Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - 777 Update and Leadership lessons with Mike Sarraille

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

Most Fridays I dedicate to Q and A, but not this Friday.  I was recently in Tampa for the premiere of Legacy Productions 1st documentary "Dropzone Everest," which follows Mike and a small group of civilian skydivers as they train for, then execute an expedition to skydive into the basecamp and surrounding areas of Mount Everest.  Since we were both together, and we leave for the 777 Expedition in two weeks, a podcast was of course in order.  We will do our best to send "dispatches" from the road, but until then, this episode should serve as an update on what we have accomplished so far, and what we hope to complete on the expedition.  Enjoy

What's going on, everybody? Now, what do we normally do on Fridays? We do full auto Friday. But today, I figured I'd change it up a little bit. I just happened to be on the road, as you'll see from the episode, a new version of the green screen, if you will. And I was with Mike Sorrelli, who has been a previous guest on the podcast. And we were in Tampa for a documentary Drop Zone Everest that Mike had done a trip to skydive into the base camp of Mount Everest last year, which is leading into our triple seven expedition coming up in January.

Basically two weeks from the day this is released, I will be headed to Chile to start the expedition. So since we were there, and since I want to keep it kind of forward-facing and update people on what we have going on, I figured I'd grab at a quick episode with him. So I'm sorry, no Q&A today, only a short episode with Mike. Now, on that note, I've received some messages that the last two podcasts have been skis. And I went back and forth and I listened to the raw files. The raw files are clean. So I reached out to the hosting platform.

And it looks like the only platforms that have an issue are the ones that are audio only. I haven't heard anything from YouTube or Spotify. So I got some feedback from them. I changed some file settings. I changed some formatting types. Bottom line is I've done everything. But one last thing I can change. But what they have said is the changes I have made should solve the problem.

So, if you are an audio-only platform and this episode skips, please reach out to me and then I'll kind of fire off the last option that I have. And that's it. So it's not full off Friday. I don't know what this is. We're going to call this triple seven update with Mike Sorrelli. Enjoy. I'm looking at danger close now. So on the leadership front, it's interesting that you open. Every time I talk in front of an organization, I talk about when to instill the philosophy. and ethos of your organization. Day one. Yeah, well, I usually recommend 10 years in because it's really easy to change in green habits. How many companies, though, don't do that? All of them.

Like 99% don't do it. So I'll usually end sometime near the closing remark. I'll talk about analogy I use as driver's license because I've watched how my kids got their license and I know how I got my license and I don't know anybody who didn't study for the test or practiced to learn how to use a car that went to the DMV and was like,

let's do this. on their 16th birthday. So if you practice and you find a mentor and you learn the way and then you're in a parking lot and a rural road and the city road and eventually you go take your test because you're training for the test, it's the exact same thing as leadership. If you don't facilitate and foster that environment of being a leader from day one, they're going to get the corner office and be like, hmm, all right, fuckers. How do I do this?

It's culture building, man. Yeah. I'd love to see you speak, keynote, because I always take something from everyone. one, then I'm like, oh, I'm going to take that. Now it's mine. I'm a plagiarist at fucking heart. How did a Men's Journal find you? Is it because of the book?

Because of the book, they did a review on the book. Okay. And then the dude was really cool that was writing the article and we're talking. We probably talked for an hour and a half. I'm like, bro, I got into, I'm like, there were warfighters and warriors in the military. One of the thing that pisses me off is you call everyone a warrior in the military. I'm like, what's the difference between the two in your mind? One is technically and tactically proficient at the art of war.

and they're not necessarily mutually exclusive and a warrior is somebody who is a person of integrity character based on values and more than importantly knows restraint when not to kill you know that and you can probably articulate it better you serve with some guys that were

good at the fucking job of being a warrior or that break glass warrior but they're like bro I wouldn't trust you with my money I wouldn't trust you with my fucking wife for sure then that does that then you are not a warrior you can call yourself whatever you fucking want but if you can't be trusted

outside of a combat zone then in my definition you're a warrior and bro you look at it like I've met some civilians which I call now warriors within their respective professions yeah some of them

I've met them like Debbie Lee's an example that woman had three kids first husband was highly abusive second husband passed away and that woman's mindset she's like she did everything she could

to provide for her kids I mean, she grinds and she's a woman of like, Christian, woman in faith, just kept grinding, dude. That woman has a warrior mindset than some of the guys we served with. Maybe not where we came from, but, you know, the Marines and the conventional seal teams. I feel like we have to find a better term than warrior.

It's too broad. Yeah, into the everyday warrior was a combination of like anyone has the potential. A warrior exists, it's your choice. You're really going to be a warrior or not the way you conduct yourself? And so the whole thing about the warrior is every year is behavior.

To me, like leadership and culture is about behavior, full stop. I mean, especially in today's day and age with social media, everyone has a microphone and all the influencers are like, I read five pages or I read one book. It's 10.

Yeah, 10 pages a day. Do you really? Do you really? Are you putting out this bullshit? Well, they probably do read the 10 pages. I don't know if they're getting out of the... 10 pages is easy. Yeah.

But I do this every day. Do you do, do you really do that? Theatrics. We've talked a lot about theatrics. It's, I think that's one of the downfalls of social media. I've said it so many times. It shows the peaks, but not the valleys. It's a curated look, and you could take snapshots. And I've had an experience a few times where I've met the influencers who are promoting like the incredibly disciplined, incredibly positive, everything,

in my life is great and they're some of the most unhappy people that I've ever seen, except for in their social presence. And I'm not talking about people that we both know, because in your head, you're probably like, hmm, who are you talking about? Who? Who? I'm talking non-military. No, I'm talking non-military people.

No, I'm talking non-military people because you have a choice. You show people what you want them to see a snapshot in your life. Yeah, I don't show my wife. I don't say Jordan yelling at me, rightfully deserving of being yelled. I would watch that video. Yes. Do you know how to make a reel? Because that would be a sick real.

If you want the truth, you've got to set up cameras in every corner of every room and everyone's life. And broadcast those. This reality, like, bro, I'm out of balance. I preach balance. Balance is like perfection. It's a complete and utter illusion. It doesn't mean you're trying to find balance. And you should always try to find balance.

But I'm probably one of the most unbalanced people because of triple seven and all we have on our plate right freaking now. And you can't say, you know, for as long as you've been on the road, that you're at some semblance of balance right now. No, I'm a mess right now. Like, I'm on, for people watching this, this is obviously a different setting than the normal studio. You're going to go back and some of the shit like Carlin. I told you I'll take out one thing.

No, no, take out that. Because I don't want to take with the leadership development. No, I'll take some of this stuff out. But, yeah, I mean, I'm on the, I'm constantly on the road, which it's like this balance in or lack of balance between being present, you know, at home with Leah. She was just on the road with me before. So oftentimes we travel together.

This is a very short trip where we're not going to be together, but away from my kids, away from being able to train, sleep cycle disrupted, but still trying to do everything that I want to do professionally. It's out of balance for sure. Like my sleep cycle is fucked up. I'm living on day quill and fucking a leave right now because I'm, you know, getting off a cold. I'm on antibiotics for potential staff infection that I picked up on the Jiu-Jitsu mats. It's a dude. In Costa Rica? Yeah. Big surprise. Shocker, for sure. But yeah,

I mean, it's tough. I strive to be balanced. I do the best that I can when I can. But at the same time, I mean, you've got to make the sausage while it's raining. I think that's how the saying goes. Who's the, and he caught me, man. I was doing an interview with, is it Trell Davis? I have no idea you're talking about. No, no, no. Why am I blanking? The famous tight end from Denver Broncos that set records. I don't watch basketball.

I don't watch basketball. Half the guests sometimes I'm like, I'm not a big football guy, but I'm like, so hey, man, how do you achieve balance? Or how did you achieve balance while having a Hall of Fame career? And it was almost like the Alan Iverson. You probably do remember this when he got asked me. He's like, are we talking about practice? Practice? We're talking about practice?

basically this guy he's like balance he's like what the fuck are you talking about yeah when you're trying to achieve anything exceptional there is no balance because you have to pick and choose what you're gonna you're gonna prioritize your time and if that's your goal your family sort of falls to the wayside and I've heard this from business leaders that said and you know this like when you're an entrepreneur you can choose about three things in your life the business is one yeah that's that's that's given your family is probably second which means like you you you you degrade on relationships.

I don't talk to a lot of my buddies because I'm so focused on the business. And he's like, hopefully the third is health. And usually, like, I've been in the worst shape I've ever been. I mean, dude, in the SEAL teams, we got to, work started at, what, 10? You got to work out until about 10 when we're at the command. I mean, you were an officer, so yeah, probably 10, 30, 11. What time with the enlisted guys bring up your coffee? Was it like 9ish, 930?

Like 9.45? And if it wasn't made properly? No, it's like, look at the facilities that we had. We had, I mean, my favorite thing to do back on the East Coast because it was fucking ranges that were available, 365 days a year, no oversight needed, no RSO, you sign yourself in, fucking ammo in your cage at any time, go get your gun. So I would go in the morning early, shoot for like an hour,

go to the gym, work out for however fucking long I wanted to. Most of the time I was sitting there bullshit with Triple S though. And, yeah, then go upstairs. And I'm like, what are we doing today? You'll never guess. House runs. Sweet, let me get my gear on. And it was awesome.

Yeah, it was so, yeah, singularly focused. But I also look back, I was so focused on my job that 100% my, everything else was being sacrificed, for sure, when it came to allotting my time. People are like, and I said this sounds horrible at face value, but your family was. 100 second was a second priority yeah I won't blame the military on the demise of my first marriage

but it had a hand in it for sure so you recognize that you're out of balance when are you going to focus on getting yourself back in the balance that's Jordan is my metrics yeah she's like yeah you're you're flying off the

hinges here but when will you slow down I guess is what I'm saying um because I've been asking myself this question. Like, where do I, what, where do I want to arrive at where I start, if you, if you list your priorities where you're like, you know what, I'm now going to move another one up to the top or re-rack and stack the priorities because obviously we're not going to live forever. Our bodies are probably not going to be serving us amazingly well as we get older

due to the mileage on them. You more than me, you're like the fucking million dollar man over here, half metal and unobtainment. Your face yesterday when I said I had never had a surgery, I wish I had taken a picture of it. You're just like, what? Well, technically you did have one surgery when you were shot. No, I didn't. They left it in. The round is still in your leg?

Yeah. They didn't do anything. They didn't have to sew you up. So we're on target, and the little birds came in and flew some people out who were far more injured than me, because there was gunshot wounds. There was wounds from a breaching charge that went off that people were too close from. There was, I think... They breached under fire.

It was a blue and blue. There was a lack of communication, or not a lack of communication. It wasn't communicated. So we were, if you were look at it like a traditional house, just to make it easier for people, instead of using, you know, fucking black side, white side, red side, all that stuff. That still confuses me. Are you serious? It's not that hard.

You know we got away from that, right? I hope so. Yeah, it was just a north. Yeah, that's the easier way to go. So let's just assume you were looking at a house, though, would have the walkway up to the front door and the driveway. That's the side I was on. We'll just call it the front of the house.

The back of the house, we had, and it was surrounded by walls and there was adjoining structures. They had made entry on the backside of the house, and it was, I didn't make it to the inside of the house, so I was kind of just told this, but the entrance they used and the rear led directly towards the door, the front door that we were on the side of. Like a hallway, from rear door right to the front.

Basically just a center-fed hallway. way directly to the door. And if I was looking up at the structure, so the door was right here, the window that the guy shot me from was right here. It actually looked like a very traditional house that had like a window that might be a living room, a front door next to it, and then an extension that came out that would have been a garage. And I was just going to go to the corner and hold security. Evangeloista was going to go up and put the breach on the door. So I was over the wall first and I kind of just waited in the shadows and we made our way up and I just didn't want to turn my back onto the blacked-out window, so I turned my head to look at it and I fucking blasted

from that window. That put me down, but so they were returning fire from there, but we did notice that they were in a gunfight on the inside. A breaching charge was put up, and there was an element making its way down the hallway. I think it was a, like a C-6 strip charge, full length of the door, which it, I think it actually might have been a metal door, too. It doesn't even matter, though. I mean, it almost vaporized a guy's arm. He was really close to it. It peeled back the Kevlar on one of the assaulter's helmets. That's how much of the blast they absorbed.

Point in all that is, I was one of the less injured people. So there was little birds coming in. Yeah. Pulling them out. I got thrown in the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle, driven to the green zone. They put me on a stretcher, and I was in a room with another guy at the squadron.

And the dock came in. I think it was a dock. Fuck, I don't know. Could have been a physician's. But they came in and they're like, hey, you know, how you feeling? I'm like, it's quite painful. I'd like some morphine because I was fucking scared to take morphine in the field. Because I watched too many goddamn movies where if you, like, give yourself the auto-injector

Surret, which, of course, I had some. Yeah, I thought I was immediately going to, like, start finger-painting, like, fucking elephants with my blood on the wall or something. Yeah, and come to find out, I have a genetic abnormality where opiates don't work very well on me. No kidding. Yeah. So... It's not like you can test.

that until you test it. No, so the guy juices me with some more phoia. I was like, that's awesome. I would like some more, please, because I'm still at an 11 out of 10 on pain, so they give me more. And they started talking to me. So they cat scanned me first, x-rated, and then the doc was saying, so it doesn't appear like your leg is broken because it wasn't. It missed my femur by about a quarter of an inch. My largest complaint at the time was my ankle, because it had interacted with my sciatic nerve. So it felt like my ankle had. had been laid, what's the movie, Misery, where the dude gets hobbled, lock. So that's what it felt like.

When I got to the Green Zone Hospital, that was my number one complaint. It was my ankle. So they actually, like, super gingerly, they cut my shoe off and they were looking at it, and they x-rayed, and they like, what the fuck is wrong with it? Your ankle's fine. But it was that neuropathic, it was just sucked for like a year and a half, that neuropathic pain. But the doc goes, okay, so there's a bunch of frag in here. We can see the slug.

He goes, we can start getting this stuff out. And I had the wherewithal just to be like, what does that necessarily mean? He goes, well, there's ferrous metal in your body, so we're not going to be able to MRI you. What we'll do is we'll take an x-ray, intubate you, throw you on your stomach, you know, knock you out, and start slicing and just pulling things apart and pulling the metal out. Like, is there another option here? And he goes, yeah, he's like, honestly, you know, it didn't break the bone, the nerve damage is what it is, your body will encapsulate. it in calcium. It'll move around a little bit.

You'll need to go get an image from time to time. But there's probably no danger in leaving it in there. Like, what the fuck didn't you leave with that? So that's the one I want. So I never had a surgery. You know, automatically I'm thinking

this is a documentary where we go in and we get it out. The whole documentary, 45-minute documentary about getting this out. No. Yeah, so, yeah, no surgeries whatsoever.

Interesting. And it was a wild ride, man. So they, I think they daylight choppered us from the green zone to Balad. and then one of the worst experiences, if not the worst experience of that whole thing, was the C-17 flight from Blod to Germany.

Without painkillers? Oh, I had painkillers. Because the J-Soc dudes that were on that bird, we had a J-Soc doctor that was assigned to us. I had everything. What didn't have that level of care was every other stretcher in that aircraft, and it was full.

Front to back, side to side, and the writhing pain noises from the rest of the people, I actually asked the doctor, I'm like, can you put me out? Please, like, just fucking put me out. Then you land in Germany, and you're, I'm on a stretcher, and you're received by people with the best intentions of the world, but these young women were offloading the stretchers, and they were struggling with the weight of the people that were in the stretcher.

And they put us on a fucking school bus and drove us on the Audubon to live. launched or did you have that experience? Yeah. Which, one of the guys who got hurt was in like the full erector already, and it's a bouncy road. And he's just, and they almost dropped him in the stretcher too. Those two portions for me, the airplane flight and that ride to the hospital were the fucking worst.

In what year again was this? 2005? Yeah. It got better and it got better. Yeah, I hope so. It got better. You probably know this guy, Johnny, great dude. he was a naval academy officer from like Boston thick accent.

He was shot through the hand in Iraq. Okay. And basically didn't treat him. And somebody put him on a civilian flight without any pain meds or anything for an infection. And similar to you, you went to Portsmouth. You're like, hey, I'm in a lot of pain. He went to, what's the Naval Hospital in the city? Balbo, right?

Yep. Went to Balbo and he's like, yeah, I'm in a lot of pain. My hand's starting to really swell. They're like, what happened? He's like, I was shot in the hand in Iraq. And they're like, no, that's. that's not possible. You'd be on a

casvac or, I'm sorry, Medevac. He's like, no, they put me on a point. And so, I know that incident right there

led to a lot of changes and NSW's like, all right, we've got to get our act together. Yeah. They put their own sort of procedures in place. And, dude,

my, my set aside being on a C-17 with nothing but casualties, and then you're looking at those casualties, and you're like, hey, I may have 30 holes in my leg, but God damn, like,

That's a nub right there. There was a guy. There was a guy. It was, I have very bizarre memories because, so in the green zone, I kept asking for more morphine. And eventually a doctor came in and he goes, listen, here's our height, weight scale. You are at the absolute fucking apex of what I can give you. Like, you may still be feeling pain, but if we juice you more, your heart might stop. Because it's just a central nervous system.

suppressant. Yes. So then they were giving me stuff to help me sleep, and I would have these weird moments of, like, waking up. So I woke up in Blod, and I think, like, the CG was standing at the end of my bed. And I swear I just looked, I'm like, hey, what's up? And then I'm going to back to sleep. Which is an appropriate response for in general.

I'm sure I said something. You know me well at this point. I'm sure I said something fucking ridiculously sarcastic. But it's like, what are you going to do to me? Like, I get a fucking free pass. I'm going to say to you, whatever the fuck I want to. and I vaguely remember like I was the one who notified

my wife they had just juiced me and they hand me a fucking phone and a and a card where you know you had to put it it was like a calling card I was so juiced out of my mind I couldn't even hit the buttons and so I had to have somebody else do it for me

and the conversation I vaguely remember it's like hey you know I said I was going to be home in like 60 more days but I'll be home pretty soon I got hurt last night and I remember her saying what happened? I'm like, oh, I got shot. She goes, like in the face?

No, not like in the face. And so she notified my parents, but, yeah, it was so wild. The things that I remember, the things that I don't remember, it was, yeah, crazy experience, for sure. So there was a one, we didn't have morphine on the rooftop because we had given it back to the cornerman who redeployed about a week earlier. You're talking about when Mike... When Mike jumped guilty. So he was actually...

How close, hold on, you guys had given your morphine... Because you were almost ready to rip out of there, right? Bro, you're talking about bad senior leadership and just junior guys. We just... We knew we only had like three or four more missions. We're like, oh, we're good, we're fine. If there was anyone that was experienced, like you or a gym... They would be like, no, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Understand you're redeploying your sign for this. Yeah. You're going to sign it over to me, even though that may not be illegal, but we'll have a custody chain on it. The guys are not going out with their morphine. But here's the saving grace. I went for that, those little pockets that were on the ankle.

Yeah. It wasn't there. It's actually a good thing it wasn't. It was fucking painful as hell. But it kept me coherent into the fight and making decisions, which was required at the time. But I eventually make it to Blod

in a small world, a close family friend. I mean, a family we had grown up within Menlo Park, their son was an Air Force surgeon. So I'd already gone through one surgery in Al-Qaim, and then on to Balad where they did some other stuff. Were they just drag and frag out of your body? Yeah.

And in some of the holes, I think they were packing them already. Yeah. But so he comes and visits and he's going to call my mom. He's okay, he's okay. But he takes a picture with me and they were, I mean, they were filling me with fluids, dude. I look like the Michelin man. just overweight and so my mom gets this picture and she's sending it out to everyone and

finally I get home she shows me the picture of it she I'm like ma ma ma I'm like you have to approve all pictures through me before they go out it was the it looked like I was it looked like for six months I'd been eating just candy in Iraq it was pretty pretty embarrassing that's my mom God bless her I love her but she always chooses like the worst photos where you're like your eyes are blinking Fuck, that's wild. How did you guys end up getting off that roof? So I told you, I still have not confirmed this.

The wildest thing is we never did an after action. They never sat the three of us down and said, hey, as hard as it is, let's talk about this. There's some lessons that need to be learned. They never did it. And I sat down with Doug Wallace and Benny Olson. I deployed with Benny in 2010. I love that guy. We did an after action almost 15 years to the day.

and we talked through what happened and what we could have done differently. And this goes back to Jim, who you know, who'd written an after-action, he went out with us. And the guy of all 40 of us in that task unit who were inexperienced to include Jocko, Jock didn't have much combat experience,

he picked off in 48 hours. He went on one op for 48 hours with us. He picked off more in that 48 hours than all 40 of us combined it. And he wrote an after-action, which was unfortunately hidden away that we all should have read him, because he predicted a grenade on the roof scenario and suggested that we switch up our

captains. Did he really? Yeah. So the embitter went off. I think that's probably a fail safe like with the blast and concussion of that proximity and that magnitude. It shut off. And so while I was cycling that back on. So for people listening in embitter is the radio that we were using at the time.

Internal communications, pretty ruggedized. I had to crawl over to an Iraqi had the motorway. roll and called over to the mutually supporting Overwatch position. How close were you guys to the nearest friendly position? The mutually over, uh, supporting Overwatch position was probably about 500 meters away, if not less. Okay. I think it was less. Um,

maybe like 250. And, uh, you know, when we say mutually supporting, sometimes it's not all that. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You draw the little sniper arrows and, yeah. I'm sure it looked great on paper for mission approval. But we had the problem the building and it seemed like it took ages for that element to get to us and uh you know Benny was the only one that was um trying to find the word uh mobile um and he picked up the least injured he picked up like he's uh mark 48 i think we had the 48s by then yeah uh

and she just laid it down without he didn't come off that trigger i've never seen and he's a he's a small man he's shorter than this table he's he's he's he's he's he's he's beloved because he was competent, tactfully, professionally, and he was just a good leader. He's not as short as Nick Norris, but he's short. Yeah, I just talked to Nick Norris, well, I owe him a call. But Benny, I saw Benny's face, and I've never seen Benny's face like that. I mean, it was just pure rage, and I think he went through that belt without coming off. And so he kept firing, and finally the Iraqis came, because they ran off the roof.

They came back on. They fired. But, yeah, it took for ages, and then it was a Bradley. they threw us in the back of a Bradley with Mikey's body um those guys are so badass they will fucking drive those things absolutely directly into the Hornets nest down roads known to have IEDs oh for sure

uh that's rough you know I'd love to say I'd love to say other seals bailed us out of the bad situation it was always the army it was always the army or the Marine Corps if it were true if you think about the size of the elements especially at a conventional team that you would go out there with it would be almost impossible for a seal unit in the field to like rescue a

another seal unit. Yeah, you're making like, you're making, it's almost like carrying a thing, a gasoline is a fire like, hey, I'm coming. Well, we got, that's like, hey, we got 16 people and we're split up over four locations, so we'll send you a rescue force of three people because we got to keep somebody, well, actually it's going to be two because we're never going to be by ourselves. So we got two guys coming your way. Or we have, you know, five M1A1s and four Bradley's.

It's like I'll take the tanks for 500 Alex. You know what I mean? Like it's impossible for a seal unit to rescue another seal. Unless you're doing a squadron-sized operation. you're not on the offensive unless it's a point target. Correct. So, you know, I think there's a misnomer. Like, if you've ever seen a seal platoon do an IAD,

they go Winchester, which means out of ammo, pretty rapidly. That's why the most, let's say, 90% of the time it's break contact and get out of there. If it's a larger force. How fuck did we get on talking about Iraq? Wounded. I don't know. man. I don't either. My brain is.

So balance. Yeah. When are you going to stop? That's how we got on this. My wife laughs. She's like, because I keep saying five years, I'm making five years I'll be able to retire you. So you've been saying that for about five years is my guess. And she's just like, before I didn't even get it, she's like, no, no, hold on.

Let me guess. Five years. And so I did tell her by the time I'm 50, what we're doing now. I'm like, I will ratchet that back with the adventure skydives and all that. and putting my body on the line to where, and I don't know about you, you may go till 55. I will still do a jump here and there, but I'm like, my intent is to get the younger generation of SOF,

special operations, into legacy. And these are guys who are going to want to do their expeditions and will tell their stories. How old are you now? 45. Same. What's your birthday? November 11th.

Okay, so I'm slightly older than you. By one month and better, I guess it would make it. How much do you think about your mortality? You ever look at the age you are now and wonder how much you have left and what you still want to accomplish? It's definitely much more prevalent than when we were on the field of battle. Yeah, I never thought about it. Yeah. So, you know, you know what it is, is this month alone, you've seen all these actors and whatever high profile people are dying at age of 60.

Like, it's insane how many people are dying. Dude, it's funny that you say that because I didn't used to think much about like, well, how much? time do you have left and it was I had that thought yesterday as I was scrolling through a news feed and I realized like every day for a week I mean obviously people are dying every second of every day I get that but yeah it was the ages and scrolling through it and then again Glover does most of my math because he's my quant but I can do some basic arithmetic I'm like wait a minute I'm a lot closer to that number you know what it was Ray Leota that kicked it off from me what age did he die at oh he had to be in a 60

I think he had to be in the 60s, but Ray Leota also, I think he drank and smoked like a chimney. He probably burned it hard at both ends. So that was shocking. I'm like, we grew up on, like, Goodfellas. We grew up on these guys. And now they're all, they're all perishing. When did you, I just, I ask you this question because I'm going through this phase, I think of, and my dad's coming out to visit us for Christmas.

And I love doing episodes with him. And I'm curious, because he's in his 70s. like what he how much time does he spend thinking about his mortality or just time it's a little bit morbid to say it in mortality's perspective

but like I'm fascinated to ask him what is left that you want to accomplish in life like what are you looking forward to in your phase of life when did you start looking at a calendar as it's like holy shit

this thing is ticking away because I didn't think that way my teens or 20s or my 30s and none of that and I just turned 45 this year and now I'm like hmm you know my mom

my mom sent me an email or might have been in text because I called my dad my old man um love my great great father man I cannot have been in want but she texts me and she's like

hey don't don't call him old man anymore so I think that that's bothering him but you know I am I the apple does not fall far from the tree but I see it in my dad he's he's assessing his life and whether he's this guy's accomplished a lot

this guy came from very little and he accomplished a lot and these kids are all doing good stuff and he's still just he this is where I got it I'll be highly critical of myself as he is highly critical of himself but I've told him at one point I'm like hey man you did good

like I know you're not done but you've done well if you can look back and be like damn I've actually I accomplished a lot I've raised a good family they're all in a good place my daughter's not on a pole like life is good but I can understand that you can't you said it the other day and it was Tony Stark said it in that film not a ounce of money ever bought a you're absolutely murdering this no amount of money

will buy you any second of time I also fucked it up but not as bad as you did but so that's why when when I when I contacted you about legacy expeditions I'm like crap I'm like we we've got to get going now because we only have about five 10 years of of pushing you and I'm just in our bodies. Speak for yourself. Like I said, you're the million-dollar man. Yeah, I think I'm done. I think I'll be supporting you and Nick.

Which, dude, I have no problems. You know I want to do the space dive, but Nick's like, no, I got that one. And Nick is more deserving, given what he's done for skydiving than... Quite frankly, he can have that. I mean, we'll describe what you're talking about. I'm going to be his alternate.

And if somebody... You wouldn't pass the physical to fucking play JV softball right now. All right. So I guess I mean to you the ice skitter that got curbed. Tony Harding. Tony Harding. So I need Tony Harding, Nick, in a parking lot.

If they threw you up against a medical screening to go into a high troposphere jump year? They would be laughing. Alarms would be going off in the building and they would cart you out of there. They would be laughing. So Joe Kittinger just passed away. I believe he was 93 or 94. 94, I believe. 94, he was the, we call the space diving OG, the original gangster.

Yeah. You think Felix and Alan Eustis are badass. They did this in, like, in what, the 2000s? Yeah. When did Felix do it? 2012-ish? I think about 10 years ago. 10 years ago.

12 or 13, yeah. So, Joe Kenninger did this in 69. And had a failure in one of his gloves, like his hand was swelling up. Yeah, he... The modern era people had many technological advantages that Kittenger did not, and that didn't stop him. No. That guy broke a lot of records. No, he gets full cowboy points.

Not to say anything negative about the other people, but if you look back at what he was able to do with the equipment at that time, I think it's a feat that exceeds what you're able to do with the leading edge of science and technology like Felix. Two different ballparks, man. Yeah. Two different ballparks. But if we can get Nick up there to do like 140. What is the record? This is why we have, I think Alan was at, I'll look it up.

Alan was the Google guy, right? He was at the Google guy. Well, see, but it gets interesting. So Felix went up and he jumped out without a drogue. To set the speed record as well. He set the speed record. He set the altitude record. Alan, I'm trying to, I know he was a, he did it very quietly too.

But he went up and he was a drogue-assisted free fall. entire time, which is incredibly smart, given the guy's skydiving experience versus Felix. But we'd have to figure out where Nick would fall into all that. 1,000, well, basically 136. Okay. Yeah, Nick. But here's what I love about Nick. And it goes to what you talk about, like, we're not sociopaths.

When I'm like, hey, you know, we're going to go jump from 41,000 feet. Nick's like, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's talk about the oxygen piece. He's very, it's not risk averse at all. It's, he's going to mitigate risk. So if it's not to his standard, Nick's not going to do it. Yeah, that's how you live to see another day. So, but DV, who's the rigor on triple seven, he's a last minute ad. Great dude, never served in the military.

He was part of the consulting team for Alan Eustis for his record attempt. And Nick said, if he's going to do it, He's going to do it similar to Alan Eustace, where they basically attached his back to the balloon rather than a capsule. They lifted the dude up in a space suit in a balloon. Yeah. That's a long ride, dude. I think it was like a two and a half hour to three hour ride.

Yeah. Would Nick want to do it with a drogue assistant or free fall? Oh, he said he wouldn't do it without a drug. He said watching Felix, he's like, that guy said he's crazy? Yeah. He said, that's ill-advised. God, I wish Felix had done a gainer off the end of that. It would have been a fatality, but what a fucking sick exit that would have been.

Because he blacked out. He did not black out. Are you sure? Yes. But they had a pro word to cut the camera. 100% they did. And they smartly. So what ended up happening is if you, it's fascinating to watch.

He went off almost feet first because I think he was just slowly trying to transition to his belly. But if you watch the footage that was on his suit. I don't think he had the maneuverability to do that. No, he did because there's no fluttering of the suit. So if he had done a backflip, and like giving the horns to the camera on the way by, it never would have stopped. And I think he probably,

because it would have accelerated and he would have died, he ended up on his back spinning, but he was able to correct for it. But he wasn't able to correct for it until there was the wind resistance where the body inputs actually had the desired result. Was he on his back or was he on his side? He was on his back.

Spinning on his back in a space suit that did not have a crazy amount of flexibility. And there's footage of them in like the Arizona Tunnel flying that suit around, which... Oh, do you like? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the, I've been going to that tunnel for so long. I was augmenting with, like, the bundle courses and the Green Team courses. And they were still hanging drywall at that facility. And we were in there fucking around in that tunnel when it was first coming on. It was definitely not a boondoggle of government dollars. We definitely didn't get like 30 to 40 hours for three instructors every time that we went out there. But yeah, that would, yeah, if anybody's going to be able to pull that off with the proficient. and the knowledge it would be Nick, for sure. Yeah, by the way, I spent pretty much the whole month of November

in the I-flight Virginia Beach. I don't want to say Ray's last name, but Ray's... Ray's awesome. He was working at the Arizona. Yeah, yeah. So he said, hey, what's your goal for the month? I said to tell Annie, stump to go fuck himself. That's never going to happen, though. You're trashed in here. No, no, no, we got better. Backflying, good to go. And we finally, well, got to sit flying. My toes were on top of Ray's toes.

And we were doing that. We were yelling for. Fuck you, Andy it the whole time. He's going to send me the clip. That's fun. But it was a assisted. Don't make me again go online. I will put together the most epic fucking real of you tumbling out of control because it would be every exit you did in Iceland. No, it was not.

I'll go to the fucking, I have it on my phone. All my exits were that right there looking at you. They were not. They were not. Oh, that's bullshit. I literally, well, first off, I went out after you and I'm like, fuck, I'm going to have to go fast because he's tumbling again. No, it's not. And then in Arizona...

I literally was looking at you giving the horns like that. Just because you give the horns doesn't mean you're stable. You can do that in any rotational axis. And then there's the first training trip we did in Arizona. And every time we would let go, it would just be cartwheeling. Because we all went to sit fine and I suck at sit fine. So I show Leah these videos. And after like the third one, she would say like, is that mic spinning off in space again?

I'm like, you know it is. Why even... Well, I got some choice for Leah. Yeah. So what the hell are you doing? out in VB for a month? Visiting your kids? Visit my kids and then also the Virginia Human Performance.

Okay. Which runs, again, I'm going to butcher this. The Navy SEAL Foundation has done. They've set the bar with you know. Is that Ollie's facility? Alex, Oliver, goes by Ollie. Retired SEAL. Basically it's a 30-day rehabilitation program from cognitive

to, of course, the physical therapy. They put you on a diet plan. Your meals are made for you. Sleep studies. I mean, even speech therapy and real all. Yeah. This is something that All he needs to, I mean, he needs to help the Green Beret community. He needs to help the AFSOC community, the Marsock community. That needs to be put out far away.

Ollie has the template, and Ollie should be bigger than certain other companies out there that we know in that space. If anyone knows this guy, he's, you know, he's quiet, he doesn't want the spotlight. In fact, he used to scare the. shit out of me like he's not very approachable at our old place not a guy that I'd go up and speak to but he's one of the most genuine dudes and he even held meetings with all the team guys but it's all NSW personnel whether they were seal or not and some of the talks the roundtable talks were just tear-trickers yeah but for all he to do something like that and opened up the table it was it was cathartic for for a lot of us and for a guy that's so

respected as a warrior when they do that they set the stage like everyone else followed. How many hours did you get in the tunnel? Probably around five. It's not bad. So when I went, I told Ray, it's like, prep me for an AFFI because I want my AFFI. You do?

Yeah. Because if we're going to start training vets, that's the one thing. How many jumps do you have? I'm over close to 800 now. Okay, so you meet the criteria for AFFI. Yeah. We certainly don't meet the skill requirement. You know it's relatively difficult, right?

By the end of that month, I was all over the tunnel. Yeah, but were you doing that intentionally? Because I've seen you all over the tunnel too, and you were doing everything you could to control yourself. So that's not a metric for shit. I'm done. I'm done here. Call my agent. If I was, it's challenging, man.

It's one of the, it's super rewarding and I always love teaching AFF, but it is a... Depending on who you have. You're going to go get one of the best instructors. It's a challenging... Ray and Nick are like, we're going to put you with somebody to challenge you, man. Yeah, but it's a challenging learning medium. You can't talk. You got about 60 seconds.

They're probably not going to die if they follow some basic criteria, but things can go bad really fast. It was one of my favorite things I used to do is go back out and augment the Green Team courses. Because there's AFFI, which is accelerated free fall instructor. Then there's MFFI, military free fall instructor. They're largely the same qualification. Different standard. Different standard. And on the military side, it adds complexities that the civilian side doesn't see.

Mostly what I mean by that is equipment. The rear mountain rucks, not that big of a deal, but those front mounted rucks, holy shit. and MFFI is a one-to-one ratio versus AFFI which is 3 to 1 or 2 to 1. 2 to 1 for the first 3 jumps I think are 4 and then it goes down but I loved it I mean it's uh that's where I got to know

Lou really well as we would come back and augment the course Yeah that's come back and augment the courses all the time But it uh you would probably enjoy it but your level of currency would need to stay relatively high yeah so you would need to jump quite a bit So Ray put the harness on. Yeah. And we were doing practice polls, flipping over, getting on the right side. So that alone, that one month where I had 20 minutes every day for at least four to five days each week was just my skill went from here.

Funny how it works, right? Yeah. So that's the other thing too is we get into this, man. Like, I love fucking jumping. There's no greater view. And I think as we get more vets, especially amputees. And as you're at like 10,000 feet. And you look at them and just pre-plan, like just fucking yell.

Let it out, dude, at $10,000. Why would they yell? Released the stress, man. I'm fucking yelling the whole way down, dude. You are? Oh, fuck, yes. Why? It's a stress relief.

And then, especially under canopy, when you do 360s, it is fucking... Who are you yelling at? I'm just letting it out, dude. You're yelling at the universe? Yes. God, you're fucking weird. I've never once yelled in free call. But, no, we got to get more vets into this thing.

I think it is a great sport for a lot of guys. Well, I think we need to add, so we have talked about when it comes to the legacy expeditions and making it during, because the triple seven will be a very small group of people, which will be cool. Yeah. But they're all more experienced, various levels of experience, but experienced enough to go on the trip. making that a larger initiative will be great, but I think you need to add, or we need to add, on top of teaching them, we need to figure out a way to make sure that they stay current.

Yes. Because you will fuck yourself up jumping if you don't stay current. And then exposure to it, like, let's be honest. The barrier to entry on the civilian, well, actually, even on the military side of the house, I mean, I guess you get more jumps. You get substantially more jumps, but on the civilian side of the house, it's eight jumps. You get more jumps in a very condensed period of time. So you may not jump for three months or, well, if you're on employment, you're not jumping for four months.

The initial qualification, though, is going to take you a few weeks. I mean, MFF out in Yuma used to be a month. But you're going to jump at night. You're going to jump equipment. You're going to jump a weapon, which is obviously a job requirement. So you don't have that on the civilian side. But you can start AFF on a Friday and be done by a Sunday. That is a license if you're not careful to go fuck yourself up.

So I would want to add an enduring piece to not only the exposure. but, and I don't know what it would be, basically a fund that people could draw from to make sure that they maintain their currency. Right now, geographically, and I've told this to Jordan, I'm like, I need me somewhere closer to a drop zone. We've got San Marcos,

Space Land in San Marcos, which is a great drop zone. It's still an hour and a half. Okay, so there's nothing that close to Austin? And there's, well, there's nothing that close to Calispell. Dude, there's zero in Calispell. So I was joking, whether it's Keeper Valley or Montana. Tuella.

is got we've got to open our own DZ? Yeah. Do we though? Or just it's the problem with On the road.

I know if Leah would probably complain if you were gone all the time I'd bring her with me Yeah I don't have a goddamn Firmis I want to eat everybody

I need to retire my wife I need to retire your wife I'm not cutting that out I'm not retire my wife in the sense of I get rid of No

So I've got a dog. You have a fur missile that wants to eat everything except for you and your wife, and it's problematic when you want to travel. And I told you the solution is get a fucking French eat. Yeah. Jordan missed out on Iceland because of that one. Yeah. But we should go back.

That was one of the most... It was a mission uncomplete. Dude, I've talked with Denver. Like, we want to go enduro riding through the interior. Like, you know that... Was it the first day that we jumped in where we stayed in those... I want to call them a teepee, but that's not correct. That was...

A yurt? A yurt? Thor's mark? First off, we are not getting a Fiat RV again. I thought that thing was... I thought the wheels were going to fall off. Dude, the pussy wagon made it all over Iceland, man.

That thing was good to go. I got some tickets. Maybe you got some tickets. Under my name and my credit card. You and Devere, I'm like, hey... I paid him at the return. But, you know, that trip, we have to go back and... Well, where we jumped in that...

It was the first day, right? That's where we stayed the first night, because that's where the... It was the first night, second jump, with the first jump. But my point at, like, I was looking at Google Earth, and that particular road, and it was all the, like... It was crazy. We were fording... Fjording? What's the fucking word?

Crossing rivers in vehicles that were lifted, and drivers literally saying, hey, take your seatbelt off in case this gets swept away. That was one of the main entries to going totally towards the interior. Can you imagine doing that on, like, a door? dual sport motorcycle because Denver and I both have KTM 890 adventurers up in Montana. Yeah, yeah. We ride them all summer. Mike borrowed one of those, right? Glover actually, one of the last times I saw him in Calisville, he was picking up his bike.

He didn't go to the KTM, but it's like anything. There's a different brand's version of it. But you could do like fucking 10 days and you would get, it'd be like the surface of Mars. Like, of course you could stay on like dirt roads and stuff, but I want to go back and do that. I want to go back and do an actual proper, like, jump trip. Because the cool thing is, we did the whole ring road. We went clockwise on the ring road. We found this one place. We stayed in, like, hotels and Airbnb's. Do we found some of the coolest places ever tucked away that you would never find unless we had done that? It was the perfect site survey. And then as we're

flying home, we fly over Greenland. And I'm looking down and I started looking up Greenland. I'm like, we need to go to Greenland. And then you came up with the idea of, or, Or, I don't, probably wasn't your idea. Everything is my, I'm the idea guy behind this company. You just, you just, you just, you just do the media. I just correct the ideas, it's fine. I fucking bring reality back into the conversation. Don't confuse your enthusiasm with a kid.

Could that be our tagline, legacy expeditions? Don't confuse your. Right now it's like, what is it? No one ever did anything great by playing it safe. Yeah. God, that's a great tagline though. We're done the second somebody gets majorly. Fucked up.

You think? No, but it's not a good look. So that's a question. If people saw the risk mitigation from the ATAC system, everything we've done, we did over 800 jumps amongst this team alone to prepare for Triple 7, and the jumps aren't even the biggest risk. So on that, somebody gets substantially hurt during the Triple 7. Do we stop or keep going? It depends on the severity of the injury, but we have three guys.

Hospitalization. Yeah, so there are three guys that can be peeled off outside of the expedition team that would stay with that individual to make sure that he gets back. If it's me, if I break my femur in multiple places, I expect you guys to keep going. I'll leave you on the drop zone and not call 911, or whatever the number is in whatever country that we're in. So, you know, even if there's a death, the guys are going to continue on. Okay. I may have to peel off on that one to deal with that.

Or if Jim stops breathing on an airline just leaving, but the airline deal with it, the U.S. Embassy, and we'll continue on. Sorry, Jim. Jim is 73 years old. We're going to be doing the mirror test. Like, he's got, he's got it. Yeah. He gets no ambient.

That might just shut it down. He did three jumps on Tuesday. Or new. Of last week? Of last week. And he was, like, Dan Myrick, you did two. And Dan's like, oh, I need one more for film. Jim won't say no.

Yeah. And I'm looking at Nick. I'm like, we're putting them through the rear. It shouldn't be that bad as... I mean, he is a seasoned tandem passenger. He would actually be a tandem master's absolute dream. And he's a skydiver. Yeah.

Because they're using the... The pad. What do they call it? The airbag? Yeah. I've actually never used that. It's a good idea for sure, because I may or may not have fucked a few people up on landing.

Well, we're going to have to use that with passengers for legacy expeditions. Why wouldn't you? It's just another risk. It's the same thing. If that technology exists and you choose not to use it, you're not making good decisions when it comes to analyzing and assessing the risk. Okay, so we are, what's the date today?

It's the 13th. When do you leave for Punta-Iranians? 15 days. And you're going there a day early to do a site survey? Yeah, if you want to adjust your flights, we're going to go to Skydive Andes. I'm going to spend an additional day with Leah. You guys let me know how it goes.

Don't see, Jordan. Jordan is going to watch this and now. Life's about the choices that you make, Mike. Yes, it is. We're going to do a site survey there, and then Nick and I are going to make sure that all the vehicles are prepped to pick guys up when they arrive

in Punta Arenas. So we go Puntauranias. There is some requirements to be given permission to go to Antarctica. PCR tests. We fly to Antarctica. We have what, a 6-day window? Yeah. That we can't do anything, right?

We may get one fun jump in on the 6th, weather-dependent, but then the 9th is when we're trying to do our official jump. Yep. And it's go from there. So we go, we'll go from there. I'm assuming the flight returns to Pontoranus, and then where do we go from there? Straight on to Latimer Airlines. Yep.

And to Santiago. Okay. Jump in Santiago. Straight to Miami, which Space Land Cluiston, the owner, God bless him. He's not open for the day we're supposed to be there. He's like, we've got you, boys. What day are you planning? Because honestly, if people knew about it and they live in that area, I think it would be kind of cool.

They showed up to support. Absolutely. So we are going to have a team in the United States similar to how we ran operations. It's like a joint operation center. Well, not joint, but an operation center that will be on social media, updating people of where we're at in the journey. Please come join us. Same thing with Perth. I know there's people have been hitting us up from Australia.

I've been getting quite a few messages from Australia. When you're going to be there, please. But the, I mean, shout out to Space Lane Cluist and that guy just, he's like, whatever you boys need. It wasn't even going to charge us. What's the date, though, that we're expecting to be there? We should be in Miami on the 11th. Okay. But in and out the same day, right?

In and out the same day. But we're getting in at like 5 a.m. straight to Space Land Cluiston. Yep. Jump there, back to Miami. Even the mayor of Miami may join us, not for a jump, but may join us to just watch. So there'll be some media in Miami because we've got a number of hours there, about eight hours on the ground. To Barcelona.

That drop zone is about an hour outside of Barcelona. To Cairo over the pyramids. now there is a chance It's probably not going to be visually appealing at all No, no no No and I think we will We will do 13,000 on that

Just for from a cinematography aspect On that note What altitude are we going to jump at In an hour to go? 13 Why? Why wouldn't you?

I would like to exit the aircraft at 2,000 feet We've got the tandem And I think the minimum for NICS I didn't say anything about a tandem I said I would like to exit the aircraft at 2,000 feet

Yeah 500 is the minimum. For a tandem. For a tandem. I would like to exit the aircraft. I'll do a site survey. There's no fucking reason to go jump a negative 50 degree

at 13,000 feet. It's still going to be like negative 35 at 2,000 feet. Well, hard times make good men. Just leave the door open. I might fall out. There you go. I think for chili,

you do want to get as high as you can because that's going to be freaking gorgeous with the mountain ranges. They're all going to be gorgeous, but there's only one that's going to have ridiculously sub-zero temperature. That's true. Cairo with the pyramids will be cool.

We may be jumping out of the MI17. That would be sweet. Which go down and right. I'm trying to remember when you get off an MI17, don't go left. Or is it? Because the tail rotor? Yeah. The tail rotor is on the starboard side of the aircraft.

So go left. No. If you're facing the rear. Oh my God, Mike. I go to the opposite fucking direction. Guys are going to be sleep deprived. Wherever the jump master is, he's going to stay on the opposite side. We're going to tape an orange arrow on the ramp

and that thing, like, towards the ramp, and it's just going to go out in an angle so you can dive out, tumble, recover your stability, and then deploy your parachute. Some of these guys have not jumped out about it. It's not that much different depending on the board. Just hold. Well, if they, like, I've jumped out of 47s in Blackhawks

and smaller helicopters, if they maintain, like, 80 to 100-not forward speed, it feels like a twin otter. It's not the, if they hover, which if we're going to do that, we need to make a pact right now that we don't tell the people on the helicopter that we are hovering, because that's amazing. So in Everest. Then they step out and they're like, ah, they're grabbing for air. Yeah. And we saw experienced jumpers do that on the first jump in Everest.

They did with this. Yeah. That's why you always ask, hey, what's your forward airspeed going to be? Because that actually is more critical. That's the only thing that actually matters because you're jumping out into relative wind or not. So we had jumped from 60s before So in Everest we were doing about 30 Yeah, that's super low

You're gonna be mushy Hold Just sit and hold But no I always like to set my buddies up for failure If it's gonna make for a good video The best video will be to have the MI17 Hover as much as possible

I'll just kind of slowly creep back to the edge And like film and tap everybody out And be like, yeah I think your first out dude You're first out on every jump poised to get Nobody tells me how I exit. No one tells me.

Poised to get video or it's going to be a total loss. You're poised. I'll go out on my back and still get the video. But you're out first on every jump and everything. I think everything is a side door unless we get that C-130 for the final job. And of course, they am I. What are we going to jump out of it? So, hold on.

We're in Egypt, then to Abu Dhabi. Okay. What's the aircraft there? I've got it written down. I think it's an otter. Okay, probably is. But we are jumping into the, uh, Corniche, which is the beach right next to hotels.

It's a big drop zone. I think it's like 150 by like 300, so it's fine. 40% you won't make it. I've made every fucking teasing. That's actually not true. 100% not true. That is totally true. No.

That is 100% true. I will go back through my footage. I will go back through my footage, and I'm going to create a fucking dossier called Mike's lies. I told Boots. Boots is like, hey, man, you're acting. I'm like, oh, don't fool yourself. I follow like Andy out or I follow you out

and I just match your pattern. And that's why I hit the DZ. Could I do it on my own? Yeah, I could. But you just follow the guy with the most experience unless he's hot dogging it. He's most likely gonna hit the X. Yep.

Just follow hit. And if you're within 20 meters, you're good. So Beach and Qatar, that'll be awesome. That'll be another one. It's a completely different country. It's fine. I was thinking about... You just offended our UAE's partners.

But after that, They're going to take us to their, basically, their national fallen soldier. Yep. Memorial. And we're all going to have a moment of silence because for the listeners, they lost about 120 soldiers fighting ISIS in, not ISIS, Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Yep. And then on to Perth where our Australian soft counterparts are laying out the red carpet. Thank God they don't like to drink.

Because that's the thing. It's going to be sleep deprived. I've requested a one liter, like in coolers for each guy. I don't know. I don't like beer. Beer is the worst. Somebody's like, yeah, I think it was Glenn. Like, they'll have fosters.

I'm like, I don't think they drink fosters enough. Yeah, that's like a shitty marketing play. It's like the Outback Steakhouse. I don't think you're going to. And they'd be like, yeah. Is this not bothering you, Mike? No, it's not. My bald head.

Check this out. This is the newest addition to the green screen. And then we'll get some sleep in Australia. Let the guys have one night. Will we, though? It's the 35. The 35-hour transit back to Tampa for that last jump. I think the longest flight I've ever been on was from L.A. to either Sydney or Perth and we were going to New Zealand.

I came off of that thing shattered. Full, just economy class, just stuck in the center row. It was, it took a couple days. And I think I was in my early 30s when that happened. The guys are, I don't think they know what they're in for, flying economy. But because of my hip, I've got to fly first class. Yeah, of course. I totally understand.

It's more your rank than your hip. I am the senior guy, aren't I? You are, which means you're completely and utterly responsible for everything that happens. That's why we brought the Canadian. Technically, he outranks me, which... That's not how it works. That's not how that works at all. I will say this.

It is funny how we've fallen back into how we did business in the squadron. Yeah. That you, Nick, boots, Fred are all leading the tactical technical piece. And every time I open my mouth, you all look and you're like... So as we were saying, they're like, hey, go coordinate the flights, dude. Yeah. But, yeah, this is, I can't believe this is happening. Nick calls me, he's like, hey, is this happening?

Yeah. He's coming this morning. He's like, are we really doing this? I'm like, this is happening, dude. When did we, you and I first start talking about this? I was trying to think about this the other day and I couldn't put it in. July, I think of 2021. Yeah.

It's a lot like the coffee shop. We've been looking at PDFs for two years and now we're like six weeks away from being able to open. I will walk there and look at the building, like, this is very hard to believe, actually. Much like this, we've talked about it and talked about it and talked about it, and then in 15 days, 16 days, I'm on an airplane. Do you realize how many people never experienced that in life? Because they never accept. And I'm going to say, I always believe in the 99% to the 1%.

99% of people never experienced this because they never put it on the line. They never accept it safe. They play it safe. They don't step into the arena. And what people don't realize is how many times I've done this and fucking failed. I've probably been part of two companies that were textbook failures, one with a bunch of team guys. And those hurt, but you learn so much from those that fail. And you learn readjust for the next one.

And you know we won't be, people will think we'll be on cloud nine when this thing is over. I'm going to be on cloud nap. Every time we accomplish something like this, I just go, uh-huh. Yeah. And it's just like, what's the next bridge line? Well, the jumping is actually going to be the easiest portion. We are jumping at DZs with jump aircraft. That shit's not hard.

It's everything that's going to, one, especially at our skill level. At some of our skill level. Like I said, I'm just going to do static cameras on these aircraft, and I'm only going to highlight your exit every time. And I won't even need to really look. through the footage, I'll just look for the one that's tumbling. Oh, your fucking wind tunnel time, your lies about your stability.

It's the logistics that'll be hard. It's all the stuff that like George behind the scenes is putting together, the airplane tickets, the visas, the permissions. I mean, I'll speak about it super broadly, but let's just say that Antarctica is not easy to get in and out of. There's a lot of things that are required to do that. Like, that stuff to me is the hardest part. The jumping is going to actually be easy,

but we'll be shattered at the end of it for sure. You know, it's worth mentioning that the guy who is probably the most critical point of failure on this is not you or me or Nick or Fred or boots. It's George Silva. Yeah, agreed. Not even a seal. Seal support. He was a fleet corpsman with the Marine Corps. Got messed up in Nazaria.

But without that guy, this thing would not have happened, putting all the puzzle pieces in place. Yeah. And that's why he's going to be the general manager of Legacy Expeditions. So one of the reasons I'm messing around with this portable kit. and actually people asked me questions about it. So what I am using for audio right now, and I think this came from Dan. This is the same audio that we're using for the documentary.

That's the first time I saw it. So we were in Arizona at the Complete Parachute Solutions Training Facility, and there's going to be a documentary around Triple Seven, and they were doing interviews, and they came up and they clipped on one of these DGI mics. And, you know, we both have a podcast, so I'm interested in things that are audio-related, And I prefer a studio setting with the microphone because it's super controlled.

But I was looking at it. I was like, son of a bitch, that audio is great. And I was thinking in my head, portable podcast kit. So I picked up two of the DGI. Well, one box, which has two. I actually just ordered another one today. And the one thing I'm going to add to this is they have, I found a YouTube video that reviews, like, laveolier mics.

Yeah. So instead of having this clipped here, you can go in your pocket, and it would be just a super lightweight microphone. And I was able to find some. It's actually a European, they're like 13, 14 bucks. So I ordered all that stuff today. So we can do four people, four audio feeds. These things actually can transmit to a camera or it saves.

Like right now we're saving the audio to the puck, for lack of a better word. And then a GoPro that I'm using because I want to be able to do updates from the road. Plus, if we're going to have five or six days in Antarctica, I will go fucking crazy. So we might as well create as much time. And just release them after we get back. Well, I'll do some stuff from Antarctica, but I would like to, figure out, even if it's like a 30 minute update from the road, release an audio video file every day as we're going along.

So that's one of the last things we're looking at right now, I think, in Arridium Go. That'll work for Antarctica, but I mean, honestly, why? It's not going to send that much data. I think you can send a still. I'm assuming black hole for Antarctica unless my in-reach go works, the one that I use for hunting, and I can do text messaging.

So I know with Eridium Go, you can do Twitter. So you may be relegated to Twitter updates. And then the second we get in Miami, you can hand that off to Will. And Will can publish. But the thing is, like, podcasting isn't hard. Like, if we did a 30-minute episode, it would take me five minutes to pull everything together and just be able to update it. I'm just curious if we, if, I think it would be cool to update people as we go,

like a 30-minute update from the road. They may have to be audio clips. Maybe. Over Arridium. Well, so the Arridium Go. It has to be. That's only, our only black hole in comms is going to be Antarctica. Yeah.

So the Eurydium Go turns your iPhone into a satellite phone. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. Anytime I can link my laptop up in any airport lounge or any of that stuff, I can upload the episode. That's what I'm saying. Like, I'm assuming that Antarctica will be a black hole of comms. That's what I'm planning on. I'm what I'll tell, you know, friends and family, obviously.

But, yeah, beyond that, I think the more we could update people of what we have going on, the better it'll be. Talk about the... the documentary coming out now? Yeah, go for it. So we've got Drop Zone Everest. Which is called Mike's documentary. So, yeah, I knew you were going to come. Mike had an idea to create a documentary about himself.

It was not my idea, and we've already said that this is very cringe-worthy to watch yourself on camera. You said that. I'm interested to see Mike's documentary tonight. This was stage one. In full transparency, we didn't have... Like, we didn't go in with a plan to make a documentary on Everest at all. It was just like, we can't let this footage go. How did you guys capture the footage?

So Elias Sokele, who is a big-time adventure, he's climbed Everest multiple times, K2. He came along with me. He sort of archived the whole thing. And we didn't know what to do with it. And Dan Meyerks's like, we'll give me the footage and we'll do a chop on it with some other guys. But we had no plan going into Everest that we were going to create a document. So it was very much plugged together and a lot of lessons learned. Triple seven, it's a completely different plan.

Yeah. We basically have a storyboard. And the documentary for Triple Seven, let's be honest, the majority of the footage is going to be done after the actual expedition, interviewing you and your home, all the rest of the guys, the families of the fall and that were representing. The one thing we fell short with this one is we jumped in honor of extortion 17, the entire team.

We did raise $200,000 for... For Everest? For Everest. We raised 200,000 for Special Operations Warrior Foundation, and hopefully this documentary will raise more. But we didn't get to interview the families because we just didn't have the budget to fly out and interview them. So fell short, but I think what I've learned is

we are going to be good on the other side of the camera, interviewing and telling other people's stories, not it focused on us, even though you and I will be in Triple Seven with a piece because you're jumping in honor of Dave Hall. Was he a chief or senior chief? I know he was a chief. I think he got picked up for eight

and he had a career hiccup that I think prevented him from putting it on. What people don't know, perhaps, in the military is that you can be selected for a different rank, but there's a little bit of time in between before you actually pin it on and that time is called

the time to fuck yourself if you get in trouble. Because they will change their mind. Yeah. Yeah. So I think he got out as a chief. Chief. Yeah.

But yeah, one of the, if not the most probably impactful mentor that I had in my first SEAL platoon, pre-9-11, nothing was going on. And the dude, I forgot. I think he was probably on like fourth or fifth or sixth, the pre-9-11 workup, but just a wealth of knowledge. Pointman, sniper, calm guy, like the trifecta that you would want, you know, pre-9-11 or post-9-11. And actually, those are all great qualifications. But, yeah, it was crazy. He tried to go to the command on the East Coast. Didn't do, from my understanding, he had a personality conflict,

one of the instructors, so he did not make it through the screening. But then went to a very small special mission unit and was just fucking kicking ass for like half a decade, you know. And a shame. You know, it ends up taking his own life, you know, just over a year ago. It's fucking catastrophic. The, yeah. Yeah, that's becoming all too current with some of these guys.

The one that shocked me was, why am I blanking on his name, Master Chief? The guy was on the West Coast, just beloved. Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. This is my brain trauma coming out. I mean, the guy was just a mentor to everyone. That and then a guy that I served with, a gold, Tom, like that was actually relatively close in time. and both of those circumstances

like that it couldn't be more fucked up. Where guys put their pride in the way of reaching out to their brothers and like, guys will rally. If you make a call and say, hey, I'm really fucked up. I know there are a number of guys that would get my own plan and come out and be like, okay, let's put a plan in place.

Let's address this. But that's just, it goes to show the, man, I've got to be careful here. I mean, just guys will internalize that shit. Would you reach out and ask for help? It's a hard thing to do. I understand. Do you think you would, though?

I didn't. I didn't. Because what you have to replicate is the headspace that they're in as well, and that's a tough one. Making me asking you that question now is not actually necessarily fair because you're looking at it from a logical perspective. So I had Dave, who was an officer from where we came, pull me aside and sort of give me a slap. And then at the time I was Dayton Jordan, and she put an ultimatum down. And then they connected me with a guy Chris Free, who's helped more guys in the community from Hawaii.

Clinical psychologist, I mean, talk to me for like a year and a half every week for like two hours. And so, no, I did not reach out of my own. I just continued to fucking spiral down the hole with alcohol. Did you realize you were spiraling? Oh, I ended up choked out on the sidewalk. And it was a realization. I'm like, oh, this is not going to end well. Somebody got a rear naked choke on me during a fight.

It's funny how that works. Couldn't even hear them coming. Because the two friends were in front of me. First off, I didn't have my hearing aids in. I was gonna say your death is fucking. Yes. You wouldn't hear an elephant walking on fucking, you know, little jingle bells. The two or three civilian guys that I met in Austin that became friends watched it happen.

Yeah. And then I woke up and they were all looking down at me. And the first words out of my mouth, did I just get choked out? And they're like, yep. But if you had the choose between getting knocked out or choked out, what are you going to go with? Well, here's the thing. the guy laid, he was a practitioner. That's what I'm saying.

He laid the head of my down. It's the most gentle way to be violent with somebody. You could have just dropped and I would hit my head. Yeah. So I saw him in the bar like two weeks later. And somebody's like, that's a guy. And I walked up and the guy just goes like this. I'm like, buy you a beer, man.

And bottom of a drink, we're not going to have this conversation. Thank you for laying my head down. I say, hey, man, I just wanted to de-escalate the fight. Yeah. And since then you started training jiu-jitsu? No. Dumbass. Jiu-jitsu is life.

Life is jujitsu. Also, people can find balance in that as well and just realize it's an awesome skill set and it allows you to do things like that if you would want to. It's a great exercise emotionally and physically. You know, I got the privilege to meet Raphael Lovato

and I think, you got to have them on your podcast. I'll connect you. I was going to have them on mind. The reason I want is, There's no more humble of a dude who cannot be nicer. And I want to ask him, is jujitsu an art form for you? Or is it a self-defense sort of mechanism? And I think it's both.

It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. But I think for him it's like an art form. And it's just like, can I perfect certain things? Yeah, he's at a level. Because he doesn't have to go beat the shit out of, there are certain MMA guys that are just dicks that walk around fucking threatening everyone or they know no one's going to step up to him.

like that guy redefines when you meet guys like that that are at the top level of the world you're like okay that's a warrior I wonder what his answer would be because he is at a level of such refinement and people just

should look him up it's yeah Raphael Avato or Raphael depending on where you're from and he had to step off the stage because of the medical condition yeah I think he retired from competition not too long ago after this was it ADCC

something like that yeah but yeah one of the highest levels I'm curious what he would say about that I mean for him can't be used as self-defense yes is it a perfect self-defense tool no I mean you need to add striking to it as well you gotta be able to manage distance but I have a feeling he can strike I'm sure he can yeah I'm absolutely sure that he can

yeah it's uh yeah you should take it up or just keep getting choked out the hips is too I box I love boxing because I suck at it much like skydiving uh true so true You said it by Hey, I've knocked out some guys before I've been knocked out before

But yeah, I don't know where we're going with it I don't either What do we got next? What do we have today? How much? What do we have a lunch? We've got a lunch Which I think we've already raised

$25,000 for Fultz of Honor. Sweet. That was set up by a guy named Tim Love who reached out to us because of Joe Rogan Happened to be with the Tampa Sports Commission and the guy has helped set up everything. So the Joe Rogan effect, whatever you want to call it. It's real.

We had two TF160th weather guys reach out and they're like, hey, we want to do the weather for you. So now we're getting daily weather updates, which mitigates risk or our ability to deal with contingencies knowing that like Spain is no longer viable. We've got to go to France. Yep. And George and the team back here are going to set that up. How awesome is it? We don't have to change all those tickets. Holy fuck.

George has lived. George has in George is going to go stage with the woman from the executive desk for American Airlines so people know American Airlines didn't like they weren't willing to help whatsoever couldn't return our phone calls George was hitting a roadblock for three days straight I talked to 15 different people in American Airlines I finally got a woman named Missy and like I'm I'm I'm like getting frantic and she can hear my voice because this would, like, doing the tickets for 16 people was near impossible because you'd have to get other people involved. And she's married to a retired Navy. She's been with American Airlines for 25 years. And she's like, honey, I'm so sorry, no one from American because everyone would be like, no, you're going to talk to somebody else.

Didn't care. I told her the cause. She's like, I will get this done. She contacted her direct supervisor. He's like, hey, if you want to work on it, you can dedicate four hours or you, your American Airlines time, but the rest comes out of your personal time. And she has made this happen. And so George is going to go stay with her until Barcelona to change, make any last

minute changes. So without George, again, this thing would not happen. This thing would not happen without the sport of a lot of people. We get the sexy part. They get the hard part. Same is true what we used to do for a man. Yeah. I don't think. people understand the support to operator ratio is so far askew, especially at the East Coast. You know, when people ask like, what do you mean? Like, Intel analysts were easily reading 250 pages a day to find us a target. Yeah. And it also, they built relationships to the point where our female Intel rep would be like,

hey, I think you guys should go out on this target and lay out the case. And you'd be like, you're sure? She'd say yes. But, okay, we're going. Yeah, let's get it. All right, so we got lunch today. We got the premiere tonight of Mike's documentary. Which comes out January 9th on Extreme International, Roku, Fit TV.

Do you watch much TV? No. I don't have time. I don't know. I'll try to catch a movie every once in a while. Leah's into Marvel movies, so we'll, like, wind down the end of the day, watching some ridiculous... Does Leo want you to admit that? To admit what?

She's watching, like, baby movies, the Marvel movies? Baby movies. I'm joking. They're superhero movies. I know. Yeah. It's not like the Finding Nemo shit. Although I've watched that movie

thousands of times with my children. Do you ever tell the story about July 4th in Iceland? Over the table full of copper cups? No. So in Iceland, this was the day that Andy almost beat the living shit out of the... Few people. Well, you weren't going to touch Tommy.

No, I wasn't going to touch Tommy. Tommy has a good heart, just out of his league. you were going to kill a Norwegian, the guy who headed up the trip, and we pulled off. So we end up in the same hotel that they're at. Surprise, motherfuckers. They're avoiding us. The other, the amount of, I'm sure you got texts from other people that were on the trip. Yes.

That were like, thank you for what you guys did. The trip was continued to be messed up. But we end up, because I drink something called Mule 6, which is a twist on a Moscow mule. What's the twist? I forget what it is. It's whiskey. That's what it was. Mule 6 in the military, if you have a call sign, if it's followed by a 6, that means you're the commander or the senior enlisted of that group. And so I'm the Mule 6.

No, I'm joking. Yeah. And you end up drinking. There's a lot of things in my own mind. We end up drinking probably amongst the group of, let's see, there was six of us. Denver, Erica, myself, Leah, Will, and you. We easily drink through probably about 100. of those.

Don't forget the bottles of wine at dinner. Yes. I think we went through four bottles of wine at dinner. And we went until about four in the morning. We went from like... Hard to say because the sun never fucking goes down. That's true. We drank for probably six hours.

Yeah. And I remember with Leah, because Will's telling the story about the Buckle Bunny. Yeah. Murder Leah comes out. She's like... She's wasted by this point

because Will had a girl that left him for a... Let's be clear. We are all fucking wasted at this point. But she kept saying, hey, Will, do you want me to... you want me to beat her up and everything like we tell a story and they'd be like hey do you want me to beat that guy up andy i think your wife is uh she wasn't your wife but then no we were she's a savage man she fucking works hard she's super humble about nicest woman in the world

until she doesn't need to be yeah and it's uh you know she has dedicated i think almost 14 years of her life to jiu jitsu at this point whether it be through competition or teaching I mean she's the main kids coach uh where I train and Honestly, anybody who's willing to coach kids at anything deserves a fucking sainthood right off the bat because I could not do it. And I'll go in there and watch. I'm just like, I got to get out of here. Yeah, but she's a badass in her own right for sure. Super quiet about it.

She actually doesn't like talking about it that much. I can't even get her to come on the goddamn podcast. Yeah, that's got to change. She's just like, well, I need to have something to talk about. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Like starting a company for women's geese. For women's geese? She's going to have to come into the, I mean, I couldn't think of a better representative for women in the street.

I agree. Yeah. And you know what? That's actually, that says a lot. Just like I feel like it's cringy to be one of the primary focuses as a documentary. I understand where she's coming from. Yeah. But she'll get over that.

And if she can impact a few women in the sport and be a representative, she's doing good then. Yeah, it'll make a huge impact, in my opinion, at least. So, yeah, dude, I think that's it. I mean, we've been out, I think, for almost an hour and a half. I just wanted to give people an update on where we are, which we covered, where we're going to go. We covered that. What else did we leave out as far as the triple seven? Did we leave out anything?

No, that's it. And then we'll let people know the last day we're jumping into Tampa. Yes, and that'll be a celebratory jump. It's not a record. Yeah, the record will actually end in Australia. We wanted to do it in the U.S., but by choosing Australia to end it, we saved like 40 hours. Yeah, I was going to say, what did the airline travel get shaved down to? 105 to 65, 105 hours, 105 hours on board planes to 65.

So we just gave ourselves 40 hours. Huge buffer. Yes, to hit that seven-day mark. No. And then Legacy Expeditions stand by. I think we're going to start setting these trips up for groups. The veterans, this has been two years in the making, and I'm excited there's been a lot of hard work,

and I think Legacy Expeditions is going to be an awesome content company. It's going to be an awesome leadership development company. And then we're going to skyrocket your podcast even further. Would you just get ranked? 700, top 700? Yeah, top 700. Of the world. And there were over 10 million podcasts.

I think the numbers actually higher now. Probably. Joe's responsible for like half of those. He's like, you should start a podcast, and you should start a podcast, and you start a podcast. You didn't tell me that. Thank God. But he knows his stuff. You know what I mean?

Yeah. What do you want to close out with? What do you want to close out with? All right. Go watch Mike's documentary. We'll leave it at that.