183 – He’s a Special Forces Green Beret: Tom interviews Lane Belone

Episode 183 – Lane Belone
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, it's Tom here with episode 183 of Screw the Commute podcast. We've got Lane Belone here and he is part of Vetrepreneurs Month. He is a Special Forces Green Beret who knows how to operate in risky situations. And I'll introduce him to you in a moment. And I hope you didn't miss Troy Broussard, Episode 182. He was a self-described contrarian and he is he's also part of Vetrepreneurs Month in and he's got three homes. And I had to ask him, how do you live in three different homes? I don't know where to put my favorite stuff, all of them in three different homes. All right. So please tell your friends about this podcast. It's a great thing for entrepreneurs and vetrepreneurs and people that want to be entrepreneurs and people struggling in their entrepreneurial journey to give them tips. On Mondays, I do in-depth sessions on all things that have either made me a lot of money or saved me a lot of money. And on Wednesdays and Fridays, they do interviews with great entrepreneurs like Lane here and all kinds of great tips and inspiration from it. So spread it around and also tell him about our podcast app. That's in the Apple store. You go to screwthecommute.com/app and we've got instructions on how to use all the fancy features so you can take us with you on the road. Now, I also have a big freebie to thank you for listening to this podcast is by 27 dollar e-book, How to Automate Your Business. And just one of the tips in this e-book has saved me over seven and a half million keystrokes and other things in the book have allowed me to handle up to one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and 40000 customers without pulling my hair out. So. So check that out. If you hear anything in the background too. There's where Lane is that, the big windstorm or something going on so don't worry about it. He's been in a lot worse situations than that. All right. Our sponsors, the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia, we are approved by the Department of Defense to participate in the my CAA military spouse scholarship program. Now, just as the school and just as me, the founder, we give a ninety five hundred dollar scholarship to anybody military, active duty veterans, military spouses, law enforcement and first responders to thank them for all the things they do to keep civvies safe. In addition to that, the Department of Defense gives military spouses that are eligible four thousand dollars so they can get a total of thirteen thousand five hundred dollars towards their education. And that education on Internet marketing skills can take them. They can use it anywhere in the world and they don't have to take crappy jobs. And then every time they move, take another crappy job. So we'll tell you more about that later. But you can check it out and everything we talk about today in the show notes in this particular case, you can go directly to IMTCVA.org/military. Then if you want to go directly to an episode, this is episode 183. You go to screwthecommute.com/183 and it will take you directly to Lane's episode.

[00:03:55] All right. Let's get to the main event. Lane Belone is a Special Forces Green Beret veteran turned high performance coach. He uses his leadership experience in high risk environments to develop business executive teams into laser focused and empowered A teams, which was one of my favorite shows back in the day. Lane extracts what is already within using a process called creating space. So all involved step into their greatness. Lane are you ready to screw? The commute.

[00:04:30] How you doing, man?

[00:04:34] Doing great. And again, apologies for the high winds here in Colorado. It just kind of came up as we started this podcast.

[00:04:42] While it's probably, you know, a lot better than what it is in Florida and coming up the coast right now with the hurricane, this coming up. So I think we'll live. So tell everybody what you're doing now and then we'll take you back to see how you came up through your journey.

[00:04:59] Yeah. So right now, I just like helping people do more of what they really want in life. And right now, I'm really focused on entrepreneurs, business people and specifically CEOs and my business partner, Steven Kuhn, which you just had on recently. We are focusing on CEOs to help them really fulfill their purpose and use their business as an expression of their individual purpose. And so it's a it's a really awesome endeavor that we've recently started as we've been focusing on entrepreneurs for the past year.

[00:05:34] And when our focus on specifically on CEOs.

[00:05:37] Now you have a process called creating space. Can you go into that a little deeper? What does that mean?

[00:05:43] Yeah. So earlier this year, Steven and I, we were down in Peru and we were discussing it and talking about some of the stuff that we already do intuitively and creating spaces, a name that something that we've been doing for decades now. And essentially what it is, it's it's doesn't matter if you're talking to an individual person, a group, an audience, there's this invisible space that you can create. And allow people to step into this greatness and you step into this space with no preconceived notions, no expectations, with only the intention to provide value in this interaction, and you never know what's going to happen. And including podcasts. And so we are just stepping into this space and allowing our greatest selves to create something that's interesting, powerful, funny, whatever this moment calls for. This podcast calls for. And that's essentially what creating spaces.

[00:06:43] Yeah, I think he found his wife that way. I don't know if you heard the story about that. She was, I guess, his boss or something. He just came out and told her how beautiful she was. And she said, go in your office. And then he just left her alone for a while. And then she came back after him. As that said, hey, it was only worth one try. What's up with you man?

[00:07:06] It's exactly creating space right there. Yeah.

[00:07:10] Yeah. So I'm glad you say stepping in space because a lot of people just step in it. And that's a whole different thing. When they mess up.

[00:07:21] Yeah. We definitely don't want to do that. If we can help it.

[00:07:24] So. So you have a program coming up about this, right?

[00:07:28] Yes. So it is. It's called the Humble Alpha CEO program and it's specifically designed for CEOs. And essentially, it goes through several different stages, but allowing a CEO to really dig deep into who they really are. And of course, they have the CEO position. But what we're really doing is we're stripping their identity of their their position, their role, their duties and coming to the core of who they are as an individual person. And once that's figured out, man, it's it's a really powerful way of being in the world. And you can use this to basically using business as a tool to express your individual purpose. And that's a really powerful way to align yourself and really find find ways to allow resonance to happen it an organic way.

[00:08:25] All right. Now, is this something that the CEO wouldn't want everybody else to know he or she was going through, or is this something they brag about?

[00:08:35] It's a thing that if you go through this process and we've had we've had many clients go through these stages or segments separately, but now we've put put it all together into a full comprehensive program. And what it allows is a small community of like minded people to build off of each other, to elevate each other. And it's not coming from a place of scarcity mindset, but more of an abundance mindset. So the more people that have this, if you want to call it training or this mindset or this extraction of purpose, all of these things, it's only going to make the world a better place. And it's going to actually allow CEOs to do more deals, make connections to joint ventures with like minded people that operate under the same principles that that Steven and I share, which is H.I.T. Honesty, integrity and transparency. And so that is at the core of all the stuff that we teach, not only the program, but for. For everything in life, really.

[00:09:39] So how is it delivered? How is this group setting or is it one on one or combination?

[00:09:45] Yeah, it's a combination of. We have a what we call a learning center and that's already pre-recorded training, distilled information and knowledge ready for them at at any moment. We have group coaching which is expert led and then we also have masterminds, which is member driven or CEO driven to where we're allowing the knowledge and wisdom from all of the people that are part of the program to help create solutions for each other. And then we also have, you know, so a couple other resources that are that are really cool.

[00:10:19] All right. So how do the how do people find out about that?

[00:10:23] Yeah. So they would need to go to QOLEnterprises.com and you can find out more information about the program. QOL stands for Quality of Life, which is that Steven and I you know, it's the instate of why we do everything that we do. And it's one of those things where at the end of each video that we do, we always have this kind of tagline says, you know what, it's all about quality of life.

[00:10:55] Yeah, yeah. I've heard him say that. So. Okay. So that's. QOLEnterprises.com and that's of course will be in the show notes so they can just click on it if they're driving in the car. So let's take you back. So were you an entrepreneurial kid.

[00:11:10] No. No I wasn't. I was a I was a Boy Scout and I was a sports guy, basketball, love track. And I was very active in the Boy Scouts. And so that kind of exploratory nature and competition driven really allowed me to thrive in. And later in the military. But yeah, I didn't really have any experience or even really knowledge of entrepreneurship growing up. You know, small town. Yeah, small town. About 5000 people in Oklahoma. And entrepreneurship was wasn't something that most people strive for. And I just stumbled upon it later in life.

[00:11:55] So. So, OK, so you went through Boy Scouts, went through school. So how how'd you end up in the military?

[00:12:03] Yeah, it's actually kind of an interesting story. So my best friend at the time we were trying to decide what we were going to do after high school and he was like, yeah, I heard something about this thing called the Army Rangers and stuff like that. I was like, OK, well, yeah. I was kind of thinking about college. And so we were like, well, I don't know what we're gonna do. So we ended up playing rock, paper, scissors, both of our destinies. So my buddy AJ, he he's like, OK, so if I if I win, you know, we go we both go to the military. And if you win, we both go to college. So that's two out of three. He one, we both joined.

[00:12:41] That's career planning at its best. I've ever heard of such a thing. So you signed up there in Oklahoma then? Where'd you go to boot camp?

[00:12:55] Yeah. So I went to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and that's where I went to Basic. And I originally joined the military as a intel analyst. And I joined at 17. And in my mind, Intel, I was like, OK, I'm going to be gathering information, intel on the ground and all this kind of cool stuff. And that's not what it turned out to be. It's more of sitting there sitting behind a computer and doing that kind of stuff. And so, needless to say, about a year after I got to my first duty station, which was overseas in Germany, which I loved, and that sparked my passion for travel. But I decided, OK, I need to do something a little bit more challenging.

[00:13:40] You're a high performance guy. I mean, you can't sit there all day long.

[00:13:44] Yeah. And, you know, it took me a little, little while to kind of get used to the military, the army. And but I came to the realization to try out for this thing called special forces. I saw a flyer on the shopette door and say, hey, come to the auditorium and you can check out what this is. And I'm like, oh, I have no idea what it is. And so.

[00:14:08] So you went up to the the leader of the group. Let's do some rock, paper, scissors see if I should be here.

[00:14:16] Yeah. I. Well, I think that was the only time I ever allowed rock, paper, scissors to decide a major decision in life. But I still do rock, paper, scissors for small things like, oh, I'm going out to eat and stuff. But so. So I walk into this auditorium and it's one of those old school auditoriums and have a bunch of bench seats and with a projector playing a video, you know, at the at the front. And so as I was walking in and I saw this video playing and it was guys blowing stuff up, jumping out of airplanes, shooting cool guns, you know, just doing all these crazy military cool stuff. I haven't done most of that. Almost all of that. And I was like, I don't know what it is, but I think I want to try out for it. So I know that, you know, they talk about what it is kind of and it's kind of secretive and all this kind of stuff and say, OK, well, if you're interested, you can join the Special Forces Assessment selection. And so I ended up joining a couple months later, and that was a whole ordeal of itself, three weeks of grueling test of personal fortitude.

[00:15:32] That's just the test to get in. Right. That wasn't the actual training, right?

[00:15:36] Yeah. It's just to see if you got what it takes to join a two year special forces qualification course. So yeah, I ended up attending SFAS is what they call it selection and end up passing and stuff like that. And in going through two years of incredible mind blowing training and so many life lessons and in those two years that at the end of it. You become the very minimal Green Beret. Even through those two years of of grueling training and the attrition rate is somewhere around two or three percent.

[00:16:17] I was going to ask you that. Well, when you say attrition, you mean only two to three percent make it or or two or three percent wash out.

[00:16:27] Yeah. So from all the people that that attempt to join any special forces training. Only about 2 or 3 percent actually earn and graduate the qualification course.

[00:16:40] So there's this after this after the the first test to see if you have any chance at all. Or is that starting before you did that testing?

[00:16:49] Yeah, it starts at the Special Forces Assessment Selection.

[00:16:53] Ok. So right there, only two to three percent make it all the way. And so you say you're a minimal green. Know that? Yeah. You get a smaller hat or something.

[00:17:08] So you have all this training and it's knowledge and experience and you have also your regular military experience. But as soon as you go to the A Team, the operational detachment, Alpha ODA is what they call it. You are a brand new Green Beret and you pretty much know nothing as much as as much as you learn in the Q course. You are joining very specialized, highly trained, highly experienced Green Berets. And you just you join the team and you're like, OK. I thought I knew a lot, but actually I don't know much. And so they're in the process of being the lowest man on the totem pole, so to speak, begins again.

[00:17:55] Yeah. Wow. Now, do you have to commit to longer? Like, if you were chosen to go into a special forces program, do you have to commit to a longer stay in the military?

[00:18:06] It's about the same as any other commitment in the military or in the army specifically. And it goes by enlistments. And so normally it's about three or four years after you don your Green Beret. And then after that, it's just a normal military enlistment every two, three, four, five, six years, depending on your contract, then you just call it reupping or sign on a new enlistment contract.

[00:18:34] Yeah, I'm just saying from a from somebody just goes in with a four year commitment. If two years of that were, you know, almost three years, probably a training and then you get out. That's kind of a waste, right?

[00:18:46] Yes, it does. There's a committee, but it's not it's not a lifetime contract or anything like that.

[00:18:54] All right. So. So how long did you stay in that? Eight years. Eight years. All right. And then when you're starting to know that you're coming to an end, end of your run. What were you thinking? Get a job.

[00:19:12] Difficult decision because when you're really good at something in your efficient, proficient and skilled, it's it's difficult to leave that profession for something unknown. But ultimately, it came down to two factors, two major factors. The first one, of course, was family. And to be able to provide for the family, future family and being able to have the quality time with my wife and do the things that we want to do.

[00:19:42] And how did you get married? It was during the time you were in special forces.

[00:19:49] Yeah, I was right in the middle of it. So my wife got plenty of experience of me traveling, deploying and going on missions. And, you know, it's it's a difficult thing for the family to to have the husband or the spouse to be gone for months at a time.

[00:20:08] Yeah. But now is it is it really like you see on TV, like all of a sudden you get a text or a or a beeper and you gotta run. You just gotta go.

[00:20:17] Yeah. So there's a specialized units within special forces that I was part of that that operated like that. You had a basically drop at a moment's notice. There's a you know, they have specific time, windows and stuff. But, you know, quick recalls for, hey, you got to be back at the unit and we gotta do do something kind of thing.

[00:20:37] Yeah. It's already got to be hard on the family. Yeah. For sure.

[00:20:40] Yeah. Yeah. And. Yeah. And that also takes away from traveling. You know, been being stationed in Europe, you know, afforded the opportunity to travel and sometimes you can't because of that limitation of being on a recall. Yeah. Yeah. The family was the first first factor and the second one was was more of an individual or personal factor. And that was me knowing that I had a mission in life that was there was greater than my military service. I will always be appreciative of my military experience and service and so many great people and leaders developing myself and helping me and guiding me every step of the way. But ultimately, I knew that I needed to do something different and help people in a different way. So that towards the end of my service, I was in efforts of helping people. And I didn't know what I was doing when I was just helping people with what I knew.

[00:21:44] And that's how how, you know, I decided to get out and and pursue something that was unknown to me and stepping into this entrepreneurship. And it was it was a difficult time to decide. But I knew that that was the right answer.

[00:22:00] You decided before you got out or a little buffer period after you got out.

[00:22:06] Yeah. So I basically decided not to enlist in a new contract with the military. And so I had a little bit of runway, so to speak, to to plan and to strategize, so to speak, on what I was going to do after the military. And my specific strategy was to have the first 12 months lined up after I got out of the military. And so that was my strategy worked out pretty well. It gave me enough time to think about what I wanted to do to take action on what I wanted to do to experiment, because there was a lot of, of course, you know, entrepreneurs. So much experimentation. And so that that's what allowed me to be successful in this transitional period, which was, you know, it's it's a anytime you transition from career, career or any big change in life. That transitional period is always difficult. And the better you can set things to your favor, the more or the easier it is mentally because it's tough. Any transition is tough, but the best. The better you can prepare yourself and in all different kinds of ways. Well, we'll help you on your on your journey.

[00:23:26] Are you saying that you gave yourself 12 months after getting out to work on this and figure out how it was gonna play out? Is that what you're saying?

[00:23:34] Yeah, exactly. And actually, the the first three months I and my wife and I, we we we returned back to the US and we did a three month road trip across America spanning 37 states. Oh, wow. So a whole bunch of friends and family and places that we haven't seen because we had traveled quite a bit together as a married couple. And I think about 20 countries up until that point. And and we were like, yeah, we haven't really explored much of the US. So. The US is incredibly beautiful and there's so much diversity not only in culture, but in terrain, geographically speaking and all that. And so that's what we wanted to do when we got out. And so it was it was a very liberating feeling. Just roaming the US driving around and exploring. So that was now as part of the twelve month plan was to just decompress, enjoy, relax and essentially and really embedding that quality of life mindset.

[00:24:41] All right. So how did you actually I mean did start a business. Did you make an LLC or did you just become a sole proprietor and how did you get the word out that you had things that you could help people with?

[00:24:54] Yeah. So it first started out with travel and so I started helping people travel. And for me, travel is a tool for transformation. And it's it's a mindset and a process and a strategy, so to speak. To use travel advantageously, to grow as a person. And so that's where it started out. And that was a solopreneurship.

[00:25:17] Well, when you say helping him with travel, what do you mean the logistics of it or keeping safe or what? What? With regard to travel?

[00:25:26] Yeah. So is the whole gambit. And it was safety. It was planning. It was mindset. So it was a whole encompassing thing, especially safety with my military force background was. Yeah. It was very beneficial for anybody that I worked with. And. But I didn't get a lot of success with my travel endeavors. And. But what that did lead me to was meeting up with my now business partner, Steve Kuhn. And we actually met on one of these journeys down in Peru. And that's how we we we actually met in person in Peru. Beforehand we had met online. And what we are a part of and now leaders of the Vetpreneur tribe. And which is about 13000 plus right about now. And we've met online and we have we chit chatting and, you know, get to know each other. And then one thing led to another. And we found ourselves both down in Peru. And that's where we met. And then, you know, just a lot of incredible things have happened since then and a lot of synthesizing. And it's just a partnership made in heaven.

[00:26:44] So he's involved in this. The. The Q thing that you're talking about, right?

[00:26:47] Yeah. Yeah. Him and I are co-founders.

[00:26:50] Great, great, great. So we've got to take a brief sponsor break. And when we come back, we're going to ask what's a typical day like for you.

[00:26:58] All right. So, folks, this is Vetrepreneurs Month I want to tell you a little bit more about how my school supports military families and how our training can help them. First of all, we give a 50 percent or ninety five hundred dollar scholarship to thank them for their service. This applies to active duty or veterans. Then for our eligible military spouses, the DOD gives them an additional four thousand dollars. And the reason this is perfect for military families. And I know this first hand because living in the Virginia Beach Norfolk area, probably the biggest collection of military in the world as spouses here normally have to take crappy jobs at lower than average pay because employers know they're going to get deployed and the employers don't want to invest a lot of money in people they know will be leaving. So then the spouse has to get deployed and find another crappy job in a new location. So so with Internet marketing training, companies don't care where you live. You can work legitimately from home. I mean, if you get deployed somewhere else, it doesn't matter. You can still be handling social media and email marketing and shopping cart stuff and customer service and all the other things that every business on earth needs. And not only that, you can study at home with no expenses, no books, no travel or childcare expenses. So it's just perfect for military families. And one more thing. You can also sell your own stuff. You can create e-books. You can create online courses, membership sites, things like that. So it's just perfect for military families. So I'm I'm thrilled to be involved and be able to help them with it. So check it all out at IMTCVA.org/military. And remember, it's distance learning so you can be anywhere in the world. You can get an Internet connection and take the training and they give me a call. I'll be thrilled to tell you all about it and support your military family.

[00:29:05] All right. Let's get back to the main event. We've got Lane Belone here. And Lane, what's a typical day look like for you now?

[00:29:13] Yeah. So when I wake up, first thing I do is I do a meditation and we kind of talked about this before, before the podcast is actually record my own meditation sequence. And what this does is it really primes my day to get in this incredible state of mind and allow just everything to happen exactly how they should for this particular day. And so after this meditation, I drink some water and and so I actually do a fasting fast. It's called that time restrict feeding. So my first meal of the day is that until about eleven or twelve in the morning. And but I drink coffee and. I get my highest creative works done from about eight to eight to 10 or eleven. Generally speaking. And then after that, it's just replying to emails, connecting with people online, creating content for clients or coach working. And so, yeah, it's a process of allowing what needs to happen that day. And as as appointments or calls happen, they happen. And that's pretty much how it goes every single day.

[00:30:42] Well, I think you ought to make a product out of that recorded meditation and you could just send it to me and then I could play it while I'm sleeping. How about that? I guess that's not how it works. What do you do? What? Why? They record their meditation. I don't get that. I thought you have to meditate and then you're kind of quiet. And what are you recording exactly?

[00:31:03] Yeah. So there's all kinds of different kinds of meditation. There's no wrong way to meditate. And for me, the meditation that I created is a specific sequence to prompt me to think about or to meditate on a specific thing. And it's so there's a difference between affirmations and prompts. And so affirmations are a very specific word, specifically worded specific verbiage of something that you want to say or think or feel. But for me, a prompt allows me to organically think about or feel what I need to feel for that moment. And so there's a slight difference between those, but the the difference between them or very powerful. And so this meditation is more of a prompt on what to. For me to meditate and think upon for the day. And so, for instance, it'll be how, you know, it starts out with today is a great day. And then I say. Feel why it's great. And so during this process, I'm just I'm just thinking about why today is gonna be a great day. And so I just envision what's going to happen for you, feel what's going to happen. And that automatically sets me into this really incredible state of mind for today's gonna be a great day. Doesn't matter what's going to happen, you know, even if there if it even if it's filled with fires, I have to put out intense labor intensive, you know, digital work, whatever it is. Content creation doesn't matter what's going to happen because I know it's going to lead to impact. And so just by these small prompts, I'm able to really just feel it. And then because I come from that space or that position of that state of mind, then things just happen during the day that they just need to happen. And it's just to allow in synchronicity.

[00:33:00] Yeah. When it keeps you in the right mindset, because if you're always thinking bad stuff gonna happen, you know, it just makes it worse. Whenever I think the challenge come up.

[00:33:12] And so I'm taking the same concept. When it rains, it pours. Instead of it being bad stuff, it's just good stuff.

[00:33:18] Well yeah. When it's sunny, it's sunny. So this is really great. Get to hear your story, man, because, you know, I'm gonna really go back in and suggest maybe even make some training on rock, paper, scissors, because it's a powerful tool. So you get high performance out of CEOs. So any CEOs listening. What if they're not a CEO?

[00:33:45] What if they just want to they'd love your story and they they they want to be a better high performance person. Do you have anything do you do any coaching? You do anything for a for individuals?

[00:33:59] Yeah. Yeah. That information will also be on the website. But yet right now we're specifically focused on CEOs. But for the past twelve months, we've been helping all kinds of entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs with five employees, 10 employees, people that are just now getting started that don't have a company, but they're thinking about it. And I have a business idea. So Steven and we work with all kinds of entrepreneurs or those aspiring to become entrepreneurs. So, yeah, just contact us and we'll help in any way that we can. Because ultimately creating impacts is is at the heart of why we do what we do.

[00:34:37] Yeah. And it's all about quality of life. Hey, I'm going to try to get some sear training off you in case they put out a bad product that people are trying to get me.

[00:34:53] Well, I'll be seeing you soon so we can get discuss that.

[00:34:59] All right. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to be on. Everybody check out the site in the show notes. Give it to them again.

[00:35:05] QOLEnterprises.com.

[00:35:11] Thanks so much. Lane, I'll be seeing you at the mill. Well, I'll have already seen you by the time this place that the Military Influencers Conference or I'm going to be addressing the business accelerator group there. So I'm looking forward to that, although I should say I'm looking backwards to that. It was great one. Yeah, I get mixed up with these things. We had a great time. That's absolutely true. All right. So so thanks so much. And we'll catch everybody on the next episode. See ya later.

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