Ep. 42: Ian Eishen | The Intersection of Military Service, Leadership, and Technology

Have you ever pondered the profound impact of relationships, networking, and mentorship in shaping your professional journey? We invite you to share a thought-provoking conversation with our guest, Ian Eishen, a seasoned Air Force veteran, who taps into his rich experiences of over two decades in service to illuminate these facets. This episode promises to offer more than just insights - it's a stirring exploration of the power of motivation, the nuances of identity, and the significance of authenticity in effective leadership.

We journey alongside Ian as he navigates through his military life, emphasizing the importance of identity and how it can be harnessed to uplift others. His late decision to join the Air Force truly underscores how open doors of opportunities can be found in the most unexpected places. We delve into the art of creating lasting impressions, emphasizing authenticity as the backbone of leadership. The discussion then takes a fascinating turn towards the role of AI and communication in leadership education, shedding light on how storytelling and the choice of font can make a difference in digital communication.

We round off this enlightening conversation by addressing the necessity of comprehending complex subjects and simplifying them for others. Drawing from Ian's wisdom, we emphasize the importance of documenting and sharing knowledge, as well as the value of generosity beyond personal gains. A powerful blend of military experiences, leadership lessons, technology insights, and communication strategies, this episode promises a riveting experience. So, get ready to change the way you perceive mentorship, leadership, and networking with Ian Eishen.

Connect with Passing The Torch: Facebook and IG: @torchmartin

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Transcript

Martin Foster: 0:00

Anytime you feel like you reached the ceiling, consider that maybe the ceiling is just a floor to something else. My guest on this episode of Passing the Torch is Ian Eishen. He joined the Air Force in the year 2000 and served on active duty for over 23 years. During this time, he spent a large portion of his career developing talent management, prototypes at the tactical and operational levels and identifying and testing emerging technologies against strategic problems across the Department of Defense. In summary, he's accomplished a lot and is all that in a bag of chips Without further ado. Passing the Torch with Ian Eishen starts now. First and foremost, welcome to the show and thank you for joining me. This episode has been two years in the making. Hey, speaking of celebrating, this is our first time meeting in the world.

Ian Eishen: 1:03

It is. How crazy is that it is. I appreciate you inviting me.

Martin Foster: 1:06

I literally just finished up an episode with Lee Ellis which you got to witness.

Ian Eishen: 1:09

It's a hero I can't interrupt that.

Martin Foster: 1:16

I only had 30 minutes with him, so I was like man, there's all these different things.

Martin Foster: 1:21

I was just honored to have 30 minutes but I was telling him in my bag I have my personal notebook that I might do a list, but within that I have a podcast section. I've had this podcast for going on six years. In January it'll be six years I wrote out a guest list of 50 or 100. It's a lot of people. You've been on that list for a while, I remember. I know, even though we just met in person for the first time and then I called you, I don't know Friday or Saturday or whenever, it was last week, but I felt like over the past couple of years there's been a lot of messaging back and forth about, yeah, I felt like our relationship predates this, just because of that's the nice thing about social media you can get to know somebody long before you ever actually meet them and you can develop a relationship.

Ian Eishen: 2:12

It doesn't mean it'll automatically happen, but you can. If you put in the effort, you could actually develop a real relationship. And then meeting in person at some point is just another piece on that journey. But there's plenty of airmen that I know that I've only met through social media. We've talked for years. I know them, I know their families, I know a lot about them. I've still never met them in person. At some point that'll happen, it just hasn't yet.

Martin Foster: 2:35

We have a ton of mutual friends, one being Shaun H R Lee, but he speaks so highly of you.

Ian Eishen: 2:43

That's a cool guy. Now he's a good officer. I got to hang out with him as a lieutenant and, while he was a captain, and work with him on a bunch of projects and do some stuff for Syria and Iraq. We got to do a lot of real mission and so it was a lot of late nights and a lot of this is in Germany. Right, this is in Germany. Yep, we were both at Ramstein, so a lot of stressful nights, a lot of him specifically developing as a leader and learning how to transition from a lieutenant to a captain and then getting DO level responsibility as a captain and having to operate at that level and how to just continue to grow. And so he did amazing and he's a guy I'd work for anytime.

Martin Foster: 3:19

Oh, 100%, 100%. And so he speaks very highly of you. And then one of my close friends, jake Kearney Chief Kearney now he's down at Lackland, but he was when Shaun Lee was a squadron commander. Kearney was his squadron SEO. But hey, I want to read this quote because, well, first and foremost, this is what Shaun Lee gave me when I was promoted last year.

Ian Eishen: 3:42

Oh, yeah, he does that.

Martin Foster: 3:43

He never says nice things to my face. It's always in writing or he talks trash to my face nice things behind my back. But I have this black book and you heard me talking to Lee Ellis earlier, so I read Leading with Honor. It's part of a book club. Shout out to Susan Mace. Bought this book, started reading books, writing down my thoughts. Every time I read a book I take notes on that book. It's full of quotes, but I was going through it earlier or last night and there's a quote I saw on there and I thought it was fitting for you.

Ian Eishen: 4:17

Okay.

Martin Foster: 4:19

It's, my episode is anytime you feel like, and I don't have a source for it. So what was credits?

Ian Eishen: 4:23

The internet, the internet.

Martin Foster: 4:24

Okay, I'm not even flinking, I don't know. Anytime you feel like you reached the ceiling, consider that maybe the ceiling is just a floor to something else.

Ian Eishen: 4:34

That's good. I wish I would have said it.

Martin Foster: 4:36

Yeah, I'll quote you.

Ian Eishen: 4:37

Okay, yeah, I'll say it later. Michael Scott, martin Foster.

Martin Foster: 4:41

Martin Foster, Shaun HR Lee, we'll do the. Michael Scott, when I do the audio episode or the audio recording, I'm just going to read your bio.

Ian Eishen: 4:51

Okay, look at that, it's a long bio.

Martin Foster: 4:52

I did my research on you.

Ian Eishen: 4:54

Yeah, I didn't write that bio.

Martin Foster: 4:56

There's a website that I found that had. I went on LinkedIn and LinkedIn it says but there was a website. Oh, for your company.

Ian Eishen: 5:04

Is it Aleria? Yep, aleria, yeah.

Martin Foster: 5:07

Well, all that said, I'm not even going to edit most of the most of the stuff I'm going to keep in. Yeah, sure, appreciate it. I'm going to go ahead and put my suitcase over to my right and, yeah, I'm just gonna try to do as many episodes as I can. You should. You've got everybody in one place.

Ian Eishen: 5:19

I know, and everybody's here, they're ready to talk. The meetings are only, you know, mostly on the floor having discussions, and so there's plenty of opportunity and everybody's in that mode where they're willing to talk and teach and have a good time, and so these are some of the best places to learn, and the things that you hear will provide value, hopefully, to somebody else, and so if you can capture some of that and keep it for someone else to listen to, it's even better.

Martin Foster: 5:43

Not great. Besides hanging out with me doing a podcast and drinking in an old fashion, please describe my life is great right now.

Ian Eishen: 5:50

My life is great right now, so I'm recently retired and it's not great because I'm retired. I actually loved the Air Force. I had a blast in the Air Force. I did 23 years but I got out because I had a son in high school who wanted to be at the same high school and was actually doing really well, and so every military parent kind of understands there's a time where you've got to leave. And he finally he's gone with me to so many other bases. We got here to the Pentagon, had a great job, great role here, loved it, and about four months in he said hey, I know we're going to have to move because we've been talking about maybe moving again and, by the way, we've been here four months. He said I know we're going to have to move, but I'm starting freshman year and I actually really like my school and so if there's any way we could not move, that would be cool. Those were his exact words.

Martin Foster: 6:36

What's your son's name, caden? That's really responsible, especially at 14 or 15.

Ian Eishen: 6:40

I thought so too. So I immediately turned to my wife and I was like, well, crap, like now we got actually Like that was not a thing. I was thinking at the time. Just coming from Edwards, I came here to the Pentagon again, was really enjoying my job. I was writing an emerging tech strategy for General Brown and getting to travel all over the place and I mean it was a great responsibility and a great job. And so when he came and said that I realized man, that's rough. He's actually doing well, because he'd been home school before that and this was his first time back in public school for a while and he was doing so well with it. I realized, ok, now we've got to try something.

Ian Eishen: 7:11

So I started to look at, could I stay here local and stay in the Air Force? And there's ways to do it, but it's difficult. There's kind of a path and everybody kind of needs to move on that path. And at a certain point I realized that it was just going to be very difficult for me to stay active, duty, stay in a single position and actually hold up that position for other people, because it was a great developmental position, I learned a ton, and so I needed to free that up so that someone else could take advantage of that as well, and so the best thing for me was to get out, and I was actually having a blast.

Ian Eishen: 7:41

I didn't want to stay longer and risk maybe getting disgruntled or maybe being in a different situation, and so leave while I'm having fun and where I'm in DC, where I can actually provide for my family and take care of them and give my kid four years at the same high school. That was the goal, and so I was able to achieve that goal. He started his junior year a few weeks ago. He's loving it, he's having a great time, and that was the goal, that was the whole reason, and so to be able to do that that's why life is great.

Martin Foster: 8:08

Yeah, especially in the DC area, it seems like it's such a cool place to go to high school and get to experience.

Ian Eishen: 8:12

I mean history.

Martin Foster: 8:13

When you're studying history in high school, it's like hey, look out to the window. Kids, that's it.

Ian Eishen: 8:17

Yeah, but they don't care. 16, he doesn't care.

Martin Foster: 8:21

Well, now they can learn the history of TikTok, or whatever.

Ian Eishen: 8:23

He's not going to understand it until later, but I will say, coming to DC and not commuting is awesome. Dc's a great place to be. Northern Virginia is an amazing place to be If you don't have to commute, you're not sitting in traffic for two hours a day, so, and I'm not doing that.

Martin Foster: 8:37

My brother-in-law, my sister's husband. He's in the army. Eight years ago he was stationed at the Pentagon. He lived in Arlington, virginia, in a place called the Village. Distance-wise I think it was eight miles, but it would take him over an hour to get there.

Ian Eishen: 8:53

There's no need for that, yeah.

Martin Foster: 8:54

So he started taking the metro and stuff. I showed you your bio that I'm going to read for the audio portion of this.

Ian Eishen: 8:59

Yeah, it's long.

Martin Foster: 9:00

It's long, but that's all the stuff that you do. I'm trying to capture everything. But when meeting someone for the first time, how do you explain what you do? Because I've listened to you on different podcasts. I remember when you were active duty you started the Air Force quarantine, so I've been following you for a couple of years, but you do it in a good way. You do it a lot. I've seen you do TED Talks but, yeah, how do you explain what you do?

Ian Eishen: 9:22

What I do now.

Martin Foster: 9:24

Just when meeting someone for the first time, because I feel like you're an innovation guy. You're a guy that just a strategic thinker, but more than a strategic thinker, you're someone who puts like. To me you are innovation. Because in the Air Force, there's a lot of buzz terms, and innovation being one of them. To me, innovation is more than just the idea, it's the action of the plan. You're someone who personifies the action of like, hey, and if it fails, it fails, but we're going to try this out. But that's just a small explanation. But, yeah, again, you've accomplished so much. How do you explain what you did in the military and also what you do now?

Ian Eishen: 10:03

Yeah, I think, first off, if you were to come and ask me what do I do and I say my name is Ian, I personify something. That would be a weird way to answer any question, and so I guess it would depend on you. Know, if it's here, I say my name's Ian at a deep tech startup and then if they want to talk about that, we'll talk about that. If they want to talk, oh, then they go. Why are you here hanging out with the Air Force? Then maybe I'll talk about you know, I retired from the Air Force last year, but that was another. That was a purposeful decision that I made. When I got out, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't.

Ian Eishen: 10:35

I held the rank of chief. I held the rank of senior NCO for a long time. It was great. It's been great for my family. I know a lot of people. I've been able to do some things with that, but I don't consider myself like retired.

Ian Eishen: 10:47

Chief is not the thing that I am. It is a thing that's built me to this point. The relationships and the experience I got are what allows me to do the things I do now. Ian, like I'm Ian, I'm a father, I'm a husband. My family's still around, so I'm a son All those things. I happen to work at a deep tech startup. I used to work in the Air Force and it contributed a lot to my life and so I really do that represents a lot of me. I'm not a chief in that sense. It's just the rank that I got to hold. That was a cool thing that I got to do, and so it's still weird walking around here and people calling me that, but that's just a cool thing I got to do, and now I get to use that to help other people. So it all depends on the context, and so I didn't really answer your question completely.

Martin Foster: 11:33

No, it's good, I'll take it.

Ian Eishen: 11:35

But yeah, that's probably what I would say.

Martin Foster: 11:37

I was thinking about that on the drive down here because I told you I had a 7 and 1 half hour drive, so I really just started getting active on LinkedIn. I had a LinkedIn for years. It had my job duties from past DPRs and all that stuff, but I was like that's not who I am. So I actually changed my profile to say podcaster and networker, because I feel like that's what I want to be. That's who I am kind of now at this stage, and how I'm leveraging my rank and my position is to network and collaborate, because it provides a platform to help out other people, which, to me, is something that you've done, whether you were active duty at was it Edwards or Beale I was at both.

Martin Foster: 12:16

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right, that's what I do to your son. You moved around a lot, but that is because I remember messaging you a couple years ago. I was like damn dude, are you leaving again?

Ian Eishen: 12:25

Yeah, so I was at Beale for about three years, Did Edwards for two after that and then the Pentagon for two.

Martin Foster: 12:29

Yeah, but yeah, it's just using the platform, because I've met people where their rank is who they are and they introduce them, even at a random restaurant. They'll be like, oh, I'm so-and-so based off rank.

Ian Eishen: 12:42

There's nothing wrong with doing that. Everybody identifies differently, and so some people identify as their sports team the thing that they love or their hobby. That's them Taking away or judging somebody for the way they identify I could never do. I just don't identify that way.

Ian Eishen: 12:57

I also don't identify as a fan of a certain football team, even though I am, but that's not how I identify, and that's not the first thing that I would bring up in a conversation, because it's not so important in my life that I need to bring it up in the conversation. And so I think the first thing that people usually bring up is a thing that's very important to them, and you can tell a lot by somebody by what they do. Now, if you'd ask me that question, I was sitting here in uniform, or I was here as a representative of the Air Force, and I probably would have answered that question differently, because I'm here representing the Air Force, I have this rank and I have this uniform on for a reason, and so you're not asking me for fun, it's no, I'm defying it and I work over here and this is what I do, but that's because it's more of a professional environment. But if we were just sitting next to each other at the bar and you asked me who are you? Me?

Martin Foster: 13:45

And that's it. You said a couple of things. That's a couple of key words, but we talked about just identifying yourself. Can you please describe your childhood? And then also, what was your curiosity growing up?

Ian Eishen: 13:57

I don't know the curiosity thing, I don't know. I had an oldest of six kids my dad had. He worked as an air conditioning repair guy. He taught air conditioning repair HVAC at a community college. So he did that my entire life, had a couple of side hustles where he went and did consulting work for air conditioning, refrigeration. And then he did, he wrote a lot of the state testing for air conditioning refrigeration and started writing software to help that testing and so it was like a what I would consider like an old version of an LMS to do automatic testing and things like that. So we always had these side hustles, but that's what he did and so he did that through my entire career or my entire life.

Ian Eishen: 14:37

And then, yeah, I joined the Air Force right after going to. I went to college for two months, tried the college thing, realized that I wasn't paying attention, didn't want to pay money to go do a thing that I wasn't really taken advantage of, and Air Force seemed like a decent opportunity and so, you know, at the last minute I joined and then ended up sticking around for 23 years. But yeah, I mean we grew up in Dallas, texas, and oldest is six kids, so I had all those kids around, kind of helping them grow up, and my parents divorced when I was like 11. And so a lot of time, you know, single family or single parent and trying to help, you know, take care of six kids.

Martin Foster: 15:13

Now I think I know we're roughly the same age. I went to college for three years and I was like oh, you did a little more than me. Yeah, but then I was thinking I should have joined the Air Force three years ago and I think about where I'd be now. You know I'd be at 24 years and, like you know, you do the math for retirement and all that stuff. Yeah.

Ian Eishen: 15:28

I mean sure, sure, but you're on the path. You're on for a reason, and you know you would have been totally different If I hadn't have done my last assignment. I'd be in a different position than I am now If I hadn't have done one before. That, like each one of those assignments, is what makes you you. So it's really hard to second guess. Should I have done it? Should I have not? You can't control it anyway, and so I mean you could waste time thinking about it, but I think you know you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that path, and so it is the path regardless.

Martin Foster: 15:55

As I mentioned earlier, I've done quite a bit of research on you.

Ian Eishen: 16:01

Okay, so I have a question.

Martin Foster: 16:03

So I called a mutual friend of ours. I won't say who Aisha is gonna be on my podcast. What's the question I can ask him that he hasn't really discussed another part of it. Okay, okay, you're like you gotta ask him about this, but when I say the word handcuffs, what comes to mind?

Ian Eishen: 16:17

Oh, he's talking about handcuffs that I had in the office so you could pick handcuffs throughout. You know, if you're sitting there kind of like a fidget spinner, you know you're sitting there thinking you're trying to figure things out and you just need something for your hands, and so I would have to set a couple different handcuffs and you could pick those and try to figure out how to get out of them. So that's what he's talking about, cause if it was something else, I'm not trying to, it is, it is it is about handcuffs.

Martin Foster: 16:41

I think it's obviously you know who I'm talking about. But so would you ever have like be messing with handcuffs when someone's coming to your office and you're meeting them for the first time? Sure, so was there like a, was that like intentional, or was that maybe like no it literally was a fidget spinner.

Ian Eishen: 16:56

It's. I have a. I have a hard time paying attention to one thing you can call it. Maybe it's OCD, maybe it's ADHD, I don't know. There's never a situation where I'm it's very hard for me to focus on this one thing and not do anything else. Gonna be whiteboarding, I'm gonna be right notes, I'm gonna be doing something, and so that was it. Literally was like a fidget spinner to just something to keep my hands occupied.

Martin Foster: 17:17

That was cool, I think, just kind of like a I envision like a mad scientist type thing, right, like hey, I gotta just work on stuff and-.

Ian Eishen: 17:23

Or it's ADHD.

Martin Foster: 17:24

ADHD.

Ian Eishen: 17:25

You can call it, make it sound fancy, but it's really just an inability to concentrate.

Martin Foster: 17:28

The reason I say that? Because I thought about I imagine someone meeting you or seeing you for the first time and you're picking the slock of a handcuff and you're like, oh hey, what's going on. But what are your thoughts on first impressions versus lasting impressions?

Ian Eishen: 17:42

Yeah, I mean, I think, especially even on the, the civilian world and really everywhere you go, first impressions are important Just because people have they have an expectation of who they want to meet and are going to meet and they're going to judge you in a certain way. Being cognizant that that exists, I think is important, doesn't mean you change your whole persona. I mean even, I guess you know, if I, if I wanted to, or if I wasn't having to deal with a first impression, I probably would have worn a polo shirt and dressed a little. And it's not because I I don't care, I'd much rather be a little bit more comfortable. Most of the people that I was meeting with today were in suit and was in a suit and tie. So if I dress down too much, that could mess up a first impression. So I'm cognizant of it, but I wasn't going to wear a certain tie. There was no need for me to do that today, and so going above and beyond because that exists is not something I was willing to do in that situation.

Ian Eishen: 18:30

Now, lasting impressions, you know, aren't going to come usually by the way you dress. It's going to be by lots of interactions. And so you hope, you hope your first impression doesn't shut anybody down and it just keeps the door open to continuing the relationship and the discussion. And if you kind of mess that up the first time, hopefully you can leave a lasting impression by spending more time and expanding more effort. But if you want to be very deliberate, you know, trying to make sure that you decide what is the impression you want to leave on people.

Ian Eishen: 18:58

You know people, you work with people, you work for what is the impression you want to leave? And hopefully the one you know that I've always tried to leave is somebody who's willing to help in whatever situation. Might not know what to do, but if you have an issue, I'll stand there right next to you and we'll figure it out. If I had to put, you know, everything into words, that's the one I would do. But it has nothing to do with the way that you dress, very little to do with the way that you carry yourself, but a lot to do with the way that you approach people in person or online, the way that you you know react to them, the way that you make them feel. Those are all very important things that I think you need to be very deliberate about. And so you didn't say which one was more important, because both can be at different times, but that's the way I think about each.

Martin Foster: 19:40

It's actually teach a pro-dev on lasting impressions because I've made so many horrible first impressions on so many people in my life.

Martin Foster: 19:47

But just fortunately I've been able to rebound. I've learned the hard way how to make you know bad first impressions but positive, lasting impressions. Hey, you talked about I wanna just go down discuss a little bit of rabbit hole you talked about. You know the suit and tie and, like you know, no need to do that because there's a lot of people who probably, and I probably would be one of those people who would wear a suit and tie cause I would have felt maybe some pressure. But how important is it for people to have that authenticity when in a leadership position, or maybe not in a leadership position, more than that, just like an influential person. But again, yeah, just your thoughts on.

Ian Eishen: 20:24

I'd say those are two different things. So if you decided and being so, let's pretend you're in my position and you go, you know what I need to wear a suit and tie. If you think you need to wear one, wear one. If it's gonna make you uncomfortable not to, then the right move is the suit and tie. I don't care that much. There's only a few places I wear suit and ties and that's usually if I'm doing something in the White House vicinity chamber of commerce. You know something officially government, not the Pentagon. If I'm in London, cause you kind of have to business wise. And then Paris, again, it's a business, must you can't. I can't walk around in jeans. I would. It doesn't work. There's no way I could even make it to step two of trying to talk to somebody. But you need to pick what works for you Now as we get into. Yes, you can call that being authentic. Other people could say, well, you're wearing this because it's what you think people want. It's not authentically you and that doesn't matter, it's none of their business.

Ian Eishen: 21:16

Authenticity as a leader is a completely different thing. It could be done in the way you dress, but, especially with most of the audiences as military people. They don't get to pick that, and so your authenticity comes in a lot of ways. It comes again at the way you approach people, the way that you make them feel, the way that you're there for them and the way that you follow up. Those are some of the best ways, from a leadership perspective, that you can remain authentic and still help them. You can. Certain times you're gonna be in situations.

Ian Eishen: 21:45

You know, I was a command chief during COVID and I bring that up to say that there were a lot of decisions that were made that not everybody understood. There are a lot of decisions that we made that we maybe might have made differently now, but at the time and at the moment it was the right decision for us to make. But we had to be authentic and transparent in. Here's what we think. Here's the decision we're making, here's why we're making it. Here's the other decision that was a little bit, you know, more intrusive or worse, or we thought wasn't as good. And here's what we're looking to learn being transparent in that and knowing that we might not have made the right decision, but it's the decision we made, and then reversing it if necessary.

Ian Eishen: 22:21

I think that's key, wherever or however you build it so that there's trust there and even if the airman, the person, whoever it is on the other side who doesn't get to make the decision, doesn't like what you did, they gain an appreciation for the problem and this is why we'd go to ALS or NCOA or talk to in our town halls. We had town halls every week. You know every decision people could ask about and we would tell them everything. I will always tell you everything that we made, every decision that the general made that I made. Everything we were thinking about right or wrong, as long as it's not, you know, somebody's medical or somebody's disciplinary issues. Those are the two things you can't talk about because it's not in your business. Everything else is open for debate. General's still gonna make the decision that they wanna make, but we can discuss it, cause we didn't want.

Ian Eishen: 23:02

We wanted leaders, and by leaders of all ranks to understand the issue and understand the choices that we had available. And then at some point they're gonna look at it and go I wouldn't have done that and that's okay. Now they have all the information. So when they finally get into the situation where they can make the decision, they've thought through it. It's not the first time they can learn from our success or failure, and just after action and on their own, and then, hopefully, when they're in that situation in the future and they're a squadron commander, a chief or what you know, a leader, at whatever level, they get to make the decision that they think is necessary. But they've had 10 years to think about it, or five years to think about it and learn from good or bad that we did, and so I think that's another piece of being authentic is just being very transparent and very open to criticism.

Martin Foster: 23:42

That's tough. I mean, that's scary for people to be open to criticism stuff. But I like the way he said like, hey, people have 10 years to think about it, because that's why even this book, like there's been things I wrote down in the moment and then, even over the past two years, I go back and reference my black book. I'm like, oh, I went through the situation five or six years ago.

Ian Eishen: 23:59

Well, it's amazing what you think about things when you're ignorant, and people use ignorant as a word, that's they've got a negative connotation around it. Ignorant just means that I don't know what's going on. I don't know about this. I'm ignorant on a lot of subjects. The first time I learn about it, I'm a little less ignorant, and over time I become less and less ignorant until I become knowledgeable. That transition doesn't happen. It's not a switch. You don't one day become knowledgeable, but over time you hit a sliding scale and at a certain point you're knowledgeable enough to make a decision, and the quicker you can get to that, the better. Understanding where your gaps are and then filling that gap with with knowledge, with experience, with someone else on your team who might have that knowledge or experience, I think is key, and so you have to be very aware of what you know and what you don't know, and where your limits and boundaries are, or you're just gonna make some terrible decisions.

Martin Foster: 24:41

You have been on numerous podcasts, a few which I listened to over the weekend and even on my drive down here, and a 2021 podcast. You mentioned that you had a current my space account, but it's a two-part question. First question why? Why in 2021, did you have a my space account?

Ian Eishen: 24:59

I was speaking at ALS and I was on all social media that my airmen were on. I wanted to make sure. You know there's a. Everybody always talks about having an open door. Well, I did have an open door, but as a squadron chief and a group chief and then a command chief, technically my door was open, but it doesn't mean I was there. And then sometimes it was closed because I was in meetings with other airmen or chiefs or you know I was doing things and so, yes, the door was open. I'm always available, but I'm not always available. Social media I was.

Ian Eishen: 25:25

So if they, if they, emailed me, it could get lost in a hundred emails that I got that day Very few of them, you know, to me. But if you, they sent me a message on reddit, I'm gonna see it. If they sent me a message on Facebook, I would see it. So I'd always give out my Xbox live. If they sent me a message on there, I'm gonna see it. And at one point I was telling everybody that and they were like why don't you have a myspace? I was like no one uses my space. They're like now it's coming back.

Ian Eishen: 25:49

Okay so I went online and it wasn't coming back, but there were people on it and I was like fine.

Ian Eishen: 25:55

So I had a 412 test wing command chief myspace page and if anybody wanted to reach me there, they could reach me there as well, and so it was really just trying to. They laughed about it all the time and so it was. It was. I think it was beneficial to have, and but there were a few people that did reach out and I was able to help them with some things, and so you know, it was really just it's hard for me to say hey, come talk to me, but come talk to me in the way.

Ian Eishen: 26:16

I want to be talked to in person in my office during duty hours when I'm there. That's really hard to do. Each one of those is a barrier. Each barrier I can remove it gives me a better opportunity of meeting and talking to that airman, and especially when they're in a time of need, hopefully they reach out when they're not, but if they are, every one of those barriers could mess things up, and so if I can make it where, well, doesn't matter if you're on my base, it doesn't matter if it's duty day, it doesn't matter if you know where my office is, doesn't matter if I'm there. It also doesn't matter if I'm on the thing that you know. If you're on the thing that I'm on, instead I'll go to the thing that you're on and I'll just be there. I don't do a ton. You can go to the myspace page. I think it's still up.

Martin Foster: 26:56

It's not a ton of posts, but it's there to make sure that if anybody needed it, it was there to reach out to him staying on the subject of myspace, if you had a top 8 and it was only based on leadership Ability, who would be in your top 8?

Ian Eishen: 27:10

top 8 leaders. It was music. We had a lot of what they had a lot of those too. So you could still put music back on your new myspace if you want to what would?

Martin Foster: 27:17

what was your song?

Ian Eishen: 27:18

Oh, there were a lot of them back then. This was late 90s, early 2000. So it was a lot of alternative in Some country. I can't even remember Top 8 leaders. That's a good question. Yeah, you're gonna have to give me a rain check. Let me, let me think about it.

Martin Foster: 27:34

I want to say on this question, it's maybe not necessarily leaders, but hey, if you're, if general Brown says, comes up to you and says, hey, ian, I need you to build a team, you and eight other people, military people I'll throw in some civilians, because you know civilians, civilians, civilians serve to and civilians are great leaders. But just eight people, you plus eight other people who's on your squad.

Ian Eishen: 27:54

What are we doing? Yeah, you, this is. It needs something like there's people that there's a lot of good people here, but they're not good at everything to solve a hard problem set. What kind of hard problem set innovation.

Martin Foster: 28:05

That's not a thing how to connect with people in a socially connected world, how everyone's so close today through social media. Actually, we'll say leadership ability, but in terms of who's a proper leader, to who has great poise, who's great communicator, who's consistent and I think consistency isn't underrated. I once had a mentor of mine Talked about when the best compliment you can give to a leader is being consistent. Because he talked, he referenced a commander that he once worked for, when every day when that commander walked into the work, walked into work, the exec would give a thumbs up or thumbs down, gladator style, like thumbs up, hey, this person's in great mood today, right so, but you know, like any talked about hey, that person when they were on a thumbs update was awesome, but it wasn't consistent. It was like what are we getting that day?

Ian Eishen: 28:56

But in terms of consistency, thoughtfulness, connection, poise, so here's the thing as soon as I name a name, I'm not naming another name, so given names is difficult.

Martin Foster: 29:07

What about historical figures thing?

Ian Eishen: 29:08

Well, no, no, no, I'm not want to sidestep your question. I think I'll give you some examples, and I think so. I had a Dio back when I was in special tactics who was? He was a driver like. He jobbed it more than anybody I'd ever seen. He was. He had high expectations for everybody. He was really tough to please, very nice guy, but Probably never did things good enough and very rarely would you get it good enough for him. So it's hard to please, but we, but everybody, tried All the time to make things better.

Ian Eishen: 29:42

In the end that was the most efficient, well organized squadron I've ever been a part of and it was. It was that way throughout a lot or really Nasty real-world deployments and the squadron just performed. He was actually a very nice guy, great with families, and so it wasn't a bad guy. He was just very hard to work for. He was very demanding, but it was consistent and he was like that with everybody. It wasn't a thing that he did with enlisted. He didn't do with officers, he did with people. He always expected people To rise to his level and his level was always getting better, and so he would. You know, he would outwork you. He was smarter than you, and it's not that he told you these things, he just was like he's one of the smartest officers I've ever met. Hardest working officers ever met, fastest runner I've ever met. He could PT anybody in the squadron. He's just a beast in every sense of the word. And so because he talked the talk and he could do it, he wasn't making you do hold it, he wasn't holding you accountable to a thing he didn't hold himself accountable to and because of that we were very efficient, well-run squadron. That's a leader I'd take on my team anytime, even though he was very hard to work for. Still an amazing leader and to this day I still use him as an example.

Ian Eishen: 30:47

I've got plenty of examples of leaders that didn't like and didn't you know, didn't work well for me, or the airman around me, and you know leaders at all levels. But anybody who will work hard, who will hold themselves accountable, just like they'll hold you and makes you better, I think it's a good one to have on your team. And so again, not me sidestepping your problem, but I can't start naming five. You know random chiefs here and then five other chiefs get you know but heard about it because I didn't call them out, but you'll know it when you see it. People who are Consistent with their communication and have actually practiced to make sure that what they are communicating is, back to your point, authentic and there's a reason for it, as opposed to Standing up on stage or standing up in front of people Holding court because you like to hold court, that's a. That's a different skill and it's not one that I normally look for. I want people who are gonna go and and solve problems, and if we need to communicate to help solve that problem, then awesome.

Martin Foster: 31:37

When I was fortunate enough to be selected for promotion a couple years ago. You know, it was kind of like the slumdog millionaire, like when the guy has all these flashbacks at different key points in his life. That's what I had like a flashback to at that point 20 years, my career, with all the people who helped shape me. And it wasn't. It was more than just like shaping me over the course of a year or two Years or three years, but there'd be various specific Instances, right like that moment in time, where when I think of like leaders, it's, it's more than like all this person, it's that person in this moment, on this day.

Ian Eishen: 32:11

It's always a moment.

Martin Foster: 32:12

Yeah, and we talked about a. So my top eight are mutual friend. I won't say his name again because I don't want to give him that.

Martin Foster: 32:19

Yeah, I would my stepdad, who I was very close with. He died unexpectedly on October 15th of 2010. Wow, it was out of nowhere and I was stationed in California at the time. My mom and my stepdad were in Oklahoma. My mom called me. She was like hey, you, this is it, you got to come home and right, this is at one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning In California and we're two hours behind Oklahoma.

Martin Foster: 32:42

By 6 am, I was on a flight. I drove down in LA is three hours, right. So I drove down LA, caught a flight, I was able to make it home in time, like probably 15 minutes before he passed away, but but I say all that not just for sympathy, but I I felt compelled to, and we didn't have on-class computers really, so everything we did, it was on, right. So I had to go to work to put it in my out-of-office. No one asked me to do that, I just. But I typed up this long and I didn't want to text anybody, but I went to work at Like you know, two, whatever, two or three o'clock in the morning. I actually on my way to LA.

Martin Foster: 33:16

I remember I typed up this email and I was like in flip-flops and you know what, just travel clothes and I saw that lieutenant and he was like, what are you doing here? And but we had like this great heart-to-heart and you know he was just very supportive and and at that point I really didn't know him that well but that's really kind of like what he stepped up in the moment as a 24, 25 year old snot nose Lieutenant. But just good people, yeah, yeah, good people. But I always think about it's those things really when I think about who would be on my, my, a team or you know something like that. You know I've referenced a couple times about, I know you've done a lot of things with strategy and I know you did Ted talks and a couple other things, but how do you turn insights into strategic direction that drives value for leadership and company?

Ian Eishen: 33:58

Yes, it's a pretty broad question. I think you end up doing this a lot. I have found myself in these situations where you're you see things, you spend enough time digging into a subject and maybe it's more than other people around you, and again, maybe it's because it's been ADHD thing or you just you get focused at 2 am and but you end up Getting really smart at one thing and it allows you to see through tea leaves that other people can't see. You know Everybody you know. If you look at everything, you know you're the only people who, you're the only person who knows what you know. I mean it's it's a mixture of your lived experience, your, your learning, your education has nothing really to do with an actual degree, but just the education that you've learned through all these cycles of just going through life. And so at some point you know things that other people don't know and because of that you you gain insight.

Ian Eishen: 34:46

You get to see things are coming and sometimes those are related to our magic technology or strategic change. Or you know there are people who saw the GWAT was was moving and we were gonna be in a near peer competition. You know, you can look, look up a f a 10 years ago and there's a lot of near peer talk. You know, pivot to the Pacific was going on 2011, 2012,. You know it's when we were all gonna stop focusing on GWAT and we're gonna move into the Pacific, and so these are these, these phrases that people use to kind of to push strategic guidance. When ends up happening is you've and you'll see it in business too. So I'm in a deep tech company, which means that the people that I work with have been staring at these problems for 30 years. They are world experts at these problems, and so when ends up happening is normal people, really smart people, who just don't study these problems, are here. These guys are here, their PhD level, with PhDs, and so I'm using that as a phrase, but actually as a real term. They've studied this thing for their entire lives. They can see things the rest of us can't, so they're trying to tell you about this, this future, this world that to you is just science fiction, but to them is real, because they've been doing it.

Ian Eishen: 35:50

But you're still here, and whether it's being in the, the Air Force, and trying to convince people that this emerging technology is a way forward, or you know, we have to start looking at the way that we deploy capital as an organization, and so we were pushing for the last two years really hard to get the Air Force and the OSD to look at capital and and Economics as a, as a information operation, as a warfare. You can have economic warfare, you can use the economy and you can use your capital deployments to actually wage gray zone warfare. You can do with information operations. We finally got to people, people to think that way. But you can do a lot of things that are not kinetic but can still cause dilemmas for a near peer adversary. So if I said those words and you've heard it for the first time I've been thinking about this for a long time.

Ian Eishen: 36:37

You're still here, so I've got to take all these things that I know and all these things that I think, and the first time I try to tell you, I try to tell you this, this thing that took me a PhD to learn, and you don't get it. Well, you're not going to, you're not. The thing that took me 20 years to learn. I can't explain it to you in 10 minutes, and so most of what you end up doing is going on an education campaign, educating everybody around you in the way that they need to be educated. Just like you want to communicate in the way that they need to be communicated to, you have to educate them the same way, and so you have to find a way to take really Technical things are really deep strategy or whatever it is the thing that you think you know. Well, first bounce it off a lot of people, because just because you think it's right doesn't mean it is. We all make, you know, mistakes with it, but get them not from here to here, but get them from here to here. And get them from here to here and then spend on session three here to here. It's an education. Even you know some of the things that you know.

Ian Eishen: 37:25

There's gonna be people to hear at the conference talking about quantum. If you've never touched quantum, it's weird. Quantum physics and quantum states it's a hard thing to learn. It's hard for quantum scientists and quantum engineers to understand this. Optical engineers understand this, and so you think in one session, 45 minutes on the floor, you're going to learn it and it's not going to happen. And so what?

Ian Eishen: 37:42

Your job half the time is as a leader of any organization, whether that's a business organization or a military organization.

Ian Eishen: 37:48

But if your job is to influence and inspire people, you have to take all these things that you know, that you've learned, that you're really smart at, because it's your lived experience, and distill it down in a way that they can take, and maybe it's focusing on one or two things, maybe it's focusing and teaching it in a way that they understand, but your job is to educate.

Ian Eishen: 38:06

Then, when you finally get them to the point that they're educated to the level that you need them to make the decision, then help them make the decision, because if not, it's just you coming down from above or from the side or from out of their area and making decisions for them.

Ian Eishen: 38:17

And so we had this same issue with artificial intelligence in the Air Force. This is why one of the first things so we built an artificial intelligence strategy for General Brown and one of the key things is we said, if you're going to use this at some point, we're going to be automating things. So you're going to automate things that most people do. Now An airman does this or a leader decides this. Now we're going to automate it. That's not going to just happen. In order to make that work, they're going to have to trust the automation, and they can't trust it if they don't understand it. And so, if we want to get to a point that we have trust, we need to have transparency behind our algorithms, transparency behind our data and education for our airmen so they know what these words all mean. You can't just put all this science fiction in their face and keep them to believe it, and so it's an education process.

Ian Eishen: 39:00

This is why we partnered with MIT. There's an MIT AI accelerator. This is why many people across the Air Force probably at least a thousand by now have gone through different levels of AI training. Because education became a key component of our emerging technology strategy. Because education leads to trust. Trust leads to actual implementation and at some point we can get automation. But it's a long process. But education comes first.

Martin Foster: 39:24

Okay, I want to stick on education. I'm very passionate about enlisted education and to me, education is more than what happens inside of a classroom or going to college or whatever. So what two to three books do you recommend based on education?

Ian Eishen: 39:38

What are you trying to learn?

Martin Foster: 39:40

That's a great point because usually so I've been asking this question a lot in podcasts. I know you listen to a lot of podcasts because I think we talked about that the other day. That's a common question that people always ask is hey, what two to three books do you recommend? That's always a general question. So typically I say I always ask. For example, I had a communication expert on a past, a recent podcast, and asked her. I said hey, what are two to three books regarding communication do you recommend to people? Or, oh for, chief Togman asked him hey, what two to three books based on reflection and connection? Or Shane Pilgrim was someone else I had on a podcast recently and for him I said hey, what two to three books do you recommend to people based on transitioning out of the military and entrepreneurship?

Ian Eishen: 40:23

So for you so I'll give you. I'll go down that list. So your Shane Pilgrim episode was awesome. You know he talked about Last man in Babylon. There's a good book. He talked Millionaire Next Door. That's a great book as well, I would add. I think Creativity Inc is a great book. I think it's a great business book, but also a creative business book. It's the story of Pixar and essentially how you'll see a big buzz light on the cover. But it's a story and it's one that I would buy for senior NCOs and chiefs that if you went to Edwards and made those ranks, you probably got this book.

Ian Eishen: 40:53

What about Culture Code? Do you like that book? It's fine, yeah, and it's not me going against it, it's just I like there's a lot of good books out there that are very inspirational and you can get some good quotes out of them. Sometimes it's really hard to take that book and get real next steps. Simon Snack, for instance. I love all his books, very repetitive.

Ian Eishen: 41:09

At a certain point I actually got to the point with his books. I was like I don't need to read the last half of it because it says the same things. Now it actually had a point, got me to going. I don't know if this guy knows what he's talking about. And then I met him and I was going to interview him and I was like, hey, here's all the, I'm going to give you my questions. He was like no, I don't want to see your questions, I just want to be fresh. And so I was like cool, I respect that. And so when I asked him these questions and they were all questions that I had thought very long about, these were things I was dealing with so selfishly I got to interview him so I was like I'm going to ask things that I want to know. How long ago was this? We had him on QU 2021 and then I brought him out to Edwards or, excuse me, we had him in 2020 on QU and then, 2021, I brought him out to Edwards.

Ian Eishen: 41:51

Every question I asked him, he thought for about 10 seconds and he had one of the most eloquent and insightful answers I'd ever heard. And he came at it from a completely different way that I had never thought about, even though I had paid attention to all these questions and thought about them long and hard, and they were great and they had next steps in them. And so sometimes when you get into or I find when I get too much into the insightful books and the motivational books, I feel good, but I don't know what to do next, and so I like taking those and then adding them with another book that has more next steps. And so if you got into one of the ones that I would buy for people and I give away a lot of books but there's a whole series called Slydology, resonate and Data Story. It's by the same author and they're all on building story arcs, and so Slydology is literally how do you build presentations that inspire?

Ian Eishen: 42:39

Most of what we do is build presentations to elicit some sort of decision. Sometimes it's inspirational, sometimes it's trying to get the commander to decide something. But how do you take a very well thought out story and build that into your slides? Data story is the same thing, but it's mainly with data. So how do you take and it's a very easy book to follow. So how do you take statistics and really refine data and turn it into a way that can create insights for others? Resonate is, instead of just the slides like these, all build on each other. It focuses on the story itself, and how do you build ideas that capture people's attention and use those ideas to then move forward to whatever you're trying to do, whether it's inspire or teach.

Ian Eishen: 43:19

And so for communications books, those are ones that I really like.

Ian Eishen: 43:22

There's a couple of advertising books the Ogoli Ogoli advertising agency, from the Mad Men agency, essentially and so they've got their own book that was written about all the different ads they use, and you can get really I'll get geeky into the ads themselves and the typefaces.

Ian Eishen: 43:38

There's a book that I give out to people called Type. That's all about different typefaces and fonts and how you, how different types, elicit different responses. There's a elegance to type and there's an elegance to font and an art to it. And if you simply use Arial because that's the one that was there, then okay. But when you're presenting, there should be a reason for the type that you picked, and I think it was weird for my execs the first time I asked these questions why did you pick that font and how did you want this to make you feel and what kind of response were you trying to elicit? But those all mean something Same, with the colors that you use and the style that you use to do all this. So communication those are the books that I would recommend, and those are the ones that sit on my shelf and I'm handing them out to many, many people.

Martin Foster: 44:21

I love it. Some of the communications major, oh, okay, I think I'll start including on some emails I send out some at work I send out.

Martin Foster: 44:28

I call it. In addition to face to face mentorship, I do digital mentorship. I type up emails and just about a certain subject has nothing to do with work, but just kind of like reflection. But it's interesting you talked about the font because I 100% believe like that matters right, like the font that people use, and so I do a lot of writing and I type out questions for each podcast and I'm very specific on the font that I use.

Ian Eishen: 44:53

And why'd you use this font?

Martin Foster: 44:54

This is American typewriter.

Ian Eishen: 44:55

I know Why'd you use it.

Martin Foster: 44:56

There's something about it, I realize I like the old, so even like we have old fashions. You talked about advertising, mad Men. Mad Men was obsessed with that show, one of my favorite shows of all time.

Ian Eishen: 45:08

It's a good show.

Martin Foster: 45:09

And people talk about how can you use sexist and all these different things like, well, it was the late 50s and 60s, like they're just reenacting that time. But I loved more than that. You know, they did a lot of things that disagreed with, but the things I loved about the show was the detailed writing but the nuances. They captured New York City, like the fashion and the social, all those social events. There was just a whole style and it was just. It was very classy.

Martin Foster: 45:36

And as I'm building, as I'm building, passing the torch, I go toward more. I like whether it's sports logos or as I'm building logos, I kind of like simple, classic designs. Or when I'm searching, when I was building different logos, that's what I type in hey, I want a retro or a minimalist or a simple classic modern look. But there's just something about I feel like it puts me in a zone. It's the same reason why I write in cursive in my book and I write in pencil. I used to write in pen earlier on, but there's just a mindset. I feel like it. It kind of like when people have like their separate workspace, like hey this, this is all, it's right, or their own garage gym, like it's.

Martin Foster: 46:18

Just when you step out there You're in a zone. There's just something about. Even when I type papers, or they did type papers for school, I use that, unless they said use aerial or times in the room and whatever. But yeah, there's just something about the font that I look, that I like I go. I alternate between between the questions, I'll have black or the bold and you know non-bold. Just a it to me. It professionalizes it.

Ian Eishen: 46:41

I like it the cool thing is that answer is the right answer. There actually is no wrong answer to that question. It's, and I would only argue that the only wrong answer is I don't know it's the one, it's the one that was there. Now, if that, that's okay, if that's your answer. But it means that there was no thought put into it and so in the end, the thought is I'm trying to elicit a certain response, and for this is your notes, but you deliberately put something for you, to inspire you, to make you feel a certain way, to make things easier for you. So you did all these things for a reason. You pick the font and the size and the, the typeface and you know, not everybody realizes that those are two different things, font and typeface and even get into the kerning and figure out what kerning are you gonna use for this font as opposed to this font? It's, it's an attention to detail thing, and I'm not saying people who don't have that attention to detail, you know, aren't thinking. It's just there's a story that you're trying to tell and you can even get into this. I used to go through a course and we would. I don't know.

Ian Eishen: 47:31

I'm sure you've read the the Iliad and the heroes journey and yeah, so when I write EPRs, I write EPRs to the heroes journey, so I do the entire journey of a hero through the EPR. At least that's my attempt. It can't always happen. I'm trying to tell not only a story but, like, there is this tried-and-true method called the heroes journey that we teach for communication and that is how you introduce a character, you walk them through their background, you walk them through the challenges and how they overcame those challenges, and that's something I try to do for all the airmen that I write for. And so, whether it's a 1206 or an EPR, the heroes journey and that cycle is the entire thing. And if I can do it right and I've done it a few times and it just worked that way Actually every bullet has a story arc and then the entire thing has a separate story arc. Man, I would love to see Hardest.

Ian Eishen: 48:18

EPs, so it's there's decent ones out there. It's hard. I helped him with his narrative one, this latest one since my first one with narratives. Now that I'm out it's a little harder there, but even my you know, before you I would write 1206's and they wouldn't let you write in sentences or in paragraphs, and so every bullet was a sentence, but in every sentence, in order, told my story. And this is the nice thing I got to do is achieve, because I had no chief above me to say you're not allowed to do it that way and we had Awards win over and over and over again because I told a story. And it's especially hard when you're teaching again education.

Ian Eishen: 48:48

I'm trying to say I've got this person that I've stared at for a year. They're amazing. I know they're amazing. I've seen everything they've done, I've seen all of their triumphs, I've seen all the valleys they've been in and I've seen them overcome it. And now I'm trying to take a piece of paper and Tell all of you guys who've never met the guy or gal, never seen him, know nothing about what they do, and I'm trying to convince you that they're better than anybody you've ever seen.

Ian Eishen: 49:09

I'm not gonna do it with straight bullets with action impact, you know, unless I deliberately tell the story, and so the hero's journey again. Why would I recreate that like they've already? They've done it, it works well. So my job is to take these things that are tried and true and use them as a way. Use them as a way To tell you, these people who don't know the person that works for me, that they're amazing, and I think it's a good way to do it. And so I'm not successful with every single document that I write, but that is the, the template, that's the guidelines that I use and that's the starting point, and I only deviate from that when I have to. I only write acronyms when I have to. If you look at Hardis sees, if you look at his EPRs from me, there might be two acronyms, and it's probably nco and Something else. That's.

Martin Foster: 49:52

GPA yeah, so you, you've heard a million times I don't write any the.

Ian Eishen: 49:57

I had one, I think, in my exact before that in, because it was a medical thing and I couldn't get by without it. It was like ten lines. I was so long I couldn't write it without the acronym. But I don't need you to know these acronyms. I need you to understand what this person did.

Ian Eishen: 50:10

And if and every time I write an acronym and every time I use some sort of Idiom or colloquialism that that only I know or only my base knows or only this AFC knows, then I leave you as a reader. My whole job is to take you as a reader board member awards board or promotion board and Gets you to understand the thing that I get to see every day. So again, I take this, I Create insights with it as we go back to the insights question, but insights in a way that you understand as a board member. So wargaming the board and what a fscs are on the board and what is the likelihood of it being this a fsc, and what language do they speak, and so how do I turn this into their language? It's very deliberate to make sure that the people get recognized for the amazing things they're doing.

Martin Foster: 50:52

That's awesome. I love the story thing because that's what it should be. It's just, I mean, like any good superhero movie, like there's gonna be struck, like you're telling a story, like that's why the movies are two hours right. There's the or like or, even if there's a trilogy.

Ian Eishen: 51:05

Oh yeah, nine hours right.

Martin Foster: 51:06

Yeah, the first one's the origin story, right, and they're developing the, the villain and all these different things. But then the third one is how they the end part is how they always became trunk traffic at the end.

Ian Eishen: 51:15

But you don't have that. You just got like 12 lines. I know so how do you do it in 12 lines?

Martin Foster: 51:20

Oh it's, it's been a challenge. Hey, when it transitions, some lighter topics, more fun topics, this is all fun, but just kind of, miss Elenius, questions have no order or sequence, just kind of just random. That I was thinking about. I Also have, I think, 10% less left on my phone. This is good, it's great conversation. Are you ready? Let's do it. What are you world-class at that people might not know.

Ian Eishen: 51:47

I don't think I'm world-class. I'm pretty good at French pastry. Yeah, I again I get you go back to the OCD thing. So I go into these phases where I need to learn how something is done and I spend five months doing only that thing until I'm done and feel like I know it well enough, and then I switch, and so there's six months of you know Pizza dough and now I make pizza dough every Friday. Let it rise, go through the entire time you know fresh pizza dough.

Ian Eishen: 52:15

For a while, for probably three years it was French bread and French pastry, and so it was lots of different French pastry the family loved this, I'm sure yeah, they get to try all the the good and the bad, and so you know, you start with Brioche and you move on to macaron and then you move on to different breads and Different flowers, and so you just get really deep into it and then at a certain point I know it and then I move into other things that I cook cheeses for a while, like Make lots of different types of cheese like those are. So, yeah, lots of that kind of stuff someone on the same plane.

Martin Foster: 52:46

If you were to give a TED talk on a some subject, for what you are not knowing, for what would it be? And it can't be the French pastry, but I know you've done a TED talk before.

Ian Eishen: 52:56

Yeah, I did that one that was more on. It was just a man, airman, doing awesome things and I got to kind of Watch. What would I give a TED talk on? I think it's Taking it's hard to do into a TED talk, but taking very complex subjects and trying to distill it in a way that anybody can understand. Not really a TED talk. It's probably more back on the the skill. But yeah, that's what I would do two last questions.

Martin Foster: 53:18

What do you believe to be true, that you know to be true but you cannot prove it? For example, for me, I'm very staunch my belief that I'm a right to X guy. So in a package of twix they do taste different to me. So, and I'm very hard on this belief, I will. I won't fight people for it, but I'm very. I'll have a spirited debate. But that's just a generic example. But what's?

Ian Eishen: 53:41

I think the last bite of a lot of things aren't as good as the first one, and so most of time is not worth doing. It's like a tiny. It's a tiny piece, no, and then it was funny. So I used to do this a lot. I mean, it was a weird habit.

Ian Eishen: 53:56

And then the other day my kid I was 11 and I was getting his plate and he had all these chicken nuggets and he had the last bite missing out of all of her. The last bite was still there. I was like hey, why didn't you cuz normally eats them all. And I was like why didn't you? Why didn't you eat these she's waste? And he goes it just didn't seem like it would taste good. Okay, I can't, I can't fault him for that. I did the same thing for a long time. So he's and I've never said these words to him this is a thing I did a long time ago, but I've been with my wife for a long, long time, so she it's something rubbed off on him. But yeah, the last bite is not as good.

Martin Foster: 54:31

Yeah, that's, that's good something for me. Something else for me is that, you know, speaking of food is it's hard for me not to judge people like, say, like a fruit at a bar and we invited, like you know, hey, come meet us, we're. You know, I have some nachos, or if I'm eating nachos and I'll offer some to someone, there's always that nacho that has like all the perfect toppings the one nacho the one nacho right and you always save it till last.

Martin Foster: 54:55

But I've been to places where like, or I've been around people when I said, hey, you know, hope yourself some of nachos, they immediately go for that one first.

Martin Foster: 55:02

Yeah, they suck everyone else and all the other night and it's just like it's hard for me, like that's all I need to know about that person. That's the only impression I need. Yep, terrible leader, all right. Last question if you could put a billboard anywhere in the world and Write your message on it, for the world to see, where would the billboard be and what would your message say?

Ian Eishen: 55:21

Yeah, I would probably put I'm breaking your question, your premise, but I'm keeping your premise I would put one on the outside of all of these military bases so that people see it and realize that there's more. There is more out there than just the military. And this isn't like a disgruntled retiree, it's. It's really easy, and I think every retiree will tell you this. It's really easy to get so busy in the day-to-day of Helping airmen and leading and hacking mission that it's sometimes hard to look out. It's. It's a bubble, not in a bad way. It's a bubble. It has to be. It has to be a very insulated bubble because you're doing really difficult things. The nation and your airmen asked you to do things that no other job does, and so I don't think it would work any other way. But one of the byproducts of that is you do get into this bubble and it's really difficult to get outside of it. It usually takes some sort of weird situation. You know, I didn't get outside of it until I was able to start doing a couple internships at other companies and I'm interacting with people who just thought differently, who were not inside the bubble, they didn't live there, and you start to see, oh my gosh, I can actually I can affect national security from the outside, like this isn't the only place. There's ways for me to serve other than active duty. There's ways for me to take care of my family, like all these things that I thought were Truths, and it's mainly because I never questioned them, I finally realized there was another version of that Amazing people who were serving in their own way and they had never touched the military. They didn't even really know about it. They were helping national security in a way that was much more powerful than even what I was doing. I had to get out of the bubble for a minute to see it and then, once I see it, I was able to go Okay, what are the things I wanted to do with my life? And helping Airmen and increasing national security Were the two things, and there's other ways for me to do that, and actually, in a lot of ways, I can have more impact on the outside Because I'm not limited.

Ian Eishen: 57:06

You know. I can go talk to Congress if I want to. I'm not limited by rank or perceived Station as far as you're here. So this is what you're allowed to say. This is your level of worth. Your, your worth and your ability only comes from whatever you do. I mean, at a certain point, based on a first impression to let you in the room to do these things, and at a certain point You'll ruin it and you'll leave, or you'll continue and you'll be able to do great things. But it has nothing to do with some sort of preordained List or chart and it takes a little while to see that.

Ian Eishen: 57:36

I'm incredibly grateful for the military, because everything I have now is because of the 23 years I served and there and then I was able to serve with and the leaders I was able to learn from, and because of all that, I'm finally in a situation where I can help you know Airmen from a different point of view, help them as they transition, help them understand, bring technologies in that maybe they didn't know existed, and and help national security very directly, instead of being in a large organization where it's tough to move things. In a very small, nimble organization we can move much faster and so in certain ways, I'm able to impact more, but I'm not able to interact with airmen on a regular basis and this is why things like a fade this event, other events that I get to go to. I was at a senior in CEO induction, get speak, or I got to speak there a couple weeks ago. It was amazing, because I get to kind of fill my cup from that other side. That was my long answer to your question.

Martin Foster: 58:23

No, that's great man. Well, that's all I have in. I shouldn't. Thank you so much for being on my podcast. This is thank you for having me man, this is really cool, and I think I mean my recorder says one hour seven minutes in County by the way, I'll say that was a good old-fashioned.

Ian Eishen: 58:35

But the last sip is not as good as the first one. So it's proven my point it's still good. It's not as good though.

Martin Foster: 58:40

This has been a learning I appreciate. This is so much you know. Someone at AFSA had asked me like why am I doing my podcast? I Don't make any money from this. I mean, I spend money on this, but oh yeah, this isn't cheap. Yeah, I mean you know, yeah, and I appreciate you know you, you recognize the equipment and everything. But I do this because I'm generally passionate about it, but this is helping me build my network and get the message out.

Martin Foster: 59:02

So I did that podcast. I did 15 interviews at AFSA and I'm still going through posting, but the last one I just posted my most recent episode, it was with Shane Pilgrim and I tried something different. I posted that one strictly to, I think linked or only linked in. I might have posted it to Facebook.

Ian Eishen: 59:19

I think I saw the LinkedIn.

Martin Foster: 59:21

Yeah, but I, you know, I was like I've had really posted a whole lot on there, but the like, the reach that it has and it shows that and I've actually had people like message me directly about that, like, hey, you know, I like what he said about this or that, so it's just a, it's a connection platform, it's a networking collaboration, so, and you're someone who I've been wanting to build a network worth network with and collaborate with for a long time. So, yeah, just thanks for doing this, man. I appreciate it.

Ian Eishen: 59:47

No, I I appreciate you having me on. So I mean this. You know I had my own podcast equipment. This equipment is not cheap and then for every hour, you know you just did an hour here. That takes time to schedule. You've got pages of notes, so that took time. It's not done.

Ian Eishen: 1:00:03

You get to now edit and go through that process and so the fact that you're spending, you know, 10 hours or 15 hours of work to put out one hour of content and even that's being a little pessimistic, it could have been, you know, double that based on your commitment but what it ends up meaning is you're able to capture something. You now have an artifact of this moment in time dumb things that I said, good things that I said, maybe, but you have this artifact that can be used to help others. If it was for you, you'd record it and you'd watch it yourself and you'd learn all these great things from all these cool people like this the POW got to speak to earlier. But by taking the time and energy to record it, it's your dedication to everybody else people you have no idea who they are, but you're saying you know what my debt. I'm dedicated to helping make you better if you want to be better or to learn something, or to get an experience or to hear Somebody.

Ian Eishen: 1:00:53

That's different and and that's a level of commitment and dedication that I think is huge. And so when you start looking at, you know who do. Who do I want on my team? It's people that are gonna do things like that, people that are gonna be selfless and are gonna be able to look past what's what's in it for them and what's good for them and saying I have unique access and placement to you. Know people like this, this author and some of the other people you've been able to interview, and I think that knowledge is valuable for someone I just don't know who, so I'm gonna capture it and take the time to do it, and that's a level of commitment that you don't always see. It's it's commendable and I thank you for that.

Martin Foster: 1:01:26

Thanks, thanks. I appreciate that. All right, everyone that wraps up this episode. Big thanks to my guest, ian Eichen. My outro is gonna be very short on this one. So remember, vision, relate, develop, take care, everyone, Foster out.