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

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Speaker 5 They had VC or MVA come out of a spider hole and threw a Chikom at this guy. He picked it up, went through it back, and it went off in his hand.
Arm gone, side of his head gone.

Speaker 5 People were starting out, they were a little uncertain about the war, but they weren't like they were when we came home. Guys coming home, throwing

Speaker 5 with signs and names, Nazi,

Speaker 5 murderer, baby killer. Don't forget baby killer.
Feel like your soul coming out of your chest.

Speaker 6 Mr. Bob Parsons.

Speaker 5 And the flesh.

Speaker 6 Welcome to the show.

Speaker 5 Good to be here, Sean.

Speaker 6 Man, I'm really excited to interview you.

Speaker 6 I've been watching GoDaddy, you, all your companies for decades now, and I just find you to be a fascinating human being. So I just want to say thank you for making the time and

Speaker 6 coming into Nashville and knocking this interview out with me. I think think it's going to be awesome.

Speaker 5 It's my pleasure, brother. Thanks for having me here.

Speaker 6 It's my honor. But everybody starts off with an introduction here.
So, Bob Parsons, United States Marine Infantry veteran who received the Purple Heart in the Vietnam War.

Speaker 6 Self-taught programmer who started Parsons Technology in your basement in 1984, growing it into a $100 million revenue company before selling it for $64 million.

Speaker 6 Founder of GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registrar, which you sold for $2.3 billion.

Speaker 6 CEO and founder of Yam Worldwide with ventures like Parsons Extreme Golf, Scottsdale, National Golf Club, and Harley-Davidson of Scottsdale.

Speaker 6 Philanthropist who, alongside your wife, Renee, founded the Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation in 2012.

Speaker 6 Trailblazer in psychedelic assisted therapy, using it to confront your own PTSD and funding over $19 million in research to help others. That's super close to me.
I did that.

Speaker 6 I did an Ibogaine experience in Mexico and totally changed the trajectory of my family life, my business life, every aspect.

Speaker 6 And New York Times, best-selling author of the book, Fire in the Hole, self-made billionaire ranked 338 on the Forbes 400 2024 list with a net worth of $3.9 billion.

Speaker 6 You're a husband, father, grandfather, and

Speaker 6 great-grandfather. Welcome home.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 you have a quote that I read that I love, and it says, I believe I was born a dreamer.

Speaker 5 I know I was, yeah.

Speaker 6 When did you come up with that quote?

Speaker 5 I just, I've always been a dreamer.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 it was when I

Speaker 5 was taking an inner child workshop one time trying to find myself. This is way back when.
And

Speaker 5 I had to write myself a letter.

Speaker 5 And the letter was from me now, or then.

Speaker 5 to when I was a young child, when I was a young boy. Wow.

Speaker 5 What would I say? And then how would I write back? So I did that. And then I had to

Speaker 5 write about myself, the different parts of me.

Speaker 5 And that's where I, you know, I just sitting in my hotel room at night,

Speaker 5 when I was writing this for the next day's class,

Speaker 5 I just remember thinking, I believe I was born a dreamer, and I was.

Speaker 5 And so that's how that came about.

Speaker 6 And stuck with you ever since.

Speaker 5 Yeah, sure, it has. And as a matter of fact, I used that paper that I turned in.
That is the introduction to my book or the preface.

Speaker 5 And the letter to the little boy and the letter back

Speaker 5 and then about myself. And the letter about myself starts exactly with that.
I believe I was born a dreamer.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 6 What is the letter to yourself? What did you say to your young self?

Speaker 5 Did I say to my young self? Yes. You know, it said that, you know,

Speaker 5 I'm writing to you for many years in the future,

Speaker 5 and I know more about you than any other person alive. I know everything there is to know about you,

Speaker 5 and I know that you're going through a tough time in your life.

Speaker 5 I know that

Speaker 5 my mother was insane,

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 Dad wasn't around much.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 I just never understood it as a kid.

Speaker 5 But I was scared most of the time.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I told my younger self to hang in there.

Speaker 5 Because you know more about the right thing to do than

Speaker 5 anybody's going to tell you. And to just hang on.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 that one day,

Speaker 5 you know, believe in yourself and never stop dreaming because more than anything, that'll be your salvation.

Speaker 6 That's powerful.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 that's that letter.

Speaker 6 What did your young self write back?

Speaker 5 Well, didn't write much. We had to write it with the left hand, you know,

Speaker 5 our non-dominant hand, so it looked like a young child. And it basically wrote that

Speaker 5 thank you for writing to me.

Speaker 5 I cannot wait to be you.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I'll see you when I grow up.

Speaker 6 Man.

Speaker 6 What was that for?

Speaker 5 That was for an inner child workshop.

Speaker 5 And I was just trying to get rid of my PTSD and deal with it.

Speaker 6 When did you do that?

Speaker 5 Oh, God, it had to be in the 90s sometime in the 90s yeah

Speaker 6 well we'll dive into all the therapy and getting better uh after work war trauma but bob i would love to do I mean, I know you know this, but I want to do an expose on your life.

Speaker 6 And so we're going to go through childhood, the Marine Corps, Vietnam, and all your business ventures and some life lessons you've learned. I'd love to know about your values and all that stuff.

Speaker 6 But before we kick it off, we'll start with something light. So, there was this back and forth conversation

Speaker 6 from your assistant and us about the condom story. I don't know anything about it.
I didn't want to know anything about it. I just want to hear it directly from you.

Speaker 6 And the little I do know about it, it sounds hilarious. So,

Speaker 6 what is the condom story?

Speaker 5 Well, the condom, the condom story is when I was a

Speaker 5 this is a junior or a senior in high school.

Speaker 5 I had never been with a woman, you know, I mean, we talked about it day and night, but, you know, I never, never, never, never been with a girl. And this is, I'm growing up in East Baltimore.

Speaker 5 So my buddy Danny Thorne, who's a year or two older than me, who was my total advice on, you know, he told me everything I needed to know about women, most of the stuff totally, totally wrong. Right?

Speaker 5 Like, like, like he told me, he said, you know,

Speaker 5 when you go down on a woman, right?

Speaker 5 And I see, I don't even know what it looks like.

Speaker 5 He says, you go down on a woman.

Speaker 6 There's a lot of ways to do it.

Speaker 5 He says, he says, you move all that hair to the side. This is back when, before they shaved, right? Move all the hair to his side.
And you

Speaker 5 kiss, you're going to see something that looks like the baby Jesus kiss it.

Speaker 5 And so, anyhow, that was the advice I grew up with.

Speaker 5 So, Danny was getting her home-based action from this girl named Tony.

Speaker 5 And Tony was, she lived with her mom. It was her and her mom.
And her mother was going out of town for the weekend. And so Danny arranged with Tony that

Speaker 5 he and her would have the upstairs. And Tony's girlfriend, Pauline,

Speaker 5 said that she wanted, she was she was ready to you know to plunge ahead and

Speaker 5 I'd be just the guy that she wanted to to do it with so I thought oh my god it's here

Speaker 5 so so I'd I'd go ahead and

Speaker 5 you know it sounds good to me so the first thing I did the next day was a Monday I remember I went to the pharmacy and I had just enough money to buy one condom so I bought one condom

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 I'd go home at the end of the day, and I'd have this condom squirreled away, you know, and I'd pull it out. And I'd sit it on my dresser, and I'd look at it, and it'd look at me, you know, and,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 and each of us, each of us wondering what the other one's thinking. And so finally the day comes where it's Friday and

Speaker 5 I come home, it's three o'clock or so, and I go ahead and take a bath. We didn't have a shower, so I took a bath and

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 5 got all ready for school, you know, for to go out and meet Pauline, so I put on my best clothes. They weren't much, but they were my best.
So I go ahead and do that, and then I pulled his condom out.

Speaker 5 And I guess by then it's four o'clock. And

Speaker 5 I pulled his condom out and

Speaker 5 I said, shit, I take it

Speaker 5 out of the package, right?

Speaker 5 And I look at it and I go, wow, that's

Speaker 5 it. So I'm looking at it.
And again, it's looking at me. And I remember thinking, and it's my first time.
And you can just picture the condom saying to me, yeah, it's my first time too, right? So

Speaker 5 we taken,

Speaker 5 I, as soon as I put it, you know, as soon as I pulled it out, I'm hard as a a rock. I mean, I'm thinking about this.
I'm ready to shoot through the roof, right?

Speaker 5 So I take this condom and I think, I wonder what it feels like with this thing on.

Speaker 5 So I put the condom on and I put it all the way on.

Speaker 5 And I thought, you know what?

Speaker 5 I'll just leave it on.

Speaker 5 And that's the way when

Speaker 5 we get ready to have sex,

Speaker 5 I'll be ready.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I go up and meet them and so forth. And so from, it was about six o'clock we were going to get together and

Speaker 5 I had done went flaccid then.

Speaker 5 And when I went flaccid, the condom

Speaker 5 rolled all the way up.

Speaker 5 And it rolled up in my bubic ears.

Speaker 5 Right?

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I'm there with Pauline. Danny and Tony go upstairs.

Speaker 5 We're on the sofa. She's got this little club basement fixed up.
And so we're on the sofa there. So

Speaker 5 I reach over and I kiss Pauline and we start smooching.

Speaker 5 And man, that thing was like a switchblade flat back.

Speaker 5 But the only difference was, Sean,

Speaker 5 it didn't unwrap the way it wrapped up and the pubic hairs didn't let them go. So instead, it hung on to every one and it just pulled with the force of,

Speaker 5 it felt like somebody took my pubic hairs and glued them to the bumper of a Chevy and floored it.

Speaker 5 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 first, first I was, I was going to, I said, I'll just tough through this. I'll just tough through this.
And I did, and then it got, it got blinding. And then the season spy would have talked.

Speaker 5 So I went right to the floor and they had this little bathroom with this little

Speaker 5 door with a little latch on it. It's just a makeshift toilet, right? So I could crawl and get into there and shut it and latch it and try to get this thing off.
I can't get it off.

Speaker 5 I mean, it won't come off.

Speaker 5 My penis is like, I'm not letting it go.

Speaker 5 And I'm saying how Marys or fathers, I've been doing everything I could think of. And I mean, nobody ever talked to me how to get rid of a heart or I was thinking of

Speaker 5 Mother Superior, who was the gnarliest woman I ever seen. Thinking about maybe what it'd be like to having sex with Mother Superior.
Didn't matter.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 eventually.

Speaker 5 I mean, she knocks on the door. Pauline knocks on the door.
She says, is everything okay? I said, sure, it is. I'll be right out.
I'll be out.

Speaker 5 Don't worry, I'll be out in a minute. So eventually, I think it took me 20 minutes to get it off, but I finally got it off.
Hairs everywhere. And

Speaker 5 I put it back on.

Speaker 5 And I

Speaker 5 pulled myself together, went outside.

Speaker 5 And she's long gone.

Speaker 5 She left.

Speaker 6 You lost her.

Speaker 5 I lost her. Yeah, that was the first.
So I lost her. And I still remember my buddy Danny.
I never told anybody what happened way back then.

Speaker 5 Never told anybody. He said,

Speaker 5 how did you fuck this up? I said, it was a sure thing.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 she told all her girlfriends that

Speaker 5 what we were going to do. And then we sat down, I kissed her, and then I ran into the, locked myself in the bathroom, and I did the

Speaker 5 course I was.

Speaker 6 Never sealed the deal with that one, huh?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I killed the deal totally.

Speaker 6 Poor Pauline, she missed out.

Speaker 5 Well, I'm hoping someday, I don't know where she is, but if she is, I hope she gets the bucker. She says, that's what happened.

Speaker 6 Wow. Well, you know, there's an old saying, two is one and one is none.

Speaker 5 That's how Rick Claire taught me that. Yeah.

Speaker 6 But, well, that clears that up, the condom story. Wow.

Speaker 6 What a great way to start.

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Speaker 6 All right, so a couple things. One, I got you a gift.

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But

Speaker 6 yeah, we make those. Like I said, they're made right here in the USA.

Speaker 6 And then one other thing to knock out.

Speaker 6 I got a Patreon account that's a subscription network. We've turned it into quite the community.
And, you know, I started this show in my attic at my house. And then we moved here.

Speaker 6 And now we're getting ready to move into a lot bigger facility that's out on some acreage. And we'll make a better guest experience.
But Patreon's been with me since the beginning. And

Speaker 6 they've really supported me with what I'm doing. And they're the reason that I get to be here today with you.
And so, one of the things that we do is we offer

Speaker 6 Patreon, somebody in Patreon, to ask each and every guest a question. And so this is from

Speaker 6 Nate.

Speaker 6 Hi, Bob. I really admire your journey and what you've built.
As a fellow U.S. Marine, I've come to believe that owning your own business is the ultimate form of freedom.

Speaker 6 But honestly, the most daunting part for me is figuring out what to build, how to find that unique idea or opportunity worth going all in on. How did you approach this early on? Semper Fidelis.

Speaker 5 Semper fine, Nate.

Speaker 5 Well, buddy, listen,

Speaker 5 the way I've always done it was I did what I liked. I did what I liked, and my dad, for all his faults, I mean,

Speaker 5 he had a lot of good ideas, you know, about certain things. But one of the things he said, he said, is you always should do what you love

Speaker 5 because when you love something, it tells you all its secrets. And I believe that.

Speaker 5 And it only stands to reason, Nate, because when you do what you love, you're going to work harder at it and you're not doing it just for the money and you know depending upon why you're working right why you're doing what you're doing that's going to determine how successful you are and you'll never be successful if you're just working for the money

Speaker 5 because you won't do the things you need to do to be successful because they're the counterintuitive so there you have it Man, that's great advice.

Speaker 6 I would 100% agree with that.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 6 I'm doing doing what I love. And

Speaker 6 where this takes me just continues to surprise me every day. I can't even believe I'm sitting down here with you.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 so let's start.

Speaker 6 Let's get into the interview. So you grew up in East Baltimore.

Speaker 5 I did.

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 6 Brothers, sisters?

Speaker 5 I grew up in East Baltimore.

Speaker 5 Younger brother, younger sister.

Speaker 5 mom and dad, of course.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 we never had much. Mom and dad were gamblers, and neither one of them was that good at it.
And so we were always broke. I mean, always, always broke.

Speaker 5 And if Dad bought anything, it was always on credit. And they always would goose in with the interest rate, which means

Speaker 5 we even had less. So if we needed to have anything, we had to figure out how we were going to

Speaker 5 work and earn it, earn it, and how we were going to make money and get what we wanted to get. And

Speaker 5 we did things like newspaper routes, shoveling snow, running errands, working in film stations, construction, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 my first business is an interesting story.

Speaker 5 It was a lemon-aged stand.

Speaker 5 And so, one day, I'm probably about eight or nine years old.

Speaker 5 And I go ahead and

Speaker 5 decide it's one of those hot days that they get in Baltimore that, you know, you could see this

Speaker 5 heat wave off the off the

Speaker 5 tar street, you know, Asphalt Street. And

Speaker 5 when

Speaker 5 I did that, I decided, man, I'll make lemonade. I'll have a lemonade stand out here today.
Well, mom wasn't around. It was just me.
I was the only one home.

Speaker 5 So I go ahead and and get this picture out that she had. And I knew that lemonade was lemon and sugar

Speaker 5 and water. So

Speaker 5 I get this bottle of lemon out. And she's

Speaker 5 called real lemon. And I fill this thing up with the lemon.
And then I put

Speaker 5 sugar in it. And then I put...

Speaker 5 put water in it and I mix it all up and no matter how I made it, it just didn't taste quite right and then I get the idea maybe that's the way it's supposed to taste so I just put I just put more sugar in it right and I just keep mixing up mixing it up mixing it up and then so I

Speaker 5 go outside I put this at this little table I set this little table up on her at the base of her porch and I put this little sign up lemonade five cents and the lemonade pitcher looked beautiful I mean it looked beautiful it had It had like the little sweat on it.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's just, it's perfect. Well, this is back during the days when, back during the late 50s, when the insurance guys would, the life insurance guys would walk debit routes, right?

Speaker 5 And they collect the weekly premium because that's the only way you're going to get it in East Baltimore. You go knock on somebody's door and they get it from them.

Speaker 5 So this guy, his name is Mr. Hill, H-I-L-L.

Speaker 5 And he's got this little pork pie hat on. He's got his sports coat slung over his shoulder, got his tie undone.

Speaker 5 He's walking, squatting like a hog, right? So he says to me, he goes, and kid, I says, he says, man, can I use,

Speaker 5 can I use, use, use this today?

Speaker 5 So I fix him a lemonade and he gives me a dime, told me to keep the change, and it was nicer. I couldn't believe my luck.

Speaker 5 So he takes

Speaker 5 and he knocks his lemonade back

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 he seems to

Speaker 5 wave

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 he wave it around.

Speaker 5 His eyes bulge. He spits his lemonade out in the street and he goes, that's good.
That's the worst fucking lemonade I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 5 And he goes storming away. And,

Speaker 5 you know, I thought, maybe, maybe

Speaker 5 it just isn't that bad. Maybe, you know, he don't know us.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So the next day, the lady, a girl across the street, Suzanne, she comes over.

Speaker 5 She gets a, she buys a cup of lemonade, takes it over home, comes back and says, my mother says you have to give me my money back. So I gave her money back.
And

Speaker 5 same thing. And

Speaker 5 then nobody would come near my lemonade stand.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 the

Speaker 5 guy comes over.

Speaker 5 Later, my mother comes home and she says, what are you doing?

Speaker 5 And I said, I'm selling lemonade. She said, you're selling lemonade?

Speaker 5 I said, yes. She said, how did you make it? And I said, I said, I took the lemon bottle and I poured it.

Speaker 5 She goes, I keep vinegar in that bottle. Oh, shit.

Speaker 5 So I made lemonade with vinegar. And

Speaker 5 she helped me make a butter lemonade that actually tasted good.

Speaker 5 Nope, we're already done. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Nobody wanted it for free.

Speaker 2 Nice.

Speaker 5 So anyhow, that was my first business, utter failure.

Speaker 6 So you said your parents are gamblers.

Speaker 6 What were they gambling in? Anything they could?

Speaker 5 Oh, anything. Horses, sports,

Speaker 5 numbers.

Speaker 5 Let's bet that mom would go to bingo all the time, but that was more social thing than a pure gamble. But, you know, that's what they would do.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And your dad was a

Speaker 6 World War II CV in Guadalcanal.

Speaker 5 Yeah, he was in Guadalcanal, Bougainville, the Fiji's.

Speaker 6 Did you guys talk about that?

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did.

Speaker 5 He

Speaker 5 had all these pictures and

Speaker 5 he told me, he says, yeah, it was a rough, miserable place. Had a picture of his ship that

Speaker 5 he took from the beach and it

Speaker 5 a Japanese suicide sub, two-man sub screwed into the side and blew it up. Oh, wow.
And I said, how were you there?

Speaker 5 You knew they were going to take a picture? He says, yeah, we knew it was there. It couldn't do anything to the sub because the moment they touched it, they would blow it, right?

Speaker 5 So they just all got off the ship. And it wasn't that they waited for him to get off the ship.
They just were able to.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so he had that. And

Speaker 5 part of what he did was drive a bulldozer, I believe. And

Speaker 5 he said, they sounded like the Japanese Eurosana like washing machines. He said, and he said the Marines, he said the Marines had it the toughest.
He said, but he helped build the airfield and

Speaker 5 stuff like that.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 6 Wow. What else were you into as a kid? It sounds like life was pretty rough.
You know, what kind of stuff were you into?

Speaker 5 Well, you know,

Speaker 5 I was a terrible student, terrible student.

Speaker 5 And I failed the fifth grade.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 nobody can ever take that away from me. But

Speaker 5 when I failed the fifth grade, Sister Brenda, I was

Speaker 5 in parochial school. Sister Brenda was a nun and

Speaker 5 she didn't talk much, but she sure hated me because she kept me almost every day after school. She would just turn around and I'd think, man, I'm going to go.

Speaker 5 I'm going to go home one time. This kid would say, hey, Roberts, can you hear me? Or something, I'd hand it to him.
She'd go, Robert Parsons, you're staying at school.

Speaker 5 So anyhow,

Speaker 5 it was the last day of school and me,

Speaker 5 this kid named Frankie, his kid named Anthony,

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 everybody got their report cards. It was one of them Baltimore days, hotter and shit, you know.
And it was maybe June or May. And I went to St.
Elizabeth's Hungary.

Speaker 5 And so all I was looking for was a nun-free summer. Sister Brenda handed everybody their report cards.
And then she said to me, Frankie and Nancy says, you three,

Speaker 5 wait here. I'll be back later.
And

Speaker 5 as I take his line out, then,

Speaker 5 you know, and there you go.

Speaker 5 And then I'll process your whatever is going to happen. But she didn't say we failed.
So

Speaker 5 Anthony's saying, I remember him saying, I wonder what Sister Brenda wants us to stay back here for. And it occurred to me, I said, it's because we failed.

Speaker 5 And so she took everybody out to meet the parents. And

Speaker 5 the way this was set up,

Speaker 5 St. Elizabeth occupied one big square block.
And she would walk out. If you were facing,

Speaker 5 I don't know the direction, but if you face in one of the directions and you go out the left side, you go all the way down and you go, you turned by

Speaker 5 the nunnery or the convent and take all the way down and that across the street to where she'd meet the parents. Well,

Speaker 5 my father,

Speaker 5 every year on the last day of school, he'd pick up me and my brother and my sister,

Speaker 5 later,

Speaker 5 she was involved in that.

Speaker 5 He'd pick us up and he'd take us over to the sporting goods store or something and we'd buy

Speaker 5 something

Speaker 5 for passing and we'd bring us home. So

Speaker 5 I was thinking, there is no way I'm going to tell my father I failed. So as soon as she left, I left.
So she's going

Speaker 5 left, I go right. And I run through the schoolyard, then around the side, over where the parents are, up around the side of the convent and up against the wall or this

Speaker 5 black fence where it was fencing off the convent. And I could see Sister Brenda in the class coming down

Speaker 5 walking down with them and everybody's happy with their report cards and so forth and um

Speaker 5 i i uh i said to her

Speaker 5 um

Speaker 5 well the thing i had in my favor was i knew about sister brenda she was a very lazy nun i had some inside information she would never during the few times when i would go home one time with everybody else she would break off and go right into the nunnery she never walked the class all the way down.

Speaker 5 And so she did the same thing with this. She took and let the class go, ran the nunnery and the class turned right.
And we're going to walk now by herself.

Speaker 5 And she went back to crucify the unholy threesome.

Speaker 5 Right?

Speaker 5 So I just stood and, you know, and I was, you know, halfway wondering, worried that the class, that the class was going to see me and people were going to go, what are you doing? So forth.

Speaker 5 They didn't even notice me. I mean, I could have been one of the bushes.
So

Speaker 5 they were too worried about themselves and the report cards. So they started away, kept walking.
I followed them. And I go

Speaker 5 down the block with them. And I crossed the street

Speaker 5 where my father is. My father's already there with my brother looking at his report card.
And my father says to me, Robert, where's your report card?

Speaker 5 And I said, Dad's sister didn't give me one.

Speaker 5 He says, you didn't give me one. He looks at me like a dog that heard a strange noise, you know.
And I says, I said, no, dad, this year, if you passed, you didn't get a report card.

Speaker 5 That's when the lie came out.

Speaker 5 He says, no, no.

Speaker 5 You keep mine. He's holding my brother's report card.
And he goes, he's smoking territories right then. So he

Speaker 5 takes a puff and he says, I get in the car. And he says, not a problem.
So he takes us to the sporting goods store. I know I'm in the

Speaker 5 sporting goods store, I'm on death row. So he says, my brother's got a bunch of stuff.
My father's going to put most of that back. Just pick one thing you want.

Speaker 5 And then he says to me, Robert, don't you want anything? I said, dad,

Speaker 5 I got plenty. I had nothing.

Speaker 5 So he says, oh, get something. So I got this first baseman's mitten, you know, for a young kid.
And so we go home.

Speaker 5 The same thing happens with my mother my brother comes in gives him his report card gives her the report card and then uh he gets me the

Speaker 5 you know she says where's your report card same thing you know

Speaker 5 and um she says i never heard of such a thing that you you know if you pass you didn't get a report card and i said i pulled it out i said my call sister and she said I'm calling that sister.

Speaker 5 I said, well, if you think you should feel better, call her. So I went and went and sat on a sofa and I waited for a school to call.
Well, the school never called. No.
They never called.

Speaker 5 I waited all summer long and they didn't call all summer.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I'd have my buddies that I'd be playing ball with or something. They'd say to me, Robert, what's wrong? I said, nothing's wrong.
I said, oh, something's wrong. I said, nothing's wrong.

Speaker 5 Now, I knew if I told one of them, it'd be all over the place. So I didn't tell anybody.
So fast forward to the first day of school. Matter of fact, one time I went to tell my dad what was going on.

Speaker 5 And then he goes,

Speaker 5 he's got this,

Speaker 5 he's got the newspaper up. It's hot as there's no air conditioning in the house.
He's sitting on his sofa that is covered in plastic. So it would stay nice

Speaker 5 for my mother. He's sweating his ass.

Speaker 5 Smoking dirt.

Speaker 5 So I say, Dad,

Speaker 5 Dad, I'm going to tell him.

Speaker 5 Dad, and he drops the paper and I see these eyes bulging out, sweat running down his face. I said, never mind.

Speaker 5 I'm out the door. So anyhow, so first day of school,

Speaker 5 I get in. We go with Miss Maui, the neighbor lady.
You know, she had

Speaker 5 this little red beetle. She's this big, big, large woman.
And

Speaker 5 it looked like there was 100 kids in that car. You could hardly move, but anyhow, she pulls up.
We all go in. I get in line, and St.
Elizabeth had

Speaker 5 one class for each grade. And I get in line with the sixth graders, and I didn't know what else to do.

Speaker 5 And I look over in the fifth-grade class, there's Frankie and Anthony, and they're motioning me to come over. I'm going,

Speaker 5 I don't even want to look at them.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 there's a ring of the bell and then they start moving in, you know, the first graders, second graders, third, fourth, fifth.

Speaker 5 And then time for the sixth graders. And I'm at the end of the line or none that year is Sister St.
Thomas. She pulls me out of that line.
She says to me, She puts me against the wall.

Speaker 5 She's got her nose about maybe two inches from mine. She says, Sister Brenda told me what you did.

Speaker 5 And I thought, all right, there it is. And she told me what she did.
And I said,

Speaker 5 I didn't say anything. And she says, and she didn't know what to do.

Speaker 5 So she passed you.

Speaker 6 No shit.

Speaker 5 So that's how I failed the fifth grade, but I didn't have to repeat it.

Speaker 6 You moved on to sixth. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And she said to me, she said, if you give me any trouble, you're going right back into the fifth grade. I said, I'm old, sister.
And I wish I could tell you I was a lot better.

Speaker 5 I was a little bit better, right?

Speaker 5 And I remember when I got my sixth grade grades, I showed them to my mother, and she goes, well, it's nothing to be proud of, but she did pass. And

Speaker 5 I like it better when you get a report card. I said, so do I, mom.

Speaker 6 Oh, man. So at what point did

Speaker 6 I mean when did you get interested in the Marine Corps?

Speaker 5 I got got

Speaker 5 interested in the Marine Corps one day at the end of gym class. I was a senior.
It was probably March or April. And

Speaker 5 I had discovered

Speaker 5 alcohol. And I had discovered,

Speaker 5 rediscovered the opposite sex.

Speaker 5 And neither have ever been known to help grades in school.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 5 And so I took in

Speaker 5 with

Speaker 5 that, I was sure I was going to fail. I mean, at this time, I wouldn't

Speaker 5 be able to pull it off. So I had two buddies say to me that they,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 they were going to go talk to the Marine Corps recruiter on Conklin Street. Would I go with them? And I said, sure, I got nothing to do.
So

Speaker 5 I went with them, and it was

Speaker 5 a guy named Mike and a guy named Aggie, Agaris, his name was

Speaker 5 a Creek guy. And

Speaker 5 we take in,

Speaker 5 go meet this recruiter. And he had us at hello, buddy.
And so I joined right with the boys, right with them.

Speaker 5 And my mother had to sign the papers for me to join. Oh, really? And she said, she said, and maybe this will be what you need.
And it's during the height of the vietnam war that was in 1968

Speaker 5 man it was uh

Speaker 5 every war was rocking and rolling then and so um

Speaker 5 i went and uh showed all my teachers when i could finally get my orders uh because the marine corps

Speaker 5 uh a recruiter said you know we check your grades and this and that and the other thing you know and you know we won't take you unless you're top-notch and so forth and so i thought uh you know probably not get in, but I'll do it anyhow.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 I could have had no head, and they'd have told me back during those days.

Speaker 5 And so,

Speaker 5 you know, I got accepted. And

Speaker 5 there you go.

Speaker 5 You knew you were going to war. Huh?

Speaker 6 You knew you were going to go to war.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I thought it was.

Speaker 5 And then, you know, like

Speaker 5 the idiots that

Speaker 5 young guys can be, you know, we all said, man, we hope it's not over until we get there. And,

Speaker 5 well, we got our wish.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 you must have joined, what, age, 17?

Speaker 5 I was 17, yeah.

Speaker 6 17 years old. Joined the Marine Corps to go to Vietnam.

Speaker 6 And what, what did you,

Speaker 6 what was your job description in the Marine Corps?

Speaker 5 0311, buddy. Nice.
Is the number familiar?

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 Very familiar. Yeah, I was in 0311.
Aggie was in 0311. Michael was in 0311.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so, and then crazy shit happens, and we come home, Aggie gets in a tussle at a bar, his mother owns, gets stabbed to death. So he never even went.
And then me and Mike went.

Speaker 5 I went to

Speaker 5 Delta Company, 26 Marines. We're in Quang Nam province.
And then Mike, he went to the First Marines somewhere. And

Speaker 5 I don't see him anymore. And there we go.

Speaker 6 Well, it sounds like the Marine Corps was a very transformative process for you.

Speaker 5 100%.

Speaker 6 Give it a lot of credit.

Speaker 5 Yeah. You know, the one thing I'll say is,

Speaker 5 you know, it was,

Speaker 5 you know, they did more for me than I ever did for them.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 everything I ever accomplished, ever accomplished, I'd have never done it without the Marine Corps because they give me direction.

Speaker 5 They give me the importance of understanding responsibility.

Speaker 5 They give me

Speaker 5 the fact that

Speaker 5 to believe in myself and that I can accomplish more than I ever dreamed possible. And

Speaker 5 I was hoping for that.

Speaker 6 So, how long was it from when you

Speaker 6 signed in, when you signed the documents, that you went off to Vietnam?

Speaker 5 I signed the documents probably

Speaker 5 in April,

Speaker 5 maybe May, April, May. And then I went, I was inducted in in August and six months after August, Vietnam.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 6 So you went, basically you went through basic training,

Speaker 6 your infantry school through 11 school, and then right to

Speaker 5 theater. There you go.

Speaker 6 How was boot camp for you? Basic training?

Speaker 5 Well, boot camp took me a while to get adjusted, but after a while I got adjusted, which is fine, you know. I mean, the food was great.

Speaker 5 And I still remember that ice cold chocolate milk.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, for me, it was the food. The food of Parasite was stuff up.

Speaker 5 And so, so, you know,

Speaker 5 I liked it. I was able to

Speaker 5 do it. And

Speaker 5 I would have been a rifle expert. I was a rifle sharpshooter, and I was doing okay until I had like two rounds left.
And I had

Speaker 5 drill instructor, Sergeant Little, he said, Parsons, you better leave screwing my

Speaker 5 And he was pissed at me because I wasn't

Speaker 6 What did your parents think about and your siblings think about Vietnam? you going?

Speaker 5 Well, you know, my dad said he wished he could go in my place.

Speaker 5 And mom,

Speaker 5 mom, you know, you have to understand my parents, they were very different. Mom, my mother was, when she was a young girl, she was beat a lot by her father and so forth.

Speaker 5 So she was abused in that sense. And so she didn't have a lot of, she had a lot of love beat out of her.
So I remember when it was time for me to leave for

Speaker 5 for her to catch the plane at Friendship Airport, which is not Baltimore, Washington then.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I'd go to Friendship Airport and

Speaker 5 before that I was at

Speaker 5 night before

Speaker 5 and my mother comes in and she says,

Speaker 5 dad just got up and went to work. He didn't even say anything.
No kidding. No.
And then mom said, well,

Speaker 5 I'm going to the racetrack when Aunt Burt. don't get yourself killed that was it that was it

Speaker 5 and off they went

Speaker 5 and so I called

Speaker 5 called my brother I mean not my brother my cousin and he'd give me a ride to the airport and

Speaker 5 they had there's a lot of guys there they had their

Speaker 5 girlfriends and sisters and family and mother signs and all this sort of thing. It was me, it was just me.

Speaker 5 But see,

Speaker 5 the hell of it was I was, that's all I was ever used to,

Speaker 5 so I didn't, didn't bother me too much. Um,

Speaker 5 and then

Speaker 6 to Pendleton, holy shit, yeah, so you got no send-off from family, no,

Speaker 7 wow,

Speaker 6 were you guys close at all?

Speaker 5 Family, yeah,

Speaker 5 no,

Speaker 5 me and my brother.

Speaker 6 Where do you fall in the birth order?

Speaker 5 Oh, I'm the first, my brother's the second, and my little sister.

Speaker 5 And now

Speaker 5 they're all passed except for my little sister and me. And she and I are close, so.

Speaker 6 That's good to hear. What's her name?

Speaker 5 Beverly.

Speaker 6 I mean, was there any communication once you got?

Speaker 6 Did you write them letters or anything?

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, they'd write letters. And

Speaker 5 mostly it would be my brother and and my sister would write me letters and my buddies, some of them would, and um uh once in a while um

Speaker 5 um

Speaker 5 Paris would write me a letter, but not much.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 6 Well, let's talk about

Speaker 6 let's move into Vietnam.

Speaker 6 What was it like landing there?

Speaker 5 Well, man, I tell you what, that place smelled different than any place I ever smelled in my life

Speaker 5 smelled like rot

Speaker 5 so we spent our our first night guarding the rear area and that's just some someplace to put us you know so they trucked us out to our unit and

Speaker 5 uh we we were with uh delta company 1st battalion 26 Marines, 1st Platoon, 2nd Squad.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I got to my squad, and we're in Quang Nam, rice paddies as far as you can see.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it was quite a place.

Speaker 5 I remember

Speaker 5 the guys were staying in a tent, canvas tent.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so

Speaker 5 I had a

Speaker 5 bunk and a couple guys,

Speaker 5 I think it's like a Marine Corps Rifle squad, it's about 12 guys.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 there was not 12 guys in the squad.

Speaker 5 It was like

Speaker 5 seven or yeah, seven.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 maybe even less because it was just the guys that were there and then us. And what happened is that they were ambushed a couple days before

Speaker 5 we were sent out there. We were sent there as me and a couple others were sent there as replacements for the guys that were killed in this ambush.
So

Speaker 5 they were killed. And

Speaker 5 there was

Speaker 5 four of them were killed. One of them was seriously wounded.
And

Speaker 5 to a man, it was all the senior guys.

Speaker 5 So the guy who was

Speaker 5 the senior man, this new squad leader, had just turned 19 and had been in the bush for six weeks that was the most senior guy yeah

Speaker 5 wow yeah what did you think about that well at at first i you know we were going out on our first night sand bush and i sat down and

Speaker 5 i mean i went outside the hut and we had this we're at the very top of hill 190 and you know means it's a hill 190 the numbers it's 190 feet above sea level so so we're at the top of this and right at the the top was this old French fort there.

Speaker 5 This

Speaker 5 wall with shell holes in it and stuff. So I guess the French were overrun there.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I sat on this wall and I kept starting thinking about

Speaker 5 how in the hell am I going to survive this? Because the Army, Navy, and Air Force, their tours are 12 months. Marine Corps is 13 months.
I don't know shit from China all about this place.

Speaker 5 The guy who I'm replacing, you know, I mean,

Speaker 5 the guy who replaced the squad leader, you know, he don't know either because, I mean, he hadn't been here much longer than I do. And

Speaker 5 so it didn't look good. So

Speaker 5 I started,

Speaker 5 you know, I got scared for just a little

Speaker 5 bit.

Speaker 5 And then it occurred to me that

Speaker 5 I probably wasn't going to survive it. I was going going to die there.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I mean, it was a hard thought at first, but

Speaker 5 then after you accept it,

Speaker 5 then nothing bothers you.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 It's interesting that you say that because

Speaker 6 You're the only other person I've heard that articulated that. And

Speaker 6 that's kind of the way

Speaker 6 I meant to inject my own

Speaker 6 experiences because they're irrelevant right now. But

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 that's how I dealt with it too. I just always assumed I was already dead.
And so

Speaker 6 it kind of

Speaker 6 took the fear out of it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it takes the fear totally out of it.

Speaker 5 But what it does, though, is you can do your job.

Speaker 6 Yep.

Speaker 5 You can do your job. And so

Speaker 5 that night we went on our first

Speaker 5 ambush.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 you had come up with that mindset before any fighting had even started.

Speaker 5 Excuse me?

Speaker 6 You had come up with that mindset that you're already dead.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Before

Speaker 6 you ever pulled a trigger, before you were ever shot at, before you ever saw anything.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I did. I didn't.

Speaker 5 Because I've been in so many different types of situations, you know. And it's just, we're just,

Speaker 5 you know, it's just,

Speaker 5 this is what it's going to be, you know. And

Speaker 5 so, so anyhow, so that's, that's the thought that I had. And the interesting thing is, is I'm friends with most of the guys in that squad.

Speaker 5 There's seven of them that

Speaker 5 five.

Speaker 5 Five of them.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 most of them tell me the same story no kidding and they said I never told anybody I mean one one guy who's a squad leader that guy that was the squad leader he turned out to be marvelous but he had the same thing he said he said how can you do your job if you worry about you know you worry about

Speaker 5 you know you you're whether you're going to live or not right he says

Speaker 5 That's just not your problem at the moment, right? And the machine gunner, same thing. You know, know, this guy's name is Brown.
He lives down in Austin, Texas. I love the guy.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 anyhow, but none of us told each other.

Speaker 6 No shit.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 We just had that mindset. So anyhow, so we go out.
We get our first ambush.

Speaker 5 We have a corpsman with us.

Speaker 5 And then a sister squad.

Speaker 5 We're in a, we're just outside a village in a pagoda.

Speaker 6 And then... What's a pagoda?

Speaker 5 A pagoda is it's like a little religious place okay where they have altars and stuff like that at least that's what we call them was pagodas and um so and then about a click or a couple clicks from us was another pagoda and we had a sister squad set up there

Speaker 5 and after we were set up on this ambush for

Speaker 5 maybe

Speaker 5 maybe

Speaker 5 an hour or 45 minutes or something, but it was before we did a first move, you know, because we would go out, we set up an ambush,

Speaker 5 we'd do a wait a while, let it get good and dark, and then there'd be a first, and then there'd be a first move,

Speaker 5 and then we'd set someplace else,

Speaker 5 and then there'd be another move, and then we'd set them for the night. And the deal would be to move so

Speaker 5 nobody knows where you're at.

Speaker 5 So, anyhow, that was the thought. So

Speaker 5 this

Speaker 5 squad,

Speaker 5 our sister squad, is in this other pagoda, and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose where they are. And we get the radio call that they sprung their ambush.
They had a fucking

Speaker 5 VC or MVA come out of a spider hole and threw a ChiCom at this guy.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 5 he picked it up, went to threw it back, and it went off in his hand. Shit.
Yeah, so he's pretty fucked up. And so, to get there

Speaker 5 with the Corman, because they didn't have a Corman with them. So, we get there, we run through

Speaker 5 this fucking rice patty. Ever walked through a rice paddy? No.
Well, I'll tell you what, rice patty is the shittiest thing in the world to walk through.

Speaker 5 I think God put him there to say, Don't walk here.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 5 the mud would be like about a

Speaker 5 water be like about maybe a couple of feet deep. And then the mud would be a couple of be a foot or deep or so.
So you'd go down in it and

Speaker 5 every kind of vermin you can think of is crawling around in there.

Speaker 5 So we're running through this rice paddy. I got my gear halfway on, halfway off.
It's my first night in the bush. I don't know.

Speaker 5 Anyway, that it ought to be. It's choking me.

Speaker 5 His magazines are choking me. I got them in like a bay of the Laro like you see in the old West, you know.

Speaker 5 Stupid. But

Speaker 5 nobody was there to show me. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 5 So we get there.

Speaker 5 This guy is

Speaker 5 hurt horrifically. Not dead.

Speaker 5 Arm gone.

Speaker 5 Side of his head gone.

Speaker 5 They're trying to check an eye that's not there with a hand that's not there. I mean, it's crazy shit, you know, that you see, you see in war.

Speaker 5 And the squad leader is this guy named Blackwell.

Speaker 5 And he starts,

Speaker 5 he's, he starts

Speaker 5 just standing in this rice paddy. And

Speaker 5 he's throwing up and then he's just standing there.

Speaker 5 And it's this helicopter just coming in, this Huey's coming in, and it's going to land right on him.

Speaker 5 So I see it, I run

Speaker 5 and grab him and push, push, push, push, push. It misses him, it misses me.

Speaker 5 But we hit a rice right he tank and go

Speaker 5 and this, and he snaps him out of it. And then, so I saved his ass.
It's then saved my own ass. But

Speaker 5 so then we took in and

Speaker 5 they told us to go back out. It's a different ambush place after this guy, Hunt gets taken back, you know, Medevac back.
And by the way, it's a big time. He didn't die.

Speaker 5 I've not seen him at a reunion, yeah.

Speaker 6 No shit. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And so I take in,

Speaker 5 we sat in with this sister squad, which we weren't supposed to do at all. But we thought we'd get some sleep.
So the next morning, the sun breaks. Nobody's answering the radios where we are.

Speaker 5 And a hell

Speaker 5 What the fuck? Her firing a.50 caliber machine gun over her head.

Speaker 5 Then we mowed her back and I joined her ass out. And that was my first night in the bush.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 how did that, I mean, how did that experience

Speaker 6 sit with you? I mean, that's mission number one. You see a guy

Speaker 6 gets his arm blown off, gets half his face blown off.

Speaker 5 You know, it didn't.

Speaker 6 It didn't.

Speaker 6 Were you numb to it before it ever happened?

Speaker 5 No, pretty much, yeah. Pretty much.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 the thing was, the crazy thing was, is that

Speaker 5 those guys

Speaker 5 were the first family I had.

Speaker 5 Just that little bit of time, I fell in love with those guys. I mean, they were my brothers.
I mean, it happened like, boom, like that.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 then to this day, I'm still close to him. I talk to him once a week, certainly once a month.

Speaker 6 And so your guys' mission said,

Speaker 6 your mission said was to go set up ambushes.

Speaker 5 That was it. Yeah.

Speaker 6 How many ambushes do you think you set up?

Speaker 5 Well, not a lot. Not a lot.
I mean, I was in the bush for a month. And then I got wounded.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 5 I got wounded. But

Speaker 5 then I hit a

Speaker 5 Chikom, Chinese Communist Grenade, we call them ChiComs.

Speaker 5 It was set up as

Speaker 5 a

Speaker 5 trap.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 my buddy,

Speaker 5 what the fuck's his name?

Speaker 5 Because

Speaker 5 my mind just went blank, but he'll kill me.

Speaker 5 I forgot his fucking name.

Speaker 6 We'll get there. We'll get there.

Speaker 5 So anyhow,

Speaker 5 he steps over a

Speaker 5 tripwire, and I hit it. And so I just got caught shrapnel in both legs and left elbow.
And then I got medevaced out all the way to the naval hospital in the Cusco.

Speaker 5 So I was there for a couple of months or three or I don't even remember. I don't even know how long.

Speaker 6 If it's okay,

Speaker 6 let's go. I want to get to that.
Okay. Get a little more descriptive.
But what were some of the other ambushes that you guys had done?

Speaker 5 We're walking one ambush.

Speaker 5 Brownie

Speaker 5 sees all of a sudden where we're at. We're going through this village, right? And it's just gotten dark, right? And we're going through this village.
And

Speaker 5 two NVA soldiers, both with NVA rifles, black pajamas, the whole mine yards, come running right at us. He turns with his M60 and takes them both out.

Speaker 5 I mean, they were dancing like dolls.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so, yeah, so, and then that night, at night, and right then, you know,

Speaker 5 we sweep towards the area where we had the activity come from. And my place was, I was sweeping towards where

Speaker 5 there was

Speaker 5 the hooch that I think that they came running out of.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I took a hand grenade

Speaker 5 and threw it, right?

Speaker 5 And only it didn't go as far as I thought it was going to go.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it landed, but it landed on the other side of a rice patty dike facing away from us. So when it blew, it blew away from us, right?

Speaker 5 Guys, Ligatic and George, the squad leader, scared the shit out of them.

Speaker 5 He turned around and go, did you just fucking throw that? And I said, yeah, I did. And they go,

Speaker 5 well,

Speaker 5 don't throw any more tonight.

Speaker 5 And then so the next day, George tells me to don't throw any more hand grenades. I said, do I still have to carry them? He says, fucking right, you got to carry them.

Speaker 5 He says, just give them to somebody else to throw. And I said to him, suppose we're getting over and run.
And he says, then you can throw them.

Speaker 6 How were you guys moving around at night through that jungle?

Speaker 5 Well, where we were,

Speaker 5 the only time I went through the jungle was

Speaker 5 during the day because there was rice patties on one side.

Speaker 5 There's not a lot of jungle on rice patties

Speaker 5 located. And then the other side is where there was jungle and so forth.

Speaker 5 I spent some time there, but it was all during the day.

Speaker 5 But it was mostly just quiet, quiet and being in the dark.

Speaker 6 With seven guys.

Speaker 5 Well, seven and then ten and then twelve and then

Speaker 5 that sort of thing.

Speaker 5 And then,

Speaker 5 I mean, it's just so many things. The first night I was there, I shot a snake.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 we would sweep and body count was a big thing.

Speaker 5 So we'd sweep through the rice patties and we put up illumination, you know, that comes comes down on them parachutes.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 we'd look for bodies. So of course we didn't find any.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 because

Speaker 5 this is NVA that we did kill, they always would have something around a piece of rope around their neck to be pulled away by somebody else.

Speaker 6 No shit. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 6 that's how they would collect their dead.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 They would noose them.

Speaker 5 They would noose them and drag them through. Yep.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 5 So, so they, I mean, these guys have more stories, 100 more stories than I do, 100 times. But, I mean, so, so we start sweeping, and I look, and there's this big fucking snake

Speaker 5 in the water and swimming right towards me. I mean, it's swimming right fucking towards me, right?

Speaker 5 And it's my,

Speaker 5 it's my squad and this other squad.

Speaker 5 So, so we take in the,

Speaker 5 we take in the

Speaker 5 squad's snake.

Speaker 5 And anyhow, so the snake's coming down. And just when it's about two or three feet, because I'm thinking, surely it's going to go left to right, right?

Speaker 5 This thing is coming like it's going to bite me in the balls, right?

Speaker 5 So I put my rifle on automatic.

Speaker 5 And all this water goes flying up and it hits me in the fucking eyes. And I move

Speaker 5 I look and I get my eyes cleared I look left left right nobody's there they're all into water

Speaker 5 oh fuck well I didn't hear the end of that forever and then George George was nice about it later because the next day he said next time don't shoot the snake

Speaker 5 no

Speaker 5 So anyhow, that was that night. So it's just crazy shit to happen.

Speaker 5 I remember one time we were on a day patrol for some reason others a whole company's coming out and it's a day patrol or the whole platoon it was fewer to us but me and two of me Proctor and a guy named Pavlovich were sent to get water so we go into the village and they we get water right so we go into the village we got everybody's canteen

Speaker 5 Right. And so we go in.
And just when we go to get water, we can see this kid. He's coming out.
He's got like one of these trays in front of him, like

Speaker 5 a small, like small Coke's coming, the wooden trays. And he's got a burlap strap holding it up, and he's got burlap covering it.
You know what he's got in there?

Speaker 5 I swear to God, you're not going to believe it. Nobody fucking believes me.
And Proctor and the other three guys are dead. So

Speaker 5 Vanola Popsicles. He had fucking Vanola Popsicles.

Speaker 5 It did. He did.
And And so I take, and we take, and before you know it, this kid had everything we had of value. Bread, cans of bread, cigarettes.

Speaker 5 I mean, we're just eating one popsicle after another, right? Pravalovich goes,

Speaker 5 suppose these are poison. And then Proctor goes, who gives a fuck?

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 that's one of my happy, happy stories about the place.

Speaker 5 But crazy shit.

Speaker 6 crazy stuff did you get into any firefights

Speaker 5 you know the the the the one that was the most was we we surrounded this

Speaker 5 village small village and and in it somehow

Speaker 5 they they figured out that there was a squad or

Speaker 5 part of a platoon of North Vietnamese in the village and we caught them there during the day

Speaker 5 And so, so we're in there,

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 we're on the side, and there's a machine gun is the side that Turks is at.

Speaker 5 I mean, that we're at. And so, Brownie is on a little knoll not too far from us.
And George says,

Speaker 5 you, Parsons, and

Speaker 5 what the fuck is

Speaker 5 Bryant, the guy's name is Bryant. He goes, you and Bryant run the run the

Speaker 5 can of

Speaker 5 machine gun ammo over to Brownie.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 we did. And then his fucking gun starts taking on us, starts shooting at us.
We dive. We're laying against this dike and it's shooting over top of us.
We get up, we get this stuff over to Brownie.

Speaker 5 And the funniest damn thing happened is I've thought about that

Speaker 5 at night that day many, many times

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 5 I cannot remember what happened no shit and I so I go to a reunion I asked one of them one of the guys there so do you remember what happened

Speaker 5 right and he says oh we killed every fucking one of them I said did we I said, I was there one night. I said, yeah, you were there.
I said, anything unusual happened? No.

Speaker 5 I don't remember. I mean, it's like it didn't happen.
I remember the giving the

Speaker 5 ammo to

Speaker 5 Brandy and his kid Goodwin, who was right where his egg hunter.

Speaker 5 And no, that's it.

Speaker 6 Nothing.

Speaker 5 Nothing.

Speaker 6 Totally blocked it out of your memory.

Speaker 5 Totally.

Speaker 6 I'm just curious. I mean, did you

Speaker 6 come up during any of your psychedelic journeys?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 6 Never.

Speaker 5 Oh.

Speaker 7 No. Wow.

Speaker 5 Nope.

Speaker 5 Nope. didn't.
And

Speaker 5 that is the only, to the best of my knowledge, the only incident like that.

Speaker 5 And firefights, exchanged rifle fire a couple times, but not a lot. I mean, I had seen light combat, I mean, compared to most guys, especially the guys who were up around

Speaker 5 the DMZ.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 man,

Speaker 5 when I got wounded, I think I had about,

Speaker 5 I probably saved my life.

Speaker 6 Do you think you killed anybody that night?

Speaker 5 I don't know.

Speaker 5 I mean, how would you know?

Speaker 6 Do you're.

Speaker 5 I mean, I didn't know I mean, they weren't close like me to you.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Right? Or, you know, I could like when Brandy took those two NVA out. I mean, they come.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, I could see that, but

Speaker 5 I didn't do anything like that.

Speaker 6 Was that the first engagement when the two Vietnamese charged you guys? Is that the first engagement you've seen it?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I I think so. No, no, it was one before that.

Speaker 6 What was the one before that?

Speaker 5 One before that, there was a bunch. There was some MVA about maybe

Speaker 5 a football field or two away from us in a village. And we started firing on, and they firing that back, and nobody got hit.
And the best of my knowledge, we never hit anybody.

Speaker 6 So the first time you saw Americans kill the enemy was when they charged you in that village?

Speaker 5 No, no, no, Americans.

Speaker 5 They were NBA.

Speaker 6 That's what I mean. They were charging you guys.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yep. What did that feel like

Speaker 6 for you?

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 in some ways it was exhilarating.

Speaker 5 Some ways it was.

Speaker 6 To see it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, it was.

Speaker 5 I mean, I was like part of the team. I mean it was just that was I mean that that that was it.
I mean I didn't do much for the team, but I was part of the team

Speaker 6 Did you think much about it

Speaker 6 afterwards?

Speaker 5 No

Speaker 6 later on in life?

Speaker 5 No

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 You know, and

Speaker 5 to be honest with you,

Speaker 5 the stuff that,

Speaker 5 some of the stuff that I've seen that

Speaker 5 fucking rocked me

Speaker 5 was

Speaker 5 stuff that

Speaker 5 happened later. I went in combat.
You know, I mean,

Speaker 5 it was just

Speaker 5 the whole idea of the war. And I mean, I remember seeing those two guys, they look like dolls.
Dead dolls, right? But

Speaker 5 their legs are all contorted and shit.

Speaker 6 Where was this?

Speaker 5 It was the same episode.

Speaker 6 Oh, okay.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Same episode.

Speaker 5 If you're looking for a war hero, brother, I ain't the guy.

Speaker 6 Well, I'm just fascinated in Vietnam. I mean,

Speaker 6 that was you guys and your generation.

Speaker 6 That was what really

Speaker 6 inspired me to... to become a SEAL and

Speaker 6 go overseas, you know, for

Speaker 6 my generation's award.

Speaker 5 Vietnam, baby.

Speaker 6 So I just have a ton of respect for Vietnam vets.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I got a whole story. When you're ready, you want to take a break or whatever?

Speaker 6 Yeah, let's go into,

Speaker 6 let's start where you got wounded because you're a Purple Heart Vietnam recipient.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So.

Speaker 5 I go to

Speaker 5 one of the things I have,

Speaker 5 I've got a good good memory, which is unusual, me not remembering anything on that

Speaker 5 at that time when me and Bryant were running and over.

Speaker 5 I remember

Speaker 5 they carried me back and they couldn't get a

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 another night I had a guy got wounded.

Speaker 5 A point man hit a trap. He was walking on a rice patty dike, right?

Speaker 5 And I helped carry him back. And the reason we had to carry him back is because his legs were hurt.
And

Speaker 5 his legs were hurt. And he

Speaker 5 was obviously going to live.

Speaker 5 And the war, business of the war was really good some other place and all the choppers were busy, at least at least that's what i was told and when i was wounded it's the same thing happened right only i wasn't walking on it on a dike i was walking on a path through a village um

Speaker 5 so so i take and um uh get um

Speaker 5 uh

Speaker 5 they get me to this to this road

Speaker 5 And there's these two

Speaker 5 guys in a road, but they got me, they just shoot me full of morphine, I think it was. And I mean, I didn't give a fuck about anything.
And

Speaker 5 one interesting thing before that, which is a fun story before that,

Speaker 5 I take, and

Speaker 5 I get sent back because

Speaker 5 I got a cut and some barbed wire or something. I cut all my fucking fatigues up.
I only had one pair.

Speaker 5 So the company kind of sent me back to the rear that day, and he said to get a whole new set of fatigues and to get it to get a haircut and then come on back. A haircut.
Yeah, it did.

Speaker 5 I had to

Speaker 5 get it all cut. So I take in,

Speaker 5 I go back, I get my haircut, and then I go to where the fatigues are. And there's these two rear area guys who are with storage fatigues.
And it's this big warehouse. And I said, I'm here to get some

Speaker 5 fatigues.

Speaker 5 And they said, well, you need a check signed by the colonel. I said, well, where's the colonel? They said, well, he's up in Dongha, which is 100 miles north.
And I said, well,

Speaker 5 I got to go back to the bush. And, you know,

Speaker 5 these pants are all ripped up. So they said,

Speaker 5 brother,

Speaker 5 they'll hang us if we give them to you. So we can't.
So finally, after, you know, it was useless arguing with those guys.

Speaker 5 I start walking back and I start walking back and I go through this area where there's a quantit huts.

Speaker 5 Well, it must have been there. One of them was there in one of the quantit huts like it.

Speaker 5 I opened the door up

Speaker 5 and I go in and it's like fucking candy land in there.

Speaker 5 So I take and open one of the lockers and it's got a brand new set of fatigues in it.

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 5 try them on. They fit me.
I take mine off, put them on a hanger, hang them in there.

Speaker 5 And then I go ahead and I look on one of the mattresses as

Speaker 5 a rubber lady, an air mattress.

Speaker 5 Not a rubber lady like you get at the pad shop,

Speaker 5 you know, just a rubber lady. So I take in, I take all the air out of it and then put it under my arm.
And then I take and start with all my new pockets.

Speaker 5 I start start stuffing Marlboro's and Winston's in it because those motherfuckers would take all the Marlboros and Winston's and they'd send us out like L ⁇ Ms and Salems and Kent's and nasty ass cigarettes.

Speaker 5 So I go back and these guys are saying, where the fuck you get that? I said, never mind, I just got it.

Speaker 5 So I gave him some cigarettes and so forth and I

Speaker 5 blew that rubber lady up. And

Speaker 5 so I only slept and had it for like two days. And then I got wounded.
So

Speaker 5 I'm going away in a case. He says, hey, Parsons, who gets your rubber lady? I said, you guys decide.

Speaker 6 Nice.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 let's talk about the day that you got wounded.

Speaker 6 Is it as much detail as you can remember?

Speaker 5 Well, the thing I remember the most is

Speaker 5 these guys driving me with no headlights on through these dirt roads, right,

Speaker 5 to get to the field hospital. And

Speaker 5 they had some country western music going. I remember that.
They were singing. I thought they were fucking loaded.
And I didn't really give a shit.

Speaker 5 But, you know, they were, you know, as long as they were there taking me. So they take me, they take me to

Speaker 5 the field hospital.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 immediately cut all my clothes off.

Speaker 5 And then they do a triage.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I guess they determined I was not

Speaker 5 seriously wounded. And

Speaker 5 then they put me inside this big tent.

Speaker 5 And it was cold as shit. I mean, it was so cold in that tent.

Speaker 5 And because it was going from outside, it was like 80, 90 degrees inside,

Speaker 5 60, 70.

Speaker 5 So I remember they kept moving.

Speaker 5 I was laying on just a canvas cot, and they kept moving it closer, closer, and they had all these buckets of water.

Speaker 5 And they put me on

Speaker 5 this x-ray machine

Speaker 5 because I was wondering what the water was for. And when they took me off the x-ray machine, they washed it off.

Speaker 5 And then the next thing I know, I was in surgery. I don't remember anything after that.

Speaker 5 Then next morning I wake up, bed is soaked, pissed all over.

Speaker 5 And the corporate says, don't worry, brother, it was just so busy we didn't have time to put a catheter in you. And

Speaker 5 so I put one in me and then changed sheets. And

Speaker 5 then the colonel come over and said, congratulations, you're just purple heart.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 6 In the actual, the actual operation,

Speaker 6 the ambush that you were on,

Speaker 6 can you describe how you were wounded again?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I hit a tripwire.

Speaker 5 Hit a tripwire. Hit a tripwire.
It was on the left side of me, and it caught the shrapnel here

Speaker 5 and in my left elbow.

Speaker 5 And I remember the surgeon saying, you know, you had a piece of big piece of shrapnel go into the joint and didn't damage it.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 5 So I was lucky. I mean, I was lucky as I can be.

Speaker 6 Were you conscious the entire time?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 5 A little bit. Just a little bit.

Speaker 6 For the explosion.

Speaker 5 Oh, the explosion. Yeah, I was conscious most of the time.

Speaker 5 I didn't go out.

Speaker 5 I just remember when that fucking thing went off and I went down on the ground. I said to the, I turned to

Speaker 5 George, because I was learning to walk point then.

Speaker 5 And so Bryant was walking first. I was walking second.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I said, Jesus Christ, it fucking hurts. And then it didn't so much, and then it did, and

Speaker 5 then they shot me with morphine and

Speaker 5 so forth. I didn't hear it so much.
I seen it, you know.

Speaker 5 Didn't know what happened at first.

Speaker 5 You know, disoriented totally.

Speaker 6 Did you think you were going to die?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 6 You knew you would live.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I thought I would.

Speaker 5 Thought I fucking would.

Speaker 5 Oh, God. And the guys, the guys I always got pissed and started fucking putting a Zippo to this village.
And

Speaker 5 he says they got

Speaker 5 George Squad leader got in a little bit of trouble for that.

Speaker 5 And he said he was in trouble. And then

Speaker 5 the North Vietnamese had a big push through the area that we were in. I wasn't in it no more, but

Speaker 5 we were in, and

Speaker 5 he forgave him

Speaker 5 because he was a good fucking Marine. Jesus Christ, he was good.

Speaker 5 Like about a couple days after,

Speaker 5 they

Speaker 5 set up on this

Speaker 5 bank in these reeds.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 they seen

Speaker 5 a

Speaker 5 squad of NVA come through

Speaker 5 and started coming out, started coming out of the water. They opened up on them.
They killed them all.

Speaker 5 And then they were ordered by our captain, Captain Moorhead, to go all the way down,

Speaker 5 to go about a mile or two out of sight and then turn around and go

Speaker 5 a couple clicks in, then come all the way back and reset up in the same spot. And they did.

Speaker 5 And when they did, they

Speaker 5 an hour or two later, the company, the rest of the company came through.

Speaker 5 And of course, these guys, being the fucking knuckleheads as they were, opened up on all of them.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 then they said, George said, there was a fucking whole fight went on all night. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And there was

Speaker 5 a fucking

Speaker 5 A gunship was going around the fucking,

Speaker 5 you know.

Speaker 5 And uh, when the sun shone, he says there was bodies everywhere. And where there weren't bodies, there were drag marks, you know.

Speaker 7 And wow.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Well, Bob, let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, we'll talk about your coming home.

Speaker 5 Well, talking, we got to talk about the hospital first.

Speaker 6 All right, we'll pick up at the hospital.

Speaker 5 There you go, buddy.

Speaker 6 Perfect.

Speaker 6 All right, Bob, we're back from the break. We're picking up at the hospital.

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 5 Well, I'm back at the hospital, and

Speaker 5 I think you think about a military hospital

Speaker 5 in wartime,

Speaker 5 you see a lot of

Speaker 5 fucked up dudes, boy.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 man, it's just really, really screwed up.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 seen this young kid was a

Speaker 5 Marine

Speaker 5 recon.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 he

Speaker 5 was out on some long distance LERP they called it or something like that, the long distance reconnaissance. Reconnaissance, yeah.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 he hit a bouncing petty.

Speaker 5 You know, it's the only time I've heard of one or heard of anybody hitting one, but I heard about them all the time, but never actually anybody, you know, falling victim.

Speaker 5 But that's what he fell victim to. And, you know, bouncing petty, it's a rocket on the inside of a pressure plate.
You tread on it.

Speaker 5 As soon as you tread on it, as soon as the weight goes off, that rocket's coming up.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it's, I mean, you're fucked. That's just, that's

Speaker 5 all there is to it. And it

Speaker 5 blew his ass off.

Speaker 5 And he was

Speaker 5 completely paralyzed

Speaker 5 and the guys would take turns. He was sandwiched between two boards and a device that had a you know

Speaker 5 opening for his groin and this is a tail

Speaker 5 and uh

Speaker 5 we would take turns turning comic book pages for him

Speaker 5 and uh

Speaker 5 i felt so sorry for that guy And I mean, and other stuff you'd say, you know, it's just

Speaker 5 so fucked up.

Speaker 5 The thing I remember,

Speaker 5 one one of the hardest things

Speaker 5 about that. I mean,

Speaker 5 whatever brought the war home, that did.

Speaker 5 I mean, you know, you spend some time in a military hospital.

Speaker 5 You'll see.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 Navy lost my payroll records.

Speaker 5 So I couldn't go off base.

Speaker 5 I used to say to some of the guys,

Speaker 5 I had to have some civilian clothes and some money to go off base. And I'd say,

Speaker 5 can you loan me some money and your civvies? And so I could go on liberty. He says, I like you, man, but not that much.

Speaker 5 Oh, God.

Speaker 6 Jeez. You know, I read somewhere, or maybe I saw it on an interview.
I can't remember.

Speaker 6 Did you think that you had a guardian angel?

Speaker 5 I did.

Speaker 5 I did.

Speaker 6 Why did you think that?

Speaker 5 So many, so many things happened that I just

Speaker 5 come out okay.

Speaker 5 Like

Speaker 5 another time we're in a firefight in a village, right? Again, nobody's hit, nobody's done anything.

Speaker 5 Me and this dude named Pavlovich,

Speaker 5 we go

Speaker 5 into this

Speaker 5 hooch,

Speaker 5 searching for Christ knows what.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 in there is one of these little tables.

Speaker 5 And it's a long table. It's about maybe four feet, five feet, four feet tall.
And on it is a bowl, one bowl.

Speaker 5 And in the bowl

Speaker 5 was

Speaker 5 an undetonated tonk round.

Speaker 5 from the night before

Speaker 5 when

Speaker 5 we had this guy named Cook. and Cook was one of these guys go to jail or join the Marine Corps for stealing cars.

Speaker 5 And so he, you know, it's back on the Marine Corps. It was doing what it could to, you know, fill the ranks.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so anyhow, he fired it, didn't go off,

Speaker 5 somehow landed there, but our boy

Speaker 5 Pavlovich moved his fat ass and tipped the bowl

Speaker 5 and and they had this wooden floor put in i mean small this kind of a crappy wooden floor on the altar and this thing hit the hit the wood

Speaker 5 didn't explode motherfucker now that got my attention

Speaker 5 yeah

Speaker 5 so i go outside and i go there's no way i'll go back in there

Speaker 5 period and uh so cook goes back in there and they used to used to have on the helmets, they'd have these big black rubber bands, right?

Speaker 5 Pieces of rubber, and they would keep bug repellent, bug juice in them, right?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 Cook put

Speaker 5 the Dud M's, what's it M79?

Speaker 6 Holy shit. He put an

Speaker 6 unexploded round.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it was an M79.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah, it was the M79.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so he puts the M79 round in it, and we're walking back, and you could see he's got, you got about

Speaker 5 two, three guys,

Speaker 5 and then one guy

Speaker 5 watching him, and he's back about maybe

Speaker 5 20 yards,

Speaker 5 and then 20 yards, the next closest guy, and he's walking with this thing on his head. I kept waiting for his head to just.

Speaker 6 Holy shit.

Speaker 6 And he made it.

Speaker 5 He made it.

Speaker 6 What the rest of the time when that damn thing

Speaker 5 selling? Fuck. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 6 Well, let's talk about.

Speaker 6 I mean, I am curious. I mean,

Speaker 6 is there, is there,

Speaker 6 do you feel like you had a relationship with a guardian angel?

Speaker 5 I did. I did.
And I still do.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, it's just, it's just

Speaker 5 stuff I've come out of. Like, for example, for example, I'll give you this.
Okay,

Speaker 5 I'm

Speaker 5 on Okinawa

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 I get sent to Okinawa to get processed back to Vietnam, back to the unit.

Speaker 5 And it's been a couple of months or maybe three months.

Speaker 5 I really don't know.

Speaker 5 But it moves around then.

Speaker 5 Okay,

Speaker 5 so

Speaker 5 I take and

Speaker 5 get to be,

Speaker 5 the doctor there got to be friendly with me. I thought he was a good dude.
And

Speaker 5 so

Speaker 5 when I got to the point where all my wounds were healed, I said to him,

Speaker 5 I went and I said, Doc, I'm ready to go back, you know.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 He said,

Speaker 5 you're ready to go back? He says, Parson, you don't have to go back. He says, I'll keep you here for the rest of the war.

Speaker 5 And I said, no, I want to go back. I want to be with those guys.

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 they were my family,

Speaker 5 right? I loved them more than I ever

Speaker 5 loved a lot of my.

Speaker 5 I mean, we were closer,

Speaker 5 even though it was just a month.

Speaker 5 So he said, okay.

Speaker 5 And he

Speaker 5 signed off.

Speaker 5 And the day that my orders come through to leave for the next day

Speaker 5 my payroll record showed up

Speaker 5 my payroll record showed up and so he said

Speaker 5 go off base

Speaker 5 enjoy yourself and they might have given me seven eight hundred I don't know how much they gave me might have been might as well been you know 20,000 you know Okinawa beer was a dollar you know it's just do anything you want I mean it's just a lot of money.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I take in,

Speaker 5 you might have figured out by now. I'm never much of a rule follower.

Speaker 5 Yeah, figured that out.

Speaker 6 I'm figuring that out. Okay.

Speaker 5 All right. So

Speaker 5 I go off base.

Speaker 5 I'm supposed to be back at midnight.

Speaker 5 It's about three in the morning. And I'm walking down a street.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it's raining like hell. It's almost coming down sideways.

Speaker 5 And there's a guy walking back up the other way, coming right towards me.

Speaker 5 It's Blackwell. It's that guy I saved during the first night.

Speaker 6 Are you serious?

Speaker 5 That serious.

Speaker 5 And he told me it was his third heart, and he didn't have to go back. So he was in G2, which is orders and all that sort of stuff, intelligence.
And

Speaker 5 he said, I can get you,

Speaker 5 the guy that runs this little

Speaker 5 printing press and goes back and forth and delivers orders, I can get you that job. He says, because the company Gunny and I are tight.
And he said, and

Speaker 5 by then, I think he was staff sergeant. And

Speaker 5 he says,

Speaker 5 I'll get it done. And he says, when do you go back? And I said, I'm supposed to be seven o'clock tomorrow morning.
And this is like three in the morning. He says, I don't think

Speaker 5 I can get it done that soon.

Speaker 5 And I um

Speaker 5 I said, Brother, that's okay, that's okay, because I was kind of looking forward to seeing the guys anyhow.

Speaker 5 So, um,

Speaker 5 you know, we part, I tell him where I'm at, so forth. We part, and and uh, he goes his way, I go mine.

Speaker 5 And um,

Speaker 5 I um

Speaker 5 go back, immediately get arrested. They take me to the officer today.

Speaker 5 And the officer today goes, you know, he's this young second lieutenant. He's got their shit jobs, talking to buttheads like me.
And he's going, why can't you be packing?

Speaker 5 And I said, I'm going back. I interested in Vietnam.
And I was wondering, I got to go back tomorrow. And I lost track of time.

Speaker 5 And he goes, get him the fuck out of here. So they take me back and I fall asleep.
I slept for maybe an hour and then I fall asleep with fall out with the hangover from PG's as hell.

Speaker 5 And I had orders stationing me back Black Wall got it done.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean that happened. I mean to me that's

Speaker 5 we're like the fifth grade. I mean it's just things repeatedly have happened like that.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I think

Speaker 5 my angel's there.

Speaker 6 Still to this day.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think so. I think hopefully

Speaker 5 I'll meet him or her or it.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it'd be kind of nice one day. I know whenever I meet her, he's going to look more exhausted than I do.

Speaker 5 Oh, man. I get a picture of this going, fuck.

Speaker 5 I was going to take the night off.

Speaker 5 Let's talk about

Speaker 6 coming home.

Speaker 5 Coming home was hard.

Speaker 5 I'll

Speaker 5 tell you

Speaker 5 what I did.

Speaker 5 When I had just about two months left,

Speaker 5 they disbanded my unit I was with.

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 marched them, marched, didn't send them home, sent the guys in it that were that were coming in, the new guys transferred them all to that unit and they all went over to Vietnam. Right,

Speaker 5 and this unit,

Speaker 5 the guys coming home, they put them in

Speaker 5 this unit and they brought it home. So it was like they brought it home, but they didn't.
It was a farce.

Speaker 5 Did you follow me there? Yeah.

Speaker 5 Okay, so

Speaker 5 I take in,

Speaker 5 I get sent over to

Speaker 5 the,

Speaker 5 I get sent over for processing where I get to get processed to go back to Vietnam.

Speaker 5 Now, I didn't want to go back then, and the reason I didn't want to go back then is because I had been in touch with the guys. I had seen them.

Speaker 5 They were on a helicopter ship just offside Barrier Island. And they,

Speaker 5 you know, I told him, I said, guys,

Speaker 5 I had put

Speaker 5 two requests

Speaker 5 to go back, to transfer, to leave this unit that I was in. Because I wanted to be with him.
I wanted to be with him so fucking bad.

Speaker 5 And Blackwell left. He said, he left.
And he says, I says, why? He says, goodbye. I said, you going home? He says, yeah, I wish.
He says, I'm going to go back. And he says, I can't stand it here.

Speaker 5 He says, at least I understand it there.

Speaker 5 I said, see you, buddy.

Speaker 5 And so anyhow, I take in

Speaker 5 both times

Speaker 5 this company gunny that he told me about.

Speaker 5 My request to transfer got approved by everybody and gets to him. He calls me his office, rips it up, says you get yourself killed.
It never got approved.

Speaker 5 And so I was getting ready to go back but i didn't want to be with a bunch of new guys i want to be with them

Speaker 5 right so um

Speaker 5 i i i'm in the processing area and this place is like a zoo and it's just one lieutenant first lieutenant and then he's running around like

Speaker 5 you don't know what's going on so i go over to him i said lieutenant

Speaker 5 i

Speaker 5 I could do this job. You need some help here.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I said, you know, and I'm going to rotate in a couple months anyhow. And he said,

Speaker 5 all right, we got the job.

Speaker 5 He said, where's your ID? And I give it to him. He says, I can get it all taken care of.
So I went right away and started processing guys.

Speaker 5 And what I would do was I would take guys and put them on planes that were coming back.

Speaker 5 And so they could go home. And guys that were coming there, I would confirm their units.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 one of the things that bothered me so much is

Speaker 5 I would see these guys that were like assigned to 9th Marines and guys going up around the Z.

Speaker 5 And, you know, it's...

Speaker 5 I mean, there was no place there that was a walk in a park for the Marine Corps,

Speaker 5 but there were some places that were much worse.

Speaker 5 And while I wasn't that much older than these guys, if I was older than them at all,

Speaker 5 I had the experience, which aged me a bit. And I also, from being intelligence and knowing what was actually going on there,

Speaker 5 I would just look at these guys and I'd feel terrible. I mean, I would feel terrible because,

Speaker 5 you know, they had this little tinge, you know, where they're a little excited and so forth. And they're walking straight into fucking hell.

Speaker 6 Man.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I remember that. And

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 5 time went up. And I went home.

Speaker 5 And then when we went home, it was a different place.

Speaker 5 Different place than when we left. When we left, when, I mean, people were starting to, they were a little uncertain about the war, but they weren't like they were when we came home.

Speaker 5 There wasn't anybody take that out on the guys coming home throwing shit and with signs and names.

Speaker 5 Nazi

Speaker 5 murderer,

Speaker 5 right?

Speaker 5 Drug addict. And yeah, ironic, you know, fucking in our war crowd, calling us drug addicts, those fucking dope addicts,

Speaker 5 and on and on and on. And baby killer, don't forget baby killer, and then on and on.
So, I mean, you know, it's just, and then those of us that weren't confronted with that, we see it on news anyhow.

Speaker 5 So, you know, it's just, it's just, it's just,

Speaker 5 you know, like your soul coming out of your chest.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 at the time, I I knew it bothered me, but I didn't think it bothered me to the extent that it did.

Speaker 5 You know, because I got to the point where I had people come up to me and they'd say, hey, weren't you in the Marine Corps in Vietnam?

Speaker 5 Sean, I started crying.

Speaker 5 That's when you fucked up.

Speaker 5 And so.

Speaker 5 And then one of the things that I found,

Speaker 5 I was doing a book and I took some mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms, when I was

Speaker 5 working on the book. And

Speaker 5 I had a flashback.

Speaker 5 I had a flashback, baby.

Speaker 5 And it was a flashback, not to Vietnam,

Speaker 5 but to when I was in troop processing.

Speaker 5 Seeing those guys.

Speaker 5 I mean, it bothered me to the core.

Speaker 5 And I, you know, well,

Speaker 5 you know, I'll never say I don't haven't cried. I have, but I've never cried like that.

Speaker 5 And then I don't cry over it again since. I mean, it purged me

Speaker 5 somewhat.

Speaker 5 So, so anyhow, and then

Speaker 5 I just

Speaker 5 went to work in a steel mill, shoveled steel.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it was a hard job. And then I got another job, applied for a job as an apprentice,

Speaker 5 machinist apprentice.

Speaker 5 And this guy they sent me up to hire was

Speaker 5 this old guy named Roy

Speaker 5 that was with the union so long that he had, you know, he had tenure. He couldn't be fired no matter what.
And the guy wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't talk to me.

Speaker 5 And, you know, I'd say anything to him, he'd say, leave me alone.

Speaker 5 And he would set his machine up every day. So he was running this huge turret lathe, right? So he was making, milling down these lathes for

Speaker 5 ships, seagoing liners, right? So do

Speaker 5 propeller shafts.

Speaker 5 And he would, so it'd come all the way up, but never touch it, just go back and forth, back and forth. And my job was to help him.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so

Speaker 5 after a couple months of this, I went to,

Speaker 5 I seen an ad by the University of Baltimore. where I could go there with the GI Bill and I didn't have to,

Speaker 5 didn't have to take any of the entrance exams. My My high school grades didn't matter.

Speaker 5 I mean, I couldn't have gotten into Harvard with an AR.

Speaker 5 So I went to the University of Baltimore. I go into the registrar's office and I said to him, I said,

Speaker 5 I want to register for college. He said, what do you want to major in? I don't know.
I said, well,

Speaker 5 nobody in my family went to college. So I went, he says, go see this counselor.
And I did. And it was a huge line to see this guy.
I'd have been just getting to see him today if I got into it.

Speaker 5 I mean, I never got to see him. And so

Speaker 5 I went back and he got the registrar's office and says,

Speaker 5 if you can

Speaker 5 sign

Speaker 5 a waiver,

Speaker 5 You can pick your own major. I said, why didn't you tell me that? I said, you have a list of majors? He gave me a book.
I opened it up. First one, accounting.

Speaker 5 I said, what's accounting? He said, well, do you like numbers?

Speaker 5 I said, yeah. He says, you go with math.
I said, reasonably. He says, you're interested in business? Yeah.
He says, you should make sure in accounting.

Speaker 5 So that's what I did.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, had I opened it up backwards, I'd have been a zoologist.

Speaker 5 And I said to him,

Speaker 5 Sure.

Speaker 5 And it's got to be be a very fortuitous choice because I loved it.

Speaker 5 And it was, you know, very solitary. I liked that.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 5 I'm now one of the school's biggest benefactors.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 5 He said, me.

Speaker 6 Man,

Speaker 6 what a curve.

Speaker 5 Yeah. What a curve.
So I did that. And

Speaker 5 I went to.

Speaker 6 What was it like for you in school as a combat veteran at that time?

Speaker 5 You didn't talk about it.

Speaker 6 You didn't want anybody to know?

Speaker 5 No, no. It wasn't that you didn't want anybody to know.
You just didn't talk about it.

Speaker 5 Nobody asked you about it.

Speaker 6 Did you stay close with your guys that you had served with?

Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Many of them live close?

Speaker 5 No, no. I mean, they live in one guy lives in New Hampshire.
Another guy lives in the mountains of Pennsylvania. He was the other guy to hit the trap.
He lives in the mountains of Pennsylvania.

Speaker 5 Another guy, two of them live in Florida. Another one lives in Iowa.

Speaker 5 And Brownie.

Speaker 5 Brownie, the rascal,

Speaker 5 lives in Austin.

Speaker 6 I mean, how did you get through? It Sounds like that was

Speaker 6 that was the hardest part for you coming home.

Speaker 5 Was

Speaker 6 and so

Speaker 6 you know, there's a lot of veterans today that are dealing with similar issues and

Speaker 6 can't fit back into society.

Speaker 6 How'd you get through it?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 the

Speaker 5 thing I, the thing I did was, um,

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 5 worked hard

Speaker 5 and I buried myself in my work. You know, everybody that has

Speaker 5 any degree of PTSD self-medicates in some way, shape, or form. I think they do.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 my self-medication was always my work and my studies. So I had to turn things around when I was

Speaker 5 in

Speaker 5 college. And then

Speaker 5 when I eventually

Speaker 5 I worked for

Speaker 5 a firm that

Speaker 5 Commercial Credit Leasing Corp

Speaker 5 worked for them and they would send me to schedule the assets of

Speaker 5 companies they were looking to buy

Speaker 5 And then I'd schedule the assets, schedule the leases, and then come home. And this was in the 70s.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 what I did one day,

Speaker 5 when another day, another fortuitous thing

Speaker 5 was

Speaker 5 looking at this company in Redwood City, California. And I was

Speaker 5 going to

Speaker 5 get my work done. And I had had a

Speaker 5 12-hour layover until I was

Speaker 5 gonna had to catch the flight.

Speaker 5 And so I wound up on a Stanford campus and I went to the bookstore

Speaker 5 and I bought a book on how to program in the basic computer language and I bought it

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 went to the airport.

Speaker 5 I,

Speaker 5 matter of fact, at first I went to Fisherman's Wharf and

Speaker 5 looked at

Speaker 5 a charcoal and

Speaker 5 showed this little Chinese kid lighting the firework and a bunch of other kids standing by, some older kids holding their hands over the little kids' ears.

Speaker 5 And it's Cheryl Germanus, you know, it's just wonderful. The guy just caught it.

Speaker 5 Artist named Wai Ming.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I asked the guy, the guy said to me, he said, you know, this about so forth. I said, how much is it? He said, $10,000.

Speaker 5 And how many might as well have been $10 million.

Speaker 5 And so I

Speaker 5 see you later. And

Speaker 5 by the way,

Speaker 5 when I did the deal on Parsons Technology, I bought that painting.

Speaker 6 No kidding.

Speaker 5 I tracked it down, baby.

Speaker 5 I have it in my bedroom and I see it every day.

Speaker 6 Nice.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 only I bought

Speaker 5 the original is now in a museum.

Speaker 5 I bought an artist's lithograph or so forth, which is, I'm told, the best you can get. And

Speaker 5 it didn't cost nearly 10 grand, but the memory is what matters.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So

Speaker 5 anyhow, so I read the book or the salient parts of the book while I was waiting. and wrote my first couple programs on the way back.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 based on that book, I taught myself how to program.

Speaker 5 And I eventually switched to the Pascal language, sold my Apple computer and bought an IBM, and then started my first business, which was called Parsis Technology.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 6 Just going back, you had mentioned

Speaker 6 everybody with PTSD self-medicates one way or another.

Speaker 5 I think so.

Speaker 6 How were you self-medicating?

Speaker 5 I buried myself in my work.

Speaker 6 No drugs?

Speaker 6 No antidepressants, booze, none of that.

Speaker 5 Just work, baby. Work.

Speaker 5 And then when I first started getting Parsons technology off the ground,

Speaker 5 I wrote

Speaker 5 the code for a program that would take care of home finances. I called it Money Counts.

Speaker 5 And it got to be pretty good.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 then I quit my job. I was working, I was working, started this leasing division for this company.
And

Speaker 5 if I had stayed there, this was like November, no, October. Had I stayed there through the end of the year, I'd have got $50,000, would have got a bonus.

Speaker 5 I quit.

Speaker 5 And the reason I quit was

Speaker 5 I figured I could just have just enough time if I worked hard to write a

Speaker 5 tax software program, do a 10-40.

Speaker 5 And I got it done.

Speaker 5 But to get it done, I would work 60-hour shifts.

Speaker 5 I would come in to work, let's say, 8 a.m. Monday morning, work 8 a.m.
Tuesday morning,

Speaker 5 8 a.m.

Speaker 5 Wednesday morning,

Speaker 5 and then work

Speaker 5 half a day. And when I say half a day, I meant half a day.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 5 I would know I needed to stop by

Speaker 5 the reason I needed to stop was because I started to hallucinate. I will see a dragon walk across my desk.

Speaker 5 Holy shit.

Speaker 6 So you buried yourself in work, started your technology company.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 I think a lot of people,

Speaker 6 just from my generation,

Speaker 6 I feel like entrepreneurship is a,

Speaker 6 I feel like it's the only segue, you know, to really bury yourself into and to kind of

Speaker 6 leave the.

Speaker 6 What am I trying to say here?

Speaker 6 You have to be willing to,

Speaker 6 for me myself a navy seal a cia contractor that's just some that i did

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 it took me a long time to to

Speaker 6 i mean people expect a certain body style a certain attitude a certain demeanor you know when you

Speaker 6 are in those type of communities and warfighting communities. And it's almost like a fucking trap that that you're in.
And

Speaker 6 it wasn't until that I had discovered entrepreneurship and started doing what I love, like you were saying at the very beginning, that

Speaker 6 I started getting better. And I started putting more importance on what I'm building rather than the past.
And

Speaker 6 eventually coming to the realization that

Speaker 6 I'm not a SEAL. I'm not a CI contractor.
That's just some shit that I did. And this is who I am now.

Speaker 6 And I mean, did you, did you find that when you

Speaker 6 became an entrepreneur?

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 for sure. For sure.
I mean, that was the only thing I was interested. I talked about.
I mean, I don't think I owned a Marine Corps cap. I mean, any, anything like that.
And not that I, I denied it.

Speaker 5 I didn't. You know, if somebody's wanting to talk to me about it, I'd talk to them about it.
But

Speaker 5 that wasn't going to, you know, take care of my family, put them where they needed to be and,

Speaker 5 so forth.

Speaker 5 To me,

Speaker 5 that was the only way.

Speaker 6 What got you interested in coding? It was just a random book on a shelf, and you just decided, hey, I'm going to take a peek at this? Yep. Especially back when, did you say the 70s?

Speaker 5 75.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 6 So you buy a book on coding.

Speaker 6 You read it.

Speaker 6 You work

Speaker 6 three and a half days a week. and then you build this entire empire.

Speaker 5 Eventually, yeah.

Speaker 6 How long did it take you to get traction on your business?

Speaker 5 On parcel technology. That first year I did the tech software.

Speaker 6 In one year.

Speaker 5 One year. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, I was doing it for a couple of three years before that because it took a while to

Speaker 5 build it and know how I wanted to do it and what I wanted to do for the software to be right, you know, and, you know, it couldn't be buggy and on and on.

Speaker 5 It couldn't be, I couldn't make my lemonade with vinegar anymore. Right.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So so anyhow, all those things, you know, I

Speaker 5 just, I needed to have things just so.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and so it took about three years.

Speaker 5 Three years for that. And

Speaker 5 so that third year, when I got the tax software done,

Speaker 5 I made a quarter million dollars that year. I've never seen that kind of money in my life.

Speaker 5 Quarter million, I mean, yeah, $257,000.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 5 The next year,

Speaker 5 I made $2.5 million. The next year, I made $5.

Speaker 5 Next year, I made $7.

Speaker 5 I mean, and then it's just, I mean, I've never...

Speaker 5 missed too much since.

Speaker 6 How did you get it out there?

Speaker 6 Was it just you?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 It was just you.

Speaker 5 Just you and my wife.

Speaker 6 So you built it. How did you

Speaker 5 magazine ads?

Speaker 6 You bought magazine ads.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Holy shit.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I was spending early on, I was spending

Speaker 5 $55,000 a month on advertising.

Speaker 5 And, you know,

Speaker 6 how early on?

Speaker 5 Well, this is my third year.

Speaker 6 I mean, your ads,

Speaker 6 your GoDaddy ads were phenomenal.

Speaker 5 You know?

Speaker 6 Did you come up with those? Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 well, me and me and a group of other people together.

Speaker 5 Yeah, together.

Speaker 6 So you got a knack for marketing and advertising as well.

Speaker 5 More that than anything.

Speaker 6 What was the first ad?

Speaker 5 The first ad for what?

Speaker 6 For Parsons Technologies.

Speaker 5 Okay, yeah, first ad.

Speaker 5 And let me tell you how I bought it.

Speaker 5 Okay,

Speaker 5 I'm in the basement, and this is, I'm still working the other job.

Speaker 5 And I have this magazine call me,

Speaker 5 and they say,

Speaker 5 now, one of the things I always did, always pay my bills. Always paid them.

Speaker 5 And they said,

Speaker 5 I've

Speaker 5 taken,

Speaker 5 let me see, let me see. Okay, they called me.
It was called a computer bargain line out of Fort Dodge, Iowa. And this was a rag, I mean, one of them little rags.
It would look like a magazine cover.

Speaker 5 I mean, a cheap magazine cover. And inside it'd be like print, like newsprint, and have different stuff for sale.
It's cheap, all sorts of deals, right? And that's what it was. So

Speaker 5 they said, we have on the outside front cover, we've got that ad.

Speaker 5 It's normally like $12,000, $14,000.

Speaker 5 If you can get me creative in a couple of three days,

Speaker 5 It's it's $5,000.

Speaker 5 Now,

Speaker 5 so they thought I had the money. I never had the money.
So I took it and I said, I'll let you know in the morning. So I looked at it and I said, I called my

Speaker 5 wife and I said, I just got a feeling that

Speaker 5 this could be it.

Speaker 5 So I said, let's do it.

Speaker 5 And then I said, and if it turns out it busts, because every ad I ever had run up to that point was a bust.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 we decided to do it.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I pay

Speaker 5 a kid in that local ad firm and they do an ad. And I sold my software.
I had sold it for like $99, $79, $69, on and on and on and on. Now, I was selling it for $12

Speaker 5 when it said, $12.

Speaker 5 And then it said no shipping, no,

Speaker 5 it's not copy protected. Remember, copy protection?

Speaker 5 It says not copy protected.

Speaker 5 It's not

Speaker 5 copy protected.

Speaker 5 It used to have agreements that you had to be part of if you used it that would signal that

Speaker 5 you could only use it like a book.

Speaker 5 You couldn't make copies and give it to people. On and on and on.

Speaker 5 I said in mine, you can do anything you want, just send me 12 bucks. Right?

Speaker 5 So the ad said, money counts, but it only costs $12.

Speaker 5 Send it.

Speaker 6 Blew it out of the water.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 first couple days, I mean, after the magazine come out, there wasn't anything. And then there wasn't anything.
And then there was,

Speaker 5 you know, half a dozen orders, then a dozen. And then you ever see these ads where you see the mailbox of stuff with orders and checks.
That's the way it looked. And then there was a box.

Speaker 5 They had to set a box next to it. And

Speaker 5 so, oh my God, I think I made 20 grand on that ad.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 then I took my wife and I and the kids, we took and did a mailing and we broke every direct mail rule there was, just mailed.

Speaker 5 place had that ad printed up and mailed it to uh everybody on that ever inquired senses that we got a 30 return.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 5 So then

Speaker 5 I took in,

Speaker 5 I think I added a $3 shipping charge, didn't matter. Then I added, I made it $16 instead of $12 and made the shipping charge $5 and left it that way for a couple of years.

Speaker 5 And I would get big ads made up. in all the big magazines.
And that's how Parsons Technology made it.

Speaker 6 How long was it before with Parsons Technologies? How long was it before you started hiring people?

Speaker 5 It was

Speaker 5 right after I quit my job.

Speaker 5 Right after equipment job, actually before that a little bit. And my wife would have some of the

Speaker 5 neighbor ladies

Speaker 5 would help her and they'd all be down there taking orders and they'd all have their hair in curl or

Speaker 5 dungeon.

Speaker 5 But it was, it was, they did a good job. And, you know, they, you know, they were happy.
They made some money. I was happy.

Speaker 5 I was launching this company. And then

Speaker 5 eventually I had,

Speaker 5 oh my God, I had a thousand employees.

Speaker 6 Holy shit.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 A thousand employees?

Speaker 5 Yeah, it might have been 500. You know,

Speaker 5 I have to think about it.

Speaker 6 And then you sold it.

Speaker 5 I sold it to Intuit.

Speaker 5 My wife and I, we got together, we decided we would sell it for

Speaker 5 $40 million if we were ever offered it.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 Intuit offered me $6 million.

Speaker 5 I knew enough to tell him I was insulted.

Speaker 5 And the most I could get him up to was 64. So I sold it for $64 million.
Wow.

Speaker 6 In what time frame?

Speaker 5 10 years.

Speaker 6 10 years.

Speaker 5 I started it in 84, sold it in 94.

Speaker 6 Well, I mean,

Speaker 6 where did you learn your business since?

Speaker 6 Just comes naturally to you?

Speaker 5 Selling lemonade.

Speaker 6 Selling lemonade.

Speaker 5 You know, it's just from just

Speaker 5 working, trying trying to make a living.

Speaker 6 How long was it after you sold Parsons Technologies that you started GoDaddy?

Speaker 5 95, 96.

Speaker 6 What time frame is that between

Speaker 6 the two?

Speaker 5 A couple years.

Speaker 6 Just a couple years? Yeah. What was the inspiration for GoDaddy?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 really, there was none.

Speaker 5 It sounds crazy.

Speaker 5 What happened was

Speaker 5 when I did the deal with

Speaker 5 Barcelona Technology after that, my wife didn't want to be married anymore. And to be honest with her,

Speaker 5 I wouldn't be married to me anymore either.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 she finally, she took all she could and she fucking boomed my ass.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I moved to

Speaker 5 Phoenix or Scottsdale so I could work.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, I just

Speaker 5 had a non-compete assigned. I had to honor it.
Only their non-compete was, I couldn't work, period.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I honored it. And when that thing came, came due, came up, I just started started working and

Speaker 5 started

Speaker 5 my own job, started, you know, to start a company. And I like being in the

Speaker 5 in the hunt. I like being out in the business stream.
I like doing stuff. I like being active and like having my cell phone align, right?

Speaker 6 And you like the risk.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, I like that. I like that.

Speaker 5 And so, um,

Speaker 5 and I like the risk, but not too much risk.

Speaker 5 So I

Speaker 5 started that. And at the time,

Speaker 5 I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew the internet was going to be something.

Speaker 5 I knew that was going to be an area where

Speaker 5 there was going to be opportunity.

Speaker 5 So what I did was, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know exactly what.
So I hired about maybe 10 or 15 people.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 we tried a bunch of things.

Speaker 5 I named the company JoMax Technologies, believe it or not, after a dirt road. Now, why did I name it after a dirt road? Name didn't matter.
We didn't do anything.

Speaker 5 I would send people to, they would go to

Speaker 5 a

Speaker 5 business meeting at the Chamber of Commerce.

Speaker 5 And people would ask you, what do you do? And they said, we don't know yet. And I said, you know, I have never talked to anybody that don't know what they do

Speaker 5 and so

Speaker 6 who did you hire i mean if you didn't know what you wanted to do and you just knew that you wanted to be in the internet business in some capacity how do you even know who to look for well i just i just would look for people that were looking for work

Speaker 5 any particular job description or not really not really i mean people that knew knew a little bit about tech and that sort of thing. And,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 they were the people that I hired. And some of them actually were with me till the last day.

Speaker 5 Not many of them, but some of them. And so I went ahead and

Speaker 5 we tried all sorts of things. We tried

Speaker 5 building intranets. extranets.
We tried doing education. We tried sewing other people's software.
Tried sewing hardware. None of that stuff worked.
But one thing worked.

Speaker 5 And the one thing that worked was

Speaker 5 building

Speaker 5 websites. We could build websites and make some money.
Not a lot, make some money.

Speaker 5 And the money that...

Speaker 5 We made when we started doing

Speaker 5 these websites, there was one problem with them though. And that is

Speaker 5 they didn't scale.

Speaker 5 You had to do the work of building a website in order to make the money. And so what we did was

Speaker 5 we built

Speaker 5 a software program

Speaker 5 called,

Speaker 5 we called it Website Complete, was the very first one. It was one of the first companies and the guys in the world to do this.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 that would be,

Speaker 5 you could take and do it, just put some, fill in the blanks and this and that. And this thing would write the code for a website.
Very primitive, but you'd have a website.

Speaker 5 So it would do that. And then the next step was where

Speaker 5 things looked like they were going to,

Speaker 5 Jill, is every website needs a domain name, needs an address.

Speaker 5 needs a SeanRyan.com.

Speaker 5 Right?

Speaker 5 So then what we did was I found

Speaker 5 I went to all the website companies, I mean all the domain companies, and they were all pain in the ass to deal with.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 we had one of our engineers went ahead and just filled the applications to

Speaker 5 do that for us. So

Speaker 5 we could become a domain name registrar.

Speaker 5 And not in the domain name, a domain name registrar is not in a sense where you take and you have to buy a bunch of domain names to resell although you could do that

Speaker 5 what it's more like the dmv selling vanity license plates you know once you get a vanity

Speaker 5 license plate

Speaker 5 at the dmv it's yours as long as you pay the annual fee well that's the way domain names work All right, the only difference is you have companies that can do that, and they're called domain name registrars.

Speaker 5 so so we started doing that

Speaker 5 and um

Speaker 5 and then what happened was the dot-com boom and the dot-com boom there was so much noise for the dot-com boom you couldn't nobody didn't even pay attention to you

Speaker 5 yeah not even not even close

Speaker 5 and so um

Speaker 5 I mean, the noise, you could see like these Super Bowl, stupid Super Bowl ads where they were playing a piano like like chopsticks. And because they didn't have time to run an ad, but they bought it.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I mean, make an ad and stuff like that. And it got to the point where it got to be,

Speaker 5 it just got to be stupid.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 5 what happened was when I did that, I had about

Speaker 5 38 million. I split it with my wife.
She deserved every nickel she got. And I moved to Arizona.
Best move I ever made

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 5 then worked on worked on making this company work and renamed it GoDaddy

Speaker 5 and then the way that the way that that came about was I was just you know the name Joe Max Technologies it's just very forgettable means nothing GoDaddy doesn't mean much more but at least it's fun and easy to remember and so me and Gal that I still work with, we come up with that one night.

Speaker 5 After I've had our third night, we tried it. It's Fat Daddy, taken, Big Daddy, taken,

Speaker 5 GoDaddy, using the AOL go

Speaker 5 keyword and the word daddy available. Bought it for $8.95.

Speaker 6 Damn.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 that's what I did.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I started with 38 million.

Speaker 5 And then I started losing money. And I started,

Speaker 5 I said, I'm not going to worry about this company until I get down to 30 million. Then I said, 20 million.

Speaker 5 15 million.

Speaker 5 I don't know why.

Speaker 5 Story, I'm sorry, I'm choking up here.

Speaker 6 No, it's all fine. There's a lot of pollen out.

Speaker 5 So anyhow,

Speaker 5 so I decided

Speaker 5 it's going to go to

Speaker 5 15 million, then 12,

Speaker 5 then 10,

Speaker 5 then 8.

Speaker 5 And I think 8 or 6,

Speaker 5 I decide I'm going to close the company down because it didn't look like there was snowballs, chance in hell of this company ever making the turn.

Speaker 5 And then so what I did was

Speaker 5 I sold, I sold my original company.

Speaker 5 I mean, this sold all the furniture and stuff, had really nice furniture. Stupid furniture don't make you no money.
And

Speaker 5 moved, bought a horse farm,

Speaker 5 an area where it was legal for breeding horses, but it wasn't legal for developing software. That's how fucked up sauce

Speaker 5 Phoenix is, right? So

Speaker 5 I bought this big sign. I had to pay to call it Dakota Ranch.
Put it right

Speaker 5 on the wall.

Speaker 5 And then I decided I went to

Speaker 5 Hawaii by myself. And I was going to decide how I was going to

Speaker 5 shut it down, how I was going to pay any severance, how I was going to pay my creditors, and then what I was going to do.

Speaker 5 So I

Speaker 5 went to Hawaii.

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 5 went to Hawaii. I was in the Epiphany happened.
More and more I was there. I didn't want to shut it down.
Epiphany happened where all of a sudden

Speaker 5 one day this guy comes up to me. And, you know,

Speaker 5 he's

Speaker 5 happy as can be. Throw the keys in here.
Hey yo, Ms. Parsons.

Speaker 5 And I said, I'm doing great, buddy. And I mean, and I think, this guy's parking cars, probably has nothing, right? He's the happiest guy in the world.
I got six or eight million dollars.

Speaker 5 I'm miserable. Now, what's wrong with this picture?

Speaker 5 So I decide at that point to go back home

Speaker 5 and I shut it down. And if the company goes broke, I'll go broke with it.
I decided I could always park cars. But then I decided, you know what?

Speaker 5 I'm not a big-time gambler, but I like craps. I said, I'll go to Vegas and just work on a table.

Speaker 5 It sounds like a fun life.

Speaker 5 So I

Speaker 5 do that. And then this is about January, February, and then October or maybe later that year, the dot-com crash happens.
And when the dot-com crash happened, GoDaddy was born.

Speaker 5 And then I had, instead of guys waiting in line to, I mean, instead of not refusing to sell me anything at any price,

Speaker 5 I mean, every week, at least one or two companies were doing business with Vanish. I mean, Vanish disappeared, fucking gone, baby.
You don't even know where they were, no, no forwarding address. Gone.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 we just

Speaker 5 things started instead of us trying to

Speaker 5 buy advertising. I have guys standing in line to give it to me.
Damn.

Speaker 5 And then so we take, and then in October,

Speaker 5 we wait. And

Speaker 5 they

Speaker 5 turned the company. We became cash flow positive and never missed a month since.

Speaker 6 Well, for somebody that was just telling me,

Speaker 5 tell me I

Speaker 6 mitigated risk. You just went from 38 million down to six to eight million.

Speaker 5 Yeah, well, that's because I'm a knucklehead.

Speaker 6 The valet Parker decided is the one that made the decision for you: hey, fuck it, I'm going to do this.

Speaker 6 Go back, willing to lose everything, the rest of your money, and then you blow GoDaddy out of the water.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 yeah. And so

Speaker 5 it's held GoDaddy until 2011. 2011

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 sold

Speaker 5 71%

Speaker 5 for $2.3 billion. Damn.
And then sold the other 29%

Speaker 5 for almost $2 billion.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so. Wow.

Speaker 5 Not bad for a young guy from East Baltimore.

Speaker 6 Not too bad. Not too bad, I would say.

Speaker 6 You've done well.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so so anyhow i mean uh the ads all uh they all happened it was just funny as how that came about i love them i love them you want me to the genesis how he how that happened yes so

Speaker 5 i'm running godaddy and i

Speaker 5 i am never quite sure why our business just stalls where we got we got a um

Speaker 5 a

Speaker 5 16%

Speaker 5 market share worldwide. I said,

Speaker 5 we got the best

Speaker 5 prices, we got the best systems, we got the fairest policies, we got the best customer service. What are these other dogs?

Speaker 5 Why are they still writing business? So I hired a market research firm

Speaker 5 to kind of look at it for us.

Speaker 5 And they come back with an answer.

Speaker 5 They said, the reason those people aren't doing business with you is because those people don't know you exist you only advertise on the internet these people are only reachable on direct media

Speaker 5 i mean on the conventional media

Speaker 5 so what i did was that was in august i said all right well you know what i had a 10 billion 10 million dollar war chest built up

Speaker 5 And I decided the Super Bowl was right around the corner.

Speaker 5 Let's make a Super Bowl ad. Damn.
And then you see, there's a Super Bowl ad back then will cost you $3 million.

Speaker 5 Costs you way more than that now. Costs you like 10, 12,

Speaker 5 something like that. Maybe even, maybe far more.

Speaker 5 But anyhow, so what we would do is we took and

Speaker 5 I could not understand

Speaker 5 how you would get people's attention.

Speaker 5 People to look at your ad and want to buy, because they're at a Super Bowl party. Your ad is only on for 30 seconds.

Speaker 5 Right?

Speaker 5 And then after 30 seconds, they,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 they're talking, they're drinking cocktails. Some are, some aren't.

Speaker 5 They're certainly cabets and all this.

Speaker 5 A lot of them aren't even paying attention to the television and all that.

Speaker 5 How are you going to capture their attention?

Speaker 5 And then I was one day, I was with my second wife and I'm watching television. And I've seen an ad from Mike's Hardlame,

Speaker 5 Mike's Hard Lime Aid, and I knew. I knew.

Speaker 5 And what the ad was,

Speaker 5 you got

Speaker 5 three really good-looking women at the end of a bar, right?

Speaker 5 And Caddy cornered them as this guy. He's got his hunched over as Mike Hardlime aid.
and he's got a little bit of drop in the bottom. And he's looking around, looking around, and

Speaker 5 instead of him holding it up and letting it run down, he sticks a 12-inch tongue down and

Speaker 5 swirls it around and then pulls it back. And

Speaker 5 the bartender says, ladies, what do you have? And they point to him and go, we like one of those.

Speaker 5 And I said, that is it, baby.

Speaker 5 Oh, God.

Speaker 5 I said, that is it. And

Speaker 5 so

Speaker 5 we

Speaker 5 did our first, did our first dad. We did a spoof on the GoDaddy girl.

Speaker 5 She didn't even have a name. The media named her the GoDaddy Girl.

Speaker 5 We named her.

Speaker 5 And she was at a

Speaker 5 hearing by

Speaker 5 a Super Bowl

Speaker 5 board of censors or whatever she was. And they were

Speaker 5 kind of

Speaker 5 trying to decide if they're going to approve her being an ad.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 she was going to be in an ad

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 it was just hilarious because

Speaker 5 the guy,

Speaker 5 the guy running the whole show, his name was Booth Coleman, I think he said past,

Speaker 5 but he was an older guy. And she was,

Speaker 5 he says,

Speaker 5 ma'am, what are you going to do?

Speaker 5 You know, on the game, and she stands up and she goes, I could do something like this. And her

Speaker 5 tank top strap snaps. And it was a spoof on Janice Jackson and Justin Timberlake.
Right?

Speaker 5 And she stops it. And

Speaker 5 it's just, it doesn't, doesn't go, you know, all the way. So you see nothing.
You see nothing. And, you know, you look at it, you know, it's filmed at a distance, see things that

Speaker 5 blurred the cleavage on and on and on. A lot of the ad is

Speaker 5 shot from behind. So

Speaker 5 Fox News said they would do the ad.

Speaker 5 And then when we sent them the actual ad, they said, no way.

Speaker 5 And so, you know, we said, they said, you know, we had guys with me said, well, why don't you, why don't you just say they denied it?

Speaker 5 And you can, you know, people might want to see the ad that didn't get approved.

Speaker 5 No, no, I wanted to run it because I had bigger aspirations.

Speaker 5 So.

Speaker 5 So anyhow, so we went ahead and do that, all that, to minimize the ad, shoot it from the distance and on and on. And

Speaker 5 so

Speaker 5 he's taking oxygen

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 I had a line in there that said where there is a woman up there that they asked with Booth and she says,

Speaker 5 those are not real.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 then so I had to change it. She'd say, may I suggest a turtleneck?

Speaker 5 And so anyhow, they approve it.

Speaker 5 And three days before the Super Bowl, they call me back and they say,

Speaker 5 you want to buy another spot?

Speaker 5 And I said, really?

Speaker 5 And they go, yeah, we got a spot open just before the Super Bowl. And it could be a very good ad or a very big,

Speaker 5 very great ad.

Speaker 5 And I think it was

Speaker 5 Buffalo playing Filly or something like that.

Speaker 5 Patriots. But whoever it was, one of them was on a one-yard line just when they did the two-minute warning this ad was gold and then our ad doesn't run doesn't run

Speaker 5 and then i mean and they were wait maybe it's the next ad maybe it's the next ad maybe it's the next never our ad our ad never runs so i get a hold of the president of fox sports and i asked him what happened he said uh your ad was out of tenor with the rest of the ads we had to pull it

Speaker 6 it was out of what

Speaker 6 yeah it was out of what it was he said it was out of tenor What does that mean?

Speaker 5 It means it just it wasn't, it was,

Speaker 5 it shouldn't have been approved.

Speaker 5 All right. So, so any, yeah, I know, I felt the same way.
But I turned around to my

Speaker 5 buddy that,

Speaker 5 you know, he's my chief of staff. And I said to him, can we be this lucky? Can we be this lucky? That never happened before.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 what they run, instead of our, and

Speaker 5 I'll tell you what they run. They run a picture of

Speaker 5 Simpsons and Bart Simpson, right?

Speaker 5 He goes in and he's stabbing a baby in a crib.

Speaker 6 That's what they run?

Speaker 5 Much more acceptable than a breast.

Speaker 5 So anyhow,

Speaker 5 that's what happens. So

Speaker 5 I get in touch with the president of Fox Sports.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 here's what happens. He takes and he,

Speaker 5 you know, we go back and forth because we had an attorneys working on it and so forth. And

Speaker 5 so

Speaker 5 we got a deal. We got to deal with him.
So I don't have to pay for the ad that.

Speaker 5 didn't run.

Speaker 5 I don't have to pay for the ad that did run.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, life is good. I mean, basically,

Speaker 5 the market share worked. It went from 16% to 25% a year and held.

Speaker 5 All right. So, I mean, it was just

Speaker 5 great.

Speaker 5 So, anyhow, so we take and

Speaker 5 I'm there sitting there sitting in at the table and these guys are on a conference call.

Speaker 5 and I know ask for anything anything I'll get it anything I'll get it I can't think of anything I can't think of anything

Speaker 5 so here's what I think of you ready for his

Speaker 5 it was the best I could do I said tell you what

Speaker 5 give me

Speaker 5 Give me a game ball for two game balls from every Super Bowl and we got a deal and they go done

Speaker 6 Oh, man.

Speaker 5 Wow. And that's how it came about.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So the media named her the GoDaddy Girl.

Speaker 5 Bill,

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 it's just, it's just.

Speaker 5 funny how it all came together.

Speaker 6 Then you got in, you got a NASCAR,

Speaker 6 or I'm sorry, not a a NASCAR, an IndyCar, correct?

Speaker 5 IndyCar with Daddy Kilpatrick. I was playing golf with her Sunday, by the way.

Speaker 6 Oh, nice. Yeah, nice.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so.

Speaker 6 Are you guys pretty close?

Speaker 5 She's well, she's a buddy of mine, and so it was me, my wife, and her, and another friend. And I had a nice time.

Speaker 6 Are you into racing?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 6 How did that come about?

Speaker 5 Well, I was up in

Speaker 5 I was up in

Speaker 5 the Arctic and I was hunting.

Speaker 5 and I was

Speaker 5 I was talking to the two guys and these guys, I mean they didn't know nowhere and they were talking about the ND500 Danica Patrick and I said, wow, she's young. She's in a man's sport.

Speaker 5 She is drawing a lot of attention. I said,

Speaker 5 She ought to be our spokesperson. So we reached out, we hired her, and then we did, we were partners for

Speaker 5 eight years.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 5 Yeah, eight years. And she's now a member of my club, Scottsdale National.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 good time.

Speaker 6 I'll bet. I'll bet.

Speaker 6 What were you hunting up there?

Speaker 5 Grizzly.

Speaker 6 Grizzly?

Speaker 6 Did you get one?

Speaker 6 So you sold Parsons Technologies, then you immediately start another company, then you sold ownership of GoDaddy, and then you move into golfing.

Speaker 5 Golf. Yeah, golf and motorcycles.

Speaker 6 I mean, how much time was it? I mean, by this time, you're a multi-billionaire.

Speaker 6 What?

Speaker 6 I guess I'm just curious.

Speaker 6 Why do you keep moving into new business ventures?

Speaker 5 Why not?

Speaker 5 I'll ask you.

Speaker 6 I mean, I'm addicted to it. I love entrepreneurship.

Speaker 5 I love business. Yeah, I like it too.

Speaker 5 I haven't worked for anybody since 1984.

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 5 just

Speaker 5 worked hard.

Speaker 8 I mean, it's just you hit a point where

Speaker 6 you don't need anything more.

Speaker 5 Yeah, my wife and I,

Speaker 5 we move a million to charity

Speaker 5 every other week every 14 days yeah every 14 days and i think we've given a total of

Speaker 5 a couple hundred million i know

Speaker 5 oh and we help uh help the sent for five fund

Speaker 5 and then 10 million a year we just crossed 120 million a year with them i mean 120 million with them

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, when it's all said and done, buy it all, go to charity.

Speaker 6 How do you, I mean, how do you, I think that's amazing that you do that. And that's, you know, that's something I try to do here.
I'd show you all this stuff around the room.

Speaker 6 And we've brought a lot of my friends on that have started nonprofits and psychedelics and healing and mostly combat stress type stuff.

Speaker 6 And I mean, I just, I just enjoy like watching them succeed from

Speaker 6 not,

Speaker 6 you're going to be careful I say this because they built everything. I'm just a conduit to the public.
I'm the advertiser, I guess, is the way you'd see it. And

Speaker 6 the traction that they get after they come on this

Speaker 6 show is just, it's tremendous. And it just makes me feel good to watch them

Speaker 6 succeed with all the exposure. And,

Speaker 6 you know, I think I'd write, was it $19 million you've donated to psychedelic research? And how do you,

Speaker 6 I guess what I'm asking is,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 the nonprofit game is tricky. You know,

Speaker 6 you really got to make sure that you're finding people that are doing the right things.

Speaker 6 And I'll light people up for sometimes a year before I bring them on to make sure, like, hey, is this money going to what it needs to go to? And, and

Speaker 6 is this guy, you know, I really enjoy finding people that are, that are just really grinding it out. And, and,

Speaker 6 I don't know. I guess I see myself in them and uh and i didn't have anybody to lift me up and um

Speaker 6 so i guess what i'm asking is how do

Speaker 6 every 14 days you're donating another million how do you find these these people that resonate with you or the companies that resonate with you the nonprofits

Speaker 5 um well i i have a staff at our foundation

Speaker 5 um

Speaker 5 That's run by a very sharp lady by the name of Laura Mitchell.

Speaker 5 And she's been in that particular

Speaker 5 end of business for a long time, been with me long time.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 she has staff, so they sort it out.

Speaker 5 I mean, you know, if

Speaker 5 you're in a foundation, you're giving away money, your product, everybody likes it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so you do have to be careful.

Speaker 5 But what we do is,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 giving the money to

Speaker 5 whatever the organization is that we're donating money to is only

Speaker 5 part of the

Speaker 5 contract.

Speaker 5 You know, we're also in touch with them monthly, and they're assigned an individual from our foundation to be in touch with them and to, you know, help them in any way that they can

Speaker 5 and to also report back to us when the next time comes where they knock on our door if they did what they said they were going to do.

Speaker 6 What's your success rate?

Speaker 5 You mean that of

Speaker 6 nonprofits that follow through with it?

Speaker 5 Overall, close to 100%.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 do I have little disagreements along the way? Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but I mean, I'm there to work it out. I'm not there to,

Speaker 5 you know, it's different than buying a pair of shoes, you know, like, yeah. Right?

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's that's amazing. You're a great person for doing that.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 thank my wife, and

Speaker 5 there you go.

Speaker 6 So, how did you get into the golf industry?

Speaker 5 I decided to do it.

Speaker 5 I bought Scotsdale National,

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 that was first

Speaker 5 thing. You know, when I did the GoDaddy deal, I decided I was going to buy either a football team or a really, a really nice

Speaker 5 golf course.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 praise the Lord, thank my angel, I bought a golf course.

Speaker 5 So I love it. Do you play golf?

Speaker 6 I'm not any good.

Speaker 5 Oh, who is?

Speaker 5 Nobody's any good.

Speaker 6 Danica Patrick's pretty good, isn't she?

Speaker 5 She has her moments.

Speaker 5 Yeah, she has her moments.

Speaker 5 But, you know, I bought Scottsdale National. It is one of these deals where it became available.

Speaker 5 It is right now, it is

Speaker 5 730 acres in

Speaker 5 prem of real estate in Scottsdale, surrounded on three sides by,

Speaker 5 what is it, three million acres of land. Wow.
Government set aside.

Speaker 5 Has one house on the property.

Speaker 5 You guessed it.

Speaker 6 Very nice. Yeah.
Very nice. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Well, Bob, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, I want to dive into psychedelics.

Speaker 5 Which I didn't bring any.

Speaker 6 I got you covered.

Speaker 5 Good.

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Let's get back to the show.

Speaker 6 All right, Bob, we're back from the break. I want to dig into psychedelics.

Speaker 6 It's something that,

Speaker 6 like I'd mentioned earlier, it... fixed a lot of things going on with my family.
My son was

Speaker 6 six months old at the time when I finally decided to take that leap. And

Speaker 6 it's just totally changed everything for me. My family life, my business,

Speaker 6 old relationships, opened me up to a lot of

Speaker 6 things that maybe I

Speaker 6 wasn't confident diving into before.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I think would be a great way to put it.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 6 sent me on a spiritual journey and

Speaker 6 found God and faith in Christ. And just so much good has come from

Speaker 6 since the very first time.

Speaker 6 And so I know for you, I mean, we had talked about your childhood,

Speaker 6 growing up in a rough environment. We talked about Vietnam, coming home from Vietnam.
I'm sure there's a lot of business stress.

Speaker 6 I mean, I can only imagine because I'm stressed out of my mind just with what I'm running. And, and,

Speaker 6 and I find a lot of peace through those. And

Speaker 6 it took me,

Speaker 6 I guess, almost 10 years.

Speaker 6 Almost 10 years after I finally left doing contract work for the CIA.

Speaker 6 in various combat zones to finally take that leap. It took you 49 years, if I'm correct.

Speaker 6 49 years. How did you hear about psychedelics?

Speaker 5 How did I hear about psychedelics?

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 when I was

Speaker 5 a kid in the 60s,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 there was OSD around and

Speaker 5 of course, marijuana, marijuana, I don't consider a psychedelic.

Speaker 5 There was,

Speaker 5 and then you had guys talking about mushrooms and other stuff, but I never did any of that then because, number one, I just, I didn't feel the need to and I didn't didn't, I was a little afraid of it because I didn't know much about it.

Speaker 5 You know, you had all these rumors that, you know, if you took, you took LSD, you might try to fly off a building and, you know, shit like that.

Speaker 5 So I didn't pay any attention to it. And I didn't even think about it, that it would be,

Speaker 5 that it would have the the medicinal properties that it would do even though in spite of

Speaker 5 for millennia we have other cultures that have used it to to handle problems that that that we have all the time and they don't have at all because of their their wise use of psychedelics

Speaker 5 So the thing that made the difference for me was in 2017, it didn't happen until 2017,

Speaker 5 I read

Speaker 5 Michael Polland's book, How to Change Your Mind.

Speaker 5 And Michael Pollan's book is a treatise on psychedelics.

Speaker 5 And, you know, and it talks about, it doesn't talk about iboga, even though that is that's granddaddy of mall, baby.

Speaker 6 Have you done that?

Speaker 5 No. I have.

Speaker 6 That was my first one.

Speaker 5 Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I haven't. And

Speaker 5 maybe one day.

Speaker 5 But I don't. I haven't so far.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 I read his book. And, you know, and I was fascinated.
First, the book reads like a novel.

Speaker 5 Reads like mine reads.

Speaker 5 And like, you know, and it's just.

Speaker 5 I could not get over that that could be

Speaker 5 a solution for me. And so I told my wife, Renee, that

Speaker 5 I would like to try this.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 she had me fixed up within two weeks. Are you serious? Dead serious.
She had me hooked up. And it just

Speaker 5 so happened that she had been talking to a friend, who've been talking to a friend who had a journey like this and on and on and on. And it's just everything just

Speaker 5 dovetailed together. And so

Speaker 5 she introduced me to these people and two guides, work under the radar, of course.

Speaker 5 And I met them in Hawaii. And

Speaker 5 I did, for three days, I did three different types of

Speaker 5 psychedelics. First day, I did ayahuasca.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, that's different.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 you would never buy that at a uh soda fountain, would you? Uh, nasty taste of stuff. But anyhow, uh, you know, it is what it is, and some people swear by it.
Um the second day, I did um

Speaker 5 uh magic mushrooms

Speaker 5 and the

Speaker 5 let's tell you a story that is funny.

Speaker 5 My guide He made this, uh, he had this pot, this tea pot, and he said, this holds three large cups, and I made it very strong, this magic mushroom tea so you'll only need one cup. Now

Speaker 5 I swear what I'm telling you going to tell you is true.

Speaker 5 I drank all three cups and I ate the tea bags

Speaker 5 and I was righteously stoned

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 I was

Speaker 5 I was here, there, and everywhere.

Speaker 5 You know, and

Speaker 5 did I have a journey? Yeah, I did.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it was all positive. Some tears and so forth, but it was all positive.
And then the next day I took off,

Speaker 5 took a break. And that day, my wife and I went and played golf.
And

Speaker 5 what I liked is it felt like the fauna. like the bushes and the grass and the

Speaker 5 it all knew I was there and I was alive, and what I've been doing, and it was supportive. And

Speaker 5 I never putted that good in my life.

Speaker 5 It was like whatever green I was on, it was like the grass would say, hit it here, Bobby. And I waited to go right bend right around into the cup.
I mean, it was incredible. Now, I never

Speaker 5 happened, you know, again or since, but it happened that one time.

Speaker 5 And so it was a great,

Speaker 5 experience. The next day,

Speaker 5 it was LSD.

Speaker 5 And the LSD,

Speaker 5 I took a strong dose of it. And

Speaker 5 it was, you know, had the same impact the other two did.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 I didn't have any...

Speaker 5 hallucinations

Speaker 5 on that,

Speaker 5 but

Speaker 5 I sure had a righteous buzz and was happy to talk and felt good about things.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 when I was all said and done, my wife noticed it the first.

Speaker 5 She said, you're different.

Speaker 5 You know, you're easier to talk to, you're easier to get along with.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 you don't have that temper, that edge about you is gone. And

Speaker 5 then I could feel it too.

Speaker 5 and then the people that I work with also knew it you know they could see it and so I made it I made a sharp turn away from PTSD at that point I'd like to say at that time it had been

Speaker 5 49 years since the war for me and I finally came home Wow

Speaker 5 what

Speaker 6 I'd like to dive into that a little more in depth, but before we get into each specific journey, I'm just, you know,

Speaker 6 what is it that, I mean, I know you found the book,

Speaker 6 but what was going on in your life at that time? I mean, what was

Speaker 6 what sent you on the search?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 brother,

Speaker 5 I had an edge about me that I didn't like.

Speaker 5 And I would lose my temper.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I just

Speaker 5 would hate myself for it, you know, because it was no reason.

Speaker 5 It was always something stupid, you know. And

Speaker 5 so, I mean, it was always under a quest.

Speaker 5 I knew that, you know, this first, you know, I

Speaker 5 had a battle with some depression.

Speaker 5 I had

Speaker 5 fought

Speaker 5 this horrid temper that I had.

Speaker 5 And I just never liked being around people.

Speaker 5 I like being alone, you know. And

Speaker 5 that's

Speaker 5 not a good thing.

Speaker 5 At least if you can overcome why you're like that. You know, it was terrible for me when days like the...

Speaker 5 like the days the trees fell. And that reminded it was an experience I had in Vietnam.
And

Speaker 5 I would always, I would always go back there on the 4th of July. And I would do whatever I could to avoid fireworks, to stay away from that sort of thing.
But it's stuff like that. And,

Speaker 5 you know, I've been,

Speaker 5 my wife is my third wife. I mean,

Speaker 5 I've been given my walking papers twice. And it's never a pleasant time.

Speaker 5 So, and then, you know, and I knew that the women that I married both times were good women. I mean, there wasn't nothing wrong with them.
But

Speaker 5 the problem was, the problem was me.

Speaker 6 Would you, let's, what do you mean the day the trees fell?

Speaker 5 Okay, I'll tell you about the day the trees fell. We set up for ambush one night in a graveyard in Vietnam.
And

Speaker 5 we're, we're,

Speaker 5 it was all Vietnamese are buried sitting up, at least most of them are that I'm aware of. And so

Speaker 5 we had a squad a couple of clicks right of us, a couple of clicks left of us. And

Speaker 5 so I was facing just inward to this area where all these trees were.

Speaker 5 And I was leaning against

Speaker 5 the mound.

Speaker 5 They were, there was,

Speaker 5 all of a sudden,

Speaker 5 on the right of us, there was a firefight started. And then there was a firefight on the left of us.
And there was bullets.

Speaker 5 You've been shot at many times. You know what it sounds like when a bullet goes by.

Speaker 5 You know, it sounds like beef or something flying by. But I mean, it was like,

Speaker 5 and he's going like crazy. So he couldn't stand up.
And then

Speaker 5 one of the guys in our squad,

Speaker 5 Proud of George, called in artillery. It must have been NVA moving towards us from the

Speaker 5 front of us area

Speaker 5 I was facing. And all I could see was I could see,

Speaker 5 you know, I don't know how far out it was, maybe a couple hundred yards, maybe 100 yards. I don't know.
But it would be like everything would light up.

Speaker 5 And then you'd see these trees, these palm trees, just falling down, falling down. And then.

Speaker 5 And then on and on and on. And it must have been for like 15 minutes.
And then

Speaker 5 quiet.

Speaker 5 And that was, that's what I'm talking about that particular night. That night was

Speaker 5 crazy. And what was crazier about it, that particular graveyard, there was a squad of ours a month or so before I got there that set up in that graveyard.
And

Speaker 5 they all died.

Speaker 5 because

Speaker 5 the Vietnamese somehow or another

Speaker 6 They were buried sitting up?

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 5 they weren't buried. They were just mutilated, like

Speaker 5 sometimes happens.

Speaker 5 But none of us were hurt that night.

Speaker 5 Just the trees. Just the trees were.

Speaker 6 What about the family life? I mean...

Speaker 6 Two wives, you got kids, grandkids, great-grandkids. You're running

Speaker 6 a major enterprise.

Speaker 6 I would imagine that takes somewhat of a toll on the family.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it does. It does.
But, you know, I can tell you what I've, the painful thing is what I decided was

Speaker 5 early on it was

Speaker 5 might have been a good thing that I wasn't always around.

Speaker 6 Because of your temper?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Temper. I mean, I never got, never got physical, never, never once, but

Speaker 5 she was verbal and loud. And that's...

Speaker 5 I'm happy that with my angel, I'm past that.

Speaker 5 At least 99%.

Speaker 6 Are you close with your kids?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 All of them?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 How many kids do you have? Three.

Speaker 6 Close with the grandkids?

Speaker 5 Grandkids, not as much. Great-grandkids, haven't met them yet.

Speaker 6 Haven't met them yet?

Speaker 5 Haven't met them yet.

Speaker 6 How old are they?

Speaker 5 They are, I think, two and a half and one,

Speaker 5 something like that.

Speaker 6 Do you want to meet them?

Speaker 5 Of course I do.

Speaker 6 Well, what's going on?

Speaker 5 Well, I will, but I won't when I'm ready.

Speaker 5 Dad?

Speaker 6 Gotcha.

Speaker 6 So you got all this going on in your life.

Speaker 6 You find Michael Pollan's book, read it, decide you're going to do it.

Speaker 6 Wife makes the connection.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 6 What are you seeing in your ayahuasca journey?

Speaker 5 What I see in my ayahuasca journey,

Speaker 5 you know, I've seen less in the ayahuasca journey than I did in the

Speaker 5 mushrooms and the LSD.

Speaker 5 And I think the reason for it is maybe you give me a lighter dose.

Speaker 6 Anything get revealed? Any epiphanies?

Speaker 5 In ayahuasca?

Speaker 5 You know, if it was anything, it's that I, you know, I needed to change and I could change and

Speaker 5 there you go.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 that is it.

Speaker 6 How about the psilocybin?

Speaker 5 Psilocybin had the biggest difference with me a number of times.

Speaker 5 And it

Speaker 5 seems to work good.

Speaker 6 What did you see?

Speaker 5 What did I see? Well, I had that flashback of processing those guys

Speaker 5 to Vietnam.

Speaker 5 And then I told you when I was in troop processing, just before I rotated home,

Speaker 5 that, I mean,

Speaker 5 I could see those guys like I was there, like they were yesterday.

Speaker 5 I mean, like I was sitting here with you now.

Speaker 6 Was it looking at that experience or a different perspective?

Speaker 5 You know, it's just, it's just, I've seen the

Speaker 5 horror of it. I mean, the

Speaker 5 just the...

Speaker 5 how that bullshit happens and and these guys are walking into that and they don't have a clue. I mean, I've seen that.
And I mean, and the mess,

Speaker 5 if I had to tell you

Speaker 5 what my most stressful points were to cause

Speaker 5 PTSD, I would have never picked that. I just wouldn't have.

Speaker 5 Because I buried it.

Speaker 5 But it came out and it was one of the most

Speaker 5 profound.

Speaker 6 What else was revealed?

Speaker 5 That's it.

Speaker 6 The whole experience was Vietnam?

Speaker 5 Well, Vietnam, the war is

Speaker 5 rough for me. Being a kid is also a rough, rough time.
But see,

Speaker 5 I was never, when I was a kid, I was never abused. I was neglected.

Speaker 5 And it's just as bad. Maybe worse.
I don't know.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 I don't know.

Speaker 5 Both times

Speaker 5 bother me. early on when I was talking about the introduction and that letter I wrote myself.

Speaker 5 I mean, it was everything I could do to tell you about it without crying totally.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 maybe

Speaker 5 one day I will.

Speaker 5 I'll be able to talk about it. But I mean, it just wrenches my soul every time.

Speaker 6 So, you know, I think

Speaker 6 a lot of

Speaker 6 firstborns, kids with neglect,

Speaker 6 kids that are abused. I mean, I think a lot of them,

Speaker 6 they become overachievers.

Speaker 6 And like, we're always trying to prove something. I'm the oldest.

Speaker 6 It can relate somewhat.

Speaker 6 But it's just.

Speaker 6 When you were building all your companies, when you were in Vietnam, I mean, who were you trying to prove anything to? Anybody? Were you looking for some type of acceptance?

Speaker 6 Were you looking for some type of self-worth?

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 no and no. Self-worth maybe.

Speaker 5 You know, it's tough to know what I was. I just know I love doing it.

Speaker 5 And that's an area that I think was a big advantage for me. I just loved it.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 And so, you know, I was willing to channel my energy and time into it and

Speaker 5 use that as a release to kind of self-treat or self-medicate PTSD, if you will. I mean, you know, and, you know, when

Speaker 5 you don't work 60-hour shift followed by eight-hour sleep, followed by 60-hour shift, followed by, you know, for a few months, unless you're a bit of a workaholic, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah. Well, that's what it was.

Speaker 5 But I loved doing it, but I didn't do it because I hated doing it. I used to look at my watch and I never looked at it and said, oh, it's 4 o'clock.
I got another 12 hours left to work.

Speaker 5 I would look at it and say, oh, it's 4 o'clock. Oh, man, I only have 12 hours I can work.

Speaker 5 I mean, that sort of thing.

Speaker 6 That resonates with me.

Speaker 6 But I mean, I'm just,

Speaker 6 I guess what I'm saying is,

Speaker 6 if you were neglected, if you were neglected as a child, then,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 all therapists go back to childhood. And they say that a lot of this stuff stems from childhood.

Speaker 6 Even with a lot of war trauma, they dive more into, in my experience, they dive more into childhood than they do anything else. And

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 that's what makes me curious is if

Speaker 6 you built these companies

Speaker 6 to

Speaker 5 gain the

Speaker 6 approval or interest or just having your parents be proud of what you've built could be a major driver to a lot of people.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 sometimes you got to dig for it, but that's what I'm asking you, is if you think that,

Speaker 6 you know, by growing up rough and being neglected, if it was a driver in your business,

Speaker 6 in your entire life?

Speaker 5 Well, you know,

Speaker 5 I think,

Speaker 5 you know, it had to be in the sense that I grew up knowing that if I really wanted something, I better be working for it.

Speaker 5 All right. So that in itself is a driver, as opposed to somebody that's working with a silver spoon, right? And you're born with that, you know, they might not,

Speaker 5 you know, have that discipline.

Speaker 6 Those are registers.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so

Speaker 5 I was born with a dirty plastic spoon.

Speaker 5 You act differently with one of those.

Speaker 6 And what about your experience with LSD?

Speaker 5 LSD is

Speaker 5 been a different type of

Speaker 5 drug for me.

Speaker 5 I think it's been helpful.

Speaker 5 I tend to get

Speaker 5 a little

Speaker 5 with LSD, a little nauseous with it, but never so nauseous that I purge

Speaker 5 and then move on to the next step, just nauseous.

Speaker 5 So I've known that, I've avoided it. But I still think

Speaker 5 having LSD, at the same time, I had the combination of ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, and or cell-cybin and

Speaker 5 LSD, I think that is a powerful combination for me.

Speaker 6 And you saw the effects immediately, and your wife did.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 6 What did she see?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 she seen I was kind of the guy she wanted to be married to.

Speaker 5 There you go. So, you know,

Speaker 5 it's like I was told once that every young couple that gets married, right,

Speaker 5 the husband thinks that, you know, doesn't want his wife to change. And the wife doesn't want her husband, no, wants her husband to change.
And often they're both disappointed.

Speaker 5 Well, she was happy to see that her husband changed.

Speaker 5 Or maybe changed.

Speaker 6 And it stuck.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Do you continue to use psychedelics?

Speaker 5 You know, I have, but I don't.

Speaker 5 I don't. I mean, I haven't

Speaker 5 in

Speaker 5 a while.

Speaker 5 My wife did a journey not too long ago with her sisters. They had some family stuff they were dealing with, and it's been great.

Speaker 5 And I will tell you what, it has been, I mean, I love the woman tremendously, but since her journey, I love her even more.

Speaker 6 Have you guys ever done anything together?

Speaker 5 Oh, we have we have we have uh done mdma

Speaker 5 um and um done it twice i think but it's been a while it's been a while see

Speaker 6 what so what why did you dive back in did you start to see any falloff from what you've gained from your initial journey no i i did because it was there And I thought maybe I could still be better.

Speaker 6 Did you have an ego death?

Speaker 5 An ego death.

Speaker 6 Have you heard of this?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 6 An ego death. Have you ever heard of 5-MeO-DMT?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Have you done that?

Speaker 5 I have. And let me tell you a story with that.
I've done that.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 that's the kind that you smoke the, right?

Speaker 6 Toadboard.

Speaker 5 Well, I've smoked it and did it three times, smoked it, felt nothing.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 my guide, who is my dear friend, said, this must be something wrong with this. And he took a puff of it and was on the roof

Speaker 5 so for some reason another

Speaker 5 that stuff doesn't affect me no kidding yeah i i don't i don't know what it is but it's the damnedest thing damn i did ibogaine and then followed by five meo dmt and that was a total ego death

Speaker 6 you legitimately think

Speaker 6 you don't think

Speaker 6 In your mind, you are 100%

Speaker 6 certain that you are dying. And then you cross over into this other realm.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 once you,

Speaker 6 it's the most anxiety, the most fear, the most all of that stuff that I've ever experienced at

Speaker 6 any one particular given point in time.

Speaker 6 Lasts for maybe 15 to 30 seconds, but it feels like an eternity.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 6 I think a lot of people fight it and maybe they don't cross over, but if you can actually let it go, just let go and actually die,

Speaker 6 because you are 100% certain you are dying.

Speaker 9 You know,

Speaker 6 it's like your entire

Speaker 6 life,

Speaker 6 man,

Speaker 6 it's hard to describe, but it's like

Speaker 6 you just start letting go of everything. You let go of

Speaker 6 possessions and friends, and then there's like the final thing. And the final thing for me was

Speaker 6 I was having a problem releasing my wife and my firstborn son. I didn't have my daughter at the time.

Speaker 6 And that was my last thought before I crossed over:

Speaker 6 I can't fucking die because

Speaker 6 I can't leave my wife and my son in this fucked up place.

Speaker 6 And then I let that go.

Speaker 6 And you cross over into this other realm. And

Speaker 6 man, it uh

Speaker 6 it really opens you up to

Speaker 6 all the good in the world.

Speaker 6 And you know, I'd always heard about

Speaker 6 it, it took me a long time to do this because I always thought psychedelics are just for fucking hippies, and uh, I don't, I definitely don't consider myself a hippie,

Speaker 6 but I've heard him talk about energy and good energy and bad energy. And

Speaker 6 once I I crossed over into that realm, I could see like

Speaker 6 I could see all of the energy flowing from the beach into the ocean, into the trees, the birds, the sky.

Speaker 6 I could tell that everything was connected one way or another. But I wasn't hallucinating.
It was more of an intuitive type

Speaker 6 experience.

Speaker 6 I felt my best friend Gabe that I was telling you about, who's Glock and Flag is up there. I felt his presence.

Speaker 6 Um, we didn't talk, but I could just feel him.

Speaker 6 And um,

Speaker 6 and that just that stuff just changed my entire life. It cured my addiction.
I was a major alcoholic, sucking down pills, valium, Xanax, ambient, selenor, oxycodine,

Speaker 6 any, all of it, anything I could get my hands on, just to numb, just to numb, just to numb it out, gone like that. Haven't had a drop of booze since.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it totally.

Speaker 6 And then on top of that, you know, just being

Speaker 6 just being on a on the platform that I've built in front of millions of people,

Speaker 6 there were subjects that I felt beholden to my audience. I have to, I can't venture into this because my audience doesn't want to see it.
And I took all that shit away. It said,

Speaker 6 fuck it. Just do whatever the fuck you want to do.

Speaker 6 And I started doing that. And my business was already on a rocket ship.

Speaker 6 And then once I didn't care anymore about

Speaker 6 anything

Speaker 6 but my own curiosity,

Speaker 6 my business just, it gave me the courage to say no to things. It gave me the courage to dive into new areas.
It gave me the courage to start looking at the afterlife and what that looks like and

Speaker 6 we were talking about guardian angels it spent me down a whole spiritual journey with that and uh looked into the universe and all kinds of shit and eventually landed on christianity but

Speaker 6 but

Speaker 6 and i continue to do self-maintenance you know it not on any particular cadence but

Speaker 6 but um

Speaker 6 i've done a fair amount of psilocybin and

Speaker 6 man

Speaker 6 that stuff really cleaned me out, too, with a lot of the stuff that was going on between me and my wife. And

Speaker 6 I think everybody should do this.

Speaker 5 I think so.

Speaker 5 I think it is

Speaker 5 one of the answers. I think when we start doing it as a people, should we ever stop doing it as a people,

Speaker 5 it'd be a renaissance.

Speaker 6 Why did you decide to do it again

Speaker 6 after your initial experience?

Speaker 5 Why did I decide to do it again after the initial experience?

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 the first time it was I wanted to

Speaker 5 fix a problem.

Speaker 5 Second time,

Speaker 5 I wanted to get better, keep getting better.

Speaker 5 See, and now I feel I'm, you know, probably about as good as I'm going to get. So, I, you know, I

Speaker 5 not not

Speaker 5 doing it as much.

Speaker 6 Do you think you'll do it again?

Speaker 5 Might. Hope so.

Speaker 5 Hope so.

Speaker 5 Like to do it with my wife again.

Speaker 6 But.

Speaker 6 What do you like to surround yourself with?

Speaker 6 Nature

Speaker 6 when you do it?

Speaker 5 Nature. Nature is one.

Speaker 5 It's hard to go wrong with that.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 friends.

Speaker 6 Do you find clarity? Do you find answers?

Speaker 5 Not in the sense that

Speaker 5 there's something that I'm looking for. No, no.

Speaker 6 Do you go into it with intentions?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 6 No?

Speaker 5 No, no.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Let me. You know,

Speaker 5 I was with one of the guides who was.

Speaker 5 He was

Speaker 5 the guy that did my first journey in 2017, him and him and his partner. And,

Speaker 5 you know, I had thought about what I wanted to

Speaker 5 accomplish

Speaker 5 when

Speaker 5 he was there with me. And we went ahead and we, you know, I had a journey and so forth.

Speaker 5 And I never thought I accomplished anything,

Speaker 5 but I accomplished everything.

Speaker 5 And I know you're going to ask me, you're going to say, well, what is it you wanted to accomplish? I don't fucking remember.

Speaker 5 And you're going to say, well, how do you know? Well, I did at the time I knew. But now.

Speaker 5 I got my brain just,

Speaker 5 I've been eating chocolate chip cookies and they've

Speaker 5 clouded clouded my thoughts

Speaker 5 oh man

Speaker 5 are you a Christian yes how did you find faith how did how do how do I find faith how did you find faith what does that mean faith how do I find faith in God faith in Christ or how do I find it how did you find it how did I find it I I think it takes an effort for me

Speaker 5 but um

Speaker 5 you know there's uh there's a saying there's no atheist in a foxhole

Speaker 5 right i know that saying very well yeah no atheist in a foxhole and um

Speaker 5 you know i um

Speaker 6 i mean that's it's the best i can do do you think that psychedelics is a bridge into a spiritual realm.

Speaker 5 You know, I think so. I think so.
And, you know, and I'd like to think that

Speaker 5 I haven't been able to really get in there

Speaker 5 as deep as

Speaker 5 is there available for the getting.

Speaker 5 Now, the one thing I can tell you, under the supervision of a doctor, of a physician, I've taken a strong injection of ketamine and have an absolutely total

Speaker 5 hallucination, almost geometric and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 Don't think I'll see anybody again. And I mean, it's pretty heady stuff.
But

Speaker 5 coming through that, you know,

Speaker 5 I don't have any particular thing that I come away with

Speaker 5 other than love solves most things.

Speaker 5 violence solves nothing.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 those particular things

Speaker 5 would be what I came away with that as.

Speaker 6 Well, I would say that's pretty profound.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I do know when I

Speaker 5 when I spend time and I

Speaker 5 study Christianity and I

Speaker 5 read about it, I get a feeling that I don't get from anything else.

Speaker 6 Me too.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Me too.

Speaker 6 well bub

Speaker 6 i really appreciate you coming and it was an honor to interview you and uh and document your life journey and um i just want to say thank you again and god bless

Speaker 5 thanks brother

Speaker 5 well i i appreciate being here

Speaker 5 you uh You're quite a guy.

Speaker 5 You've had quite a life. And,

Speaker 5 you know, God bless you. I mean, you know,

Speaker 5 you could be an angel.

Speaker 6 I don't know. You are an angel.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 thank you.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Thank you.