Developing Grit Drive On Podcast

David Fivecoat spent 24 years in the Army including tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. He now runs The Fivecoat Consulting Group, which helps develop gritty leaders. In this episode, he discusses how to develop personal grit.




Links & Resources





TheFivecoatConsultingGroup.com





Grow Your Grit Book





Transcript



Scott DeLuzio    00:00:00    Thanks for tuning into the Drive On Podcast where we're focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community, whether you're a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I'm your host, Scott DeLuzio. Now let's get on with the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Drive On Podcast. Today, my guest is David Fivecoat. David served 24 years as a US Army Paratrooper as well as four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. And since leaving the army, he founded the Fivecoat Consulting Group where he helps develop gritty leaders. David is also the author of the book, Grow Your Grit, and he's here today to talk about developing personal grit. Welcome to the show, David.  




David Fivecoat    00:00:52    Thank you for having me on, I'm excited about this. I've listened to several of your podcasts and I really appreciate you having me on.  




Scott DeLuzio     00:00:59    I'm glad you were able to make it on the show and come on and share your information as well because I think, the gritty side of things is something that's important. I think we all have the potential in us to have that gritty side of us come out.  But it's just a matter of tapping into that. I think your experience with what you do now will be a good help there. But before we get into that, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? I know you and I both were in Afghanistan around the same time. I'd love to hear a little bit about where you were and what you did over there. And then we could talk a little bit about that for a few minutes.  




David Fivecoat   00:01:39    A little bit about me.  I grew up in Ohio, no military sort of background in the family, but decided to go to West Point because I loved reading military history and of course, all the World War II generals had attended West Point. It was really a good fit when it came time to apply to colleges. That's how I ended up at West Point and throughout my army career, I was always of the sort of mind that. I'll stick around in the army until it stops being fun. Every couple of years, when it started to look like it wasn't going to be fun, there'd be a new job or a new challenge or something.  




David Fivecoat  00:02:24    And that kept me going., I did 24 years in the army. I was commissioned as an infantry officer. Along the way, I had the opportunity to serve in Kosovo Bosnia, three trips to Iraq, and a trip to Afghanistan. My final job in the army was I ran the army's airborne school and ranger school. While I had the oversight of ranger school, we actually led the gender integration of ranger school. For your listeners that aren't familiar with ranger school: ranger school is the Army's premier small-unit leadership school. It's been in existence since 1952. There's about 80 or 90,000 graduates. Up until 2015, those graduates were all male. In 2015, we tried to run a pilot program. 19 women came to ranger school and three women were the first three women to earn the ranger tab. That was a pivotal part of the Army's decision to open all jobs and all units to women and provide