Leading by Faith and Humility with Steve Kelly

Welcome And Guest Background

Announcement 0:01

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice, and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

Travis Yates 0:12

Well, welcome back to the show. And it is my honor and privilege to have Steve Kelly with us here today. He started in law enforcement in 1985 as a corrections officer, and then he spent 20 plus years with the Orlando Police Department, spending much of those years as the training coordinator. He began instructing in 1992, covering all kinds of topics: criminal law, first aid, tactics, firearms, fitness, a bunch of other things. He was the assistant director of Valencia College's Criminal Justice Institute until he retired in April of 2025. But that's just a word for Steve Kelly because now he's a director of training at decision tactical. We'll get into all of this as we go through the show. You're going to be completely blessed by what he has to bring. Steve, thanks so much for being on.

Steve Kelly 1:05

Dude, it's this is a pleasure. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Leading With Love And Encouragement

Travis Yates 1:10

Well, this is sort of unique, but I want to open up the show with something I saw you write on LinkedIn. This was in your profile. I just want to read this for our audience, and I'm going to ask you to just sort of discuss this with the audience. This is from you, Steve. My heart is to encourage and strengthen people through speaking that builds leadership, character, integrity, faith, and care for others. I speak to recruits, leaders, churches, youth, women's groups, and community organizations sharing practical lessons from over 40 years in law enforcement training, counseling, and leadership. My goal is to help people grow stronger in purpose, service, and encouragement. And I will tell you, sir, LinkedIn is kind of the new bumper sticker for my kids in the honor row. I get a little tired of that place. But when I read that, it brought a real refreshed sense to me. And so I just want you to expand on that to our audience.

Steve Kelly 2:04

Dude, I'm sorry, I speak real, but there's so wow. Great question. I'm trying to get my words together here. I I love God and I love people. That's those are my priorities. And that's just like the simplest way to look at it. That if I want to be my very best, I need to keep that order and go out and do good things. You know, just be a blessing to folks. Find a way to encourage them. You know, you you've been teaching, you've been, you know, I've been following you. I love what you do. You're doing the same thing. You have much bigger and cooler words. You've got a doctor comes with the game, but it's the same. We we just want to go out there, you know. We we've put people in jail, we fought the fight, we've done it, and it's good. And you know, we we were taught a certain way to do things back in the day. You know, go in, assess, give orders, kick butt, take names, take ground, go forward. But there's such a better way to do it now. And you know, some of the problems we have, maybe I was partly responsible, not maybe I was partly responsible due to me not getting past the basic I was trained with. But now, dude, I'm in my mid-60s. It's time that I I can evaluate and go, hang, hang on here. There, there's a better way. And if I can encourage people, though those people keep coming back. You know, I can discipline somebody way quick and they'll remember it. But if I encourage them, they're gonna keep coming back and they they want that encouragement. So on their own, they're gonna keep coming back and trying to better themselves because I feed what I want to grow. Starve what you want to die, feed what you want to grow. And it's just that's that's simple. So wherever I go, I want to impact people for the Lord and just to be better people. And this is what I see you doing. And and our buddy, Mr. Roland Clee, that guy, man, he's like sunshine with feet. He's just going around

Empowerment As The Retention Fix

Steve Kelly 4:20

blessing people. Same thing.

Travis Yates 4:22

It's interesting, Steve. Obviously, law enforcement has been through the ringers. I mean, the last decade, if you'd told me in 1993 when I started this career, where we'd be in 2023, when I left this career, I would call you every name in the book, bless a liar. No one could have envisioned it, right? But when you look at the problems, you know, I could go through the problems, recruiting, retention, morale, high crime rates, all the things that we all know about. I point to leadership and I point to what you just talked about. Is it not true that what you just talked about kind of solves it all?

Steve Kelly 4:59

It's this is a Jesus quote, dude. You know, somebody asked him, What's the most important commandment? Love God. He said, in the second one of equal importance, love your name, dude. And and as leaders, you know, I'll say when I first started going up the ladder, you know, when you're you're like the sergeant level, your boots on the ground, or for me, boots on the ground. I'm leading, we're doing it, do it my way. And then as I promoted up, I realized, okay, give them space, give them space to learn, you know, and I would give them my authority. Like, all right, dude, you know how I roll, you know how I how I want things to operate. You have now my authority to make decisions. Do it, do it in great will, with no malice. And if something goes wrong, cool, tell me what happened. We'll analyze, we'll figure out, we'll we'll fix it, and we'll minimize its opportunity to happen again. And just then, as I got hired, I give that same authority for my people to give their authority so that people are like, you value us and encourage us, and that there's something here when when we get to do stuff and you're not second guessing us, like this. You know, if I'm when I was at the academy and we'd have class coordinators underneath us, I'd say, okay, that's your class, run it. Nothing illegal, immoral, unethical, go for it, make it happen, make it reflect you because we put you here. I trust you. And they did a great job. And now and again, okay, they'd misstep. Nothing on purpose, but we can always fix it. You know, no one, no one got injured, no one died, no animals were harmed, you know. All cool. So it's it's the same thing. We're just treating people good, you know, give them an opportunity.

Travis Yates 7:03

It reminds me, Steve. I tell this in my seminars. So uh, if you haven't been yet, act like you've never heard this story. But when I graduated the academy, and most departments have something similar, you pick somebody to pin a badge on you, and I picked my father. And at that time, my father was about 10 years younger than me now. It kind of freaks me out because he looked very old to me at the time. I was I was 22 years old. But I all I knew, I didn't know anything about leadership, but I I knew that man, there was something about him that was special. He had a successful career, he was in law enforcement, uh, a successful family, uh, everything, you know, everything seemed to be the right, the doing things the right way, even though I didn't have any really understanding of the stuff we call leadership now. And so when he pinned the badge on me, I just simply asked him, I said, Hey dad, what's your secret? What's your secret to where you are in life right now? That's humble. And this is what he told me. He said, treat people the way you want to be treated. And that goes to what you just said, Steve. And I got to admit to you, as a 22-year-old kid, I was expecting a real complicated answer. And I'm not sure I bought the answer until 10 or 15 years later when I thought back and I went, yeah, that's kind of the secret. And when I think of some of the best leaders I was around, they all had one trait in mind. It was empathy. It was caring. And where along the way in law enforcement do you think we've missed this? Is it all the programs and technology and what IECP tells us to do? I mean, somehow we've missed this most basic premise. Just care for your people.

Steve Kelly 8:43

Outcomes, not performance. Yeah, that that that's good. I I take it to another level because I I think we're somewhat similar, and that is I can I can handle a good bit of mistreatment. I I can be left alone for a good while, not attended to, and I'm okay. I don't need all that. So instead of me saying treat the way you want to be treated, I take it to a different level. You know, I have beautiful wife and beautiful daughters, handsome son, all that. I want to give him a shout out. But uh I want to treat people the way I want them to treat my wife and my daughter. That's that's another level. That's a whole different level. That's what I'd like. So I've got to treat people that way. And then they're gonna feel secure. They're gonna feel like, you know what, with that guy there, that that fellow right there, he's genuine. And he's speaking from his heart, but he's gonna make some wise decisions. I'm not gonna roll into a quick decision that's not necessary. And if we got time to sit down, let's let's sit down. And if I can include you into this decision that's gonna impact you, isn't that the best thing? It's just empowering our people.

Travis Yates 10:04

Yeah, I do find it ironic that we we select these young men and women to do this job. We put them through extensive background checks. We obviously find people of high moral and ethical and character, uh, people that have been leaders in their lives or we wouldn't select them for the job. Then we train them and we give them more power than the president of the United States has, Steve. We give them the power to take an American life on American soil. And then we bring them into our police departments and we say, shut up. We don't want to hear from you. Isn't that strange?

Steve Kelly 10:31

That isn't jacked up, but you're right. And I'm glad you noticed it, and I'm glad you're part of that change.

Travis Yates 10:37

Yeah, very strange. Well, and that and that's why I think we we love to blame the recruiting issue right now on everything but us. It's 2020, it's George Floyd, it's this, it's the politicians, it's the defund. No, no. The the problem is us, Steve. The problem is leaders. The problem is this generation, they want to be empowered. They want to have a role inside an organization. They're not just a number. And if we don't, if we treat them like a number or statistic, this is a trial for them, man. They're gone. In fact, the latest data says that every cop that starts the career today in five years, 62% will be gone. So we better learn how to treat them right, correct?

Steve Kelly 11:17

Yeah. Now, is that out of police work or they're agency bouncing?

Travis Yates 11:22

Uh, a little bit of both. A little bit of both. Yeah.

Steve Kelly 11:25

But you're right, we're still the problem. Regardless of what it is, we've got to treat them in a manner, and this goes so much against the way we were brought up on the agency. We got to treat them in a manner they're feeling valued, which is allegedly a basic human thing. He's basic need, but we were told, you're the new boot, shut up, sit in the back boy.

Travis Yates 11:49

Yep.

Steve Kelly 11:50

You know, speak it if we ask.

Travis Yates 11:52

And really, our the the way our generation was, Steve, we almost took it as a point of pride that you're going to treat me bad and I'm going to put up with it. But that has now changed. But our leadership hasn't changed with it. And so I think the departments that are figuring that out have figured out that is a secret sauce to keeping my agency fully staffed and keeping people happy. I just have to do what you've just talked about, Steve, which is to empower them, trust them. And what we we and we get trust wrong. We think, hey, I've got an open door policy and you should trust me. No, no. We have to trust our people before we can expect them to trust us, correct?

Steve Kelly 12:31

Not just, yeah, yes, correct, but it's action. Trust is an action, not a not a word.

Travis Yates 12:38

Right.

Steve Kelly 12:39

You know, I don't want it to be verbal. It's it's got they got to see it. You know, my words have no value if my actions don't back it up. And and I challenge anybody. I said, man, if I hear you hear me say something, verify it. Never take me at my word, verify it, go for it. What do I care? You know, they'll know I'm a straight shooter, and whatever he's saying is accurate. That's not insulting. And then it teaches them, man, they can rely on that fellow.

Faith As A Leadership Foundation

Travis Yates 13:07

You speak a lot about faith, Steve. And let's talk about how faith has helped help lead your leadership style, right? I mean, I I love all the leadership books out there, and all the gurus that are out here running around talking about leadership. And but the truth is, the greatest leadership book ever exists is the Bible. Every single thing John Maxwell's ever written, or whatever your leadership book's written, they got that from the original source, which is scripture. And if if the only reason you wouldn't believe that is if you've never read scripture. So obviously that has shaped your leadership style. But was there a time when you sort of figured that out, or can did you kind of always know that?

Steve Kelly 13:44

There was a time. It had to come to me. You know, I was brought up in a great Christian household with the Bible in the belt, and both had a lot of value, and both both got used a lot on me. And that helped, you know, that I was taught discipline, which brought about self-discipline. But, you know, in my younger years, although I was a believer, I believed in Christ, God's only son, sacrificed on the cross, rose again, you know, for for our salvation. Firmly, firmly believe in this 100%. I know him, I know him. But when I was younger, I knew of him. There's a distinction. You can know I have a brother and that he's a lawyer, but you don't know he has any value or any substance to him until you actually meet the fellow. So many people know of God or they use his name, but they don't rightly know him, even guys that go to church. So although I would consider myself forever a born-again Christian, I didn't know him. But uh he he uh allowed something really big to happen in my life that taught me how big he actually is. I I uh you you read a good hunk of my resume, and a good part of that was that fighting and fitness, and what I'd learned to do using, I thought I was humble. I thought I was humble. Maybe those around me had a different take. God knew better. But uh we would teach the people under me, you know. So whether they were, you know, academy recruits, I needed to acclimate them to pain. I thought it was so important so that that would no longer be part of your decision making. You'd understand pain's just time on the watch. It's you know, whatever your act your philosophy is, it's just a measurement. That's all we we can get past it, we can push. And if I can teach you to be acclimated to pain, dude, you can survive things that kill everybody else. We can hold our ground, stay calm, and then although I know this is sucking to be me, it should hurt, but I'm gonna focus on watching for the opening. And as soon as that opening happens, I come in and I can laugh. So we trained really hard, did some crazy things that all the science, all the doctors say you can't do, but we know the mind pushes the body. You get your body in good shape, the mind pushes it further. So I knew God, I was involved in my church, you know, raising my kids the right way, what I consider the right way. And

Skeptic To Believer Through Healing

Steve Kelly 16:30

I ended up having this major health episode. For 11 months, every day I got closer to death. Every system in my body shut down or shut down a little bit every day. I had seven medical experts. None of them knew what was happening. They knew that this isn't going well, and that every day you get worse, so worse ends in death. They knew that. And uh my brother-in-law, who's a preacher, saw this. I was about 11 months into this, and he said, dude, uh, we're having a healing and deliverance service at our church. You should come. Okay, the cop in me said, I believe God's all powerful. But I believe there's a lot of frauds out there. And I believe there's a lot of scammers who hype people up and do this, wow, you're healed, and you know that adrenaline got you. But inside, I 100% knew God wanted me there. 100%. So I looked at God and said, I'm going. I know you want me to be there, but I am a skeptic, so if it's real, show me. If it's fake, show me. But I'm going because I believe you want me there. Game off.

Travis Yates 17:56

I'm gonna shorten this story, but basically I got healed at the altar.

Steve Kelly 18:02

And on my way to the altar, through different events that only God can orchestrate, he proved he's real, and there's a whole Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and they work together and they do stuff, and I was healed. So once that happened, and it was an 11-month process, I realized, man, am I a knucklehead. I've been trying to do this my own way to live like everybody else, but hold on to my God ticket, my salvation ticket.

Travis Yates 18:34

Right.

Steve Kelly 18:34

That changed me. And from then on, I said, I'm your boy. I looked at God and said, I'm I'm your boy. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do it. Just give me the strength of faith to make it happen. And every day I wake up in prayer, I read my Bible with him, I spend time in his presence, then I leave my house. There's no exception. I don't even set an alarm clock. He'll wake me in time to do all this, even if I have to be somewhere at one in the morning. So that relationship that I have with him, where I actually know him, that is the most freeing thing you could ever have. To be able to say, I know the Lord on this type of basis. It's a blessing that he wants all of us to have, but we have to be big enough to say, I'm not all that.

Travis Yates 19:38

Yeah, and that can be tough, that can be tough in this profession, right? We have these type A personalities. Uh, we I think we probably have control issues all of us in this career, we want to control things. We even have this attitude of us versus them. But at the end of the day, there is no difference between us and the criminals. We have all fallen short. There's sort of a fine line there. Um, how do you how have you had success when you speak to law enforcement about these topics to get them to sort of understand it? Because we we we are skeptics, we are cynics, we we've all arrested the preachers, we've you know, we've all we've all done that. Um, but you're right, you've got it, you've got to somehow humble yourself to understand we're really not that special. We're just told we're that special, we're just like everybody else.

Steve Kelly 20:29

Now, here's a great question. Uh, and I'll I'll ask you, but we'll put it out to the viewers. How many times has the Lord called you up and said, Hey Travis, this one, this problem is really stumping me. Hook me up. You can you give me the solution? It ain't happened, you know. But the other side flipped it, yeah. Yeah, his ways aren't our ways. I can come up with what I think is the most awesome plan. And then I sit before him and say, Hey, how would you do this? He's like, easy, man. I just it's relationship. So when I'm speaking with cops, I speak about a relationship, and I don't try to convince them of anything. And I've had guys, I I live my faith, if that makes sense. I don't want to sound corny, but this is who you're talking to right now, is 100% me in any environment, doesn't matter which one. And I've had guys that tell me I don't believe in that God stuff. Okay, yeah, I'm not here to argue. But what's cool is God will give me messages and say, hey, tell him this. So I've had guys that come into my office and say, Hey dude, I am an atheist, but I gotta tell you, I'm scared. My wife has cancer. Would you do one of those prayer things? Heck yeah. Heck yeah, I'll do one of those. And uh same guy, I'll come back months later. Steve, um that little prayer thing you did, that worked.

Travis Yates 22:03

Like, hey dude, it's not me. It's God. You can do the same thing.

Steve Kelly 22:10

So bit by bit, there's impact happening to the people around us to where they realize that they when you see someone who's genuine and in a genuine relationship with God more than for forever, for 40, 50, 55 years, I was what I consider a casual Christian. Faithful every Sunday. Right. Pray in front of my food, you know, wake up, say a prayer, say a prayer at night. And because I am a good casual Christian or was, I would read and R daily bread. Nothing wrong with that. It's three minutes of God time. And I was thinking, I'm pretty maxed out here. If I was any better of a Christian, I am sure I'd be the Pope. You know, but uh he allowed my world to get turned upside down because I depended on what I could do. You know, I'd gotten when I was saying how I trained recruits, I led from the front. I was in my 50s doing this with them leading from the front. And I knew I could depend on me regardless of anything else. When God took my health, it was a blessing. Dude, I was dying every day. I was spending time with him. I learned to depend on him. Man, that's the best lesson anybody could ever learn. And if I could if I could excite people to want to have a relationship with God, then I've done something here today.

Travis Yates 23:43

Yeah, you know, and you speak about something I think, especially, you know, us in the Bible Belt, we're sort of raised with this cultural Christianity, uh, where you you termed it casual Christian, but I want everybody out there listening that maybe you think you're in the same boat, but I want to caution them. You know, the Bible says demons believe in God. Demons are not in heaven. And so a lot of people can have a belief in Jesus Christ, but that belief is not a relationship, a belief is not driving your life. And the Bible has a ton of warnings about this. You know, you can't have one foot in the world and have one foot in God, and you've got to be apart from the world, but you're in the world. And so I would just encourage those individuals to not just rely on what you were told by your grandmother, by your preacher, or or what your emotions are telling you, or what demons could be telling you. Get in the word and see what it says, because propaganda is all over this world, but boy, it's full of it when it comes to God. And the only the only thing you can do is get to the original source. And uh, you know, maybe you don't start in Genesis, but start in the New Testament because it gets right to the point. And uh it really uh I'm I'm about, I don't know, I'm a I'm about a week away from my yearly annual Bible reading getting complete. I mean, every time I go through it, Steve, I see things and I go, man, I wish I'd known this 20 years ago, 30 years ago. If I'd known this 20s, my life would be so infinitely different and better. And and so I just have to encourage people to get in there because listen, I like you, I walk through this life many, many years thinking, oh, I'm good. I got my insurance plan, but I don't think I was good at all, you know. And uh, and but thank goodness uh the Lord called me closer to him and and uh he

What Decision Tactical Really Is

Travis Yates 25:31

did that for you. And Steve, I want to sort of pivot a little bit because I have to think as we talk about uh God that somehow he had a he had a some thing to play in decision tactical because when you look at decision tactical from afar, and I'd encourage people to go to decisiontactical.com, that place is I don't know what heaven's like, Steve, but it it could look something like decision tactical. How in the world did you get involved in this and how did this even happen? And I think explain to the audience too what that is.

Steve Kelly 26:01

Well, you interviewed Remo a couple weeks ago, great interview, and that guy is just an awesome guy. So decision tactical takes simulation and puts it on steroids, caffeine, probably a little bit of cocaine. I don't know. It's just there's nothing like it. It is fully immersive. I just had one of our state senators here, we just finished probably an hour ago, and I I love it. I want every politician to come here, and they experience that what this is is we're used to running training, simulation training, and it is simulation training so cool because we can do it all in one place, no one gets injured, minimal expense. You know, you have a big expense up front, and then after that, we can run it real well, real safely, and have plenty of different scenarios to go through. And we get to watch our troops, you know. For y'all that have never done it, you'll walk into a room and it'll have either three or four sides that are screened up, and it's gonna play a scene for you that you're gonna interact with. And there's usually some fellow on the computer that's your trainer, he's running it. He's got a branch for every action you would take. So I walk in there, they tell me it's a traffic stop. I'm like, all right, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna talk to the driver, I'm gonna try to be tactical as far as my placement. But the reality is I rightly can't go far because it's a screen and the movement comes to me. What we can measure is do I make the right decisions? Do I try de-escalation? Am I trying to communicate or in my barking orders? Big difference. Am I actually assessing the full situation? Do I pick the right weapon and the right response? All those things are great things we can measure, real important. But the negative is you stay in one place. I stay in one room. It doesn't show me truly assessing tactics, it doesn't allow me to communicate with a partner under stress, it doesn't allow me to cut that pie to use this angle. It's not giving me a true stress inoculation. I love that. I love stress inoculation. I never get that from one of those one room simulations. So these guys are our three owners that are just geniuses that are led by a heart. They came up with the idea that we need to put full like a movie set and have it combine physical movement, communication, tactics, simulation, all of that in one. It's incredible. And they invited me, you know, I was the the number two dude at our training facility, police training facility. So you get invites, you have titles, you get invites anytime there's a new facility up. So they invited me, and the reality is I didn't want to go. I had no desire. I have this theory that if I'm working, I want to get my work done. If I'm off, I want to be with my family, surfing, playing, diving, something. If uh I'm working and you have me do something other than my work, I'm losing. And I'd been in training since 1992. There was nothing you were going to show me that I hadn't seen. So it's it's so cool because every cop that shows up to our place shows up with the cop face and that look that says, Wow, me, go. You know, it's cop. It's it's who we are. Uh so I showed up. I prayed actually, and God sent me. So I came and by chance, Remo's the one who gave me this tour, and he partnered me up with some other guy, some other guy that was probably looking to be an investor. I did not say anything about who I was, my background, or nothing. I just was quiet. Let's do it. The guy next to me, now he was talking big. Had a lot of money, wanted us to know how important he was, that he's a big hunter, this is gonna be great. Cool. So we get our tour. It's fully immersive. You're they strap a gun on you. It's a glock, we got Glock 47s, we're using magazines, we have AR-15s. It's good, it's righteous. Now it's all CO2, laser computer, cool stuff, but you gotta move and shoot on our gun range. We're moving and shooting in a crowd, as though it's an active shooter, and you can only shoot as fast as you can hit. I'm seeing this going, well, that's that's kind of cool. But honestly, I still wasn't grabbing the vibe because it's CO2 and we're men, we use bullets. Thank you. Appreciate that. And then he took us to a scenario, took us into the house. It's a full house. And when you get in there, you had to deal with a domestic issue. And as soon as that was done, you had to clear out the rest of the house for bad guys. And of course, there's something in every room. So it was a combination of moving, tactics, communication. You know, one of the biggest problems we have is a lack of communication. If you and I are taking down that bad guy over there, his right side is to you, you know, you're at his right, I'm kind of front angled to the left. You're gonna see something different than me. And maybe you see he has a gun on his hip, and maybe you see that elbow flag up and you take the shot, saving my life. You write your report, you're a hero. My report says I'm standing here talking,

Training For Communication Under Stress

Steve Kelly 31:55

I'm looking at the guy. Next thing I know, Travis shot him. My report's the one that goes on the news, and all of a sudden you're a liar.

Travis Yates 32:04

It's just poor communication.

Steve Kelly 32:07

So here we teach our officers, no one else is in your head. Communicate what you're seeing. Let us know so we're all in on the same fight, same incident. So we took that and we started moving through this environment, and you're in it. You're you're in it, you feel it. The guns have recoil and bang, and it's real. We finished, you know, I think at the time we did two scenarios, the gun range of two scenarios. And about midway through scenario number one, the guy that was next to me, this guy that had been bragging the whole time about how awesome he was, he had a full cup of shut the hell up. He goes, No more. He was quiet, man. So we finished this demo. Remo looks at us and says, What did you think? I'm in quiet mode, so I want to hear that guy. He says, uh uh, uh emotional. The cop in me was not prepared for that response, and I had no clue what that meant. It took me 24 hours to get that one. But that was the coolest thing I could have heard. This guy that thought he was such an alpha dog because he's a hunter. And yeah, I hunt. You hunt. I mean yeah, but animals don't have guns, they don't shoot back, and they're not chasing you down, you know, big difference. And you get it here. And and Remo didn't try to scare us or do anything, he just treated us like the troops. Let's go. And that guy humbled that day. And he realized, okay, there's more to this police and thing than I thought. So that that's something we get to do here. My favorite, I'm I'm just blessed. I get to be like the spokesman. So when we have all these VIPs or these politicians, or you know, my I get to give them the tour and I train them just like I'm training my troops. There's no politics. I'm like, love God, love people, let's go to work. This is what we're gonna do. My favorite are people that don't like the cops or guns. Anybody that says the fun, please come here. I'm gonna love on them because you know, in their heart, they're doing what they think is right to bless America. We may have a different set of politics, but God loves them all. So we bring them in, and I just treat them like cops. Treat them like troops. They go through this stuff. And at the end of it, most of them have a trial, they all have a different understanding. They may still hate us to some degree, but now there's a bit of respect they didn't have before and a bit of understanding. And if they happen to shoot the wrong person here, no one got hurt. And we discover how you came to that action and we fix it here so it doesn't happen on the street. So what we get to do here is just so cool, and I love it because it's positive building. Travis, you come here, you have a skill set. You know, you you have a beyond the normal cop skill set because you've you've got the class that you're teaching that's teaching us how to see all these different warning signs. You know, who has thought ahead to do this saying, I can save your life this way, you can save your life with this knowledge. We bring you in here with that, where you're watching all those cues, and we're gonna enhance what you have. Gonna take you to the range and teach you some enhancements. We're gonna take what you learned to the range to this house scenario. Now, what you put, what you learned, you're putting into play again and again. And we're gonna up the ante to where now you've got to watch everywhere. It's more than a 360, it's up and down and everywhere, and we just keep building you and building you and building you. And if you mess up, it's all cool. We'll stop, we'll celebrate, we'll analyze, and then we're gonna say, Okay, check that out. Shot the wrong dude. That's how you came to the conclusion. So here's what's gonna happen now. You just learned something. So now you're gonna apply that. You're gonna apply that when something like that, an incident like that, appears on your screen and you think this is the right thing, you're gonna swipe right and move forward. And sure enough, that's what they happen. They apply that to the next scenario, and then they're gonna apply that on the street because everything we teach seamlessly goes right to the street. So it's it's just a pleasure to be a part of this because you and I were brought up in the time when we went to training, it was a no-win situation. Yeah, they taught you how you could die.

Travis Yates 37:03

Lay down, lay down, and play dead. They have you lay down and play dead at the end of the scenario.

Steve Kelly 37:08

Yeah, they they teach you all the right tactics, and then you do it all, and some guy from nowhere threw in a grenade. You know, we don't do that. We're teaching this is the tactic, this is how it's done, and here's the why. That's great. You're you will love this, but this is one of those things where you can see us online, you could hear me talk with passion about it, and I swear that gives you a 30% understanding. You just have to take that fully immersive, you got to go through it.

Civilians And Politicians In Scenarios

Travis Yates 37:40

Now, you've obviously you've got a huge law enforcement component with decision tactical, but you also do a lot for civilians. So if someone is there in town around the Orlando area, they want to take their family out there, they want to go out there and experience it. You have opportunities, do you not?

Steve Kelly 37:55

We do. I've had my 88-year-old mom go through. She shot a lot of people. I had my 10-year-old granddaughter go through perfect, and I was concerned. I'm I'm a protective grandpa. I was concerned, but man, she made the decisions. I had to help her hold the gun because her hands are too tiny. Right decisions, right responses. It was just great. And you know, she felt empowered. Yeah, and what a good thing to be able to give your granddaughter. I'm like, yeah, this just keeps giving. But people come through here and you learn, do I fight? Do I flight? What am I? And I swear once you've been through something like this, we can we can kind of go around, rewire some things. You know, it's not hardwired. Maybe that flight is not hardwired, maybe there's a workaround. Right. And once we expose you to it, maybe maybe we got something here, and we keep seeing them get better per scenario. I just had the senator here today. Took her to the range, had her move and shoot in a hostage situation. Then I took her into the house. The first room she encountered something, her shots were toward the right subject. Good. Not all of them hit. But by the next two rooms, she was controlled. She showed triggered discipline. She showed she's assessing. I mean, it's like feed the positive and watch them grow. It's beautiful.

Travis Yates 39:36

Yeah, we're looking forward to it. Uh, and this will be up before IECP, but the Wednesday after IECP, we're doing our focus certification there at Decision Tactical. If you want any information on that, you can go to tackbehavior.com. We'll put that link here in the show notes. But I'm excited to get down there, Steve, and and uh and to see what you're talking about. Um it's pretty incredible stuff. Um, and I can't thank you enough

Links Final Thanks And Prayer

Travis Yates 40:00

for being here. And listen, our audience doesn't know this, but before we came on the air, you prayed for us. And so what I'd like to do is is is pray for our audience as we leave, and then we'll we'll get you on out of here.

Steve Kelly 40:12

Can I can I give you a confession?

Travis Yates 40:15

Please.

Steve Kelly 40:16

So I'm gonna attend the class you have here. I'm very excited for it. I'm gonna be stealing your material, brother.

Travis Yates 40:22

I hope you do. I hope you do.

Steve Kelly 40:25

I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna feed so many officers. Yeah, thank you for it. But I needed to get that out there real quick so you understood. I'm a thief. I'm I'm gonna take that.

Travis Yates 40:34

I certainly hope you do. And uh, you know, I would say there's nothing new under the sun, and that's certainly true with what I talk about. But decision tactical is kind of new under the sun. I'm really excited about being there. So pretty incredible stuff. What every obviously there's a lot of people that's involved in making that happen, but you're a big component of that, Steve. So thank you so much for that.

Steve Kelly 40:54

I appreciate it. It's a blessing. You want me to lead this one?

Travis Yates 40:58

Why don't you lead this one out of here? Yeah. And uh I tell you what, before we get to that, I want to thank everybody listening. Thank everybody watching. Go to decision tactical.com. Is that am I right on the website, Steve? DecisionTactical.com. Common spelling. It's gonna just the website alone is gonna get you excited. Spread the word about this. You may not be in Florida, but you're gonna know people there. You're gonna be there one day. You got to check it out. Thanks for listening and thanks for watching. And we'll close this out with a prayer from Steve.

Steve Kelly 41:26

All right, thank you. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for this time. Thank you for people like Travis and God, this audience. We have an audience here that you have blessed us with, an audience that wants to make a difference, an audience that wants to make an impact. Lord, may they be hungry for that. May this audience not only be hungry for you, but hungry to bless these people. You love everybody, you love us all equally. So wait, may we be able to take the messages that we learn here and pay them forward, Lord, and just bless with these people here. Bless us all and give us a great evening in Jesus' name. Thank you. Amen.

Travis Yates 42:06

Amen. And as we hear from the book of Isaiah, please, everyone here, be strong and be courageous. God bless.

Announcement 42:13

Amen. Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at TravisYates.org.