I said, your emotional intelligence and communication skills are gonna be your strength. So yeah, that's the thing you focus on now.
She's got a great job. No,
Tim Chrisman: I think the way you approach that of. Relating it to what somebody used to do or what other analogies that make sense, because all too often, as you said, when somebody goes into a job, they're like, this is what I do. I do this now. This is all I do for 10, 15, 20 years.
But we're not working on a factory floor anymore, so it [00:14:00] doesn't make sense. In fact, it's more useful for, as you said, the psychologist to go over and now do something. and apply that because you're gonna have far better results and a more innovative worker. Exactly. Yeah, no, I think you're the way of looking at it as a medical problem is fantastic.
Because that's something a lot of people can understand. They may not be able to understand or may think that there's some, voodoo inside the computer that is the network architecture, but you'd explain it like a diagnosis and they're like, oh, okay. I can do that. That's not
Mike Gibbs: overwhelming and it's not, if we break it down into manageable pieces and if the instruction is good now, as Albert Einstein said, if you can't explain it clearly, you don't know it enough.
yeah. I can tell you I've taken certification courses that are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because the person doesn't know it enough, but if you know it, yeah. Teach it. And if you can teach it and if you can rally the [00:15:00] troops to keep going until they finish, then they become successful. Yeah. That's all been the hardest part with big things is keeping people motivated and engaged.
It. It's true.
Tim Chrisman: It's true. And I, it's all too common for people who don't know to try to teach. It's painful to watch. It's also painful to do. There's been plenty of times I've given presentations or classes and I didn't know what I was doing. I'm like, this is uncomfortable for me as the teacher.
I don't know what the students are going through. Yeah. You came outta retirement to start go cloud careers. Yeah. What was the career, between getting that first non-medical job and
Mike Gibbs: retirement. Yeah. So my career was a little bit like a rocket ship. Yeah. I had the input.
I had the guidance. So first thing I did is I worked as a senior engineer. Next thing I realized I was on wall street. I dunno how I designing the system for the largest market maker had about six months experience. [00:16:00] What happened from there was. I actually got two really good job offers at the same time.
Yeah. And I actually went to Comcast as a principal architect to design their backbone who, and I found that I was there for about a month and I was not happy. Yeah. Not happy at all. So I had joined this wonderful company called Riverstone networks. There were the old cable Tron there now, Nokia.
Wow. That was so much fun. That was a company that was dying financially, but they had some of the best technical professionals I ever met. Yeah. I was there for 13 layoffs at the end of the 13 layoffs. I never got laid off and I decided to go to Cisco and I went to Cisco as a sales engineer and. Then I moved up into a more enterprise architect role.
And then Cisco said, Hey, we decided that healthcare's technology is important to us. And I went me internal medicine, and I've been designing systems. So I became the lead healthcare architect for all of Cisco. Wow. Now I loved it. I traveled the world two, 300,000 miles a year, traveling things.
And unfortunately I was involved in a very [00:17:00] bad. I got invited to go train with some very special martial art martial artists in Israel to study Kah because they had a 20 year level of martial arts experience. I had shadowed my foot in two different places. How often do you get to train at the, with the founders of Koga in Israel?
So taped up my foot continu to work with a torn ligament on a broken bone in my foot for 10 days of 12 hours of the day of training got home foot was purple and blue. 13 doctors told me I'd never walk again. They told me I was gonna spend my life in a wheelchair. Wow. But I went back to my mental tough.
Back to my medical skills. And I said, nobody's gonna tell me no. Oh, that's right. So I became a strength and conditional specialist, the kind of people that train pro athletes. I became a yoga instructor. I went to eight hours of physical therapy per day for eight years straight. Even today, before I leave my house in the morning, I heat a room to 130 degrees.
I do about 60 minutes of yoga in there, [00:18:00] and then jump in 159 degree sauna and do some joint mobility exercises. And then I can walk for the day. And what was I doing in between physical therapy appointments? I was coaching people to get hired. Cause it's just something I've loved to do. so I was now I'm in physical therapy.
I mentioned you need to do this. Yep. You got it. Hey yeah, Joey, I got you here. What you need to do for the, and I was just getting people hired and hired. And then I finally got healthy enough to be able to sit in a chair, start this company. I've gotten over a hundred people, six figure jobs in the last 12 months.
Wow. For a cost of less than a thousand dollars for the average student, the range for the majority of them is between one 20 and 2 75 with an average somewhere like 1 30, 1 40 for training the cost less than a thousand dollars and less than a year. So I'm pretty proud and excited about that. And now we have a program specifically for veterans.
That's
Tim Chrisman: a, yeah, no, that's little
Mike Gibbs: different, but we made some differences for the veterans since I know the veteran. I know the tactical world. Yeah. Yeah. I know the decisions we make are hard on us, but if we don't [00:19:00] make these decisions, we die. We're put in situations that are highly stressful. We don't know if we're gonna make it until tomorrow.
Plus we're carrying around a R body armor. Yeah. Ammo meals. That gives us some arthritis. So I took our same program, which is working and I added a complete total leadership training program to teach people how to go from command and control, which is appropriate in emergencies or military context to this six or seven civilian leadership styles.
I added some cognitive behavior therapy to help with PTSD. Yeah. Some yoga and meditation to help with that as well. And I'm truly impressed about it and we're still doing it. And we're offering this course for about a single day's pay for the average. Wow. That's incredible.
Tim Chrisman: No, that's so cool.
So what, we've gone around the edges of go cloud career, but what is it, more
Mike Gibbs: fully, we are a career optimization organization. We keep everything that's necessary. So I start [00:20:00] everybody at ground zero from the beginning. Yeah. And we have a methodology that's completely. Our competitors teach certifications.
Yep. Which is the name of a service and how to configure that service. Sure. But for an architect whose designs presents themselves, it's completely irrelevant cuz we don't configure anything. Yeah. But we take a different approach. So about 20 years ago, I was lucky enough to have a manager and he pulls me into his office and he tapped me on the side and he says, Mike, you're not like the rest of my people.
And I went uhoh I get fired or am I getting a raise here? I have no idea. And he pulls me aside and he says, do you know the difference between $150,000 sales engineer, like you and a $300,000 enterprise architect? And I was a young kid I'm like, tell me. And he said it has nothing to do with your tech skills, their top notch.
He said it has everything to do with the impact you make on your customers. It's your communication skills, your leadership skills, your sales skills, your business acumen, your CXO, relevance, your emotional intelligence, your executive writing, and you went on your pre and I, you know what I've done in my training program, [00:21:00] I've done two things taught exactly the technical skills submitting needs for the job and only those and put a full executive training program in there.
And I've done it for the following reasons when you have no experience, but you've got executive presence, communication. People forget that you have no experience. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And not only do they forget that you don't have any experience, no experience. Cuz you look good and you sound good. They need you on their team and they pay you more.
And that's why I've been wildly successful because yeah. When it comes to hiring somebody, we don't players care about, they don't just care about your competency. They care about the following things. One competency, two, can they trust you? Three. Are you safe? Meaning you know what you know? And don't you should don't know.
So you don't make mistake. Four. They want some energetic, enthusiastic compassion out to Burke. Five is they want someone that's emotionally intelligent. Six is they want a team player and seven is, they want someone that's willing to go up above and beyond. They're not looking for, Hey, tell me about the work life balance.
They wanna know you're willing to stay on the flight until the job's done. So yeah, those are what employers want. So by doing this, are people [00:22:00] get hired constantly? No, I don't believe anybody should leave the military without a six figure job waiting for 'em and that's why we've taken our civilian program and adapted it for military folks.
Tim Chrisman: No. I think that's, a perfect fit probably for any field, but that's something that, there's the stereotype that cyber professionals network professionals are the nerdy people. There was, I used to be in the intelligence community. And when we were at the CIA, we were the outgoing ones and we would make jokes about the people at the NSA, who they would look at.
The extroverted ones would look at somebody else's shoe. But like having this program to build that executive presence that's gotta be far and away a differentiator for these graduates. It's
Mike Gibbs: huge. And it's huge in two ways. Yeah. That the elite jobs, they don't want someone that's a techy. They want someone that's an executive that knows techie.
They want someone [00:23:00] that's got the emotional intelligence of an intelligence asset. Someone that can go adapt, improvise, overcome, communicate, be a chameleon. That's what they're looking for. Yeah. Yeah. They don't want someone how I might name is Mike. I'm an expert on B GP. They want someone that's gonna lively up the room.
So half of what we need to do, especially when we deal with technology professionals for a long time is to completely rebrand. Yep. And for the elite career, sometimes it's easier to get somebody from a psychology background than it is for an engineering background, cuz I've got them to unlearn all that and learn how to design present.
And which is a totally different skillset. So no matter what we can all achieve anything we want. Yeah. We work Cardinal.
Tim Chrisman: And that was something. So when I I was in a special operations unit and I remember talking to one of the trainers and said, like, why are you, were you eager and excited when you're talking about how this entire class is not people from infantry, not people who shoot people for a living he's because you have no bad habits.
I can teach [00:24:00] anybody how to shoot. I can teach anybody how to shoot really good. But if I have to unteach you the bad things in order to teach you the good, that takes me twice as long. Absolutely. And so I think what you're saying there with, cross career or mid-career transitions we don't think about that.
We think, Nope, this is it. I. Got my degree. This is all I'm good for. It seems like in many
Mike Gibbs: cases, but it's not true, right? Life is cumulative. Life is transferable one day for arguments sake. We just wanted to do it. We took a swap guy. Yeah. Knew a Carine and knew his pistol. And I said, you're gonna shoot at a thousand yards today.
And he is my, how am I gonna do this? So we gave him an Sr 25 mark, 11 M one 10, whatever you wanna call it. We doped the rifle for him. And. Here's your breathing. Here's what you do the same trigger control, the same fundamentals. And you had a first shot, hit it a thousand yards. And I said, okay, here's the reason this was so easy.
We knew. That you had 42 minutes of angle of drop on [00:25:00] here. We knew that we had a 45 degree win, which the, which meant a three quarter value win. We knew this. So your fundamentals were so good. Once we teach you how to run these calculations, see it's gonna be nothing. Now a SWAT guy is gonna be a SWAT.
Sniper is not gonna get outside of the a hundred yard range ever. If you can do a thousand. You can do a hundred, 200. Yeah. so in his case, it was to just prove a point. Sure. Here's how you dope the rifle. Here's your variables. Now let's take you to a hundred yards and make sure that your next 50 shots don't get past this posted stamp.
Cause if you do, it's not good enough.
Tim Chrisman: that's right. Yeah, no, I think that's a great way to look at it because at the end of the day, we're not. We're not stuck. Nope. For whatever we think. The only thing that ever stops us is us deciding we just. Don't want to, that's
Mike Gibbs: the key it's us.
We are in our own way, who gets through buds? Is it the Olympians? No, it's the people that just won't quit until they're there. Yeah. One day in Israel, I [00:26:00] thought it was really hilarious training. I personally thought it was fun. Yeah. They decided to put us in 120 degree room and one day university forces to leave our arms over our head for the entire day.
Yeah. And there are two sets of people. There are one set of people that put 'em down inside of 15. There were the mentally strong people that didn't know how to breathe, that just collapsed face down into the ground. And there were those of us that made jokes. Hey, we're gonna tell our kids about this.
Yeah. Ah, look at, we're gonna talk about when we drink tonight, we did this all day and it was fun for us now, the next day, it was hard to use our arms, but as long as we kept in the mind in the game, in terms of succeeding and winning, we won it's all in the mind. It's all
Tim Chrisman: in the. Oh, yeah, no, my wife and I watched the series alone.
I don't know if you've seen that where they drop people in the wilderness
Mike Gibbs: to survive. I've seen a version of that, but I love it.
Tim Chrisman: Yeah, it's fantastic. And at the beginning of every season, we're like, okay, who's gonna last. And there's, the Navy seal, there's the person who's been[00:27:00] ultra-marathon runner and they look good.
They've got the right equipment. They know what they're doing. And then there's always that one or two of those people are like, I just like being outside. It's. And we're like, huh? I don't know. And that's the attitude they have the whole time. They're like, I'm just, this is a good time. And they're the ones who make it, cuz they're not sitting there just gritting their teeth.
Saying, thinking how bad it is and I'm gonna tough it out.
Mike Gibbs: It's incredible. It really is. I had someone that I coached a few years ago. It was hilarious. I was doing my little yoga in the gym and he is I heard of. You're that enterprise architect, job guy, that's done this and this, and I want you to train me.
Yeah. And I looked at the kid, I knew it was a crossroad kid. I said okay, if you can do this, and I made him do 200 deadlifts with 2 25, a workout called the Murf, which was run a mile, a hundred pull ups, 200 pushups, 300 squats, another mile run. And then when I was done this, I made him do 200 squats with 2 25 on his back [00:28:00] and bear crawl a half a mile.
And I said, if you do. And I'll train you and he's gut it out. He's gut it out. And when he was in the bear crawl, I'm like, all right, enough's enough. He's now one of the most successful people I ever coached he came from a background that was challenging. He was the most clumsy person in the world when I met him.
But he had it here. Yep. He would never quit. And when I saw that, I would say, yes, I can train you. Yep.
Tim Chrisman: No, it's it is, I, I have two kids. And I don't know how to teach that. And I, talking to you, talking to other people, that's something that after a certain point in your life, it seems like you've got it or you don't.
Yeah. You can't pick it up in your thirties. But what have you seen is like formative experiences for these people?
Mike Gibbs: It's interesting. I have a I'm but the students I get are actually all typically mentally tough. And I know this sounds really strange for whatever reason I've been blessed.
[00:29:00] I have a tremendous number of, I. Huh. Okay. I've got about 500 immigrants from Africa, a couple hundred immigrants from India, immigrants from south America and also Americans too. It's great. Sure. Come to America from Africa. This is like winning an Olympic gold medal. Yeah. Yeah. My students tell me stories of going to the consulate 10 times.
And having to prove this and this kind of like when I got married and I tried to get people to come from my wedding in Greece. It was so hard to get to the United States from them legally. Yeah. So by the time they got here, they were already tough and I've got people that are working three jobs just trying to survive.
And it's do this and this. And by the way, you'll get there. There's that side of it. Now I get a lot of youth and they've been pampered. They've got participation trophies. They get a returning in garbage. And they come to me and they say, what do I do? And I say, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
everything that you thought you've had is not the reality. The reality is life's tough. Embrace it. Yeah. It's not [00:30:00] fair. So if you wanna win, you gotta outwork outthink, outperform your everyone. There's no participation trophies in life. It's war. Yeah. One person that gets hired for the job. One. One person that gets the promotion.
So how do you prepare for your battle? Do you wanna be the Olympic gold medalist that do that focuses a hundred percent of your time, effort and energy and money into one thing? Or you wanna be the hobbyist? The Jack of all trades, the choice is yours, but which do you wanna be? I can tell you where you'll be, if you'll do this and I can tell you what to do if you won't and that works for some of them.
Yeah. Now I never thought of this before. My chief operating at officer says, Mike, maybe we should put some testimonial videos out there. I said, why we're gonna get testimonials from me doing my job of teaching people a career? He said, yeah. I said, okay. So we got an airplane pilot, is he gonna make a testimonial?
Every time he lands the plane or a sniper, every time he takes out a bad guy, it's you gonna make a video testimonial? And this is where I listened to my COO and he [00:31:00] says, Mike, the students need it. They need to see the success. So we started making that, and that seems to be helping.
Tim Chrisman: No, it's I definitely am somebody who doesn't have that instinct to record everything.
It's very confusing for me when I see that happening all over the place. But you're right. There is, there are groups of people who are like, I wanna see. What the success, what success happened and that's convincing for him. And it, you were mentioning the immigrants who got here and were mentally tough.
I suppose if you've it's all putting things in perspective, if it's been exceptionally hard doing thing, number thing, number one thing. Number two is easy. Easy to be mentally tough.
Mike Gibbs: yeah. And I think there's an expression. I don't, I'm not gonna completely remember it, but tough times make strong people good times make weak people.
Yeah. We've had some really good economic times for a long [00:32:00] time until recently. Yeah. And people got participation trophies, kids were getting cell phones. Everybody's got multiple color TVs and any kind of movie they wanna. I've worked with people that are in $80 a month and they're supporting their family on it.
Yeah. Most of this world lives in less than 1500 a year. Yeah. Any of the world lives in less than 1500 a year. We get it pretty easy. Our poor are actually rich compared to the rest of the world. Oh, for sure. So even people in welfare are rich compared to most of the world. So the key is being able to understand that we can lift ourselves up.
Everybody can do everything. Yeah. I like to say I have a lot of students that grew up really poor. They joined the military. That was their education. Yep. They got out of there mentally strong, capable, energetic, enthusiastic, compassionate. I gotta hire these people. I have no choice.
Tim Chrisman: Exactly.
And yeah, you're right. Seeing the [00:33:00] people that go through the military and come up the other side, they either. Get spit out and are broken. And it just wasn't for them, but if not, they come out pretty incredible people.
Mike Gibbs: Pretty incredible. Yeah. I think a lot of the difference is, the people that are coming from a moral leap background actually come out better, even though they're in higher risk.
It's not stress. Isn't a problem. Yeah. It's how we manage that. Yeah, that's the issue, if you're trained like a seal or a Delta force person or a Mar stock person, Raider or whatever term they use each day. Yeah. You're used to this, when somebody screams at you, you're like, okay, when it's hard.
Okay. I didn't realize that when I was, I kept going to orthopedic surgeons about my foot and they didn't really understand how bad it was. and the reason they didn't understand how bad it was is they're pucking my foot. They're like how it feels. Is it painful? I'm like it doesn't feel good.
And they're like on a scale of one to 10, I'm like, I don't think you understand. I was doing 700 pound dead list in high school. [00:34:00] I've been shot with bullet CHES and they hurt five outta 10 even though I'm bleeding because they're warm and I don't even notice it for 10 minutes. I said, I've been punched in the face, the ribs broken ribs.
I said, it's all relative right now when it got to the neuropathy part out with something different. But the point, like they don't understand the world of a warrior or a martial artist, what heart is. Oh yeah.
Tim Chrisman: Oh, yeah, no, I've so I was medically retired from the army cuz of I had such bad arthritis.
Like I couldn't put my clothes on like mechanically, I understand that move. And so I would go to the doctor and they're like how bad is it hurt? And I'm like, I don't know, like a four or five and they'd do an x-ray or cat scan. And they're like, you have literally no cartilage, had the shoulder surgeon.
Professional baseball team saying I've never seen an athlete this bad unless they were in their eighties. It's I dunno what to tell you.
Mike Gibbs: I didn't play sports and it's normal for you, right? I have two torn rotator cuffs. Laboral tears in [00:35:00] both hips, no cartilage in either knee, a foot. That's got a ligament tear.
They can't do five. Her needed disc on reflux, sympathetic dystrophy. And believe it or not. I have people that complain more than me. that have a boo on their finger? Oh I believe that I believe
Tim Chrisman: that with all my heart yeah, and the thing is it probably actually is worse
Mike Gibbs: for them. It is worse for them cuz in their mind the perception is so bad.
Yeah. Yeah it's. And you can tell the difference. I call my buddy. He was a sniper in the army. Actually he was a sniper in the Marine Corps. Then he became an airline captain. Then he decided to join the army as a sniper, cuz he didn't wanna do Marine Corps PT when he was like 50 years old.
That's fair. So he becomes a sniper in the army. Then he retires from the army and in his world, I get to his house when he's complaining. There's a reason for it. Yeah. He's got a reason for it when he is complaining. And I brought a friend to his house the other day and he met my friend and the [00:36:00] kid had a booboo on his finger and he is complaining about the Booo on his finger.
And my buddy, Chris says, Mike, where'd you get this character from. He's not like the normal one of you. I said, he's a very nice person. I brought him here to see other people at the top of him out said, please show him he can do anything with me. Yeah.
Tim Chrisman: and sometimes that's all they need is to see that.
You've got it pretty good
Mike Gibbs: sometimes. Yeah.
Tim Chrisman: Yeah. It's great talking with you today, Michael. I know we're getting close to time here, but is there anything we miss talking? I think we really
Mike Gibbs: talked about some pretty cool things. The way I say, we talked about how toughness can get you through any obstacle.
Yeah. Longer way, as long as you keep fighting to do it. We did discuss how I went from paramedic to nurse practitioner, to cloud architect, enterprise architect, to coaching people for the last 20 years. I think we had a really fun time with talking about attributes for success. And I think we all had a good time talking about things from one career.
And how they can interplay for [00:37:00] another career. Yeah. Because it's that, and we need everybody to know life is cumulative. Yeah. If you were the captain of a sports team. Great. If you're a parent, there's some leadership skills involved. If you're a teacher, there's something involved in there.
Yeah. If you are a warrior. Wow. There's a lot that comes from. If you come from any of the professional things, doctor, lawyer, accountant, it's the same job. Yep. Listen to the problem, examine the available evidence, make a diagnosis and build the plan and you know what we didn't cover, but I'm gonna ask your perspective.
Yeah. Cuz you're gonna come from a better perspective. I approach the world in the following matter. I make my primary plan. I typically make up a backup plan. Yeah. And potentially a second backup plan. And then when all else. Adapt improvise and overcome you come from the world of planning.
I know you do. How do you do it?
Tim Chrisman: I do less planning than what you talked about. , I'll make a plan with the knowledge that there [00:38:00] is no way on earth it's going to work but I try to think through what are, what's gonna go wrong. What's gonna happen over here. What's gonna happen over here. So when it actually does go wrong, it looks.
I'm just riffing off things or adapting a friend of mine once said, I'm the most well prepared, unprepared person you'll ever meet because I do actually think about these things. I just don't make formal plan cuz I know none of 'em are gonna work.
Mike Gibbs: Okay. Fair point. it's the same no battle.
No, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
Tim Chrisman: But at the same time, Not planning at all is not helpful. Yeah. So I think there's I'm probably too far one side. It works though,
Mike Gibbs: but it's, it is the training that you've been more adaptable in life from which I've had to do. My primary plan is what I want to happen.
Yep. My backup plans are if this goes wrong and this goes wrong. Yeah. These are premade, but even them, you know what? Oh yeah,[00:39:00] it's still gonna be adapt. Adapt.
Tim Chrisman: And I think the good part about either way is you're not emotionally invested in one thing, your identity's not tied to that plan working.
You're not gonna cry yourself to sleep if it doesn't work, cuz you're gonna have to change it. And I know if I meet somebody who says. You know what you just said about how you plan or says we're gonna have to adapt, innovate and overcome. Like we can be friends. Yeah. Because you're not gonna freak out.
If the restaurant we go to is
Mike Gibbs: closed I'm not gonna freak out if it's closed, we're gonna go somewhere else. Exactly. It's those of us. And I've seen it. I didn't realize that I was trying to hire somebody. Who's a mental toughness coach. Yeah. I didn't even think about it. It was a green bra that I was actually talking to.
We left my. Something spooked me. I grabbed him and put him behind me and prepared for something. And outta nowhere, he grabbed me and sticks behind me and he said, Mike, there's danger here. I said, I know, that's why I put you behind me. Neither one of us even [00:40:00] really thought about the danger other than we had to get in front of it and protect the other one.
because we both sensed it via a different ways. Yeah. Now the next conversation he had to me is here's the problem. I just saw the danger before anybody else would. And if I reacted civilians, wouldn't underst. And I said, yes, I would've understand. And I would've been a witness to what was actually going to occur, but yeah, nobody else would see what you and I sold, which was this micro expression, this noise, this movement in this direction.
Cause they're just stuck on their phones. Yeah, actually I think my last thing I'll say is, you can't walk around. In that condition white stage where you don't know what's going on, was it Colonel Grossman that came down to the condition way condition yellow condition, arms condition?
Oh, I think so. And those of us that walk around, just assuming nothing's going on condition. We are surprised and we hit that panic condition, black where we freeze instead of fighting or flighting. Yeah. Those of us that walk around in that condition, yellow, which you do. And I.
See stuff, we're [00:41:00] always paying attention. And then when we see a soccer ball rolling down the street, chances are, there's a kid behind it, slow your card down. Yep. And that way, if it comes down to it, we're good or red where we're ready to fight or. As opposed to the condition black, where we're panicked because we're watching.
So I think that's all part of the plan that they adapt, improvise, overcome, and pay it. Damn him. He's situationally aware. There's always more going on. That meets the eye.
Yep.
Tim Chrisman: There's you know, if you're sitting at your house on your couch, you're probably okay. To be engrossed in your phone,
Mike Gibbs: just that, but you're on an interview.
There's something going on. You're in a client meeting. There's something going on. There's always more than meets the eye. Yep. And unless you're, if you're stuck in your phone, you're not, you're missing.
Tim Chrisman: Yeah, no, it's true. It's it's a good way to end it. thank you so much for
Mike Gibbs: your time today, Michael.
Thank you Tim. One thing, I think you're really interesting. I'd love you to be on my show. If you have a desire, glad to thank you so much. Look forward to finding a time. Sounds great. So wonderful to see you. Thanks. Take care. Take care, Tim. Okay. Bye.[00:42:00]
Comments