The mission is simple: Help people and organizations become incredibly successful by providing the tools, skills, training, and advice needed to excel. We are relentless about delivering on our promises because we can only be successful if you are.
The vision is to create a society where people thrive and find fulfillment through better leadership, understanding that a single person’s leadership can profoundly impact everyone around them, for better or worse.
Colonel Robert Schaefer hosts the voices of veterans remembering their comrades.
For almost 40 years, Rob has worked alongside exceptional individuals on remarkable teams. His experience includes serving with both outstanding and poor leaders, each providing valuable lessons. Rather than placing himself in either category, Rob recognizes that he is a product of two powerful systems: the U.S. military’s standard leadership development program, and the Special Forces’ unique approach to creating elite team leaders.
Throughout his military career progression from private to sergeant to officer, Rob had the unique opportunity to attend more leadership schools than most service members – both enlisted and officer – which gave him the chance to see the entire system from the bottom to (almost) the very top. But what truly sets his experience apart is his immersion in the Special Forces’ distinct leadership system – a system that goes beyond standard military leadership training to create leaders capable of building and leading truly elite teams. This specialized system transforms already competent leaders into individuals who can consistently achieve what others consider impossible.
Leadership has been Rob’s lifelong passion, but it transformed into a compulsion during his military service. Recognizing he wasn’t a “natural-born leader,” Rob committed himself to working harder than his peers to master leadership principles. While others spent evenings with entertainment, he immersed himself in studying historical leaders like Alexander, Hannibal, and Xerxes. His personal library includes over four hundred books, manuals, and professional articles on leadership and leaders.
These systems and principles aren’t magical or innate – they’re learned. And because they’re learned, they can be taught. When Rob left the military, a friend asked him to give a leadership seminar to his company. It was then he saw firsthand that the unique brand of Special Forces leadership he’d been part of for so many years was also incredibly effective in today’s business environments. Since then, it has become his mission to share these proven methods with as many people as possible, helping hundreds of individuals and numerous companies create cultures of leadership where great teams emerge and produce amazing results in a very short period of time.
In Special Forces, "bona fides" refers to the credentials that prove an operator's legitimacy in the field. These credentials set Rob apart even among fellow Green Berets:
