Leaders and Their Stories

Richard Lowe: It's okay.

Richard Lowe: Hello. This is Richard Lowe, the writing king and ghostwriting, Guru and I'm here in the leaders and their stories. Podcast.

Richard Lowe: I'm with Terry L. Fossum, who was the executive officer for an entire group of nuclear B 52 bombers during the Cold War and Gulf War, one

Richard Lowe: in business. He built sales teams around the world and became part of the top fraction of 1% in the world.

Richard Lowe: In the philanthropic world he earned numerous local and national awards. He's the number one bestselling author in Wall Street Journal gave the number 2. Ted Talk in the world. Wow! Is Los Angeles Magazine's person of the year for 2024, and inside Success magazine's the most impactful and visionary personality to look for in 2025

Richard Lowe: he's head. He heads up the world class speakers helping people take their books or ideas to stages around the world, whether it's Ted Talks or paid speaking gigs.

Richard Lowe: Terry, that's quite impressive.

Terry L. Fossum: I just can't. I can't. Can't say sitting down long. That's all, Richard. I gotta keep on moving. How you doing today.

Richard Lowe: I'm doing well. How are you?

Terry L. Fossum: Fantastic man. We're having a lot of fun. We're building a lot of cool stuff and kind of helping some people in the process. Hopefully.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, yeah, we met in the Alliances group. If my memory is correct. And I've been impressed by what you've had to say and how you help people. It's a great group of people I'm I'm enjoying.

Richard Lowe: Hang out with a lot of people doing this talk with a lot of them.

Richard Lowe: it's just a wonderful way to get to know people so highly recommended that you that people look it up.

Richard Lowe: That being aside, you were telling me you have several points of leadership, so I'd like to hear about those.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we were talking about what? What do we want to chat about today? You know, with leadership, there's a lot of different directions. We can go. Pat Sitkins. He's an author.

Terry L. Fossum: really great businessman. Great guy is coming out with a book this year. Just got a publisher and everything that I thought was a brilliant idea it's called. There are 2 types of people.

Terry L. Fossum: and that's it.

Terry L. Fossum: And then he reached out to several of us and said, Would you write a chapter? And all they gave us was the title like, Sure you know, that's a fun opportunity. So mine was. There are 2 types of leaders, those who develop followers

Terry L. Fossum: which we think leadership is, or those who develop leaders.

Terry L. Fossum: And in that I've got for a book that I'm writing very, very slowly. And then another keynote. I developed my 10 points of how you develop leaders, and I thought that might be for the short time we've got here today. It might be really helpful for your audience to listen to 5 of the 1st points, because there are 5 things that seem intuitively obvious, and yet they are screwed up so often. So would that be a good thing to talk about today? Would that be fun?

Richard Lowe: I am anxious to hear about these these sound like things that I could use in my own business. I'm sure our listeners could use them as well.

Terry L. Fossum: Well, good, good. Because that's what I was really hoping to talk about today. So let's do it. Okay, again, it's all about developing leaders, and all too often we think of the leader. He's the one up on the top of the hill, or she, mind you, up on top of the hill. You know. It's all about them. They are the leader, they are our leader. Yes, I am your leader. That is not a leader that is a figurehead at best, that is a boss. That is a taskmaster that is not a leader.

Terry L. Fossum: A true leader develops other leaders. And if you really want to build anything significant. That's exactly what you do. If you want to be a great parent, that's what you do. You try to build leaders. If you want to be the head of any organization, any philanthropic organization, any business, any anything.

Terry L. Fossum: If you want what's really best for the organization and the people involved, you need to build leaders. It ain't about you. It's not about your ego, it's about them, and it's about the organization.

Terry L. Fossum: So let's talk about them. And I know we've got about 15 min. I'll watch the clock here out of respect for everybody's time.

Terry L. Fossum: The 1st one number one on the Creating Leaders list

Terry L. Fossum: put the focus where it belongs.

Terry L. Fossum: And what do I mean by that?

Terry L. Fossum: It's not about you as the leader

Terry L. Fossum: get this. And this is gonna hurt some feelings. And I'm okay with that. It's not about Kpis. It's not about mission statements. Nobody gives a rat's patootie about your mission statement, your vision statement, all that crap. Except for the people that wrote them, I guarantee to you the people who are the workers. They're making it happen. They don't care. You know what I'm talking about, Richard.

Richard Lowe: I do. I do.

Richard Lowe: I saw you reacting to that. Go for it.

Richard Lowe: The company that I, some companies that I used to be with. We spent ages on those mission statements going back and forth, but nobody cared. Nobody gave.

Terry L. Fossum: It keeps.

Richard Lowe: Gave a rat's ass about the mission statement other than we were told to do it. And yeah, we did.

Terry L. Fossum: All these pillars. And yeah, Kpis, and we're going to do charts and graphs. Nobody gives a rip. Okay.

Terry L. Fossum: here's the deal.

Terry L. Fossum: People don't care about that. Believe it or not, they'll only work so hard for a paycheck, you know we when somebody gets hired, the 1st thing is well, how much does it pay? It actually doesn't mean that much to them. But listen, this is important.

Terry L. Fossum: They will die for a cause. They'll only work so much for a paycheck, but they will die for a cause. I'm prior military. Had some buddies do it. I tried to do it myself a couple of times. Happily it didn't work out so well for the enemy, but

Terry L. Fossum: people will die for a cause. So what your job is, as the leader is to equate their job, their profession, your business to a cause.

Terry L. Fossum: I was that I was keynoting at this this conference one business Leaders conference, and I asked the people there beforehand, What what does your company do.

Terry L. Fossum: and it was fascinating the answers I would get. Well, we make aircraft parts, you know. We make shoes, we do groceries. We have the biggest conglomerate of blah blah.

Terry L. Fossum: Nobody cares. Okay.

Terry L. Fossum: Richard. Patagonia's mission statement that people do care about. We're in business to save our home planet.

Terry L. Fossum: It's not. We make really cool outdoor gear, or anything like we are. Do you think that their people can get on board with that.

Richard Lowe: I think so. I think so. I think they would enjoy that.

Terry L. Fossum: Harley Davidson more than building machines. We stand for the timeless pursuit of adventure and their key phrase, freedom for the soul. Now, that's something people get on board with right.

Richard Lowe: Well, I'm a ghostwriter, and what I do is I say I write a book that's from your heart and your passion.

Richard Lowe: I don't write just a normal book. I'm not one of those by the numbers books. It's not going to be all techy. It's going to be from your heart.

Richard Lowe: and it's that's what I do. And it's the same kind of thing.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, absolutely. And if a boss can understand the building, that passion inside of somebody, a leader can understand building that passion inside of somebody. If you light a fire under somebody, they're going to stomp it out. The second you walk away, but if you build a fire inside of them it'll burn forever

Terry L. Fossum: in scouting. I'm a big boy Scouter now. They call it scouting America. Been all my life I've been a leader president of the Board of directors for our area, and what I did is I took all these Kpis and mission statements and pillars and all that, and I threw them away. So we have one job. We turn boys and girls into honorable men and women.

Terry L. Fossum: That's all we do. That's what we do period. That's our bottom line. And when I went out there to fire people up, I said, kids need scouting.

Terry L. Fossum: and our community needs leaders. It's all you need to know.

Terry L. Fossum: And son of a gun. We grew funny how that works, isn't it?

Richard Lowe: It is all right. Well, that's number one. What's number 2?

Terry L. Fossum: Number 2 on your creating leaders. Dial believe in others so they can believe in themselves.

Terry L. Fossum: You know it is amazing to me how many theoretical leaders smash people down. You're not doing this right. You're so stupid. You're terrible. You can't do this. I don't even know why I'm paying you.

Terry L. Fossum: It happened. It happens all the time, doesn't it, Richard?

Richard Lowe: Happened to me all the time.

Terry L. Fossum: All the flipping time.

Richard Lowe: Merely an employee.

Terry L. Fossum: And and and so, therefore you performed like merely an employee, didn't you.

Richard Lowe: Well, after that I certainly did.

Terry L. Fossum: Bingo Bingo! I have been absolutely amazed at

Terry L. Fossum: looking somebody in the eyes, and it might be somebody I just met for the 1st time ever. That's part of one of my companies, or something like that. I look in the eyes and go. You know what. I just want to make sure you understand something. I believe in you.

Terry L. Fossum: I believe in you.

Richard Lowe: Yes.

Terry L. Fossum: Suddenly their world changes because somebody believes in them. I was on a survival show, actually representing all the Boy Scouts of America, and we are all. It was 10 survival experts teamed up against each other while dragging along a complete novice, and we'd never even camped out in their backyard before.

Richard Lowe: Right.

Terry L. Fossum: Right. And mine was a online video gamer. We'll just leave it at that great gal, sharp gal, strong gal, but novice. And what I did is I just looked for reasons to praise. That's a big one. Guys write it down. Look for reasons to praise anytime. She did anything right. I jumped on it. You know there's a lot of fears out there for a non survivalist when you're in the flipping jungle, and things are not so nice.

Terry L. Fossum: So I just man, I'm really impressed with how you're overcoming your fears. It's really amazing to me. She overcame more of her fears. I love how hard you work. I think you're one of the hardest working partners out here. She works harder, I said. We don't have any novices in camp anymore. We're all survivalists now on international TV. You see her expression change. You see her change.

Terry L. Fossum: Believe in other people so they can believe in themselves. That's number 2. Anything to add on to that, Richard.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, I think that. Well, that's 1 reason why I like alliances. And another group called Metal. So much is

Richard Lowe: they're very supportive, and they believe in their members, and well, like I was out last Tuesday. I was there for a little while, and I had to leave. A friend of mine passed away over the weekend, and David, the leader of alliances, sent me an email saying, What's up? I didn't see you. I was worried about you so I told him.

Richard Lowe: Nobody does that.

Terry L. Fossum: Right.

Richard Lowe: I was like shocked. And and of course, you know, that's that was

Richard Lowe: it was. It was good that he believed in me enough to call to well, to email me and say, Hey, how can I help.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, that was interesting.

Richard Lowe: Get that very often.

Terry L. Fossum: That leads us right into the next one which the tenant is, give credit where credit's due, but it also goes into. We all crave recognition, whether you believe it or not. We all. But he just recognized you. He didn't say you're great here. You're the employee of the month, and he kind of that certificate suitable for? No, no, he showed you that you matter, and that mattered to you, didn't it?

Richard Lowe: That I exist, even.

Terry L. Fossum: That you exist.

Richard Lowe: I'm not. I'm not just the membership fee. I'm a person. That was. That was enough.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, yeah, absolutely give credit where credit's due. We all crave recognition.

Richard Lowe: Shoot. So I'm I'm in the military. And I was, yeah. I was the.

Terry L. Fossum: I was the executive officer for an entire group of nuclear B 52 bombers during the Cold War at this period of time.

Terry L. Fossum: and I had been the adjutant for this squadron. 325th Bombardment Squadron. Somebody took over from me when I moved up into the the headquarters building, and I heard from one of the guys who used to work for me, man Terry, this guy's taking all the credit for what we're doing, and of course they're all feeling like crap

Terry L. Fossum: now, my boss, the Colonel was a

Terry L. Fossum: let's just say he was a really tough man. He's a really tough man, so I told my sergeant.

Terry L. Fossum: You know the type.

Richard Lowe: I do?

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, he's he's kind of a he's kind of a screamer. People were afraid of him.

Terry L. Fossum: now. So I told my sergeant, who had called me up and said, Man, this guy's really, you know, taking all the credits. Tell you what I got this. Come up to come up to the office 4 o'clock today, 1,600. So he gets in there.

Terry L. Fossum: and then I call up image that took my place. I said, All right, Lieutenant.

Terry L. Fossum: Colonel C. Is pissed. He is pissed. You need to get up here right now, right now, I mean, what's he pissed about? You? Get up here right now, and he comes up there. Okay, he's waiting for you in his office. So the lieutenant knocks on the door.

Terry L. Fossum: Command.

Terry L. Fossum: marches straight ahead, cuts a left corner towards the desk, stops right in front of the desk, salutes smartly. Sir lieutenant X. Reporting is ordered, sir.

Terry L. Fossum: and he just hears laughing from behind the desk, and he looks down, and it's the sergeant it's the sergeant that he was taking credit from, and I walked in and said, Lieutenant, never take credit for anybody else's work again. That lieutenant's a full bird, Colonel, now, and he still tells that exact same story that's never take credit. Give credit where it's due.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, I had. I had a boss who was I started in the company. It was a startup, and he said.

Richard Lowe: I said, I'm putting in all these hours, you know. And he said, Well, keep putting in the hours and support us, and we're growing now. And when we finally, if you bring in some big business, you know we you'll get stock, and you'll get promoted and all that kind of stuff. Well, I brought in our $100,000 client, I mean, we were.

Terry L. Fossum: Right on.

Richard Lowe: And I went to my boss and said, Well, you know, a year ago you promised this, and my boss said, No, you get a salary.

Terry L. Fossum: You're not. You're not gonna get any.

Richard Lowe: Do you think I worked 80 HA week after that.

Terry L. Fossum: Wow!

Richard Lowe: Basically taking credit for everything. And he was getting the stock options. He was getting all this. It was implied that he was taking credit.

Richard Lowe: He he never got anything extra for me after that again, unless it was an emergency or something. I mean, I was done.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: That was the end of that, and he never even knew, because I wasn't going to tell him.

Terry L. Fossum: No, no, you didn't have the respect for him to tell him.

Richard Lowe: Totally totally lost. Respect. Keeping your word is vital.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, yeah, I give credit where it's due, or you tear people down. It's all about building people up number 4. If you delegate responsibility, delegate authority.

Richard Lowe: Oh, yes, please. Yes.

Terry L. Fossum: Ring rings true, does it.

Richard Lowe: Oh, I've so I had a boss who he! We had to go to him to get the $5 book approved, you know, purchasing a book. I mean he had to approve everything.

Richard Lowe: and it was just infuriating, because

Richard Lowe: I was at a level where I mean I was at a level where I should have had the authority. I was a Vp.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, wow.

Richard Lowe: No.

Terry L. Fossum: Wow!

Richard Lowe: Having to go to my boss to say, Can I buy this book?

Richard Lowe: What? Yeah.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah. But it's hard to stick to sometimes as a boss, because you need to understand. That means they're going to make decisions that are different than yours, but you gave them the responsibility. You have to give them the authority they might screw up sometimes. That's okay. That's part of their development as a leader. You've got to let them do it. It's too easy as the the

Terry L. Fossum: boss to take that back. Oh, no, no, no, no! But I mean, you need to do it like that. Nope, you just show that you're not a person of your word, and you tore them down instead of building them up. You're you're developing followers. You've got to develop leaders.

Richard Lowe: Them fail, you have to let them fail. That's the same thing with kids. When you have kids, you have today's mindset of having a participation awards. It just drives me bad.

Richard Lowe: like, oh, you were there? Yeah, big deal. Did you actually do the work? Did you? Did you run the race, or do the wrestling match, or do the baseball, or whatever it is? You know the science experiments.

Terry L. Fossum: Right.

Richard Lowe: Didn't do those. Why are you getting an award?

Richard Lowe: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: participation awards are the most ridiculous thing. Well, not the most ridiculous thing. But they're there, high up in the list.

Terry L. Fossum: Just like, you know.

Terry L. Fossum: And that's funny, because you say that because that leads us into the final one, push them out of the nest, and adults are nothing but old children.

Richard Lowe: It's true, right?

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, yes.

Terry L. Fossum: adults, we all are. We all whine, we all cry. We all want to get our way. We are nothing but old children, and especially men when we are sick. Let's face it. It's true. Sorry if you get emails about that. Just forward them on to not forward them on to me. I don't want to hear, but.

Richard Lowe: Go straight to the spam bucket.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, there you go. But here's the deal, folks. You've got to push them out of the nest. People will want to follow you. They're going to want to ask you what they should do. What I do is I don't answer them.

Terry L. Fossum: I answer them with a question.

Terry L. Fossum: Well, what do you think you ought to do here? I want them to at least come up with some potential solutions, and I'm going to keep asking questions. So here's 1 of the big tenets of leadership is, ask questions of them. Well, I was wondering about this, then how would that work out? Well, this would happen, and then what? And so keep asking the questions. So they learn they can come up with the solutions, and often what I'll do is if they keep doing that man.

Terry L. Fossum: I can't wait to find out what you do about that. That's going to be awesome.

Richard Lowe: Yep.

Terry L. Fossum: And that's like, wait, wait what? Yeah, I can't. I can't wait to find out what you decide to do here. That's going to be fantastic.

Terry L. Fossum: and they understand. Then they have to fly. Now I'm going to support them. I'm going to be there for them, and like you, said Richard, when they screw up. I'm still going to be there for them. You know what? Yeah, that didn't work, but fantastic. Now you know, what are you going to do next. What's your next? Try? Obviously push them out of the nest. It depends.

Richard Lowe: On the order of magnitude of the screw up.

Richard Lowe: I mean there. There are times or the competence of the person involved. There are times when you have to come down on them. But

Richard Lowe: for most, for most mistakes and most failures, they don't you reach that order of magnitude at all. Yeah, yeah. So it did. You just have you have to use your leadership brains. I think.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah. And the only time I'm going to come down on them is if they keep making the same mistake, or if they don't try.

Terry L. Fossum: you know, and to begin with, I'll do velvet hammer, you know. But if they keep making the same mistake and they're not learning, yeah, we're going to have to have a discussion at that point. It's still going to be a discussion about why didn't you? What's going on? Okay, you need to cut that out. And then that's a whole different podcast for different time.

Richard Lowe: Of course, but.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, give them the opportunity to go out and screw up, which is another one of the tenants, actually.

Terry L. Fossum: But I think we're about out of time.

Richard Lowe: Oh, we can go a little bit further. If you don't mind. Sure.

Richard Lowe: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: When I was my 1st job I worked for a World war. 2. Nazi, Hardcore, Nazi, U-boat, commander.

Terry L. Fossum: Oh, my! Gosh!

Richard Lowe: He was brought in with by operation paperclip, which was, they brought in a whole bunch of Germans, like 80,000 of them, to resell them in the United States, and he became the owner of the liquor store.

Richard Lowe: and I stayed there for 2 years.

Richard Lowe: and I stayed there. Everybody else was less than a month, and I asked my boss just before he closed the store.

Richard Lowe: Why was it here so long? And he said, Because you're competent.

Richard Lowe: and that was a big lesson, being competent trumps everything. Now, what is competence? And 1st of all, incompetence is not necessarily

Richard Lowe: an insult. We're all incompetent things. If I'm if I'm going to go, do brain surgery, I'm going to be incompetent as hell about it. I'm not going to do a good brain surgery. I'm an incompetent brain surgeon. Don't give me a knife and expect me to carve. Open your head, but you know, give me an assembly language program because I'm an Assembly language programmer. I can code that like you don't. Tomorrow give me something to write. I can write like No. Tomorrow I'm competent at what I'm competent at.

Richard Lowe: So when I

Richard Lowe: hire somebody to do something, I expect them to be competent at their job. Now, if they're incompetent at their job. I'm going to talk to them and figure out. Why do they need more schooling? Do? Was it over their head? Did they not get enough support from me. Do they not have enough budget? You know what was the underlying problem? And let's fix that. It's not

Richard Lowe: attack, saying, Oh, my God, you're an incompetent idiot it right which might be true.

Terry L. Fossum: But I don't know if that's exactly true. But yeah.

Richard Lowe: I mean, it could be. Yeah, you know I've had. I've had employees where it's like, how did this person even

Richard Lowe: crawl out of a kindergarten, but then they shouldn't have gotten past the interview stage, you know. I mean that that was on me.

Richard Lowe: But competence is a big deal, and I learned that from that

Richard Lowe: U-boat commander, Gary, Jerry Jerry Genkin that was his name. It was a long time ago.

Richard Lowe: I was like 17 managing a liquor store.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: The scary stuff.

Terry L. Fossum: But I wanted a new car, and I wanted to get out of home, you know, and.

Richard Lowe: I had to work for it, you know. Nobody's given me a a silver spoon.

Terry L. Fossum: Sure.

Richard Lowe: There's a guy named Larry Winget. I don't know if you've heard of him.

Richard Lowe: He's a coach.

Terry L. Fossum: Not sure,

Richard Lowe: From back in the nineties, and 2 thousands, he wrote a book called People are Idiots, and I can prove it.

Terry L. Fossum: Oh, God! Okay.

Richard Lowe: Great title, and the book has that tone through it. He says, right in the beginning, if you don't like being spoken to.

Richard Lowe: you know in this way. You don't read this book, and one of the things he says, which is why I like alliances so much. And my other group metal is. The 2 groups I'm in is.

Richard Lowe: if you want to succeed, hang out with people who are higher up the ladder than you, who are better than you

Richard Lowe: because they'll pull you up.

Terry L. Fossum: 0 question.

Richard Lowe: Don't hang out with people who are the same, or less than you on whatever judgments you're using. So if you want to quit smoking. Don't hang out with smokers.

Terry L. Fossum: Right.

Richard Lowe: Let's put it real, simply because they're going to drag you right back in. If you're trying to quit drinking, don't hang, go and go to the bars. Yeah. And if you're trying to get rich, don't hang out with poor people.

Richard Lowe: Hang out with rich people. Guess what

Richard Lowe: they're going to try and make you rich.

Terry L. Fossum: -

Richard Lowe: They're going to say, Okay, well, how do we do this? You know, you could talk to them. And so you're going to become rich. Those are some tenants.

Richard Lowe: I he's a great speaker. I don't even know if he's still alive. It's been many years, but he wrote some great books, grow. A pair is another one.

Richard Lowe: He's got these great titles, and they really piss you off when I read them.

Richard Lowe: But it's looking at things. Taking off the rose colored glasses and looking at things.

Richard Lowe: and I think it fits into your your 5 tenants very well, is

Richard Lowe: as a as a leader or anybody else you should search for and be competent.

Richard Lowe: and you should. You should strive to be better than you are, and one way to be better than you are is to put yourself in groups that are better than you.

Terry L. Fossum: I think that goes for ethics as well, you know. If you want to be an ethical person, don't don't hang out with unethical people.

Richard Lowe: Oh, you're no fun!

Terry L. Fossum: That's I've I've been told that before.

Terry L. Fossum: And I I'm okay with that.

Richard Lowe: Me too.

Terry L. Fossum: Because I've never been told that I'm unethical.

Richard Lowe: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: yeah, that would be a shocker to me. If I were, I wouldn't believe it. I mean, it's like what I'm I'm probably one of the more ethical people that you'd ever run into.

Terry L. Fossum: No.

Richard Lowe: And and that's because

Richard Lowe: if you're uneth, if you're if you're ethical, you don't have to look over your shoulder.

Terry L. Fossum: Right right, and people will only follow you as from the leadership standpoint, if they feel they can trust you, because if you'll screw somebody else. You'll screw them. It's the way it is, man.

Richard Lowe: Yep.

Richard Lowe: So I wanted to ask you one more question looking over your your introduction. So you were the executive officer for an entire group of B 52 bombers. What do you think of the reset they're doing now? I mean, I would imagine this bombers over almost a century old.

Terry L. Fossum: Well, and even when when I was in there the bird itself was older than than many of the crew dogs.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, you know. Yeah.

Terry L. Fossum: But but it's important to understand that. Yeah, the the airframe itself. But it's been retooled so much. It's different engines, different

Terry L. Fossum: electronics, different everything. What I love is that there are now all female crew, dogs, cruise. B, 52 crews. And again, you can send me emails if you want on that. And I just don't care. I will stick by that.

Terry L. Fossum: And then I've got all sorts of jokes, I could say. But you know the bottom line is.

Terry L. Fossum: it's fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic. What's going on? Women, we're switching completely. Women have been in combat for more years than the United States have been alive. So I'm okay with that. And

Terry L. Fossum: again, somebody can not be if they don't want to be. But I'm excited about it. And yeah, it's a great airframe. There's no doubt beautiful thing about 8 engines on 4 pods. So it's 2 engines per pod, is it? And I, you know, of course, I stay away from classified information.

Richard Lowe: Of course.

Terry L. Fossum: It can. It can take a lick and keep on ticking man, because most of the the missiles are going to be heat seekers, so they're going to hit one of those pods. The pod is away from the wing a bit so it can be taken out and still have a chance of coming on home or completing the mission.

Richard Lowe: I think you could take out 6 of the 8 engines, and it still could fly home. In many cases.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, I'm not

Richard Lowe: Okay.

Terry L. Fossum: I'm moving on

Terry L. Fossum: and and I can't really speak to that with with the new engines or anything like that. Anyway, you know, it's okay.

Richard Lowe: It's a wonderful airframe. I love it. Obviously it's more of a standoff weapon than the stealth bombers that go in there

Richard Lowe: in the thick of things, because it's a little compared to modern bombers is a little slow, and you can see it like, Hey, there it is, you know, but.

Terry L. Fossum: And it's it's kind of funny that you say that, because again I've been on, you know, bombing runs with fighters simulated again. This is during war exercises in this case coming after us, and it is amazing what those crew dogs can do with that airframe. But it is a long range bomber.

Terry L. Fossum: And again, I'm just trying to talk. Make sure I'm not saying anything and missions different than when I was in. We had gunners in in the buffs big, ugly, fat flyers when I was in, but they took those out during my period of time there. Because of that. It's going to be more of a standoff airframe. But when you can drop a whole lot of 500 pounders

Terry L. Fossum: from way way up in the sky, or you can launch outcomes here, launch cruise missiles from a long distance away. Yeah, you don't have to get that close, and the other birds can go in and play that. But it's also warfare is changing significantly even as we speak. It's a whole different

Terry L. Fossum: way of waging war than it was back back when I was in.

Richard Lowe: Yep. Well, I bet you they wish that they hadn't carved the wings off of what? 500 airframes back and

Richard Lowe: the salt days assault one and salt 2 were being negotiated. I mean, I look at those things. They have air aerial photos of them. It's like.

Terry L. Fossum: The boneyard.

Richard Lowe: What were they? Well, I know what they were thinking. They were thinking, the cold war is over. Blah! Blah blah! I know that they're wishing now. God, I wish we hadn't done that!

Terry L. Fossum: So I'll tell you a quick story, and it doesn't have that much to do with leadership for all the listeners. I'll tell you that right now. But it's a fun, interesting story, at least to me. It is because I'm old and I tell stories.

Terry L. Fossum: So we're at the last ever strategic air command, bombing competition, the last one ever.

Terry L. Fossum: And so I was there at the end of sac

Terry L. Fossum: and we come into the tarmac and we're taxiing up.

Terry L. Fossum: and we look over next to us to our taxi spot.

Terry L. Fossum: and there is a Russian bear bomber. This is our Nemesis. This is

Terry L. Fossum: this is the airframe that we have studied. And

Terry L. Fossum: again, that that is our entire Nemesis in the world. And we're parking next to the flippant airplane. And we were having. We're we're all I mean. Our jaws were on the floor. We had no idea this was happening, and when we had the banquet for the last ever.

Terry L. Fossum: red flag exercise for strategic air command. We had our new comrades there that we're all toasting a new friendship to, and I'll just say that not everybody was on board with that. There we go. That's just an old war story.

Richard Lowe: And admire how things have changed in just a few years.

Richard Lowe: because it's definitely not that way now.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we probably could have seen that one coming boy. This is a story I've never told on a podcast before a few things I've never said on a podcast before. See how you are, Richard.

Richard Lowe: I like to have a few stories at the end, in addition to all of the information, because I'm I'm a ghostwriter. I'm a storyteller.

Richard Lowe: There you go. Works out really

Richard Lowe: well, all right. Well, any final words for our listeners.

Terry L. Fossum: You know.

Terry L. Fossum: Yeah, you are leading.

Terry L. Fossum: You are absolutely leading every single day, every single action, every single word, every single subtle nuance. You are leading. The question is, are you leading to the good? Or are you leading to the bad?

Terry L. Fossum: Because everything you're doing in front of anybody at all? You are leading them. They are picking up on your cues. They are watching you. So it comes as both encouragement. Whether you think you're a leader or not, you are, you are. You're influencing people. Therefore you are a leader, but also words of warning. In that. Be careful.

Terry L. Fossum: because everything you say makes an impact everything you do makes an impact. Everybody that you're anywhere near you are impacting them. So take your perhaps new role.

Terry L. Fossum: But take your role as a leader seriously, not just in business, not just in philanthropy, not just what you might think it'd be.

Terry L. Fossum: but with your children, with your family, with every single moment of your lives.

Terry L. Fossum: That's what I got for you, Richard.

Richard Lowe: Well, thank you. It's been nice, having you on wonderful, wonderful, podcast enjoyed it thoroughly.

Richard Lowe: This has been the leaders in their stories. Podcast I'm Richard Lowe, the writing king and ghostwriting. Guru. Thank you all for listening, and this is pretty much daily. So come back tomorrow for the next one. Thank you.

Terry L. Fossum: Thank y'all. Thank you, Richard.