Scott Schimmel (00:00)
Welcome to the Making the Impossible Inevitable Podcast. This show is for those who see progress as a calling, not just a choice hosted by former Navy SEAL and transformational guide Curt Cronin. Each episode explores the mindset strategies and stories of extraordinary leaders who've turned the impossible into reality. These episodes are more than just conversations. They're a challenge to you to expand your capacity, shatter inner limitations and lead with unshakable purpose. Together,
let's make the impossible inevitable.
Scott Schimmel (00:35)
Okay, everybody, welcome to the first episode of Making the Impossible Inevitable podcast. I'm Scott Schimmel. And for our first episode, I couldn't think of any better guest than the man himself, Curt Cronin. Curt, what I know about you, you're not just someone who lives high performance, talks about high performance, but you've done high performance. Former Navy SEAL, you've led elite teams in the most challenging environments on the planet.
Now you are what I would say a transformational guide. You're working with leaders, entrepreneurs and high stakes decision makers, helping them expand their capacity to get to actually break through both results, but also in their personal life. So in this conversation, we're going to dig into what it means to make the impossible inevitable. This is episode one. You might even think of this as episode zero because I think what's going to be most important to hear from you, Curt, about who you are and what your plans are.
for this as we go forward. So we thought it'd be cool for me to interview you. So we're putting you on the hot seat and you get to turn the tables for the next episode. first, would you kind of, in these episodes, what we're planning on is having two parts. First part, looking backwards and getting a glimpse of what you've done as a guest that has seemed impossible or perhaps people told you was impossible and yet you did it. So that's what we're gonna do in first part. Second part, we're actually gonna try to get into something that you're
currently working on that again, as you're looking at it, it seems looks daunting and maybe people are whispering in your ear, you know, you don't have what it takes or this can't be done. So first part looking backwards, maybe you can start just giving us a glimpse backwards, named like early days before Navy before really becoming an adult where there are things that you can think about that seemed impossible that ended up happening in your life.
Curt Cronin (02:27)
Well, that's the reason it's my passion is because everything starts out seeming impossible. I mean, I was the tiny farm town kid and you can imagine the 85 pound kid trying to get wet before the football game to try and weigh 87 pounds, you because because you know, we were facing much bigger opponents, much, much more well funded opponents than our than our little school. so that was the essence of all it was, can I expand into something that I never thought I could do before? And so when you really say when I talk about impossible to inevitable, it's now.
Scott Schimmel (02:39)
Yeah.
Curt Cronin (02:56)
What do I need to do that time zero at my current reality would be impossible? And what would I need to now become to allow that to be inevitable for that to be not only probable, but that to be inevitable. What would the team need to look like that I need to build? What would I need to do? Who would I need to become? one of the most difficult things I had to do in a recent challenge that I now can look back and it was important in all of them, but.
How do I now become the person I want to be in the future today so my future can be different than tomorrow? And so to me, that's the essence of how do I now step into that and become that which I desire to be now, even though it sometimes it feels like fake it till I make it. Sometimes it feels like stepping into aspirational. Sometimes the imposter syndrome comes in and to me it really becomes if I feel called to do it. And the most powerful essence of that is how do I now not just
feel concerned about, okay, I'm an imperfect person, but if I'm allowing that which comes through me, then if I'm following my path, I'm following whether you can want to call it Thor's hammer, like that to me is the place that now we get to really step into our power and say, okay, this is the thing that's mine to do. And I'm going to find the right people, resources, time, talent, and across all of those seemingly impossible, improbable places, make the impossible inevitable.
Scott Schimmel (04:14)
So if you could take us back, if we can think of you as a kid, we've obviously, if you're listening, you don't know Curt yet, you did hear something that stuck out the Navy SEALs. So whatever your imagination of Navy SEALs, I certainly would assume there's like a high degree of intensity. Were you like that as a kid? Were you kind of like just like putting your head down, doing pushups all day, and then kind of help us understand what got you to the Navy, in particular SEAL teams.
Curt Cronin (04:41)
I would say the thing that is the most aligned thread would be lifelong learner. And so for me, was always.
trying to get from, here's the capability I have now and here's what's required. And because I had so few capabilities, think, Scott, you know this, but for everyone else, I have 11 out of 12 most improved player packs from my high school. So I don't know how bad I was to start with, but every single time. And so the growth mindset was crucially important, which was, okay, every single day, how do I get better? I love Tony Robbins, can I? Constant never-ending improvement. So to me, I think the relentless pursuit of...
Scott Schimmel (05:05)
Ha
Curt Cronin (05:16)
growth, the relentless pursuit of every single day being better than it was yesterday is a common throughput. And I think this Navy SEALs often have a perception of being physically dominant and we use really hard physical training, but it's really to test for mental resiliency. It's really to test for, because when you land in a helicopter behind enemy lines and everyone around you is trying to kill you in a combat zone, you have to make sure that those 16 people or 35 people, whatever that group is, that they're in.
and that no one's gonna say, hey, you know, I didn't sign up for this and quit then because we can't have that. And so to me, the essence of it is how do I now continuously grow? How do I continuously find challenges that are so compelling and so powerful that I'm going to do whatever it takes to grow into and meet the requirements of that need. And so that's where, for me, it often comes down to one side of its growth and the other side of service, because I'll always do more for others than I will for myself. so.
The reason the seals are the most unbeatable team on the planet is because the standard is not, hey, what do I need to do for me? It's what do I need to do to make sure when I make that room entry and I go left and my buddy goes right, how do I make sure he doesn't get wounded? Because he's never going to look in the direction that I was in. And so to me, those are the two compelling forces that allow us as humans to be infinitely greater than we could have ever been individually.
Scott Schimmel (06:31)
Is there a mission that you can think of and tell us that as you look back or maybe at the time seemed impossible?
Curt Cronin (06:40)
All of them, mean, all of them at the beginning, I mean, because you don't know what's going to happen. So all of them feel impossible. Let's say though, one of them that was most interesting was we were going after Abdelraq and Umazwi who at the time was number two or three, you know, from the old school out of Egypt. And, and so we looked at the entire target set and we said, Hey, here's a 60 mile radius area that has no signal. Like we had no intelligence coming from this section. And so we said, wow. The
Scott Schimmel (06:42)
Ha ha ha!
Curt Cronin (07:09)
the absence of signal is actually a signal here. And so we ended up spending probably about 27 nights in a row going into this area. And every single night we would get there and we'd get to the target and they'd say, he was just here. And so we were constantly evolving. We ended up taking a tape recorder, putting it in his car, listening to it, picking the tape recorder up. so.
we were adapting and evolving TTPs. And so they were getting smarter as we were getting smarter. And so was, who can evolve the fastest? And so it finally became, we realized, he's walking off the compound. So one night we were able to pitch and get like 17 different aircraft overhead, all with a camera to look down and followed every single person that went off. And the entire time the risk is going up because now we've gone back into the sector every single night. And so when helicopters land to make a tremendous amount of noise, it's a huge signature. And so now became
Scott Schimmel (07:40)
huh.
Curt Cronin (08:02)
A concern of, can we keep going into this space is in the risk profile keeps escalating. So then it becomes, the risk reward worth it? Is it worth going in again? Because there's high risk that now they're going to set up because there's only a certain number of HLZs because our, our MH 47 helicopters were huge. There's only a certain number of places we can land these things. And so if we keep landing in the same spaces, we're increasing risk. And so every single night, Hey, we got closer. We have more intelligence and we're getting better. And also there's greater risk that they can now respond to the threat. so.
You know, that one became for us a huge moment because we were just this tiny little seal force at the time it was run. It was all the, was all a JSOC entity, but it was mostly Delta force in this time. And so we were the tiny little seal force that was going in and going after, you know, this, this target set continuously. so when we finally got, um, Todd, the rockman, was on the think, I think the 27th night or something like that. I mean, it was one of those things where
And I almost missed it. So one of the things I'll tell you, if you make the impossible, Neville celebrate is because I remember I was sitting there writing up all the reports until five or six in the morning as always, because we were working on what we call the vampire schedule where you'd start at four o'clock at night and then you'd work through the next day. And I remember going into the sniper shack and. And no words were spoken, just, you know. Toast was poured, well, cheers to it. And it was one of those moments of, hey, we just we just did the thing. And I would later.
Scott Schimmel (09:14)
Cheers.
Curt Cronin (09:28)
One of my team members told me later, he was like, I've never in the course of my deployments had such a moment where we said we're going to do the thing. We did it and then we executed it. And so to me, that was one of the most exciting and visceral experiences of, we set out a goal. had zero idea how to get there. And of course we don't control many of the factors. We didn't control the chain of command. We didn't control the intelligence and all of it became an aggregation of continuing to make asks.
Scott Schimmel (09:49)
Yeah. Right.
Curt Cronin (09:58)
And they were fervent asks with work behind them. Like, can we get resources to go do this target tonight? Can we go get the resources to do this? Can we get another intelligence platform that does something new that we didn't have the capability for? And so we kept trying new things and we never got to know. So no fail mission is often misquoted as nothing ever failed at the perfection mindset. It's actually couldn't be further from the truth. No fail mission just means we don't stop until we succeed because
Scott Schimmel (10:24)
yeah.
Curt Cronin (10:28)
when my supervisor actually fail faster than anybody I know. And so to me, failure is just a learning evolution. So failure is, you think of it from permanence, from a learning perspective, it's just a learning until we continue to finally get to the outcome we were trying to get to. And so when you're saying you're making it possible and that we'll stand by for a whole bunch of failures in the meantime, it just depends on whether you stop or not.
Scott Schimmel (10:44)
Yeah.
Yeah, I've had the privilege of working with a few hundred special operations folks in their transition from military to civilian life. And you're the only one I could think of that went from the military to Broadway. So could you kind of talk about how that transition happened? I've never heard.
Curt Cronin (11:10)
Well, it's actually really simple if you know the end of the story, which is I used to run counterinsurgencies against terrorists because I thought they were the greatest threat to the nation. And as I transitioned out of the military into civilian world, I said, wow, physical death is a terrible thing. But the worst thing is actually when people lose that spark of hope. Right. And so spiritual death, that spiritual death, that loss of that spark and light of hope is the worst of things. And so to me, now I'm running in counterinsurgency of hope. And so Broadway happens to be to me.
The most powerful in a world of 220 character tweets where you get two and a half hours with people tapping their foot in song to me is one of the most powerful embodied communication. So I always say the furthest 12 inches in the universe is from head center to heart center. And so a storytelling means that allows you to get into your heart center in a space with 1200 of your closest friends. And I got to coach the NFL for a couple of years and it was fascinating because
unbelievable athletes, but most people don't know it's harder to get onto a Broadway stage than the NFL. And so to me, to hold that coherent field for 1200 people to be able to now hold that space or people to say, wow, I'm in a space I've never been to before is extraordinary. so for me, a, it's a, took me a while to get there, but to me, it, the, the ability to tell story, you know, in a field that allows us to now expand in a place I've never been to before. That's, I had the gift of that through seal training, through combat, you
Broadway to me is a place where in an evening I can be teleported into a new space. you know, to me, if you enter a space, get into a peak state, you can now solve the problems that you have in your life in a very different place. And so to me, it's the most logical path from counterinsurgency against terrorists into a kind of uncertainty of hope.
Scott Schimmel (12:46)
You
Of course it all makes sense now. Thank you. When you think about current life, obviously as we're getting to know you, impossible is maybe almost a bad word, but are there things you're currently feeling particularly challenged by that you're experiencing a lot of failure in? Like what's the current thing that you're learning to make inevitable?
Curt Cronin (13:13)
What happens to be the most true and honest state because I've never done any of the things I'm trying to do right now from a growth perspective. It's all impossible. It's incredibly hard right now. And, you know, start most importantly with teenagers, you know, the most humbling aspect of my entire life. If I try and take any of my older three, 16, 14 and 12, Connor, Rachel and Abby, and if I try and parent them the way I did a week ago or a month ago,
Scott Schimmel (13:21)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Curt Cronin (13:41)
It's impossible.
If I'm not evolving on the edge of where they are, and it's fascinating because I realized, and this kind of happened during the pandemic a couple of years ago, like all three of them kind of came to me at one point and said, Dad, we're tired of you telling us what to do. We want to be part of the decision process. And I was like, of course. You're my teachers, right? so...
Scott Schimmel (14:00)
Yeah. Yeah.
Curt Cronin (14:04)
you know, the only way I actually get a chance to really teach them now is if I allow them to have an experience or share what they're thinking, and then I might get to add 10 % to it. But every time I try and do Professor Curt, you know, and go to the dad's Navy SEAL lecture course, you know, either they or my wife, we first of all, we don't do evolutions. Second of all, I'm not one of your men. So it's very fascinating to see, you know, the evolution of what it requires for them. You know, this podcast to me is
Scott Schimmel (14:15)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Curt Cronin (14:31)
is stepping into, here's that declaration of here's who I am in the world. Here's who I seek. here's the humans that I'm trying to bring forth and build into what is that invisible squad and what does that team looks like that now wants to bring hope into the current VUCA conditions, into the current crazy environment. So to me, that's taking a stand of who knows how to work. Maybe people receive it well, maybe people will receive it poorly. But we know if I don't do the thing, then
the clock will pass and it won't happen. And so, you know, to me, this is a tremendous leap of faith. Everything we're trying to do in theater, it's fascinating right now watching traditional theater adapt and evolve. You know, we now have Dungeons and Dragons, have role playing games where the audience says we want to now be a part of the audience and we want to be part of the show. So we want to participate and it's fascinating how excited people are now that they get to choose what's happening during the course of the evolution or immersive productions like Paddington in London where now
Scott Schimmel (15:21)
No way.
I
Curt Cronin (15:31)
You know, you're you're you and your children because it's good for kids are walking through an experience. You start on the train and you go into a paddings neighborhood and then you get through the into the shed into the magical into Peru to find. So it's it's now how do you now participate at a very different level? Like visualization was crucial for our generation. But now if we within three to five years and get to the point where Hadestown is one of my favorite shows or now. Dad can be, you know, Hades for Stephanie's mom, you know, like you can literally
get kind of get a personal experience that that then you can get a different point of perspective is really exciting. But for me, all of it's fascinating because we have so many more demands on our attention. There's so much more dynamism that the the the ability to speak the cleanest, most authentic, most vulnerable truth in a way that can be heard is is crucially important and more powerful and.
more difficult potentially than ever before, because now there's so much noise and it's so difficult to have a clean signal through. so now it becomes, how do we show up in a slightly different way? What is the way that allows us to be seen, heard and understood and allows others to be seen, and understood in a very different way? So to me, everything is at that threshold of expanding, growing, and because it's all new, it's all, you know, as a...
rock climbers that uncertain ground where, you when you've got those 510 rubber on and you stick it on the granite and like you can tell and you've got a solid foothold and all of it feels squishy, right? Like it's not quite set. And so it becomes, okay, now how do I get two or three points of context? We can try and drive this forward and not fall off the face, right? Or not fail to bring forth that's what we wish to do, which just really takes that increasing levels of vulnerability.
increasing levels of here's where I am, here's where I stand for, here's where I think at the moment. It might be different tomorrow, but here's the deepest truth I have at this given moment so that we can drop into the deepest field and continue to have that backing and forthing where we are at podcast 200, who knows, right? But we have to pick someplace to start.
Scott Schimmel (17:45)
Well, you're leading into this last question perfectly. What is your hope with this podcast? mean, this is a very short tenure for me as a host. You're the host coming up in an episode two. So what's your hope for the podcast and maybe what can you promise the person who watches or listens?
Curt Cronin (18:04)
My hope is inspire hope. For me, I've had the most incredible series of mentors and teachers that have given me incredible insights and perspective that I couldn't have acquired over lifetimes. so my desire to give back in that sense would be, can I help others to inspire hope? My greatest desire with this would be someone's in a dark place at two in the morning or 1230 at afternoon, whatever it is. And they're like, man.
this feels impossible. And for some reason, one of these podcasts pop up and my best case scenario is it's one of the people that's most resonant with them is the people we're interviewing. It's not about me. It's about saying, maybe, maybe that week it's Scott that they're listening to and like, Oh wow, this or maybe they're talking to Jordan or maybe it's Keiron or maybe, who knows? But they all of sudden go, I didn't think this was possible. And now that if whatever they were going to give up on, they're going to give it one more try. Right. And to me, that's where, where everything changes and we just have the ability to
It's not how many times we get knocked down, it's how many times we get back up. So if one person can get back up one more time, then we're success. What can we promise? We can promise.
It'll be the deepest experience we can relate. We have words at the time. And so to me, there's no promises for any of this. It's all here's the stories we're trying to convey. And ideally, with enough different angles, I think all of us have aspects of the divine that we recall. And so to me, that team together, everyone achieves more. The more that we as a collective can kind of get into that field, then you're going to hear it in a way from.
and are you gonna hear it away from one person that you might not have quite understood from me or from you or from someone else, but when they hear it that way that now it clicks through and all of a sudden, okay, now it makes sense, right? Now you have the Rosetta Stone where now it makes sense because we're all trying to explain the ineffable, right? That moment we've had, that moment of grace, awareness, discernment, right? That moment where everything opened up and so.
The way we all explain that is very different from our own paradigm. And so my mission is if you can have enough people explain it from their own, then we can get kind of a holistic picture where you don't have just one straw looking at the puzzle, but now you have the entire kind of mosaic to look at.
Scott Schimmel (20:21)
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I've been a podcast junkie, I think since the get go early mid 2000s and a little podcast hack for those of you listening or watching. If this has been a good episode and you're like, this sounds cool. Here's the hack. Press subscribe, subscribe, whether it's YouTube or the audio so that next time there's an episode you don't miss out and it comes straight to you. Secondly,
We would love for you to know about something that we put together called a mask's assessment. Curt, can you kind of give us a glimpse into what that is and why someone should take it?
Curt Cronin (20:57)
Well, absolutely, because most missing conversations or to me conversations that never happen are the conversations because I have a projection or I have an assumption about who you are. And I'm trying to show up as CEO this CMO this CTO this commander, dad, father, son, whatever mask I'm showing up at. I'm now showing up in the role that I'm taking on with that mask, but it's not wholly, at least authentically me. And so to me, the more we can be aware of what mask we're wearing.
Ideally, we get to the point where we can pull those masks down. And part of our mission here is, hey, here's what we look like with masks on. Here's what it looks like. And it's hard for all of us. If ever I've given the impression it's easy, then like that's a complete misnomer, not what I meant to convey, but it's worth it. And so the mask assessment really helps you to identify and just give names for, because to me, once something, once you can call it a name, then now you have power over it. So, okay, this is my people, please, our mask, okay.
maybe it was useful, I might retire that one and put that one on the wall, or at least know when I put it on that, this is not useful to me right now. And so how do I now have the courage to step down and put those masks down? And it also allows me to see, that conversation didn't go well because they were wearing their mask. And so I actually didn't know what I needed to do to connect with them. So what could I have done to show up in a way that would allow us to connect authentically with each other with all of our masks off?
Scott Schimmel (22:16)
So if you want to take that mask, there's 15 of them and we'll let you know what your top two are. And that's the start of a good journey. So the show notes, we'll have the link. This is episode one. Curt, thank you. And I'm excited to listen. So that's a wrap. That's it. This is the new podcast coming at you and can't wait for episode two. See you soon.
Curt Cronin (22:38)
Thanks everybody.
Scott Schimmel (22:42)
Most people don't realize they're wearing a mask, which hides their true power without even knowing it. But the people you work with, your friends, your family, and the world need you to step into the power of your authentic self. Take our free mass assessments when cover which of the 15 masks you are unconsciously wearing that shapes your life and how you can start to break free. Start your journey at AikiPartners.com and step into the power of your authentic self.
