#156 Chris Fettes - A SEAL Team 6 Sniper’s Worst Nightmare

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Speaker 1 Chris Fettis,

Speaker 1 welcome to the show, man. Thank you for having me.
It's an honor to have you here. It's a way to be here, really.
I've been waiting a long time for this, man. A really long time.
And

Speaker 1 we got a lot to cover. I think it's going to be...

Speaker 1 a really heavy episode, and I think it's going to impact

Speaker 1 thousands, if not millions of lives and so I'm really excited about this and

Speaker 1 and you know we had a conversation on the phone about a operation you were on

Speaker 1 and sounds like it was maybe

Speaker 1 probably

Speaker 1 one definitely one of the most significant events of your life and and that really uh

Speaker 1 impacted me as well, the way you described it. And

Speaker 1 I actually

Speaker 1 I was hoping you wouldn't get pissed at me, but I brought it up

Speaker 1 in the Jordan Peterson podcast and

Speaker 1 because it was

Speaker 1 very real, very heavy, and

Speaker 1 I pray for you a lot.

Speaker 1 But anyways,

Speaker 1 it's going to be a fantastic interview. And once again, man, I'm honored to have you here.
Thank you. I'm not pissed at all.
I'm grateful.

Speaker 1 And I need to go catch up. And I didn't catch that, but now I need to go.
All good. All good.
I thought maybe somebody would hear it and be like, he's talking about Chris.

Speaker 1 But everybody starts with an introduction.

Speaker 1 Chris Fettis, you're a former Navy SEAL and member of SEAL Team 6, officially known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group, NSWDG.

Speaker 1 You were deployed around the world to fight America's enemies and defend freedom. On your last mission, you were involved in a hostage rescue mission that changed your life forever.

Speaker 1 You were credited with a 900-yard sniper shot on an enemy in a mountainous region of Somalia.

Speaker 1 Incredible. You were a contractor for the Sensitive Activities Division of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for six years.

Speaker 1 You were responsible for assessing, planning, and executing sensitive capabilities to support special operation forces operations globally.

Speaker 1 Post-military, he became the founder and CEO of Bee Free Ice Cream, where the meaning came from a discovery that true personal freedom comes only from the clarification of one's mind to realize happiness as a choice.

Speaker 1 Incredible. And most importantly, you are a father to two sons and a husband.

Speaker 1 And I hope we talk a lot about fatherhood, too. I'd love to.
So

Speaker 1 I got a Patreon account.

Speaker 1 Those are our top supporters of the Sean Ryan show. A lot of them have been here since the very beginning when I was doing this in my attic.
And

Speaker 1 one of the things I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question. And

Speaker 1 man, you had some really,

Speaker 1 really good questions come up. So I picked two of them.

Speaker 1 First one is from fellow soft guy, and his name's Paul. So after almost 30 years on active duty, 20 years in soft,

Speaker 1 I honestly don't know how I'll handle working in a civilian workforce.

Speaker 1 Can you tell us three things that surprised you, maybe that you simply did not expect about your transition back into the world and how you handled those things?

Speaker 1 Absolutely. One thing that surprised me was

Speaker 1 how much about myself I did not even know or understand, like to the core, with my identity as a special forces guy, SEAL,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 how much effort it was going to take for me to learn that. That's one.

Speaker 1 What did you, what did, when did you realize that you didn't really know who you were?

Speaker 1 I think that I realized it,

Speaker 1 you you know,

Speaker 1 that's hard to put a finger on because it was almost like a collective

Speaker 1 knowing all of a sudden, but it only came the day that I was almost at rock bottom, that I was at rock bottom, that I realized, holy shit, I can just make a decision right now, right?

Speaker 1 And just the collective memory of the first couple of years of being out, just like

Speaker 1 knowing that I wasn't what I was supposed to be, right? And that I was not even close to figuring that out. Like it just felt like it was getting worse over time.
And it was.

Speaker 1 So there wasn't really like a pinpoint moment, but, you know, there was things I was doing. There was, you know,

Speaker 1 in my marriage and with my kids and the addictions that I had just, you know,

Speaker 1 compounded on each other. You know, it has a compounding effect that I think that once you

Speaker 1 sense that you've lost your purpose of what you were, you can feel those a lot more now because there's not some outlet for it at work anymore.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that's when it got bad.

Speaker 1 So I'd say

Speaker 1 in the first year or two, the first two years, because I was focused on my new job and what I was doing.

Speaker 1 And I was really confused about that, to be honest with you, too.

Speaker 1 I learned pretty quickly that

Speaker 1 that job, and this wasn't that job specifically I have anything against. It was just that I knew I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.
And that's a really shitty feeling.

Speaker 1 And trying to go, you just feel lost. So, what am I supposed to be doing?

Speaker 1 You know what I think, man?

Speaker 1 After interviewing, I don't know how many of

Speaker 1 us types, but

Speaker 1 having gone through it myself and and and talking to gents like you i

Speaker 1 i think what happens is you change as a human and it's almost like you're under a fucking spell when you're in when you're in a unit like that i mean

Speaker 1 i know you probably don't want to talk about this but i'm going to but the hate that comes from the community i mean that's not when you're out you know that's not like normal you know to have those type of feelings and and it's just a glimpse into like

Speaker 1 how

Speaker 1 how dark it can be in the community and and when you and then and then when you're in it with the with the you know with the depression and the anxiety and the like just all this shit you know what i mean and and and when you come out if you make it out Unfortunately, we have to say it like that because so many of our friends are

Speaker 1 killing themselves.

Speaker 1 it's it's like

Speaker 1 it's like this transition to morph back into yourself what you are

Speaker 1 who you truly are what you're supposed to be and i think i think for the guys that do make it back and and find their way back to themselves of what they were before they went in it's it's it's a

Speaker 1 it's a stronger

Speaker 1 it's a

Speaker 1 I don't even want to say hardened because if you find yourself a lot of that falls away that hardness and

Speaker 1 That's what I think it is

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 morphing back into

Speaker 1 yourself

Speaker 1 I think what I've learned is that the consequences of doing that are gonna make people mad and angry because you now

Speaker 1 it's almost seen as a a false betrayal, in my opinion. Like you're betraying the code.

Speaker 1 And I've moved past this, so I don't dwell on it too much anymore, but it used to bother me a lot because I really think that that dark, dark side of this brotherhood, which is a beautiful thing, but also has this,

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 connected to the veteran suicide problem. Because I rem

Speaker 1 Maybe we'll get into this, but I remember the thoughts, the very specific thoughts that I was having in my moment, right?

Speaker 1 And going,

Speaker 1 it's very, it's a lot simpler than I think that we really think.

Speaker 1 The actual specific thoughts that are going through our head at that moment. And whatever the buildup was to get to that moment, it's different for everybody.
We have different addictions.

Speaker 1 We have different coping mechanisms for what we feel.

Speaker 1 But what I know

Speaker 1 is that for most of us, there's no betrayal going on.

Speaker 1 Most of us who are doing our lives,

Speaker 1 especially the guys that figure this out and turn and make a decision, the right path, right, and don't give up,

Speaker 1 are doing it respectfully, not disrespectfully. The programming we get.
in the code is that once you're done living your life by that code,

Speaker 1 you can't, I couldn't conceive that any SEAL or guys in a unit could then go out in the world and live their life by any other code but that.

Speaker 1 And then we sort of connect it to integrity or like whatever the words might be.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that code has to be that way for it to work, right?

Speaker 1 But it's like a little bubble of a reality in this whole world of infinite reality and the paths you can go on and the things you can do.

Speaker 1 And that little bubble of reality is also part of the whole overarching story. So how do you tell if you want to? And then there's the judgment of that in the first place.

Speaker 1 Well, why do you have to tell?

Speaker 1 I know why. You know, I've done a lot of work to figure out why I need to do anything.

Speaker 1 And not enough time to explain to every single person still within that code on why. And it might be a waste of time because they won't understand

Speaker 1 right

Speaker 1 some of them might

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 that's what it is in my opinion and I think about the solutions towards that and it's it's really solutions are more conceptual to me it's just finding some way which is happening actually so I'm very grateful

Speaker 1 where

Speaker 1 No change happens until a leader can validate that the change is acceptable, right? So some guy,

Speaker 1 some captain, whatever,

Speaker 1 until they decide, hey, I got to do my fit reps, I got to make, I got to become an admiral someday and go, this is a big problem, that this veteran suicide thing, that for sure

Speaker 1 this code in this place is part of that story of what gets to that.

Speaker 1 So what can we do that's not going to, is so afraid of doing anything because they're so afraid that it's gonna

Speaker 1 sap bandwidth from the mission right or the operating

Speaker 1 but I think that the hate stuff actually uses more manpower and bandwidth than the solution which would just be in my mind some

Speaker 1 we figure out some really hard problems at that place that's a damn good point I've not thought of that the bandwidth thing yeah we figure out like scheduling and things like um

Speaker 1 scheduling in some things

Speaker 1 or just even infusing some level of acceptability for these, for

Speaker 1 what guys are going to do when they're done, right?

Speaker 1 And maybe even some kind of rule set besides just

Speaker 1 it being this free-floating sort of non-acceptance thing, like that if you do or say anything that anybody knows about, like

Speaker 1 what are

Speaker 1 we supposed to do? Go to some ranch and live?

Speaker 1 Yeah, the quiet professional thing is what they attach it to, but

Speaker 1 you're a quiet professional there. You have to be,

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 1 When I'm now in my life, I'm not that doing that anymore. I have other things to do, you know?

Speaker 1 And it's not a disrespect thing. It's just, it doesn't apply anymore, right respectfully not

Speaker 1 i promise you no guy you talk to their intention is to go

Speaker 1 like them and i'm gonna go do this because of that like they're not they're just trying their best they're just doing their best it's a fight for survival but those experiences yes are

Speaker 1 Those experiences are very, they're profound experiences to each person. Like the special part of special forces to me

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 our little hearts inside of each one of our guys each one of like the individuality of the guy next to you we always say that you know the capabilities the cool stuff the night vision goggles the guns the support the money all the stuff is cool

Speaker 1 and I don't don't want to make anybody mad but the special part of special forces is the op is the guys the the individual person right like not the call sign part the

Speaker 1 once we light cigarettes on a quiet target we start calling each other by our names part you know and we know a little bit about you know the closest guys anyways where they grew up from what their childhood was like what and they're all similar stories yeah

Speaker 1 you know the thing they

Speaker 1 i know that they've studied with psychologists at different units

Speaker 1 And they've been doing this for a while. Probably, I mean, at least since I was there over a decade ago, um, 20 years too, I think that they started to

Speaker 1 we're trying to figure out what is that thing, what's the thread that's in common between us guys

Speaker 1 that causes us to get through those selections without quitting, right? And just keep driving through all the suffering and have that, it's not just this, oh, it's mental fortitude, you know,

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 we all experience some sort of adverse childhood thing, some trauma,

Speaker 1 some hardship, something,

Speaker 1 right? That instead of some people would go become drug addicts or, you know, some level of coping for that, whatever was missing, you know, and I could go through a whole list of that stuff,

Speaker 1 instead decided to just go

Speaker 1 do shit and never quit, right?

Speaker 1 And my opinion about that is it has a little connection to validation as well,

Speaker 1 right? Because our reputation is, that's all it is.

Speaker 1 We just need

Speaker 1 constant validation from each other in order for our reputation to be good, right? And we fall outside of that. That's the most stressful thing.

Speaker 1 That's even more stressful if you ever get labeled, you know, that's worse than if I'm getting shot at by a PKM. Yeah.
You know,

Speaker 1 that guy, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, and you need to have little moments where you you fuck something up and for a little while you might be that guy and you're like, that's the worst feeling ever.

Speaker 1 I got to get out of this, you know, at any cost. You know, I'll do anything for validation to be out of this and be in the good, in the green.
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Speaker 1 It's all related to that. And then that's a long answer to that question, but when you get out,

Speaker 1 you don't have that there anymore. Where do you get the validation from? You've got to figure out how to self-validate.
You got to go clear all of the reasons why you needed that in the first place.

Speaker 1 You have to reinvent.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's what you have to do.
You have to reinvent. For me, going back to myself, like you said, was all the way back to my seven-year-old self before

Speaker 1 things start to happen, before you,

Speaker 1 you know, start to realize that it's hard or traumatic or

Speaker 1 whatever the memories that you know, each one of us knows are in there that have been causing us all of this

Speaker 1 stress through our lives.

Speaker 1 It's a good answer.

Speaker 1 One more.

Speaker 1 Stephen Casey.

Speaker 1 What advice do you have for exiting military members whose skill set/slash area of military service diverges widely from their passion and which may take time to develop

Speaker 1 suggestions on what to do if your skill set is way outside of your passion? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do the skill set.

Speaker 1 You got to do what's available to you and you got to have a job. You got to work.

Speaker 1 That I experienced this.

Speaker 1 Start making moves towards the thing that you're passionate about.

Speaker 1 You got to stop wasting time. And so

Speaker 1 some people are going to get angry about this, but

Speaker 1 I didn't have time anymore to watch four hours of a football game and memorize all the statistics about some player and what college they went to so that when we're all gathered around for fantasy football, you're like, man, that guy really knows his shit.

Speaker 1 One day I realized he knows his shit and it's a waste of time for me because I got to be

Speaker 1 making ice cream flavors and... giving it to people to taste it and tell me what they think.
And

Speaker 1 that was the moves I was making in the background, you know, going to

Speaker 1 ice cream school at Penn State before I ever started my job. I didn't know why.
I didn't even, I think my wife was probably pissed. You're going to spend how much to go to this fucking school?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you haven't even started your job yet.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 but I'm glad I did. But my point is, start making moves towards the thing you're passionate about.
Yeah. And if you don't know what that is,

Speaker 1 you know, instead of wasting time

Speaker 1 going out drinking or like whatever the things are that you know, you're wasting time.

Speaker 1 You just know what you just know what they are.

Speaker 1 A lot of times they're related to your addictions, you know.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 start figuring out what you like to really do. It could be very simple.
Yeah, that's, I mean,

Speaker 1 I didn't know what the fuck I liked to do. You know, I did all kinds of shit.

Speaker 1 I sure as hell didn't think I was going to like sitting down talking to people for six hours because I don't like talking to people outside of the show anyways. I'm just a, I'm an introvert.
And,

Speaker 1 you know, but I mean,

Speaker 1 I think you just got to, one,

Speaker 1 one, you got to close that fucking door. That's what I think.
You have to close that door because you are leaving a community that doesn't want you to leave and that you're passionate about.

Speaker 1 Like nobody in SOF,

Speaker 1 probably even in the military, especially in combat arms, is not passionate about their, what the, what they're doing and the people that they're with.

Speaker 1 And when that's over, you have to shut that door and tune that out. It's done.
You're never going back. It's not going to happen.
You know, and

Speaker 1 if you're like me and I'm sure you and a lot of the other gents that have been in here, I mean, that's all you had time for, man, is to pour your heart and soul into your unit. into warfighting, into

Speaker 1 building that camaraderie and culture and

Speaker 1 and just being a fucking warrior. And

Speaker 1 so you don't know what you like to do because that's been 100% of your dedication and mindset and everything goes into that. And so when you get out, you got to try everything, man.

Speaker 1 You got to, I mean, you just have to have to

Speaker 1 keep bouncing around

Speaker 1 until you feel good. And then when you feel good, you're probably on to something.

Speaker 1 That's right. And it becomes, when you find something and it becomes your new most important thing in life other than your family,

Speaker 1 that's it. So dive in.
Yeah, it doesn't matter how much you have to do it. You know that's,

Speaker 1 you got it, you know, because there's people I've heard go, oh man, I like to make these duck collar things. And, but then I started selling them and I didn't like it anymore because I had to do work.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, Do you really love it though? Yeah. You know, get through a couple of years until you can get somebody to help make those things.
Will you love it then?

Speaker 1 And think in the future, you know, there's going to be a day where I'm not running this ice cream machine all day, you know?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 once you get there, it's like

Speaker 1 worth it. It's only,

Speaker 1 to me, it's a couple years, you know, it could commit to a couple, two, three years or something.

Speaker 1 Did you have...

Speaker 1 deep and meaningful conversations with teammates on deployments ever with guys you knew

Speaker 1 yeah, like some in-depth ones to like you remember some details about some of your teammates, yeah,

Speaker 1 and then

Speaker 1 just remember there's always wasn't there always a guy playing the guitar around the fire, yeah, or there was one guy I had an EOD guy that as soon as we got back from the mission, we'd do our

Speaker 1 team family movie time, we'd go watch Band of Brothers together, I'd get some ice cream, but he would always be in his hooch with a beat maker making little beats, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that's what they love doing. So then when they get out and they go, what do I do? Wasn't there something you did? Good point.
You know?

Speaker 1 Some people, it's

Speaker 1 maybe not. Maybe we were playing video games every waking moment between or whatever, but there was probably something, you know, whatever it was.

Speaker 1 You know, went on long runs or even after a long mission, I knew guys were like, you're still going on miles of a run? You love running, you know?

Speaker 1 Maybe you designed some shoes or something

Speaker 1 for that. I don't know.
But

Speaker 1 that's my point is

Speaker 1 start making moves towards that, figuring it out what you like doing.

Speaker 1 And then imagining yourself, because the longest time, you can't, your ego with that team connection is like, I can't imagine, I did all this stuff.

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 1 I can't imagine sitting in a little ice cream truck going, hey, you know, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Speaker 1 But start to, you know, until you can imagine yourself doing that, you know? Great advice, man.

Speaker 1 Well, let's get into the interview. First, one last thing.
Everybody gets a gift, even you, Chris.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I guess we're going to be competitors in the sweets business. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm going to put these in some ice cream to see what happens. Hell yeah, do it.

Speaker 1 Do it. Vigilance League gummy bears legal in all 50 states made in the USA.

Speaker 1 you're not going to get any weird feelings if you have any yeah

Speaker 1 so I'm very curious on how you got these made and

Speaker 1 they're really good I've had them before oh thank you I'll tell you offline but um but Chris I want to get into I want to get into your story and let's do I know we have a lot of rabbit holes to go down and I want to hit every one of them so but um let's start at childhood where did you grow up

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 i was born in austin texas

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 my real father was mexican my mother is half japanese and half irish caucasian no i'm a quarter japanese too yeah man

Speaker 1 cool i didn't know that yeah

Speaker 1 cool

Speaker 1 I used to be embarrassed about it a little bit, trying to fit into school.

Speaker 1 And I looked a lot more Asian when I was a kid than I think I do now.

Speaker 1 Now I'm very proud of it. Very, very proud of it.
My grandmother immigrated here. My grandfather met her

Speaker 1 while he was on tour for Vietnam and he was in Okinawa.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they've been the core of the whole family, right? And

Speaker 1 we moved around a lot. So my real father

Speaker 1 was

Speaker 1 an abusive alcoholic, physically abusive alcoholic to my mother.

Speaker 1 Did you see any of that? So what I realized is

Speaker 1 with children and even pertaining to some of the stuff that's going on with children these days

Speaker 1 is that you remember everything. It's imprinted, right?

Speaker 1 Up to a certain, you know, like age. I don't think I remember much from like three or four, maybe,

Speaker 1 but I didn't think I remember much from four or five. And then I realized one day that I do, right?

Speaker 1 So I've got imprints in my memory of my real father, his face, and for sure his energy and what it looked and what it felt like to me

Speaker 1 that I've only been able to get to actually recently, like in the last

Speaker 1 decade of my life.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 because you block them, right, if it doesn't feel good, so

Speaker 1 you know, memories of violence, of him beating my mom. And, you know, she was working three jobs to support us.
She was a seamstress for a long time. And just

Speaker 1 remembering the faces of just different women that were not my mom, you know, coming over.

Speaker 1 Damn. Like, I remember that shit.
Right.

Speaker 1 So when we, when we are going about our, the environment we create for our kids and whatever all these parents are doing, is like I think there might be a little bit of an assumption that like, oh, they're just not going to remember all of this because they're kids, you know, but it's all in there.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that,

Speaker 1 you know, realizing that that was my real father,

Speaker 1 and then in the future, seeing some of those things coming on me was a big

Speaker 1 kind of awakening moment, right? To realize. What age did he leave? So my mom finally divorced him.

Speaker 1 You know, I try to talk to her about it. I think it's a traumatizing thing for her as well, obviously.
And my grandfather's a really strong man.

Speaker 1 He passed away a couple years ago in my mom's home. I was there during his hospice.

Speaker 1 He was an orphan himself. So he experienced a really tough childhood.
Him and his brother were orphans. Their parents abandoned them.

Speaker 1 And then they grew up with, you know, a couple different foster parents. But

Speaker 1 they both became very successful. They both, you know, he spent a long career in the army.
He retired as a colonel, did two tours of Vietnam.

Speaker 1 And then when he got out, he started, worked his way up through a company called Airframe that manufactured and sold airplane. parts and components to Japanese companies.

Speaker 1 And he became fluent in Japanese. So

Speaker 1 when that was all going on with my mom, I believe that there was some influence from him to go, I need you to leave this guy, right?

Speaker 1 And almost, I don't know if there was ever an ultimatum, but she finally made the right decision

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 divorced him. How old were you?

Speaker 1 I'm not quite sure. I think I was about five.

Speaker 1 Almost six years old, maybe. Shit, so you just you do have memories back to that young.
Yes, absolutely

Speaker 1 and they they're very specific little memories you know like what's your first memory you know what i mean

Speaker 1 that's hard for people to to think right in the moment but if you sit down you meditate maybe you think about it you can you can go back like oh yeah and and

Speaker 1 you know

Speaker 1 you know there's a memory i had from when i was probably five years old or four years old that i slipped on like a slippery concrete bonked my head and i must have gotten knocked out because the next thing i saw was my mom's face i remember that, you know.

Speaker 1 And there's another memory before that where I was getting like, I was playing in an ant pile. I might have been four years old during this time.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I got covered in fire ants and I was screaming. And, you know, my mom grabbed me and threw me in a bathtub to drown all the ants.

Speaker 1 And, you know, those get imprinted because they're sensational memories, you know.

Speaker 1 outside of your everyday playing as a kid. But I also have those memories about my father and him, the way he grabbed me to talk to me to like

Speaker 1 you know

Speaker 1 i just have memories of him sitting next to me you know he had a thick mustache

Speaker 1 and the energy that i remember was not good you know um

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 biological connection between a father and son that I felt I don't think was there, right? Because when you're drowned in your addictions, when you're,

Speaker 1 you know, when you're that it's it's blocking you you know um

Speaker 1 and then i saw this in afghanistan you know with different

Speaker 1 i kind of correlate it together because i go how and it even relates to the story is how

Speaker 1 some fathers don't have that for some reason whatever it is whether it's the ideology that they're practicing

Speaker 1 you know, where we know in that some of some of that terrorist culture, some of that Taliban, you know, and different types of those, you know, extremist cultures, like what I witnessed was, and from talking and eating with Afghans, is that

Speaker 1 the wife and the son or any children are servants to the men, and that's their role, you know.

Speaker 1 Not like here

Speaker 1 in a healthy father-son relationship where you go, they're not my servants. I respect them.
You know, they're people with choices.

Speaker 1 And and just, you know, I've made a decision to try my best to create the best environment for them. And even that's not going to be perfect.

Speaker 1 There's going to be some resentment about something, you know,

Speaker 1 but you just try your best. And so I think that goes missing in today's society sometimes to go, to realize like, you do what I say because I told you so, or any

Speaker 1 level past that. But

Speaker 1 do you... Do you have siblings? Yeah, I got two sisters.
One's my half-sister from my stepfather who,

Speaker 1 the next part of my childhood is that my mother met him and remarried.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 thank God, because he's a good man. And I didn't know that growing up.
We were at ends.

Speaker 1 You know, I said and did things like, you're not my father when I got angry as a teenager. And I

Speaker 1 go back to that now.

Speaker 1 like I want to apologize. I have apologized for that because everything that he did,

Speaker 1 he's a very quiet guy, very stoic. He grew up on a farm, also with a very difficult childhood, but at least was able to make a decision.

Speaker 1 How do you

Speaker 1 take,

Speaker 1 I have so much more respect for stepfathers that actually take on or adopt,

Speaker 1 you know, someone's kids that aren't theirs for the woman that they love.

Speaker 1 Because that's a hard thing to do, to be a father without that biological connection, you know?

Speaker 1 But, you know, to teach them how to ride a bike, to teach them. So I didn't realize until I became

Speaker 1 really out of the SEAL teams that I received all of that, even if it seemed like I wasn't listening, you know, because I was a little shit. I was a

Speaker 1 rebellious little shit. And,

Speaker 1 but I'm so grateful because it all went in there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, man, that's

Speaker 1 I don't think much about that, but I mean,

Speaker 1 actually, I do.

Speaker 1 My little brother

Speaker 1 has

Speaker 1 a stepson, and he does, he's a

Speaker 1 fucking amazing dad. And

Speaker 1 I see him doing all that stuff, you know, with he's as his biological son. And

Speaker 1 I commend him all the time, man. You are changing that kid's life for the better.
And like,

Speaker 1 I don't know if I could ever rise to that occasion.

Speaker 1 It's a son to do, especially when they're pushing back on it all, when it doesn't seem like they're getting it, you know. He can definitely be a challenge.

Speaker 1 But I want to go back.

Speaker 1 What about your other sister? Is she biological? Yes.

Speaker 1 100% or

Speaker 1 yeah, my biological sister,

Speaker 1 Courtney, she

Speaker 1 is an amazing person, one of the most kind souls.

Speaker 1 And, you know, one memory I have is my mother being pregnant with her. So I must have been, you know, we're only

Speaker 1 a couple years apart. So two, three years old.

Speaker 1 I remember something about her getting hurt while she was pregnant with her and then asking,

Speaker 1 I asked my mother these questions later in childhood.

Speaker 1 She'll start to ask, you know, she told me, you started to ask these questions, you know, because I didn't know my stepfather was not my father for a while until you get to seven, eight, whatever age, maybe before that, and start to go, Hey, you know,

Speaker 1 is that you know, you start asking questions because I remember somebody else, you know.

Speaker 1 But yeah, he, my, my real father kicked her down the stairs one day in an argument while she was pregnant with my sister, and she fell down a flight of, like, went down a flight of stairs in front of the apartment.

Speaker 1 And so,

Speaker 1 and I think about my mother,

Speaker 1 like, if I could just go back as myself now to that

Speaker 1 and and fucking, you know

Speaker 1 My future self just go grab that motherfucker, you know

Speaker 1 Because what happens when we

Speaker 1 trauma turns us into something that we aren't really any of us ever are to start with when we're children

Speaker 1 now

Speaker 1 You go so far, you know, you still can always come back It's never too late, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 It doesn't matter like how far it goes or the deepest, darkest serial killers, pedophiles, all these fucking people going on can still make a choice. But in this life, you still,

Speaker 1 whatever boundaries and lines you cross, you still have to live with and deal with the consequences of what you did, right?

Speaker 1 And I didn't felt like he ever got to do that, you know. Maybe part of the consequence of it was

Speaker 1 the suffering that people like that have every day, you know? The self-hate, the just the muck is part of it.

Speaker 1 Because they're not happy, you know? Some of these politicians, some of these people, they're not. You can just see it.
You can just see the bags in their eyes.

Speaker 1 You know, you like look at this George Soros dude and you're like,

Speaker 1 just committed to evil, right? And some of them it shows, you know, it doesn't look like a healthy 80-year-old, whatever he is, dude. Looks like a demon.

Speaker 1 And then there's others that appear or look healthy, and that's the most sinister of them, right?

Speaker 1 So, but my point about my dad is that you know, some of my family on that side he actually died early somehow in 2009, and my mom found out about it.

Speaker 1 And I asked him questions, you know, how'd he die? You know, I still don't not very clear. I think it was some medical issue with his leg or something, like some weird thing.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 my side of the family, the Mexican side of the family, tried to contact me after.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just,

Speaker 1 because of that, what I just said,

Speaker 1 I just didn't have any interest. And my real father was my father.
Right. And so

Speaker 1 it would have been a disservice in my mind to go explore that. And I just didn't have the intuition or the need.
to go explore that. And my Japanese side of the family, my grandparents and my father,

Speaker 1 I had everything I needed. Right.

Speaker 1 And so the energy of that them contacting me just didn't feel right my intuition was kicking off like there's some reason behind this whether it's money or something they've heard about me I did you know I've been a SEAL for a while

Speaker 1 and so I just

Speaker 1 pushed it you know I just didn't do it you know do you do you believe in generational trauma yes absolutely

Speaker 1 because and I

Speaker 1 I don't think that it's as genetically predisposed as we might think it is. Addictive traits and things like that.
You know, maybe a little bit. What I think is that generational trauma is

Speaker 1 because the traumatized,

Speaker 1 you have kids, now you're responsible for the environment you create for them.

Speaker 1 And if you haven't healed that shit and you haven't returned to what you really are, your real, you know, the soul that's inside of all of us

Speaker 1 when we're children.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 back to the fucking George Soros thing, you're like, he was just a five-year-old kid once, and no matter what his environment was, he was just playing, just doing his job as a kid, wholesome, innocent.

Speaker 1 Whatever the environments were,

Speaker 1 to then make him what he is now,

Speaker 1 he hasn't made a decision to change that for his own kids, right? And I guarantee you now, they're all fucked up too.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's a choice that any one person can make, but you gotta, like, you can't see through the veil of that conflict and trauma and

Speaker 1 bullshit. I call it bullshit.
It's just the easiest way for me to explain it.

Speaker 1 Stuff,

Speaker 1 and it's just piled on top of us over time to where that soul right here and here is just covered in bullshit. And you can't, how do you see through?

Speaker 1 You gotta, it's like being stuck in mud or quicksand.

Speaker 1 And the decision is it's like a shovel. You got to do work every day to get it down,

Speaker 1 at least to where you can see something, you know? It doesn't have to be perfect.

Speaker 1 What kind of work? I know what you're talking about, but a lot of people aren't going to know what you're talking about. So what kind of work are you talking about?

Speaker 1 To find a way, and there's different ways I've experienced plant medicines. for sure work for me.

Speaker 1 There's other ways. Native Americans do sweat lodges, lodges, you know.

Speaker 1 Ancient people did different things.

Speaker 1 Rites of passages to becoming a man, you know.

Speaker 1 But the point being, some way for you to just stop and realize, I feel like I'm full of shit, right?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 for me, when I got out of the military, it was like I couldn't figure it out. When I talked to my wife, you know, when I was fucking things up constantly, it was like, I just crying with her.

Speaker 1 Like, I just feel this creature inside of me right just this like little dark creature and you know

Speaker 1 that's just how I visualized it but

Speaker 1 one identifying that and then going what what caused this because I think that every one of us in the world you know from the very healthy of us all the way to you know the the bent over fentanyl addict you know in San Diego

Speaker 1 The memory, the very specific memory of what somebody did to you or what happened to you, whether it was a collective over time or a very specific thing or a whole bunch of very specific things, but you know,

Speaker 1 like you know what it is, you know? And you just

Speaker 1 don't want to admit to yourself, you know,

Speaker 1 that it's that that started it, whatever the trauma is, whatever the things, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And it's different for everybody, but going then to that thing and spending time like looking at it, we don't want to,

Speaker 1 but just fucking something

Speaker 1 to put your head in place to then not just look at it, but go like all around it and go figure out like, yeah, that memory, that's it.

Speaker 1 You know, for me, for example, there was one and

Speaker 1 like sexual stuff's embarrassing for everybody to talk about. That's why it's one of the most sinister addictions in my opinion compared to like, you can say all day long, like, I'm a drug addict.

Speaker 1 I'm like alcoholic. I beat my wife.
I do this. Really hard for people, but it's also ironic because there's so much sexuality bullshit going on right now.

Speaker 1 It's all focused on that all the time of like constantly having to prove or portray or,

Speaker 1 you know, explain

Speaker 1 your sexualities and even now gone to

Speaker 1 the extent of just displaying it openly

Speaker 1 in an effort to make it.

Speaker 1 Feel normal because your subconscious, your ego is like, you know already it's a it's it's inappropriate, you know some of these things you see like i can't and i have no judgment against anybody's sexualities but from california i can't take my kids to san francisco during gay pride month because and it's not because of the sexualities because of all the

Speaker 1 traumatic sexual shit they're gonna see you know out in public

Speaker 1 and it's just not okay, but it's also not going like anything against your sexuality. It's just,

Speaker 1 you know?

Speaker 1 but for me, just as a, because it's hard to talk about, I'm going to use it as an example. One of my earliest traumas was,

Speaker 1 you know, my mom was working a lot. My dad, so that's part of the childhood story.
My dad was in the Air Force. So then when she remarried, I became a military kid.
So I'll go back to that.

Speaker 1 We moved around a lot and that became another kind of trauma. Super cool, but also a little bit of a trauma, big, a big trauma.

Speaker 1 And, but back to that thing.

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I had a good childhood after my mom got married. I really feel overall like, man, I had a great childhood, but there was these little things because they were just doing their best.

Speaker 1 He was working, she's working, and I had freedom around the neighborhood. We lived in Japan at the time, got stationed there.
Super cool. We lived there for four years.

Speaker 1 But I had free floating rain around the whole neighborhood as a six-year-old. Right.
So

Speaker 1 I was friends with this other six-year-old.

Speaker 1 And there was a specific few days where we ended up in his house down the road, but he had older siblings, 12, 13, 14, whose parents were also gone all the time.

Speaker 1 And they were watching porn in the living room. So now I go here, I'm a six-year-old, and they, you know how, you know, I see it with kids now, they influence each other.

Speaker 1 They go, hey, they think it's a good idea to take the six-year-olds and go like, look at this.

Speaker 1 And you're like, and I'm sitting there looking at this scene that I remember the very, this is what I'm saying with, you know what it is.

Speaker 1 I remember the very specific things that I was watching in that scene, not knowing what the fuck they were

Speaker 1 to go,

Speaker 1 I don't know what it is, but it's fascinating in some way. It's like this, like something I've,

Speaker 1 you know, and then all of a sudden you're a six-year-old kid trauma, right,

Speaker 1 affects the rest of the path of your life with this sexual bullshit, right? That you saw too soon.

Speaker 1 Because you don't even need to be thinking about it until your body matures into that, which was the original purpose yeah for sex in the first place is to reproduce and like you know yeah it feels good whatever we figure that out that's an intimacy thing but not as

Speaker 1 six-year-old you're supposed to be playing you know you're supposed to be looking at bugs and

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 coloring you know

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 In one of my plant medicine experiences, I was able to go back to this very closely and like almost float around it like a spirit and go, holy shit, I'm looking at my face.

Speaker 1 I'm going around, I'm looking at my reaction to it and crying for myself to go, what? Like I, you know, just want to pull him out of there and fucking stop it.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 but it went on for a couple of different days. We're in there and that became a porn addiction for later.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And I'm not embarrassed to say really because I know how many fucking people in America are addicted to porn.

Speaker 1 If you watch it every day or even every week, you've got some sort of some level of addiction. You know, there's a spectrum for different addictions.

Speaker 1 And now when I think about it, I go, fuck, one of the worst things we could have ever done as a society, and it just gradually happened, just like everything else does, just like AI, just all the things

Speaker 1 the internet that created.

Speaker 1 Can't figure out nor agree to how to use it the right way or how to kind of regulate it so it's healthy, right? And then it just explodes into this infinite realm of deviant, dark shit.

Speaker 1 We all know what's in there.

Speaker 1 We can be embarrassed to say like, oh, I can say what's in there. And you go like, wow, you're watching, you know, right?

Speaker 1 Because if you look at any of those fucking videos and like any of them, there's millions of views, you know?

Speaker 1 More than the Sean Ryan show, you know?

Speaker 1 So I know.

Speaker 1 It's a it's a collective and it's global at this point. You can just go in there and click, yeah, I'm 18.

Speaker 1 Some 10-year-old can do that.

Speaker 1 How soon do they get these things now? They have them when they're children.

Speaker 1 I know everybody's not going in there and being responsible to like block that stuff.

Speaker 1 Promise you, they're looking at it and creating these little traumas that they don't even realize. And now we have exploded into this generation, these generations of sexually addicted people.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 dude, some of the most brave people I've ever seen doing some shit are like ex-porn stars.

Speaker 1 There's this one guy, I don't remember his name, but he's now an advocate against it and how terrible, how toxic and terrible it is.

Speaker 1 No kidding. I don't know him.
He's something Christian. I can't remember his name right now, but he was a very famous porn star.
And now imagine

Speaker 1 that's all recorded. It's all in there.
You can always go back to that. So talk about, you know, you do clear some shit, you do heal, you do find a way to move forward.

Speaker 1 But it's recorded. It's still, it's, it, talk about like your past coming back to haunt you.
It's, it's every day for that guy, but he still is telling the truth and

Speaker 1 God that that must be it would be so interesting to talk to him

Speaker 1 I'll find him He's in he goes yeah, he's a he's a he's a he's a big Christian his family is looks amazing and healthy. He's made a decision, you know

Speaker 1 But my point back to that is that was one of my traumas and and I always knew it was there and what it was.

Speaker 1 I just always avoided that it was connected to anything that I was doing, habits-wise or addictions-wise.

Speaker 1 And then we go into a culture like the Teams and, you know, we almost, we don't encourage addictions, but it's like, hey, man, it's okay. Like, we're all,

Speaker 1 it's a safe environment sometimes, you know? I would say we encourage addictions. Yeah.
I think that comes, look, maybe things have changed. I remember being shamed for not drinking.

Speaker 1 Because I don't want to drink. I remember being told, if you don't drink, we're not going to trust you.
I remember being handed sleeping pills and Adderall and opiates and all the shit.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? I think that addiction is very much encouraged within the teams. It's just under the radar.
Yeah, it's a secret code thing. And, you know,

Speaker 1 they'll blast you for those addictions and they'll punish you for those addictions. Yeah, and then you get a DUI and you're like, and then they'll go and do the exact same fucking thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's a toxic loop.

Speaker 1 Part of the thing you asked me earlier is, what's the solution? I'm like, how do you change culture? You know,

Speaker 1 shaming and guilting is not going to change it. So if you have a commander, somebody that's like, you know, zero, zero tolerance shit doesn't work, you know,

Speaker 1 it's just some level of acceptability for the guys that do want to fit in, desperately want to fit in. They have to, that don't want to participate.
You know, have you, have you,

Speaker 1 have you thought about about how the culture changed? Taint change changes

Speaker 1 a lot. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It definitely changes with the ebbs and flow of like operation tempo and combat, I think. It feels like it's getting a, it gets more toxic when you're not busy.

Speaker 1 You know, because in between all that shit, you've got camaraderie. You guys are out having to trust each other every night, you know?

Speaker 1 So I talked about this the other day with my kids' baseball team.

Speaker 1 We just merged two travel baseball teams from two teams and we had this like separation of parents and kids going like, we're better, they're better, we should play.

Speaker 1 And finally, I was like, god damn it.

Speaker 1 We're all on the same team and we're all trying our best,

Speaker 1 you know, and

Speaker 1 it's, it's that, you know, concept

Speaker 1 of acceptability,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 and just stopping with the bullshit so much. Like we're supposed to be focusing on a mission and we have, we get this, we do all this bullshit stuff.
Like,

Speaker 1 you know, the fitting in part and the reputation bars is really, really, really hard and a hard thing to change. But I think that

Speaker 1 it's happening naturally because you can't deny

Speaker 1 how good it works to optimize guys. And they're starting to do it.
You know, there's like this, this program called Virginia.

Speaker 1 human performance where they actually can now go do this once a year and it's a whole collection of modalities and providers and things to sort of set you back on the path of health and optimization, which doesn't include alcohol and cheating on your wife and fucking porn and whatever the fuck else you do.

Speaker 1 You get off all that shit for four weeks, you go back, you're optimized. And that's awesome.
And then you integrate that. I'm like, that's a good one.
That's within the, that's within the teams. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's great to hear. So they are making steps.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I can imagine how hard it was for them to accept that guys are going to go spend four weeks to do this and then teammates not judge them and go, well,

Speaker 1 he's going to go, you know, like he's going to go ride horses in Montana for fucking five days instead of go to Shaw's for the 25th time.

Speaker 1 Like he doesn't know the drills and can just go to the kill house all day and get, you know,

Speaker 1 for a week and do those.

Speaker 1 So I think it's starting to happen where the acceptability part of it is happening.

Speaker 1 So you're like, you're not shaming the guys that are drinking or doing those things, but they're being more okay with you, not participating.

Speaker 1 To go, hey, we just jumped all day, it's stressful as fuck.

Speaker 1 You want to release all that stress, but you go out drinking all night, you're gonna feel like shit the next morning, and then just compounds over the trip.

Speaker 1 And then you're like, Oh, when I get home, I'll fucking fix, you know, I'll catch up when I get home, but you never do because you get home, got to be in the kill house all day, you're breaching.

Speaker 1 Never catches up till you're done with your career and your

Speaker 1 testosterone is zero, and you're just addictions have destroyed your body, you know? So I'm happy to see that that's starting to happen. Man, that's great to hear.
When did that get implemented?

Speaker 1 I think it's been pretty recent, like the last few years.

Speaker 1 I just got into it. It's been eight years.
I've always been meaning to go, and I've just been on my path of self-discovery. Nice.
So I finally got in. I'm doing it right now, actually.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Yeah. Good for you.
My second week, I had to,

Speaker 1 get my food and my workouts for this couple of days while I'm here.

Speaker 1 Right on, man. It's awesome.
Right on.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like

Speaker 1 it has to be

Speaker 1 attraction rather than promotion.

Speaker 1 You can't be shoving it down people's throat. You just have to get

Speaker 1 solid guys that the rest look up to to just

Speaker 1 be the example without promoting it. Just be.
be.

Speaker 1 People will start following suit. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 They see people they look up to, being optimized. They're like, fuck, I got to do that too.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Back to your childhood. Yeah, so my father was in the Air Force, and we started moving around every two to four years.

Speaker 1 That was awesome. Lots of cool different experiences, but then I developed this.
problem with validation one because

Speaker 1 my stepfather doing the best he could but it's not the same as, it's not quite the same. He's doing the best he could, you know, but he's also a very stoic guy, right? So

Speaker 1 maybe

Speaker 1 part of the traumas I resented, like boys,

Speaker 1 boys especially, I got two boys. I don't know, I have experience with daughters, so I can't speak to it much, but

Speaker 1 aside from nurturing for mom, they need validation from dad every day, right? And so there's a bucket to fill every day.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't mean like, oh, I got to be at the baseball baseball games every single one of them in the bucket. That's not what does it.

Speaker 1 It's not time around where, you know, because if I could be at those things and I could just be doing this

Speaker 1 and he does something

Speaker 1 and he looks over to see if I saw it and I miss it,

Speaker 1 the bucket goes down, your dad's not really there,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 now what's happening is that

Speaker 1 I'm paying attention, right?

Speaker 1 And maybe between stuff, I do some work shit or whatever, I make my

Speaker 1 ice cream posts, but they do something and just for that split second, they look over and you're like, it's just a signal, you know, I saw, you know, and their bucket fills all the way up for that day.

Speaker 1 It just took that split second.

Speaker 1 So if I'm consistent with that, I can feel it in them that they're okay week to week, you know?

Speaker 1 And when I start to

Speaker 1 be unbalanced because of my own addictions, because my habits, or whatever, comes back during stress, then I, that's the sign, you know, time to balance myself back because I just fucking missed this week.

Speaker 1 And he's acting up now, he's talking back, he's not listening to mom, you know, and I can just you just can see how it works.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the decision to get out of the Navy was right for me, and it was because of them, which I can get to that after the childhood. But

Speaker 1 fuck, I'm so

Speaker 1 grateful to myself

Speaker 1 just five six you know eight years ago to one make the decision to get out but then working towards understanding that for the next few years

Speaker 1 you know

Speaker 1 i'm so thankful that i decided to do that how was

Speaker 1 this is interesting because i moved around a lot as a kid too every two to three years

Speaker 1 I can't even count how many different places I lived in. Yeah.
Would you consider that trauma?

Speaker 1 Yeah, because

Speaker 1 I never thought about the constant validation because you have to reestablish yourself every time you

Speaker 1 show up.

Speaker 1 And I got so tired of I'm the new kid. You go into the classroom.
I remember all those memories of,

Speaker 1 you know, you're the new kid, spitballs come flying your way, you know. Or the teacher goes, welcome, Chris Fettis, whatever.

Speaker 1 And they're like, ha ha ha ha, make fun of your name, whatever, all the little things kids do. And they don't, you know what I mean? It's not bullying.

Speaker 1 It's just kids, you know, but when you do that over and over again, and then you do whatever you got to do to fit in, you, mom, can you buy me these clothes? Can I do my hair this way?

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Can I do this? Can I do that? You make some friends and then boom, you got to go,

Speaker 1 you cry, you leave your friends you work so hard to fit in with, get to the next school.

Speaker 1 New kid again.

Speaker 1 Same thing. So now I think back like, dude, how many times times did I change and conform myself to go fit into?

Speaker 1 And it was so different every time it was Japan to South Carolina, because South Carolina.

Speaker 1 And then when you show up, they're going to make fun of what you look like because of where you just came from. They're not used to seeing it.
They're not unaccustomed.

Speaker 1 And then you had to change that to be more normal. Right.

Speaker 1 So, you know, in South Carolina, I got made fun of a lot for the Asian shit. Like, you know, I was just remembering memories of kids like, eh, you know, hoi, hoy, hoy.

Speaker 1 And it's so funny now. I wish I could go back to some of those people and go, where are you at now? What are you doing, man? You know,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 that's fucking crazy, man. I got the exact same shit.
They called me a chink all the time. I'm like, fucking Japanese.
Fuck off. Yeah, yeah.
These words. Like, thanks.
Thank you for that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, and

Speaker 1 doing that, then it was. you know, North Carolina, and then it was,

Speaker 1 we got to California. and then by the time we got to California Monterey beautiful place

Speaker 1 I loved it there because my grandparents were there you know my grand my father found a way to get stationed there as a recruiter and just kept extending it because my mom just we were happy there you know he didn't want to do that but sacrifice so he was teaching me a lesson about sacrifice without even teaching me anything he just did it you know i was like i knew he loved being an f-16 mechanic

Speaker 1 but he was doing this recruiting job so we could stay there and visit. I was always at my grandparents' house in Pebble Beach, the best memories.

Speaker 1 But then I was also in this school with different crowds of people and gangs and different stuff going on. And same thing, trying to fit in with somebody, you know.

Speaker 1 Now you're a teenager and it gets even harsher, right, trying to fit in. And

Speaker 1 so,

Speaker 1 you know, I made some friends, got one of those friends I still keep in touch with,

Speaker 1 Filipino guy, good friend of mine.

Speaker 1 We don't talk too often, but he's off living his life, but I think about him a lot.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yeah, then I sort of started to attach where I'm from to there. So when people say where you're from, I don't have time to explain all that other stuff.
I go, I went to high school there.

Speaker 1 I graduated there. You know,

Speaker 1 I'm from Monterey, California. And it was my favorite memory, my favorite place.
Right.

Speaker 1 So, you know, my dad used to have tickets for recruits to go watch Giants games in San Francisco, and they never took him up on it. So we were always going to watch games.

Speaker 1 So that's how I became a Giants fan. Those games were awesome.
I love going and eating popcorn and ice cream and watching baseball games.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I realized later,

Speaker 1 after my whole career was over, that the original reason 9-11 happened. So my parents moved one more time after that.
It was their last station before they retired and they ended up in

Speaker 1 back to North Carolina.

Speaker 1 So I stayed when they moved. I tried to live off on my own.
I was bouncing around people's houses, you know, trying to knock out some community college classes, but really I was just fucking around.

Speaker 1 I was

Speaker 1 going to parties. I was going to raves.
I was like trying to fit in, you know.

Speaker 1 I had a girlfriend that was really bad cheating on me all the time. So I was learning that lesson too, that like that's normal in a relationship.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 just a pretty toxic lifestyle with no purpose. And so, you know, my grandparents sensed that in me and

Speaker 1 my grandmother really cried for me one day and was like, you're not good here, you know? And I was getting sick all the time. And she was taking care of me.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 she said,

Speaker 1 you should go back home for a couple of years. And I was like, okay.
So

Speaker 1 went back to North Carolina for a couple of years,

Speaker 1 felt better because I was living at home again, you know.

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Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I was randomly working like at a bank as a teller and bouncing around different jobs, watching this thing on TV while I was working.

Speaker 1 People coming in, just distraught, going like, what the hell is happening?

Speaker 1 That's where I was at.

Speaker 1 And I remember thinking,

Speaker 1 I don't know why I feel this, but I want to go join the military.

Speaker 1 Because now I know.

Speaker 1 There was no way for me to have any more validation. I wasn't in school anymore.
I was like

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 doing random things. And I was like, man, when we were teenagers, I remember this group of friends.
We were always talking about Navy SEALs. I didn't know what it was.

Speaker 1 Never saw Navy SEALs, the movie, never read a book. I just went, I remember we talked about that one time, so I'm going to go to the office.

Speaker 1 So I ended up moving back to California first just to go explore, you know, just to move out again, you know, same thing. I was living with some friends.

Speaker 1 And I started training, just running and doing push-ups and all the things. Then I started to read, like,

Speaker 1 what I need to do to get in.

Speaker 1 That book, Warrior Elite, came out, and that's the one thing I read.

Speaker 1 And so I just went for it. I went to the office.

Speaker 1 Hey, I want to be a SEAL. They laughed at me.
They're like, you need to pick a job too, you know?

Speaker 1 It's like, cool, whatever, that one, you know? They're like, you sure? That's what you're going to be doing, you know?

Speaker 1 And, dude, every selection so far has been that. You sure, like, you're not going to make it, you know.
You want to start a business, it's going to be hard.

Speaker 1 You're not going to, I don't think you know what you're getting into, you know, and it just happens over and over again. I actually enjoy it now.
So,

Speaker 1 hey, I'm going to have an actual actual ice cream brand in store someday.

Speaker 1 You know, I love those reactions. So,

Speaker 1 so I get this sealed contract. I go to Buzz,

Speaker 1 get through.

Speaker 1 Now, I'm in the SEAL teams and then realized later after my career, holy shit, I didn't go to serve my country.

Speaker 1 It developed into that for sure. Now, for sure, you know, I serve my country.
I serve the guys next to me.

Speaker 1 Service of others is part of my purpose.

Speaker 1 But I realized that the truth was I did that for validation. I wanted to go be part of something that I knew was like the most...
the highest level of validation if you can get through.

Speaker 1 And it was like this, there was always this concept, like this conceptual dream to go, if I make it, I made it, you know? Now I'm in this world of validation. I'm accepted for good.

Speaker 1 You know, I don't have to keep doing it over and over again. Well, that's not true.
You do have to keep doing it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it, but, but

Speaker 1 it worked, you know, I found my place in the SEAL teams. You know, I kind of figured out,

Speaker 1 you know, what I was good at.

Speaker 1 I'm grateful that,

Speaker 1 and I don't mean this in any kind of arrogance or ego way, but I was never the best guy,

Speaker 1 but I was able to make it through every hard course, every selection, SEAL Team 6 selection, all that stuff on the first try. Damn.
So I'm proud of that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 now I know why I originally did it, but now I can also,

Speaker 1 you know, appreciate all of my experiences and even the bad ones. I'm not coping with them anymore and like trying to forget them.
I actually can remember more about them now

Speaker 1 after having found found a way to just clear all that bullshit, you know, off.

Speaker 1 Before we go into your career as an operator, I want to rewind. And you had said something.

Speaker 1 You'd said something about when you found out that your stepdad wasn't your real dad.

Speaker 1 How did you,

Speaker 1 what was that conversation like?

Speaker 1 I think it was, I don't really remember what age, but I just, I think it was like six or seven,

Speaker 1 just having that conversation with my mom and her sort of breaking it to us, like, this is not your real father, right?

Speaker 1 And this is not, you know, my, my younger sister was born then. She's your half-sister.
And, and having to explain that truth must have been really hard for her. But,

Speaker 1 you know, if you ever talk to your kids when they're younger too, they kind of like,

Speaker 1 It's hard to go too in depth because they're they just kind of listen and go. Yeah, yeah, you know, um

Speaker 1 it's hard to go how do you really feel about it though you know like i don't know you know i don't know can i go play

Speaker 1 and um it was kind of like that i think so it develops over time into more of an understanding of what what was going on you know and knowing now that

Speaker 1 my mom just tried her was just trying her best she's just doing her best so any resentments i had

Speaker 1 Afterwards, like, oh, you know, I got accepted into some colleges. I couldn't go.
We didn't have enough money.

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 you know the validation thing oh my dad wasn't my real dad but i didn't get enough like validation from a father that i needed um

Speaker 1 all those resentments went away once i realized myself again and

Speaker 1 that they were just doing the best they could and they were good parents. You know,

Speaker 1 it's a dilemma that I have not explored on the show before. And so

Speaker 1 I'm very curious and I think there's a lot of good pieces of advice that could come out of this for kids and

Speaker 1 and stepdads you know and so I mean

Speaker 1 it sounds like you regret you know all the times that you kind of threw that in

Speaker 1 in your dad's face absolutely not being your biological dad I mean

Speaker 1 What do you have to say to kids? Because, I mean, divorce is higher than ever now. Divorce is hard.
Especially in our own community. Yeah.
It's so common.

Speaker 1 So traumatic, so hard.

Speaker 1 What do you have to say to kids that

Speaker 1 are in that situation?

Speaker 1 That use that.

Speaker 1 I think that the best thing I can say is just

Speaker 1 it's hard, but

Speaker 1 if you...

Speaker 1 Even sense that your parents are doing the right thing. So like you want to go do this thing,

Speaker 1 you want to go to this party, and your dad's like, no, there's danger there. And he tries to stop you, and you get mad, you know?

Speaker 1 If you,

Speaker 1 I want, I wish that they could just kind of sit down and go, are my parents good people?

Speaker 1 If they're good people,

Speaker 1 that's all it takes. Now it's like, you're going to go through hardships, you're going to fight, you're going to battle, but at least know that they're just doing their best with what they have.

Speaker 1 Right? Because there's always, even with healthy families, you know, oh,

Speaker 1 you know, my sister was always the favorite of the family, she could do no wrong, you know.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 just realizing that, like, that might not be true, it's just you have a defense mechanism, and it might be true.

Speaker 1 You know, there's some parents that seem healthy, and some families that seem healthy, and even some in my own

Speaker 1 family that I've recognized,

Speaker 1 my in-laws' family and my family's

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 You could still, you could be seemingly a good father and go, hey, if I am making my two sons

Speaker 1 or either one of them and not the other, especially,

Speaker 1 compete or like they have to prove something, they have to earn my love,

Speaker 1 that's not, that's going to turn into something, right?

Speaker 1 Especially if you're not telling them that they, they have it or they, you know, I'm trying my best to tell mine. What I've realized is like,

Speaker 1 you know we're struggling with baseball things you know hey be aggressive you know and then i have my other son who's overly aggressive and i'm like relax a little

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 it's awesome they're so good both of them

Speaker 1 but i gotta tell them in between because i get amped up i'm like god don't you know it's like i can't tell him like don't be a pussy but i'm like here's how you're aggressive you can use dark thoughts sometimes you can pretend you know

Speaker 1 and i'm like i just we've gotten to that where i'm like how do I get him to be aggressive? Like, pretend, like, the dog, he's got a French bulldog that sleeps on him.

Speaker 1 Pretend somebody's gonna like take him, and the only way to save him is for you to like throw the pitch as hard as you can, just go for it and not care.

Speaker 1 And now he is, he's like,

Speaker 1 throwing faster. Now, let that go because those are dark thoughts, but that's what you're supposed to use that part of your ego for

Speaker 1 good, like to help, to protect, you know.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 being careful to go as often as possible no matter what we do

Speaker 1 you my love for you is infinite and it's already there like you already get that just from being born you're born into it you know it's like nepotism for love

Speaker 1 not money you're born into not yet but

Speaker 1 the love is just it's this is there i love you it's infinite you don't have to ever earn that shit you know you're everything i need you to be whether you become a janitor or a major league baseball player.

Speaker 1 It's there.

Speaker 1 I feel like that's working a little bit. Good.
No, good. So that would be my advice to those kids is like,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 and if you're not, if you don't feel that that's true from your parents,

Speaker 1 maybe don't be afraid to ask them, hey, dad, do you love me already? You know?

Speaker 1 Or do I got to do this shit? Do I got to become a lawyer and a

Speaker 1 like my brother? Or like, do I got to become an athlete, a tennis player, whatever, to get that love? You know?

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 Makes a lot of sense. What about, what about, and I know,

Speaker 1 you know, the roles are kind of reversed, but, you know,

Speaker 1 how would your dad react when you would

Speaker 1 when you would say those things? My dad, when I apologize and I went through this,

Speaker 1 you know, this was after my first Ibogaine experience. That just worked for me to open up my heart to go look at all this stuff, right?

Speaker 1 Meditation now works for me.

Speaker 1 There's other ways therapy works for people, you know,

Speaker 1 different things. But when I went and had that conversation with him, it was the first time he ever cried.
really hard. First time he ever cried that I remember, you know, and it was over the phone.

Speaker 1 So I couldn't even tell he was crying, but I could hear in his voice like he said, you know, I appreciate that, son. And it was in his voice.
So I know

Speaker 1 it was the right thing to do to make him understand that.

Speaker 1 How would he react when you would say that? I mean, how would he react? He was a kid, yeah. Oh.

Speaker 1 How could hippie have reacted?

Speaker 1 I think if I asked him as a kid, he would have answered me and said, I think he would have said yes he would have said not i'm talking about my stepfather father that's what i'm talking about yeah my um

Speaker 1 what i'm asking is how would your stepdad react when you would throw it in his face that it wasn't that he was so when i threw it in his face i think that it was super anger it was very those were bad fights you know like

Speaker 1 trying his best not to get physical with me and you know um

Speaker 1 really anger you know and understandably because he was trying his best, and here I am entitled to it, going like,

Speaker 1 if he wasn't there, who knows what the fuck would have happened to me, you know, where I'd be. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They say addictive personalities, but I don't think there's addictive personalities.

Speaker 1 I think it's based on your environment, what, what you, the amount or like the, the level of bullshit you have to cope with so that it becomes your default

Speaker 1 It becomes your default in the future for when you have problems or stress and you go to an addiction.

Speaker 1 Chris, let's take a break. And then when we come back, we'll get into your military career.

Speaker 1 I know everybody out there has to be

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And so, one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter.

Speaker 1 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 super bad.

Speaker 1 She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show.

Speaker 1 And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up.
Links in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

Speaker 1 All right, Chris, we're back from the break. We're getting into your military career.
9-11 just happened. and um

Speaker 1 you went to the recruiter going to buds yeah i went to the recruiter

Speaker 1 you know those guys

Speaker 1 i don't know if they ever take anybody seriously but for sure it was

Speaker 1 rough going through there you know hey trying to convince me otherwise but so i took a you know back then it was like you if you make it through buds you get two thousand dollars so you know and i was broke so i was like yes you know that's another that was another motivation for it

Speaker 1 I want that two thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 Then I would have had four thousand dollars in my bank account because um

Speaker 1 I did

Speaker 1 because after I finished, there was a guy who got orders to the East Coast that really wanted to be with his brother on the west coast, and he traded me. I was like, Is it worth two thousand dollars?

Speaker 1 And he's like, Yeah,

Speaker 1 and uh

Speaker 1 yeah, we swapped orders

Speaker 1 nice,

Speaker 1 yeah. So, yeah, I went to um

Speaker 1 boot camp in Virginia Beach.

Speaker 1 So the other side of, you know, the base from Dev Group.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 did some training. We were waking up early in the mornings, doing some of that training, you know, with the guys that were going to go to the program.

Speaker 1 Then I get over to Bud's, I check in, and it's just game time from there. So

Speaker 1 my mental state really was just I knew I wasn't going to quit anything because I needed that.

Speaker 1 I needed that that acceptance and that validation so bad that I would fuck, I would, you know, die for it, right? It's that strong.

Speaker 1 Who were you?

Speaker 1 This is, it's just strange because we have a lot of similarities. And

Speaker 1 that's the only reason I made it through was validation for my dad. and from my dad.
But who were you seeking validation from?

Speaker 1 From

Speaker 1 my imagination of just anything, somebody important.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. 100% ego.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know, maybe some of my authentic self that I just didn't understand yet then, too, because I was lacking that, right?

Speaker 1 I didn't understand that at the time. I just knew for some reason, I know I'm not going to quit.
I don't know how I know. I just know.

Speaker 1 I didn't read into what was coming up each day. I didn't know.
I wanted to, I prefer just

Speaker 1 minimizing the anxiety about some hard thing I have to do even now, today,

Speaker 1 you know, and just do as much preparation as I can for it, right?

Speaker 1 But not

Speaker 1 anticipate it so much. Like, man, that 50-meter underwater swim is coming up in five weeks.
Now I got five weeks of stress and anxiety to think about, right?

Speaker 1 I know it's sometime coming, so I'm just gonna just gonna practice it when we're supposed to be.

Speaker 1 So that's kind of how I operated in buds.

Speaker 1 And it did me pretty well. You know, like all those hard things, they're scary.

Speaker 1 You know, standing with your back to the pool, hearing guys going, getting yelled at to get in, get in,

Speaker 1 do that underwater flip and just start cruising across, hoping you get, you know, you get back to the side. The 50-meter.
Yeah, that was one of the scarier ones, right?

Speaker 1 Did you know any of the evolutions that, I mean, before you went in?

Speaker 1 Yeah, because as we started to go through our in docks and, you know, preparing for a first phase, guys are talking. So

Speaker 1 what were you worried about?

Speaker 1 You read the Warrior Elite, too. Yeah, yeah.
So some of that was in there.

Speaker 1 Book. Yeah, I read that, but I wasn't going back to it each day.
Gotcha.

Speaker 1 I just didn't have anything.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 yeah, I just remember going through it.

Speaker 1 I had to stay in the barracks for the first three, two or three weeks before first phase actually started, and they move you into the main side to where the bud students live.

Speaker 1 And it was all surrounded by the guys who quit.

Speaker 1 So they're all going out every night. They're all talking about it, you know, like,

Speaker 1 and they're playing that whole game of like, hey, welcome to the barracks, new guy. And you're like, but these guys all quit.

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 1 what are they making me scared and nervous about this the shit they quit they quit for so that actually fueled me a little bit it's like that's how i knew what was coming you know and i was like well i'm just not gonna quit

Speaker 1 so um

Speaker 1 yeah then i we got moved over got into my class um

Speaker 1 yeah honestly it i remember it It was a good memory up until third phase. In the third phase, I struggled because I had this little fuck up and it almost caused me to fail out.
What was it?

Speaker 1 You know, when you're doing the push-ups or the pull-ups to go into the chow hall to eat, you got to do 50 push-ups, you got to do a bunch of pull-ups with weight and those rubber magazines?

Speaker 1 Well, one of the days I was the last dude, and

Speaker 1 to be honest with you,

Speaker 1 so I didn't have any magazines in the pouches. So I was light.

Speaker 1 Nice. So I go, man, do I go stop somebody? And I don't want to, honestly, I didn't want to go feel

Speaker 1 an accident. Yeah, I didn't want to go feel the embarrassment and get yelled at for breaking away to go, hey, guys, because I was the last day everybody ran inside.

Speaker 1 Now it's just three instructors waiting for me to do my damn strict pull-ups. And I didn't want in that moment to go, hey, guys, I didn't, let me, I need some magazines.

Speaker 1 And then them all break out to, what the fuck? And just send me to the ocean and all the shit you're going to have to do for anything.

Speaker 1 So I just went, fuck, I'm just going to get up there and do them and hope they don't, you know? And so I went up and instructor, I don't know exactly who he was, is like, Fettis, stop.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, stop hanging. Fuck.

Speaker 1 How many magazines you got in your pouch? And then in that moment, I made the wrong decision. Instead of saying, I have none, I was like, I got six, you know? Oh.
And he was like, get off the bars.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, fuck.

Speaker 1 Show me. I show him they're not there.
He's like, you motherfucker, you're fucked, you know?

Speaker 1 And it turned into a nightmare for a couple weeks while I was the dude oh man you know carrying the giant trident and the huge helmet thing you know

Speaker 1 and sleeping on the beach you know and you're already smoked and so I started to fuck up other things because I was smoked you know there was another guy that was with me but he ended up getting you know dropped He just because he just he wasn't going to quit, but he just could not perform close to good enough.

Speaker 1 So they eventually like, yeah, we just got to let him go. Stop fucking with him.
So I had all that fear, like, fuck, I'm going to be, I'm there now, you know?

Speaker 1 So every day, the extra shit I had to do, I was like, I just remember how

Speaker 1 low energy, like, dude, I had nothing, you know, on some of those days. And so we had big things to do on some of those days that I, that I had that going on, like

Speaker 1 this.

Speaker 1 monster mash kind of thing around the island.

Speaker 1 You remember where you like do the oak horse, rep around the island, go to a shooting range shoot i was like so smoked i didn't remember the brief i was probably doing this during the brief and they were like hey when you get to the range pick a number that's the lane you shoot in so when i got there i was like i don't know which lane i'm supposed to shoot in so i go okay god please let me pick the right one i just lay down start shooting ends up being somebody else's lane so he had double shots on his target So we get through the whole thing.

Speaker 1 I finish it. I get a decent time for how smoked I was.
And then we go back through the brief and they were going through the shots.

Speaker 1 And now we're sitting in class and they're like, hey, something weird happened. And I'm like, God,

Speaker 1 I know it's me, you know? Oh, man. And they're like, Mechling,

Speaker 1 why did you shoot six shots on your thing instead of three? And I was like, what? You know, I didn't, you know? And

Speaker 1 I'm like, that was me, you know, I,

Speaker 1 and they're like,

Speaker 1 you know, what the fuck? You can't get it together, dude, you You know, and I'm like, dude, I'm just not going to make it, you know? So I just, I tried my best to keep plugging away.

Speaker 1 I think what happened was they finally let me out of that or, you know, to rest up with the other guys a little bit

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 kind of give me the talk like, hey,

Speaker 1 you need to show us something this next week because,

Speaker 1 you know, we're keeping you because we talk to everybody.

Speaker 1 And there was only like 13 guys from my original Hell Week finishing. They were in that class still.
And we had like 45 dudes. They all rolled into our class.

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Speaker 1 So it kind of took over our class and there were some really good dudes, like really high performing dudes, right?

Speaker 1 So I used to get first on the yoke horse all the time and I went to third, you know?

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 things like that. But

Speaker 1 they talked to, i think that's the specifically the 13 guys said hey what do you guys think about this guy and they were all my bros and we all went through hell week together you know and they looked out for me nice so they came through and they're like you got to keep this guy so they kept me and then i'm and then i finished damn

Speaker 1 it was hard it was a rough time how did it feel when you graduated I felt pretty guilty. I didn't know if I belonged there.

Speaker 1 I felt a little bit of imposter syndrome, but one of the instructors, who I honestly didn't think liked me very much, anyways,

Speaker 1 was like,

Speaker 1 hey, I just want to say this. Everybody that finished this shit deserves to be here.

Speaker 1 And so that kind of cleared it for me, you know, because I had some guys for sure in that class that were like, hey, this fucking guy doesn't deserve to be here, you know, that rolled in or whatever.

Speaker 1 But all 13 of those guys that I originally started with didn't think that, so that's all I needed. You know, that's cool, man.

Speaker 1 We started calling ourselves the Peerbloods after that.

Speaker 1 Nice. So we still have that.
The guy I ended up working my contracting job for was one of those 13 guys that started his business after his enlistments as a SEAL. And we were at Team 10 together.

Speaker 1 So I ended up working for him as a contractor. Nice.
He's still running that and very successful. Where did you head to after that?

Speaker 1 What team? I went to Team 10 after switching orders and getting my couple of grand.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I don't know why I wanted to be on the East Coast I just did you know I had I was just over bouncing around California you know

Speaker 1 I had some inkling that debt root was a thing I didn't know much about it but selection was in my mind and I was like if this selection is gonna be anything harder than buds

Speaker 1 I want to make it as like I just struggled through this fucking third phase.

Speaker 1 I want to make it as comfortable as possible not have to be like living in a barracks and stuff, you know, and so I was like, maybe I'll get a house I can afford soon, you know.

Speaker 1 You were thinking that right out of buds? Yeah, I knew I wanted a family. Wow.
You know, so you were thinking about a family going into the SEAL teams?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I didn't know when or I just wasn't like a

Speaker 1 very specific thing. It's just like, I know I want to have a family for sure.
You know, and so it just seemed like the East Coast environment was better suited for that.

Speaker 1 So I was just thinking in the future. Gotcha.

Speaker 1 And that worked out. It was the right decision for sure.
So,

Speaker 1 you know, with all the stuff that happened in between, it still worked out. You know,

Speaker 1 we're really happy. We've got everything we need to be happy.
I've got my business there now. Yeah.
You know, so it's, it was the right decision. And then it actually, it did make

Speaker 1 selection for Deb Group great, you know. It was was a couple minutes,

Speaker 1 well, 30 minutes. I had to commute across town, but I was there and I saw how hard it was for those guys from the West Coast to be living in barracks just

Speaker 1 for that time. It's so hard going through that.
Wow.

Speaker 1 You were really looking ahead. I wasn't looking that far ahead.

Speaker 1 I still am.

Speaker 1 So you go to Team 10.

Speaker 1 What year is this roughly? I got to team 10 in 2000, the the end of 2005, and then we started that. I had a whole full workup.
There was a lot of challenges there.

Speaker 1 So you showed up pretty much right after Red Wings. Correct.

Speaker 1 Those guys were on their way back from that

Speaker 1 when I was at the team doing new guy stuff, waiting. And

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 my first platoon. And my first deployment was one of the most intense and profound deployments I ever had with a really great,

Speaker 1 you know, two platoons of guys and

Speaker 1 what I believe to be the best SEAL leader and operator that I ever was anywhere around. Some of the things that he was and did,

Speaker 1 specifically for me too,

Speaker 1 he might have saved my career. I got in trouble right off the bat.

Speaker 1 Doing too much, trying to beat validation by acting up, you know.

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 he must have seen something the way he described it to me. It was like, hey, I'm gonna get, I'm pulling you out of this jail cell, right? And you owe the man, but there's something you got that

Speaker 1 that's what I want you to do, and not this shit. What did you do? Um,

Speaker 1 one of the first trips we went on was diving in, um, well, first we had a jump trip in Destin, Florida, and I got arrested right off the bat from in a bar fight for just nothing except for

Speaker 1 guys looking at us from across the bar.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 that night,

Speaker 1 that football player from the Cowboys, Jason Wenton, it was his birthday and he was celebrating with people that same night.

Speaker 1 And so we were drinking with them and having fun.

Speaker 1 And then it ended up in this bar fight thing where one of my buddies looked out for me. I was going to get sucker punched.
He ended up going to jail. So now, and he was a new guy.

Speaker 1 All the new guys are now in trouble right on the first trip because of me.

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 platoon chief he's the guy I'm talking about best best seal I've ever ever known

Speaker 1 I was like you guys are now in the spotlight so you better do the training and not even a single you guys do anything else you're fucked right so we were okay

Speaker 1 And I did the wrong thing. They asked me like, hey, how'd this happen? I didn't take the blame for it.
I didn't say, hey, it all started because of my fault.

Speaker 1 It was like, oh, hey, we got into a bar fight. And then, you know, my buddy came across and knocked this guy out that was going to sucker punch me.

Speaker 1 So it just, it wasn't, it was not the right level of accountability. It wasn't, it wasn't enough accountability.
It wasn't the right accountability for that right off the bat.

Speaker 1 So I had problems already.

Speaker 1 So we go to the next place, Key West. We're diving.

Speaker 1 I'm out at the bar with another new guy.

Speaker 1 That guy ended up quitting after this because

Speaker 1 the hazing and the shit we had to deal with just got so bad.

Speaker 1 He quit. He quit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he turned into the bird. Holy shit, I don't think I've ever even heard of that.
And then I went through Captain's Mess by myself, you know,

Speaker 1 first thing, you know, as a new guy. And

Speaker 1 so we're there in a bar fight. I'm hanging out with him.
We're getting a, we get in a fight about some girls.

Speaker 1 And we decide to run

Speaker 1 and try to get to the water and swim around to the barracks. And dude, cops were chasing us around Key West for like over an hour, jumping fences

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 you know, trying to block us on streets. And it was like a full-blown chase and locking down of Key West, Florida.
So

Speaker 1 one cop, like one of those fences that sticks up with the sharp wire, like jabbed it into his leg, trying to catch me flying over a fence.

Speaker 1 Eventually,

Speaker 1 we got rolled up and I'm in jail.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it was terrible.

Speaker 1 So I'm sitting there like, oh my God, I'm done. This is done.
I just did too much. I didn't, you know, I was just like acting out too much.

Speaker 1 Glad I changed that,

Speaker 1 especially for selection for Team Six, which was a lot smoother.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I wish that would change to

Speaker 1 meditate, optimize your performance, breathe, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Optimize, you know,

Speaker 1 be the best operator you can possibly be, right?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 platoon chief comes in, he's like, hey, that's what I was talking about. Hey, I'm going to get you out of here.
Where you know these guys, but you're, you're going to have a hard workup.

Speaker 1 We got a long workup still. We still got.
Is this in jail? Yeah, he's talking to me in jail. While you're in the cell, yeah.
Man, credible.

Speaker 1 Day comes into my cell and he has this talk with me, come to Jesus. And he's like, anybody else would be losing their bird right now, right? This is not,

Speaker 1 this is unheard of to get in trouble like this this fast.

Speaker 1 He's like, but we know that the police chief and they've had this. And he's like, this is the worst one they've had for a while.
And

Speaker 1 some grown-ass men for the next

Speaker 1 foreseen future and other teams too are not going to be able to go out after work.

Speaker 1 And they're like, they're not going to be happy with you because they're going to know why. You're the guy who caused that.

Speaker 1 So for what I understand, like a year, guys couldn't go out in Key West

Speaker 1 after work.

Speaker 1 So needless to say, my platoon hated me. Yeah.
So it was the opposite effect.

Speaker 1 What that happened for me, though, was that I kicked in. I had to go to a fucking captain's mask.
It was terrible. It was embarrassing.
The other guy quit, turned in his bird.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, all right, new guy, you better show us something this next 13 months.

Speaker 1 So we go to Land Warfare. We start going on trips.
I'm getting rolled up in the middle of the night, taped up,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 having to figure my way out of it. get back, try to sleep at all, usually not, and then going to do work work all day right

Speaker 1 but what that did for me was it kicked me into it kicked kicked me into gear kicked me into something like dude i gotta perform i gotta do twice as much as anybody else and so i did i started waking up early i just wouldn't go to sleep

Speaker 1 getting stuff ready

Speaker 1 helping everybody in every department out with anything i could doing the training

Speaker 3 just

Speaker 1 fucking everything I could think of, you know?

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, that 13 months went by over time. Guys started to trust me again.

Speaker 1 I would go out with them and stuff, but I wasn't messing around, you know.

Speaker 1 They started to accept me back into the circle. How long did that take? It's about 13 months.
It took 13 months. Yeah, just all the trips you go on through

Speaker 1 workups.

Speaker 1 That's a long fucking time. That was a long time to be hating your guts.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was a long time to be

Speaker 1 trying my best to do twice as much effort, you know,

Speaker 1 than other guys. But that's not to say that I outperformed anybody.
We had some really good dudes, like other new guys I was with, or just amazing guys.

Speaker 1 Still best friends with a couple of them.

Speaker 1 So we go on deployment, and that's where I really make up for it. What do you think that they saw in you?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 My wife told me this before. I have

Speaker 1 a way of connecting with people. Sometimes I don't even realize it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 maybe those guys felt how important

Speaker 1 they were to me or at least their validation. Well for me it was the validation I needed from them, right?

Speaker 1 And maybe they felt something. I don't know.
You never asked them? No, I don't think I ever I never asked him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I never asked him.

Speaker 1 Maybe something I need to go do.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 1 you know, we went on deployment and I really,

Speaker 1 I was a JTAC

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 we had a lot of really hairy operations. A lot of couple of times I went, you know, we Winchestered an AC-130 and, you know, lots of different.

Speaker 1 Winchester means out of ammunition for the civilians listening. And could you describe what a JTAC is

Speaker 1 joint terminal air control so you're essentially we don't have air force guys and CCTs combat controllers in the teams right so we are the JTACs organically so

Speaker 1 on missions we control the aircraft right to include the surveillance like everything they can see with their with their pods

Speaker 1 And then you got to know all of the weapons you got in every stack and how to order those guys in an efficient way so that when something goes south, you can get

Speaker 1 guns down on bad guys as quickly as possible

Speaker 1 so that we can either get out of there or continue the mission.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that became my specialty during that time. I ended up going to sniper school after that.
But for that deployment, you know, I was like a roof team guy, like our version of a reckey team for the first

Speaker 1 quarter of the deployment, and then got switched on to be the JTAC. And I just feel like I had

Speaker 1 this talent for it that they trusted because I stayed that and I got a lot of experience doing it.

Speaker 1 Um, and I and I enjoyed it, you know,

Speaker 1 might have been like one of those communication things, like I enjoy communication now.

Speaker 1 Um, so I got a bronze bronze star for

Speaker 1 a couple, like I

Speaker 1 it was for really the collective operating as a JTAC that I got that for, my first bronze star.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the guys used to make fun of me.

Speaker 1 The gun case

Speaker 1 that I

Speaker 1 had been issued whoever had it before me in the teams was named Billy. So it was on there.

Speaker 1 and you know you don't get to know a new guy's name so quickly so everybody assumed that that was my name for a while and there's still some guys out there that still just know me as

Speaker 1 bronze star billy so it was kind of a joke that actually uh nick check started

Speaker 1 who ended up you know he was on that deployment often the

Speaker 1 um the navigator in our Humbie in the front seat while I was the JTAC in the back seat.

Speaker 1 And then fast forward in the future, we ended up at Denver together in different teams. But during that time,

Speaker 1 he's the guy who nicknamed me that. So we came back from that deployment.
I came back as Braun Star Billy, and I kind of recovered my reputation and was validated for the indefinite future.

Speaker 1 And it was like really one of the best feelings I ever had in the teams. Nice.
You know, and some really hard things happened on that deployment, too. We lost Jason Lewis in an IED.

Speaker 1 I was the JTAC for that. I performed the medevac.

Speaker 1 That actually ties into a story that I meant to talk about with this Hilo pilot. Dude, just one of the most incredible

Speaker 1 heroes of anything I've experienced in my operating

Speaker 1 that night.

Speaker 1 You didn't tell us where you deployed to. Yeah, so this was in Baghdad and all around.
So we were almost exclusively operating in solder city. Really hairy,

Speaker 1 nightly operations every night, sometimes six nights a week.

Speaker 1 And then occasionally we'd go out to other areas like Bacoba or Alamara for operations, but we were pretty focused on that during that deployment. What kind of operations?

Speaker 1 Counterterrorist operations, just going out after

Speaker 1 DAs,

Speaker 1 all DAs, all DAs. So my first deployment was just purely DAs every night.
We had the luxury of

Speaker 1 being able to utilize the 160th Hilo Squadron with some of the dead group guys that were down the street

Speaker 1 for Task Force 17. They kind of opened it up

Speaker 1 to the teams because there was just so many

Speaker 1 bad guys in the networks and so much to do. I think that they kind of trusted the teams, the East Coast teams,

Speaker 1 at that time

Speaker 1 to conduct DAs, you know, know, using their assets and stuff for that deployment. So it was like a

Speaker 1 it was a special deployment for us.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Let's talk about your

Speaker 1 Let's just talk about what it was like for you on your first kinetic operation

Speaker 1 Kinetic being a JTAC or kinetic shooting? Just any kinetic. Whichever came first.
Yeah, so the very first night was kinetic we went out on our first op

Speaker 1 after turning over

Speaker 1 and uh

Speaker 1 at that point i was in the back of a humbie i'm an assaulter and

Speaker 1 we go

Speaker 1 out for a guy

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 i end up switching into the driver's seat after the op so the out the op was pretty quiet but lots of there's always shooting on the way in and the way out just

Speaker 1 both for the bad guys to sort of recce where we're at so

Speaker 1 they would um

Speaker 1 you know shoot up in the air just to kind of like identify where we're at in the town right to each other so that was an experience like oh shoot you know they're not shooting at us but they are

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 you know they're shooting and it's the first time sort of hearing it so

Speaker 1 Yeah, and that target was pretty quiet, but on the way out, we for sure caught some shots off off of roof towards the Humvees and stuff.

Speaker 1 And we're like, oh, shit, you know, and then by the third night, you know, on our way in, we're driving really fast.

Speaker 1 And on those infills, you know, there's a couple IEDs going off that just miss. And I'm like, oh, shit.
So now

Speaker 1 every time we're driving, I'm looking at trash. I'm looking at everything going like, man, any of this shit can explode at any time.

Speaker 1 You're just kind of sitting in there going like, it's fucking get there.

Speaker 1 Hopefully we don't blow up. And it's just a really strange feeling as a new guy on my first, you know.
You know, when we land that plane to get on deployment, you come off that airplane,

Speaker 1 that air is just so pungent, filled with just smoke, and whatever the smells are, and

Speaker 1 the humidity of it, the heat of it. And you're like, wow, I'm in a whole different world right now, you know.
And so that's

Speaker 1 it, it only took

Speaker 1 two, three missions to just kind of get used to

Speaker 1 that, you know, kind of a

Speaker 1 little bit of of a shock you know to go all right we're in it you know

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 because when you're going through training and all that you're just visualizing it you're just imagining it

Speaker 1 and then you get there and you're in it and you're like wow okay i'm in it just

Speaker 1 there's nothing else to do just try to focus on what you're doing you know so it was only a matter of time

Speaker 1 before

Speaker 1 we

Speaker 1 got hit by an ID. I think collectively we had a little bit of an ego as a team like, oh, hey, these motherfuckers keep missing they can't get us a little bit of arrogance going on you know

Speaker 1 and that that got shut down real quick when we uh caught a flat tire on the way back

Speaker 1 uh one night

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 you know instead of you can go back and forth with the men in the arena stuff and armchair quarterbacking but we

Speaker 1 Instead of pulling off, holding security and trying to fix that thing, we just rolled with it, but we were so slow. We're rolling so slow.

Speaker 1 So the vehicle in front of me made a turn a right turn onto one of the main streets to get back to uh you know the little sort of highway going back you know out of solder city and

Speaker 1 uh an efp blew up an explosively formed penetrator copper plate which they had started using recently um

Speaker 1 it sort of

Speaker 1 blasts this shape charge towards you so it's not like a blast from underneath like a traditional IED, but it forms these

Speaker 1 the copper breaks up and it's so hot they turn into little plasma bullets and it just melts through everything like Swiss cheese you know even vehicle armor and people

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 they caught that

Speaker 1 four guys in the back of the humbie got killed including Jason Lewis was a seal

Speaker 1 ended up naming Camp Lewis after him

Speaker 1 combat cameraman

Speaker 1 and sorry, three guys, combat cameraman and

Speaker 1 a TSE guy, technical surveillance guy. And then one TERP was back there, but he survived everything.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the turret gunner,

Speaker 1 his gun got completely sheared off the barrel, and a chunk of the barrel

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 went

Speaker 1 either a piece of plasma or that chunk went through jason lewis's chest

Speaker 1 and so one of my first experiences doing this medevac was assessing what was going on and that was that was hard seeing those guys so um

Speaker 1 bobby the combat cameraman was still alive essentially but he was bent over because his face was just splayed open

Speaker 1 with blood coming out into him trying to breathe. So

Speaker 1 when we eventually got the medevac,

Speaker 1 he didn't make it on the

Speaker 1 20 or 25 minute ride back to BIOP,

Speaker 1 to the medics on our medevac.

Speaker 1 So those were the first, he was the, him and those guys were the first to go on the first load

Speaker 1 because the driver of that vehicle got a piece of that plasma lodged into his leg like right onto a nerve and I think that it cauterized the nerve so his leg actually survived for a while after that.

Speaker 1 But he

Speaker 1 badass just continued to drive. He didn't swap out.
He said, fuck it, I'm driving, right? So we get off the X.

Speaker 1 I'm dropping,

Speaker 1 you know, 40 mic mics and 105s on

Speaker 1 bad guys shooting at us from rooftops on our way out. And I start working on medevac.

Speaker 1 We've got two Apaches overhead.

Speaker 1 We get to this little

Speaker 1 Marine outpost in the middle of Solder City. They're just like, dude, I can't even imagine their experience daily, just getting rockets and just all kinds of shit at them.

Speaker 1 And they're just hunkered down holding this manning, this bad post, right?

Speaker 1 And we get inside of that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 my platoon chief's calling out, what's going on.

Speaker 1 Got Nick Check up in my vehicle navigating us, you know, to get there

Speaker 1 with the, you know, the down vehicle sort of hobbling, right?

Speaker 1 And we get in there.

Speaker 1 Everybody gets out. We get the guys laid out.
I'm getting a medevac ready.

Speaker 1 It lands, gets those guys, and I'm looking, and I see, you know, I can see

Speaker 1 Jason Lewis there and I can see the dirt on the other side of his chest, right?

Speaker 1 Just this big hole.

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 and i'm just trying my best to get a nine line going like hey we've got two that are done and one guy still alive critical right

Speaker 1 so he's the priority and the second bird gets the other two guys

Speaker 1 now

Speaker 1 the incredible thing is we still got one guy fucked up with that thing lodged in his in his leg and i'm like we're so nervous that like if it moves and he bleeds out of the artery you know

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 trying to keep him stable and then we got to wait for the birds right and we're taking fire we're shooting we got fucking rpgs people are seeing

Speaker 1 and so there's a fight going on while we're doing this medivac so these two apaches come over and i just remember thinking fuck i don't know if this is doable or anything but i start calling them hey guys we got one guy who needs to get out of here before this thing

Speaker 1 he might, you might save his, his leg and his life, right?

Speaker 1 Can you guys, and I just remember my platoon chief was like super into helicopters. So he always said, like, hey, study them, you know, they might have capabilities you don't think of often.

Speaker 1 So I said, hey, what are the chances you guys can

Speaker 1 get the co-pilot out on the wing to clip in and get him inside in the seat? and medevac him to

Speaker 1 buy hop right now. And they were like,

Speaker 1 yeah, an Apache.

Speaker 1 And they're like, oh, shit. Hey, we could do that.

Speaker 1 So we're like, all right, cool. We're going to try to call out shit.
If we see anything, you know, like one of y'all, one of you guys,

Speaker 1 you know, do a tight circle so you can fucking put guns on anybody while the other one's landing, right? And we got an AC-132.

Speaker 1 And let's do this. So we start getting it ready.
And they, they go, hey, we need a second to go

Speaker 1 call this and get,

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 an approval.

Speaker 1 So he's like, okay, cool, I'm waiting. He goes off.

Speaker 1 A few seconds later, comes back on the horn. He's like,

Speaker 1 they're saying we can't do it. And I'm like, fuck, okay,

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 a few more seconds goes by. He comes back on the horn, calls me, hey, fuck it, we're going to do it.
I was like, okay,

Speaker 1 all right, let's do it. So we do it.
The first attempt goes bad because somebody calls out an RPG. So they come down, RPG, and they peel off.
I'm like, fuck, all right, it was a false alarm.

Speaker 1 Somebody thought

Speaker 1 there was an RPG because there had been some

Speaker 1 flying around. So, cool, come back around.
They come back around. They get down.

Speaker 1 They do it. They get him in there and they fly him back.
Holy shit. Are you? And they save his leg and his life.
So they fucking land, open the hatch. The co-pilot gets out.

Speaker 1 This dude climbs in there with some shit stuck in his leg. And then he clips in and sits on the wing.
And he

Speaker 1 sat on the wing? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you have any pictures of this? Video? Anything? No, and actually, probably should go back and look. I don't even know if there's a step there, like there, you know, like a little bird or anything.

Speaker 1 I think he just sat on the fucking wing.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and so I wish I kept in touch with these guys. I didn't, if they're out there.
But what happened was he got reprimanded after that for disobeying the order, right?

Speaker 1 insubordination so now we're like hey they call us we go through the rest of the next couple nights because we got well the next night we got to stay there and we got to get all these trucks back so we leave we're going to leave the next day snipers are making sure our route is clear nobody's so we're doing watches making sure nobody's putting down ids there was actually a couple guys um

Speaker 1 i can't remember if they got shot or not or engaged but we get back safe you know we're you can imagine during watch we're all down there we just lost all these guys it was one of the more difficult moments.

Speaker 1 Looking at each other's faces, trying to figure out what we're supposed to be doing, how we're supposed to be feeling. And really just like sitting there, you know, waiting.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 snipers are doing overwatch.

Speaker 1 Gets quiet. We get out of there.
The next night we get home.

Speaker 1 Go into the talk and find out these guys are getting reprimanded. So we're like, God damn it, dude, that sucks, you know? I think some of our leadership probably did some work on that.
I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 But what ended up happening was somebody on their end of their chain of command said,

Speaker 1 what the fuck? These guys are heroes, right?

Speaker 1 And these big awards, you got a silver star for it. Nice.
So in these big awards, you end up getting a silver star from what I understand. These big awards, like,

Speaker 1 those are the moments that those happen in. But if it goes wrong, then it's like, well, well, you fucked up, you know?

Speaker 1 But but it takes certain people to make that decision in those moments. And that's where those things happen, I think.
So

Speaker 1 I believe you need to be getting a silver star.

Speaker 1 One,

Speaker 1 something tells me that you're going to hear from those guys after this.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 two,

Speaker 1 riding on the wing of an Apache out of battles, that's got to be like riding a fucking unicorn with wings out of battle.

Speaker 1 What? yeah but um

Speaker 1 wow how did

Speaker 1 i'm curious how did the how did you deal with the loss how did the team deal with the loss very hard uh very hard

Speaker 1 you know i got this huge tattoo on my back for that ended up becoming like the the emblem sort of the symbol of our platoon of our troop And a bunch of, a couple of, some of the other guys, one of the platoon commanders, even guys on the next rotation after that deployment, you know, are getting that in his memory.

Speaker 1 And so that symbol is still there.

Speaker 1 Everyone knows what year and what operation it came from and who it was for.

Speaker 1 So there was some legacy there on that.

Speaker 1 And I'm happy about that. So, but it was, it was tough for a few years.
It still is tough for a couple of the guys that I know were

Speaker 1 a lot closer to him than I was as a new guy. I was too busy focusing on getting myself out of trouble to sort of

Speaker 1 get close to guys, you know. I was just,

Speaker 1 yep. Um,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 you know, I didn't have that uh as deep of a connection with him as some of the guys did.

Speaker 1 Um, still affected me, especially seeing him, seeing him there like that.

Speaker 1 And uh, you know, he was a mentor, he was a great guy to all. He was one of the guys that was really great with all the new guys.

Speaker 1 And uh,

Speaker 1 his kids are grown now, I see them around,

Speaker 1 you know.

Speaker 1 Really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I see his wife around. I know his wife.
Do you interact with him? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not the kids as much,

Speaker 1 but for sure his wife. I see her.
You know, I see her around.

Speaker 1 I'm still in that community there with my business and everything.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 That's one of my first, that was the first deployment. Jeez.

Speaker 1 That's heavy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 How long was it after the how long was it after that operation that you guys went back out?

Speaker 1 Yeah, like a couple nights. They gave us a night off.
Hey, you guys need to take a night off. Of course, we're all doing heavy drinking, you know, shenanigans around the camp.

Speaker 1 One of the new guys I'm friends with still

Speaker 1 thought it would be a good idea to do these like baked bean mortars on the officers doors

Speaker 1 because they thought we could get away with it in that moment and we did. So they set up these little poles and we had these fucking endless baked beans.

Speaker 1 I don't know why they kept coming, but like, dude, we couldn't eat enough baked beans

Speaker 1 and turn them and sort of get them on the duct tape into the poles and then get, you know, from the campfire like a little torch

Speaker 1 and just create pressure behind the can to the point that they exploded and then blasted onto the little huge doors of the head shed. The fuck.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so the next day,

Speaker 1 like, all right, guys, you're not going to get away with this shit anymore. We had to spray those doors off, but there was just baked beans blasted on everybody's fucking doors.
You know, like,

Speaker 1 let them get it out. You know,

Speaker 1 wow, nice. Yeah, so I think the next night after the baked beans, we were out again, you know.
Damn.

Speaker 1 Anything else significant on that deployment that you want to talk about? Yeah, the last mission on that deployment, I was doing a turnover with some Team 2 guys.

Speaker 1 One guy ended up being in, their JTAC ended up being in Silver

Speaker 1 and my team at Dever with me.

Speaker 1 And it was a hairy night. We were just walking our way into Target, and there was this tree line, this big, thick tree line.
And it was supposed to be sort of an easier target, you know?

Speaker 1 Hey, easier target. It's going to be pretty easy.
Of course, it wasn't. So we go and they had a sniper nest somewhere around those trees.
And we're just walking. We can't see anything.

Speaker 1 I'm talking, you know, I can't see anything in the trees.

Speaker 1 Hey, check those trees out, you know, because we got to go through those trees to get to the target right on the other side where the town was. So we're out in the open.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 all of a sudden,

Speaker 1 a crack, right? A crack. And we're like, what was that? Everyone kind of takes a knee.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 someone comes onto the radio and is like, hey, I don't remember his call sign. We're like,

Speaker 1 Ben just got shot in the chest.

Speaker 1 But actually, I think it wasn't the first shot. There was a couple shots and then like a pause and then another shot.

Speaker 1 And that's when it came over because we had all gotten down after the first couple. So he had gotten down and wherever it was coming from, we're facing it.
His plates are here.

Speaker 1 And a shot comes in and goes like at this angle over top of the plates as he's laying down and goes out the back. So he's shot in the chest.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 one of my best friends now, I was the best man at his wedding, was the, was the guy next to him.

Speaker 1 He was a corporate and he starts reporting immediately like, fuck, we got it, we got to get a meda back now. So we start,

Speaker 1 it, and then we just start getting lit up from the trees from all over, like multiple spots.

Speaker 1 And it's just like,

Speaker 1 dude. And so now we're on the ground, like my head sideways, because I can just, you know, when the rounds are going off, you can hear gunfire.

Speaker 1 But with some experience, you know if they're close to you or not and whether you need to get down or not.

Speaker 1 And they're snapping over our heads.

Speaker 1 You can hear that snap. And so you know they're hitting, right? And you can, now we're starting, now they're hitting the ground.
You're like, fuck, now it's really hairy.

Speaker 1 It's, it's hitting the ground all around everybody between between our steps. And so we're on the ground.

Speaker 1 And they're like, get some fires down.

Speaker 1 So I'm like, fucking pop that thing up and I'm like hey we're already ready I'm already preset on those because I just felt weird about that tree line and they're like I'm like hey the fastest way to do this is you you see where we're at with the strobes can you confirm that yes all right

Speaker 1 now I got a laser hey they're coming from all over there they're like yeah we're already on it we're ready to shoot we're ready to shoot I'm like all right just confirm

Speaker 1 you confirm the bad guys by sparkling them right now so that's where they flash that IR light. I'm like, all right, you're on the right spot, cleared hot.

Speaker 1 And they just, the AC-130 just starts dropping.

Speaker 1 Just smoking these guys.

Speaker 1 And we're like, all right, as soon as they start landing, we're bounding back. So now the teams start bounding their guys back.
And then the same time I got

Speaker 1 Medevat Hilos coming in from the other direction I'm talking to. And that

Speaker 1 Corman is now running off to the side of the firefight where we're all sort of bounding back, right? In front of the tree line, just directly back.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I'm feeding off of my, he actually was the, our exo at the time.

Speaker 1 Great, awesome guy. And he's like, he knows I'm talking.
So he's like, I can't pay attention to the gunshots. And I'm just going off of him.
He's like, we're up. And I follow him.
We're up. We run.

Speaker 1 He's like, when he goes down, I go down and I'm dropping, dropping, dropping. Now we got the Apaches involved.
They're like, hey,

Speaker 1 there's more nests nests over here to the north that we can see. Those guys are moving around now.
They're like setting up and they're moving. We can fire on them right now, rockets.
I'm like, cool.

Speaker 1 Sparkle, clear hot, right? And I'm just controlling, trying to visualize the best I can this whole situation. And it's clean.

Speaker 1 We smoked all those guys.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 And we finally get back. There's like this ditch.
And we kind of get back in the ditch. Now we're calling the X-Fil at the same time as the Medevac.

Speaker 1 The Medevac comes during that fighter fight, and they don't know what's going on. They start flying right through where all this shit's coming down.

Speaker 1 And so that was one moment where I was like, hey, everyone abort. Everybody stop.
We stop all fires for a few seconds. Like, oh, you guys need to turn.

Speaker 1 Just take a 90, just take a 30-degree right turn. So they do, and then they fly out of it and over to the guy's buzz saw.
The buzz saws that Kim Light where we're spinning it around, right?

Speaker 1 And they land perfectly on that. They get on.
Those two are gone to the hospital. And now we're back at the the ditch calling for X-Fil.
And we get out of there. Everybody's fine after that.

Speaker 1 He ends up being fine. You know, he had some complications with his chest for a few years, but he healed up pretty good, I think.
And he's still kicking around Virginia Beach. Good deal.

Speaker 1 You know, I haven't seen him in some years, but we're still, I know we're still friends. You know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that was the last. So that was the last one.
We get back to the hooches and I talk to their J-TAC, guy who ends up being later one of my teammates in the team.

Speaker 1 And they go, all right, that's the turnover, bro.

Speaker 1 Holy shit, that's a hell of a turnover, Rob. Wow.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Had you.

Speaker 1 Had you shot anybody? Had you killed anybody with a rifle or with

Speaker 1 one on the roof team

Speaker 1 for a teammate of mine. He was climbing up and these guys woke up, started pointing their guns around.
I had to shoot that guy.

Speaker 1 Was that your first kill? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was,

Speaker 1 actually, it wasn't a kill. Actually, that was a hard time for me.

Speaker 1 Besides the JTAC ones, that guy ended up, like,

Speaker 1 just, he ended up being paralyzed. And then later, he did, I believe he died later, like some time later, like, I don't know when,

Speaker 1 you know.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't even know if it was during that deployment. I was kind of using one of our translators to kind of update me.
But he was found some way to find out, like, this guy wasn't dead.

Speaker 1 So we had to, we ended up fucking taking him with us after that because he was still breathing. So we dropped him at the biop hospital.
And they, I think, they

Speaker 1 essentially recovered him. So it was just a

Speaker 1 guy on target that woke up and started pointing towards one of our roof team guys.

Speaker 1 So that guy ended up passing away in the future.

Speaker 1 He went to Devrube also and he passed away from a brain tumor, unfortunately, which I've got my opinions about that stuff too,

Speaker 1 on how I have so many young guys are developing brain tumors after that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I think it's just, I think it's talking with EOD guys and

Speaker 1 understanding

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 The levels of radiation out of those jammers that we were sitting next to for all those hours all the time in order to block those signals was just

Speaker 1 vibrating through our brains, right?

Speaker 1 And the ones that I trust the most believe that it has something to do with it.

Speaker 1 So I hope that you know somebody can look into it a little more these days because there shouldn't be 30 and 40 year old dudes popping brain tumors suddenly and passing away.

Speaker 1 Another guy in my team that happened to within a year of finding out when he was clear before that

Speaker 1 passed passed away. So

Speaker 1 damn it hurts a lot to think about those guys with brain tumors. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's and

Speaker 1 what stuff scares the hell out of me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was like, was the juice ever worth the squeeze for how many preventative stuff and I think about it now with the active shooter

Speaker 1 things and the

Speaker 1 hesitancy to uh prepare or or prevent

Speaker 1 especially when it comes to money we're like you're going to spend how much on you know a couple of guards or you know some some ballistic capability that you know or something just whatever training for sure training um the active shooter training all these good things all these these these guys out are doing these companies that that

Speaker 1 but there's hesitancy to fund it because

Speaker 1 if you prevent something, there's no evidence that you prevented it. Just nothing happens.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it's just a hard thing to prove to people. So it's a similar thing is like,

Speaker 1 did those jammers, how many IEDs did they actually stop? We don't know because

Speaker 1 if it was a preventative measure that worked, then just nothing happened,

Speaker 1 you know. And then trying our best to prove that it did work, you know.

Speaker 1 But there's so many of these brain tumors from guys that, you know, he was a turt gunner, that antenna was right there, you know.

Speaker 1 The rest of us inside might have been a little bit more protected, but that thing's like, if you can see the diagrams for the

Speaker 1 frequencies and radiation these things put out, it's like not good to sit next to

Speaker 1 every night. I've not heard that one, but it makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 Damn.

Speaker 1 Well, Chris, where I was going going with this is

Speaker 1 I just want to ask you the difference. You know,

Speaker 1 I want to ask you the difference of what it feels like to kill

Speaker 1 via

Speaker 1 communication with an Apache or a C-130 or whatever versus pulling the trigger.

Speaker 1 It's completely different, in my opinion. It's

Speaker 1 not the same as doing it up close and personal.

Speaker 1 But all, you know, the times that I did do it, and I got a lot more at Dev Group than I did in the team.

Speaker 1 I didn't think about that so much. And so when guys

Speaker 1 talk about this question, you know, I understand when they say, well, I didn't think much about it, you know, because

Speaker 1 we intentionally are desensitized to it. We're more attuned with the actual identification of the target and who it is.
Like, is it a man, you know, male?

Speaker 1 Is he armed? Is he not armed, whatever, than taking the life itself. Because to be honest with you,

Speaker 1 the life itself thing is another, it falls, it aligns again with that validation thing it did for me anyways, where it was like, I didn't think too much about it because if I was the guy that got the kill that night, it was like,

Speaker 1 felt good. It's like your buddies are like, cool, this guy, we can trust this guy to do his job, you know, and not be affected by it too much.

Speaker 1 And the same sort of theme comes out of it.

Speaker 1 The more guys that I study and the more guys that I think about and look at, you know, I think about these things now that I have the space to do it, that's now where it kind of comes back to go.

Speaker 1 Those moments I can now go back to just the same way I did with my childhood memories and now go

Speaker 1 sort of analyze it and just try my best to see the truth in every one of those moments, you know, for what it for what it was, and then

Speaker 1 with no other goal than just understanding it the best that I could for me.

Speaker 1 Do you remember all of them?

Speaker 1 Some of them were a blur, especially if it was during like a firefight.

Speaker 1 But the ones that were

Speaker 1 close up, you know, I've got some sniper ones.

Speaker 1 I think about them sometimes,

Speaker 1 but, you know, in war,

Speaker 1 you know, they're trying to kill you and you're trying to kill them. And so

Speaker 1 I think less about it

Speaker 1 than I do with the last mission that I did and who I killed. That's the one

Speaker 1 that I think about. The ones with men were men

Speaker 1 or fighters. You know, there may or may not be some mutual respect as fighters for sure.
These ones that are going on, like these Hamas guys in Palestine and Israel, like, man, the whole world

Speaker 1 is on fire about Israel right now because of the collateral damages. And, like, how do you fight a war? How would you fight a war if

Speaker 1 the bad guys, just say it was in your neighborhood or your community in the future or something, some war

Speaker 1 they're there to kill you.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 instead of fighting from what we do in the military, an outpost, a planning center, or whatever, you go there, you put your uniform on, you go fight.

Speaker 1 Put your uniform on so we can tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys and civilians.

Speaker 1 And you assume that the good guys or the bad guys,

Speaker 1 they have some level of moral compass, right? That we don't train

Speaker 1 to kill anybody other than the bad guy that we're after. Collateral damage is just, it's a hellish thing.
It's part of war.

Speaker 1 But now pretend that the enemy, or even pretend that you are the one doing it,

Speaker 1 that you go, I'm going to take advantage of

Speaker 1 the moral compass of

Speaker 1 those guys. And I'm just going to go, I'm going to shoot the rockets and missiles from my backyard and then go inside where my family is.
And then go,

Speaker 1 we're good. Fuck them because they have morals and they're not going to.
They're not going to, they're not going to kill me here because I got my wife and my kids and my family.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 it just, you can even escalate it to go, now I can even go do atrocities now. You know, we can go do an attack in their territory and go door to door like they did, you know,

Speaker 1 raping and pillaging and just

Speaker 1 the horrific things that everybody wants to deny actually happened. Take the hostages, all this stuff, and then bring them back over.

Speaker 1 And we're good again because we built all these tunnels under the hospital. And the hospital's functioning.
That's fine. We want that to be that way because it's a deterrence for us.

Speaker 1 It's a capability.

Speaker 1 And then now

Speaker 1 when,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 your enemy, who you see as your enemy, is now attacking you and killing you and having all this collateral damage. It's like,

Speaker 1 you're choosing the battleground there.

Speaker 1 You know, and it's such a hard problem to think about, you know, and I hope there's some better solution, some thing that

Speaker 1 they can figure out but we're not there experiencing that shit you know and they're having to make decisions on some of these high-level hamas guys that are using

Speaker 1 intentionally using civilians as cover as a capability a deterrence capability on purpose right and then

Speaker 1 it's just a terrible way to fight war you know and

Speaker 1 the you know extremist al-Qaeda does it, terrorists just tend to do it, you know, it's not even, in my opinion, guerrilla warfare, really, you know,

Speaker 1 it's kind of a newer concept, maybe. I'm not even sure if that happened in Vietnam or not.
I need to read more, but it's happening right now.

Speaker 1 And we've faced it too. And we try our best and then we change our ROEs to the point where now we're in danger because as the war evolved,

Speaker 1 we lost the ability to the point where it became, hey, you guys aren't even going to do any shooting until somebody's already shooting at you.

Speaker 1 And you're like, that means some of us can get killed before we even

Speaker 1 engage. That's a hard

Speaker 1 problem to have, especially if that's happened.

Speaker 1 You know, now there's families out there that are like,

Speaker 1 they couldn't engage

Speaker 1 those guys because they weren't allowed to until they were getting a shot at. So

Speaker 1 just hard things to think about outside of more than just

Speaker 1 Pearl-Palestine, you know, Israel, and the things that we attach to sensationalism when we see it on the screen.

Speaker 1 And some of those people that are attaching to those causes, I think,

Speaker 1 is more related to their own validation. Like they might be lacking something in their own life that goes further than just this thing.
And then every time something happens,

Speaker 1 people in their environment are now attached to these protests and these things. And

Speaker 1 everybody wants to feel like they are part of something important.

Speaker 1 So they go demonstrate, they go do it without even really understanding what it's about or what they're doing. They just go,

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 and validation from all the other people that are doing it in their environment. So it's like, whatever's the most accessible

Speaker 1 thing in your environment to attach to as a cause. Doesn't matter if it's bad or toxic or terrible or evil or good.
You go do it, I think, for some of the same reasons that I am talking about

Speaker 1 with this lack of purpose and validation that we all need.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a good point. You know, with the

Speaker 1 Israel stuff, it's a

Speaker 1 it's extremely complicated, you know, but there are,

Speaker 1 I don't know if you know this, but i have uh some friends that were there

Speaker 1 and they

Speaker 1 one of which we i'm pretty sure we both know probably very well but

Speaker 1 they

Speaker 1 they were actually gonna

Speaker 1 flood those tunnels

Speaker 1 did you know about this not yet no they were gonna pump

Speaker 1 some massive like ship pump they were gonna

Speaker 1 not shit ship like SHIP

Speaker 1 pump would suck yeah that would have been better but they were gonna flood all those tunnels and drown those Hamas guys that would be more of a

Speaker 1 they wouldn't do it

Speaker 1 they wouldn't do it why wouldn't they do it

Speaker 1 I don't know because see it's at least like to at least target they're at it to know that they're at least mindful

Speaker 1 I think and truly believe that the Israelis are

Speaker 1 doing their best to think of ways to target the bad guys without the collateral damage. And then sometimes they have to make hard decisions.

Speaker 1 But at least that is more direct towards the enemy than going through whatever's on top that

Speaker 1 they're fighting under, the hospital or the school or the house or whatever. You know?

Speaker 1 I mean, do you know how many of those bad guys I would have drowned out?

Speaker 1 I can imagine those being like an ant farm down there.

Speaker 1 It would have been perfect targeting. targeting.
Yeah. And they didn't do it.
And sometimes that makes me wonder, you know,

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 why wouldn't you do that? Sometimes it's such a simple plan, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like, what gets in between the decision, and this is where it gets difficult in war when social

Speaker 1 opinions and

Speaker 1 the energy of the social

Speaker 1 environment affects

Speaker 1 leaders' decision-making on what they do or not. We've seen it, we see it every time.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Vietnam.

Speaker 1 You know? Touchy's, touchy, touchy subject and complicated war. As if any war is not complicated.

Speaker 1 So you come back to the States.

Speaker 1 Come back to the States. You know, you just reminded me with a shit tunnel thing, though.
If I can... interject a quick story that's actually more on the lighter side.

Speaker 1 I saved somebody's life on that deployment in a way that you wouldn't think.

Speaker 1 You'll know too. So we're coming back from one of those targets.
This is like later on in the deployment, too. And this is one of my buddies.
He's got like sensitive skin.

Speaker 1 You know, he gets like rashes easy or whatever. I don't know.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we're walking back from a target in Iraq. And out there in the open, I don't know if you ever experienced this, but those

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 ditches sort of carved out that go from the shithole of every house in the whole town, they all go out somewhere out into the open to the main show. And then they collect into a big pool, right?

Speaker 1 And there's,

Speaker 1 we were walking through one of these collections and there's like different ones and we're just navigating our way through, but you don't know because over time, like at night, especially on night vision goggles, they collect, they crust over and they just look like regular dirt.

Speaker 1 So at this point, quiet Target, we're walking out to the Hilos. A lot of distance between each guy because, you know, they're just spaced out.

Speaker 1 The guys in front of him would have never known that this happened, but I'm the guy behind him, so I was there.

Speaker 1 He just steps into one of these pools of just shit quicksand,

Speaker 1 and then like goes, oh, oh, shoot. And then no big deal, but then it's like he's in it.

Speaker 1 And it's now rapidly going you know oh it's no big deal now i can get out but then as i approach i can hear his breathing is so loud like

Speaker 1 and it's like like water coming up you know and he's starting to freak out now because he can't get out

Speaker 1 and i'm going oh this is like kind of serious so i like Fucking run up there. I'm like, hey, you all right, dude? And he's like,

Speaker 1 I'm good, you know, and I'm like, fuck, are you sinking? He's like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So I just, I grab my helo lanyard and i kind of just go

Speaker 1 and i'm like grab it you know and i'm i'm pulling him through this sludge

Speaker 1 you know this nasty and it's just black all the way down oh man it's nice and he i get him crawled out and i'm like oh my god that sucks dude he's like oh thank you i thought i was going underneath that

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 and we get up. He's got now this long walk and I'm like, all right, just I'm going to stay closer to you, but, you know, get behind me because you smell, you know.

Speaker 1 So we patrol back. He's got to get on the Hilo ride all the way back.
It's a long ride. It's just, and he's just had this like full body, nasty skin rash for like some weeks after that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But then it was funny because. Did you nickname him hepatitis? Yeah.
You did. Did you, really? Dog, I think.
Holy shit. Something like that.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I ended up in the team with him at Dev Group too. Nice.
We're still friends, but it was funny because we'll joke with our wives and stuff like, hey,

Speaker 1 he saved his life one time, you know? I'm like, I did save somebody's life.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. Yeah, so fast forward to the,

Speaker 1 you know, after that deployment.

Speaker 1 Did you do another deployment? Yeah, I did

Speaker 1 an augment. I was an augment JTAC for Dev Group.
That was a great deployment.

Speaker 1 A lot of operations happened, a lot of JTAC work.

Speaker 1 And the guy that I was with was such a great guy, such a legend of a dude, in my opinion, that

Speaker 1 he was like, you know, you should come over, you should screen. So

Speaker 1 I didn't have any intention then to do it, but we got back and then I

Speaker 1 screened. So between that screening, it's about a year process or whatever.

Speaker 1 You screen, you know, you get then either yes or no to go to the actual selection, you know, a year or so later or whatever your timing is. And then between that, I had a deployment.

Speaker 1 Second one was to Europe, and I was, you know, doing training exercises for different types of units, partner forces all over Africa, to include a

Speaker 1 lead vehicle type security detail for the Secret Service for Obama's visit to Ghana when he became president. So that was actually pretty cool.
Really?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He was bouncing around different places doing speeches and talks. And

Speaker 1 coincidentally,

Speaker 1 I didn't meet my wife. We were dating.
We weren't married yet.

Speaker 1 Years later,

Speaker 1 one of our family members,

Speaker 1 one of her cousins' husband, is a secret, retired Secret Service guy, was on that detail. And we realized

Speaker 1 we were working together there and I'm like how do I recognize you at the Christmas the family Christmas that's your wife's brother

Speaker 1 my my wife's cousin's husband so okay my cousin-in-law

Speaker 1 and I ended up staying with him for a while when I was doing my contracting work I had to stay up in DC for a little while so they housed me but it was just funny because I was at this Christmas party for my

Speaker 1 wife who wasn't my wife yet, or just girlfriend and boyfriend, and go, how do I recognize you?

Speaker 1 Dude, a couple years years ago, I was on a security detail that you guys, you SEALs came along, and he was the guy in charge of you know, organizing like their convoy, you know.

Speaker 1 That was just a crazy coincidence.

Speaker 1 Um, but that was a good, that was a good time on that, on that deployment. It was kind of the highlight of that deployment.
I just didn't, you know, we were training, so yeah, um,

Speaker 1 you know, one thing cool that happened was I've googled this since then because I wasn't sure.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 was Obama a smoker and it's all over the internet he was he self-admitted you know like hey I had to get rid of that addiction you know but for stress but because it was kind of a shock to see that when we were in the hotel we're in the same hotel as these guys who are hanging out he's coming down with his detail going out to the balcony like every five minutes to smoke you know like he was a chain smoker no shit yeah I didn't know that I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so that was that deployment.

Speaker 1 So you met your wife at Team 10? Yeah, I came back from that first deployment. I met her right after that.
How'd you guys meet?

Speaker 1 Through a mutual friend that just randomly invited me out. I was living in my own condo by myself and invited me out to dinner.

Speaker 1 I think it was sort of a little bit of a matchmaking kind of thing, but I showed up not ready. I didn't shave.
I didn't get dressed up, nothing. Didn't really know she was going to be there.

Speaker 1 Hey, she goes to the restroom. I said, hey, you didn't tell me this beautiful woman was going to be here.
And he was like, well, she said the same thing about you when you went to the restroom.

Speaker 1 So probably should exchange numbers. So we did.
We started dating, and she became my soulmate. Or she was already that, but she became my wife.

Speaker 1 What, what was

Speaker 1 what caught you?

Speaker 1 What was it? Just, I don't know.

Speaker 1 The energy about her, she's just like a clean soul. She's just so pure and wholesome and

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 amazing. I don't know.
She just, I just knew. I don't know.

Speaker 1 So you guys were together for the duration of your career after that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, and just like anyone who've gone through a lot of hard times, a lot of things, everything.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that's strength when they don't. Just like when we don't quit, we don't give up and they don't on us and they see something.

Speaker 1 You know, just the same way I think that like you asked me what the guys felt, maybe my platoon she was like, dude, you just sometimes feel something about somebody. And she

Speaker 1 did that and

Speaker 1 she stuck with that for a really long time.

Speaker 1 A really long time.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I'm grateful. I'm so, you know, I'm so grateful because

Speaker 1 here we are, you know.

Speaker 1 How long have you guys been married?

Speaker 1 Going on 13 years. Nice.
Congrats. Congratulations.
Thank you. Not too many people make it out of the teams without a divorce.
It's hard. You know, it's hard.
And it's just like anything else.

Speaker 1 It's like,

Speaker 1 it takes a lot of work. Don't give up.
Don't quit. You know.

Speaker 1 Did you have kids when you were in the teams? Or did you wait till after?

Speaker 1 We

Speaker 1 had our kids right as I was.

Speaker 1 I was a new guy at Dev Group when we had our first.

Speaker 1 No kidding. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So they lived through some of it too. Yeah, they're the reason I got out.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 How long did you guys date before you got married?

Speaker 1 About three-ish years. How did you propose to her?

Speaker 1 I took her to this spot in Pebble Beach just off. My grandfather's house, you could walk over to Spanish Bay on Pebble Beach, where he retired.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 she loves doing fun things.

Speaker 1 She's all about that. So, hey, we got to get up early.
one morning like 6 a.m but she's not a morning person so she's like uh

Speaker 1 like like we have to because we got to go see the whales there's the whales migrate through we can see their spouse and it's like it's awesome right

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 that was my only excuse to get to go over there so it had to be in the morning because that was the only time I knew that you can catch them you know

Speaker 1 so I convince her we go over there

Speaker 1 and like around like seven or seven or eight a.m.

Speaker 1 I proposed to her at at the my little spot just overlooking, it's called the Never Ending Sea or the Endless Sea,

Speaker 1 where waves kind of crash from all different directions into one spot. It's just this crazy spot,

Speaker 1 you know, that the tourists can kind of go look at and stuff. And a little ways down from that, there's this little quiet old bench

Speaker 1 that I used to just go sit at, you know, growing up. So I took her there, and that's where I did it.
She said yes.

Speaker 1 Nice. That was good.
Nice.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 we haven't got to it yet, but I'm sure you and your wife have been through a whole slew of

Speaker 1 downward spirals and all the things that come with being in the teams.

Speaker 1 But you made it. And

Speaker 1 so I want to ask you, what do you think the secret to a successful marriage is?

Speaker 1 dude i just collectively i think about the whole story and it's just keep it's so hard even now when we get disconnected we have you know understanding each other's love language for sure

Speaker 1 and then if it's not the same one

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 just learning how to be okay

Speaker 1 with doing things for the person towards it towards what they need that you know like for her it's like acts of service so the more chores i do the more getting the kids where they need to to be all that stuff she loves that you know

Speaker 1 for me it's like affection and connection and intimacy you know

Speaker 1 so we go through times where it's so busy you're like man we're so busy it's so chaotic and we don't put any effort towards giving them what they need you start to blame each other to go oh I don't feel I feel disconnected and it's and then you go well I feel disconnected because you haven't been doing these things

Speaker 1 And you're like, all right, well, we got to reset that and then try our best to sustain it over time.

Speaker 1 But there's always going to be times where it gets off balance you just got to just like your soul you got to bring it back you know you start doing start getting stressed out because it's what i want it's what i'm asking for i want the business you know i want my kids to thrive they're busy they're not sitting around they're always busy

Speaker 1 and that's stress so

Speaker 1 you want that but that means you got to put in work in between that with each other also as much as you can and especially when you start to feel that you know when it you you know when it's going on, you know, it's like I'm starting to feel like resentment or anger, even just a little bit.

Speaker 1 You're like, hey,

Speaker 1 and being able to talk straightforward about it, like, here's why I feel this. And it's, you know, trying your best not to just like blame the other person.

Speaker 1 We definitely figured out nighttime is not the best time to do that.

Speaker 1 You're tired, you know, you just want to go to sleep, you're exhausted. The morning is a lot better for that.

Speaker 1 Great advice. Well, Chris,

Speaker 1 we'll take a break. When we come back, we'll get into your time at Dev Group.
All right. Perfect.

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Speaker 1 All right, Chris, we're back from the break.

Speaker 1 Just met your wife and got your backstory with her at least how you guys met and so now we're moving into

Speaker 1 your journey over to development group

Speaker 1 right so

Speaker 1 come back from that deployment it's time to go right into selection prep so

Speaker 1 right around that time the human performance sort of aspect of

Speaker 1 or the concept started to come about. So I was lucky enough to get into some programming where we could

Speaker 1 get prepared for for the selection and then sort of be rested, you know, for a week or so and then peeking a couple weeks into the selection.

Speaker 1 So I'm grateful for that because the guys that did that with me from Team 10, we all did pretty well through the physical test and all the first week type physical stuff, right? Performance-wise.

Speaker 1 Overall, selection for me was

Speaker 1 a much smoother ride than Bud's was, especially because of that stuff that happened. But, you know, same thing.
Lucky enough, I got through. It was really hard.
Honestly,

Speaker 1 difficult in totally different ways than Bud's. You know, the physical part is there.
You're doing some crazy things. I mean, there was one day we did this.

Speaker 1 You run seven miles at a seven-minute pace, you know, with one of the cadre to the Mississippi River, swim across that motherfucker with logs and just current crazy with a swim buddy and wow

Speaker 1 get across having drifted down like a mile or so run back up do it again on the way back

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 you know i think they stopped doing it after that

Speaker 1 i got i got one of the last ones it's one of those sounds like an

Speaker 1 extra

Speaker 1 yeah it's it's it's not it's not very safe they've got safety boats and things too but it was as safe as they could make it just like swimming around the island in shark territory yeah you know yeah

Speaker 1 Just got to find the balance with hard enough things, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And somebody not getting eaten alive by a great white shark. So,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 then seven miles back. So that was probably the hardest, the hardest day for me.
That's when I started,

Speaker 1 I was so depleted that day. My legs started cramping, and I got to a point where like guys in my team were carrying me back to the house because I couldn't even, I couldn't even stand up.

Speaker 1 They were so cramped. You know, it was just super painful.
So, you know, a couple of the cadre were having fun with me. They're carrying me, fireman carrying me.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 It was a good time. So,

Speaker 1 you know, the hardest part of that selection being the first six weeks of assault, all CQB-based stuff is really intense and

Speaker 1 very,

Speaker 1 very detail-oriented, you know, with the goal of figuring out, you know, pliability and trainability. You know, like, here's the rule set for this day

Speaker 1 with all of the stressors.

Speaker 1 and then the next day it all changes and you got you still no matter what only have a chance or two to make the same mistake you know and if you make the same mistake over consecutive days you know that Friday that they're doing their assessments you're out you know and if the mistakes too bad on any given day you're out so high stress

Speaker 1 But I really, I did enjoy that. I made some really good friends during that time that we, you know, we all change through the team, you know,

Speaker 1 and that lifestyle and the intensity of those, that mission set,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 the time commitment it takes

Speaker 1 to wear you. A lot of guys that I've interviewed from a lot of your guys that I've interviewed say that

Speaker 1 the green team is

Speaker 1 harder than Buds, was tougher than Buds. Would you agree with that statement?

Speaker 1 It's harder in totally different ways. They're both really hard.
And I also don't want to take away from

Speaker 1 how hard Buds is, that people have gone through. It's a really profound experience.
But

Speaker 1 I say is harder only because there's such a

Speaker 1 smaller

Speaker 1 spectrum of mistakes before you can get out, right? So you're always within that tiny little sliver of a mistake spectrum before

Speaker 1 you're out, you're done, you know? And so with all the stressors involved and your life and everything going on, it's like really hard to stay inside of that.

Speaker 1 It's like if there's a tiny ball moving back and forth, you're like, oh, oh, it's, it's like a level.

Speaker 1 It feels like it's a level. And if it gets where the bubble gets outside, you're out.
There's no other

Speaker 1 chance. Gotcha.

Speaker 1 So the mistake spectrum, I think, think, in Buds is a little more lenient because you don't know anything yet. You just got to not quit.
It's really hard physically.

Speaker 1 But even third phase, when we're learning our skills, I had a hard time. So it's not to take anything away from that.
It's just that level is very fine with selection and green team.

Speaker 1 It has to be that way. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I'm grateful I got through. What's the retention like in training?

Speaker 1 I think it's comparatively a little higher retention for that because, you know, you start with less guys. So we started with around 60 guys or so and you finish with 20 something or no shit.

Speaker 1 It's that much. You lose that many dudes.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 And it's also hard because you're competing with other SEALs that are experienced, you know.

Speaker 1 What are the phases?

Speaker 1 There's no phased at numbers, but it's, you know, assault is all CQB.

Speaker 1 That's the first part and our bread and butter is that so if bread and butter for like the delta guys is a land warfare navigation and stuff and all the stressors that go with that

Speaker 1 that's ours and then

Speaker 1 a couple locations for that

Speaker 1 you know Mississippi being one

Speaker 1 and middle of the summer that shit's hard you know

Speaker 1 sleeping with brown reclu brown recluses nice in the in the in the barracks you know yeah

Speaker 1 trying not to get bit

Speaker 1 by spiders. I had my roommate was like a sleepwalker.

Speaker 1 So that was a little stressor for me, too, because he'd wake up in the middle of the night sometimes with full-blown sentences, you know, and one night he woke up in the middle of the night.

Speaker 1 He must have been thinking about spiders and he was like, ah, there's a spider.

Speaker 4 There's a spider.

Speaker 1 And he's like, eyes closed, but sitting straight up. And

Speaker 1 he ended up going to Red Squadron.

Speaker 1 And then I woke up startled, like, where the fuck is it? Where the fuck is it? And only to like, fucking, now he's just sitting there quiet to realize that he's not even awake.

Speaker 1 I go, motherfucker, dude.

Speaker 1 Go back to sleep. You know, every spider trap in that house was full of, it's just legs everywhere.
Oh, damn. They were full of brown recluse spiders.

Speaker 1 There's a, there's a, you know, I hope they fix that problem.

Speaker 1 Damn. I don't know how many people have been bit, but

Speaker 1 so anyways, uh.

Speaker 1 You lose the majority of the guys and the

Speaker 1 first six weeks. That's like

Speaker 1 the kind of hell week per se of

Speaker 1 selection. Is there any diving?

Speaker 1 No, diving,

Speaker 1 no diving, not at least when I was there. You kind of do that with your team.

Speaker 1 But then we have our land warfare, which is all you know, a lot of helo-based work,

Speaker 1 getting used to all different types of helos and all the etiquette and procedures that go with getting all of that that stuff to to a lot finer detail than than than than ever before really you know

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 you know all kinds of scenarios with those things on different types of terrain and buildings and different things uh

Speaker 1 and jumping after that that's probably

Speaker 1 the first or second most challenging in my opinion because it's just so dangerous there's so much

Speaker 1 Focus, you know, all the way from getting your shit on, knowing the plan, getting on,

Speaker 1 and it's just one after the other after the other after the other after the other, and trying to stay on point all day with that and not make not just small mistakes, but you know how jumping goes.

Speaker 4 Major.

Speaker 1 Man, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I've not done, I've not done anything like that. I've, yeah, I've jumped out of planes, but not to the extent that you have.

Speaker 1 So like, can you go into a little more detail on like why that's so challenging?

Speaker 1 It's just, you know, I ended up being a tandem bundle guy later, so I became an air subject matter expert also on top of my Rec-E sniper specialty, which is my primary.

Speaker 1 But the detail of the gear, everything from your handles to your like malfunction procedures, you know, you got to memorize what to do in every little thing that could go wrong with a parachute.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 It could mean that

Speaker 1 the difference between life and death in those moments. And so it's just, it's at night.
The jumps are, you know, most of them, or at least a good majority of them, are on night vision goggles.

Speaker 1 And so I hadn't experienced that much before. Not at all.
I haven't done any night vision jumps before that.

Speaker 1 A lot harder when you can't see the other guys, you know, until the very end, you know, and we're jumping through weather. And sometimes it's like, dude, I don't even know if I'm in the right place.

Speaker 1 And then right before you land, you kind of see, oh, there they are.

Speaker 1 Or you're in it, you know.

Speaker 1 And do your best to land together. So are you navigating up there? Yeah, you're navigating.
You've got your attack board, you know.

Speaker 1 What's it look like? Just a little plastic,

Speaker 1 hard plastic plate that goes into the Velcro and ties in. And then a flat part that goes out, like

Speaker 1 a little breakfast table. And it's got...
you know, a compass and whatever device, whether it's a GPS or, you know, we use our phone devices or whatever, tablets on there and Kim Light.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that's it. You're driving with this thing.

Speaker 1 You're using your eyes too and all of your senses. And you're just, it's just like, it just takes a lot of focus for a really long amount of time.
So it's just pretty draining.

Speaker 1 And when you're doing it over and over and over again every day,

Speaker 1 you know, starting from before the sun comes up to the sun goes down. It's just, it's taxing, but also you get so good at it.
So by the time we get out of that, you're just

Speaker 1 really good at it.

Speaker 1 Just from all the repetition of it, you know.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, jumping like that on real-world missions, it's just, it's so

Speaker 1 difficult already. You've got environmentals, you've got wind, you've got weather, you know, and so

Speaker 1 everybody's skill set has to be at least to a baseline

Speaker 1 level in order to trust, you know, that we're going to succeed on the the mission if somebody's not going to fly off and the shit still happens.

Speaker 1 How much airtime is it? Dude, I don't know. It's got to be a lot of hours, like hours and hours.

Speaker 1 I mean, let's, I don't mean like all together. I mean, like, when you jump out and you're navigating into a target,

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 it just depends on. What's the longest one you've been on in the air from out of the plane to landing?

Speaker 1 I mean we've done some really high high high ones in training but real world typically it's going to be just a few minutes you know how high 15 15,000 feet you know something something like that

Speaker 1 and there's some other higher capabilities but

Speaker 1 that's a different

Speaker 1 sort of capability so you jumped in on on a on a real world op I did so you go through all that and then the story of that op op was pretty,

Speaker 1 it's kind of funny how I ended up being there when I'm supposed to be there, but

Speaker 1 it was the last

Speaker 1 thing.

Speaker 1 And, you know, so I had the opportunity

Speaker 1 to do

Speaker 1 a tandem jump into a hostage rescue. So it was pretty, it's pretty epic, you know, but it also changed my life.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, we'll get there. We'll get there.

Speaker 1 So you made it through green team first time.

Speaker 1 Yep, correct. You know, I had a rough time in assault for a little while, but I pulled it together.

Speaker 1 It's kind of that it's part of it.

Speaker 1 You know, hey, no matter how good you are, if you're the top or bottom guy, there's going to be stressors that they put on there just to see what happens, see how you react. And if you snowball,

Speaker 1 you're not going to make it. You know, if you can bring yourself back, you know, enough, then that's what they want.
You know, it's just...

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 the adaptability piece to be able to change

Speaker 1 to different tactics that we come up with based on things that happen, and that can be very immediate.

Speaker 1 You know, we come back from a deployment, or even during the deployment, we go, man, this is happening. How do we, what do we do? Change it.
You know, you don't have to wait for some approval.

Speaker 1 And then if we write it into doctrine, that trickles down into the teams and becomes doctrine.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's the glorious and cool part of development group, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 How do you

Speaker 1 get?

Speaker 1 I mean, how do do you know what squadron you're going to?

Speaker 1 Is it a dream sheet like coming out of buds?

Speaker 1 It's a draft, like a true draft, a list of names with performance evaluations on it, and then each team gets an order of the draft based off of the previous year,

Speaker 1 just like in sports. And there's also, you know, some influences on who knows the guy.

Speaker 1 You know, he might be sort of a known, at least, you know, reputation-wise, by other guys, maybe even guys guys that preceded him you know from their previous team like that's what happened with me i ended up in a team where i had a bunch of guys from team 10 it was awesome right on do you know what

Speaker 1 do people know what round they got picked i think you can find that out later i don't ever remember caring much about that i was just happy enough to get you know to finish and get on a good team.

Speaker 1 But I mean, I think you can go dig and find into that, but it's kind of like, you know

Speaker 1 i don't know if it's unnecessary but it's like yeah you know it just just wasn't something i thought about i mean i i think you can probably you can go if you know anybody that was cadre or you go back to it like hey where did i rank you know um it's not hard to see those rankings is it true

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 They put a list of names or a photo of every guy that's screening up and they do a yes, no, yes, no?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's like a picture.

Speaker 1 And then you kind of vote. Okay.

Speaker 1 You can put a vote and, you know, once you, you know, are an operator vetted into the team, you, you know, you do that every year as well. What do you think about that?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I think that there's certain things there that

Speaker 1 need to be the way that they are because they work, you know? And then there's other things that I've,

Speaker 1 you know, I've obviously learned through my life that I hope change change or continue to change, and that's more culture related.

Speaker 1 But those kind of things, I think that's, you know, well, I change what works. Yeah.
So, you know, and if I didn't know a guy or anything about him, I just, you don't have to vote. You just go,

Speaker 1 you don't have to say good or bad. Just go move on to the next guy, you know.
Do they want an explanation for why somebody would say yes or no? Yeah, I think that that's invited.

Speaker 1 If you've got an explanation about something, you should put it in there. Okay.
And there's been

Speaker 1 some occasions where

Speaker 1 that was a little detrimental in the future to not do that and you know

Speaker 1 not necessarily guys that slip through their cracks per se but a little couple you know some red flags that should have been at least talked about you know

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 to work on with you know things that you can develop in a guy just you know you don't have to be legends when we come through selection.

Speaker 1 You have some space to develop just like the G-League and the NBA or whatever it's called. You know, I think that's legit.
You know, you reach a baseline

Speaker 1 in selection that's

Speaker 1 enough to get you through. And then, of course, you have guys that are well beyond that.

Speaker 1 And that's

Speaker 1 where you go.

Speaker 1 Where did you go?

Speaker 1 I think I was somewhere. I've always been in the middle.
I mean, squadron-wise. Oh, excuse me.
Silver. Silver.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 What was it like checking into Silver?

Speaker 1 Silver was new, right? It was new. Silver newer? Yeah, it was only

Speaker 1 got commissioned

Speaker 1 only a few years before

Speaker 1 I got there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it was great. I knew a lot of guys in there because they were my mentors and peers from Team 10.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it felt very welcoming. The personality of that team was the right team for me, I felt.

Speaker 1 Were they, I mean, describe,

Speaker 1 well, let me go back for just a second.

Speaker 1 What's it like graduating Green Team?

Speaker 1 It's awesome. I mean, it's like, it's just such a release of energy, you know, and some of the later things that you do are sort of gentlemen courses.

Speaker 1 You're starting, you know, you're learning some cool things. You're doing some surveillance stuff.
And, you know, a little bit more of the trips are a little bit more fun and not so taxing.

Speaker 1 So you get, you know, a a little bit of a phase to kind of get ready to go check in and do all your things because that can be intense.

Speaker 1 You got so much stuff to do, got all kinds of gear to get, got all the fucking, and you got to start, and you get in and you start running immediately. So, and it's fast.

Speaker 1 You know, you get there and it's getting the kill house and it's fast. You're like, holy shit,

Speaker 1 you know, and it's just must it must feel like what

Speaker 1 an athlete feels like going to a pro team, you know, that has a little bit of development to do and is like, it happens quick because you got to keep up. Yeah.
And it's fast.

Speaker 1 Were they welcoming? Yeah,

Speaker 1 definitely.

Speaker 1 Different kind of vibe than going to the teams where it's like, okay, new guy, you know, like, yeah, you're a new guy, but it's a little like,

Speaker 1 I don't know how to explain it, but they're just a little bit more mature-y about it. Like, less of a thing being being a new guy over there, more

Speaker 1 in and get them up to speed. Yes, you kind of already know, but it's just more important to get them up to speed.
Cool. Yeah, to get them integrated and functioning in the team immediately.

Speaker 1 So, the goal is not to humiliate you. No, that's I didn't experience it.
I think it was just that part of it is just non-existent, in my opinion, there. So, there's no time for that.
That's cool.

Speaker 1 That's cool.

Speaker 1 So, what did you? I know you're a sniper. When did that

Speaker 1 you're on the rec-team, correct?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so typically, you got to spend a couple rotations as an assaulter before the rec-team selects you in, is the way that I experienced it.

Speaker 1 So, after my first

Speaker 1 deployment with them,

Speaker 1 I was interested in that, and I had some really good

Speaker 1 experienced snipers that

Speaker 1 were cool with it. So, they brought me in

Speaker 1 and that became my

Speaker 1 specialty.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about your first deployment

Speaker 1 with

Speaker 1 silver. How long were you there before the deployment?

Speaker 1 It's a lot quicker rotation. So it was probably about

Speaker 1 eight months.

Speaker 1 From what I remember, it's a little bit of a blur, but it was about eight months.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 i won't get too much into the details of the the the cycle but it's like a lot quicker what we used to call pro dev and side x all the pre-deployment stuff

Speaker 1 um it's only like really like four month increments so it's a year instead of 18 months it's not nearly as long um and wherever you fall into that timing

Speaker 1 so um yep and then deployment was afghanistan how did the

Speaker 1 how was the deployment Was it? It was good. It was a good, steady pace of operations.
By that time, we started to

Speaker 1 have to use some of the trained up partner forces a little bit more. You know,

Speaker 1 that whole thing started with

Speaker 1 the ERU and Iraq,

Speaker 1 you know.

Speaker 1 Training them, not necessarily having to bring them on operations to gradually over time the whole Afghanistan war evolution was like, all right, we're going to start turning this over to them to fight for their own country and

Speaker 1 you guys gotta start taking these guys so

Speaker 1 we ended up having to work a few of them in

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 you know just navigate around that whole problem of bringing in guys that aren't

Speaker 1 at your level trying to teach them or whatever

Speaker 1 oh shit you guys were running around i didn't real i did not know that um that was happening over there. Yeah, we would put them in different orders of patrol.

Speaker 1 And, you know, over over the years, this is not my first deployment, but maybe by like my third, you know, we're going like, hey, all right, certain targets, they're going to go try to do it. Gotcha.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that was just such a messy thing, you know, because your operations are so precise. And you're now like, it's like,

Speaker 5 you know, we're, we're,

Speaker 1 let's say we're on a high level,

Speaker 1 not high level, but we're on a grown-up, an adult basketball team.

Speaker 1 And now they're like, hey, you got to actually try to win the championship, but you got to bring these kids, your kids, and try to figure out.

Speaker 1 All right, guys, we got two kids. How do we win this championship? But maybe that's a bad analogy, but it just got frustrating over time as the war evolved to go, guys, this is like,

Speaker 1 I get it. Yeah.
I get it. One.
And there's more danger

Speaker 1 with it. And they don't understand when shit happens.
Who's to blame when bad shit happens? And you're like, dude, we're trying our best to follow these rules and play by these.

Speaker 1 Guys start to get frustrated over time and go like, man, this is bullshit.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, the ROEs over time got so restricted, you know, because of the political climate around the war that they were like, hey, it's win hearts and minds time.

Speaker 1 And officers actually, you know, pretending to believe all of that.

Speaker 1 And even over there. Convince us.
Yeah, everybody, I think, experienced that.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So over time, it just became that. You know, I knew quite a few guys that got out because they were like, I just don't want to operate like that.
And then other guys, you stay more positive.

Speaker 1 You know, you just do the best you can. And

Speaker 1 I want to say that from that second deployment or so for me around 2012,

Speaker 1 every deployment after that was partner force. You got to bring them.
You got to,

Speaker 1 you know. And it's not easy to operate like that.

Speaker 1 Not because we didn't want to. We want to, you know, do our best, but

Speaker 1 you're like, God, it's hard to do your job when you got to bring these other guys that are just not even close, you know, and also kind of sort of

Speaker 1 report on it to go, hey, we want to make ourselves look good, you know, to everybody that's looking at us. And so we go, hey, how are the guys doing? They're great.

Speaker 1 They're, they're, you know, they're close to being SEALs. Fuck.

Speaker 1 They're not close. They fucking put their, they don't even use their night vision goggles because they're uncomfortable.
They don't understand this the

Speaker 1 and just drilling with them and spending all this time, it distracts you from operating, from training yourself, you know, and

Speaker 1 yeah, it helps, you know, to go be a cadre in selection. You're actually going to become better probably from instructing other, you know, high-level guys.

Speaker 1 But now you go down levels and you're, you're going to lose, you're losing something from just sort of bringing your level down to go train these guys on basics that we're actually going to go operate with.

Speaker 1 It's like being on a fucking Ducati and then going back to training wheels on a.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not like, I don't mean it in an ego, arrogant kind of way, but yeah, it feels like that. It's like, oh man,

Speaker 1 gotta go,

Speaker 3 you know, teach them how to

Speaker 1 ride a bicycle when we're on Ducatis. Yeah.
It doesn't make sense to me. We just talked about your green team and how rigorous it was and how like,

Speaker 1 you know, how the level, level, you know, you described it like a level, the bubble gets out and you're gone. And then

Speaker 1 you deploy

Speaker 1 and you got these guys that,

Speaker 1 I mean, they probably wouldn't even be

Speaker 1 SEALs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it's tough to go back and think about that, too, and not hold resentment for how the whole thing with Afghanistan evolved.

Speaker 1 And then we saw what happened with everything and the whole ex-Fill of Afghanistan shit show. And then just going like, man, were there, how long were their intentions,

Speaker 1 you know, to restrict how we operate in order to get this done and then not, you know, feel like the force was misused and this and that. And

Speaker 1 you don't have time to think about it when you're doing it. You're like, there's a mission and we do the mission.
It's my job. So you don't really,

Speaker 1 I didn't really have time to think about any of that until I was done. And then now I go back and think about it and just try my best not to

Speaker 1 hold anger and resentment for it. it but when i see some of these stories especially with the ex-phil and guys like you know you had on here andrew i'm like dude

Speaker 1 you've got so many guys coming on here shows like this and other awesome shows just

Speaker 1 to want to just tell the truth and things it was like we've as a as a society i'm like we've moved so far away from being okay with the truth, right, to a point that like everything just feels like there's bullshit piled on top of it.

Speaker 1 And we just want want to see just the baseline of truth so we can make decisions on how to do things better, you know, and get better. And go, man, that happened.
But next war,

Speaker 1 can we learn from it this time? It didn't work in Vietnam, didn't work in other wars, didn't work in Iraq, didn't work in Afghanistan. Are we going to do it again?

Speaker 1 Where we have some conflict that we don't just,

Speaker 1 when you commit to war,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 or, yes, war is hell. And so so if they're committing to it with this willy-nilly kind of oh

Speaker 1 we're gonna

Speaker 1 go to war you know

Speaker 1 but we're pretty quickly not gonna finish the job and and it's gonna turn into something else you know especially driven by societal pressure and politics and everything it's like dude once that happens now you just start thinking about all the lives of 2000 or so guys and the situations, you know, and thinking back to buddies you lost and things that happened,

Speaker 1 you know, and the way that they ex-filled to go, fuck, man, did they really, and then they stand up sometimes and go, we love our military.

Speaker 1 And like, do you, do you really think about it in depth, you know, or is it just a game, you know, and if it's, war is not a game.

Speaker 1 So if you commit to it, like,

Speaker 1 fuck, let's just finish the job as quickly as possible to minimize now death on both sides for an extended amount of time in the future, right but that's what people don't understand too and they go uh ceasefire and this and that and and no war and you're like well there's a reason for

Speaker 1 why do you think that was

Speaker 1 why what was why do you think that war went the way it did i mean it was

Speaker 1 balls to the wall at the beginning yeah and then could finish it you saw the roes start changing And then it got to the point where it's like, what? Why are we even here?

Speaker 1 You're chopping these guys' legs out. And

Speaker 1 you're essentially giving...

Speaker 1 You are 100% giving the enemy an advantage by slapping these ROEs on us.

Speaker 1 Now you're playing around. Yeah, you're like, hey, here's an advantage.
We're going to show up and see how it goes.

Speaker 1 Do you have any theories? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've got different theories, but it's almost just overarching in the words. Like the

Speaker 1 country as a whole, when we have attachments to,

Speaker 1 we have so many distracting attachments from the truth and reality and things, you know, everything

Speaker 1 from

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 pressure in your, in your, in like a normal average person's life, just the pressure, right, to

Speaker 1 go to school, work. you know now you've got a family you got whatever all your responsibilities it gets stressful you've you know you might feel shitty you might be coping coping with shit.

Speaker 1 We were talking about trauma. You've got your things and you feel it's fucking hard.
And then now we've got so many other distractions on top of that. The attachment to celebrity is a thing that

Speaker 1 is a thing for me. So now we have celebrities with opinions.

Speaker 1 And it sounds like an excuse or something small, but I think it's actually having a way bigger effect than any of us want to admit, where we go,

Speaker 1 this celebrity.

Speaker 1 doesn't like the war and they start to speak out again now this is the societal pressure the buildup of social opinion now starts to affect high-level leaders and politicians to now go, hey,

Speaker 1 we're killing them good. Like we're getting this war and we're getting this job done like effectively, but it's too effective.
So

Speaker 1 let's still do it, but

Speaker 1 die it down a little bit. You're like, take it easier on the bad guys.
And you're like, we're talking about fucking war. What do you mean, take it easier on the bad guys? How? Well, this is how.

Speaker 1 We're going to start making the ROEs stricter to the point of absurdity, actually, over time to where now it's like, okay, now the mission is just win hearts and minds.

Speaker 1 And you're like, oh my God, well, how do we,

Speaker 1 how do we, now we got to pretend to believe in that and do our jobs at the same time

Speaker 1 and mitigate risk. Guys still get killed because of the mitigating of the risk.

Speaker 1 It just gets watered down. And

Speaker 1 warfighters, you know, if you, if that's your role, if if you do that, if you're a warrior, just fucking doesn't work that way well,

Speaker 1 you know, and it's hard to say and hard for people to understand that like the best way for war is as quickly and as efficiently as possible with the intention of minimizing collateral damage.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's a very

Speaker 1 specific

Speaker 1 ancient thing.

Speaker 1 you know, that

Speaker 1 you want to fucking draw it out and then

Speaker 1 now everybody perceives that we lost. Like, we didn't fucking lose, man.
I don't, like,

Speaker 1 yeah, maybe we, you can, the perspective could be that we lost, but I don't, dude, I saw what we were like,

Speaker 1 did more enemy get killed or good than good guys? A lot more, I think. So, I don't know what the metric is for that, but

Speaker 1 however disillusioned we might get, I refuse to believe that we lost any fucking war. We just, we did it to our, we do it to ourselves with

Speaker 1 it's just how we extend it you know

Speaker 1 i don't know man i got some uh

Speaker 1 a little bit different opinion on that than than you but yeah that's okay i just uh

Speaker 1 i mean i guess you can't really from a warfighter's perspective yeah it's sort of an overarching force you know uh

Speaker 1 i'm really scared what's coming you know i mean

Speaker 1 because we had a handle on it.

Speaker 1 In my opinion, I don't think we can say that we won that war.

Speaker 1 No, I don't think we won that war. We definitely

Speaker 1 killed more bad guys than they did of us.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 1 you know, the thing is, is

Speaker 1 I mean, fuck, man, we've left the world.

Speaker 1 Being that it's worse off now than we ever started. That's kind of what I'm getting at.

Speaker 1 Sorry, go ahead. The fact that it's worse off, it is worse off off now than when we entered.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the fact that now there are 21 different terrorist organizations all convoluting together

Speaker 1 and coming up through our fucking southern border that we're funding. We are funding.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 that is a,

Speaker 1 that's pretty devastating. I mean, they have

Speaker 1 definitely strengthened in a very short amount of time, and we're going to fucking feel it here. We are going to feel it in this country.
You know, we're being forced because we didn't finish the job.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And we're being forced to

Speaker 1 I don't know how to explain that

Speaker 1 it's like we're being forced to just like be okay

Speaker 1 with you're being forced to live our lives on a four-year cycle because it's all election-based, two and four-year cycles.

Speaker 1 So every decision I see being made for some of these things is based off of whatever effect

Speaker 1 of government and politicians

Speaker 1 thinks they're going to have within the next two to four years, and nothing beyond that.

Speaker 1 I'm like, think further than that with just my fucking ice cream, you know?

Speaker 1 And the consequences are just piling up rapidly, right? And they're just more and more and more and more bullshit piling up

Speaker 1 so that you can, we, you know, we can

Speaker 1 win something in two or four years that

Speaker 1 that pile of bullshit is going to take decades

Speaker 1 to fix, even if we could at least reach a level

Speaker 1 of enough bullshit being cleared away to actually agree to talk about any of it, can't even discuss at this point. Yeah.
You know, like an argument between two people. What are we arguing about?

Speaker 1 We got to at least agree to the thing we're arguing about

Speaker 1 and a little bit of the truth behind it, whatever the topic is,

Speaker 1 before we can even get close to making a decision on how to get better, you know, while satisfying both of our needs. It's, we just, we're so far from that.

Speaker 1 And it's just, in the meantime, all the danger and all the shit is just keeps stacking up. Yeah.
And then we're going to see it,

Speaker 1 you know, with some attack or some bullshit and everyone's going to be all surprised. We already saw it.
We saw it in Israel. We saw it at that Russian mall.
We've seen it happen here before.

Speaker 1 You know, they came out with a report. Do you know who Sarah Adams is by chance? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 CR targeter.

Speaker 1 Say again. She the Askari media.
Yes, that's her.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a lot of stuff she talked about.

Speaker 1 There's this book that came out. It's almost more like a report.
I wish I Scott Mann told me about it in his interview that we just released. So anybody listening, they can go back to get that.
But

Speaker 1 they are predicting

Speaker 1 Al-Qaeda, the terrorist networks are predicting, they're saying that the casualties that we will feel will be 50 to 60,000. 50 to 60,000 casualties when they decide to make their move

Speaker 1 in our home front. It's a large scale.

Speaker 1 And we all sound like kooks and conspiracy theorists until it happens and it's like, well, prevention, there's a lot of shit being prevented. It's not kooks and conspiracy theorists.

Speaker 1 We are funding Taliban. Yeah, proven it.

Speaker 1 We proved it on the show.

Speaker 1 9-11 was a $500,000 budget. Government already came out after we broke the news right here in this fucking room that

Speaker 1 they accidentally...

Speaker 1 accidentally sent $239 million to the fucking Taliban.

Speaker 1 But we know it's more like close to a billion a year, you know, that's going to these NGOs and being funneled back to the

Speaker 1 and we know that they're producing passports.

Speaker 1 I've talked about this a million times, but we know they're producing passports, send them into South Central America, they're funneling up through the southern border.

Speaker 1 It all circles back to the same truth. And it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 The more and more people you have that are experts with some real world experience in these things, like actual part of their life, whether it's their job or whatever they do, coming on to stuff like this with the courage to talk about it.

Speaker 1 And people still,

Speaker 1 you know, some people want to go, that's not the truth.

Speaker 1 That screen with the CNN and Fox and that stuff, that's the truth. And,

Speaker 1 you know, the movie I saw that says based on a true story, why didn't they make that about that if it's true?

Speaker 1 You're like,

Speaker 1 I witnessed this in my life, Richel.

Speaker 1 The stuff you're talking about being true is like a movie based on a true story. That's not even close to the truth.
That's exaggerated for entertainment.

Speaker 1 Like, dude, that's why now finally, the good thing is they're starting to realize how stupid it is and go

Speaker 1 on like the Washington Post or something I saw the other day. Shows like the Sean Ryan show are now people are turning to those for their information,

Speaker 1 you know, instead of mainstream media. And you're like, thank God they're waking up to it.
But, you know, it's like right at the last minute before this election. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But, well, Chris, let's move into,

Speaker 1 let's move into

Speaker 1 your final op.

Speaker 1 Are you ready? Yeah, yeah, I'm ready. I know this is heavy for you.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it started

Speaker 1 actually kind of a cool story.

Speaker 1 I wasn't supposed to be there.

Speaker 1 So I made a decision to get out when I was in the middle of my previous deployment in Somalia. I was a team leader at this out station, and we were pretty remote out there.
We're doing some cool shit.

Speaker 1 We stayed up in this mountain for 22 days. That's where the 900-yard shot happened on a big ambush.
Oh, yeah, man. Tell that.

Speaker 1 We got to hear that one. Sorry.
We got to hear that one first.

Speaker 1 It was outside of our

Speaker 1 normal operation deck, but these

Speaker 1 ISIS Somalia slash al-Shabaab terrorists

Speaker 1 had

Speaker 1 gone up into this little oasis of a village up in the mountain. It was like, it was nice.
It had a waterfall, date trees. Is it really green? You know, just in the middle of a...

Speaker 1 desert with nothing else. And so,

Speaker 1 you know, some people have been living in this village for decades.

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 this place since has become sort of a safe haven for bad guys to go almost like it's like a vacation spot or something

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 because it's nice up there so these these guys decided to just go take it over so they go up and essentially kill all the villagers and

Speaker 1 you know you know move them out of there to essentially take over the spot of like cool it's ours now we're gonna relax here

Speaker 1 and it was such a profound

Speaker 1 sort sort of wrongdoing that we got approved to go up there and clear them out

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 we go through we go up there it's a long planning process to get it all i mean we we were getting like humvees from dermo and re and repurposing them and getting them ready and going up there and training you know for a long time

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 we we went up there

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, we've had partner force vehicles in front of us. And, you know, we anticipated an ambush.
And then there was just a big ambush.

Speaker 1 To get up there is on these like really tight switchbacks. So they're taking a lot of time.
And so, you know, IEDs were placed up there. And,

Speaker 1 you know, one of the partner force trucks got blown up and flipped over.

Speaker 1 So we've got now

Speaker 1 our team, corpsmen and medics and stuff over there. working on those guys and we're stuck on this switchback just getting lit up from rpgs and pkm and AK from somewhere.

Speaker 1 And some of them are like, where are these coming from?

Speaker 1 So we, but we, you know, we had some turret guns, we had some 40 mic mic guns up on the Humbees that were just super powerful, you know, weapons.

Speaker 1 And so we were able to suppress that, you know, pretty comfortably.

Speaker 1 But while that was all going on, we're still getting all these pop shots on the trucks from somewhere. And the guys are like, where is this from? So

Speaker 1 I'm like, fuck, I hop out of my, we're stuck. We're not moving right now.
So I, the guys are just staying staying inside because you can see them landing around us.

Speaker 1 So I, I, and there's this big mount, there's this big

Speaker 1 like ridge off to my left side. And we're driving up around the switchbacks.

Speaker 1 So I go, man, I go, and I just happen to always carry my 300 windmag, and I used to get made fun of for carrying it up in the, in the mountains, because it's just huge.

Speaker 1 So I had other buddies of mine like,

Speaker 1 god damn it, that fucking thing seems bonking me in the helmet and shit. And I'm like, well, walk away from me somewhere, you know?

Speaker 1 You know, I'm carrying this thing.

Speaker 1 And I actually, there was another op where I used it. And, you know, we were, we, we, we killed some, some bad guys that were launching mortars on us, you know, four of them.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I'm the guy who got to go do that because I had the long gun, you know?

Speaker 1 So it was always worth it to me hucking that thing around. This is my favorite gun, 300 windmag.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so I pull that thing out of the back of the truck. I get it kind of set up.
I had a big pouch full of rounds and I go get under the hood of the thing.

Speaker 1 And I got my, we've got a turret gunner up there, another guy that passed away from a brain tumor after I got out.

Speaker 1 And so, but at that time he was

Speaker 1 up there on the turret and we had suppressed a fire. There wasn't much going on anymore, except for these guys shooting pop shots.
And I thought it might be from up there, 900 yards up on this

Speaker 1 ledge. So I get out and go, hey,

Speaker 1 dude, Zach, can you spot me? You know, I'm going to shoot, I'm going to look up there. So I look up there, I go, there is six guys up there.

Speaker 1 I can see their little heads, and they're like shooting AKs over at us.

Speaker 1 Not very effective, though. It's still landing around us, but it's 900 yards away or AKs, you know.
And

Speaker 1 I'm like, all right, dude, I'm going to start. shooting back.
So I start loading arounds and I'm like,

Speaker 1 if I miss over the top, it's just a little, little just little

Speaker 1 you know heads and so I'm like and they're gonna snap over and those guys they're gonna go off right I'm like that's fine maybe that'll work but instead I start like I'm gonna take my first shot and intentionally kind of miss a little bit low so I can mark it on the rocks and by the way that wind the wind was blowing towards them that they might not have heard that you know so so that's what I did And then I would kind of zero it in and then shoot at one of them.

Speaker 1 And then they'd all duck back and I'd be like, you know, hey, did I get them?

Speaker 1 You know, he's like, no, i don't think so so i kind of was like all right well that's suppressed they're good but then every time they came back and started shooting more um

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 so i just keep doing my best and you know then eventually he's like you you got that dude you know you got that dude you know and

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 you know i don't like I don't like the language sometimes out of ego to go like the pink, you know, mist or whatever, but that was the sort of,

Speaker 1 he thought he saw that it's like okay well

Speaker 1 fuck i'm looking are they coming back he's like no they're not coming back this time so they and then they so they stopped so i didn't know we didn't know really

Speaker 1 so i put the gun away we start get everybody kind of wrapped up those guys survived in that truck so the the the id was in this plastic jug and it went low order so it didn't explode all the way um so we get back in we move into the camp we take it over take over some buildings make it our jock and then we spend the next 22 days doing little operations like sniper ops up there, trying to get the bad guys.

Speaker 1 We're having mortar fights and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 And then eventually get enough of them to where, you know, hey, now we're going to introduce those villagers back up into there. And so we start doing that.
That was an awesome time.

Speaker 1 They were like, so happy. They kind of started moving back in.
And then the partner force kind of took over that spot

Speaker 1 for the next few years, I think.

Speaker 1 I heard that eventually it got taken back over, but I'm not sure about that.

Speaker 1 So we did some good for a short amount of time at least nice um and we came back down there and that was that deployment so

Speaker 1 the way that that was confirmed was that uh

Speaker 1 you know you can you can capture with your isr like some of their chatter on radios and they're chattering about hey there's a sniper when we're in the firefight shooting at us later on that night we're listening to terps like hey i've been listening and they're talking about going up there and getting what's his name that a sniper shot you know like so we're watching them they they go up there and they get this guy and they drag him down.

Speaker 1 And that's kind of a confirmation. Damn.
You know, and so you know, I had a really awesome

Speaker 1 platoon chief then was like,

Speaker 1 dude, I'm gonna write this up. You know, it's pretty, it's pretty cool, so I'm gonna write it up.
So he did that.

Speaker 1 And that's how I got that one. Fucking A, man.

Speaker 1 That's cool.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was one of the cooler

Speaker 1 experiences.

Speaker 1 So yeah, where were we before that story?

Speaker 1 We're moving into your last stop. Yeah, so we move in.

Speaker 1 I'm at that, in between those missions at that out station, and

Speaker 1 my kids are three and four, my two boys, and

Speaker 1 I'm having a hard time getting them to FaceTime with me because my wife says, hey, the... Braddock, my older son, he's starting to understand what's going on.
Like, you're not here.

Speaker 1 And you want to talk to him, but he's mad and he doesn't want to talk to you until you're back. Oh, man.
And so, how's that feel? Dude, it broke my heart.

Speaker 1 And I couldn't get him on unless he was crying. So we tried a couple of times.
I'm like, dude, I don't.

Speaker 1 He's so mad. And he was crying, you know, I don't want to talk to you until you're here, you know, like with me.
Man.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that broke my heart and I realized what I was going to be missing, you know, because I was only 14, I was only 12, 13 years in

Speaker 1 with the intention to go all the way to 20, which meant I was going to be working my way all the way up through the team, you know.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 by that time, it was my turn to be a team leader, which is really kind of a,

Speaker 1 not the pinnacle, but a really big milestone as an operator, in my opinion, to get to. And I always wanted to get to that.

Speaker 1 So I stopped telling her, hey, just don't just don't get get him on there

Speaker 1 you know and i'm gonna get out and she's like you're gonna get out i'm like yeah fuck it i'm gonna get out um

Speaker 1 so i kind of started thinking about that decision wasn't too serious about it still had a few more weeks left at the out station and then i

Speaker 1 started doing some research in my off time about fatherhood

Speaker 1 and then it became pretty apparent to me And I don't even know where I got this from, but it just seemed like I was reading it over and over again that

Speaker 1 as a father to sons,

Speaker 1 the most important

Speaker 1 time to imprint those validation things that we're talking about and

Speaker 1 dad being there, essentially,

Speaker 1 is between the ages of 8 and 12. So I was like, all right, I can get out and I can make that still, you know?

Speaker 1 So that was really my deciding factor. And as I kind of got closer to that decision, I started to announce to the team, like, hey, guys, I'm getting out.
And it was like, I know it's bad timing.

Speaker 1 I'm supposed to be a team leader right when we get back.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we had some great leadership then. And then our master chief was like, hey, dude, there's never a good time.
So,

Speaker 1 you know, we're going to take care of you.

Speaker 1 And, you know, he got me into the Nyco clinic and stuff, sort of organized. And then we came back from deployment.
That next

Speaker 1 three months over the summer was my terminal leave. So we got back.
I started my terminal leave. I started turning my things

Speaker 1 I don't know what. Oh, I did one more trip just to stay current, just in case.
And it was a jump trip because I was a jump guy. And

Speaker 1 one thing about being a jump guy, I was never great at it. I

Speaker 1 ended up going to the tandem bundle school because when my first son was being born, we were short that quality and I was so like the whole validation thing was like, man, they're going on deployment.

Speaker 1 And there's an opportunity to jump in this course.

Speaker 1 It was the hardest course outside of any selection. For me, it was anyways, because my son was supposed to be due at any point during that three weeks.
And it's intense. So I was fucking shit up.

Speaker 1 I was distracted. I was thinking about my son being born.
And I had this instructor that was a legend of a dude, you know, and I was in the green course, so it was the Delta course.

Speaker 1 And I was the only Dev Grew guy. And, you know, the whole

Speaker 1 thing from him was like you're going to be the best dude in this course. And I was like, okay,

Speaker 1 you know?

Speaker 1 And then I was the, I was the worst guy guy in the course, you know, but that's where I made some really

Speaker 1 lifelong

Speaker 1 delta friends. One guy specifically, he really pushed me through that course.

Speaker 1 And I'm eternally grateful for it because I got through and I probably shouldn't have, you know, they were really patient with me.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, since then, after that, I practiced a lot and got good at it, you know.

Speaker 1 So then I started to enjoy it, right? A little bit at least.

Speaker 1 So we fast forward now to this. I go on the trip.
I go do my tandems, my bundles, stay current, you know, my last hoorah with the team.

Speaker 1 And we get right back from that trip. I start turning all my shit in except for all my stuff we're going to do, you know, because now we're on standby.

Speaker 1 We're on our, we're responsible for the hostage rescues if any, if anything comes about.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I leave those. I just take them home instead of my locker.
I turn everything in except for my primary guns and my night vision, my favorite night vision goggles out of all the ones that we get.

Speaker 1 And that was it. And I was like, cool.

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 1 in the team room doing emails and wrapping my shit up, you know, trying to get a resume together.

Speaker 1 I had a job opportunity, so I was going to go for that. Just in contracting with my buddy's company, I mentioned earlier.
And just chilling now.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 one day I'm in there they spin up

Speaker 1 and I'm like fuck of course you know the the day I decided to get out you know and I missed the hostage rescue you know

Speaker 1 so I'm in there but because of

Speaker 1 some different circumstances

Speaker 1 You know, there was no clue that there was going to be anything and we had guys doing some different kind of cool training stuff they had to get done a lot of the reckey guys and planners for you know when we have that, they're, we're typically the guys that plan,

Speaker 1 you know, routes and jumps and different things like that, right?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I had a really,

Speaker 1 I had a platoon chief that, you know, like not everybody liked, but I had some kind of connection with him. I thought he was a really intelligent dude.

Speaker 1 I think his intelligence was underrated.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 he, I was like, hey,

Speaker 1 I'm going to head out and go for a run around my neighborhood. I'm kind of also like depressed because I don't get to go do this thing, you know?

Speaker 1 He's like, okay, so I go running, get done running, get back to my house.

Speaker 1 Look at my phone. There's a bunch of texts from him.
I'm like, oh, shit. So I call him, hey, what's going on? He's like, hey,

Speaker 1 we got some guys in different places trying to get back, but we could really use, you know, some planning help if you want to help. plan this thing.
I was like, yeah.

Speaker 1 And then just kind of joking around, you know, I'm like, hey, if I plan, do I get to go?

Speaker 1 I'm on term of leave. Of course I don't get to go, you know?

Speaker 1 But he goes, hey,

Speaker 1 hold on a second. So he puts the phone down for a second, a couple minutes, comes back.
He's like, yeah, you can go. Like, holy shit.

Speaker 1 All right. How long do I have to get there?

Speaker 1 You got all your shit ready? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You probably better get here in like 45 minutes, you know, if you're going to make this.

Speaker 1 Bird. So I'm like, oh, shit.
So that's how much time I had to throw all my shit in the truck and tell my wife, hey,

Speaker 1 I'm gonna go do this thing. Are you okay with it? She's like, holy shit, you we got through all of this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not gonna stop you from doing this one thing, but it's kind of that whole like Team America thing, like, just don't die,

Speaker 1 you know. So I'm like, okay, and I'll, you know, um,

Speaker 1 try my best and love you,

Speaker 1 you know, and squeeze the boys and go. And so now that's how I ended up on the mission.
So

Speaker 1 we fly over there

Speaker 1 and you can find this in the news and shit.

Speaker 1 There was a hiccup with the staff for Obama informing him that we were in the air ready to jump when we got there.

Speaker 1 And so it got pushed 24 hours because He was asleep in Martha's Vineyard, from what I understand.

Speaker 1 I don't know the details of that. I know there's a bunch of shit that I probably have no fucking clue how works, you know.

Speaker 1 And we come down, we push to the next night, and then we go.

Speaker 1 So I'm up there. I got a tandem medic on me,

Speaker 1 and I'm the point man for the op, you know. And I've got three other guys, too, usually a team of four.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 up in the point, anyways.

Speaker 1 So everything goes well. We jump, great landing,

Speaker 1 we get on this target. It's four,

Speaker 1 this is in the news too,

Speaker 1 two professors that were kidnapped from the University of Kabul days before.

Speaker 1 One was Australian, one was American,

Speaker 1 Kevin King and Timothy Weeks,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 found out that they're here, right?

Speaker 1 probably

Speaker 1 being moved around different compounds on their way to across the border in Pakistan and

Speaker 1 you know

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 network of dudes that do you know the most deviant shit with the Taliban it's those guys right suicide bombers

Speaker 1 you know

Speaker 1 you know just all the all the worst shit you can think of that happened you know chopping off heads and whatever other kind of shit I think that honestly actually was more in Iraq but I don't know

Speaker 1 so it's those guys right and so we're expecting some we're expecting a hard fight, maybe.

Speaker 1 And we all know, if you have any experience with these guys in Afghanistan, with all the suicide bombs, the houseborne IEDs, all the shit we like, go really deliberate with when we go to these compounds.

Speaker 1 We're looking for, I mean, it's slow CQB.

Speaker 1 We're looking at every threshold for wires, for different,

Speaker 1 you know, there's even started using,

Speaker 1 you know, motion sensors and, you know,

Speaker 1 you know, light sensor, like photosensitive bulbs you know and pillows and shit like that to just blow right and there's so many ops where that happens right

Speaker 1 so it's it's high tension and we're expecting this shit and we get down and they're at a they're at a compound right

Speaker 1 got a long walk in everything goes well And then we get to, you know, we see some movement around, some guys that seem to have RPGs, motorcycles moving around. And

Speaker 1 what I believe was going on based off of what happened was that that was just normal shit going on because we were able to get all the way up to the target, sneaking up and get up on top and get ready without anybody knowing anything.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 there were a couple of noises, you know, that we made.

Speaker 1 The way that I

Speaker 1 go back to thinking about what actually happened on this op have a lot to do with,

Speaker 1 you know, Kevin King never spoke much about it after. Maybe he's super traumatized by it, maybe he's living his life, whatever.

Speaker 1 But Timothy Weeks did speak up on it a bunch in a bunch of different interviews and news outlets. And

Speaker 1 you know, I was in my contracting work

Speaker 1 after this op,

Speaker 1 and eventually

Speaker 1 they were cut a deal to be turned over and traded with the release of Anasa Khani,

Speaker 1 which is, you know, the leader

Speaker 1 and a couple of other guys.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 once that happened, pretty quickly it went around, even in the news, like a little write-up that he had of like what he thought happened on those different ops, because there was a couple attempts, a couple of failed attempts.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I pieced it together over time what I thought really happened, right? And so

Speaker 1 different ROEs for a hostage rescue, totally different.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 every operator really understands like pretty in-depth what those are. You have to, right? You really talk about it.

Speaker 1 Because the mission is the hostages. And on a hostage rescue, it's so hard to talk about, especially with people that don't understand war and those things, because

Speaker 1 one of only a couple of things is going to happen.

Speaker 1 They're going to kill the hostages if they know that you're there, which has happened. And that's a really hard thing for operators to deal with after.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 or you're gonna rescue the hostages and kill all the bad guys. Great, you know?

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 1 the good guys might accidentally kill the hostage while they're on the doing the operation. That's happened before too.

Speaker 1 That's hard.

Speaker 1 So as an operator, you go through your decision-making matrix to go, you know, like, hey, my decision-making has to be very precise here, right?

Speaker 1 And this is where, even more so than any other time, or like, there's no room for the soul, I think, in those.

Speaker 1 And that's a sacrifice that warriors have to make, in my opinion, to do what they do sometimes. And that's where the detachment from that.

Speaker 1 is so hard afterwards to come back to because you've just moments of detachment from that for so long over time,

Speaker 1 you know.

Speaker 1 And in history, some

Speaker 1 have been able to figure that, to stay attached and connected to that soul while they're doing it. But

Speaker 1 that just wasn't the case for

Speaker 1 where I was at, right? And what guys around me were at, and why it's so hard right now.

Speaker 1 Guys coming out. So

Speaker 1 we get up.

Speaker 1 I'm the first guy to touch the target. I climb up, sneak up to the roof.
My spot, and my job is to protect the assaulters, right? And see what they can't see.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 we have another team coming around on our side, a little delayed because they went a different way.

Speaker 1 They weren't sure if we had been,

Speaker 1 you know, compromised at all yet.

Speaker 1 My opinion is we still weren't.

Speaker 1 So they climb up they get set they get ready and in the meantime I'm looking over Down here and there's five people sleeping in the courtyard But we knew that

Speaker 1 And on the way trying to figure out who they are what they are making sure none of them are the hostages, right?

Speaker 1 And that there's a lot that goes into that identification, you know hair color skin color You know, what do they look like?

Speaker 1 Is there any chance that they're they used to dress them up like in burkas, you know,

Speaker 1 so that we'd think that they were women, right? So there, there wasn't any of that. They're all males.

Speaker 1 And through a process of that, you know, getting to 100% clarity that like none of them are the hostages, but at the same time,

Speaker 1 you know, going, hey, the ROE,

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 Intel

Speaker 1 is saying that who these guys are and

Speaker 1 what networks they're part of,

Speaker 1 when they know we're here, they might blow up the whole fucking thing in themselves. They're willing to do that, right? And all of us.

Speaker 1 And we've experienced that before.

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 1 they're going to fucking spray something from under, you know, from their little

Speaker 1 sleeping nest. And

Speaker 1 in my job,

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're on a mission. The hostages are the most important.
But if I hesitate in a decision, dude, I've gone through this so much, dude, I'm going to try my best here

Speaker 1 because I went through a whole process for years of

Speaker 1 making sure I'm not justifying, but justifying and like going back and forth with my ego, just

Speaker 1 trying to understand this thing. But also, for so many years, I was just coping with it with addictions and drinking my face off and just being

Speaker 1 lost

Speaker 1 with that new trauma, right?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 figuring out if the decision I made was the right one because the decision I made was we're going to kill these five males, right? And eliminate any risk to those assaulters.

Speaker 1 Because if one gets hit because I hesitated on that decision,

Speaker 1 then I know their wives. I know a bunch of them.

Speaker 1 You know, they're all around our community, you know?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 fuck, that's my job, right?

Speaker 1 So then I started to eventually separate this into a duty decision and a soul decision, right?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 when the breach goes off, I'm eliminating those five. So I did, right?

Speaker 1 Thinking back now,

Speaker 1 There were some things that happened outside that I there were some loud noises some things some some mistakes that I think may have spooked those guys into stomping those hostages down into a tunnel system down below.

Speaker 1 Because when a couple of years later, when they got turned over,

Speaker 1 that reading that he, the thing that he wrote was like, hey, the first time

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 woke up in the middle of the night and to getting kicked down a fucking hidden tunnel.

Speaker 1 and was like knocked out and came back to and then as soon as I came back to there was a a loud explosion which is the breach for what I think

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 and so it wasn't like hours or days it was it could have been seconds that we missed those guys right

Speaker 1 maybe maybe not

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 so the breach goes off the assaulters come in they get into a fight with a couple of

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 Couple of guys, eliminate them, and we're waiting to hear that got them you know in that room the beds are still warm there's still food from whenever before

Speaker 1 you know

Speaker 1 exercise bike whatever and

Speaker 1 hey they're not here and that's when

Speaker 1 essentially like okay we're gonna clear this whole village now which we did

Speaker 1 and we've got other compounds we're looking at to, you know, to go look at, to go do.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 as I'm doing my job, hopping from roof to roof, covering my guys, I'm going like this rush of just

Speaker 1 sort of stress comes over me because now it's soul time,

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 1 Because what I didn't know,

Speaker 1 what I don't, what I think I didn't know, I still go through this to go, did I know, did I not know in that moment

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 two out of the five

Speaker 1 males were kids.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 in the moment, it doesn't affect me too much. It's my job.

Speaker 1 You know, we wrap up that target, we get back, it's a failed hostage rescue.

Speaker 1 The team discusses like we always do. Hey,

Speaker 1 anybody have any issues with everything that went down tonight? Raise your hand. No.

Speaker 1 And even the guy who I told you the platoon chief was like, man, I'm

Speaker 1 I brought it up because i didn't you know hey i don't know i think i you know i i know i did the right thing duty-wise but something in here is fucking me up right now right

Speaker 1 and i'm you know i'm good he's like you good i'm like i'm good but

Speaker 1 i don't know what to say what i what i feel is like hey you did the right thing

Speaker 1 With that, you know, when you breach in Afghanistan, it's a blind assault. There's fucking dust.
Like,

Speaker 1 those guys's clearance was like you can't even see your hand in front of you. So, imagine that, you know, hey, feeling your way into bad guys, you know, and making sure they're not the hostage.

Speaker 1 So, that was that. The last I ever talked about it with anybody.

Speaker 1 The craziest thing was, those guys got extended for a month to do more operations around this. Rangers get involved, other guys get involved, and uh,

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 all right, guys, I gotta go start my job in a fucking week and get back in time for it.

Speaker 1 So I fly back and no shit, like two days later, I'm up in DC in this office at DITRA with a fucking suit and a tie,

Speaker 1 thinking about these kids and just trying to figure the shit out, but not understanding how.

Speaker 1 And I'm in this fucking office.

Speaker 1 I'm supposed to be getting read-ons and badges and shit.

Speaker 1 And I got this, there's this fucking, you know, guy who's the boss or whatever, the program manager, and he's like fucking eating Twinkies and shit all over his desk.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, hey, sir, what am I supposed to be? What do I need to do here? And he's like, fucking,

Speaker 1 what are you talking about? Get your ass over to the fucking brief you're supposed to be in. And I'm like,

Speaker 1 okay, you know,

Speaker 1 fucking dick, you know? And then I go.

Speaker 1 Do my best to figure out what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing in that in that job the first couple of weeks, you you know,

Speaker 1 just feeling lost, like, what the fuck am I doing, you know? And, you know, over time, I got into the swing of it. And it was really, actually a really good experience doing that work.
It's just,

Speaker 1 you know, as I processed through this and

Speaker 1 went through this whole phase of just

Speaker 1 these years of just fucking figuring myself out.

Speaker 1 Just getting the bullshit, shoveling the bullshit out as much as I could while still adding more not under not being able to figure out why I couldn't get it off and

Speaker 1 You know one day I had the i begin experience That cleared that that helped me understand a little bit better and some other things that I did as well and then like fuck finally I figured out how to start leveling it out to a point where I had enough clarity in my own self to go back to that moment and now look at it instead of fucking hiding from it, which I was doing for years.

Speaker 1 And every time I wanted to think about it, I would just go fucking get drunk, you know, and I got to this point

Speaker 1 just a few years ago i'm eight i'm eight years out now and maybe four years ago was rock bottom where this thing plus the childhood

Speaker 1 and all the shit i was doing outside of what i what i really wanted to be right which was just good

Speaker 1 i fucking

Speaker 1 You know, I had this friend in my neighborhood take his own life just in the little lake across from my front porch.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I used to go to that spot just because it made me feel good. I just like take a paddleboard over there and I'll just kind of lay there where he took his life and go, fuck, I like feel something here.

Speaker 1 And then every time I leave this spot, I don't feel anything.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 because of that, you know, eventually I started to, it just took about a year of this seed being planted and growing in my head to where like, man, I can just fucking, I'm the burden on everybody.

Speaker 1 I'm yelling at my kids. i'm a horrible husband

Speaker 1 i'm addicted to everything

Speaker 1 i can't figure this shit out with these kids

Speaker 1 so you know one day i found myself uh

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 playing slack side squeeze you know the drill when you're fucking dry firing

Speaker 1 um but with one in the tube

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 that was the moment. I'm like, what the? I didn't even really realize I was doing it.
I was just thinking.

Speaker 1 And then I now think back to go, thank God I wasn't drinking a bunch there. Because I think that in those moments, in that critical moment, which is

Speaker 1 the veteran suicide, like critical moment that I think about a lot,

Speaker 1 is a lot simpler

Speaker 1 than what I think we all think it is. Because there's very specific thoughts going on in that moment, right?

Speaker 1 This guy, you know, this couple of guys or my team thinks I'm a shitbag or something. Like, I had another friend take his own life, and

Speaker 1 he was at that out station with me, and he got sent home because he was, he came out a really bad alcoholic.

Speaker 1 Then he was a great operator before, and then he turned into this, and he started getting bounced around teams, but you know, they got it to where he could like survive through it, and he got to retire.

Speaker 1 And then right after he retired, he took his own life.

Speaker 1 And for him, it was a little different it was like dude that whole bullshit of

Speaker 1 like if if a guy's not performing for whatever the reason is

Speaker 1 in that moment

Speaker 1 when you guys start to when we start to jump on it and be like that's a fucking juice of shitbag and you just betray him after everything all the good

Speaker 1 he was

Speaker 1 in those hard moments

Speaker 1 like that's the shit guys are thinking about right so there's a much better way to do that shit. And I even participated in some of it with a different guy we got rid of.
It's like

Speaker 1 we're hard motherfuckers, but we don't have to play that game when it gets to that. We can get rid of a dude for not performing or put him somewhere where he can get a little bit better, right?

Speaker 1 And take a break or whatever it is without going, oh, he's getting and fucking jump on that and be like, shit, you know, because once that label happens, that's a betrayal. And

Speaker 1 fast forward to later

Speaker 1 that critical moment,

Speaker 1 those little memories like those are what they're thinking about what we're thinking about in my what I think

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 that was the rock bottom moment

Speaker 1 the only thing that uh

Speaker 1 made me fucking stop in that fucking moment and paddleboard back to my house was it was at night time

Speaker 1 I knew my family was eating dinner and I started thinking about my son and the whole reason why I got out was for them.

Speaker 1 And that brought me back a little bit to go, like, fuck.

Speaker 1 Even if I'm a shit father, like, they still believe there's something in me, that thing that some people can feel or see, like my wife did.

Speaker 1 And she was still doing it in that moment, even though it wasn't me. She knew.

Speaker 1 They fucking know.

Speaker 1 There's something more, right? And there's a chance to get back to that before they give up.

Speaker 1 I went back and

Speaker 1 a couple days later,

Speaker 1 the wife of my friend that took his life there just randomly called me.

Speaker 1 And she was like, how you doing, you know?

Speaker 1 And I was like, fuck,

Speaker 1 that's not good.

Speaker 1 And she goes, oh shit, let me come over and talk to you. And I was like, yeah, that'd be awesome.
You know, because I knew what she must have, what she had gone through

Speaker 1 with her husband's taking his life and how that was a whole process. She figured something out because she was not, she was something better

Speaker 1 after that, after some years.

Speaker 1 And so she's the one who introduced me into the

Speaker 1 medicine.

Speaker 1 So I went, I was like, dude, I'll do anything. I don't care what it is, I'll go.
And I'm,

Speaker 1 yeah, I was scared, but I was like willing to do, to try anything. And so

Speaker 1 I went

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 we can go through that whole as a whole nother discussion, but it just completely opened up my heart to seeing through all this bullshit that was on top to go, fuck,

Speaker 1 you can just make a choice.

Speaker 1 So I made a choice

Speaker 1 and pretty quickly I was able to get rid of all that bullshit, just shoveling it out to where it was like pretty much empty. And now I was just in full clarity.

Speaker 1 to now go back to that to that night and go fuck why did that happen how did did that happen?

Speaker 1 So then I was able to go pick it apart and go, hey,

Speaker 1 I did what I think is the right thing in duty, right? Because I know how the universe works.

Speaker 1 If I didn't do that, we would have all gotten blown up or somebody would have gotten shot and now I'd be dealing with that, right?

Speaker 1 We're not here.

Speaker 1 But also saying maybe that wouldn't have happened because if that's a little bit of a justification for it, then fine, but you know how the universe works, you know?

Speaker 1 And so now going to separate duty completely from it to go

Speaker 1 for my soul,

Speaker 1 it was not the right answer.

Speaker 1 So I know that, right? And so now what I do is I've spent so much time now instead of forgetting about those kids, thinking about them and trying to place myself in their

Speaker 1 childhood reality where it's it doesn't matter what your environment is if you're the children of a terrorist and your role as a servant to the father or maybe you wasn't in that I don't fucking know

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 your job is to just is to play you know and learn and absorb everything so it it makes me it forces me to to

Speaker 1 attach it to what's happening with children now and all the fucking bullshit of that and like just trying to i want to just shake some people up to go look you're your own stuff

Speaker 1 right that you're you're now you know you want people to think you're a good person right we all do most of us some people have gotten to a point where they don't give a fuck right

Speaker 1 i want you to think i'm a good person so bad that i'll I'll seek validation, you know, I'll do virtue signaling to show you how good I am, which now I'll use my children to show you.

Speaker 1 Look, especially the sexuality thing.

Speaker 1 It's so

Speaker 1 dangerously evil underneath it all.

Speaker 1 But I don't

Speaker 1 also

Speaker 1 want to shame and guilt those kind of parents that are doing that, right? Because they might not fucking even, when you're not clear, You're not even aware of your own behavior sometimes, right?

Speaker 1 So they don't even fucking know. They think it's the right thing to go, look, we let them,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I don't want to get into it too much, but like

Speaker 1 a boy, maybe he wants to be a girl, and we kind of push that a little bit, or vice versa, because we need to show that we're good, inclusive, diversive people.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the truth, what I know is

Speaker 1 the truth, what I know is

Speaker 1 if I teach my kids kindness,

Speaker 1 that shit's all included in kindness.

Speaker 1 You know, inclusion, there are all these things, right? It's all underneath kindness, but you also teach them boundaries to protect themselves. And with children, they don't have boundaries.

Speaker 1 They don't know what that means. So they're going to absorb and sponge and take everything

Speaker 1 because guess what? They just want your validation. So you might be like, hey, children, what do you think about this or that topic in front of another adult?

Speaker 1 And like, they're going to say what you want them to because they want their goal is your validation and nurturing for mom and they're going to do whatever they need to do to get that no matter how wrong or evil or anything it might be

Speaker 1 right

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 i just go through all of that over time it's always connected to these kids to the point where

Speaker 1 I don't want to forget them. And I don't know how best to explain this, but

Speaker 1 I actually

Speaker 1 find myself thinking about it so much that it's like a little, it's like a

Speaker 1 some form of love for them, you know, like, and what is their, dude, this is the hardest thing.

Speaker 1 What, you know, I believe that this is an experience, and just like if you're religious, I'm not even religious, but I see all these themes through every, every religious text that I've ever read.

Speaker 1 I try to read all of them.

Speaker 1 This is a body,

Speaker 1 right, that contains a soul. And death is just a transition into the next experience, whatever it might be.
But that's the thing we're always fussing about and arguing about. Like,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 what is reincarnation? What is all, you know, and literally fighting wars with each other about

Speaker 1 our different beliefs about something we can't know here

Speaker 1 yet,

Speaker 1 you know?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so I find myself thinking about where they're at, you know.

Speaker 1 Same way I think about my grandfather.

Speaker 1 Before he passed away, some of the last words he said to me, I was able to sit by him next to the bed and talk.

Speaker 1 I was like, dude,

Speaker 1 grandpa wants to say things, but I don't know how. He's like, you can say whatever you want.
You know?

Speaker 1 And I was like, well, here's what I want to say.

Speaker 1 You've such a mentor to me. Everything I've done,

Speaker 1 you've given me the validation.

Speaker 1 You've been so proud of me.

Speaker 1 You know, he was so proud that I made it to SEAL Team 6. And

Speaker 1 I wanted to do this ice cream thing next so he could see.

Speaker 1 It didn't happen in time. But

Speaker 1 the thing I wanted to say, I was like, whatever you're feeling, You know, like,

Speaker 1 I can imagine that you must be going through your whole life as an experience.

Speaker 1 And even to include things you might not have resolved with some of your sons, because there were some tensions, there's some things going on, you know, family things that always exist.

Speaker 1 And I was like, but what I think is that deep down inside you,

Speaker 1 to the core of your soul, what you really are is just little boy Jack, seven-year-old. That's

Speaker 1 what I visualize as the most authentic, the most real version of me that I ever was before anything happened to me, before those traumas, those conflicts, those things and so

Speaker 1 going into myself

Speaker 1 was like a hostage rescue to grab that little boy and bring him back

Speaker 1 through all that fucking bullshit

Speaker 1 so those kids now I think about and I don't want to forget them

Speaker 1 damn Chris

Speaker 1 you know when we spoke the first time um

Speaker 1 you had mentioned

Speaker 1 dreams.

Speaker 1 Can you talk about those dreams?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So for a long time, you know, like I said, like coping. We talk about PTSD,

Speaker 1 you know, in the teams and soft.

Speaker 1 I don't like to use that word.

Speaker 1 Because just like other words, in society, we attach too much stigma to those words so it's like PTSD is like this thing no one wants to have

Speaker 1 because we know that if you're labeled with it or attached to it no matter how many how how how anonymous they make the reporting system of it or whatever you do with a psychology or whatever you're not gonna

Speaker 1 I'm not going to because I want to be operational that's my mission

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 I like to call it coping instead. We all cope with it in different ways that we,

Speaker 1 in our culture, we make, just like in society, we make certain things socially acceptable, anything but, you know,

Speaker 1 encourage each other to change our lifestyles,

Speaker 1 do something healthy, you know,

Speaker 1 because it doesn't fit in the culture. And that's the thing why culture is such a powerful thing.

Speaker 1 So my coping with it.

Speaker 1 Was I was like trying my best to forget it and then I was having these fucking night non-stop nightmares. And it was

Speaker 1 tough for my wife because it'd be like I'd be stuck in the dream and making these strange noises because I knew I was in a dream and I was trying to get out of it.

Speaker 1 So, because I didn't want to look at that,

Speaker 1 these kids, and like the hardest part is like, I know the image of what it looked like, like, even

Speaker 1 one of them kind of like got up a little bit and like there's bullets through them and then kind of like laid back down.

Speaker 1 And this this shit tormented me

Speaker 1 in the dreams that every time

Speaker 1 he got up it was like

Speaker 1 my younger for some reason my younger son's face so then I developed this fucking

Speaker 1 belief that if anything traumatic happens to either one of them through their lives it's because of me

Speaker 1 And I was like, that's the message I was getting that I was like doing I was like essentially shooting my own it

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I think the reason it was him is because he's a little bit more of the adventurous like he's he just

Speaker 1 he just goes for it

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 1 it's actually awesome now like he just

Speaker 1 he probably has fear but he doesn't care about the fear you know and then my older son is more analytical thinks things out a little bit more and there's gonna be good things and bad things for for those both of those traits but but i love both of them equally as much.

Speaker 1 But for some reason, it was him because he's probably more likely to get into danger faster. Like, if any, like, I don't even want to say this because I don't want them to become seals,

Speaker 1 but he'll be the one if you know, I think.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 after the Abigaine, those went away, and so did the migraines.

Speaker 1 Do you think those kids have ever tried to make contact with you?

Speaker 1 Talking about the ones here?

Speaker 1 No, they're all like.

Speaker 1 You talking about on the operation? Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, I. Those.
They're. I can't.
Oh, I see what you're saying. Sorry.

Speaker 1 No, I haven't.

Speaker 1 That's a good point.

Speaker 1 I might need to pay more attention. You think you're opened up enough for that? Maybe.
You know, one thing I think about is,

Speaker 1 sorry, I misunderstood that for a second.

Speaker 1 I haven't gotten to a lot of the other war stuff much. And I don't know.
Sometimes I go, oh, it just didn't affect me much. I don't think so.

Speaker 1 I think that there's a psychological toll on everything that happens, every little thing.

Speaker 1 Now, if you choose, if you're a guy that chooses to go, hey, I'm good, doesn't.

Speaker 1 Didn't bother me much and you hold it and you don't talk about it and you go on your, you know, it's like be with my grandfather i wish he told me more but he just doesn't talk about it you know like okay that's just how grandpa is that's okay you know

Speaker 1 but then there's us guys that want to

Speaker 1 i want to i want to tell them i want them to

Speaker 1 i want them to feel

Speaker 1 you know something

Speaker 1 like they want to i think that you know my kids they both my boys i think they they want to

Speaker 1 so i decide now to go to it instead of of the effects that that shit's having on me when I try to forget it.

Speaker 1 But, you know, as far as the,

Speaker 1 you know, I meditate a lot. I've gone through some really intense meditation training and I've got some more to do.

Speaker 1 Some teachers

Speaker 1 get a lot of

Speaker 1 visions out of those when you get far enough and deep enough.

Speaker 1 And I might not have been paying attention to what you just asked, you know, so

Speaker 1 maybe the next time I do that,

Speaker 1 or even some,

Speaker 1 you know, plant medicine ceremony or something, that

Speaker 1 maybe I'll lay that down as an intention to go, hey, if there's anything for me to receive from them, I'm

Speaker 1 open.

Speaker 1 Did you know Gabe Cardi?

Speaker 1 No, I don't think so. He was at Team 10.
No, I didn't know him.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I've told this before, but I'm going to tell you because

Speaker 1 I know that motherfucker contacts me all the time.

Speaker 1 And I'll tell you one example. That's his flag up there.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 the Red Wing. Yep.

Speaker 1 He,

Speaker 1 well,

Speaker 1 that was Josh Harris's flag, but Gabe was Josh's best friend. And

Speaker 1 Gabe cared about three things. He was

Speaker 1 he became

Speaker 1 a really bad heroin addict. And

Speaker 1 when he knew things were getting super dicey,

Speaker 1 he would give me that flag

Speaker 1 of those rounds. And I told you where those came from,

Speaker 1 and his dad, his grandpa's firefighter helmet.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 that's just the only three things he fucking cared about.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he passed away several years ago but

Speaker 1 I've had a lot of encounters with him

Speaker 1 and uh I'll tell you the last one

Speaker 1 that I had was

Speaker 1 you know I've never told anybody this or I have not said this on the show but those rounds are

Speaker 1 from the Red Wings birds that went down and

Speaker 1 well I'm honored for you to tell me.

Speaker 1 A ranger that was on the recovery op

Speaker 1 at the crash site gave those rounds to him and said that

Speaker 1 those were the only things that didn't burn up in the crash site.

Speaker 1 So he snapped off a round for every guy that died on that op

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 brought him home and he just had him in a little fucking shave kit.

Speaker 1 And he would give them to me if he thought he was going to check out.

Speaker 1 I'll probably give them to a museum or

Speaker 1 something when I feel the time's right.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 before he died, he would come over to my house all the time and tell me that

Speaker 1 he was going to start a Wounded Warriors hockey team sponsored by the NHL. Completely jumped out.

Speaker 1 And you've seen what that looks like, and a lot of people listening have seen what that looks like. It's not a fucking pretty sight.
And,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I dedicated

Speaker 1 several years of my life to getting,

Speaker 1 trying to make him better.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 had some successes, but ultimately

Speaker 1 it didn't work out, obviously.

Speaker 1 But he would tell me, I'm going to, yeah, the Florida Panthers NHL team, they're going to sponsor me. And I'd be like,

Speaker 1 okay, Gabe, I hope you're right, man. And

Speaker 1 when they found him, when he died,

Speaker 1 the Florida Panthers NHL team decided they were going to sponsor him. And so they went to his house to tell him that they were going to fund his team and be the sponsor.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he was,

Speaker 1 he had overdosed and was on the floor

Speaker 1 fast forward. They still stood the team up.
They still funded the team. His name's on all the jerseys.
And I got one of the first jerseys ever made.

Speaker 1 And they won the fucking national championships the very first year.

Speaker 1 And then I told you I went to Vienna and I did that Masood interview. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we were the first ones to report that. And I got super fucking paranoid

Speaker 1 for protection, and

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 got a little too far in front of my skis, and

Speaker 1 started hiring personal protection for my family, and the fucking Talibans called me out on X several times because

Speaker 1 we're fucking what they're funding. And

Speaker 1 we came home from that Vienna trip, and I had that jersey framed. It's the first thing you see when you walk walk in the door right next to the American flag.
Huge, probably weighs 30 pounds.

Speaker 1 It's been hanging there ever since I got this studio, which has been about three years now.

Speaker 1 And we got back,

Speaker 1 and that

Speaker 1 frame was,

Speaker 1 it had fallen off the wall and it was on the ground.

Speaker 1 It should have broke because of how heavy it is.

Speaker 1 Not a crack in the glass, not a

Speaker 1 frame still, nothing. Perfect condition.

Speaker 1 And we walk in. This is the day after we got back from Vienna.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I'm like,

Speaker 1 nobody here could have taken it because the whole team went to Vienna with me,

Speaker 1 except my assistant.

Speaker 1 And she wouldn't have done it. But I asked her, I said, hey, did you,

Speaker 1 what's this? And.

Speaker 1 She's like, I was like that when I came in.

Speaker 1 Nobody else was here, like I said. And so like all day that was in my mind as I'm here working.
And then the team left and then everybody in the buildings left.

Speaker 1 And I was the last car in the parking lot and I'm pacing around and I just, I just thought, because like I said, Gabe had made contact several times before and I'm like pacing around and I'm like, fuck man, like

Speaker 1 what are you trying to tell me, man?

Speaker 1 And do I need to like fucking move? Do I need what do I need to hire more protection? Like, what do I need to do?

Speaker 1 What are you telling me? And

Speaker 1 I go home

Speaker 1 and I tell my wife, Katie,

Speaker 1 I'm like, man, the weirdest fucking thing. Like,

Speaker 1 that frame's been up there. It's been on the wall for three years.

Speaker 1 I've never taken it off. Like,

Speaker 1 and then... I come home from Vienna.
I'm super paranoid and the frame's down. And I feel like Gabe's trying to tell me something

Speaker 1 and Katie goes

Speaker 1 the hockey jersey

Speaker 1 and I'm like yeah and she goes Sean

Speaker 1 the Florida Panthers just won the fucking Stanley Cup

Speaker 1 and I was like

Speaker 1 what

Speaker 1 She's like, the Florida Panthers just won the Stanley Cup

Speaker 1 And I was like holy shit And then I looked at my watch, and the date was June 28th. Yeah, the day.

Speaker 1 June 28th is the anniversary to Red Wings, which was a massive part of Gabe's life because those were his guys. That was his platoon.

Speaker 1 And I just fucking lost it.

Speaker 1 But that's too many coincidences

Speaker 1 to be anything else. And then I thought,

Speaker 1 that fucker isn't trying to warn me anything.

Speaker 1 He's just going, he's celebrating. No, you fucking idiot.
I'm not trying to warn you of anything. You're not that damn important.

Speaker 1 The fucking Panthers won the Stanley Cup and it's June 28th, and I just want your attention. And

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 there's signs, man. There's always signs.
There's some coincidences, but there's also a lot of not coincidences. You've had enough experts on here that do things,

Speaker 1 you know, that

Speaker 1 dude, I mean, we might

Speaker 1 to believe there's there's not something

Speaker 1 dude over time

Speaker 1 It's it's just it's in every text every Bible We're more than this, what's in front of us and signals and messages You know can get through from here to there to wherever we exist

Speaker 1 You know

Speaker 1 outside of or inside of what what we what this is you know so

Speaker 1 really my opinion is that um

Speaker 1 it's it's it's it's like a low it's it's

Speaker 1 i don't want to offend anybody but it's a low intelligence

Speaker 1 it's of low intelligence for me

Speaker 1 for for somebody i think like an atheist or something or somebody that just doesn't believe there's anything else but this

Speaker 1 um because there's just too much evidence like the evidence is our is is you

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 to be harder to it's got to be harder to not believe than it is to believe. I think so.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 the only reason I'm kind of bringing this up right now, man, is

Speaker 1 for me, I think life is all about love

Speaker 1 and forgiveness.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 those kids' skulls are somewhere. And

Speaker 1 I can see it all over you that

Speaker 1 you want to know that you've been forgiven

Speaker 1 and you love those kids

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I mean you can see that it's that you're so genuine about it.

Speaker 1 Maybe they will make contact. Maybe they're trying to.

Speaker 1 I think they are me, you know, maybe that's the

Speaker 1 sign that you need to know

Speaker 1 that they're good with it.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 Thanks for sharing that. Thank you for that.

Speaker 1 You want to take a break? Yeah, be good. Let's take a break.

Speaker 1 Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes, and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review.
We read every review that comes through.

Speaker 1 and we really appreciate the support. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Let's get back to the show.

Speaker 1 All right, Chris, we're back from the break. We're going to lighten it up a little bit.
But I do, man, thank you for

Speaker 1 toughing it out with that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 just from our discussion downstairs,

Speaker 1 I'm glad that was therapeutic for you. Yeah, I appreciate it.
I'm grateful

Speaker 1 for the moment.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 let's move into, we covered a little bit of kind of what it was like getting out, I think at the very beginning, actually.

Speaker 1 But I did want to, you know,

Speaker 1 ask about,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 when did you tell your wife about that stuff?

Speaker 1 I don't, you know, it's kind of a blur. I don't think I really

Speaker 1 talked still, I haven't talked much. She knows that that was one of the things really, you know, affecting me.

Speaker 1 But we never really got into into the deep details of it

Speaker 1 but I think it might have been a couple of years after it took years I think it was a couple of years

Speaker 1 yeah I think it was a couple of years can I ask how she received it

Speaker 1 I think she received it the best she could you know

Speaker 1 She's really good about receiving those things, but I know that you know people it's sometimes how you know, they're thinking about how do I react to it, you know, and you're like, you don't have to react to it, you know.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I think that

Speaker 1 she took it and

Speaker 1 really deeply cares about me,

Speaker 1 you know, and I can feel that. And I can also know

Speaker 1 she doesn't have to say anything, you know. I can feel how much she cares when I tell her those things, even in silence, you know, you can see it in her eyes.

Speaker 1 So I think she just worried, you know, she wanted, her goal and intention was she wanted me back, you know, or she wanted all of me, maybe even, you know, feeling like she hadn't ever had all of me, you know, a full presence of me and who I am, you know,

Speaker 1 minus all that bullshit. And so it was a really

Speaker 1 glorious moment to finally reach that person that I wanted to become. for her, for myself,

Speaker 1 you know, for everything, for the business. You know, that wasn't going to work until I became the person that I needed to become to

Speaker 1 deserve to walk through those doors.

Speaker 1 Do you think your kids will watch this?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I think they'll watch it. And,

Speaker 1 you know, it's

Speaker 1 one I'm grateful for more than just, you know, you calling me up to come on the show. I mean, it's also, to me, it feels like this opportunity from God, certain moments in your life that you get.

Speaker 1 And for me, as as I think into the future,

Speaker 1 I can imagine them when I'm older, you know, if I get there

Speaker 1 looking back to this and going, man, this is a marker for how I feel right now, you know, while this stuff is all still fresh and I'm still, you know, a little young and they're, you know, to, to, they're still young, you know, they're still boys.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 it's a

Speaker 1 technology is cool in some ways like that. Yeah.
You know, So now they have it.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's...

Speaker 1 Do you think you'll watch it with them? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Have they ever heard any of this? No.

Speaker 1 What do you think they'll react what do you think their reaction will be?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I think that I'm clear enough and honest with them enough about as much as I possibly can that I can go, hey, you guys don't you don't have to react to this, but you can tell me how you feel, you know, and and I know that that's going to evolve and change as they grow.

Speaker 1 So now it'll be interesting for me to see

Speaker 1 how it evolves with them.

Speaker 1 I love these, man. It's like a legacy piece, you know.
Your family will watch this for generations. And

Speaker 1 it's really,

Speaker 1 it's really cool. And

Speaker 1 it's, I don't know, it's just.

Speaker 1 I think for a lot of the guys that come in here that do a life story like that and it's and they they get vulnerable and deep and open doors that don't rarely get opened. I mean,

Speaker 1 I just, uh, I'm thankful to be able to do it, and, and, and, uh,

Speaker 1 I just, man, it's just, it's important, man.

Speaker 1 I always wonder what it's like, you know, to watch, watch something like this as a family when it's about you.

Speaker 1 And, uh,

Speaker 1 but, but

Speaker 1 what are,

Speaker 1 you know, what was it like for you to get home? And because you, you decided to leave because of your sons. Yeah.
And your wife. And so how did that reintegration go? It was hard.

Speaker 1 You know, it took me some time doing that job and trying to figure out

Speaker 1 why not only did I not feel better, but

Speaker 1 increasingly worse over time.

Speaker 1 And so,

Speaker 1 you know, once I finally figured out that that is correlated to understanding your purpose, you know, and sometimes

Speaker 1 when I say finding your purpose, a lot of people, I think, they don't know, like, what does that mean, your purpose, you know?

Speaker 1 And you might not figure it out until you just start doing shit, you know, until you start being like, dude, I don't like what I'm doing right now. So how do I get out of this?

Speaker 1 How do I start making moves towards something that I know that I like? And then the more you do it,

Speaker 1 you know, it starts to build and grow.

Speaker 1 And then you can kind of start figuring out, like, well, my purpose isn't to make ice cream, you know, it's not your job or where you live because guys will get out and go, I'm just gonna move to some beautiful ranch in Montana and everything's gonna be fine.

Speaker 1 You're like, no,

Speaker 1 you know, once you have something, you're gonna, you know, it's not just what you're gonna do. It's

Speaker 1 if I

Speaker 1 make ice cream, that's just my medium it's I

Speaker 1 part of my purpose is to serve to serve others once I figured out how to serve myself so that I can be more available to serve others it's not a narcissistic or selfish thing it's a it's a generous thing in that in that way

Speaker 1 to serve others you know I did it something inclined me to go do that in the military and I didn't even know why you know

Speaker 1 So it wasn't just for validation. It was because part of my purpose is to serve.

Speaker 1 Right. So now I just, I just get to feed people ice cream and watch them smile.
And

Speaker 1 there's no toxicity, there's no ulterior motives, no agenda or anything behind it. It's just fucking ice cream.
I want to make you feel good, you know, for a short amount of time, you know, or

Speaker 1 your purpose might be to create. Dude, the paintings, the...

Speaker 1 You know, I've got a creative mind too, so part of my purpose is to create. You know, a mother's purpose is to create.

Speaker 1 And just

Speaker 1 those kinds of words it's so hard with words because

Speaker 1 so much behind everything we try to just try to find the best combination of words to describe to you know what i'm what you feel which is everything if what we are and what we feel is is every grain of sand on earth

Speaker 1 right even under the ocean then words is like a sprinkle of sand in your hand and you're trying to use those to tell everybody about all of the sand, you know?

Speaker 1 So it's hard.

Speaker 1 Some people are really good at it with their vocabulary. You know, the vocabulary is better, you know, than others.
And so you just try your best, but that's what I'm saying with purpose.

Speaker 1 It's like it's more aligned with not your fucking title, your, your, you know, I am a

Speaker 1 mother with ADHD that, you know, is a teacher and does, and all this stack of, and my sexuality is this, this, this.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying anything about sexuality. That's fine.
I'm saying that that's not what you are. You know, that's That's just one tiny little aspect of part of what you are.

Speaker 1 So the purpose thing is

Speaker 1 a more literal thing. Like, what do you do and why? You know, what do you want to do? I want to paint.
Maybe your purpose is to create. Go do some and see if you love it, you know,

Speaker 1 and make some move towards that. Or, you know, maybe it's to teach.

Speaker 1 And you're, if you're a teacher and you love, have you ever seen a teacher that loves being a teacher, no matter how stressful it is?

Speaker 1 You ever had one of those teachers? You're like, that was a good one. I remember.
She cared. I could feel that she cared about us all.

Speaker 1 And that's just stressful because there's other teachers that hate it. And they might be convincing themselves that that's their purpose.
My purpose is to teach. And they force it, force it, force it.

Speaker 1 But why are you so miserable doing it? It might not be.

Speaker 1 And then you're afraid to let that go,

Speaker 1 you know, and move into something else that might be more aligned with your purpose. So it's that.

Speaker 1 I think a big hurdle for a lot of people too, not just guys getting out, is limitations. And,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I don't believe there are limitations anymore.

Speaker 1 I used to think there were limitations.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 I realized when you do find your passion, there's literally no fucking limitations. The only limitations there are are the limitations that

Speaker 1 you put on yourself. And what I notice is that most people look for the limitations as an excuse to not excel and succeed, not even realizing that they're fucking doing it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you might have to do some shit in the meantime. That's not a limitation.
That's just what you got to do. You got to have some money.
You got to put food on the table.

Speaker 1 You do those things and you just fucking get through it. But if you can commit a couple years, you know,

Speaker 1 it's worth it. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, and

Speaker 1 usually we go pretty in-depth on the transition, but

Speaker 1 it got so heavy there, I think we need to we need to pull out of uh

Speaker 1 pull out of the darkness.

Speaker 1 But I do want to ask you another thing, and uh I know you already said it, and I feel the same way, but you know, with everything that you've been through and everything you've experienced and and

Speaker 1 everything that you thought the SEAL teams was going to be,

Speaker 1 You've been through the transition.

Speaker 1 We've both lost I've lost more people than I can count to suicide, way more to suicide than I have in combat. And,

Speaker 1 you know, with everything that you know now,

Speaker 1 and your sons are going to look at your career eventually if they haven't already, and they're going to probably

Speaker 1 want to do something like that to impress you. What

Speaker 1 would you want your kids, your sons, and the SEAL teams?

Speaker 1 I don't want them, and I've told them this and my wife

Speaker 1 because there's just there were so many close calls and it's just now I'm a father now I know there's danger I'm okay with danger

Speaker 1 this brings me back too to so many every time somebody was lost is like I go back now to those memories where I wasn't really paying close enough attention to the fathers now that I'm a father or even in the mothers too of how overwhelming that feels when that happens to them.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's just, it's like the toad,

Speaker 1 it's like the toad, but worse, more overwhelming than the toad. You know?

Speaker 1 If you've ever experienced five minutes of DMT, I think that losing a child as a, as a parent might be more overwhelming than that.

Speaker 1 Or equally,

Speaker 1 fuck.

Speaker 1 Now I think about their faces and I missed some of that, you know, in those moments, but now I think back and go, fuck, I was,

Speaker 1 it's no small thing. And so I don't want to

Speaker 1 feel that. But,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 if

Speaker 1 they are going to go,

Speaker 1 I got to support them so that now the support is,

Speaker 1 at least they're going to be the safest possible because they have that validation, have that support, you know, where I'm not.

Speaker 1 I don't want them thinking about, you know, tension with dad or their validation for anything if they're going to do that.

Speaker 1 You know, I want them to optimize and just make the smartest decisions possible and

Speaker 1 hopefully a little luck in there from God too.

Speaker 1 You got into some,

Speaker 1 sounds like you got into some interesting contract work. Yeah, I did.
It was interesting. I didn't enjoy it much, but it was interesting.
What's the extraterrestrial stuff? I'm dying here.

Speaker 1 I didn't work on anything. with extraterrestrials, but you know, you've got access to lots of programs and different email systems and different things.
and for sure there was a

Speaker 1 time where

Speaker 1 some traffic went around

Speaker 1 with

Speaker 1 regarding you know

Speaker 1 you know they've talked about this plenty too and it's out there you can look this right up that there's a task force

Speaker 1 you know

Speaker 1 there's a there's a a task force responsible for

Speaker 1 collecting the data around all of the UFOs that pilots are seeing.

Speaker 1 You have pilot buddies. I got a lot of them.
There's an airbase there, Oceana, lots of F-18 friends.

Speaker 1 They see this shit all the time. Do they really? Yeah.
What are they seeing? Anything in particular? Yeah, the same little

Speaker 1 shiny shape that zips around in these different experiences with their pods or just with their eyes. And

Speaker 1 it seems to be that same shape over over and over again as people have seen it off of ships, off of naval ships,

Speaker 1 in their pods and out of their windows. And

Speaker 1 it's not, you know, it's now it's at the point where

Speaker 1 this no, it's no longer like, hey, you know, don't speak up about anything because you're going to feel, you know, we're going to embarrass you. It's like, oh, you saw something?

Speaker 1 You know, like, no, now it's been enough that they're like, yeah, I saw a couple today.

Speaker 1 Oh, shit. Yeah.
I saw one last week. You know,

Speaker 1 just trying to

Speaker 1 keep, you know,

Speaker 1 record them snapshots or whatever and enter it into this, you know, into the database of

Speaker 1 evidence of

Speaker 1 UAPs.

Speaker 1 So, you know, they're having hearings about it, congressional hearings and different talks about it. And like, it's, it's, it's just true at this point.
There's no conspiracy theory around it.

Speaker 1 There's, there's things going on, including, and that's, that's just one of them. What do you think it is? You think about this stuff? I do, and it's tough to talk about because

Speaker 1 when I say I think into the future, I also go

Speaker 1 into the far future and the far past and go all the way into,

Speaker 1 you know, physics. And I've read a couple of Stephen Hawking's books and things and

Speaker 1 the different folks like that and astrophysicists. I just like love watching that stuff.
And I love all of the, you know, ancient aliens and everything on

Speaker 1 the stuff I watch if I do watch something.

Speaker 1 And it's just too apparent that, one, physics and all of these researchers and scientists are telling us that time is not linear out there. It's based on gravity.

Speaker 1 So if time is not linear, then in different places, the past, present, and future could all be existing at the same time.

Speaker 1 And in spirituality, I think that a lot of monks, a lot of people that practice meditation, spirituality believe that too.

Speaker 1 Which means your childhood and being an old man is happening already. Right now, you just only can experience this moment in this time, right?

Speaker 1 But five seconds from now, if I move this bottle, that's the future. And if I make that decision right now, then I can see the future.
It's going to move, right? Nothing's going to change that.

Speaker 1 Maybe some, you know,

Speaker 1 boom.

Speaker 1 That moment exists at the same time as I was just saying, that in five seconds, that's going to move. So

Speaker 1 I do think about it. And if that's the case,

Speaker 1 you know, I also think about technology and AI.

Speaker 1 I just, we're battling about

Speaker 1 how to use it, what to use it. And

Speaker 1 I think that it's inevitable that we're going to, we're already starting to integrate AI consciousness into our consciousness in different ways, whether it's a chip or whatever, like it's going to start with your iPhone is just now implanted.

Speaker 1 You don't have to do anything. You just go,

Speaker 1 you know, and do shit. And it'll evolve from there.
And to the point where now we can access artificial intelligence in combination with our own intelligence.

Speaker 1 And maybe that becomes the next species of humans because it's going to evolve.

Speaker 1 We've already had several species of humans, it just makes sense based off of the evidence that already exists that we're going to evolve into another type of human.

Speaker 1 We're going to, unless we destroy ourselves,

Speaker 1 you know. But so, just

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 if you ask me if I believe in aliens or extraterrestrials or any wording or language around that,

Speaker 1 to me,

Speaker 1 it's unintelligent to think otherwise because I can only base it off of my own experience so far, which is being alive.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there's no belief that I can have. There's no evidence to prove otherwise that there is life because I'm alive.
I've never experienced nothing.

Speaker 1 So when Stephen Hawkings is like, he's a genius

Speaker 1 with what he was doing with physics and theories.

Speaker 1 But he's not an idiot, but sometimes he's also kind of an idiot because he was an atheist. So, how do you do all that and then believe once we die here? There's just nothing.

Speaker 1 A lot of those guys believe that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It doesn't make sense based off of the evidence. I don't think so either.
With the AI thing, I just interviewed. Do you know who Andrew Huberman is? Yeah.
By chance.

Speaker 1 I just interviewed him two days ago. Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 And I asked him if he knew anything. Super cool guy.
And like

Speaker 1 way cool. And

Speaker 1 no, I was asking him about Neuralink. I was like, Do you know? Because he's a neuroscientist.
I was like, Do you know anything about Neuralink?

Speaker 1 And so, do you know that this, do you know that's going to help blind people see?

Speaker 1 That's incredible. So, here's how this, I'm going to totally fuck this up, and I apologize.
But we're layman's trying to basically, yeah, here's how I describe it.

Speaker 1 But uh,

Speaker 1 so basically,

Speaker 1 whatever whatever, they implant something to your eye, and it goes to a chip, and then the chip goes to your brain or something. And so basically,

Speaker 1 it's a,

Speaker 1 what did he call it? He said it's,

Speaker 1 oh, it's a digital, he gives a digital signal to the chip, and then the chip turns it into an electrical signal that goes to the brain.

Speaker 1 People are starting to be able to see like shapes and different shades of

Speaker 1 gray. Yeah.
And that it will eventually be

Speaker 1 just like what me and you are sitting here looking at. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it got into this discussion and I was like, I said,

Speaker 1 he started going on and that

Speaker 1 it will soon be possible that

Speaker 1 you can

Speaker 1 kind of

Speaker 1 like stimulate different sections of the brain when it comes to touch and all these all the senses and so i asked him i said so are you telling me that

Speaker 1 it's possible to project a hundred percent false reality into somebody's brain

Speaker 1 and them not even realizing if we can if we can experience touch vision taste everything emotion you know through these chips I mean there's like layers of matrices that could be that could mean that we're in a a simulation

Speaker 1 right now.

Speaker 1 And that simulation is a simulation. That's right.
It's never ending.

Speaker 1 But to not be able to speculate about it because of people who want to be ignorant about it and shut it down with conspiracy theory or whatever is like, now we don't even get a chance to have fun and even talk about it.

Speaker 1 To not believe in it, to be honest with you, is boring.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, how fucking boring.

Speaker 1 So, but, you know, people ask,

Speaker 1 you think there's aliens, you know, and stigma attached to that word too, because of Hollywood has fucked it up, you know.

Speaker 1 But everything we've created in Hollywood is based off of something we saw here. A dragon is a lizard and a bird, you know?

Speaker 1 And you just, I go into it and think, dude,

Speaker 1 we're just accustomed to everything. You become accustomed to everything.
So an octopus looks like crazy. But we're just accustomed to it because it's been here ever since I was born.

Speaker 1 And I learned what it is, you know, or a giraffe has this fucking, if I saw that, if we didn't know what that was and we weren't accustomed to it and we saw it on Saturn, we'd be like, fuck, there's these creatures with these necks that reach up so they can eat shit that's high up, you know, and they have spots like fucking alien.

Speaker 1 And why is it so out of reach? It's like we're so fixated on what it might look like.

Speaker 1 And like, just like humans, once you realize in yourself that it doesn't fucking matter what I look like, you're have like so much more freedom in your life.

Speaker 1 And now you can be done with all the costume shit all the time, you know, and yeah, have a little personal style or whatever. But it's like the same thing with aliens.

Speaker 1 I don't give a fuck what they look like. I just want to know if it's what it feels and

Speaker 1 how it communicates and

Speaker 1 its level of awareness and consciousness, you know. It's more interesting to me than just shutting it down or arguing about what it would look like.
What do you think it is?

Speaker 1 How deep do you think into this stuff?

Speaker 1 Pretty deep, you know, and I actually, you know, I enjoy my, my, my medicine ceremonies too.

Speaker 1 Now I'm at the point now where they're just fun, beautiful. I have some intentions for it.
The trauma, dark shit is. I've gone through all that.
It's usually not that, you know, anymore.

Speaker 1 I've gone through so many repetitions of that. Now it's like, hey, my intention now is just feel gratitude, you know, know, and, you know, have a have a good experience.
And it always is that.

Speaker 1 And then at the same time, then I go, hey, I want to receive some signals to help me understand what consciousness might be like, you know, elsewhere, because

Speaker 1 what I always get in those

Speaker 1 is that

Speaker 1 we're all connected in consciousness. And then we might all be from the same source of consciousness, whatever that is, if it's God to me.

Speaker 1 If God, then, and not even in a religious way, it's just, you know, there is something more than than what's in front of us.

Speaker 1 And whatever it is, including vacuums of nothingness, you know, or whatever we were before the Big Bang theory is also part of it.

Speaker 1 You know, any of those periods of nothingness or voids is also part of God. So

Speaker 1 it's everything. God is everything, right? So God, love,

Speaker 1 right, different words for that.

Speaker 1 You know, joy, pure joy

Speaker 1 are here, are up here in the spectrum of consciousness. And

Speaker 1 suffering, evil,

Speaker 1 dark, you know, shit, Satan is down here in the bottom part of the spectrum. And that's infinite.
And everything in between is where we all choose to exist.

Speaker 1 And it's just an infinite circle of consciousness. with those things being on the outer spectrum of it.
Do you think we have a collective consciousness? Yeah. Or is it specific to the individual?

Speaker 1 Collective, and we're all just little branches of the same consciousness of God,

Speaker 1 in my opinion.

Speaker 1 And that evolves over time, my understanding of it. So hard to explain with words.

Speaker 1 I really want to improve my vocabulary.

Speaker 1 Do you think that

Speaker 1 do you think UFOs, extraterrestrials, could be some kind of a

Speaker 1 projection of a collective consciousness? Yeah, I mean, maybe a spiritual entity.

Speaker 1 Spiritual entities,

Speaker 1 that's hard to explain because it's just the different variations of spirituality, vice, science that people want to separate, right? But in a lot of ways,

Speaker 1 it's very similar language around the same concepts,

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 1 If it's inevitable that I believe that we're going to integrate and become another another species of humans, right,

Speaker 1 then inevitably we're going to figure out how to harness gravity. And

Speaker 1 maybe we've already done that because out there where you can harness gravity and we learn that time is not linear, now we can sort of bounce around and probe ourselves.

Speaker 1 So maybe we're probing ourselves with these little things.

Speaker 1 That's an interesting perspective I've not thought of.

Speaker 1 Yeah, And maybe we found, now we can expand. That's what Elon Musk is doing.
He's, he's, he's an explorer. His purpose is to explore.
So

Speaker 1 in the meantime, he's down here being Batman. Thank God.
We've got a guy like that, you know, that's not fucking an evil billionaire, you know, like Soros.

Speaker 1 He's like the arch enemy of Batman, you know, Musk. Yeah.
And,

Speaker 1 God,

Speaker 1 I hope we get more of them, you know?

Speaker 1 But his purpose, I think, is to explore his doing it. He saw the fucking thing land in the chopsticks the other day.
Fucking amazing.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 as we evolve,

Speaker 1 we're going to reach places outside our solar system eventually. And we're going to find something.

Speaker 1 And then we're going to meet them. And find out that their consciousness is from the same source as our consciousness, but we just look different.

Speaker 1 And then we're going to become accustomed to each other. And then the next thing you know, it's going to be a fucking Star Wars bar.
Why isn't everybody freaking out about each other?

Speaker 1 Because they are accustomed to each other,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, I don't know, I love thinking about this. It's

Speaker 1 you know, I mean,

Speaker 1 we could go on all day about this, and it'll turn into a whole nother episode. But let's get to um, let's get to

Speaker 1 ice cream. Where did the passion for ice cream come from? That came from childhood.

Speaker 1 So we went through all that, but, you know, from the point that my stepfather came about, I had a great childhood still.

Speaker 1 You know, I still perceive that I had a wonderful childhood.

Speaker 1 My mom, you know, she's,

Speaker 1 she's heaven of a mom, you know.

Speaker 1 And, um,

Speaker 1 you know, she did everything. They did, everything they could, provided everything they could.
And one year I got a,

Speaker 1 you know, I was always in the kitchen with my grandmother and my mom. So I cook a lot.

Speaker 1 You know, I have the creative mind and I, you know, I love to like make wontons and different stuff when friends come over. And it's been great for the cafe.

Speaker 1 So now the ice cream cafe is more than that. Now, now it's a legitimate bakery.
I've got two chefs. They're wonderful.
They're just, they're my heroes with this.

Speaker 1 And we're going to go so far with this. And they're going to reach all their dreams too.
You know,

Speaker 1 pastry chef and chef couple and they they're awesome it's their

Speaker 1 couple yeah they're a couple no kids yeah they met in culinary school and damn that's cool when i was selling ice cream out of my garage struggling to make brownies and shit because i didn't i'm not good at baking they had just moved here recently from up north to get out of the kind of hustle and bustle of that stuff started working down here at some restaurants and they hit me up they saw my earlier instagram said hey are you looking you need some help with baked goods i was like absolutely and once i started sourcing it from them, I started realizing, holy shit, she can do anything.

Speaker 1 And she can.

Speaker 1 It's so, so it's just, it's just, it's amazing. So now fast forward, everything that goes in the ice cream.
Plus, now we've got the bakery part of it with all the pastries.

Speaker 1 We've got a, it's a bakery, uh, creamery where we, I do all the formulas. He does all the, the spinning and flavoring and coffee shop, coffee house with some really good baristas.

Speaker 1 And it's been working out really well. Nice.
But it all started back in childhood when I was just cooking, you know, playing around and ice cream was just my favorite, my favorite thing. So

Speaker 1 fascinated with ice cream, became fascinated with how it's made.

Speaker 1 You know, fast forward on only one or two of my deployments, I took a machine and messed around with making ice cream out there, but I didn't know how to formulate or anything.

Speaker 1 So it was just kind of a mess, but it was fun.

Speaker 1 I honestly, my creative outlet, I sort of suppressed a little bit out of, you know, that need for validation, going, this isn't cool, man.

Speaker 1 This is going to be, you know, they're going to perceive this as, you know, weird or strange. So I kind of like, just wasn't creative for all those years.
You know, I just kind of

Speaker 1 like hid it away, you know?

Speaker 1 So once I got out,

Speaker 1 I had that job, but a year, not a year, but as soon as I decided to get out, I started looking into how do I learn how to make formulas for ice cream?

Speaker 1 Because I know there's something with that that I want to do. So I started making moves before I was even ever out, right? When I was at that out station making that decision, you know,

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 there's this 150 year old ice cream school at Penn State that's been there that's pretty renowned for like Ben and Jerry's I think went there a couple other big big company founders to learn how to make ice cream and uh so I went there I signed up for it

Speaker 1 my wife's like you're gonna spend this much money on what I'm like I'm gonna go to college

Speaker 1 So it's a short course. It's a food sciences course there.
You get full semester credits for this

Speaker 1 thing. You go around the dairies,

Speaker 1 you formulate ice cream you do tests you got to do it on paper just like sniper school and pass the test you got to pass you know you don't just get through

Speaker 1 and uh and also learning the business side of things they've got all kinds of cool keynote speakers and people coming in from big companies and small shops and it's for everybody from the beginner to somebody that's building a fucking ice cream factory so great experience And then I went right into my job and kind of forgot about it for a while.

Speaker 1 So as I evolved through that transition and sort of self-transformation, I started to feel good enough to go, man, I can visualize myself doing something with ice cream. So and then COVID happened.

Speaker 1 That's where I really started making ice cream in the kitchen. I kind of converted our kids' baby playroom into a little ice cream lab.
I started testing out samples,

Speaker 1 created my chocolate flavor that my wife loves. And it's still that formula.
And

Speaker 1 eventually, COVID cleared up. I had time then to get on YouTube, start learning how to make a business plan.
And

Speaker 1 it was a joke at first, you know, but you'd laugh at it if I showed you my, hey, Chris's idea and all the things I went through, you know, with the whole branding of it and the naming and everything.

Speaker 1 You still have it? Yeah, still have it. Nice.
Definitely. I've shown it to a couple of people and, you know, I'm like, see, I told you to laugh, you know? And can we put it up on screen?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you could. Let's do it.
Send us a picture. We'll put it up.
Yeah, I'll send you. I'll pull it up.

Speaker 1 It's funny. It just looks like a little cheesy PowerPoint.
And, you know, now it's a thing I can pitch to any bank, to anywhere, you know, and it's, it's nice.

Speaker 1 And it's a full model for the next three, five, ten years that, you know, is modular. We can pull things out of it and go, hey, what's the next shop look like?

Speaker 1 What's the warehouse for pints to go in a store look like when it's time for that? You know, you know, I'm going to need some logistics for.

Speaker 1 when it's time to start getting ice cream, you know, into a store and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 So, right now, we're just focused on the headquarters and getting everything we can possibly do out of there. And then,

Speaker 1 sometime after next summer, probably start looking at the next location.

Speaker 1 Nice. And you brought some.
Yeah, brought some. I'm always ready for ice cream, man.

Speaker 1 See, hopefully, they're softened up a little bit, but we'll see. If not, we'll

Speaker 1 all right.

Speaker 1 Dark matter. It's my wife's favorite chocolate of all time.

Speaker 1 Might need to wait a little bit. It's pretty, pretty.

Speaker 1 Oh, sorry, let's switch this one here. I want you to try sea salt and salt.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Then I got a little fun flavor. My chef came up with everything,

Speaker 1 everything bagel cream cheese with

Speaker 1 crunchy croissant

Speaker 1 pieces.

Speaker 1 That was yours. It's pretty hard.
Holy shit

Speaker 1 That one's probably the best seller one of the best sellers

Speaker 1 Dude

Speaker 1 Tim you gotta try this shit

Speaker 1 This is amazing you want plum? Yeah,

Speaker 1 all right

Speaker 1 then Tim

Speaker 1 You gotta tell me what you think about this

Speaker 1 everything bagel flavor.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's really weird, but it's really good.

Speaker 1 Tim, you can't block the cameras.

Speaker 1 This is going on. This is going on.

Speaker 1 What is that? Everything bagel? Yeah, it's like we were messing around with it one day and we're like, hey, let's do a, let's try some savory things.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, dude, I did a hot ribeye steak with this, and I put a scoop right on the hot ribeye, and it just like melted into it like a butter, and it was delicious. But it's also just good to

Speaker 1 like a

Speaker 1 I don't know how to explain. You won't crush this, you know, for movie time on the couch, but you can eat a scoop of it after dinner and it's delicious.
Let me try it. Let me try this one.

Speaker 1 Let me try that. You put this on a steak? Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 it's kind of like

Speaker 1 butter. It's dairy.
But just now that you have everything bagel,

Speaker 1 croissant,

Speaker 1 with cream cheese flavor, with scallion cream cheese flavor in your mind, now try this.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Dude, it tastes just like it.

Speaker 1 Like identical.

Speaker 1 That is wild.

Speaker 1 It's interesting, right?

Speaker 1 I love it.

Speaker 1 What else you got?

Speaker 1 Dark matter here.

Speaker 1 This is my wife's crack.

Speaker 1 When I'll be at the shop working, she'll always, you know,

Speaker 1 she'll always make me bring her home a scoop of this.

Speaker 1 It's a Dutch cocoa.

Speaker 1 Now, Dutch processed dark chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate chips that we grind up. How many flavors do you guys have?

Speaker 1 I think that doing the drops that we were doing before we had the cafe, we probably got a couple hundred.

Speaker 1 And but it's gotten now to a point where, dude, when I first started making it, I was like, man, what flavors I'm going to do? I don't know.

Speaker 1 It was strawberry season, so I got some strawberries from the farms right down the road, and that was my first ice cream drop. Just, hey, I announce it on Instagram.
I hype it up.

Speaker 1 I make it, you know, however many I thought I could sell, like 50 pints.

Speaker 1 schedule pickups through DMs and that's how I was doing it for like a year or so

Speaker 1 and People were coming to my house to pick it up and it got pretty popular

Speaker 1 I figured out I was pretty good with the social media part of it that was just fun for me and

Speaker 1 That's kind of how the story developed fast forward to the chefs coming on board.

Speaker 1 They I started outsourcing it so it got easier and I would go pick up the baked goods from her chop it up throw it in the flavors come up with flavors just based off of how I felt and moods

Speaker 1 and It started to flow and then fast forward a a year and a half or so, I said, hey guys, I want to get this more serious. Let's move this into,

Speaker 1 you know, a commercial kitchen. So we did.
And we struggled through finding the right one. We had to move in and out of one.

Speaker 1 That was hard. And then we found one that worked really well for another year or so.

Speaker 1 And then I intended on us, we'd meet up a couple times a week, make up to 150, 200 pints of ice cream, drop it. Sometimes they'd sell out, sometimes they wouldn't.

Speaker 1 So we then we'd put the some of them in freezers in different locations. Then we had multiple pickup locations to cover different towns.
And so it kind of grew and we started having a business. And

Speaker 1 I found a better software system for

Speaker 1 organizing those. I didn't have to use a spreadsheet for pickups all the time.
It just kind of

Speaker 1 did it for me.

Speaker 1 And people were picking up ice cream. I love these stories, man.
So you literally started this out of your garage. Now

Speaker 1 seen pictures of your place. It looks beautiful.
Thank you. It looks like the nicest ice cream store I've ever seen in my entire life.
But

Speaker 1 it's not even a joke. I'm being serious.
We'll put overlay photos up right now while we're talking.

Speaker 1 But I love these stories, man. I just love organically grown business.
It's just pure.

Speaker 1 entrepreneurship, creativity, and you've developed something out of thin air. It's amazing.
Yeah. But

Speaker 1 what do you think your hang-ups are going to be?

Speaker 1 You know, costs right now, you start doing business. So, you know, I found, you know, I thought we were going to be doing this for a couple more years.

Speaker 1 And then an opportunity for this space popped up. And I just knew it was the right spot.
Everything about it was right. I could afford it.
And the area that it's in is not. typical there.

Speaker 1 And this landlord, he gave me a chance.

Speaker 1 So he gave me a chance. My best friend in Chicago helped me.
He's a business guy. That's huge

Speaker 1 because he's in the logistics business. So

Speaker 1 knowing the long-term goal, he was like, you know, hey, he committed to jumping in, and that's not easy to do. You know, he's already busy as fuck.

Speaker 1 So our families are friends. We're tight.
He's my best friend. We

Speaker 1 built this thing last year and it was hard.

Speaker 1 A lot of things, a lot of delays happened, a lot of struggles.

Speaker 1 Got through it, opened the doors and it was like before I opened the doors, it was just nightmares of like total failure and everything I've committed up to that.

Speaker 1 All of our money, our home equity, you know, to make this beautiful shop that I had in my mind for years. Dumped everything into it.
Yeah. That's awesome.
Yeah. And so

Speaker 1 then we opened the doors and it just, it hit right from day one. And I was on my knees at home just

Speaker 1 thanking God,

Speaker 1 you know, hey, it's working. And then it kept working, you know, and the cold months slow down, you know, certain days, Monday, Wednesday, that's typical for everybody.

Speaker 1 But now we're going to start having some lunch menu items. My shit, the chef is just a genius back there.
He just, I don't even,

Speaker 1 we don't have to meet about things to make.

Speaker 1 They just, and that was the, the beauty of working with, with them two for two whole years is like, the trust and everything was already there for that part of it, you know. But they came along.

Speaker 1 They had to trust me to get this thing open. I had to trust them that they were going to be committed to the dream, which is going to lead to more dreams for them, you know? And

Speaker 1 them knowing my full intentions

Speaker 1 is to help them to that through me. And it's just, it's working out.
There's hard things

Speaker 1 going on.

Speaker 1 The hardest struggle is probably the culture of it all. you know, assuring that the customer experience when I'm not there is similar to when I'm there.

Speaker 1 And, you know, you can't get anybody to care about as much as you, but for sure they do, you know, but now it's everybody else. My manager, you know, does.

Speaker 1 And now it's the teenagers and they're awesome. They're all kicking ass.
Nice.

Speaker 1 And it's just keeping all of us aligned into that culture and brand of like, of what, you know, what it needs to feel like for us and for the customers.

Speaker 1 And so that's the, that's the challenge I learned immediately. And then, of course, like costs are expensive when you get going and you got to find ways really quickly to

Speaker 1 bring those down. Yeah, so that's what we're doing.

Speaker 1 But I think we'll, you know, get those things fixed pretty quickly. And we still got more things to add.
I still got to get merch online. I got a lot of cool ideas for that coming.

Speaker 1 T-shirts, hats, all kinds of cool shit. Nice.
Shipping the ice cream.

Speaker 1 So we'll get back into these drops where we go hype up a special flavor, you know, like once a month,

Speaker 1 limited supplies, you know, sells out, sells out. We're not making that flavor again, you know,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 start shipping it at least regionally, you know, probably East Coast at first.

Speaker 1 This was a good test to get to get this here. Don't forget to put Tennessee on that list.
Yeah. Where are you guys going to be? And I mean, what do you see this developing into?

Speaker 1 Do you think you'll franchise or are you going to keep it?

Speaker 1 I don't know about franchising, but for sure, I'm already looking at, I'm already looking at the next location for, I want to get, we know we need to get the data for a full spring and summer.

Speaker 1 That's the best months for ice cream stuff.

Speaker 1 But, you know, the stuff the chefs are doing for the cold months with pastries and our coffee is great too you know so we didn't just add those things to make more money like you know i really got the right people in it and we're we're doing our best at all of those things at the same time and it seems to be working i think customers especially locally dude we have such a good local following of people that have been buying it since day one, you know, and also now regulars and people just coming in and our community in that southern Virginia Beach area is like, it's just been, God, it's like the best.

Speaker 1 That's awesome. So I think within five years, we'll have multiple stores is my plan.
And we'll be ready to start looking at,

Speaker 1 you know, building a warehouse in a continuous freezer system or something to start getting

Speaker 1 some pints and a couple other ideas I have into

Speaker 1 a store.

Speaker 1 Distribution. Yeah, like a public, start locally, you know, pitch it in.

Speaker 1 My partner will probably activate for that because he's a logistics guy. And then we'll start figuring out how to get ice cream in stores.

Speaker 1 That's the goal. And that's the longer 10-year sort of goal.
Well, there's going to be potentially millions of people listening to this or watching.

Speaker 1 Is there anything you want to throw out into the world that you might need to help accelerate your business or anything at all? Just curious.

Speaker 1 You never know who's listening, man. Yeah.
You'd never know.

Speaker 1 You know, I've met some cool people, but I'm, I'm, I'm just, the thing about ice cream, too, that people always say is like, hey, there's so much ice cream around.

Speaker 1 How are you going to, there's so much doubt, so much doubt, you know, how are you going to make money in ice cream? There's so much, there's so many brands.

Speaker 1 I'm like, that's with anything that you do in a business. You can't, I had to not think about that and go, no one can do it the way you're going to do it.
You know, got your style.

Speaker 1 There's so many coffee shops. They're all going to be a little.
different

Speaker 1 limitations, dude. Yeah, don't create limitations.
Just try to break through those. And so,

Speaker 1 you know, I've met met some really cool people already, but my opinion, like I respect everybody's ice cream.

Speaker 1 So anybody that wants to give me any advice from any of those companies or any of those, you know, CEOs and owners about stuff to, based off of what I just said, like, hey, here's something they learned or something, that would be super valuable.

Speaker 1 But also, you know,

Speaker 1 like I said,

Speaker 1 we are going to start, we're going to become a brand of ice cream. Right.
So, you know, I'm going to need, I'm going to need some distribution, you know, and some logistics for that. So

Speaker 1 it'd probably be good to start talking to some of those people soon. Right on, man.
Well, I mean, I got to hand it to you, dude.

Speaker 1 You're creative. You're branding, you're creative, your page, like it's just everything.
Your marketing,

Speaker 1 it's all top-notch. And the ice cream is a level above all of that.
So at least stuff that I've tasted. So,

Speaker 1 I mean, I think you're going to be very successful and and I I hope you are

Speaker 1 you already are

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 now it's salted up

Speaker 1 well Chris

Speaker 1 winding up the show here but

Speaker 1 I know you had a a specific ending that you wanted to to end with. Yeah, a total gift.
A little gift of mine. It's very simple.

Speaker 1 There's so much bullshit going on and having to figure out each one of us how to how to how do you how do you do it? Like how do you

Speaker 1 day to day, there's so much, you know,

Speaker 1 so many boundaries being broken from, you know,

Speaker 1 you know, from this, it's the battle, the never-ending ancient battle between good and evil going on right now. You can feel it.
This election's coming up. It's like, dude, the information.

Speaker 1 So in my job, there's a lot of, I didn't like it because it was all based on military deception, information operations. I know how that shit works, you know?

Speaker 1 It's an operation

Speaker 1 and it's working against people. So, you know,

Speaker 1 it's a machine.

Speaker 1 You hate this guy. You hate Trump, right?

Speaker 1 Can you really explain why? Can anyone really explain why? They're going to say things that they've been getting fed for years and years and years. And you say shit through the screens.

Speaker 1 So often we know

Speaker 1 from research that people will start to believe that, right? And vice versa. Same thing.

Speaker 1 You know, it's not an operation, I think, in defense of it, but you start finding, you know, the good guys start doing the same kind of thing.

Speaker 1 Like, hey, here's some information about, you know, the Harris campaign or whatever. And it's like, dude, just.

Speaker 1 Outside of all the bullshit, really, it is the battle between good and evil. So you know what's good and you know what's evil.

Speaker 1 And you might be sort of attached to like one little topic, one thing, you know, abortion or the transgender issue or like the border, like whatever it is. But dude, if you,

Speaker 1 if we can just see past, that stuff's all important. But right now, it's all underneath a grander importance of good and evil.
going on and it's happened over and over again over time right

Speaker 1 some of the same patterns um

Speaker 1 so my opinion is that understanding and misunder like misunderstanding is like at a max right now

Speaker 1 and if people change their minds to to the good side the right thing to do is not go ha I told you so you know what I mean having fucking all that time in shame and guilt it's like just let that shit go and welcome welcome to the good side the side of good you know

Speaker 1 forgiven for the side of evil depending on what you did to, you gotta, you know, deal with the consequences of certain shit and certain actions. But welcome to the good guy's side.

Speaker 1 It's okay that you change your mind, you know. Yeah, but the only way to change people's mind is not

Speaker 1 this fucking constant, it's just not gonna work, right? So,

Speaker 1 this is something I learned in meditation training. It's called a tongue exercise.
Probably take three minutes, three, four, five minutes. It's a meditation, and it's my

Speaker 1 way of sort of proving

Speaker 1 what might work for

Speaker 1 changing your mind as a little gift. Because I know you're into that a little bit, little meditation stuff.
Bringing the nervous system down, which is the goal of my shop, part of the brand.

Speaker 1 Come inside. Don't care who you are.
Don't care what you did right now. Feel like in bring your nervous system down.
Get some sweets, get some ice cream, get some good shit. Bring it down.

Speaker 1 Enjoy yourself, chill, right? And then when you're ready, go back out into the bullshit of the world. Like, that's the brand of the cafe.
That's cool, man.

Speaker 1 So I'm

Speaker 1 just going to talk you through it. Just close your eyes and breathe.
That's all you got to do.

Speaker 1 Just focus on breathing.

Speaker 1 Breath in, breath out.

Speaker 1 And as you're breathing, just imagine

Speaker 1 the perfect beach

Speaker 1 for yourself. It could be one that you've been to before.

Speaker 1 Maybe you haven't.

Speaker 1 Whatever it is, it's a perfect day on this beach.

Speaker 1 The temperature of the air is perfect.

Speaker 1 You start walking down towards the water. For my beach, it's a dune.
I come down through the cattails.

Speaker 1 I'm feeling those cattails between my fingers.

Speaker 1 Walking down the sand.

Speaker 1 Feel the grains of the sand between my toes.

Speaker 1 Start making my way into the water.

Speaker 1 The water is the perfect temperature.

Speaker 1 As I continue down into the water,

Speaker 1 I'm breathing.

Speaker 1 I get waist deep.

Speaker 1 And when I start to get stomach deep,

Speaker 1 I stop there and breathe.

Speaker 1 And as I feel the ebbs and flow of the waves against my body

Speaker 1 and the ocean supporting my weight,

Speaker 1 I look out into the distance.

Speaker 1 It's a beautiful sky. It's a beautiful horizon.

Speaker 1 I notice where the color of the water meets the color of the sky. And I just breathe.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I'm going to slowly turn

Speaker 1 towards the beach.

Speaker 1 And I'm looking at a beach.

Speaker 1 And there's somebody there.

Speaker 1 This is somebody that you love. Somebody that you really love.

Speaker 1 It could be yourself, could be your mother, your son, just somebody you really love deeply.

Speaker 1 For me, it's myself, my seven-year-old self.

Speaker 1 And I'm just there playing, just watching myself play.

Speaker 1 As I take the next few breaths,

Speaker 1 when I inhale,

Speaker 1 I'm going to inhale all of the stuff, all of the suffering, all of the bad experiences, any trauma,

Speaker 1 any ignorance.

Speaker 1 And I'm just going to breathe it in in the form of black smoke

Speaker 1 through the air into my lungs.

Speaker 1 I'm going to sacrifice myself for just a moment to absorb all of this dark smoke.

Speaker 1 And then as I exhale

Speaker 1 I'm gonna breathe it out through my fingertips out all of my pores and into the ocean

Speaker 1 mother earth is just there to absorb all that shit from us

Speaker 1 I'm just gonna do this for the next couple breaths

Speaker 1 Now, when I'm ready, I'm going to turn back towards the horizon.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to breathe a couple of breaths.

Speaker 1 Look at the horizon again.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to turn back to the beach again.

Speaker 1 This time,

Speaker 1 there's somebody there that you despise. despise.
You might even hate them. Maybe they hate you.

Speaker 1 Somebody right now in your life

Speaker 1 that you despise and that despises you.

Speaker 1 Same thing.

Speaker 1 Every breath in, you're going to breathe in in the form of black smoke all of the ignorance out of them. All of the...

Speaker 1 What you know has caused all of that ignorance, all of the trauma back to their own childhood, all of the things, all of the bullshit that they just can't understand how to cut through right now,

Speaker 1 right? And they're taking it out on everybody else around them and themselves. You're just gonna breathe all that shit in,

Speaker 1 just gonna breathe it out into the ocean.

Speaker 1 You know, this is the only way

Speaker 1 that you have any chance of changing anybody's mind.

Speaker 1 They feel some validation for why they ended up that way somehow, whether it's your energy,

Speaker 1 however you communicate this person or not,

Speaker 1 it's a choice they have to make.

Speaker 1 And when you're ready, turn back to the horizon. And you're going to look at the beautiful horizon again.

Speaker 1 Now you slowly turn back to the beach.

Speaker 1 Now every person,

Speaker 1 every person on the planet, Every creature, every animal is there on the beach.

Speaker 1 And you're going to do the same thing.

Speaker 1 breathe all that black smoke out of everybody

Speaker 1 through yourself

Speaker 1 out into the ocean

Speaker 1 now when you're ready

Speaker 1 You can start making your way back into the beach.

Speaker 1 There's nobody there now.

Speaker 1 It's just you and your perfect beach.

Speaker 1 You feel the water lower as you walk out.

Speaker 1 You feel the warm sun hit you.

Speaker 1 Start to warm your body immediately.

Speaker 1 Make your way back up the sand,

Speaker 1 back up the dune.

Speaker 1 Now you're walking off into your life

Speaker 1 back into a normal day.

Speaker 1 And when you're ready, you can open your eyes and come out.

Speaker 1 That's it.

Speaker 1 It's so hard to do.

Speaker 1 So hard to do

Speaker 1 when we're doing this every day, all the time.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that's not to say that you can't have boundaries, right?

Speaker 1 But if the more that I think that, the easier it is to deal with the bullshit. People's bullshit.

Speaker 1 And hope that more people can change their mind and not feel some kind of shame and guilt about it and not change their mind just because

Speaker 1 they've been doing it for so long. Like, man, I voted for them.
I did this. I can't.
I'm going to look dumb. You know?

Speaker 1 It's okay. Just change your mind.
All right.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 That was awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 damn, Chris.

Speaker 1 That was

Speaker 1 That was a hell of an interview, man.

Speaker 1 Been through a lot. Yeah, had a good time, man.
That's good. And

Speaker 1 I just got to, like,

Speaker 1 to see you pull through all that. I mean,

Speaker 1 that's a miracle, man. And

Speaker 1 I just want to say it was an honor to interview you and

Speaker 1 keep an eye out for those signals. Yes, sir.
Yep. I'm grateful.
Thank you. Thank you for the moments to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 Thank you, brother. I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you. God bless.
God bless you.