#197 Bob Parsons - Vietnam War Veteran / Founder of GoDaddy & PXG

They had VC or MVA come out of a spider hole and threw a SHICOM at this guy.

He picked it up, went, threw it back, and it went off in his hand.

Arm gone, side of his head gone.

People were starting to a little uncertain about the war, but they weren't like they were when we came home.

Guys coming home, throwing sh

with signs and names.

Nazi,

murderer, baby killer.

Don't forget baby killer.

You like your soul coming out of your chest.

Mr.

Bob Parsons.

And the flesh.

Welcome to the show.

Good to be here, Sean.

Man, I'm really excited to interview you.

I've been watching GoDaddy, you, all your companies for decades now, and I just find you to be a fascinating human being.

So I just want to say thank you for making the time and

coming into Nashville and knocking this interview out with me.

I think it's going to be awesome.

It's my pleasure, brother.

Thanks for having me here.

It's my honor.

But everybody starts off with an introduction here.

So, Bob Parsons, United States Marine Infantry Veteran who received the Purple Heart in the Vietnam War, self-taught programmer who started Parsons Technology in your basement in 1984, growing it into a $100 million revenue company before selling it for $64 million.

Founder of GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registrar, which you sold for 2.3 billion.

CEO and founder of Yam Worldwide with ventures like Parsons Extreme Golf, Scottsdale, National Golf Club, and Harley Davidson of Scottsdale.

Philanthropist who, alongside your wife Renee, founded the Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation in 2012.

Trailblazer in psychedelic assisted therapy, using it to confront your own PTSD and funding over $19 million in research to help others.

That's super close to me.

I did that.

I did an Ibogaine experience in Mexico and totally changed the trajectory of my family life, my business life, every aspect.

And

New York Times best-selling author of the book, Fire in the Hole, self-made billionaire ranked 338 on the Forbes 400 2024 list with a net worth of 3.9 billion.

You're You're a husband, father, grandfather, and

great-grandfather.

Welcome home.

And

you have a quote that I read that I love, and it says, I believe I was born a dreamer.

I know I was, yeah.

When did you come up with that quote?

I just, I've always been a dreamer.

So

it was when I

was taking an inner child workshop one time trying to find myself.

This is way back when.

And

I had to write myself a letter.

And the letter was from me now, or then

to when I was a young child, when I was a young boy.

Wow.

What would I say?

And then how would I write back?

So I did that.

And then I had to

write about myself, the different parts of me.

And that's where I, you know, I just sitting in my hotel room at night,

when I was writing this for the next day's class,

I remember thinking, I believe I was born a dreamer, and I was.

And so

that's how that came about.

And stuck with you ever since.

Yeah, sure, it has.

And as a matter of fact, I used that paper that I turned turned in.

That is the introduction to my book or the preface.

And the letter to the little boy and the letter back and then about myself.

And the letter about myself starts exactly with that.

I believe I was born a dreamer.

Wow.

What is the letter to yourself?

What did you say to your young self?

Did I say to my young self?

Yes.

You know, it's said that, you know,

I'm writing to you for many years in the future,

and I know more about you than any other person alive.

I know everything there is to know about you,

and I know that you're going through a tough time in your life.

I know that

my mother was insane.

And

Dad wasn't around much.

And so

I just never understood it as a kid.

But I was scared most of the time.

And

I told my younger self to hang in there.

Because you know more about the right thing to do than

anybody's going to tell you.

And to just hang on

and um

and that one day

you know believe in yourself and never stop dreaming because more than anything that'll be your salvation

that's powerful so that's that's that letter what did your young self write back Well, didn't write much.

We had to write it with the left hand, you know,

our non-dominant hand, so it looked like a young child.

And it basically wrote that,

thank you for writing to me.

I cannot wait to be you.

And

I'll see you when I grow up.

Man.

And what was that for?

That was for an inner child workshop.

And I was just trying to get rid of my PTSD and deal with it.

When did you do that?

Oh, God, it had to be in the 90s sometime.

In the 90s.

Yeah.

Well, we'll dive into all the therapy and getting better after war trauma.

But, Bob, I would love to do...

I mean, I know you know this, but I want to do an expose on your life.

And so we're going to go through childhood, the Marine Corps, Vietnam, and all your business ventures and some life lessons you've learned.

I'd love to know about your values and

all that stuff.

But before we kick it off, we'll start with something light.

So, there was this back-and-forth conversation

from your assistant and us about the condom story.

I don't know anything about it.

I didn't want to know anything about it.

I just want to hear it directly from you.

And the little I do know about it, it sounds hilarious.

So,

what is the condom story?

Well, the condom, the condom story is when I was a

junior or a senior in high school,

I had never been with a woman.

You know, I mean, we talked about it day and night, but you know, I never, never, never, never been with a girl.

And this is, I'm growing up in East Baltimore.

So my buddy Danny Thorne, who's a year or two older than me, who was my total advice on, you know, he told me everything I needed to know about women.

Most of the stuff totally, totally wrong.

Like he told me, he said, you know,

when you go down on a woman, right?

And I see, I don't even know what it looks like.

He says,

you go down on a woman.

There's a lot of ways to do it.

He says, he says, you move all that hair to the side.

This is back when, before they shaved, right?

Move all the hair to his side.

And you

kiss, you're going to see something that looks like the baby Jesus kiss kiss it.

And so anyhow, that was the advice I grew up with.

Nice.

So Danny was getting her home-based action from this girl named Tony.

And Tony was, she lived with her mom.

It was her and her mom.

And her mother was going out of town for the weekend.

And so Danny arranged with Tony that

he and her would have the upstairs.

And Tony's girlfriend, Pauline,

said that she wanted she was she was ready to you know to plunge ahead and and

I'd be just the guy that she wanted to to do it with so I thought oh my god it's here

so so I'd go ahead and

you know it sounds good to me so the first thing I did the next day was a Monday I remember I went to the pharmacy and I had just enough money to buy one condom.

So I bought one condom.

And so

I'd go home at the end of the day and I'd have this condom squirreled away, you know, and I'd pull it out and I'd sit it on my dresser and I'd look at it and it'd look at me, you know, and,

you know, you know, and each of us, each of us wondering what the other one's thinking.

And so finally the day comes where it's Friday and and I come home from it's three o'clock or so and I go ahead and take a bath.

We didn't have a shower so I took a bath and

I

got got got all ready for school, you know, for to go out and meet Pauline.

So I put on my best clothes.

They weren't much, but they were my best.

So I go ahead and do that and then I pulled his condom out.

And I guess by then it's four o'clock.

And

I pulled this condom out and I said, shit, I take it

out of the package, right?

And I look at it and I go, wow, that's, that's it.

So I'm looking at it.

And again, it's looking at me.

And I remember thinking, and it's my first time.

And you can just picture the condom saying to me, yeah, it's my first time too, right?

So

we taken,

as soon as I put it, you know, as soon as I pulled it out, I'm hard as a rock.

I mean, I'm thinking about this, I'm ready to shoot through the roof, right?

So I take this condom and I think, I wonder what it feels like with this thing on.

So I put the condom on and I put it all the way on.

And I thought, you know what?

I'll just leave it on.

And that's the way

when

we get ready to have sex,

i'll be ready

so so

i go up and meet them and so forth and so from that was about six o'clock we were going to get together and and um

i i had done went flaccid then

and when i went flaccid the condom

rolled all the way up

And it rolled up in my bubikairs.

Right?

So

I'm there with Paul Lane.

Dandy and Tony go upstairs.

We're on the sofa.

She's got this little club basement, you know, fixed up.

And so we're on the sofa there.

So

I reach over and I kiss Paul Lane and we start smooching.

And man, that thing was like a switchblade flapping back.

But the only difference was, Sean,

it didn't unwrap the way it wrapped up and the pubic hairs didn't let them go.

So instead, it hung on to every one and it just pulled with the force of,

it felt like somebody took my pubic hairs and glued them to the bumper of a Chevy and floored it.

Oh my gosh.

So

first I was I was going to, I said, I'll just tough through this.

I'll just tough through this.

And I did, and then it got, it got blinding.

And then the seasons by would have talked.

So I went right to the floor and they had this little bathroom with this little

door with a little latch on it.

It's just a makeshift toilet, right?

So I go crawl and get into there and shut it and latch it and try to get this thing off.

I can't get it off.

I mean, it won't come off.

You know,

my penis is like, I'm not letting you go.

And I'm saying how Marys are fathers.

I'm doing everything I could think of.

And I mean, nobody ever talked to me how to get rid of a heart.

I was thinking of

Mother Superior, who was the gnarliest woman I ever seen.

Thinking about, maybe what it'd be like to having sex with Mother Superior.

Didn't matter.

So

eventually.

I mean, she knocks on the door, Pauline knocks on the door.

She says, is everything okay?

I said, sure, it is.

I'll be right out.

I'll be out.

Don't worry.

I'll be out in a minute.

So eventually, I think it took me 20 minutes to get it off, but I finally got it off.

Hairs everywhere.

And

I put it back on.

Nice.

And I

pulled myself together.

went outside and she's long gone.

She left.

You lost her.

I lost her.

Yeah, that was the first.

So I lost her, and I still remember my buddy Danny.

I never told anybody what happened way back then.

Never told anybody.

He said,

how did you fuck this up?

It was a sure thing.

And

she told all her girlfriends that

what we were going to do.

and then we sat down, I kissed her, and then I ran into the, locked myself in the bathroom, and I did.

And then, of course, I was.

Never sealed the deal with that one, huh?

Yeah, I killed the deal totally.

Poor Pauline, she missed out.

Well, I'm hoping someday, I don't know where she is, but if she is, she gets the bucker.

She says, that's what happened.

Wow.

Well, you know, there's an old saying, two two is one and one is none.

That's where it taught me that.

Yeah.

But, well, that clears that up the condom story.

Wow.

What a great way to start.

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All right, so a couple things.

One, I got you a gift.

Vigilance league gummy bears, legal in all 50 states, at least until RFK makes them illegal.

It's just candy.

But

yeah, we make those.

Like I said, they're made right here in the USA.

And then one other thing to knock out,

I got a Patreon account that's a subscription network.

We've turned it into quite the community.

And, you know, I started this show in my attic at my house.

And then we moved here.

And now we're getting ready to move into a lot bigger facility that's out on some acreage.

And we'll make a better guest experience.

But Patreon's been with me since the beginning.

And

they've really supported me with what I'm doing.

And they're the reason that I get to be here today with you.

And so one of the things that we do is we offer

Patreon, somebody in Patreon to ask each and every guest a question.

And so this is from

Nate.

Hi, Bob.

I really admire your journey and what you've built.

As a fellow U.S.

Marine, I've come to believe that owning your own business is the ultimate form of freedom.

But honestly, the most daunting part for me is figuring out what to build, how to find that unique idea or opportunity worth going all in on.

How did you approach this early on, Semper Fidelis?

Semper fine, Nate.

Well, buddy, listen,

the way I've always done it was I did what I liked.

I did what I liked and my dad for all his faults.

I mean,

he had a lot of good ideas, you know, about certain things.

But one of the things he said, he said, is you always should do what you love because when you love something, it tells you all its secrets.

And I believe that.

And it only stands to reason, Nate, because when you do what you love, you're going to work harder at it.

And you're not doing it just for the money.

And,

you know, depending upon why you're working, right, why you're doing what you're doing, that's going to determine how successful you are.

And you'll never be successful if you're just working for the money.

Because you won't do the things you need to do to be successful because they're counterintuitive.

So, there you have it.

Man, that's great advice.

I would 100% agree with that.

And

I'm doing what I love, and

where this takes me just continues to surprise me every day.

I can't even believe I'm sitting down here with you.

But, um, but um, so

let's start.

Let's get into the let's get into the interview.

So, you grew up in East Baltimore,

yep, brothers, sisters.

I grew up in East Baltimore,

a younger brother, younger sister.

Mom and dad, of course.

And

we never had much.

Mom and dad were gamblers, and neither one of them was that good at it.

And so we were always broke.

I mean, always, always broke.

And if Dad bought anything, it was always on credit, and they always would goose him with the interest rate, so which means we would even

have less.

So, if we needed to have anything, we had to figure out how we were going to

work and earn it, and earn it, and how we were going to make money and get what we wanted to get.

And

we did things like newspaper routes, shoveling snow, running errands, working in filling stations, construction, all that kind of stuff.

But

my first business is an interesting story.

It was a lemonade stand.

And so one day, I'm probably about eight or nine years old.

And I go ahead and

decide it's one of those hot days that they get in Baltimore that, you know, you could see this

heat wave off

the

tar street, you know, Aswald Street.

And

when I did that, I decided, man, I'll make lemonade I'll have a lemonade stand out here today well mom wasn't around it was just me I was the only one home so I go ahead and get this picture out that she had and and I knew that lemonade was lemon and sugar and water so I get this I get this bottle of lemon out and she's

called real lemon and I fill this thing up with with the lemon and then I put the sugar in it and then I put put water in it and I mix it all up and no matter how I made it it just didn't taste quite right and then I get the idea maybe that's the way it's supposed to taste so I just put I just put more sugar in it right and I just keep mixing up mixing it up mixing it up and then so I

go outside I put this at this little table I set this little table up on her at the base of her porch and I put this little sign up, lemonade, five cents.

And the lemonade picture looked beautiful.

I mean, it looked beautiful.

It had like the little sweat on it.

I mean, it's just perfect.

Well, this is back during the days,

back during the late 50s, when the insurance guys,

life insurance guys would walk debit routes, right?

And they collect the weekly premium, because that's the only way you're going to get it in East Baltimore.

You go knock on somebody's door and they get it from them.

So this guy, his name is Mr.

Hill, H-I-L-L.

And he's got this little pork pie hat on.

He's got his bars coat slung over his shoulder, got his tie undone.

He's walking, squatting like a hog, right?

So he says to me, he goes, and kid, I says, he says, man, can I use,

can I use, use, use this today?

So I fix him a lemonade and he gives me a dime, told me to keep the change.

And he was like, I couldn't believe my luck.

So he takes and he knocks his lemonade back

and

he saves the

wave.

He wave it around.

His eyes bulge.

He spits his lemonade out in the street.

And he goes, that's good as the worst fucking lemonade ever since in my life.

and he goes storming away and

you know I thought maybe maybe

maybe it just isn't that bad maybe you know he don't know us yeah

yeah so the next day the lady a girl across the street Suzanne she comes over she gets a she buys a cup of lemonade takes it over home comes back and says my mother says you have to give me my money back so I gave her money back and and same same thing and then

nobody would come near my lemonade.

So

the guy comes over.

Later, my mother comes home and she says, What are you doing?

I said, I'm selling lemonade.

She says, You're selling lemonade.

I said, Yes.

She said, How did you make it?

And I said, I took the lemon bottle and I poured it.

She goes, I keep vinegar in that bottle.

Oh, shit.

So I made lemonade with vinegar and

she helped me make a better lemonade that actually tasted good.

Nope, we're already done.

Yeah.

Nobody wanted it for free.

Nice.

So anyhow, that was my first business.

Utter failure.

So you said your parents are gamblers.

What what would they

what were they gambling in?

Anything they could or?

Oh, anything.

Horses, sports,

numbers.

Mom would go to bingo all the time, but that was more social thing than a pure gamble.

But, you know, that's what they would do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And your dad was a

World War II CB in Guadalcanal.

Yeah, he was in Guadalcanal, Bougainville, the Fiji's.

Did you guys talk about that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did.

He

had

all these pictures and

he told me, he says, yeah, it was a rough, miserable place.

Had a picture of his ship that

he took from the beach.

And it's a Japanese suicide sub, two-man sub screwed into the side and blew it up.

Oh, wow.

And I said, how were you there?

You knew they were going to take a picture?

He says, yo, we knew it was there.

They couldn't do anything to the sub because the moment they touched it, they would blow it, right?

So they just all got off the ship.

And it wasn't that they waited for him to get off the ship.

They just were able to.

And

so

he had that.

And

part of what he did was drive a bulldozer, I believe.

And

he said, they sound like the Japanese Euros and like washing machines.

He said, and he said the Marines, he said the Marines had it the toughest.

He said, but he helped build the airfield and

stuff like that.

Wow.

Wow.

What else were you into as a kid?

It sounds like life was pretty rough.

You know, what kind of stuff were you into?

Well, you know,

I was a terrible student, terrible student.

And I failed the fifth grade.

And

nobody can ever take that away from me.

But

when I failed the fifth grade, Sister Brenda, I was

in parochial school.

Sister Brenda was a nun and

she didn't talk much, but she sure hated me because she kept me almost every day after school.

She would just turn around and I'd think, man, I'm going to go.

I'm going to go home one time.

This kid would say, hey, Roberts, can you hear me?

that?

Or something, I would, I'd hand it to him.

She'd go, Robert Parsons, you're staying at school.

So anyhow,

it was the last day of school.

And me,

his kid named Frankie, his kid named Anthony.

And

everybody got their report cards.

It was one of them in them Baltimore days, hotter and shit, you know.

And it was maybe June or May.

And I went to St.

Elizabeth's Hungary.

And so all I was looking for was a nun-free summer.

Sister Brenda handed everybody their report cards.

And then she said to me, Frankie, Nancy, says, you three,

wait here, I'll be back later.

And

I take this line out.

You know, and there you go.

And then I'll process your whatever is going to happen.

But she didn't say we failed.

So

anthony's saying i remember him saying i wonder what sister brenda wants us to stay back here for and it occurred to me i said it's because we failed

and so she took everybody out to meet the parents and the way the way this was set up

saint elizabeth's occupied one big city square block and she would walk out If you were facing,

I don't know the direction, but if you face in one of the directions and you go at the left side, you go all the way down and you go, you turn by

the nunnery or the convent and take all the way down and then across the street is where she meet the parents.

Well,

my father,

every year on Lifestyle School, he'd pick up me and my brother and my sister,

later,

she was involved in that.

He'd pick us up and he'd take us over to the sporting goods store or something and we'd buy

something

for passing and we'd bring us home.

So

I was thinking, there is no way I'm going to tell my father I failed.

So as soon as she left, I left.

So she's going

left, I go right.

And I run through the schoolyard, down around the side, over where the parents are, up around the side of the convent and up against the wall or this black fence where it was fencing off the convent.

And I could see Sister Brenda in the class coming down, walking down with them.

And everybody's happy with their report cards and so forth.

And

I said to her,

well, the thing I had in my favor was I knew about Sister Brenda.

She was a very lazy nun.

I had some inside information.

She would never, during a few times when I would go home one time with everybody else, she would break off and go right into the nunnery.

She never walked the class all the way down.

And so she did the same thing with this.

She took and let the class go, ran in the nunnery, and the class turned right.

She was going to walk now by herself.

And she went back to crucify the unholy threesome,

right?

I just stood and

I was halfway wondering, worried that

the class was going to see me and people were going to go what are you doing so forth they didn't even notice me i mean i i could have been one of the bushes so so they were too worried about to self-sended report cards so they they started away kept walking i followed them and i go down the down the block with them and i crossed the street

where my father is.

My father is already there with my brother looking at his report card.

And my father says to me, Robert, where's your report card?

And I said, dad's sister didn't give me one.

He says, you didn't give me one.

He looks at me like a dog that heard a strange noise, you know.

And I says, I said, no, dad, this year, if you passed, you didn't get a report card.

That's when the lie came out.

I said, no.

You keep mine.

He's holding my brother's report card.

And he goes, he's smoking territory.

And then

he takes a puff and he says, all right, get in a car he says not a problem so he takes us to the to the sporty goods store i know i'm but in the story sporty goods store i'm on death row so he says my brother's got a bunch of stuff my father's gonna put most of that back just pick one thing you want and then i he says to me robert don't you want anything i said dad

i i

I got plenty.

I had nothing.

So he says, I'll get something.

So I got this first baseman's mitten, you know, for a young kid.

And so we go home.

The same thing happens with my mother.

My brother comes in, gives him his report card, gives her the report card.

And then

he gets me through,

you know, she says, where's your report card?

Same thing, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

And she says, I never heard of such a thing that you, you know, if you pass, you didn't get a report card.

And I said, I pulled it out.

I said, my call sister.

And she said, I'm calling that sister.

I said, well, if you think you should feel better, call her.

So I went and went and sat on a sofa and I waited for the school to call.

Well, the school never called.

No.

They never called.

I waited all summer long and they didn't call all summer.

So

I'd have my buddies that I'd be playing ball with or something.

They'd say to me, Robert, what's wrong?

I said, nothing's wrong.

I said, oh, something's wrong.

I said, nothing's wrong.

Now, I knew if I told one of them, it'd be all over the place.

So I didn't tell anybody.

So fast forward to the first day of school.

Matter of fact, one time I went to tell my dad what was going on.

And then he goes,

he's got the newspaper up.

It's hot as there's no air conditioning in the house.

He's sitting on his sofa that is covered in plastic.

So it would stay nice

for my mother.

He's sweating his ass

and smoking

so I say dad

dad I'm going to tell him

dad and he drops the paper and I see these eyes bulging out sweat running down his face I said never mind

about the door so anyhow so first day of school I

get in we go with Miss Molly the neighbor neighbor lady you know she had um uh this little red beetle.

She's this big, big, large woman.

And

it looked like there was 100 kids in that car.

You could hardly move.

But anyhow, she pulls up.

We all go in.

I get in line.

And St.

Elizabeth's had

one class for each grade.

And I get in line with the sixth graders.

And I didn't know what else to do.

And I look over in the fifth grade class.

There's Frankie and Anthony.

And they're motioning me to come over.

I'm going, I don't even want to look at them.

So they, there's a ringing of bell, and then they start moving in, you know, the first graders, second graders, third, fourth, fifth.

And then time for the sixth graders, and I'm at the end of the line.

Our nun that year is Sister St.

Thomas.

She pulls me out of that line.

She says to me, she puts me against the wall.

She's got her nose about maybe two inches from mine.

She says, Sister Brenda told me what you did.

And I thought, all right, there it is.

And she told me what she did.

And I said,

I didn't say anything.

And she says, and she didn't know what to do.

So she passed you.

No shit.

So that's how I failed the fifth grade.

But I didn't have to repeat it.

You moved on to sixth.

Yeah, and she said to me, she said, if you give me any trouble, you're going right back into the fifth grade.

I said, I won't, sister.

And I wish I could tell you I was a lot better.

I was a little bit better, right?

And I remember when I got my sixth grade grades, I showed them to my mother.

And she goes, well, this is nothing to be proud of, but she did pass.

And

I like it better when you get a report card.

I said, so do I, mom.

Oh, man.

So at what point did

when did you get interested in the Marine Corps?

I got

interested in the Marine Corps one day at the end of Jim Class.

I was a senior.

It was probably March or April.

And

I had discovered

alcohol and I had discovered

rediscovered the opposite sex.

And neither have ever been known to help grades in school.

Right.

And so I took in

with

that, I was sure I was going to fail.

I mean, this time I wasn't going to be able to pull it off.

So I had two buddies

say to me that

they were going to go talk to the Marine Corps recruiter on Conklin Street.

Would I go with them?

And I said, sure, I got nothing to do.

So

I went with them, and it was

a guy named Mike and a guy named Aggie.

Agaris, his name was

a Greek guy.

And

we take in,

go meet this recruiter.

And he had us at hello, buddy.

And so I joined right with the boys, right with them.

And my mother had to sign the papers for me to join.

Oh, really?

And she said, and maybe this will be what you need.

And it's during the height of the Vietnam War.

That was in 1968.

Man, it was

every war was rocking and rolling then.

And so

I went and showed all my teachers when I could finally get my orders because the Marine Corps

recruiter said, you know, we check your grades and this and that and the other thing, you know, and, you know, we won't take you unless you're top-notch and so forth.

And so I thought, you know, probably not get in, but I'll do it anyhow.

Well,

I could have had no head, and they'd have told me back door in those days.

And so,

you know, I got accepted and

there you go.

You knew you were going to war, huh?

You knew you were going to go to war.

Yeah, I thought it was.

And then, you know, like

the idiots that

young guys can be, you know, we all said, man, we hope it's not over until we get there.

And,

well, we got our wish.

So

you must have joined, what, age 17?

I was 17, yeah.

17 years old.

Joined the Marine Corps to go to Vietnam.

And what did you...

What was your job description in the Marine Corps?

0311, buddy.

Nice.

Is number familiar?

Oh, yeah.

Very familiar.

Yeah, I was in 0311.

Aggie was in 0311.

Michael was in 0311.

And

so, and then crazy shit happens, and we come home.

Aggie gets in a tussle at a bar.

His mother owns, gets stabbed to death.

So he never even went.

And then me and Mike went.

I went to

Delta Company, 26 Marines.

We were in Quang Nam province.

And then Mike, he he went to 1st Marines somewhere.

And

I don't see him anymore.

And there we go.

Well, it sounds like the Marine Corps was a very transformative process for you.

100%.

Give it a lot of credit.

Yeah, you know, the one thing I'll say is,

you know, it was,

you know, they did more for me than I ever did for them.

And

everything I ever accomplished, ever accomplished, I'd have never done it without the Marine Corps, because they give me direction.

They give me the importance of understanding responsibility.

They give me

the fact that, you know, to believe in myself and that I can accomplish more than I ever dreamed possible.

And

I always hope for that.

So how long was it from you

signed in, when you signed the documents, that you went off to Vietnam?

I signed the documents probably

in April,

maybe May, April, May.

And then I went, I was inducted in in August

and six months after August, Vietnam.

Wow.

Wow.

So you went, basically you went through basic training, your infantry school through 11 school, and then right to

the theater.

There you go.

How was boot camp for you?

Basic training.

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Well, boot camp took me a while to get adjusted, but after a while, I got adjusted, which is fine, you know.

I mean, the food was great.

And I still remember that ice cold chocolate milk.

And,

you know, for me, it was the food, the food of Parason was stuff up.

And so, so, you know,

I liked it.

I was able to

do it.

And

I would have been a rifle expert.

I was a

sharpshooter and I was doing okay until I had like two rounds left and I had this drill instructor Sergeant Little he said, Parsons, you better leave screwed my hair

and he was pissed at me because I wasn't

what did your parents think about and your siblings think about Vietnam?

You going?

Well, you know, my dad said he wished he could go in my place.

And mom,

mom, you know, you have to understand my parents, they were very different.

Mom, my mother was, when she was a young girl, she was beat a lot by her father and so forth.

So she was abused in that sense.

And so she didn't have a lot of, she had a lot of love beat out of her.

So I remember when it was time for me to leave leave for

to catch the plane at Friendship Airport, which is not Baltimore, Washington then.

And

I'd go to Friendship Airport and

before then I was out at night before

and my mother comes in and she says,

dad just got up and went to work.

He didn't even say anything.

No kidding.

No.

And then mom said, well,

I'm going to the racetrack when it burnt.

Don't get yourself killed.

That was it.

That was it.

And off they went.

And so I

called my brother.

I mean, not my brother, my cousin.

And he'd give me a ride to the airport.

And

they had,

there's a lot of guys there.

They had their...

girlfriends and sisters and family and mother signs and all this sort of thing.

It was me, it was was just me.

But see,

the hell of it was I was that's all I was ever used to,

so I didn't

bother me too much.

And then to Pendleton.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

So you got no send-off from family?

No.

Wow.

Were you guys close at all?

Family?

Yeah.

No.

Me and my brother.

Where do you fall in the birth order?

I'm the first, my brother's the second, and my little sister.

And now

they're all past except for my little sister and me.

And she and I are close, so.

That's good to hear.

What's her name?

Beverly.

I mean, was there any communication once you got?

Did you write them letters or anything?

Yeah, yeah, they'd write letters,

mostly it would be my brother and my sister would write me letters and my buddies, some of them would.

And

once in a while,

Paris would write me a letter, but not much.

Wow.

Well, let's talk about,

let's move into Vietnam.

What was it like landing there?

Well, man, I tell you what, that place smelled different than any place I ever smelled in my life

smelled like rot

so we spent our first night guard in the rear area and that

some some place to put us you know so they trucked us out to our unit and then

we we were with Delta Company 1st Battalion 26th Marines 1st platoon 2nd squad

And

I got to my squad, and we're in Quang Nam, rice paddies as far as you can see.

And

it was quite a place.

I remember

the guys were staying in a tent, canvas tent.

And

so

I had a

bunk and a couple guys,

I think it's like a Marine Corps Rifle squad, it's about 12 guys.

And

there was not 12 guys in the squad.

It was like

seven or yeah, seven.

And

maybe even less because it was just the guys that were there and then us.

And what happened is that they were ambushed a couple days before

we were sent out there.

We were sent there as me and a couple others were sent there as replacements for the guys that were killed in this ambush.

So

they were killed, and

there was

four of them were killed.

One of them was seriously wounded.

And

to a man, it was all the senior guys.

So the guy who was

the senior man, this new squad leader, had just turned 19 and had been in the bush for six weeks.

That was the most senior guy?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

What did you think about that?

Well, at first,

we were going out on our first night sandbush, and I sat down and

I mean, I went outside the hut, and we had this, we're at the very top of Hill 190.

And you know, I mean, since Hill 190, the numbers, it's 190 feet above sea level.

So we're at the top of this, and and right at the top was this old French fort there.

This

wall with shell holes in it and stuff.

So I guess the French were overrun there.

And

I sat on this wall, and I kept starting thinking about

how in the hell am I going to survive this?

Because Army, Navy, and Air Force, their tours are 12 months.

Marine Corps is 13 months.

I don't know shit from shot.

I know all this place.

The guy who I'm replacing, you know, I mean,

the guy who replaced the squad leader, you know, he don't know either because, I mean, he hadn't been here much longer than I do.

And

so it didn't look good.

So

I started,

you know, I got scared for just a little

bit.

And then it occurred to me that

I probably wasn't going to survive it.

I was going to die there.

And

I mean, it was a hard thought at first, but

then after you accept it,

then nothing bothers you.

Yeah.

It's interesting that you say that because

You're the only other person I've heard that articulated that.

And

that's kind of the way

I meant meant to inject my own

experiences because they're irrelevant right now but

I mean I

that's how I dealt with it too I just always assumed I was already dead and so

it kind of

took the fear out of it yeah it takes the fear totally out of it and but what it does though is you can do your job yep

you can do your job And so

that night we went on our

first ambush.

So

you had come up with that mindset before any fighting had even started.

Excuse me?

You had come up with that mindset that you're already dead.

Yeah.

Before

you ever pulled a trigger, before you were ever shot at, before you ever saw anything.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, I did.

I did.

Because I've been in so many different types of situations, you know, and it's just we're just,

you know, it's just,

this is what it's going to be, you know?

And

so, so anyhow, so that's, that's a thought that I had.

And the interesting thing is, is I'm friends with most of the guys in that squad.

There's seven of them that

five, five of them.

And

most of them tell me the same story.

No kidding.

And they said, I never told anybody.

I mean, one guy who is a squad leader, the guy that was a squad leader, he turned out to be marvelous, but he had the same thing.

He said, how can you do your job if

you worry about

whether you're going to live or not?

Right?

He says.

That's just not your problem at the moment, right?

And the machine gunner, same thing.

you know this guy's name is brand he lives down in austin texas i love the guy um so so anyhow but none of us told each other no

yeah

which is had that mindset so so anyhow so we go out we get our first ambush uh we have a corpsman with us

and then a sister squad we're in a we're just outside a village in a pagoda and then what's a pagoda a pagoda is just like a little religious place

where they have altars and stuff like that.

At least that's what we call them as pagodas.

And

so, and then about

a couple clicks from us was another pagoda.

And we had a sister squad set up there.

And after we were set up on this ambush for

maybe

an hour or 45 minutes or something, but it was before we did a first move, you know, because we would go out, we set up an ambush,

we'd do a

wait a while, let it get good and dark, and then there'd be a first, and then there'd be a first move,

and then we'd set someplace else,

and then there'd be another move, and then we'd set them for the night.

And the deal would be to move so

nobody knows where you're at.

So, anyhow, that was that was the thought.

So

this

squad,

our sister squad is in this other pagoda, and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose where they are.

And we get the radio call that they sprung their ambush.

They had a fucking

VC or MVA come out of a spider hole and threw a ChiCom at this guy.

And then

he picked it up, went to throw it back, and it went off in his hand.

Shit.

Yeah, so he's pretty fucked up.

And so, to get there

with the corner, because they didn't have a corner with them, so we get there, we run through

this fucking rice paddy.

Ever walked through a rice paddy?

No.

Well, I'll tell you what, rice patty is the shittiest thing in the world to walk through.

I think God put him there to say, don't walk here.

So

the mud would be like about a

water be like about maybe a couple of feet deep and then the mud would be a couple it'd be a foot or deep or so so you go down in it and

it's got every kind of vermin you can think of is crawling around in there so we're running through this rice paddy i got my gear halfway on halfway off it's my first night in the bush i don't know

anyway that it ought to be It's choking me.

His magazines are choking me.

I got them in like a bay of laro like you see in the old west, you know.

Stupid, but

nobody was there to show me.

Yeah.

Right.

So we get there.

This guy

is hurt horrifically, not dead.

Arm gone.

Side of his head gone.

Trying to check an eye that's not there with a hand that's not there.

I mean, it's crazy shit, you know, that you see, you see in war.

And the squad leader is this guy named Blackwell.

And he starts,

he starts

just standing in this rice paddy.

And

he's throwing up and then he's just standing there.

And it's this helicopter just coming in, this Huey's coming in, and it's going to land right on him.

So I see it, I run

and grab him and push, push, push, push, push.

It misses him and misses me.

But we hit a rice right he tank and go

and

he snaps him out of it.

And then

I saved his ass and then saved my own ass.

But

so then we took in and

they told us to go back out.

It's a different ambush place after this guy, Hunt gets taken back,

medevac back.

And by the way, it's a big time.

He didn't die.

I've not seen him at a reunion.

Yeah.

No shit.

Yeah.

And so I take in,

we sat in with the sister squad, which we weren't supposed to do at all.

But we thought we'd get some sleep.

So the next morning, the sun breaks.

Nobody's answering the radios where we are.

And a hell war

what the fuck her firing a 50 caliber machine gun over her head

then we mowed her back and they joined her ass out and that was my first night in the bush wow

i mean

so

how did that i mean how did that experience

sit with you.

I mean, that's mission number one.

You see a guy

gets his arm blown off, gets half his face blown off.

You know, it didn't.

It didn't.

Were you numb to it before it ever happened?

No, pretty much, yeah.

Pretty much, but

the thing was, the crazy thing was, is that

those guys

were the first family I had.

Just that little bit of time, I fell in love with those guys.

I mean, they were my brothers.

I mean, it happened like, boom, like that.

So,

to this day, I'm still close to them.

I talk to them once a week, certainly once a month.

And so, your guys' mission said,

your mission said was to go set up ambushes.

That was it.

Yeah.

How many ambushes do you think you set up?

Well, not a lot.

Not a lot.

I mean, I was in the bush for a month, and then I got wounded.

And then

I got wounded, but and then I hit a

chi-com, Chinese Communist Grenade, we call them Chi-Coms, that was set up as

a

trap.

And

my buddy,

what the fuck's his name?

Because

my mind just went blank, but it'll kill me.

I forgot his fucking name.

We'll get there.

We'll get there.

So anyhow,

he steps over a

tripwire and I hit it.

And so I just got caught shrapnel in both legs and left elbow.

And then I got mede-vaced out all the way to the naval hospital in the Cusco.

So I was there for a couple of months or three or I don't even remember.

I don't even know how long.

If it's okay, let's go.

Let's go.

I want to get to that

and get a little more descriptive, but what were some of the other ambushes that you guys had done?

We're walking one ambush

and

Brownie

sees all of a sudden where we're at.

We're going through this village, right?

And it's just gotten dark, right?

And we're going through this village.

And

two NVA soldiers, both with NVA rifles, black pajamas, the whole mine yards, come running right at us.

He turns with his M60 and takes them both out.

I mean, they were dancing like dolls.

And

so, yeah, so, and then that night, at night, and right then, you know,

we sweep towards the area where we had the activity come from.

And my place was, I was sweeping towards where there was

the hooch that I think that they came running out of.

And

I took a hand grenade

and threw it, right?

And only it didn't go as far as I thought it was going to go.

And

it landed, but it landed on the other side of a rice patty dike facing away from us.

So when it blew, it blew away from us, right?

Guys, Logatic and George, the squad leader, scared the shit out of them.

He turned around and go, did you just fucking throw that?

And I said, yeah, I did.

And they go,

well,

don't throw any more tonight.

And so the next day, George tells me to don't throw any more hand grenades.

I said, do I still have to carry them?

He says, fucking right, you got to carry them.

He says, just give them to somebody else to throw.

And I said to him, suppose you're getting over and run.

And he says, then you can throw them.

How were you guys moving around at night through that jungle?

Well, where we were,

the only time I went through the jungle

was during the day because there was rice patties on one side.

There's not a lot of jungle on rice patties

located.

And then the other side is where there was jungle and so forth.

I spent some time there, but it was all during the day.

But it was mostly just quiet, quiet and being in the dark.

With seven guys.

Well, seven and then ten and then twelve and then

that sort of thing.

And then,

I mean, it's just so many things.

The first night I was there, I shot a snake.

You know,

we would sweep, and body count was a big thing.

So we'd sweep through the rice patties and we put up illumination, you know, that comes down on them parachutes.

And

we'd look for bodies.

So, of course, we didn't find any.

And

because

this is NVA that we did kill, they always would have something around a piece of rope around their neck to be pulled away by somebody else.

No shit.

Yeah.

That's how they would collect their dead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They would noose them.

They would noose them and drag them through.

Yep.

Wow.

So, so they, I mean, these guys have more stories, a hundred more stories than I do, a hundred times.

But, I mean, so, so we start sweeping, and I look, and there's this big fucking snake

in the water and swimming right towards me.

I mean, it's swimming right fucking towards me, right?

And it's my

it's my squad and this other squad.

So, so we take in the

we take in this squad squad's snake

and anyhow so the snake's coming down and it just when it's about two or three feet because i'm thinking surely it's going to go left to right right this thing is coming like it's going to bite me in the balls right so i put my rifle on automatic

all this water comes flying up and it hits me in the fucking eyes and i move

and and

I look and I get my eyes cleared and I look left, left, right.

Nobody's there.

They're all in the water.

Oh, fuck.

Well, I didn't hear the end of that forever.

And then George, George was nice about it later because the next day he said, next time, don't shoot the snake.

So anyhow, that was that night.

So it's just crazy shit that happened.

I remember one time we were on a day patrol.

For some reason, others, a whole company's coming out, and it's a day patrol.

We're the whole platoon that was free to us.

But me and

me, Proctor and a guy named Pavilovich, were sent to get water.

So we go into the village and we get water, right?

So we go into the village, we got everybody's canteen,

right?

And so we go in.

And just when we go to get water, we get to see this kid.

He's coming out.

He's got like one of these trays in front of him, like on like a small, like small Coke's come in, the wooden trays.

And he's got a burlap strap holding it up, and he's got burlap covering it.

You know what he's got in there?

I swear to God, you're not going to believe it.

Nobody fucking believes me.

And Proctor and the other three guys are dead.

So

it's...

Vanilla popsicles.

He had fucking Vanola Popsicles.

It did.

He did.

And so I take, and we take, and before you know it, this kid had everything we had of value.

Bread, cans of bread, cigarettes.

I mean, we're just eating one popsicle after another, right?

Pravilovich goes,

suppose these are poison.

And then Proctor goes, who gives a fuck?

So

that's one of my happy, happy stories about the place.

But crazy shit.

Crazy stuff.

Did you get into any firefights?

You know,

the one that was the most was we

surrounded this

village, small village, and in it, somehow

they figured out that there was a

squad or

part of a platoon of North Vietnamese in the village.

And we caught them there during the day.

and so so so we're in there

and we're we're on the side and there's a machine gun is the side the terse is at

I mean that that we're at and so Brownie is on a little knoll not too far from us and George says get get

you Parsons and

what the fuck is

Bryant, the guy's name is Bryant.

He goes, you and Bryant

run the

can of

machine gun ammo over to Brownie.

And so

we so we did.

And then his fucking gun starts taking on us, starts shooting at us.

We dive, we're laying against this dike and it's shooting over top of us.

We get up, we get this stuff over to Brownie.

And the funniest damn thing happened is I've thought about that

night that day many, many times.

And

I cannot remember what happened.

No shit.

And so I go to a reunion.

I asked one of the guys there, I said, you remember what happened?

Right?

And he says, oh, we killed every fucking one of them.

I said, did we?

I said, I was there one night.

I said, yeah, you were there.

I said, anything unusual happened?

No.

I don't remember.

I mean, it's like it didn't happen.

I remember giving the giving the

ammo to

Brandy and his kid Goodwin, who was right when his egg hunter.

And no, that's it.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Totally blocked it out of your memory.

Totally.

I'm just curious.

I mean, did you

incident come up during any of your psychedelic journeys?

No.

Never.

No.

Wow.

Nope.

Nope, didn't.

And that is the only, to the best of my knowledge, the only incident like that.

And firefights, exchanged rifle fire a couple times, but not a lot.

I mean, I've seen light combat, I mean, compared to most guys, especially the guys who were up here,

the DMZ.

And,

man,

when I got wounded, I think I had about,

I probably saved my life.

Do you think you killed anybody that night?

I don't know.

I mean, how would you know?

Do you're.

I mean, I didn't know.

I mean, they weren't close like me to you.

Yeah.

Right?

Or, you know, I could like when Brandy took those two NVA out.

I mean, they come.

Yeah, I mean, I could see that, but

I didn't do anything like that.

Was that the first engagement when the two Vietnamese charged you guys?

Is that the first engagement you've seen it?

Yeah, I think so.

No, no, it was one before that.

What was the one before that?

One before that, there was a bunch, there was some MVA about maybe

a football field or two away from us in a village, and we started firing on, and they firing that back, and nobody got hit, and the best of my knowledge, we never hit anybody.

So the first time you saw Americans kill the enemy was when they charged you in that village?

No, no, no, Americans.

They were NBA.

That's what I mean.

They were charging you guys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

What did that feel like

for you?

You know,

in some ways it was exhilarating.

Some ways it was.

To see it?

Yeah, I mean, it was...

I mean, I was like part of the team.

I mean, it was just, that was, I mean, that was it.

I mean, I didn't do much for the team, but I was part of the team.

Did you think much about it

afterwards?

No.

Later on in life?

No.

And.

You know, and

to be honest with you,

the stuff that,

some of the stuff that I've seen that

fucking rocked me

was

stuff that

happened later.

I went in combat.

You know, I mean,

it was just

the whole idea of the war.

And I mean, I remember seeing those two guys, they look like dolls.

dead dolls, right?

But

their legs are all contorted and shit.

Where was this?

It was the same episode.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Same episode.

If you're looking for a war hero, brother, I ain't the guy.

Well, I'm just fascinated in Vietnam.

I mean,

that was you guys and your generation.

That was what really...

inspired me to to become a SEAL and

go overseas, you know,

for my generation's award.

Vietnam, baby.

So I just have a ton of respect for Vietnam vets.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

I got a whole story once you're ready.

You want to take a break or whatever?

Yeah, let's go into,

let's start where you got wounded because you're a Purple Heart Vietnam recipient.

Yeah.

So

I go to

one of the things I have,

I've got a good memory, which is unusual, me not remembering anything on that

time when me and Bryant were running an ammo over.

I remember they carried me back and they couldn't get a

yeah

another night I had a guy got wounded.

A point man hit a trap that was walking on a rice paddy dike, right?

And I helped carry him back.

And the reason we had to carry him back is because he was just, his legs were hurt.

And

his legs were hurt.

And he

was obviously going to live.

And the war, business of the war was really good some other place and all the choppers were busy, at least that's what I was told.

And when I was wounded, it's the same thing happened, right?

Only I wasn't walking on a dike.

I was walking on a path through a village.

So I take and

get me to this road.

And there's these two

guys in a road, and they got me, they just shoot me full of morphine, I think it was.

And i mean i didn't give a fuck about anything and what one one one interesting thing before that which is a fun story before that

i take and um

i i get sent back because i i i gotten a cut and some barbed wire or something i cut all my fucking fatigues up and only had one pair so so the company kind of sent me back to the rear that day and he said to get a whole new new set of fatigues and to get it to get a haircut and then come on back

yeah it did i gotta i had that get it get it all cut so so i take in um i i i i go back i get my hair cut And then I go to where the fatigues are.

And there's these two rear area guys who are with storage fatigues.

And it's this big warehouse.

And I said, I'm here to get some

fatigues

and they said well you need a check signed by the colonel I said well where's the colonel said well he's up in Dongha which is hundreds of miles north and I said well I

got to go back to the bush and you know these pants are all ripped up so they said

brother that's this they'll hang us if we give them to you so we can't so so finally after you know it was useless arguing with those guys I I start walking back and I start walking back and I go through this area where there's a quantity huts.

Well, it must have been there.

One of them was there in one of the quantit huts like it.

I opened the door up

and I go in and it's like fucking candy land in there.

I take and open one of the lockers and it's got a brand new set of fatigues in it.

I

try them on.

They fit me.

I take mine off, put them on a hanger, hang them in there.

And then I go ahead and I look on one of the mattresses as it's a rubber lady and an air mattress.

Not a rubber lady like you get at the bed shop.

You know, just a rubber lady.

So I take in, I take all the air out of it and then put it under my arm.

And then I take and start with all my new pockets.

I start stuffing Marlboros and Winston's in it because those motherfuckers would take all the Marlboros and Winston's and then send us out like L ⁇ Ms and Salems and Kent's and nasty ass cigarettes.

Holy shit.

So

I go back and these guys are saying, where the fuck do you get that?

I said, never mind, I just got it.

So I gave him some cigarettes and so forth.

And I

blew that rubber lady up.

and and um so i only slept and had it for like two days and then i got wounded so i'm i'm going away and the case hey parsons who's going who gets your rubber lady i said you guys decide

nice

so let's talk let's talk about the day that you got wounded is it is in as much detail as you can remember all right well the thing i remember the most is

these guys driving me with no headlights on through these these dirt roads, right,

to get to the field hospital.

And

they had some country western music going.

I remember that.

They were singing.

I thought they were fucking loaded.

And I didn't really give a shit, but they were,

you know, as long as they were there taking me.

So they take me, they take me to

the field hospital and

immediately cut all my clothes off.

And then they do a triage.

And, you know, I guess they determined, you know, I was not

seriously wounded.

And

then they put me inside this big tent.

I mean, and it was cold as shit.

I mean, it was so cold in that tent.

And because it was going from outside, it was like 80, 90 degrees inside,

60, 70.

So I remember they kept moving.

I was laying on just a canvas cot, and they kept moving it closer, closer, and they had all these buckets of water.

And they put me on

this x-ray machine

because I was wondering what the water was for.

And when they took me off the x-ray machine, they washed it off.

And then the next thing I know, I was in surgery.

I don't remember anything after that.

Then

next morning I wake up, bed is soaked, pissed all over.

And the corporate says, don't worry, brother, you were just so busy we didn't have time to put a catheter in you.

And

so I put one in me and then changed sheets.

And

then the colonel come over and said, congratulations, you're just purple heart.

Wow.

In the actual, the actual operation,

the ambush that you were on,

Can you describe how you were wounded again?

Yeah, I hit a tripwire.

Hit a tripwire.

Hit a tripwire.

It was on the left side of me, and it caught my shrapnel here

and in my left elbow.

And I remember the surgeon saying, you know, you had a

big piece of shrapnel go into the joint and didn't damage it.

Wow.

So I was lucky.

I mean, I was lucky as I can be.

Were you conscious the entire time?

No.

A little bit.

Just a little bit.

For the explosion.

Oh, the explosion.

Yeah, I was conscious most of the time.

I didn't go out.

I just remember when that fucking thing went off and I went down on the ground.

I turned to

George because I was learning to walk point then.

And so Bryant was walking first.

I was walking second.

And

I said, Jesus Christ, it fucking hurts.

And then it didn't so much, and then it did, and

then they shot me with morphine, and

so forth.

I didn't hear it so much as seen it, you know.

Didn't know what happened at first.

You know, disoriented totally.

Did you think you were going to die?

No.

You knew you would live?

Yeah, I thought I would.

Thought I fucking would.

Oh, God.

And the guys, the guys I were with got pissed and started fucking putting a Zippo to this village.

And

he says they got a George, George Squad Leader got in a little bit of trouble for that.

And he said he was in trouble.

And then

the North Vietnamese had a big push through the area that we were in.

I wasn't in it no more, but

we were in, and

he forgave him

because he was a good fucking Marine.

Jesus Christ, he was good.

Like about a couple days after,

they

set up on this

bank in these reeds.

And

they seen

a

squad of NVA come through and started coming out, started coming out of the water.

They opened up on them.

They killed them all.

And then they were ordered by our captain, Captain Moorhead, to go all the way down,

to go about a mile or two out of sight.

and then turn around and go

a couple clicks in, then come all the way back and reset up in the same spot.

And they did.

And when they did,

an hour or two later, the company, the rest of the company came through.

And of course, these guys, being the fucking knuckleheads as they were, opened up on all of them.

And

then they said, George said, there was a fucking whole fight went on all night.

Yeah.

And there was

this fucking

A gunship was going around the fucking,

you know.

And when the sun shone, he says there was bodies everywhere, and where there weren't bodies, there were drag marks, you know.

And wow.

Yeah.

Well, Bob, let's take a quick break.

And then when we come back, we'll talk about your coming home.

Well, we've got to talk about the hospital first.

All right, we'll pick up at the hospital.

There you go, buddy.

Perfect.

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All right, Bob, we're back from the break.

We're picking up at the hospital.

Yep.

Well, I'm back at the hospital, and and

Think you think about a military hospital

in wartime

You see a lot of

fucked up dudes boy

and

Man, it's just

really really screwed up

and

Seeing this young kid was a

Marine Corp Marine

recon.

And

he

was out on some long distance LERP they called it or something like that, long distance reconnaissance.

Reconnaissance, yeah.

And

he hit a bouncing buddy.

You know, it's the only time I've

heard of one or heard of anybody hitting one, but I heard heard about them all the time,

but never actually anybody, you know, falling victim.

But that's what he fell victim to.

And, you know, bouncing petty, it's a rocket on the inside of pressure plate.

You tread on it.

As soon as you tread on it,

as soon as the weight goes off, that rocket's coming up.

And

it's, I mean, you're fucked.

That's just, that's

all there is to it.

And it

blew his

ass off

and he was

he was

completely paralyzed

and the guys would take turns he was sandwiched between two boards and a device that had you know

opening for his groin and this is a tail

and

We would take turns turning comic book pages for him.

And

I felt so sorry for that guy.

And I mean,

and other stuff you'd see.

You know, it's just so fucked up.

Thing I remember,

one of the hardest things

about that.

I mean,

whatever brought the war home, that did.

I mean, you know, you spend some time in a military hospital.

You'll see.

And

Navy lost my payroll records,

so I couldn't go off base.

I used to say to some of the guys,

I had to have some civilian clothes and some money to go off base.

And I'd say,

can you loan me some money and your civvies?

And so I could go all the liberty.

He says, I like you, man, but not that much.

Oh, God.

Jeez.

You know,

I read somewhere, or maybe I saw it on an interview.

I can't remember that.

Did you think that you had a guardian angel?

I did.

I did.

Why did you think that?

So many, so many things happened that I just

come out okay.

Another time we're in a firefight in a village, right?

Again, nobody's hit, nobody's anything.

Me and this dude named Pavlovich,

we go

into this

hooch,

searching for Christ knows what.

And

in there is one of these little tables.

And it's a long table.

It's about maybe four feet, five feet, four feet tall.

And on it is a bowl, one bowl.

And in the bowl

was

an undetonated tonk round

from the night before.

When we had this guy named Cook.

And Cook was one of these guys go to jail or join the Marine Corps for stealing cars.

And so he, you know, that's back on the Marine Corps.

It was doing what it could to, you know, fill the ranks.

And

so anyhow, he fired it, didn't go off,

somehow, somehow landed there.

But our boy

Pavlovich moved his fat ass and tipped the bowl.

And they had this wooden floor put in, I mean,

this kind of a crappy wooden floor on the altar.

And this thing

hit the wood,

didn't explode.

Motherfucker.

Now, that got my attention.

Yeah.

So I go outside and I go, there's no way I'll go back in there.

Period.

And

so Cook goes back in there and they used to have on the helmets, they'd have these big black rubber bands, right?

Pieces of rubber, and they would keep bug repellent, bug juice in them, right?

Well,

Cook put

the Dude M's, what's it, M79.

Holy shit.

He put an

unexploded round.

Yeah, it was the M79.

Yeah, it was the M79.

Yeah, so he puts the M79 round in it.

And we're walking back.

And you could see he's got, you got about

two, three guys.

And then one guy

watching him.

And he's back about maybe

20 yards.

And then 20 yards the next closest guy and he's walking with this thing on his head.

I kept waiting for his head to just

holy shit.

He made it.

He made it.

What the rest of the time with that damn thing?

Fuck, yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, let's talk about,

I mean, I am curious.

I mean, did you

is there, is there,

do you feel like you had a relationship with a guardian angel?

I did, I did, and I still do.

And,

you know, it's just, it's just

stuff I've come out of.

Like, for example, for example, I'll give you this.

Okay.

I'm on Okinawa

and

I get sent to Okinawa to get processed back to Vietnam, back to the unit.

And it's been a couple of months or maybe three months.

I really don't know.

But it was around then.

Okay.

So

I take and

get to be,

the doctor there got to be friendly with me.

I thought he was a good dude.

And

so

When I got to the point where all my wounds were healed, I said to him,

I went and I said, Doc, I'm ready to go back, you know.

And

he said,

you're ready to go back?

He says, Parson, you don't have to go back.

He says, I'll keep you here for the rest of the war.

And I said, no, I want to go back.

I want to be with those guys.

I mean,

they were my family.

Right?

I loved them more than I ever

loved a lot of my,

I mean, we were closer,

even though it was just a month

so so he said okay

and he

he

signed signed off and the day that my orders come through to leave for the next day

my payroll record showed up

my payroll record showed up And so he said,

go off base,

enjoy yourself.

They might have given me $700, $700,080.

I don't know how much they gave me.

It might as well have been, you know, $20,000.

You know, Okinawa beer was a dollar.

You know, it's just, do anything you want.

I mean, it's just a lot of money.

So

I take in,

you might have figured out by now.

I'm never much of a rule follower.

Yeah, you figured that out?

I'm figuring that out.

Okay.

All right.

So

I go off base.

I'm supposed to be back at midnight.

It's about three in the morning.

And I'm walking down a street.

And

it's raining like hell.

It's almost coming down sideways.

And there's a guy walking back up the other way, coming right towards me.

It's Blackwell.

It's that guy I saved during the first night.

Are you serious?

That serious.

And he told me it was his third heart and he didn't have to go back.

So he was in G2, which is orders and all that sort of stuff, intelligence.

And

he said, I can get you.

The guy that runs this little

printing press and goes back and forth and delivers orders, I can get you that job.

He says, because the company Gunny and I are tight.

And he said, and

by then, I think he was staff sergeant.

And

he says,

I'll get it done.

And he says, when do you go back?

And I said, I'm supposed to be seven o'clock tomorrow morning.

And this is like three in the morning.

He says, I don't think

I can get it done that soon.

And

I said, brother, that's okay.

That's okay.

Cause I was kind of looking forward to seeing the guys anyhow.

So,

you know, we part.

I tell him where I'm at, so forth.

We part and

he goes his way, I go mine.

And

I

go back, immediately get arrested.

They take me to the officer today.

And the officer today goes, you know, he's this young second lieutenant.

He's got their shit jobs, talking to buttheads like me.

And he's going, why can't you be packing?

And I I said, I'm going back.

I interested in Vietnam.

I was wondering, I got to go back to Marin.

I lost track of time.

And he goes, get him the fuck out of here.

So they take me back.

And I fall asleep.

I slept for maybe an hour.

And then I fall asleep with, fall out with the hangover from BG's L.

And I had orders to station me back in Black Wall.

Got it done.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, that happened.

I mean, to me, that's we're like the fifth grade.

I mean, it's just

repeatedly have happened like that.

And

I think my angel's there.

Still to this day.

Yeah, I think so.

I think, hopefully,

I'll meet him or her or it.

And

it'd be kind of nice one day.

I know whenever I meet her, he's going to look more exhausted than I do.

Oh, man.

I get a fiction just going fuck

I was gonna take the night off

let's talk about

coming home

coming home coming home was was hard and

I'll tell you tell you what uh what I did.

When I had just about two months left,

they disbanded my unit I was with, and

9th Marine Amphibious Brigade, and

marched them, marched, didn't send them home, sent the guys in it

that were coming in, the new guys, transferred them all to that unit, and they all went over to Vietnam, right?

And this unit,

the guys coming home, they put them in

this unit and they brought it home.

So it was like they brought it home, but they didn't.

It was a farce.

Did you follow me there?

Yeah.

Okay.

So

I take in,

I get sent over to

the

I get sent over for processing where I get to get processed to go back to Vietnam.

Now, I didn't want to go back then.

And the reason I didn't want to go back then is because I had been in touch with the guys.

I had seen them.

They were on a helicopter ship just offside Barrier Island.

And they,

you know, I told them, I said, guys,

I had put two

requests

to go back.

to transfer, to leave this unit that I was in.

Because I wanted to be with him.

I wanted to be with him so fucking bad.

And

Blackwell left.

He said he left and he says, I says, why?

He says, goodbye.

I said, you're going home?

He says, yeah, I wish.

He says, I'm going to go back.

And he says, I can't stand it here.

He says, at least I understand it there.

I said, see you, buddy.

And so anyhow, I take in

both times

this company gunny that he told me about,

my request to transfer got approved by everybody.

It gets to him.

He calls me his office, rips it up, says you get self-killed.

It never got approved.

And so I was getting ready to go back, but I didn't want to be with a bunch of new guys.

I want to be with them.

Right?

So

I'm in the processing area, and this place is like a zoo.

And it's just one lieutenant, first lieutenant, and then he's running around like

you don't know what's going on so i go over to him i said lieutenant

i

i could do this job you need some help here and uh

i said you know and i'm going to rotate in a couple months anyhow and he said um all right we got the job

he said where's your id and i give it to him he says okay get it all taken care of so i went right away and started processing guys and what i would do was i would take guys and put them on planes that were coming back

and so they could go home.

And guys that were coming there, I would confirm their units.

And

one of the things that bothered me so much is

I would see these guys that were like assigned to 9th Marines and guys going up around the Z.

And, you know, it's,

I mean, there was no place there that was a walk in a park for the Marine Corps,

but there were some places that were much worse.

And

while I wasn't that much older than these guys, if I was older than them at all,

you know,

I had the experience, which aged me a bit.

And I also, from being intelligence and knowing what was actually going on there,

I would just look at these guys and I'd feel terrible.

I mean, I would feel terrible because

they had this little tinge, you know, where they're a little excited and so forth.

And they're walking straight into fucking hell.

Man.

Yeah.

So

I remember that.

And

I

time went up and I went home.

And then when we went home,

it was a different place.

Different place than when we left.

When we left, when

I mean, people were starting to a little uncertain about the war, but they weren't like they were when we came home.

There wasn't anybody taking it out on the guys coming home throwing shit and with signs and names

Nazi

murderer,

right?

Drug addict.

And the ironic, you know, fucking in our war craft, calling us drug addicts, those fucking dope addicts, and on and on and on.

And baby killer, don't forget baby killer.

And then on and on.

So, I mean, you know, it's just, and then those of us that weren't confronted with that, we see it on news anyhow.

So, you know, it's just, it's just, it's just

you know, like your soul coming out of your chest.

Yeah.

And,

you know,

at the time, I knew it bothered me, but I didn't think it bothered me to the extent that it didn't.

You know, because I got to the point where

I had people come up to me and they'd say, hey, weren't you in the Marine Corps in Vietnam?

Sean, I start crying.

That's when you fucked up.

And so,

and then one of the things that I found,

I was doing a book and I took some mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms, when I was

working on a book.

And

I had a flashback.

I had a flashback baby, and it was a flashback, not to Vietnam,

but to when I was in troop processing.

Seeing those guys.

I mean, it bothered me to the core.

And I, you know, well,

you know, I'll never say I haven't cried.

I have.

But I've never cried like that.

And then I don't cry over it again since.

I mean, it purged me

somewhat.

So anyhow, and then

I just

went to work in a steel mill, shoveled steel.

And

it

It was a hard job.

And then I got another job, applied for a job as an apprentice,

machinist apprentice.

And this guy they set me up to hire was

this old guy named Roy

that was with the union so long that he had, you know, he had tenure.

He couldn't be fired no matter what.

And the guy wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't talk to me.

And, you know, I'd say anything to him, he'd say, leave me alone.

And he would set his machine up every day.

So he was running this huge turret lathe, right?

So he was making, milling down these lathes for

ships, seagoing liners, right?

So do propeller shafts.

And he would, so it'd come all the way up, but never touch it, just go back and forth, back and forth.

And my job was to help him.

And

so

after a couple of months of this, I went went to,

I seen an ad by the University of Baltimore where I could go there with the GI Bill and I

didn't have to take any of the entrance exams.

My high school grades didn't matter.

I mean, I couldn't have got into Harvard with an AR.

So

I went to the University of Baltimore.

I go into the registrar's office and I said to him, I said,

I want to register for college.

He said, what do you want to major in?

I don't know.

I said, well,

nobody in my family went to college.

So I went, he says, go see this counselor.

And I did.

And it was a huge line to see this guy.

I'd about been just getting to see him today if I got into it.

I mean, I never got to see him.

And so

I went back and he got the registrar's office and says,

if you can

sign

a waiver,

you can pick your own major.

I said, why didn't you tell me that?

I said, you have a list of majors.

He gave me a book.

I opened it up.

First one, accounting.

I said, what's accounting?

He said, well, do you like numbers?

I said, yeah.

He says, you go with math.

I said,

reasonably.

He says, you're interested in business?

Yeah.

He says, you should make sure you're in accounting.

So that's what I did.

And,

you know, had I opened it up backwards, I'd have been a zoologist.

And I said to him,

sure.

And it's got to be a very fortuitous choice because I loved it.

And it was, you know, very solitary.

I liked that.

And

I

graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Wow.

I'm now one of of the school's biggest benefactors.

Wow.

He said,

me.

Man, what a curve.

Yeah.

What a curve.

So I did that, and

I went to,

yeah, went to.

What was it like for you in school as a combat veteran?

At that time?

You didn't talk about it.

You didn't want anybody to know?

No, no.

It wasn't that that you didn't want anybody to know.

You just didn't talk about it.

Nobody asked you about it.

Did you stay close with your guys that you'd served with?

Yeah.

Many of them live close?

No, no.

I mean,

one guy lives in New Hampshire.

Another guy lives in the mountains of Pennsylvania.

He was the other guy that hit the trap.

He lives in the mountains of Pennsylvania.

Another guy, two of them live in Florida.

Another one lives in Iowa.

And Brownie,

Brownie, the rascal,

he lives in Austin.

I mean, how did you get through it?

Sounds like

that was the hardest part for you coming home.

Was.

And so,

you know, there's a lot of veterans today that are dealing with similar issues and

can't fit back into society.

How'd you get through it?

Well,

the thing I did was

I worked hard

and I buried myself in my work.

You know, everybody that has

any degree of PTSD self-medicates in some way, shape, or form.

I think they do.

And

my self-medication was always my work and my studies.

So I had to turn things around when I was

in

college.

And then

when I eventually

worked for

a firm that

firm that Commercial Credit Leasing Corp.

worked for them.

And they would send me to schedule the assets of

companies they were looking to buy.

And then I'd schedule the assets, schedule the leases, and then come home.

And this was in the 70s.

And

what I did one day,

when another day, another fortuitous thing

was

I was looking at this company in Redwood City, California, and I was

going to

get my work done.

And I had a 12-hour layover until I was going to

catch the flight.

And so I wound up on a Stanford campus, and I went to the bookstore.

And I bought a book on how to program in the basic computer language and i bought it

and um

went to the airport

i um

uh matter of fact i first i went to fisherman's wharf and um

looked at a looked at a at a charcoal and um

showed this uh little Chinese kid lighting the firework and a bunch of other kids standing by some older kids holding their hands over the little kids' ears.

And it's their little grimace, you know, and it's just wonderful.

The guy just caught it.

Artist named Wai Ming.

And

I asked the guy, the guy said to me, He said, You know, this is about so forth.

I said, How much is it?

He said, $10,000.

And how many might as well have been $10 million?

And so I

see you later.

And

by the way,

when I did the deal on Parsons Technology, I bought that painting.

No kidding.

I tracked it down, baby.

I have it in my bedroom, and I see it every day.

Nice.

Yeah.

And

the original is now in a museum.

I bought an artist's lithograph or so forth, which is, I'm told, the best you can get.

It didn't cost nearly 10 grand, but the memory is what matters.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

anyhow, so I read the book or the salient parts of the book while I was waiting and wrote my first couple of programs on the way back.

And

based on that book, I taught myself how to program.

And I eventually switched to the Pascal language, sold my Apple computer and bought an IBM, and then started my first business, which was called Parsons Technology.

Wow.

Just going back, you had mentioned

everybody with PTSD self-medicates one way or another.

I think so.

How were you self-medicating?

I buried myself in my work.

No drugs?

No antidepressants, booze, none of that.

Just work, baby.

Work.

And then when I first started getting Parses Technology off the ground,

I wrote

the code for a program that would take care of home finances.

I called it Money Counts.

And it got to be pretty good.

And

then I

quit my job.

I was working, was working, started this leasing division for this company.

And

if I had stayed there, this was like November, no, October, had I stayed there through the end of the year, I'd have got $50,000, would have got a bonus.

I quit.

And the reason I quit was

I figured I could just add just enough time if I worked hard to write a

tax software program, do a 1040.

And I got it done.

But to get it done, I would work 60-hour shifts.

I would come in to work, let's say, 8 a.m.

Monday morning, work 8 a.m.

Tuesday morning,

8 a.m.

Wednesday morning,

and then work

half a day.

And when I say half a day, I meant half a day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then

I would know I needed to stop by

the reason I needed to stop was because I start to hallucinate.

I will see a dragon walk across my desk.

Holy shit.

So you buried yourself in work, started your technology company.

I mean,

I think a lot of people,

just from my generation,

I feel like entrepreneurship is a,

I feel like it's the only segue, you know, to really bury yourself into and to kind of

leave the,

what am I trying to say here?

You have to be willing to,

for me myself, a Navy SEAL, a CIA contractor, that's just some shit that I did.

And

it took me a long time to...

to

I mean people expect a certain body style a certain attitude a certain demeanor, you know, when you

are in those type of communities and war-fighting communities.

And it's almost like a fucking trap

that you're in.

And

it wasn't until that I had discovered entrepreneurship and started doing what I love, like you were saying at the very beginning, that

I started getting better and I started putting more importance on what I'm building rather than the the past and

eventually coming to the realization that

I'm not a SEAL.

I'm not a CA contractor.

That's just some shit that I did.

And this is who I am now.

And I mean, did you find that when you

became an entrepreneur?

Yeah.

For sure, for sure.

I mean, that was the only thing I was interested.

I talked about.

I mean, I don't think I owned a Marine Corps cap.

I mean, anything like that.

And not that I denied it.

I didn't.

You know, if somebody wanted to talk to me about it, I talked to them about it.

But

that wasn't going to, you know, take care of my family, put them where they needed to be, and

so forth.

To me,

that was the only way.

What got you interested in coding?

Was this a random book on a shelf and you just decided, hey, I'm going to take a peek at this?

Yep.

Especially back when, did you say the 70s?

75.

Wow.

So you buy a book on coding,

you read it,

you work

three and a half days a week, and then you build this entire empire.

Eventually, yeah.

How long did it take you to get traction on

your business?

On parcel technology.

That first year I did the tech software.

In one year.

One year.

Well, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, I was doing it for a couple of three years before that because it took a while to

build it and know how I wanted to do it and what I wanted to do for the software to be right, you know, and, you know, it couldn't be buggy and on and on.

It couldn't be, I couldn't make my lemonade with vinegar anymore.

Right?

Yeah.

So, so anyhow, all those things, you know,

I needed to have things just so.

Yeah, and so it took about three years, three years for that.

And

so that third year, when I got the tax software done,

I made a quarter million dollars that year.

I've never seen that kind of money in my life.

Quarter million, I mean, yeah, $257,000.

Wow.

The next year, I made $2.5 million.

The next year, I made five.

Next year, I made seven.

I mean, and then it just, I mean, I've never missed too much since.

How did you get it out there?

I mean, was it just you?

Yeah.

It was just you.

It's you and my wife.

So you built it.

How did you.

Magazine ads?

You bought magazine ads.

Yeah.

Holy shit.

Yeah, I was spending early on, I was spending

$55,000 a month on advertising.

And, you know.

How early on?

Well, this is my third year.

I mean, your ads,

your GoDaddy ads were phenomenal.

You know?

Did you come up with those?

Yeah.

I mean,

well,

me and a group of other people together.

Yeah, together.

So you got a knack for marketing and advertising as well.

More of that than anything.

What was the first ad?

The first ad for what?

For Parsons Technologies.

Okay, yeah, first ad.

And let me tell you how I bought it.

Okay.

I'm in the basement.

And this is, I'm still working the other job.

And I have this magazine call me and they say

now one of the things I always did always pay my bills always paid them and they said

taken

let me see let me see Okay, they called me.

It was called a computer bargain line out of Fort Dodge, Iowa.

And this was a rag.

I mean, one of them little rags would look like a magazine cover.

I mean, a cheap magazine cover.

And inside, it'd be like print, like newsprint, and have different stuff for sale.

It's cheap, all sorts of deals, right?

And that's what it was.

So

they said,

we have on the outside front cover, we've got that ad.

It's normally like $12,000, $14,000.

If you can get me creative in a couple of three days,

it's $5,000.

Now,

so they thought I had money.

I never had the money.

So I took it and I says, I'll let you know in the morning.

So I looked at it and I said, call my

wife and I said, I just got a feeling that

this could be it.

So I said, let's do it.

And then I said, and if it turns out it busts, because every ad I ever had run up to that point was a bust.

So

we decided to do it.

And

I pay

a kid in that local ad firm, and they do an ad, and I sold my software.

I had sold it for like $99, $79, $69, on and on and on and on.

Now, I was selling it for $12

when it's at $12.

And then it said no shipping,

no,

it's not copy protected.

Remember, copy protection?

It says not copy protected.

It's not copy protected.

This used to have agreements that you had to be part of if you used it, that would signal that, you know, you could only use it like a book.

You couldn't make copies and give it to people.

On it, on and on.

I said in mine, you can do anything you want.

Just send me $12.

Right?

So the ad said, money counts, but it only costs $12.

Send it.

Blew it out of the water.

Well,

first couple days, I mean, after the magazine came out, there wasn't anything.

And then there wasn't anything.

And then there was,

you know, a half dozen orders, then a dozen.

And then you ever see these ads where you see the mailbox of stuff with orders and checks.

That's the way it looked.

And then there was a box.

They had to set a box next to it.

And

so, oh my God, I think I made 20 grand on that ad.

And

then I took my wife and I and the kids, we we took and did a mailing and we broke every direct mail rule there was, just mailed place, had that ad printed up and mailed it to everybody that ever inquired, since it said, we got a 30% return.

Wow.

So then I

took and

I think I added a $3 shipping charge, didn't matter.

Then I added, I made it $16 instead of $12 and made the shipping charge $5 and left it that way for a couple years.

And I would get big ads made up in all the big magazines.

And that's how Parsons Technology made it.

How long was it before with Parsons Technologies?

How long was it before you started hiring people?

It was right after...

Right after I quit my job.

Right after I quit my job, actually before that a little bit.

And my wife would have some of the

neighbor ladies

would help her and they'd all be down there taking orders and they'd all have their hair in curlers and she's a

dungeon.

But it was, it was, he did a good job and, you know,

they were happy.

They made some money.

I was happy.

I was launching this company.

And then

eventually I had,

oh my God, I had a thousand employees.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

A thousand employees?

Yeah, it might have been 500.

You know,

I have to think about it.

And then you sold it.

I sold it to Intuit.

My wife and I, we got together, we decided we would sell it for

$40 million if we were ever offered it.

And

Intuit offered me 60.

I knew enough to tell him I was insulted.

And the most I could get him up to was 64, so I sold it for 64 million.

Wow.

In what time frame?

10 years.

10 years.

I started it in 84, sold it in 94.

Well, I mean,

where did you learn your business since?

Just comes naturally to you?

Selling lemonade.

Selling lemonade.

You know, it's just from just

working, trying to make a living.

How long was it after you sold Parsons Technologies that you started GoDaddy?

90.

95, 96.

What time frame is that between

between the two?

A couple years.

Just a couple years?

Yeah.

What was the inspiration for GoDaddy?

Well,

really, there was none.

It sounds crazy.

What happened was

when I

did the deal with

Parsons Technology after that, my wife didn't want to be married anymore.

And to be honest with her,

I wouldn't be married to me anymore either.

So

she finally

took all she could and she fucking booted my ass.

So

I moved to

Phoenix or Scottsdale so I could work.

And,

you know, I just

had a non-compete assigned.

I had to honor it and only their non-compete was I couldn't work, period.

so

I honored it and when that thing came came due came up I just started started working and

started starting my own job started you know to start a company and and I like being in the

in the hunt I like being out in the business stream.

I like doing stuff.

I like being active and like having my self on the line, right?

And you like the risk.

Yeah, yeah, I like that.

I like that.

And so

I like the risk, but not too much risk.

So I

started that.

And at the time,

I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew the internet was going to be something.

I knew that was going to be an area where

there was going to be opportunity.

So what I did was, I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I didn't know

exactly what.

So I hired about maybe 10 or 15 people.

And

we tried a bunch of things.

I named the company JoMax Technologies, believe it or not, after a dirt road.

Now, why did I name it after a dirt road?

Name didn't matter.

We didn't do anything.

I would send people to, to, they would go to

a

business meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, and people would ask you, what do you do?

And I said, we don't know yet.

And I said, you know, I have never talked to anybody that don't know what they do.

And so.

Who did you hire?

I mean, if you didn't know what you wanted to do and you just knew that you wanted to be in the internet business at some capacity, how do you even know who to look

Well,

I just would look for people that were looking for work.

Any particular job description or not really.

Not really.

I mean, people that knew a little bit about tech and that sort of thing.

And,

you know,

they were the people that I hired.

And some of them actually were with me till the last day.

Not many of them, but some of them.

And so I went ahead and

and we tried all sorts of things we tried

building intranets extranets we tried doing education we tried selling other people's software tried selling hardware none of that stuff worked but one thing worked and the one thing that that worked was

building

websites.

We could build websites and make some money, not a lot, make some money.

And the money that

we made when we started doing

these websites, there was one problem with them, though.

And that is

they didn't scale.

You had to do the work of building a website in order to make the money.

And so what we did was

we built...

a software program called

we called it Website Complete, was the very first one.

It was one of the first companies and the guys in the world to do this.

And

that would be, you could take in and do it, just put some, fill in the blanks and this and that.

And this thing would write the code for a website.

Very primitive, but you'd have a website.

So it would do that.

And then the next step was where

things looked like they were going to,

Jill, is every website needs a domain name, needs an address,

needs a seanryan.com, right?

So then what we did was I found I went to I went to all the website companies, I mean all the domain companies, and they were all pain in the ass to deal with.

We had one of our engineers went ahead and just filled the applications to

do that for us.

So

we could become a domain name registrar.

And not in a domain name, a domain name registrar is not in a sense where you take and you have to buy a bunch of domain names to resell, although you could do that.

It's more like the DMV selling vanity license plates.

You know, once you get a vanity

license plate

at the DMV, it's yours as long as you pay the annual fee.

That's the way domain names work.

The only difference is you have companies that can do that, and they're called domain name registrars.

So we started doing that.

And

then what happened was the dot-com boom.

And the dot-com boom, there was so much noise for the dot-com boom, you couldn't, nobody didn't even pay attention to you.

Yeah, not even, not even close.

And so,

I mean, the noise, you could see like these Super Bowl, stupid Super Bowl ads where they were playing a piano like chopsticks.

And

they didn't have time to run an ad, but they bought it.

And

I mean, make an ad and stuff like that.

And it got to the point where it got to be,

it just got to be

stupid.

And then

what happened was when I did that, I had about

38 million.

I split it with my wife.

She deserved every nickel she got.

And I moved to Arizona.

Best move I ever made.

And

I

then

worked on making this company work and renamed it.

GoDaddy.

And then

the way that that came about was, I was just, you know, the name Joe Max Technologies is just very forgettable, means nothing.

GoDaddy doesn't mean much more, but at least it's fun and easy to remember.

And so me and Gal that I still work with, we come up with that one night after I've had our third night.

We tried it.

It's Fat Daddy, taken.

Big Daddy, taken.

GoDaddy, using the AOL go

keyword and the word daddy available.

Bought it for $8.95.

Damn.

Yeah.

And so

that's what I did.

And

I started with 38 million

and then I started losing money.

And I started,

I said, I'm not going to worry about this company until I get down to 30 million.

Then I said, 20 million,

15 million.

I don't know why.

Sorry, I'm choking up here.

No, it's all fine.

There's a lot of pollen out.

So anyhow, so I decided I'm going to go to

15 million, then 12.

Then 10,

then eight.

And I think eight or six, I decide I'm going to close the company down because it didn't look like there was a snowball chance in hell of this company ever making the turn.

And then so what I did was

I sold my original company.

I mean, this sold all the furniture and stuff, had really nice furniture.

Stupid furniture, don't make you no money.

And

moved, bought a horse farm,

an area where it was legal for breeding horses, but it wasn't legal for developing software.

That's how fucked up sauce

Phoenix is, right?

So

I bought this big sign.

I had to paint it, called it Takodadi Ranch, put it right

on a wall.

And then I decided I went to

Hawaii by myself.

And I was going to decide how I was

going to shut it down, how I was going to pay any severance, how I was going to pay my creditors, and then what I was going to do.

So I

went to Hawaii.

I went to Hawaii.

I was, and the Epiphany

happened.

More and more I was there.

I didn't want to shut it down.

Epiphany happened where all of a sudden,

one day, this guy comes up to me and, you know,

he's happy, happy as can be.

Throw the keys in here.

Hey, you know Miss Parsons.

And I said, I'm doing great, buddy.

And I mean, and I think this guy's parking cars probably has nothing, right?

He's the happiest guy in the world.

I got six or eight million dollars.

I'm miserable.

Now, what's wrong with this picture?

Ah,

so I decide at that point to go back home

and I shut it down.

And if the company goes broke, I'll go broke with it.

I decided I could always park cars.

But then I decided, you know what?

I'm not a big-time gambler, but I like craps.

I said, I'll go to Vegas and just work on a table.

It sounds like a fun life.

So I

do that.

And then this is about January, February, and then October or maybe later that year, the dot-com crash happens.

And when the dot-com crash happened, GoDaddy was born.

And then I had, instead of guys waiting in line to I mean, instead of not refusing to sell me anything at any price.

I mean, every week, at least one or two companies were doing business with Fanish.

I mean, Fannish disappeared.

Fucking gone, baby.

You don't even know where they were.

No forwarding address.

Gone.

And so

we just

things started.

Instead of us trying to, you know, buy advertising, I have guys stand in line to give it to me.

Damn.

And then so we take, and then in October,

we wait, and

we turned a company, we became cash flow positive, and never missed a month since.

Well, for somebody that was just telling me, you look

mitigated risk, you just went from 38 million down to 6 to 8 million.

Yeah, well, that's because I'm a knucklehead.

The valet Parker decided, is the one that made the decision for you of, hey, fuck it, I'm going to do this.

Go back, willing to lose everything, the rest of your money, and then you blow GoDaddy out of the water.

Yeah,

yep, and then sold GoDaddy until 2011

and

sold

71%

for 2.3 billion.

Damn, and then sold the other 29%

for almost 2 billion.

Wow.

Yeah.

So.

Wow.

Not bad for a young guy from East Baltimore.

Not too bad.

Not too bad, I would say.

You've done well.

Yeah.

So, anyhow, I mean, the ads all

they all happened.

It was just funny as shit how that came about.

I love them.

I love them.

You want me to tell you the Genesis

how that happened?

Yes.

So I'm running GoDaddy,

and

I am never quite sure

why our business just stalls where

we got a

16%

market share worldwide.

I said,

we got the best

prices, we got the best systems, we got the fairest policies, we got the best customer service.

What are these other dogs?

Why are they still writing business?

So I hired a market research firm

to kind of look at it for us.

And they come back with an answer.

They said, the reason those people aren't doing business with you is because those people don't know you exist.

You only advertise on the internet.

These people are only reachable on direct media.

I mean, on conventional media.

So what I did was, that was was in August.

I said, all right, well, you know what?

I had a

$10 million war chest built up.

And I decided the Super Bowl was right around a corner.

Let's make a Super Bowl ad.

Damn.

And then, you see, there's the Super Bowl ad back then will cost you $3 million.

Costs you way more than that now.

It costs you like 10, 12,

something like that.

Maybe even, maybe far more so but anyhow so so what we would do is we took and

I

could not understand

how you would get people's attention

people to look at your ad and people want to buy because they're at a Super Bowl party your ad is only on for 30 seconds

right and then after 30 seconds they um

you know they're

they're talking, they're drinking cocktails, some are, some aren't.

They're certainly cabets in all this.

A lot of them aren't even paying attention to the television and all that.

How are you going to capture their attention?

And then I was one day I was with my second wife and I'm watching television.

And I've seen an ad from Mike's Hardlime,

Mike's Hard Lime aide.

And I knew.

I knew.

And what the ad was,

you got

three really good-looking women at the end of a bar, right?

And Caddy cornered them as this guy.

He's kind of hunched over his mic hard line.

And he's got a little bit of drop in the bottom.

And he's looking around, looking around.

And instead of instead of him holding it up and letting it run down, he sticks a 12-inch tongue down and

swirls it around and then pulls it back.

And

the bartender says, ladies, what do you have?

And they point to him and go, we like one of those.

And I said, that is it, baby.

Oh, God.

I said, that is it.

And

so

we

did our first, did our first dad.

We did a spoof on the GoDaddy girl.

She didn't even have a name then.

The media named her the GoDaddy Girl.

We named her.

And she was at a

hearing by

a Super Bowl

board of censors or whatever she was.

And they were

kind of

trying to decide if they were going to approve her being an ad.

And

a a she was going to be in an ad

and

it was just hilarious because the the the guy the

the

the guy running the whole show his name was booth coleman i think he said passed but but he was an older guy and uh she was they he says oh ma'am what are you going to do

you know on the game and she she stands up and she goes i could could do something like this.

And her

tank top strap snaps and it was a spoof on Janice Jackson and Justin Timberlake.

Right.

And she stops it and it just, it doesn't go

all the way.

So you see nothing.

You see nothing.

And, you know, you look at it, you know, it's filmed at a distance, see things that

blur the cleavage on and on and on.

A lot of the ad is

shot from behind.

So

Fox News said they would do the ad.

And then when we sent them the actual ad, they said, no way.

And so, you know, we said, they said, you know, we had guys with me said, well,

why don't you just say they denied it?

You can, you know, people might want to see the ad that didn't get approved.

No.

No, I wanted to run it because I had bigger aspirations.

So, So anyhow, so we went ahead and do that, all that, to minimize the ad, shoot it from the distance and on and on.

And

so

he's taking oxygen.

And

I had a line in there that said, where there's a woman up there

that they ask with Booth, and she says,

Those are not real.

And he and then, so I had to change it.

She'd say, may I suggest a turtleneck

and so anyhow they approve it

and three days before the Super Bowl they call me back and they say

you want to buy another spot

and I said really

and they go yeah we got a spot open just before the Super Bowl and it could be a very good ad or a very big,

very great ad.

And I think it was

Buffalo playing Philly or something like that,

or Patriots.

But whoever it was, one of them was on a one-yard line just when they did the two-minute warning.

This ad was gold.

And then our ad doesn't run.

Doesn't run.

And I mean, and we wait, maybe it's the next ad, maybe it's the next ad, maybe it's the next.

Never our ad, our ad never runs.

So I get a hold of the president of Fox Sports, Sports and I asked him what happened.

He said, your ad was out of tenor with the rest of the ads.

We had to pull it.

It was out of what?

Yeah.

It was out of what?

He said it was out of tenor.

What does that mean?

It means it's just it wasn't, it was,

it shouldn't have been approved.

All right, so, so any, yeah, I know, I felt the same way.

But I turned around to my

buddy that,

you know, he's my chief of staff and I said to him can we be this lucky can we be this lucky that never happened before

so

what they run instead of our and

I'll tell you what they run they run a picture of of

Simpsons and Bart Simpson right He goes in and he's stabbing a baby in a crib.

That's what they run?

much more acceptable than a than a press

no so anyhow that's uh that's that's what happens so i get it i get in touch with the president of fox sports

and so

here here's what happens he takes and and he um

you know we go back and forth because we had our attorneys working on it and so forth and um

so

we got a deal.

We got a deal with them.

So I don't have to pay for the ad that didn't run.

I don't have to pay for the ad that did run.

And,

you know, life is good.

I mean, basically,

I...

uh the market share worked.

It went from 16% to 25% a year and held.

Phew.

All right.

So, I mean, it was just

great.

So anyhow, so we take and

I'm there sitting them sitting them at the table and these guys are on a conference call and I know ask for anything.

Anything I'll get it.

Anything I'll get it.

I can't think of anything.

I can't think of anything.

So here's what I think of.

You ready for this?

It was the best I could do.

I said, tell you what.

Give me a game ball, two game balls from every Super Bowl, and we got a deal.

And he goes, done!

Oh, man.

Wow.

And that's how it came about.

Yeah.

So

the media named her the GoDaddy Girl.

Bill,

I mean,

it's just

funny how it all came together.

Then you got in, you got a NASCAR,

or I'm sorry, not a NASCAR, an IndyCar, correct?

IndyCar with Daddy Kilpatrick.

I was playing golf with her Sunday, by the way.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah.

So.

Are you guys pretty close?

Well, she's a buddy of mine.

And so it was me, my wife, and her, and the other friend.

And I had a nice time.

Are you into racing no

how did that come about well i was up in um

i was up in

in um the arctic and i was hunting

and um i was um

I was talking to the two guys and these guys, I mean, they didn't know nowhere.

And they were talking about the Indy 500, Danica Patrick.

And I said, wow, she's young.

She's an amazing sport.

She is drawing a lot of attention.

I said,

she ought to be our spokesperson.

So we reached out, we hired her, and then we did, we were partners for eight years.

Wow.

Yeah, eight years.

And she's now a member of my club, Scottsdale National.

And

good time.

I'll bet.

All bet.

What were you hunting up there?

Grizzly.

Grizzly?

Did you get one?

So you sold Parsons Technologies, then you immediately start another company, then you sold ownership of GoDaddy, and then you move into golfing.

Golf.

Yeah.

Golf and motorcycles.

I mean, how much time was it?

I mean, by this time, you're a multi-billionaire.

What?

I guess I'm just curious.

Why do you keep moving into new business ventures?

Why not?

I'll ask you.

I mean, I'm addicted to it.

I love entrepreneurship.

I love business.

Yeah, I like it too.

I haven't worked for anybody since 1984.

I

just

worked hard.

I mean, it's just you hit a point where

you don't need anything more.

Yeah, my wife and I,

we move a million to charity

every other week.

Every 14 days.

Yep, every 14 days.

And I think we've given a total of

a couple hundred million, I know.

Oh, and we

helped the Semper Five Fund.

I've had 10 million a year.

We just crossed $120 million a year with them.

I mean, $120 million with them.

And,

you know, when it's all said and done, buy it all, go to charity.

How do you, I mean, how do you, I think that's amazing that you do that.

And that's, you know, that's something I try to do here.

I'd show you all this stuff around the room.

And we've brought a lot of my friends on that have started nonprofits and psychedelics and healing and mostly combat stress type stuff.

And I mean, I just enjoy

watching them succeed from,

you got to be careful I say this because they built everything.

I'm just a conduit to the public.

I'm the advertiser, I guess, is the way you'd see it.

And the traction that they get after they come on this

show is just, it's tremendous.

And it just makes me feel good to watch them

succeed with all the exposure and and you know i i think i'd write was it 19 million you you've donated to psychedelic research and how do you

i guess what i'm asking is

you know the

the non-profit game is tricky you know you you really got to make sure that you're finding people that are doing the right things and i'll light people up for sometimes a year before i bring them on to make sure like hey is this money going to what it needs to go to?

And, and

is this guy, you know, I really enjoy finding people that are, that are just really grinding it out.

And, and

I don't know.

I guess I see myself in them.

And, uh, and I didn't have anybody to lift me up.

And

so I guess what I'm asking is how do

every 14 days you're donating another million.

How do you find these

people that resonate with you or the companies that resonate with with you, the nonprofits?

Well, I have a staff at our foundation.

It's run by a very sharp lady by the name of Laura Mitchell.

And she's been in that particular

end of business for a long time, been with me a long time.

And

she has staff, so they sort it out.

I mean, you know, if

you're in a foundation, you're giving away money, your product, everybody likes it.

Yeah, so you do have to be careful.

But what we do is,

you know,

giving the money to

whatever the organization is that we're donating money to is only

part of the

contract.

You know, we're also in touch with them monthly and they're assigned an individual from our foundation to be in touch with them and to, you know help them in any way that they can

and to also report back to us when the next time comes to where they knock on our door if they did what they said they were going to do

what's your success rate

you mean that of uh that that of non-profits that follow through with it uh overall close to uh cool a hundred percent and and uh I I mean,

do I have little disagreements along the way?

Yeah.

Yeah, but I mean, I'm there to work it out.

I'm not there to,

you know, it's different than buying a pair of shoes, you know, like.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah, that's, that's amazing.

You're a great person for doing that.

Well,

thank my wife and

there you go.

Right on.

So how did you get into the golf industry?

I decided to do it.

I bought Scottsdale National

and

that was

first thing.

You know, when I did the GoDaddy deal, I decided I was going to buy either a football team.

or a really, a really nice

golf course.

And

praise the Lord thank my angel I bought a golf course

so I love it do you play golf

I'm not any good well who is

nobody's any good Danica Patrick's pretty good isn't she she has her moments

Yeah, she has her moments.

But, you know, I bought Scottsdale National.

It's just one of these deals where it became available.

It is right now, it is 730 acres in

preme of real estate in Scottsdale, surrounded on three sides by,

what is it, three million acres of land.

Wow.

Government set aside.

Has one house on the property.

You've guessed it.

Very nice.

Yeah.

Very nice.

Yeah.

Well, Bob, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, I want to dive into psychedelics.

Which I didn't bring any.

I got you covered.

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Thank you.

Let's get back to the show.

All right, Bob, we're back from the break.

I want to dig into psychedelics.

It's something that,

like I'd mentioned earlier, it fixed a lot of things going on with my family.

My son was

six months old at the time when I finally decided to take that leap.

And

it's just totally changed everything for me.

My family life, my business.

old relationships opened me up to a lot of

things that maybe I was

wasn't confident diving into before.

And

I think would be a great way to put it.

And

sent me on a spiritual journey and

found God and faith in Christ.

And just so much good has come from

since the very first time.

And so I know for you, I mean, we had talked about

your childhood, having growing up in a rough environment.

We talked about Vietnam, coming home from Vietnam.

I'm sure there's a lot of business stress.

I mean, I can only imagine because I'm stressed out of my mind just with what I'm running.

And

I find a lot of peace through those.

And

it took me,

I guess, almost 10 years,

almost 10 years after I finally left doing contract work for the CIA

in various combat zones to finally take that leap.

It took you 49 years, if I'm correct.

49 years.

How did you hear about psychedelics?

How did I hear about psychedelics?

You know,

when I was

a kid in the 60s,

you know,

there was LSD around and

of course, marijuana, marijuana, I don't consider a psychedelic.

There was,

and then you hear guys talking about mushrooms and other stuff, but I never did any of that then because, number one, I just, I didn't feel need to and I didn't didn't, I was a little afraid of it because I didn't know much about it.

You know, you had all these rumors that, you know, if you took, you took LSD, you might try to fly off a building and, you know, shit like that.

So

I didn't pay any attention to it.

And I didn't even think about it, that it would be,

that it would have the medicinal properties that it would do, even though, in spite of

for millennia, we have other cultures that have used it to handle problems

that we have all the time, and they don't have at all because of their wise use of psychedelics.

So the thing that made the difference for me was in 2017, it didn't happen until 2017,

I read Michael Polland's book, How to Change Your Mind.

And Michael Polland's book is a treatise on psychedelics.

And, you know, and it talks about, it doesn't talk about iboga, even though that is,

that's granddaddy of mall, baby.

Have you done that?

No.

I have.

That was my first one.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I haven't.

And

maybe one day.

But I don't.

I haven't so far.

But

I read his book.

And, you know, and I was fascinated.

First, the book reads like a novel.

Reads like mine reads.

And

like, you know, and it's just,

I could not get over that that could be a solution for me.

And so I told my wife, Renee, that

I would like to try this.

And

she had me fixed up within two weeks.

Are you serious?

Dead serious.

She had me hooked up.

And it just

so happened that she had been talking to a friend, who've been talking to a friend who had a journey like this and on and on and on.

And it's just everything just

dovetailed together.

And so

she introduced me to these people and two guides, work under the radar, of course.

And I met them in Hawaii.

And

I

I did for three days, I did three different types of

psychedelics.

First day I did ayahuasca.

And,

you know, that's different.

Yeah,

you would never buy that at a soda fountain, would you?

Nasty taste of stuff.

But anyhow, you know, it is what it is.

Some people swear by it.

The second day,

I did

magic mushrooms

and the

let's tell you a story that is funny.

My guide, he made this, he had this pot, this teapot, and he said, this holds three large cups.

And I made it very strong, this magic mushroom tea, so you'll only need one cup.

Now,

I swear what I'm telling you, going to tell you is true.

I drank all three cups and I ate the tea bags.

And I was righteously stoned.

And

I was here, there, and everywhere.

You know, and

did I have a journey?

Yeah, I did.

And

it was all positive.

Some tears and so forth, but it was all positive.

And then the next day I took off.

took a break.

And that day my wife and I went and played golf.

And

what I liked is it felt like the fauna, like the bushes and the grass and the

that all knew I was there and I was alive and what I've been doing and it was supportive.

And

I never puttted that good in my life.

It was like whatever green I was on, it was like the grass would say, he didn't hear Bobby.

And I waited to go right bend right around into the cup.

I mean it was incredible.

Now,

it never

happened, you know, again or since, but it happened that one time.

And so it was a great,

great experience.

The next day,

it was LSD.

And the LSD,

I took a strong dose of it and

it was, you know, had the same impact the other two did.

And

I didn't have

any

hallucinations

on that.

But

I sure had a righteous buzz and was happy to talk and felt good about things.

And

when I was all said and done, my wife noticed it the first.

She said, you're different.

You know, you're easier to talk to, you're easier to get along with.

You don't have that temper, any that edge about you, it's gone.

And

then I could feel it too.

And then the people that I work with also knew it.

You know, they could see it.

And so

I made a sharp turn away from PTSD at that point.

I'd like to say at that time it had been

49 years since the war for me, and I finally came home.

Wow.

I'd like to dive into that a little more in depth, but before we get into each specific journey, I'm just, you know,

what is it that, I mean, I know you found the book, but what was going on in your life at that time?

I mean, what was

what sent you on the search?

Well,

brother,

I had an edge about me that I didn't like.

And I would lose my temper.

And

I just

would hate myself for it, you know, because it was no reason.

It was always something stupid, you know.

And so, I mean, it was always under a quest.

I knew that, you know, this first, you know, I've had a battle with some depression.

I had

fought this horrid temper that I had.

And

I just never liked being around people.

I like being alone, you know, and

that's...

It's not a good thing.

At least if you can overcome why you're like that.

You know, it was terrible for me on days like the

days the trees fell.

And that reminds me, it was an experience I had in Vietnam.

And

I would always go back there on the 4th of July.

And I would do whatever I could to avoid fireworks, to stay away from that sort of thing.

But it's stuff like that.

And,

you know, I've been,

my wife is my third wife.

I mean,

I've been given my walking papers twice.

And it's never a pleasant time.

So, and then, you know, and I knew that the women that I married both times were good women.

I mean, there wasn't nothing wrong with them.

But

the problem was, the problem was me.

What do you mean the day the trees fell?

Okay,

I'll tell you about the day the trees fell.

We set up for ambush one night in a graveyard in Vietnam.

And

Vietnamese are buried sitting up, at least most of them are that I'm aware of.

And so

we had a squad a couple of clicks right of us, a couple of clicks left of us.

And

so I was facing just inward to this area where all these trees were.

And I was leaning against

the mound.

And

they were, there was,

all of a sudden,

on the right of us, there was a firefight started.

And then there was a firefight on the left of us.

And there was bullets, you've been shot at many times.

You know what it sounds like when a bullet goes by.

You know, it sounds like a beef or something flying by.

But I mean, it was like,

he's going like crazy so he couldn't stand up and then some one of our one of the guys in our squad might probably george called in artillery it must have been nba moving towards us from a the front in front of us area i was i was facing and all i could see was i could see

You know, I don't know how far out it was, maybe a couple hundred yards, maybe 100 yards.

I don't know.

But it would be like everything would light up.

And then you'd see these trees, these palm trees just falling down, falling down.

And then

and then on and on and on.

And it must have been for like 15 minutes and then

quiet.

And that was, that's what I'm, I'm talking about that particular night.

That night was

crazy.

And what was crazier about it, that particular graveyard, there was a squad of ours a month or so before I got there that set up in that graveyard and

they all died because

the Vietnamese somehow or another

they were buried sitting up?

No,

they weren't buried.

They were just mutilated like

sometimes happens.

But none of us were hurt that night.

Just the trees.

Just the trees were.

what about the family life I mean

two wives you got kids grandkids great-grandkids you're running

a major enterprise

I would imagine that takes somewhat of a toll on the family yeah it does it does but you know I can tell you what what I've the the painful thing is

what I decided was

early on it was

might have been a good thing that I wasn't always around.

Because of your temper?

Yeah,

temper.

I mean, I never got never got physical, never, never once, but

she was verbal and loud, and that's

I'm happy that with my angel, I'm past that,

At least 99%.

Are you close with your kids?

Yeah.

All of them?

Yeah.

How many kids do you have?

Three.

Close with the grandkids?

Grandkids, not as much.

Great-grandkids, haven't met them yet.

Haven't met them yet?

Haven't met them yet.

How old are they?

They are, I think,

two and a half and one,

something like that.

Do you want to meet them?

Of course I do.

Well, what's going on?

Well, I will, but I won't when I'm ready.

Dad.

Got you.

So you got all this going on in your life.

You find Michael Pollan's book, read it, decide you're going to do it.

Wife.

Wife makes the connection.

Right.

What are you seeing in your ayahuasca journey?

What I see in my ayahuasca journey?

You know, I've seen less in the ayahuasca journey than I did in the

mushrooms and the LSD.

And I think the reason for it is maybe you give me a lighter dose.

Anything get revealed?

Any epiphanies?

In the ayahuasca?

You know,

if it was anything, it's that I, you know, I needed to change and I could change and

there you go.

But

that is it.

How about the psilocybin?

Psilocybin had the biggest difference with me a number of times.

And it

seems to work good.

What did you see?

What did I see?

Well, I had that flashback of processing those guys

to Vietnam.

And then I told you when I was in troop processing, just before I rotated home,

that I mean,

I could see those guys like I was there, like they were yesterday.

I mean, like I was sitting here with you now.

Was it look was it looking at that experience or a different perspective?

No, you know, it's just it's just I seen the

horror of it.

I mean,

just

how that bullshit happens.

And these guys are walking into that and they don't have a clue.

I mean, I've seen that.

And I mean, and the mess,

if I had to tell you

what my most stressful points were to cause

PTSD, I would have never picked that.

I just wouldn't have.

because i buried it

but it came out and it it was one of the most profound

what else did what else was revealed that's it

the whole experience was vietnam well vietnam the war the war is is

rough for me being a kid is also a rough rough time but see i i was i was never when i was a kid i was never abused I was neglected.

And it's just as bad, maybe worse, I don't know.

But

I don't know.

Both times

bother me.

Early on when I was talking about the introduction and that letter I wrote myself, I mean, it was everything I could do to tell you about it without crying totally.

And

maybe

one day I will.

I'll be able to talk about it.

But I mean, it just wrenches my soul every time.

You know, I think

a lot of

firstborns,

kids with neglect,

kids that are abused.

I mean, I think a lot of them

they become overachievers.

And like we're always trying to prove something.

I'm the oldest.

It can relate somewhat.

But it's just

when you were building all your companies, when you were in Vietnam, I mean, who were you trying to prove anything to?

Anybody?

Were you looking for some type of acceptance?

Were you looking for some type of self-worth?

You know,

no, and no.

Self-worth, maybe.

You know, it's tough to to know what I was.

I just know I love doing it.

And that's an area that I think was a big advantage for me.

I just loved it.

And so, you know, I was willing to channel my energy and time into it.

use that as a release to kind of self-treat or self-medicate PTSD, if you will.

I mean, you know,

when

you don't work 60-hour shift followed by eight-hour sleep, followed by 60-hour shift, followed by, you know, for a few months, unless you're a bit of a workaholic, right?

Yeah.

Well, that's what it was.

But I loved doing it, but

I didn't do it because I hated doing it.

I used to look at my watch and I never looked at it and said, oh, it's four o'clock.

I got another 12 hours left to work.

i would look at it and say oh it's four o'clock oh man i only have four 12 hours i can work

i mean that that sort of thing that resonates with me but i mean i'm just

i guess what i'm saying is if you if you were neglected if you were neglected as a child then

you know

All therapists go back to childhood and they say that a lot of this stuff stems from childhood.

Even with a lot of war trauma, they dive more into, in my experience, they dive more into childhood than they do anything else.

And so

that's what makes me curious is

if you built these companies

to

gain the approval or interest or just having your parents be proud of what you've you've built could be a major driver to a lot of people.

And

sometimes you got to dig for it, but that's what I'm asking you is if you think that,

you know, by growing up rough and being neglected, if it was a driver in your business,

in your entire life?

Well, you know,

I think,

you know, it had to be in the sense that I grew up knowing that if I really wanted something, I better be working for it.

Right.

So, so that in itself is a driver, as opposed to somebody that's working with a silver spoon, right?

And you're born with that, you know, they might not,

you know, have that discipline.

Doesn't have registers.

Yeah.

So

I was born with a dirty plastic spoon.

You act differently with one of those.

And what about your experience with LSD?

LSD is

been a different type of

drug for me.

I think it's been helpful.

I tend to get

a little

with LSD, a little nauseous with it, but never so nauseous that I purge

and then move on to the next step.

Just nauseous.

So I've known that, I've avoided it.

But I still think

having LSD, at the same time I had the combination of ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, and or psilocybin and

LSD, I think that is a powerful combination for me.

And you saw the effects immediately, and your wife did.

Yes.

What did she see?

Well,

she seen I was kind of the guy she wanted to be married to.

There you go.

So, you know,

it's like

I was told once that every young couple that gets married, right,

the husband thinks that, you know, doesn't want his wife to change.

And the wife doesn't want her husband, no, wants her husband to change.

And often they're both disappointed.

well she was happy to see that her husband changed

or maybe changed

and it stuck yeah

do you continue to use psychedelics um you know i i have but i don't

i don't i mean i i haven't haven't in uh in in a while um

My wife did a journey not too long ago with her sisters.

They had some family stuff they were dealing with, and it's been great.

And I tell you what, it's been, I mean, I love the woman tremendously, but since her journey, I love her even more.

Have you guys ever done anything together?

Oh, we have.

We have.

We have done MDMA

and

done it twice, I think.

But it's been a while.

It's been a while.

So why did you dive back in?

Did you start to see any fall off from what you've gained from the initial journey?

No, I did because it was there.

And I thought maybe I could still be better.

Did you have an ego death?

An ego death.

Have you heard of this?

No.

An ego death.

Have you ever heard of 5-MeO DMT?

Yeah.

Have you done that?

I have, and let me tell you a story with that.

I've done that.

And

that's the kind that you smoke the,

right?

Toadboard.

Well, I've smoked it and did it three times, smoked it, felt nothing.

And my guide, who is my dear friend, said, this must be something wrong with this.

And he took a puff of it and was on the roof.

So for some reason or other, that stuff doesn't affect me.

No kidding.

Yeah,

I don't know what it is, but it's the damnedest thing.

Damn, I did Ibogaine and then followed by 5MEO DMT, and that was a total ego death.

You legitimately think,

you don't think

in your mind, you are 100%

certain that you are dying.

And then you cross over into this other realm.

And

once you,

it's the most anxiety, the most fear, the most all of that stuff that I've ever experienced at

any one particular given point in time

blasts for maybe 15 to 30 seconds, but it feels like an eternity.

And

I think a lot of people fight it, and maybe they don't cross over.

But if you can actually let it go, just let go and actually die,

because you are 100% certain you are dying.

You know,

it's like your entire

life.

Man,

it's hard to describe, but it's like

you just start letting go of everything.

You let go of

possessions and friends, and then there's like the final thing.

And the final thing for me was

I was having a problem releasing my wife and my firstborn son.

I didn't have my daughter at the time, and that was my last thought before I crossed over:

I can't fucking die because

I can't leave my wife and my son in this fucked up place.

And then I let that go

and you cross over into this other realm.

And

man,

it really opens you up to

all the good in the world.

And, you know, I'd always heard about

it took me a long time to do this because I always thought psychedelics are just for fucking hippies and I don't definitely don't consider myself a hippie

but I've heard them talk about energy and good energy and bad energy and

once I crossed over into that realm I could see like

I could see all of the energy flowing from the beach into the ocean, into the trees, the birds, the sky.

I could tell that everything was connected one way or another.

But I wasn't hallucinating.

It was more of an intuitive type

experience.

I felt my best friend Gabe that I was telling you about, who's Glock and Flag is up there.

I felt his presence.

We didn't talk, but I could just feel him.

And that just, that stuff just changed my entire life.

It cured my addiction.

I was a major alcoholic, sucking down pills, valium, Xanax, ambient, selenor, oxycodine,

all of it, anything I could get my hands on,

just to numb, just to numb it out, gone like that.

Haven't had a drop of booze since.

Wow.

Yeah, it totally.

And then on top of that, you know,

just

being on a, on the platform that I've built in front of millions of people,

there were subjects that I felt beholden to my audience.

I have to, I can't venture into this because my audience doesn't want to see it.

And it took all that shit away.

It said,

fuck it.

Just do whatever the fuck you want to do.

And I started doing that, and my business was already on a rocket ship.

And then, once I didn't care anymore about

anything

but my own curiosity,

uh, my business just it gave me the courage to say no to things,

it gave me the courage to dive into new areas, it gave me the courage to start looking at the afterlife and what that looks like.

And

we were talking about guardian angels, it spent me down a whole spiritual journey with that, and uh, looked into the universe and all kinds of shit, and eventually landed on Christianity.

But,

but

and I continue to do self-maintenance, you know,

not on any particular cadence,

but

I've done a fair amount of psilocybin.

And

man, that stuff really cleaned me out, too, with a lot of the stuff that was going on between me and my wife.

And

I think everybody should do this.

I think so.

I think it is

one of the answers.

I think when we start doing it as a people, should we ever stop doing it as a people,

it'd be a renaissance.

Why did you decide to do it again

after your initial experience?

Why did I decide to do it again after the initial experience?

You know,

the first time it was it was I wanted to I wanted to fix a problem.

Second time,

I wanted to get better, Keep getting better.

See, and now I've I feel I'm you know probably about as good as I'm going to get.

So I, you know, I

not not doing it as much.

Do you think you'll do it again?

Might.

Hope so.

Hope so.

Like to like to do it with my wife again.

But

what do you like to surround yourself with?

Nature

when you do it?

Nature.

Nature is one.

It's hard to go wrong with that.

And

friends.

Do you find clarity?

Do you find answers?

No, not

in the sense that

that there's something that I'm looking for.

No, no.

Do you go into it with intentions?

No.

No?

No, no.

Yeah,

wait a minute, wait a minute.

Let me.

You know,

I was with one of the guides who was,

he was, he was a guy that did my first journey in 2017.

him and him and his partner.

And,

you know, I had thought about what I wanted to

accomplish

when

he was there with me.

And we went ahead and we, you know, I had a journey and so forth.

And I never thought I accomplished anything,

but I accomplished everything.

And I know you're going to ask me, you're going to say, well, what is it you wanted to accomplish?

I don't fucking remember.

And you're going to say, well, how do you know?

Well, I did at the time I knew.

But now

I got my brain just,

I've been eating chocolate chip cookies, and they've

clouded my thoughts.

Oh, man.

Are you a Christian?

Yes.

How did you find faith?

How do I find faith?

How did you find faith?

What does that mean?

Faith?

How do I find it?

Faith in God, faith in Christ.

Or how do I find it?

How did you find it?

How did I find it?

I think it takes an effort for me.

But,

you know,

there's a saying, there's no atheist in a foxhole.

Right?

I know that saying very well.

Yeah, no atheist in a foxhole.

And,

you know, I,

I mean, that's

the best I can do.

Do you think that psychedelics is a bridge into a spiritual realm?

You know, I think so.

I think so.

And,

you know, I'd like to think that

I haven't been able to really get in there.

as deep as I, as, as, as, as is there available for the getting.

Now, the one thing I can tell you, under the supervision of a doctor, of a physician, I've taken a strong injection of ketamine and have an absolutely total

hallucination,

almost geometric and stuff like that.

Don't think I'll see anybody again.

And I mean, it's pretty heady stuff.

But

coming through that, you know,

I don't have any particular thing that I come away with

other than love solves most things,

violence solves nothing,

and

those

particular things

would be what I came away with that as.

I would say that's pretty profound.

Yeah,

yeah,

yeah.

So

I do know when

I spend time and

I study Christianity and I read about it, I get a feeling that I don't get from anything else.

Me too.

Yeah.

Me too.

Well, Bob,

I really appreciate you coming, and it was an honor to interview you and

document your life journey.

And I just want to say thank you again, and God bless.

Thanks, brother.

Well, I appreciate being here.

You're quite a guy.

You've had quite a life.

And,

you know, God bless you.

I mean, you know,

you could be an angel.

I don't know.

You are an angel.

But

thank you.

Thank you.

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