Jocko Podcast 291 w/ Mike Glover: Are You Prepared? Stack The Deck In Your Favor

2021-07-23T04:11:27Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @mike.a.glover @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:00 - Mike Glover, Army Infantryman and Special Forces Soldier. 3:29:10 - Final thoughts. 3:34:07 - How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO UNDERGROUND Exclusive Episodes: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jocko Store Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com Jocko Fuel: https://jockofuel.com Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Echelon Front: https://www.echelonfront.com 3:50:31 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

Yeah, you know, you hear like the sports analogies of like, well, you know, it's like a professional sports scene, but these are like the champions, right? They have a mission set where they go, hey, you guys are going to go and do bilateral operations, working with indigenous guys, like ICTF, like ERU, like we talked about. Like, I sat on rooftop for like days and weeks going, where they held all the back guys and, and guys were talking like the Navy killed them all. This vindication board was, uh, filled with team guys that we lost and there was dozens of on one side and when you killed a bad guy because you took that call sign patch and then, you know, if you were as Tony Yoset, who was a third group team sergeant, I was killed, you would just carry TY on your left shoulder under your call sign patch and if you killed a bad guy and you were successful on your mission, you'd come back and you put it on the vindicated side and we had all the pictures of the guys that were killed on that and every night we'd fill that board and cycle them back and forth because, um, we understood that getting killed was a part of the job, comparatively and you know this you're very skilled in the history of warfare including the Vietnam War where thousands, 60 plus thousand Americans were killed, sometimes hundreds in certain battles were killed, entire Mac V. Sog teams taken off the planet, they accepted that risk. I was one of the few guys that got picked up and tasked to go to school, and I'm like, I'm going to so tack with SoTAC, and the Special Operations Terminal Air Control School, I'm like, dude, I want to go to SoTAC. Well, we did R&D, like the best things that we could put in the bag and you're going to live out of it for 72 hours, which happens to be, uh, appropriate amount of time to escape, evade, um, and then carry the appropriate amount of stuff in reconnaissance, like not overbearing. There's times that I came off the mat after an hour walk and feeling like the best I've ever felt, like super calm, super relaxed, super focused and like I was doing meditation in my own headspace. It's like, it's almost like you're watching it happen and you kind of can be like, yeah, whatever. and I remember early on in my in my seal career, like entering a room and shooting some targets and then and then all of a sudden be like, wait a second, my weapon, my weapon, I don't take it, I don't want to say it and not want to draw any attention to myself because I don't want to see that I don't want my weapon, weapon is unsafe. Like, hey, there's where we're going to put this over watch position or where we're going to set up the base element like those kind of decisions? But in the things that I enjoyed like overlanding across Afghanistan and the wild west, with not a lot of oversight and just wing in it and learning a lot of lessons in that versus that deliberate like land on the X, fast-repaunt off of the building and kill bad guys. And so they like you do like a lot of guys with our experiences do, try to impart those experiences and impact on young people. Whereas the kind of training that I ran, which was like the advanced training, like the training that we do with platoons before we went to point it, right? And I'm like, oh, and I'm like, okay, so am I going to be time Everything from running through the cemetery trying to find you know, inscriptions of, of specific people getting smoked to death, low crawl on across, you know, face down in the lawn, getting, you know, getting smoked, um, just routine hazing to make sure, hey, this is a work, work testing to evaluate you constantly if you want to be here. But I remember actually a summer of like when I was 12 or 13, my mom trying to convince me that, hey, you know, your dad just met a new woman, which he did, which was going to be my step mom, she had three kids at the time. There's supply bullets so that the frontline guys get, what about the people that are, you know, collecting intelligence, whether collecting intelligence, so the frontline guys can go kill people like everyone, that's what we're here for. Like a hit, like eating, eating and sleeping in the field to be able to conduct an operation are now the new priorities for me taking care of my guys. Well, I mean, getting like, even just a hood, like people aren't used to taking, if you, if you, if you don't grow up in those martial arts, if you don't grow up in impact sports, and that used to make in contact. And it was like one of those, you know, badass like, Punisher school deals, right? And I'm like, dude, I mean, you look for all the light and darkness and I'm like, man, that means the world to me, that maybe I had an impact on these men that stood side by side and fought uphill. Yeah, that high level, I mean it's theta and alpha and these these wavelengths of like this neurological consciousness when you're in that alpha state and you're taking that that information similar to like, when you're in a shower or on a drive and all these thoughts come to you, this creativity comes to you. I'm like, oh, dude, this dude is like Jason's going home. Yeah, those guys, just like an Iraq, just like I've experienced in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Africa, it's a vicious cycle that doesn't stop and we don't learn those lessons. Yeah, you know, obviously the seal community gets quite a bit of, you know, flack because we're like, uh, I guess for lack of a better word kind of popping the right now. That was pretty early, you know, and eventually you're just like doing this like a freaking robot, that's just execute. And what I try not to do was be like, you don't know where this does, I'd be like, okay, well, let's talk through it. And I know that you sit there and think of the back of your head of like, you know guys that did 12 more deployments compared to your And I know when I, when I took my first casualties and had lost my first guys, there was no one that was telling me like, hey, here's what you got to think about. It sounds like you were pretty maybe you kind of, because you can also, when you get older, you go, yeah, you know what, they just, you know, they did this when they were a little too young or they didn't get along or they weren't quite a good fit I mean, it's probably a few weeks when I went through it was like a escape, like a survival block. You know, well, what they like to do, I'm like, okay, so this has been done before. So the reason I asked this question is because somebody's going to be listening to this in 10 years or 17 years or 23 years and we're going to be in a situation where there hasn't been any casualties in a long time and all the sudden someone's going out and doing what, doing what soldiers do and they're going to take casualties. That's not like it's like, well, you know, preserve it. You just sort of, and it's the same thing when we were talking about, homo and rock, it's like, okay, look, there's just, I'm not, the pain is there, but it's like somewhere else. I would take, that the tomb taught me about self awareness and being present within my own mind and developing this relationship with the conscious voice that's in my head, but also like this passive observer, this person who's kind of observing the narration of the voice in my head and sitting back and like measuring all these inputs. So I'm like, wait, I figure out like a 12 to 24 people, $500 to slot, pistol carbine, let's make some revenue. And I don't know if you guys call the combat clearance, but like, hey, we're going to open the door You mean, you're like literally standing, literally, you're not standing in your class rank or anything like that. And then you, like, you create your new happy place where you're like, man, it's long as I'm in my head Like that don't you think that's kind of like a it's high in liability and it's neglectful? I'm sitting here talking to you and for some reason in my mind, I'm thinking I'm talking to like what like an older person. Like, like you take a platoon out and, and they've got, they're, they're, they're, they've, they've been crushed for a five, six, seven hour patrol. I mean, they go out, set off in the F. P. killed an American or two or what, you know, go, go, lob, and like I said, they don't really have to, they don't have to win every time. So he pushed me into it once, and like whatever, I must add some kind of punk ass freaking smirk on my face like whatever. This makes me think about this is the second time I thought about it in recent times, but you know, like the cop is telling, the cop is saying, hey, you can make mistakes. And like you said before, these guys aren't trained to be diplomats to be fit experts, the training kill bad guys and they're the best at it. Like there's no one, you're not going to, if you and I earn business together, you know, I say, well, actually, I don't want to make any money. Like you might have one or be like, this is the best thing I've ever tasted. I will, we'll say, just like I say on a lot of podcasts with guys of your caliber and your background that you're doing something that I wish a lot of guys with our background would do, which is get off the bench and take a stand and commit to this burden of responsibility. And so they don't want the right guys there or the wrong guys there, they want the right guys, and they, they want to make sure you earn it. What makes it so challenging to get through the, is it just like microscopic inspections of your uniforms and your hair and your freaking nose hairs and your hair here, your hairs and stuff like that? So a couple of Americans, like me and another SIF guy, and like three or five seals would go out and do our piece.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockel Podcast number 291, with echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening.
[00:00:08] Your responsibilities may involve the command of more traditional forces, but in less traditional roles.
[00:00:14] Men risking their lives not as combatants, but as instructors or advisors, or as symbols of our nation's
[00:00:20] commitments. The fact that the United States is not directly at war in these areas in no way
[00:00:26] diminishes the skill and the courage that will be required the service to our country, which is rendered
[00:00:33] or the pain of the casualties, which are suffered. To cite one final example of the range of
[00:00:41] responsibilities that will fall upon you, you may hold a position of command with our special forces,
[00:00:46] forces which are too unconventional to be called conventional, forces which are growing in number
[00:00:51] and importance and significance for we now know that it is wholly misleading to call this the nuclear
[00:00:58] age, or to say that our security rests only on the doctrine of massive retaliation.
[00:01:07] Korea has not been the only battlegrounds since the end of the Second World War.
[00:01:12] Men have fought and died in Malaya, Greece, the Philippines, Algeria and Cuba and Cyprus,
[00:01:21] and almost continuously on the Indo-Chinese peninsula. No nuclear weapons have been fired.
[00:01:28] No massive nuclear retaliation has been considered appropriate.
[00:01:34] This is another type of war. New in its intensity, ancient in its origin, war by guerrillas,
[00:01:41] subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead
[00:01:50] of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him.
[00:01:58] It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what we, to what has strangely been called
[00:02:04] wars of liberation. To undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain the freedom
[00:02:12] that they have finally achieved. It prays on economic unrest and ethnic conflicts. It requires
[00:02:20] in those situations where we must counter it. And these are the kinds of challenges
[00:02:25] that will be before us in the next decade. If freedom is to be saved, a whole new kind of
[00:02:31] strategy, a wholly different kind of force and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training.
[00:02:38] That right there was an excerpt from a speech by John F. Kennedy to the 1962 graduating class
[00:02:51] of West Point, the United States Military Academy, and that same year he also released a message
[00:02:57] to the US Army. And that message read to the United States Army. Another military dimension,
[00:03:07] guerilla warfare, has necessarily been added to the American profession of arms.
[00:03:14] The literal translation of guerilla warfare, a little war, is hardly applicable to this ancient
[00:03:22] but at the same time modern threat. I note that the army has several terms which describe
[00:03:29] the various facets of the current struggle, wars of subversion, covert aggression, and in broad
[00:03:35] professional terms, special warfare, or unconventional warfare. By whatever name, this militant
[00:03:43] challenge to freedom calls for an improvement and enlargement of our own development of techniques
[00:03:49] and tactics, communications and logistics to meet this threat. The mission of our armed forces
[00:03:57] and especially the army today is to master these skills and techniques and to be able to help
[00:04:03] those who have the will to help themselves. Pure military skill is not enough.
[00:04:12] A full spectrum of military paramilitary and civil action must be blended to produce success.
[00:04:21] The enemy uses economic and political warfare, propaganda, and naked military aggression
[00:04:27] in an endless combination to oppose a free choice of government and suppress the rights of the
[00:04:33] individual by terror, by subversion, and by force of arms. To win in this struggle, our officers and men
[00:04:44] must understand and combine the political, economic, and civil actions with skilled military
[00:04:51] efforts in the execution of this mission. The green beret is again becoming a symbol of excellence,
[00:04:59] a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.
[00:05:06] I know the United States Army will live up to its reputation for imagination, resourcefulness,
[00:05:13] and spirit as we meet this challenge, signed John F Kennedy.
[00:05:20] So, the Green beret, the U.S. Army Special Forces, were formed for this new type of warfare.
[00:05:31] Well, I guess as JFK said, new in its intensity but ancient in its origin.
[00:05:38] And today, almost 60 years since JFK made these statements,
[00:05:42] there's a new generation of soldiers that have trained
[00:05:45] incessantly to fight this new type of warfare and were honored to have one of those soldiers here
[00:05:51] tonight with us to share some of his experiences. He served in the U.S. Army Special Forces,
[00:05:57] worked as a contractor for some government agencies and has continued to hone his skills and teach
[00:06:04] others through his company Fieldcraft. Survival, his name is Mike Glover. Mike, thanks for coming
[00:06:12] out, man. Thanks for having me on its an honor. I have it to be here. Green berets, Green berets,
[00:06:20] the deal. We're kind of a big deal. I don't know if you can do that. Yeah, you know, obviously
[00:06:28] the seal community gets quite a bit of, you know, flack because we're like, uh, I guess for lack
[00:06:36] of a better word kind of popping the right now. Yes, but people seem to forget there was the green
[00:06:40] green beret, green beret movie way before and then I was thinking about the actual Delta Force
[00:06:47] movie the other day, which was way before anybody knew anything about the seal team. So so anyways,
[00:06:54] let's get to a man. Let's go back to the beginning. Let's go back to where, how you grew up, where
[00:06:59] you're from, what turned you into you? Who conception in Korea? Actually conceived in Korea, conceived in
[00:07:07] Korea. That was a Joe army kid. What did you do? So he had two of them, or else is he was a
[00:07:15] 95 Bravo, which is a military police officer and a Philadelphia artillery guy. What years was he
[00:07:21] 70, late 70s into the mid 80s? Okay, his, his intent was. Was he, did he go to nom? He didn't.
[00:07:29] He was, he was, he was in high school during Vietnam and then by time he got out the war had been
[00:07:34] fought. That was over. But he got stationed in Korea at some point. Yeah, I got stationed in Korea
[00:07:41] and met my beautiful mother at a very young age. She was 18 years old and then they had me at
[00:07:47] 19. How old was he? 25, 24 and just living his best life doing the army thing. We actually moved
[00:07:59] to California, to Fort Ord, California, where I was born and Monterey. Looks like a zombie apocalypse
[00:08:05] there now, the actual base for Ord. Looks like a sim shoot house. Did he get shot down? It did. They
[00:08:12] shut down all the buildings, condemned them, but it's still open. Like you could drive through
[00:08:17] publicly. So there's no gates. And station in Germany for a period of time with my dad as a young
[00:08:23] child and then parent separated. So got to come to Daytona Beach, Florida where I was basically raised.
[00:08:33] Going with who'd you go with? Monterey? Monterey? Monterey? Monterey? Monterey?
[00:08:37] Speaking of English, Medigay and Germany, wanted up getting back over to the US where I spent
[00:08:46] time between Florida and North Carolina, split in the difference growing up. Were you, were you looking
[00:08:52] at the army, like good deal? Were you around the army all the time when you're, when you're a little
[00:08:56] bit older? Yeah, it's like, you know, we live, you know, these civilian lives now, but there's
[00:09:02] always this evidence that we served in some capacity. So I saw that evidence as a child. My dad had
[00:09:09] the dog tags, the pictures, the moterey gear. I remember playing with his TA50, his old moterey gear,
[00:09:16] his mess kit and all of his LBE and all the old stuff that we had, the webbing. And I just kind
[00:09:24] of knew growing up in that environment that I was going to be in the military. His brother was a
[00:09:29] career, Navy guy. So I was, you know, growing up with Charlie Sheen and Navy Sills and Chuck Norris and
[00:09:38] Delta Force and kind of immersed in that and decided at a very young age. I mean, man, it's, it's,
[00:09:45] as young as I can remember, that's all I want to do. Was it an altering? Yeah, that's the same with me.
[00:09:50] I always say people like, when did you make that decision? I'm like, I don't know, because I just
[00:09:54] remember what wanting to wear camouflage uniforms as a little kid. Yeah, that's what I remember.
[00:10:00] But you were in mostly growing up in Daytona Beach. Yeah, Daytona Beach and then split in the
[00:10:05] difference between North Carolina and my mom actually settled right outside of Fort Brad,
[00:10:10] North Carolina, which I would spend a lot of time. What year were you born? 80. So you're growing up.
[00:10:15] So now this is like the 90s. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. I'm sitting here talking to you and for some
[00:10:19] reason in my mind, I'm thinking I'm talking to like what like an older person. Yeah. And I'm thinking
[00:10:25] in my mind like, oh, it was the 50s. I don't know why I'm thinking that because because because
[00:10:30] okay, yeah, I guess because yeah, just read JFK, so I'm thinking, oh, yeah, this is the 50s. And
[00:10:34] then I started thinking myself, wait a second. This is like I was already in the Navy when you
[00:10:38] are freaking teenage or whatever. So you're growing up in the 90s. 90s. What year did you go in the
[00:10:42] Navy? 1990. 90. Okay. Yeah. I was 10. Yeah. That was 10. Wow. Wow. Now feel young all this sudden. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:51] Yeah. So what are you doing in Daytona Beach? What's the scene down there? Are you in the water?
[00:10:58] Are you surfing? Are you listening to music? What are you listening to? I was, I made my dad
[00:11:02] jokes and says that was a part fish because I was always in the water. I mean, I remember training.
[00:11:07] I wanted to be a Navy Sil, I first started thinking about the military. My uncle was very
[00:11:12] pro-Navy obviously. My dad was pro army and I remember jumping and diving into pools and doing
[00:11:17] underwater UDT challenges. Like tie-in knots. You know, there was no discovery channel or there was
[00:11:23] no representation, a mainstream of what Navy Sil's did. It was UDT was Charlie Sheen and Navy Sil's.
[00:11:30] So I wanted to do that, but I grew up in the water, outdoor fishing, I grew up on a boat.
[00:11:35] I mean, I think it was out. We probably fish four days a week. What was your dad's civilian job?
[00:11:41] So he immediately transfer from the military and work for the Department of Corrections for the
[00:11:46] state of Florida. So he started doing corrections at an early age, right out of the military,
[00:11:52] which transitioned his retirement, but if it's a whole bunch of cool stuff for him,
[00:11:56] and that's all our member him doing. And then, is he live? Do you see, is there another like,
[00:12:01] does he get remarried or something? Who's taking care of you when he's at work?
[00:12:04] Yeah, I mean, if I could reflect on that time period, I think I did a lot of taking care of myself,
[00:12:11] but I was super independent. I wasn't only child. So it was just making sure. You know, so
[00:12:15] growing up, I had a good imagination. It was very responsible as a kid. I don't remember getting
[00:12:21] trouble. I wasn't in bars. I wasn't into weed. All the typical things that kids are into. I remember
[00:12:28] like doing con-op, I concepted up the operation plans in brief as a 10-year-old. I had a toy
[00:12:34] MP5 and planning ops getting Gucci out and geared up and then doing these like low-vis operations
[00:12:41] at night. And then even a or I didn't even know what an A or was. And after action review,
[00:12:45] I would come back and like, let's talk about it. Like weird stuff. Who's we? Look, all my friends.
[00:12:49] Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I was just that kid. Yeah. I was that kid.
[00:12:53] Hey, did you? What about the fact that your parents got divorced? Did you? Did you have like
[00:12:58] anemosity towards your dad or towards your mom or were you just, did you just kind of,
[00:13:04] because when divorce happens at a young age, sometimes kids can't understand it. And it makes them,
[00:13:10] you know, I guess, have some kind of anemosity towards one parent or the other. It sounds like
[00:13:15] you were pretty maybe you kind of, because you can also, when you get older, you go, yeah, you know what,
[00:13:19] they just, you know, they did this when they were a little too young or they didn't get along or they
[00:13:22] weren't quite a good fit and I get it and we're going to carry on. Yeah. That was me man. I just never had a,
[00:13:27] I never developed anemosity for any of my parents based on the things they weren't potentially doing
[00:13:33] right. I don't know if it was because I always taught not to judge people and even my family
[00:13:38] and the circumstance I was in. What I looked at, it was a very adaptive opportunity for me to
[00:13:43] to go to different places, meet different family members and then have these cool experiences.
[00:13:49] I mean, I grew up in World Carolina with my cousins running the streets, doing playing war,
[00:13:55] shooting BB guns and then I come back to Florida and then I was hanging out my dad fishing
[00:13:59] outdoors on the beach in the water. And so I had a really good childhood. I despite the
[00:14:05] problem that was separation, which eventually at the age of 12, why did I move him back to my
[00:14:12] moms, taking advantage of opportunities there? What was the, what was the opportunity? So
[00:14:18] when I went, so my, obviously my mom and dad are in kind of like, cohoots and competition with
[00:14:24] each other because they want to have me, you know. And so I'm going back and forth, getting spoiled
[00:14:30] and separate ways. But I remember actually a summer of like when I was 12 or 13,
[00:14:35] my mom trying to convince me that, hey, you know, your dad just met a new woman, which he did,
[00:14:40] which was going to be my step mom, she had three kids at the time. And then it's an allocation
[00:14:45] of resources. And you know, when you have three new children in the home, you don't get taken care
[00:14:50] of like you used to. And so I was like, yeah, maybe I want to give my mom a chance and live with
[00:14:54] my mom and it's a good situation. So I just said dad, I'm, I'm just going to live my mom.
[00:14:59] And he was, I remember painfully, he was bummed out. I don't think I've ever heard my dad cry
[00:15:05] or saw him cry. And I think he was crying on the phone when I told him that. And it
[00:15:10] created a device, because I was his only baby boy. But he had children in the take care of,
[00:15:16] he had a new born with the woman that he was with. And I knew he had this life, he had this vertical,
[00:15:20] he had a concentrate on. So I live with my mom. And then, you know, in North Carolina, and she wasn't,
[00:15:27] she wasn't wealthy at all. She was an entrepreneur, small business, beauty salon. We were struggling.
[00:15:32] I thought it was going to be like, oh, this is cool because my mom buys me crap all the time.
[00:15:36] My dad never buys me stuff. And so I went into that opportunity and realized, hey, I mean,
[00:15:41] me and my mom were going to have to fend for ourselves. And we she with another guy at this point.
[00:15:45] She was, she was with my stepdad. She eventually met my stepdad at 15. She had a boyfriend at
[00:15:50] the time. Name Alex was a good dude from that she had met in Germany, had brought her over.
[00:15:55] But she was trying to find her way. I mean, I don't even think, and this is, this is
[00:16:00] uh, uh, honest reflection. I don't think I had shoes until I was like 14. Like I had flipflops.
[00:16:07] It was like, she didn't have a car to us 15. Um, because she couldn't afford a car. So we didn't
[00:16:13] have a lot of things that were basics because she was grinding as an entrepreneur. But that taught me
[00:16:18] more about life moving forward, being adaptive and eventually becoming a military leader. I think
[00:16:25] a lot of those experiences come from that. You know, you said, you said, first of all, it's pretty
[00:16:30] amazing how you were, um, kind of attach native, able to not be emotional about these decisions and
[00:16:35] stuff as a kid. You also said, hey, uh, I was taught not to judge people. Who taught you that?
[00:16:42] I grew up as a Baptist and, um, I wasn't, like, I'm not a super religious person. I never
[00:16:48] have them. But I've questioned, I'm a crying as a kid when I was in my bed trying to think about
[00:16:54] what the next step was for people. Like what happens when you die? I remember I actually,
[00:16:59] I remember this thought gives it stuck with me. I said to myself on my head, I said, wait a minute,
[00:17:04] if if a God's Jesus is father, then who's God's father? And there's this void in my brain. I'm like,
[00:17:12] oh my God, I can't figure this out. And I remember being destroyed. And so religion kind of brought
[00:17:17] that together for me. So I grew up like a Christian non-denominational and was taught a lot of
[00:17:22] values that way. Also my dad's a military-minded guy. So discipline, integrity, honor, all those things
[00:17:28] weren't still that many young age to. And then what, at what point did you, because you were in the
[00:17:33] water all the time, and it seems like that would be a good call to go in the Navy and, and try and
[00:17:40] go in the SEAL teams. What made you make the decision to go in the Army instead? Yeah, good question.
[00:17:45] I, I, I, I never been asked that, but specifically I know the exact moment. I was on my, the
[00:17:50] steps of my grandma's house and they don't a beach. And my uncle, who is still active Navy, had just
[00:17:58] come back from being on the water and in the fleet. And I was talking to him about being a Navy
[00:18:04] SEAL. And he said, listen, I know you're torn between the two. Do you want to be a green
[00:18:09] braid? Do you want to be a Navy SEAL? And if I were a kid, it's like, it's a choice, but you don't
[00:18:13] realize the progress that you have to go through. And so I'm like, so what happens if I fail?
[00:18:19] As a, if I go to selection and, or a good abuds, if I fail, what happens? He goes, you're
[00:18:24] mopping a deck forever. He goes, and then he told me about the whole recruitment. He actually
[00:18:30] tried out for buds and didn't make it when he was young in the Navy. And he said, hey, there's a
[00:18:35] whole bunch of guys I served with that didn't make it, that fill all the slots in the Navy, that
[00:18:41] nobody else wants to do. And I'm like, so what happens if I'm in the Army? And then my diet was
[00:18:46] there to educate me, says, listen, you could be an airborne ranger, you pass ranger school,
[00:18:50] you go to selection, you don't make it, you're still an airborne ranger, combat arms. And I'm
[00:18:55] like, why does one be in the fight? And I, I made the decision right there in that moment, it was like,
[00:18:59] okay, let me see the path that leads me to be a special forces guy. When I was 10 years old,
[00:19:04] I made a bet with my dad that I was going to be a green braid. Damn, better men in P5,
[00:19:09] better head of the team. I had to buy myself. You couldn't buy me a Phoenix arm's 22 right now.
[00:19:20] The fact that what, what the fact that you were able to calculate that is incredible,
[00:19:25] when I, I was freaking, you know, I was like, I think I was 18 when I joined, but I might have been 17
[00:19:32] on the maps program. Anyways, I was young, but I was older than you were at age 10, and I didn't even
[00:19:38] figure out that, hey, that, that thing never came into mind, mind what if you don't make it.
[00:19:43] Yeah, which is a stupid thing to be thinking, because there's a 80% attrition rate in Buds.
[00:19:48] And it's totally, it's, it's the worst. I mean, look, here, here's what's the worst. If you join the
[00:19:56] Navy because you want to be a mechanic or you want to be a work on aviation equipment, that's
[00:20:01] awesome. The, the Navy's freaking a great place to get those kind of jobs that are sort of like
[00:20:06] industrial blue collar jobs. The Navy's freaking awesome for that. You, you want to, like I said,
[00:20:10] you want to be a diesel mechanic, bro, go, go join the Navy. You'll get awesome experience of that.
[00:20:15] You want to learn about communication systems, technical stuff, the Navy's great, but the type of
[00:20:22] person that wants to be a seal doesn't want to do those kind of things at all, at least as far as I can tell.
[00:20:27] So, let that's what you're going to end up with. And so it's really a bad deal if you don't make it,
[00:20:33] it's not, not going to be fun. What's worse, too, you train up for that job before you,
[00:20:38] or the use to, right? You used to train up for that job. Yeah. So then what's a good thing is you see
[00:20:44] how much that job potentially sucks. Yeah. So when you go into Buds, that's your motivation. I don't
[00:20:48] want to go back to that thing, that vocational thing. No, it's, it's, and the other thing that's,
[00:20:53] that's really good about the army and the Marine Corps is you get all this fundamental basic
[00:20:57] infantry, small unit training before you go to special operations training. So in the, in the
[00:21:04] seal teams, you don't have that. You don't have this sort of base of knowledge of fundamental
[00:21:09] small unit tactics like you have in the army and in the Marine Corps. So how will you when you
[00:21:16] are less 17? Yeah. I joined us 17. And go to boot camp. Got what you expected?
[00:21:22] Yeah. I went to infantry boot camp where to sand hill became a 11 Bravo. I actually signed up to
[00:21:28] the an airborne Ranger, an option 40 contract, which is known as the option to go to Ranger
[00:21:34] Pétain. Oh, so that's, that means you're going to Battalion. Yeah. I was, I was so I set to go to
[00:21:39] Battalion. But what I signed up for as an MOS was called 11 X-ray. And 11 X-ray is similar to the 18
[00:21:46] X-ray. And where the X stands for, they filled the gap. They, they decide what they want to make
[00:21:51] you. So back in the day, it's not like this now. But back in the day, there was four different
[00:21:56] specialties in the infantry. 11 Bravo Charlie Delta and Mike. And, or not Mike, not Delta, but Mike
[00:22:04] and hotel. So if you were 11 Bravo infantrymen, if you're a Charlie, Mortarmen, if you're a
[00:22:10] Mike, like heavy-willed mechanized vehicles, if you're a hotel, heavy armor like Rodin on Humvees.
[00:22:16] So basically an infantrymen with different skill sons. Well, when I got there, the way they selected
[00:22:23] us in group does was based on where we were standing. So they said, hey, you guys in a group,
[00:22:28] you're going to be Bravo's. You mean, you're like literally standing, literally, you're not standing
[00:22:32] in your class rank or anything like that. Just wear your stand. Where you were lumped together.
[00:22:37] And so they're like, you lumped. You're going to be a Bravo, you know, and they made them
[00:22:41] molasses. Well, they made me an 11 hotel. And so I'm like, okay, so I'm going to infantry guy that
[00:22:47] drives and Humvees shoots 50 cows and toe muscles. Cool. What do this? At the end of basic training,
[00:22:53] where they transition you and they go to AIT where you get your advanced training. They're supposed
[00:23:00] to have a rip brief, a Ranger docturnation program brief. So the rip instructor comes and I'm like,
[00:23:06] what's going on here? Like he's not talking to us. He's talking to the Bravo's and the Charlie's.
[00:23:10] Like why is he talking to us? Don't even think anything about it because I'm like, I mean,
[00:23:14] you want, I don't even have a rank, right? And so no, no foot to stand on. So we go through the training
[00:23:20] and at the end, they go, hey, Mike, you're going to Fort Lewis Washington to an infantry unit.
[00:23:25] And I'm like, I have a Ranger contract, airborne Ranger contract. So they look at my
[00:23:31] Amosica, know your hotel. Ranger of a time doesn't have hotels. And I'm like, what? Like,
[00:23:36] what do you mean they don't have hotels? And like you should have told us before you were
[00:23:39] a day, I came like, I'm a private. I think I tried to say something, but you guys ignored me. So
[00:23:45] luckily for me, my uncle was a sergeant major and the 18th Airborne Corps, big division of
[00:23:52] airborne infantry units. So I call him during my little break and like this is what happened.
[00:23:58] So he gets this, you know, long story short, he gets this connection where this old guard recruiter
[00:24:04] comes in. And I'm in a room similar to this. And they're like, I know your uncle, I'm going to
[00:24:09] hook you up. Like literally the guy says it to me as a E5. And he's the recruiter for the old guard,
[00:24:14] the third infantry regiment, right? I don't even know the hell the old guard is. I'm like, okay,
[00:24:19] what do I got to do? And a civilian comes in and he looks at my orders, he's a
[00:24:23] Gamer orders and he looks at it. And my MOS has a love no hotel. He literally takes a pen
[00:24:28] and scratches out a love no hotel, writes 11 Bravo and then signs his initials boom.
[00:24:33] And it instant 11 Bravo. And I'm like, oh, and I'm like, okay, so am I going to be
[00:24:38] time and it goes, well, first we can't do that. We have to send you to the old guard because that's
[00:24:42] part of this deal. When we send you the old guard because you could only be 11 Bravo going the old
[00:24:48] guard. We're going to send you there and then you could put a 41 87. Everybody back in the day,
[00:24:53] even kind of now. So see, I 41 87 is the way that you migrate and do whatever you want to do,
[00:24:59] natural. So I get the old guard. No idea what the old guard is. And the long story short,
[00:25:05] they're ceremony unit of the US military. They do all the fall on our funerals, the state
[00:25:10] dignitarious courts. All the stuff I did not want to do. I had to take advantage of my time.
[00:25:17] This is pre-GWAT. So I'm like, I'm talking what like 97 97 97 97. So I get there and, you know,
[00:25:26] luckily for my circumstance, my uncle is very well known in these units. He served as a
[00:25:32] between start, does a storm. He's just a popular character in the inventory in this and these
[00:25:36] particular units. And the old guard for infantry guys is like a break. Yeah, you go to Korea, you go to
[00:25:42] the 82nd and then you go to the old guard to take a break. So I get there. E1 don't know anything
[00:25:47] and I realize it's not the place that I want to be, but I have to take advantage of my time. So I
[00:25:52] head on a trajectory to focus on setting myself up for success to be the best version of special forces
[00:26:01] that I could be. And so that's where that journey began. Did anyone tell you what to do? Was anyone
[00:26:07] talking to you about it? Was anyone telling you about selection or what you need to get ready for?
[00:26:11] Anything like that when you're reading about it? So I was so books or had been a big part of my
[00:26:16] life since the origins of where I wanted to be in the military. You know, the Marseinco books, the
[00:26:23] you know, the the Marine Sniper, all these books, John Plaster, Mac Pisaug, John Strikers stories,
[00:26:29] all these stories I was digesting and absorbing. I even stole and basic training a book called
[00:26:36] Commandos that was a paperback book from the drill sergeants, Paul Table Hall, while I was doing KP,
[00:26:43] I was cleaning crap up. And because I was like, I want to digest this. I was like hiding,
[00:26:48] doing that stuff. And so I had an understanding of what it took in discipline, but I had no idea
[00:26:56] because I didn't get any intel. As I got into the infantry, I maximized my time. I trained up for
[00:27:03] Ranger School. I went to Ranger School as an 18 year old PFC, a private first class. I went to
[00:27:07] Airborne School. How hard does it get a billet to Ranger School as an 18 year old? Almost impossible.
[00:27:12] How is it getting? So there's there's trials. Most infantry units run what's called pre-Ranger.
[00:27:19] And people think, hey, you raise your hand. You get a slot. That's not true. If
[00:27:23] you're a baton, it's a requirement. So they get the majority of the slots. If you're a regular
[00:27:27] infantry unit, you get slots based on order of merit. So they have an OML list. And if you
[00:27:34] earn it, they'll give you a slot. And then you're on the list. And then you just trickle your way
[00:27:38] to the top. So I tried out for it about 30 of us tried out for us and only three of us got slots.
[00:27:43] And I was a young PFC. What's it? What's the trial based on? Freak and PTC testing? It
[00:27:48] opens a sample here or something. What's harder than Ranger School? So it's about a week.
[00:27:53] Right? So in a week, it's like how much crap can we put together in a week to crush these kids
[00:27:59] dig to see who's most likely to succeed? Because these units have the reputation on the line.
[00:28:04] If the third image of your regiment sends five dudes to Ranger School and nobody passes, it
[00:28:08] reflects poorly on the on the regiment. So when I showed up, it was a rucksack. It was a, you know,
[00:28:16] a ruck march, 12 miles in time. It was land navigation. It was a common core task. It was patrolling.
[00:28:23] The number one thing that's going to make you successful is that your physical fitness in
[00:28:27] Ranger School. It's your ability to lead. And so as a young 18 year old at the time,
[00:28:32] I'm navigating this problem set. It's like, hey, PFC, Glover, give a warno. Give a con op. And I'm like,
[00:28:38] oh, like I have to brief this. So planning and then executing that raid was a reflection of your
[00:28:45] probability of success in Ranger School. So I was successful. And you're a PFC and there's 30
[00:28:51] people try out and you get selected. I got selected. Now I was one of one of three that I got selected.
[00:28:56] We went to Ranger School. I was actually the only one at the three that went all the way through
[00:29:00] without recycling. And in my infantry company, the only people Ranger Qualified was me as a PFC
[00:29:07] and my first sergeant who was a senior E8 in the army. So it was back then it was rare. I was
[00:29:13] rared to have a Ranger tab on your uniform. How was Ranger School? Kick in the balls, kick in the balls.
[00:29:23] Fear was the thing that I had to overcome. It was the most difficult thing that I had overcome.
[00:29:29] I remember like the night before Ranger School. Fear, I'm assuming fear of failure. Fear of failure.
[00:29:34] Absolutely. And you know, you have no perspective. You just have these stories. You know,
[00:29:41] my squad leader had been Ranger School before. So he was feeding me information, which almost makes
[00:29:45] it worse. You got to be aware of this and you're trying to live with that solution in mind.
[00:29:52] And you're getting hit with all these other random jobs in the face. I showed up and I'm super
[00:29:58] physically fit. And I remember getting my, um, I had a low body fat, high physical fitness score.
[00:30:04] And when I got there, I realized very quickly it wasn't about that. It was a, that's a,
[00:30:10] the Ranger Assessment part of Ranger School is relatively easy. I mean, it's we're talking
[00:30:14] eight minute mile pace, five miles, 40 minutes. We're talking about basic pushups, situps, and running,
[00:30:21] pullups, and basic stuff. Really quickly, you start deteriorating because you're not eating.
[00:30:26] Uh, you're averaging about one in our rear day when I went during winter time. And you're averaging
[00:30:31] about three and a half hours of sleep. Those difficulties for a dude. I mean, I went to Ranger
[00:30:36] School. I was even as an 18 year old at 200 pounds. All the guys that were meat heads that were
[00:30:42] big dudes suffered the most because you need protein to feed muscle. And when you're not getting
[00:30:48] that, your body starts deteriorating. And it's painful. How much weight did you lose? 30 pounds.
[00:30:54] 30 pounds. Yeah, that's a good time. Yeah. And that's another thing. Man, I might have taken the
[00:31:02] gamble. You know, they're like, hey, listen, Jocco, you might end up on a ship somewhere. But
[00:31:08] if you go to Ranger School, guaranteed you're not eating out of my, let me take a bubble.
[00:31:13] Roll the dice. Yeah. That's another ball game. That's the thing about buds. The thing about
[00:31:18] buds, you're getting fat, man. Yeah. And it's all you can eat. That's beautiful. Yeah. It's
[00:31:23] saved. It's why you jacked. That's huge. But the thing is Ranger School, like you said, Ranger
[00:31:30] School is really the premier leadership school for the Army. It is. Yeah. You're running operations.
[00:31:37] You're, you're, you're filling a different role. Basically, every operation. Sometimes you're the
[00:31:43] leader. Sometimes you're freaking machine gun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, when I went to
[00:31:48] Ranger School as a very young kid, I didn't know what to expect. And then it's Sinker Swim.
[00:31:55] You either step up to the plate and you're prepared to be, look, the characteristics of
[00:32:00] being successful, Ranger who aren't that difficult. But being a clear, concise, decisive leader
[00:32:06] under stress is super important. And I saw, and in front, for, you know, comparably to all my peers,
[00:32:14] which weren't peers. I'm talking about the second lieutenant that just graduated IOBC,
[00:32:18] infantry officer, basic horse, Navy seals, green berets. Like these are guys that are highly
[00:32:24] respect. So it was a whole plethora, like a melting pot of a whole bunch of different backgrounds.
[00:32:29] And I realized when you took away food, when you took away sleep, when you broke everybody down,
[00:32:35] we were on this equal plane. And so they're very minimal characteristics that you needed to be
[00:32:40] successful and to shine. We're not that difficult. And so I saw people, Sink and I saw people succeed
[00:32:48] because they swam. Those people that sunk were just, they couldn't make decisions. And then when
[00:32:53] they got stressed, which they never been tested and stressed, they couldn't do basic skills. That's
[00:32:59] right. So Ranger School, they give you the formula. And here's the conup. Here's the five paragraph
[00:33:04] op water. Here's how you execute a rate. Just follow that step by step and you'll be successful.
[00:33:10] And I realized how analytic that was. And so I just needed to get through and check the block and get
[00:33:15] it done. And I saw a lot of people Sink that I highly respected because they started falling apart.
[00:33:22] I mean, I saw guys who were beef, beefy dudes were jacked, who were strong. And they were getting
[00:33:28] broken down the most because they couldn't handle the deprivation of sleeping food. And when I saw
[00:33:33] that as a young man, as a young leader, it changed my entire perspective on life. Like it reprioritized
[00:33:40] the hierarchy of things that I thought were important. And I'm like, that's not important. Like a
[00:33:43] hit, like eating, eating and sleeping in the field to be able to conduct an operation are now
[00:33:49] the new priorities for me taking care of my guys. So I came out of that as a very young leader
[00:33:55] who wasn't even an, that was an informal leader. I wasn't even a designated leader. And that
[00:33:59] shaped me to become the leader that I would become. When you say people that would have trouble
[00:34:03] where people that would have in hard time making a decision. Like what would they be having a hard
[00:34:07] time making a decision? Like, hey, there's where we're going to put this over watch position or where
[00:34:12] we're going to set up the base element like those kind of decisions? Yeah, everything from technical
[00:34:17] to very cognitive decisions that had been made in adapting to change rapidly. So in Rainer School,
[00:34:23] you're going to set mission, which is based off your con up that you plan. It's a deliberate
[00:34:27] mission sent, contingency base mission sent. You go in the field with that and then after that,
[00:34:32] it's all fragos. It's fragmentation orders of the missions changing. We're doing this. And mostly
[00:34:38] how to do with the adaptability of adapting to rapid change. Hey guys, this just happened.
[00:34:43] Now you have the doubt what you're going to do. I have no idea. It was probably a lack of glucose
[00:34:48] in the brain. It was a lack of sleep. I mean, I had guys that broke down and like just quit.
[00:34:55] Because when you get to that state where you can't function mentally, what's going to get you through
[00:35:01] that? And typically it's grip. It's resolved. It's digging deep. And some of those guys never found that.
[00:35:07] And even though they were tested and they had an opportunity, they never found it. So when we
[00:35:12] came out of the field, the greatest thing about Rainer School is your judge by your peers.
[00:35:17] You write down on a piece of paper. At the like the second you come out of the field,
[00:35:22] your smoked out of your mind. They put you in a classroom. They sit you down with a piece of paper.
[00:35:27] And they say, write down a person you want to go to war with and write down a person you leave behind.
[00:35:33] And that's that's super impactful for a young man being told that they would be left behind
[00:35:41] by the majority of their peers. That's I mean, it's super impactful. Because it's like,
[00:35:46] hey man, adapt, change. Do some self reflection or fail. And just be that guy for the rest of your life.
[00:35:53] That that right there set the press and it's for everything. And in Ranger School,
[00:35:58] one of the ways that you could drop is by getting peered out, right? Where if you get, if you get
[00:36:02] ranked the lowest guy X number of times, then the instructors are like, yeah, this guy is not the guy
[00:36:07] that we want. If you get peered and it's becoming a routine out of the field, you will immediately get recycled.
[00:36:14] So a recycle isn't just like going back to the beginning of that phase. It's potentially going
[00:36:19] back to the beginning of Ranger School. So now you're talking about, when I went to Ranger School
[00:36:23] with 70 plus days, it was a couple months, three different phases when I went Darby,
[00:36:28] which is then the Fort Benning and San Hill, Delana Gow, which is in the mountains, and then
[00:36:34] at Eglend, which is in the swamps. So if you get recycled, you potentially will go back to the phase
[00:36:41] or go back to the very beginning. I mean, I interviewed a woman Lisa Jaster, who is one of the first
[00:36:47] females to go through Ranger School. She failed every phase. She got to the last phase and failed,
[00:36:54] and they said, you failed. So here's your options. It was a weird thing, knock out these push-ups
[00:37:00] because we get a assess if you're physically a fit to go ahead and go forward. If you don't knock
[00:37:04] him out and you can't meet that standard right now, you're done. But we're going to recycle you
[00:37:09] to the very beginning. So she was in a race over like a year. Like sustained combat operations
[00:37:15] and sleep and food deprived for like a year. And I can't imagine, but that was your options. It's
[00:37:20] either, again, it's either synchronous one. You have an opportunity to succeed and change the way you
[00:37:25] look at yourself, which I think is the most impactful that they give you that opportunity, or continue
[00:37:29] to be that guy, and then you just get shit canned. When are they helping people out by, let's say you
[00:37:35] get graded low? Isn't instructor going to be coming over to you and say, like, hey, listen,
[00:37:39] here's what's going on. You're really indecisive. You need to start thinking through these things.
[00:37:42] The reason I'm asking you this is because like in basic seal training. First of all, you're not
[00:37:49] doing anything really tactical. But second of all, there's no real hate, bro. Here's the mistake
[00:37:54] that you're making. Whereas the kind of training that I ran, which was like the advanced training,
[00:37:59] like the training that we do with platoons before we went to point it, right? I mean, that's all
[00:38:05] I'm doing this being like, hey, man, you can't be sitting there, being indecisive. You need to figure
[00:38:11] out what's your work, call you're going to make. You need to do at least give your guys some
[00:38:13] correction. Like, I'm constantly doing that to these guys. Is that happening at Ranger School?
[00:38:18] Or is it more like, yeah, you know what, this guy ain't got it. Yeah, I mean, here, the reality is
[00:38:23] they know if you're not going to make it. Your peers know the students know. There's guys who are
[00:38:28] made for war, and there's guys who aren't made for war. And one of the things that I think is
[00:38:34] important about the Ranger tab and the experience is you're creating combat leaders represented by
[00:38:39] a tab. Now, now we don't wear tabs necessarily all over the place because we're in different uniforms,
[00:38:46] but when you saw that tab, you understood that, that guy was capable as a leader in combat.
[00:38:51] And it totaled a lot. So a lot of the times, especially with the officers who come out at IOBC,
[00:38:57] they're brand new 22 year old, uh, second lieutenant. Don't give them the opportunity. And they'll
[00:39:02] say, hey, these are the fixes fix this. If you don't fix it, you're going to fail. You go to
[00:39:06] you report to your first duty station as an infantry officer without a Ranger tab, forget about it.
[00:39:10] Your career failed for the, you're just not, you might as well just get out. For, for a young
[00:39:16] Joe's like PFCs that I was for specialists or even young, uh, NCOs, not commission officers,
[00:39:22] you have an opportunity. They'll give you some feedback and they expect to see you, um,
[00:39:27] take that opportunity. You might not get another opportunity based on the cycle of getting patrols,
[00:39:33] which just means they're going to recycle. And you'll get another chance, uh, a month and a half
[00:39:38] later, because that's how long it takes to get through it. What's the nutrition rate at Ranger's
[00:39:41] goal? It's pretty high. It's about ID percent. Really. Yeah, that's about 80 percent.
[00:39:47] So you get, you get down with it. And now you must have a pretty freaking good reputation. What
[00:39:51] do you, are you 19 yet? I'm 19. Yeah. 19. You graduated from that. So what's next? So, um, my uncle,
[00:40:01] um, when I'm there, was a guard, the two with the unknown soldier. He was there as a guard. He was a
[00:40:08] battoon sergeant, um, before my time. And when I'm there, I put a 4180 something going to
[00:40:13] Ranger for time. It doesn't get accepted. They're like, no, I have a Ranger tab, which I thought was
[00:40:18] the prerequisite to get a 4180. They're like, no, uh, we don't, we don't need the numbers. And in
[00:40:23] 98, they didn't need the numbers. 99. And so I talked to my uncle, I'm like, what do you want?
[00:40:29] What are my options? Like, I'm ready to be in the fight, which there wasn't a fight. And that's
[00:40:34] probably the reason why I think you have 4187 approved. They're like, um, he's like, go, go
[00:40:39] try out for the two. And at the time, um, and still at that unit, the two million-known soldier
[00:40:46] was the most difficult. It's probably the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life to be honest.
[00:40:51] Selections and special operations comparatively were walking the park, compared to what that was.
[00:40:58] I went there. The army's been guarding the two of the unknowns since the, the 50s.
[00:41:04] It's been around since the, uh, in term of the World War I of known. And it was an honor.
[00:41:11] It was something that was going to build me and set me up for success, leading into,
[00:41:17] potentially, behind or special forces. And so I took the opportunity. I went and tried out.
[00:41:21] How long is the trial?
[00:41:23] So you typically do a two week trial. It's called TTY. They just, they TTY to the tomb.
[00:41:30] You do a whole bunch of assessments. And then they go, you're good enough or you're not to continue
[00:41:35] to select and try. And that's a seven in the nine month process. If you're smart, seven months,
[00:41:41] if you're not so smart, not once. So it took me like 10 months. So it took me a long time to get my
[00:41:46] earned my two-man-dentification badge. But the, the, the process is almost a year.
[00:41:50] And then what's that job in tail? I mean, obviously we know what it looks like from the outside.
[00:41:56] Yeah, garden the tomb. But what's it look like from the inside?
[00:42:00] It's a suckfest man. It's a suckfest. I mean, it's, it's the most difficult thing I've done.
[00:42:05] But the most honorable, uh, responsibility I've been given in the military.
[00:42:09] So the two-man-dentone soldiers who've been guarded by the army since the, the 40s.
[00:42:14] And they guard the tomb 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And that rotation takes place
[00:42:21] and three release based on height. First being the tall, second being the mid, mid guys,
[00:42:26] and third being the shortest, minimum six feet tall. And then you rotate basically a firefighter
[00:42:33] schedule. Day on day off, day on day off, day on and four days off all year round. You know,
[00:42:37] your schedule for three years in advance. And you typically guard if you're a guard, you have your
[00:42:42] badge during the summertime, seven walks a day, uh, 30 minute walks with a seven-minute guard change.
[00:42:49] And then about two to four hours of guard rotations at night. At night we don't do it in ceremony,
[00:42:54] uniform. It's typically class. I think bees at the time, more BDUs. And it's a roving patrol.
[00:43:00] Your job is simply to guard the tomb of the unknown soldier from desecration or disrespect.
[00:43:06] And we do that, uh, snow, sleet, he doesn't matter the weather. It's, it's just being done.
[00:43:11] What makes it so challenging to get through the, is it just like microscopic inspections of your
[00:43:19] uniforms and your hair and your freaking nose hairs and your hair here, your hairs and stuff like that?
[00:43:24] Yeah, it's, it's the attention of detail. Line six of the sit-less creed states, my standard
[00:43:28] will remain perfection. And so you build this culture around paying attention to every single
[00:43:34] facet of your military uniform, even your life, even your personal life, of being squared away.
[00:43:39] So I, I did that job and, um, you know, painful to be a new guy doing that job.
[00:43:47] But inspections of your uniform every single day, if not by the hour, they have a culture where you
[00:43:53] earn a walk. You don't just get a walk, you have to earn that walk. So you have to earn it by
[00:43:58] understanding knowledge, yet the verbate a memorized 28 pages of knowledge about the tomb of the
[00:44:03] unknown soldier and the history of our international cemetery. Because you're represented. If you're
[00:44:07] like, you can go down to do a tomb guard walk and front of 3000 people come inside the quarters,
[00:44:12] change and go out three minutes later and communicate the tomb of the unknown to whatever
[00:44:16] it presents to the US military. So it's a, it's a diplomatic position, not just a guard
[00:44:22] wearing a uniform walking back and forth. And so I remember, my first walk was in front of 3000
[00:44:29] people at 12 o'clock noon, CNN, Fox News, cameras weren't in my face. I remember hearing standing
[00:44:35] at poor arms hearing the band at rattle on my weapon. Because you're free to nervous because I was
[00:44:40] nervous. I was standing in for, I mean, I'm looking through AVator glasses that are in my peripheral
[00:44:45] and see people like inches from me, just staring at me and every movement during the
[00:44:51] gorge change has to be perfect. And it's intimidating. But it's a sharp learning curve. And again,
[00:44:58] it's a huge opportunity for me. So the training program or the selection program that you're talking
[00:45:02] about that, that's 10 months long. Are you working during that time? Are you doing any guarding?
[00:45:07] Or no. You're doing all the guard walks where there's nobody going to watch any. Early morning,
[00:45:13] late afternoon and everything at night. I even did what's called a visual because I wanted to get the
[00:45:18] hell away from the guys and I didn't want to get hazed and abused. I did visuals where I would work
[00:45:25] all day. And so I'm, you know, helping prep the guards, you know, forms doing early morning,
[00:45:30] late afternoon walks. And then at night, I'm taking when they cemetery closes at 7pm until 7
[00:45:37] in the morning, standing guard for 12 hours straight, no sleep and guarding just to get away from
[00:45:42] the guys. I was like breaking records of doing that. I was like doing 21 visuals back and back.
[00:45:47] So what was going on with the guys that was so bad? Was it just freaking all in your shit all day long?
[00:45:55] Well, the, so the, the two of the unknown soldier, the actual badge is the least awarded badge
[00:46:01] in the US military besides the astronauts badge because, you know, they're not a diamond dozen,
[00:46:06] military. So the, Tim guard badge is, is very, um, much protected by the Tim guard badge protectors.
[00:46:16] And so they don't want the right guys there or the wrong guys there, they want the right guys,
[00:46:20] and they, they want to make sure you earn it. And I did and back then, you know, hazing.
[00:46:27] We come from the military where hazing was normal. I mean, if you weren't hazed, you, you didn't
[00:46:32] feel like you were loved. Like, I got my EID, my airborne wings, my halo wings, punched into my chest,
[00:46:37] my every rank punched in my collarbone into the bone. And that was just the, the universe we,
[00:46:43] uh, evolved in. That was very much the case. Everything from running through the cemetery trying to find
[00:46:50] you know, inscriptions of, of specific people getting smoked to death, low crawl on across,
[00:46:56] you know, face down in the lawn, getting, you know, getting smoked, um, just routine hazing to make sure,
[00:47:02] hey, this is a work, work testing to evaluate you constantly if you want to be here.
[00:47:07] And it's something I guess is handed down in tradition. What's the award ceremony like when you finally
[00:47:12] get the badge? Not, not that big of a deal. I mean, it's pretty, I, I just saw a picture of it. I have
[00:47:18] a small four by six picture of it. And, um, the third relief or the third, if the true
[00:47:25] regimen commander comes down in 06 and he pins your badge on you in the morning. And typically you
[00:47:30] worked the whole night to take your, you take your badge test, which is a series of specific tests,
[00:47:35] including changing the guard at noon, uh, reading verbatim the 28 pages of knowledge,
[00:47:42] with no errors, being perfect. And a written test all kinds of stuff. And then you get your badge
[00:47:48] pin and, you know, I'm badge 470 out of probably about, uh, almost 600 badges today.
[00:47:56] Then how long did you have that job for? Not long. I did it for about a year and a half
[00:48:00] afterwards. And then so for a year and a half after you went through nine months of this shit,
[00:48:06] yeah, they're like, okay, and this is what you're doing. That's your job. That's your job.
[00:48:10] And how did you like it? So I love the honor of the duty.
[00:48:15] Um, but it's not what I wanted to do in the military. I, you know, one thing we had to do is maintain
[00:48:22] our, um, common core skill sets. So we would come out of the field and those three days down,
[00:48:28] we do med training, we do raids, patrolling, we had to maintain all these things. So you get the
[00:48:34] inventory experience as a part-time position representing the army in a full-time position.
[00:48:40] And it's not what I sign up for. I mean, I was trying to be the best that I could be,
[00:48:44] be all you could be was the model back then. But it's not what I sign up for. And then nine
[00:48:49] eleven changed everything for me in that, in that situation. But where were you stationed when nine
[00:48:55] eleven went down? So I was, so I got out of the army. My first, uh, rotation of four years.
[00:49:02] September 3rd of 01 was my ETS day. Get out of our update. I transitioned into the National Guard
[00:49:09] because I was going to college and was a squad leader in the inventory. What was your plan? Like
[00:49:15] federal Bureau of Investigation HRT? I was like, if there's no war, if I can't get into
[00:49:20] the Italian, I'm going to get my college degree and I'm going to go, I'm going to be a sniper in
[00:49:24] HRT. Um, and that was my, my sights were set on that. And when nine eleven happened, it was a week
[00:49:31] after my ETS. And how old are you now? 21. So you're 21 years old. You get out on September 3rd,
[00:49:39] September 3rd is when I left the army. Okay. So then what do you do? So September 11th comes.
[00:49:48] Now you're freaking, you got to go and go and be a jerk. I'm freaking out. Like, when September 11th
[00:49:53] happened, I was the National Guard and I knew the nasty guard was going to get mobile last.
[00:49:58] And I'm like, I'm not going to work these to no offense to the National Guard. But I'm like, I
[00:50:01] did not go into work these dudes. I immediately, like I took, I was at college in the cafeteria
[00:50:07] in Fateful, near Fort Braggon, Carolina, when this happened. I went home and threw my battle dress
[00:50:13] uniform in the washer and started packing my stuff because I'm like, we're going to war. This is it.
[00:50:19] And immediately, I started making phone calls and they're like, yeah, and do another man.
[00:50:22] Nothing's going on with us right now. Stand by to standby. And I'm like, I have to make moves.
[00:50:26] So I started reaching out to recruiters and very rapidly, got back in the military and went straight
[00:50:33] to selection. We straight to Greenbrake. Was it hard to get to go straight to selection?
[00:50:36] They don't have to been lines out the door at that point. In impossible. I was a, I was a 20 year old
[00:50:42] E5. I mean, I made sergeant at 20 years old Airborne Ranger qualified with a tomb guard badge.
[00:50:47] And when I showed up to recruiter, he looked at me like I was a 16 year old kid who wanted to play
[00:50:53] Army. And I was like, is there's not a thing. And at that time, they hadn't even worked out this whole
[00:50:59] thing where guys who were prior servers come back in and serve. And I'm like, dude, I just got out last
[00:51:04] week. And he's like, sorry man, you gotta start over. And so I'm duck walking barefoot with a whole bunch of
[00:51:10] teenagers, I'm trying to get back in the Army. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, oh, because you had to go back
[00:51:14] through like the recruiting process or very beginning. I mean, I had to go to basic AIT. I had a
[00:51:19] ranger task. I don't have to do any of that stuff. But I had to go back through the Army and
[00:51:23] processing system called 30 F.A.G. From the beginning. I'm duck walking and I actually went to
[00:51:30] the recruiting station, which is called maps is where they had processed you in military uniform.
[00:51:37] And I remember they brought us on the room and everybody stripped down. And guys are looking at me.
[00:51:42] And I'm battle dress uniform stripping down and they like, what is this dude doing? Like,
[00:51:47] isn't he a recruiter? Like, what is happening? And I'm, you know, in my boxer briefs, like everybody
[00:51:52] else duck walking and doing all my little drills to get back in the Army. And then you go straight to
[00:51:57] selection from there. So I went through a program basically in 18 next-rate program and I had a
[00:52:03] try out where special operations preparation course they evaluate like they did in me in
[00:52:09] ranger school and said, hey, is this kid? Is there a probability that he's going to be successful?
[00:52:15] Let's evaluate him in land nav. Let's rock him. Let's p-t-m. And if he's good, we'll give him a slot.
[00:52:21] And so that's prep you just said prep. It's basically the preparation for
[00:52:28] giving guys slots to go to selection because they just want to throw you into selection and have
[00:52:32] you fail. They're setting you up for success. And so I quickly evaluate and they're like,
[00:52:37] hey, the streets ready. Let's send him now. How long is that little evaluation?
[00:52:41] A week. Okay. It's not straightforward. And then you go to selection and selection.
[00:52:49] This initial selection is only a few weeks long, right? When I went out to selection, it was 21,
[00:52:54] 22 days. Yeah, a few weeks. And this is just sort of weeding people out. Yeah. And so you
[00:53:01] make it sure you want to be there. Yeah. I mean, at the time you had to have, and you had to have
[00:53:06] three years in the Army. So you're talking about experience, typically in CO's, not commission officers,
[00:53:10] or junior-listed guys who have experience in the military. And you show up. It's a week of assessment,
[00:53:16] land-of, all these gates to make sure that you're good to go. And then it's team week. It's basically
[00:53:22] a little mini version of how week. And then they do the long-range movement. The long-range movement
[00:53:28] is what gets everybody. It's the land navigation leading into a long-range movement, where they
[00:53:33] assess your ability as an individual to learn a skill set and then in the wood line alone execute
[00:53:40] that skill set to be successful. And that skill set is just land-of. Land-of. We need to be there.
[00:53:45] It's our trick. It's like you guys' water we use land and hate can you hump for a long period
[00:53:50] of time duration, day, night, and keep movement and can you find your points? And just like the
[00:53:56] water, there's a lot of people who can't. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's it to me,
[00:54:00] it's like walking, it's very primal, and a lot of people fail. Yeah, you put that rucksack on. It's
[00:54:07] nittyg. Not quite rocket anymore. Yes. Yeah, it sucks the life out of you for sure. What about the first
[00:54:14] I've always found like the first 17 minutes with a rock animal. I was like, oh yeah, I remember this
[00:54:19] shit. Yeah. Where your body starts to warm up and everything hurts and then you start moving.
[00:54:25] I've always been a good rocker that's always been my strength. And so I'd never had a hard time
[00:54:30] with rocking my feet. We're hard. My back was good. So I didn't have a difficult time with selection.
[00:54:38] But what I saw as a lot of guys weren't prepared for that level and duration of movement,
[00:54:44] and it just broke them down. What are you doing today? In those in that selection where you did
[00:54:48] what a week of rocking. What do you think you're doing today? On average, 16 to 10 kilometers per movement
[00:54:56] per gate. So it depends. You start that whole entire process. Here's the philosophy behind it.
[00:55:05] We're going to start moving you and get you on your feet. And then we'll give you an 18 mile or
[00:55:10] a 20. I think the average is a 20 something plus mile or so. So you're broke when you start.
[00:55:15] And then we'll move you for a long period of time and see it's all a test on preparation,
[00:55:21] by the way. It has nothing to do with the actual assessments. It has everything to measure whether or not
[00:55:27] you prepared in advance. And so what they want is the guys who've prepared in advance. And so at one point
[00:55:34] for the long range movement, which is 30, probably 30 plus miles over a period of 24, 48 hours,
[00:55:41] you're not stopped moving. And if you bed down for a period of time and you sit down each
[00:55:45] hour and rack out and you're not timing yourself appropriately, you just fail. And so you have to
[00:55:51] meet these gates, but it's all it's all on your own. And that jacks up people's minds. When somebody
[00:55:57] comes into a room and writes down exactly where you got to be, what uniform you got to be in,
[00:56:02] and what time you're moving. That independence and setting off with no destination to mind.
[00:56:09] Hey students, I want you to get ready, get your truck on. We're going to move until you
[00:56:13] tell you to stop. That immediately destroys people's mindset off the gate because they're like,
[00:56:18] what do you mean? So they go off the gate, they start spreading and they don't paste themselves
[00:56:22] and they burn themselves out. Or they're so insecure with the circumstance, they impose
[00:56:27] they self-induced all the stress and then they quit. And you're like, you're self-selecting because
[00:56:32] you don't have the exact parameters of what you're going to be doing. That's how war is.
[00:56:37] I mean war is, hey, we might be flexing all night. We might be flexing all year, who knows?
[00:56:43] And that uncertainty and a lot of people breaks people down. And they ring out or whatever,
[00:56:48] what do they do? How do you quit in the selection? So in selection, in periods of time,
[00:56:56] you go back to your barracks. And when I went to selection, it was a piece of plywood,
[00:57:00] no pillow, and you have a bunk that has no pad, nothing, nothing comfortable.
[00:57:06] You go to sleep in the morning and you wake up and half of your entire crew that you
[00:57:11] went to bed with is gone. And you're like, what? And so what people are doing is getting up,
[00:57:16] they're leaving, knocking on the hut and this self-select, like literally saying, I'm done.
[00:57:21] I'm out. You have to voluntarily withdraw and have a conversation in order to check on a selection.
[00:57:29] Yeah, there's something I've always found about being out in the field and Humping,
[00:57:33] specifically, there's two things that come to mind that I've been talking about this lately,
[00:57:39] from just like a leadership perspective and just at my own personal mindset is, I'm very aware
[00:57:45] of time. I'm very aware of time. I can always feel time creeping up on me. I can always feel time,
[00:57:51] like people think, oh, we'll be able to make it. We can we can rest a little longer. And I always
[00:57:57] had that sense that, oh, actually no, it's not, we're not going to make it. In fact, we need to
[00:58:01] leave now if we're going to make it or we're sitting there trying to come up with a plan. I said,
[00:58:05] you know, we need to start moving forward. We can't spend any more time playing. It's time to go.
[00:58:09] I always had that sense of time and I still do. And it's almost a level of paranoia.
[00:58:14] It's something that always is in the front of my heads up display, right? My heads up display is
[00:58:20] always going, hey, wait, check your time, check your time, check your time. But that reminds me
[00:58:24] of being out on patrols, whether total dick drag or patrols, where you're carrying a shit
[00:58:30] ton of weight and you're going really far. And you still got to get to the target on time.
[00:58:36] And the, the, the intrinsic motivation that it takes. Because once you sit down, you take that
[00:58:45] load off and you see the guys all freaking sitting in a crappy perimeter and just they'll sit there,
[00:58:51] they'll sit there indefinitely. Like, like you take a platoon out and, and they've got,
[00:58:57] they're, they're, they're, they've, they've been crushed for a five, six, seven hour patrol.
[00:59:04] They won't get up unless you're like, hey, boys, we gotta go. And if, if you don't do that,
[00:59:11] if somebody doesn't do that, somebody doesn't say, hey, guys, it's time to get up and go,
[00:59:14] there's no, there will be no movement. We'll, we'll happen. They'll, they'll not hit that target.
[00:59:18] They'll, okay, we couldn't make the target. That's what will happen. People accept that. Like,
[00:59:22] yeah, you know what? Yeah. And, and so having that, having that intrinsic will to say,
[00:59:29] look at your watching go, you know what? We, we said 10 minute break. It's been nine minutes.
[00:59:34] Hey, boys, get ready to roll. That's a big deal. Yes. That's a big deal. Yeah. I think part of the,
[00:59:40] you know, like you say discipline is freedom, part of that freedom is control that you have
[00:59:44] self-control. If you understand what you have to do to be discipline, to make gates, to meet
[00:59:50] time hacks, then you have control. You're offensive. You're thinking proactively. And a lot of
[00:59:55] guys don't have the discipline to do that. It's, it's, it's, it's real crazy to see that something
[01:00:00] so simple, a task, so common core can weed the masses and evaluate who's going to succeed
[01:00:09] with the combination of aptitude and discipline versus who's not. Yeah. And like you just said,
[01:00:14] what it really boils down to is when you're tired, when you're sore, and when you don't know
[01:00:20] how much longer this is going to last, do you have what it takes to put your rock back on,
[01:00:25] stand up and start walking again. It's it. Yeah. You wouldn't think it's something that
[01:00:31] that freaking simple, so simple, so primal too. So you get through selection. And then you hit the
[01:00:38] Q Course, hit the Q Course as a 18 Bravo, special forces weapon is guy going to third special
[01:00:46] forces group. Any, any highlights out of the Q Course? No, I think that you know, in the lead in
[01:00:54] talking about JFK and the representation of how we wanted to establish this irregular and unconventional
[01:01:00] means of warfare, I learned that truly from the long duration that I was in the Q Course.
[01:01:07] I went to Robin Sage, merely weeks after Robin Sage, after that experience, I was
[01:01:15] living that training in Afghanistan and remote firebase. So Robin Sage, which is an exercise,
[01:01:22] basically living unconventional warfare and an environment which is rocking him, North Carolina,
[01:01:28] the surrounding area, where all the civilians or subcontractors and bought into this whole thing,
[01:01:33] it's elaborate scenario was so impactful for me. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. So just to give a little
[01:01:39] background on the, so the mission of the Green Braids of Special Forces is to go out and work with
[01:01:46] indigenous forces, get them trained up, get them organized so that they can fight by themselves
[01:01:53] or with very little guidance from the, from the Special Forces, and eventually with no guidance at
[01:01:57] all. That's the, that's the mission. So the, you guys do this big exercise, it's sort of,
[01:02:04] is it like the final exercise that you do? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And it's called Robin Sage and you
[01:02:08] go out and you have, quote, indigenous forces, which is really just the local populist inside this
[01:02:14] town and you have to train them and you have to work with them and you have to get information
[01:02:19] from them and set up targets and the whole nine yards because that's what the primary mission
[01:02:26] of Special Forces is to go do that. Yeah. It's by with through its foreign internal defense.
[01:02:31] It's been newly coined counterterrorism, foreign internal defense based on the words that we're in
[01:02:36] now. But it's the idea of, you have to build relationships and rapport with indigenous people,
[01:02:42] with forces. You just can't go and do deliberate actions only. You know, SR, DA, HR, those things
[01:02:50] are complementary to a strategic plan. The strategy is we have to win the hearts and minds. So
[01:02:55] when I went to Robin Sage, you had West Pointers, like junior West Pointers. We had
[01:03:00] role players from the military that are interweaved in this scenario where you can't just go into
[01:03:06] this circumstance and treat them with a military mind. You have to break bread with them. You
[01:03:12] have the drink tea with them. You have to learn about their family and build this relationship
[01:03:16] because you have to trust these guys on target. And so that's what I really took away from Robin
[01:03:22] Sage was this opportunity to learn and grow and culture and then build that relationship, which
[01:03:29] meant we're building a bond where we could fight side by side and the width portion of it
[01:03:35] and find it fixed and finish these bad guys together in powering the host nation that we're
[01:03:41] doing warfare with. That's super important because the translation of going into war
[01:03:48] was exactly that with the circumstance with Afghanistan at the time. And you know, like I
[01:03:53] wanted this scenario as I built conduit and a chicken coop and a chicken house for six hours with
[01:03:59] this guy and I'm like, I'm like, look at the other dude, I'm with him. Dude, what's going on?
[01:04:03] Like, what are we doing right now? Are we just, are we actually just doing a tasking and just
[01:04:08] hoping this dude up because it's we got to pass it to this and then at the end of that six hours
[01:04:12] we heard a noise and I'm like, it's all coming together. We put our info, we ran into the woods,
[01:04:17] put our in force together out of her backpack and ambush these two dudes who were interrogating
[01:04:21] and bullying this farmer and I'm like, this is so awesome. I mean, it's still long, it's a long
[01:04:27] burn but it was so awesome as an experience. And then you, so you get done with anything out
[01:04:32] in the Q-course stands out. Not survival school. I mean, survival school got my ass handed to me.
[01:04:37] I mean, it's the first time that I, I mean, how long is the survival school? It's pretty long.
[01:04:44] I mean, it's probably a few weeks when I went through it was like a escape, like a survival
[01:04:48] block. Yeah, it's a, a CRC, the high-ressee, a sea version, what you guys have gone through. And then,
[01:04:55] you know, you escape, you evade and then you go into the RTO and just get your ass handed to you.
[01:05:00] And, and again, you learn very rapidly that we're not all created equal in our capacity to deal with stress.
[01:05:09] And I, I don't find with it. I mean, I grew up fighting, I grew up in martial arts. I grew up doing
[01:05:15] all these things, which set me up for success there to go, hey, man, this is an exercise.
[01:05:20] Learn from this experience. Wait, what martial arts did you grow up in? Ninjitsu
[01:05:24] before straight up Ninjitsu, who wants something? Dude, I, my first instructors were all green
[01:05:30] brazen for Brad North Carolina, who opened a Ninjitsu school active and former SF guys.
[01:05:36] And it was gangster. We were doing stuff like my mom once.
[01:05:40] I, I, I did do have them shoes with the toe cut out, yeah. Look at you, you're like how
[01:05:45] you're like sure kidding. So how do all the free thoughts? The toners, yeah, you were just
[01:05:49] getting it. It was crazy. I was wondering who is buying all that stuff out of the back of freaking
[01:05:52] know, black belt magazine. I had a lot, it was, it was, I had all the red knives all that it was
[01:05:58] crazy. It, it was, it was a cool experience because my guys that were the instructors were all green
[01:06:05] and burrace. And so they like you do like a lot of guys with our experiences do,
[01:06:11] try to impart those experiences and impact on young people. And so they were doing the same with me.
[01:06:16] So I felt like I was mentored by these green burrace. Once I wanted to do a class
[01:06:21] and my mom dropped me off and for my mom to be paying for this courses a big deal.
[01:06:26] She dropped me off and she saw the instructor put me in front of a mirror.
[01:06:30] She came back an hour and ten minutes later and I was still standing in front of the mirror.
[01:06:36] And she was pissed off because she's like, I'm paying for my son. Why are you doing? Why are you only
[01:06:41] having a stand there? It's an assessment. And I stared at myself for an hour and meditation.
[01:06:46] I'm like, what the hell? I learned a lot about myself in that hour. It's crazy.
[01:06:52] Alright so back to back to, did you stay away before we go there? Did you guys fight each other in
[01:06:58] Ninja 2 school? A lot. It was aggressive. A lot of dudes got hurt. I think it was a lot.
[01:07:05] Before, what year was this?
[01:07:07] 93, 94.
[01:07:09] I don't see you have a lot of stuff.
[01:07:11] Yeah, that's coming out. Yeah. People were, this is during the revolution. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It was a lot of,
[01:07:16] I mean there were, I mean Ninja 2 has, and this Japanese form has a lot of traditional
[01:07:21] uh, jujitsu type moves on the ground, but it's not ground game. So you are move, yes. It's a singular
[01:07:29] move. It's a singular. That's the problem. That is the problem. That's a inherent problem with that.
[01:07:34] And so I, I learned a lot about discipline from that experience, but it made me harder.
[01:07:39] So when I went to survival school, I was just prepped, man. I was good. I, and it wasn't a
[01:07:44] difficult thing, but I saw dudes fall apart. And when I went to survival school, it was the last
[01:07:49] thing that you did in the Q course. If you failed, you failed everything. You just, you just spent
[01:07:56] two years of your life training to be a greenbrae, and they let dudes go, how many people fail?
[01:08:00] Half. We'd have a couple per class. I mean, it was common. We have a couple per class. That would
[01:08:05] self select, and they were like, I'm done. You're like, you just a teacher. We're just making them
[01:08:09] quit. The stress, man. Well, it's stressful. Well, I mean, getting like, even just a hood,
[01:08:14] like people aren't used to taking, if you, if you, if you don't grow up in those martial arts,
[01:08:18] if you don't grow up in impact sports, and that used to make in contact. When that hood comes
[01:08:23] off your head, and you get slapped by dudes, hands who are like pickle fingers, and he slap
[01:08:29] your face, and you can't do anything, that starts breaking you down. And by, you know, day two of
[01:08:36] that experience, you know, laying naked in your cell, flux cuff, and a box, you, you, you, a lot
[01:08:41] of guys sell select. I thought it was, I was into claustrophobia. I like being a small place. I,
[01:08:49] I hid, I slept, and I was like, this is awesome. Just keep me in this box.
[01:08:53] Man, I got slapped so hard when I got captured at Sierra School. The, it surprised me.
[01:08:58] Yeah. Like, it was, I mean, this guy freaking out and nowhere. The hood comes off. I'm standing
[01:09:05] up against the wall. It's out in the middle of the woods, and they have like a wall. And I
[01:09:08] think it's almost like a Hollywood wall where it, when you get pushed into it, it kind of
[01:09:12] gives a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So he pushed me into it once, and like whatever, I must
[01:09:17] add some kind of punk ass freaking smirk on my face like whatever. And this dude did not like it at
[01:09:22] all. E-core, cracked me. I mean, I'm talking as hard as a human being, and I mean, I've been punching
[01:09:29] the face. It was like that, but he hasn't happened to be open. And I, I, I just got the little,
[01:09:34] got the little flash, and I was like, oh, Dave. This is real. I was like, yeah. And believe me,
[01:09:39] that was that was number one because he followed that one up. Yeah. But I, like you, I can't
[01:09:47] imagine that that would have made me quit. But I guess there's someone's not used to, you know,
[01:09:52] maybe scrapping or whatnot. That's it. Yeah. A lot of people quit. Not really for them. Yeah. I had
[01:09:57] what, the interesting thing in this psychology was, you're playing, you have to be resistant. Right?
[01:10:03] The whole game is your resistant. I remember we were building in the sand, a sickle that represented
[01:10:10] the communist, you know, scenario. And we were building the sickle and have of us were sabotaging
[01:10:18] the sickle. So guys would make it. And I remember I had a guy who I highly respected he was
[01:10:22] but tuned started the infantry, had gone through training with me. I was scooting all the stuff out
[01:10:27] after they were building it, knocking it over. And he turned around and he walked to me because
[01:10:32] why are you doing? I'm like, what do you mean what are you doing? Dude, I like worked an hour on that.
[01:10:38] I'm like, wait a minute, you realize that we're supposed to be subverting this whole circumstance.
[01:10:44] Like you're not supposed to actually be making this. And he's like, oh, and he was in the scenario,
[01:10:50] man, freaking bridge on the river. Quiet. Oh, dude, it was insane. Right. Some of these guys were like,
[01:10:54] the headlights. I mean, they had the deer and the headlights look and they thought for real,
[01:11:00] they were in the back country of Vietnam. I mean, it was it was crazy. It was crazy to see.
[01:11:05] It was cool. Cool experience. Yeah, get, get, get, go ahead. What kind of claustrophobia stuff did
[01:11:12] they? A lot of it was, this this guy right here is kind of claustrophobic. Yeah, we've been working with them.
[01:11:18] Yeah, yeah, exposure is the way to deal with that. But it's they had, I mean, it was it was very
[01:11:24] tight, secluded spaces where you couldn't sit down on your butt and you couldn't stand up all the
[01:11:30] way. So you're in a uncomfortable stress position and then they would close the box on you and turn
[01:11:35] up lights and then they play the music like crying babies, all kinds of different stuff. And
[01:11:41] a lot of people, they would transfer you in a different box is based on your fear. So if they saw
[01:11:47] the fear coming out of you, they were exploiting that fear. They're like, oh, this dude in a big
[01:11:50] box is getting scary. Let's put him in a small box. And so it varied from small boxes to big boxes.
[01:11:58] But that jacked up a lot of people. I mean, it was it was significant. And then how long
[01:12:03] do you have to stand there? So a long time. You lose track of time because you're sleep deprived.
[01:12:09] Here's one story. I, I thinking I was a smart guy. I, I was like similar to the, I have to piss
[01:12:17] right now, but I had a piss really bad. And so I'm like, if I piss in this box, they're going to hook
[01:12:23] me up. I can't piss in this box. So this is my, I'm thinking logically, I think. And I'm like,
[01:12:29] this is completely logical. We, so hook me up is a bad thing. Hook like, like, pull me out of the
[01:12:34] thing and slap you. And slap my face off my face. And I'm like, look, I'll piss in my boot.
[01:12:41] And then I'll take it outside and we're in the gravel. I'll dump the piss off.
[01:12:45] Forgetting about this whole thing called displacement, right? I pee in my boot. I take off my
[01:12:50] boot. You don't have socks. Your naked get these bare pajamas on. I fill my boot with piss.
[01:12:57] And then I'm like, okay, I got it in here. I feel good. It's not all of a thing. And then I put my
[01:13:02] foot back in the boot. Damn. And then it goes everywhere. And I'm like, and then immediately occurs to me,
[01:13:07] like, that was a horrible idea. It's, I'm standing in piss. And then my foot, my naked foot is covered in piss.
[01:13:14] And I'm like, dude, that did not work out. I had a plan. That was not how I thought I was going to
[01:13:19] execute. It was a horrible man. It's funny because as you've thinking about that, I was
[01:13:24] you were talking about that. And then when you asked that question echo, you know, there's some,
[01:13:28] look, I don't know if this is some, you know, just straight up, Sam Harris meditation type
[01:13:34] scenario. But you get your brain where you just aren't there anymore. You're just like,
[01:13:40] cool, you're putting the box cool. Then you're sitting there and you're thinking about
[01:13:43] freaking whatever Kentucky fried chicken and lemonade. And you're just in a totally different world.
[01:13:50] And you don't know if it's been an hour or five hours. And you're getting slapped. It's like,
[01:13:56] cool, whatever. Like, whatever they're going to do to you. You just sort of, and it's the same thing
[01:14:01] when we were talking about, homo and rock, it's like, okay, look, there's just, I'm not, the pain is there,
[01:14:06] but it's like somewhere else. It's like, it's almost like you're watching it happen and you kind of
[01:14:09] can be like, yeah, whatever. Hey, keep going. Yeah, completely, your, your, your sedated man.
[01:14:15] You're just going with the flow. It's, it's similarly to, I think about when you accept at some
[01:14:20] point when you're in water that you're just going to pass out and you accept that. You're like,
[01:14:25] I'm okay with that. That bridge in that gap and just accepting it is the, the first part
[01:14:31] and being successful in that environment. And then you, like, you create your new happy place
[01:14:36] where you're like, man, it's long as I'm in my head and I have this space that I'm comfortable with.
[01:14:41] I'm good. You could do whatever you want. You're nothing you do to do. Yeah, if you are present
[01:14:46] in the shit that you're going through, yeah, that's got a suck. I can't even, I can barely even
[01:14:51] relate to it because I, I think, eventually you just get good at being like, okay, I call whatever,
[01:14:56] that's what we're doing, cool, whatever. I can't, it's got a, that's what, that's, you know,
[01:15:00] that when I start thinking about what makes someone quit, it's because they're present in that
[01:15:04] shit that's going down. They're actually in it. Yeah. And now they in it, they're looking at the
[01:15:09] future going. It's just more shit in the future. So, oh, this is horrible and forget it. I'm going
[01:15:14] to ring out. Yeah. It's that fair response. It's the comped inflation of impending doom. You're
[01:15:19] just thinking about the next thing that's coming and then your whole life is all these little
[01:15:24] small progressives of like, doomsday, doomsday. It's like, dude, I'm, I'm on the beach,
[01:15:30] drinking a painting colata, eating a piece of chicken right now. I'm, I'm, I'm living my best life in my head.
[01:15:36] And I'm good. You must have learned some of that. The tomb situation because that stuff
[01:15:41] doesn't sound fun to me. I would rather go through serious school 20 times right now than, yes,
[01:15:46] you uniform inspections. I would rather do that as well. I would take, that the tomb taught me
[01:15:51] about self awareness and being present within my own mind and developing this relationship with
[01:16:00] the conscious voice that's in my head, but also like this passive observer, this person who's
[01:16:06] kind of observing the narration of the voice in my head and sitting back and like measuring all
[01:16:12] these inputs. Because when you're standing still for 21 seconds at a time before you take 21 steps,
[01:16:19] repeating it times an hour for a long walk during the winter hours, times four to six walks a
[01:16:26] day. You have to get real good at being comfortable with yourself. Is there a face improvement in
[01:16:31] there? There is. So it's a face washing in DC 21 seconds, face down the mat 21 seconds, walk 21
[01:16:38] steps and repeat for the entire duration. And it's one hour. One hour and seven minutes with the walk
[01:16:45] in the garage change. How often would you be in total autopilot where you'd get done and be like,
[01:16:50] well, that was constantly. You know, that's referred to as the flow state. You're completely
[01:17:00] in a flow state. Because when I like about, you were talking about time. Time has always been
[01:17:06] important metric. In fact, we should probably get a more closely because that relationship with
[01:17:12] time, I think sets and establishes these gates and disciplines for your whole life,
[01:17:17] for the structure of your life, right? When I was a team guard, one thing that you had to
[01:17:22] train to do is count 21 seconds exactly and then turn into face for 21 seconds and get this
[01:17:28] rhythm and cadence down. But when you got into that flow state, it was unconscious. So now I'm just
[01:17:35] on autopilot and I'm in a meditative state. There's times that I came off the mat after an hour walk
[01:17:42] and feeling like the best I've ever felt, like super calm, super relaxed, super focused and like I
[01:17:49] was doing meditation in my own headspace. That translated throughout all of the uncomfortable,
[01:17:55] even experiences and gun fights and everything else I did in my life, created a structure in my
[01:18:01] head for being comfortable in my own head in physical stress in my environment.
[01:18:09] Sometimes when I do due to jutsu, I don't really know what happened for the last hour.
[01:18:13] Yeah, like I'm just like, what, how did you get that? I'm like, I don't remember getting anything.
[01:18:18] Yeah, and I remember early on in my in my seal career, like entering a room and shooting
[01:18:24] some targets and then and then all of a sudden be like, wait a second, my weapon, my weapon,
[01:18:27] I don't take it, I don't want to say it and not want to draw any attention to myself because I don't
[01:18:31] want to see that I don't want my weapon, weapon is unsafe. Yeah, I did it without and then
[01:18:34] you know, did it absolutely without thinking about it. That was pretty early, you know, and eventually
[01:18:38] you're just like doing this like a freaking robot, that's just execute. Yeah, that high level,
[01:18:43] I mean it's theta and alpha and these these wavelengths of like this neurological consciousness
[01:18:50] when you're in that alpha state and you're taking that that information similar to like,
[01:18:54] when you're in a shower or on a drive and all these thoughts come to you, this creativity
[01:18:58] comes to you. Those things happen in that flow state because you're streaming information and
[01:19:04] that's when you're most I think when you're at your best, right? It's when you're falling
[01:19:09] in CQB and everything comes together and you're like, what just happened? Like we were just
[01:19:14] objective secure in 17 seconds. How did that happen? I barely remember anything but I was so
[01:19:19] conscious because you run that alpha state of flow. It's an amazing state to be and
[01:19:24] and I think very rare for people to find these days with the distractions they have.
[01:19:31] You wrap up the QCourse. The last thing you do is rob and say to work and with, you know,
[01:19:35] role playing in-ditch and then you said you're almost immediately in Afghanistan.
[01:19:41] Right out the gate deployed with thirds, special forces could put a mountain team and then
[01:19:47] do nine months in Afghanistan or a mot fire base just right off the gate, right off the gate,
[01:19:52] during operation redwing. My company was involved in redwings.
[01:19:57] When I got to a team, it was the traditional green parade mission. We're going to put you in a
[01:20:02] mot fire base on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan as an 18-brobbo at 150 Afghan soldiers that
[01:20:09] weren't even soldiers. This is before Afghan National Army was even stood up and solidified,
[01:20:15] especially in our region of a nervous-stand province. And we trained assisted in advise these guys
[01:20:23] made them Afghan special forces guys and started conducting operations in a nervous-stand.
[01:20:29] What kind of operations were you conducting? Movement to contact. We did SR,
[01:20:34] Special Reconnaissance. We did DA a lot of training and a lot of getting attacked. I mean,
[01:20:44] we got attacked every other day in the remote location that we're in. We're the furthest
[01:20:51] northern fire base beyond J-bad, beyond Assadabad, in a fire base called Narei,
[01:20:57] right on the border, surrounded by the Hindu Kush. I mean, we were at the bottom of that bowl.
[01:21:04] So rockets and directed tax almost every other day. And so we did a lot of
[01:21:10] reactive contact, immediate action drills. And a lot of patrols. I mean, we drove up and down
[01:21:16] one MSR. I went down went to Paira-Calt and eventually ended up in Shetraw, Pakistan,
[01:21:22] and conducted a whole bunch of air ops and ground ops in that area.
[01:21:29] Was this like a traditional ODI team of 10 or 12 guys? 12 guys with a small contingent of
[01:21:37] civil affairs for a period of time, one combat controller, and a fire base, two hours from air and
[01:21:44] J-bad. So as remote as you can get, I mean, we were self-sustained. I learned a lot, even fast
[01:21:51] fording it with how I teach survival and sustaining oneself. And what we call just homestead as we teach it
[01:21:59] about how you have to take care of yourself because you don't have the opportunity.
[01:22:03] And those remote circumstances did a pen on any kind of assets. I mean, a snowstorm in that area
[01:22:08] would shut us down for a week at a time where we get no air support. No air support, no cast,
[01:22:14] no resupply, no meta-vac platforms. So we were solely dependent on the men and their skill sets
[01:22:22] that they have based on their experiences. That's freaking sketchy. It was the Wild West.
[01:22:30] The greatest time I had in SF to be honest. We didn't have a flagpole. We had
[01:22:35] Cyple-5 W's for a con-up submissions. It was a good time. And did you realize that while you were doing it?
[01:22:44] I did. I had the introspect. I mean, when I remember when I showed up and we landed at $10,000
[01:22:50] plus feet of elevation. And I was pissed in mellow yellow. I mean, I was like, do this is insane.
[01:22:56] And I remember standing in the middle of my fire base. We were long, comb-n-r river.
[01:23:00] Very small base. I mean, I could throw a football and hit every gate. I've ever
[01:23:06] been looking around going, well, this is my home for almost a year. Get comfortable with this,
[01:23:10] because this is how it's going to be. And immediately, transforming and using those cultural
[01:23:16] tactics and building relationships, but getting comfortable with time. Because I didn't know
[01:23:22] when we were going to get out. I didn't know if we were going to survive. We've lost a lot of
[01:23:26] guys. That rotation, operation, redwing, and a happen. So there's a whole bunch of circumstances
[01:23:31] that happen during that trip where I'm like, do this might be it? I mean, this is pretty hot,
[01:23:35] circumstance. Are you going to get out of this? Stop thinking about that. It's like the character
[01:23:40] in Banner Brothers, the officer who said, you know, who's basically walking dead, just accept
[01:23:45] the fact that you're going to be killed. I had those kind of moments going. This is it, man. We're
[01:23:50] focused on the mission. And it changed a lot of how I, what I assumed at war in practice and how
[01:23:57] it executed in real life. A lot of it was steering concepts and didn't necessarily translate.
[01:24:03] What was the delta between the two? The biggest thing was my relationship in the ODA was teaching
[01:24:11] tactics and creating a base defense plan. And so the doctrine told me to do specific things that
[01:24:17] didn't work in our environment. So you had a base defense plan for example, where I would exercise
[01:24:22] my guys and say, hey, I want you to hit the walls, hit the roof, be prepared for that directed tack.
[01:24:27] Well, that's the dumbest tactic when you're receiving one of seven millimeter rockets that
[01:24:31] have a kill radius of a hundred yards. And so you put dudes on the roof, which I did myself on the
[01:24:36] first directed tack, got on the roof with a 240 machine gun. And I'm like, do what am I? And I'm
[01:24:42] getting, and we's a 107 screamed over me, my 18 Charlie, my engineer, and impact it a fuel
[01:24:48] blivit behind us and exploded. And I'm like, what am I doing? And also in practice, you could
[01:24:56] immediate action to death, what it's like to react to contact with small arms. But how do you react
[01:25:02] to contact when it's a 107 millimeter rocket? When it's an 81 millimeter motor, all of the things
[01:25:08] that you prepare for change rapidly, when that kind of ordinance and munitions and firepower
[01:25:15] come to bear completely changes everything. So I'm like, oh, this isn't like run it through
[01:25:20] wood line and Fort Bragg North Carolina. This is a little bit different. And so that change my
[01:25:25] perspective on a doctrinal conventional answer and solution versus being creative and coming
[01:25:31] up with new ways and tactics as you evolve at the speed of war. Did you guys have any counter
[01:25:39] battery or anything like that? None. I had, did you have mortars? I had 120 millimeter mortars.
[01:25:45] I mean, nightly that I would go out and we'd be dropping on point of origin sites on
[01:25:49] poo sites. But that's all we had. The biggest weapon systems we had were munitions and
[01:25:56] cashiers that we found and cashers that we found where we took them and turned them around on
[01:26:02] bad guys. We put a Mark 21, 107 millimeter pod. We get one rocket from the bad guy. The
[01:26:07] sit rep would read, you know, ODA366 response with 57, 107 millimeter rockets. 106 millimeter
[01:26:14] recorulus rifles. We had mounted the ATVs. We had RPGs that we carried with us in backpacks
[01:26:20] and we were using Chinese made 120s to respond and react to contact. So it was truly a, I think,
[01:26:29] significant green beret fire base mission. You ever seen the movie heat before? Yeah,
[01:26:38] yeah. This makes me think about this is the second time I thought about it in recent times, but
[01:26:43] you know, like the cop is telling, the cop is saying, hey, you can make mistakes. Or no,
[01:26:53] I can make mistakes. Doesn't matter if I catch you or not. Like I'm going to go home at night.
[01:26:56] Yeah. You make one mistake and it's game over. Yeah. And that's what I think of, you know,
[01:27:01] the enemy in that situation, they don't have to take very big risks at all. They can
[01:27:06] lob shit at you from wherever and they just have to get lucky one time. That's it to get a guy.
[01:27:11] Yeah. And you've got to be vigilant all the time and you've got to keep your guard up all the time.
[01:27:18] And even if you keep your guard up all the time, you're still just exposed just by the nature
[01:27:21] of the fact that you're in a valley surrounded by indirect fire or direct fire in terms of rockets.
[01:27:25] Yeah. Yeah. Our strategy in that fire base was a test bed for creativity.
[01:27:34] Um, we built a mosque like I physically built a mosque with my hands. My ODA brick by brick helped
[01:27:41] build a mosque. Why? Because we wanted to build rapport with having a place of
[01:27:49] worship inside of our fire base for Afghans, but it also deterred indirect fire. Because no
[01:27:54] terrorists weren't be responsible for dropping a mosque in the middle of an American fire base.
[01:27:58] Like we had to think outside the box. And we truly were set up almost for failure in that circumstance.
[01:28:06] But every fire base had a hold its territory. Before VSO, we're village stabilization operations
[01:28:14] where you're setting up in the actual village, the idea of fire bases derived from obviously
[01:28:19] from Vietnam era, from John Shreck and Mire air of, hey, let's go out, set out these bases
[01:28:24] and establish a presence. And so we were present and the bad guys knew about it. And it was a
[01:28:30] sharp learning curve steep learning curve, instead of least. Where you get the food from?
[01:28:35] Typically, initially we were flying in and until we started getting creative, we built a
[01:28:42] breadhouse where we were making foot bread, Afghan foot bread in the middle of our fire base.
[01:28:47] Then we started procuring goats and sheep and then slaughtering them and then eating them and
[01:28:52] then rice and we were getting supplies from Pakistan because it was around across the border
[01:28:58] and bringing it in to make actually good mills versus the Murmai child that we're getting. That was
[01:29:04] garbage too. It was disgusting. Did you, did you take any casualties from all those attacks?
[01:29:11] Yeah, I mean we had, we had wounded in actual, I killed an action or a company. We, during the mid range,
[01:29:18] we just had the anniversary of Operation Red Wings, which was the 28th of June.
[01:29:27] We got hit up for that mission task with that. Can't advance, which was in Bagram,
[01:29:33] kind of assembled the quick reaction force that eventually went out and lost one of the birds
[01:29:38] on the MH-47 that were shot down. So we did QRF for that. Did some big operations and
[01:29:46] what coat you've all in your barricade and took casualties. We lost the MH-47 during that trip.
[01:29:53] Pretty expensive bird. It was overall a good trip. Our fire bases were successful and
[01:29:59] disrupting the enemy, but we just started over, man. The detriment to warfare is this vicious cycle.
[01:30:08] And when you take a playbook and you plan the playbook, but you don't put in the same
[01:30:13] continuity pieces to establish a long-term relationship, you just start the vicious cycle over again.
[01:30:19] Every detachment commander, every team sergeant, once their mark in history on that battleground,
[01:30:28] and it doesn't do well long-term in warfare, which is obviously where the point we're at today.
[01:30:34] I mean pulling on an abafghanistan. Would you do during redway? Were you on the recovery
[01:30:40] of the war? So two of my companies in a side of ad in J. Bad, south of us got tasked to actually do
[01:30:48] the rescue of Marcus Attro. So, good buddy of my Kent was the ground force commander for that.
[01:30:54] Two ODAs and the arrangers went in with some intermittent special operations guys.
[01:31:00] We got told because of our proximity to the actual site crash site to hold fast, they sent
[01:31:06] schnooks to us to be the QRF for the other group and then the rest of our company, all the other
[01:31:11] ODAs did the battery recovery with batayan. So there was a the whole company was involved and
[01:31:17] some way, but I suddenly airfilled through the entire operation, not doing much.
[01:31:27] So your leadership lessons on that deployment were, you know, you got to think, you got, you
[01:31:34] can't follow the doctrine all the time. Yeah. Look, green braids are known to be unconventional
[01:31:42] in a regular war for experts and thinking outside the box, the idea of, hey, you're not still
[01:31:48] when you're acquiring. These creative tasks to bear that benefit you on the ground is what I
[01:31:56] learned about. I actually learned that, you know, being in a remote firebase and Afghanistan
[01:32:01] with minimal to no resources at all, you had to come up with solutions. So I learned about
[01:32:09] establishing problem sets, coming up with creative solutions and the path to execution for those,
[01:32:15] which is a formula that I used in, you know, a combat rotation slater.
[01:32:22] And you're running a company of 150 Afghans. Yep. Yeah, I ran. So I was the, when I went, I was the
[01:32:31] only bravo, typically you run a junior in a senior. I would have been the junior because I was a young
[01:32:35] staff sergeant. My senior had surgery so he couldn't show up until later on in the deployment.
[01:32:41] My team started came to me like on the first day and he said, hey, there's a formation outside
[01:32:45] with your guys. I'm like my guys. Like, yeah, you got 150 Afghans out there. You're the commander.
[01:32:50] And I'm like, what? I'm like, Roger that. I go outside. I'm like, guys, let's, let's, let's,
[01:32:56] let me give you an in-brief. Let's, we're going to do assessments that give them the plan.
[01:32:59] And I have to do it for these dudes. These dudes are looking at me like a machiled and I was, I mean,
[01:33:04] it was a 25-year-old child. So they challenged me immediately. One of the guys says to me,
[01:33:12] Mike, they want to know if you're a good shooter. And I said, well, what does that assessment look like?
[01:33:19] You know, well, what they like to do, I'm like, okay, so this has been done before. What they like to
[01:33:24] do is take a piece of bubble gum wrapper and they delaminate it and they put a 1-inch square at 25 yards
[01:33:30] on the target and they said, whoever gets closer, whoever's closer wins, but then you earn
[01:33:35] our respect. I'm like, did you guys watch a movie man? Is this like, is this the thing? Because I don't,
[01:33:39] I don't remember seeing this anywhere. And like, it's, it's part of their traditional, like,
[01:33:43] okay, cool. So we get in the prone and I saw the Zords rifle, not it's rifle, AK 47. So,
[01:33:50] but no red dot, our iron sights and I don't even know the point of aim or impact on this gun. It's
[01:33:55] no dope on it. Oh, it's a random AK. So I said, so I say to the guy, I said, this is the same weapon that
[01:34:02] you shoot at the circus at the little red star. Exactly. Notching the star out of the counter fair.
[01:34:09] So he sits down and he's a well-respected nurse standing and these guys look like me. I mean,
[01:34:14] I look like I belong in that tribe and they're all Chinese influence. And so they all
[01:34:20] look up the Asian eyes. And so, rapport initially right off the bat is like accepted,
[01:34:25] but I have to prove myself. So this guy gets down the prone and he takes a shot. And we go up
[01:34:30] and inspect it and he's like an inch off of the pasty. So I'm thinking of my head, he's holding it
[01:34:36] and he's shooting it, but he's a little bit high. And that 25 yards flashed bang. That much
[01:34:41] change in muzzle velocity at 25 yards. So I'm thinking, let me just aim at the base of this thing.
[01:34:46] So I'll put my I'll probably pop this one inch pasty and I break a shot and it goes through
[01:34:52] the piece and try to contain my excitement because I'm like, yeah, I don't want to be like, yeah,
[01:34:59] what's up? But I knew it was part of this whole story in this journey. So I go up there and they
[01:35:05] they bust out and they're like, yeah, oh my god, they're so excited. And from that moment,
[01:35:10] it's like, I was their commander. And we have this relationship where I train them every single day.
[01:35:15] I broke bread with them every single day. And it was a beautiful thing, man. I felt like I had a company
[01:35:20] worth of valuable human beings who had laid down their life. And when I found out later, and this
[01:35:26] is an in hindsight looking back and talking to different guys, when I left, I had those afghan commandos.
[01:35:32] I handed them over to another ODA. When third group came back in, they rotated in and there was a
[01:35:37] guy by the name of Rob, Rob, Rob something. I can't remember his name. It's a horrible
[01:35:46] camera. And he rotated in with him as the 18 Bravo. So when he gets in that position,
[01:35:53] he starts grooming these guys and they're telling stories of that circumstance. So as this
[01:36:00] evolves later in the war, I find out that one of the guys that we had from third group that was
[01:36:06] killed postusiously in a gunfight, running uphill with a machine gun. Gets killed,
[01:36:13] earns the metal of honor and dies fighting side by side with these same guys. In fact, some of
[01:36:20] those guys that I trained were killed in that action, where a third group of guys won the metal
[01:36:27] earned the metal of honor, sacrifices life. But those afghans died on that same hilltop,
[01:36:32] running uphill against an enemy, machine gun, nested position. And I'm like, dude, I mean,
[01:36:39] you look for all the light and darkness and I'm like, man, that means the world to me,
[01:36:45] that maybe I had an impact on these men that stood side by side and fought uphill. And that
[01:36:52] truly meant a lot. And so those guys, you earn their respect, you operate with them. But when I
[01:36:58] left him, it was the, I felt like they into the world. And you know, you talk to guys like John
[01:37:02] Strike or Meyer, that's a common thing. It's something that we're not very good at. In fact, we're
[01:37:07] pretty horrible at. And now, of course, you must be kind of sick. You're stomach seeing that we're
[01:37:12] pulling out. And those guys will either be rounded up and killed or they'll join the Taliban
[01:37:20] because that's what they got to do to stay alive. More likely, all the intel has been leaked already.
[01:37:26] They already know who they are and they have their target deck built. And right now, I mean, if you
[01:37:31] look at all the different places, especially the remote places of Afghanistan, which is very
[01:37:35] tribal, very geographically regionally, there are already taken over. I mean, they'll have the
[01:37:41] estimates from the experts is in the next six months, a boggroom and can are, we'll fall to the
[01:37:47] Taliban. If not sooner, because there was a formal agreement, a diplomatic agreement, that means
[01:37:53] they're supposed to take over in some capacity anyway. But what that means to the rest of the
[01:37:58] men that we fought off all over the country, all these guys will be rolled up and more likely
[01:38:02] executed, which is a damn shame. Yes, here in some reports that the Taliban would go to, you know,
[01:38:11] some of these villages or whatever, and send a note into the police chief and say, hey, man,
[01:38:17] yeah, it's over. You can get on board or we're going to kill you and kill your family. And
[01:38:21] the police chief or whatever local Afghan leaders, like Roger that, you know, I'm on board.
[01:38:27] And that's that. Yeah, those guys, just like an Iraq, just like I've experienced in Yemen,
[01:38:34] in Pakistan, in Africa, it's a vicious cycle that doesn't stop and we don't learn those lessons.
[01:38:44] But I don't know the answer. I don't know the solution. I mean, make it in citizens and bring
[01:38:48] them out, taking the fighting force that's the most capable human beings there and doing that.
[01:38:52] I don't know what the answer is, but it's a horrible thing that I know is transpire,
[01:38:56] likely right now. So you get done with that deployment?
[01:39:03] Yeah, I've get done with Afghanistan immediately come back and go to a Sephardic, which is our
[01:39:09] version of advanced CQB, HOSIS rescue, to be alive with a DA company, you know, the, when I work with the
[01:39:16] CQB, the CILS and OSIXO7, all the, the latter rotations, it was mostly with a company called
[01:39:23] the Commander in Extremist Force, which has now been renamed the Crisis Response Force, which has
[01:39:28] been reclaimed deep underground unit for tunnels and stuff. So get part of that unit, which our
[01:39:37] focus is DA, SR, HR, and get through Sephardic, no problems, and get immediately reassigned to the
[01:39:46] Commander's in Extremist Force, which is hopping on a plane the next month to go down a range.
[01:39:52] So how long are you home for? Four months, home for four months.
[01:39:57] How long is that deployment to Afghanistan? Nine months total. Yeah. So nine months, get back,
[01:40:02] do Sephardic for two months, and then get about a month and a half before we burn out for Iraq
[01:40:09] for Baghdad. Have you gotten married or anything at this point? Yeah, I actually got about that.
[01:40:14] I actually got married right before this rotation, and in a courthouse, I grabbed my
[01:40:20] past away at that same time period, didn't get a lot of time to have any kind of anything
[01:40:26] with the family, and then we were turning it in burden for Iraq.
[01:40:29] Four months home, and now what's this deployment? So this is now your first deployment to Iraq.
[01:40:36] First of all, I'm going down a range in CT is the, and this is O6. O6.
[01:40:44] Yeah. And so you ended up working in Baghdad. In Baghdad, Baghdad,
[01:40:50] it's our national airport. We were at camp, not camp, and it's area four. So we staged the area
[01:40:57] four, and a couple of mission sets, working with Iraq, and counterterrorism forces, working with
[01:41:03] task force, as a, you don't matter a force, and then working with the ERU, which is the emergency
[01:41:09] response unit, the equivalent of the FBI HRT that prosecutes targets in Iraq.
[01:41:14] Iraq, that's an Iraqi unit. Iraq just for everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:41:18] So the ICTF is an Iraqi unit there in Iraqi unit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:41:24] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Almost acted like the Mike force until, you know, the
[01:41:33] Mike force strike unit until we get there, and we start doing joint operations with napsoff
[01:41:39] and then the SIF. So it's, it's like a couple guys from my SIF company, which was B23, the third
[01:41:45] group SIF, working hand in hand with six or seven guys from a silver tomb. And we would go out
[01:41:52] and at the time, we weren't, they weren't doing operations with Americans because a company,
[01:41:58] a contract with company was training them, but they weren't, advising them, but they weren't doing
[01:42:02] counterterrorism operations. So we actually took over and started doing the first counterterrorism
[01:42:07] operations with them side by side using our assets to bear, but doing the true CT for an internal
[01:42:15] defense mission. So you're rolling out a hidden targets? Hidden targets. Every night.
[01:42:19] It's basically what this is. Yeah. Smashed in targets every night. I mean, our, our PDSS, our pre-department
[01:42:24] deployment site survey, we got it again, fight and kill dudes and our PDSS. So we were like,
[01:42:29] it's going to be a hot year. And that was a year you were there. Yeah. Yeah. I was over and
[01:42:33] a body. You guys were down and back then. You were working alongside some of the guys I was with.
[01:42:37] Well, that I knew over there. Just basically nightly ops. Reverse cycle nightly ops. We had a
[01:42:47] cycle of, you know, red amber green, your train dudes. Even if you're training dudes, you're probably
[01:42:52] gunning on trucks or acting as a machine gunner on half, on helicopter assaults, but every single
[01:43:00] night we were prosecuted targets. Sometimes two, three targets, the night, depending on what was going on.
[01:43:04] So we had a target deck. Everybody else in task force had a target deck. And at the time,
[01:43:09] which was in transition for the big surge, we were prosecuting at the time, she-a-based targets.
[01:43:19] And so, Mooktaal, Saadr, and his network of shitheads, we were going after every night.
[01:43:27] Were you working mostly in the round Baghdad or all over their country?
[01:43:30] Pretty much all over the country. I mean, we have with Navy assets, flying us out the 60s.
[01:43:35] We were using Pavelo or the 53. Or you use some task force 160. So little birds, 60s,
[01:43:43] depending on what was going on. It was all over, all over. And what was your specific job on this
[01:43:49] deployment? So I was an assaulter. I mean, in the SIF, I was an assaulter, I was a breacher.
[01:43:54] I actually was deployed with, at the time, Jeremy Wise. Jeremy Wise was a young
[01:44:00] East Coast-based silt team member who wanted up getting killed with the CIA as a global response
[01:44:06] staff officer. He possibly was awarded the CIA star. And we were both breaches together.
[01:44:15] So every night we did breaches. We did unilateral pieces of our up. So a couple of Americans,
[01:44:22] like me and another SIF guy, and like three or five seals would go out and do our piece. We'd hit
[01:44:27] one building and then the Iraqis we were with with with another building. So get a lateral
[01:44:32] assaulter is basically what we were. It's radically different deployment than what you did in Afghanistan.
[01:44:37] I mean, not even the same freaking ballpark in saying completely different. I try to use some of the,
[01:44:43] you know, the similarities where we were training them in the back end. But these guys,
[01:44:47] if you saw them operating when they're kid, you would think they're Americans. Like competent
[01:44:52] assaulters, snipers, Americans. Yeah, and they had all American gear and weapons because I was telling
[01:44:58] you I went over on PDSS and because we were going to go, I actually, if that would happen,
[01:45:02] I would have been collocated with you and we would have been running the same out. We would already
[01:45:05] know each other. We'd be bros. Yeah, we'd run together. Yeah, we'd have rolled out. But we ended up
[01:45:10] not going to re-end it going to Ramadhi and said, but yeah, the, the, the ICTF and the EREU had, like,
[01:45:17] American issued weapons. They had night vision had everything, everything, everything. Yeah,
[01:45:21] they had everything. And they were well trained, well trained. They had to be the best trained,
[01:45:26] and most reliable Iraqi soldiers by a landslide. Yeah, the combination of the Iraqi counterterrorism
[01:45:32] force, which we pulled out a, I rack and adjordan and isolate and trained. And the EREU that
[01:45:38] turned into the emergency response battalion, were the highest paid trained experienced units that
[01:45:47] eventually took ISIS. These same guys, I lost probably half my fighting force that I worked
[01:45:52] with over the years against the fight against ISIS in 2014 when we pulled our guys out and
[01:45:58] those dudes went to war. I mean, they went to Missouri, they went to Baghdad, they went to Kurdistan,
[01:46:03] they were fighting in their bill. They were probably with close air support, meaning the JTAC
[01:46:10] peace with the sole reasons that ISIS doesn't exist in Iraq today. So it's, it's a, it was a long
[01:46:16] road ahead of them. We were just in the beginning stages of it. What did you prefer for the deployment?
[01:46:22] What did you like doing better? Man, that's a tough question. So different, so different, right?
[01:46:28] But in the things that I enjoyed like overlanding across Afghanistan and the wild west,
[01:46:35] with not a lot of oversight and just wing in it and learning a lot of lessons in that
[01:46:41] versus that deliberate like land on the X, fast-repaunt off of the building and kill bad guys.
[01:46:47] I enjoy them both. I mean, if I could have, if I could overland to an objective and fast-repaunt
[01:46:52] off of it, that whole combination, it'd be perfect. Man, I love both of them.
[01:46:58] And then how long was this deployment to Baghdad six months? Yeah, so we were doing six month rotations.
[01:47:03] Did you, did you guys take any casualties on that deployment? We did. We took every
[01:47:08] deployment that we wanted to take and we wanted to lose an esteemed guy. So we were working with
[01:47:13] joint task force, which included tier one units and the Rangers and us and the Navy. You guys were
[01:47:20] taking casualties. There was EFTs that were affecting guys, gun fights. We took a casualty.
[01:47:26] One of my guys and my troop was killed. That rotation, tongue-no-in was killed. And then
[01:47:32] time apart, purple hard, students get in gun fights. It was an active year.
[01:47:40] Was, was tongue the first guy that you lost that was in your actual element?
[01:47:46] Yeah, and that was on my team and my troop first, first did.
[01:47:52] Didn't know him great. I mean, I knew him. I was a new guy there, but one of the most respected
[01:47:57] members of that unit. I mean, he was the guy on the PDSS with his long gun who wound it up killing
[01:48:02] like three bad dudes on a PDSS. I mean, who goes TTY and kills a few dudes comes back after,
[01:48:09] getting in town like, you got some intel on target. He was that kind of guy.
[01:48:14] Vietnamese descent too. So me and him were the only Asians in that group. He took, he took,
[01:48:21] he took his job serious and when he saw me come into the company, he took me on earth's wing
[01:48:28] and he tried to take care of me. He experienced a soldier, belonged to C11, which is the first group's
[01:48:33] sift and did a whole bunch of operations and the Philippines all over Southeast Asia.
[01:48:38] And just a highly respected dude. I mean, just a great guy. And when, how deep into the
[01:48:43] point was that? Man, right, I'll pick eight. I mean, it was only a couple months in. We still had
[01:48:49] four months of that rotation. And then at the end of our rotation was the surge. So we got super
[01:48:55] hot, super active. Probably some of the closest experiences to death I had in that, and that
[01:49:01] rotation for me personally. From gun fights, from IEDs, now gun fights. I mean, I was on a
[01:49:08] roof top in Saudar City once in a sniper over watch position for a horse's rescue.
[01:49:13] Got pinned down to the roof. I had a big army sniper team that was with me.
[01:49:18] That, that one and a half hour gun fight, small arms, RPGs, water rounds, all in the same
[01:49:27] gun fight, all on our position. Under the frigate, I was like, you know, laying on the roof, trying
[01:49:33] to keep my head flat and staying in the fight. Because we had a retreat option. We couldn't
[01:49:37] went down into the building into the third story that we were on. And I looked over in my buddy Chris,
[01:49:42] because there's only two of us with a big army sniper unit was laying underneath the satellite
[01:49:49] dish. And we're, the three stories high. So we're above most of the city, but there's still
[01:49:55] second and third story buildings inside Saudar City. And he's getting the satellite dish
[01:50:00] disintegrated over his ass a couple feet over his butt. And I'm like, oh, these guys are close.
[01:50:06] They have his dad, they have them us down in. And then I looked up in the sky,
[01:50:10] because I something caught my attention, I looked up and there was RPGs air bursting above us.
[01:50:15] And I'm like, this is not good. So we, we basically started way laying in bad guys that were
[01:50:22] squirting into the objective, like trying to infill on containment. And that were breaking contact
[01:50:27] out of the objective. And all black, body militia dudes, black pajama kind of guys. And a lot of
[01:50:34] it was command and control because we had cast, I had control, I had comms with a closer support F-16
[01:50:42] that was above us. And we were trying to relay and report all the information, but we were having comms
[01:50:48] problems. So what low that fight, you know, in the long story of it, what low that fight was in F-16
[01:50:56] because I marked a V-S-17 panel in the middle of that roof came out of its rotation, its orbit,
[01:51:05] and over 500 feet above our building did a pass and pop flaters. I thought he was going to do a
[01:51:11] gun running kill us all because we lost comms. So I popped that V-S-17 and I looked up and he
[01:51:16] started banging in and I'm like yelled at my combo guy and I'm like, do we have any comms? And he
[01:51:21] came down and ran the perimeter road which I think was, he's called home base, we're at the base
[01:51:28] of a leg of Sauder City from home base to third base. He ran that entire road at 500 feet,
[01:51:34] turned his wings, you can almost see his face and pop flaters and it rolled the gun and
[01:51:39] fight enough for us to get out, break contact into Bradley's and break contact. We killed,
[01:51:45] I mean, total turned that up over 100 dudes and got a shut down for like a month on a side
[01:51:51] of city. I mean, tanks were destroying buildings five feet in front of them because they were,
[01:51:58] I mean, they were just getting smashed with RPGs and everything else. Pretty pretty darn again,
[01:52:02] fight. And that was the end of year to point at a no-6? About mid-rotation, that was about mid-rotation.
[01:52:08] Good times. Then you come back, do another work up? Instant work up, getting ready for a new
[01:52:22] deployment and then we go down range. O7's different beast, the height of Alkaira. On the
[01:52:31] tailland of that rotation the surge begins, the Sunni strategy, they start the Suns of Iraq,
[01:52:36] they start empowering Sunni's. There's a war going on between the Sunni's and she is. And
[01:52:42] typically it's like, you know, the exotic city versus everybody else in the country. And now the
[01:52:48] Sunni's are getting supported by the US. So we're going to war with Iran back, she is. And we get
[01:52:56] into that rotation. And our task force does a couple things. They have a mission set where they go,
[01:53:03] hey, you guys are going to go and do bilateral operations, working with indigenous guys, like
[01:53:07] ICTF, like ERU, like we talked about. But there's another component our mission set where we work
[01:53:13] with J-Sock. I joined Task Force. So we were under joint task force conducting counterterrorism
[01:53:22] operations, hunting HVT's on a deck for J-Sock as part of one of their action arms, that
[01:53:30] whole entire rotation. And it was epic. It was one of my best rotations. If listen, so this is now
[01:53:37] 07, you're back over there. Oh seven Iraq. Yeah. In Baghdad again. Yeah, we're at Fernandez and
[01:53:42] SS Fernandez named after a unit guy was killed. And you're doing and you're doing one hit, you're
[01:53:49] working with the Indage one night. And then two nights later, you get a package from J-Sock and you're
[01:53:55] going out and hit that target. So we divided our troops. Oh, okay. So my troops just doing
[01:53:59] you to a lot of rocks. Who was killing the bad guys? Later on the X every night. Just kidding. Yeah,
[01:54:04] I was crank. Yeah. That was how big is your unit that you're working with? 20. So our
[01:54:11] troop is about 20 plus guys. And at the time, I'm a sniper now. So I moved over to the sniper
[01:54:16] section. So I'm a sniper team supporting to assault teams for hits every single night. So my
[01:54:24] job specifically was containment. So I was setting a establishing containment. A lot of building
[01:54:28] climbing that rotation. A lot of Overwatch killing squirters running out of buildings,
[01:54:35] killing bad guys trying to get to the fight. And it was like the gloves are off. I mean,
[01:54:41] the strategy that we got passed down and rules of engagement were killed them all. And that's
[01:54:47] what that's what we were doing. And so it was an epic rotation. We had a lot of HVT's, a lot of foreign
[01:54:52] fighters, a lot of gun fights, a lot of casualties on our side. And a lot of dead bad guys.
[01:55:03] Were you guys mostly taking vehicles or are you doing helicopters all the time? Most of it was
[01:55:07] half was helicopter assaults with little birds and in the eight sixties. So all black hoax and little birds.
[01:55:13] Every, I think pretty much every night it was that. I don't remember too many ground assaults.
[01:55:17] A couple here and there in the strikers. If we had to go to Soder City, we took
[01:55:21] tanks that would lead the way into the Soder City, suck up all the EFPs. We called them Team Rock.
[01:55:29] They would get blown up for us even to the point. Yeah, even to the point where these guys would
[01:55:34] get blown up, they'd pull over to the side of the road and we just bypassed. They were just the
[01:55:37] bridge point. And they were the hammer we were going through and hitting our surgical targets.
[01:55:44] It was a great rotation man. We lost a guy. One of our team guys, Justin Monchky was killed,
[01:55:51] stepped on a pressure plate ID. We had about, uh, in my company, we had about 15 purple hearts.
[01:55:57] So a lot of dudes injured shot, blown up. Um, and a lot, we killed a lot of bad guys. I mean,
[01:56:03] it was a good trip for a killing bad guys. How are these, um, you're, what, what's your position
[01:56:08] and as far as leadership inside the company here? So I'm, uh, I'm a two IC. So I'm
[01:56:13] right behind my cell leader, um, as a new sniper. Um, so I do it my cell leader at the time Jason,
[01:56:20] uh, tells me to do. And most of my role is because I was pretty lean and a good climber
[01:56:28] me and a couple of the other guys were on the climbing team. And so if we had a containment set,
[01:56:32] we hit a building. We used ladders or even building climb traverse ladders, um, from building
[01:56:38] to building and set and tame it from a high position. We called high team to be able to contain the
[01:56:44] objective from top down while the assaulters hit a deliberate target set. So traditional
[01:56:50] countdown's 5432. Breach goes off at 2 and then we hit the target. And you're doing it in
[01:56:56] an op and night, basically. Sometimes the other, yeah, sometimes a couple more than that. Yeah,
[01:57:01] but we a lot of this, this time period was, um, taking advantage of SSC. There was an emphasis on
[01:57:08] sensitive site exploitation. Doing a lot of posts analysis on the objective, a lot of tactical
[01:57:13] interrogation to lend itself to taking advantage of the opportunity on a target and flexing to other
[01:57:21] targets to take down networks. So super aggressive, the combination of two two, uh, SAS Ranger
[01:57:28] Battalion, uh, Cag, us and, and Def, uh, five action arms under task 416. And this is Stanley
[01:57:35] McCrissel's big project, right, his, his, um, his big, uh, machine of war. What, what, what it was was
[01:57:44] one of the most significant, I think, most significant strategies in the war, especially a
[01:57:49] patrition of taking out bad guys. As you're, be talked about, um, you're, you're losing some guys now.
[01:57:58] How's, how's your, um, how are you guys handling that? So the reason I asked this question is
[01:58:06] because somebody's going to be listening to this in 10 years or 17 years or 23 years and we're
[01:58:11] going to be in a situation where there hasn't been any casualties in a long time and all the
[01:58:15] sudden someone's going out and doing what, doing what soldiers do and they're going to take casualties.
[01:58:21] And I know when I, when I took my first casualties and had lost my first guys, there was no one
[01:58:27] that was telling me like, hey, here's what you got to think about. Not just from a, look, we get the
[01:58:32] protocol of, hey, here's the, here's the book that we're going to follow. Here's the calls we got to make,
[01:58:37] but now you got a bunch of guys that just lost one of their best friends and what are you going to do
[01:58:41] about that? How did you guys go about it? Great question. Um, a lot of responses that are, um,
[01:58:52] doctrinal would have guys stand down have a moments if not days of mourning a process.
[01:59:03] Um, I remember when we lost tongue in O6 are immediate strategy at the tactical level. So
[01:59:12] you talking cell leaders and trip-smart majors said, listen, we're not waiting. We're hitting targets
[01:59:19] tonight and we got aggressive and we went out in in O6 and O7 we had a vindiction, um, vindication board.
[01:59:31] This vindication board was, uh, filled with team guys that we lost and there was dozens of
[01:59:37] on one side and when you killed a bad guy because you took that call sign patch and then, you know,
[01:59:43] if you were as Tony Yoset, who was a third group team sergeant, I was killed, you would just carry TY on your
[01:59:49] left shoulder under your call sign patch and if you killed a bad guy and you were successful on
[01:59:55] your mission, you'd come back and you put it on the vindicated side and we had all the pictures of
[02:00:01] the guys that were killed on that and every night we'd fill that board and cycle them back and forth
[02:00:06] because, um, we understood that getting killed was a part of the job, comparatively and you know this
[02:00:16] you're very skilled in the history of warfare including the Vietnam War where thousands, 60 plus
[02:00:23] thousand Americans were killed, sometimes hundreds in certain battles were killed, entire Mac
[02:00:28] V. Sog teams taken off the planet, they accepted that risk. So when we lost guys in our community,
[02:00:35] there was no morning, there wasn't time to mourn, we get back on helicopters, I remember
[02:00:40] something that really stands out to me from the O7 trip, we lost two to S.A.S. guys, they were killed
[02:00:46] on target in order to have three of them that were killed. The task force commander had us come
[02:00:51] outside and the two to S.A.S. commander briefed five different task units and he spoke to warfare
[02:01:00] and he spoke to the importance of understanding the fight we're in, how this works and getting back
[02:01:07] in the fight. It was of 10 minutes spill and we're all sitting there in kit with guns in our specific
[02:01:13] units and at the end of the speech he gives a hand in arm signal and all the little birds and all
[02:01:19] this 60 spin up and we load five different task forces up in little birds and MH60s and fly away
[02:01:26] and smash bad guys. That whole experience was what the task force was, depending on what unit you
[02:01:33] were, you might have that experience but if you weren't task force that was the experience of
[02:01:39] night. We accept that risk, we lost guys and then we got back in the fight because we had no time
[02:01:43] to mourn. It wasn't a time for mourning. That's um, same strategy I had, you know, got to get your
[02:01:52] ship back on, get your gear back on, and go back out and do what you're supposed to do and do
[02:01:58] what your boys would want you to do exactly. Yeah. Any good leadership lessons or any
[02:02:07] leadership lessons from that deployment that stand out? The biggest one is I'll say his name
[02:02:12] not because he's retired. He was the commander that we worked under as name was Tom D. Tumaso.
[02:02:19] It was aatoon leader blackhawk down as a young ranger at the time was a cag commander and he was
[02:02:26] our commander. When we got to that country we had gotten used to the way that we did business,
[02:02:33] breaching blowing every door, shooting back guys in the face and he briefed us and he said,
[02:02:38] man we're going to start this new tactic this year and it's called callouts and we laughed. We joked.
[02:02:44] It was comical to us. We even wrote drew cartoons about how comical this whole tactic was.
[02:02:53] So let me get this straight. You want us to go to a building, land little birds offset,
[02:02:57] serapticiously approach and then knock essentially knock and call them out.
[02:03:03] Yes, that's what we want you to do. So the whole time we're like this is ridiculous. This is insane.
[02:03:07] Until we hit a foreign safe house that had Libyan foreign fighters and in the war in Iraq,
[02:03:15] positions two and four out of the top four guys killed on the battlefield that were killing Americans.
[02:03:21] Formatable foes were from Libya, two and four. Number one was Saudi Arabia. Number two was Libya.
[02:03:29] Out of these foreign fighters, they were training the Green Mountains of Libya.
[02:03:34] They had gear that was comparable to ours. A solo boots,
[02:03:39] Santo watches, chess rigs, suicide vest, proper guns with red dot optics and all the tactics
[02:03:48] to bear. We hit a foreign safe house offset on infill, which was about a 4k, 2 to 4k offset,
[02:03:57] which is offsetting away from the objective so you don't get compromised.
[02:04:00] We get compromised by a early warning position. Our little bird attack helicopter kills six dudes
[02:04:07] run off the bat on infill. Birds get straight at the bird. I'm in the 60. I'm in feet hanging off
[02:04:12] the 60 takes incoming rounds in between us and the chalk in front of us. We land, we make movement.
[02:04:21] We think there's a couple of foreign fighters. There's 13 and they're also decided bested out.
[02:04:26] Long story short, I have a dog, save my life, a cag dog, but a new move.
[02:04:33] But a suicide bomber 15 meters in front of me.
[02:04:36] Sacrifice his life for mine. We get into the house, we kill everybody.
[02:04:42] We establish SSE after objective secure and realize they have pk, machine guns,
[02:04:49] barricaded and sandbag positions. A threshold deep away from the reach point.
[02:04:55] If we'd have reached that like every target set we'd reach before prior we would all die.
[02:04:59] We would have got the first assault element would have been zipped up. They would have broke contact out of back
[02:05:04] and we'd been fighting for allies. We were fighting for allies in containment. We had offset containment called the mount
[02:05:09] and we were in a hand-to-hand range.
[02:05:13] So you did that up doing containment and doing a callout on them? We did. We did exactly what he trained us to do.
[02:05:19] And even in that, I mean I threw six hand grenades on the other side of a berm
[02:05:25] and direct engagement in contact with enemy. I mean the hand grenades I was throwing with my teammate
[02:05:31] were landing in bad guys laps on the other side of the berm. These dudes were ready to get it on.
[02:05:36] We decimated the target with 105s from a spectrogunship. We recovered Vinnie's body.
[02:05:41] And then we dropped a J-DAM on an ex-film and daylight. We got back Vinnie was covered in American flag.
[02:05:51] The whole task was there to salute us. We got blood on our shoes. Some dudes are injured and we're like
[02:06:01] this makes sense. I realized from that experience,
[02:06:07] don't be in a rush to die. So many guys want to get on the ex and they want to do this thing called
[02:06:14] kicking indoors and shoot back as in the face. But they don't understand the tactics and techniques
[02:06:20] procedures evolve every single day at the speed of war. And it was the realization where I had
[02:06:27] the coolest guy because he's the coolest commander of the coolest unit telling us something that
[02:06:32] it seemed cool and then that realization coming home and going down. Okay, now we got a change tactics.
[02:06:38] We got to think outside the box. We can't get, we can't conform to convention and to routine
[02:06:44] and think it's going to be the right solution every single time because times change. And that was a
[02:06:49] huge impact on my career moving forward. Yeah, I went through a similar transition in O-304 where
[02:06:56] we were breaching every door and we ended up hurting some people, you know, and sometimes not the
[02:07:03] right people. And we started getting some pressure like, hey, you can't just keep doing this.
[02:07:09] And so, well, if you're not going to explosively breach, then that leaves you mechanically
[02:07:13] breaching. If you're mechanically breaching, well, now you're sitting there with the Hoolie,
[02:07:16] swinging at a door and now you're really exposed. So why not just take a step back and say,
[02:07:23] hey, get the turpa on the horn and tell these guys to come out. And now we kind of know what we're
[02:07:28] dealing with. And yeah, as you can imagine, the pushback I got was was, you know, pretty strong
[02:07:36] from the guys because they're thinking we're giving up this tackle advantage. We should
[02:07:40] explicitly breach every time. And I was getting pressure from my boss. And what I realized is
[02:07:47] if it makes sense to explosively breach, awesome, we will do it. And I told my boss, if it makes
[02:07:52] sense for us to explosively breach, we're going to do it. And if we don't need to, we won't. And if
[02:07:56] we call out as appropriate, we call it as appropriate. So right there's three courses of action,
[02:08:01] which for the first few months I was there, there was one course of action. And how long
[02:08:05] it's to take the enemy to figure that out. And like you're saying, by what was this? Now this
[02:08:09] is 07 of course they'd figured out, oh, we can put a barricaded sandbagged position to room's
[02:08:15] deep, you know, on the main breach point. And we'll have a field day. Yeah, it was their M.O.
[02:08:21] I mean, look, guys often think about warfare and they think the opposing side is, are these
[02:08:30] shadows and these entities and these paper targets. These are creative human beings who aren't
[02:08:35] conform to convention. They don't have doctrinal time hacks and requirements that they have
[02:08:41] to abide by. They wake up, they use their imagination. And sometimes that imagination trumps
[02:08:46] the fighting force conventional tactic that you bring to bear and you got to adapt. You got to be
[02:08:53] malleable. Yeah, I mean, even the idea of what we ended up calling combat clearance. And I don't
[02:08:57] know if you guys call the combat clearance, but like, hey, we're going to open the door and we're
[02:09:01] going to look inside. Like, hey, I'm not why would I run in there? Yeah. And are there times
[02:09:07] you got to run in there? Absolutely. We're getting shot at in the hallway. I'm going to get into
[02:09:10] this room. We're getting shot out in the street. We're going to bust this door and we're going to
[02:09:12] get in this building. That's what's going to happen. But if we're safe in the street and it's
[02:09:16] secure and we open this door, oh, we breach the store. What do we run in for there? What do we
[02:09:20] run in? Why? Why would we do that? So again, that was another thing that was contrary to everything
[02:09:26] that not everything I had learned. But to the bulk of what I had learned, which is, hey,
[02:09:31] speed, violence of action. Like, we're going to get, when that door opens, we're going in. And
[02:09:36] I get it. There's plenty of times where that's the appropriate behavior. Absolutely. There's
[02:09:42] also times where that's not the appropriate behavior. And it's difficult to overcome what you
[02:09:46] always feel like what you learn is what you kind of prefer. Right? Whatever you learn first,
[02:09:53] whatever methodology you learn when you're a new guy, you think that's the way it is. And it can
[02:09:57] be hard to overcome that barrier. And there's a bias. There's an actual bias around that. I
[02:10:01] forget what the name of the bias, but there's a cognitive bias around whatever, oh, anchoring.
[02:10:06] So whatever you learn first, whatever piece of information you get first, that's kind of what you
[02:10:09] anchor to. Yeah. So it can be difficult to overcome and say, hey, wait a second, does this really
[02:10:14] make sense? And believe me, I mean, I met that stiff resistance with a lot of guys along the way.
[02:10:20] And what I try not to do was be like, you don't know where this does, I'd be like, okay, well,
[02:10:25] let's talk through it. You know, and actually, I'll tell you what, let's break out some semi-nation.
[02:10:30] And let's give it a shot. Why don't you show me how it works out when you go rushing into this room
[02:10:35] when you don't know what's in there. And there's no reason to rush in there.
[02:10:38] Look if you're getting shot out of the hallway, I get it. But if you're not,
[02:10:42] man, what are we doing? Yeah. Yeah. Don't be in a rush to die.
[02:10:49] So that was a freaking savage deployment then it was epic. And once again, what's you, you knew it
[02:10:55] at the time. I mean, every time every night you're loaded up for it's gone, you're, this is
[02:11:00] good as it's ever going to get. Yeah. I had multiple conversations with the guys in the team room
[02:11:07] in the kit room, getting loaded out like it doesn't get any better than this guys. Remember every
[02:11:12] single moment of this because you'll never get this again. How old were you? 26, 7. Yeah. But that's
[02:11:18] just a little bit your third deployment though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you got to relish it. I was
[02:11:24] comfortable and more. That was, that was, I was getting, I was fixing mistakes. I was making
[02:11:32] and honing this craft and I was getting pretty good at it. And you know, there was opportunities
[02:11:42] inside of my unit to do whatever I wanted to do. And I took all those opportunities. And it was,
[02:11:49] it was a great playing field for creativity. And we did a lot of cool stuff, man. It was, it was amazing.
[02:11:56] It was that task force, crystal, little task force was awesome. Colonel or sort of major,
[02:12:04] Command Sergeant Major NACI was the unit Sergeant Major at the time. And I remember we had a team patch
[02:12:10] and a brief. And our team patch had some skulls on it. And it was like one of those,
[02:12:19] you know, badass like, Punisher school deals, right? And I'm thinking, Sergeant Major NACI's
[02:12:27] going to see this and he's going to be pissed. So during a brief, we're doing a brief
[02:12:30] up before loaded helicopter is saying, looks at it. And I see him side eye, one of the patches.
[02:12:35] And the patch says killed them all on the patch. And he kind of side eyes it. And I'm like, oh,
[02:12:41] shit. And I go to a, my, my cell line of my Jason dude, he's side eye and the patch was screwed.
[02:12:46] And this is the unit Sergeant Major. And so he, he comes over and he says, hey, who's, who's
[02:12:55] patches are these? And Jason steps forward. And he pulls them in the hall. He's coming with me.
[02:13:00] And he goes, so let me see that patch. And he pulls it off his shoulder. And I see this go
[02:13:04] down in the hallway. I'm like, oh, dude, this dude is like Jason's going home. Like we're not doing this
[02:13:09] up. And he hands in the patch and, so our major reaches inside of his pocket and pulls out a handful
[02:13:17] of J-SOT coins that say, uh, task force and has all the numbers. It's a skull. And the backside
[02:13:24] it says, uh, something like operating at the speed of war. And he hands in the coins. He goes,
[02:13:30] it's the coolest patch of earths. And he slaps it on his arm. And he walks out on my dad
[02:13:35] did not go the way up. That's going to go. I was like, we're in the right place. This is, this is where
[02:13:39] it's at right now. Yeah. And this is where, this is where you lose people. I mean, mentally
[02:13:48] lose people. Yeah. Because if you, if you, if you, if you, if you don't know what we're talking
[02:13:56] about, if this sounds like a hyper aggressive or crazy or whatever, what you're forgetting is that
[02:14:07] the whole object of wars to kill the bad guys, that's what we're doing. That's the purpose. I remember
[02:14:13] I heard a story. They were, you know, I read some new story. And it was, I think it was a marine unit.
[02:14:20] And they were talking about the fact that this marine unit had, um, like a scoreboard on the wall of
[02:14:27] number of bad guys killed. And each one of them was like a K-bar. Like a little K-bar was drawn up there.
[02:14:32] And the tone of this article was, you know, just just disturbed by this. So can you believe that
[02:14:40] this is, you, US Marine Corps unit? And I think it's Marine Corps unit. We'll have these, you know,
[02:14:44] it's keeping score of the number of enemy that they killed and proudly display the K-bar knife. And
[02:14:52] I was just thinking, man, what, what do you think we're human over there? Yeah. What do you think we're
[02:14:56] doing over there? Now, where you got to be careful is, is, well, for one thing, you got to be careful
[02:15:03] because you got to, you got to protect your guys. And if you get them in that mindset, they can go too far
[02:15:06] with it. Of course, you've also got to be careful because you're not building good relations with
[02:15:12] civilians or reporters or the public, at least part of the public because part of the public goes,
[02:15:20] what are you doing? What do you mean kill them all? So it's a, it's a touchy thing to touchy subject.
[02:15:27] And yet the, the entire purpose of a military unit is to kill the bad guys. And man, I said this
[02:15:34] the other day somewhere and people were like freaking out about it. And, and I'm like, well, no,
[02:15:39] I mean, I understand you've got supply people, but we're little supply people supply. There's supply
[02:15:44] bullets so that the frontline guys get, what about the people that are, you know, collecting intelligence,
[02:15:49] whether collecting intelligence, so the frontline guys can go kill people like everyone, that's what we're here for.
[02:15:53] That's what we're here for. There's no other thing and ensure are there humanitarian missions? Yes,
[02:15:59] are we going to try and win hearts and minds? Yes, all those things, all those things are secondary,
[02:16:04] the fact that the military, the military is to kill bad guys. Are they here to protect and defend? Yes,
[02:16:09] absolutely. How do they protect and defend? Kill bad guys. That's it. So you wrap up that
[02:16:18] deployment. Wrap up that deployment and then, uh, start doing advanced training. I mean, I have a lot
[02:16:24] of catching up to do so, um, because you don't have four back to back to back to back to the
[02:16:28] deployments. Yes. Yeah. And every break every month or every day of break is getting more honoured,
[02:16:36] you know, like you need to get more trained. Um, I think that year in between those rotations,
[02:16:43] I went to Cyberschool, I went to FreeFall School, I went to JTAC School, um, all to, again,
[02:16:50] become an asset, more of an asset on my team. So I went to Special Forces, Cyberschool.
[02:16:54] Of course, how long is the Special Forces Cyberschool? A couple months. It's pretty long. I think it's
[02:17:00] two and a half months. A little bit of technical, uh, a lot of tactical, a lot of long gun,
[02:17:07] but it's evolved over time. Um, Rangers go to that same school,
[02:17:11] Cax, and I appreciate that same school, and Special Forces Cyberschool, that school as well.
[02:17:16] Great experience. Learned a lot. I think I got to those out of that break. What I learned most
[02:17:22] was the difficulty of close air support. I was one of the few guys that got picked up and
[02:17:28] tasked to go to school, and I'm like, I'm going to so tack with SoTAC, and the Special Operations
[02:17:33] Terminal Air Control School, I'm like, dude, I want to go to SoTAC. I'm like, look, if you're a
[02:17:37] sniper and you're doing sniper operations, you want to keep the team small, somebody has to have
[02:17:45] that skill set. So you can drop bombs. I'm like, well, that makes sense. All right, does that mean
[02:17:49] I'm tethered to a radio likely, but it means you'll kill more bad guys. I'm all about that. So they sent
[02:17:54] me to one of the most difficult schools I've been to a SoTAC by the way. How long is that school?
[02:17:58] Uh, a few weeks. I think three weeks, two couple weeks of ground, and then an air week where you
[02:18:03] call lifefire, and uh, all different aircraft and platforms. All the, uh, only school I've almost failed.
[02:18:10] Really? I was, I was, I was worried about it. The technical aspects of speaking big,
[02:18:16] military language, like, lat long. I mean, I could speak M. G. R. S. and Braille. Like, I'm good at M. G. R. S.
[02:18:23] But then they said, lat long. I'm like, what the hell is lat long? So, so the Air Force controllers
[02:18:29] that I went to, they're like, you don't know what lat long I'm like, dude, I've never even heard the
[02:18:34] term. Like, what's lat long? Like, I have to learn this. Like, it's all that long, because you have to
[02:18:38] communicate to the aviators. And they speak lat long. Like, oh, no. And so I was, you know, doing the home
[02:18:44] work late at night. I was a senior E7. I was a class leader. And I was played running. I almost failed
[02:18:50] that course. So I was this close. And I think the Air Force dudes there, they would, it didn't
[02:18:55] want to see me pass. They, they were a little stout. They're like, oh, the senior SF guy, the
[02:19:00] students don't. He's played running. They have savages for, yeah, they wanted to see me fail out.
[02:19:04] I passed out. And I got my air, uh, close air support certification. And then a rotated back
[02:19:10] into O8, another war. And what are you doing this last, last time in O8? So O8, um, I was a troop advisor
[02:19:17] for the ICTF. Uh, the Iraqi counterterrorism force was born and bred by the SIF companies, A15,
[02:19:26] and B23, uh, fifth group, uh, SIF and third group SIF pulled these guys into Jordan,
[02:19:33] isolated them, trained them, and then infiltrated back into the country, smashing bad guys. And the ICTF,
[02:19:40] the young operators of the ICTF, they don't get bricks. They don't get a, uh, a red cycle, right?
[02:19:49] They, they stay in warfare and they, through the common of years of war, we got the most
[02:19:54] experience and we're some of the most experienced operators I've ever served with. So I advised
[02:19:59] the whole troop, and at the time we were downsizing American forces. So me, a Navy EOD guy, a Kamo guy,
[02:20:07] maybe Kamo guy, and then a troop full of ICTF, Spinka targets. So what time of, in 2008, were you there?
[02:20:16] Well, the entire, the entire summer, so probably March, April, timeframe until, you know,
[02:20:22] six months into it, almost a Christmas. And this is smash in targets. All, we are calling them true
[02:20:29] bilateral operations, right? And we're trying to work ourselves out of a job. A lot of guys
[02:20:34] were bummed out by it. Um, things were getting political in08. Uh, I was signing shooter statements.
[02:20:40] If I was admitting that I was killing bad guys, which we start stop doing. I mean, we stop in
[02:20:44] meeting, we were killing bad guys because at that time, if you killed a guy, you were a shooter
[02:20:49] statement and it went to the DOJ and I rack. Uh, I actually remember one time I came back from an
[02:20:56] op and my commander, my company commander comes to me goes, hey Mike, you're good to go back out
[02:21:01] on op's. I was like, I just got back from an op. Sir, what are you talking about? Oh, you,
[02:21:07] you're being investigated for that last shooting yet. I'm like, what? What would you mean
[02:21:13] investigated? Like, well, yeah, they had to do a trial process and they took it to trial. They
[02:21:17] did the shooter statement with witnesses and everything else and then you're good. I'm like, what?
[02:21:22] I don't want to my team star and I'm like, dude, what is going on? They're, we're going on
[02:21:26] trial and through paperwork and then we're shut down from operations. He's like, yeah, it's part of
[02:21:32] the climate. I'm like, uh, and it's, it's, it's one of the first times in, in, in, in leading because
[02:21:39] I was leading a troop, uh, entire troop of ICTF that I started getting affected by the political
[02:21:46] climate. All the other times I've been insulated by cell leaders team sergeants, good leadership
[02:21:52] who knew that they just keep all that shit away from the guys and let them do their job. And
[02:21:58] it's the first time it started trickling down and I'm like, oh, a wow. Yeah. Yeah. The house thinking
[02:22:03] about that when you're talking about your OSF and deployment, I mean, your, your focus was
[02:22:07] 100% on your job. That's it. And so the people above you and Jane and Cran, and that's a,
[02:22:13] that was a superlative supportive chain of command as well. Yeah. And so you weren't dealing with
[02:22:22] any of this other crap. No, I'm shutting you up and oh, eight. And you find out you're under
[02:22:26] investing. Super political. Yeah. Super political. So did you, uh, you just kept doing ops
[02:22:33] backed off a little bit. Did you back off a little bit or did you, so the ops weren't as
[02:22:38] aggressive. Like I remember telling my new guys because I was selling it at the time in a troop
[02:22:41] advisor. I remember telling my new, siff guys, bro, it's about to be on. Get your stuff ready,
[02:22:47] bring the thumper plenty of 40 my mic, we're about to kill some bad guys. And go, and we went
[02:22:53] in the solder city and it was crickets. And I'm like, this isn't normal. I was like, dude, it's
[02:22:57] gonna happen. Yeah, I'm bushed. EFT's nothing. And I'm like, what is good? We got back. I'm like,
[02:23:02] no, that that was probably just random. We're, we're gonna get back into it and we're gonna go
[02:23:08] kill. But, and they, they, we get went out again and I'm like, there's nothing happened. What is
[02:23:12] going on? And because of the, at the times, the Sunnis and the Shia's were doing a ceasefire.
[02:23:21] And anytime they killed Americans, they would pay for it politically. They started pulling back
[02:23:26] and just isolating, building their, their infrastructure and their castles and not do not
[02:23:33] be an aggressive. But all the things that we were hit were dry holes. We, we got in a few gunfights,
[02:23:39] killed a few dudes. But it was, it was not what I expected it to be. And it was the transition of
[02:23:44] what became, I think the transition out of that, that fight. Yeah, no, and one of my buddies
[02:23:51] took over my task unit and went into solder city with snipers in, I want to say it was
[02:23:58] June of 08. Yeah. And they killed all kinds of bad guys. And I did about four to six weeks of operations
[02:24:04] there and the freaking, the shakes there kind of like, all right, we're good. We're good. We don't,
[02:24:11] we don't need any more of this. Yeah. And they made that truse and stuff. Yeah. And you know,
[02:24:16] the way I looked at it was like, they'd been doing operations for so long. Like the, the, the, the,
[02:24:22] the, the, the, the, the body army and stuff out of solder city. And they would take so few casualties.
[02:24:27] Yeah. I mean, they go out, set off in the F. P. killed an American or two or what, you know,
[02:24:32] go, go, lob, and like I said, they don't really have to, they don't have to win every time. Like
[02:24:38] it doesn't matter. They're going to go back and they'll attack again tomorrow night or the next night.
[02:24:43] And, but then once they started taking some massive casualties, yeah, we're like, I think we've had enough
[02:24:48] for this. Yeah, it was pretty much, I remember that time period, um, so I was a sniper at the time.
[02:24:52] So in between my troop at being up, I did stay behind sniper operations. And we actually took
[02:25:00] from what I understand, we took one of the missions that you guys had. You guys were doing daylight
[02:25:06] Overwatch for the guys who were building the T-bearious around solder city. And you guys killed a whole
[02:25:11] bunch of people. When we came in, they switched it to night ops. And we couldn't kill anybody. Like,
[02:25:16] I sat on rooftop for like days and weeks going, where they held all the back guys and, and
[02:25:21] guys were talking like the Navy killed them all. Like, where are they, they're like, they're not coming
[02:25:25] out. They all gave up. There, if once you did reverse ops, uh, that tactic worked because they were
[02:25:32] getting smoked in daylight. And so I, and I think Chris Kyle at one point had that up. And, um, so
[02:25:37] I remember, we remember hearing about his name and some of the guys and like, oh, do they have a
[02:25:42] high body count? We were so excited. And we end filled day one. I was like, crickets and I'm like,
[02:25:46] what is, and they had a, they had a drone. I remember seeing a drone overhead. And they were
[02:25:51] low-flying this drone during the building of this wall and the completion of it. I'm like,
[02:25:56] no wonder there's no bad. Like, all the bad guys here, this drone on purpose, uh, as a tactic
[02:26:01] that we applied, but they're all keeping their head down. And we couldn't kill any of them. And I was
[02:26:05] like, oh, this sucks. But the, the stay behind stuff was fun. Yeah, that, that was a big kind of
[02:26:10] of, uh, whatnot. When I was in Ramadies, the same thing, like the bad guys were, they knew not
[02:26:15] to come out at night. Now, yeah, 90, whatever, probably 97% of the bad guys that got killed by my
[02:26:22] task, and it, one of the daytime. Yeah. The other 3% were at night, because they knew if they came
[02:26:26] out at night, it was a bad deal for them. Free fire. So they came out the day. And it's the same
[02:26:32] thing that those guys didn't saw their city. Um, that's another, so it's another deployment
[02:26:40] another six months, this six months. Yeah. And just going out hitting targets, but it's definitely
[02:26:45] more melow on this deployment. Yeah, it was more of a, uh, a leadership role in troop advising
[02:26:51] the surmager, because I was acting as the ground force commander for every op. So I, I started learning
[02:26:57] a lot about processes. You know, like before I was just in a nougat altar, I was called a ghost
[02:27:02] assaulter, just there doing my little narrow piece of the pie. Now I had to step back and get the
[02:27:08] big picture. I had a control way to assets. I had to flex the different targets. I had a strategize
[02:27:14] on the fly with my troops aren't major deploying his troops. And we had a whole bunch of incidents
[02:27:19] like we're, you know, me and the EOD guy, the Navy EOD guy, are hitting targets by herself,
[02:27:25] because they're hitting a building. We get intel. I don't have enough time to flex that whole
[02:27:29] troop. We have to do it. So we go inside a house as by herself. And it was fun, man. We had a blast.
[02:27:35] It was like it was cool because we had the leash off. And even though it wasn't as active, I mean,
[02:27:41] we were doing, I remember we had an intel from a soccer field that they had a couple handsets that
[02:27:46] correlated to the soccer field. And I was like, all right, we got to get the soccer field. So I said,
[02:27:50] hey, guys, we're going to move to the soccer field. So we started walking. I'm like, I need you guys
[02:27:54] to move out. And they wouldn't move out. I grabbed the EOD guy. We sprinted to the soccer field.
[02:27:59] As we ran around the block, we were in ambient street light. The group of guys were meeting and
[02:28:06] they were in the middle of the soccer field, the middle of night, like two in the morning. They see us.
[02:28:10] And we're sprinting across an overfield, trying to shoot like 10 dudes who move in 10 different
[02:28:15] directions. And we miss everybody. And when we get back the, everybody in the jock and the talk is
[02:28:21] laughing, because they're like, dude, that was the best we've ever seen. Because we saw you guys
[02:28:25] break contact from the main element and you're like screw it and you start sprinting. But they all
[02:28:29] went 10 different directions. So we could track any of them. And we're running and shooting. And we're
[02:28:34] standing there in the field like damn it. That was our opportunity. It was a good time, Sner.
[02:28:41] Wrap up that deployment. Then what's next? So I, I, I get back and I go to Cag and I'm in Cag
[02:28:47] and a, a technical role reconnaissance role. And I go back to Iraq and to Belad. And I, I, I run
[02:28:55] because of my reconnaissance background, it's how I got recruited in. I run a joint interagency task force
[02:29:02] of, um, interagency organizations with J. Sock to do reconnaissance over the entire country of Iraq.
[02:29:11] I was, I was undercover as a lieutenant colonel. So I was an OIC, young OIC. Nobody believed it.
[02:29:17] Um, but put it in that position to C2 and control all the things that were going on for
[02:29:25] reconnaissance assets in the country. Now in Belad at that time period, because everything was
[02:29:31] downsizing and including the base of Belad. A year is this now? Oh, nine. Yeah. So stuff's
[02:29:36] really slowing down. Really slowing down. In fact, the reason they brought me in is because
[02:29:40] reconnaissance is obviously another way we get involved without involving packs on the ground,
[02:29:47] people on the ground. So we still had a, have eyes on, but we had to use technical means of reconnaissance
[02:29:54] and that just depend on dudes and hide sites. In fact, during that time period, um, there was
[02:30:00] a restriction of one of two Americans per target and you had to stay in containment. So if you're
[02:30:04] moving to a bad guy place, you leave behind the Americans, they'd stay on containment with the
[02:30:09] vehicles, um, indigenous force would hit the objective, come back and then you roll out. And so at that
[02:30:15] time, working in the joint interagency, I didn't feel like I was missing out on much. I felt like I had a
[02:30:21] broader role to fill in that capacity. And then, and you're just overseeing all this reconnaissance
[02:30:27] elements. That's what you're saying. All of it. I had daily VTCs with a SILTIM command,
[02:30:34] NAVS OFF, mostly, which was the main effort. Not the way. There wasn't a lot of SF guys in the
[02:30:39] country admit at that time. So I had daily VTCs with a Navy and supported their operations and
[02:30:45] technical reconnaissance means tagging, tracking, locating all the, all the sexy stuff for
[02:30:50] technical recon, um, for the entire country. And that was based on the fact that you had sniper
[02:30:56] experience. Yeah, I got recruited. Con and experience or whatever. Yeah, I got recruited. I want to
[02:31:01] selection or successful. And then, um, my background, my entire life, my background and special
[02:31:07] operations was mapped for that, that field of expertise. In the transition, coming back from
[02:31:13] 08 to 09, I went to J. Sox, technical reconnaissance course, which was like six months,
[02:31:19] pretty intense course, and learned a whole new world of operations that I didn't even know existed.
[02:31:26] I knew a little bit, but when I went to that course, I was like, whoa, now this is, this is in
[02:31:30] Koshit. So I did that for Task Force for J. Sox for my own non-rotation. And then what happened after that?
[02:31:38] Gat back and then, um, got with another squadron. And at that time, we had been in Iraq,
[02:31:46] since we killed Zarkawi. The task force has a mid-NiRAC, um, really since, I mean, intermittently,
[02:31:53] we, we own Iraq. But Afghanistan, we completely gave up. So, I wasn't on the ball and Afghanistan,
[02:32:00] because we were too busy in Iraq. And then all of a sudden, we had to change a heart.
[02:32:05] Look, Akhaita was on the run. We didn't even know this thing called ISIS existed. And we decided to do
[02:32:12] a surge as an organization to Afghanistan. And I was on the first thing smoking. So my first
[02:32:21] real good deployment with that organization, with a special mission unit, was in Afghanistan. And
[02:32:28] when we got there, um, the Rangers on the Battle Space, Colonel Carilla was in charge,
[02:32:35] and we were the red headed step-children. And I was like, what? How is an SMU the step-children?
[02:32:41] Like, when I got there, I was taking showers with bottles of water, and it opened field. And I'm like,
[02:32:46] this is the prepare C.T. unit on the planet. And I'm doing this and they're like, dude, we have,
[02:32:51] we're building everything from scratch. So we set up shot there and started targeting bad guys.
[02:32:56] And the first two months was prep. And then the second two months was killing bad guys.
[02:33:03] And we did a lot of it. That, that, that second 60 days of that four-month rotation.
[02:33:09] We saw more bad guys killed in a two-month period than anything that I experienced before.
[02:33:14] You know, it was because of the assets that we brought to bear. Good rotation, though.
[02:33:18] And you were, you were still over seeing Recky at this point? Yeah, I was, I was that squadron's
[02:33:23] reconnaissance in CO, which just specialized in Reckon. So everything from OP's to technical
[02:33:31] Recky to inner agency, like even controlling aircraft for for ISR. And he was an active trip.
[02:33:40] I mean, we lost a dog. We had a guy's shot. We had a guy's blown up. A lot of active operations
[02:33:47] during that period of time. It was, it was amazing to see that talent and you can't really get an
[02:33:54] idea or understanding of that talent and capability when you, when you focus on individuals.
[02:34:00] But when you see it come together in a single combat operation where everybody's so efficient and
[02:34:06] effective, you really see the benefit of the selection process, the training process, and the
[02:34:13] support mechanisms that make that unit the most elite unit in the world.
[02:34:19] Yeah, you know, you hear like the sports analogies of like, well, you know, it's like a professional
[02:34:25] sports scene, but these are like the champions, right? These are the NFL, three can superbow winners.
[02:34:31] That, you know, that you see the superbow guy that like, whatever gets his right arm massaged
[02:34:38] so that he can whatever and he and this other guy's doing speed drills with the first four meters
[02:34:43] of his sprint and he's going to work with a specialist that's going to get him even a little bit,
[02:34:47] you know, one millisecond faster and then they're getting their helmets dialed in so that they
[02:34:51] can have comms in there and they got this, they got all like at just 100% pure focus for every
[02:34:57] individual to be as good as they possibly can. And then you put that team together and every one of
[02:35:04] those individuals is 100% focused on being as good as they possibly can with all the support
[02:35:08] they could possibly want and this is what you end up with just freaking the best.
[02:35:13] Yeah, it's the big leagues for sure. And I, when I realized and that you know, even being a very
[02:35:18] confident shooter, a respected member of special forces and being a PT start at the time,
[02:35:26] that there was men above me and beyond me that I'd never catch up with that were just so talented.
[02:35:33] And I was like, it was humbling and I'm like, well, I'm not the most elite dude. I thought I was.
[02:35:38] I woke up and went, dude, I'm crushing it and then I see the talent pull over there and
[02:35:42] realized there's this thing, this machine. And like you said before, these guys
[02:35:50] aren't trained to be diplomats to be fit experts, the training kill bad guys and they're the best
[02:35:55] at it. I mean, the Navy version and the Army version, they're the best at it in the world.
[02:36:00] And then it was humbling and honorable experience at being part of that.
[02:36:06] So what came after that? So at a very young age, actually at the age of 29, I made
[02:36:13] E8. How's your wife handle it on all this, by the way? She's good. She's a champ at the time.
[02:36:17] I don't, she's never ready to me now. So it's the last. But she's handling it well, man. I mean,
[02:36:23] look, she, her perspective was, if I was happy doing what I loved, that was my moment in time
[02:36:32] and she would support me. Do you have any kids? No kids. No kids. None. So it was easy for us.
[02:36:37] Right? She was busy getting our nursing degree, phenomenal woman, just handling business and grinding.
[02:36:44] And then when I came back, she was my support and make sure, make sure, because you knew I was coming
[02:36:51] back and in that unit, especially those boys don't have any downtime. It doesn't exist. Even when you're
[02:36:58] down, you're not down. You're up on a call cycle for being able to quick respond or you're in a
[02:37:06] down cycle and you're training. You're always gone. I was gone more than any part of my career in
[02:37:11] that organization. So when I made the E8 list, I made it on the black side. There's the black
[02:37:20] list and the black list is just, it's an advertised. And I was just to give, I don't know the exact numbers,
[02:37:27] but for that year, it was something like 160 guys were promoted. I was 159.7 on the black list,
[02:37:36] because the black list, like you're like an intermittent number, that's not advertised. I was the last
[02:37:40] guy on the black side, which includes the Navy that was promoted to E8, which means I was the last
[02:37:46] guy to get picked up and I was 29 years old as an E8. Yeah. And so I, you know, it was mainly because
[02:37:55] of the combat experience I had and then in E7 school, which is for us is called Adenak, I won the
[02:38:00] leadership award. And so those two things set me up to get promoted that fast, but I wasn't prepared
[02:38:05] in my operational career to go, you're an E8. What's next? So if I stayed in that unit, then I
[02:38:13] would have just been what I was, you know, in that unit, you're not, it's called Blue Chips. You don't
[02:38:22] get Blue Chips because you have experience. You could be a 20 year special operations guy. When you
[02:38:27] show up that unit day one, you earn your Blue Chips one day at a time. And so me starting, I would
[02:38:34] starting from zero, leaving the unit and going anywhere I could have gone, I'm a team starting.
[02:38:41] I'm a god in the special operations, right? And it's the job that you want because you're controlling
[02:38:48] and an operating with your ODA with your detachment. I had no, look, I wanted to go back, but I was like,
[02:38:56] if I go back, they'll put me on a regular ODA and not meeting that in a derogatory way,
[02:39:02] but just not a SIF company, not a specialized company. Randomly, gentlemen by the name of Command
[02:39:09] Sergeant Major Bob Erbie, who's a legend in Social Forces Command, communicates to me that he
[02:39:15] hurts. I've heard I may de-eate and he heard about my experience and he wanted to recruit me to
[02:39:19] stand up a new career, a new commander's response force for the, the continent of Africa.
[02:39:26] We didn't have one because we were so busy fighting in the Middle East, we didn't have one.
[02:39:30] Jay Sock approved that and long story short, I stood up a SIF as a plankholder from scratch.
[02:39:37] We went into a company in 10th group, me and another guy from the unit, stood it up from scratch,
[02:39:43] had full power to train anything we wanted to with our guys, reconnaissance guys, and build this unit from
[02:39:51] zero. As we built the unit, we got vetted and validated and then Benghazi kicked off, which
[02:39:58] my or benefit wanted to be in in Africa. So when did you deploy immediately? I deployed immediately.
[02:40:04] I was the first team to deploy for that unit, two Benghazi, to Libya. This is after the September
[02:40:09] 12th of tax. Yeah, September 11 and 12, a tax in 12th in 2012. During our train up,
[02:40:18] we literally get tasked to go to Libya. We start developing intel and then Benghazi kicks off.
[02:40:24] And when that happened, I was actually in a special mission, genic compound, doing cross
[02:40:29] K Ali briefs with Libya and then this thing happens. And then a few weeks later, I'm in Tripoli,
[02:40:36] Libya going building out a counterterrorism force going after Abukutal, the guy responsible for it.
[02:40:44] Did you run it? We didn't run any of those ops though, did we?
[02:40:49] So one, we didn't do anything about it. It was a big 13 hours in Macauze, he was kind of reflective of
[02:40:58] that understanding. But we had the opportunity to kill Abukutala in about 60 to 90 days.
[02:41:06] There are other use of sock elements with us and they positively identified that dude in a short period of time.
[02:41:12] I was there in the meeting when we proposed it to the country team, which included the ambassador
[02:41:16] Sharjay, Alexander Pope, who was appointed and he denied it. He said the political climate
[02:41:23] would allow us to do this. The representative from Yisosak, senior E8, stood up and almost detonated.
[02:41:30] I mean, he detonated in a very tactful way. But that was the climate we were dealing with.
[02:41:36] It was so politically charged, they wouldn't allow us to do anything. For six months, I was in that
[02:41:41] country fighting to kill bad guys, to do our job as to commanders' response force, but also
[02:41:47] representing Yisosak and they wouldn't let us do anything. It was horrible. It was the worst political
[02:41:54] military experience that I faced. So what you're doing, you got home from that.
[02:42:01] That had to leave a bad taste in your mouth. What did? Three weeks after I got back, I was out of the
[02:42:07] army. I dropped my paperwork as a senior E8. With how many years in? The time 16, 16 years.
[02:42:14] When I was down range, I got recruited by the CIA. I was going to take a job called
[02:42:20] Pair Military Operations Officer, which is a good-going U.S. or CIA.gov, an apply for my
[02:42:26] exiled job description there. Mike Span was one of the first casualties of the global war
[02:42:31] in terror in September 11th. He was actually a Pair Military Operations Officer. I wanted to be
[02:42:37] Mike Span. I had just finished my college degree, which took me 15 years to accomplish,
[02:42:42] which is a prerequisite for government service and federal federal government. And I decided at that
[02:42:49] point, I wanted to step aside and work for this agency because I saw the good things they were
[02:42:53] known. At the time, after I got back in out-processed, very rapidly, where people were like,
[02:43:00] my troop, the main element wasn't even home yet, and I was already out-processed. My independence
[02:43:07] was July 4th of that year of 2013, and immediately started contracting. Went straight back to
[02:43:14] Libya. I was in Libya on terminal leave back in Libya as a civilian, and then started contracting
[02:43:22] with the agency for the next two and a half years. While at the same time, I was in a reserve component
[02:43:30] of special operations, and where I was a team sergeant in Texas. They made sergeant major in Texas.
[02:43:38] And so I was contracting, deploying with an agency, coming home, and then deploying again, deploying again.
[02:43:46] Yeah, put on my uniform, jump on a plane. I mean, one time I came back from Yemen, a week later,
[02:43:52] I was back in the Zira Africa with a sort major uniform on doing a counterterrorism staff operation,
[02:43:59] or staff exercise that turned into an operation. Came back, put on my civilians, and then
[02:44:04] went back to Yemen. So I was just in a cycle of it. Give us a little bit of a brief on what we
[02:44:10] were doing as a what your job was as a contractor. So honestly, it's nothing sexy. I was babysitting
[02:44:18] case officers. I mean, my job was to protect him overseas. I was outside of the, what people would
[02:44:25] normally refer to as industrial contractor. So I actually worked directly for the agency and
[02:44:31] babysat case officers and protected them. When you're a case officer and you come out of school,
[02:44:37] you get a 500 pound head. Lots of experience in training, but it's all concepts. When they go overseas,
[02:44:47] we only have enough time to repair the biggest and brightest minds on the planet to do what they do.
[02:44:53] And so we, we are the, the shield that protects these guys to do their job. And at the time that I
[02:45:00] applaud, you had a minimum experience of six years and special operations, and you had a shoot
[02:45:05] to ask off. And when I showed up for this job, I've vetted, it's a shooting call. You shoot,
[02:45:12] and you beat the standard, or you leave. My class, we had probably 10, 10 dudes that are senior
[02:45:18] level dudes, operators, and the most elite units, half of them probably went home because of the
[02:45:23] shooting calls. You're competing for a six-fear job, also, so the pressure is high. And the shooting
[02:45:29] standards are the, the hardest shooting standards I've seen. Apparently in federal government,
[02:45:34] because you're a federal law enforcement instructor after you get through this experience,
[02:45:38] it's a toughest federal law enforcement call. That's informal. It's not actually doctrine.
[02:45:43] And when I went down range with that organization, I was confident that even me and my
[02:45:52] writing partner, typically were sales that with our little clock 17, P-shooters in the waste band,
[02:45:59] that we could do some work, enough to fight back to our vehicle or back to the machine gun
[02:46:04] in our vehicle and do some work. But it also taught me about what these inter-added season, these
[02:46:13] brave men and women do every day, which is they put it on the line. You don't have a QRF
[02:46:20] Ranger Battalion element in MH47's prepared to come rescue your ass. It's just you.
[02:46:26] And I'm like, dude, you guys do this? Yeah, we've been doing this since the beginning.
[02:46:29] Like, what? This driving around randomly, doing your thing and like, that's all. What's the nearest
[02:46:35] task force? Other but three hours away. Okay, so we're out on our own. That changed everything for
[02:46:41] me. I mean, that changed everything I thought that I potentially knew about single-to-noperations
[02:46:49] and lovis operations. We think lovis, our guy's thought lovis was like putting a shemag on,
[02:46:55] you know, and hiding their chest care or play care underneath their dress, their man dress.
[02:47:00] It's a new game. It's a new game. It was crazy. So you do that for two and a half years?
[02:47:06] Two and a half years. And did you, so you originally wanted to actually be in the CIA, not a contractor?
[02:47:16] You did, where you continued to try and pursue the job of actually being a member?
[02:47:22] Yeah, I wanted to be a staffer. I wanted to be a blue badge or I wanted to be a full-time employee.
[02:47:26] And I had to change a heart when I was in Yemen. Yemen was super political. The Houthis,
[02:47:32] the political climate, and all these things that were transpiring was doing what I didn't
[02:47:38] think was possible in that interagency, which was debilitating their ability to do their job.
[02:47:44] And I saw great guys that were on operational side, on the operational side that were getting stagnated.
[02:47:55] I couldn't believe it. I actually, I remember thinking to myself on one rotation,
[02:48:00] like this doesn't happen to these guys. There's no way. These dudes, there's no way these guys are
[02:48:05] getting. There's got to be something going on. Coconut dagger. And it wasn't because of the oversight
[02:48:11] of how the interagency the IC works in the intelligence community. With well over 17 agencies now,
[02:48:19] there's so much direct, direct, direct national level oversight and micro management
[02:48:26] that can't do their jobs. And so I had my whole thing with the internet on the military was,
[02:48:30] if I can't kill bad guys, I don't belong here. So I left because I went to an organization which I
[02:48:36] thought were still killing bad guys. And they still were in some capacity. But where I was in the
[02:48:42] situation I was in, they weren't. And I went dude, I have to have to change a heart here. I have
[02:48:47] to figure something out because the war for me is over. There's no more killing. I mean, eventually
[02:48:53] ISIS popped their heads up and there was a whole new cycle of killing that I missed, which I wish
[02:48:59] I was part of. But I had to make a decision to get out. And then that was it. That was it.
[02:49:05] I was in Pakistan and I made that decision. I brain stormed. My, my ride partner who was a seal,
[02:49:13] his brother was a dev group guy that was killed on a raid, a rest trying to rescue a hostage in
[02:49:18] Africa. And he's one of my best friends. And I said, hey man, I want to start a business.
[02:49:26] He's like, well, it's brain storm. And we had course of action development, man. We sat down
[02:49:30] after work and mapped out some plans and many conversations over dinner trying to figure out
[02:49:36] like what I could do. And, you know, with our background expertise, the obvious route is a
[02:49:44] tactical something, right? But I didn't want to do that, man. I saw these dudes who were getting out
[02:49:50] and they were dealing with all the backlash of coming out and saying, hey, I'm this guy.
[02:49:55] Because at the time I didn't have any social media. And I'm like, I don't want to be a tactical
[02:50:01] kind of guy. I want to do something kind of different. And I wrote down survival. And, you know,
[02:50:08] primitive survival is what most people would think about. And when they think about survival.
[02:50:12] But I said, what if there's this niche and developing like this modern survival take on preparedness
[02:50:18] of training citizens, not just military and law enforcement, but citizens to be better prepared
[02:50:23] in their culture? What year is this? This is 2015. Damn, so you were ahead of the curve.
[02:50:28] Yeah. Yeah. This is 15. And I'm like, there's something here. And I wrote a mission statement.
[02:50:34] I did a con op. I wrote a whole five-fair graph op order on the whole business plan. And
[02:50:41] resigned from my position with Interatency came home, talked to my command soldier major,
[02:50:47] as a Sergeant Major. I was an op Sergeant Major at the time. I said, hey, man, I'm thinking about
[02:50:52] doing this. Because dude, like, there's nothing going on. It's like we're about to activate the
[02:50:57] entire unit. And you'll be a staff Sergeant Major sitting in a talk for a year and I've got to stand.
[02:51:03] There's nothing going on. Do what you want to do. I said, how hard is it for me to resign?
[02:51:09] Because I will type the paperwork. That's how easy it is. And then I'll just send a team
[02:51:14] and you sign it for your position and your rank. You don't have to do anything. But technically
[02:51:19] resign. And you'll go into IR status, inactive, ready reserved. And that's it. And I remember I did that.
[02:51:27] And the next day I was like, holy crap. Like I just cut the biggest and
[02:51:32] political court known to man in history of man. And now I hear Flavin. And I have to make it
[02:51:39] make sure to happen. And are you still married at this point? I'm not. I'm three years removed.
[02:51:44] Or two years removed from a divorce. But you don't have to take care of anyone but yourself.
[02:51:52] It's just me. So it's kind of like a little bit of big on bell-cocard. But I mean, let's face it.
[02:51:57] You're going to be able to, you know, give me a ground pad.
[02:52:02] Yeah, I'm winging it, man. I'm, I think I probably was living in a ground like a pad.
[02:52:08] I was probably an air mattress in a, a band in place. I was smart with my money because
[02:52:14] they call it the Thousand Air Club because you, you make it in the Thousand a day in your bank
[02:52:18] roller. Most guys go home, blow it on Harley's and trucks and come back and start the vicious cycle again.
[02:52:25] But I took that money. I think it was 25k and invested it and started my business.
[02:52:31] What was the first move? The first move was education. I had no idea. Educating yourself. Educating
[02:52:37] myself. I had no idea about marketing about, um, like I have a degree in Homeland Security. What's
[02:52:43] going to translate to? Now, much in, in my new field of expertise. So I took my business plan,
[02:52:50] started doing, um, trying to build fidelity on the correlation between a concept and then the
[02:52:56] execution of that concept, trying to use historical data. And there was none. There was no good
[02:53:01] case studies or examples of businesses in that genre that weren't very narrow in their field.
[02:53:07] Primed us a rival. Yeah, sure. You can find a hundred business plans. They all suck and they're not
[02:53:11] doing very well. But what is this cultural thing of like this genre of call preparedness? Where mindset,
[02:53:17] self-awareness, uh, technical training, um, you know, all the things that we did in our culture
[02:53:24] and purpose and special operations. How does that translate to citizens? And how do you scale verticals
[02:53:29] in business? That was intense for me. Uh, it's something that I still learned today, you know,
[02:53:35] five years later with 40 plus employees. I'm like, dude, I'm still learning. I'm trying to figure
[02:53:40] in to show you what was the first move that you made then in terms of like what's the first gig that you did?
[02:53:45] So the first gig was a tactical training because I could make a revenue stream. So I'm like,
[02:53:50] wait, I figure out like a 12 to 24 people, $500 to slot, pistol carbine, let's make some revenue.
[02:53:57] Then I built the website. Then I started marketing. Social media for me was brand new. And I think
[02:54:03] at the time was new for people to see special operations guys doing it. I know at the time there's
[02:54:08] only handful of us doing that. And people were like, oh, and they gravitated towards us. I remember
[02:54:14] 10 Kennedy, I was his boss. Uh, 10 Kennedy was a, is an MMA fighter, um, um, um, uh, success launch
[02:54:20] of manure. I was his boss at the time and I'm like, dude, how are you doing this? He plugged me on
[02:54:25] his social media. I got 10,000 followers and I'm like, this is how it works. This network building,
[02:54:30] that's how easy it was. And so I started building it. I designed a survival kit. As a contractor,
[02:54:38] I went to, um, the luxury of doing the interagency direct contract position. I can go to any training
[02:54:44] I want to. And they sent me to a whole bunch of high-speed schools, including a survival school,
[02:54:49] where they had high-speed contractors who developed this like Ziplock back theory.
[02:54:54] There's this guy right now who works for a Kevin Estella. He's in the field right now,
[02:54:58] day two, doing a 72 hours Ziplock back challenge on a field cross survival and Instagram. And we're
[02:55:03] updating it. And the idea is, if you're in a foreign country that's semi-promissive, non-promissive,
[02:55:10] the worst case scenario for you is it loses its sovereignty. A coup happens and now you're on your
[02:55:15] own. The first star in the 50s that was applied to the CIA board was a guy who, uh, escaped and
[02:55:22] evaded from China and got killed and Tibet by a random security guy shot in the chest with one
[02:55:30] round with like a 32 British pistol revolver. Um, that's a thing and there's dangerous of it.
[02:55:36] So the idea is like a Ziplock bag is the things that you can carry on your person, your physical body.
[02:55:42] So I took that and I literally in the course went, everything you guys put in this bag,
[02:55:47] how did you guys come up with it? Well, we did R&D, like the best things that we could put in the bag
[02:55:51] and you're going to live out of it for 72 hours, which happens to be, uh, appropriate amount of time
[02:55:56] to escape, evade, um, and then carry the appropriate amount of stuff in reconnaissance, like not
[02:56:03] overbearing. And I said, I'm going to take everything in these bags and I'm going to turn into a
[02:56:08] survival kit and sell it. He's like, dude, you should do that. My valium doing it. And so I,
[02:56:13] our first survival kit, I sold like a thousand on day one of that kit. And I was like,
[02:56:19] there's something here. There's a product thing here. There's a training thing here. There's these
[02:56:23] revenue streams that I'm seeing and we built it from very small diversified and build up all the
[02:56:31] verticals, one by one. So you sell a thousand of these survival kits almost instantly.
[02:56:37] Instantly. So now your theory is correct. There's demand. There is demand. I'm creating a new
[02:56:43] demand signal, but there's demand. Um, that that starts off. What year is that?
[02:56:49] Six, the very beginning of 16, the very beginning of 16. So five years ago, you get the word out.
[02:56:58] You sell a thousand these kits. And so then what's the next move? Now you know there's a market,
[02:57:03] you start developing shit. What's next? Well, I think part of it was I have to develop a
[02:57:07] culture here. Like there's a, there's a thing that exists that I'm trying to redefine.
[02:57:12] Most people who think or have seen us on the surface even think that we're a primitive survival
[02:57:17] company because survival is synonymous with, with primitive survival, like rubbing sticks together
[02:57:21] in the woods. And so I'm not a big fan of that. I'm not an expert at that. There's guys that are
[02:57:26] talented at that. I hire those guys now, but that's not me. I'm the guy who understands that, you know,
[02:57:33] 20 operators can go out and deliberately hit the worst-case scenario and come out on top. And so
[02:57:39] in my hypothesis, like, why is that happening? Why do, why do intentionally men put themselves
[02:57:47] in harm's way to kill the bad guy and why statistically do they come out on top? And so if you
[02:57:54] start looking out and laying out all the reasons why, it's not because of one widget, one school,
[02:58:00] it's because the culture that are immersed in. They all got selected together, they train together,
[02:58:07] they pay attention to all the details. They can do contingency based planning. They have service support.
[02:58:11] They do course of action development. They rehearse. They pay attention to their equipment and
[02:58:17] everything they do. And ultimately they're conscious to their culture, their world. They're here
[02:58:23] right now paying attention to what they are doing. And when I look at citizens and everything that's
[02:58:28] happening in a world that we never learned lesson from, we're completely complacent and freedom
[02:58:35] as a benefit of freedom because we're comfortable in routine. And that happens to be our MO as
[02:58:42] Americans, which is beneficial, right? That you live in sovereign societies, you get all the luxuries and
[02:58:47] freedoms of all the man who go off to war and do this thing. But what is it to the detriment?
[02:58:53] Or what's the, if you look at statistics? And this is what I did. This is, this is the greatest
[02:58:58] start point is doing this research. I started realizing there's no understanding of what this even
[02:59:03] means. There's one guy that I found. There's a couple guys, but one guy significantly, by the
[02:59:08] name of John Leach, who did a study on survival psychology. He asked a question, why do people live
[02:59:14] and why do people die? Specifically in catastrophes. He has a theory based on his case study
[02:59:20] analysis of mostly natural disasters. Some of them man made that there's a breakdown of about
[02:59:26] 10, 80, 10. 10% of the population happens to be making the right decision and they survive.
[02:59:34] 80% probably broken in half, 50, 50. Sometimes the right decision, sometimes the wrong. And then
[02:59:40] 10% are the bottom of the barrel. They're like the guy who runs, this is in a survival situation
[02:59:46] of some kind. This is a catastrophe, disaster. So all of the things coming together typically
[02:59:51] associated with compressed timeline and high intensity stress. So the bottom 10% is the bottom of
[02:59:59] the barrel. And children happen to be in that bottom 10%. And so the question is why are some people
[03:00:07] at the top 10 and why are people at the bottom 10? And how do we get the people who are at the bottom?
[03:00:12] Even children into the top 10. And that was the premise of my business and answering that question.
[03:00:18] We need to figure out why people die. What is their background and experience? What mistakes they
[03:00:27] made and how can we put them in a bracket and a 10% bracket to make sure they survive? That was the
[03:00:33] question that had to be answered. That's where it started and then you started looking at, okay,
[03:00:39] what did you find? What did you find as far as a curriculum that you put together that moves people
[03:00:45] from the bottom 10? We're getting killed to the top 10. The most impactful thing that I found,
[03:00:51] which I see a lot of correlation in what your whether it's discovery or just dissemination of your
[03:00:57] books and all the information that you're doing is self-awareness breeds situational awareness.
[03:01:04] So there's this lack of awareness. There's really a lack of understanding. The analogy I like to use
[03:01:09] is to have a land cruiser. I'm a big fan of land cruisers. So I take my land cruiser, which is a 94
[03:01:17] land cruiser, which is FCG80, if your land cruiser nerd, head gasket problems are notorious for these
[03:01:23] things. They overheat their head gasket blows and then it's catastrophic. So the question is,
[03:01:29] when you're driving down the road and you see smoke, how do you address smoke? Most people see smoke
[03:01:35] and they go, oh crap, smoke, let me pull over, right? I'll call Triple A. So they have a dependence
[03:01:41] on something else. An institution, an insurance company, whatever it may be. And so they don't source
[03:01:47] source, the solution. Another course of action is you keep driving because you don't understand
[03:01:53] what's happening. So you just push through and you think that pushing through, hey, because it's
[03:01:57] only 10 minutes away from home is the answer. So you saw the smoke, you didn't have a answer.
[03:02:03] There's a void, a darkness in the back of your head. So you just do something random. It's randomized
[03:02:09] behavior. You drive, you get home and before you get home when you get down in your street,
[03:02:15] your car catastrophically in floats. You hear a pop, you hear noise. It starts the buck,
[03:02:23] you pull it over to side the road, you lift the hood and you realize you have a blown engine.
[03:02:27] Right? That analogy is representative of people's brains and the understanding of the brain.
[03:02:34] So a lot of things that we happen to us in our lives mostly affected by stressors,
[03:02:41] which happens to be a catastrophe, by the way. A stressor is just either low grade or high-grade
[03:02:47] catastrophe. We take stress, we start filling these things and then we don't know how to control it,
[03:02:53] we don't know how to diagnose it, we don't understand mechanical processes and then so we ignore it
[03:02:59] until it becomes catastrophic. So now you're in the vehicle accident and your only role is to do certain
[03:03:06] technical things to help the person who's burning alive, but you don't know how to do it. Why?
[03:03:11] Because you don't understand how to break glass. You don't understand the 42 that's required to
[03:03:18] push past the pain and break glass, or maybe if you understood technically that you could just crack
[03:03:22] off this wire and tin and slap it that you could shadow the glass. Or if you're even had more
[03:03:28] a forethought, maybe carry a tool, like a breaching ass, a wing cler-hape, a breaching ass, and you smash
[03:03:32] the window. But then you let that person burn to the ground. Hopefully it's not a family member.
[03:03:37] Hopefully it's not you. But this happens. And this little thing happens to everybody and some kind
[03:03:44] of circumstance. And what I tell people is if it hasn't happened, it's bound to happen.
[03:03:49] The difference between us and our experiences and civilians is that we've seen the detriment
[03:03:55] of not following these basic processes and the understanding of what take places when you don't
[03:04:01] understand them. So what I want to do is lint these processes and understanding so people can self-diagnose
[03:04:09] be aware of what's happening sympathetically, parasympathetically, and then give them more awareness.
[03:04:15] So when they see smoke, they go, oh that's not smoking all. That's water vapor. That's coming
[03:04:20] from our radiator. Oh I'm going to pull over. I'm going to let the car idle and sit. I'm going
[03:04:24] to let it cool down. Oh I carry gloves and a rag in the back of my car. I'm going to pop the
[03:04:29] radiator cap. Oh I realize because I looked in the reservoir, there's nothing in the reservoir.
[03:04:33] I carry coolant because I have a 94 and it eats coolant. I get coolant put it back in it.
[03:04:38] Top it off, sit it, let it idle. Everything seems fine and I'm on my way and I just survived.
[03:04:44] That whole thing is not done and a very tactful and intelligible way and I think we need to change that.
[03:04:51] So it requires processes, it requires progressive learning, it requires a lot of different paths
[03:04:56] that haven't been created, which is the business challenge because it's easy to articulate it,
[03:05:02] to do a podcast, to do a book, all those things, but to create a progressive path for civilians who are
[03:05:08] disinterested in the first place, it's the best in my opinion business problem to have because it
[03:05:14] lends itself to a new challenge, which I'm all about. So what are the courses look like? How do
[03:05:20] let's say you just sold me and I'm like, hell yeah I'm in the game, I'm freaking,
[03:05:26] uh, jocco the, whatever, insurance salesman and you just sold me. What do I do? There's three
[03:05:32] progressive paths to this. The first path is Phil Graserov, Phil Graserov.com. It's the website.
[03:05:39] It's physical training. It's like physical things that you can do. It's gunfighter pistol,
[03:05:43] gunfighter carbine. It's first a tactical combat casualty care. This is via a website via a website.
[03:05:49] So you're, for instance, on on on a video explaining to me how to put a turn of
[03:05:55] it on my kit. This component is you physically come to our training. Okay so there's a difference.
[03:06:01] So you said website, but then you said physical. So you go on the website. You get you sign up for the
[03:06:06] training, right? And then the, the in person physical training is one component of it.
[03:06:11] Uh, that training includes equipment, augmentation and equipment. Look, we're not the, we don't
[03:06:16] on them, and hopefully on medical gear. But I, I will sell you the best medical gear that's made.
[03:06:20] Uh, North American Rescue, the same cat seven turn of kits or cat turn of kits that we used.
[03:06:25] We've seen them save lives. So we sell turn of kits, survival kits, all the augmentation for
[03:06:30] enabling people to be better prepared. That's the fill cross survival. The second component is
[03:06:35] progressive learning. You have to be able to learn progressively at a start point and understand
[03:06:41] the path. I realize that deficiency years into this whole thing. Because people go, oh, I
[03:06:46] train gunfighter pistol, what's next? And I'm like, uh, gunfighter pistol too. And they're like,
[03:06:51] oh, we'll outside of that, what's next? Like, well, I need a holistic path to this. So we hired a
[03:06:58] girl, um, her name's Amber, stay at home, um, nurse. Somebody who understands LMS systems.
[03:07:05] We actually teamed up with Ozmore, which is a learning management based system. The same thing
[03:07:10] we did with online learning with your masters for my bachelor's, where we take, um, an online
[03:07:16] learning approach to get people involved including families. So you can go online. You could sell
[03:07:22] up, you could sign up on, uh, wetheprepair.com and sign up for an LMS component that includes,
[03:07:28] like, stop the bleed. So you take a class where you receive a turnic it, you apply that turnic it,
[03:07:33] and you have an interactive experience virtually. It's online learning, but it's for the
[03:07:38] preparedness minded. It's for people who, you know, who don't have the time or money to fly
[03:07:43] from North Carolina to Utah to take a physical class in person. So there's a progressive learning
[03:07:48] path that touches all the fields that we break down, what's called tellers of preparedness,
[03:07:53] which I can go over, um, of how we, how we, uh, disseminate this information. So people can
[03:07:59] understand it. The last component to that is what I've realized, uh, that preparedness is,
[03:08:04] is it's this thing that brings people together. That's not super toxic. Like everybody can get,
[03:08:10] if you're a liberal in San Francisco or a conservative and moral Montana, you can get on board
[03:08:16] that you need this idea of preparedness to make you better prepared for the worst case scenario,
[03:08:22] generally speaking. So when I have classes in person or online, I see this community building
[03:08:28] built based off of this one thing that's not segregating people, or that doesn't have toxic,
[03:08:34] underlined things about it, right? It's not French. So we started, uh, American
[03:08:39] contingency, which is a community-based program where if we educate people to be better prepared,
[03:08:45] what's next? What happens when you get around people that you like, because you're,
[03:08:50] you're thinking about the same considerations. Like, I want to take care of my family. I want
[03:08:54] to protect myself. Um, how can you inner operate? Well, there's, like, there's a, there's a,
[03:09:00] there's a bigger picture, right? The breakdown of the family unit, breakdown of, uh, communities.
[03:09:05] When we, me and you grew up, we knew our neighbors. We knew our, our neighbors, friends, and family.
[03:09:11] Now, if you see your neighbor and he's checking us now, you're like, you're like, who's that guy?
[03:09:15] Like, why is he looking at me? Like, that's her neighbor, man. Like, what do you do? Like,
[03:09:19] for the first time in history, you could be in an apartment complex with thousands of people
[03:09:24] in a vertical and not no one person and be disinterested and knowing anybody. But what do you do when
[03:09:30] you have to band together because our hurricane destroyed the infrastructure of your town? Well,
[03:09:36] American contingency, we actually have a members dot American contingency dot com that allows people
[03:09:41] to group and network. We have hundreds of groups that are inner operating now, that are like
[03:09:47] minded, that train together, that work together, that build assets and their capabilities together
[03:09:54] and then the break bread together, which is building relationships. So, and every tier,
[03:09:59] and this just happened, which, um, you know, look, I think the, the most impactful thing that you've
[03:10:07] done in your career and your, in your life is what you're showing in, um, and what you do and your
[03:10:15] actions outside of the military, right? So, it's somebody for me as a young entrepreneur I look
[03:10:20] at you and go, these are the right things, writing a book in publication that exposes your
[03:10:26] ideology and your thinking to impact young people who don't have anything to lean on and purpose
[03:10:33] is the most impactful thing that a human being could do, especially from our backgrounds. So,
[03:10:38] I said, I'm going to do pillars of preparedness, teachers thing, let me get a book deal.
[03:10:42] Well, nobody wants to touch me. For years, they thought I was French. I mean, I've been called
[03:10:49] everything from right-wing extremists, which is bizarre because I'm half Asian, um, to, um, you know,
[03:10:55] neo-nazzi to all this weird stuff because I'm, I'm talking about this idea being prepared.
[03:11:03] Just two weeks ago, I signed a book deal with a major publisher that vetted me for two years,
[03:11:10] which means they just paid attention about writing a book on preparedness. And I'm like,
[03:11:16] that's big, that's huge for me. One to be able to impact somebody via the written word which I
[03:11:22] grew up with is impactful, but to a publisher that published Michelle Obama and also Jordan Peterson,
[03:11:29] on both sides of the spectrum is taking a chance on me. And I am allowed, I'm, I'm, I'm humble
[03:11:35] by the opportunity allowed to have the opportunity to pass this word and mainstream to people
[03:11:42] who might be thinking about this, but don't know how to contextualize it,
[03:11:45] is a sign to me that this is making sense to people. Look, it's a hard genre because it's so,
[03:11:52] it's spread so thin. But the time and the place that we live in, our society right now,
[03:11:56] where people's cell phones, their virtual realities, are more important and significant than
[03:12:01] their actual reality. At the detriment to their physical and mental health and wellness,
[03:12:08] it needs, we need to be bringing this to bear in conversations, to get people involved in something
[03:12:14] outside of their cell phone. So it's my mission, but it's become something so different that I thought
[03:12:21] it was going to become as far as scaling a business for a call. Let me tell you what I think.
[03:12:28] This is what I think is very cool. And I was wondering if you would get there just from what you've
[03:12:36] seen so far to what my perspective is and what my perspective is is your sort of like,
[03:12:44] what everything you just said to me is the tip of the iceberg, actually. It's just the tip of the
[03:12:50] iceberg and I'll tell you what I mean by that. If you look it for me, GJ2. GJ2 for me was a huge component
[03:12:59] of my life, not because I learned how to fight, not because I got in good physical condition,
[03:13:04] but because I learned a new way of thinking. And I started to understand the world from a different
[03:13:09] perspective. And I started to see correlations between GJ2, combat tactics, leadership, interacting
[03:13:16] with other human beings, the way I approach problems, the way I thought. GJ2 became a way of thinking.
[03:13:22] And it's actually, I can't say it's GJ2 is that way of thinking because it's everything combined.
[03:13:28] It turns and translates into the sort of just the way of thinking for me.
[03:13:33] Well, when I start thinking about being prepared about handling situations, about reacting
[03:13:42] to emergency situations, about handling contingencies, all those things you can learn,
[03:13:50] you can learn for the specific, for the specific genre of actually applying to a survival
[03:14:00] situation, just like you can learn an arm lock for actually applying to a grappling situation.
[03:14:06] But guess what? You can take that mindset and you can apply to everything that you do. So you can take
[03:14:13] what you're teaching about thinking through a problem, about foresight, about preparing for a certain
[03:14:20] scenario and the contingencies around that. You can actually apply that not just to how you're
[03:14:24] going to handle a fire or an earthquake or a civil unrest, but how you're going to handle a business
[03:14:30] situation that you're in, how you're going to handle an interaction with someone in your own family.
[03:14:36] It's not a hostile interaction, but it's an interaction that you need to think through.
[03:14:40] So the way that you're talking about preparedness and I've told this to people before, they're like,
[03:14:46] well, you know, how good do you have to get a J2? Like if you need to, at a certain point,
[03:14:50] you're a blue belt, you're 225 pounds, Joko. You're okay. You can handle yourself in a self-defense
[03:14:57] situation. Yeah, absolutely I can. What about shooting? Well, what are the chances, Joko,
[03:15:03] that you're going to get into a gunfight? Your 49 years old, you know, you got a life in
[03:15:10] kids, you live in a nice area. What are the chances you're getting in a gunfight? Why do you need to be
[03:15:14] training? Why do you need to, why should I be training? People asked me, why should I work with a
[03:15:19] firearm? Well, let me tell you why. Because yeah, you have this narrow chance that for whatever
[03:15:25] reason somebody enters your house or you're in a situation, somebody tries to steal your car
[03:15:28] hurt you or whatever, where you got to use your firearm. The chances of that, let's face it. They're
[03:15:33] tiny. But guess what you get? Guess what you get from practicing and aren't like shooting.
[03:15:41] You learn how to control your breathing. You learn how to detach. You learn how to refocus after
[03:15:47] you throw a shot and still take the next clean shot without worrying about what just happened.
[03:15:52] You learn how to calm yourself down. You learn how to associate or disassociate from problems
[03:16:00] that are happening right in front of you. So there's applications to the art of shooting a weapon
[03:16:06] that you can apply to everything you could do. There's applications for what you learn in
[03:16:10] Jitu that apply to everything you do. There's applications to, if I went to one of your courses
[03:16:16] and you taught me how to what I should put together for a go bag for a car. Here's what you should
[03:16:22] think through. Cool. I can promise you. I'm going to use that. I'm going to put it go bag
[03:16:26] in my car and I put together a good one. But guess what else am I going to do? I'm going to think
[03:16:29] about a contingency for my business and what we can do as a business to prepare for a certain
[03:16:34] contingency. What do I need to prepare? What do I need to think through as a leader to be ready?
[03:16:42] So you're talking about a narrow, when you talk about this mindset of preparedness,
[03:16:49] you're talking about a pretty narrow thing. How am I going to survive a situation? To me,
[03:16:53] it's applicable to everything that a human being does. Why does a special operations guy
[03:17:02] when there's an earthquake or a flood or a car accident? Part of it, part of the reason that they
[03:17:08] survive is, hey, they know what to do. They know how to break a windshield. They know what to do in
[03:17:15] that specific technique. They technically know what to do. But part of it is, number one, they've
[03:17:21] been under pressure before. And number two, they know how to think through the problem that they're facing.
[03:17:26] So what you're teaching isn't only applicable to survival. It's actually applicable to everything.
[03:17:34] And that to me is it should broaden your audience to everybody. And I like the fact that you said,
[03:17:43] there's a certain alignment with what you're doing. The alignment is, you know, we run one of
[03:17:48] this with businesses sometimes. If you go higher up enough, the alignment ladder in a business,
[03:17:58] you know, you might want to do something one way. I want to do something different way.
[03:18:01] Ultimately, I say, hey, listen, do we want to take care of our clients? Yes, do we want to make some
[03:18:07] money? Yes, we do. Do we want to take care of the people on our team? Yes, we do. So we're going to be
[03:18:11] a line there. Like there's no one, you're not going to, if you and I earn business together,
[03:18:14] you know, I say, well, actually, I don't want to make any money. Or actually, you know, I want to
[03:18:17] screw over our clients. I actually know I don't want to take care of our team. You're not going to say that.
[03:18:21] And if you did say that, we were not working together. But 99% of the time you go to any business,
[03:18:25] they, you can go to a point where you're aligned, where you and I are thinking the same, hey,
[03:18:30] listen, we want to take care of our clients. We want to take care of our team. We want to make some
[03:18:34] money. We can agree with that. What you just said, I don't care where you're from. I don't care where you're
[03:18:39] from. You take, what did you say, a liberal and San Francisco or a freaking redneck in Montana?
[03:18:47] And you pull them into a room and say, do you want to be able to take care of your family?
[03:18:51] What are they going to say? They're going to say yes. Do you want to be able to handle
[03:18:54] yourself in a pressure situation? They're going to say yes. Do you want to be able to take care of
[03:18:57] yourself? They're going to say yes. So there's an alignment that's inherent in what you're teaching,
[03:19:04] that absolutely will bring people together. But it'll make them better, not just because they're
[03:19:08] able to survive. It'll teach them a way of thinking that will progress them in every aspect of their
[03:19:15] life. And that's why I think it's even more powerful than what you're saying because I could take
[03:19:22] some company executives and send them to one of your courses. And yes, it's a cool benefit
[03:19:29] that they're going to learn about survival. Just like I run a program where we take our guy,
[03:19:33] we take civilians. We teach him how to do a room clearance. We teach him how to move between
[03:19:37] buildings. This is a 45 minute session. How to clear a room and how to move from building to
[03:19:45] building in a group. That's what we teach him. Then we say, okay, here's your mission. And we start
[03:19:49] giving omissions. Now, what do they learn about clearing buildings? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at
[03:19:55] all. But what do they learn about leadership? What do they learn about thinking under pressure?
[03:19:59] What do they learn about how to get people to move in the right direction? What do they learn
[03:20:03] about being able to detach and take a step back and not get caught up in the firefight? We use
[03:20:08] we use later attack. Not get caught up in their laser gun and freaking out about that.
[03:20:13] So we take people and put them through this tactical training, not so that they can become
[03:20:18] great tacticians. But so that they can lead better. So what you're doing, hey, listen, it's great.
[03:20:24] You put people through some training that they learn survival skills. But to me,
[03:20:29] an even higher up of a higher archie of benefits is that they learn a way of thinking.
[03:20:37] That's going to benefit them in every aspect of the life. I think that's badass.
[03:20:40] Yeah, appreciate it. The lesson is learned that we found is exactly that most often
[03:20:48] people aren't exposed. They have limited exposure. So when they have the opportunity to do something
[03:20:54] like a five-day experience, we do corporate training. We've done it. I've consulted for Oracle
[03:21:01] and some other companies. It's not about like you said the technical experience. The bottom line
[03:21:07] is they're not going to learn enough reps to build that technical expertise unless that's on their
[03:21:11] own. But the life lessons they learn and taking it back and processing stress like you said
[03:21:17] is so important and valuable. I think what's happening with this introduction of technology in our lives
[03:21:24] is its limiting our ability to be exposed. So one of the advice is that I give for people
[03:21:32] who are like, how do I change my mindset? A lot of people say mindset, mindset, what the hell does that
[03:21:37] mean? And our field of expertise has to do with resilience. Your ability to bounce back, your
[03:21:43] ability wants to press the bounce back and to be stronger to thrive instead of just survive and get by.
[03:21:49] So when we expose people to new challenges, it doesn't have to be extreme. You could just,
[03:21:56] I mean we have extreme versions of this. We do sear school. We'll get a civilian sear school
[03:21:59] which is fun to run. But those guys will come back from that experience from a five-day sear
[03:22:04] experience survival escape resistivate and they'll go, this is the most impactful thing I've ever
[03:22:11] done in my life and I'm like, really? Okay, let me reflect on my impactful experiences.
[03:22:19] Oh yeah, Ranger School. When I was in Ranger School and I'm exposed and I'm vulnerable,
[03:22:25] it's impactful because it's something different and we understand this obviously about even singled
[03:22:30] celled organisms. If you're exposed to trauma, that is the first stage in growth because no
[03:22:37] growth takes place without exposure to trauma. And so whatever that form factor is, getting
[03:22:41] pummeled on the mats and jujitsu, you are learning as you go. You're breaking to build. And so
[03:22:49] what's fascinating about this whole movement that I think is preparedness is that it's positive.
[03:22:55] There's not a lot of negative things that take place in preparing people to be
[03:23:00] prepared for that worst case scenario. You see a lot of positive impacts on community with law and
[03:23:06] enforcement, with relationships, with peoples understanding. And for me, getting all this collective
[03:23:15] of information and making sense of it and being able to clearly disseminate that is the biggest
[03:23:20] challenge. But it's the funniest thing about the business. I mean, the LMS, for example, of creating
[03:23:26] this idea that you could learn online and you could learn about these life-saving things. The
[03:23:31] NACEA here came out and said, why would you teach somebody how to apply it, turn it online? Like
[03:23:36] that don't you think that's kind of like a it's high in liability and it's neglectful? I'm like
[03:23:40] do you could build a rocket ship inside of your garage off a YouTube video? So I could think
[03:23:47] I think I could teach somebody how to stop the bleed with a technical, turn it get applied to their
[03:23:51] body to help them survive. And so I'm fascinated by it's my passion, obviously, but I think you're
[03:23:58] right. I think especially when it comes to leadership, there's a breakdown in our societies.
[03:24:04] With guys not willing to get off the bench and do anything for themselves, I was doing a podcast
[03:24:09] with Pete Blaber. It was a former CAD commander wrote the mission, the man in me, and worked
[03:24:16] just wrote part two of that, which is the common sense way. And one of the things he talks about
[03:24:21] is this idea of collaboration. And when you collaborate with somebody, when you have communication
[03:24:27] and you have reciprocation, then you create the environment of us wanting to learn from each other,
[03:24:33] but you also give people the confidence to stand up in their own communities and do something about it.
[03:24:39] I don't care if it's not their community. Like, yeah, you want to run for city council. That's great.
[03:24:43] You don't and you just want to stand up and get off your house for your family or even for yourself.
[03:24:48] You're fat, you're sloppy, you're lazy, and you can make a change inside yourself because you
[03:24:54] come to that realization. That's good. And for me, there's no revenue generated there.
[03:24:59] It could be a podcast. It could be one way to dissemination. That impact is priceless. It's worth
[03:25:04] everything in the world. So what are people going to do if they want to get in the game with you?
[03:25:12] So they go to, they go to, fieldcraftsurvival.com. That's it. I mean,
[03:25:17] fieldcraftsurvival, look, we're all over the map on fieldcraftsurvival. We'll get a podcast, we get the
[03:25:22] website. We can port you to theweedeprepair.com, which is the LMS or members dot americancontinus.com.
[03:25:31] The start point is start like in this experience, listening to the long-form versions for free
[03:25:38] from YouTube, from podcast, and start developing an understanding of what you want. And then,
[03:25:43] you know, it's all over the map on, look, on Instagram, fieldcraftsurvival. My personal's
[03:25:49] Mike.au.gov, but every day I'm living this. One thing I haven't detracted from is consistency.
[03:25:56] I might be making wrong business decisions. I mean, I might be jacked up in many ways,
[03:26:01] but one thing I could never be criticized for is consistency. So I wake up every single day with
[03:26:06] this on my mind. And in the last six years that I started this venture, I don't think I've had one
[03:26:10] day off. And that's okay. Because that my grind is this purpose. And, you know, selfishly, I don't
[03:26:16] know if this is a tactic. Maybe it's done when we're unaware of it. But I've built a thing around me
[03:26:24] that felt and feels like the team life that I had, the culture that I came from. And I get the
[03:26:30] feeling in it in here, and in your gym, and this, and the people that I've met, and in a similar
[03:26:37] experience, I'm doing the same thing on my end. And a parallel, parallel, but also synergistic
[03:26:43] universe. Is there any mistakes that you made from a business perspective that
[03:26:49] were close to catastrophic? Have you screwed up anything really bad? Or are they all just kind of
[03:26:53] little learners you go? Kind of learners you go. I think early on, I almost made a mistake early on
[03:27:00] where I was told in the diversification of all the things I was doing as too much. And I get that.
[03:27:05] If you look at me even today, I mean, there's a lot of things we got going on. But at the time,
[03:27:11] they all the verticals were spread so thin that nothing was getting traction. And so I was told,
[03:27:18] find one vertical, one thing, one kit, one training session, and double down on that. Create one
[03:27:24] little tiny vertical scale that you can make revenue from and then diversify. And I said,
[03:27:30] not, I can't do that. I said because this whole thing that's preparedness is very diversified
[03:27:34] in the first place. I can't teach mindset without teaching physical training. I can't teach physical
[03:27:39] training without an understanding of a mobility platform into your life. So we have to do everything
[03:27:45] it wants. And so doing that was challenging because it almost broke me. I'm literally it broke me.
[03:27:50] Like, I lived in my business with my girlfriend for four months and we literally lived in a warehouse
[03:27:57] for four months and it didn't have a shower. It had a pump shower that we can't with. That was
[03:28:03] our living circumstance. But you make those sacrifices in business and then all of a sudden everything
[03:28:08] scaled at once. And then you're like, oh, okay, so this is the place to be now. So now it's about tactics
[03:28:15] and you know, developing the right flow supply chain issues, all these things that everybody's
[03:28:21] dealing with in business. It's a it's a train wreck. But I wouldn't try it for the world.
[03:28:25] And where are you based on it? So right now we're in a heaversity Utah headquarters is there.
[03:28:31] We're standing up Kevin Owens, a former sniper team made him on who's unilaterally running
[03:28:36] a Philcraft NC. He's standing that up and then Rahal Martinez, my training director, has 20 subcontractors
[03:28:43] that teach all over the US. He's standing up in Arizona near Phoenix, north anthem, uh Arizona,
[03:28:50] which is north of Phoenix. So we're standing up these small little verticals, uh Evan Hayford,
[03:28:57] who's a buddy of mine, uh Owens Black rifle coffee has given me the opportunity to sell
[03:29:01] and display about the size of this table, Philcraft survival swag and gear that we sell for equipment.
[03:29:08] And that will be in every Black rifle coffee. It's in two right now. I'll be in four next week.
[03:29:13] Be it hopefully in a thousand when it competing with Starbucks. Um, but yeah, we're all over the map,
[03:29:18] man. That's freaking awesome. Well, hey, man, I think we've been going for, uh, I don't know,
[03:29:25] we're yet four hours yet. I don't know. Three and a half something like that. Um, I don't want
[03:29:30] to take up too much more years. I'm going to know you got a little, little, uh, plane to catch echo.
[03:29:35] Echo Charles, you got anything. I do not. Thanks for coming. Good to meet you. Nice meeting you,
[03:29:39] too, man. No questions from echo Charles. Not today. We covered it all. You, you,
[03:29:46] one podcast we were talking about living off the land. Yeah. And, um, you know, I was, uh, I was a
[03:29:52] radio man in my, in the last few days. So I was always travel light and, you know, carry like no food,
[03:29:57] just water batteries in the radio. And, and then we were talking about whatever was, uh,
[03:30:03] like we were talking about the Civil War and how those guys were just, they would live off the land.
[03:30:08] Right. And echo chimed in the fact that, you know, he had also, he could also live off the land.
[03:30:16] That exact. So, all right. He would say, and, you know, if he's going to LA for a couple of days,
[03:30:21] yeah, doesn't need to back a lot. Yeah. Because worst case scenario, live off the land. You
[03:30:25] don't, didn't bring a toothbrush. Brush cool. Roll into Walmart. Yeah. Roll into a wall greens.
[03:30:31] You get a toothbrush. That's what I'm talking about. Urban surprise. That's freaking
[03:30:34] a little bit surprising, man. I'm surprised you didn't ask about like what the best, you know,
[03:30:38] store was to get to the front of that city. Yes, but you see, yes, they're pretty consistent.
[03:30:43] Whatever Brett conceptually, it was the same thing. Same same. Instead of packing a big
[03:30:48] bag or whatever, like, you live off the land. Yeah. Urban sprawl. That's urban land.
[03:30:55] It's the same thing. Yeah. It's an ecosystem. It's an ecosystem. Let the environment provide.
[03:31:00] That's it. Right. Yeah. There you go. Right on. Sounds good.
[03:31:04] Mike, any closing thoughts? No, I just want to just take a second and just say thank you for the opportunity.
[03:31:10] I will, we'll say, just like I say on a lot of podcasts with guys of your caliber and your
[03:31:16] background that you're doing something that I wish a lot of guys with our background would do,
[03:31:21] which is get off the bench and take a stand and commit to this burden of responsibility. What you're
[03:31:28] doing is growing a business, but what you're also doing is impacting young people's lives and
[03:31:33] every walk of a life to do something with their lives. That's purpose. That's different than
[03:31:39] anything else that's a structure and business plan. This is an impact on culture. I think from, you know,
[03:31:46] it's far back as we can record every major battle that's been fought. Those men came from more
[03:31:54] in affected popular culture. Whether it was cut in, you know, P51 Mustangs, making hot rods,
[03:31:59] chopping hoarlies, having an extreme impact. There is a burden of responsibility of men like you and
[03:32:07] me that need to step up and accept that reality. The John Plaster, the John Strucker Myers,
[03:32:13] the world, are the ones who affected my life and me stepping up and doing something about it.
[03:32:18] I'm not talking about just military service. I'm talking about doing something impactful for your life.
[03:32:23] And this, the books, the business, that's the vertical and revenue. That's what scales the hierarchy
[03:32:32] and engros, but the impact it transcends across society. And without you, without your abilities
[03:32:40] to stay in it and stay committed, we wouldn't be affecting popular culture like we are.
[03:32:45] And I think you're leading the way in that way. I'm humbled to have been on this podcast and to
[03:32:50] have the opportunity to speak to your audience, but I just want to let you know that personally.
[03:32:55] It's a big deal. You're doing it. You did it in military service. To me, we come from similar lines.
[03:33:02] That's not the greatest impact. The greatest impact is what you're doing right now.
[03:33:05] It's all appreciate it. Well, thanks. I appreciate it. I'm not sure I'm all about you.
[03:33:10] I've made me out to be, but when I look at what you did in the past and freaking just talking about your deployments,
[03:33:17] I mean, not even, there's not even any words to describe. And I know that you sit there and think of the back of your head
[03:33:24] of like, you know guys that did 12 more deployments compared to your whatever five or six. And I think that's the feeling we all have all the time.
[03:33:32] And you even said it today, there's you found out I found out there's there's someone and not just someone,
[03:33:40] but there's a bunch of people way better than we are at that job and God bless them for going out there and getting after it.
[03:33:47] And that being said, what you did to hold the line, what you did to carry the torch,
[03:33:53] appreciate it. And then back at you once again, what you're doing right now, you know, I think what you're doing right now is
[03:33:59] going to have a huge impact and is having huge impact, getting people's mindset straight.
[03:34:07] In a time when mindsets are all over the map, seeing you do that, that's impressive.
[03:34:15] And I hope you keep doing it, brother. Thanks, brother. We'll do right on.
[03:34:22] And with that Mike Glover has left the building,
[03:34:25] I appreciate my coming on.
[03:34:31] Freaking great story.
[03:34:34] Bottom incredible stuff and what you're doing right now is awesome.
[03:34:40] Talking about preparedness, talking about being ready.
[03:34:46] Seems like we should start fundamentally. There's one area we can start to be ready.
[03:34:50] Today, echo Charles, what do you think? There's always ways to be ready, be more ready.
[03:34:59] I think that self evaluation part was kind of critical. I mean, it wasn't surprising.
[03:35:06] But it was a good reminder. It's like one of those answers that lies right below the surface
[03:35:12] that you already know is there, but it's not always revealed. It's self-reflect.
[03:35:17] Evaluate where are we? You would think that's obvious, but it's not.
[03:35:21] It's not a lot of people go through life without evaluation,
[03:35:23] evaluating where they're at, where they can improve, what they can do better.
[03:35:26] Yeah, it's true. And I'd say this before, where it's in a way, depends on how you look at it.
[03:35:32] It's a good problem to have. It means a lot of our problems are solved.
[03:35:35] You know, if you're not worried about this or that happening, that just means that
[03:35:40] it's not happening very often. You know, kind of a thing, which is a good thing.
[03:35:43] Solved problems tends to be a good thing. Tens do. Okay. Anyway, so we got to be careful about
[03:35:53] that kind of stuff. We do want to keep ourselves ready, strong, healthy. You won't have to
[03:36:00] exercise strength every single day, aside from in the gym. It seems to say, like you doing 20
[03:36:10] reps squats. Right? Like the results, the reason you do that. That reason is not going to be
[03:36:18] demonstrated, displayed, put into play every single day in real life. It's not going to.
[03:36:25] I guess maybe conceptually it might, but no at all. But there's a bigger purpose here.
[03:36:31] It's the same. It's to stay ready, realistically as ready as you possibly can.
[03:36:37] And all these different elements. So while we're on this path of readiness, capability, health,
[03:36:44] mental and physical, we might need some supplementation. Good news is,
[03:36:49] Jocco has supplementation called Jocco Fuel. So let's start with discipline. Go. RTD
[03:36:56] cans. It is the new, the new era of energy drinks. Actual energy drinks. Yeah, my
[03:37:04] glory said something real simple, but real true. I like it. I like that it's healthy.
[03:37:11] You don't have to worry about poisoning yourself anymore. I'm paraphrasing that last
[03:37:16] part. But it's true though. And I said before too, where yeah, you look, sometimes I'm going to drink
[03:37:21] two of those in a row. Sometimes three. I did drink two of them just now. Yes, so you don't have
[03:37:27] to, there's no back end price anymore. It's like, oh wait, I'm actually technically, I'm not worried
[03:37:32] about becoming a type two diabetic this afternoon. Correct. I didn't just drink 72 grams of sugar
[03:37:38] or whatever. No, I had monk fruit, which is technically good for you. Yeah, that was a good point.
[03:37:44] You made this off air, by the way. Where you're like, yeah, there's five calories in the
[03:37:50] new ones, there's 15 calories. Because it comes from food. Yeah. The sweetener comes from food. Not some
[03:37:56] chemical that shouldn't be in your body. Yeah. They can't provide any kind of calories.
[03:38:00] Between five and ten calories per can. Why is that? Like you just said, because it's not chemicals.
[03:38:07] You know what has zero calories? Calories? A chemical. That's what has zero calories. What has
[03:38:13] some calories? Monk fruit has some calories. Yeah. Five. Yeah, so it's one of those deals, man. Like I said,
[03:38:21] the new era of energy drinks. You can drink some energy drinks. There's your energy drink.
[03:38:24] Great there. On the path 100%. Two. That's not like it's like, well, you know, preserve
[03:38:29] it. It's not partial path. 100% on the path. 100%. No deacion. So yes, you can get these
[03:38:35] in it. There's new flavors out by the way. You're going to have to check them out yourself.
[03:38:40] Very impactful, exciting flavors. As far as flavors go. You know, you can get them at
[03:38:45] wall wall if you're in the area that you have wall wall. You can get them at a vitamin shop.
[03:38:51] By the way, talking about flavors, what I find interesting is some families of beverages. They kind
[03:38:58] of all taste the same. They might have a different label on it or a different name. This stuff
[03:39:06] tastes legitimately different. Like you might have one or be like, this is the best thing I've ever
[03:39:11] tasted. You might have an other one, not like it. Try a different one. Yeah. Because there's definitely
[03:39:16] more variation in flavor. With these flavors, then there is with a normal company, a normal drink.
[03:39:24] Who's just like, look, they know what the flavor profile is to get people addicted. So they put
[03:39:29] a bunch of sugar in there, name it something and cool. They're moving forward. We're not doing that.
[03:39:34] We're giving you legit flavor profiles with different tastes. It's a good point for your mind.
[03:39:39] Open. Also, you can get them at originusa.com. Also, as far as supplementation goes,
[03:39:46] we have stuff for your joints, super-cryl oils and joint warfare. Also for your immunity, vitamin D3
[03:39:52] and cold ore. Also, if you need additional protein, if you want additional protein. Or if you want
[03:39:59] dessert. And the ore and ore from dessert. Boom. But I had one last night. Not to go to
[03:40:06] people do it. The peanut butter? No, yeah. One peanut butter. That's a win. A total win. And it's
[03:40:14] not like I was like, let me just choose the pair. I just grabbed anyone and it happened to be that.
[03:40:18] Yeah. So I'm like cool. I went kind of hard though. I don't recommend this all the time. I put
[03:40:24] some chocolate chips in there. On accident put too many. Not that way too many, but too many. And then
[03:40:30] banana. This kind of disqualifies everything you're saying. A little bit. You can't just add chocolate
[03:40:34] chips. It always tastes really good. You added chocolate chips, bro. But it was like almost too sweet.
[03:40:43] I think because of the additional chocolate chips. Yeah. I pondered the whole thing. Okay. You're
[03:40:49] still very, very good. You know what you do? You know those the dark chocolate chunks. You can
[03:40:56] buy dark chocolate. Yeah. Whatever percentage put that in there. That would have been perfect even
[03:41:00] for accidentally put too much. Anyway, there's other flavors as well. So don't, you know, don't
[03:41:07] slack on that either way, whatever flavor you like, milk, additional protein, another clean deal.
[03:41:13] It's not like some sugar filled deal. It is once you put freaking chocolate chips in it. You know,
[03:41:19] it's going to depend on the level of, uh, it's really good to say. It's like a dark chocolate.
[03:41:23] It's like a turning the Pete Roberts with the vegan chip cubes under your tongue. It was just one of
[03:41:28] those things. You know, it happened some time. But I don't put chocolate chips in there. It's freaking
[03:41:32] delicious. Yeah. Totally does. So there you go. Get some milk. Get some, get what you need. Yeah.
[03:41:39] Dark filled.com. And by the way, this is important. It's important. Oh, just this is important.
[03:41:47] I'm going to say something that isn't important. It's important. If you want to get free shipping,
[03:41:53] get a subscription. If you subscribe, you get free shipping. We know we're competing with some
[03:41:59] large, maybe even the largest of organizations, the oral, better shipping stuff for free. No big deal.
[03:42:05] We're shipping for free too. Subscribe. We got you. Yeah. Just true. Also, I mentioned originusa.com.
[03:42:13] This is where you can get American made denim. American made jiu-jitsu geese. Rash guards. So basically,
[03:42:21] a parallel for work, a parallel for jiu-jitsu, and then everywhere in between. Basically,
[03:42:28] a parallel for a parallel for every. For the whole life. Okay. Yeah. 100% originusa.com. Again,
[03:42:34] all made in America from the ingredients or materials. The materials all the way to the end product.
[03:42:43] Boom, all made in America. So you're supporting yourself. You're supporting America as well.
[03:42:48] Also, jiu-jitsu. When when? Big time. Big time. Also, jiu-jitsu. It's called jiu-jitsu. So you
[03:42:55] got a jiu-jitsu.com. And this is where you can get Rash guards, t-shirts,
[03:43:00] trucker hats, right? The Flexit hats, huddies, all this good cool stuff, representing the path,
[03:43:07] disciplining, cost freedom. Good. When things are going bad, this is always some good. It
[03:43:13] comes from it. Iconic video. Words from the man right here. Then the last you want to represent that.
[03:43:19] That's where you can get the shirts on Jocco's store. So, in this video, that's iconic,
[03:43:23] or is it the words? I don't know. I don't know. I had any value-weighted kind of things. Like both,
[03:43:27] I guess, technically, but you're saying you made an iconic video is what I'm here. Either way.
[03:43:34] Good job. Either way. We have a subscription situation as well. For shirts.
[03:43:38] Designs a little bit different. Iconic design. That's a subject for debate and thank,
[03:43:45] but people do seem to like them. You want to then cool-neutral it every month. High quality, by the way.
[03:43:51] Boom, you can subscribe for that to that. It's called the shirt locker. You can get it on Jocco's store.
[03:43:57] Also, subscribe to this podcast. We've got an already. Leave a review if you're in the mood.
[03:44:03] That's kind of cool. Yeah, that's cool. Also, we have Jocco unraveling, which I do with my
[03:44:09] brother, Darrell Cooper, DC. Grounded podcast, Warrior Kid podcast. You can also join the underground
[03:44:16] Jocco Underground.com. We have alternative podcasts. We're going into some pretty cool subjects on
[03:44:22] there. Look, we made that in the event that there's problems in the podcast realm. And people start
[03:44:30] trying to block or erase or put in Jack to Aber. All this stuff that they could do.
[03:44:38] If that gets out of hand, which it could, we will make adjustments and we will be on Jocco Underground.com.
[03:44:45] If you want to support that, you can sign up. You can subscribe to $8.18 a month. Then you can listen to
[03:44:50] all these alternative additional podcasts that we're making. And we're going to do other
[03:44:55] cool stuff that we haven't really even started yet. But we got cool ideas that will come out.
[03:45:03] We have a YouTube channel, subscribe to that. If you want to see the videos that I am the
[03:45:07] assistant director of. And the videos that sometimes I am in them, which is kind of cool that
[03:45:14] I do, I do role. I both assistant direct and I. And you're the talent. Yeah, both talent.
[03:45:20] Either way, yeah, that it is true. We do a YouTube channel video. Does it make you mad when you're
[03:45:28] directing a video? And then I give a little suggestion and it kind of makes a big difference.
[03:45:34] Because you always see my little bit frustrated. You always see my little bit frustrated.
[03:45:40] You kind of, the good thing I'll say, your humble enough to be like, you do the shot.
[03:45:45] Whatever the adjustment is. But then I feel like it. I feel like you have a hard, I think those
[03:45:52] nights you don't sleep as good as you do. If you come in and you got the shots. Well,
[03:45:56] I'll wise man once told me. And when I say once, I mean plenty of times that as a leader,
[03:46:04] I need to always, my goal should be to do your team members idea, not your own idea.
[03:46:10] So from a leadership perspective, you do a good job of going like, yeah, good. That's
[03:46:15] sounds like a good shot. We'll do that shot. I like it a lot. That's good. Even if it's an 80%
[03:46:20] solution. Even if the shots in a person's solution. What I'm asking you, so from a leadership,
[03:46:24] giving you an A minus. But what I'm saying is when you go home at night and the little demon
[03:46:33] start to knock at the door and you wonder why the assistant director had to come up with that shot.
[03:46:40] Yeah, had to say, hey, let me give you a little help.
[03:46:45] Sir, it looks like what happens. You did? It makes me happy.
[03:46:50] You know, we were able to collectively come up with a viable idea.
[03:46:55] You want to know why you got the A minus? Because I can see it in your face.
[03:46:59] I can see it in your face. I can see the frustration when you don't come up with the shot.
[03:47:04] When it's when you have to take advice from the AD, when you have to take advice from the AD,
[03:47:11] yep, that's when I realize it. Yeah, it'll frustrated. I can see it in your face. I can see it in your eyes.
[03:47:16] I can kind of feel it, too. Yeah, well, I'll give you credit. It's still an A.
[03:47:20] Because you still do your best to get the good shot. I haven't had you sabotage a shot yet
[03:47:25] and said, yeah, you know, it actually doesn't work. But I can see that it's frustrating.
[03:47:29] Yeah, well, you keep talking to me with a condescending tone. I'm about to go
[03:47:33] up. See plus on you pretty soon. Yeah. Either way. Anyway, psychological warfare. If you
[03:47:42] know what that is, it's an album with tracks, jockel, talking to you through your ears. But why?
[03:47:48] And how to get past moments of weakness, even if he imposes those weaknesses on you himself.
[03:47:55] As the case mayor may not be sometimes. Yeah. Hey, Dakota Myers got a company called
[03:48:00] Flipside Canvas. Flipside Canvas.com. You can get cool stuff to hang on your wall. I got a bunch
[03:48:06] of books. I got a new book coming out. It's called Final Spin. It's a, we're not sure what to call it.
[03:48:14] It does tell a story. Parts of it are not written normal. It's a strange story. There's some
[03:48:21] interesting characters in there. Literature or something. Maybe literature, maybe poetry, maybe a
[03:48:28] transcript. We're not sure what it's called. It's a new form of writing. If you want to check it out,
[03:48:37] it's called Final Spin. Preorder it so that the publisher knows to print a bunch of copies.
[03:48:43] Leadership strategy into act is field manual. The code, the evaluation of the protocol,
[03:48:46] discipline, because freedom field manual. Way the word you're going to want to end three and four.
[03:48:53] Then we have Mikey in the dragons. We got about face by hack worth. We got extreme ownership
[03:48:57] and that I caught a leadership that I wrote with my brother, Lave Babin, who I also have a leadership
[03:49:02] consulting problem. Leadership consulting company, where we saw problems through leadership, go to
[03:49:09] echelonfront.com for details on that. We have extreme ownership academy, extreme ownership.com.
[03:49:16] Where we have virtual learning and live virtual learning. Leadership is not an
[03:49:24] occupation. You get a shot. Now you know it. You've got to go to the gym every day. The leadership
[03:49:28] gym. Coming get it. Next live event is the master in Phoenix, August 17th, 18th, and then
[03:49:39] Las Vegas, October 28th, and 29th. We've sold all these out. Go to extreme ownership.com. Click on
[03:49:46] events. Get registered. If you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their
[03:49:53] family. You want to help gold star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, mom Lee. She's got a
[03:49:57] charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's
[03:50:03] mightywariers.org. And if you want, if you want more of my colorless chronicleings,
[03:50:11] or you need more of echoes in name, interjections. You can find us on the in the webs.
[03:50:18] On Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, Echo's, Adic, with Charles, I am at Jock and we're like,
[03:50:23] Mike Glover. Mike Glover is on Twitter, Mike A Glover, one on Instagram, Mike.A dot Glover.
[03:50:33] And then of course, he's got field craft survival and field craft survival.com.
[03:50:39] Check his stuff out. Lots of great information. And well, thanks to Mike once again for
[03:50:47] coming on for sharing your experiences and knowledge. Mike, it's awesome. Even more thanks
[03:50:53] for your service for taking the fight to the enemy, which you most certainly did worldwide,
[03:50:58] freaking outstanding. Thank you. And to all our military personnel that are right now out there
[03:51:04] taking the fight to the enemy. Thank you for what you're doing every day to preserve our way of life.
[03:51:10] And the same goes to our police and law enforcement firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers,
[03:51:16] correctional officers, board of patrol, secret service, and all first responders. Thank you for
[03:51:22] preserving our safety here at home. Then everyone else out there, let me ask you a question.
[03:51:31] Are you ready? Are you ready for contingencies? Are you ready to maneuver if you have to?
[03:51:38] Are you ready to save your friends? Your family, yourself. Are you ready?
[03:51:43] Well, you should be. We all should be. So get your Mike Glover on.
[03:51:54] Train, plan, prepare by going out there every day and getting after it.
[03:52:02] And until next time, this is Echo and Jockel out.