#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones

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Visit prizepix.com for restrictions and details. Travis Haley, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks for having me, Sean.

It is an honor to have you here. And I've been trying to make this happen for a long time.
And I've been really looking forward to this. And seriously, it's an honor to have you sitting here.
So thank you for making the trip. Thank you.
You know, I left contracting for the agency in 2015 and started a training company. It didn't last very long.
But you and then another guy, Dom Razo, were – I looked at everybody that was doing this stuff and the level of professionalism that you have and the attention to detail that you put in all of your content, your marketing, your advertising, your products is just second to no one. And it really, really stands out.
At least it did for me. And so it's pretty surreal to be sitting here with you right now because I studied all of the stuff that you were doing very early on when I was in that game.
And it's really cool, man. You've built an empire and it's very inspiring for me and a lot of other people.
So very cool. Thank you, man.
I acknowledge that. So my plan worked exactly as planned, I guess.
It did. It did.
But everybody starts off with a introduction here. So Travis Haley, you're a prominent figure in the defense and firearms industry, known for your extensive military service and contributions to the tactical training and product development.
You're a force reconnaissance marine combat entrepreneur and an eighth generation gunfighter. In 2011, you established Haley Strategic Partners, which focuses on designing cutting edge tactical equipment and offering science based training programs.
You also serve as a mind architecture and self-improvement coach, helping others find post-traumatic growth, and shares not just how you, excuse me, not just how to be a survivor to life, but a beneficiary to it. You're a husband to a superwoman, a father of seven children, the founder of seven successful companies, and an adventurous and extreme athlete.
As I mentioned before, you are a very, you're just a phenomenal businessman and started several companies, CEOed several companies. And I remember watching Magpul training videos hours and hours on end when I was overseas.
We would just loop it. And you're a pro snowboarder, base jumper, windsuit pilot, rock climber, and the list just goes on.
But like I said, honor to have you here. And something that I wanted to just cover at the very beginning is when we were downstairs, we had a discussion about veteran suicide, and you had just lost your 36th close friend, not just acquaintance, close friend.
And I've lost, I quit counting. I don't want to know the number, but I just wanted to open the floor for you on that because it sounds like it's pretty fresh and uh i told myself the same thing at one point is stop counting let's just just stop paying attention to it and uh it was really hard to stop paying attention to it you know um when you get that call in the middle of the night or an email or text next to, hey, bro, you know what happened.
So instead of running away from it, which I think I did for a long time in the very beginning, because I'm sure we'll get into it more, but I did not know how to deal with loss. I didn't know what it was.
I didn't know how to define it. And I started, instead of running away from and diving into it, and said, how can I maybe do something to prevent this from happening more? And you're not going to stop it, right? It's not going to stop it.
We've got to change the message somehow, some way, and help

people reframe the situation that's in their life, the circumstances that's happening to them at this point in time as they may not understand them. I mean, I've had my dark moments where I get reckless in the past.
I've, you know, knock on wood, I've never had suicidal, like, I'm going to go do this right now. And so maybe I'm blessed or maybe I'm not blessed.
Maybe I, maybe, you know,

some I've never had suicidal, like, I'm going to go do this right now. And so maybe I'm blessed or maybe I'm not blessed.
Maybe some people have had those situations in their life. And even that, I had a friend last night call me and he was on the edge and he's having bad anxiety, panic attacks.
And then he said, yeah, I even put a, think it was a a 44 magnum in his mouth and

couldn't pull the trigger and i so i immediately asked him was it wrong that you put a 44 magnum

in your mouth and it's like yeah moment of silence and he's like i said think about the

answer before you say it when was that he said a while back i said was it wrong that you did that

Thank you. And he's like, I said, think about the answer before you say it.
When was that? He said, a while back. I said, was it wrong that you did that? Because we're still having a conversation right now.
And he says, no. I said, say it again.
And so we worked through it from a mind architect standpoint to start to understand the meaning of an event, a decision that you might make, or a word that you might say that's incorrect. Like, look at depression.
Everybody's depressed nowadays. Well, maybe you're not depressed and maybe the best way to solve a problem is to identify there isn't one in the first place.
Every time we want alone time or we want to like off gas or I just need to get away from it, oh man, I've got these anxieties and problems. I think that you could look at it as a word.
A lot of experts are now starting to talk about this more. It's a compression state that you want to go into to compress myself, to off-gas the chaos and corruption of my day or my experience that I had.
It's not, but you'll label it as depression versus compression. So, if we can just maybe identify and define the words more that we use, the spelling, right? That's why they call them spells because you're casting a spell every time you say, I'm depressed.
Are you? Or you just need some compression time because you need that time. And I think we don't understand that.
And so we just get more depressed and more anxiety comes on. And then next thing you know, I'm like, I want to end it all.
I don't want to be here anymore. And next thing you know, we're creating organizations of trying to stop suicide.
And I've even talked to the guys a long time ago. I haven't talked to anybody recently at Mission 22, but 22 vets a day die.
Now it's up to 40. Right now, as we speak and sit here, it's up to 40 up to 40 well why is it up to 40 maybe we're reminding them that it's okay to commit suicide instead of saying it's not okay how about rebrand your company i i said this one time they said rebrand it next year as mission 21 and then mission 20 and then mission 19 and mission and they were like they laughed at that but um so if anybody hears that now i think that's a good idea is to talk about how do we get rid of it, not just acknowledge it exists.
And that's what I'm trying to do the best I can. I'm curious.
Did you struggle with, we're not going to get into this full-blown now. We'll wait until the appropriate time.
But I am curious. Did you struggle with drugs or alcohol or both? No.
No? Luckily, I've never done that. Never dealt with it.
You know, I think that with the veteran suicide stuff, I think of a lot of that, I don't think, I know a lot of that is coming from shitty decision-making under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Yeah. And, I mean, you know how long it takes to pull a trigger? A fraction of a second.
And you can have that thought, you know, with not a clear mind, and all it takes is a fraction of a second to pull that trigger or swallow those pills or drive off the. Or jump off a building.
And I think that is, I know that's what's getting a lot of guys. Is not having a clear mind.
And under the influence of drugs and alcohol. And it's not that that cures everything.
You know what I mean? I don't think coming off of it is going to cure depression and all these other things. But I think that, I think the majority of these seem to happen when somebody's under the influence and they're not in the right state of mind.
And maybe that's one of the things that we need to be spending a little bit more time on to get to the real root of the problem you know which is which is the suicide is what we're trying to to get you know to to to clean up to stop and but i don't think that's going to stop until the drugs and the alcohol stop.

And, you know, you had brought up another statistic this morning, Travis, that you had said you have the numbers. I don't, but you had mentioned, and I knew this, how many people died in OIF and OEF? Yeah, the global war on terror in 25-ish years now, I guess, is somewhere around 92 or 9,300.
And don't quote me on exactly that number, but it's over 9,000. Okay, if we look back to Vietnam and Korea and World War II, we knew what the numbers were there, right? You had, what, 45,000, 52,000, and then World War II is like, what, 400 plus thousand men died.
Okay. Damn, that's pretty good.
Global war on terror in 25 years, we've only lost nine. I mean, it sounds shitty to say it like this, but we've only lost 9,000 plus people.
Okay. Technology, better medical facilities.
I mean, we can get air medevaced very quickly nowadays. so people would say, well, that's not that bad.
But then you add the suicide numbers, which we're starting to see a lot of numbers come out, and I'm going to fact check them. Apparently, like two months ago, it peaked 140,000 GWAT veterans in 25 years, whether you serve somewhere in that timeframe,

have committed suicide.

So in theory, our actual death toll of the war,

again, not everything is combat related.

It could have been some family issue,

childhood trauma, something like that,

drugs, whatever that influence that decision,

but they still are considered the GWAT number.

That's why I'm kind of fact checking the number itself.

It could be 140, but how many are actually combat related? Hey, I can't handle the trauma and the nightmares anymore kind of thing. You'll never figure that out.
But if that number is true, if suicides alone in the last 25 years, that means that we're almost at 150,000 dead in this war on terror. And if I can personally say I know 36 of them that are good friends of mine, maybe that's true.
And that makes me want to fight harder. You know, I just want to rephrase, I think it is drugs and alcohol.
I don't think that is the only problem. I think when you, all of this, you know, operator syndrome, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, CTE, and it all gets compiled together, and you add drugs and alcohol on top of it, which is obviously people think it's a coping mechanism.
I think that's what I was alluding to. I think that's the icing on the cake that unfortunately is like the last straw.
I think there's another issue starting to happen too. So I've never had a drug or alcohol problem.
I don't have an addictive personality. It's weird.
I've tried. It doesn't work.
I'm actually allergic to alcohol, and that's happened in like the last year and a half. Like I, even if I have like a glass of wine, I got a really big into wine and make my own wines for a while.
Can't do it anymore. And I'm happy because I don't like waking up like that.
Plus, I have a TBI and I think there was some stuff going on there that was activating it and certain dyes I can't have, et cetera. But another issue is not to say that I haven't had a problem with drugs or alcohol, but I've tried them.
I've done all the experiments. I think besides Ibogaine is one of the few things that I haven't done.
But now I'm hearing guys coming back. And when I do it, I do it very, very, very traditionally.
I have shamans that everything is free. Nothing is paid for because in that world, and I believe this, if you pay for that service, you take away the spirit of it.
Interesting. Yeah.
So it's hard to find guys like that. But now I got dudes coming back saying, bro, I just got back from South America.
I just did my 12th Ibogaine or my 12th ayahuasca trip. And I'm like, that's not how it works, bro.
You're now using these medical treatments that we have really found a lot of great things with from psilocybin to all these other subjects that have, I mean, dude, woken me up. Like I found myself in some of these situations, but they were like six day long, not one second of sleep for six days, very little food, cold plunging in the snow, running through the mountains, getting beat down by 80 pounds soaking wet.
Native Americans that put these rite of warrior passages together to off-gast you from combat. And when you find out you study ancient warriors, you'll see how much that we used to do as warriors to off-gas ourselves from the chaos and corruption before you were allowed to go back to your tent, your teepee, your family, your village.
The medicine men would keep you there and say, you're not ready to go home yet. The Romans did it.
The Spartans did it. The Samurais did it.
Every known African tribal warriors did it. Natives of this country, every tribe had their own process and it was based around medicines, but it was a graduating process.
It wasn't like, we're just going to keep giving you IV gain until you're better. I was like, that's another problem on that end of the spectrum I'm starting to see now.
And on the other end, it's like, I'm just smoking weed every night and doing heroin now or taking pills because I can't take the pain. And then it's like, where's the balance? And so we need to find that balance as well.
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I did not realize you were into plant medicine. Yeah, I did.
I did the IV game. Nobody's aware of it until now.
Yeah, well, now everybody knows. But, you know, it's interesting that you say that about psychedelic therapy because that is, and look, I'm a huge, Anybody that listens to this knows I'm a huge proponent to psychedelic therapy.
It changed so many aspects of my life in a positive way. But I'm like you, I don't, a little bit different of a philosophy, but I don't abuse it.
I'm very, I don't know if ritualistic is the correct word for that, but I take it very seriously. Sometimes I think I take maybe take it too seriously, but because- What do you mean by that? Well, because, man, this is, I'm actually going to start to contradict myself here.
But because where I was going is that parts of this reminded me of kind of the beginning of the opiate crisis within the veteran community. Veteran community.
Guys got a little bit of relief from pain, you know, from this stuff. And then we realized, oh, shit, it numbs our mind.

My mind's not racing anymore.

I'm in.

You know, and I started to see this within psychedelics, too, where people want to live in that realm and not take what you need out of that realm and then go live your fucking life here in reality.

You know, and that realm becomes like some type of escape what i was what i was going to say when i when i when i said maybe i take it a little too seriously and it gets in the way is is is more and more of these studies are coming out about microdosing and and and um maybe having a a low-dose psilocybin T, you know, in the morning. I don't do that because I have to set my space up the way I need it to be.
I have to do all of the things. The ritual aspect, yeah.
Because I think that it is, in my opinion, it's a medicine that demands a tremendous amount of respect. And I live by a code that does that.
Sometimes I think that code gets in the way a little bit because I need days off in the ass end. I need days off in the beginning.
I like to prepare myself and part of me thinks, hey, like just do it. Just get the benefit.
But then I see, I do see people abusing it. And I wouldn't say microdosing would be abusing it.
If you have a system or a plan and it's working for you where, and a lot of people will take microdosing overboard you shouldn't feel a microdose you should it should be just on the edge to just give you a heightened sense of things yeah um and this is where a lot of people like god i can't believe you guys are talking about this man like that's that's so taboo in your world it's like no it is our world that's the first thing i tell people that are very confused like Like, wait, you do plant medicine? Like, just like the last 3,000 years that I've been able to study in warrior

cultures, yes, before you go into battle, especially when you get home from battle.

The rituals, you look into some of these, dude, I mean, I went down, I think it was with the

Pima Indians in Arizona, and they put me through a sweat lodge camp. Worst pain in my life.
And these guys have hooks on their, I'm sorry, not hooks, scars on their chests. The chief of the village.
Again, beautiful, long, black hair, 80-pound soap and wet dude, just wearing jean shorts and flip-flops and running us through the whole scenario. You're naked inside with six other dudes in this buffalo hide tent they stoke the fire for three days it's like it's pretty cool the ritual aspect and it's all helping it's giving it's it's that you can tell everybody's there for you it's not hey i'm i'm paying you to go to to this 10 12 000 camp in south america to have 90 other people laying on the floor going through the same experience as I am.
It is just you and only you. And then I ask like, chief, what's, I'm curious the scars on your chest.
He's like, and he eventually tells me it's another passage, another rite, a ritual, rite of passage for become a warrior. And at a certain age, they hang themselves with hooks and they hook themselves through their chest muscles and they hang from an oak tree in the village and they hang there for three days and they have to take the hooks out themselves in order to come off of this, write a passage.
And then once they do, they're good. I'm like, why is your chest so fucked up? And he's like, I've done the seven times as a medicine man and demonstrator.

And I'm like, yeah, I'm not a warrior.

I'm not a warrior.

I would never do that.

So you hear some of the craziest stories from these guys that are still doing it to this day on reservations.

Not all of them do.

It's like you have the,

still the small warrior groups inside of every culture

and then the rest of them and same with us, right? You have the small warrior groups inside of the culture and then all of us. And what they do is they introduce you to the spirit aspect of it.
And that's what I look for. So even if I'm microing, uh, one day it's because it's for me, I'm going to be out in the mountains today.
I might just run up to Sedona, meet my buddies. We'll go paramotoring through, not on medicine, but we'll have this night, this campfire, this, you know, we'll bathe

in the mesquite trees, which mesquite trees release a natural DMT into the water. That's

what the natives believed. And so we would bathe in the freezing waters.
We'd lay out in the sun

and meditate and journal, and then we'd go fly and have this amazing flight. And then we'd land

to And so we would bathe in the freezing waters. We'd lay out in the sun and meditate and journal.
And then we'd go fly and have this amazing flight.

And then we'd land and we'd off gas, hug, high five, man.

We'd go back to our lives.

Like that would be maybe even a full journey or maybe just a micro dose.

Some days if I just want to be really creative

and I just can't get that spirit to work inside me, I will turn on that frequency just a micro dose. Some days if I just want to be really creative and I just can't get that spirit to work inside me,

I will turn on that frequency just a little bit.

But I won't abuse it.

And that's the thing is people don't understand

the divine feminine, divine masculine aspect

of all of these drugs.

Ayahuasca, they call a grandmother for a reason.

She's going to take you on a journey.

Psilocybin, it's a divine feminine drug. It's going to take you on a journey.
DMT is even on the feminine side. THC is on the feminine side.
But LSD acid or ibogaine, that's divine masculine. You are going here whether you like it or not.
And so it's to understand that Shakti and Shiva aspect, the old ancient world of divine feminine, divine masculine, you have to understand that in order to really, I think, get the full benefits of it and be with good people that can share or just give to you. Damn, that's interesting.
I've not heard that, the feminine and masculine. Where did you hear that from? Just in my studies.
And this wasn't medicine studies. This was like ancient warrior studies because everybody has masculine and divine feminine.
And that's where our love and our even protecting comes from is on the feminine side of the house. Our words in which we use or the fight or the flight or the the the more masculine aspects of what we would do to protect somebody even a female that we all have the same thing and so that's where a lot of the divine you know um that comes out of these plant medicines will are is on that wavelength and I think if you know that about it,

it makes your journey so much better.

Like my biggest journey I ever had,

which was last year,

maybe a year and a half ago,

needed to really unlock some stuff,

needed to really, you know,

break down some darkness that I had

that was residual from something in the past.

Plus my father just died and that messed me up pretty bad. Still does.
Sorry to hear that. Greatest hero of my life, and all of a sudden, it's gone.
And it's like, wait a minute. And I don't know why, I just struggle with it.
I just did a podcast with a good friend of mine, Mark England. He's a mindset coach and breath coach.
And he helped me unlock that problem about, it was my dad's helped so many more millions of people than I could ever possibly fathom helping. And when he left, I wanted to celebrate him.
My family didn't want to celebrate my father. And so I did this podcast with Mark and he did a four-step process on me to help me slow the story down in my head.
Because we get tight, we get high and tight, going back to kind of the PTSD a little bit and some of the things that we hold on to. It's in our chest.
We're trapped in our chest. And if we can't lock that breath, we can't switch from being high and tight because we don't know what it's like to be low and slow in our breath, that's going to get you.
So a lot of these guys need to learn to unlock that before they go on a journey. So we would even do massive breath work stuff.
That's where the cold water comes into play to really get somebody to take it it seriously and then we we have them dial on their breath and then we'll start educating them on on what we're going to be doing at this point in time so like on my last one it was like seven grams of of psilocybin which is what they consider a hero's dose um and then that wasn't working i think five grams is is considered a hero's dose. Five hero's.
Seven is a warrior's dose. That's right.
So I did seven. So I did a warrior's dose and that wasn't working for me.
It was taking me on a journey, but this is where the coaches come into play. We had UFC movement fighting coaches there.
So we fight all night long as well on the on the medicine um we um go through the mountains through bryce canyon and and run through the snow and the mud and barefooted and just silkies man and you're like how are we out here living for four hours and nothingness it's just like it's it's it's a different world of mindset you know um and so then that wasn't working for me so they said

hey he needs divine masculine so they dropped in some more um and that was that was the lsd and

my life has changed since that moment um more so than any other experience what changed

the ability to see myself my past life my um

I'm sorry. What changed? The ability to see myself, my past life, which is what I've been living in.

Not necessarily a past life, even though I saw some pretty gory,

like the most real combat I've ever seen in my life.

My hands hurt so bad the next day.

Hold on.

When you say a past life, are you saying a past life or like my previous career is a forced reconnaissance Marine? So both. So I saw a past life image of me standing on top of a pile of bodies with blood soaking through my hands around a katana.
And I remember screaming, how could one man do this? And that scared the shit out of me. Then my past life started coming.
Why did that scare you? I don't know. What did you think it was? How did you process that? I felt like I was just a murderous, it was the most real, I mean, I don't know what it's like to be in a sword fight, but I was like, now I know what it's like to be in a sword fight but i was like now i know what it's like to be in a sword fight after that that experience a vivid like just real um screaming they had to hold me down at times um they had to put a buffalo hide blanket over me and pin me down um to try to just calm and they're very good they're they only they know when to speak and when to be in there and when to kind of touch you and and just kind of make you calm back down and uh and i could see then my current life past life you know being in combat family traumas death everything and then i started realizing i'm living in my past lives when i should be living in my path life.
What's my path?

My path is created by my past. And that was the first time I've been able to actually see that.
It's the first time I've been able to breathe through with coaching and hearing my best friend Byron going, ride the exhale, ride the exhale. And by seeing all of that, again, showed me who I was and what I was living in and where I should have been living.
And so now every day I wake up, I will think about what is my path moving forward, not reminiscing on my past and, or worrying about something, about something, being in fear of my past and having anxiety for my future. And that's like the now concept.
Everybody understands the now concept. Everything happens right now in this moment, in this time.
It's not my dad's time anymore. It's not my ancestor's time anymore.
It's like the problem with our country. When's somebody gonna step up? It's you.
It's your time. And hopefully many moons from now, our grandchildren will be reading about the history that we created in this country to keep it free, to keep the world free.
So those are things that I couldn't really see a whole lot. And now I'm seeing a whole clearer message about what do we do moving forward? It's not about what I did.
That doesn't define me. My traumas don't define me.
My childhood traumas don't define me. What I'm doing right now does.
What do you believe happens when you die? I think I'm still trying to figure that one out. Now, not to say I'm not a man of spirit or a man of God, because I am.
Are you a Christian? I am. I am.
I was raised Catholic. It's kind of funny.
I went to Catholic school, didn't really get along with the, because I went to Jewish community center after Catholic school, which my sister hated. And so they, it was this conflict and I got caught saying, hell, Mary's in yiddish one day and they kicked me out of school because the the jcc guy this i forget i think his name was tommy big old jolly fat guy drives up in this little volkswagen van and picks me up every day from catholic school and sister pat would just stand there with her you know her nun suit on and just like just scowl this dude and he would teach me he would he would teach me to speak a little Yiddish and he taught me Hail Marys and Yiddish.
And I was out of the, I got a math problem wrong one day in Catholic school. And she's like, go to mother Mary and do your Hail Marys.
So I'm out there, I'm doing them. And all of a sudden I feel this ruler on my shoulder.
It was like old school Catholic ruler stuff. And parents came in and that didn't work out too well.
So then my mom's like, well, maybe Christian school would be a better thing. So she sends me to Christian school.
And that was good. And that was good.
I got in a fight with a teacher about dinosaurs one time because I went outside and grabbed a fossil. And she said, well, that's because the government put those fossils there to make you think dinosaurs are real.
And I'm like, don't they talk about beasts in the Bible? So I was confused. And then I brought a link of 20 millimeter shells from my dad's Air Force time as a pilot.
And they kicked me out of school for a show and tell. Because you're not allowed to have live rounds in school.
So anyways, I've studied religion. I've really tried to make a habit of it.
You know, I've been to some big universities, went to Cornell once to study the promised land, Judaism and the Palestinian conflict. Really started diving into the Quran and reading it and trying to understand it.
And then started even playing with Buddhism for a little while to understand, not to practice. And to realize, well, what are people's motives and intentions? Because you know how it is, man, young and dumb, we're in the military, go here, do this.
You don't know anything about the people. You never really given good intel.
And so I wanted to try to change that in my life. So for my kids that are growing up, if they decide to serve, which they are, I can educate them from a different place than what the education I got and i think that's important for people to realize because look how many muslims that we would we would trust our lives to we have yeah we've had best friends man look at this freaking afghani pull out man like how many dudes on some of those teams that yeah you know you know the story there um and but there's a.
I'm curious how, if you love talking about these, going down these rabbit holes, but if you're a Christian, then how do you, what I'm curious about is how do you tie in multiple lives? Right. In different time periods.
And that's where I don't, I mean, I wouldn't consider myself the most diehard Christian in that regard. I would say that there's definitely an afterlife, and that's what we would consider heaven.
Some people would consider that the next density. You know, like we're in a density right now, just like rocks and plants are in a density, and animals are in a density.
We're in the next density, and the next density we move on to is a higher self, that's heaven. And so I love dabbing into those stories too and listening to those people kind of talk about how that works on their scale, the frequency of the spirit world.
It's like, so, and it's all the same. So do you believe that you'll go on and have another, so this is kind of like reincarnation.
Right. That's the density aspect, which, again, is confusing, where most people would think, oh, if you're going on to a next density, what is that? That's like this spirit alien world.
It's like it could also be heaven. It could be in that next world.
Then we're put on this earth to get our PhD at a very hard place in the universe. And we're judged for how we respond to it.
We're judged for how we help people, how we love, how we show our compassion, how we are able to be vulnerable and have the courage to be imperfect. And I think if you do all those things well, you'll be rewarded to the next life or density or heaven.

And I know some people that are diehard in that case wouldn't be like, no, you need to pick a side.

It's like, I love studying everything, and I'm still trying to figure it out at this point in time in my life.

Where did you come to, I guess maybe conclusion isn't the right word because you're still looking into it.

When did you come into this thought process?

How did this happen?

I think it's been in about the last five or six years of my life.

Did it come in with plant medicine?

Actually, it came in with my fiance.

She's diehard Christian, mega church upbringing, mom, dad, you know, own a Christian bookstore. And she can recite the Bible like the back of her hand.
But she's also looked into a lot of these other things and has not changed her mind about God or spirit, but it's just more information to understand and to take in and have fun exploring versus being absolute about it. I'm just not an absolute person.
I'm not going to say, oh, all religions are bad except Christianity. Shame on us for thinking that.
Why are we so special? Faith is faith. Spirit is spirit.
And when you have, like I said earlier, if you're a man of spirit spirit, a man of faith, well, that's gonna help with a lot of things like being more resilient to things, to trust the process that like, hey man, first thing is the facts. Nobody gets off the spaceship alive, right? So enjoy it while you're on it and make the best of it.
And if you only get this one in 400 trillion chance or whatever it is to become a human being um i'm gonna play the most magnificent game i could ever play in that short ass amount of time that i have that's why i have a dragonfly as my logo it's because i i realized that short life that it has there's a lot of great aspects to it from the warrior side and the survival side and and it's a symbol of life because it's Its lifespan is only about 30 days when you see a dragonfly flying around. And so, well, how can something be one of the oldest living creatures on the face of the planet? Again, depending on what you believe in, how can it be the most adaptive, most efficient, the greatest hunter on the face of the planet for its size and its capacity and what it does? How can it be all of these amazing things and only live for 30 days? I't answer that question but what i can answer is like or ask like every student that that comes to our programs or every person that i encounter i said what are you going to do with your 30 days to make the world just a little bit better place than what you came in it and that's that's what that means to me um you know because my dad gave me that as a kid when a dragonfly landed on my finger one time.
And he told me I had good luck and then taught me all the significance of it. And that was the thing that stood out to me the most was how short our lives really are and how much conflict and how much diversity and everything else that's in this life that we're being tested on.
And so I will always make sure that, well, I mean, we were talking about haters earlier, right? I will always make sure that I'm hated and not being a hater. It's much better to be in that world.
I feel sorry for the ones that are so full of themselves that all they do is hate on others and create common enemy intimacy in the world. That's the biggest problem we have.
That's not God-like. That's not good.
And I think if, and I'll speak a lot to God, but I think one of the things that God made primarily over everything else is good. So, and I think there with good comes truth, with truth comes love, or love comes from good too.
And then uncertainty. You don't know what's going to happen next.
So I think I like to live in the uncertain world where I don't have an answer for everything because I realized that if I try to be too certain about something in my life, I'll drive myself batshit crazy trying to figure out what's going to happen next to me. And then I have to realize like, well, if I knew what was going to happen tomorrow morning or knew what was going to happen even tonight, what would be the point of being alive? What would be the point of waking up tomorrow if we already knew what was going to happen? So I don't think certainty is a problem that should ever be.
Uncertainty should be a problem that's ever solved. And so when I study religion, I go, don't be so certain about it.
Let's just keep exploring. Let's keep looking into all of these crazy thoughts and things and plant medicine.
Man, dude, I've never touched drugs or alcohol and stuff in my life. I was was a pretty straight-laced kid growing up i was a troublemaker i mean bad um attempt to murder type trouble that i got into wow um yeah me and dj actually have a weird i noticed listening to him have an interesting kind of pathway there um where i was yeah i was extremely curious adventurous to a point where I would, well well let's see what happens to this mailbox when it detonates with these types of chemicals or this or that or when a pipe bombs on cows or um hey there's somebody that needs help let's shoot at them that that's getting hurt shoot the person that's hurting the person that needs help and that was my situation i wasn't bad but i was extremely curious and um and me in a lot of bad places.
And I probably pissed my parents off and stressed them out more than anybody. But it was all good.
That was my upbringing. And so the religion was different because I was bouncing around from JCCs to Catholic schools to Christian schools.
So I think I've always had this kind of everything in my life and I was never grounded in something. So maybe my next journey in life is to maybe find something to ground to.
Interesting. And so I'm on that path.
You're a deep thinker. And medicine has certainly helped me think of a different world of spirit and code.
And it's like, okay, there's something we can't explain here. Is that just medicine doing that to me or is that God? No, that's everybody sees the same thing.
So it might, that's a godly thing to me. There's a spirit world to that.
And I love that, man. So constantly asking questions and exploring.
You know, you mentioned something about, I don't know, maybe 10 minutes ago and you had said we were talking about, you know, kind of setting the stage for psychedelic therapy and how serious we both take it. And I'm curious.
You had mentioned something about when things start getting stirred up, you go do it. I think you told me you're running eight companies.
Obviously very busy. Father to seven kids, a wife.

You got a lot of shit going on. So what I want to ask is, when you feel that stuff stirring up, and you're not just going to a clinic, you're embedding with some type of a tribe.
Yeah. And you're the only one.
And how long does it take you to set aside the time to work on yourself with that? Well, I think that's the biggest problem we all have is the lack of time. Now, and try to keep this as succinct as possible, there's a instinctual nature to every human being, right? We all have an instinct.
We're all born with something. We're not born with knowledge.
We're not born knowing how to do something, but we're born with some type of instinctual thing that they call conation, not cognition. Cognition, I believe, comes from conation, your instinctual self.
And in your conation, you have four action modes. Fact-finding, how you gather and share information.
Following through, which is how you arrange, organize, or systemize. Quick starting, which is how you deal with risk or uncertainty.
And then implementing how you handle spaces or tangibles. How you build.
So, like to give an example, if I said, hey man, if we had a box from the store and it's a desk or something we had to build, like got parts and letters and instructions, what's the first thing you would do? Would you A, open up the box, pull the instructions out, start laying things out and do an inventory of every part and piece and make sure it's all there? Would you start organizing every A and B and C's and D's and then start organizing into a system of how I'm going to start building and then read all the directions and go K and then come back to step one? Or are you the guy that turns the box and looks at the picture and dumps the shit on the floor and goes, I can do this. That's what your instinctual makeup is.
How you problem solve that is exactly the way you problem solved it when you were 12 years old. You do the same thing today.
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That's the thing that kind of upsets people is that you're going to score high in two of those categories higher than the others. So for me, I'm a mid-range fact finder for, that means I can go either way.
I can read a book, but I'm not going to probably read the whole thing like front to back. I'll highlight stuff and post a note and make notes in it and come back to it later.
I'll have 16 books open and I'll come back again. God, I'm never going to get these books done, but eventually I do.
And eventually I get the same amount of information as the person that just reads one book front to back. That's just how I do things.
My systemizing is a two follow through. Like if you said, hey, Travis, call me tomorrow at three o'clock.
I'm like, all right, Sean, I'll see you tomorrow. Talk to you tomorrow.
Dude, don't expect me to call you tomorrow at three o'clock because I'm going to probably seize the moment elsewhere. Something's going to happen.
So why do I carry my stupid EDC Apple watch to go, hey, Siri, remind me to call Sean tomorrow at three o'clock. Now, why did I do that? Is it because I'm a procrastinator? Is it because I'm going to just forget? No, it's because I love being raced against a clock because I'm a seven in quick starting.
I love risking uncertainty. I love the uncertainty of life.
And so if I understand that, now I'm going to take a risk. It doesn't mean you're not going to take a risk if you're higher of these categories and lower here.
It just means you're going to probably systemize, fact find, like the jump master that's like, come on, dude, we got this. You've got 16 pages of weather reports and you're asking the freaking nav again for the wins at Alpto.
We got it. Let's go.
Let's jump. That's the quick starter talking.
Yeah, I think I see the drop zone. Stand by.
You're like, Taley, don't do it. That's the quick starter, right? 60% of the time, it works out every time.
And then you have the fact finder that's really diving into it. So I think coming back full circle, it depends on how you instinctually operate.
So coming back to a guy like me that has seven kids, seven companies, or eight companies now, how do I manage all that? I love the risk and certainty of all those things. I'm good at being a jack of all trades.
I'm not good at sitting down and systemizing one thing. I love to build teams.
I love to build products and development systems. I love to sit down and go, okay, here's how we're making this product.
There's a 16-step product phase to all of this. I'm going to write that down.
I'm going to build that and then start building on teams and teach them how to do this 16-step product development phase. And then, all right, engineers, ID guys, go ahead and start developing shortcuts to that system.
And then next thing you know, efficiency starts happening. That's what the quick starter does.
That's the entrepreneur. That's the musician.
That's the creator. That's the artist that just wings it.
And like probably your buddy you were talking about earlier, where your systemizers are guys that I want as my CFO. That's right.
Because my CFO, if I walk into Grant's desk and I look at his desk and I go,

how the hell is he getting any work done

with a clean desk like this?

Right, his stuff's always organized,

but he'll come into my office and go,

how the hell is Haley getting any work done

with a messy desk like this?

You see the conflict that just happened in the workplace?

So I think if we can all understand

our instinctual strengths,

which every one of my guys, my gals

are psychologically evaluated on this conative scale. It's a test called the Colby test, K-O-L-B-E.
It's an alpha test. Kathy Colby developed this many years ago.
And it's a test you can't lie on. You cannot lie on it.
It'll put you in transition if you try to lie on this. But if you've ever taken like a Myers-Briggs

or like those star point tests

or some of those IQ type tests,

those are cognitive based tests.

You can lie on those.

So like I know a lot of intel agencies,

like we were working with the Australians

and they give their guys neuroticism tests.

And so I took the test and I scored 98% neurotic.

And the dude's like, bro,

we didn't think you were a neurotic guy.

And I'm like, yeah, I lied on your test, man. And he's like, what? I was like, it's a cognitive-based test.
I lied on it because I want to get a job with you guys. I want to be a case officer with you guys.
And he's like, holy shit. I was like, yeah, you have neurotic case officers running around that are neurotic that lied on your test.
You need to give them more of an instinctual-based test that you can lie on so that's why i like working with the colby corporation and so out of hundreds of employees that i have all of them i can walk into any department and know exactly what everybody's cognitive instinct does that's my job as a leader i have to because if i can go up to you and say let's say you're the high fact finding systemizing engineer and you're like in building a cab model you're into it and i And I walk in and go, Hey, Sean, come with me real quick. I need you on a project.
You're like, like right now, like, yes, right now. But I, but, but like inside they're saying that like, don't, please don't make me stop what I'm doing.
I need to finish this system where if it's me and you come in, I'm in the middle of something, I'm diving really deep. You're like, Travis, come here.
I got, I want to show you something. All right, man.
Hey, what's up? So you'll see that in people. You'll see that in your kids.
And when you can see that and you can understand their innate motives and intentions and innate force and talents, I can now direct my teams better. I can not have as much conflict in the workplace.
I can have collaboration. so going back to the question of how do I manage all that stuff, I do it by really making sure that everybody's operating in their instinctual strengths, not just their cognitive-based strengths.
That's your resume. Your resume of life is your cognition.
That's what you've learned, you're going to learn, and you continue to learn. And you'll keep filling out that resume.
You didn't know how of an airplane when you, before you went to free fall school, you were taught to do that cognition. But what made you really fly better than maybe somebody else? Your spatial awareness, your ability to implement and see and mimic somebody else.
Like watching the instructor in front of me, I could be like, okay, what's he doing with his elbows? I'm going to try that. Next thing you know, it starts working or gripping a gun.
I sit there and watch the great ones back in the day like how does freaking robbie latham doing that man i'd rewind and like vhs like like okay i'd replicate it and next thing you know i'm shooting well that's the good implementer some people can't do that so even teach somebody on a range i'll find out every class we go through a conation exercise i have a guy that's an implementer i'll show him i'll point i'll I'll feel. I have somebody that's a fact finder.
Hey, put the gun away. All right, let's go back to the three points that we talked about in class.
What was the first element of the grip? It was something about friction and this bone. I forget the name of that bone.
The trapezium bone. What does that do? Ah, that's right.
It traps. Traps the hand.
Okay, what does that do as you extend the gun?

That's what I'm missing.

What is it doing?

If you think about lever systems in class one and class two levers,

pair of scissors does what?

Versus a pair of nutcracker does what?

Two different tools because a pin's in a different place.

Don't put your pin back here when you grip a gun.

Put your pin up here and grip a gun.

And what do you have?

Leverage, good.

Try that.

I don't even show him.

He looks the same as the implementer

down at the end of the line because we've taken and put cognitive and cognitive-based outcome training into a firearms program versus to say, just keep going, you'll eventually get it. Get a better grip.
Like, how? What does that mean? So I've implemented that across my family, across my companies, and it allows me to trust everybody more with their instinctual strengths. And if they mess up, I go, hey, quick starter, why'd you screw up? Because I was being impulsive boss.
Good. What are you going to do next? I'm going to build a system for myself.
Why? Because I use my quick starting as a crutch instead of working on the thing that I'm not good at, like setting an alarm to call you. Because from here on out, if I set that alarm right now to call you tomorrow at three o'clock, guess what happens to all my other tasks? It's a race.
I have to be there for Sean at three o'clock. So I'll knock out this, I'll knock out that.
I'll go back in and finish a project or go and spend some time with my kids. And all of a sudden my life becomes so much fuller because instinct, that's what I want.
I want to be raised against the clock.

So when we brain map this and put it on EEG systems, you will see stress in me trying to organize and systemize. Even if I love it, you will see no stress and flatlining in my delta, beta, alpha, theta waves in my brain.
when I'm about to sling load 450 pounds on a torch jump

out of the back of a C-130 and a full wall locker jump, my heart rate actually goes into almost a resting heart rate when I'm in those situations. But me reading and writing and doing taxes, okay, man, what the hell's wrong with me? You know what I mean? So once you understand that about people, I think it becomes easier.
And that was a big struggle for me in the beginning, starting businesses, quick starting all over the place and failing and getting fired and like, dude, you're not doing the right thing. You're moving too fast, slow down.
That system alone has really helped me help people. And then in return, I can sit here and say, I can successfully manage, almost successfully manage seven kids.
I'm still trying to figure that one out. But the companies, it's like, yeah, they're self-sufficient because I let them have that self-sufficient nature by giving them the trust that they're going to operate in their cognitive instincts well and help others identify when they're not operating in their cognitive instincts well.
That's why I don't care about how much you know, because knowledge is just potential power. It doesn't give you any power.
The plan of execution gives you power. And that baseline, understanding myself instinctually, okay, now what do I know cognitively? And then how do I affect that with my affect, my emotions? Because that's the three elements of life, right? Your cognitive your instinct which grows your cognition which your cognition then helps develop your emotional state what i know what i've seen what i've done will make me kind of anxiety make me happy make me whatever like that's that's the order of those things and i think if we understand them as leaders of organizations or family members uh and and as individual operators imagine how many less people I would have fired in the team that couldn't get the, hey man, if you just keep tumbling for 10,000 feet, bro, you're not going to be on the team.
You're not going to be on jump team. Sorry.
If you can't figure out how to breathe on pure oxygen and you're having trouble and you're in hypercapnia constantly because you don't know how to fin because you never go to the pool and work out, you're fired. It's like, no, I could have taught them differently by using their codonative instinct.
So it's complicated, but when you get into it, you're like, man, this is actually extremely simple. Why aren't we thinking or teaching like this? Imagine if they taught your kids in school with their instinct versus just giving them the shit that the Department of Education gives them, which hopefully that changes.
Interesting. I'm definitely- So that's one to that.
that's one answer that i that helps me balance then of course off-gassing and doing the other things and trying to make sure i stay as healthy as possible i used to love all the extreme sports i can't do them all anymore uh but as any time i can get out in the elements that's my that's my off-gassing. Thanks for sharing that.

You bet.

Well, Travis, so I want to get into your life story.

So we'll go childhood, military, career, transition out, contracting,

what you're doing now, and then who knows what we'll get into,

what rabbit holes in the middle of all that.

But I got you something. That's probably the only reason you're here actually that's it i've been waiting on these vigilance lead gummy bears made right here in the usa and i got you something else so your edc was awesome by the way oh yeah but have you heard of the up phone yeah so i've been you talk about this, and I've been very curious to dive into this.
Yeah, so there is a whole slew of features on that phone. Eric Prince developed it.
He got a guy that helped develop Pegasus. Are you familiar with Pegasus? Yeah, a little bit.
The computer virus. Yeah.
One of the guys on the dev team of Pegasus helped develop that phone.

So there's just, you know, everybody's worried about big tech and people spying on you and big tech following you and tracking everything you do. And so that is the best answer that I've found thus far.
And, you know, I don't, we have a lot of heavy conversations around here that we don't want anybody listening in on, and we usually throw our phones in a Faraday box or something. But with that, it's got a kill switch.
It throws up a piece of plastic in between the battery and the phone, so they can't, they cannot listen. And then you can even download your social media apps on there and there's a feature that um that enables it it enables the social media companies to not track everything that you're doing on your phone it's got an integrated vpn it's got an integrated version of signal on that phone wow um it's yeah a lot of cool features that was my biggest.
I'm sure a lot of people will look at this and go, can I operate it as a normal phone? Yeah. That I'd be using like an iPhone or a Samsung device or Android or whatever else.
Can I still have my lifestyle or do I have to use this for something else? Like that was my big question. You can still use it for your lifestyle.
And it works with a works with a bunch of different um network providers okay i don't know exactly which mine's with t-mobile but um but they're gonna eventually work with all of them but if you go to the website it'll tell you you know which ones you can you can use so it's not its own service it's it's device. Okay.
But I thought you might like that.

Absolutely.

And perfect.

Yeah, and somebody offered me gummy bears yesterday on the range,

and I was like, nope, I'm going to go see Sean.

I can't do that to him.

Right on.

Thank you, man.

Well, Travis, let's start getting into your life story.

Where'd you grow up?

North Florida. In the swamps farm boy um what town little town called danell in florida it's uh yeah ocala area and then there's crystal river crystal river's where the bandit's go and the springs there okay so if you're if you're looking at florida well i guess it'd be like this from the camera side uh it's right in the crook so you got the panhandle of pensacola you know panama city and stuff is and then um miami down here we're right in the gulf of mexico side of the house so um you know lots of river life growing up on boats fishing with dad and swimming um loveved the water, scalloping, hunting, big, big hog hunter, hogs and knives kind of thing back in the day.
Brothers and sisters? One brother, yeah. One brother.
Sister died in a car accident when I was young, five years old, four or five years old. And yeah, big athlete, played multiple sports.
Tried to let her in as many sports as I could my senior year just because I'm trying to be a jack of all trades. Wanted to be a recon Marine, a forced recon Marine since I was about nine years old.
That's when I remember seeing or hearing about us, like nine or 10 actually. And my brother's almost six years older than me.
And I remember seeing a Marine walk into his high school wearing dress blues and I wanted to be an A-10 pilot. My dad was a pilot in the Air Force.
Grew up sitting in the seat next to him flying. Like I was soloing and ready to fly at 17 years old.
And had an opportunity to play football at a big university in Florida. Turned it down, joined Marine Cornstead.
No kidding. Yeah, yeah, turn it down.
So, was lucky. Was, again, like I said earlier, I was a troublemaker.
You know,. I loved fire.
It's bad, dude. What kid does that love fire? It's horrible.
Got in some hot water. One night, some people were breaking into houses, and they were meth heads, tweakers, and we decided decided to go out and stop them you know as a bunch of kids camping out wearing camis and uh we how old were you i was 15 i think at the time had a sawed off 10 22 ruger no stock no barrel like we didn't know back then man and uh and it was black as night just about one o'clock in the morning and uh they said shoot at him shoot on put get him out of here so i just ain't i mean 50 yards that nice just to shoot to make some noise to scare him and i see this body drop on the dock and i'm like oh shit and are you serious yeah and my buddy's like dude you hit you hit that, and gave me a high five, and then they ran out screaming.

Turns out they were bad, and they got busted for what they were doing, but we didn't know any better.

We're just like, hey, let's go get rid of these people.

We already held them at gunpoint earlier.

My buddy's dad came out with a shotgun and says, hey, y'all, get the hell out of here right now.

I'm calling the cops, and they lied their ass off, and then they went around, and then dad went back to sleep. So we decided to take it in our own hands.
Who's we? Me and three other buddies that were camping out and running around and partying at night and shooting guns everywhere. It was a total redneck Florida story, man.
And so we ran across the street, and two guys went left, and we went right. And basically, L-shaped ambushed them before we knew what an l-shape was and and dumped one they dragged it turned out to be a female um just scraped her head uh didn't kill her but they about a year later they found out and tried to came to school hooked me up threw me in jail for about eight days and and they found out that you shot her over a year later.

They arrested his dad because he was the only one witnessed with a gun that night.

And I was like, dude, what happens if they find out?

He goes, screw my dad.

He goes, he abuses me and molests me.

Fuck him.

He can rot in jail.

And I was like, okay.

A year later, he breaks. And they come in and say hey you're under arrest um so that was an attempt to murder charge at first then of course it dropped down as a juvenile so they dropped that down to some assault charges battery all aggravated battery assault with a deadly weapon um they i ended up taking a plea and the judge used to be a former jag colonel and my recruiter i'm i'm in the late entry program at this point in time and because now i'm like 16 and a half by the time this all comes around and i'm thinking my entire life is ruined i'm not gonna be able to join the marines i'm not gonna go to go play ball now can't do anything and the judge have he reviews, and my staff sergeant's like, look, I can speak for this kid.
He's helped us immensely in the delayed entry program. My dad worked for Florida Power Corporation, so I had access to numerous resources on the family farm.
So I built an obstacle course on my family farm that was bigger than Parris Island, South Carolina's confidence course towers uh almost a thousand foot zip line coming out of a 62 foot platform fast ropes like i was a nerd wow i was a nerd um because a guy that built the original fast ropes had a hanger hanger right next to my dad's hanger and we fly colonel john matthews he introduced me to him and because i used to pull up old wells and the old plastic pipe and i'd hang it in trees like 40 feet up and i'd drill holes through it hanging i'd slide down until one night i i uh i sprained my ankle because it was wet hit the ground and my dad's like you're not doing anymore cut that out of the tree and then he introduced me to john he said go and pick one it was a fat you know back as a kid when fast ropes were brand new like you never heard of of this concept was always repelling. I see this rope.
I'm like, holy shit. I, and so I hung in the tree and I just fast roped every single day of my life.
Um, and you know, so we'd have delayed entry program meetings at my farm. We'd have like 60, 70 kids running through the whole course.
And the recruiter's like, who the, who does this? When I started this podcast, it seemed like I had to figure it out all on my own. It was overwhelming.
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So that's how I grew up. I was just a military nerd.
Grew up on my grandfather and my father's

blood-soaked horror stories from war. What I would say maybe blood-soaked horror stories for some, but for me, I was like, that's my destiny.
I feel like I need to do that. I need to serve in some way.
Do you feel like, was it pushed on you at all? No, not one bit. It was 100% your decision.
Never. My dad never really talked about it a whole lot.
My grandfather did, but there was never any, you should think about this, son. Never.
Ultimate support. I think they expected it from me.
And as soon as I joined up, and of course, when the judge goes, that's exactly what you need is some discipline. So upon completion of your community service and all this other stuff you got to do, you will join the United States Marine do you understand me and i'm like yes sir and he goes in staff sergeant he goes this kid doesn't do these things and you will come back to me we're going to have another meeting and we'll we'll readdress your future and so i did everything i was supposed to do and still had that shot to join the marine corps so i know, I equate that back to a lot of guys do bad

things, but it doesn't mean they're bad people. And I realized that, you know, later, because I really questioned myself, like, am I a bad person for trying to help people? You know, I didn't know the law.
I didn't know what I could and couldn't do. And then I still had the shot to go and do what I did in my life.
You know, I'm extremely grateful for that and blessed that I was afforded that opportunity.

You're an eighth generation.

My dad, my grandfather, all the way back to- Who fought him more. American Revolution, yeah.
My grandfather's got probably the most unique story. Omaha Beach, first wave, first boots, first ramp to drop.
He survives four out of 40 in his boat team. Makes to the beachhead tries to jump overboard when everybody's getting shot inside the boat realizes he can't swim sees one of the one of the other soldiers drowning and jumps back in and the staff sort of just like let's go and he grabs a thompson off of one of the dead guys an m1 and goes in gets injured goes back to london does the whole rehabilitation camp stuff then he goes back to new york meets grandma gets his orders to go back to europe command for a second tour gets on the train and about three hours in the train ride he's like uh are we going to new york and these guys next i'm like no man we're going to camp pendleton california we're marines and he's like what and he couldn't stop so by the time you know trying to wire to people back then you ain't getting off the train and going back to europe or back to new york so he ends up going to california they retask him and then he was in first wave invasion iwo jima first ramp to drop got hit by a kamik in, ripped off the back of his boat, and then packed their shit up a few months later, went to Okinawa, Japan, and was in Okinawa.
So he's the only known warrior that was in both theaters and all three major campaigns. Both of his flags are down in New Orleans World War II Museum and the stories that he has.
So I got to grow up on that, and I'm like, that's cool. I didn't even know until about 10 years ago, the lineage of my family.
I didn't know this growing up. I didn't know anybody beyond my grandfather, World War II.
Because my dad's like, yeah, I think we're from Germany. I think great-grandpa Gershbach is from Germany on your mom's side.
And then Grandpa Haley, we had family. I'm like, Haley's not German, dad.
It's Irish English. And he's like, I well i don't know and then i found out 10 years ago i got this whole family tree and i found all the military documentation all the way back to uh james haley was my seventh generation grandfather who was a sergeant in 11th virginia infantry in 1776 and then he ran home to his dad william haley who was 52 years old farm and said, dad, the revolution's starting.
You got to come out of retirement and fight. So he served as a private under his son, who was a sergeant in the 11th Virginia military and infantry.
And they fought in the revolution. And I just found last month, another name popped up, John Haley before him.
So now I just found my ninth, but I don't know where he comes from. There's not a whole lot of information on it yet.
So I'm still digging into that. And then I go back to my dad.
I'm like, dad, we're not from Germany at all, man. We're freaking been in America.
He's like, well, how long? I said, I don't know. We've been here since at least the 1600s.
So we're early settlers in this country. And every male has stepped up.
You know, I'm curious. Do you think your dad and your grandfather wanted you to join the Marine Corps? Having both have been to war? I wish I could ask them that question because I don't know the answer.
I know they were super proud when I did. And I think you know how that generation, both those generations were a little quieter, especially Korea and World War II.
Now, my grandfather didn't hesitate to talk about slaying Japs and freaking, you know, in World War II or, you know, killing the Nazis. But my dad was quiet about it.
Not from a trauma standpoint. I don't think.
I think he was just a quiet man. And it's probably why I run my mouth too much sometimes because I always wanted him to speak out more.
I always wanted him to tell more stories. So I think that he was extremely proud of me joining because he never gave me any sense of, you know, or like any weird frequency or feeling I never got from him.
So, no, I'd love to. One day, one day I'll ask him that.
Yeah. You know, the reason I'm asking is we had a conversation downstairs about your son.
And, you know, I ask a lot of gents that come through here that have been to war, you know, in our time frame, if they want their kids to go to war. I think about it all the time, you know, about my son, and he's only three.
And I think about how I'm going to project my past to him and all that kind of stuff. And so do you want your son to serve? Did you want your son to serve? I think that was the most bittersweet moment when, and maybe in that feeling, I may now know what my dad and grandfather might have felt.
Like I told you, I found out from the recruiter, not my son. And so a lot of, because of course my ex calls like, did you, you made him join the Marines? Like I said, no, I had nothing to do with this.
This is all on him. And so I was confused at first because I was worried that they weren't picking anything.
No job. They talked about a couple of things, but military was never on the table.
And all of a sudden, this recruiter is telling me, hey, I'd like to meet with you. He's 18.
I know he can do what he wants, but since he still lives under your house, I want to give you that respect and talk to you about his desires. And I'm like, okay, find out, get down there.
Hayden, what's going on, man? I'm joining the Marines, dad. Okay.
and and i'm going recon i'm like what like what you didn't think to talk to me about this we talked about this all the time you come out to my classes you hang out with these guys you talk to these dudes a lot like you know why not tell me and uh and and it just wasn't my time for him to tell me that so maybe he was thinking i I would talk him out of it. I think he would say that, maybe.
And maybe I should open that transparency up with him and make sure that that's clear. But I did tell him, I said, look, if you do this, you have to promise me one thing.
You are not allowed to walk in my footsteps. You will make your own.
So, because I don't want you, because he's going to get compared to me, of course. You know, I was honor graduate, high shooter, all that stuff in boot camp.
He's living under that. And guess what he does? He gets Ironman and high shooter and honor graduate, gets E3 promotion, meritorious Lance Corporal out of boot camp.
I've never heard of that in my life. So he's already kicking my ass and my brother's ass, who was also Ironman and a high shooter and undergraduate and then became a colonel, just retired.
And now he's heading to the same path and the same footsteps that I stepped into. And you know, like those fins, man, when he puts those feet down on that pool deck here coming up soon, he's going to kill it.
And he's

doing more now than I was doing. And I was pretty prepared going in.
So I think my feelings at first was like pride. Man, he's doing something that most people on the face of the planet would never do.
Second emotion, fear, suffering.

Just like the old saying, ignorance is bliss. He's ignorant right now.
Wisdom is suffering. the pains that we have,

the visions, the memories,

the sounds, the smells, whatever it is from our past and our combat experience is the suffering from how much we now know about it, how much we know about the world. I mean, look at the things we're talking about with the state of America, the border, the drugs, the sex trafficking, the wars, the corruption.
the wars, the corrupt, corruption. Like we didn't have that.
At least we, I didn't remember that when I went in, I was like, going to go serve my country, put foot to ask for my, my country, you know, against evil people in the world. And that was all I had to worry about.
Now our kids are joining the military with all of those things that we're talking about. And they hear podcasts, they hear guys talking about it.
He has access to all this information and he's still choosing to join. That's where I go, why? Why are you joining? Because I want to make the world a better place.
Okay. That's a really good start.
And so of course, a lot of people would say, you sure you want your son joining the military in a time like this? You sure you want him working for this administration? Of course not. But I worked for some shitty administrations too, just like you did and just like a lot of us did, just like my grandfather did.
There was people that were running the country back then that weren't the best. And you're always going to have bad leaders.
And so you're always going to have bad people. And I think people forget and all the chaos and the bullshit in the world that we talk about all the time.
It's like music, man. There's so much beautiful music in the world.
Just like the world is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place. The problem is the bad is louder.
That's it. So my opinion is the only way to fix a problem, like the problems we're having in a woke ass military, in a government that's not prioritizing Americans first, et cetera, et cetera, is to put good people into that system and stop quitting.
Now, I get it. I'm a victim of quitting law enforcement because I was forced out because I was making too good of decisions.
I was increasing people's hit probabilities and survivability rates, like astronomically and world record national highs and percentages around the country. Well, that puts out the improper psychological mindset to our communities that we're training killers, not police officers.
So shut it down. Like, what do you mean? We only do four quals a year.
Shut it down. You only need to do one a year.
Why? You can't justify that to me, then goodbye. And I had to throw my badge across the table because I won't be a part of that when I know I can fight harder outside on that system.
So I've not told him any of these things.

I've not said, hey, here's all the corruption and stuff you're going to be up against.

Here's the things that you need to worry about.

No, you need to worry about swimming, running, breath work, meditation.

And I'm teaching him old cultural warrior ways, not the new stuff.

Like I'll see him get really stressed out and all of a sudden I start going. And then he goes, and I'm like, damn, I wish I had the senses to do that when I was younger.
So it's not my job to tell him about all my horrors and my suffering and the wisdom that I have. I want him to be a little ignorant.
I want him to go in with a good foundation and good parenting strategies, which we can pride ourselves on for, I think doing a decent job and a hard life. But we've all had broken form, divorces and trauma.
Me, I was not the best guy, man. I wasn't around much.
That's why I stopped. That's why I left the Marine Corps 15 years and tried to find something else because I was confused.
And I want him to

find those lessons on his own. What bothers you the most? What's your biggest fear about him potentially going to war? it's a selfish thing i've realized it's i

i don't want him to have the same it's a selfish thing I've realized. It's, I,

I don't want him to have the same darkness that maybe we have afterwards,

but he's going to,

and that's the choice he's making.

That's the life he's manifesting.

And I realized that if you're going to step up

and take on that hardship of a life,

I mean, just think about a pipeline

I don't know. and I realized that if you're going to step up and take on that hardship of a life, I mean, just think about a pipeline alone.
Who does that to themselves? Why would you want to be deprived of food and sleep and be wet and cold all the time and be beat down and mentally and physically exhausted at the end of every day for two solid years? Who does that to themselves? Very special people. And I know a lot of operators don't consider themselves special, and that's the problem.
They are. They are special.
And when you get out, you look back at your brothers and you look back at what you did, you're like, there's not a lot of dudes in the world that would do those types of things to themselves and with each other. And that's what creates the bond that we have.
I'm excited for him to feel that. Really excited.
All the great things that we've encountered in our lives and in the operational community, I want him to feel all of that. I'm scared that he'll feel all the bad.
I'm not sure how he'll react to it, but that's the selfishness. That's why I have no business trying to change his physics because that's nonsensical.
You can't have that conversation. That's like trying to change the position of the sun.
You can't change somebody else's physics, man. And so I want him to be on this journey.
I know he's going to be a savage, a compassionate savage. He cares.
He's vulnerable. And I want him to find all the hard things and deal with them in his own way.
And I hope that I have given him the best that I can with what I have, a structure of how to manage the stressors where I didn't have one. He's gone through the passages, not medicine stuff, the meditation work, the cold stuff.
He's a fighter. He knows what pain is.
And that's the biggest lesson that I want him to understand is the difference between those two words pain and suffering do you worry that he is trying to live up to to the life that you've manifested yeah that's another piece of it that I think when I heard Marine first I'm like whoa what and then all of a sudden he goes and I want to be a I'm like, okay, I hope I didn't do something to make you think that you have to take that same path that I did. And after exploring that deeply with him, I don't think it is.
I really don't because I had some buddies of mine talk to him. I had him talk to a couple of my buddies that were former force guys, went tojs down in tucson had him talk to a couple buddies in kag that came in and uh my buddy in kag he's like he's like look man your son's not joining because he he wants to be like you because he he went deep on him and because i told him the same exact thing i said man i'm worried that he's doing this because i'm doing it and he goes nah man he he wants to get it out of the system the system.
He wants to choose the hardest branch of service. He wants to get the badass uniform, wants to get the ass, and he wants to go out and be hard.
But he goes, I understand. And after talking to your son, he is extremely intellectual.
I said, yeah, he scored perfect on all his tests, 100% on the ASVAB or 99, whatever that is. I was like, he could have any job he wanted.
Choose his recon. And he's like, he wants to take the hardest thing.
And then he started asking me about our world. And I was like, oh, really? He's like, yeah.
He goes, a kid like him in four or five years from now, we're going to look for him. That made me feel good, right? Because especially the hardships that Marines go through and the force reconnaissance or reconnaissance community,

the Raiders are getting their,

they're always constantly messed with by the Marine Corps.

And that's why a lot of guys go contract.

That's why a lot of guys go over to the dark side.

They start their own companies.

They get out and they do something different

because they're at this point where like,

I think I've maxed out what the Marine Corps

can give me at this point.

And it's getting better.

I hope the Marine Corps starts learning their lesson

and starts taking care of their people

because you have the greatest organization

of, again, brotherhood and camaraderie

and this crazy ass psychopathic,

compassionate fraternity of men

that come together to go destroy evil

that came together in a bar one night

in Pennsylvania and said,

we need to kill people.

And they started a branch of service in a bar. Okay, that tells you a lot about the Marine Corps.
So I'm honored that he's a part of that. And I'm also, you know, I was grateful to hear.
And when I started talking to him about, hey, what do you think about some special mission stuff? Later on down the road, he's like, oh yeah. He goes, I would absolutely love to do that.
He goes, I just, I love the water. I love the amphib side.
I tried to, I said, dude, I need you to come down to Cordata and work with some of the teams that I work with. Some of my buddies down there, I want you to check out the Naval Special Warfare side of the house.
We go down there, hang out, talks to a bunch of my buddies. And he's like, I'm just not, I don't, I don't feel it.
I don't feel it. I was like, okay, what about pararescue? What about helping, saving lives, man? You know, so others may live concept.
Introduced them, had them work with a team of guys that came in from Tucson and he's like, okay, what about pararescue? What about helping, saving lives, man? So others may live concept. Introduced them, had them work with a team of guys that came in from Tucson.
And he's like, these dudes are badass. He goes, they're, he goes, incredibly talented.
He goes, I just don't like the medical side too much. I'm like, all right, okay.
What about ASOS? What about this? What about that? No. I was like, well, what do you want to do then, bud? I don't know.
Recruiter calls me. Like, I tried.
So I tried to introduce him to as many people

as I could. And I think what he'll do is he'll take that path.
He'll go up and then he'll cross deck and go to the CAG program. I think.
Have you thought about how you would handle it as a father if he doesn't make it? of course I've had that worry

and so with that worry I've had that worry. Um, and so with that worry, I've just said to him, like, look, this is a hard life and not everybody makes this through on the first one.
It's okay. It's okay.
If you don't make it through, um, some of the selections or vettings or, or, or basic reconsumers course. Um, you know, so what I want you to do is think about, you know, the, the, the, the trusting side of the house, all the things that I ever taught you about the braving system, the boundaries, the reliability, the accountability, the vault, the integrity, the non-judgment, the generosity that you need to have as a leader before you go and outperform everybody else over here.
I think Simon Sinek talked about that a little bit with the SEAL teams. He always looks for the trusted and performer guy.
He's got a cool graph that he talks about with that. But I'm like, no, you need to understand what the anatomy of trust is first.
And that is setting healthy boundaries. That is reliability.
That is vulnerability and accountability of your actions. That is being a quiet professional because there's no such thing as a silent

professional that's something the military's messing us up with bad that's the problem with a lot of these guys that get into going back to the stress and the ptsd not to bounce around here but like they're they're taught to be a silent professional and that's a problem there's a look again define the words silent means what nothing quiet though means hey you guys keep your voices You know, and I know, you know, the teams get their balls busted for writing books and making movies. I wish we did that.
I wish we had 5,000 Force Recon Marines in the world, but we don't. We have maybe 400.
Actually, that's up to 800 right now. It's the highest it's ever been.
When I was in, 300 dudes, 100 on the East Coast, 100 on the West Coast, 100 in Okinawa, Japan. That's it.
And then your reserve guys. You guys have like 5,000 Navy SEALs in the world right now or something like that.
Why? Because you guys are good at marketing and storytelling. And regardless of people busting balls, the Marine Corps won't do that.
You look on their Instagram channels, you'll have a recon Marine doing something, jumping on an airplane. It'll say, US Marines doing this, conducting this exercise here and there.
I'm like, why don't't you talk about it that's the quiet side i'm trying to get people to do more of and so i'm a shock that he came to me and wanted to do that because i've never really talked about it much of what i did in force recon you know some i think about this all the time and you know i i really hope my kid doesn't want to join the military um i'd rather him go another path, but I think about it all the time. And there's a dad, and he's three, but he's starting to get into, he's starting to show a lot more interest in dad.
Took him fishing for the first time not long ago. Took him camping for the first time not long ago.
Do camping for the first time not long ago do a lot of family hikes atv rides like that and you know one of the things that i just always think about is is what if he does try to walk in my footsteps, especially the career. It sounds weird because I'm talking about my own career, but I could see how a kid would be impressed with the military career that I've experienced.
And then to expound on that, the podcast that I'm doing now. You know, we're bringing on guys like you and lots of soft SOCOM tier one types.
And I wouldn't necessarily say that we glorify it, but it's everywhere.

You're telling history, and history is important. And, you know, so something that I think often about is even that if he does want to, if he does go that route, which I hope he doesn't, but if he does, what, how do you let your son know that you're proud of him if he fails in what you've succeeded in? I think that would be one of the toughest.
I've shared this with him. And I think being transparent is important to your kids about those types of things.
And saying, look, it was not easy for me. There's things that I failed at.
There's things that I never thought I would be able to get through. And some of them I didn't.
And I said, you're going to find those times. I said, just like you jumped into wrestling in the last two years of your life and you skyrocketed to the top man you took top state championships and and a short amount of time but how many fights did you lose he's like oh a lot dad it's like exactly so you're gonna continue to lose a lot of fights especially on this journey um you're not you're not going to be the star athlete in this game you're going to be with 60 other dudes that are also almost on the same level as you at certain points in time now of course you got your tool bags and you got your high performers but the mid-range of everybody is going to be pushing everybody and and that's that's what's going to be addicting to be around those types of guys that want to push themselves that hard and be that miserable in order to put foot to ass for their country that says a lot about them and that's what makes it a special organization um so i've i've shared those those times like you you will fail you understand that right and i said just because i failed um doesn't mean i didn't go back and try again i said so if you fail it that doesn't mean you don't you don't you go back to the marine corps needs you go back to another unit.
You can take that in-doc again later. It's going to happen.
There's times I had to spend two and a half years as an infantryman before I was even allowed to take an in-doc. I said, son, you're on a contract.
You get to go out of boot camp and walk right into the Reconcils Training Center. Like, that's awesome, right? And I said, but I had to live through failure for two years before I even got my chance.
And I just so happened to be lucky to pass the vetting and in doc to get into that. But then I failed miserably down the road.
I failed at a lot of stuff. And so I said, when that happens, don't hang your head low and walk away.
So, you know, and I, of course I've taught him, don't ever, don't ever ring the bell concept. You know, that's not, that's not in's not in your life.
It's a love story. So I have shared that with him.
I've shared the love story of what it's like to want to do that. Like when you were kids and you had a poster on your wall and it had the cool guy stuff.
Kids watch the commercials nowadays of the special operations guys jumping and diving and coming out of the water. And I was like, damn, wish i had that one as a kid i had that stupid marine corps poster where the guy with the k painting the k bar on his lc1 it's like that was it it's all i had um and i i just happened to find reconnaissance and and and never studied any other branch of service never studied seals never studied air force any of that stuff even my dad was in the Air Force.
I just gravitated towards this path. And so I think, you know, he is extremely lucky to be in this opportunity to where I think he's set up for success.
Because I know there's a big, they've changed the programs quite a bit, which makes me feel better about his success. Because right now, basic recon course has like a 98 rate.
Um, and people are like, wait, that's a basic school, man. It should be more like buds.
Cause that, but that's a problem with buds now too. Cause I know you've been talking to a lot of people about that, but I heard last year that they had like a 71% attrition rate.
Well, that's a lot of money and a lot of time they're spending. So where's the preparation courses for these guys before they even go into it? That's what recon's doing now.
So they're doing a, like he's starting five weeks of MART, which is this Marines awaiting reconnaissance training. Then he goes into a five-week reconnaissance training assessment program where they really start squeezing them and try to figure out who's going to be candidates to go to BRC.
And then they'll have 13 weeks, basically, on top of their infantry training they just got out of, on top of 13 weeks of boot camp, which there's more infantry training in. So they already have a good infantry skill set with land navigation and basic patrols and formations and stuff like that, where I know if you're a Navy side, it's hard to get that if you're not in an infantry-based job.
So you're trying to get into that school, and then you're learning all the combat tactics. So I think the Marine Corps and the Army has that side a little bit better.
And so they've realized that that's the last place we need to have a high attrition rate. Let's burn them out before they even get there because then we can send them back to infantry or the Marine Corps' needs before we waste a ton of money or a million bucks sending them to BRC.
And so now they've pretty much capped that 98%, which is awesome. So I have a good feeling.
And he goes, I said, well, what's the 2% to the staff at CYC out there? And he goes, it's DORs. It's guys that still at that point, they get all the way through that and they get to BRC.
I'm like, I just, I changed my mind. I don't want to do this.
And that 2%, that's pretty damn good. So I think those preparation programs are very important nowadays.
I didn't have that. I just, I took leave to take an in-doc to sneak out of my unit because my unit's like, you ain't going to recon.
You're a light-armored reconnaissance Marine. I'm like, that's not recon.
That's a tank. I'm driving around and I hate my life.
It's hot. It's fucking steamy.
And there's sand on my body all the time. And I want to go in the water.
And they're like, too bad. So I took leave.
And I prepped for the in-doc. uh i found a guy at the pool one day i had a recon jack on his arm where we typically tattoo it and uh i said hey how do i get the recon he said just come to camp pendleton take an in doc i said just just come take it i said but how do i do that my unit won't let me he's like bro if you pass the in doc recon owns you your unit can't do shit about it i was like so i had out the hard way.
I mean, a best friend of mine took the in-doc and took a week off, went to Camp Pendleton, did surf drills and did everything we thought we needed to do and passed the in-doc. And we were three out of 53 people to pass.
That's it. No shit.
Yeah. And so they said, all right, good job, guys.
We'll do your psyche valves. And they sent us back to our unit.
And they said, in a few months, we'll call you and get your orders out here. And that was six months goes by.
And then finally, all of a sudden, orders show up. And dude, I got hammered.
Sergeant Major screaming at me like, what the hell is this? And I'm just sitting there smiling, big shit in the ring on my face. And he's like, you're going to fail.
You're going to come back here. You're going to make your life miserable.
And that motivated me. I was like, well, I'm damn sure not failing because I don't want to come back to your ass.

So I tell him those kinds of stories as well.

The potential of failure is greater

than that I think he has now.

And plus the kid, like I said, he's a savage man.

He's swimming 15,000 meters a week before he goes.

He's deep into the deep end fitness program

that I run with a friend of mine in Scottsdale under Prime Hall and the guys that you've had on your show before. And that's – I'm just seeing these kids, man.
We got about 10 kids in contract right now in our deep end fitness program. I mean I would have died to have had an eighth of the training that these kids are getting now.
so the resilience and the water survivability stuff and the things they're doing is tenfold more so than what they'll even get at buds or or uh special warfare and air force or or reconstitutes training wow so i'm not as worried what is the i'm sure you've had a lot of talks what is one piece and i'm sure he's going to watch this what is a piece of advice that you haven't given him yet

that you want him to know?

Wow. to soul search what compassion truly means to the warrior.
I believe compassion is the number one trait of a warrior. Why I say that is because, you know, a lot of people would say, well, what do you mean that? What does that have to do with warfare or gunfighting? I'm like, well, it kind of has everything to do with it because if you think about it, the more I care about something, the harder I'm going to fight for it.
It's like if somebody broke into my house and tried to hurt me or my family and I'm sitting sitting on the curb afterwards and the cops are like hey what happened um why did you shoot that guy 15 times um i'm not going to say the typical answer that most people might say well because his evil motive or intention or his capabilities and all the stuff that we would legal uh have a legal justification of why i did it uh that would be reasons considerations and potentially excuses of why I did it. That would be reasons, considerations, and potentially excuses of why I did it.
The deeper meaning is I did it because I care about something so much more precious than that piece of shit, my family. That's why I did it.
I didn't want to do it. The last thing a man that wants that seen violence, as you know very well, is more violence.
But I will take his ass out of the street and skin him alive and light his ass on fire to make a spectacle for everybody to see what not to mess with. It's like that American flag on the wall, same thing.
I care about that. I care about what it means.
And so that compassion is what drives us to go out and put foot to ask for our country. And we forget that at times.
And want him to remember that that no matter what you're going through no matter how much pain or suffering you're in remember how much you gave a it's a great piece of advice and the world will be a better place if we all just cared a little bit more. Thank you.
Let's take a break. I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us.
And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world.
And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have

is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign Superbad.

She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show. And some of the stuff that she

has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind-blowing.

And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence

brief.

So it's going to be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the

southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these

different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part.
The newsletter is actually free. We're not going to spam you.
It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's going to be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that.
But like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up.
Link's in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.
All right, Travis, we're back from the break. Let's get back to you.
You went in the Marine Corps. You got into reconnaissance.
How'd it go? Yeah, so I, like I took that leave, got my orders back about six months later, pissed off my command, got what I wanted, went out there, and loved it. Now, again, I've never seen in my life as a Florida boy, never been in the snow, ever.
Never saw snow, ever. Never saw mountains.
Came from a small farm type family, didn't have a whole lot of means. Mom and dad worked their ass off for everything we had.
And so we didn't take a lot of family vacations unless it was like Disneyland or something like that, which was huge for us.

And so I get out there and all of a sudden I fall in love with the mountains and the rock and California and mountain warfare schools.

And I just hit every school I could possibly go to and spend some time out there.

I did my first enlistment, got in a relationship, very young and dumb relationship, typical Marine, 21-year-old story, Vegas. I'll just throw that in there.
Nice, Vegas. Yeah.
The old shotgun wedding? The old shotgun wedding. Perfect.
Literally at the Chapel of the Bells, which was the same, that Chevy Chase and the Vegas, same church. Hold on, we got to go into this.
How did this happen? All right. So I check into First Recon Company back before it was a battalion.
So some guy's like, what's a recon company? Like it was First Recon Company at the time. The battalion had been disbanded and came back later.
And when I check in, I check into the headquarters battalion where these girls were working working, secretaries, S1 Abin. And they check us in and my buddy's like, hey, they're pretty cute.
Let's ask them out. So we both ask them out, start dating both of them.
And in two weeks, we're both in Vegas getting married. Nice.
I don't think I've ever told this story before out loud. So, he comes home first

and goes,

dude,

now we're serving Nice. I don't think I've ever told this story before out loud.

So he comes home first and goes, dude, now we're surfing, man.

We're like living California life.

We're just trying to be the bachelors that we're finally at recon.

And I mean, we're still ropes.

We're still on the recon indoctrination program at this point.

And he comes home and says, dude, check it out. I got married this weekend.

I'm like, what? What are you talking about? Who are you? What do you mean you got married this weekend? He's like, no, check it out. They both work in admin, right? This is an old school thing.
I don't suggest anybody do this. That's watching.
Oh, I think I know where this is going. And they can go into accounting and because both being active duty, you get dual comrades and BAH housing allowance.
And so you can then move out in town when you get this

and get an apartment and live the bachelor life.

And then we get it in and all and go our separate ways.

And that didn't work out

because she ended up getting pregnant

about four months later.

And I'm in jump school at this point.

Or no, I was still in the indoctrination program.

and I think

BRC

started

Thank you. I'm in jump school at this point.
No, I was still in the indoctrination program. I think BRC started coming around and then jump school and all that stuff.
The pipeline wasn't the way it was back today. I'm like, when are we going to get this annulled? When are we going to get this annulled? I was like, we haven't told our parents anything.
Nobody knows about this. She's like, I'm pregnant.
I'm like, what the hell do we do? So we tried to make that work the best we could for about a year and a half. I even got out of the Marine Corps, moved back to Florida with her and Travis Jr., my oldest.
And I was an electrician growing up. My dad was a big electrician.
So I went to job, went to work for a buddy and went to the police academy every night for 26 weeks. I'll just be a cop, man.
I'm no longer a Marine. So I do that for about 10 months.
I start working on my post-certification for Orange County Sheriff's Office out of Florida to become a deputy. And the guys I'm working with, the field training officers, my recruiter that I'd hang out with and drink beer every night.

And I'm just miserable.

He's like, dude, sign the papers.

Go back in.

What are you doing?

You're miserable.

And I'm like, I just, no, I got to be a family man now.

I'm just going to become a cop and I'll be fine.

No, dude, sign up.

I'm not signing the papers.

Stop, Dave.

And then everybody was just bossing my boss.

You're not ready to be a cop yet, man. And so I go home.
We didn't get along too well. We were just totally different personalities.
And I said, look, I'm sorry. I need to go back and do what I set out in my life to do.
And so after that 10-month break, I contact the recruiter. I walk in and say, hey, man, give me those papers right now.
And he's like, well, I can't get you to recon. I'm like, what do you mean you mean you can't i'm a recon marine what do you mean you can't get me to recon and he says i've got i look he goes i got a buddy up at two two scout sniper platoon the staple tune he goes they need a chief scout right now i'm gonna send you up there go over to recon tell them that you're you're stuck in the infantry and they'll suck you back over and i'm like okay that's crazy why the hell would i go to a sniper platoon i? I'm not a stay guy.
I'm a recon guy. That's not going to work.
And he's like, you'll be fine. Don't worry.
So I did it, and it was actually a great opportunity to run sniper command centers and understand that world because I never understood it before being in a reconstant side of the house. And so I, on the job, trained with those guys for about nine months.
Whenever the Sergeant Major said, hey, I'm a recon Marine at an infantry unit, he's like, what the hell are you doing over there? I said, they told me that they're not taking sergeants at the time back into recon. And he's like, what are you talking about? We need sergeants like crazy.
So again, recruiting commands are all screwed up. So I had to go through this whole process when I could have just went right back to recon.
And then so they found a seat and second force recon, one of the platoons needed a guy. So I stepped into that and jumped right back into force recon.
Holy shit. So hold on.
Let me replay this for you just so I'm tracking here. So you've wanted to be a force recon Marine since you were nine years old.
Yeah. You joined the Marine Corps at 18.
You become a reconnaissance Marine two years later.

You have a fling.

You guys get married so that you get the BAH money

and you can move out in town

only to get out of the military and become a fucking cop.

Right.

Holy shit, Travis.

What the fuck?

Totally against everything that I wanted to do in my life, right?

But that was what was happening,

and I've learned very...

Well, I've learned the hard way that, hey, man, what happened happened. And it happened exactly the way it happened, and it didn't happen any other way.
You know why? Because it didn't. And so I get back on my journey, and so I just had, I had like, I don't know, I wouldn't call it a pause.
It was, I was, that was meant to happen for some reason.

And of course I have an amazing, incredible son,

you know, Travis Jr.

He's freaking, he's my first love, man.

My first kid.

And he's working on becoming a professional fisherman,

electrician, and just all around just awesome. And what month is it?

I don't even know what month it is.

It's November.

In two months, I'll go. and just all around just awesome.
And what month is it?

I don't even know what month it is.

It's November.

In two months, I've become a granddaddy.

Congratulations.

So I'm excited about that.

That's awesome.

Yeah, he's given me and everybody a wonderful gift.

And, of course, that was a struggle, though.

The one question I have is, wait, how long after you got married did you get out of the military? That stint with that marriage? Yeah. It was pretty tight towards the end of that.
It was about a year and a half. So we dated, did the thing, got to recon about two and a half years.
And then at the end of that enlistment, I had make a decision to to stay in and and continue to deploy and stuff which she was not having that and she's like we need to just get out get away from the military and so on my first i was on a small extension and i said i'm done i'm leaving so was it so what was it a year and a half of marriage before you got out about a year and a half and a half, I think, if I remember back. That's not very much money in BAH, Travis.
Right? So then I get out, and I'm working as an electrician from 5 in the morning until 6 at night, going from the law enforcement academy from 6 at night to about 10 at night every day for 26 weeks. And I was like, I want to go back and just malinger in the Marine Corps.
Damn. For those that are wondering what BAH is,

BAH is a housing allowance that you get in the military.

Back then, I remember $709 a month more

to live in an apartment in California.

Nowadays, it's a little different.

But yeah, you're right.

It wasn't a lot of money.

But no, I deployed.

I went to as many deployments as I could do when I got to second force recon. Did you deploy with reconnaissance before you left the first time? No, not on the West Coast.
So where was your first deployment coming back? It was all schools, all workups. And that's what pissed me off so bad is that I felt like I was leaving my guys down because now I got to get out.
And I'm just now fully getting schooled up. I didn't go to dive school yet because dive school was a hard seat to get back then.
And then I'm like, I got to go, guys. And I remember Gunny Smith, Ed Smith, I'm sure a lot of the recondo dudes out there listening know that man's name.
He tried to keep me. He's like, you're an idiot.
Don't do this. Come on, man.
And he screamed he screamed and yelled at me and i was like i just had to take care of my son now he's like we all got kids we all got to take care but the marine corps needs you and i was like i wasn't listening at that point and i wish i would have but again everything happens for a reason and i maybe i wouldn't be sitting here if those things wouldn't have happened to me what year is this this would It's been 98-ish. 98.
So not a lot going on in the world anyways.

No. if those things wouldn't have happened to me.
What year is this? This would have been 98-ish. 98.
So not a lot going on in the world anyways. No, not at all.
And so maybe that was something else too. I'm like, okay, I've spent an entire enlistment here.
Nothing's happened. And maybe I can just become a cop and take care of my kid now.
I fucked up. I'm ashamed of myself.
Now I got to figure out how to be a dad and live a life. And then I realized how hard it was.
And so I went back in and just fell in love with that love story again, of being the image that I wanted to become when I was 9, 10 years old. And started schooling out heavily.
What year did you come back in?

98.

You came?

99.

It would have been 99 that I came back in.

So you were out for like a year, maybe less.

It was less than a year.

It was like 10, almost 10, 10 and a half months maybe,

if I had to guess.

Yeah, because it took me a little bit to get in the academy,

get my job, scored away.

And then by the time I graduated the LE Academy, it was 26 weeks later and i'm like nope i'm going i'm getting in so then i get back to second force i deploy a couple combat tours on that where'd you go that was first wave invasion mosul uh we were the first troops in northern iraq um and we went off the 26th marine expeditionary unit so we're already floating and cutting circles so you so you went in and then did what you went back in 99 four years and then finally deployed into a combat room yeah so but yeah what 2000 oh 99 I went into Kosovo which all we did was fill gaps with the SAS there and you we saw some interesting stuff. Um, you know, we got some orders fired on us and navigated around a bunch of landmines for a long time working with the SAS.
Um, so a lot of guys wouldn't consider that a combat deployment, it was an active, like we're going in and working against the Serbs because they were the ones we were watching at the time. So, and then I did a golf deployment in Somalia

when I was telling you about when I first came in,

just hit the fleet at 3rd Light Armored Reconist

of Italian 29 Palms, boom, balloon goes up,

going over and I spent four months over there

on boats and working around,

watching people fight over bags of rices on the docks,

securing the pier facilities.

So that was cool because that was

that was first thing man first first step on the parade deck in 29 palms just getting out of boot camp in school of infantry i'm on a plane heading over to kuwait so i was like i'm doing it and then i get this stagnant like nothingness happens and i get out come back in 99 kosovo my car things are starting to happen now. And then 2003 kicks off.
And I was, 2003 is when DET won. If you remember the first Marine Special Operations team was hand-selected with Gunny Oates and those guys.
I had 500 candidates that were selected. I was one of them with two other guys in my platoon to go to DET won.
But me and I think it was Brian Moss and Ricochet and Sean Mickle, we got selected. And I remember us having to kind of come to Jesus meeting like, we're already done with the shooting package.
We're ready to deploy. And I was like, I don't think I can leave my guys.
And because we've got a 25 man tight team that's been working together for six months, you're ready to hit stuff. And so we decided to stay back.
And then Sean gets injured and he goes. So he couldn't go on deployment anyway.
So he healed up and actually I think he went and did part of the debt one stuff. So then Marine Special Operations is founded and I'm overseas on deployment.
We get the call to go into Mosul's. We stopped in the Cyprus, flew in, and it was the battalion landing team from the MU was supposed to come in through Turkey.
And we land into Mosul in the middle of the night. AAA fire, everything's on fire flying in, and we're supposed to be going up against the Iraqi 10th Corps Army, which which is 10 000 troops and from what our intel reports were we uh birds take off we're sitting there in the grass all night long kind of waiting find out on comms hey blt is not being authorized to break through the turkish border you're on your own and we're like okay so we ended up setting out sniper teams and figuring out the situation before we could finally get other people in there there There was an ODA working in town that we finally linked up with and a couple of agency dudes running around.
Got in some firefights. Let's talk about the first one.
Firefight? Your first firefight. It's fucking hilarious.
So there's a learning lesson on this one too that it really started making me think about the science, because everybody kind of calls me the science guy in the shooting world a little bit. We were rolling through the ASPs.
And to describe Mosul, when you're out in the fields, it's a beautiful rolling, for those that haven't seen it, like grassy plains. You can see for 10,000, for like 10 clicks, man, you can just see forever.
Now, the ASP, which is an ammo supply point south of the airfield, is one of the biggest ASPs in the world. EOD guys said it would take like 10 years to systematically clear this thing out.
So our job was to go in and secure the ASPs so nobody could get access to all that ordnance. And it was a lot of ordnance, 300 foot deep tunnels and these structures in the ground that kept all their artillery missiles and stuff in and scuds.
Also looking for chem labs was one of our missions. And so we go out and roll.
It's like day four, I think, in country. And the BLT is starting to finally come in.
And we're like, all right, we're going to go push out and get out into our AO. And there was four IFAB commando jeeps, six-man team in each jeep.
So you got a whole platoon of force recon guys. And our last platoon was probably one of the most stacked platoons in history, I'd have to imagine.
I think by the end of deployment, everybody got promoted. It was, I want to say there was like five or six gunnies in the platoon, which is unheard of.
And, you know, E7s in the platoon. Everybody else is staff sergeants, which is more like an ODA team, how that would be structured, not necessarily a force recon team where you have a gunny, you know, maybe a staff sergeant, all sergeants as team leaders, and then everybody else is kind of sergeants most of the time.
So everybody, I mean, I think we had like 17 school trained snipers in our platoon, which most scout sniper platoons don't even have that. I think we have like five free fall jump masters.
Most of us are tandem masters and just dive supervisor. I mean, it was stacked, man.
So, and I'm staging that because of the amount of experience that was in this platoon, you know, looking back laughing now, we're rolling down this hill and we come around, we see this little building in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing else for miles and miles and miles.
And the building was probably about five, 6,000 square feet, one story, a couple of windows and a door on the front. And all of a sudden I hear one of the guys in the front, and he goes, light it up.
And we're like, what the hell? And I remember hearing something that didn't sound right, but I didn't hear, like, it wasn't that good, the traditional snaps. But I heard something, I was like, what the fuck is that noise? And then all of a sudden I hear, and I'm like, oh shit, we're getting shot at.
Now we're tail end, Charlie. And Brian Moss, I believe who was driving at the time, just retired um congratulations brian by the way if uh uh he sees this and uh he pulls off through the rocks and i'm on the 50 trying to get on this window and uh it's the left side window that was shooting at us uh and so um i'm like brian stop stop stop and he's like i can't let me y'all shape because he's trying to pull away so we can pound the building and i was like fuck it so i throw the 50 down i bring up my m4 and i i pulled that trigger so fast man it was probably three seconds that gun was out of ammo and i remember coming down now he stops the vehicle and i'm like nope i had a ready mag system on so i drop a mag put another mag another mag in.
And I remember going, damn it, use your 40 mic mic. So I'm like, so I grabbed the 203.
And one of the policies that I've always had for my teams, and even that team, a lot of us carried them 203s because if we were in a contact, you know, as a six or four man recon team, put their heads down, man, put some heat on first, you know, to make them think that you're bigger than what you are. And so my brain just clicked into that mode.
It's like, hey, pump a 40-mike bike into the building because I don't know where this is really necessarily coming from except for that window, which everybody was identifying. 40-mike bike is a grenade launcher for you civilians.
Yeah, the 40-millimeter grenade, little tube underneath your rifle. And it's it's already locked and loaded.
So I take the

safety off, come up. And I remember the first time in my life going, where the hell do I put the red dot on my aim point? Because you don't typically shoot a 40 millimeter.
This is exactly 50 meters on the road. I mapped it out afterwards.
And so I was thinking like on top of the window, maybe a couple of feet above the window. So it's like, dunk, you know, fired, I went in, of detonated and blew up the window.

And then I remember, I think Ed sees mine go in the window. So he decides to fire his and it goes like 150 meters over the building.
Cause you know, your, your brain goes to what it knows. It's like, dunk, and it's like, God damn it.
So I busted his balls for that for a while. We spent, I think, of the 50 cals were almost empty.
Everybody shot at least a mag. On one window? 240 Mike Mikes were fired.
And I think some of the pencil amount of 240s were run down pretty good to at least 100 rounds where needed to swap a belt. And I'm just like, this building looks like Swiss cheese.
That sounds very Marine Corps. Yeah, but not, I mean, again, going back to the experience of us, right? You think we'd like, oh, there he is, done.
Hey, high five, let's move on. This building was falling apart, man.
We were done with it. And I remember us kind of having, especially our team having to come to Jesus meeting afterwards, being like, hey man, if you're going to pop that puppy's can, don't grease them so hard next time, man, because the world's out of ammo.
We got to go back and refit and regroup now before we can continue our patrol that we just started. And that was kind of the first funny thing.
So that really triggered me. And I look back on a lot of the stories that we have and whether it's buddies or personal situations that I was in, like that bothered me that I didn't know where to hold that red dot.
Because I'm like, well, they don't let us shoot high explosive grenades out of a 203

and 50 meters in training. I've heard they've done some programs like that now, because I know the

guys were trying to breach doors with them and stuff. And I started realizing, wait a minute,

hold on. I don't even remember seeing my red dot for the 30 rounds that I fired before that.
Why

not? And then I started studying ocular science. And I ended up hiring three ocular scientists

I think it's a good thing. on.
I don't even remember seeing my red dot for the 30 rounds that I fired before that. Why not? And then I started studying ocular science.
And I ended up hiring three ocular scientists at

Haley Strategic to try to help me understand why we see things a certain way. How can we understand

how our eyes can be better? How can I be faster? How can I increase my visual acuity? How can I

calm myself down under critical stress? So every time you get under critical stress, gunfight, or if you remember back to high school fighting, you're just like going crazy. It's like, that's the amygdala hijack.
That's the chimp paradox. Great book.
If nobody's ever read that, by the way, if they want to know more about that. It's like once a chimp comes out of the cage, you can't control him.
Because if we had a chimpanzee here right now, we started pissing him off and got in a fight with him, who's going to win? He will tear your ass limb from limb. So that's your emotions.
That's your affect. And you need to keep him in the trunk.
And that's my biggest thing. And going back to the medicine and stuff we talked about earlier, I finally met my snake.
It's a snake in my world. And I was able to keep him at bay.
I'm like, say, hey, I don't need you. I don't need you anymore.
You keep fucking up my life. You keep making me talk to my wife the wrong way.
You make me treat my children in a way that I don't want to treat them. You come out when you're not needed, man.
Stay asleep. I'll come get you when I need you.
And you've done a lot of help for me in my life. You've been there when I needed to destroy things, but not anymore.
I'm in control now. So that's what it kind of helped me with.
And so anyways, when you go into this critical stress, this body alarm response that we call it, this blood flow increases to the center field of your vision, which eliminates the possibility for a near sight focus, which what have we been taught all our life with handguns? Clear front sight, clear front sight, clear front sight. Well, guess what you can't, you cannot get in critical stress is a clear front sight.
So it's like, well, what do you mean? We've been taught that all our life. What do I do? Well, that's where I broke it up into, you have a clear front sight, which I would categorize as precision sight picture, hostage situation, long target, and then stress sight picture.
Well, stress sight picture is when I walk up to a vehicle and go, hey, good evening, ma'am. I'm Deputy Haley with America.
And I start doing the matrix and drawing a gun and coming back and I'm getting shot at. Your eyes are going to immediately change in geometry.
That's the thing. That's the key.
And wishing I knew this information back then, so I may have had better solutions or better, more files in my file box to pull from. When the geometry of the lens, the gushy white ball changes shape and flattens out, this is looking this way, there are ciliary muscles that go all around the eye.
And those ciliary muscles will contract and then flattens the geometry of the lens, which eliminates your possibility to see near focus. It does what? It's a natural defense mechanism for humans to go, hey, the bear's attacking me.
Throw the spear, throw the rock, punch, do whatever. So it's like, well, why do we teach that in firearms when nobody else teaches that? Baseball players don't have to go clear red threads, clear red threads and throw all the way from a mound to a pitcher and be perfect.
A sword fighter never said clear sword tip, clear sword tip and stab. You know what I mean? So like nobody's ever had to do that.
Now it's suddenly introduced modern firearms and screw up the way our eyes naturally defend ourself. So it's like, well, what's the answer? And that's what I started working back and forth with a lot of doctors to figure out like, hey, I couldn't see this then.
Why? Okay, here we go. We start diving into it.
I understand the eyes. Then we start doing tests back and forth and going, whoa, okay.
So we need to have some other type of sighting system, which would be stress sight picture. What does that mean? Learn to shoot with my iron sights by focusing downrange on the target.
It's a simple plane adjustment is all it is. And then some people are like, well, that's all you had to say.
Well, I know, but it took me so long to figure out and dive into, you know, ocular experts to understand how my eye actually works to come up with a simple solution to go precision sight pitcher. I've got time working for me.
Hostage situation. Some guys would say time's not working for you, but you're not coming into a room and going hey that's my briefcase bro and tom cruising i'm in the street you're going to be very precise with that shot even if it is at speed your brain will switch in those situations and what i say is that when the threat is bigger than the threat itself that might be confusing if i'm in a hostage situation i go home and I find a man or threat holding my wife or kids.
When the threat is bigger than the threat itself. Yes.
And so to give you this example, if you walked in and saw a horrible case scenario, your wife or child or somebody that you love or care about being held at gunpoint or knife point, what's the biggest threat? Your wife dying. Not the guy with the gun or the knife.
So the biggest threat now is, oh my God, the most precious thing in my life might die if I screw up. So you might want to take some time and then make sure you see your sights.
I've talked to a lot of guys that have taken shots on hostage or SPS guys. I had a buddy in CAG that took a shot like this.
And he said he remembered calculating the brain box math as he's coming around the corner hitting a guy on the bed with his wife and kid about to go high order, like movie type shit. And I was like, whoa, wait, you saw that? Okay, describe that to me.
I'm nerding out on what he's seeing because the situation's like, okay, it happens. And then you ask cops the same thing.
Yeah, I remember seeing my sights just like I was trained. Really? It was 9 p.m.
You're sprinting down an alley, shooting at a guy at 27 meters, and you hit him once in the back of the head with a single shot fired, single-handedly, mind you. Just like you're training? I want to go work for that department.
That's how you guys train? Well, that's what I had to write down in my report. Oh, okay.
You didn't see shit, did you? No, I was just shooting at the guy. Okay.
Just like that, that building we started shooting at, I didn't see clear at all until my eyes went, Hey, you're about to fire a high explosive device. You might want to remember where you're.
So now the threat's becoming bigger, me potentially lobbing a grenade and having frag back or something and i think that's what triggered my brain just like will trigger a hostage shooter or a a s vest type situation so in his case what's the biggest threat him and his entire team about to vaporize not the guy with the bomb it's like no we might all die if i don't take this shot and calculate it right now so i thought those stories were extremely interesting and why i took a really deep dive into the ocular stuff so yeah something as simple as a stupid little gunfight in iraq blowing up a building um which turned out to be an ammo supply point issue point that's where all the ordinance would come and they would issue that out so that blew up for days wow because and that's how we started clearing we'd have we worked with the oda it was the next kind of fight we were in and we pulled up on them and like hey what are you guys up to and like yeah some ass shooting at us from one of those asp towers up there about 500 meters away and we're like well let's go roll them up it's like one dude so it's us us and a whole oda that's let's go get this guy and they, nah, we got a Viper on station. It's coming in here.
He's IP inbound in about probably two minutes. And we're like, what, you're going to, you're going to drop a fucking JDM on that building over there? And they're like, yeah.
They were like, okay. And you said IP inbound two minutes? Like, yeah.
Okay. See you later.
So we jumped at our shit and started hauling ass up the road. And they're dropping,

I think it was a 2,000 pounder on the thing.

And in an ASP,

that's 300 feet deep in the ground,

full of ordnance.

So we're like, yeah, we're out of here.

And we hauled ass.

And then we could kind of see in our mirror

that the guy's looking back like,

and you could see him calculating the distance.

They jump at their humvees,

start hauling ass away.

That fucker blew up for three days, man, nonstop. Like got it on video.
We'd be sleeping at night at the airfields. You'd see already rounds landing in town.
And the good thing was like, well, we don't have to patrol for three days. We're good.
Because nobody can go in there at that point. And that's how some of the ASPs got cleared.
Because it was bad. Wow.
Wow. Wow.
So you were on the initial invasion first true son yeah that is pretty fucking historic and it was kind of cool that you know we took mosul and we did a good job um big army came in 101st took over for us and that's when the ied war started kicking off and i i believe and a lot of other guys talked about how much ordinance there was coming out of that ASP we believe that may have fed the IED war in the country and when we lost control of Mosul we didn't gain it back until until MARSOC and I think it was ST, I think still team seven.

I think it was seven.

Went into Mosul together and took it back in 2017.

And they gave us a piece of one of the mosques there

and it's got the trident on it

and the flag that they flew over the city when we won.

So we've got that in our little museum

at Haley Strategic's headquarters.

That is cool.

To try to say like, man, we've lost this

for almost 15 years and we fought and fought

And And so we got that in our little museum at Haley Strategic's headquarters. That is cool.
To try to say, like, man, we've lost this for almost 15 years. And we fought and fought and fought with the Iraqis and finally got it back.
So, but still a shithole, still a loss. What was your guys' op tempo on that deployment? It was short and fast.
A lot of movement. and then we left, flew back to the ship.
Now we're on a full deployment at this point and we're ready to go home. And so we're heading through almost to the Straits of Gibraltar.
And, you know, the MEW, the Marine Expeditionary Units, for people that don't understand how that works, like right now, there's a MU in the Mediterranean, probably cutting gator circles, as we call them, around Israel, just hanging out, waiting for something to happen.

And then there's always one in the Pacific.

And you always have the back then.

It's changed a little bit, but you always have a force recon team and a SEAL team attached to that MU.

And we work hand-to-hand as a special operations nucleus of that entire system. And you're on a carrier, the Gators, the LHDs, which have all the Ospreys and Cobras and F-35s.
So we can deploy an entire Marine Aircraft Task Force, hovercrafts, tanks, you name it, infantry guys. So we can mobilize anywhere in the world in 24 hours or less.
So they call us the 911 of the world. So when a country has a problem, an embassy goes bad, or Afghanistan with the Abbey Gate, that was the 26th Marine Expeditionary.
They'd call in to go and help. I think Tyler Vargas, you had Tyler on your show.
He was on the Mew that went into Afghanistan and got in that shit with Abbie Gate do you know Tyler oh yeah yeah had him on the podcast everything what a fucking awesome oh yeah I think I might have been the first podcast he did was with me damn I love that dude yeah he's incredible resilient man yeah I mean that's I've learned a lot from him so we got the 911 to go into Liberia after that and And Liberia was, of course, we were disappointed at first.

Like, come on, man, we just want to go home.

And so it's like, nope, your asses are going in.

Figure out what's going on.

This was a 14-year civil war.

Charles Taylor, the president of the country, very highly educated, U.S. educated guy.

He was on a, just a murderous, he was a genocidal freak all of a sudden, started killing his own people. So he killed about 180,000 of his own people that year with his corrupt government forces.
So now you have Sierra Leone and a couple of other countries that created rebel groups like the Lord rebels.

They become down from Sierra Leone and fight against the government.

So now you have these corrupt government guys fighting against rebels,

trying to overthrow the corrupt government.

And guess who's in the middle of getting, getting killed?

All the innocent people in the country.

That was probably one of my most eye opening experiences culturally, culturally. You know, like, again, being worldly traveled, seeing true death and true just heads, heads on tables everywhere on the markets.
Human heads? Oh, yeah. Piles of bodies.
Why were there human heads on tables? Cannibalism. It's voodoo, man.

Cannibalism?

It's West Africa.

It is like hardcore.

Do you see that happening?

Every day.

You see humans eating humans?

If you type in rebels of Liberia, West Africa,

you will see crazy people with wigs and weird glasses

and wearing women's dresses and life preservers,

and they're out there shooting with AKs and RPGs,

kind of Lord of War.

Remember the movie Lord of War with Nicolas Cage?

That is Liberia.

And so the ground, the pavement is all 762 by 39 brass.

There's no pavement.

It's brass everywhere you go in the streets,

just constant gunfights.

And-

Hold on.

Eventually-

We got to- This is a sound of war that nobody ever heard about i've never heard about it what what is it i mean you saw fucking cannibalism yeah what i mean just describe that in detail the first time you saw it or any so this is the weird part about this this country um you have people that are just trying to survive and live like almost normal people like just normal great people um i love love is is a word that's might not even describe how i feel uh towards the liberian people like i i there was kids i wanted to adopt and bring home with me man it was crazy yeah experience i don't know if that if that was the same for other guys on my team, but I really immerse myself in places that I go. And sometimes too much.
If you've ever seen, what's a good movie? Tears of the Sun with Bruce Willis, the Navy SEAL team that goes into Cameroon. And there's piles of bodies and the stench and everything very very similar um the nigerians are there whacking and killing people uh even though they're supposed to be a friendly peacekeeping force for the african eco was or eco mill forces which are they're kind of small nato so in the continent of africa if something goes higher order like like something blows up, they will not call NATO in right away.
They'll call ECOWAS, which I forget what ECOWAS is, but African nations come together and they then determine, does military action need to happen here? And then if it does, they'll say, okay, ECOMIL, military side, let's get Ghana, Senegalese, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Nigeria. You guys can bring in a contingent of armed forces and help secure this country and stop the civil war before we need to get bigger people involved.
So that's the level this was at. So United Nations, everybody's watching this.
Our job was to go in and do a hydrographic survey of the port facility and White's Beach down by the embassy. So we could determine if we can land hovercrafts, Amtrak's, you name it, and send the BLT in to stop.
Rumsfeld and Bush at the time needed to get more SA, so they send us and SEAL Team 4 in. Do you know Rourke? Lieutenant Rourke, Denver Rourke.

He was

the platoon leader for

Steel Team 4 at the time

and now is in

the acting world, I think.

He played himself in Act of Valor,

the movie.

He was Lieutenant Rourke in Act of Valor.

I know he's done

a couple other films.

He was the platoon leader. Rob O'Neill was in Act of Valor.
And so I know he's done a couple other films. Well, he was a platoon leader.

They and Rob O'Neill was in that team as well.

They hit the beach.

We hit the port facility.

I know they were a little upset about that

because we won the mission planning on the port facility,

which was a 2,000-meter surface swim.

We were trying to go subsurface,

but we couldn't because of the amount of intel, because I was one of the intel guys on the team pulling all the information from S2. There was like three ships laying on their sides in the port, bodies floating in the water, active gunfights going on on the port facility while we're doing a hydrographic survey.
And so what happens is we're back done. Recon's done.
We're back on the beach. I'm sorry, back on the boat.
And about 5 a.m., if I remember right, we hear launch QRF, launch QRF over the 1MC on the boat, the intercom. It's called 1MC.
And so Cobras and 46s took off because something happened. One of the team guys got, I heard,

and I'm sure there's a whole,

I'd love to hear the story if anybody knows it.

I know it's probably embarrassing for those guys,

but somebody said that one of the guys got cramped so bad

from drinking the night before on the boat,

they couldn't get through the surf zone

and they brought boats in.

They brought the ribs up to grab them and throw them in.

And Liberian fishermen were coming out that morning

and identified, now we're over the horizon,

man. We're not supposed to be there.
It's a clandestine operation. And if you look up Navy SEALs in Liberia, you'll see Rob O'Neill and all his guys and Rourke on the beach holding like a thousand Liberians back on, stay back, stay back.
And they're like, Americans, you're here, you're here, you're here. So there was a compromise.
And then they get back to the boat and General Turner's like, you guys can go back to Sigonella. We don't need you here anymore.
Thank you. Now we have to change the entire mission.
So they send us back in as a liaison team to work with the Eco Mill forces to try to stop this civil war by running checkpoints and telling the Nigerianian nibac commander say this is what you're going to do this is what you're not going to do then we go sit and grab the lord rebels and we'd say hey sit your ass down um you know you are not a general even though you call yourself that because you know these little skinny crackheads like when i say crackheads like crack was extremely bad heroin was bad they're constantly chewing cot. And you're telling them like,

hey, stop shooting at civilians.

If I catch you shooting at civilians,

you're going to die.

Do you understand that?

You see that loud,

that thumping noise that flies over

every once in a while?

We will have no problem,

no hesitation blowing your ass up

if you're firing a rocket on a bridge

across the street into the market.

You will stop beating people

and stealing their cars.

You will stop treating people like shit.

And so every night we'd have these meetings at their bars. We'd walk in be like hey sit down all right what can we do and we single-handedly and i say this not out of of you know being egotistical or narcissist or anything but we stopped a 14-year civil war in just a couple months um by moving as fast as we did as three recon teams throughout that country damn keeping the fucking south africans back because they would come in and just say oh you just kill these people i'm like yeah okay fuck out of here you don't care um in the nigerians that's a whole other story um they're they only get paid about i think the average infantry nigerian soldier gets paid back then $600 a year, and equivalent to American money.
And they don't get paid while they're there, but they're on a year-long deployment, and they have to go in this eco-meal deployment for a year and work in Liberia. And then when they get home, they finally get paid.
So what do you think those guys are going to do? Imagine if you took freaking 1,000 Marines that are all privates, put them in a foreign country, and said, we'll pay in a year from now yeah they're gonna rape pillage and kill everybody they can so now they're a problem that we had to work as a liaison force to stop um so it turned into a nightmare made uh i'll be honest it made iraq look like disneyland really did sounds like it especially with the stench and the bodies and people will come up to you in the market with a head. Like, hey, this is a government head from a commander.
Look what we got. Look what we got.
I'm like, dude, get the fucking head out of my face, man. Like that's what Liberia was like.
And it was a beautiful country before this all happened. Subtropic, beautiful hotels on the beach.
When we got there, looked like some horrible tropic, like a bomb went off. No windows, no holes, Swiss cheese everywhere, casings all over the ground, constant rocket firing back and forth.
And then we forced Charles Taylor out. He went into exile, but then paid his special operations team, which he called the Wild Geese.
They would name everything after weird American movies and stuff. The commanders would drive by and say Rambo on the side of their car, and then it'd be John Wayne, and it'd be funny, funny, Josie Wales and the commanders.
They got 20 people in the back of the truck with AKs and PKMs and stuff. And you're like, hey, what's up, Rambo? If you see all the pictures on the internet, if you look up librarian rebels, like, I guarantee I know every one of those dudes by name.
And the voodoo magic was really interesting because they would wear women's dresses, wigs, life preservers. Life preservers? Yeah, there's a little funny story on that.
They would wear these things because the voodoo magician would bless that article that they're wearing, and it would make them bulletproof. And one day, one of the guys comes up in a blue dress and a wig and these old weird glasses.
And I said, why do you guys wear that shit? And they all speak English. They all speak, it's their first language, which this was the coolest part of the whole country, was back during the, you know, they kept calling us brother American, brother American.
I'm like, why do you guys call us brother Americans? Like, you're not, what do you mean? They're like, we are Americans. And I'm like, last I checked, you're Liberian.
Well, I'm an American. No, no, no, no.
We are grateful and honored for you to be here because we are all brother Americans. We come from America.
And I'm like, what are you talking about? You come, Liberians come from America. And then they started educating me and my guys on the history of our own damn country that we forgot, the emancipation.
When the slaves were freed, they had an opportunity to go back to their homeland and Liberia, Monrovia, Liberia was the first colony of American slaves that established a new order and a new government in the, in the continent of Africa. And they are extremely grateful for that, right? Interesting.
Interesting, you know, misunderstanding potentially. Wow.
And I was like, really? And so we just dove into the culture and the information. And they were teaching us, some of these kids, man, that are, they don't even know how old they are, but like 12 to 15 years old, they'll recite parts of our constitution.
And you're like, you live in a tin shack, dude. It was incredible.
That's why I just really have a deep love for those people. I mean, it's interesting, you know, the piece of advice that you gave your son is find compassion and you're talking about it right now.
And one of the worst places imaginable, at least at that time. Yeah.
It made me realize how good the world really is, even though it's bad all around you. Even the kids.
The kids were amazing. One time we pulled up on this village, just checking in, doing a security assessment.
They got hit the night before, lost a couple people. Because every night when you're out, you you're out, you're trying to patrol as much as you can.
You hear about, hey, we got a village over on the east side, just got hit, man. The government came in and he paid his government $44 million in cash to, he goes, look, I'm going to prove that I'm still in power, even though I'm in exile.
You guys keep raping, pillaging, and killing as many people as you can. And that's what his special operations teams were doing.
So at night, they go out and tear people up. And then the eco-mil forces and us liaison would have to try to figure out who's what and try to help out all these people.
And then go in and do an assessment the day after to figure out, hey, what happened? Raping, pillaging, cutting nipples off of women so they can't breastfeed their babies. Are you fucking kidding yeah child soldiers constantly being taken this is 2003 man this was still happening and it still happens in africa um liberia is a better place now from what i understand but that's what it was and it was life-changing for me because i think a lot of guys don't think about what that was um just because you weren't a shit shit ton of gunfights doesn't mean that you can't learn valuable lessons about cultural differences or just the kids, man.
I grew such an appreciation. And I'm sure a lot of people will when they hear this.
We hear all this laughing and screaming and we pull around the corner and there's like 15 kids running up and down the street up this little hill. And we're like, what the they all happy about every time we'd pull into a village all the women would come out and start dancing and chanting and like thanking god for us to be there because now they get to walk free because they're scared of getting raped killed their children being stolen and put into child warfare whatever like they're just and it was the greatest feeling to have these people chanting and screaming and laughing and smiling all of a sudden.
And it made you, choked you up for a second. And we realized these kids are chasing a toy.
And I look at it and I walk up to them. I'm like, what are you guys doing? And they hold up a wheel, which was a piece of wire.
It's like a piece of hard wire that they found like a hanger. And they twist it together and made a wheel.
And then they made a stick about three feet long and it had a little L shape on the end, like a snake stick. And they would sit there and roll that wheel with that snake stick down the hill and get it going really fast.
And they would chase it up and down and up and down. And they did that shit the entire time we were there.
And not one time did anybody quit or like they were constantly having fun meanwhile there's like death and destruction and piles of bodies everywhere uh and they just got hit the night before so that to me i'm still trying to understand that they became accustomed because every time i walk into my kids rooms and i see all the shit they have makes me want to go outside and grab a piece of wire.

And I think we need to remember that,

you know, we have a ton of resources as an American.

We have everything in the world.

You have every single opportunity to make something of yourself in this world,

in this country, especially as an American.

And so I think, you know,

after my world experiences and traveling and seeing that, I go, how dare you have the audacity to say that you don't, you need more. And, and so again, it comes back to how much resources can you have before you forget how to be resourceful? And that's all those kids are.
They're so resourceful and having the best time doing it in the worst situation you could ever possibly fathom. And that scares me now because if something did happen in this country,

which every great nation eventually has this problem, what are our kids going to do?

Are they going to be able to have that resilience and that happiness under that situation

or is it going to be 10 times worse?

So those little things that you pull out of the battle spaces are what you really truly remember.

The gunfights, that's why we were there, man.

You pull the trigger, you do your job. Sometimes it hurts, especially when you fuck it up.
But the times you do it right feels good. But what really feels good is making that kid smile, making that woman chant and dance and praise, thank you for making us free.
like Americans don't realize what that means until you see some shit like that and you don't need to be in a gunfight to see that you know but yeah i think uh that was an interesting one that was i'm very agree with everything you said there and i think think that was important that you brought that up.

I want to know about the cannibalism.

I've never seen that.

What was that experience like?

So it's not like they're eating bones and stuff in front of you

and the markets and stuff,

but you're hearing the stories constantly of especially the rebels

and the corrupt government people that would do that as a fear tactic.

And I think it's a part of their culture, man.

It really is.

It's a cultural thing.

It is.

Is it a necessity?

It's the same thing that comes out.

No, I don't think it's a necessity because not everybody does it.

Your people that were in positions of power were the ones that did most of it that I'd

noticed.

This is like satanic ritualistic shit.

Well, if- It's the elites are eating other fucking human beings. Yeah, but they're also just younger operational types too.
They're teaching the kids to do that stuff. So all the shit you see in movies about the cannibalism and those countries is not on this like, you would think like the deepest, darkest little tribes in Africa or in South America only do that.
No. Normal people that are wearing blue jeans and gold necklaces and run around with AKs and wigs and stuff on are also doing it.
It's a part of the culture. It's- Holy shit.
Was it the biggest thing there? How do they do it? No. Do they cook it? I think they just cook and eat it, yeah.
Or eat it raw. Wow.
Not a big expert in that regard, the cannibalism. Even just asking that question makes me want to look back and go, wait a minute, let me dive into that a little bit more.
Yeah. But it was definitely very apparent, and people would tell you about it.
And the excuse where we go, wait satanic they don't know what that is i don't think um but i i think there's one line like in that movie tears of the sun when they walk in and they see the the mother with the nipples cut off which is a thing uh they pour cornmeal we'd find women with cornmeal in their mouths as they're getting raped and trying to be suffocated as they're being raped by these kids that were rebel soldiers. And they would steal the boys.
They would shoot the men, leave the elder alive to tell the story. They'd rape all the women and impregnate them and then cut their nipples off.
And, gee, that's just the rest of the world. That's why it be nice if americans realized what percentage they are of the world it's very small and and and i'll i'll maybe close with that later but i call it the whole concept but uh yeah it's that's just what they do that's the best answer when you say who in the fuck would do something like this? And then the only response is, it's just what they do.
And what drives that? I don't know, but I would be happy to kill every one of those people that do that. Man.
To these beautiful souls, as all these people, these kids were. People in the villages that we encountered, amazing.
Absolutely amazing. I go back in a heartbeat.
Matter of fact, I did. I went back on my own.
You went back there on your own? Did some contracting work by myself with a client, yeah. How are you handling the home life with that? As far as- Then? You have a son now? Yeah.
I mean, how are you is this shit coming home so this is this is where things started getting weird in the transition of my life how did i transition out of the military and why did i even transition so many years of active duty service at this point um after a few deployments i I loved being away sick instead of home. You know, guys get homesick.
Like, I just want to go home, man. Like, you got the Army guy with his helmet cocked back, and he's dragging ass going, I just hate this.
I've been here 13 months. I want to go home to my family.
I get it. But that's not why you're here.
You're here to do the job. And if you really love the job, you shouldn't have to go home.
Because you start to realize home is where you are. And I think that's what a lot of us tend to let happen.
Because war is a home to us. And I just had this conversation with the Marine Raiders the other day.
Because they keep getting messed with by the big Marine Corps. And I hope it changes.
And I said, you know why you guys are miserable right now? I said, because you're not at war. Because when you're at war, you don't have to worry about being disruptive.
You are, naturally. But when you come back and you're in garrison, guess what? Everybody's messing with you.
You can't have an elite unit inside of an elite unit. What's the elite unit? The United States Marine Corps itself is an elite unit.
So that's where the silent professional problem comes into play. And I think it's destroying us because these guys are afraid to speak out.
And they're afraid to play the game. And they need to just learn to play the game while in garrison so they can go back to war before they get disbanded again.
And that can happen very quickly. And SOCOM's pissed off about it.
So after I came home from my deployment there in Africa, my son, Travis Jr., at the time was about eight years old. And I remember walking into the house and going up to visit him.
And she knows I'm coming, right? I tell her, I walk in and I open the door and he's sitting there playing on the ground in the living room.

And I remember saying, hey, buddy, I'm home. And he looks at me sitting there.
He looks back at mom, looks at me again, looks back at mom and goes, mom, who's that? Holy shit. and

that I was like, shit.

And that was like taking that dagger and stabbing it into my heart.

And I, you know, you've heard me mention this love story,

the love story of the poster.

I want to be that one day.

I love that image.

And then I love becoming that image. I love sweating and being sugar-cookied on a beach with sand in places I never could possibly

I'm going to go to be that one day. I love that image.
And then I love becoming that image. I love sweating and being sugar cookied on a beach with sand in places I never could possibly imagine getting.
And I love that perseverance aspect where I'm still here and I'm not ringing that fucking bell. I'm not quitting.
I'm not DORing. I can look next to me and say, okay, you may not be here, but I'm still here because perseverance is my only mission.
And I love that. And I love becoming that image of hunting evil in the world and deploying and and i loved every second of it i loved uh being in a tyrannical war-torn shitty environment because it made me realize and appreciate what i got to come home to eventually and that's where the away sickness comes into play but i loved it too I think.
And I loved it. Still gets me a little bit.

I loved hunting people.

I loved knowing that I could make the world a better place by one five, five, six round at a time.

I loved being away so much

that I loved everything that loved me.

And I loved to leave everything that loved me.

And then I started to deal with darkness and death

Thank you. Going back to maybe the suicide if that helps people.
And when I walked in and he said that, I realized that I loved, I loved war more than I should have loved my own family.

That's not okay.

That's not okay for any man.

And so I'd go back to my unit and I'm at,

I think, fuck 12 years at this point,

maybe,

maybe.

Yeah.

Most of that time now in forced reconnaissance,

reconnaissance community.

And I tell my platoon commander,

who's the greatest platoon commander on the face of the planet still is,

in my opinion,

Andy Christian.

I said, Hey, I'm going to check out. And he's like, what? The guy that loves it so much? What the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean you're checking out? What do you mean you're leaving? What do you mean you're going to...
What? That doesn't make sense. It shocked everybody.
And I was up for a B-billet at this point in time. A B-billet is a staff position for people that don't know where I'm going to be some type of instructor of free fall school, which was my first choice.
Skydiving has been a big thing for me. Love it.
And VSW, very shallow water programs for working on some top secret programs with the Navy. Love that stuff.
I know they play with dolphins in the dolphin program the Navy has. And my mom was on, she was a trainer and on the set of Flipper when I was a kid growing up.
So she did a little bit of stuff with Busch Gardens in Florida. And I was like, mom, I might be able to get into a dolphin program and train a bunch of flippers in the Navy.
And she's like, really? That's so cool.

What are you going to be doing?

I was like, you don't want to know.

But that never happened

because this happened with my son

and I ended up getting out.

And I was like,

I don't want to go to a bee billet.

I still want to fight.

But I need to make my own schedule.

And so I was confused

in a dark, dark environment now.

And that's when we lost our first,

it was a transition time Right before I started contracting, I lost one of our teammates, killed an IED. And we had just moved to Washington, D.C., because I was working out of D.C.
And we all met at Arlington National Cemetery to send him off. And I was done at this point.
I'm like, I'm moving on. I'm going to not contract.
I'm not going to do shit. None of that's on the table.
I'm just going to start a business, and I'm going to figure it out again. Because I got to be there for my son.
Because I haven't been at all. It's been a horrible divorce, horrible relationship with mom, which is great now, thank God.
But it just, it wasn't our time. And so I sat there at Arlington, you know, and everybody's in their blues, looking sharp, Valhalla, right? It's the Warriors, Noble End.
And this is another, I guess, PTSD story that I learned a lot from, a ton, where I'm standing there and I'm like, this is why we do this, you know? And then I start looking around and I start seeing the faces of people. I start seeing the pain, the suffering, the tears, the disappointment, the anger.
And then I start to see the color guard moving in and the gun team. And something I noticed when I was a kid, every time a movie was on, a war movie, and Taps would play.
Taps is the trumpet song you'll typically hear at a funeral or at nighttime, they play taps to go to bed 2200 to remind us of that there's no victory without sacrifice in a nutshell. And every time that song would play, my dad would get up and walk out of the room every time.
And I was like, I must be going to get another beer or something. And I just kind of made this excuse for him.
And then I started to realize, and it wasn't until that moment when that tap started playing, that killed me. And I started losing my shit.
And I realized like, fuck, man, where's the nobility in this? Where's the nobility? Look at, she just had a baby while he's on deployment. And her two-year-old daughter doesn't even know dad's dead, laying there in front of him.
There's no nobility in this. Why are we doing this? Now I'm struggling with this inner fight.
Like, was it all worth it? Was this worth it? And at the end of the funeral, standing there, losing my shit again. But I'm a Marine, so you're not allowed to cry.
You're not allowed to show emotion. So I'm trying my best to hold it inside, which eventually just turns into trapped resistance, and then you suffer.
Well, one of my buddies comes over. I'll never forget this.
He comes up next to me, and I'm standing over Javier's grave, and he goes, isn't it awesome, man? He kind of hits me me and I'm standing over Pavier's grave and he goes isn't it awesome man? He kind of hits me and I'm like dude what's so fucking awesome about this? And he's like what do you mean? To know a dude that just went all the way. And I'm like okay what are you talking about brother And he goes, to know a dude that just went all the way.

Like a guy that's willing to do that is incredible.

He's like, how do you not get that?

And I'm like, I'm trying to process all this right now, dude.

Like, what are you talking about?

And he goes, dude, our fallen brother represents everything that we do,

everything that we stand for, everyone that we stand with here, and everything that we do, everything that we stand for,

everyone that we stand with here and everything that we now stand against.

And it started to click a little bit.

And he said, don't forget,

there's no difference between you and him.

He did that just like you would do that,

just like I would do that.

So don't forget who we are and what we do, all right? And I just like try to keep my shit together and he gives me a hug, walks away. And then that's when the nobility kicked in.
That's when the tears of sadness and sorrow that you'll still see in me that are tears, but they turn from sadness to sorrow to pride and honor. And that's when the nobility kicked back in and said, without sacrifice, there is no victory.
As hard as that is for people to understand in our world, everybody sacrifices something. You've sacrificed a ton, man.
You're sacrificing something right now, being here with me, when you could be doing something different. You could be with your wife or your kid.
We've all had sacrifices and sometimes they're little, sometimes they're massive. And I think they're all necessary, especially in the face of evil.
There's only one way to get through that

and that's to realize that we need men and women

that are willing to go all the way.

Because if we don't,

you're not gonna have anything.

You'll have nothing.

And that's what everybody's scared about right now

is having nothing.

So maybe we should all step up

and start thinking about this a little bit differently.

And that's all I ask people to do.

Just think differently how you think.

I'm not trying to change you.

I'm just sharing.

We're sharing our experiences and our stories

with people that are horrible, that are horrid.

Nobody likes telling them war stories.

And if they do, they're probably not true.

And so, you know, we should listen to those experiences

and listen to what other people around the world tell us.

Listen to the concept of the whole,

the 8 billion people in the world. Who are we? And what are we here to do? That's an important story.
So yeah, man, it's like these little tiny things I have, where it could be just a simple story of an experience in combat or with my kid walking home that turned into the greatest lessons of my life because it allowed me to look into a place you know so that was like i need to look into that i need to i need to figure out okay he's the most important thing right now and i still fucked it up after that you know i still wasn't the best dad wasn't there all the time um and then i transitioned all right i'll start my own company i'll start training and i do i move out to california to be with my wife because we were separated for three and a half years with two deployments between that time she was a doctor at Balboa Naval Hospital as a lieutenant commander and I was in Camp Lejeune in force recon and we did it well man we made it made it work we travel every month and see each other and I'd go out and do free fall school or you know jump packages and go meet her she'd come to me and we made it work. And then we have two beautiful kids out of it, Hayden and Hudson.
But once I got out there to California, she's like, are we finally having a family now? I was like, I think so. I think we can actually be together for once.
How did you meet her? I was in free fall jump master school and we were, I was gas lamp district, Buffalo Joe's, disco night. Everybody wore an aphroes and Ray-Bans.
She was in their dance and walks by and goes, hey, hey, what's up? Pulls me on the dance floor. We start dancing.
Loud as hell, can't hear her damn thing. This is kind of a funny story actually.
and she's like, so what? I was like, what do you do? I'm a doctor.

I'm like, okay, whatever. Nice try.
Sweating her ass off, dancing on the floor. And she's like, what do you do? I said, I'm a cook.
And I pulled the Steven Seagal thing, which that guy's another fucking story. And she's like, oh, you're a cook that likes to jump out of airplanes.
And I'm like, what are you talking about? She rolls back my tattoo, my Jack. And I was like, well, I also, I also cook.
And so then we started talking on the phone and she's like, why don't you come out next weekend? I got a good feeling about you. And so we went diving and did some, she was working up on a marathon.
So I ran 19 miles with her and I was like, yeah, I can do that. And next thing you know, she's like, hey, you want to come back again next weekend and you can stay with me.
And I've got four roommates. One of them's in the Navy as a lieutenant and the other one's a barkeeper or something else.
So I go there and I open up her closet to put my clothes to hang them up and I see Navy uniforms. And I'm like, so why is your, and I thought it was her roommate's uniforms.
And then I saw the female rank Lieutenant Commander or Lieutenant at the time. I'm sorry.
And I was like, Jen, please tell me these aren't uniforms. And please tell me for the last two weeks, you haven't told me that you were in the United States Navy.
And she's like, what does it matter? She goes, I'm a doctor. You know how Naval docs are, right? Don't even know how to put the ribbons and the rank on their uniforms.
They're wearing scrubs all day. I was like, Jen, this can't happen.
This isn't, this isn't a thing that we can do. She goes, I don't care.
She goes, and we're on different coasts. We'll figure it out.
So we dated long distance for years. And, and then eventually we ended up getting married and had two kids and just worked out.
And then she got out of the Navy as a commander at 16 years and started her own practice and dermatology became very successful. And then I was working and started contracting.
And that's what happened when I went to San Diego, finally, I'm sitting there. I got my toes dug into the beach, man.
I'm like, am I finally going to have a break in my life, which is going to be weird for me? Damn phone rings. And it's one of the project managers at Blackwater.
This is two weeks I'm out in California. And I'm like transitioned my entire life to be with her.
My son's in Pennsylvania. I'm trying to figure out how to see him more.
And I get this call. Hey, Trav, what's up, man? My name is so-and-so from Blackwater.
I was like, Blackwater, the contracting company? It's brand new at the time. It's 2004.
And I was like, yeah, hey, man, we heard you're out. I'm like, how old do you guys know I'm out? Like, hey, word travels fast when the operators get out.
We got an opportunity for you. How would you like to be back at Moyoc and be here in a week from now? I'd like to get you back into Baghdad in two weeks.
And I'm like, what? Now, I'm jonesing. I'm hurting, and I don't know what to do with my life, but I want to fight.
I want to go back. But family's messing with me at this point.
And he's like, look, we'd like to ask you to be on Ambassador Bremer's personal detail. He's the most high threat PSD principal in all PSD history.
And out of even every US president combined.

And he needs good hitters

to be on his team

and we'd like you to come out

and try out.

I was like,

yeah, man, I'm honored.

Thanks for the call.

What do you want me to do?

Hey, we'll have tickets for you

in a week or two.

Just be on standby.

Roger that.

I hang up and she walks up.

She's like, hey, who was that?

And I'm like, oh, fuck.

And I just couldn't stop

making those decisions.

And I know I'd hurt and went right back to Iraq two weeks later. And so I was on the Bremer detail with Blackwater.
Started doing a lot of surveillance work for the Blackwater teams on the advanced side, even though I was on his detail as a gunfighter. How many people were on his detail? Oh, shit, man.
It was... I want to say, I could probably be corrected here by a 10 or 20.
I know there was 52 people at the time when I was there approximately for his advance team, just the advance. Now, that didn't include the entire company of military police and strikers and humvees that didn't include these like all the civic iraqi forces that we oh it was a full-on mission profile it was holy shit i didn't realize it was that big three little bird helicopters that were directly attached to him and him only unless they could be tasked out which we got tasked out to a lot of things but that was primary he had priority all the time um not including the advanced team.
The advanced team would be about 20 dudes at a time. And then we had another 20 and we were rotating constantly because this dude was like the energizer bunny, man.
He would plug himself in at night or four. He'd come home at four, say like midnight, and he would wake up at four in the morning.
He'd walk in reading into his villa. He'd come out reading out of his villa.
He'd plug himself in, keep going all day and all night.

And we're just like, man, we can't keep up with this dude.

And what else?

And then QRF teams on top of that.

And then that grew even bigger after I left.

So air support, ground support, you name it, we had it all.

Probably one of the coolest PSD details I've ever seen in my life um everybody was a hitter everybody was former special operations until standards started dropping and then as you know you know clown show started to happen at that time um i was on the detail and then they asked me to come over to the air side say hey who's a who's a surveillance guy here i said well i'm rec I'm ReCondo. And they're like, you know how to run a camera? I'm like, yeah, dude, come on.
So I went up in the bird, started doing a lot of intel work. And they said, hey, would you mind, you know, because you're working all day and then you're going up on the birds at night, whenever you got a chance, why don't you just transition to the bird team if you don't mind? I know you like being on the details.
Like, you may not have to ride around and get smashed by IEDs all day. I can look down instead of look up.
Yeah, absolutely. I love aerial platform stuff.
And so I ended up kind of working and developing the program of instruction for Blackwater. I did all the videos that went back to Eric and said, hey, we got a guy in country that can video, film, and edit.
So that way when a new gun guy comes on board the team, I can say, watch this video. Here's how this works.
Here's how we pick up the package. Here's how we drop the package.
Here's how we work venues. Here's how we do inner and outer concentric rings of security and blah, blah, blah.
I filmed this whole thing and then started working on innovations. Now I'm working on saw mounts for the helicopters and it was a perfect match.
So I loved being on the Little Birds and that's when Najafaf happened in April 3rd. So Najaf is a very historic event, and this year is the 20th anniversary, correct? Yeah, it is.
So I really want to document this piece of history. So if you could be as descriptive as possible i'll do my best i would

appreciate it yeah and we're still trying to pick up the pieces i know me and the team leader uh for the najaf team just got together did a podcast on our our channel on the bridge and um and him and i were comparing information back and forth of what happened up north in baghdad versus what happened down in Najaf.

So, I'm

on... of what happened up north in Baghdad versus what happened down in Najaf.
So I'm on detail. I'm on office watch at the time.
So when he's working at his desk, somebody's standing in that room at all times, just like super service. And you're hearing every conversation that he has with Rumsfeld, the president, you know, Colin Powell, Connelly's rights, everybody's walking out of the office every day if they're there in country, which was pretty frequent.
And I'm hearing all the red phone conversations. And so we started getting word of shit happening down in Najaf.
And so I start hearing the traffic going back and forth on the radio. And then I start hearing Bremermer talking on the phone.
A Sanchez, General Sanchez, the time, the coalition commander. Not well liked at the time by a lot of the staff and everybody from what I was hearing.
So he comes in. Sanchez, what's going on down in Najaf? It's not a big deal, sir.
We're starting to evacuate people. We're good.
Everybody's moving from Camp Golf back to Camp Echo. Might have that mixed back and forth, but that was in the Najaf teams.
And the camps are about 20 clicks away from each other. So when they started taking the heat from Qadr al-Sadr's Mahdi army, they started pushing forces back.
Now, at the time, we knew there was a Spanish company of troops that were on the ground. They had LAV-25s, not necessarily like our LAVs, but they had 25-millimeter Bushmaster chain guns on them.
They had, I think there was about 100 Spaniards there. There was a small contingent platoon size of El Salvadorians who were savage.
and then a small Blackwater team protecting Phil Cosnett,

who was the CPA official. That was their principal, and that's what white boy, call sign white boy, and his team were protecting.
We think Phil was on the agency side of the house as well with some stuff that was going on out in town. There was some, I heard of a failed agency hit.
I don't know any details about that. I'd love to hear more about that.
If anybody knows, I'm sure nobody's going to talk about it, but it was just like, it's like, what's going on? And then they had local police chiefs out in town that were trying to be, you know, trying to be loyal to the U.S. coalition, but at the same time, McFutter Al-Sadr said, hey, you'll be loyal to us.
We're going to kill your police officers. And so that few nights before, I remember, I think White Boy says it in my podcast, but they had this big, giant meeting with Phil Koss and everybody in this town hall and the police chiefs and everybody there, the Iraqi police.
And they say, hey, you have to show loyalty to the coalition. If you do, we'll help you.
We'll support you. We'll push these people out.
And so apparently that chief stands up and goes, you have my loyalty. I will be faithful to the coalition.
And they all drive out. Chief gets in his car, drives out, assassinated as soon as he drops out and goes outside.
i think that was kind of the big from what i understand muqtadar al-sadar kind of the icing on the cake for him and he says you know what fuck this coalition provisional authority take it down i want it at this time it was uh i forget that thing where everybody's kind of migrating into najaf because it's the golden the golden mosque is in naj. It's the most holy city in the entire world besides Mecca for the, for the Islam, for the Muslims.
And so there's just people walking all over the place, all over the country, man. As we're flying down, there's like thousands of people on the roads just walking towards Najaf to pray.
And so now you, you just like our border, right? You invite all the assholes along with the people going to pray to fight the infidel. And so McTadr built an army of 10,000 mighty army in the city of Najaf.
So a lot of people don't realize Najaf, the battle where the Marines go in, is bigger than Fallujah. And we just had the recent anniversary for Fallujah, but Najaf was a bigger offensive than Fallujah was.
I did not realize that. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that because it was nasty.
It was rough. I think Fallujah was more systemized and organized.
You had General Mattis pushing through and his big speeches that kind of make it kind of prominent in history. And we lost a lot of people in both.
I think we lost more in Fallujah, but Najaf was a very complicated situation.

And we weren't a part of the big phase. We were the initial.
So I think the reason why they also then pushed into Najaf afterwards is because, and Fallujah, because, you know, Jerry and the guys were just hung on the bridge a few days before all of this. And that stimulated a bunch of people, especially us.
And because I actually took Jerry's hookup down that morning and the Little Birds and transported him down to his new position, dropped him off. The next day they were ambushed and killed and hung from the bridge.
So all of us were like, man, we were just hanging out with this guy. That's fucked up what happened.
Let's get some revenge. And that could be a problem.
So I think everybody went after, as soon as the Namati Army kicked it off and started attacking the CPA that day on, I believe that started April 3rd, all of us were like, let's get it on. Let's go down there and mess these dudes up.
And of course, contractors have to be reminded from time to time that, look, you fall under the Geneva Convention, you're not allowed to offensively engage in combat operations. If you do, it's against the Geneva Convention.

So pump the brakes, hoss.

And that was the big conflict with us in the U.S. military.

Everybody wants to shoot everybody until it's time to read your ROEs

and your rules of engagement in the Geneva Convention.

So this stuff all starts popping off, and now they're trying to –

I think that they were trying to kill Phil specifically and take that compound down. The Spanish start pumping 25-millimeter, the chain guns, when the initiation starts.
I think it was daisy chain. I think they drove an IED in, popped it off, drove another one, popped the next one off, which is what an IED daisy chain is, killed some people.
And then that's when the Spaniards started going to work to push the first phase back. The El Salvadorians started running around clearing houses and buildings and pushing people back.
Blackwater dudes went into defense mode. And then the Spanish Prime Minister of Spain then said, shut it down, cease fire.
Not one Spanish troop will fire a shot in Iraq, and if you do, you'll be court-martialed. We are pulling out of Iraq.
We're negotiating with terrorists because the Madrid bombing had just happened. And instead of them saying, look you, they said, no, we're going to pull out.
So we even had a Spanish sniper with a .50 Cal Barrett on the rooftop that day, and we had him smash a dude at 800 meters with a RPG.

Takes him out.

The Colonel, Colonel Cole,

the Spanish coalition commander,

personally goes up the rooftop,

grabs his ass and pulls him off the roof

and takes his 50.

Are you serious?

And we heard he was court-martialed for that.

Yeah.

And I'm trying to grab the 50

and they're like, yeah, no, that didn't happen.

So they took all the weapon systems.

We couldn't shoot.

These guys are sitting in their tanks, buttoned up while all this shit's happening and nobody's firing around now in the beginning they did but they were they were shut down um so now and i'm not there at this point in time right we're still up in baghdad getting all this information back bremer gets pissed off here's another phone call kind of scratchy comms coming in from white boy, Chris, down in Najaf. And he's very broken, unreadable, but you could hear him say, hey, we're not going to make it through the night.
And those were the words that we all heard on the radio. And so we're like, holy shit, we got to get down there, man.
Bremer calls Sanchez back in. Sir, they're a bunch of fucking contractors.
They don't know what they're talking about. listening to them they're mercs now you don't tell them i'm still a freaking staff and ceo in the marine corps i'm in i'm in force so i stayed in the reserves through this process as well so i was out uh had a platoon in in hawaii for force recon and because that's where she moved to we would move to hawaii after dc and'm like, I'm not a merc, man.
I'm just making my own schedule right now. I'm still wearing an American flag just like you are there, Sanchez.
And so that was pretty disappointing because, you know, white boy is a former freaking retired Navy SEAL. And most all the dudes on his team were hitters.
And so and so we're all, I'm standing around Delta guys all day long, SF dudes, SEALs, Force Recon Marines and Rangers. And it's like, you're calling us a bunch of mercs.
Like, no, we were, we have the same heart that you do right now. We're in this for the same exact reason.
Um, you know, mercenary definition, cause people still get this wrong. This is a derogatory term to call us mercs, because a mercenary is somebody that only does it for their own monetary gain, their own ego, their own gains out of it.
Where the contractor is still in it for the same reasons that we would all be in it as Americans in a coalition. So he's like, and he screams back to Sanchez, they get in this fight.
And I saw, I remember he even balled up his fists a couple of times. And I'm like, this is going to be the best office watch I've ever been on in my life.
So he leaves after this fight and he says, hey, call your boss in here. I said, roger that, sir.
I said, Frank, you need to come up to the office. Frank comes up.
Hey, have you heard from white boy? We're getting broken comms, sir. He goes, last year we heard is they're not going to make it through the night.
He goes, they're starting to get wired in or dialed in with mortars. And Spaniards are shut down.
Nobody's firing a shot. And he's like, why are the Spaniards? And he's like, oh yeah, they think about the Spanish situation.
And they're like, they need help. They need help now.
And big army has denied all medevacs. And they have one army captain that's now shot.
And because there was a small contingent of US military there on that post as well. The Marines that were there, there was a handful of Marines.
They were, I think, mostly, they call it defense systems messaging analysts or something. So they're doing like server stuff and sending out comms and making sure all that.
They were just checking in on the servers and the antennas to make sure, I guess, everything was working that they weren't even basing nudge up they were just popping into the and popping back out a couple army people um not sure what they were doing there um one female army that was scared to death um even made a derogatory comment about her in a video that I did in the 10 year anniversary video 10 years ago. Cause she was screaming, what are you shooting at? You're shooting women and children.
And I remember turning around saying, look, if you're not going to be part of the solution, you're a part of the fucking problem. If you want to go downstairs and being raped and freaking killed by insurgents that are about to come in and take us all out, you can go do that.
Or you can sit there and shut your mouth. And I don't have time for that.
And I was a different man back then. Wasn't as compassionate as I am now or didn't know how to find it maybe.
And she killed herself that day on the 10-year anniversary. And that bugged me.
And that's the only situation she was ever in, in her life. She just happened to be there in this worst case scenario, this Alamo situation.
And it devastated her to the point where she left her own child behind and committed suicide on the 10 year anniversary. And man, that was maybe one.
And I was about to go back and delete that whole video. I said, no, I'm gonna leave that up as a reminder for me of that.
You never know what people are going through in their lives. And you don't have to have some resume that you're some badass with 14 combat deployments or 20 combat deployments or three, whatever it is, that you have more value over somebody else that's hurting.
Like, that's not okay. So I left it up and still to this day.
So that's the kind of people that were there and then you had us up in baghdad would it bother you if i overlay that video on this oh even the chick on the roof that was running around yelling what are you shooting at what are you shooting at like i told you on the that day shut the fuck up no i mean it's out right i mean i'm i'm i'm vulnerably speaking about it um because i fucked up i i feel you know most people like hey she didn't know any better you didn't know any better it's just it was that time yeah we were young and dumb um and it hurts that that uh i felt like it added to her pain maybe when maybe i shouldn have done that. Maybe I should have went up to her and said, hey, it's going to be okay.
We're here, okay? And we'll tell you what to do if you have any issues, like I would now. Like if I went into a hostage situation and there was somebody crying and women were tied up, I wouldn't go, hey, fucking suck it up, buttercup.
You know what I mean? Like that's what the military put into me and I don't like that. And so I would obviously be more calm and compassionate and say, hey, you're gonna be okay.
All right, if you need anything, just let us know, but keep quiet. Let us know if you see anything and we're gonna take care of this and we're not hurting anybody, that's good.
Okay, we're only hurting bad people. And then go back.
I wish I could have had that conversation. And so, yeah, I think that's history, man.
And even though sometimes it hurts to think about it, our past is only something that we now simply know. That's all it is.
And so, yeah, I wouldn't have any problem with that because it's another reminder for me to continue to be living off of my first trait, the warrior trait, which I believe is compassion, like I said earlier. And the second trait of a warrior is being vulnerable, having the courage to be imperfect.
And so, yeah, that's why I left it up because I realized that that wasn't the right thing to say in the moment. So like if my son or anybody else is in that situation again, and somebody's hurting and somebody's screaming and somebody's suffering and they feel like they're going to die, you might not want to tell them to shut the fuck up.

You might want to be there for them

in any capacity that you think is appropriate

based on the situation, of course.

Could you have been there for her?

I don't know.

Considering the circumstances?

I think I could have spoke differently to her.

I could have.

I mean, how many combatants are you guys engaging at any particular moment in time on that day? Well, it would be between onesies, twosies with RPGs up to about 50 people running down the street at one time. It was probably some of the bigger groups.
And then mortar teams setting in on buildings. But there was about a...
So I met a... of this question, I met a guy in DC one night I was up there working.
I was at a hotel and I walk outside and this guy's smoking a cigar and I'm making a phone call. And I said, hey man, how's it going? He's like, good.
He's like, hey, who'd you serve with? And I'm like, what? And he's like, who'd you serve with? I said, I was a Marine. He's like, oh yeah, I was Air Force.
I was like, oh, okay. Where'd you serve? I said, well, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, you know, Balkans.
And he's like, he's like, where'd Iraq? I said, well, all over the place, man, from Baghdad to Mosul to everywhere between Ramadi, Chakrit, Najaf. He's like, where Najaf? I said, well, he just went.
I was like, April 4th, 2004. You may I 2004 you may have heard about the big he's like dude i was flying swordies that day i'm a viper pilot and i'm like whoa what wow and he's like yeah he goes that shit was insane and i'm like what did you see because now i'm like really interested what he saw because we see what we see and you can't see from a 20 000 foot perspective he's like bro he goes i remember getting on comm saying you have at least a thousand insurgents running on you at any given time.

And I'm like, was it that many?

He's like, oh man, I could see it all.

He goes, I don't know how you guys made it out of that.

He goes, that was the, and this has been told,

that was the biggest insurgent assault in the history

of the war, in the Iraq war.

Because they were just massively being pushed at us,

pushed at us, pushed at us.

For Fallujah, they were hiding like cockroaches inside the buildings. We had to go and hunt them.
This was an actual assault where that didn't happen a whole lot on the insurgency side of the house. The reason I'm asking that question is I want to paint a whole picture of what that scenario looked like when you were talking to that woman.

The next day, U.S. Army said

there was 374 dead insurgents in the street.

374 dead insurgents.

Yeah.

So, and I don't mind that.

I wish it was more.

I really do.

I shot almost 800 rounds of Mark 262, 77 green out of a sniper rifle in two days um and i was the only guy who had a sniper rifle out of just chance i i remember going to the ready room because i remember 800 rounds it was two it was almost four total loadouts man i grabbing mags. Guys were throwing me mags nonstop.
Because I was a guy that could see more than anybody else because everybody had Mark 18s or shorty 10 and a half inch guns and aim points on them. So they couldn't peek in windows.
Nobody had any binos. Nobody had shit.
And I was weird. I'm in my office watch.
Again, Bremert calls Frank in. Hey, what's going on? Hey, look, I'm making a big risk here, Frank.
From what I remember the conversation, he's like, I am authorizing you by any means necessary to go down and get my man out of there and get your team out of there. And he's like, sir, what do you mean by any means necessary? He's like, you know what I mean? He goes, I will cover you guys under the Geneva Convention.
I will write some type of order, whatever it was, that will temporarily authorize you to offensively engage if you have to, to get our people out. And we're like, whoa, what? And I've never found that order or anything, but we're like, and Frank looks over, he's like, you ready? I said, you ain't gonna ask me twice, boss.
Hauled ass back, went to the airfield uh sprinted across the airfields like get it up get ready and ran back across over to the cross the the palace went through our ready room grabbed the weapons started kitting out and grab as much shit as we could grab my m4 grab an mp5 that i i bought in a fucking gas station for 70 bucks because we had to buy a lot of our own weapons in the first phase. A lot of people don't realize that the contract, because the state wasn't able to get guns over to us yet.
So some of the early contracts, like if you were on an off-site, you had to buy shit. So I like guns.
Saw an HK. I'm like, 70 bucks? All right.
I talked him down from 150. and got a case of beer from a gas station guy that you know they had the beer hidden behind because they weren't allowed to have alcohol um and so anyways i take that thing um because i always carried the bird with me as a secondary weapon to my m4 and a saw so i have the saw on the bird all the time that was my primary weapon system and i remember looking down the sniper rifle and going, and I remember talking to my partner who was a counter sniper on the team that I would share in and out when I wasn't on the birds.
And I was like, you think I should take that? And he's like, maybe. I said, I'm taking it.
And I grab it. And he's like, hey, hey, here's the dope, man.
Here's the dope. Because I never shot this gun, right? I would sit on it as a counter sniper in the stadiums and stuff and rooftops, but I never shot it he would zero the gun before i got there and he said yeah it's got 100 yards zero and here's your dope i'm like well how do you know what your dope is at 800 yards when you can't shoot 800 yards in the green zone because there's no range that can support that we're guessing with with ballistics and you know what we do back then so that's why in the video you can even see me if you look upwater Styper video, you can see me turning the dials on that Leupold, like, what the fuck? And you see me turn it back, and eventually I'm like, fuck it.
Just zero it out, go mill dots only. And I'm like, why am I trying to dial right now? Because he gave me dial numbers, not mill dot numbers.
So I'm sitting there trying to figure that out in combat, which is a whole other story that I shared on my classes now and why I push precision so hard with our carbines or like I just got done teaching our first sniper class or precision rifle class, not sniper class. Um, that will be next and field craft urban stuff.
And it's like, no, we dope these guns because I've learned the hard way. I grabbed a rifle that was a shared counter sniper rifle 556 20 inch barrel lewipold mark 4 scope on it dmr trigger and took it into a battle space and had to zero the gun in combat i don't know where the hell my rounds are hitting um and so i get there we let we we actually back up a little bit we, Hacksaw, who is my pilot, who actually just called me recently.
And I just finally got a voice. I haven't talked to him in 20 years since I left the roof with him.
And I was like, holy shit. Like all these guys are coming back out now and calling.
So I can't wait to get, as soon as I get done with this, I'm gonna call him up and give him some love, man. Greatest pilot in the world, 160th guy, was one of the lead Blackhawk, or Blackhawk down Mogadishu, Little Bird drivers.
Greatest pilot in the fucking world. Anybody would say that about this guy.
We go over, he does the full mission briefing. Everybody's trying to figure out what to do.
And we go and we haul ass 100 knots, 100 feet, as fast as we could get in. So we land in Babylon first.
So there's a fuel air supply resupply there. We land, we shut down the birds for a minute.
We're all kind of stoic and quiet because we kind of know what we're getting ourselves. We think we know what we're getting ourselves into, but nobody knows what to really say.
And all of a sudden two gunships come in um steve goes oh shit these guys look like they're coming from the west from the jaf so the apaches land he goes over the patchy pilots get out they're like dude steve what's up man he knew one of the guys and uh he's like hey man we're going in nausea he's like whoa he goes we just got called out of nausea off and he's like what He's like, yeah, it's too hot. They called us out.
I was like, so when the fuck do Apaches get called out when it's hot? Like, we need you in there right now. Our guys aren't going to make it through the night.
He's like, yeah, it's something weird. We got Vipers on station right now dropping an ordinance, but we don't know what's happening.
We just got called off mission. And like, well, why were you called? Nobody could answer the question.
So now I'm thinking, okay, is Big army doing something here? This is why they've called this the Benghazi of Iraq, because there's some weird shit behind it that nobody really knows still to this day. And I'm not trying to open a can of worms.
I'm just trying to talk about the history of these. It's interesting.
It's just interesting, right? It's just interesting. And so he's like, give me those freaks to the vipers.
He's like, Steve, you know, I can't do that, man. You guys are contractors.
So he brings back what was supposed freaks and they never worked. And Steve goes, Hey, everybody come here.
He goes, I need y'all to understand that this is a volunteer mission and something happens. It's a volunteer mission, okay?

There's no guarantees on this one.

Anybody want to step back right now and stay here,

nobody's going to hold it against you.

And, dude, everybody was just kind of –

I think we looked around at each other to, like,

I fucking dare somebody to say that.

I dare somebody to step back, you know?

And, of course, nobody did.

We spun up, got off the deck 18 miles ripping as far hard as fast as we could we come in trying to get air comms with the vipers nothing um we're on final coming into the buildings we kind of do a loop around checking everything out we're like wow this shit's on fire there's stuff you know i could see what i thought was bodies laying down the road um i see the guys on the roof waving at us like like crazy and then all of a sudden i hear the whole freaking aircraft just goes and it shakes like it was getting like i thought we were going out of the sky. Worst turbulence I ever felt.

And I'm hanging out the side of this thing.

And I'm like, what the fuck?

And Steve's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what was that?

And the bird's like pitching and rolling.

And I was like, I don't know, I don't know.

So I checked tail rotor.

I checked everything.

I'm looking up.

I'm like, we look fine, Steve.

I don't know.

I can't see anything.

And I look out and this building's just going,

mushroom cloud coming up about 500 meters from us. And it was viper drop of a fucking jdm on a mortar position and uh from an anglico marine anglico team apparently that was calling for calling fires missions while we were trying to come in and we thought we got hit by an rpg or something so we gained stability we're okay we come in like we got to shut down now man we got air dropping out of the sky we don't be flying around this place and doing because we were going to come in just do some gun runs drop some supplies um and see what's going on and then fly back out well steve's like making an audible guys we're going in we're landing and see what's going on so we all land in this courtyard that was you know i mean like if you could fit scale down helicopters and put them in this room two foot off of each wall two foot off of each rotor blade it was super tight we were sitting there these guys were phenomenal pilots so we get out and then guys come up to us holy shit man thanks you guys coming and supporting us man holy shit we need to get on get on the roof get fighting we're gonna tell you what's going on here and we're like like, well, what are we doing? They're like, you ain't flying, it's too hot.

So then Ben Thomas,

who ends up being kind of my quasi spotter that day,

former SEAL, he says, dude, is that a sniper rifle?

I'm like, yeah.

He's like, thank God you brought that,

bring it to the roof.

We don't have any of that here.

So I haul ass to take my crew helmet off, put my hat on backwards, grab my load out

and haul ass up to the roof. went to work and just started identifying things and the biggest thing i identified when i started shooting at people um was this fucking gun is not doped and this is not a good thing so i started saying hey ben hey see the the t barrier the t wall uh i said hey i'm gonna shoot it what how far is this is about 100 105 meters i'm like i shoot hit he's like okay you're about an inch high i was like all right well that's an inch high at 100 so the gun's not zeroed for me now and then i start working out and we start building a range card and then also i'm like hey contact left we'd start shooting and i'd come back and then i'd start doping the gun again.
And I had to literally build a dope car in a range in a fucking gunfight in the

biggest insurgent attack of the war.

One of my biggest lessons there is zero your damn gun.

More importantly,

zero yourself first in order to be able to zero your gun.

That's kind of a saying we say in our training classes.

Cause you can have a zero gun,

but if you're not zeroed,

you're not gonna be thinking right.

So now I'm trying to figure things out.

I finally start figuring it out.

Start taking dudes out.

One guy on my podcast,

there's a footage of a guy with an RPG

getting into position,

which is real footage.

It's the first time I saw this.

There was a French reporter

embedded with the Monat Madi army,

the insurgents,

and he was documenting

what they were doing against us.

And yeah, lots of freelance reporters was running around Battlefield doing that. And it was about 10 years ago.
You had that reporter on your podcast? No, his footage from that day that he was filming the insurgents shooting back at us. We found that footage 10 years later.
I wonder if you could find that fucking guy. So it's been taken off the internet, but I have the piece of footage.
I'll show it to you. And it's a document about a 21-year-old guy that travels from Europe to fight the infidel.
Goes all the way to Iraq, travels, gets to the Holy City, is recruited by Muqtadr al-Sadr's Mahdi army. And the first thing he does is they give him an RPG and they say, go shoot at the American sniper.
That was me. And you can see that on the subtitles and everything.
And I remember the shot like it was yesterday. It was about 320 meters and yards actually back then.
He crosses a street. I see a glimpse and I start scanning over that way.
And I say, hey man, I think somebody's got RPG walking out. And then he pops his head up for a second behind this tin shed thing.
And as soon as he pops his head up, so I dumped right there right on and so um and 10 years later i find this documentary about this kid that traveled all the way from europe to try to kill us or the american sniper which was me um wow dude had no idea what he was fighting for you know imagine his family his parents who knows i mean yeah he's an insurgent so i'm sure people have to well fuck that guy like no it's still somebody's son it's it's still somebody that was corrupted somebody that was coerced into evil somebody that made a decision to go and fight somebody else because a common enemy intimacy um and and that bothered me for a little while when you when you see that footage it's like i I't have any hesitations and i wouldn't have not if that happened again with and if i knew that it'd still shoot his ass it wouldn't have stopped me from shooting but it's like that's war that's how fucked up it is man gotta even know how to fire an rpg and uh and so that's the kind of scenarios that were happening and um farthest shot that day was 720 meters um with a 5.. That's my next lesson.
I was like, I never shot a 5.56 past 500. Marine Corps boot camp, man, that's it.
That's the limitations of that weapon system. Just like if you're a sniper in the Marines or Army, they'll tell you back then 1,000 yards, that's the limitation in the sniper system, so I'll shoot past that.
Like, dude, if we knew an eighth of what we know now back then, we'd have killed so many more people. So now I'm trying to dope a 5.56 out to 800 yards and hit guys with rockets and stuff.
So yeah, they were coming down pretty hard and fast. One of the coolest stories from that day was a couple of people got shot.
But there was one, I have this knife story. It's a resilient story about sharpening your knife.
A lot of people watch my videos and hear me say, hey, stay sharp. Because I always say, hey, stay sharp, be safe, and die free.
And they mean something. Be safe, well, it means don't be risk adverse.
It means do dangerous shit carefully, like JP says. Being sharp means that knife, it's not useful unless it's sharp.
And so if you gave a knife emotions and put it in a grinder, it would hurt. And I think that's the problem with Americans or people in general in the world is that they're afraid to sharpen themselves because it hurts.
And this one guy, this Spanish airborne dude that was part of the Spanish contingency there, I can't remember his name, Tabata or something like that, I forget. He's getting attacked with his squad by the insurgency that broke through the gate.
They're down below in these outbuildings and they're going at it with these dudes. all of them run out of ammo um his best friend shot and killed right in front of him he's got a bunch of his buddies that are on the ground hurting and all of a sudden like eight insurgents come down the wall he's out of ammo he pulls out if you look up nazoff buck knife spanish soldier you'll see him standing there with his bloody knife in his hand hand.
And I use it as a big presentation when I'm doing my leadership and resilience presentations. And he's sitting there with a big shit-eating grin on his face with this bloody old-timer buck knife.
I think it was a buck. And the wood didn't handle with the gold.
Oh, I know. I know what you're talking about.
We all grew up with them. And the insurgents come in dude just starts stabbing these guys man stabs them as many as he can to where they all run away and they didn't fire a shot and saved his buddy's lives um so he got i think the medal of valor or something when he got back to to to spain um i'm sorry jeez i'm sorry i think he was an el salvadorian not spander he was al sal um those guys were phenomenal they were clearing out we had a sniper in the hospital that was shooting at us um who hit corporal young one of the marines who turned into an infantry marine really quick we gave him a saw and said hey go to town um then he was running up and downstairs and delivering water and food and getting more.
And I even had him go get some oil from a Humvee. I said, hey man, my gun's drying up, dude.
Like nobody had oil. That's another funny thing.
I'm like, looking back on these after actions, I go, you see all the dudes in Vietnam with a little oil thing and they're banned in their helmet and you laugh at it. I was like, does anybody got any oil? Like nobody had any oil.
I mean, guns are seasoned up guys. So that's where I come in as always been the resourceful guy on a team when you're out of resources hey go drain one of the differentials on a humvee or on a tank and give me some oil and bring us a fucking pan of oil up here so i was down downstairs i ran down to wash my face and got some oil dipped it did bolts in it and freaking went back up to the roof so like those are lessons that you should know you should know those.
So in the event that you're in a shitty situation like that, you ain't going to go, well, my gun's dry. I guess I'm down.
No, you fix it. You fix

the problem as fast as you can. It's a risk formula.
What do I need to do right now? What's

the risk I'm going to take? What's the resources I have available? And that'll equal my decision

and action. And if I can keep that going in my life, I can make a decision for my kids,

my business, my family in combat. And it's a simple formula.
It's a condensed OODA loop formula. So we had one guy get shot in the eye, concrete splash from the sniper.
If I remember right, army captain got hit through the arm. One of the L-Sals got hit through the mouth with an AK and blew his mouth out.
And it's blood. You'll see pictures of blood all over the roof.
That's from him. They're dragging him out and blood squirting everywhere.
And then Corporal Young gets hit while he's shooting on the saw. And this guy was a Kentucky boy.
I'm still trying to reach out to you, man. So if you see this, reach out to me.
I always want to make sure he happened next was you know i got a marine next to me now brotherhood right um losing consciousness not doing well but then still fighting he'd get back on the gun he'd still keep fighting this guy was a savage um a defense systems messenger by the way not a combat ranking or a combat i'm always got from what i understood and he fought fought like a dog that day, man. He did well.
And more importantly, supported everybody else to the point where he started losing consciousness, medevacs all denied, all denied. What do you mean denied? Why? We have fucking US military personnel that are shot and need to be medevaced immediately, negative, denied.
Like what the fuck's going on, man? That's the weird thing. Like there was times where it wasn't that hot at all they could have easily came in when he had lulls in battle and so i go to steve and i'm like hey man how can we get this dude out of here we're running low on ammo running low on food chow which doesn't really matter at this point but we need more ordinance we need some shit and we need to get these guys out of here and he's like well he goes i don't know what's going on but this is weird he goes i've never seen medevacs denied like this um i said what if we fly his ass back and go get more supplies and come right back and he's like what do you mean i said me and you jump on our bird put his ass strap him down the front, fly his ass back to the cast, drop him off, hop over the pad, which is right next door, reload, refit, and me and you fly right back down.
He said, Travis, if I get shot, we're dead. I said, I understand that I'll take left side and support you and protect you best I can.
And he goes, we're doing it. So me and Steve single-handedly loaded Young up the front seat, strapped him down.
We booked out of there as fast as we could, went back, dropped him off. I threw his ass on the stretcher with all the medics that came out, and Pat Amon Chess said, you're going to be good, brother? And he had a round that went through his shoulder and into his i think his upper i think his upper quad in his lung because he was he was starting to get really drainy sounding um and we didn't know what kind of internal internal damage he had or anything his shoulder swole up like this big so uh he gave me a thumbs up they pushed him away the cast went over to the pad all the blackwater guys were ready, feeding us with shit.
Right back down at Najaf, went right back to work. Wow.
And Corporal Young, from what I heard, got the Silver Star for that, for his actions in Najaf. I don't know if that was downgraded to a Bronze Star, but he was up for the Silver Star that day.
i think the anglico commanders put him in for that um and went back started pushing people back sfoda started coming in and started controlling the area and then all of a sudden we find out general sanchez is on his way down and we can now leave and so he came in and did a big dog and pony show on the rooftop and made it sound like he stopped the the warrenage off that air coming in and like this big dog and pony thing who is this general sanchez the coalition commander at the time in 2004 and stood on that rooftop in a big like uh kind of apoplex now stance on the rooftop saying we did this are you fucking kidding me yeah fucking pissed a lot of us off um and again general sanchez i don't want to be judgmental because i don't know what he was going through i don't know what bremer was going through because both of them are talked badly about a lot of people talk shit about bremer and i didn't see nothing but him trying to do the best job he could i saw him constantly frustrated on office watch talking to bush or romsville would be screaming at him through the phone he's like and i always wanted to go like you're right sir but obviously i can't do that and but you could tell he was dealing with a lot of shit a lot of moral decisions he had to make that i think he didn't like the decisions that he had to make um and then of course sanchez coming in i mean all you got to do is say hey they're fucking contractors sir don't Don't listen to them. You realize who the team leader of that team is, right? That dude ain't a fucking mercenary.
He's a savage former Navy SEAL. And look at all of us on this team that have been protecting Bremmer's ass and taking care of your army guys when they're out needing help.
They'll come to us because they're afraid to go to you because every time they'd ask for air support from the Apaches, the Apaches weren't authorized with their ROEs to engage they'd come over to our pad and say hey can you guys fly for support first we'd have military police guys going out trying to find bomb builders and stuff that were like they were making arrests in in town with special operations they'd have us fly consensual ring security for them um because the apaches weren't authorized to engage on certain people. So we were doing barter trades with operational resources to help the Army, and then they could help us, because we wouldn't get ammo and stuff sometimes.
So I would go, hey, we'll do a mission for you as long as you guys can find us some linked 556. We can't get any linked tracer 556.
So I would be bargaining and making equipment and using their machines and stuff to do it, and I was just always the tinker. So we made the program work.
But that guy was always a thorn at everybody's side. So again, I don't know who was bad in that situation because somebody was.
Somebody was making bad decisions that day. Luckily, more people didn't die because they should have.
If you think about how big that insurgency was um pretty fortunate you

know to keep those people back so i took targets 300 and beyond everybody else took targets inside of that um and i think we started pushing those guys back to where mctotter finally decided i guess we can't take the cpa today because we're losing too many people and then we pulled out big army comes in and goes we got it now and then never talks about it and then redacts all the stories in people's books and everything else.

You know, I didn't think that was really cool even some of my friends like you know we've talked about you know friends of mine that i was on mission with will will tell me hey shut your mouth about this none of that happened i'm like well it did it was just another mission in our lives another gunfight because i mean i've got almost 14 trips and combat tours. So it was just another fight for me.
But there's some weird shit about this one that I can't answer a lot of questions to. So maybe we should ask questions.
Do we just stop talking about Benghazi? Do we just stop talking about the shit that happened there? Do we just stop talking about all these other conspiracies? No, we should open a can of worms on them if it's if it's not now if it divulges national security information of course that's where i'll shut my mouth but nobody said travis hey look we had some bigger issues there's a national security thing there can you keep this down sure man thanks for telling me that wow roger that i know what a tssci clearance is i keep my mouth shut. But when you don't tell me that and you just say, hey, dude, shut the fuck up, bro.
It's like, who got to you? Who got to the agency get to you? Did somebody get to you and tell you to shut the fuck up? Did your book not do very well? And that's why you're all pissed off at me? Okay. We got to put that aside.
And again, I'm just doing it from a historical archiving standpoint. because think it's good to talk about guys like Corbolana Young, who's a freaking savage that got medals for that day that helped us help everybody else keep the insurgency back so we can keep that CPA alive, prevent the loss of life, and ultimately finish our mission, which was go in and get those people out and save the coalition provisional authority, Phil Cosnett, from getting killed by the insurgency.
What do you think was going on? A rumor that I heard, it's just a rumor, I have nothing more than that, was somebody tried to do a failed hit on McTotter's family.

And he was like, okay, fuck you.

I'm taking that CPA now.

That's what I heard.

Now, that could be just a wazoo story rumor.

But I think, you know, kind of, you want to start a war, don't kill a king, kidnap a prince concept. And I think that could have been potentially one of the angles.
Plus, I know that the guys in Najaf were doing a really good job trying to get the support of the people in Najaf to fight against McTotter's army that was growing rapidly. And they were, like McTotter's goons were going at night and kill police officers that were loyal to the coalition.
And then our job was to go in and really help them understand why you need to be loyal to us, because we're going to help you. These assholes ain't going to help you.
He's going to take over one day. He's an Iranian Shia.
He's a cleric. He's going to take over this country.
And what did Bukhtar Al-Sadr do after we pulled out of Iraq? Comes Zadataharan from Iran takes over this country. And what did Mactar Al-Sadr do after we pulled out of Iraq? Comes out of Taheran from Iran, takes over the country, and turns into the cesspool that it is, which I believe is another American issue.
I don't think we should have been in Iraq in the first place. I think that it's all to make money, just like Liberia.
Oh, sure, why do we need to secure the Firestone tire plants? Who gives a fuck? We're going after this guy that's a scumbag special operations terrorist. Well, just do what you're told.
Why? Later to find out, we at that time got like 27% of our rubber from Liberia. Nobody went into Rwanda when they killed a million people with machetes.
Why not? Because there's no economic assets to protect there. So I get it.
There are certain economic assets we want to protect. It's a part of our job as well.
It's why State Department, I guess, exists to some degree. But Israel, it's all about money, man.
Nobody gives a fuck about the Palestinians. They care about capitalizing on the largest economy in the Middle East.
And who is that? You got the Shia. Nobody gives a fuck about the Shia.
They magically, the president of Iran disappears in a helicopter crash and this entire chain of command is wiped out in the next six months after that. Then all of a sudden, Russia, Xi Jinping and China and Putin start talking about Middle Eastern reform.
All of a sudden, we jump in because Israeli gets attacked. And then you have to look back 100 years to the 1922 white papers from Winston Churchill and see why.
Why are we going into the Middle East? Why are we trying to get rid of the Shia? Because they don't make up any of the economy in the Middle East. There was a thorn in the Sunni side.
You got the Turks, which is a semi-Semitic Sunni population. Okay, they're cool, right? You got Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, all the big countries, Egypt, and the list goes on, but the Sunni population.
So I believe, personally, after studying the promised land a little bit in my life, that this has been contrived ever since the 22 white papers to allow the Zionists to live there, to allow the Arab revolt to happen when they're like, hey,, you lied to us. Oh, you want to fight? Now your asses are going to live in open-air prisons, going on Heights, Gaza, and the West Banks.
And now your asses are in open-air prisons the rest of your life, and you're painting our asses. And so now you have this whole problem with them going back and forth, abrogation of law, everything else.
And they're always arguing about who's right, whose land it is. And next thing you know, America know america and the western world sitting back going god damn we're going to capitalize on this as soon as this stabilize because we're going to make agreements which we've already done with saudi arabia and egypt and everybody else that doesn't give a shit about helping the palestinians to capitalize on once we turn that machine on we make all the money it's monopoly that's why zhi jiping and put said six months prior, they need to do Middle Eastern reform because they're tired of us.
And that's when we're like, nope, we can't let them get in because they already own Africa. They already own Central, South, and Latin America, and a lot of the rest of the world.
And so we got to make a call. We got to make a move because look at how Breaks Nations is building quickly.
And so- Oh yeah, I'm very familiar with that. I think it's's all connected and I think something with Muqtadar al-Sadr all the way back to Najaf is a part of all of this shit.
A part of everything. I don't know what it is.
Interesting. But it's weird.
So that's why I think a lot of guys will Benghazi factor that a little bit to go, it's a part of the bigger picture of making money in the world. And that's, you know.
I mean, it's, you know, the connection between Dick Cheney and Halliburton is, that's all you need to know. He made $64 billion in the first year of the war, from what I understood.
That is all you need to know. Remember how fast Cape Yard and Halliburton, everybody built up? Oh, yeah.
I mean, we just took over that country and it was like, wow. And Afghanistan.
This is impressive. And Afghanistan.
It's all money. When you see that, you know what it was all about.
There's nothing else. You got the fucking vice president connected with the biggest logistics company who's running all logistics for two separate wars.
That's it. That's what it was.

Now, I don't think,

and you and I certainly probably agree to this,

we don't want to come off sounding anti-war because there's people that need to be killed.

I'm not saying we did anything bad.

We did do bad.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have been there at all.

I'm not saying we didn't do any good

because we did rid the fucking world of a lot of bad guys we did but we did not have to fucking be there especially in iraq and the way afghanistan went should we have been there yes have you ever had any any experts on like central banking and all that stuff come in yet not yet i'm really interested to see how that all feeds into because uh like a lot of people say you know what hitler and qaddafi and hussein and some other big prominent features or people leaders in the world had in common they're against the central banking that the western world wants to do so they have to get rid of those people in order to destabilize a region, to go back in and fix it and save it. Look what we did.
And now we can capitalize on the economy of it. I believe that could be a potential possibility with Saddam because as everybody's agreed, he's the only dude that stabilized the Middle East for as long as that was stable.
He had Iran to fight with back and forth for a while. Big deal.
Now we destabilize the whole thing. And then Gaddafi starts squawking and making noise.
And we go, oh, let's get rid of his ass too. Destabilize Libya and all that stuff.
And Benghazi happens. And it's like, well, who's next? Oh, the Iranians.
Let's go ahead and wipe those dudes now. So we're starting to wire down to the Sunnis that we want to be able to help so that's got to be a that's got to be a hundred year plan in my opinion because it's it's been consistent since the 20s of our movement into that region but again i'm not educated to to that but it smells like that you know because we've seen the money we've seen the yeah um you know and then of course

all the sex trafficking and drug trafficking that comes on top of that you know that's another

problem how many how many any enemy combatants do you think you might have killed that day

people have asked me a lot um

i can't count but i know i shot a lot of people um i didn't i didn't sit there and start taking my stock and things like that you don't really do that in that type of situation and then there's people that i know i hit that ran off or you know can't confirm um but when you're sitting there in a prone position on a sniper rifle with groups of 50 people coming at you or like in the video that i i put up there's a bus a tour bus that they use to try to dump all the insurgents right behind the the hesco wall or the t-ball um and we that's 104 yards man and it was full of insurgents and uh you can't see it on the grainy video but through a 10 power scope i'm sitting there looking at dudes inside of this thing waiting to get off, and I'm just like, got 100 meters in the prone on a freaking sniper rifle. And everybody else was shooting too because it was like, hey, it's a bus full of bad guys.
Blow them up. Somehow that bus was able to get out of there.
It turned around and backed up. It was like, fuck this.
You see the guy driving away, but you could see the windows and everything popping out of it. And I would guess there had to have been at least 25 insurgents on that bus alone.
Did that much killing affect your psyche at all? Not a bit. No.
Never questioned it? No. Because it was right.
Meaning it was righteous, right? Like we look back and just go, well, the war may not have been righteous, but you know what? When we're on the ground, we're on the battlefield and we're fighting. Yeah, there's that thing that's like, oh, I'm fighting for my brother next to me.
Eh, no, that's not what you signed up for. You signed up to kill bad people, you know, and I want my scalps.
So I'm okay taking out evil people. I think there's a level of psychopath in everybody that is involved in that job.
And I know people will look at the word psychopath as a very bad, bad derogatory type word. If you study ancient warriors, you study history, you know, you study the last 3,000-ish years of hunter-gatherer separation and agriculture and things growing, we don't need hunters as much anymore.
We don't need the fighters and the protectors as much anymore. So we get outcasted.
And some of us in our blood still have that super sense of justice, that super sense of duty. And I will go out and fight and make sure that our village, our country, whatever we call ours, will be safe because it's just in our blood.
And that's the thing like with my son, when he asks, should he go and fight in the military? If he doesn't, where's he going to go fight? Because he's going to fight. And I think this is where a lot of guys like myself as a kid, I was already fighting before I was going in.
I was looking for the fight. I was looking for something bad.
I was looking for something to blow up because it was cool to understand the experiment that happens in the event that one day in the military, I need to know explosives. I should start learning now by going to Home Depot.
You're like, well, I didn't know any better, but so imagine if I wouldn't have had the chance that I had. I'm already coming out of jail, man.
What do you think would have happened to me? I would have fought for somebody else. Maybe bad.
Maybe that's the difference. Another phenomenal book is The Wisdom of Psychopaths, what we can learn from spies, serial killers, military, and CEOs.
Donald Trump was a psychopath, okay? Hillary Clinton is also

a psychopath. Two difference.
One's righteous, one's evil. You can tell by their intentions.
And I don't care. There's even studies that they've done looking back to all former U.S.
presidents to find this element of the psychoticness inside them. And JFK was the highest ranking one.
No shift. Yeah.
And it's like, wait, what? And then you start to realize he cared. He was compassionate.
And sometimes that will, that's an element. That's why I think compassion is the number one attribute to a warrior, because if you care about something, you're going to fight for it.
And then if you have that tendency inside of you that you will fight for it no matter what, and you will go all the way for your beliefs and your morals and your ethics and who you stand for, that's a pretty fucking good killer, man. And there's nothing bad about that because we need those people in the world.
And I'm not labeling myself as that. I've been studying it and trying to figure out

why I do the things that I do,

why my heart rate drops under stress versus increases.

I'll see that I'm monitoring myself in planes.

I do heart rate variability testing in our labs in Scottsdale.

And I sit there sometimes like,

why is it when I'm at 6,000 to 9,000 feet,

I'm kind of amped up,

heart rate's like 120 in the plane,

checking people, having a good time.

And then after that 10,000 foot mark mark hits starts going into this flow state um and then when i'm in free fall i still measure in the 70s and 80s and i'm like interesting whether i'm free flying whether i'm i'm doing tandems whether it's just like my flow state man it's my my it's where i want to be um So they contribute that to sometimes those tendencies that allow you to go into that mode. So I think the difference though, between the evil sociopath or psychopath and the righteous one is the suffering that occurs.
The evil ones don't suffer. They love it.
They love the hurt. They love the pain on other people.
They're the malignant narcissists of the world. They're the ones that really truly need to be destroyed.
And the righteous one will feel the same way about killing until they fuck it up. And this is where I tell my students, 99.999% of your life is everything.
It's sitting here right now. It's taking your kids to school, going fishing and hunting and camping and taking your queen to the movies or going on a date or paperwork, taxes, work, everything in between, even, let's say, riding on a helicopter in a combat and you are doing the fast rope and doing the thousand yard dash across the field, you kick the door, you go inside and you touch that trigger, you almost touch it.
But the situation in front of you changes immediately. Maybe they drop their gun.
Maybe they have a come to Jesus meeting or something or Rohammit or Mohammed meeting or whatever. And you're like, to me, that's 99.9% of your life.
So why is it that, you know, why do we teach firearms training? Why do we teach tactics training? The mind tactics, because there's no such thing as physical tactics. Why do we spend so much time in our life on those skill sets when it's a micro percentage, that 0.000 something? And even after all those shots that I've taken in combat, and I know those guys out there have taken way more than me, it's still a micro percentage of our career.
The rest of it's humanitarian efforts and laughing and playing with kids in Africa and wherever, the Philippines. It's like just schools and training.
And I think we can screw up and fix a lot of this. I can zig when I should have zagged over here.
I could spend money or not spend money when I should have. I can make a good family or business decision.
I can make a bad one, but like, hey, we'll fix it. It's okay.
But when you cross that line, because if you think about a 1911, for example, that trigger is only a 0.070 of an inch. An M4 is only 0.089 of an inch.
That's like that, man. That's the difference between your life changing or not.
And so if you go over that line and you do it right, you won't lose any sleep over it. You'll feel good about it.
You'll high five your brother and be like, damn, that was awesome. See that guy's head come apart? Like some shitty movie scene.
But when you mess it up, when I ask people, why do you take that little tiny percentage so seriously and come out here and train and spend all this time and money with us and our classes, why do you do that? It's because it's the micro percentage of your life you can't fuck up. When you cross that line and you do it wrong, you will never, ever be able to come back from that mistake.
And that's when you realize the pain. When you take something away that you can't...
It's like, dude, it's like a...

You know, law enforcement had this joke,

I cracked it. when you take something away that you can't.
It's like, dude, it's like a, you know, law enforcement had this joke about crackheads when they drop pieces of crack. They're so addicted.
They'll crawl on the carpets for hours trying to find the pieces they missed to put it back together to get that fix, right? And so I think of this shooting scenario that I could be in that if I fuck that up, which I have in my life and break that glass,

you will sit there with a pair of tweezers and glue and try to put it back

together.

And if you could imagine trying to take a mirror that shattered on the ground

and try to make it perfect again, you can't.

And that's why that training is so important because you can't mess it up.

Where did you fuck that up?

In Africa. Do you want to talk about it? It's a tough one for me, man.
I might be able to abbreviate it. I've been working on this one for a long time to try to be able to come out and tell the story.
This kid, man, this kid who was everything to me, probably about 16 years old. He stayed out of the war efforts.
He really wanted to help educate us. Earlier when I said that when we went to, in country, everybody's calling us brother American, he would be the first to say, here's why.
And his kid knew everything about America. And that's all he wanted to do was go to America one day.
And he told me that his mom and dad were killed two weeks before we got there in the Civil War. And there's a lot of kids running around with no parents.
And so, you know, when we see him, they're like, hey, kids, you got to go away. You can't stay here anymore.
We have no place to go. We have no place to go.
I'm like, okay, well, why don't you go back to your village? Your parents are dead, okay? So we had these five kids that would always hang out with us on a daily basis. They'd always be looking for work.
So we'd give them MREs and medicine and stuff. And they'd tell us where to get eggs in town and little blocks of cheese because you're eating MREs every day.
And there's not a whole lot of food running around in that country during that war. So he was extremely resourceful.
One day he ran into town eight miles to get an egg and a block of cheese for me and a little bowl of bread and ran eight miles back and came back at the end of the day. And I'm like, where the fuck have you been, man? He goes, I went to get the egg and cheese.
I'm like, what took you so long? He's like, I went to town. I'm like, you mean you went to town? You mean, did you get a ride? No, I ran.
Flip-flops, man. And I'm like, you ran 18 miles to get me an egg and cheese.
Yes, I guess. You don't know what 18 miles is.
Because it's all they do all day is run and walk everywhere. And I'm like, do you see that vehicle right there? You tell me next time and we'll drive in and grab it.
Okay? So then we started doing that. I was like, that's how cool these kids were.
Anyways, he would start telling us where weapons cachets were and say, hey, I know a guy that's building guns. He's not bad.
He's trying to put food on his family's table. They can't sell weapons to the militia legally.
So they're getting busted. These are part of the weapons cachet issues that was happening in the city because it's just Lord of War, man.
There's guns everywhere. So we would go and do these hits and eventually realize when we turn over the, you know, anybody that was a potential threat or issue, the Nigerians would take and cut their hands off on the side of the road, typical African stuff.
They didn't take prisoners because they don't get paid like I talked about earlier. And so they would interrogate and beat the shit out of these people to a point where one day i ran down and put a 1911 in a night bat major's face and almost killed him and told him that's not what we do here we're a peacekeeping force and he gets in my face and he's like but we don't get paid my men don't get paid he's what do you want us to do we can't take prisoners we can't feed these men we can't so we teach them a lesson by cutting a finger or hand off or beating a little shit out of them and sending them back out of town as a message.
So we're like, guys, we got to do something different. This ain't working.
We got to start going more clan on this. So we take our shit off at night.
We go out, hang out with the rebels. And we start listening and working on an agreement of how we're going to stop these things.
And then this little kid would be like,

hey man, I know this guy is selling weapons down the street, blah, blah, blah.

So anyways, this is working, man.

Like this is really starting to make people,

because when you go up and knock on a door and say,

hey, US Marines, they'd be like, yes, come in, come in.

And they would fucking, here it is.

And you're like, okay, that was easy.

Why has this been so hard?

Because they don't want you to hurt us. They don't want us to turn you over to the Nigerians or anybody else.
And so we're like, okay, well, what if we just start offering food and supplies and medical, being compassionate to these people? And so at night, I would go around, sometimes by myself, and start talking to these people in villages. And we'd go out to their Guinness factory.
It's funny, it was an import Guinness factory that the rebels took over. And that's where they'd run all their operations out of.
And so we'd go down at night and they'd be dancing and partying with their people and drinking and smoking dope and stuff. And we'd sit down and just bullshit with them and talk.
And then we'd leave. And then one night we're down there, this kid comes in and i'm not gonna say his name uh but he says travis i know where a place is and i'm like get the fuck out of here man you're not supposed to be here i don't want these people knowing that you associate with us he was so adamant i said all right fuck it let's go so we we jump in the vehicle we did a five-point contingency plan we jump in the vehicle we drive down the road which is right around the back and I said, hey, if we're not back in 45 minutes, this is the vehicle.
We did a five-point contingency plan. We jump in the vehicle.
We drive down the road, which is right around the back. And I said, hey, if we're not back in 45 minutes, this is the approximate location we're going to be.
And we walk up. Same thing.
I knock on the door. And there's a guy sitting on a box in a little tiny room about the size of a large closet.
A couple candles lit in room and he had a mattress on the floor right around the corner which the kid told me that there was a couple rpgs and ak's in there and so i knock on the door and he's got a i could see an ak beside him which they could have a rifle in their house we didn't give a fuck they were trying to protect themselves but they just couldn't have caches and be selling guns um so i said, hey, you know why I'm here? And he goes, yes, I know who you are. I said, okay, can we talk? And he goes, no, you get out of my house.
How dare you assault me? And I'm like, okay, this is different. Never had this conversation.
Normally like, yes, come in, come in. You're the Marines that are helping us.
Yes, here, give me my food. Give me my medicine.
Where's the Red Cross? Can I have security? No Nigerians. I want Ghana, Seneca, Lies only.
And we'd do a quick negotiation. We'd get out of there and we would secure that village with security and food and they would love us.
Well, he's pissed off. And I'm like, dude, what the fuck, man? Hey, I'm going to talk to you and you're going to listen to me.
I know you're selling weapons and you need to stop. And I know you have them and I'm here to offer you a deal.
I'm here to offer you help. You've probably heard what we're doing for you.
I know. How dare you insult me? Get out of my house.
I don't sell weapons to their government. I'm like, I didn't say you did yet.
Okay. But, and he starts getting really belligerent.
All of a sudden, kid runs in and starts yelling at him saying, you listen to him. You listen to him.
He'll help you. He'll help you.
And I'm like, shut the fuck up. What the fuck? What is going on here? And I'm like, dude, why are you? I'm trying to say, I don't know this kid.
I'm acting fucking weird. And I was like, look, dude, shut your mouth.
Listen, I'm going to give you 20 American dollars to save your life because you know at the end of the road, there's a Nigerian checkpoint. Fuck the Nigerians.
Like, yeah, exactly. And you know what's going to happen if you don't obey me right now.
I'm going to arrest your ass and take you down to the Nigerians. Fuck you.
And I said, hey, dude, 20 American dollars at that time. The Liberians told us that would be a year's salary for a Liberian.
So I'm like, we're fucking carrying cash all the time, right? Can't drop a Rolex in Liberia. They don't give a shit.
They wanted American money. And so they, he takes it and he, or he actually, I'm sorry, I'd go to give it to him and he slaps my hand away.
And I'm like, and he goes, $100. And I'm like, dude, what this is? And he goes per ak-47 i'm like you motherfucker and now he just admits it right and now he's trying to uh trying to uh uh swindle me out of this thing now and i said fuck you get up you're under arrest and i reached over and i was sitting on this little stool and he was about right here and i reach over and grab the the mattress and i i point i go see you motherfucker and that's when he grabs his ak and puts it in my face and i was like i didn't think about that i totally was like stupid idiot you let your emotions get to you this is me looking back on the situation um the kids like screaming i'm like shut the fuck up i was like hey calm down dude calm down i'm here help you again.
I'm not here to hurt you. And at that point, I saw two things.
I saw his eyes extremely bloodshot. I think he was high up on something.
And I remember seeing, of course, the muzzle in my face. And I remember seeing the safety on, on the AK.
Now I'm a big, AK was the first guy I ever owned as a kid, 13 years old. I begged my dad to own an AK.
Because in 1986, Clint Eastwood said, it makes a very distinct sound when fired at you, so remember it. And that movie Heartbreak Ridge about recon Marines.
And I went out and studied that gun inside and out. And that is the thing that popped in my mind.
And at the time, I didn't realize it, didn't process it. But I remember getting so angry, so mad in this moment.
And even me trying to explain this whole process this whole process probably was about two and a half seconds i uh i remember going you lose in my mind i had my 1911 honor concealment and in and in a Safari Land 071 paddle holster on my side. I remember realizing in a nutshell, again, looking back a little bit, but processing the micro thoughts that I had was, he's gonna try to kill me, gun's not gonna work, he's gonna relinquish control with his hand to take the safety off like an untrained person does on an AK.
By the time he gets his hand back on the gun, that's going to be about two seconds. I know I can draw my 1911 in less than one second from concealment and smash this motherfucker right now, pin his AK up against the wall, step into his chest and pull the trigger.
And step 10 happens and it goes into it. I grab the muzzle, I step up, put my foot into his chest, pin him into the corner, fire two shots, and step back.
I fall back. I hear this.
I'm holding a barrel, holding a 1911. I hear this fucking scream that was like a, if you could murder a cow and the cow could scream, I don't know why that pops in my head.
That's what I heard. And I almost shoot my boy in the face.
And I called him my boy, like he was almost my son. Because I felt so sorry for him that what happened to his family.
I grab him and he's just bawling, man. And I pin him up against the door jam.
And I'm like, don't you ever fucking do this again get the fuck out of here i throw him outside he tumbles on the ground and gets up and hauls ass down the alley and i'm standing there and i anyways i run back we get in the vehicle haul ass um and i'm i'm sitting there staring at that fucking ak and i pull the chamber back the bolt back on on it. There's a round of chamber like, fuck, man.
What the fuck? Why did that just happen? Like, why did this kid come in that fucking room? Why did he, why was he so adamant about this tonight when he never does that? Like, what the fuck is going, why did he mudsuck me into that situation? And I thought about it and I sat there all night staring at that AK. And the next morning, didn't sleep one second.
Sun comes up just barely. Kids aren't there.
Kids are always there every morning. They're out there sitting on the railing, ready to bust rust on our vehicles, ready to get food, ready to, they weren't there.
So I jog down the hill, get into town. I see one of the kids walking around in town, one of the older kids, about 19 years think they don't know how old they are i go up to him and i say hey um i forget his name i yell his name and i go up to him and i grab him and he jerks away from me scared to death and i'm like hey what dude what the fuck guys where you at this morning and he starts shaking his head and getting nervous like I'm about to cry.
And he's backing up away from me. I'm like, dude, what's going on? And I said, I need to see my boy.
Where is he? I need to talk to him about something that happened last night. And he backs away.
And he goes, no, no, you'll never see him again.

And I was like, why won't I see him again?

And I'm trying to really figure out what the hell is going on here.

And he goes, because last night you killed his father.

And he turns around and runs away.

And I'm like, the fuck does that mean?

What are you talking about?

I killed his father.

His father died. And it fucking hit me man I dropped to my knees right there in the village and I realize and then then heard the stories later

from the villagers that all that boy wanted me to do

was get his dad out of the weapons, arms,

fucking whatever that was.

He was ashamed of his dad. and he was

and I was the guy

that was supposed to help him

and I fucked it up because of this fucked up super sense of justice this ancestral curse maybe to go so far above and beyond to help other people that I hurt them.

I didn't tell anybody about this except a couple very tight dudes

determined that it was a I didn't tell anybody about this except a couple very tight dudes

determined that it was a good shoot, fuck whatever that means.

And I wanted to quit like I've never wanted to quit in my life.

And thank God it was a week out before we were leaving.

And I just sat back in the recon operations center and just listened to comms traffic the rest of the time and didn't do shit. And we helped so many people.
I believe it contributed to stopping a 14-year civil war. But that was the micro percentage that I feel, regardless of what people say and friends have taught me through post-traumatic growth training and breaking down the story and telling me, because I lied about this.
I even told the story one time on a video that Magpul did. They forced me to tell the story and I lied.
I didn't tell the whole story. I didn't tell anything about the kid.
I didn't say anything about the father because I was ashamed of myself. I was fucking ashamed.
I didn't tell my wife for probably 12 years. Later, I didn't tell anybody.
I was afraid, of course, by my own teammates to be fucking scrutinized by running around Liberia trying to help goddamn save the world. They still don't know.
One of them does.

And I don't know what he thinks of me because I did it in a way that I thought was helping,

but maybe it would have compromised

and fucked up the entire team's mission.

That's always the thing that I was scared of.

And I've always been scared to tell that story

because of the shame that I believe

is the worst enemy that we have

when we screw up in our life, When all my intentions were to help people. That's it, just to help.
And I saw the magic working. I saw what we were doing.
And then that just crushed my soul. That's the real reason I got off active duty.

For fucking two weeks later,

I'd be sitting on the beach,

start to feel it again.

I get a phone call.

Hey, I'm going back.

And I was not communicating well with my wife at the time.

She was like,

hey, you got this thousand yards there, man.

And I don't know what's wrong with you.

You're here now. You can leave all that behind you.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm trying. They get a phone call to say, hey, come back to Baghdad.
And I go, that's what I need. I need to go back.
I need to be away sick again. Because if I go over there and I get in a shitty situation, I might feel more appreciation and grateful for going through this experience and uh man that was dark that fucked me up for about eight years didn't sleep well uh i hurt people i hurt my kids i hurt my teammates as a reservist um i hurt i hurt a lot.
I lied. My integrity was destroyed.
And integrity meaning, you know, not just doing the right thing when nobody's looking like we say in the military, but also not taking fast, fun, or easy. And I started taking the easy way out of things.
And if it wasn't for a good friend of mine, that was a human lie detector, a polygrapher or something like that. He was a law enforcement detective, and he's like, tell me this story, man.
I've heard the story online that you told, and it's bullshit. You're fucking lying to me.
So I dive into the story, and he was a former Golden former golden gloves boxer and he comes out of his

garage and puts a beer down.

After I tell the story, he's like, drink that.

I said, am I fucking drinking that?

And he's like, you will drink that.

I'm going to beat your ass.

And I'm like, I'm not drinking a Guinness, man, because this happened in a Guinness factory

or started.

And so I've always had this like, not doing it.

So you don't drink that.

I'm going to beat your ass.

We're going to go.

He throws down boxing gloves.

Thank you. I'm not, I'm not doing that.
You're going to hurt me. I know it.
And I'm not giving in. And so he says, you're going to fill in the gaps of this story and we're going to do it the hard way.
And so I started coming out and telling him these other pieces that I'm telling you that I've really never openly told ever in the world. And it scares me still, scares that it could compromise the situation.
It could, it was a good, good effort in battle. We helped thousands and thousands and thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people.
But when I hurt one that I don't mean to, even though dad made a bad decision, man, I got to live with that kid and what he's feeling. Who is he? What does he do now? Is he a fucking terrorist? Did I turn him into something horrible? Is he happy? I was told that by a friend of mine who's a monk.
Just recently, about two years ago, he told me, he's like, hey, I have a feeling from the spirit that your boy boy's happy he's happy for you and i was like how the fuck would he be happy he's like because he sees what you've done for the rest of the world he sees you wow sharing

Thank you. sharing powerful um and that helped man that helped a lot when he told me that because I couldn't let go of that kid and his face the last face I saw in him was just the most horrible face I and I want to believe my friend who told me that that because you've helped so many people and shared this, you've taken some of your simple situations here, like thinking first.

That's why I say think before you shoot.

There's a catchphrase that we always say, thinkers before shooters.

It's just a thing that came out, and that's what it means. It means you might want to think about the consequences of your decisions instead of just being a fucking gunfighter, man.
And that's what I always call myself, you know, always a gunfighter until that moment. I wanted to, again, like I said, I quit everything.
But I went back and I did multiple tours after that in Iraq, four more trips to Iraq, I think. Took vetting.
Went into Afghanistan three or four times. And kept chasing the dragon.
You know, I kept trying to find myself. And it took forever to do that.
And I apologize to everybody out there that I hurt in those dark times in my life because that's not me anymore, even though you'll still see the pain. And again, even though you might see tears of sadness and sorrow right now, they're not.
They're proud moments. They really are.
So when I do get emotional, I try to think back to that. My buddy told me, hey man, we'd all do the same thing.
He went all the way and you go all the way. Or that my traumas in my past are now something that I simply just know that I can look back to and go, how do I take that? And how do I share that powerfully and authentically as much as I can with people? So where maybe they don't find themselves in that same situation.
And that's why I gravitated to start becoming a tactics and weapons and mindset coach because I didn't have the right story in my head. I may still not.
And a lot of people will, when you ask them what a mindset is, combat mindset, warrior mindset, it's all bullshit. It's a very simple explanation.
And that is the story that you tell yourself. That's it, nothing else.
So if I'm in a bad situation and I say, I'm gonna die, which we heard that in Najaf. There was one guy going, man, we're not gonna make it through the fucking night, man.
And so what's a guy like me say to a guy like that on the rooftop? Most people say, oh, shut up, dude. You know, suck it up, buttercup.
No, that becomes infectious. And then everybody starts going, holy shit, what if we don't make it through the night? Yeah, they're dialing mortars in on us.
Holy shit. This is a real thing.
I might never see my family again. This is real.
Man, maybe I shouldn't have gotten on that helicopter. You start questioning

everything. And then what happens? This is called a negative thought performance interaction,

psychologically speaking. And we turn down this toilet bowl of death where I don't want to fail.
I hope she says yes. Man, I hope I graduate.
I hope I get through the course. I hope I pass vetting.
That creates frustration, disappointment, fear anxiety you know high tension hormone imbalance and then it goes down to ultimately decreased performance and then you keep going down the circle and you just keep telling yourself i'm gonna fail that's when somebody goes we're not gonna make it through the night or i say i'm never get over this darkness. And I had to take my own medicine because I've always preached this to people to say, hey, have a thought performance interaction that's positive.
Today, when I wake up, what am I gonna do for the world? Like this morning, I did that. I woke up early.
I went right into the pool. I was like, damn it, the hotel pool is like 86 degrees.
So what do I do? Oh, it's raining outside. I go outside and I sit in the rain and cold meditate for about 30 minutes this morning.
Why? Because I want to manifest a good day with you. I want to help people.
I want to make the world a better place than when I came in it. And I think that's easy to do as long as we share authentically.
And then I go through the rest of my process. I had a little bit of pain.
And that's what I realized is that best lesson out of all of this with trauma management for us. And not just for us as gunfighters, but anybody, right? Rape victims, people in horrible accidents, inner child issues that you just cannot figure out what's going on.
There's two voices I've broken it down to. There's a voice of pain and the voice of suffering.
And the voice of suffering for me is that really sympathetic, annoying, itchy asshole voice that's always on your shoulder telling you, man, what are you doing? Why are you here? Why did you do this? You're cold, you're wet, you're tired, go home, quit, ring the bell. She's not going to say yes, don't ask her.
Hey, you're not going to get this job. Why are you even applying? Stop working so hard.
Why do you need to go to the gym for so much? Why do you need to wake up so early? Why are you going in the cold water? It just hurts. Get out of there.
You're just going to suffer. That's the voice of suffering in a nutshell.
It's annoying. A lot of people listen to that voice.
Then on the other hand, there's the voice of of pain and the voice of pain to me is the voice that is very parasympathetic it's very quiet it's very stoic it's the voice that will say hey man look you can listen to that other guy and he's right if you quit right now today will be easier but tomorrow's going to be harder and you know that. So if you can simply just accept, is the key word, the resistance that you have of this thing, this trigger, and accept it, you will realize that resistance is simply the precursor or bedfellow to suffering.
That's it. The more you resist in your life, the reality that is, I'm not happy with my bills.
I can't pay them. I can't get a job.
I'm stressed out. My wife hates me.
My kids hate me. I'm getting divorced, all this stuff.
Keep manifesting that. Keep telling yourself that.
Keep telling yourself that today you're not going to build a new product. You're not going to market well.
You're not going to tell a story well. You're not going to train well.
I'm not going to shoot well today. I just don't feel good.
You're creating a negative story of suffering. But the pain will tell you that if you can put that knife edge in there and sharpen it and deal with the pain, that pain is absolutely mandatory in your life.
Suffering is optional. And that's why I have a big quote about my office desk.
It says, pain is mandatory. Life.
And I suffered for so long. I know a lot of guys suffer for so long and we'll always have something that we'll suffer in, but it's the ability to go back and go, hey, suffering, I don't need you right now, but I do have to endure the pain if I want to get through this.
That is the deviation amplification model of post-traumatic growth versus the deviation countering model, which is put under the rug, don't talk about it. You know, hey, we lost a guy today, which I've been a part of this.
And all of a sudden it's like, hey, let's not talk about it. Let's move on, let's go to the next target.
You're like, hey, what the fuck did we do wrong? Hey, nobody did anything wrong. Don't start shifting blame.
Everything's fine, he was a hero, like in a nutshell story, right? Generalities. And it's like, that's not okay.
We need to talk about this. We need to make sure this doesn't happen again.
And that's a problem for me. So I think if we can, as human beings, listen to the voice of pain just a little bit more and realize that, yeah, today's going to be harder, but tomorrow's going to be easier.
And if you can make a routine of that

and wake up and try it,

especially for me, it's hard, man.

It's really hard to get an ideal routine for me

to help my mindset.

But I do it the best that I can

with what I got at the time.

And if I can start making a habit of that,

what'll happen as I think one day,

somebody will say, who's Travis Haley?

When I answer that, I will answer with an undeniable stack of evidence that I am exactly who the fuck I say I am. Because I've been able to put in the work to get over this darkness, this story, this bullshit in my life that's haunted me and hurt others.
Because I couldn't be authentic. I couldn't tell the true story.
Because I was afraid of what was going to happen. That fear and anxiety alone, I think, makes people put the bottle in the mouth

or the needle in the arm or the gun to the side of their head.

And I don't want that for people.

And that's why I've learned to try to share as powerfully as I can,

even if it creates consequences for me.

So thanks for listening.

Thanks for sharing.

That's why that's hard for me to put out.

Yeah.

I do tell it in small circles.

I tell it in like, if I'm teaching an AK class,

I'll say, guys, come here, let me tell you a story.

Because I still have the AK. It's on my wall in the office.
I'll show it to you if you're from Scottsdale. So, yeah.
We de-milled it, made it a museum piece so it can be brought back. My team said we're bringing this back.
So, it's a. It's a reminder.
Every single day I walk in. Wow.
Think. Don't get ahead of your headlights.
Don't assume. Create a healthy boundary for myself before I step over a line.
Try to be as reliable as I can for people. Take accountability for this.
You own it. You lived it.
You did it. you know, try to be as reliable as I can for people.
Take accountability for this. You own it.
You lived it. You did it.
You know, there's a lot of lessons in the conversation that we just had, and that's definitely the biggest one, man. And I think that's the perfect way to end this on that lesson.
And damn, man. Your traumas will always haunt you.
It's how you manage them. So it's not about letting go.
I've learned this the hard way, as you can still feel and hear, even though I coach and I help people now. It's not about letting go.
It's about letting it be. Because what happened, happened exactly the way it happened.
It didn't happen any other fucking way. You know why? Because it didn't.
And if I can find acceptance in that, if I can find peace in that, which I have, and I can share that, somebody else might turn around and share it with somebody else. And next thing you know, we have a better society, a better community, less suicides, you know, more vulnerability and openness.
And I think that's in closing on vulnerability. When you say that around operators, they go, man, I'm not weak.
And it's like, dude, they're two totally different definitions, even though they might sound the same. One means the inability, weakness, to defend yourself against criticism or an attack.
The other one is the ability to defend yourself against or be open to criticism or attack and have the courage to be imperfect. I think that's a pretty good judge of a man's character that can be vulnerable and open and tell the truth no matter how bad you fucked up in your life.

And things will get better.

You may not think so.

But I promise you'll start being a shapeshifter.

You'll start helping other people.

And you'll start to be a catalyst in other people's lives.

And that's why I will train, I will teach, and I will share stories as long as I possibly can while my body and mind allow me to.

You're doing a good thing, man. You're doing a real good thing.
And thank you. Thank you for doing it.
I know that's gotta be real tough and to share and to live with. And man, Travis, you, Travis, you're just a fucking genuine,

good human being.

And I'm honored to know you.

I'm honored to interview you.

And just thank you for being here, man.

Thank you.

I appreciate it. You get a chance to dig into my 14-year career in the NBA, but also get the input from the people that will be joining.

Charles Barkley.

I'm excited to be on your podcast, man.

It's an honor.

Spike Lee, entrepreneur, filmmaker, Academy Award winner.

Nixon!

Now you see, I got you.

But also how sports brings life, passion, music, all of this together.

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