Ep. 62 | The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth w/ Kyle Lamb

Published: January 6, 2023
Nathan Spearing

Kyle Lamb is a highly decorated special operations veteran turned businessman that has always prioritized faith and family over anything he accomplished on the battlefield or in the marketplace. In this interview we discuss why meekness is not weakness, biblical warriors, why Jesus is a mans’ man, and the importance of your mission. Be prepared to be encouraged in all areas of your life!

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Disclaimer: This transcript is AI generated because I’m editing and publishing all of this stuff myself! Enjoy!

[00:00:00] Nathan Spearing: Welcome back to The Life On Target podcast. I’m your host, Nathan Spearing, bringing you my interview today with Kyle Lamb, a 21 year special operations military veteran with numerous valorous awards. And since leaving the military, he’s founded Viking Tactics, a tactical training and gear. I’ve personally used the slings on my rifles, only used his slings on my rifles for the last decade, plus actually getting closer to 20 years now.

[00:00:35] Nathan Spearing: I just got done listening to the whole interview as I edit it for release this week, and it is no doubt one of the most encouraging discussions that I’ve had in a long time. Mr. Lamb challenged me personally as a husband and father during our conversation. He shared his personal practices for studying history, running his companies, continuing to [00:01:00] grow spiritually, mentally, and physically.

[00:01:03] Nathan Spearing: We discussed why the meek shall inherit the Earth, spoiler alert, not because they’re weak, and how we as Warriors read and understand Bible war stories. We talk about the Bible and war For a good 20, 30 minutes of this interview. He also shares advice for how men can find meaning and purpose and why we are to blame for the mess that we see going on around us and what we’re supposed to do about it.

[00:01:33] Nathan Spearing: So without further ado, I bring to you my interview with Mr. Kyle Lamb.

[00:01:40] Nathan Spearing: I think that I’ve had people call me their ranger grandfather that I’ve had conversations with, and I think that you’re you’re one of my grandfathers in the military maybe Great-great-grandfather actually, and maybe grandfather’s making you too young.

[00:01:53] Kyle Lamb: Now you’re making me too old.

[00:01:54] Nathan Spearing: Yeah, yeah, there’s a, there’s generations of warriors that go, had gone before us [00:02:00] and between us, and they’re all running up our backside now where they’re at right now.

[00:02:05] Nathan Spearing: I mentioned in the pre-interview that there’s a lot of people that have dwelt on your military service and dug into that, and that was obviously a significant part of your story. And who God made you in to be out of those experiences. But I think I wanna start sooner.

[00:02:21] Nathan Spearing: You’ve known your wife a really long time. And for me in my life, that’s the most significant relationship that I’ve ever had and will ever have, no matter how much time I get with my wife going forward. So talk a little bit about your upbringing and then, you know, bring us to how you met your wife and then, you know, I was, it was entertaining to hear about how she didn’t want you to go into the military at all and, and how that played into it.

[00:02:49] Kyle Lamb: Well, we so I grew up in South Dakota on a dirt farm there. Nothing high speed. Plenty of, always plenty of ammunition to shoot, always plenty of critters to hunt. Plenty of horses to [00:03:00] break and plenty of work to do in the fields, but that’s probably why I wanted to join the army cuz I was basically lazy and didn’t want to be a farmer cuz they worked pretty hard.

[00:03:11] Kyle Lamb: Maybe not the entire year, but most, for us it was a lot of the year because we had cattle as well. So we had to in the wintertime it never stopped cuz we had to take care of the cattle. And in South Dakota, there’s. You know, 10 foot of snow year round, or not year round, but winter round. So we had to deal with that.

[00:03:25] Kyle Lamb: But, so I went to I had, I knew who my wife was. She had no clue who I was, but she comes from a family that raised black quarter horses, like true black quarter horses. And she was truly a horseman. My dad was a cowboy, so he broke horses, but we didn’t do a lot of the shows like her family did.

[00:03:45] Kyle Lamb: We did rodeos more than shows and I rodeoed rolled bulls and barebacks, and I wasn’t real good at that either. But I had checked her out and finally I went to a horse judging competition way back when, I guess we were both [00:04:00] 15 or 16 years old, and she had never judged horses before. So I saw her and we got to talking and just, I was immediately in love and she was like, who’s this dude?

[00:04:11] Kyle Lamb: You know? Anyway, that was when we first met. . So we’ve been together since we were 16 and we’ve been married now for 36 years. So , it’s been a long time. And you know, I think a lot of people when they hear that, they’re like, oh, how do you do it? Well, that doesn’t mean that everything’s been rosy.

[00:04:28] Kyle Lamb: That means that we’ve hung in there over the years, you know, being in the military man, being in the unit and dealing with those deployments and the egos that we have, it’s, man, it’s difficult. I mean, if you have a strong woman it’s a perfect opportunity for you guys to clash, you know, to beat your heads against each other because we’re, she’s very confident as well, and she can handle the family without me being here as I’m sure your wife can now, they would rather have us around.

[00:04:59] Kyle Lamb: But, [00:05:00] you know, we sometimes elevate our importance because of what our job is or was. And I’m gonna tell you, raising our children is way more important than the military. Because if you want to talk about what you know, you said, well, I’m your great grandfather or whatever in special operations.

[00:05:23] Kyle Lamb: I went to the unit in the fall of 91. You probably weren’t even born yet then.

[00:05:27] Nathan Spearing: We’re not that far apart. Yeah.

[00:05:29] Kyle Lamb: Okay. Okay.

[00:05:30] Nathan Spearing: I was maybe still wetting my pants

[00:05:32] Kyle Lamb: yeah, well that comes back later on anyway, so it’s no big deal. So I went to the unit in 91, fall of 91, and I stayed there up until 2007 when I retired. I had one year when I went to first group. But I guess my point is, all that time that you’re, you think that you’re doing this great stuff, but you’re, you know, you’re, my wife was raising our children, which my legacy is not gonna be that I was.

[00:05:59] Kyle Lamb: in the [00:06:00] military, my legacy’s gonna be what my kids now I have two grandkids. You know, what they’re gonna end up doing or how they, you know how they are. And I know that I mean, both my kids have been very successful. Both are great kids and I can credit my wife with that. So I guess, you know, oh, I kind of, I guess I kind of expanded on that a little bit more maybe than you wanted.

[00:06:20] Kyle Lamb: But I think that our relationships they’re not easy. If it’s easy, it’s probably fake,

[00:06:25] Kyle Lamb: Because if you really care, you’re gonna have those hard discussions.

[00:06:29] Nathan Spearing: Well, and I think that, that dovetails right into some stuff that I’ll, I don’t know that I’ve ever said, but, you know, as crass as it may sound, nobody you killed overseas is gonna have the negative effects generationally of you raising a bunch of bastard children, you know, I mean, functionally bastard children.

[00:06:50] Nathan Spearing: And it’s hard to. But I, you know, I’ve heard a chaplain talk about a coo. We like to go into the team room and talk about how crazy our wives are and that’s not taking responsibility. [00:07:00] You know, we have that delegating authority kind of thing that we know in the military, but you’re still responsible, you know, as old fashioned as it may sound, as ruffling the feathers as the man, as the head of the house.

[00:07:11] Nathan Spearing: If you’re creating a climate where your wife is going crazy you gotta own that. And it’s a really easy to go away to Neverland and say, I don’t want to, I don’t want to handle the stuff that, that’s my responsibility as well. And I think that also at the same time, there’s grace there.

[00:07:29] Nathan Spearing: Like you can start exactly where you are right now and you can do something with that for anybody that is in that position. You know, our God is bigger and somehow has a way to transcend time and make up things in ways that don’t even seem possible.

[00:07:48] Kyle Lamb: Yeah. And I think, you know, you hit on a good point there that well all that’s a great point. But so we all stumbled. We’ve all stumbled in our relationships and we just, we want to get back on the [00:08:00] right track. And I would say that I think that it is good to talk in the team room about your families. And if you do have struggle, , hopefully you’re on a team that allows you to have that open discussion and then you can try to figure out what you’re gonna really soon figure out is that everybody’s having the same struggles.

[00:08:19] Kyle Lamb: Every person in the world goes through the stream. Str same struggles that we go through just because you’re in the military and some subs specialized unit doesn’t make it a, you know, an easier or a worse situation. I think back to, you know, why did I join the military? Well, I joined the military cuz I wanted to do something different.

[00:08:39] Kyle Lamb: And joining the military was probably the best thing that could have happened to me other than marrying my wife at the time because it allowed me to get away from that. I don’t know if I want to say it was a caustic environment because it wasn’t, it’s a great place to grow up in South Dakota.

[00:08:56] Kyle Lamb: But being in the military allowed my wife and I to [00:09:00] separate ourselves from our family, and then we had our own family and it made us stronger together. Being away from the family and all the, in-fighting and the, you know, whatever kind of discussions go on behind the scenes with your family. I love my family, but they, you know, they’ll drive you absolutely crazy at times.

[00:09:20] Kyle Lamb: And it’s made, my wife and I, our family is so much stronger because of us being in the military.

[00:09:26] Nathan Spearing: So when you ma, you got married, how old were you when you got married and then you know,

[00:09:31] Kyle Lamb: 18 eight, yeah, 18, 18 years old. Got married on Friday, the 13th of June of 1986. And then on July 7th I was in the military. And I went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for basic and ait t cuz I was a 31 Victor, a tactical communications guy. And then from there, jump school and then to the 82nd recently I got to go back to Fort Sill.

[00:09:54] Kyle Lamb: Hadn’t been there since I got outta AIT T and I got asked to speak for [00:10:00] my I guess he would be my great nephew’s, basic training, graduation. And it was kind of crazy cuz I stopped by to see the drill sergeants when I got into town there. And they took me to the bay where I went to basic training.

[00:10:16] Kyle Lamb: It was crazy. It was, and that’s where my my great nephew went to basic training as well. So things always you, when you go through basic, everything’s big. And when you grow up, everything’s big and then you go back to it. I went back to my house that I grew up in. I was like this big, oh wait, it’s not a big house, it’s this little tiny house.

[00:10:33] Kyle Lamb: Oh, this big barn. Oh no, it’s not a big barn either. It’s a small barn, you know what I mean? And I went back to basic training to this big bay and it was this small bay that, that’s where it all started, you know? So yeah we got married and it was the first few years were pretty tough cuz we were both working very hard to make ends meet.

[00:10:51] Kyle Lamb: I think my income at the time was like $600 a month. So jump school was a big thing because, you know, jump pay at the time I think was one [00:11:00] 10. So when you can get Yeah. Almost 20% of your pay

[00:11:06] Nathan Spearing: Yeah. I don’t think it matches that percentage these days. It’s

[00:11:11] Kyle Lamb: It was something else. So anyway,

[00:11:14] Nathan Spearing: and you so you had to go through initial training and then she moved out. Your first assignment was at Bragg, is that correct?

[00:11:22] Kyle Lamb: yeah, I was an 82nd with the 5 0 4 parachute Infantry Regiment, first brigade. And commo guy there. So we lived at Fort Bragg and we pretty much lived there. I mean, we lived at Bragg most of my career because I had a short stint with Fist Special Forces Group out of Fort Campbell. Had a year with first group out of Fort Lewis, and the rest of the time I was at Bragg.

[00:11:46] Kyle Lamb: So that’s kind of all we knew

[00:11:48] Nathan Spearing: Talk about some of those early. Cuz there was not a lot of time between married and now, like you said, completely across the country and doing it yourself. New guy in the [00:12:00] army, new to marriage. Talk through that. That was obviously the foundation for a long marriage and everything, where some of the, the things that happen relationally there.

[00:12:10] Kyle Lamb: I think the, one of the things that we agreed upon early on in our marriage, we had kids. We never, we didn’t figure it out. I wouldn’t say we figured, and we probably still haven’t got it completely figured out, but we’re trying. But we had a pretty good knockdown drag out. Both kids were born at the time and we, that was probably the highlight for me of us making the right change that we just said, whatever the troubles are, we just gotta talk through it.

[00:12:40] Kyle Lamb: Don’t go to bed mad g you know, get it settled no matter what it is. That doesn’t mean you’re gonna forget about it. And it, cuz everybody thinks that, man, oh, don’t fight. No, you need to fight. If you care about something, you’re gonna fight for it. So that means, and I’m not saying like, care about what your side of the argument is.

[00:12:58] Kyle Lamb: I’m saying care about your family [00:13:00] because you gotta fight through it. And my kids, luckily they’ve adopted more, my wife’s. Manners than me. And they always make sure that if there’s trouble they figure it out right then and there. They don’t, they just don’t let it sit there and fester. Yeah, it

[00:13:16] Nathan Spearing: was y that was her kind of saying that to you.

[00:13:19] Kyle Lamb: It, initially it was me because I was like, okay, this, we gotta something’s gotta happen here. And to be honest with you, I don’t even remember what it was that was such a big deal because it’s just like we put it all behind us and we’ve moved forward and man, we’re so much better than we were back then.

[00:13:36] Kyle Lamb: One of the things that I had to, we had to get past was my wife grew up on a pretty good size farm and they had several hired men. So when she cooked food, she cooked for like 20 people. So we joined the military and she cooks up. Goulash and she cooks enough for 20 people. So we eat this dog on goulash for two weeks.

[00:13:58] Kyle Lamb: Before we fi we didn’t have enough money to go [00:14:00] buy more food, so we had to eat what we had there. But we quick, I quickly realized two things. He needed to make less food and I didn’t like goulash if I ate it every day for two weeks. But, you know, we may do with what we had there and things move quickly.

[00:14:15] Kyle Lamb: We were lucky early on. We had a good, we had a good church that we went to in, in Rayford, North Carolina, first B, first Baptist Church, and there was a lot of older men that were good mentors for me and they kind of jerked a knot in me a few times to get me back on the right path. My wife had some good mentors with there as well with as with Bible study Fellowship that she was going through the four year program and they got her lined out as well to, to.

[00:14:41] Kyle Lamb: just think a little bit differently cuz when you’re a kid and if you’re, you know, you can be 30 years old and still be a kid, I guess. But we thought that we were important and really that wasn’t the case. I mean, all the people around us that we should be helping, you know, they should be the important people in our lives.

[00:14:59] Kyle Lamb: [00:15:00] And I think now we’ve definitely grown up in that respect.

[00:15:04] Nathan Spearing: Yeah. And I think that you, you touched on, thinking that we’re pretty special and, going back home and your wife’s like, yeah. You know, this needs to happen.

[00:15:15] Kyle Lamb: Yeah.

[00:15:16] Nathan Spearing: on that little bird. I don’t even really care. Like, what’s a little bird? And and this kid’s been bad. This trash needs to be taken out.

[00:15:23] Nathan Spearing: Why is it, why is the roof leaking over here? Like, you know, you showed up an hour later than I expected you, you gotta catch up. Let’s go. And

[00:15:31] Kyle Lamb: One thing my wife, one thing my wife would say is, Hey, I know you did a good job at work. That’s awesome, but we did just fine without you being here. So don’t come in here and try to take over the situation. And I think that’s one thing in the military it’s especially difficult for men because we want to be, we want to serve and we want to pass, you know, pass that on to our kids, whatever it might be.

[00:15:58] Kyle Lamb: One thing that a lot of [00:16:00] times we don’t consider though, is what if you have a really strong wife as we do. And I don’t know your wife at all, but I just know that the situation you’re in, she’s gotta be strong. or you know what I mean? She just has to be, to deal with what, you know, what you’ve put her through and she’s still with you.

[00:16:15] Kyle Lamb: That doesn’t say anything about you, that says everything about her. So, you know, I don’t care. I mean, I don’t I’m saying this tongue in cheek, but I don’t care what you’ve done because I know what you’ve done and it’s easy. Doing what we did was easy. We get on an airplane, fly overseas, do a few missions.

[00:16:32] Kyle Lamb: It was awesome. It was fun. Your wife stayed home and raised those kids. My wife stayed home and raised those kids. That’s way more difficult than anything we ever did.

[00:16:40] Nathan Spearing: Exactly. I know you had guys that overplayed how hard it was back home and like to try to pretend like it was, but it, I mean, there’s just singularity of focus. It’s so hard to, run a household, to be what you need to be to very unique kids, different [00:17:00] kids. You have to switch, you know, how you handle each thing.

[00:17:03] Nathan Spearing: You have to order all these things outside the home that are essential and I for sure can relate. You know, we did fine and we want you here, but it’s gonna go a little bit differently. You can’t just yank the wheel as soon as you show back up. And I think that every man experiences this men go off to work and come back.

[00:17:24] Nathan Spearing: There’s just a farther distance that we traveled in a little bit longer period of time to have that go and return be a lot more stark contrast than just the guy going every day to work. And so we’d feel the highs and lows more, I think, than somebody that’s there all the time.

[00:17:42] Kyle Lamb: Yeah, and I. I, I want to add one other thing to that too. If you have a strong wife or for the women that are listening, if you have a strong husband well, it doesn’t really work that way. Nevermind dis Yeah. Disregard that comment for use. Women don’t worry about it, but for us, dudes, if you have a strong wife, it’s, it [00:18:00] will be more difficult because they just handle it.

[00:18:03] Kyle Lamb: If you have a weak wife, then you probably gotta come in and help and do all that’s fine. That’s awesome. But I’ll tell you that the guys with strong partners in their life, man, it’s, you just let go of the wheel a little bit and if the front ends align correctly, it’ll stay on the road. And with our wives, I mean, they’re handling it without us.

[00:18:26] Kyle Lamb: So, yeah, it’s, I think that’s a blessing and sometimes it makes you cuss a little bit, but it. At the end of the day, you’re like, Ugh, dang it. She’s right again. And one of the, one of the problems I’ve had to deal with is understanding that my wife has a special capability to immediately read people. I don’t have that capability.

[00:18:53] Kyle Lamb: So we would meet people and my wife would be like, yeah, I don’t know. And I’m like, no, this is a good [00:19:00] dude. He’s awesome, you know? And she’s like, yeah, I don’t know. And guess what? She’s never been wrong. So now, as soon as I meet somebody, I’m like, what do you think? I turn to my wife and I go, what do you think of this guy?

[00:19:13] Kyle Lamb: Because she’s gonna make the right call. And especially like if somebody shakes her hand or gives her a hug, she immediately it’s, she can perceive things. That we can’t perceive. So, man, it’s a superpower. Use that superpower and enjoy that because now you don’t have to waste time. If this person’s a bad person, why do you want to even be associated with them?

[00:19:36] Kyle Lamb: If she can sort through that. Now, granted in the businesses we’re in, sometimes we have to deal with people that we don’t want to deal with. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people that you let inside of your, inside of your house, you know, your family. We gotta be careful because it’s our job as the husband and the wife to make sure that we don’t endanger our kids or ourselves or what we’ve worked for or the future or [00:20:00] whatever.

[00:20:00] Kyle Lamb: By letting somebody inside of that special, that fence that we’ve put up, you.

[00:20:06] Nathan Spearing: One of the things that I felt like really stood out for me when I was a young ranger in Iraq and watching the varsity team play is how the culture allowed for people to have different opinions and hash it out and come up with the best course of action and rely on the unique strengths of the people in the room to come up with a, an incredibly innovative way to solve a problem.

[00:20:36] Nathan Spearing: And it was never one guy. That nailed it right down the middle every time. It was always that, that comfortable environment. And we knew there was a hierarchy, there was a sergeant major that was gonna slap the table and say, shut up. This is how we’re doing it now. You know, I heard enough we’re making a decision.

[00:20:54] Nathan Spearing: But there was that ability to hash it out and to let people say what [00:21:00] needed to be said. And even, you know, the young guy, you can say something maybe you need to be a little more cautious about when you get on that mic. But we want to hear that too. And you can quickly demonstrate that when you talk.

[00:21:11] Nathan Spearing: You’re the one that, that you want to listen to, you know? And that’s instructors that we had that came down off the catwalk and didn’t say anything for most of c QB training, but then started to say something that gravitas that was there. And that’s what you have with your wife and your kids.

[00:21:27] Nathan Spearing: Even as I know you know this now with older kids being involved in your business. If you just white knuckled the steering wheel and didn’t listen to the different people in your life, your family, and how God’s brought these unique skills in your own household for success and for winning. And if you just white knuckled it and didn’t allow, have a command climate if you will, where people could speak up and people could disagree.

[00:21:55] Nathan Spearing: And we saw it in life and death situations. There could be [00:22:00] disagreement, there could be very high temper and we could hug it out, slap the table, and jump on the Black Hawk and get it done. And there was no, you know, there’s a lot of conflict, a lot of high peak yelling and screaming about stuff that, that did matter.

[00:22:17] Nathan Spearing: And then we put it all to rest and got it done, you know, and that needs to be done in the household too.

[00:22:23] Kyle Lamb: Yeah. And one of the things that, that you didn’t say but is implied, they all cared and they cared violently. Well, what about your family? Does your wife not love your kids violently?

[00:22:37] Kyle Lamb: And I know that’s not like we would normally say that, but man, I’m telling you right now, I am way more scared of your wife than I am of you if it comes to your children, because it’s the same with my wife.

[00:22:51] Kyle Lamb: they are violently prepared to do whatever it is for those children. So that being said, [00:23:00] we need to be you need to be very aggressive with what your views are, but just understand that. Then you gotta come and you gotta figure that out. And with our families, especially with the guys at work, it was pretty simple.

[00:23:13] Kyle Lamb: At least it was for me. But with my family it’s more difficult to, it’s just more difficult probably because we care more for our family than we do for that mission, even though we don’t want to let that on while we’re doing the mission. I mean, when you’re in the mission, in the middle of that, it’s the most important thing in your world.

[00:23:28] Kyle Lamb: But then once you get off that airplane at, you know, Pope Air Force Base, well, now you need to get back to being, you know, being a dad and focusing on some of that stuff. And I think that’s where a lot of us, myself included, that’s where we struggled. We would come home and we stayed that person that was down range.

[00:23:47] Kyle Lamb: And you can’t do that. You can’t you’ve gotta be able to separate, you know, separate those two. You had asked me earlier about speaking at a church and we can get into the, you know, kind of how that happened later. But one of the things that came up, I was [00:24:00] speaking to, to all men and I was very nervous because it’s the first time I’d done that and I didn’t wanna get struck by lightning.

[00:24:07] Kyle Lamb: And I just was like, okay, I’ve got my notes and I’m trying to, I, you know, I kind of had a framework of what I wanted to talk about. Finally, after 10 or 15 minutes, I was past being nervous and I could put down my notes and just kind of open up to these guys. And one of the things that I figured out that day, I was talking to the men because, The men are men.

[00:24:28] Kyle Lamb: We’re the ones that need the help. The failures in America right now. You can blame the government, you can blame whatever you want. You can blame global warming. I don’t care what you blame, but the problems in America today are because of dads period. There’s no if, because if the government, if dads were there, the government wouldn’t try to do what they’re doing right now.

[00:24:51] Kyle Lamb: If dads were there, we wouldn’t have all the difficulties that we have with people being incarcerated, people, you know, just the crazy stuff that’s going [00:25:00] on. It’s because of us, it’s because of dads. So I’m speaking to these guys and I said something and I said it, and it kind of sunk into me right there in front of all these guys.

[00:25:10] Kyle Lamb: I’m looking at the dads with their sons, with the grandpas, with the neighbor who’s a firefighter, and the other neighbor who’s a SWAT guy and the other neighbor who’s a farmer or whatever. This is up in Indiana and I said, , why do we tr, why do we treat our sons differently than we treat an absolute stranger on the street?

[00:25:31] Kyle Lamb: And what I mean by that is we meet a stranger on the street and we’re kind to that person. We’ll shake their hand and we’ll look them in the eye and say, man, I hope you have a great day. And then you go home. And what do you do to your son?

[00:25:48] Nathan Spearing: Crush ’em.

[00:25:49] Kyle Lamb: You crush him.

[00:25:49] Kyle Lamb: That’s not right.

[00:25:50] Kyle Lamb: That’s your son. Okay. And if it’s a daughter, I’m replaced that with daughter too. But I was talking to men, so I was hitting on this man thing, and it really, and it hit me like [00:26:00] this, like a big ruck sack fell out of the ceiling and landed right in my head, you know? And I’m like, okay, we should elevate our children and.

[00:26:10] Kyle Lamb: treat them better than we treat anybody else. Because they are our children. We have the responsibility to raise them to be the best person that they can possibly be. And one thing I, that I also have figured out is we’re not all the same, thank goodness. Cuz if we’re all the same, they’d call it China or Russia or something, but they call it America.

[00:26:29] Kyle Lamb: We can be different. My son’s different than me. My daughter’s different than me. My wife is different than me. Embrace that. Don’t make them, they don’t have to be just like, like you. But my point of that whole matter is to the dads out there, man, raise your kids up on a pedestal because they’re your children.

[00:26:49] Kyle Lamb: Treat them better than you would treat anybody on the street. And if you do that, I promise you, it, it will make your kids it’ll make them better as they grow up as well. But us man, [00:27:00] we gotta get our act together.

[00:27:01] Nathan Spearing: I just recorded yesterday a podcast on grit and, you know, Angela Duckworth is the one that kind of made grit scientific, you know, and looking at her study at, it’s mostly Latin to me. I don’t understand exactly all the graphs and things, but one of the things that she talked about in her book was the spectrum of, you know, high standards and low standards, and then, Warmth and coldness, or being supportive and unsupportive and said that basically a wise parent has really high standards but is warm and supportive.

[00:27:39] Nathan Spearing: And I have to look at that graph, you know, it’s a, it’s quadrants and I feel like I’m low on the warmth, supportive, like that’s hard for me to do. And, but that you can still have high standards. It’s just how are you encouraging them and you use the words, you know, lifting them up, bringing them up, elevating them, and that the Latin root for being a [00:28:00] parent is to bring forth.

[00:28:02] Nathan Spearing: And so how are we bringing forth that potential and not being the one that’s low standards and warm, you know, cuz that doesn’t, you have to have the high standards, you have to have the warmth. And so that, that’s exactly. Where I was just I mean, I literally, this is like double whammy. I’m sit prepping for that podcast and I’m talking about it and then, you know, you’re talking about it the same way, you know, and making sure and had to go, you know, to my sons and say I’m proud of you.

[00:28:31] looking at him and looking at in the eye, you know, he had a pastor come back and talk about how Jesus had to hear the father say, this is my beloved son. He is fully God, fully man. Yet having to come to the realization, you know, I believe over time what he was actually gonna be there to do. I don’t know that, I don’t believe that he had that understanding all the way that he was living, being fully human is not really knowing exactly how everything’s gonna go down[00:29:00] and setting his face towards Jerusalem and going but that, that, the Heavenly Father said, I’m pleased because him and his humanity, he needed to hear that from his dad.

[00:29:10] Nathan Spearing: And. Sitting with my sons after that, hearing this good preaching and have my 10 year old son say, Hey, you know, you heard all these parenting, we had kind of a parenting seminar. You heard all these comments. What does dad need to do? And he just said, dad, you need to tell me good job more.

[00:29:25] Nathan Spearing: And that hurts. But praise the Lord that there’s wise men to hear it when he is 10, for me. And then, hopefully there’s guys listening to this conversation that, that have unborn sons or two-year-old sons or whatever. And that’s the beauty of the gospel and his church, that we can say these things and we can be transparent that I’ve screwed it up, you know, I mean, it’s, it was hard for me to hear what you just said, you know, it’s tear teared me up a little bit to to think. Personally, how I treat people. I’m super nice to [00:30:00] everybody I meet, I love people. I love being around. I can just be, have charisma and be warm to everybody. And I don’t really want exactly how I relate to my sons out there, you know? And that knowledge but Christ is sufficient, you know?

[00:30:16] Kyle Lamb: So I want to really make you stop and think for a minute that didn’t come from your son.

[00:30:22] Nathan Spearing: Yeah. It came from God.

[00:30:24] Kyle Lamb: Think about that, dude.

[00:30:26] Kyle Lamb: Just ponder that for just a second. That comment came from God.

[00:30:30] Kyle Lamb: So you want to talk about laser light show right to your heart. That’s a pretty special deal.

[00:30:38] Nathan Spearing: Yeah. He can use my son at 10 to speak audibly to.

[00:30:42] Kyle Lamb: It’s . Yeah. It’s just, it’s very powerful and it’s also I did a podcast with a good friend of mine that I was in seawater and with a guy named Al Buford and he talked about his son and his son was into computer games and everybody, we hear computer games, oh yeah, you know, we don’t want to, well now his son is in [00:31:00] college doing computer science and he’s like this whiz kid.

[00:31:02] Kyle Lamb: He was building his own computers when he is just a little kid. And just because you weren’t into computers doesn’t mean that your kids can’t have different, loves that, that than you have. We, I’m not trying to raise a mini me, I’m trying to raise a good man and a good daughter, you know, or, you know, my daughter, I mean, she’s a great wife, great mom.

[00:31:25] Kyle Lamb: She’s just awesome. And yeah, we just, we that when I talked with him and I’d heard we had talked about that before, cuz he and I are pretty good friends. And I brought it up. I wanted him to kind of hit on that because it was very powerful to you. You think you have something important going on, and your sons think they have something important going on.

[00:31:48] Kyle Lamb: Well, what’s more important? Well, neither one is more important. E both of them are important. So how do we get past that? You know, if I’m sitting in my office here and I’m reading a book and my [00:32:00] wife comes and she says, I need you to do this right now, there’s that little bit of, well, I gotta finish this chapter.

[00:32:09] Kyle Lamb: I gotta finish this page, or whatever. Well, what do your kids feel like when you come and say, Hey, you need to stop doing that and come do this. They’re like, Hey dad, I gotta finish the chapter. And you’re like, no, you’re done now. Well, let’s compromise a little bit. I’m not saying let your kids be pushovers or you be a pushover.

[00:32:30] Kyle Lamb: I’m saying that. What they perceive as important right now, let that be important because it is, my grandson and my granddaughter are into Minecraft, and I was like, Minecraft, what kind of crap is that? And then I sat down and had a discussion with them. It’s awesome. It’s really awesome. The stuff that they’re learning from that.

[00:32:50] Kyle Lamb: The stuff that my grandson knows right now at eight years old, some of the stuff he knows I didn’t figure out till I was in my forties.

[00:32:58] Kyle Lamb: That’s amazing. That’s, I mean, so [00:33:00] let ’em, you know, let them get warmed up to what makes them passionate for them right now. That’s a passion.

[00:33:06] Kyle Lamb: TaeKwonDo is a passion. You know, find what that passion is. Whatever your kid, if they have a passion, then that’s a win. It doesn’t mean that the passion’s gotta be your passion. It’s gotta be their passion.

[00:33:17] Nathan Spearing: Yeah, that’s a really good word. Cuz I mean, my wife, when I was getting up this morning to come in to the office and prep for the podcast and do this, she’s like, Hey, can we have a conversation about, you know, how the rest of today’s gonna go and tomorrow? And I’m just like, you know, like, I want, I gotta get to the office.

[00:33:33] Nathan Spearing: You, you don’t understand. I’m interviewing Kyle Lamb, I’m not ready, I gotta get there. You know? And she’s like, hold on a second. Is this siding gonna get put on the barn like later this afternoon? Or not? Like, I’ve been looking at this pile sitting next to the barn. I need to hear your report on that in the farm and what are you doing?

[00:33:49] Nathan Spearing: And that, you know, relaying that, cuz my kids are always, you know, we live in the bus and we got all the bunks, they have headlamps and they got their books open and I’m like, Hey, time to go to bed. And they’re like, dad, can [00:34:00] I finish this chapter? Can I, you know? And that’s a. That they’re wanting to do that, but for sure I’m wanting to be like, Hey, shut it down.

[00:34:06] Nathan Spearing: And I heard some parenting advice to say that, you know, give them, give ’em the five minute warning, you know, the 10 minute warning or whatever. Allow them to kind of realize that it’s coming. And before I wanted to be like, forget that. When I say this is what happens, you know, dad snaps his fingers gotta happens.

[00:34:24] Nathan Spearing: It’s like in that they don’t have the maturity. And when my wife says, Hey, I wanna talk to you about how this afternoon’s gonna go, and I’m like, like I have the maturity and I not say anything. Cause that’s gonna get me in trouble if I let it out like a kid, you know? But they don’t have it. They can’t, they ha they just let it out.

[00:34:42] Nathan Spearing: Like, I’m building this Lego thing. I’m trying to finish this chapter. And so that’s a good word. To, you know, it’s, you want to be the authoritarian, this is my rules. I said, lights out, you know, we’ve done the prayers. You knew this was coming, at least didn’t do it last night cuz I saw two or three kids with headlamps and I was just like, [00:35:00] eh, Friday after Thanksgiving, I’m not even gonna say anything.

[00:35:03] Nathan Spearing: I’m just gonna go to bed. And they all went to sleep. I don’t know when, but they did, you know. And Henry Ford, I read about him. He used to hide underneath his covers. He’d set his room up to where he could work at night. And if his parents came in, he could slip into bed.

[00:35:19] Nathan Spearing: And the light and everything was kind of dampened. And that made me, that was another time I was like, man, I’m literally crushing, my kids are trying to go be innovative like guys like Henry Ford and I’m creating a climate in my household where they can’t do that. They can’t be innovative.

[00:35:33] Nathan Spearing: They can’t control it. So anyway. Well, well, I received that. It’s a good word.

[00:35:40] Kyle Lamb: well, it’s I’m, I, you, I hear that story about your wife and I can tell you right now, your wife and my wife would get along famously

[00:35:47] Nathan Spearing: Yeah.

[00:35:48] Kyle Lamb: cuz my wife is super organized. She’s got everything dialed in and I’m the one that’s off. I’m the good idea fairy. You know, I’m floating around doing my thing and she’s the one that’s actually [00:36:00] making this all happen.

[00:36:01] Kyle Lamb: So,

[00:36:01] Nathan Spearing: Oh, yeah. My wife makes the lists. She’s like, you know, you should make a list. You should do this. Let me help you figure this out. And I’m just like, you know, I don’t wanna be confined by this list. I gotta, you know, but that’s something that I’m learning as I run businesses and as things grow, you can’t afford to be disorganized.

[00:36:19] Nathan Spearing: Disorganization equals loss of a lot of things, money, potential, all that stuff. So,

[00:36:27] Kyle Lamb: Well, so going back to our time in the military, remember when guys would get up to do a team leader brief back, they always had a card to read off of. They knew that like the back of their hand, but they had that card, and we did that so that when you were tired, sleepy, hungry, scared, whatever, you would still stick with the plan and you would still brief everything that was important so that your guys could hit the objective and do things correctly.

[00:36:50] Kyle Lamb: Well, that’s all a list. A list, a checklist that we have. I have my, I’ve got my notebook that, I mean, I live with this notebook with me because it, it [00:37:00] keeps me going in the right direction cuz I know this is gonna sound crazy, but my brain is pretty scatological,

[00:37:07] Kyle Lamb: I’m all over the map, which I would venture to guess you are too.

[00:37:11] Kyle Lamb: And a list will get you at least to hit the high points that you get. That stuff squared away that day, that week, that month, whenever it might be. And I’m very good at, if I have a list, I can get through it. If I don’t have a list, I just kind of bounce around. My wife has a list too, but hers is, she can do it without writing it down.

[00:37:31] Kyle Lamb: She has a list and she knocks it out every day. One day she told me, she goes, well, like when you get the balloons and I go balloons, she goes, balloons on your email. Have you ever seen the balloons? Yeah. I’ve never seen the balloons either, but when you empty your inbox, you get balloons. I’ve never seen them every day.

[00:37:54] Kyle Lamb: So she’ll get 200 emails in a day for our business and she will crush through those emails and she [00:38:00] doesn’t get today. She gets it first thing, the next morning stuff that she needs answers for, and she gets the balloons, and I was like, what are you talking about? I had no idea there was such a thing that you would get balloons when you emptied your inbox.

[00:38:12] Nathan Spearing: Well, we had a knockdown drag out a little bit when my wife went into my inbox one time. She’s like, you know, 9 70, 300 unread emails, you know, she just marked them all unread, you know? And I was like, are you kidding me right now? Like I knew in, now there’s 7,300 emails mixed in there that I, if I go back to September, you know, whatever, I don’t even have to look at the, you know, I would’ve been happier if you deleted them and then I then if you made ’em unread, cuz now I know there’s 7,300 emails in there that I didn’t weren’t, didn’t matter in September last year.

[00:38:46] Nathan Spearing: And now I can’t tell the difference, you know, but yeah. Different systems for sure. And I definitely have never got the balloons. So, so

[00:38:54] Kyle Lamb: That’s a dream. It’s a dream I have.

[00:38:56] Nathan Spearing: yeah, talk about talk about leaving the military. I [00:39:00] sent you a podcast and you gave me some double barrel feedback on it. That was very good. Which is why I asked We had a great culture in the military of saying it like it is and then dealing with the fact that you

[00:39:12] Kyle Lamb: Y you didn’t know what to think when I called you.

[00:39:14] Nathan Spearing: No. I mean, I knew something was coming and especially when you said, do you want me to be honest? And I was like, Ooh, this is, yeah do, I didn’t send it cuz I wanted to get, you know, whatever.

[00:39:26] Kyle Lamb: So I called Nathan up and I said, yeah, I listened to your podcast and I was offended, I think, is what I said. And it got pretty quiet.

[00:39:33] Nathan Spearing: yeah.

[00:39:34] Kyle Lamb: And I don’t know what was going through your head, but I was just being very honest when I listened to it. I truly was offended. And I was offended because you were speaking directly to me.

[00:39:46] Kyle Lamb: And I think that’s where some guys we misconstrue our thought process. If you hear something and you’re offended by it, you might wanna peel back the onion a little bit [00:40:00] and think and see why are you offended by that? Is it because it’s true? ? Or is it, you know, there might be something that you hear that’s offensive that it’s just because you have different beliefs, that’s fine too.

[00:40:12] Kyle Lamb: But I was offended because dude, you were speaking directly to me and getting out of the military. I’ve been lucky enough that I’ve kind of made a transition. Some guys are still kind of stuck where your, where that podcast you were talking about where that where that hit. I’m past a lot of that now, but it was good for me to hear that because I don’t want to be that guy.

[00:40:35] Kyle Lamb: And you talked about the Letterman jacket, you talked about some other stuff that, that can hit pretty close to home. And when I go teach a class, I’m really happy when I hear somebody say, Hey, how long you been working for Viking Tactics? Or, Hey, so what did you, what’s your background? And I’m like, oh, this is awesome.

[00:40:53] Kyle Lamb: They’re in a class. They don’t know that I own Viking Tactics. They’re in a class and they didn’t sign up just because of my background. They signed [00:41:00] up because, Of the, hopefully the credibility of our business. And they’re getting something out of it. And they’re like, well, so what did you do ? What’d you do in the Army?

[00:41:08] Kyle Lamb: Man, that’s awesome. If I hear that I know that’s a positive thing. I struggle when I first got out, and I probably still struggle a little bit now, but I struggle because I miss the mission.

[00:41:18] Kyle Lamb: And nowadays with a lot of the veterans out there, there’s all these struggles and, you know, we need to talk about this or that, and I gotta have some me time and blah, blah, blah.

[00:41:31] Kyle Lamb: And the bottom line is, you don’t need me time. You need to take care of other people. And if you take care of other people, your, you’ll be, your cup will be full. I promise you. If you stop thinking about yourself and think about other people, your cup will be absolutely full. I got a good buddy of mine, Tim.

[00:41:48] Kyle Lamb: This guy sends me these texts every now and again. He sent me a text one day. He goes, Hey man, don’t need anything. I’m just cheering from the sidelines. Him.

[00:41:55] Kyle Lamb: He didn’t have to do that. He did that because he cared for me as his friend. And that made [00:42:00] my day, like I know that my buddy doesn’t need to talk to me, he’s just cheering from the sidelines.

[00:42:04] Kyle Lamb: Well, how many people are there that you could call or text in the morning and it might be your wife or kids too, you know, like just a kind word to them. What will do that? What will that do for somebody else? Well, it’s gonna do something for them, but it’s also gonna fill your cup up and that getting back to that mission, if I said to you, and I don’t wanna put you on the spot here, but what is your mission?

[00:42:31] Kyle Lamb: Do you have that? Do you have that defined in your life, what your mission is? Or maybe what is your mission today? What is your mission tomorrow? What’s your mission next, next week? Not what was your mission 15 years ago when you’re in the military, but what is it right now? And. , I gotta tell you, I got a list of missions of things I want to accomplish, and they’re not that I don’t believe in having a bucket list because a bucket list is just stupid stuff that you want to do.

[00:42:59] Kyle Lamb: Then just [00:43:00] go do it. Don’t have it. Don’t put it in a bucket. Just make it happen. You guys want to, I hear everybody, oh I wish I could skydive come with me. I’ll make that happen in one day or less. And you know, I say one day, because we might have a weather day, we might have to do it tomorrow, but bottom line is if you, if it’s truly on your bucket list, air quotes, for those guys that are just listening out there, then just make it happen.

[00:43:25] Kyle Lamb: I don’t have a bucket list. I’ve got missions that I want to complete, and there’s missions for our business. There’s missions for, you know, our heart. There’s missions for our family, but have that, have a mission that you need to finish. And if. Those guys and gals that are out there that are struggling getting outta the military, it’s cuz they miss the mission.

[00:43:45] Kyle Lamb: They mission, they miss the people. We’ll figure out the mission and you could also find good people to be part of that with you right now, outside of the military.

[00:43:53] Nathan Spearing: . Yeah. I think that that’s something that I’m going through with the businesses, doing the vision and the mission [00:44:00] statement and the things like that, and that can sound a little corny. When you read it in kind of entrepreneur books and things like that. But for those of us that understand, even looking at the failure of Afghanistan, and it goes back to what was the overarching goal or mission that we’re trying to accomplish there.

[00:44:19] Nathan Spearing: And I, I can’t remember how many trips I did there. I didn’t know what it was, you know, and having the mission such that your people know, this is why I’m here, this is how I fit into that. And realizing, you know, I have a guy working for me and there was some things that weren’t going well.

[00:44:37] Nathan Spearing: And I started kind of diving in, okay, how do I, you know, and the reason why is because I hadn’t communicated the mission to him. I hadn’t communicated what it was like. He understands that he’s getting a paycheck and he understands there’s a remodel going on, but it’s like, no, what are we actually, when we remodel someone’s house, What are we actually doing for those people?

[00:44:59] Nathan Spearing: And why does that [00:45:00] matter? Because you live the majority of your life or what enables the majority of the things you do from your home. And we’re creating spaces for people to live life well and to do the things, you know, and that, that matters more than just demo this bathroom. You know? And I realize that, so you’re not putting me on the spot, but if you would’ve said probably two or three months ago you would’ve asked me that, I would’ve been definitely a lot more convicted.

[00:45:26] Nathan Spearing: And it should have happened sooner for me. But and that obviously goes back to the family aspect too. I think that my wife and I understand the trajectory and kind of understand the end state, but I don’t think it’s written out in a way, cuz I think it should be something that our kids, even now, what do we do?

[00:45:46] Nathan Spearing: What’s, what are spearings missions? What is, what do we do as a family? Why? , why does this matter specifically and

[00:45:53] Kyle Lamb: And I think it’s important too when we do that, it’s different for every member of your family. And you [00:46:00] can’t just say cookie cutter, here it is. It’s gotta be, it’s gotta be built directly for each one of your children and your wife and for you. I was gonna show you the, a couple of books I’m reading right now.

[00:46:10] Kyle Lamb: So one is the Afghanistan papers, which is intriguing. And just so you know, the leaders of our country didn’t know what the mission was either. , they didn’t have a clue either, which is sad. The more I read, the more I’m like, oh, this is, it is just disturbing. Even though you had guys at the beginning that had it figured out, Donald Rumsfeld had it figured out, but then he just kind of got.

[00:46:34] Kyle Lamb: Pushed to the side cuz he said, it’s gotta be very direct. Like this is it and then we’re done. No nation building, we’re gonna do this. And then along with that, I’m reading this one right here called an a Great Improvisation, and this is about Ben Franklin’s Times in when he was in France. And it’s pretty intriguing to see what he was going through.

[00:46:57] Kyle Lamb: You know, there’s a lot of fun stuff that he did too. I mean, he [00:47:00] was, he had plenty of girlfriends and all that stuff going on too, but what he was dealing with, having to deal with Congress, having to deal with the French, having to deal with the Brits, the Spanish, I mean, all of that. It’s really intriguing to see I don’t know, it’s just, it’s we wanna believe that our history today is something we’ve never seen before.

[00:47:17] Kyle Lamb: But it’s not

[00:47:18] Kyle Lamb: John Jay. I don’t, are you familiar with John Jay? He was one of the guys that wrote the Federalist papers. He was the first. Supreme Court Justice. You know, so I’ve got another couple books I’m reading right now too, and he talks about some of the difficulties they had that were going on with riots, they had people rioting in Boston.

[00:47:37] Kyle Lamb: It’s like, huh? In Philadelphia. Wow. And we think the riots that we had because of, you know, what’s his name, George Floyd. Or because of Covid or whatever the, oh this, oh, this is the first time this ever happened. No, this is not the first time that’s ever happened. So, very interesting. If we dig into it a little bit.

[00:47:58] Nathan Spearing: Yeah. I think that’s [00:48:00] the crazy thing about it, is it’s available, those, that wisdom is available for 8 99 tomorrow on your doorstep, you know? And that’s, I mean, I, as I was prepping, listening to your interview with Jack Carr, and you guys are talking about podcasts and, or you’re talking about books that you’re reading, and did you read that and did you read this? I just had an Amazon tab open. You know, it’s like, I don’t know. I you gave me so much homework, you know, to do and how to leverage it. So talk about

[00:48:31] Kyle Lamb: So can I give you a, can I give you a spider web rabbit hole story so that you understand how this works

[00:48:37] Nathan Spearing: Yes, exactly.

[00:48:38] Kyle Lamb: Okay. So the Wright Brothers, you’re familiar with the Wright Brothers. The Wright brothers were awesome and they ended up in France and I was reading a David McCulloch book. I was listening to it on tape.

[00:48:51] Kyle Lamb: And I don’t listen to I’d listen usually to one book at a time on tape, but I read like half dozen books at a time. But I listen to one [00:49:00] at a time. So I listen to that book and I’m like, huh, well then David McCullough has another book about Americans in France.

[00:49:06] Kyle Lamb: So I was like, oh, Americans in France, I should read or listen to that book.

[00:49:11] Kyle Lamb: That’d be kind of cool. And I literally just finished it yesterday and listening to it. But since I started listening to that book, I’ve read, I think I’ve read like six books because of that book. So Last of the Mohicans, do you know who wrote that?

[00:49:26] Nathan Spearing: Cannot remember

[00:49:27] Kyle Lamb: james Fennimore Cooper. James Fennimore Cooper was in France with his buddy named Sam Morse.

[00:49:34] Kyle Lamb: And Sam Morse was in the Louv, and he was painting this picture called The Gallery of the Louv. It’s a picture of. What he’s seeing inside of the lube, the big museum inside of in, in Paris. So he’s doing this and every day James Fennimore Cooper goes and talks to him and I was like, the gallery or the gallery or gallery, whatever the photo is called, he sold it.

[00:49:55] Kyle Lamb: He made a bunch of money, like $800 or something by doing [00:50:00] this seven foot by nine foot pitcher. Now it sells for $3 million or whatever. So I was like, oh, James Fennimore Cooper wrote the last Mohicans. And I know, you know Daniel Winkler that made the knives for the movie. I need to read the Last Mohicans.

[00:50:16] Kyle Lamb: So I sit down and I read the last Mohicans. There you go. So now what’s next? Well, I’m reading Last of Mohicans and there’s another book that is mentioned in the last Mohicans. Oh. A Voltaire book. And I’m not a huge fan, actually, I take that back. I think that was from this Benjamin Franklin book.

[00:50:36] Kyle Lamb: Anyway, so I read. James Fenimore Cooper’s last Mohicans. And then I listened to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as a book, which was one of the best books I listened to probably in my entire life because the guy that narrates it is just amazing. That led me to reading Voltaire’s candid, or candid or however you say that, which read me to read this book on Benjamin Franklin’s time in [00:51:00] France.

[00:51:00] Kyle Lamb: And there seems like there’s another book I read because of that. Anyway, that’s how my mind works. Like when I go into that rabbit hole you, if you listen to legend of Sleepy Hollow, you hear them talk about a guy that was hung from a tree. Well, he was a guy that was a convicted of being a spy.

[00:51:19] Kyle Lamb: John Andre and John Andre he liked to do plays and all this stuff when he was living up in. When he is living in the United States and had girlfriends from America and all this stuff, but he ended up getting hung as a spy. But he did it like a man. He was to the very end, you know? Yep. You caught me.

[00:51:35] Kyle Lamb: I’m dressed in civilian clothes and yep. Hang me. And he hung there like a hero, you know, even though he is a Brit, he was our enemy. Well, that tree and that dude is mentioned in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which is, I believe that’s written by Washington Irving. So there you go. The spiderweb that we become part of, if you just let it happen do you know what a Mayhem tower is?

[00:51:57] Nathan Spearing: No.

[00:51:59] Kyle Lamb: So [00:52:00] there was a guy that decided at the Battle of Fort Watson to build a 30 foot wooden tower so they could shoot down into the fort. So his name was like Hezeki Mayhem or May Mayhem or something like that. And he. made these guys build this tower, and then in the dark of the night they took the tower apart and in the dark of the night, they snuck up there, they reassembled a 34, a 30 foot log tower.

[00:52:31] Kyle Lamb: Just think about how difficult that was. And then they went in there and they ended up shooting every Brit they could. I think they lost two, and the Brits lost a hundred and something because they were headed in an elevated position right side outside of the wall. Well, if you didn’t know that, if you hadn’t read history about the Revolutionary War, you wouldn’t know that John and Andre was the tree they’re talking about in Washington.

[00:52:52] Kyle Lamb: Irving’s book, legend of Sleepy Hollow. You wouldn’t know that when they talk about the battle of 96 or the siege of 96 [00:53:00] when Nathaniel Green said, bring in a mayhem tower. You wouldn’t know what they were talking about. You’d be like what? What is this tower they’re talking about? You gotta know history.

[00:53:12] Kyle Lamb: So I like to go, I like to dig into it, like, where did this come from? And That’s how things like that happened when at that point in the history of our country, we think we got it rough Now, they were dissembling windows to get the lead out from between the panes of glass to make balls to shoot Brits with,

[00:53:30] Kyle Lamb: That’s fricking awesome.

[00:53:31] Nathan Spearing: Yeah, it is.

[00:53:32] Kyle Lamb: that’s history that we should be proud of. That’s awesome.

[00:53:35] Nathan Spearing: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that I, what was so crazy to me is how successful the musical Hamilton was during Covid. Like, everybody is getting so jacked on this guy who is like, screw you. I’m gonna do this, you know, and [00:54:00] is fighting and is like, I’m gonna go to war. I’m going to, you know, all these things.

[00:54:04] Nathan Spearing: And they’re just like, yeah. While they like hide behind their diaper, you know? And I think that you don’t have to go down into that rabbit hole, but there’s something and there and the way everything is right now, people are trying to just say, all these men are, you know, white, racist, bigot, misogynist.

[00:54:24] Nathan Spearing: People, and that’s why we’re in such a bad shape, because these guys at the very beginning sucked and all that. And you have to know the real history of things and you also have to under just understand humanity. Like people will discount the Bible because of the terrible things that the fathers of the faith, you know, did.

[00:54:44] Nathan Spearing: And they don’t see God working through humanity in spite of our fallen nature, in spite of what we do. Like it doesn’t mean we’re saying that you can read a book on Benjamin Franklin be like, yeah there’s a lot of wisdom and things I shouldn’t do that he did. You know, and there’s a lot of things, but [00:55:00] it doesn’t mean that there weren’t great minds and there’s not wisdom to be taken and learned from that.

[00:55:06] Nathan Spearing: And it’s, it goes back to not reading. People don’t read like they. That’s our, my wife’s primary educator for our children is books that, you know, just stacks and stacks of books that the kids read through. It’s not textbooks, it’s the literature. It’s stuff that’s written well by good authors and it all deals in that timeframe that they’re supposed to be studying.

[00:55:28] Nathan Spearing: But it’s this, just like you said, you got all these different books. She’s, it’s a stack and they’re reading through and it all is themed, but it’s just books, and it’s there it’s free in a sense, or it’s like, Goodwill hunting dollar 50 cents, slate charges at the public library, it’s accessible and it’s real.

[00:55:45] Nathan Spearing: And and my son does it hanging upside down out of a hammock, like he’s not, you don’t have to sit in this one spot and read it like you can. He’s, I routinely come home and my oldest is in a camp chair. in the chicken coop with a [00:56:00] book,, and it’s, he’s not being told he’s been told the standard.

[00:56:03] Nathan Spearing: And it’s not to time, it’s to standard. Say, Hey, you gotta read these books. You gotta come back and narrate this part to mom and you can do it wherever you know. And have you heard the book how Lincoln learned to read?

[00:56:13] Kyle Lamb: No, I, no, I

[00:56:14] Nathan Spearing: it basically goes through the education of, I think about 20 American historical figures in their education and what actually was the things that they did.

[00:56:27] Nathan Spearing: And Mo almost all of them are non-formal and reading. And you know, Betsy Ross, Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln’s dad I think is his dad. And his uncle had to shoot an Indian that was scalping their grandfather. Ran inside and got the musket came back out. The Indians are bent over their grandfather and shooting.

[00:56:49] Nathan Spearing: You know, it’s like, if they didn’t know how to do that on the frontier, if they didn’t have that ability to defend, like there would’ve been no. A blinking, you know, there would’ve been no, you know, the things would’ve been way [00:57:00] different. That’s just,

[00:57:01] Kyle Lamb: I’ve been given some, I’ve been given some thought. You kind of, you jarred something out of my brain here. I’ve been given some thought to, you know, like what are the 10 things that we should do to raise men in America? Because I, I get a lot of questions like, you know, how do we save boys from the evil that’s in our country right now, but better yet, how do we get ’em past that evil?

[00:57:24] Kyle Lamb: And then how do we get them to be raised as good men? And you hit on several of them right there. One is to read,

[00:57:32] Kyle Lamb: We gotta have, all of our young men in America need to know how to read.

[00:57:36] Nathan Spearing: yeah.

[00:57:36] Kyle Lamb: period. If they know how to read it opens up the world to the entire world’s available, like you said at your fingertips.

[00:57:43] Kyle Lamb: Everybody here last time I checked, at least in Tennessee, you can go into a library regardless of your skin, sc skin color or your pay grade or who your dad is.

[00:57:53] Kyle Lamb: Of all, know how to shoot a gun and know how to hunt because if you know how to hunt, you know how to shoot a gun, you’re gonna be in the [00:58:00] outdoors and that’s gonna put you closer to God to begin with right there.

[00:58:04] Kyle Lamb: One of the things I see a lot of our veterans struggling with is alcoholism or drug abuse. And one of the things that is part of the 12 step program is to know and believe in a higher being.

[00:58:19] Kyle Lamb: So if it works for, if it works for Alcoholics Anonymous, why shouldn’t it work for every young man to believe in a higher being?

[00:58:28] Kyle Lamb: You see what I’m saying? We can quickly put together, like what could it be that, and I’m not saying that every kid’s gotta go out and shoot an Indian that’s scalping his grandpa. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is every kid should be able to go out in the woods and hunt, and if they don’t like to hunt, then let ’em go harvest you, knowl mushrooms or whatever.

[00:58:46] Kyle Lamb: But get out in the woods because that’s gonna give you skillsets that you can use no matter where you’re at.

[00:58:51] Nathan Spearing: And that,

[00:58:52] Kyle Lamb: talk about, oh, when, go ahead.

[00:58:54] Nathan Spearing: solitude comes from that too. Like, I think that if you can leave your phone behind when you go out in the [00:59:00] woods, which is harder to do these days, but I recently did that for 75 days. Almost spent 45 minutes in the woods, you know, without my phone. I felt like I was almost on drugs.

[00:59:11] Nathan Spearing: Like imagine, I mean, I was homeschooled, I never did drugs, but I was just like, it’s the clarity that comes from getting rid of that device for a little bit , cuz there’s stuff that is happening at the, you know, FCI sequence and what’s going on with the foliage and the patterns that has been woven into creation, that’s doing something for you when you’re seeing it and when you’re around it.

[00:59:35] Nathan Spearing: I was talking to a guy this morning, like, it all comes back to getting your hands in the dirt, like actual real dirt that has, you know, Joel Southton talks about there’s more organisms in a handful of dirt than our people on the earth, you know, and there’s something to that, how small and what’s going on at that level,

[00:59:53] Kyle Lamb: We, we always try to get our grandkids, you know, when they were little, we’d get ’em out in the woods. And [01:00:00] one of the things that I thought of it, I never thought of this my entire life until I had, I saw these grandkids and they’re sitting over there eating dirt. . And I was like, you know what? I know exactly what that tastes like because I ate dirt.

[01:00:18] Kyle Lamb: Let him eat dirt, let him lick a tree. Let, and that sounds weird, but the texture, like my grandson, he would touch a tree and his hands would just move and he would just, like, he got tactile fuel of that tree. And if you as an adult go out in the woods, put your hand on a tree,

[01:00:37] Kyle Lamb: Put your hands on the, in the dirt, like you’re talking about, feel the leaf, pick up a leaf that just fell into the woods.

[01:00:43] Kyle Lamb: Smell it, look at it, feel it. I mean, it’s just like you can spin. I’m, people are gonna think I’m a complete lunatic, but I’m telling you when I’m out hunting, it is just, it’s so amazing the stuff that you see and smell and hear and yeah, it’s, yeah. I wanted to go back. You said you mentioned [01:01:00] Jack Carr and one of the things about Jack, he’s been a reader his whole life

[01:01:03] Kyle Lamb: And.

[01:01:06] Kyle Lamb: I do take book advice from a few people, but once a person gives me a bad book advice, I’ve never listened to them again. Jack has never failed me. I mean, he told me to read first Blood, the original Rambo story. Have you read that?

[01:01:24] Nathan Spearing: but that was, that’s one of the ones that’s in my cart when I was listening to the interview I was like, oh my gosh, how have I not, I mean, that’s ultimately one of those things that it’s not been very long, that I’ve been just, I was always the guy that was moving and wanted and just couldn’t sit still.

[01:01:42] Nathan Spearing: And I still am, have a hard time with that, but I literally, you can see right here I’ve, I brought this chair in the office and I have a stack of books next to it. And my morning ritual is to come in, I have a notebook, I have the Bible, and at a minimum [01:02:00] I’m reading the Bible and I’m, I got the notebook open and having a stack of index cards to write things on if I cuz it you just have these things come to your mind.

[01:02:08] Nathan Spearing: And so it’s like I put it down on an index card, I know I’m not gonna lose it, and then just get right back into reading the word or whatever. And then every day, , even if it’s just a few pages. You can crush books. If you can get read just 10 pages

[01:02:23] Kyle Lamb: Oh yeah. And the thing about notes, like I’ll take a book and I’ll make notes in the front cover of my book, and then as I go through the books, I’ll make, I just make little notes as I’m going through. You know, like, let’s see what this one says. Okay, actually this is where Voltaire, where I said I gotta go back and read that book.

[01:02:41] Kyle Lamb: He said, what is optimism? Alas, it is the mania for pretending that all is right, when in fact everything is wrong. That’s pretty good.

[01:02:54] Nathan Spearing: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:02:55] Kyle Lamb: That’s pretty, that’s, it’s something to think about, you know, and anything that can inspire thought, like you said, if you [01:03:00] sit down and read the Bible, I’ve been working on a book about the Bible that’s been I’ve got one chapter left

[01:03:06] Nathan Spearing: Oh yeah. Let’s talk about that.

[01:03:09] Kyle Lamb: Yeah. And I’ve been, this, I’ve pissed off a whole bunch of people because they’re like, when’s this book coming out?

[01:03:14] Kyle Lamb: And I’m like, I don’t know when it’s done. It’ll be out, but I don’t know. But I’m writing a book war stories from the Bible and it’s just stories that, you know, as soldiers, or at least for me, I like the Old Testament cuz there’s a lot of killing going on in the Old Testament.

[01:03:31] Nathan Spearing: Amen.

[01:03:32] Kyle Lamb: And it’s, man, it’s, you want to talk about crazy stories that happened?

[01:03:38] Kyle Lamb: Just crack open the Bible and read about just anything. I mean, there’s so much stuff. So I had to pick the characters I wanted to write about, and I made the stories align with the Bible, but I go more in depth and I, so I’m telling, yeah, I’m telling a story. It’s a, of a fiction based on fact, you know, so it’s [01:04:00] historical fiction is what it is.

[01:04:01] Kyle Lamb: But in some of this stuff, it took me a couple years to understand, and my wife luckily is persistent. She had this, she sat me down, we were at my daughter’s house. She sat me down and she goes, I got a great idea for one of your chapters. And I’m like, it’s my book. You know what I mean? Like, what’s your idea for this chapter?

[01:04:23] Kyle Lamb: She goes, well, imagine what the angels did when Jesus was crucified.

[01:04:29] Kyle Lamb: And she tells me the story and she’s like, she’s all into it. And she tells it to me and she goes, and then when Jesus died, they roared. And I was like, and I told her, I said, I don’t get it. I just, I don’t, I’m not getting it.

[01:04:41] Kyle Lamb: And then I, it took literally, it took two years of me thinking about what she told me. And one day I was like, I get it. Because if you read about the crucifixion, you read what happened when Jesus died,

[01:04:56] Kyle Lamb: The angels did roar. We couldn’t hear ’em. But you [01:05:00] think about why, so the Earth went dark.

[01:05:02] Kyle Lamb: The shroud or the curtain in the tabernacle ripped from the top to the bottom.

[01:05:07] Kyle Lamb: What’s the significance of that? Well, the significance that I didn’t get it until recently. I’ve been. Reading the Bible since I was a little kid. I didn’t get this, that was the time when Jesus was crucified. He died for our sins because up till that point, what we were doing, we were sep, the church was separate.

[01:05:23] Kyle Lamb: We had the church, and then we had the arc of the covenant, and they were separate. And only the priest, the high priest, could go in there maybe once a year. We couldn’t be part of that. Well, Jesus ripped that curtain from the top to the bottom by his crucifixion, which allowed us to go past the curtain.

[01:05:40] Kyle Lamb: So when she, if this all just when it all kind of sunk in, I’m like, oh, this would be a great chapter. And she goes, yeah, that’s what I was telling you two years ago.

[01:05:48] Nathan Spearing: Lug head,

[01:05:50] Kyle Lamb: yeah. So think about, think just put yourself in the shoes as a soldier. And I think of angels as soldiers. of God’s army. They’re the key [01:06:00] soldiers that are there to do the bidding that needs to be done. They’re seeing all this happen and they’re watching Jesus carry the cross to calvary, and they can stop that right now. They can stop his suffering. They’re all powerful. They can do it. You know, they have the ability to do that.

[01:06:21] Kyle Lamb: Yet Jesus is telling them he’s not, you know, he’s not talking to him with his voice, but he’s telling them, you gotta let this happen. And they have to stand guard pH, can you imagine the greatest human ever? And you have this tie to him because you’re an angel and you’re seeing that happen and you’re told, hold what you got.

[01:06:49] Kyle Lamb: Don’t unleash your weapons. Keep them in, you know, keep ’em. She, and that leads me to another thing. I was listening to Jordan Peterson, and he said about being a, you know, the [01:07:00] best men are dangerous men. And one of the things he said was and I’m I’ve added to this, but he said, you know, in the Bible it says the meek shall inherit the earth, but meek and weak are not the same thing, but people are trying to make it out.

[01:07:14] Kyle Lamb: Like Jesus was meek and or Jesus was weak, not meek. Jesus was a carpenter. Jesus sat down outside the temple and he braided a quart or a whip, and then he went and he whipped people in the church. That bro is awesome. That guy is like a man’s man. You know what I’m saying? The dude wore sandals. I mean, of course everybody did then, but they were just tough dudes.

[01:07:38] Kyle Lamb: And he hung out with a bunch of fishermen. So in the Bible, when it says that, you gotta remember what meek means. Meek is somebody that carries a sword, knows how to use it, but chooses to keep it sheath.

[01:07:50] Nathan Spearing: Yep.

[01:07:52] Kyle Lamb: When the meek decide to pull out their sword, the evil better be watching out because they [01:08:00] will inherit the earth, and that’s the way it’s gonna be.

[01:08:03] Kyle Lamb: That’s the way it is. That’s what we have to be on the right side of the law. We know how to use all those weapons, yet we choose to only use them on who needs to have that done to ’em. You know what I mean?

[01:08:15] Nathan Spearing: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, I think one of those things that those of us that have studied violence and made it our craft for a large portion of our life understand the responsibility. I say anybody can shoot, I got to the point where I was paid not to, you know, and that understanding and, you know anybody can go in and blaze and let the belted weapons, run free and everything dies. I came up in Ranger battalion. That’s you send us into a valley, we got it. You know, we’ll take care of it. But that surgical aspect, that understanding that it has to be the least amount the escalation of force, from completely [01:09:00] calm and that when you read the Bible through that lens or through those personal experiences, you see it there.

[01:09:06] Nathan Spearing: I was just re reading Deuteronomy and they talk about in chapter 20, the law with regard to warfare and how they say, and this ties kind of back into what we were talking about earlier. They say If you have built a house but haven’t christened it. If you’re betrothed to a woman and you know, haven’t gotten married, and then it goes all the way down.

[01:09:25] Nathan Spearing: So you think about you have this force there ready to go out to war, and I’m, this is how I’m picturing it. So say you have 15,000 guys going to war, and they say, Hey, any of y’all got a house? Any y’all, you know, and these are probably the guys in their prime. You know, these are the 19, 20, 22 year olds. And you see these guys. Hey, the Lord says it’s more important that you go back and you marry and father children than go die in this battle. It’s more important that you go and build a house and crispen it and move into it and build this, and then it gets down and it says, any of you are fainthearted,[01:10:00] go back. And so there’s not any concern for there being a total number there. This is the things that you will, that are higher priority that you take care of before you go on to the battlefield. And then these are the thing. And then we don’t want a fainthearted person here because you’re gonna infect the others here and we’ve seen in times that God dwindled that number down to something that was very uncomfortable for the, even as an elite as they are, we’re going into this situation and you’ve taken all these numbers away and God never is concerned with the numbers of in the odds.

[01:10:39] Nathan Spearing: Yeah.

[01:10:40] Kyle Lamb: a perfect example that I wrote a chapter on Gideon, and it’s, you know, when you read about Gideon, everybody knows about Gideon, the 300 and lapping like dogs and all this stuff, but they don’t get to the part that really matters that he had to be reassured over and over and over and over again.

[01:10:57] Kyle Lamb: By God that he was supposed to really do this. Like, [01:11:00] okay got that last thing about the fire bursting out of the rock. That was pretty cool. But how about now you put some, I’m gonna lay a fleece on the threshing floor, and then there’ll be no moisture on that fleece. Okay, now tomorrow I want moisture.

[01:11:13] Kyle Lamb: You know, it’s like, dude, how many? And I, when I wrote that I also made the angel that came to him. I was very descriptive, like, what does this guy look like? Like, he’s got scars. He’s carrying a dagger cross draw, which I guess I don’t even have to say that cuz you, how else would you carry a dagger?

[01:11:30] Kyle Lamb: Right? but try, I want to try to give people a picture because for me, if I read the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, it’s a picture. I see it, I smell it, I feel it. And the thing is I, if I tell it and you smell it or see it differently than me, that’s fine. It becomes your story then. Because I have experiences that you don’t, you have experiences I don’t have.

[01:11:53] Kyle Lamb: So it’s gonna become your story by when I say that or when I talk about Esther and Mordecai, [01:12:00] man, picture this woman, I mean, think she was picked of all the women trying to be the queen. She was picked.

[01:12:08] Kyle Lamb: Holy cow. What does that tell you? I mean, she had to be some special gal to be the one, you know? And just

[01:12:16] Nathan Spearing: Safe to say she was a pretty good looking woman.

[01:12:18] Kyle Lamb: Yeah.

[01:12:18] Kyle Lamb: But I, what I try to do is get lessons learned from these stories that you may, maybe you didn’t think about, but it’s stuff that is on my heart when I get done thinking about David and be Sheba. It’s not that David had an affair with a married woman. That’s, that, that’s not even part of the discussion.

[01:12:38] Kyle Lamb: That woman was married to one of his mighty men.

[01:12:42] Kyle Lamb: He had one of his own men that he knew very well. He had him killed on the battlefield because of his lust. That is horrendous. And there’s so much more that comes out of that story if you dig into it.

[01:12:55] Kyle Lamb: I talk about Ahu, the assassin and the left-handed dude that killed King Alon. [01:13:00] and I go through the whole process of how he made his dagger because at that time the Jews couldn’t own iron, so they would’ve had to make that dagger outta bronze, how you would make a dagger outta bronze, you know, heating up copper and tin and melting it into a form.

[01:13:13] Kyle Lamb: And I didn’t know that when I started reading that. I didn’t know that. And I researched it and I’m like, oh, that’s how you make bronze. I had no idea. And I’ve been doing some forging here in the last few years. So that’s that hit home with me there too, trying to figure out, you know, just how that process works.

[01:13:29] Kyle Lamb: So I wrote that as part of the story. So when you read it you’re, you’ll learn about ahu, but you’ll also learn how to make bronze. And that’s kind of a cool thing to learn. I.

[01:13:39] Nathan Spearing: So what was the talk about, like, did you always know you were gonna write? How did that, you’ve written some books, you’ve written different things, but then you got this is probably a little bit different genre of things that you’re doing.

[01:13:54] Kyle Lamb: I knew I liked to write. I didn’t know that I was gonna end up writing books, but I liked, as a kid, I like to write and I like to [01:14:00] tell stories. I really like to tell stories, obviously. And writing is just being able to tell a story so that you don’t have to tell it every time you can let people read it.

[01:14:09] Kyle Lamb: This, I don’t even remember. I think it might have been ahu that kind of drove me to write this book. Because that story is, was so powerful to me, to what he did. I mean that you wanna talk about special operations, that dude is, he’s the man. I mean, how he got into the presence of the king and he got everybody to leave.

[01:14:29] Kyle Lamb: It was just a great story. And I know that was one of the first stories I wrote for this book because I’d let a couple of my friends that were preachers or missionaries read it and they’re like no, this is wrong. Historically, this is wrong. And then when they told me that, that’s when it expanded into making the sword out of bronze, which made the chapter an even better chapter than I was like, oh, well what other people would I wanna write about?

[01:14:55] Kyle Lamb: And there’s some people that you immediately are like, I gotta write about David and Goliath. Well, [01:15:00] okay, but what about Sampson?

[01:15:02] Kyle Lamb: I tried to write a chapter on Sampson. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t I couldn’t do it. So it’s gotta be stuff that you want to write about. Paul the

[01:15:09] Nathan Spearing: What was it? What was it about? About Sampson? Can you put your finger on it? Why

[01:15:15] Kyle Lamb: it just wasn’t a, there wasn’t, I couldn’t, I, it, I couldn’t tell the story. I couldn’t make it a good story.

[01:15:21] Kyle Lamb: It was just like, I’m not saying it’s a bad story. I’m just saying that I couldn’t make it something that I would want to read. And you can’t force, if you gotta force it, it’s never gonna work. So I’ll give you an example.

[01:15:35] Kyle Lamb: Joshua, you want to talk about a guy that wrote j his, it just writes itself, is the story of Joshua when he goes into the promised land with Cal Caleb, I believe was his sidekick, right? They were the only two dudes that had, that were allowed to live and go back into the Promised Land because when they did the original recce 40 years prior to that, they were the only two that came back and said, To their commander, who was [01:16:00] Moses.

[01:16:00] Kyle Lamb: They said, we can do this. And all the others were like, oh no, we can’t. There’s Mo or there’s Giants and there’s cities with, you know, huge gates and walls around and we can’t do this, we can’t do this. And they said, we can do it. And they were the only two that were allowed to eventually go to the promised Land.

[01:16:17] Nathan Spearing: I

[01:16:17] Kyle Lamb: then if you

[01:16:17] Nathan Spearing: the end of Joshua. What the inheritance that he got in the promised land too, like these city, like the pick of the cities.

[01:16:26] Kyle Lamb: When you think about though, just start out with his very first mission. So very first mission. Do you know what that was?

[01:16:33] Kyle Lamb: A town called Jericho.

[01:16:35] Kyle Lamb: And when he went into Jericho, there was two things. There was the infill, and the infill was across the Jordan.

[01:16:42] Kyle Lamb: We had crossed, you know, you, we, we know about some other river crossings that were pretty amazing, but the Jordan River was a pretty amazing river crossing as well, since it was the rainy season.

[01:16:53] Kyle Lamb: The river was swelled and God stopped the river. They crossed and then they got to their mss. And when he got to the [01:17:00] mss, it wasn’t like, okay, let’s prepare to go to Jericho. They said, all right, boys,

[01:17:04] Nathan Spearing: Circumcision.

[01:17:06] Kyle Lamb: it’s that time. And they all had to get circumcised, like, bro, I’m not sure how many dudes in the unit would’ve said before they hit Baghdad.

[01:17:13] Kyle Lamb: They gotta get circumcised if they would’ve done it, you know? So then they go into Jericho and I don’t wanna ruin the story, but people should read it. When they went into Jericho, they, or they went around Jericho, really. But when they originally went into Jericho to do the reconnaissance, they met up with a prostitute named Rayhab.

[01:17:30] Kyle Lamb: And these couple of. recce troupe guys ended up at her house. I don’t know what happened there, but they ended up at her house and she said, would you do me a favor and when you come in here, not kill my family, cuz they told her everybody would die. So they hung something out the window cuz she lived on the wall, the exterior side of Jericho.

[01:17:52] Kyle Lamb: So they were able to exfil out her window, she hit her, hid them up on her roof initially, but she was able to display where she was at so that her [01:18:00] family in her house wouldn’t be killed. She’s the great grandmother of a guy named Jesse, who is the father of King David.

[01:18:08] Kyle Lamb: That’s amazing. So there’s, I mean, there’s just so many great stories that

[01:18:11] Nathan Spearing: that it, when you look at the Bible, you know, it’s, it is impossible to not see the greatest author and story writer ever just on full display. Like you can’t peel back. There’s infinite layers. these connections, to these lineages, to these circumstances that are, that, that are verifiable and also impossible. That it all fits together like this. , and it’s why a guy like Jordan Peters can read it and just be like it’s everything, , but yet, doesn’t know what to do with it like he’s such a smart guy and he still is blown away by it. And then still, but they can’t figure it out cuz it’s just infinitely deep, you know?

[01:18:59] Kyle Lamb: Well, it’s, you know, [01:19:00] that, so that goes to Paul the Apostle. So when Paul, who at the time was called Saul of Tarsis, right? So he didn’t believe because, and I don’t know this as a fact, but I have my thought process. Thomas Sowell, do you know who that is? Super awesome writer. I would highly recommend watching his videos.

[01:19:18] Kyle Lamb: His books are a bit difficult to read, but he calls ’em the intelligentsia. The intelligentsia has a harder time believing facts than those of us that are not the intelligentsia are part of academia because we have experience in the real world. So we tend to be able to. use our experiences and know that Yeah that’s a possibility, right?

[01:19:41] Kyle Lamb: I believe that at the time, Saul of Tarsis was probably fit squarely into being part of the intelligentsia because he was a lawyer. So he had a lot of schooling. He was traveling around and he was ridiculing the Christians. And one of the things the, one of the, well, one of the only stories we really know about him bef in his [01:20:00] pre-Christian days was when he held the coat as guys stoned.

[01:20:05] Kyle Lamb: Steven, I think is who they stoned, right? And he stood by and smiled as they, they killed this guy. And here’s a guy who’s extremely intelligent, part of that academic structure of Jerusalem at the time and part of the Roman Empire. He ends up on the road to Damascus, I believe. And he has a run in with a very bright light.

[01:20:28] Kyle Lamb: It took that to convince him of what God was. So what is it gonna take to convince Jordan Peterson?

[01:20:36] Kyle Lamb: What’s it gonna take to convince some of these other people that are these intellectuals? And you have guys, like I said, Thomas Sowell, he’s a Christian. Thomas Sowell was a Marxist, and people that don’t know who he is you should check him out.

[01:20:48] Kyle Lamb: He he was a Marxist, who then, as he studied Marxism, he realized that this doesn’t work.

[01:20:55] Kyle Lamb: And the left hates that because, you know, he was one of them. And [01:21:00] then now he’s become, you know, he’s went more to the center or he even to the right. He’s a black dude,

[01:21:05] Kyle Lamb: Severely educated. I mean, he’s educated beyond belief and just unbelievably intelligent fella.

[01:21:12] Kyle Lamb: And He’s an easy guy for those guys to hate because he’s he sees it through experience and studying, you know, studying the problem of of the economy and of crime and all the things that are important to us in society. And incredible guy to read.

[01:21:28] Nathan Spearing: So talk about how you fit it all in real quick. We can. I know you got lots to do, lots on your plate and you’ve, you fit this interview in, but like how are you mentioned to me in one of the phone calls that we had, you’re concerned with the last 48 hours and kind of what’s on your plate that week.

[01:21:43] Nathan Spearing: As a man of God, as a guy that’s got a bunch of mission. In his notebook that he’s trying to accomplish. This podcast is life on target. It’s, hitting the mark, taking aim, and hitting the mark, which you understand how much effort it takes to shoot that x,

[01:21:59] Nathan Spearing: [01:22:00] so what do, what are your personal practices for doing that kind of thing?

[01:22:03] Kyle Lamb: so first of all, I get a lot of requests to, to be on podcasts. And when I first found out you were a former unit dude, I was like, okay, I really don’t want to do this podcast. You know, cuz what are we gonna talk about? It’s gonna be like, oh, beat our chest, or whatever. And then when I went to your website and I’m like, yeah, I think I wanna be on this podcast because we, there’s a, a mission bigger than us, and I think that’s, you know, when we talk about the mission that’s in written in my notebook.

[01:22:33] Kyle Lamb: And what I talked about earlier in this podcast was get up every day. And try to do, and this is hard, this, and this is one of the struggles I have. Get up every day and do something to make somebody else’s day better. Not your day, somebody else’s. All it takes is a text, a phone call, an email. I mean, a phone call is probably best, but a lot of times that’s not possible.

[01:22:56] Kyle Lamb: So just send a text to somebody. So that’s the first thing that needs to [01:23:00] happen. The second thing is try to priorit, prioritize and be honest about prioritizing your life. This is, that’s one I really struggle with because I have little shiny objects that keep popping up, and I’m like a monkey. I see a shine, shiny object.

[01:23:14] Kyle Lamb: I want to grab a hold of it. But that shiny object is not going to help you in your mission. So if it doesn’t apply to your mission, you shouldn’t, you just, you shouldn’t do it.

[01:23:24] Kyle Lamb: I’m not gonna go much deeper into that because that’s, you’ve gotta figure that out. I just know that’s a struggle.

[01:23:29] Kyle Lamb: That that I have there. And then the other thing is what can you do to make yourself better? Like, to make yourself better for other people? What is there that you can do? You can, you know, you talk about getting up and reading the Bible, that’s important. You can study history. That’s important.

[01:23:48] Kyle Lamb: You can do physical fitness. That’s important. You can go hunting that’s gonna make you, and people would say, oh, well, that’s a selfish thing. Well, if I go in the woods for two hours, I’m a better person when I come out. [01:24:00] And if I, and my wife knows that, so she’s like, yeah, go hang out in the woods for a while.

[01:24:05] Kyle Lamb: Go for a walk in the woods. My wife and I, you know, get up every morning, go for a walk. And that’s one thing that helps too. Like get, you know, get something going where you can kind of clear your mind and get ready to. My wife always says, I’m gonna rock this day. And she does. She gets up, she works out.

[01:24:21] Kyle Lamb: She. Cooks an awesome breakfast for us, for me cuz she’s normally doesn’t eat what I’m eating, but she makes me our eggs and bacon and coffee and great breakfast and then boom. Then we hit it and we go hard. My wife is running the warehouse, she’s got other stuff going on. She’s got the grandkids here right now.

[01:24:39] Kyle Lamb: And I look at her for my inspiration too cuz I’m like, this lady can, she’s got that puritan work ethic that I have to really concentrate on to have and then get out there and do it. If you, when guys are in the military, they think, especially in our former outfit, they think that they’re gonna get outta the military and they’re just gonna get, people are just gonna give ’em money just to be cool and [01:25:00] hang around and drink coffee, I guess.

[01:25:01] Kyle Lamb: But bottom line is there’s plenty of dudes that can hang around and drink coffee. They need people that can work. So we have to work every day hard at whatever our job is. If you are in the military and you get out, I would ask you to try to do something that you love to do. And that doesn’t mean it’s gotta be in the military vein of things.

[01:25:20] Kyle Lamb: It can be like what you’re doing. You’re solving problems and you love that. I know you do because you have, at the beginning of the day, you have a mission set and you’re trying to get through that, or at the beginning of the month, the beginning of the year, whatever it might be, your wife has a different mission set and she’s handling, you know, she’s got all those kids to take care of and then she’s gotta take care of you.

[01:25:41] Kyle Lamb: The most difficult kid in the bunch. She’s gotta, she’s got to have that list on her mission set. So, I don’t know if that answers your question, but have a mission to every day get up and have a mission. I know what I did and what I’ve, what I did a couple days ago. I know what I’m gonna do today and I’m [01:26:00] trying to figure out what I’m gonna do tomorrow and the day after.

[01:26:02] Kyle Lamb: But it can’t be if you. . Like we just got back from vacation, family vacation that my wife had booked, and then we couldn’t go because of Covid, but we finally got to go to Turks and Caicos, hang out on the beach. My brain was going the whole time. I was coming up with things that I needed to do when I got back.

[01:26:22] Kyle Lamb: I wasn’t just shut off like nothing happening. I’ve always, I’m always trying to focus on what that next mission is. At that point, I had a deal where I was doing some leadership consulting. As soon as I got back and I was going through that process, what do I, you know, what am I gonna talk to these people about, have something going on in your brain if it’s just like, whoa is me and I feel bad about myself.

[01:26:45] Kyle Lamb: Yeah. That’s gonna end badly. I’m gonna tell you right now, I’ve seen that story over and over. I do wanna, I do want to hit on something else too, and I hope you’re okay with me saying this. If you’re not, you can delete it when I get done saying it. In our world, the. Veteran world. One thing that keeps coming up that [01:27:00] I keep seeing is a lot of drinking.

[01:27:02] Kyle Lamb: And what I would challenge you guys out there with, I’m not telling you need to stop drinking. I’m not, that’s not what I’m gonna say, but you need to get control of that because if you’re struggling with depression, alcohol is a depressant. And I’m not trying to be your dad or your mom or your grandpa or whatever.

[01:27:19] Kyle Lamb: But what I’m saying is stop with that because it’s only gonna make things worse. There’s other things that you can do than drink. Get past that. And the next part of that is if you run a veterans organization, what I challenge you with is take alcohol off the menu. Because when you bring a bunch of veterans together and they all get together to start telling stories, , then all of a sudden, oh, open bar, everybody get liquored up and then all of a sudden you’ve put guys in a bad place.

[01:27:51] Kyle Lamb: And somehow you think that’s how you think that’s a good thing. I don’t know. Once again, I don’t care if people drink. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m just saying that we’re bringing men [01:28:00] together or veterans together. We’re gonna talk about the good old days or the bad old days or whatever.

[01:28:05] Kyle Lamb: You, however you wanna perceive them. And then you’re gonna take and start down in a depressant and it’s just gonna get worse and worse. So there’s other things that we can do other than that, you know, we can, let’s meet and go hunting. Let’s meet and go fishing. Let’s meet and go or whatever. I mean, there’s a lot of other things that we can do other than that.

[01:28:25] Nathan Spearing: No that’s really good. I, whenever I was leaving the military, I went. Walter Reed for a month. And when I joined the military, I didn’t drink at all. And I just, it was one of those things that was like, Nope, don’t do it. Don’t do it. You know? And then as time go went on it, it became more part of my life than before.

[01:28:49] Nathan Spearing: And I had this army psych, you know, lady say, you’re medicating with alcohol to me. And I was like, nah, you know, it’s [01:29:00] just two beers. It’s just whatever. But she says, why are you, how are you using it though? You know? And that’s ultimately the thing is I’m coming in. It was a hard day’s work. I’m, you know, the deal, we are, we’re, we’ve maxed out our mental capacity and physical capacity.

[01:29:17] Nathan Spearing: And you walk into the room and their kids are hollering and stuff needs to be done and it’s just crack a beer open. To just kind of deaden things a little bit. And it could be one beer, it’s not about, and that’s, and every time if you’re with a guy that’s like, oh, I only drink this much, and you’re immediately pointing to the quantity and using that as the benchmark, you’re, you need to think again, you know, what is the purpose?

[01:29:46] Nathan Spearing: And I think that you see that in the Bible, that, hey, when you bring your tithe and there’s these feastings and that, drinking was a part of that in some ways. But was it every night at dinner? Was it, you know, a bunch on Friday night? [01:30:00] Was it, what’s the trend? And then what is the purpose of that? And why? Ultimately I’ve heard some really good preaching about the Holy Spirit is you’re deadening the Holy Spirit at a proportion of how much you’re doing that. And I, you know, that’s, I’m not saying it as eloquently as some of these pastors are, but when you are. Taking this kind of substance, any substance at all and all, and using it to kind of alter a state, you know, and that’s why I think like some of those breathing exercises is an exercise in general, and getting out into the fresh air and these things, like, I never felt better.

[01:30:34] Nathan Spearing: I, I remember waking up the first morning after, it’d been two or like a week or so in the program, no drinking, no meds, nothing. And I’m sleeping and I woke up and I heard the birds after a good night’s sleep, I did some breathing stuff to get, calmed down. I don’t look at screens these behaviors, and I got sleep.

[01:30:56] Nathan Spearing: I hadn’t been sleeping well, , I hadn’t hadn’t been working out as much. I’d [01:31:00] been, I’d gone from, one beer three nights a week to one or two every single night, and that even is. Is maybe just below the threshold of alcoholism or whatever, but that trend and then that what the reason you’re doing it.

[01:31:13] Nathan Spearing: And it’s really hard to go work out instead of pop a beer, you know? But if I don’t wanna work out and I move some heavy stuff around and I breathe some clean air, then I’m ready to say, I’m gonna rock this day. I’m in, in the same shoes as your wife.

[01:31:26] Nathan Spearing: If you didn’t do that it’s simple but not easy. So I think that’s a really good word. I think that applies to everybody,

[01:31:33] Kyle Lamb: That sleep. So. So what do you do to help you?

[01:31:38] Nathan Spearing: Well, the the stuff that they talked about there was that I think the best thing I’ve talked about it there’s a podcast that Jocko does with Andrew Huberman, and it’s called, it’s Take Ownership of Your Physiology. and he talks about how every cell in our body is a clock. And for those of us that believe that our bodies were wonderfully made and knit [01:32:00] together in our mother’s womb and that before we were born, God knew us the reality that every cell in our body is on a clock.

[01:32:06] Nathan Spearing: And he said, ultimately, you’re trying to get those, all those cells on the same clock. So these other foreign substances and these different things that their diet and all that. And the thing that gets your body on that clock is sunlight. So he’s really big about getting the light from the sun in the morning, a good amount, you know, and then stopping the light from, you know, that understanding of your your phones or doing things to your clock.

[01:32:32] Nathan Spearing: And so that was some of the sleep hygiene stuff there is putting the phone away earlier, even though you got, you can turn night mode on and stuff. Like, there’s these artificial things that are changing our body’s clock and to go to that, and then that diet enforces it exercise and all of it is essentially to try to get your body on that natural clock where all that melatonin’s released and you get groggy and you tank off.

[01:32:56] Nathan Spearing: And caffeine’s a big thing they told us at the Nico thing, like, [01:33:00] you’re drinking caffeine in the afternoon. It’s affecting sleep. You know, like I was like, oh, I’m just, I was getting ice coffee at three 30, you know, I wasn’t an energy drink guy, but I was getting ice coffees at 3, 3 30. And they’re like, you got this caffeine, it’s bonding to different cells.

[01:33:13] Nathan Spearing: It’s causing these things to happen at the brain level and it’s just, it’s infinitely complex. But that if I’m working out. Five times a week. And it doesn’t have to be even, that’s been a hard thing for me to, cuz you, you worked out for two or three hours, you know, sometimes, cuz that was the only thing you had to do.

[01:33:29] Nathan Spearing: So to realize that it’s okay to just get 15, 20 minutes a good sweat on maybe 10 minutes even. And then eating well and not having any of these artificial And then I, we are in the, we’re out on the land, we’re in the bus, we don’t have a whole lot of lights. Anyway, so our family goes to bed a lot earlier now, with the sun.

[01:33:48] Nathan Spearing: My, my body’s, my clock is set and I don’t even have to set that alarm almost. And I’m, you know, I could maybe go back to sleep if I don’t, but it’s. But it takes work. It takes kind of [01:34:00] executing the same week over and over again, those habits and saying, all right, this is the point where everything gets put away and I’m still not good with the devices.

[01:34:08] Nathan Spearing: I could be a lot better

[01:34:10] Kyle Lamb: I think so the device thing, see I kind of disagree with that one. I think it’s what you’re looking at on the device. Because if I don’t do any, anything on the internet, but I read on my device because it’s that way. I’m not keeping my wife awake. I was reading real books in bed and then I was like, okay, I’m keeping her awake because of that.

[01:34:29] Kyle Lamb: I’m just gonna use my iPad to read and I’ve got it set on the black setting and all that. But I was medicating taking Advil PM and man it helped, but then it. Started screwing my stomach up and all that. So then my daughter was like, dad, have you tried any tea? And I thought tea, I I’m not a big tea guy.

[01:34:46] Kyle Lamb: Well, I started taking tea with little ginger sliced up in it and makes my stomach feel good. It’s, and that has really helped me. And I, so I’ve very rarely do I have to take anything now to sleep. Same thing. Just have a busy day. [01:35:00] Then the other thing I’ll tell people that has helped me is if you have thoughts that keep coming into your head, if you’ll just get out of bed and go write them down,

[01:35:09] Kyle Lamb: You’ll go right to sleep.

[01:35:11] Kyle Lamb: Cuz that’s one of the struggles I have is some nights I’m like, man, I gotta remember to do this or this. I get up, I go get my notebook, I write whatever it is down, and then I go back to bed and I sleep. I sleep like a baby at that point. So yeah, there’s, I think there’s ways to do it other than booze or whatever, but Yeah, if you’re tired and you go to bed, I know when I’m hunting and I’ve had a rough day out hiking up and down hills.

[01:35:33] Kyle Lamb: I sleep like, I sleep, like I’m dead.

[01:35:36] Nathan Spearing: . Yep. Do more work, work harder. Probably is something that those people that are having trouble with it could incorporate. So, well, I know you got the grandkids there, and I don’t want to take any more of your time. I I hope that the Lord, I know the Lord will use this conversation and the wisdom that you’ve had you know, hard, hard-earned and sometimes given to you double barrel by your wife and you’d being just smart enough to listen.

[01:35:59] Nathan Spearing: And thank you so [01:36:00] much for the time and spending it here. And the beauty of podcasting as it can, just like a book, it can continue to give value. So thanks for helping with this podcast and helping us and look forward to how God has continued to follow. Closer, and cheering from the sidelines and thank you very much.

[01:36:18] Kyle Lamb: Yeah, keep doing what you’re doing, man and yeah, be positive like you are. Speak the truth and have a mission. That’s it.

[01:36:25] Nathan Spearing: Awesome. Thank you so much.

[01:36:28] Nathan Spearing: There you have it. My interview with Kyle Lamb. Hopefully it was as impactful to you as it was to me having that discussion with him a month or so ago. Please share it with a friend of yours that it may help. Let’s continue to build each other up and to find our mission, to find our purpose, to get up every day, to make ourselves better so that we can serve other people.

[01:36:56] Nathan Spearing: And be sure to check out the show [01:37:00] notes at my website, spearing.co or in the description below and rate and review the podcast, let others know about the work that we’re doing here at Life On Target. And as always, have a good one.

[01:37:12]

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Ep. 62 | The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth w/ Kyle Lamb

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