Nobody Is Coming to Save You

A New York Times bestselling author and leadership coach shares his invaluable secrets for successfully motivating people to action in low-trust, high-stakes environments.

For years, Scott Mann worked in low-trust, high stakes environments where nobody was coming to save him, his men, or the exhausted majority of Afghans they served. There, he learned that the best way to get big sh*t done and bridge vast divisions is to meet people where they are, not where you want them to be. He calls this approach Rooftop Leadership.

Wherever you live, work, or play—in real estate, in corporate sales, in HR, for a community volunteer group, in a non-profit, in politics—the hardest thing to find these days is authentic connection with other people. The social trends and fraying of civil society after more than two years of prolonged isolation from Covid, mass technology, organizational strain, and blinking-red stress levels on our emotional dashboards have taken a toll that those of us in our own exhausted majority are only beginning to understand and appreciate.

With inspiring stories about his experiences in the military and candid reflections on civilian life, Scott Mann connects readers to a more ancient, primal aspect of their nature rendered dormant by the modern world. Nobody Is Coming to Save You shows readers how to navigate the Churn that’s dividing us and learn to make new and deeper connections to ourselves, to each other, and to the natural world around us. 

• “Nobody’s Coming to Save You is written by a man who knows from personal experience how teaching the sharp lessons of self-reliance, setting goals, and never giving in until the mission is accomplished makes the world a better place, as those lessons are keys to greater self-confidence and a strong sense of character. I know Lt Colonel (ret) Scott Mann as a friend and leader who knows how to get stuff done. He has seen his share of combat, has served our country well, and anyone who reads his book will benefit greatly from the stories he shares and the inspirational heroes we meet along the way.”
  Gary Sinise, actor and founder of Gary Sinise Foundation
• “Some people serve a term, and some a career, but only a select few serve for a lifetime. LTC Scott Mann's heart bleeds for our freedom and for our country. When he is sending us a message, we should all pay attention."
  Shawn Ryan, former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor and host of the “The Shawn Ryan Show” podcast
• “Why should you or I listen to a Green Beret on the subject of taking charge of our own lives in this era of divisiveness and disillusion? Because the Special Forces mindset of ‘Influence without authority’ is the key to self-motivation, self-reinforcement, and self-belief. Lt. Col. Scott Mann has not only ‘been there and done that’ in overseas combat commands but he's brought it all home through his brain-children---Rooftop Leadership, Operation Pineapple Express, the Heroes Journey; he's even written, produced, and taken the stage (and soon a movie) in Last Out, about the ordeal of the warrior's return to civilian life. The common denominator of all these ventures---and of Nobody Is Coming To Save You---is the mindset of Start-It-Yourself, Don't-Wait-To-Get-Chosen. Scott is the greatest champion I know of bottom-up leadership. In this age of polarization and catastrophization, the answer to ‘Who is coming to save us?’ can only be one thing: We ourselves. We are coming to save us. Scott Mann and Nobody Is Coming To Save You point us to the tools and the mindset to make this happen.”
  Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of Gates of Fire and The War of Art
• Scott Mann is a talented and lucid writer who has a lot of wise things to say about the attention deficit Internet-driven world that so many of us live in and how to reconnect to a better, calmer version of ourselves. And he should know, as someone who lived among the people in Afghanistan as a US Special Forces officer and then tried to get as many American allies out of Afghanistan when the US military withdrew from the country in 2021, he has lived through some of the most stressful episodes in recent American military history, and he brings a lot of the wisdom that he derived from these experiences to his excellent book.
  Peter Bergen, author of The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden