How Military Training Shapes Top Entrepreneurs | Cole Fackler DSH #602

When you were defending these high-level people, were there any attempted attacks on them?

There was one

during the day.

Wow, during the broad daylight, broad daylight, but they have such-I mean, they had such a protection detail militia outside of the U.S., like Trump has teams just monitoring him 24/7, right?

Yeah, so you were probably like undercover and people didn't even know.

I think I stuck out a little bit, yeah.

I think I stuck out a little bit there.

And I mean, they knew it was early in the war, um, in 05,

and so I mean, they knew who we were

wherever you guys are watching this show I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe it helps a lot with the algorithm it helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team truly means a lot thank you guys for supporting and here's the episode all right guys we got cole fackler here today founder of gbrs group thanks for coming on man i appreciate it thank you for the opportunity yeah we were just talking about surfing yeah uh it's it's one thing i've done the longest i just turned 40 last february but ever since I can remember, I've been in the ocean surfing probably since I was like four or five.

Wow.

So you grew up in Virginia.

Did they have waves out there?

Hurricanes.

Hurricanes, storms, definitely chasing all those is what creates a surf on the East Coast.

But I grew up swimming competitively and with Pisces.

So love the water, love the ocean, and can't get enough of it.

Damn.

What's the biggest wave you've caught?

Biggest wave I caught

was

in,

say 2012.

I was on the north shore of Hawaii, a place called Log Cabin.

So it's about a mile offshore from Pipeline.

Legendary break.

And we're actually out there

doing some training and the surf got big enough, the Eddie ICAO almost went on.

It was right in that time window for that big wave contest in Waimea.

But we ended up doing some towing surfing.

The legend, Ken Bradshaw, he was one of the pioneers in tow and surfing.

I was out there with him and got towed into like a 45-foot wave.

Holy crap.

So what exactly is tow-in surfing?

It's where a jet ski pulls essentially, you know, a wakeboard boat type

rope, and you have a board strapped onto you, and you get enough speed and get towed into

a big wave.

That is crazy.

And you're a mile out of the shore.

Yep.

So you can't even.

I mean, there's a lot of jet skis.

There's a lot more training that go into it.

It's not just get a jet ski, get a rope and a tow board and and jump out there no i mean these guys are legends like professionals they've been doing it their entire lives that's insane 45 feet dude that is seven times my height yeah i mean there were a lot of pros out there that day um cole christensen john john florence i was just lucky enough to be out there that wave hadn't broke in about eight years no way yeah so it takes a certain size swell um

and it doesn't happen every year so wow so a lot goes into it to get to that point yeah i mean everything from being comfortable in the ocean to your team, procedures that you wipe out, what to expect, people to pick you up.

And, you know, it's, it's progressed a lot in the safety equipment from jet skis to flotation and everything else.

Nice.

Would you say you're a bit of an adrenaline junkie?

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely an adrenaline junkie.

I like pushing my limits.

Yeah.

You like that moment of like your life's on the line almost?

Yeah, not recklessly.

Definitely mitigating some of the risk with the training, but I definitely like pushing my limits.

I was always, from a young kid, always searching for a bigger wave, bigger wave, bigger wave, and just enjoy it.

So that's that mindset kind of took you to the military then, right?

Yeah, yeah, it did.

I grew up competitively swimming year-round and just always

was super motivated and training hard and being the best I could.

I'm a sore loser, so I didn't like losing.

But being a part of a high-performing team was what pushed me to the military.

The patriotism.

I was in high school as a senior in high school

in history class when 9-11 happened.

Oh, wow.

Watched it on TV.

Dang.

And it was hard to grasp what we were watching and seeing.

So that was a part of the driving force to go in the military.

The patriotism, being something bigger than yourself,

being a part of the American dream and protecting it.

Everything from freedom of speech to

providing protection just for every American.

It was that terrorist event, you know, a lot of people lost families, and we wanted to make it right, but just, again, protect the U.S.

from the terrorism.

Yeah, that event was such a catalyst.

So many stories of people joining the military after that happened.

Yeah.

So what was it like when you joined?

Was it an immediate fit or did it take some adjusting?

So I graduated high school about eight months prior to going in into the Navy.

It was a pretty...

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Straight shot.

Went through a boot camp up at Great Lakes.

At that point, we had to go to a Navy raiding school.

So briefly, went to San Antonio for two weeks before getting to Coronado and going to Buds, which is basic underwater demolition seal training,

where

the notorious hell week goes on and all that.

So it was a pretty straight line from going in to getting to Buds.

I was lucky enough going through Buds.

I didn't get injured, didn't get rolled back.

And that happens from time to time.

But there's nothing

more enjoying to be in California on the beach going to Buds.

Yeah.

How many started your hell week and how how many ended?

We had roughly 180-ish people start in our buds class, and I say 22 originals finished.

Wow, so from that, you know, 180-ish originals, 22 finished.

There were some from classes ahead of us that rolled back into our class, whether it was injury or failing one of the key mark tests.

Yeah, so they had a little experience.

Yeah, wow, so only about 10-15% past.

That is very low.

Yeah.

Is it usually physical?

They can't keep up with the physical side of things or is it more mental?

I say it's more mental than physical.

They'll get you physically ready.

It's more the mental side and

not quitting and getting through it.

I mean, there was everybody from middle Kansas to Alaska and every other state with every other kind of background.

Wow.

Single parent, married parents, brothers, single kid.

A lot of wrestlers did good.

But

every different walk, life build,

and people that may not physically look like they'd pass, they'd pass.

Interesting.

That mental toughness really is what gets you through it.

Yeah.

That must have been interesting for you to meet all sorts of people because you grew up in Virginia your whole life, right?

So you didn't really talk to other people.

No, I mean, I competitively swimming and competing growing up.

I did some traveling, nothing too far west from Virginia.

Yeah.

A lot of up and down the East Coast.

Okay.

So you were really good at swimming.

I was.

Yeah, I swam year-round for

probably from when I was six all the way up until I was about 15.

Dang.

Had a shoulder surgery when I was 14.

I mean, we were swimming year-round

roughly,

say, over 100,000 yards a week.

Holy crap.

So you were a distance swimmer?

I was a sprinter.

Oh, you were?

A lot of our practices, you know, we'd swim 10,000, 15,000 yards of practice.

But

I was in the same year group with Michael Phelps.

Oh, God.

And him growing up in Maryland, you know, swam against him and

grew up around a lot of greats.

Yeah, that's legendary.

Did you see him rising to that level?

I didn't realize that at the time.

It took my mom to tell me.

She's like, you swam against him.

I was like, I did.

I mean, I didn't know.

Oh, you didn't even know?

No, 14, 15.

And that age, like,

you know, you don't know.

We're both that age.

And he went on to do great things.

Yeah.

You know, he had the perfect genetics for it, plus the work ethic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was always competing against those six foot plus guys that were like 12, 13 with the good genes.

So they have an extra inch on you every single time they.

Yeah.

But it didn't discourage me.

My dad always said someone out there is always training harder than you, longer than you.

That was just the motivation.

I had this like rocky theme in my head.

It's like, no, that's not going to happen.

I love that, man.

Any other sports you played?

I mean, I grew up.

I was very fortunate.

I got to play a lot of different sports.

Lacrosse, baseball, basketball, name it, instruments.

Played the violin for like 10 years.

Yeah.

Okay.

10 years is a long time for an instrument.

I didn't last that long.

No, so I was lucky with the exposure that I got.

I was an only child, too.

Yeah.

You got a good mindset, man, because instruments were tough for a lot of kids in my school.

None of us made it past like two years.

Yeah.

No, I enjoyed it.

And hopefully one day I pick it back up.

Yeah, I'd love to see that, man.

I tried doing the trumpet.

Yeah.

It just grossed me out, man.

You know what I mean?

Like, your spit's literally in that.

Well, I played the Alto Sacks for a while.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's gross, right?

You got that long tube.

You got to clean it.

Nope.

Yeah, Yeah, I'm good with that, man.

So how long did after you joined the military, did you start getting deployments and stuff like that?

So went in 2003, showed up to the East Coast at SEAL Team 10 in 04.

Her first deployment was 2005.

It was a pretty quick turn.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, graduated buds

and went straight over to Team 10.

We jumped into a workup where you hit a number of skills and training trips leading up to those deployments.

Where'd you get sent to?

Iraq.

Oh.

Do you remember that pretty pretty vividly arriving and stuff?

Yeah.

We were in a big C5 where that nose opens up.

Yeah, on the movies, you see those, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

the picture in our head was like, we have to be prepared to get off the airplane and get into a gunfight immediately.

And that's that's not what it was when we landed by any means, but a big C5 kind of dive bombing down.

So no, you know, ground fire would hit it

right into Baghdad.

And we had all our gear prepped and stuff like that, but it wasn't like that.

I mean, you could, there was definitely a different smell you could hit about like 4,000 feet, smell a little different, just open sewage and different stuff.

Oh, wow.

But we went there and did some protection detail stuff for the presidents, PMs, prime ministers, and

got a lot of exposure.

direct action missions where you hit different targets.

Did some stuff with Jocko.

Nice.

We were kind of spread out somewhat.

Main base was in Baghdad, but kind of went out west, linked up with the West Coast guys.

So we were all East Coast, even numbers, West Coast, odd numbers, out of San Diego.

And there were probably a handful of different SEAL teams.

And so it was busy.

Wow.

So every day it was like you didn't know what to expect.

It was a new thing.

I mean,

it was either it was a bounce between protection detail and the prime minister's presence or doing nighttime type

direct action raid missions.

When you were defending these high-level people, were there there any attempted attacks on them there was one um

on talaboni during the day wow during the broad daylight broad daylight but they have such i mean they had such a protection detail militia outside of the u.s um people that were there uh his protection detail got all into it oh wow so he had a team and then you guys were just kind of monitoring that team monitoring and kind of more central closer to him

So it was kind of a whole exterior force that they had and they got into it.

Dang, that's intense.

Yeah, you don't realize like Trump has teams just monitoring him 24/7, right?

Yeah, so you were probably like undercover and people didn't even know.

I think I stuck out a little bit, yeah.

I think I stuck out a little bit there.

And I mean, they knew it was early in the war, um, in 05,

and so I mean, they they knew who we were.

Got it.

How many years were you there?

Uh, in the SEAL teams in Iraq,

combined

went back in 07, back in 09.

In Iraq, it was probably a combined two and a half years of deployments.

Yeah, so did 11 deployments total.

Damn.

I got medically retired after 17 and a half years.

But between Iraq, Afghanistan, and a few others,

it was a lot.

But Iraq was about two and a half years.

Afghanistan,

probably a year and a half or two.

Holy crap.

11 is the most I've heard.

It was busy rotations.

Like there was a cycle that it was just, you knew where you're going 24, 16, 24 months out.

And then there were some other

unplanned deployments that we had to do.

That must be tough because you're at home and with your family and they just say, oh, you're getting sent off again.

Yeah, it is.

It's extremely tough, especially when you can't tell them where you're going to go.

Oh, you're not allowed to tell?

On some of them, there were definitely some things that we couldn't, where it's like, I'll call you.

Damn.

I don't know when I'll call you, but I can call you.

That's crazy.

You're all

your own family.

Yeah.

Holy crap.

I didn't know it was like that.

Yeah.

So, I mean, when I was at SEAL Team 10, there for roughly six years, and then went to a selection process to kind of the special mission unit at development group and went through that selection and then spent another

seven years there.

and then got medically retired.

And even at that unit, did a number of deployments, a little bit faster cadence.

Got it.

So I didn't know there's stuff past the Navy SEAL.

I thought that was...

No, it's all part of the SEAL teams.

Naval Special Warfare Development Group is kind of just another step up from that.

And going through the selection process there again

is definitely tough.

And not everybody makes it through.

But super funded and they do a lot of good stuff.

Interesting.

Lucky to make it.

Was that tougher than Hell Week?

It was in the sense of you're just as tired physically, mentally, but they want you to make decisions that will result in people's lives.

Wow.

High-pressure stuff.

Yeah.

And Buds is more, I say, physically taxing.

I mean, although I said mental is the top, the biggest part of it.

But Budge, you show up with the right stuff.

You do what they ask you to do.

You get through.

And I don't want to make it sound that simple, but it is.

Going through that other selection, it's way more pressure.

Wow.

It's like the next step almost like if you went up for like the NFL draft and everybody's got your eyes on you, but you have to do all these different tests and how you rank out, and they can cut you at any point.

So it's like that.

So it can be a big ego blow, too, if you don't make it.

Everybody knows who makes it and doesn't make it.

Yeah, yeah, because you can't hide it, right?

No.

That's what happened with Dan Bazarian, right?

Yeah, I'm not fully sure on his story.

I know he made it through Buds.

I'm not sure.

I think he got injured or something, and then they found out through the medical records.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you think a typical, like, I don't know, college athlete could pass some Buds training?

D1?

Yeah, I'm sure they could.

On the schedule that you have to perform, I'm not sure.

I mean,

I would like to say yes, but there's a lot of people that surprise you that.

just mentally they're not equipped because you can't factor that in the physical side like you said yeah I mean, yeah, D1 athlete could pass kind of, I say, the standards,

but just the day in, day out.

And like, it's not just the physical

standards, it's it's everything else.

Yeah, I remember when my dad, my dad was in the Navy, actually, so he would try to get me to join, but I couldn't do the pull-ups and the push-ups, dude.

Yeah, those were hard.

I was a twig in high school.

I was 132 pounds.

Uh, my best friend DJ, he literally was like 130,

like 130.

Oh, he's 17 too.

Like, him and I were 17, 18, so it's hard to hurt a 17, 18-year-old, but I mean, he

was skinny.

Now he walks around like 240 and jacked.

Wow.

Yeah, I was picture this because I was 130 pounds, but I'm also 6'5.

So I was literally a twig.

Like, I was a track runner distance.

Yeah.

And I just couldn't even do like 10 push-ups in high school.

It was pathetic.

Or two pull-ups.

You got to start somewhere.

I know.

Yeah.

That's all.

But what was the minimum?

You need to do like, I think, 50, they said, 50 push-ups and 10 pull-ups.

Yeah, that's about right.

Yeah.

Couldn't get there.

I don't even know if I could do do it now, man.

Hey, there's some running too, but the running would be easy for me.

I would.

I hate running.

Really?

Swimming was easy.

You do those two mile ocean swims every week.

Yeah.

I grew up also doing some triathlons with my parents and that kind of thing.

So open ocean water was good.

That was just relaxing.

Yeah.

It wasn't worried about it.

That'd be probably the hardest for most people, though, the swimming part.

Yeah.

Two miles in open ocean.

So you can't even drop out if you wanted to.

I mean, there's definitely guys that quit on the swims.

Wow.

I mean, there's safety boats and things.

Yeah.

But yeah.

i heard i don't know which branch of the military was but they make you go underwater and then some people pass out or something that's part of buds oh it is you have to do a 50 meter underwater swim that's where you'll see guys like start to pass out at the end and there's instructors that basically are guiding you watching you there and wow grab you but for you you probably did it without passing out

yeah you had the swimming background yeah my swimming background my first 50 meter underwater i did when i was 10.

dude that's a whole uh like

yeah like the olympic size pools, 50 meter.

I don't know if I could do that in one shot, man.

That is intense.

I used to dive to the bottom of the pool 13 feet for fun.

Yeah.

Touch the floor and come back up.

The risks we took as kids.

Miss those days.

Those innocent days, you know?

Just, you don't know how close all of us were in to probably dying.

Yeah, no.

You ever miss that innocence, though?

I do.

And I try and preserve it in my kids.

Yeah.

I try and preserve it so they can be creative and fun and

no rush into this world.

I remember people always saying, don't rush to grow up.

It's like, I don't want them to rush to grow up.

Yeah, I feel that.

Do you feel like you grew up kind of quick?

No,

maybe.

Yeah.

I mean, a mixture of growing up.

I think the discipline that a lot of the sports

I got out of a lot of the sports probably had me grow up a little quicker than normal.

Yeah, that's the thing when you pursue professional level sports, right?

You got to start at an early age and you give up some freedom.

Yeah.

I mean, my practice, I was doing eight practices a week.

Holy.

So there are doubles during the week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I was lucky enough that my parents would take me to 5 a.m.

practices.

5 a.m.

Damn.

That is early.

Yeah, high school started at seven.

So you were doing it before school started.

You were committed, man.

Did you want to become like a professional swimmer?

That was definitely a goal at one point.

to try and make it to the Olympics and go that route.

After my shoulder surgery, I got exposed to high school and women.

I was like, hold on, this is a whole new life.

Yeah.

Like, how,

why didn't anybody tell me about this?

Yeah, that was a woman, man.

I've had an interesting

sports, say, career exposure.

Cause after that, I went to cycling and like road biking, road racing, and competed at that.

So I've always been in some sort of competition mindset.

Nice.

What are you planning on doing now?

Any marathons or anything?

No.

No, I mean, since the military, it's like I've broken my legs three times.

Oh, shit.

Had four shoulder surgeries and had a number of other surgeries.

Holy crap.

It hurts.

So that medical retirement, it wasn't just one incident.

It was just a compilation.

Yeah, I mean, those are the surgeries, like being blown up, shot, everything, you know, landing hard at night, doing skydives and jumping at the whole combination of things.

Oh, wow.

So when you were skydiving, the parachute didn't go off in time or something?

No, I mean, I never had

a double malfunction, which the two parachutes in there, there's a main and reserve.

Yeah.

I definitely had some malfunctions with mains before and had to have some cutaways but it's more landing at night um i'll just say in the middle of the desert can't see

can't see normally and i mean you have night vision but still hit the ground hard that is scary so you're literally jumping out of a plane it's pitch black and you don't really know what you're landing on

sometimes that is crazy sometimes uh training usually you at least know kind of landmarks where you're gonna land but sometimes those trees look real small until you get to them.

They're like 15-foot cactuses.

Damn, and that's nuts.

And if you got injured, no one will even really know because it's black and dark out.

Real world,

I mean, there's all comms and there's contingencies too.

Like training-wise, there's control measures.

Like you get injured, there's planes in the sky.

Usually, you land together.

So, okay.

Yeah.

How big was your group that you were landing with on these?

I mean, it ranged.

Um, nothing bigger than you know, probably 30, 20 people.

Okay, it's a pretty tight squad yeah and you were with shipley during these

um some him and i split apart we went to different groups sorry you're good

um

dg and i went to different teams when we went to development groups so a lot of our time was spent apart during those years but we're both always big into skydiving in air and would do it on the weekends and and push our limits there nice Where's your favorite spots to skydive at?

Eloy.

Eloy, Arizona, in between Tucson and Phoenix.

Okay.

They have the world's best skydivers and the most consistent weather for the most jumps each day.

And it attracts people from all around the world.

Wow.

Anything?

It's pretty close by here.

Yeah.

Gotta check it out.

I've never done skydiving, but it's on my list.

Gotta go and go there.

Like they're tandem masters.

Everybody world-class.

Uncle Cast.

I like trying new activities.

Yeah.

That one's been a fear of mine, but I need to conquer it.

Getting the wind tunnel yet?

Wind tunnel?

Is that the indoor one?

Yeah.

Yeah, they have one here i i haven't jump in there you'd recommend that first

it's it's a great training tool um

and you can expedite kind of your learning curve there

because you talk about going skydiving it takes probably 15 minutes to get a airplane right up skydive for a couple minutes canopy come down hopefully you land safely

uh i mean that was probably 45 minutes you got one jump okay but you jump in the wind tunnel for 10 minutes you got 10 jumps okay interesting yeah i'll try that first You ever do the squirrel one where you wear the squirrel?

I haven't.

I've known a lot of world-class skydivers that have died.

And if they're dying doing that stuff,

I'm good.

I can push my limits other ways, but I don't need to fly in proximity to cliffs and everything else.

Okay, so you have your limits.

Yeah, now, especially now, like probably 10, 15 years ago.

Yeah.

Might have kept pushing that limit, but kids, wife.

It's different now.

Yeah, I'd like to manage not trying to kill myself doing something like that funny any any fears you have

i hate bees and snakes bees and snakes and you you've done a lot and that's your fear i got attacked i got attacked by like three different swarms when i was a little kid growing up cutting the grass and i just hate bees ptsd oh yeah from bees yeah if you're some people are allergic to bees so yeah that's that's a legitimate fear

snakes I'd say snakes are a bit irrational because they're not a common animal.

But I'm cool with sharks.

Okay.

That's interesting.

I got to go diving with sharks.

There's an awesome couple, Juan and Ocean Ramsey.

She's been labeled like the shark whisperer.

And the way they break down the knowledge of sharks and how they control the water column, they really kind of break every

horrible rumor about'em.

Really?

Yeah.

So when you say water column, what exactly are they doing?

So like the depth of the of the water.

So, you know, three feet, feet, 10 feet, however that is.

And the alpha type shark will be at the top of the water column.

And they can tell, like, yeah, I can tell if a shark's hungry.

Like, apparently you can see when there's ribs.

They kind of compare it to

pit bulls.

Like, everybody thinks a pit bull is going to eat you.

Yeah.

It's like if you kind of break it down, you know, when a dog brings its ears back, sharks have sort of the same tailtail signs in different ways.

Wow.

So you were like in a cage down there with them?

No cage.

No cage?

No cage.

Dude, that's crazy.

No cage what if you saw one that was hungry i was relying on them to identify those and hopefully not get eaten and i mean they gave a few key things or like try not to have your back turned to them yeah so you're kind of consistently swimming like 360 degrees around is it true you're supposed to punch them in the nose if they come by you they definitely said to push push their nose if they get close and push them off so that's like a sensitive spot on yeah wow Yeah, you see the statistics.

They actually don't kill that many people as people think.

A lot of the bites are saying the the sharks may get excited because they're splashing or whatever.

So a lot of the bites, they're just testing it to see if it is food or not.

Unfortunately, some of those bites are catastrophic, but a lot of them aren't attacks.

It's more they're curious.

Wow.

So did you have a snake incident as well?

No, I just don't like them.

You just don't like them.

A lot of people fear snakes.

Some of them get big.

So those ones I fear.

Yeah, some of the ones in the Amazon, those big ass ones.

They're all over Florida, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Damn.

Is that where you're at?

No, Virginia.

Oh, you're still in Virginia?

Yep.

So you don't ever want to move out of there?

I definitely would.

But a lot of our families there, so my wife's parents, my parents' kids.

So get them through high school and pick somewhere else.

We spend some time in Florida.

Yeah.

So enjoy it.

How old are the kids now?

They're 11, 8, 6, and 5.

The 11, 8-year-old are from my ex-wife and I.

So we have a nice blended family.

The five and six-year-old are for my wife and I nice and uh you know I had to have somebody push me around in a wheelchair oh yeah oh

with having four so one of them will grow up and take care of me okay any military aspirations for your kids I want them to pick whatever makes them happy if they want to go in the military cool I'll definitely give them my personal take on some expectation management But whatever makes them happy, I'm good with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Some parents really forced it on them, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, I try and, if they're interested in something, make sure that they commit to a season and I see it through.

But I'm, I'm not going to be one of those things like you got to be the best at whatever you want to try.

Yeah.

Like give them the opportunity, exposure, and if they naturally want to do it, awesome.

Nice.

How's the school system in Virginia?

Good.

Two of my kids go to private.

The other two that that live about an hour away go to a public school, but both good.

Okay.

They all have their hurdles.

Yeah, it's cool to see your perspective of both systems, private and public.

Yeah, it's interesting.

Everything that they get after school activities,

different educational opportunities, because I mean, one's in middle school now, and the other three are in elementary, and kind of see the difference

in all of them.

Yeah.

How's the business doing?

GBRS group, right?

Yeah, GBRS group is good.

We're about to hit five years in September.

It's grown really fast.

So always adding to the infrastructure and learning and growing.

It's been a huge learning curve, but it's doing really well.

That's cool, man.

We're lucky we have an awesome team.

We've been fortunate.

It's been pretty organic with that team.

But kind of gotten to a level now where it's like those strategic professional people have the experience is what we need.

Yeah.

But been super lucky.

I think your company mission really resonated with people.

Yeah.

You know, we

started at the end of 2019.

We really wanted to pass on our experience and knowledge to the next generations to make them better, safer, make our communities better, safer,

whether it was law enforcement teams or just kind of the two-way community as well.

But, you know, we learned a lot of lessons in blood where a lot of people lost their lives.

We thought we could add value back to those next generations and kind of discuss and be an open open book.

Like we weren't perfect, but kind of discuss how we handled transitions or losses, marriages, kids.

And

a lot of our references aren't in the right way.

So yeah, and no one will talk about it.

Like we grew up in it, like, don't talk about it, drink about it, or do whatever you need to.

Just show up and perform.

And

although that may work short term, long term, you know, there's a lot of long-term effects when you're done with all of it.

You look back, it's like, well, my family's gone.

I have no relationship with my kids.

Right.

You know, a mixture of different things.

So, we really want to help and be honest and give real-world references, not a theory.

Yeah, that's important stuff to talk about because, yeah, these veterans come back and there's major family issues and social issues fitting into society.

So, it's cool to see you really do that, man.

Yeah, it's been enjoyable.

And the letters and messages we get, it's crazy.

It's all around the world.

Wow.

But, I mean, just people find dark times.

And to be able to talk about it or at least have a reference and see somebody talk about it, you know, you're not alone.

Yeah.

I mean, that's a worst thing when you're going through trauma.

You feel like you're alone and no one can resonate with you.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

That community aspect is major, I think, just having like-minded guys that going through the same thing you went through.

Yeah, and it's a diverse team.

I mean,

we got all different branches of the military, people there,

all different ages.

It is a great team and very diverse team.

So although I may not have an experience, you know, one of the other people at our team may and can really help.

So, that's cool, man.

Anything else you want to end off with or promote, man?

No,

I uh I appreciate the time.

Absolutely, it was good.

So, that was fun, man.

Thanks for coming off.

Thank you, awesome.

Thanks for watching, guys.

See you tomorrow.