Mission First Recruiting with Von Kleim

We share real numbers from Cleveland and Philadelphia to show how mission-first recruiting and clear standards can flip outcomes fast. Von Kleim with Force Science joins us to break down leadership, human performance, and training that actually attracts and protects good cops.

• casting an honorable vision that fits real police work
• shifting recruiting language from apology to mission
• local trust versus national narrative and why it matters
• honest accountability through clear, trainable standards
• aligning use-of-force policy with human performance limits
• leadership presence as a retention and recruiting lever
• training as a differentiator, including visualization methods
• practical steps to prepare new hires faster and safer

Safeguard Recruiting is owned and operated by first responders, and it is a public safety recruiting firm with a proven recruiting system that staffs agencies across the country. 

Reach out today for a free consultation and learn about our guarantee that will increase the number of candidates for your agency. 

Transcript

New Year Wins In Recruiting

Travis Yates 0:00

Welcome back to the show. I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday season. Here we are, early January, about to get after it again. I know many of you hopefully got to enjoy some time off and you're getting back in the groove of things. And man, do we have an episode to launch 2026 for you? I'm going to tell you about that in just a few minutes, but over the holidays and over the break is always a time for our company to kind of see the successes of the previous year. And man, did we get some this year? You may have seen the lead article in IECP's last newsletter about the Cleveland Police Department increasing their applications 356%. We'll link an article based on that, but obviously they've been a great client with ours. We've really enjoyed partnering with them. And by the way, we'll give them the credit. I mean, we are partnering with them and we've we've given them a lot of things to do, and they've said yes to a lot of those things, but you know, they're doing the hard work. I mean, we don't want to make it seem like people can just hire us and walk away. Cleveland PD hired us uh about nine months ago, and they have worked extremely hard in that time period. And so we we give the credit to them, but it really was nice to see them get a lot of credit around the country. We saw numerous articles pop up based on that one article that IECP ran. Also, Philadelphia Police Department announced a 287% increase in hires. Now, we've of course worked with Philadelphia for the last couple of years. Captain John Walker's been on this show. And by the way, they came two hires away from breaking their all-time hiring record. And that is tremendous based on where they came from. And Captain Walker talked a lot about that on this very show. I'll link that up as well. Uh, but once again, uh, it's an honor to partner with them. But Captain Walker has put a team together that's putting in the hard work. And if you want to hear about what those agencies did to make that happen, and by the way, quickly, Philadelphia within six months started turning around, and Cleveland within the last six months has just been on fire.

Client Success Stories And Results

Travis Yates 2:21

In fact, uh, just a quick story is is we told Cleveland early on, we're going to staff you full. And I'm not sure they really believed us, but we're on the verge of it. Actually, they're on the verge of it. And once again, I want to reiterate we're not sitting here taking a victory lap for ourselves. We're just bragging on these agencies that have taken a different approach to recruiting, done some things a little bit differently, and we've just been able to go along with the ride and partner with them. Of course, you've a couple weeks ago, you heard from uh another guest on this show of a client of ours that's he's increased his hiring interviews, Larimore County, Colorado, 3x. He's gonna go for 5x this year. And by the way, you're gonna wonder well, what's that cost him? Uh, it's less than any hiring bonus for one person you've ever heard of. Actually, way less. I don't want to reveal it, but it's just not a lot of money. They put in a lot of work, and of course, they have our software, which is what they talked about on the podcast. And so check those out. You can just go back to a few podcasts and you can check those out. But we're really, really happy about that. We have a huge article come out and police one here in the next few days. Follow us on social media, we will post that. But we're very honored to be able to partner with them as well and to start talking about even more people about recruiting. So, today's guest, you're gonna love today's guest. There's probably not anybody in this profession that is tuned in to so many different topics uh than Vaughn Kleem with Force Science. He's the president of communications there. I've known Vaughn for many, many years. And man, when it comes to leadership, when it comes to recruiting, when it comes to retention, when it comes to what other agencies are doing across the country, he is tuned in. You're gonna love the interview. I love talking

Introducing Guest Vaughn Kleem

Travis Yates 4:10

to him. We'll have him back again, but you don't want to miss this one. So without further ado, here's Vaughn. Well, it's our honor to welcome Von Kleem here on the show. He has over 30 years of experience in the criminal justice field. He's held positions all the way from patrol officer to drug investigator to use of force instructor, street level supervisor, parole investigator, jailer. He's got legal positions, including chief prosecutor, special victims counsel, police legal advisor, senior policy attorney, military magistrate, special assistant of the U.S. attorney, and much more. But he's currently the president and director of communications with Force Science. It's an incredible honor. And Vaughn is has probably talks to more law enforcement agencies across the country than almost anybody. So we thought he'd be a great addition here on the show to discuss leadership, recruiting,

From Crisis Talk To Vision Casting

Travis Yates 5:00

retention, all that goes into that. Vaughn, how are you doing, sir?

Von Kleim 5:03

Oh, I'm doing great. And hey, Travis, thanks a lot for inviting me. I've been watching your show. I've been impressed with the work you're doing, and and it is absolutely an honor to sit here with you today.

Travis Yates 5:12

Well, we're trying to give this content to law enforcement because we keep hearing this routine of there's a recruiting crisis, and this is going on, and this is going on. My issue with that has always been if we just call it a crisis, it gives us an excuse. Uh, we we don't see that at all. We see plenty of people that want to go into profession. Obviously, not every agency is the same. Just what's your thoughts? You're speaking to officers across the country, you're speaking to agents across the country. What are you hearing from them, Bond?

Von Kleim 5:40

Yeah, well, that's a great question because obviously things are changing now, but the response to it shouldn't change. And I and what I mean by that is when we were seeing the huge recruiting problem, and I just talked, I talked to a buddy the other day who's in recruiting. He's like, we don't have to actively recruit very hard right now. We again have applicants lining up around the block because they they like the political environment, right? And what he was specifically talking about is we just went through a phase where our politicians and our leaders were trying to convince the country that cops were racist, abusive, and corrupt. Well, that's a problem because if you're trying to recruit people into an industry, you need to cast a vision for them, right? That was the strategy. How do you cast a vision that they can see themselves in, right? And it has to be an honorable vision. And depending on who the individual is, it could be one of courage or one of communication or one of they, you know, we we look at at police departments like a baseball team, right? Not everybody's a pitcher, not everybody's a right fielder, but everybody's on the team. And so we look for their skill set and we plug it in. That was part of the recruiting. We looked at their attributes, we looked at their skill sets, and we cast a vision for them, and then we showed them how they could get there. Well, the vision that was being cast was your race is abusive and corrupt. They nobody's lining up for that. The people who wanted to be cops couldn't raise their hand with that as the backstop. The other side of that was if you want to become a cop, understand that cops are systemically racist. This was what was being beaten into everybody's head. So if you want to go into that industry, you have to go in there with an anti-racist mentality, which meant you had to deconstruct all institutions of racism, policing being one of them, and you had to deconstruct it from inside. And so they were seeing applicants who were basically social justice activists who wanted to become cops so that they could dismantle that system of oppression from the inside. Well, the traditional law and order guys who were in the agency had no idea what to do with that, right? But that's who that's who was actually signing up or willing to come and sign up to be cops at the time. Uh, that's pivoted. You know, I've seen it pivot. Um, I think you've probably seen it pivot in a conversation two nights ago with a recruiter. Um, they're able

Mission Over Messaging In Recruiting

Von Kleim 8:05

to cast a vision of honor, courage, commitment, selfless service, sacrifice. They're able to cast a vision of uh, hey, we run towards the sound of gunfire, we we stop the bleeding, we start the breathing. Um, if you want to be courageous and you want to be physically strong and intelligent and you want a job that requires those attributes, you just found it, right? That's what policing is. Uh, so that was sort of what the challenges I saw was, and I think some of that's been eliminated. And what I started with, so this so the strategy doesn't have to change. There's they still now get to cast a vision, but they can do it with optimism and they can do it with a little bit of confidence that the political leadership is not going to as aggressively or overtly, uh, or I should say openly and notoriously demonize the police profession in this current political culture.

Travis Yates 9:00

Yeah, I mean, well, I think what you described there is it's mission-based, right? If you stick with your mission, and it's easy to know what the law enforcer mission is, it's in our name, law enforcement. There's always going to be people that want to do that job. There's just people inherently that want to do that job. But I think as you described, as we got away from that mission to, I don't even know what that was, things went kind of haywire. It kind of takes me back to it was three or four years ago when the military wasn't hitting their recruiting levels, which was a problem, it's a national security problem. And they were having meetings on Capitol Hill and Army and Navy and uh Space Force, they're all giving big bonuses and they're trying to give all these incentives. They weren't hitting their their recruiting numbers, but the Marine Corps was, and they got they they got the head of the Marine Corps, and I apologize, you probably know his Vaughn, you know, Colonel, whatever his name, whatever, whatever the rank of the head guy is. He testified in front of uh a Congress and they said, We don't understand this. You you don't offer any bonuses, you don't offer any more incentives. Why are you hitting your recruiting goal? But none of the other branches are. And he just simply said, because we promised they can be a U.S. Marine, right? So he sticks to his mission. And so and I tell you, we've we've run across this with some of our clients, Vaughn, and we've we've had sort of had some deep conversations with them. Like during that time period you talked about, they were actually trying to recruit based on that. Hey, come in here and you can change this profession. Come in here, we we we acknowledge our mistakes of the past, but we need you to come help us. And and it here's a shocker, it wasn't working for them. No, they were either getting people that weren't fitting in their culture or can or being able to actually do law and order, or they weren't getting anybody at all. In fact, the biggest answer is they weren't really getting anybody. And as soon as we would shift their ads and shift their language to the mission, it just started working. And so I'm with you. I hope it has shifted. Uh, but I would caution everybody listening. It's not like that stuff's gone away, it's just not as politically expedient now to be that way uh today that it was then. Trust me, it's still there. And and just what's your thoughts on that? Because I, you know, we've talked about a lot of these issues, and you and I've gone off microphone here, and and that's what's so frustrating to me because I feel like law enforcement just expects everything. The pendulum's always going to swing back, is the famous words, right? Pendulum's always gonna swing back. When it comes to recruiting, we're probably never going to see the masses of

Local Trust Versus National Narrative

Travis Yates 11:15

people trying to get into a department that we once did. I mean, I tested with a thousand people for nine spots, I think. I'm sure you have a similar story. But we can get enough people if we just kind of stick to those core issues. Speak to the mission, speak to honor, speak to courage, speak to what the job's actually about, not what people are saying it's about. What's your thoughts on that?

Von Kleim 11:33

No, you just nailed it. Like if all they have to do is accurately describe what the job is, they do not, and this is the this is a nice transition to the question to your question, which is what do leaders need to be doing? Well, they need to be honest about the reality of the job as compared to how it's being described by the political leaders. And so, how many people stood up and they said, we need to change the culture of policing, right? And I said, and you you've probably heard me say this, I've said it loudly and proudly for years, was well, what do you think the culture of policing is? Because the culture as I experienced it and continue to witness is what I just said. You know, these are people who uh are self committed to selfless service and sacrifice and running into danger and starting the breathing and stopping the bleeding. And and these are people who show a high level of discipline and amazing judgment. And they're like, Well, you have to admit there's some bad cops, and I'll say, sure, and you have to admit some planes crash, right? But but we do not ignore the millions of planes that land safely because sometimes a plane crashes. And and you know, you and I do we do expert witness work, we look at some of the worst cases, right, across the country, and and no one's no one's ever gonna have more of a front row seat to bad policing than we do. We see real life bad policing. And a prosecutor recently asked me, well, what percentage of the cases do you get? Do you recognize excessive use of force? And I said, you know, probably less than 4%, I mean, high 90%, are are fall within a reasonable range of decision-making and performance, which is the legal standard. Cops have to be reasonable, and reasonable people can disagree. And so I was pointing that out, and he wanted to show that as my bias. Like over 90% of the cases are reasonable. And so I didn't think fast enough on the stand, but I, you know, like you do after you testify, you go back to bed in the hotel that night and you go, Oh, I wish I would have said this. And here's what I reminded myself of that night. This prosecutor had access to every single police use of force in that jurisdiction. And I simply wanted to ask him, how many cops have you prosecuted for excessive use of force over the denominator of as many uses of force as in your in your jurisdiction? And the answer would have been much higher than mine. 99% of the cases he thought were reasonable, fell within a reasonable range. I didn't think of it fast enough, but that's the reality of policing, they're doing an amazing job every single day. And the anomalies stand out be precisely because they're anomalies. Um, so our leaders have got to do a better job of pushing back and saying what you're describing does not reflect the reality of American policing. And if they don't want to go that broad, they can say it doesn't reflect

Honest Accountability And Clear Standards

Von Kleim 14:45

the reality of our policing in our city. Because you remember the study when they asked, you know, civilians, what uh what's the what is your trust in law enforcement as ranked among other yeah uh professions, and law enforcement was still really high, yeah. But they would still, but you know what was higher than how do you what is how do you rank the trust of law enforcement, which was pretty high, even at its worst political pushback, our community still had a pretty high trust in yeah, even at the worst you can think about, we were fourth or fifth place of all industries, yeah, yeah. And then you ask them a next question well, how much do you trust your police? And it went up. Yeah, it was even higher trust in their local police because they personalized them and they what they were what that to me reflected was how successful has the anti-police narrative been in influencing your trust in police versus your experience with police, right? If they relied just on their experience, it was gonna be much higher. If they relied on the so the political narrative and the media narrative that was raging through our country, um well, of course that's gonna influence it. Which which this goes again. We talked to chiefs about this when they were like, we need to build community trust. Officers, individual officers need to engage in in strategies to build community trust. And I always thought, well, one, what is your current level of community trust? You know, Thomas Sowell talks about that. It's community trust is not an actual thing, right? People trust you based on relations you have individual to individual. But he says, even if you could find on one day in one minute, some metric that accurately reflected community trust, you don't know which subset of the community you're talking about. It certainly isn't your entire community, but whatever it was, even within that subset, it's going to change within one minute, right? Within the next experience. And it's so fickle, and this was a leadership issue, that the best departments could have very good metrics of community trust because some of them were capturing metrics on car stops, right? With their little apps, like, thank you. Here's your warning. By the way, how would you rate this interaction? Which was brilliant because in those moments they were being rated very high. So later, someone would come in and say, You have a terrible relationship with your Hispanic community. And the chief would go, Yeah, I don't think so. We've got pretty good metrics right here to show they have a pretty high trust. The problem with that was you can get one activist to stand on a podium provided by the media to say, you know, we thought we had a much better relationship with our police department, but this has destroyed community trust. And now we're back on our heels again. And I'm like, that just cannot be how we operate a police department.

Travis Yates 17:40

It's so interesting you said all that because I'm in the middle of a research project right now, and I'll share this to you at length in a few in a few weeks, I'm sure. But I I uh I've been going through about 2,000 police videos, not just the videos that show up on your algorithm, like diving deep, not you know, randomized watching all of these incidents. And man, I I've come across there thinking we're a lot better than even I thought, Vaughn. I mean, you talk about heroic stuff, and and even going through there, you it you would have to almost try to find something being done wrong. And so it is amazing how the narrative is so dip so much of the reality. We we we

Human Performance Limits In Use Of Force

Travis Yates 18:20

are in this day and time where you don't have to believe me or Vaughn. Go go watch the thousands of police videos dropping all over the country every week, right? I mean, if we're so terrible, where is it at? And I just think it's unfortunate because obviously there is a leadership issue that plays in the fact, you know, they've been doing studies for a long time and why people stay at their job. It all comes down to leadership and support, uh, not salaries and benefits. That's important, but it's always leadership and support. And so I think from a recruiting standpoint, leaders have to get involved. You can't just set back and let the recruiting officer do the job. There needs to be a figurehead giving assurance to people that are looking at your police department, and I think that's huge. I mean, what's your thoughts on that?

Von Kleim 18:59

Yeah, so we I I have tried to frame these complex issues as simple as I could, uh, even for chiefs, right? So you might have heard me talk about the concept of honest accountability. Like our police chiefs have got to demand accountability from their people. Uh, we all expect it. We don't carry guns and point them at people and not be, and by accountability, I mean we have to explain why we did what we did, right? But if you want to hold somebody accountable and you want to uh to a standard, right? There's two things that have to be present for honest accountability. The first is that the standards have to be clear enough that the officer can predict the lawfulness of their own behavior. So when we start to see minimum force necessary or last resort, it's like I've had people call, go, well, how would I know what that is? How would any officer know what the minimum force necessary is in advance of feeling resistance or or or observing resistance or pre-assault indicators? Like the feds have, I think, put it best. All we can do is have our entry point. It's an educated guess, right? When you talk about minimum force. But let's more broadly talk about any standard you hold officers accountable to from a due process notice standpoint, you've they have to be clear. And by clear, it's not just clear and reading it, it has to be clear and then operationalized through training. And your chief has to be willing to stand behind those because if you want to undermine morale, you have a chief of police who wrote a policy, supported training. And when the officer follows it, and this is happening in a lot of criminal cases for your audience, uh we have officers whose supervisors come in and say he followed his policy, followed his training, he did exactly what we would expect him to do under the circumstances. And he's sitting there as a criminal defendant. And you know who's not on that stand testifying on his behalf? The chief of police. Now, recently, in a case, the under-sherh came in and testified for his officer. The officer was still convicted. So we have that challenge, which is a little bit separate. But the leaders that we're finding, one, they have to make sure their policies and standards are clear enough, first on paper and then through training, that the officers can predict the lawfulness of their own behavior. The second criteria is the expectations on decision making and performance can't be beyond human performance capabilities. And this is where we make our living. This is kind of our unique offer. If you're going to hold an officer or any human accountable to their decision making and performance in a critical incident, you can't expect them to do things that no human can reasonably be expected to do. The problem is we don't know what humans can or can't do because we live our lives sort of uh educated by TV, right? We see gun draws where I just got to wait till you reach for yours and I can beat you on the draw. Right. And some of that infects even our police leadership. They have ideas. Uh I recently had to consult with a with a police leader who, in their policy, basically the police could not shoot somebody until there was an overact. Right. So if you're holding a gun and you've got the gun at your way at your down by your side, they were required to wait till there was an overact towards the assault. So I just pulled up my my my computer I had with me, and they hired us for this. So this was, I love that they did this. This was actually a leader

Bad Options And Real-Time Decisions

Von Kleim 22:30

doing it right. Like bring in you guys, educate me. And I'll I'll quote what he says. I'm I I put it up, he looks at it, and it's an animation of action versus reaction.

Travis Yates 22:39

Yep.

Von Kleim 22:40

And following the animation, because words on paper, the research doesn't matter. They need to see it and feel it and hear how fast this stuff is. I show him a real world video that demonstrated the same concepts where the officers actually get shot, one gets killed. And he's just staring with this blank stare because he knows what his policy says. He knows that he just terminated an officer for violating that policy after a shooting. And he's watching this and he goes, Well, you just made me uh a liar. And he had been briefing the community on what why that policy was important. And when he looked at that, he realized what we were telling him overtly, which is under your current policy, you're requiring your officers to be shot at a minimum two times before they can respond with reactive fire or responsive fire, if they can respond at all. And I made sure I said that because we have videos after videos of officers dying after the first shot. Yeah. Right? So, I mean, and and to you, I saw the look on your face, and to your audience who are probably sophisticated cops, they're gonna find that to be ridiculous. The problem is the whether it's your chief of police who hasn't understand the reality of human performance, or it's your investigators, because we try to get in front of all of them, it's definitely your jurors. It's definitely your judge. Um, unless, of course, your juror comes from an inner city culture of violence, they get it. They're some of our best jurors. They're like, they know I would have shot him much sooner. Okay, they get it. Uh, but our judges, our attorneys, a lot of them have never seen the reality of human performance in a critical incident, its effect on memory, its effect on perception, its effect on decision making. They haven't seen any of it. And so they come in with expectations. Some of them come in with the best of intentions, and once you educate them, they get to the right answer. Others come in as reform activists, they hate the police, they're looking for their opportunity to hold cops accountable. They thought they finally have seen that. Um, I wish when we come back next time, I'll be able to tell you about a case I'm currently sitting on that exemplifies this perfectly. But the other thing our leaders need to remember is your cops are often put in positions where they only have bad options and they have to make a decision among only bad options. And they're doing it without the benefit of an air-conditioned office and replay on their body cam, right? And so we're currently sitting on a case where you know the they were it was just two things. Either the guy, there's a risk that the guy's gonna get die here, there's a or there's a risk that the guy's gonna kill somebody here, there's a risk the guy's gonna kill somebody down the road. But both of those risks are very real and they're very present. The officer decides do I stop the threat now or do I let it go down the road and and hope for the best, and maybe have to stop it later. And and he made a decision, and so I look at that case and I was like, basically, dear chief, let's not forget there's no good answer here, right? None of us know what was gonna happen down the street, and we still don't because he ends up shooting the guy. But those are the kind of things that you know they

Leadership Drift From The Street

Von Kleim 26:00

come to us, and I'm like, and when you're talking to their leadership or you're listening to the investigators, you know they have forgotten what it's like to be a cop. And you you might know this. I mean, when you when you got into leadership positions, how long had it been since you put handcuffs on somebody? Right? If you're a small agency, maybe you're still arresting bad guys, but most of the agencies, there's a point, even when you hit sergeant, you're not putting handcuffs on people anymore.

Travis Yates 26:26

Well, no, I mean I'll speak from experience. I spent 27 or 30 years supervisor and above, and and you know, 20 plus years middle management above. You the system, the departments are actually built to where you're you're not supposed to be at that level making those line level decisions. You have to actually work towards doing it. Like I you have to say, I'm gonna go to this training whether you let me to or not. I'm gonna go out and work the streets today. I know you want me in my office. You have to make that decision to stay involved. Most people don't, and I don't fault them for that, but you get separated very quickly. And Vaughn, you know, this all brings up one last question. I think it's so valuable. And I we don't have many clients that push this, I don't think, enough, because I think it's so important. Because I believe the new generation of law enforcement, they want to be like you've talked about, they want to be prepared, they want to be ready, they want to be trained. How much should we in recruiting be talking about the training we're going to give you? Now, of course, that's as long as we're giving them great training, but I think that should be promoted. Don't you think so?

Von Kleim 27:24

Yeah, especially if you're giving them great training because it but because training is evolving right now. Training, the training methodology, the science of learning. We have a methods of uh uh or advanced advanced instructional methods classes, our AIM course. Um, a precursor to that was Chris Butler's great course, uh uh methods of instruction course. Um these guys, these those two classes, one from Chris, one from ours, actually complement each other. But the

Training As A Recruiting Advantage

Von Kleim 27:50

point is we now have understanding and technology and and and research-backed training methods that are advancing cops much faster than they ever could have been before, right? A lot of this stuff is old, it's just being repackaged and and trying to finally push it into the system. But I would, I I think that's an incredibly valuable uh here's what makes us different at our department kind of approach, right? Um, and it is it is a huge part of casting the vision because, as you know, you can't cast a vision for somebody that all they can see is themselves drowning. You have to also show them the roadmap to get there and to convince them we're not throwing you into that deep water right away. That's where you're gonna end up. And and based on what I've seen about your history and your life and your attributes, you have everything we need to get you to that high elite level, right? Um, great communication skills. We love seeing that in you, and on and on, right? And your physical skills, so you're a wrestler or you play rugby or whatever, another great attribute um on top of your academic performance, all these things. Here's where we can see you, and here's how what our responsibility is to get you there. We're gonna get you there. Um, and I just remember whatever version of that, you have to think some of our most elite operators, and and the ones I've come across, some of the most elite medical first responders passed out at the site of blood the first time they got there. Some of the top medical critical incident response teams remember their first day at a at a mass casualty where their supervisor was smart enough to say, here's your job is to hold this bandage on this guy right here. Now, there's a hundred other people that need assistance, not your problem right now. Yeah, right now, this is what we know you're capable of, and we're gonna continue to build your confidence on. I might be digressing a little bit, but I think your point is your agency has got to know what is the vision, what's the mission, what's the vision you're casting for them, and then also understand your own roadmap to get that person who's trusting you when you say I can get you there, you could lay out how we're gonna get you there and the cool technology. And I just for your audience, one of the funnest things I do is remind folks like the importance of visualization training, right? So I'll tell people I can get you, I can get you to sound and act like a veteran cop very quickly. Here's a series of books that are called What Cops Know. And it's just one story of real coping after another, right? And there's there's detective versions, there's patrol versions, there's night night patrol versions, but they're just real cop stories. What I want you to do is read that chapter, that story, and I want you to lay down and I want you to visualize, I'll teach you how to get into like like a self-hypnosis state, right? Just do some out, do some breathing, get into alpha state, right? And then I want you to visualize yourself going through that scene. I want you to see it. And if you start to get nervous, I'll teach you how to do self-arousal, like monitor your self-arousal and monitor or and control your arousal states. You're doing that in your living room floor. And I remember doing this in 1993, reading, I don't remember what book it was, Be Your Own Bodyguard by Blauer

Visualization To Accelerate Competence

Von Kleim 31:10

or something, or or uh I don't know, Awaken a Giants, uh Giant with some book that convinced me that this is what elite operators were doing. This is what Olympic athletes do. If you want to be at the top of your game, injury free, you you adopt visualization. The funny part of the story is I had done a hundred car chases in my head talking about the traffic conditions and the speed and the weather and all the things that you're supposed to do, visualizing you're picking up the radio and putting it back and drumming your fingers so you're not tensing all the things that they taught you. My very first car chase dispatch calls me and says, I just want to tell you, she didn't know I was doing all that because you sounded like a veteran. That was better than I've heard our veterans in car chases. And I instantly knew, I was like, I was kind of shocked. So I was like, Well, this wasn't actually my first car chase, because I'll leave that your audience with this. Your body doesn't know the difference between that which you vividly imagine and that what you actually experience. Yep. Right. And so we use that to our benefit in getting these brand new recruits where they need to be much faster. So, yeah, if that's part of your program, share that stuff with them. Let them think they're Olympic athletes and elite operators right off the bat.

Travis Yates 32:25

It's great stuff. Fun clean force science. Uh man, you are uh you're a legend in this profession. It's such an honor to have you here. I'm I'm proud to call you a friend. Uh, please come back, man. I mean, because every time you open your mouth, you're helping this profession, and that's what we want to promote. So thanks so much for being here.

Von Kleim 32:42

Uh well, Travis, thanks for having me again. And I I I still think you and I need to get a roadshow at some point because I love the work you're doing, and I think I think that's a one-two punch that a lot of it that would inject just so much uh enthusiasm back in and confidence back into the industry with some of these guys who just I say this this is what you give these leaders. There's great leaders out there. You and I would walk in and we give them permission. We give them permission to say the things they know are right again, right? Yeah, so hey, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you.

Travis Yates 33:10

Thanks, man. You've been watching and you've been listening. Thank you for doing that. We'll see you next week.