642 – Using the power of story: Tom interviews Marty Martinez

Episode 642 – Marty Martinez
[00:00:08] 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 642 of Screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with Marty Martinez, and every September we honor our veteran entrepreneurs. And this is Vetpreneur Month. Marty is a great veteran that's helping other veterans and civilians with their business. We'll get to that in a minute. Also, he's been running triathlons since 1989. And and maybe he's going to help out our civilian population a little bit with some some of their acronyms, like maybe he'll tell us what I don't know, FNG stands for. So check with him on that. And I saw him bantering with a Navy SEAL, John MacAskill. And I think Marty will be happy with me because I turned down an appointment to the Naval Academy. So I know they they like the banter back and forth, so that should make Marty happy. All right. And hope you didn't miss Episode 641. That was Brian Stacy, a great veteran that has Tricon Fitness. Boy, he doesn't pull any punches, man. You there's no excuses with this guy. That was episode 641. And if you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash and then the episode number. 641 was Brian and today will be 642 with Marty. All right. Pick up a copy. If you're if you have anything to do with business or even if you don't have anything to do with business. If you download this book, I give away. It has saved me. We actually estimated over 8 million keystrokes. It's called How to Automate Your Business, but it's really how to make your computer work go lightning fast with cheap and free ideas that you're right in front of you.

[00:02:11] Probably nobody just taught them to you so that you can spend time doing the things you love. And if you're in business, spending more time with customers and prospects and developing products and services, which is where the money is. All right. So grab a copy of that book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And while you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app, and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet. Take it with you on the road.

[00:02:42] All right. Let's get to the main event. Marty Martinez is here. He's called the Moak. I think I know what that means, mother or something, I think. But he's a brand and marketing strategist who partners with CEOs, executives and solopreneurs will to grow their personal and professional brands. And human to human. He does it through the power of story. And this is not woo woo stuff, folks. This is this is highly effective things in the business world. He spent nearly a decade working on marketing for the US Army and the Pentagon with Army G eight, I think, or G eight. So I'm not sure what that is. A multimillion dollar defense contractor and startup, so he knows what truly drives conversions, sold out launches and how to land big interviews. All right. Marty's been covered by The Washington Post, Stars and Stripes magazine, FOX, ABC, NBC, CNN, and and he was a speak featured speaker at Pod Fest Multimedia Expo. And he's got this best selling book, How to Speak Civilian Fluently. And he'll help me with that as we go. So, Marty, are you ready to screw? The commute.

[00:03:57] That's true.

[00:03:58] That's true. Right. Well, good. Glad to have you here. Myself and all our listeners, thank you for your service. You know, we really appreciate the sacrifices you've made for us so that we can do the things we're doing. So I want to take you back a little bit first, because I understand Fort Hood is a little mad at you because you really didn't want to go there when you got into the service. Right.

[00:04:24] Yeah. No, I'm from Texas. And when I was a ROTC cadet, I found out that I was supposed to go to Fort Hood. I was like.

[00:04:36] That's like down the street from you, right?

[00:04:39] Yeah. Yeah. I was in the Austin area and I'm like, I don't want to do this. So I asked how I can get out of it and they said, Well, you've got to find someone willing to trade. And so for the next few months, I just try to figure out how to get out of that, because I wanted to continue to jump out of planes, which I'd been doing for eight years prior. Wow. And it actually it actually worked out. I found some I found some people wheeling and dealing. And when I was in the infantry officer basic course and was able to trade, I think it took me like three or four trades. And I finally wound up at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at the 82nd Airborne.

[00:05:17] Oh, that's not far from me. And one of our great veterans, a friend of mine was Military Spouse of the Year there, and also a marine Corps vet. But but you said you were jumping out of planes for eight years prior to going into the service.

[00:05:31] Well, I was I was I had a listed into First Ranger Battalion and I did a long range surveillance. And then I decided to trade in the stripes and become an officer. And that's why after that, I'd already been jumping out of planes for eight years and went into 82nd with eight years of experience, which which is where the MO comes from.

[00:05:55] That's I threw it in the word mother, but it's master of all something knowledge or what is it.

[00:06:01] Yeah, master of all knowledge. Which, if you know anything about second lieutenants in the military, especially second, second, second lieutenants in the infantry at the 82nd, we know like two things, Jack and nothing. And so but I came in again with eight years experience. And as I'm sitting there as a second lieutenant, I'm talking to all the NCOs, non-commissioned officers with sergeants and the others. And I'm saying, no, I like this. And this is based on my experience already in the Ranger battalion, they were like, Who is this guy? And so Jane Melts. Who is out here on one of your shows? I think last.

[00:06:37] Yeah.

[00:06:37] Last year, my business partner, he was my executive officer. So he loves to tell everybody he was my boss for about I don't know how long he makes it up to now, but it was literally about five days. He tells everyone who's my boss. And so he's the one who gave me the title memo, which is a play on the mother of All Bombs, but it's the master of all knowledge, which is yes, so and so we just keep playing with it. So now we've even got our own coffee line out, which is the MO blend, and it's the mother of all coffees. So.

[00:07:09] Well, I heard you talking to this Navy SEAL guy, and that's when the term flag came up and he actually made a made one for his baby's onesie. So without making this an explicit episode, tell tell everybody what that's about.

[00:07:27] Yeah. So F and G is the friggin new guy.

[00:07:30] Yeah.

[00:07:33] And so that's when you're you're the new person on the team and you're trying to figure everything out, but you're also kind of a pain in the butt because everyone has to stop and train you and, you know, or to have a lot of fun with you. And so that's that's the F and G. And so you don't want to be in that position for too long.

[00:07:51] Too long. Yeah. See, I was a charter pilot, freelance charter pilot for a long time. And we would do that to the new guys in the hangar, you know, we would send them for some prop wash.

[00:08:02] Yeah.

[00:08:02] Or one of my favorites. We sent, we sent this guy for a metric Phillips head screwdriver.

[00:08:11] Oh, jeez.

[00:08:15] So, yeah. So, yeah, you don't want to be the fag for all. But that was just. I have to say, even though he's a seal, that was a brilliant thing to put on his babies onesie.

[00:08:27] Yeah, that's pretty awesome. I got a kick out of that. John, you're talking about John McAfee. Yeah, he's right. Yeah, great guy. You know, I was telling him before he came on our show lounge legends that, you know, we've always got this rivalry between Rangers and SEALs and Army and Navy and everything. And it was funny because one of my really good friends, Mike Nolan, he's a SEAL and we would always go out and do physical training and just always trying to outdo each other and something about seals. They love to mess around with the dang logs. And so there we are in Germany running around the woods, carrying a dang log and then doing it at lunch. The rest of the sane people are actually eating lunch. We're running around the woods of Germany and Kaiserslautern carrying a log through the woods. And then we come back and now we're we got bark on our neck and we're got scrapes and bleeding and stuff like that. And they're like, What did you guys do? And I'm like, See, you want to take up a log?

[00:09:25] So yeah, yeah. We see this on TV all the time when they show little snippets of SEAL training and we're thinking, what's what's the practical application of that? Exactly. I'm not sure. It must be something. So you've got a book, How to Speak Civilian Fluently. Is that to help transition people out of the military when they get out of military? What is that?

[00:09:47] Yeah. So that's we're we partner with Eric Doc, right? He's the CEO of Vets to PM Project Management and he wrote this amazing book, How to Speak Civilian Fluently and prove it with your credentials. And we he asked us to contribute in there and what it really is is and it's a lot of what we talk about is the transition and transformation out of the military. You know, you can't go in. And if you're a veteran out there, you know, exactly. I'm talking about when I say you can't go in a knife hand at everybody, you know, that stern hand and and put in everyone's face. You can't call everybody the F word. You know, even though we do it in the military, it's like a salutation, you know? Good morning. At first you can't do that. It's kind of not it's frowned upon, but it goes in detail about all these different things on how to do it and then really prove it with your credentials. Eric does a great job of helping veterans get project management credentials, and so I was honored to contribute to that and James contributed as well. James Phelps Because it's a really good book and we we actually we love to give that away for people that reach out to us and give them a copy of that for free.

[00:11:02] Yeah, that's that's beautiful. But I was thinking what you just said a minute ago, you know, somebody goes in, apparently you can do anything with kindergarteners nowadays. I can imagine going in there for your first day of school. Good morning, you little efforts.

[00:11:17] Right?

[00:11:18] I think they're they're doing it. The thing is, Marty, they're doing worse than that really nowadays with the little kids. That would be the the least the least thing that they did.

[00:11:29] So I don't know if Florida knows what they're getting into, but.

[00:11:33] Oh, my God. So so tell people tell everybody how you're working with people now. It's not just veterans either, right?

[00:11:41] No. No. So we started by focusing on veterans, veteran entrepreneurs, family members, people that want to be small business owners. And we've expanded now. We help real estate agents. We help people that are friendly to the community. One of our clients is a he helps with veteran placement in i.t. Services and so what we do is help them get their messaging right. James and i are at JTF 214 Joint Task Force 214 we are story brand certified guides. And what that means is basically we if you've read the book Building a Story brand by Donald Miller, we're certified by their team to help people clarify their message through the power of story. And it's really it changes a lot because a lot of times you've seen it. I've seen it where you're driving around and all it is are these billboards talking about their product. And it's just that you're driving by, looking at it. It doesn't really resonate with you.

[00:12:37] You hardly even see it anymore, especially online. They call it like banner blindness. You know, you just it just doesn't even register at all.

[00:12:47] So, yeah. So if you're going through websites or whatever, you have 3.5 seconds, how do you quickly grab someone's attention and bring them into a story? And that's what we do. We help them. We help we help them to not talk about themselves. We help them talk about their customers problems. And once you obsess over your customers problems or your prospects problems, now they're interested in your brand, and then you can introduce yourself as the solution for their problem. That's how you start to create, increase your brand and start building superfans. And that's that's where we thrive now.

[00:13:25] And there's a lot of places that you guys help use the stories like interviews and leadership development and handling change, which is constant lots of places, right?

[00:13:40] Oh, absolutely. We we for us, everything's everything's about sales and marketing and negotiations. And it's not just business owners that utilize our services. I speak a lot to transitioning service members as we're going through this, as we get out of the military, whether you're retiring, you've just done one term of enlistment. You're getting out of the military. You've been changed. As we talked, we joked about with the knife hands, right. But you get out of the military and the military is a really good job of helping you transition back into civilian life, but not necessarily to transform. And the transformation is what's going on in your mind. How do you sell yourself? How do you see yourself as an economic product that is? And how do you communicate that when you're going for a job interview? So again, the same construct of this power of story goes to a person who's trying to get a job or an entrepreneur trying to gain more clients, increase their marketing, reach in revenue.

[00:14:39] Yeah. And I was really surprised and I have a student in my school that's he's going to be transitioning out after 17 years. He's doing stuff with yoga. And I heard you talking with Mr. MacAskill about mindfulness and meditation and yoga and just it's not something civilians think of when we think of military people, but I guess it's a stress reliever and clear in your mind because you most of you have seen things that we don't want to know about.

[00:15:11] Well, it's not. Yeah, and it's not just that, too. It's also quieting the mind and getting the calm. And then once you can quiet the mind and get the laser focus, then you can go through and see how you want to execute a plan in the military, whether you're a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger. Or if you're an Olympian, that's going to be the pole vault. You want to be able to see what you are going to accomplish. See the plan. And it becomes muscle memory. And your brain can't necessarily tell what's what's live or what's Memorex. And it starts to wear in those grooves so that you can execute as part of your planning. And it's going to make you it's going to help you become more successful.

[00:15:55] And it has I heard you say that you can't audible if you didn't have a plan to start with. Which which a lot of people were just winging it through through life.

[00:16:08] Right. Absolutely. I mean, and that's the thing we did. We did I did a blurb the other day or last week about Eisenhower. And, you know, planning is everything. The plan is nothing. And you hear it and it comes from the saying, no, no, no. Plan survives first contact. Well, okay, great. But at least you've done the plan. You've done the due diligence to make sure that you've set the foundation to achieve success. And the other thing that we never planned for and I'm guilty of it as well, is planning for catastrophic success. And that's where you go, Oh, what if this thing does go like Grant Cardone? What if I first time I've just ten excited? Am I ready to to acquire this many new clients, you know, how am I going to service that if I get this new job and I have to relocate next week? Oh, my gosh, am I ready for that? That's the catastrophic success. And you have to plan for that as well.

[00:17:06] Also, if you hit it really big, you get a whole bunch of new friends come out of the woodwork now lottery.

[00:17:14] You know.

[00:17:16] Yeah. Now I love to you know, so many civilians are listening to this this month where we highlight veterans. We like to get a little picture into what the inside scoop I'll say. So I heard you say one time where some major came up to you and ask you if your hands were cold and you smart alecky said back, No, because they're in my pockets. What does that mean?

[00:17:47] So, yeah, so that's a that's a sergeant major and majors, the top of the NCO ranks. And they're the enforcers.

[00:17:55] And one of those noncommissioned officer.

[00:17:57] Right, right. Those are the sergeant. And this is the top of the food chain for the NCOs. And they basically they walk around and make sure we have good order and discipline. And one of the things, the pet peeves that we joke about, but it's actually true because every joke is based on truth somewhat right, is get off my lawn and get your hands out of your pockets. And so I was walking around, it was cold, I believe we were in Poland and it was like December. And I got my hands in my pockets in the army. That's a big no no. And we call them Air Force pockets or hand warmers. So our major comes up is like, sir, are your hands cold? And I knew exactly where he was going with this. Right? I've got like 20 years in the army. My hands are in my pockets. He just looked to me like I was the biggest smart aleck, and he was like, okay, I'm like, he didn't even bite. He was like, Whatever. He just walks off. Salute.

[00:18:55] Oh, man, I love those insider scoops. Now you get around a little bit when I say that. I mean, you run like crazy. And you used to be in the mountain bike racing, too, right? Like, oh, yeah, adrenaline junkie or what.

[00:19:11] I've always, you know, hand-eye coordination was never my big thing. So I didn't play a lot of baseball, didn't play a lot of football. I mean, I did for around the neighborhood, but never for school. But I found out that I could run like the wind and Terence was my wow. And so at an early age and this is I started picking up cycling and running. And when I picked up cycling, this was back in 1987, 88, not a lot of people were doing it back then. Greg Lemond hadn't even won the Tour de France 711 team was just starting to win some things. And this little race in Italy, so people didn't know what it was. And here I am, this skinny little 15 year old riding my bike around south Texas and running everywhere. And so it just it just became who I was and. It became a passion, a lifestyle. And so from there, I did it in I did it in high school. I ran a lot. And then I did it in college and I did mountain bike racing, road racing and triathlons. And I took I took our teams to the collegiate nationals for Southwest Texas State University, which is now Texas State University in San Marcos.

[00:20:24] Well, I've seen some of these YouTube videos of these mountain bike guys. I mean, was it just for speed or were you like on the edge of a cliff where the GoPro is? Looks like you're going to kill yourself any second or what was it like?

[00:20:37] No, I wasn't. No. So for context, I did the majority of my racing in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. So not a lot of those crazy mountains I got the hill, the crazy hills are more mud swampy than anything else. But yeah, it was for speed, but not for, you know, those crazy Colorado type hills and stuff.

[00:21:00] Were you jumping over things and that.

[00:21:03] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's obstacles on the course. You're jumping over and getting over stuff, but really it's about getting from point A to point B faster than everyone else on the course.

[00:21:13] Do you do that anymore?

[00:21:15] So I'm going to get back into the mountain biking because I really I turned 50 this year and my goals are to even though I swore them off, I'm going to do another marathon. I'm going to do the Army ten miler. There's a ten mile race in honor of the AUSA convention here in October. And then I want to do an Xterra triathlon. So an Xterra triathlon is still swim, bike run like all the other triathlons, but as if it wasn't hard enough already, we do it usually in a lake or an ocean. Then we do it on a mountain bike through all the arduous terrain, and then we run it on trails. So it's a bit of extra suck factor, I guess.

[00:21:59] What kind of bike you use for these things? How long does the whole race last?

[00:22:04] Yeah. So those races you finished in? Around 2 hours. Those extras, my Ironman, I finished in 13 hours on average, and then my half iron man's were 5 to 6 hours. So I don't. Yeah. All of them. All the events are the same. For those, it's all swim, bike, run. So the Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run. Or, as my dad said, as I was getting off the 112 mile bike, hey, you've only got a marathon left. And I was like, you're like the worst motivator ever could have said, you know, hey, you're a good job. You're two thirds of the way. Done this. But remind me that I had a whole marathon left.

[00:22:50] To run into that guy that carries his disabled son on his back or something. Something like that. You ever.

[00:22:55] See that? Yeah. So I never did.

[00:22:59] Now that's an abbreviation there.

[00:23:01] Yeah. And he's a the Hoyt. Hoyt. Now I never had the honor of meeting them, but we have met a lot of other great people that are doing that. But yeah, they're there. I've seen that those videos so many times and I still, you know, someone's cutting onions in the room.

[00:23:21] Yeah, exactly. Same with me. Yeah. Yeah, but what, what kind of bike you use for these things. So for the bike or you just.

[00:23:32] Yeah, it's a very specialized bike for these long distance half Ironman and Ironman races. I've got a cervello which is a very specific like time trial bike. It's at a different angle and you really just contort it into the most aerodynamic position to even where your water bottles are behind you to stop the wind. And you're just trying to go if it's a half Ironman, 56 miles on the bike as fast as you can, or if it's at full Ironman 112 miles, it's.

[00:24:00] Nasty tires because it's called Mountain. Oh, no.

[00:24:02] No, no, no, no. For the Ironman, those are road tires. So you've got different ones. The Xterra, that's straight on mountain bike. That's a mountain bike. I have a very large mountain bike that I race on that one. I then for the Ironman and half Ironman races, those are completely road tires and very specialized. And again, we're just trying to save as much. Time is possible, so error and X come into play.

[00:24:30] People have flat tires and have to fix them on the run or.

[00:24:34] Oh yeah, absolutely.

[00:24:35] You've got a team or it's all you know.

[00:24:38] It's all you. You've got to be able to change your tyres, fill up your, fill it up, figure out how you're going to get to A to B. I mean, crazy things have happened. I've done some of these races where like out of nowhere I got I'll never get to be Sting's one by the time it went away, bam, there's another one. I'm like, Are you kidding me? I'm in the middle of Arizona racing. Where does this thing coming from? And I still had like 90 miles left on the bike.

[00:25:03] So they have like water stops and stuff.

[00:25:07] Yeah. And so what they do is on the bikes every ten miles, there's an aid station and you don't get off the bike, you just keep writing. And there's volunteers which are like some of the greatest people, because these races will never happen. If we don't have these volunteers, they'll be out there and you you race by and you grab it and you can fill your water. And then they have some sort of other electrolyte replacement, whether it's Gatorade or whatever they have, whoever the sponsor is. And you go and they're awesome. Sometimes you have mishaps. Funny story I was doing doing an Ironman, very hot and as I'm coming through, I just wanted to throw something on me and I'm like, water, water, water. And I get water. So they give it to me. I don't even check, I just open it up and throw it on myself. And it was red Gatorade and I'm like, Are you kidding me? And I just left it. So now I've got another ten miles before I can't I can rinse off, so I'm getting hot and sticky. And it was just like.

[00:26:09] Oh, like that's sugary.

[00:26:12] So it just makes for the story.

[00:26:15] Yeah. Yeah, that's. That's crazy. So you got some kind of giveaway for the folks, right?

[00:26:24] Oh, absolutely.

[00:26:24] Yeah. Yeah. So what about that?

[00:26:27] Yeah. So every single month, Joint Task Force 214, my company, we offer a monthly free training. And so this month, tomorrow is how to grow your business during a recession. But every month you go to that same website, go JTF 214 214 and you can, you can participate in our free training. And then within that, what you get is coaching from Donald Miller and the story brand team. And we pull our we pull the people that use that link, we pull them aside afterwards and we do another 30 to 45 minutes of one on one coaching with those in the room. And we've covered topics of top five things your website needs to make your money Small Business Finances, How to create sales scripts that close lead generating assets. And again, like this month, we're talking about how to not just survive a recession or economic downturn, but how to grow and thrive during it.

[00:27:27] Right. And this is like a $300 deal that you're giving away, right?

[00:27:31] Yeah. It's $295 a ticket normally. But we do this for free. This is part of our giveback because we know that money's tight. And people people just need a little bit of help so we can help people. That's what we want to do. And it really helps and they help us out. If I'm being honest, this is where we get a lot of great super fans and Google reviews and they wind up coming back to us because the training is they learn the power of story and they kind of say, you know what, these guys aren't gurus because there's a lot of gurus out there. If I'm being honest, Tom.

[00:28:04] I'm the only one. I'm the only one. You didn't do your research well.

[00:28:09] So we like, you know, this is real. We're giving you free content. I'm not asking you for anything. And that's is it. So we want it really is. It's a give back.

[00:28:16] So beautiful and that's it. Go.JTF214.com of course we'll have that in the show notes everybody and they want to get a hold of you directly what's the best way?

[00:28:27] Follow us on a follow us on LinkedIn or YouTube at JTF214 and we're very responsive on there. We're always sharing content with it and that's a great way. And if you go to our website, JTF214, you can schedule a call from there.

[00:28:45] Easy peasy. So the other thing was go.JTF214.com. Right, go to that page.

[00:28:51] Right. Yeah. Right. So the go to JTF214 is for the three monthly training and then our normal website is JTF214.

[00:29:00] Well, great, great, great. So thanks so much for coming on, man. And you aren't the first one. You're not the F and g of the vet month. So, so, so you're here number three. But three is a great number to be on. So, so, absolutely. So thanks, Marty. And watch out for those B's, man.

[00:29:20] Yeah, I will. Thank.

[00:29:23] All right, everybody.

[00:29:24] For having me on the commute. I really appreciate it. It's been an honor.

[00:29:27] My pleasure. And folks, make sure you go check out Marty stuff and go JTF214 for the giveaway, getting that giveaway and JTF214 directly to to find all his social media and his website and all that stuff. And again, from myself and all our listeners, we thank you for your service and all the other great veterans. Even if they're not on here, we don't care if they're a vet, they're a vet. Preneur or not. We appreciate you so thank you so much, everybody. And I'll catch you all on the next episode. See you later.