Jocko Podcast 318: 318: Even When The Uniform Comes Off, You Have a Lot To Offer. With Micah Fink

this is jocko podcast number 318 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening the native americans believed that if you gave someone a diagnosis it was a curse it was a curse that can become an identity if you accept it but a rewiring can happen when you realize that you are the one creating your own experience this is a long and truthful conversation with yourself how can we learn and evolve from our successes and our failures where do we need to change how can a person find solace and sovereignty in the face of experience that has been shaped by such pressure immense hardship bad choices chemical manipulation digital stimulation and sophisticated programming that teaches you to kill when the antiquated ways fail and repeat the same answers and produce the same results it's time to take charge of change you are not the victim of this life but rather the victim of your own choices truth is found within oneself but to get to that truth you have to peel back the layers to who you are it's self work and self knowing that creates profound change today we have an addiction problem we are addicted to other people's ideas we become the victim of our experience we take magic pills or become convinced by false prophets as to what will fix us or make us happy we just want to relieve hurt and make it go away but running from pain only magnifies the pain we are born to honor what is good while striving for our highest self you have to be open to everything enclosed to nothing the heat the cold your weaknesses failures and successes your loss and your regrets face them face yourself this is the most important and difficult battle you have ever been in alexander the great once said bury me with my hands out of the ground so the world can see that i left it with nothing that is the plan you change your own life from within always from within never outside it's one hundred percent in you life is not here to punish us but is here to help us grow in wisdom and knowledge and to ensure we never again are a victim of life the time is now and that is a compilation of words that i put together that were written by or spoken by or implied by a man by the name of micah fink and i think you're going to see that through his path in life in boyhood and business and war and combat and service and sacrifice it's allowed him to learn some valuable lessons and his goal is to teach those lessons or if not the lessons themselves then at least teach other people how to learn those lessons how to rewire themselves to be who you want to be to be who you can be and we are lucky enough to have micah with us here tonight to share some of those lessons so micah thanks for coming by man thanks buddy man that was intense yeah that was awesome yeah you've got a bunch of clips out and and stuff that you've written on your website and i just pulled from some of it and watched some of your videos and pulled from some of that to try and give people a feel for sort of where you're at but in order to get to where you're at i guess we we start at the beginning yeah where have you been yeah where have you been so where'd it all start man you know uh i uh i kind of always started like yeah i was just a small town kid from upstate new york and i laughed because if you would have told me when i was a kid that i would be doing the things that i'm doing today i would have i probably would have hit you over the head with a frying pan i just uh i feel really fortunate to uh you know to now be in a place where i can i can take the experiences in my life that at a point did break me down um and and and now kind of uh show people that those experiences are the greatest ally that they have and this journey of self-discovery uh that we're all on and uh you know i grew up my dad you know i grew up tough family you know uh my dad was uh you know seven brothers and sisters and uh grandfather was a mob mob guy and uh so he was in federal prison you know for 10 years and uh were you alive then no no i was so this is before you were born yes before i was born and but and he had a tough life and so he grew up as an orphan on the streets and this is your dad my dad my grandfather who i was super close to he died when i was 16. and uh i was i was really close to him he was a he was a hard man and uh he grew up as an orphan and um and ended up turning his life around i guess you could say much later in his life became the head of the railroad union and you know my dad always tells the story when when their life kind of started straightening out and fast forward a little bit my my dad said they used to go back he was a engineer in the railroad and uh he said he used to go back in the caboose my grandfather be running all these card games you know hustling and doing this and that and my dad would come back and say bye what are you doing back here i thought you were a christian and he's like you can't gamble and he's like well with me it's a sure thing so it's not gambling because he was a card counter he could count cards but uh you know so it's like real blue collar family railroad family and uh you know my dad my dad grew up in that kind of life so my grandfather's pretty severe guy so did your dad grow did your grandfather live in also an upstate or was he down in the city so he was upstate he was in the city and then and then family moved upstate new york and then uh mother and father died alcoholism and then i think nine nine of the brothers and sisters were street kids basically they were orphans and then my grandfather kept escaping and um matter of fact he broke his leg as an orphan was taken back to the home had to get surgery and you want to talk about having a rough they circumcised them he was 10. the doc yeah there's an orphan kid so they brought him in there they're just like yeah i'll give a little snip but uh yeah so it was a it was a interesting kind of upbringing because my dad grew up and he he went to the 82nd airborne i always either go to go to prison or go to vietnam type deal and um my dad was a really really rough guy like he's the epitome of a tough guy like a real tough like a violent tough guy and uh he wound up in prison and he ran up in lemonworth and uh and what what was this before you were born was this yeah this is so this was before i was born so my mom and dad have been together since 15 or 16. my dad had to join the military um did he go to vietnam well he was supposed to go to vietnam but then he wound up going to prison um which vietnam might have been better but uh yeah he uh he never had that balance in his life you know and um you know it's interesting my mom and dad i think 56 years or something they've been together um but yeah my dad went to leavenworth and uh he got in some trouble in the military of course and he was riding with all the biker gangs stuff like that and i mean he doesn't every tooth in my dad's head's been punched out he's got 100 something stitches across his head and you know he kind of just he had a rough and he hit rock bottom and he got out he ended up uh becoming a christian and then i was so he so his prison time was in the military yeah he went to leavenworth yep yeah yeah so he went to leavenworth and uh how long was he in leavenworth for a couple years and then after that it was whatever dishonorable discharge most likely yeah and then and then he got out and he just uh like took a bus back basically so he owed he owed a bunch of money to uh like the hell's angels and those kind of guys so they like took everything when he went to prison robbed him blind basically and uh so we got out with nothing and you know when i was a kid like my christmases were spent like in the city missions you know every single christmas we were in the slums and the hoods we had people at my house like straight out of prison and like my daddy's always telling me i was a kid he's like you know why i come here he said i come here because i never want to forget where i came from and my mom said that when my dad when she met him he had a van 56 panel van that said no hope without dope you can never figure why i figure figure out why i'm getting pulled over all the time but like so he was you know he was a he was a rough guy and a matter of fact i know because as a kid people would come up to my dad they wouldn't believe that you know it was him and he was he was he was a violent human being and the kind of person has nothing to lose and he was tough and he was a boxer and he was a street fighter and um so yeah so my dad gets out and he ends up becoming walking down the street like lowest point of his life and he sees like the windows open in a church and lights on and he decides he's gonna walk in there and he sits in the back zz top looking guy if you look at the pictures he's got the huge beard with the you know the jacket with 87 patches on it you know rats and stuff and uh tattoos he had like jesus smoking pot in his arm and he had all kinds of crazy stuff and uh he uh he has an experience like in that church and nobody talked to him like nobody would even come up to him they just looked at him like whoa this is a scary guy and he turned his life around right there in that moment and uh so i was born in 79 my sister was born to 77 and my dad had to figure out how to put his life together so my grandfather got him hooked up on the railroad and i ended up becoming an engineer and uh working on the railroad through until i was in second grade and then he started a church in a really rural town of 600 people so we were we were real poor when i grew up uh we all lived in the same bedroom so how many brothers and sisters were one sister just just the one sister just the one sister yeah and this is still in upstate new york yeah and then they started doing the tent revivals so when i was a kid i always tell people i'm like listen i at the time i had become uh and i'm not a religious guy like but i had become i would get saved like pretty much three to four times a week i've been i've been saved more than any human being in north america because you would hear these guys and they would start preaching you know the crescendo would build and the worms and the hell and then i'm like god i'm like you know i've been kind of i'm touching my penis or something i'm like i should i'm gonna that would just be my hand up and then i was like i moved my way up to the blanket guy where i when the people would fall down i would rush in with a little blanket and laid over them which a lot of them are faking because i was like man these people kind of just fall down like before they even get up there sometimes they would just they would get over the tower or whatever so i'd have these little blankets you know i'm like seven or eight years old i'd run up the blanket and i'd always like step on their finger and they'd be like hey so then i was like i started questioning things i really i really did start questioning things or sometimes they'd push you down on the ground but that was a crazy experience you know we traveled all around was that all around the country you travel or just upstate new york okay upstate new york you know so it was a i remember the 80s it was kind of a wild time for that kind of stuff that people get the laughing spells and like you know there was all these kind of things going on and so i ended up uh i ended up leaving home at 16 so and i lived on my own from then on and where did you move to i kind of moved around the country uh and uh yeah so i ended up uh moving uh down to south florida and uh getting a job down there and working and what were you doing in south florida uh my grandmother lived down there and i lived uh i was homeless for a little while i was almost for some months down there and uh i'd gotten you know i'd gotten in some trouble i was also a very rough kid as you could imagine i the thing about that whole movement looking back now retrospectively is is the guilt and the fear and all the things that are associated with that world movement the movement you had a revival movement and all that kind of stuff and it was never about love you know and i mean to me like that loving yourself and not judging yourself and all those kind of things it wasn't associated with that at the time and so as soon as i got old enough you know around 15 i uh well i started working at 10 and yeah i had my first job on a dairy farm and then by time i was 14 years old i was working 35 40 hours a week sometimes and that was kind of my life were you going to school yeah i was going to school so i get off school sometimes i worked at 10 o'clock at night i'd work all the weekends work sunday afternoons um and then i started working for a family as a lineman first i was like pick up the sticks guy you know i'd run around and move the trucks and do all these things and then um slowly anything you get off the dairy i don't really drink milk because of that [Music] milk is a disturbing product like it is just sorry like new horizon organics or whatever but it's nasty like it's a nasty thing you know like and my job was to clean the udders and stick these little suckers onto there and you know like these old bags kicking you in and on you and it's the worst thing and then the milk goes in there and there's the flies and the cat's licking it up everywhere and then these things got to be like constantly you know kept pregnant you know so they're like in this perpetual state of pregnancy to get him to keep lactating you know and the only thing i wanted to do is just get the hell away from it so yeah i ended up uh ended up becoming alignment so i learned how to do line work be started climbing telephone poles when i was 13 and uh i started making like good money doing that so um i didn't do that down in florida i did a bunch of other things and then uh i sounded like fun oh yeah yeah that was a really really rough time in my life uh matter of fact we were just down in florida and i was driving through some of the areas i used to live in i could remember being so hungry like going in the grocery store and just living like just like grabbing like food and just like seeing like the big fat security guy like just looking at me like and i would do the whole kind of like julio jones like you know and usually i'd make it out with like one-tenth of what i had like and i remember this particular package of sausage that i had um who are you hanging around with what was that was going on uh i ended up uh i had met some guys when i was younger and uh that were kind of passing through they were like street guys and passing through upstate new york yeah they were like selling and you know kind of rough crew and so i actually showed up at their house in florida yeah and i was you know i was in some i was in some pretty big trouble at the time and um i uh i was on my i wasn't living at home at all anyway and so i moved down there and i stayed down there until i was 20 and and then i moved back home i had like 30 grand on me and a car and all kinds of stuff and i moved back home with a with a stripper girlfriend i got that out of my system so when i got the stripper in the teams i was like boys i was there when i was 17. don't do it and yeah so i you know i moved back home my life was kind of like in a tailspin honestly i you know i had money at things and i had a real hard chip on my shoulder and i just uh you know i had kind of become like my father i guess in a sense where i was i could be violent i was pissed off i was just angry once your dad found like god was he still pissed off and angry no but inversely he was really hard he was a hard man like hard you know i didn't i never looked at god as like god is love and he wants to like care for us and jesus with the lamb and stuff you're like old testament god old testament god like like i'm gonna take the stab those are the stories i heard you know like the ones you never hear you only hear like jesus just loves everybody like and then if you don't listen to him like worms are going to come suck your brains out you're going to burn it now and by the way like i mean i mean it was like that that was the was the revival days it was the fire and brimstone and so um i was afraid of it to be honest and i um i didn't i didn't like the whole thing i didn't like the hypocrisy and that whole movement and stuff and so as soon as i got old enough you know i had a bunch of money i had worked my whole life that's what i did i put my head down and i worked i worked really hard and that's kind of all i knew i was excessive compulsive worker and you know when i left i was on my own i had like i had no like balance in my life so yeah i moved back home i started doing line work again and actually a big turning point for me was that i uh um i went on a backpacking trip by myself and i ended up kind of having this experience out there with a bear it was like a little black bear or whatever and i kind of just started like thinking about my whole life and and how i just wasn't ready to die i wasn't ready to that there was something else missing and i walked out of there and i literally after that moment i kind of changed my whole life it was nothing religious where was where were you out in the adirondacks yeah kind of where i grew up going to all the time and so uh yeah so i ended up getting back on the line crew climbing telephone poles again and i look back like when i was a teenager working on these line crews i would spend the summers living in new york city and i was living with grown men that were shooting heroin and you know living in these they would put me up in these hotels and i would live in these with these guys that were like vagrants you know they were they were like they would travel from city to city on these huge contracts and i would be down there for the week and um yeah that was a that was tough you know because i was a kid matter of fact i remember there was a guy i'll never forget him i won't say his name he's probably dead now but he was like six foot eight he was the scariest guy who's from long island okay his brother was another gigantic dude and they were the hairiest people like i've ever seen in my life okay i've never seen men that hairy in my life until i met you and then um these guys were like these guys are like lebanese butchers like and they had the deepest voices and i get put on a splicing crew with this guy and i remember i'm you know i'm 16. it's right before i left i'm living in the city i'm living with all these guys and of course they would never give me a bed i'd be in the corner my little like sleeping bag you know and they'd be doing their things and uh i remember this guy would never talk to me and he would always flick his cigarettes at me and he was just constantly smoking pot all right and you're 16 at this point yeah yeah and uh so i'm down there with this guy and i'm like he has a van like a white like murderer van filled with all his cable stuff and his head like touches the ceilings in it and you'd always be like he always called me loser or fake or whatever like any name except for my name he would call me he had the deepest voice he's covered in hair and i remember we're in long island and i mean most kids are like playing like basketball and they're out there like trying to like you know make out with their girlfriend like high school prom like i'm there with this dude jim and i remember we're in long island i'm like setting the cones up or whatever and and i'm not doing it fast enough or good enough everything's getting paid by the units and i remember he like he's in the bucket above and he just looks at me and he starts swearing at me and he takes like a bolt and he throws it down he hits me in the side of the head within my heart had it like i mean it rang my belt freaking dude had a wing on him too so he just like whips it down it's like boom like and i like remember i like rocked back and i like i went around the side of the truck and i started like kind of crying i was like so then i like i just snapped and so i started like taking all the cones i started screaming and throwing them into the road and cars like laying on their horns this is in new york and i'm like and then i run over and grab the emergency controls in the bucket and i'm like and he's like flopping and shit's coming everywhere and he's screaming i'm going over you and i'm like crying i'm like like i'm pushing all the tools under the ground i'm throwing everything everywhere i'm kicking the truck i'm going crazy so finally after like 30 seconds of going crazy on the controls i can see is like this dude's gonna murder me so he just like stands up when i stop and he's like you're dead you're dead he says to me and i'm like so i just grab a huge pipe off the thing and i'm like and i'm out in the road and i'm just bawling my eyes out like come on jack i'm on like screaming and he's like he's like coming down his little bucket out i'm the tears and people are laying on their horns and shit's everywhere and he looked at me and he's like he gets down like just like out of reach from me and i'm hitting the truck on my yard dad like and he probably would have killed me and then he just like looked at me he's like and he went back up he made a good decision and i was like so then he's like pick up everything you piece of he says to me like and so i'm out there picking everything up and sure enough like i got to live in the house with the guy so i like you know i go back the week's over and of course we go back up you know it was like nothing happened you know and i would ride back up there and he would just be like smoking like joint after joint listening to the led zeppelin he would like look at me and get done you go and he like flicking at me and like hit my pants and i'd brush it off and he'd be like and he'd like he's like keep driving so i mean that was kind of like you know i always like joke about like when i got in the military like i was already kind of like a i wasn't afraid of much at that point like in the sense of like i just had i had had a lot of experiences you know i'd grown up on my own and grown up you know pretty rough and so um i end up starting my own line crew and hiring some of my delinquent friends that i grew up with you know and and i happened to be uh in queens new york and at this point i really did turn my life around and i'm in queens new york uh when the first plane hit the world trade center so september 11th i go to the yards in long island pick up all my equipment we used to store everything in these huge yards just outside the city and um i'm gonna get some of this here i got i need some like juice and uh i could uh get all the stuff loaded up and i got we used to just go down there and be dudes standing on the street and i always give them cash so i'd be like who needs to who needs a job you know like who's got a driver's license i'm like all right 100 bucks get in and we'd hire like a ground guy and um i was making big money at the time and i bought myself like an audi which i did not advise uh wait what was there something wrong with the audience well i mean i didn't realize that when it broke i could afford to fix it like that that was like and they do break who are your friends that you were hanging out with who are these dudes so like i only really kind of ever had like the same friends kind of growing up so the same crew from catskill yeah move down with you uh the guy yeah so they would work with me during the week we'd live down there and on the weekends they'd go home so we'd leave sunday night at like three o'clock in the morning or whatever and then we'd be there to work monday and then we had a place that we'd rent and we'd live down there work all week and then come back up weren't you in a band or something too yeah yeah i played it in a funk skyband shout out to funkshop loomis i think everyone's probably dead in that band but uh and were you guys playing gigs back then yeah so we were playing gigs back then so i ended up uh man i wish i had a my wife has a great picture of me at the house with my band i had platinum blonde hair and like my ears pierced and they're like stretched out and i got the whole thing huh oh yeah so this is like nice so this is i started playing drums as a kid in church as a you know and playing that gospel music you know so when you weren't covering you got all the like blankets so it's all those kind of like old gospel chops and uh and so i started playing drums when i was eight and um you know i wasn't like that we ended up kind of moving out of being you know really poor and and um you know kind of got to like i guess you could say like i guess what would be considered middle class or whatever you know yeah because your dad had a legit job but then the railroad yeah but he left the railroad and that's when we kind of went down because god was gonna pay us jack yeah and so you guys were gigging you were in a gigging band gigging band yeah we actually uh the band funk shot bloom is opened up for long beach double all-stars um bro yeah i actually have a dem we actually have a demo cd we had a song um called single man and uh tv dinner's always the same cause i'm a single man one night stands are calling my name because i'm a single man so it was uh yeah we were kind of a jam band and funk ska band and i like that kind of chops i like gospel music like you know that's kind of what i grew up with and um guys like dave weckel and ginger birch and uh you know so i was really actually thought i was gonna become a professional drummer that was like what i was really aspiring at the time to be um and i probably would have been had i stayed on the trajectory had 9 11 not happen um i mean i was uh getting i just gotten sponsored by evan's drum heads jd adario um so i was i was getting pretty like serious and i probably wouldn't have stayed with that band forever would have moved up you know you know to various bands and you know selling out your band before you even made it bro look at you yeah yeah i would have moved up from loomis funk [Music] yeah music guy it definitely gets people well scott is like the fact that you were playing ska music is is it's a well it's a particular style of playing too it's a lot of like odd time signatures you know like um and so it's it's and funk and gospel and all that kind of stuff has a similar foundations you know it's all based off of kind of like jazz you know so that's what i did you know and i played a lot of like christian music and i was like jesus rock um and let me tell you something you get the youth group girls when you're like jesus rockstar you totally do you're playing like at the huge youth camps and stuff you know you're like you're the guy you're driving the beats you know we love the lord but you know what's your name christian youth camp attendance just went down by 80 for young girls by the way don't go there i'll never send my kids there it's the worst you know back of the van so so all that's kind of where you're at you're busting your ass working you're playing music and making money enough money to buy an audi that you really can't afford to fix but still you got the audi yeah and then september 11th comes yeah september 11 came and i had never like you know thought about joining the military anything like that where were you on september 11 because you're in the city so i was in queens new york yeah i was on a telephone bowl when it happened uh so i was on a railroad pole at the time my job was to send a so time warner was being stood up high-speed internet road runner and we had to isolate those systems with what they call power supplies and so power supplies had to be isolated so if there's a lightning strike it would only go like 300 feet before the next pole and not below the whole system so i had a job putting in these power supplies and then grounding everything to power bell cable and all the way down into the ground and then i install these big supplies and then wire everything up and i got paid for everything i mean if i put like a screw on i could bill for it whatever it was so it was it was a good gig i mean making 7 800 bucks a day after i paid my guys and all my expenses so it was like it was good money and i was a hustler and so i mean i could just i would work when the sun was up like you know i was on my second cup of coffee and making money so um yeah the the first plane hits the world trade center i'm on a telephone pole i have no idea what's going on um and then i get a call in the next hell from a friend of mine that tells me that uh a plane just hit the world trade center and at first i really didn't believe him and um i come down off the pole and end up like meeting a lady who's had her door open like right next to where the pole was basically she lived right by the railroad tracks and what a terrible place to live oh my god when people live by the railroad tracks it's just like especially on the east coast like when you drop when you take the train they'll the railroad tracks yeah if you live by the railroad tracks it's a bummer that's that's let's face it out here in california you can live by the railroad tracks in encinitas and have an ocean view that in a house that you paid 4.8 million dollars for it's not that way on the east coast no your house is made of shingles yeah cause they're like the how you know how those houses are shingled it's like yeah these are working on the roof let's just keep going and uh yeah so i was like so i come down i see this lady she's in there she's watching the news husband was a port authority police officer and she was kind of crying and emotional you know then obviously the other plane hits and like at the time i thought like america was like under attack or were being invaded i i don't know i had all these like weird thoughts probably from watching like movies and red dots happening now yeah jed um so yeah so i uh i go back to the yards and i got my buddy with me we got rid of the other dude we gave him his hundred bucks and and i was like i'm going into the city and my buddy's like to do what and i'm like i don't know to like help out and he's like you don't know anything i remember this conversation we were at because i did i don't know what i was going to do i would be a victim or something but how old are you i was 21. okay yeah so i'm 42 now and so i was like so i go in there drop everything off take the audi get on the lie 495 and i'm like hauling ass down there there was no traffic it was crazy and i'm like maxing this car out it's probably why i broke down and i get to the i think it's the lincoln tunnel and there's like already tactical teams and guys all standing there and tell you how tight security was like i had like a bunch of like cable tv and electrical ids and like just you know i look like a state department guy in iraq you know i have like a million badges or whatever and i tell them i'm like a demolition crew and can you can you let me through and they're like yep bring it in and so i just drove right on through and we went down there and parked and that's when i you know towers that fall listen to the radio and that's when uh i realized like the severity of everything that was happening like i could see the smoke and people were screaming and running everywhere and i'd never seen anything like that in my life and so i ripped the sleeve off my shirt put it on my face and my buddy and just walked into the smoke basically at this point no idea where i was going so i would stay there for 24 hours until september 12 and um that was uh what were you doing at first like nothing i was just like trying to like see if anybody needed help but like i needed help myself because i was covered in the smoke and everybody was running the opposite way so i ended up getting in there and then they were putting together these like makeshift shirt it was total chaos like i don't think that people unless you were there like realized like there was really no organization it wasn't like there was half you know the fire department was dead there's smash vehicles cop cars everywhere so we kind of started like getting together with groups to like look for people late in the afternoon i ended up seeing like a guy's leg sticking out from underneath the police car and a bunch of us got over there and lifted it up and he was dead and i remember like all the gravel and everything was like shoved into his face he must have hid underneath the car i don't know to speculate but whatever happened the car lifted up and smushed them and so people like pulled them out and they pulled like some blankets over them and fire department came in citibank tower fell that tower you know mystical tower 7 i was like right there and uh you know for a couple hours i couldn't see my hand in front of my face it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life until i became an sdv guy did you stay put did you just stay there i just stayed there with my shirt over my head but i couldn't breathe and then you know i go to the fire department they watched my eyes out and i stayed there all night i found like an arm and like intestines like and i crawled inside the world trade center like i was sliding down the metal beams into the belly of the world trade center and it was like the most insane noises i ever heard in my life like creaking and you know just like smoke and steam and it was just it was so chaotic i had no idea what i was doing but i wanted to help i had i have this memory of like i had a bicycle tube tire on my hard hat with those little like disposable ever ready like red and green like with the white switch lights that was my headlamp i had them like tied on there to the rescue and even if i found somebody i don't really know what i would have done because i had zero skills really and so i you know i'm right by that iconic picture of where the exoskeleton of the world trade center is where the guys are raising the flag and it's all over the posters and stuff i'm like sitting off to the right and uh so the next morning i was there got some food out of like a smashed up like little bagel cart that was there with my buddy and i remember for the first time since like that dude hit me in the head with that bug nut i uh i was like crying really hard like i ne i could feel the death i could feel the departure of life in that area like you could feel the immense loss and um i was sitting there with my buddy i'm like we're just crying and he just looks at me he's like man like what are we gonna do the sun's coming up it's the next morning and i just looked at him i was like i'm gonna kill whoever did this and he was like okay like you know you kind of patted me on the back like yeah okay and so um i ended up um deciding 2003 that i joined the military because what happened was i lost my contract like six maybe it wasn't six months maybe three months later i lost my contract so so through the end of 2001 you're you go back to work go back to work but then they're like you know all this economic ambiguity all the new build all the stuff they start cutting them like low guy in the totem pole you know subcontractor so i own like all these like um uh like all this line equipment that i bought and you know i had a truck that was i bought that payments on i had my audi like like i had all this now i'm like you know basically i'm just trying to keep everything flow i couldn't find any work everyone's freaking out i'm watching it i'm glued to the tv you know 24-hour news cycle and so i ended up selling everything off picked up some like side work and uh and then moved out to big sky montana and i got a job as a ski tech out there because i was just like i was watching this warren miller movie and he said if you don't pack up everything that you have and move the big sky montana you only be one year older when you do and i was like so i got a job out there in a ski shop uh fixing skis and so i worked out there came back did you know anything about skiing yeah i had i mean my idea of skiing like i hate them like i basically just like stole the skis like and i would i had a pair of wire sniffers and that's how i learned how to ski um my parents did take me on like a youth group thing one but i spent most of the time trying to like make out with a girl and uh and then get saved on the next sunday get forgiveness but i uh no i would um i would go up with a pair of like wire snippers and you know used to have the old things and i would like snip them off and put them on my jacket and that's how i would ski and i'd ski all the time like that um i know it sounds terrible and i'm sorry if you're listening and i did that to you it's for your forgiveness but but i mean that's that's how i was you know i mean i didn't really i didn't i didn't have you know a lot of things and so um so anyway i went out there and i worked in the ski shop and i just basically was a ski bomb and it was awesome and i met my uh i met my first and only ex-wife so uh she was like a work exchange program from brazil a little spotty on the english so it worked well and um yeah so so i ended up you know working out there for basically about a year coming back and then getting on a line crew and that's when i decided i was going to join the military and then how did you figure out the navy well um i tried to join the army because i had seen like everything roberts ridge and all that kind of stuff and uh i didn't know like a ton about the military and i they you know of course the army is trying to get me to go in the infantry and you work your way up and this is where it starts and i'm like i didn't so a navy guy actually came out and like saw me and i kept going to the mall because the recruiting station was in the mall um which meant you know go try to get in the military if it didn't work out get orange julius need a pretzel so that's kind of is orange julia still around does that still look big i think all their customers died one leg at a time yeah yeah exactly so eventually a navy recruiter sees you he sees well he's like he starts chatting it up with me he's like coming back for lunch in one day and he's like oh hey i've like seen you coming here a bunch like what are you doing you're always like here i'm like well they're like i'm trying to get a rain go in the rangers and uh he's like well why you want to do that and i was like oh because you know they're the best in the world he goes no they're not and he's like you got a minute let me show you a video and he brings me in there and shows me like the cj croc is kind of video like it's it's like the dudes doing flutter kicks in the shorts and they're like in the desert like i mean it was at the time the coolest thing i'd ever seen in my entire life and i was just like enthralled and these dudes are like doing the triangle defense and like they're so i was like man he's like yeah the navy seals like they're the best and i was like whoa man what do i got to do he's like you got to just sign up take a little pt test like i was like great like so i go through all this stuff and it took me a little while to get longer to get in than i had wanted because i had a couple like little altercations in my life i had to get cleared up and uh yeah so i ended up starting doing like a bunch of research and i was like i could barely swim i could swim but i wasn't like that kind of swimmer so i started uh i started training uh i bought the uh like a navy seal workout book and uh i started boxing again because you grew up boxing i grew up boxing yeah how much did you box when you were a kid uh on and off pretty much since i was like about 10. yeah i started in catskill new york same place mike tyson learned catskill village boxing there you go yeah and uh i actually understood working out because if you never did that but working out back in the day was kind of like the toe touchers you know you're doing the side it was not as like you know scientific as it is today no i remember getting ready to come in the navy and thinking like dude you know i did whatever five sets of eight pull-ups like what a good workout because you just had no idea i mean this is like 89. so there's no well at least there was no information available that i had i mean i wasn't going to go to the library library we couldn't just google and figure it out so and at least if you box like you knew even if you just knew like you got to push yourself like you obviously did you compete in boxing yeah then you then you knew like you you knew how to push yourself hard in a workout absolutely but that was like a different kind of like in the sense basically the workouts i was doing was was running push-ups pulsar like i was i would get up in the morning i would get up before work so i had a job i started working for a roofing contractor once i was working for a line guy that job kind of foiled out and thank god these guys were crazy i was working on glenn's falls anyway lion crew's got some crazy people in it you know they got a lot of problems like i find myself living in a trailer in glens falls with this dude johnny cause you want to pay my hotel or whatever but anyway so i'm like doing that end up getting a job for this roofing company so i'm roofing all day i'm working at a pizzeria at night and on the weekends i worked for this guy sanja this ugandan guy who had a bunch of slums and i would go in there and basically patch everything up temporarily you know i wish flex tape was around because i was basically you know flex taping everything just to make it like you know pass the sniff test for the renters and uh so i was working three jobs and you know busting my ass making pizzas and matter of fact this is so when i went to buds i had a bicycle that i bought uh from a guy that came in the pizzeria uh it was a really cool um specialized stump jumper like for the day it was like she had like the shocks i mean it was like it was sick and i took that the buds with me i bought it for 60 bucks and at the pizzeria and i sold that bike to mike everett who was my neighbor yeah anyway just a little factoid but um so if he still has that you know i don't know oh you mean mikey everett mikey ever the team guy yeah oh wait he was your neighbor yeah he was my neighbor when i lived in buzz i lived in imperial beach okay and i lived like two blocks over him and how i met him was i was going through buzz of course i showed up with you know i got the tow head and he was selling a jeep and i had seen the movie i wanted a jeep because navy seals and i did end up getting one uh i mean i had once i went and i like bought into it like big time became like a navy seal his story and i bought every single i've read everything you know from hunters and shooters you know men of devils agree i read everything the stories that i mean i was like obsessed and uh that's how i am i'm like a total immersion guy but mikey was i l when i lived in coronado when i was at team one yeah mikey was a team one mike was in my opportunity team one we lived in the upstairs apartment and he lived in the downstairs apartment so i have many many many many mikeys yeah [Music] yeah that's freaking awesome i would go over it like so i met him and he's like i went over there and i was like oh how like how much for your jeep he's like are you in buds and i was like yeah he's like the out of here he said something like that to me or something i was like if you come back when you'd get a brown t-shirt or something he said to me i ended up like getting him known through buzz he's like the nicest guy ever he's the nicest nicest guy and his wife you know that little gal um just great people for sure his dad was like a hell's angel and he was like on easy riders and stuff like i mean um super cool people the best the best you know i used to get crazy with stuff oh yeah yeah so i was like so i went over i remember i sold my bike to him uh i needed like the money i forgot i figured it was why i was selling i wish i never sold it um but i sold that bike that i bought the pizzeria and uh for 60 bucks i think i sold him for 150 so damn ripping off shout out to the business mind gotcha mike so so uh so i'm like so i'm training for buzz i'm like basically order the baits like six two sixes or whatever they were and the pants and and i just start working out and and training my ass off and end up meeting a guy named through my recruiter a guy named drew bisset you know he is an old team guy he was a he was a commander i don't think i know yeah and he started off in udts and went on and they ran this like seal um training course in greenwich connecticut so you would go down there and you're supposed to get this like letter of approval or like recommendation i never got from it but it was a great experience because i met a bunch of guys that later on i would go on and serve with um and we would train like on the once a month together for like a whole weekend and i'd never done anything like that and so it was a really good experience i you know worked out tons and you know i'd work out in the morning right on the evening i show up to buds uh you know go through uh boot camp which was like i'll never forget it because i remember the boot camp guy was like i i got busted taking the lunches for the sick people and eating them at night and i was so hungry because i would like go work out in the bathroom i was so nervous about failing and i got busted and so they you know they had all these restrictions going on then they had that dive motivator program going on run by uh jody mcintyre was running at the time and so i would like go over there and i'd get these little passes and then i started knowing all the scruffs waiting to go to buds and so they would give me these passes and then eventually i was just kind of filling them out and leaving like and wandering around boot camp right so i started calling my my my now ex-wife um and i'd go in the phone booth and i got busted by the chief like right before graduation so i never really got to see my family they restricted me before i left to go to buds or whatever i was eating m ms and i was like in the booth and i was like i saw my chief and i was like i just timed it wrong like literally as i was walking around with like chips on my chin i like walked out he's like looks at me and i was like i have a pass and and he's and he's give me your pass who signed this i was like uh petty officer johnson like oh like i got that was my first taste of like the military has you by the balls and um yeah so i show up class up with class two five four matter of fact bro i graduated brian bourgeois oh really yeah brian was it was a buddy of mine and uh yeah so i classed up with them and yeah cruise through i think we graduated 13 original guys that class graduates like guys like ryan bates and uh yeah i remember i didn't shout out to ryan bates for sure i didn't like him at first because everyone's like hey ryan's like he does like wrestles at the lions then i'm like what the is the lions then you know everyone's like he's like in the best shape ever like everyone's there i was like freaking beat his ass like i i just was like not having it you know we ended up becoming super good buds you know but he's awesome yeah i tell a story a lot but i don't say his name brian but uh it's like one of those moments where i was they were going through training and through work up training and i was running the training and there's like total chaos going on in the mount town and there's just like everyone's getting shot up with paintball or whatever and no one's making any decisions and i could already i a guy like him he stood out because he's just like freaking stud and was squared away and i don't think i had trained because eventually we trained together in jiu jitsu and whatnot so i think i kind of knew that or whatever but that wasn't he was good as an operator you know beyond jiu jitsu he was good as an operator and i knew it and you could all you could tell like in a platoon there'd be like two guys that were good or three guys that were good or whatever and it might be the oic it might be the platoon chief it might be the lpo or it might be some freaking random e5 so i've been watching him and there's total mayhem and chaos going on and he's like crouched down behind a wall and i walk over to him like hey bro what's going on he said just just get crazy and i said what do you think you should do right now and he's like we should we should freaking strong point that building and i go why don't you make it happen he and he it was beautiful the look on his face was like oh i can do that and he just was like hey we're strong point in that building over there here's like you know i don't even know he's a new guy or maybe he's a one cruise wonder whatever he started making calls and people just listened and they did what they're supposed to do and uh yeah i love that guy yeah i know i you know i have so uh van wilson he was a team guy that uh uh got killed in a car crash day after we graduated buds academy grad officer who's ncaa wrestling champ monster i know we're all heartbroken we all got like tattoos the night before or whatever together and we're all all super tight and yeah that was uh that that you know being in buds and that like that changed my life you know that whole that whole experience you know i was like finally like a part of something you know did you have trouble with anything you said you weren't that great of a swimmer did you figure it out no i aced everything except for the last one but uh as a matter of fact it would have been the first time every time had i not dragged another friend of mine who's getting ready to get out uh because he was he was done after that if he didn't pass that it was over for him and he was like sandbagging like crazy but yeah that's pretty good that you were able to not really be like a water guy and pass everything yeah i mean later on i would become you know i started competing you know you know a free dive spear fishing you know around the world um so i mean i that water experience and then being an sdv guy um which was like if they they should just have the sdv at buds like day one everyone get into this we're gonna sink it under the water in the dark you would you would it would you would weed out like 75 percent of the people a lot of people it's terrifying and um so i got out went you know went to 18 delta i went to the sacramento course and then uh um got sent to stv team one how tall are you six four do they even think about that at all i mean that doesn't make sense bro no ah so if you don't know sdv is like a mini sub and it's it's a it's what's called a wet submersible which means when you're in it it's filled with water so it's not like you're in a little submarine like james bond all listening to itunes with with the freaking heater on it's it's like this time they're not big they're small and they fill up with water ocean water not like warm water ocean water is around you you can't move in it there's a guy in front of you and so like the dive profiles get so um you know i went to sdv school i crashed the sdv like before i graduated which was great because i ended up becoming a backseat guy and i got to do the real world mish um but i was like i'll never forget i had an officer next to me i can't remember his name he was a total dick and and he was like so bossy he's a new officer he knows he wants to he wants to lead me and yeah and i'm but we drive they nav so i got the stick i'm like you know controlling the ballast i'm like you know and i was like hey uh sir i think there's like there's something in front of us i think he's like just stay on this course and i'm like i don't know he's like it's just artifact i'm like i think that's a thing like and i was like so i was i was like okay fine so like crank it up accelerate and i'm like accelerate and i hit it and it was like out in the middle of osha was like one of those like rock little jetties with the with a little lighthouse on it and all of a sudden it was like you know we come rocketing out all sudden it's like all the water trades out it's like [Music] i'm like so i like open up the door and i like look down and there's like land and i look at him he's like oh like we're there and so that was the end of my driving career um and he was he was pissed because i did i said okay fine and i just accelerated right into it so um graduated stb school go out to the team and uh you know that's when i started learning like how sophisticated that really is and how you know it's super complicated you're diving mixed gas free breathers and open circuit all in these various profiles throughout very long dives under under pressure and like 12 hours eight hours like yeah and you you'll switch on and off so you'll be like you know you can't be on a rebreather you know because you got oxygen toxicity area you can't be on all heliox or nitrox or you can't be on all open circuit because of nitrogen narcosis so you're like and then you have these like computers with all these like lights that blink and like these huge like screens and i could never remember like i knew that double red was not good even i know that it was like double red and i'd be like uh manually enter the air like and i'm like oh double green i think it's okay solid i'm good and so there's a guy right in front of you and you can't move so he sits in between your legs all your gear and all your equipment gets shoved in the back and then everything's pitch black so when we're training for the national tasking like everything's by memory every single thing has a not every single light has a signal you know because you're not using the under the ots system you know because it can be heard so everything is by feel so everything begins like you know first you're in these huge tanks and then you're graduating up until you're in the ocean so everything is in the pitch black so like when things get out of sync it gets very confusing and then you have to fsa at the end you have to take your rigs click it to the outside and then the sub will surface and then you like blow out close your rebreather and kick away and then the sub leaves and then you're on the surface and then you swim ashore you know and then you have underwater pingers that find you like all that kind of stuff so it was like at first like not what i had like signed up to do like meanwhile i'm like watching the news you know it's like glasgow and i'm like underwater like like hand signals so um i wouldn't change it for anything in the world because of the team i got to be a part of what we got to do um and the knowledge that i gained of that mobility platform uh it was something that i think like within the teams is so like niche and most people think you know because the stv guys always get like bad rap you know like all freaking like sdv guys like um but i got out of that and then i got to augment damn neck so uh seven days later after that deployment so yeah the it's i thought the attitude of like oh sdv guys like i i don't know at some point and i was pretty young when i was like yeah you know what that those guys freaking get my respect and because it's a i don't know i i talked to some of my friends one of my friends in particular was like who came from sdv and was that whatever team we were at and i remember he's a good dude a solid dude and a like team a reliable team guy that you would want to go with you on and off and one time we were talking he was like hey man we were doing like some exercise off of korea and you know it's winter time and he was like he's telling me the story and he's all like he's all like in the like he starts filling up with water and he's like i don't want to do this anymore yeah but he's like i don't want to do this i don't want this is not what i this is not what i want to do i don't do this anymore like literally having dor thoughts like he wants to quit after he's been in teams for 10 years people both we've had team guys i won't call them out but like there was team guys that would freak panic i mean you can get we had a we had a chief uh in my second platoon who drowned and died um i mean got tangled up in the lines on a bottom up you know because they would bottom up underneath stuff and it was uh it's sketchy there's lines everywhere there's stuff going everything's by me you have all this gear all this equipment all this stuff like it is you have to maintain like a totally cool mind um and then when you get into like dry dock sheltering and in the real world and all those kind of things like things can go sideways quick there's no there's no mistakes matter of fact i remember we were training for that for that mission how was that 80 feet on a rebreath of my buddy um my best friend actually like we're down to the bottom i remember like i had like a leak in my mask and i was like looking i was like pointing you know doing the signal like there's a problem he's like typical he's like you're good and i remember i was like and the whole piece goes and i was like like and i was like and he looked at me he's like there is no buddy breathing you're in like a full face mask he's like you know just remember him like i watch you die he's just he just looks at me like you're dead like and i remember i just was like sorry you just blow and go hey blow and go from 80 feet yeah i was watching he's like i'll never forget your face it was hilarious i was like it was hilarious because i could never make that piece again unless i'm about to die we did we used to do more sub-ops in the regular teams yeah and so you know like i did a few trips of doing lockouts and stuff and even that you know you're in this little freaking chamber and it's filling up with water and it's freezing cold and you got it what do we have we'd have like weapons bags and engine bags and all this stuff in there and it's all claustrophobic and i'm i'm very comfortable in the water yeah but like guys did not like even that and that's one you know 100th of what it's actually like because when we do that we'd be like cool hey we're going to do we're going to do sub-ops for a week or whatever two weeks you guys just like oh what are we doing for the rest of our lives sub-ops just it's like god like you could kind of gut through something right you know you're learning and just got through something if that's just your life and you know what yo we just did a 12-hour dive today cool what are we doing tomorrow a while while we're dive oh man it never it's like you you had to uh i mean you you got to learn to relax like you can't freak out in those situations at all no no like you know we used to always say like those who panic first die if you panic you'll die i mean the what happened to you know that chief that died was he got tangled up in some lines and you know then his mask got pulled off and there was no getting it there's no getting out like there's no you're it's pitch black you know and the worst is you know the bioluminescence like all that kind of you're like completely blinded um you know and then working all the way up to a national tasking with those guys and doing all that stuff um matter of fact uh we had to we were like getting to the point we didn't know where we're going we didn't know any of the information uh still you know still classified to this day probably always will be and you're just getting sick of the same people you know the same problem same personalities the same dirty coffee cup the same dude the same you know it's the same and we were traveling all around the country in different environments like you know preparing for anything and i remember finally our chief at the time was like he called a smoker's and he got in big trouble because he's like okay this is it we got to settle all these beefs before we leave and deploy you like oh well at first i didn't really have problems with anybody i was kind of just like whatever and um so you were a new guy when this was going down this is your first first first that's freaking savage new guy and so um i was like you know i'm super moto guy like i was just like so you know fired up and did you know what you were getting into into when you got assigned sdvs well i had read the old books about the dudes like in the tortilla like getting covered in grease and like squirting out of like a sewage pipe or whatever old school you know but that's that's really all i knew about i had no idea um and uh yeah so like he had calls the smokers and we're getting ready to leave and he's like hey we're gonna put the board up here officers unless it doesn't matter everybody write name on the board one five minute round so by the way yeah that's just right if you don't know echo you know what smokers is yes sir okay smokers is hey we're gonna it's usually boxing it's like we're just gonna boxing yeah and they do it on ships too they do well at least they used to used to have smokers on ships and smokers on navy bases we're just going to go and box other people so that's what like the military was like tough back in the day but it was a great let me tell you something it leveled the scores between a lot of people and i didn't so everybody like got up and you had to write your name on the board with the guy that you wanted to fight and of course like some guys jumped up right away and like wrote the guy's name down and i just kind of sat back i'm like and then this dude gets up and he's one of the divers and he writes my name on the board and i was like i didn't know he had like a problem so i was like so we go oh he didn't know you freaking box since you were 10 years old well i wore all my so we like so everybody starts coming to me and they're like hey like help me out they're all nervous now and so i'm working with some guys a week goes by it's like a friday night or something we show up there and and i wore like my old boxing trunks i got like you know custom gloves i got all my stuff no head gear i didn't want anything i did my gold teeth like mouthpiece and i put it in i'm like and so when i was in the meta course i actually um was sparring partner for ray mercer yeah that kind of ended in my hopes of like thinking that i was going to be like great someday i don't you know how we you know men are like we just kind of think like but i ended up so like to backtrack a little bit i started boxing again while i was going through the medic course in fort bragg for a year and i end up fighting in the north carolina state prison so boxing guys like bernard hopkins and then they come up out of the prison programs and so i went in there went through all the security stuff whatever and i fight like you know various rounds kind of like a tournament style and i ended up winning to like the top guy well we was a draw the top guy and he was like the scariest dude i'm telling you he was like the biggest scariest dude he was doing like 17 the life and ray mercer was there and so his coach saw me boxing or whatever and was like hey ray's like getting back in the game which he did and he ended up fighting like tim sylvia oh that's right he crushed his face in okay ray mercer people don't remember like that guy was an animal he also unfortunately lost a kimbo slice mercer did yep in mma yep got but the funny thing is they didn't box like somehow i think if i remember right kimbo slice got him in a guillotine and ra and ray was like i don't know what this is but i thought we were going to know what i mean it's like i thought we were going to fight so yeah so like i started i was so did you do like a camp with him yeah so i started boxing with him on the weekends like sparring partner getting them in shape and so uh you know i grew up watching ray mercer you know he devastated tommy morrison he lost the linux louis he was a brutal dude he'd never been knocked down he had a head like a you know like a giant block of cheese and and he was merciless i mean if you watch that knockout against tom morrison who was like my hero at the time before he got aids and uh but like i mean when he beat him down i remember what he said he's like you know you can kill somebody in boxing that's like all he said it was like very like not like is he okay or anything and when he lost to lennox lewis which was controversial actually um i kind of ended his career he had some more fights like along the way but um when he hit tim sylvia he caved his whole head in i mean if you watch that clip on youtube i mean it's brutal so i'm in there boxing with him i have a couple great shots of me and him boxing together and he hit me so hard one time that for the first time like i like kneeled down the ground i wasn't really sure like i'm on like roller skates like i and i i remember i was like hurt for like a week and i started thinking in my head like man if this is how like people are hitting like this level i don't i think i'll die because i don't have a huge neck i don't know i just got like more of like a noodle neck like uh no matter how hard i work i need the iron neck or whatever but um yeah so i so i i boxed with him and then i just i just stayed in shape you know or whatever once i left there i had three amateur fights and then box would fray then whatever went in the teams and so we show up at the smokers and so i got all my trunks i got all my stuff i got my shoes on my little tassels and everything and i got the whole thing in there and he's looking at me over there with his like you know i don't know off brand boxing gloves or whatever and he just comes over he's like hey man i just i don't i don't know why i signed up for that i don't really have a problem with you or anything like that it's just are we good i'm like you're dead and we got in there and i let him like punch me around for like 30 seconds i hit him one time knocked him out cold and so shout out to my chief because like he got in big trouble because some guys got hurt and they couldn't die because they're because you know their noses and it was like dudes dudes got beat up um so yeah so it was it was a good experience you know i uh really uh really fortunate that i went there you know it was a unique experience and then i and then seven days later well while underway i got told i was getting augmented to tf373 so and where did you go for that uh well i went damn neck did like a train up with them and then went to afghanistan to an out station and how was that deployment that one was rough that one we lost uh josh harris so i was with him when he died um that's right next to him and then jason freewald and john markham so that was a that was a tough one and so uh you know that was my first experience in real war you know i mean what i had just come off though like the implications were so high like the intensity that if anything went wrong like literally no one's coming to get you like you know it's uh not gonna be good so but it was completely different you know than being shot at in the desert so um yeah it was uh that was a really good experience and then it kind of just like you know up to my aspirations i got to work with some incredible people and uh do a lot of really cool missions and kind of do the stuff that i had been hoping to do from when i was sitting there at 9 11 and i had a you know a vision of what i was going to do you know what were you guys doing like pretty much just da's yeah was that what you were doing do a da's a lot of like srs and stuff like that a lot of overwatch's for the army you know in various areas we had a lot of remote outstations and then we were with the uh um the people that i later went on to work for uh we were kind of the military component for them so and so the op temple was high tempo was high it was 2008 so and you're just living the dream living the dream like i mean riding dirt bikes like i'm just like living the dream uh and then uh when josh died you know that was my first experience with losing somebody and then it just was like really real to me how you know it just everything changed after that for me um and that that mission was you know he drowned uh so that was uh the way that whole thing went down that that was tough that was that was a tough one and then the guys that were with us you know uh jason got killed on entry uh he got shot in the stomach and then john markham got shot in the neck on that so that was a huge loss in 2008 you know for the teams so so when you when you say when you say like things changed or you changed or it changed what was what was like the change was it hey all of a sudden oh we're not immortal or what was the change that you were yeah i think that was it like i think i had this like i had this like immortality idea in my head where i could outsmart out run out shoot out do anything and then uh the realism when someone's wrapped in a flag on a helicopter you know as a young guy i was just like the implications were so high i have a great picture at my house i don't have a lot of military stuff at my house i have some stuff in my office but because i don't want to influence my son you know i try to you know i don't want him to feel that you know and uh um it's a picture that was taken by an oga guy of me that he sent to me later on and i was standing out looking over the corn gall and uh i couldn't believe like where i'd come from and that i'm like standing here with these people like these men you know like who are were giants to me you know because like i said i became like a historian i read every book everything every there's probably not a book on the teams that i didn't read and this was before like a lot of books were coming out they're like old school books and i really believe like in the brotherhood like in the old school like do everything together kind of mentality uh matter of fact kirby harel he's like an old school team guy and he was like i never forget we were like sitting drinking a beer one day when i was a new guy and he's like he's like you and you know this other guy's like you guys are like the spirit of like the old teams like the old teams like just and i mean i was i like lived it i loved it and uh um so you know going to actual war though is very humbling you know and it kind of puts you like in a place where you realize like this is like super dangerous because to be honest with you i didn't really think that way at the time you know real quick kirby harel story because it's just awesome he was on the podcast and he's talking oh he's talking about the phoenix program and he's like yeah he goes so he we'd we'd go up and i was talking to him because you know i have a little bit of perspective of like what doing missions are like so i was like so so how would you know what what like hut you're going into in a village and he's like oh well i would a source tell you like hey it's three huts down on the right and he's like yup that's what happened i go that's cool and so there's one op they're in a in a little sampan him and one other guy and they go into this village and he and so he's telling the story and he goes yeah you know so i went in there and i went into the third hut on the right or whatever it was knocked the guy out i come out throw him in the boat and so i'm thinking i'm like that's cool and i go i go uh how did you knock him out he goes and he go without missing a beat i go i go how'd you knock him out he goes ball peen hammer so like you see him on his web gear he's got a ball-peen hammer and his freaking web gear just whack it dude at the head and that's that that's so bad that's so badass back when the men were iron and the ships were wood yeah how long was that deployment to afghanistan that uh i think we were so four months yeah month like working up getting ready and then were you still actually technically attached to sdv and yeah they're tad yeah yep that was their tid so so when you got done with that deployment what happened i went into uh well i went into another platoon like basically uh i got home my girlfriend now wife we've been together for 15 years now um married for 10. and she picked me up at the airport and i showed up to drop all my gear off i got my car this is coming home from deployment coming home from deployment i get picked up uh no fanfare obviously at the command line again just get all your stuff and um hung out with some of the guys for a couple days and then headed out and uh i get back to the command and so i was with slab uh so after josh died i got went to another base got to kind of know him and um which obviously is like was an icon you know looking up to him or whatever just like a really great leader like real real quiet real steady likes you know um got to meet him and i was like i want to go screen and go to the command or whatever and so some guys like reached out about me you know putting my package in and all that kind of stuff and so it's like a saturday or something i get to come i get my car get all my stuff tell my girlfriend that i'm going to meet her and drop everything off and the master chiefs there and so he sees me in the locker room he's like come on this is the sdv master chief truck yeah who i didn't like and so i uh i i'm down there like getting all my stuff just home from deployment like and to be honest with you like looking back like that whole like there was a lot that happened like that was like a lot because i just did back to back so i mean i was like hadn't been there in like a long time and all this stuff had gone down and here i am like checking in thinking i'm gonna like get some time off or whatever and he goes up in the office and he's like hey i want to talk to you come on upstairs and you go so uh you know you just got back i'm like yeah i just got back like right now you know and he's like so you think you're gonna like go over there and like screen is that what you think i was like i'm like what like apparently some people had sent some emails and said hey we want him to come over blah blah whatever and and i was like yeah he's like whoa you know they're not in charge of manning i am he says to me and i was like i thinking about my headspace at the time you know i was like not in a good head space and i was like i i said something inflammatory i think and he went like crazy and started like screaming at me came over the desk like on my face you know and he's like you'll go where i tell you to go and da da da and i was like then i'll get out you know like i i mean i've had that kind of attitude and so we're getting this huge thing i get a text message from the chief he tells me hey um gear ready on sunday 96 hour sr i'm like okay so i like unpack my gear call my girlfriend i'm like packing out so i roll right into another platoon two days later and i was pretty bitter about that uh nobody like asked me how i was doing nobody was like hey like what's going on like or you know how was your trip like next thing i know i'm like literally like dudes with orange vests walking around looking for me with like rubber shape like laying in the bushes like like i was so mad i can't describe how mad i was uh the only thing i could do was think about how mad i was and that was impossible for me getting madder like like i would explode so um i go through you know i go through that and i hurt my hand uh and end up rolling out of that platoon right before the tasking i got a pretty severe arterial injury in my hand and uh so then i go to like you said go to trade at made e6 and go to trade at this like sdv trade at or did you go to oh it was like standoff weapons that we had it was like no it was like sdv i forget what's called something so you're still at sdv yeah but you're in the training i'm in the training department so i'm like going to seattle a lot and you know working over in those regions or whatever and then uh and then i got out uh because and then i tried to screen for well i went into the reserves immediately and then tried to screen for kag uh and the reserve unit wouldn't let me go so then i tried to go from the reserve unit i remember the mass chief at the time and he wanted me to go sell res for two years and serve my time at the reserves before i can go there because this isn't going to be a stepping stone everything i was trying to do was try to get the opportunity to go over there so then i ended up uh i won't say his name because he ended up getting a lot of trouble but i ended up meeting getting picked up and doing a job in iraq for uh during the i think it was a status of forces agreement that was going on at the time doing like psd stuff so now you're a contractor so now i'm a contractor and i was like picking up schools and stuff and going to schools or whatever and trying to like figure out how i could like weasel my way like back into active duty that's all i wanted to do and i was just really got out of pure spite i was just so angry like and i looked back at like my state and i was like man like luckily i'm like a fairly i may not sound like it but i'm like a steady-headed person because i was like really like a roller coaster of emotions like i had just experienced all this stuff in a nutshell and next thing you know i'm like felt like i was being on you know so i um i'm in iraq and i'm like standing at the green bean and i see a guy who knows me and he starts talking he's like oh hey what are you doing i was like i told him what i was doing he's like give me your email i got another job for you and so i ended up going over to uh you know contracting for the cia yeah and i did like almost four years over there and did you go what what did that you know from what you can say that's cool to say was that did you get some immediate training were they like hey you're good on your training what would you have to do i was the only team guy that made it out of the training me and three other guys uh first of all i didn't really like i had an idea but he wouldn't tell me anything and i got how it went down was like i got a random email being like you know you've been like recommended for training can you be here on uh you know whatever the date was and i was in iraq so i remember i went to this guy was like a total tool bag he was like some like army guy or something and i was like oh hey i gotta like get out of here i got like a family health problem and he's like you can't leave here i was like i'll walk right out of this gate and i'll get on the airplane i'm like you don't own me i'll do whatever i want you know so finally like they like they made me fly calm air so i'm like i do whatever i want thank you yeah because i was like i'm taking this job like i want this job and so i couldn't have gotten out of there and made it training so i end up flying calm air out and i'm like rethinking everything i was about to like baghdad airport like there's no orange julius's there and and i'm like one of these guys is not like the others so i fly back and two days later i'm in training and uh at an undisclosed facility and it's like go time like can you perform like show up here on the line nobody talk nobody's saying anything like nobody's like i'm in this like vetting and it's like i know it's like four or five weeks all over in various locations and uh i show up it was really funny because i'm checking into the hotel in one of the states and of course i'm in the lobby and i look around it's like typical contractors like you know huge like american flag had some beards like everyone's like low problems clearly like clearly we're all here together you know everyone's calling everyone brother like and like even the even the guy at the front desk is a brother and and so we check into the uh we check we check in and my roommate is a team guy bunny of mine and so uh as we're like in like he's like a good buddy of mine and i didn't even know he was there so we're there and um he didn't make it but theo so i get a text message from overseas like watch the news tonight okay bin laden goes down and i'm in the hotel like no way you know and of course you know and then you've got all you got all the seal experts on there describing it exactly how they did it like right it was like it was like the uh it was like the captain phillips thing you know hey i had that dude with like i forget who it was like brandon webb or something it was like a watermelon like swinging slowly and he's like shooting it with a 50 cal like showing how like difficult it would have been to hit the watermelon but so i'm like glued to the news show up the next morning we got like selection starts and um you know pt tests all those kind of things and the quals were super hard shooting calls yeah they were very difficult like that's what got most people was the qualls and then the cqb um i mean it's and then they never like there's no coaching there's no like if you don't make past these tests at this time you're just you just go away like a van just pulls up and you just leave there's no like hey bro you think he can do better next time like i mean i've walked i mean we're i was there with cat guys team guys like everybody and so i get to the end there's only four of us left and now i'm kind of figuring i'm in a total state of paranoia too because every movie i've ever watched about the cia is like playing in my head you know i like turn the sync on i'm waiting for like a cable to come out and look at me or whatever you know like everything everybody is like everybody's on it which is kind of funny because when i went through the surveillance course and uh i actually got busted by like a big fat lady in a kfc she like busted me so i was like you know there is those kind of people so they don't discriminate i i was doing like some countering surveillance thing and i was i was in san diego and i was all dressed up like a bum and uh and i'm like sitting there and i'm all freaking dirty and shitty and and i got busted and i got busted because i had my watch on and like this you know so just like whoever we were surveilling whatever it was surveilling the surveillers or whatever yeah and like we got back to the debriefing they're like hey you know jocko freaking nice watch they're like you got rolled up because of that you know everyone everyone's like look you look like a bum with this freaking uh iron man watch this is the healthiest bum ever yeah this was before everyone had like the big tactical watches that everybody has now yeah you know but back in the day i guess this was sort of like a big tactical watch bear can you do it so yeah the old school that's funny so not so only a few you get a few of us make it through yeah and so some of the guys got the opportunity to try you know they were good dudes and they had to try again but the quals were like i mean were you always a good shooter yeah i was always a good shooter i don't not that i grew up i grew up like you know deer hunting like but like i always laugh because now i'm like big archery hunter and stuff and and and actually a hunter but when i grew up like hunting was like you know shooting out of the back of the truck and like a deer like in a corn field and like you know like that that was hunting like you know like our hunting gear was like you know like this onesie snow suit was like yeah you bought a wall crack yeah exactly and a six-pack it was like bubba you must have good hand-eye coordination from maybe from boxing and everything to just go in there and knock the out of a course like that that's legit yeah and the pistol i mean the pistol shooting was like they had this one called the rundown uh so it was you lined up on the 100 all right and then you would sprint to the 200 drop down two shots prone and then you'd sprint no no no this is rifle oh i thought you were talking pistol i was like damn no this is no joke so um no but this was a tough one so it's full kit on and then you would start you had to have six mags and with two rounds in each mac you'd start at the 100 sprint to the 200 drop down two shots prone then sprint to the 100 two shots kneeling and then sprint to the 50 two shot standing then to the 25 two head shots then to the seven two head shots mag change in between every one you had two minutes and minimum score 24 on a ipsec um that got a lot of guys and then six seconds four shots from the concealed 25 yards um on the pistol so that was and you can't miss yeah that's gonna by time you get through all that then you got like cqb so i'm like and this is the interesting thing about this is no workup it's not like you went through no you came off some shooting school or you like okay hey let's get you guys all dialed in here's your test i was just like hey welcome here's your test yes and you're you're basically testing the whole time because it's like a vetting and uh it was really funny because we show up and we're at like the uh the dwayne deter thing so i thought i was done with that because i went through that in skt you know okay you hit me ahead of the thing it hurts and i i know this is deadly like but you know how they got to do the level one everyone's a level three yeah it depends who you know if you got somebody a meathead they're gonna hit you with it so i'm thinking i'm done with that i show up there and i'm like oh no like karate chops to the head like so we go through all that stuff we get done there's another series of calls at the end you finish that off and then you get offered a job and get ready to start deploying and then every two years you have to redo it and if you fail you're done so there's like this looming pressure of like i have to redo all these things and then it gets more like i went through that and then it gets more like uh training there's like you still have to crawl but there's more training involved but that the initial one was just the vetting out and that was tough that was some of the toughest training i ever went through so now you get to that job and you're starting to conduct operations obviously there's only so much we can say about the operations yeah you know where you're conducting them and kind of what you're doing but broadly speaking what was your what was your task yeah so um tasking was to you know protect uh you know cia personnel like you know around the world you know they conduct their missions uh so it's uh it's intense and you work all the time there is no moratorium there is no standing down there is no you know you're you're employed and it's onesies and twozies um and then there's also like the high vis military side where you're doing the paramilitary stuff depending on what bases you're at so i was a team leader at a couple bases where it's like full-on i mean it's full-on military like you're you know you got a whole you got a whole team of guys underneath you and uh yeah it's uh looking at it from that side and looking at it from the military side is just so different like it's unbelievable um and so yeah it was uh for a team of guys that you're talking about are not americans yeah not americans yeah and uh and you know people can say what they want about those guys and i wouldn't say i trusted all of them but you really develop a relationship you know you you rely on these guys and you know watching afghanistan fall and it was hard you know it was hard matter of fact i met some of the guys recently that got out of the country uh last month uh they reached out to me and they're they're here somewhere living in the refugee camp basically and uh they were telling me about what happened to a bunch of our guys i mean held against the walls shish kebab spears stuff through their hearts you know i mean like brutally killed um so it was uh it was tough i had a good relationship with those guys so some of them are here in the states actually uh funny enough like one of them like i don't know they don't we don't use our names but one of the guys somehow like found me and like reached out to like my secretary like i was like my name is like so-and-so muhammad like you know i'm looking for mike and they said it to me i'm like take everything off the internet like [Music] yeah that's bizarre it is bizarre and he you know it was uh i sat down for a matter of fact what happened was i was i won't say where i was but i was in a state for work a month ago my plane gets cancelled um so i'm like kind of wandering around like oh my god i gotta like get another hotel and do all this stuff i walk into the parking garage and i hear somebody calling me by my call sign of course like my spidey senses like just perk up and there's not a lot of people that know that and i like turn and look and it's two of my guys like where i was the team leader of that place for three deployments and uh and he's like you know i'm like like what's happening right now so i ended up like going back to their house with them and having dinner at this which is like it's a wicked refugee camp i just ran into him at the airport all right so i sit down and when we go off i'll show you some pictures of me with them but uh yeah they started telling me like what happened to all these guys i mean dude it's like man that guy is all he's ever done since he was 20 years old was worked for the americans i mean his family's been killed her house has burned down people have been beheaded um i mean they've been tortured i mean it's it's it's rough yeah this the amount of people that worked with america in afghanistan is like a massive number it's a massive number to think like oh well there's only a small amount of people that are going to bear the burden it's like there's a massive number of people that work with americans well if you look at uh you know kind of in my work with my foundation um if you look at the number of of people that have served in the war americans right 2.7 million americans served in the global war and terrorism 20 years right so 7 000 died in the war over 20 years 1500 are amputated so that's point zero zero zero two six percent um point zero zero five six percent are those who have died right and then you look at the fallout though from the war so we just we look at those hard numbers right but we don't look at the cost of it and you look at uh only 4.5 percent of them are 10 you know american veterans attempting to start businesses or be entrepreneurs you know there's 50 000 non-profits in north america two and six veteran on you know psychiatric medications um and between 2005 and the end of 2020 155 000 guys have killed themselves so people say well you know some of those guys were other vets or whatever you know they didn't serve in there there were vietnam vets or it doesn't matter like that's a huge number that's every 64 minutes and so we look at those numbers and the fallout on american culture and then you gotta look at the fallout on the on the host nation culture and that that will be felt for generations like and then what we did like i don't mean we but like what our nation did like we're no longer like a force of righteousness and of good like we are we are colonialists that have destroyed the foundation and fabric matter of fact i was talking andy said like what is it 98 of all people in afghanistan didn't know who osama bin laden was and didn't know 9 11 had happened right so so we just think about our cost of war but then you've got to look at the long-term cost of of what's the displacement within societies and it's going to come home to roost i mean i was listening to there was a general who supported us when i worked on the other side of the house he was a badass matter of fact i have a t-shirt with his face on it i work out with it all the time he was he was a real he was committed to the cause and he was he wasn't we just just abandoned them and they uh they tore these guys told me they just tortured them viciously and this is a guy that for for 15 years 15 years dedicated his whole life to our nation and they you know they told me what they did what they did to them and i was just like man it's not like there's a cost there's a huge cost you know and i think the cost is felt on our uh on our soldiers here uh you know i think that the enemy that we were fighting is not it's not like the it's not like you know they're not like chinese or like russians you know these guys didn't have drones they didn't have bombers they don't have any of that kind of stuff you know they they had you know weapons that were uh you know that they took from the russians the 70s and running around in flip-flops in like pajamas and uh and the ones that fought alongside of us believed in us that we they took us at our word that we would you know that we would honor our commitment to them as a people and as a nation and think about the girls and going to school and the children and um my heart breaks for it there's nothing i can do i'm a pawn i'm a minion like in the scope of things but uh but i you know i think that uh the karma is gonna come home and it's gonna haunt this nation you know i think you look i look at my little children i got you know my fifth kid about to be born and and i think about what does 50 years look like right 50 years um it's gonna come home it's gonna come home to us and you could see the hurt and you know what these guys i'm sitting there eating dinner with them i'm eating the foot brad i'm sitting in there of course i'm waiting for somebody to come out and stab like a tenon inside of my head i'm like i cannot believe i'm in this situation but i show these pictures i'm like i'm like i can't first of all they're in like abject poverty all right they're like in these refugee camps where it's like no wheels on the vehicles everywhere and like here here you go thanks for helping us out and um you know i just uh you know i have a heart i have a heart for people that's my life my life is people and i see that hurt whether they're you know afghani or american or whatever i see the hurt because it adds to the global collective you know and you can everybody can feel it they can feel the whole world changing right now and you know i think that hammer is going to come home i think it's going to hit us right in the face you know so how long did you continue to work um doing that job with oga yeah so i uh i did it for almost four years um and uh and what was the op tempo how often were you going on deployment how often were you home it was i was every 60 days to 90 days depending on where i was and what i was doing sometimes i get extended or whatever um and that's about all you could take of that job before he just got completely burned out so it's a 60 to 90 day deployment 30 days home and then 30 days home is it yeah like when you come home how long does it take you to reset and freaking enjoy your life before you're like well i gotta go back again in four days or whatever you don't you don't i never get out of that zone i would come home uh and be i was so intense you know i was i wasn't an intense person and i didn't have i wasn't on facebook i didn't i'm not i didn't live that my whole life was isolated i have like the same friends like the same people you know the same job i i i didn't like i wasn't out there my i would come home and i would be very distracted like i because i always knew that i had to like leave again and then in um in 2014 i was in a really significant ordeal um i i would say it was like up there in my top two or three events i had in my you know military paramilitary career was uh actually i would say it's probably the top like it was the most insane gunfire and combat and carnage that i've ever been involved in and um you know that's when i kind of was like enough was enough for me i'd had enough at that point you know so um and that's kind of when my whole world fell apart really because i didn't have that anchor anymore and that that that had become my identity like when that identity went away you know i was kind of left spiraled with all these experiences and skills and things and now i had no mission no purpose like uh what what was different about that event that i mean you had your buddies been killed before you'd done missions where there's a ton of pressure you've been in gun fights like what was why was that particular event the straw that broke the camel's back because there's no community uh you know you're a gun for hire and there's no community it's not like i come home and i'm like with the team i'm with all my buddies i'm in my platoon i got the people i got the things i got this culture i show up and i'm with different people from different units i got two cat guys here and a green beret here and a you know a cct guy here i don't you know and you become friends and you yeah there's a brotherhood but then i may never see those i'm gonna even work with them again i may be over here you know so that so when you go home it's kind of just like oh you're just like you just get on the airplane i mean when i came home i flew through dc i still had like you know pieces of concrete like you know i was still banged up like and i just like arrive home at the airport like and then that's just it there's no nobody calls and says are you okay like what's going on like how's the family like nothing you're just i'm living in a rural area by myself with my wife and kids and i'm you know there's you feel like you have nobody does your wife have any idea what's going on not real i mean yeah i mean i didn't like tell her stuff but she could just tell um a matter of fact when i left and i and i resigned i um there and there was a lot of reasons for that but um i remember my my daughter my middle daughter said to me mom always sits in the car and cries every day and by herself and i was like and i was like about what you know like so like i went over there and i was like why are you crying in the car like what's going on and she's like you're just you're so intense like i didn't say anything i mean i wasn't like chatting it up but i just radiated a form of intensity like at any minute i'm ready to go and yeah i mean if it wasn't for horses and what i'm doing right now i'm probably i don't know i look at the state of veterans today and i don't think that people understand the severity of what's happening to our culture especially like kind of where we come from you know and my my career is a just a fraction of of you of you living a lifetime in that you know and uh but it has a huge impact on you long term and we forget about those people and like i was kind of rattling off some of the statistics like i mean if you look at having fifty thousand nonprofits in north america for vets fifty 000. between 2012 and the end of 2020 we spent 92 billion dollars all right the top five nonprofits for veterans have billions of dollars all right there's organizations in those top five that you know spend 29 28 million dollars last year on postage stamps all right 18 million dollars on tv ads all right the the addiction rate of what i see of guys coming and applying to my program a couple hundred a year i can only look at those hard numbers right but 75 of those guys are on at least two my maximum guy had come to heroes and horses had was on 13 medications last year we had a guy come on 11 medications come off all and lose 37 pounds in 41 days in the program right nobody cares about nobody looks at any of those kind of things the joblessness the suicide and then there's a conversation about living and being alive we say oh this is a success story because he didn't kill himself and i and i've looked at guys and i told him you're you're you're dead you're already dead you haven't pulled the trigger but you're dead you're not living any form of life and you know if it wasn't if i didn't happen to fall into i guess you could say or or be directed i guess serendipitously or you know um i don't i don't know i don't know because i was uh i was just i was so wrapped up in anger you know and i felt alone in the world because it's not like you don't have anybody around you you're just you're just done you know and you realize like you're just uh you're just a number you are literally if the tool breaks they throw the tool away you never hear these stories i could tell you stories about guys that have been shot and busted they're you know crippled and they're they can't even pay their bills they're living in a one-room shack and you know trying to get medical payments like contractors like it's um and then tie that into their military career and it just becomes this caustic cocktail and that's why i've dedicated my life to this because i think that there's something special whether no matter what you did in the military that that you went signed up knowing that you could die in a time of war because you believed in something i think people think that means fighting for the government but i think it means fighting for your country and fighting for what is good and somewhere when that gets lost and gets twisted i think a whole person loses their anchor point and they spiral out of control and yeah i mean i yeah so that's why today the program that i run is it's so intensive and when so when you got out when you when you left that contracting job did you have a plan no well yeah kind of i guess i i left because i remember i was i got home on christmas eve and i was like putting together all this like my wife picks me up from the airport and i remember i'm driving she's driving are you living on the east coast at this point no i'm in montana okay and uh it's snowing out and she's driving and she just starts like hysterically crying and i'm like you know what's your problem and she's like are you okay and i'm like yeah i'm fine and she's like i just like i can feel your energy coming off you you're like a furnace right now i was like fun like and she's like okay like well we gotta like you know put the christmas stuff together and i got extended so i've been on like a long trip so christmas eve i go back and i remember i'm like it was the uh frozen the frozen thing that's enough to drive anyone freaking over you want to talk about freaking snapping like i had the frozen car like i'm trying to put the wheels on like and i remember i was shaking so bad and i was like i was just so in my head because you know after that we you know some things happen we got to the suicide bomb went off we had all these like things that happened and i remember like i just could i would i couldn't down regulate i i mean i just couldn't down regulate even just driving in the car i felt like i was there like everything was happening around me yeah when you said that 30 days coming home for 30 days i can remember coming home off of deployments and it takes like a 30 day period to where you're like okay like my first deployment to iraq we there was this big paranoia about getting you know ied'd when you went under bridges or were ambushed when you went under bridges and so you know you'd always kind of like take a little breath before you'd go under a bridge in a in a in a convoy and and i remember when i came home you know i'm like i'm like i'm not trying to say i was freaking out or anything but when you when when i would be driving my car from work back home and go under a bridge it'd be like you'd have that just like oh yeah i remember that just this little something in your mind right and it would take like a month for me to go away so i'm thinking you're coming home for 30 days that's not enough time to get any sort of like to to to to would you say downgrade or whatever down regularly there's no time 30 days is not enough to down regulate period and when you're all you're doing is coming home and you know you're going on another deployment in that 30 days you might as well i kind of feel like you might as well not even come home because it's just what is what good is it going to do that's freaking crazy it is and uh it's it's it's crazy that the amount of work that's carried out by contractors around the world i don't think people understand the scope of it especially when it pertains to like you know the dia the nsa the cia like you know these institutions that use contractors um yeah it's it's a it's a tough transition for sure and uh i happened to uh you know for me like going back to work you know i started you know working on a ranch i met some guys and so i would kind of like immerse myself in that and so christmas eve yeah so i kind of cut off your story because so this is this is you just had this sort of what you called the biggest incident in your career yeah i would say one of the top three for sure like and now you get into the freaking aluminum tube and you wake up and you're in freaking montana again i'm in montana and i'm like and i remember i was trying to put i couldn't focus to like even put the wheels on the thing i was just so and i remember like i i stayed up all night you know i got on late i got in basically christmas morning and like the kids got out but of course you know they're like you know american consumerism like ah am i tired they're not even looking at the thing and ripping stuff stuff like everywhere and i'm like you know the waste like the dolphin's gonna eat that so we're like uh you know and i remember like trying to cook breakfast that morning i've been up now for i don't know probably 48 hours or something and and i remember cooking breakfast and looking out the window and i was like my wife came over and kind of put her arm on me you know i'm trying to like be happy and everything but i just looked and i was like i'm just like i need some more time home you know so i email and say hey like i need some time home and obviously like this huge thing happened and it was huge and like you know the highest levels were involved and it came overseas like uh so like it's not like you know they didn't know or anything and uh and they're like well we like need you to go back like you know take this team blah blah and if you don't come back we're going to dock your pet and that's when i was like [Music] back to like my master chief story you know i was like like and i was just i was just done i really wasn't sure i had i had started um you know i started my foundation uh and and so then i did a film called 180 you had already started your foundation i had filed the paperwork and done i hadn't run anything or done anything yet but did you have a vision for what the foundation actually was yeah and that's evolved significantly to what it is today um but yeah so and then i ended up in 2015 running my first season which was like come out for two weeks go home come out for two weeks go home and so i did a film with yeti called 180 out um and i had met a guy strangely enough my wife had this like mommy's workout thing i watched a video he's a big hunter uh mark c capp and uh he was like sitka's main guy yeti's main guy big archery wrote he made a video called searching for west and it's about him being this prolific archer and how his son's born and he's kind of like thinking about why he he should be there with him and you know so i watched this video overseas with a bunch of guys and he's they're like oh this guy lives in bozeman so i send the video to my wife she launches this like mommy's workout thing and his wife comes and strangely enough like so i was like this is the guy from the video like that this is the hunting guy and so we ended up like meeting and he goes hey i want to do a video on you uh yeti video and he was making all the yeti videos at the time like a bunch of them and so initially it was about me like being an archery elk hunter or whatever and uh and then he got to know me and he's like hey i want to like do it on your standing up this foundation on your first season and that first season was i don't know how that year didn't kill me honestly uh i mean it was one of the it was probably the hardest year i've had in my entire life uh i got to you know i bought my house basically broke no paycheck i started trimming trees for a guy i'm like working on the side like you know my relationship was like touch and go i was you know i started chewing horses i'm trying to bring these vets out i'm self-funding everything um i am basically down to you know a few thousand dollars in the bank account um and uh end up meeting a gentleman that over over a beer totally randomly for a friend of mine that gave me a twenty five thousand dollar check and before he gives me the check and i was twenty four thousand five hundred in debt with the non-profit and i never met this guy before i'm on my way to wyoming to shoot for national geographic and i got a huge fight i'm charging up my credit cards non-profit you're supposed to raise money the people donate then you use that money to do good i didn't really know anything about that so i started a nonprofit and started putting my own money into the nonprofit and going broke i miss that page uh so i'll never forget it this guy comes i got horses on the trailer i'm heading into wyoming to shoot for national geographic packing some guys but he calls me oh stop and get a beer with this guy i'm like i can't i'm just i'm like getting a lot of problems right now and i couldn't pay for the vets to come back so i had all these vets supposed to come back and the last words i have my wife was like i'm doing this and i'm charging up the cards and i'm going to finish when i start i don't care what it costs i don't care if we sink the whole family i'm doing this i'm finishing this so on my way to wyoming everybody's like hey dude it's maureen he's like let's get a beer with this guy and i and i refuse to refuse he keeps persistently calling me so finally i stop i grab one beer with the guy i sit there i kind of talk for like i don't know 45 minutes i was like i gotta get going he's like can i talk to you outside so i go outside he looks at me he goes he wanted to pet the one of the horses and he's allergic so he puts a glove on he's out there petting it both a guy he looks and he goes you're the worst non-profit guy i've ever met in my life and i've been working with charities for 40 years and i was like of course my ego is like you know out like how dare you but he was right i was i didn't know what i didn't know anything and he hands me a check and he goes i want you to call me i i like what you're trying to do so it gives me it gives me a check i drive down the road i look at it for 25 grand and that's when i knew i was doing the right thing and so um you know i think like initially looking back i think really i was like trying to find a way to help myself you know and um because i i felt so lost you know i just i felt lost i had no purpose i had no mission um you know and working with horses and shoeing horses and just that world just took me out of where the focus was all on myself and my focus became on managing these animals and learning about them and learning and learning about myself through the animal um i didn't really know that then because my my the guys that i was with were force fear and repetition you know they were old school cowboys putting me in a horse house getting bucked off and kicked and all those things and whiskey drinking and that was perfect for me at the time um but you know through that relationship over the years horses became a mere reflection to who i was you know because they're a they're a prey animal um and they're designed to stay away from things with eyes in front of their head you know they're instinctually um highly intelligent cerebrally very stupid of course it's a dumb animal and um but instinctually they're highly evolved and so um you know i brought these guys out i finish out the season with them i start the next season i start getting some fundraising behind me i have the first class a guy leaves the two weeks goes home at ods and dies army officer and dies in his house ods he was a lieutenant and so then i extended the program to realize i still have this letter i wrote the class and so i extend it and today the program is now 41 days long i'll kind of skip ahead to that but what i realized is that it's actually struggle that gives everything in life value and so everything designed for veterans is designed to take the struggle away like people that wanted to help me wanted to take the struggle away when it was the re-engaging in the struggle that helped me re-establish a foundation and who i am as a person or who i was and i really just became an identity i lost a baseline to that connection with myself and you know so many times a job is what you do but a purpose is how you live your life and so when that job went away i didn't have that purpose because i never really learned that you know that deeper connection uh to um something that is uh you know i think that that that's what makes us human i think that uh we live inside of our minds and we live a series of ideas and we we level up through all these things we get some stuff and we get some things and we get to some places we achieve some heights but at the end of the day when it's all said and done the real question is like what is it all for what is meaning in life and i think when those identities fade and people stop waving the flag and nobody really cares that you're in the air force for 20 years and it's you know nobody cares that you were overseas like your kind of life kind of goes on everything spirals out of control and your the problem is always you and i think that um you know now today looking at what happens over 41 days it's really one long continual conversation here with yourself who am i as a person because you know the average person i was reading yesterday spends between 15 and 23 years in front of the tv okay all right like i started like i started i was i was verifying it this morning because i was like that is the craziest thing ever because the average person lives well let's say 80 80 years that's 30 000 days right so if you spend between 15 on the low end or 23 years watching television right then you're not working for 24 hours right you have eight hours of sleep every day and then you know ages one to five what are you doing you're eating off the floor you're pooping your pants you don't know anything you can't even talk right you're just like wandering around people are stuffing you in seats and putting weird clothes on you right and then they do the same thing to you when you're old right so you've got to knock off a few years at the end where they're putting weird things in you and putting diapers on you and you kind of revert back right so how much time do you really have well i was just crunching some rough math so between 37 and 38 years roughly because you spend you know uh what is it 419 hours on the toilet you know you spend you know a year and a half showering you know there's all these other things that you look at i mean the question is like what is this all about you know and and what i realized is that success and failures are one and the same you can have a success and that success can be the worst thing that ever happened to you and you can have a failure that could be the worst thing that ever happened to you because the byproducts are the same they inhibit growth and they they stop evolution because you have an experience then you perpetuate that identity associated with that experience and then you live and create your future so human beings are constantly the victim of their own choices and everything in society is saying no it's not your choices it's everything else around you and so you know over 41 days i i always say like i don't have any ideas for you i'm not advertising come to me and i'm going to tell you what to do i said come here and i'll put you in a place where you're going to learn what that is and i'm not going to judge you for whatever the outcome is because that's your life to live that's your 37 years that you have get off the tv but um i the state of the american veteran is absolutely in dismal condition um i didn't know a lot about nonprofits when i started matter of fact i didn't know anything and along the way i've met every crook liar in charlatan from here to the rio grande um because it's a it's a people make billions off the backs of other people's pain i'm sorry if you serve 10 years in the military the answer for you is not to float in a tube and eat donuts like or you know to go to texas and you know shoot a deer that's tied to a tree in front of a corn feeder like nothing's more healing than that right like um you know i'm sorry like and people hate me for saying that my thing is like you're you're you like i don't care like because i see it i see the state of these guys that show up and they are completely fractured and they've been to 15 16 institutions they're on this they've been injected with that they're on these pills they're on these psych meds or on this medicaid they're on this and i look and i'm like the pandemic of suicide in the veterans community can't be understated and the numbers like i don't even know if you would ever even be able to find the real numbers um really uh but it's substantial you know and and this whole catch thing you know 22 a day like like if you're doing 22 push-ups a day for veteran suicide you're an like 22 push my kid can do a hundred he's eight okay like at least have some dignity and then it's like you know you're on there filming like hey guys vets are killing themselves um shout out to my sponsor for my new t-shirt i'm gonna be doing 22 push-ups today um new lycra by the way go online 10 use my code bob and i mean this is the world that we're living in and i'm like we have to get back into the business of developing human beings you know we have a uh um we have a desire you know human beings are now in such a state of like hyper complexity where everything is integrated everything is connected that there is no individuality there is no original thought you become an amalgamation of everything that you've heard and been exposed to but you really do nothing right like the jury's out like wake up do hard work learn about yourself turn the off like meditate like you know eat a carrot every now and then like and and life is gonna be pretty good for you doesn't mean it's going to be easy but you'll have the built-in tools and you'll begin to learn about your higher self and you know people can say like you know this is like magic or whatever but like there is like i don't care you're in worry like you got the spidey senses what is that what is that what is that thing what is meaning right what is this what is this thing meaning that we all have we're all gonna answer that question at some point in our life whether you get hit by a you know skateboarder like and whack your head in the curb or you die in combat or you you know eat yourself to death like you're all going to face those those things and to me the hero's journey is the journey of learning about yourself and using those tools to overcome the external circumstances that you face and so like over the 41 days like we have you know that every guy walks at least 80 miles in the program just to meals they'll spend 22 days in the wilderness they won't eat a piece of sugar they won't eat dairy they won't eat they won't have juice they will only eat meat vegetables salt water and black coffee and they will learn to meditate they'll get into an ice tank every single day they will start their day with mindfulness they'll read books they'll go through leadership courses they'll learn to shoe horses ride horses they'll learn to see themselves you know working with wild mustangs they'll be put in very dangerous situations all these are just tools to shift focus from a person that is always looking out for answers to a person that is looking in for answers and then using those answers to then change the material world around them with their choices that are authentically theirs and that's called purpose and when you start to do that there's always a dragon that steps out right in front of you right the dragon steps out in front of you and and then you find out how much you really want it because everything is designed today to keep you from knowing what you are like social media doesn't exist if you're not there the internet doesn't exist if you're not there you are the energy source that feeds your own demise so so you give your energy to feed your own destruction and then you complain about the very thing that you're feeding when it's always you you're the one i always tell people like oh god like the guys like the twitter is the this and then you know whatever it's like it's like oh god he did that but it's not there if you're not there you feed it you are feeding and you are clothing and you are arming your own captors you are and everything is designed to keep you sound asleep consume consume consumes know of they know i need you to feed what i'm building you will serve serve serve as the cog in a gigantic organism and you will give your energy 40 50 years of it you get your little plaque thanks for bob employee of the month and and and then what you go down to south florida and you sit there and you just wait your car you're sitting in the same traffic yeah maybe it's a ferrari so what you're in the same traffic yeah maybe you get a little bit of better beef you know maybe this one was massaged by 50 japanese ladies or whatever right it doesn't matter it doesn't matter because then the fear starts to build and then the clock just starts going the next thing you know what are they doing they're like ah it's too late it's too late you've missed the meaning of life you've missed it and veterans are out there like perpetuating these identities that's why i don't do like you know these guys they show up and it's just like dude you got out in 2005. it's 2022. okay they're putting chips in people's brains man no one cares about the logistics department and bagram and o5 that you know may or may not have been mortared right like like think about the numbers you would think that every veteran is burned and every veteran has been amputated fifteen hundred amputees point zero zero zero two six percent of veterans have been amputated there's billions of dollars of organizations to help the amputated billions we got this guy a wheelchair ramp a ramp how about like a ramp made of like wood like that's like 800 bucks right but but but this is what's happening we have to get back to where we start developing ourselves push ourselves away reunite as a community and start getting serious about human development and begin giving our energy to things that matter like our food our water our shelter like the community around us doing things that are good turning off that stuff don't spend 23 years of your life in front of the tv like we have to change we have to change our minds we have to change our bodies we have to we have to become the governors of our own perceptions we're no longer the governors our own perceptions perceptions they create actions and behaviors and they're being governed by something else and you know my message is that i don't have the answers but you do and the jury's out on greatness it's it's it's spattered on walls and caves and books and tablets throughout all of mankind the jury is out know thyself know thyself there's a reason why everybody wants your energy because you're building an empire and that empire just turns out that you're its unwinning prisoner and you can walk away and you can let yourself out and you can change you can do it we can do it and i'm not gonna sit back and be a participant and watch generation like i'm nobody special i'm nobody of notoriety i'm not like all i do is i believe in the dignity of the human experience and there's people that have done some really great things throughout all of the history of mankind and they did it by knowing themselves and then whatever you know we love to watch the brave hearts and we love to watch the patriots and we love it be that person be that person it's not about dying when being being burned at the stake when you're 23. well do you spend 23 of your life watching tv that's a great 23 years that a guy like william wallace had he was able to do that because he understood something giordano van bruno who was burned at the stake by the catholic church in the 1500s for writing the pope of he uh he looked at them when they were going to burn him at the stake and they cut his tongue out and they nailed it to him over his head they were getting ready to burn him and try to get him to recount you know that the you know earth revolves around the sun and all these things you know that was heresy and he looked at him and he understood the deeper meaning of life and he said it's not his last words were it's not eyes who is afraid it's you and then they lit the fire what a badass way to go you know um so i've just dedicated my life to you know right now the program is a 41 day long program you know at the end of it we have a lakota sweat lodge i've had the opportunity to uh get to know some of those medicine men and uh you know that's an ancient tradition that is uh 16 000 years old that dates back and uh and you know they say you go into the womb of the earth and when you come out you know you're reborn and it's it's really like uh it's like an insane sauna that has chanting and all those other kinds of things and you you're in there in the heat and you kind of go the heat brings you from the kind of physical into the spiritual and so every guy will pass through those windows and they'll do a four window ceremony upon graduation and then and then people are like and then what and i'm like and then go and live your life because now you know and if you want to go participate in those same things you can do it but not ignorantly because you know you know that wow i'm creating my own experience like the the whole idea of free will i believe is what project earth is all about it's about free will well the experiment in free will is coming to an end because everybody's been programmed everyone's it's coming to an end and um i'm not going to let it come to an end in my life i'm going to take power of that because free will is powerful i can get up from this table right now sell my rental car illegally to a chop shop and go climb mount everest i could do anything anything but people do nothing they do nothing they don't understand the power that they have instead they give that unknown power away and then they blame life and they become the victims of this experience we can change we can change right now people can change and in turn the goodness can be restored the goodness of this nation you know the goodness that made you sign up and say you know what i want to fight against evil i want to stand again if i lose my limb if i get burned if i give i don't care i want to do it and and return to those values that represent not only us as americans but us as human beings and you know that's that's that's my message you know to the world is like that book right there about face wake up and turn around and do 180 degrees from what you're doing and your life will change you will change it will change and it will change for the better take that journey reject the easiness of life that is being sold because it is a poison and it is a cancer and uh and you will maybe you'll be rich maybe you won't be it does it won't matter because you will be wealthy in heart and wealthy in mind and wealthy in spirit you know and that's uh you know that's kind of what i want to share with the world so what's this look like first question do horse do you need to know how to ride a horse to show up no no matter of fact like the majority of guys that come have never even seen them you know never even ridden a horse before in their life had you ridden horses before um when did you start riding horses i had one horse growing up i never i wrote it like a couple of times and that was about my experience that was it and then you're i'm going for this uh yeah so it was the introduction of horses so i ended up meeting some uh i was uh right before i got out so this is like 2013 i ended up meeting some cowboys uh with horses in the backcountry and i got to know him and they invited me to the right i met him out of hiking i was just hiking with my daughter and i met him and that's how i started shooting horses so i first started shooting horses with a guy on a tip and table so they put them into a huge machine tip them on their sides and then i just my job was to run like the wheel grinder and i was just like helping out and eventually i started learning how to shoot horses and start colts and these guys like i kind of thought initially they were all about like helping vets and all this kind of stuff they were like the most like crooked human beings that i've ever met in my life like real legit crooks uh you know because the equine business is tough like in the cowboy world and all that kind of stuff so um but i did learn a tremendous amount those guys were mentors to me you know all that aside and then um and then i just so then you start riding horses all the time every single day day in and day out yeah i mean i uh like i said i just crossed my 18th wilderness on a horse you know so uh i we have 70 horses today um and i've been breaking and training wild mustangs for five years now like straight from the wild and i always tell people i'm like if you like think you're like a legit tough guy like you like i will put you in there with a completely wild horse and you're gonna find out real quick how tough you are because the horse is immediately gonna sense if you're afraid and like i had this i had this horse two years ago i never did quite get him i'll show you a cool picture of him going straight up in the air and i'm on the end of this rope um he's the only horse i ever had actually like just straight up attack me um and uh like attack me and what would happen was is that he would like you know you get in there and he'd start moving around and if you even take one step back they're one step forward okay because in the horse world you know there is uh there is a hierarchy you know so there's the alpha male and the alpha female and they lead the herd and then everybody else falls subsequently underneath so the alpha male runs roams around looks for predators you know keeps everybody at bay and the mayor is leading them into food and water in the wild they eat first they do everything first and then it slowly goes down so you're falling somewhere in that horse hierarchy and you know to think about horses a horse is the highest vo2 max out of any land animal on earth all right they have binocular and minocular vision they can see out of both eyes completely independently the right brain and left brain doesn't know so they're looking at something on the left the right brain has no idea just like my ex-girlfriend and so but uh you know they uh you know when they put their heads down they can see almost 360 degrees while they're eating and but they can't see four feet in front of their nose and they can't see four feet behind them um and a horse is designed really to do one thing run so they have you know 50 liters of fluid in their stomach at any given time which sloshes around this free-floating intestinal system so as the horse moves that fluid sloshes and slaps in the diaphragm which causes them to go to breathe in so it's boom boom so they're they're breathing in super hard and uh they can't breathe through their mouth so they breathe through their nose and their noses are flared so it's like an air ram system and so a horse's design like you know i i i can be a mile away i was out in wyoming there's wild horses on the horseback and they can feel the vibrations in the ground and you just can see them on your binos they just they sense you right so they're highly evolved at getting away from predators so now here comes human beings like hello i want to ride you and and so you have to one become their leader first so you have to have an ability of self leadership right because they can sense that and then and then you know two you have to gain their trust and you gain that trust uh with that animal um by you know pressure and release so applying pressure that animal releasing that pressure and essentially talking to them you know so if you watch me working wild horses i can doesn't really look like i'm doing much but i'm controlling the direction of that animal because in horse language whoever moves their feet first loses so what happens is especially with the students when they're first working with wild horses as the program progresses it's a couple days they get with wild animals you'll see the guy i don't know 20 year green beret or whatever horse takes a step towards him you'll see him take a step back well that horse is like okay now you're my and in the next time around he's on you right um and you know horses are are like people some are you know docile some are nice some are psychotic whatever in terms of the wild ones and um so yeah i had this horse and he's uh you know i get him like finally where i can get him saddled and everything like that it takes me like three or four days and i can get hands on him starting like pick his feet up and one day just came in and he just never was a trusting horse and i kind of pushed him more than i think he was capable of at the time and i just kind of like he was just there so i'm gonna let him like sulk or just let him stand there and rest and it was a pretty rough morning and and i turn around and he just like rears back and tries to strike me in the back of my head you know i kind of like fall for it and then he bites me on my back you know and kind of throws me to the side or whatever you know of course i'm like can't crawl up the round pen fast enough you know like i mean that's a large beast and you know so this was three or four days into you working with him yeah and he so we we adopt him completely wild uh i think 28 of our 70 horses are wild horses um i've been been five years ago i did a film called the 500 mile project where i rode 16 wild mustangs um from new mexico to arizona 760 miles um after trading them for three months with a couple guys and it was the story of the unpurposed horse and the unpurposed human being and so here you have the wild horse which is facing the same thing as the american veteran which is huge government monies right so there's there's you know 50 100 000 whatever it is today i haven't looked uh wild mustangs in captivity so in 1979 they had the wild horse and burro act so they started rounding them up off the ranch lands and putting them into long-term holding facilities and today it's a 60 or 70 million dollar program and the problem's only worsening they've tried shooting them out of helicopters with birth control and all these kind of things and and so the whole thing is a disaster and adoption doesn't really work either it works on a small scale but there's too many being produced to adopt them out so we we go there we adopt them we sort them out we figure them out and if you watch the film and the opening scenes of the films is very intense i mean these horses have never been around people so they're terrified because they're designed to run away from us and so you know through a series of shoots and sorting things you know we pick out what we want out of hundreds of them and then we load them into trailers and bring them back and then we start training them and those are the horses that then go into the program so you know horse is uh is a mirror reflection to who you are because a horse has designed it sensing your predatorial instincts so you may say i'm not scared and i or or maybe i am going to hurt you because i'm going to be very aggressive with you and then the animal becomes very afraid of you now you may not be per you know portraying that on the outside but on the inside that's what the horse is looking at you could look like you're totally calm but your heart's going 140 beats a minute and the horse feels that so then he starts thinking what are you going to do to me and then they'll test you because where are you going to be on the hierarchy and if you watch them in the pens you know there will be this one horse that will come along everybody's eating as soon as he starts walking over everybody goes away and there'll be one horse that's like maybe i'm not going to go and then this horse like double barrel kicks the music yeah i'm going to go so you're they don't you're somewhere on that scale and so horses a lot of the program happens in the 41 days with these horses without talking because what happens is the horse reflects back what you really are and so people blame the animal this horse is an idiot well you're an idiot no we don't say that sometimes i do um but but these guys begin to realize and when they change their internal compass their relationship with their horse instantaneously change it is the most beautiful thing you see this union where all sudden okay you're my leader you're the alpha male or alpha mayor and i'll kill myself for you and when a horse believes in you that might like some of my like rope horses and my really good horses like the one you have like that video i sent you or whatever you know they'll kill themselves they will run for you until they die they will run through a fence they will they will do anything for you because they trust their leader but a lot of guys initially are just passengers on an animal that hates them because they hate themselves and they're not able to have that internal compass be calibrated so throughout that relationship and throughout them learning about horses they're really learning about themselves through the medium of the horse and so from day one you know guys apply to the program it's a really comprehensive uh application process and it's it's 100 veterans all veterans all veterans yep and uh it's a it's a it's a tricky application you know most non-profits you kind of like fill out the thing and it's like you know you like pretzels or peanuts like you're welcome like thanks for like this is like gets in your head and then you know through that process you get selected you know kind of rate guys one to five you know we can only take so many guys you know we get a couple hundred applications a year and then and then we send them two books communicate with them every week help them lose weight change their diet we send them articles on testosterone suppression through ssris and medications and all these kind of unhealthy lifestyle we help them kind of level up as they're preparing and then when they arrive it's uh you know kind of indoctrination getting in the ice tanks this is how this works this is our morning routine so you wake up it's a mile walk in the dark off the ranch they walk down to the main area um they'll you know mobility work with jim jones so they designed their workout program all based you know these guys are not trying to get jacked or anything but they some of them are like straight off the mission of the kitchen so you know they they like i mean we have guys that like haven't i had a guy last year that said he hadn't walked up a flight of stairs in seven years all right so now like you're entering into like you want i mean pain when you're scoping out applicants are you trying to create uh what do you call it a class yeah so i create a class but are you trying to create a class of like do you look at the people and go look this guy's probably he's going to need some help but he's probably going to do well this other person's like this is a train wreck over here or are you just looking for train wrecks i just take the worst of the worst okay so you're looking for and i put them all together and there's no science to that because to me it's like you to get through this you have to work as a team but it's about the individual you're on your own journey and you're gonna need other people to help you along the way but i don't care if they ever talk to those guys again a lot of them maintained some of the closest friendships ever matter of fact on the way here some guys uh canadian special operations sent me a guy and uh last year and he changed his life and this guy was in a real bad way and they've maintained relationships with each other but ultimately it's about the individual because they're on the hero's journey and the hero's journey is that you have to walk through those flames you have to go through those fires you have to feel it and so you know 4 30 in the morning they wake up they walk a mile down to the main camp then they intentionally move their bodies they get done with that we do a meditation um and then they do breath work the wim hof breath holding and then they get into an ice tank and then that scales up till you know the end they're sitting there for like 10 minutes and that's pretty rough on guys that are like straight off like and then and then it's all about horses and so then in the evening we have what we call the uh um the maxim lab which is a leadership course based on stoiism so i don't tell them any ideas i'll present a question what does it mean you know choose to be harmed in your harm choose not to be harmed and you haven't been what does that mean and guys will go around and let them talk things out and so throughout the program they'll do that for 40 days and then after uh after six days they'll head into the backcountry for eight days they are given a horse and a mule so wait six days they've been there yep they've been doing this routine they've been learning about horses well at this point everybody can lope a horse and get a dead run everybody can you know rain control their horse and pack a mule and understand equine medicine trucks trailers all that kind of stuff uh they get all that in six days so it's very intensive those are some long days extremely long days um matter of fact like there was like a guy the vet came out and he's like um like there's like guys sleeping like right next to the horse i'm like i know guys come on we're not in the military now we have to stand up and like but but so six days of so the beginning of the program they're there they're getting all this good stuff that you're giving them and they're only eating like meat vegetables what do you say salt water and coffee that's it okay there's no juice there's no dairy there's no honey nothing no and and then after six days of that then it's we're going in the wilderness yep on horseback with the hor you on your horse and your mule correct as a team as a teacher and then those guys they're paired together eight guys in the class they're paired together and they've got to pack their own stuff and then of course there's camp gear and all that stuff we have duties all lined up for everybody and that's a progressive trip so there is no main camp so every day they pack up and move okay so um you know all ultralight stuff you know most of the time i never use a 10 i'm just i just sleep out unless it rains um and they'll spend eight days we'll do like around 80 or 90 miles on that trip then they'll come back and they'll start the next morning what's called ranch week so now they're going to learn how to rope they're going to we have you know cows they're going to learn how to rope cows how to do stock management they're going to learn more advanced riding they're going to learn how to work on a range how to be in a working ranch and so that's called ranch week it's all about ranch stuff they'll drive tractors and they'll learn all these things in different groups throughout you know the whole facility then a lot of times we'll move we'll go to another ranch we'll help them gather and sort and ship cows and do stuff depending on what's going on so that's ranch week and then they start you know i guess you could say like phase two or something where there are another six days of training so that training is blacksmithing so they'll learn how to shoot a horse they'll learn how to trim learn how to pair they'll learn equine medicine they'll work with wild mustangs they'll do a cold starting they'll do raining they'll do more advanced riding they'll do roping well they'll actually rope live cows and they'll learn how to you know how to manage them how to operate on a working ranch in terms of all the agricultural components and they'll learn more packing and learn how to probably know seven eight ten animals at a time pull them together how to drive trucks how to drive trailers how to do chains how to run chainsaws how to run accidents all those kind of things and then and then they'll head into the backcountry for 11 days um and then that's how many days deep are we into this program right now uh like is the 11 days 30 days or something so is the 11 days sort of like the final days in the field yeah and that's a tough trip like it's tough on me it's tough like you know 11 or 12 days in the wilderness like that progressively moving wears on you plus the animals have their own personalities and there's you know we run our stock loose so we tie you know we hobble them and we turn them loose in the mountains and so you know you got to get up and you got to gather in the morning it's cold it's snowing in august you know all those kind of challenges last year we rode across the wind rivers we did 120 miles across one river range and that was a brutal trip it was incredible but it's just tough and then you know you're shooing horses you're constantly where you're building camp you're cooking everything and it's all this you know like whole food stuff so guys are it's a tough trip and then they lead every day so every day a different guy leads he has the map he has the routes he makes all the decisions i let him fail i let him fall flat on their face i let him make mistakes as long as nobody's going to get hurt and let them feel that take you know ownership of all those kind of you know that leadership component and confidence and stuff and so um and then they get back and then when they get back from that trip obviously everyone's decimated so the average guy last year lost 20 pounds in the program um our record that last year was um 37 pounds in 41 days and uh yeah and then and then the med countless 11 psych meds guy a guy walked away from so um and then of course you have the guys on the onesies and the twosies and stuff like that so they get back then we wake them up at one o'clock in the morning they usually get to bed around 10 that night after we because you know horses come first so you got to doctor horses clean horses you got to do shoes you got to do all those things and then we'll wake them up drive them to a mountain make them climb sacagawea peak so 10 000 foot peak in the dark because the metaphor is that nobody really cares what you just accomplished because behind every mountain is another mountain and so we want them to feel that and in that video you can see the guy standing on that peak and then one guy's kind of rubbing the other guy in the back you know none of that's acting or anything you know that was a real emotional moment because they have lived a lifetime and it is real life it's not like you're coming here and this is fake life and now you're gonna leave and go back to real life it's all real life there is no fake life right it's all real right you put the virtual reality goggles on for nine hours that's real life right right it's not time doesn't stop and so um they climb that mountain they come down pack up all their gear and then the next day is graduation day so then they get into the sweat lodge so they graduate get into the sweat lodge uh they go through that we do some sound stuff with them and then we have a year-long take-home course called stay the course where the guys have diet reading you know suggested reading you know fitness stuff access to an app and kind of like you know whole food eating and stuff like that and uh and then the guys that want to we plug them into an internship and then they go for four to six weeks to alaska wyoming montana utah they go to work in ranches they go to cowboy outfits they go to outfitters and you know in the yukon um and at this point in their life when they're done they've moved on and i had an interesting guy this year who came straight out of the marine corps basically like weeks and came here and he showed up and he was like straight up like ranger rick you know yeah they're like the oakley's on you know you had the just like you were like he's straight everything was the military everything was the military when he left he [Music] had left all his military clothes in a garbage bag had you know cowboy hats like the whole thing and had essentially he's been worked under he's mexican i got him i happen to know a team guy buddy of mine awesome guy and who works for a guy that has a ranch in mexico so he's been ranching in mexico like his whole life is like completely different i think what would happen if more people got out and immediately took on the next challenge in their life in the face of everything and where would they be today and you know that's my overarching goal is that like you know the sweat lodge is a super powerful thing and it can be terrifying how hot does the sweat launch really hot like like like really hotter than normal sauna hot oh yeah yeah so so so the rocks that they use they go out and gather the rocks they're lava rocks they haven't been heated up since the last you know younger driest impact their last major volcanic eruptions and you know they put them in there and there's a lot of drumming and songs um they honor everything the water and the earth and all those things um and it's called the anipi wakan which is one of like seven sacred ceremonies so like the sun dance which is hanging by your flesh uh from a pole uh for three days with no food or water and then um to come off that they hook buffalo skulls to you and you have to run into the desert until they rip out of your back um these guys have all done this numerous times um and then there's the you say these guys you're talking about the guys that you work with yeah and uh they um they're some of the they're some of the deepest most special people that i've ever met they are people that when you meet them you're like these people are good they're like good peo like there's a wholeness to them that is um attractive like there is a balance to them and uh so these guys of course are terrified you know everybody's like you go into this little tiny lodge and you're in there you can't see your hand in front of your face and it the heat begins to increase in the songs and they um you know they welcome in you know all kinds of different things and animal spirits all that kind of stuff and when you come out how long are you in there for um well the door open closes four times but the whole thing's like a couple hours and uh so then there's the then there's the vision quest where you go in there for 24 hours with no food or water alone that's uh and then there's the four days we've had people on our ranch that grown up there for four days with no food or water by themselves in the mountain and they sit up there um in the sweat lodge no so that's one of the other rights so the sweat lodge was banned in north america until 1976. it was illegal uh matter of fact dancing was illegal native american dancing was illegal so when columbus arrived in a north american continent there were 60 million natives here at the start of world war one there was 800 000 left in buffalo almost 60 million had been killed to almost to extinction so those rights were banned and it was illegal a matter of fact it was illegal to carry those names unless you were like on a reservation so there's a real uh tradition in history you know you're not taking psychedelics or anything like that it's the heat and uh and it's the prayers and it does change you and it leaves an impact and the first time i ever did it i'll tell you right now like i was ready to like dig my way out of there like i did not like it because your mind's like of course i start watching youtube videos you know i'm like oh no like i get it i was like huh i'm gonna die i can't get out sdv like no and like i'm back in the black tube of death and and i uh it's had such an impact on me i've done eight of them now and uh you know i've really like uh learned i guess like in a way to honor myself like in a way that is uh you know my mind my body my spirit by like what i eat and how who i am in relationship with who i expose my my life to my energy to like what i put my intentions towards like all these things begin to kind of open up to you as the weeks in of your life go on and uh so it's something that we've integrated into the program that's been really effective and do you hallucinate is that what you're talking about so like i had uh interesting i i guess you could say not every time every time it's been different not one has been the same uh some have been like incredible other ones i feel like i just suffered like um they're all different um but i actually had a really interesting thing is that like i was in there and i saw a baby in the womb appear over the fire and but there's no fire that's a hallucination i think well um i think i'm not sure though uh it there's no fire the rocks are just red but you can't really see them then they're in this hole so there's no fire it's hot rocks and they keep and then people open the door and bring them in and put them in there and then they have buffalo horns and they add the water they keep dumping water on it with buffalo horns and they're singing drums and chanting and stuff and i saw like a baby in the womb like in a fetus and it appeared like over the fire and i thought like oh man like i'm like the children like are dying or something i don't know i had this like thing and then like a week later my wife found out she was pregnant um and then i instantaneously knew like that's what i saw i knew that i would have another child and i don't believe that children come from you i think they pass through you and you know i think they're here for particular times i think we can become derailed as human beings um because we you know we get enticed you know by gross materialism and all these things that detract us from ourselves and then somebody else has got to come along um but yeah so so that experience has been powerful so i added it to the program and people are always like so what book did you read who did you do like what did you i'm like nothing zero it's just my own journey it's the all the things that i've done in my life that have helped me um really become united with myself i had become homesick from who i was as a person whether it was the wild and crazy religious stuff of the day or you know cast in the demons or whatever or it was the military or was the agency or it was all these other experiences um you know i had lost a footing and a connection to myself and now that that connection and that link has been restored um you know i feel a balance that i've never felt before in my life i you know i always tell people i'm like i don't have a retirement i i don't have any um 401k i told my kids i'm not paying for your college and i'm not buying you a car like i'm not doing any of those things but i will build an ecosystem here and teach you how to hunt and how to work the land and how to honor the animals and do all those things and i will support you but you're gonna have to do it yourself and you know i'm not gonna if i go tomorrow and they're like you got cancer i'm like okay i'm going out like bob marley like i'm just gonna be like all right cool you're not poking me and sticking me or doing anything i'll just like i'm not you know so these experiences have given me a connection to a place where you find true peace it doesn't mean the world around you is peaceful but and it doesn't mean you're weak and you're some kind of like you know snowflake or whatever it's a it's a balance that you when you read about the great warriors the the the sun zoos and you read the tao jings and you read about the alexander the greats and you read about the peoples that ulysses and all these great people there was a balance they had they were artists they were calligraphers they would also kill you in 57 different ways but not out of anger not out of hate and they were such a place of balance and so you know my life now is about restoring that balance and then bringing that balance to other people but i can't do it for you and over the course of 41 days you know it is a is is a conversation how much do you do really want it more often than not we fall in love with getting in shape you know we fall in love with being healthy or we fall in love with you know having things or whatever but we don't like the idea of what it takes to get there you know we don't like that we don't like to feel uncomfortable and and we have to become comfortable in the uncomfortable and in turn the things that are holding you back they dissipate and go away you know so that's what the 41 days is about yeah you know what you and i didn't talk before you showed up here today and and so when like i was putting together your words and i'm glad you've hit this a couple times today and i'm i i wasn't 100 sure but certainly i was pretty confident that idea that you are introducing situations to people that then they figure out like what the answers are to their questions and then you said it multiple times today like hey i don't have the answer for you and i can't tell you what to do here what to do there but i can take you to a place where you're going to start looking and you're going to start looking inside and you're going to start asking some questions and finding the answers yeah it's exactly and that that's everybody is trying to tell you how to be you know like you go to tony rob you know i don't want to dis tony robbins or anything because he's like probably able to send assassins after me but like good luck to those assassins yeah bring it i dare you um but yeah like they're gonna track you up in the mountains on force back themselves are you kidding me tony ain't coming there dude i dare you to challenge you tony um but you know like people get so fired up and they get so amped up and they spend their life watching all this stuff and all these things and going to these things but they don't actually do anything if you did one tenth of the information that's contained in your brain you wouldn't be in the situation you were in we just become addicted to getting more information you know it's like you know 12 steps to purpose like oh man like you're going to get to the end and it's 12 it's like whoo but then what's the guy come out with nine steps you're like oh i gotta get the other book there's only nine like you know like now he's got he's got he's got nine more books to write uh to me the jury is out on what it means to really be a human but we've lost that we've lost that knowledge um in pursuit of a construct that if i if i get to the end of an idea that never was mine in the first place i'll achieve some end state right i'll retire or um i'll achieve happiness you know maybe it's a it used to be in the 80s you know become a millionaire now if you're a millionaire who gives a a million bucks like i mean it's like a million bucks is like nothing nowadays right you know it's what was it like they had that spending bill or whatever it's like if you took one trillion dollars and you stacked it on end to end go a third of the way to the moon okay so 3.5 trillion goes to the moon and part of the way back right like so but there those things like that really matter in life are are your food your water your shelter and your relationships in your life and um if you're not in balance with those things there's not there's no things in life that are going to help you find a place of completion because eventually you will face the man in the mirror you will eventually no matter what no matter how many cards no matter what it is like i was using the example of like warren buffett was like laying in the desert and dying like about to die and i came like walking by with some water and i was like hey warren give me all the money that you have and i'll give you this water he would take it he would 100 take it he wouldn't be like no he'd be like like he'd want it right so it puts everything in relative perspective and the most exciting adventure you can go on is the adventure with yourself that is the most exciting adventure and then your whole life opens up we spend our time like in shitty relationships with shitty people afraid to change and jobs that we hate doing things that we don't want to do to get to places that we never wanted to go in the first place and then we play and then when i was using the exam i'm like okay if you're depressed okay and everyone's like you know this for a while was like the mental health month and the men all this mental health stuff was going on like crazy like you know everyone's like hey guys mental health month i'm you know skydiving for mental health like i'm i'm um i'm conducting a uh boxing clinic for mental health and bringing awareness to it and and mental health so then you're like i'm depressed it's like okay i'm depressed so then you go to the person that's in charge of the construct and they say what's the matter you don't like your life well i don't know something's wrong they're like hmm well we're going to give you some things to get you back to work okay we're going to get you back in love with the very thing that you hate it's never something is wrong with the thing the construct itself it's always something wrong with you so then you're like okay so you take the stuff and you feel good for a while and you're like butterflies and everything's going around but then it wears off in six months and you go back and then the people tell you okay we gotta get you back in love we gotta get you back to work we gotta get you back undepressed it's never about making massive lifestyle changes like it's never about throwing the keys away getting radically committed to yourself it's always about changing you to get you back in love with the very thing that's causing the depression right it's never about like radical change it's always like you have a chemical imbalance so i'll give you some chemicals to get you back in balance that'll work by the way 79 bucks a month and and so i think that like we have to stop like we have to pump the brakes like you know we have to return back to the basics of what it means to be a human and and you know my work with veterans is like they're basically involved in a socialist system right they show up to an institution it's a one-size-fits-all right my greater goal is to create a board of the smart innovators people that that maybe there's a wellness arm like a fedex for veterans right and the post office doesn't work where guys can say you know what red pill blue pill six weeks in therapy meds this that counseling for ten years all these other things institutions meetings or whatever or or maybe there's an eight-week program i'm going to go to that will be the suckiest thing i've ever done in my life it'll be the true hero's journey but when i come out the other side i will have learned what i am and i will take that knowledge and i will begin to change the world around me with my own energy my own impetus and my own identity from the inside out we should give people that opportunity but instead you know you show up to these like you said these false prophets that what are they there really really to do yeah what's scary about this is so much of the stuff that that people get like prescribed or advised it actually you know in in some of the talks that you you talk about like peeling away layers to get to you all those other things are actually added layers they're adding layers on top of layers on top of layers that seem to smooth things over for a month or you know three months or whatever and then all of a sudden that whatever's in there is starting to burn through and caused you know caustic material to rise the surface and so you're like wait a second i don't know if this is it so you go back and they say cool oh oh you got a little uh friction coming out little caustic materials coming up cool let's put another layer on that and put another layer on that and then we you know what are you going to put over yourself you're going to put you know a car or a watch or whatever expensive item that is another layer on top of this it's not a solution no it's not it's not us it's like this is i so i just went through yesterday with my wife we like threw out like a ton of stuff right because the average american household has over 300 thousand items in it okay and i walked in there you have a weird like a nerdy freaking uh uh what is it statistical analytical mind well listen i actually just watched like a thing when i was traveling back from florida about these like minimalist people or whatever and they you know of course went in there and it's like and i told my wife so we're down in florida and what does she want to do she's like obsessed with the goodwill we don't buy anything new nothing and the kids nothing new zero everything we buy use or you know will or whatever but that in and of itself is an addiction right because i'm like she's like oh my gosh i got this flannel i'm like you have like 90 flannels she's like i know but this one was like three bucks and i'm like that's the problem right like you don't need that right so so we went we were like okay once a week we're going to target one portion of the house and get rid of stuff so yesterday we threw a we were taking to the goodwill we i mean i don't we took out an entire like ford expedition full of things okay and then like we were done at like three o'clock afternoon and i looked around and i was like it doesn't even look like we took anything out i mean like how many potato peelers did we have i was like we have like nine potato peelers meanwhile in ethiopia i'm like i'm like we had so many things and what do things represent their measurements of time they're measurements of time because you have to have time expended and energy to get that thing right and so then i get this thing and then there's always another thing that you need to get well the attachment for the mixer that goes on the thing that does the pasta like you know what doing that but like well it's an extra 10. you know we'll add it on there and so we started going through and just getting rid of tons of stuff you know and and the scariest thing is going to be like going to my closet you know like and and realizing that wow i've spent a lot of time in my life getting these things and i'm like never have time i had a time i don't have enough time what am i doing with my time i'm using my time to get things that i don't need and so it's like gandhi was asked the question what confuses the most about modern man he said modern man spends all his time to get money then spends all his money to get his time back that's i mean that's pretty profound right like and um i remember running that calculus i was like a young well not not a young seal but i'd been in the teams for a while and there was people i guess as sort of maybe remember the adventure racing things as that started coming out but then and then that became sort of extreme sport and like that whole thing and then i thought to myself man uh people like work hard to get money to pay for to learn how to skydive or scuba diving i get to do that that's just freaking cool like i thought i had the whole system beat man it kind of did a little bit you know it's like hey man i'm doing you're working your ass off to go do this i'm literally getting paid to do that stuff in the first place i i one one thing that i that i think was probably it might be it's a very important part of my life um when i was in the teams my first platoon and i like figured out to take a step back and look around i call it detachment now because i don't know that's the word that i figured out to call it but like you're in a situation there's going on and no no one's making a decision and i like learned hey take a step back look around and you'll be able to see infinitely more than if you keep staring down the the sights of your weapon or whatever and i learned that clearing oil rigs and training and then i started applying it and everything i did but but then at some point i started applying it to like you know having a conversation with my platoon chief my platoon chief starts getting mad about something i'm thinking instead of me being in the moment like in my own head getting mad back and escalating the situation and all of a sudden i'm yelling a yelling match with my chest and i never did that i'd be like oh hey got it chief and i would take a step back and and i feel like that was helpful and is helpful to me i guess all the time because i'm always like taking a step back and saying hey what am i really doing like what's what am i what's driving this me to do this particular thing or what's making me do this other thing or why am i not doing something else and it seems like uh when you go into these extreme situations it's another time where it happens like when you're freaking dog ass tired or you're freezing cold and you know it's like i was telling that story about my my uh sdv buddy that was just like i don't want to be doing this anymore and you take that step back do you feel anything like that like in these sweat lodges where bro you can only suffer so much and then you got to just like take a step back and look at your whole life except yeah you have to let go see it's like you have it's it's the art of like letting go it's the art of detaching like and that's when you go from that kind of physical to spiritual where where you're no longer holding on to anything and you're just being and that's when we spend so much time asking and wanting things but no time listening just being still and listening well you know in those places the you know i'm like you know your mind's going a million miles an hour and you're like i gotta get like all these things like ah this things are popping up everywhere i don't know betty i wonder if she's uh who's bed and like i don't like all these things are coming right and and then all sudden when you when you learn to quiet your mind and be still and begin to listen the things that you need for your life out of the nothingness comes to you i don't know how to explain it scientifically or like in a lab or like whatever but i'm telling you right now the the if you look at like jesus for instance right like jesus really like i mean jesus wasn't a religion okay jesus basically said love your neighbor as yourself well to love yourself you have to know who self is or you only love the idea of self so you have to know what yourself is right and then the kingdom of god it's in you okay it's actually within you and then like those leaders of the day he's like by the way those dudes are liars and they're gonna kill me but you know whatever so he was a cataclysm he was a nuclear bomb dropped on culture of the day okay so we think of cataclysm we think of meteorites or floods or earth fractures or whatever solar flares but a powerful idea that speaks to the core of who we all are as people is a cataclysm and he was a cataclysm of the day but his message was simple right you have to love what you have to you have to love yourself well you have to know who itself is and you have to love yourself then you have to love your neighbor the same way right and then the kingdom of god is it's in you it's it's in you so you have to go within and so what does he do he goes up there and he doesn't have food or water for 40 days right and then you know they kill him and then by the way he comes walking through walls like by the way you never die okay thanks for the message right i mean that's the message like if you look at through all about history it's always the same know thyself it's inscribed in the oracle of delhi and every year we have a different saying at heroes and horses that's on the belt buckles that the guys get when they graduate this coveted belt buckle and uh everyone they have a different saying in this year is kind of is the saying is know thyself and um uh you know one year we had think greater than you feel you know we have all these other ones but know thyself and i think that's just gonna kind of stay there forever now i'm done making up slogans uh i i think like know thyself is a is a powerful thing right and so that is inscribed in gold at the oracle of delhi 1400 bce it hasn't nothing has changed except for know thyself i'll caveat that or else other people that actually know what you are will use you to create their own kingdom and enslave you that's that's what it is this is this is this is reminding me of a uh i don't know we were doing a podcast a while ago and we got asked a question so it was like legit i think it was legitimate dating advice someone was asking or they got dumped or something like this that's heartbreaking and so i was saying and i've given this answer a few times on the podcast hey when you're when you get dumped and you get broke up and you're all heartbroken i i try and explain that like hey the person that you were in love with that cheated on you or that you know ran away or whatever they did the person that you were in love with actually didn't exist they didn't exist that girl that seemed so sweet but then she cheated on you or whatever you were in love with this idea of this person and and now it's gone you have to accept the fact that the person that you're in love with actually didn't exist in it it kind of is a good thing you go oh wait a second i'm all heartbroken now who am i going to marry now who am i going to spend the rest of my life with oh no actually the person that i thought i was going to marry and the person i thought was going to spend the rest of my life with didn't exist that this girl was not a good person and now i got to learn that now i can move forward but what i'm relating this to what you're talking about is when people look at themselves and they got this idea of themselves that they're kind of maybe not in love with but they at least like yeah you know i'm this or i'm that i'm a fighter i'm a soldier i'm a wall street dude or whatever you are you have this idea of yourself like hey you know i kind of love who i am and then there's something going on where you actually don't love that person and cause you know that that person that you're portraying doesn't actually exist it's a projection it's a projection and so that's a rude awakening and i think that can be a rude awakening when someone gets out of the military and is all of a sudden saying oh the person that i was which was a soldier a sailor an airman or marine one that person all of a sudden they literally don't exist anymore and you can try and hang on to it but it's got it's it's not going to be there you don't like you said you don't have your friends you don't have a word you don't have a platoon anymore you don't have a platoon anymore it's think about how heartbreaking it is when you don't have a platoon anymore it's a freaking horror show it's everything i love a single platoon and all of a sudden you don't have a seal platoon anymore you don't have it doesn't exist anymore for you and so you can't you you have to figure out okay what what am i really and you gotta dig in there and figure that out and you know i think for me again i was always like a rebellious kid growing up blah blah blah and i always was like questioning myself and i don't know i think when when even when i was in the seal teams like there was i'd look at some leadership and be like this guy's whatever this this guy's not me right this guy's legitimately not me like i know who my guys are i don't know what we're like but that guy's he's not really one of us and there's a bunch of people that aren't really one of us so i always kind of felt that and it was okay when okay now i'm gonna move on to my next job or whatever i got out of the navy retired from the navy but man trying to figure out trying to make sure that you know who you are and make sure that who you are isn't a construct i just used your word of the day construct i normally don't use that word that's an interesting word i don't normally use that word that construct that you built it might not be for real and if it's not for real that's gonna it's gonna sting and all but it's gonna sting it's going to hurt but cool now you know that now you can figure it out now you can get in there start doing work baseline you got to hit the you got to hit the bottom of the bowl you know where where the projection doesn't protect you anymore listen you can you can dress up all day and put on the mma stuff or whatever and until you know you get freaking spun kicked in the side of your head and then the projection doesn't work anymore right like and that's life we're all you know everybody's living some form of projection at some point in their life and you know the thing is as those projections fade you become depressed and you become disenfranchised and and the thing is like you don't have to be if you have one job really in your life is to wake up and just be yourself and then you can't fail it's impossible like sure it doesn't mean i do dumb i do dumb i say things i have a second guess myself oh i called my wife i should have never said that she's like honey and but then she's like it doesn't matter because that's just how you are just be okay with that and so you just if everybody just woke up and just and just where there's authentic self the entire world would be a completely different place like think about like think about filters think about a filter on a cell phone right you got some like lady where like you know the botox is failing shit's going down probably was hot ex-husband's in dallas like you know but you know she's kind of like this she's got a little droopy and then and then she puts the filter on you're like boom right in love with the projection of themselves you know it's like the worst thing is you see everybody sitting on the bus and i'm sitting on the bus you know the today and everyone's like you know you can see them over there like liking they're like and they're like this they're like l-o-l-l-o-l like heart heart lol like happy smiley face right like they're the saddest looking people you know dudes like bellies are gross or mask is on crooked you know their hair is up they got two cell phones lol lol lol right it's all a projection it's a total projection and so like we have to stop being projections and get back to the basics of who we are but unfortunately we put projections in these places where we try to be like somebody else rather than being ourselves and that's destroying the fabric of humanity and you know if you look at you know you look at chinese culture um they're all simulated everyone's wearing the same clothes everyone's doing the same things everyone's serving the same people they're all born from chinese mothers they're all you know they all have this they all have this plan in place this 10 000 year destiny okay what are we trying to do we're trying to like you know we're trying to make the rent you know we're trying to like you know we're trying to pass the bill you know we're trying to you know you look at these people well i don't want that either that is a nightmare there is no individuality like what do you exist you exist to serve the state well you exist here in north america to serve the projection the projection i'm going to go why i'm going to buy the car so that when people see me they'll think i'm successful even though i work at in and out which i'm not no dings on in and out you actually props to the in and outs oh yeah by the way didn't they just do some great stuff or something they wouldn't do them covey backs or something i don't know shout out to the in and out okay good burgers but like you know or whatever like you you but like you'll see people will buy things and do things and extend themselves to a point to to fulfill a projection and it's so empty because there's never enough there's always a new thing there's always another thing and so your whole life is giving you projection and that's why people are the quintessentially lost they're they're literally have their self standing next to them in their life and they're completely in the material realm everything is material the five senses there's nothing else beyond that so in that case i have to chase these projections down get that one get the next one get the next one so on and so forth that's why like filters and all those things like they're cancer because they they they are nothing more than a project you don't look like that you don't you're not that way it's like a crate it's if you take a step back and think about this hey i gotta when i send a picture to my friends i'm gonna run it through a computer program that makes me look better like that's a crazy thing it's so that's a crazy thing yeah because it because it and it drives it it's put us into all forms of chaos as a society right like where i mean you think about you know this whole thing on climate change everything that's happening in the world is like i think the debate is like are we causing climate change or are we just destroying the environment right well we are 100 destroying the environment um and for what so you can have like another table another mahogany table okay like or more diamonds you know because i love you and i want you to have this diamond that was mined by children in africa and smuggled over here so that we can be together for a year and then you can take half of everything i have but you know it's this whole bizarre thing where it's like we don't even care about anything except for enforcing our own projections so it's like hey maybe we shouldn't like chop down every tree because maybe when i breathe out the tree breathes in with tree breeze out i breathe in maybe we shouldn't be dumping the chemicals into the rivers what is that almost every river in north america now contains glycophade in it right so it's bleeding in from npk from mass farming and agriculture the soils dying i mean i'm with ranchers i'm in rural i'm in agriculture people that's my life and you you listen to these old guys kneel down and pick up the soil dead right and where is all this stuff going where is all these things going what's happening around us uh is that people only care about their own projections and the very things that give them life they're destroying to further something that does only exist fictitiously as an idea and it's a scary time to be living in right now it's like you know here we are like ukraine like russia like look out like wow like they're coming they're gonna get us ah like the russians and and it's like okay but you're really concerned about their borders but like what about like our borders like aren't those important too no only the ones in ukraine right and and it's it's you get sold these illusions and and in turn we destroy every single thing around us including ourselves and if we don't change we are coming into an epoch we are coming into a time a real time that we will become unrecognizable to ourselves and when i see guys coming and they're on 11 medications they're on eight medications or been in therapy for ten years now they're unrecognizable to themselves they are unrecognizable they look in the mirror they don't know what they are they only exist as a projection of an identity and you know yeah it's like i'm sorry for the doom and gloom y'all no believe me you listen to this podcast a little bit more we got dude i mean there is like there is like a 1940s like machete the the weird thing is is as you look at this stuff in a large scale all these things are in place and you you know when you just were saying that about vets and you're on a bunch of medications and you're being basically subdued you know you're being subdued and it's not just vets it's like humans humans are being subdued look we don't really actually want you to do anything we don't actually want you to come up with your own ideas we don't actually want you to write your own freaking books we don't want you to create something what we want you to do is continue to feed our machine that we've got working over here that's what we want we want to feed our machine and we don't want you to feed your own machine and that that's that's like what is actually happening because people spend as i don't know what the what'd you say 37 years in front of a screen or whatever it was yeah you're not gaining when you're doing that that's not that's not for you that's for them that's so they can sell your they they can sell you to whoever their advertisers are so you can buy more of their stuff that's what's happening it's your energy they need your energy see everything is energy they need you and i say they okay like corporatocracies governments whatever it is marketing companies data capture people whatever you see they need your attention and your attention is your energy and that is the impetus for them to grow but if you're using your own energy to do your own thing that's problematic that's scary that's really scary scary for them right it's terrible and they can't have everybody running around so what do they want you running around with a projection you need all these things to help your projection and it is cr this is uh like almost cliche right now it's cliche for me to say what i'm about to say there are free psychologists and scientists and computer programmers or whatever they're called sitting figuring out literal ways to make you look at the screen more to addict you to that that's what they're actually doing they're actually doing that they're actually doing that and here by the way you're paying them to do it in many ways you're actually giving them money to do this so that they can get you to not think for yourself and i'm not saying like oh think for yourself come up with some crazy no think for yourself like actually think about what's going on around you instead you're just receiving what someone else is telling you which what they're telling you to do is waste more time looking at this and and and to buy whatever product it is that they're making this is what what's actually happening think about like what have you heard of the milgram experiments oh yeah it's crazy right yeah what two thirds of the people killed the person because the guy in the white coat told them to right so it's already figured out we already understand how to like corral human beings and to get them to give their energy and focus into developing what whatever it is is vying for your attention it needs you it doesn't exist without you i mean our founding fathers were pretty smart we the people okay um you know they understood that there's a power associated with the people you know the people united the people you know believing in the goodness and the opportunity that was afforded by this nation and and and instead we we have fractured ourselves among the most trivial things and then given our energy and then we complain about the very thing that we feed to build we complain about it when we are responsible for paying for the bricks the prison keepers the uniforms everything and so turn your attention to something else if you took that same time you know between 14 and 23 years watching tv in your life let's just say take one year out of that maybe you get 22 years of netflix in all right take one of those years and and just solely dedicate it to yourself and if you do well you will regain time because time is accelerating extremely fast and it's accelerating because because time is only realized by the experiences that are contained in it right so like like you know i've heard it said like one million years with one event or or 10 minutes with 50 000 events every moment of our life is filled with it with with an experience and so we realize time and time accelerates and we accelerate our own time in life it's like at the end of the day you're like man like you feel like you lived a lifetime because you realized every moment of that day and none of it was spent with you none of it and so you feel disconnected right well don't worry take a vacation down to disney we're gonna get you patched up you know have a couple margaritas you know eat four meals a day it's vacation consume right and so this built-in acceleration that's happening that we feel in the world right now is caused because all of our energy is directed towards that and so i think that we can walk away and you know i've i've walked away you know i kind of started out when i first started this i didn't know a social media i had nothing i'm like okay i'm starting a foundation like i gotta get an instagram you know so i used to look back at like the instagram i had and was like i didn't i didn't even know what a hashtag was you know um i was like it i was like you know it was like me like chopping wood you know i'm like do work or something i had the worst things but then it kind of grew and i got to like almost 20 000 people and i was like sharing ideas and then and then i you know throughout you know my experience of going through the program every season because i'm out there doing it right i'm not out there like standing there like you know i'm living it with the guys i'm feeling it i'm feeling the ice i'm feeling the cold i'm i'm you know i'm hitting the ground riding the colts i'm like at ten thousand eleven thousand feet i'm building the can i'm feeling every moment i'm in the sweat lodge i'm doing i'm not like this like kind of passive participant i'm there and then i just realized i have to walk away like i have to just do it so i just i just deleted it and i just walked away and man all these like anxieties and things like it went away you know of course like my foundation has it and all those kind of things and then like i don't know like a year later i was like i'm going to start it off again i got a message to share the world and what do i start doing next thing i know i'm sucking back in the hole i'm in there and i'm doing this and then i just and i just stopped i was delayed i'm like i'm done for the rest of my life i'm never doing that again and and it's like it's the battered wife syndrome you know it's like that's what i had and and i look and listen people can choose whatever they want to do or whatever but i'm just saying for my life i needed to realize that my energy needed to be directed at something else and that i wasn't being you know i wasn't fulfilling and maximizing my potential as a person because i was spending my time to start and i was like you know consciously like this is not a projection this is who i am this is but then of course i'm like i don't like that little love handle okay let me get it honey get another side shot here with the axe that's in the remote wilderness here photoshop yeah right like probably you know just you know it's three bucks you get the abs it's no big deal this is the freaking man wilderness filter yeah exactly and so you know so i i'm trying to change like i i we haven't bought meat from the store in four years you know i sold my beloved pickup truck to my good buddy uh team guy and i bought a 66 foot by 17 foot wide geothermal greenhouse and an excavator and on my land and you know we have the ranch and you know training my horses and like my kids like they don't have any tech they don't have a screen on the ipad on any of those things teaching the real basic things like and i started realizing how much time i was actually spending doing the things that i'm actually railing against you know and so um little tiny changes one step at a time you know so do you not have a vehicle no i have a view i have a vehicle but no i had this truck i had the 75 ford high boy i put a 429 cobra jet in it and all of it was sick red lifted i was all you know it was cool guy like one mile to the gallon i started like a bird died you know it was like that kind of truck and i loved it and i always wanted that growing up as a kid you know i mean the the ford high boy was cool when i was a kid and um but i sold that and i bought things and and i've really um i've changed the relationships in my life and even the things that i expose myself to and the content and those kind of things um radical quiet time in the morning you know like like not just like working out and getting in my son or whatever but like like learning to just sit there and be still and thoughtless and then like you know get to the place where i can do that for 40 minutes without without a thought and just breathe nothing and then all sudden i have all these realizations about things i don't know where they come from i have well i do know where they come from right you get plugged in that energy is real and you get plugged into and that's what guys find listen there's days in the backcountry where it's like everyone's kind of chatty and then they'll be like days where you're on a horse and it's like nobody says a word and it's just like man you can like it's amazing everyone's real talkative at the first like 12 minutes of a forced road march exactly yeah this is going to be like 30 minutes in dead silence for the next four hours as you just hop it out you're trapped in there in your own little brain do you think that you were uh do you think that you made the seal teams or steel teams made you probably a little bit of both well yes a little bit of both um i can i can tell you like from my experience of like going through buds i i was never gonna quit i never thought about quitting i was just like i was so stoked and happy like this is what we're doing this is what i'm doing uh i it took me a while to figure out like i wanted to be a good seal you know that's what i wanted to be once i got in the teams i wanted to be a good seal and it took me a while to figure out what that actually was and i i don't think i really figured it out until probably about five years after i retired and i think i would still be them modified i'm still working on it right now but you know there was different things that i did along the way where it seemed like the team guy thing to do and then as i got older and figured out oh yeah that wasn't really exactly a good team guy thing to do now there's some core tenants that never changed and i think the ultimate one is like if you're a good team guy you put your team in front of yourself and that would seem clear to me from day one and and i think that that is the ultimate sort of the ultimate quality of a good team guys like oh that guy he will do he he will he's going to put you ahead of him and if you have a platoon full of guys and they're all putting each other ahead of themselves like that's a freaking kick-ass platoon so i kind of knew that i kind of felt that way like even with the friends i had growing up it was sort of that same mentality about not being selfish and not putting yourself like not looking out for yourself and and so when i got in the teams that core belief was probably it was probably in existence when i got when i was when i got in the teams of like hey you don't put yourself ahead of your friends i think uh that's what i was kind of that's what me and my friends were like when i was a kid and i think that was that core tenet was there so did it get honed hell yeah it got honed but i'd say it was kind of there man yeah it's like something i feel like when i showed up at buzz it was like i felt really inferior to everybody like in the sense that everyone has like ripped and like they were like all had like you know played football and everybody was like sports athletes and everyone was there and i just felt so inferior i had like this shitty tattoo like everyone made fun of well not my classmates but all the instructors what was the shitty tattoo uh i have uh i still have it um i have like a transformer tattoo but it's just like a shitty outline that was done by a friend of mine like on this arm and uh yeah and whatever but like i got this thing and they used to say faint get up here and show everyone your stupid tattoos and then i'd have to get up in the truck and then they'd be like everyone laugh of course you know everyone would laugh and then they would come down and i remember we had this one we had this one chief my instructor i'll never forget he's like he was the one that was constantly calling me out he's like get up here and show everyone your stupid tattoo and i was like whatever so i'd like go up there and show them the tattoo everyone would do the laugh and then we'd take off on the run you know kind of the thing and uh and then one day he's up there and i was like he's like you know if i had that tattoo like that i i think i would just kill myself and i was like well if i had legs like yours i would kill myself oh damn and everybody was like and then everybody laughed for real so i i proceeded to eat a mouthful of sand and i did the run every time i lost the sand because i would slowly do a little like i would stop it i have to refill refill yeah i would refill and i'd put the sand and i'd run but all the instructors came up to me and they're like we got props for you we know that like really sucked and they're like they all like gave he gave props you know yeah and uh but i i just kind of like going through that like i did have that belief in myself like i i had a belief in myself and i would look at that the instructor is not in a sense of like they're out to get me but that like if they could be on the other side of this experience then i could be too that's all i ever thought about was like if he can do it i can do it you know it's like that was that movie the edge or whatever uh with uh anthony hopkins and uh who's the dude that just shot the guy oh alec baldwin he just shot a gun female actually he did yeah he's a female yeah that's right and um yeah but memory did that movie the edge yeah yeah he's like what one man can do another man can do like and i kind of like i mean i wouldn't say i was like thinking about that movie but like in my own way i i thought like man if somebody else can be standing there with that shirt on i could be standing there with that shirt on you know i think pressure i think those experiences just reveal who we really are and i think that everybody could make it if they had the ability to look in at that you know that fire in the gut or whatever but too often not it's too enticing to ring out i was uh i was not great at anything right i wasn't the fastest runner i wasn't the fastest swimmer i guess like you i wasn't like a great athlete i was like a maybe slightly below average athlete in high school and then even when i got to teams it was like i was never gonna win anything yeah so i always felt like i had to work harder and to be a good team guy and the quitting thing is crazy actually when you look at the things that happened with people like incredible athletes like i was literally a below average athlete and i was young you know so like even if if you went to college your mortgage developed i mean the difference between a 18 year old and a 22 year old is a big freaking difference but you know i i had college athletes d1 college athletes i had an olympic alternate for gymnastics which is crazy quit uh wrestler d1 wrestler quit wrestler really the wrestlers are tough i think i think so i think so i i i'm actually one of my swim buddies rang out in like um the after hell week in dive phase we're doing something in the pool and i'm i think we're doing buddy breathing in the pool yeah and so i'm passing in my regulator and i'm taking two breasts and he's taking nine and this dude was from like iowa or something he'd never been in the ocean before and he was super pale so he was just sunburned he looked bright red like the entire time yeah and and so i'm doing you know taking whatever two breaths giving him he's taking nine and finally he just stands up he wearing four feet of water in the pool he just stands up he goes to the surface and i'm like down there and i think okay so i stand up and he's just calling out like hey i quit i'm out of here this is i'm not doing this after hell week wow so that water thing can get a little bit crazy on some people uh yeah the water thing is legit you know i've had some so i mean i was drowned in afghanistan uh and yeah i had like some i've had how'd that happen i had some um crossing a river uh and the uh a rope that i was attached to got wrapped around a rock and i don't really know how much i can say about because of the nature of where we were and all those things well you're in a river i was in a river yeah and so basically um i had gone down there once checked it out um it was much more intense than anticipated uh you know and i had this like idea like about this water op and all this kind of thing so began studying it and there was a really there was a mission that we needed to get done that had not been successful previously and i was in this this this space with with some guys and it's kind of like really amped up on this you know first water off all the things so go down there the second time with like a two 100 meters of one inch tubular nylon all tied together in an alice pack and uh the plan was that i would go upstream and offset and then swim down the other side then pull the equipment set off a hoist system so that you know we could zipline all this stuff and get everybody across this sounds good so it was like uh uh you know class four rapids way way way north and uh so it starts off i'm down there i got like my my boots on i got my stuff is my second time done now i've been watching this thing drone footage all the things i've been observing this for a long time i understood the flow of the river and there was a dog leg which was like the point of no return like if you went there there was a huge cave and i would watch on the footage like logs and like trees did go in there and like days later would be like bloop would come out so i knew if i went in there that i wouldn't live and uh so i go down there and i start going like upstream so now this is you're executing the mission well i'm doing the are you doing a recon i'm basically doing recon to see a proof of concept and so we're down there we got guys set up security the whole deal i'm down there i'm like really nervous i'm like whoa this is like i'm like in shorts and like you know this is like really a wild place and there's huge cliffs so there's only kind of one way in this wadi to the ocean to the uh to the river so i kind of start going up while i end up getting like sucked into a cave that i couldn't see it would just look like a dark spot on the on the on the aerial and they like let all the rope go the rope gets all tangled up around me i'm like a cat grabbing on the sides like i can't grab on anything so i'm end up making to the beach now i can't i can't get back there's no way to get back unless i do that again i'm not going in that cave nobody has any idea it's like one o'clock in the morning so finally i go up and i get the rope and i get it taught and i'm on the beach and i'm like i sit down i have a riggers belt on with a carabiner my boots fins and uh no shirt and a pair of shorts and a speedo underneath um because i have to contain that thing just kidding so that's a lot see it's a projection and uh so anyway i'm like so i'm sitting there and i can tell you i honestly felt like a lot of fear i felt afraid because like the waves were so big it was like so i'm like okay okay okay like just like just michael phelps it like you can do it and like so i get into the water and i start like swimming as hard as i can and i was unprepared for the violence of that water it literally swept me away and as i'm like flying down i'm like i kind of get like almost to where the dog leg is to get to the other side and so everybody's like in this wadi there's guys up here on this mountain these two mountains and this is all like cliffs and it's kind of not cliffy on the other side and you know that was the plan so as it's like turning like this i kind of get to hear and there's a boulder in the center and the rope goes right around the boulder which just they're holding an anchor and i just become like a flapping parachute and it just sucks me underneath and my feet go underneath a boulder and i had a ut life vest on so i pulled a little thing which i've never done in my whole training and i was like and it just ripped right off it was like a toy and my shoes are gone everything's gone finn's gone shorts are gone i'm in my speedo all this is happening very quick and i realize like i'm drowning and i try to unhook the carabiner i physically can't i'm not strong enough and i'm no like crane puff like i i couldn't physically the current was so strong and i'm trying to move the rope one and a half inches to get it out of the back and it was a stupid little like black issue like locking carabiner you know where i gotta twist the thing a half turn and like and i'm like and i started like really i started drowning and i started seeing like you know these kind of like i guess like you would say hallucination or whatever i started like seeing all kinds of crazy images and i started feeling like i'm going out unconscious like this is like the end i remember saying like please god don't let me like drown in afghanistan and and then meanwhile these guys are like everyone's piling down off the hill like thinking i'm like dead they saw me like zip by and so they're heave hoeing and they're like heave hoe and heave honing there's a lot of rope so they end up like heave hoeing the rope off the rock and like i right when i'm like about to totally just drown and i remember saying in buzz dry drowning is better than wet drowning dry drowning is better i mean don't breathe in because you can be resuscitated but if you suck in your toast like all that water is going to go in your lungs you know being a medic like it too and i just kept saying dry drowning is better than what johnny and i just refused to breathe in and then all of a sudden i like pop up into the foam and i remember like gagging in and sucking all this foam and i'm like and i just start washing down the river again i'm just hitting rocks i'm like doing cartwheels i don't know which way is up and i'm and i'm like screaming help like to nobody and and i'm like oh like and i remember i'm like breathing in foam and i and i get to the other side which they could not access me because of the the terrain and i get to their side and i'm like i'm on land and i start like crawling you know super fast to get up on short and then they just start dragging me on my face right they're like oh like and and i'm like getting dragged back into the river and so i get against this boulder there's a lot of slack in the line i do kind of like a squat like and i pop the off and apparently everybody like fell down and they pull it back and they're like he's alive they thought i was dead they thought i had drowned so now i'm like in my speedo with no shoes on or anything in real bad guy land like and there's like people with like lights collecting driftwood there's like and so i'm like i crawl underneath this like outcropping and i cover myself in mud because i saw it on predator and and i mean that's really what i did i remember you know like that scene you know yeah and and so i cover myself in mud and i just lay there until like almost like probably an hour before first light and i'm like thinking i'm gonna be the first seal to ever be captured like and i was like off like that and i'm like and i got like sticks and like rocks like piled up and i'm just and i'm freezing the like one of the coldest moments i've ever been in what was the water temp what time of year was it it was uh august okay but it was cold yep super cold and we were pretty damn close to as far north as you could go and um so i'm uh i'm like laying there and then i see like some nods like lights and the guys have made it around come down they were scanning the shore and i like popped out i'm like here's like mud dude with like you know cool guy with like a speedo on no shoes well i had no shoes so like they have my bag though we gotta get out of here now like so i'm like yo you know we're hugging like i thought you're dead we're doing that whole thing so i get my clothes i have no shoes on and to tell you truth i don't remember walking back i i think i just like blacked out or something like because i was so cold and i had my shoes on and i was so you know i got my gun got all my stuff got everything we go back get the base one of the guys there one of the oga guys son's a team guy he runs one of the branches now um so sun's up we get back and he was there and he's like he's like in tears he's like you want to have a drink so we go up and we go in the skiff and he's like i thought you were dead and i was like why did we do this like this was terrible like we should have never done this like blah blah blah so he gives me a drink we have a drink can i go back in my room i'm like that was like whoa so back to like open it up whatever move on well my team leader comes to me like a week later and he's like hey brother i think you could do that again and i'm like i'm like sure definitely like go in my room i'm like i'm so scared i don't want to do that like that was the worst experience of my whole life like i but of course i'm like yeah i mean definitely brother like for sure like so i started like watching all these youtube videos and i started like river crossings all this kind of stuff i'm like okay like and so i order all this equipment from the um pjs and all this stuff comes up i got throwbacks rescue stuff i'm like inflatables protects the whole deal long story short i go back down there to prove the concept and there was people down there so we bagged us canked it we didn't want to burn the air now everyone's hearing about this like water mission going down and the night we were supposed to go and execute we never did do it and two hours before we left i was switched out with josh harris who drowned and died and i was right next to him yeah so there's a lot of little details in there i'll leave out but it was uh it was a bad deal yeah and uh you know that experience had an impact on me for sure uh and so when i did the ironman in 2012 one of the reasons why i did the iron man was because as a free diver i got into serious free diving like serious venezuela mexico all over the world that's why you were in the teams you were doing that when i was contracting and but i started free diving in the teams uh matter of fact i came up with this whole thing called spear fishing pt uh because we had surf pt and i was like that's not fair it's discriminating like we should have spearfishing pt which was the greatest thing because we never got back to work on time there was always some kind of issue and so we got the day off basically i know that only lasted for like three weeks um but yeah so i uh i had to fell even diving around the world like i mean i was going to very deep desk you know 110 feet like uh killing you know tuna and panama and i spent you know three weeks in venezuela diving i always had this wreck playing in my head of what had happened when i would get in situations i got my arm caught in venezuela underneath a rock at 80 feet you know and the next thing i know it's like in my head like i'm in afghanistan i'm drowning like it was crazy i'm like i gotta kick this thing so i ended up like signing up for the iron man because i heard like the the swim is the most terrifying thing in the world which it was yeah i had like a pant that's a bold statement coming from that freaking afghanistan holy you want a bunch of like middle-aged men and women that are like you know hate their lives and trying to find themselves like you don't want to be in the water with them because they're vicious and but anyway like i'm out there and i'll never forget it like i'm a fast swimmer i i was like finished i think 112 on the swim and the iron man which is is really good 2.4 miles and i'm out there and i started too far in advance for my skill and then people started swimming over top of me like i was just a random buoy i mean they literally just kicked me in the face and just there was 2400 people just like swimming and i couldn't catch my breath and i got kicked in the face my goggles got kicked off and i got and i'm like hey got like guys look at like the paddle board's like you need help you know like if race is over like i can't breathe i can't breathe and i'm like oh my god i'm back and i remember this guy was like i'll never forget it he looks at me he's in a panic like me and i'm like not panicking panicking but i'm just like i can't catch my breath because every time i try to breathe i'd get some like you know 45 year old lady's foot toe up my nose and and so he grabs on to me and he's holding on to me and i'm at this buoy and i remember he's pushing me down he's like and the paddle boards are trying to get in and i'm like in this mix and i remember i just looked at him and i was just like and that moment i like faced it and this dude was like pulling me down and i just like grabbed him by his like rubber cap and i punched him between the shoulder blades as hard as i could and he was just like just like it was like electric shock like hit him and i was like ah just like ah i just started like swimming and i my wife has this great shot of me coming out i look like i look like i have like ptsd when i'm coming out of the water like might have like bags under my eyes i got news for you you did it yeah and i came out of the water and i was like i was like totally terrified and uh but i never had another bout with that ever again and uh it was a moment where i was like i knew i had like i had like finally like face that thing down which was like playing in the back of my head it was really weird uh when i would get into water situations where i've been drowning which happened a lot like in dive spear fishing you know and uh so and i never had another another had another issue again so it was uh it was a moment in my life that i'll i will never forget as long as i live we go offline i'll tell you some more details but yeah and then what what do you got going on right now like with the the beef the ranch the cows like you're full on just going for it yeah i mean it just uh i mean my goal is so we just purchased this ranch we've got a capital campaign going on and we've raised some money building a human development center there so which will be uh it's a 10 person cold plunge a 10 person sauna a gym in the center and then a meditation room that's sound proof and then it vibrates at 528 the megahertz of the earth so it's very good grounding um and uh when something's vibrating 525 megahertz do you hear it do you feel it or it it's the earth it's the earth so like if you ever if you know i always tell people like if you're having like anxiety or something like that like or you're just like you know sometimes you get that kind of like raciness or you feel like you gotta like down regulate a little bit like the best thing you can go out is go outside take your shoes off stand in the ground be in total silence and stand there and it usually goes away within like three to four minutes and i just breathe it's very grounding it right it grounds you and so you know frequencies are super important so we actually do sound with the guys and last year the guy said it was our first year doing it uh almost every guy said it was the most profound experience of their life we have uh somebody that comes in and brings those sound bowls and they bring up the resonance outside on the ranch like deep where the sweat lodge is and it just vibrates it and they do these bowls and it's like some people it's so intense they vomit from it uh so wait you sit you lay there and these are big bowls i don't know what you're talking about yeah they're bowls and they stir them and they each bowl produces a frequency and they can bring you up to the resonance which ground it grounds you and so um you know obviously like everything is frequency and everything is is like how are you looking at somebody on their iphone like how am i talking to you how am i vibrating right now and you are somehow interpreting what i'm saying in your brain i'm literally vibrating to you and somehow you're like yeah let's go do something right go over here like and so um you know that's that's that sound therapy is something that uh it works it's very very powerful uh if you've if you've never tried it there's probably places here go go to a sound bath they have all these bowls all these things they'll bring you in there and because your whole life is inundated with blue light and frequencies and wi-fi signals and all those kind of things so what you're doing is you're re-establishing a baseline so so yeah so the ranch we're building a human development center we've got an arena going up a 100 by 200 indoor arena so we can expand kind of into the winter time and uh and then the guys live in non-electric wood cabins with outdoor showers and an outhouse total minimalist so um the guys the students the students that are going through yep are going through so they live in like little lodgepole cabins that we're building that are just little bunks a little wood stove and an outdoor shower and an outhouse a double owl house i'm gonna get some of that yeah get some of that yeah a matter of fact this year when we put the double house up we forgot to put the little blanket in the center and like three days later the guy's like hey do you have like a blanket or something and i was like oh i'm sorry i totally forgot about that but they were using it yeah which is disturbing that's one of those things that's one of the like starkest memories i have from navy boot camp was that there's no stalls in the and you were just literally sitting down and there was someone sitting next to you you know a foot away taking a next to you it's just the removal of whatever it's kind of the removal of all privacy is gone it's gone yeah it's a hundred percent on you yeah poop next time [Laughter] that's how much we owe you moving that hole and by the way there's another dude on the other side of you that's also shitty so that's good times so you're so you're building this so this is gonna up our capacity to take more students and do more yeah because right now i mean the guys are living in wall tents uh and everything's out all the outdoor showers all that kind of stuff the ranch we bought has basically a tiny little cabin on it that you know abraham lincoln's contractor built and two pivots you know and uh and a small shop that had no well or anything so we popped in a well we've done all this stuff and so now we're raising money too to build that out and to expand the program uh to year round and you know my goal is not to have some big giant program like i think that is the problem is that everybody thinks there's like one institution that can do it all and my idea is to kind of get to a sweet spot with guys and then you know we're capturing data and then to go and to get other organizations to up level themselves and to begin to really start thinking about like human development and bringing forth change rather than like me saying like i can do it all and i can build this huge thing and i i wanna i wanna network with people and have them scale up and uh that people that are really serious about human development and i think that will i think we'll look back and this will be a hub of uh um you know it'll be a place where a spark formed and um when people start looking at things different because the guys that graduate this program uh you know it's uh they're they're they're cha they're different they're changed you know what i mean and and so um i think that everybody deserves that opportunity but i can't do it all and i think that other people like i said there's 50 000 non-profits in north america you know we spent 92 billion dollars since 2012 and the end of 2020 and it's gotten worse um you know and i'm sorry and a lot of people like you know they hate me because i say you know you know you got organizations they got shetland ponies that you can take and they put sneakers on them and you walk around town like my message is you know you like that is that doesn't that doesn't do anything like like it takes time and it takes commitment and maybe that's not for everybody and and you'll have to walk your own path but i think that as all these existing institutions maybe i can find 10. maybe i can find 10 that are focused on human development maybe maybe it's saying like hey think about the change of a guy you take a guy's 75 pounds overweight he's on meds he's like but he wants to change and he's got the fire and you put him in a 10-week fight camp right and then think about who that guy would be at the end of 10 weeks right nutrition diet focus meditation ice baths like working out purpose like feeling good strong like getting balanced all those things like i mean it's it's simple but it's it's it's it takes effort and it takes work and so my my goal is to is to start a new conversation and bringing people together about what it you know about restoring um you know these guys back to the dignity of who they are it's crazy like the shit's not gonna be easy if you're gonna reset your life and dig in and find out who you are that's not gonna that's not gonna be an easy evolution no doughnuts like yeah it's like yeah and it's it's crazy you know that that opening that i read for me was like literally there are some people that are literally trying to give you a magic pill that's going to do all this work for you like which is a crazy thing it's crazy it's in it's insane like when you think about it but the thing is we already know the secret sauce right that's why you know the business people are like let's create something called obstacle course races right like you literally climb over a log flop into the mud then some roided out dude hits you in the head with a foam bat and then you get like a medal and then the next day in the office everyone's like whoa what's different about him he faced an obstacle gem and he over game right i mean that is the obstacle course races like i mean we so so set that challenge in front of yourself i think we can like unite together do different for me like i never thought you know we bought a ranch for three million bucks i met this guy he was delivering hay i started talking to him he goes oh my dad might be selling his ranch you should meet him are you looking for a ranch i'm like sure yeah definitely we worked seven years with no ranch leased everything set it up every year mobile gypsy camp it was a living hell imagine 70 horses not owning 1 16th of an acre was a nightmare and most people never saw that and so here i am like going to this guy's place and i sit down a cup of coffee you know big business guy i sit down i'm like he's like so he interested in the ranch i'm like yeah he's like well do you have any money and i'm like no no and he's like thanks for coming like basically it was like really nice but then never talk to me again so then like a year later he calls me up he's like i'm definitely gonna sell the ranch are you interested and i was like absolutely so i ride down there my motorcycle and i'm like i sit down with him he pours me a cup of coffee goes do you have any money and i'm like no but i'm gonna get it because i was like it was like the jerk store with like you know with george costanza you know i was like thought of this this comeback like the whole year and he's like well i said i'll give you my word give me an opportunity and i'll get it and i i didn't have any of that kind of resources so we ended up getting a loan what year was that that was last year so you got a loan against uh a charity is that yeah yeah we got a loan yeah we got a loan on the ranch and so um and i raised a million five from various donors and put that you know down payment or whatever took a loan out and you know we just launched a four-year capital campaign to build a ranch out so some 7.5 million bucks over four years and uh and then you know the funny thing is about nonprofits is that i don't own it i'm basically even though i'm the founder i'm just an employee i'll never have those assets like if the whole thing dissolved tomorrow goes to either the state or to another nonprofit and so you know i exist in this solely for the development and betterment of my fellow man and i think that you know whether it's a veteran or it's a stay-at-home mom or somebody recovering from a getting ran over by a dump truck or whatever it is um i think that people are gonna once again begin looking um to to partake in that hero's journey and that journey of self-discovery to get out of the places that they're currently in and so that's that's my goal and we're capturing data we're working with the university to get results and stuff like that so that i can go to other non-profits and sit down with that person say listen i know you give five thousand dollars to critically injured soldiers i also know that you have 290 million dollars in the bank because your financials are public and online as a non-profit maybe you could run a program that actually does something for people beyond you know getting on their kids ipads maybe we can do something to better mankind you know maybe we can do something to level up you know society our society our community in a way and and stop giving handouts and start you know giving hand ups you know i think that handouts are a total failure i think yeah of course people have things and stuff like that you know critical things but like for the most part like you have to own it you have to earn it and you have to own it and i think we get an opportunity business and we get out of the handout business oh you served come on and float in a tube and we have a massage therapist online like thank you for your air force time oh here's a filet mignon and a carrot and a raspberry like you know then a jacket and some fishing gear even though you live in detroit and you live in a one-bedroom apartment and you know below the poverty line like most veterans do um and and and maybe i'm going to give you an opportunity to change your own life but you're going to have to do the work and we get back in the opportunity business that's that's what i want to see happen and then hopefully you know uh you know when the meteorite hits the world and dinosaurs come back or everything like that it'll be like a plaque somewhere it'll say he tried to do good but it was futile they destroyed themselves aren't you aren't you trying to uh do something with with beef too like yeah so what's going on with that yeah so uh so the beef model is kind of like so i i talked about the social hybrid is this non-profits are in this perpetual starvation cycle right where you're beholden to the donors where you know you have to raise money and then you know you're constantly in this state of having to raise money because you can't generate money because you're a non-profit i didn't know that by the name when i started i'm like why am i so broke and then like five years later i'm like wait a second non-profit damn it so um but i was like we have this ranch uh you know we're going to start a cattle company farm to table you know and i think that like the care of the animal from the moment it's born living and dying on the ranch treating that animal with respect you know if you've ever been to mass agriculture and you saw what it's really about it's one of the most disturbing things that you've ever seen in your life and if you've ever been to a slaughterhouse or a packing plant where they're doing a thousand head a day you know they're picking them up with skid steers and terrified adrenaline hormones and they're gonna pump like smash it is very it's not good um and i think that i think that carries over to the food and so like you know raising that animal honoring that animal letting him graze letting him live letting him be out there letting him live their lives sustainably harvesting them teaching people how to do that you know integrating that and then selling that beef to um donors that can then in turn support the program so the ranch stands on its own two legs so it's a social hybrid it won't exist to make money but it was just to sustain you know the program then also expose people to that animal husbandry into that ranching side of the house and then also you know down in line with the beef i i i think like to me food like where your food comes from is so important and it's so critical to the wellness of the individual you can't expect to be happy if you're eating you know uh cheez-its and garbage and all those kind it all is tied together your body is the subconscious mind and even down to the food that you eat and you know what i started getting exposed to this world and i started seeing things i was like man this is like rough like when you really see what's happening put to the animals and those kind of things and listen i'm not like you know out there like you know whatever like an activist or anything like that but i'm like there's a better way like the natives did it right you know they they harvested they took what they wanted they they used every component think about the waste that we have they only take the best cuts everything's dog food or this or that or like and so for me it's like butchering the whole animal using the bones to create bone broth taking the hides and and making boxing gloves and american-made boxing goes with the hives and like taking all the fat taking all those things taking the bones making biochar out of them right so like using that as a as an organic fertilizer that we could use on the ranch and we could give away and share with other people like using the whole animal and teaching guys those things because when they become connected to their food they start to understand the system that they're a part of you know i tell people the whole world is it's like your life is held together by a wire okay a wire so like if the wire breaks meaning like the power goes out millions will die within weeks from a wire like oh i'll hunt you're not gonna hunt you're not gonna make it out of your high rise you're gonna be like you'll be in a 25 million dollar tomb okay the water comes out what are you gonna do it's over a cable a cable breaks the internet goes out and millions die and i think that so many guys like common they realize and they change their whole lives because they start to realize the role that we pay in the system and how you know how everything is now handed to you and you take for granted all those aspects and so my goal is to stand up that that system and that human development program and then begin to get other people to do the same thing and i want to expand a community you know and and that's my goal so that's what's going on with the beef and just i mean i i talk a lot well not a lot i talk about china china yeah china and you know we saw a lot of this during covet like what are we dependent on but we're dependent on china for food and a lot of people don't recognize that china limit china china is coming for us i tell people i'm like if you look at mao during the chinese industrial revolution the great leap forward mao knew that he needed nuclear technology there's been five emperors in china emperors that's what i'll call them dictators whatever leaders great ones whatever dragon lords so like microaggression and so but if you look at what they did he understood that they needed nuclear technology so what did he do he traded food to the russians in exchange for nuclear technology starved his own people 30 million people died during peace time and he got the nuclear weapon they have a 5 000 year plan all right they understand that by by enslaving their own people for cheap labor because americans exist for consumption i want it now and i want it cheap and it it's like my house i go in there how many how much do i need right it's that's cheap it's only three bucks another potato peeler you never know so so so how many potato peelers did you actually have in my house okay i did have five that's a lot i did have i kept two shout out to cuisinart but i uh i was like if you look at them they're smart because what they did is they understood the american psychology they understand that americans are overconfident because from childhood they're told you're the best you're good you get praised for things you never deserved they they're entitled and lazy chinese are the opposite right so they're like marching forward to their 5 000 year destiny and so what do we do we outsource everything to them for super cheap goods and in turn handcuff ourselves to them right including our medications the world's most critical medications are made in china and so you know china is on the move and their military is now expeditionary they're providing aid to foreign countries they've got their jets and let me they got hypersonic missiles and let me tell you something they're not over here like trying to pass the pt test okay oh i didn't you know got to go to fep because i didn't make it by the way my rights matter you don't tow the line in the chinese army you wind up as biochar okay they don't no need for you and and xi jinping said that you know if we try to stand against the chin this is two months ago in a live speech he said on their show of force and he said you will meet a great wall of steel made by 1.8 billion chinese that are unified what are we over here like don't go over here like i don't like you like so they banned all girly men on tv there is no boy bands allowed social media turns off at 10 o'clock at night and and what are they preparing for to be a world leader and who are they in lock stuff with the russians right and and because they see the united states dwindling because consumption consumerism entitlement overconfidence uh and and this desire to tell people what's right and wrong you know like we have these things and then what happened in afghanistan right we're no longer a force for good we are we better rethink because this enemy is not like an afghani running around in pajamas these dudes are probably genetically modified who knows what they're going to do they might unzip their fake chinese bodies and come out and just be like who knows right they are genetically modifying super soldiers forbes just or was at a time or whatever just had a thing on them so we are facing a time right now where this entitlement and all these things that we have are coming home to roost on us and you know buyer beware because if the cable breaks if the earth even burps okay if it just rumbles in the wrong place and the power goes out for say two months millions upon mil there won't be enough excavators to dig the holes for the bodies that will burn people oh no but it's the truth think about it if you're living in a 25 million dollar high rise on the 98th floor and the power goes out where do you get your next sandwich from by time you make it down every store will be gone all the food will be gone there will be no water your well pumps won't work just think about it life is held together by a cable and we never think that that cable is gonna ever break and you know who's holding part of that cable network is china and i don't think that china would have picked a fight with us but i think we've put a fight with them and because here we are just bloating bloating bloating bloating bloating and and and they're refining refining refining refining refining so i mean if if putin invades ukraine i bet you i bet you see china and china go after taiwan simultaneously i wouldn't be surprised and then they could launch hypersonic missiles and vaporize our fleet in two seconds and then it's either go nuclear or stand down i i think i don't know what's what's today just for reference today is the 24th of january nice i think that putin's going in i think ukraine's i think it's on and i think he's what he's doing he's looking at biden who's compromised and he is it it breaks it breaks my heart and russia has a bona pic because think about it we eisenhower screwed them over because we were supposed to pay them all that money and we never did and then we chased them over to over to afghanistan what you know caused problems over there whooped on them over there did the cold war ripped the walls down crushed our economy did all these things right and now we're telling them oh you can't go across those borders and they're just like meanwhile the russians over there like every guy is like khabib yeah you know like kill kill kill kill kill our guys are over here like stand down people are being mean they're gonna call us back not all americans are like that there's definitely too many that i mean there's definitely plenty of americans i work with a lot of young military folks and man they are uh yeah there's kids ready to rock and roll but i don't know if the country is if the country's willing to sacrifice like in those situations our guts are ripped out i mean think about 20-year war you think you think about like the united states there was a usa article last year it's it's worth checking out even though they're kind of like whatever but like they have a article with a moving map on it called the cost of war if you google if you look it up or duckduckgo or whatever brave it and you will see a moving map and it shows last year the united states you know waged war in 88 countries okay so we we had we had an 88 count so we're getting look at the british empire they got so spread so thin in so many places right and they got so worn down they were facing conflicts in turkey and the conflicts in india and conflict next thing you know america you know you got george washington's like we're gonna kill you right and and so america has become super extended i think we need to restore what it means to be an american like i think we've lost i think that term is synonymous with the wrong things and and being a patriot is synonymous with the wrong things and you think patriot you think like dude riding it jacked up side by side like whoo like freedom like no there is no freedom there's only free and that's what america freedom means that someone's affording you that to me free is an inalienable right is is to live like as i see fit and fulfill my purpose and this nation affords me that and in turn i serve you know my country that gives me the opportunity provides all this infrastructure and all those kind of things we take all that for granted and we need to restore the message of what it means to be an american i don't care what political parties and what color and your race in general i don't care about any of those things what it is is a common thread that made this nation incredibly great and we've taken it for granted and it's starting to get frayed and what happens is that it's like lennon said you give them a rope and let them pull it around their neck and they'll hang themselves matter of fact they sold us the rope and we put it around our necks and so i hope i hope we can change i hope the noise can quiet down because if people got serious just you change the world by changing yourself that's the thing there's not these big grandiose ideas where i get out there and i'm like you have this huge idea the idea is that on the really macro scale i change myself and when i change myself i change the things around me and when the people around me change themselves the things around me change and that's how mass change happens um it happens inversely as well and so you know uh change for the negative and i think like to restore what it means to be american to be able to walk down the street and to be able to grab somebody by hand to be united to uh um to restore it kind of that that that viewpoint of of what's made us so great is is the is is the common thread that runs through the hearts of every single one of us and and we have to put all those things aside all these projections aside and get back to the basics of what it means to be a human and i think that we can come back from this do i think we will i don't know um i don't know but if we don't um it will happen to us and uh and it will be more swift and more violent than we could ever imagine whether it comes from the planet or whether it comes from another nation um the time to change is now is right now and and and to readjust so yeah and like you just said all that starts with you yeah whoever you are you if you're listening to this right now it's you it's you change and don't be afraid to change you know we're so attached to these outcomes like don't be afraid to change and uh um yeah i just like i i i i see it in the world and i see people like i like today on the bus i saw all these people and i'm like man we are so disconnected from each other just trying to walk out the door of the bus to the rental car company people are shoving each other just to get out first so they could do what be one step in front of the other guy right like that's not who we are as a nation that's what makes us different and we gotta get we gotta get back to those cores core values all right this is a long one that's all good man um i wanna make sure so you've been mentioning your your non-profit yeah uh horses and heroes heroes and horses did i get it backwards it's heroes and horses yeah okay heroes and horses you can go to heroes and horses.org is in there you also have instagram and facebook and a youtube channel heroes and horses all of those can be found at the same spot um echo you got anything i do actually okay so a long time ago a few hours ago you mentioned something about an experience with a black bear and then you just sort of moved on dang oh good point i wanted to come back i kind of wanted to know what what happened with the black bear listen wearing that look look around your leg right now look you know you know what's really funny about that is i've had so many run-ins with bears at this point in the game i look back at that one and it and it's kind of makes me chuckle i mean i've had you know we had a bear come out horse go off a cliff and getting impaled like i mean i run into him archery hunting all the time and and now i'm like my black bear story when i was like a teenager coming back from my dark years and this black bear like having this guy like if i see a black bear literally in the background i'm just like i just pick a stick up i'm like god and he's like ah they like take off a grizzly bear is different a grizzly bear is like you feel like you're hunted but you know no what had happened was i was out hiking um i was kind of just like you know here i am returning from you know this kind of childhood uh um you know uh i guess you could say prodigal son kind of experience and um i'm up there hiking and a great while i'm sleeping out no tent a small black bear kind of comes in and he's like literally sniffing around he's all by me and everything and all i had was like a swiss army knife that i've gotten from my grandfather he'd have the kind with a little white toothpick he could pull out and uh and i have never had it and and and i was actually very terrified at the time uh i was like oh my god like here's this thing i'm laying in my sleeping bag and he's just kind of sniffing around sniffing around he's walking around and that's what really like i started thinking about my life he got my food i didn't have it wrapped up properly eats my food and so anyway that experience right there like when i came back i finished my hike with no food it was like a three-day hike so two nights and three days total and that was on my first night and that whole time i reflected on what did i want my life to be and so that was a real pivotal moment in my life that that little black bear came in and it made me think about the fragility of my own life um you know in it and i'll tell you like there's nothing more uh that feeling in the wilderness of the wilderness has no mercy you know it has only rule and only law it has no mercy there is no equality in nature you know and you feel that when you're around animals and you see them and you're with them there's a there's an honesty that happens and you know and i discovered that honesty really for um because i was a lost person you know and i i did feel like i was invincible and so that little black bear kind of brought it in made me have my swiss army knife and made me feel my own fragility so that's what kind of led me to taking the next step to change well i'm gonna ask you i'm just gonna so what happened with the grizz on the horse falling off the cliff oh man so because i mean i mean they're gonna ask you now or we're gonna stop recording i'm gonna ask you as soon as we get done so you might as well tell everybody otherwise everyone's gonna have to sell it one time yeah so i was like you know um it's like my second season packing and um you know i got a pack string with me and i'm in the back and a grizzly bear kind of comes out on the trail it comes but kind of like barreling down most of the time the bears will stop kind of like look sometimes they'll stand up and then they'll usually when they see the horses they don't like the horses when you're alone by yourself that is a completely different story and one of the guys one of the cowboys was in front of me and he thought he was going to kind of spook the bear off more which was still kind of going down the trail because he dropped down to the next switchback and when he did the the horse spooked when the bear moved and he went off the side it was very steep and the horse kind of locked up his hindquarters and then took a jump locked up his hind quarters and then there was like one huge like douglas fir with a giant timber or a bow sticking out that was like pointed and when the horse leaped you know at that kind of steep grade it gained a lot of altitude and it landed directly onto that thing and it went through its stomach and out its side and it would made the most horrible noise i've ever heard a horse make in my life and it was like like and it was about like making this bellowing sound the cowboy flips off peels the head stall off the horse everyone's like screaming like oh my god so i'm like i like jump off my uh my horse i just leave the mules loose and i start like kind of trying to get down to him and the horse is like kicking and blood is like pumping out it's hitting me my face i mean it's a large animal and uh i'm trying to get him up off this thing and the cowboy is kind of the head's dazed and he's like there i was like i need help getting this horse up we're trying to stop the bleeding like you know i'm like and then the horse died he died like probably like within 10 seconds bled out i mean it was a massive injury and uh there was nothing more healing than that uh yeah so i you know that was uh that was an intense experience i've had him uh we had some guys we had a guy quit uh three years ago bear came out barreled uh towards the whole pack string uh the guy that was working for me at the time shot him and tumbled him bear turned came at him again hit him a second time what was he shooting 357 that's why i carry 44 mag and i was like oh dude the 10 mil more shots i'm like 44 mag and they're so the bear uh tumbles and of course you got to call the forest service it's this like investigation and they came up and it was 13 feet uh the shot was made 13 feet the bear print from the horse so he was about he was about to tackle the animal um but most of the times you know they don't really want to bother you but you know you never know and the guy that quit was like yeah and i'm good well the whole pack string exploded okay so here comes a grizzly bear a dead run and next thing you know these guys are fi you know they're on day nine on horses their horses start bucking and you blow up and the mules are going every i mean it's like a yard itself this is a complete freaking mayhem mayhem mayhem because like i mean somebody that's more skilled could have like got a hold of them if you watch that film the 500 mile project uh you know um it's it's a great film but we had a guy uh a mountain bike run into him and and the horse reared back and broke his orbitals and broke his face and um and then have to get medevaced or whatever but things can get sideways you know with horses like pretty quick and uh that grizzly bear experience was was one of those uh but it doesn't happen often and uh you know so by the way apply to the program uh it's totally safe uh almost totally well we'll protect you no but uh it's it's a huge opportunity we just opened applications by the way i'll plug that real quick uh last week so they're piling up quick and uh you know we'll we'll close them i think march 31st and then april 1st we select the class so we kind of select them along the way and that selection is eight people or is it there's there's three eight-man classes and then we'll run our winner class so we'll have 32 guys go through the program this year um so yeah so so applications are over nine so go to heroesandhorses.org and apply if you're interested in coming out for the experience of your lifetime right now man awesome 357 magnum no good for for bears no it's not i mean i have a 44 mag i'll tell you right now i've like i've i've done so many side cut by side comparisons with guns like 10 mils 357s i'm telling you you want that initial knockdown power to be a wake up call and let me tell you when a bear runs they put their head down low to the ground they're not like up they're super low to the ground and so you know a lot of people don't realize that like they're actually difficult to hit because they're like when they're running at you like that you know 30 miles an hour they're coming in there's a lot happening very quickly and bears aren't scared of people anymore the scariest thing is when i shoot you know when i knock an elk down and i'm by myself and then i got you know hit on the gps for the guys to bring the horses or whatever and i'm out there by myself like standing over a gut pile that is like the worst feeling chum in the water man it's the worst feeling like you want to i always build a fire and i like make it like super big or whatever and i try to put pine boughs over and piss on them or do all these like kind of things or whatever but you want to talk about like getting in your you know i'm doing the whole like what was that i'm the only one out there i'm like yeah there's not like how long does it take the horses to get to you uh it depends where i'm at you know what's the longest waited okay so have you ever slept out on some guts no no no guys come no matter what that would be your horse can see at night i always thought listen we ride at night and it's broke i mean things happen i mean there is no it is what it is you're right at night you want to find out uh you know always tell people i said you don't know you know a lot of people don't know this little bit of history but i always tell them that the the uh maybe i shouldn't say this but the an old cowboy told me one time that the catholic religion was actually started in montana and it was a it was an old outfitter looking for tree branches at night right so riding his horse and i always tell that joke to the guys joking around shout out to the pope or whatever but i i uh it works like if you ride you can't see anything and you're like it is the craziest feeling to ride all through the night on a horse it's wild but the horses know what's up oh they see perfect at night no but you can't see anything you know and you're walking on these like ridges and you just hear like rocks you're like okay you're just like you're writing a horse name like dingbat or whatever you're like i don't know i trust you but they don't want to die either so yeah heroes and horses.org i really appreciate the opportunity uh and taking the time you know to kind of hear the story and stuff so thank you very much well hey man thanks for coming on uh you know sharing these lessons thanks for your service and in everything that you did and and really man i think thanks for the most part what you're doing right now man i think it's awesome and um appreciate it bro all right thanks thanks echo micah just stepped stepped out awesome having him on i just was reviewing my notes that i was taking while he was talking and most of them i got to but there's one that i didn't get to address and i'm sure maybe come back on at some point we can talk about it or we'll just talk about it but you remember he told the story or he was he's making hypothetical situation warren buffett is in the desert he has no water and micah sees him and micah has water yeah and warren buffett's gonna die and he says you know i'll give you this water but you have to give me all of your money and and and micah says so he's gonna do it right and that's true often but here's the crazy thing there are people whose ego will not allow them to make that trade they would actually rather die i know that sounds crazy sounds a little bit inconceivable let me tell you how it's not inconceivable in what leif wrote about with the with a situation with a uh a special operations unit that was going to conduct an operation and leif talked to some national guard guys that were saying do not do that operation leif goes and gives that information to the special operations unit that was going to go do it and those guys were like no we're going and those the the national guide guard guys they don't know how to handle i forget what the exact wording but we don't need to listen to them instead we're going to go do this mission and so we have to keep in mind that ego is so strong that if you have a guy now look warren buffett might be a guy who's you know led his eagle he's an older guy maybe he's got enough life experiences to be like oh i want to live that's more important to me but i guarantee you there are some individuals that would rather die than admit that they're wrong they'd rather die than take help from someone else they'd rather die than ask for help so that was just one little thing that i thought about as and unfortunately you know i took the note and then i didn't get to get to bring it up with with micah but that is something to think about you don't realize how powerful a negative force an ego can be yeah i i was thinking the same thing too at that time there's a movie like kind of new i think where it had kevin spacey in it and then before they released it they replaced them because there was a kevin spacey scandal already do you know what movie i'm talking about it's uh something about the i want to say the gatsby i don't know i don't know i don't know what movie but it was basically a famous rich guy um is in the movie or that's the movie's about both okay both um it's i don't know yeah so it's about a real it's like kind of like a true story or something okay i think if i'm not mistaken i'm only gathering like pieces of it but it's basically about uh this super duper rich guy um they i want to say they kidnap his son or something like that or the daughter or something and they're like hey basically like you know held them for ransom or like give us this money or whatever and the guy and it was no money for this guy like it was not that much and he was in the oh yeah i think it's like on the news or something he's like oh so what are you going to do he's like i don't care i don't care like there's no way he would give money it was that it was like that that much you know where yeah i can lose a son like whatever it's like the in it's not like and i'm totally trying to remember the thing but it wasn't it wasn't like oh i can't afford it or it was it was more about the prince yeah yeah like like no no no i'm not giving that much money no one can do that to me kind of a thing like i'm not even meanwhile like you know kind of a real important thing you know the son or the grandson or something like that but yeah i i thought that same thing too i said i get i get the example because it's true it is true it's kind of true it's basically like like saying without your health you have nothing you know like you can't you can't bring your money to the grave like it's true it's true but there are these weirdo little exceptions where it's like that doesn't matter to some some people yeah that ego gets that ego starts to get charged up man it's um it can be it can definitely be a scary thing so it's like and you might even said this before where ego is essentially like a like a drug that you can you know some people like they'll oh they'll just take drugs till they die yeah like ego will kill you that's an example yeah yeah exactly it's like that thing you know people will smoke cigarettes like so much and they'll be like hey the thing that i said was your ego will love you to death your ego will love you to death there you go just like drugs will love you dude like drugs love you yeah and i took this from j i think if i remember this correctly jay adams who is a old-school skateboarder dirt like dog town z boys and i heard him saying drugs will love you to death yeah because you know he had a bun he had problems with addiction and went to jail and all this stuff and i actually met him and kind of hung out with him a little bit i was my friend my friend uh ran an underground scape downhill skateboarding uh uh event not just one but like a regular basis yeah and and it was like hey we're gonna meet at this random mountain that just got freshly paved like the state just freshly paved some mountain yeah and we're gonna meet out there and do downhill races have you ever been on a downhill skateboard uh i've been on a downhill skateboard yes okay i've i said oh i'll try what this is like or whatever i got on a downhill skateboard i went 20 feet and i was already going so fast i i did i jumped off because i could see where this was going it wasn't a good place i don't have the skill set to be doing this yeah guys race in leathers yeah like like uh motorcycle racing leathers they race in those things so i kind of so at any at one of these underground events jay adams rest in peace was there and you know i got to shake his hand and i didn't get a picture that's a bad move actually well how long ago was it um 10 years 10 years ago maybe 10 years maybe even a little bit longer you should have got a picture and then pictures are available at that time because if it's like 1991 or oh no no this was this was recent this was like you know i was a grown man trying to get on a downhill skateboard dude those guys are freaking crazy yes sir yes they are bombing hills yeah bombing hills you're on escape this isn't on the snow or the water yeah like you fall in the snow look you can get hurt on the snow for sure yeah you can get hurt on the water you notice there's a key word there canned you can get hurt on the water you can get hurt on the snow if you fall in a freaking downhill skateboard you're getting hurt interestingly they don't they wear leathers they know how to fall better or whatever yeah i think i think a lot of times especially in skateboarding in general that you just get hurt and i think those guys are kind of just used to it for sure you know unless you break like your ankle your wrist or whatever or whatever break whatever either hurt or you're injured so skateboard is just used to getting hurt let's face it bro you get you get especially on the downhill right where you gotta bail or whatever and you're sliding oh you're sliding what are you hitting something's gonna stop you you know so jay adams said drugs will love you to death and as soon as i heard him say that i was like uh yeah you know what also we'll love you to death your own ego your own ego will love you to death so you got to watch out for it yep yeah like the the the short-term payoff of what it delivers to you is just so makes you feel so good or safe or secure or whatever get that little hitter that like yeah i mean well your your health your safety your well-being you got to be careful that well hey uh this has already been a really long podcast appreciate everyone for listening if you want to support the podcast go to jockofield.com get some get some supplements of whatever kind you may need jockofield.com we also have look we talked a little bit about china today china we talked a little bit about china we are we are in an economic war with china for the time being could it escalate yes it could if we lose the economic war trust me the escalation is going to be real bad so we're in a economic war with china right now and at origin usa we are on the front lines of that war we are building stuff in america the things that micah was talking about today you know a sense of purpose when you when you're not making anything you don't have look let me rephrase that when you are making something producing something building something you have a sense of purpose and when you're building something that's helping rebuild your community you have an even greater sense of purpose so if you want to help us rebuild our communities help us rebuild our country help provide a sense of purpose to hundreds and one day thousands of hard-working americans then check out originusa.com get awesome stuff that's made in america yeah i think that that concept kind of probably goes deeper than maybe we might think at a glance where you know how like you know as technology evolves and all like all this other stuff or whatever you know basically it's just an it's an evolution of problems being solved so the smaller problems get solved just so you can take on bigger problems right and they then we have innovation and you know all this stuff invention like back in the day right you have these simple tools a stick a rock you know and you're making like you're spending five days making this one thing that literally you can buy at 7-eleven nowadays right like that kind of stuff but back then it's just how it worked it's like yeah bro if you want to fire bro it's going to take a lot to make that fire then after you make that fire it provides the warmth and the heat and you can cook for you and your family and all this stuff so it's like this little system that kind of works together but then when you start inventing things that fire part making the fire apart becomes really inconvenient like we got to focus on this bigger problem here that making that fire takes like freaking i don't know 35 45 minutes that maybe would help us in this bigger problem if we could just do that in an instant so let's solve that problem indefinite on an indefinite level you know so boom we saw that problem now you got lighters matches whatever right i'm sure it didn't happen in that order but i'm just saying for example but it just keeps going and going and going and going so we got a bunch of problems solved for us now yes all kinds of problems yes but now the problems become you know what's that hierarchy it's like some yeah hierarchy right hierarchy of needs so now technology kind of like exploded so fast so now it ended us up on that that higher part of the hierarchy or the needs right but technology has it right now it's not good enough to solve those problems so now you got people depressed or whatever that's what i'm saying so now yeah if you we can infuse little little scent sprinkles of senses of purpose into all of our lives really i think that's going to be the beginning of the uh the solution yeah but it was just kind of like how michael was saying where you kind of got to go down to the the baseline a little bit to explore like where can i infuse some of the purpose in that baseline then your life it just as a whole would be more more beneficial more fulfilling or whatever yeah i think fulfilling is the word yeah like you'll you'll feel more purpose like just in your day-to-day you know just how it works but or i think it works like that check um so originusa.com cool awesome to support get it get whatever you need there also we got jocklestore.com which echo nate made up the name for very original yeah because we have a store no i think i i accepted the name for oh see i think did i name it literally made it up you know what actually now that you mentioned no you actually said to me like hey i'm going to start us a store i was like oh what's it going to be called i didn't think i asked that was probably like three days later you're like hey i set up the store okay cool yeah you like we'll look at the website and i go okay cool what's the website you're like a jockless door you know what's funny like i'm remembering it and you're correct exactly right i don't know you could tell me anything right now and i'd believe you if you're like no you imposed it on me or no you said you know your idea is dumb josh or you said you know jocko you wanted to name the store something lame and then i came up i would believe whatever you said yes sir because i remember it i am remembering it now and it's weird because it's not like i was like hey what's the best kind of name for this or that or you know how to make this it was just like it was just kind of like a foregone conclusion like i didn't even really think of it i was like oh let's just do the thing this is just just how you know podcast so you gotta have a store so chocolate store nonetheless on jocko's store you can get your uh apparel shirts hats hoodies good stuff if you want to represent on this path that we're on subscribe to the podcast subscribe to our youtube channel all that stuff we appreciate it check out check out jockowunderground.com look there's a lot of influential things going on out there in the world people are getting banned whatever not whatever really yeah straight up some of us got shadow band did you get shadow band i don't know i i don't know it's kind of like there are people that i follow that i know when they're shadow band because i'm like you know how you kind of miss it like you're like oh i haven't heard from this person when they're not posting and they've been and you even try to look them up and their their name that's the thing the name don't that's the video that someone sent me was there searching for my name and it's not up there yeah look we don't know what's gonna happen we don't know who's in control of these platforms they seem to be being okay sometimes but sometimes we're getting shadow banned so go to jockonground.com if you want to help us out on that psychological warfare you know the deal on that flip side canvas dakota meyer got cool stuff to hang on your wall i've written a bunch of books if you want to check them out there's some information in them that could help you especially the kids books man get the kids some books and also have a leadership consulting company go to ashlandfront.com if you want some details on that check out our our online training academy our online training academy extreme ownership.com putting all kinds of effort the lessons that the lessons that we learned are so helpful we this is what we hear all day long every day i get emails i get handwritten letters we get updates utilizing the skills that we brought back the leadership skills the life skills if you want to get in the game go to extreme ownership.com and check it out yeah it's funny that that academy because you have it under echelon front you know with you know and i always looked at it or kind of imagined it as essentially oh this is what you you know if you work and or if you manage a team you're a boss or something like that oh yeah perfect freaking perfect really but when you kind of look into it and you kind of go on there and stuff this is really what it is where it's like okay yeah sure i listen to jocko you know sometimes involuntarily against my will whatever but let's say i volunteer i listen to jocko and you know what he has some good advice you know and actually if i'm going to tell the truth here where if i listen to and by the way you kind of choose what you put in your head and what you listen to right so we choose to listen to you most of the time sure so now jocko with all this advice or whatever he actually has an online academy like to train you that's literally what it is it is like okay so and i kind of took it for granted where i can ask you questions like when i see you it's easy i can literally call you up if you answer you've asked me a lot of questions over the years yes if you think about it now i'm not talking about questions about how to do a camera which you have asked me but i'm talking you come in with a legitimate scenario yeah business narrow family scenario i need advice straight up straight up just the other last time i saw you i asked i asked you what do you think about this i'm thinking about this or this and i need like straight up legitimately need advice for me right now did i give you good advice yes i think so i'm following it i'll tell you that it's working right now so far i guess it was more of a long-term decision-making course well then we're probably thinking it's the right move because you probably weren't thinking no offense you may not have been thinking long term yeah a lot of us make that mistake we think short term yeah about what plays out i was it's like one of those things where you know how you make this decision to pursue this it's going to put this other thing on hold for a long time or you can pursue the other one and it'll put this one on hold either indefinitely or for a long time so it's like which one is it the advice i gave you is very good by the way i i agree yeah and even when you said it it cl it hit me so quickly that yep you i think you're right you know that's a good call so if you didn't know me yeah if you weren't if we didn't hang out if we weren't doing jiu jitsu if we weren't doing the podcast and you had that question you could go to extreme ownership.com and literally ask me and i would give you the same advice exactly right and that's get some more particulars maybe your scenario is different maybe your area of operation is different but essentially you'd get at least now does this mean i'm going to preach to you that i know 100 no but i would help you way through the options which is what i did with you right yeah exactly right and that's exactly what i was going to say that's exactly what it is you know where you and then of course you know you you have a bunch of other experts in little little special specialty elements of life or whatever as well but yeah that's what it is yeah you want to you want to get straight up life advice from jacqueline you want to get straight up online training from jacob there it is boom you got it right there extreme ownership.com hey if you also if you want to help out service members active and retired you want to help other families go to mark lee's mom she's got an awesome charity organization called america's mighty warriors you can go to americasmightywarriors.org she's doing a ton of help a ton of help that i've seen with my own eyes my friends have gotten help from her so it's a great organization also obviously check out heroes and horses.org micah in case you couldn't tell he's a freaking awesome guy with an awesome vision and he's moving forward with that if you want any more of my torturous tales or you need more of echo's discombobulating disclosures can find them on the wood you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on instagram on facebook echo is at equity charles i am at jacqueline does this mean we want you to go in there and waste time freaking getting sucked into the algorithm no don't do that you want to check out you want to hit us with something you want to give a shout out cool we appreciate it you want to get a little information about what we're doing cool don't get sucked into the algorithm the so listen and i my brain mind and i'm sure a lot of people do the same thing where it does this thing where anytime i listen to like micah or you know anytime pretty much anyone's story and you hear those cool little parts of it where it's like oh man i need to take away the computer from my kids from now on you know it's like you get sucked into a story so much like it's so um what do you call like so engaging that you kind of like i kind of want to be a bow hunter now you know it's like that kind of giving john dudley a call that's what i'm saying when he's talking i'm like dang maybe i miss my calling from you know for bow hunting yeah even though i'd be out there in the woods with the with the grizz i literally shot one bow in my life one time by the way and it was pretty recently but nonetheless i still had that feeling assumed saying because you see you get so immersed in like the story or whatever then he was talking about like the social media and i felt it i was like yeah you're right social media is so toxic but the reality is it can be toxic and it can be very beneficial like you would you know i know i'm you know you can be in communication with very valuable people for very good reasons i've gotten through we've probably gotten 30 guests on this podcast legit awesome guest freaking so stoked from social media oh yeah so that's definitely and it's and it is a legitimate way to communicate with other people it doesn't mean you have to get in the algorithm so it's there we're there and also heroes and horses at heroes and horses you can check out the instagram the facebook the youtube go check out the youtube a bunch of the things that that micah talked about today he kept g hey we made this film we made that film go check those things out they're they're really cool to watch i watched them and uh yep so there we are micah really appreciate you coming down really appreciate your service in the military and out of the military and once again thank you for what you are continuing to do to help out vets and it's going to have a huge impact so thanks brother and to our active duty military and our veterans out there thank you for your service and remember you got a lot to offer even when that layer comes off even when that layer comes off of the uniform and the military when that uniform comes off you still have a ton to offer so go out find a mission find yourself that's where it starts and also thanks to our police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service and all first responders thanks for what you do and remember just like the military what you do is not necessarily who you are you have more than your uniform so remember that and to everybody else let's follow the words we heard today quoted from micah from alexander the great who said bury me with my hands out of the ground so the world can see that i left it with nothing let's leave it all in the field by going out there every day and getting after it until next time zecko and jocko

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 144,927

Keywords: jocko willink, podcast, discipline, defcor, fredom, leadership, extreme ownership, author, navy seal, usa, military, echelon front, dichotomy of leadership, jiu jitsu, bjj, mma, jocko, victory, echo charles, flixpoint

Id: CpIsCFnsf1I

Length: 280min 52sec (16852 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022