Jocko Podcast 320: Counter-Attack The Problems Around You and Solve Them. With Eli Crane.

2022-02-10T19:51:48Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @elicrane_ceo @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:52 - Eli Crane. Navy SEAL, CEO. 2:44:20 - 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 3:11:37 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

Okay, so it was really interesting, Jaco, because as we were turning over things to the Iraqis so that they could hopefully stand on their own once we left, one of the, one of the very last things that we turned over to them was the actual coordinates for the target we were going to hit, and as a point man, I was sharing that responsibility with another, another one of my, you know, another, another guy in that platoon, and so we were, we were like doing blue and gold shifts, it was my night, and so they gave me like, hey, this is the, this is the eight-digit grid we're hitting, these are, you know, maps, you know, of the area that we're going to, we were actually going to obbograbe, which is like a suburb of Baghdad, and which of these like a 45-minute drive from Felusia, and so they were like, you know, notoriously nasty part of the city, yeah, the, like the prisons there that everyone's heard about obbograbe prison, but it's also like a part of town, and it's, it's notoriously a pretty bad part of town. and then you'll spend a month doing that and then sometimes it'll be four months before before you shoot your gun again, you know, and it's like, so I feel like, by that point, you know, in my service, I finally felt like I was, you know, okay, I feel comfortable doing this, I feel like I'm decent at it, you know, the learning curve of doing Patuens, I think exactly correlates to the learning curve of having children and your first kid, you have no idea what's going on, your total idiot, and but you learned so much by your second kid, you're like, okay, we kind of got this, by your third kid, you're like, I'm dialed, I'm ready. Yeah, the people, I guess it's hard to, it's hard to see from the public persona that got put out of Chris of like how funny he was and how like shit talking he was, it just like, and the other thing that sounds craziest, the prank, like he like to do like pranks on people like a little kid, you know. And so always try and, you know, be, you know, be a part of not bringing people down, bringing the group down, but just being positive, you know, because there was some, there was some of that going on in that group, like, you know, some real negativity and, you know, I get it, I understand why, but at the same time, I don't, I don't know that it, you know, was very productive, making us the most cohesive, you know, fighting unit that we could possibly be. I like to, I don't know if you do this, Shaco, but I like to think about sometimes, you know, from a legacy building perspective, like, like, I like to think about my funeral, like, who's going to show up? No, so when I got out of, uh, when I got out of high school, I started working some like odd jobs like construction, you know, at one point I was like a scorekeeper down at Parks and Rec, you know, for like softball games, stuff like that. Like, we would come in, like, we would come in to rooms like the new guys like back to back, like, our hands ready to go because you didn't know what was, you didn't know what were you were going to be, get it with, but they definitely, they definitely loved having new guys around, I'll tell you that. And honestly, that's why I'm an America first candidate, not because I, not because I hate, you know, any, any other country around the world, but I love this country, and it's for so long, so many of our leaders and politicians have put America on the back burner, and they've sold out so many, you know, of our workers, our constituents, and it's just like, hey, you know, I'm off for, I'm off for, you know, free trade, but it needs to be fair, and we need to make sure that we're not shooting ourselves in the foot and shooting, you know, you know, displacing our work for us and taking manufacturing away from many of these folks and families that, you know, count on it. Turns out, once I got out of the Navy and went to like a civilian dock, like laser spine instituted in Phoenix, they were like, hey, man, you got, you know, you got some stress fractures and you're spine, you've got some, you know, some stuff going on, we can either give you a fusion or we can just give you shots and I was just like, okay, I'll just wait. Like, I don't know what's going to, is the playing in a land is like, I'm going to have to PLF out of the plane because there's like, people shooting us like, I have no idea or no context for what that's going to look like. Or like, you know, it was like, it was so position driven in football that, and when you look at it like wrestling, water pool swimming, you know, the types of sports like that were it's like, it doesn't matter. He's like, you know, all the acronyms, BTF, Charlie might, you know, the guys are just rolling because he's, you know, he's like, you know, making fun of all these guys who want to be like Jaco. but yeah, I mean, it was interesting getting, you know, an ambush like that, we're only got four dudes, and then a bunch of a bunch of FelusiusWatteam guys and you're like, you know, at one point, our AOS at the time, he was like, he was on my side of the street, just give us, like, give us, start to finish a little bit. and it affects everybody and this idea that we can just print our way out of this mess that we've gotten ourselves in because we don't have any fiscal responsibility and we have politicians that want to support of, you know, a spending bill so that they can go back to their constituents and say, oh, hey, look, I just got you guys, you know, great broadband, you know, wifi or whatever it is, but knowing deep down that there were, you know, a thousand other things in that bill that wasn't good for the country but now they can come back to hold this trophy up and be like, look what I did for you guys, you know, all across the board, how about energy? But yeah, it didn't, and it was interesting because as I went down that pipeline, you know, I started to think, you know, people would tell me, like, especially my brothers, you know, you always raise your brothers, give each other hard time and my brothers, you know, I probably dished out more than I, than I received, but you know, they would tell me that I was stupid because my grades were awful. And it's like this, it's gets this heated exchange, like, what WTF, or you guys doing, you know, because we had to pass, you know, how that works, we have to pass up to, you know, their hire, I was like, where we're going to be operating. And, but I, you know, it was interesting because like you would, you know, you do your op, you do your mission and then like you've got another, you know, click or two to ex-fill out and, you know, trade it's putting down over half of your guys. I mean, that's just a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, a massacistic move, right, to go and just open up your life, give away your time, give away your privacy, give away any semblance of civility from other human beings. and you have Democrats like the guy I'm running against, guy named Tom O'Hallor and who will try and convince you that inflation, it's not that bad or it's, you know, I've even heard in the media they'll say, well, Jen Socky said, well, you know, it's an upper class problem, you know, and it's like people that are putting gasoline in their cars, people that are buying hamburger meat or any of the consumer products that we buy, those prices are going up and up Yeah, it was a real bad part, and anyway, so they, I can't remember who told me, but they were like, hey, like this is the first night, we're going to give these guys a great coordinates, so I want you to walk over there with an interpreter, well, you know, go outside our main base, go to there where they, where they were sleeping, the Felusia SWAT team, given the great coordinates for the target we're hitting, and I ask them, make sure that they know where we're going, because they're actually going to lead lead us out. To the point where like, I couldn't keep up with it, I had to start like, moon, like bringing guys in from the military that were like, you know, doing whatever job and they'd have, they'd work in the garage and help me out. So that, what you do on that deployment, so, as you're as now, we're DSCliners, this is like 2010 now, yep, 2010 we're DSClinating, we were partnered up with FelusiusWatteam, we were still doing, you know, some DAs here and there, we were doing a lot of fit with them, making sure that, you know, they knew what they were doing, and we actually started me and one of our jails kind of ran the fit, and we were just making sure, we were trying to turn more and more of the op over to them, so by the time, by the time that platoon was over with, if we would go on an op and there were only allowed to be four seals on the ground, you had to have for every one seal, I think you had to have five Iraqis, that was the ratio it had to be, and so the, you know, the closest call I ever had was a night where we got ambushed by three dudes and we only had four seals on the ground, we had, we had, I think, two, three gun trucks, so we had three RG 33s with those remote weapon system, the remote 50 cows, And like, like, I was like, as kind of a seed at, you know, like looked after him, just loved the kid, such a such a solid dude. I'd never seen one either, but he had this, he had the sales, he had the product there and Kevin, they were looking at it and Kevin's like, you know, he's like, is the brand on on this anywhere and the guy's like, no, he's like Kevin just starts ripping him up. I know that, you know, one of the things that I like to tell people, this is how it felt for me was, you know how echo you always get like a, even today, you'll probably get a second win, you'll feel tired and then you'll get a second win. You know, and I was I felt, for the first time I felt like, I didn't feel like I was some great operator, but I felt like I felt confident for, you know, because it takes a while. But yeah, like, even as like, you know, it's a wide receiver that they would make, you know, you know how it was. And so, you know, it's already, you've already got your body armor on, you've got like a machine gun, you've already got like, you know, you're loaded for bearer. There wasn't a lot of free time, but we did allow ourselves like that was our, like, you know, one show that we'd watch together and I was like, babe, we got to figure out how to get boner breacher on each and every one of these units leaving the garage. And thankfully, you know, and I don't know how it would have worked out if we would have done, you know, what he wanted to, he was just being a hard charging, you know, oh, he was, he wanted to make moves and, you know, go just smoke these dudes. And so we did like a video, a video drop off, like, vehicle drop off, like 600 yards from the target, because the argys are pretty loud, and we didn't want them to hear us like foot patrolling in or the vehicles. He'll be like, well, you know, I should think I should hear an offer from and if the one of the other sharks starts talking like, hey, I'll offer you this Cuban will be like, I'm out. Like no one wanted, like, if someone didn't make a touchdown, it's pretty hard for us to be like, yeah, we should just give them the touchdown, even though he didn't make the touchdown, like, that doesn't make much sense. I'm just going to, you know, hang out at the team and like, maybe, you know, sweep for a little bit and like, go to a school every once in a while. So you're talking about the fact that, you know, like, with your faith with, you know, you basically a couple times in your life at critical times have been praying and saying, hey, look, if I'm supposed to go to Buds, open the door, if not close it, you know, I need a way to help my family. It was like a green neon suit that you would wear at a football game or like a ski, you know, like skiing or something, made you stand out, right? And so like, I jump in my little green Honda Civic and I drive over the barrage as fast as I can and without, you know, getting arrested and he's like, he's like, just when you get the Danny's come out behind the bar. Like just like how Eli is like where I don't really watch TV, but there is one show that me and that's literally the one to show that you like. And, you know, I was hoping that the increased maturity was really going to help me out a lot, but, you know, I just worked out whenever I can and I definitely don't feel like I was ready just because of what I came out of, but I was more ready mentally to, you know, go back And it was, it was cool, but I, I like to talk about my failures, because I think that's where the gold off and is Chris actually sat down with each and every one of us with his like little green notebook and he's like, all right, tell me what, what your goals, what do you want to accomplish, what do you want to do?

Most common words

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockel Podcast number 320 with echo Charles and me, Jockel Willing. Good evening, I go. Good evening.
[00:00:08] So there's a a common set of metaphors that get thrown around a decent amount.
[00:00:18] Something along the lines of we as people were authors of our own book and where the star of our own
[00:00:27] movie. You heard these things before? I have. And when you hear them when I just set them and even the way I set them,
[00:00:38] they seem kind of tried and they seem cliched and I guess they are, but like many cliches, they are
[00:00:46] true in many ways. And there's an analogy in those statements with the idea of
[00:00:55] extreme ownership. Take ownership of your life. That's the similar to, hey, you write your own book.
[00:01:08] You get to create the plot is the underlying theme, which means that you have control. And obviously,
[00:01:14] I like that idea. I like that attitude. And I agree with the idea of creating your own plot,
[00:01:24] writing your own book that you're in. But it doesn't quite correlate 100% because
[00:01:35] here's the thing. If you are truly writing your own script, then you actually have control over everything.
[00:01:46] That's happening. You have 100% control over everything that you're writing. You're writing it.
[00:01:52] But in life, in real life, there are things that are beyond your control in war, the enemy gets a vote.
[00:02:03] In life, life gets a vote. Life gets a vote. Bad things are going to happen, the things that you
[00:02:16] don't expect. Disease, accidents, misfortunes, mishaps, catastrophes. And it doesn't matter,
[00:02:26] it doesn't matter who you are or what situation you are in. These things are going to impact your
[00:02:31] life. At some point, no one gets out of life without these things happening.
[00:02:38] No one truly gets to write their own script. So the question is, what do you do with these things when
[00:02:46] they hit you? How do you face these challenges? How do you actually take ownership of your life?
[00:02:54] It is not an easy thing to do. But we are lucky enough today to have someone here that
[00:03:07] has taken ownership of his life and is dedicated his life to service.
[00:03:13] He served in the sealed teams. Once he got out of the sealed teams, created an incredibly
[00:03:20] successful business, he serves his family, serves his wife and his two daughters. He serves his
[00:03:26] faith. And now he is looking to serve his country again as a political leader. His name is Eli
[00:03:37] Crane and he is here tonight to share his experiences and pass on some of those lessons learned
[00:03:45] that he got along the way. Eli Crane, thanks for coming down, man. Thanks for having me, Jaco.
[00:03:52] Appreciate it. Long drive out from Arizona. I know about five and a half hours, but it was a good one.
[00:03:59] Let's jump into this. So speaking of Arizona, let's start at the beginning. Let's start about your
[00:04:03] past and where you came from. Yeah, I actually was born in Tucson, Arizona. My dad was going to
[00:04:11] pharmacy school out there. Both my parents are from Iowa and they moved out here. Go to a good
[00:04:18] pharmacy school and there were a lot of pharmacy jobs in the west. So my dad went through pharmacy
[00:04:23] school and moved to Stown to Yuma, Arizona, of all places. Yeah. And so was there a job or something
[00:04:30] down there? That's why that's why I did it. And it's cool because I remember a lot of my buddies
[00:04:36] in the platoon were always complaining about Iraq and I was like, this is like where I'm from.
[00:04:42] Man, except Arabic street signs and maybe an extra dust storm here there. This is like,
[00:04:47] kind of like Yuma without the good Mexican food. But yeah, so grew up in grew up in Yuma and
[00:04:55] just love playing sports was a football player. Played a little bit of basketball and stuff like
[00:05:01] that wanted to be a pro football player but then I realized you know, ran into reality and realized
[00:05:07] that I didn't have the skills and started looking at other options. Was your, Sir, your dad was
[00:05:14] actually completed pharmacy school and he was a pharmacist? Yes sir. And what about your mom?
[00:05:17] Was she doing the same thing or did you start raising the kids or? Yeah, she was raising the kids and
[00:05:23] she was also, she also did some part-time work at our church as a secretary. So.
[00:05:27] So you were spending time in church then when you were younger? Yeah, I did. How was the attention
[00:05:36] span in school and whatnot? It was good student? No, it was a horrible state. It was funny. I remember,
[00:05:43] thank God, you know, Jaco, you talk about dynamic leadership sometimes are like hey,
[00:05:48] what works for this individual doesn't work for that individual. But it was interesting because I
[00:05:55] remember my mom, thank God, she, you know, tried to be dynamic and parenting me and my brothers
[00:05:59] because my older brother and younger brother were good students but me on the other hand, not so much.
[00:06:05] We either, you're the middle, right? I was a middle and they were, I remember my mom come and home
[00:06:09] from a parent teacher conference and she was like, you know, Ela has in the classroom but he's
[00:06:16] not really here and like I was always daydreaming. I was out at recess, Jason Butterfly's
[00:06:22] whatever I was doing. But yeah, it didn't, and it was interesting because as I went down that
[00:06:28] pipeline, you know, I started to think, you know, people would tell me, like, especially my brothers,
[00:06:33] you know, you always raise your brothers, give each other hard time and my brothers, you know,
[00:06:38] I probably dished out more than I, than I received, but you know, they would tell me that I was stupid
[00:06:46] because my grades were awful. And so you hear, you hear something enough time, your stupid, your
[00:06:51] stupid, your stupid, you start to internalize it and, you know, you can easily make that a part of
[00:06:56] your identity. So I did, and, you know, I started to think I was stupid. And then as I got,
[00:07:02] as I got further along in life and I started, you know, finding what I was passionate about.
[00:07:08] I realized that I wasn't stupid. I just, you know, needed to have that energy and my attention
[00:07:14] funneled in the right direction towards something that I really cared about. So you played,
[00:07:19] did football, did you say football and what? You know, I played football a little bit of basketball,
[00:07:25] but most of my focus was football. Yeah, and you played all through high school? Yeah. How good were
[00:07:30] you? You know, I was decent, but I wasn't, I wasn't good enough to move on to college. I played,
[00:07:38] you know, I played quarterback. I loved, you know, playing quarterback. I loved the team dynamics of
[00:07:44] football, but it was interesting. And, you know, I got to take extreme ownership of this, but my coach,
[00:07:52] we had like three slow white quarterbacks and in high school, our coaches decided to switch us to an
[00:07:58] option, you know, running football team. So it was kind of like, you know, none of us were even
[00:08:04] really in a system that, you know, really highlighted our skills, our preferred skill sets or what
[00:08:11] we were even good at. But, um, and there was, there was one guy that ended up starting over me.
[00:08:18] And, uh, unfortunately, he was juicing at the time. And I was like a scrawny, like hundreds, you know,
[00:08:24] I wasn't that fortunate for him. He was like, I was six one, like 170 pounds, just really,
[00:08:31] really scrawny. He hadn't put on any weight yet. And, uh, he had, he kept throw about 15 yards
[00:08:36] further than me. And he, he got, he, he started. So it is what it is, didn't get, you know, didn't,
[00:08:42] didn't get the opportunity to really start once I got deeper. I started all the way up to
[00:08:47] like my junior year and then, you know, I got benched. And, um, the bottom line is, you know,
[00:08:52] I wasn't good enough to make it happen. And I'm kind of looking back on it, hindsight being what it is.
[00:08:57] I'm kind of glad because I'm pretty pretty thrilled about the route that I ended up going down.
[00:09:02] And then you, you stayed in Yuma, that where you went to high school?
[00:09:08] Yeah, that's where I went to high school, civil high school.
[00:09:11] And your parents were just continuing to work and, yeah, get you ready for life?
[00:09:18] Yep, pretty much just raising me and my two brothers and, um, yeah, I mean, you know,
[00:09:25] I'm, feel pretty fortunate to grow up in the home that I did, you know, my parents loved us,
[00:09:29] they provided for us, et cetera. And, um, you know, I, I realized a lot of folks don't get that.
[00:09:36] So, pretty grateful for that. And then were you planning to go to college?
[00:09:41] Was that part of your plan?
[00:09:42] Yeah, I, I was planning to go to college, but I was hoping that I could go there and play football.
[00:09:47] Like that was my focus, that was my goal. And, uh, and then I also wanted to be in the military at some point.
[00:09:55] And so the advice that I was getting was, hey, if you're going to go to college, you know,
[00:10:00] or if you're going to go into the military, go through, go through school, get your degree,
[00:10:04] become an officer, you know, and you'll get a lead man, the pays better, et cetera.
[00:10:09] And, you know, that wasn't the path I ended up taking, but, um, did you, did you get better grades?
[00:10:16] Did you got older or did you did your brother scar you to the point where you heard to the,
[00:10:22] not doing any school or you at all? No, so when I got out of, uh, when I got out of high school,
[00:10:28] I started working some like odd jobs like construction, you know, at one point I was like a
[00:10:33] scorekeeper down at Parks and Rec, you know, for like softball games, stuff like that.
[00:10:38] I was working at a restaurant as like a bus boy, you know, definitely not on the, on the path to
[00:10:43] this. This is when you got out of high school. Yeah, when I got out of high school,
[00:10:46] did you didn't go right into college? I didn't. Okay. And then, uh, and then,
[00:10:51] I was kind of, I was kind of lost and it was right after my parents divorced, and my parents
[00:10:55] divorced was pretty tough. And so it kind of rocked my world. I was definitely, you know, a little bit
[00:11:00] rattled. So I was trying to figure how old were your parents got divorced? I was 17. So, um, you know,
[00:11:07] thankfully, like I said, I got my parents together for most of my, you know, upbringing, but it was,
[00:11:13] it was a pretty brutal divorce. And so it just really rocked my world and, um, I was, you know,
[00:11:18] took some time trying to figure out who the hell I was, what I was going to do. And, um, and then I started,
[00:11:25] I, I started going back to a community college called Arizona Western, and I started studying
[00:11:31] criminology. And that's when I started getting good grades because I, I loved it and, I loved it.
[00:11:36] And, you know, I was, I wasn't getting straight as, but I think, I had like a three, three, five
[00:11:41] average or something like that. And, uh, you know, I enjoyed it. And I longed that last four.
[00:11:47] So I did that for about two years. I think I was one credit away, like a, a elective away from getting my,
[00:11:55] my associate's degree. And then I applied to go to the University of Arizona.
[00:11:59] Unfortunately, when I got to the University of Arizona, they didn't have like a criminology degree.
[00:12:04] They had like a, some criminal justice degree, but I'd have to go to the L. or Business School,
[00:12:10] and I didn't get into that one. You had to have really good grades to get into it.
[00:12:14] And, uh, and so I ended up being like, okay, I still want to finish my degree. Still
[00:12:20] want to have the opportunity to become an officer if possible. And so I was like, okay,
[00:12:25] being the typical, you know, I was like, okay, what's what path can I go that allows me to do that?
[00:12:32] And so I looked at sociology, the study of society and culture. And I started, uh,
[00:12:38] you know, working on my major and that I switched my major at that point because it's because they
[00:12:43] didn't have the criminology major. Were you thinking about the seal teams or were you just
[00:12:48] thinking about the military in general? Did you know? Yeah. So at that point, I knew I wanted to be a seal.
[00:12:55] Even when I was back in UMB before I came to Tucson, I was never a big part of your or anything
[00:13:00] like that. And I remember, um, when I was even when I was doing the odd jobs, one of my favorite
[00:13:05] things to do at night was to go to Barnes and Noble and just like, you know, really go through
[00:13:11] the military history section that they have there. And I would just read books on special forces,
[00:13:17] PJs, Rangers, Delta. And I just fascinated by the special forces community. And I remember my dad
[00:13:25] gave me a piece of advice in high school. He said, Eli, the trick to being happy in your career is
[00:13:30] basically to pick something you would do for free. Don't, don't pick a career because of money.
[00:13:36] It won't make you happy. And he told me, if I could, if I could go back and do it again, I wouldn't
[00:13:41] be a pharmacist. He said, I could have gone and, you know, you know, been a forest Ranger,
[00:13:46] something like that. I would, I would do that. And so I took that advice on board. And I was like,
[00:13:50] you know, man, I was reading the books. And I was like jumping out of airplanes, blowing stuff up,
[00:13:55] you know, shooting, you know, being with, you know, being in a team environment.
[00:13:59] Puedo, I do that for free for sure. And so I started setting my mind on special forces. Is there
[00:14:06] something that particularly narrowed it down to the seal teams? Yeah, because all the literature that I was
[00:14:12] almost almost all of it said that it was the toughest training in the department of defense.
[00:14:18] And I don't know. There was something about that that just appealed to me. Like, I wanted to test
[00:14:22] myself and see if I could, if I had what it took to, to make it through the toughest training in the
[00:14:28] world. And then I, I loved the water or I thought I did. Yeah. That, that, that, that notion gets tested.
[00:14:37] Yeah, those get tested. It picked up. How old were you when you were figuring all that out?
[00:14:41] Was that when you're already at the University of Arizona? Yeah. So it was even when I was, you know,
[00:14:48] definitely thinking about it, even when I was at Arizona Western, I was also thinking about
[00:14:52] what it'd be cool to be a fed, because I was studying criminology, you know, federal law enforcement,
[00:14:57] or something like that. And then as soon as I got to U of A, you know, I started studying
[00:15:03] sociology, which I really, I was back in that, I really don't like this that much. And I really,
[00:15:10] I could even see kind of the indoctrination within academia at that point. And I was like,
[00:15:16] I'm really not on board with a lot of this extra curricular stuff that they're putting out here
[00:15:20] and kind of the bent that a lot of academia has. And so I started, I found a program in ROTC.
[00:15:30] I started, I realized, okay, there is an ROTC program here. There's a lot of military folks.
[00:15:34] Maybe I should go get hooked into that. And so I did. And I found that they had a Ranger Challenge
[00:15:41] program at U of A. And so I was like, oh, cool, man, I want to see if I can join and get into that.
[00:15:46] Maybe I could learn a little bit and, you know, network and just figure out, start working towards
[00:15:52] getting in the right type of shape. And so I started doing the Ranger Challenge program and,
[00:15:57] you know, we'd have to, you know, wake up, do early morning PT's and, you know, just get some
[00:16:02] exposure to that culture and the leaders within that culture. And so I started doing that.
[00:16:08] And that was helpful. So what year is this? So that would have been probably
[00:16:12] 2000. So were you in college? You know, in September 11th came? I was. I was. I was just starting my
[00:16:22] senior year at the U of A. And I was doing that Ranger Challenge program. You know, my grades were
[00:16:27] decent. I was a lifeguard at the U of A. Rex Center and, and 9 11 happened. I just finished a
[00:16:35] Ranger Challenge workout early in the morning. Got my car turned on the radio and I was driving
[00:16:41] back to where I lived and it was all over the radio and I was like damn. I was actually in a
[00:16:46] agricultural fraternity called Alpha Gamma Roe at the time. So I drove home and I was like, I woke up
[00:16:52] all the guys who were still asleep and I was like, dude, you guys got to get out here and watch this.
[00:16:56] And so we all, we all got to watch it and everybody was just obviously stunned and surprised and
[00:17:02] pissed off at the same time. And so I remember wanting to join, you know, obviously I, I wanted to
[00:17:10] join the military and I remember, you know, taking a couple days to think about it, but I'm just like,
[00:17:16] I got to go, you know, and I remember calling my mom and my dad and telling him, hey, look, I've
[00:17:22] decided I'm going to go join the military. I'm going to drop out of school and join the military.
[00:17:26] Because I just really felt like, hey, there's never going to be a time like this, you know,
[00:17:31] where the nation needs the next crop to step up and serve. And so I actually dropped out that
[00:17:38] week when, you know, dropped out all my classes and then went down, started talking to the recruiter
[00:17:44] and playing those games with the recruiter. And then, with then probably, I think, seven or eight
[00:17:49] days, I was, we were driving up to Phoenix so that I could get on a plane and fly to Great Lakes and
[00:17:55] it was pretty quick. Dude, that's really quick. Yep. And was it like a Seal contract? Was it,
[00:18:02] what was it a Seal contract? Yeah. Was it called Diver? I don't think it. I don't think it.
[00:18:07] I did back in 1820. No, it wasn't called that. I can't remember what it was called, but they did
[00:18:17] guarantee me the opportunity to do a screen test and try out. Yeah, which is if you think about that,
[00:18:24] is the shallowest guarantee you could ever get to sign your life away. Right. Hey, here you
[00:18:30] sign this piece of paper for six years in the Navy and you will be guaranteed a chance to take a
[00:18:38] street, screening test that might get you picked up for buds. Right. That's a slim offering.
[00:18:43] I know it. And you Rogered up. I did. I did. And, you know, I'm, I wouldn't look
[00:18:50] in back on it now. I don't think I would change it. Even though I never, I've still to this day,
[00:18:56] never finish my degree, you know, for a couple different reasons. But I think this, I think it was the
[00:19:03] right thing to do. And I'm glad that, you know, there were a lot, there were thousands of Americans that
[00:19:08] did do exactly that. Yeah, Tim Kennedy was saying that same thing. He went down to the recruiter
[00:19:12] like September 12th or whatever. Yep. And he said the line was around the building and everything.
[00:19:18] So you showed up to boot camp in Chicago? Yep. And was it, was it a shock to the system?
[00:19:25] Well, big time. Big time. Yeah. I don't know who doesn't get a shock when he showed the boot camp.
[00:19:32] Even Navy boot camp, which is, you know, relatively mild, I guess compared to, like, let's say,
[00:19:40] the Marine Corps boot camp. But just the immediate loss of all your personal freedom,
[00:19:46] right, personal space, it's kind of a, it's kind of a little bit of a shocker echo.
[00:19:51] Oh, I understand. And what were you going to be? So I, uh, back then, I mean, obviously your goal
[00:19:58] is to be a seal, but you had to take a rate, right? Yep. What, uh, Gunners Mate was a seal source
[00:20:04] rate at the time. I think they're only at five o'clock. So I mean, I was like Gunners Mate. Yeah,
[00:20:08] cool. That sounds awesome. So I, so I chose Gunners Mate. And, uh, thankfully, I chose a cool one,
[00:20:14] because I was going to spend some time in that rate. Yeah. Did you take the screening test?
[00:20:19] I did. You passed it? Not the first time. The second time. Yeah, man. This, you know, this is something
[00:20:28] even before. Or older you at this point? I am 20. I'm 21 years old. Okay. So, um, I didn't pass my
[00:20:37] first one. I passed, I passed the second one. Like I was running in like steel, the, you know,
[00:20:42] back when you had to run the screen test and like steel, towed boots, knee knockers. Yeah. And I had
[00:20:48] gotten some, what I would consider today probably some pretty bad gouge from a team guy, um,
[00:20:53] that I talked to because I didn't know any seals. And I, you know, but my recruiter, he was like,
[00:20:58] hey, man, there's some seals out at YPG. You'm approving around her at jump school. We can go talk
[00:21:03] to him if you want. And I was like, yes, I'd love to go talk to him. So I remember going out,
[00:21:07] he drove me out there and I talked to one. And, uh, he was like, he's like, look, man,
[00:21:13] the only way you're going to know is if you, if you have what it takes, it's just a show up and
[00:21:17] do it. He's like, can you pass the screen test? And I was like, yeah, I think I can't. And so,
[00:21:23] that is, that is the worst advice ever. So that's what I was rolling on. Like this guy is a
[00:21:28] Navy seal dude. This is what he told me. So, um, and then, so I, you know, once I got to the level
[00:21:33] where, you know, I could do like, I could pass the screen test. I was like, okay, I'm good to go.
[00:21:38] Let's do it. And then when I got, like, I was, but even when I ran the screen test on my own,
[00:21:44] I was never running in and still towed boots and pants and I don't, and like a fool,
[00:21:51] when I did, when I did this stuff, I didn't, I didn't do it together. And that's a big deal.
[00:21:55] There are a lot of people don't, like, people don't, yeah, dude, I can do 42 pushups. Yeah, I can do
[00:22:01] I can do six pull-ups. I can, I can do all these things individually, but you're not running
[00:22:06] them together. And when you start running them together with, with the time, um, requirements in
[00:22:11] between, it'll gas you pretty quick. So, the first time I ran it, man, I was dry heaving,
[00:22:18] coming across the finish line and, uh, failed. But I got a chance to go back and do it again.
[00:22:23] The next time, like, I came in with, like, maybe a second left. And, uh, they're like, all right,
[00:22:29] sweet, you get your silk contract, and I'm like, yes. And so, um, graduated from boot camp,
[00:22:35] went to Gunners made a school right there in Great Lakes. And at that point, they let us work
[00:22:41] out with some actual seals. We got to do CLPT, I think three times a week. So I started doing that.
[00:22:46] And it was kind of funny. I had, I have hairy legs. And so, there was this instructor.
[00:22:51] You would Joe Biden apparently. Wow. Wow. He's, I didn't realize. You see that video, right?
[00:23:00] I mean, is there a crazier, like, no combination of randomness that you could put into a video
[00:23:06] besides that Joe Biden and hairy legs and the kids in the blonde hair and the white. The most
[00:23:12] insane thing. Yeah, so anyways. So you got hairy legs. Yeah. And so one of the instructors,
[00:23:19] the name was instructor hater. He, he wouldn't even let me speak English. He made me speak in
[00:23:24] bookie. Like, and I used to be real good at doing the truth. But it was like, no, like, he made me
[00:23:30] run around and like, you know, go report to so and so over there. I would run up to him and I,
[00:23:35] he'd make me report like that and it, they loved it. But whatever. And yeah, so did the CLPT
[00:23:42] thing graduate graduated, Gunners made a school and then went immediately to Buds in class
[00:23:49] up with Buds class 242. Would you get what you expected at Buds? Yeah, and more and more. And,
[00:23:58] you know, it was, it was really, it was really interesting because I actually made it through
[00:24:06] how weak on my first, on my first attempt. And, you know, definitely not heroic, more like hanging
[00:24:13] on by the, you know, hanging on. What would you have a trouble with? So, yeah, yeah, I was, I was
[00:24:22] having trouble with Buds. So, when I was born, I was born with some doctor say that I had asthma,
[00:24:29] some said I had exercising due sprungitis, whichever diagnosis is correct at the end of the day,
[00:24:35] my lungs only functioned at about 60 percent and that, you know, of what they're supposed to. And that's
[00:24:40] after even like an albuterahit or treatment. And so, you know, you can imagine, you know, if your lungs
[00:24:47] are only functioning at 60 percent and you've trained to the bare minimum, you're going to have
[00:24:52] a tough time. And so, I was having a really tough time. And so, I made it, and I, I walk around
[00:25:00] it about 225 pounds. I had because my lungs don't function at the level they're supposed to,
[00:25:07] I had to get down to a hundred and seventy five pounds just the past of screen tests, right?
[00:25:13] It's like a car, right? We can't put a bigger engine in this thing, you know, we can't do a lot to it.
[00:25:18] How how do we make it? We start stripping weight out of it, throw the back seat, you know,
[00:25:22] like get rid of weight. Because just saying it is only going to go as fast as it goes. And so,
[00:25:27] started really, you know, getting really thin, really thin, and that, that, this is while you're in Buds
[00:25:33] or I had to get, I had to get really thin before you can go into Buds just because, you know,
[00:25:37] was this while you were at GMA school? Yeah. So while you're GMA school, you're just dropping weight.
[00:25:42] Yep. Trying to get, trying to get the run faster. Yep. And you show up at Buds
[00:25:47] in your herd. Yeah, and it wasn't, honestly, it wasn't just that. It wasn't just that. Like,
[00:25:52] I was immature as well. You know, I had, that's one thing that, like, when I talked to people about
[00:26:00] seal training in Buds and the fact that they're trying to form you into a team guy,
[00:26:07] when I first showed up, I was immature and I was like, I was looking out for number one. I was
[00:26:11] looking out for me. I was like, man, and it wasn't like I was a jerk, but if, if I'm struggling,
[00:26:18] if I'm on the struggle bus over here, and I haven't grown up in maturity yet, I'm like, man,
[00:26:23] I got to, I gotta focus on myself. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna volunteer for that to spot
[00:26:28] under the boat, man. I'm hurting, right? And so, after post-heal week, I failed a,
[00:26:36] evolution called life saving, which sometimes is a passer fail, sometimes it's a weed out
[00:26:40] evolution. And so life saving just for people to understand, this is where the students have to
[00:26:48] rescue the instructors who are allegedly drowning, and they're actually not drowning. They're actually
[00:26:54] just getting ready to kick your ass. So, and they have different levels. The first one is kind of
[00:27:00] passive, and then it goes up those to the fifth level, which is you're in a fight with another
[00:27:06] dude in the water. And you mentioned that it's past fail, but you also mentioned that there's a decent
[00:27:15] amount of subjectivity to it, where if you have a guy that's coming through buds that maybe he's
[00:27:20] meeting the standards, he might even be crushing the standards, but he's not a good, doesn't appear
[00:27:26] like he's gonna be a good teammate. Doesn't it? Doesn't appear to be the kind of guy you'd want
[00:27:30] your platoon as an instructor? Yep. They can weed that guy out. Yep, at least that's the way it used to be.
[00:27:37] Yep. And that's what it was. And it's, I'm glad. I, you know, I look back on it. It's one of the
[00:27:44] best things that ever happened to me. You know, I got, I failed that event. They gave you like in most
[00:27:50] evolutions of buzz. It'll give you like two or three chances to pass it. I failed it three times.
[00:27:54] So they sent me to an academic review board. When you were, when you were failing that,
[00:27:59] was that just like horrifying? I can only imagine that failing life saving would be, yeah,
[00:28:06] kind of like drowning. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was horrifying. Like I remember,
[00:28:13] we had one instructor who was a very large man, very large man. I remember getting him back to the
[00:28:18] pool wall, pinning his hands on the side and I was just smoked. And I got up on the pool deck and I'm
[00:28:24] still holding his hands on the pool wall so that, you know, he doesn't, because he'll just, he'll just
[00:28:29] fall into the pool if you don't, if you don't pin him to the wall. And so I'm pin him to the wall. I get up.
[00:28:36] I get out of the pool deck and like I'm supposed to like cross his hands as I bring him up. You know,
[00:28:41] you don't want to talk about it. So he can like spin the other way. So he can spin with his back
[00:28:45] towards me and then I can put him put him on my legs and slowly let him down. So if he was a
[00:28:51] real drowning victim, I'm not creating more trauma. And I remember I spun him the wrong way and
[00:28:56] his junk like landing right on the pool deck and I heard him go, and this, he was his biggest
[00:29:02] doctor and I'm like 170 pound bud student. On my third try and I'm like, oh my god, I'm done.
[00:29:10] And went to an academic review board and yeah, they were, I remember walking in and they were like,
[00:29:17] all right young man, we're looked over your record and this is post-held week. This is post-held
[00:29:21] week. Meet yeah, me and my roommate were both dead. I think we both got boarded that day with one
[00:29:28] other guy and they were like, look, you're obviously tough. You made it through how weak, but we need the
[00:29:35] best of the best here and you're not meeting up to that standard. They were like, you fell to run,
[00:29:40] you fell to swim, you fell to no course and here is the big, here is the big one and you're
[00:29:46] at you're ranked in the bottom 25% of your class because in sealed training even back then we were
[00:29:51] doing peer e-vails. And so that's a big deal. And so they're like, we're going to recommend that
[00:29:56] you come back in a year and I was like, okay. And so you know, that was a tough, tough blow for
[00:30:03] me because they actually ended up keeping my roommate who had basically the same stats that I had
[00:30:08] was ranked the same the same way. So that was the keypim, you know. Honestly, I don't know,
[00:30:13] but they didn't tell me, but he actually made it all the way to third phase, couldn't pass this final
[00:30:21] swim and he got, he got booted and he was a, he was a little dude as well, but I felt really bad for him
[00:30:29] because he never went back. When you were going through hell week, what, were you solid and how
[00:30:35] week in terms of mentally? You know, I would say, I wouldn't say solid, I would say my mentality was
[00:30:44] hanging on for dear life. And I think that was, you know, the difference between my first
[00:30:49] how weak and my second how weak. If I say hanging on for dear life, you mean you're sitting in the
[00:30:55] water on Tuesday night and you're like, like, can we get a little bit further and you just did that
[00:31:02] the whole time, basically? Yeah. So the interesting thing is, is that I never thought about quitting.
[00:31:10] However, I remember we broke out Sunday night and then Monday night, I remember standing in line
[00:31:18] with, you know, the class, you know, where they're coming around with flashlights looking at you
[00:31:23] and I'm thinking of myself. I've never been this cold. I've never been this wet. Never been this tired.
[00:31:28] This is not Monday night. This 24 hours in and I've still got another four and a half days of this.
[00:31:34] No, and I'm certain I think of myself. There's no way. And what I was trying to do is, I was trying
[00:31:40] to eat that elephant in, you know, in one bite. And I mean, that's, I think that's probably the
[00:31:46] thing that gets most guys in training is that like when you've got a five and a half day block
[00:31:52] like that and you try and eat it in one bite, it's just mentally overwhelming. No, but if you're able
[00:31:58] to break it up into, I'm not even going to worry about Friday afternoon. I'm just going to focus
[00:32:02] on, I know I get to eat chow in two hours. I'm just going to, I'm going to make it to chow. And if it
[00:32:07] gets tougher than that, I'm just going to make it through this race. And if it gets tougher than
[00:32:11] that, I'm just going to put my right foot in front of my left foot and from, and you just break
[00:32:15] those goals down. And that, that was something that you, you think you're decent at doing until
[00:32:21] you get into the eye of that storm and you're like, that was a big difference between how we
[00:32:27] go on and how we do for me. But I, I bottom line is extreme ownership. I got what I deserved
[00:32:34] and it ended up being a blessing. How, were you not just super freaking angry when you got dropped?
[00:32:42] I was, I was, I remember, you know, you probably know, uh, Dan Taver. So I remember talking to
[00:32:50] instructor Taver at the time. He was, he was there in my board. He was the proctor in my class.
[00:32:56] And, you know, he pulled me aside. And it was really cool because he didn't have to do this. But
[00:33:00] he was just really encouraging. He was like, hey, don't, don't let this, he said something in
[00:33:04] effect. I don't let this be the end. Come back. Do it. You can make it. And he's like, and he's like,
[00:33:11] and don't, basically, he's like, um, don't feel bad about this. Just make it right. And that was
[00:33:18] really cool coming from a guy like that. Who at that point in my life, I don't even know if, you know,
[00:33:22] he, you know, cared about it. Because, you know, the persona that buzz instructors put on. But it was
[00:33:27] just really cool. It was like, it was like an older dude who'd been there done that, sealed chief,
[00:33:32] and just a mentorship moment. And that that was really cool that he did that.
[00:33:36] So then it's trick or treat to the fleet. Yep. Give me something good to sweep. Oh, yeah.
[00:33:41] Where'd you get stationed? So the, the detailer gave me, hey, your options are you go to Japan,
[00:33:46] or you can go to Virginia, or you can go to Jacksonville, Florida. And so Japan sounded kind of cool,
[00:33:53] but I was worried that if I went there, it'd be harder to get back. And so, and I really didn't
[00:33:57] want to go to Virginia because I heard a lot of bad things about being in the fleet. There's a lot
[00:34:01] colder. I was like, Florida's kind of nice. I mean, Rhonda Santas wasn't there at the time,
[00:34:06] but I, I'd still heard good things. And so I was like, uh, I'll go to Florida. I'll go to Mapleort
[00:34:12] and I remember Jaco, I drove, I drove across country and showed up there and I looked at that
[00:34:19] ship. And I was like, and I knew I was going to be sleeping on that ship for the next at least
[00:34:22] cup year or so. I actually slept in my car, man. I was like, oh my god, this is going to suck.
[00:34:28] And it did suck. What are you in E3 at this point? Yeah. So you check on board your ship.
[00:34:35] Did you get skullary duty out of the gate? Like, like, mass X. Yeah. No, I didn't, um, matter of fact,
[00:34:43] I got hooked up on that on that regard. I never went crank. We call it cranking. Yeah,
[00:34:48] that's cranking. Yeah. That's cranking. And, uh, my, my rotation didn't come up for probably
[00:34:54] until I'd been on the ship like a year or so. And instead of going cranking, I went and did
[00:34:58] something called the Hab team. And we were just rehabilitating spaces. It was the easiest duty
[00:35:04] I'd ever had on the ship. I worked for the, I worked for the post office clerk. And, uh, like,
[00:35:12] they would just pick a space or two every week. And we would just go in. We would tape off the space.
[00:35:17] We would tape off everything that couldn't get painted. And we would just paint it. And other than that,
[00:35:21] like, that's all we had to do. And they pulled me out of my division. So I didn't have to do any of
[00:35:26] the divisional work. I wasn't standing watches. And it was like the, it was like the easiest duty I
[00:35:32] ever did. All my buddies that were, you know, and, and the gunners made division were so pissed off
[00:35:37] at me that couldn't believe that I was getting a good deal. So we had this little gym on board.
[00:35:42] It was probably the size of this room that no kidding. Maybe a little bit bigger.
[00:35:47] Well, what ship was it? It was the USS Gettysburg. It was an ages missile cruiser.
[00:35:51] CG64. And, uh, there were over, like 450 people on the ship echo. So there were two gyms about
[00:35:59] this size. 400. And they would close it down if like the ship was rolling too much. And so it was like,
[00:36:07] you would show up, hoping to get a workout in two treadmills. And then, you know, they were almost
[00:36:13] always busy. And the food you're eating is garbage. You know, and so it was like, not only that,
[00:36:20] but you would typically, underway, you would work your regular day. Like, let's just say, you know,
[00:36:26] six in the morning to five in the afternoon. And then every single night you would have to stand
[00:36:32] to watch. You would either have the eight to midnight or the ballast before as we called it,
[00:36:37] where the four to eight. And so your sleep was always interrupted. You were always getting treated like
[00:36:42] crap in the in the fleet. And, um, but it, again, it was good for me. It's what I needed to grow
[00:36:49] up. And even in those circumstances, I said that I was immature when I went through Buds the first time.
[00:36:56] And I still think I'm a little immature now. It's a progression. And, uh, but it was cool because
[00:37:03] I started, I started looking back on, okay, what did I do wrong? How do I make this? How do I make
[00:37:09] this right? How do I improve while I'm out here? And even in those circumstances, I think I wasn't
[00:37:14] under a boat anymore running with that heavy boat or, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't step up
[00:37:19] for my buddies in that circumstance. But there were times where we were all tired. Nobody wanted
[00:37:25] to take the watch or nobody wanted to take the trash out or nobody wanted to do this. And there were
[00:37:29] times where I could practice, you know, taking it, you know, taking one for the team. And that's,
[00:37:35] that was part of what I needed to do. And just learn how to be that guy. You know, when, um,
[00:37:41] when the team needed you. And so and just grow up a little bit. But so, so how long did you
[00:37:48] spend on that ship? Two and a half years. Did you do one deployment or two deployments? Two.
[00:37:53] They said that seal instructors and the recommendation on on my exit, Evalor, whatever it's called,
[00:37:59] was he like, we recommend he comes back in a year. But the seal of a ship won't get a replacement
[00:38:06] if they, if they let you go to a special program so that they were like, no, it's just, we're,
[00:38:11] we're, you're staying here. We can't be undermaned. And so at what point did you commit to like,
[00:38:16] I'm going back above them and make it? So this is an interesting story. And it, it talks about,
[00:38:23] you know, it's all about taking, taking risk at times because Jocca, when,
[00:38:29] when my orders came through to go to Buds, I still had a year left on my contract. So I could
[00:38:37] agon the buds either past or failed. And then, you know, whatever, or if I failed, I could just get out.
[00:38:44] Yep. The Navy was like, nope. You're, you're going to read on this for another four years
[00:38:49] if you want those orders. They dropped that on me the day that I was scheduled to leave the ship. I was so
[00:38:54] pissed. And I was just like, I can't believe it because I'm face, I'm staring down the barrel.
[00:38:59] Because I, I used to get the four year mark now. I was at the three year mark. Okay. Oh, so your first
[00:39:04] enlistment was like three years because you didn't get through Buds. Well, it was, I had a four year
[00:39:08] enlistment, but when my orders came through, I was at my three year mark. Got it. So I had enough time
[00:39:13] on my contract where even if I went to Buds failed out, I could just get out. I'm out, clean, clean
[00:39:18] escape. Don't have to come back to the fleet. But the Navy was like, nope, you're signing a
[00:39:22] four. They knew they know that how much of leverage they have on kids that want to go back to
[00:39:27] seal training or do seal training or special program or whatever. And so like I remember calling
[00:39:32] some mentors in my life, I was like, hey man, this is what I'm staring at. What do you think?
[00:39:36] And I also, I was just praying. I was like, Lord, this is the only thing, this is the only thing
[00:39:43] on my heart. And I was even praying while I was underway on the Gettysburg. I was like, Lord,
[00:39:47] if this is not what you want me to do, please take it from me. Because I don't, I had, I
[00:39:52] want to walk in your favor. I want to, I want to be the man you want me to be. And I want to do what
[00:39:56] you want me to do. But this is the only thing on my heart. And so if it's not what you want me to
[00:40:01] do, please, like path me out of here, you know, send me down the path, whatever path you want me to
[00:40:07] go down. Because I'm a knucklehead. And if you don't help me and guide me and direct me in this,
[00:40:13] I'm going to probably make a bad decision. And so, but yeah, it was still, it was still,
[00:40:18] so the fire still burned, you know, to go back, even knowing that if I didn't make it, I was going
[00:40:24] to be right back in the fleet. So that's one of the hard things about the Navy, all you
[00:40:30] young men that listen to this show, you know, is it, at least in the Marines or in the Army, man,
[00:40:35] it's like, if you'll make it through a program, you can go being a conventional unit in fight,
[00:40:39] bro, you're going to be fighting some rust and some dust in the Navy for a polishing some brass,
[00:40:47] sweeper sweeper's man, man, your broom did. It's bad. And it must have been super hard to prepare now
[00:40:55] since you're on a ship underway to deployments in two years. You're eating food that sucks for
[00:41:00] your health. Chili dogs, baby. Chili dogs. How did you stay in shape or how did you get in shape?
[00:41:08] Once I got, once I knew that my orders, once I submitted my package, I went right back to
[00:41:14] a, I got a drop a bunch of weight. I got in a little bit stronger, put on a little bit more muscle,
[00:41:19] but I started dropping a weight again so that, you know, I could keep up on the runs and whatnot.
[00:41:25] Sometimes they'd let us run around the ship. Sometimes, you know, sometimes they wouldn't, but,
[00:41:32] you know, I just did any time I got the opportunity to work out, I did. And, you know, I was hoping
[00:41:38] that the increased maturity was really going to help me out a lot, but, you know, I just worked out
[00:41:46] whenever I can and I definitely don't feel like I was ready just because of what I came out of,
[00:41:51] but I was more ready mentally to, you know, go back and I think that was where my biggest,
[00:41:57] where my biggest issue was. And so you get back to buds easier this time or maybe not easier,
[00:42:03] but you're more mentally prepared. Yeah, it was, it was easier in the fact that I was mentally
[00:42:09] prepared and I knew, you know, I'd seen a lot of the movie already. The difference was,
[00:42:16] is that when I got back the second time right off the bat, I got pneumonia. And so I failed. So I already
[00:42:22] have horrible lungs and now I've gotten pneumonia, like just ravaging them. And so I failed my
[00:42:27] first two runs. And like so they were like, look, if you fail one more run, you're done, we're
[00:42:34] dropping you and I hadn't even got back to hell week. So I'm like, oh my god dude, I'm not even
[00:42:38] going to get back to where I was where I made it to the first time. And so thank God, I passed my
[00:42:46] third run and got an opportunity going to hell week. And so thankfully, you know, I made it,
[00:42:54] you know, passed that run, made it through hell week. And then, but I was on the bubble, the
[00:42:58] entire rest of seal training for runs. Yeah. And I was a horrible runner. Every time, like, came in,
[00:43:04] like, made, you know, four, three, two, you know, one second. Exactly. Exactly.
[00:43:12] Was hell week? Was it, was it better going through the first time when you didn't really know
[00:43:18] what to expect or the second time where you did know what to expect? Which one was better,
[00:43:22] which one was worse? For me, the second one was much better, just because I think that there's a
[00:43:30] lot of, you know, fear and anxiety going into something like that that you know has taken out
[00:43:35] so many men better than you or perceivably better than you and stronger than you and faster than
[00:43:41] you. And you can't argue with the data. I mean, so many guys don't make it through that.
[00:43:45] And so I knew I could make it through it. And I also knew there was a part of me that was like,
[00:43:55] I don't stay to wake for maybe 48 hours before going into hell week the first time. Maybe,
[00:44:01] probably not even that long. Probably like 30 something like that. And so there's a part of you that's
[00:44:07] like, if you've never done something, okay, how am I going to stay awake? How's the body even
[00:44:11] do that? Stay awake from five and a half days and just get destroyed the entire time? And so there's
[00:44:16] always that part of you that's like, okay, I know they can't kill me, but this just doesn't make a lot
[00:44:21] of sense. At the end of the day, I'm exhausted, I'm tired. What would, what would things look like if,
[00:44:26] if I didn't sleep for five, five and a half days? How would I function? How, so the fact that I
[00:44:31] had already done it and gone through it, I was like, I know I can do this. I know that, you know,
[00:44:36] one of the things that I like to tell people, this is how it felt for me was, you know how echo
[00:44:40] you always get like a, even today, you'll probably get a second win, you'll feel tired and then you'll
[00:44:45] get a second win. That's how I felt. I felt like every time like, you know, five, six, seven hours
[00:44:51] into, you know, into it, my, I'd get tired. I'd just wait an hour and then I'd get a second win and
[00:44:56] I'd be right back in it. And that's kind of cool that your body works that way, but they also said that
[00:45:02] your body will stop like shutting, it'll start shutting down functions that aren't necessary to
[00:45:08] survival like growing fingernails or facial hair. I don't know if that's true, but that's what they told us.
[00:45:15] Yeah, that's crazy. And, and then that's it. I mean, you, you, you, you make it through buds this second
[00:45:21] time, even though you're on the bubble the entire time for runs. Yeah. But you make it through.
[00:45:28] I make it through. And then, um, I'm told I get orders, still team three. Most of my class got
[00:45:36] orders to the East Coast. They're only six of us is stayed on the West Coast. Sure. How is one of the
[00:45:41] fortune once? So you get through it, you graduate and where'd you get orders to?
[00:45:48] Uh, still team three. And did that, the most your class get West Coast, these coasts, even split? How
[00:45:54] did, how did they do that? So only six of us stayed on the West Coast, everybody else went to the East
[00:45:59] Coast. So I was, I felt lucky. Dang. And where was team three at the time? What was going on?
[00:46:05] Team three was already deployed at the time. You got, you got this was those, this is Rommati.
[00:46:10] Oh, so yeah. So what they told us, Joco, is it, all right, team three is deployed. You
[00:46:16] guys are just going to stay here and go to schools. And so it was interesting because I had just
[00:46:20] married my wife in between buds and SKT. And so I'm like, this is awesome, babe. I'm just going to,
[00:46:26] you know, hang out at the team and like, maybe, you know, sweep for a little bit and like,
[00:46:30] go to a school every once in a while. We can start our life together. So why don't you move out?
[00:46:33] She just graduated from our university of Arizona. Like, why don't you move out when we can
[00:46:37] start our marriage together? Did you run that grant through the US Navy? No, no. But, Chaco, the chief,
[00:46:45] in charge of us was like, now you guys are good to go. You're not deploying. We've, you know, we've
[00:46:49] talked it through a bubble, blah, blah. And so she moves out and we move into this little apartment here
[00:46:55] in Point Loma. And, and then two weeks later, they're like, hey, change of plans. You're deploying,
[00:47:01] and it's soon, you're, you're going to go through Searschool and then you're going to deploy.
[00:47:06] And so I don't remember what, what it was that happened. But for the guys went through Searschool the
[00:47:13] week before I did and then they deployed. And so I went through Searschool by myself and then to
[00:47:20] pull like flew over by myself on like a civilian airplane. And I'm just like, oh my, dude, I was so
[00:47:27] stressed out. First time going to war. Don't know any of the guys at Searschool Team 3,
[00:47:32] but my instructors have told us, hey, listen, you guys, when you get there, keep your mouth shut,
[00:47:38] do what you're told. You're about to swim with some great white sharks. That's, that's basically
[00:47:43] the advice. And so I don't know anybody. I'm flying the war by myself. I don't even have any guns.
[00:47:48] And it's just like, you don't know, I had nothing to compare to. I, I'd, I'd been, I'd been on a
[00:47:53] ship before, but I'm flying into a war zone with no guns. Like, I don't know what's going to,
[00:47:59] is the playing in a land is like, I'm going to have to PLF out of the plane because there's like,
[00:48:03] people shooting us like, I have no idea or no context for what that's going to look like. And then
[00:48:08] I'm going to have to like integrate into this platoon of guys that already did a work up together.
[00:48:14] And so anyway, we were what 30 minutes down the road from you guys in Bravo Platoon. I think there
[00:48:22] were four or five of us, four of us that went to Bravo Platoon. And so we started immediately,
[00:48:28] you know, doing the new guy job, you know, making sure the hummers are gasped up, making sure
[00:48:33] they're clean, making sure the windows have all the moon dust wiped off. I'm making sure the
[00:48:37] two 40s and the 50s are clean, oiled up ready for the op. And then it was cool because they threw
[00:48:43] us in to turret gunning immediately. And I was like, this is fantastic, man. Because all of our
[00:48:48] buddies, you know, are doing whatever they're doing on the east coast and we're already getting
[00:48:52] to go on ops with these guys. Yeah, that's freaking awesome. And the culture was, and that
[00:48:58] platoon was really cool in that the rule was this. We're not messing with you unless we need to.
[00:49:06] And then if we need to, we're going to tighten you up. And you know, but it was just like as long
[00:49:11] as you, as long as you walk around on egg shells, do the new guy thing, you know, we'll leave
[00:49:17] you alone. But you're going to, you're going to do all the crappy jobs that nobody wants to do.
[00:49:22] You're going to do it standing tall with respect. And, you know, I was totally totally all about that.
[00:49:28] Things changed a little bit once I came into bruiser. They're very next.
[00:49:33] I try to think of how many guys came to task unit bruiser in Ramadi. You guys got, you
[00:49:40] guys got, sold the front. I know you got sal. And another dude named Sean. Okay. Sean H. Yeah.
[00:49:47] Yeah. Sal was, he was, he was such a nice guy. And he had, and he smiled all the time. This is the,
[00:49:57] this is the, this is the, this is the invention of normal face. So I had this thing I do with sal,
[00:50:03] where I, I'd taken the, the cardboard like, entered from the spools of paper that we'd print
[00:50:11] maps on. Yeah. And I'd sit there and I'd be like, all right, Sal, listen up, bro. You can't be,
[00:50:15] you're, you're like, supposed to be a seal now. You can't be having this big smile on your face.
[00:50:19] You look like a dork. We don't look like dorks. And of course, this is all like hilarious. So
[00:50:25] he's smiling even more. And I'm like, okay, so here's what we're going to do. You can't smile.
[00:50:28] If you smile, I'm going to whack you in the head with this thing. And, you know, so when
[00:50:31] I'd start going ready, then he'd be like, this is her. And I go, go. And he couldn't, he couldn't
[00:50:35] keep like a normal face for a half a second. I'd have to whack him in the head, but he was a
[00:50:40] freaking good guy, funny and just had a good attitude, but he just smiled a lot. And of course,
[00:50:45] whatever you're going to do, if you don't smile, you're going to get beat for not smiling. If you
[00:50:50] smile too much, you're going to beat for smiling too much. So you're going to get beat. I mean,
[00:50:54] that's basically what the whole concept was when you rolled out. When we, when we get to, when we
[00:51:00] get to it, remind me to tell you a funny, sad friend, a story that involved you in skits. Okay.
[00:51:08] Yeah, maybe it's too scary. It's too scary. That lost to been good. So you ended up, I mean,
[00:51:15] that's still even for Sal for you, for you guys to roll on, out on a deployment. You haven't even
[00:51:20] done a work of before you guys get to go out. You guys get to do some ops, get some experience,
[00:51:23] get to know what it's like to drive down the road in the middle of night waiting to get
[00:51:28] blown up, which is, which is fun. Then what? So then, then the deployment's over? Yeah, then
[00:51:38] the deployment's over. And I flew back on the last bird. And, and what, what, what, how
[00:51:46] did we run the same bird? If it was the last bird, we were on the last bird. I don't think so. I was
[00:51:51] relaxed, so he wasn't there. But yeah. So anyway, I get back, and it's weird because
[00:52:01] all the guys had already been back. They were already like selecting the new platoons. I was on
[00:52:05] the last bird, so I get in late. And then I remember, you know, getting back, me and my wife, we schedule
[00:52:12] our first like date night. Like we're going to finally get a go out and celebrate a hanging out,
[00:52:17] made it back, all that. And so I'm, we're, she's getting ready. I'm already ready to go like, you
[00:52:23] know, that that goes out of date nights. And I get a call from one of my other new guy, but he's
[00:52:30] that just came back with me, but he came back, I think, before me. And he's like, hey,
[00:52:35] you need to get down to Danny's right now. And I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah, bro,
[00:52:40] we're in Delta, Platoon now. Get down here right now. And I'm like, no, dude, I'm, I'm off.
[00:52:47] People going, he's like, Eli, I'm not asking me, I'm telling you, get your ass down to Danny's now.
[00:52:52] So I got to go tell my wife, like, hey, there's going to be no date night. I don't know what's
[00:52:57] going on, but it's sound serious. So I'm rolling down the world worth three is apparently broken out.
[00:53:03] There's a situation. It happens to be a bar in Coronado. Yeah. And so like, I jump in my little
[00:53:09] green Honda Civic and I drive over the barrage as fast as I can and without, you know, getting
[00:53:13] arrested and he's like, he's like, just when you get the Danny's come out behind the bar.
[00:53:18] I'm like, oh, this sounds fantastic. He's like, yeah, we're in Delta, Platoon,
[00:53:22] Chris cows are LPO. And I'm like, awesome. And so I get there. I walk through the bar, all the new
[00:53:29] guys that I just like graduated, you know, SQT with some of which went down, some of which didn't
[00:53:35] are now standing at attention in lines behind Danny, just getting screamed at. And I'm like,
[00:53:41] holy cow, dude. So yeah, that was, and so that night, you know, we were, you know, it was the
[00:53:49] end, end doctrine, end, end talking the tea bruiser, right? And so this guy, this guy, you know,
[00:53:58] he wasn't there, but it was just, yeah, it was, it was interesting because the culture had
[00:54:03] completely shifted to, hey, man, totally new, new group of dudes, new rules. And yeah, I realized
[00:54:13] real quick that this was going to be a interesting two years and you better be locked on.
[00:54:19] Like, we would come in, like, we would come in to rooms like the new guys like back to back,
[00:54:24] like, our hands ready to go because you didn't know what was, you didn't know what were
[00:54:29] you were going to be, get it with, but they definitely, they definitely loved having new guys around,
[00:54:36] I'll tell you that. Yeah, I guess that answers my question. I was going to ask you if you got
[00:54:39] treated like a new guy, since you kind of had a little bit of a deployment, I guess the answer is
[00:54:44] a solid, yes. Oh, yeah, they were like, yeah, that's like a little bit worse because they're like,
[00:54:48] you lucky bastard, you got to go over there and you didn't even do a workup. That was the thing,
[00:54:52] they're like, hey, that didn't count. You're doing a full workup. You will be a new guy for a full
[00:54:58] two years and it was like, Roger that. And you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?
[00:55:04] So, talk it. Did you, uh, what position did you get in the platoon? We were a double.
[00:55:10] A double turret gunner. Yep. And it was, it was cool, but I, I like to talk about my failures,
[00:55:17] because I think that's where the gold off and is Chris actually sat down with each and every one of
[00:55:23] us with his like little green notebook and he's like, all right, tell me what, what your goals,
[00:55:27] what do you want to accomplish, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to become a sniper. And so,
[00:55:33] he actually, you know, and I think there were a couple other, but that was,
[00:55:36] of other guys that wanted to go to sniper school, but that was my number one thing. And so he actually
[00:55:40] sent me to sniper school. My first, as a new guy. Yeah. And I failed. Oh, no, man, I made it through
[00:55:47] pick and then scout and then I didn't qualify expert on the, the M4, the 200 yard
[00:55:56] quality you have to do before you actually get to go to sniper school. And so I was, that was hard,
[00:56:02] you know, imagine coming back and telling Chris, hey, I just blew that. And so they didn't get
[00:56:07] an extra billet because I failed. So Chris wasn't happy about that. It definitely went in the book of
[00:56:14] whoa. And yeah, so, you know, paid paid for that pretty dearly, but, you know, I mean, you know,
[00:56:24] it is what it is. Wasn't like I was, wasn't trying. Yeah, the people, I guess it's hard to,
[00:56:32] it's hard to see from the public persona that got put out of Chris of like how funny he was and
[00:56:37] how like shit talking he was, it just like, and the other thing that sounds craziest, the
[00:56:43] prank, like he like to do like pranks on people like a little kid, you know. You did. That was when
[00:56:50] people asked me all the time, they're like, so what do you think of that movie? And I was like,
[00:56:54] you know, the movie is, you know, it's decent, whatever. But I was like the number one thing that they
[00:56:58] screwed up was like that they missed like how funny he was in his tensor humor and how he was
[00:57:06] always doing something shady. Always doing something shady. But I guess I don't, maybe it
[00:57:12] wouldn't, maybe Hollywood didn't think it'd be as cool of a movie as if, you know, they portrayed
[00:57:17] him that way. Yeah, I guess they would have had to make it into a, like a mini series or something
[00:57:22] where they could, where they could develop the character, develop his personality so you could
[00:57:27] see all sides, which would have made it more impactful because then you'd see, hey, this guy that
[00:57:32] is very funny loves his family and likes to clown around. I also can be totally serious and has a
[00:57:40] very, has the most serious job. But, you know, they got to take all that stuff and like you said,
[00:57:45] they got to make it into a movie that's now and a half long and that's what they did. Yeah, they took
[00:57:49] like 15, 20 years of his life and condensing it now and a half. So I mean, you know, that can't be
[00:57:55] easy to do. Yeah. How was that work up? Good. So I was, I was, I was running your work up.
[00:58:01] Yeah. Thank you, by the way. My God, did unbelievable. Do you carry any wounded guys anymore?
[00:58:08] Yeah. We actually, dude, it was so crazy. Like, you know, and it was cool to see you because you'd
[00:58:17] come out all the time. And I can't remember which one's, which years you were even out for, but
[00:58:24] it was, I do remember doing like, you know, seven click insert in, you know, hit the target and then
[00:58:33] on the way, ex-fill, this guy would put half of our guys down at least. So I mean, I would, you guys would
[00:58:40] you guys would get tore up by the hot for. All right. I think there might have been a little bit of a
[00:58:49] suggestion from this guy to make it as hard as humanly possible just by reading some of his stuff.
[00:58:54] And, but I, you know, it was interesting because like you would, you know, you do your op,
[00:58:59] you do your mission and then like you've got another, you know, click or two to ex-fill out and,
[00:59:05] you know, trade it's putting down over half of your guys. And so, you know, it's already, you've
[00:59:11] already got your body armor on, you've got like a machine gun, you've already got like, you know,
[00:59:16] you're loaded for bearer. And now you've got to carry, you know, another 250, maybe even depending
[00:59:23] on his size. We had some beasts in my pool too. And so, you know, maybe another 300 pound dude,
[00:59:28] and it was just like brutal. I remember, remember one time I was getting ready to pick up,
[00:59:34] want a down seal and it was chief D. And he's a big muscular dude, the type of guy that was,
[00:59:42] you did not want to piss off. And also, let's say like, he's not going to be super light.
[00:59:46] He is not super light. Yeah. He's, he's really heavy. And so, I am a freaking stud. He just want to be,
[00:59:55] like, everyone just wants to like do good, especially his guys. Yeah. They want to, they want to
[01:00:00] kick ass form. And so, I had my guns on my back, but I didn't like have it retention or anything.
[01:00:06] So, I went down to like grab his upper torso and my gun comes over top and hits him on the
[01:00:13] head. And I was, he was like, oh my god, who did that? Thank God it was night time.
[01:00:20] And you couldn't see you did it. And I got it. Joko, I didn't take extreme ownership
[01:00:26] because he wanted guilty. And I just like, I just, we got him up and we, you know, we started
[01:00:31] moving in, but extreme ownership might have cost me my life right there. So, yeah, we didn't,
[01:00:38] I didn't tell chief D that it was me that didn't sling my gun and just smack him in the face,
[01:00:42] but yeah, I think the good thing about the way that you ran training was that there was nothing that
[01:00:50] I ever faced that was even close to the training. And I think that's a good thing.
[01:00:55] I wasn't always happy with you about it. I remember one time you were out at, I think you
[01:01:00] were out at a San Clemente or something. And instead of like, okay, we, we do the day runs,
[01:01:05] we do the night runs, we go to sleep. There, you didn't let us go to sleep. It was just like,
[01:01:10] okay, TST, here we go. We're going back in the town. We got to go hit this and I'm like,
[01:01:15] God, dude. Well, I always thought of like day runs, night runs, morning runs. I made after noon runs.
[01:01:21] Yeah. You know, brunch runs. How's that sound? We'll get a little bit of that.
[01:01:25] And Stoner was your to you commander? Yeah, he was, uh, he was the to you commander there from
[01:01:31] O6 to O8, right after you left. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's when he got, that's when he got hurt.
[01:01:37] Yep. He broke his neck. Uh, yeah. That happened. Luckily, he didn't break his spine. He just broke
[01:01:45] vertebrae and his neck when a dude fell off. One of the other new guys fell off of the ship
[01:01:51] boarding and landed on top of him broke his neck. I remember I was at, obviously, I was at Traydeck
[01:01:57] and I get the call like, hey, we got an injury and I'm like, all right, Roger. And then I got like a
[01:02:01] text from someone's like, hey, it's Stoner. And I was like, check, went up to the hospital. But thank God,
[01:02:08] he, uh, he didn't break his spinal cord. So he was able to put on the neck brace,
[01:02:15] kind of walk through the rest of until that was healed up and, and he still able to go on
[01:02:20] appointment because he wasn't going to stay home. I mean, no, no. Well, that brings up another
[01:02:26] funny story because, uh, remember, uh, I don't know if this guy's still in. Anyway, our L.T.
[01:02:34] During that period, Texan guy, Jimmy. Yep. He, uh, he made us roll. He made us do jujitsu three times a week.
[01:02:43] Yeah, right? These, you know, all of them, you know, fall into following this guy's footstep.
[01:02:49] And so we would, we would roll. We did jujitsu before, uh, before the day started and, uh,
[01:02:55] I remember one time, I got somebody, I can't remember who it was. Another L.T.
[01:03:01] in a triangle choke. And I, I was tying it in good and he picked me up, stacked me and
[01:03:06] dropped me on my neck and I heard something go pop, pop. And I was like, okay, you know, and we
[01:03:12] did a quick time out and I was like, okay, I can still move it. And then we, we finished the day.
[01:03:17] I'm okay. Like, we finished the rolling. I feel okay. And then it's take a shower and then it starts
[01:03:22] getting real tight and real stiff. And I, I'm like, man, I, this is, this doesn't feel right.
[01:03:28] Maybe I should go say something. So I've made a mistake and I went and said something. And I told
[01:03:33] Chris, I was like, hey, I did something while I was rolling. I heard some pops in my neck.
[01:03:37] And, uh, it's starting to get really, really tight. And he's like, okay, go over to medical. So medical
[01:03:43] made, um, called an ambu. It came to the, to this, you know, three picked me up, put, like,
[01:03:50] put me on like a bed or whatever they took me to Balboa, they'd X-rays or whatever. And they're like,
[01:03:57] you know, they're like, oh, you're good. You're good to go. So they brought me back and, uh,
[01:04:02] put they made me put a neck brace on. And so I walk into C-chris and, uh, and I take in the neck
[01:04:08] brace off. And he's like, so, uh, what would happen? And I'm like, I'm good to go. They did X-rays.
[01:04:14] He's like, did they give you anything? And I'm like, well, this neck brace, but, you know,
[01:04:17] I don't need it. I'm good. And he's like, no, put the neck brace on. So, Chris had the guys paint
[01:04:22] it pink. And then made me wear the neck brace for like the next week. And I was like, even when we,
[01:04:28] like, because we were just getting ready to go to Pendleton. And so he made me wear it out and
[01:04:32] town. He made me wear it everywhere. And I was just like, oh, and I'm never saying anything ever
[01:04:37] to get like I said, like that's a flood. Yeah. And then, uh, so how was that deployment? It was, you know,
[01:04:49] it was, I think it was good. I know a lot of guys weren't happy about it. But, um, we started on the
[01:04:57] Syrian border in Al-Qaim. We turned over with an SF unit. And the deployment started out by
[01:05:03] with our primary focus trying to stop foreign fighters and equipment and, you know, all sorts of
[01:05:11] money and stuff flowing in from Syria into Iraq. And so we did a lot of desert patrols.
[01:05:19] And, you know, that it's not, I don't think it's what team guys really love doing. But it, you know,
[01:05:24] it is what it is. And then probably, and we actually spent a lot of the first month and a half building
[01:05:32] up a structure to live in. So we called ourselves seal beasts. Like we had two CBs that were like
[01:05:37] constantly telling us what to do, how to build this structure. And so we built that. And then,
[01:05:43] after we got that finished, um, that's when I think the army called and said, hey, we're, we're going
[01:05:49] to, we're going to, we're going to cordon off, solder city. And we need some seal snipers. And
[01:05:55] some guys to come in and help us do that because, uh, all solder's militia was killing the Iraqi
[01:06:02] contractors that were building the wall. And so that's when Stoner and Chris and several other
[01:06:10] guys, somewhere, army 33 texts, some, some were calm skies and many of them were snipers,
[01:06:17] from seal team eight. And then from seal team three, they formed like this super troop,
[01:06:21] um, which Topstoner was in charge of. And so they, they went and left us, I think four of them
[01:06:29] went from our platoon. And then the rest of us stayed back and we just went all over, you know,
[01:06:35] went all over the country. We flew some humvies up to Missoul. And then towards the end of the
[01:06:41] deployment, Chris came back and I actually got to go and, you know, be a part of that for like the
[01:06:47] last month and a half or something like that. But it was, you know, it was a decent platoon,
[01:06:52] but we were all over, I mean, instead of operating out of one place, we spent time in Alessad,
[01:06:59] we spent time and I think hit Haditha, we even, we even built the new basin, Rawa,
[01:07:05] when Alkaya got shut down. So we were just like transit all over the place. Yeah, yeah, that there's
[01:07:10] it always sucks when you're not like with your whole platoon. It's also there's cool things about
[01:07:17] traveling all over the place that my first deployment to Iraq, we lived in Baghdad the whole time,
[01:07:23] but we would go out to all over the country. So that was kind of, you know, you just get to see
[01:07:28] different areas and we'd stay for day here two days here, some random like SF outstation,
[01:07:34] the middle nowhere and hang out with them, do whatever we can to support and then come back. So that's
[01:07:39] kind of cool. And then my second deployment to Iraq, I didn't leave her body like it was just
[01:07:44] there the entire time and that was also cool in a different way. So kind of different experiences,
[01:07:50] they both have something cool about them. They also have some things that kind of, you know,
[01:07:55] might not be as cool, but what was like the big lessons learned on that deployment for you as a human.
[01:08:02] Oh man, let's see, be you know, be flexible, you know, be adaptable. I found that that was so
[01:08:15] key in that in that job is just to be flexible, adaptable and try and keep a positive mental outlook
[01:08:22] it all, you know, at all times. And the other thing to I started to see like,
[01:08:27] started to see how negativity and complaining could affect the morale of the group and it,
[01:08:39] you know, it could be detrimental. And so always try and, you know, be, you know, be a part of
[01:08:48] not bringing people down, bringing the group down, but just being positive, you know, because there was
[01:08:53] some, there was some of that going on in that group, like, you know, some real negativity and,
[01:09:00] you know, I get it, I understand why, but at the same time, I don't, I don't know that it,
[01:09:08] you know, was very productive, making us the most cohesive, you know, fighting unit that we could
[01:09:14] possibly be. Yeah, when that real simple idea of complaining and it's so bad. And that's one thing
[01:09:24] I picked up from wherever in the teams was like, hey, don't complain, don't ever complain about anything,
[01:09:30] don't complain if you're cold, don't complain if you're hot, don't complain if you've been
[01:09:34] awake too long, don't complain about anything, just don't complain, just don't complain. And, you know,
[01:09:40] obviously not everyone gets on board with that program, but it never, it never, complaining just never
[01:09:46] helps anything, just doesn't, like if you, if you want to joke about it, that's cool. If you want to
[01:09:51] jokingly, you know, bring something up because you're going to make fun of the situation you're in,
[01:09:57] man, that's a different thing. But if you're going to, if you're going to seriously say,
[01:10:03] it's too hot, it's too cold, we're not getting the support, we need this is bullshit. Like those
[01:10:08] attitudes, they're just, they're just, they're just, they're just not good. And that's why I always
[01:10:11] like that, that team guy that you just never hear him complain or when someone does complain,
[01:10:17] when you get, when you get the right crew, someone starts to complain, they get shut down, you know,
[01:10:22] and that's a good attitude to have. Is that where good? That is, that is 100% where good
[01:10:29] comes from. That's, that's freaking stone or that was stone or coming to tell me, coming to
[01:10:33] complain me about something and me saying, and him saying, like, I already know what you're going to say,
[01:10:37] and I'm like, what? And he says, you're going to say good, because that's what you say about everything,
[01:10:41] and it's true. I'd be like, oh, we don't, we don't, oh, we're going to have to stay out,
[01:10:45] freaking at this desert warfare training facility for an extra two weeks. Good, we're going to get
[01:10:50] better, whatever it is. Yeah. Let's not complain. That's not the deal. So you don't want
[01:10:58] from that deployment. Yep. And it's another puttune because you're a new guy still kind of,
[01:11:03] now you're one cruise wonder, one and a half cruise wonder. Right. Right. There's always something,
[01:11:09] Matt. Did you go, did you end up going back to sniper school? I did. Yeah. Where, when you got home?
[01:11:15] Yeah. So thankfully, I, I just got to go qualify and then I got to pick up where I left off.
[01:11:22] I learned a little trick that really helped me, you know how on our pistols you, you know,
[01:11:28] front sight focus, you have that little green dot and whatever or the little white dot.
[01:11:33] Wow, I was like, I was looking at the front sight post on my, you know, in four iron
[01:11:38] side and I was like, it's just straight black. I mean, aim small, miss small. And I was like,
[01:11:42] I took a little paint pen and I just put the tiniest little white dot on my front sight post.
[01:11:48] And that really helped me to like put it where I needed to and just I started doing a lot of
[01:11:53] dry firing and the positions that I was going to have to shoot and did well on the test and then
[01:11:58] went out to, went out to sniper school. I did really good on the shooting, but I was really
[01:12:02] bad at the stocking and I was like on the bubble the entire time. And, but, you know, made it through
[01:12:08] sniper school got my sniper sweet and then, unfortunately, by that point in 2010, we went to
[01:12:16] Felicia and they wouldn't allow us to take sniper weapons on, obviously, we're trying to de-escalate
[01:12:23] the war and snipers don't typically do that typically, they're gasoline on things. So, so that
[01:12:32] we still a pig gunner and that, or did we have to point manner somewhere? Yeah, I moved the point
[01:12:38] man and lead navigators as well. I was also running ordinance department. So,
[01:12:43] yeah, I mean, it was good. You know, and I was I felt, for the first time I felt like, I didn't
[01:12:51] feel like I was some great operator, but I felt like I felt confident for, you know, because it
[01:12:59] takes a while. I mean, there's so much that there's so much from like, comms to, you know,
[01:13:05] understanding maps to, you know, the physicality side of it to, you know, small unit tactics that
[01:13:11] you're trying to pick up and learn, but in that in special forces, you'll spend two, two weeks
[01:13:17] doing this and then you'll spend a month doing that and then sometimes it'll be four months before
[01:13:24] before you shoot your gun again, you know, and it's like, so I feel like, by that point, you know,
[01:13:30] in my service, I finally felt like I was, you know, okay, I feel comfortable doing this, I feel like
[01:13:36] I'm decent at it, you know, the learning curve of doing Patuens, I think exactly correlates to the
[01:13:42] learning curve of having children and your first kid, you have no idea what's going on, your total
[01:13:48] idiot, and but you learned so much by your second kid, you're like, okay, we kind of got this,
[01:13:53] by your third kid, you're like, I'm dialed, I'm ready. By your fourth kid, you're like, I got this,
[01:13:57] like, we're making shit happen. But you see, guys, in their first Patuens man, it's a lot of,
[01:14:04] it's a lot of stuff, especially nowadays, like when I was in my first Patuens, it was like, okay,
[01:14:08] your radio man, there's three radios, like it's it was just we weren't doing knots, we didn't have
[01:14:15] lasers on a weapons, everything was easier and guys now they have a lot more to learn, just even
[01:14:22] with the technical side there, more to learn and then from the operational side, there's more to learn,
[01:14:26] that's the way it goes. So that, what you do on that deployment, so, as you're as now,
[01:14:34] we're DSCliners, this is like 2010 now, yep, 2010 we're DSClinating, we were partnered up with
[01:14:39] FelusiusWatteam, we were still doing, you know, some DAs here and there, we were doing a lot of
[01:14:44] fit with them, making sure that, you know, they knew what they were doing, and we actually started
[01:14:49] me and one of our jails kind of ran the fit, and we were just making sure, we were trying to turn
[01:14:55] more and more of the op over to them, so by the time, by the time that platoon was over with,
[01:15:01] if we would go on an op and there were only allowed to be four seals on the ground, you had to have
[01:15:08] for every one seal, I think you had to have five Iraqis, that was the ratio it had to be,
[01:15:14] and so the, you know, the closest call I ever had was a night where we got ambushed by three
[01:15:21] dudes and we only had four seals on the ground, we had, we had, I think, two, three gun trucks,
[01:15:28] so we had three RG 33s with those remote weapon system, the remote 50 cows, but yeah, I mean,
[01:15:35] it was interesting getting, you know, an ambush like that, we're only got four dudes, and then a bunch
[01:15:40] of a bunch of FelusiusWatteam guys and you're like, you know, at one point, our AOS at the time,
[01:15:50] he was like, he was on my side of the street, just give us, like, give us, start to finish a little bit.
[01:15:55] Okay, so it was really interesting, Jaco, because as we were turning over things to the Iraqis so
[01:16:02] that they could hopefully stand on their own once we left, one of the, one of the very last things
[01:16:07] that we turned over to them was the actual coordinates for the target we were going to hit,
[01:16:12] and as a point man, I was sharing that responsibility with another, another one of my, you know,
[01:16:18] another, another guy in that platoon, and so we were, we were like doing blue and gold shifts,
[01:16:23] it was my night, and so they gave me like, hey, this is the, this is the eight-digit grid we're hitting,
[01:16:29] these are, you know, maps, you know, of the area that we're going to, we were actually going to
[01:16:35] obbograbe, which is like a suburb of Baghdad, and which of these like a 45-minute drive from Felusia,
[01:16:42] and so they were like, you know, notoriously nasty part of the city, yeah, the, like the
[01:16:47] prisons there that everyone's heard about obbograbe prison, but it's also like a part of town,
[01:16:51] and it's, it's notoriously a pretty bad part of town. Yeah, it was a real bad part, and anyway,
[01:16:57] so they, I can't remember who told me, but they were like, hey, like this is the first night,
[01:17:02] we're going to give these guys a great coordinates, so I want you to walk over there with an interpreter,
[01:17:08] well, you know, go outside our main base, go to there where they, where they were sleeping,
[01:17:13] the Felusia SWAT team, given the great coordinates for the target we're hitting, and I
[01:17:18] ask them, make sure that they know where we're going, because they're actually going to lead
[01:17:22] lead us out. And so I walked over there, I gave them the, you know, the great coordinate,
[01:17:28] I gave them all the maps and pictures, I was like, do you guys know where this is, and they're like,
[01:17:31] yeah, we know where this is, and so I was like, and at the time we had you feel funky about that.
[01:17:36] Very, and this made it worse to, we knew that there was one of them that was every time we left
[01:17:42] the wire that he was calling and telling people which direction we were headed. So, you know, you always,
[01:17:49] you always feel really, really shady about that. And so, gave it to them, and then probably at like
[01:17:55] one in the morning or something we took off started driving there. And I noticed,
[01:18:01] as soon as we drive into the neighborhood, there's like, sirens on all over the neighborhood,
[01:18:06] and like, like, we're already blown. And so we did like a video, a video drop off, like, vehicle
[01:18:14] drop off, like 600 yards from the target, because the argys are pretty loud, and we didn't want
[01:18:18] them to hear us like foot patrolling in or the vehicles. And so we get out, and there's four seals on
[01:18:24] the ground, and then there's like 20, fullo's your SWAT team members, and we start taking off,
[01:18:30] and I'm also point man that night. So, it's like a 600, it's only a 600 yard patrol in the target. And so,
[01:18:36] we're walking down this really, really wide street. And so I put us into like a file formation,
[01:18:42] so that at least a couple of us can engage if we get a contact front. And so we're walking in
[01:18:47] and probably halfway to the target. And I noticed that like, I guess.
[01:18:52] Oh, staggered file, you said fire, you meant staggered file, yeah. Okay, I'll get, I'll just try to
[01:18:56] make sure I'm tracking. No, no, no, no, thanks. And so we're walking, and, and I'm noticing as I'm
[01:19:04] walking, because you're always when you're patrolling, you're always looking for like cover,
[01:19:07] concealment, hey, if we get contacted from the front, where can I duck into, is there a wall, or a
[01:19:13] door, something like, and I notice everything's boarded up, bars everywhere, nothing is open. And so
[01:19:20] halfway there, all of a sudden, do three dudes with one had an RPK machine gun, and then the
[01:19:28] other two, I think had AK's. But we had a, we had a predator overhead, we had, I think two
[01:19:35] Apache's, and we had an AC 130 gun ship overhead. I'd never, we'd never gotten that much air
[01:19:42] in any op I'd ever been on it. And so three guys open up on us, and it was surreal because they
[01:19:49] guy with the RPK, no kid had probably 200 rounds belted together of Tracer. So you could see every bullet
[01:19:56] fine over us. And you know, in training that you're taught, okay, you hit the ground, make yourself
[01:20:04] as small as possible, make yourself a small target, and then return fire, gain fire,
[01:20:08] spirit, and then somebody's gonna, you know, we're, we're gonna maneuver, whatever the call is
[01:20:14] gonna come out, it's gonna be. And so I remember hitting the ground and just watching, you know,
[01:20:20] Tracer rounds fly over us for probably a minute and a half before he had to reload. And then I could
[01:20:26] see the other two, the other two guys, muzzle flashes, I'm thinking to myself, I thought, you know what,
[01:20:33] if I can see their muzzle flashes, even though I have a suppressor on my gun, because they're shooting
[01:20:37] high. I was like, if I open up right now, and the, the suppressor doesn't work as well as I hope
[01:20:43] it does. And they, they pinpoint my location, I'm dead, because it was, when we went back and looked
[01:20:48] at the footage from the Pred, feed, it was only 110 yard engagement. So it's very close. And so I did,
[01:20:56] where they, in a building, where they on a roof or something or not, they were coming, they were
[01:21:00] coming around a building. So I got to watch like, so they were external, so you could actually
[01:21:05] see them even from the Pred, because they were outside of the building. You could see them from the Pred,
[01:21:10] I couldn't see them, you know, even on nods. All I could see was their muzzle flash. And so anyway,
[01:21:17] like I wait, and I noticed that the, the, the, the little of fire dies down, and so as soon as it dies
[01:21:23] down, like I get up, and I'm like I said, I'm really slow. So, but I'm running back, you know,
[01:21:29] I'm, I must have been cooking echo. And I'm like, I'm moving as fast as I can. And I'm pretty,
[01:21:35] I'm pretty light. I only have, I think, four mags on me, you know, in four mags on me. And I'm running back.
[01:21:40] And the, oh, I see, I see his over here. And he had found, he's like, I got, I got an out,
[01:21:45] I got an out, and that for us means hey, man, I got some cover, come over here. And so I come over and
[01:21:50] I start, I bump him off and then, you know, start, I start returning fire and the gun trucks by this
[01:21:58] point pull up. Next, you know, next to me. And then this fight, I don't know, goes, this gun fight
[01:22:05] goes on for, I don't know, maybe maybe another couple minutes. And then the gun trucks start, you know,
[01:22:10] blasting these dudes with 50 cow and it like ends like that. They're like, no, we're done.
[01:22:16] But it was, it was, it was interesting because like, the, the A O I C was like, hey,
[01:22:23] let's flank. Let's, let's, let's, let's, and I, I was just thinking of myself, I was thinking of myself,
[01:22:29] hey, we were already blown when we came in. These guys, the gig was up. They knew we were coming here,
[01:22:34] because they were sirens all over the place. We've got a bunch of, you know, flujious,
[01:22:39] swat team guys. We know at least one of them is working on the other side. And they're not like,
[01:22:44] they're not a good fighting force at all. I'm like, I was like, bro, I don't think that's a good idea.
[01:22:49] And I see we hold what we got and get the hell out of here. And thankfully, you know, and I don't know how
[01:22:56] it would have worked out if we would have done, you know, what he wanted to, he was just being a
[01:23:01] hard charging, you know, oh, he was, he wanted to make moves and, you know, go just smoke these dudes.
[01:23:08] But I had a real bad feeling about it. And so, you know, thankfully he was like, he listened to me,
[01:23:14] and he was like, let's hold what we got. And we, you know, jumped in the trucks and we got the
[01:23:18] got the hell out of there. And then it was crazy because we, because Blir, not, it was actually
[01:23:26] Iraqi policeman that ambushed us. And so then they roll up. And it's like this, it's gets this
[01:23:33] heated exchange, like, what WTF, or you guys doing, you know, because we had to pass, you know,
[01:23:40] how that works, we have to pass up to, you know, their hire, I was like, where we're going to be
[01:23:43] operating. So there's the de-confliction that goes on. And it got really, it was starting to get a little
[01:23:50] tense. And I remember there were, we had some guys in the trucks, you know, just some shooters in
[01:23:55] the trucks. I'm like, hey, you guys get out of those trucks. If this goes down, we need to, we need to
[01:24:00] make sure that we finish this. And so anyway, nobody got, nobody got hurt on our side, which I couldn't
[01:24:08] believe because like I was watching hundreds of tracer rounds stream into what my chief's position.
[01:24:12] I thought he was done because he didn't come up over coms for probably 40 seconds to kind of make
[01:24:18] a call on what he wanted. But anyway, we got back, we drove back to Felicia after that. And it was
[01:24:24] kind of wild because the ROI I see at the time, who was actually, who was actually my swim buddy
[01:24:33] and buds and I really good friend of mine. He, you know, thankfully, he didn't bring this up in the
[01:24:39] de-breed, but he was like, he came to me in the team room and he was like, he like, well, what were you
[01:24:45] doing? What were you doing tonight? And I'm like, what are you talking about, dude? He's like,
[01:24:51] how was screaming at you from inside the RG 33 to get back? Because I was, once I bumped that guy out,
[01:24:58] I came out on the left and I started trying to engage their muzzle flashes with my laser.
[01:25:02] And he was like, he's like, bro, he's like, the wall right behind you, rounds were exploding right
[01:25:10] over your head. They had a total beat on you. They were just shooting like a foot high. And I was like,
[01:25:15] dude, I'm sorry, bro, I could not hear you. And that's one thing I learned on that deployment
[01:25:20] is that those cool silencers that we have that like work as coms pieces, but also ear pro,
[01:25:26] you can't hear the crack over your head because they cancel that anything over like 105
[01:25:31] decibels or whatever they were canceling it out. So I couldn't hear it. I didn't know they had a
[01:25:35] beat on me, but thankfully, it was down to you too. Thankfully, moves you to the Ohio. Thank God,
[01:25:45] man. But yeah, that was, that was interesting because because of the situation and we had so many
[01:25:53] jundies or you know, I right, flu just watch team members with us, it really limited our ability
[01:26:00] to do stuff when we needed to. So you wrap up that deployment and then what's your plan?
[01:26:14] Because now you've got two platoons, you maybe could do a third platoon, you maybe could go to training
[01:26:19] cell or trade debt, maybe you know, what's your options? What are you looking at? What are you
[01:26:24] making up your mind to do? Yeah. So I was looking at a couple different things. My body was pretty
[01:26:30] tore up at that point. I'd hurt my back really bad, you know, weightlifting. And I had,
[01:26:38] the Navy wasn't able to diagnose it at the time. Turns out, once I got out of the Navy and went
[01:26:42] to like a civilian dock, like laser spine instituted in Phoenix, they were like, hey, man, you got,
[01:26:47] you know, you got some stress fractures and you're spine, you've got some, you know, some stuff going
[01:26:53] on, we can either give you a fusion or we can just give you shots and I was just like, okay, I'll just
[01:26:58] wait. But my back was pretty messed up at that time. It really, you know, was pretty excruciating,
[01:27:03] just don't even wear a body armor. And so I'm looking at that. I'm looking at the fact that I've
[01:27:09] kind of done what I came to do as far as like I wanted to go serve my country and and I had little
[01:27:17] you know, I was kind of watching my little kids grow up in pictures or my oldest grow up in pictures.
[01:27:21] And I was just like, man, you know, that was kind of tearing, tearing at me a little bit. And so I was like,
[01:27:28] I'm either going to go, um, through our like ASO program. I need something new if I'm in a
[01:27:35] stay and do this, I'm going to either need to go like ASO or screen or something. But I'm not, you know,
[01:27:41] I need to, you know, I need to, you know, I need to some change. And so, started thinking about it,
[01:27:45] I was definitely praying about it. And uh, while I was on that deployment, I actually was like,
[01:27:50] but I want to make sure that I give myself enough time to make a good decision.
[01:27:54] Because my family's counting on it. And so I actually reinlisted on that deployment. And,
[01:28:00] at the time, you could give your kids the GI Bill if you reinlisted, you had enough time in,
[01:28:06] and, you know, uh, and so I split, I gave my daughter my GI Bill and re-listed for four, so that I had
[01:28:12] enough time to plan the exit and at that point, I was pretty confident that I was done, you know,
[01:28:19] you know, the point and I was, I started focusing on, okay, I need it, I need to exit.
[01:28:26] And, uh, I did, I did, you know, talk to some folks about ASO. I looked at it a little bit. I never
[01:28:32] really looked at screening. Um, and then as I went, I went to the recruiting director it after that.
[01:28:38] So that's when you got home from the deployment. Yes. You went to the recruiting director it.
[01:28:43] I don't even know what that is. Right. No, most people don't. Um, so when I came, is it an SW?
[01:28:50] Yes, sir. Yeah, got it. When I came into the teams, uh, we only were filling 60% of our
[01:28:57] billets at the schoolhouse. So that's why guys like me could come, you know, I knew guys that went
[01:29:03] to Buds three or four times. But now if you even if you come, well, I'm working off old information.
[01:29:10] But when I was at the recruiting director, even if you like were an Olympic athlete and you came
[01:29:15] in there and you crushed the screen test like it never been crushed before, early as Spot Year
[01:29:19] again was nine months out, you know. And so, um, what what the Navy did was, and the reason I took
[01:29:27] the job is because my old platoon chief and old, um, you know, master chief, uh, J.T. You know,
[01:29:34] J.T. Yep. Yep. He, uh, he said, hey, hey, Eli, if you come work for me, I'll let you go to school
[01:29:39] in the afternoon. So you can finish up that old degree, start working towards getting out and I'm like,
[01:29:44] no, that sounds like pretty cool. And, uh, so I took that job, started doing that, uh, working for him.
[01:29:51] And, uh, you know, it was, it was, it was interesting because the Navy sent us all over the country.
[01:29:58] They had done a Gallup survey that showed that there were seven different sports that young men were playing,
[01:30:05] that were, uh, enabling them to be more successful at a higher rate than, um, others.
[01:30:11] We're lucky. So one was Warripolo. I think two was swimming and three was wrestling.
[01:30:16] And that's where we spent most of our time. And it made total sense to me because like football players
[01:30:22] weren't doing well. And it made sense to me because like I was a quarterback and they were like,
[01:30:26] you know, they put a red jersey on me, like, don't hit that dude. Or like, you know, it was like,
[01:30:31] it was so position driven in football that, and when you look at it like wrestling,
[01:30:36] water pool swimming, you know, the types of sports like that were it's like, it doesn't matter.
[01:30:41] How big you are, you're doing everything. You know, and you're going to be held to a standard, you know,
[01:30:46] I mean, you look at Big Old Echo or what position you play Echo. What do you see?
[01:30:51] I was a lot smaller. You guys were hitting me. His only 185 back there. Oh my god.
[01:30:55] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Long time ago. Holy cow.
[01:30:57] Did you like eat a cornerback or something? Like, actually, it's so mean too.
[01:31:02] But yeah, like, even as like, you know, it's a wide receiver that they would make, you know,
[01:31:07] you know how it was. It was like, okay, this is your position. This is what we want you to be good at.
[01:31:12] But we're not going to focus you in in in the in seal training bro. It's like nobody cares how big you are.
[01:31:19] What position you play. It's like you're doing you're doing everything. You know, so
[01:31:25] those are the sports that the NSW director, it was trying to raise awareness.
[01:31:30] But you said seven sports. That's three. What were the other four? You remember?
[01:31:33] Yeah, I was like crew cross country. I think, look, cross.
[01:31:41] Cross. That's the water polo. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, but that's where we spent the most of our time on those three.
[01:31:51] And they would send what they called seal scouts around to those type of events in high school
[01:31:58] college. And we what we would do is we would show a video of like you can't you can't recruit a seal.
[01:32:02] If you have to talk somebody in to show it up to that and then they see it for real. They're like, no.
[01:32:08] I'm not doing this. So what we would actually try and do is just raise awareness like this is an
[01:32:14] option for you and then and then leave and then let them, you know, self select themselves into it.
[01:32:21] And so we go around the country doing that. So I did that for about a year and a half. And then
[01:32:25] got an opportunity to go to trade it and be in a more ops. Got a spot in VVSS and I started,
[01:32:34] you know, just learning from the guy who was the LPO at the time.
[01:32:38] Actually, got to go by his house last night and have a beer with him and have some dinner with them.
[01:32:42] But after that is when he left, he turned it over to me and I became the LPO of VVSS. And so
[01:32:48] honestly, that was the best training I got to go into entrepreneurship because, you know, as you know,
[01:32:55] like you you have like a hundred times more of this than I ever did. But I never got put in a
[01:33:03] leadership position like that where there were so many things that you had to account for, so many
[01:33:08] things that you were tracking on, making sure things are going to be in the right place. And then also
[01:33:13] when things don't go as planned, how do we flex, what do we do, what's the contingency. And so
[01:33:20] you know, that was a phenomenal opportunity for me because I was even running my small business,
[01:33:24] bottle breacher out of our one car garage in Point Loma while doing that and just working stupid
[01:33:30] hours. But you know, that was really helpful and you know, helping me learn how to be a better
[01:33:38] leader. But it was also cool to see to just, you know, being a part of being on the other side and
[01:33:45] watching, you know, the training cycle, how much goes into it and making sure that these guys are
[01:33:51] prepared when they go down right. So your teaching VVSS and you just mentioned this when you started
[01:33:55] ball breacher for the first time. Yeah. How did that come about? So it came about, I was actually,
[01:34:02] I knew I was getting out. I probably had, you know, two and a half years before my time was up,
[01:34:07] but I watched a lot of my buddies get out before me that had the same credential, same qualifications.
[01:34:13] I watched them struggle. Like to find something that they could actually sink their teeth into.
[01:34:19] And I knew that wasn't even an option for me because I had a daughter or two at the time.
[01:34:24] And so I was like, man, you got to figure this out. And so it was a little bit of fear that was driving me
[01:34:30] but also going back to that identity early on. Like, you know, I didn't want to, you know,
[01:34:38] one of the things that my brothers used to call me was a fuck up. They used to call me that all the time.
[01:34:43] And I'm not trying to throw F moms on your show. I know this is, you know, some kids listen to the show,
[01:34:48] but, you know, it is what it is. And so there was a part of me that, you know, still had that identity
[01:34:54] in the back of my mind, like, hey, well, maybe you got lucky and became a seal, but this is when you're actually
[01:35:00] going to show the world that you are, you know, that F up. And so, you know, not only did I not want to be that,
[01:35:09] but I also wanted to make sure that my little girls and my wife were provided for. So like, I was doing that,
[01:35:14] you know, the VBSS thing, the IPO thing and running bottle breacher at the same time, but the way it
[01:35:20] actually came about was I remember my little brother who is a Marine Corps pilot, he is a cober pilot.
[01:35:26] He went to the PI and at one of the outdoor markets there got a 50-calb on-lover and he brought it back
[01:35:33] and he gave it to me. And I was like, dude, what is this thing? It opened your beer? No way.
[01:35:38] Try it. Yep, sure enough it does. And I was like, dude, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen.
[01:35:44] And so I put it in my junk drawer and then when my buddies would come into my house,
[01:35:48] like watch a UFC or something, they were like, dude, that is badass. Where can I get one?
[01:35:52] And I was always like, I don't know, man unless you go to the Philippines.
[01:35:56] But I started thinking about it and I was actually one up to LA for Thanksgiving
[01:36:01] that my family members were having up there. And I remember on the way back I was like, dude,
[01:36:06] that thing is cool, but it was real generic, just plain brass, all dinged up. And I was like,
[01:36:11] but it could be way better. And so I came back and I went into my garage and I spray painted it,
[01:36:17] black. And then I had bought a bunch of punishers stickers because I made platoon DVDs
[01:36:23] for my last platoon. And I took one of the little punishers stickers once the paint dried and I put
[01:36:29] it on there. And it was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh my god, this thing is insane.
[01:36:36] And so I took it to work. You know, the next, you know, the next day or so I showed it to my buddies.
[01:36:40] They were like, dude, this is maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen. Make me want. Make me five for
[01:36:46] every guy, my family. And so that's when the light bulb came on like this thing is cool, but it could
[01:36:51] be way better. And nobody that I knew of or any of my buddies knew of was selling them in the states.
[01:36:56] And so it was at that time my wife was she was running a couple online or want. She she had
[01:37:04] success with some online businesses, just small little online businesses like boutiques and stuff.
[01:37:10] But she knew how to work, you know, the store, the internet. And she graduated with a degree in, you
[01:37:15] know, business from U of A University of Arizona. So she was definitely had that part down where I was
[01:37:24] extremely weak. And I was like, babe, babe, do you think you can help me sell these online?
[01:37:29] She's like, oh, let me do some research and you know, I'll let you know. And so she comes back
[01:37:33] and she's like, yep, I know what we're going to do. She's like, we're going to sell them on Etsy.
[01:37:38] I'm like Etsy. What is Etsy? How about eBay or something I've heard of? And she's like, no, trust me.
[01:37:44] She's like, women shop on Etsy all the time. It's like an artisan, whatever, artisan, you know,
[01:37:51] website. And she's like, they will buy them for their men. And so we started them. And the first ones
[01:37:58] after that one that I already had. So I started buying dummy rounds online. And then I would, you know,
[01:38:05] I'd start practicing cutting them with a Dremel tool. You know, just like crawl, walk run, right?
[01:38:10] And that's what we used to say in the CO teams all the time. I was like, I just have to figure out.
[01:38:14] And I didn't know anything about manufacturing cutting metal. I was just a dude in the garage.
[01:38:18] And I don't know if I make that run. And so I cut like, I figured out how to get it down.
[01:38:25] And this was kind of cool. It would take me, it would take me about, I think, 25 minutes to cut one
[01:38:31] when I started. And they look like crap, but people still bought them. But then I started getting
[01:38:37] real square away with my manufacturing. And I realized, Draco, that the tip of my broom handle,
[01:38:43] that I cut off with a Dremel tool fit perfectly over a 50-cow round. So now I could make a fixture,
[01:38:49] my first fixture. And I cut, I cut the cut into the broom handle. And then I take a Sharpie marker.
[01:38:55] And I would actually draw the cut on there. So that, because it was taking me seven minutes,
[01:38:59] I time myself to actually like take a take measuring cloth, measure out all the, all the dots,
[01:39:04] then connect them. And then I would take my Dremel tool, put it in a vison cut-up. And so that was my first
[01:39:10] fixture. And then now, now we were, now we were cooking. And so they were, you know, they were still
[01:39:16] really rough. Like I would prime up, then I'd paint them. And then I was like, okay, if these team
[01:39:21] guys who, you know, get everything, you know, people think they're the coolest dudes in the world
[01:39:26] they're willing to buy them. Anybody would buy them. I just have to figure out, market it to somebody else.
[01:39:30] So I started thinking, okay, these are going to be big in the military units, firemen,
[01:39:35] cops, etc. And so I started buying stickers online. And I started painting them and putting
[01:39:40] stickers on them. And we would market them that way. And it was interesting because, you know,
[01:39:45] when you start selling stuff, typically you want to start your price point high,
[01:39:50] and then work down until you find somebody that'll buy it. And so I remember looking at
[01:39:53] what everybody else was doing. They were selling them, you know, like really generic cheap ones for
[01:39:58] like 20 bucks. And I'm like, I want to see if I can start buying it, like 28 and make more profit.
[01:40:04] And so I started at 28 crickets, nobody bought them. Brought it down, waited two weeks,
[01:40:09] brought it down to 24, 99, a couple people bought them. Oh, cool. Got our first sale. And then,
[01:40:15] you know, let it let it hang out there for a bit and then brought it down to where everybody else
[01:40:19] was boom, floodgates open, people are buying these things nonstop and, you know, we're in business.
[01:40:24] And so at that point, I just kept, you know, working it, working it, trying to improve, you know,
[01:40:30] our fighting position or the product found somebody that was an actual machinist that could cut
[01:40:35] them professionally, found a professional powder cutter that could put instead of putting paint on them.
[01:40:40] It actually like powder coat them and you just want to get one of the old snow,
[01:40:44] replace it with paint did one of those. That's what I wanted. My boy. I got like, I've got, like,
[01:40:49] probably a hundred bottle breaches from people give them to me. And we have some that we give away.
[01:40:57] Yeah. And so I have, but I want, I want one that's spray painted with the Narls cut that
[01:41:04] barely works. That's what I was. I saw one last night. Yeah. My boy, my boy, Mike,
[01:41:10] he was the LPO at VBSS before he passed the job over to me and he had, he, we broke out one of the
[01:41:18] old ones. I was like, damn, I was looking at the Dremel Cut Nixon, the crap I cut and I'm like,
[01:41:23] God, I can't believe it. But you know, honestly, I am big on my faith. And I remember that
[01:41:29] point in my life and I was definitely afraid of failing my family. And, you know, I was still
[01:41:35] seeking God in the things in my life. And I was praying. I was like, Lord, how do you want me to
[01:41:39] provide for my family when I get out of the military? And it was funny, man, when he's like,
[01:41:45] beer opens. Well, right, but here's the cool thing, man. You know, they are bottle openers and
[01:41:52] most people use them to open their beer. But, you know, the cool thing is, it's like, even something
[01:41:58] like that, if you give God the glory did, you'd be surprised. Some of the doors he will open
[01:42:03] in your life. So, you know, and it's just, it's crazy, man, because when I told people, especially
[01:42:10] maybe guys, they were like, you like, what are you going to do when you get out? I'm like, hey,
[01:42:15] I'm some of the bottle openers. Jockel, I'm surprised something didn't send me to you. There
[01:42:20] were like, yeah, that's probably not going to work out. And let's get this guy to a psychological
[01:42:26] evil ASAP. But it was cool because within six months, my original goal wasn't to build like a
[01:42:35] multi-million dollar business. It was like, hey, I want to make some extra money for a date and I
[01:42:40] or to save up for, you know, my next firearm or whatever, just some supplemental income. And then
[01:42:46] as it started growing, I was like, do this could be something. And six months into it, we were doing
[01:42:52] $7,500 a month, which blew me away. I never thought we'd even get there. And then at that point,
[01:42:58] I made one of the better moves that I ever made in business. And I sold my chopper. I had a
[01:43:04] motorcycle that I used to drive over to your gym and do the jutsu with. But, um, and I sold the chopper
[01:43:13] and I bought a laser, I took the funds and I bought a laser engraver. And that is when things just
[01:43:19] would be because I was watching an episode of Shark Tank. And, um, these the sharks were tearing
[01:43:27] apart in entrepreneur. Primarily Kevin O'Leary, who became one of my, um, investors. And he's
[01:43:32] he's ripping apart an entrepreneur because this guy, he had decent sales, he had a pretty cool
[01:43:37] unique product. But he had no brand recognition on the product. So like he had the brand on the packaging,
[01:43:44] but as soon as it left, that was the one who was the product. It was like a green neon suit that
[01:43:49] you would wear at a football game or like a ski, you know, like skiing or something, made you stand out,
[01:43:55] right? And the guy, Kevin and Marseille market for that.
[01:43:59] Or for a green neon suit, like a skin type suit, like Spambex suit. Exactly. Yeah. And so the guy had
[01:44:06] he was doing 300k in sales and you know, I've never seen a human in a green neon suit.
[01:44:12] I'd never seen one either, but he had this, he had the sales, he had the product there and
[01:44:17] Kevin, they were looking at it and Kevin's like, you know, he's like, is the brand on on this
[01:44:22] anywhere and the guy's like, no, he's like Kevin just starts ripping him up. He's like, this is the
[01:44:27] dumbest thing that you know, you can do as an entrepreneur. He's like, what if somebody's looking at it
[01:44:32] and outside the package and they want to know who made it, but they can't find your brand on
[01:44:36] there anywhere. They can't go Google it and look it up online. And so I was sitting on the couch
[01:44:41] with my wife Jen and we, because we had two small kids, I was in the Navy still and we were running
[01:44:46] bottle breacher. There wasn't a lot of free time, but we did allow ourselves like that was our,
[01:44:50] like, you know, one show that we'd watch together and I was like, babe, we got to figure out how to
[01:44:55] get boner breacher on each and every one of these units leaving the garage. And so I started
[01:44:59] doing some research which led me to laser engraving. And so I had about $30,000 in the bank from
[01:45:05] like a re-enlistment bonus and I was like, I don't work in the Navy. I don't want to risk, you know,
[01:45:10] our little nest egg on something and unknown, right? And so I was like, I'm going to sell my bike.
[01:45:16] And Cindy, it goes the best place in the world to have a motorcycle. I mean, just the best place.
[01:45:20] And so that was hard for me to do, but I later read Rich Dad Poor Dad with Robert Kisaki and he talks
[01:45:27] about all the time, you know, and he talks about his book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, what the Rich
[01:45:36] teacher kids at the Poor Don't. Basically, the summary is, you know, wealthy people teach their
[01:45:41] kids to buy assets, not lab abilities, right? Assets, something that makes you money,
[01:45:46] liability, something that cost you money. And I hadn't read the book at the time, but that was basically
[01:45:50] the move that I made. And, you know, by doing that, our sales went from $7500 at the six month
[01:45:58] mark to a month and a half later we were doing $22,000 a month out of that same one, Car garage.
[01:46:02] To the point where like, I couldn't keep up with it, I had to start like,
[01:46:05] moon, like bringing guys in from the military that were like, you know, doing whatever job
[01:46:10] and they'd have, they'd work in the garage and help me out. And then, you know, I think, you know,
[01:46:16] a year after that point we were doing $80,000 a month out of that one Car garage. And that's
[01:46:20] when I pitched a shark tank. And so you were still on that community when you pitched a shark tank?
[01:46:26] I was. Yeah, I was, I was right at the tail end. Okay. I was right at the tail end and there was
[01:46:31] an open casting called down here in like Miramesa. And I was sitting with one of my advisors in LA and he's
[01:46:37] like, you like, you got to get on that show. And so found it open casting call went down there.
[01:46:42] They were like, hey, first 500 people get to get to pitch to a casting member. And so I went
[01:46:47] gotten line at like one in the morning. I was like number one 25 and then, and then came back the next
[01:46:54] day once I got my little wristband badge and, you know, knocked it out of the park. And then they were
[01:47:01] like within a week. No, within that was on a Saturday Monday morning, they sent me an email.
[01:47:05] They said, hey, we loved your pitch. We need, you have one week to make a video. And I, you know,
[01:47:10] made the video. They loved it. We kept moving on. And it was funny because when you get in that
[01:47:16] process, they assigned you a couple producers and who are kind of coaching you through the process.
[01:47:21] And they were like, it was funny. Me and Jen would have to hop on the phone with them every Friday at
[01:47:26] like four p.m. to have like a conference call with them. How's the pitch going? Where you guys
[01:47:31] at in the process? And it was funny. They were always telling Jen what we would practice our pitch on
[01:47:36] the phone with these guys. And they were like, Jen, Eli is just not excited. You've got to get him
[01:47:41] excited. He sounds like he's not enjoying this. And I'm like, guys, I'm not a cheerleader. Like,
[01:47:46] when I need to get excited like all, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to rob rob rob ross
[01:47:51] just can borrow like I'm going to tell you, hey, this is what we're doing. These are what the sales are.
[01:47:55] This could be something. And but you, you got to keep in mind it's a TV show. So they want you to
[01:47:59] like, you know, they want you to be all. They want that drama, bro. I want that drama. Yeah.
[01:48:06] But anyway, we got, we got an opportunity to go on the show. And we, you know, it went really well
[01:48:12] and got two sharks. Mark Cuban and Kevin O'Leary. And you know, it just, it started blowing up
[01:48:20] and that created another, another leadership challenge to to work through. So then where,
[01:48:26] that once it came out, how much longer did you have in the Navy once the show came out?
[01:48:30] So I actually pitched on the show. I feel we were telling the seal commander this, but I was on
[01:48:39] terminal leave when I pitched. So that's legal, dude. Is it? Yeah, totally. Okay. Well,
[01:48:45] at least as far as I know. I've been out of the Navy now since what since 2014. So
[01:48:51] I, maybe there's a statute of limitations. Hopefully. But anyway, so yeah, I was on terminal leave.
[01:48:57] So I wasn't even going into work, but I went and pitched in LA. And then the show,
[01:49:04] the show actually aired the month after I got out of the Navy, my final, my final month
[01:49:10] in the Navy. So it was like perfect timing for us. And, you know, we started, we started working,
[01:49:16] you know, we started working, you know, the group back to Arizona. We, yeah, as soon as I could
[01:49:21] even, even on terminal leave, I moved my family back there as on a so. What did you get
[01:49:25] did you get a building for production? Like what did you do for that aspect? We did. We, we, we
[01:49:29] we rented space. We rented a couple different spaces. And we just ran it out of there. And it was
[01:49:35] interesting because when you go through that process, there's no guarantee that even if you go to
[01:49:42] LA and you shoot the show, there's no guarantee that your episode's even going to air. So this
[01:49:46] goes right back to kind of like the situation I talked about in my second time, taking those orders,
[01:49:52] coming back to Buds. It was a big risk because at that point we had like $70,000 in the bank
[01:49:58] in our business account. And I remember knowing that, you know, if this show airs, we need a lot more
[01:50:05] inventory, we need more machinery, we need to hire some people. But if it doesn't air, we just waste
[01:50:10] it all of our money. Or we're going to have to figure something out. And so we again, we went big,
[01:50:15] we gambled. We spent every last cent we had at my wife who ran the numbers, who's always around
[01:50:21] the numbers. She was like, hey, if this show doesn't air, we're not going to make payroll. You know,
[01:50:26] so thankfully, it aired when it was supposed to air. And you know, I think we did like $450,000
[01:50:33] that night of the airing. And that was, it would have been way bigger than that. But we got so much
[01:50:39] traffic on the website. I was told it was like 13,000 hits a second because it was like 12,
[01:50:45] 12 million people watching the show. And they were like the website crashed within seconds of an
[01:50:52] airing on the east coast. And so thankfully, one of the things that I learned in the teams,
[01:50:58] guys like Jaco was one is none to his one. Always have a backup. So we had a redundancy plan
[01:51:04] in place. We put up a banner on the website. Hey, go to Etsy. We still had our Etsy store. People were
[01:51:08] still able to buy there. And so we limped, limped through it. And then we were all like, yes, this is
[01:51:14] awesome, you know, great exposure, great sales. And then I'm like, now we have to make this stuff.
[01:51:21] Because we don't call it, it's not like we're calling China. Like you know, and so we were before
[01:51:26] shark team. We don't call it turnaround here. That's right. That's right. So we were making like 135
[01:51:32] bottle breaches on a good day before shark tank. I think when we woke up the next day, we had to
[01:51:36] make like 60,000 bottle breaches. And we had 20,000 emails to answer and like people are pissed off. Like this
[01:51:43] is the day and age, I am a zombie man. Like, where this little mom and pop shop that was like,
[01:51:48] we're not making with germaltols anymore. But I mean, we don't, we're not making them that fast.
[01:51:53] And so it created a real leadership challenge where, you know, that lesson of, hey,
[01:52:01] what we did yesterday, you can't say this is how we, we've always done it. Because how we've always
[01:52:05] done it and it ain't gonna work anymore. And we got to, we got to think outside the box, we got to
[01:52:08] get creative. And thankfully, I mean, it took me longer than I, I would have liked to have figured
[01:52:13] it out, but thankfully, we finally figured it out. Got things up on step and we're able to handle
[01:52:20] national television earrings and stuff like that. And so what year was that? That was 2014.
[01:52:26] How long did it take you to get caught up with 60,000? Making a 335 a day. Three months. Took, took us three
[01:52:33] months and people were pissed, man. The worst part is if some people somehow were finding market
[01:52:39] and Kevin's emails are shark tank investors and they're like, I can't believe you did a deal with
[01:52:44] this company. These guys are idiots, you're stupid. And like, at that point in my life, nothing
[01:52:51] was worse than getting an email from, you know, Mark Cuban, like WTF. You guys need to get this stuff
[01:52:58] straightened out. You know, it was just like, I mean, that's the type of thing that would just
[01:53:02] ruin your night. You know, but, you know, going back to, you just like working for Chris Kyle,
[01:53:06] dude, hey, that don't cut it anymore, man. You know, so I think it's been, I think it was a blessing
[01:53:13] and it's definitely prepared me for what I'm doing now. There's a, I watched, I watched the,
[01:53:19] they have a YouTube video that's like after the shark tank beyond the tank. Yeah, beyond the tank.
[01:53:25] And it was pretty cool. A lyrics, you know, he was talking about you and talking about veterans.
[01:53:30] You could see his a Patriotic guy who's getting like, he's getting choked up talking about what
[01:53:33] you guys were doing and just thankful for your service. So I thought that was, to me, that was
[01:53:38] awesome to see because I don't, I don't watch that show. Echo is like, uh, it's big time. Watcher of
[01:53:44] shark tank. Yeah. Did you watch this like when it happened? Life? Oh, you did, you did.
[01:53:48] My boy, dude. In the game, boy. In the game. Yes, over there. Well, yeah.
[01:53:54] Were you nervous before you walked out there? I lived a little bit, but I was more excited.
[01:53:59] I'm not gonna lie to you. I was a little bit nervous because you know, it's like, you know,
[01:54:02] that you're about to either be a hero or a zero on national television. And obviously, too, like,
[01:54:10] all those entrepreneurs, like, they have more, you know, business acumen in their fingers.
[01:54:15] And I did my entire body, but I knew we had something. And I knew that if we could just get on the show,
[01:54:21] obviously it was a controversial product because it was a bullet, you know, by the way. So I was worried
[01:54:26] about that, but it was funny because, um, one of the things that we'd rehears was we were going to
[01:54:31] get each shark their favorite beer. And then, um, you know, hand out the personalized bottle
[01:54:38] breaches that I'd made for each one of them. And then let them, you know, open their beer with it.
[01:54:42] And we're all gonna cheers and whatever. Well, um, last minute, the prop director, guy, he's like,
[01:54:48] hey, we're not gonna use their favorite beers or whatever. We're gonna use these beers that we have
[01:54:52] backstage. And I'm like, hey, you're called, you're show, whatever you guys want to do. And so I don't
[01:54:57] know if somebody was playing a joke on me or what dude, but I went and I, you know, took my bottle
[01:55:02] up, my bottle breacher, I breached it up. And this thing starts foaming all over the place. And I look at it.
[01:55:07] And I'm like, you know, this is like, they're opening their beers. I'm opening, you know, my beer.
[01:55:12] And I'm supposed to cheer up, you know, do the cheers thing. And I was such like, whatever dude.
[01:55:17] Sorry, I just, you know, you know, take a big swing of it. And it was funny because we started
[01:55:22] our pitch and Jen like leans over to me and she whispers to me. She's like, there's beer,
[01:55:28] there's foam in your mustache. And I was like, whatever dude. I just keep trying to make my
[01:55:34] right. Just keep going dude. So we did it, you know, and it was, it was a blessing. And I think
[01:55:40] it's led to, you know, so much, so much other stuff. But, you know, definitely isn't always
[01:55:46] roses. And one of the hardest things about it was working with my spouse. You know, I mean, you know,
[01:55:52] I hadn't even learned to barely live with my spouse at that point because I'd been gone a lot. And,
[01:55:59] you know, we were both kind of like type A's like button heads all the time. And it definitely
[01:56:04] took some learning to what we call staying your swim lane. You know, and like, you do what you do.
[01:56:11] I do what I do. And I'm, and trying not to sleep on the couch. It's been a lot of time sleeping on the
[01:56:16] couch. But, you know, I probably deserved it. So you're talking about the fact that, you know,
[01:56:22] like, with your faith with, you know, you basically a couple times in your life at critical times
[01:56:29] have been praying and saying, hey, look, if I'm supposed to go to Buds, open the door, if not
[01:56:34] close it, you know, I need a way to help my family. If I leave the Navy, open a door, I'm knocking.
[01:56:42] Let me in. Let me, let me, let me know what to do. Yeah. Serious guidance for you. Yeah, it was
[01:56:48] and it was interesting because after after the Shark Tank, and I know there's a spectrum here,
[01:56:56] and I try not to compare myself to other people. But I knew just by knowing myself,
[01:57:01] I knew I wasn't in a good spot mentally. Like, you know, done five deployments, and I got,
[01:57:10] I got now, and I felt this like anger in this rage inside me. And I tried to keep it under wraps
[01:57:17] because like, I, I didn't think it was cool. I didn't want, you know, people to know that like I was
[01:57:23] struggling with certain things. And, you know, and then all the stress of being a dad to young
[01:57:29] kids and, and then running this, running this business with your spouse who you just barely learned
[01:57:34] to, you know, work with. And so I felt like, you know, I was on the struggle bus. I felt like I was
[01:57:40] failing as a, as a husband in many ways, and even as a dad. And I was laser focused on this business,
[01:57:45] because I was like, took the same mentality from the seal teams. Like, hey, just go as hard as you
[01:57:50] can outflank your enemy, you know, stand up this team. And, you know, sometimes when your laser
[01:57:56] focused on something, you start dropping other important priorities. And when it really resonated
[01:58:02] with me, like the spot that I was in, probably, probably two years after Shark Tank, I think it was
[01:58:10] 2016, a buddy of mine here in San Diego who was in that VBSSL with me, just a good dude. I'm pretty
[01:58:19] sure he's still active. He was an e-dog and then got his commission. And he called me up and usually
[01:58:26] when he called me, it was just to talk shit to me. We called it Bander Therapy. We just, you know,
[01:58:32] tell each other how worthless they were. And we'd laugh about it. And then like it felt like you
[01:58:36] just did like, you know, an hour long intensive therapy session or something. And so I was like,
[01:58:43] oh, here we go. You know, his initials are KP, KP's calling. We're going to, we're going to get
[01:58:48] after each other and then, you know, just catch up see how he's doing. And I could tell immediately
[01:58:54] he wasn't calling to, you know, Bander Therapy, give me a hard time. And he's like, hey man,
[01:58:59] I got bad news. And I'm like, what's up, dude? And he's like, hey man, Chuck is dead. And I'm like,
[01:59:04] what? And he's like, yeah, Chuck is dead. He got killed fighting with the Peshmerga, you know,
[01:59:12] fighting nicest. I think it was yesterday or something. You know, like, I don't remember what else he
[01:59:18] said. But we got, we got off the phone and I was just in shock because Chuck,
[01:59:23] Keating, was one of my new guys at a SILTHING THREE and Delta Blotin. And like, like, I was
[01:59:29] like, as kind of a seed at, you know, like looked after him, just loved the kid, such a such a solid
[01:59:36] dude. And went on to become just a phenomenal seal. But it was, I noticed how I was in trouble because
[01:59:44] I remember walking out of bottle breacher and I didn't, like, I felt like I was getting ready to
[01:59:50] just break down. And I didn't want my staff to see me, you know, break down. I didn't think that
[01:59:54] would be professional. And I remember feeling it, like, I remember feeling the emotion come up
[02:00:01] from my stomach into my throat. And like, our cool, let's just get this out. And it just like stopped.
[02:00:07] And it wouldn't, like, I couldn't, I couldn't shed a tear, I couldn't cry. And this happened
[02:00:14] like, I started walking around the, the, the, the, the, the like mall that bottle breacher's
[02:00:21] buildings are located in. Happened like four or five times and I was like, oh damn, dude, that's kind
[02:00:26] of, that's kind of weird. And I've kind of, it was, it was, it was so weird that I started thinking about it.
[02:00:34] And that was the first time that I'd ever happened. And there had probably been, I don't know,
[02:00:39] to that point, probably 15, at least 15 guys that I knew that had been killed in war.
[02:00:46] And he was out of all of them, none of them were closer to me than him. And it was kind of,
[02:00:52] I was perplexed at why I couldn't mourn him. And so I started thinking about it. And there's a,
[02:00:59] there's a, there's a verse in Proverbs, 423, it says above all else guard your heart
[02:01:06] for, for from it flowed the springs of life. And I realized, I realized it not only had I not guarded my
[02:01:14] heart, but I had built massive walls around my heart to where I couldn't feel anything anymore. I couldn't
[02:01:19] even feel, I couldn't even mourn like one of my best friends, it just got killed fighting ISIS.
[02:01:23] And I knew I was in trouble. And, uh, and the other thing I realized was that that wasn't
[02:01:30] an isolated incident, like it was affecting the, the springs of life that as a father and a husband
[02:01:38] that we're supposed to be flowing out of us so that we can love those around us, especially our
[02:01:44] spouses, our kids, that they were broke, man. That those walls that I built around my heart so that I
[02:01:51] couldn't be heard anymore, like it was affecting. It was keeping some of the arrows of life out,
[02:01:57] but it was definitely affecting that love that was supposed to be flowing out. And I just knew I was
[02:02:01] in trouble. And thankfully a buddy of mine named Rick who loves your show, by the way. He invited
[02:02:09] me to this, this men's retreat. And it was like a Christian men's retreat. And I was like, oh god,
[02:02:14] that sounds awful. Um, but, you know, he kept after me for a couple of years and it's called,
[02:02:21] it was called ransom art. It's called, you know, now it's called Wild It Heart, the guy that wrote
[02:02:26] the book while that hards a guy named John Eldridge. And he writes some phenomenal books, but
[02:02:32] finally I said, you know what, man? I want to be a better man. I want to be a better husband,
[02:02:36] a better dad and, and all of that. So I'm going to go with you. And so I went in, uh, I think it was
[02:02:40] 2017 and the event changed my life, man. And, uh, I think the biggest question, biggest questions most of
[02:02:48] us ask theologically are who am I? Why am I here? Why is a world so messed up? What can I do
[02:02:56] about it? And, uh, you know, I definitely got some answers to those questions. And it was cool,
[02:03:01] man. It wasn't like, there was no religion, you know, there was no churchy entity. You would think
[02:03:08] going to event like that, you'd be surrounded by a bunch of net flenders types, but it was just a
[02:03:12] bunch of regular dudes, um, who all came with the same questions that I had. And I think, and I think
[02:03:20] many of them were in the same spot that I was, they hadn't taken care of their heart. They hadn't
[02:03:24] guarded their heart. And, um, in the scripture, it also, um, I think it's 1 Peter 5, 5 8 says,
[02:03:33] be alert and of sober mind for your enemy, the devil, prowls the earth like a roaring line, looking
[02:03:39] for someone to devour. And I have seen a lot of men devour. I mean, we got 22 vets every day
[02:03:47] killing themselves. And that's just the states that report it. And that's just one, that's just one
[02:03:53] area of, of devouring going on. And, you know, it's like, I've always, and I know that not everybody
[02:04:02] believes the same things that I believe. I, I totally get that and I respect that. But I've always
[02:04:07] believed that if, like, if you, if you get something good, and you don't share it with other people,
[02:04:13] if you have a life altering experience, and you don't point others to it, that's pretty messed up,
[02:04:19] and you're not being a team guy at that point. And so I want to share that with people because
[02:04:24] I realize there's a lot of dads out there and a lot of husbands out there and a lot of, you know,
[02:04:30] vets out there and first responders out there that have a lot of questions and they're dealing
[02:04:33] with a lot of stuff. And like me, many of you have tried to like stuff it down like a beach ball
[02:04:39] under the water. And you can hold that beach ball down under the water for a couple of sec, you know,
[02:04:44] couple seconds, maybe even a minute if you're strong like echo over here. But sooner later, man,
[02:04:49] I think it's coming up. And if you don't take care of it, it's going to explode and usually on
[02:04:55] the people that you love the most. Was there, was there, like concrete actions that you took when
[02:05:04] you got home from the retreat? Yeah, there were. The first thing I did was I apologize to my wife,
[02:05:11] the very first thing because I realized just, and this goes back to extreme ownership now.
[02:05:21] I realized how many just how many ways I had failed her, you know, and how she needed me.
[02:05:28] She needed, she needed me to fight for her and off the time. I was so proud, Jaco, and so screwed
[02:05:34] up in so many ways. It half the time I couldn't even apologize to her if I screwed up, man. And I was
[02:05:40] broken and, you know, I needed, I needed fixing. And one of the first things that you need in that
[02:05:46] situation is to realize, hey, man, I'm broken and it's okay to get help. It's okay to seek it out.
[02:05:53] And that's not how team guys are trying to thought. We're taught to BTF, Charlie Mike,
[02:05:59] figured out, keep moving forward. You know, and we're not, we're not, we try and stay away from
[02:06:05] medical. We try and stay away from any of the touchy, feely, emotional stuff because we got stuff to
[02:06:13] do. And that stuff typically not helpful, but I can tell you after going to that, going through
[02:06:20] that ministry and I've been many times now over the last several years, but my marriage, I never
[02:06:26] thought my marriage would be great. I actually have a great marriage now, man. And so much of it was
[02:06:32] because I was equipped to not go back into my own story and get some healing, but also get some
[02:06:40] tools on how to move forward. And just understand the the bigger perspective of this story that we
[02:06:47] live in, man. And you know, it's like one of the things they teach there is that you were given a
[02:06:52] masculine heart for a reason, because you were born into a world at war. And I think a lot of the
[02:06:58] stuff that we see in society has spiritual undertones and foundations to it. And if you don't,
[02:07:03] like if nobody ever teaches you that stuff, man, it's kind of like getting shot at from,
[02:07:10] and you have no idea where you're getting shot at from. There's a lot. I think there's a parallel
[02:07:14] there, but the first thing I did was apologize to my wife. And the second, one of the second things
[02:07:20] that there's another scripture in it, forgive me. I don't remember exactly which one it is,
[02:07:25] but the scripture is I stand at the door and I knock and whoever hears my voice and opens the door,
[02:07:31] I will come in and eat with him and he with me. And that's what I needed, man. I just, I just
[02:07:37] prayed and I gave it up and I said, Lord, I'm broken. I'm hurting on the inside. And I'm inviting you
[02:07:43] into calm, rip all this stuff out of my life and my heart that I don't need that's dragging me
[02:07:49] down and that's not helpful to my family, to those that even trusted me to love and take care of.
[02:07:56] And I need your help and it kind of goes from trying to do it on your own to being like, hey,
[02:08:02] Lord, come in here and help help me with that. And I say that respectfully, man, because again, I know
[02:08:08] that a lot of people don't see things the way I do or feel this, feel the same way, but again,
[02:08:13] I'm not trying, I'm just trying to help other people because I know there's a lot of dudes out there
[02:08:17] asking the same questions that I was asking and they want relief and they want to be well
[02:08:24] and they don't know how to do it. Yeah, well, there's like a route to humility that you're talking
[02:08:32] about and there's a bunch of different routes to humility and I was actually thinking about that
[02:08:37] earlier today, you know, like the one of the, one of the founding tenants of Christy
[02:08:43] Anity is, hey, I'm going to put God above myself. Well, that's, that's, that's humility. To put,
[02:08:52] you know, I, I talk about humility oftentimes from a leadership perspective, you put the team
[02:08:56] above yourself. You put someone else's plan above your own plan. That's, that's a form of humility
[02:09:02] and extreme ownership is, you can't be, you can't take ownership without being humble enough to say,
[02:09:08] oh, this, this, this, this problem was my fault. So I think, you know, the, the route that you take to
[02:09:16] get to a point where you can say, okay, I'm going to be humble. I'm going to look at my life and say,
[02:09:21] hey, hey, wife of 10 years. I'm sorry that I haven't been as good as I can, right? That what,
[02:09:29] what it takes to get you there is, you can, you can take a bunch of different paths to get there,
[02:09:35] but humbling yourself, whether it's before God, whether it's before your team, whether it's before
[02:09:41] your wife and saying, hey, I know I can do better. That's a path that is going to help anybody.
[02:09:48] And, and I think how you get there, there's a bunch of different ways and the result is going to,
[02:09:54] is going to bring you to an area where you are going to find improvement. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree.
[02:09:59] It did not definitely needed to be humbled, you know, and all the guys that are a part of that,
[02:10:06] you know, that ministry, John, Morgan, Bart, man, thank you guys so much for everything you've done.
[02:10:13] Because I know it's not just me, I know that they've helped thousands of dudes through it. And
[02:10:17] if you guys want to go check it out, just go look up, you know, while they're heart,
[02:10:20] I think it's wild at hard.com or whatever, but man, wow, just a life changing experience for me.
[02:10:28] And it really, I went from wanting to build the biggest baddest veteran-owned company in the,
[02:10:33] you know, in the United States to, you know, wanting to focus on my family more.
[02:10:38] And, and also just coming back to, okay, God, you know, you've blessed me with so much.
[02:10:45] How do you want me to spend the rest of my life? Where do you, where do you want me to be?
[02:10:49] What do you want me to, you know, be doing? And now, now here I am, and, you know, doing something
[02:10:56] that I never ever thought I'd be a part of. But I think that's what happens when often you
[02:11:01] turn it over and be like, whatever you want me to do, just open the door. And if you don't want me
[02:11:06] to do it, please shut the door, you know, but I definitely want to spend the rest of my life trying
[02:11:13] to help, you know, help people and, and guide them towards, you know, concrete stuff that actually
[02:11:19] help me. And through that idea of serving, here you are now running for Congress, and Arizona.
[02:11:30] Yeah. What, what? I mean, that's just a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, a massacistic move,
[02:11:38] right, to go and just open up your life, give away your time, give away your privacy, give away
[02:11:45] any semblance of civility from other human beings. Right. And, and here you are, you know,
[02:11:53] you're going for it. Yeah. I am. And, you know, I think we're off, we're off to a good start.
[02:12:02] But I went into this knowing that there was a good chance that, you know, the, the outcome that many
[02:12:09] people, including myself are, are striving towards will not, there's a, there's a, there's a decent
[02:12:14] chance that that outcome will not become a reality. But at the end of the day, I focus on what I can
[02:12:22] control. I focus on a focus on your posture, Eli, don't focus on the outcome. Continue to try and
[02:12:30] be a man of honor and integrity and, and, and more importantly, be a guy that's willing to say,
[02:12:37] okay, I, I may not have all the experience in the world. I may not even be the best candidate,
[02:12:42] but this country is in massive trouble. It's in massive trouble. And I'm willing to go
[02:12:48] serve again. And if you, you all don't want to send me, I'm cool with that. If I'm not, if not,
[02:12:53] if I'm not a good enough candidate, I'm cool with that. What I'm not cool with is sitting on my couch
[02:12:58] complaining about it and yelling at my TV. And I'm not going to be okay. I like to, I don't know if
[02:13:03] you do this, Shaco, but I like to think about sometimes, you know, from a legacy building perspective,
[02:13:09] like, like, I like to think about my funeral, like, who's going to show up? Who's not going to show up?
[02:13:15] What's my, what are people going to say about me when I'm gone? Are they even going to be talk? Are
[02:13:19] they even going to, are they even going to talk about me? Or, or bring up my name and, you know,
[02:13:24] I'm, I'm hoping that at the end of my life, people show up to my funeral and be like, you know what?
[02:13:31] Eli did some, you know, Eli was good dude. And he loved, he loved people, and he wasn't willing,
[02:13:38] or he was, he was willing to sacrifice and serve something bigger than himself. And if, if that's what
[02:13:44] people say about me when I'm dead and gone and six feet under, then to me, I've lived a purpose driven
[02:13:52] life, something that I can be proud of. And to me, that's, that's what this is all about. It's like,
[02:13:57] you and I swore an oath to protect into the fin this country from foreign and domestic threats.
[02:14:03] And right now, I don't, I don't know how you see it. I believe we have some very dangerous foreign
[02:14:09] threats out there, but I think the biggest threats in this country right now are within and the fact
[02:14:15] that we can't, we can't unite and we can't, we have a lot of forces working against this,
[02:14:22] who I don't believe actually want to see a free and prosperous people that still have the power
[02:14:30] where our government is of foreign by the people. But there's a dichotomy to that.
[02:14:37] We have, we're so free and so prosperous here that many of us have become complacent.
[02:14:44] We've checked out. We don't think that we have to participate. And you can't have both. You can't
[02:14:49] have a government and a country that's of foreign by the people and have a complacent people
[02:14:54] that have checked out and don't participate. And I think that's one of the reasons we're in the
[02:14:58] spot that we're in because people don't want to deal with the negativity that goes along with politics.
[02:15:03] They don't want to deal with the nastiness. I totally get it. But that's one of the reasons
[02:15:09] we're in such a bad spot because we just think that we can elect these, these individuals who
[02:15:15] look good and they sound good. They put on the suit with the little flag on the on the collar.
[02:15:20] Tell us what we want to hear and then we leave it up to them and then when they let us down,
[02:15:24] we're like, oh well, I guess there's nothing we can do. No, there is something we can do.
[02:15:32] We can get involved and we can fight for it and that's what it's going to take honestly.
[02:15:39] Was there any issues that was there like a straw that broke the camels back where you said,
[02:15:46] I got to go. I got to do this. Yeah, there was and it was this last election in 2020.
[02:15:55] For so for so many different reasons, it was part the election. What I saw happened in the election,
[02:16:01] but then it was also watching people that I thought were actually eyes wide open,
[02:16:10] willing to fight for us. Do this number. They look left. They look right. Oh,
[02:16:15] I guess nobody else is saying anything. I'm just going to get back in line and you know,
[02:16:20] do my thing and make sure that I don't put myself out there and jeopardize my future political
[02:16:27] career. And so that was that was the big one for me because I believe that there was massive
[02:16:35] fraud in this last election for a bunch of different for a bunch of different reasons.
[02:16:40] At the end of the day, if we have a government that's of buying for the people and yet our elections
[02:16:46] aren't tight and we're not electing. We're no longer electing our officials.
[02:16:52] We're in massive massive trouble and the clock then starts ticking on how long in my opinion we actually
[02:17:01] last. And so I've said this before I'll say it again. I would rather we not. I would rather my guy
[02:17:09] lose or whoever I'm voting for lose, then we don't have to even question. Hey, how legit was that?
[02:17:18] Because I didn't look right over there and that didn't look right. And what about this over here?
[02:17:22] Oh, we're not allowed to talk about this or we'll get kicked off of social media too. Okay.
[02:17:26] Yeah, that doesn't smell right. How about if we have if we the people want to actually audit
[02:17:35] and check the results of our election? What is that look like? Is it welcomed or is it
[02:17:44] or do lawsuits start flying? There's been some interesting stuff going on that are similar
[02:17:52] to what you're talking about. So Jill Rogan, who's I have to explain who Jill Rogan is?
[02:18:00] No, no. Okay. So Jill had these doctors on, talk about COVID and these are doctors that have
[02:18:12] a non-mainstream media view about COVID. And he just released a statement yesterday because now we have
[02:18:19] some of these old rock and roll people telling Spotify if you don't pull Jill Rogan off,
[02:18:24] then we don't want our music off and that's a legitimate thing. So it's like, okay.
[02:18:34] So Rogan came out, he released like a nine minute podcast last night.
[02:18:38] I happen to be driving and when it came out, so I listened to it. And so this is what's interesting.
[02:18:44] I forget the examples that he gave, but one of them was six months ago or a year ago or whatever,
[02:18:52] if you said cloth masks don't do anything, you would be literally banned and there's documented
[02:19:00] people that were banned from social media for saying that. And now it's, oh, it turns out it's
[02:19:06] actually true. And for example, CNN has been widely reporting that. There's a whole list of things
[02:19:13] like that. Oh, here's, here's the, another example is, if you were to say six months ago or a year ago,
[02:19:22] once you're vaccinated, you can't catch COVID and you can't spread COVID. And if you would have said
[02:19:28] that, there's people that were banned from social media for saying those things. And now you look
[02:19:34] up and those things are actually true. They're factually true. That's what's happening. And you get this
[02:19:41] with the, with the election results that you're talking about in 2020. There's, when people said,
[02:19:51] hey, I'm not sure about this election. Right. Some people weren't necessarily saying,
[02:19:56] I mean, there was politicians, there was very few politicians that were saying, hey,
[02:20:01] not so sure about this. Maybe we should hold off. Maybe we should check the results.
[02:20:06] There was personality, social media personalities that were saying that. And they, they got
[02:20:12] shut completely shut down. Right. Not for saying, hey, I think we should overthrow the government.
[02:20:17] But for saying, hey, don't you think we should confirm this because I agree with you that
[02:20:23] to me, the worst outcome for an American election is people look at it and go, I don't believe it.
[02:20:32] Right. Even if it's, even if it's never mind half the populate, I don't want 10% of the
[02:20:38] population to think, hey, I don't believe this is true. I think that that, I think that the
[02:20:44] election results were wrong. I think there was foul play. All those things. What I want to do is,
[02:20:50] if 10% of the people say, or 1% of the people say, hey, we think that there was foul play in the
[02:20:56] elections. I want to say, okay, well, let's get everything out in the table. You know, a good
[02:21:04] analogy would be if you're watching, if you're playing a football game. Yeah. And, you know, a team,
[02:21:10] we think a team got to touch down. And, and the other team says, yeah, that wasn't a touch down.
[02:21:16] You don't say, well, shut up. It was because now we all leave and we don't really think they
[02:21:20] want to. We argue about it. We fight about it. And it's a bad thing. Instead, what do we do? What
[02:21:24] do we do nowadays when there's that problem? We solve the problem by going, oh, you don't think it was a
[02:21:30] touch down? Cool. We're going to go to the video tape. We're going to lay everything out on the table.
[02:21:35] And then everyone can see, oh, yeah, cross the plane. It was a touch down or didn't cross the plane.
[02:21:42] That's it. We can solve the argument so that we actually get the truth out there. And, and it seems
[02:21:49] like with this election, instead of saying, hey, here's what happened in these situations.
[02:21:58] Here's these anomalies that took place. Here's why they took place. Here's the impact that they
[02:22:03] have actually had. Here's some characters that did some things that they shouldn't have done.
[02:22:09] Here's some things that some accusations were made that were totally false. Right.
[02:22:12] But, but to just say, oh, if you don't think that that election was perfect, then you should be
[02:22:24] silenced. And, and the reason I bring up the the the masks and the vaccines is because
[02:22:33] right now, it seems like there are some people that are gathering evidence about the election
[02:22:39] that might not necessarily turn the election over. But they might at least say, hey, this is
[02:22:47] something that happened. This no one no one agrees that this should happen. No one agrees that someone
[02:22:52] should be stuffing ballot boxes, right? No one no one thinks she's been stuffing ballot boxes.
[02:22:56] So if ballot boxes are getting stuffed, what can we do to prevent that? And to me,
[02:23:02] I can't imagine an American that's aligned with America. Like with just the the broad idea of
[02:23:13] America where we have freedom of speech, where the right to bear them said, the bro we have the right
[02:23:18] through life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I can't imagine someone saying, you know,
[02:23:22] I actually think stuffing ballot boxes, okay? I actually think these changing these election laws
[02:23:28] I think that's fine as long as you know it's done for the right party. That to me doesn't make sense.
[02:23:35] So I think when you start talking about the thing that kind of pushed you over the edge,
[02:23:41] I think there's a lot of people that felt that way. Yeah. And honestly,
[02:23:47] there's a long there's a long list of things that I've been watching for years, but,
[02:23:51] you know, I like for instance, you look at this, look at this other board at, right?
[02:24:00] We're getting ready right now to possibly, you know, go send troops over to Ukraine on the eastern,
[02:24:06] their eastern border and yet we don't even take care of our own border, right? We have
[02:24:11] Fittin' all and drugs coming over that southern border. We have human trafficking coming over that
[02:24:16] southern border. You know, we're basically supporting the cartels by doing that. We have MS-13
[02:24:25] gang members coming over that southern border and you have an administration right now that doesn't
[02:24:29] even want to address that problem at all. They're actually taking people in the dead of night
[02:24:34] sometimes and flying them around the country. Right? You had a situation where border patrol agents
[02:24:39] were being fired because they wouldn't take a vaccination yet. People that were coming here
[02:24:44] illegally weren't forced to take a vaccination and then flown all over the country in the dead of night
[02:24:49] so that UNI wouldn't know about it, wouldn't see about it, et cetera. Those are facts as well.
[02:24:56] And so that's just one more issue. How about our debt situation? You've got like close to $30 trillion
[02:25:04] in debt, right? Right now you have Nancy Pelosi and others pushing spending bills that are going
[02:25:13] to continue to rack up that debt and we don't even have the money to pay for it. We're just printing
[02:25:19] money and basically we're devaluing the US dollar and we're causing inflation to skyrocket and
[02:25:28] you have Democrats like the guy I'm running against, guy named Tom O'Hallor and who will try and
[02:25:33] convince you that inflation, it's not that bad or it's, you know, I've even heard in the media
[02:25:39] they'll say, well, Jen Socky said, well, you know, it's an upper class problem, you know,
[02:25:46] and it's like people that are putting gasoline in their cars, people that are buying
[02:25:52] hamburger meat or any of the consumer products that we buy, those prices are going up and up
[02:26:00] and it affects everybody and this idea that we can just print our way out of this mess that we've
[02:26:06] gotten ourselves in because we don't have any fiscal responsibility and we have politicians that want to
[02:26:12] support of, you know, a spending bill so that they can go back to their constituents and say,
[02:26:16] oh, hey, look, I just got you guys, you know, great broadband, you know, wifi or whatever it is,
[02:26:23] but knowing deep down that there were, you know, a thousand other things in that bill that
[02:26:28] wasn't good for the country but now they can come back to hold this trophy up and be like,
[02:26:32] look what I did for you guys, you know, all across the board, how about energy?
[02:26:39] You know, we went from actually having so much energy that we were exporting energy.
[02:26:44] We shut down the Keystone XL pipeline and now we and we greenlit the Russian pipeline at the same time.
[02:26:52] Right. So how's that good for America? We're talking about defunding police officers.
[02:26:58] Are you, are you, what, what, what, what, what, what, what universe are we living in, right,
[02:27:03] where that's a good idea, you know, and I like Jaco, what you've been talking about, hey,
[02:27:07] how about we get, get some of these, you know, police officers, some better training, right?
[02:27:12] I think that's great, but defunding him, ain't gonna help anything. It's gonna, it's gonna hurt
[02:27:18] people and it's gonna hurt people, and it's gonna hurt people, lower class people and minorities,
[02:27:21] more than anybody else. So we've got this country has gone so, in my opinion, it's gone so far backwards
[02:27:28] and so many different, and so many different ways that I look around and one of my favorite
[02:27:32] sayings of all time is evil times when good men do nothing. And so again, it's just like,
[02:27:38] I'll tell you what, if there was, you know, if, if you were running into my district,
[02:27:42] I wouldn't be running into this district, bro. I wouldn't, and matter fact, I'm gonna put you on the
[02:27:47] spot right now. I, because I know I'm not the only one that has asked you,
[02:27:51] Gavin Newsom, there aren't too many guys that could take him out. You could take him out,
[02:27:58] dude, and I know you're building your empire, but I want to put that on your brain, bro,
[02:28:02] because you could take him out. I know you could, yeah, um, I don't think about, like,
[02:28:09] think about the platform that you have, think about your, your reputation and the seal teams.
[02:28:15] Think about what, what you've done as an entrepreneur, and at, at the same time, you've managed to
[02:28:21] keep your family intact, bro. That's, that's big time. I don't know another, I don't know
[02:28:27] another human being that has that all under one roof, man. And so I know you got stuff to do,
[02:28:34] I know you're working on stuff, but you could take him out. You could,
[02:28:43] evil times when good men do nothing, man. And I, and I hate to even, I hate to even put you on the
[02:28:48] spot because nobody's done, nobody deserves to like enjoy the American dream more than you have,
[02:28:54] just with everything you've done. But this is an inflection point in this country. That's why
[02:28:58] echo, that's why you see seven Navy SEALs running right now. Because it wasn't like, hey,
[02:29:03] it wasn't like we got on a conference call. Like, hey, you know, it'd be cute, because if we all
[02:29:08] ran for content, no, no, everybody, they all realized it. I know you, I know you feel it as well,
[02:29:13] but you know, how bad I saw that beat at Al Jaco, you know, the governor of California.
[02:29:21] Yeah. And and look, I appreciate you. Your input on that one.
[02:29:29] I really don't want to go into politics. That being said, I, you know what's interesting is,
[02:29:37] you know, I talked on my friends at live in Texas, they live in Utah, and they live in Montana,
[02:29:42] and they live in Arizona, and you know, there's just been a rash of people leaving California.
[02:29:48] Businesses leaving California. My friends, a bunch of my friends have left California,
[02:29:54] and I love California. California is freaking awesome. It is California has the Pacific Ocean.
[02:30:03] It has the mountains. It has the desert. It has the redwood trees. It has the Ocemedi. It is a
[02:30:08] magnificent place. It is absolutely magnificent. And yeah, it is in a very
[02:30:17] precarious situation right now that I don't think it can, I don't think it can, I don't think it can
[02:30:24] can you go this way. I mean, you, you've seen the news. You've seen the, the homeless situations.
[02:30:32] Yeah. You see the, the trains that we're getting attacked and, you know, robbed from entire free
[02:30:42] trains. I don't know what's going to happen, man. I don't know what's going to happen in California.
[02:30:48] I, I love California. California is an iconic place, and there's, and the other thing
[02:30:56] you got about remember about California is California is not San Francisco and Los Angeles. That's
[02:31:02] not California. Right. That's a small part of California. California is the Imperial Valley. Right.
[02:31:09] California is the agriculture that is the vast majority of this state and hard working Americans
[02:31:17] that are out there busting their ass to make things work. And at the same time, painting incredible
[02:31:23] amount of taxes and having the regulatory environment that's, that's hostile to business, legitimately
[02:31:30] hostile. Right. So with all these things as they continue to add up, I can't predict the future.
[02:31:38] I certainly hope I don't have to get into politics. I, I really just don't know if I have the
[02:31:43] stomach for it. I don't want to do it, man. And, and it's like just the biggest cop out that I can
[02:31:52] throw back at you at this point and, and you and the rest of the guys that are out there
[02:31:57] trying to do it for the right reasons is awesome. Um, man, I don't, I don't want to get into that
[02:32:04] business. I don't want to get into that world. And, you know, when people ask me about politics,
[02:32:10] I always tell them that, you know, I'm not, I don't want to do it unless things can really bad.
[02:32:13] And people hit me up all the time. Is it bad enough yet? Is it bad enough yet? Is it bad enough yet?
[02:32:19] I don't know where that line is for me. I feel a dumb and dumber moment coming on right now.
[02:32:26] Or I just want to say, so you're saying there's a chance. There's a chance. Okay. One at a million.
[02:32:34] Awesome. Uh, don't like it. Um, no, I hear you. I hear you. It's an, it's nasty, man. It's a nasty
[02:32:41] world in its, a caddude. And I, I'm barely even scratching the surface of it, but even now, like,
[02:32:48] I, I don't really like the world. I don't like the self-promotion of going around campaigning
[02:32:53] and telling people why you're so great and why they should vote for you. I don't like that part of it.
[02:32:57] I don't like the nastyness of, you know, people lying, lying about you and trying to smear you
[02:33:03] and, you know, every single way possible and if they can't come up with anything good, they'll just
[02:33:08] make it up. I don't like that part of it. I don't like exposing my family, you know, to this stuff as
[02:33:13] well, I just want my kids to grow up, kind of like a normal life. And, but I'll tell you what, man. It's like,
[02:33:20] if enough of us don't do it, we're done. Yeah. That's the way I see it, man. And I wish I was more
[02:33:26] optimistic, but I watch, like, just like on a, you know, a dope sheet as a sniper man, I watch
[02:33:32] trajectories. I watch where this country started, and more we're at now, man. And it's, I mean, COVID,
[02:33:38] if that doesn't wake people up, you know, to, you know, the fact that often, most often,
[02:33:45] governments aren't typically interested in letting the power rest with the people,
[02:33:51] I don't know what's going to wake people up, but it's, it's getting bad, and we need to,
[02:33:58] we need some sled dogs to put their, uh, and maybe a couple leaders to put their, uh, their
[02:34:04] shoulder to the wheel, but just saying, am I the only one that's ever called him out on, I don't think so
[02:34:10] now. I will say when I speak, maybe not necessarily on the podcast, because it's a small group
[02:34:16] of two or maybe three. Yeah. So yeah, whenever I go and talk to businesses, companies or
[02:34:21] organizations, I'm getting called out almost 100% of the time to get in the game, to get in that
[02:34:27] game, you know, and, and right now, I mean, part of my cop out, part of my, uh, uh, rationalization
[02:34:37] is, you know, I'm trying to build businesses in America, American made business, we're bringing
[02:34:42] manufacturing, we're putting people back to work, we got hundreds of employees, American employees
[02:34:47] that are, that are making things happen. We're, we're bringing back manufacturing. That's, that's,
[02:34:53] it is a part, it's, it is a part of the fight. It's a very important part of the fight. And honestly,
[02:34:58] that's why I'm an America first candidate, not because I, not because I hate, you know, any, any
[02:35:04] other country around the world, but I love this country, and it's for so long, so many of our
[02:35:08] leaders and politicians have put America on the back burner, and they've sold out so many,
[02:35:13] you know, of our workers, our constituents, and it's just like, hey, you know, I'm off
[02:35:18] for, I'm off for, you know, free trade, but it needs to be fair, and we need to make sure that
[02:35:23] we're not shooting ourselves in the foot and shooting, you know, you know, displacing our work
[02:35:28] for us and taking manufacturing away from many of these folks and families that, you know,
[02:35:33] count on it. And that was one of the coolest things about bottle breaches. I couldn't have even
[02:35:38] done it this long. I couldn't have even run that business this long. If I didn't find a way to
[02:35:43] incorporate mission into it. Okay. How do we, how, how is this bigger than just profits and
[02:35:49] balance sheets and okay, so we can support some cool veteran nonprofits, we can hire some vets,
[02:35:55] we can make our products in the USA. Okay. That's enough of a mission to keep me, you know, engaged,
[02:36:01] you know, for a certain amount of time, but, you know, and I love that you're doing that as well,
[02:36:06] man. It seems like it's getting hard to keep up with all this stuff you're doing. Well,
[02:36:11] you, you tell you, you tell you how I'm a bigger challenge, man. You tell you how I'm a bigger
[02:36:14] challenge. So how can everyone help out? How can we help get you elected? Where do we gotta do?
[02:36:21] Yeah. All right. So I appreciate it, man. I just appreciate the opportunity to come and wrap with you,
[02:36:27] guys. If people want to go follow me, they can look up Eli, Eli Crane, underscore CEO on social media.
[02:36:36] If you want to go to my website, it's Eli for Arizona.com. I hate to even ask, but unfortunately in
[02:36:44] this world, so much of this boils down to name ID and for a first time guy in a political race,
[02:36:51] a US Congress race, so much of it is going to come down to do we have the ammo and the resources
[02:36:57] to run all the TV ads, all the digital ads, all the mail ads, et cetera. So if you guys can give us
[02:37:03] a small donation, we would really appreciate it. I'm asking people for prayer as well. You know,
[02:37:09] just for guidance direction and wisdom. And the other thing I'm asking for is that people share,
[02:37:15] you know, share the website, share what we're doing here, so that other people that don't know about it
[02:37:20] can pitch in and help you, so those are the things that you guys can do. Sounds like a plan and
[02:37:28] probably a good place to wrap it up, Eko. You got any questions? We got football questions,
[02:37:33] whatever. I don't want to keep us here too much actually. No, I just actually want to say,
[02:37:38] so when I when we saw the Shark Tank episode, you know how like because you guys watch that
[02:37:44] even before you're on. You know the kind where someone comes out with a product or service,
[02:37:48] and you, you mean it depends on who you are, obviously. And you immediately know like,
[02:37:53] all this guy's going to get a deal. That's why I felt about yours. Because Brad, he but you don't
[02:37:57] want Shark Tank. I've watched it. I mean, I watched your episode over the past like a few days
[02:38:02] when I knew you were coming out here, but no, I'm not a regular watcher. Well, I'm like a bunch of
[02:38:06] other people that moment I saw that thing as a, I was like, did you know what I think about? Did you
[02:38:11] know you lie before that? No, I did. This was back in the days, like in 2014. Yeah.
[02:38:16] Um, but Brad, once I saw that thing, I was like, Brad, that's the cool issue that I ever seen.
[02:38:21] Yeah. You're that guy, bro. Oh, yeah. You're that guy that you was talking about.
[02:38:25] No, dude. I mean, it was so, it was so cool and such a blessing man. And I mean, it's still,
[02:38:31] I tell people all the time, you know, guys don't really grow up. We just get bigger toys.
[02:38:37] Can I tell, can I tell the Southern Franco story? Oh, yeah, it's a real hell of a thing. All right,
[02:38:41] so it's so fun, man. You know, Jaco is who Jaco is, man. And, you know, you got, got people that want to be
[02:38:47] like Jaco, right? And it just so happened that a lot of people, you know, and in task unit two,
[02:38:53] wanted to be like Jaco. So they made us, the older guys made the younger guys do skits.
[02:38:58] And that's a pretty dicey situation, man, because by the way, I know I know where a style
[02:39:02] lives right now. Yeah. I know where he's at. So I might have to go get him. So he's coming, bro. No,
[02:39:08] it wasn't even making fun of you. Really, it was just he was making fun of people that wanted to be like you.
[02:39:15] And so it was funny. So they make you do these skits. And if you piss him off, you know, you deal with,
[02:39:20] you deal with that side of it. But if you make them, if you can make them laugh, while making fun of them,
[02:39:25] that's the, the golden ticket, right? So South was always the funniest dude. So South came up with
[02:39:31] a lot of our skits. And so I remember he did this skit and it was like he was playing you. And
[02:39:39] or no, he was playing, I think he's playing Stoner. And he had this, he had this note, like this
[02:39:44] note, this binder, and he put like, what was it? WWE JD, what would Jaco do? And he like walks out
[02:39:52] playing Stoner, talking like Stoner. He's like, you know, all the acronyms, BTF, Charlie might,
[02:39:57] you know, the guys are just rolling because he's, you know, he's like, you know, making fun of all these
[02:40:02] guys who want to be like Jaco. But our failing misery, and it was just, it was just so funny dude.
[02:40:07] And so, you know, that, that became, you know, a joke, you know, running joke after you left, like,
[02:40:13] got to do all these guys walking around, what would Jaco do? Try to be like, bro, you're not
[02:40:17] Jaco, just be yourself, man. Okay, just be yourself. Big tough frog man, you know,
[02:40:23] our 200 pound ball, all the stuff. Hey, what's Charlie Mike? Continue mission. Oh, yeah.
[02:40:30] It's just another one. And it, and it's an unofficial thing, meaning our status is, this time
[02:40:37] is that we are going to Charlie Mike, meaning it's an unofficial thing, like, we are actually
[02:40:40] continuing to mention, but that turns into just like a, they just Charlie Mike, bro, right? You just
[02:40:45] got to just keep going. BTF, not official. BTF is unofficial. Yeah. Yeah. BTF is unofficial.
[02:40:52] Similar meanings, except for BTF, has, you know, greater capabilities, because it can be used for a
[02:40:57] lot more things than just, just, just, continue mission. So, you know, that's all good. It's all good.
[02:41:05] Eli. Yep. Any closing thoughts? Thank you, man. Thank you for, you know, what you're doing.
[02:41:12] And thank you for allowing a guy like me, you know, to come on this show. Like I've
[02:41:16] listened to this show for, you know, years. And I understand why you, you, you try and keep politics out of it,
[02:41:22] because, you know, I mean, it's such a divisive thing, but I just appreciate you taking a risk and
[02:41:27] bring it, allowing a guy like me to come on and, you know, talk about a little, even my faith, man.
[02:41:32] That's something that can be really divisive to people. And I definitely don't want it to be a
[02:41:37] divisive to people. And I definitely don't want it disrespect, which you've built, but I'm
[02:41:40] grateful that you allowed me to come on and talk about it, because at the end, bro, I do not want
[02:41:46] to be, I never wanted to be in Congress. I don't like Warren suits. I don't want to live in Washington,
[02:41:50] D.C. But I honestly believe if we don't get, if we don't get some men and women with courage
[02:41:57] and character that never wanted this job in the first place in key positions, I'm very concerned
[02:42:02] about what the future for my kids is going to look like. So thank you, man, for using what you've
[02:42:07] built to help guys like me. Yeah. Well, again, thank you. Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you
[02:42:15] for what you did. Thank you for job and the teams, man. That, that counts, bro, like getting after
[02:42:20] getting out there doing that job, holding the line in the teams. Thank you for doing that. And
[02:42:26] for what you did with what you did, what you continue to do with bottle breacher, like that's building
[02:42:31] the American economy. That's made in America. That's freaking outstanding. That's providing
[02:42:35] jobs for people. That's, that's awesome. And, and what you're doing right now going in a politics
[02:42:40] look, I don't like politics. I know you don't like politics. And, you know, I'm not like intentionally
[02:42:49] staring away from politics on this podcast. It's just not the thing that I talk about. No,
[02:42:55] man, and I've had other political people on here. I'll continue to have my, I've had people
[02:43:00] from both sides. I've had Democrats. I've had Republicans on here. People that have run for
[02:43:06] Democratic positions, people that have run for Republican positions, people, and, you know,
[02:43:12] talking about your faith, like, that's, that's a, I mean, I've, that's wide open. You know,
[02:43:17] you can't cover books about the military and not have faith in intertwined in those things
[02:43:24] from people that have, have been to the edge and back. But for me, you know, what I like,
[02:43:31] what I want and what I hope is that when people listen to what we talk about here, they actually
[02:43:36] listen to it. Actually, listen to what people are saying. Yeah. And instead of trying to figure out
[02:43:41] where I don't like you or where I don't agree with you, I try to figure out where I agree with you.
[02:43:47] Where do you have a common goal that that I have? And you want to see America moving the same
[02:43:54] direction that I want to see it? And maybe we have some different ideas about how to get there.
[02:43:58] Yeah. That's okay. That's okay. You know, in a platoon, you ask a pl, you ask every single guy in a
[02:44:06] platoon to come up with a plan for a mission. They're all going to come up with a different way.
[02:44:10] And they're all probably going to think their way is the best way. But guess what? We're all trying
[02:44:14] to do the same thing. And that's what we need to do in this country is look at where we're trying to
[02:44:20] go get on board, support each other, and let's move in that direction. Thanks for coming on, man.
[02:44:27] Thank you. Thank you. And Eli is on his way back to Arizona. And before he left,
[02:44:34] echo Charles, man. You normally aren't quite as hyped to get a picture with someone.
[02:44:42] As you were with Eli, because as far as you're concerned, Shark Tank is, he's a movie star
[02:44:52] for you. Well, or something. You know, you know, you know, but all when you watch them on it,
[02:44:56] you would just happen to watch that life. Like whenever it came out in 2014, you were watching.
[02:45:02] Yeah. So I've seen, I do watch Shark Tank. No, I've seen every single episode. Really? Yeah.
[02:45:07] Yes. How many seasons have there been? I don't know. One million. I don't know. Okay. But it's
[02:45:12] like that today. Like just like how Eli is like where I don't really watch TV, but there is one show
[02:45:17] that me and that's literally the one to show that you like. There's well, my fervo does not
[02:45:22] come on anymore. So yeah. Down to one show. Yeah. There's some other ones that are like cool.
[02:45:28] I'll catch it if it's like the tail end of the night and then whatever, but the one that we do
[02:45:33] watch together every episode Shark Tank. And that was one of them. No, I didn't know him.
[02:45:40] But he was like, you know, I'm a veteran, you know, former Navy SEAL and stuff. So I figure,
[02:45:44] okay, we must know, you know, kind of the same people and just in general. But the thing that
[02:45:50] really was like, I was down for the causes when he showed that thing, man, the freaking 50 caliber
[02:45:56] bottle opener. Come on. I mean, that, you know, was it the cure for cancer? No. But it was the coolest thing
[02:46:03] I've ever seen ever in terms of bottle opener. He'd be able to believe. Yeah. It was really cool. And
[02:46:10] when, you know, after a while, you can tell like, okay, the product alone is such a good idea that
[02:46:15] he, of course, he's going to get a deal. It was like that thought like, yeah, I thought, oh,
[02:46:19] he's going to get a deal. And he got a double. Yeah. He got a double deal. You shark's. That's a big deal.
[02:46:23] Actually, three sharks bid because one other shark said, I'll do a deal right now. And then he
[02:46:29] lies said, hey, just out of respect for the other sharks. I want to make sure that just does anyone
[02:46:37] else have anything to offer. And then the other shark stepped in and made an offer. And then the other
[02:46:44] shark. I don't know all the sharks. That's another little detail. And that's fun. That's
[02:46:51] interesting because I do remember him saying that. But I totally forgot that he was the one who said
[02:46:55] that, which, okay, so I was good was how he framed it. I remember that part. He framed it as not as like
[02:47:04] and actually they made fun of him a little bit because he said he said, he said out of respect for the
[02:47:11] other sharks. I want to make sure that none of you would like to make an offer as well. When
[02:47:15] what he was really saying was, hey, listen to say, if we also want to throw it in the market,
[02:47:19] then the one of the female sharks said, oh, out of respect for us, like she kind of called them on it.
[02:47:25] But he did it right. He did it right. And so good job, you lie. Usually how they say it is kind of like,
[02:47:31] well, it wouldn't be smart for me as a businessman to, you know, just like taking off for the
[02:47:36] first offer. So they they'll frame it something like that. Like, hey, out of out of like my own or
[02:47:41] our business interest money. When he said out of respect for the other that's undeniable right there.
[02:47:46] Because this is what the sharks will do sometimes. Cuban will do this. He'll be like, um,
[02:47:50] do they have their own little methodologies that they use? What's Cuban do? He'll go, if you really
[02:47:55] want to, he'll bully the other sharks. So he'll be like this. He'll go, hey, I'm offering you this
[02:47:59] this, but you got to take it right now. Like he started and I don't want to hear them. If you start
[02:48:04] taking there and he'll totally do it too. He'll be like, well, you know, I should think I should
[02:48:08] hear an offer from and if the one of the other sharks starts talking like, hey, I'll offer you this
[02:48:13] Cuban will be like, I'm out. So they miss it. And now he has kind of a little bit of a reputation
[02:48:18] for doing that kind of stuff sometimes. So now people get really, oh, and they jump at it, you know?
[02:48:22] But if you frame it like, hey, out of respect for the other sharks, you would have to paint
[02:48:27] himself as a bad guy now for him to really follow through. Yeah, it was good. I want to see
[02:48:32] him so respectable. Who you like? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's only a good. It was cool to have
[02:48:38] him on here, man. But definitely cool. And even though he's trying to get me to run for
[02:48:44] freaking governor of California and stuff, I'd have to do a campaign video. Oh, yeah, you can't
[02:48:51] paint a video guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you might even have to work. I really hope it doesn't
[02:48:59] come to that man, but but I give it up for these guys that are out there doing this because
[02:49:04] I look, I can, you know, sometimes people say, oh, I wouldn't like to do that, but you know, they're
[02:49:09] lying. Yeah, you know, they're like, I don't want to have to run for this position. Yeah,
[02:49:13] feeling of the need for them. My country's calling me and you know that they're not telling
[02:49:16] the truth. Yeah, like you can, you lies like, hey, I don't want to do this. You can definitely
[02:49:20] lie like literally does not want to do this. No choice, but at the same time, you can see the passion
[02:49:26] in he knows that we need help. And he's right, he's right, man. He's right, good on him. He came
[02:49:33] at me with the direct approach, which is normally not your recommended approach, but it kind of
[02:49:40] made me think, man, I'm weak over here. Well, yeah, and even if you don't, and this is all in a big
[02:49:47] picture kind of way, this is all just the natural course of things where like if things get too
[02:49:52] extreme and everyone sort of recognize the way this thing, this two extremes, it's going to start
[02:49:58] tipping the other way. Usually when it tips the other way, just like a swing, right? It's going to
[02:50:02] it's going to tip maybe a little bit more, you know, and hopefully it'll settle. Hopefully at some point.
[02:50:08] I am, I am keep waiting for California to start swimming back. And it is, you are starting to see
[02:50:15] indications, right? There was a female mayor up in San Francisco that she just came out and was like,
[02:50:21] alright, we're crushing crime, we're funding the police. And she was, this is in San Francisco.
[02:50:26] This is like a liberal mayor of San Francisco. She started swinging it back the other way.
[02:50:31] Yeah. So that's the, one of the early indications of what's going down. I mean, you see the
[02:50:36] politicians out here just, they did a man at right now. It's what they did today. I don't know,
[02:50:42] but like they got, they put another mask mandate on indoor mask mandate. I mean, meanwhile,
[02:50:48] other parts of the country are wide open for months. Yeah, even the Denver guy. Same deal. Yeah.
[02:50:55] And oh, oh, wide open. England is, England's just saying we're done. We're done with COVID.
[02:51:00] Yeah. Hey, more people are going to get it. We know that. I think Sweden or some,
[02:51:05] somewhere off the, there's places that are just going wide open. Yeah. And Florida's been wide open.
[02:51:09] And Texas, man, I wasn't Texas for a couple years ago. I made it as a couple. Maybe it's like a year
[02:51:14] and a half ago. I did a jujitsu seminar or like a meet and greet at jujitsu. There was 200 people
[02:51:23] there rolling jujitsu. Meanwhile, California was in lockdown, by the way. So that's okay. So
[02:51:30] people are making decisions. But here's that here's, you know, I just saw a picture of the
[02:51:36] newsom who he was just talking about at a football game with a bunch of other politicians,
[02:51:42] none of them wearing masks as they have mandated for everyone else. Yeah. You see,
[02:51:48] you can't get away with that forever. No. You can't, it just doesn't work. Yeah. And that's why
[02:51:54] the pendulum is going to start to swing back. That's what's going to happen. I hope I don't have
[02:51:58] to ride that pendulum to the other side. Yeah. Because I really don't want to. I want to surf.
[02:52:04] I want to do jujitsu. I want to make the podcast. I want to build the companies that were building.
[02:52:09] So and and if we can do that properly, maybe we don't have to get into this whole freaking political
[02:52:16] thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, if you're in a bus, we'll say, or fan. So we're in a bus.
[02:52:22] You know what? I feel like that's my political theory. That's your thing. And I don't know about it.
[02:52:29] But like, I think it's got to be, I'm talking chaos. I'm talking, I'm talking, I'm talking
[02:52:35] total mayhem and chaos. And I don't really think I would be in no, I don't, I think it's, I think
[02:52:40] I would become a political leader in an environment when things are no longer the way they were.
[02:52:49] You know what I'm saying? I think I'm, I think I'm more stepping up to a really hostile situation.
[02:52:57] Yeah. That's where I'd get. That's where I grow and hot. Yeah. And in a lot of terms,
[02:53:00] two, we have to remind ourselves that, or remind ourselves of the question of, is it really hostile?
[02:53:07] Or is it just hostile like on the internet? Yeah, you're on the TV or whatever. And I'm not
[02:53:12] to say it is or isn't. I'm just saying that's always a good reminder. And I would tell you that
[02:53:15] there are elements that are hostile in real life. There's definitely elements that are hostile.
[02:53:20] And now, the thing with Joe Rogan was just crazy right now. You know? And the point that he was
[02:53:26] making in this little nine minute episode that he did, I mean, people got banned from Twitter for saying
[02:53:35] masks don't work. Yeah. And by the way, there was people out there wearing three and four
[02:53:39] masks when I was traveling, let's go the airport, there'd be people with two masks on and a
[02:53:43] face shield, right? And okay, hey, cool, go, go do that. But some people were saying, hey,
[02:53:51] this does, how does this work? And you know, the people like dude, it's a piece of cloth over my face.
[02:53:55] How's that stopping anything? And that was just a kind of a common sense approach. Okay,
[02:53:59] we're banned from your band from talking. Even if you're like, it doesn't seem like there's
[02:54:03] does a lot. You're banned from talking. So now, now you talk about those election things. And it's like,
[02:54:09] hey, it doesn't, it seems like these states that were like swing states, there was
[02:54:14] devoting stop. And in the only four like swing states that matter, devoting stop counting at midnight,
[02:54:20] does that seem weird? Yeah. Oh, you're banned. You know what I'm going to say that.
[02:54:25] Yeah. What the right answer should be, hey, that's a good question. Let's do some analytics and
[02:54:30] figure out what happened. Yeah. So, and there's, I, I do know that there's some other
[02:54:35] information that's coming out right now that is definitely, let me rephrase that. There's the
[02:54:42] information coming out about the 2020 election that indicates that maybe things should be looked at
[02:54:48] a little bit more. So, uh, and again, if it's wrong, and it turns out that the election was
[02:54:57] squared away, then cool. You go, okay, cool. Now you all can stop worrying about it.
[02:55:01] All you freaking crazy right wing fringe Trump maniacs can calm down now because look,
[02:55:06] here's the facts. But instead of what they're saying is like, hey, shut up, you're a conspiracy theorist.
[02:55:13] What does it do? What do you do? When you suppress that information, what does it do to those people?
[02:55:17] It embold, it doesn't embolden them. It makes them even more suspicious. You know, and that's not a good
[02:55:23] move. When you won't show the NFL team, the video, they just go, see, they don't know, show
[02:55:29] it's a bad move. Are these things out? Man, what's the worst case scenario? What's the worst case
[02:55:36] scenario? Hey, we got, we got some, we got to fix our elections a little bit. That's, that seems
[02:55:41] legitimate to me. I want to have everybody's vote count. Okay, cool. Don't you? Or do you not?
[02:55:49] Because if you do not, then we have a serious problem with our alignment between us two as human beings.
[02:55:56] I'm American. I think we vote for our people, and that's who gets put in office.
[02:56:04] Don't you think that? You know, and if you don't think that, we have a serious problem.
[02:56:09] And I don't think most Americans, the vast, vast majority, are like, yeah, whoever gets voted,
[02:56:18] that's who should be in office. Cool. We agree on that. We can agree on that. Should the voting
[02:56:24] beast done in a method words kind of standardized and make sense and it's hard to cheat?
[02:56:31] Wouldn't that make sense? Yeah, that would make sense. Okay, cool. Yeah, that instant replay analogy was
[02:56:38] pretty much spot on there because it does like, you know, in football, as the example is,
[02:56:44] the if, you know, usually it's like a touchdown or an out-of-bound scenario, whatever, right?
[02:56:49] Where the line matters, critical moment. Yeah, actually, actually technically it's never,
[02:56:54] it doesn't have to be in a critical moment. Can be the first play they gave? The problem is that
[02:56:57] you only get so many of those calls. You can only go to the video tape a certain number of times,
[02:57:02] and you might not want to waste it if it's like, you know, if you've the first and two,
[02:57:06] yeah, if you ever. I think that's challenging the, yeah, yeah, challenging the rest call. That's,
[02:57:11] that's true. So either way, if the reason that exists is because we do, no matter what team you're
[02:57:22] trained for, Simon, it's just 49ers or the Denver Broncos, whoever, wherever you're trained for,
[02:57:29] you do want to know the truth. Yeah. Like no one wanted, like, if someone didn't make a touchdown,
[02:57:35] it's pretty hard for us to be like, yeah, we should just give them the touchdown, even though he
[02:57:39] didn't make the touchdown, like, that doesn't make much sense. Yeah, and it especially doesn't
[02:57:43] make sense. Even if you're like, well, you know, my team kind of wants, or I just want to let it slide.
[02:57:48] The problem with that attitude, which is understandable, you know, I'm a raging,
[02:57:52] freaking Denver Broncos friend, and it looked like a touch. I think it was a touch. We just need to
[02:57:57] let it slide this time. Here's the problem. You've just now said in place a precedent where we're
[02:58:03] not going to review things. That's what we're, okay. So now we're just going with whatever that
[02:58:07] ref saw that was a weird angle, and he called it a touchdown. So we're good. We're just going to go
[02:58:11] with that for now on. That's not the precedent you want to set. You want to set a precedent,
[02:58:14] like, okay, we have a way of assessing whether this was actually a touchdown or not. And that's what
[02:58:21] we're going to utilize. So you might say, you know what, I really want the Broncos to win,
[02:58:25] and it kind of looked like a touchdown, but the right thing to do for future reference, and for future
[02:58:31] precedents is to say, let's go to the video tape and confirm. But the politicians that said that,
[02:58:38] and a lot of it was tied to the fact that the January 6th event happened. And that made people just
[02:58:46] go, I don't want to, I don't want to catch any flag for what's going on. This is getting crazy. Let's just
[02:58:52] move forward and call it what it is. Looks like they won't go to the video tape. When the video tape,
[02:58:59] we'll make people say, yeah, you know what, the team won. Or, or they say, oh, the team didn't win,
[02:59:07] and now we got some serious issues that we need to attend to. It's very strange times, man.
[02:59:13] It's a very strange time. What's weird? Here's what's weird about this. Is me saying what I just said,
[02:59:19] it seems like pretty normal. It seems pretty logical. Well,
[02:59:23] shouldn't you go to the video tape? No one's going to listen to that and say, no,
[02:59:27] they're going to say, yeah, if that's the rule and you have the data, then why wouldn't you check it.
[02:59:34] But you transfer that exact analogy to the 2020 election and all of a sudden, whoever says,
[02:59:43] hey, maybe we should review the information and the data is a savage, you know,
[02:59:50] insurrectionist, whatever. Well, it's like, no, I'm not an insurrectionist at all. What I want to
[02:59:57] do is review the data. So if someone says that, they get even worse accusations. So it's very strange
[03:00:05] times. So do you, and you mentioned something just a second ago about how in the NFL,
[03:00:10] you only get a few chances to challenge the call. I think I'm not in the NFL. I admit, and it's been a while,
[03:00:16] really, since I've, you know, so that rule could be changed. I don't know. But nonetheless, that was a rule at
[03:00:22] some point. Yeah. And that's for a reason because if there's no limit to, let me challenge every single call
[03:00:28] and jam up this whole system, this whole game, this whole game is 12 hours long now, because I'm
[03:00:33] challenging every call that goes against me. Right? So isn't that part of the game too? Where?
[03:00:39] What's interesting about like the election was people were like, who we don't want to investigate
[03:00:43] everything. We just want to make sure that these key areas that had voting anomalies that are
[03:00:49] documented, maybe we should check those out. Shut up. There. No. Right. So it's almost like a tactic
[03:00:55] where you could, if you're on the other side, right? You could be like, hey, you're just trying
[03:01:00] to stop. You're just what you call. You can't let it go. What were they saying? They were saying,
[03:01:04] like, you can't just accept the truth. It's like that. You know, you want to keep that as an unlimited
[03:01:10] uh, you know, challenging the call. Yeah. You know what? Well, what makes this really scary?
[03:01:14] Well, makes it all that really scary. It's because I haven't dove enough into the details,
[03:01:19] but what makes it really scary is that what just what Joe Rogan just talked about, which is, hey,
[03:01:25] people were getting banned from social media for saying masks didn't work and now it's the reality.
[03:01:30] People were getting banned from social media for saying the vaccine you could still spread COVID
[03:01:35] even if you had a vaccine. And that is actually true. And by the way, people were getting banned
[03:01:41] for saying you could still catch COVID. Guess what? That's true. So all these things,
[03:01:46] we didn't have an open conversation about them because one side got completely shut down,
[03:01:49] which is crazy. So there you go. Can't have an open conversation. That's disturbing
[03:01:57] when you can't have an open conversation. And when what you have to watch out for is people that
[03:02:04] whatever methodology they want to use raised their voice and yell over you. So whether that
[03:02:12] mean, I'm not talking, so could that be, if you and I are in a discussion and you start going,
[03:02:18] I don't care about that. And you start raising your voice and yelling and talking over me?
[03:02:22] Okay, but that's just you and me. I realize you're just mad, whatever, but I didn't get my point
[03:02:27] across, but you don't care because you leave. That, that behavior in social media, that behavior
[03:02:39] in the news, that behavior in mainstream media where, oh, echo saying something I don't like.
[03:02:45] So I'm going to attack him, raise my voice, but through whatever means that might mean,
[03:02:51] you know, retweeting you with hate, calling you this or calling you that or doing a personal
[03:02:54] attack, all that behavior. Now we're not discussing the topic. We're discussing that I hate you.
[03:03:04] You have watched the movie the time machine, you ever heard of it, I didn't watch it, but
[03:03:10] okay, so the time machine is okay, Guy Pierce, who's also the star of Memento, by the way.
[03:03:18] You know, a guy Pierce boom, he makes time machine, he goes away in the future and, you know,
[03:03:21] he finds that humans have split evolutionarily speaking. So they were actually split in three,
[03:03:29] but so one, so he goes with the villagers or whatever and like he says something,
[03:03:34] wait a second, this could have been stargate. Nonetheless, he says something and everything
[03:03:40] a time machine back to before this story. Everyone like turns their back or starts walking away
[03:03:47] or erases what he wrote in his time or something like that. And someone who like somebody explains
[03:03:52] to him, hey, like you can't speak of that, you just can't speak of it. And I think later on they find out,
[03:03:57] like, you know, we're behind and something like that. And that's the thing, what's something you guys
[03:04:01] got to listen to what they say and it isn't ironic that Neil Young's song, keep on rocking in the
[03:04:05] free world. He's like, don't talk anymore. Right, like that's crazy, right? Boy, that's crazy.
[03:04:12] Yep, that's why we have the underdrumped. By the way, we have the underdrumped.
[03:04:16] I'm going around dot com. Why do we have that? Why do we charge $8 and $18 a month
[03:04:22] to have our own little platform that this is why? Because what we're talking about right now,
[03:04:29] this may get rolled, this may get bounced, this may get edited, right? And we're not actually
[03:04:35] making a statement one way or the other. I'm just explaining things that have happened. Yeah.
[03:04:40] I haven't dug through the details enough. I don't spend my time digging through the details of
[03:04:46] current events. I don't do that. That's not, but you know why? Because I'm not that interested
[03:04:52] and because other people that commit their time to them, let these other people go do that.
[03:04:57] I'm going to be reading about World War II, Vietnam, Korea, the Peloponnesian Wars. That's what
[03:05:02] I'm doing over on my side. I'm going to be trying to jitter, hopefully going surfing, playing guitar,
[03:05:06] those are the things that I'm doing. I'm not parsing through the news stories that came out
[03:05:12] in the last 48 hours to try and get you and catch you on something. But when you let a little
[03:05:19] time go by and we talked about this on one of the underground points. So I let time go by and the
[03:05:24] truth starts to rise to the surface. Now it took six to eight months for the truth to rise to
[03:05:29] the surface on some of these stories. But again, you know what's sleep I lost over these stories
[03:05:33] while they were happening? Not very much. I wasn't freaking, I was like, these masks don't work or
[03:05:38] I wasn't like, you better put on a mask. I didn't lose sleep over that. Because I was like, hey,
[03:05:41] it doesn't seem like going to work that good to me. Oh, you know, I'm going to carry on with my life.
[03:05:46] That's what I'm doing. So we don't know when we might get suppressed. So that's why we made
[03:05:54] Joccon around dot com. If you want to, you can help us out. If anything happens to any of these platforms
[03:06:00] that you listen to this on, we will still have that platform. We do an extra podcast on it about
[03:06:06] once a week. And we talk about other things that maybe don't fit quite on Jockel podcast, but we
[03:06:11] want to get them out there too. So you can check that out. If you can't afford it, look, if you can't
[03:06:14] afford it, it's okay. We still got you. You can email, what is it? Assistance at jockel underground.com.
[03:06:22] We appreciate your support on that. You know, also we were talking about American-made companies.
[03:06:27] You know, that's kind of, that's, that's what, that's the way I am trying to help America right now
[03:06:34] by building these companies with the origin team, origin us a dot com. If you need to get boots,
[03:06:38] if you need to get jeans, if you need to get a G, which you probably do,
[03:06:43] then get go to origin us a dot com and by the way, you probably, you may have seen we have a hunting
[03:06:48] line coming out. So we, we're going to be making clothes for hunting. That's what we're doing.
[03:06:54] We've got all kinds of good clothes coming out as well. Work out clothes, by the way,
[03:06:58] echo Charles. So we're going to cover you down on that as well. Origin us a dot com. We also have
[03:07:05] jockel fuel dot com. I'm barely, barely on my game today. Why? I didn't sleep last night. Probably
[03:07:14] got two hours, maybe two and a half. And I've, this is my second jocco discipline go, which is it,
[03:07:21] which is a drink. It's a drink. Could you call it an energy drink? You could because it does have
[03:07:26] energy in it, but when you hear energy drink, you're thinking, oh, oh, you're going to ingest some
[03:07:31] poison that's going to get you a jittery and hyper for about an hour and a half. And then you're
[03:07:35] going to crash and be sick and be diabetic. We're not in that category. No sugar in here,
[03:07:40] sweetened with monk fruit, 95 milligrams of caffeine. Get you on that nice little. You're good to go.
[03:07:47] You're good to go. People say people, if you don't sleep, you don't, it's like, no,
[03:07:52] less than eight hours of sleep is like being a point zero eight. Do you why? You're, you're mentally
[03:07:58] impaired. Look, I'm not saying it's good for you, but it's not as bad as, you know, look, should you,
[03:08:03] get sleep, no, I'm going to get me wrong. Get sleep. Sleep as much as you can. Sleep as much as you want.
[03:08:12] Okay, don't get crazy, but what I'm saying is, if you see a little bit less and you need a little
[03:08:18] swamp hitter, get yourself some jocco fuel, jocco fuel.com. Yeah, that's good. I will also
[03:08:23] contend that even if you got a lot of sleep. Drink because it is good for you. Yeah, it's
[03:08:28] healthy for you. Look, hey, look, some people hate some people drink coffee, right? In the morning,
[03:08:33] good drink coffee, back coffee, whatever you, however you drink coffee. If you get eight hours of
[03:08:38] sleep, what should you not drink coffee? Not necessarily because of kind of good, drink some coffee,
[03:08:43] man. You like that one? You want that as you would say hit or whatever, the reason same deal.
[03:08:48] Mm-hmm. And it's healthy for you. Yep. So boom, you'll be better off either way. Also new tropics in there.
[03:08:54] Yep. It's not ignore that. That's good for your brain. That is nutrients. Yep.
[03:08:59] For your brain. That's probably why you don't need to overload the caffeine with the go.
[03:09:03] Yeah. You don't need to because it's got the new tropics in there. Get your up there on step,
[03:09:07] rock and then on. Right, there was a commercial and I remember the drink I forget what it was called,
[03:09:12] because I used to get it. It's juice. Straight up juice. Like juice juice. Oh, like apple juice.
[03:09:18] Yeah. Like it was like a mix I think. I forget what it was. But nonetheless,
[03:09:21] their thing was like feed your brain. Well, now as an adult, I'm looking at like,
[03:09:26] like feed your brain. Isn't there like 50 grams of sugar in that thing right there?
[03:09:30] Savage is. Yeah. Yep. That's jacophil.com. Don't forget about jacos store.
[03:09:36] We're making cool t-shirts. It's true. Yeah. You want to represent?
[03:09:40] Because hey, this path is not always easy. Yep. Yep. Good to go. But it is worth it. It is weighs 100%.
[03:09:47] And if you want to represent, boom, yep, you get your shirts, your hats. The subscription shirts continue to
[03:09:55] dazzle the senses. Yeah. That's a little bit of a sense. Yeah. You got some good one. The shirt rocker.
[03:10:00] Yep. The shirt rocker. You get a cool new one every month. We got to we got some cool ones coming out.
[03:10:08] Look at that. They're always cool. Inticipation is just overflowing over there. Subscribe to
[03:10:14] this podcast, YouTube, the YouTube channel. Psychological warfare. Flipside canvas to code a
[03:10:20] mire. You got to get cool stuff to hang on your wall occasionally. Yes. Unless you want to bear
[03:10:26] wall, which is only applicable in a podcast in the jacophil podcast studio. But even though it's like
[03:10:32] conspicuously bear. Yeah. My house, my home, would be bear. Were it not for my wife?
[03:10:41] Because she's hung some stuff on the walls. But that's not appropriate. You should hang some
[03:10:46] fun your walls. Flipside canvas dot com to code a mire, making awesome stuff. I've written a bunch
[03:10:50] of books. We got Ash's Lomb front. Yeah. If you want, if you like what we're talking about here,
[03:10:54] get some of the books. Ash's Lomb front. Dot com leadership consultancy. Extremeownership.com
[03:11:03] is our online training academy for leadership. You can check that out.
[03:11:07] Also, if you want to help service members retired service members, active duty service members,
[03:11:16] gold star families, the families of service members. Check out Mark Lee's mom. She's got an awesome
[03:11:21] organization. Go to America's mighty warriors dot org if you want to donate or get involved. You can
[03:11:26] also check out heroes and horses dot com. We got Mike. I think up there in the woods in the mountains
[03:11:33] of Montana helping out vets. And if you want more of us, you can find us on social. And that's cool.
[03:11:39] We'll be there. But we don't want you in the algorithm. Keep out of the algorithm.
[03:11:46] Echoes, adequate Charles. I am at jockelwilling. And thanks once again to Eli Crane for coming on,
[03:11:54] appreciate your service in the past and in the present. Eli for erasona.com. Let's go help
[03:12:03] Eli win and to the soldier sailors, airman and marines out there protecting our flag around the
[03:12:11] world. Thank you. Same goes to our police and law enforcement firefighters, paramedics,
[03:12:17] EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, board of patrol secret service, all first responders.
[03:12:23] Thank you for protecting us here at home and to everyone else out there.
[03:12:27] Remember that you do get to write the script of your life, but you have to write around the
[03:12:37] things that don't go the way you want them to. But don't let that stop you. Instead, take ownership
[03:12:48] and counter attack those things that aren't going the way you want them to. By going out every day
[03:12:55] and getting after it. Until next time, Zekko and Jockel. Out!