Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Austin Von Letkemann and Nick Palmisciano

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

Nick Palmisciano is a United States Military Academy graduate of West Point and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business MBA Program. He served six years as an infantry officer before moving into the business world, creating the successful marketing firm Diesel Jack Media, and Ranger Up, which grew to prominence as the first military lifestyle brand. He is the co-author of Tim Kennedy's Book - Scars and Stripes, and the creator of the new series Office Joe. Austin Von Letkemann, known as "MandatoryFunDay," 1st Lt. is currently a platoon leader assigned to Alpha Company, 303rd Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Battalion, 504th Expeditionary Military Intelligence Brigade. Von Letkemann creatively uses his free time to make parody videos that apprise the humor of day-to-day military operations, while simultaneously connecting civilians to the everyday life of a service member. Watch Office Joe Here: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Office-Joe/0Q7Q14CQ5IGEU91Z3M4OU6Z7B2  

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Holy cow, we have found ourselves at the end of 2024 somehow. I am super fired up for 2025. There are some really cool things on the horizon personally and professionally. I'm going to talk about them as I am sure that they are going to happen. My theory is to under promise and over deliver. And sometimes I feel like if you talk about them early, you jinks it a little bit. But I digress. Let's get into what makes this podcast possible. It's Black Rifle Coffee. I just went over to the website right now. It says free shipping on orders of $30 or more. But the reality, is this. This comes out the Monday before Christmas and you probably have missed your opportunity to get somebody a gift to get it to your house on time. If that's the case, they have some cards

right down here in the left hand side. Or what my suggestion would be is this is truly something last minute, but they like coffee. You have a choice between the ECS, the exclusive coffee subscription or Evans coffee subscription and their traditional coffee subscription. So you could always sign somebody up, make them a cool card and gift them the gift of coffee, which keeps on giving. and you'll be covered. You know, not awesome that you waited too long and forgot, but we've all been there at some point in time. And it's a really easy and cool gift to give.

And if you're a coffee fan yourself, there's a bunch of sales going on on their site. So you could get some of their apparel, their gear, the samplers, the bundle, whatever it may be, you can pick and choose. And, you know, people ask me all the time, what can I do to help support the podcast? There's two things.

One is you could tell somebody about it. That costs you nothing, right? Share the podcast, write me a review on any of the, mediums that you might find it, that would be appreciated. But secondarily, it's support the brand or brands that help me make this podcast possible. That's really it. Now, let's get into the episode for today. My guest today are Austin von Leckman and Nick Palma Shano. We're going to work our way front to back on that one. Austin is probably more recognizable if you're on Instagram under the account of Mandatory Fund Day. Now, as somebody who's spent,

nearly two decades in the military. The things, the skits, the videos that he does about the military, they put me in stitches. And if you were warned in the military, you may not understand him as much, but go to his page right now and smash the follow button. The dude is absolutely hilarious. Nick Palmishano, previous member of the military as well, switched into being an entrepreneur. He is now the creator and a producer of Office Joe, which is what Austin and Nick came to actually talk about, even though we talked about a variety of things along the way. office Joe imagine the office most people are familiar with that and this is my description not necessarily there's the office but with a veteran setting that's right it's going to be amazing

and you can find it on streaming services we talk about that in the episode nick is also the co-author of tim kennedy's book scars and stripes we talk about that a little bit as well and i'll say this about the episode if you're not a fan of talking shit then this way not be the one for you because we talked about a lot of things and we made a lot of fun of each other and other people. So if that's your jam, strap in. If it's not, you know, maybe the episode's not for you. Episode 366 with Nick Palmashano and Austin von Lekhtman. Enjoy.

I'm looking at danger close now. Can't be clear hot. I mean, there's only one place to start. It is with Tim. So you are the co-author of his book. I am the lowercase author of his book, you know. What does that mean? Well, he's the, you know, it's his book.

Who wrote more of it? I don't remember. That's a lie. It is a lie. Which ties in well with the book, which, would you put it in the fiction or nonfiction section? It is definitely a nonfiction book. All right. When he was telling you the stories, did you know they were made up?

I'm not cutting any of the same. I know you're not. I know you're not. No, we talk to so many people for that book. So many people in every area interviewed as many people as possible. You know, and like, you know, when you're talking about the combat stuff, everybody's story was like a little different. But they all lined up to the same, you know, general messages. Yeah.

Yeah. How do you think it'll play out for him in the long run? I mean, the internet always find something else to be outraged about anyway if you give it enough time. How do you think it'll play up? I think in five years, Tim Kennedy will still be Tim Kennedy and he'll still be doing great things. And I think that the other stuff will have faded away. Because I've never seen anybody become great by breaking down other people. Yeah. You have to build something to be great. Are you co-authoring his book about service in World War II? Was he, did he say he started to lose loss? Or was he in the trenches? Yeah. What's his heck?

What's he going to have in his backpack? 50 landmines? 50 artillery shelves? Where are the number 50 come from? 50 was... You made that shit up, didn't you? It was all me. I wanted to get Tim in lots of trouble.

Yeah. Now, I went back and listened to the audio of our, like, interviews and looked at our notes. And you know how Tim talks, right? He's like, everything is over the top. He doesn't, he's not like, you know, uh, this, this taco is really good. He's like, this is the best taco in the whole world, you know, like, and just over the, like, it's, it's, you'll never find a taco this. So he was like, you know, I had, I had a backpack full of, uh, of grenades, like 50 of them,

a gazillion of them. Like, I don't know, like, it was, it was tons. And so, you know, in the process at, At one point, it said, I believe, it said I had like 50 grenades. And then, you know, when you go through the editing process, you get, first, people that haven't written a book, you turn in the manuscript. And then the main editor goes through and takes his or her cut at it. And then once, like, then that cut comes back to you and you, like, accept changes, delete changes,

offer up other changes. You kind of do that back and forth until you agree. Then it goes to a line editor. And a line editor is just a grammar freak. So if there's... What are you looking up, Michael, Jesus? Anything that is grammatically incorrect, they flag it and you make a decision. And I think somewhere in the process, the word like got removed. That's what I think happened. But, you know, have read it a bunch of times I didn't see anything that was odd about that because 50 is so outlandish, I would not expect anybody to be like, yeah, he really had 50 grenades. Then why put 50? It's a valid question.

The answer is because Tim's book of lies. It's bottom line. It's a fictional book. It goes right next to the fucking Hobbit. I will tell you, I will tell you Tim Kennedy does have a history of lying and let me tell you. Yes. Now we're getting to the fucking good stuff. Tim, uh, Tim was like, I'm, he tells me I am going into judo and I'm going to work on judo.

And I know you're good at judo. And I've been beating you up all these years. So let's do some judo together and we're only going to do upper body stuff. Isn't he a judo black belt? Now, now he is. But back then, but back then he was a white belt. And, uh, and so I was like, cool, let's do that. Because he really had been beating the crap out of me for years, uh, in fighting in Jiu-Jitsu.

everything because he's a professional fighter, athlete, etc. Have we confirmed that? You know, I don't know. I don't know. Have we? Maybe it's possible. It's possible. We're going to need to check the tape on that.

It's possible that the 12 years that I spent cornering him was a figment of my imagination. Was it green screen? It might be. It might have been. All right. So we start, you know, doing some Randori, only upper body. And about 30 seconds into it, he's talking. talking to himself. He's like, oh, you're, you're hard to move. You're hard, you're,

you're actually hard to get in on, right? And then blast doubles me. That checks out. Just like 30 seconds into like trying jujitsu, blast doubles me to the ground. And I'm like, you said we, we were doing upper body. And he does his little like evil laugh. So there's a confirmed lie right there. Yeah. Yeah. The question is, where do you file it, you know? I don't know. The beginning, the end. What do you want, Chavlin? We have a puppy today for the first time here. What is it?

Michael, I know what we're going to do. Pick up that cage and stuff him in the other studio and lock the fucking door. All right. That's what he deserves. Sounds good. And then that way we can keep going without worrying about the dog. Oh, that's awesome. Do we still have good audio?

Ha-ha, he's running from you. He knows. He knows what's coming. Yeah, I feel bad for Tim. I mean, he's a fantastic person. A lot of people don't have the touch points of personal experience with him. And, God, I hate the world of social media. We were kind of alluding to this a little bit earlier.

It's just, it's not real. It's not real. The gap between social media and the real world. Tim does talk in the way that you described. I've never met anybody who's more willing and ready to help. Like, if you come to him and you're like, hey, I need advice or whatever. like, I mean, he'll, he beat me up for 30 minutes on the mats first, but then we went back to his office and he was like, what are you trying to do?

Like when I was still kind of establishing myself and I was like, these are my ideas. And he'll, he has a really, really great clear way of communicating like this, this is not going to work. Like I've tried this before. This is what you should do. And he'll put you in touch with people that he thinks can help. Like he's, he is very generous, you know, and wanting to help. He doesn't do that for me ever.

Just say, I also have experienced. He has never helped me get anything. So I don't even know what this guy's talking about. My experience with Tim is he is constantly either grabbing a weapon or trying to fucking tackle me to the ground. Or threatening people. Yeah. Or threatening people in like a funny way. Do you think that it will change the way he describes stuff going through what he's going through right now?

Because here's the thing. And all jokes aside. Yeah. Some of what he is dealing with right now is his own doing. Oh, it's a bold statement. We're going bold today. No, it's, our experiences are ours. to do with what we want to.

But it's not a free license to tell stories. Stories are important. The reason I wanted to be a seal was because of the stories that I had heard about seals. But every individual is 100% responsible for what comes out of their mouth. And I don't think he is trying to portray something that he is not. But at the level that he is at, he has to expect such an extreme level of scrutiny on everything that he says. he has to be cautious. And that's what I mean, like, some of what he's going through is a little bit of his own doing. And I would say that to him if he was sitting right here. Yeah, no, I know you would. And I know where that comes from.

You know, I don't ever like to speak for anybody. I know that I have never seen him lie other than the jujitsu, the judo event I told you about. And occasionally telling women that they look nice at formal events when he doesn't really think that. That is the move, by the way. That is what you do. It's always good. And if they say, how old do you think I am? You say 22.

Regardless if that's demonstrably false. If fucking Gandalf is sitting in front of you, you're like, 22. You know, I don't spend time with anybody I don't think is a good person. Yeah. And, you know, he's one of the best people I've ever met. Yep. it is hard to have the entire, what seems like, it's really a very small subset of the population. It is hard to devote that much of your life to a population.

And it seem like the world is turning on you. So do I think that he will likely be more exact, excuse me, more exact with anything he says, like especially in a book form or something going forward, I think probably. Yeah. You know, I personally think the whole thing has been really, really unjust. I just think it's been unjust. And, you know, I think that you can nitpick anybody and make them seem terrible. Not me.

No, you, of course, are perfect. That's why. that's why we're on the show. We're trying to learn how to be more like you. I was down at Black Rifle yesterday. We might have talked about Tim a little bit on the podcast. It's hard to say, hard to remember. And I was telling Evan, I'm like,

I'm fucking tired of people not knowing about my valor. And so I finally came out with it. Like, I am the Navy SEAL with the most sniper, with the most confirmed misses. I want somebody to fucking. prove me wrong. Like, that's my valorous statement that I'm throwing out there. And the funny thing is, is I'm not even joking. I can miss a motherfucker like nobody's business. But that's literally how I try to be so cautious. First off, I always say the same thing. Like, my career was super

average. I never did a fucking thing. So I don't make any claims to do so. And if I am going to make a claim, it's going to be something ridiculous like I just said, which is also based heavily in truth. Yeah, it's tough. Anything you put out there, It's going to be looked at through a lens of other people's experience, probably an immense amount of time away from the event. It's fucking tough. I wouldn't trade places with him for the world. Yeah, that's for sure.

It's very hard. And I also try not to go too hard on the people involved either because, you know, we were talking about this earlier. And not even in the context of like the Tim thing. But like, I've never met a high performing person that isn't broken in some way. Like we're... Yeah, they're not balanced. We're not, like, we're not doing superhuman or even big things because we're, like, healthy.

Like something, you know, there's something broken inside you that makes you want to do, you know, or was that makes you kind of want to, like, heal something or go above board on something. And so, you know, I suspect that the guys that run that podcast kind of have something in them that doesn't quite match up. that, you know, that, you know, maybe, you know, it could be as simple as, you know, they did great things and Tim has notoriety. And, you know, they feel like he shouldn't have notoriety. Or it could be, it could be any number of things. Like, you know, I don't know them. So I'm not going to, I'm not throwing shade. But usually, you know, usually when I see people do something that I don't personally agree with, it, I very, I try very, very, hard to be like, well, what is it that is making that happen? And I don't, I don't really buy, I don't think that they genuinely believe that he is, you know, a liar. I don't, I don't, I don't actually believe that. I think they don't like that he is famous, that maybe, you know, some of their friends that have done more are not famous, that maybe they think he's not using his notoriety the way that they would or they think they would if they were in the same situation.

But again, I don't know these people, so I don't want to. Yeah. But I do, you know, we throw around a phrase all the time, hurt people, hurt people. Seems accurate. And that's, you know, I think that everybody involved in this have done way more for their country than I have, and I hope they kind of find some peace and figure all this out. And our community is pretty bad with the cannibalism. Like, I mean the veteran community?

Yes. It's one of the most toxic communities. It's crazy. It is insane. I don't understand it. I think the explanation is pretty easy. They, like, when we're inside of the veteran community, whatever branch you might be in doing your thing, it's about the team, right?

Or whatever your element. And at some point in time, and I hope you're, everybody realizes it's like you're going to time out in your military service you will seal community is great at this like if you leave the seal community will cease to exist we can't do this without you your beating heart is what to keep this organization alive yeah and then you leave and they're like oh fuck you're gone we replaced you with three people you know it's like oh yeah you told us you were leaving and yeah we totally forgot we said those to you and uh yeah like your DD-214s over there.

See you later. Everyone is replaceable. Everyone's replaceable. And then you get out and what I will say at least, and I can only speak for my experience, which was a long time ago. And my true feelings are everybody is, their experiences are their own to do with what you want to do with them. If people want to write a book, write a fucking book.

If you want to be the quiet professional, never talk about it and drink yourself to death at the VFW, I don't advocate for that. But that, like, do with it what you want to do. But what I see is when it leaves the world where you can leave a moment. Michael, fuck that dog. Nobody likes him. He's not even handsome. When you leave that world of the team is going to get their credit for it,

and individuals start to pull ahead a little bit more. There's this. It rubs people the wrong way. It does rub people the wrong way. It's so strange because I love the veteran and military community. I really do. But some of our behaviors when we see the success of others, especially because it's like, I mean, we've all seen it.

somebody gets out and then the commander's like well he's dead to me now like that guy that guy's a fucking piece of shit and i don't know i truly do believe a rising tide raises all ships like if one veterans did you make that up i did and i'd like that to go in the next book please i might have heard tim credited with that back when he was sailing with christopher he was on old iron side when he said that wasn't he using the sextant on christopher columbus's vessel i i swear that his initials are on Plymouth Rock. Are they not? I believe they are.

I believe you're right. I just, I love seeing other people's success. And it makes me want to try harder. Like, you know what I mean? For a lot of people, it doesn't land there. It doesn't land there. They will see other people's success. And they, the most common thing that I see at least, and I'm not trying to be critical

of people that feel this way because I do believe do what you want to. They will say, the only reason that you are successful is because of fill in the blank, the job. In our case would be the Trident, right? Which what I tell people is, go on fucking Amazon and buy one. I don't care. I'll send you the link. You can have your own Trident.

Go forth and do fucking great things. Probably wouldn't wear it out in public or make up stories. Leave that to Tim, but. I saw, like I saw it, you know, I was like, here it comes. Here it comes. Here it comes. I'm sorry, Tim. I'm only going to do that for a few more hours.

they get they'll say you're only this because of that and you know maybe that's the case but let's also be honest we're not all created equal some people are really well-tooled to serve in the military and they are going to struggle when they get out and some people are really good at taking their military experience and figuring out what to do with it after the military and those two people are on a different trajectory and oftentimes it is fuck it is so it is heartbreaking to see the amount of it's like they're with the shepherd's hook and somebody's climbing a metaphorical ladder in their life and they're like trying to hook onto their belt and pull them back down because that person's on a different rung.

It sucks. It sucks. And it is super fucking toxic. I don't like it. It's wild though because, you know, to me, you know, you look at Tim, right? You just stay with the example of Tim since we're making fun of them for an hour. I can do 90 if you guys want to go long. But, you know, he devoted his life to becoming an elite fighter.

Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. An elite jiu-jitsu player. Allegedly, right? The reason that, I mean, the reason that people know about Tim in the first place in a meaningful way is because of fighting. Yeah. And then he had, you know, the most popular History Channel show for a couple of years.

And then he had his own show, you know. on. So, so like all of these things are the reason why he, you know, rose to prominence. Now, if he had been a firefighter, right, and not in the military, people would be like, oh, cool. But because he was in the military, it's like, I feel like people forget that he was a fighter and did this other stuff that, and they just, they keep looking at, well, he only did this in the military, which when I say only, I'm talking about the people that are talking crap about them compared to whatever they think they did. But you can go be a fighter. You can go be on a TV show. You can write a book. You can do all these things. But it's like everybody forgets about that.

And they just look at, well, I deployed twice as many times as him. So why am I not as big or whatever? I see that a lot. Those metrics get super dangerous and dirty. How many people have you killed or the side or the other. And I hear those, or the deployment metric or the whatever, end of life, whatever the fuck you would want to call it. And anytime I hear that, I always ask the people saying that the generation of people that put you through training, did they have an opportunity to go into combat? That's right.

And they didn't. Yep. But look at what they were able to craft and create and enable you to do. So they didn't get to deploy to combat, and you did. Are you better than them? I don't think so. They never had the opportunity. The world never presented them that opportunity.

So putting a value or all of your value in, what's your number of deployments? What's the number of firefights you've been in? How many people you have killed? I mean, cool. It's this constant game of one-apping. Yes. And then also, guess what? I mean, Evan and I were talking about this yesterday.

He's like, we won the GWAT. I was like, fucking when? There was no aircraft carrier landing with mission accomplished on that one because I feel like we're still fighting terrorists. So maybe we're just calling it something else. Yeah. It's going to trend back towards what it was pre-9. 9-11, which I'm glad I got to see that. My first five years in the military were pre-9-11.

It was amazing. I drank enough alcohol to kill a fucking donkey, you know, like lived on fucking per diem, traveled around, talked about how badass that we were going to be. And then when we got pressed for real, the first time overseas, we're like, wow, we fucking suck. Thank God, we're generations ahead of the enemy that we're fighting. It's literally the only reason that I feel like we won. But I understand what that was like. And so there wasn't this, how many combat deployments, this, that, or the other. I'm not saying it was a healthier, writ large ecosystem, but this, this metric of, well, I served in war and what I did in war is more important that what you did, even though you

didn't have a chance to go to war, like, what are we doing here? Yeah. Like, that scale is never going to balance. I always thought it was funny when I first joined, and like, as soon as I got to my first unit, people were like, your generation's weak, your generation's pussies. And I'm like, y'all are training us, brother. Like, I'm not sure I'm the problem. I don't have any influence.

like, yeah. I also think like there's just been weak and, you know, people who could be described as pussies around since forever. Forever. Since forever. Yeah. There's another aspect with Tim that I think makes people very uncomfortable. And that is he can beat the living fuck out of almost everybody on earth.

Yeah. And I don't know if this is an issue on the women's side of the house, but a lot of dudes get really uncomfortable with that. Yes. So there's that aspect as well. And it's always, it's always dudes that, like, don't fight at all. And it's like, brother, if you don't train at all, you can't fight. Like, I went, the first jiu-jitsu class I did, I was 26.

I trained with the professors, like, 15-year-old kid, and he beat the shit out of me. Did you try to see red? I did, and then I passed out. But he would, and I could have picked this kid up over my head. And he was just so good. And that's when I realized, like, oh, my God. And I've never been an overly cocky person, I don't think. But that's when I realized like, oh, wow.

Like, I'm not shit. Yeah. And for guys, especially in the communities, special operations community, again, I can only speak for the Navy. I mean, we used to call it going over the burn. If somebody rubbed you the wrong way and you got into an argument, you'd fucking go over the berm and you would settle it. We'd say go into the wood line. Yeah. Or in the ConX box, whatever it is.

The problem is, what if you got a dude who feels totally. comfortable running his mouth, but he can beat the fuck at him. What are you going to do with that? Yeah, 100%. I actually don't want to go over the room with you. So, yeah. We just talk it out? Let's be reasonable.

There's an aspect of that. For sure. I think he's going to be okay. Yeah, he's going to be okay. Yeah, he'll be okay. He's a, you know. I wish people have had the ability to see him behind the social media presence and facade. I've had a good opportunity to spend time with him when literally nobody is there.

And he is one of the most generous, kindest liars that I know. What people don't talk about, too, or they don't see it, right? Because all you see is the forward-facing success. But what you don't see is getting up at 4 in the morning to do, like, establish your business. You don't see working late nights, like, after you've gotten off work, especially if you're in the military. they and it's and it feels like when you see it on social media it feels like god this person must be just lucky or they must have a hookup or whatever but it's always people with incredible work ethics that rise like that like i think cody caches just quoted

it but she was basically like there's no such thing as like luck in business there's just working really hard there is luck in business there is yeah luck should be defined as the intersection of hard you get what i'm saying yes you get what i'm saying that i just wanted to agree with you aggressively. Publicly and aggressively. There is luck, but you get what I'm saying. Like, lucky people worked really hard for nine years. Like, we just read

about Jeff Bezos. A lot of at-bats, a lot of iteration, you know, like nothing typically works right out of the gate. Yeah. Except for the cleared hot podcast. Did I have been at this for like seven years? I know, I know you have. But that's the thing to people don't,

and again, I mean, I've heard the stat that there's a thousand podcasts a day that are started. I'm sure. Which there might be. And they don't make it past episode like three, right? Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. But I blame most of those on Joe because he tells almost everybody he meets.

Hey, you should start a podcast. It's like, hey, man, shut the fuck up. I'm just kidding, Joe, I love you. You can keep telling people that if you want. But say there's a thousand a day. If you go online and you look at what a successful podcast is, they're looking at 100 to 1,000 downloads on an episode over a 30-day time period. Oh, wow.

Those numbers, relative, so if you take, let's take Rogans as an example, who has billions of downloads. Yep. Probably, fuck, it wouldn't surprise me if you had over 100 billion downloads. And then there's the one with 300. There's a little bit of gap in between. But even, have you guys ever watched JRE number one? Yes. Michael?

It's fucking fantastic. It's filmed on a laptop rear-facing camera with snowflakes fucking coming down. Fucking pull up J.R. It's amazing. Where it started to where it is. Right. Now, granted, did Joe have some advantages? A fear factor dude, comedian.

Yes, of course he did. But fuck me. He's on episode like 14 million right now. He cranks him out like seven a day. Right. I went and did a, he let me use his studio to interview him one time, which I'm sitting there. I'm like, this is really weird. You're like letting me, this is like borrowing the Millennian Falcon right now.

I don't know how to drive. He goes, dude, this is my fourth one today. I'm like, what? How do you do that? He looks me dead in the eye and he goes, weed. I'm like, okay. But he just fucking goes. Yeah, look at this shit.

Oh, damn, look at the second video down. Look at that. Three hours ago, man, they're already hopping on it. That's Jerry one. I told you fucking snowflakes, dude. Oh, my God. Hat on backwards. Somebody watched this on MySpace.

This is, this became. I had a Myspace. I did too. This became and is probably the most powerful media object entity on the fucking planet. I think. But here's where it started. Joe, who's probably galactically high there, doesn't even know that he's talking into the computer. Doesn't know the snowflakes are falling.

That's a setting on the computer he accidentally hit. But, I mean, you know what people say? Oh, must be nice. are lucky. The 2,000 plus episodes later of iterations, when I first started doing this, it was, there was no video cameras. It was a little zoom recorder and two microphones. And I use little five pound plates to hold the microphones down. So I'm traveling around with a fucking suitcase with an extra 10 pounds in it, like an idiot. And finally a camera, then multiple cameras. And I used to be in another office suite down the hall and slowly built. It's like, yes,

there's luck involved in that too. But like I don't have a single superpower other than I can grind. And that's, I mean, you have to. Yeah. You have to. So, yeah. I have people ask me about getting into content creation a lot and like, is that what you consider yourself to be a content creator?

He does. He considers himself to be a content creator. He is. He is. Let's talk about the people flocking to him at the coffee shop. All of a sudden, fucking, all of a sudden, I'm there just trying to feed my poor weiner dog some water and fucking, I come out and there's multi-cam everywhere. And I can tell sometimes he feels bad.

for me. He's like, he'll be like, hey, Nick, Nick used to be kind of famous too. And I'm like, it's okay. You don't have to do that. I don't need that. There was, I heard, I heard breaks locking up outside as people were like, Jay turning in to come to get pictures with you. Then they're asking you to send it to him. That was a covert way of that guy trying to get your phone on by the way. And they're always surprised that he has like, his voice really sounds like this. I know, because you think it's a bit. Like, who would want to sound like. Who would want to sound like Who would want to sound like, you know, beaker? Who fuck is beaker?

From the Muppets, you know, like, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B. Yeah. Oh, yeah, famous content creator. I'm going to give it to you. It's good. I would say 75 people ran into the store to see him. Yes.

Maybe 100. Yeah. That'll go in the third book. Maybe 100. Are you writing a book, too? I'm going to get Nick to write it for me. Just goes. Because then I can put anything I want in it.

I mean, clearly. Clearly. No, but people ask me, and I recently had somebody, they're like, what, like, what is your trick? And I showed them, like, on, I think YouTube, it has almost an exact number. And it said, like, 4,367 videos. Yeah. And I'm like, I did like, when I started, I'd do like 10 in a day. It wasn't like that abnormal.

Your videos are fucking hilarious. That's a huge, huge compliment coming from your. Don't build them up. Don't build them up. But no, it's true because, and here's why I don't. God knows when I first stumbled across it. But anytime people are making fun of officers, I'm fucking in. Oh, yeah.

I am an officer now and I love it. I retired as a fucking officer. But I did 12 years enlisted first. And I chose to go down the officer pipeline because I couldn't fucking make E7 in the Navy. And I was trying to figure out ways where I could still progress and do something. Right. So I switched. I mean, I was a limited duty officer.

And I tell people emphasis on the limited and probably light on the duty. you know, but people don't understand. They think that, again, the SEAL community is an Elon Musk, multi-billion dollar rocket kidded out with dudes in the most high-speed gear headed to Mars. And it's a bunch of retards on a short school bus. Licking the flavor windows and generally unwilling to quit. So it over time works out okay. Yeah.

And people will think that I'm joking when I say that and I'm dead fucking serious. But I think I think that's literally everything. I think most people in life, including myself, you're like, I don't usually know what I'm doing. And you just have to figure it out. You're just normal, but you work really hard. You know? My wife had some friends come over the other day. They wanted to talk about they were basically ideating on kind of what they want their future to be.

And they were asking me, hey, how do you do the things? that you do. And I gave them an honest answer. And that answer is I actually don't know how to do any of the things that I do. The coffee shop, I have never went to an architectural meeting, a legit blue sky bill when they say, well, what do you want it to look like? You're like, fuck, I probably maybe should have thought about that before I started paying you guys. Or also, aren't you guys supposed to give me the ideas? This would make that a little bit easier. I've never had, I mean, I had people working for me in the military. That shit's so easy. You know what I'm challenging? A barista with an average age of 17.

Yeah. Having 30 of them, 30 to 40 people working for you and worrying about payroll and insurance and infrastructure and a management staff. And all the rules. Oh, yeah. And then also, by the way, health rules. And that environment, the climate of the workplace. And we said, well, I don't fucking care about that. I knew it.

I knew he was going to say. That's why I said it. But then, like, the retail stuff. I don't know what people want to buy. And I actually constantly say this to our managers because I, I let them, the market gets to determine what we're going to sell. That's right. Because I'd be fucking bankrupt if I only sold the shit that I like.

It'd be like massive black dildos in there. And like maybe some garland and a pumpkin pie. I don't know why it was that particular pairing. But I can't pick it. The first, when I first started, when I first started my first company, Ranger Up, the apparel company. The first. Is that a phrase inside of the Ranger Regiment, Ranger Up? Ranger up. So I'll tell you, I'll tell you where it came from.

I know there's like the Rangers leave the way or like follow me at the aircraft. I'll tell you, I'll tell you where it really came from. My buddy Danny, he came back. He was a, he deployed right away to Afghanistan. Yeah. Like 2001, right? He came back and. Was Tim with him? Probably. And Austin let me have my phone And Danny got back And when he got back We were all we all had like a party for him And he You know he was like half an hour into it

And he goes Man You know I know this is this is lame But like I'm so tired Like I think I think I'm going to go to bed and I just go, Dan, Ranger the fuck up. And he was like, oh, my God, I can't believe he just said that to me.

It's funny how that clicks, though, and you can turn, you can create it. That's so good. And it just became like this kind of thing. So it started with like a joke. Yeah. And Ranger up at the beginning was, it was all comedy. Like, there was no tough guy anything. The first third.

Was there some short shorts, though? Always short shorts. Fuck yeah. But the first 30 shirts that I made, only one of them did well. and I'm just talking about iteration. Yeah. The idea that this sounds about like my journey is into soft goods retail as well. Except for that one where it did good.

The one, the one kind of, it was the only, the one shirt was the only reason that that I kind of kept doing it because I was like, fuck, like 29 out of 30 word failure. But then it was like, all right, why did this work? And so then you start iterating on that idea. And that was, you know, that was how that company grew. And it grew to an eight-figure business. And I got to do a lot of like really incredible things because of it. But it started as a hobby.

It was, I was bored with my Fortune 100 gig. What was the Fortune 100 gig you were doing? I worked at John Deere. The tractor people? Yeah. They're the green ones, right? The green ones. I have one of those.

Yeah. It's not like a big tractor. I almost rolled it the day I got it. I'm just saying. It was, are you drifting it? It was a great. I was not respecting. the slope. It's a great company. Great company, great people. Like I genuinely thought,

because you hear a lot of crap about big companies. I genuinely thought they cared not only about their people, but passionately about the product. So I love John Deere. That's crazy to hear about a company that big too. If I ever get a big piece of land, I will definitely buy a John Deere tractor. That being said, I'll give you one example of when I knew I probably needed to be an entrepreneur. Do you remember David Letterman? Yes. Okay. So David Letterman for a period of time, you could you could send in products donated to like kids and he would maybe like highlight your products on his show. And so I thought this was a great opportunity to focus on John Deere gifts and toys. And so I sent this crazy, what I thought was hilarious letter to David Letterman and a bunch of

toys, like a couple grand worth of toys. And he had this bear on the show, a dude dressed in a bear costume. I sent like a 4x t-shirt, John Deere T-shirt. So I don't tell anybody about this. I just do it. And he, he like read parts of the letter. No shit. On the show, the bear comes out in the John Deere T-shirt. Which is going to drive a huge. Huge spotlight towards John Deere. It was great. Yeah. And I got in trouble.

Yeah, because you didn't tell me. I didn't tell anybody. I didn't ask anybody. I just was like, and that this is the thing is they were right. Because they were at the time, I think, a $35 billion company. And I am just some like junior executive. Like, I don't have the right to put the brand at risk over. But at the same time, like, I needed that in order to be happy.

Yeah. And so that's how I ended up kind of like starting the hobby. me and a buddy, you know, like, hey, let's do this for fun. And then it was like, it got bigger. And all of a sudden, I'd work my, you know, eight, nine hours at deer. And then I'd be working like eight, nine hours at home. And, you know, and it just got to the point where my boss called me into the office and was like, hey, you know, you're going to get a promotion. I told me that on Friday. And then I came in on Monday and I said, hey, I'm resigning. Because I was already making more money than I ever thought I'd make.

At Rainbow. At John Deere. Oh, okay. Gotcha. And my promotion was going to be like a hundred grand raise. And I was like, if I take this, I'm never getting out of it. I'm going to do this forever. And I don't want to do it.

Yeah. So then I went then in the course of a very short period of time, you know, I was, I ended up like almost bankrupt. you know, divorced, you know, I had a one-year-old and a three-year-old. Like, I went through it. But for whatever reason, even while all that was going on, like, I felt super alive. And then Ranger-Up started working and, you know, the rest is kind of history. But, yeah, like, you know, like the journey is not easy.

And there's a grind. And you don't exactly know how it's going to work out. And you have to be in that situation where you're like, I've got 57K in credit card debt and $1,300 in the bank. And I have a one-year-old. And I have a- And it's the 29th of the month. And it's February where there's only 20-8 days. Hot-dog castle all the night, man. And you've got a one-year-old and a three-year-old.

And you're like, you know. And everything can just get pulled out from under you, like, literally at any time for any reason. Yeah. Like, the factory could catch fire and all the inventories gone. But my process for everything, whether it's, whether it was Ranger Up or at John Deere or now with my new company, Diesel Jack, or Office Joe. Hey, for people out there watching, go buy a fucking Blu-ray. I know you threw it out. It's on all the streaming services.

I know you threw it out in the 70s, but go get one so you can watch that. If you own a Blu-ray player, you may be entitled to compensation. Yeah, or send me an email and I'll send you one of those two for the two people that still 01. It's the same people that are on landline. It's still 10% of the market. No, but the process for me has always been like learn what the, how it works. Yeah. And then ask questions about why it works that way.

And then if there's something that seems stupid, see if you can go around that. So like when we were doing, when we did the movie Range 15, you know, that the- Which is nonfiction, right? Yeah, it's a true story. It's a true story. I just made the assumption. I'm going to write that book. Range 15, the true story.

We didn't, you know, the doors kept closing. It was like we went to Hollywood. Jared Taylor and I went to Hollywood. I don't know if I would take Jared to Hollywood. Jared is better at talking to people despite the fact that he has no filter whatsoever than any human being of ever met in my entire life. He is like literally holding a fucking hand grenade with the pin out. I love him. You never know what's going to happen. You never know what's going to happen. You never know what's going to happen. But people love him. And he is... They should.

They should. Yeah. Yeah. But he is better at connecting human beings than anybody I've ever met. I had him on the show. We talked for three hours. I don't remember a single fucking thing you talked about. I think we talked about aliens and fucking gophers and everything in between. He's amazing. He's all over the place. And I think he stayed for four days. That sounds right. That sounds right. At the VFW, which is right by the clock. This is one of the best VFWs there. I'm like, I mean, I've never been in there, but okay, sounds good.

How long did you stay with Ranger Up? About 10, 11 years. Like, we did it for a long time. And then I, you know, I sold it. The whole reason, like, diesel jack started is, you know, I sold the company and I had to contractually work for another year for them. And it was great. Yeah.

And then right around the time that COVID was happening, you know, The hedge fund that had bought it kind of felt the strain, and they were like, you know, hey, you've got to lay off this. They made every company lay off a certain amount of people. And I was like, eh, it doesn't make sense. Like we're doing, we're growing, all this stuff. And long story short, I kind of said, well, hey, how about, you know, I'll just leave and you keep these people. That was kind of like, so that was, I left.

Did you guys make a lot of VNX? Not a lot of VNX. No, I wear those now, you know, because I don't like anything touching my neck, you know. Just saying it's a weird choice. It's the jujitsu. It's very 1600s, but. You know, hey, if you were graced with a neck like this, you know, I just, but. I'm just saying, it's controversial.

It's a bold move. I don't see it often. It's a bold move. Usually paired with an ascot of some kind, so it's just, it's hard for me to get around. We've had enough controversy for the week already, Nick. I don't like anything touching my neck. Like, just so you know, your shirt's still touching your neck. Collared shirts.

It is technically. Collared shirts drive me. Like I despise them. And even even in Jiu-Jitsu now, I significantly prefer Nogi Jiu-Jitsu. Why? When my uniform top touches my neck, I'll throw a conniption. You know what scares me after starting Jiu-Jitsu is zippered sweatshirts. Oh, yeah. Just the feeling of that being just ripped across your neck would, it's just horrendous.

That would hurt. Yeah. I've never thought about that. And now that's going to be an intrusive thought. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of Tim, he said nice things about your J-Jitsu.

anytime I'm meeting anybody. Actually, you know what that is though? Proof he's a fucking liar. Because I've only rolled with him once when I was a Blue Belt years ago. And he absolutely fucking demolished. But he demolishes everybody. No, I would fuck him up now. I'd have to fucking smash him worse than he's ever been smashed in his fucking life.

That's a strong statement. It's like I told him on the phone. His top pressure is weak. His cardio isn't there. He obviously doesn't train. outside of jiu-jitsu so I can dominate him at will, I think. No, if I can go with him one time, like four years ago. Well, he said your jiu-jitsu is good. He must have watched some videos or something. I don't know. Did he though? Or is he making shit up? Or is he a dirty life?

No. He's a kind man. He's being generous. He typically will tell me whenever I'm meeting somebody whether or not that person would beat me at jiu-jitsu. Like, that's how he categorizes things. He 100% sees the world through who he could physically dominate. 100%. He's a caveman. He said you would beat me at Jiu-Jitsu, but I was the better wrestler. Yeah, because I've never done a second of wrestling in my life. Listen, I'm just telling you what he said.

Do you know how I beat wrestlers? I fucking sit down. Quick guard pull. I refuse to engage in wrestling with them. Yeah. I mean, it's smart. Well, it's just grappling. People who think that they're going to come in, I don't give a fuck, what your belt is.

if you hit a high enough level wrestler, you're so fucked. And just because all you're going to be doing is playing defense and trying to keep them off you, you're not going to get them on their back. Yeah. And even if you do, they don't stay there long. I was wrong with Jim Miller one time,

who was a huge wrestling background. And I used to say, he's a monster. I used to say that I swept him, but I realized he corrected me. He goes, you attempted to sweep me. He did put his knee down, and I scissors swept him.

And he was fucking completely back towards the ground. but before he landed, his fucking hips had switched. It's like a cat. I'm like, yeah. Fuck you, dude. Thank God. When do they teach you how to levitate? No, he just, their hips turn over so fast.

You can't get them on their back. You just can't get them on their back. And even if his back had hit, like, it's so ingrained. I don't understand the rules of wrestling other than it seems to be the death if your back hits the ground. So the second it hits, they come back up. You're like, fuck, man, I actually don't know what to do with that. Like, I can keep you off of me.

Yeah. But this is going to be the most boring five minutes of our entire lives. And very tiring. Totally. Like you're going to have ungodly forward pressure and I might be able to stop you and there's no chance I'm going to do anything offensive. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's rough. Yeah. Tim is being extremely kind. Yeah. Jiu-Jitsu is fun, but it certainly isn't fucking magic. There's plenty of people who have my number. Not Michael, but it's plenty of people. He's a purple belt as well.

It's a room full of purple belt. Yeah. Just a bunch of purple. But I'll probably be a purple belt forever. Why do you say that? Tim seems to advance people super fast. Yeah. So how long you've been training, Tim, how long's your blue belt been trained?

Be like 16 years. Yeah, he, at one point, he was just like, why don't you just come under me? And I was like, all right, I'll do that. And so, you know, at some point he was just like. It was nine years ago when you were a blue belt? Yeah. At some point, he was just like, hey, you're a purple belt now. And just, you know, our structure is like he just tells me, hey, the next time we roll together, you need to be, your attacks need to be more varied.

And so then I go home and I think about, okay, what do I need to do? But I'm not, I so aggressively wanted to be a black belt in judo when I was a young man. And then I wrestled and it didn't matter at all. Like there's no belt. It's just like who can win. And so with Jiu Jitsu, because I didn't really start belted jiu jiu jitsu. My wife is a much better judicious player than I am. Well, they have to be more technical.

She's extremely good. My wife's better, too. She's a three-sided black belt, and she's fucking savage. So she was the one that brought me back to the mats. Because I've always rolled, but I was rolling like no ghee with, you know, like Brandon Garner, Bryce Mahoney. And like, we would all kind of meet up at Ranger up and we'd roll no ghee and whatever. And she was like, why don't you put the ghee back on?

and I can't even remember when that was, but she set me up for failure because women operate on a different wavelength than men. And so they were like, she's like, hey, my husband's going to come in. And they're like, oh, that's great. And she's like, yeah, he's super good because of, you know, he's a black belt in judo and he's this.

And so she kind of bigged me up thinking, like she's trying to be like a supportive wife, but not realizing. Sold your ass right down the river. Sold. So I show up. People are like, oh, really? I show up.

I show up. I show up. I'm here at noon. And there's like a murderer's row of black belts and brown belts. And that's all I had. And like at the end of like three hours, I was like, I fucking hate all of you. You know, like we, we, we, it was like a three hour fight. It's good for dudes though.

That's, I think, I actually think the world would be a better place if more men specifically experienced that. 100%. Oh my God. Deal with getting fucking dominated and controlled and having to go look in the mirror and be like, okay. That sucks. I suck. I can be better. This is a super long path, but I'm going to keep making myself uncomfortable and keep going back. I think it would round the edges. I wish, I wish more people could experience too what, I mean, and I'm sure it's true for any, like, combat sport or whatever you want to call it. But like, it will carry you through the worst parts of your life. Like, because when you're on the mats, you cannot think about anything else. It doesn't matter what's going on because you're just focused on not getting choked or not getting armed or whatever. And it's so. uncomfortable, it's like, it's almost like a form of meditation. Like, it pulls you into it. And it's

the only thing that you can focus on. That's what I, every single time I leave the mats, I leave, even if I got my ass kicked the whole time, I leave feeling better than I walked in. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, I particularly like jujitsu when things are not going well. Mm-hmm. Because just, you know, if you're hanging on my back trying to choke me, I'm not like, oh, man, how are we going to make payroll? But honestly, like honestly. No, for sure. Can you imagine people's, well, I mean, I think we all can imagine it because we all didn't start jujitsu when we were a child. People who can't escape those thoughts that I can't imagine, right, I just know why I just said I can't.

I can't imagine the overwhelming nature of those inescapable thoughts if you don't have an outlet that turns the volume down a little bit. Yeah, yeah. It's people are probably, I actually think that like a lot of the, the, the problem. problems we have with kids and mental health and all those things are, and this is probably controversial, but the zero tolerance policies in high school and middle school and all these things around fighting. Yeah. We've decided.

Is this what would it is switched to? Like if you're violent at all, are you ejected? It was like that right around when I graduated high school. What year did you graduate? 12 or 11, one of the other? He's a young. He's a young man. Dude, you are a young man.

Yeah. It was 11. Yeah. I'm not going to run the math on that. I was like 19. I was 94. So. I was 96.

I mean, they were still stuffing people at lockers when I was in high school. I'm not trying to make it sound like, you know, in the 90s it was like this hard, you know, but there were fights almost every day. Yeah. You know? And not like crazy, but, you know, guys. Guys got mad at each other. They fought.

And then oftentimes they'd be friends afterwards. Yeah. But I do think that- It creates politeness. It creates politeness, but also grievances are dealt with. And they're dealt with immediately and they don't build to something else. Like, you know, you did something bad to me. You know, we fought and now for better or for worse.

Like we have now taken those emotions. Whereas you did something bad. to me and now you're making fun of me online and I'm in my little group saying this guy's and they're like, you should do something. You know, like you end up with these unhealthy kind of permanent problems that are really, we had a disagreement. So what? But then it becomes something bigger because it's pushed aside. It's not dealt with the way that we naturally deal with things. You know, it is like, I think fighting for young men is important. They either, you either have to do it as a combat athlete or you have to do it in real life.

But like kind of figuring out like two things. One, standing up for yourself. And two, I can get my ass kicked. Like I am not unstoppable, you know? Yeah. I think those are really important lessons. And I think taking it away has created this problem where kids, not most kids obviously, but kids will resort to ultraviolence or unhealthy thought processes

or taking their lives or all these things that really didn't exist the same way that they do now. I think they existed, but a much smaller. Smaller. Yeah, of course they exist. Yes. Yeah. But you didn't see multiple school shootings happening, you know.

You didn't see. I'm not even aware of one in the era that you and I went to school. Me either. And I don't think if you look at the rise and increase in gunnership in population, I don't think statistically diverged. It doesn't match it. Yeah, it doesn't. It's not like, nope. We still had the same act.

I'm like, we had, my dad had fucking, probably a statute of limitations is expected. He had a fucking 357 magnum in his sock drawer. It's like, that was his level of a skiff that he rolled with. You know, maybe he was in a sock at some time harder to see. But yeah, I mean, I could have any, any time gone in there. but not even a thought process. It would have been considered. Yeah.

It gives people an ability to regulate their own emotions better too. And I also think that, I mean, people can tell if you're willing to go hands-on. Like, hopefully that doesn't sound really weird, but I don't know. I think it would give more, what I say is it gives people that are meek, more confidence, and it gives people that are too confident some meekness. Like, it just, it'll give you what you need. Because if you're like hyper-confident and you show up to any place where they're hitting each other or sparring, you're not leaving super confident. Yeah.

You know, and if you're not confident and you show up, you can learn. I always tell people that are getting started to, like, do it for at least six months because six months is long enough to become proficient enough where a new group of people will come in. And that's when you really see if you've improved. Yeah. Because you're like training with the same people and, you know, you're kind of all getting better at the same rate. But then a new person shows up and you're like, oh, wow, I actually. have learned some skills. Yeah, and you should train with that person and abuse them.

That's where you practice all your high consequence moves. I'm just joking. Austin, how did you decide to start doing the content you do? Are you in the Army still? I'm in the Army, yeah. I'm active duty. I thought you were getting out. That's a rumor that I might have started.

Okay. Do you want to continue with that rumor or? I'm not sure. Right now, so I've achieved a level of notoriety. that I'm very proud of. And I don't want to just get big and, like, deuses. I'd like to give back a little bit. And I actually was just talking to somebody about this.

He was like, well, you've kind of, like, already given back. And it was nice. It was a very kind thing that that person said to me. But I want to, I'm actually going to start a new job pretty soon where I'm doing content, like, unofficially for the Army. And it's going to be, you know, morale. That sounds horrible. The way that it's structured is going to be fun.

But it'll be for morale retention and recruiting. Allegedly. I was going to say, is that what they told you? Yeah. Did a recruiter tell you that? So what do you know, a captain? No, I'm a first lieutenant. I'll be a captain in the next couple months.

In the army though. You guys start at second lieutenant. He's in a four-star general, right? Fuck yeah. He's an O-2. Okay, so you guys start second lieutenant, then first lieutenant, then captain, right? Yeah. No, it would always fuck people up army guys calling a Navy base.

If you say captain, that's an 0-6. Yeah, yeah. They're like, oh shit, sir, because I would get those calls. I'm like, oh, yes, sir. They're like, no, dude, I'm fucking 03. I'm like, oh, sweet, me too. Yeah, Lieutenant Carey's fucking no weight. None.

Okay. I thought you had been in longer than that. He was enlisted. Yeah, I've been in 13 years in February. And it's because I did almost 10 enlisted before I commissioned. This is where your content comes from. Yeah, yeah, a lot of it. I now understand exactly why you are so accurate in your descriptions of the

people. Iner workings of the military. People say it to me all. Like, I had, so my. my brigade commander while we were in Poland was considering changing the policy when he heard about the social media stuff. Yeah. And my battalion commander actually went to bat for me and she said, sir, just watch it. Just watch the videos.

Yeah. And so a couple days later, I saw him and he's huge, this huge dude. He's like six, five. You know what I mean? And so he starts walking straight towards me. And I'm like, all right, who like got drunk and got in a fight? That's never a good sign. And then you got a fucking serpentine when that happened.

But he walks up to me and he goes, dude, you're a fucking. hilarious. And he shook my hand of this gigantic hand, you know what I mean? And he was like, he was like, but you're just a lieutenant.

Like how, like how do you know all this stuff? And I was like, well, I was enlisted for a long time first. Yeah. And so, but he became a big fan

of a character that I had in my early skits. The character was me because all the characters were me. But he became a big fan of this Marine veteran Blake and he'd always wear these glasses and like every,

third word was raw and that was his favorite dude. Blake had a pet raccoon named raccoon. Yeah. And so probably a red truck. He loved it. I think he did actually. But how I got started is I just started making videos. I made like, but where did the idea come from? Because you were obviously in the military. You were aware that social media started. One day we were just like, fuck it. Like I'm going, I'm going in on this. Yeah. I started making videos. I got, I got really lucky. So to counter my own quote earlier. I got lucky because my 20 already are a liar. Yeah my yeah I should write a book my 20th to 27th video somewhere in there did like 60k which is which at the time I was like

I'm fucking famous like you know what I mean and it was a it was a very like classic one of my skits where I'm taught I'm a I'm a dude pretending to talk to a commander yeah he talks to himself in all of his series oh I know I love it's like hey hey look it's me Austin my my counselor said I needed to do something with the voices. So here it is. And it's healthy and it's doing well for me. But I'm like, sir, yeah, we got two new NCOs coming in. One of them, you know, he volunteers.

He's got letters of recommendation. He's got a master's degree. This guy's got a DUI and he runs fast. And the commander's like, I want that guy. But it's funny because that was so true though. The lighting was terrible. Like I had words on the screen and the words were like off the screen. It was an objectively bad piece of content.

the message resonated with people so much because so many people had had that experience. And it just kind of took off. And I was like, oh, I can do this every day. And I did. I've done it every day since. And despite all that content, you were actually a good actor. When did the Army first catch wind of this, though? Oh, pretty early.

Because like with, so I was at. And you are in uniform in some of them. And when I first saw them, I was sitting there wondering about like, how is this received? probably depends on the pay grade that you ask and the exposure to it and how much they can laugh at themselves and the fucking military. I have had general officers

reach out to me and say they loved it. Perfect. And so, and I've had people. But there's another one that secretly hates you and wants to ruin your life. I guarantee that that's true. I guarantee there is some dude that's like, someday I will ruin him.

Yeah, I had one guy walk up to me one time and he wasn't even in my chain of command or anything, but he was like, I don't really like what you're doing online. And I was like, who are you? Like, what? Go talk to my boss. That's all you came back with?

Literally, literally, well. I would have, I was expecting. I thought you were going to say something. I thought you were going to say something funny there. Yeah, you come back with like, dude, your fucking wife loves it. She sends me a bunch of dick picks. I have people literally every week walk up to me and be like, my wife loves your stuff. And I'm like, four years ago, that would have meant a fist fight.

Like that exact quote. So that's kind of funny. It is funny, though, because. he he has somehow transcended our community. Like he's not, it's, you know, with, you know, with Matt or Tim or Jared, like, you know, they're all famous inside of a subset of people. But with him, like my kids are, have grown up around Tim Kennedy. They've grown up around the Black Rifle crew.

Like they've grown up. So they're not like, wow, it's. Tim. They're like, you know, hey, it's Uncle Tim. When they saw me in a picture with him, they were like, oh my God, you know Mandatory Fund Day? I'm like, why do you know Mandatory Fun Day? And they, they just think his voice is funny and the stuff he does is funny. My face is funny. So like, my mom thinks I'm handsome at least. In high school, like high school kids follow him, which they don't realize, they probably think you're doing straight comedy about them. military, unfortunately what they miss out is you're actually doing.

Now, what I'm saying is what we do. Yeah. And I don't even like, I don't even play it up. Like so, I mean, sometimes it's played up, obviously. But like, yeah, it's funny that you say that. So early on my, my content was like super specific to the active duty army. And then I saw somebody say, we do that in the National Guard. And so then I changed it to just Army.

And then I saw somebody who was like, we do that in the Marine Corps. And I saw I changed it to military where I changed it to military where I changed. it to U.S. military or something. And then somebody, the first person that reached out to me from another country was this British officer. And he was like, dude, we thought you guys didn't do this in the American military. And I was like, no, brother, we do it harder. We do this so hard.

And so then I just changed it to military. But I have this like, like, I just had this French dude reach out to me. And he was like, if you ever come to France, you're not paying for a single drink. And I was like, I'll take you up on that. For sure. But so it's funny, I've made it more and more broad in general while still applying to the audience. And honestly, I've tried to do more mainstream stuff. Like I'm trying to get into geopolitics and I kind of make it funny with like, you know, I put flags.

It's still me talking to myself. But I only talks to himself. Oh, I'm aware. I don't have the budget for any more actors yet. I'm going to, I keep trying to pull this back in. But in this right here. In the Blu-ray that you love to buy. It's not just on Blu-ray.

It's streaming everywhere. Then why did you bring me a fucking Blu-A disc? Because you can't get rid of him anywhere else? Because it's higher-of-ship. It's higher quality. I'd say put that in Tim's backpack, but it's two-fold grenades. It is higher quality than it's streaming. I knew it was coming.

You see it. He gets a little smirk right before he's about to drop it. This was the most fun project. Nobody can read me. Nobody knows what I'm going to say. This was the most fun project I've done. one of the most rewarding things I've done. And like, so I was so nervous.

I've never acted before. Nick sends me the script. I'm reading it six million times. I'm still reading it on the plane over to North Carolina. And then I got there. And he's going to be in a scene. Him and Jared are, they play recruiters next door.

Jared would be a great recruiter. He played the part well. Hey, he would just be like, what do you want to do? We don't really do that, but like here's the paycheck you get. You want a hell cat? Yeah, you can get a fucking bust.

Dang at a 30% interest rate right off a base when you're an E2 and probably can marry a stripper if you wanted to. Just low-key selling it without selling it. He would probably have it an exceptionally high enlistment rate. Oh, definitely. He's so personal. And the people coming in would actually know what they're getting into. Yeah, he would be honest. Yeah.

But still be able to sell them on the fact that it's going to be horrible. So when I was envisioning these recruiters, and these are the recruiters that are next door to the office that this whole show's about. I knew that, like, originally I was like, man, I've got to have Jared in this role because he plays like the shitbag recruiter. It doesn't care that he's there. Yeah. You know, his uniform's messed up and he's just aggravated all the time.

And I always wanted him arguing with somebody. And we met at a comedy event where he was doing stand-up. We met at a comedy event where I learned that I'm bad at stand-up comedy. Internet comedy and stand-up comedy are not the same thing. They're not the same. But the way he gets exasperated, I was like, man, this would be so perfect with crazy aggressive Jared and like this exasperated, frustrated dude playing back at him. So I wrote it with the two of them in mind and then I asked him if he would do it. And man, I could not do the acting thing.

They made it really easy. I don't think so. With the right team, I don't think it would have been fun with anybody else. but like I showed up and Jared and I flowed really well so you made a really good choice there. The script was well written. Picking me was a great idea. Well I met Jerry

I know that sounded. Clearly I was the listman. This is where my humble guy facade breaks. I made the good pick with Jared but and then I was so nervous because this is not a group of people that will tell you you're doing well if you're not doing well.

And they were very complimentary. Once we got going it's like like everything just flowed. And I remembered my lines and we were able to do a bunch of takes. We were able to play with it, have fun with it. And it was just, I mean, it was a, it didn't feel like working. It felt like hanging out with the boys, you know? It was just, it was fun.

Yeah, they're one of my favorite parts of the show, these two guys. We got described as the Peanut Gallery Muppets as well at the premiere. I like that. I like that. How did you get it pitched and sign off as far as, the project is going to get done. Where is it streaming right now? All the streaming services?

Right now it's for sale on Amazon, Apple, and YouTube. Okay. So you can get it on any of those. Where it's going to land long term, I don't know yet. We're kind of still talking to people about... Is the idea that this is season one and there might be more? 100%. That's the plan.

The show's about an E6, Joe Houser, that leaves Fort Lewis at... as an infantryman just, and the opening scene is literally him trying to get his, his DD-214 and getting all kinds of crap from an S-1, you know, trying to, you know. Which is an admin person for those of you're like, what the fuck is an S-1? That's HR. Basically, he's trying to get the form that says he's out of the military and he's a civilian. And the opening scene, you know, we kind of have that out there. That's got a ton of views.

But people are like, man, this hurts a little bit. like it's funny, but it also is bringing back slashback. It's my favorite opening scene in any show I've ever watched, honestly. Of a dude trying to get his DD2. Just trying to get his DD214. The way that it's portrayed and the other things that happen along the way are so spot on. Just like you could not encapsulate the military experience better than the first five minutes of the show. So he gets his DD 214.

And he drives across the country to start his job as a graphic designer at a boutique marketing firm. And he learned how to draw and pull. porta potty's while deployed. That's, that's, that is our, that is our main character. That's our main character. A politically incorrect art too. Oh God. And so, you know, the whole show is about, um, veteran transition.

And so the first season is about finding, like sexually or? Well, it's a great question. So episode one covers some of that. Okay. It's funny you mention that. Almost 2025. We have to be clear. Uh, episode one is, is it, you'll enjoy episode one.

Okay. But yeah, I mean, the whole idea, you know, when I talk to people that are just getting out that are struggling, and I spend a lot of time, I do a lot of work with the American Legion. I do a lot of work with the Independence Fund. I've done a lot of work with Warrior Rising. And so all of these organizations typically are dealing with veterans that are, you know, they recently got out or maybe they've been out for a while and they feel lost. And they typically, this is just me talking, I feel like when veterans are having a hard time, they typically have either not found tribe or not found purpose. And so even though the show is ridiculous, it's comedy, it's not, it doesn't take itself too seriously, I promise. The theme of every season is about the things that you have to do to kind of find happiness

in life. So season one is tribe. So he lost his tribe of the military. He's showing up at this place. He's a fish out of water. And he's trying to figure out how he fits in and whether he has tribe. So that's kind of like the baseline of season one. Okay.

I would add to that, honestly, trauma. But not trauma occurred during military service. It's before. I've, as I'm sure we all have, I've had far too many friends make the decision to kill themselves. And I have stopped trying to make a sense of an irrational decision. You can't logic it. You can't logic it. I can understand.

I understand that they got to a place where it was their logical decision. I don't understand getting to that place. But I have shifted my thoughts on it. Because people say, well, why is veteran suicides Ohio? Why do guys struggle so much when they get out? And I didn't have a lot of deep conversations with guys when I was in. about their upbringing. Yeah.

Like, hey, dude, did like at Thanksgiving? Did your uncle touch you under the table? You know, we weren't talking that much about that shit, or were you abused or any of this stuff? The number of guys, and this isn't, it's not a, I'm not saying that all people are like this, but the number of guys that I served with who brought in a full fucking sea bag of trauma

before going into the military. I was assuming a sea bag is some kind of Navy thing. You guys would probably call it a duffel bag? Thank you for that translation. Does it come before the D bag? Yeah. It could probably hold 75 grenades. You know what?

We're just going to, we're going to completely embrace it. And from now on, we're going to use grenades as our measurement of both volume and weight. We should. We should. But they brought a full, they brought a full bag with them in. And they do find a tribe. And they find a purpose. And if you think about this, if you were somebody that was.

abused and that could be let's say you were bullied or the victim of abuse you couldn't control what would be a better job than finding something where you get to fuck up other people that in the world you perceive as being able to do that so you find this you like fuck this is awesome I'm going to do this job you get to go do that job and you but yet you encounter even more trauma along the way then you get out of the military most of the guys will geographically separate maybe go back home to where they were from and right and so they lose their tribe and they're geographically separated. And now they have the shit that they brought with them and then the stuff that they picked up along the way. And I think for a lot of people, it's just far too much.

I don't, you know, I don't necessarily think it is the military service that is driving the suicide on the far end. I think we have to look more holistically and start trying to figure out who these people were before they joined the military. Because I don't know, the military does break some people, some of the jobs for sure. But there is that aspect of what did you bring with you? And I was actually, I did a podcast with, he was a psychiatrist and a psychologist. He joined the Army National Guard. I think it was at 63. He was the oldest dude to ever join.

He, Viam only believes that we should shift the enlistment age from 18 to 21 because he thinks that will have probably the longest or the most meaningful impact on the tail end because people are going into that environment more prepared to deal with the trauma that they are going to experience. Yeah, they're a little more mature. They are. I mean, the prefrontal cortex on adult males is 25. to 27 is what they say. Setting them up for success. And so there'd be a little bit of a hijink inside of that, obviously, because you'd have to restructure stuff.

But that to me is a way more interesting idea about fixing a downstream problem than throwing up your hands and saying there's nothing we can do about this. Because I hate to tell you, like, all the computer-based training about suicide and checking on your buddy and all this, it's not fucking making an impact. It's having zero impact whatsoever. It's funny you talk about that. And, you know, I've had a couple buddies that chose to take their own life. But when I'm getting, and I don't get near as much hate as some people do.

But give it time. Yeah. It's coming until your book comes up. It's coming. When I am. I'm going to publish a fake book under your name just to see what happens. When I have those moments where I, like, see a bunch of comments or whatever, I think about the times when people have told me, like, I reconnected with a friend. I actually had a girl message me and say I reconnected with, I mean, she said her elderly father.

I don't know how old he was, but like, she was like, I haven't talked to him in 20 years, but I sent him one of your videos and whatever war he fought in, he had the same experience. And it was probably about the fucking motor pool or formation or something. And she said, now I've reconnected with my father. And I don't even read my DMs anymore at night because I started crying as soon as I read this. You know, this girl's telling me she hasn't talked to her dad in forever. And now they've reconnected. Bottom line, you're a hero.

But I agree. I think comedy isn't like the kind of comedy that we... Just trying to start a slow clap. The kind of comedy that we like isn't promoted enough in the military. Like we make those jokes, but it's almost like, I don't know, sometimes the seniors are like, you know. I don't know if the world is ready for the type of comedy that really gets my rocks off. It is fucking... Dark. But God damn, the shit I have laughed about in the complete remote isolation of the backwoods where nobody could possibly hear us with any listening device would fucking drop people dead in their tracks. But I also think that's probably a coping mechanism and how you survive as well. But yeah, it's, man.

Well, that's the funny thing about, you know, Range 15 was like we pushed it with Range 15. We pushed the limits of comedy with that. and almost universally people like it either gets a 10 or a one star there is almost no nobody's like solid seven like it's either you know this is hilarious or you're the worst people I've ever heard of you know spans the gambit if you will yeah yeah that's okay yeah you know I mean what are you going to do it's uh yeah I don't know so Austin you stay in If you stay in, how many, so you're, well, you've been an officer now two plus years? Yeah. Does the Army reset your retirement calculator like the Navy does by 10?

So the small print on my LDO paperwork was, yeah, if you owe us 10 more for. From the time you commission? Yeah. Oh my God. We call that an adstone the Army Act. Did you know that? Or was that like surprise? I did know that.

I did know it, but I didn't care. I ended up getting medically retired just under the 17 year mark, which was, I didn't want to do that. I was actually, I think, five to seven days away from just separating. And that's when I waited to do my discharge physical, because I was like, fuck it. Whatever. Maybe I won't even do it. And the doctor looked to me and said, there's no fucking way I'm signing this. I'm like, well, you need to because I have plans. And he ended up, I ended up extending for a year and went out to NICO and did the whole M-E-B-P-E-B process. So it didn't really matter. And I would have been okay with it. But it's, I'm glad that the Army doesn't do that.

So if you decide to stay in, though, how are you going to do both? How are you going to, because there is a point in my estimation where what your building will grow to a point where it probably won't serve the Army as much as they necessarily wanted to, where they'll probably say to you, hey, this isn't somehow way, shape, or form getting in the way of or bumping up against your ability to professionally do your job as a teacher. Yeah, I mean, right now my plan is to stay in. I've got seven years until I can retire seven years and change.

So I wish I had an answer for you, but I'm going to tackle it the best I can when it comes. And if somebody says like, hey, this isn't jiving anymore, then I'll, you know, I'll bow out gracefully. But I think that what I'm doing is good. You know, I think I walk a really fine line of professionalism and comedy and realism. Yeah. And so I'm hoping that people will continue to see that. And so far they have. My chain of command's always been super supportive.

I've had that one guy and then maybe one other person. You're still relatively junior though, too. I'm curious if it'll shift as your rank is kind of ascends. The cool thing is I'll be... As the envy, the 04 envy starts setting in. Well, if you take away the social media aspect of it or the notoriety, just in the military structure, right? The higher you go and rank, the more influence you have. Not that I would necessarily agree with that argument, but I could land at a place where I see where they're coming from.

I could see them not wanting him to be a command. making this kind of comedy. What do you do in the Army? What is your job? I'm an MI officer. I'm a platoon leader right now. What is an MI officer? Military intelligence officer.

Okay. All right. I think he's asking you, what do you do? He works in military intelligence. I heard cats right now. I don't do any MI as a platoon leader, really. It's just managing guys. Yeah.

I don't know if that's going to get any better as you go up and run. I think the number of guys you manage just might increase. Job satisfaction will stay exactly the same. I am excited, though. My next gig should give me the opportunity to use this talent to do something. I think I'll serve. This incredible talent. I'm going to give it to him.

He is talented. No, he is. He's good. I have never met anyone. I have never met anyone that talks to themselves as well as this guy. I talk to myself so good. As well as this guy does. Hey, the rest of the world is going to try to tear you down.

I mean, I generally roll out a bed in the morning, look in the mirror and like, what's up, you piece of shit? What are you going to fuck up today? It already makes me very uncomfortable to speak about myself positively. And Nick knows that. I'm getting red right now. But yeah, I'm excited to see, you know, what I can do. And then, yeah, but maybe at some point an opportunity comes along and I have to be like, hey, guys, I got to go. Like, I want to take advantage of this.

I don't know what that looks like, you know. But I love wearing the uniform. And I think even through the comedy, you can see the love for the institution. Because I am unapologetically American and I do believe the United States military is one of the greatest institutions on Earth. I was the trademark holder of that phrase. Really? Unapologetically American? God, I'm surprised you guys.

No way. You said you were. Did that leave with Ranger Up? Yeah. Okay. I left with Ranger Up. Okay. Yeah.

Don't sue me, please. I'm not. I don't care at all. it would be somebody else. Oh, yeah, I guess at this point it would be somebody else. He might be able to put in a good word for you. But yeah, I just, I love what I do. I love wearing the uniform.

I'm very proud of it. And I don't know. I'm going to see where it goes. After, let's say you're able to do the other seven plus years, whatever it is, I mean, assuming you're still able to, and I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to continue to build. Will you just lateral and full time into what you're doing outside of your military service now? Yeah, right now I'm trying to figure out.

and I was actually talking to Nick about this in the lobby and a couple of my buddies. I'm trying to figure out the product that I want to sell and I want to create something massive and I know I can do it. What are you ideating around? Right now it's a dippable pre-workout. That's what I'd like to do. That's the idea I have now. How the fuck did you come up with that?

I have a video series that went viral. Have you heard about what people are doing with Zinn right now? Yeah. Yes. Where they're putting it in their ass. Yeah. And on the ball sack. What?

Oh, I didn't know that. It's thin permeable membrane, dude. I'm going to put thin, I'm going to put thin permeable membrane on a t-shirt. Fuck. I literally just saw that headline. I'm like, why is this in my fucking news feed? Like, people are fisting Zin up their ass. Yeah, I made a video series where it would be me in the gym and I would, like, lift something.

And I'd be like, you know how I can do that? Because I have 16 Zin pouches in my ass. And I specifically picked 16 because 15 coming to kids. can and people picked up on it and they're like, you had to crack two cans? Fuck. Has Zinn taken over in the military? Oh, God, yeah. It's every.

And it's funny because I get pissed if it's out at the shop that's close to my work. I'm like, what the fuck? Like, I need my fix. I don't remember when I first heard about Zin, but God damn. It's everywhere. Was that four or five years ago? Is it better for you than dip? It's 100% better because there's no tobacco and it's literally straight nicotine.

nicotine itself isn't that healthy, which is what the people that sell me nicotine tell me. Well, it's a neotropic. And about, I think, a half of the doses of a single Zin every two days. Yeah, probably. But, yeah, it is better for you. Like, you're not getting all the crap that comes in tobacco. Is it good for you?

I mean, I would debate that. I always thought, like, tobacco wasn't really the worst part. Isn't it, like, all the stuff that. The carcinogens and stuff? I used to hear that they would, there was a little bit of fiberglass in there. so irritate the front side or the inside of your lip. Yeah, with dip. I mean, maybe the best lip mistest test is for somebody who's on like a Zen pack a day, like a can,

if they were to stop cold turkey, are they going to have issues? Oh, I got out there. Definitely. Okay. All right. So there's probably an addictive now. Okay. That kind of answers our question as to whether or not it's better for you.

I've never tried one. So it's never been my thing. I had braces in high school and I was fucking playing baseball riding home in this guy's truck. He goes, hey, man, do you want a dip? And he's like a senior. And I'm a freshman. I'm like, oh, no. So I throw in a Codiac.

Puked everywhere. Codiac winter green. Yeah. I fuck, man. I feel like I took a garden hose to my braces to try to get out for two days. I had that winter green taste. Yeah. But it killed any desire I ever had to try that stuff again.

And I would watch guys just freaking. That's how smoking was for me. I tried a cigarette one time. And I was just like, I don't, fuck it. Yeah, it was gross. The first time I tried it. I dipped through Ranger School. I showed up like because everybody did it after a certain point not anymore yeah were you to distinguish honor

graduate I was not I was not I was in the running I was in the running I got beaten by uh Tim no by Lucasaurus he was uh he was uh he was uh in my squad and I went to I went to school with him prior to so I've known him for years and he deserved it he was he was better than I was yeah I'm okay with it I've never been that undergraduate of a single fucking thing me either I try to I'm like what's the baseline standard to graduate, I'll do 1% above that. Not because I want to, but that's generally my max capability. So slide right now. I worked really hard to be 1% above average.

You know what, though? And like all these courses, that's fucking good enough. If you meet the standard to graduate, then you fucking graduate. Yeah. These things are miserable. These are miserable courses. People really don't know how miserable these schools are. They also don't understand, like the term honor grad.

people who've listened to this podcast and will know where I'm going. The honor grad of my bud's class is in prison. He and his wife lured a couple back to their apartment and cut them up with a spider coat. Oh my God. Yeah, and put their bodies into garbage bags. He used to work at a grocery store chain. So they distributed the bodies throughout the grocery store garbage can network because he knew the velocity that they would get thrown away. And then he got caught stealing T-shirts from a hooters in the middle of the night.

And when they looked in his wife's purse, there was a fucking spider code knife with like human flesh and hair on it. No. And the driver's licenses of the victims. Of the people? Yes. Oh, so they wouldn't have gotten caught if they weren't dumb as shit. But they were really smart about like 99% of it. That was the honor man of my butt's class.

Maybe let's not put too much into it. You know, what does honor me to you? Did he write a book? No, he's still in prison. Okay. You can write a book from prison. I guess. I think he gets mandatory parole in a few years. I am going to try to sit down. How do you get parole for that? I don't think his sentence was life. Can you look up Ben Seifert, S-I-F-R-S-R-T?

Mandatory parole? Like he has to get parole? He has gone up for parole multiple times and has been denied. And wherever he is. Oh, I got you. Yes. Honor, man. Honor courage commitment, not a big deal. Okay, he's going to get out almost 20 years ago. got divorced in prison. It fell apart. You know, I guess it's tough to have a long-distance relationship. Totally. Shots were fired through the bathroom door.

Yeah. Yeah, there was a gunfire. The gun fight? Nah, I think he killed him with a gun. Okay, so second-degree murder, but cleared him in the other one. Yeah, Erica Seifert, yep, that's the couple. That's the victims. Those are the victims, yep.

Yeah, keep going down. Honor, man, on the right. Oh, my God. Okay, keep going down because I know there's going to be a mandatory parole here. Mandatory release days, 2030. Fuck yeah, six years away. I got to get him on the books. How did he get out of life?

Second degree. But how is that second degree? Well, I guess we don't know this. So when you say- She got first degree. And second degree, fuck, that means she was the ringleader, I think. She was the murderer. She's eligible for all in 2024.

There's no fucking way. They divorced in 2010. Pussies. Yeah, you might as well write it out at that point, right? I mean, fuck, if you're married and you're in a different prison, and it's like, would she care if you were into your bunkmate, who's a dude? So she probably shot. There was a gunfight for sure.

Well, not a gun fight. My God, why am I saying that? There was a gun involved. Yeah. I don't know if they ever recovered the gun. I really think that the spider coat knife with the DNA and flesh and hair and the, IDs was probably tough to argue around. Yeah, no, that's hard.

It's real Jason-born shit. I mean, that's what we teach in the SEAL teams. Yeah, I mean, you guys know how to distribute bodies via grocery store chains. He did. He did. I think it would be a fascinating podcast. I mean, question one, like, hey, buddy, what have you been up to since I last saw you? You don't open it.

You're a coward. You're a coward if you don't do that. I mean, I haven't seen you since Bud's graduation. What you've been doing? me up to speed, dude. What do you've been up to? Give me the wavetops. You know, other than getting fucking ass bored out by your fucking roommate. What's Wednesday prison chow look like?

Probably mac and cheese. Yeah. Office Joe. Well, talk to me about the production company you started too. Yeah. So, oh yeah, I guess we were talking about that. So when... That's how I do it.

I have no idea what the fuck I'm going to talk about. I can go whatever subject you want. When I step down from Ranger Up, the company was like, well, if you're leaving, then we have no reason to have a North Carolina office anymore. So they can, you know, the people that you have there can move to North, to Ohio, or we're going to get rid of all their jobs. And I was like, oh, crap. So I kind of thought about it. And then I was like, hey, guys, I've got some good news and some bad news.

I was like, the bad news is that next Friday you're all going to get laid off. and they were like, oh my God, like what the, you know, unless you want to move to Ohio, no one wanted to move to Ohio. And the good news? Nobody wants it. Nobody wants it's not worth it. And I was like, the good news is you can have the same job at new company I'm starting. And they were like, well, what's the company?

And I said, I don't know yet, but I'll tell you on Monday. And went home and I thought about, like, what am I good at? You know, what would I enjoy? They made some phone calls to a couple of guys that had run agencies before. And that's how Diesel Jack Media started. I had a Jack Russell for 15 years named Diesel, Jack Russell, Jack Russell, Diesel Jack. And launched a marketing advertising agency and kind of grew that to a pretty significant company. and I've always, you know, since range 15, I've always wanted to get into, you know, production

and earnest. And we've done a lot of great work. We've done some documentaries. We did, you know, send me about the fall of Afghanistan. Do you just like the process as far as that content creation and production? So everybody likes different things. I don't like content as much as I like making artwork. That's what I'm saying.

So you can call it what you like the end result, what you want. Do you like the iterative and design and creative process to come up with it? I love the creative process. I love coming up with ideas as a team. I love writing. I think that's probably my best, like, skill set. Yeah. But I also really love watching.

So like, you know, in office, Joe, I'm in it, but I'm like a super minor character. I didn't want to be in it. I wanted to see it. But the bathtub scene was good. Yeah, thank you. I wanted to see it like brought to its rightful conclusion. And so what I like is the fact, you know, usually, you know, if you look at Hollywood, you know, there's a dude that writes it. There's a, there's, you know, another writer that kind of writes over what that guy did.

And they, you know, producers get involved. And it's some version of that original idea, but it's not the original idea. And then someone else directs it and they put their spin on it. and then there's an editor and they put their spin on it. And so by owning the production company, like I wrote it, you know, I directed it. And I'm not saying that like any movie, any film you make, it's a huge team process with a lot of incredibly talented people. But I like seeing the vision from soup to nuts. And then it's like, hey, if you don't like it, it's my fault.

But I've watched a lot of really talented people that are in the Hollywood world that I know, I know they're better writers than I am. And like their product hits the market. And everybody's like, man, the writing is terrible. And it's like, it's not their fault. It's because 43 dudes had an opinion. And like, like, how does Disney make something with bad writing? It should be impossible.

But it's because there's 43,000 people that touch everything. Well, when was the last time Disney actually made something that was new? I feel like most, and I say this with absolutely no data to support this, totally anecdotal. I feel like there hasn't been like a new movie made in a really long time. A really long time, actually. Yes. Not even just Disney. Well, they've made them, but you haven't seen them because they all flopped.

Well, but it's like they're retilling the ground. Yeah. Like, okay, superhero movie, but it's in this genre. Yes. You know what I mean? Oh, I get what you're saying. Yes. You're saying there hasn't been a truly original idea out of them for a long time.

It's like you're out there like, fuck it, let's just do another pass with the fucking John Deere over this dirt and make it look like something else. But it's 98% the same thing. But I think that that's the transition from making films to making content. That's why I'm really like very hardcore about, you know, when I'm making an ad, that's content, right? If I'm making a, you know, a silly thing on the internet to make people laugh, that's content. But if you're making a movie or you're making a show, you shouldn't think about it as content. You're telling a story. The problem now, and this is really interesting, is I know you're making fun of these right here.

Losing this as a medium for sales is why independent film has suffered significantly. And it's why you don't see a lot of new movies. Really? Yes. because this right here, people used to make more on these than they did actually in the theater, or at least a comparable amount. So now if you don't win in the theater, you're not getting any additional money from Netflix or Amazon or whatever after they buy, whatever license they buy. Yeah, I've heard the back-end deals on those are pretty microscopic.

Like you'd have to multiply it by a massive number. Massive amounts. So, you know, because of that, they don't want to take risk, right? Why would you deviate from something? You know if you put, you know, I mean, pick your current, you know, who's the dude right now that's like in everything? The Rock? Good looking guy was in Top Gun Maverick. Oh.

Glenn. And he was in Twisters. Yeah, he was in Twisters. Glenn, is it Glenn? Glenn is his first name? Powell. Glenn Powell. You're right?

And no, Csavent. No shade on Glenn Powell, right? He's killing it. He's killing it. And I'm happy for him. But you know if you put Glenn Powell in something, you're going to do all right, right? So like what, you know, he's, you know, put him in a rom-com.

You know it's going to be all right. Put him in a quasi-action movie. You know it's going to be all right, right? He's actually done some interesting work. But the formula is you take a known quantity. you put a, you know, action in particular because action is universal and Netflix and Amazon now want to make sure that they, that international audiences get it. And, you know, you can understand an action movie regardless of language. And so literally, that's what they're looking for.

Action movies, horror movies. Yeah. You know, if the plot's complex, it probably needs to be in your native language. Oh, wow, I never thought about that. That's really interesting. Tougher to follow if you got to read the subtitles. I wouldn't expect a content guy to understand. I can barely read.

I'm obviously not actually throwing shade. But yeah, so that's like the challenge right now is they have to make money in the theater. So then you think about like office space, right, is considered a classic, you know, movie. Like our generation knows that movie in and out. Completely flopped in the theater. Have you ever seen it? office space? I have. Is it because I told you to recently? No. God, every fucking movie reference I use with him. He's like, nope, never seen it. Completely flopped in the theater. Did it really?

Completely flopped. And now it's like a cult classic. It was in the $5 bin in Walmart and Best Buy. I think Napoleon Dynamite did that too. I think it flopped like when it first came out. And people, you know, people started buying it and they're like, oh shit, this is really good. And now it still makes millions of dollars a year now. Yeah. But. Well, so then how do you solve that? Because technology is not going to go backwards.

I can't imagine them coming out with a Blu-Rate 2.0. So, you know, I think that I think there's a few different ways that you can solve that. So one way to solve it is, you know, at some point there's probably going to be some negotiation where people get paid based on views, you know, like that's a reason. That's literally what happened with social media. That's what happened. When you were doing stuff in the early days, you weren't getting paid. and now we all get paid based on views usually or length watched.

I'm really glad I was part of that not getting paid portion of the time. Thanks for, you know. Thanks for crawling so you could run. First got through the wall. It takes heavies. So I think that's that's one angle. The other angle is if you look at what the Angel Studios has done, you know, with the first with Chosen, but now with all their stuff.

They launch on their own platform and they typically have the content. They typically have their content for free. And then you provide money if you enjoyed it. But they also have. Like a tip? Yes. And they've made a fortune. What?

Really? I can kind of see that. I can see that. And almost because people would appreciate that it's free. Yes. That they would want to reward you. I mean, I'm having a hard time connecting it in my head, but I can see why people would do that. Right, yeah.

And I bet you they're, so probably not everybody's giving something, but those that do give, it's probably like bigger than you think it would be. And probably more than the cost of it would be to buy or rent it. Right. Yeah. So maybe one in five people are giving something, but it's 20 bucks on average or something like that. And then, you know, they have a new show movie and then a show coming out called Homestead that is, I think you, know Jeff Kirkham. That name rings a bell. Jeff was one of the original investors in Black Rifle Coffee. He and Evan served together. It's based on a book called Black Autumn and then a series.

But in Homestead, it's through Angel Studios. They actually are featuring all of the products that are used. So there's like an ad network built into it. So at any point, you can like click on the screen. Oh, that's pretty cool. And be like, what's this knife? And it like pops up. And so so the stuff that they're like if I had this. Yes. In the thing, somebody could click on it. But in TV shows and movies now, brands pay to have their thing on the table. They're missing that click to purchase it, but the brand. Sure, yeah, but it's still there. This shit's not showing up accidentally. It's not showing. Oh, well, yeah. No, I get that. But the idea that you could like. The idea that you could then, they're being there reducing barriers to purchasing. Oh, yeah.

Mass is there. In office there, though, I basically put all my friend stuff in it. Yeah, of course. It was like... I mean, Jack Hard did the same thing with Chris, like the half face blade knives and... Yeah. And most of the people,

unless you're in his particular friend network, wouldn't notice it, but the ones that did be like, oh, fuck, that's awesome. Yeah. So, I get it. Yeah. So, you know, the way we kind of built the universe

is like you have your core group, but then because it's about, you know, it's about a design agency, the people coming in every episode are, the interesting edition. So like Tim Kennedy plays a 500 pound, you know, evil executive named Silas Rathmore, you know, and he's... Is this the real thing?

This is really an office, Joe. Okay. Yeah, this is... I just didn't know if there's a book. It's a true story. It's a true story. Yeah, no, Tim went method. He went method.

He gained... Tim is method. He gained 300 pounds. He put a fat suit on. Yeah, he did. He put a fat suit on. Just like when he tried to hide in the fucking jujitsu gym by putting on prosthetics. It's like, get the fuck out of here, Tim.

God. That's one of the first Tim Kennedy videos I ever saw. He put on like a really shitty mustache and went to a Jitzy Gen and he pretended he wasn't. He was in bowling people and like, that's so weird. I made that video. No, you didn't. Oh my God. I literally told him about it when he was in Poland.

That was when I met him. That is hilarious. Yeah. What would he last undercover about seven minutes? Yeah, he can't. Not in Austin or in Jackson. Jack, you know, Jack Mandeville, you know, played a hedge fund guy. Mary Dague, do you know Mary?

Mary Deg would be a great person to have on the show. She's really funny. She was EOD Tech and she lost both of her arms. You know, she says being bad at her job. I was going to say there's a super fucked up joke there that I'm trying to tell. Oh, no, she's, she's. She'll make it. So she plays a-

I said the fucking Red Wire. She's a comedian, right? She plays a gang leader in the show. So she has no arms. She has a gang of people that all act like they're Hispanic, but none of them are Hispanic. Okay. It's really, it's a weird show. But she's amazing in it.

She is amazing in it. And, uh, how many seasons are you guys going to do? As many as you can? I have five planned. Holy fuck. I have five planned, but, you know, obviously like season one has to be successful. Okay. Um, right now, everybody, everybody that has kind of has watched it.

And we've had, we've had, it's been, it's been really good. We've had, you know, thousands of people have bought it. And, uh, the feedback is great. And actually the interesting feedback is, um, people are like, man, you know, like I was expecting like range 15 all over again. And I'm actually pleasantly surprised like it wasn't that. It was totally different. Uh, and none of us wanted to remake range 15, like, you know, that we did that.

And for the time, it was right. But this is approachable. Like, you can't watch it with like a. 10-year-old, but you can watch it with a teenager. It's not, it's like, it's like, I would put it at like a light R heavy PG-13. You know, there's some, there's some violence, but not a, like, funny violence. There's, there's probably more F-bombs than we needed, but, you know, that's, that's just the way we, we went with it. But it's, it's not like range 15 where, you know, you can only bring your weird friends to range 15, or they're going to be uncomfortable.

Yeah, that's more like a stream that one at home with a limited audience. Yeah. To save her bet. You're a weird friend. I love that. No, I mean, listen, like, you know, in range 15, there's a scene where, like, one of the heroes of the whole thing, the woman that literally figured out how to cure the zombies doesn't know who the Medal of Honor recipients are. And she gets murked in cold blood and nobody ever talks about it again. She spent an hour and 15 of a 90-minute movie helping the team and then just gets murdered for no reason.

It's so dark. It's one of my favorite parts of the whole movie. But like, you know, people are like, what the fuck is wrong with you? The hardest thing to believe in that movie was actually Brian Callan as a soldier. He's, God damn, that guy is fucking hilarious. He's hilarious. Yeah. He's hilarious.

I remember I did I did fighter and the kid many years ago and it must have been for Range 15 and we spent the entire episode talking about chimpanzees fighting and how they rip off

your testicles and jaw he was asking me why we don't clear rooms with hornets or snakes why don't you guys why don't you guys take jars of hornets and throw them into the building and then just wait

and I'm like well I don't know Could couldn't the Logistical issues of getting a jar of hornets To the battlefield My question was like Because it's not actually a bad idea I mean I believe if there was hornets

Where are we getting all the hornets I mean Halliburton obviously But yeah it's like are we getting a government contract For these fucking hornets Are they gonna attack us Are these trained hornets Are these trained hornets? Yeah what if they turn on us?

You could put pheromones on You know a lot about hornet fighting. Yeah. Or snakes or why don't we use darts. I'd like to be a hornet fighter like in my off-duty time in season two of office show, please. Okay. Has he already signed up for season two? He has signed up for season.

He's been awesome. He's been like helping, you know, promote the show and all those things. Here's the fucking move. You guys don't have. What's the move? You don't have a hair on your fucking balls unless you cast Tim Kennedy as a a stolen valor dude that gets called up. So I add a fucking applebee's.

That motherfucker rolls in there and he's in his uniform telling stories on Veterans Day trying to get a fucking free meal. And then one of us catches some part of his story. That's not quite right. So I mean, straight up. Straight up. In season one, the character Tim Kennedy plays hates Tim Kennedy. Yeah, there's a picture of him up on the wall.

He talks a lot of shit about Tim Kennedy as Tim Kennedy. I think he would do it. I'll pitch it to him if you need me to, from my distance. He'll 100, oh, he would, from a distance. He would, he would 100%. He would 100%. Yeah. I mean, he's going to have to lean into this a little bit.

I told him, I told him. If I was him, I would wear a T-shirt every day that just says coalition asset. And that, that would be it. I'd wear, you know. Didn't he just mean that he was there as part of the U.S. coalition? I think people are taking that one too far. He's not saying he was like Jason Bored moving around on the battlefield, right? Not saying that. What he was saying is that he was assigned to the mission, not to an individual unit. So basically, headquarters got to decide where he was going at any given point or time. That's all he meant by that. But of course, it's, you know. People got to run with it. Just drop Kennedy in. He'll take care of the war. Well, I'm going to see him in Nashville next week. I'm trying to think of the most fucked up way to say hello to him. And I haven't figured it out yet, but it's going to cut deep.

To your point, though, leaning into this stuff is always 100% the right move. Anytime anybody's foot. Like some dude on, was it yours or mine, he posted, is that Captain Dipshit the lieutenant with like cartoon tattoos on his arm? And I was like, that's, I screenshot it. And they put it on my story. I was like, that's the best. There's much worse things I've been called.

But that's one of the funniest for sure. I used to just post. And, you know, I don't really, I'm not like big into. social like I was when I did Ranger Up. But Ranger Up had, you know, over a million. And so people would hate every day. And whenever they hated, I would just post the gif of, uh, it's not your fault from, uh, uh, goodwill hunting. Oh, that's funny. And I would do it over and over again until they quit. Like it didn't matter if it took hours. But it'd be like, fuck you. It's not your fault. Let me ask you this. How much attention did you pay to the positive comments?

because there is this inherent negative bias. Especially when it's your art. I bet you for every negative there was 99 100. And I'm asking you this because I am so guilty of this. Yeah. And it's funny too how people that you don't know, you're like, motherfucker, you just cut me to the bone. I, like, how did you know me better than I know myself?

And you'll ignore every single piece of positive feedback and affirmation and get so fucking spun over one negative con. It's something I work on. When I was younger, I cared a lot. When we, the first few times, like, something, you know, somebody said something negative or, you know, whatever. Now you just pretend like you don't? No, it's still, like, obviously nobody likes to see negative stuff. But I now, I've been in social for better or for worse.

Like, I kind of tried to get out of it and then I got sucked back in for a long time. And so I've seen every iteration of your, you're great, you're bad, you're great, you're bad. So I don't take any of it seriously. Yeah. You know, like me personally, I'm only speaking about me. I always try to do good things, even if every time that I have fired back and maybe done damage to somebody that was trying to do damage to me, I felt shitty about it. And I haven't done it in years. I was going to say the same thing.

you're like, fuck yeah, I got you. I got you. And then you're like, man, I am actually a piece of shit. Why did I? Well, it's because when you, when some rando says something to you, it's meaningless. But if you respond, I don't respond to any of it anymore because people, one guy messaged me and he was like, can you please delete your comment? Because I've got people like threatening me in my DMs.

Yeah. And it was in no way serious. Like I just said, I said something funny back. And I'm like, I don't think you guys, do you understand I talk shit on the internet? Like, if I do say something back, like, I don't know. And even with the Tim stuff, like, I, early on, I got a little overly engaged. And my wife, and even Tim, we're like, just, just don't. Because I, like, I've seen, like, you know, when they're like, you didn't really get injured.

Like, I remember his wounds. You can see the scars. Like, you, you know, like, I, you know, they talk shit about Afghanistan. Like, I was there when he was there. when he came back with, you know, shit all over his pants from when he was walking through the sewers, carrying the kit. Like, I was physically there when this stuff happened and like him crying after all of, you know,

when we were mission complete, we couldn't go back, you know. You're talking about to save our allies stuff? I'm talking about to save our ally stuff, you know. And so like this idea that like, you know, he didn't help. He wasn't a problem. it was for a, you know, a grift. Like, I take that stuff super personally because I was with all of those guys, you know?

And he doesn't sell that like he was this grand hero. Like, if you watch every interview, he talks about, you know, Gabbler and C-spray and, you know, the Air Force guys, Sean Hurley-Heath, chief among them, that did way more than he did. And it's true. They did way more than he did. Right? They were there longer. They, you know, but he contributed significantly in a very dangerous situation. And, and there's no question about it. We, we flew 12,000 people out of Afghanistan between the 8,397, I think, I could be slightly off on that number that we brought to UAE or the, the, you know, 3,000, give or take that we brought to Cutter on two UAE planes that, you know,

we had because of our friend Joe Robert, you know, who was lucky, we were lucky enough, had those relationships or with the three planes that Glenn Beck and Mercury One paid for. So we had five airframes, right? 12,000 people. Like, you know, this is all, and it's like... Some of that Evac stuff is tough to watch. Yeah. People cling into the outside of airplanes.

Like, fuck, man. Yeah. And so, you know, it's not like... It's not like Tim is sitting there going. I personally saved 12,000 people. It's, you know, we had 12 random veterans, and some of them had fantastic connections. And then we had Sarah Verardo,

that was opening doors left and right. You know Sarah. She is a fucking powerhouse. She's a powerhouse. Are we allowed to say her name? No, I'm dead serious. I don't know if she likes the... She doesn't like attention,

but I'm going to give her attention. Okay. As long as it's not something we've got to go back. Sarah Varardo is, you know, when all our clearances were coming from various folks in the State Department or the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You know, it's not like, if we were just 12 assholes that we're doing

whatever we wanted. You know we'd all be in prison right now. Like, that's not how things work. And so, um, Tim would be in prison. He is a prison, you know. So it just, you know, and there was, and there was stuff that happened where people were upset with, with, you know, the team and, and, and I don't want to get into all that. It was a fucked up situation. It was a fucked up situation with a lot of people doing their best. And because of all kinds of things, Nobody got the outcome they wanted. And, you know, I will say that, like, that dude did everything he could to do what he thought was right with the time that we had available. And that's it.

And so, you know. Like I said, there's a lesson to be learned there for him. You just, you have to expect that that level of notoriety, the scrutiny that you're going to get is almost unbearable. Yeah. So just be careful. I mean, that's the lesson to be learned. Will he learn it? Different story. You know, with that, though, like, I don't think he did anything wrong. Like, literally every interview, he gave the credit to the other people. I'm not trying to say that he did anything wrong. What I'm saying is it, preciseness matters because that's where people will come after you.

If you crack the door, they'll kick it open. I know what you're saying. But I also think there is nothing. he can do that someone won't hate. I truly believe that if Tim Kennedy... That's true of all of us, though. If Tim Kennedy was like, I'm giving a million dollars to deaf kids, somebody would be like, you fucking hate blind kids? Like, 100% that would be what happened. And it is true of all of us, but not to the same extent. Like... That's what I'm saying, with that level of notoriety, the scrutiny from all... You have a lot of notoriety. I don't think so. I'm resoundingly an idiot, which I think people...

I wasn't arguing. I mean, notoriety and being an idiot are separate things. But I think I've known for being an idiot. So therefore, so what I try to do is set the bar low and then trip over it. You know, it's like, I don't, solid. I do the best I can. I've been an underachiever my entire life and I have no desire to change that. You just, you have different delivery. Your delivery is understated. His delivery is amped up because that's your personality. Like, you know, you have an understated, biting sarcastic personality. I don't find myself to be sarcastic.

I don't know what you're talking about. That was so, I almost was like, what? You were about to be like, no, you are sarcastic. And Tim is like, he's like a fountain of energy. Tim, here's what I can tell you. I can't wait for his next fucking book to come out. I got ideas. I think Tim might have been the second man on the moon.

We all know Neil Armstrong, the astronaut, but do we know the astronaut known as TK? Terriott Tubman was a sniper and Tim taught her how to shoot. Yeah. I got ideas. You know, like we're talking about, he might have been there writing the Gettysburg Address. I'm not sure. You know what? Coaching George Washington that way.

You can't believe he wasn't. Honest to God, I don't think he's willing to go this far, but I think a historical Tim Kennedy series of Tim Kennedy through time. Yeah. He is just... It would be so good. He already dressed up as George Washington for a black rifle hat. Powdered wig at all. Yeah, so there's that.

We could do A. Blinken next. He's going to have some height issues there. He's a little wee. Actually, he's not that wee, but he's... I think the only thing I have on him is I might be a quarter of an inch taller. But... Yeah, we'll put him on the moon first. Maybe he's teaching Amelia Earhart how to fly.

Have him, like, kill racism. You know what I mean? God, fascism, Nazism. It just haven't killed the isms. Yeah. He's going to be okay. Yeah. He'll be all right.

Of course he is. I mean, of course he is. Do you think there's anything that we can do that would, I was going to say, force the veteran culture to stop being this destructive cycle? But I don't think that's the right word. Do you think there's anything that we can do that would encourage them? I think that there's a small contingent in our community that is hyper-vocal. and I don't think you're getting rid of them.

I wish the positive people would be more vocal. It almost seems like the positivity, though, it's, again, I think the negativity bias plays into that a little bit. I think it's harder to get more traction being positive than it is negative. And so then I think that it probably becomes enticing, especially if you show this pattern of getting attention for being negative. I think you can, yeah, I think you can gain quick attention being negative, but any time I put out a video,

I want to be speaking in the positive. And it's really hard to describe how I think about it. I think I've done a pretty good job of it so far. But like that stuff. Of course you think you've done a great job. If I was to grade myself, it would be an A plus plus. On a scale of one to ten, I don't know, I'm a 12. But you gain attention really quickly when you gain attention really quickly when you

you're just crapping on people, but like, that is not an audience you want. Like that doesn't feel good either. I don't think you feel good about that. When somebody comes up to you, are they, are they just like, what up, bro? Fuck Tim. You know what I mean? Like, who, what are you saying? Because when people come up to me, they're like, yeah, you're really funny.

I also had a dickhead first sergeant. Like, thanks. Thanks for making that video. Like, it's kind of fun, you know? It feels good. Yeah. But when you're just tearing people down, like, it's just how. I don't get those people.

And my mind doesn't work that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I think that you do a positive show, I think. I try to. I want to, I don't know if I have any goal other than trying, I mean, for myself, like, pie in the sky.

I would rather try to leave the world like a little bit better than I came into it. I mean, like, that's kind of it. That's literally. I don't even know what the fuck that means, but that's kind of my underlying goal. We were talking about this. I think, I think it was this morning. morning. It's like the lens that I always try to, you know, is this going to make the world better or is it going to make the world better? Oh, yeah. And that's literally like even, I even make that decision now when I'm responding to somebody, you know, that, like the temporary stuff, let's say today, everyone was like, Nick's the worst. Okay. In two weeks, they'll have a new worst. Yeah. You know, will it affect how, you know, how I am with my.

kids, will it affect my relationship with my wife, will it affect my job? Your friends. It won't affect anything that's meaningful. In fact, I can just shut my phone off and I won't even know what people are saying. Like really, like, and so, you know, one of the things, you know, when everything was, when everything hit the fan, you know, Tim and I were talking and he was, you know, just kind of like, this sucks, you know, people suck and blah, blah, blah. And he's like, how are you doing?

And I was like, yeah, you know, like I'm a little tense right now because my son just deployed. And he just went, fuck, what am I even talking about? What am I even talking about right now? Yeah. You know, because my, you know, my, you know, he, he, uh, he pinned on. Uh, he was, he was, he was my son's first salute. No way. He flew out, he flew out.

He only had, he was on the ground literally for six hours. He flew from Texas, landed in Raleigh. drove three hours to Boone, saluted my son at his ROTC, you know, graduation, pin on ceremony, et cetera, drove back to Raleigh and flew to a, you know, a business meeting he had elsewhere. That's amazing. So, you know, like, and it's weird to have a kid deployed, you know, and it's weird to. I'm glad that none of my kids had any interest in military service.

How do you have? Three. Like 21 and 19 boys and then a daughter who's 16. And I am resoundingly the most boring, uninteresting person they've ever met, which is perfect. They're like, whatever, Dad. I don't, I don't push it. In fact, I, when he started thinking about military service, I was like, go Air Force. They take care of people, you know.

They get lobster. It's a good life. They build the runway last. It's a good life. It's not an accident. You know, he, uh, that's so good. And I'm going to steal that and use it. They 100% build the fucking runway last.

So it's like, first we need to do the defact. Yep. And then the bowling alley. And then the golf course. The golf course is, oh, hey, we're out of money. And our base doesn't have a runway. Well, here's your fucking money for the runway. Yeah.

That's so funny. Yeah. I mean, I actually have no idea if that's true, but I've been saying it for years. So. Well, regardless of whether it's true or not, you know. We all hate them because they just have it better than us. They do. They have it really do.

They have a lot better. They do. What else do you guys want to cover? Yeah. What do you want to talk about? You know, what do you want to talk about life? You want to talk about politics? Man.

There's not even anything to talk about politics-wise at this point. We kind of wait. I'm curious to see what kind of game they bring. They're talking a big game. I would love to see a lot of the change that they're talking about, shaking stuff up. I would love to see a reduct. of the cost that we spend on so many. Absolutely.

I don't know how much of the game that they're talking they're going to be able to do. That's what I think too, because Congress has to ultimately pass all this stuff. And he's told Vivek and Elon you have until 4th of July, 26. Yeah. And I mean, we're talking this momentous, gigantic undertaking. I don't think even if it was Trump's only sole focus that he would be able to accomplish a fraction of what they're talking about in the four years that he has. The big thing that I think no one is thinking about, maybe not no one is thinking about.

But yeah, like, first of all, you know, government employees are not evil or anything like that. There are a lot of government employees that are doing great things. There are also some that I would have happily choked to death when I was, you know, in uniform and was dealing with finance or dealing with, you know, whatever. But there are a lot of people that are doing, you know, really good work. let's say you did reduce the government by 50%. You know, some of the, they're talking even bigger. But let's just say you were to cut it in half. That's millions of employees.

Yeah. Who now are unemployed. Yeah. And... Yeah, through the lens of trying to decrease the size of the government, you might be creating a little bit of an unemployment issue. You might be creating an unemployment issue. You might be creating other problems we're not even thinking about.

Now, that being said, we cannot operate the way that we're operating now. You cannot forever increase the deficit at the rate we're doing it now. I mean, we will end up in a, you know, we'll end up not being the currency that the world is based on, and that'll be a catastrophic problem. So here's a hot potato one they're talking about. Should veterans benefits be on the chopping block? I think, and I won't be careful.

We're going to alienate a lot of people. be careful i don't think so i think that if you are going to send people to war then you have to pay for the results of that war and like and like what what should happen is access to those benefits should get easier because like we have this massive budget and it's kind of just like where the fuck does it go like we we have i don't know i heard about all these benefits to joining the military and then i see people some people it seems real easy things like vogue rehabs like the most amazing program ever, right? But it seems like so few people can get access to this stuff.

It's like really, it's gate kept and it's odd to me. I don't know why, but people are acting like it comes directly out of their pocket. Like it's, you know, I want a third sauce packet. Yeah. I think the benefits program would benefit, no pun intended, from a little bit more scrutiny. I think you did intend. Intend your pun, sir. I didn't intend that one.

Streaty on the program itself, but then also scrutiny on people's ability to actually use it. Yes, but then also people who are using it and gaming the system, and that should be reviewed as well. That's fair. Yeah. But I think... Not through a malicious lens, but like... Oh, yeah, no.

I'm biased. I think you have to be careful with that stuff. And I'm not saying... One of the things that happens when you start worrying about the exceptions is you start building this colossal system that is very expensive that deals with the exceptions. I'm not so sure it's the exception. you think it's more people than not? I think it might be split more towards 50-50 than not.

Really? Yes. That's an aggressive statement. I didn't feel like it was aggressive. I feel like it was softly delivered. So you think 50% of veterans? No, no, I said I think it's closer to 50%. You think 47% of veterans?

I'd said closer to 50. I mean, we don't have to put a number. 58.9%. Hold on. Now you want to count? You don't want to You don't want to count grenades and fucking Tim's backpack, but now you want to fucking count?

Okay, we'll just say there's there were 49, all right? I think that there are, there is a reason that entire communities and ecosystems exist and you can find these without searching that hard that are coaching people towards this never ending. This is what you need to say. This is what you need to do. I do think that.

exists. I know for a fact it exists. And I was having a conversation with somebody the other day and they were talking about even more interesting than that is the, and I know almost nothing about Reddit other than it exists. And I guess there are subsections called sub fucking Reddits. I'm literally at the end of my knowledge of Reddit when I say that. But he was talking about it's almost comical in nature. There's entire forms that exist of like, hey, I'm getting a divorce or my girlfriend's breaking up with me and she's going to go report me how. And she knows. She knows that I was gaming the system.

And the fucking response, you know what I mean? It's, I don't want to, I don't, I don't believe it is incredibly widespread. But it is real. And if we can't hold ourselves accountable and have that level of integrity, how can we expect the taxpayer to support that? There's nobody who's going to be able to look inside of the Veterans Benefit Program other than veterans, and be able to determine what is legitimate and what is not. Yeah. It seems like it always, when you're talking about this kind of stuff, it always goes so far one way or the other.

And it's really difficult to find that middle ground where we're actually being fair. Oh, it's not going to be easy for sure, but I think it's important. I think we are better off over benefiting than we are under benefiting. I would rather, I mean, listen, everybody has to live with the decision that they're making. You know, that's at the end of the day. Everybody has to live with the decision they're making. if somebody's gaming the system, they know that they're a piece of crap. They know that they're...

And that's all they'll ever have to. The guy that wants a couple grand a month out of their government, he's not fucking starting a business. But I would much rather have... Maybe he is. We don't know that. I'd much rather have a few of those than have some guy, and I've watched guys that have serious issues, not be able to get... I'd rather err on the side of, you know, you get... your stuff, then make somebody jump through hoops that really needs it.

I do want to clarify that last statement, though, before somebody cuts it, I don't have an issue with veterans benefits. Whatever. Whatever content, man. Michael, put that down that we'll cut out that. Why don't you talk to yourself about that? So we're going to cut out that comment and we'll make a clip out of this previous. But somebody that's trying to game the system and they know they don't deserve it.

I don't know. That's just, they're just a turd. I mean, I, I know that, like, when I went through my final physical or whatever, the things that I was actually worried about, I'm zero percent for. Like, I got, during a training exercise, I got thrown from the TC hatch of a Bradley and landed on the front of it. And, like, my, I broke off a piece of my elbow. And, like, over the training exercise, I worked it out of my, you know,

kind of like pushed it through the skin. And then ever since then, I've had a patch right here that just randomly sweats and I lose feeling in my arm a little bit. That's zero. You need to go get that fucking checked out. That's zero percent. That's, that's, that's a random patch of skin that sweats profusely. No, it really will.

Like, I'll be in an air-condition room. Have you fucking talked to a doctor about that? Only the, only the, that first VA appointment that I have. That's a compensation and pension appointment. They're not there to fucking diagnose. Anyway. So I, so, so like, that was like. That was like zero percent.

And that was like a thing I was worried about. I was like, but then they, they were like, hey, you know, you were infantry, so we're going to, we're going to like examine your spine. And I have like a bunch of, you know, which is common for infantry. A bunch of chips in my spine. Yeah. And they were like, you know, that was like 10%. So I'm like 10% because of that. But like not zero percent for the pneumonia that they misdiagnosed and then gave me the wrong medicine, which made the pneumonia worse.

Did it make it on your rating paperwork, though? It is on my... So there is actually value even to be rating at zero percent because you can still see... Right, yeah. So it's like, I don't want people to think that that means that that didn't... First off, the fucking VA math doesn't make sense. It's like 30, 40, 20, 15, your total rating is 30. You're like, what are we doing here?

Yeah. Are we adding and dividing by fucking three? The math doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. But it's the most bizarre shit ever. But like, okay, this number adds up to 678 and you're telling me the number is 30. Okay. But I know there is value.

It's not a matter that it's not real. But if you can get it on there, the zero still has value for treatment. Yeah. And I'm good. I don't need any of this stuff. But I was frustrated. I remember leaving, because I didn't even really want to go. And, you know, all my friends were like, you got to go.

At least go. I wouldn't have gone if it wasn't required for that MEP, P, EB process. I literally had to go do it. And now as I'm getting older, you know, and like sometimes my back really hurts now. You know, now with time. And, you know, so it's, I understand the need for it. But I do remember being very frustrated with how hard it was. To me, it's like, hey, my elbow's not right.

My, there's something wrong. You know, I definitely have massive scar tissue in my lung from the pneumonia. And I get pneumonia easily now, thanks. Like that, I feel like that would have been, you know, it's just very random. But then, you know, now I understand it's much more. much easier for people. And I think that that's... It depends.

You know, there are some catch-alls that may or may not apply to people that are more difficult to necessarily verify, I guess, would be. And there are ways to gain the system. I'm not trying to say, I think, that it is a system-wide issue. I do think it should be on the chopping block with everybody else, with all the other systems. I'm not saying it should be chopped. I'm saying it should be... You're saying somebody should do an assessment.

Yes, that's it. Let's just start there. And then let's base our actions off of what the assessment we find. We're going to do that to all the other government agencies. I think they do a review. It's called like every four years. It depends on your rating. Like a P&T permanent and time.

But I mean the government. I think the government does a massive review and I cannot remember what's called. I do think, though, the fundamental problem. Yeah. That they'd never went to. I'm going to look it up. The fundamental problem, though. And I do think this is a significant. significant problem. We always find money to send young men and women to war. Oh, yeah. Trillions of dollars.

You saw the economist article. Trillions of dollars will emerge from nowhere in order to send, you know, and I can say this now, and it's not an insult to young people. It's because I now have a kid that's literally, you know, doing that. We always find money to send kids to war. And then it's huffing and puffing when it's time to pay for the results of that war. Like I have a problem with that. I have a fundamental problem with that because I would prefer that the huffing and puffing happens before we...

I'd rather huff and puff about sending people to war. 100%. Yeah. And all the benefits that somebody has or that they were promised, those people should be grandfathered in regardless of what any decision is made about future benefits too.

Because I've seen that, like, I remember, God, I can't remember who the Sergeant Major of the Army was that did it. I think it might have been. Chandler, but it was, he wanted to change tattoo policies. And then, like, people were not grandfathered in. So, like, tons of- That's going to have immediate impact?

Tons of people lost their OCS packets, green to gold packets. Tons of people couldn't go to walks, like become warrant officers. And it's like, this is, that's criminal. That's crazy to me. No regerts. Not even a single letter? Yeah, that, the, I'm not the guy to solve that problem. Yeah.

I think you are. I'm just saying, I think, I think all... I'll make funny videos about it. I think you should end up through the power of the content. You should argue with yourself until you solve the problem. Like one guy thinks that they should be cut and the other guy doesn't. Yeah. You're like, no, I'm not doing that.

I don't want to do anything to alienate anybody. I just want to give everybody a hug. I feel like Austin's doing a good job. I don't think he needs our content suggestions. Austin's doing... In all seriousness, you know a lot of, you know a lot of, you know, know, popular veterans. This guy is genuine in every way. Like he has, he has helped everybody that has asked him for help. And, you know, I've, I've been in this world a long time and I know just about

everybody and, you know, some people kind of get high on the horse and start really believing the hype about themselves. And like, he's not like that. He spends a lot of time with people and tries to do the right thing. So it's been a, it's been fun working with him. He crushed it in office. Joe. I appreciate it. Streaming now. Screaming now. The fun office Joe was the most fun, rewarding thing I've done up to this point.

And it also, I don't know, I felt like, it was like, I've had moments where I felt like, kind of like, wow, this is a big deal. And that was the biggest for me. Because like, now I can go on Prime and click on a show that I was in, right? And it's because of Nick. And how many people can say that? Like, you know, it's, it was one of the most profound moments. my life, like seeing it on prime.

That's cool. We got to get you in season two. I am not an actor. I feel like you. I would be either. I feel like you can definitely act. I mean, I haven't tried. So you could make him a coffee shop like barista.

Very disgruntled. Sometimes I do serve coffee at the shop. I know how to do drip coffee and a latte. So regardless of what you order, there's one of the two things you get it. I'll take a mocha, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, here's your fucking latte. Sorry, I can run the cash register. There's got to be a funny role.

I don't want a funny role. You guys don't want me involved in that shit. I feel like we have to force it. I know. You could make you a pastor. Why? I'm like, this actually, I can actually see it. I could actually see that.

Just a really disgruntled negative pastor. Are we going like Catholic priest or are we going like? Can it be a pastor? But that just tells people to fucking give up. That's what I'm saying. They come to me with their problems. I'm like, listen, it's not going to get better. Listen, all right?

Just fucking. Look at how it ended for Jesus. Shit can it now. Like, just give up. Start a drug addiction problem. How do we solve these problems in our marriage? Did you have a pre-nup? Oh, you already, the boat has sailed.

Yeah, explore the terrain outside of your marriage. Have you ever heard the saying the grass is greener? Not giving marital advice people. fucking joking. I don't believe in that. Yeah. No, I'm not, I don't, I don't think I would be a good Fesbian. I appreciate the offer, though. All right. Yeah. I'll have you guys back on for season two. How's that? Yeah, I'll help promote season two. Where, uh, where can people find you guys, social media wise other than mandatory fun day? Yeah, I mean, he's, everybody knows. Who doesn't know that? Um, I'm Nick Palmeschano. I'm Nick Palmeschano on everything except for

Twitter or X where I'm still Ranger underscore up. But Nick Palmishano. They let you keep that one? Yeah, because they don't want to run it. All right. Fair enough. So, and that was like that. No kidding.

Well, that was my personal. Oh. Yeah, it was a personal one. It wasn't the brand. So the brand had like a different one. Yeah. It was like Ranger up with that one. So that was, it's been mine.

And just mandatory fun day for you. Yeah. Everywhere. It's mandatory fun day everywhere. Even on Snapchat, which is for the devil. Do you tiki talk? Yeah. Yeah, he's big on TikTok.

He's huge on TikTok. God, you're a piece of shit. I'm on TikTok, but I've posted nothing. Depending on where I am for the military, I'm the most significant strategic threat to the military. You are. You could take the military down. Do you repost the same content across all?

I'm like I'm on Instagram. Yes, yeah. I post the same stuff everywhere. Okay. God deal. I can't. The amount of time I used to put into content versus the way he can do it. And I mean, and I'm not throwing shade.

I'm saying this in a positive way. he'll sit there for like 15 minutes and make like four videos and just post them all at once. And I'm like, you don't try to time them or anything. And he's like, well, you know, I used to time them, but I just found it's pretty much the same no matter what. And just post them all. And like- Well, that's what you learned after 4,000 post videos. I walked outside of the hotel and made this video. And I did it in one take.

We're at three hours and it's got 44,000 views. So I'm super happy with that one. But yeah, like, it just, I just run with it. And I've always found trying to script it or. anything like that, it just never is as good. For me, and it's funny, you're talking about the process, you enjoy the writing. I enjoy idea generation and then filming and then literally no other portion of the process. Like, I don't want to edit.

I do edit and, you know, but that's what I enjoy. And that's the strength and that's what I lean into. That's why I do volume. It's really low quality, really high volume. I think it's high quality. Well, I mean, as far as like, I don't usually use like, good cameras and stuff. It's all on my phone. You're talking about. Your phone at this point is a good camera. I guess that's true.

I mean, you got a cinema camera in your goddamn pocket at this point. Yeah. They're pretty amazing now. Yeah. They really are. Amazon, Prime, Apple, anywhere else? You can get it on Google Play YouTube. Okay. Yeah. Or you can order it on Blu-ray at Officejo Show.com. I can't get behind that. Hey, it's still, it's still 10% of the market because it's higher quality than all the streaming services. Is it really? Yeah. Oh, way higher quality. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.

That is actually that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, whenever they get their AARP subscription, they can pop this in. Words hurt. Yeah. Words hurt. You could call somebody on your rotary dial phone. We'll watch you it.

All right, gentlemen. Until next time. Thanks.