Nobody Is Coming to Save You

In these divisive and distrustful times, the hardest skill and most important commodity in life and business is knowing how to connect deeply with other people. What are the secrets to moving reluctant people to action, in life or in business?

One Green Beret cracked the code on the rooftops in Afghanistan.

Working in isolated Afghan villages with a population naturally sympathetic to the Taliban and their hardline Islamist worldview, Lt. Col. Scott Mann and his teams were given a mission: connect with the villagers and enlist their support in order to save American lives and reduce Taliban influence and reach.

For years, Mann—a New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed leadership coach—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, for it was on the rooftops of these depleted and desperate villages where he and his teams influenced and led people across seemingly impassable trust gaps, establishing true rapport for the first time.

Veterans bring a lot of things home from war, and one of the things Mann brought back was Rooftop Leadership. His bottom-up approach isn’t just for Afghanistan or Green Berets. 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.

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. 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. Accessing our primal nature can help us transform not just our society and our relationships, but ourselves. Building human connections is a crucial skill taught to Green Berets that separates them from all other special operations forces. It is the secret sauce to getting big sh*t done when nobody is coming to save you. And Scott is ready to show you how.

• “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